Yesterday was the Catholic Church’s All Saint’s Day celebrated by the Vatican since the Fourth Century post-Jesus’ birth. This liturgical holiday commemorates thousands of known only to the Bearded All-Knowing Deity. Later in that millennium 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. The date had been 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 to coincide with the Celtic Day of the Dead, hoping for pagans to convert to the One True Faith. The Church was very adept at adopting pagan ways to attract followers.
As a devout Atheist I never viewed the Catholic saints as a connection to a non-existent Supreme Being. They and we are all just people. For better or worse, although I am drawn to Brigid of Kildare mythically based on an ancient pagan goddess with the same nam, a druid priestess whose temple was seized by the early Church to be a monastery and is associated with wisdom, poetry, healing, protection, blacksmithing, and domesticated animals. Her feast day coincides with Imbolc, a druid day of cleansing.
Over the years on her feast day February 1 I had gone to St. Patricks Cathedral on 5th Avenue to light a candle before her statue at the first apse to the left. I never pay for the candles. Sometime in the last century diocesan church officials took to covering on the statue on her holy day 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.
That day I worked for Mark Amitin, the producer of ALBEE DIRECTS ALBEE, from 10am to 8pm, having to listen to a complete megalomaniac and fight off his advances. All Mark wants is to fuck me.
By the time I got back to 256 East 10th Street it was 9pm.
Alice had left a note on the table saying she was going to a party at Kim Davis' apartment on Bleecker Street. I didn't bother to bathe or even get dressed in a costume. Everyone at the party was in drag. I grabbed a beer and sat on the couch. Alice was Little Bo-peep. She was having a great time as was everyone else. I kept my distance.
"Why you so down?" asked Kim holding a bottle of vodka.
"I hate work."
"Who doesn't hate work? You want to dress up as me?"
"Not a bad idea, but I'm cool being no one."
"No one is better at being no one than you."
She handed me the vodka. A no one knew his role. I drank more than I should and never broke a smile, happy to not be in drag.
Yesterday evening torretial rains capped a stormy day flooding various parts of New York City. New Jersey too. Many people in social media blamed the neglected infrastructure. Not surprising, since 10-15% of Americans fervently rejected climate change due to humanity, although on the coasts that percentage is even lower due to events such as yesterday's deluge. No planned flood protection program can compete with the future.
This is not about the sewer system. This is about climate change. The water melting from the glacier not only goes into the oceans but also the atmosphere which is saturated with humidity. Don't worry AI will help us answer the problem by convincing humans there is no problem
My friend Haoui Montauk bequeathed me a Paul Smith suit in his will. We had worked at a punk nightclub together in the late-70s. He had collected the cash and I had worked the door as a bouncer. Haoui liked to call me ‘rough trade’.
He wasn’t wrong. I liked a good fight now and then. He said it ran in my blood.
I was taller and stockier than the poet, but the suit fit my body albeit a little tight. It was not a suit for all occasions, since the material was a bright blue plaid. I wore it pride and considered any venture so attired was like taking Haoui out for a walk through the city he loved the most.
I received many compliments from women for having the courage to sport such an extravagant outfit and my bravery was rewarded with further admiration upon their hearing about my deceased friend having left it to me in his last will and testament, but New York wasn’t the same city as before.
The rich had replaced the poor and the bankers had crowded out the artists. They were very uncool and on one occasion a banker in his 20s muttered under his breath passing me in front of a Prince Street deli, “What a fucking ugly suit.”
“Same as your face,” I wasn’t taking any guff from a Wall Street stooge.
“What you say?” He wheeled around with a gym-strengthened aggression.
“My suit is ugly, but so is your face.” Haoui was gay. People like this man had bullied him as a boy. I wasn’t backing down. My friend Billy O was waiting in the middle of the block.
The young man approached me, as if he wanted to fight, but Billie O was already taking my back. Two against one wasn’t good odds and the Wall Street stooge stormed away with a parting ‘fuck you’.
“And not only are you ugly, but you only have one eyebrow.” I was good at getting in the last word.
