All Saints Day

Yesterday was the Catholic Church’s All Saint’s Day celebrating the over ten thousand saints acknowledged by the Vatican since the festival came into being in the Fourth Century post Jesus’ birth. This liturgical holiday commemorates thousands of known only to the Bearded All-Knowing Deity. Later in that millenia according to Wikipedia on 13 May 609 or 610, Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon at Rome to the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the martyrs and created the feast of dedicatio Sanctae Mariae ad Martyres, which has been celebrated at Rome ever since. The date was chosen to supplant the Roman pagan festival of Lemuria, during which malevolent and restless spirits of the dead were honored by the living.

Pope Gregory III switched this day of prayer to November 1, thus coincidingwith the Celtic Day of the Dead, hoping for pagans to switch to the One True Faith. The Church was very adept at adopting pagan ways to attract converts. As a devout Atheist I never view the Catholic saints as a connection to a non-existent Supreme Being. We are all just people. For better or worse, although I am drawn to Brigid of Kildare who suffered conversion from paganism after her death. On her feast day February 1 I used to up to St. Patricks Cathedral to light a candle. The church officials in the 90s covered her statue to prevent pagans from worshipping her. They never stopped me. I carried my own candles to acclaim her holy Soul. After all she had discovered how to make beer and if that’s not a miracle then what is.

Restem en Pacem.

Dead Boys Who? 2015

This Halloween weekend I traveled to Cleveland for my nephew's wedding.

I arrived on Friday afternoon and left Sunday at noon.

I asked scores of Cleveland natives, if they had ever heard of The Dead Boys, the fiery rebellious punk band from the shores of Lake Eire.

"Sonic Reducer." The song is considered a punk anthem.

"Nope."

Throughout 1977 to 1979 I saw them often at CBGBs.

They deserved better, but Sire Records mismanaged the band into its present obscurity.

Here's to Stiv Bators (Steve Bator) – vocals Cheetah Chrome (Gene O'Connor) – lead guitar Jimmy Zero (William Wilden) – rhythm guitar Jeff Magnum (Jeff Halmagy) – bass Johnny Blitz (John Madansky) – drums

The Dead Boys remain alive for me and thousands of other punks.

Loud and Snotty.

To hear HEY LITTLE GIRL, please go to the following URL;

NO UP OR DOWN By Peter Nolan Smith

The 1960s Space Race between the USSR and USA exterminated young boys' worship of westerns and we retired cowboy hats, vests, guns, and holsters to the closet next to toy boats and teddy bears.

During the autumn of 1962 I pleaded with my parents to buy me an astronaut costume for Halloween and my father answered my request with a gleaming John Glenn space suit complete with a visored helmet. My older brother dressed as a green-skinned Martian and Frunk had fabricated a ray gun from a broken egg-beater. After dinner we were eager to trick or treat, but before leaving the house I purloined sunglasses from my father's desk.

"Aren't you going to ask Dad for permission?" My brother was better at following rules than me.

Our father was escorting my younger siblings around the neighborhood.

"He won't know a thing."

"Why do you need sunglasses."

"They're extra protection from your death ray." I pointed to his weapon. I had seen INVASION FROM MARS ten times. The Martians' main weapon vaporized soldiers into carbon.

"I don't think this is a good idea."

"We'll be back before you know it. What can happen?"

We lived in the suburbs, a land of two-car garages, good schools, and beautiful babysitters.

"I guess nothing."

"Other than getting a lot of candy."

"Chocolate."

"We left our split-level ranch house. My best friend, Chuckie Manzi, joined us on the lawn. He was a young Frankenstein.

"First things first." He pointed across the street. Mr. Martini's house drove truck for Arnold's Bakery. His wife put out cake instead of candy.

It was a moonless night. I could barely see. We climbed the Martinis' brick stairs. There was no metal railing. My brother rang the doorbell.

Mrs. Martini acted scared and offered a selection of cakes. I chose orange spice. Chuckie and my older brother picked chocolate cake. We thanked her with filled mouths and I slipped on my glasses and shut the visor. I then turned around and walked off the stairs.

Free fall.

My helmet smashed into the wall and mutilating my little finger scrapped down te rough brick. I thumped into the flower bed face first..

I sat up with blood all over my astronaut suit. I was more concerned with my father's sunglasses. They had fallen off, but luck was with me. They were intact.

My brother led me back to our house, careful not to let any blood drip on his costume.

My mother admonished my dangerous behavior. She had six kids. We were always in jeopardy. A band-aid stemmed the blood and my mother refused to let me leave the house again."
"What about my candy?"

Here." My mother dumped a load a licorice, Mars bar and other treats in my bag. "One accident is more than enough for tonight."

And she was right and I replaced my father's sunglasses on his desk.

I still bear a jagged scar on my little finger from that fall and since that Halloween I have only worn sunglasses at night when I can't find my regular glasses, but I learned that on Earth we fall in one direction.

Down and no one ever fell in Space.

There was no up or down off this planet.

Especially for boys from the South Shore of Boston in the fall of 1962.

Halloween in Pattaya 2007

In 2007 Pattaya celebrated the old Celtic festival of Samhain with a singularly Thai flavor. Bar girls dressed in skimpy dresses and go-go girls painted fake blood on their faces. Farangs drank more than normal nights. It's a pagan holiday and nothing says pagan better than sex go-go girls, beer, and a devilish hang-over the morning-after.

That Halloween I got no farther than the Buffalo Bar.

I wore my Ramones outfit.

Torn jeans, Keds sneakers, a Ramones t-shirt, and Ramones baseball cap.

None of the girls made any comment, since I had worn the same outfit to the bar on innumerable occasions.

I drank five Chang beers. 6.9 % alcohol.

I asked three lesbians to short-time with me.

They laughed at my lewd suggestions

The scary thing about Halloween 2007 was my two-minute motorcycle ride home.

Which on five Chang beers was mighty scary trip.

Pumpkin Bowling 1962

Route 28
From Chatham
On Cape Cod
To Manchester
New Hampshire.
The four-laner contracted to two
Through the Blue Hills
South of Boston___
Wider again after the lights
After Chicktawbut Road
Passing my neighborhood
A fruit stand sold pumpkins
On Halloween___
That evening
Hundreds lay unprotected
No lights
Our gang of boys and girls
Sleathily in the dark
Plundered them.
Not for smashing
But for bowling down Edgewater Road
Into the traffic
On Route 28___
Harmless fun
Around the neighborhood
The young trick or treated
Once they went home
Only three of us up for it.
Chickie Lally, Karl Koni, and me__
Two pumpkins in our arms
The lights on 28 changed
We three rolled the pumpkins
Down the road
To where
The pumpkins and traffic met
Horns, tires squealing, the thump of pumpkins under tires___
We ran into the night.
Laughing
Behind the fruit stand.
Laughing
Not haha
Laughing
Laughter
Our mothers
Didn't know___
Laughing
Because our fathers
Didn't know__
Our lesson
Pumpkins and cars don't mix.
Not even on Halloween___

ps I never really like the Smashing Pumpkins___Nirvana was the only grunge band for me

ODE TO LOUIE LOUIE - 1980 - 2023

ODE TO LOUIE LOUIE

Louie Louie Oh No we gotta go
1963
Eleven years old
A Boy Scout at the Hyde Park YMCA
Looking to get my Swimming Merit Badge
Scared of Polio in the pool
Scared of the chlorine
Scared of drowning
The Scout instructor shouting,
"Twenty laps."
"One lap underwater."
"Rescue your buddy."

