the old lady

in the back room has one good and one fucked-up eye. she's all chicken bones in a house dress, frail and helpless. she needs to be led around by the elbow. she doesn't want a cocktail, she wants coffee. she helps herself. the bad eye is watery, poked-out and unseeing, a scary egg-white blob. i wonder if, in an earlier century, she would have been accused of practicing the black arts, run outa town or burned at the stake. she doesn't say much. she's in her own world. at times it's as if she's not there at all. friends and family speak to her or at her. how is she doing? she looks at her loafers. she waits until they finish with their attentions. i imagine her young, pretty, flirting, but it's a stretch. i see her in her kitchen under a harsh fluorescent light, the dishes piled up and befouled, a smell of piss and toast crumbs on the formica. definitely a bad-picture TV with the sound on low, her slippers worn at the heel and the photos of relatives turned over. a sickly cat is curled up in a corner. i hope i get her wrong. i hope she's aware, safe, living in her own house, taking calls and sky-high on pills.

my job:

waiter at Doyles and for more years than i can count. doing anything that long invites disaster, boredom, wet brain, mistakes, getting shit-canned, psychiatry or criminal acts. in my case i'm just plain lucky because i love what i do. i did from the start. i look forward to it every night, even when my art homework is coitus interrupted and a song is half boiled on the stove. there are so many reasons why i dig the gig. for one, it ain't phony. yuppies (when they existed) are never comfortable there. it ain't posh, but it's decent and it's a good time, the food and service friendly and inexpensive. booths and beer sell the joint to the newly arrived. the three rooms, from the original antique bar to the 80's additions, have a family frankness, a we-did-this-ourselves-not-some-interior-designer-with-ascot-and-little- dog crap. tin ceilings, wobbly fans, paintings and photos of politicians, Red Sox teams, high school year book portraits taken back in the mid-20th clutter the space. i like looking around. it appeals to me in an easy way. the worn-through linoleum, beer neon, hanging lamps and the recently added flat screen tvs co-exist with the sway-backed shelves behind the bar. the kitchen is huge and crazy loud with the attack of cooking, dish washing, pizza hurling, foul language, frantic expedition and screaming cel phone calls to kids. the bar is one yards long slab loaded with a soldier's salute of beer taps. the murals make no sense. are we in Boston? Switzerland? Ireland? some are incomplete (the artist couldn't paint hands and hid them behind Pilgrim skirts). the Indians are more yellow than red and were repainted, as well as the ceiling, after the smoking ban. the cigarette era accumulated a nicotine crust on the walls and tin. the new paint job holds, translucent as glass. but none of the above would keep me, or anyone else, working there all these years if there wasn't more to it. more than whizzing about the floor, banging through doors, mopping up kids rice-on-the-table or dealing with idiots. it's who you work with and work for that gets you through the night. i get a bang out of my co-workers, then and now. they are a rag tag lot and we yell, fight, laugh, steal tables, shrug off asshole customers as we beat up on them as soon as we're out of earshot. we squeal/cheer the Sox, Pats, Bruins and Celts. the jokes and anecdotes never let up or get stale. gossip is as thick as gravy, complaints wild and the side-work can be spotty. we shrug off the annoying cliches: 'i'll DO a Hogaarden' - 'do'? are you serious? should i watch? 'i'm still WORKING on my prime rib' - with a screw driver? can ya get me a glass of water 'when you have a chance'...as in HURRY THE FUCK UP! 'i hated it' hardy har har har (when every plate has been licked clean). the naughty desert eyes: 'i'll try the mudd pie' tee hee hee - like they're remembering some exotic sexual position. the presumption of the regular who assumes that because he's been to Doyles a zillion times, he deserves the extra attention. really? probably. but over time, regulars become friends. like teachers, we watch their kids grow up. we hear about an impending divorce, a son's first guitar, a daughter who won a writing award. the wait staff (except for me) are girls. cooks, dishwashers, bartenders are all dudes. the kitchen guys hang tough and are dirty-mouthed and hilarious. when you boom through the swinging door you enter their turf which is louder, raunchier and more real in a lotta ways than the 'how can i help you?' politesse back on the floor. the bartenders open wine bottles by grabbing the belly in one hand and back-assward twisting the bottle not the corkscrew. but hey, we ain't in the South Wnd. we ain't Vogue sleek or knock-out hot. we cover a broad age spectrum, but we're good looking in that straight forward working class what-the-fuck way. we wear t-shirts, shorts and jeans. there is no snotty have-to-wear-black dress code. and we're quick. turn over is our bread and butter. not many customers linger anyhow. big families with lotsa kids running all over the restaurant want in and out with a snap. the back room is the only function space of its kind or size in Jamaica Plain. it can handle birthday parties, political fund raisers, soccer trophy nights, wedding receptions, graduations and lesbian football teams. years ago, Eddie Burke, who bought the joint back in the 60's, made sure that no prejudice be allowed. he made it a rule: if some asshole was racist or homophobic, he was banned for life. who knew that a liberal agenda was gonna take over the hood? dykes love doyles. so do cops, veterinarians, African Americans, indie rockers, Germans, nuns, Haitians, students, socialists and trans-genders. the polyglot is happy here. there's no paid vacation, sick or maternity leave. you show up or you don't and you make the money you make, but you walk outa there with your tips, you can adjust your schedule to suit another occupation and you don't take the job home. i rarely hang after work. i love the interplay and frenzy during my shift, but i don't feel like sticking around later. (i have other friends at another bar.) but ya know what? when things get tough, we count on each other. we pitch in. we pass the hat for someone who's sick or who's lost a friend, having a birthday or getting married. we read with a glance how waitress X is handling the dope at table 30 and we have her back. regulars have nick names: 'the dog lady'. 'the basketball guys'. 'why do you DO that?'. we laugh about them. we have to. it's like that in 'the industry' and especially at Doyles. it ain't corporate and that's why it's fun, that's why it works and that's why so many of us have stayed on. my sister, a waitress for years, said 'you can't be yourself when you wait tables'. i get it and acting does happen at Doyles, but it ain't Shakespeare and you can pretty much be who you are. you can even have a count-your-farts-in-the-hallway contest with Kelly and Sheila, or do the crossword when it's dead slow. that's just part of why the place is awesome, why there are so many returnees ('are you still here?'), why so many of the staff have stuck around and why i'm grateful to have the gig. hey, they even call me 'Ricky'.

is the grass really greener? (redux)

or are we honestly just fine in our own skin? would we, if we could, be anyone other than who we already are? to have the flash money of a Wall Street tycoon, the endless sexual opportunities of a rock star, the way-too-beautiful boy who draws moths to his preposterous flame, the leggy body of the model who walks the runway like fuck you, the outsized athleticism of the Olympic swimmer, the impossible leap of a dancer, the oceanic saxophone voice of a black blues singer or the power to move people as poet, novelist, painter, film maker. we lie in bed, heavy with the weight of the not done, the all we may never be, the relationships that are missing or too much with us, the families that drive us crazy, the cars that won't start, the jobs that don't pay enough for the shit we take, the books we never write, the plays we're not in and the races we're too scared to run. we collect so many debits and so few credits. but honest-to-god, we like who we are, don't we. we like our name, our silly astrological sign, our dysfunctional families, our besotted friends and our peculiar failures. the face that ain't gettin' younger is still the face that we quietly, reluctantly, love and the way our eyes in the mirror can not lie. the blur we see in the window as we imagine a younger, hotter self is a soft joke, amusing, familiar and oddly cool. so, when you get right down to it, we wouldn't ever want to be anyone other than who we are, right? the grass 'looks' greener, but it ain't, it's burnt. we own our Dharma path, no one else does. why would we trade that in for the unknown other? we can't and we wouldn't. our soul is not for sale.

