September 24, 1978 - Journal Entry - East Village

The Red Sox are a game out of first with six games to go.

Few people in our scene care about sports, although Guadalcanal is a die-heard Yankees fan. They suck this year.

Last night I went to party with Grant at Stan's and ran into Vickie, a skinny blonde with a stutter. I have one too and we discussed our speech difficulties. I moved a little closer to hear her better and she stammered, "I-I-I'm asexual."

"Oh."

"My friend Jessie thinks asexuality is a disease." Vickie was wearing a tight white sweater and a half-inch of make-up

That's stupid." Vickie was a poetress. I loved her reading with distorted speech.

"I told him the same. I'm not that primitive." I couldn't tell Vickie that I'm attracted to androgynous women.

"You're the same as all men. You'd fuck a hole in a tree.

Vickie walked away to speak with her friends. None of them were asexual.

"No luck." Grant was always curious about my sex life. Queers were like that.

"We were just talking."

"T-t-t-talking?"

Don't make fun of our speech."

Sorry, I was joking."

It's not a joke."

So you got shoot down?"

"Yes."

"Then let's go to CBGBs."

Who was playing didn't matter. We all loved CBs and I had no problem with being shoot down, but when I left the party, Vickie broke from her friends and asked, "Can I go to CBGBs with you. I won't h-h-hang on you."

"No worries." Just because she was asexual didn't mean I couldn't be a gentleman.

"Thanks, my friends are assholes.

"Sure, but I have other places to go first."

On the way I stopped at One University Place, Mickey Ruskin's new restaurant next to Washington Square. The front bar was packed with arty assholes. The line for the new pinball game was long, so I told Vickie, "Let's go

"A greasy foreign meatball in a three-piece suit clutched her arm. He was drunk He was with friends. I had drunk heavy at the party and chopped on the guy's forearm, freeing Vickie. Grant tried to calm the situation, but the meatball poked my chest and said, "Don't get tough with me."

His accent might have been French. I had taken it in grammar school at Our Lady of the Fotthills. Grant motioned with his head for the door. Vickie was already on her way out. I should have left without a word, except I'm from the south Shore of Boston and said, "I don't have time to waste of fools like you."

"Fool? You call me a fool. Who are you?"

"Normally I would have japped him now, but I wasn't wearing my glasses and said, "This is America, not France. We don't need your type here."

"I'm not French. I am Spanish."

Mickie came over to us. Two bouncers backed him up and he and asked, "What's the problem here?"

"This foreigner is out of line, but we're leaving."

"Then leave." The three of us walked to CBGBs in silence. At least I was silent. Vickie vanished once I got us comped for entry. Her friends seemed the same as the ones left at the party, but they weren't the same, just not different from the others.

Kim Davis whispered in my ear, "You came here with Vickie here? You know what Alice thinks of that. She;'s worried about you getting a disease."

"Firstly Vickie's asexual."

"She is?" Kim's regard for the scrawny blonde climbed a few steps.

"Yes, and cool out, I'm only sleeping with Alice no matter what she thinks." It was a lie, but one she unlike Alice was willing to believe.

I ended up reading karen Crystal's palm.

"You suffer from incredible angst." Her marriage with Hilly had been over nine years, but they were still partners in the bar. Her only job in the place is to stop us from smoking weed. "What make you think you can smoke in here? This isn't no methadone clinic."

Onbviousy she had never been to the dressing home, which seconded for a shooting gallery. Me, I wasn't into skag. I liked my drink. " My love for Alice overcomes my lust, although she said to me this morning, "I'm so scared when you go out alone at night. I worry about you getting a disease.

Excerpt From FAMOUS FOR NEVER by Peter Nolan Smith

Late in the summer of 1978 an Upper East Side photographer asked me to write a photo-roman about a sadistic kidnapping. I cast my co-worker Klaus Sperber as the black leather villain. The Gothic singer was the daytime pastry chef at Serendipity 3. I was a busboy there and Anthony lived above the swishy ice cream shop of East 60th Street. Upon meeting Klaus at the Kiev Coffee Shop, the photographer was smitten by his ghostly face.

"You were made for film." Anthony started snapping pictures. We were waiting for our female lead. I didn't know her.

"My voice was made for the opera." The gaunt German loved to perform forgotten castrati role. "But I don't believe in movies. Too many frames showing the same thing when only one needs to show the true emotion."

"Like Gloria Swanson at the end of SUNSET BOULEVARD." I loved Billy Wilder films.

"I can always pretend to be her." Klaus grimaced with a stolen toothy smile and pursed his black-painted lips. He was a natural mimic. "Who is the leading man?"

"No one yet." Anthony's eye hadn't left the viewfinder.

"What about him?" Klaus pointed my direction.

"He’s a little brutish." Anthony swung the camera and focused the lens on my face.

"Like a caveman." Klaus snidely commented about my hard-boned features. "You know his name at Serendipity 3 was Bam Bam after some stupid American TV show THE FLINTSTONES."

"I'm not an actor." I trembled like LA in an earthquake.

"You don't have to act. All you have to do is pose." Anthony shifted his camera to the entrance, as the second coming of Veronica Lake entered the diner. Every man at the counter followed the click of the blonde's stiletto heels. Her knee-length black skirt was slit to a vee revealing her white upper thigh and her black polka-dot shirt was unbuttoned to a vanilla navel.

