TRUE STORY

My old man goes by Christmo also. It's like if Cher went by Bono. Or Bono went by whatever his last name is. The eldest son always sports the singular last name. My mother's name is Star. Here's their phone message, delivered in my father's deep baritone: "HI, THIS IS CHRISTMO. STAR AND I CAN'T GET TO THE PHONE. BUT IF YOU LEAVE A MESSAGE WE'LL GET BACK TO YOU. YOU HAVE A NICE DAY." BEEP! My little brother Duke is a pro at using the phone message as a venue for self expression. He lives in the backwoods of Maine, has no electricity, computer, nor TV. The phone recorder is his instrument of entertainment. I called the other day and got his lastest. In a perfect fake baritone he delivered a note for note mimic of the old man's message complete with very sincere- "YOU HAVE A NICE DAY.'
This morning he called to check up before i hit the road. He asked if I liked the message? I told him to hang up and call me back and I'd let my machine pick up. Inspired by his mimicry I'd done the same. 'HI, THIS IS CHRISTMO. PARIS AND NICOLE AND I CAN'T GET TO THE PHONE. BUT IF YOU LEAVE....' He approved of my rendition. I knew he didn't have a computer so i gave him the catchup on the blog. What with Ophrah's recent declaration concerning truth, I told him how I was trying not to be caught in any lies. He'd never heard the story about Friendly informing me from the tattooist's chair what she was about to get carved in her little tree. "Did she get it?" he asked. I said no. But then I thought back. My eyes had gotten progressively worse in those years. Up close things were always really blurry. Hmmmm? Maybe she had gotten the mark of the beast and I just couldn't see it. Who wears reading glasses down there? So to be completely honest I can't say whether or not Friendly has that 666 tattooed or not. I'd have to check and I don't think I'll be invited down there any time soon.
When I heard Duke's message I immediately called my mother and told her to dial Duke up. Five minutes later she called me back. In a perfect deadpan she said "What's funny about that?" YOU HAVE A NICE DAY NOW.

XTRA PULP

I forgot I had begun telling you about my post divorce affair with Friendly in Y2k. Friendly's one of those women who doesn't have a lot of close women friends. Other women are threatened by her, unjustifiably so. A friend once summed her up as the perfect blend of complete dysfunction and nurturing big hearted soul. It was all wrapped up in a smolderingly sexual package that she pretended not to know existed. No one bought that act. Hence the jealousy and mistrust of other women. The Nazi hotpants didn't help her case.
After the motel painting we started the full on married woman affair. The triangle dance began. I told her to own up to hubby. She said she would. She lied. I bought it. After a while I just accepted that she was dealing with her husband in her own way. Me too. I was still working at the Dakota. I used to snag her Lauren Bacall's thrown out Vogue and Variety. When we could pull it off I'd arrange for a conjugal visit in one of the apartments we were renovating. The other laborers would take an hour while Friendly and I caught up. Bar bathrooms, empty apartments, Taxi cab backseats, and of couse my car were favortite spots. If I didn't throw my back out I was good to go. On great occasions she would take the bus to the Catskills or we'd get a room at the Gramacy.
The limitations of such a relationship are apparent. Add to this she and hubby were wanabe priest and priestess in Santeria, with a real Dominican one living downstairs, both had chippy dope habits and hubby had just inherited a big chunk of change from a lawsuit and you can see the potential for this as literary fodder. OK, maybe literary is pushing it. But Friendly definitely amped up the slease factor in my life. She once called me telling me how she was about to get 666 tattooed on her labia and did I mind? Hell, I'd been married and living in the sticks for 7 years with Mrs. Yummy. I hadn't written a song in all that time. With Friendly at least the poetic juices started flowing again....thick with pulp. And yes I do mind.

AM I DIVORCED YET?

A little recap- I've just gotten married for the first time to Luscious and we are living in Woodstock, planning to move to the West Coast. It's 1975. Honey and I are visiting my folks in Ct. and I've just passed out at the sight of my own blood. It's 1981. Yummy and I have just been married and we're looking for land in PA. It's 1993. In my memory Sweets and I have broken up for the last time- 1972. In the present day we've started sending email back and forth. I'm leaving a week from Monday on a trip south where I'll visit her. No, I'm not divorced yet in the narrative, but it's coming.

POPI ON THE BLOCK

My Spanish is limited to Cafe con leche, por favor- coffee with milk, please and Donde esta bano?- where's the bathroom. But I've lived in latin neighborhoods- Ave. C and SF's Mission district. I have Cuban, Columbian, and Salvadoran close friends and I like mariachi music. For some reason I find kindred souls in the " little brown ones" to the sud. When I did the good deed of bringing attention to the drugs dropped by the kid on the bike word spread. Within a short period of time I was getting respectful nods and "Hola Popi" more and more. These were my last days of living in the EV.
Out on the street I was greeted warmly but in my own building it was a different story. The evil crackhead twin and her boyfriend/pimp were cranking up the music and smacking each other around in the hall at an increasing rate. A loaded 12 gauge leaned against the wall I shared with my neighbors. It was the one and only time in my life I felt it necessary to keep a loaded shotgun in the house. Then I smelled smoke. Two times over a six month period they set the place on fire. They just put blankets up over the smashed out windows and continued unperturbed. The cops did nothing to remove them. The landlord did nothing. I just argued with them. After a year they had won. I started looking for a place in the country.
Yummy was now Mrs. Yummy. I switched bar jobs, cracked a rib removing a drunk, quit and found a high end steady carpentry job at the Dakota apartment building. The Dakota is where John Lennon was killed and Rosemary's Baby was filmed by Roman Polanski after Sharon Tate was killed by Charlie Mason's cult of followers. I guess if you were to work at a place with a bizarre history and celebrity residents, this was a good one. Yoko lived there, as did Lauren Bacall and Connie Chung and Maury Povich. Friendly split and I wouldn't lay eyes on her for nine years. We saved our penneys and looked for a place outside of the city. Our first stop was Austin PA- the Slab compound.

THE GREAT ECSTASY OF THE HAMASTINIANS

The TV in the car dealership was tuned to CNN and I was the only one in the room for the entire morning. After a couple of cups of bad coffee I just sat there zonng out on the talking heads. Two things of major import were happening in the world. The first was the election of Hamas as the party of choice in Gaza. Young men with AKs and yellow flags- the Fatah party, besieged Pres. Abbas' house in Gaza city in a chaotic dance of gunfire, car burning and flag waving. There was good footage of the mess and a voice over by a Brit reporter. The woman back in CNN land kept feigning concern over the reporter's safety on the street. He was getting pissed over her insipid concern. He knew just how hollow it was.
The other big news event was Ophrah looking all serious at the camera apologizing for calling Larry King and standing behind James Frey's fake memoir. Cut away to Frey and Ophrah on the couch. Ophrah is pissed and Frey looks like he's just been called into the principle's office. Then back to CNN where the scary looking anchorwoman informs me that when Ophrah hyped the book it "flew" off the shelves and now that we found out it's fake, sales got even hotter. Now back to Gaza.
Fatah- yellow. Hamas- green. Fatah- corrupt losers. Hamas- suicide bombing winners. Everybody's got guns and beards and no job. My advice to Fatah is stop shooting in the air. Save that ammo boys. You may need it. The woman in the dealership comes in and sits down in the chair next to me, like she's going to give me very bad news. Brakes- shot. Valve cover- leaks. Needs a tune up. "You don't have anything to do this morning." she jokes and disappears. Ophrah comes back. It's the same clip. She apologizes again. Frey looks shell shocked. His bank account is swelling by the minute.
More minivans are set on fire. Once in a while a young boy jumps up, grins and gives the camera a victory sign. The green flags wave calmly. The yellow flags jerk and drop and stab at doors and windows and air conditioners. Car salesmen wander by and make more coffee. Not a soul comes in for a car all morning long. I remember this is the same dealership where somebody came in a couple of years back and killed a couple of people. I can't remember what it was all about. I think somebody was screwing somebody else's wife. I'm glad I left the nine at home. No sense in making anyone nervous.
It takes all morning to get my car in shape. It purrs as I head home, and stops on a dime. I reflect on the day's news. Democracy works. What the Soviets couldn't accomplish in Latin America, democratic elections has. Peru, Venezula, Chile....Mexico? And now Iraq and the Palestinians are getting on that democratic freedom train. Ophrah's sorry, as she should be. Frey's contrite and rich as a sultan. When the CNN reporter asks for the umpteenth time about the reporter's safety, he drops the phone. "We seem to have lost ________. While we try to reestablish our connection lets go back to Ophrah." JIHAD!

CALL ME SMOKEY

I wasn't really paying attention the first time he said this. I was still reeling from the haircut my neices had given me. "You hear me?" I nodded absent mindedly turning from side to side in front of the mirror checking the new do. "From now on you can call me Smokey." He was looming over my shoulder in the mirror, making eye contact with my reflection. I stopped preening and turned to face Shorty. "You want me to call you what?"
"Smokey."
"Ok. I'll play along. Why?"
He turned away and mumbled under his breath, "Just do it."
My big little brother had suffered from persistent headaches for years. I figured this was it. Finally something had shorted out in there and this name change was the precursor to something bad. He skulked away. It reminded me of a time years before when he spun this long elaborate tale of of pulling a gun on a guy in a bar and one of his cop buddies had to come to his aid and quiet the situation before somebody got killed. I gave him a stern lecture over doing such crazy shit and talked to his wife with brotherly concern. She just laughed it off, saying he was making it all up. If he was making it up, he should be the one sitting at the Selectric.
No one else in the family was even keeping track of this back and forth between us. I told Duke about Shorty's request and he just shrugged. "Guess you better call him Smokey then." Duke advised. Duke had a way better dynamic with Shorty...sorry..... "Smokey". The day after xmas I came home. I said goodbye to everyone and when I shook Smokey's hand I winked and called him Smokey. He smiled as if to say, there, that's better. For now we're going to leave him standing there. I can't deal with him right now. The shit's too deep and menacing. Better to just revisit the exs. Let Smokey be, well......Smokey.

