first fight

i heard between my parents was in Weatogue, Connecticut, in 1955. our house was a big-box, 3-story, white clapboard wedding cake, with a wrap around porch, acres of lawn, copper beach trees and a massive untended vegetable garden. it was idyllic and the least disturbing, miraculous part of my childhood, until one night, late, after bedtime, when i got up to pee in flannel pajamas, no hair down there, watching the stream, shaking off until i heard something new, an argument in the kitchen. the voices thundered up the backstairs. i heard mom, furious, her tears folded into the yelling. i heard dad screaming back at her and a glass shattering. i tip-toed to the top of the back stairs and the shouting got louder, but the words were either indistinct or i didn't let myself understand them. i hadn't a clue my parents weren't ok with each other. just that afternoon i helped dad paint New Yorker cartoons on a bathroom wall (a rare collaboration). last night i watched mom get ready for a cocktail party in her incredible gold dress. 'you look like a movie star, like Tallulah Bankhead', i bragged. (Tallulah's voice, deep, low and ironic, had captivated my prepubescent imagination, replacing the Lone Ranger in my pantheon of luminaries.) but that was hours ago. this fight hit me like a rock in the head. I covered my ears and retreated to the back porch, a screened-in, second story 'day room'. there the sound was muffled. i was 'intrigued + repulsed at the same time' (as my friend Jane said once about seeing a strap-on for the first time). it was like finding out that Santa Claus was a lie. i took mom's side in my little head. she was hurt. i should defend her. but was that fair? i hated hating my dad. sure enough, a month later, things got worse. when he took me on a ski trip, i ratted him out. he was plastered. there were women on couches in our bedroom laughing. one, two? college girls? i wasn't sure. this was new. they were 'guests' i supposed. but they also seemed to 'be with' him in some way i didn't understand. while i'm on the phone checking in i tell mom about it - the drinking, the girls and right in front of him, close enough to get smacked, he went berserk. he said he'd never trust me again, his fairy-assed son. the little boy he calls the Prince as in 'you pay more attention to the Prince than you do your own husband'. and this after she refused to call in sick for him at the bank. 'you're hung over, you're not sick. go to work'. i thought she was right, but i was never sure. i was proud of how crazy he was. of how easily he could make her laugh. how he liked to fart in the elevator and blame it on a stranger. but i remembered that first fight and i wanted to protect her from being hurt again. so i ratted him out, 100%. i shamed him in front of his college girls and in front of me, his son. i threatened his manhood. two years later on a train from Philly to Montreal for yet another ski trip we kids were about to conk out in bunk beds, the clickity-clack train wheels soothing us down, when dad stumbled in, shattered and loud. mom clocked him one, a sucker punch to the jaw and he went down. it had to be tough for a guy to get punched out by his wife in front of his kids. i realized, deep down, that we loved them equally. it was more painful to take sides than not, even as we did, jumping from one ship to the other in hopes of some miraculous balance. we are never certain where love lies. we wonder if our subsequent luck or ill fortune in the relationship game grew from that fierce, unyielding Yankee tempest.

in the weeds

i first got high in college, my senior year. 'when does it begin?' i wonder. 'i don't notice anything...'. i lay back on a filthy dormitory persian rug, closed my eyes and tripped into cartoon land. Daffy Duck quacked at me in a field of sunflowers, leaping and laughing, an animation by van gogh. a week later i listened to Horowitz perform Chopin's funeral etude. my mother appeared in a pale blue greek robe crossing a cracked Dali desert. her head fell back, freighted with sadness, an exaggerated Picasso profile weeping slow motion mercury tears. she held my father in her arms, like a baby, his tiny limbs were crooked and blackened like the burnt ends of match sticks. she traversed the landscape in deliberate Martha Graham strides. her movement echoed the dark, basso piano chords Vladimer struck. i was shattered by the visceral hallucination that came on by inhaling this tiny, dried up plant. it was 1967 and i jumped on the flower power bandwagon. sadly, years later, i got paranoid every time i smoked. i talked too much, i laughed too loudly, i stared too aggressively and hated the high. pot stopped being fun. some wise old goat on a Cambridge street corner explained that this happens to some of us. that it's physiological. the body reaches a tipping point. the bad outweighs the good. Mary Jane scowls. she's over you. she's moved on. after many more tests to prove him wrong, i gave up. i stopped. no more Ganja. no more paranoid nightmares. not for me. in the late 90's a friend came to town. we went to his brother's apartment. the pipe was passed. maybe this time, i hope. maybe this time my body's cured of its aversion. 2 puffs later i'm in orbit. i can't shut up. i can't uncross my legs. i'm frozen, babbling and jumping out of my skin. my friend turns to me and says, deadpan: 'you know, Rick, no one is listening to you'. it took every ounce of energy for me to stand up, find a dark empty room, lie down and wait for it to go away. my body once again rejected the high. lately, however, on occasion, with rarely more than one other person, i can handle a one-shot hit and be ok. it's fun again. pissing takes a century and every conversational nuance is brilliant, insight at every corner. i get lost in the face of the beautiful. wow, man, your teeth, your crooked yellow teeth are fuckin beautiful, and the place where your neck disappears into your shirt...

