We’ve got war to cover

2002—The Anna Nicole Show premieres. 7.6 million people watch. A record. Two million keep watching. Anna Nicole Smith is E!’s biggest hit. She’s “big,” “fat.” Hit, hit—she’s everybody’s punchline. I’m eleven, twelve. I watch. I laugh. To have a punchline is to have someone punched: passive voice. (Not one of us punches.) I know I’m a big woman, she tells Howard Stern, so what? He wants her weighed. Anna Nicole refuses. He’s been guessing all day—300 pounds. He promises her $3,000, an Xbox for her son. He could win $700 if he’s right. I’ll show you my penis. His team cackles. Anna Nicole glowers. It’s not a thing for y’all to make fun of me about.

2003—Horrors abound. I am twelve, thirteen. The passive voice is deployed. Iraq is invaded. Iraqis are killed. Our landline rings // is hung up hung up hung up \don’t pick it up/ is found off the hook in the morning, unbroken tone all night. My mother tells me it’s a telemarketer. I’m told it’s a telemarketer. The caller ID reveals a name. I keep the name : : the name is kept—

Anna uses a lie detector on her five favorite bachelors to hold court for courtship.¹ The phone rings, it rings. Anna and her friends go camping. My mother continues to lie. Anna acts out a scene from The Taming of the Shrew. I’m told it’s nobody, nobody’s calling. Anna goes on a date with a truck-driving bachelor. But no: it’s somebody. Anna stars in Skyscraper as a death-defying chopper pilot with fancy red fingernails trying to save high-rise hostages. I memorize the caller ID. First initial, last name. I know the caller is a woman before I know she is a woman.

2004—Abu Ghraib. I don’t understand eleven soldiers are on trial. All anyone talks about is Lynndie England, the woman in the photos who, with a cigarette rakishly dangling from her lips, pointed to the genitals of naked, hooded Iraqis and gave a mocking thumbs-up. My father writes that.² He is one of 100 journalists from around the world covering her trial. I hate Lynndie England because everyone hates Lynndie England. My father enlists the active voice. Prisoners were tortured. Lynndie England tortured prisoners. Justice will be served. We will punish her.

Anna Nicole Smith loses sixty-nine pounds. Look at the little waist! Kelly Ripa chirps. Turn around! Show everybody! Show off. Wow. You did great. Do you feel terrific? At the Billboard Awards, Anna Nicole’s voice slurs, the cadence of a tape played at half-speed. liiiike mah bahhhhhhhhhdi? My mother takes to imitation. Eyes jiggle. Arms lift. My father and I laugh. We spend years sharpening this dynamic. Men laugh at the woman pretending.

When do I start hating my mother? 2003? 2004? When we’re at war. When Bush wins again. Anna Nicole and Lynndie England reign/burn. The problem is not that the military exists. It’s that Lynndie England lives. Not that reality TV exploits. It’s that Anna Nicole wants fame. The problem is not that my father is chaos. It’s that my mother can’t love him.

August 8, 2004, FORT BRAGG, N.C.—Now, there was a distance in her eyes, and the jauntiness was gone. She moved deliberately, as if carrying the psychological burden of international scorn as much as the physical demands of being seven months pregnant. My father’s writing teaches me things. Not that violence exists; more that it’s invoked by a woman. A mother.

When does my snooping uncover that voicemail? On my father’s phone, from my mother—It’s 2:26am, and I want to kill myself. Please come home. When do I first call my mother bitch? Or is it cunt? Fucking cunt. What word can I use against my father besides son of a bitch / bastard? All words, bedfellows to mothers astray. There is no compressed word to hurt a man like him.

My flip phone rings at 3am; shutting it off, I fall back asleep. Anna and friends head to Palm Springs to judge the American Guy 2003 competition. I wake at 4:30am for swim practice; my phone is gone. Anna lunches with Larry Flynt, then does a Hustler photo shoot. My parents stand stiff in the kitchen. Anna attends the Kentucky Derby along with Larry King, Kid Rock, and Pamela Lee. I’m told I deserve a new cellphone—a better one. Cousin Shelly returns for a makeover; wet and wild mud wrestling. I’m told I’ll get a new number.

Daniel is truly the love of my life, Anna Nicole once said, when her son was still a boy. 2006—when Daniel is 20 years old, Anna Nicole gets pregnant with the girl she always wanted. Anna Nicole births the baby girl in the Bahamas; Daniel flies there to meet his newborn sister. All three fall asleep in the hospital room. In the morning, Daniel is dead—accidental overdose. This ruins his mother. Five months later, Anna Nicole dies in a Florida hotel room—accidental overdose.

My mother stays up all night one night dials dials dials my father; I stay up, too, pretending to sleep upstairs. He comes home at 6am. I put up with this shit, and still you won’t let me get a dog. At 7am my father and I cuddle under the covers as my mother washes dishes downstairs. My father. I cannot unlove my father.