MY TWO CENTS OF HISTORY

Twenty years ago today I was installing my one and only museum show at The New Musuem in NYC under the name Kristan Kohl. I remember the exact date because it was the same day the shuttle blew up. I had just gone out for baby blue paint to paint the walls and was heading back to the museum on Broadway to install the work, when it came over the taxi cab's radio. It sort of put things in perspective. An art show was so minor considering. Recently a few friends have called to either ask why I wasn't respresented in a Downtown art retrospective survey or to read snippets from the catalog misrepresenting my role on the scene. Let me set the record straight.
I moved to NYC from SF in December of 1983. I opened Christmo Gallery on E9th St. and Ave A in January of 1984. My first show was documentary photos of the artist Stelarc's various "body suspensions" around the world. A year later I would help string him up with 18 shark hooks through his back, and suspend him three stories over E11th St. This was the type of gallery I had. At the same time i started painting under the name Kristan Kohl and exhibited her (my) work at Christmo. 1984 was a good year for me. A recent survey curated by a friend 1974-1984 failed to make note of this. It's a bit ticklish to try to set things straight without sounding bitter or whiny. But I feel I must, at least in this modest venue, make my voice heard. My friend the historian gets things wrong too often. i have a much better memory.
I don't really mind the omission until somebody calls, forcing me to face it. Then there's the other critics and historians that draw attention to other 21st century gallerists who are now creating fake work, by fake personas and exhibiting it to great acclaim. When critics talk of it like they've just discovered sliced bread I bristle once again. HEY! Didn't I do that 20 years ago? That's all I wanted to say.

BLOOD ON THE KEYS

Now that Honey was "cured" of her pregnancy things calmed for a while. I kept in touch with the Berkeley cops, getting updates on what they were doing concerning the Mills murders, starting to weave a narrative of my life, relationships, conceptual work and current events. I bought a hot IBM Selectic that had been dropped on the way out the window and learned to type avoiding the (r). The pot plants on the back porch grew and grew. Then early one morning I heard the little bell I had rigged on the porch gate. Actually Honey heard it first. "Someone's on the porch." she whispered in my ear. I woke from a sound sleep and was standing naked, pointing a shotgun at a very startled paperboy before he could harvest much. He spun, bud flying and ran down the back stairs. The gun wasn't loaded.
I came back inside, pulled on some clothes, put the dog on the leash and followed a trail of indica bud across the backyards three blocks over. As I bent down in the middle of the road to pick up another bud, I heard that little "whoop" cops use in order to get your attention. He had it. I smelled like skunk and my pockets were bulging. "Everything alright sir?" the officer asked. The dog barked at the cop. "Just walking the dog." I replied. He looked down at the dog and she growled. Then he gave the mutt a little salute and went on his way. I owed Froo-froo for that one.
In the light of dawn I surveyed the marijuana theif's damage. He'd gotten more than i thought. I canceled my subscription to the daily paper and harvested the rest. The following week Honey and I flew east to visit my folks. I packed a few ozs. for my little brother Duke. Duke was the baby of the family, and the only one of my siblings who shared my taste for the weed. Prime Cali bud wasn't readily available in CT. Honey lit a stick of incense as I opened up my suitcase. "What are you burning down there?" my mother yelled from the top of the cellar stairs. Honey went up and made up something about meditation. Duke stuffed the ozs. in his coat and went to spread the wealth.
I was locked in a dark spiral of personal domestic violence, coke abuse, a murdered neighbor and the larger world events of the Dan White murders and Jonestown. I was 28 and trying my damndest to discipline myself to write every day. As Honey leafed through People magazines I borrowed a typewriter from my sister Spunky and kept plugging away. I wallowed in all the noir elements of my personal tale. It felt like I'd never make 30. I wore dark suits and dirty white shirts. Late one night I hooked my finger on a sharp piece of metal on Spunky's little electric. Blood splattered the keys. I got woosie. The next thing I remember is Honey's face looming over me. "Are you OK?" Where do I start to answer that one?

GUNPLAY XMAS

It wasn't this past xmas. That passed without shots being fired. I was able to deal with Shorty without resorting to pulling the gun. No, this was xmas past. It was the one after I had been arrested on the Palisades. Yummy finally calmed down and life went on through the summer, fall, and then it began to snow. I was working at the bar and did odd job carpentry during the week. I'd just finished writing RELIGIOPATH but was having no luck with publishers. Friendly moved next door to the guitar player and after I'd done a nice slum spruce up for her, she was planning on moving to California with a Brit AND the guitar player. Yummy worked as a high end waitress at various toney restaurants. We were getting along quite well. I had been to court a half dozen times on the pot and LSD charge and still my case wasn't settled. I was getting scared that i would have to do time. My public defender told me "You may have to do time." I told him that wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear from him.
I was an over 40 year old, relatively intelligent, well spoken white man, not easily rattled by the justice system. If I had been a 20 year old black man I'd be writing this from jail. I stood in that Rockland County court room and watched person after person be sentenced to 30 days, 90 days, a year of county time for the most inconsequencial crimes- grafitti, public drunkeness, bad checks. My lawyer was a slovenly, verbose, fat man with a flair for ineptitude. When I called his office, his secretary had a charming way of cussing me out and hanging up. "Fuck you! We have better things to do, Mr. Christmo!" Click. That's a direct quote.The poor are fucked in this system. The poor of color might as well just put on the orange jump suit and start picking up trash.
So it was, in this climate of impending County time hanging over my head I decided to have a xmas party on 7&C. It could be a going away party also, in a worst case senario. I went out to get eggnog as the guests trickled in. On the way back, past the heroin laundromat, a kid riding a little bicycle dropped a bag without realizing it. I looked down. I was an ungodly amount of white powder. I put my foot over it and shouted to the kid on the bike. "YO!" He turned and glared at me. I stood my ground and crooked my finger. His eyes narrowed and I saw him put one hand in his baggy pants. He couldn't have been older than 16. The bike spun and he came at me full speed. The back tire spun out and the front tire almost touched my pant leg. I said nothing. Then I removed my foot from the bag and motioned with my eyes to the ground.
When the kid saw what he had dropped his jaw almost hit the bag. I moved on. He caught up with me as I was putting my key in the front door of my building. "Yo Popi." he said, now all sweet, "You saved my life." I looked at him and smiled. "No problem homes." Then he spun his bike around and was gone. I spiked the eggnog and the party continued. Then at the party's loudest, gunfire broke the festive mood. Everyone went to the windows. A big crowd had gathered on Ave. C.
Bodies were down. I tried to see if i recognised any but it was dark and I couldn't make much out. Within minutes Five-O sirens and lights sped up and down the Ave. Everyone moved away from the windows and the party continued. Then Friendly came in wearing red leather hotpants with a swastika stiched on her crotch, twisted both my nipples and kissed my cheek. Yummy was not pleased. I think I hear sleigh bells. Nevermind, just another ambulance.

BLAME THE JEWS

My producer is running around, tweeking buttons and positioning mics, rattling and poking crap and he's still not happy with the sound. I sit quietly on the couch about as useful as teats on a bore. Finally he just looks at me with this desparate look and says, "I have to learn to calm down. It's tough being a Jew." No one blames the Jews like a Jew. Being a bit of an amature theologian I'm always interested in comparative religions. "That's like blaming my Dutch ancestors for my inability to keep the beat." I reason. He nods in agreement. "Exactly."
There's an entire chapter of a book on the history of the Catskill mountains that is devoted to my family. It's called the Christmo Narrative. It starts with Great, great, great grandpa Gilbert. He was a civilian contractor for George Washington's army when they got in his neck of the woods. Before that he killed indians for proifit (and most likely fun). G was a motherfucker. I guess I could blame him for not coming in on the one. I don't know, the Jews have something different going on. They blame the entire people for their misfortunes. And over and above that, they blame God. As His chosen people, God shows a particularly perculiar sense of tough love with the Jews. I think their beef is justified there.
Then there's the rest of the world that blames the Jews also. Bad credit? It's the Jews. Movie sucked? It's the Jews. Like a room full of rednecks joining Ali G sing "THROW THE JEW DOWN THE WELL" we don't need much prodding to point the finger. Hamas just got elected as the party of choice in Gaza. Osama surfaced with another cassette. Why doesn't he go digital? Where's all my Al Quaeda donations going? I don't think we can blame him on the Jews. But then again...
Back in the studio I've got a special guitar virtuoso sitting in. He just returned from Israel where his daughter lives. We lay down some tastey "Wes Montgomery" sounding licks and he cracks another Miller tall boy. The producer's brow furrows. I can't tell wether he's pleased or not. It sounds good to me, but I'm Dutch what do I know? When the guitar genius gets up to leave he starts bitching about his leg. He fell on one of those ancient Jeruselem streets and fucked it up bad. I can read his mind as he hobbles away through the snow. "Those Jews can't make a decent sidewalk?"

GOD WILL BE CUT

Movie: KILL BILL 1. Scene: B. Kiddo is handed her custom made sword by Hatori Honzo with this warning. I'm paraphrasing. "If you happen to come across God with this sword....God will be cut." In a movie with great hokey lines, this is the best. Maybe I'll just start reviewing DVD lines. I give this one four and a half chopped off heads.

Another one of my favorite lines comes from my all time favorite TV show The Simpsons. It's spoken by the recurring hillbilly character- Cleatus. He has shimied up a telephone pole, looks at the wires and says to himself. "I can call Ma from here." Then he looks down and shouts "HEY MA!" I use this line when I want to proudly show my white trash, ridge runner roots and love for my mother in her presence. First I'll whisper to whatever sibling is sitting close by- "I can call Ma from here." They won't pay any attention to me. This is best accomplished in a nice restaurant or maybe a funeral palor, with my mother sitting just out of whisper shot. Then I'll cup my hands, catch my mother's eye, and in my best twang shout- "HEY MA!" She hates when I do this. I crack myself up.
In her first long email Sweets said how much she liked my family and fondly remembered my mother's spagetti dinners at our house in the late 60s. "Remember the time you pulled a hair from your plate and asked your mother if she wanted it back?" I didn't remember but I know I must have done it. With five kids almost in a row, my mother sure better have had a good sense of the absurd. We weren't mean kids but we were always trying to get over in one way or another. Mom ran a tight ship but she appreciated a good laugh as much as the next mom.
After a bout with cancer that damn near killed her, she's back almost 100%. Her sense of the absurd is even sharper now. She did battle with steel so tempered and sharp God didn't have a chance. He was nicked. There she is. Doesn't she look good? Psst. I can call her from here. HEY MA!