performing

at 9. first as a cub scout with a whiffle and singing a 'negro' spiritual in black face (burnt cork on grease paint). that was the first time i remember doing anything like this. the unfamiliar rush in my skinny chest in front of a crowd of easy-to-love-you parents. i think i'd seen my dad in the Pirates of Penzance and was bowled over. the lights, color, make-up, huge bellowing voices and pit band killed me, as well as the on-the-road Broadway musicals that hit Philly i went to with my family. the stage was lit up like a forest fire with dancing, gesticulating big busty broads and (did i know it at the time?) gay gay gay chorus boys. what was this? why did it hit me so hard? how was i drawn to this flame? this had to have inspired my show-n-tell boyhood. i'd whip a cape around my shoulders and jumped through windows onto the lawn as if to save the day. i busted through a barn wall into a room-within-a-room and imagined myself a Flash Gordon hero. i would mind-wander out a 3rd story window into an other-personality night sky and fantasize a dream cloud Neverland to which i belonged. i banged out 'original' piano improvisations at the Prout's Neck talent show. but when it really took hold was in choir and chorus at the Episcopal Academy. trying out with my thin reed of a voice, singing scales with earnest eyebrows and hoping to impress the choir master with my little boy/girl's voice. which i did, making choir-boy and chorus-kid. i was exuberant and red faced in my (brief) tremulous solo at the Big Moment spring concert. i giggled in chapel over smothered farts-in-robes, a hard in-the-pants pencil up against the boy soprano beside me. it weren't just foolin' around. it instigated a transformative shiver in the soul, all this showing off in front of any audience. i can't remember a time, since the cub scout Uncle Remus, when i was not in a play, chorale, glee club or living room show-and-tell. at Yale my entire social life revolved around singing groups. the white tie prestige, the complex arrangements, the dazzling eyes-that-won't-let-go-of-you effect on girls and closeted boys. the fat sound, acapella, that could fill a hall. i joined choir, glee club, The Duke's Men and The Whiffenpoofs. we were ginned-up songsters with tinkling cocktails leaning against mantle pieces, champagne badges of courage in a faux demi-monde, an icicle-keening tenor bounding across a college yard in the autumn frost. sex, music, art, performance was a Dagwood sandwich i ate up. still, i was singing songs i had not written, that didn't express my inner or outer life. when, years later, on a borrowed upright in an over-stimulated New Haven house, i began to write my own songs and my own music, a change occurred. i was not filling another's shoes, but standing in my own. i'm thinking about this now because a friend asked me recently why i perform. i didn't know what to say. i'd never been asked. i hadn't thought about it. Bob Dylan said 'the only time he felt like his real self was on stage' (off stage being less authentic than 'real life'). it is the exact same for me. i am my most-est self when i perform. in captivating ears, eyes and hearts one imagines an electric synapse with another. one synthesizes his microscopic view of self, life, friends, loss, trauma, love and sex on a safe proscenium, offered up risk free. and then there's The Zone. if you give it all you got, if you 'leave it all on the stage', you occasionally inhabit an ego-vanishing dimension. your 'you' vaporizes. you transmogrify into an energy that is not from, but through the Self. your 'muse' weegie boards an art wave. this is intoxicating and let's face it, you love the love even as you wonder how to win the anonymous heart. you invent reciprocity. the nightmare, the other side of the coin, is the uncertainty that lurks above every singer's watchtower. the hell possibility of fakery, of when you're 'acting and not being' spits on your face. 'who the fuck do i think i am? i suck! they hate me! my voice is gross. my songs are absurd! i'm overdoing it. anyone is better at this than i am. i'm wasting your time. etc etc.' - crash, burn, explode. or when the narcissistic star fucking groupie blow job staggers past an open door, or when the i-need-to-get-high post coital sadness storms in after leaving all your everything on stage, or when the intense need to be loved but not intimately hurls you into the dank house of horrors. 'they loved me minutes ago, where are they now?' it's lonely at the top (or the bottom), even for a weekend blues warrior, a fat Karaoke singer, a zit-faced shedding teenager doing 'moves' in front of a sweaty mirror with a hardon in his shorts. for all these reasons, pro or con, i do what i do on any given night on any stage that will have me. maybe, like the tenor Jussi Bjorling or like Mark Sandman, i will drop dead performing, no regrets, with slow-motion flowers falling like snow upon the stage.

my KIA

is a brand new, grass green, sparkly 2011 CMV (cunt mama vehicle?! cytomegalovirus?!) 'Soul/Exclaim!' with all the implications of those words. i bought it last month and not only did it cost more money than i've ever spent on anything ever in my whole entire life, it is also the absolute very first car i've ever bought, period. prior to that i borrowed, or took a cab, or a long time boyfriend would have something, a Duster or a shitbox Dart. my dad bought me a blue panel truck when i drove to Steamboat Springs, CO to teach at an ill-fated school. my last car was the used GrandAm my mum left me after she died. it's still going strong, the motor anyhow, albeit dented up and nutty, but drivable and kicking. now my sister has it. my mechanic promised it'd be good for at least another 60-90 thou. for 15 years it drove me all over town, gear and all. the point is, again, i never bought one of these myself. i never had to. i was terrified of the expense, the responsibility and the threat of getting smacked up in traffic. but now, with Social Security to handle the monthlies, i own this thing, this car, this object of which i am so fond. oddly it is as if i am in some over the top, obsessive romantic relationship with a 'thing', an inanimate. i talk to it as i approach (clicking open the door from 20 feet away): 'hi'. when i leave i say goodbye. when i start to meditate i 'see' it, the face of my beloved, a misty vision before me. it is my friend, my easy lover, my favorite dog. it even looks like someone i know with it's snub, bug's nose. i caress the hood, the dash, the hound's tooth upholstery. everything on it works - the windows, the doors, the gas cap, the sun roof, the electronically adjusted rear view mirrors and the hazards (which i forget to shut off and rush back to correct). every design choice pleases my aesthetic eye as if delivered in some rare Nirvana cloud by a beloved guru. it is So Quiet with the windows up you can't hear the engine idle at a stop light. there are so many instrument panel buttons i lose focus trying to make adjustments on the radio/cd/Sirius player. the AC kicks in like arctic snow. i can, if i want to, open the gas cap without leaving the driver's seat. (the GrandAm required a screwdriver.) the mileage is green - 24 city, 32 highway. the front window is so wrap around huge it's as if i'm in a diving bell with a 360 panorama, an Avatar in a 3-D future. in the rain the wipers, front and back, work seamlessly with no scars across the glass. an endlessly gorgeous tingling sensation has every trip i drive feel brand new, like a pot high and each regular journey a first time kiss. i don't know when i'm going to tire of this, if ever. i wish my mum could have seen it, she would have loved it, beaming and posture erect in the passenger seat, proud of me for making such a brave, wise choice. i can't take full credit. my room mate's girlfriend posed as my wife. she did her hair and wore a snooty, just-try-to-impress-me look to ward off any hard core salesman. in the meantime she'd already chosen the KIA on line, pricing and comparing the other models i checked out, the Chevy HHR and the Honda Element. we looked at all three on motor mile. the Element was four-square awesome. it's all-plastic interior can be hosed down without spoiling. it's salesperson was a sweet, wet-lipped, mumbler who was the exact opposite of the sleaze bag hotshot Music Man type we expected. it was as if he tried to not sell the car. we liked him. my 'wife' liked him. but the Element, as fab as it was, was ultimately 4G's more expensive than the KIA with way worse mileage. the HHR guy couldn't have given a shit. his shop was greasy and no one there seemed to want to sell anything to anybody. the car looked cool on the outside, but was claustrophobic to drive and the steering had a squooshy, no-control feel. we saw the KIA last at a small mom n pop dealership. we test drove a 2010 red, but i was not, under any circumstances, going to buy a red car and meanwhile the saleman was a shark, but so obviously so that we laughed him off. the only available not-red was a pea green 2011 loaded (the only 'Soul' on the lot). i had sworn up and down that the one thing i would not do was buy that day. we were just looking, period. i'd brought the wife along to make sure i kept my promise. but the shark showed his teeth and offered an awesome deal and the wife whispered that it was too good to pass up and so fuck it, i bought it on the spot and strangely without a shred of buyer's remorse. i drive it like a little old lady terrified she's gonna hit something or get hit. eek! i take it all the way out to Watertown to my favorite car wash so it can be sprayed with protective goo. i pluck something as small as a single pine needle off the floor mat and flick it out the window like a booger. i guess it's the American thing, a dude and his car, except that this one's Korean, smallish with no leather ball sack under the rear axel and well, in the vernacular, 'gay'. but fuck it, i'm in love and when that happens no one can tell you different. my plan, my hope is to drive it as long as i did the GrandAm at which point i'll be 80 years old and they'll want me the fuck off the road. i will fight whomever tries to do that with brick-in-purse as i hit the gas and crash it through a store front window.