"This is Clover." Anthony invited her to sit down. "We met at Club 82.”

"I like dancing with transvestites. They don't hassle me like straight men." Clover pushed a sheet of blonde hair from her face. She wasn't wearing a bra. Anthony lifted his Leica. Clover dropped her head for the curtain of hair to cover half an eye. "Are you the hero?"

"Yes." There was no saying no.

"Good. I like my men rough." Her voice slurred this preference for sultry surrender. "My sponsor like it rough too."

"He's also the writer." Klaus said with a keen interest in his acting partner. He was into straight men.

"So what's the story?" The 19 year-old arched an eyebrow. "Something sexy I hope."

"It's about the three of us."

"And?"

"I haven't written a word," I confessed with a shrug.

"The story will write itself with you three in it." Anthony pressed the shutter button. The camera swiveled from Klaus to Clover to me. Its aperture clicked open and shut like a robot attempting to wake from a long recharge. "We can make it up as we go."

"Like life. Like Art." Klaus believed in keeping it simple and I built a story around his kidnapping Clover's character to finance an opera about the last castrati on Earth.

We huffed poppers for one scene. Clover stripped near-naked in another. Klaus cut my eyes blind in another. Bandages transformed me into a blind mummy. She lay on my bare flesh wearing nothing but a scent of another man.

"My sponsor had me when I was a little girl. He thinks I'm too old now. Nineteen isn't old, is it?"

"No." I was twenty-five. When I was fourteen, Clover had been eight. “You were lucky to get out of Texas."

"I never looked back." Clover could make it to the bright lights of Hollywood. Nothing was pretend with her.

Our shoots ran late, as we shoot scenes over the city. Tenement fires were our lighting. Sirens backed our sound. My girlfriend accused me of having an affair.

I wished that Alice were right, except Clover slept with men for money.

"I don't tell the oilman about them. He thinks he's the only one, but his friends pay me $1000 a night and I'm worth every penny."

A grand a night was out of my price range and I had to be satisfied with pretending that I was sleeping with her. Alice was not pleased with the illusion and neither was I.

Our last shoot was on 42nd Street.

After midnight Times Square was awash with wickedness. We posed on 42nd Street with the pimps, whores, and drug dealers. Clover looked the part of a rich man's mistress and I could pass for a detective in my pinstriped suit. The final scene was set in a XXX shop. The clerk would allow anything for $20. Anthony set up his tripod before the open doors of a porno booth. The voyeurs watched us for free. Clover wanted their quarters. Behind us the booth's 8mm loop repeated the ravishing of a young blonde by an older man.

When I imitated the on-screen action, Clover whispered, "On my fourteenth birthday the oilman raped me. He bought my parents a new house. He's been taking care of me ever since. You ever rape anyone?"

"No." Soldiers of the Sexual Revolution raped no one.

"Do you think you could? If it was me?" Five years as the oilman's mistress had introduced a special game to Clover and she teasingly shut the booth door. "If it was a game?"

"No." I snatched at her arm.

"Too bad. You'll never know what you're missing." She pushed open the door and the camera strobe caught our struggle.

THE CLOSET OF LOST THINGS by Peter Nolan Smith

The Nuns of Our Lady of the Foothills taught their students math, English, religion, history, geography, and a scattering of other basic subjects. Their educational technique depended heavily on harsh discipline. Left-handers were deemed possible satanists. The nun expected everyone to be right-handed. Any laggers were beaten into submission and laziness on small ts earned the offender to Palmer Penmanship a wrap on the knuckles.

The mysteries of adding, subtracting, multiplication, and division were boiled down to tables.

7 X 7 = 63 and 1 + 1 always equaled 2.

How didn't matter as long the charts were in our heads.

The flow of history was divided into dates important to the Holy Roman Church and America; 5 BC the Birth of Jesus Christ, 1215 the Magna Carta, 1492 Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, 1776 the American Declaration of Independence, 1914 the Start of the Great War, and the 2nd Vatican Council in 1961.

Questioning why the Birth of Jesus Christ came five years before Anno Domino or why Christmas was only four months later than the Immaculate Conception were grounds for a visit to the Principal, who corrected adolescence heresy with a yardstick and Sister Mary Eucharist ruled the nuns of her convent with the same iron hand.

The mysteries of faith were solved by the memorization of the Baltimore Catechism; God made the world, God is the Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things, Man is a creature composed of body and soul, and made in the image and likeness of God and God made us to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven. God reigned over man with capital letters.

There was no detour from these tenets, until my 6th Grade teacher Sister Mary Osmond ignored the the strict curriculum of her mother superior. The ancient nun had taught in Egypt and entertained her pupils with tales of Africa.

"We lived by the Nile. After the harvest the children ran barefoot over the sharp stalks without slicing their feet."

Closing my eyes I envisioned her students gliding over the fields of razors. Sister Mary Osmond opened our minds and we followed her approach to worlds beyond Boston.

Sister Mary Eucharist hated her and warned, "Fear. That's how the Church rules the faithful. Fear."

Sister Mary Osmond offered the course of love and we reciprocated by scoring the highest test scores in the Diocese. Her knowledge flooded our senses and she had an answer for everything.

Not all of it was true.

One afternoon Connie Botari cried in the back of the class.

