Pacem In Terris

Pope John XXIII wrote the Easter encuclical PACEM IN TERRIS in 1963. The Pontiff was upset by how close the world had come to global destruction during the Cuban Missile Crisis and his holiday missive was addressed not only the Faithful, but 'all men of good will'.

His treatise also extolled the rights of man, stating, "That every man has the right to life, to bodily integrity, and to the means which are suitable for the proper development of life."

Two months later he passed from this Earth.

He was a good man, who rescued Jews from the Nazis and attempted to mediate between the USSR and USA.

His last words were in Latin, "Ut Omnes Unum Sin."

"That they may all be one."

It remains our hope.

To read PACEM IN TERRIS please go to the following url http://www.papalencyclicals.net/John23/j23pacem.htm

Beermas Vs. Easter

I'm no longer religious, but I am spiritual, so I celebrate Beermas.

Often.

And I don't drink to make women more beautiful.

I drink to improve my looks.

Oh, you dog.

A Reprobate's Parental Guidance

In 1969 I smoked reefer for the first time in my VW Bug coming from Nantasket Beach. Tommie Jordan and John Gilmore were my passengers. The weed belonged to Tommie, a hockey player from North Quincy. His hair was long, at least for a hockey player, but then so was that of Derek Sanderson and he got big money for playing with the Boston Bruins.

Tommie's weed was mild, yet strong enough to strike my sense of hilarity like cobra venom.

We sat at a traffic light for three changes of red to green, laughing hysterically about nothing and very little is funnier than nothing.

Marijuana was illegal in the 60s.

It is now legal in some states, but the DEA continues to oppress smokers'

The greatest segment of the US prison population are convicted pot smoker. Teenagers are constantly lectured on the dangers of smoke.

At the end of last summer I was out in Montauk . The surfing beach town at the eastern tip of Long Island is a relaxed community. I watched the moonrise on Saturday night with my friends. It had been bigger on Friday evening, but size wasn't important this far from Manhattan or Easthampton. We retreated back to a beach shack in Ditch Plains for a BBQ filled with reminiscences of friends long gone. One woman and I vowed to save a 80s beauty trapped in Detroit. We could have reached Wendy in 9 hours, except none of us were driving after a few glasses of wine. Wendy would have to wait for another posse.

I was surprised that our host's son was in the house. This was Labor Weekend, the last days of freedom before school for a 17 year-old boy.

"Why's your son in the house?"

"I caught Todd with weed."

While my host had been straight for a decade, she wasn't a hypocrite. She had started smoking at 14. "What could I say?"

"Not much."

I turned to the teenager. Todd looked like a good kid.

"What were you smoking? Weed or sinse?"

"Hydro." Too didn't roll his eyes, which was a sign of maturity beyond his age.

"Hydro's not really weed."

I had been at Agent Rockford's underground weed plantation this Spring. Every plant had been a twin to the other like a successful cloning experiment. Rockford had handed me a mask.

"7% THC gets in the air. Too much exposure and you're high."

"Is that a bad thing?"

Rockford's reluctance to answer said a lot and I have steered clear of sinse and hydro ever since. I could have given a sermon to the grounded teenager in Montauk. Instead I asked, "How kids in your school smoke pot?"

"90%."

"That many?" I didn't doubt his number. He attended a Manhattan private school.

"The other 10% are Jesus freaks praying for our salvation."

"I only pray for our victory," I explained about Mexico's liberal drug policy. "Anything under 4 joints is legal."

"Even big fatboys?"

>"Maybe only two of those." Rasta joints burned a pile of weed. "Victory is in sight."

The teenager high-fived me.

Later in the evening my host took me to aside and said, "Thanks for the free-pot speech. Maybe you should be doing a tour. Smoke a marijuana."

"That used to be a David Peel song." No one in this generation or even the last two had ever heard about the East Village hippie dedicated to the freedom of the weed. It was too long a story to tell without going to youtubes, so I poured myself another glass of wine and watched the stars drift toward the full moon. It was a good night for it.

ps

David Peel was a good man.

Songkran Madness in Thailand

The Songkran celebration ushers in the Thai New Year as well as the coming of the rains ending the hot season. The festival is focused on Wan Parg-bpee April 15, when homage is paid to ancestors, elders and other persons deserving respect because of age or position. Younger people pour scented water into the palm of an elder so that bad actions or thoughts will flow away or they sprinkle water onto the person while uttering wishes of happiness and good luck.

In the old days, young people actually helped bathe old people. Some still bring towels so the elders can dry their hands. It was all quite charming, but the tradition has undergone some changes in recent years.