herpes

was the name of Chet and Billie's cat. he was orange and yellow, like the sore without the pus. i think Chet had the ooze on his cock and so kitty got honored with the diagnosis. Kelly had it on her lip, upper right. in her yearbook picture she did the one-finger rescue, just so. her classmates duplicated the gesture in support. 10's of pretty girls with cocked head and forefinger on the upper right smiley lip just so. we always knew who her boyfriends were because they all had the same burnt bacon scab in same spot. an Irish girl at work had it so bad her entire mouth was Cajun blackened. it was grotesque. i have one, mid-upper. it cracks open at gigs and bleeds a trickle when i hit the mike in an extravagant emotional moment. the thing is, herpes ain't AIDS so we kinda laugh it off, but still i wonder about the origins, the ontology. who gives it to us? was it a deep french kiss in Prague? foul drinking water from an over-shared bottle? a nefarious coke addled blow job? it ID's you, Herpes, as if to indicate and tag an overactive, dirty sex life (if there is such a thing). who wouldn't want that, the scab badge of courage? at some point Lysine eradicates the symptoms. an occasional thumper pulsing on my upper lip reminds me of an old friend, but he never materializes. he is a he, isn't he? a particularly man-triggered flag. what would constitute a female STD? warts? warts down there? i dunno. thank god i don't 'show' any longer.

guns

scare the shit out of me. i was never the brat with the plastic holster and a pop gun. i liked Tonto more than the Lone Ranger and Silver more than either. i played doctor, house and store not war. i can count on one hand my encounters with the dark metal. 1) dad marching into the living room with a Civil War musket that he strung up on the mantle that now leans against my bureau like an exhausted whore. 2) the brass flare gun he fired into the night sky chasing my sister and her boyfriend around the block in a jealous rage. 3) the 22 which, along with my mother's jewelry, was stolen out of our house in Philly. my parents were away. i was in charge. i brought some inner city kids out to the house to drink, smoke weed and go crazy. which they did. (i was probably after one of them.) when mum and dad returned only to discover the missing jewelry, the 22 and their screwball son, they flipped. weak-kneed courage and guilt carted me down to South Philly to track down the culprits and the loot. i located two of the guys on the street and pleaded with them. 'the shit ain't mine. i have t get it back. i understand why you took it. i'd been a fool to have you guys out to a house with a lot of stuff around when you have little. i won't call the cops. i just want the shit returned. pretty please.' one of them sent a scout to find their leader. he sent back a message: if i return the next day he'd hand it over. i did and got it back, but the 22 had been sawed off and the punk pointed it at my head, watched me sweat, lowered it and laughed at my silly, tail-between-legs girly idealism. no more social work for Berlin. 4) in Somerville my sister and i met a pyro who'd burned three houses to the ground. we considered adopting him (cross-eyed hearts). i'd met the kid when he was 'working' at the Ritz Carleton beauty salon the same time i was wall papering the back room. (this was the same place i unearthed hair rinses with fancy names like 'Frivolous Fawn', 'White Mink' and 'Chocolate Kiss' that got transformed into the Orchestra Luna song 'Doris Dreams'.) he moved in, slept in my bed and enjoyed nights of passive blow jobs and meaningful looks. one day my next door neighbor, the boy i was really in love with and who'd become jealous of pyro, showed up at the door with a 45, heavy in his hand. i think it was his way of telling me to dump blondie. i hid it under the mattress until the fire starter left, nervous about the maniac next door. in seconds me and my sister grabbed the gun, walked to the Charles and threw it in the river, plop. 5) in JP, back from seeing 'Raging Bull', stoned, my boyfriend and i walked into the kitchen and there it was, on the table under the lamp, thick, gray and nasty, a serious piece. it had been put there by some coke dealer staying the night. i yelled at him to get the gun and himself the fuck outa the fucking house or i'd call the fucking cops. truth be told there were times during the operatic scenery of my relationship back then when i tried to manipulate my boyfriend under threat of suicide - prima donna Berlin. had there been a gun lying about i think in a split second of weakness i might have tried to use it on myself, or worse. so there ya have it. i hate them. i'd love to get rid of them. fuck that i-am-a-real-man-with-a-gun shit. fuck it up the ass.

