Only four more days until I leave Los Angeles. I made no friends. No one told a joke or a story. I'm more than ready to leave. I came with nothing. I leave with nothing. Scottie and I remain friends and I do withJoel Bernard.. Time to go. The tempeeature is rising and the cloudless skies permit a merciless sun to bake people alive. Oh, New England.
In August of 1987 friends in Michigan extended invitations to visit them in Onekema and the Upper Peninsula. Paulie, Gregg, and I celebrated our departure at the Milk Bar in Lower Manhattan.
"Why are you going to Michigan for vacation?" Scottie the owner was a New Yorker. The rest of the country was a blank to him.
"I've never been there before." My trips through the Midwest never ranged farther north than the Interstates.
"I want to see America." Gregg was an English literary agent. His America consisted on Manhattan and Hollywood.
"The real America." Paulie had been brought up outside of Detroit. His father had built cars for Chrysler. The bearded Midwesterner taught sculpture at School of The Visual Arts. "Onekema has the highest sand dunes overlooking the waters of the most beautiful of the Great Lakes and the Upper Peninsula is the Land Time Forgot with forests primeval by the shores of Gitchie Gumee."
"By the shining Big-Sea-Water." I had learned THE SONG OF HIAWATHA in grammar school.
"Have a good trip." Scottie bought a round of drinks, thankful to be spending his summer in New York.
After closing the club we packed Paulie’s green Ford 150 pick-up, then left Manhattan via the Holland Tunnel. Our first stop was the Delaware River, where the three of us changed into jeans and tee-shirts. We didn't bother to clean out the truck. The mess on the floor gave it character. Crossing the bridge we entered America with the sun rising in the East.
"I understand the attraction of Onekama with the beach on Lake Michigan, but the Upper Peninsula seems far away." I counted the miles on a map. It was almost the same distance to Miami Beach.
"The Upper Peninsula has about a third of Michigan's landmass and only 3% of its population. The Yoopers or UPers came there to work the mines. Most of them closed and the towns are deserted and the forests are thicker than ever. It's like traveling back into time. You'll love it."
"Sounds heavenly to me." Gregg was keen on seeing the northern forests. He was from London, where there are more people than trees.
Traffic was light beyond the Allegheny Mountains and the day's temperature rose with every westward mile. The blue sky gave way to haze by the Ohio frontier. Big trucks crowded the highway and fast cars sped past us. Paulie insisted on driving the speed limit.
"I have two guns, A shotgun and 45 were under the driver's seat. Paulie liked to be prepared for anything. "Neither are registered, so I'm taking it slow, plus who knows what you two are carrying."
"Nothing." Gregg and I said in unison. All three of us knew that both of us were liars.
After the next fill-up at a truck stop I crashed in the flatbed. The humid wind ruffled my clothing without any relief from the heat and the heavy sky held the promise of a tornado. An exit sign read AKRON.
I sat up and leaned against the back of the cab. Greg and Paul waved to indicate that we were on schedule. I wrapped a red bandanna around my head. Sunglasses weakened the harsh sunlight. We were a rolling version of MAD MAX, the prequel to the apocalypse.
We passed a state trooper cooping in his cruiser in a copse of trees.
His eyes met mine.
The battered pick-up was maintaining 60. Most of the other cars traveled much faster. The cop instinctively clocked the three of us as potential wrongdoers. His lights lit up and the cruiser roared onto the interstate with lights flashing and siren blaring.
The rest of the motorists parted a way for the statie. The cruiser fell in behind our pickup. Paul pulled over onto the breakdown lane and I thought, "Drugs, guns, drink. We're going to jail."
The young trooper got out of his cruiser. Paul was in his 40s. Greg and I were in our 30s. There was a big generation gap between the trooper and us. His hand flicked the safety strap from his holster. He was expecting trouble.
"You want me to get out of the truck?" I was good at taking orders in a situation like this. My grand-uncle had been a detective with the Boston Police.
"You stay where you are and keep your hands in sight." He gripped his service revolver and peered into the front seat. The trooper requweated Paulie's license.
"Sure thing." He fumbled with his wallet. His search was taking too long.
"Sir, please get out of the truck?" The trooper stepped back carefully to avoid the speeding traffic. His knuckles were white on the gun.
"Yes, officer." Paul opened the door. Several empty beer cans fell onto the pavement.
"You've been drinking." His words were a statement not a question.
"Last night I had, but not today." Paulie was telling a lie. We had left the Milk Bar at 5am. "Those empties we were saving for the next trash stop. I didn’t want to throw them out the window."
The trooper wasn't impressed by his erudite accent.
Cops only needed a high school diploma.
"Sir, please, come to the back of the truck."
Paulie joined the officer and the trooper wagged a pencil in front of his face. Our friend's head wobbled on his neck like a spinning top losing speed, but followed the pen without getting dizzy. The officer put down his pencil.
"Sir, I want you to walk in a straight line."
Paul put one foot in front of the other like a robot.
The officer was disappointed by the results and looked ready to back up his hunch by getting out the Breathalyzer. The pencil dropped from his hand. Paulie picked it up with the grace of a 13 year-old ballerina and handed it back to the clean-shaven young officer.
"Where are you going?"
"The Upper Peninsula to see friends and family."
"You’re from Michigan?”
"Detroit. Born and raised."
"There's a rest stop five miles ahead." The officer put away his pen. "I suggest you empty the truck of those beer cans and back on the road obey the speed limit."
"Thanks, officer."
Our two vehicles parted ways. I returned to sitting in the front. Paulie started the truck.
"How we get away with that?" Greg asked with relief.
"Because I'm from the Midwest. If it had been one of you, that stop would have led to a different ending." Paulie pulled into the westward flow of traffic and I checked the map. The Michigan stateline was two hours away.
That night we made Detroit. Dinner was at a bar off Michigan Avenue. We chased down coneys, which were hot dogs with beanless chili, down with cold beer. I played the MC5, Iggy, Grand Funk Railroad, and Mitch Ryder on the jukebox. Gregg chatted up the girls. They loved his British accent. I shot eight-ball with the locals. We could have stayed there the rest of our lives, but Paulie crashed out around midnight and we loaded him into the truck. I drove north past Flint and stopped at a small hotel off the highway. We shared a single room. None of us snored that night.
The next afternoon we reached the Great Bear Dunes. Vonelli's family had a beach stack a sand bluff a hundred feet from Lake Michigan. The art dealer took us out on a ChrisCraft. The vast expanse of water rivaled Conan the Barbarian's Vilayet Sea. Three days passed riding dirt bikes off the dunes, swimming, and drinking beer. At the last evening's BBQ Gregg recounted told the story about the Ohio cop to everyone. They shook their heads with disbelief.
"You always were a lucky man," Vonelli's sister said at a BBQ. They had gone to school together.
"Not lucky. That's an old police trick and I was waiting for it."
"What was a trick?" Gregg asked with a burger in his hand.
"Dropping the pen." Paulie smiled in triumph. "Plus I wasn't drunk. I was merely hung-over. Mind you, severely hung-over, but I got over it fast as soon asI saw the flashing lights."
We toasted his escape and finished the night watching the stars revolve over the Earth.
The following morning we said our goodbyes.
"Tell Jim I said hello." Vonelli was heading back to Paris. The auctions at the Hotel Drouot opened in less than two weeks. He was flying out of Detroit in the afternoon.
"I hope I catch him." Paulie was speaking about his friend in the Upper Peninsula. "He might have left for California, but his father will be happy to see us."
We hugged the rest of the Vonelli clan. They were heading south to Florida. Paulie pointed the pick-up north. I sat in the back of the truck. The midday heat zapped my strength and I passed out in the back of the truck short of Petrowsky.
The Ford's tires hummed over the Straits of Mackinac Bridge. I woke up to the spectacle of two lakes meeting underneath us. The temperature had dropped into the 70s. and I sat up in the back to breathe in the boreal air. Canada was less than a hundred miles away.
Paulie drove for another 15 minutes and pulled off Route 2 somewhere north of St. Ignace. We slept in the back of the truck and rose with the misty dawn. Paulie bought breakfast from an Epoulette diner.
"I know these." Gregg held the hot meat pastie up in his hand.
"They're a relic from the Welsh miners working mineral deposits in the mid-1800s." Paulie bit into his. Flakes of crust scattered over his lap. "They remind me of my youth. Back in the 50s my father would drive up here in the summer. We went ice fishing in the winter. The UP was a paradise back then. Jobs, nature, and good people. Most of them gone since the mines closed. Now all you got are old Finns to stubborn to quit the land."
"Same as the State of Maine." I had been brought outside of Portland as a child. All the real jobs had headed south in the 1950s.
"Except the Upper Peninsula has a population density of 10 people per square mile. It's deserted."