I first celebrated Songkran on Koh Tao in 1991, where I was bushwhacked by the staff of the bungalows. Buckets of water soaked me. Wet smiles and squealing laughter followed, as I chased the girls for revenge. They were remarkably fast. Afterwards we drank Mekong whiskey and had a good laugh, but fifteen years have firehosed aside these gentle practices.

Now street vendors hawked squirt guns of every capacity to hooligans ready to spray the unwary with a noxious mixture of itching powder and gutter water. Industrial drinking fueled the unholy holiday madness. Playful water fights escalated from harmless sanuk or fun into vicious shootings redressing old grudges. Pick-up trucks jerry-rigged with plastic reservoirs recklessly raced through unwary pedestrians and ya bah-demented motorcyclists imitated crackheads fleeing a 7-11 robbery.

The migration en masse creates a chaos beyond imagination on the roadways and travel time is doubled or tripled by the congestion of the exodus. Road accidents claim countless lives around the country and the injured number in the tens of thousands. Thankfully the number for 2016 was less than the previous year, as a result of an annual media blitz aiming at reducing road fatalities.

Government officials pointed the finger at traffic accidents as one of Thailand's top three serious health problems, in terms of burden of disease. Almost 30% of in-patient beds of the hospitals under the Thai Ministry of Public Health are occupied by road traffic accident victims

Longtime foreign residents opt for three methods to avoid the mayhem.

The first is flight to another country i.e. Malaysia or Cambodia if the dates coincide with their visa renewals.

In 2007 my mate Nick and I overlanded to Phnom Penh and drank ourselves senseless ay Sharkey's Bar .

Neither of us remembered much of anything, but we hadn't ended up in jail and the staff of the hotel was sad to see us leave.

The second tactic is to retreat within the confines of your apartment, condo, or house. Trips during the morning hours are not so wet, as the revelers are sleeping off their drunks. Prior to midday only children line the roads and are hardly able of get the water beyond their reach. After sunset you can travel again, though you should avoid any nightlife zones where the water frenzy continues to flow beyond any constraints of sanity.

Lastly Thais considered any Puritan disapproval of Songkran as a sacrilege against sanuk, so if you can't beat them, then join them.

Several years back my cousin, Sam Royalle, hired a truck. The driver loaded the flatbed with three titanic barrels of iced water and we armed our extended families with multi-liter water nozzles. Overloaded by ten people the pick-up's tires scrapped the steel chassis, as we cruised Pattaya's streets with the audacity of Somali tech fighters whacked out on qat.

At Beach Road and Soi 8 the girls from two beer bars deliriously chucked buckets at the passing cars. Griffin deluged them into submission with a high-powered hose. On the corner of Walking Street we unleashed a hurricane on two ranking police officers.

Everyone loved that.

Beers for everyone.

Songkran can be a lot of fun if you observe some simple rules.

Enter the water festival and drink as much as you can.

Don't bring your telephone with you or any device that might electrocute you.

Just because a girls is laughing doesn't mean she is enjoying your dumping ice water down her back.

Respect the word 'no' or mai ao.

Wear clothing that dry fast i.e. football shirts and swimming trunks.

Sunglasses are good for keeping water out of your eyes, because not all of the water smacking your mug is out of the tap.

Leave your wallet at home. Only carry money. It will get you drunk and out of trouble if you get in an accident. If the embassy has to identify you, they can get dental records.

Do not fall in love with anyone you soak. I did and it ruined by life. Before that I was a happy bachelor. A wet tee-shirt is just a wet tee-shirt.

Keep a jai yen or cool head. Tempers to flare.

During Sam Royalle's and my tour around Pattaya we soaked all comers. This win streak instilled a predatory glee in our Thai friends and Sam's tattooed wife jumped off the truck to soak several foreigners hiding behind a tree. It was supposed to be fun, but a humorless weightlifter wrenched away Dtum’s water gun. “Sopheni.”, then knocked down Dtum.

Knocking down the teenager might have been an innocent mistake, but hearing the word 'whore' snapped a fuse and I leaped off the truck with a long PVC tube. The steroid junkie lifted his fists. He was bigger and stronger, but I lashed his wrists with the plastic pipe.

His watch exploded into a shower of tiny gears. A headshot propelled him over a rack of t-shirts. I kicked the inside of his knee and genuflected in anguish. Dtum and I jumped onto the truck. She flipped him the finger and the pick-up truck lurched down Beach Road.

"You hit him like napalm." Griffin handed me a Singha beer. "Thanks for saving Dtum."

“It was nothing. Nothing at all.”

