Meet Frank Picone of Rocky's NY Pizza Hagerstown, MD

Frank Picone, who I believe now owns Rocky's New York Pizza in Hagerstown, MD, originally opened a pizzeria with his brother Lou Picone in the early 90’s in Huntington, Long Island, New York... right next to Walt Whitman High School. A lot of us, who had absent parents and smoked pot as a way to dissociate from the pain of our reality, cut classes and hung out there. Frank, who was probably about 15 years older, maybe around 30 at the time, became our “friend” often coming out from behind the counter to hang, and supplying weed and alcohol as we stayed long after business hours. Walt Whitman was not a school that shepherded its students to holistic wellbeing or taught its women to be empowered. The greatest reward available there to females- but only those who were skinny and pretty enough, was the prestige of wearing tiny skirts that barely covered their butts and making the cheer team. I had no dad present, and my mom was a mentally and physically ill addict, who was at best in a catatonic state, and at worst incredibly vicious and abusive. By the time I reached high school we had no heat in the house in the winters and a lot of the ceilings had caved in from rain and rot through the roof over the years of no upkeep. It was a dark, cold, sad, and frightening world, that I came to this high school from.

There was a girl a year older than me named Lisa Ann Bakal. She appeared suddenly, amongst the roster of our mostly preppy high school with a force- her IROC Z with the vinyl “Spoiled Bitch” across the windshield, her skimpy tight outfits, mile-high hair, and eyeliner that extended out into her hair, made her presence immediately known. She, for reasons which have never been known to me, hated me to the death. To my knowledge our paths never really organically crossed, yet she sought me out and tormented me relentlessly. She pushed me in the halls, screamed obscenities like the C-word at me across crowds, scribbled in fat black marker in the bathrooms things to humiliate me. Her stares of rage and hatred scared me all the way into my cells. She talked about me to everyone, spread vicious lies, and told everyone she planned to jump and kill me. I was terrified. I lived in constant terror at home, and as there were other situations at school that were not merciful or friendly, this was another layer of the hellscape of my teenage years.

One night a guy I knew, Phil Roberts, who was a student with us but worked at Picone’s, called me and said, “Frankie wants to see you”. He picked me up and I was surprised instead of going to the pizza parlor he dropped me off at Frankie’s basement apartment where he lived with his wife and two small kids. This would have been 1992, I think. I was 15, possibly 16. I began to dissociate, which was my drug of choice at the time, as I realized Phil was just dropping me off and leaving me there, in the next town over, far from home... in the dark. I walked down the steps into the apartment. It was terrifying and strange to be descending into what felt like a lair, realizing no one else was there, and seeing pictures of his wife on the walls who looked just like an older me. His wife was out of town with the kids visiting her family in Maryland or somewhere like that, maybe Virginia. I didn't know what to make of that nor did I have words at the time for the complex and terrible feelings creeping over me. My body was slowly freezing into stone, and everything became a little blurry as if I were watching a movie with poor resolution.     

Frank told me that he wanted to talk about "the Lisa situation". He said he was a member of La Cosa Nostra and he could protect me. He showed me his gold chain with an Italian Horn symbol on it. If I was receiving safety, why did I feel so scared? If you're so powerful, why do you live in your parent's basement? I was confused and I don’t know what happened in the space between that and my next memory- laying on my back in his bed... laying there frozen and sick to the stomach of my entire being, as his penis went in and out of an area on my body that felt like it was no longer attached to my being. Thank god it was small and didn’t cause me to feel anything more than one in their sleep might be faintly aware of a burglar creeping around taking a few things, where one can only freeze, wait for it to be over, and pray nothing was taken that was too connected to our heart. It was not like regular fucking. It was weird and I thought maybe it was how they did it in the mafia or something because if you are from Long Island, you know that is its own odd culture (mostly made up of guys who have no connection to it but like to pretend). I didn’t understand what it was, but now I understand what it was- it was pervy pedo fucking. He later told me that his wife was 13 when he first met her, and her dad wanted to keep him away from her because he was older, but he pursued her until they were together and there was nothing her father could do.

