Wednesday, June 29, 2016

A MAN OF SPEED by Peter Nolan Smith

In early September of 1960 Hurricane Donna struck New England as a category 2/3 storm. The radio station WBZ announced numerous school closing. My primary school on the South Shore, Our Lady of the Foothills, was one of the first on the list following Beaver Country Day School in Newton. My older brother and I were happy to stay home. We were new kids in town.

That morning a raging gale howled against our split-level ranch house and the windows vibrated in their sashes. The electricity died at noon and my father lit a kerosene lamp, which he placed on the kitchen table. Our family of seven huddled around the flame like Neanderthals sheltering in a cave. Several hours later the howling hurricane abated to a whisper.

“Where are you going?” my mother demanded with hands on her hips, her voice ringing with the authority of a woman, who had carried five babies in her womb.

“Outside to show them the eye.” My father loved a good storm and waves crashing over the sea walls.

“Hurricanes are not a joke.” My mother had experienced the 1938 hurricane. That tempest didn’t have a name, yet hundreds of New Englanders had died in its path.

“I know.” My father shrugged in weak surrender to the truth.

“You act, as if you don’t.”

Hurricane Edna in 1954 had destroyed his sailboat on Watchic Pond. The hull lay in our backyard.

Six years later he had yet to repair the damage to the mast.

My father was my best friend. He's been gone four years. From this life. But not from forever.

To read A MAN OF SPEED by Peter Nolan Smith on Kindle, please to the following URL to purchase the book for $3.99

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HHLHTDK#navbar

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Women On Cash

The never-ending war against racism in America has denuded southern flagpoles of the Confederate battle banner and forced state capitols to store the statues of ancient slavers.

Nationally Americans agreed that Andrew Jackson, a die-hard slaver and Indian killer, better not represent the nation's higher values and the US Treasury decided the replace 'Old Hickory' with Harriet Tubman, a black woman, who led over a thousand blacks from Dixie too freedom.

There was rumbling from below the Mason-Dixon line as well as north of the border, but Ms. Tubman was a true hero.

Tubman carried an old Navy revolver.

She was not afraid of using it.

No one under her care went back to a plantation.

She was not the first woman to grace paper money.

Martha Washington, another slave owner, was on the $10,000 bill.

We didn't see many of those.

My favorite prior on the $1 coin to pistol-packing Harriet Tubman was Sacajawea, a Lemhi Shoshone woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Pacific and back.

Without her knowledge and language skills the white men would have never reached their goal.

The remained in the Western Plains, alternatively dying of illness in 1812 or living in Wyoming to 1884.

I have been to her grave.

Amongst her people.

Harriet Tubman was buried in Auburn, New York.

Far from Dixie.

A good thing back then.

May she live on the $20 for ages.

Saturday, June 18, 2016

Pattaya Time Warp - Photos from 1969


Sam Royalle emailed this photo.

Paradise 1969 although Hell was only a few hundred miles away in Vietnam.

Click on this URL

http://pattaya-funtown.com/old_pattaya_pictures_videos/#

These photos were taken by a GI on holiday. Amazing. No Big-C. No traffic. No plastic bags in the water. No Russians, lager louts, or bikers. There is no trick photography. That's how it was. Not that I knew. I was a draft dodger and I'm still trying to get my anti-war pension from the Pentagon. Maybe I'll have more luck now that Obama is in office.

"Hey Ho We Won't Go."

But I would have gone to Pattaya in a heartbeat.

How could I have known?

We were so much younger then.

Pattaya Tai

The future site of Bali Hai

Pattaya Beach.

The old pier.

The beach.

From the admiral's hill.

Florence Foster Jenkins - American Songboid

Some people are just plain lucky.

According to Wikipedia Florence Foster Jenkins (July 19, 1868 – November 26, 1944) was an American socialite and amateur operatic soprano who was known and ridiculed for her lack of rhythm, pitch, and tone, her aberrant pronunciation, and her generally poor singing ability.

Her audience came to see her faults.

Her pianist tried to hide them.

It was an impossibility.

But she was loved and that's not a small thing.

Not then.

Not now.

And this May the movie starring Meryl Strepp reincarnated Florence Foster Jenkins.

It see

She deserves nothing less.