My girlfriend's face face clouded with embarrassment. My outburst had cost Mem Nah or face and my hands trembled with a fifteen year-old's adrenaline.

"You lucky not dead."

He lucky he alive."

This not fun."

I thought about saying sorry, but Thais don't know the meaning of the word, but she was right. Fighting was not 'sanuk' and since then all I want on Songkran is to have fun.

Fun fun fun. Sanuk sanuk sanuk and there’s too little of that is this world to act like a mean-spirited farang.

Gothic Flames From Notre Dame

After Viktor Malenski was murdered outside the Continental Lounge on the Far Westside by persons unknown, I fled New York to Paris. 1982 was a good year for a fugitive in the City of Light. I worked at a popular nightclub, wrote poetry in my journals, and lived in the garret of a Marais Hotel with a view of the towers of Notre-Dame.

Over my six-year stay in Paris I must have passed the soot-blackened Cathedral a thousand times. I never ignored the Gothic gem and usually entered through the front and exited through a wooden door in a recessed apse behind the main altar, haunted by a ghost of Victor Hugo.

Quasimodo, the Roi de le Couer des Miracles, had reigned the bell towers in THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME.

The malformed man loved Esmerelda, a beautiful Gitane danseur.

The Church had no love for them.

Just another reason for my atheism.

Yet the eastern rosette window was a wonder to behold with the dawn light streaming through the carved glass.

Once I was guided through the Foret. The lead roof was supported by thousand of centuries-old planks and beams hewed from the Bois de Vincennes. The hardwood smelled of the ages.

My friend Tony from the Studio restaurant on Rue du Temple prayed to the statue of Black Michael beneath the six-thousand pipe organ.

"He was Lucifer's brother."

The angel was playing a clarion horn. Tony was into metal and said, "Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath."

I had been raised a Catholic, but had been a devout atheist since the age of eight and certainly no devil worshipper. I respected the beliefs of others as long as they didn't interfere with my wicked life, however one Easter I had played backgammon at a Left Bank apartment with several Peruvian drug dealers. All night long I had beaten them mercilessly and exited with my winnings and two slender dancers from the Moulin Rouge dressed in matching gold lame short-shorts and tube tops.

Another cathedral of Paris.

The procession was approaching the main doors. I told the girls to hurry up or else we were obliged to walk to the next bridge. The three of us scurried across the cobblestones. The bishop regarded us as Satan and his hand maidens. I crossed myself in reverse. His eyes widened with horror. I smiled and blessed with with a raised palm and mouthed in Latin, "Nunc autem Christus resurrexit."

LIke I said I had been raised a Catholic by nuns, priests, brothers, and in the THE WAY OF THE FLESH Samuel Butler wrote aptly, "Learning Latin shows that you don't have to know everything in the world."

The girls and I retired to the Brasserie de Ile St. Louis to drink champagne and listen to the strains of the pipe organ. It was a glorious day in the shadow of the cathedral.

I departed from Paris in 1986.

I went back often to see friends.

In 2011 I strolled along the Seine after a rain storm.

Notre-Dame wasn't on my path until 2011.

A rainbow arced over the cathedral. The soot and car exhaust has been scrubbed from the facade. Notre Dame shone in the sun.

It had stood in that spot for over eight hundreds years and looked like it was bound to survive the extinction of man and God.

Forever.

Forever doesn't last long in the modern world.

The cathedral had fallen into neglect. The upkeep cost were only $2 million a year. The structure was falling apart at the seams and the guardians decided to replaced the two-hundred year-old spire above the main altar. Something went wrong and a fire spread up the tower melting the lead slates into molten lava. The foret burned out of control. Church officials saved what was outside the flames. The firemen geysered water over the cathedral.

The fire went unstoppable.

The spire toppled onto the roof.

The interior was abandoned to the conflagration.

In the morning the final embers were doused with water.

The bell towers had not fallen like the Twin Towers.

Dawn brought on blame and promises of renewal.

If not for Notre Dame, then for the love of Quasimodo.

He was not real, but neither is God.

Only love and compassion.

Peace.

ps France only has 34% Catholics. Let them pay for the restoration of Notre Dame after paying the victims of child abuse.

Until then Notre-Dame should remain in ruins.

In transit gloria.

TOUGH GUYS / BET ON CRAZY by Peter Nolan Smith

Brownsville has always been a tough section of Brooklyn.

The one-mile square neighborhood was actually tougher than tough.