The banker looked over his shoulder with eyes blazing with hatred. He picked up an avocado from the fruit stand and threw it at my head. I ducked to the left and it whistled past my ear. A good throw, but a miss and the Korean grocer came screaming out of the store, yelling, “You pay for avocado. You pay for avocado.”
The banker ponyed up the money. Billie O and I had a good laugh, but he said, as we entered the Mekong restaurant, “That suit draws the wrong type of attention.”
“It’s Haoui.” I explained how I got it.
“Maybe it’s haunted.” Billy was Irish. We were both superstitious and I retired the suit for a long time.
Ten Halloweens ago I was stuck for a costume and remembered Haoui’s suit. It fit a little tighter than before, but I could pass for a carnival barker in it. My left knee was sore from buckling on the basketball court and I picked a cane out of my closet. I had one with an 8-ball for a knob. One look in the mirror said ‘carney’ and I limped through the East Village to Nolita, where my friends were waiting at two tables in front of the Mekong.
It was a warm night and we watched the parade of costumes. Most people were heading over to the parade in the West Village. I sat next to our lady friend, Jane was dressed as a go-go girl from the 60s. The English model had the Swinging London look down pat. We were having a good time, until a Batman dropped into an empty chair next to her. Our friends laughed at the intrusion, but then the muscular Caped Crusader kissed Jane and then he stole my beer.
A Stella.
The cheapskate owner charged $6 for it and never bought back a round.
“Jane, you know this guy?” Women were sacred, but beer was holy.
“No.” Jane was horrified by his macho behavior.
“That’s enough.” I grabbed my beer. It was going to be in the way.
“Old man, don’t tell Batman when he’s had enough.” He was in his 20s and sounded Wall Street. His muscles came from exercising and his bravado was bolstered by a few boxing lessons.
“Old man?” I was only 49. It was the youth of old age.
“Yeah, take a look in the mirror. You’re farting dust like a mummy.” He resumed smooching Jane.
“Leave it off.” My friends’ kids were at the table. I didn’t want them to witness a fight. Still it was only Batman without Robin, so I said, “This isn’t your table. Move on.”
“Fuck off, you old git.” Batman grinned like the Joker, if the villain had perfect teeth.
The word ‘git’ ended the discussion. Git was my word. I seized Batman’s cape and threw him into street. He snatched the cane from my hands and swung it at my head. I blocked it with a forearm and caught him with a right to the jaw. I wrestled the cane from him, but he ripped off my glasses and ran away, chanting, “Nah-na-na-nah-na.”
It sounded mockingly like Stream’s hit TELL HIM GOODBYE.
My left knee was in no condition to chase him.
Shannon came out of the bar. The tall New Yorker was dressed as a cowboy. I thought he looked like Robert Duvall in TRUE GRIT. Shannon was a good decade younger and several inches taller than me. We had been friends since the Milk Bar and played basketball together in Tompkins Square Park.
“What’s wrong?” He could see scratches on my face.
“Batman stole my glasses.” I squinted and pointed to retreating Batman. He was having a good laugh.
“I’ll go get him.” Shannon loped down the street at a run.
Batman was resting at the gate to St. Patricks.
“Gimme back the glasses.” Shannon spread his stance. His fighting skills came from the street and not a gym. My money was on the Cowboy Versus Batman.
“Go fuck yourself, dude.” Batman threw a punch. Shannon blocked it with ease and KOed Batman with one punch. Batman slunk to the sidewalk like he was sleeping in Bruce Wayne’s bed. Shannon returned to Mekong and said, “Here’s your glasses.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll be going.” Shannon didn’t need to speak with the police.
“I owe you a beer.” It was good to see again.
“You owe me nothing. That guy was a creep.” He downed his beer with an ear cocked for sirens. He knew Billie O and said, “One more thing. Don’t wear that suit anymore. It’s trouble.”
“You got that right.”
Later that night I returned Haoui’s suit to the closet. It stays there most of the time, but every once in a while I take it out for a walk. It’s getting small for me in my old age, but I can always suck in my gut.
Haoui wouldn’t expect anything else from me and neither would his ghost.
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.
Halloween has nothing to do with Christianity. The Harvest Holiday originated way back into the distant BCs. The Romans dedicated the feast to Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, and the Celts celebrated the summer's end with huge bonfires to evoke the blessing of the spirit world for the dark half of the year. Walking between the fires cleansed the soul for the winter. The practice probably dated back to the Picts and deeper into prehistory.
