Big Bro

for Chelsea, Giuseppe, and Brad

Cory Bennet

Giancarlo was the big bro, the big homie. He was the dude on the block with the AK resting against the wall near his front door, the old head at the spot, the one who bailed you out of Santa Rita Jail in Alameda County when no one else would answer the phone.

Yeah, I could write about all the times he made me laugh or we disagreed on something and talked shit, or the multiple times he gave me life-changing advice, a week in early October when he opened his home to me and showed a generosity I had not seen before. Or I could say he was a real one who didn’t give a fuck. If you knew shit about this world, you would have saluted him as he passed by. Other people’s opinions were their own and did not concern him. He was a punk on Gilman Street or a skater at Embarcadero, he inhabited all those youthful countercultures and never gave in to what everyone else gives into, those whitewashed suburban schemes. No space for me and my people? Well, Gian elbowed his way through the crowd and made space. Yeah, I could talk about all those things and not even touch on the impact he had on American literature in the 21st century. So, I remain quiet.

I attended MTVM V in early October 2019. That story is for something else, another time, but I will say that it changed my life. Chelsea and Giancarlo were like magic when they worked together. I am honored to have been allowed entry into this world that seemed like a place a junkie skate rat had no business being in.

The first book Gian told me to read was Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby by Geoffrey Wolff. A bohemian publisher in Europe does drugs and a bit of crime, ends in a murder suicide. Crosby published T.S. Eliot, Hart Crane, D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Oscar Wilde, and Dorothy Parker. I told Giancarlo I had finished it and he sent me the collected poems of Crosby, the final entry in his diary reading: One is not in love unless one desires to die with one's beloved. There is only one happiness it is to love and to be loved.

A deep sob, I put my elbows on my knees, my head between my legs, when I think of Giuseppe, and the way Gian would kiss the top of his head and smirk when he knew he was annoying him. I gather myself but it starts again when I remember watching Chelsea and Gian laugh hysterically while walking through a Medieval city with cobblestone streets, a couple paces behind us.

The second book Gian gave me was Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone. A Vietnam War correspondent traffics heroin with his friend in the states who picks the pack up at the Port of Oakland to deliver to Converse’s (the war correspondent) junkie wife in Berkeley. Before I started reading it I asked Gian what it was about. He cleared his throat and sucked on a nicotine lozenge and said, “America.”

None of it matters because I can’t talk to him, can’t tell him how shitty Fleetwood Mac is, can’t tell him Knausgaard is the best writer of all time, whether or not I believe it.

He intimidated me and I admired him for that. We hopped some fences somewhere on the coast of Italy and at the second fence he looked at me and tilted his head for a boost so I kneeled in the grass. I thought to myself that we would have hit a lick or two, if only. If only hangs in the air over a lot of this, for a lot of us. If only we had reached out to him. If only we had told him we loved him one last time. If only we did something right in our lives. In my life, every time I’ve put a rose on a dead friend’s casket, regret for all that I did not do envelops my sour soul.

I expected Giancarlo to live longer than me because I never consider the deaths of friends who stood with their feet planted firmly in the Earth. Those end up being the ones that break your heart the most. Sammy Winston, I’m looking at you homie.

I must arrive at my point and so here it is. I fell in love with the most beautiful woman with a soul that lights me on fire, and an alum of MTVM II, Mila Jaroniec.

I need to give this part about Mila some space because although it is intertwined with my relationship with Giancarlo, the love I have for Mila is singular and exists within the material world but also it’s pure, neoplatonic, of heaven. I have often told her, “Loving you feels like getting over on god.” She is a genius. I admire her as a writer and as a person and those two things aren’t separate so let me say I admire her entire being. I am in love with who she has been, who she is, and who she will be in forty years. I love her like nothing else. She is my best friend, my soul mate, a blessing, and the love of my life. If you come at Mila, I hope you vest up because holy beings are protected at all costs.

Mila was at MTVM II, I was at V. We tried to figure out if we slept in the same room, we didn’t. I asked her to be my wife. My wiiiiife. Giancarlo heard and said, “Chelsea and I will be marrying you two in Sezze…” I texted him how much I loved her and how I would take care of her. One time on social media, I called her an “Eastern bloc bad bitch” and Gian came at me a little bit—like I was really calling his girl a bitch. I told him it means something else where I’m from and he laughed it off, said he was only giving me shit. It was important to me that he knew I was riding with Mila to the grave and would body anyone who hurt her. He trusted me.

The way Gian spoke to Mila broke my heart because it was all love and I felt that was how everyone should talk to my wife lest they catch this fade. I didn’t need and don’t need permission from anyone for anything, but Giancarlo knows who the fuck I am and his approval meant more than anyone’s. I didn’t need shit, in my back pocket was proof that big bro was down. Over the past few months he would send me random Juice WRLD lyrics that reminded him of Mila and I, or check in on me and simply say he was so happy for us. That is what I will carry with me throughout my life, Giancarlo DiTrapano supported the most important relationship I will ever have. It’s a small thing, but I sincerely hope part of his soul knows his girl Mila is safe with me and I want to tell him don’t trip homie, we gonna hold it down for you until they bury us all.

I don’t know where to stop telling this story, I’ve skipped so much and blew through time. Really, this isn’t about writing, or books, or art, none of that shit. It’s about a man I looked up to and respected, and the woman I will love for the rest of my life, whom I dedicate my life to, and that they loved each other too and god damn if that isn’t beautiful to you.

I keep the notes he wrote on the story I workshopped in Italy in the closet, on the shelf next to a shoebox of letters from my biological father when he was incarcerated. I never finished that story, it grew too painful to write but I can hear Gian telling me that the scary shit is the thing that needs to be written.

I’ve had many writing teachers, instructors, and mentors. I didn’t listen to shit they said. But I listened to Chelsea and I listened to Giancarlo. Where I’m from, when the big homie dies, you gotta step up. I expect anyone who claimed to have Giancarlo’s back, or said they had love for him, to show yourself and step up. I’ll say it with my chest: I love Giancarlo intensely and that’s on the homies. Any haters want to speak up, holla at me and we can handle that.

We aren’t ever going to share a spliff again, or playfully talk shit. I’ll never wake up to ten messages from him about autofiction and mythology, and he won’t ever read another word I write. I thought the last thing we talked about was Xanax but that wasn’t it, I asked him something he never answered. It’s all good Gian, I figured it out and you told me you weren’t worried about me. I don’t know how to end this.

Thank you for believing in me, for trusting me with Mila, for letting me into your home and feeding me, for giving me Shy, Felicia, and Steven, for making me cry laugh, for being a man I could look up to, for rolling hash joints, for caring about literature, for doing shit your way and showing some of us that joy was a simple thing to access, you only had to have your heart open to the entire world. And again, thank you for Mila, thank you for the kindness in your voice when you spoke to her, the gentle way you treated her. Gian, you are the center of the most important relationships in my life, the people I love most fiercely, and I got nothing else to say except I’ll miss you forever.