During a summer baseball camp in the early 1980s, I huddle with a group of infielders on the main baseball diamond on the campus of Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York. I’m the smallest figure in the bunch, the top of my head reaching the shoulders of the other players.
Early morning sunlight slants across the field, and a pinging sound ricochets off the brick dormitory buildings set on a hill overlooking the diamond as a garrulous coach with a Long Island accent and a potbelly stands near home plate, swinging a fungo bat and smacking ground balls to us.
Playing third base in youth league baseball in Rome, New York, in the late 1970s.
Another coach, dressed in a gray T-shirt and baseball pants, stands near our group in the infield, observing our defensive mechanics. I charge the ball and crouch low to the ground, keeping my head down and my glove open. I field several balls without a bobble and fire them to first base. The Long Island coach then lines a laser in the air toward second base, and I leap to my right—my body parallel to the ground as the ball smacks the pocket of my Mizuno mitt. The diving backhand catch produces cheers from several camp-goers nearby.
The coach hitting the fungoes yells, “Wow. Nice play out there. Way to look alive.” The coach standing near second base says in a Southern accent, “Hey, what’s your name?”
After I tell him, he says, “You’re a good ballplayer and a good-looking kid. The girls must love you. Do you have a girlfriend?”
“No,” I say.
“No. Why not?”
Before I can ponder the question, I say, “I’m too small.”
“Too small—what’s that got to do with anything?” the coach says.
“I don’t know,” I say. I dig my cleats into the dirt and smack my mitt, trying to come up with an explanation. “Girls don’t like short guys.”
The coach and some older players standing near me break into laughter. I laugh too, and then I resume my place in line, kicking dirt and bouncing on the balls of my feet, waiting for the next ground ball to be hit toward me.
Playing freshman baseball in Rome, New York, in 1984.
This past Thursday, July 30, I held a local author talk and Q-and-A at Utica Public Library on Genesee Street in Utica, New York. Two senior citizens attended, and their presence pleased me because as the time for the 6 p.m. event drew near, I thought no one would show up.
Utica Public Library exterior. Photo by Kenneth C. Zirkel.
The talk was held in the Music Room on the second floor of the brick Neoclassical building erected in the early 1900s. I took an Uber because I was nervous about getting lost in Utica (as I had so often done in my youth when traveling to the city from my nearby hometown of Rome). As we traversed eastbound along the New York State Thruway, the Uber driver and I had a nice conversation. He’s a retired journalist and corporate communications professional who still does freelance work. We discussed the decline of journalism, the state of higher education, and writers we admire, including Stephen King and Richard Russo.
I arrived shortly after 3:30 p.m., and an easel displaying a large poster board with my book cover image greeted me as I entered the library. Flyers were also posted. The library was busy with mothers and their children perusing and checking out books and some adults using the computer room.
I introduced myself to the staff member who reserved the space and booked the event for me. She directed me to the second floor. I walked around for a bit, then headed upstairs, passing through an art gallery on the second floor and gazing at works by local artists hanging on the walls.
As the afternoon wore on, I debated going outside to walk along Genesee Street, maybe stopping at a Starbucks or another coffee shop. But I didn’t want to leave my books behind, and I didn’t want to carry my heavy book bag. I also had some trepidation about the safety of the neighborhood, so I stayed inside.
I set up my books on a long table at the front of the Music Room, answered work emails and Teams messages, and read the books I had brought—the novel Tepper Isn’t Going Out by Calvin Trillin (paperback), the memoir Educated by Tara Westover (paperback), and A Deadly Shade of Gold by John D. MacDonald (Kindle). The AC was blasting, the movement of cold air murmuring, and I had to keep my raincoat on the whole time because I was freezing.
Utica Public Library interior. Photo by Francis DIClemente.
After using the restroom on the first floor, I was excited to find my book in the library’s general circulation, sitting on a shelf next to some other memoirs. It had a Utica Public Library stamp inside.
My memoir, Stunted, on a shelf at Utica Public Library.
Then I went upstairs and sat in the Music Room, waiting as 5:30 and then 5:45 p.m. came and went. I stood up and took some photos of the empty space and a selfie to document the “no-show” turnout.
And as I stared out the window of the library, looking at the Munson art museum across the street, I acknowledged within myself the discouragement I feel about my memoir’s reception in the world more than two months after its release.
