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Left at the Monkey
Seventeen-year-old Frankie thinks of himself as a guy with a pop star’s good looks and musical talent. He’s spent a sunny afternoon at the public pool babbling to a handsome stranger, someone who finally gets him and likes the same kind of music. Maybe things are looking up for him in this dull, little town, he thinks, until the next morning at Mass when this tanned and toned man turns out to be his new parish priest.
In the seventies most Catholic parents didn’t question a priest guiding and instructing their son, so the pretense of helping Frankie prepare for college exams becomes the ruse for his frequent trips to the priest’s house. He’s certain their developing affair is a secret, but his best friend Clare begins to worry about how much he’s changing before her eyes. She’s not the only one keeping Flip, who lives across the alley from the priest’s house, has his own suspicions about what goes on between his classmate and the young priest.
Frankie is not completely naïve about Father Paul’s intentions, and he is using the young priest in his own way to make connections in the theater world of Minneapolis where he hopes to flee after moping through life stuck in a small, flat Minnesota town where the biggest excitement is the annual Polka Days parade and the butter heads at the County Fair.
Clare never loses faith in him as her soul mate – even when he turns to disco and starts wearing plaid bell-bottoms and platform shoes. When her Pinto is rear-ended and bursts into flames, it’s Frankie and Flip who are at her hospital bedside encouraging her back to health. She recognizes their love before they’ll admit to it, and this gives her the peace she needs to know that from now on Frankie will be alright.
But how was she, or any of them to know, that the young priest had another lover in town – the high school music and drama teacher, Mr. D’Angelo - who wasn’t so keen about Frankie being the center of the priest’s attention, especially after D’Angelo had spent years grooming Frankie for the stage? After discovering the truth about Frankie and Father Paul, D’Angelo flies into a jealous rage, dragging Frankie through the snowy streets during the annual pre-Lenten Fasching parade, colliding with the wooden-masked Narren and drunken revelers. In a command performance of his own making, what heights will D’Angelo climb to make a tragedy of the winter festivities?
In the seventies most Catholic parents didn’t question a priest guiding and instructing their son, so the pretense of helping Frankie prepare for college exams becomes the ruse for his frequent trips to the priest’s house. He’s certain their developing affair is a secret, but his best friend Clare begins to worry about how much he’s changing before her eyes. She’s not the only one keeping Flip, who lives across the alley from the priest’s house, has his own suspicions about what goes on between his classmate and the young priest.
Frankie is not completely naïve about Father Paul’s intentions, and he is using the young priest in his own way to make connections in the theater world of Minneapolis where he hopes to flee after moping through life stuck in a small, flat Minnesota town where the biggest excitement is the annual Polka Days parade and the butter heads at the County Fair.
Clare never loses faith in him as her soul mate – even when he turns to disco and starts wearing plaid bell-bottoms and platform shoes. When her Pinto is rear-ended and bursts into flames, it’s Frankie and Flip who are at her hospital bedside encouraging her back to health. She recognizes their love before they’ll admit to it, and this gives her the peace she needs to know that from now on Frankie will be alright.
But how was she, or any of them to know, that the young priest had another lover in town – the high school music and drama teacher, Mr. D’Angelo - who wasn’t so keen about Frankie being the center of the priest’s attention, especially after D’Angelo had spent years grooming Frankie for the stage? After discovering the truth about Frankie and Father Paul, D’Angelo flies into a jealous rage, dragging Frankie through the snowy streets during the annual pre-Lenten Fasching parade, colliding with the wooden-masked Narren and drunken revelers. In a command performance of his own making, what heights will D’Angelo climb to make a tragedy of the winter festivities?
202 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 7, 2016
1 person is currently reading
2 people want to read
About the author
Michael Bonacci
2 books10 followersMichael Bonacci received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from Vermont College. Besides writing poetry, he enjoys adapting historical documents for the stage and has had several play produced in New York, Minneapolis, and Seattle. He is a former Anglican priest, and also lived and studied at a Benedictine monastery and Buddhist Zendo. After managing several nonprofit organizations in the Midwest and Seattle, he moved to the Skagit Valley in northern Washington, and now lives with his husband, David Bricka, and the most amazing dog in the world, Buddy, in the "backyard" of Little Mountain.
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July 25, 2022
This one was very well written. While there’s some heavy and controversial plot, the actual content is tasteful and carefully handled. The characters are unique, interesting, and relatable, and the Frankie-Flip relationship is really cute.
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