People White, Black, Yellow, Oriental, Occidental, African, Inuit A billion of us times four Mostly faceless The great unknown Waiting.... Where is the Messiah? Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad Hitler Blood, death,Belief Washing across the Globe For the past, present, and future. No, no, no, no Saviours last a weekend, a month and then assassination Demonic Murder by the 'Them' None of them reincarnated To die and then live again relive, reborn, redie, and then again Where are the messiahs?
Several years ago the media covered a story about rat-infested aGreenwich Village KFC. The stock for Yum Corp, which owns the fast food chain along with Taco Bell, dropped fifty cents on the NYSE with the negative news and I felt bad, because for several years I had been a quality control inspector for KFC in the New York area.
Colonel Jim Rockford had hired me for the job in 1999, although the Iowan was not related to the James Gardner's TV character in the Rockford Files and our friendship dated back to an acid trip on Black’s Beach in August 1974 during which I swam with seals speaking in tongues. Jim laughed at their jokes. Coming down from the LSD we forgot the sleek sea mammals' punchlines, although one of them had to do with seaman.
Jim Rockford had served in Vietnam. He had rejected a military career to become a hippie guru with a girlfriend who looked like Patty Hearst.
That summer in Encinitas the cops stopped us everywhere with guns drawn, thinking Pam was America's # 1 fugitive. Jim hated the attention and felt the urge for going.
"Come join us in Frisco. You can wear flowers in your hair."
The Summer of Love had ended in 1968.
"I have a teaching job starting in a few weeks."
"The road is not a job. It's an adventure."
"I know.
We said good-bye on the highway. They headed north of the PCH and I hitchhiked east to Boston, where I taught at South Boston High School. Jim showed up at my Brighton apartment in the late autumn. His hair was longer and Pam, the blonde SLA clone for Patty Hearst had been traded for a young Eurasian twenty year-old named Nona.
Everyone in Boston fell in love with her that season.
Me too.
I taught school and at night we danced at gay clubs in Boston. They left for Woodstock with the first frost.
We stayed in touch, but I moved to New York to pursue a career as a poet and the connection snapped like an old rubber band. I thought about Nona a lot. Her beauty was an exception to the rule in America. Dusky instead of blonde. I never expected to see her again.
In the winter of 1995 I was in Bali at the Blue moon, a seaside bar where everyone who disappeared from your life reappears cooler than before and one night a woman called my name.
It was Nona.
She hugged me in the early evening tropical light and we drank with mutual friend and later went to her kon-tiki house in a bamboo grove. Her jealous Balinese boyfriend threatened me with a ceremonial kris. Nona showed him the door. “Pagi. Anda tidak bagus.”
“Not you. Stay here. He scares me.” I slept in the spare bedroom listening to the bamboo trunks rub against each other like lovers seduced by the wind. Nona was upstairs. She was lying in bed. I thought about Rockford and remained in my room.
After midnight her lover climbed the wall into Nona's bedroom and whispered words of love in Balinese.
In the morning he was gone and Nona said she was leaving for Singapore.
No packed bags lay by the door and I read the situation for what it was, but before I left the house, I asked about Jim.
"Why did you leave him?"
"Because he hit me."
"Hit you? Why?"
"It's a long story, anyway he's married and living in Iowa. I think he's growing marijuana. Here's his number. If you ever see him, tell him thanks for everything."
A month later I was back in New York and called the number in Iowa. The woman answering the phone said Jim wasn't home. I later found out he was doing a five-year bid for cocaine possession, while I spent the rest of the 90s working six months at my diamond gig on West 47th Street and the other half of the year traveling on the other side of the world. Six months on. Six months off.
It was a small world.
I ran into Nona in Bali, Paris, and London. She was designing silver jewelry for a German boyfriend. There was no talk about the Bali beach boy or Jim.
Women don't discuss guys who hit them, unless they've had a lot to drink and Nona only sipped wine.
My 1998 trip to Thailand was highlighted by my falling in love with a one-eyed go-go dancer. It ended badly and I returned to New York, exiled from my redux of the film THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG.
My friends tired of my tales about betrayal and they avoided my calls, because broken hearts are always bad luck.
Most evenings I drank at the 10th Street Lounge without anyone bothering me, but one night spotted someone familiar staring at me. He was older and had short hair. I couldn’t ID him until Jim Rockford smiled.
“What you doing here?"
"A friend from Boston had said you were living on East 10th Street and this seemed like the bar you would drink in."
"How so?"
"Pretty girls. Good music. Come with me."
"What are you really doing in New York?”
“I spent the last five years as a guest of the Iowa penal system. The cops invaded my house for suspicion of pot growing. Couldn’t find anything but an ounce of coke. Said it was for dealing.”
“Was it?” I’m very pro-anti-drugs.
"What you think?"
"Personal use."
"Yeah, but they never found the reefer since I had buried the farm underground and we were using solar panel to heat the room, so they couldn’t see the heat signature. Dopes. I’m still dealing pot but needed a clean source of income, so when I got out of prison, my PO got me a job inspecting KFCs."
"Kentucky Fried Chicken?" The Colonel had been a vegetarian since a near-fatal bout of cancer in his teens.
“Yeah, Frankenstein chickens with no legs and no eyes. Only a mouth, bones, meat, and an asshole."
It wasn't a pretty picture and I ordered a vodka at the bar from the waitress I'd been trying to seduce for ages. My speech was visually impaired at the end of the night. Rockford wasn't in much better condition and I invited him to sleep at my place.
"Thanks, I couldn't have made it to New Jersey."
"What are you really doing out there?"
"Well, I told you about that KFC gig. Every day I go to about 30-40 of them. Maybe you can help me."
“Me work for KFC?" My coke-spastic hands were having trouble with the front door. The key kept getting bigger.
"You can drive while I fill out my reports. I'll give you $200 for the day and all the chicken you can eat."
"I have my diamond job." It was September, but no one was buying jewelry.
"Call in sick. Will your boss understand?"
"I think so." My boss Richie Boy was my drinking buddy. The next morning I phoned at 9 and said, "Head cold."
"Have a bacon and egg sandwich and drink plenty of water." Richie Boy had never graduated from medical school, but I followed his advice to the letter.
Jim had a cup of coffee and a donut.
"Breakfast of cops."
"I needed more."
We picked up his rented Ford Taurus from the parking lot on East 9th street.
I put Arthur Lee’s LOVE on the CD player and we left the parking lot.
“Damn, I love SIGNED DC. Head over to queens. I have a battle plans.” Jim threw a metropolitan map on my lap. The locations of the KFCs were marked with a red marker.
“Today’s Brooklyn and Queens. Tomorrow the Bronx and Manhattan.”
I glanced at the map.
There were over a hundred KFCs.
None of them were on 5th Avenue or Soho or the Upper East Side.
I mentioned this to Jim and he laughed, “Wherever KFC is, then you can count it as a scary neighborhood after dark. So step on it.”
We drove over the Queensboro Bridge and hit 10 KFCs before noon. The back seat was jammed with specials and super-sized drinks. “The stores get a bonus if they ask us to supersize.”
I made good time through Queens, because most of the shops were on the same boulevards, however Brooklyn had 30 KFCs scattered over the 5th biggest city in the USA and the neighborhoods got rougher as the night darkened over the city.
East New York was an apocalypse.
Especially Pitcairn Avenue.
No bars. No restaurants. No stores.
Only KFCs and bums hanging around the corners.
No one bothered us, since two white guys cruising a black neighborhood looked like cops, except we weren't the filth. The $300 worth of chicken in the back seat reeked of the Colonel. I had eaten about $20 worth and was ready to lose $19 of it.
"We gotta to get rid of this shit."
"Stop at Courtlandt. There are few homeless people there."
“A few was about fifteen and most readied to run when we pulled up to the curb. Jim lowered the window and said, "Don't anyone break a move."
They froze like it was a KOJAK episode and the Colonel got out of the car. "Anyone here like chicken?"
"Does the pope shit in the woods?" A toothless wino joked, as Jim opened the back door and distributed fifty meals to the shopping cart brigade. The toothless wino cackled holding up a drumstick."First I thought you wuz the cops. Now I know who you are. You the chicken messiahs."
Like that the chicken messiahs became an urban legend to the needy in Phillie, Newark, Yonkers, and New York.
Only the homeless would accept our charity on the streets. Anyone else was too proud or suspicious to take a hand-out, although not the Jamaican posse working security at the 10th Street Lounge. Those bouncers loved the special deliveries.
