bloody shave

at one point i had free access to a gym. a 30th floor downtown health spa filled with chrome machines, mirrors, men and women sweating off pounds and working hard to transform flubbery bodies into generic, cut, hairless 'beauty'. nothing more absurd looking than a rock hard 20 year old body sprouting a 45 year old head. i pretty much got nowhere fast. there were no pounds lost, no change in body contour. i went because it was, for a few short months, free and it got me out of the non-profit office where i holed up. what stayed with me was an unforgettable sight. in the shower everyone keeps an eagle-eye perimeter around their naked selves. 'i'm naked. you're naked. i see you, but i'm not looking at your dick and for fuck sake's don't look at mine'. one afternoon i'm toweling off at the sink while the guy next to me is shaving. he has a big slap-happy grin, but his face is covered in blood. the blade has sliced up his neck, throat, cheeks and Adam's apple. i can't believe what i'm seeing until i get it, he's blind. the guy is fucking blind. here he is, 30 years old, 30 stories up, towel around waist, shaving in a public bathroom. shaving blind and bloodied-up and ecstatic. the freedom he feels, unassisted, shaving himself thoroughly rips me out of my bleak cynical judgement. what a dude he is. what an amazing amazing guy. i didn't say a word. i just admired how incredibly awesome he was.

patience

does not become me. i try to wait (they also serve who only stand and shit), but i'm terrible at it. i rush through songs, i tick off my list-for-the-day like a housewife on meth. i meet new people and crash course their biography. at work i smack the plates down on the table even as i try, so help me, to gently settle the food onto the paper mat. driving cross country i count not miles, but states, hurtling through the imaginary dotted lines that atlas-separates Kansas from Iowa. i drink beer like water at an oasis. i eat shovel-fulls of Chinese and suck up Pu Pu like a Hoover. perhaps i am racing towards the end of my life. or maybe i'm trying to see, touch, experience, absorb everything and everyone in my path as quickly as possible so as to not miss anything. i watch myself roar down the road in 5th gear but it never slows me down. i rev the engine, i lurch through life. Buddha would have a problem with me.

nureyev revives fonteyn

he pulls her out of retirement. they dance on big stages across the globe. she's young again. he's leaping to inspired heights. they adore each other. the other night i'm watching the last 5 minutes of Toy Story 3 and working up a good cry when i notice my spinster cat, Sofi, on top of the foot stool. underneath is the new kid, Mao, who looks up at her with half-closed but curious golden eyes. Sofi half-heartedly paws the air with a matchstick leg. Mao's seems half asleep, but they're communicating. what was once fight and scratch has for the moment become what i can only describe as play, or off-hand shadow boxing. Mao has drawn her outside her stay-in-the-safe-closet persona and now they're in kitty love. she prefers to leave my room when i go to sleep rather than crash at the foot of my bed. she wants to be out there in the hallway with Mao. they've slept body-to-body when i caught them in an unguarded moment and the other morning. he stood watch at the door to the porch while she shat in her box, undisturbed, like the centurion boyfriend who guards the men's room while his girlfriend takes a hurry-up piss. it took months, this ever so gradual friendship and on Christmas day, i swear, as Sof was curled up on a couch pillow, Mao leaped up, clumsy tip-toed over to her and kissed her on her hard licorice-lipped kitty-mouth. a tiny cat kiss like a bird fart. they still wrestle and scratch and bite and hiss and spit, but it's closer to a good time than a hate-fest. so on top of Toy Story 3 i get this image of two ex-enemies in a paw-de-deux.

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.