WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD David Attenborough

Every day I feel blessed to be alive. To see the wonder of this world, please go to the following URL and watch David Attenborough speaking to the music of WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD. http://www.youtube.com/embed/auSo1MyWf8g?rel=0

Oak Beach Inn

In the 80s I would get on my Yamaha XS 650CC and drive out of Manhattan to Jones Beach. I'd avoid the gathering of sun-worshippers at the East Bathhouse and rode past the sand dunes bordering Ocean Parkway past West Gilgo and Cedar Beach to the Oak Beach Inn located across the inlet from the western end of Fire Island.

One sunny afternoon I rolled into the parking lot and stopped a few feet from the slanted gangplank leading into one of Long Island's more renown bars. OBI's bartender, Robert "Rosebud" Butt, was reputed to have been the birthplace of the Long Island Ice Tea and the freshly-opened clams from the raw bar tasted of the Atlantic. TVs showed sporting events and music videos, but the main entertainment was to sit on the outer deck and watch the comings and goings of the cigarette boats churning up the channel.

The sea was calm and the speed boats ripped up rooster tails in their wake.

Most of the yahoos minded the speed for approaching the docks, but on my second beer two old salts pointed to an approaching Scarab.

"I don't think he's going to slow down." The lean man was tanned to the color of a leather couch from years on the ocean. "He's going about 40 knots."

"Probably his first boat." His more portly friend leaned over to get a better view of the inlet. "He'll get by the sand bar, but he's gonna have trouble with the buoy."

"No, he'll have no trouble with it." The thinner man scratched his chin. "Then again the current's running a little funny. Yeah, you're right. He's in trouble."

How much trouble was explained by the speedboat crashing right into the buoy, splitting the rakish bow in half.

"Doesn't look like anyone was killed. Guess we should go out and help him." The fat man turned to me. "You mind watching our drinks, we'll be right back."

"You got it."

The two men weren't the Coast Guard, but they were the next best thing.

They were drinkers at the Oak Beach Inn.

The location of the original club was at 40°38′23″N 73°17′10″W.

You Bet I Would - Blondie @ Coney Island

THE ANNALS OF DRINIKNG / A Few Too Many

My landlord subscribes to the New Yorker. I read it from time to time. Never all of it, but I pick and choose the articles and several years ago I was drawn to Joan Accocela's THE ANNALS OF DRINKING / A Few Too Many, which was probably the best-written piece to be published in the esteemed magazine in decades. For once they featured writing more to my pseudo-intellectual tastes, especially with key search words such as hang-over, alcohol, and Kingsley Amis.

The article taught that hang-overs occur when the blood/alcohol index returns to zero brought on the dehydrating trips to the bathroom, so holding it is better than constant relief visits to the bathroom throughout the night, although an overloaded bladder would produce more anxiety than a hang-over.

The writer dated hang-overs to the Stone Age and offered insight into the source of the word hang-over plus several foreign alternatives.

Danish is the best "Carpenters in my head."

As for cures the writer heralded Andrew Irving's HOW TO CURE A HANGOVER and also RU-21 a KGB remedy for 'A few too many'.

No drinking man or woman should miss this piece, so please click on the following URL

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/26/080526fa_fact_acocella?currentPage=1

Never have so many been help by one person.

The Jack Palance photo is featured, since Attila the Hun famously fell off his horse while drunk, caught pneumonia, and died the next day. The Huns supposedly hid his corpse to avoid desecration, but some historians think his bodyguard were too hung over to find it.

Thursday morning I woke up this morning with a hang-over and couldn't figure out why I recalled drinking champagne combined with wine.

Never a good combination, but I survived the dawn thanks to the frosty Stella Artois' stuck in my refrigerator.

Hang-overitis.

It's never forever.

EVERYDAY DRINKING by Kingsley Amis

Not everyone is cut out to be a drinker. It's an exacting devotion. Appreciation and dedication are not to to be found at TGIFs or mall beer joints, unless the serious drinker has no other choice, since everyone knows that drinking alone is a serious indication of alcoholism. As long as there's one other living person in the bar ie the bartender, then you're spared any accusations of being a drunk.

What's the difference between drunks and alcoholics?

Drunks don't go to meeting and neither did Kingsley Amis, who posthumously published EVERYDAY DRINKING in which the author decalred about his morning after, "I have a hang-over bad enough to think I'm sprouting antlers."

Mr. Amis was not a wine sipper.

In fact he resented anyone drinking wine other than at dinner as a lightweight.

I'm sure he would have forgiven a Danish sailor/friend on the Isle of Wight for drinking rose wine, since his doctor had warned Kurt that vodka was destroying his liver.

Wine would have been kinder, except the Dane drank 16 bottles of rose per day. Five before breakfast. I'm sure that consumption level would pass Mr. Amis' demands.

Mr. Amis favored cocktails, preferably a gin tonic. He would go to the cinema with all the appropriate mixers in his pockets; lemon, ice, tonic, glasses, and gin. A man for the ages who never let his unconsciousness be his guide only his companion as do most men in Pattaya, drinking capitol of the Orient.

EVERYDAY DRINKING has an extensive list of drinks, but like most drunks we like to keep things simple.

Faster to get it down.

I have perused this Amis collection several times at the bookstore. I doubt it will make it to the lending library, but if it does it won't be staying there long, because I have fast hands.

Atheism - Kingsley Amis

“Yevgeny Yevtushenko: 'You atheist?' "Kingsley Amis: 'Well, yes, but it's more that I hate him.” ― Kingsley Amis Foto for gratuitous titillation by Ali Formenti

SEPTEMBER SONG Lotte Lenya

SEPTEMBER SONG was written by Kurt Weill to present an aging man's lament of the passage of youth. Many women have sung it as well, few better than Eartha Kitt and the composer's wife. Check out Lotte Lenya's version by going to this URl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTBu44Ui2Fg&feature=related

Split Sky

At the age of ten I sat on our roof during a summer electrical storm with my older brother. Boston rarely offered such a dramatic show of weather. My father yelled for us to come inside. We thought we knew better and shouted that we were okay. The two of us watched in awe, as lightning strikes spoked the hills to the south. A cyclonic wind raked through the trees at the end of our lawn. The smell of ozone oozed over our flesh. My crew cut stood on end. The black clouds rippled like crow's wings. My brother and I looked at each other. He said something I couldn't hear and his eyes billowed with fear. A lightning bolt split the willow tree twenty feet from us. The flash strobed my eyes and the clap of seared thunder rattled my teeth. Smoke smoldered from the trunk. Hail pelted us without mercy. It was time to go. My brother and I leaped through the window and my father shook his head. "You're lucky you're not dead." He was right about that.

Flying With The Windows Down

Last Monday a small electrical fire forced the airplane carrying Mitt Romney's wife to make an emergency landing in Denver. The passengers escaped from the stricken jet without injury and later on stage at a political rally the GOP presidential candidate expressed his relief that his wife was safe and then said, “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly. And you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem.” People scratched their heads in wonderment, for the passenger fuselage is pressurized to allow the plane to travel through the oxygen-thin upper atmosphere. Later on the Jay Leno Show Ann Romney said he was joking about the windows, but the real reason he wants the window to roll down was so that he can visit his dog strapped to the fuselage. To see him speak on this matter, please go to the following URL; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ws_s38QmxM

Wish I Was There # 1

Foto from Sam Royalle at Diamond A Go Go, South Pattaya. This evening. I'm half the world away. Enjoy the dancing girls, farangs.

You Bet I Would - Emma Watson

The painter Duncan Hannah posted this photo on FB. A friend complained, "I mean, it's almost too much." I replied, "Or almost too little." We live in a world of squares.