Sister Mary Eucharist would have ignored the silent sobs.

Sister Mary Osmond put down her chalk and approached Connie's desk.

"What's wrong?"

"I lost my headband." Connie had looked very cute this morning with it on her head, although not a pretty as Kyla Rota.

I wore glasses and sat in the front of the class. Neither girl knew that I lived and breathed on the same planet.

"Is that all?" Sister Mary Osmond tenderly touched the young girl's head. "Don't you worry about that and do you know why?"

"If you lose something than it wasn't yours to begin with."

"Who taught you that?"

"My mother," answered the thin brunette.

As had mine.

"And you pray to St. Anthony to help you find something."

"Yes, sister, he has the power to find things."

"And does anyone else know the prayer?"

"Yes, sister," answered the entire class and we recited as one, "St. Anthony, St. Anthony, Please help me. Something is lost and can't be found."

While I had rejected the belief in God after the drowning of my best friend, I had remained true to the powers of the saints, since most of them had pagan roots and St. Anthony of Padua had at one time lived in Morocco, which rendered his faith questionable in my eyes.

"Anyone find Connie's head band?"

We looked about the class and after a few seconds shook our heads, saying, "No, sister."

"But don't lose faith in St. Anthony, besides in heaven there is a closet with everything you ever lost waiting for you," Sister Mary Osmond explained to Connie,

"Really?" The cute brunette wiped away her sniff with a bare wriest.

"The closet has your name on it in gold letters. Nothing is truly gone, so you will enjoy seeing it again in heaven." Sister Mary Osmond gave Connie a handkerchief with her initials embroidered in a corner.

"You keep it. All possessions are transitory on this Earth. The only thing you need is a pure soul to get you in heaven and purity is the key to the closet with all lost things.

I was on the verge of pubescence. So many impure thoughts bounced in my brain, that I was certain of damnation to Hell, where Lucifer had a closet loaded with the things that I never wanted in the first place.

I lowered my head into my hands. My toy boat and teddy bear would remain trapped in their heavenly closet, but then I remembered what Sister Mary Osmond had said about lost things. They remained forever in your head and I smiled, because forever will be a long time in Hell without a teddy bear.

As I got older the number of lost things grew with my travels around the world. My possessions were scattered across two houses in Thailand, a mountaintop cabin north of Santa Cruz, two farms in upstate New York, my apartment in Fort Greene, and my sister's house outside of Boston.

Upon my return to the States from Thailand in 2008 I emptied my storage space in the East Village.

I was missing paintings, first editions, color slides as well as my cowboy boots and collection of nightclub memorabilia or at least that was what I thought until visiting a good friend out in Easthampton in the summer of 2009.

After dinner Billy announced, "I have several boxes of your stuff in my cellar."

"You do?"

"Yes, you left them here after you gave up your apartment to live in Thailand."

"That was in 2002." The rental management had offered $20,000 for my vacating the tiny apartment on East 10th Street. "Remember what you said?"

"No."

"You said that now I was just another guy from Boston who once lived in New York."

"Twenty-nine years in the city don't make you a native New Yorkers."

"If you say so, but I thought I put everything in storage."

"Wrong, boyo. We drove a truck out here."

"We did?"

"A van."

"Damn." I had no recollection of that ride.

"You want to go check on them?” Both of us were recovering from last evening remake of LEAVING LAS VEGAS.

"No, let's go for a swim in the ocean first."

"You boys be careful," his wife shouted from the pool. Sara came from the UK and liked her ocean calm. "Two people had drowned three weeks ago."

"We'll obey the buddy system." The Atlantic rarely forgave fools.

Amagansett Beach was ten minutes from Billy's house via the back roads. His I-pod played John Lennon's WORKING CLASS HERO, as we broke through the barricade of slow-moving SUVs and Porsche Reich sedans on Route 27. Billy was a local and locals knew the back roads.

At the beach a parking space opened up next to the reserved handicapped spot. Billy grabbed it before an up-island vacationer steered his Mercedes GL 405 between the white lines.

"Nice, huh?" Billy had a healthy disdain for the summer people, while recognizing his high-end real estate job survived on their largesse. He smiled to the irate driver of the luxury SUV and shrugged like he was sorry. It was a good act.

We walked onto the beach with towels over our shoulders.

Two men in their fifties wearing sun glasses.

Weekenders sunned on the wide strand. Coolers crowded the beach blankets. The miasma of sun tan tainted the sea air. Few people challenged the surf. A distant hurricane was churning giant waves along the offshore sand bars.

Few people were venturing farther than their knees into the sucking froth.

"No one's in the ocean."

"One surfer." Billy pointed to a single figure bobbing on the waves beyond the nasty shore break.

"I didn't come here to watch him."

"Me neither."

"Then it's straight into the water." Billy swam laps at Guerneys three times a week.

"The only thing to do." I ran into the sea and Billy followed close behind.

The cold current grabbed our bodies like the Atlantic wanted us to drag us to Iceland, but the danger of riptides had natural curative powers more important than a reunion with long-lost relics of the past.

We ducked under the close-outs and stroked through the sets of double waves to the calm of the outer break. I couldn't touch the bottom.

The lifeguard looked in our direction.

I waved that we were fine.

He nodded to say 'be careful'.