money

freaks me out. supposedly, the 'law of abundance' (Isabel Hickey style) claims that if you don't ask for what you don't need the universe will provide. even as i buy into that i'm buying way too much, although my collection of the useless seems less indulgent than it might be. the clothes i buy at Old Navy. for dinner out it's chinese-in-a-bag. my last vacation was 15 years ago and paid for by a dear friend. when i was a kid i watched mom pay the bills, while the old man in his red leather chair smoked a pipe and chewed ice on his 5th vodka tonic. mum sat at her creaking antique desk, leaning forward, neck long, writing checks and balancing bills vs income. i'm like her. i try not to live beyond my means. i refuse to be held hostage to debt. i don't O.C.D. balance my checkbook, but i keep a wary eye. i didn't have a credit card for decades because i'd never bought anything on time. i paid up front or didn't buy. i loathe the idea of paying money to spend money. eventually my friend's dad cosigned for a card and now i have one, which i pay off as fast as i use it. i love the bitch. the simplicity of the hard shiny rectangle. the clarity, tax time, of the statement. the speed of web transaction. but here's the rub: my grandfather's father was a millionaire. he lived in a mansion in Rhinebeck, NY. he lost his shirt in the crash of '29 and my grandad, having grown up with dough, with a chauffeur to drive him to school a) never learned to drive and b) didn't give a fuck about money. his son, my father, felt cheated out of 'the life'. he wanted the show money could buy. Broadway musicals, fancy suits, new cars, a 50's bullshit status with decals of the colleges we went to littering the rear window of his Jaguar. my mom had a small inheritance that doubled dad's income so we were ok, just shy of upper middle class. we lived in a big house with 9 acres of lawn, two cars, private schools and big-assed vacations. but we saw how much dad hated his job at the 'Girard Trust and Corn Exchange' (who's name shitted out of his mouth like an oily turd). he wished he'd been a writer. he resented mom's income as a sword held over him even as he lapped it up. my sisters and i never mastered the money game. we scratched out a living, two of us as waiters, one a teacher and none of us making the big grab. this painted us into a corner at times. the fat options money could buy were out of reach, but we saw through the charade of vacant materialism, opted for art, life, love and spirit ahead of wallet. we seem happier for it. my sisters have great kids and their lives are full. i don't have a family, but i spend my tips making records. i lose money, but i love it. it's who i am, it's what i do. i stand tall on the catalogue. i wander afield only on rare occasions when i want to give a friend a good time and they can't afford it. or if a Democrat has a chance of kicking Republican ass in an election. still, i worry. what will happen when i'm 'let go' at work? when my measly Social Security check can't pay the rent, let alone a trip to the movies. i fantasize myself sporting a beehive and pencil and pushing a walker around Doyles 'til the cows come home, but without that, to tell the truth, i'm screwed and drooling toothless in a wheelchair onto a linoleum corridor and hopefully so out of it on tranquilizers i won't know the difference. was there ever a time in history when money had nothing to do with quality of life? probably not. were this India i would head out onto the dirt path with a rag around my waist, low balls, a wooden bowl and chase all the skinny black-eyed boys who'd have me.

the roof

may be the only place you can find infinity in a city - the big dome sky, clay soft tar under bare feet, vertiginous ledge to piss over, a blimp lit from within circling Fenway like an overweight duck. i don't go up there often, but when i do it's with just one person and the time spent is as rare as the location. stars shoot, traffic below purrs like surf, moonlight quicksilver melts on the face of a boy, laughter lifts like beating wings, like a beating heart and closeness is possible and real. one night, up there, after wine and too many cheap beers, the two of us peek through splayed fingers at a fatty in his underwear bucking towards his girl in mock sex-god pantomime. he looks silly and doesn't know we're watching. we try not to be voyeurs but can't help it. we fall down on our backs giggling like girls. we can't believe what we're seeing and the party on the next-door flat, raising bottles to us, has no clue. we move about, changing position, place and view. the conversation is wild and out of range, an acid escalator to the shifting pale pink clouds overhead. things are told that until this night were secret. these are dark, embarrassed, wonderful, poetic, sexy blood brother confessions. the pipe we hold onto, like a rope on a keening ship, keeps the body from falling into the bushes below when we piss, studiously apart from one another. a golden arc splashs onto the cement, chases a cat and turns on lights that are movement activated. we hear Hispanic staccato cha cha and buzz on a nearby porch, the girls invisible and big-titted in our comic book fantasy. we lie at the edge above the street and spit. a white cotton ball floats haphazardly three stories to the sidewalk. in a laughing fit you stomp on the tar and wake the guy in the bedroom below who didn't want to be an asshole and make us shut up like a mad mom and who sends in his place a magic girl, a proxy, to tell us that although she's fine with the noise, he isn't. she hugs you and touches your face as if fireflies had landed on your cheek. she leaves with a silent Navaho drift, her skirt like soft breath, downstairs and we are alone again. we get close up here, you and i, as if proximity isn't possible in other places. statements pontificate and play, but it's ok. we know how silly and how deep we talk. time stops or flies as we ride the wave. the imagined glint of sunrise soon to flash on the curve of earth tells us it's late and it's time to go. that we are lucky for the hours we had, uninterrupted. sex has happened here and kissing, but not with you. love and sex hover like a hornets, but do not bite. we are probably thinking about it, me a lot more than you and you not with me, but the sex talk is honest, hot, revelatory and brave. it is as if we could, but can't or won't. there's been 5 nights of this. one would have been good enough, i guess, but we go for repeats. it is astonishing and ridiculous that more that once has worked. when something so wonderful happens we worry we'd mess it up with repetition, but fuck it, worry never got anyone anywhere. you say: 'language is the biggest obstacle to communication'. i say: 'my heart opens up when you're around'. 'yes' you reply, mentioning Joyce whom i can not read. maybe you will read him to me aloud some night on this roof. we thump downstairs into a dark kitchen, down a dark hallway, outside onto the sidewalk we just looked down upon. we shiver and i walk you home, off roof. we finger snap 'good-night' with exhausted smiles. the sky is more full with fading stars and a thin pale moon.

plum boy

eating another diarrhetic breakfast on a quiet Sunday i see him with his friends. he's a geek. they're all geeks at his table. geeks are hot. i think they really put out in bed, even if there's stinky fingerpaint in unwashed tighty whities. or so i imagine. but there he is. knobby El Greco fingers pulling on chin hairs, picking his nose and rubbing his neck. he has enormous teeth, too many it seems, deep water blue eyes and a big jumpy smile. i can't tell about the hair. it's combed aggressively forward. when i get up to take a caffein dump i pass by and glance at the crown. hmm, maybe he has an early spot? oh well, he's still hot, fuck it. then it begins. the looks above my book. he doesn't notice at first, but like radar (i hate the tag 'gay-dar') he sniffs something in the air, eyes catch eyes and there's a bewildering fog in his Sinatra blues. he's not sure. was Freddy Krueger in the corner actually staring at him? he steals another glance and sure enough he knows. the book dude is in fact looking directly at his face and smiling as if t say 'hey, it's cool, just looking. you're cute. i like the sound of your laugh'. he blushes but quickly returns to his gesticulating conversation with fellow geeks. uh oh, something weird. he pushes his tongue out of his mouth in a chub arc, locking the tip behind his lower front teeth. his lips open and the tongue protrudes. it's as if he's sucking on a plum. a dark crimson orb when in fact it is his own engorged member. i don't think he knows what he's doing. maybe his friends are used to it or don't notice. who cares? i can't help staring. he's sexy even with the tongue trick and his leg, his right leg, is bouncing under the table like a jack hammer, ratta-tat-tat. i think he'd have fun at my place over for a visit. he'd let me look at him for longer periods of un-embarrassed time. of course i wonder if all these at-the-moment idiosyncrasies would, after awhile, turn me off and i'd wind up hurting his feelings. build up his nascent narcissism only to tear it down. i remember years back another kid, a bad-breath yellow-toothed geek stayed the night. he wanted to. i doubt he'd done anything like that before, or would again. but somehow his awkward, skinny body fell into my bed. he might have left before dawn not wanting to be caught by room mates. i can't remember. but i would have loved to have been with the plum kid. at least i think i would. perhaps, like so many fantasies, it's best to have remained un-acted upon.

