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.