FREAKY DEAKY

This contact with Sweets is incredible and it ties in so perfectly with my journey (both on the road wise and metaphorically speaking). I began to think of my second stop in West Virginia at my lawyer's house. I say my lawyer. He probably would not refer to me as his client. Pro bono, in either case. I had a history with him and traveling. When I lived in Baltimore, before I met Luscious, Sweets called me and asked if I wanted to go along with her and a girlfriend to visit my lawyer (way before he even dreamed of being a lawyer) in Florida. I explained how broke I was but she said come on along, she'd foot the bill. Women never seem to understand when i say I'm broke I mean nothing but lint in the pocket. What the hell. I stuck out my thumb and 12 hours later I was banging on her door in Knoxville. At least I thought it was her door.
This was the first little wrinkle in the trip. By the time i realized it was the wrong apartment the cops had been called. When I did find the right apartment the cop did most of the talking for the first five minutes. I was burning up upon reentry into Sweets' life. Nonetheless she took it well and the next day we were in the girlfriend's VW heading for Lauderdale. The next little problem was feeding me. I was hungry. After two White Castle stops the girls were less cheery. I was doing OK up to this point but I sensed a chill in the bug and moped a little.
By the time we reached Fort Lauderdale everything had worked out and we were a happy threesome again. I told them i would just borrow a little from each and I'd be OK. Our host was the medical caretaker for a quad., a photograper. He would help him with the everyday stuff like groceries and his business photo stuff. In return he got free room and board and a small stipend. I think he wanted to be a doctor back then. He found another way into your pocket.
The house was big enough for all of us. Now, people often admonish me for glorifying the seamy underbelly too much. And they are probably right. But the thing is, sometimes the freaky stuff is going on right under my nose and I'm clueless. There was stuff going on in that house I had no idea about until years and years later. But, back to Sweets. I tried my damndest to win her back to no avail. So I borrowed her girlfriend's VW went out on the town by myself, got drunk as a skunk and ran the tank almost empty. I couldn't afford gas on the pitiful budget the girls had given me. The car got about five miles from the house, on the way to the beach, and conked out. I had decided to stay home. It was a little hot for me.
Now both on them were on my ass.
The day I did go to the beach with them I ended up in a big argument with Sweets and hitchhiked back to the house. There were three cars in driveway. The photographer was having a session. My buddy was assisting with the lights and I got the girls cold drinks and made cheeze sandwiches. We played a lot of Moody Blues and Yes.
When we got back to Tenn. I caught a ride as far as Virginia with Sweets' roommate's parents, who took an immediate dislike to me. I think they'd heard about the VW running out of gas. I don't know whether i paid either girl back. Most likely I didn't. I'll have to ask Sweets if I owe her on that one. I wish I could tell the stuff that happened in that house when we weren't there. I know my lawyer will deny everything.

ONE OF MY EXS LIVES IN TEXAS

Don't get me wrong. This is no Bill Murray journey to visit old girlfriends. But once I started charting the trip through Tenn. I started thinking about my first love and the girl I followed south right after graduating from High School. We were an odd match. I was a hippie, stoner, wannabe artist and she was a homecoming queen, brainiac, wannabe Sorority sweetheart. Once allowed to spread our wings mine became atrophied, a bit twisted and turned into a tail. Hers grew straight and true, fluttering like my rapid heartbeats when we were separated.
I wasn't smart enough to get into the school she was attending and settled on a suitcase college in the North Carolina mountains. The sign at the front of the college read- Western Carolina University. Spray painted over that was- Home of the WCU Space Cowboys. It was a good choice. She, on the other hand, was matriculated 100 miles across the Smokie Mountains at UT Knoxville. I drove my '59 Volkswagon over those mountains every weekend I could. My hair grew. Her accent got thicker. I called her Sweets. She called me Dimps. I know. I know. What can I say? We were young, dumb and full of.....unicorns and rainbows.
We broke up and got back together alot. To be honest I have no idea why we went into this pattern. By the second year of college I had gotten my grades up to the point UT accepted me. We loaded all our stuff in a 1951 Ford pickup and drove to Knoxville. Then we broke up again. At first I roomed with two jocks, one of which robbed me and smiled sweetly to the cops when they showed. He looked like a Ken doll.The cops liked him better than me. His name was Ken. Then I moved into a $60 per month slum with a guy who had a giant penis and insisted on showing me what he was packing way too much. He wasn't gay- just proud. By xmas break I'd had enough. I moved home and went to work as a roofer in the New England winter. By spring I was back in Tenn. We never did get back together. They say you never forget your first love. I say you never forget any of them, but the first IS special.
Last night I called Sweets' mom and got her email. She had moved from Tenn. to Dallas. She WAS on the way. I dropped an email. Within an hour she had replied. I hadn't seen her since our 20th high school reunion and that was 16 years ago. Her tone was familiar and very welcoming that i stop in. She was divorced with grown kids. She asked what I had been up to? Well, lets see...

SALVADOR

Estimated day of departure: Monday Feb. 6. Eye doctor- Thurs. Car check up- Friday. I start to make the calls. The first hitch in plans is the fact that I need a letter of permission to take my totally financed car out of the country. I have to insure it in each country and supply detailed information on how I can be reached at all times. It's worse than my mother. The bank wants me to call every day. My mother said email was OK. So now I'm thinking drive to Texas. Leave the car at my buddy's place in Austin, buy a junker pickup and take that into Mexico. Go as far as it will take me. If I make it to San Salvador, sell it and fly back to Austin, pick up my car and drive west to LA and SF. Sound good? I got room in the back.
My first stop will be at the Slab compound in Austin. I just thought of that. Austin, PA to Austin, TX. A sign? My friend in PA is a guitar player, singer, electric banjo picking fool I've known since my band days in the EV. I ask how he's been? "Have I talked to you since I went to jail?" he responds. We catch up and he says i can stay and we'll play some music, etc. I'm not sure what the etc. means. "I'm not exactly on the way to El Salvador." he says when I explain my trip. Ah, but he's wrong. He's exactly on the way.
Next stop West Virginia to see a childhood friend, a big shot lawyer with a lovely family and hopefully soft guest bed. I'll probably just spend the night and get back on the road. Due south through the Smokeys into Knoxville, where I lived before Baltimore, then Nashville- maybe a little music biz schoomze, or open mic. (or not), Memphis, and end up in Austin to plan my next move. OK, I'll make room in the front. Come oooon. I'll have you back by trout season.
During this travel period I will not be blogging as extensively. I have to keep my eyes on the road. I also hope to be writing this screenplay of Carlito's journey at 14, with two other 14 year olds, in a 1954 Chevy convertible, from El Salvador to Brooklyn in 1973. I don't know what it's called yet, but by the time I reach Holliwood i want to have something to hand to somebody. I'm excited. Did I mention that my friend in TX is a heavily tattooed, shaved headed gun dealer, with a company called Terror,Inc.? OK. You can drive. I'll roll.

SATAN'S KINGDOM

I had eyeballed Lusious various times during our year at a Baltimore art school, but we never met until the very last day. We shared a cigarette and beer and went out on the town that night. A week later she moved in to the old farm house i shared with two hippies and their dog and kid. The dog was named Ananda and the kid Rama. They were vegetarians.
I had a job as a hotwalker at the local horseracing track Timonium and scored a job for Lucious. We drove our 1949 farm red pickup to work at 4am. By 10 am we were done. Five horses were excercised, groomed, walked, stalls mucked, the jockey was drunk and the nags ready for a day of leisure. Timonium was the second string track to the big time- Pimlico. When the Triple Crown was run we had finish line seats as Secretariet blew away the field. We may have made minimum wage and had horse shit on our boots, but come stakes day we had the best VIP seats in the house.
When the horses moved north after race season we decided to do the same. I built a flimsy plywood cap on the truck and we double clutched our way to Ct. Even though the social morals of the time were very understanding of two young people in love, cohabitating outside of marraige, my parents were not. We were forced to live in our truck. We found a beautiful spot along the Farmington river, pulled the truck in and set up camp in Satan's Kingdom. She got a job at the local Friendlys and I was painting a Dr.'s house. During the day we'd tie the dog to a tree close to the river and drive our home to work. It was a beautiful summer.
When the leaves changed we sold the truck, bought a jeep and headed for Woodstock. That's where and when we decided to get married. I was (and still am) very close to my family. Their cold shoulder towards us hurt. If a little ceremony in a Justice of the Peace's rec. room would make it all better- so be it. We had a bash at The Woodstock Pub and went back to our Bearsville house with a bunch of my friends and brother to continue the party. Stools were chopped up for firewood. Ritz crackers were peanutbuttered to our windows. My brother ended up asleep in the back of a car that left without his knowledge. He'd gotton lost and missed the wedding. Then he got drunk and missed breakfast. So far he wasn't much of a best man. I fell asleep drunk with out making love to my new bride. I've been married twice and both times I've let the wedding night pass without closing the deal. If I ever get hitched again I promise consumation. Married life should always begin with a little nookie. Like back in the Kingdom- the truck should rock before sleep.

CURED

He sits on the toilet, soaking wet, but not cold. It's August hot. He can hear the neighbors downstairs. The sound comes up easy on the pipes- Joni Mitchell and someone humming along. He stands up, stares down at the rose bush outside the neighbor's window, picks a pack of cigarettes off the shelf, shakes one out and lights it, tossing the wooden match out the window. It falls the two stories spinning a whispy contrail in its wake. She's in the kitchen, fixing dinner, humming also. He holds his breath, trying to catch the melody, then lets it out and moves to the mirror. The scar's healing nicely. He traces it with his finger. Doesn't even hurt anymore.
"What are you doing in there?" Her voice is bright and cheery. "Almost ready. Can you uncork the wine?" he shouts out. Yesterday she went to the doctor. He left her and went to get a coffee and read the paper. When he returned to pick her up she was waiting outside having a smoke. "How do you feel?" he asked her.
"Cured." she said.

JUST LIE

There's a line in the movie HUSTLE AND FLOW that really rings true for me. The main character, a lovable but lame pimp- DJ who is trying to break into the rap business has just beat the shit out of his hero- Skinny Black. He trys to stuff the cassette into Skinny's mouth, after Skinny has "dissed" him by tossing aforementioned cassette in the toilet. Gunplay. Skinny lives. Our hero is in jail on that jail phone, separated by that glass, with his producer. The producer asks if he REALLY knew Skinny before that night. DJ ponders this and with all sincerity, assures the producer that in the end he will most definitely lie. Truer words were never spoken.
I want to stuff every cassette, CD, sheet of slides, resume, press release, manuscript, invitation and signed headshot I've ever dropped in the mail down Skinny's throat too. I loved this movie. This guy's got hos, a nice ride, a bit of a hectic schedule and one night fate intervenes in the form of a Casio SK-50. This is the very same organ I started a church with. But that's neither here nor there. DJ takes the organ, does a little " Rock you. Rock You." on a loop and before you can say "Beeee-Otch." he's a wannabe rap star. What he doesn't realize is it's better to be a pimp. At least I think that was the theme. I give it Four Gats blazing.
The epiphany over the lie is what caught me. The script, written by a white guy, is philosophical. In another scene Nola spits back verbatim "flow" on the difference between man (small m) like a dog and Mankind (like a dog with memory). This she does while straddling a music biz guy's running suit and eventually she hears DJ's tune on the radio. I cried on that one. Then in a beautiful twist the jailers slip DJ their cassette, informing him that they know the streets from both sides. I cried again. We all assume that if DJ doesn't get violated in the weight room or shived in the shower he'll come out 11 months later a star, rich beyond his wildest dreams. Once again, show me who to shoot or what mouth to stuff this laptop down. My street cred. is good. I guess you'd call it road cred. up here. Knuckles to the glass my brother.