Its unofficial motto "Brownsville! Never ran, never will!" guaranteed Kings County Hospital the title of the most gunshot victims admitted to a E.R in the USA. The US Army even set up a training program called the Academy of Advanced Combat Medicine to take advantage of the area's hundreds of gunshot and stabbing victims. Surviving the gauntlet of youth steeled Mike Tyson for his reign as the heavyweight champion of the world and molded my boss on 47th Street, Manny,for the old diamond dealer also hailed from Brownsville.

"Brownsville was always tough," the 80 year-old jeweler explained to everyone who has to listen. "I fought with Italians, Puerto Ricans, Irish, and Blacks, but in some ways we all got along. Everyone knew who they were. One day this big black kid decides to fight with me. He didn't give a reason. Maybe he didn't like pastrami. He called me out and after school I met him in the playground. He had thirty friends with him. I wasn't too scared, because a fight with a schwartzer was usually fists. Only the wops and spics carried knives. 31 schwartzers versus me. So I tell the guy, "Listen you want to fight me then we fight, but if any of your friends touch me, then tomorrow they'll be a 100 guys out here looking to square things with you." The guy, his name was Horace, looks at me and says, "Fuck it." That's how things were back then. No guns. No one dead. The next day Horace and I were friends."

Black boys and Jew boys were cautious friends in the 1940s. This urban myth lasted into the 50s, but white people fled Brownsville for the Long Island suburbs in the 60s. The Civil Rights Act had been passed to insure the progress of blacks, but Brownsville became a ghetto with the influx of cheap heroin, gun shots in the night, and a roll-back by the police, as the absentee landlords torched their tenements.

Jimmy Breslin wrote about the neighborhood in 1968.

"Berlin after the war; block after block of burned-out shells of houses, streets littered with decaying automobile hulks. The stores on the avenues are empty and the streets are lined with deserted apartment houses or buildings that have empty apartments on every floor."

Manny left Brownsville before this decay, but Brownsville remained in his blood.

He worked as a schlepper for several years in the Bowery diamond district. There the young man met the most beautiful girl in Brooklyn. Everyone said that Hilda looked like Elizabeth Taylor. They weren't lying about the comparison, except Manny's wife had sapphire blue eyes. The two opened a jewelry store on Canal Street.

Manny remained true to his roots. He didn't take shit from anyone. Not the mob from Little Italy. Not the other jewelers who looked down their noses at the young upstart or his wife's family who couldn't see what she did in the undersized starker, as the old folks call a tough guy in Yiddish. He wasn't beholding to none of them.

Street fights were not acceptable, but Manny would protect his own. Shotguns lay under the counter. His revolver was in the safe. He never had to fire either. Manny was friends with the wise guys on Mulberry Street. He was their kind of Jew.

Even after he moved uptown to 47th Street with his sons, Richie Boy and Googs. His heart was still downtown and talked that way to customers, dealers, and his help.

"He comes from the Bowery." The older family firms would criticize his gruff ways.

"Not the Bowery, I come from Brownsville." Manny was proud of his heritage and even prouder to exhibit the street prowess a boy needed in that neighborhood.

Diamonds were traded on memo. One jeweler loaned merchandise to another jeweler on the promise that within 90 days they return with the goods or the money. Honesty is a crucial element in these transactions, however not all jewelers are honest, so the odds are high that sooner or later you'll get burned by greed.

Manny depended on his tough guy reputation to avert any thefts and he was a young 70 in 1999.

Young guys aren't scared of old guys and one jeweler burned Manny for a $20,000 diamond. This was before the age of cellphones. The dealer had gone to ground. Manny had to make good the loss and never thought that he would see the thief again.

Life went on.

Money came and went from one hand to the other without sticking in anyone's pocket for too long.

One night Manny took his second wife to dinner at a midtown restaurant after playing tennis.

The midtown restaurant wasn't expensive, because besides being a tough guy, Manny was a little cheap. This vice was another legacy of a Brownsville upbringing. His second wife didn't mind the stinginess, for she used to dine with the infamous Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky and Luciano's 'Little Man' would split a dish with her. She always told Manny that he was no Meyer Lansky.

"He was a runt." Manny wasn't too tall either, but his height broke 5-8. A good half-foot taller than Meyer Lansky.

Size isn't the only determining factor for toughness, for another Brownsville native, Mike Tyson, was only 5-10. He KOed taller, stronger men with regularity in the early years. Iron Mike hit Leon Spinks so hard that the then-champion's eyes rolled in his head like dice.

Most of being tough was being ready to be tough and Manny was more than ready, when he spotted the diamond thief at the restaurant bar.

"Excuse me a second," he told his second wife and rose from the table.

