Conference

I'm at a conference in North Carolina. Etc. I'll be back to posting soon.

Abandoned

High school would begin in a few days, and I didn't want to go.  Wayne had already dropped out to play music full time and Steve had decided to join him.  Tommy had dropped out, too.  I was only fifteen, so that wasn't an option.  

Wayne had joined a band with a former member of the band The Left Banke who had quit just before they recorded their big hit "Walk Away Renee."  Wayne was a good guitar player, and that was all he cared about.  Steve and I went to hear his new band play one of the local radio station promotions one afternoon, and they were good.  Standing out in the crowd watching Wayne onstage, though, made me ache with jealousy.  They were far better than we had ever been.  Maybe it was due to the amount of sound the large sound system gave them, but I doubted it.  Their harmonies were clear and crisp.  Everything was right.  They were going to the recording studio to cut a demo.  They were going on tour with another band.  Wayne was out.  He had grown up.  Steve had a new girl and was trying to get out, too.  Tommy was working in a tire shop busting his knuckles and making his own money.  

I would go to high school.  

There were new rules, they said.  We had to tuck our shirts in and our hair had to be cut. It couldn't touch the collar of our shirts and had to be above our ears.  Girls were made to kneel on the ground in order to have the hem of their skirts measured.  It would be like the Nazi camps they had taught us about in history class.  We would be prisoners.  It would be torture.  

Meanwhile, at home my parent's continued to argue.  There was seldom any peace, and I was forced to sit through the bitterness and the accusations, trying to watch TV or listen to music in my room.  It would last a while, then one of them would leave the house and all that would be left was the greasy residue of anger and of sadness.  

I was in a lonely place, I thought.  Suddenly it was all gone.  I was not part of anything.  I shared nothing with anyone.  

Falling Away

Eventually people began to move. Steve and his girl came to the car looking like hurricane survivors, and only then did Wen deign to budge. Nobody said much, and soon we were in the car and driving home. Dirty, tired, and full of regret, I watched the cars go by as Steve took his girl to her house. They kissed and whispered low and sad with love's breath and the bad breath of morning without ablution. Wen got out, too. Goodbye. Goodbye.

I climbed into the front seat with Steve glumly watching the traffic on the long road that would take us to my house, the morning light somehow hostile and alien as we drove by the Boy's Club.  I wanted to go to bed.

And then suddenly, horribly, we were passing my parent's car, my aunt and uncle and cousins inside, all their heads turned toward us like guppies in an aquarium waiting to be fed, waving and pointing and looking as if they had just noticed some hideous accident. I looked at Steve. "Shit," he spat and hit the gas. He wanted to get me home and drop me off before my parents got there. This looked bad. This looked like trouble.

Steve barely bothered stopping as I jumped out of the car and ducked inside. I just wanted to go to bed, but within seconds, I heard my parent's car pull up. This was awful, I thought. I was a good boy and never caused trouble. I had been in the bluebird reading group in elementary school and was one of the best spellers. I had been an all-star athlete and had heard the cheering of the crowd. Steve! It was Steve and Wayne and all the rest. I was not like them. I wasn't. Sure, I went along, I hung around, but I was an observer, I said to myself, not a participant. Before the door opened, I had repented of my ways.

They all walked in--Mom, Dad, my Aunt and Uncle and their son and daughter who were slightly younger than I. They all just stared at me, my cousins with a mixture of excitement and admiration.

"What'd you do last night?" my father queried.

"I stayed out with Steve." I didn't know what they knew or how much I could lie.

But my mother broke in.

"Steve's mother called here last night to check on him. She said he was spending the night here. When she found out, she started calling everybody. She called his girlfriend's house and her mother said she was staying over at a friend's house."

She was very excited, my father stern beside her, my relatives obviously enjoying the drama. I just stood there, my arms at my side, in a new place I had never been to before. All before me lay a strange land unlike the one I'd come from. I was in another country.

"A Japanese!?! You spent the night with a Japanese! She's twenty years old! Jesus Christ, I fought those bastards in the War and you're sleeping with them." He was mad, but I could tell they didn't really know what to do. It seemed they were in a new country, too.

"Get in there and get cleaned up," he said, gesturing to the bathroom. As I was closing the door, I heard him yell, "And wash that thing good before it drops off!"

It wasn't true, of course. There had only been the one kiss and my one minute of pathetic groping. But I felt empowered, somehow. My family thought I was capable of sleeping with grown women, exotic women at that. I could hear something other than anger in my father's voice. I hadn't any name for it, but I didn't feel inclined to object.

When I finished showering, I went straight to my room and got into my bed. I would sleep through the day like a sick man. It was Saturday. There were cartoons and movies that I would miss, Charlie Chan or Tarzan or some monster movie like "The Creature from the Black Lagoon." I could feel myself falling asleep as I listened to my family backing the car out of the driveway, falling away from all of that.

Eventually people began to move. Steve and his girl came to the car looking like hurricane victims,

The Darkness and The Dawn

After we left the hotel, we were out for the night, first to the Big Boy where I couldn't seem to drink enough coke to quench my thirst, then everywhere else, just walking and talking through the night. We went behind a Montgomery Wards department store and jumped in and out of some boats that were stored there. There was a cabin cruiser where we thought to spend the night, but we were too jacked to stay there long.  Steve and Wayne were maniacal, embracing the speed and what it made them feel. I, on the other hand, felt terrible and was trying to resist, wishing only that I was home in my own bed where I always was at this hour, sleeping peacefully, embracing my dreams. But no dreams were forthcoming that night.  After getting hamburger money from the first car, Steve was ready to get more. He walked through the darkness checking front seats for money or anything else that was left laying on the seats.  It was wrong, I thought, a violation.  But Steve was rife.  He already had a pocket full of goodies.  

Sometime in the early morning, it began to rain, so we ducked into an elementary school to wait it out. Everything was dark and damp as we huddled together in an alcove on the gritty cement, listening to our voices echo oddly through the empty hallways, finally stretching out three together to get some rest.

In the morning, I just went home. My parents thought I was spending the night at Steve's house, so there was nothing special awaiting me, no consequences, no punishment. At least not from them. But I felt awful. My skin was like rubber, unnatural when I touched it like nothing belonging to me. I had never spent a night like that before and felt dirty inside and out. I went to the bathroom and ran a hot bath. I lay in the steaming water heating it again and again as it cooled, but the water did not soothe me.   I was sad and felt like crying. Why, I wondered? Nothing had gone wrong. We had not gotten into any trouble. But nobody had told me about speed and the way it let you down. I was not a tough boy. I was not like Wayne and Steve. They would talk about that night in highlighted detail, pursuing it again and again and again. But I was done. It was a dirty life, I thought, hard and nasty. At fifteen I was sure I was damaged, that I would never be right again.

But way leads to way, and in a few weeks, Steve had a new girlfriend. He was sixteen now and allowed to drive, but he was still on probation and was not allowed to be away from home without supervision. His mother, though, was a drunk and was responsible only half the time, and so those were the terms of his restriction. His new girl was nineteen, he said, and he had told her he was eighteen. She had a friend and the four of us were going out on Friday. He would tell his mother he was staying at my house. I would tell my parents I was staying at his.

So in the early evening on a Friday, we pulled up to his new girlfriend's house in his old Hearse. Steve was nervous as I'd never seen him before, jumping out of the car and breaking a cigarette in half before lighting it. "What are you doing?" I asked. "I don't want her to think I just lit up before I walked up," he said, hunching his shoulders and heading for the door.  He was trying to look older.  He was trying to look cool.  