Scared of the cold polio water
Scared of after lesson showers
The Scout instructors liked young boys.
Not me.
No Village People in the YMCA
Not in 1963.

Only naked men and boys in the steamy showers
I saw nothing
Eyes shut
I felt nothing
Only my hands and the steam
I heard moans
Of boys and men
I knew nothing
Not the word 'fuck'.
I was pure
Audio pure of curse words and their meanings
Singing Louie Louie in the shower.

Another boy liked Louie Louie too
John
A normal name
His left leg was missing
Cancer.
John was from Readville
My age
He knew more than me
Maybe because he had less life ahead
We sang Louie Louie together

In the locker room
Not the showers
The Kingsmen song was a hit
A hit banned by the radio.
A hit Arnie Ginsberg played twice a night.
On WMEX
50000 watts of power

At the end of the AM dial
Next to WILD
The black station
They played LOUIE LOUIE too

John told me why
"Someone says fuck in it."
"Fuck?"
Catholic altar boy ignorance.
John taught the meaning.
"People in and out."
He rubbed his stump.
He told me more.
There was no 'fuck' in the Mass
Or the Bible.
Only fuck in LOUIE LOUIE
Fuck on 50000 watts
Fuck across the USA
FUCK FUCK FUCK
"Yeah fuck."

It was the youth of America's secret
From coast to coast
A cool secret on the night airwaves
One-legged John hummed the opening
I hummed too

Only one problem

What was fuck?
I knew nothing
I could ask no one
Maybe it was what I did with my sister's Barbie and Ken
Naked dolls
Fuck
LOUIE LOUIE
"I gotta ta go, yeah yeah yeah."
Repeat
"Louie Louie I got ta go
Yeah yeah yeah
Fuck

ps I only knew One Leg John from the swimming lessons
pps LOUIE LOUIE was originally at 1956 hit by Richard Berry

According to Wikipedia just prior to the song's release, Berry sold his portion of the publishing and songwriting rights for "Louie Louie" and four other songs for $750 to Max Feirtag, the head of Flip Records, to raise cash for his upcoming wedding.

In the mid-1980s, Berry was living on welfare. Drinks company California Cooler wanted to use "Louie Louie" in a commercial, but discovered it needed Berry's consent because he still owned the radio and television performance rights. The company asked the Artists Rights Society to locate him which led to Berry's taking legal action to regain his rights to the song. The settlement made Berry a millionaire.

Yeah Louie Louie.

Whoosh

Aging

As you get old you forget, as you get older, you are forgotten, then you forget everything. - James Steele - International fugitive

# 17 by Peter Nolan Smith

In April of 1976 I drove a stolen car from Boston to New York. The Olds 88 wasn't really stolen, since a Back Bay lawyer had paid $300 for the disappearance of gas guzzler.

A little past midnight I abandoned the Detroit clunker by the Christopher Street pier. The license plates went into the Hudson. The keys remained in the ignition, engine running. Within minutes joy-riders drove off with the vehicle. On my first three trips to vanish a car, I went straight up to the 42nd Street Bus terminal and caught a bus back to Boston. The fourth time was different.

On my last trip I had stopped at a small restaurant in the West Village. I knew one in New York. I sat down and ordered an omelette. I was in no hurry to go anywhere and flirted with the waitress, an artist from North Carolina. I stayed until closing. we took a train to Brooklyn Heights. I walked her to her apartment on Remsen Street. We made love for the rest of the weekend. She said I looked like a fallen angel on her candle-lit bed. I repeated the rendezvous for the next two thefts. Two days ago I called to say I was moving to New York. Neither of us had said the l-word, but Ro had to be in love too. She wasn't at the resaurant and I called from the Christopher Street subway. No one answered the phone. The 7th Avenue subway to Brooklyn Heights and I walked to her apartment building with a bag of clothing and books over my shoulder, dreaming of the life of a poet. Fool. She wasn't there and her roommate explained that earlier the painter had caught a flight to Paris. Ro had not left a forwarding address. It didn't matter. I had several hundred interest in going back to Boston.

I slept at a drinking friend's apartment on Park Slope. The next day I got a job at Serendipity 3 as a busboy. I moved out of Brooklyn after discovering James Spicer was stealing my tip money. I rented a SRO room on West 10th Street and 5th Avenue. A bed and four walls cost $44/week. I was making about $200 at the restaurant.

After work I took the subway from 60th and Lex to the Astor Place. Usually too wound up to fall asleep I killed a few hours drinking a dive bars before heading back to my miserable room. I wasn't making any friends fast.

One wintry December night in 1976 I stumbled home from a derelict bar at the corner of the Bowery and Houston. The icy wind slashed through my thin clothing and I was about to hail a taxi to my SRO tenement on 11th Street, when the thump of a frantic bass emanated from a white stucco building. The accompanying music was rock and roll at its purest and I pushed open the bar's heavy wooden door.

The leather-jacketed quartet on the stage were covering the 45rpm version of The Rivieras' CALIFORNIA SUN. The audience was heaving up and down, as if the floor was pulsating in time to the 3-chord progression. I stepped forward to join the frenzy.

A huge hand blocked my way.

"$5." The monstrous bouncer wore a yellow construction hat.

"Who are they?" I handed over the fiver.

"The Ramones. They play punk," answered the big man.

Everyone in the bar wore leather jackets and the girls had colored hair.

CALIFORNIA SUN was replaced by a fast-moving song with a chorus of I WANNA BE SEDATED. I rushed up to the front of the crowd. By the end of the band's set I was hooked to the music and like that I became a punk.

The next day I bought a leather jacket on St. Mark's Place and later had my cut my hair at Manic Panic. Those girls were punk from the points of their stilettos to the tops of their teased black hair.

Every night I hung out at CBGBs. None of the stars of the scene were my friends. They played music and my one talent was playing pinball, so I was a nobody, which was okay, since being a punk was all about not caring about being nobody.

Not everyone felt the same way.

Blondie was getting noticed by major record labels, the Talking Heads toured coast to coast to bigger and bigger crowds, and almost every girl loved Richard Hell for his song BLANK GENERATION and his nihilistic good looks. None of us knew how to be different, but we had a good idea about how not to be 'me' anymore thanks to Richard.

Our devotion to this faith failed to translate into record sales and the Voidoids' forays into the Top 40 were mocked by an unknown power-pop trio's song RICHARD IS A FORKHEAD. My own personal lack of success gained me nothing and in 1981 I left New York to work as a bouncer at a Paris nightclub on the Grand Boulevard.

One night a New Wave girl band from the East Village appeared as the Rex's headliner. The lead singer had a crooked nose and bedraggled hair, but once the ugly duckling hit the stage, Claudia shone with a savaged beauty meant for a dark room and her lanky body encircled the mike stand like a boa crushing a stick. In some ways she was a female version of Richard.

After the show I introduced myself and offered her a drink. We spoke about CBGBs. New York was as close as her body. Claudia's husband played with Richard Hell. She laughed upon hearing about the song RICHARD IS A FORKHEAD. After closing the club, we ate at an African restaurant in Les Halles.

"What do you miss about New York?"

"Nothing really. I come from Boston."

I spoke about my hometown. I was a big Bruins fan, although I admitted, "I can't play hockey for shit." "Really?"

"My father was teaching me how to skate backwards and fell, cracking his skull on the pond ice. There was blood everywhere. II never learned how to skate backwards."

