word snob

it's small, my cringe reaction to catch-all phrases. i loathed 'it's all good' as a flipping hippie coin inclined to dispel any annoyance, large or small. it's been replaced with 'no worries' EVERYBODY says 'no worries'. who started this? how did it take hold? didn't we all hate 'don't worry be happy' as bumper sticker easy-as-pie pablum even though it originated with Meher Baba and stood on solid guru ground? the 'no worries' slight-of-hand that is a more upbeat 'whatever'? curls the hair on the back of my neck. within the last couple of years 'real quick' is all over the sidewalk - a no problem wait a sec snap your fingers instant solution to any troubling knot in the day that will be taken care of 'real quick'. it's not even the the absentee 'ly' that bothers me so much as the fact that everyone i know, friends and not friends, say it. (this may be part of the waitress hears too many verbal shortcuts syndrome.) lastly, and this is totally a waitress complaint and leaks primarily from girls, is 'thank yeeeew' - the 'eew' being drawn out in a small 'o'-shaped mouth and held onto for dear life. it is nasal and obnoxious and never ending. fingernails screech on the blackboard. why this stuff plugs me in so fiercely i cannot fathom. like the little finger beside a glass of wine that 'does it by itself', i am caught in the web of my own observation.

the tenor

the tenor

i never was but hoped to be. even as a boy soprano i looked up to these guys. i even fantasized about them in some colorless disturbing way, they are so clear of note and high of pitch. as aces in the singing game they captivated me exclusively until Aretha Franklin took over when i saw her sing Natural Woman on Johnny Carson. but that was way later. the boy who sits at the feet of the upper classman tenor disappears into that voice as he does the young guy who belts it out. i would have done anything he asked (which is safe to say as he would have undoubtedly never asked). at Yale, in the high reverberation stairwells and tiled bathrooms i'd take a stab at Jussi Bjorling, tearing my alcohol bruised vocal chords to shreds but got high on the high sound. (poor Jussi died on stage, in a chair, singing his final aria.) something there is that loves a tenor, perhaps the Narcissus of singers, squirting mist on an anxious throat. it came to a head at Yale when someone in the class ahead of mine, a Chinese scholar with a phenomenal singer, sang 'Miss Otis Regrets' at a 'rush' for those of us who wanted to join acapella singing groups (where we could drink underage and nurture 'platonic' love attachments with the like-minded). I was lost in his voice. I would visit him at Saybrook College in the dark of night. 'Excalibur' was carved on the armchair i would sit in by the fire. he would play 'Tristan und Isolde' and describe to me how he and his girlfriend would try to simultaneously climax at the peak of Wagner's arch. he went on to study voice in San Francisco with one of the supposedly great masters of voice. i lost track of him until Orchestra Luna was in the studio and i looked him up in the Manhattan phone book. i wanted him to know that i wrote songs, that i was singing in a band and that i was making a record. i wanted to see how he was doing after the Yale years. i found his apartment on the lower West Side. he opened the door in a frenzy of anxiety. the place was a chaotic pig pen of rooms littered with unwashed clothes and dishes, with sheet music scattered all over all floors. he explained that his great teacher and mentor had died and was irreplaceable. he appeared to be insane to a clinical degree. he nervously carried a chrome pitchpipe in one hand. he would blow into it for a high C and struggle to reach it. he failed again and again and a scratchy, flat, awkward sound gagged out of his mouth, his eyes aghast. i think he made a clumsy pass at me. he had become totally gay i guess. no more 'Tristan'. it was crushing to see this great person, this great voice, this precocious student fall so close to the gutter. i backed out of the apartment, took a cab to our bland hotel and left him to, i dunno, rot. maybe we can't go home again. maybe we shouldn't even try.

how do they know

dogs (and cats), when you're hurting? they do, don't they? when i was a kid we had a Standard poodle (the only one of the many dogs we had growing up that we disliked) who looked after my Granddad after he lost his wife. he slept in a tiny room (the 'maid's room') at the end of a long hallway on the 2nd floor. the poodle would trot down the hall, sit at the side of the bed and rest his chin on the mattress next to Granddad, looking mournfully up at him with big brown eyes. he knew. he gave solace in ways none of us could.