Jim and I hurried into the bathroom to wash off the grease. We huffed two large rails of Bolivian pink flake. Dinner was vodkas at the bar. Our dessert was a line of blow. Nothing too extreme and the Colonel said, “I got another busy day tomorrow.”
Jim woke early. "I'll be back next month."
And every month the Colonel would come into town with a kilo of pot and a bag of blow. KFCs franchise owners recognized us as secret shoppers and cleaned their stores for our review. Some were good. Some were horrible. Jim never ate the chicken. Only the potatoes and corn bread. I loved the skin.
"Most people working this job get really fat." Jim warned, as I had a bite of an extra spicy chicken. “So watch out.”
I concentrated on driving and after five trips knew the streets of the Bronx and Brooklyn better than a gypsy cabdriver.
Phillie was worst than anything New York had to offer.
Especially North Phillie, where addicts shot dope on the streets. They never wanted charity chicken.
About a year into the gig Jim asked at the bar, "You know I been wanting to ask you a question."
He had gotten the manager, Cornell, to play IMAGINE. Jim was a Beatles fan. I liked the Damned.
"What kind of question?"
"How you get my number?"
"Nona gave it to me."
"Nona? Where you see her?"
"In Bali," I explained about our meeting at the Blue Ocean without mentioning the boyfriends.
"How she look?"
"Beautiful as ever."
"She say anything about me."
"She said you hit her."
"It was a mistake."
"Yeah," I never hit women. At least that's wwhatI told myself, but had done so three times. They were also all mistakes.
"She was telling me I was a loser. Every day. It got to me and I slapped her once. She left me after that. I don"t know why her telling me that would have such an effect. I'm a peaceful guy."
Nona had recently returned to New Jersey and I said, "I saw her last week."
"She’s back?"
“Yes.”
“You have her number?”
Nona had told me never to give her number to Jim, but he was my friend and she was a hundred miles away. I wrote down the number and he went outside to call her. He came back after a few minutes and said, "Now I remember why I hit her."
"The voice."
Nona came from Trenton.
Her voice sounded like it came from a high-pitched helium inhaler.
"She still didn't deserve to get hit."
"You're right." Jim was contrite. "She was a good girl. Said she wants to meet me."
"You tell her about KFC?"
"She had a good laugh about that. Made me feel good to make her laugh."
Me too and later that week they got together.
Although only as friends.
I left the states after 2001.
Jim and I still speak.
He visits Nona on his trips to Jersey. She eats chicken. He drinks wine in her house on the Delaware. No chicken messiah could hope for more in this age of little magic, because like the ad says, “The Colonel knows best.”
And Colonel Rockford knew the best even better the the KFC Colonel.
Back in 2014 the Bruins overcame a horrible 1st period to tie the Blackhawks and force another sudden death overtime. This time the flow of time was in the Bruins' favor and Paille scored the game winner. Game 3 will be in Boston.
I love hockey.
Several years ago I beat my cousin Oil Can on his $15,000 table hockey game at his house on the North Shore.
4-3 with a stomping on decider.
"I'd like to see you do that on ice." Oil Can wasn't a sore loser, but he had lost four games at home. His son was disappointed since Harrison had been working hard to be the first person to beat his father.
"I'd be lucky to score a goal." I was useless on skates.
"It'd be a four-game sweep with each one a shut-out." Oil Can wasn't bragging about his prowess with a hockey stick. He had started for our high school as a freshman. Harrison was playing basketball.
"Your hockey team went 0-17 my senior year." 1970 was forty years ago.
"And the next year we reached the playoffs." His team had challenged the hockey hierarchy through 1971 to 1973.
"You were a good squad." I had seen them beat BC High at Boston Arena. Our home rink was Rindge Arena off 128.
"We could go play a one-on-one right now on Route 1. I've got all the equipment." He had starred in his high school re-uniuon game the previous winter. He was even better in baseball.
"Not a chance." I was intent on enjoying my victory at table hockey. "I can't skate backwards."
"What was that about?"
"My father brought us down to the pond up in Maine." My father was from Westbrook. Boys were expected to skate six months after they learned to walk. There was a pond overlooking Portland Harbor. The smell of bread from the Nissen Bakery mixed with the smell of the sea. "He told us he was going to teaching us how to skate backwards. My brother was 5 and I was 4."
"A good age to learn."
"We had walked down the street with skates over our shoulders. Mine were CCM." Skating backwards would help me play for the Bruins in the future. They never beat the Canadians. I was going to be a star, since I could skate forward faster than anyone in our neighborhood, except for Charleen Davis, but she was a girl and girls didn't play hockey. "The ice was clean and my father showed us how to position our feet. My brother and I got on the ice. We should like him. He pushed off and tripped over a crack. His head smacked the ice and he stood up with a smile."
"Your father was a good skater." Oil Can had lived up the street from our teaberry ranch house on the South Shore of Boston.
"Yeah, but blood was flowing down his face. He had cut his head and the smile was from a concussion. He had broken his leg skiing the year before and I thought that he would have to wear a cast on his head." He told me that he wasn't hurt and I believed him." I loved that man.
"Ice is hard, but not that hard."
"After that I never wanted to skate backwards." My father gave up on teaching us how to skate backwards.
"So no game today?" Oil Can wanted to show his son that he wasn't a loser. Harrison loved him either way.
"Not a chance, but I'll play another game to seven on the table hockey." I was happy to give him a second shot at shining for Harrison. I have a son and Fenway loved his father too.
"You're on." Oil Can popped open to beers and we clinked bottles. "Here's to our fathers."
Harrison toasted us with Coke. He was 11 and one day soon he would beat his father at his own game. It was only a matter of time.
ps I took Oil Can in the second series 4-2, because in table hockey I didn't have to skate backwards.
GO BRUINS.
Last month smug northerners ridiculed the snowbound paralysis of Dallas.
"Maybe we should airlift Maine drivers down to the South to teach them how to drive in winter conditions," joked a friend at the 169 Bar in Chinatown..
"My grandfather once said, "There are two seasons in Maine, the season of good sledding and the season of bad sledding, but there is no winter anymore."
No one south of the Swanee River had ever entertained thoughts of good sledding or bad sledding, but it wasn't a question of snow.
The annual goal accumulation in Fulton County was from 2-5 inches.
The real problem was two-fold.
The governor of the Lone Star State advised his people not to worry.
"We have it covered."
And they might have, if the temperature at commuter departure time hadn't dropped to 7 degrees Fahrenheit, which froze the melting snow to black ice.
Black ice is a terror.
According to Wikipedia black ice, sometimes called clear ice, refers to a thin coating of glazed ice on a surface. While not truly black, it is virtually transparent, allowing black asphalt/macadam roadways or the surface below to be seen through it—hence the term "black ice".
Tires glide like hockey pucks on black ice.
In Atlanta, New York, Boston, or Montreal.
No one can drive on it.
Back in the winter 1974 I was hacking for Boston Cab to pay for my college tuition.
One frigid night I rounded the corner at the Christian Science Building to pick up a fare on Clearway Street. The rear of the Checker glided left and I corrected the veer with ease. The customer was waiting on the sidewalk at the end of the street. I rolled at a safe 5mph and tapped the brakes to stop, however the street was glazed by black ice and I passed the fare without losing speed. Directly in my path was a parked Boston Police cruiser in which sat two cops eating donuts. They saw my headlights. I pressed lightly on the brakes. The Checker slid into a slo-mo diagonal vector aimed at the driver's door.
Inertia took control and the cab stopped inches from the cop car.
My fare breathed easy in the back.
The officers shook their head.
I shrugged an apology and drove the customer to the 1270 Club on Boylston without a scratch.
So I understood the Dallas shutdown.
Them Texans can't drive for shit in the snow.
Throughout the 60s the Eastern High School hockey tournament was held at the old Boston Arena. Games between bitter rivals packed the stands over the legal capacity of 4600.
In the 1968 ECAC semi-finals BC High was pitted Somerville High. Fans from the public high school filled the rinkside seats, while BC High's following crammed into the steep upper deck. My older brother attended BC High as a junior. I was a sophomore at Xaverian, but his friends accepted my support for this game, since we had smuggled in beer as had many of the Eagles' supporters.
By the end of the 1st period our section was a roiling maelstrom of drunken teenage boys and several seniors amused the under-classmen by dropping M-80 firecrackers on Somerville fans. We laughed at their scurrying away from our bombing tactics and their cheerleading squad climbed the stairs to beseech us to stop the bombardment. Our rebuke of this offer was ungentlemanly and the Somerville football team attempted to quell our boisterous behavior, however we held the upper ground and beat the squad down the stairs with our fists.
