In Honor of Lassitude

Written 6/29/2013

Back in 2008 the BBC had broadcasted a story about a Bogota Museum honoring laziness with a week-long exhibition dedicated to a deeper understanding of lethargy. At last lassitude has achieved respect by intellectuals, who have too often downplayed its importance to human existence. 

Throughout the 80s and 90s my Sundays were devoted to ruminating before the TV in my East 10th Street apartment, taking long baths, avoiding conversations, and finally watching Star Trek, while having a plate of General Tsao's Chicken take-out from China Star on 1st Avenue.

My girlfriend, Ms. Carolina, called this day 'the incommunicado Shabbath'.

In fact the only person to whom I spoke was the six-fingered Chinese deliveryman.

"$4.75."

"Keep a dollar tip."

The door shut and I resumed doing nothing, while the rest of New York returned home tuckered out from a day at the museums, movies, or brunches.

As a child my father couldn't stand idle hands and scheduled a slurry of chores for the Lord's Day; mowing the lawn, sweeping out the garage, weeding the flower beds.

There was no TV, until you were finished, but he also said, "If you aren't going to do a job right, then there's no reason to do it."

I must have been ten, when I tested his saying.

One Sunday he entered the TV den to find me watching the movie SINBAD.

"Are your chores done?"

"I didn't think I could do a good job mowing the lawn, so I stopped."

What could I have been thinking?

My argument for laziness earned a month of no TV.

I didn't get a mention for thatact of juvenile rbellion at the Bogata museum and neither did the Thais, who are perennial Olympic contenders for the gold medal in lassitude in the eyes of farangs, who don't lift a finger in hard labor. Thai workers labor six days a week for less than $10 a day with lazy drunk wewsteerners compaining about their abilitiy to nothing when they weren't getting paid.

In the late 1990s I work at a metal shop.

Every week I carry tons of brass and steel.

I know tired same as the Thai workers.

All you want to do after a long day is drink a beer and lay down for the count.

Today in 2013 I am at rest.

It's a natural state in the universe and farangs can go fuck themselves onmine and Thais' off days.

All Alone Labor Day Sunday 2023

Labor Day Weekend.

BBQs, family, friends, trips to the beach or lake.

Not 2023, as I recover from my New Year liver transplant. I am lucky to be alive, although some times I think many people think I died during Christmas. No one calls, then again I don't have much to talk about other than being alive.

I thought about the old quote, "As you get old you forget. As you older you are forgotten."

My family in Boston were no-shows. No calls. My clan in Thailand were resting on the otrher side of the world on a Sunday. My good friend Alice was celebrating her birthday in Scotland with friends. We had spoken yesterday. She was glad I was alive. Me too.

No one else has called my phone. No one has knocked on my door. This afternoon I had taken care of Professor Ollman and smoked cigarette with his loving son Raoul on the balcony overlooking Bleecker Street. Afterwards I went to Staples to print some pamphlets I had written aboutlife and deadfh,. I spoke with the young man making them. Upon my return to Clinton Hill I ran into my young comrades. Brigette and Alex. They were headed to Fort Greene Park to laze on the lawn. I wished them well and proceeded to 387, where I sat in my collapsible beach chair and drank an iced cappacino from Larina, thanks to Erica and Frederico. Flacco the Dominican Homeless came by. I gave him water and $1. He returned the favor with a smile.

Alison from Palm Beach called at seven.

We spoke for fifteen minutes.

It was a full day.

I forget I am not forgotten.

I have people everywhere now, the past and future who think of me as I think of them. Remembering much. Forgetting nothing.

Labor Day Travel

Written Sep 1, 2022

In early September 2008 my good friend Alan Vaughan called from Gary, Indiana. The art dealer from Bruxelles was driving to his old hometown, Sarasota, Florida from Onekama, Michigan, where his family had maintained a cottage on Lake Michigan below the Acadia Dunes formed from the glacial melt. He had just visited the Jackson 5 home on 2300 Jackson Street. A little out of the way, but we all loved their 1979 hit ABC. We hadn’t seen each other in a good six or seven years. He knew that I had returned from Thailand to dogsit a mad Airedale rescue for two months in Palm Beach. That job was over and it was time to vacate the mansion off Worth Avenue. I informed him that I was heading north to New England.

“How you getting north?”