Claudia laughed and said, "Richard is a good tennis player."

"I'm not good at that either."

"Are you good at anything?"

"Some things."

"I'm sure." She touched my hands.

At dawn I walked Claudia to her hotel in La Marais. The rest of the band was waiting by a van and, she said, "I have to go to Lille."

"Like Cinderella?"

"I don't think Cinderella ever went to Lille."

"I guess not, but the fairy tale never mentioned the name of Cinderella's hometown."

"No, but it wasn't Lille." She kissed me on the cheek and entered the van. No glass slipper marked her departure, then again I wasn't Prince Charming.

That summer I visited Perpignan with a friend. Roland Garros was on the TV. His father asked if I was interested in tennis. My father had taught me tennis. I had him by thirty years. I couldn't ever beat him, but my friend convinced the doctor that I had one time been the 17th ranked tennis player in the USA. I protested the obvious lie, but sometimes people prefer to believe something less than the truth.

Upon my return to Paris a music industry friend introduced me to a tousled-hair French singer. Lizzie was promoting her new record and the African influenced single was climbing the charts.

"I know you." Her eyes swam with recognition. "I lived in New York and you once threw me out of an after-hours club on 14th Street."

"I don't really remember that," I answered, although a crazy French girl tumbling down the stairs of the Jefferson Theater wandered in the shadows of my memory. The infamous after-hours club was renown for confusion. "But why did I ask you to leave?"

"You didn't ask. I was having a fight with my boyfriend. You tried to break it up. My boyfriend punched you. You tossed him down the stairs. I fell with him."

"Sorry."

"Don't be. It was our fault."

"It was?"

"Ouais." Lizzie didn't hold the forceful eviction against me and later that evening in bed at my hotel in La Marais the wild-haired medusa told me about her affair with a spike-haired singer in the East Village. "Richard?" Forkhead had a long reach.

"Yes, Richard." She lit a cigarette and the tobacco turned her kisses into ashtrays. "Don't be jealous. Richard and I were never boyfriend and girlfriend."

"And what about us?"

"Nous sommes un stand de nuit or one-night stand."

"Those are the best kind of affairs."

In the morning I watched her leave like another Cinderella, thinking she was gone for good, but the next evening she showed up at the Rex with her Fender Jazzmaster guitar.

"TV?"

"Yes, I am famous in France."

French stars fared better without the other people in their life and I kept our affair a secret. We had a good time throughout the fall, although our affair ended on a Christmas vacation on the Isle of Wight. My good friend Vonelli was in love with her. Lizzie was in love with him. My saying 'bonne chance' was my Christmas present to them and on Boxing Day I took the ferry to France from Southhampton to Dieppe. It was a stormy passage and I was glad to stand on dry land. Three hours later I was back at the hotel in La Marais.

I remained in Paris another two years before returning to the USA to write screenplays for porno films in North Hollywood. Within a month the quasi-mafia producer fired me for being too intellectual. I never thought that I was that smart.

Back in New York I rode motorcycles and worked at the Milk Bar. I watched the Bruins on TV. They went nowhere, but everyone came to the Milk Bar. It was the place to be from 1am to 4am.

One night Richard came to the door. I had never spoken to him before, but he said, "I think we have a mutual friend."

"Who?" I knew exactly who.

"Lizzie in Paris says hello."

"She's a great girl."

"She is at that." I offered him a drink and was surprised by how friendly he was. After the second drink he said, "Lizzie told me about some American in Paris calling me Forkhead."

"I said it, but the first person to call you that was Marky, the lead guitarist of the Ghosts."

"I know their song too." Richard no longer sported spikes. "By the way she called you 'suedehead', which is funny coming from someone with a hair like a crow's nest."

"More a bird's nest."

"Depends on your perspective." Richard was taller than me. He tipped the bartender $5 before leaving the bar. She smiled at him in recognition of his legend. Punk wouldn't be punk without him.

"I'll see you around."

We lived in the East Village and ran into each other on the street. He invited me to poetry readings at the St. Mark's Church. Someone said that he edited several alternative magazines. I submitted short stories to each one. He never mentioned them afterwards. I didn't blame him. My typing, grammar, and spelling were atrocious.

I returned to France in 1989.

Lizzie was dating an art dealer. Vonelli was going out with my old roommate. Paris was a small world. The singer and I played squash in Les Halles. She beat me without mercy, despite wheezing after every shot. I spoke about Richard during a break.

"Richard is so funny. I think he was jealous of you."

"Jealous for you being with me."

"You told him about that?" Our affair remained a secret on my end.

"Maybe, it isn't important anymore."

"No." I had been in love several times in the interim. None of my romances had been a success.

"Then let's not worry about the past." Lizzie served the ball against the wall for an ace. After her victory we had dinner in the Marais and she said, "Loser pays."

"That wasn't much of a game, considering I heard you once were the 17th-ranked tennis player in the USA."

"I never was, but a friend of mine from Perpignan lied to his father about my ranking. He believed his son."

"Do I look like I could have ever been the 17th ranked tennis player in America," I said it, so she wouldn't believe me and added, "Plus I let you win fair and square."

I'm not sure."

"Up to you."

We said good-bye in Les Halles. Neither of us suggested a nightcap. We had become just friends.

Nothing more, but friendship lasted longer than love in our world.

In the 90s I began taking around-the-world trips.

I ran into Richard at a gallery opening. He was fascinated by my tales of opium dens on the Burmese border. I thought about writing a down-and-out travel book. I gave several chapters to a literary agent. He hated my typing and I worked selling diamonds on 47th Street. It was a 9-6 job. I wore a suit and tie. The money was good. I went out at night, but not late.

One autumn night at a reading of Richard's poetry at the St. Mark's Church I spotted Claudia at the bar. I hadn't seen the singer since Paris. Richard kept looking at Claudia and I asked, "Are you two a thing?"

"Richard's no one's thing. You have a girlfriend?"

"I was living with a Spanish girlfriend last summer, but she more than a little unfaithful, so I threw her out. The problem was that Elena was good friends with the old Puerto Rican woman living next to me. A bruja."

Claudia didn't understand the Spanish term for sorceress.

"A witch."

"Witch?"

"Yes, Santeria." The magic was practiced by the Caribs throughout the Lower East Side." Senora loved her and the old woman cursed me by saying I would never love again and I haven't since Elena."

"Really?"

"100%." There was no other explanation for my celibacy.

"Maybe I can help you change that."

We left for my place. Her divorced husband was taking care of their son. We spent the night together and she left before dawn. and she spent the night. "Like Cinderella?" I joked with a towel around my waist.

"Cinderella didn't have a kid."

In the morning Claudia kissed my lips and walked down the hallway to the stairs. Mrs. Adorno opened the door. The old bruja had witnessed more than a few women come and go in and out of my life. Her one good eye squinted in my direction and spat something in Spanish before mumbling, "Sex not love. Siempre." and she spent the night.

"Not always," I said, because I wanted more from a woman than sex. Claudia and I went to the movies, made love twice a week, took hiking holidays with her son. She fellated me during the NHL playoffs. I wore my Bruins shirt. They went nowhere, but I wasn't prepared for her saying after they were ousted from the playoffs, "This isn't working out."

"What isn't?"

"You and me. I want something more from a relationship than this and someone wants to give it to me."

"Who?" I had to ask.

"Richard."

"Forkhead."

"Yes."

"Oh." I was growing to used to finishing in second place.

"He called to say he really wanted to be with me. I have to give it a chance."

