The Names My Father Called Me

"Fruitcake," "Liberace," "Gore Vidal," the list goes on. But what's in a nickname, anyway?

A very young Phillip Picardi in a bubblebath. I was not smiling because I wanted to be like Posh Spice.

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You’re reading the first-ever story in fruity, a newsletter by editor and journalist Phillip Picardi. To get the latest in your inbox each week, you can subscribe here.

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Dad was always the first to wake up in our family. The pets—one dog and at least two cats at any given time—would team up and force their way into my parents’ bedroom, walking right past my sleeping mother to climb on top of and paw at my father. I’d sometimes wake up before dawn, stirring at the sound of their claws tapping excitedly down the stairs, my father grunting sleepily behind them. 

It was on Dad, then, to wake us—his four sons, and his lovely wife. One by one, he’d scream our names from the foyer up to the stairs in a manner that was equal parts military roll call and The Sopranos. If they say how you wake up sets the tone for your day, consider what me and my brothers first heard nearly every morning for over a decade: 

“Honey bear!” he’d yell to my oldest brother, Robby (who was chubby and quite hairy). “Dyslexic!” he’d yell to my other brother, Anthony (who is, indeed, dyslexic). “Johnny Pie!” he reserved for the youngest of us, “the baby,” who hated being infantilized. Then, it was my turn. “Fruitcake!” Dad yelled. “Hey, Fruity Phill! Time to get up!” 

We all had our nicknames, and each of us loathed them to varying degrees. The thing about mine was, I didn’t even know what it meant. My mom would sometimes emerge from her room, closing her bathrobe hurriedly to hiss down the stairs at Dad: “What is wrong with you? Don’t call him that.” Then, she’d call him his designated nickname: “Asshole.” 

At eight years old, the only words I heard used to describe gay people were flamer or faggot, both of which I had been handily called by my brothers and classmates on numerous occasions. Fruity and fruitcake were of a different era—belonging to playground bullies of the ‘60s. (Enter, my father.) 

“[Fruity] comes from Polari, a queer British slanguage, probably in the mid-19th century,” the historian Hugh Ryan told me via Twitter recently. “It had earlier uses as both an insult for women and prostitutes—just like ‘faggot’—and as a word for crazy, both of which are pretty common origins for words that make the jump to meaning ‘gay.’” 

After I  came out of the closet at 14, Dad took even more delight in his nicknames. He added “Gore Vidal” and “Liberace” to the list, two men I had never heard of but was somehow certain I never wanted to be. Once I was out, though, the nicknames lost their power—I had no real shame in being myself. In fact, I was delighted that my newfound flamboyance was so clearly upsetting him. Every time an insult was hurled up the stairs at me, I’d put on a little (ok, a lot) more bronzer. I changed the background of my MySpace page to the most erotic possible Abercrombie campaign imagery. My headline? I’m here! I’m queer! Get used to it!

In case you missed it, I was insufferable. Coming out was exactly the catalyst I needed to bolster my self-righteous teenage angst, providing me with all the dramatic material I could dream of. Soon came my furious stomping up the stairs, the slamming of my bedroom door, the blasting of Christina Aguilera’s Stripped at full volume, and the prolonged silent treatments. I found my cross to bear, and honey, we were Italian: martyrdom was built into my genetics.

So just imagine my face (and my too-tight, extra-small Burberry logo t-shirt) when my parents decided that Dad would be the one to move me into my dorm room at New York University—a drive that would require four hours of one-on-one time. I packed up the car alone, said goodbye to my mother, and prepared myself for a Phil Collins marathon. (Dad gets frustrated at any background noise other than Collins, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, or some very creepy, Da Vinci Code-level Gregorian chants. When we were kids, he’d turn off the radio and condemn pop songs as “the Devil’s music.”)

Four uninterrupted hours was the most time I’d ever spent alone with my father. We would trade off attempts at casual conversation, then let long, pregnant pauses fill the car as the roads and sights of my childhood whipped by our windows. Two hours into our drive, the tense, awkward silence between us evolved into a surprisingly comforting quiet. For much of our relationship, my dad and I tried so hard with each other—me, trying to win his favor, his attention, his approval. He, trying to understand me or relate to me, only to (unwittingly or not) offend or inflame me. In the car, the gravity of my departure started to set in. He knew as well as I did that I wouldn’t ever be returning to live with him; that New York was my new home.

