NORTH OF HERE BY PETER NOLAN SMITH

NORTH OF HERE

BY

PETER NOLAN SMITH

The only problem with Maine is that you can’t eat the scenery - James Steele 1978

MANGOZEEN BOOKS 2024

VERMONT WINTAH 1973

A blizzard buried Montreal The temp arctic. Minus zero. Crashing with two New Zealanders Across the street From the Winston Churchill Pub Only forty feet through chest high snow. To a beer was a gamble. Life, death or frozen limbs. More storms ahead On the morrow Sun. I bid adieu to my friends To Marie-Claire A waitress at the pub "I'll be back in the spring. Au revoir.”

I hitchhiked south. Boston bound. Grey low clouds Overhead Snow drops like clots of cream. A farmer drive me to the border Guards wave me through the frontier.

On American soil. No cars No trucks Only snow. And the cold cold wind. The night. Skin freezing Shivering bones Tears of ice. No traffic. Only snow and cold.

Finally headlights An Oldsmobile Toronado Front end transmission A Rocket V8 Over 4000 pounds. The V8 beast stops The lock pops up I brush off the snow Sit inside. Warmer than warm. The driver an old woman. "My name's Meryl. Can drive in this."

"I'm from Maine. We know snow."

We switched seats. I drive 20 mph Into the snowy night Headlights barely pierce the snow. The only vehicle on the road On the way to Burlington.

I stayed the night Meryl cooks stew on the stove. After dinner A fire in the living room. Whiskey in a glass.

Outside the cold. The snow. The night howls around her house. Yellow birch burns in the fireplace. Warm feet Warm hands The room pure New England The North. Wintah 1973

FIRST FIRST SNOW IN NYC 2024

No snow In New York City. Not cold neither. Three years now.

Yesterday Two inches of snow. Cold. Not Omaha cold -40. 20 degrees Fahrenheit cold. And sunny. The wind a cruel cold Fort Greene Park. The two inches of snow trampled Thousands and thousands of feets. Each child's step immortalized in the cold. Steps atop steps Like the ruins atop Troy.

The slope down from the Monument Snow flattened by children's sleds. Hundreds of sleds Thousands of shouts of glee.

This morning No one, but me and the sun and the snow And the cold. Near Arctic cold.

1957 Blackstrap Hill, Falmouth Maine Five years old With my brother, sister, and father. No sun. A gray sky. None of us cold. Inside our parkas. Children from Maine never cold Until the sun goes down. We trudge through knee-deep snow. Dragging a toboggan and a sled. To the top of Blackstrap I stand on the toboggan. Slides slowly over the snow. Arms out For balance. Picking up speed. My father, "Jump." I don't see why. More speed. I fly Faster and faster. Children in my path No stopping. I can't fall. I only fly. At the bottom of the hill A young girl In my path. No stopping Shut eyes. No thud. No scream. The toboggan arest. Open eyes. Step off. People laughing. Not my father. "Go to the car." I go, the girl's smile, I smile back. The station wagon locked. Sit on the snow The air cold, the snow cold. An hour later My father, brother, and sister Dragging the toboggan and sled. My father pulled me to my feet. "Sit in the front. I'll turn on the heat." Full blast all the way to Falmouth Foresides.

Not like today Out the wind In the sunlight Fort Greene Park Snow underfoot The first snow in three years But the same as Blackstrap, Because as my grandfather once said,"There are two seasons in Maine. The season of good sledding And the season a bad sledding." Truth in those words. Especially with more snow coming In two days. More Good sledding ahead.

THE LITTLEST BEAR

Vernon fished the Casco Bay from Peakes Island. The other day-fishers know his boat. A 1985 Seaway 22-footer running the Drunken Ledge, The Cod Ledges, Big Ridge, and the Tanta’s ‘punkin bottom’. Pollock and cod in the winter. All in sight of the Ram’s Head Light station. Vernon 56. Fishing all he know. Not speaking much, Except to the fish and his boat THE LITTLEST BEAR. Forty-one years of fishing Still has all his teeth and hair. Once a stud to the cougars at Billy Ray’s Tavern They thought he was worth one night. Not no more. He smells too much like fish.

On a sunny January day Vernon trailed two long lines Over the blister bottom of the Klondike. A good haul of cod to sell at the Portland pier. This his life. The wet of the sea, the smell of fish, and..... A three-foot wave broke o’er the bow. The sun low off the shore. No other boats were in sight. Wind from the north. Dark clouds on the flat horizon. Casco Bay not flat for long. Heavy seas ahead and behind. Still plenty of fish on the lines. Only two options; Haul in the catch or cut bait and head to the shelter of the nearest island. Inner Green. The cold Atlantic wind skates across his skin. Something bad Down East. Bad but not wicked. “Fuck it.” No fool Vernon cut the lines. Time to outrun the weather. Maybe not enough time. Throughout that evening the storm got serious. No one at Billy Ray’s Bar seen Vernon. Not asea nor ashore.

They say nothing. Saying something was bad luck. They drained their PBRs and watched the Bruins. At midnight the tavern door opened wide. Vernon. Drenched to the bone.

“Rough ride home. Two Jamie’s, a ‘Gansett.” He eyed the bar. Four other fishermen on the stools. Dry. “Get these landlubbers a drink too.” Vernon says nothing else. There was nothing to say. A lifted finger. Another round. As many afore closing Vernon knew his limit.

THE SOUL OF A SUMMER STUTTER

MmmmMagic Kkkklaxon Xxxxxray Thththat A childhood stutter and stammer slurred my speech. 1950s. Maine Across the narbor from Portland Mouth resisted the passage of the and ghs. Family and friends failed to decipher my words. Mangled consonants and muttered vowels in my mouth. Adults thought me stupid. Schoolmates thought me retarded. Three beat me. I soon understood everyone is stupid Even me.

My father took me to Maine Medical. Doctor's diagnosis “His tongue is too big for his mouth. Slicing his palate with razors will free his tongue to work more.” My father rejected their cure. “My son will live with a lisp.”

I had more than that A stammer, misjuxtaposition of syllables, lisp, mumbling Thereafter my own language. Words mine alone Understood by none.

Our family moved from Falmouth Foresides To the South Shore Of Boston A Catholic school. Nuns. Uniforms. Mass. Hide my speech. The nuns would none of that The ruler on my wrist for a sloppy ths. Same for gh Slap slap slap My classmates happy to be spared the rod The more severe nuns believed me Satan spawned. I was also left-handed.

Sister Mary Osmond understood my flaws. Scheduled speech therapy. Taught Palmer Penmanship To my right hand. Her efforts helped Sadly the bullies relentless more than those in Maine Strangely my speech in Latin was perfect Mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa. Forgive me forgive me forgive me a lot. Priests understood my Latin I believed in neither God or Satan.

1966 Ruby Tuesday Dreams of the Rolling Stones. A teenager in the 1960s seeking to live forever young. Through books. Music. The world. None of us had to speak in the 60s or 70s. Teachers and parents sought silence. Singers and poets hid me from the and ghs. We live with forgotten words, and the history of ancient scents. My girlfriend Smelling of A road tarred with peaches.

Years later. 1976. A stolen car. A city. New York City. Different from all before And everything more Not magic Only the being here more than now The spoken stood once In my way But not with poems Poems Whose power lost to the modern age But not for a boy with a thick tongue Especially with a Boston accent.

RED FISH AWASH

The ACADIA BAY 2 on the Gulf of Maine

Out in the Atlantic Above the Cashes Bank A hundred miles east of Portsmouth Calm seas Close to winter Tricky weather. Today so far okay. Sunny A slight swell from the deep. Quentin slogs through the knee-deep catch. Ninety-three minutes into his shift. Four hours on. Four hours off.

The aft awash
Red fish chewing bait.
The hold half-full. Quentin never dry, always wet. His fingers and toes Icy old. Christmas a week away. Land way over the western sea. Quentin not counting days Nor the minutes. Till land. His eyes on the height of fish in the half full hold. The net full. More riches from the Cashes Bank.

On the Horizon Another trawler The Paper Sun. Heavy with a tub of hake. The sea never looks a lot like Christmas. This far offshore. Quinton noses the air. Diesel fumes The stink of fish. The sea. Always the sea. Quinton not bathed in days. Soon Back ashore Soon New Bedford. A few beers in Knuckleheads. A burger and fries too. A night in a cheap hotel Then drive to Maine. Three hours. To Arundel His mother Sister A dog dog Penny, A bath More beer. A home cooked meal and then Christmas But not today Not Tomorrow Just hard labor If lucky Just four hours on Four hours off If wicked lucky Work 24/7 Cold and wet eevery second

Aft awash with redfish Gulls glide over the wake. The sea always the sea. The Atlantic always the Atlantic Till the ACADIA BAY II Berths in New Bedford And Quinton’s boots stomp the pier Waiting for that first bazz on Merry Yulemas to one all and none.

