Back in 1969 Jerry Brendt took this photo of two brothers messing around with white girls. This was not Selma, but Boston's Combat Zone where people could be people.
The Caddy is a convertible and the girls love the horseplay. Everything seems perfect.
Everything depends on your point of view or disposition.
"it's just a car, girl.
In 1980 my firend Carmine slid a .38 across the table of John's Italian Restaurant. I looked at it for a few seconds, the asked, "What's this?"
"A gun," said the Sicilian plumber.
"For what?"
"For protection. This is the East Village."
Junkies ruled the streets, thieves plagued the unknowing, and project thugs roamed the street for prey.
"Fuck protection. I can take care of myself." I pushed the weapon back to Carmine. "Plus the only way I would take it would be if you gave me a thousand bullets. Like you said, "This is the East Village."
The Upper Lower East Side was dangerous to a fault, but I was in my prime.
25, 165, and angry.
"Your choice, but never say I didn't give you an edge."
"Not to worry, I'll never say that."
I shunned guns.
In New York or Paris, or Hamburg or Pattaya, yet my sense of invincibility doesn't prevent white mother-fucekrs from try9ing to teach everyone how dangerous they can be with an AR-15 in their hands.
Last month several masked gunmen entered the Kentucky Statehouse armed to the teeth.
The fascist police waved them around the gun detectors. They stood at the top of the stairs. If I had a hammer in my hand, I would have whacked them in the heads, but I'm in New York City. We don't act like we are trying to reinstate slavery, because we well know that the banks have made us all slaves and I need Uncle Carmine to come out of the grave to re-armed me for the coming battle, although this next time I might need more than a thousand rounds.
After his exoneration by a GOP majority Donald Trump has regaled his victory by pushing out the boundaries of his party's extreme convictions. He has ousted his critics within the government and pursued the rejection of Stone's sentence for selling out the country to the Russians and lying to the Congress. Trump even showed his true self by tweeting 'If you attack the king, then you have to kill him."
Trump has attacked the social benefits of SSE and Medicare.
# 45 has upped the stakes of Hitlerian politics by messaging that ICE will be supported by armed gangs in their pursuit of illegal aliens in 'sanctuary cities' like NYC or LA.
Fascism.
Pure and simple, yet 45% of American voters favor the White House resident.
"I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it."
Not if I was on the block.
Thankfully the old shit is old.
American boys loved guns in the 50s. Plastic weapons lay gift-wrapped under the Christmas tree. Our movie heroes slaughtered the country’s enemies on the silver screen and tough cops performed gun ballets on prime time TV. Guns were good for the country and America was good to guns.
Armed with air rifles my older brother, our friends and I re-enacted World War II on the bluffs overlooking Portland harbor. Imaginary bullets tore holes through make-believe Nazis. Hitler was the last enemy to die, however none of us suffered a scratch during these battles.
“I wonder what it would be like to be hit by a real bullet,” I said after our replay of D-Day.
“There’s only one way to find out.” My older brother stuck the muzzle of his air rifle into the soggy grass. He cocked the lever twice and pulled the trigger.
A wad of dirt hit my chest. It stung a little.
“Now it’s my turn.” I rammed my air rifle into the ground.
“I wasn’t wondering nothing.” Frunk backed away at a run.
My shot miss him.
We broke into warring camps. Shooting the dirt was too slow and my side dropped our rifles in favor of throwing mud clods. My brother’s friends picked up rocks.
One stone hit my head and I keeled over out cold. Our enemies routed us and I woke to my brother and his allies standing over me.
“You give, you dirty Nazi?” Frunk was offering quarter.
“I surrender.” Defeat tasted of mud and blood, but I wasn’t giving him the pleasure of seeing my tears and planned my revenge.
The next time I would end up on top.
At the age of seven time was on my side.
In July of 1960 my father packed our Ford station wagon for a week’s vacation on Watchic Pond. We stopped at my grandmother’s house in Westbrook for lunch. My two brothers and two sisters ate their Italian sandwiches, as my parents argued with Edith about the Space Race with the Soviet Union.
My mother and father feared the communist domination of Space, while my grandmother defended the international pursuit of peace. Edith had served as a nurse in France during World War I. My father had spent World War II with the Army Air Force. None of them heard my request to go to the bathroom or noticed my leaving the kitchen table.
After doing my business I climbed up the stairs to the bedroom over the garage and pushed through a rack of military uniforms in the closet. A repeating rifle rested on wall pegs. Two shotguns hung below its berth. I freed the Winchester and held the rifle in my two hands.
The trigger felt of cold steel and I levered open the chamber.
There were no bullets to be seen.
I kneeled by the window and aimed the rifle at the cars on Main Street. The passing Cadillacs offered a big target and I imagined Adolf Hitler behind the wheel of one. My aim sighted a driver. He had a mustache. Before I could pull the trigger, my father ripped the weapon from my hands.
“What the hell are you doing?” His rage boiled beyond his skin.
“It isn’t loaded.” I backed away to the wall and put my hands behind my back.
“You never know.” My father levered open the chamber.
“I checked before.”
“By levering open the chamber?” His anger simmered below the boiling point, as if he understood my fascination.
"Yes, sir, same as you."
"Why are you aiming at a car?
I was pretending to kill Hitler."
"Pretend? Killing a man is not pretend. Your Uncle Jack was in Korea. He did things there. He never talks about them. Do you understand?"
“Yes, sir.”
“Stay away from guns.”
He replaced the Winchester and locked the closet.
That evening at the lake my mother and father argued about guns. My older brother and I went outside to watch the stars.
“Plastic guns are only toys.”
“The Winchester is not a toy. My childhood friend thought a shotgun was a toy and he shot his baby brother dead. They aren’t toys.”
My father was adamant on this issue and confiscate our toy guns back on Falmouth Foresides.
We secretly borrowed broken plastic guns from my next-door neighbor to participate in the games of WAR. Fighting Nazis in the woods wasn’t the same without your own weapon. No one suggested a repeat of the mud fight. We were not cavemen.
Mid-summer my father was promoted to a better job with the phone company. Our family moved from Maine to the South Shore of Boston. Our new house was painted pink.
In August my parents sent my older brother and me away to Boy Scout camp. We had two weeks to earn the five merit badges necessary to attain the rank of a Wolf Scout. Swimming, canoeing, basketry, and forestry required several days and on the second-to-last day the camp counselor led our troop to a shooting range.
We were armed with .22s and positioned on the firing line. The rifle was lighter than the Winchester in my grandmother’s closet.
Hitting the target five out of ten times fulfilled the requirement for the rifle merit badge.
I accomplished this task on the seventh shot with three bullets to spare. I loaded one into the .22 and aimed at a treetop beyond the sand bunker. I imagined Hitler in a tree. The bullet nicked a distant branch.
“Nice shot,” Frunk whispered with a smile.
I didn’t have time to enjoy his accolade.
“What you think you’re doing?” My counselor yanked the rifle out of my hands.
“Nothing.” The woods behind the bunker went on for miles.
“You shot that last one in the air.” His face was swollen with outrage. He had lectured us two hours on gun safety.
“No, I didn’t, it slipped from my hand.” I wasn’t admitting anything.
The rest of the scouts stopped shooting. Another counselor acted as back-up. A young boy with a gun in his hand was a danger to himself and others.