"I understand." I stood no chance against a rock god, especially since Mrs. Adorno's curse was stronger than me.

I gave Claudia my blessing and started a course of hard-drinking. Drunkenness wouldn't lift the curse, but I stopped my thinking of Claudia. Of course an affair with Richard wasn't destined to last forever and a month later Claudia phoned to say it was over.

"Can I come over?"

"The answer is yes, but I'm leaving for Thailand within a week." I had sold a 5-carat diamond and bought a round-the-world ticket with my commission.

"All you men are alike. You leave when the going gets tough."

Claudia hung up before I could defend myself. She never returned to my apartment. Mrs. Adorno's curse was once more triumphant.

Six months later I returned from Asia to sell diamonds on West 47th Street during the Christmas season and bumped into Richard on East 11th Street. Neither of us spoke about Claudia, but he said, "We should play tennis sometime."

"Tennis?"

"Lizzie said you were good at squash. You must be able to play tennis. I belong to the club over on the East River. We can play whenever you want."

"I haven't been on a tennis court since 1975."

"The cold scare you?" This was a challenge.

"Not in the least." I was from Maine. We had two seasons. Winter and preparing for winter. "Name the day."

"Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny in the high 40s. Say noon."

"Noon it is."

The next morning I called in sick. My boss Manny let his employees have 'drunk days' and I slept for another hour.

By noon the temperature warmed up to almost 50. Richard was waiting by the riverside court. He had brought an extra racket.

"Your choice."

I selected the one more tightly strung without knowing if that was better or not. I was no Arthur Ashe and lost two sets in record time. "You don't play often, do you?" Richard smashed an ace to my left.

"Not for years."

"Lizzie said you were once the 17th-ranked tennis player in America."

"That was a joke. I was once down in the South of France during the Roland-Garros tournament in Paris. I was watching Yannick Noah's set and my friend told his father that I was the 17th-ranked tennis player. I denied the claim, but his father thought I was being humble and scheduled an exhibition at the local tennis club. I was presented to the town's mayor and the club president. My friend whispered that they expected me to play the provincial champion."

"And did you?"

"No way. I said that I was under contract and couldn't play anywhere without signed agreements. A little later his father found out the truth. He didn't think it was funny at first, but everyone else in Perpignan got a good laugh. I didn't think it was funny either. You never do when you?re the punchline of a joke."

"Now, I feel the same way. I really thought you a good player." The way he said that revealed that this was not about Claudia, but Lizzie.

"Maybe I am. Maybe I was taking it easy on you." I knew the truth.

What about another match?" He wanted to know it too.

"Sorry, I'm under contract." I handed back the racket and walked away from the court with a smile on my lips.

After that day Richard and I didn't see each other for several years. I was either working or away in Asia writing novels no one wanted to publish. At least my typing was getting better. Finally I left the States to live in Thailand. I had a baby with my wife In Pattaya.

In April 2004 I returned to New York. My Israeli subleasee had squealed to my landlord in hopes of getting my apartment. An eviction notice was issued in both our names. I threw my tenant out on the street.

Mrs. Adorno said nothing this time. My landlord paid $8000 to speed up my departure from the flat. I was 50 and New York was a tough city for the old. The day before my flight to Bangkok, I spotted Richard on 1st Avenue.

He smiled upon seeing me, then frowned, "I got bad news. Lizzie died this week."

"No."

"It was the cigarettes."

"Shit." I really liked Lizzie.

"They had the memorial in the South of France. Her ashes floated out to sea with the flowers." He shuffled several folders of manuscripts between hands. "That leaves only you and me."

"And Claudia."

We had nothing else in common than these two women, but his words burned like a fire left unwatched.

I told him that I was leaving the city for good.

"No one leaves the city for good." He had been living there for over 30 years.

"I just got rid of my apartment."

"That doesn't mean anything. You'll be back, if only to prove you're the 17th ranked tennis player."

"Yeah, there's always that. See you around, Forkhead."

"You too, Suedehead."

I waved good-bye.

Richard was right.

I did come back to New York.

We still see each other another time, because none of us were leaving New York. Not even our ghosts, for the dead lived forever in the past for those stuck in the present.

Even the 17th-ranked player in the USA.

Vote Early Vote Often

On the night of Obama's election we danced in the streets in Nolita. I wandered up to Union Square. The park cracked with the joy. We had a black president. An older black man and I met eyes. We cried and hugged remembering the struggle. A small phalanx of riot police gathered at the corner of University and 14th Street. They were nervous. Their white-shirted officer scanned the celebration and spotted a reveler climbing a street lamp. People were cheering him. The captain shouted out an order. The squad linked shields. I strode in front of the officers and said, "Stand down. I'll handle this."

"How?" demanded the captain. "This is a big crowd "

"Big?" I laughed and said, "This is nothing. I was a doorman at Studio 54. Gimme thirty seconds."

I walked across the street, pushed through the crowd, shouted to the young man on the pole to get down. He obeyed, since I pointed to the cops. Then returned to the cops and said, "That's how you handle a crowd."

ps. I had only been a doorman at Studio for a month well after Steve and Ian sold it to Mark Fleischman, who bought it, because no one ever let him in, despite his wealth. The crowds on West 54th Street were not the thousands faced by Mark Binecke and his crew, but sometimes they numbered a couple score.

Vote early, vote often. - Mayor James Michael Curley of Boston

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 Key West to Mount Cadillac in Acadia
Just Blue Hill Tower
The hills of my youth
Of my teen years
Sex with Linda Imhoff
Long-legged
Shaven clean
Twenty -six
Us
Naked in the back seat of a VW
Possible
Not Easy
But possible
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.

A FINE DAY FOR SAILING by Peter Nolan Smith

My grandmother hailed from County Mayo in Ireland. Her last name was Walsh. At the age of fourteen Nana traveled to Boston by ship. Most of the other passengers were cattle.

"It was an awful crossing. Storms most of the way. We sailed in the Year of the Crow," she told her grandchildren in her lovely Gaelic accent.

"When was that?" I asked to pin down her age.

"That's my secret."

Women from the West of Ireland were experts at keeping secrets, however that ocean voyage was so traumatic that she had never returned to Ireland, even though every year my mother and her sisters offered to fly Nana to Shannon.

“I don’t want to see that ocean again.”

She was adamant with this decision and avoided any sight of the sea.

In the summer of 1958 my older brother and I regularly stayed at Nana's house in Jamaica Plains to give my parents a break from taking care of six children.

One weekend my parents proposed Nana to take the ferry and meet them for a family outing at Nantasket Beach. They were taking our younger siblings to a church event farther down the South Shore. Nana's other daughters were bringing her grandchildren and Nana loved us all.

"You'll save us a long ride back there."

"I'll not take the ferry. We'll take the bus."

"The bus will take hours," said my mother.

"The ferry is a short ride." My father had been born on the coast of Maine and like mother he loved swimming in ocean.

"Nana, can we go?" I pleaded with her. "I've never been on a ship."

"I don't like the sea.

"It's not the sea. It's a harbor."

"All the same to me, but I'll do it, because I love you." Nana shut her eyes, as if she were reliving a horror of that North Atlantic crossing from the Year of the Crow.

"Thank you," my mother hugged her youngest daughter and they left Nana's Jamaica Plains apartment with my brothers and sisters for our home under the Blue Hills.

The next day was a hot day and we looked forward to the swim in the cold green Atlantic. The three of us rode the train from Forest Hills to Haymarket and then walked to Lowe's Wharf. The pennants on the SS Nantasket flapped in the light breeze.