Billy and I rode a few waves. One crunched my body into the sandy bottom adn I tumbled in an eddy of foam. My head broke the surface. Billy was a few feet from me. We shared a glance and let the turbulent surge carry us to safety.

"I think I'm ready to look at those boxes now." I was out of breath and exhilarated by the swim.

"Me too."

We returned to Billy's house, listening to John Lennon's IMAGINE.

I had never been much of a Beatles fan, but these two songs revealed the genius of John, although Billy and I had to both ask, "Why Yoko?"

"Some things are not to be known."

Back at his house Billy, Sara, and I went downstairs. There were thirteen boxes. One was covered in mould. A small carpet had rotted in the damp. I opened the boxes one after another. There was no damage to the art work; cartoon series by Gaetano Liberatore, an oil painting from the Steaming Musselman Philippe Waty, two of Ellen Von Unwerth's first photo or a suede jacket in a plastic bag.

"It still fits after all those years."

"A little tight around the waist." Billy's wife said it in such a way that the truth didn't hurt. The English are a polite people.

The next box was loaded with slides and photos from my travels around the world. Bali, Tibet, Laos, Peru, France, Ireland, China, Thailand, plus a love letter from 1964.

I read it aloud.

"Sweet." Billy's wife was very sentimental. "Who was Connie Botari?"

"A girl from long ago."

I told them about the closet of lost things.

The third box was a set of Wedgwood china from Bowdoin College which had belonged to my Grandfather. He had graduated from the Maine College in 1912. I had served countless dinners on the plates at my old apartment on East 10th Street. The large serving bowl still bore the stains of a sauce. I guessed that it was pasta sauce.

The last box contained books; first editions of FRANNY AND ZOOEY, CATCHER IN THE RYE, MOONRAKER, and about twenty other classics. They would have been worth a fortune if signed or still in good condition.

"Thanks, Billy." He could have thrown these out years ago.

"Well, we still have to discuss the storage fees."

"Oh, Billy." His wife had a different sense of humor from the Irish. "You can't charge him anything."

"I was just kidding."

I wasn't so sure, since the Irish can be mean.

I told them about the closet of lost things.

"It was supposed to be in heaven, but there was one right here on Earth and it was in your basement."

"Proving there is heaven on earth." Billy O examined the copy of JUNKIE.

"And it's where we find the things we love."

Now if I could only find my lost teddy bear, my life would be complete, because I am a simple man awaiting the celestial Closet of Lostd Things.

September 25, 1978 - Journal Entry - East Village

Living in the shadow of the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory during the 1960s I was obsessed with the weather created by the long chain of hills south of the Neponset River. Snow filled the woods in the winter, spring rain flooded the streams running across the overgrown farmland the bogs buzzed with mosquitoes in the sweltering summer, and the trees black with New England colors through the autumn. Winter was winter. Cold, but Northern Europe was colder and I was surprised, when Clover said she was planning to leave New York for Poland. No one from our scene traveled to Communist countries and I asked, "Poland?"

"Krakow is supposed to be beautiful and cheap."

"I've never been farther east than Bar Harbor." I visualized a coal-stained medieval city

"I have never crossed the Atlantic." I thought about Paris, but I want a real place on the edge. I have more than enough money after selling the door Jean-Michel Basquiat painted for me. Will you be my big brother?"

Of course. Any Polish people give you a hard time, buy me a ticket and I'll save you."

"I wish my brother was tough, but he's the way he is and he's happy with that."

"He certainly does look happy." Brad was earning good money dancing in a jock strap at the Adonis Theater in Times Square. He was in love with one man while fucking scores of men every month.

His Mexican partner beat him regularly. Jose is a surfer stranded in New York and frequently quotes the Tradewinds hit - NEW YORK'S A LONELY TOWN. "I hate the surf in New York." Clover's packed bag rests by the doorless entrance to the apartment. She pulls me into the bathroom. We had only made out. We had never made love. She wanted me to violate her. I couldn't do that even as pretend.

"This is your last chance."

"Maybe I'll met you on the other side of the Iron Curtain."

Forget it." Clover was angry. "You have to leave. I have things to do."

I wanted to go with her, but whatever we were, we weren't anymore and she was headed to a country where wheat fields ran all the way to Siberia.

Clover vanished completely that year. I received two postcards; one from East Berlin another from Krakow. She seemed happy from her writing. I searched the Internet to find a trace of her, but Clover is gone forever.

The New Illiterati

The other day I exited from NYU hospital and stopped in their gift store. I was astounded to see that there wasn't a single book in the shop other than mini-coffee table picture books and reflected on the loss of several generations' ability to read anything other than a cellphone screen. I used to go through at least three books a week. I vacuumed my friends' collections without ever finishing Thomas Mann's THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN or Proust's

I buy the New York Times a couple of times a week

The Darkness Of An Empire

"El imperio en el que nunca se pone el sol." or 'the sun never set on your empire' was a remark attributed to a loyal courtier of the Holy Roman Empire Charles V. His possessions spanned the globe. Philip II gambled its power on the Spanish Armada. Filthy weather in the Channel thwarted his desire to conquer Britain and by the18th Century the English crowed the same sentiment as the hildagos.

"On her dominions the sun never sets; before his evening rays leave the spires of Quebec, his morning beams have shone three hours on Port Jackson, and while sinking from the waters of Lake Superior, his eye opens upon the Mouth of the Ganges."