false endings

'how can a thing so perfectly ended, continue?' is what Peter Barrett said in a spoken word intro to Love Is Not Enough, the Orchestra Luna song that made it onto the 1974 record (Epic). Peter complained: 'the Beatles say All You Need Is Love and you're telling me Love Is Not Enough? i don't get it.' i was thinking Bergman, not Lennon as in Through A Glass Darkly. a boy's sister is insane. 'why can't she get better, father, when all of us love her so much? when she is surrounded by our love?' but it was not enough. she was helicopter-ed to an asylum. nevertheless, Peter had a point. how can an ending continue? we get fed up, wrung out and quit on each another, on a job, on family, on ourselves. all the love in the world, prior to dissolution, fails until something unexpected happens. the pencil flips (eraser to lead) and scratches a new sketch. jumping out of a canoe in one direction sends it off in another. the caterpillar becomes a butterfly. nevertheless, when doors close we have a hard time imagining escape. it is not until we give up completely that we can be born anew, or so the cliche spins. and what about lovers who've thrown in the sweaty towel? 'she doesn't love me anymore. i can't take it. it's killing me! i'm fuckin' outa here!' crys the losing boy. 'he's a shithead. he's checking out my best friend. he's always 'confiding' in my fucking sister! i'm gonna throw up!' that's when the 'maybe we can still be friends' coin hops into the fountain and bubbles hope to the surface. 'i still love you. differently, ok?, but we understand each other too well to cast the baby out with the bath water. maybe there's a new way to be.' so whispers the cross-my-heart prayer. it is most often put forth by the losing half and seems unrealistic to the one who cares less. and it's a ploy to wrestle lost love back into the sheets. 'we'll talk. have coffee. learn to deal the 'new person, ok?' is the argument put forth to re-discover what had joined the two together in the first place. the big unsaid: 'we're not fucking right now but maybe we will again'. it's the fucking, isn't it, the sex. where did the attraction go? why did it stop? who were you thinking about when i wasn't around? who were you fantasizing when we were still together? who is sucking your cock, eating you out, driving you crazy with impossible pleasure? sexual jealousy, more than it's emotional cousin, voids the 'let's be friends' fantasy. unless one is, at long last, emotionally neutral or has that rare disinclination to be jealous, the ending is true and not false. it's over. let it go. let him go. let her jump out of the car and die. get over yourselves. i love false endings in music, getting fooled into thinking that the song is over and then it's not. it's easier in art. to finish something only to fire it up again. to paint over a ruined canvas or wad up a poem and try another. in love it's not so simple. all those painful complicating failures and soul-lacerating endings, all the refused-to-be-believed expiration dates scream back at us from the chasm when love is not enough.

kitty projection

my cat is neurotic. she will not to be picked up unless just before the pellets hit the bowl and then just behind her shoulders, legs stiff as drum sticks, a measly 3, 4 feet off the linoleum and not in arms, not hugged against chest. visitors oo and ah and reach out to pet her, but she darts away, fussy and paranoid. with visitors she hides in my closet on a shelf waiting impatiently for them to leave. if a dog barks she hibernates until it's gone. on the other hand, with me, she's awesome. she sleeps under the covers, in the crook of my arm, on her back, purring. she loves to have her belly rubbed when it's cold out. her purr is so loud you can hear it a room away. her prized trick is to slip in and out of my bedroom through a pantry portal between the kitchen and my room, a miniature swiss window she discovered when we moved in 7 years ago. she's getting on, 10-12 years old. i worry that once she hit's 17 she'll be shitting herself and unable to jump, to access the glory hole. when she arrived at my apartment for the first time she hid behind a couch for two weeks until she got up the tits to emerge and stake out the territory. for years that territory has been this apartment, unshared with any other beast. a revolving door of room mates and friends until last week when a new kitty, an irresistibly cute, fluffy, Yoda-whiskered guy moved in, skin, bones and fur. his name is Mao after the Chinese dictator. my room mate thought he looked dictatorial with his tough guy stance and big paws. we went down the list: Hitler, Stalin, Idi, Pol Pot and chose Mao, because, ok, that's the sound he makes: 'Mao'. we love the little fella. how could we not? he's fuckin' wonderful. but Sofi is petrified. Mao scampers about the house on curiosity skates and Sofi hides on her shelf like a rejected glove. i don't know what's going on in her kitty brain, but i imagine all sorts of terrible thoughts. that i'm cheating on her, that i don't love her anymore, even as i pat her more than ever. i've made my bedroom her sanctuary so she can eat in peace. once Mao's big enough to leap through the hole, that'll be the end of the quarantine. at first i blamed her. i thought, fuck, get over yourself, Sof, you weirdo. any other cat would have handled the kid no problem. but i call the vet and she tells me that this is normal. that it might take one to six months to a year for Sofi to adjust, if not longer. a friend of mine went through the same thing with her guy and that cat is still, two years down kitty lane, freaked. i did take one indulgent step. the vet suggested a product from France, a plug-in atomizer good for a month. it wafts oily feline fumes into the atmosphere that have a calming effect on an upset kitty. sometimes it works, sometimes not. but i bought the Eau de Chat and it seemed to do the job. Sofi acquired a sort of Xanax equilibrium. occasionally she peeks around the kitchen corner and stares down the hall at Mao who's staring back from the far end. maybe when no one's home they hang out and have a laugh over how worked up we humans get over all this. i love her. i need her to be ok. i tell her that. she purrs. i imagine she listens and is working on it with some invisible, screwball shrink. coda: things seem to be better of late. both creatures lie on the same bed blinking at each other, paws crossed.

miracle

i have a friend who believes that everything can be explained scientifically. that all is chemistry, math, physics. one doesn't fall in love, one's chemicals interact. one is not inspired, one's neurons fire ganglions that spark synapses which translate 'i will paint the library red'. there is no New Age or old age other dimension, after life or ESP. spirituality is soft brain. Tarot cards are a gypsy mirage. astrology, meditation, prayer, religion - a fool's fabrication. miracles do not exist. all has an objective, rational fingerprint understood and languaged by the mighty mind. i'm in the other camp. a hard core ex-hippie who believes that whatever you imagine is 'real'. other dimensionality via drug spoon, deja vu or a dream-triggered song is evidence sufficient and who can 'explain' love anyway? Keats, Auden, Bishop - it takes a poet, not an ivory tower. why clutter up a pretty mind with dirty facts? i defer to a Van Gogh landscape which was how he 'saw' the fields of southern France, or the dazzling whirl of stars. i take the inexplicable as an 'of course'. of course there are previous as well as follow-up lifetimes. of course there is karma in love, in difficulty, in the dharma bum path of each snowflake being. of course there is a soul. of course there are miracles. case in point: healing a burn on my hand. two weeks ago in a frantic rush to yank a pizza out of the hopper at work, the hot edge of the oven door nicked the skin behind my thumb. it curled up like a window shade snap-exposing a pulpy pink spot the size of a nickel. it made me gag just to look at it. i had a waitress tape a band-aid over it so as to not infect or gross me out. back home i slathered disinfectant only to learn that it's best to do nothing. to not cover up. to let the burn air out, dry and heal. my fabulous t-cells went to work collecting around the wound like circled wagons, ant busy and tireless to clean, repair and rebuild new skin. it took 15 days and itched as i waited. the sting of the work done was a reminder that something amazing was going on. like ET healing Elliott with a god-creates-Adam touch of forefinger-to-forefinger. the Hollywood miracle became true blue 'reality' on my hand. i appreciate the happy rehab. i know, it's all science. any idiot with half a brain could explain what was up, but not me. it was, for this stubborn old bird, a miracle.