His girl was older, alright. I could tell that right off. She was a couple inches taller than Steve with bleached blonde hair and a voice like a cartoon. She squeaked when she talked and had eyes that wandered everywhere. She was like a movie star, I thought, but not, like some weirder version of the funny girl in one of those beach movies that were so popular then. "We'll have to pick up Wen," she said like Minnie Mouse as we all jumped into the front seat.  We were off.

Wen was Japanese and even older than Steve's girl, and you could see the surprise in her eyes when she got into the car. Steve had told his girl that I was seventeen, and she said she was nineteen. But those were lies, and there we were, sitting in the back seat, a couple for the night, a twenty year old woman and a fifteen year old boy. Steve didn't seem to notice.  He didn't care. He had what he wanted. He had his girl and we had some Canadian whiskey and some coke and we were going up to the lake. He was excited.  It was sad.

Steve and his girl got drunk and started making out right away. I tried sipping at the whiskey, but I didn't like it at all, the syrupy sweetness and the mediciney after-bite.  Wen and I sat on the opened back panel of the Hearse looking out at the lake where the happy couple frolicked, laughing and kissing and finally taking off their clothes to swim in the lake. And as the darkness gathered, we could hear their screams of laughter coming from the distance, Wen and I trying to find something to say, in the painful silence.  Somewhere around midnight, I thought to try to kiss her. Leaning over, I grabbed her womanly shoulders and childishly stuck my tongue into her mouth. I rolled it around for a few foolish seconds while placing my hand on her breast.  She left it there a minute before pulling it away.  And then it was over.  We were done. And there was nothing left to do but lie down in the back of the Hearse and go to sleep while strange love made its way into the dampish dawn, Steve and his girl confirming their emotions on a blanket by the lake. And as it always does, the sun came up turning the dark world light. I saw the pearls of dew on the damp grass and the steam rising above the water of the lake. Beside me, Wen was curled in a little ball snoring lightly. Fog hung in the air as if to hold back the day.  How long, I wondered. How long.

Anything Other Than This

The warmer days of spring gathered around us bright and beautiful. We were bathed in sunlight so that even the worst of us was better, happier. School seemed nothing but laughter and hilarity and the recognition of fragile relationships we now adored. There was old Carnie. "Remember the time. . . ." And so it went.

Who doesn't hold onto their lives with clinging fingers even at the same moment wishing to vanquish it? The highway is always stretching out before us with its promise, but it seems most often better left for another day. And so the rhythms and routines, the same minor victories, the same hopeless failures.

Steve and Wayne came over. We were going to see the Young Rascals at the Civic Center. We knew how to get backstage. We'd done it before. But tonight would be something different. Wayne had a bottle of diet pills he had stolen from his mother, West Coast Turn Arounds, so named because it was said you could take one and drive to California, then turn around and drive right back. They looked ominous to me, those little black pills, but they were the same ones all the mother's took in the morning before they took their sleeping pills at night with their tranquilizers lodged somewhere in between.

We had no trouble getting into the auditorium and getting seats after entering through the backstage door. We had already shaped our plans for getting backstage after the concert, but this show we wanted to see from the seats. And we weren't disappointed. Felix Cavalier was a flurry of action on the big B3 Hammond organ, his two hands slipping over the double keyboards, his frenetic right foot hitting the floor keys that provided the bass, the cords in his neck straining as he stretched toward the microphone. He did everything. He was a genius. And there was Little Eddie, more go-go dancer than musician, a heart throb and a singer with tambourines and shakers. And Dino, playing drums with the same energy that Felix played the organ. Man, they were good, though I was bugged by Gene Cornish, the lead guitarist. He was big and heavy and looked oafish to me, and I never thought he really belonged.

After the concert, we made our way to the stage where we slipped through a side door while the watchman wasn't looking. If you wanted to, it seemed to me, you could get into anything. You just made yourself small and invisible and slid in. That is what it felt like, anyway, so long as you kept your eyes from moving, from looking around, that part of the world would cease to exist for a moment.

And there we were again at the same table where the Hollies had stood, with the same crowd of people as if they had never left. And the Rascals, it turned out, were staying at the same hotel and again, we would go. This time it would be different, though, for Wayne was passing out the Black Bennies. With hesitation, I put one in my mouth, and for a second, I thought I might find the courage to spit it out, but the second passed and it slid down my gullet and into my stomach palpably. I swear, I could feel its blackness.

At the hotel, a crowd was hanging out in Felix's room. The door was open and we simply walked in. The party was already well under way. The room was crowded with people, Felix sitting center stage, legs crossed like some Eastern guru, on the bed above the others gathered around on the floor. Everyone was smoking marijuana in a mystical way, not the way my friends had smoked it, but differently, with a visible reverence that was a little unnerving. Nervous, I stepped outside.

Dino had taken a groupie into his room, Steve said. Outside the door, you could hear her laughing. Gene Cornish was chatting up a girl in a paisley mini-dress like an older uncle, big and loutish, I thought, but she was enamored of his attention and soon he was guiding her down the hallway to his room. Wayne was standing with Little Eddie on the breezeway when I walked up. He was giving Eddie a record, a demo he had just made with another, older band, asking him if he would listen to it. I was astounded by Wayne sometimes, but Little Eddie took it into his room and put it on top of a mess of things he had already unpacked. Then he walked out with a guitar.

The speed had kicked in and everything seemed a little unreal, and I couldn't tell you how long we stood there, the four of us, Steve, Wayne, Eddie, and me, while Eddie played guitar and sang, not his songs but others, renditions of songs I had heard by other bands and songs I 'd never heard before, playing through a few riffs before stopping and talking. And somewhere in there, Wayne broke out a little camera and Eddie posed for photos with each of us. I had mine for years, me standing with Eddie, taller than he, both of us smiling. I wish I could find it now and post it, for I think I was the more handsome of the two.

That done, Wayne picked up the guitar where Little Eddie had left it and began to strum, each chord sending shock waves through my body. What was he doing? Shit oh shit no, I thought, but Wayne, apparently, thought that Eddie was going to ask him to form a band. First Wayne played a song he wrote as Eddie looked on. Then he started to play "Groovin'" at which point Eddie had had enough. Reaching out, he put his hand upon the fret board muting the strings and said, "Don't. I hear that all the time." And with that, Eddie took the guitar from Wayne and drifted off to his room alone. He hadn't smoked, he didn't have a girl. He just went to his room and closed the door. And that was it for the night. Wayne, beginning to fidget, reached into his pocket and pulled out another handful of Bennies. It was a mistake for which I wasn't ready. We washed them down with sodas we got from a hallway machine.

It had been an incredible night, but I was starting to twitch. I didn't like this, the way I felt, and somehow it had ruined rather than enhanced my experience. Things were rushing by, distorted, compressed, Steve and Wayne now full of some crazy meanness with which I would have to contend. In the parking lot, Steve looked into an open car. There was some money sitting near the shifter. He opened the door, reached in, and got it.

"Let's go to the Big Boy," he said. And with that, we left, Felix holding court in his drug den, Dino and Gene in their rooms with their new girls, and Eddie. . . who knows? Watching TV? Getting ready for bed? Perhaps strumming sad songs on his guitar, listening, thinking. I'd rather have been doing that, I thought. Anything other than this.

