Tag Archives: memoir

Excerpt from Stunted

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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Busy Vacation

I had a busy and not-so-restful “staycation” in Syracuse this past week with events tied to the launch of my book, Stunted: A Memoir of Delayed Manhood. On Tuesday, June 23, I traveled to my hometown of Rome, New York, for a book reading at Jervis Public Library.

I hadn’t visited the city since Thanksgiving, and the maple trees were in full bloom with branches overhanging the streets in north Rome, presenting a dense, chartreuse canopy. Here’s a picture of some trees I saw near Jervis’s parking lot.

Since my dad, mother, and stepfather have all passed away, I don’t get back to the Copper City very often, and when driving northbound on Black River Boulevard or James Street, I feel more like a visitor than a native Roman. But even so, Rome will always be home to me.

I met my friend Bill Vinci (host of The Empire Plate web show) in the parking lot of Jervis, and we talked for about twenty minutes before he had to leave for a fantasy baseball meeting. It was a beautiful summer night, and attendance was sparse for the reading. But a former neighbor, some friends from high school, my brother, Dirk, and his partner, Donna, and my friend, Bill Soldato (author “Billy the Liquor Guy”) showed up, and I was able to reminisce and catch up with them.

Most of all, I was elated to be holding an event inside the confines of Jervis Public Library—reading from a book I had actually written. That’s because when I was a child, I discovered a love of books and reading at Jervis. And while I attended Mass at St. John the Baptist Church, Jervis served as my true cathedral of learning. It provided a foundation for what would become a literary life and was also a refuge, a safe space where I could escape the domestic unrest punctuated by my parents’ quarrels during my formative years.

During America’s Bicentennial year of 1976, my mother had enrolled me in a summer reading program at Jervis. I was six years old and turning seven that August. The librarian had divided the group into two teams, and we competed against each other for the book tally. I read eighteen books that summer, and I have the certificate to prove it.

While walking through the stacks before my reading, I remembered how the library had introduced me to writers like Ray Bradbury, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Thomas Wolfe, Albert Camus, Hermann Hesse, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Brontë, and so many others.

Later, I found some of my poetry books in Jervis’s circulating collection, resting on a shelf in the Literature section, sandwiched between poetry books written by Emily Dickinson and Ralph Waldo Emerson. I thought: “I’ll take it. Not too shabby company.”

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The following day, Wednesday, June 24, I appeared as a guest on the lifestyle show Bridge Street on WSYR-TV (NewsChannel 9).

I was nervous about the segment because it’s live television. And as a longtime video producer, I’m used to being behind the scenes during production (where I am most comfortable), not acting as a guest or interview subject. Fortunately, once a female member of the crew mic’d me up, and I sat in the guest chair, the interview with hosts Iris St. Meran and Erik Columbia lasted only about five minutes.

Here’s the link if you want to watch it.

I’m abstaining because I don’t want to torture myself. On the way home, I thought about five things I should have said that slipped my mind in the haze of the bright lights and nervous energy of live TV. And to protect my fragile self-esteem, I don’t want to see how I looked and sounded on screen, which I know goes against a book promoting self-acceptance. But as I said in the interview, self-acceptance is a daily effort (and a struggle for me).

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On Friday, June 26, I was fortunate to read some poems, along with three other poets, as a participant in Verse & Waltz: An Evening of Poetry and Brahms, presented by the Oneida Lake Arts and Heritage Center at St. David’s Parish Hall, in Fayetteville. One of the poems I read came from Stunted.

The theme of the night was “love,” and each poet was allotted about seven minutes. Because I do them so infrequently, I tend to overprepare for readings. I am apprehensive about reading my poems, and I feel the page is the primary home for my verses. I write to be read in text form, as opposed to being heard. So in getting ready for the event, I printed the poems I considered reading for the evening.

I ended up with too many options, but it was a great exercise because I edited a number of the poems—noticing in many places, the works would be much stronger if I cut lines. I also replaced words that would be difficult to pronounce; hence: clasps became clutches, aquiline became beak-like, and vestibule replaced lobby.

I read through my poems, then sat back and enjoyed the music in the second half of the program. And all the German waltzes and fine singing made me want to watch The Sound of Music again.

In preparing for the reading, I realized I have written many poems that have only been published in collections that are print on demand or had small print runs, meaning several verses have had limited release. I do submit poems to magazines and literary journals, but the fees restrict the number of submissions, and the competition for publication is also fierce.

So I’ll be going through my previous collections and publishing them as standalone posts on my blog.