HUNTING CHRISTMAS TREES 1958

Fir trees lined the sidewalk On Vanderbilt Avenue Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Spruce pines. Chopped Up north from New England forests. My homeland. Trees For families and friends To celebrate Christmas. The fragrance of evergreens, As
The tree elves Elysaah, Ruth, and Bobby Hock trees and wreaths. Working hard Whilst I laze On my yuletide throne Surrounded by Trees.

Eyes closed Dreaming Of 1958 My father With ax in hand. The pine woods outside Gorham Maine. Snow on the ground My brother and me The two of us In tow In search of the perfect tree.

My mothers and the younger other us Back in the Ford Station Wagon Heat running Full blast Windows closed

On a cold winter afternoon. Our breaths hang on the air. Paralyzed by the chill. Us in red hats. Red mittens too. Always deer hunting season In Maine.

The land belongs to someone. Not us. My father very honest Except during tree hunting season.

Born in Maine As was his father And our grandfather. They know the rules. One tree a family.

I remember My older brother Before A tree taller than my father Our tree. For Christmas. My father spits in his hands We stand back. Thwock Thwock Thwock. The tree down To the snowy ground. Sap bleeds from the stump. Leaking the scent of pine Into the winter air.

Same as today on Vanderbilt Avenue. Hundreds of miles away from the Maine woods. Decades distant from my youth. Clouds overhead Colder by the minute. The scent of a hundred pine trees

The same As The Maine Woods 1958 An Evergreen memory From long Ago

Now Winter Coming Soon. As always Wintah On Clinton Hill And up in Maine. Especially Gotham. Merry Yulemas. One and all.

WINTAH MAINE

Walking a back road From school No sign of the sun Leaden clouds overhead Fields frozen stiff under deep snow. A northerly wind from Montreal. Grey slush underfoot Cold wet seeping Through soles Another slog to Grandmother’s house. Where waits A warm pot belly stove. Pull off boots Peel off sox Stick frozen toes Under the hot stove Aaah.

A cup of tea Milk and sugar Aaah.

No more the cold Grandmother’s house Maine winter Only another half-mile To go Till Grandmother’s house And Spring Another four months away Counting the days. To April Flowers No snow. Flowers. Ahhhh.

NAKED TO THE COLD SEA

Early 70s On Nauset’s nude beach Hippies not yet punks. A thick ledge of wet seaweed The high tide mark. Off with our clothes

Lay on the cool green algae Our bare bodies sink beneath the sludge. Comforted by the ocean’s flotsam. The summer sun We stand as one. Naked to the elements We laugh Our seaweed skin hued the cold blue-green Eyes met Understood. All As one into the ocean. Waves. Current. The Atlantic. The seaweed freed from our skin. Naked youth.

Hippies not yet punks 1972. Young.

SEAGULLS IN THE AIR

Age six, my best friend Chaney and I The end of the McKinley Road on Falmouth Foresides. Portland across the harbor. Water A Maine blue. Seagulls skate the cloudless sky. Chaney pulls out darts from his father’s den.

Hands me one. I throw Hit a gull. The bird flutters to the mud flat. Blood. Waves laps over its wings. The sea takes its own. Chaney puts away the darts. I hadn’t even aimed at the gull. We walk back home. Not a word to anyone. Not even to Cathy Burns. Whom we both loved her. He was eight. Always will be eight. I will never forget him.

Cumberland County Kingdom

From the Kezar Pond to Saco Bay. Old Orchard Beach to Bailey’s Island. The land of my youth. The summer camp on Watchic Pond Built by my grandfather. A frontline surgeon in WWI France. A retreat from the horrors to Maine With a nurse, my grandmother. A noble woman from a 9th generation Maine family. A family of five. One my father

A huge farmhouse In Westbrook under the shadow of the SD Warren paper mill. Cumberland County a land of tall pines. 1960 My best friend Chaney. Found a basket of dead puppies. We threw them into Portland Harbor. The tide took them to sea. My innocence destroyed by death.

Four years later a big-breasted girl at a drugstore counter. “Will you walk me home?” At 12 a walk was a walk. I stuffed my comic in my jean’s back pocket. Drained my vanilla soda.

A walk with the girl. A path along the Presumpscot River Past the paper mill. No houses. No voices. Trees. The grinding of the wood saws across the river The murmur of cars far from Main Street. In the woods. She lifts her dress over her head. Her breasts puffy pillows.

Touch. Soft. Nipples hard. They belong to her. Not Barbie. She sighs. I run. Chased by her laughter. To my grandmother’s house. Upstairs to a bedroom with sea murals I lay in bed. Watching the headlights across the painted sea. East and west. Into the Atlantic.

Peter Nolan Smith is devoted to the magic of poetry and New England.

Despite a stammer, stutter, lisp, and a tendency to mumble, he has been blessed with the power to recite poems lost to himself the seconds he says them.

That is poetry.

Magic.

The wind, the sea, and of course chowder.

mangozeen.com

North of Dover-Foxcroft.

December 15, 1978 - East Village - Journal

Last night I ran into John Kemp, with whom I had worked for the New School student registration. He suggested going to CBGBs. I thought about saying no. Alice waited at 256 East 10th Street. We haven't touched each other in weeks.

"Sure, why not?" I agreed to the walk down the Bowery. A cold winter night. I was wearing tennis shoes. Wet from the melting snow. Nothing was happening at the bar and Lang joined us for drinks at Grassroots. The downstairs dive was packed with locals from the scene. Beer was cheap and I downed a few shots of cheap well whiskey. I looked at the phone booth more than once. Telling myself to call Alice, but didn't want to hear the silence on the other end. Things are not good with use. I haven't told anyone anything about her being late. Laing gave me a chunk a hashish before I left at 3. I was really late, but not so drunk. I have a problem of handling my liquor too well. I was surprised to see Alice still wake in the bedroom. She had been reading Ionesco. A dramatist. I had no idea what he wrote. I tried to read it several times without getting a hook. Too esoteric for me. I have a simple mind.

She looked, as if she had been crying. That happens a lot. She never says why. Do I make her so unhappy. Coming in this late must hurt her, but she never speaks with me. She goes to meet with her friend, Susan, and never wants to do anything with me, as if I am the sole cause for her possible pregnancy.

"Where have you been?"

"CBGBs first and then Grassroots with John and Laing." I wasn't drunk, but I wasn't sober either.

"Why didn't you call? I was worried about you. I thought you might have gotten hurt or killed or..."

"Or fucking another woman."

"Well, of those three choices, fucking is probably the most likely." She didn't dare accusing me of infidelity. I recognized her fear. I had been violent at Irving Plaza during the fight with Blondie. My bruised ribs from the betting felt better, but I was sure everyone of her friends had portrayed me as the aggressor, instead of the victim. My reputation is not that of a saint.

"Would you have wanted to meet me?" This was the most we had spoken in days and we weren't done. "Truth is I don't now. Last month all I wanted was to be with you."

"And now?"

"You never want to be with me."

Alice was leaving for the holidays in West Virginia with the divorced mother and father, shuttling between Charleston and Huntington. I sat on the bed and held her hand, surprised she hadn't withdrawn from my gesture.

"I know things are not good between us. This possible pregnancy, ahving to deal with feuding parents, trying to do the show, debts, dealing with me. You're going to be gone for two weeks. Skiing most of it." I hadn't skied since leaving New England in 1976. There were mountains north of here. The Catskills weren't New England and the Adirondacks were too far away from the city.

"Maybe this time apart will be good for us."

"Maybe."

The last time she left for DC she returned cold and mean. Nothing like the woman I love. Days passed before she was the Alice I love and that abyss will be crossed again.

Foto by Ann Sanfedele >

Last night I ran into John Kemp, with whom I had worked for the New School student registration. He suggested going to CBGBs. I thought about saying no. Alice waited at 256 East 10th Street. We haven't touched each other in weeks.

"Sure, why not?" I agreed to the walk down the Bowery. A cold winter night. I was wearing tennis shoes. Wet from the melting snow. Nothing was happening at the bar and Lang joined us for drinks at Grassroots. The downstairs dive was packed with locals from the scene. Beer was cheap and I downed a few shots of cheap well whiskey. I looked at the phone booth more than once. Telling myself to call Alice, but didn't want to hear the silence on the other end. Things are not good with use. I haven't told anyone anything about her being late. Laing gave me a chunk a hashish before I left at 3. I was really late, but not so drunk. I have a problem of handling my liquor too well. I was surprised to see Alice still wake in the bedroom. She had been reading Ionesco. A dramatist. I had no idea what he wrote. I tried to read it several times without getting a hook. Too esoteric for me. I have a simple mind.

She looked, as if she had been crying. That happens a lot. She never says why. Do I make her so unhappy. Coming in this late must hurt her, but she never speaks with me. She goes to meet with her friend, Susan, and never wants to do anything with me, as if I am the sole cause for her possible pregnancy.

"Where have you been?"

"CBGBs first and then Grassroots with John and Laing." I wasn't drunk, but I wasn't sober either.