BOYS IN THE ENSEMBLE

It's all about relationship. Be it family or lovers or just that PA rushing towards your illegally parked car....one has to get along with others. They used to have this catagory of socialization on school report cards. "Christmo is attentive in class, if a bit of a daydreamer. His math skills are weak, although his verbal skills are improving. He seems to get along well with others and holds down the beat in the class band." In kindergarten I played the rhythm sticks. (I bring that up to the producer to no avail. Take six.) By fourth grade I begged my parents for a second hand trumpet. In between herpes outbreaks, the music teacher insisted I wasn't the worst player, but I WAS the only one not to make the band. That did not compute. I was crushed. I gave up on music until I was 33 years old. Never underestimate discouragement at an early age.
Perfect opportunities to pick up a guitar with no talent or skill, like the punk rock hey days of 1975-81 were let pass without a note being played. I wanted to. But I felt I was too old- at 25 and not good enough to even try. NO YOU DIDN'T MAKE BAND! I had to overcome the early patterning done on me by that fourth grade idiot. My writing began to morph into verse. At first the pieces were long, complex, ponderous poems. Over the years I trimmed them into songs. I realized my voice was strong, if not a little rough and off key. I didn't need to play an instrument. I could write and sing the songs. To those about to rock....we salute you.
My first band was formed as the '86 Mets brought home the series. I was between girlfriends after breaking up with Cookie in order to concentrate on Candy and subsequently been dumped by Candy so she could concentrate on the boyfriend she was cheating on in order to be with me. Follow? These periods of single life have always been the times of my greatest artistic achievements. God bless 'em, women take up a lot of time. I'm not saying it's time wasted. But it does cut into that just sitting around by one's self, twiddling thumbs and creating. Then there's the boredom factor. Art has always been my way to overcome that. No matter how pitiful your everyday is....sing along and before you know it you have a soundtrack to your pitiful life. Music makes pitiful more palitable
The band was an immediate success. We all smoked pot. All but the guitar player were hard working carpenters. And the guitar player had the pot. Once music became demystified I grabbed the mic. and howled. It was the most fun outside of sex I'd ever had. We were old (all over 30) but that didn't slow us down. We wore bad wigs, horrible fashions and cranked it to 11. Remember grunge? Shit, we started that when Kurt Cobain was still in a Seattle pre-school on the rhythm sticks. We played CB's and even opened for Meatloaf one night at the Paladium. That was our high point and I think we had been playing less than six months. Let me introduce the band: Bimmy on bass, Hoss on drums and Horrible Uncle Pee-Pee on guitar. "Man, to only be snorting coke out of a naked 11 year old's belly button on the beach on acid in Malibu too...." I sang as the lighters waved and the girls swayed. It don't get much better than this. Then a Jolt cola can whizzed past my ear. Ahhhh. A real fan.

BAD LOUIE

I pulled the Malibu over in front of Friendly's and the guitar player's building and dropped them off. Hollywood was in town shooting on E11th. The usually seedy block looked even more seedy. Burnt out wrecks had been imported and more sneakers added to that pole in front of the parking garage. I couldn't find a parking space so just double parked while they got their stuff out. A young guy with a headset and a big radio came rushing over to tell me i couldn't park there. I hated filmmakers. I had a big Detroit beast that required a big parking space. Hollywood took up a lot of parking spaces to work their magic. Many was the time I got in arguments with PAs just doing they're job. Once in a while I would pull my grandfather's police badge and shove it in some poor kid's face and leave the car squishing orange cones, ruining the shot.
The 11th St. shoot was for the classic Abel Ferer flick "BAD LIEUTENANT' starring Harvey Keitel. As my friends got their wet bathing suits and dried banannas out of the trunk I looked up and there was Harvey sitting in a director's chair. I was nice to the PA and told him I was just leaving. I was a fan of Harvey's. To say E11th between A&B was sterotypical for a noir slum in 1991 was an understatement. Crack had hit town and any spruce up accomplished in the 80s had disinegrated by now east of Ave. A. Rent the movie and check it out. They didn't have to work very hard to make it look sketchy.
My uncle always called my aunt "Louie", short for lieutenant. My relationship with Yummy was a bit like that. I'd learned fear over the years. She was the boss and i accepted that. I was more than happy to do it. I felt I'd been given a second (fifth?) chance for happiness with a woman and I didn't want to blow it. I didn't fuck around. I was working steady. And before I knew it I'd popped the question and Yummy and I were making marraige plans. Her history with men was as suspect as mine with women. We were a good match.
I found a parking space on 7th between B&C, just outside the heroin dealing laundromat, grabbed my bag and went home. There were twin crackhead girls who lived next door. One was really sweet and always said hello. The other was mean as a snake and seemed to particularly dislike me. I never knew which one I was passing on the stairs. "Hi DARLING!" the good twin said. I just smiled and turned the key in the door.
Yummy was worried. Yummy was pissed. Yummy was upset. Yummy was...did I mention pissed? I didn't say a word for the first ten minutes. I let Yummy get it out of her system. Then I put on the hurt face and told how I was arrested on the way home and.....the tongue lashing started up again. For such a pretty girl, she sure had a mouth on her. This was going to be more difficult than I imagined. I thought I had learned fear. Looked like I still had some lessons left in the book. "Jesus, Louie." I found myself mumbling.

FRANKIE AND JEANNIE

In classic battered mode, i kept going back. I worked as a carpenter. Honey worked in a Telegraph Ave. boutique. I wrote and interviewed some Nazis and my neighbors from the People's Temple. Although Honey didn't smoke pot, her expertise was invaluable in growing the back porch plants. She checked ph and added bat guano. The plants were 10 footers. Take away the crazed fights and we had a pretty good relationship. We shared in the cooking and cleaning and made each other laugh. Apart from the rabbit ,Honey had a Keeshound called Froo- Froo. If you looked in the window you would be jealous of our seemingly cozy life.
One day i got a phone call from home. A good friend Frankie was missing in Florida. I guess back in those days we were all a little bit criminal. Miami was the U.S. city of supply for almost all of the coke shooting up the noses of America. Fortunes were being made by people who had never known such money. This was before "Just say NO." Coke was mainstream. Even my old man made jokes about the tiny spoons and golden bottles his stock brokers carried in their suit pockets. It wasn't demonized like today. So when I got word about Frankie I knew it could be bad.
A year before I had visited Fla. and had dinner at my cousin's, who was married to Frankie's sister. We all sat around a big table of shrimp and Bavarian Busch, laughing and ripping into the fresh seafood. Then Frankie pulled out a .45 automatic, dropped the clip in his hand and tossed it on the chair. He looked at me and smiled a sly grin. "Sis doesn't approve of firearms at the dinner table." His friend who hadn't said much, followed suit, tossing another automatic on the chair. No one paid the least bit of attention, concentrating on the shrimp and hot sauce. I felt like i should've pulled a sawed off shotgun from my pant leg, just to be polite. I thought of this little scene when I got the call. I didn't know specifics, but I had my theories.
Days passed. Then weeks. Then months. No word of Frankie. I wrote a note of concern to his parents. When they saw the Cali post mark they thought for sure it was their son. I meant it to be comforting. It backfired, giving them false hope for a few minutes. Never does a good deed.... I was trying to turn the interview with my neighbor into some sort of performance text when it came over the radio. She, her husband and daughter were all murdered the night before. The prime suspect was her son- Eddie Mills. These were dark days in the Bay area. First came the Dan White murders of Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone. Then the headlines switched to the mass murder/suicides in Guyana. Jim Jones became a household name. You could smell the blood in the air. Nevermind. That's just that septum again.
I called the Berkeley cops and told them I had a cassette tape of Jeannie Mills talking about being afraid her children would someday kill her. They came over and picked it up. Two months later I tracked Eddie Mills down. He wasn't hard to find. He and his skeezy, peach fuzzed buddies had taken over the family house. The DA said there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute. They couldn't find the gun. The door was open. I knocked but no one came. I climbed the stairs towards the Buzzcocks blaring through a closed bedroom door and knocked again. Eddie emerged, scratching and sniffing. I asked about his mother and his years in the Temple. I should have been afraid of the punk but wasn't. "Just life." he shrugged "I didn't have much of a choice."
You think as the years pile up you'll have closure. You think someone will be prosecuted for Jeannie's murder. You think Frankie's bones will turn up and like on Miami Vice, a couple of bad guys will trip up and implicate themselves. But it doesn't work that way. A generation grows up. People get old and die or lose their minds and just mark time until a welcome end comes. Mysteries remain. R.I.P. Frankie and Jeannie.

xMO TRIM

No. Not that kind of trim. I had none of that in my stocking. Like in that O'Henry story, I'm talking hairs. How that little bald, lolly pop sucking guy could write such beautiful stories was beyond me. After Itchy and Shorty had so rudely interrupted my recitation, i moped around looking hurt. No one paid the least bit of attention to my hurt feelings. The neices and nephews were playing board games. The TV was on to a football game. The women gossiped and fixed more food. The men drank, ate, snored, farted, burped and started it all over again. By evening the old man had gotten the photos developed from the morning. He was almost as fast as digital. Shoot. Drive to the Photohut and drop off the film. Pick 'em up before closing. Memories by dinner time.
We had a nice family shot. I looked at my hair with dismay. It hadn't been cut in two years. What with the thinning top and receding front it was only a matter of time before it all went down the drain. I joined the kids at the dining room table. I told one neice that if she braided my hair they could cut it. I couldn't have given those kids a better gift. What the hell. I needed a change. One went for the rubber bands. Another got the scissors and a brush. If I'd let them they would've shaved me, painted my toe nails and dressed me up in a party dress. Kids love to redo their elders. Each one's a little Queer eye at heart.
By the time they were done i looked like a sad mental patient with a "bob". "OOOOoooo, you look GREAT!" they all exclaimed. They were not at all objective over their work. I took a shower hoping it would help. It didn't. I just looked like a wet mental patient. If i shook it out I looked like Mao with round eyes. Shorty snickered and Itchy had to run from the room so as not to swallow her tongue. I heard her cracking up in the bathroom. My mother gave me a big kiss and said i looked so much better. She was as blind as those lousy barbers. By the time xmas was over everyone had drifted off to sleep and I opened one last gift, forgotton under the tree. To: xMO From: Santa. It was a tortiseshell hair brush. And to all a good night.