To see the trailer, please go to the following URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rRVCNffvKk

Friday, June 17, 2016

Tarzan Jesus On VDO

A religious festival in Guatemala featured a Jesus on a very high pole. The spectacle turned bad when 'Jesus' fell from his crucifixion perch, but luckily caught hold of a wire to break his fall.

A miracle for Tarzan Jesus.

His father was part god/ part ape.

To watch Tarzan Jesus fall, please go to the following URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Emwi1y5U4

Tarzan Jesus

Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote TARZAN in 1912. The story of a British orphan raised by apes in Africa captivated American readers. The former businessman became wealthy off these tales of Dark Continent and the legend of Tarzan remains a money-maker for Hollywood.

While other actors brought the Lord Of The Apes to the silver screen, Johnny Weissmuller animated Tarzan for the cinematic audiences around the world. The Olympic champion embodied the character with his swimming, fighting, and famous cry swinging through the jungles.

"Me Tarzan. You Jane."

In my childhood Johnny Weissmuller was Tarzan.

Since his retirement Hollywood has drafted numerous actors to play the Lord of the Apes.

Lex Barker, Gordon Scott, Jock Mahoney, Ron Ely, Miles O'Keeffe, Christopher Lambert, Casper Van Dien, and now Alexander Skarsgård in a 3D version.

Personally I'm waited for TARZAN JESU.

A tale for the ages.

Sunday, June 12, 2016

Polar Flight Seat #60A


Seat 60A in a window.

I slept most of the journey over the pole, waking occasionally to peer out the 777's porthole.

Below was the long Arctic night and overhead five stars were visible through the pitted flexi-glass.

Virgin was offering a real Space voyage to intrepid 'astronauts'.

$200,000 to ride Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Enterprise 250,000 feet to the very edge of Space. A porthole vista of the cosmos and 5 minutes of freedom from gravity. The space terminal will be in New Mexico. Not far from Roswell.

There have been no shortage of prospective passengers opting to witness the miracle of the universe such as the strange swirling Aurora Borealis seen over the Norway several years ago.

I have only seen the Northern Lights twice in my life.

Neither was on this last trip over the pole.

The sky was as black as night.

As far as the eye could see above and below.

Unless you counted the old Chinese woman asleep next to me.

She was so celestial.

Libre Puerto Rico

On September 12th of 1983 Víctor Manuel Gerena dropped off his girl at Hartford City Hall to get a marriage license after which the minimum-wage guard finished the day's work at Wells Fargo armored car facility by drugging his two white co-workers and robbing the depot of $7,000,000 in cash. His girlfriend was stranded at the altar and the FBI accused the fugitive of belonging to a pro-Puerto Rican Liberation gang called the Los Macheteros.

Víctor Manuel Gerena and the money was transported to Puerto Rico, where members of Los Macheteros distributed the loot to the island's poor.

The FBI confiscated approximately $80,000 in the years after the White Eagle Robbery and federal authorities prosecuted several gang members, however Víctor Manuel Gerena remains at large to this day, Puerto Rico Day and every day the fugitive sets another record for being on the FBI's Most Wanted List longer than any other man or woman.

Felicitations and a clenched fist salute to the FALN.

Libre Puerto Rico.

ps The FBI are dumber than a bucket of doorknobs.

Saturday, June 11, 2016

Headless Farang in Bangkok


Jamie Parker remains my eyes and ears in Thailand. Wehave known each other for decades. Our tastes coincide more often than not, although Jamie's fun usually begins where mine ends, which is why I told him not to spy on either my girlfriend or wife during this extended absence from Siam.

My wife lives in Chai-Nat. 180 kilometers north of Bangkok. She isn't Jamie's type. Mam on the other hand is 25 and skinny.

"Just the way I like them." Jamie was calling from Pattaya. Mam's apartment was down the coast in Jomtien.

"Jaime, how long we been friends. A long time, right? So don't joke about birddogging Mam."

"What you going to do 10,000 miles away if I do?" Jamie's voice was garbled by whiskey and I warned, "Me, what will I do? I have the key to your safe deposit box. The code too. I'll wipe you out tomorrow morning."

"You actually think I left anything in that?" His question was asking for the truth.

""Yes, because I've already looked."

Jamie had left me the keys in case he got into trouble, but also since he didn't trust himself with the contents of his safety deposit box; $90K and two bags of cocaine plus gems and two fake passports. I'm no thief at least with friends. Banks are another story entirely, because they're the biggest thieves of all. "So you don't fuck around with me and I don't fuck around with you."