Paulie wasn't kidding about the desolation.
I hadn’t seen more than three people in a clump the entire morning. The stocky men and woman resembled each other in their jeans and flannel shirts topped by a baseball cap. Few cars traveled Route 2's long straightways bordered by dense pine forests.
We pulled into Fire Lake around 3.
Paulie beeped the horn before an old farm house, whose walls had been weathered by many winters and the two-story structure leaned away from the prevailing wind. A herd of cows grazed in a fenced field. One cow stood by itself. It was not the bull.
Our host limped into the afternoon sunlight. Uvo was in his 50s. He greeted us with a firm handshake and a yellow smile. He lit an unfiltered Camel.
"Where's everyone?" Paulie’s scratched at his beard. It was more salt than pepper.
"Down at the lake fishing, but Jim left for Ann Arbor two days ago, eh."
"Sorry, I missed him." Paulie had attended U Michigan with Uvo's second son. Both were artists.
He tugged on the cigarette and exhaled a flume of smoke. "You boys fish?"
"Not much fishing in New York." Gregg regarded Uvo, as if he were a Norman Rockwell painting.
"No, guess they don't like to swim in concrete."
The afternoon sky that filled with high clouds from the north. The summer was fading fast and autumn was ready to take its place. Uvo held a pair of axes in this hands.
"Going to get cold tonight, eh. Call me old fashioned, but I believe in the work ethic. You work. You eat. No work. No eat."
The Londoner was no farmer and I was no Paul Bunyan, but we took the axes and laid into the wood.
Both of us had blisters on our hands within minutes, but as an Englishman Gregg believed in doing a host’s bidding and we hacked logs into firewood, while Paulie and Uvo drank Schlitz beer. They were examining Paulie's 45 and the shotgun. Beer cans floated in a metal tub.
"I see you guys are into the real hard work." Gregg attached no small amount of sarcasm to this statement.
"It may look like we’re doing nothing, but nothing is hard work to do when other people are working hard." Uvo sucked at a tooth. He was missing one in the front.
"We'll be joining you soon enough." I swung the ax with wild abandon. The two men backed away from us. Hard work was dangerous to someone not used to it.
Gregg and I finished our task in a sweat and joined the other two. He slung the ax over his shoulder, as if he graduated from a dude logging camp. Uvo surveyed the woodpile.
"Not bad for trolls, eh."
"Trolls?" I had been called many things in my life, but never a troll.
"Trolls is the Yopper euphemism for people coming from unda the bridge," Paulie explained, as he handed us two cans of Schlitz. The beer that made Milwaukee famous was unavailable in New York.
"I used to drink these as a kid." The gusto of the crisp cold beer brought back memories of my youth on the South Shore of Boston.
"American beer." Gregg took a swig. "The only thing closer to water is a canoe."
"At least we drink our beer cold." I had been in England. "Your beer is warm piss."
"But strong.”
"Strong beer is good." Uvo nodded his approval.
"At least Schlitz isn’t Bud." Gregg emptied his beer and Uvo handed him another from the icy tub.
I noticed a serious bruise on his forearm. The farmer glanced over to the single cow in the pasture. “Cow butted me, eh. They can get nasty this time of the year. You boys feel like a sauna."
"Sauna?" I lived next door to the Russian Baths in the East Village. Hot steam was the cure for aches, pains, and hang-overs.
"Yes, the UP wouldn’t be the Up with saunas. Most of us that haven't left are Finnish. We don’t like the hot weather, but love the sauna. It’s good for you." Uvo pointed to a traditional Scandinavian steam room next to the barn. "I build that a year after finishing my house. I got it ready for us. Are you ready for it?"
The old man stripped off his clothing and waved for us to join him inside the sauna. The three of us were naked seconds later and entered the low-ceiling hut. The gnarled farmer threw water on the glowing stones. Steam furled from the rocks and the temperature rose close to the surface of Venus.
"Good to see new faces up here, eh. Fire Lake is a long way from anywhere. Most of the people in town are tired of seeing each other. They get crabby as a bear coming out of hibernation, but nothing gets them together faster than talk of a barbecue, so if you want to see people, we'll have a barbecue."
"Fresh meat too." Paulie's was a total carnivore, although his blood pressure was that of a 300-pound man. He ate steak four times a week. The waiters at the Homestead Steak House on 9th Avenue knew him by name.
"Y-up." Tinges of Finnish clung to Uvo's accent. He scratched his buzzcut then rubbed his unshaven face. "Go shot a cow after we’re done."
Michigan "Shoot a cow?" I was a meat-eater, but my meat came from a supermarket. I wiped the sweat from my face with an old towel.
"Would rather he kill it with an ax?" Gregg joked from the corner.
“That might get messy."
“Why you killing a cow?” The English literary agent looked like a soggy mummy under his wrap of towels.
"I kill one cow every fall." Uvo stated matter-of-fact. "Keeps me in meat until the spring. The way snow falls up here you never know when you can re-up supplies."
"Winters are hard this far north.” Paulie spoke from experience. "200 inches of snow are the norm. A few communities had recorded annual snowfalls nearing twenty feet."
"I know killing a cow ain't sport, eh. Heck, I known this cow all its life. I fed it as a calf." Uvo seemed sad about the upcoming culling of his herd. "Strange, but the other cows sense what's going to happen."
"You think they tell each other?" Gregg hailed from London. The only cows in that city arrived dead at the Smithfield Market for slicing into steaks and grinding into hamburger.
"Dunno. Cows are funny, eh." Uvo stropped the edge of an old straight-razor to the sharpness of an assassin’s blade and stroked the grizzle from his face with an economy of motion.
"You feel like a shave?"
"No place better than a sauna." Uvo re-stropped the edge. My beard was scrapped from my face without a nick. Uvo pointed to Paulie and Gregg. They shook their heads.
"What are you boys religion?" Uvo didn’t wait for an answer and said, "Because up here on the Upper Peninsula we take the Word of God for truth."
"I'm okay with whatever you believe." I was a confirmed atheist, but kept my devout non-belief to myself.
"In da beginning dere was nuttin." Uvo's accent thickened to a nearly indecipherable patois, “Den on the first day God created da Upper Peninsula. On the second day He created da partridge, da deer, da bear, da fish, and the ducks. On da third day He said "Let dere be Yoopers to roam da Upper Peninsula". On the forth day He created da udder world down below. On the fifth day He said "Let there be trolls to live in the world down below". On the sixth day He created da bridge so da trolls would have a way to get to heaven. God saw it was good and on da seventh day, He went Huntin and that works as the Word of God on the UP."
"Works for me." I laughed relieved he wasn't a Bible thumper.
"Time for more beer." Uvo led us from the sauna. We toasted his version of Genesis with a cold Schlitz and raised our cans to the sky. The sunlight dried our naked flesh. The wind lipped up the silver bottom of the leaves. Uvo looked over his shoulder to the large pasture. The herd of cows were standing against the fence. The one cow was in the distance.
"That the one?" Gregg lifted his head from a nod. He was handsome in a desperate way.
"Weird, eh?" Uvo reached into the bucket and pulled out four more beers. They were going fast. "They shun that one like killing might be contagious."
Death awaited all creatures. We drank our beer. Uvo saved the empties for target shooting. The cows stared at us like we were holding a vote to change the sacrifice.
"Funny how they'll protect themselves from other animals but not man." Gregg aimed a finger at the distant cow. It moped in protest. "That's because they trust us."
"Trust?" Uvo laughed with a farmer’s certitude. "Cows ain't no one's friend and nuttins as dumb as a cow tied to a post, eh. How you think I got this black and blue on my arm."
"The lone cow." Paulie was sitting on a log. His legs were thin. The sculptor needed more exercise.
"Yup that's the one." Uvo walked over to the gate. He lifted his fingers to his mouth. A long whistle got the attention of the solitary cow. The others huddled closer to the fence. The cow shook his head.
Uvo whistled again and then banged the grain bin. Corn husk dust misted a halo around the farmer's head. The cow meandered to the gate. Uvo slipped a noose over its head. Long scars crisscrossed the haunches. Something wild had had at it. Uvo led the beast to a trellis constructed of thick logs. A pulley hung from the beam. The naked farmer fed the lead line through the pulley and hauled the cow's head upward.
Uvo returned to us. The other cows scattered over the pasture to munch the long summer grass. Gregg was sprawled against the sauna wall. The heat and the beer had taken its toll on the Englishman. It wasn't a pretty sight.
"Something wrong with that troll. I don’t want no one dying on my farm, eh."
"I’ll take care of him."
“You a doctor?"
"No, but I know what to do, my grandfather was a doctor in the First World War." I went into the sauna and came out with a bucket of icy water. I emptied the contents over Greg. The Englishman sputtered to life. Uvo and Paulie laughed as only naked men can laugh.