the love lottery

don't get me wrong, i like sorella's. there's something about it. it's not quite a diner and is hardly an uppity cafe. the food can be sketchy. in June a kid was found puking his omlette into the gutter. you have to be smart about what you order. eggs over easy, luke warm home fries, dark toast with bacon usually gets the job done. the coffee is hardcore, a surefire diuretic promising the inevitable tippy-toe walk to the toilet or a sprint back home with your fingers pressed like a prayer against your sphincter. my favorite thing is to go there alone, on a Sunday, eat something safe, read and inventory the beautiful boys. last week they sat me upstairs. i prefer the original room with the ugly greek art and omlette signs, but i don't really care. the fat guy who waits on me, thighs chafing against thighs, is a scenic view in and of himself. oddly, there is not One Single Handsome Person in sight which is fine, making it easier to concentrate on my book. i live on the edge and order a vegetable crepe with a side of braised tempeh. it arrives tepid and dull tasting and the crepe the fat guy smacks down is spilling over with fruit. i didn't order fruit, but i refuse to make a scene. (we waiters never want to make a fuss or embarrass a comrade.) soon, however, the big man returns with the veggie version: raw onion, raw sprouts, damaged spinach in a cold crepe. I wolf it down, i'm in a good mood. my noir novel (The Dead Yard - McKinty) is clickity-clacking down the track. i get lost in it and in the dead yard on my plate until, simultaneously, two couples are seated on either side of my table. the girls are as striking as the boys. my eyes lift furtively from the page. the kid facing me on my left has black briary Brezhnev eyebrows, corn blue eyes and full lips, as if lipstick engorged. he and his girl spend hours lost in each other's eyes. they have that wet just-showered-after-a morning-fuck hair, thick and heavily scented from post coital cum (my imagination is off the charts). he smiles as i lurch up from the table to leave, a stack of singles under my coffee cup. i ask, nervously, if he's seen Rushmore. he has. 'you look like that kid', i say, with a big ingratiating smile. 'no kidding?' it's safe to connect on a silly pretense. but it is the boy to my right that knocks the breath out of me. i stare over my glasses at his legs, Beardsley profile, wild art school hair, big boots. i must look like a sex-starved librarian. i picture him in boxer shorts, boner poking a tent, a cliche porn fantasy. what's most captivating is what he and his girlfriend are doing. they are taking turns drawing on a single napkin. that's right, drawing, with a blunt golf score pencil. she is engrossed as he looks on. it is as if she traces a line on his naked back, in the sun, on the beach sending a shiver up his spine. she pushes the paper over. it's his turn. i try to see what the images are. i'm guessing they're hieroglyphs of a personal, in-joke nature. i can't tell. it doesn't matter. it is this thing between them, this happy, sandbox way of liking each other that is beautiful. i love them for it. is she French? she has that Paris girl, Band of Outsiders vibe with no makeup, pouty lips, a sexy overbite, disheveled hair and who cares clothes. they are lost in the game. they have won the love lottery.