BC High scored an upset victory and at the end of the game hordes of cops separated the two groups of supporters, letting Somerville leave first. Their fans were furious at their loss and our behavior. We shouted out parting epithets. Most of them began with the letter F. Once the lower section of the arena was clear, the police allowed BC High fans to file onto the street.
Hundreds of Somerville fans lined the sidewalks. They were big boys and it seemed like all the entire town was waiting in the alley. We had beaten them in the arena and on the ice. They were hundreds of us. Our friends gave the Somerville fans the finger. I shouted out obscenities. My brother nudged my ribs and pointed over his shoulder. The police were shutting the doors to prevent a general melee.
Clang.
Our retreat to safety was cut off.
I rapidly counted our numbers.
We were about forty.
We stood in a gauntlet of teenage thugs.
We were on our own.
The Somerville fans were slow to react to this advantage.
A clear path ran up the middle of the alley to Mass Ave. and one of my brother's friends shouted out, "Run, motherfuckers, run."
We didn't need to be told twice.
I ran the 440 for my high school.
My older brother the 880.
Our best times for a dash were that night, as we outraced our enemies to the safety of Mass. Avenue and Kelly's Bar at the bridge.
Like the wind we ran with fear on our heels. I reached Kelly's first. The 6-8 bouncer with Winter Hill connections saw us ahead of the approaching horde. My grand-uncle was the head detective with the BPD. He drank at this bar sometimes.
Jimmy pulled open the door and said, "Get inside quick."
Twenty of piled into the bar. Jimmy slammed the door shut and threw the bolts.
Curses and kicks rained on the steel barrier.
And the fight?"
"That too."
"And the race,."
"It was a matter of life or a beating."
The pounding at the door had died down.
Jimmy looked out the spyhole.
I bought him two beers as thanks. "Go Eagles." Jimmy was class of 62.
I ordered two 'Gansetts." He clinked my glass. I had been drinking there since I was twelve and said, "Run, motherfuckers, run."
We all toasted those word and the phrase served as a joke for years to come, however to this day whenever someone says that they are from Somerville I never mention the word 'hockey' or run motherfuckers run. It was better than way.
The Boston Garden was a hallowed destination for fathers and sons in the 60s. The pride of the city was the Celtics, who were NBA champs year after year. I was a basketball fanatic and my father brought my older brother and me to several games after our move from Maine to the South Shore of Boston, but coming from that northern clime my father's preferred sport was hockey.
Every winter he flooded an improvised rink in the backyard of our suburban lawn on frigid nights. The next morning the ice shined like a silver mirror. We played hockey before and after school. The Bruins were our team; American-born Tommy Williams, the Uke line of Johnny Bucyk, Vic Stasiuk, and Bronco Horvath along with Don McKenney and Fleming, however in the early 60s the Bruins ruled only the basement.
Their cellar status didn't deter my father from taking his sons to the Boston Garden and on January 31, 1963 we watched the Chicago Blackhawks play the home team. For decades I thought the game had been close and that Bobby Hull, the fearsome scorer, had tied the game with his third goal.
A Google search wiped the amnesia from my memory, for the Bruins had been annihilated by 1st place Chicago.
9-2
Stan Mikita trifectaed the Bruins three goals.
Back then men wore hats and the Garden ice was deluged by a homage of homburgs and borsalinos.
My father kept his hat in his hand.
"That was nothing special."
Bobby Hull changed his mind with wicked slapshot with his curved banana stick. The goalie never reacted to the blast and # 9 scored his 8th career hat trick at 16:25 of the third.
My father flung his wide brim onto the rink.
"Now that was special."
The Golden Rocket was special and then some.
Just like my father.
Thankfully Bobby Hull won't be playing for the Blackhawks in the Original Six Stanley Cup Championship this week.
There were few better.
My paternal grandfather had a saying about the seasons in Maine.
"There are two seasons up here; winter and preparing for winter."
My early childhood contradicted this adage, for my five year-old senses recognized a very short and wet spring followed by a little longer and slightly warmer summer capped by a short and wet autumn before a very long and cold winter. Whenever I mentioned this to my father, he would correct my theorem by saying, "Spring, summer, and fall exist, but only as a time for battening down the hatches for winter."
My mother was from Boston. The distance from Falmouth Foresides to the Charles River was a little more than 90 miles. The difference in climate was immense, for in Maine winter continued into April and debuted early in November. She dreamed of swimming at Nantasket Beach, for the water temperature at Old Orchard Beach rarely rose over 60. My mother had her own comment on the Maine weather.
"There are only two seasons; winter and August."
My older brother and I knew winter was coming whenever my mother had us try on the previous year's snow clothing. He and I were the same size. We never got hand-me-downs and every cold season my mother was disappointed by our steady growth.
Benoit's Department Store had a sale in mid-November. My mother waited for that day and drove across the Back Cove Bridge into Portland. My sisters got pretty coats and galoshes. My baby brother two snow suits. My older brother were given matching outfits. My mother liked passing us off as Irish twins. My eyes were bluer than those of my older brother.
Once the temperature dropped below freezing, my father constructed an ice rink from 2 by 10 planks and filled it with water. We played hockey from time we arrive home from school to after dark. The Boston Bruins were our team. I listened to their games on the radio. The Chief, Johnny Bucyk, was my favorite player.
I dreamed about playing in Boston Garden. My father's attempt to teach me how to skate backwards was cut short by his tripping on the backyard rink's uneven ice. He sat up with blood gushing from a jagged gash. I never got the hang of skating in reverse. This failing didn't prevent my playing pond hockey or celebrating the Bruins' Stanley Cup victories in 1969 and 1971. Their theme song was NUTTY, but as Ranger's defenseman Brad Park said, "Bobby Orr was - didn't make - the difference"
The owners' dismantling of the Big Bad Bruins sent the team into a hockey purgatory in the 70s. The fucking Canadians beat them in the finals in 1978 and 1979. I was living in New York.
Two days before Christmas 1979 a Rangers fan stole a Bruin's hockey stick at the end of the game. The team charged into the stands and I cheered every punch.
It was a lonely town to be a Bruins fan.
My Aunt Jane had moved to New York in the early 60s. Her husband retired from the Merchant Marines and bought three tenements on East 11th Street. Carmine earned good money as a plumber on the Lower East Side. Landlords called him to right violations. The two of us conducted some business together. We never told anyone what. The cigar-chomping curmudgeon loved his wife for putting up with his idiosyncrasies and bought her season tickets to the Rangers in 1987.
Aunt Jane had attended U Maine. My alumni was a rival of the Black Bears, but we shared a love for the Bruins and hockey.
"The only way you're going to Madison Square Garden is if you accompany me to the opera." Jane came from Columbia Falls, which she called the last place God created before he had his rest. They grew people tough that far Down East.
"The opera?" Opera was theater with screaming fat people on stage.
"Yes, opera. You don't get to see the Beast unless you sit through the Beauty." Jane drove a hard bargain. Her husband Carmine had nothing to do with opera. He was a jazz man.
"I've never seen an opera." CBGBs had been my La Scala during the late 70s.
"Not Jesus Christ Superstar?"
"I'm an atheist." The Red Sox had tested my faith early in life and I had failed the final.
"Tommy?" Jane was a decade younger than me. She had been a hippie, which was another shared brick in our heritage.
"Rock opera's different?" I knew every word to The Who's opus of a blind pinball player. "It has soul."
"And so does Carmen." The heavy-set Maine native held up tickets in both hands. The left two were for Lincoln Center and the right pair were seats for the Bruins-Rangers.
Raymond Bourque and Cam Neely had transformed my hometown team into a Stanley Cup threat. The Rangers had been exiled from the finals since 1940. They sucked and their fans were even worse, but Jane's tickets were good seats.
"Count me in." Five rows from the ice was an easy sell.
"The opera too." Jane wasn't one to let his fish wiggle off the hook.
"Carmen." Somehow I knew the opera was about a cigar. They were Uncle Carmine's favorite vice.
A week later Jane and I taxied uptown to Lincoln Center. The Upper West Side was terra incognito for the denizens of the Lower East Side. I wore a suit for the occasion. Aunt Jane proudly entered the red and gold auditorium, as if I were a gigolo. She waved to her fellow affectionados. Our seats were dead-center in the second-tier balcony. I examined our fellow opera lovers.
At 34 I was one of the youngest men in the audience.
"How do you like it?" Jane smiled with contentment.
"Ask me in 30 minutes." I resisted any sign of pleasure. I was a punk, not a fat lady fan.