Simple Math, You Idiot

Yesterday a radical friend posted a video of the comedienne Sara Silverman lambasting the GOP for radically altering the ID requirements for voting across the country. The courts have been knocking down these laws passed by republican-dominated state legislatures, however over 21,000,000 Americans, mostly the elderly, poor, military, and students don't have state-issued IDs. The response to my friend's posting ranged from outrage to utter dismay, however one person entered this comment; "I didn't read the articles on this or watch much of Sarah's video... but what's the big deal about asking for ID? Who doesn't have a gov't ID these days? Sarah said 21 million people don't have ID... aren't there 225 million in the country? Doesn't seem THAT bad. Doesn't seem like it would do much to affect the outcome of the race if those are the numbers." Those who don't know history are doomed to fuck up more than once and I wrote; "You stupid fuck, there are over 310,000,000 citizens of this country. Some are under 18. the poll officials are asking for driver's licenses and 21 million people don't have them, but do have other forms of ID acceptable to banks et al. wake up. the 2000 election was decided by less than 450,000 voters. Wait a second Al Gore got more votes than GW Bush, so maybe 21 million people denied the right to vote wouldn't effect the result. It's amazing how little people don't know when they choose to be stupid. To See Sara Silverman's torried denouncement of voter suppression, please go to the following URL http://front.moveon.org/boom-sarah-silverman-blows-republican-voter-suppression-efforts-out-of-the-water-nsfw/#.UGIB9kQLaWj.facebook

Panic At 39,000 Feet

Millions of passengers fly on commercial airplanes every day.

Most flights reach their destinations without incident, but not all of them, so before take-off stewards and stewardesses stand in the aisles to give safety instructions accompanied by a video. They point out emergency exits and demonstrate how to put on life vests and air masks. Most people ignore the safety instructions, but on a flight from JFK to Orlando I noticed during the segment about air masks that the actors pretending to be passengers calmly slipped the plastic breathing apparatuses over their faces and I thought that if and when the air masks dropped from the ceiling of a 757 I am going into an EXORCIST level panic.

There will be no calming me down, for if you keep your head while everyone around you is losing theirs, then you don't understand the seriousness of the situation.

FREAK OUT

Flying For Fun PAN AM

Pan-Am was America's airline, connecting the north and south continents, then island hopping across the Pacific to Manila and then straddling the Atlantic to London and Paris. I flew them often to Boston from New York back in the 1970s. The service wasn't up to the fabled clipper class of the past, but they got you on your plane. Once I arrived at the JFK terminal after the gate had been closed by the ground crew. "Sorry, the plane has pulled away from the gate." The woman at the counter picked up the phone and spoke to someone, then hung up and said, "Come with me. We'll drive you out to the plane." We hurried through the terminal to the lower floors. A luggage cart was waiting at the doors. I threw my bag in back and the woman shouted, "Bon Voyage." The driver zigzagged through the maze of tarmacs to find the prop-engined puddle-hopper idling before the main runway. The rear door of the plane was open and a crew member was waiting by the stairs. I ran to the aircraft and jumped on board to take my assigned seat. As I fastened my seatbelt, the captain apologized for the delay and announced that we were ready for take-off. The engines roared and the aircraft raced down the runway into the air. That was traveling.

Stop Throwing Poo

Of course the ad from the Belfast council has been photoshopped, but I love it, plus you acidheads know it could be you or me too. Free your mind.

Vote With Your Life In Mind

"Well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance ... if someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and — and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care." Mitt Romney last week on TV. Health care is about keeping healthy people healthy. It's cheaper that way.

The Downside of Heaven

A holy man from Bali died from old age. He arrived at the Pearly Gates to be greeted by St. Peter.

“Welcome to Heaven.” St. Peter led the Balinese holy man inside the holy rest home of eternity.

“I thought heaven was only for Christians.”

“No, no, heaven is for everyone. Over there are the Balinese. To the right the French. Back there the Muslims. Up front the Christians. Over there the Irish.” St. Peter pointed out every segment of heaven, then as they walked through a forest of euphoria, St. Peter whispered. “And over there are the Fundamentalists.”

“Why are you whispering?”

“Because they think they’re the only ones up here.”

Read Stanley Elkins THE LIVING END.

In that novel the protagonist is sentenced to Hell for thinking Heaven looks like a Hollywood set from the 1930s.

Now that's cold, even for god.

Maigre Versus Pom

My friend Bruce is a famous writer. His name is listed in Wikpedia. Last week I re-wrote a small piece about Palm Beach, in which I take care of a crazy Airedale during off-season. I mentioned Bruce's name in the story and the robust novelist called to invite me to dinner.

Last night Bruce and I met in the East Village. He had died his hair blonde and looked like a healthy Marlon Brando weighing closer to 200 than 300. The staff greeted the legendary writer with smiles. He was the most famous person in the restaurant.

"I come here a lot." His satyric grin revealed a few missing teeth. His exploits on Times Square had taken their toll on his beauty. I no longer recognized the reflection in the mirror.

He ordered a bottle of wine from the Latino waiter and we both choose the fish du jour. After the waiter left the table, Bruce said, "I read that Florida piece."

"It showed the promise of your increasing literary lassitude. Bruce thought that several of my novels should have received better treatment than total rejection.

"Lazy how?" My father had accused on that sin from a very early age.

"Like you were just typing instead of writing." Bruce had churned out three novels in the 90s. The one about a rent boy won a prize in France.

"Truman Capote said the same about Jack Kerouac."

"Even Kerouac spelled better than you and your grammar is atrocious. You're better than that."

"I don't really have the time to be anything other than lazy."

"Don't have time? You're not even working." Bruce was constantly typing out articles for magazines and journals. Words flow from his brain to fingers like tiny diamonds fleeing a broken hourglass.

"The search for money takes up most of my time some days." Raising $700 a week without a job was a week-by-week struggle, but Bruce was right and I said, "I'll go re-edit that story."

"Good, I hate lecturing grown men who should know better."

The young waiter arrived with the wine. Bruce chatted to him about the nearby gay bar. He was certainly Bruce's type. Once the wine passed his muster, Bruce raised his glass.

"Welcome back to New York. How was Thailand?"

I clinked his glass and told him about my two months with Mam and Fenway, the couple of weeks with Angie and her mom, then my ear infection which prevented me from swimming and touring the country. I felt like an old man complaining of my ailments and said, "I think my warranty has run out." "Mine ran out years ago." He laughed with a learned wickedness. Both of us were lucky to be alive.

"You know it's funny about that story, but Fenway's mom read that piece and afterward said that she knows that I love her."

"Why?" Bruce had not met Mam. She had never been to the States.

"Because I wrote that I was faithful to her." I had invited Bruce to Thailand on many occasions.

"You're not faithful." Bruce was judging my present by my past. Most people are trapped by deeds long forgotten by themselves, but not others.

"Twenty years ago you would have been right, but I haven't been with anyone but Mam since 2006. I keep accusing her of slipping a love potion into my beer."

"Love potion?" His voice quivered with possibilities.

"She said that she didn't need a magic potion to make me love her." I showed Bruce her photo.

"She's skinny and beautiful, but not as skinny as Jeffery Kime's old girlfriend Valence. She was the skinniest girl I ever met. A top model with arms as thin as licorice sticks and legs as slender as ivory toothpicks. Tres maigre."

"I don't remember her." I had been good friends with Jeffrey in Paris of the 80s. The ex-actor had a top-floor apartment overlooking the Grand Boulevard. "I crashed with Jeffery after breaking up with my teenage girlfriend. He had plenty of girlfriends, but no Valence."

"She must have been before you knew him. Valence is still my close friend. Then he married the Limey aristocrat."

"She wasn't skinny at all." I had spent time at Jeffery's farmhouse in the Luberon. His wife was lovely. "A nice girl."

"Jeffery thought he was marrying up." His mother had been an army officer. His father was a higher rank. They never married, because his father already had a wife.

"He was." I met his wife's father. He was old landed gentry from Devon.

"I can't believe Jeffery's been dead for over a decade." Bruce finished his wine and poured his glass full. We had lost too many friends over our lifetime.

"Me neither." The last time I had seen him was at Bruce's condo in Miami. He had been very sick. We had gone to see Tom Petty at the Orange Bowl. It had been a good night.

"What happened to his wife?"

"She remarried. My friends say that she is happy." I lifted my glass to Jeffery. He had been a good friend to us both.

