Title: Why Can’t Life Be Like Pizza?
Series: The Pizza Chronicles, Book One
Author: Andy V. Roamer
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: March 30, 2020
Heat Level: 1 - No Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 55100
Genre: Contemporary Young Adult, LGBTQIA+, Young adult, contemporary, family-drama, interracial, gay, in the closet, immigrant family, high school, mentor
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Synopsis
RV is a good kid, starting his freshman
year at the demanding Boston Latin School. Though his genes didn’t give him a
lot of good things, they did give him a decent brain. So he’s doing his best to
keep up in high school, despite all the additional pressures he’s facing: His
immigrant parents, who don’t want him to forget his roots and insist on other
rules. Some tough kids at school who bully teachers as well as students. His
puny muscles. His mean gym teacher. The Guy Upstairs who doesn’t answer his
prayers. And the most confusing fact of all—that he might be gay.
Luckily, RV develops a friendship with
Mr. Aniso, his Latin teacher, who is gay and always there to talk to. RV thinks
his problems are solved when he starts going out with Carole. But things only
get more complicated when RV develops a crush on Bobby, the football player in
his class. And to RV’s surprise, Bobby admits he may have gay feelings, too.
Excerpt
Why Can’t Life Be Like Pizza?
Andy V. Roamer © 2020
All Rights Reserved
Chapter One—Why Can’t Life Be Like
Pizza?
Why can’t life be like pizza?
I’ve been asking myself the question a
lot lately. I love pizza. Pizza makes me feel good. Especially since I
discovered Joe’s. Joe’s Pizza is quiet and out of the way and allows me to
think. And Joe’s combinations are the best. Pepperoni and onions. Garlic and
mushroom. Cheese and chicken. And if you really want that little kick in the
old butt: the super jalapeno. Mmmm, good. Gets you going again. And lets you
forget all your troubles.
What troubles can a fourteen-year-old
guy have? Ha! First of all, I’m not a regular guy, as anyone can guess from my
taste in pizza. My parents are immigrants who are trying to make a better life
for themselves here in the United States. Besides the usual things American
parents worry about, like making money and having their kids do well in school,
my parents spend more time worrying about the big things: politics, communism,
fascism, global warming, and the fact they and their parents survived violence
and jail so I-better-be-grateful-I’m-not-miserable-like-kids-in-other-parts-of-the-world.
Grateful? Ha! As far as I’m concerned,
life is pretty miserable already. Instead of thinking about the World Series or
Disneyland, I worry about terrorists down the street or the dirty bombs the
strange family around the corner might be building.
I don’t know why I worry about
everything, but I do. It’s probably in my genes. Other guys have genes that
gave them big muscles or hairy chests. I got nerves.
And then there’s my name. RV. Yeah, RV.
No, I’m not a camper or anything. RV is short for Arvydas. That’s right.
“Are-vee-duh-s.” Mom and Dad say it’s a common name in Lithuania, which is the
country in Eastern Europe where my parents were born. A name like that might be
fine for Lithuania, but what about the United States? Couldn’t Mom and Dad have
named me Joe, or Mike, or even Darryl? My brother, Ray, has a normal name. Why
couldn’t they have given me one?
I even look a little weird, I think.
Tall and skinny with an uncoordinated walk because of my big feet that get in
the way and make me feel like a clod. Oh, yeah. I’ve been getting some zits
lately, and I wear glasses since I’m pretty nearsighted. Not a pretty sight, is
it? At least the glasses are not too thick. Mom and Dad don’t have a lot of
money to spend, but they did fork up the money to get me thin lenses, so I
don’t look like a complete zomboid.
What can I do? I try my best, despite it
all. I’m lucky because I’ve done well in school, so at least my genes gave me a
half-decent brain. Hey, I’m not bragging. It’s just nice to feel good about
something when most days I feel pretty much a loser at so many things. When I
was in grammar school, there were enough days when I came home from school and
cried because some big oaf threatened me, or I got hit in the stomach during my
pathetic attempts to play ball during recess.
Mom always tried to comfort me.
“Nesirūpink,” she would say. “Esi gabus. Kai užaugsi, visiems nušluostysi
nuosis.” We talk Lithuanian at home. Translated, that sentence means, “Don’t
worry. You’re smart. When you grow up, you’ll show them.” Actually, not “you’ll
show them,” but “you’ll wipe all their noses.” Lithuanians have a funny way of
expressing themselves. Not sure I aspire to wiping anyone’s nose when I get
older, but that’s what they say.
Whatever. I’m determined to put all that
behind me. I’m starting a new life. My new life. Today was the first day of
high school. I’m going to Boston Latin School. You have to take an exam to go
there, so it’s full of smart kids. Besides smart kids, it has heavy-duty
history too. It was founded in 1635, a year before Harvard. They already gave
us a speech about that.
And about pressure. The pressure to
succeed with all this history breathing down our necks. Pressure, ha! Doesn’t
scare me. I know all about pressure. I’ve gotten pressure from cretinous
bullies at school. I get it from cretinous Lith a-holes, who Mom and Dad keep
pushing me to hang around with because they say it’s important to be part of
the immigrant community. And I even get pressure from cretinous jerks in the
neighborhood.
Cretinous. A good word. That’s something
else about me. I like words. Real words and made-up ones. There’s something
cool about them. Yeah, yeah, I know what people would say. You think words are
cool? Kid, you’ve got more problems than you thought.
Well, I’m sorry. I do think words are
cool. There’s something fun about making them up or learning a new one. Kind of
unlocks something in the world. And I like the world despite all my worrying.
It can be an okay place sometimes.