With that glaring exception, I’m not a person who would interfere knowingly with anyone’s relationship or wants to cause anyone pain. I would never do anything disrespectful; I think women should stick together. I care about people whom I don’t even know and would choose to respect and honor them, over any of my own selfish needs. That night has caused me deep confusion over my identity, depression, shame, pain and horrible guilt for most of my adult life. It compounded the pain I have toward my absent father who never in my life has defended me, and a very deep-seated fear that I don’t deserve a safe relationship where I will not be cheated on as some kind of karmic retribution. As I already was a person whom it did not feel very good to be, and this made it infinitely worse. And let’s not forget the humiliation, the feelings of absolute foolishness, as SURPRISE! no protection from La Cosa Nostra ever came to my high school in my defense in "the Lisa situation".

I always took full responsibility for myself since I was very small, and it wasn’t until quite recently that it even dawned on me how fucked up this was. That this guy is in fact, a pedophile. I was raped. Even though the law would agree with that, as I was a legitimately underage girl- in furtherance, due to my developmental trauma I had not yet developed any skills to have worth or advocate for myself- I was in the truest sense, completely a child. Most of my adult life it never occurred to me this wasn't entirely my fault and some kind of hideous character flaw on my part. I didn't understand how I could freeze so deeply and let him touch me, after picking me up like a child and carrying me into his dark bedroom, since I wasn't even remotely attracted to him. I blamed myself for putting myself in the situation, for allowing myself to go to his apartment in the first place. My whole life this has been a secret that confused how I felt about myself and somehow defined me although there was absolutely nothing in my story that was congruent with this identity, nor did it feel like a conscious choice I sought to make.

Many years later, this pain was brought-- against my will and better judgement, to the light and both re-inflamed and compounded when a boyfriend “the angry therapist” lol, laid me down underneath his weight on his bed at the beginning of our relationship and explained that he needed to know “everything that ever happened to me” (meaning sexual abuse) so he could “understand what he was dealing with”. He then said most females have been molested and gave intimate examples of just about every female friend he had and the details of who molested them and how. I froze in horror and didn’t want to speak. I don't know what was worse-- being forced suddenly to think about something I had so painstakingly over the years managed to quarantine between layers of self-hatred, shame, and depression, being forced to recount the story on the spot (and at his convenience) out loud to someone I had no desire to share it with, or the implication (from a therapist/ life coach person, who should have known better in all of this) that there was something that positioned me in some lesser way in our dynamic, had marked me in some way that he would have to somehow adapt to. I became acutely flushed, started to sweat, and couldn't breathe. He repeated he “needed to know everything that happened to me sexually so that he would know what he was dealing with”. As a guy around 40 years old, who often bragged about mostly having sex with virgins, I wonder now how many times he used those stories to masturbate. I’ve yet to come to any other answer as to why he would need to aggressively pry this information out of his unwilling girlfriend, or female friends. After many years in therapy, the only conclusion we have ever been able to come to about him and also his other confusing, disgusting behavior is that he is a narcissistic predator. It is sad to have to wrap and dismiss someone you used to be close to in that way, but I can’t really say in all the years I knew him that he provided any evidence that would refute that conclusion.

I hope you keep your children safe. I hope you provide refuge for your girls, so they have somewhere to turn when they are in pain and confusion rather than the places in my life which I found myself in. I hope you teach them what to do when their gut and entire body is telling them something is wrong, even if they can’t cognitively understand it. I hope you teach them safety... worth...boundaries... body autonomy... and self- love.

I am so sorry to Toni Picone. I shudder often at the life she may have had with a guy like that at the helm. I am sad for their son and daughter; I have always hoped somehow this sickness of their father left them unscathed.

I am so sorry for being a part of that sickness, I always have been, and I always will be.