“I’m hitchhiking on I-95. I figure it will take 3-4 days.” I actually had a airline ticket from West Palm Beach to Boston, but preferred to mythize a drifter's northbound voyage. “I’m broke so that’s the only way I can get there.”

>“You’re kidding?” He was incredulous. “I haven’t seen a hitchhiker on the entire trip from the Upper Peninsula.”

“Not one?"

“Not one.”

“Well, I’ll be a blast from the past.”

I hung up and then called Alan the next day from the Palm Beach airport saying I was in Jacksonville. He was in Memphis. He had stopped there to see Graceland.

The next day from Brooklyn I called from Dillon, South Carolina. On Labor Day Roanoke, Virginia.

"I’m making real good time."

By the way I was already drinking voka screwdrivers made by my brother-in-law, David Rutter, on Watchic Pond in Standish, Maine. Nowhere close to South of the Border. At my family cottage with my sister and her family and my Aunt Sally and Uncle Russ. Twice the vodka. Half the ice.

The trip from West Palm Beach to Boston wasn't fun, but it han been faster than standing on I-95 waiting for a ride in the middle of the night fast.

And there was nothing like Maine at the end of summer and a cold water lobster. And of course heavy-handed Vodka-tonics from my brother-in-law David Rutter.

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Much more to come.

Labor Day 2023

It's Labor Day Weekend.

Labor Day is not Workers Day.

That Holiday is May 1 worldwide save the USA, Land of the Free.

Workers of the World unite.

No such slogan exists for Labor Day. That holiday had been promoted by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor to oppose May Day, which commemorated the 1885 convention of the American Federation of Labor, which passed a resolution calling for adoption of the eight-hour day effective May 1, 1886. Four days later the Chicago Police and Pinkerton agents attempted to clear a workers' protest from Haymarket Square. Someone threw a bomb, killing a policeman. Eight others died. No one claimed responsibility. The blame fell on anarchists. Four anarchists were executed by hanging. Another died of suicide by a smuggled blasting cap. They have been hailed as martyrs every May Day since.

Conservative Democratic President Grover Cleveland had seen May 1 might strengthen socialist and anarchist movements that backed the May 1 commemoration around the globe. According to Wikipedia in 1887 he publicly supported the September Labor Day holiday as a less inflammatory alternative and formally adopted the date as a United States federal holiday through a law that he signed in 1894.

Falling on the first Monday of September the three-day weekend became a popular end of summer holiday. School began that next week and even at the age of 71 My body and soul instinctively feels the urge to attend the next grade. BBQs, beaches, drinking beer before the summer is over, but in the heated seasons of the mass species extinction summer might never end. at least that is what it feels like in Brooklyn with a breeze blowing through Metro Tech Plaza.

Tomorrow Hotdogs and the Rockaways.

Riis Park and naked.

ps Only the USA, Canada, and Australia do not celebrate May 1 as well as the Vatican, because May 1 is also a pagan holiday.

Sleeping on the Job #1

Written 9/1/22

When I was a kid, white-collared businessmen would see road crews along the highways leaning on their shovels and declared them lazy bastards never having hard to perforn hard labor in their lives.

My father had worked a lumber camp in his youth and tell them, "You've never worked a day in your life, if you say that."

He was an electrical engineer. His hands were soft, but his voice revealed his respect for a working man.

Farangs criticize Thais for laziness without realizing that Thai workers are pushed to the limit.

10 hours a day. 6 days a week. 200-300 baht a day.

The money goes to cigarettes and alcohol to fuel their labor, so they'll find someplace to catch up on their sleep and no one does it better than this day-laborer lying on a steel atop a townhouse.

Comfortable?

Click on photo to enlarge and you'll see how comfortable.

September 3, 1978 - Journal

CBGBs was packed for the Dead Boys recording a live LP. At the bar Alice had drank bourbon with Kim like a cowhand off the range. The two werevmore than a little drunk and fought off anybattempt stop their drinking. Various girls flirt with me at the pinball machine. I refused them. Neither Kim nor Alice were safe. Mostly from their selves.