Hands over their genitals.
Gregg wasn't too happy with the sudden reveille, but understood that he had violated his guest privileges.
"Thanks for the wake-up call."
"No problem."
"I have some calls to make and that cow has a date with a Winchester." Uvo walked over to his house. He entered by the front door. The cow in the rear mooed our surrender. We followed Uvo’s path across the lawn. I went to my room. It was on the second-floor. The windows overlooked the cow. I stuck wet tissue in my ears waiting for the killing shot.
Uvo and Paul exited from the house. They were still naked. Uvo held a Winchester rifle. Paul had his 45. The cow mooed once and Uvo stuck the rifle muzzle in its ear. One bullet buckled its legs. Paul gave the coup de grace.
The killing took less than ten seconds.
Uvo and Paul tugged on the rope around the dead cow’s neck. The creature was ready for slaughter. I lay on the bed. The mattress was old. The sheets smelled of the seasons. I fell asleep in a minute.
I woke to the sound of people talking and the smell of sizzling steak. I got out of bed and went to the window. Meat was burning on the grill. Ten people were drinking beer; Paulie, Uvo, Grieg, three women and four men. Everyone was wearing the UP uniforms. The only way I could identify Uvo was by his red cap.
I dressed in the uniform and joined the party.
Paulie's truck was parked next to the house. The tape deck played garage music. Gregg entertained the congregation with tales of Oxford. I had heard them before, but he was a good storyteller and I laughed along with the other guests. We drank beer and ate steak. Blood dripped from our lips. The meat went well with the potato sausage and cudighi, a spicy Italian meat.
"Why are we here?" I asked Gregg with a beer in my hand. It was the only thing familiar to me.
"Because we didn't want to be in New York."
"But here?" The sky was ablaze with the sparks drifting up from the fire.
"I don't have a clue." Gregg had been quick to accept the seduction of the Upper Peninsula. We were adrift from the world. Our aluminum beer cans clanked cheaply together. "But I'm feeling very UP."
One of the women had brought a nisu, a cardamom-flavored sweet bread. Another came with juustoa or spueaky cheese and sauna makkara, a Finnish bologna. It was good eating. The sun went down quick and the stars ruled the cosmos.
Uvo gathered the empties and placed them on a shot-up fence post 50 feet from the grill. Paulie placed his 45 on the table with a box of ammo.
"You're up." Uvo put the gun in my hand.
"Blast away." Paulie was completely at home.
The 45 was heavy. I pointed it at the target and pulled the trigger fast and smooth. My third shot tore into a beer can. I scored with the fifth and seventh.
"Not bad shooting for a Troll." Uvo took my smoking gun from my hand.
We shot the rest of the ammo box in ten minutes. Only two of the beer cans survived the onslaught. Paulie put his pistol under the seat of his pick-up and I sat on the porch.
"Good steak, eh?" Uvo was aglow with beer. His good feeling was shared by his friends. They smiled broader when the stereo played DIRTY WATER.
“Delicious.” Better than anything from the Homestead. "But I meant to ask you. What were those scars on that cow."
“Bear, eh." The nisu woman answered my question. Paulie was flirting with the scrawny 40ish brunette. She wanted to dance to LOUIE LOUIE playing on the pick-up's stereo. They did the two-step.
"Yup, a bear attack that cow last spring. I shot it dead."
"Don't say that too loud, eh." The woman glanced around the guests. "Game warden hear that and Uvo has a big fine."
"Maybe $2000 for out of season." Uvo popped open another beer.
“But it was attacking your cow."
"I understand." Bears in Maine roamed the blueberry patches for a sweet treat. The police warned hikers to stay away from the patches. "Last summer in Maine I spotted two black bears scavenging a moose carcass across a river. Both studied me, as if I were food."
"Bears don't eat people. We taste like shit, unless they're hungry. Guess that bear was hungry. I shot him with that Winchester, eh."
"The same one you killed the cow with?"
"Ain't got another."
"That almost like the scene in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA where Lawrence has to shot the man that he saved from the desert in order to seal the alliance of another tribe of Arabs."
"That's just a movie. Up here a bear is a bear. A dead bear weven moreso. Uvo called me up and I came over with my backhoe." A longhaired farmer nodded his head in remembrance of that day. "Big hole, eh."
"Yup." A chorus joined by the other locals.
"That cow was a little crazy after that. Always running around the pasture and scaring the other cows. Sorry it had to go, but crazy cows are bad for milk."
"Yup." Another round of 'yups' all around. Even me.
"Bear meat tastes like pork. Best are the legs and loin." I had eaten some in Maine.
"Bears too strong for me. Too much grease." Uvo made a face.
"Plus they have trichinosis." Paul's date made a face. "Bears are no good eating. Not like steak."
"Yup."
Gregg and I joined the chant of yups, because after the fifth beer we all spoke the language of beer in the land of bears.
It was a language common to everywhere forgotten by the rest of the world.
And few places were more forgotten than the Upper Peninsula.
It was good to be away from New York.
Andy Warhol quote: "What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."
When I was a kid, Campbell’s Tomato Soup tasted homemade, especially if milk was added as suggested by the directions. Everyone ate it in 1964; the rich, the poor, the in-between, and twelve year-old boys like me, so I was pleased to read in LIFE Magazine that a New York artist had painted large portraits of the popular soup can. My mother thought that Andy Warhol’s works were funny. My father wasn’t as appreciative of his work.
"I bet you could do better with your crayons."
My father had said the same about Hollywood movies without ever letting me touch his Bell & Howell movie camera, but adults have a funny way of discouraging their children from pursuing the arts.
That next weekend I was mowing the lawn. My father was conversing with our next-door neighbor. He shouted to me and I shut off the mower. When I reached them, my father said, "I told Leo that you could replicate Warhol's painting, can you?"
My father looked at me for assurance.
"Probably."
My war cartoon entry in the recent Boston Parochial Art Contest had been awarded with an honorable mention. "Probably isn't 100%."
"I can only do my best."
"Your best?"
"Yes, sir." I never called my father ‘dad in front of other people.
"$5 says he can’t." Mr. Manzi shook his head with bemused conviction.
"I think I can." The LIFE article stated that Warhol’s big soup can paintings cost $1500 and an autographed can of the real soup was priced at $6.
“Think isn’t good enough." $5 was a tank of gas for his Delta 88. $10 was two pairs of Levis at Sawyers on Boylston Street.
"Can I bet too?" I had $12 saved from my paper route. Winning $5 from this bet had me thinking that I could afford my very own Warhol. The supermarket had to sell them. The Stop and Shop at the South Shore Plaza offered all kinds of weird foods in the specialty aisle. They have to an Andy Warhol can for sale.
"Can he?"
My father looked over his shoulder.
My mother wasn't home.
“I won’t say anything to Mom."
"Show Mr. Manzi your money.” I took out a fiver.
Then we’re on, but he has to complete the drawing in one hour." Mr. Manzi pulled out ten dollars and we walked inside the house.
"More than enough time." My father handed me a soup can from the pantry and sat in the den with Mr. Manzi to watch the Red Sox game. "Go get your art stuff."
I went upstairs to my bedroom to fetch my crayons, several sheets of white paper, a ruler, and a compass, and then hurried back to the kitchen.
"Two minutes are gone already." Mr. Manzi shouted from the den.
"I know." I pulled apart the curtains. Sunlight swarmed through the windows and I examined the soup can for several minutes and then sketched its outline onto a clean sheet of paper before taking out my crayons.
Andy Warhol had used five colors to copy the soup cans; red, black, white, silver, and gold. Getting the curve of the top and bottom right required the aid of the compass. Coloring the bottom half was simplified since it was the same color as the paper. The font of the lettering was tricky and the gold fleur de lis required a glib hand, yet I copied the symbol of the Bourbon Monarchy with guillotine precision.
"Only five more minutes." My father yelled from the TV room.
"I'm almost done." I rushed through the gold medallion.
Rendition in hand I descended to the den with 20 seconds to spare. I showed my father the image, certain that my effort would pass their inspection.
My father shook his head and gave Mr. Manzi $5.
"Close, but not close enough." My father was an honorable man and close only counteed in hand grenades.
"I don't know."Mr. Manzi reached for the paper. "Let me be the judge."
"What for? No son of mine is going to be an artist.” My father had much more austere goals set for his second son and threw the paper into the trash. He was pushing me to be a doctor. My mother was praying for a priest.
"You owe Mr. Manzi $5."
"Yes, sir." I handed over the finnif.
"This wasn't so bad." Mr. Manzi rescued the drawing from the garbage. "I’ll pay you $10 for it."
"But I lost the bet."
"Yes, but I’m buying your Warhol. Maybe someday this will hang in a museum."