collision doll

at 14 we thought it would be cool if we could get cars to crash at night, on a dark stretch of road near our house in Wayne. there were nine of us. Henry, Harlow, John, Teddy, Lilian, Keith and the three Kinscherfs. we made a life-sized doll out of clothes and stuffing and strung a clothesline across the street near a bend in the road that was surrounded by trees. we dropped the line, lax with the doll looking like a ten year old child, attached at the neck. we practiced. we would abruptly yank the clothesline and the fake kid would snap to startled attention, performing like a marionette. we waited in the trees. it was past midnight. it was cool out, not cold. no shivering. we hid on either side of the road waiting for two cars. one from one end of the street, one from the other. then we heard them. we could see the headlights. we knew what to do and we knew how to escape. we knew the woods, the crazy property. as they neared, 200 yards between them, we snapped the rope and the little fake kid popped up like a deer. both cars slammed on the brakes. tires burned rubber and screeched to a slow motion halt, but not fast enough to avoid cracking into each other. we heard the glass shattering, one headlight out, mad cursing from both drivers and doors opening and closing. we crept backwards into the dark woods and made our get away, hearts pounding, sweaty, unable or even afraid to speak. we were pretty sure no one was hurt, but that they might have been was a chastening thought. we stopped doing stuff like that afterwards. we never read about the accident or heard anything, but we knew, each of us. it was an unspoken secret. we lived, if for a few frightening minutes, on the island of the 'Lord of the Flies'.

mouse twitching

my cat, Sofi Wan Kenobi (or Sofia Di Putzi, or Sofi Anon depending on my mood) is a runt with a tiny head and a tiny body. she has a funny off kilter walk and a lopsided, skittering run. in fact she gallops (i hear there's a ten syllable German word for this) up and down the hallway of our apartment, thundering 'hoofs'. i chase her in my socks, trying to imitate her, to make her run faster. she loves this. Sofi's inky black, with yellow/green eyes and a few straggly white hairs on her chest. she distrusts everybody. she hid behind a couch for 2 weeks when i got her, second hand, from a girl moving to the West Coast. the girl called her Zoey, which was cool, but i had to name her for myself. if i was gonna feed her and solicit her affection, then i should call her what the fuck i wanted to. strangely she's a one man cat and i'm her man. he who feeds her... but of course there's more to it than that. i think she got kicked around in her old neighborhood, like Nixon and it's still with her, the paranoia. she's also sweet. when she watches TV in my lap, her purr is so loud you can hear it in the next room. she licks my hands and arms to wake me up in the morning and she's a pro at those seductive 'i love you' eyes. last summer i had to extract a few of her teeth. they were rotten at the root. it cost a small fortune. she survived the surgery, but had to be fed mushed-up tuna and water for weeks, hating the dry pellets when forced to go back. a funny result is that her tongue gets caught in her missing tooth gums during a licking session. it gags her tiny throat. she reels it back in, like a birthday curly horn contracting back into place. it makes her look lie a Turette kitty. i refuse to let her get fat. i'm obsessive about it. too much to ask of a dime-sized heart, i rant. i feed her parsimonious portions 4 times a day which means she wakes me up at 6:30 in the morning staring at me. 'NO,' i say. 'NO, SOFI!' but she's right. she's always right about feeding time. i lumber out of bed, feet like ski boots and clink her pellets into the bowl. afterwards i can't sleep. i read. noir fiction while my noir cat glares, nose-to-nose, hoping for a post breakfast scratch. i give in, pat, purr, scratch, lean, purr, read. she's a super hunter. handling the mice problem is a total sport. i can tell she's caught one when i hear her leap up and through the secret door in my closet making muffled meow sounds, mouse in mouth. she lets it go, chasing it to pieces. i find the shriveled creature in the morning, tweeze it's tail with a square of toilet paper and dump it in the garbage. when she doesn't kill it dead and it's not alive enough to interest her, it twitches on the floor, partially upright, tiny feet just so. i touch the tail and one little matchstick leg shivers. i jump, horrified. i can't put it in the garbage until i'm sure it's totally utterly kaput. i won't let it suffocate in the stench. but it hurts, this Mother Nature struggle, which Sofi always always wins. i'm proud of her, but i feel badly for da poor widdle mousey.