"You hear about the farang who hung himself off the Rama 8 Bridge?" Jamie wanted to change the subject. "His body was found hanging by a wire. No head. They found that wrapped in a plastic bag."

"Murder or suicide?" Most farangs would vote for the former while the Thai police like to wrap any messy cases up with 'suicide'. Same as cops everywhere.

"I think it was sexual misadventure. He covered his head in plastic and then jumped off the bridge trying to get a thrill."

"Sounds like something you might have tried."

"Only a couple of times, but then I lost the thrill." Jamie went silent as if he were reliving the moment. "Not The Nation had a funny take on it. Very gallows humor."

"Do that and stay away from Mam." I hung up without another word. I was angry. The love of Thai girls wasn't meant for the light of day and I trusted her the same way I trust Jamie.

Completely.

At least he came through with the email from NOT THE NATION.

http://www.notthenation.com/pages/news/getnews.php?id=729

OR

Beheaded Foreigner "Probably Suicide"

The death of an unidentified Western man whose head was found hanging in a bag suspended from the Rama IX bridge has been ruled a suicide by police.

"Based on careful forensics, we think that he removed his own head, placed it in the bag, tied to the rope, lowered it over the side, and then jumped," said Police Colonel Chavalit Prasobsilp. "We see it all the time."

He then went on to explain that Thailand was home to a high number of such unusual suicides, such as renegade journalists shooting themselves twice in the head and corporate whistle blowers choosing to vanish in the middle of investigations to bury themselves in shallow unmarked graves.

Very suspicious.

Then again I believe all deaths are the result fo murder someplace along the line.

For a related article click on this URL

http://www.mangozeen.com/2009/02/26/bangkok/soi-nana-twins.htm

Gon Gohng = Thai for Scam - Pattaya

Many Pattaya beer bar denizens know kee-kong means cheating. Bad romances are great communication skill enablers, yet few western tourists or residents have the occasion to learn the useful word gon gohng or scam.

99.999999999% of people are honest. Not all.

Several years ago a 25 year-old Australian woman reported a rape to Pattaya police. She claimed separation from her friends led to a friendly conversation with 3 men who drove her to a remote area for a prolonged rape. A young Thai man rescued her and took the victim to Bangkok-Pattaya Hospital, where she was checked for HIV infection. The police inspector vowed to apprehend these criminals for prosecution and drove the young Thai man and Australian woman back to the site of the rape.

Both suffered simultaneous amnesia.

Danny Lyons @ Whitney Museum NYC

Photographer Danny Lyon has been taking photos of bikers, criminals, protestors, rioters and various other socially challenged groups.

New York's Whitney Museum will be displaying his work in a retrospective titled Danny Lyon: Message to the Future, which opens on 17 June and runs until 25 September.

That show is one I will not miss.

Bikers galore.

Get your motors running.

Thursday, June 9, 2016

If Jesus Came To My House

According to the New Testament Jesus was crucified by the Romans atop Calvary. His apostles entombed their Messiah in a cave. His mother and Mary Magdalene mourned his death. The High Priests of Judah celebrated the demise of another troublemaker. Only Jesus didn't die easy.

On the third day the Son of Joseph supposedly rose from the dead.

Fifty days later He assumed divinity and Christians have worshipped the Living Christ for thousands of years.

IF JESUS CAME TO MY HOUSE by Joan G. Thomas was a popular Catholic School book during the 1960s.

As an atheist I read it to discover the thoughts of my enemy.

It wasn't a bad book, although Jesus never cooked anything or performed any miracles.

Gods don't have to work.

Just like rich people.

Both worry about idle hands and the Church came out a handbook to prevent Catholic schoolboys from masturbation.

According to the Vatican 2352 masturbation is to be understood as the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. "Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action. The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of "the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved.

True love.

The Church has never acknowledged true temptation other than Jesus' trails before Satan, where he refused the wilds of this world.

However Jesus saw half-man.

God is all-seeing, so Jesus is half-seeing.

And temptation is everywhere.

God knows where too.

Like I said, "Thankfully I'm an atheist."

And if there ain't no God, then God knows nothing.

Thankfully all my temptations are left in the past.

But not the need to masturbate.

