Perpignan July 31, 1988

Last night Jacques Vial, my patron in Perpignan and cousin to Olivier Brial (Cousins could be anyone from the same town or village in Catalunya), had invited some forty people to a forest dinner. At a long white-clothed table his beau-frere, his wife, Jean-Louis, his employer, Francois, a compatriot, a sad carpenter, a skilled woodsman, doctors, painters, the Brials and waves bronzed by the Med sun.

No tan lines on the shoulders.

I was the only American there, but I was a cousin too.

Family covered a lot of ground in the South of France.

We dined on Sanglala, a Spanish fish dish, almost like a paella, however the fish was better.

Wine loosened tongues. Old stories transported to laughter. Everyone laughed at how Oliver's father, Doctor Dudu, had thought I was the 17th ranked tennis player in the USA five years earlier. Everyone was a target. Everyone got their good-hearted revenge. No one spoke politics. The party lines were old fights for for a dinner or at least until several someones had drunk too much.

It was great to be Rousillion and even better to be away from the Reagan USA.

Despite my reputation of a nightclub thug, I had been invited everywhere; Prades in the Pyrenees, Toulouse, the casinos of Cardeques, and the bars of Barcelona and Coillierre harbor. Jacques had sold me as good people. He was a good salesman.

The bright southern sun blindingly lit the walls of the 3rd floor bedroom on Blvd. Wilson.

Carnet-Plage was only twenty minutes away, I called Serge to accompany me, however his girlfriend said, "He's sleeping."

"Another long night at the Playa de Argeles." I hadn't returned to the nightclub, since the weekend.

"Et toi?"

"The same."

I hung up and phoned Alan Vaughan in Paris. Sleep drenched his voice. No one was waking early today and he said softly, "I can't talk now." I suspected Mdme. Chenu was in bed next to him.

Friends stop talking to you once they fall in love.

Next call.

Pauline in Barcelona only two away from Perpignan.

"Come down. We can drink wine on the beach tonight."

I packed up bag for a weeklong trip. Pauline was modeling during the day and I was writing a collection of short stories. I arrived at the train station with a single bag packed with my Aiwa tapeplayer and a Canon typewriter carrying case. The bag's strap had broken in Luxembourg Aeroport. I lugged it in my hand. I wished I had left behind both and only had a bathing suit in my bag. Pauline liked the beach.

Three hours later I'm on a topless beach with my friend. Her cigar-thick nipples certainly change a man's view on life. She touched my shoulder. I've been alone to long to be alone tonight. I love 1988.

The Children Of Dead Friends

Sad to say I have outlived my most dangerous friends. They challenged Life. Faces turned to destiny and death seized them for eternity.

Junkies, bank robbers, normal people and psychos lifted from life.

We cannot surrender out souls.

We must live.

Forever or until the sun don't shine.

A Walk To Bliss

At dusk after a hard day's work I walked to the closest packie in Hudson. There wasn't a car in the parking lot. The bells of a nearby church rang five times. Five O'Clock. They can't have close at 5 But it was a Monday Then I spotted a lit OPEN sign. I purchased a pint of Vodka And returned to Warren Street. No one was the Sidewalk. Not even a dog. I muttered about squares, However this life has taken a toll On the flesh and soul. I drank in the backyard. Vodka and tonic. Toasting the past and the future Along with the rest of us: The wounded, the fallen, and the forgotten. Here's to us all.

Cold As A Dog's Tongue

120 in Death Valley.
98 in Brooklyn.
Ice cream stick in my hand.
A glob of vanilla falls on my foot.

Cold spreads on my skin
Like frost from a hole in an Inuit's boot
Cold, but not close to zero in winter.
And then the cold melts above freezing.

A dog looks at the ice slime
His tongue loos over his teeth
His eyes glazed with desire.
To lick my foot.

I offer him a taste.
His lap is quicker than his owner.
A taste of paradise is worth the jerk of a chain.
If a dog could have winked then this one would have.

Because sometimes a dog's friend is a man with ice cream on his foot.
Far from Death Valley
120
Twenty miles away from ice cream.