When I got home, I thought more about Jeffery and wondered whether I might have met Bruce's friend. I googled Valence, top model, Paris, 80s and found one photo of her naked smoking a cigarette. She was skinny or maigre, but very hairy too. Almost like she was wearing a beard on her groin. I didn't remember her at all.

My Mam is nothing like her. She's phom enough for me. Phom means skinny in Thai. I think Jerry would have liked her. He was a lot like me. I only wish he were here to be more like me than me.

An Actor's Incredible Journey

There is no TV in my top-floor apartment. I watch nothing by NBC, CBS, or ABC. My late father would be happy with my rejection of the 'boob tube', although my apostasy was more due to my inability to operate the new-fangled remote controls than the content offered by networks. I hear people talking about TV shows. The names of the shows' characters populated and my ever crowded limbo of contemporary popular culture, so last night's EMMY contestants registered zero recognition with my synapses. Everyone at Frank's Lounge watching the televised event knew everything about these people. I felt like Rip Van Winkle woken from a long sleep, but I was amused by a friend's comment about many of the lucky winners' acceptance speeches. "What is this show "Incredible Journey", that every winning actor thinks he's been on?" Aldo had been reared on the Gold Coast of Florida. "You don't know the struggles of traveling from a bodunk town in square state to attending acting classes at a square state cow college then surviving the purgatory of nos while everyone jokes about you're being a waiter and finally coming to LA to sell your body and soul to TV." I came from Boston. We had culture. These actors came from the Midwest. The odds against making it were a million to one. "And who would have dunk it?" Certainly not their old man." "You got that right." Aldo worked in TV on the production side. His Emmys were on the mantle at his Jersey home. "Who would have think it?"

Last Chances For the Island

Governors Island lies offshore of Brooklyn and Manhattan. The Indians called it Paggank', for the Dutch it was Noten Eylant or Nut Island. According to Wikipedia the island's current name dated back to British colonial times when the colonial assembly reserved the island for the exclusive use of New York's royal governors. The island served as a army post from 1783 to 1966 and as a major United States Coast Guard installation from 1966 to 1996 after which it became property of New York City, however the island remained off limits 2003, when it was open to the public as a park on the weekend of the summer. This is the second to last weekend for the island after which it will hibernate for the winter. The ferries to pier 101 are free from Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and the Battery Maritime Building in Manhattan's Financial District. I'm going today. See yah There.

NYPD Wabbit Hunt

The government is after an escaped mutant rabbit in the woods. It's impossible to catch him, because he's so fast. They offer a $10,000,000 bounty for its capture. The CIA, FBI, and NYPD show up to help get the rabbit.

The CIA go first. Two hours the black squad comes out of the woods.

"We found the rabbit, but we had a team rendition him to Gitmo." The CIA agent tell the G-Man.

"Bullshit, you didn't find any rabbit. FBI, you're next."

The FBI go into the woods. Two hours later their team exit from the woods.

"We got him but he's in the witness protection program."

"Bullshit, you didn't see any rabbit." The G-man sends them away and turns to the NYPD.

"Don't worry, we'll get your rabbit." The Sargent leads his squad into the woods. The G-Man hears fighting and screams and after ten minutes the NYPD drag a battered and bloodied bear out of the woods. The G-man asks, "What the fuck is this?"

The NYPD sergeant nudged the brutalized bear, who says, "I'm a wabbit."

WANTED MAN by Peter Nolan Smith

Staten Island was formed by the melt-off of the Ice Age. The fifth borough doesn't exist to most New Yorkers, but my doctor lived next to the Tibetan Museum on Lighthouse Hill. Nick and I attended the same college and every year he invited me out to his house for my annual mdedical examination.

Last weekend I rode the subway from Fort Greene to South Ferry. Saturday was a sunny day and the starboard side of the Samuel I. Newhouse was packed with tourist snapping thousands of shots of the Statue of Liberty. I sat on the port-side to survey Red Hook NYCHA projects.

Back in the 90s those forlorn houses had been named the city's worst neighborhood and my friend Rocco had worked under cover for the NYPD narcotics. He had been off the force for years, but his brother was working as liaison between the Mafia, FBI, and NYPD on Staten Island and I tried the retired detective's cell on the off chance that he might be on there.

"Where are you?" Rocco was a big fan of my writing. I had almost ruined his career as a movie producer with his seeking support for NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD, my screenplay about pornography in the 90s.

"Where do you think I am?" We were used to answering questions with questions. No one could know our answers.

"You're not upstate." Rocco never picked up the phone at home, almost as if he was in the witness protection program. "I'm guessing you're on Staten Island."

It was a long shot and I wished that I had bet $100, because Rocco said, "You motherfucker, you have someone tailing me."

"Nope, just playing the odds." I believed in planned coincidences. "I'm seeing my doctor at Rose Avenue. Maybe we could meet up later. Are you with your brother?"

"Nah, Johnny's done thirty. He's down in Florida collecting his pension. I'm with my old partner, Frankie, you remember him?"

"Sure." Frankie was the scary half of a duo playing bad cop/bad cop. His partner looked like Dean Martin and got all the girls at the Milk Bar. "Wasn't he related to someone in____"

"Yes, he was, which was he couldn't get nowhere in the job, because everyone knew his connections, so after I busted out of the job, he became a union delegate."

"A dead end for a good cop."

"You got it." Rocco and Frankie were basically straight in a time when being crooked was easy.

"We're at Great Kill Yacht Club. You should come by. I'd like you to talk to him." Rocco was producing a indie film about crooked cops in Red Hook. FIRST MAN IN wasn't even close to being semi-autobiographical.

"Is he still on the force?" There was no one near me.

"No, he did his twenty and out, but then opened a couple of bars with ties to his family. They went under and he ate the debt, then he tried a deli and pizza shop. Each one was a failure."

"I know the feeling." My jewelry store in the Plaza went bust in 2009. I noticed that the ferry was approaching St. George and the tourists were flooding to the bow. I got up and lingered at the rear of the crowd. "What you want to speak about?"

"I'll tell you when you get here." I hated secrets almost as much as Rocco hated talking on the phone.

"I'll call you after my check-up." I got off the ferry and proceeded through the terminal to the trains. Nine stops later I exited from the train and walked over to Nick's office. He was waiting in his BMW SUV. It was good to see him. The doctor and I had been friends ever since European History pre-1500 at college.

"Get in." He popped the locks.

"What about my check-up?" I sat in the car. It smelled brand-new. Nick took care of his things.

"You look great." He peered over the top of his glasses and pulled away from the curb.

"That was my check-up?" My legs hurt from too much basketball and I had a little hangover.

"I see enough sick people every day to recognize a healthy one." Nick had been practicing medicine almost thirty years. His name symbolized health care on Staten Island. "You lost ten pounds in Thailand. You stopped drinking hard liquor. My eyes are clear and my skin is in good condition. You look great for a man twice your age."

"Thanks." His bill of health backed up what I had heard from the Thai doctors during my summer vacation in Sri Racha. "You mind if we stop by Great Kills Yacht Club."

"Why there?"

"I have to meet a friend."

"He connected?" Nick shrugged to say that was the only kind of people who hung out there.

"He's an ex-cop making a film. He wants to help me with my screenplay BET ON CRAZY." I had a name actor for the lead. Bill was going to play 'me' in the drama about a goy selling diamonds on 47th Street. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all, Rose is cooking dinner. We have an hour." Nick drove past Hylan Boulevard past the various clusters of strip malls selling nails, sun tans, and pizza. He turned left on Hillside Terrace. "You know where his boat is."

"I think they'll be easy to find." Rocco liked to see any approaching danger. I figured that it ran in the family. We pulled into the parking lot and I scanned the boats in the slip, then spotted Rocco and his brother supervising the storage of a SeaBreeze 25. The white hull was gleamed in the late summer sun.

"That's them."

"I thought as much." Nick parked his car and we strolled over to the two ex-cops.

"Love to see yah." Rocco shook my hand and I turned to Frankie. He was as handsome as ever, although the lines in his face aged him a little more than his years. At least he wasn't balding like his partner. I introduced them both to Nick.

"I know you. In fact I knew your father. He was my doctor as a kid."