"Sssssh."
The curtain parted on the stage and two seconds later I was transported to Seville, Spain 1820. Carmen was a bitch. The fat lady playing Carmen dallied with the love-smitten corporal. I sympathized with his throwing everything away for her love. I had done the same on more than one occasion and if Aunt Jane hadn't stopped me, I would have jumped to my feet, when Don Jose killed Carmen for betraying his love.
"Not bad?" Jane applauded softly with gloved hands.
"Good. Not bad." I answered from my standing ovation. I was a convert. "Count me in."
"I knew I would."
A week later Carmine drove Aunt Jane and me to MSG.
"Don't do anything stupid." Carmine had frisked me before getting into his modified station wagon.
"I'll be a good boy." I was wearing a black leather jacket and heavy boots. No one could see my Bruins skating jersey underneath and if they did, my gloves had pennies stitched into the knuckles. Three of them taped together packed a good punch.
"Just remember it's only a game." Jane waved good-bye and the station wagon roared up 8th Avenue. Carmine was heading up to Charley's Soul Kitchen in Harlem. He liked their fried chicken.
We walked into the arena with thousands of Rangers fan. They hated the Bruins, but their real enemies were the Devils and Islanders. A flutist before the arena played POTVIN SUCKS. I hadn't been to an NHL game in years and I thought about my father's rink in the backyard.
"Fucking hockey."
"Damn right." Jane clapped my back. Women from Columbia Falls liked a good swear.
Sadly the Rangers bettered the Bruins on the ice. The fans nearest us were familiar with Aunt Jane's ties to Boston and assailed her with light-hearted ribs. I almost changed my opinion about Ranger fans, except once the play on ice was stopped by a fight in the stands between Ranger fans.
"Bums," my aunt muttered knowing her place.
"You got that right." I sipped my beer thinking about Bobby Orr beating Eddie
The two seats next to me were empty, until the 3rd period. Two drunken yahoos from the upper decks commandeered the seats. I said nothing, since liberating the good seats was an honored tradition at sporting events, but the one closest to me caught my accent.
"Boston sucks." He was in his 30s and wearing a toupee.
"Tonight, but not all season." They were 2nd in their division.
"Boston sucks." Rogaine had failed to cure his baldness and his rug was slipping off his head.
"Keep it clean." Aunt Jane sensed the water boiling in my pot. Her hand clasped mine. The message was to let it go.
"Don't tell me what to do, old lady." He smelled of Budweiser. It was a cheap beer for the masses. They didn't sell it at Lincoln Center.
"Old?" The word body-checked Jane harder than 'fuck'.
"Old like Gerry Cheevers." The rug-wearer knew his hockey and his friend laughed at his quip. The bald guy never saw me flick the gloves.
I heard a ring when the wrapped pennies stuck his temple. He was out cold. Jane covered her mouth. Her smile was too wide for her fingers, even though the Bruins were losing 4-2.
Outside in the winter air Jane asked, "So what is better? Hockey or opera?"
"The crowd is better at the opera."
"And hockey?"
"Hockey is hockey." I shrugged and pointed to Carmine's station wagon.
Inside the car he asked if we had a good time.
"The Bruins lost, but we did just fine." Jane patted his hand. She loved him more than hockey.
"No trouble." He looked at me in the rear view mirror.
"Hey, it's only a game." I put my gloves in my pocket.
"Only a game?" Carmine didn't believe me, but he didn't know anything about hockey otherwise he would have known that Kate Smith sang at the beginning of the Philadelphia Flyers games and nothing ever starts until the fat lady sings.
Not in hockey and most certainly not in opera.
Hockey was bred into the blood of many New England boys. Frozen ponds and backyard rinks were our winter playground. My dreams of playing for the Boston Bruins ended with my father giving my older brother and me a lesson in how to skate backwards. We were standing the wind-swept surface of Watchic Pond. My father said, "Watch me."
My father was wearing his Bowdoin college sweater. He had earned a letter for football. His feet were a shoulder-width apart and his knees bent slightly before pushing off with his skate. The blades cut half circles in the smooth ice. He was blessed with frictionless grace, until he caught an edge and fell backward onto the hard ice. His head smacked the black ice with a crack. He sat up with a hand holding the back of his head. Blood seeped through his fingers. My father rose to his feet and skated to the edge of the lake leaving a trail of red.
My older brother and I regraded each other and our eyes conveyed the shared knowledge that skating backward was dangerous. Throughout our youth we were fearless attackers. On defense we were useless. Both of us posted more defeats than wins on the frozen pond next to Rubber Road. MY best friend was no better and my two young cousins were forced to play defense in many losing efforts, which honed their skills for high school play.
I didn't bother to tryout for the team.
I sucked, but I supported our blue and gold team throughout three disastrous season. My senior year the squad went 0-17. I attended every game and was renown throughout the league as a fighting supporter. We never lost in the stands no matter what the odds.
That losing tradition changed the first time my youngest cousin put on the team uniform. He was a natural athlete and excelled in football, hockey, and baseball. Oil Can scored two goals in his first game. My cousin was unstoppable throughout his career at the all-boys Catholic School south of 128.
His last game for my alumni was at the old Boston Garden on Causeway Street. My hippie friends from college bought tickets for the game versus our arch-rival, Catholic Memorial. I knew the ushers from the Celtics and Bruins and they showed us to better seats. My uncle and cousins were rinkside. We chanted the team slogan.
"Go Hawks Go."
This was the big time and I went into the guts of the Garden to visit Oil Can before the opening face-off.
"Oil Can," I shouted, as I stepped into the locker room. This dump was the same place that Bobby Orr suited up for the Bs. Twelve-inch pipes ran up the wall. It was only heat source for the home team. The actual lockers had nails pounded into the concrete. A shredded carpet covered the floor and a banquette provided seating for the players. Our old high school gym was in better condition, but this was the Garden. The Stanley Cup had been won by the players in this had been
The time-battered coach in a cassock spotted a long-haired hippie at the entrance and yelled, "Get out of here, you furry freak."
"It's me, coach." I lifted the long hair from my face.
"Smith, when did you become a hippie weirdo?" The brother was a good old tough guy. The ex-boxer had taught math. Like me he had an assortment of speech defects.
"The minute I left this school, but I’m still a big fan."
“Do us and you a favor.”
"Yes, brother?” He had given me good grades.
"No fights? You're a man now."
"Yes brother." I was trying hard to be a peacenik, but old habits died hard on the South Shore. "You mind, if I wish Oil Can good luck."
"You know your cousin has a real name?" The old brother shook his head. He hadn't been young in many years, but his life was devoted to the betterment of their our and bodies. I nodded my respects and walked over to Oil Can, who was seated on a battered wooden bench. His gloves held a battered hockey stick. The handle was notched for every goal he had scored with it.
Oil Can lifted his head and smiled upon seeing me.
"You know where I’m seating?"
"In Boston Garden.”
"On the same bench as Bobby Orr."
"Number 4." The Bruins were heading to the Stanley Cup and if all went well, they wouldn't have to play the Canadiens. "My cousin in the same room as Bobby Orr. It's a miracle."
"Watch out." Oil Can snapped his stick and a cat-sized rat flew through the air. It struck the wall and hit the carpet running for shelter.
"Damn, that was big." His eyes were as big as mine.
"Bobby Orr has to deal with rats?"
"And stinky rats too." Oil Can sniffed at his stick. "I'll never get the smell off it, but that could come in handy tonight."
"You get out of here." The coach pointed at me. "Only team now."
"Yes, brother." I exited from the locker room and joined my friends. My uncle came over and I told them the story of the rat. We looked under the seats. The players took the ice.
We cheered Oil Can's first and second goal and threw our hats on the ice for his third. He picked up the offerings with the blade of his hockey stick. After the game Oil Can returned mine. The temperature on Causeway Street was in the 20s. I tugged on the watch cap and pulled it off a second later. The material smelled like rat. I threw away the hat and washed my hair three times before the stench was gone.
From that night on we called Oil Can's feat 'the rat trick'.
Every moment of glory has its secret price.
On winter nights as a child in Maine in the 1950s I listened hockey and basketball games on the radio from Boston and the Far North. While I loved the Celtics and Bruins, I cherished even more so the fading in and out of hockey games from the Montreal Forum, for even if I didn't understand a single word of French, I loved the slash of the skates on ice, the pock of a slapshot, the boom of the boards after a big hit, and the cheers of the crowds.
Only later I discovered that the Canadians were the Bruins' bitter rival.