I poured everything I had into this book, writing it over the course of ten years while working a full-time day job and managing family responsibilities. And while I never expected a TED Talk or a Today show appearance to follow the release of my memoir, it’s disheartening that events have been sparsely attended and I remain stuck on four reviews on Amazon (although they have been positive). Even more so, I thought the book’s universal message of self-acceptance would resonate with a wide variety of readers.
But as I walked around the Music Room, the floorboards creaking beneath my feet, I tried to console myself by thinking a writer or artist’s career has ups and downs, highs and lows, and it’s all part of the journey.
I am also grateful to the people who have read the book and commented on it, the libraries and booksellers who have hosted me, and the local media outlets that have interviewed me or written stories about the book.
I also knew that my wife and son would greet me when I arrived home that night, and I would get up the next day and write before heading off to work at a job that paid my bills and provided health coverage for my family and me.
I was about to pack up my stuff and head downstairs to open the Uber app and book a ride home when a small, older man wearing a blue shirt and jeans held up by suspenders entered the Music Room and sat down. I thought, “OK, one is better than none.”
I asked, “Are you here for the reading?”
“Yes,” he said.
I introduced myself. His name was Bob. We shook hands, and we talked about the Utica area and its history. I asked Bob where the Saranac Brewery was located, and he rose and walked toward a window in the corner. I followed him, and he pointed toward the brewery in an area behind St. Joseph and St. Patrick Church, which could be seen in the distance.
At 6 p.m., I sat down and told Bob I’d read a little bit and then answer any questions he might have. I put on my reading glasses and was reading the prologue when I looked up and saw an older woman seated in the audience. I nodded and said “hello,” and she smiled. She said her name was Lorraine and she lived nearby. She had blond hair and glasses, was dressed in a black shirt and leopard-print pants, and wore a red baseball cap with a Flash Gordon lightning bolt on the front.
I was elated, and I made a point of listening to their questions and being fully present in the moment, giving my best effort for the two people who took time out of their day to attend a local author event.
And we had a pleasant conversation. They asked me about where I grew up, my educational background, medical and family history, and how long it took me to write the book. I enjoyed hearing about their lives. Lorraine claimed she owned more than four-thousand books. She also said she was born premature and the doctor who delivered her tossed her tiny body on a bed and said to Lorraine’s mother, “Don’t bother with her. She’s not gonna make it.”
Lorraine said she wanted to tell the doctor now, “I’m 77 years old, and I’m still here.”
Bob said he likes reading nonfiction, primarily autobiographies, nature books, and books about dogs. He asked me if I was Italian, and when I said, “Yes,” he told me he’s full-blooded Italian. He said he lives alone and shared details about two solo trips he took to Italy and Sicily, including how he met some distant cousins on one of the journeys.
Toward the end of our discussion, Bob asked if he could look at a book. I said, “Sure,” and he grabbed a book, flipped through it, stopping at certain pages, pointing to pictures, and asking me questions.
I felt so happy that Bob and Lorraine had rescued my night that I signed two copies of my book and gave them away to my new friends.
The experience made me think about one of my favorite scenes in the movie Vision Quest. It’s when high school wrestler Louden Swain (Matthew Modine) visits his friend, hotel worker Elmo (J.C. Quinn), who has taken the night off to watch Louden wrestle against Brian Shute, the best wrestler in the state of Washington. The writing and acting in the scene deliver such emotional power.
Louden tells Elmo that he shouldn’t have taken a night off from work because his pay would be docked, and that his six-minute wrestling match is “not that big of a deal.” Elmo gives a monologue about watching Pelé on TV during a soccer game, and he ends his speech with the line, “It ain’t the six minutes. It’s what happens in that six minutes.”
And the lesson for me is: It isn’t about how many people show up at a reading or event or the number of ratings and reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. It’s about the connection you form with the people who do read your book and attend your events.
I also thought, OK, so I’ll never win a Guggenheim fellowship, sell the movie rights to my book, be a bestselling author, or earn a living from my writing alone. Still, I can continue to write in my spare time and contribute something positive in my own small way.