The following day was the feast of the dead.
For the dead are never dead in our hearts and minds, except for the Living Dead.
In Gaelic the walking dead are called marbhán siúil.
The modern usage is zombai.
Thankfully they are creatures of myth and not reality like banshees and leprechauns.
Nothing was scarier than NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.
The word Zombie is derived from the melange of the words zonbi Haitian Creole and nzumbe from the African dialect North Mbundu. Zombies are the walking dead. They entered American culture thanks to George Romero's 1968 epic black-and-white classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Scientists and anthropologists have searched Haiti for zombies since the 1930s without having substantiated the rumors of voodoo priests seizing the astral or soul of their victims other than Wade Davis The Serpent and the Rainbow.
According to Wikipedia Wade Davis, a Harvard ethnobotanist, presented a pharmacological case for zombies in two books, The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985) and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988). Davis traveled to Haiti in 1982 and, as a result of his investigations, claimed that a living person can be turned into a zombie by two special powders being entered into the blood stream (usually via a wound). The first, coup de poudre (French: 'powder strike'), includes tetrodotoxin (TTX), a powerful and frequently fatal neurotoxin found in the flesh of the pufferfish (order Tetraodontidae). The second powder consists of dissociative drugs such as datura. Together, these powders were said to induce a death-like state.
The Living Dead are creatures of legend, but several years ago year the Washington area had been pestered by zombie flies who have been infected by an unknown fungus taking control of their brain. Scientists have conjectured that humans might be susceptible to such an affliction and Homeland Security has studied various strategies to handle a zombie outbreak.
As far-fetched as this plague of zombies might seem there are actually five ways of humans contracting zombieitis according to cracked.com
Brain Parasites such as toxoplasmosa are weak, but in the hands of the Pentagon the fungus could be strengthened to affect humans very fast and there's nothing scarier than fast zombies a la RESIDENT EVIL. Voodoo poisons are another vector danger, but in a trance zombies are slow-moving i.e. not as dangerous as fast zombies. Viruses such as Mad Cow's Disease are a potential threat to humanity, but the living dead would be spastic and easy to avoid, unless they had numbers and in every zombie movie zombies seem to be everywhere. GM stem cell research could produce suspended dead to await a cure for their disease, but zombies are not sleeping beauties to be awaken by a kiss. Lastly nanobots seeping into your brain to take over your 'free will' and some madman hits the kill button.
Zombies Zombies Zombies Red Alert.
Tonight is Halloween.
Zombies are a favorite costume for young and old alike
Beware of the real thing.
One bite and you're a zombie and no zombie is a friend of mine.
This Halloween weekend I traveled to Cleveland for my nephew's wedding.
I arrived on Friday afternoon with my departure planned for Sunday at noon.
On the afternoon before the rehearsal dinner I checked into the Rennaissance Hotel and then conducted a walking tour of downtown; down to the Sttlers Land trolley stop and along the famed Cuyahoga River. At various bars 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.
"Nope."
"Sonic Reducer" According to Wikipedia their tradmark song is considered a punk anthem and has been covered by bands as varied as Guns N' Roses, Overkill, Pearl Jam, Foetus, Dozer, Leeway, Die Toten Hosen, Bad Religion, and Saves the Day. The song appeared on the UK compilation album New Wave, produced by UK actor and mystic, Pete Knobbler
"Nope."
Once more Wikipedia The album Young, Loud and Snotty, which features the song, peaked at #189 on the Billboard 200 in 1977.
Throughout 1977 to 1979 I saw them often at CBGBs.
They deserved better, but Sire Records mismanaged the band into its present obscurity and the band were demons onto themselves.
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;
The 1960s Space Race between the USSR and USA exterminated young boys' worship of cowboys 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.My older brother and I were on our own.
"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 through 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 the 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 she 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, having learned that on Earth we fall in one direction.
Down and no one ever fell in Space.
There was only up or down off this planet.
Especially for boys from the South Shore of Boston in the fall of 1962.
Halloween, the pagan holy night after a warm autumn day with the sun streaming through the alley windows to mock my darkness.