The seventy year-old took out his tennis racket and strode across the dining room. The thief was 30, taller, and once remarked to another dealer that Manny could go fuck himself if he thought he was going to get back his diamond.

"Hey, you." Manny called out to the younger man.

"Nice tennis outfit." The thief thought he was safe at the bar.

He misjudged the older man.

Safe was home in bed.

Manny whacked the gonif in the head with the racket and made him pay for this disrespect with another couple of whacks to the ribs. His wife pulled Manny off the fallen man. Two off-duty cops were glomming drinks at the bar. They were going to arrest the two of them, but Manny was a better talker.

His older brother had been a cop in the 20th. Seymour was from Brownsville too.

The thief made up a story with hems and haws.

The cops freed Manny and threw the thief in jail. A search of the gonif's apartment turned up a steel box. Manny's diamond was still in its envelope. The cops kept it as evidence. Manny cursed them for six months.

"I'd rather have the stone back than see that piece of shit in jail."

Manny's balance of justice had been met with the beating. It was the Brownsville way of life. He got his diamond in the end. He doesn't admit to hitting the gonif, but he's still a tough guy at 80. Mean too, because something about those Brownsville street turned a tough guy mean and Manny was no exception.

He was an old mean tough guy.

We fought all day long over sales. He stiffed me on commissions. I called him a cheat. He was a piece of shit to me and I was a piece of shit to him.

One day a hard-nosed Hassidim was late delivering a diamond. My customer didn't want to wait. I lost the sale. $200 out of my pocket. $2000 from Manny. Fish was a big guy. 6-4, but this wasn't the first time that he had been slow. Brownsville has always been a tough section of Brooklyn.

"I don't need this schiesse from a goy." Fish didn't like dealing with gentiles. The diamond maven was a big person on the street. His firm sold diamonds to Tiffany and Harry Winston. A gross macher.

"That's apparent from the way you treat me, sie gesund." I was not a goy, but a sheygutz.

Ten minutes later he was at the exchange, itching for a fight. Fish unbutton his black rekel undercoat and Prince Albert frock coat. They were both a size XXXL

"I should hit you." His fists were clenched in rage. He had a reputation for the first punch.

"Hit me once if you want." I hated fighting fat guys, but I was a tough guy too back in the 70s, 80s, and some of the 90s. I've been a tough guy in the 21st Century too, but with decreasing success. I maintained my stance, which was a few inches out of Fish's reach. "But if you try a second time then I'll take out your teeth."

"Slow down." Manny came to the counter. "Fish, we're here trying to make money. If you say you're going to give us a stone, give us a stone. Don't make so much drama about the goy saying something about your beanie."

"Beanie?" Fish sputtered with outrage and his left hand grabbed his yarmulke, as if he was trying to distract me.

"Yarmulke. Beanie. It's all the same to me." Manny hasn't been to temple in since his father Jake passed away at the age of 98. He had been run over by a truck and caught a cold. The cold was what killed him. Jake was a tough guy too. Manny's father came from a part of Poland that was just like Brownsville.

The Yiddish word for tough is hart.

"It's a yarmulke." Fish was an observant Hassid.

"Just like I said." Manny stood his ground.

Also out of Fish's range

The big Hassid eyed the both of us and shrugged off the moment.

Life on 47th Street was about making money or nimmt geld. He threw a packet and a memo on the counter.

"Here's your diamond."

Manny practiced religion after work. He had great faith in the power of wine.

We sold his stone later that afternoon.

Manny complained about the small profit I squeezed from the customer.

"Better a little than nothing."

"Best more than a little."

Manny smiled with a laugh. He was still a tough guy. A piece of shit too, but he was my piece of shit.

And the tough guy from Brownsville wouldn't have it any other way.

Never ran, never will!

You Bet I Would - Kim Novak

I don't think I would have needed up on top.

Dead Dreams

Most people think that it is impossible to dream about your death. Common myth upholds to dream of your death would cause your own death, however according to experts most dreams of death symbolize a renewal of life or a change in the path of your destiny. Freudians regard all dreams interpreting the two basic drives in life; sex and death.

I came close to dying in my dream after eating a potato taco in a small Mexican village. That night my stomach rumbled and my head was filled with danger, as I read HP Lovecraft. THE TERROR AT INNSMOUTH was not the best story to read before sleep.

In my dream zombies chased me through a garden. I was trapped in a screened gazebo. Their fingernails scratched at the thin barrier.

"Stop." A dirt-covered zombie called out to his minions. "Tell me the secret of human life and we will let you live for another 60 seconds."

"The secret of human life?" I was stumped having only score a C in Philosophy 101, then it came to me. The secret of human life was that even though my end was going to be horrible, I wanted those extra sixty seconds.