This video captures the heat and passion of hockey.
The fights?
Fights occured often in pre-1980shockey.
I wish it wasn't that way, but Derek Sanderson was always my man.
Here's to the great teams, their players, and the history of a rivalry written on ice.
Watch this amazing video
https://vimeo.com/150439850
Not for nothing, but go Bruins.
And bless the Dropkick Murphys' ROSE TATTOO.
They are one of us.
Happy 2016
Mike (Habs) and Moi ( Da 'Ruins )
Back in 2012 I was in Thailand. I no longer resided in Pattaya. Too many Russians, retirees, and I preferred Sriracha up the coast, where I lived with my son Fenway and his beautiful Mom. Sriracha was a totally Thai town and I was comfortable drinking beer with Mam and playing with my son, but Mam understood my need to see old friends and one night I received a phone call from Ed. The Hollywood real estate broker had just divorced his wife in LA and needed a guide to the go-go bars of Pattaya.
"Go see your friend. But not see any women." Mam kissed me good-night at the bus stop on Sukhumvit. Fenway eyed his father with suspicion. The two year-old had no reason to worry. My body and soul belonged to his mother.
"I'll be back early." The sun was setting in the Gulf of Siam. I would be at the Buffalo Bar by 7. Ed couldn't be fussy after 25 years with the same woman. "Before midnight."
"Ha." Mam knew men better than me. "Come home when you want."
"Pai." Fenway waved me onto the bus. I blew him a kiss and he wiped his cheek with a smile. He was a good jokester.
The ride to Pattaya Klang took 30 minutes. The motorsai taxi was another five minutes to the Buffalo Bar. Ed sat with the owner, Eddy. She was my age and looked older. Jamie Parker was by his side. We all knew each other from New York in the 80s.
“Ed thought I was dead.”
“I heard more than one version of your death.” Ed and Jamie had been bad boys at Max's Kansas City.
“None close to true.” Jamie had been a good boy in Pattaya. Most of the time. He excused himself to speak with the owner. We ordered beer. The first was good the second cold. Used to Manhattan prices, Ed laughed at the bill. “The girls in here seem friendly.”
“Friendly as Fereghinis.” Thais bore no physical resemblance to most venal of Star Trek races. They were more beautiful than any woman on Melrose and twice as thin.
“I thought we were farangs.” Ed ordered two drinks for the bar girls who had appeared to massage our necks.
“It’s what they call all of us.” The word’s meaning depended on how it was said.
“Not me. I’m a farang lao.” Jamie returned to the bar.
"Only because you eat insects.” The CIA called his kind 'snake-eaters'.
“And speak a little Lao.” Jamie paid the bill and asked, “Are we taking Ed on a Black Diamond run?”
Jamie’s no-hold’s barred pilgrimage to Pattaya’s night spots included most hellholes not of the regular visitor’s radar screen.
“Let’s stay with intermediate slopes.” Ed was no stranger to Jamie’s taste for danger.
We got on motorsai taxis and headed down to Walking Street. 8pm was early and Jamie suggested the Tiger Lounge. “It has great AC, they’ll play anything we want, and the two early girls are the best-looking on the street. If we're lucky neither has been barfined yet.”
Ed was a happy man. Both girls were in the bar. Their combined age didn't add up to that of his ex-wife.
Beer, AC, The Ramones, plus Wan and Fah stereo-massaging his back.
No man could ask for more and Ed recounted the damages of the divorce from his wife. “Malibu house gone. My firm considered me a pussy for not fighting the divorce and axed me from the board.”
“And that was bad?” Jamie’s history was nightlife and prison. He only worried about parole boards and that was a long time ago.
"From where I sit now it was a good thing.”
“And it’s only going to get better.” Jamie dragged us to Living Doll 2, where he harangued the manager about an erotic hot dog eating contest coupled with the most hot dogs you can eat contest. The manager deemed the idea a little too 'lo-so' for his clientele. Ed disagreed. “A bunch of fat guys sucking down dogs followed by go-go girls eating hot dog. Nothing could be sexier.”
“Really?” I asked, since Ed was seated with twin sisters. The skimpy bikinis revealed that some farang had their silken skin tattooed with the same craven images front to back. Thankfully none showed his name.
“Maybe I’m wrong.” Ed had supported the arts. None more than exotic dance.
“I show you wrong.” Jamie signaled for the chek-bin and we were off to Heaven Above. The white interior reminded Ed of Clockwork Orange and my old club off 7th Avenue. 1986. “The Milk Bar.”
“Except these girls are real.” Jamie had been saving the best for last. Ed rang the bell. The 49 year-old was avalanched by beauties and for the first time in a long time he was happy. An hour later he disappeared. No one had seen his departure. Jamie and I wandered off Walking Street and he dropped me at a taxi stand. The fee to Sriracha was 1000 baht or $30.
I made it home at midnight.
Mam and Fenway sat on the couch watching Ultraman.
My son sniffed at me.
"No perfume." I was ever faithful to my wife. We fought over that fact and made love once little Fenway was asleep. We held each other as if neither of us wanted to let go.
In the morning Ed called me and explained the rest of his night.
“I went back to the Tiger and barfined Wan for the week. I'm taking them to some island not so far away. I’ll call you when I get back.”
“Sure.” Koh Samet was an hour down the coast. I didn't warn him about not falling in love. He had been alone with a woman that didn't love him too long. His holiday might stretch to a week, because time goes fast when you’re having fun. I know, because I've been there too.
Jim Fouratt hired our CBGBs gang to work at the New School registering students. He laughed upon seeing me, since he only like the way I had defended gays in the punk clubs. The music impresario leaned over and said, "None of these fools realize that as many people have graduated from the New School as have finished reading Thomas Mann's MAGIC MOUNTAIN. All hail the NRP, but I don't know if it's a good thing for group leader to have a job."
"Better than being broke all the time." I had celebrated the new gig by getting drunk. I left before Alice woke for her yogurt job.
"You think you can hack having a real job?"
"It's been two years since I had a real 9 to 5 and that was more a 9 to 3 as a substitute teacher at South Boston High School during the Bussing riots."
"Take it day by day. That's all all of us are going to do for a month."
"Then what?"
"I have something good planned, so just do your job. We'll see you tonight." John Kemp and Jim were coming over to my apartment to work on the NRP Manifesto. They are much more serious about politics, whereas I like to like to get laughs. Grant Stitt said at lunch, "They only want to help because you're cute."
"I thought John was straight." The British shoemaker was a good friend,.
"No one's straight."
"I am."
"Straight in deed only, but what goes on that head of yours. Hot hot hot."
I go off at 4 and walked over to Monthly Review, a socialist printing house. I read ALBANIA DEFIANT, waiting for Roz to finish at 5. We no longer have sex, but I like drinking with her and we wandered down the the Riviera Cafe on Christopher Street. Her friend Robert, a tall handsome dancer, was there and hit on me several times.
"I haven't been with a man in ages."
"Liar. you've been with them in your mind. One day you'll find one to change you back to one of us."
The Shah left the Pahlevi Palace in Tehran without a forwarding address. The Communists will be killed by the rural mullahs and Persia will resort to a land ruled by religion, just like the USA.
The British Foreign Office is famed for the reserve of their diplomats, however back in 2009 the BBC uncovered the true feelings of their ambassadors thanks to the Freedom of Information laws. The smiles, the speeches, and promises of friendship are a front for the traditional English bias against anyone not from the right school or blood.
The UK's ambassador to Thailand during the Viet-Nam War expressed his opinion of the Thais in his reports without disguising his disdain.
"They have no literature, no painting and only a very odd kind of music; their sculpture, ceramics and dancing are borrowed from others, and their architecture is monotonous and interior decoration hideous. Nobody can deny that gambling and golf are the chief pleasures of the rich, and that licentiousness is the main pleasure of them all."
Harsh words from a long-nosed farang.
Of course the Thais express their opinion of such comments either with a murderous smile or a bullet to the back of the head.
Either way works, especially if you're telling the truth and there in nothing better than 'sanuk' with Thais in Ban-nok drinking Lao and listening to Luk Thung.
Chai you!!!
This morning I drove Ande's father's car from Brookline to Route 3 onto 128 past the snowfields of the Blue Hills and then headed south to the great metropolis of New York City. Big Blue has a radio station atop its granite bald summit. The view from the tower encompassed Boston from Cape Ann to Nantasket.
As a teen I had skied the short trails, but always revel in the dark blue of the Atlantic stretching east into the Atlantic. Boston had once been my hometown. My mother had called this morning and told me to take care of myself.