“You have any idea how far a bullet travels?”
“No, sir.”
“Maybe a mile.” The counselor wagged his finger in my face. “You could have killed someone and maybe you did.”
“Sorry.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say, even though I wasn’t sorry.
“Guns aren’t toys,” he pronounced with the authority backed by the Boy Scouts of the America and exiled me from the shooting range and the dining hall.
That evening in our campsite I waited for the police. My arrest wouldn’t please my parents. My brother returned from the cafeteria with a plate of instant mashed potatoes and hamburger and a cup of bug juice.
“No one died.” He placed the food on my bunk. “No one hurt either. I told them that you had sweaty hands and the gun slipped out of your grip.”
“Thanks.” This news cured my lack of appetite. “You going to tell Mom and Dad?”
“No.” Frunk was a good brother, but my nickname for the rest of the stay was ‘wet palms’
The errant shot was not mentioned to my parents, but I had once more learned that guns were not toys.
My sisters, brothers, and I attended a Catholic school in our hometown. The nuns at Our Lady of the Foothills excelled at discipline and my mother loved the uniforms. Their efforts to keep their young students failed, as society turned violent in the early 60s.
The KKK bombed churches in the South. Police killed civil rights protestors. JFK was assassinated in Dallas. A lone sniper shot over forty-three people from the Texas U. Tower. The Viet-Nam War expanded in size. The inner cities burned in summer. The Mafia dumped their victims in the Blue Hills. My next-door neighbor found a man with a hole in his head. Chuckie didn’t tell the police. All the teenagers of my hometown knew how the Mob dealt with snitches.
We watched war movies the local movie theaters; THE LONGEST DAY, SANDS OF IWO JIMA, ZULU, PORKCHOP HILL, DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK and scores of other combat films.
I wanted to be a Marine. I wanted go overseas. I wanted to kill for my country.
Just like John Wayne.
I got something else entirely.
Two bigger boys bullied me in 7th Grade. They didn't like my living in a pink house. I bore the beatings in silence and planned my revenge. The shotguns in my grandmother’s attic had shells. I tried to bring the over-under home after our Christmas visit.
My father found it in our station wagon and accused me of theft. My punishment was twenty lashes with a belt. I refused to cry, because I was dedicated to breaking the 5th Commandment.
In the Spring I nearly drowned one of the bullies in the Neponset River to protect a girl.
Her name was Kyla. We went steady.
In 1968 America took a turn for the worst. Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and RFK were cut down in their prime. The country was awash with guns. I wanted to leave this country and there was only one place for a teenage boy to go.
Two days after my birthday I returned home with enlistment papers for the Marines. I had lied to the recruiting officer about my age and envisioned fighting the commie hordes with an M-16. After victory my girlfriend would greet the killer transformed into a hero with kisses. I hadn’t told Kyla about my fantasy. The cheerleader was a peacenik.
My mother read the papers and stared at her second son in horror.
“I want to join the Marines and serve my country.” The sergeant in Lower Mills had guaranteed an overseas tour.
“You’ll serve your country better by studying harder.” My mother was a big believer in education. College was the only viable option for her children after high school.
I thought I held a trump card. My mother was very religious and I said, “I want to fight the godless communists in Vietnam.”
“You’re 16 years old. You’re not going to war.”
She called the recruiter and blasted his attempt to shanghai her son.
I was angry at her hypocrisy. Her patriotism excluded her son’s going to war.
My father was of a different mind. He had served in WWII and said, "“See how you feel after you graduate from high school.”
“The war will be over by then.” Humphrey and Nixon were campaigning for peace. The troops were coming home according to both candidates.
“Probably not.” My father had missed three Christmas for his country. “Wars don’t end fast.”
A family friend of Kyla came home on leave. We went up to the Quincy Quarries for a swim. Danny Quinn had smuggled a M16 back from DaNang. The pasty skinned teenager loaded a clip into the weapon and sprayed a cliff face with bullets. This was a real gun and Danny let me hold it. This was a killing machine.
“Cool.” I pulled the trigger. The clip was empty.
“There’s nothing cool about it,” Danny told us about the War. It was not going good. Like Uncle Jack he had done things. “If you don’t have to go, don’t.”
He sold the M16 in Southie and went AWOL to Canada.
America was split down the middle by the war. Southie backed the fight against communism to the hilt and kids in my hometown avoided the Draft by attending college. Hippies flocked to the Boston Common. My hair ran over my collar and I skipped school to attend peace rallies with Kyla. My love of guns withered with a bong in my hands.
Kyla and I broke up before her senior prom. College saved me from the Draft. Guns in America belonged in the hands of cops and revolutionaries.
My older brother carried .38 as a summer cop on the Cape. Frunk brought the revolver home at the end of the season. My father didn’t like it in the house.
Two months later my older brother heard someone messing with the back door to my parents’ house. Frunk grabbed his gun from the bedroom closet. The intruder was coming up the stairs. My older brother jumped off the couch and assumed the pose taught by his gun instructor.
“Freeze or I’ll shoot.”
“It’s me. It’s me.” My baby brother was sneaking back home from seeing his girlfriend.
“You’re lucky you didn’t get shot.”
Our family had escaped a tragedy, because Frunk hadn’t switched off the .38’s safety.
The story was told at many family gatherings. My father didn’t laugh at the punch line.
He hated guns.
America came off the rails in the early 70s.
Nixon was thrown out of the White House. Gas stations were besieged by thirsty cars. Defeat in Viet Nam left a bad taste in the country’s craw and the wrong direction was the only course left to America.
The recession had created a job drought in Boston and I was lucky to be hired as a substitute teacher at South Boston High School upon my graduation from college.
In 1975 desegregation by bussing bitterly divided the city. Whites and blacks carried guns for protection. They shot at each other for paybacks. It was not the best of all worlds.
Two years of apartheid education tested my loyalties. My own kind regarded me as a race traitor. All whites were the enemy in Roxbury. The wrong place at the wrong time was an easy place to find in Boston during the Bussing Riots and I moved to New York City in the Spring of 1976.
My first job was at a gay restaurant on East 60th Street in Manhattan. I shared an apartment with a silver-haired con artist on Park Slope. Jim liked rough trade with tough boys. The elegantly dressed forty-year old carried a derringer for protection. A trick stole it from him twice.
Jim liked the boy.
“You should get one too.” Jim worried about my coming home late. My unemployment checks paid the half the rent.
“If I had a gun, I’d empty it before I reached the subway.” The streets were dark and dangerous. The subways were plagued by thieves. The later I came home after work the better and I hung out at CBGBs until closing.
My friends from Serendipity 3 introduced me to a budding actress from West Virginia. The twenty-one year-old’s soft eyes were two different colors and her flawless skin was whiter than powdered sugar. Alice’s favorite film was Goddard’s BREATHLESS. Mine was OUTLAW JOSEY WALES. We both loved The New York Dolls and Merle Haggard.
After her graduation we signed a lease on a three-room apartment on East 10th Street. The monthly rent was $180. No one normal wanted to live in the East Village. A junkie threatened Alice. Jim lent me a gun. I hadn't touched a weapon since Boy Scout camp and practiced pulling the trigger. Hakkim was a dead man. Someone on Avenue B killed him first. I gave back the gun.
I felt safer that way.