EFFECT AND CAUSE

The effect is obvious. I hope to make the cause more apparent. You have to dig. Way before blogs there were psychiatrists. The first one I went to by accident. I thought he was a GP. I had found him in the yellow pages under physicians and dialed him up. "That's right. My wife has this persistant sore throat and I'm getting worried. Uh huh. Wed. at 3 would be fine." That was it. That's all the info I offered or recieved. This was Bearsville, NY circa 1974. My first wife Luscious and i were living way back on a dirt road, heating by wood, without a TV- much like i live now. She worked as a seamstress in town and I'd just landed a job as a carpenter's helper for an old acid head building spec. houses across the mountain.
Life was good. We'd had some issues- like her screwing my best friend after a drunken poker game, but we'd worked things out. If it wasn't for her pesky sore throat everything would have been perfect young marital bliss.
The Dr. had an office in his home. I figured the examination room was in the back. He was a bald little guy with a weak handshake and and a grey sweater. He smiled and pointed to a couple of chairs. "Please.." he said and sat in his own chair. "Well..." he continued clasping his hands. "You mentioned something in the throat?" We both nodded. I was waiting for the flat little stick and flashlight but I saw neither. "Hmmmm..." he said and looked kind of "parental" at us. "How's everything at home?" I'm thinking it could be the smoke from the stove so I say "We heat by wood." "I see." he responds and makes a note on a yellow legal pad. Then I think of other stuff- "We have two dogs and a cat. You think it can be that?"
At the mention of our pets i see the guy jump a little. Maybe he's allergic or was bit. Who knows. So I change the subject. Luscious just sits there. She's tall, pale, and bone skinny. A new shag haircut frames her pretty face. She's wearing a pair of jeans ripped up the inseam and turned into a hippie skirt. Potato boots, high laced up the front, completes the ensemble. She looks good. She wants a cigarette sooooo bad. The Dr. seems to be writing a lot now. "We don't have insurance." Luscious mumbles. He waves her off, seemingly unconcerned. I start looking around the office for the usual Dr. stuff- stethoscopes, white coats...nothing. Then he drops the bomb. "What kind of sexual practices are you kids involved in?" He's now leaning forward and peering over the glasses.
"SHE HAS A SORE THROAT!" I say a little too loud. Luscious touches my arm and looks disapprovingly at me. "Our sex life is good." she says, her voice seeming to clear immediately. You have to understand this was around EST and Rolphing and any number of crack pot quackery Dr. practices. Luscious was completely on board for this appoach to get her smoking again.I wasn't so sure. "Aren't you at least going to look at her throat?" I ask the nosey doctor. "What's our sex life got to do with this?" "It can be what they call- psychosomatic." the Dr. says in a quite patronizing tone. Then a little light goes off in his Dr. skull. "You do know I'm a psychitartist?"
Then little lights went off all around. I'd called a Dr. I didn't ask what kind. Now that we were on the same page, out came the tongue depressors and he wrote a scrip for anti-biotics and we were on our way. Ushering us out the door, he was sweating and seemed quite embarassed over whatever had traveled through his fertile imagination. Luscious' voice was already better and she said her throat had stopped hurting. Some how the therapy had worked. It would be a few years before i started seeing a shrink for real but none have ever had the effect that that first one had. Wifey and I went home, got a hot fire ging in the woodstove, fed the cat, played with the dogs and afterward we both lit up our cigarettes.

YUMMY ON THE BEACH

Before we cross the bridge and head downtown, let me give you a little background on Yummy. We met one hot summer day out at Ditch Plains- a popular beach on Montauk LI. I was there with a couple of friends and Dr. Stripper. This beach is like Manhattan with sand. You can't stroll down the strip of white sand without running into someone you know from town. Some people like this aspect of weekends and country homes. I, for one, do not. City folks are afraid of the locals and figure there's safety in numbers. They search out each other like lost sheep in coyote country. That's why I live where I live. If I want to see Manhattanites i go Manhattan. I don't mind coyotes.
As I sat on a blanket playing dominoes and tried to keep an eye on DS frolicing in the surf, a familiar face approached. It was this guy Otter and his companion, a striking, tan beauty in a rawhide laced, denim one piece, and Jackie O shades. It wasn't love at first sight but it was mutual curiosity. They joined the blanket. As the conversation picked up we learned we knew many of the same people but for some reason had never crossed paths. DS returned, shaking her wet red hair and making her presence known to the new additions under the umbrella. She had a ear piercing laugh that made fingernails on a blackboard seem calming. A little too eager to please. Just her age, I told myself. We made dinner plans and Otter and ? moved off. I never did catch her name.
A year later I'm sitting on a female friend's couch with Sailor Ricky, my photog friend, watching Monday night football and damned if the beach girl, didn't emerge from the kitchen carrying a plate of nachos. I was kind of a mess over Dr. Stripper's infidelity with a former friend, subsequent breakup and my recently passed 40th birthday I don't think I'd taken a shower in a week. We recognised each other and took it from there. Like puppies, girlfriends are chick magnets. I was way less attractive sitting there, single with the Sailor, drinking a Budweiser, stuffing nachos in my face. After a couple of false starts we went on a movie date. It was Dracula. I met her in front. "You shaved?" she said, disappointed i no longer sported the scruff. I was trying to look more presentable. Two demerits right out of the gate.
The movie was OK. Dating tips: If you don't have a puppie or a girlfriend on your arm, try being uninterested in everything they say, surly, snide and bored. It was working. We went for a post-movie drink. Back on my couch a couple of hours later, I fumbled with buttons and zippers. She told me to slow down...but not stop. Then she gave me directions on how to kiss her properly. Okaaaay.....I played along, trying to follow directions. I guess I did alright because the next night she showed up at the bar I was working at and left with me after a nightcap. A year later we were engaged. Look. There's the bridge. Friendly pulled a five from her mushroom laden purse and handed it to me. Deep breath. Here we go.

DON'T TAKE YOUR LOVE TO TOWN

OK, you with me so far? Little brother- Shorty is now pissing me off to the point I want to slam him into the wall. But I have no idea how I will accomplish this. We are at my parents house in CT. It's xmas 2005.

Friendly, the guitar player and i are heading back into Mahattan on the Palisades after I was busted for Pot and LSD. Yummy, later to become Mrs. Yummy, is waiting in our apartment on 7&C, pissed because I'm with Friendly and the guitar play AND I'm late. It's summer of '93.

I've just pulled my British racing green sportscar over to the curb in front of Enricos, after Honey called the cops at on Berkeley apartment on Woolsey St. and I was advised to leave by the law.I have a little amber bottle of cocaine in my pocket. It's still the 70's.

I just scored some pot, raked up the yard, got grocerys and sat down at the computer. My Timex says 2:14 pm on a Friday in January. Actually I can't figure out how to set the date. It says it's a Thurs. in June. It's today in either case. Lets go back to Enrico's.

I turned the key off in the MG and got out. I looked up and admired the sign above Enrico's. It was flashing pink: Finochios. The club was an old school tranvestite show. I'd never been but WW II sailors will tell you about it like it was the asshole of Hell way back when. By the Seventies it was Mom, Dad and the kids family fun in Frisco. I found a seat at Enrico's bar and started drinking. I wasn't that upset over the whole Berkeley mess. It was numbing me, not tweaking me. The whiskey helped. A girl slid onto the stool. She asked for a light, smiled and touched my hand lightly, steadying the match when I lit her. That little touch. It said volumes.
I hadn't even the time to order her a drink before we were both coming on easy and smooth with each other. Two drinks later we were old friends.
She was Phillipino, small features and soft light brown skin. We both got drunk. I don't know why it didn't click when she told me she was a dancer. I'm thinking ballet or one of those Twyla Tharpe hot girls in tights and skimpy top. Then the subject changed and before we knew it it was 2am and the liquor stopped flowing. I told her i had a bottle back at my studio in the Mission and off we went. I grabbed the bottle and we went back to her place. I said something about her tiny ears and she said "I understand.' I thought that was a strange response, but didn't dwell on it. She fixed some drinks and we got cozy. Up until this very moment I thought only faithful, monogamous thoughts in regard to Honey. Like that fucking rabbit, I forgave her for her shit. It was her nature, I reasoned.
But, this evening was a watershed (literally). The cops. The cold bath. It was bad. And this girl seemed so chill and cool and sexy..... Then, in a break in the Roxy Music album. I think it was between Love is a drug and End of the Line- on Siren, I said something to her and this time i heard "I'm a man." This time I paid attention. She (no I mean he) was trying to tell me the whole time. Understand? He was a Finochio dancer- a pre-op transexual. Look at those ears! How can they belong to a man? To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. It was kind of embarassing for both of us. What the hell. As they say I was flattered, if not a little curious. Excuse me. Could you close those tent flaps?

FIVE DOGS AND A RABBIT

Sporty, Shorty, Duke, Shauna, Kelly and Mr. Bunny- that were their names. I also had an earlier pink eyed white rabbit named Mopsy, but the weasel got him and we were never really close. The animal to human relationship I want to talk about is me and Mr. Bunny. Like some of my girlfriends, my pet's names have overlapped and reoccurred through out my life. There's another Mr. Bunny who comes up later. But I don't want to get ahead of myself. This is Mr. Bunny #1. The Berkeley years.
He was a cute as can be little brown Dutch Dwarf rabbit with the nastiest disposition on earth. Even as a tiny bundle of soft fur this rabbit would rear up on it's back legs, bare it's teeth and come at you with both fists flying. Honey had bought him at a flea market and we kept him on the back porch with the marijuana plants. I made a nice cage for him and put a removable shit try in the bottom. Mr. Bunny shat from dawn 'til dusk. I think he even took dumps in his sleep. He didn't like Honey or me, treating us both with equal contempt. That old adage about not biting the hand that feeds you carried no weight with Mr. Bunny. Are rabbits considered vermin? If not, they should be.
The thing with this kind of animal is the cute factor. The NY Times did a big article on this in the movies these days. Remember those insidious penguins? Cute right? Who knows what they got stuffed in their pockets when they leave the room. Ever seen a sea otter? The male breaks the female's neck and has sex with the corpse just for jollys. You like Fisher Cats? They're the only animal mean enough to take on the porcepine. And porcepines don't bother anything but car tires. These cutesy-pie critters are charismatic mini-fauna. Whales and grizzly bears are charismatic mega-fauna. Mr. Treadwell showed us how cute they are.
So it was with Mr. Bunny. He tricked everyone. Vistitors would OOOoooooo and Aaaaahhhh over him. He'd bat those big eyelashes, stand up and twitch his little nose. Then when the stupid human would bend over and put fingers within reach........well lets just say many was the time i had to plug in the extension cord and touch the frayed ends to that rabbit's privates in order to get him off someone's finger tip. Even though he treated Honey badly she loved him to death. She said he was just exhibiting his rabbit nature. She had a good way with animals. At least she didn't bring home a rattlesnake.
In the end I outlasted Mr. Bunny. He got sick one day after gnawing on his cage so much he got a blockage. "A log jam." the vet called it. Right before I pulled out my wallet and pealed off a C note to have him sent to a better coop, Mr. Bunny opened his beady little eyes and bared his worn down chompers. He looked right at me as if to say- just come a little closer and we'll see who outlasts who. Sweet dreams little feller.