"His father was a good man." He always had a good word for me as did late Nick's mother. I loved her bacon and eggs.

Frankie reached into a cooler and pulled out four Tecates. We spoke about Staten Island, their years working the Red Hook houses, and our connections to each other. We went back decades. Nick and Rocco wandered off to look at the boats and I stood with Frankie. He had something to say and started with a confession.

"You know me, I'm not a bad man." He was posing a question.

"None of us are, but we do what we have to do to get by." I had never killed anyone and Rocco had never spoken about any shootings resulting in a death.

"Yeah, well, I got into financial trouble a couple a years ago. I have three kids and an ex-wife. I needed to get straight and one night I met a guy I knew from the job. He was retired too. I had heard something about him, but couldn't remember what. For some reason I thought that he was a little like me, but he starts talking about cocaine. I don't know nothing for it. Maybe a few lines once and awhile."

"It isn't a sin." I stopped, because coke wasn't cocaine anymore.

"Anyway he tells me that he has a connection from Florida with pure stuff. He'll front me a couple of ounces and I can sell it to my friends. I knew he was talking about my family. Shit, I wasn't going to sell the shit to strangers. So I ask around and make a contact. We sell ounces and then a kilo. I get back on my feet and I'm almost ready to pull out of the deal, when this fucking scumbag turns out to be undercover for the DEA. They want me to rat on my family."

"But you can't."

"No, I can't, so they take me into custody until I make bail for a million dollars."

"Who'd you shoot?"

"No one. Fucking G-man prosecutor thought he was Rudy fucking Giuliani and I was his case to ride into politics. They have me every which way; wires, tapes, every fucking thing. I felt like John DeLorean. I would have never gotten involved unless they suckered me into it."

"I understand." The good are good only because they are too weak to be bad.

"I'm looking at major time and I was wondering what you thought about doing a runner somewhere."

"And Rocco told you about Thailand." My old home Pattaya had been a refuge for fugitives. "You have any money?"

He mentioned a number. It almost had enough zeroes.

"If you live quiet that's good for five years, but most farangs live fast in Thailand."

"I'm looking to disappear." A million dollars was a good incentive against flight, but time for cops was hard time in prison.

"You have a passport?" The Feds normally confiscate it on arrest.

"I got one," he said it in a way that I knew it wasn't his.

"And you can leave and never come back."

"All I got waiting is a cell." His kids were grown. People were going to be looking for him, but he was good-looking and Thais like good-looking people.

"At my age that's going to be my retirement plan."

"This isn't funny." Frankie wasn't in the mood for jokes.

"Okay, I'll tell you what to do." I laid out a plan for him. The route was direct. I knew a village in the western forests. The headman was a friend. He had a nice sister. Vee had one eye, but spoke English. No one else in the village did. Frankie might last there a couple of months before the peasant food and the quiet of the rice paddies drove him into Bangkok. I wrote down the information with my left hand. My script was almost as unreadable as NIck's handwriting on his prescription.

"And these people will take care of me?" We exchanged phone numbers.

"For a price." I lived there some of the year. The tranquility was brutal, but I had my children and second wife. She loved me. I had no idea why. It had only been a month since I left her and I missed Mam.

"No one does nothing for free." Frankie eyed Nick and Rocco coming back to us.

"I'm doing this for you." I was waiting for him to ask me to be his guide. We had no history.

"Thanks." It was a simple thing to say, when you were trying to disappear as a wanted man.

"It's just a couple of phone calls. You have to do the rest." He had been a fool, but all that bullshit about not doing the crime, if you can't do the time is exactly bullshit.

We shook hands and I told Rocco that I'd see him soon. If Frank took my advice, i would see him in the western forests come the new year.

Back in the car Nick asked, "What was that about?"

"You really want to know?" I was getting hungry and his wife was a good cook.

"No." Nick had his own troubles.

"Good." And I had mine.

We were good friends. We knew that we didn't need to know everything anymore and that was a good thing on Staten Island.

THE POLITESSE OF PALM BEACH COPS by Peter Nolan Smith

Back in the summer of 2008 I was taking care of a Palm Beach mansion. It was deep off-season and hurricane season was coming on fast. One evening I went over to my friend's house close to the center on town. After dinner Lisa killed me at scrabble. She scored 33 points for xi, which is a Chinese measurement. All my words were composed of single-digit letters. After she claimed victory, I bid her good evening and drove the LandRover down S. County Road under a fading full moon. The palm trees bent under the force of a stiffening wind. The air was thick with humidity. All the windows were open. I hated AC.

Passing Joe's Crab Shack my phone lit up with an SMS from my Thai girlfriend. Our baby was going to be a boy. I phoned the phone to tell Andrew C about the news of my baby being a boy.

"Congratulations."

HIs salutation was cut short by a Christmas tree of lights exploding behind the LandRover. I pulled over to the curb and said to the British interior designer, "Let me get back to you. The cops want to talk with me."

I kept my hands on the steering whee and the young officer shone his flashlight in my face. I blinked for several seconds and then he shut off the light.

"Yes, officer." As far as I knew I hadn't done anything wrong.

"Your right-rear tail light is out." His Floridian accent was soft to my ears.

"Really?" I had only one beer at my friend's house, while we were playing scrabble, so I wasn't worried about a DWI.

"Yep, license and registration and insurance, please." He was polite for a cop, then again this was Palm Beach.

The license was in my wallet. The registration in the glove compartment. I couldn't find the insurance. Giving him the first two, I apologized, "Sorry, this isn't my car. I'm house-sitting on King's Road. The insurance is on the desk there." My job was to watch the house and walk their Airedale.

The officer asked the address and I gave him the street and number.

"You're taking care of that crazy dog?"

"Yes, officer."

"You know it's on the shot to kill list if it gets off the lease."

"Yes, officer." Pom Pom had attacked two dogs before I got there. She had been rescued from a shelter. I thought that her previous owner had run a crack den in Riviera Beach. "I keep her on a short lease."

"See that you do."

"I'm sorry about the light. Does this mean I'm getting a ticket?"

"No, if everything checks out, it's a simple verbal warning."

"Thanks, I was speaking with my friend. I must found out I'm having a baby boy."

"Congratulations. I'll be right with you."

Five minutes later he returned to the car and handed back my ID and papers.

"Get that fixed."

"I will as soon as the house owners wire the money, officer."

"That could be a long time." He knew his territory.

"I have a bike." It was cheaper than a Rover with gas at $4 a gallon.

"Good Luck with your baby boy." It was a nice thing to say.

"Thanks. Now all I have to do is think of a name.

"You'll think of something." He got into his cruiser and sped down the road toward the Southern Bridge.

I put the car in gear and called back Andrew.

"Did you get a ticket?"

"No, just a warning." I started the car and drove slowly down S. County Road with the crest of waves glowing white on the night's ocean. "He was actually nice."

"Not like New York cops." Andrew C had been living in the country the last ten years, but he explained that the previous month he had been invited to a dinner party at Paul Kasman on 10th Avenue in NYC.

"I was flying to London in the morning. I had a few glasses of wine, then stopped to drink water. After dinner I went outside to see that a tow truck was backing up to haul away my Audi. I got there before the clamps had been hooked to my car and I drove away to find a decent parking spot. It took more than ten minutes. Finally I crammed the car into a spot a block from the gallery and got out of the car. A light blinded me. It was an unmarked NYPD cop car and two cops ordered him to stay where he was."

"Never a good thing." Cops under Mayor Bloomberg had been become wretched revenue pirates.

"One got out of the cruiser and demanded if I had been drinking. I told him that had two drinks at a party around the corner." He explained with a Norfolk county stutter. "Then I said that I was flying to see my parents in the morning."

"They must have been impressed."

He said that he didn't about my travel plans and demanded that I take a Breathalyzer test. I thought that I was going to jail and wouldn't make my flight. I blew into the device and I passed. The cop was not happy, saying that I barely passed.

"Barely counts with atomic bombs."

"I locked the car and went back to the party. I didn't drink anything else. Coming out of the gallery I saw the cops waiting. I smiled and they said, "Bon Voyage."