After the end of the show we accompanied Guadacanal from the Geeks and his frail from DC to his place on 3rd Street. Alice was legless and lurched across the sidewalk. I shoukd havevtaken her home tomour place, but she wasn't done with the night. We went up to his apartment and sat at the kitchen table in his apartment. Alice slips onto the floor. Everyone laughs, as she says her bones have melted to butter. I lay her on a sofa and Guadacanal breaks out an ounce of blow. We huff thick rails, almost like we have a death wish. His girlfriend joins Alice. We stay at it, then he huffs a finger thick line, coughs and flops on the floor. Not breathing. I thump on his chest. He coughs and vomits on himself. I slap his face. Nothing. Two comatose kittens on the sofa. A dying man on the floor. I lift the phone. No dial tone. Guadacanal's breathing is shallow and getting ready for a flatline. I toss him over my shoulder, grab the keys, and hurry to 1st Avenue to hail a taxi.

"Bellevue."

I throw the driver a twenty.

"Fast."

It's almost five. Traffic is light. Still dark. No pedestrians. Five mintues later we're in the ER. Doctors ask questions. I tell the truth. They know it before I say it. My friend is swept into a recovery bed IVs sprouting from his arms. The doctors and nurses see ODs all the time. Hevhas regained consciousess and wants to leave. interns restrain him Guadacanal will be fine. I return to his apartment. The DC girl is gone. Ske took the blow. The dawn is rising. i huff thedregs on thebtable and I wrestle Alice home to East 10th Street and tuck her into bed.

I can't sleep.

At noon Alice wakes, surprised to find herself in the apartment.

"I had a dream I was in Morgantown with my brother. I want to go to some open spaces. I need the country."

It's a sunny day. I still haven't slept.

I had visited her grandmother's haunted house outside Charleston. Two days of rain. Water dripping inside the house. A cold damp in the middle of the summer. I had felt trapped by the weather and the mountains and hollows. Almost as if there was no where to run, but Alice had been inspired by a photo of the glammed-out New York Dolls before Gem Spa and run away from her hometown like some many of us in the East Village.

"New York has gotten to me."

I said nothing about Guadacanal's OD. I could have been him. I doubt he had been in any condition to carry me down the street.

"I want to go somewhere."

"It's Labor Day weekend." Everyone in New York has left the city, but us and everyone we know, except Guadacanal. All I want is a hot dog from a BBQ. Instead outside the streets are steamy and garbage line the sidewalks, mostly because there are not enough trashmen, since the President told the city to go fuck itself two years ago and the sanitation workers went on strike to protest the layoffs. It was either money for the police or trash. The police won out. Tourist remark on the swirling trash. The cops raid drug dens. None of the middle class feel safe. I'm not scared and Alice is brave. This is our city. Nothing is going to get better soon. But swe aren't asking for better.

September 2, 1978 - Journal

Alice and I are stuck in the East Village. No one has invited us anywhere. No picnics. No barbeques. Nothing. The telephone has not hung with any invitations. At noon Alice checked it to make sure it was on.

There was a dial tone.

I turn on the fan and the black and white TV in the living room. It's warm, but not hot. I ask Alice, if she wants to go to Coney Island. She shakes her head and sits next to me. I want to ask, if she wants to have sex, but she's still recovering from her bourbon bash two nights ago, spending all yesterday puking. I give her ginger ale.

"I don't like ginger ale."

"No one does, but puke taste better, when it's part ginger ale."

The TV reports no fatalities at the Speedway bombing during the Indianapolis 500, but hundreds of people are crashing across America. Over two hundred deeda already. I have survived two totals. One in a VW at 17 and another in a Boston Checker Cab in 1976. But more than a few sideswipes and fender benders. Driving drunk was my sin and a good reason to move to New York. I haven't touched a wheel since our trip to West Virginia. I was a careless driver in the city, but an ace on the highway, although in June 1974 driving cross-counttry with Andy Korfeld, I fell asleep at the wheel of a For Torino stationwagon in the dead of the night. Iowa. Skating across the meridian strip. I righted the car back onto the Interstate and relingquished the driver position, but I wish I was on the highway somewhere out west. Alone or with Alice with her hard on my lap.

I years before I succumbed to the call of the road and hitchhiked far from where I started. East West, north, rarely south.

Today I'm trapped here and pulled Alice closer. She knows what that means and rubs my cock. I know she hopes fucking will clear her head. I aim to serve and we fuck until she cums twice. I fake mine.

Photo by Peter Bennett.