Unknowing

Ninth grade was almost over and we passed yearbooks around one to another for signing. Memorabilia, the early lessons of a maudlin life. We signed what we thought were clever things, snappy things, still finding it difficult to publicly express emotion in an honest manner. Or honest emotion in a true manner, perhaps. Top Girls were learning a formula that would see them through the next three years and maybe more, the buzzwords and tag lines that would later get them into sororities and beauty pageants, and maybe even enviable marriages. My crowd, however, were mostly inarticulate, limited to a few words scrawled in uneven handwriting. We watched the future prep stars practice their farewell handshakes and hugs and crocodile tears, though in a few cases, I had to admit, some people were already so swallowed up with the formulas of emotion that I believed that the tears were sincere. My own life was far from theirs by now, separated by what seemed to me an unbridgeable chasm of chances and circumstance, and what I imagined to myself was a bit of daring, too. While they had gotten together in the evenings to make posters for the homecoming game or on weekends to raise money to buy band uniforms by having a car wash. . . I was elsewhere.

Still, I had to admit I felt something there at the end. I mean, it is impossible not to feel something. Change was coming in a swift and sweeping way. The old world would soon be gone, that world we had built those past three years, the world of shared histories, of teachers passed down from year to year, the sound of the pep band and the principal addressing the student body on special occasions. These were life lessons to be learned, though, the passing of things, the going on to something else. What the hell did I care. It had not been that great.

I had already come to be a melancholy youth, if not yet cynical, an outsider and a rebel, and I felt deeply both the privileges and inequities around me. I had a legacy of standing up for unpopular kids and never doing or saying the expected thing. Still, it surprised me when at the end of the year, Terri approached me shyly and handed me a letter. She didn't say anything but simply looked up for a moment and then turned and walked away. I didn't know what to make of it. It was odd.

Terri was a heavyset girl with thickish skin and oily hair. She dressed poorly in what looked to be clothes from the depression. But her most distinguishing feature was her eyes. She wore coke bottle glasses that made her eyes the size of silver dollars. The glasses were heavy and she was constantly pushing them back up the bridge of her nose where they would once again conspire with gravity. Because of her looks more than anything else, I think, Terri was regarded by the other kids to be retarded. Her name was a trademark insult among thoughtless boys and girls, and so she was eschewed, forced to sit in the rear or to the side of things, isolated, alone. None of the other kids wanted to be associated with her, but she did not bother me, and from time to time I would talk to her. It was never anything much, just a sort of guilty kindness, I guess, something I thought to do because the others would not do it, an unspoken ideal instilled in me early on by my grandmother, my mother, and my father.

When she was gone, I opened the envelope to see what was inside. It was a letter written in purple ink in cursive letters, beginning with the formal "Dear." I wish I had the letter now so that I could quote it. I have tried to emulate it's words and emotion, but I can't. She told me that she was glad she had gotten to know me these past three years, that I was one of her favorite people in the school. It went on like that, the language no more sophisticated than any other ninth grader, but the depth of the emotion and self-revelation were shocking. She was lonely, she said, and it was often hard not to be included in things. But when she was home and loneliest, she often thought of me and it made her feel better. She wished me well at the new school next year.

I thought about it for a long time. I had never thought about Terri except when she was in my vision, probably, or when her name was invoked in jest. She had simply been part of the landscape that made up my life. I tried to imagine her at home, though I was not even certain where she lived. I pictured her in some bedroom surrounded by the paraphernalia of her life, stuffed animals or dolls, maybe. Some pictures of favorite uncles and aunts. I saw a bedspread as plain and washed out as her dresses. It was Friday night. She was alone.

I would have to live with that, I thought, now that she had given me the letter. It haunted me. I didn't want her to be sad, but I didn't want to save her, either. I did not want to call her up for a friendly chat or ask her if she wanted to get a hamburger. And I felt guilty. We were both outsiders, one of us by circumstance, the other by choice. There was a loneliness and longing that enveloped each of us, but it was nothing I could share with her. There was only that. I felt I knew something now that others did not know, that I believed I wished I did not know, too. Once you know a thing, however, there is no unknowing it. Terri, I thought. God damned Terri.

The Supremes

We were going to party with the Hollies--but we didn't. Somehow, we got to the hotel before they did and were standing around when some cars pulled up to let them out. We didn't know what to do, really, being in unchartered territory, so Wayne called out, "Hey, Graham," and gave a wave. And Graham Nash looked over, smiled the smile of a politician, and with a flick of the wrist shot a quick wave back. Then there were people emerging from cars, the shuffling of bags, intimate and knowing laughter with girls in short skirts, and then they were gone. It didn't matter, though. We had seen it. We were there. Nash had given us a wave and a smile. He knew us, we told one another, and that was that. It was thrill enough for the night and many days after. It was the topic that filled our minds and conversations. We were all recommitted to being a famous band.

The Supremes came to town. They were playing a sports stadium on the outskirts of the city in an unincorporated part of the county in a big barn of a place where they had concerts and rodeos. It was about as far from where we lived as we dared to go, but Steve, Wayne, and I stood beside the highway with out thumbs stuck out. It was twenty straight miles down one highway, and we were lucky. It only took us three rides.

Race was on everybody's minds, and we lived in the prejudiced south. But there was something else about it, too, the steamy myths of black sexuality male and female, knowledge unknown to white men and women. There was something now called "soul," and if you didn't know what it was, they said, you didn't have it. I was pretty sure I didn't know what it was, but Wayne pretended he did. He said that if he had the chance, he would sleep with Diana Ross. What about the other Supremes, I asked him? Yes, he said, them too.

And so it was that we made our way, a nighttime journey toward something exciting, something of which I was afraid.

We had no tickets, of course, but we never bothered with that any more. When we got to the stadium, we made our way immediately to the back, past the large crowd of concert goers and chain linked fences that kept them out and kept them in line, past the security guards and police, back into the darkness and pungent smells of rodeo stalls and clay yards. To our surprise, there were horses and cows and bulls penned up there now behind the stage standing in wooden corals and stalls swaying and crying out occasionally in moos and whinnies, especially when we got anywhere close. There in our Beatle boots and mod clothes, we picked through mud and straw and shit trying to find our way beneath the stage. Where were the performers? we wondered. There were trailers parked in back and we thought they were probably there. But we didn't have much time to think, for suddenly there were cowboys all around. "In here," Wayne said, and we slipped over a wooden fence and into a stall. The cowboys passed and we waited awhile, but standing there in hay and mud was worse than buying a ticket, so we took our chance and stepped back out into the open.

"What are you boys doing?" a rough voice said. A big man stepped up like he was going to clobber us. He wasn't fooling around. "What are you doing around these horses?" he asked with what seemed to us a threatening anger. I could tell he didn't like the look of us at all.

"We just want to get into the concert," I confessed, hoping that honesty would help. But it would not have mattered what I said. The man was determined. "C'mon with me," he said, forcing us in the intended direction. "Y'all don't belong in here." I wasn't sure what he was going to do and by the looks on Steve's and Wayne's face, they didn't either, and without a word, we bolted, first in one direction, then, realizing we were trapped, back to where we had come in. The man gave a half-hearted chase, but we all knew he couldn't catch us on his best day. We didn't say anything and didn't quit running until we were out of breath in a stand of pine trees far from the stadium. Nobody had followed us, we were sure. They would not find us here.

We stood for a while in the warm moonlight, getting our directions and catching our breath. We had no money and wouldn't have bought a ticket even if we had, and soon we began to make our way back out to the highway. It didn't take long before we were all hooting and laughing, each giving his version of the episode smacking of horse shit and cowboys, each tale more grand than the other.

Then the talk turned to The Supremes. We would not get to meet them and Steve and Wayne talked about the disappointment. I didn't say much about that, though. I was glad to be away, glad not to be in trouble of any sort. That trouble lay before me, I knew, but I didn't want it yet. At least not that night.