At one point the tiffs and teabags dominated a quarter of the world's population. Maintenance sapped the Home Countries of capital and manpower. Sea to Sea to sea drained the vitality of the nation. Victorianism led to the noble massacres of Flanders and the Somme. WWII wiped out another generation and the Empire collapsed with the surrender of it's Crown Jewels to the niggers, wogs, and chinks. Winston Churchill was furious. He was English 100%. His mother was an American. Her beauty was international. As an historian Churchill understood the weight of time on power.

"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind." 1943.

Britain's remaining oversea possessions consists of Gibralter, the Falklands, Bermuda, St. Helena, Ascension, British Antarctica, the South Georgia Islands, Tristan de Cunha, the South Sandwich Islands, Akrotiri and Dhekelia, the Pitcairn Islands, British Indian Ocean Territory The British Virgin Islands, The Turks and Caicos Islands, Anguilla, Montserrat, and The Cayman Islands. Margaret Thatcher fought a long distance war against Argentina to reconquer the South Atlantic islands. The last ten years the UK has waged a war in the Middle East against Islamist militants. The cost of that campaign became clear year ago, when the British government sold the Bangkok Embassy and Thai workers leveled the buildings in less than a day.

London in Flames.

An empire is never dark whenever it is on fire.

GUNGA DIN by Rudyard Kipling

When I was a young boy, I loved the movie GUNGA DIN.

The hero was an outcast water-boy.

The lowest of the low in the ranks of the British Empire, but Rudyard Kipling recognized their worth to a man dying of thirst and wrote the following poem.

GUNGA DIN

BY RUDYARD KIPLING

You may talk o' gin and beer When you're quartered safe out 'ere, An’ you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it; But when it comes to slaughter You will do your work on water, An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it. Now in Injia's sunny clime, Where I used to spend my time Aservin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen, Of all them black-faced crew The finest man I knew Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din, He was "Din! Din! Din!" "You limpin' lump o' brick-dust, Gunga Din!" "Hi! Slippy hitherao." "Water, get it! Panee lao." "You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din."

The uniform 'e wore Was nothin' much before, An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind, For a piece o' twisty rag An' a goatskin water-bag Was all the field-equipment 'e could find. When the sweatin' troop-train lay In a sidin' through the day, Where the 'eat would make your bloomin' eyebrows crawl, We shouted "Harry By!" Till our throats were bricky-dry, Then we wopped 'im cause 'e couldn't serve us all. It was "Din! Din! Din!" You 'eathen, where the mischief 'ave you been? "You put some juldee in it Or I'll marrow you this minute "If you don't fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!"

"E would dot an' carry one Till the longest day was done; An' 'e didn't seem to know the use o' fear. If we charged or broke or cut, You could bet your bloomin' nut, 'E'd be waitin' fifty paces right flank rear. With 'is mussick on 'is back, 'E would skip with our attack, An' watch us till the bugles made 'Retire,' An' for all 'is dirty 'ide 'E was white, clear white, inside When 'e went to tend the wounded under fire! It was "Din! Din! Din!" With the bullets kickin' dust-spots on the green. When the cartridges ran out, You could hear the front-ranks shout, "Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!"

I shan't forgit the night When I dropped be'ind the fight With a bullet where my belt-plate should 'a' been. I was chokin' mad with thirst, An' the man that spied me first Was our good old grinnin', gruntin' Gunga Din. 'E lifted up my 'ead, An' he plugged me where I bled, An' 'e guv me 'arf-a-pint o' water green. It was crawlin' and it stunk, But of all the drinks I've drunk, I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din. It was "Din! Din! Din!" "'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen; "'E's chawin' up the ground, 'An' 'e's kickin' all around: 'For Gawd's sake git the water, Gunga Din!'

'E carried me away To where a dooli lay, An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean. ’E put me safe inside, An' just before 'e died, "I 'ope you liked your drink," sez Gunga Din. So I'll meet 'im later on At the place where 'e is gone.” Where it's always double drill and no canteen. 'E'll be squattin' on the coals Givin' drink to poor damned souls, An' I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din! Yes, Din! Din! Din! You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din! Though I've belted you and flayed you, By the livin' Gawd that made you, You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

The Unmagic of the BBC

Varanasi on the Ganges River is one of the oldest cities in the world and considered by many to be the spiritual center of India. Archaeologists date its origin to over three thousand years ago and Siddhartha formulated the tenets of Buddhism upstream at Sarnath in a sermon entitled 'Turning the Wheel of Law' in 528BC. Mark Twain visited the storied city in 1897 and famously said, "Varanasi is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together."

In 1995 my youngest brother died of AIDS. I traveled to the holiest sites on Earth. My last stop was the ghats at Varanazi.

The fiery funerary rituals offered a spectacle unknown to the West, but occidentals can not accept the beauty of the Orient without seeing fakirs behind the miracles.

Today a BBC reporter wrote that the sunset tradition of sadhus standing on plinths was enchanting, but added that he later learned that the supposed ancient rites were the invention of a hotel owner to spice up the evening on the Ganges.

According to his article he stated that 'a couple of days later I was sitting in the BBC studio in Delhi with a young Indian journalist who had come in to comment on the election campaign. He heard my report in his headphones.

"You were in Varanasi?" he asked the BBC reporter.

"Yes."