couples syndrome + the wisdom of a wise old lady

what is it about long time companions that so often, when out to dinner, they don't look at each other, but stare off into the restaurant, eyes glazed, not speaking. it is as if all has been discussed seven times over, or there's something so difficult to bring up they both say nothing. maybe i'm reading it wrong. maybe they share a serenity that requires no words and instead, exquisite silence. then again, wasn't it Nietzsche who wrote that all relationships, all the good ones, were essentially long conversations, with the cup never dry, the jokes never stale? in company the stories both have told before still make them laugh while sour couples roll their eyes. not again, they fume. 'i am so tired of his show-off blather.' 'can't she shut up? she's fucking flirting with that asshole with the same line she used when she met me.' the isolating desperation of two as if the other is not in the room, or worse, all too present. on the flip-side there is the mother of a friend who told my sister that 'unless you're jealous you're not in love'. and my friend Jane who used to say: 'they fight like they're in love'. without tension there is no love story. god knows we chew up the initial emo-rush with dark imaginings. or we stir a tepid pot with accusation so that the make-up sex is hot, or at least new, or re-newed. it's rare and wonderful to see those few couples, gay, straight, bi, trans whateverthefuck where life hasn't gone out of the frame. i remember reading about Bess and Harry Truman. when they'd moved out of the White House while it was being renovated and were sleeping at the Blair House. the secret service could hear the springs of the bed in the President's Suite squeaking like mad. they still loved each other, those two. they still went at it. neither had ever known another. i like hearing about that. it keeps me from settling (as if there is a Particular Perfect Someone) just because i don't want to be alone. i see a too much of better-someone-than-no-one, the fear of solitude. worse, however, is the nightmare of feeling isolated around the very one you're with. landing in Vineyard Haven, high on acid, my friends Patrick, Aam and i sat at a table at the Black Dog. across from us an old woman was reading. she wore a tight-fitting one-piece gray suit with a zipper that ran from crotch to throat with a ring, like a cock ring, at the neck inviting a pull down. she looked terrific and very old, but with none of the wandering mind, the looking back wistfully, the feel sorry for herself spectre. with my usual LSD forwardness i inquired: 'how is it, being old?' she put down her fork and looked right at me with clear blue eyes. 'you know what', she said, 'an old tree, weathered by storm and bleached, is beautiful. we all think so. an old car, up on cinder blocks in a back yard with weeds growing up around a rusted frame is beautiful. we all agree. we love old things. we even collect them. we pay for them. new is nice, but doesn't share that soul quality that has us loving old things, old objects. it isn't like that with people, is it? not for the most part. we like the young. and another thing? you may think, you might hope or imagine that eventually one reaches a plateau where one arrives, finally and where all makes sense and all questions answered. well i'll tell you, you don't. you won't. it's an endless upward curve of learning, suffering, moving on and trying again. i was married for many many years. one morning i put down the paper and looked across the table at my husband who was lost in breakfast, who was, in a sense, not there. not there with me anyhow. the sound of his fork on the plate was explosive. that did it. i'd had it. i left him. i walked out. you see you never know where life will take you. that no matter how we plan it, no matter what we anticipate, it will not be that way, not ever. maybe you get close on a good day, when you're lucky, to having The Truth fall into your lap. maybe, but not often. ok, that's it. that's all i've got to say. nice to meet you.' she stood up, pivoted and left, her cock ring bouncing at her throat. she is still very much with me.

speed

i usta hit it hard in Philly when i was imagining myself as an architect. having been accepted by the Yay-ul Architecture School on a full scholarship i was thinking, well, i'm sort of an artist on the inside, but i need to make a living so maybe something like buildings and shit would do the trick and balance the inner artist with the outer realist. to find out for sure i got a job with Vincent G. Kling and Associates in downtown Philly where i labored over floor plans and carefully etched toilet designs. at night, however, i'd get high on anything i could get my hands on - hash, weed, lsd, mushrooms, peyote, sunflower seeds, meth. loved the double life. a favorite junket was to drop a pill, drive to the airport, park at the end of the runway behind the chain link fence and watch the planes take off and land. the big bellied sky whales lifted your hair and crushed your eardrums. it rocked. or we'd hit up the Electric Factory (a small venue at the time) where i lucked out and saw Hendrix ride a greased pig onto the stage. or Iron Butterfly zone off into a San Francisco twilight. or even Three Dog Night with their hairy chests screaming into the mike. i traipsed up to the skinny androgynous bassist from the west coast band, Spirit, shake his limp hand (a forefinger grazing my palm in code) and gaze like a teenage girl into his mercury eyes. all this got me into the margins at work where i'd sketch 4x8 foot posters (faux Peter Max) and color them in with a fist of psychedelic magic markers. all this led up to my first bad trips on meth. i loved the initial rush, the humorless solve-all-the-problems-of-the-world edge, my heart beating like a bitch in heat. it was great until the inevitable crash. i would denounce to myself all the hot ideas that had only minutes ago seemed brilliant. i hated the sound of my voice. my skin crawled with invisible bugs. my eyes dried out. the only solution would be, though i didn't have any in those days, a sedative or wicked strong weed. more often than not i was stuck sweating it out, long hours of self-loathing and suicidal panic. it did help on cross country drives. who needed sleep? after a brief incarceration in a Santa Barbara jail (for shoplifting) my friend Harlow (flown out from Philly by my infuriated dad) and i drove back to the east coast without a wink, miles high on meth. i don't think we shut up for the entire trip. we solved all the problems of our love lives, poverty, war, inequity on the 2.5 day jaunt. ghostly, skeletal horses galloped alongside my blue panel truck at night. a sabre tooth tiger leaped from a cave, snarling and drooling across the hood. red necks in rest rooms gave us the evil eye. once home, we napped, helplessly fucked up in a 100 mph daze. i gave the shit up soon thereafter only to replace it down the rock n roll road with a coke addiction. it was more glamorous than speed. it was sexy to do, the cutting, shaping, snorting, encrusted mirror. the horny rush would subtract all moral code and inhibition. but that too, like it's white trash pal, would induce a grotesque fall from grace. good and bad times they were, those dark days of infantile fear and loathing.

tits or boobs?