The Last Words On A Landline Phone

Some eleven years after the end of the American Civil War, Alexander Graham Bell uttered the first words over a telephone in 1876 to his assistant.

"Mr. Watson - come here - I want to see you."

Since then millions of trillions of words have been spoke over landlines, however since the advent of cellular phones people talk less and less on landlines and I predict the last sentence said by a caller will be, "Call me on my cell."

Or as the world descends into chaos in 2050, "Hey, man, take care of yourself. We are so fucked."

Emily Dickikinson Antithesis - I'M FUCKED - ARE YOU FUCKED TOO

I'm fucked. Who are you?
Are you fucked too?
Then there's a pair of us. Don't tell them. They are not us.
They'd snitch us out - You know.

How dreay to no be fucked!
How dreary as a frog.
To live as an alias to please them
All summer long
To an admiring bog.

Mission Delta 88

People drove big cars in the early 70s. My father bought a four-door Delta 88 Royale in 1973. Only 7000 were made that year. The overhead-valve high-compression V8 engine owed its existence to muscle cars such as the GTO. The Delta 88 was no family car. A heavy foot on the pedal rocketed the ton of steel to 100 mph with ease. The tundraesque back seat was designed for teenage submarine races. I had been arrested once for a high-speed chase. The Delta 88 begged for gas. My father rarely let me drive this Detroit monster. It was a bad story waiting for a beginning. Late summer of 1975. My cousin Cindy had fell in love with a student from Oxford. His family hailed for Rhodesia. His uncle founded National Geographic. A step up from her previous beau, Joe, who had given her a V-8 engine the previous Christmas. Cindy was flying to London to meet Oliver. She was 22. No parental supervision. Our goodbyes ran long at her house in Wollaston, Massachusetts. Her mother cried a salty Neponset River. My mother joined the current of tears. The two sisters were very close, but the clock ticked overtime on their theatrics. Her father didn't want to say good-bye. Uncle Dave looked at his watch. 12:10. Cindy's flight was at 12:45. The distance to Logan Airport was 14 miles. Cindy ran to the front door. Someone had to drive here to the airport fast. Uncle Dave looked around the room. His son was too young. My older brother was in law school. His eyes fell on me. He held up his car keys. A Impala. "They'll never make it in that." My mother stuck the Delta 88's key in my hand. My father opened his mouth. My mother's regard shut it. "Get her there on time." "I'll do my best." I had driven taxi three years during college. My diploma read 'sin laude'. No one booked more money on the weekend than me. Boston was my city. I took the keys. 'In one piece." Uncle Dave said what my father couldn't. "I'll call from the airport." 12:11 I started the car. The V-8 was in shape. Our mechanic loved big engines. 303 cubic inches. I goosed the gas and turned on WBCN. BALLROOM BLITZ by Sweet. My two sisters wanted to come along for the ride. My mother stopped them. "Better only two." She tapped her watch. Cindy's boyfriend was several social stratae higher than ours. We were family. "No red lights." Cindy fastened her seat belt. She was in love. Women are funny in that state. They have no fear. "No red lights." My mental map counted four. The Quincy cops changed shifts at noon. Their schedule worked in our favor. The Delta 88 peeled rubber from Anderson Street. Cindy said one word, "Faster." The Delta 88 fishtailed onto Newport Avenue. A straight line to North Quincy. Traffic was light. Cindy and I had protested against the war in Vietnam. She pulled out a joint. "I got to get rid of this before I get on the plane." "Light it up." The light at Beale Street was green. We were going 70. The road dipped past the intersection. The Delta 88 traveled a hundred feet in the air. The suspension prevented our panning out on the asphalt. I pushed the engine. 80. 90. 95. I passed two cars like they were running on lead glue. The lights at West Squantum Street went yellow. I obeyed the old adage. "Yellow means faster." Horns blared in our passage. We were in another time zone. Nothing was in my rearview mirror but empty road. We smoked the joint in peace for several seconds. "Keep your eyes open." We whipped into Neponset Circle like Bonnie and Clyde. No one was prepared for outlaws. I stomped on the gas. The V-8 honored Detroit with power. I was back up to 100 up the onramp of the Expressway. "12:17." Cindy had a Cartier watch. Her beau had given it to her as a token of his love. The watch kept good time. WBCN's DJ segued to Slade's "Mama Weer All Crazee Now". Cindy was more into Cat Stevens, but TEA TO THE TILLERMAN was not writing for this ride. More luck. No traffic on Route 3. No cops either. I hit 110 at the Mass Ave exit. "12:20." I was ahead of schedule. The odometer had gained 8 miles. Only 6 more to go. "You see any cops?" Cindy had better yes than me. "No." The Delta 88 reached 110 entering the tunnels of Central Artery. I dropped down to 60 in the Sumner Tunnel and we arrived at British Airways' terminal at 12:26. Cindy jumped out of the car. She was carrying one bag. A wave and my cousin was inside the terminal. A state trooper appeared from the right. My trembling hands tensed on the steering wheel. The plastic melted into my flesh. "Move the car, sport." "Yes, officer." I drove away according to the traffic laws of the Massachusetts Commonwealth. I stopped at a bar on Mass Avenue. Kelly's. They had 50 cents beer. Three of them brought me back to earth. I didn't get back to Wollaston until 1:30. "Did she get away okay?" My aunt wanted to know. "Fine." I told them about the trip intown. None of them believe me. "What about the red lights?" "They were none." None of them after that statement believed me. None of them except Uncle Dave. He thanked me with a beer and I was grateful. Still am. Just the way I am.