"Nice." It turned off the main road to the driveway of the mansion. I could hear Pom Pom barking inside the house. She wanted her walk. "Thailand has four in the whole country. If you get caught for DWI the Thai police will make you drink water until you pass the test."

"If only New York cops were so accommodating."

"What a nice world it would be."

"Once more congratulations of your having a son."

"Yeah." I missed Mam and wanted to put my hand on her swelling belly. A ticket to Thailand cost $1100. I had $20 in my pocket. I hung the phone and opened the door. Pom Pom had the lease in her mouth. I snapped it onto her collar. We walked down the street. Ours was the only house with lights and let Pom Pom do her business on their lawns.

Actually I was lying before.

I had six beers at Lisa's house.

The cop must have smelled them, proving that Palm Beach is more Thailand than New York City and that's a good thing.

All-Seeing Eye of the NYPD

As a child the nuns at Our Lady of the Foothills told us that God was all-seeing. Our every moves was surveilled by Our Father in heaven and the sisters seemed to be blessed with the same power. They had eyes in the back on their head and could catch us passing notes or misbehaving, which were amazing feats since they wore heavy wimples. My mother was a devout Catholic. As a reward for her faith God bestowed the telepathic vision. We couldn't get away with anything. Moving to New York granted me a degree of secrecy, but my cloak of invisibility is about to be trumped by the NYPD's teaming up with Microsoft to set up a $40 million monitoring system of video cameras, radiation detectors, and license plate readersto spy on its citizens in the name of catching criminals, traffic violators, parking infractions as well as the notorious New Yorker enjoying a beer on his or her stoop, The streets will be watched by the watchers. They will wear blue and they will be seeking any wrong-doers both in deed and thought. I can hardly wait. No one has been reading my thoughts, since my mother passed away in 1997. Not even me.

A Shotgun and Two Jugs of Moonshine

On my 61th birthday I bought a shotgun with enough rounds to clear the streets of New York. Things were getting bad. If I didn't get out of the city now, I was never getting out of here. Thankfully I have two plastic jugs on moonshine. They would help get me close to the Mississippi. After that I was on my own." The draw of the brokehead on the other side of the Hudson was enough to confirm, "If I can make it to here, I can make it to anywhere." There are no cars. There are no planes. My feet will get to the Pacific. From there I'll get home somehow. In moonshine, more truth.

MAIS OU SONT PASSES LES GAZELLES Lizzy Mercier Descloux

Lizzie Mercier Descloux pioneered world music with her 1984 "Mais où Sont Passées les Gazelles ?" ('But where have the gazelles gone?') base on her travels in Soweto. The punkette was a good friend and we miss her always. To hear MAIS OU SONT PASSES LES GAZELLES please go to the following URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI03uuJEX_c&feature=related

Hermaphrodite

Back in the early 80s no one went to the Louvre museum. The museum was completely empty. My friend Tony from Alabama and I would tour the galleries of the Louvre with models telling them not to look at the paintings. "Let the paintings look at you. You are more beautiful." We ended our promenade at the Mona Lisa, but forced them to look at the statue of the Hermaphrodite. The girls loved us for thinking them 'beautiful', belle' or 'schon'. It was the truth.

National Cheeseburger Day

New York has great cheeseburgers, but my favorite was from McBell's Bar on Sixth Street across from the West 4th Street basketball cage. Tommie Dimaestri was the waiter and served me free food whenever his boss wasn't looking too hard. I think Tommie was sweet on me. Anyway McBell's cheeseburger's ground sirloin was served on a fresh bun and topped by cheddar cheese with the consistency of melted lava. No one in the city can topped it, but McBell's has been closed for years and there's no mention of it, the owner, or his dog, Sam. It's a cruel world. Happy Cheeseburger Day and don't cheat by going to Mickie Ds, for their meat if everything from the cow, except the moo.

Horseneck Beach Races

The day after my senior prom I drove my date, Patti, down to Horseneck Beach in my VW Beetle to meet my schoolmates. We couldn't find them in the parking lot and she suggested that we cruise the beach road in hopes that they might have migrated from the crowded public area. Patti was a pretty girl and I told her that she reminded me of Faye Dunaway in THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR. "You're just saying that." The honey blonde was a junior at the local Catholic girls school. "No, but I'm no Steve McQueen." I looked over to the beach and remembered the scene from the movie, where McQueen's character races a souped-up VW over the dunes and I turned the steering wheel hard and stepped on the gas. She laughed nervously, as we sped along the shore. This lark lasted until my tires sunk into the sand. I tried to rock it out of the trap, but succeeded in burying the tires deeper. "I think the tide is coming in." Patti was right. "You wait here." I ran to the West Beach Bar. A derelict towtruck was parked outside. I entered the bar. The three men inside laughed at me and the oldest said, "Let me guess. You got your car stuck in the sand." "Yes." "You're the second one today. $15 to get it out." "I have $10." I guessed a lot of young men thought that they were Steve McQueen at this beach. "Ten is it." He put his beer on the bar and walked out to his truck. We returned to my VW. The water was up to the engine in the rear. The man attached chains to the front chassis and hauled my car to the road. "Thanks." Patti was grateful for the help. "You wanna drink some beer with me." The older man was asking her. "No, I came with him." "Just thought I'd asked, because if you're stupid enough to go with someone who gets stuck in the sand, then I thought you might be stupid enough to go with me." The tow truck driver pulled away from us and Patti laughed with relief. I dropped her home before dark. I never touched her. I was stupid and not just for getting stuck in the sand.

A LOSS OF MEMORY by Peter Nolan Smith

The Catholic Church and other derivatives of the Judeo-Christian faith extol monogamy as the true state of man and woman, then explain sex through the mysteries of the birds and bees. Actually my parents never lectured their children on that subject, although they said that the stork had delivered a new brother or sister from the hospital.

"A stork?" I doubted their claim, for the bird was not native to New England.

"Yes, a stork," my parents said the word with reverence and they remained faithful to each other as mating pigeons. Bees never entered into the conversation about babies, maybe because the queen bee had so many lovers.

Just like me, for I can't count the number of my paramours on one hand or all my digits and while I don't remember all their names, I do recollect their faces, smiles, and smell, yet very little of the sex.

Woman on the other hand pride themselves on their memories.

They can quote you twenty years after the utterance left your lips. I thought that females would be equally recollective about the act of love, but not all of them.

Several years ago I ran into Valda at a studio opening in Manhattan. The ex-La Rocka model was still a beauty. I had been out of town for a half-year in Asia. She and I sat on a window sill reliving our past. The cheap wine was kind on our memories. Two younger people came up to us and the girl asked, "Are you a couple?"

"Not really." I smiled at the tenderness in her voice. I had once been that young.

"You seemed so comfortable together." Her beau beamed with the promise of two hearts beating as one and he held his girlfriend's hand with tenderness. They had a lot to learn, but I wasn't in the mood to bust their bubble, so I said, "No, we were never a couple, but we once were lovers."

"No, we weren't." Valda's quick answer came in a harsh tone.

"We weren't?" I was certain that we had slept together on my futon with slick sweat cooling our bodies on a hot August night in 1979.

"Not at all." Her adamant response bristled with denial.

"Are you sure?" Her kiss was etched on my mind.

"100%."

Those few encounters couldn't have been a phantasm of my fantasies. She had scratched my back to shreds.

"Really?'

"Yes." A fury dwelt in her eyes.

The young couple were aghast at this reversal of their intuition and they fled from the charred ashes of my displaced memory.

"Sorry, guess I was thinking about someone else." I waved the white flag of surrender.

"And there were plenty of those." Valda stormed out of the gallery.

She was right, for a woman is never wrong about a man.

I had slept with two of her best friends.

Mary Beth and Lucille wouldn't know if I was right about sleeping with Valda, but I was gracious enough to allow Valda her victory, for maybe something bad had happened between us. I couldn't dredge up my sin, but then maybe I wasn't so memorable in affairs of the birds and bees.

I doubt it but as the philosopher James Steele said, "As you get old you forget. As you get older you are forgotten."