My one goal was to make enough money to pay off their mortgage and then send them to Hawaii. Getting a regular job was the only way to achieve that wish, but 9 to 5s bored me shitless and I stepped on the Cutlass' gas.
Visiting my parents had been comforting as had seeing my brothers, sisters, and aunts and uncles and our next door neighbors, the Menconis for Christmas dinner. I loved my parents. My older brother was with Pattie, who was working for the CIA My sisters Pam and Regina seemed happy, and Regina's beau was a good man from Hartford, if there is such a thing. My younger brother Patrick played guitar in the basement, while Michael, obviously wanted to tell everyone his secret. I had warned him that confessing you're gay was one sure way to ruin Christmas and he said, "Maybe this summer."
I felt bad about not having any gifts and even worse getting some. Andy was my only friend at the gathering. Every other friend from grammar and high school and college have vanished into the amnesia of the past. My old girlfriends are ghosts; Linda Imhoff, Hilde Hartnett, Janet Stetson, and Jackie Collins. I'm not sure if I abandoned them or they deserted me.
The Cutlass sped on I-95 through the marshlands of the Neponset River. The highway rose at Sharon onto a plateau all the way to Providence. The Interstate had destroyed miles of neighborhoods, but at least the engineers had banked the pavement and I hit 80 past the empty harbor.
Farther along the State Prison rises atop a high berm. Hundreds of convicts locked to serve sentence for their crimes or someone else's wrong. Snow topped the field of the pine barrens, until I reached New London and the nuclear sub bases of Groton. Within a half hour I crossed the Connecticut River, which I considered the southern boundary of New England.
At Christmas dinner my family asked, "Will you ever return to Boston?"
"I don't think so."
I love New England; Maine and the White Mountains, but I had taught English at South Boston High during the bussing riots. The city of my birth was filled with racists. My old friends called me a 'race traitor. I could fight them all. The day before Christmas I rode the trolley into Park Street. None of the women appealed to me.
I left the city in 1976. I adopted the slums of the East Village as home, even though my first friends had yet to come to New York. My good friend, Andy, was remained in Boston playing funk in an all-black band. Neil had left Staten Island to study Medicine in Dagupan City in the Philippines, Libby had flown to Paris to seek fame and fortune as a fashion model. I had new friends now, but I felt I would desert them at one point.
LATER
A road trip would be perfect except there's nowhere I can go, as I will have a series of tests at NYU Hospital to assess the health of my liver.
I've been invited to ski in Tahoe, sun in florida, and fly over to London to reside at Goodenough University. Mostly I want to see my families in Thailand, however Nu says that everything in shut down in Pattaya and Mem is concerned about leaving the house.
Oh, for the world to be free again.
Occasionally the question arises. "If you could go back and change something in your life, where would you go?"
Stupid question.
Most people would chose to avoid a certain mistake or avoid the repetition of the same error, but if I were granted that click on the heels, I would return instantly to 5th Grade to slap that kid staring out the window during English lessons and tell him pay attention, because you're going to have aspirations to be a writer.
As anyone reading my columns has seen, my typos and misspellings mar the flow of writing to a new height of internet illiteracy and a reader criticized my abominable typing of GOING TO JAIL - CHONBURI
"Have you ever heard of SEPLLCHECK?", as my good friend Sam Royalle.
The answer is yes, but not after I've been drinking.
I try so hard, but my brains and fingers fails me some time.
Mea Culpa.
It isn't that bad or is it worst than my grammar.
50/50.
For certain.
Barbie was a doll born of the 60s. Her original body scale if set to the height of 5-9 would give her dimensions of a 36-inch chest, 18-inch waist and 33-inch hips. Her unearthly body was never questioned by the millions of girls, who loved the Mattel creation, and certainly not by their brothers, who undressed Barbie whenever no one was home, s they recreated the act of sex between Barbie and her boyfriend. Few of us were imaginative enough to realize the possibility of a menage-a-trois.
Barbie was the first women of the 1960s that boys ever loved and anyone who tells you different is a liar, unless they were into Ken.
And a lot of my friends did love Ken.
He was so cool.
Especially when watching us play with Barbie.
Ken never squealed to my sisters.
He was a good guy and there was nothing wrong with playing with dolls. At least not by my method, because rubbing Ken and Barbie together like two sticks inflamed my pubescent mind to a fever pitch.
Mea culpa Barbie.
In the end I saw myself As others saw me. A middle-aged man turning older An older man becoming ancient Who had refused to obey the promises of Faith Demanded by the Sisters of St. Mary. I never kneel before the altar I never ask for forgiveness for my sins Only saying to the Bible's God I am a mere mortal. Mo More No less I'm just a mere mortal____
Never to be a God.
Different languages have many words for the same thing.
Eskimos supposedly have fifteen words for snow.
The travel movie AMAZING THAILAND claims the Thais have thirteen words for smile. This statement falls into the realm of urban legend, although the Thais have a smile for every occasion.
Happy? Smile. Sad? Smile. Crash car into buffalo? Smile.
I went to www.thai2english.com to see how close they came to 13.
6 was the answer.
Yim – Smile
Roi yim – Smile
Feun Yim – Forced Smile ie after you tell your wife you're not giving her any more money for the week.
Om Yim – Smile knowingly ie your wife knows you'll hit an ATM for her if you want to go out with your friends and not get an earful.
Bproi Yim – Distribute smiles to ie smile to others saying what a fool your husband is not thinking he can get away without hitting an ATM
Obviously there are some smiles even the Thais don't recognize.
Yim Mah – Doglike smile on your girlfriend's boyfriend who's you think is his brother.
Yim Kee – Shit-eating smile on your girlfriend after you discover her brother is really her husband.
Yim Beer – Your smile after figuring a bottle of beer is more faithful than your girlfriend.
Yim Kwai – Your smile as seen by Thais. Buffalo grin
Yim Talung – Your smile walking down Soi 6. Otherwise known as a leer.
Yim Im – Smile after eating too much.
Yim Isarah – Your smile upon biding your missus adios.
"Free at last, free at last. Good God Almighty. Free at last." Martin Luther King
Over twenty golf courses are located within an hour drive from Pattaya, Thailand's infamous beach resort.
Whacking a little ball around the world-class fairways gave many long-distance travelers something to do during the day, while waiting for the night to fall on the Last Babylon. Jamie Parker preferred sleep, however his girlfriend Ort had been poking his stomach for the last week, saying, "Uan."
"Fat?" Jamie looked in the mirror. His traditionally flat stomach was thickened by beer flab, but uan was an overstatement. "I've never been fat in my life."
"Now not never. Now you uan." Ort was wearing an imitation Gucci shirt and fake Levis. She weighed less than when they had met at the Paris a Go-Go. She wasn't the prettiest girl in town, but she was sexier than most of the girls on the circuit and Jamie was happy with her about 50% of the time.
"Really?" The New Yorker's nickname on the Lower East Side was 'el Flacco Blanco'.
"No problem you fat. No girl look at you."
"I thought Thai girls liked fat men."
"And you think they love you long time too?" Ort brushed her long black hair, so the strands fell down her back like the mane of a mare.
"I'll show you 'love you long time'." Jamie threw her on the bed, but halfway through their love-making his lungs were depleted of oxygen.
Ort was right.
The 51 year-old ex-con was fat and out of shape. As a retired criminal both could be a death sentence and he fell asleep vowing to change his life of indolence.
The next afternoon he rode his bike to the Asia Hotel Driving Range. Ort sat on the back of the scooter. She didn't trust him out of her sight.
At the range he picked out a driver and ordered two buckets of balls.
Neither of the pros commented on his wearing flip-flops.
"You play golf before?" Ort ate fiery sum tam salad in the shade.
"Only mini-golf." Jamie had played several games on summer holiday. He had lost each time to his younger brother. Nothing in the intervening years had diminished his ignorance and he observed a 70 year-old man swing at a ball. It traveled 200 meters in a straight line.
"Chok dii." Ort devoted her attention to the spicy mango salad.
"I've always had beginner's luck."
Jamie balanced a ball on the tee and grasped the driver like a Louisville Slugger. The heft of the shaft was too small for his hands, but he instinctively understood that his thumbs were in the way. Jamie clutched the club like he was hitchhiking with two hands and spread his legs like the old man, who had whacked his next ball to the 250 meter mark.
Head down Jamie swung at the ball and missed by two inches.
"What mean beginner?" Ort's face displayed her displeasure at his effort. Thais hate losing face.
"Someone who is learning to do something." Jamie adjusted his grip and stance.