My father and I watch TV. Commercial break; he turns to me. Why don’t you have a girlfriend? Boys your age have girlfriends. I nod. I squirm. He smirks in a way that indicates concern. You’re not gay, are you? My father, the journalist. I can’t tell him the truth.

2007—Anna Nicole’s death: her biggest hit? In the days after, more than half of cable news is devoted to her. In the weeks preceding her funeral, her death is the third biggest national story, outpaced—barely—by the 2008 presidential race and the Iraq War. An Iraq vet decries troop morale is impacted. . . by the fact that America is paying attention to. . . Anna Nicole Smith. The reality star with a fake name. Vickie Lynn Hogan has died. Who cares? We’ve got war to cover, we’ve got war to cover.

cover (v.)—put something on top of or in front of (something), especially in order to protect or conceal it. Anna Nicole’s body, covered by a sheet. Anna Nicole’s body, covered by the news. She is not forgotten—but she is. She is forgotten by Dannielynn, the daughter she births months before dying in Hollywood, Florida. Dear baby, unmemoried mind.

New phone, new number. I swim swim swim swim swim swim swim swim. Online I cannot find her, the woman \kept name/ the woman who calls us. Then one day—I do. A byline. She’s a journalist? Like Mom, like Dad. She’s written a story about. . . my teammate Brad? Brad swims fast. Brad has dreams. He could make the Olympics. He is going to Princeton. How did she get this story? Was she at my practice? Did she watch me swim? Law & Order interrogation—she can see me, but I can’t see her. I am being followed. No. Correction: she is following me.

Brad; the woman who calls—both hauntings/obsessions. All freshman year, I look at Brad’s svelte body like I look at the caller ID: I can’t look away. I eye Brad in the shower—his abs, cut brownies. His armpits, those thickets of wet. Swimmer boys don’t shower naked. That’d be gay. Speedos are gay. We shower in suits that run down to our knees. Wrapping towel around waist, we trade swimsuit for boxers, cock always covered. But some days, Brad bares all. Naked, he dries his suit in the growling machine. I study the V of his body, the swell of his ass.

Uncovered truths; the burdens they bring. I can’t unfind my father’s drugs / porn / hotel keys. I can’t unfantasize boys naked with me. I can’t unread the email sent to my parents by the woman who calls—now I know why she calls. Family secret, revealed: reality frays. My family is not what I thought. I’m not the boy I’m supposed to be. All high school, I keep these secrets : : these secrets are kept—

2007—Anna Nicole is buried in the Bahamas the last day of my championship swim meet. I set a personal best. 11th place, 3 spots away from podium.

Event 44 Boys 100 Yard Breaststroke
11 Fuoco, Dante JR Mount Lebanon Hi 1:03.81
29.87 33.94

It does not feel like enough. Two years later, how fast I do/don’t respond will be clocked by the woman who calls.

When do I first interrogate my father? How my father covers abuse / how my father covers abuse.

2009—I’m eighteen. It’s summer. A rising sophomore in college, I lifeguard. I love college. I love swimming. I am on my break. It’s hot. I sit on the grass. I get a text from an unknown number. But I know who it is.

Dante, your sister wants to meet her brother

All summer, I lie to my parents. What I keep from them is what they kept from me: the truth. I meet the calling woman in secret. Her daughter—my sister—is five, is secret secret secret. Our play dates: the park, the movie, their house, the diner. We play play. I don’t tell anyone. I tell the little girl, I love being your big brother. The calling woman rages at me. You’re just like your father. The calling woman cools. Thank you for being so amazing. I vow to make everything right.

Come autumn: explosion. The calling woman sends my father a photo of me and my sister—reveals our secret. He bursts into my bedroom, yells. I weep; he weeps. I forgive him—then I take it back. He rages, yells. I call the calling woman cunt. I stop calling my sister.

For years I keep calling myself man, straight, son. Yes, Dad. I’m your best friend. Your only child. The lies I tell to allay him—these wear on me. I start telling the truth. He can’t stomach my longing for men. He leaves my mother, moves out of the house. He calls he calls; I don’t pick up. I’ll never pick up.

2019—Nixing father from life, I fall in love with a man. We call each other girl, a term of endearment.

Recurring nightmare: my mother is dead. I cry and I cry—then I wake up. But even awake I’ve wept, relieved, sutured by fact: my mother still lives. I love my mother. She tells me, I had no one to talk to. Neither did I. But now we can talk. The secrets we suffered, now stories we share.

————-

¹Episode synopses of The Anna Nicole Show, season 2, taken from Rotten Tomatoes.

²Coverage of Lynndie England’s trial quoted from “Trial casts W. Va. Soldier in different light,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Dante Fuoco (@garlic_lover_b0y) is a queer theater-maker, writer, and educator living in Brooklyn, NY. The creator of two full-length solo shows, Dante has poetry published in Foglifter, DIAGRAM, Poets.org, MAYDAY, No, Dear, and other places. Dante holds an MFA in poetry from Virginia Tech.

memoir, 2025SLMMarch 14, 2025Dante Fuoco