Famous Almost

Sneaking in the second time proved no more difficult than the first. The backstage door was still open and we simply walked in. This time we went straight up a set of stairs to a second floor where there were some offices. No one was around. This would be a great place to hide, I thought. Nobody was going to bother coming up here. But Wayne was looking out a window and suddenly barked, "Come here." Outside a group of girls had gathered, and every time he passed by the window, they began to point and scream. Steve went over and looked out and waved, and you could hear them clamor. Obviously they thought we were the band, a band, at least, and someone to yell over. We kept up our play getting a taste of what is was like, we thought, to be the Beatles. But the yelling was becoming more subdued until one of the girls called out, "Who are you?" Wayne called back, "We're the Circle of Confusion." And they went silent. Apparently, they had never heard of us before, and quickly they drifted off into the darkness. Our star had faded, but our brush with fame had left us invigorated.

We WERE big, we thought, destined for better lives than the ones we were leading. We savored the night and the certainty that all of this would one day belong to us--the dressing rooms, the fans, a life on the road. Everywhere we went, puddles of adoring girls would form and scream our names with hope and desire. We would be clever and quick when interviewed by reporters. I had already imagined Ed Sullivan introducing us with high praise and a sweep of the arm. . . "And here they are, The Circle of Confusion."

After the concert, we stood backstage as a group of followers formed. And there in the center of it was the band. We made our way over to a table full of food and drinks where Graham Nash stood with Allan Clarke. People were crowded around smashed elbow to elbow, grinning, admiring, hoping for something vague, I guess, something they could take away and tell their friends. It didn't last long, but we overheard Alan Clarke tell some girls where they were staying that night. He said to come over, that they were having a little party. And then they were gone.

Though we had not been invited, we knew where the hotel Clarke had mentioned was, and we were going. We had no car, but it wasn't far, maybe a mile, a little more, and away we flew through the night pumped full of nicotine and adrenaline and a certainty that we were destined to be something other than we now were. We were going to party with The Hollies.

Sneaks

"Shit, here comes someone."

We ran into a closet in the dressing room, the door just cracked so we could see out. Two of the members of The Dutch Masters walked in and shuffled around. We had snuck into the concert hall hours before the show began. It was easy. The roadies were carrying in equipment, and we just joined in. We made a couple of trips to a big truck full of gear when Wayne grabbed a guitar case and hid it deep behind a stand of bushes. "We'll get it after the concert," he said. On the next trip, we just peeled off into the interior of the scaffolding and then into the dressing room. The Hollies were playing that night, and we were big fans of the high harmonies that Graham Nash sang. The Dutch Masters were the first act, a band that wore long wigs and outfits that looked like the cover of the Dutch Masters cigar box. We didn't have any interest in them, but now we were trapped in a broom closet inside their dressing room.

We watched as the drummer sat looking at himself under the bright makeup lights that surrounded the mirror. He would tap out something on the table with his drumsticks, then look back into the mirror. He found a pimple and began to pick at it. There were other people in the room we couldn't see who would occasionally pass into our vision. Not much was said, just the usual jokes and jibes, one fellow picking on another. Somebody threw a sock at the drummer and told him to quit looking at himself so much, but he was really working that pimple. Finally, he took it between his two drumsticks and squeezed. That was when Tommy began to laugh. Wayne reached up and quietly pulled the door closed.

"What was that?" a voice queried.

Wayne was holding onto the door when someone tried to turn the handle. He held it in place. My adrenaline was pumping. It was hot in the closet and stupid. We all shuffled a bit as Wayne put his foot against the door jamb and pulled hard on the door handle. The fellow tried the door again.

"I think someone is in there," the voice said. We were screwed. But we were young, too, and silly, so Tom picked up a light bulb sitting on a shelf next to him and said, "Let me out." Wayne moved aside and Tommy opened the door and walked into the room holding the light bulb in front of him and offered, "Did you guys order a light bulb?" Everyone in the room just stared. Steve started laughing and we all walked out into the light and out the door before anyone moved. And then we ran, first down a flight of stairs, then out a rear stage door into the dark. Outside, we all began to howl. We were adventurers, pranksters, and we were free.

Wayne walked over to the bushes where he had stashed the guitar, but it was gone. Who had taken it, he wondered disappointedly. A mystery without clues. But we hadn't time to worry about it just then. We had work to do if we were going to see the concert. It would be harder sneaking back in.

Balls

I still haven't time to write. In the weeds. Balls, I say. Balls.

"To Failure"

You do not come dramatically, with dragons
That rear up with my life between their paws
And dash me butchered down beside the wagons,
The horses panicking; nor as a clause
Clearly set out to warn what can be lost,
What out-of-pocket charges must be borne
Expenses met; nor as a draughty ghost
That's seen, some mornings, running down a lawn.

It is these sunless afternoons, I find
Install you at my elbow like a bore
The chestnut trees are caked with silence. I'm
Aware the days pass quicker than before,
Smell staler too. And once they fall behind
They look like ruin. You have been here some time.

Philip Larkin

Post No Bills

No post today. I am too much under the gun.

Away from Home

Steve's sister had gotten pregnant by the guitar player she was dating, but she didn't want to keep the baby. I wasn't privy to everything, but she and the guitar player got married and she went on the road with him for awhile. When she came back, she wasn't pregnant any more. Wayne and I were at Steve's house one night watching a movie with him and his sister. We were all piled onto her bed lying around, smoking cigarettes, talking. Wayne was next to Steve's sister under the covers, and they were close. Everyone watched the movie, but something was going on. Wayne was seventeen now and Steve's sister was twenty-one, but Steve didn't say anything. I hadn't been around very much, and I was uncomfortable and confused. She wasn't a pretty girl, but she was skinny with shocking bleached hair and a new red Mustang. The movie went on. Nobody said anything. I guessed whatever they were doing was already reified.

Her husband showed up from a road trip one day. He was a greaser with long hair, about thirty years old. He wore a black leather jacket and looked worn. He slept a lot when he was in town. Then he went to Biloxi to play some hotel lounge with his band, and he never came back.

Nights with other people were not at all like nights alone. There was this, and there was that, and the two never mixed. I was learning to live like that, home and away from home. It would stay with me.

Valentyne

That is how it should be spelled, I think. If I write a story about a girl, her name will be Valentyne. She'll be young and French but from Morocco, and she'll be smallish and darkish without being either small or dark.  She'll have just a touch of downiness upon her arms and lips that are full and colored like cherries. Her voice will make birds gather and weep with happiness. She will be quiet and melancholy and much alone, often going unnoticed, but not by me. I will love the slight swelling of her belly and the way she gazes with an almost imperceptible smile upon her face like Mona Lisa. She'll dress in dark, rich colors, full skirts and subtly patterned dresses. Walking down cobbled, winding streets, she'll carry a woven basket full of fresh cut flowers in the bend of her elbow. A friend will call to her from a window above--"VAL-EN-TEEN." She will look up, smile and wave. It will be February 14. It will be Valentyne's Day.

Further

Baseball season over, there was a madness in the air as we approached the end of our junior high school years. We were ninth graders, the top of the food chain for only a few more months. We were fifteen, the most awkward age with feet too big and limbs too long, horribly beautiful distortions of what we would become. Some of the girls were already riding home in cars with boys from the high school. We looked forward, we looked back. Some were already growing maudlin.

But I had my own problems to contend with and they weren't being covered by the yearbook staff.