ted

i had to go. i'd been to St Particks as a teenager to honor Bobby. this was as critical a view. i dislike lines and crowds. i went to the Sox victory parade in '04 and the first one for the Pats in the snow. i was glad i went, but after waiting for hours on numb feet just to see the boats lumber by i was let down, bored wondering is-that-all-there-is-to-a-victory-parade? sure, it was good to plant my feet in honor of the hard-earned, long time coming, champs and to see the rock star athletes on display in real time. but once was enough. on the other hand i liked being in line to hear Obama speak during the campaign. the people, thousands upon thousands, psyched, inspired, happy, up and to be a part of something bigger than my routine, as if all of us were one. that was the last time i saw Teddy. he was bellowing on stage to introduce the new torch bearer. i'd also met him, years back, in a bar. shook his generous hand. 'good t meet ya, Senator...' etc. it was not that big a deal but something never forgotten. on the way to the JFK Library, on the T and looking out the window it seemed as if a lot of guys looked like him, overweight, chin up jaunty, toothy grin, with eyes on the sky and feet on the ground. but they weren't the man. no one was or ever will be. not in my lifetime. the line was as diverse racially as it could be in this ol' whitey town. there were tears wiped away under sunglasses, eyes downcast or uplifted or both and kind thoughts about strangers. i was gonna read to pass the time in the long line, but i didn't. i quietly inched towards the under sail like library with the rest. the Kennedy kids were there, thanking us for coming, for showing up to honor their grandfather, for loving the world he believed could be better even as dark forces conspired against it. inside the Smith room where i'd last seen Paul Krugman speak, lay the great man in state, surrounded by soldiers who didn't blink, by members of families who'd lost love ones on 9/11, who'd been connected to the Senator in loss and by members of the Kennedy clan who sat quietly on spindly metal chairs. we had to be there, all of us, to honor this storm of a man who outlasted so many hurricanes in his personal and public life. we need him now more than ever. every time, every time i hear the words: 'and the dream shall never die' tears fill my eyes.

ass

because you sit on it for hours, it is rarely clean or smooth or pretty. ass topography is speckled with pimply red bed-bug like dots and cuneiform hairs. a hammock of water balloon flesh hides the under-ass parenthesis and worse, a shit chunk can get caught in ass hair and dangle like a tick in the jungle. a pristine shiny clear-skinned tight ass is a rare find indeed. it doesn't survive much past 14 which is why, after a few beers, a martini or a weed hit you blur the view and make it right. you ignore the spots, the dingle berry, the saggity ass and give it a squeeze or a bite. as for your very own back porch, it is next to impossible to take in. a twist in front of a mirror can offer a 3/4 snapshot, but gives no indication of how broad of beam or distended one has become. the stand-above-the-mirror-on-the-floor approach reflects an alien ass crack high on spider legs, walnut balls with a cock tip in a peek-a-boo, sweaty bush. without a friend with a camera you'll never see your fat ass the way it really looks. a friend of mine twirling out of the shower felt a soft slap on the back of her upper thigh only to realize that it was delivered by her very own cheek, a blubbery wet buss. it made her laugh, but she was horrified. i think asses begin, unless belonging to an athlete or a ballet dancer, to find gravity in the late twenties and even if it's a tight ass, it can become a dirty ass. it's been sitting on itself long enough to accumulate a collection of creases and black heads. if you're lucky your boyfriend or girlfriend will pop and scrub and smooth you out like a soap stone. but the thing is, no matter how disturbing this part of the body might be, we're interested. we have to look. maybe face first, or tits, or crotch, but a nice shot of a nice ass in blue jeans will not be ignored. a kid walks by on the sidewalk and you turn and you look. you always will. the way an ass walks is an action miracle. male or female. a big hefty left, right, left ass-in-a-dress is a Fellini spectacle worshiped for centuries. how many tourista walk all the way around the Statue of David just to catch a glimpse of that famous forever young rear end? maybe, unless you're a total pedophile, a dirty ass, a be-zitted butt, an ass crack with pubic seaweed sprouting out like a song, is hot as hell. we all have our favorites. we all fantasize about how so and so's will look out of shorts or stepping out of the shower. we can't help it. we even watch each other watching. it gives us a snort. and there are some asses impossible to picture. on some, there's no movement whatsoever, or what appears to be no ass at all, just a plumb line from the upper back to legs, or, weirdly, an indentation, as if there's a vacant lot where on others an actual ass bounces along with a smile. i would kill to examine, like an archeologist, one of these ass negatives in the flesh.