Beautiful Gerry Vasco @ AMP Gallery Provincetown

AMP Gallery is very pleased and excited to invite you to an Opening Reception

June 10, 6-9 PM of photographs and videos by Bobby Busnach, David Macke, Alice O'Malley, Ethan Shoshan, Gail Thacker, Conrad Ventur, Jamie Casertano, Bobby Miller, David Chick, and Shaari Neretin!

The Opening will also feature a special performance by Billy Hough & Susan Goldberg at 7:30!! Free!

Look forward to welcoming you! __________ June 10 through June 30 | OPENING June 10, 6-9 PM Bobby Busnach: "Fags Hags and Wannabees: Scenes of Tribal Grit, Glam & Camp from the 70s" David Macke: “chthon-ic” 2016 Alice O'Malley: "Lesbian Poetry" Ethan Shoshan: "Screen Tests for Disappearing into the Ocean" Gail Thacker: "Polaroid Theatre" Conrad Ventur: "Atlantis" Jamie Casertano: "I've Been Here Before" Bobby Miller: "Cookie Mueller" David Chick: "Holly Woodlawn" Shaari Neretin: "Sound Bytes: Mass(ive) Consumption"

AMP: Art Market Provincetown 432 Commercial St, Provincetown, Massachusetts 02657

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Resist

The 1967 March on the Pentagon showed the US government the depth and commitment of antiwar protestors. Armed troops prevented demonstrators from mounting the War Department's steps, but the hippies and radicals put flowers in the rifle barrels of the soldiers guarding the Citadel of Death. They were arrested in the hundreds. Within years it was the thousands. American involvement in SE Asia waned without peace as B52s bombed Viet-Nam, Cambodia, and Laos.

Hillary Clinton's mentor, Henry Kissinger, was a main architect of the mayhem.

A true war criminal.

America has now been at war since 2002.

Palestine, Algeria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Yemen, Syria and countless cities around the USA.

No one in America says a word.

The wars are fought without a witness.

The dead dying without comment.

The wounded suffer without respite.

Injustice.

Torture.

Chaos.

That is the truth of Pax America.

And no one says a word.

Fuck them.

Bring the troops home.

Defund the Pentagon.

Arrest the war criminals.

Peace.

It's the only way to the future.

Jed Clampett Rocks Out

Nothing say don't do it like an old man rocking out.

Like Buddy Ebsen in THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES.

Jed Clampett was more Ted Nugent than Duane Allman.

To see this travesty, please go to the following URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFOojfjRE64

55 REMSEN

In the fall of 1975 I worked as a substitute teacher at South Boston High School. The city's school system was torn by busing riots. Poor white kids attended school in poor black neighborhoods and vice versa. No one went to classes, unless the TV crews showed up to interview a politician, then the white boys fought the riot squad. It was a bad scene, but I was getting $85/day to insure no one firebombed the empty classrooms. Most school days I wrote poetry. Some of it wasn’t bad.

I moved into a cheap Brookline basement apartment . Upstairs was a two-family commune. The parents believed in free love. I had dated one mother's second daughter. Hilde had told me that she was 18. We had lasted less than three weeks. Her parents said that the young blonde was too young for me.

"How young?"

"16."

"You're right." I was 23, but their daughter's next boyfriend was a 30 year-old car thief.

My best friend met Hilde’s older sister. Terri was almost twenty and was very sexy as to be expected of a Combat Zone stripper.

Two weeks later AK deserted his college girlfriend and moved into the commune's attic with Terri. We were one big happy family.

AK taught school during the day and played keyboards for a popular funk band at night.

The New Yorker was Jump Street's token white boy.

He dealt with the promoter.

When Jump Street were hired a weekend gig at a club in the West Village. AK invited me to join him. Hilde's sister was staying behind for a family gathering and AK confided in me, "I have this old college girlfriend in New York. Rose is an artist. She looks like an East European refugee.”

I painted my own portrait from this scanty description.

Dark-hair, thin, feminine.

That Friday night te band drove down in the van. AK took his Firebird. He wanted to impressed Rose.

"It's not a GTO."

"But it is fast."

We crashed at a friend's place in Harlem. AK invited several friends to the show. I knew no one in the city. Rose came up wearing a cotton shift complimenting her southern gracefulness. Her hair was cut short like she might have been a dyke in college. Her accent was Appalachian. She laughed at Ak's stories, until his girlfriend entered the bar unannounced. Terri had smelled a rat. Ex-strippers are sensitive that way.

“Pretend you're with Rose.” AK was plotting to meet her later.