I thanked him and my father sternly ordered me to return to cutting the lawn. Following the mower was easy work, but it took skills to draw a Warhol, although many magazines vilified his paintings as copies of reality. Andy Warhol had laughed at this criticism and said, "Everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes."
Warhol's fame lasted longer and The Factory raged through the mid-60s. His bohemian entourage shot movies about nothing. Sometimes naked girls lounged around the loft. Other times the men. One longhaired poet wielded a whip, while dancing to electronic music. None of their films appeared at the South Shore Drive-In and I conspired to join his circus, as did many of other Catholic school students, for teenagers were rejecting the life of church-work-family-heaven.
Tough kids slandered Andy Warhol as a 'queer' and strange too strange too, but I knew Andy could use me for his movies. There was only one problem and it wasn't that I was only 13.
His kingdom was in Manhattan, more than two-hundred miles to the south.
The sad truth was that Andy Warhol was never coming to the South Shore and Boston remained off Warhol's beaten track throughout 1965, 1966, or 1967, but in May 1968 the Velvet Underground were booked to perform at the Boston Tea Party. Warhol was filming his proteges' concert and I planned finding my share of fame.
"Let's go see the Underground", I suggested to my girlfriend, Kyla Rolla, who was inarguably my hometown's prettiest girl.
"I'd like to go, but the Doors are playing at the Uptown Bus."
Kyla was in love with the Lizard King.
"Yeah, but I really like the Velvet Underground."
I had never confessed to Kyla my ambition to be a star or my desire to leave this town for good..
"Jim Morrison's sexy, but if you want to see the Velvets, then I can go see the Doors with my girlfriends."
Kyla unbuttoned her shirt. She was well developed beyond her age. The boys in town were enough competition without opening up the field to hippies in Boston and I said, "I'll go with you."
That night the Doors performed to about forty girls and me. Everyone else was at the Boston Tea Party, although Warhol never showed up to film the set.
"Less than a month later Valerie Solanas tried to assassinate Warhol and the Factory disbanded for security reasons.
Kyla and I broke up in 1969.
I became an anti-war college student with long hair. Beer replaced pot.
I graduated sin laude from university and taught at South Boston High School during the Busing Riots of 1975. The students fought daily, despite the presence of the State Troopers in every classroom. The purgatory of the present was mirrored by the limbo of my future, then on a trip to New York I fell in love with a young painter from Brooklyn. Our love was destined to forever.
I quit my job and drove to New York in a stolen car. Ro and I made love three times that night.
The next day she flew off to Paris to study art.
My heart was shattered to shards, but not enough to force me back to Boston, so I moved into a SRO hotel on West 11th Street and applied for work as a busboy at Serendipity 3 on East 60th Street. The restaurant was decorated with Tiffany lamps and the menu offered frozen chocolate ice cream sodas. Mr. Bruce, the owner, examined my semi-Neanderthal features and said, "You're hired. Our clientele likes rough trade."
Rough trade was not really a compliment; then again Mr. Bruce wasn't Bruce Lee. His mustache curled upward like scimitars and his lisp hissed like an over-boiled teapot. He was looking south of my waist.
"I’m not gay."
"No, neither are all the boys on 53rd Street." That block was famous for hustlers.
"I’m not that type."
"Too bad,” Mr. Bruce sighed as if the forty year-old was used to playing a waiting game with young men. “You have trouble with famous people?”
"Famous? You mean like Andy Warhol famous?"
"Yes, we were the first to show his work in the 50s. Andy comes here from time to time. He likes our double chocolate frappes, but you’re not his type. He likes prep school boys, then again you never know. When can you start?"
"Now." I had rent to pay.
Ten minutes later I was in a white shirt, black tie, and black pants. All the waiters and busboys had female nicknames. Mine was Pebbles.
Serendipity was a fun place to work.
The staff knew about my thing with Warhol and joked that the pop artist would make me famous as Joe Dallesandro, who played a street hustler in FLESH
"You could be his double. Bus boy by day. Dick trader by night," said Lady Bird.
"I'm straight."
"That's what all the rent boys say."
"And nobody knows better than you," countered Lorelei, the German pastry cook. The Weimar reincarnation's real name was Klaus and we had met at Max's Kansas City. He had a thing for me and sang, "Lady Bird has to pay and pay."
"I don’t pay them for sex. I pay them to go away, bitch."
The girls at Serendipity were catty to a fault.
I might not be Andy's type, but neither was he mine. I was after fame.
Only that and one afternoon Mr. Bruce caught me checking the reservation book.
"Why are you looking in the book?" Everyone had their place at Serendipity 3 and mine was not where I was at the moment.
"I was curious. Someone said that Warhol was coming today." It was a hope-filled lie.
Mr. Bruce shut the book.
"Andy doesn't need a reservation, Pebbles. Why you looking anyway? I told you before that Andy like preppy boys. They wear blue oxford shirts, navy blue blazer, khakis, and penny loafers. But I like black leather. Want to come in the backroom to check the pickles?"
"No, thanks."
"You want to be a bus boy the rest of your life?"
"It's a living." Busboy wages more than paid the weekly nut for my room.
After work the thin German singer and I changed into black leather and torn jeans to drink at the wild bars of the West Village. Unlike Candy from the Velvet Underground's WALK ON THE WILD SIDE, Klaus was far too perverse to be anyone's darling in the back rooms and he certainly wasn’t Andy Warhol's type.
One night some gay-bashers tried to attack some queers on West Street. I stopped their assault with a broken beer bottle. An uptown nightclub owner heard about my intervention and came to Serendipity to offer me a doorman job at Hurrah's, a punk disco. The pay for a bouncer was $100/night and all I could drink.
Opening night featured the Ramones and the Police.
I said yes.
"I gave my notice at Serendipity and told the boys to come visit me. They liked straight boys just like Andy Warhol. Hurrahs' owner found out that Klaus sang rock like castrati and promised him a gig.
"I have to think about it."
Hurrahs might not be Studio 54, but big names from rock and cinema come on big nights. You'll be a hit."
"Really?"
"I guarantee it.” I was only one of his many friends to tell him the same thing. Everywhere Klaus went he attracted the attention of photographers, fashion designers, and talent agents. Each contemplated on how to make money from a Josef Goebbels lookalike with a voice of Maria Callas. Few were smart enough to see the obvious.
"I'll think about it."
Later that week Klaus agreed to open for Divine at Hurrah. His repertoire was two songs; Lou Chrystie's LIGHTNING DOESN’T STRIKE TWICE and a classic aria from Mozart. He showed up wearing in a pink suit with stark make-up on his face.
"Here's my list." Andy Warhol’s name was at the top.
"You really think he'll show."
"Divine said he would." Divine was the most famous transvestite in America. She was fat too, but funnier in John Waters films than the Flintstones or anything on TV.
"I'll make sure he knows you personally put him on it."
"Viele Danke." His Nazi salute was very discreet.
The night of the show I scrounged through the cloakroom for a blue blazer forgotten by some preppie the week before. It was a tight fit, but as close as I could get to Warhol's ideal.
Klaus laughed at my changed appearance.
"You clean up real good. Why the change?"
I couldn't tell him about my aspirations.
This was his night and I wished him luck.
My anxiety rose, as it appeared like Andy Warhol wasn't going to show up at the club. Studio had a big party. Maybe Klaus and Divine weren't enough of a draw for the King of Pop.
I helped Klaus to the stage and returned to the door with a beer. Drunkenness was my favorite cure for disappointment, but as I lifted the Heineken to my lips a Lincoln Town Car stopped at the curb. Three blonde boys got out of the back. They looked like Groton seniors on holiday. Andy emerged after the Waspish trio. His wig shone as white as a full moon on a smoky sky. People stopped on the sidewalk to gawk in awe. Cars braked on 62nd Street and I broke out of my star-struck paralysis to put down my beer.
"Welcome to Hurrah."
Everyone on the sidewalk opened a path for the White Mole of Union Square. Andy ignored them. His eyes fell on me and marked me as not his type and he said, "I'm on the list."
"Plus three." I opened the velvet ropes. "Klaus put you on it."
"Thanks." He walked inside. The three Prep boys followed him.
The entire incident lasted less than ten seconds.
After the show Klaus exited with Andy, the three boys, and Divine. Everyone at the entrance exuded raw jealousy. Andy Warhol saw none of them. I was the only person with something to say.
"Mr. Warhol, I painted your soup can as a kid. It wasn’t as easy as people think."
"Really?" He regarded me with a plastic lock of hair blocking one eye, then left the club.
"Another five seconds added up to fifteen seconds, yet I remained a nobody, but I was good at being a nobody too and that skill has lasted most of my life.
I still like Campbell's Tomato Soup too.