South

Life then was full of imperatives. If you were young, most of those were about mindlessly following traditions and protocol. If you lived long enough, you earned respect. We pledged allegiance and bowed our heads for prayer. The county sheriff rode a horse in the local parades and wore a cowboy hat. Unbelievably, his name was Star. There were southern men and northern men, and they were different. My family came from the north, so that made the most sense to me. But the confederacy still lived in the hearts of southerners, and truly they still wanted to fight the war. The speech of southern working men was hard and dangerous, I thought. They liked to squint their eyes when they spoke. They harbored a resentment at the influx of northerner occupiers that was taking place. I remember the harsh talk when Bobby Kennedy, then Martin Luther King was shot. They called him Martin Luther Coon and played racist songs from the Rebel label. You are not supposed to talk about that now, I guess, but it has never left me. We were not part of the larger thing that I saw on TV and in magazines, I told myself. George Wallace was running for President on the anti-segregationist ticket of the American Independent Party and was very popular in my neighborhood.

The laconic days were coming to an end. There was a new imperative challenging the old. You couldn't stay neutral. You had to choose sides.

Two and a Half Channels

(Mr. Peabody's Way Back Machine)

Blogging has given people something else to obsess over and worry about, I think.  I read a blog entry by a talented photographer who is having a blogging crisis.  He refers to another famous photographer who blogged about his own blogging crisis.  I think they worry too much.  Nobody comes to a blog expecting to see a finished product, I think but rather, some junked up process that might have something funny or creative or useful in it amongst all the other stuff.  I'm glad they blog so I can see the bucket of snakes wiggle around.  I can see why I like what one of them does and why I don't like what the other one does.  It makes for a great day.  

A blog is a process, not a product.  For instance, I know I have written one too many boys fight scenes without an intermission.  And here it is.  

We got two and a half channels on our T.V.  I say half because one came from a town sixty miles away and so it was weak reception and always very snowy.  There were three networks, of course--The American Broadcast Company, The National Broadcasting Company, and The Columbia Broadcast System.  The snowy channel was a marvel to me, for I still believed in mysteries.  Many did.  Nobody, for instance, had yet given up on finding real evidence of the Loch Ness Monster, and almost everybody admitted to having seen "something strange" appearing in some night sky.  Yes, there were mysteries and half-seen stations were one of them.  There was an even stranger station that came in on a second dial that had to do with the first.  If you set the channel selector knob to "U", you could spin another dial that didn't click and sometimes faint images would emerge.  Some days I would fool around trying to pick up something odd, perhaps the transmission of some alien culture trying to communicate with the home planet. 

That is how my mind still worked in the midst of all the craziness, the girls pulling up their nightgowns while standing on chairs, the alcohol and drugs that were part of the underculture, the beatings given by boys both black and white, and, ultimately, the disintegration of the happy family life I had grown up with.  The mysteries of television were great.  

In memory, it seems that Johnny Weismueller was always swinging from tree to tree and that Charlie Chan and Sherlock Holmes were always solving mysteries.  These were things one could count on, just like the annual airing of "The Wizard of Oz" and "Moby Dick" and for some reason "Pork Chop Hill."  And I was still escaping into the Saturday morning worlds of "Sky King" and "Roy Rogers" and "Hopalong Cassidy" and "The Lone Ranger." I spent hours watching Wile E. Cyote trying to catch the Road Runner, and Elmer Fudd trying to catch that "cwazy wabbit."  At night, there was "Sea Hunt." 

All this mingling with the seemingly hopeless romance of love.  How does one hold it all together?  

Two and a half channels and one T.V.  We all watched it together.  We watched Walter Cronkite for our news and tuned in with everyone else for "Bonanza."  T.V. was a shared experience in many ways, for whatever we watched in the evening was replayed with friends the next day.  Two and a half channels.  

I remember the day we got the color T.V.  It was a big decision and my aunt and uncle went with my parents to pick it up.  But something went wrong, totally haywire, and before we could turn it on, my mother was screaming at my father and swinging her fists wildly.  Then she sat on the floor and cried.  My father walked my aunt and uncle to the car and I headed for the hills.  I guess I never liked the new T.V.  

It seemed that suddenly all the shows had changed.  Pow!  Kaboom!  It was Adam West's "Batman" in every color.  There was "The Wild, Wild West," with the evil little dwarf and his giant companion.  And then "The Smothers Brothers" changed everything.  It was more shocking than Johnny Cash's drug-induced performance of "Ring of Fire" on "Hootenanny"  (the vision of that performance remains vivid in my memory even today) and a hell of a lot smarter than the slapstick "Laugh-In."  It was 1968, and Bobbie Kennedy and Martin Luther King died on that TV.  Later that summer, Hippies were beaten in front of our eyes at the Chicago Democratic Convention.  And the half channel increased its wattage so that we now had clear reception on all three stations, two, six, and nine.  

And for the first time, I saw "Oz" in shocking color.  

All American Victory

(Painting by Charles Bukowski)

Steve was built solid and hard, but he wasn't tall. Still, he acted with a meanness often enough to make you wary. When he was in the ninth grade, he got into a fight with a fellow over something that I can't remember. But it was a big deal and the fight was going to take place at an elementary school playground late in the afternoon. We all went expecting  a slaughter, for the fellow Steve was fighting wasn't considered very tough. In fact, I considered him a bit of a sissy. He was a quiet kid who joined clubs and "swelled the crowd" as it were, but he wasn't anyone that I could imagine just popping into somebody's head or whose name would enter into a normal conversation. And that is what made this fight so surprising. At least at first.

I showed up with the usual bunch of school hoodlums, everybody acting like they were going to the circus or the fair, laughing and jumping and fake punching each other in anticipation. Steve was walking a little in front of me smoking a cigarette seeming a little serious, and I wondered at that. Past the houses and through the streets, we made our way, the crowd growing larger with every block.  When we finally reached the school playground, no one was there.  Then across the yard, Steve's antagonist crawled out of the passengers side of a lone car and stood looking across the distance. Then the driver's door opened, and his father got out. There was immediate confusion as a collective "What the hell" gasp emerged from the crowd, the father and son walking straight over without saying a word.  Then the father said, "This is going to be a fair fight. Nobody is going to interfere." I could feel some of the older fellows bridle at this, but everyone remained quiet. Until they squared off.

"Kill him," a lone voice cried and then the din went up as Steve charged in, but his punches were flailing ones and just weren't connecting. His antagonist boxed rather than fought, and he just kept moving and blocking punches and throwing his own stinging little jabs. You could see he'd practiced his footwork.  By now, Steve was frustrated, embarrassed, and probably a little bit afraid as he stepped in and caught a good solid right to his cheek that made what was becoming the familiar crunching sound of bone on bone. A good sized mouse immediately sprung up tall and blue under his left eye.  Steve stepped back and touched the mouse, then with a wild scream of hideous frustration, he charged in trying to take his antagonist off his feet.  But the fellow grabbed Steve's hair and didn't go down. He didn't let go, either, and he started swinging Steve around by his long blonde hair, his father getting excited now and uttering his own cheer of encouragement.  We could hear the crackling tear of the hair being yanked out by its roots and the involuntary cry of pain falling from Steve's lips. Then suddenly Steve was free. By now, hoodlum frustration was palpablel and some of the tougher guys were hot to give the fellow a real beating. You could smell the rise in testosterone. Fists were smashing at the air.

"You fucking sissy, you can't pull hair. C'mon you sonofabitch!"

That was when the father stepped in and broke it up. He said, "OK, the fight's over," and he put his arm around his son's shoulder and walked him back across the field to the car. I don't think the boy had been seriously hit.

And then the jeering began as everyone tried make sense of what had just happened, foul epithets following the two slowly retreating backs of victory  Neither of them turned to look. 

Then everyone turned their to Steve, his face swollen, a chunk of hair missing from his head, a small trickle of blood issuing from one nostril.   He looked as if he might cry. Somebody handed him a cigarette.