GO AHEAD, BREAK MY HEART AGAIN

Dateline Rome: Researchers at University College London find men derive much more pleasure in watching punishment inflicted on the guilty. Women, on the other hand, still feel for the poor sap...even if they know he deserves everything he's getting. "...their empathy centers still quietly glowed."

For the past week or more every NYC paper has been filled with the gory details of the death of a 7 year old girl- Nixzmary Brown at the hands of her parents. Those researchers are right. I would revel in hearing the guilty parties are severely dealt with. I would also like to see city officials raked over the coals, caseworkers prosecuted and men like Charles Ensley, the president of Local 371 of the Social Services Employees Union, who stated in this climate "workers will start removing children at the least sign of abuse, and that is not a good practice." . I'd like to see him removed. Then I'd like to see him go to "the dirty room". But wait. That's not all. There's more guilt to go around. What's with the family? I don't mean the kids. They were terrorized also. I mean all the aunts, uncles, cousins at the funeral torn to shreds. I hope the hell I'd know if any of my neices or nephews were being duct taped to the chair. And you can take it to the bank I'd drop on dime on their parents, right before I stepped in. Although in some instances...with a couple I won't mention, a stern talking to wouldn't hurt.
The eggheads in Britain are right. My empathy centers are flatlined and my pleasure nodes are craving stimulation. I want justice for little Nixzmary and I never met her. Then I picked up the local rag and some slack jawed, mouth breathing local woman is accused of dropping her 6 day old son on the floor. She said she was aiming for the blanket and missed. Then she bit the boyfriend in the hand. Who knows what she was aiming for there. Then the boyfriend called his mom and Florida, who was the one to finally call the cops 1500 miles away. Three hours had elapsed before the cops showed up. I guess if i was a woman i wouldn't feel so good hearing that mommy dearest was arrested. Once again, proof postive of the neuroscience study.
It's one thing when adults visit violence on other adults. Or kids on kids. It sucks. It's stupid and desparate and damaging as hell, even in small doses, but the playing field is at least clear, if not level. With adult to kid violence it's a whole other ball game. It's just plain evil, whether that violence is sexual or not. I'm sorry. It's been that kind of day for me. Revisiting stuff can bring that out. i didn't mean to harsh your mellow. I got empathy too.

SEND IN THE CLOONS

I'm sitting on the fine leather couch, in my producer's state of the art bungalow studio, waiting for him to get off the phone with his ultra hot French model girlfriend who's working in Germany, so we can lay down some guitar tracks. I can't help but listen in. Hell, it's a small studio. Her english is a lot better than his French but still he's struggling to get his point across. "...no you ARE funny. That's whay i like you. Yes. You're serious too. You must have your mother's genes." Silence. Like all ultra hot girls they hate to be called beautiful. Much better to say they are funny and serious. "Genes. You know DNA." I can read her mind. She's thinking- I don't wear my mother's jeans. The producer hangs in there. "It's the language barrier. I'm much funnier if you know the language." As only the French can cut through the bullshit- "No you're not." she deadpans. "You're a real cloon." the producer comes back. See. He does know a little French.
When I'm not herding tiny reindeer I'm working on this album. I used to think I had rhythm until i started working with this guy. He has a fucking metronome in his head. All my loopy go off the beat, drop one, then pick it up in the next verse doesn't fly with him. I like that. He's running a tight ship and that's a good thing. He knows a lot about what buttons to push and more than he gives himself credit on where to place the mics. The stuff is sounding better and better. My job is to bring a six pack and stay on the beat. Ever so slowly we're moving forward.
The other day we were sitting at the kitchen table discussing what instrumentation to add when he mentioned how he knew a guy, who knew a guy that could get Garth Hudson down to play keyboards. "He's fallen on hard times." he said "All we have to do is drive to Woodstock on dump day, offer to buy him a Chinese dinner and he'll play." Garth Hudson is the classically trained keyboardist on all the good Band albums. THE BAND! From the time I was a 15 year old sprout I'd listened to Music From Big Pink. I still listen to it. I don't want to jinx it so if you're going to the dump don't tip him off.
Back in the studio i struggled to stay on beat and by the end of the session I hit it. Then we played it back and realized the drum track had bled onto the take. It was all trash. It was a minor setback but the producer seemed to take it hard. I stayed uncharacteristicly upbeat. If I'd been paying the hourly rate i would have thrown a shit fit. i had to remind him how blessed he was- young, good looking guy, sharp dresser, cool studio, hot girlfriend, Firebird in the garage....must I go on? So what if he didn't have a history of psychotic girlfriends and heartbreak. We can't all be cloons. Now lets hit the dump.

MY JOB

Continuing my women and cop theme. When I saw the trooper on the Palisades waving that big bag of what from my (and the cop's) perspective looked like psychedelic mushrooms, my shiveled little heart constricted even more. I couldn't hear what they were saying but I saw a big grin come across the guitar player's face. What could he find so funny? Then the trooper ran his fingers through my friend's long grey hair, dug around a little in Friendly's purse and eventually joined me in the cruiser. He started the car and craned his neck around to me. "You have a couple of good friends there." he said, flipping the siren and pulling back on the parkway "They wouldn't say anything." I was bursting at the seams to ask what was in the bag but said nothing either. A mile down the road we got off at the New City exit. "Dried banannas." the statey said, as if he read my mine. Phew!
Turned out the cop was a nice guy. When I said we were coming from a particular lake he said he knew it well. He was a fisherman. He started a little lecture on drug abuse and I cut him off. "Look." I said now realizing nothing worse was going to happen "You got me. It's your job and I don't begrudge you. But my job is to be an artist. I'm not an air traffic controller or train conductor. My job is to smoke a little pot and once in a while...." I stopped my big mouth remembering that Miranda thing. Anything you say can and will......
Once at the barracks he apologized for having to handcuff me to a bench and started the paper work and pictures. Other cops came and went laughing about the two old geezers with the hot young blond. One asked if we were Deadheads. I said we weren't. He looked disappointed. "Any scars or tattoos?" my arresting officer read off a sheet of paper. I lifted my shirt and began the tour. At first he thought they were some sort of Aryan Brotherhood ink. I had to explain each one. "This is for Exxon, this one is for the Masons and this one over here..." Various tattoos he wrote on the pad. Friendly put her hand on the glass window separating us (like they do in TV jail) and smiled. The guitar player gave the thumbs up. Two other troopers looked at the tattoos and one said "Cool."
Start to finish the whole experience only took a couple of hours. By the time we left the cops had given us coffee and were saying goodbye like old friends. On the way out the door I asked the fisherman if I had to really worry about the bust. "If this had been Manhattan." he said "It would be a desk appearance ticket. No big deal. But this ain't Manhattan. Plus that LSD is another matter. Go to court and see." We shook hands and that was that. I told him to stop by the lake some time and we'd wet our lines. He smiled. No way he was going to get in a boat with me. Friendly wrapped her arms around me and gave me a big kiss and whispered in my ear "I had an oz. of 'shrooms in my bag. He never saw it." Christ! Back to town we went. Yummy was waiting. I knew I would have to plead insanity. A room full of big state troopers was nothing compared to what lay ahead.

CALIFORNIFICATION

So there I lay, wrapped in a striped beach towel, three wash clothes and a roll of Charmin for a pillow. I had to keep flipping from side to side to breathe. Remember that deviated septum? Just as I was getting comfortable i heard a knock at the door. It wasn't the usual insistent rap of Honey's sharp knuckles. No, this was soft and polite. Like a velvet glove. "Sir, this is Officer So and So. Would you unlock the door and come out here please?" Jesus! She had called the cops. Never underestimate the extent to which a woman will go when she decides to burrow under your skin.
I emerged, blinking, wet floor head hair spiked in all directions, naked but for that beach towel. "Let's go in the other room." the young Berkeley cop said as his partner removed a glaring Honey to the bedroom. I prayed Honey hadn't narced my stash to the law and followed the crackling sound of a radio into the living room. The cop went to lay his hat down on the glass table and it fell through to the floor. He looked embarrassed. I just shrugged. I hadn't gotten around to cutting a piece of plywood for the top. We both sat on the couch I lit a cigarette and offered him one. He shook his head. "So...." he started the conversation. I picked up the ball.
This was before California law had been changed in regard to domestic disturbance. Now days cops take both parties in and sort it out later. Back then the cops separated the parties and if they could calm things down no paper work was needed. It was also before ATMs, computers, cell phones, VCRs, and the murder of my neighbor who blew the whistle on Jim Jones. The cop was OK. I gave him the thumbnail concerning Honey and I and our stormy relationship. I showed him my wounds and asked him to check Honey for any such marks. He was as puzzled as I why she had called the cops, but said i should maybe split for the night. I agreed, found some dry clothes and walked down the stairs with the cops, thanking God Honey hadn't spitefully nodded towards the scale and bindles of white stuff.
I got in the MG and pointed it towards SF. I still kept a studio in the Mission and was finding myself crashing there more and more. Off towards the west I saw a glow. In the middle of the Berkeley mudflats, just off the highway, a giant bush was ablaze, lighting the surrounding goofy plywood sculptures of stickmen and dragons in an eery orange light. Not a soul was around. In those days I was very aware of signs and omens. Even more so than today. A BURNING BUSH! I had no idea of implications but, cross my heart- there it was.
I hit fourth gear and the little engine purred. The Michelins bit the cool California asphalt and i slipped a Blondie cassette in the slot. The Transamerica pyramid pierced the skyline, beckoning across the bay. There was no traffic. Instead of heading for the studio I decided to get off in Northbeach. I checked the Casio. A little after midnight. Still time for a drink. The was a parking space right in front of Enricos. Golden.