The reefer dealers on 1st Avenue were battling the Blue Door gang down the block for control of the profitable corner. This war was replicated all over New York and a call to 911 was a waste of a dime. Our neighborhoods were unofficial no-go zones for the NYPD. We were on our own.
One night gunshots echoed down the alley.
“They’re firecrackers.” The staccato volley was followed by a scream.
“Yeah, every day in the East Village is the 4th of July.” Alice hailed from the hillbilly hollows outside of Charleston. Her clan shot guns at bigger targets than possums. She could name the caliber of each report.
The next morning two puddles of blood congealed on the sidewalk. The teenage boys slinging sinse on the corner were plotting revenge on the Blue Door. Their aim was as pitiful as THE A TEAM. Stray bullets tended to find the wrong targets.
None of them had won their marksmen merit badge and my hand itched for a gun. The vigilantism portrayed in Charles Bronson’s DEATH WISH was a daydream shared by millions of New Yorkers. People got away with murder all the time.
Later that summer I quit Serendipity 3 to run the door at Hurrah’s on West 62nd Street.
The second-floor nightclub had been converted from a failing disco to a successful punk rock venue to serve as an antithesis to Studio 54. Blondie, the Ramones, and the Gang of Four played to sell-out crowds. My friends handled the cash at the bar and ticket booth. Our security staff consisted of an off-duty cop named Seymour and two black bouncers from Harlem.
Jack Flood and his nephew, Marvin didn’t look family, but I wasn’t questioning the bloodlines of someone Jack’s size. Conked hair framed a face plastered over his bones like beaten putty and his midnight-blue suit blanketed a retired heavyweight’s frame like a circus tent constructed for wooly mammoths instead of puny elephants.
When we shook hands for the first time, his thick middle finger tickled my palm. Half the staff of Hurrah was gay and the old boxer wanted to know if I went with men. A scarred eyebrow arched over a yellowed eye in anticipation in answer to his prison question. I guessed I was his type
“Someone said you were a punk.” Jack’s hand was bigger than a catcher’s mitt. Big hands meant big shoes. The slab of his tongue flicked over thick lips.
“Punk doesn’t mean that now.”
“In prison punks means stick pussy.”
“Stick pussy?” A grainy porno movie flashed in my head and I informed Jack, “Punk is the music they play here.”
“So that’s what they called it.” He turned to his nephew. “Hey, they call this music ‘punk’.”
“Punk?” Marvin nodded with a misunderstanding of its meaning. He was one month out of Attica.
“I thought it was rock and roll.” Jack released my hand and whispered a favor. “You keep that between you and me. You know that thing with my finger.”
“I’ll take it to your grave.”
“I know you.” Seymour the cop had been studying Jack for several minutes. “You a fighter?”
“I fought Joe Louis in Seattle.”
“1951?” Seymour narrowed his eyes like his memory wasn’t working right.
“Uncle Jack went down three times like a Times Square hooker,” Marvin joked from the door.
“Louis never knocked me out.” Jack squared up to his nephew. He had Marvin by 2 inches and 50 pounds.
“No one ever done that.” The younger man dropped his eyes. He knew his place.
“To tell the truth Louis was past his prime and weighed 30 pounds more than me. I gave the folks a show and made enough to buy my first Lincoln and I got a shot at Harry Matthews. Now that white boy stood toe-to-toe for 10 rounds in Seattle, giving away 10 pounds. I lost on points.”
“What happened to you? You sort of vanished.” Off-duty cop had a free pass to do whatever they liked to anyone who was poor and not white.
“A little of this and too much of that.” The ex-fighter winked to indicate that he wasn’t telling all the truth.
I later learned that Jack had retired with a record of 20-14-2 before entering prison for several long stretches for what he called crimes of civil disobediance.
“Harry Matthews was a good fighter.” Seymour nodded to indicate the two men had an understanding.
All three men carried guns.
One slow evening it was show and tell. Suicide was the headliner. The electronic duo drew a small crowd.
“I’m not a kid.” Seymour lifted his shirt. A snub-nosed .38 was clipped to his belt. The sightless revolver was not NYPD regulation. “Any punk want trouble, they got it.”
“.38 is for pussies.” Marvin opened his leather jacket. A .357 Magnum was packed in a shoulder holster. Clint Eastwood sported the same gun in DIRTY HARRY.
“Pussies?” Seymour came from Brownsville. He had played with the sons of Murder Incorporated. He was no punk.
“Sorry, if I said it the wrong way, but a .38 won’t kill someone as quick as a 357.”
“And you think that not killing someone is being a pussy?” Seymour stepped closer to Marvin. At 6-2 they were the same height, but the off-duty cop had the edge.
“Marvin don’t think nuttin,” Jack rumbled from his seat.
“What kind of gun do you carry?” I asked to break the tension, but I was also itching to hold a gun.
“None of your business.” Jack was dead serious. “Only time a man should show his gun is to shoot whoever wants shootin’. Ain’t that right, Seymour?”
“And not talk about it later either.” Seymour nodded with a smile. Cops and criminals had more in common than the rest of us and I reminded myself that despite our friendship Seymour and Jack lived by different rules.
Overall working with Jack was easy. One look from the old fighter stopped most trouble from becoming a problem. He loved his long black leather coat. Richard Roundtree had worn the same in SHAFT.
Our slack time at the door was consumed by stories of Harlem bookies, Ossining convicts, and high-yellow girls from the South.
Whenever Jack's wind gave out,Seymour weaved arcane tales of gambling at the track.
“One time I bet on a fixed house. Ring of Darkness at Belmont. It was a rainy day. The horse took off from the gate and everyone in the stands had bet on #7. The other jockeys were in the fix too, but rounding the last turn Ring of Darkness slipped in the mud and fell. Never heard a groan from the crowd like that. Everyone was a loser.”
According to his tally, Seymour’s wins outnumbered his losses, although the heels of his shoes were round as a baseball.
Marvin extolled his girlfriends’ virtues. Each one was beautiful than the last.
“You don’t know nuttin’ ’bout women.” Jack offered from the chair behind the desk. He occupied a lot of space no matter where he sat or stood. “You ever been married.”
“What’s the difference?” Marvin played straight man for Jack’s pontifications.
“Married women kill you, if you leave ‘em and single women, if you don’t go.”
Marvin, Seymour, and I looked at each other in confusion.
“If I have to explain, then you don’t need explainin’.” Jack pointed out the door at his battered 1968 Lincoln Continental. “I always keep the tank full. Never know when a woman might go crazy with a razor.”
A Lincoln, a full tank of gas, and Jack Flood was a movie without a screenplay. Only one of Jack’s women came to the club.
“I come to see The Specials do MESSAGE TO YOU RUDY.” Nadine was high-yellow Jamaican. Her spread hips were built for the Continental’s front seat. She kissed Jack with all her soul and he kissed her back with all his heart.
“I think I’ll take my break.” Jack disappeared upstairs with Nadine.
We watched the ex-fighter follow the big woman like a schoolboy in love with his teacher. Marvin whistled in admiration.
“Jack likes them built for comfort.”
“I like all kinds.” Jack turned around with a broad grin. “And I like them best when they like me.”
He was telling the truth.
Every girl entering Hurrah was surveyed by the old boxer’s eyes like he was casting the teenagers for a remake of THE MACK. The older white women were greeted with a polite hello and shivered with the fear of desire. Jack cast a long shadow.