New York City.
Rural devil-worshipping cults celebrate Satan and covens must exist on the island of Manhatten, but once the juvenile trick-or-treaters have scored their candy, the night belongs to the young punks, gays, queens,and addicts. I'll be working the night at Hurrah and dropped two dexedrine pills to elevated my mood, which had me verging to the edge of homicide. A thin stiletto was in my leather coat, although I feel more like hurting myself than someone else.
Ro showed up at Hurrah to see the Revlons. No costume. Just her usual ingenue artist look. When she entered, we talked for a long time at the entrance. The band wasn't going on stage until midnight. Half the crowd was in costume. The rest of us wore our punk attire.
"I'm glad to see you. I had hoped you would be here."
"The feeling is mutual." I hadn't seen her since Bix starved himself to death in a cave under the Cloisters last winter.
"I still can't believe Bix is gone. I'm really..." her voice drifted off in a daze, then again she always had trouble finishing sentences. "Bix's death made me feel so strange. Did you feel that way when James died?"
I had live with James Spicer, the elegantbjazz impressario, in Park Slope, until I woke one night to his anointing my feet ala Mary Magdalene.
"His death made me realize how precious life is. His last night I had sat with him at the hospital for hours. The only two people in a ward. The nurses and doctors were scared of him. He was dying from something they had never seen. Lots a gays were dying of the same thin. His parents showed up from Florida at dawn. He hadn't spoken to them for a long time. I went down to the cafeteria and ate a bagel chased down by chocolate milk. I thought nothing could ever taste so good. When I got back to the ward, James was dead."
She spoke about her committment to a series on fish paintings.
"The color of my paintings are getting better, but I look at them and there's no spark oflife. like they were floating dead on the surface of the ocean. I need something to make them come alive." Ro complimented my not trying to being anything than what I was and predicted, "You're not going to be trapped at this job or even this city. You only are doing what you do to make money, but one day you'll understand your desire to be nothing is something everyone wishes they could achieve."
"A fateful decision, if I remember correctly you have a long life line."
"I just feel so guilty about Bix."
"He loved you."
And I couldn't love him back. I didn't even let him kiss me, when we were making love. I'm to blame for his starving to death."
"I tried to help Bix. He was lost in numbers and he chose his death.." A cold cave on a rainy night. I needed another dexxie. Your show is about to begin. Enjoy." I dropped another pill and drank a vodka-tonic, then three more.
Ro left with Nells, the Revlon's bass player. I slouched against the wall. Our affair had been weekend flings. I'd steal a car in Boston on Friday and drive here in four hours, meeting at the end of her shift at David's Pot Belly.
I thought someone who said, "You look like an angel under candlelight." had to be in love.
My older brother Frank My sister Regina as a scarecrow and me. During dinner my mother served us beets from a can. We had never seen a beet before, but my mother said that we weren't going trick or treating unless we finished them. I put a small bite in my mouth and immediately spit it out. I tried to wash it down with milk and upchucked the backwash onto my plate. My mother was disappointed, but my brother and sister even tried. We put our plates in the sink and went out into the night. Hunting Halloween treats. With demon friends.
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 bar-fining a 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, knowing I was a faithful farang to my two wives.
The scary thing about Halloween 2007 was my two-minute motorcycle ride home.
Which on five Chang beers was a mighty scary trip.
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
My life in Paris is well behind me. My last visit was in 2014. Like New York Paris has changed during my years in Thailand from a city of artists to a metropolis of wealth. Thanks to Facebook I have been able to reconnect with old friends and last year I was pleased to hear that the famed cartoonist Tanino Liberatore was alive. Back in 1986 I had the pleasure of working with him on three projects; two cartoons and the script translation of his classic tale of an android in love with a 12 year-old junkie RANXEROX.
The director for the film Jean Mondino. The script had been written by Pierre Grillet. They needed an English screenplay to get Hollywood money. I wasn't a particularly good writer, but Tanino, Pierre, and Jean were my friends and I had just finished EMMANUELLE 3 for Paramount-France. For better or worse I was the man for the job and I sat down for two weeks and typed out 100 pages of a futuristic search for Elvis' lost master tapes. Tanino's pubescent heroine Lubna was addicted to a drug. Pierre had called it 'bleu'. I used the word 'heroin' in my adaptation. I gave the script back to Mondino and told him to read it before he gave it to anyone.
