It’s a lot of work being me.

Is what Frank Machianno thinks when the alarm goes off at 3:45 in the morning. He rolls right out of the rack and feels the cold wooden floor on his feet.

He’s right.

Itis a lot of work being him.

Frank pads across the wooden floor, which he personally sanded and varnished, and gets into the shower. It only takes him a minute to shower, which is one reason that he keeps his silver hair cut short.

“So it doesn’t take long to wash it” is what he tells Donna when she complains about it.

It takes him thirty seconds to dry off; then he wraps the towel around his waist-of which there’s a little more these days than he’d like-shaves, and brushes his teeth. His route to the kitchen takes him through his living room, where he picks up a remote, hits a button, and speakers start to blastLa Boheme. One of the nice things about living alone-maybe the only good thing about living alone, Frank thinks-is that you can play opera at 4:00 a.m. and not bother anyone. And the house is solid, with thick walls like they used to build in the old days, so Frank’s early morning arias don’t disturb the neighbors, either.

Frank has a pair of season tickets to the San Diego Opera, and Donna is kind enough to pretend that she really enjoys going with him. She even pretended not to notice when he cried at the end ofLa Boheme when Mimi died.

Now, as he walks into the kitchen, he sings along with Victoria de los Angeles:

“…ma quando vien lo sgelo, il primo sole e mio il primo bacio dell’aprile e mio! il primo sole e mio!…”

Frank loves his kitchen.

He laid the classic black-and-white floor tile himself and put in the counters and cabinets with the help of a carpenter buddy. He found the old butcher block in an antique store in Little Italy. It was in tough shape when he bought it-dried out and starting to crack-and it took him months of rubbing oil to get it back into prime condition. But he loves it for its flaws, its old chips and scars-“badges of honor,” he calls them, from years and years of faithful service.