He treated Alice with respect, until she entered the club wearing a white plastic mini skirt and matching shirt. Jack smacked his lips and said, “Fried chicken.”
Alice ran up the stairs. She didn’t speak to me during the show by the Damned. Back at home she said, “I don’t like the way your friend looks at me.”
“Who are you talking about?” It had been a long night. The Damned had packed the club to the rafters.
“Jack.” Alice was beautiful enough to be in movies.
“A lot of men look at you.” After a year in the city she should have been used to men staring at her, as if she was naked.
“Not like a killer.” Alice told me to speak with Jack and I said yes.
We were in love.
The next night the Dead Boys filled the club beyond fire capacity. After the headliners hit the stage, I pulled Jack into the side hallway.
“What’s up?” Jack cracked his beefy knuckles.
“Do me a favor and don’t look at my girlfriend like you want to pimnp her.”
“That’s all. I thought you were goin’ to have me fired.”
“Why would I do that?” Only the manager could dismiss staff.
“You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Nuttin’, that’s good.” His broad face broke into a guilty smile. “So we’re good.”
“Sure.” He was doing something underhanded at the door. I was to turn a blind eye. “As long as you ignore my girlfriend.”
“Sure thing, but you know the closer to the bone, the sweeter the meat.”
Alice hated my working nights. The girls at Hurrah were free as the wind. I tried my best to be faithful.
“Can’t you get a regular job?”
“I could.”
I promised to look for a 9-5, except each night a different punk band from NY, London, or LA played to full houses and hanging with Jack was better than watching THE TONIGHT SHOW on TV. The only time we really had to do anything was when people tried to sneak inside for free.
Jack hated this.
“They’re stealin’ money from our mouths.”
“What you mean?”
“Nothin'.”
The B52s played three nights in a row. The crowd swelled with each concert. Our capacity was 600 and on the last night the manager told us not to let anyone else enter the club.
We shut the door.
Two Puerto Ricans jimmied open a side entrance. Jack dragged the trespassers to the front door and booted them onto the sidewalk with a size 14 shoe.
“We’ll be back.” The pair warned and walked off toward the projects.
“People always sayin’ that.” Jack repositioned his gun from back to front. “Never know when it’s gonna be true.”
Thirty minutes later the band hit the stage. Marvin and I went upstairs to watch the show. I got drinks from the bar and returned to the entrance. Jack was leaning against the wall. It was only the two of us.
“Where’s Seymour?”
“Outside callin’ his bookie.”
“For his winnings?”
“The only time cops win at the track is when they bust a bookie.”
I handed Jack his cognac and coke.
He didn’t have time to drink it, because ten Puerto Ricans stormed into the hallway. Five of them held stilettos and my stomach shrank behind my spine. Jack coldcocked the first attacker. The second PR stuck a shiv into his side.
“Motherfuckah, you fucked up my suit.”
Jack hammered his assailant’s nose a short right. Another he mauled with a left. A knife slashed at my face. Jack caught the blade with his right hand and cracked the Puerto Rican’s skull with his elbow. Jack pulled out a .38 and threw it to me.
I caught the pistol by the grip
“Shoot the motherfuckahs.” Jack was bleeding from three places.
Seeing the gun the Puerto Ricans fled the hallway and I chased them onto the sidewalk. They were fast on their feet. Within seconds they were a hundred feet away, but I had been waiting for this moment since I was a kid.
They weren't Hitler, but one of them had stabbed Jack. I aimed and pulled the trigger. The front window of a car shattered upon the bullet’s impact. My Boy Scout training hadn’t covered shooting at moving targets. The gang accelerated like a DJ had sped up a 45 to 78 rpm. There was no second shot.
“I’m goin’ to the hospital.” Jack hobbled up to me, blood seeping between his fingers. “You bettah get rid of that piece before the cops come.”
“I’ll do it right now.” I stuffed the .38 into my leather jacket.
“Good. Now flag me down taxi. Cab drivers don’t pick up bleedin’ brothers.” Jack leaned on a car and I stopped a taxi.
The driver protested about Jack’s messing up his seat.
I gave him an extra $10.
They drove away to Roosevelt Hospital on 8th Avenue and I went up on the roof of the nightclub. Another five bullets were in the chamber. The sight had been shaved off the barrel. Tape was wrapped around the handle. It was a gun for killing.
Pulling the trigger had been easy.
I aimed the gun at the building next door. The power was immense. The killer inside me was outside my flesh. I thought about keeping the piece, but killing someone was too easy and I dropped the gun down an airshaft. The pistol clanged twice on its ascent and I returned to the door, wondering whether Jack was alive.
The police were waiting on the sidewalk; ten uniformed cops from five patrol cars. Ten cops. Two more were plainclothes detectives.
“How’s Jack?”
“Three knife wounds aren’t gonna kill that old coon. I heard he fought Joe Louis.”
“Five rounds.”
“Tough old nigger.” The detective had a litany of questions. I told them 90% of the facts.
“What about the gun?” The detective and other cops surrounded me. I was suspect # 1 for a good reason. Marvin was still upstairs.
“What gun?” I played dumb.
“Someone reported a shot.” He stared at my hand.
“I didn’t hear any shot.” Seymour walked up to us.
“And you are?” The detective recognized his own kind.
Seymour showed his badge and backed up my story. He must have been waiting in the shadows for the right moment. The detective accepted his fellow cop’s explanation and pressed his ear to the radio.
“A couple of those boys stole a taxi. They crashed it in the park. We’ll show this ‘Jack Flood’ their pictures.”
They got into their cars and drove off into the night.
“Repeat after me.” Seymour recited a hundred words of less description of the attack.
“Don’t vary from it no matter what anyone says. And what happened to the gun?”
“What gun?”
“That’s right.” Seymour clapped my shoulder. “And congratulations on breaking your cherry.”
“Break my cherry?” The expression was known for the loss of virginity.
“On shooting at someone.” The off-duty cop whispered in my ear.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
"Good, the less said the better. That way the truth doesn’t sound like a lie."
Cops had a funny sense of law and order.
That night Alice slept on the other side of the bed. She was scared of me. I couldn’t blame her. I was scared of me too.
The next morning I called the club. The manager explained that no charges were pressed by either side.
“No charges? Jack had almost been killed.”
“Jack also has a record of violence long as your arm and not just in the ring,” the manager explained over the phone and then read out some of Jack’s previous charges. All were felonies. Most of them involved guns. “Better for Jack to drop it.”
Jack said the same thing in the hospital.
“At least they didn’t cut my face.” He touched his skin. “Don’t want to lose my looks.”
“Sorry I didn’t hit anyone.” I felt bad that I was untouched.
“Sorry? You hit someone and you go to Rikers Island and white boys don’t do good there. Besides them punks only scratched me.” The bandages covered his ebony arm and chest. “Good thing I wasn’t gettin’ killed, cuz you shoot like shit and that’s a good thing, because you don’t want to be woundin’ people tryin’ to kill you. You either gotta have a killer instinct and you don’t. You don't.”
“How can you tell?” I had aimed the gun.
“If you wanted to kill dead, then they be killed.” The monitor for his heart showed no change in his cold-blooded heart rate. "Killin' a man's no easy thing."