HAIRY AND RUDY

'Twas just this morning fresh from my shower
Came a knocking at my door
Then even louder
It was Carlito standing there soaking wet
His baby reindeer had escaped and he was upset

Yo Popi, come on in I said and offered some coffee
No gracias amigo I can only stay a minute then i have to git
Remember yesterday when I showed you the deer?
Well I forgot to close the gate
Now I fear Hairy and Rudy will be coyote bait

Just like he said he only stayed a minute they went on his way
I'm going to leave you these numbers
Call me if they show up
Then he got in his truck

I went about my day writing in this blog
Then laid down on the couch and slept like a log
Rain beat against the windows then turned to snow
I didn't care I had nowhere to go

When I woke from my nap I looked out the window
And what did i see but two tiny reindeer- Hairy and Rudy
I threw on my coat and dialed the cell
Yo Popi your reindeer have returned
Well what do you know?

Then for two hours I coaxed and cajoled
herding those reindeer back in the pen
All time making up this rhyme
Stupid as it may be
Some days you herd reindeer
Named Hairy and Rudy.

O LITTLE BROTHER, WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?

Oh, there you are, still sitting at the table. Because I'm the eldest , all my 3 brothers are "little". Like the ex's I feel it's good to pick one to represent for the others. The big fella across the way has been selected precisely because of our tumultuous early years and my part in his torment. "What's with you two?" my sister asked, passing around a steaming plate of scallops wrapped in bacon. "He started goading me, like always." bro said grabbing two toothpicks, stripping both in one bite. Sis rolled her eyes and moved on with the finger food. More on her later.
I tried not to look him in the eye. I had once thrown a 45 rpm record, Odd Job style, at him catching him square in the head. The tiny crease was still there. It wrinkled up and blinked when he smiled at me. I cracked another Corona, as did he. One of the nieces came over and sat in my lap and told me I stank. I told her that's what happens to old people and that I specifically did not take a shower just for her. She turned her nose up and ran off to torment someone else. The dog begged for anything edible and the holidays ground on.
This investigation into what was presently transpiring between little bro and I was being hampered by all the booze and rich food. Turn the page. The next day was Christmas. Our exceedingly large family was all that was right and wrong with conspicuous consumptionism in 21st Century America. I sat quietly twiddling my thumbs as gifts were lavished upon the kids. An older niece gave me a little box- "For negative, sarcastic, crappy thoughts". It was in reference to my sister's sacarine habit of making "Happy Thoughts" boxes for my parents. I had told her how it always bummed me out. I grabbed pen and paper- "Watching the rich people open gifts." I wrote on a tiny slip, folded it an put it in the box.
Late in the day I pulled out the guitar and started to play a new song. We had gone through all our drag names earlier in the day. I was Sporty Jennings. My sister in law was Itchy Magraff. Itchy and little bro-Shorty Jennings sat on the couch yammering about something as i tried to hit a clean G cord. Look, I'm not one to announce a song with a lot of "Quiet Please!" I just launch into it, hoping the crowd will get the point. Forget that. Shorty and Itchy got louder and LOUDER. They happened to be sitting on the couch three feet away. They LAUGHED! They GUFFAWED! They paid no attention to my strumming and vocal styling. Now it was my turn to get pissed. Where's a 45 rpm record when you need one....or two?

SHEWHO

Last night I got an email from an old girlfriend stating quite succinctly that I should "get over it." She wasn't referring to herself but my ongoing moping and pining for Friendly. Ouch! Truth is I can't get over any of them. Sure some are harder to forget than others but on the whole I think of each and every one every day. There was Sweets my first girlfriend. She lasted all through high school and into college. Then my second girlfriend and first wife Luscious. After the divorce came Honey, Cookie, Candy, Dr. Stripper, Baby-baby and the second wife Mrs. Yummy. Then came Friendly, Twitchy and my current love Shewhocannotbenamed.
As Shewho informed me the other day "If you got me you'd be thinking of ways to get rid of me." This was in response to my bitching over the fact that her husband seemed to get in the way of our dating plans. She was probably right. I had a bad case of wanting what i couldn't have and once getting it....Shewho, Friendly and Candy were all on that list. I'll get to Candy later. Look at Kong. Take that blond away, chain him up and watch the poor fool spin. I bet if they had just let it run its course they would have bored of each other and moved on. "Jesus! Don't you ever brush your teeth?" "You know you could shave those pits once in a while."
A perfect case in point is Shewho. We met when I was with Baby-baby, almost 20 years ago. Our love has survived marraiges (hers and mine) distance, kids (hers) and my propensity to write about all this crap. She understands me. She loves me. She worrys about me. She has very low expectations. I may not show it, but I love and care for her equally. I also have very low expectations. We're made for each other. Add to this the inexplicable fact that our sex life still smokes and so what if society frowns upon this. Must I cite Kong again?
As far as my obsession over Friendly goes, as i told my producer when he bitched over having difficulty writing hearbreaking songs, because of his run of nice, well adjusted girlfriends....pick one. Friendly has become the flailing armed, many headed hydra, representative of all. I blame Friendly for everything that went wrong with all of them. It makes things easy with the chorus. I'm an innocent man.

MY SHOES AREN'T LONG ENOUGH TO KICK THE SHINS OF THE LORD

When I used to work, we would periodically be visited on the job site by one sort or another of "Bowtie Willie". These were the priviledged and pampered "designers" hired by our super rich clients to tell them what we were doing wrong. These men would expertly balance a cup of tea, with a pastry on a plate and wind their way through a filthy construction site without getting a speck of dust on their thousand dollar suits. They were way more than a cut above the rest of us. We would marvel at their expertise in such matters as wallpaper, vintage toilet bowls, and paint chips. Not to prejudge, but most of them seemed rather gay. In fact almost all of them were married with kids. That's not gay is it?
The one thing they all had in common was the length of their shoes. A shiney wing tip would enter the room a full five minutes before the bowtie appeared. It was uncanny. They seemed to be of a breed that endured some sort of reverse foot binding. I'm sure once they started moving their parent's furniture around and putting posteds on various lampshades with helpful hints on updating the fabric, the folks knew they were special. Go get the toe clamp and stretcher. Little Willie is special.
Not all admired these men. Some on the crew were quite jealous of their talents and the special treatment they would recieve. They felt they could pick a bone white or towel warmer as well as the next guy. Some would even try to put in their two cents on where to hang the Degas or put the tea set. It was always very embarassing when this would happen. Eyes would narrow. Teeth clenched and jaws set, Bowtie Willie would then relax, realizing his obvious powers could incinerate the poor schmuck and graciously thank him for the input. I never said squat. A man must know the length of his shoes.

HONEY'S PREGGERS

The screw driver didn't go in that deep. I still have the scar, but no real damage was done. My nose on the other hand was broken, deviating that septum for all time, cutting the delivery passages for any inhalable powder in half. Probably saved my life.
Honey was an exotic beauty of mixed origins- Malaysian, American Indian, Black, etc. It must have been the etc. that made her so violent. She had been a student in a class that I was TAing at art school. Like all my women she was beautiful, bright, and had a few issues. Like a moth to a fucking Zippo I go.
Our first date was in a hot tub. I loved California. At the time she was involved with a lawyer in the Berkeley Hills and an ear, nose and throat specialist in SF. She was more of a scientist than an artist. I liked that too. I didn't need the competition on the art front. Within weeks I had moved into her ultra cheap Berkeley pad and squeezed the Doctor and Lawyer out of the picture. I should have stayed tight with the Doctor. I had no idea I'd be visiting emergency rooms so much in the coming years. I guess I was the Indian Chief. I grew pot on the back porch and for the first time started writing. I was about 25 or 26.
Honey had a nose for coke. At the time I was suplementing my income with a little low end dealing- eights and quarters for the Berkeley weekend party set. Punk rock had given way to bad haircut new wave. Everybody was doing coke. Honey was doing all my profit. What i didn't realize at the time was coke could take a personality already predisposed to throwing punches and unleash the inner Macho Comacho. What should have been just a little normal bickering between cohabitants had a tendency to escalate to full scale war when the nose candy came out. You kids can learn from my mistakes here. Anyways, Honey got pregnant and she blamed me. I don't mean she was sleeping around and she suspected it was mine. We were monogamous. (As sure as one can be on that front). I mean she BLAMED me. It was like I had infected her with a case of crabs. That's when the chairs really started flying.
One night after i'd crawled off to the couch and drifted into dreamland she doused me with a full pan of ice water, just for jollys. How dare i sleep when she wanted to play. I'd spent the day interviewing my neighbor who had been the whistle blower on Jim Jones' People's Temple. When the water hit me I swear I saw Jim Jones looking down on me and smiling. I know pregnant women can be difficult, and have special needs and cravings, but this was plowing new ground. Trips to the 7-11 for rocky road and burritos i could take. So I did what any sane man would do. I killed her.
Just kidding. I sure wanted to though. Instead I summoned all the restraint a twentysomething can muster and didn't kill her. I stood there soaking wet and calmly went off to the bathroom, locked the door, took a hot shower, wrapped myself in a bunch of towels and laid down on the fluffy pink rug like a whupped dog. That's when she called the cops.