Here are some poems culled from my potential reading list from Friday night. I’ll start with one that is unpublished.

The Safe

In my head
I know
the meaning
of living
is to unlock
the safe
enclosing
the heart
and give
what love
you own
to others.

I fall short—
collecting
but failing to
distribute
the love
I possess.
And so
I ask myself:
Just why am I
holding on to
all that surplus?

In Another Life

In another life,
we would have slow-danced
to Willie Nelson music
in a townie bar in the Catskills,
and made love in your father’s tool shed
on a Sunday afternoon.
In another life,
we would have been married
at sunset in Sylvan Beach, New York,
on a warm June night.

In another life,
we would have had a son named Isaac
and a daughter named Rose.

In another life,
I would have been a master pastry chef
and you a renowned neurosurgeon.

In another life,
troubles would have come,
as they always do,
but our love would have been unshaken.

In another life,
you would have been
more than just a glimpse,
a face in a car rushing by me
in the opposite direction.

(From Sidewalk Stories, Kelsay Books, 2017)

Mother at a School Bus Stop

A middle-aged woman with a white canvas coat
stands with her two young children
at a school bus stop on a misty gray morning.
The boy and girl are bundled up
and jabbering as they bounce around—
unaware that Mondays should be devoid of glee.

When the bus pulls up, the mother hugs the children.
The kids separate from her breast,
scurry up the steps and claim an empty seat up front.
The mother waves goodbye to the little faces
pressed against the window and watches
as the bus pushes away from the curb,
ejecting a thin cloud of exhaust.

The woman turns around,
waits for the traffic light to change
and then crosses the street,
marching up the block to return home.
Once there, dirty dishes, unmade beds and
cigarette butts heaped in black plastic ashtrays
demand her attention until mid-morning,
when the woman leaves the house and rushes to work.

She then counts down the hours
until the school bus returns to the curb
and her two kids hop off and leap into her arms,
almost in unison.

(From Dreaming of Lemon Trees: Selected Poems, Finishing Line Press, 2019)

Landscape

Beauty abounds.
Just look around
and you will see—
a quivering leaf,
a patch of grass,
billowing clouds,
and a slash of light
beneath the bridge.
It’s not a bad world, really—
we just need
to train our eyes
to gaze with wonder,
and marvel at the
transcendental pageantry.
It’s there before you.
But you must zoom out,
zoom out
and refocus the image.
There. Hold it.
Do you see it now?

(From Sidewalk Stories, Kelsay Books, 2017)

Vestiges

My parents are gone.
They walk the earth no more,
both succumbing to lung cancer,
both cremated and turned to ash.

With each passing year,
their images become more turbid in my mind,
as if their faces are shielded
by expanding gray-black clouds.
I try to retain what I remember—
my father’s deep-set, dark eyes and aquiline nose,
my mother’s small head bowed in thought or prayer
while smoking a cigarette in the kitchen.

I search for their eyes
in the constellations of the night sky.
I listen for their voices in the wind.
Is that Rite Aid plastic bag snapping in the breeze
the voice of my father whispering,
letting me know he’s still around …
somewhere … over there?
Does the squawking crow
perched in the leafless maple tree
carry the voice of my mother,
admonishing me for wearing a stained sweater?

Resorting to a dangerous habit,
I use people and objects as “stand-ins”
for my mother and father,
seeking in these replacements
some aspect of my parents’ identities.

A sloping, two-story duplex with cracked green paint
embodies the spirit of my father saddled with debt,
playing the lottery, hoping for one big payoff.
I want to climb up the porch steps and ring the doorbell,
if only to discover who resides there.

In a grocery store aisle on a Saturday night
I spot an older woman
standing in front of a row of Duncan Hines cake mixes.
With her short frame, dark hair, and glasses,
she casts a similar appearance to my mother.
She is scanning the labels,
perhaps looking for a new flavor,
maybe Apple Caramel, Red Velvet, or Lemon Supreme,
just something different to bake
as a surprise for her husband.
A feeling strikes me and
I wish to claim her as my “fill-in” mother.
I long to reach out to this stranger in the store,
fighting the compulsion
to place a hand on her shoulder
and tell her how much I miss her.

I fear that if my parents disappear
from my consciousness,
then I too will become invisible.
And the reality of a finite lifespan sets in,
as I calculate how many years I have left.
But I realize I am torturing myself
with this twisted personification game.
I must remember my parents are dead
and possess no spark of the living.
And I can no longer enslave them in my mind,
or try to resurrect them in other earthly forms.
I have to let them go.
I have to dismiss the need for physical ties,
while holding on to the memories they left behind.