"I'm waiting." The undead's overlord was impatient and I rewarded his vice by waking up and saving the human race. I asked several psychic friends for an interpretation of this dream. Most said that dying wasn't bad.

"But I didn't die. I only met dead people."

The majority of the dream-soothers considered this encounter to be the subconsciousness' way of grieving, except none of the zombies had been family members or friends or foe.

The only psychic with any sense was an old gypsy woman on the Lower East Side.

"Some dreams don't mean anything. They just are. Same as death as in life."

I believed her words until dying in a series of dreams in 1982.

I died from nuclear blasts in New York, Moscow, and a Siberian airfield after making love with a Russian airwoman. The dreams occurred over a three month period during the Pershing missile deployment in Germany. I was living in Hamburg. The sex and death aspects of these dreams were overpowered by the premonition of impending doom.

My fear of nuclear holocaust was superseded by the threat of a German pimp, who said that owed him 20,000 for having sex with one of his girls. Ilsa never said she was working. SS Tommy laughed, saying everyone in Hamburg was working for someone.

I fled northern Germany, leaving behind a car and apartment.

No nuclear bombs killed me and neither had SS Tommy.

Not in reality or my dreams.

THE BOUQUET OF RUINS by Peter Nolan Smith

Dec 1982

Some cities are best defined by songs such as APRIL IN PARIS or AUTUMN IN NEW YORK, but Hamburg defied music, especially as winter weather skimmed off the North Sea to besiege the harbor city with endless rain, cold, and darkness. Every day the night conquered a few more minutes of light and our once-popular club on Epperdoffer Weg was deserted by the attractive youth, the esoteric intelligentsia, and the wicked rich, who sought the warm comfort of their homes rather than B-Sirs.

The sleek nightclub had been designed to resemble CLOCKWORK ORANGE's milk bar.

The fashion people of Hamburg had loved the place throughout the summer, but with autumn the clientele had been replaced by pimps and off-duty prostitutes from the Reeperbahn. Neither liked to pay for their drinks and my share of the profits shrank to nothing.

Henri, the DJ from Paris, and I counted the days until we called it quits, only I wasn't telling management about my departure in case I wanted to come back after the holidays.

Only one person deserved an 'auf wiedersehen'.

I had been seeing Astrid since early October. The blonde twenty year-old studied fashion at the University. Her dramatic overbite and an aquiline nose stole any chance of her being called beautiful, but the slender Astrid was very accommodating in bed and took the time to improve my German.

"I may be leaving," I told her after a lengthy session nearing dawn.

"Are you going for good?" she asked with an imaginative lisp.

"Maybe. Maybe not. You can always visit me."

"Where?" She dressed conservatively for school and stuffed her night clothes in a stylish leather bag. The blonde had morning classes.

"Paris."

"And not New York."

"No."

New York was off-bounds for reasons unexplainable to anyone in Europe.

"And you are not coming back?"

"To Hamburg?"

"Ja."

"Vielleicht." The cold dark wet murk of the North Sea port worsened after Christmas.

"When will you leave?"

"Before Christmas."

"Then we will have more than one occasion to say 'auf wiedersehen'."

"Das ist rechtig."

Astrid kissed me on the lips and left my Milchstrasse apartment.

I returned to sleep.

That evening SS Tommy showed up at the bar early. The few customers in the club avoided the six-foot enforcer for the GMbH. Astrid stood at the door dressed in a fur with very little else underneath. She normally never showed until after midnight. Something about this combination didn't add up to two. SS Tommy handed me a piece of paper.

"What's this." The total came to almost 10,000 DMs or $6500 US.

"A bill." His scarred finger jabbed the top of the 'rechtung'.

"Oh." My high school German coupled with Astrid's lessons allowed my to translate the long list consisted of charges for sex. "What's this?"

"This is what you owe for the nights with Astrid."

"Astrid? I didn't know she worked for you."

She smiled at me with a crooked grin.

"Not all our girls work the Eros Center." His gang ran a string of more than two hundred women on the Reeperbahn. Each had sex five times a night. 200 DMs times five times two-hundred women came to $100,000 a night. SS Tommy owed three Ferraris. He worked for Cali, who owned B-Sirs. "Everything is there."

I checked the bill again. Each act was itemized by date.

"She never said anything about working for you," I said in rough German.

"Everyone in Hamburg works for someone." The Zuhalters were infamously violent and SS Tommy was no exception. I had to offer him a gesture.

"Here are the keys to my car."

