You Have Got To Be Fucking Kidding Me (My Family Really Puts The Fun In Dysfunction)

Lou, Mike, and me

Can't say I saw this one coming, guys. I found out the other day that my stepfather has a daughter.

My stepfather has a daughter. 

It would appear that, apparently, I am the last to know that Louie fathered a daughter before he met my mom. And her half-sister reached out to me over Facebook last night. It was in a post about Louie's old store, The Karmel Korn Shop. I posted:

"Do you guys think you can post any memories you have of The Karmel Korn Shop? My stepfather, Louie Lombardi, ran that shop when I was little. It was on East Main Street. During parades he put on the Mr. Peanut suit. My aunt Elaine also worked there. I'd love to hear what you all remember about it!

Lou went into residential and commercial painting when the shop closed. He's still at it! He's a youthful 80. I'll share all your memories with him!"

 I posted that in June 2025. And then, this pops up in my life:

Oh yeah, you know I private messaged her and her sister, The Daughter, who told me everything. The story is both believable and stunning. 

First of all, it was the sixties. So. Things were different. It would appear that Louie and the woman made a pact of some sort that they would never speak of this baby, and near as I can tell the woman's husband raised The Daughter thinking she was the fruit of his loins. The Daughter told me:

I found out when I was about 27 about Louie. I always thought he was just a friend. The Lombardi’s were always close friends of the family. I used to go to Grandma and Grandpa Lombardi’s house on Manhan St in Waterbury. I never knew any of them were my family. 

Well that's odd, I spent so much time at that Manhan Street nuthouse, and I THOUGHT they were my family, until I was about, oh I'd say about eight, maybe ten. It bothered me that something was off with this family. That these people clearly hated me. So I asked my mom what was up, is Louie my real father? It was then that she told me that my bio father was a dude named Ralph, a friend of uncle Vinnie. Oh. Well. Okay then.

Here's an excerpt from my Diary entry called If It Ain't One Thing It's Your Mother (March 18, 2017),

Eight years older and straight out of Central Casting, Louie was a total Guido. Cuff links and Yves St. Laurent, wing-tip disco shoes and a pinky ring: gold, set with a milky brown stone he called a "tiger eye." Louie was the maître D at a steak house & lounge, which was apparently a thing. His sister Sharon still calls him by his nickname: Romeo. I was not impressed.

My mom met Louie just before he made a pilgrimage to Europe to seek out his maternal grandfather's family. He went to Switzerland, Copenhagen, Prague, Rome. In Benevento, Italy he met those relatives, ate bread and cheese, drank wine, and apparently he bought his entire wardrobe for the next decade. There was a home perm at some point. Oh yeah, he was a smoooooov operator. Then my mom showed up, strong and lean from all that swimming and bike riding, with me slung on her nubile little hip. He chatted her up, she told him to get lost, and she hasn't been able to shake him since. I think they really just knocked each other out.

When they began "dating" I'm pretty sure Louie still lived with his parents on the second floor of a green triple-decker in a blighted little burg called Waterbury, CT. Grandparents on the top floor, some drunk uncles in the attic, and a rag tag assortment of sisters in a basement that reeked of cigarette smoke, Juicy Fruit gum and dime store cosmetics. That house was another asylum. Seriously, this was a thing Italians did.

Heck On Wheels (*hell tba)

Not the actual MG.

In those days Louie drove a blue MG. An MG is a cunning little 2-door roadster with no trunk and no back seat. He loved that car. He'd park her outside the green triple-decker, and he'd wash her with the hose. He'd polish her with Turtle Wax and a soft chamois cloth until his mother called him in for macaroni and meatballs. I was only a toddler but I did not approve of his lifestyle. I was bookish and weird. Suspicious, staring sullenly from under dull brown bangs. I could talk but I wouldn't. I hated him. I stared at him sullenly when he would be there in the mornings, in my mom's bed, all brown and strange-smelling. I stared at him sullenly when they danced The Hustle in the living room. I started at him sullenly when he brought his strange-smelling things and put them in my mom's room. I crawled into his closet, inspecting shiny pointy shoes. I opened drawers I wasn't supposed to, and I turned over gold chains and rings, dog tags from the National Guard. I was especially captivated by the tiger eye pinky ring, which he didn't wear by then because he had started to work as a house painter and contractor. He kept the Italian shoes and clothes, but now he wore paint-spattered jeans and what my mother called "Guinea shirts." You may know this garment as a "wife beater," but I wouldn't hear that term for another 30 years yet. My brother Michael was born.