"That fucking punk. Everybody knows why his father stopped the fight. You would have killed him."

But Steve was winded and the truth is it might have gotten much worse for him. He didn't say anything. He just turned and began walking in the direction of his house.

Steve was different after that, meaner in some ways, but defeated, too. At school, some of the other kids who would dominate the yearbook laughed at him and some of them called him out. There was more to come, but I think this was the tipping point, the impetus for Steve's eventual downward spiral.  There is something about a public thumping that can make the bitter mean turn strange.  

Full Snow Moon

Tonight is the Full Snow Moon. Or Wolf Moon. Or Hunger Moon. Depends on who you are or what you prefer, I guess. Coldest moon of the year. Symbolically, I assume. A time when the summer's food is running low and hunting is most difficult. Not here. Migratory birds have come by the billions. Fishes swim the sea. I haven't guts to check my horoscope. Gave that up a long time ago. A full moon birthday. Monday, no less.

Here is an image I stumbled upon today, unremembered, lost. I have been working in the studio on encaustic projects. I made the first one I've liked yesterday. I figure with rent it has only cost me about $900. I'll sell it for $1,000 if anybody wants it. But it gives me some ideas and some confidence that I can do more. With time. And luck.

As Bukowski said, "The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over The Hills."

Ham Bone

When Eddie moved to town, everything was different. Room had to be made. Eddie came from Georgia and was a juggernaut. He was as big and thick as my father and had smiling eyes that were a warning and a deception. Everything about Eddie seemed happy, but you knew right away that he wasn't. He smiled and smiled and then--Kaboom!--everything went haywire. Eddie was simply crazy.

One Saturday, I was hanging around the shopping center playing pinball and smoking cigarettes when Eddie showed up. Everybody said hi to him, but you could tell that people liked to keep their distance and by ones and twos they began to drift off so that by the time I was ready to leave, Eddie said he'd walk with me. It was one of those southern spring days that surprise you with its heat coming suddenly before you are ready for it, not the heat of summer but hot nonetheless, and as we walked, Eddie began to sweat. He was older than I and about a foot thicker. He was a good athlete by dint of his size and power, but he moved heavily with effort as we crossed the sandy field of sandspurs and weeds that had begun to fill the empty spaces. Walking with Eddie, you had to go at his pace, and every once in awhile he would just stop to tell you something, and you had to stop, too. He'd stand there and smile that big awful smile that was full of anger and tell you something weird about "back home" which sounded to me like some distant planet with different mores and customs that made little sense here. You could hear all those red clay hills in his thick, syrupy voice.

So we walked and stopped, walked and stopped, me going a different way home, somewhere between our different paths, hoping to part ways soon, when suddenly he stopped and said:

"Man, I wish I had me a big old watermelon right now. I'd core it and fuck it right here."

My knees rather buckled. I couldn't believe what he had just said. He went on to say they did it all the time back home in the summer. I couldn't get my mind around any of it. I was still ashamed that I had learned to masturbate, and here was this big brute of a boy with his criminal smile telling me he wanted to fuck a watermelon. I knew I could never tell anybody he said this, not even my closest friends. It was just too dangerous.

One night, I had gone to a party at a girl's house I knew from school. It was a warm night and all the kids were hanging around outside drinking punch that her mother had made in a big bowl, everyone excited and chatting with the usual teenage explosions of laughter over goofy things. There were kids in my grade and some kids a little older there, too, but things were going along fine until Eddie showed up. I had never seen Eddie in a social situation since we went to different schools, so it was a surprise to me to see him in a madras shirt tucked into a pair of khaki pants with a leather belt and matching shoes. I was standing with Jimmy T when Eddie saw me. As soon as Eddie showed up, Jimmy started getting nervous because there was something between him and a girl that Eddie liked. "Hey," Eddie said to me, but he was looking at Jimmy. "Listen, let's start a band." I didn't know what to say. I couldn't imagine that we liked the same kind of music. I couldn't imagine him being moved by music at all, really. "Well, I'd like to hear what you play. . . " but I didn't get to finish before Eddie snapped, "You think I have to try out to play with YOU?" I stammered out something incomprehensible, but Eddie had already turned his back to talk to somebody else.

I had to admire Jimmy for staying at the party, for I know I would have already slipped away into the night, but he just stayed and talked distractedly in that far away voice with a worried look on his face. He didn't have long to wait. Eddie was standing near with his back to Jimmy talking with a group of kids who laughed nervously at what Eddie was saying, but I noticed the distance they kept from him. Nobody, it seemed, wanted to get within an arm's reach. And then, in one of the slickest moves I had ever seen, Eddie just turned around and tossed his drink onto Jimmy's chest, still with that big, easy smile. Nothing ever worried Eddie. "Oh, man, I'm sorry," he said, staring Jimmy down with those maniac eyes.

"OK," Jimmy said, "lets get this over with." I couldn't believe it. Although Eddie and Jimmy were the same age, Eddie was a couple of inches taller and about twice as thick, his neck equal to one of Jimmy's legs. But Jimmy walked across the street to an empty lot with everyone in tow, lastly Eddie who was in no hurry at all. He walked across the street talking and smiling, stopping along the way as he always did. The fight itself was like an old fashioned duel, Jimmy standing and waiting for Eddie to approach. And when he did, Jimmy put up his hands in a classic boxing pose and Eddie raised his fists. Quickly, Jimmy threw a couple of jabs that missed by a foot and took a step back. Eddie, patient, just kept moving forward, smiling, never throwing a punch. There was nothing for Jimmy to do but jab again, and again, too scared to get nearly close enough to have a prayer. But somehow there in the dark lit by the spring stars and moonlight, Eddie moved his arm. It was just a jab and not all that quick, but when that hambone fist connected with Jimmy's jaw, you could hear the bone crack. Jimmy was taken off his feet by that punch and he flew through the air like he'd been hit by a car. He was down, his back flat against the sandy ground, his eyes rolled back in his head. And that was it, just the one punch. And then the the mother, the hostess of the party, was calling everyone back inside and people began to drift away. Eddie didn't say anything at all to anyone but the fellows he showed up with, and then they were gone into the night.

And that was Eddie, and that was Georgia for me forever, a land of ham boned brutes without sympathy or moral restrictions. Eventually, Eddie got into trouble and was gone. Years later, I heard that he found Jesus and became a minister. It was horrible to imagine.

Addie: Pt. 2

We walked to the high school through the sunset dusk of deep purples and fading reds, the air cooling and sweet with promise. Mike surprised me by smoking a cigarette as we walked, something I'd never associated with his "type" before. But there was a lot I didn't know. Approaching the gym, we could hear the crowd as it cheered for what must have been the end of the junior varsity game. The din and the bright lights that flooded the crowd of screaming students and parents and teachers seemed alien and dangerous to me. This was not my school. I could feel my adrenaline begin to kick in.

Inside, Mike looked around, then he tugged at my arm and said, "Come on." And there they were, Mike's girl and Addie, I guessed, for they were looking our way and waving. I didn't know which was which, but one of them was a killer. They both wore short skirts that gave them trouble if they worried about it which they didn't seem of a mind to do, but the darker one did not seem to belong. I mean, she didn't look like everyone else or anyone else that I had ever seen in person. Her hair was cut short, longer on one side than the other, and her eyes. . . well I can think of nothing but cliches, for they were, each and every one of them, true. . . they were the most brilliant eyes I had ever seen. She looked at me and smiled without smiling, the whiteness of her teeth just showing. Everything about her was vivid, more detailed and more refined than the rest of us, like the glossy photographs I'd seen of movie stars. This was Addie.