He must have been under pressure for the producers, because he sent the screenplay untouched to Hollywood. Drugs were rampant in the film world, but the 1980s were the time of Nancy Reagan's Just Say No. Those cocaine-addled Hollywood hypocrites read heroin and axed the possibility of any financing for the project.
I was rightfully blamed for the disaster and my translation work dried up faster than spilled water on a Death Valley highway.
I remained friends with everyone, because failure isn't a fault in France.
Not for your friends.
Check out RanXerox the graphic novel.
Here are the images;
http://images.google.com/images?q=ranxerox&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=5y9oS-LXJIfk8QatmcCxBw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CB4QsAQwAA
A rainy morning
Impasse de Danzig
La Ruche
The gray morning light
On Candida's bare skin
My hand glides up your divine spine
To rest
Beneath an angel wing shoulder.
Heartbeat steady
My fingers memorize the eternity of your youth.
This touch will last forever.
I think___
The door opens
Her mother
Cafe et croissants.
Candida groans
Wanting more sleep.
I whisper
"Je revendrai avec le petite dejeuner.
Descend from the loft.
Bare feet
A towel around my waist.
Simone smiles
I say
"Elle dors."
Her mother smiles.
Her daughter safe.
I smile back.
Not as young as Candida
But not as old as now.
And Candida ever young on that day
April
Paris
1985
Nights out in Montauk I go to bed early in a tent. A good tent. Fall asleep fast. Listening to the wind and waves. Funny being outside. In the darkness. Normally very peaceful and not too cold undrr my blanket.
This morning an October storm arrived before the rains. The tent flapping like a loose sail with the wind.
Even in the darkness of night I feel nature. The colding night. My fingertips a little chilled. I fall asleep. The rain has stopped. Waking to relieve myself under the stars. No other humans other than the occasional passing car.
Last night at a party a British woman said she walked six miles in 75 minutes every day. No one believed her. I took her back. i walk a lot. Not that fast and I said it was possible. Not by me. Before I left the party I told the woman I was walking back to Ditch Plains.
"Just be be with the darkness."
I strolled back to Ditch Plains like an old hobo. Detached from the modern world which is nothing like the Jam's THIS IS THE MODERN WORLD. Cars on the road. Headlights in my eyes.
Why are they so bright in this modern world?
Drivers aren't used to a man on the shoulder of the road. They must wonder who the fuck is that? Just some weird old man. I walk facing the traffic. A car stops. I thought it might be the 12. Just someone turning around.
The teenagers of the 1950s worshipped Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Buddy Holly as gods albeit dead gods instead of risen god like Him of the Old Religion. The new generation of baby boomers preferred the living and the stars of the 1960s were transported by TV and radio to my family house under the Blue Hills south of Boston.
Bob Dylan’s BLOWING IN THE WIND toppled Elvis off his throne and the Beatles stole girls from Bobby Rydell with I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND. Young boys worshipped movie actresses as wingless angels, whose beauty blazed eternal on the silver screens.
In 1965 Julie Christie won our hearts in DARLING and my older brother chose fur-bikinied Raquel Welch as his muse after her debut in 1,000,000 BC. The seductive virtues of various starlets were debated by the boys in my high school outside 128 in Boston. I held my sand ie said nothing, because I was searching for a goddess to call my own.
One cold January night I lay in bed in a split-level ranch house on the South Shore Snow clotted against the window. My older brother slept soundly under the covers. I was wide awake. My fingers turned the dial on the transistor radio. A wire running to a tiny ear plug transporting me across the Eastern Seaboard and beyond. Static, then the antenna caught a signal from Quebec transmitting a wavering female singing ‘La maison ou j’ai grandi’.
I cursed myself for not having paid more attention in my grammar school French classes and looked over to my brother’s bed. Dead asleep. I turned up the volume and rode the magic radio waves to the last fading notes of the guitar. The Montreal DJ announced with breathless admiration, “C’etait une autre tube par Francoise Hardy.”