Sad, but sometimes true.

FLATLANDS by Peter Nolan Smith

I-90 weaved over the Berkshires into the tree-drunk Hudson Valley and the smooth highway shadowed the ancient Mohawk Trail past the cities of northern New York. The escort of gentle hills faltered after the Finger Lakes and the interstate straightened out across fertile farmland between Phelps and Batavia.

AK was at the wheel of the special edition Torino. Its owner had maintained the station wagon in concourse condition and the V8 engine purred at 65 mph, wanting to go faster. Pam was in the back reading FEAR OF FLYING. Sitting in the front I added up the distance to the Rockies from a map of the USA. Colorado lay more than 1500 miles to the West. There was little danger of us getting lost in the Midwest, since the highway ran all the way to Northern California.

“Aren’t we going to stop and see Jackie?” AK asked, as the Ford Torino passed a road sign marked BUFFALO 35 MILES.

“I called before we left Boston. She’s gone south to Kissing Bridge.” Pam mercifully fielded his query. The blonde nursing student in the back seat was Jackie’s college roommate. Her boyfriend had been the fourth wheel on several double-dates.

“Jackie’s with her high school sweetheart.” Last summer I had hitchhiked back and forth from Boston to Buffalo five times to see the doctor’s daughter. Jackie was that cute. “She’s down at her parents’ ski chalet in Kissing Bridge.”

“I’m sure she’d be happy to see us.” AK tapped on the steering wheel. He was having a good time at my expense.

“You and Pam maybe, but not me.”

“Somebody sounds jealous.”

“I’m not jealous.” The ex-cheerleader was happy with her sweetheart. He had been admitted to Yale’s law program and I said, “They make a nice couple.”

“You’re right. He does sound jealous,” Pam declared, for while a man’s ears were designed to capture the full pitch range of sound, a woman’s hearing was attuned to deciphering the broad prism of human emotions.

“Okay, maybe I’m a little jealous, but that’s not a sin.”

“Actually it’s one of the Seven Deadly Sins, if I’m not mistaken.” The New Yorker regarded someone falling down stairs as comedy and his finger getting a paper cut as tragedy.

“I can see that I’ll never be right on this trip.” We had been on the road less than five hours and I had been the butt of their jokes for all five of them. California was more than two thousand miles from here and my payback could be exacted somewhere west of the Mississippi. We Irish liked our revenge cold.

“Pride’s another of Deadly Sins.” AK grasped the steering wheel with his hands at 10 and 2 O’Clock. A driving school on the South Shore had taught me the same technique in 1968.

“Sloth is one more.” Pam offered from the rear.

“I’m not lazy.”

“Didn’t you graduate ‘sin laude’?”

“I wish you’d stop telling people that.” I glared at AK.

“Hey, graduating without honors is better than not graduating.” The New Yorker was not distracted by my discomfort. “Or going to Viet-Nam.”

“I might have graduated at the bottom of a class of two thousand, but I bet ten dollars neither of you know the other Deadly Sins?”

“You’re on.” AK lifted two fingers. “We have envy, pride, and sloth. Greed and lust make five.”

“Gluttony is six.” Pam was a good Catholic girl.

“And what is the Seventh?”

“Bias.” AK was half-Jewish.

“Wrong.” I was half-Irish.

Pam and AK offered a dozen wrong answer before I ended the contest by saying,

“Wrath.”

“Shit, I should have guessed that first.” AK laughed at my answer.

“What do you mean by that?”

“You do have a temper.” Pam offered over my shoulder. “You can’t say that you don’t.”

“No, that would be a lie.” I would run out of fingers and toes counting my fights in grammar school, although most of them had been to protect myself from ritual beatings by two bullies in 8th Grade. “So where’s my ten dollars?”

“Double or nothing for the Ten Commandments.” AK countered speeding up to 68.

“You’re joking?” Nearly my entire education had been under the tutelage of nuns, brothers, and Jesuits. My palms had been blistered learning the Old and New Testaments closing my eyes I reverted to a 3rd Grader at Our Lady of the Foothills.

“Thou shalt have no other gods.” I ripped off the other nine and said, “That makes twenty. You can put it in the gas kitty, unless you want to double or nothing of state capitols.”

Geography had been my strongest subject in grammar school.

“I give up, but I have my own talent.” AK revealed his pop acumen by reciting the release date of each Beatles LP, as if his brain had stored the information to teach a future class in Beatles 101.

“BEATLES FOR SALE was their last record worth a listen.” I had rejected the Fab Four for the Rolling Stones after hearing their cover of Chuck Berry’s COME ON.

“SGT. PEPPERS, THE WHITE ALBUM, LET IT BE and every other Beatles LP hit the top of the charts all around the world.” AK owned all their records.

“That might be true, but when was the last time you listened to one?” I had bequeathed my Beatles albums with the exception of BEATLES 65 to my younger brothers.

“It’s been a while,” AK admitted with an apologetic voice.

“You know the Beatles are Jackie’s favorite band?” Pam had the right ammo to shut me up.

“They are?”

“Didn’t you notice their poster on the wall of our dorm room?” She shut her book.

“No.” I tried to visualize the poster and only came up with Jackie’s bed.

“Your Beatlephobia is another reason that you two were never going to make it in the long run.”

“She left me, because of the Beatles?” Sex with Jackie was well worth shutting my mouth about how the seven minutes and eleven seconds of HEY JUDE was the longest hour in music history, but now was too late to change that part of the past.

“I’ve already said too much.” Pam folded her arms to conclude this indiscreet breach of a friend’s confidence.

AK slipped on her Joni Mitchell tape and we listened to BLUE for the second time in seven hours. It was the only tape that we had in the car. Pam resumed her reading and AK looked out the window. The wind through the windows did the talking for us.

I-90 bypassed Buffalo and we stopped for gas just over the Pennsylvania state line. The town was North East. We had been driving for eight hours. Boston was almost 500 miles behind us.

Pam assumed driving duties and drove fifteen miles over the speed limit.

“You’re not scared of getting a ticket?” AK eyed the speedometer.

“I never get speeding tickets. Maybe when I get older, but not now. Cops like a pretty face. If a smile doesn’t work, then I go for tears.”

“Maybe you could teach me your magic.”

“Sorry, a magician never gives away her tricks.”

I leaned against the rear passenger door.

The warm spring air buffeting through the open window deafened my ears to their small talk. My friend was attracted to the wholesome blonde. The pianist’s chances of conquest were near-zero, since Pam was saving her virginity for a wedding night with her fiancee.

To the North the afternoon surface of Lake Erie glowered more brown than blue. The steel mills of Erie and Cleveland had been polluting the great lake for close to a century. Overhead a blank haze hovered over the endless fields of green corn stubs. The sun was drifting toward the western horizon. I took out my journal and wrote down single words describing the passing scenery.

“Sky, earth, lake, highway, cars, trucks, trees, barns, silos, birds, steel, bridge, flowers, clouds, haze.”

The pen dropped from my hand and I dozed in the back seat until a sharp argument woke me.

“What’s the problem?” I leaned forward to the front seat. The lowered visors were blocking the setting sun. It as getting late in the day.

“Your friend wants to stop for the night and I say keep driving.” Pam’s face was firmly set by her determination to reach California. She hadn’t seen her doctor boyfriend since Christmas.

“I agree with Pam. The less time we spent in the Midwest means more time to spend in the Rockies. With three of us driving we could make the mountains tomorrow afternoon.”

“Non-stop.” Pillow time was AK’s second favorite drug.

“So name a city or town.” Pam threw the map at AK.

“What about Cleveland?” It was only fifty miles away.

“I spent a night in Cleveland in 1972 drinking beer next to a junk yard. There’s nothing there.” Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa had nothing to offer off the highway other than cornfields and crapped-out factory towns.

“Strike one.” Pam stepped on the gas. No one was passing the station wagon, while she was at the wheel.

“What about Toledo?” AK read off the map.

“No Cleveland, no Sandusky, no Toledo.” Pam’s closed the argument with her hands white on the wheel. Her America consisted of the East Coast and the West Coast.