Not a single cloud marred on the sky above the calm harbor.

"Looks like a fine day for sailing," the purser said taking our tickets.

"I've heard that before and from another man staying on land."

Nana sat us inside the steamship. The ferry departed on time and the sea breeze cooled the hundreds of the passengers. A clown prowled the lower decks to entertain the children. He had a funny wig and big floppy feet. He scared my brother and me and we kept our distance.

The trip was scheduled to last about 30-40 minutes, however the wind picked up once we cleared Georges Island and the sea smashed over the bow. Nana clung to my brother and me, while the clown and scores of children slid across the tilting deck.

"Was your trip on the Atlantic this bad?' asked my brother.

"The waves were tall as buildings. The ship was awash water. Cows were swept overboard. They screamed moos in the ocean. I can hear them now."

She unleashed a mournful moo.

It sounded of death.

"And people were lost?" My brother gaped at the waves crashing over the hull.

"Cows only. Thank God," Nana muttered a prayer and pulled us close.

Several minutes later the storm ended faster than it began and we landed at Nantasket on schedule.

My mother stood outside the Waiting Station on the pier.

"Say nothing," Nana said walking down the gangplank.

Yes, Nana." The Irish knew how to hold their sand.

"How was the trip?" asked my mother, seeing the abating panic in the eyes of the other passengers.

"Grand."

"So what about a trip to Ireland?"

"Not a chance."

Nana spent the afternoon at the bandshell. Her feet didn't touch the beach. She was glad to leave Nantasket and even happier to arrive back to her house in Jamaica Plains. It was far from the wicked sea. She kissed us good-night.

"It was a fine day for sailing," I told her.

"That it was."

Nana had a way with words, but an even better one without words.

Her kiss was my ticket to dreamland and none of those dreams involved the ocean.

Maith á aithne agam uirthi.

I finally figured out the Year of the Crow. Nana's birth year was a mystery, until I looked at her marriage certificate from 1919. She married Peter Nolan from the Aran Isles. He was 34 and she was 26. Her date of birth was 1893, unless she lied about her age, as had my mother on her driver's license. She had been fourteen at the time of her crossing the Atlantic in 1907. Sent by her mother and father to help the family in Mayo. Five years before the Titanic.

Alone.

Coming down the gangway in Boston, she broke the heel on her shoe. Thankfully her Uncle Michael, a priest, was waiting on the dock. This wasn't a tourist trip and he took her right up to Salem to be a serving girl for the rich. Never to go to sea again, except with us. So long ago.

Foto - Nana Nolan and Me - 1953

Other Information The Mayflower provided passenger service between Boston and Nantasket Beach from the 1890s through the 1930s. In the 1940s she was taken out of service, grounded at Nantasket Beach, and converted into a nightclub called the the Showboat. The Showboat operated for many years, but by the 1970s, it had become a derelict and abandoned structure. In the autumn of 1979, it caught fire under unknown circumstances and burned to the ground.

The steamers of the Nantasket Beach Steamboat Line were a popular mode of transportation in the early 1900s. They provided quick and easy transportation between Boston and Nantasket Beach, and other destinations around Boston Harbor and the Massachusetts South Shore. On Thanksgiving Day in 1929 (November 28th), the company's six steamers were docked for the winter at Nantasket's Steamboat Wharf (Nantasket Pier). On that day, a large fire broke out and destroyed 5 of the steamers -- the Nantasket, Mary Chilton, Old Colony, Rose Standish and Betty Alden. Only the Mayflower was pulled to safety and survived the fire. For more information on the 1929 Steamboat Wharf fire.Other Information The Mayflower provided passenger service between Boston and Nantasket Beach from the 1890s through the 1930s. In the 1940s she was taken out of service, grounded at Nantasket Beach, and converted into a nightclub called the the Showboat. The Showboat operated for many years, but by the 1970s, it had become a derelict and abandoned structure. In the autumn of 1979, it caught fire under unknown circumstances and burned to the ground.

from wreckhunters.com

The Witches of Khorat.

Isaan Witches 2022 Filmed by Angie Khongbua

Rock and Roll - Velvet Underground 1970

In the winter of 1970 I was a seventeen year old senior on the South Shore of Boston. I had been accepted to a local university in my junior year. I didn't want to go to college, but the Draft was press ganging young men from all over America to fight the communists in Vietnam, so my choices were very limited, but I was in love with Janet, a beautiful brunette, who was a cheerleader in my hometown. She loved me too.

Her mother was divorced and saw a Chilean jazz pianist. They went out often to dances, concerts, and football games and most nights I came over after track practice with her mother's permission to study. We never did. Instead we made out on her living room couch, never going beyond third base. She was a good Catholic girl, saving herself for marriage. I was okay with that, since we went to the edge often.___

Never naked, but on the edge and even though I was an atheist I told myself I could wait. I was in love and marriage to Janet was a dream of a folk, and future together___

No Vietnam. College. Work. Marriage, children, a house with a lawn. It all seemed possible lost in the passion of teenagers blessed by youth___ Then one night we were listening to WBCN, the radio of the American Revolution. JJ Jackson was the late night DJ. He played soul, jazz, rock, folk, and this night he went deep, as our desire crossed boundaries set by the Church.

I touched her. She touched me. Some places we never touched before guided by innocent inhibition. We were in the Garden of Eden. Our future selec by our fevered panting, our blood aboil with lust, this was not sin, this was heaven___

Then JJ Jackson spoke___

"This is a live recording from the Velvet Underground. ROCK AND ROLL. This is us, dig it."____

At first I ignored his advice until Lou Reed sang, "Jennie said when she was just five years old

There was nothin' happenin' at all
Every time she puts on a radio
There was nothin' goin' down at all
Not at all
Then one fine mornin' she puts on a New York station
You know she don't believe what she heard at all
She started shakin' to that fine, fine music
You know her life was saved by rock 'n' roll."

Janet asked, " What's wrong?"

I had stopped fondling her breasts and grinding my pelvis into hers. Suddenly I understood that she and I were not over, but I once more was destined to leave my hometown with its three streetlights, no bars, Catholic Churches, temples, the suburban desolation and an abandoned chocolate mill. I was leaving it all and whispered the Janet, "I love this song "

"I do too."

We kissed and embraced and joined Lou Reed on the chorus.

"It was alright (it was alright)
Hey baby, you know it was alright (it was alright)"

We were no longer together forever only locked in eternity for the now and
"It was alright (it was alright)
Hey baby, you know it was alright (it was alright)."

Tides Of The East River - June 2023

June 20, 2023

Dawn on the East River The summer solstice
No blue

A clouded sky A pale white sun
93 million miles away
Glowing
Gray

I
In bed
A fourteenth-floor hospital room
Touch the window
Glass warm to my palm

Below The East River flows fast south
Four knots with the flush
Of Long Island Sound
Twice daily
In out in out
North South
As the estuary has flowed
Since the melting of the Great Glacier
15000 years ago

Forming Long Island and points East
Block Island, Cape Cod, Martha's Vinyard, Nantucket.

Their original names

Manisses, Paumanok, Pawtuxet, Noepe, Nontoke. The Lenape tribe called the East River Pawkatuck

Their land stretched
Nargansett to the Delaware Bay.