"Why didn't you call? I was worried about you. I thought you might have gotten hurt or killed or..."

"Or fucking another woman."

"Well, of those three choices, that is probably the most likely." She didn't dare accusing me of infidelity. I saw that she feared me. I had been violent at Irving Plaza during the fight with Blondie. My bruised ribs from the betting felt better, but I was sure everyone of her friends had portrayed me as the aggressor, instead of the victim. My reputation is not that of a saint.

"Would you have wanted to meet me?" This was the most we had spoken in days and we weren't done. "Truth is I don't now. Last month all I wanted was to be with you."

"And now?"

"You never want to be with me."

Alice was leaving for the holidays in West Virginia with the divorced mother and father, shuttling between Charleston and Huntington. I sat on the bed and held her hand, surprised she hadn't withdrawn from my gesture.

"I know things are not good between us. This possible pregnancy, ahving to deal with feuding parents, trying to do the show, debts, dealing with me. You're going to be gone for two weeks. Skiing most of it." I hadn't skied since leaving New England in 1976. There were mountains north of here. The Catskills weren't New England and the Adirondacks were too far away from the city.

"Maybe this time apart will be good for us."

"Maybe."

The last time she left for DC she returned cold and mean. Nothing like the woman I love. Days passed before she was the Alice I love and that abyss will be crossed again.

December 13, 1978 - East Village - Journal

I was born in Boston.

Raised on Falmouth Foresides
And the South Shore.
In 1976
I left for good.
New York bound,
Two years now
Yet I miss New England

The White Mountains
The Maine Coast
Old Orchard Beach,
Portland's Eastern Promenade
The two old schooners rotting off Wicassett

Decaying river towns;
Lowell, Manchester, Saco, Chicopee, White River Junction
Beaches,
Nantasket, Wollaston, Horseneck Beach, Truro,
Cape Ann, Gloucester, Marblehead, the Beverly Salem Bridge

Lobstah, fried clams, Italian Sandwiches, and damned Chowdah.

From Lake Champlain across the Green Mountains
To the Connecticut River

Over the White Mountains
On the The Kancamagus Highway

Down to Newport and Across the Block Island.
New England. Oh New England.

Bridgeport, New Haven, New London.
We are not New York.

South of Boston

The Blue Hills
Swimming in the Quincy Quarries,
Tramping to the top of Chickatawbut
At 517 feet to the east
Big Blue to the west
635 feet.
Nothing taller from the Hudson to Mount Cadillac in Acadia
Just Blue Hill Tower
The hills of my youth
Of my teen years
Sex with Linda Imhoff
At Eighteen atop Rattlesnake Hill.
No forests
Fifteen generation trees
Stone farm walls
Tumbled by the frost
Bog ponds and swamps
My home town.
Forever New England.

Beyond The Border

Over the years my friends' sons and daughters suspected that my travels were connected to the CIA or some criminal enterprise. My denials only confirmed their opinions, mostly because none of them wanted to become their parents, unless they were rich.

Recently young man contacted me on Facebook and asked if I was in Thailand to transport drugs. Thai police are very strict on traffickers and I have never entertained any business enterprise involved the shipment of drugs within or outside Thailand, however back in 1994 I was motorcycling north of Chiang Mai with two Italian friends. We reached the northernmost point of Thailand, Mai Sai, and stayed at the idyllic Mai Sai Guesthouse. Butterflies floated over the tropical flowers and young Burmese children swam in the river. I was content to drink a Singha beer, but they wanted more.

"More?"

"Prego, opium." They chorused this mutual desire.

"Don't say that too loud." Undercover Thai police specialized in entrapping westerners. I tried to deter their obsession, but they were relentless and I said, "I'll see what I can do."

I set out for the western mountain crest marking the frontier on a 250cc ATX. No police patrolled the road. No passport control either.

I spotted an old man from the Yao tribe. I asked him if he knew where to find 'fin' or opium. He nodded with a toothless grin and pointed into Burma. I thumbed behind me and he jumped on the back of the trail bike. We drove several kilometers on an unpaved road to a small village of thatched huts and runny-nosed kids. He spoke with several men and came back with five fingers up.

"$50?" I asked and he smiled once more.

The money was the Italians, so I wasn't losing anything, if he disappeared into Burma. I handed over the dollars. He and another man drove off in a pick-up . I sat in the village watched by everyone like I was a TV showing an American sit-com without subtitles. After twenty minutes I started getting nervous. I was in Burma without a visa looking for drugs. Potentially big trouble. A truck was coming up the hill. I got on the bike and started it in case the truck belong to the Burmese police.

It was the old man. He got out of the truck with a garbage bag of pot. Five pounds at least. I shook my head.

"Not ganga. Fin. Opium. Horse. Ma."

None of this filtered through our language barrier, but he lifted a finger for me to wait. He went into a hut and returned with a bag of white powder. It looked familiar and tasted familiar too. Chinese # 4 Heroin.

I thanked the old man and stuffed the cellophane bag into my boot. Thais are very wary of people's feet. They consider them dirty and my boots were caked with dust. I drove back to Mai Sai through several Thai police checkpoints without any incident. In my room I showed the bag to the Italian.

"This is not opium." They were disappointed until we chased the dragon.

This was the real gear and I explained that opium was tough to find now that the DEA waged its war on drugs along the border. The growers refined the opium into heroin for easier shipment. The Italians could have cared less. They were in oblivion and by the end of the week they were hooked to the gear. They wanted more, but I wasn't pushing my luck. I gave them directions and headed back to Chiang Mai.

I never saw them again.

I explained this my friend's son.

"Right." He preferred to believe his own story and I was guilty as charged by a teenage mind. Better than the real thing, because I like my freedom and I know better than to do something that stupid now I'm a grown man. At least anyplace other than the Golden Triangle.

December 12, 1978 - East Village - Journal

Poor Alice bears the financial brunt of our relationship. Beyond that she is my love and a good woman to my heart. We still haven't had sex and she hasn't had her period. Three weeks and she sleeeps in the other room. I hear her crying and try to comfort her, but I haven't the money for an abortion. Not that I want one. I want a little us, but she doesn't want to hear that destiny. Despite the success of her shows, she beats herself up and I have no way to advise her about the future.

My mother and father came to town and we dined at our regular spot, McBells on Sixth Avenues. No one calls it Avenue of the Americas. I ordered a cheeseburger and Tommy deMastri offered us a bottle of wine from the congenial owner. Francis likes my younger brother. All my gay friends do. We enjoyed ourselves and returned to the apartment. I fronted to my parents, that the apartment was mine, instead of ours. Alice was embarrased at our living situation. Upon her departure, my mother slipped me $20 and said, "This place is fine for now, but I don't want to see it as part of your life in two years."

"Neither would I." I can't explain to them my lifestyle of hangin out at CBGBs every night. I can't explain it to myself other than I love it.

I walked them to the corner. They are obviously out of place on East 10th Street with the pack of sinse dealers on the corner, who respectfully wished us a good evening. Criminals to the police, but they always watch Alice's back.

I put them in a yellow taxi and Frankie, one of the Puerto Ricans with whom I played basketball, came over and asked, "They your mother and father?"

"Yes."

"Your old man is good looking for his age and still has some of his hair. A lot more than most white men. You'll look like him in thirty years. And te madre, very beautiful."

"Thanks." After thirty years of frosting her hair blonde my mother has decided to go natural. No more hair spray. BACk when we were young my older brother and I stole her aerosol cans and taped them together to exploded in a hidden bonfire in a nearby sandpit. Our attempts to convert them into multi-stage missiles failed without failure.

I love my parents, strange since I hear so many friends badmouth their parents. My father always told me the truth and my mother has always wanted what was best. Easy since my father never said anything and my my mother wated what shethought best. They must worry for me; no job, no career, but they had politely listenedto my poetry during dinner. I just don't want to end up like my Aunt Mary's beau. Peter Willen was an old communist, heavy smoker, and had horrible teeth, but he loved my aunt to the end. So my fear is only being loyal to someone I love.

Vernon fishes Casco Bay Small Point to Two Lights Nets full of cod and blues His dory was known Islanders saying, "There goes Vernon." Until in November A savage gale struck A Nor'easter Arctic seas A cold heavy sea. Not relgious Vernon curses God A mean philistine Sending such storms "Bastard." Two days later Coast Guard finds his dory Smashed On the rocks of Small Point Not far from ashore. Vernon never comes to land He died at sea A fisherman's way.

December 11, 1978 - East Village - Journal Entry

Last week slipped out of existence without any resistance to the daily grind of waking past noon, Alice embracing me until three, Her going to Irving Plaza, while I wandered the East Village until six, having a drink in a Polish dive, then return to 256 East Street to watch TV, sleep and repeat. An unhealthy rut, but tonight was the first meeting of the National Resurgence Party at the downstair bar in Irving Plaza. I was surprised by the turn-out; Kim and the Kyle, Lang, Joseph Curtin, Mombo, Grant, Alice, Mitchell, John Kemp, the British shoemaker, and Jim Fouratt, Who fought at Stonewall, who's more interest in having sex with me than my humorous take on American politics.