“What about Chicago? We could see some blues. Maybe some Muddy Waters.”

“We’ll hit Chicago around two in the morning.” I calculated our arrival time by dividing the distance by speed. “The bars close at that time.” Driving into a city was an unneeded deviation.

“Okay, no blues, but what about a motel?”

“You can sleep in the back of the station wagon.” I pointed behind me.

AK popped off the Joni Mitchell to vent his frustration. He fiddled with the radio dial and found a college station playing soul music. Al Green was followed by Joe Tex and Ike Turner.

Night fell west of Toledo and a quarter moon rose behind us. A little east of Angola, Indiana we filled up the tank at a truck stop charging 60 cents for High Test. I ordered $10 at the pump and then looked to the diner. The bright windows were clean.

“I’m hungry. Anyone else?” I was thinking a cheeseburger and fries.

“I vote for a thirty minute break.” AK raised his hand.

“I’ll go along with the mob to make it unanimous.” Pam got out of the station wagon and stretched her body. Boston to here had been a long run.

“We’ll see you in the diner.” AK opened his door and walked Pam to the diner.

I paid the attendant and parked the Torino.

The truck stop was wreathed by a mist of diesel fumes and the buzz of blood-thristy mosquitoes competed with the low growl of idling engines. Women wandered from truck to truck. Several checked me out as a potential customer. I hurried inside the diner, where the long-haulers at the tables were gawking at Pam and I wished that the blonde coed was wearing a jean jacket instead of a filmy peasant shirt. Several truckers snickered out jokes about Pam’s ugly sisters. They were talking about AK and me. I joined my friends at the counter and started to open my mouth to remark on their lack of front teeth.

“This might not be the South.” AK grabbed my hand and whispered, “But these good old boys would love to beat up a hippie. Keep cool.”

I smiled at the plaid-shirted truckers and a ravaged redneck in greasy overalls winked at me. At least one of them didn’t think that I was ugly.

The blue-haired waitress took our order; hamburgers and fries for three.

“Don’t mind those hicks. They ain’t got a home or wives.”

“We do too have wives,” the redneck protested with hurt pride.

“Ex-wives, you mean, Chuck.” The waitress smirked, as if the truckers were deadbeat brothers owing her money. “All these bums have are their trucks.”

“As long as the banks don’t know where we are,” a heavyset trucker joked with an outlaw smile.

“Not such a bad thing to be on the road.” I offered to bridge the gap.

“What do you know about the road?” a bearded long-hauler in greasy overalls demanded from across the counter. His tattooed forearms were thicker than Pam’s calves.

“Not much, but I drove taxi to pay for my college tuition and spent more hours behind the wheel of that cab than in a classroom.” Hacking those late hours had been a contributing factor to my ‘sin laude’ status on my diploma. “I know it’s not the same as hauling potatoes from Idaho to Texas, but I made money on wheels.

“Potatoes are a good cargo,” The bearded long-hauler murmured with an accompanying nod and the redneck agreed, “Potatoes don’t shift their weight.”

“A shifting load of pigs will jackknife your rig and sure enough the next day a dead man will be shifting in his grave.” A white-haired trucker grimaced from a flashback to a near-brush with death.

“Yeah, but trucking is better than working at a factory.” Another trucker professed from across the counter.

“Or a mine.” The redneck offered with a West Virginia accent. His fingernails were black with grease not coal.

After that comment we held a pissing contest to see who had held the worse job. My employment as a janitor in a morgue was beaten out by a shit-shoveler at a pig farm.

Pam had heard enough bravado and stood up from the counter.

“Happy trails.” She blew a kiss to the truckers. Several of the hardened long-haulers blushed, as if they were school boys on a first date. Pam knew how to work a crowd.

Walking to the Torino the throttling of big engines filled our ears. Overhead the stars clustered into the thick marvel of the Milky Way. The night temperature was dropping into the low 70s and might lean into the 60s before the dawn. It wasn’t summer yet.

“Those truckers weren’t so bad.” Pam shivered in the cool air.

“Most people have some good in them.”

“I loved how you stopped being a hippie and became a trucker like you were shredding your skin.” AK caught up with us. “You even started to speak with a drawl.”

“I have a gift for language.” I wiped my face with a napkin from the diner.

“More accents than language, which is a good trick for a Boston boy.” Pam tossed the keys in the air. “Your turn to drive.”

I caught them in my right hand and opened the passenger door for her.

“Jackie liked your manners.”

“So at least I was a gentleman.”

“On some occasions.” Pam shut the door. AK was looking back at the diner.

“What’s the matter?”

“You and me. Our families came off the boats and dropped anchor. These people went inland. They’re not like us.”

“They’re still Americans.” We watched the same TV shows, played the same games, and ate the same food, but AK was right. Some of these people considered us as much the enemy as the Viet Cong.

“I know that, but both times I crossed the country I felt like a spaceman on an alien planet.”

“Or Captain America and Billy in EASY RIDER.” Dennis Hopper’s biker film had scarred every longhair with a healthy fear for rednecks and crackers.
Knuckles rapping on the car window cut short our conversation.

“Our mistress calls.” I nodded to Pam.

“As long as she’s with us, we have nothing to fear.”

I sat in the front seat and turned to Pam.

“We weren’t talking about you.”

“I know. My ears weren’t burning.” She had a protective toughness to her, then again staying a virgin required work in the 70s.

I started the Torino.

The V8 was raring for the road and the souped-up station wagon raced onto the highway. The truck stop disappeared into the darkness and I pushed the car up to 80.

The dashes between the lanes shrunk to dots.

“Aren’t you worried about cops?” AK had an unblemished driving record.

“They’re resting for the Memorial Day madness.” Cops worked triple shifts on the holidays. They loved the overtime.

AK tapped my shoulder and pointed to Pam. She was sleeping with a quivering smile on her lips.

“Guess she found a hotel room in her dreams. Why don’t you do the same?”

I slowed down to 70. A distant radio station was playing Tommy James’ CRIMSON BLUE PERSUASION.

“Wake me, if you get tired.” AK stretched out on the back seat and joined Pam in Never-Neverland.

Indiana was the heart of America and this late at night every miles was a mirror of the last and the next. AK and Pam slept for two hours, as I drove in the throes of an interior conversation. None of my voices settled future problems about a real job or lack of a girlfriend. I finally silenced the banter by speaking to the DJ on the radio. He was a better companion that the voices in my head.

The trucks rolled at 75. The drivers of the big rigs communicated with each other on CB radios, pinpointing the location of rolling cruisers and speed traps. I followed their lead like a taxigirl at a dime a dance hall.

West of Michigan City a stretch of highway broke free of traffic in both directions and I stepped on the gas to test the engine. The Torino hit 100 within a half-mile. My foot buried the pedal and the speedometer touched 126 before I eased off the accelerator. The owner had been telling the truth about the Torino. This station wagon was built for speed and we reached the old steel town of Gary three hours after leaving the truck stop.

Two summers ago I had passed the mill town and the night sky had shimmered with the glow of blast furnaces at full tilt. Tonight it was black as the midnight hour. The recession had killed off the graveyard shift. I eased off the gas and the Torino fell into place with the trucks on the road. Their drivers had slowed down for a reason and a mile farther west we passed a state trooper hidden in the bushes.

AK woke up with a groan.

“Where are we?” He rubbed his neck. He should have crashed in the back.

“A little west of Gary.”

“I was hoping you would say Chicago.” AK was slow coming to his senses.

“It’s about seventy miles north of here. We made good time.” I90 had become I-80. We were 900 miles from Boston and only two thousand from California. “It’s only 1. You ready to take over?”

“No, but I’ll try my best.” We stopped on the side of the interstate and made the change in less than twenty seconds. Before getting behind the wheel, AK tapped Pam on the shoulder.

“What?” She was startled by being in a car with two men who were not family or her boyfriend.

“Let me fold down the back, so you sleep like a human being.” AK helped her from the car and we arranged bedding from our sleeping bags. Pam crawled into the back without asking where we were. I wished that I could have joined her, but AK could use the company for the next hour. We shut the doors and the Torino pulled back onto the highway.