what d' ya call 'em? girls prefer boobs. guys, tits. breasts sound too clinical, too sibilant. knockers are dated. bosoms are too poetic. to me 'boobs' sounds dumb, like water grenades, demeaning in a goofy way and tits are what? smaller? more perky, more upright, hard nippled? on odd occasions i take a sampling, a census. tit's or boobs? i ask. of course there's a thousand Chaucerian options i could look up. i could Google tits to see what's vogue, but i don't. it's all tits all the time far as i'm concerned. how about you? tits or boobs? you already know, don't ya? shout it out.

my girlfriends

have often been my best friends well before 'fag hag' made it into the cynical repertoire. beginning with high school, the-girl-who-gave-a-shit-about-me, who stood by her closeted pal was a consistent fact of life. she championed my obsessions, my trafficking in the emo underworld and my starry eyes about art and life. we'd become inseparable, inter-dependant and shared a world view with made-up vocabulary, in-joke humor and x-ray insight. what i overlooked, shamefully, were those rare girlfriends who loved me too much for their own good. who over-worked our un-sexualized connection even as they knew, heart deep, that boy-girl love was not in the cards. they'd listen patiently to my crush rants in the same way i'd listen to straight boys carp about their shitty girlfriends. those unreachable guys i'd mirror with undivided attention as i (weakly) camouflaged desire. i became the straight boy in reverse to my sympatico girlfriend. she'd bite her tongue and console me about the kid who hadn't made it all the way across the bi-bridge. she would wait and hope for more of me for herself, fantasizing that she alone could deliver the missing link in my loser love life. we got strung up in some dizzy parallel karmic love-trap, a half-requited but not unrequited maze, as if 'put there' to teach our sophomoric hearts what had not been learned about full-on soul connection. we slept in the stale bed of unequal romance even as we knew, separately, sadly, that we would suffer. we do that, don't we? choosing in 'best friendship' someone for whom we feel way more. where the imbalanced heart longs for level ground, longing eyes, erotic touch. it's hard to not believe that the person we feel so much for can not, on their side, feel the same back. i've been super lucky. i've had several astonishing, talented, strong-souled, brilliant women nurture my better self and believe in me with spotlight eyes even as it hurt. even with whom the over-the-glasses bar-code scan of drunken locals inspired nasty fiction. 'look at that one. he is SO into his hair', we'd laugh. we were side-by-side. we'd share art, absurd ambition and disappointment all until the unguarded heart broke, or until i woke up and saw how she'd been let down. or until she threw in the towel and chased after a straight kid who could truly love her back. from these great friendships difficult wisdom grew. i love them all, i still do, my best girlfriends. the one's i hurt i didn't mean to. the ones i did not continue to smile from their perch on an elevated dollhouse stage with a great laugh, head back, getting me getting them. maybe in a distant lifetime we were lovers. maybe we sustain a truer thread by not ever being all that we can be.

college

i wonder if we need to go, straight out of high school, into the firing line when we're not even sure why. just to move a kid out of the house and onto the dogtrack of binge drinking, shirtless screams at a sports cam, knocked up or riddled with STD's, studying at the last gasp on amphetamines with useless info shitting itself out like bad brains into the next day exam toilet. the money spent or borrowed is an Everest of debt. we are led to believe that the ladder climb to success, respect and riches begins with a college degree. but what about the slackers who squeak through high school and are not ready for prime time? why spend the cake? could the Pandora promise of college life be a let down? could a dull job snap 'real world' hardship into focus and step up a seizure of introspection about what a rightly directed education might prove down the career highway? could this then and not prematurely make a cogent blueprint once he or she knows what the fuck they really want out of life? in the days of white shoe, when boys (not girls) joined the frats their fathers rushed, a hollow leg up the Wall Street skyscraper could be won with little more than the ability to get stinko drunk or hit the whore house of letter sweater intimacy. i for one, as much as college taught me about my twisted heart, my hidden drives and my obsessive probing of the withdrawn, burned up dad's money like a forest fire. i could have learned as much or more on a tramp steamer, or hitch hiking across Australia. there is something to be said about testing one's self in the fish stew of peers. to find out with whom you can catch your breath, or learn the odd degrees of difference, or at least scab off the sophomoric whims of 'i will be a doctor/lawyer/hot shot' as soon as that chemistry course nails you to the floor. or 'i will be a writer' when at the bottom of your paper in American Studies in red pencil you read the comment: 'this is either the best or the worst thing i've ever read in my life'. but to spend or owe that much money to learn all the places you fail is false advertising and bought into, like the credit cards handed out like candy to freshmen, only to be abused. all these kids gobble up is the pretense of discipline when on a good day it's really about learning how to get by, to cheat, to do the least and still make the grade. to wait until your life finds focus might not be such a bad idea in hurry-up America.

where do you put it?

your snot? you pick your nose at a stoplight and what do you do? fling it out the window? rub it onto the steering wheel? under the seat? i paste 'em behind my legs, smudging in layers of crust that read like tree rings, dating all deposits. or on my sock. who's gonna look at my sock? on foot i smear lamp posts, like insect sperm, glistening on an aluminum pole. when i'm sick and the spew of phlegm is infinite and no surface can retain it, i fill a grocery bag with little bird's of discarded tissue. rubber cementy boogers are rolled into bee bee's and flicked across the living room floor. hard fingernails of nose shale i drop like bark onto linoleum. what else? i'm a watcher. i want to see what others do. a kid in chapel, in 3rd grade, had one finger knuckle deep, eyes glassy, as he withdrew a glob and pasted it as if with a paintbrush across his school sweater, a diagonal tape worm Pollock-ing a narrow filthy front. my next-door-neighbor threatened: 'i bet i can make you moo-oove.' 'no ya caa-an't' 'yes i caa-aan'. a perpetual snot river ran out of his nose, down his upper lip and into an open mouth, green-yellow slugs. he'd gob 'em up into a french twist, like cotton candy, raise it over his head and that's when you ran, the boy at your heels snorting his nose off. a friend in high school, shuffling up a receiving line at a debutant party, flobbed an oyster onto the exposed tit of the girl who's tiny Chinese hand he was shaking. it landed like egg yolk and quivered as if wondering what to do with itself. her mom, all brisk Philadelphia efficiency, whisked out a hanky and dabbed the doo doo off the tit. 'never you mind,' she might have said. my dad, squirming like a salmon against the current of grey flannel suits on their way to work, was fighting for a seat on the commuter rail. he harked back a flapjack of goo, collecting it in his throat and zinged a slo-mo parabola at the idiot running in front of him. the target clapped his hand on the back of his neck as if shot. dad surged ahead, knees pumping and made his train. and then there's the pocket hanky conundrum. in college my East African room mate had grown up in Zanzibar. over there you press finger to nostril, close it off and fire your product onto the sidewalk, grass, tarmac, toilet, wastebasket or desert sand. he thought it unclean to save the dried deposits in a hanky. so i adopted his slingshot approach. i loved it. it made perfect sense, but it got me into trouble in Central Square. i was mid-snort, head down and didn't see the kid approaching, hand up for a high 5. friend, fan, who knows? what i do remember is that my ju ju flew like a mortar onto his brand new Converse All-Star. i will never learn. i am, as the girls at Doyles say: 'gross'.