"Without Andy Warhol's autograph it costs less than a dollar and I can always afford that price. Hopefully forever.
None of the cops from the 9th Precinct were happy about the closing of the basement bar next to their station house in the summer of 1980.
Even fewer were excited by its re-opening as a French bistro.
Evelyn’s Bistro was another sign that the East Village was giving way to a new crowd. Not wanting to lose customers, the petite Parisienne maintained the rundown decor, employed the foul-mouthed lesbian bartender, kept the warped pool table, and cuffed the police officers a free drink for every three that they bought with cash, but the blonde chef won their hearts by cashing their checks without a fee and soothed their souls with her cassoulet.
Evelyn truly had a gifted hand at the stove and I adored her cote du porc a moutarde.
That year I was the doorman at the Jefferson. The after-hour club was located above the closed theater of the same name. Evelyn, her daughter, two sons, and friends were on my permanent guest list. Accordingly I ate for free at her restaurant. It was a good deal for all concerned parties.
As for the cops we were friends, since they were on the payroll of the Jefferson.
Evelyn's real clientele were punks, new wavers, strippers, writers, artists, drug dealers, and b-models.
Nobody had achieved an overnight success, although continual failure was no reason to stop the party, even though a meal at Evelyn’s was more expensive than the Polish food at the Kiev Diner, however the food was appreciably better and finding money was easy for people on the hustle.
At night laughter drowned out the music from the corner jukebox, the bartender poured three-second shots, and the mélange of law with disorder created a subterranean scene lurking beneath the radar of the rest of New York. I established the rules for the pool table and every Monday Night Evelyn's held a late-night contest, the prize being that whoever won the final game of eight-ball was called 'Mr. Cool' for the rest of the week.
The cops had been playing the dead rails and sodden pockets of the quarter-a-game table for years. They were unbeatable, unless they had been drinking and these cops liked their drink after finishing a long shift on the Lower East Side.
By Ten O'Clock I could beat the best of them and the table opened for Evelyn's clientele. They ate, they drank, they played pool, and they spent money. None could beat me at pool and my winning steak ran a solid month. Even Lora, the surly bartender, addressed me as Mr. Cool.
On the fifth Monday night I ran the table on my challengers. I sunk four striped balls on the break, split-pocketed a pair, and knocked down the Eight-Ball on the double bumper, after which I stepped away from the table for my rivals to battle for the chance to dethrone me. Evelyn served me steak-frites at the bar, Lora topped off my wine. The jukebox played Joy Division.
Frank deRocco came over to me. The tall cop was the precinct bagman for the Jefferson. His partner Kevin was the best pool player in the bar, but he was sleeping on a pile of beer crates.
"You know that kid over there?" deRocco eyed a young man in his twenties playing pool.
"Never seen him before. Why?"
"Because his family are 'family'."
The 9th Precinct was north of Little Italy, but the fat boys controlled the drug trade of the Lower East Side out of a 1st Avenue restaurant. No strangers ate at the Lanza's and Frank said, "Heavy family."
"Really?" My only familiarity with the Mob was from movies and walking by Umberto’s on Mulberry Street, where an assassin had murdered Joey Gallo.
"Stay away from him. That kind of Wop is nothing, but trouble." deRocco slapped me on the back and went over to wake up his partner. Kevin and he were working the midnight to eight shift.
I watched, as the trim newcomer vanquished each pretender. Despite a jaw the size of a shovel he was handsome with slicked black hair and wore a tattered 1950s suit.
Evelyn knew him. Her sons hugged him. Several girls whispered in his ear.
After beating the last competitor, he announced, "I'm Mr. Cool."
"Not so fast." I walked up to the table with a beer in my hand. He was slightly shorter than me, but gripped his pool cue, as if he might need it. I pointed to the table "I was Mr. Cool last week. You have to beat me to be this week's Mr. Cool. My break. That okay with you?"
"Sounds fair." He smiled his acquiescence and said, "My name's Vince."
"Rack the balls tight."
I chose the least warped stick from the cues and leaned over the table. My break shot smashed into the triangle of fifteen balls. I sunk one solid, then missed on the Two Ball.
"I’m feeling lucky." Vince took off his jacket and placed it over a chair. He studied the lay of his balls and dropped three balls in succession. A few customers stopped eating to watch his play.
I grudgingly admitted to myself that the young man had style, even though his shoes were obviously two sizes too big for his feet.
"Where you from?"
"Buffalo." He spun the chalk atop the cue. "Someone told me you used to have a girlfriend from there. Her name was Lisa. I knew her back then. She was hot."
"That she was." Lisa had left six months ago to model in Europe. I hadn't heard from her since.
"I went out with her a little. She was a great lay." The broad-jawed Italian didn't need to say that, but he apologized with faux sincerity, "Oh, I thought you were over her. Sorry, man."
"Nothing to be sorry about." I thought about Lisa all the time and said, "I've moved on."
"It's the only thing you can do." He blew the dust off the tip and sank another two shots before blowing a ricochet by a few centimeters.
“Tough luck." I had three gimmes positioned before the corner pockets. The fourth shot required a long carom from one end of the table to the other. I had been a math major in college and calculated the angles before stroking the ball without any English. Its trajectory off the bumper was perfect, then lost course over a warp in the felt.
"Scratch." The lantern-jawed actor declared in triumph. "I get a free shots, right?"
"It’s the rule." They were the same everywhere in America. "Looks like I'm in trouble."
"You can't win them all." He bent over the table and sunk his last ball.
The Eight-Ball rested against the bumper and he called, “Eight in the corner.”
He took a second too long to adjust his aim and the cue ball erred off the black to scurry into the side pocket.
"I win."
"But what about my second shot?" He was shocked by the loss.
"You scratched on the Eight. It’s over. I remain Mr. Cool."
"For this week."
"Now is all that matters to me."
A beautiful blonde entered the bistro with a small poodle and Lora shouted from behind the bar, "No dogs allowed in here."
"It’s not a dog." Al went up to Lora and slipped $5 into her hand. “It’s a pet and a cute one too."
"Okay, but only for you, Al." His charm worked even on dykes and he sat with the blonde.
Later I found out later that Vince and the German girl lived together down in Little Italy. Vince had family there.
One night he played at the Mudd Club with an art band. The lead singer was the darling of the Warhol set. Vince hated the lack of limelight, although a famous actor came to the gig. He left with her. The German girl cried holding her dog. I bought her a drink. She said 'danke' between sobs.
Every Monday night we played for the honor of Mr. Cool. I was more lucky than good and he was more good than lucky.
Evelyn called us 'les Mssrs. Demi-Cool'.
Early one Monday night in September the German girl came into the bar. She drank two whiskeys and picked up the cop Frank. He wasn't really her type and I asked Lora what was the story.
"I don’t know. Something about Vince and the dog. I don’t understand German. Frank will be back. He has the late shift with Rip Van Winkle." Lora pointed to Kevin on the crates. They were his home away from home, now that he was legally separated from his wife.
Two hours later Vince showed up with a black eye and a swollen forehead.
"What happened to you?" I considered Vince for all his bravado and connections a stick pussy.
"Anna hit me with a frying pan when I wasn't looking.”
"Really?" I could read the manufacturer’s mark on his forehead.
"Yeah, it's the San Gennarro Feast in Little Italy and my uncle has his concession where you have to get a quarter on a spot 100% to win the grand prize. It’s almost impossible, since the spot is the size of a quarter."
He ordered a beer from Lora. She poured it in a glass. Vince drank half in one gulp.
"My uncle was sick and asked me to take over the concession. I didn’t have a grand prize, so I grabbed my girlfriend’s puppy. No one ever won the grand prize in the thirty years that my uncle ran the game. It was a good money earner and he said that I could keep 25% of the winnings. There was no way you could lose."
"Let me guess. He taught you how to bump the game." I had seen the scam at work. Vince was right. No one won fair and square on Mulberry Street.
"A magician never tells his tricks." Al looked to the door and asked me, "You see my girlfriend tonight?"
"She split with Frank the cop about an hour ago." I could have said nothing, but as an Irishman I couldn’t give up the chance to get back at him for that remark about Lisa.
"Where they go?"
“Don’t know, but he'll be back. Her? Who can say?" I nodded over to Frank’s sleeping partner. "He left a security deposit. So what happened to the puppy?"
"Shit happens, that's what." The actor walked over to the pool table and racked the balls. We chose cue sticks and I gave him the break.
Vince was the standing Mr. Cool. He pocketed nothing on his first shot and I dribbled in two. He came back with three and scratch on his fourth shot. I got nothing and he put down one. I was well behind after he eliminated another ball. I sank two, but almost scratched leaving him an excellent lay.
"So what about the puppy?"