I hadn’t understand a word, but realized that Francoise Hardy couldn’t be anything other than an angel. My angel. I remained glued to the station on the St. Lawrence River and the DJ rewarded my devotion with other tubes like LE PREMIER BONHEUR DU JOUR, QUI PEUT DIRE, and L’AMITIE, after which he said, “Bonne anniversaire, Francoise.”
Somehow my brain translated those words into ‘happy birthday, Francoise’.
I was a fifteen year-old high school student living on the South Shore. The DJ announced that Francoise Hardy had just turned twenty-three and lived in Paris. Three thousand miles due east across the Atlantic. The chances of our meeting were nil and she was a woman and I was only a boy.
“Turn off that Frog crap.” my older brother mumbled from his pillows.
“Okay.”
I shut the radio and went to sleep confused by conflicting images of Francoise Hardy. I envisioned her as a blonde. I fantasized about her as a redhead. I woke early to a dream of her as a brunette. Dawn was barely up. Snow buried our suburban neighborhood. I dressed for the cold and descended to the kitchen.
“You’re awfully quiet,” my father said at the stove, as he cooked pancakes for my younger sisters and brothers.
“I’m thinking about changing my language from German to French.”
In my freshman year the brothers had offered four languages; French, Spanish, German, and Latin. Students only take one. Most either Spanish or French. I chose German and Latin. I had never been able to explain why to anyone. Not even myself.
“I thought you liked German.” My father had studied French at college.
“I do.” I spoke it with a Boston accent much to the chagrin of Bruder Karl. My best grade had been a D+ and I had no feeling for Marlene Dietrich.
“Any reason for the change?”
“Maybe I’ll have more use for French.”
“Like for when you’re ordering French Fries from Simco’s at the bridge.” My older brother joked, as he sat at the table. My younger brothers and sisters laughed along with my father. Simco’s on Blue Hill Avenue in Mattapan had the greasy fries in Boston.
“Tres droll.”
I didn’t mention my restless night to my car pool friends, as we drove to high school on 128. My daydreams of Francoise Hardy consumed the morning math and biology classes. I barely listened to Bruder Karl. He was a good old Bavarian. After leaving his class, I had a study hall and went the library to search through the record collection. Brother Jerome, the librarian, was in his office. A freshman sat on his lap. One of his favorites.
I wandered over to the record trays and flipped through the LPs without finding a single French record. A few music stores in downtown Boston sold foreign music and I planned on heading to Washington Street after school.
“I’m not going home today?” I told my car pool.
“Where you going?” My best friend, Chuckie Manzi, wanted to join me.
“To see the dentist.” It was a good deterrent. No teenager liked the sound of the drill.
“You’re on your own.”
My friends dropped me at the Forest Hills T station and I got off at Washington Street. None of the big department stores had any French 45s or LPs. On the way to the Park Street Station I chanced upon a record store on Boylston across from Commons. The bearded owner looked like a beatnik. I was dressed as a mod.
“Can I help you?” Thousands of records according to genres were stacked against the wall.
“Do you have any Francoise Hardy?”
“How do you know about Francoise Hardy?” The older man seemed amused by my request.
“I heard her on a Canadian station.”
“Must have been a strong signal.” He went to the French section and pulled out a sealed LP.
“Francoise Hardy dropped out of the Sorbonne to record OH OH CHERI with Johnny Halliday. He’s the French Elvis. She became one of the biggest stars of Ye-Ye music and her hit TOUS LES GARCONS ET LES FILLES made the charts in the UK. I think it was 1964. This LP came out in 1962.”
He gave me the album. Up to this all I knew about the singer was that she was French. I held the cover in both hands. The name had a face. A cinnamon strands of hair streamed across feline eyes. An ivory hand held an umbrella with a detached interest. Francoise was a woman made for a rainy afternoon.
“Can I hear a little?”
“Sure.” The old man slipped the LP onto a Garrard 401 turntable and cued up LE TEMPS D’AMOUR.
A patter of drums opened the song. A twangy guitar and solid bass joined on the next bar. The singer wasted no time getting to the lyrics. They must have been about love. 2:27 passed in a second.
“What you think?”