They made room for us, and Mike and I joined them on the flat wooden planked bleacher a few rows from the floor. I hadn't any idea really what to do. Nothing in my life had prepared me for this. I was socially inept at best and did not know how to make small talk with someone of her ilk. Mike hunched close to his girl on the far side and began to tell her things that made her giggle. Addie turned to me. I think it was at that very moment that some hormone began working that hadn't been present before. I could feel a dangerous change, but it may have simply been the first flair up of acne. Suddenly, though, I longed for the vocabulary I had never developed, craved some social repose. My nose and teeth felt huge, my feet gigantic. I was a sideshow freak, a misshapen retard escaped from home. But she seemed not to notice. What words passed between us I can't recall. I'm sure it was the usual talk of teenagers in public, who knows who and what are your favorite things and do you like this band. What I do remember is the regal way she looked around so slowly, that subtle smile barely gracing her lips, one hand delicately touching her forearm. She was of a medium height and did not look older than her age but was, somehow, the furthest extension of it.

Before long, the game was over and the crowd began to shift, and Mike said, "Hey, let's go over to the Burger Boy and get something to eat," and we joined the line of people heading for the exit. And just as we stood, I felt a violent jarring from behind, a purposeful bump that moved me on my feet. I turned around to see a sneering older boy, taller than I and thicker, a group of fellows bunched around him. "What's the matter?" he shouted. I didn't know. I turned back around and it happened again. I knew this was bad. I knew I was in trouble. I didn't turn around this time but walked on behind Addie, listening to the laughing taunts behind me. I didn't know what it was about, but I did. I was a new boy, and I was with Addie.

Somehow we snuck through the night without incident, my heart racing in my chest with expectation and fear, but soon we were seated in plastic chairs beside a big plate glass window looking out across a parking lot, eating onion rings and cheeseburgers and thick chocolate shakes, and the conversation shifted as Addie and Mike and his girlfriend talked about things they knew, me sitting all the while like a country cousin watching them with a dopey grin meant to disguise my anxiety. They had done this before. They were practiced. Their lives had been full of meals and conversation. They owned a social grace I had been shut out from, then avoided. But nothing had really gone wrong, I thought, and perhaps I would make it through without discovery. Maybe everything would work out after all.

But it didn't. When we had finished eating and had stepped outside, there was a group of boys hanging around. They were older boys from the high school, and I kind of knew one of them who was a friend of Steve's, but not very well. And as we stood waiting for Mike's girlfriend's mother to come and pick the girls up, a thick fellow with coal black hair noticed us and made his beeline. Quickly, he made it known that he didn't like the way I looked, that he didn't like me hanging around here, that he just didn't like me at all. That was OK with me, but he wasn't going to leave it alone. Mike and the girls had retreated a few steps so that I was isolated with the Blacky in the middle of a ring. I could feel the stares and though I didn't turn, I could feel Addie looking too. And it was that, I think, that made my decision, for I would rather have taken a beating than have crumbled in front of her, so I said, "You want to fight?" Standing next to Blacky was Steve's friend, and he whispered something in Blacky's ear. "Do you?" Blacky responded. I felt something there, some chance or opportunity that I couldn't name as I said, "I do if you do." I was moving off toward the woods in back of the Burger Boy, for if I was going to take a beating, I didn't want people to see it, didn't want them to see me cry for mercy or worse, to see me run. But Blacky was less certain than he had been, and then he said, "Look man, I was just kidding. Don't get so serious." And with that, everything changed. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe my luck. There, in a matter of minutes, I had gone from goof to hero. I could see it in Addie's very clear eyes.

Shortly, a car pulled up driven by a June Cleaver look alike, and the girls were smiling and climbing into the car and waving goodbye. "Call me," Addie said as they were pulling away.

"Let's get out of here," I said to Mike, not wishing to risk anything else, but just then, Steve's friend came up.

"You know why he didn't want to fight," he asked me. I shook my head with uncertainty.

"I asked him if he knew who your father was." I just looked at him, wondering what he meant by that.

"I told him your father was a famous karate instructor and that you could take his heart out of his chest and show it to him before he died." And he began laughing with cleverness like a favorite uncle.

I don't know why he did that, but I knew I wouldn't forget it. Things might work out, I thought, though I knew in my heart that it had only been luck and that it could cut both ways.

Addie

My crowd was not getting socialized in the same way that other kids were. We were outsiders and didn't participate in school activities except to subvert them. Other kids from families with expectations joined school clubs and other organizations. They dressed better and adopted mannerisms and linguistic styles that identified them one to the other. It was the conformity that I could not stand, that and all other forms of subservience. But having played on the school baseball team made me more acceptable, I guess. Somewhat.

One day, Mike, one of the boys all the girls thought was cute, told me that his girlfriend's friend liked me. Her name was Addie. He said that I should come with him on Friday and we would meet them at the basketball game. I could stay over at his house for the night. Mike was one of "them," but he was cool, too, and though I was nervous, I said sure.

Before Friday, I got a call. It was Mike's girlfriend telling me that Addie liked me. Addie. I had never seen her before and was uncertain about the whole affair, but when Mike's girl asked me if I wanted to talk to her, I said yes.

"Hello," she said. Is this you?" Her voice was not like other girls I knew. It didn't lilt but sang some slow melody I hadn't heard before. It vibrated low in my belly. "I can't wait to meet you. Mike showed me a picture of you. You're cute."

"Mike has a picture of me?" I thought that was odd.

"No, he showed me your picture in the yearbook."

"Oh, I don't think I look like that now. I had to get my hair cut for baseball."

"Well, I can't wait for Friday. What do you want me to wear?"

I had never been asked such a question before. I didn't know any of this. It was like a Doris Day movie, I thought, but I wasn't even Tony Randall.

"Are you listening to the radio?" she asked me.

"Yes."

"Do you hear that song? That's my favorite."

Spooky. That was the name of the song, and suddenly it was my favorite, too.

(no time to finish. to be continued. . . I think)

Dissidents and Miscreants

Our baseball team was a good one, but there was discord. Our star pitcher was the tallest athlete in the county and had some peculiar talents. I mean, he wasn't particularly athletic, but because he had such a tremendous wingspan, he could throw a fast ball that most people couldn't touch. But he didn't like playing baseball, preferring basketball instead. During the baseball season, he had wanted to quit the team to play in a basketball league, but our coach talked to his parents and that was that. One day, though, he showed up with a broken finger he had gotten playing basketball. Coach was beside himself. Over the course of the next week, they fashioned a splint that would still allow him to throw the ball. Jon, the second tallest fellow on our team and the first baseman, was beside himself, and one day he fell apart in practice, crying and accusing the coach of all sorts of things including favoritism. I'd never seen anything like this before, a direct and confrontational challenge to hierarchical authority. It was true. It was cool. After that, though, there was much discord on the team. We were too talented to lose games, however, and we won the County Championship. It was a lesson well learned, I thought. Blind obedience did not necessarily make a champion.

Baseball season over, I had hours to fill. Some of the boys had started lifting weights and bodies began to harden. And this led new arrangements in the male chain of command. There were challenges and fights, and some of the outcomes were surprising. One of the scariest fellows was the shortest. Doug's father was a drunk who used to terrorize the family, and Doug was learning to fight hard on those awful nights. He wanted to be a Hell's Angel, he said, and indeed after quitting high school, he bought a Harley Davidson and got his wish. I associated with Doug and some other boys who one day decided to turn on me. It wasn't overt, just subtle jabs and jibes that were intended to put me at the end of the line. I didn't feel any real affection for these fellow who were mostly miscreants of one type or another, so it was simply a matter of not hanging with them any more. That, however, was a logic with an inherent flaw, for when I did see them at school, the taunting began to get worse. One day walking home from school, it got to be too much for me. For the first time in my life, my blood had risen hot and nasty. Sure, it was fear and frustration, but it was anger, too, and, perhaps, my own raging hormones.