“Scenes from a Dream Landscape” is an experimental poem that was published in my collection Vestiges (Alabaster Leaves Publishing/Kelsay Books, 2012). The original version was much shorter, and while editing the Vestiges manuscript, I challenged myself to go deeper, exploring the idea of a “dream landscape” by continually asking, “What if?”
For some reason, I’ve linked the poem to the U2 song “A Sort of Homecoming” from the album The Unforgettable Fire (one of my all-time favorites). I don’t understand the meaning of the song, but I love the poetic lyrics, especially these lines:
“And you hunger for the time
Time to heal, desire time And your earth moves beneath Your own dream landscape . . . ”
Scenes from a Dream Landscape (Alternate title: The Keith Jackson Poem)
A shaft of morning sunlight,
the sounds of the city awakened,
a hallway carpeted with beige sequins,
a keyhole in an apartment door
revealing a woman lying on a bed,
her thigh exposed and covered in blood,
a ticking clock pasted to a nose missing the rest of its face,
a passageway to a cellar overcrowded with dancing wax figures,
an old woman on a sofa
knitting the blond hair of a girl chained to the floor,
a kitchen table made of stone and cluttered with
smashed whiskey bottles and ashtrays engulfed in flames,
a bookcase filled with only one volume—Kafka’s The Trial,
an oil painting of an electric fan
spitting green pigment in all directions.
You go deeper into the unknown,
propelled by an urge to make sense of the images.
You knock twice at the door, then turn the doorknob and enter.
And then you see yourself standing
in front of a funhouse mirror under bright pink lights.
A warbled, digital voice says:
“Welcome to our experiment on human unconsciousness.
We thank you for being a test subject.”
The lights go out, blackness cloaks you, a door swings open,
and now you are being moved
along a conveyer belt inside a stadium tunnel.
The Rose Bowl. Photo Credit: Visit Pasadena.
You come to the place where the cement overhang meets the sky.
You lean over the orange metal railing and now you see
thousands of people dressed in white hospital gowns,
sleeping on cots spread out on the turf of the Rose Bowl.
The sun begins rising and bathes the San Gabriel Mountains.
Keith Jackson’s voice comes over the public address system
and announces, “Please welcome our new guest.
Our breakfast special this morning
is poached ankles and toasted eyelids.
And don’t forget to swallow your medication
immediately after eating.
We hope you’ll join us later this afternoon
when the Ohio State marching band
takes the field and dots the I.”
Next you feel two small knees pressing against your chest
and a set of hands tugging at your ears.
Your eyes open and you find blessed comfort
in the face of your daughter Mary,
who screams, “Get up Daddy. You can’t sleep all day.”
Keith Jackson’s morning announcements then fade out,
replaced by a request for pancakes,
orange juice and a trip to the zoo.
With graduation party season in full swing, I thought I would share an excerpt from my recently released memoir, Stunted: A Memoir of Delayed Manhood. The excerpt covers the time period after I graduated high school from Rome Free Academy in my hometown of Rome, New York, and prepared to enter my freshman year of college. Warning: Adult content follows.
From Chapter Ten:
I graduated high school in June 1987 as a shy, sexless adolescent unprepared for the social landscape of college life. Decked out in my cap and gown, I stood a half head shorter than my mother and sister as we posed for a picture in our backyard on graduation day.
And here’s a catalog, a list of experiences I failed to check off before finishing high school, departing Rome, and heading to the campus of St. John Fisher College, a small, liberal arts college (now renamed St. John Fisher University) in Pittsford, New York, a suburb of Rochester:
I never went on any one-on-one dates.
I never bought flowers for a girl (except for one Valentine’s Day in elementary school).
I never drove a car to a girl’s house to pick her up and meet her parents—getting their permission to take her out for the night.
I never had a serious girlfriend.
I never put my arm around a girl at an RFA football game or held hands in a darkened movie
theater.
I never kissed a girl on the lips.
No fumbling with bra straps in the backseat of a car or feeling a warm breast while sitting on a couch at a house party.
I never made love in a girl’s bedroom while her parents were out of the house.
And at age eighteen, even if a girl had offered me the opportunity to have sex, I would not have known for sure where to put my penis during intercourse.
My inexperience with the opposite sex weighed on me as I spent my final summer at home. During one weekend in late August, my friend Billy and I went to McDonald’s to hang out in the Uptown area (a section of Rome where teens congregated).