"Meuu-ma." Ort rollercoasted her inflection through the word.
"Yes, Meuu-ma."
Jamie grasped the golf driver like he was hacking a watermelon with a samurai sword.
Jamie had played baseball for Xaverian Brothers in Brooklyn. Nothing felt better than the ball meeting the sweet part of the bat and the euphoria of smacking the next golf ball 270 meters was an unexpected epiphany. The old man turned around to smile with appreciation of his tee-shot and Ort lifted her head from the plate.
"Sometimes beginner's luck takes more than one try."
That week Jamie's morning began with a visit to the Asia Hotel Driving Range.
Ort liked one of the golf pros. He was Thai. Jamie didn't care, since he got free lessons out of her flirtation.
He switched the flip-flops for Nike Air Max golf shoes and bought a used Ping driver from the pro shop.
A few lessons from Ort's admirer advanced his drives into the 300 range.
Several golfers asked him to join them for foursomes at the various golf courses around Pattaya. Jamie thanked them for offers, but refused to venture further than Sukhumvit.
"Something about that road makes me think I might die on it." He had seen numerous collisions at the intersection of Sukhumvit and Pattaya Tai. Cars and trucks had a serious weight advantage over flesh and blood on bikes.
Ort was proud of his prowess at the driving range and home.
"You are now a handsome man again," she whispered with a hint of naughtiness.
"I was always handsome." He had also cut down on his beer consumption.
"You not fat now. You man #1." Her tongue slipped into his ear like a sea snake seeking his skull.
They went home and didn't see daylight for three days.
Life was good. The weather was temperate. Jamie was treated by the staff at the Asia Driving Range with deference. He was a good tipper. The Thais called him 'Jame'. None of them could say 'Jamie'.
One day he stroked the balls almost 325. He thought nothing else in the world could be more perfect, until he saw Ort's face.
She was scared to the marrow.
"Bpen Arai?" He turned to see a group of stiff-faced Thais standing in front of a top-end Benz.
Their eyes glared at him.
"Are those people the problem?" None of the paunchy men appeared ready to fight, but they had money and money bought trouble cheap in Thailand.
"They want use tee." Her cautious nod was a timid wai to five Thai middle-aged men before the Mercedes.
They glowered at Jamie, as if no farangs should live in Thailand.
The headman wore a diamond-encrusted Rolex. His hair resembled a toupee, but he wasn't bald and he might have been good-looking 20 years ago. At 50 too much bad karma had passed his eyes.
"I'll go when I finish this bucket." He had 15 balls to go.
"No, we go now." She signaled the waitress for the chek-bin.
"No, we don't." He put all his muscle into the next drive. The ball sailed out of sight into the distant protective net. 350 plus.
"Okay, go now." Ort grabbed his hand.
"Why?" Jamie had a good idea why.
"This men khon yai," she whispered the words like she was an innocent slave caught in rebellion.
"Khon Yai." 95% of the Thai population had been chattel until 1905. The King had freed the masses with a signature, yet the khon yai or big people continued to regarded the people as animals.
Their greasy smiles threatened Ort with the long tradition of domination.
"I know who they are." People whose families overcharged the price of gas, sold cars for twice the cost in the USA, and stole land from the poor.
Same as the rich in America.
Al Gore one year.
GW Bush the next.
"You not know these people."
"I also know they're not the king or anyone in the royal family."
Jamie respected the king with the reverence of a god.
He was the one true Thai and his family was deserving of the same respect.
Putting another golf ball on the tee was not a crime against lese-majeste.
"The only khon yai in your life is me. Now sit down." Jamie had been to prison. He was well-versed in talking tough and even more skilled at the art of staring down tough Thais. The boss looked over his shoulder to the drivers. The pros and staff of the driving range were visibly shaken by this silent confrontation. Ort looked ready to cry. Jamie gauged the distance to the fat man as less than 3 meters, but with a gold club in his hand the man was less than 6 feet away.
"Jamie. I love you."
She had been with a lot of men before him.
The word 'love' came out of her mouth too easily at the wrong time, but her eyes revealed she didn't want to see him dead and he picked up the bucket of balls. The Thai men snickered with the glory of their triumph.
Jamie said nothing on his way to the cashier.
Neither did he flinch hearing the word 'farang'.
Most Thais called all westerners 'farang'.
This was their country and he told Ort to get on the motorbike, while he paid the bill.
The golf pro wai-ed him.
"Thank you."
His smile said sorry.
"Mai-bphen-rai." Jamie tipped him a 500 baht. "I know when to have 'jai yen'."
He wai-ed the golf pro and the five men laughed at his use of the Thai gesture.
Jamie had been in Thailand long enough to know how to smile in Thai.
Each smile had its own meaning.
His smile clearly said 'yet mung'.
The Khon Yai gritted their teeth and narrowed their eyes.
He sat his bike and Ort wrapped her arms around his waist.
"Thank you." She was happy that no one had died at the driving range.
Jamie was happy too, because it's one thing to have bad manners, it's another to know when to not use them.
The answer is never.
Especially in a foreign land.
Thailand is renowned throughout the world as the Land of Smiles. Every year the country plays host to millions of tourists. These visitors for the most part return home extolling the hospitality of the Thais. Few foreigners understand that the Thais have as many smiles as the Eskimos have names for snow and the nation has been showing its best face during the current political crisis.
Red shirt supporters grinning in defiance of the government.
Yellow shirts protesting the rise of the poor.
Soldiers smiling during the coup d'etat or ga boht by the Royal Thai Army.
Nothing is what it seems and it's all thanks to the Thai library of smiles.
Here are a few of them;
- yim tak tai: The polite smile, used for strangers
- feun yim: The 'I-am-forced-to-smile-even-I-do-not-want-to' smile
- yim cheuat cheuan: The winner's smile over a rival
- yim tang nam dtah: The truly happy smile
- yim tak tan: The 'sorry-you-are-wrong-again' smile
- yim sao: The smile masking sadness or unhappiness
- yim mee lay-nai: The evil smile
- yim cheun chom: The admiring smile
- yim yor: The arrogant smile
- yim mai ork: The forced smile
- yim yair-yair: The smile to apologize and take the heat out of an awkward, embarrassing situation
- yim hairng: The nervous, apologetic smile
- yim soo: The 'it-cannot-get-any-worse-therefore-I-better-smile' smile
Read more: http://absolutelybangkok.com/the-thai-smile/#ixzz0fAgo08X4
I'm particularly impressed by the last offering 'yim yor' or the smile that says I'm right and you're wrong.
Anyone who has lived in Thailand has seen that last grin too many times to count, but worse probably they didn't recognize it either because they thought that they were so right that they could never be wrong.
And the Thais call that one 'yim farang kee-nok'.
It doesn't mean anything good.
Unless you know the yim-yet-mung or the fuck-you smile
December 1990 I nailed my first big sale at the diamond exchange with a 5-carat round brilliant. F color. SI in clarity. The year was 1991. The profit margin was 20%. My commish was $1500. The NY Times travel section advertised a round-the-world ticket for $1399. I had 5 Gs saved in the the bank from working seven days a week before Christmas. I told Manny and his son Richie Boy that I was leaving for the summer. Winter was the slowest time of the year and they wished me good luck.
After a life-threatening 'bon voyage' party I flew west with the sun. My friend Demmi sang BORN TO BE WILD at JFK. The Russian was into motorcycle and long trips.
"Keep your eye on where you're going and not where you are." Demmi had had several crashes over his lifetime on Triumphs and Nortons.
"Thanks for the advice." I had read about dirt-riding through Northern Thailand. Dirt roads, opium fields, and tribes stuck in the 14th Century. The hills were mountains on the East Coast. The Himalayas were a week's ride if a biker's papers were in order.
I was free of america the second the Garuda 747 lifted off from LAX. The next stop was Biak, a large tropical island north of Irian Jaya. Naked men were waiting on the tarmac. They wore gourds on their penis. Only two passengers from the 747 stayed on the island. A missionary and me.
My trip had just begun; I free-dove amongst sunken Japanese destroyers under the surface of a mirror-blue sea, danced in the rice paddies of Bali, rode ponies across the sand plains of Mount Bromo, ate pig with the headhunters of Lake Toba, tripped on mushrooms at a full-moon party of Koh Phagnanh, and frequented the go-go bars of Patpong. Various ex-pats recommended my heading to Burma, Vietnam, or the Nana Plaza for another ogle at naked girls of the Firepole Ballet.