"Everything was cool. I must have made over $500 in quarters. You know how much that weighs? Almost fifty pounds." Al shook his head. "I had enough to pay my share of the rent and was thinking about closing down, when this Jersey guy comes up with a handful of quarters. About $5 worth. I guess I got greedy, because I said, "What the fuck." Anyway the guy misses every time and I'm egging him on. Finally he flips a coin in the air and it lands flat on the dot. No bounce. Nothing. I nudged the box. Nothing. The puppy is barking in its cage. The guy wants the dog. His girlfriend wants the dog. I offer him money. He says no and grabs the dog. I punch him, the dog escapes, the cops come and I have to give the guy $100 in quarters. Fucking mook."
"So you lost the dog?"
"Yes, I lost the dog and when I told Anna, she went crazy." Vince drew back his hand and slammed the cue ball with all his strength. It flew off the table and rolled down the bar to the door, where his girlfriend stood with Frank deRocco, who was holding the puppy in his arms.
"I find the puppy, no thanks to you." She stormed out of Evelyn’s and Vince ran after her, grabbing his jacket on the way.
The eight-ball sat on the table.
I sank it.
He didn't come back that night or the next Monday, because Hollywood called him to act in a movie.
I never played anyone else for Mr. Cool.
Vince made a name for himself out west, Lisa remained in Europe, that winter Internqal Affairs raided the Jefferson, Evelyn's remained open another two years, and every once in a while Vince's ex-girlfriend came into the bar with her poodle. It was no longer a puppy. Anna said that Vince was sending for her as soon as he had a place.
Lora gave her free drinks. They were a couple some nights. No one liked sleeping alone, but I was then Mr. Cool and Mr. Cool never minded sleeping alone.
The years passed and Vince Gallo made movies raced motorcycle and then became a fascist and will never be cool again. In fact he never was. Me? I was a loser and losers are always cool as long as they remain too stupid to surrender the struggle, Fuck you Vince Gallo.
The 1980s were thirty years in the past from the 2010s and when I told stories at the 169 Bar, my young listeners suspected that I was lying about jumping off the Quincy Quarries cliffs or nearly making love with Darryl Hannah in Jamaica or watching bears eat garbage at a Maine dump.
Sometimes I wondered if they are right, but my memory was spot on about many things like how a Paris friend and his girlfriend would leave the Bains-Douches nightclub high on heroin to sleep in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise. Guilhomme was a cold-wave musician. His lead singer Eric was squeamish at the sight of blood and tolerated Guilhomme for his talent at the keyboards.
Their crow-black band never possessed a name. A model/friend from LA suggested Les Mortes D'Aube.
"I love The Dead of Dawn," Guilhomme trilled, since he resembled an unburied cadaver. His chubby copine was a Pigalle dancer with orange hair and skin as white as chalk. She dressed like an overfed cadaver, her dress in tatters. Sex had nothing to do with their relationship. He was gay and Claudine was asexual. Their love was drugs.
Neither junkie had money for a room, so every night they scaled the high stone walls of the Pere Lachaise Cemetery to squat in a tomb not far from Jim Morrison's grave.
"It's even closer to the plinth of Jean-Francois Champollion." Guilhomme told me one night, as if the name meant something.
"Who?"
"Champollion was the man who deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphics." Guilhomme was enthralled by anything dead. His favorite band was Black Sabbath. "The Khedive of Egypt gave him the obelisks standing in Place de Concorde. It came from the Luxor Temple."
"A smaller version is on his grave." Claudine had dropped out of school at age 14. She admired Guilhomme for his brains. He was her tutor in all things good and bad.
"It's a nice tomb, but Mssr. Les Doors attracts too much of the wrong crowd." Guilhomme's snobbery was based on LA WOMAN than French pride.
"They wake us in the morning with their crying. Boohoo, Jim."
"And he isn't even dead. The cemetery workers tell me that the grave is empty."
"Ouais, Jim Le Grosse is eating cheeseburgers in Marbella." Claudine didn't like American pop stars either. She was in love with Jacques Dutronc.
"So who's the famous Frog buried in your crypt?" I asked with anger, since I loved the Doors' CRYSTAL SHIP.
"Frog?" Guilhomme looked blankly to Claudine. The French haven't a clue that les estrangers call them 'Frogs'.
"The dead person."
"There are a lot of bodies buried there. It's a family crypt, but none since 1919," answered Claudine.
"They must have been wiped out with the Spanish Flu." Guilhomme was making up a story and I was listening since it was almost the end of the night. "Their remains are cared for by neglect and that obscurity allows us to live in splendor."
"It's quiet in our crypt at night." Claudine was ready to leave.
"But not the cemetery." Guilhomme was waiting for his man. Omar had good Persian brown. "We have to keep an eye open for grave robbers. They hunt for the bodies of the newly dead. Normally they only take the head, since it's easier to hide in a bag than a corpse."
"Plus heads are 3000 new francs, while bodies are 5000 francs. Not worth their weight," Claudine said, then stop seeing Guilhomme's glare."We only go there to sleep."
"Like Dracula."
"No, more like the dead." Guilhomme obviously loved the macabre atmosphere of the ancient graveyard and painted his fingernails black to hint at a frantic clawing from the depths of the dirt. "I love my sleep."
"The grave robbers are quieter than the devil worshippers on the full moons."
"Ssssh."
"Sssssh what? It's true."
"They hold rites in the clear of the moon. They gather at special graves and dance to a music from another time. They ask us to join them. Naked. Sweating. Pagan. A knife slipping into a dog. I don?t like them." Guilhomme painted a tapestry of horror, tainted by the French people's love for their dogs.
"They scare me." Claudine?s breasts slipped in and out of her ragged attire. She sometimes worked the streets of Pigalle. Guilhomme liked to think of himself as her pimp.
“Do not worry.” He brandished a long stiletto. A tourist shop sold them near Notre-Dame. “I will cut them first.”
“They are no fools.” Claudine knew the limits of Guilhomme’s protection. “The devil worshippers are many and the ghouls are even more.”
“Let’s go.” Guilhomme spotted his Moroccan dealer. Ali worked all hours.
“Come visit us and we’ll show you the sights.”
“Thanks.” I had no interest in joining them. The stone walls of Pere Lachaise were fifteen feet high.
Guilhomme’s sojourn in Pere Lachaise lasted a summer. The crypt offered cool comfort during the hot season. Autumn brought the damp and junkies hate the wet. The two broke up and Guilhomme went back to live with his parents in Versailles. Claudine disappeared completely. No one wanted to say where.
They were haute-class. His eccentricities were a family trait. He quit drugs and became a businessman, although Guilhomme disappeared over the weekends. Eric, his singer, said, “He still frequents Pere Lachaise with the ghouls.
“I hope he grows out of it. It is so perverse.”
My 90s and 00s were spent in Asia, but in 2011 my benefactor invited me to come down from my writing residence in Luxembourg to act as a translator for his trip to City of Lights.
We stayed at a four-star hotel on the Rue de Rivoli. Our meals were epicurean adventures. Our days were spent in galleries and museums. I called on old friends. Most of them were busy with work. A few met us for dinner. My benefactor made them very welcome. He ordered vintage wines and picked up the check. I had very little time to myself, but one morning I escaped to wander through the Marais.
The old Jewish quarter had changed in my absence. Stores were boutiques and my old hotel particular had become a townhouse. By midday I wanted a drink and headed over to Rue Vielle du Temple, hoping that the Le Petit Fer à Cheval was in business.
I was in luck. The small bar was a monument to the unchanging character of Paris. The bartender was old enough to have been serving 'pression' thirty years ago and he greeted me with a nod, saying I was not a stranger. Neither was the man in the black suit across the bar.
It was Guilhomme.
He hadn’t aged a day in thirty years and I checked for a reflection in the mirror before calling out his name.
He lifted off his sunglasses to grin with green teeth.
“L’Americain.”
“Good to see you.”
We exchanged fingernail bio of the last decades. He worked for a bank. He laughed to hear that I was writer in residence in Luxembourg.
“A boring town.”
“Boring is good at my age.” I had stolen too many people’s share of excitement over the years.
“Tu a raison.” Guilhomme wore his years with a studied heaviness. He ordered an absinthe.
I asked for a demi.
The other patrons of the bar sniffed the air.
Guilhomme’s dirty black suit smelled of the grave.
“Did you go to work today?” I meant grave-robbing.
“Are you with the tax man?” Nothing frightened a Frenchman more that an audit.
“No, just that you seem a little dusty.”
“Ah.” He lifted his sleeve to his nose. “You know it wasn’t me that liked the tomb. It was Claudine. She liked sleeping with the dead. She would take off their clothes and lie with them. She liked nothing better than to fondle their cold flesh. I think she even made love to some of them, but I never watched. Sex was not my thing.”
