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"This hallway floor is better than sleeping at home in the bed with my mother"

Danny Dupa hadn't always been Vito Vaselini's sidekick / confidante. He was once a little angry boy, a long time ago. His family lived in a one-room apartment in Lowell, at 201 Middlesex Street. His father left home when he was nine months old. It was only him, his mother Charlotte, and the two dozen cats his mother kept in the room. Although the room was rather large, it always smelled of cat urine. His mother worked as a waitress, part-time. Most of the rest of the time she would spend in a bar called Simone's Hideaway, working as a hooker. Sometimes she would bring drunks home.

Danny and his mother Charlotte lived in that room on the top floor from the time he was two years old, until he moved out of the house when he was fourteen. He used to sleep in Salvation Army boxes. If it didn't have any clothes in it, he was fucked.

Lowell had a lot of rooming houses back then, and Danny would sleep in the community bathrooms at night. In some places people let him sleep, other places they'd piss on him and go back to bed. This was better than living at home with his mother and the cats.

The one room only had one bed, and he slept in that bed the whole time he lived in that room with his mother. When she brought home a drunk, he either slept in the bed, or on the floor. It was uncomfortable for him to be in that bed when his mother was having sex with these guys. After a while he would simply get out of bed and sleep on the floor. He would hold onto his pillow and pretend it was someone who really cared for him and wanted to hold him -- something he had never gotten from his mother. She was never physically abusive, but constantly degraded him verbally. He was told he was an oaf constantly by his mother.

Some of the men would stay over for a day or two. Some would act like a father figure and give him commands, like "Hey, oaf, go get me a beer." One man stayed there for over three weeks. His mother got along with him for the maximum two or three days, and they constantly fought the rest of the time he lived there. His name was Pete, and he was an all right guy. He worked on a construction crew. He drank but he wasn't mean when he got drunk. He was the first man in Danny Dupa's life that stayed with his mother that called him "Danny" and not "oaf."

Danny's mother was always watching TV -- when she wasn't at the bar. She watched soap operas. She had a restless spirit

One day something in Danny told him it was time to leave. It may have been the same old dirty, filthy, pissy, shitty sheet that he had been sleeping on for the past three weeks. It may have been because Pete left. He could no longer go to school. He felt embarrassed by what he had to wear. His mother had started to go whacko -- in alcoholic terms, I think it's referred to as "wet brain." Now for the first time in his life, she was hitting him. Through the years, Danny had developed a mean streak like his mother. And when she came at him that day, screaming and swinging, and hitting him several dozen times, he finally snapped. He whacked her six times in the face. As she was lying on the floor, he got down on his knees, opened his mouth and took a deep breath, and bit off part of her nose as she lay there convulsing.

So you can see how, for Danny, living in hallways when he first moved out was better than living at home.

One day as he was walking down Middlesex Street, going past Garnick's Music Store, he stopped and looked in the window. A man inside motioned with his hand for Danny to come in. His name was Dave Garnick. He was a repairman and delivery man at the music store. For some reason, Danny came in -- there was music playing. Something changed in Danny when he heard that music. The music was different, but the effect was the same as music had on Frankenstein's monster. It was disco.

Dave Garnick was a friendly guy and he started to talk with Danny about what music he was interested in -- he was trying to make a sale. Danny said, "I don't know -- whatta you got?" Dave said, "How do you like what's playing now," and he started to dance. Danny started to dance a little bit -- well, he was moving around.

At that time, Garnick's Music Store was the hot place to buy records in Lowell. They always had young girls working the counter who were there more for looks than intelligence. I think it was a ploy to keep young people coming in. Sometimes you'd see three different girls in one year.

Dave Garnick was always a character, and the girl who worked there at the time named Pam was looking at Dave and Dupa dancing, in awe and disbelief.

The song stopped and Dave asked Danny what he did. Danny said, "I hang around and I look for things. Sometimes I find them, sometimes I don't." Dave Garnick took this as a mystical sign, a mystical sentence. Dave asked him if he wanted to wash the windows once a week to make a couple of bucks. Robert, his brother, who actually owned the business, gave Dave a look like "What are you doing?" Dave gave him a hand sign and a look like he was saying, "Don't worry about it." Danny asked how much would it pay. Dave said, "It'll probably take you an hour, and I'll give you three bucks." Danny asked if he would have to buy records with the money. Dave said, "No, and maybe we'll have some scratched records that you can have for free." Danny said, "I ain't got no record player." Dave said, "You do a good job, and we'll see about getting you one." Danny said to Dave, "Well, I gotta get going and go find something." Dave asked what he had to find. Danny said, "I don't know. I ain't found it yet." Dave said, "Come back in a week, and I'll have the stuff for you to clean the windows."

Danny started to walk out the door when Dave called him back and said, "Hey kid, where you living?" Danny said, "In the hallway in the rooming house above Tower News." Dave optimistically said, "Well kid, I hope they got an electrical outlet in that hallway, cause someday I'm gonna get you a record player."