Lenapehoking

A land of plenty
Their Name Lenni Lenape
"We the people' numbered 50,000
Living on oysters, beans, corn, fish, and the fruits
The land of plenty
Four hundred years ago___

Now
20227:16 AM Rita delivers my breakfast
Eggs, potato fritter, sausages, black coffee

She Jamaican
African
Her smile lights my life
Her thirteen year-old son
Name Michael.

Day six in the hospital
On Manhattah
The Island of Hills
Or
Manahactanienk
The Place Of Intoxication

7:46PM
Commuter ferries sped South
Down the Pawkatuck
Fast Tugboats toil north
Against the tide
Driving barges
Northbagainst the surge___
Gulls fly freely overhead
I mistake them for helicopters
My eyesight not 20/20
But my eyes strip away the apartment blocks
On Roosevelt Island
To before the Dutch came to Manhattaw___

Twenty years later
Only 3000 Lenape
In all of Lenapehoking
The Land of Plenty lost.
Their canoes once plied the East River___

Now jet skies, the Circle Line, party boats, and sumptuous yachts
Champagne and wine drunk off Manhattah
The Place of Intoxication__

This morning
I drink black coffee
hospital coffee
Bleech___

Me
Banned from all spirits
My destiny either sober or dead
I chose Life___

My clan lived on the other side of Earth
Two Wives, five children, two grandchildren
Sri Racha, Thailand
On the Gulf of Siam
Ao Sayam

Now night in Sri Racha.
A twenty-three hour flight away.
The other side of here.
The world turns
West
Into the afternoon.
Towards the night
Same as during the forever of the Great Glacier
The drowning of Atlantis
15000 years ago to now
And into eternity And I turn with it My hand against the window Warm from the rising sun of forever___ Over Pawkatuck Lenapehoking A land of plenty
Forever here
In my heart and soul___

le Bains Douches Toujours Seule 1983

A poem from a journal 1983. Ah, Paris.

TONIGHT IS NOT HALLOWEEN

Published Oct 30, 2023

Last night I attended a Halloween party in Montauk as a late to the Goa rave scene hippie babacoo. the oldest man in the house. Richie Boy and his wife were costumed as a non-bald Uncle Festus from the Addams Family and Sandy B was the sexist socereress within the four walls. It was October 26.

Halloween has been celebrated on Oct. 31 for most of my entire life, but four year ago a Connecticut State representative floated an ill-conceived idea to re-schedule the holiday to fall on a weekend.

"Halloween is fun night for the whole family, but not so much when you have to race home from work, get the kids ready for trick or treating, welcome the neighborhood children, and then try to get everyone to bed for an early school and work morning."

Both Democrats and Republicans lambasted his suggestion, which included trick or treating in daylight for safety's sake.

I also disagreed, but this year New Yorkers have already been sporting Halloween costumes for over a week.

Call me old-fashioned, but celebrating Halloween on any day other than October 31st is a sacrilege for Satanists and like-minded pagans and yesterday a friend phoned that he was having a Frankenstein party a three nights early. We argued about the date, until Shannon explained Halloween's Celtic origin as Samhain, which marked the division of the year into halves of light and dark when the otherworld was nearest reality.

“It was a night of fire to cleanse the world.” I knew my Irish heritage. My mother’s family came from the West of Ireland.

"And they carved turnips, not pumpkins," Shannon stated with authority. His fiancee Charlotta was smart and he had mined Google's vast abyss of useless knowledge to impress the German artist.

"So the band should have been Smashing Turnips." The Chicago alternative band had been big in the 90s.

"No, once us Micks came here, we opted for pumpkins instead of turnips. They were bigger."

"Plus it's hard to carve the Jack 'O Lanterns with eyes and mouth on a turnip.”

"I also sliced off my thumb splitting a turnip two years ago."

"And hollow pumpkins smash easier."

"Not if you carve smaller eyes and mouths on a pumpkin."

"Why?"

"Because the pumpkin will rot within a day, if the holes are too big." I had been researching 'pumpkin soup' on the Internet. Getting smart didn't take much of an effort these days. "What are you going as this year?"

"Some kind of monster." Charlotta was hosting a Halloween party on the right night at Chez Oskar on Malcolm X Boulevard. Old Yellah believed in tradition and so did Shannon. "The first Halloween in America was supposedly in 1911. Someplace in hockey-puck land."

"Canada?"

"Yep."

"Then Happy Hallowmas." My Halloweens dated back to 1958 to Falmouth Foresides, Maine, when my mother warned that I couldn't go out 'trick or treating' unless I finished my beets.

Canned beets paved the path to chocolate paradise and I poured a glass of milk to wash down the purple vegetables. My older brother in his pirate outfit watched my struggle. I wore a skeleton costume. My younger sister was dressed as a ghoul. Gina and Frunk finished their beets. They actually liked them.

"What are you waiting for?" asked my brother. "We're missing out on all the good chocolate."

"Nothing."

I put the first sliced beet in my mouth. My tongue skated around the jellied vegetable. The bittersweet chunk tasted twenty years old and I swallowed it whole. My throat constricted on the unchewed beet's passage, but I got it down.

Only two more to go.

"No more milk." My older brother pulled away the half-filled glass. He had a date with Sandy the girl next door. The five year-old was dressed in white up as a good witch.

My best friend Chaney was going as a clown. His sweetheart's costume was that of a ballerina. I had asked Kathy Burns to walk the rounds with me. She had decided to accompany with Jimmy Fox. They were dressing as Tarzan and Jane. I didn’t have a date, but I would have chocolate, if I ate the beets.

I stuck the fork in the second beet slice and stuffed it deep into my mouth. Maybe too deep, because I gagged on it. My father's clapped my back and the beet slice back onto my plate.

My mother was not amused by my upchuck.

"Stop playing with your food."

"I'm not playing."

"You better not be. There are starving people in China."

Her family had gone through the Depression. Food on the plate was meant for your stomach. This was 1958. Eisenhower was President. America was a Land of Plenty. The beets belonged in the trash, but not in our house. Two slices took two minutes to stuff down my throat.

"That wasn't so bad." My mother grabbed my plate from the table and dumped it in the sink.

"No." They came from a can and I vowed to never to eat beets again.

After kissing my mother I ran around to the back of our house and threw up the beets.

Only one thing would get rid of the taste.

I hit every house in our evening our neighborhood for candy and chocolate. My bag bulged with treats. My friends and older brother had done no tricks. Chaney had kissed Sandy on the cheek.

Reaching my house I climbed upstairs to my shared bedroom and stuffed four Baby Ruths in my mouth. I chewed them into mush and they sluiced down my esophagus into my stomach. The combination of chocolate and beets played havoc with a six year-old's constitution and I ran into the bathroom to empty my belly into the toilet.

The color of my upchuck was purple.

I drank a glass of water and returned to my bedroom. My brother was separating his candy into groups. I picked up a Baby Ruth and chewed it a little more slowly than the first four. It was not a beet or a turnip or a pumpkin or a kiss from Kathy Burns.

It was sweet chocolate.

And there was plenty of it.

As there will be forever as long as Halloween is celebrated on October 31.

Montauk Train # 19

Amagansett
Empty golf course
FourteenPile Of Stones minutes
From Montauk___
I have never played golf
Pitch and Putt
Once in Queen's Park
London
Back in the last century
With friends
Nina, Ingi and others
The Persian, Maid Marion, Frank, maybe Fingers
Maybe others___
A beautiful September afternoon
Queen's Park
Who won
No one cared
No one counted the score___

Kids licking ice cream
Softies
Exit the Park
Passing George Orwell's house
Thirteen Years past 1984
Remember it like thirteen years ago
Especially the ice cream
Dripping on the Kids hands___
Now
The Montauk train pulling into the station
Five minutes late___

Uncle Bubba - Lookalike

Last night some young admirer struggled and mistakenly called me Uncle Festus. I said to them and their waif friends "The only part of me that is bald are my shaved cock and balls."