"And you recorded something at the cremation ceremony on the river bank there."

"That's right."

"In a boat?"

"Yes. It was wonderful."

"You know the whole thing was invented by the manager of a luxury hotel in Varanasi about 20 years ago. He was trying to drum up the number of tourists coming to town."

"I see. Right."

Journalists get lied to so often that they generally end up fairly cynical, or perhaps to put it more kindly, skeptical. And let me say straightaway that I am not accepting the journalist's account without question.

Even if I went back to Varanasi and investigated the matter I have no doubt that most people would insist the ceremony has been going on for centuries.

That's the way with these things. But still it was a bit of a shocker. Perhaps you can never quite go far enough in questioning why things are happening - what purpose they really serve.

I emailed my boss.

"About that ceremony," I said. "You might well have been right."

I told him what the journalist in the studio had said.

"Ah yes," he replied. "The invention of tradition. Happens everywhere."

The article ended there, but not all magic in life has to have an origin.

On my travels throughout Asia in the 90s I carried a world band radio. At night I would listen to the BBC broadcast from London on the other side of the world. The World Service was a century old tradition for expatriates living abroad and now the Cameron government has been neutering the radio shows.

They will not be able to demystify Varanasi.

It is as old as dust itself.

Same as radio waves traveling to the stars.

The Bud of Ten Years After

The nuns at Our Lady of the Foothills comforted their young pupils' loss of a favorite toy by telling the tearful student that in heaven there was a closet containing all lost possession. I found solace in this possibility even after I lost my faith in heaven and hell, however one day I realized that that the closet would be filled with one sox and one glove without their match. My disappointment was tempered by the understanding that you really don't ever have a favorite pair of sox, plus some possessions are meant to be lost. As my Irish grandmother said, "If you lose something then it wasn't yours to begin with."

Her harsh statement bore the truth.

Take care of your possessions and they will stay with you throughout your life.

Having lived around the world I've left a scattering of boxes and bags in LA, Paris, Bali, and Thailand. A VW bug in Germany. A Yamaha motorcycle in Florida. Books everywhere. Multiple pairs of glasses in this very apartment in Clinton Hill. Nothing seems to stay with me forever, but the other day my longtime friend Juiliana came to visit me on 47th Street. She had a paper bag in her hand.

"You left this at my house." She lives on West 18th Street. I had last stayed there in 2002. I couldn't remember ever having stored anything at her loft, but the bag held photos, CDs, and a Thai rice basket containing jewelry and a big bud of marijuana. The necklaces, rings,and bracelets were from my mother. The bud was still big and fluffy. I thanked Juiliana with a small gold ring. She could have kept the gold for herself, but she was an honest woman.

Later that night I stashed the jewelry in the apartment and broke out my pipe. The bud was fluffy. Its aroma had faded years before. Black specks coated the seeds. AP, my landlord, asked, "You're not really going to smoke that, are you?"

"What's the worst that can happen?" It looked dry not dangerous.

"You could be transported 10 years into the past." AP had seen HOT TUB TIME MACHINE. The RISD graduate was a fan of the 80s. New York was fun in those years. The 70s had been wicked, but too far away in the past. Nothing could bring them back.

"The year 2000. Here I come." I would be 48 again. My body would like that. Later in the summer I could try to stop 9/11. My name would be synonymous with hero. I stuffed the pipe with moldy weed. The reefer burned fast. I half-expected the room to swirl out of 2010, instead the clock on the wall ticked forward to 2011. The bud of Ten Years After was harmless to the time-space continuum, but harsh on my lungs and I coughed out a haze of smoke.

"How is it?" AP was curious if pot could be vintage. There was only one way for him to find out the truth. I handed over the pipe. He coughed himself into the present. Higher than minute before. Maybe time was more fragile than I imagined. It was a matter of perception to the Bud of Ten Years After. The master of the universe lost once, but now found.

September 10, 1978 - Journal Entry - East Village

Gold, jewels, power, hate, and sex. Why nations fight wars People decided to die rather than live Stupid reasons

I had a friend in Maine. Chaney and I promised never to swim alone. My family moved from Falmouth Foresides in June of 1960 A week later Chaney drowned in Sebago Lake

He was eight.

In 1974 I left my hometown for good. I left behind another friend Carl married his high school sweetheart. She was seven months pregnant.

I never saw the baby.

I had a friend in college. Neil and I are still friends. He is studying medicine in the Philipines. Dagupan City

Neil was born on Staten island. We will meet again I am not in love with money or gold or God I'm in love with the modern world.

And everything else.

SEPTEMBER 4, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

Labor Day 1979

A holiday without pay. No business as usual. Alice is working the Yogurt Shop. Neither of us got out of the city. I beg breakfast from Nora at Dojos. She gives it to me and lends me $5. I almost kiss her, but Alice's friends are watching me.

I'm living an illusion thinking that money is coming my way. Work is the only solution to my present destitution. I go back to 256 and watch TV. Eight station showing nothing of interest.No movie. No sporting event. Nothing is getting too much of a hold on my life.

SEPTEMBER 4, 2021

I get up early to catch the Chinatown bus. I miss the first one and go for the second at 2pm. I almost felt like blowing off the trip, except I haven't seen my family members for over a year.