SS Tommy took the car keys for the VW, which I had paid 7000 six months ago.

"Where's it parked?"

"At the mechanic shop."

Two days earlier I had driven the orange VW into a tree. The mechanic had said last rites over the chassis. It was a total write-off,

"Warum?" asked SS Tommy.

"Just getting a turn-up." It was an easy lie to tell.

"Das ist gut, du musst gibt morgen 5000 Marks mehr." SS Tommy grabbed my arm in a claw grip to insure that I understood his demands.

"Kein problem." My shoulder muscles had gone dead, as his fingers dug into my flesh. Pain radiated through my body. He wanted money not a car.

"I'll give you a free night with Astrid." SS Tommy clicked his fingers. "Stay with him. I don't want him running out on me."

"Jawohl." She was good at taking orders as are all Germans.

I told the manager that I was going home early and left the club with the blonde. Everyone avoided me, as if I had the plague. No one had friends, when SS Tommy was your enemy.

Back at my apartment Astrid apologized for telling SS Tommy about my departure.

"Kein problem, but why had you made up a list?"

"For me to remember you." Astrid caressed my shoulder. >p>For a few seconds I almost believed her.

We had sex, as if nothing had changed between us and I suppose that it hadn't.

Afterwards I got up from bed.

"Are you leaving now?"

"A little later. There's a late train to Paris," I said nothing about the 5000 DMs under my bed.

SS Tommy wasn't getting a pfennig of it.

Neither was Astrid.

After a glass of sekt she went to take a shower, promising me a night to remember.

"Maybe I do 1000 Marks worth."

"That would be nice." I smiled sipping my glass of pesudo-champagne.

As soon as the bathroom door shut, I grabbed my cash and wrapped a wire hangar around the doorknob, trapping Astrid inside.

Within minutes I was ready to leave. I didn't have much to show for six months in Hamburg, but I didn't need much in Paris.

I heard thumping on the bathroom door.

Shouts followed.

"Chus," I shouted, leaving a note on the kitchen table to SS Tommy that the bed, chairs, table, and everything else were his.

I liked this deal better than paying my debt.

I bent over to pick up Astrid's underwear off the floor. I liked her smell. I stuffed them in my bag.

A minute later I caught a taxi on Mittelweg.

"Bahnhof."

Ten minutes later I was in the station. The night was cold. I bought a ticket for the 12:34am train to Paris.

After that I hid on the platform like a spy fleeing Nazi Germany.

The southbound train pulled out of the station on time. My compartment was empty. The train stopped at every station. The towns sounded like battlefields. I didn't sleep until we passed through Dutch customs.

Dawn brightened the gray skies on a landscape of ruined steel factories of the Low Countries. These industries had been destroyed by Japanese competition. The decay stretched from border to border into Belgium. The wet of the winter carried the corruption of rust and concrete. It smelled of death and I pulled out Astrid's panties. They were French silk.

The conductor announced our ETA in Paris was 9:23am.

After arriving at Gare Du Nord I took the Metro to St. Germain, where I booked a room at the Hotel Louisiane and then breakfasted at the Cafe de Flore

Cafe du lait, croissant, and a Calvados said Paris and I sang APRIL IN PARIS to myself.

SS Tommy would never find me here.

Astrid's panties were still in my pocket. I stole a whiff and inhaled the fading fragrance of cinnamon and sweat with a tang of herring. We had had a good thing for a few months and I smiled thinking that I would never see her crooked smile again.

And that was a good thing for this winter, especially since I couldn't see that far into summer.

For that was Hamburg's season to shine.

EVES IN THE FLESH

In the winter of 1995 I was sitting at my desk in the diamond exchange, when Scottie Taylor phoned from LA.

"How you doing?"

"Great, I'm opening a Milk Bar in Beverly Hills. How'd you like to be the doorman?" The ex-lightweight mentioned the numbers. The salary was on par with what I earned selling diamonds for Manny on West 47th Street.

"What's the weather like?" Gray snow covered the sidewalks of the Diamond District and icy slush filled the gutters. The temperature hovered well below freezing. Business was dead this time of year and I calculated that I could double my salary on tips at an LA nightclub.

"Sunny."

"Any rain?" This time of year Pacific monsoons splashed the Santa Monica Mountains and transformed the yellow slopes to gold.

"Sometimes, but not enough to cause any floods."

"We got a place to live?" I had never lived in California.

"A pool house in North Hollywood. My friend Dennis owns it and a go-go club too."

"Go-Go bar?" I had been a big supporter of the exotic arts ever since frequenting Boston's Naked I in 1970 and honestly preferred stripping to ballet.

