Fiction
Date Published: February 28, 2025
Publisher: MindStir Media
The Belmont is a tale of a young man’s struggles with a heartbreak he
cannot get past, set against the backdrop of a bacchanalia-filled weekend
centered around the 1998 Belmont Stakes horse race, which ended with a
Triple Crown bid thwarted by a photo finish. During a long
“weekend” spread out over six days and in three different states,
a weekend fueled by alcohol and sexual tension, but also filled with
reflective, heartbreaking, exhilarating, hilarious, and heartwarming
moments, Tommy Cippolini embarks on a journey of self-discovery,
experiencing just about every single human emotion along the way. In between
episodes filled with anger and frustration, anticipation, anxiety,
disappointment, sexual arousal and temptation, binge drinking, daringness
and trepidation, hilarity and debauchery, and longing and sadness, Tommy
confides in good friends, casual friends, strangers, and family members
about his feelings and past trials and tribulations.
EXCERPT
CHAPTER 1
Wednesday, June 3, 1998.
On the road, while looking back.
Tommy Cippolini steered his 1991 Nissan Sentra toward the exit ramp off Route 684 in upstate New York and onto Route 287 West to begin the last major phase of the five-plus-hour drive from his parents’ suburban home just north of Boston to his friend Vince Piolini’s bachelor pad in northern New Jersey. Tommy had been on the road for about four hours now, having departed the Boston area just after the morning rush hour had begun to die down on this Wednesday morning of June 3, 1998.
As his compact car followed the bends along the ramp leading from 684 to 287, the opening strains of Green Day’s “Basket Case” began to blare from his car stereo.
Tommy smiled at the symbolic irony of the most upbeat song on Green Day’s Dookie record starting to play just as he’d finally made it through the longer and more difficult parts of his journey and was now heading into the homestretch. He’d started out the day listening to some “mood” music, particularly some of Pink Floyd’s later albums, including the very depressing Final Cut, because he wasn’t in the best frame of mind when he’d left home that morning. But, as he got deeper and deeper into his drive and closer to his final destination, he perked up, switched over to some Black Crowes, and then decided to pop Dookie—one of his favorite records of the ’90s—into his car’s CD player.
Vince’s place was located just off Exit 148 on the Garden State Parkway, and Tommy now had just one more highway change to make before reaching the Garden State and the last leg of his drive: driving west on Route 287, crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge, and then hooking up with the Garden State not too far beyond the other side of the bridge.
Tommy was making this trip to New Jersey to kick off the annual Belmont Stakes Weekend. Vince and his friends had been attending the Belmont Stakes Triple Crown horse race every year since at least the 1980s. In actuality, they didn’t “attend” the race so much as stake out a spot inside the gates of Belmont Park, but outside the racetrack facility itself, along with hundreds of other people with the same idea, and camp out for essentially an all-day picnic filled with massive amounts of food, alcohol, and other debauchery. It was the ultimate male-bonding experience.
For Tommy, though, this was just his second Belmont Stakes, having attended his first one just the year before, in 1997. Tommy was eight years younger than Vince and the rest of the Belmont crew, which was comprised of Vince’s old high school friends from Yonkers and his college friends from the University of Delaware, most of whom he’d known since the ’70s. He’d met Vince during his sophomore year in college at the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz, when Tommy was nineteen, but Vince was already a twenty-seven-year-old grad student who’d opted to live in the dormitories on campus rather than renting an apartment or commuting like most other grad students did.
Vince was a smart, gregarious, fun guy with an extremely calm demeanor, a math-oriented mind, a meticulous nature, an almost impossible wellspring of optimism flowing from every pore of his body, and big dreams. He and Tommy became fast friends and had remained very close through all of life’s trials and tribulations.
Unsatisfied with his early post-college life, Tommy had moved to Miami in 1990, spending five-plus years there, and so he’d missed out on all the Belmont fun during his years living in South Florida.
He decided to head back to the Boston area in 1995 for numerous reasons, but the primary reason for Tommy’s return to Massachusetts was the fact that his brother and two sisters lived in different states and had their own families, so there was no one around to take care of their parents if anything should happen to them. At that point in time, both of Tommy’s parents, while retired, were in good shape and doing just fine. But he knew that situation wasn’t going to last forever.
He also had one other, major reason for leaving South Florida and heading back north: He was heartbroken, as his fiancée, Alissa—a woman he’d been seeing, admittedly off and on, for ten years—had broken up with him several months before he’d left Miami. In reality, they were “engaged to be engaged” since no ring had been purchased or placed on Alissa’s finger—yet. Still, the wedding plans were in the talking stages, and Alissa had agreed that, at least at first, the couple would make their home in South Florida since her sister also lived in the area at the time. Things came crashing down in early 1995 when Alissa’s rich parents, who’d known Tommy since 1985 and always seemed to like him a lot, decided that he wasn’t good enough for their daughter. She listened to them and ran off to start dating some guy who had a seven-figure bank account.
So, Tommy limped back home that December and tried to regroup and begin anew. It took about sixteen months for him to get his life back on reasonably solid footing. Things weren’t perfect, but Tommy felt they were good enough, at least, for him to finally attend his first Belmont with Vince and his buddies.
About the Author
My name is Anthony Cocco. I’m 59 years old and a native of
Malden, Massachusetts, but I’ve spent most of the last 21 years living
about 20 miles north of Boston. Since 1997, I’ve worked in the
financial services industry (some asset managers and some retirement
services providers), in various roles, and recently started my fifth
different job in that industry in February of 2025. Prior to that, I worked
(out of college) in the health insurance field, mainly in customer and
provider relations (three different companies in two different
states—Massachusetts and Florida).
I am the fourth (and final) child born to the late Morris and Dorothy
Cocco. I have two living (and one recently deceased) siblings, one brother
and one sister (my eldest sister passed away suddenly in July 2024 at age
72).
I have no children of my own and have never been married, but I do have
five nieces and nephews (3 of the former and 2 of the latter), two of which
are the daughters of my late sister. Since I’m the only one of our
parents’ kids to have remained living (for the most part) in
Massachusetts, the rest of my family (except for some cousins) is somewhat
spread out across the country.
I attended the State University of New York at New Paltz from 1984-88,
where I earned a (largely unused) degree in Journalism (I wanted to be a
sports broadcaster but got sidetracked when someone convinced me I needed to
be a sportswriter instead). It wasn’t long before I realized that
vocation wasn’t a good match for me, but my years at New Paltz
weren’t entirely wasted because it was during that time when I met one
of my lifelong friends, the guy who introduced me to the “Belmont
Stakes crew”—his friends from his youth and from his undergrad
college years. One of the main characters in my book is based on him, and
all of the characters that make up the entire Belmont “tribe”,
as I call it in the book, are based on his friends and other acquaintances.
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