After Stanley, the manager brought us a round of drink, I announced that the NRP will officially launch in the New Year with a meeting on the Staten Island Ferry to propose the occupation of Greenland, whose premise is a joke since the USA has no interest in world domination after the Vietnam Debacle other than to capitalism in the USSR through the sale of Coca-Cola.

Yesterday Metro-Novelties went well at Irving Plaza, even though David McDermott narcissistic madman routine of a Stock Broker losing his mind after the Stock Market crash of 1929. Not that he was a jumper. David heroically had helped rescue Patti Astors's husband after he fell of Tom Sculley's roof, but he has been replaced as emcee by the Mumps Kristin Hoffman, who is so funny and musically talented.

Klaus Nomi was the headliner and his popularity has spread beyond the gay demi-monde. We remain friends, but one day and one day soon he will be a star and stars have little time to space of light bulbs like myself. "Lady Bug' Hickman performed he erotic acrobatic routine and I wondered what it would be like to have sex with such a flexible female. Alice and I haven't touched each other in weeks.

Her rat-thin witchy friend Susan glares at me as if I were fucking her cat. She really is a cunt, but thankfully I have nothing to do with such a soul ugly harridan. Lance Loud lovingly covered the Sex Pistols'ANARCHY IN THE UK, then anonymous yet profane version of THE NUN Story followed by the ever popular Businessmen in Space. They are so Devo.

Kim Davis shared the stage with her partner ripping off grafitti tee-shirt after tee shirt, who looking like the illegitimate Jewish son of General MacArthur, complete with sweep-over. Traci Sherman deep-throated fire, accompanied by scantily dressed go-go girls in punk leather. Some egomaniac declared himself THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE. I wanted to throw him off state and suggest so to Alice. Her girlfriend Susan sighed with man-hating ennui, so I shouted the Center of the Universe, "Fuck you.You suck. Someone should have killed with at birth."

Susan gasped and I realized she was fucking this loser unbeknownst to her boyfriend, Tom, but then she's not the only one who hates me. Donna Destri still holds a grudge as my fight with with Blondie and I say to John Kemp, "Fuck her. She has legs like horse and tits as flat as pancakes. Alice and Susan walked away from he and John said, "Don't worry about them. All Susan thinks about if fucking Alice."

"Thanks for the comforting works."

In truth I was a little jealous, as the trio of Alice, Tom Scully and fucking Susan have successful introduced vaudeville to the East Village and the modern world . They are stars, but I never wanted to be them and in truth I'm happy not to be them either. I remain faithfully no one.

A TASTE FOR THE EAST 1990

My first trip to the Orient was in 1990. A round-the-world ticket. One destination was Singapore. The Straits city was already undergoing its metamorphosis from a colonial port to a gleaming metropolis of skyscrapers. Raffles had been closed for renovations. I stayed at a cheap Chinese hotel in a decrepit godown. The walls climbed toward the ceiling without reaching their destination. A yard of wire covered the gap. The bedding had been soiled by a thousand weary bodies and the fan spun with lazy fatigue. That night I left the room and wandered toward the harbor, looking to drink beer. A Punjabi rickshaw driver stopped by me.

“You want ma.” His clothing had been shredded by a decade of useless washes. His body had been dessicated to bones wrapped in parchment. His eyes shone with a dull want.

“Ma?” Horse in Chinese. The word had one meaning in New York City. “Where?”

“I know place.” His claw of a hand beckoned to accompany him. Drugs were contraband in Singapore. The penalty for possession was death in the most grievous cases. A long prison sentence for anyone else foolish enough to challenge the system. Most arrests came from informers such as this rickshaw driver, who said, “I not police.”

“I know.” Snitch maybe, but the appeal of opium was an old friend. I climbed into his vehicle and we traveled into the night far from the new towers of glass and steel. The streetlights were dim in this neighborhood. Several doorways were populated by Indonesian transvestites. Others by Chinese whores. Men drank openly on the sidewalk in rebellion against the Singapore leader’s draconian measures for public behavior. The rickshaw driver braked with a whining screech.

“Here.” He looked over his shoulder to check for anything out of place. “My name Rami. This place good. Give $10.”

I handed over the money. We entered the battered house. The smell of opium greeted us. I tapped Rami and gave him another $10. “One for you. One for me.”

“You good man.” Rami smiled with two front teeth. The rest had been rotted as brown as cigar butts.

An old woman of indistinguishable racial origins led us into a tiny cubicle. The furnishing were two wooden benches and a wax-covered stool. Sweat shadows marked the proper position for lying on them. Money passed hands and she shut the door. Rami produced tin foil, which he tore into two separate pieces.

“Sorry, no have pipe.”

“I know how to chase the dragon.” I opened my packet and dropped the black ball on the aluminum foil. Rami rolled two paper tubes. A lit candle illuminated the room. Rami was an expert and I followed his lead.

“Good horse.”

Within minutes we were transported to another century before planes, telephones, and movies. Back to when Opium was king and I was its slave. Years later I went back to find the opium den. A shopping mall stood in its place, selling nothing I wanted. Only fancy perfumes and expensive shirts. It was better that way for the rest of the world and I went to Raffles for a Gin Sling, looking for Rami every step of the way.

He had to be in the shadows somewhere.

Men like him never die.

Not if they know what is good for them.

A STORY OF O by Peter Nolan Smith - 1994

In 1994 Crazy Santa possessed a special guest card to the Russian Baths on East 10th Street. The steam room crew began to heat the river boulders at 6am. The two-ton stones glowed red by 7:20. The Schvitz opened at 8 AM, but Crazy Santa was in the dry steam room at 7:21. He was a rich junkie, who was the last family member of an 18th century fortune. Heroin had not ruined his sense of entitlement.

As a permanent member I could have entered the Baths at that bastardly hour, except my alarm clock was set for the opening. At 8:10 I exited from my apartment two doors down from the entrance with a towel over my shoulder and strolled east rain, sleet, snow, or sunshine.

Every morning day on my short walk I witnessed autumn's surrender to Winter, the snow on the sidewalk, the ornamental pears blooming in Spring and the return of the hot sticky Summer.

I liked the look on the day workers' faces headed to the subway. Their eyes questioned my destination. The Baths weren’t for everyone. It was a temple to cleanliness and rejuvenation, in which the weight of a night’s hard drink evaporated after thirty minutes in the 180F heat.

One Spring morning I entered and spotted Crazy Santa on the top tier of the heat room. His white beard remained fluffy, despite the Venusian temperature, then again his body fat was less than zero.

I knew the Jersey heir to a deodorant fortune through my Uncle Carmine, a Sicilian plumber married to a Aunt Jane, a distant aunt from Maine's Cumberland County, which she called 'the last place on earth created by God'. We weren't really blood, but Carmine and I conducted business on various projects hidden from the rest of the family. Crazy Santa had a small room in Uncle Carmine’s basement. The walls were covered with torn hippie posters. He paid no rent.

Crazy Santa’s real name was John Lyon. His other alias for the addicts of the Lower East Side was Junkie John. He was a sucker. His family had had big money. THe sole heir Crazy Santa inherited the remains, which had mostly been invested in his veins.

The previous Christmas I helped him turn $80,000 of stock into gold coins, which wasn't an easy thing in 1993, since the Feds were after drug dealers laundering money. Collecting the coins on West 47th Street took a little time. Returning to his bullding between B and C Avenues, I asked Uncle Carmine, if I should fuck him.

“He’s going to get $2 million at 50.” Uncle Carmine was patient. “We’ll get him then. He promised to take care of me.”

Trusting junkies was a losing proposition. I said nothing. Carmine also knew the risk.

Crazy Santa lost the gold coins to his crackhead girlfriends within a month. We hadn’t spoken since the sale.

The near-albino nodded, as I sat opposite him in the gaseous vapors hovering under the ceiling ceiling. Crazy Santas’ skin was parched dry as a Death Valley corpse. Junkies like vampires don’t sweat, unless they are jonesing.

“Hot, huh?”

“Always hot this hour.”

He spat on the floor.

"Do me a favor. Don't spit on the floor."

"You don't own this place. You don't make the rules."

I grabbed him by the hair and shoved him.

"You're right. Just don't do it again."

“Sorry, you wanna smoke some O?” Somewhere in his head he suspected that I had ripped him off on the coin deal. I had only taken a 5% commission, but the only truth junkies believe are the lies they tell themselves He wasn’t man enough to blame himself and stood up with a towel around his waist.

“It’s a little early.” I wore a fluffy towel and my own flip-flops. The ones at the Baths were cheap. Like wearing paper towels and cardboard sandals.

“No one’s here and anyone who is here lets me do what I want. Money buys freedom.”

I remembered how he talked about his money. I should have left, but followed him to the front of the Baths. I hadn’t smoked opium for years.