"Best in LA. Every morning the girls come over to touch up their tan."

"Naked?"

Paving Over Paradise

My first visit to Bangkok was in 1990. I stayed at the Malaysia Hotel on Soi Duplei, once the 60s haunt of the infamous backpacker murderer Charles Sobhraj. The trees were bordered by sylvan compounds and I played basketball at the military school next to the Lumpini Muay-Thai stadium. Patpong was a twenty-minute walk through small sois. The city retained the charm of its past, although nothing like the Bangkok of the 1950s.

Prominent farangs and Thais drove Ford Fairlanes. Opposing traffic was the occasional tuk-tuk and trolley. The Hotel Royalle had an unobstructed view of the river. A beer on the veranda was 10 baht. The waitress wai-ed with a smile.

Most people traveled by the klong ferries. Kids swam off the docks and the water was drinkable. Klong Toey was the after-night destination for Thais and ex-pats. The infamous Mosquito Bar featuring dim-lighting? First and foremost among the Klong Toey bars was the notorious 2nd floor Mosquito Bar on Kasemrat Road.

According to old-timers this dive's seedy decor was camouflaged by a stygian darkness dispelled by the occasional flicker of a match. The gloom suited the female dok-thongs, since their age in the dim illumination was indecipherable to the drunken patrons. The beers were reputably cold and no one ever got killed in the frequent chair-throwing fights.

Equally disreputable was The Venus Bar, which the late David Musserie claimed was Thailand's seminal go-go bar serviced by Klong Toey slum girls.

When asked about bar fines, he laughed with his ample belly jiggling like Jello under electro-shock.

"I think it was 10 baht. The Venus was paradise, because it was only for locals. We knew each other. Sort of CHEERS for the wicked and the little angels, until they got mad and then it was every man for himself running for the door."

Hundreds of bars are packed in Nana. I can't say I like drinking in any of them.

If only I had a way-back machine.

Wouldn't it be nice?

For further information on these bars please go the following URL

http://snesejler.dk/bill77.htm

GO GO Safety

My cousin Sherrie performed exotic dances around the world. Her skill with a firepole was legendary and a smile graced her face through every routine before a devoted audience smitten with a drool factor of 10. The slim brunette was their goddess, but even goddesses feel pain like mermaids with feet.

No one saw her grimace upon getting backstage or heard her mutter, "My feet are killing me.

Not only her feet, but her hands thighs, knees, and back ached from the exertions of the strenuous acrobatics under the spotlight. She swore the worst damage came from wearing high-heels during these shows.

"Barefoot would be better, but it's so no class."

Things haven't changed much since Sharon's retirement, however a safety class opened in the once notorious Patpong district in Bangkok, so that go-go girls can mesh their fluid movement on a fire pole with elegant dance steps destined to prevent injury usually suffered by ballerinas.

"Go-go dancing should be upgraded to an art," stated Empower Foundation director Chantawipa Apisuk during the Patpong go-go contest of 2006. Her non-profit institution has development many courses for go-go girls and bar workers to improve their lot in life. The contest stressed introductory courses in jazz and ballroom dance to prevent injuries to the over 5000 girls employed at the Patpong bars.

Safety regulation for dancers are non-existent other than for their extra-curricular activities outside the nightclubs, but go-go dancing is an art and should be treated as such by the dancers and spectators. Most girls lazily shuffle side to side.

Beautiful? Yes.

Exciting ? No.

Even the best are imitating the moves from pop stars such as Lady Gaga and Beyonce.

Boring, because most real men don?t want to have sex with those pop sluts.

But better the go-go girls of Patpong and Pattaya concentrate on the learning real dance rather than the spinning firepole routines, because then the real stars came become erotic choreographers for future go-go dancers. Most girls haven?t a clue how to dance and it shows. Not that the beer slobs care. They haven?t seen a naked girl in the flesh in years. And it shows by their appreciation of the less than skillful performances.

Applause for sucking on a banana.

I guess so, but real erotic dancing in the style of Salome comes from practice.

And safety always comes first especially when you want to cut off the head of your rivals. The best acrobatic go-go was GG Barnum?s in New York. Transvestite strippers put on a trapeze act, where they would take off their g-strings in mid-flight. 1978 New York New York It was something back then. No place like that now.

Ashbury Park Bikinis

Jersey beaches have a tough reputation as the land of no.

No radios, no dogs, no beer, no footballs, no, no, no.

Back in 1980 two girls from Ashbury Park saw it different.

They were free to say yes or no.

I like their style.

Foto from Joe Maloney

Which I found on https://missrosen.wordpress.com