getting old is no fun

my father's brother, my Uncle Karl, was one tough guy. he was an athlete who played football for the Giants and held the punting record there for decades. he was a soldier who, during the war, drove an ambulance for the American Field Service in Italy. he was a fly caster Rambo who broke his leg a mile from his car and crawled back the full distance on elbows. he was an illustrator who lit up a book on fly fishing and a free lancer who produced architectural renderings so he could raise his family without the uncertainties of being an artist only. he was a romantic who loved his wife madly and who, deaf as a door knob, had her hit a cowbell to get his attention. he didn't get along with my dad. they'd yell at each other on lakes, scaring the fish away. they'd yell about work. they'd yell about anything. Karl loved to paint, dad hated the bank but did it for the dough and the phony prestige. he ragged on my uncle for not 'knowing the value of a buck', but Karl had the balls to be an artist and dad wished he'd written books. Karl was a moralist who hated hearing that my dad cheated on my mom, but who reversed himself when she divorced him. why couldn't she gut it out? back n forth they'd fume. it made my little boy's head spin until i'd watch him paint. usually they were water colors propped up on easels in snow fields near our house in Connecticut. he'd work with quick, sure strokes, pipe in mouth, eyes squinting at a tobacco barn in the near distance. unlike my dad, a word whore, Karl was a man who spoke with his eyes. one look from that mashed in football face and i knew i'd found a grown up who understood me, who recognized the art idiosyncrasy in my character and who sussed out a sensibility that few had guessed at (including myself). he knew that i'd make unconventional choices as i sorted out wherever-the-fuck i was headed and was ok with it. when we'd leave his house after a Thanksgiving/football weekend, he'd nudge me aside and signal acknowledgment with a wave of the pipe, a gandalf trail of smoke that let me know that i'd be fine, no matter what. as if to say that the odd path can be the right one. to listen to my heart. to keep at whatever strange interest seduced me. sadly, after college, i saw little of the man. i was caught up chasing my whims all over the game board - Peace Corps, architecture, teacher, hippie, actor. none panned out until i began, unexpectedly, to write songs. Karl heard about it. could i send him a tape? were the songs honest? not sure his ears could hear, let alone judge what i sent him i felt a peculiar certainty knowing that my early work mattered to him. then his kids grew up and scattered. he lost his dear wife and began to lose touch with the real world. he believed that credit cards were free money. he sand-castled an Everest of debt. not able to hear, he mistrusted strangers and became paranoid, fearful and accusatory. chronic vertigo tumbled him down stairs and he broke his ankle. he shuttled through hospital, rehab, a nursing home and assisted living in a downward spiral that whirl-pooled him away from his beloved self-sufficient life. the ankle wouldn't heal. the doc cut bone from his hip to fix it. took a year and a return to the hateful nursing home. old ladies cackled about his 'hot legs' and winked. nurses made fun of him behind his back and were inattentive. the medics messed him up. when he got Pneumonia they doled out the wrong drugs. he became delusional. he'd pop out of bed, wheeling his chair, spying and making remarks with nobody paying attention. 'lets go for a dip!' he'd shout. 'there's a pool upstairs and we gotta see Rick! he's up on the 2nd floor, we gotta go see him. c'mon Karen! (his daughter)'. she'd listen. shrug, teary-eyed, not knowing what to do, his life narrowing to nothing. his vertigo came back. he fell, broke his hip and was trapped again. it was hard for his kids to show up, their lives hurrying along with their own families to look after. he grew distant and dark and no one could find a solution. he didn't want anyone to save him. a blood clot in his heart (a pulmonary embolism) could have been averted had he been properly hydrated, but the docs failed again and he died. he must have hated this humiliating conclusion to a lion's life. he had become the dad his kid's joked about, even as they loved him. as for me, i never went to visit. he died in that fucking rest home, bullshit about the last mile he could no longer crawl. my dad, like Hendrix, puked into his lungs on a Christmas Eve and choked to death, alone in a hospital in Boston with no kids, no wife, no girlfriend, nobody and parallel to Karl's isolated demise. the brother's Kinscherf - a Russian novel from New Jersey.

dad 'saves' me

i'm not sure i've got this right. selective memory colorizes and distorts. but here it is: dad was playing tennis at the club. 'the club' was what they called the shingled one-story building where you signed up for golf or tennis or watched Sunday movies or bought a lemonade or a sarsaparilla on your parent's tab. the club was located near the magic door entrance to Prout's Neck (home to Winslow Homer and many of the scenes he painted and eventually a summer retreat for the rich and social registered.) it's a beautiful, short thumb pennisula poking into the Atlantic off the lower coast of Maine. it's where my mom grew up and the locus of many first stirrings of the heart and of my imaginary world, including my first public performance on a piano, an upright in the hall at the club where we put on end-of-summer spectaculars on a rickety red-curtained stage. i played a faux classical self-composed 'piece' all by myself and was rewarded with room-papered applause. one mid afternoon, as i ambled across the narrow two-lane, sand-shouldered road in front of the tennis court where dad was playing doubles, i was hit by a car. the speed limit, anxiously observed, could not have been more than 10 mph. i was 14, in shorts, no pimples yet, bright-eyed and probably on my way to see a dirty friend. i was knocked to the ground and scuffed my knees. it was no worse than that. dad heard the screech of tires, flung his racquet, shot through the pine grove to my rescue and lifted me up in his arms. he was worried and red-faced angry. he was screaming at the driver who was probably someone he knew, or maybe not. it's unclear. but i know i was proud of him. proud that he rushed to my side, that he ripped that driver a new asshole. this was before the shit hit the fan with the wake of infidelities, the bottles of gin and vodka buried in the woodpile, the embarrassed, broken man he was later to become. i had forgotten about this day, this sunny blue sky afternoon at 'Proutsy Proutsy' as he called it. the place where he was silently blackballed for his loud mouth and drunken insults. but he was so cool that day and my narrow 14 yr old chest was filled up with the sight of him.

brothers

i love my sisters. we know each other in that profound way that only time and blood can develop. i depend on them for it. i never resented their gender or tried to convert them into boys, but i think, as i began, early on, to have boy crushes, some of those friendships may have been predicated on my desire for a bro. i've always wanted one, or two. someone to compete against. someone older as a sign-post scout, or younger, the kid i could look after and protect. maybe i bought the idea that brothers, when young, fooled around and in sexy innocence played with each other or in front of each other and found out what that tent in your pants was all about, but it goes deeper than that. i wanted someone (dad not being the greatest in the bonding department) to lock in with, to compare notes, to challenge my manhood or dispel/forgive my weakness. if i 'made' brothers (the way they 'make' members in the Mafia) it was with my first friends. we walked the forest arm-in-arm as if blood related, brothers by proxy. we could cut a finger, share the cells and belong to a soul river that we self-created. that's how technicolor those first glorified friends translated. i have your back, you have mine. in Lonesome Dove Augustus Mcrae and Woodrow Call are equal to this archetype. neither was complete without the other as a foil, as a measure against himself and as a trustworthy, truth-telling pair of eyes. man-love without sexual rising. that's who i wanted. a Captain Call or a Gus Mcrae in the next door saddle. i guess i found them, these part-time brothers past, present and future in the long trail of best friends. they sustain the parts of myself about which i'm ok: loyalty, directness, an open heart, a crazy imagination, a symbiotic view, a foolish leap off the cliff and a willingness to look like shit on any given day.