"I pulled the trigger."
"Yeah, you were almost there." I had failed a test, but Jack said, "Better almost there than there. Trust me on that."
"I will."
He was a killer.
Just like my Uncle Jack.
After his discharge from the hospital I invited him to dinner in my neighborhood.
That night Alice left before he arrived at our apartment.
“You only like him, because he’s a gangster.” She was only partially right.
“No.” I liked Jack, because he was Jack Flood.
“And you want to be a murderer too.”
“No, I don’t.” My urge to murder had disappeared after shooting Jack’s gun.
“When was the last time you wrote a poem? Not since you took that job.” She slammed the door after that sentence.
Jack liked the Italian restaurant on the corner of 1st Avenue and 10th Street. Lanza’s was empty and the food was mediocre. The wine was sour, but the prices were cheap. Jack liked it just fine.
“Ain’t nothin’ bad gonna happen to a black man in an Italian restaurant. Not like Harlem. I always got to watch my back in restaurants up there.”
After dinner we walked across the street to his Lincoln. It was parked next to a hydrant.
The dealers on the corner stepped aside for Jack. Their respect had nothing to do with the two guns on him.
“They don’t know me, but they know me.” He grabbed the two parking tickets from under the wipers and tore them into shreds. “I’m old school. Not many of me left in this city. You wanna go see James Brown?”
“James Brown?” James Brown had saved Boston the night of Martin Luther King’s assassination by calling for calm from the stage of the Garden. “You know James Brown?”
“He’s an old friend.” Jack slipped behind the wheel. The Lincoln was the perfect fit for a man his size. “He’s playin’ the Lone Star.”
“It’s on 5th Avenue.”
“Get in, I’ll introduce you to him.”
Jack drove cross-town on 9th and backed up 5th for several blocks. Cars blew their horns, as he burned a red light in reverse.
“Jack?”
“I know what I’m doin’.” He wrenched the wheel to the right to park right in front of the Lone Star.
“Good parking job.” His driving explained the many dents in the Lincoln.
“Always is when you don’t pay attention to the law.”
The tickets were $10.
Once inside Jack asked, “They take your ticket?”
“No.”
“They ain’t’ takin’ no one’s ticket.” Jack eyeballed the door. “Go up to everyone and ask them for their tickets and I’ll sell them outside for $5.”
“They cost $10.”
"We ain't retail.”
Jack and I overpacked the bar with a hundred extra people. The fourteen-piece band was crowded onto a minuscule stage by the overflow. James Brown barely had room to dance.
Jack and I bought a bottle of champagne.
Once the show was over, he took me up to the dressing room. James Brown was signing autographs for his fans. The Godfather of Soul froze upon seeing Jack.
“I ain’t dead.” Jack hugged the smaller man.
“No one said you were.” James Brown wiped the sweat off his face.
“Liar.” Jack released James. “This is my friend.”
“I saw you at the Newport Jazz Festival. You blew Zeppelin off the stage.”
“I blow everyone off the stage.”
His sideman ran a rhythm section tighter than a virgin’s lips.
Jack lifted a finger to signal that the two needed time alone and he slipped the Godfather of Soul some money. The next night we racketed the door again and Jack confessed that he had been doing the same at Hurrah.
“Those kids don’t wanna buy from a brother, but a white boy?” He let the sentence hang in the wind.
“We could make some money on the sell-outs.”
SRO shows packed the club with 700 people. Tickets were $10. 50 tickets a night split two ways was $250 each.
“Count me in.”
We had a good six-month run, but the door had too many eyes.
The manager caught onto the scheme and demanded other names. I offered mine alone. He fired me without severance pay. Jack kept his job and contacted the security at Madison Square Garden, the Palladium, and several other concert halls.
I sold their excess tickets.
Jack got a cut.
Alice and I broke up that winter. I left her for a blonde model. Lisa didn’t like the way Jack looked at her either, but she never had any reason to socialize with him.
Jack, Marvin, and I watched the first Roberto Duran-Sugar Ray Leonard fight at Danceteria on West 19th Street. We had bet heavily on Duran. His unanimous victory paid 9-5. I shouted for drinks. We were big winners.
Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a face. It belonged to one of the Puerto Ricans from the stabbing. Jack slowly turned his head.
“Is that who I think it is?” Jack wasn’t expecting any lies.
“Yeah.”
“You don’t want a piece of this and you ain’t seen nothin’.” Jack snapped his fingers and his nephew trapped the Puerto Rican against the wall.
“Jack, we won money tonight.” I was pleading for a life.
“I win money all the time.” Jack’s hand slipped behind his jacket.
“Don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what? Ain’t nothin’ happen yet.” Jack walked across the room. His hand was holding steel.
People avoided contact.
The young Puerto Rican boy prayed with quivering lips.
Jack whispered in his ear, then patted him on the cheek. He returned to the bar with Marvin. The Puerto Rican boy was gone.
“What you say to him?”
“Said tonight was his lucky night, but I’d see him again.”
“And what will you do then?”
“Depends on my mood and tonight my mood is good.”
A week later Jack and I were eating at Lanza’s. We washed down meatball and spaghetti two bottles of horrid wine. As we waited for the check, I asked, “Jack, would you have killed that kid the night of Duran fight?”
“Kill ‘em?” Jack scrunched his lips as if the next words were hard to say. “Nah, no reason for killin’. He ain’t killed me.”
“But you looked like you wanted to kill him.”
“Lookin’ like and killin’ ain’t the same. You know why I threw you that gun?”
“Because you were hurt.”
“Yeah, but the real reason is that I was scared to kill them. If I did, then I was goin' back inside and I’m too old for prison. “ This was a confession. One Jack really didn’t want to make, but he said, “It bothered me, forcin’ you to make that decision to shot or not. Everyone sees movies and thinks it’s easy pullin’ a trigger. Ain’t never easy pullin’ a trigger.”
“That’s true.” I had pulled the trigger without thinking.
"Good thing your shootin’ ain't worth shit.”
“I know that now.”
“They ain’t a toy.”
“My father said the same thing.”
“He was a smart man.”
After that night Jack and I parted ways as people do in the lives we led.
A year later I heard Marvin was shot dead in a Harlem alley, but no one had said anything about Jack.
I decided that he was still driving that big black Lincoln. It was better than thinking him dead, because men like Jack Flood don’t graduate to the heaven, even though they understand the real value of ‘thou shalt not kill’.
Jack had taught me that lesson and I’ve never owned a gun in my life. I shoot them only at gun ranges. I never think about killing anyone anymore, but I know what it’s like, because every bit of Jack was a little bit me.
At least I’d like to think he was.
He didn't want any more killing.
Not for him.
Not for me.
Not for anyone and that was a good thing.
I've looked up Jack Flood online.
His boxing record in on http://boxrec.com/list_bouts.php?human_id=32419&cat=boxer
His son wrote that his father's birth name was Norman Alonza Winston Flood.
Born Dec.26,1920 or 23 in Brandan,Vermont.
I don't see how you get Jack from Norman Alonza Winston, but he was always Jack to me.