"You know I know you and Carmine are waiting to rip me off. You think you're so smart, but I went to Harvard."

"Did you finish?"

"No, but I know your type. A loser from the lower classes just likeCarmine. You'll both get nothing in the end."

We entered the bathroom and he pulled out a glass stem. We lit up a small ball of black tar. The Tongs had run thousands of opium dens in New York. Chinese rocks had killed off most of their clientele, but this morning Crazy Santa had opened one on East 10th Street. The aroma was Golden Triangle, although the country of origin was Mexico.

Tijuana black tar.

Heroin.

I faked my inhale. John like most junkies only cared about his high. The heroin flitted through his blood and he sagged against the wall in a nod. I took off the key wrapped around his wrist and went upstairs to his locker, quickly rifling through his clothes. I left the dope and pilfered half the money. I returned to the bathroom. He was still breathing and I slipped the key back onto his wrist. Upstairs I showered, dressed and said my good-byes to the owner.

“Where is Crazy John?” The owner had another name for Crazy Santa Claus.

“In the bathroom?”

I nodded, wiping the sweat from my face. A little of the D ranin my arteries. Work would be tough for the first hour.

“High?” asked David.

“Yes.”

“I will make sure that he doesn’t die.” Dead people were never good for business.

“I could care less.” That was the drugs talking and a little bit me too. David and I spoke the same language. Always apathetic to junkies. They were their own worst enemy and ours as well, but he was right, given the chance I would take him for it all, then again losers are never that lucky.

JUNKIE

Back in the 1980s on several occasions I espyed Burrough’s walking corpse crossing Grand Central, his unpolished shoes slithering over the marble floor with an effortless gait. No hello. We knew not each other. I sometimes a drunk. He high and listlessly heading to score dope, his once elegant suit hanging off a scarecrow frame, awaiting a breath of wind to show that he was alive. Just. A rich man’s son. I loved JUNKIE. Glad not to be him. A murdering junkie. No one’s hero, except as a slave to heroin. William Burroughs.

A counter-culture icon. When the filthy rich proposed to build the Andy Warhol Museum on the Lower East Side, I thought better to have the Museum of Junkies with twin statues of Burroughs at the entrance.

“The old junky has found a vein... blood blossoms in the dropper like a Chinese flower... he push home the heroin and the boy who jacked off fifty years ago shine immaculate through the ravaged flesh, fill the outhouse with the sweet nutty smell of young male lust.” NAKED LUNCH

SKATING ON THIN ICE by peter nolan smith 2011

Thailand's monsoons arrived at the end of the Pattaya's low season in April 2022, but none had ever been lower than this Covid season. Hotels offered special rates and the few working girls at the even fewer bars and go-gos called everyone 'sexy', but the global travel chaos due to the deadly pandemic has forced the Thai Tourist Board to revise their typically optimistic projection for arrivals to the Land of Smiles, especially after monumental rains flooded the center of the country.

Cities and villages were underwater. Transport was impossible on the inundated highways. Food grew scarce to find and the monsoons weren't expected to ease until October.

My family and I lived up the coast from Pattaya and news of the empty bars filtered north.

"Thailand not have farang," said Mam, as we drank Leo Beer at our small house in the hills.

"You have me and so does Fenway." And the rest of our clan.

My son was happy. Fenway had his father to drive him around SriRacha.

"Many girl go back home."

"To Isaan?" The impoverished plateau had supplied Bangkok, Pattaya, and Phuket with a steady crop of bar girls for decades.

"Better now live on rice farm. Pattaya not have old men. Not have young men. No men. No money. No rice. Everyone get skinny.

"But never as beautiful as you." We had been together for years, although most of those year I worked in Europe or the USA. I had two families to feed.

"Barg wan."

"Yes, I have a sweet mouth. More beer?" I regarded the sky. Dark clouds approached from the Gulf of Siam. Black lined the bottoms. Lightning crackled through the air and Mam ran inside to unplug the TV and fridge. I shut off my cell phone. Electrical storms were a force to fear in Thailand.

A minute later the rain fell hard, then harder, and even harder. I lit a kerosene lamp. Fenway didn't like the dark and I held him close. Thirty minutes later the storm passed over SriRacha heading inland.

The sun came out and the street steamed with a rising mist. I turned on my phone and it rang immediately. Sam Royalle was on the other end.

"Did it rain by you."

"Not a drop." Sam resided in Pattaya.

Twenty miles to the south.

"Bucketed down here." I hadn't seen Sam in a while. He had been working on a new website.

Sixteen hours a day, so I was surprised when he asked, "Feel like coming out for a beer tonight?"

Sam Royalle liked go-gos. We normally drank shots of tequila. He conversed with people despite 110 dB levels. His Bedford accent worked well in loudness.

"If it isn't raining."

"No excuses. I'll take you out for a steak."

Sam had been living in Thailand over ten years, but remained a boy from Bedford.

"You ever think about changing your diet?"

"What you expect me to eat? Thai food?"

"It's good enough for sixty million Thais." Few of them were overweight.

"I'm British. We eat British food. Only British." The Brit did like a good plate of curry and pad Thai, which I never ate. It had no kick.

"So see you around 7." He gave the address of a new steakhouse. "It's very classy."

"I remember classy. Seven, then." Classy for farangs in Pattaya meant no wife-beater t-shirts.

Back in the last century only the Dusit Thani was the only classy resort in Pattaya, but times had change.

"You go out with friend?" asked Mem.

Fenway was eating chocolate ice cream.

"Sam wants to have a drink."

"Go-Go bar."

"I guess so, but I only think of you."

"Hah, all men lie. Think of me with naked lady. You very funny."

"It's the truth." My thinking only of her was the truth, but no women will believe that.

"True not true. Same same. I know you. One drink look lady. Two drink talk with lady. Three drink only think drink. That truth."

"Yes, it is." I liked holding hands with a glass of gin-tonic.

A little later Mam, Fenway, and I ate at KFC. She dropped me at the bus stop at Tuk Com on Sukhumvit. Traffic was heavy and the sun was going down. I kissed her and hugged Fenway.

"Mai mao, papa."

"No, I won't get too drunk."

Mam gave her blessing.

"Sam take care you. You take care Sam." Her spies covered Walking Street. Their network posted agents on every soi. I was a good boy and good boys never get caught doing bad.

"Chan lak ter."

And I did love her, as I jumped on the bus.

Thirty minutes later I got off at Pattaya Klang and hopped on a motorsai, telling the taxi driver, "Walking Street."

The ride to Pattaya's Second Road took less than ten minutes. I walked over to Walking Street. Farangs were a rarity on that gauntlet of lust. The desperation on the go-go girls' faces was a cruel mirror of hard times. Every girl sang the same chorus "Take me home."

"Bang thi teelang."

"Maybe later. Maybe never. All farang kee-nok."

Sam and I ate a great ribeye steak at the classy restaurant.

He looked healthy for the first time in years. His new business venture was off the ground. Sam was looking at a million dollars in two years time. It all sounded good in a go-go bar.

Sam suggested hitting Heaven A Go-Go. The upstairs bar was the best in Pattaya. I hadn't been there in months, but several girls knew my name. They were friends of Mam. We drank beer. Two bottles. The owner of Heaven bought several rounds of tequila. Paddy had run a pimp bar in East St. Louis. He was most men's hero.

Sixty-five and running a go-go bar. He was my hero too. East St. Louis was tougher than Pattaya back in the early 1970s.

"Any girl you want. No bar fine." I thanked Paddy for his generosity, but refused about twenty nubile dancers before midnight. I told them the same story.

"Mai mii keng leng."

"I can give you power." Their bare bodies smelled of youth and a promise of a trip to heaven or hell. I wasn't interested in either destination after ten beers and deserted my bar stool at Heaven Above a Go Go, telling Sam Royalle that I was going to the bathroom. Three naked girls were on his lap. He wouldn't notice my departure.

The night air on Soi Diamond was strangely cool. The moist wind carried the threat of rain and I walked to 2nd Road rather than be tempted by another drink on Walking Street.

Two transvestites grabbed my arms at the top of the alley. The pair were armored in black shiny leather. They towered over me in their spiked heels. Masochists would have paid to lick the their feet. A hand slithered into my pocket. Her fingernails raked my thigh for plunder. The Shim found my wallet. It only had 2000 baht, but all my ATM and credit cards. My struggle to break free was futile, until the pickpocket yelped with pain.

"Pai loi." The voice belonged to Jamie Parker, a friend from the Lower East Side. "Get fucking lost."

"We go. Come back too." The taller TV sneered with a helium alto. Her manhood throbbed in a leather bikini. I felt inadequate.

"Good luck then." Jamie stood his ground. Almost sixty he carried the menace of the killer paroled after eleven years hard time.

"Yet mun." The she-boys strode off to find easier prey.

"I had things under control."

"Didn't look it to me." He handed back my wallet and coughed like a backfire from an out-of-tune Harley, although I suspected his hack hadn't come from smoking cigarettes.