Last summer I showed up at a Haymarket restaurant with signs of not having made it to the toilet in time. My younger sister was aghast at my condition. I was too, but her hectoring me on the phone for being late had delayed my zipping down my fly. "I should have recognized that as a sign of alcoholism."

"So should I have."

I changed my jeans and headed north to meet Quinton and the fishing crew of Peak's Island for a road trip across Maine. A week like those five days would kill be now, but back then I claimed to be indestructible and I felt alive. I feel alive now just more vulnerable than before.

From Kiev with Love

The Kiev Restaurant opened in the late-70s. 24 hours. We went there after CBGBs, Max's, and the Mudd Club. Bacon and eggs as the dawn broke the morn. It was a scene. I had a fight over a tape recorder with Samo and discussed a photo-roman with Klaus Nomi. They went from obscurity to fame. I stopped going to the Kiev after the cook served well-done eggs. I sent them back and the waitress brought a plate of transparent eggs on top the first order. His message couldn't have been clearer. That was 1980.

Kiev meant the Kiev all those years, but not since September 2009..

That year I landed in the Ukrainian capitol seeking payment from a local internet company for equipment from a Palm Beach manufacturer. An hour drive into the city. Onion-bulbed domes gleaming in the May sun. I booked into the Domus Hotel and walked around the old town. Punks drank on the corners, goths huffeded glue in the alleys, and bums fought in the parks. Broken beer bottles glittered on the streets. It looked like a tough city, but I recognized that there was a distinct female/male advantage. Something like 55/45% in the youth. And none of women fat like Americans.

Then again there were no 7/11s or fast food.

And the beer is cheap.

On the steps of a cathedral a long-hair was playing Nirvana in the main square.

His audience consisted of all ages and two old men danced along to FEELS LIKE TEENAGE SPIRIT. They even knew the words. Not a bad town.

Kiev 2009.

Make Mine Rare

Last Labor Day weekend in Maine my brother-in-law and I had several discussions about whether it was better to BBQ with charcoal or gas. The world's leading leisurologist voted for gas and I bowed to the swami's greater savvy on this subject. Some subjects you have to leave to the experts.

The Death of the Road

In 2013 my summer holiday plans fell apart one by one. An ex-girlfriend's Nantucket house had too many guests, my mate in Millbrook had accepted an invitation to the Rockefeller’s’ Adirondack estate, and my sister was leaving Maine for a conference in Boston. All the flights to Thailand were out of my budget and Labor Weekend came with a harsh realization.

I was stuck in New York.

At least it wasn’t New Jersey.

Earlier in the day I had bought a small painting off the street for $1. It hung on my kitchen wall. Telephone poles outlined against a cobalt sky. The words HIT THE ROAD in the corner spoke the ancient language of wanderlust and I contemplated hitchhiking across the USA, following Jack Kerouac’s route in ON THE ROAD.

“That’s a great idea.” My landlord AP loved adventure. He had two kids. His freedom was linked to their attaining 21 in the year 2025.

“Have you seen any hitchhikers?”

“Not on the LIE.” AP drove once a week from Fort Greene to Hamptons to check on his building site. “Or anywhere else.”

“Me neither.” The spring of 2009 I had traveled over 2000 miles through Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin without seeing a single hitchhiker on the roads. I called several friends in Florida, Maine, and California. None reported a sighting.

“Maybe they’re extinct.” AP was puzzled by their disappearance and I rethought my trans-American travels. Denver was a good two days from New York by car. Maybe 3-4 by thumb. If I left Monday morning, I wouldn’t get to Colorado until Wednesday. Another 2-3 days to the coast. Saturday or Sunday. Online flights one-way from San Francisco to JFK cost over $300. I had $700 in my pocket, plus two kids in Thailand.

Instead I went to Ralph's Deli and bought a six-pack of Modelo.

I wasn’t going anywhere.

But I had known that all along.

KILL THE RICH CHAPTER 2 By Peter Nolan Smith

Two NYPD homicide detectives stood in front of the Vent du Sol. Uniformed officers kept the curious behind the yellow tape. Dead men attract spectators. The rubberneckers weren't looking for the victim to come back to life, but waited to see if anything else out of the ordinary happened on this quiet Upper East Side street. An attractive blonde woman was crying at the restaurant doorway. An older man had his arm around her.

"Girlfriend and best friend," Lee Solent said, lifting his eyes from his notebook.

"No, girlfriend and maitre de. From what I heard the victim had no friends." Sam Chatham had been his partner for ten years. They had solved many murders. They hadn't solved many more.

"What we have so far?"

"The victim, Mark Bonsoul, came out to smoke a cigarette. He is one of the richest men in New York. The waiter who had been at the job since the end of the Co-vid closings came outside and for no reason came outside and pumped three shots. Twice in the chest and once in the head. He jumped into a car for parts unknown. License plate unseen. The bullet casings came from a .38. I questioned the maitre. He knows nothing and no one saw anything. I left the girlfriend for you. That's all so far."

"I'll talk to her now." He thought about the .38. No one used the revolver anymore, but it was a good gun to hit a target at close range and he bet himself that the rich guy had been shot from less than a distance from five feet.

Close.

"Try and be nice." Sam Chatham rarely got to play 'bad guy'.

I'm always nice."

"Yeah, right."