My mom was clearly a captivating seductress. Because in order to be with her, Louie traded in that sweet MG for a goddamn used white Ford Fairlane. Trunk the size of a child's swimming pool and a long bench-style backseat. Pale blue vinyl that turned almost molten on hot days. The seat would burn the backs of our thighs if we forgot to put down a towel in summer. Rear wheel drive, because that makes sense in New England in winter. In 1978 it snowed a lot. You may have heard about it.

I stared at him sullenly when he was digging out the car, pouring salt and sand in an effort to get out of the driveway.

So that was my early childhood impression of the guy. As an adult. we get along far better, as I wrote in my Diary entry called

I didn't make Lou into a dad. Not really, though in adulthood we get along better than when I was a child. My mother was a fiery little flower-child with a 3-month-old when they met during some rare "mom's night out" at whatever dance clubs were called just before disco. His huge family never warmed up to me except for one cool aunt. Just about every disappointment that chipped away at my self-worth right up to college could be attributed to feeling ostracized by that lot. Isn't that called Red-Headed Stepchild syndrome? Lou's sole contributions to my upbringing consisted of driving me to doctor's appointments, never once coming in, waiting in the car and bitching about it for a hundred hours a day. He was mad a lot. Yelled all the time. He's mellowed a thousand percent now, and in retrospect I understand how much pressure he was under -- we were poor as fuck and my mother didn't work. Dark days. 

I wrote that 13 years ago. He's 80 now, my mom is 74, and they are still joined at the hip. They take care of each other. They make it work. 

Michael on Rescue Me

However. You guys, assuming she's not making it up, and I don't think she is, Louie had a bio daughter this whole time! 

At first I was angry that neither my brother nor my parents told me. The Daughter told me that she introduced herself to Michael at a Rescue Me event, which I can only imagine was awkward as fuck for them both. But then I thought, what business of mine is it? The Rescue Me years happened to be a time when I wasn't talking to my family much. And later, when we were back in touch, when would it have come up? Then I was angry on behalf of The Daughter. Both her parents have passed on, so any No Contact Pact is surely expired, no? Why not reach out? 

My own bio dad Ralph, I have at least talked to on Facebook. The Daughter doesn't even have that.

Also from my Diary entry Any Other Sunday:

Speaking strictly in scientific terms, Ralph is my father. I met him in 2010 just before Christmas. Well, "met." On Facebook. In 1969 he was my 16-year old mom's 17-year old boyfriend. It has been wildly interesting, finding him now, exchanging messages online and learning "his side" of making a baby he never saw -- apparently my grandmother threatened to have him killed if he ever darkened her door again. You'd have to know her to know how believable that is...there were rumors that she had nefarious underground connections in the Italian neighborhood. Here's the first thing Ralph wrote after accepting my Friend Request.

We haven't met, but maybe we still will. Also? He had a son eight years after me. Yes, I have another half-brother, Nick. Like Michael, Nick is strong, principled, handsome, and married to a wonderful woman. A few months ago Nick texted me that he and Erica want to come visit me and Joe. Definitely after we move, definitely by this summer.

So, have you got this soap opera straight? Louie had The Daughter, then Ralph and JoAnna had me, then Louie and JoAnna had Michael, then Ralph and another woman had Nick.

Yep, that's why this one is called You Have Got To Be Fucking Kidding Me (My Family Really Puts The Fun In Dysfunction). 

“We’ve become something of a family.
A dysfunctional, fucked up family.”

― Krista Ritchie, Kiss the Sky