Lee Remick - Quincy Beauty - You Bet I Would

Lee Remick came from the South Shore of Boston.

She was a great actress.

Especially in THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES.

The Ruins Of The Acropolis

The years pile on us like a stack of cards from losing hands at a casino. Strangers ignore my passing and friends failed to recognize me. Ancient as dust I regard my body in elongated shadows at dawn and dusk. A ruin like the Acropolis. Once great, but now shattered, but then I recall the last line from Edward Rosemund's CYRANO DE BERGERAC.

“You strip from me the laurel and the rose!
Take all! Despite you there is yet one thing
I hold against you all, and when, tonight,
I enter Christ's fair courts, and, lowly bowed,
Sweep with doffed casque the heavens' threshold blue,
One thing is left, that, void of stain or smutch,
I bear away despite you…
My panache.”

Quelle grand pif

Foto by Raoul Ollman

15 Ways to Know That You're Old School South Shore

1.) You dove off Shipwreck at the Quincy Quarries and lived to tell the tale without getting a car antenna in your arm.

2.) What about the SS Mayflower at Nantasket Beach?

I had a head-on crash there in 1969.

VW versus a Delta 88 was no contest, but my four passengers and I had walked away from the total wreck.

The driver of the Delta 88 had tried to reach the Mayflower. She had friends in the bar. Someone later told me that it had been a transvestite club. None of them had come out to help us.

3.) The Surf Nantasket was a great dance hall.

Jay and the Techniks were the house band along with the Pilgrims.

5.) The Rocking Ramrods were the best band in Boston.

Watch this URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJLYq0tHAPk

6.) Ridge Arena was a great hockey rink, but sucked as a concert hall.

I saw Teddy and the Pandas with the Loving Spoonfuls there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQk7p2Ybx50

7.) You can't wait for winter to be over, so Tony's on Wollaston Beach will open so you can feast on fried clams.

8.) Big Blue Hill was the highest elevation in your childhood.

9.) You watched a ship launched on the Fore River.

10.) You've driven down to Hull to enjoy the majesty of the hurricane battering the sea wall.

11.) You made it from Wollaston to Nantasket in 15 minutes.

On 3A.

12.) HoJos served your favorite ice cream.

13.) Your hometown was founded by Pilgrims.

Their last names are not yours.

They don't call the South Shore 'the Irish Riviera' for nothing.

14.) You recognize Tim Wakefield as the most famous person to ever come from the South Shore.

15.) The Neponset River was a wildest river in your life.

No one knew its source.

None of us asked about its headwaters.

They weren't located on the South Shore.

May that river run deep forever.