"You're right. Those ka-toeys are tough." I count on bruises on the tomorrow. The indentation from their nails would fade faster. Mam's suspicious mind wouldn't clear for months. I asked Jamie, "What happened to you?"

Jamie's body had been perennially thin. Drugs and diet, but his face was gaunt and Panda black circles masked his eyes.

"I look that bad?" He stared at his reflection in the 7/11 window. He wasn't the type to lie to himself about his looks.

"Yes, you look that bad." Ja-bah was bad. The cheap speed was addictive. "You need some money?"

"A thousand wouldn't hurt, but it isn't for what you think."

"Jamie, you can do what you want with it." I was no angel.

After dark any money you give a friend had to be consider a gift. I pulled out a purple note.

"I don't feel like it, but then I'm not the boss." He stuck the bill securely in his jeans pocket. "Mind if I walk with you a bit?"

"I'm just going to get a taxi."

The eyes of a passing policeman convicted Jamie of several crimes. He could never go back to New York. His sin against the state had a long statute of limitation.

"Let me give you a ride somewhere."

"Yeah, there's too much light here." He lowered his head like someone might be following him. I fought the temptation to look over my shoulder. A taxi took us to 3rd Road for 200 baht. It was safer than a motorsai taxi.

At the Buffalo Bar I ordered him a beer and waved for the girls to leave us alone.

"Man, it's been a hard month." He sat on the stool as if he had been on his feet for days. "But you don't want to hear about it."

My mother had prayed for her second son to accept an avocation to join the Cloth. I refused the priesthood after hearing Led Zeppelin's first LP in 1969, but she had been right. I would have made a good priest or at least a confessor. Everyone liked to tell me their secrets.

Jamie drank his Chang beer in less than a minute.

"I'm all ears." I downed my first in sixty-five seconds.

"You ever hear of Ice?" he whispered the word with guilt-ridden worship.

"Crystal Meth." The drug had hit the fly-over of America hard. The cops had cracked down on traditional drugs and the dealers synthesized a smokeable speed from ephedrine, the basic ingredient for over-the-counter cough medicines. The substance was equally available in Thailand. Big Pharma was behind it all.

"That's the one. The Nazis used to give chocolate bars laced with the stuff to Luftwaffe pilots." Jamie was a vast abyss of useless knowledge. "Kept them flying for days."

"And you started smoking it here?" Drugs are readily available in Thailand, although opium, heroin, grass have been supplanted by ja bah and ice thanks to the repressive interdiction of the Thai Police and DEA.

"With Ort." He shrugged to indicate his complete surrender.

"Ort?" I knew Ort from Soi 6. I hadn't seen her since her boyfriend left her for a transvestite five years ago. The little vixen wanted to be my geek. I had refused with deep regret. Ort was very sexy. 23 and looked 16. She was every man's vice.

"How you run into Ort?" She was a girl around town. I stayed out of her path. Even her saying the words 'I have' got me hard with the thought of the pipe.

"She was dancing at Paris A Go-Go. Told me to meet her after work. We went back to her place. A little furnished studio. Bed, TV, AC. She asked if I minded if she smoked some ice. You know me. Anyone can do what they want as long as it doesn't hurt someone else." Jamie's heroin addiction had stolen his youth. Cocaine took away his edge as a comedian. His taking up with speed in his fifites could be a show-stopper. "Don't look at me like you were a Parole Officer, who discovered a bad blood test. You're no angel."

"You're right." I had disappointed Nancy Reagan too many times by saying 'yes', instead of 'no' to throw any rocks without breaking windows in my own house of glass, but I tried my best to avoid drugs in Thailand. Prison here was worse than any of Jamie's stateside time.

"And you're right too. I knew it was dangerous, but did it anyway."

"And how was it?" Jamie didn’t need a lecture and I was curious about ice and Ort.

"Ice is nothing. No rush. Shooting speedballs is a thousand times better for a high."

"So what the attraction?"

"Sex." Jamie spoke low, which was a little strange in a bar, where every girl was looking for a date. "I thought she wanted me only to buy some ice. 1000 baht. But once we had a few pipes, she said she was hot and asked if I minded if she took off her clothes. Another bowl and mine was off. A day later and we were still at it."

A binge. "How many days?"

"3-4. I took Cialis to keep up my strength." Speed and Cialis were tough on the heart, however Jamie was hardy enough to survive hardcore XXX games. "And then another four days and we had sex the entire time. I had to stop because the skin on my penis wore off. Ort wasn't happy and started screaming for it. It was like being with a nymphomaniac. A tyranny of sex. I told her I was going to the ATM. I didn't come back."

"How much money you spend?"

"About 15000 baht and I lost about 5 kilos."

"Cheaper than Jenny Craig's or Weight-Watchers."

"I don't have the weight to lose like you."

A loss of five kilos would put me close to the fighting weight of my early 40s.

"And you didn't go back?"

"Don't trust myself. It's not the Ice. It's the sex, the ice, the lying in bed with nowhere to go." He drank his beer with a thirst to quench another demon. "Sawan."

"Heaven." I was impressed Jamie knew the Thai word for paradise. Nah-Lok meant 'hell'.

"A little hell too, which we both like."

"Without sin, there is no pleasure," I loosely quoted Luis Bunuel, the Spanish surrealistic film director. "So now what?"

"I changed my SIM card # and started clean again." He ordered another beer. They were going down smooth. "Not 100%, but close enough. Another few days and I'll be back on top of the world."

"More like top of the slag heap in this town."

"As long as it's a foot higher than anyone else, you can see the stars." Jamie had a way with words, which slurred after our fifth beer.

I invited him up to Sri Racha. He made Mam laugh. Fenway liked playing with him. On the third day he left for Pattaya. I drove him to the bus stop on Sukhumvit.

"Take care."

"I know how to do that."

"And how not to too."

"Something else we have in common."

At the end of the week I was packing my bags for New York. I had to go back to work at the Dimaond Exchange. My flight left in the morning. Mam hated being alone. Fenway is a very busy boy.

The phone rang in my pocket. It was Jamie.

"Are you okay?"

"Excellent." He was running promo events for bars and restaurants during the low season. The next is an erotic hot dog eating contest at TiggleBitties Tavern.

"What about Ort?" I whispered the name. Mam has good ears and a jealous soul. Some people question her love. I know better.

"Haven't seen her or been to anywhere she goes."

"Smart move." Ort was a girl to avoid, which is why I no longer answered her calls anymore. "I'll see you next time around."

"Send my love to Mam and little Fenway."

"They will like that."

I went into the living room. Fenway was trying to load two discs at the same time into the DVD player. I told him, "No."

He didn't like hearing that word in either Thai or English, but just saying 'no' can save your time these days, especially when you're skating on thin ice.

HillBilly Ranch Bar Boston - 1999

As you get old you forget. as you get older, you are forgotten - anon

I know that I didn't come up with that quote, because I haven't really forget everything yet and several years ago I reminisced about Lost Boston with a few old-timers during an afternoon Jacob Wirth's bar, while killing time waiting for the Chinese bus back to New York.

The girthy fifty-year olds were both members of the court, a judge and a DA, and I introduced myself, asking if they knew my brother, who had worked as a lawyer in Boston for almost thirty years.

"You mean 'No Show' Smith. I can't count the number of times we've requested his presence here and he never shows."

"He's a hard worker."

The sharp winter sun filtered through the thick front window. No music played on the stereo and the TV showed the rerun of last night's Celtics game. At that moment there was nowhere else in the world closer to heaven.

"And this isn't hard work." The DA slugged down a Jameson and signaled for three more.

"It can put a sweat on you, but not like digging a ditch." I had been working as a general contractor on a rich man's house in Greenwich, Connecticut. My hands were calloused from the toils of construction. The three of us were of Irish descent. Our grandfathers had suffered hard labor to make our lives less of a struggle. "Holding a shovel is more honorable work."

"To the Big Dig." The judge raised his glass. The tunnel under downtown Boston had replaced an elevated highway.

"Sorry, if I don't join you, but they dumped the rubble into the Quincy Quarries." The project planners had dumped more than 5.4 million cubic yards into the granite pits.

"Now the Quarries was something. Most every teenage boy south of the Charles River had jumped off Rooftop."

"Here's to Brewster's Quarry" The bartender appeared from nowhere and placed four glasses on the scarred wooden plank, joining us to toast the longgone Eden.

"Remember when they didn't let women drink at the bar here?"

"Yes, bck in the early Sseventies I used to bring my feminist friends here as a joke. They hated that the bartender wouldn't serve them at the bar. "He loved telling those hairy girls to take a seat in the dining room." I couldn't remember his name, but we agreed that back then a woman's place wasn't at the bar in Jacob Wirth's. I was of a different mind now. "I thought it was a good laugh."

"Maybe the bartender didn't think it was that funny. You were probably a dirty hippie and I mean that in the best of all possible terms. I was a Marine."

From South Boston?"

"Yes." I had taught at South Boston High School during the Bussing Era and decided not to mention that.