The night skies over Italy in 1610 were unsullied by the light overdose of the 21st Century. Galileo Galilei pointed a 20X telescope into the stars, while standing atop of rooftop at the University of Padua. The astronomer spotted a single moon orbiting Jupiter, but the next evening he divined that they were two not one and named the gas giant's sixth satellite after a lover of the God. Some modern-day religious-right star-gazers refer to Europa as Jupiter II, for in mythology Europa had been seduced and ravished by Zeus in the form of a white bull on the island of Crete. The God rewarded his victim with a javelin that never missed and later arranged the stars to create Taurus.
In Ovid's Metamorphoses, the poet portrayed the seduction in these verses; "And gradually she lost her fear, and he offered his breast for her virgin caresses, His horns for her to wind with chains of flowers until the princess dared to mount his back her pet bull's back, unwitting whom she rode. Then—slowly, slowly down the broad, dry beach — First in the shallow waves the great god set his spurious hooves, then sauntered further out 'til in the open sea he bore his prize. Fear filled her heart as, gazing back, she saw the fast receding sands. Her right hand grasped a horn, the other lent upon his back her fluttering tunic floated in the breeze."
If that's not porno what is.
Back in 2013 afternoon I received the following comment for Mangozeen:
bestiality
europeananimalsex.com/darcyelam@arcor.de
I do accept as true with all the ideas you’ve presented in your post. They’re very convincing and can definitely work. Nonetheless, the posts are too short for novices. May you please prolong them a little from next time? Thank you for the post. European animal sex has a long tradition, however Germany is considering a ban of zoophilia denying the origins of the continent. The maximum penalty for bestiality is $40,000US, while Ireland imprisons animal lovers for life. Sex with animals is legal in a number of states in the USA Alaska, DC, Guam, Hawaii, Kentucky, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Vermont, Virginia, Wyoming, West Virginia, Alabama and of course the cow fucking capitol of the world, Texas.
How they gonna leave the farm once they done Bessie?
The Beatles began their infestation of America in 1963 and the following April the Fab Four dominated the US charts with 5 #1 hits. I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND was followed by one chartbuster after another. My next-door neighbor favored John Lennon. Addy Manzi had seen the group at Carniege Hall in December 2, 1964. Her father had played with big bands in the 40s and his old music contacts had scored the tickets.
”I screamed John’s name a million times. He never looked my way,” the beautiful brunette told her brother and me after she came home from New York. My ex-babysitter remained flustered until seeing the Beatles at Boston Garden a week later.
“John played every song for me.”
Every girl in the audience thought the same and the adoration of teenage girls transformed the English group into gods with the release of A HARD’S DAY NIGHT and RUBBER SOUL. No one in the rest of the world paid much attention when John Lennon claimed that the Beatles were more popular than Christ in the summer of 1966, but priests and preachers throughout America sought to burn their LPs in Nazi fashion, however the bonfires of the Bible Belt were shunned by millions of virtuous girls willing to sacrifice their maidenhood to Beatlemania.
This defloration fantasy was shared by the majority of New England girls.
Most girls pined for Paul McCartney. My younger sister wrote ‘the cute Beatle’ a dozen letters. She was not alone.
Kyla Rolla was the cutest girl in my 8th Grade class at Our Lady of the Foothills. She wore her blonde hair long like Paul’s girlfriend, the British actress Jane Asher. I knew her since we were 8. She hadn't said three words to me in five years.
My band was the outlaw Rolling Stones. I couldn’t tell Kyla that SATISFACTION was the greatest rock song of all time or that I loved the B-side of the 45, UNDER-ASSISTANT WEST COAST PROMO MAN. In order to gain her heart I committed treason to the best rock and roll band in the world and pretended to like the Beatles.
I stopped visiting the barbershop in Mattapan Square. My hair grew over my ears. Desert boots were abandoned in favor of Beatles boots. I wore a Beatles jacket without a collar. It cost $15. Matching pants were another $10. I wore the suit to school.
The nuns sent me home with a note for my parents, breaking my perfect attendance streak, but Kyla noticed my belated surrender to Beatlemania and after school on the bus ride home, she sat next to me for the first time in years.
“Who’s your favorite Beatle?” Her uniform skirt was four inches over her knees. The nuns sent home any girl with a higher hemline. There was only one answer.
“Paul.”
“Me too.” Kyla moved closer.
Her skin smelled of Ivory soap and her hair bore the faint fragrance of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. Her green eyes were the color of the emeralds stolen by Murph the Surf from the Museum of Natural History in New York.
I prayed that she didn’t notice my breathing her scent, as our conservations revolved around Paul McCartney trivia.
Paul was a Gemini like me. He was 22. I was 12. His favorite color was blue.
"Mine too." It was the truth.
I told Kyla that she looked like Jane Asher.
She let me hold her hands.
I sang her songs off BEATLES 65. ‘YOU’VE GOT TO HIDE YOUR LOVE AWAY.
Kyla closed her eyes dreaming that I was her Paul.
“Kiss me, Jane.”
“Oh, Paul.”
Our lips met at the red light before the local church. Paul’s soul invaded my body and my hand touched Kyla’s cashmere sweater. Her ribs felt like thick guitar strings. My fingertips inched higher.
“Oh, Paul.”
My hand grazed the bottom of her breast and Kyla gasped with outrage. A slap to my cheek devastated my imitation of Paul.
“But I thought that____”
“You thought wrong. You’re no Paul.” Kyla pulled down her shirt and stormed down the aisle to the girls her age.
My older brother had seen the entire episode. His eyes warned the other boys to not make fun of me. It didn’t stop their snickers.
Every day I begged Kyla for forgiveness. She ignored my every entreaty and went steady with Jimmie Lally for the rest of the school year.
His hair color was closer to Paul’s than mine.
I didn’t hate him or her, because they were accurate caricatures of the greater world beyond the confines of Boston’s South Shore.
Kyla broke up with Jimmy in May.
"You can write me in Florida," she said on the last day of school. Her parents were divorced and her old man was living in Miami.
"But why didn't you talk to me all this time?"
"Because I wanted to teach you a lesson."
"About what?"
"About wanting to hold my hand."
I wrote her letters that summer.
In September we were a thing again, but I could tell that her kisses were for Paul same as her caresses. I hated him and his poster over her bed. He stared at me all the time and I gave him the finger whenever she wasn't looking.
My parents bought SGT. PEPPER for my birthday. I listened to it once. Kyla had ruined the Beatles for me. The Rolling Stones regained my devotion. I played HIS SATANICAL MAJESTY’S REQUEST twice a day as if the Devil could transform Kyla’s love for Paul into stone, but the Beatles were more powerful than Satan.
Over the next few years Kyla and I never went all the way. We were saving it for our wedding night. Her mother was going a man from Chile. They spent nights out in Boston. We had the run of the house until midnight. I was almost a man.
Kyla introduced me to WBCN on her FM radio. “Mississippi Harold Wilson” was the first DJ to play Cream’s I FEEL FREE. She loved the Velvet Underground. I was a big fan of the Jefferson Airplane.
We lay on the couch of her dark living room. Our nights were everything except have sex. My parents understood that we were in love. My mother was okay with our dating as long as I got home before midnight. I felt a little like Cinderella.
My hair grew longer. Kyla and I talked about running away to San Francisco for the summer of love. We got as far as Wollaston Beach.
At summer’s end I spent a long night on the couch. Time disappeared from our universe, as WBCN’s night DJ played the Modern Lovers’ ROADRUNNER and Quicksilver’s MONA, then JJ Johnson announced over the air, “I have a special song to play this evening. A masterpiece. HEY JUDE by The Beatles.”