"Let's go, asshole," I said to Doug since I knew it would be him I would have to fight anyway.

He was taken by surprise as bullies so often are, the shock of it suddenly showing in his normally sleepy eyes.

"Go where?" he laughed.

"Let's fight. I'm tired of you. You think you're tough, let's find out right now."

His buddies stood waiting, looking at him, waiting for their villain to step up. But there was only the pause that accompanies uncertainty. His eyes were searching.

"No, I don't want to fight you," he said. His friends were disappointed. Worse. But I was finished. I was gone.

A few weeks later, I heard a story that I'm certain was true. And it was the undoing of that little group and its brush with power. There was a short man with thick glasses who owned the house next to the Boy's Club of America. His house had a pool, and he would lounge about it watching the boys through the fence. He was what we knew then as "a queer." Everyone knew it, and it was a joke. But Doug and his consorts had somehow gotten to know him, and he would buy them beer. One night, they were at his house drinking and swimming and then everyone was naked. And something happened to Doug while he lay on the deck in a half sleep, pretending, the other fellows said, that he had passed out. And that news spread like wildfire through the school. How the the little man with the thick glasses survived all that, I don't have a clue. But Doug didn't so well, and with that, he became invisible, choosing some other life, I guess, further from the public eye.

Random Events

As I try to recall it all, the events during that ninth grade year seem random. I don't know the order in which they occurred. That is the way of memory. I had an English teacher who seemed smarter than the rest, but that may have been the result of her teaching us literature. She smoked cigarettes and drank coffee. We knew that from getting close to her. And she did get close in a rather intimate way when she talked to you. She would come up behind you at your desk and lean over to look at your paper so that her breasts were pushed against your back, and she would speak in a low, hoarsey whisper close to your ear meant not to disturb others. But disturb it did. She wasn't young but middle-aged, and there seemed a world-weariness about her that was profound. She was divorced, we knew that, and she lived alone in a house close to the school. Herbie had been over there, he said in a conspiratorial way that was meant to convey the unsaid. He was writing a book along the lines of "The Prophet," a personal search for meaning and she was helping him. She had spoken of Herbie's writing in class, so it had legitimacy. It worried me, though, Herbie's writing and the relationship he had with the teacher and simply the fact that he went to her house. I felt as if I were falling behind in some way, growing up wrong or not at all. I knew I could not write anything personal or poetic, and I did not know how to get invited to the teacher's home. Still, when she looked at me, I felt she was searching my eyes for something, some spark of life or meaning that I was unprepared to give her. Each day, I looked forward to her class, but afterward I always felt undone.

There was another English teacher, Miss Bloodworst, who was was very overweight and not at all attractive but whom, it was said, was pleasuring the fellows that came to her home. It was an apartment rather than a house, which made her seem something strange and exotic in our lives, but I couldn't imagine why anybody would bother with her. I didn't like to think about it.

Winter passed with its gray coldness, and with Spring some energy returned. I decided to try out for the baseball team though I had not played baseball for two years since that championship game we lost because of my hesitation. I began throwing and fielding balls with Allen and was surprised at how bad I had gotten. His father would throw to us for batting practice, and I was a bit embarrassed. During tryouts, though, I did well, and when the list of those chosen was posted, my name was there. That didn't settle well with some of the others who had not fared as well.

"Why in the fuck did they pick you," Jack spat. His face was screwed up with pain and rage, and I could tell he wanted to fight which surprised me some since he really wasn't what I considered a tough kid.

"I don't know. I guess I did well."

"Well coach told me that he didn't pick me because I wouldn't have been happy sitting the bench." That seemed to give him some satisfaction.

"Well good for you," I said and walked away stung by his comments.

But for the while I would be an athlete again with kids from my own class. It was a tonic against the other world that swirled around me, the drinking and drugs and brainless violence.  

Playing Hooky

It seemed a mad violence lay all about me in a world from which I was willing to retreat. It was difficult, however, for even at home there was fighting. The relationship between my mother and father had strained to its breaking point. They fought, and if they didn't, there was the smoldering, barely repressed resentment underlying their every word and deed. I was happiest when everyone was gone. I was happiest alone.

Now reading was shaping my internal world. I couldn't find the rich things I read about in the barren landscape about me, but I knew that somewhere beyond the invisible barriers that held me in this mean, hillbilly life was something richer, fuller.  I'd read it. It had to be true.

I took solace in the gray days of winter when things were still. Quiet days alone in the house when I would stay home from school were always the best. I had learned to keep the note my mother wrote on the days she knew I stayed home in order to use it on the days when I skipped.  If the school secretary called, I would just tell my mother I had lost the note. They were never dated.  Skipping was a heart-racing deviance. Both my parents went to work before I left the house, so on those mornings I would get up and dress and wait for them to leave, then I would turn on the T.V. and watch the "Dialing for Dollars" movie with Russ Wheeler who would randomly choose phone numbers from the telephone book and call to see if the person was watching and knew "the count and the amount" that were randomly selected by spinning a large Las Vegas-styled wheel. It was embarrassing, even for a delinquent, for hardly anyone he called was viewing the show. But it was thrilling, too, and intimate, knowing I was watching T.V. with a handful of stay at home housewives when I should have been suffering through my math class. And after the movie there were reruns, "Andy Griffeth" and "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Dick Van Dyke" and "Bewitched" and then "That Girl." After this, there was nothing but soap operas, so I would turn the TV off and steal one of my father's cigarettes and go outside and smoke. I would be hungry then and have to steal food from the back of the pantry shelf so my mother wouldn't notice. The shelves were lined with nothing but Spam and Vienna Sausages and Potted Meat, and even at that age, I knew instinctively that those things were poison, but what could I do? I would make a can of Campbell's Soup and put the faux meat on pieces of white bread and try to scavenge something else from the fridge.  All there was to drink was that hideous Tab sitting next to cans of Metracal, for my mother was on a perpetual diet. Such things, I thought, were the bane of my existence, a phrase I had picked up somewhere recently.

After lunch, I would read through the afternoon until it was time for "The Merv Griffin Show," where I could watch all the Borscht Belt comedians and absorb that great Jewish angst and gain knowledge of an absurd universe, the sharp humor subtly recruiting me into an unspoken conspiracy of subversion.

But all too soon, my parents would come home from work and I would be plunged once again into mundane life, the omnipresent unhappiness and the threat of worse. What would save me, I wondered. And when.

Ground Hog Day

P. Phil saw his shadow. More winter. For animals it means getting leaner. Not me. I will eat and drink and grow rotund. And like the movie, one day will seem so much like another. . . but I won't get it right. I will go to work on this gray, damp day and take the daily beating. How long, oh lord, how long.

On another note, I watched the Super Bowl last night. It was the first game I have watched all year. It was a good game, all and all, but I was surprised by how grim it all is. There seemed little joy in any of it, only disappointment and relief.

But maybe that is me.

Gary Isaac

I stumbled upon a flicr site today that has unnerved me. It belongs to Gary Isaac. I am loathe to send you there. You will love it, sure, but it makes my paltry work. . . well, paltry. I was sick with envy as I looked through his images and read his stories. There is no mania there but for good work. I tell myself now is the time to quit it, to slow down and post only when I have everything right. But then again, I might never post.

I will leave it at that. Follow the link. You will spend time there.