“I’ll take it.” Her pose sold youthful innocence. I gave him $5. “Is this the only one you have?”
“Of that LP, yes, but I can get some of her other records, if you’d like.”
I nodded my answer and promised to return on the weekend.
“My name’s Osberg.” He handed me a business card. “Call to find out when to come in.”
“Thanks.” I left his shop and caught the T to Ashmont.
That evening after finishing dinner and my homework, I went down to the basement and put the LP on my father’s record player. My brother had a better one in our bedroom, but I wasn’t sharing Francoise Hardy with someone in love with a woman in a fake fur bikini, even if Frunk was my older brother. He had Raquel Welch to himself 100%.
One play of her record and I became her biggest fan south of the frozen USA-Canada border.
Every night I listened to the Quebec stations in secrecy. Her songs soothed my soul lost in the empty suburbs south of Boston and I felt as long as she was out there, there was someplace other than here.
At school I hid my secret. THE only French we knew were the Canucks from Quebec. Good for playing hockey for the Boston Bruins. I didn’t want to risk their attacking Francoise. I bought several LPs from Mr. Osberg and as winter melted from New England, he introduced me to the other Ye-Ye girls; Frances Gall, Sylvie Vartan, and Jacqueline Ta’eb as well as the Sultans from Quebec and Serge Gainsbourg.
None of them were Francoise Hardy. I dreamed about flying to Paris. An airline ticket cost hundreds of dollars. I settled for listening to her music with my eyers closed.
In 1968 Francoise Hardy released COMMENT TE DIRE ADIEU written by Serge Gainsbourg. Mr. Osburg said that he was the wicked man in France and played his hit with Jane Birkin JE T’AIME MOI NON PLUS.
Love dripped off the record. Mr. Osburg was right about this Gainsbourg man. He was as ugly as sin. I had to save Francoise and as soon as I arrived home, I asked my father, if we could vacation in France.
“They’re having riots there.” My father was very conservative. He tolerated the length of my hair, even if he thought I looked like a girl. “Students in the streets. Worse than the hippies. We’re going to the Cape.”
Our family rented three motel rooms in Harwichport. The pool overlooked the small harbor. The beach boasted the warmest water on Cape Cod and the sea registered 65 Fahrenheit by the 4th of July.
Every morning I read the Boston Globe. The newspaper covered the War in Vietnam with little mention of the Paris student unrest. I was certain that Francoise Hardy wasn’t the type of girl to get mixed up in trouble on the Left Bank. Not unless she fell into the hands of the evil Serge Gainsbourg and I plotted a trip to France. A rumor was whispered across Boston about a jet plane leaving Boston every morning for Paris. Its cargo of Maine lobsters was traded for eclairs, creme brulees, and pomme tartes. $100 round trip.
Two weeks before the start of school I emptied my bank account and took the T to Logan Airport early one morning. None of the terminals listed the ‘lobster’ flight and I spent the greater part of Saturday hunting for the mythic plane to Paris.
“Ha.” A Boston cop laughed upon hearing my query. “Once a week some kid comes up looking for that plane. There ain’t none. Some bullshit story someone invented for who knows why, but the weird thing is that all these kids want to meet the same girl. Francoise Hardy. You ever heard of her?”
“No.” These other boys’ feelings for Francoise Hardy could never rival my love.
“Me too. Must be some kind of film star. Like Brigitte Bardot.”
I fought back an explanation, not needing any more converts to the faith, and returned home in defeat. That summer America was deep mourning after the murder of RFK in LA. MRS. ROBINSON replaced Archie Bell and the Drells’ TIGHTEN UP as # 1, while Simon and Garfinkel sang about an older woman from the movie THE GRADUATE. Francoise Hardy was eight years older than me. I changed the words from Mrs. Robinson to Francoise Hardy. I never sang it in front of my girlfriend. Kyla was the same age as me.
COMMENT TE DIRE ADIEU was not a hit and the radio station in Quebec played less and less of her songs. Kyla and I went steady. I liked to think that Francoise would have approved of my selection, but I was stupid and left Kyla for no good reason in 1969. That year Francoise released Francoise Hardy en Anglais. Like the Catholic Mass in English her songs lost their magic in the translation.