I stopped rubbing against Kyla’s thigh. WBCN never played The Beatles. Paul McCartney, my old rival, opened with vocals and piano. F, C and B-flat. The second verse added a guitar and tambourine. Simple and purely The Beatles.
“I love this.” Kyla pulled me closer. The four minute coda of ‘Hey Jude’ went on forever. At the song’s end I was still a virgin, but only just. Kyla opened her eyes and sighed, “That was good.”
I read the love in her eyes.
Paul.
Always Paul.
I looked at the clock on the wall. It was 2:10. I kissed her lips and dressed fast, as if my speed could turn back the hands of time. Kyla waved from the door way. She was wearing a silk robe.
“Tomorrow.”
“Manana.” I had learned the word from her mother’s boyfriend. He let me drink wine.
The streets of my hometown were suburb quiet. No cars. All the houses dark. My home was three miles away. I was on the track team and ran my best time for that distance.
A car appeared around a curve. A VW. It was my father’s car. He must have been coming to get me. His mood had to be dark. He liked his sleep. The VW 180ed in the street with a screech. It had a short turning circle. The car braked to a halt and the passenger door shot open.
“Get in.” It was a command.
I sat down expecting the worst.
My father read the riot act.
"All you had to do was call. Ten seconds and say you were all right. But you were only thinking about yourself.”
I never saw the punch coming. The VW never swerved. Blood dripped on my shirt. My father handed me a rag. I could tell that he was sorry for having lost his temper. He had never hit me before.
“You’re grounded for a week.”
“Yes, sir.” A month was punishment. A week was an apology.
He turned on the radio to WBZ. The disc jockey was playing HEY JUDE.
Soon The Beatles song seemed to be the only song on the radio. Kyla played it at home. My mother and my father knew the words. I couldn’t get them out of my head.
At the end of my grounding I went over to Kyla’s house. Her mother was out on a date. I looked up at Paul. Kyla put on SGT. PEPPERS LONELY HEART CLUB BAND. She pulled me to her and I should have walked out, but leaving Kyla wasn’t in my heart and I sang along with Paul. She smiled and kissed my lips.
I might not have been her Paul, but I was holding her hand and Paul never did that other than in her dreams.
The Beatles released ABBEY ROAD on 26 September 1969.
The pop quartet's eleventh LP was their last and featured such McCartney disasters as "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and "Oh! Darling", but was saved by Lennon, Ringo, and George.
According Wikipedia shortly after the album's release, the cover became part of the "Paul is dead" theory that was spreading across college campuses in the US. According to followers of the rumour, the cover depicted the Beatles walking out of a cemetery in a funeral procession. The procession was led by Lennon dressed in white as a religious figure; Starr was dressed in black as the undertaker; McCartney, out of step with the others, was a barefoot corpse; and Harrison dressed in denim was the gravedigger. The left-handed McCartney is holding a cigarette in his right hand, indicating that he is an imposter, and the number plate on the Volkswagen parked on the street is 28IF, meaning that McCartney would have been 28 if he had lived – despite the fact that he was only 27 at the time of the photo and subsequent release of the record.
Some people might think he had been reincarnated as a fly, except I saw him on Hamptons Beach in the 1990s, then again if Paul died inIndia, then the man on the LP cover was a fake and ended up as a fly.
The 2020 Kili Intiative team has departed from the Kibo Lodge in Loitokitok for the Maasai Plains under the guidance of JM, Ma'we, and Fast Steve.
The road down to the highway is so familiar from last year with Mount Kilimanjaro looming behind the group of Tanzanian and Kenya young adults.
The valley stretches for miles to the east filled with lions, elephants, giraffes, zebra, and countless other African species.
At one point the map is spread atop a hill and the team navigators see to find where they are and where they need to go.
"I told you we need to go left..." "I have no idea where we are..." "Can you see if there is a Java nearby?"
Needless to say they found Inkisanjane.
They made dinner inside the school.
At night the team sat around a campfire. In less than a week I will join them and Commander Tim, but not on LoLoipange.
The Hill of Thorns.
I will be leaving New York on Monday February 17 to meet the 2020 Kili Initiative team in Marangu Tanzania. Originally, the first Mt Kilimanjaro climb was just going to be a one-off ascent, with the singular aim of raising a few US dollars for community projects and to offer 10 young Africans the opportunity to reach the highest point in Africa. Since its inception, KI has lead more than 500 climbers to the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro, including 220 youth from Africa and beyond, and raised hundreds of thousands of US dollars for youth-based activities in Kenya and Tanzania. Mt Kilimanjaro has inspired, saved and transformed.
I will be joining the team for my second climb as well as fill in sections for my film about the 2019 climb and team members to promote the project.
I thank you for your past help and hope you can help me achieve the summit and complete my filming.
Asante
Peter Nolan Smith
https://www.gofundme.com/f/top-of-africa/donate
"Women are always right and they are never more right then when they are wrong and you try to convince of this." Pascha Ray.
They're different creatures rom man as proven by this email from Brian LeBouef featuring a short story exercise written by a male and female student at the U of Phoenix.
The professor told his class: "Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short story. You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and copy me on the email. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story and send it back, also copying me. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back-and-forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is be absolutely NO talking outside of the e-mails, and anything you wish to say must be written in the e-mail. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached."
The following was actually turned in by two of his English students: Rebecca and Gary.
THE STORY
(first paragraph by Rebecca)
At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.
(second paragraph by Gary)
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his trans-galactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he
could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay.
The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.
(Rebecca)
He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel,"
Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspaper to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her.
"Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.
(Gary)
Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live.
Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of >, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid, Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. "We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty!
Let's blow 'em out of the sky!"
(Rebecca)
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.
(Gary)
Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. "Oh, shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of F---ING TEA??? Oh no, I'm such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steel novels!"
(Rebecca)
Asshole.
(Gary)
Bitch.
(Rebecca)
F__K YOU - YOU NEANDERTHAL!
(Gary)
Go drink some tea - whore.
(TEACHER)
A+ - I really liked this one
And that's says it all about men and how they treat women.
Of course this is totally sexist and racist, especially when they both go Homo Sapiens and attack us Neanderthals.
The world is not flat, but scholars of pseudo-cosmography cling to the belief in a 2D Earth like Seven-Day Adventists' hope for the 2nd Coming of their Messiah.
As early as 150BC Greeks divined the world was round through mathematics.
Western historians claim that ancient societies espoused flat-worldism, however the center of the cult was Kabbalishers in Europe, where the skies were too dark to witness the rotation of the planet.
Tibet and Egypt revered astrologers, however truth-seekers were burned at the stake in Europe.
Galileo Galilei suffered a life sentence of house arrest under the pedo-Vatican. Math was scorned. Telescopes were considered sacrilege. Knowledge was taboo. In death his desiccated middle finger promotes his regard on the Holy Roman Church's understanding on the universe.
As long as they love God.
Personally I would rather hang with tramp Barbies than extoll the existence of a flat earth.
I have flown in Space over the northern pole
I have seen the the curvature of the earth.
I've circumnavigated the planet ten times.
The world is not flat, but it seems that way when you hit the surface.
Unless it's in the snow.
Snow is soft to a fallen man.