And so on the night I see the woman
in the grocery store aisle,
I do not speak to her,
and she does not notice me lurking nearby.
But as I walk away from her,
I cannot resist the impulse to turn around
and look at her one last time—
just to make sure
my mother’s “double” is still standing there.
I want her to lift her head and smile at me,
but she never diverts her eyes
from the boxes of cake mixes lining the shelf.

(From Sidewalk Stories, Kelsay Books, 2017)

 

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Daily Orange Q-and-A

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.

 

 

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Six-Month Reprieve

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.

You can also find the book on Amazon or Bookshop.

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).

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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).

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Book Release and Giveaway

Today marks the completion of a dream with the publication of my memoir, Stunted: A Memoir of Delayed Manhood. To celebrate my publication date, I am running a Goodreads giveaway. It ends on June 1, and I’ll be giving away two signed copies of the book.

I don’t have much experience with signing books, but I have never understood the practice of authors crossing out their printed name when they sign their books. To me it feels like defacing a work of art.

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My Books Arrive

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.

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Buddha Bliss

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.

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A Quote Worth Sharing

I am currently reading The 90-Day Memoir: Tell the Story of Your Life by Alan Watt. Each chapter begins with a quote. I wanted to share this one because I thought it was profound. There’s some debate online about the origin of the quote, whether it came from a Cherokee legend or from somewhere else. But either way, the words are worth noting.

It also reminded me of a poem I wrote about a wolf several years ago.

The Mystery of the Wolf

A summer evening in upstate New York—
a backyard sprinkler hisses
while the smell of fresh-cut grass
is pungent and delicious.
Crickets chirp and a coffee-colored mare
snorts from across the barbed-wire fence.

I am alone, kicking a soccer ball,
when a gray wolf emerges from
the high weeds lining the fence.
I try to run, but my legs lock up,
and I tumble to the ground.

The wolf circles me,
then sweeps in on my limp frame.
I can hear its stomach growling
as it hovers over me.
The tongue is extended
and drool splashes my face.
The wolf takes my neck in its mouth,
but does not bite down.

And I wake up in my bed,
thankful that the encounter is just a dream.
I am safe, and no wolf invades my room.
Yet I remain troubled,
afraid of closing my eyes,
drifting back to sleep
and ending up at the mercy
of another predator.

Previously published in the collection Dreaming of Lemon Trees: Selected Poems by Francis DiClemente (Finishing Line Press, 2019).

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Stunted: A Memoir of Delayed Manhood

Forthcoming is such a lovely word.

And I’m happy to share the cover image for my coming-of-age memoir, Stunted: A Memoir of Delayed Manhood, which is slated to be published later this year. It was a long, hard road to get here, but I am honored that the story has found a home with Toplight Books, an imprint of McFarland & Company.

Cover image for my memoir.

The book is also listed on Amazon, Bookshop, and Goodreads.

I began researching this project in June 2013 after marrying my wife, Pam, who has been a steadfast supporter, cheering me on along the way. I obtained medical records dating back to 1984 and incorporated journal entries from the early 1990s. So in many ways, I’ve been writing this memoir my whole life. The impetus to write the book sprang from a long blog post I wrote in December 2014 to mark the 30th anniversary of my initial brain surgery at SUNY Upstate Medical University Hospital in Syracuse, New York.

At Walt Disney World in 1985, a few months after my initial brain surgery.

When I started working on the memoir, I realized I needed to study the genre, so I read the classics like Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr, This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff, Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, Stop-Time by Frank Conroy, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, and many, many others.

Between that initial blog post and the completion of the book, life intruded.

I had two brain surgeries, was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, mourned the loss of my stepfather, Bill Ruane, my Uncle Fiore DeCosty (nicknamed Fee), and two cousins, Derek and Damon DeCosty. I published numerous poetry collections, wrote a play that was produced by a small theater in Las Vegas, produced a few documentary films, and earned two Emmy awards. I bought a house (reluctantly), and most importantly, became a father to my son, Colin, who will be ten years old next month and was diagnosed with autism in 2018.

The whole time I was living my life in the present while my head remained partly stuck in the time period from 1984 to 1995, covering the terrain of my high school experience in Rome, New York, my undergraduate years at St. John Fisher College (now named St. John Fisher University), in Rochester, New York, graduate school at American University in Washington, DC, and the start of my professional career back in my hometown of Rome and in Venice, Florida.