COWPOKE MOUNTAIN

I carry a gun. It's completely legal. I strap on a Ruger 9mm with a full clip, zip up a sweater around it, stick a NYS full carry permit in my pocket and I'm good to go. I mention this because it's been a dream of mine since i was plopped down in front of that B&W TV watching Hop-along-Cassidy. Everybody on TV carried guns. At that time I carried fake guns when I watched TV. As far as I knew every kid watching TV carried fake guns also. It was just what you did. I wanted to be a cowboy. My little brother still does. I'm content to be heeled. I may not have TV reception, but my gun is real.
This is just a little side note. It also doesn't hurt to let you know I'm armed at all times, just in case... What I really wanted to talk about is my self imposed role as a movie critic. I like it and hope you do also. I watch alot of movies. The thing is I don't go to the real movies too often and no one's greasing me with free tickets, so I have to review movies sight unseen. It's really not that difficult when you think about it. Read a couple of other reviewers, see a preview, check the ads and hype and well....lets see.
Brokeback Mountain is a good one to start with. Two very handsomish straight men playing two very handsomish gay men in 1963 cowboy country. Strap on that strap on. Lushily directed by Ang Lee-(Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger..) this is an epic Holliwood love story, only instead of animals or boring heterosexuals, two confused cowboys camp out, take their shirts off alot, say cowboy sort of stuff, hug, kiss, gaze into each other's eyes and....(tent flaps close). My gay friend told me about a practice (not limited to gays) called "sounding". I had to look it up- "a long arm of the sea". Ahoy matey! This practice involves inserting things in a rather small, seemingly very wrong place for pleasure. What the hell, cowboys are tough.
Everything goes good until summer's over and the cowboys have to go home to the wife and kids. Plenty of tight jeans, butt shots, shiney belt buckles and bucking broncs. The early cowboy fetishism of Robert Mitchum films is replaced by a more subdued fashion sense and tighter jeans. John Ford skies give way to blue screen fireworks displays and a little karate correography. Its not about the gay thing but more about Holliwood LOVE. This is how they get that sounding stuff past the censors.
In the end i don't know what happens so I can't give it away. I would have them argue with the wives alot, get caught with something on their collars, pine for each other, lie, cheat, become so tormented they can't go on and....Or they get the shit kicked out of them by homophobic (gay?) cowboys from the neighboring ranch, skinny dip in the swimming hole, square dance, nurse a little fawn back to health, and ride off into the sunsetstrip where they open up a leather shoppe. I think if I saw the movie I'd like it. I'm a sucker for a love story. Down periscope. We're gonna dive!

NO REDEMPTION HERE

Yesterday I was reading the Sunday times and in the Style section there were two books of note mentioned: A Drunkard's Guide and I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. Now I know I said I wasn't going to endorse stuff and I haven't read either, but the basic premise of both of these tomes I fully endorse. Endorsing premise is OK. I've completely had it with writers wallowing in all the juicy stuff, only to see the light, stop the madness, clean up, get the adoring wife(or husband), sell the movie rights, and inspire a generation to watch Ophrah. The review of these two little books gave me hope. Life long fuck ups can be marketable too. Of course these books were written by much younger folk. Who knows if they're in it for the long haul. There's plenty of time for them to switch gears and repent. For now I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Welcome on board. Let me fix you a drink.
I've had some experience with 12 steppers. Many friends gave up on the downward slide long ago. They stopped doing whatever their chosen poison was, got a few tattoos, went bungee jumping, found God, did the weekend sweat lodge routine, smoked cigarettes, drank cup after cup of coffee and called each other relentlessly to make sure no one was backsliding. For many of them it worked. They turned from sniveling scumbags and became upright citizens. For some, once a sniveling scumbag...... Sobriety doesn't always change one for the better.
My intimate eyeball onto that world came in the form of a 5'3" 23 year old red headed, ex-junkie stripper working on her doctorate in literature at Barnard. At 39 I was at the top of my game. Whatever that game was. She didn't try to convert me and I was glad not to share any of my stuff. After a few months of what passed for courtship she moved into my place on 7&C. The age difference (the largest span up until then) didn't seem to be an issue. So what if she didn't know the members of Grand Funk Railroad. In fact she was a big fan of 70's nostalgia, mining my frazzled memory banks for fashion tips and anecdotal information. Everything was paizley until she moved in. Then the phone started ringing.
God bless 'em, sober people seem to need to talk amongst themselves at all hours of the day or night. I got so used to saying "It's for you." I started rushing into the bathroom to look in the mirror just to make sure I existed. Then there was the sex thing. No, not between her and I. That was satisfactory, but nothing to write home about. More precisely it was the talking about, philosophizing over, exegeting, deconstructing and otherwise taking the fun out of sex, that got to me. That, and the fact that she had started stripping again and was talking about doing fetish porn films, and happened to be screwing a friend of mine was what bugged me. Short story long, we didn't last a year. I heard she became a bigshot editor in England after marrying a Brit. My point? Oh yeah. Some bottoms can't be reached. That is unless it's in a glass. Cheers.

AND THE SUN CAME UP....

....and it had two broken elbows and a triangled face. And the sun came up. I found this little piece of poetry scrawled in orange crayon across the face of a dirty piece of blue lined school paper in front of my Berkeley apartment. The year was 1979. If I'm to truely delve into my shadowy past we must visit this era. Crank up the Circle Jerks, spike that chicky yellow hair, wipe that white stuff off your upper lip, shine those pointy toed shoes and come along.

I'd driven out of the Bearsville hills in 1975 with a wife, a dog, a cat, in a brand new pickup loaded down with everthing we owned. A week later we were at the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets wondering where all the hippies had gone. Four years later the wife, cat, dog and pickup had disappeared like those hippies. I bent down, picked up that eerily predictive scrap of paper, touched the sticky bandages wrapping my midsection, sucked in my breath and straighten my vintage dark shades, making sure they hid all the swelling damage. Flint's barbeque was just opening up. I could smell the hot sauce. Coffee? Yes, please. Coffee.
The night before had started well enough. The previous year I had been working on a series of prints and that night was the opening for the showing of this work. The prints were tiny cryptic images captured in blood on large sheets of rice paper. I had seven of them. The source of the prints was a fresh tattoo placed on seven different individuals. I opened my shirt and peered down at my bandages, marveling how much the seepage looked like my prints. What do they call that...synchronicity? The opening was at Lyle Tuttle's tattoo palor above the bus station on 7th in SF. Instead of buying beer and wine I bought scotch for the opening. This was the first of many miscalculations that night.
Nervousness, some pre-opening lines of coke, heavy traffic getting across the Bay bridge, and the fact that my girlfriend had just learned she was pregnant, set the stage for some serious scotch imbibing. Before the lights were blinked in order to get the crowd down those Tuttle stairs and back on 7th, Honey and i had indescreetly aired our dirty laundry all over that tattoo palor, and she had gone home to Berkeley in coke fueled huff. Ahh, young love. Now I could get serious about the J&B.
The party moved from Tuttle's to Site, a gallery where Kathy Acker was doing a reading. I can see her like it was yesterday- tough, shaved head, wrapped in tight black leather, sitting in a chair spitting her caustic prose at a crowd of adoring fans. I didn't know who she was at the time but in my drunken haze her words hit me like BBs between the eyes. The only thing harshing my mellow was two rather large Germans having their own party right next to me. I glared and told them to shut the fuck up. Miscalculation number 2. The larger of the two grabbed me by the neck and shook me like a rag doll. Hearing all the comotion Ms. Acker stopped her reading and invited the German's on stage. Two big Germans were no match for one fierce literary lesbian from NYC. She clipped their wings as I went off the get rid of some of that scotch.
By the time I headed east across the bay I had to open the door of my MG and feel the road with my hand in order to get home. There was no way my eyes were working. I struggled to get up the steep stairs of our apartment house. The wall bouncing tipped off the girlfriend that her sweetheart was returning. As I fumbled for my keys, the door swung open. I smiled a big stupid grin of gratitude and was promptly stabbed in the chest with a screw driver. Hellooooo.
You want to sober up fast? Always carry a screw driver. I heard the bell. Round one. Now get in there. Left. Right. Uppercut. Watch your blindside. Rope a dope. It wasn't the first time Honey and I had gone toe to toe. But it was the first time weapons were involved. Honey was tough. Honey was mean. And Honey had been up doing all my coke since she left the opening hours before. Maybe this was why they tell pregnant women not to do hard narcotics. It seems to make them mad.
The expensive 50's glass table shattered. The TV went over. The dog (her dog) got in the act gnawing at my pant leg. That wasn't fair. I kicked it and looked at the judges for a ruling. They just shrugged. The neighbors beat the cieling with a broomstick. They were the hippies I had searched for in the Haight, who had journeyed to the East Bay many years before. Even gentle, peace loving hippies could take only so much of this kind of thing. Foot work. Defense. I got some shots in but it was obvious i was no match. Unanimous decision. Honey raised her arms, spat blood and went off to bed. I had the couch. The dog bared her teeth and snarled. Nightie night.....and the sun came up.

THE COP MAGNET

Even before Friendly and I did the dirty deed we socialized a bit. As I said before, she was my guitar player's girlfriend before hubby and I got in there. In those days I was way more social on all fronts. I would have spagetti dinners at my EV pad and in the summer time I would invite my friends up to the country for a weekend of carousing at my family's lake house. Over the years it became a tradition to drop acid at these little get togethers. We weren't kids. Friendly was probably the youngster in the group, by now well into her 20's.
We would pile into a motley assortment of vehicles, point them towards the Catskills and in two hours be singeing our pastey skin on the dock. By midnight the cabin would be glowing purple, breathing and rocking from side to side as the band was set up and the LSD took hold. It looked like a Roger Corman B movie set, complete with girls gyrating on the coffeetable and light weights puking in the laurel bushes. Some years I was involved with someone, other years I was single. In either case I always tripped, much to the dismay of whoever I was with. You think I'm fun drunk? Wait until you see me on a head of classic LSD25. Like a barrel of electric monkeys.
One year in the early nineties I brought a pocket full of the stuff and aside from one stalwart, I was the only one to trip. Everyone poo-pooed the idea. "I'm too old." they'd whine. "I'm pregnant." Whimps. So I just put the rest of the acid back in a matchbook and stuck it in my pocket. At this time I was working weekends as a doorman at a city bar so I had my weeks free. I was also involved with a woman who I was later to marry. She had to get back to the city to work, but I decided to stay with the guitar player and Friendly to catch one more day on the lake. Late that Monday afternoon we headed back to town.
I drove a puke green 1972 Chevy Malibu with a bad muffler that screamed pull me over to any officer of the law whose path we might cross. Put three dodgey looking individuals in the from seat smoking a joint and...well you guessed it. On the Palisades' we got pulled by a NY Statey. He smelled the weed. I had taken it upon myself to take the fall. Friendly and the git player had just been popped in South Carolina on a pot charge and they could ill afford another. I could be the goat. How much could a little marijuana get me? Smokey patted me down and immediately found a pipe and the weed in my shirt pocket. As he read me my rights and put the bracelets on me, he asked if I had anything else? I said no. I thought I was being honest. I'd forgotton all about the LSD. When he pulled the match box out of my pants pocket I remembered. He smiled like he'd just won the lottery when the little pieces of blotter fluttered onto the trunk of the car.
As I sat handcuffed in the back of the prowler I could see him talking to my friends and watched as he began searching the car. I had no idea what they had in their luggage. Then I saw him emerge from the back of the Malibu waving a big bag of something in Friendly's pretty face. My forehead dropped to the front seat head rest. I didn't look good in orange. At least I'd get three squares and a cot. The fiancee would surely give me the death penalty.