A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
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“As far back as i can remember ... i can remember manhattan.” Orlandito “Dito” Montiel, son of Orlando, a Nicaraguan immigrant, and an Irish mother, grew wild in the streets of Astoria, Queens, pulling pranks for Greek and Italian gangsters and confessing at the church of the Immaculate Conception, gobbling hits of purple mescaline and Old English, sneaking into Times Square whore houses—“Kids from nowhere going nowhere.” At 14 Dito watched as his best friend and surrogate older brother, Antonio, beat another kid to death with a baseball bat during a gang fight. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is the quintessentially American story of a young man’s hunger for experience, his dawning awareness of the bigger world across the bridge, and of the loyalties that bind him to a violent past and to the flawed and desperate Saints that have guided him—a streetwise Meetings With Remarkable Men with echoes of Whitman and Kerouac , Saturday Night Fever and Dion and the Belmonts. Dito tasted short-lived notoriety as a model for Versace and Calvin Klein, and as the leader of “the most successful unsuccessful band in history,” Gutterboy, a 15-minute darling signed to Geffen for a then unprecedented million-dollar advance. But this book is about the Saints: Dito’s father, Antonio “our insane warrior hero,” Bob Semen, Frank the dog walker, Jimmy Mullen, Cherry Vanilla, Allen Ginsberg and all the others, the drunks, coke-heads, junkies, the insaniacs like Santos Antonios who said, “Now Dito remember, in life you gotta be crazy.” Photographs by Bruce Weber, Lance Staedler and Allen Ginsberg arefeatured. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is soon to be a major motion picture directed by Robert Downey, Jr. “I like it a lot...”—Allen Ginsberg “The greatest streetwise healing book ever written. In a world full of put-ons and pretty faces he’s the real deal.”—Susan Carlucci, In FashionPublishers WeeklyMontiel's saints run the gamut from omniscient priests to wacky con artists. In his rambling memoir of growing up in the 1970s and '80s in a tough Queens neighborhood, he escapes to the East Village to emerge as a Calvin Klein underwear model and lead singer of the punk band Gutterboy. Montiel's childhood was rough but thrilling. "[I]n our neighborhood we would take your everyday type of kids' game and throw in an extra little consequence clause that no one else seemed to have." Games escalated from stealing from the church poor box (consequence: 50 Hail Mary's from saint number one, Father Angelo) through peeing through the windows of Mafioso hangouts (consequence: "being chased by crazy Dimitrios with a meat cleaver") to gang fights (consequence: Montiel's pal Antonio [another saint] kills a guy with a baseball bat and spends six years in prison). When the scene shifts to the sex-, drugs- and punk rock-ridden Lower East Side, Montiel's love affair with Manhattan predominates, as he roams the city with girlfriends, junkies and his mother (more saints) and hangs out with Allen Ginsberg (whose photos of Gutterboy appear in the book) and Warhol protegee Cherry Vanilla. Several Kerouac-like road trips feature the thrill and beauty of being "crazy high" in a non-New York world. Montiel tells his entertaining, sad tales with a combination of affection, glee and nostalgia. He's managed to escape the dismal fate of many of his childhood cohorts, while still cherishing and embracing their humanity. Photos. (July) Forecast: Slam poets and beat fans will go for this, as well as anyone interested in the East Village 1980s punk rock scene or celebrities like Warhol, Ginsberg and fashion photographer Bruce Weber. The upcoming movie based on the book (directed by Robert Downey Jr.) will increase interest. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Growing up under the rrFather Angelo Pezullo3Orlando Montiel, Sr.7Antonio17A Visit from Santos Antonios Berserk26A Game of Tag in Mayberry, Indiana28"Clowns"34Saints, wanderers, brief acquaintancesWho Is Larry Kert?41Jimmy Mullen of the Bronx46Travels, deserts, gettin' lostAs Far Back As I Can Remember ... I can Remember Manhattan57Mayberry, Indiana, on Highway 168Fourteen Days with a Crazy Indian Modern-Day Saint70The Hashish at Ray's House on the West Side Is Scary81083What You Will and Won't Do85Freaks, bizarres, friends, living obscenitiesAngelo Ruggiera89Gutterboy91Freak Magnet94Bob Semen, Frank the Dog Walker, and an Open Letter to Walt Whitman98Splitting Wood108Ronald Reagan, the Grimace, and Punctuation110Adventures in Male Modeling and Street Vending112Finding Englightenment through Talk Show Host Richard Bay117Cherry Vanilla119Christmas in New York with Annette126One Night130Bruce Weber131Seventeen139Allen Ginsberg Wants Bitter Melon, but No Genitalia145San Francisco153The Most Successful Unsuccessful Band in History161HealingA Conversation about Deepak Chopra while Eating Pot Cookies in a 2nd Avenue Apartment (the Eggplant without Hair)177Twenty-Six Moments181The First Cold Breeze of September188Is It Possible to Get Closer to God in a Peep Show Booth190Explaining Mayberry193Further Explaining Mayberry195The Monday Night Pace199You Think You've Seen the Best Minds of Your Generation Wasted201Anonymous207Healing209