On a warm, humid night, we stood in the deserted parking lot under the glow of the illuminated golden arches, talking with our friend Chad, who had ridden his bike to the area from east Rome. He was leaning on his handlebars, dressed in a white concert T-shirt, and we were talking about me going away to school. I said, “I’m a little nervous. I don’t know how it’s gonna be. I don’t know if I’ll fit in.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it, Franny,” Chad said. “You’ll get your helmet polished by the girls there.”
I had a sense he was referring to blow jobs, but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. I gave a good laugh to cover my lack of knowledge, and said, “Thanks, Chad, I hope you’re right.”
From Chapter Eleven:
Although my parents must have sensed my unease about attending college while looking like a fourteen-year-old boy, my father offered me no advice on how to deal with it, and my mother lacked empathy for my situation. She told me to stop being sensitive when other people questioned my age. In conversations with family members, co-workers, and restaurant servers, she would say, “He gets so upset if someone asks him about his age. He has to learn to accept it.” But Mom exhibited compassion through her actions by taking me shopping in New Hartford and buying me sheets, towels, toiletries, and other essentials for college life. She taught me how to do laundry, informing me about the basics of temperature cycles and the importance of separating colors from whites, and she also made sure my financial aid paperwork was submitted on time.
As I made my final preparations before departing Rome for the fall semester in 1987, my sister Lisa allayed my fears with sage advice based on her experience as a student at Hartwick College in Oneonta. When I told her how I knew the other kids would question me because I looked so young for my age, she said, “What you have to realize about college is that everyone has something that they don’t like about themselves, something they want to hide. Some girls are fat. Some guys have acne all over their faces, or they sound effeminate. Everyone has something. You look young for your age, but so what? Don’t think you’re the only one who is different.”
It was exactly what I needed to hear. She also told me, “You’ll be fine once you make a few friends.”
##
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The Daily Orange, the independent, student-run newspaper at Syracuse University, published a Q-and-A article featuring me and my book, Stunted: A Memoir of Delayed Manhood. I’m honored to appear in the pages of the newspaper, which I read religiously as a staff member at SU. You can read the piece here.
One year ago this week, I published my wacky passion project, Poecabulary, which is a minimalist poetry collection and conceptual art piece. To celebrate, I am running a free Kindle book promotion through Friday, June 5. If anyone would prefer a PDF version, please email me at ffd1284@gmail.com.
Poecabulary front cover.
This project originated with some wordplay and Photoshop edits back in 2013. And while the collection contains fewer than 700 words (across 190 pages), it took me more than ten years to curate, select, refine, and edit the 156 word pairings that comprise the book.
Here’s the back-of-the book description:
Poecabularyis a minimalist poetry collection that blurs the line between vocabulary and verse. Words appear in unexpected pairings, creating connections that surprise, challenge, and invite reflection. Each combination is a deliberate act of linguistic play, where alliteration, sound, appearance, randomness, rhyme, and meaning collide.
The author explores how similar or opposing words interact, encouraging readers to discover their interpretations and associations. Both a playful exercise and a meditation on language, Poecabulary celebrates the power and flexibility of words.
This collection will resonate with language lovers, poetry enthusiasts, and anyone curious about how words shape meaning. Sample pairings include Autistic/Artistic, Diffident/Different, Lonely/Lovely, Perfection/Perception, and Reject/Respect.
I’m brimming with gratitude for having wrapped up a great week. On Monday, Memorial Day, my memoir, Stunted: A Memoir of Delayed Manhood, was officially released by Toplight Books, an imprint of McFarland & Company. My Goodreads Giveaway continues until June 1 if you want to try to win a copy.
On Tuesday afternoon, I had my sixth-month follow-up appointment with my neurosurgeon, Dr. H. I received the radiologist’s report early Tuesday morning when I logged into Upstate’s patient portal. Upon reading that the tumor had grown measurably since the last scan in September, two thoughts swam through my brain—can the radiation oncology team hit the tumor with another round of Gamma Knife radiosurgery, and, if not, can I schedule my brain surgery over the summer so it won’t disrupt my busy work schedule that ramps up during the fall semester at Syracuse University?