"Not many choices for young men from Southie back then."

"Prison, OD, or the Marines. None of us had the money for college."

"A wise choice. I protested against the Vietnam War." At sixteen I wanted to join the Marines to get out of my hometown. My mother, a staunch anti-communist, refused to sign the papers.

"You dirty hippie."

"I'll drink to that."

My brother showed up later and our collective memories toured the city of our past. We extolled the prune rolls at Warmuth's, the grilled hot dogs at WT Grants, the strippers at the Two O'Clock Lounge, and relived my brother's bachelor party in the Combat Zone. It was a blank in my mind.

"I vaguely recollect stumbling out of the Naked I into the Hillbilly Ranch. I think I wanted to hear a version of Meryl Haggard's MAMA TRIED."

"We lost you for about an hour."

"Probably ended up with the drag queens at the Other Side." William laughed with his beer belly juggling like defrosted jello. The beer at Jacob Wirth's was better than good.

"No, I'd remember that. At least I think I would, but something sticks in my mind about getting up on the stage of the Hillbilly Ranch and singing a song." Later I had seen Sleepy La Beef, John Lincoln Wright, the Bayou Boys, and other southern bands of the 70s at the dive next to the Greyhound bus station.

"That was a tough bar owned by Frankie Segalini. You were lucky that you weren't rolled in that place. it was filled with Navy peckerwoods and crackers. They didn't like us Irish."

"You returned to the Naked I intact." My older brother had a head for long ago. He was a lawyer.

"And we made it to the church in time."

The four of us clinked glasses to those times gone by. It was good to be with my older brother and two members of the court. We spoke of our lies

The 1978 Blizzard, the Chelsea Fire, BC beating Notre Dame, Checker Cabs, friends, family, the Surf Nantasket, Brother's Bar in Kenmore Square, and the taste of fried clams from Tony's on Wollaston Beach.

Afterwards I walked my brother to his office on Beacon Hill. The bus station and the Hillbilly Ranch were gone. Neither of us said anything about them. We were happy to have seen each other and spend time together. We were in the now in a city we knew so well. As youth we had thought that the good times would never end and they never do in your heads, especially after spending an afternoon at Jacob Wirth's>

Florida Postcard 2/28/78

This is a postcard from Florida dated Feb 28,1978. Hilde was on a road trip with her extended family; four of her younger siblings, two step siblings, two dogs, her mother Kate and Joe All in a van. My friend Andy was living at the family's Brookline compound with Hilde's older sister, Therese. He can't recollect that trip, which took place after the great Northern Blizzard of 1978, which buried the Northeast from Buffalo to Boston in over three feet of snow. I lived through that winter in a West Village SRO. 27 WEST 11TH STREET. A single room with linoleum floors warped by too many bare feet. Oh Florida.

Hilde - Dear Peter, I just tramped through the Everglades with sighting a single reptile. Palm Springs is very quaint. Florida is --- Dirty, ugly ( like New Jersey ), boring, and rainy. Cold and rainy. THe Hartnett girls are having a fashionable vacation. Luxury all the way. The van unbearably smells of dogs. Winnie and Damion are restless. Mother and Joe are ____we should have known better. Pray for us. Hilde.

Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud. 2010

Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud.

James Brown sang those words to the entire nation.

Even the KKK heard, but back in the 1960s not everyone was listening to the singer of PLEASE PLEASE ME, since black music could only be heard on the far ends of the AM radio spectrum. I twisted the knob beyond WMEX and Arnie Ginsberg to find a universe of music unknown to top 40 radio. Station WILD. Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave, Booker T, Tina Turner, and James Brown. Civil rights meant freedom for the soul. Blacks were welcome on TV. Ed Sullivan even, but no one was ready for James Brown on WHERE THE ACTION IS singing PAPA’S GOT A BRAND NEW BAG.

His mad feet swiveling across the stage killed my waltz lessons for good. My mother called it devil music and I became a dancing fiend. no Marvin Gaye. As a soon-to-be teenager, I knew if I could dance like James Brown, girls would go crazy and I tried to perfect his split.

Drop dead with your balls to the floor and then up again.

A miracle if you survived the first attempt

I got me a pair of black shiny pointed shoes. Just like James. A suit too. Black. My mother thought I was going to be a priest until she spotted the Cuban heels.

“You’re bound for hell.”

All I wanted to be was James Brown’s Wonderbread double. My older brother thought I was crazy.

“You’re never going sweat like him.”

James Brown poured a typhoon of sweat night after night after night, because the Godfather of Soul was the hardest working showman in the world and he was more than that too.

But not to everyone.

Back in the day a feminist said that someone who hit his wife after she was huffing crack in his private bathroom and led the police on a Macon County car chase didn’t deserve any accolades.

No one is 100% saint and JB didn’t get Rodney King beating for that regrettable episode. He did time for the crime and his life was much bigger than one mistake.

April 4, 1968. Martin Luther King had been shot by an unknown assassin. James Brown had been scheduled to play the Boston Garden. The frightened city officials considered cancelling the concert, until the performer convinced them to televise the concert. Before the first song he dramatically appealed for the city to remain calm. Roxbury and Blue Hill Ave didn’t go up in flames and the next day James Brown flew to DC to preach peace in the nation’s #1 Chocolate City.

That show might have been broadcast in black and white, yet proved Poppa Peacemaker was one color.

“It’s the night train.”

Agent 00SOUL played the 1969 Newport Jazz Festival to thousands of hippies waiting for Led Zeppelin. My brother and I were two of them. Nipsy Russell primed the crowd with the dirtiest comedy routine this side of Moms Mabely and the master blasted the long-haired audience out of their seat with a two-hour performance. There were few sights uglier than hippies trying to dance to soul. Mr. Dynamite showed them the way. By the way Led Zeppelin sucked.

“I feel good.”

What about Maceo Parker’s JB horn section?

Tight. Everyone loved James.

Richard Nixon invited him to the White House in 1972.

“I don’t care about your past.”

James liked playing live.

In 1974 he appeared at Boston’s Sugar Shack, a pimp club. I was the only longhair at the bar, but the stylish procurers welcomed a fellow fan with open bottles of champagne. I didn’t attempt any splits and neither did anyone else.

Certainly not during IT’S A MAN WORLD.

We called out for PLEASE PLEASE ME as an encore and James Brown didn’t disappoint us. He went down on his knees a dozen times with his MC putting the spangled cloak over his shoulders. Helped to his feet the show appeared over, but the Godfather was a big tease and loved the applause.

From everyone.

“Ain’t no drag, poppa’s got a brand new bag.”

Wowing the Studio 54 disco crowd or inflaming a New Wave audience with soul the Mudd Club in 1978. Africa Bambatta spun SEX MACHINE thereafter to set the dancers’ feet on fire.

“I don’t know karate, but I know crazor.”

In 1979 I was working at a rock disco. Hurrah’s on west 62nd Street. My bouncer was Jack Flood, an old Harlem gangster. The ex-heavyweight from Seattle drove a Lincoln and had hands the size of catcher mitts. The first time we met, Jack flicked his middle finger into my palm. An old homo sign.

This coming from a man who fought a six-round exhibition with Joe Louis in 1950.

“I lost every round.”

We were friends. Jack and me. One night three Puerto Ricans tried to bust into the club. I punched their leader in the mouth. Jack laughed saying, “That was a love tap. Here’s how you KO someone.”

His punch paralyzed my shoulder for an hour.

After midnight I went upstairs to have a drink and came down with a cognac and coke for Jack only to find him and his nephew Marvin being stabbed by the PRs. They had come back with friends and knives. One slashed at me. Jack stopped him with a left and then pulled out a revolver. One shot into the ceiling. The PRs fled and Jack gave me his piece. He was bleeding in the chest. So was Marvin.

“Shoot ‘em.”

I ran outside and pointed the gun at the attackers.

I was no killer.

Two shots in the air.

They jumped into a taxi and disappeared with the cops in pursuit.

“You done good. Get rid of the gun.”

I went to the roof and dropped the revolver into an airshaft.

Jack stayed in the hospital a week. No charges were pressed. The police detective showed Jack’s record. Long is not the word. When he got out of the hospital, I told him James Brown was playing at the Lone Star Cafe.

“James Brown. I know him.”

I got tickets and Jack drove us downtown in the Lincoln. He didn’t stop for lights and backed up on 5th Avenue against traffic without looking in his mirror. He parked the black car before a fire hydrant and we strolled to the door. The place was packed, but we noticed the bouncers weren’t taking tickets and inside we gathered these tickets and sold them outside for $10 each.

We split $1000.

James’ show was 14 band members of soul bliss.

Afterwards Jack took me upstairs to the dressing room.

James greeted him, “It’s the Seattle Slaughter.”

I shook the master’s hand and Jack brought me out of the dressing room before I blubbered too much.

High point in my life along with shaking hands with Muhammad Ali and RFK and never paying taxes.

