Al Pacino is the Godfather of my Edible Children
Who names their kids after pasta sauces?
The life of Alfredo James Pacino is crazily intertwined with mine.
In the year 2000, Alfredo Pacino took 91 days to make the film, Chinese Coffee. Coincidentally that is the exact length of time I have now not had sex.
It wasn’t always like this. I was single once.
I was a rapidly rising member of the local chapter of the Pacino Fan Club. We called ourselves Pachinkos. I had a future.
Then in July 2011, I uttered a chat-up line so devastatingly successful that it resulted in two children and a marriage.
It was at the After-Party for the premiere of, The Son of No One, a wholly unremarkable film by Pacino. To jiggle us out of our funk that evening, we had taken to celebrating his other performances.
I did an impromptu impersonation from Scarface, complete with the feral intensity. No one does Pacino better than me; other than arguably, Pacino.
“Say Hello to my little friend.”
Dora, the cute brunette standing next to me during the drinking games was down three glasses of pinot and at least 7 shots of tequila. How was I supposed to know that she’d never seen Scarface?
Evidently, I had made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.
In the morning as she was leaving my apartment, she winked. “You had me at Hello.”
Dora wasn’t a Pachinko. She was at the party because she ran a modelling agency that supplied hostesses — eye candy of the minxy East European kind. She had little interest in anything which wasn’t Bulgarian folk music while I’ve always been known as Sonny, because of Dog Day Afternoon.
Despite wildly different taste in films and pasta sauces, our sexual chemistry was instant and creamy. Must’ve been the Scent of the Woman. “If you get all tangled up, just tango on.” We were like spaghetti.
The Scarface line became our private signal, a handy innuendo, particularly during dull dinners at her parent’s place. They didn’t speak English; at least with me.
In 2013, I proposed to Dora in a movie theatre, during the screening of the refreshingly quirky, We are not Animals; though within seconds of her accepting, we were.
Al Pacino appears in the film for only three minutes and we shamelessly missed it. He obviously didn’t take kindly to my gaffe and taunted me in the title of his next film, The Humbling. I got married to Dora that week.
In 2015, when Pacino released Danny Collins, we countered with our first production, a girl. I wanted to name her Danny to pay tribute to my ultimate hero. However, Dora outmanoeuvred me and named our first-born, Marinara.
Un-fukin-believable!
It was ostensibly to honour a distant aunt, of whom, I hadn’t heard till then and haven’t since.
But her real reason was something else: my rare tomato allergy. Women can be cruel that way.
Let’s just say that tomatoes and I share a healthy reciprocal revulsion. It is a fruit that masquerades as a vegetable but is botanically classified as a berry. Fachrissakes, if I want complex characterization, my go-to fix is Glengarry Glen Ross, not gazpacho.
When Marinara was a baby, the only song that would pacify her was the infernal ketchup song. Yet, I have experienced no major health issues from hugging her. I routinely buy her Christmas presents even though my life has a rating of 52 on Rotten Tomatoes.
She is a gorgeous girl but somewhere deep inside me, her name continues to rankle. If Dora desperately wanted a ‘saucy’ name, why not Pesto? Green is far more politically correct these days.
Whenever I’ve obliquely dared to suggest that Aunt Marinara is a mythical creature, Dora turns passive-aggressive. “Who names their kid after a pasta sauce?” At that point, I usually back off. I’m whipped.
But I had a feeling that my best work was still ahead of me.
September 2019 saw the launch of The Irishman. Pacino, as the mercurial Jimmy Hoffa, was a consummate thespian. The old charisma had returned and the Pachinkos were electrified. I gave him a private standing ovation. To be fair, the ovation part was Dora.
She fell pregnant and was all set for delivering our second child in June this year. We knew it was a boy.
This time I was ready. I had planned an ambush, a masterful plan that involved military precision and bribing a hospital attendant.
Within seconds of the umbilical cord being snipped, I signed the birth register, naming him Alfredo.
He is 91 days old today.
I’m thrilled. Dora is livid.