None of it had anything to do with motorcycles and I couldn't get BORN TO BE WILD out of the head. An Australian motor trekker at the Malaysia Hotel suggested, "This time of year the dope fields of Northern Thailand are bone-dry as left-over turkey the roads are dust ankle-deep. Very few people have driven through the tribal villages; Akhas, Yai, Karens, Hmong, KMT refugees growing opium for outlaw warlords."
The next night I rode the sleeper train to the northern capitol, Chiang Mai. I rented a beat-up 125cc Honda XT and set out for the mountains. The paved road ended at a bridge crossing a tea-colored river. A lazy police guard waved me through the checkpoint and I throttled the gas. The dirt bike's knobby tires churned a thick cloud of red dust in my wake.
The rutted track was trafficked by the occasional pick-up truck loaded with poppy plants. The scowls on the drivers' faces warned the drug lords considered trespassing a mortal sin in the Golden Triangle. I didn't care. I was on a motorcycle. The sky was cloudless. The hills stretched in all directions. This was the freedom of the road and I was going to live forever.
I should have remembered Demmi's advice, for my immortality vanished when a pick-up truck rounded a blind turn in my lane. I had been paying too munch attention to the scenery. 50 kph was way too fast to avoid the accident. This was how bikers died and I said, "Shit, I’m dead."
The impact catapulted my body headfirst into his windshield and I somersaulted onto the flatbed. The entire accident had taken less time than the Big Bang and I was shocked to have survived the head-on collision, although my left wrist was out of the socket and blood streamed from the lacerations on my face.
An old lady atop a bag of rice stared into the sky, as if I had fallen from an airplane. I climbed from the flatbed and surveyed the bike. The front tire was bent as a taco and the handlebars peeled onto the gas tank. It wasn’t going anywhere.
"Farang ki. Farang kwaai," the rat-faced driver raged in rapid Thai.
The truck's grill was only slightly dented from the collision, yet in his mind the accident was my fault. Westerners had no business in these hills. His screams grew more high-pitched and he kicked dust at my feet.
Grateful to be alive I was slow in losing my temper.
He grabbed my shirt.
I told him to calm down.
"Yai yen."
He was beyond understanding my request and spat in my face.
I yanked his hand off my shirt and he stumbled off the road down the hillside. The old lady ambushed me with a cane. It struck my injured wrist, as the driver scrambled from the slope with murder in his eyes.
Luckily a police truck appeared to stop anyone from getting hurt. The driver explained the accident and my assault. I tried to counter his lie. The policeman lifted his hand to silence us. He inspected our tire tracks.
"Falang, right. Thai man pay motorsai. Pay doctor. He sell pig, come give you money. Okay?"
His summary judgment was more than satisfactory, since normally the farang was at fault for any accidents. The driver had to haul my motorcycle to Chiang Mai and I have a photo of him lifting the bike out of the pick-up, his face seething with hatred, while his mouth is warped by a rigid smile. He wanted me dead,
The hospital set my wrist. I downed several painkillers. That night my arm throbbed with increasing pain. To this day I can predict wet weather by its dull twinge. Snow brings on a sharper ache.
Upon my return from Asia, I recounted my accident in the Golden Triangle to Demmi at the Sidewalk Café. He laughed at all the right spots. Someone told me that he had been straight six months.
"Any motorcycle accident you can walk away from is a good one." He looked better than he had in years. “Any time I have one, I jump on the bike as soon as I can.”
“In some ways I imagined I had died and gone through to the after-life, only the after-life wasn’t much different from my previous existence." I had no intention on challenging this time-space dimension by getting on a motorcycle to recreate the crash, but Demmi was right. I was alive and that was all that matter in this life, when the other dimensions belonged to the driver's Thai smile.
This evening I arrived at Hurrah and my friends and fiends from the security staff greeted me back to work; Anthony, the junkie, Grant Stitt, Jim Fouratt, Ideles and a score of acquaintances. Everyone was in the holiday mood. Less so me. Alice was still in West Virginia.
Not everyone was my friend and an attractive brunette in a tight dress grabbed my hand and said, "You know one you'll be walking in the east Village and a gang will beat the shit out of you."
I took any threat seriously, because no one wins all their fights, except for Rocky Maricano adn I said with gratitude, "Thanks for the heads up."
The brunette was in her early twenties and I couldn't think of what I might have done to earn her wrathful prediction, then I realized she was Donna Destri, a Blondie groupie and I had fought that band at Irving Plaza during the New Wave Vaudeville Show. Her brother was in that band and I hadn't won the fight.
As doorman I was topped many people's list for revenge and I explained my position about that fight, but she didn't believe my side of the story.
"I'm sorry if I offended you. Can I offer you a drink."
She accepted my apology and I was glad that she had. Donna was friends with everyone on the scene and I tended to be a little too violent for most everyone. Alice was scared of me.
At the end of the night I took a taxi to my apartment on East 10th Street. The rooms were as empty as the fridge. Alice wasn't coming back from Skiing at Snowshoe until Sunday and she had been ignoring me for weeks, still thinking she was too fat to make love. I could have gone home with someone. The girls at Hurrah were easy. Hell, I was easy, but I remained true to Alice, who failed to understand that I loved her.
While in Boston I had told my mother, "If I had the money, I'd propose to Alice."
"She is a smart girl and you need to be with someone smart to make your body and soul happy."
It was late, but I tried to call Snowshoe. I let the phone ring four times. The operator for the resort was off-duty. I don't have a camera and don't have any photos of Alice. Al I have is my memory.
Disco is king and queen of the music scene. No punk gets played on the radio other than Blondie. People of the night loved disco. I loved it too. It was great to dance to at Studio 54, Cisco Disco, or parties and I really loved my hometown girl, Donna Summers.
Punk was never going to break big-time. The record companies promoted Led Zeppelin, old Beatles tunes, and any group with a lot of hair. Disco and MOR rock. Where did soul go? Drugs had burned out the inner cities and disco was easy to control for the Big Labels.
Tomorrow I'm off and will head down the CBGBs to meet with Guadalcanal to see Johnny Thunders, a rare appearances for the ex-member of the New York Dolls, since they were under contract to Max's. Guadalcanal says he had peyote. I haven't tripped in ages.
LATER
ROCK AND ROLL DECAY The mellow muzak of the Rolling Stones. The Beatles forgotten The stars of the 1960s flickered out of the scene Dead, drugged,or drunk Useless, boring or wastedSelling out to the corporations.
LATER
Almost dawn I went outside to the corner bodega to get beer to quench my thirst. I also picked up the New York Times and sat on my stoep.
The Shah of Iran will probably be deposed in the comiing months. Taiwan is angered at the USA for signing a treaty with Mainland China. All across the USA murders make the headlines. I hear gunfire from the corner every week. The drug war of the CIA has devastated the Lower East Side and every inner city black neighborhood. Hakkim and George round the corner. They are both high on smack. George punches his friend and they cross the street to avoid me, although Hakkim glares my way and says, "One day white boy we are going to get you. And that ain't no lie. And that hillbilly girlfriend of yours."
Hearing his threat I stood up to chase them, but they were gone like the wind, which was cold this morning. Only eight more hours to the night. I cracked open a beer and put away the newspaper. If I was lucky, I might get some sleep. it was long overdue.
My friend Dave Henderson was heading to Maine for the holiday with his wife Kate. They could drop me at Old Orchard Beach from where I would catch the Amtrak train to Boston's North Station. My sister-in-law Kathy, informed me that she was having ten guests to their Cambridge house. I backed off the trip worried about possibility of catching Covid, however the idea of spending a night on Old Orchard Beach was a throwback to my childhood Only one problem. All the motels cost $139, even in the dead of winter, so I opted for going to dine with the Nepolas on Staten Island, where I had a great time.
I didn't drink anything, but gorged myself on cake and sweets.
Dr. Nepola and I go back to my first year of University.
1970.
Not a single fight, even though I abandoned him in Berkeley for a ride with Marilyn and her daughter in an overpacked Pinto. The wife of a Cockette, a transvestite dance group popular in San Francisco. We made love on the Bonneville Salt Flats. After leaving me in Cheyenne, she said she'd come back stay with me in Big Village. She showed up with her daughter and my next-door neighbor, Ande, knew her and I was cock-blocked by his girlfriend, Ann-Marie, who was good friends with Marilyn it was small world after all.
FOOT NOTES
Hurrah was a punk-rock nightclub on West 62nd Street. I worked there until getting caught for selling tickets over and over again on SRO evenings, thanks to being ratted out by Karl, a sneaky queen.
Stoep is old Dutch for stoop.