“And what happened to her.” I feared the worst.
“Claudine” He touched a tooth like he was searching for a morsel of yesterday’s meal stuck in a gap.
“She turned out like all women. She married a lesbian transvestite farmer and moved to the Haute Savoy to be a peasant. They had three enfants. I send them Christmas cards.”
“And you?” I didn’t question any of the oddities of his last statement.
Everything was within the bounds of normal with Guilhomme.
“Moi, I don’t sleep in Pere Lachaise anymore, but I like to lay on the ground before closing to remind me that we will all sleep in the dirt one of these days.”
“But not today.” I toasted the truth of his prediction, but Guilhomme had too much of the fragrance of death on him to be healthy and I drank down my beer fast. I didn’t bother to say ‘plus tard’ and walked out of the cafe, my heart beating with life.
Later that evening at dinner I entertained my benefactor with a tale of the walking dead. My friends were thrilled by my encounter, but I neglected to mention Claudine’s love of the dead.
Some secrets are better left to the grave.
Especially about those about the living, because they might die, but their secrets live forever.
Rainy day in Paris. A great title for my sixth novel, which I will be writing when I'm 110. Spook Jacobs sent my lease renewal for 256 East 10th Street along with letters from the past five months of my travels; two from AJ, one from Sharon who has come out of rehab, from Nina Gold in London, Carmen in Cancun, one from my sister Pam, another from Miranda who had been married in LA. Considering that I sent out over sixty from Biak, Bali, Penang, Bangkok, and Kathmandu, a 10% return was darned respectable, especially since correspondence by letters has fallen into disuse at the end of the 20th Century.
300,000,000 seconds and counting until 1/1/2000.
We have fast ascended into a time of literate illiteracy.
People in the West can write, but don't, because they have nothing to out down put down on paper. TV junkies with all their thoughts told by the corporations. Luckily I have esisted any desire to be Proust, TS Eliot. My friend, Rick Temerian, said once, "Your first writing was like you wee tryin to be Scott F Fitzgerald."
I love THE GREAT GATSBY and have always imagined that Gatsby was a roaring 20s version of Arthur Weinstein running an outlaw club in the East End, oaying off the cops and dealing with the filthy rich and gin runners. I wouldn't mind writing a new 1984 or Maxie Laing's RUNNING a novel about an Irish tinker. No choice other than to be a populist writer always dedicated to 'smash the state,.
A LITTLE LATER
I had lunch with Corinne at le Comptoir. I was blathering to my sometimes lover about literature and amity with ex-s, when she interrupted by saying, "I have a story to tell you. you know Claude Aurenson."
It was not a question. Claude was the manager of le Privilege, Paris' premier boite de nuit under the Palace theater on Rue Montmatre. Corinne worked the Bains-Douches upstairs bar. She knew everyone on the scene as did I having been the doorman back in the 1980s. "Well, I see him at the bar. Last week. I hadn't seen him in months, but he invites me to a party at le Privilege and asks my name. So as a joke I gave my nom de familie as the town of my birth. He looked at the name written on the paper and says, "I was born there forty-three years ago. I asked him about his family and he revealed that he was a bastard. He was born during the war and that was common in those years, but strangely he tells me about this man who never wanted to see him and I realize his father was my uncle and Claude is my cousin. We hugged like long-lost cousins and we take a trip to Toulouse together for a family dinner. I say nothing about this story and when my uncle comes to the house, he looks at Claude and is introduced to him. They share the same first name. Claude says nothing. I go into the kitchen and my Uncle Claude follows me and asks, "Who is that man?" I tell him just a friend from Paris, but he knows full well who Claude is. their faces are mirrors. One old. One younger. "That's my son." asks Uncle Claude. I say yes and he rushes out to hug his son. After forty-three years they were reunited and see each other all the time."
I cried happy to have heard such a beautiful story. Not everyone has a tale of woe.
A LITTLE LATER AT THE BRITISH PASSPORT OFFICE.
I have noticed that my journal entries have nothing to so with events. Days, weeks, or months. Thrre is predious little happening inthr outside world, Paris is Paris. Les Parisiennes are preparing for Le Grand Depart on July 14. The USA economy is in danger of collapse as always. Unrest in the Eastern Europe is threatening the Iron Curtain and soon the World Cup begins.
Fuck Italy.
Modern sports fans are always saying that athletes from the Golden Age of Football, Baseball, Basketball, Hockey and various other sports could cut it now and they are right. Today'athletics are stronger and faster, but I can always count on Bob Gibson on the Cards or Gale Sayers or Dick Butkus and many others could have flourish in the 21st century and further argue that few modern players could have competed in the 50s, 60s, or 70s when competitors are seriously injured by rivals. I have come to hate the present rough plat of sports, but then I guess I'm getting soft in my old age. Not.
THE LAST QUALLUDES ON EARTH
Several years ago my doctor and I were cleaning out the medicine cabinets of his deceased father's office. It was in his parents' old house. where his old man had spent over 40 years caring for thousands of Staten Islanders. We were surprised to find three small boxes of Quaaludes. Their date 1979.
"You think they're any good?" My doctor asked examining one jar. Six pills were stuffed under a cotton ball. 'Ludes were the Eucharist of Disco. No girl could say no to them or after one or two. They were banned in 1979. To most people they were a myth. "Only one way to find." I cracked open the jar and jiggled out one pill. It tasted like the last one I took at Studio 54. Like I needed another half. An hour later my doctor asked where I thought I was. "In the bathroom?" Everything was so nice and fuzzy. "You're in the living room pissing into the fireplace." "So I guess they still work." My doctor and I decided to save the 'ludes for a special occasion. Ten years ago. every time I tell anyone about the 'ludes they tell me a story and beg for one. I have been a strict guardian. After these are gone they will never exist again and I feel like a hunter getting ready to kill the last do-do birds. Extinction. In 2003 my friend Randall Koral had decided to come out to Thailand to film THE LAST QUAALUDES ON EARTH. I asked about a storyline and here was his reply. "Don't worry about movie-scripting. I have a better idea. Really simple. It'll be a docu-drama-epic-adventure. It's called "Lude: Four Days of Sex and Extinct Pharmaceuticals in Thailand" and it goes like this: You told me you had found the last three ludes on Planet Earth and I thought that sounded like a good reason to meet you in Thailand with my film gear, bringing with me the last rolls of Kodachrome 40 Super 8 film on Planet Earth. We celebrate Fenway's first birthday then we head off into the unknown. My interviews with you, with you speaking on camera about why Quaaludes and life, in general, were so great in the 1970s, will be shot in video. I'll shoot everything else. Landscape et al. AndI have the ludes He still has the footage.
My father came around the world to see me and Angie in Thailand. Most of the time he had no idea where he was. It was the start of his decline. Frank A Smith II passed in 2010, but my father will always be in the here-now with the love I carry for him into the here-to-come.
Amusing yourself in a hospital
I can't believe how satisfying fucking with the robot is.
Robots built to obey Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics from I ROBOT.
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Last Wednesday I was admitted to Cornell Hospital Fter a blood test, since my liver markers were suggesting that my body had finallt figured out that my new liver was not the old one and starting rejection. The transplant team came to my river view seventh floor room and said that rejection was treatable, but would require a week-long stay. I had little choice but to agree.
Thankfully I had my iPad and charger, but the hours in a room were wearying and I began perambulations through the seventh floor. The nurses weren't happy with my leaving the ward, but its confines were not ideal for stretching my legs. I didn't run into many humans and those were mostly nurses and staff not interested in any interaction with patients. I did run into robots. they were deep into their mission. I said hello and stop. they didn't react to voice commands, so deeply on a mission.
I ignored them on the long lonely corridors, until I found a food delivery robot stymied by a loose door. I asked if it needed any help. no response. Every time it reversed the door trapped it again. After the thrid attempt I held open the door. It veered to the right to avoid hitting me, but a sublimal mean streak rose from the past and having been bullied as a young boy I decided it was time to take coup on the robot.
The perfect victim.
I scotchjumped a series of checkmates, but lost interest.
And I felt bad.
Bullying wasn't fun.
I apologized to the robot. It didn't care. It was a robot. It was on a mission.
I was only on a walk.