I lasted another ten minutes before falling asleep, praying that we were out of Illinois by the time I rose from my limbo.

I woke to JOLENE by Dolly Parton. It was a big hit in America. AK’s face was a dark silhouette behind the wheel.

“You’re listening to country?” I sat up in my seat.

“I like her twangy voice, plus there’s not much else to listen to out here.” I looked out the window. Water was everywhere. The lights of a big bridge split the dark horizon. “Is that a lake?”

“No, the Mississippi is in flood. A radio station warned that the flood crest with hit this area tomorrow.”

“We’re lucky to pass through now.” The shining reflection of the setting moon on the black flood plain mirrored a watery alternative to the highway.

“The Army Corp of Engineers says there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Are you sure the road is open?”

“Cars are coming from the other direction. You ready for another shift?” AK slowed down to stop on the shoulder.

“Not really.” Two hours of sleep had barely sated my weariness.

“Regretting that vote against a motel for the night?” AK asked outside the station wagon.

High waters lapped against the banks of the Interstate. Another three feet would close the highway.

“Just a little.” Two trucks whipped past us at top speed. AK and I watched their rear lights faded into the night.

“This is our land.” AK misquoted Woody Guthrie on purpose

“As much as Boston or New York.” No matter where we went in our lives we would be Americans.

“From the New York Island to California.” He got the words right this time.

“This land was made for you and me.”

The altered lyrics didn’t sound hokey without the music. They were a testament to a singer’s love for his country. I took the keys from AK. He sat in the passenger seat and draped his jean jacket over his body.

“Stay between the lines.”

“I’ll do my best.”

I checked the rear view mirrors. AK lay like a ragdoll underneath his sleeping bag. Pam slept head to toe in the direction of California. The highway was black ahead and behind. My foot exerted pressure on the gas and the Ford Torino pulled into the righthand lane. 70mph was a good speed for this time of night. The tank was half-full. Omaha was an Iowa away.

The Missouri River was the beginning of the West.

I accelerated to 80, for fast was the only speed to drive at this time of night in America.

Obsession with Possession

Written Sep 17, 2012

Materialism is a fleeting desire of possession and all spiritualism is nothing but an attempt to explain nothingness to justify our obsession with possessions. - James Steele

New York State Of Mind

Last night I was sitting in Frank's Lounge bemoaning the Patriots 20-18 loss to the Cards. "It was a fix. That holding charge against Danny Woodhead was weak. You know when the refs blow a call, when the TV doesn't show the replay." I was on my fourth beer and speaking loud to Paco and Vince. "So you saying the game was fixed?" Paco was a few years my senior. The Giant fan knew football. "Maybe." Games were only fixed by referees and the NFL. "The point spread was already blown and the over-under was 48, so tell me who was to gain from a bad call." "Add six points to the 38 and a conversion." "That makes 45. The under is still safe." Vince didn't bet on games. He was a school administrator for math. He was good with numbers. "Not if the Cards came back and score a field goal." I was deep in an alternative universe. "That's not what happened, besides this is New York. We don't give a shit, if New England wins." Paco had Brooklyn-born. Our argument wandered through several topics until we got to best song about Boston and New York. The three of us agreed that DIRTY WATER was Boston's theme song, but none of us thought that Sinatra's NEW YORK NEW YORK was a shoo-in for top New York song. "I used to listen to it in Boston and think, "Yeah, start spreading the news." "That's because you come from Boston. New Yorkers don't about New York like that, because we don't leave New York." Vince was younger than both Paco and me. He had been to North Carolina twice. "Plus Sinatra is from New Jersey." "Only one song I consider # 1." Paco got up from his stool and played Jay Z's EMPIRE STATE OF MIND backed by Alicia Keyes. "This is a song by New Yorkers. The sample comes from LOVE ON A TWO WAY STREET by Sylvie Robinson. She's from Brooklyn and Angela Hunte and Jnay wrote EMPIRE. They Brooklyn too." "So EMPIRE is a Brooklyn song? Not New York." "Fool, Brooklyn is New York." "I know that." I had moved to Park Slope in 1976, thinking I was commuting to Manhattan, the real New York, but not anymore. Brooklyn was my town, but another song slipped onto my mental charts. "I think you have a good argument, but what about Billie Holiday's AUTUMN IN NEW YORK or NO SLEEP TILL BROOKLYN?" "I know what you're trying to do?" Paco pointed a finger with a smile on his lips. "You're gonna say that the Pogues' FAIRYTALE OF NEW YORK is your song. You Irish are so predictable." "No, I wasn't." "Oh, yes, you were," Rosa the bartender had been listening to our every word. The Chinese girl had big ears and a warm heart for this city. "EMPIRE is # 1, NEW YORK NEW YORK is # 2, and FAIRY TALE is # 3. And that's it. Anyone have a problem with that?" Paco, Vince, and I shook our heads. Rosa was the boss at Frank's Lounge and all three of us were old enough to know that a woman is never wrong. And I mean never. To hear EMPIRE STATE OF MIND please go to the following URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjsXo9l6I8

Joe Was Good People

Penn State played Navy this weekend and after the game the teams sang each other's fight songs. Nittany Lion supporters were touched by this display of sportsmanship, but once more criticized the NCAA ban based on the Freeh report accusing the university and its football program of enabling a child molestor for decades. Alumni are incensed by the firing of the late Joe Paterno and Graham Spanier without recognizing their complicity in the sex abuse scandal. They express their anger at the situation without any connection to the cause for their shame. Ask the boy who was raped in the shower room, if he feels unbowed. Joe Paterno did nothing to protect him and that is the truth no matter how songs the football sings after a game.

You Go Your Way, I Go Mine

The United States and its allies are rattling the saber in the Persian Gulf by conducting naval exercises designed to thwart any attempt to close the vital sea lane should Israel decide to attack Iran to prevent their distant enemy from developing an atomic bomb. This weekend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in New York drumming up contribution from supporters and the hardliner appeared on American TV to force President Obama to draw a line in the sand on Iran. While his GOP opponent has accused Obama of throwing Israel under the bus, Bibi was quick to tell the interviewer that he was satisfied with the President's efforts to protect his nation from attack. According to the BBC Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian expert in Israel, suggested that publicity for the exercise was primarily aimed at American voters and the Israeli leadership: "This military exercise is Obama's way of showing U.S. voters, especially Israel's supporters in the U.S., and Netanyahu that when it comes to Iran, he is not only relying on talks," he said. "To show that when he said 'I have Israel's back' in March ... he meant it." Congresswoman Michele Bachmann wasn't so sure about Obama's commitment to the Zionist state, since the President hadn't met with the Israeli PM on this trip. “And President Obama needs to get his priorities straight. What he needs to do is cancel his planned interview with David Letterman, cancel his meeting with Beyonce, cancel his meeting with Jay Z, and instead agree to meet with the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, because you see, America and Israel have a commonality of interests.” The White House said that scheduling conflicts for both men were an issue. I think Bibi feels better with the fleet in the Straits of Hormuz than shaking hands for a second with the President. And secondly Michelle Bachman, "Shut your hole."

My Naked Breasts

The Royal Family of England was outraged by the publication of topless photos of the potential future queen of Britain. No one back in the 1940s would have dared shot HR Princess Elizabeth skindipping at Balmoral Castle. Newspapers respected the Crown back then and now newspapers strived to violate the privacy of the rich and famous to sell copies to the poor and unknown. Buckingham Palace has threatened lawsuits against any publication displaying the naked photos and the Irish Daily Star has closed to avoid any legal action against its overstepping the bounds of lese majeste, but the Italian magazine CHI, which is owned by former PM Berscolini, has responded to this edict by splashing the photos on the front cover. Having seen the Duchess' breasts I decided to shave my chest to see, if her highness' set were more beautiful than my moobs or man boobs. One look in the mirror told the truth. Duchess Kate is the prettiest of all. Even in a photo taken from a kilomoter away from the terrace in the South of France. Beauty is beauty is beauty, but there is no privacy any more. Not unless you close your shades. ps I'm doing the world a favor by not published a photo of my moobs.