nostril yoga

when i catch cold and sometimes when i don't, i have a serious which-nostril-to-breathe-out-of freak out. one works, the other doesn't. the working one clogs, the other one's clear. a needle thin stream of air bites the roof of the back of my mouth. i try everything. i lie on my side with one sheet fold covering the open nostril. i lie on my back with my head under covers (forcing my cat the fuck out of the way). i press the clear nostril hard into the pillow at just the right angle to allow for some-but-not-too-much air. i twist a wad of tissue into a cork and plug/adjust the aperture. i open my mouth like grandpa, making my lungs happy even as this provokes cotton mouth. if all else fails i sit up and read until i'm exhausted enough to not give a shit about what a disaster the entire situation has become. if i were a shaman or a guru or a disciple i'd know for sure that this was an opportunity to practice yoga breath, elevate my consciousness and 'arrive'. don't breathe, be happy.

hot springs

It's 1968 and i'm eligible for a draft deferment if i teach shcool or join the Peace Corps. terrified of Viet Nam, of killing or being killed or of being a shitty teacher, i opt for the Peace Corps (Korea) but get the boot half way through training. the shrink diagnoses me as a confrontational personality that won't cut it in a non-confrontational society like Korea. i would be the classic ugly American. my next try was for a teaching deferment. through Yale i land a job as a special class/art teacher in a one-street town called Moosup (as in 'there's a moose up the river'), Connecticut. i last 8 months. i fall in love with one of my students, E. he lives across the street from my boarding house in a nearly-falling-into-the-river, two story shack with his mom, her boyfriend(s) and 6 brothers and sisters. by winter, i am sleeping in his bed every single night. no one minds. we are tentative physically. i get no sleep and tip-toe out in the morning, shoes dangling from two fingers, rush across Main Street, dress for school and get picked up by the football coach, my heart in vertigo. Moosup Junior High is not eton or Exeter (where i imagine boys slept with boys and/or teachers for centuries as a right of passage and part of the curriculum). of course this is bullshit. i'm working a public school in a tiny town with tiny minds. E will be found out, shamed or worse. god knows what might happen to me. i decide the best thing for everyone is to skip town. i ride to Philly on my Kawasaki 650, depressed and weakly suicidal. when i call E up, twenty years later, his son answers: 'dad's out,' he says. i tell him who i am, how i knew his dad and before i can finish explaining the kid shouts, 'Rick!? from Moosup?!' like i'm some long lost hero, back from traversing the globe, the person his father told him about. when E takes the phone, he tells me that i wouldn't like him now. that he has a pot belly and isn't 'that way' anymore. he says we'd been good with each other then and are still so today. maybe we'll get a beer if he comes up north. but this conversation occurs long after i try, only one short year after Moosup, to take a second crack at teaching, this time in a co-ed boarding school in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. what was i thinking? sure enough, three months down the road i have 'those feelings' again, this time for K, my english student. we spend hours together, get messed up on Robitussin, weed and take long walks in the snow, the electricity of high emotion and laughter bouncing off the hills. sometimes i lie in his lower bunk, he in the upper we hold hands top to bottom. not saying a word, smiling. we drive to the top of a hill, take off our clothes and slip into the hot springs, floating there, at peace and forgetting school, job, drama, age difference (i am 21, he's 16) and thrive in the moment of our friendship, close, a bit in love. it is a rare, psychedelic oasis on top of a Colorado peak and though we never 'do anything', i'm 'caught', accused of sleeping with boys AND girls and fired. they shunt me off to a motel where i drop acid and wait until one of my teacher friends sneaks K down to see me one last time. we hold each other, cry some and then, next day, he goes back to school and i take the bus to Denver for my draft physical, acid high and scared to death. i flunk. i have letters from two shrinks that are conclusive. i am both 'suicidal AND homicidal', a 4F. this was the ignominious end to both my last stand as a teacher and dodging bullets in Nam. i write K long letters about everything, missing him. i guess they were love letters. the headmaster reads them aloud to the student body at lunch in the cafeteria embarrassing my friend and dooming our relationship. i try to repair the damage by driving to Santa Barbara and waiting for him when he flies home for Christmas. but when he arrives he doesn't want to see me. it had been too much to bear, the public humiliation. it is a long, amphetamine drive home. i suppose, even as i was terrified and partly ashamed of everything that went down, it was time to take seriously the idea that i might become that most wonderful, infamous identity: artist/musician/homo.