Just out., June 21, 2002, Page 53, Image 53

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Life w ith F ath er
here’s a saying in my family: The minute
an Acito opens the door of the fridge and
the light goes on, we don’t eat— we do
three minutes of audition material.
My dad has been performing in front of
fridges and audiences for nearly 50 years. A
Dixieland trombonist, he got his start in the
1950s playing in a five-piece hand. (There
were actually just three guys in the group, but
they only knew five pieces.)
These guys would do anything to get work,
including playing under assumed names for
nonunion wages, which is how Rocky Farino
became “Reginald Farrell,” Morty Feldstein
became “Montgomery Fielding” and Charlie
Acito became “Chase Carlyle.” I don’t know
about Rocky and Morty, hut the name “Chase”
stuck.
It suits him; my father is hard to keep up
with. Years hack while vacationing in Den­
mark, he suggested we take the boat to Sweden
just to go to dinner. We use the experience as
shorthand whenever we go out together: “OK,
the movie gets out at 10:30; ya think there’s
time to get to Sweden?”
The man is simply incapable of not having
fun. Once when he came to pick me up at the
park after school, he drove his car up onto the
playground, rolled down the window and
yelled: “Hey you
kids! Get outta
the road!”
Some
fathers took
their kids to
the zoo to
see the ani­
mals. Mine
ttxik us to
the movies to
see the
Marx
Brothers.
And to this day,
Chase can’t walk into a fast fcxxJ restaurant
without asking the teen-ager behind the
counter for a table near the hand.
hase lives across the street from my brother
Neal in New Jersey. The neighbors call
1, im "The Gnxwy Grandpa" because he
drives a convertible and favors women horn
after Neil Armstrong walked on the mixin. “I
feel like a 20-year-old,” he says, “hut, y’know,
there’s never one around.”
When Neal told me that my nephew’s girl­
friend just moved across the street, my first
thought was: “Oh, no. She’s not dating Dad, is
she.7"
Chase doesn’t discriminate against older
women, though. His only criterion for a com­
panion is that she must he completely and
utterly wrong for him. My family has stopped
THE GOSPEL
ACCORDING
TO MARC
by M arc Acito
writing the year on the hack of our holiday pic­
tures; we can figure it out just by looking at the
woman on Chase’s arm.
Lately my father has widened the playing
field by working as a dance host, which means
he’s paid to dance with unattached elderly
ladies at senior socials. This essentially makes
him a gigolo, except he’s vertical instead of
horizontal. He loves the attention and enjoys
the challenges— like how to mamho with a
woman dragging an oxygen tank behind her.
What keeps my father so vital is his willing­
ness to try absolutely anything. A walking tour
of New York’s Radical Communist sites? Let’s
go! The Warhol Diaries: An Opera (sung in
Czech)! Hurry, we’ll he late! The Portland Gay
Pride Parade? Where do we line up?
I’ve got to admit I was a little nervous about
that last one. Chase might have hung out with
Allen Ginsberg in Paris, hut was he prepared
for men on leashes?
The moment he saw the baton-twirling
guys leading the marching hand, he started to
frown. “Damn it!" he said. “I shoulda brought
my horn!”
Never mind that they had uniforms and
choreography. As far as Chase is concerned,
he’s with the hand. Now and forever. Like
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Afterward 1 introduced him around, and I
couldn’t help hut notice the
expressions on people’s
faces as they met
him: a mixture of
amazement, admi­
ration and envy.
He’s like the
poster hoy for
PFLAG.
One friend,
whose folks disowned
him when he came out, threw his
arms around my father, kissed
him and said, “Will you he my
dad?” I get choked up just
thinking about it.
O f course, he
might have said,
“Will you he my
daddy?” I’m not
sure. It was hard to
hear over the disco
music. But, as a performer,
Chase takes his compliments wherever he
can get ’em.
As we walked hack to the car I put my arm
around him and asked how it was he could he
so cool about my being gay. “Y’know, Son,” he
said, rubbing my hack, "when you’ve played the
trombone as long as I have, you learn to let
things slide."
Happy Father’s Day, Dad. You’re the best.
And that, my friends, is The Gospel
According to Marc. JH
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