His girlfriend was too smart to fall for such a simple subterfuge and after the gig I accompanied Rose to a late dinner at David’s Pot Belly Restaurant on Christopher Street, where she worked as a waitress. We had omelettes and spoke about art. Mostly I listened about her plans to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

“Bette Davis’ character wanted to do the same in PETRIFIED FOREST. Lesley Howard has the outlaw shoot him, so she can collect his insurance. I thought it was very noble.”

“Anyone ever tell you that____”

“Tell me what?”

“That you like an angel____” she struggled for several seconds with the next words.

“______under candlelight.”

"No one has ever said anything like that to me."

"It's true_____."

She apologized for not finishing sentences.

"I have a speech defect too. S_s-s-stuttering."

She smiled at our shared failing and we went to her place in Brooklyn Heights.

55 Remsen Street.

Her apartment was one-floor above a Chinese whorehouse. A dragon lady in sheer silk stood at the door. I guessed her to be about 40. The red light over the doorway made her 20.

“You want good time?”

“No. I never paid for sex.

“Maybe sometime you not lucky. Come see me.” She hissed the invitation like a snake sliding through dry grass.

“I hate that____.”

“Woman.” Rose didn’t have to finish off that sentence.

Straight women hated those that aren’t and Ro opened the door to her apartment. She shared the space with a lanky West Virginian. He had a pad of paper in front of him on which he scribbled numbers. Rose introduced him as Bix.

He lifted sallow eyes from the scratching pencil point, but didn’t say a word, as Rose led me into the bedroom. I tried to be quiet, but she called out my name with each thrust nearing orgasm. Women were echoing other men’s names from the sex den below.

Every time I exited from the bedroom, Bix was at the kitchen table.

An unlit cigarette in his hand.

An empty beer to the left.

Several piles of paper were scattered about the table. Numbers filled them to the edges. An expression of hurt paralyzed his face. Words were lost in his mouth. Finally on Sunday morning he asked, “How does it feel to fuck another man’s woman?”

"Rose said nothing about being in a relationship."

"No, she wouldn't, but what can you expect from someone who can't finish sentences?"

"I don't know. I have a stutter."

"So I asked you before." Bix put down the pencil and picked up a knife. He probably used it for sharpening the lead points. "How is it fucking someone else's girlfriend?"

I didn't like his holding the knife and said, “Wait a few minutes and I’ll tell you.”

I locked the door behind me and said to Rose, “Your roommate said____”

“I know what he said. Don’t___” Her hands drew me back into bed to complete her sentence. Her first kiss swallowed my soul. “I love your lips.”

We made love twice more that day and on Sunday Rose escorted me to Penn Station to catch the train to Boston. I had no idea where AK and his girlfriend were. I kissed Rose on the platform and said, “I’ll see you next week.”

“I work on the weekends.”

“I’ll wait until you get out.”

“It will be late.” Hesitation rimmed her reply.

“I can wait.” The train conductor was calling ‘all aboard’. “After all this is the city that never sleeps.”

Back in New York AK grilled me about Rose."

"Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"You know."

"The answer is no."

"You're not lying?"

"No, nothing happened with us. Besides she has a boyfriend."

"Bix?"

"Yes."

"Bix has been following her around for years. I don't know why she lets him do that."

"Me neither."

Thoughts of Rose killed Boston. Its streets were empty after dark. The bars seemed provincial. None of the women possessed the beauty of Rose. The next weekend I trained south to Penn Station and took the subway to the West Village. I stood before David's Pot Belly. Rose waved from inside the restaurant.

The cook Michael served me a Gruyere and mushroom omelette.

Afterward I killed time at the Riviera Bar with a silver-haired jazz impresario. I recited a poem about hitchhiking. James said that I was almost a genius.

“How do you know?”

“I manage Cecil Taylor and Merce Cunningham.” He smoked a cigarette like Marlene Dietrich. The Riviera was loaded with gays, bi, straight. It was middle ground. James was 100% playing for the other team and proud of his sexuality. “I once made it with James Dean.”

“The movie star?” I had heard that he had been with Sal Mineo.

“He went with anyone. You care for a drink?”

"Yeah, why not?"

James and I drank too much, but I arrived at David’s Pot Belly at closing.

"I'm exhausted. Let's go back to my place."

There was no traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.

I paid the taxi fare. We climbed the stairs. The dragon lady smiled at my passage.