THE AMNESIA OF ME by Peter Nolan Smith

Eight years ago I was sitting on Pattaya's notorious Soi 6 listening to SOMEBODY TO LOVE. As I grooved to the Jefferson Airplane's hit, a trio of sub-20 Thai girls had invited me to visit an upstairs short-time room.

"You sexy man. How old you? 40?" asked the youngest.

Even through beer goggles my mirror doesn't lie more than 49.

"Older."

"45?"

"Gair-gwar?"

"50?"

"More?"

"Buah, you not old. You boran." The bar-girls was tired of the guessing game and they went to seek out younger picking.

Boran meant ancient in Thai.

I was ancient to someone south of twenty, but as my friend Tidball was wont to say, "I like to think of myself as the Acropolis. In a state of ruins, but you can tell once it must have been something."

I left Soi 6 before someone accused me of being gao or decrepit.

Back in Jomtien my wife laughed upon hearing these girls thinking I was boran.

"You old man, but you my old man." Her belly swelled with our child.

"And you are thuut-sawn."

"Barg wan." My angel led me into the house. She loved sweet talk, which was very popular in Pattaya, which was a refuge for men not wanting to face their age and to misquote TS Eliot. "As I get old I shall wear my trousers rolled where the women don't speak about Michelangelo."

No one in Pattaya had ever mentioned Michelangelo, unless they were a Ninja Turtle fan.

I've been old for a long time, but the old age truck never blows its horn when it backs up over you and I never forgot the first time I became old.

Back in 1986 I returned to New York from Paris. I had sublet my East Village apartment to a Swede. Sven moonlighted as a bouncer at Danceteria. Everyone liked him and he liked black chicks. I had no trouble with the male nurse. He paid the rent on time and helped the super with the plumbing.

When I informed him that I was coming back for good, Sven moved out three days before my return. Nothing was missing in my flat. Not one of my books or records or clothing. Even the old lady next door, Mrs. Adorno, said good for Sven.

"He good man. He like chocolate ladies." The old witch was in love with the young Swede. She was only 4-10 with chronic pains from a spinal injury. ?He help me with my back. I miss him already."

"What about me?" I had not been in New York more than six years.

"Not miss you long time." The ancient bruja waved a hex sign. "You old man."

"Old man." I was 34.

"I old. I know old, viejo." Senora Adorno slammed shut the door.

Mrs

Adorno was right, however my heart was forever 15 and I swore that I was going to be young forever, despite the old bruja's curse.

But time was slipping away.

My college friends were employed as lawyers, realtors, bankers, and doctors.

Real jobs weren't for me.

Arthur Weinstein got me a spot at the door of the Milk Bar. The club on lower 7th Avenue was decorated like the Malchek Bar in CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Scottie Taylor the owner hid in an egg chair. His manager ran the bar and hired the help. She had good taste in funny people and in late-September we had a new bargirl. Shane came from the UK. Her ambition was to be a pop singer. She had dreads and a cute body. I never hit on her and she asked if I had anything against black girls.

"You're more high yellah than black." More Chinese than African too.

"So why don't you take me home?" Shane was forward and I couldn't think of a single reason for not taking up her offer. I was single. She was over 18. We rode on my Yamaha 650 to East 10th Street. As I parked my motorcycle on the sidewalk Shane looked at the building with a frown.

"What?"

"I've been here before." The declaration wasn't based on deja vu.

"Let me guess. With Sven."

"Yes." She followed me upstairs without any fear of disappearing like Orpheus' dead wife.

I had a joint and she liked smoking weed. All Rasta girls do.

Once inside the apartment she picked up an LP.

The Mothers of Invention's FREAK OUT.

I put the album on the stereo.

Hearing HELP I'M A ROCK Shane laughed, "This is your apartment, right? I was here more than once. I would look at the records and wonder who lived here."

"Who did you think it was?" My apartment was a classic homage to the 1960s. Wood covered the walls like a rural shack. Bathtub was in the kitchen and the water closet was in the back.

"Seeing these LPs I thought it was some old hippie."

"Hippie?" I had hitchhiked to San Francisco in 1971 three years too late for the Summer of Love and more a punk than anything else.

"Yes, an old hippie."

