Originally Posted Monday, February 10, 2014
Ugh.
I was eleven the night that the Beatles were introduced to America on "The Ed Sullivan Show." It was my birthday. I had anticipated this performance for weeks. Radio D.J.s had been hyping the moment. There were many strange reports about the way they looked, ragged "mop tops" with strange hair who had all the girls in Europe yearning. I expected to see fellows who looked like roaches, but that would have to wait a few weeks until The Rolling Stones came to the show. There had never been anything like it. It wasn't long before I had a guitar and drums and was in a band. One day at school, my hair was falling into my eyes as it had done probably every day before, but the lunchroom lady had to say in her derisive manner, "What are you, a Beatle?" "Yes," I said. "I'm a Beatle." It was irrevocable.
Last night, they celebrated my birthday once again with a Beatle's tribute on television. I am not a nostalgic person. In fact, I am anti-nostalgia. I learned about the tribute this morning reading the N.Y. Times. It was a good review, I think, as much as I can tell as one who did not see the performances. The reviewer said that they pretty much sucked, but that the songs by Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney were just as lively as they ever were. That was good to read. I like old Beatle songs. I like them for the music, not for memories of the past. They sound good and hold up well, I think. But they are made awful by tributes and the false memories of aging fans.
If I'd thought about it, though, I would have gotten out my guitar and played my own tribute--without nostalgia--trying to mimic those golden throated notes I can never make right and then switching to my best Dylan. I'd love to hear Dylan do the Beatles.
The day was spent as most of my Sundays are. I didn't break routine, waking early, doing what I do then taking a long walk before brunch with my friend. There I did a bad thing that I have been regretting since. The bar was crowded, so I grabbed a cafe table just in front of it. As I was waiting for my buddy to show up, another fellow I know came over and we began to chat. A fellow I didn't know came over and asked if I minded him using the other side of the table to hold his beer. Told him I didn't, but my friend would be here any moment. Eventually there were five of us there, and the fellow we didn't know turned out to be from Scotland. There was something odd about him, and eventually he started talking about Americans and guns. My buddy is a gun nut and they began what seemed a friendly disagreement, but the Scott went all nationalistic about a gun not doing my buddy any good in Scotland as the Real Men there would simply disarm him and kick his ass. That is where I joined in. I don't have a gun and don't like them and am in favor of outlawing them, but his comments to me seemed more about manliness than guns, so I said, "I don't know, but I'll bet I could cap your ass before you got to me to take the gun away." We were staring at one another, the Scott and I, but my buddy interrupted me to make his more adamant point about guns. The other fellows at the table were obviously annoyed by the guy, but the conversation would change subjects for a minute and then the Scott would start up again about Real Men. They didn't need guns, he said.
"Do you have prisons in Scotland?" I asked him. He looked at me funny. "Who get to be the real men in prison?" I asked him.
"They are all real men," he said with pride.
"I know," I said, "but who gets to be the husbands and who gets to be the wives?" He looked at me confused then. "I mean, somebody's got to be taking it up the ass."
And he said, "The Americans are taking it up the ass."
I'm not for guns. I'm not against butt sex. I'm not against Scots. I'm a fucking hippie. So I don't know why I did it, why I'm always doing stupid shit like this. I think I make myself. I do it all the time and one day soon I will pay for a lifetime of it. But just then, I stood up, took a step and said, "Try it, motherfucker."
And just like that, I was the nut job. Later after brunch was finished, my friend said, "I didn't think you were going to go off so fast. I thought you'd just keep talking and make him get crazy."
Surely it was because of the day. Time's winged chariot and all that. It's making me bitter, maybe.
I'm better off alone.
The afternoon was beautiful with cloudless high skies and temperatures in the low seventies. I wanted to be as beautiful as that day in some impossible way.
And later, as the sun began its descent, I went to eat dinner at my mother's. We don't celebrated very well being hillbilly's and all. There was a quiet hollowness that surrounded things. I've never liked birthdays and have always wondered that so many people were happy to be born. But it is mostly well-to-do republicans who like it, in my experience, homecoming kings and queens and their attending socialites. My mother grew up poor in rural Ohio during the depression.
"I don't remember anyone ever celebrating a birthday," she said. "I can't remember anyone saying 'happy birthday' at all." She's probably right. I had one attempt at a birthday party when I was a kid, and I told everyone at school the wrong day. The boys in the neighborhood came over. At school on Monday, I learned that everyone else came on Saturday. We were gone.
Now I am older again and do not feel like going to work. I've decided not to. The day is a carbon copy of yesterday. I have things I must do that I didn't do when I took off Friday. I will try to do at least one or two of them today. I am not in the right frame of mind to deal with people and would probably perform something regretful or irrevocable if I did go into the factory.
I should try to be as happy as Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, but I feel more like Harrison and Lenin (shit--I meant Lennon, but either will do).
"And all before us lie,
Deserts of vast eternity."
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