Jack and I hung out a lot and one night we were watching the 1st Roberto Duran/Sugar Ray Leonard fight. We had bet Duran and won about 2Cs each. As we were celebrating he tapped my shoulder.

“Turn around and tell me if you recognize anyone.”

I did.

It was the PR who had stabbed Jack.

“I got some business to do. Nothing to do with you.”

Jack and Marvin vanished with the PR.

Didn’t come back to the bar either.

That was New York 1979 and it was the end of an era. Jack Flood stayed up in Harlem. Marvin was shot dead in a basement. I moved to Paris.

Soul was dying and somehow people stopped listening by 1980. Disco didn’t like live music, but James Brown kept it up and in 1982 he appeared in Hamburg Germany in front of 200 people. I was with a black pimp called Nigger Cali.

Almost as tough as Jack Flood.

Same show.

Knocked me dead and everyone else and within the year he appeared in ROCKY IV singing LIVING IN AMERICA and he never went out of style again. Everyone wanted to be James. Rev. Al Sharpton even Condeleeza Rice.

Same hair, n’est pas?

“Get up of that thing and relieve that pressure.”

But on Xmas the godfather left the show and I’m listening to HOT PANTS.

“Smokin’.”

I ain’t crying because James wasn’t about the blues. He went out a showman.

“I love hot pants.”

And so did Jack Flood.

And so do I.

NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR THE BLUES

No one wants to hear the Blues.
Leadbelly or Buddy Guy
Easy to figure out why
It had to do with the weather.
A long winter
Not too cold and too littel snow
Long and it wasn't over yet.

Spring a month away
Everyone ready for the Easter Break
The Bahamas, Florida, Mexico
Anywhere but here with the Easter Bunny.

I want to see flowers
The Easter Parade.
Not today,

No one to listen to the Blues
Robert Johnson scratching his guitar
Moaning MILKCOW'S CALF BLUES

"It just ran down my leg."

Those hard times Down South.
Ain't worth one fake dime
Up here in the North.
People wishing for The end of winter and the flowers in the trees.

Can't you see the night
Can't you feel the cold
Rain keep fallin'
Not spring yet.

And I followed her to the station
with my suitcase in my hand
It's hard to tell
when all my love is in vain.

MILKCOW'S CALF BLUES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qPA2tZ2gk8

A Man is A Man 2009

The American ideal for a man has been based more on movie characters than reality. Bravery has been defined by cinematic shoot-outs and wisdom quoted from famous films. Politicians have long recognized this weakness in the voters' psyche and their press attaches strive for photo-ops mirroring Hollywood moments.

On May 1, 2003 President GW Bush flew in on a hailed for his MISSION ACCOMPLISHED appearance on the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. Uniform, jets, a sea of sailors spoke victory to the masses watching the staged scene on TV.

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed and the regime is no more". Although Bush added, "Our mission continues" and "We have difficult work to do in Iraq.". The Eternal War on Terror still reigns over the world withthe Pentagon repeatedly failed to admit that the USA has yet again lost another war.

The foolowing President Barack Obama also has a perchance for playing to the camera, although his bow the the Japanese emperor during his tour of the Far East was regarded as a sign of defeat by the talking heads of Fox News.

"General MacArthur must be turning in his grave."

The American Caesar never bowed to any man or god-king.

He had his movie moment before Congress.

"Old soldiers never die, they simply fade away."

MacArthur was pushed out of his position of Far East Caudillo by a KKK president from Missouri for disobeying a direct order. Truman wasn't abut bowing to the military, however Barack Obama's bow to the Japanese emperor was not a sing of submission as much as one of respect. It was only a limo dance in reverse because the emperor is almost a midget.

Respect accomplished.

Next stop.

Washington and Obama has no intention of bowing to the GOP over health care.

At least we hope not.

Maybe If I Was More Barry Than Barack May 2008

In 1860 three weeks before the presidential election an eleven year old girl wrote this letter to the Republican candidate from Illinois.

Honorable Abraham Lincoln

Oct. 15, 1860

Dear Sir

My father has just home from the fair and brought home your picture and Mr. Hamlin's. I am a little girl only eleven years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter. I have got 4 brother's and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husband's to vote for you and then you would be President. My father is a going to vote for you and if I was a man I would vote for you to but I will try and get every one to vote for you that I can I think that rail fence around your picture makes it look very pretty I have got a little baby sister she is nine weeks old and is just as cunning as can be. When you direct your letter direct to Grace Bedell Westfield Chatauque County New York

I must not write any more answer this letter right off Good bye

Grace Bedell

Abraham Lincoln granted the young girl's wishes and grew a chin curtain beard also known a Donegal.

He won the election and Became the first American president with a beard.

Barack Obama must get thousands of similar letters every year, but judging from how divided the country is on Race, many political pundits must been wondering why our first black president has taken measures to whitify himself a la Michael Jackson.

That would catch the KKK by surprise, because this election might be about jobs, but the real issue as always is equality and no growing a beard will free us.

Once you go black, you never come back.

ps even racists have to have a sense of humor.

Q. What would you get if you crossed Albert Einstein with Barack Obama? A. E = MC Hammer

Abe And Marilyn and Blackula

Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclaimation in 1863. Slaves were freed throughout the South. Their liberation awaited the arrival on the Union Army.

"Free at last, hallelujah."

The unchained darkies' paradise last a few years, as the South instituted Jim Crow laws aimed at their subjugation to sharecropper lands. The police and mobs below the Mason-Dixon Line punished any loose-tongued niggers with the noose. Lynchings occurred with frightening regularity and Africans fled the South throughout the 20th Century in hopes of better days, only to have Northern factory owners conspire to break the spirit of blacks by underpaying their worth. The 1919 Tulsa Massacre taught spades that no place safe existed for a black man, woman, or child in White America.

I taught high school in South Boston during the Bussing battles of the 1970s.

A Massachusetts state judge ordered the Boston School Committee to rectify the racial imbalances within the city without including the lily-white suburbs. Poor Irish teenagers were transported to the poorer neighborhoods of Roxbury.

Divide and conquer amongst the old slaves, for the Irish were transported to the Americas as slave as well as the Africans of the West Coast.

And nowadays the battle lines are drawn by color.

Black and their supporters versus an aging White America threatened by the rising number of Latinos and Chinese flocking to the fifty states. Riches and safety await them, because White America is only interested in keeping down the blacks.

A nigger has to know his place and that is why Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson.

He mouthed off to a white cop.

Treyvon was murdered, because he was a black boy in a hoodie.

Akai Gurley had it coming, because he was black.

Tamir Rice was shot dead by cops.

At least one a day in these United States.

And white people say these killings are no racist.

No, they are almost right. Cops kill people, because they are poor and dead men can't tell their side of the story.

Whites prefer the nice lies by the people they have entrusted to protect them from the blacks.

Murder is just another price to pay for sleeping safe and sound at night.

ZZZZZZZZZ.

In your sleep.

Blackula will come to get you, whitey.

Me too, but I'm eating tons of garlic just in case.

He looks more like Abe Lincoln than Marilyn Monroe and there is nothing I want more than Marilynula sucking my blood in bed.

I'm a sucked for a stone-cold dead blonde.

Lost At Sea

As was will be 360 degrees of darkness Black below. The Pacific Ocean. The ship The sea The sky Blackness Where is the captain? The sea slows, The ship speeds at 18 knots Stars blink on and off, on and off Never true blackness Only the dark. Where is the first mate? Engines slow to half-speed The heading Singapore Due west Two thousand plus miles Five days away at a faster pace Where are the crew? A glow to the east Not the sun Far from land Asea Not the moon Maybe another ship After a half-hour The light drowns beneath the horizon Leaving Only me on the late night Pacific Watch Where am I?

Washington's Birthday - 2015

Today America celebrates President's Day to honor past presidents, but especially George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. New York only recognizes George Washington on his birthday of February 22, 1732 almost three hundred years ago. Gilbert Stuart painted the Father of the Nation as a white man as had countless other artists, however historically many English male colonists sired children with female Africans, because white women couldn't survive the climate or the summer fevers. Not all of the forefathers were white. They were only painted white. Was George Washington white?

The Virginian owned 123 slaves.

His views on slavery changed through the years.

"Here is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for this abolition of slavery but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, and that is by Legislative authority."

-GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1786

According to mountvernon.com Washington also explored ways to reduce the number of enslaved people at Mount Vernon without selling them. Most ideas involved renting or selling land to finance an emancipation. He was unable to execute any of these plans during his lifetime.

Were it not then, that I am principled against selling negroes, as you would do cattle in the market, I would not, in twelve months from this date, be possessed of one, as a slave.

-GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1794

Only the year before he had a slave woman whipped for refusing to work.

Her name was Charlotte.

There was no good in slavery.

No good in owning slaves.

Washington freed them all at his death in 1799.

Slavery remained the GM of the South until 1865 and thereafter with the Jim Crow laws subjected Africans to enslavement of another kid.

Father of a Nation.

No slave owner can claim that title.

Us against them.