Most people think I look like Eric Roberts, but I prefer Jeff Bridges.

Montauk Bluffs # 3

Venus
Shine
To the west
Fog 'neath
The bluffs
Full moon
Rising
In the East

Knicks Versus Celtics - Game 1 - 2024-2025 Season

Tonight the NBA season opens with the New York Knicks playing the World Champion Boston Celtics at Boston Garden. There is another name for that arena, however I live only partially in this century of corporate control. The present value of the Boston franchise is estimated at $5.12 billion and the present owners are considering selling the team. The Celtic players might consider this, however this year's combined salary is $230 million. The Grousbeck's group bought the Celtics in 2002 for $360 million and are contemplating dumping the franchise for “estate and family planning purposes,” according to statement released on Monday. That news came less than two weeks after the Celtics won their NBA-record 18th title, and with the team facing hard financial decisions about how to keep together a roster than won the most games in the NBA last season according to sportico.com.

Sportico also values the Knicks at $7.4 billion. Rich men's stratosphere. LeBron, the wealthiest active player, has about $1.2 billion. Not even close enough to purchase his present team, the LA Lakers, although The Cleveland Cavaliers NBA franchise was valued at $3.35 billion in October 2023, according to Forbes. This was a 63% increase from the previous year, when the franchise was valued at $2.05 billion. Inflation or greed is everywhere.

Still I'm a fan. I have been a fan since a child in Falmouth Foreside, Maine, listening to Johnny Most announce the game from the old Boston Garden in 1958. I was planning to wear something smart, but I'm taking out my Celtics gear. This might be New York City, but Go Celtics. It will be a tough game and the Knicks are geared up for a championship. Bring it on.

Plastic Everywhere - Myrtle Avenue

I've taken to picking up plastic and cans and paper from the streets. Just so I can turn around and not see trash on the sidewalks. People buy snacks and drinks not for their health, but to just consume due to the relentless advertising from the corporate food chain. The most popular trash; potato chips. The modern manna of the people. A complete meal of non-food suppressing hunger. I try not to eat them, but I took succumb to their crunchy allure. The body and mind are so weak. So I pick up the trash. Someone has too.

I know a man who doesn't pay to have his trash taken out. How does he get rid of his trash? He gift wraps it, and puts in into an unlocked car.

Henny Youngman

VDO Imbiss Cambodia 2007

Published Feb 11, 2024

During Songkran 2009 Nik Reiter and I overlanded across Cambodia from Pattaya to Sihanoukville. Someplace betwixt point A and point B we had to stop for a river ferry in the middle of nowhere. Upstream the Preak Piphot disappeared into the jungle. A small stall on the muddy bank sold frikadeller, a German delight. a strange offering on a road mostly traveled by locals. The shop was owned by an old Kraut from Berlin in his sixties. I ordered a few frikadeller and spoke with him in German. My accent pure South Shore Boston. South of the ferry landing workers were constructing a bridge and after bidding him 'chus', we crossed the river sad to think another nowhere would vanish for good, but damn those frikadellers were good.

East Berlin Immer Eis Cream - 2013

Back in 1989 one West German Mark bought a huge ice cream in East Berlin's Alexanderplatz.

Two marks bought two ice creams.

For good girls.

NICHT FUN by Peter Nolan Smith

In the autumn of 1982 Henri Flesh and I flew to Berlin. We booked rooms at the Hotel Kempenski for a three-day holiday from BSIR, Hamburg's most popular club, after working the entire summer. That night the French DJ and I went out to the Dschungel in Charlottesburg, where we ran into a pair of Christina F lookalikes. All the girls wanted to be the junkie teen refugee from the Zoo Station, who had become a star thanks to her bestselling book, THE DIARY OF CHRISTINE F. My girl's name was Chloe. The ex-ballerina from Koln was as blonde as Ilsa of the SS.

The next morning and gray and misty. We bid the girls auf-wiedersehen, giving them taxi fare and money for a breakfast. Henri and I strolled over to the Brandenburg Gate. The photo image of a Red Army soldier waving the Red Flag over its battered arch was burnt into my head. Concrete barriers barred any approach to the monument to national unity. Nina Hagen, a punk singer, had been granted deportation to avoid becoming a protest figure. This was not the Free World.

We strolled over to the graffitied Wall and climbed a scaffolding to view over the twelve-foot wall. The heavily-mined 'death strip' was a barren patch of dirt stretching right and left into the murk. Another wall barred any escapes along with an electrified fence. The Cold War was running strong on the front line and the two us smoked Gitanes on the way to get into East Berlin. A huff of Persian Brown helped pass the time and we arrived at Checkpoint Charlie in a nod.

The squat female border guard wasn't happy about letting us into the workers' paradise. We were enemies of the state in her eyes and those of the West as well. She stamped our pass light as ether. The Stasi or secret police had ways of dealing with our kind and two bland men followed us. Unlike the prosperity in West Berlin entire neighborhoods bore the scars of the Fall of Berlin. Bullet holes, shell holes, collapsed buildings, and empty blocks. In many ways East Berlin looked like the East Village.

We walked through the deserted city and crossed the River Spree to arrive at Karl-Marx Platz, where a thin concrete communication tower rose into the graying September sky showing off the achievment of the DDR.. The fog was so thick the spie was barely visible. The stomp of boots startled us and across the plaza a troop of armed Soviet soldier goose-stepped out of the mist.

"There's parking everywhere." Henri wished that we had my orange VW bug.

"Here comes a car." Henri pointed to where a small car whined down the street.

"Wooo, ein Trabant." We waved to the driver and Henri explained that East Germans waited for years to purchase one. It sounded like a lawn mower. The Stasi agents didn't appreciate our laughing.

We drank bier in a restaurant. The people at the tables avoided lifting their heads. They knew how to act around the Stasi.

One big glass cost twenty-five pfennigs. I had enough money for a hundred beers and bought a round for everyone in the restaurant. No one said thank you. No one touched the glasses. They stayed on the bar.

The Stasi approached the barman and spoke in low voices.

"They are no fun." Henri wasn't liking this day trip.

We left the restaurant and went shopping, except there was nothing to buy in the shops.

"Maybe we could score some drugs." Henri entered a pharmacy and exited in a huff. "They were only selling steroids. Last thing I want is to look like an East German female athlete."

The Communist competitor were three times the man I would ever be in real life.

"Us too." The girls acted out weighing weights.

The Stasi were no amused by our behavior. Two more followed us. Their message was clear

Heraus auslanders.

"Wir zuruckgehen nach Ost."

I had had enough of East Berlin.

"Communism is a failure." Henri liked his socialist France.

"Same as capitalism." I hated the consumerism of the West, where everyone's soul was for sale.

I wanted to go back to the hotel and nearing Checkpoint Charlie we gave our remaining East German DMs to a young boy. He looked at the Stasi agents and threw them on the ground, then ran down the street.

We passed through the Berlin Wall at the sunset. No one stoped us at the frontier. We were no threat to the DDR. The dyky border guard was still on duty. Helga had to love her job. Once more back in the American sector I waved down a taxi and told the driver to take us to the Kempinski.