“You lucky man.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

"This one never go home same man. You must be special."

"I'm an angel____"

Rose slapped my hand. She didn’t want me socializing with her downstairs neighbor. She opened her apartment door. The wall clock said 3:16. Bix sat at the table. Unlit cigarette in his hand. The numbers had spread to the walls. None of them were equations.

Rose and I retreated to her bedroom. She wasn’t in the mood for sex.

“I’ve had a long day______at work.”

“What’s with Bix and the numbers?” I had been a math major in university.

“He feels as if he can find the right number maybe he can turn back the hands of time and win back my heart.”

“And do you know the right number?” I had loved the poetry of math until LSD warped my perceptions of dimensions. Then words became my math.

“No, and neither will Bix. He’s crazy and that’s why I______stopped being with him,” she whispered from bed. We kissed under the sheets. She murmured with a cuddle, “I still love your lips. Go to_____sleep.”

“All right.”

I fell asleep reading TROPIC OF CAPRICORN. The profane writer had spent his childhood in Williamsburg. Brooklyn Heights was more for successful artists such as W. H. Auden, Truman Capote, Hart Crane, Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer, Carson McCullers, Arthur Miller, Walt Whitman, and Mary Tyler Moore. I woke to the screams of a Chinese woman fighting a man.

Not everyone was as happy as me in Brooklyn Heights.

The next day we brunched on Montague Street. Rose had to be a work at 4. We made love quickly on her bed. I liked her tongue more than her lips.

“That was better than good.”

"I can only try to do my best."

Saturday night was a repeat of Friday night. Dinner at the Potbelly and drinking at the Riviera. Ro was off on Sunday. We went dancing at the Limelight on 7th Avenue. James Spicer came along with us. He bought drinks and we shared a taxi back to Brooklyn. His apartment was in Park Slope.

“You ever need a place to stay call me.” James blew me a kiss, as the taxi disappeared into Brooklyn.

“You know what______he wants?”

“Same thing as everyone. A little love.”

I didn’t even notice the dragon lady or Bix or the cries of pleasure from below. Ro and I were the only two people in the world. I wrote several poems. Ro wanted me to read them to her. They must have made more sense than Bix’s numbers.

We ate in the city. I went to the train by myself, telling her that I would be back in two weeks.

She smiled and said, “I’d like______that.”

Throughout that fall and winter I commuted between Boston and New York. I’d phone during the week. Ro rarely answered the phone. She was either at art school or work. She told me that Bix never picked up the phone. He was even deeper into his numbers. They infected the hallways.

Friday nights the dragon lady greeted me. Her name was Lee.

She asked Bix for numbers.

He handed her a sheet of paper.

“If I like number. I make bet. Win big money.” Lee followed the twisting cortex of numbers for a lottery winner. “Open restaurant. Sell food. No pussy.”

I slowly plotted a strategy to quit teaching in June and collect unemployment through the summer. I informed Rose about this plan on several occasions.

"This apartment is small."

Bix could leave."

"No, it's his place."

"We can get another apartment."

Obviously Rose was stalling, but I didn’t care, because I no longer wanted to live in Boston.

My parents were sad to hear about my leaving.

AK said I should thank him for introducing Ro. “You owe me.”

"I'm not sure how to pay you back."

"I 'll think of a way."

Hilde's car thief boyfriend arranged a job driving a gas-guzzler to New York. The owner would pay me $300 to ditch the Oldsmobile and later collect the insurance, claiming the car stolen.

"It's easy," her boyfriend explained. "Once in New York park the car by the Hudson, throw the plates in the river, and leave the keys in the ignition. Joyriders will steal the car within minutes.

That Friday morning I phoned Rose several times. No one answered the phone.

After packing my bag in the Olds the two-family commune stood at the door and waved good-bye.

It was a little after noon.

“You be careful.” Hilde was a little teary-eyed.

"Don't break any laws." cautioned her boyfriend. He was glad to see me go.

I drove down the highway at 55. Everyone else was hitting 65 or better, but I didn't need a state trooper stopping me.

The trip from Brookline to the West Side Highway lasted 4 hours. It took five minutes to unscrew the license plates and toss them into the black water flowing past the desolate docks. I walked to her restaurant. I had $300 plus my savings in my pocket. A new life awaited me and I entered the restaurant with a smile.

"Where's Rose.

She quit yesterday," Said Michael the cook.