Okay, okay, I’m getting off track. I
want to write about my first day of school. Mom and Dad gave me this new—well,
refurbished, but new to me anyway—computer for getting into Latin school, and
they keep after me to make good use of it. So, I’ve decided I’m going to write
about my new life. My life away from cretins—Lith, American, or any other kind.
The first person I met at school today
was Carole. Carole Higginbottom. She’s in my homeroom. She was sitting in the
first row, first seat, and I was sitting right behind her. We started talking.
She’s from West Roxbury, too, which is where we live.
West Roxbury is part of Boston. You have
to live somewhere in Boston in order to go to Latin school. West Roxbury is a
nice neighborhood, for the most part, with houses, trees, grass, and people
going to work and coming home. Kind of an all-American place, I guess. We used
to live in a different, tougher part of Boston, but Mom and Dad moved away from
there because they said the neighborhood was getting too rough. They promised I
wouldn’t get beat up so much in West Roxbury. I don’t know. West Roxbury is
better, but I still have gotten a few black-and-blue marks with “made in West
Roxbury” on them, so as far as I’m concerned it isn’t any perfect place either.
Carole lives in another part of West
Roxbury, near Centre Street, which is the main street in the area. People like
to hang out there. Mom says that part of West Roxbury is a little dicey. (Mom
thinks a lot of neighborhoods are too dicey. Maybe that’s where I get my
worrying from.) Anyway, Carole sure doesn’t seem dicey. As a matter of fact,
she’s a little goofy. Tall and skinny with red hair, red cheeks, and a million
freckles. And she has a really sharp nose that curves up like those special ski
slopes you see in the Olympics. But I get the feeling she’s smart. She says she
likes science. That’s good because I might need help with science. I’m better
with other subjects like history and English.
Our homeroom teacher is Mr. Bologna,
Carmine Bologna. He’s a little scary with slicked-back dark hair and even
darker eyes that stare at you forever. He looks like he’s part of the
organization we’re not supposed to talk about—you know, the scary one from
Italy that’s into murder, racketeering, and drugs. Two guys were horsing around
in the back of the class and Mr. Bologna came right up to them, said a few
words under his breath, and just stared at them. Boy, did they settle down
fast. I’m no troublemaker, but I’ll really have to watch myself. Don’t want to
deal with the Bologna stare if I can help it.
Today was mostly about walking around,
learning about our subjects, and meeting teachers. Besides all the regular
subjects, I have to take Latin. I don’t have anything against it per se, but is
it really necessary to learn a dead language? And then there’s the teacher, Mr.
Aniso. He’s kind of light in his loafers. That’s another new phrase I learned
recently. It refers to gay guys, and Mr. Aniso is so gay it hurts. I just hope
he can’t tell anything about me. I don’t wave my wrist around the way he does,
do I?
Yeah, that’s something else I have to
come to terms with. I might be heading in that direction. Yeah, me. I can
hardly believe it. Me! Why? It can’t be true, can it? I’ve been praying to God,
asking Him not to make me gay, but I don’t think He’s listening. If He exists,
that is. Maybe He’s not answering because He doesn’t exist.
I don’t know. People on TV and in books
say being gay is okay. Movie stars and rock stars are gay. There are gay mayors
and other gay political types. That’s fine for them, but they don’t live with
my family. Mom’s a heavy-duty Catholic. Dad’s a macho, “what-me-cry?” kind of
guy. And my younger brother, Ray, well, Ray probably doesn’t care one way or
another, but he doesn’t count anyway since he hates everybody. And then there
are all those Lith immigrants, the community that’s so important to Mom and
Dad. Most of them are so Old World and conservative. I don’t think being gay
would go down well with them.
Not that I am gay for certain. I’m just
saying it’s crossed my mind because…well, because I think about guys sometimes.
And I notice them. Notice how they look when they’re coming down the street.
Notice their eyes or their hair or the way they move. Just notice them.
Oh, I notice girls, too, but something
about guys is different. I can’t put my finger on it, but I think about them as
much or maybe more than girls. And I want to be with them. Is that normal?
What’s normal anyway? To be honest, I’m so inexperienced. Never dated. Never even
kissed anyone. Not like that anyway. No, I’ve spent my time worrying about
communism, terrorism, and global warming. Like I said, I’ve always felt a
little out of step with the rest of humanity.
Dealing with all this is just too much.
To be nervous about things the way I am. To be speaking a language most people
haven’t heard of. To have a strange name. To wear glasses and look nerdy. And
now I might be gay? It’s all too confusing. I might as well start on
antidepressants, or something stronger, right now.
But no. I try to look on the bright side
of things. Take Carole for instance. She seems nice and fun, and maybe we’ll be
friends. And if she likes me, I can’t be too weird, can I? I guess I’ll find
out. I better not think about it. There’s enough to worry about as it is. I
just have to take a breath and focus on my homework. Yeah, we got homework
already. At least that’s one thing I’m good at. And when I go to Joe’s, well,
life’s not so bad, at least while I’m eating my chicken and cheese or super
jalapeno slice.
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Meet the Author
Andy V. Roamer grew up in the Boston area and moved to New York City after college. He worked in book publishing for many years, starting out in the children’s and YA books division and then wearing many other hats. This is his first novel about RV, the teenage son of immigrants from Lithuania in Eastern Europe, as RV tries to negotiate his demanding high school, his budding sexuality, and new relationships. He has written an adult novel, Confessions of a Gay Curmudgeon, under the pen name Andy V. Ambrose. To relax, Andy loves to ride his bike, read, watch foreign and independent movies, and travel.Website | Facebook
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