Even in a round world society.
The 2013 Christmas season had been a disaster on 47th Street.
Back in the 1990s I usually sold close to a quarter of a million in jewelry and my commissions provided a healthy six-month cushion for the winter, however in 2013 my sales from Thanksgiving to the Winter Equinox totaled less than $25000. After Xmas Richie Boy didn't need my services and my commish would carry my expenses only into the second week of January. He needed money and a lot of it, for his firm along with most ground-floor stores in the Diamond District were adrift in dangerous waters.
After New Year's Manny, my octogenarian boss, complained that the lack of sales was due to how we set up the window.
"You have to spread out the rings. Show people what we have." Manny roamed the street looking at other firm's windows. Any shop with customers inside it had to be doing something right. Our exchange was a morgue. We had very few diamond rings in the case.
No one-carat stones for the common man.
Everything was a big ticket item and the rich weren't shopping on 47th Street.
n y before New Year's I came into the city from Brooklyn to drop off pearls. I met Sammie at Richie Boy's counter. I gave him his goods and he returned my memo.
"I've never seen a Christmas like this." Sammie had been in the business over thirty years.
"The jewelry business is dead." I had been working on the street since 1990.
"Why do you say that?" asked a Hassidic Rebbi. Sol was renown for his wisdom. Many of his followers were diamond merchants. He must have heard their moans.
"Prices went up. Customers don't want to come into the city. They see the ads for Zales and Jared and hit the malls, but mostly people shop online. For everything. No one even knows 47th Street exists." I had excuses galore for the collapse of our industry.
"That's rubbish," grumbled Manny from his desk. He regarded idle talk as a waste of time. "Hard work is what makes a business flourish."
"How do you hard work yourself out of this hole?" Sammie was seriously seeking an answer.
"It won't be easy. The street has to advertise itself. Our old customers are dying off. We need new blood, but most people under forty never buy jewelry, because they can't commit to a relationship. All they have are their smart phones and smart phones don't need diamonds."
"You don't know nothing," smirked Manny. He had been in the business for over sixty years.
"Have you ever seen it this bad?" Sol demanded in a quiet tone. The rebbi didn't want anyone to know what he thought of the economic climate.
"I got robbed for a half-million dollars. That was a bad time during a time of good money. All we have to do is make one good sale and everything will be fine." Manny waved his hands in the air like he was trying to conjure a rich customer from thin air. The exchange remained empty. "But when that is, I don't know."
"What do you know?" The Rebbi stepped closer to the counter.
"I know nothing," Manny admitted in an unexpected display of honesty.
"Then you are the smartest man on the street, for anyone with all the answers hasn't heard all the questions." The Rebbi blessed Manny and walked into the cold winter air.
Sammie and I looked at each other.
"So ignorance is a blessing?" Sammie buttoned his jacket. He had to go to see a pearl merchant in Chinatown.
"Socrates said, to know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge."
"Sounds like Greek bullshit to me." Manny waved for us to leave. "I have work to do, not bullshit to hear, you beatnik bums.
"Happy New Year, Manny." I wished the old man. Manny and I went back in the years. Many of them had been good and I hoped for more to come, if we were lucky. He slipped an envelope filled with $100 bills across the counter.
"I wish it was more."
"I wish I had sold more." For his sake as well as mine.
"Maybe 2014 will be different, but what do I know?"
"Nothing. Just like me." Ignorance was always easier to achieve than enlightenment.
"Exactly. Come back later and we'll have a drink. Maybe two." My boss dug into his pile of papers. The answer to his problems wasn't in his bills, but it was better to look where it wasn't than where it was with only one day left in 2013.
Nothing really bad could happen in that time, especially when ignorance is blessed by a rebbi.
The last numeric palindromic date on the Gregorian Calendar was 11-11-1111 AD or XI-XI-MXXI Anno Dominum, although time in 1111 AD for most of the Christian world was ruled by the old Julian Calendar, but Pope Gregory changed the calendar to stop Easter from wandering all of the months. Yesterday 02-02-2020 was the first time in 919 years that the date could be correctly read from right to left as well as left to right.
I checked to see what happening on ye olde 11-11-1111.
Nothing of note in the western world.
Then again it was a Saturday.
Another work day for the masses.
Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday.
Kansas City won over San Francisco.
Otherwise nothing of note happened in the modern world.
Here are some stunning examples of how uneducated people are from THE GREAT BRITISH QUIZ CONTESTANTS.
UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE (BBC2) Jeremy Paxman: What is another name for 'cherrypickers' and 'cheesemongers'? Contestant: Homosexuals.. Jeremy Paxman: No. They're regiments in the British Army who will be very upset with you
BEG, BORROW OR STEAL (BBC2) Jamie Theakston: Where do you think Cambridge University is? Contestant: Geography isn't my strong point. Jamie Theakston: There's a clue in the title. Contestant: Leicester.
BBC NORFOLK Stewart: Who had a worldwide hit with What A Wonderful World? Contestant: I don't know. Stewart I'll give you some clues: what do you call the part between your hand and your elbow? Contestant: Arm Stewart: Correct. And if you're not weak, you're...? Contestant: Strong. Stewart Correct - and what was Lord Mountbatten's first name? Contestant: Louis Stewart Well, there we are then. So who had a worldwide hit with the song What A Wonderful World? Contestant: Frank Sinatra?
LATE SHOW (BBC MIDLANDS) Alex Trelinski: What is the capital of Italy ? Contestant: France. Trelinski: France is another country. Try again. Contestant: Oh, um, Benidorm. Trelinski: Wrong, sorry, let's try another question. In which country is the Parthenon? Contestant: Sorry, I don't know. Trelinski: Just guess a country then. Contestant: Paris.
THE WEAKEST LINK (BBC2) Anne Robinson: Oscar Wilde, Adolf Hitler and Jeffrey Archer have all written books about their experiences in what: - Prison, or the Conservative Party? Contestant The Conservative Party.
BEACON RADIO ( WOLVERHAMPTON ) DJ Mark: For 10, what is the nationality of the Pope? Ruth from Rowley Regis: I think I know that one. Is it Jewish?
UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE Bamber Gascoyne: What was Gandhi's first name? Contestant: Goosey?
GWR FM ( Bristol ) Presenter: What happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963? Contestant: I don't know, I wasn't watching it then.
PHIL WOOD SHOW (BBC RADIO?MANCHESTER) Phil: What's 11 squared? Contestant: I don't know. Phil: I'll give you a clue. It's two ones with a two in the middle. Contestant: Is it five?
ROCK FM ( PRESTON ) Presenter: Name a film starring Bob Hoskins that is also the name of a famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci. Contestant: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
JAMES O'BRIEN SHOW (LBC) James O'Brien: How many kings of England have been called Henry? Contestant: Er, well, I know there was a Henry the Eighth .. ER. ER ... Three?
THE VAULT
Melanie Sykes: What is the name given to the condition where the sufferer can fall asleep at any time? Contestant: Nostalgia."
STEVE WRIGHT IN THE AFTERNOON (BBC RADIO 2)
Wright: Johnny Weissmuller died on this day. Which jungle-swinging character clad only in a loin cloth did he play? Contestant: Jesus.
Christians can find Jesus everywhere and Jesus is always the right answer to any question.
Cheers, Britain. The USA is right with you.