Eventually, we double parked right on Washington Square and made our way into Goddard Hall, which was entirely empty—I’d signed up for a week’s worth of volunteer work ahead of the official move-in day. True to form, I carefully assembled everything from shower curtains to picture frames containing tear-outs of my favorite images from Vogue, which I spread across my twin XL mattress, already preparing my very own gallery wall. My dad dropped the last of the boxes—cans of San Marzano tomato sauce and a bottle of olive oil he’d insisted on bringing along—and said abruptly, “Ok. Good luck, kid. I’m leaving.”

I looked at the piles of boxes around me, then up at him in disbelief. “You’re not going to help me unpack?” But he had already started retreating backwards out the door. 

“No, what am I going to do? You’re fine, I’ve gotta get home to beat traffic,” he said. Before I could respond, he pulled the door shut and walked away. 

I immediately called my mother, complaining loudly (via my Blackberry) that Dad had left me with a mess and without assistance, and this was exactly why she should have come to help move me in. Then, my phone alerted me to an incoming call. It was him. 

“What?” I said angrily.

“I just want to tell you that I love you and I’m proud of you,” my father said. I could tell from his voice that he had been crying. He left my dorm room to hide the fact that he was emotional—not to beat traffic, like he said. He fled because he knew his guard was coming down, and he didn’t want to be with me in person when it finally crumbled. 

I’m still trying to figure out what goes on with so many men that causes us to show love in this fractured, twisted way. In her book The Will to Change, feminist theorist bell hooks writes, “Patriarchal mores teach a form of emotional stoicism to men that says they’re more manly if they do not feel, but if they should feel and the feelings hurt, the manly response is to stuff them down, to forget about them, to hope they go away.”  

In my dorm room that day, it occurred to me that I’d been waiting my whole life to hear my father say, “I love you and I’m proud of you.” But looking back on this moment now, I can see that it was my dad—not me—who finally had the courage to heal the divisions in our relationship, even if he had to do it from the safety of his own car. He was the one wise enough to finally say what had gone unspoken, to provide the model of manhood I didn’t even know I needed. Until then, I had tricked myself into believing that my queerness made me unlike him. It wasn’t until I hung up the phone and started crying, realizing how much I’d miss my Dad—how much I already missed him—that I could see that I, too, was a part of the problem. 

That phone call was a turning point for us, but it wasn’t like everything changed from then on out. Family dynamics are kind of like asking someone for their favorite Beyoncé album—it’s just not that simple! What I will say is, Dad broke the ice, and then we tested the waters for a while, feeling the temperature and seeing how deep we could swim. We made an unspoken commitment to do better by each other, and for ourselves. He, slightly softer from old age, has learned to listen more, and has seemingly found a whole new approach to fatherhood, thanks to the welcome addition of his seven grandsons. (Many of them are still deciding whether they fear or adore him. Our entire family can relate.) He also—gradually—let go of the damn nicknames.

I thought a lot about Dad before finally taking the plunge with this newsletter. When it came time to launch this thing—the first “media project” I’ve worked on since being laid off in December—I knew the name I chose had to be a reflection of myself. I find it only fitting that I landed on the name my father first gave to me. 

However, fruity is no longer just a nickname given to me by somebody else, and it is certainly no longer something I’d consider an epithet. It is also not something I count among the other titles I’m leaving in my past, like boss, executive, or chief. Instead, it’s a label I happily choose for myself. 

Reclaiming fruity feels ironic, since it once caused me so much pain and made me feel so misunderstood. But as I got older and became less afraid of myself, I learned that it was another part of me I’d eventually come to love. I know (after quite a few years and a whole lot of distance) that I can’t fully blossom until I’ve confronted where I’ve been—including the darkest, thorniest places where my ugliest feelings reside. 

In that sense, fruity is the perfect embodiment of my relationship with my father—it is the men we were when we chose to hurt each other, and who we are now that we know better. And it’s a helpful reminder on the hardest days that, when you’re brave enough to bring something to the light, you might be surprised at what will grow.