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ALSO BY PETER FARRELLY

The Comedy Writer

Dedication

For my parents and for Cordo Wilford

PART One

Dildo, that’s what my old man called me. Dildo Dunphy. I remember when he dubbed me. It was a muggy day in the summer of my ninth year and I’d run inside his radiator shop to borrow fifteen cents for a frozen lemonade. The old man blotted his forehead with the back of his hand and leaned against the counter, the tiny blood vessels on his nose gorged red with rancor. He scowled over a bogus Jimmy Fund bucket and said, “Until you earn it, Dildo, just stay the hell out of here!”

My Christian name is Timothy Brian Dunphy and I was born and raised in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, a rotting city bleeding off an anemic river just north of Providence. The old man loved Pawtucket. Claimed it had flavor. I couldn’t argue with that; the city smelled like a sour-cream-and-onion-flavored potato chip, on account of the Choo-Sum junk food factory a mile upstream. Factory City, U.S.A., that’s what Pawtucket was called in her prime.

My old man and brother and I lived on the first floor of a seventy-year-old triple-decker perched above the tire-and-barrel-strewn banks of the Blackstone River. The apartments above us had been condemned and were occupied by bats. Life as we know it had left the Blackstone years earlier, although occasionally there were rumors that someone had spotted a three-headed frog or a giant Siamese carp swimming near one of the factories. I never swam in the Blackstone.

My mother hadn’t lived with us since November 22, 1963. That’s when she blew her brains all over our garage. Don’t let the date weigh you down; it’s not the reason, just fueled her mood. On our front door was a handgun-shaped sticker that read: FORGET THE DOG—BEWARE OF THE OWNER.

The neighborhood consisted of Nielsen families, I suppose. Another lady on my street committed side-sui; my next-door neighbor was doing time for being an accessory to a murder; about one-third of the parents were divorced; another third were screwing around; there were a couple of wife beaters; a few child abusers; a possible husband beater; a good crew of alkies; and the nut at the top of the street was on probation for bumblasting a troop of Boy Scouts.