To make it to my appointment, I had to take a Centro bus out to the Upstate University Medicine office in the Township 5 shopping center in Camillus, which is an Area 51-sized example of suburban sprawl.
Here are the quotes from the report that troubled me:
There has been “significant interval enlargement of the sellar and suprasellar mass consistent with known craniopharyngioma. On the current examination the mass measures 2.3 x 1.4 x 2.1 cm. On the comparison study dated 9/3/2025 the mass measured 1.6 x 1.1 x 1.7 cm.
“. . . There is worsened superior displacement and compression of the optic chiasm right worse than left.”
Yet when I see the always sanguine, gum-snapping Dr. H., he’s unruffled by the latest report. Dressed in a green, plaid flannel shirt and brown khakis, he takes a seat and explains that he reviewed the previous scans, lined everything up, and determined that the tumor has not grown significantly. He tries to allay my fears by giving me a detailed description of how different MRI machines or variations in the “slices of images” can affect the interpretation of the scan.
My two latest MRI scans appear on computer screens. The image on the left is from September, and the one on the right is from this May. The craniopharyngioma is the circular object in the middle of the brain.
Dr. H’s recommendation: Wait and see. Reschedule another MRI in six months.
I have no objection to this approach, and I left the office feeling grateful for another six-month reprieve—another half a year to live with no scheduled surgical intervention.
At the same time, I know the tumor isn’t sitting idle. It’s in a constant state of aggregation, growing steadily as the fluid inside expands, and at some point, it will likely provoke headaches and double vision (more than just to my extreme right).
But I try not to fall victim to the futility of worrying about my health (easier said than done).
##
On Friday, Upstate posted my conversation with host Amber Smith on the Informed Patient podcast. I much prefer pitching questions instead of fielding them.
I’ve conducted countless interviews in my role as a video producer at SU since 2007, and it’s definitely weird to be on the other side, to be the interviewee and not the interviewer. But it gave me a warm feeling of nostalgia for my radio days (circa 1996-2006).
My first shipment of books from McFarland & Company arrived yesterday. I’m so glad to see this book become a real thing—not just an idea in my head—because the project took more than 10 years to complete.
“Stunted: A Memoir of Delayed Manhood” is a coming-of-age story about identity and self-acceptance, told through the lens of my journey to adulthood after being diagnosed with a brain tumor when I was 15 years old.
The contains about 40 black-and-white photographs, medical records dating back to 1984, and diary entries from the early 1990s and beyond. It’s also loaded with sports and pop culture references from the ’80s and ’90s (e.g., Doug Flutie and The Cure).
I’m scheduled to give a reading at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, June 23, at Jervis Public Library in Rome, where, as a youth, I discovered my love of books and was introduced to authors such as John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Ray Bradbury, Albert Camus, Hermann Hesse, Joyce Carol Oates, and many others. I hope I won’t be so nervous that I ramble and babble.
A certificate for my participation in a summer reading program at Jervis Public Library in Rome in 1976.
I haven’t had a chance to blog in a while because I had to finish proofreading and indexing my forthcoming memoir, Stunted: A Memoir of Delayed Manhood. Producing a back-of-the-book index was an exhausting, onerous project—especially because my book is loaded with medical terminology and pop culture references from the 1980s and 1990s. Example: U2 see also The Edge, The Joshua Tree, Mullen, Larry Jr.
My messy index in process.
To avoid having to write an index for my follow-up memoir, I’ll make it 97 percent fact and 3 percent fantasy and call it autofiction.
But that’s not why I wanted to post today.
I am re-reading the autobiographical novel The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, which I think is a very underrated Kerouac work.
One passage caught my attention, and I wanted to share it.
The narrator, Ray Smith, has traveled from the industrial wasteland of Los Angeles to Riverside, California, as he tries to make his way to North Carolina to visit his mother. He camps for the night in a bamboo grove.
“And then I thought, later, lying on my bag, smoking, ‘Everything is possible. I am God, I am Buddha, I am imperfect Ray Smith, all at the same time, I am empty space, I am all things. I have all the time in the world to do what is to do, to do what is done, to do the timeless doing, infinitely perfect within, why cry, why worry, perfect like mind essence and the minds of banana peels.’”
And I know this is a quote I will revisit during stressful times. Have a good weekend, everyone.
Francis DiClemente 