Here’s me in either my junior or senior year of high school or my freshman year at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.

And as time elapsed and I wondered if I would ever finish the book, I drafted scenes, wrote a crappy first draft, completed multiple revisions on my own, and then hired developmental and line editors through Fiverr, wrote a book proposal, and sent out countless queries to agents and publishers who accept direct submissions from authors.

While I am ecstatic that the book will be published, I detest the necessity of the promotional phase. But it’s a reality I can’t escape. My intention is for readers to find some universal truth or connection to my personal story.

Here is the book description from the McFarland site.

Set between 1984 and the mid–1990s, this coming-of-age memoir follows Francis DiClemente’s experience of adolescence and early adulthood in a body that struggled to develop. Diagnosed with a rare brain tumor that led to hypopituitarism, DiClemente remained physically underdeveloped while his peers matured into young adulthood. As he navigated relationships and sexuality in college, it became evident that his prolonged experience with physical nonconformity fueled isolation, self-doubt, and shame.

This book explores the impacts of his condition on schooling, intimacy, and emerging adulthood, examining how physical differences shape identity formation. It reframes masculinity not as a function of physical development, but as an ethical and emotional practice grounded in empathy, resilience, and responsibility. Contributing to conversations on embodiment and self-acceptance, the work offers insight into the experience of living at odds with normative timelines of growth and belonging.

And I was very fortunate to have some gifted and generous writers provide blurbs for marketing.

“Francis DiClemente’s searingly honest memoir offers a vital perspective for anyone grappling with their own place in the world.”

—Shivaji Das, author of The Visible Invisibles

“Francis DiClemente and I met as teenagers on a baseball diamond in the summer of 1983, and while I have since gone on to work in a different sport populated by alpha males gifted with superhuman size, strength, and athleticism, I know of no better or stronger example of what manhood truly means than my friend. This moving story of self-discovery, which Francis courageously tells with raw honesty and vulnerability, reminds us that the journey toward fulfillment in life is inward, and should inspire us to be less judgmental—not only of others but ourselves.”

—Bob Socci, broadcaster, New England Patriots

“DiClemente’s journey becomes a lifelong battle, man against regrowing tumor. In these pages, he provides the most intimate details of how he learned to be a man while trapped in the body of a boy. Hopefully, his words, and his honesty, can reassure other boys and men grappling with masculine identity.”

—Angel Ackerman, author of the Fashion and Fiends horror series and founder of Parisian Phoenix Publishing

“This is a deeply moving testament to the quiet courage it takes to claim your identity in a world that insists on defining it for you. For anyone who has ever felt unseen or out of place, DiClemente offers a reimagined vision of identity rooted not in the body, but in the soul.”

—Brittany Terwilliger, author of The Insatiables

“Francis DiClemente has written a book on men and masculinity that should be not only savored but consulted by those men who, at some point in their lives, have questioned what their manhood means and what place it holds in society. And by those men I mean all men. This work might have been born of DiClemente’s many masculine hardships, but it becomes a celebration of what is best in us.”

—William Giraldi, author of The Hero’s Body

“DiClemente delivers an unflinching account of the brain tumor that disrupted normal growth and his participation in one of the first human growth hormone trials. …a touching and compelling memoir.”

—Carmen Amato, author of the Galliano Club historical fiction series

“Francis DiClemente tells it like it is—with no BS. This work is honest, human, and full of hope. I respect the courage it took to write it.”

—William Soldato, author of Under Too Long

“Francis DiClemente’s book is a courageous and beautifully crafted memoir that speaks to the quiet battles so many face in silence. With poetic clarity, brutal honesty, and emotional depth, he explores identity, masculinity, and the long road to self-acceptance. A powerful book.”

—Apple An, award-winning author of Las Crosses, Mother of Red Mountains, and Daughter of Blue City

I’m now working on a second book, which is a continuation of the story. There’s no timetable for completion.

One note about the cover.

My Uncle Fiore took my photo in 1985 at the New Jersey shore. We had traveled to New Jersey from Rome one early fall weekend to visit my cousin, Fiore, who was stationed at an Army prep school in Monmouth County, where he would spend a year before matriculating to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. I remember listening to Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. album on my yellow Sony Walkman in the backseat on the way down from Rome to Jersey. I connected the song “I’m Goin’ Down” with our southbound travel, and I loved side two of the album, especially the songs “No Surrender,” “Bobby Jean,” and “My Hometown.”

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