Mrs. Adorno was right and I couldn't bring myself to make love with Shane. No newly old man should resurrect his youth in a young woman's flesh. I didn't have such a problem later in life, because old can get very old without the young.

Still no one in America has called me sexy since high society interior designer Tony Ingrao bought a 20-carat Burmese blue sapphire from me. At our celebratory dinner he cooed, "You're very sexy. For an old man."

Tony only wanted sex.

As opposed to my wife who wanted my heart and soul, despite my age, but during my money-making sojourns to New York I have learned the hard way that "As you get old you forget. As you get older you are forgotten."

Several years ago a woman sent a query to my Facebook page.

"Are you who I think you are?"

It was Shane. I wrote back that I had worked at the Milk Bar as the doorman. Her reply came as a surprise.

"I'm sorry I worked at the Milk Bar too, but I don't think you're the person I was thinking about. It was all such a long time ago. Take care."

Not who I thought you were?

Shane must have wiped her memory clean.

"Old hippie?"

Those two words castrated my pride, then again we never had sex, still her epistle on Facebook reveals she has forgotten about me 100% and the words 'old hippie' too.

She was wrong, for while I might not have long hair, I still listen to Jefferson Airplane and I will never forget the MC5's KICK OUT THE JAMS MOTHERFUCKERS.

The First Words On A Telephone

On March 10, 1876 Alexander Graham Bell said the first words on a telephone to his assistant, Thomas Watson, "Mr. Watson--come here--I want to see you."

Five years later the native of Salem Massachusetts resigned his position with Bell to farm stones in East Braintree, then became a successful Shakespearean actor until founding the Fore River Shipyard in 1883.

The Shipyard provided thousands of well-paying jobs to men and women.

Hundreds of Ocean Liners, Battleships, Cruisers, Destroyers and Submarines slid down the slideway into the Fore River.

When my family moved from Maine to the South South in 1960, we stayed the first night at Eddie's Motor Lodge across from the shipyard. I recall standing at the motel window and seeing the derricks looking over the trees illuminated by floodlights. My father told me to go to bed. He hated my insomnia.

The Shipyard was on the way to Nantasket Beach. A fried food shack and a cheap gas station sat at the roundabout to the Fore River Bridge. The concrete drawbridge was a joyful sight. The ocean and Paragon Park were less than twenty minutes away.

As teenagers we drove down 3A to see bands and dance at the Surf Nantasket.

After our junior prom in 1969 our friends, my brother, and I ate at Cain's Lobster House. My date was Janet. My brother was with Ava Gardner, but somehow she ended up with our next-door neighbor. My brother rightly never forgave Carl for his bird-dogging him.

All of it's gone now, the Shipyard, the ships, the launches, the restaurants, the jobs, and the Quincy Quarries.

But Pete's Bar is still open and I go there any time I'm in Quincy with my lost nephew, Matt St. John. Old strangers come up to me and ask my name. A few I knew back in the 1960s and for us fifty years ago was more than a memory.

They are life.

"Mr Watson - come here - I want to see you."

Singapore # 1 In Sorrow

Fresh on the failures of Gallup's presidential predictions the company releases the results of a happiness polls citing that Danes are the most satisfied people in the world and those from Togo are the least. Most bummed out was understandably tied between Greeks and Iraqis, however denizens of the Asian city-state Singapore responded negatively to many of the questions, saying that only 2% felt like they liked their jobs.

I understand that feeling.

Ten years ago I wanted to take the gun out of the safe and shoot my boss.

Singapore has much more stringent gun laws and an interviewee on Forbes stated, “We don’t clap very loudly. I’ve been to concerts where people don’t even applaud as much as they should.”

Yet back in 1991 I flew into Singapore from Sumatra. The transition from old Asia to new Asia was striking with the city-states' gleaming skyscrapers and shopping malls. I had heard people complain about the emotionlessness of the city. That evneing I went to the cinema to see CYRANO with Gerard Depardieu. The French was subtitled into Chinese and English. At the end of the movie there wasn't a dry eye in the house when Cyrano cries out, "I shall always have my panache."