Venus possesses the thickest atmosphere in our solar system. Scientists have theorized the the second planet from the Sun might have once had oceans until those bodies of water were vaporized by greenhouse conditions millions of years ago. Those gases were blown away by solar winds, leaving a superheated highly pressurized atmosphere of mostly CO2 and some noble gases ie noble gases ie helium (He), neon (Ne), argon (Ar), krypton (Kr), xenon (Xe), and the radioactive radon (Rn). While impossible for humans to breathe NASA scientists have conjectured that there are still pockets of O2 swirling around Venus. The 1958 film THE QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE portrayed Venus as a planet populated by blonde voluptuous females dominating male scientists ruled by a cruel queen Zsa Zsa Gabor. Her warriors are extremely happy with male Earthlings. Real men. Hollywood never bothered to play by the rules of science. There is no life on Venus at least not as we know it. Last week smoke from countless forest fires in Quebec smothered the Eastern Seaboard. The air quality hot 410 in Central Park. The scale only goes up to 500. That level is considered hazardous. beyond that it's life-threatening, which occurs regularly in New Delhi, India. I shut my windows and hunkered down until the hazardous smog disipated into the atmosphere. Not forever and meteorologists warned that such events were likely to increase in the summers to come. I had once been in Paris and the air qualtiy had deteriorated to the point where the city grovernment banned traffic in the City of Light. The Boulevard St. Germain was devoid of cars. I sat at the Cafe le Floe luxuriating in the urban silence. No one in New York contemplated such a strict measure. Cars are our sacred cows and they existed forever in common memory. I do not have a car. I try to minimize my impact on the planet, but I still use more energy in one day than Julius Caesar had consumed in his brief reign over Rome. We are not to blame for the burning forests, the rising seas, the extinction of our species. It's an anormaly. Just like humans. One Texan evangelist preacher claimed that global warmming was caused by the Earth passing through a warmer section of the Space left over from God's Creation, while an Alabaman Bible-thumper blamed the hotter weather on our ignoring the Word Of God. More sinners are going to Hell and the flames have incrased even more so since they are outweight. Hell has a place for them all. They worship extinction. Even their own.
In the summer of 1995 my baby brother, Michael Charles Smith, passed from this world and I voyaged around the world to pray at the holiest temples and shrines in Asia. I stayed briefly in LA, Honolulu, Bangkok, and Chiang Mai.
In September I flew north to Kumming and after a few days in that Yunnan city traveled by bus from Dali to Lijiang.
A four-hour trip by bus.
Farmng villages dotted the roadless slopes of steep valleys. I was the only gwai-lo on the decrepit bus. A rice farmer opened a bottle of soda. The cap revealed a winning number. 5000 yuan. More than a thousand dollars.
I understood no Chinese, but two weasel-faced men befriended the wary peasant. They tried to get him off the bus, but the driver refused them to steal the villager's prize.
The bus driver was a good man.
We arrived in Lijiang at sunset. The city had been the capitol of the Naxhi people from the year 658 AD to 1107 AD serving as a southern Silk Road outpost for caravans from Burma, Yunnan, Tibet, and Persia. So far the old Baisha city had survived the urbanization wiping out ancient China and the centuries-old neighborhood has been declared a World Heritage site with good reason.
I picked a hotel on the outskirts of old city.
Chairman Mao hailed my arrival.
I was the only foreigner to salute the Chairman.
My hotel room on the the 4th floor room was simple. The bed was comfortable and the window offered a view of the Jade Dragon Mountain. Clouds covered the 5500-meter Himalayan peaks. The Naxi called the tallest Mount Shanzidou. In 1987 two American mountaineers had scaled its heights and said the climb was very dangerous.
I set up my typewriter on the desk, content to be far away from the awe-struck tourists on the Great Wall of China.
That night I turned on my Sony Worldband radio. The announcer reported that women from around the world were flocking to an international congress in Beijing for promote equal rights.
Hillary Clinton was scheduled to address the conference.
She was married to the president of the USA.
The BBC newsman said that the Chinese Authorities were at a loss as to how to handle these 'guests'.
There were thousands of them.
Demanding equality.
From men.
Naxhi women were hard workers. The traditional matrilineal family had been eradicated during the Cultural Revolution, however the dominant females retained the right to leave their wealth to women. Men were rarely seen working the fields.
Some tended to tourists in the old town.
At night they got drunk.
Beer was cheap in China.
I got drunk too.
Like I said beer was cheap in Lijiang.
Sadly the restaurants in Lijiang offered a very limited menu.
Noodles, noodles in a broth, scallion pancakes with noodles.
Plus a tasty Yunnan specialty.
ç‹— or gou or dog.
I had eaten dog in the Spice Islands. I ordered a plate. Backpackers regarded me with horror. Gou was a good change from noodles.
After dinner I attended a concert of Naxhi music. The Baisha Xiyue orchestra consisted of antique Chinese flute, shawm, Chinese lute, and zither.
The multi-tonal repertoire was hard on my ears and I left early to buy bootleg cassette tapes in the night market. I stopped at a stall run by Tibetans. The Buddhist nation bordered Yunnan.
After drinking a few beers at a candle-lit cafe I wandered through the darkness to my hotel. The night manager handed over the key to an ancient lady, who accompanied me to my room. I turned on the TV. A young woman was reading news. I didn't understand a word and sat at my typewriter. My fingers said nothing and I retired to bed and listened to Jeff Beck on A TRAIN KEPT ROLLING.
I fell asleep by the light of stars falling on my face.
I couldn't count how many cross the sky.
In the morning I walked down to the main square. A few backpackers were slurping down noodles. An old man ate dumplings. I signaled to the cook I wanted the same and wrote in my journal. The shuijiao were pork-filled and another welcome detour from noodles. The old man sat at my table and pointed to my block-script writing.
"English not beautiful."
He painted a Chinese character in my journal along with other characters and stamped a red print to the right.
"Love."
"Meili?"
He nodded and corrected by my annunciation.
I spoke all languages with a Boston accent.
Huang Fu was a calligrapher and invited me to his studio. He spoke good English.
"As a young man I go school for English. A lucky man," he laughed and explained his name meant 'Rich future'.
"Good joke. Father not see no one have fortune with Mao. My family not lucky. I # 1 son. Red Guard sent me camp. Almost die."
"Bad times."
"Yes, but they sent me here. Mao want kill all 'olds'. Here far from Beijing. We walk here. Red Guard beat us. We get house. Have food. Red Guard hate here. Hate Naxhi. Everyone hate them. We go back to old ways. I write. Come I show you."
His house was only a few minutes away. The walls of his studio were covered long rolls of Chinese characters. Writing implements crowded the tables. Two friends followed us inside. They told stories of exile. The same as Huang Fu. We drank tea and Huang Fu drew on paper.
"This tell story of Chinese victory over America in Korea."
He was proud of his nation's fighting MacArthur to a stalemate.
I told him about my Uncle Jack killing hundreds of PLA soldiers at the Chosin Reservoir.
"War not good."
We nodded in agreement, but I could tell that Huang Fu believed his country to be in the right, even if he was forced to live far from the center of the world and I thought about Ezra Pound's translation of Li Po's poem EXILE'S LETTER.
I went up to the court for examination, Tried Layu's luck, offered the Choyu song, And got no promotion, And went back to the East Mountains white-headed.
I loved that poem, even if Ezra Pound had lied about its origin. I was far from New York and understood the disappointment of Layu's failure.
For a good reason.
To pray for my brother in Tibet.
I gave Huang Fu a photo of me at the Statue of Liberty.
"Big lady," he laughed and said the same to his friends in Chinese. They laughed and he gave me the calligraphy poem of the USA defeat. I handed him 100 yuan. We shook hands weakly. No one in the Orient liked that Western habit.
I spotted a Chinese motorcycle on the street.
It looked like a BMW.
Zhongdian was only six hours away and the road from the frontier town ran west to Tibet.
I asked the owner in sign language, if he wanted to sell the bike.
He shook his head.
I pulled out $1000US.
He shook his head again, signaling it was forbidden for foreigners to drive in China.
That night at the hotel I learned from two Frenchmen that the road between Lequn and Nyingchi was very dangerous.
"How dangerous?"
"Fatal."
Five years earlier I had survived a head-on crash with a pick-up in Northern Thailand. The driver had been at fault and the police had forced him to pay for the repairs to the motorcycle. I was lucky to escape with just a broken arm.
Even luckier in Bangkok.
Then again everyone is lucky in Bangkok until their luck or money runs out.
Bad roads buzzkilled good luck and I decided to stay in Lijiang a little longer.
The Frenchmen and I rode a bicycle up the valley to the foot of the Jade Snow Mountains
The locals said there was a ski slope there.
We cruised leisurely down the broad valley through the rural villages. TV antennae were the only sign that this wasn't the 14th Century.
Same as 1450.
A Buddhist temple rested under trees.
The monastery had survived the Cultural Revolution.
A lone monk emerged from a garden. I explained my reason for traveling here. He blessed my late brother and asked in sign language where I was going.
"Tibet." I pointed west.
He picked up a smooth stone.
"Tibet." He said to take it to Lhasa.
I agreed with a smile.
It was on my way to the high Himalayan plateau.
Lhasa was not far away now and and my brother was coming with me.
He lived in eternity always.
We all do in the end.