Detective Solent motioned for an patrolman to lift the tape. He walked over to the restaurant's entrance and introduced himself. The blonde woman had stopped crying and the detective put his notebook in inside his jacket, noting she wore no jewelry.

"Sorry about your friend. Miss...?"

"Kerry Mahony. This was our third date." Her eyes were as green as mowed grass.

"You're not leaving town, are you?"

"No, this is my home. Born and bred." Her accent said private West Side schools and an Ivy League college and her tone reveal her annoyance at this intrusion, as she said, "Why do you ask that?"

"I wanted to make sure I could question you tomorrow."

"I can't see why not, but I will have my lawyer there." A lawyer wasn't necessary, but people can say the wrong things after a murder and the police like fitting square blocks into round holes.

"My partner will take your information." He stared at the maitre de, as if he were hiding the murder weapon on his person and said, "He'll get yours too.

"Up to you." The maitre de was accustomed to big people and the police weren't big people in his mind. Detective Solent walked away. He knew all about people like the maitre de. Everyone was guilty of something.

Everyone.

KILL THE RICH CHAPTER 1 by Peter Nolan Smith

The Vent de Sol was booked solid. The clientele hailed from the upper echelons of New York's1%. Table # 4 sat eight people was dominated by a 54 year-old man in an impeccably British tailored suit. No one in the Upper East Side bistro had earned more than the wily investment banker. No one on Madison Avenue and no one in Manhattan either. No one even close.

The masked Latino waiter expertly refills Mark Bonsoul's glass of 2000 Château Lafite Rothschild - Pauillac and the host of the party of eight says, "This one sip of wine costs more than this man makes in a night. Well, it does have to be a big sip."

The banker guzzled a mouthful to the laughter of his friends.

The waiter bowed with dancer's grace and serves the other guests a lesser vintage.

Dinner is served like a ballet of tastes and textures.

Before dessert mark Bounsoul ordered a Remy-Martin Louis XIII cognac and stood, patting his chest for the pack of Treasurer Aluminum Gold.

"You'll have to forgive me, but old bad habits die hard and you usually die before the bad habit."

He exited from the restaurant onto Madison Avenue. The pandemic had emptied the streets. Mark had never caned more money than throughout Co-vids and lit his cigarette with a gold lighter. The windows of nearby high-rises were dark. No one he knew lived in those hovels. He inhaled on the Traveler. rich tobacco. A five-star restaurant. An extraordinary wine. A beautiful wife. Alone he basked in aloneness.

The waiter approached him on the sidewalk. Mark sighed thinking he might have to speak with him. He thought that until he saw the gun. It didn't look expensive and Mark took another huff like a dead man before a firing squad, because there was no running from this fate. A bullet hit his chest, then another, each strangely without any bang.. He dropped to the sidewalk on his left side. His vision was growing black and his lungs offered no help. He was a dead man and nothing was going to change that.

Last Plane From Kabul 8/31/2021

Yesterday the last US military transport jet lifted from Kabul airport packed to the brim with last-minute American departees. Hundreds of thousands of Afghanis hoped to join the exodus from the Taliban ruling Afghanistan. The new government had ordered its fighters to not shell the refugees, although an ISIS-K suicide bombing killed 90 civilians and 9 US Marines. Joe Biden OKed a drone strike and the missile struck the militants, but also a family car with ten children aboard. Typical of the CIA and Pentagon. Kill kill kill.

Americans complained about the speedy pull-out, but the president weighed out the options.

Going back in was never one of them and after twenty years not a single American has his boots on the ground in Afghanistan.

The last soldier out of Kabul was Army Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who departed on the final C-17 Globemaster III. Something heroic to be the last to go.

General Boris Gromov walked over the Friendship Bridge crossing the the Amu-Daria river on 15 February 1989 with thirty to forty trucks loaded with Afghani treasures as well as an antique Tekke carpet stolen from Darul Aman Palace, which he cut into several pieces, and gave it to his fellow comrades.

Otlichnaya rabota.

Major General Homer D. Smith is generally regarded as the last US soldier out of Vietnam, evacuating more than 7,000 Americans and South Vietnamese before finally retreating himself. A true hero of his times and all that follows and went before.

Back in 2007 Nik Reiter and I waited for a ferry across the Meleleuk River in Cambodia. I was surprised to find a shack selling wurst and frikadelle. The owner was an old German. He was happy to speak German, even though mine was strictly Hoch Schule Deutshe. Oskar had been in the Orient ever since the fall of the 3rd Reich. He explained tht he had been with the Luftwaffe at Stalingrad.

"I was there at the last flights. We loaded the wounded onto the Junkers one of top of the other. There was no heat and one by one they froze in their berths. None of them got out alive. Only my Kamraden and me and some SS. I was never so happy, when the plane lifted from Stalingradskaya airfield. Three Heinkel 111s left as we landed. The flight officer was a major general. Hellmuth Mader. Over fifty years ago. Have you been to Germany recently?"

"Not since 1982." I had been just as happy to flee Hamburg ahead of the pimps of the Reeperbahn as any soldier from the 3rd Reich flying from the doom of the 6th Army."

We crossed the river and I never saw the man again.

On the opposite bank Nik looked back and said, "That could have been bullshit, but it didn't sound like it."

"No, it didn't."

It ain't easy to be the first and it is very hard to be the last, walking away without a backward glance, just thinking Thank the Heavens we ain't there no more.