Maybe emotion is something better saved for the dark of a movie theater or better yet a bedroom.

Plus who gives a shit what Gallup says?

Mipples for Moobs

"I'm like the Acropolis. In a state of ruins, but you can tell at one time I must have been splendid." David Tidball said those words more than ten years ago. He was speaking of himself, but I quoted the English painter on many occasions without any riposte from my audience, attributing their lack of response to their ignorance of classical ruins. Americans don't possess a good sense of history, except for sporting events and 9/11. Even that last date challenges their perception of time. 27% of my countrymen have no idea what year the WTC collapsed in flames, so why should they remember a stack of carved stone atop a Greek hill?

No reason, but my body has lost its resemblance to the glory of antiquity in the last decade. The six-pack abs are a plastic sac of beer. My tight buns are sagging like melted cheese and worst my chest has ceased to be a chest. It's man boob territory. My friends mocked my decrepitude. Women envy my 36 C Cups. I've shaved them to enhance their beauty, but I have come to see that they are missing an essential accessory.

Cigar-sized nipples.

I need an operation to enlarge them or get transplants from well-teethed teats. The ridicule of my moobs would end the instant that I took off my shirt. The critics would be stunned to silence by the sight of mipples hanging from my moobs like strangled worms. They will avert their gaze, except for those that are twisted, because when the weird get weirder, things get out of control and while my ruination might rival the neglected Maya pyramids of Tikal, mipples on moobs will resurrect the dead.

The photo is the glory that was 256 East 10th Street - 1978.

A Few Steps With A Ghost

Walking back from High Falls
Quiet sang in the woods
Opposite the abandoned Philmont mill
Dusk swooned over the western ridge
The sun was fare-welling day
With a final offering a glow of neon orange.
In my sixty-nine years I have seen over twenty-thousand sunsets
Many of them alone
But not tonight.
A spectral figure passed between two trees.
A luminescent creature from the far-beyond.

They disappeared as fast as they appeared.

The Living mean nothing to the Dead.
And the Dead meant nothing to Me,
Unless they are family and friend,
Because those ghosts never died for me.

Fly Me to The Moon 50

July 20, 1969.

The eyes of the world broke away from the Vietnam War, the Paris Uprising, and the Mets challenging the National League. Our vision was fixed on the Moon, as TVs and radios reported the lunar landing of Apollo 11 to an anxious planet.

This space mission had been inspired by the late-President Kennedy and Neil Armstrong immortalized the epic moment with the words. "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

July 20 1969 was a Sunday.

The next day I was working at Ma Bell.

A summer job.

I was 17, but have no recollection of watching the astronaut's first steps on the moon, which should have been as indelibly etched into my memory as the JFK assassination and losing my virginity and this memory lapse lent credence to those conspiracy theorists claiming that Man never landed on the Moon, but let's face the facts.

The Lunar Landing was televised by every channel; ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS.

Teenagers watched almost 30 hours of TV on the 1960s and being a teenager if the Lunar Landings had been on TV, then I should remember seeing them, instead recalling nothing.

Ergo no Lunar Landing.

NASA has yet to refute my analysis, but for further research into the Moon Hoax, check out this URL

http://www.redzero.demon.co.uk/moonhoax/

One theory is that I could have been making out with my girlfriend.

On the weekends her mother permitted us stay at their house unchaperoned and Janet Stetson was certainly more important to me than a moon landing.

Even now.

Next Year Andromeda

Andromeda is the spiral galaxy 225 million light years away from our star system.

Four billion years from now the two galaxies are predicted to crash together.

None of that will be there to witness that event.

When I was a kid in the 1950s, Marvel Comics came out with a story NEXT YEAR ANDROMEDA.

225 million light-years in one year means a vessel would have to cover over 60,000 light-years a day.

Is that possible?

Not with our technology.

This week Voyager 2 left the solar system.

The NASA space probe was launched in 1977

It has passed Jupiter.

Saturn.

Uranus.

Neptune.

And now into Deep Space.

Joining the other five vessel to achieve departure from the heliosphere.

Most people have no idea of this accomplishment.

Next year Andromeda.

Especially with Julie Chrystie.