“See say why?”

“No.”

Brooklyn Heights was a couple of subway stops away from Christopher Street. On the way I reflected on the unanswered phone and her quitting her job. That one and one didn’t add up to two, but a myriad of possibilities. Too many to count. Numbers and more numbers.

Just like Bix.

I arrived at 55 Remsen at five. I rang the doorbell a number of times without success. I tried the buzzer for the whorehouse. The door clicked open. I climbed the stairway. The dragon lady waited under the red light.

“Today I lucky. Find good number.” She pointed to a scrawled number on the wall. “Tomorrow no work. You come back. Have good time. Okay.”

"I'm here to see Rose."

"Oh, yes, you." All Americans looked the same to Lee. "She not home."

"Not home. You ask Bix. He know."

The door to the apartment was open.

Bix sat at the table.

A burning cigarette in his hand.

“You know that Hitler was anti-smoking. So was Rose. When Hitler killed himself in the bunker, the first thing the Nazis did was light up a cigarette,” BIx inhaled deeply and then crumpled up several papers jammed with numbers. “Rose’s gone. Left this afternoon.”

“To where?"

“Off to Paris to study at the Sorbonne.”

“She said nothing about that.”

“I know. I was surprised too.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, but I guess you’ll have to go to France to find out what it’s like to see another guy fucking your girlfriend. Not me. I already know.”

It was a shitty thing to say and I probably should have hit him, but I had said the same thing several months earlier, so I figured us even.

“You know she never kissed me.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“How was it?”

“Good.” I had no reason to lie.

“I thought so.” Bix took out his pencil and paper. The numbers were his friends. I walked out of the apartment with my bag. The dragon lady looked at me, “Look you not lucky no more.”

“No not lucky.” Fucked was a better word, except that word had only one meaning in Lee’s bordello.

I wandered onto Remsen Street.

A plane flew overhead and I imagined Rose looking down.

From that height people were not visible.

Somehow I had ceased to exist for her. I couldn’t say why.

I went to the corner telephone and called James Spicer. He answered on the first ring. I told him that I needed a place to stay.

“I thought you’d call me one day.” He sounded drunk.

“Why?” I wanted drunk too.

“Because that girl had heartbreak written on her face. More hers than yours. Get in a taxi and I’ll tell you more.”

“Okay.” I glanced back over my shoulder at 55 Remsen. A taxi came down Montague. I waved it down. Like Rose I was gone and I wasn’t coming back either.

I ran into Bix two months later. He was living on the street. I got him a job as a carpenter. He stayed about two weeks.

That winter the police found him dead below Brooklyn Heights.

Starved to death.

His ragged clothing was stuffed with paper.

No numbers on any of them.

He had buried that demon in the peace of his death, as I had tempted to excommunicate my pain by writing the same poem to Rose about a hundred times. Each ended as a crumpled paper. James Spicer called the pile of rejects 'the hill of THE END'. I didn't laugh at his joke. After that I stopped writing poetry. The words were simply letters, not magic.

Rose and I met each other years later. We had another affair.

Very brief. She was working at a fish restaurant. Her paintings were of fish. They were very good.

I mentioned Bix. She said that she had heard about his death.

"There was no helping him."

"None?"

“None____.”

I waited for her to say more.

Rose was a woman of few words and I couldn’t bring myself to ask why she had left me or why she never kissed Bix, but then I had always known the answer.

It was in the movie PETRIFIED FOREST.

Art was more powerful than poetry and numbers. Only life was stronger, although sadly not for everyone and Bix knew that better than most.

I’m only glad not to discover the same.

Edison Versus Tesla

Edison created the lightbulb.

Tesla discovered the universe.

More than light.

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA by Peter Nolan Smith on Kindle

Most relationship end at the same point and throughout the 1980s my romances t-boned with fate in New York and Paris. I fell in love time and time again with the right women in the wrong places, but also never realized what I had until it was gone.

My long novella IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA recounts my inability to see past skin-deep beauty into the souls, although I was no angel.

Nightclub owners, crooked cops, porno actresses, and runaways were my friends.

No one had two feet on the ground, unless they were in the grave, but I learned nothing from it all and that's because anyone who has all the answers has not heard all the questions.

Here are the women in question.

New York.

Paris.

New York.

We were all so much younger then and we are still younger than now.

To purchase my novella IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA, please go to the following URL

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JQSIZZ4