He asked about East Berlin.

"It's a worker's paradise."

"Schiesse."

Even Henri knew the meaning of that word, but neither did I consider the west the Free worrld. I like Nina Hagen was a punk.

I doubted I would ever see East Berlin again and bid the half-city 'Niewiedersehen', although that night Chloe and I pretended we were spies and I loved lying in bed with her, whsipering in my Boston-accented German, feeling oh so James Bond. Oh, 007.

Berlin October 1982

Berlin October 1982 A Pan-Am flight from Hamburg A Geldstadt Money City To Tempelhof. West Berlin. Behind the Iron Curtain.

Henri Flesh et moi DJ und Tursteher Nachtclub Leute. Bsirs for the Reeperbahn pimps.

Taxi Zum der VierZeitenJahren Hotel No bags Only Two grams of Persian brown. We're remaking THE JOURNAL OF ELIZABETH D Without the writer. We left her in Hamburg. She's safer there.

Check into the hotel. Concierge looks like Dirk Bogarde. From THE NIGHT PORTER Not a stray hair out of place. No click of his heels. Still everything about him Nazi.

We unpack. Huff some Persian brown. I wish it were China White. Change into bathing trunks. Both of us Greyhound slim. We swim in the tiled pool. It dates back to before the war. The Great War. 1914-1918 Our grandfathers served in France. Long long ago.

Two couples exit from the sauna. Speedos for the men Bikinis for the women Older The men Former Nazis Proud.

They never lost the war. Henri is French. He sees them too. For what they were and are. "Salauds."

They see us for us. Auslanders. I stare at them. "Nazis."

The word crosses the pool. They hear it. They know who they were And who they are. I get out. Get my towel We leave. Turn Spit on the floor "Nie weider." Never again.

Kurdammstrasse. Wealth The West Zoo Station in the afternoon. No action. Eat Eisbein Pig foot Drink Berlin Weisse Bier Go to Der Dschungel Disco Dance with TVs Do Persian brown. The West rules At least this isn't Berlin 1945. In the AM we go to the East The Berlin Wall stretching out of sight. This side graffiti The other side A Death Zone Ladnmines, dogs, and snipers Through Checkpoint Charlie To East Berlin Passports bitte A squat female border guard We are of interest For thirty seconds. Willkommen zu Democratic Deutschland. The Workers Paradise. Alles ist in Ordernung.

A walk through the ruins Bullet holes in the buildings All gone in West Berlin A Trabant shutters by Like an out-of-control lawnmower. No people on the streets. Very few in Karl Marx Platz Parking anywhere. On a back street Nothing to buy in the shops The sound of boots A Soviet patrol Goose-stepping Like Nazis A German cellar bar Order Berliner Pilsner For the twelve people at the tables No one drinks them. They are all Stazi Henri says Secret police Like the Gestapo. We leave East Berlin Without even a postcard.

Back in the West Capitalism on the K-Damm We have Persian smack We are young. Free Both of wish Christine F was with us. Henri more than me They are something. At now for now In both West and East Berlin Fur Immer and always.

Berlin Wall a la Pattaya - 2009

The Berlin Wall fell in November of 1989.

Several years ago a German expat in Pattaya tried to recreate one of many escape attempts over the infamous barrier between East and West by trying to evade police by leaping over a concrete wall topped by barbed wire in a state of nakedness. Stasi Police would have shot him dead back in the good old days of the DDR, however the Thai police responded by restraining the unclothed man and remanding the madman to his embassy.

I recall reading back in the 1970s about another mad German attempting suicide by an escape over the Berlin Wall. He ran out into the minefield without exploding a single bomb, then climbed the wall to become tangled in the wire. The guards shot at him and their errant bullets snapped the barbed wire, so the verrückter Mann fell into West Berlin. Disappointed by failures he jumped into the River Spree to drown only to be rescue by the US Army.

He cursed them all and fled into the path of a street car.

It killed him dead and he died a happy free man.

There is no success like a suicide getting to the end at last.

Free at last. Freikeit im Der Ende.

The Wall Of Unfreedom - 2014

The Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 by the East German Communist regime to prevent its citizens from fleeing the repressive Soviet-led government. The concrete barrier was constructed was constructed with 45,000 separate sections of reinforced concrete, each 3.6 metros (12 ft) high and 1.2 metros (3.9 ft) wide, and cost DDM 16,155,000 or about US$3,638,000 according to Wikipedia.

In 1982 I visited Berlin. The Wall or Antifaschistischer Schutzwall was a must-see for tourists. Henri Flesh, a Paris DJ, and I stood atop a viewing platform. A death zone lay beyond the wall brimming with mines and surveyed by assassin snipers. In 1982 one person was killed by the border guards. His name was Lothar Fritz Freie. He was shot in a restricted area.

The Berlin Wall fell with the collapse of the USSR in 1989, however in recent years the Zionist government of Israel has built a greater wall to protect themselves from the wrath of the Palestinians. The West Bank Barrier is much taller and thicker than the Berlin Wall. Its path cuts across the Occupied Territories with the express purpose of seizing more land for the creation of settlements for right-wing settlers dedicated to the expulsion or extermination of any non-Zionist population.

The British built a similar wall to preserve the Lost Provinces on Ireland.

They failed to prevent the rise of the IRA.

Same as the wall failed for the USSR or the Border Patrol on the Mexican border.

People flow like water and freedom of movement is the way of the world.

Free Palestine. Free Ulster. Free the world.

The Fall of Berlin Wall 1989 - 2009

"Ich bin en Berliner."

These words were spoken by JFK before the grim barrier in 1961.

I have stood at the wall in 1982. Its shabby concrete was graffiti-splattered on the Western side. The other side was a no-man's land of mines, dogs, and guard towers. I had crossed over to East Berlin via Checkpoint Charlie. I was immediately struck by the amount of parking available on the streets. Beer was plentiful and cheap. food was good and even cheaper. There was nothing to buy in the shops, so I spent my deutschmarks on beer for the locals. They grumbled 'danke' like they were stuck with communism for the rest of their lives.

Hope sprung anew with Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan gave this speech at the UN.

"We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Nothing happened that day and no one expected the Berlin Wall to fall. The UUSR's missiles were pointed at the USA and the West. They numbered in the thousands. The hard-liners refused to grant any liberties to the masses. George Bush was more concerned with the Contras in Central America than the Kremlin. Americans were geared for another fifty years of Communist rule over Eastern Europe, yet in one night a faceless bureaucrat shrugged off the Iron Curtain draped over East Germany and ordered the Berlin Wall to be open for passage between the two worlds at war.

The domino effect was instantaneous. East Germans flocked to the West in wonder. Poland was liberated by Solidarity. The Balkans fought off the old guard and Russia splintered into pieces.

Communism was dead.

George Bush and the GOP claimed the victory.

Democracy was safe.

But even safer was capitalism and as Slavoj Zizek wrote a brilliant opinion piece in today's New York Times celebrating the end of communism in Eastern Europe while recognizing that the collapse of communism was not complete and neither was the triumph of capitalism a victory for the people of the world.

The richer got rich and then got richer.

Both in the New East and the Old West.

So today I'm wearing an old Moscow Dynamos Hockey shirt.

My keys are on a communist key chain.

And my heart is a little pink, but not hued by the blood of Stalin.

Communism failed, because there never was communism.

Not in Russia and not in China.

And never in the USA.

Not even under Obama.

But the revolution lives on.

No matter what anyone says.

Even me.