My travels in the late-60s and 70s were confined to hitchhiking across America. None of the drivers played TOUS LES GARCONS ET LES FILLES, but I defended French music to hundreds of hippies, rednecks, and disco fanatics by saying, “You’ve never heard Francoise Hardy.”
In 1973 she appeared in the film SAVE THE TIGER. The American director failed to break the twenty-nine year-old singer to America. She remained a creature of France.
The Atlantic Ocean separated America from the Old World. My opportunity to cross the waters came in 1982, when I was hired to work as a doorman first to work at the Rex for the counter-culture magazine Actuel and then after a stay in Hamburg, the Bains-Douches, a popular Paris nightclub. At first I was unfamiliar with the French pop stars. Over the course of the next year I met Johnny Halliday, Yves Montand, Catherine Denevue, Yves St. Laurent, Coluche, countless Vogue models, arms dealers, and other lightbulbs of the night, but never Francoise Hardy and I asked the owner about her absence.
“She doesn’t go out at night. Her husband, Jacques Dutronc, is very jealous.”
“Of what?” Dutronc was a rock star for the French. Nobody in the USA knew his name, but ET MOI ET MOI ET MOI was a great song. I had it on tape. “Other men?”
My boss warned that her husband was capable of almost anything against any man seeking intimacy with his wife. “He is very much in love with her.”
“Who wouldn’t be?”
My boss shrugged with mutual understanding, He was a Francoise Hardy fan too.
The nightlife was a small world in Paris and I didn’t mention Francoise’s name again. People had big mouths. Jacques Dutronc visited the club on several occasions. He was a star. I was no one. A thick cigar hung out of his mouth. I hated the smell. He never came with Francoise. The rumor was that she was terribly shy after having been the Ye-Ye Girl for so many years. I made her husband wait to get in more than once.
Jacques Dutronc complained to my boss, who laughed behind the singer’s back.
My job was to make French stars feel like getting into the Bains-Douches was a privilege. My friends were granted an easy entry, especially Suzi Wyss, the Swiss mistress of a Getty Oil heir. On my days off I smoked opium at her oriental pad in the 13th arrondisement. The Swiss courtesan was superb cook and traveled through many cliques. One night she invited me to a dinner, but said, “Don’t tell anyone, but Francoise Hardy will be coming.”
“I thought she didn’t go out.” This was a miracle.
“She doesn’t, but she loves my cooking and I am always discreet. So not a word.”
“Silence will be my vow” I wanted Francoise to myself. “Will her husband be there?”
“Not for dinner, but he might come for dessert. He has a thing for my Swiss chocolate torte.”
Suzi’s piece de resistance was a culinary delight and I prepared like a nameless suitor for this rendezvous with Francoise Hardy.
I bought a chalk white shirt from Agnes B and a gray suit from my tailor in the Sentier. No tie was better than pretending to be a business man and I purchased Cuban heels from the Marches Aux Puches flea market. They dated back to the time of her greatest success. I cut my hair short and didn’t bathe for two days to emulate French men, who avoided bathing in fear of losing their masculinity.
That evening I showed up on time with a bouquet of roses. Suzi loved flowers. We smoked hash. Opium was for after the dinner. The door bell rang at 9. Francoise arrived at the apartment with a young gay man. Yves knew me from les Bains. We opened a bottle of wine. She wasn’t a drinker, but was amused by my stories of New York nightclubs awash with beautiful women and crooked cops.
“It would make a good movie.”
“Only if you played the lead.” I envisioned us on the podium of the Academy Awards receiving Oscars.
“I’m too old to play that role.”
“You’re never too old to be a star.” I wanted to tell her I had loved her forever. Now was not thee time. Maybe never was the time. She was only thirty-nine. I was thirty. I told her the story of hearing her on the Montreal radio and the plane with the pastries. She laughed at my love from afar. She had had a lot of lovers like that in her life.
“Didn’t I tell he was sweet?” Suzi lit another joint.
“Sweet as your torte.”
I was falling in love again.
In fact I had never stopped loving Francoise. She spoke about her music and picked up a guitar from the corner. The Ye-Ye girl sang two new tunes. I was in paradise and was about to tell her about hearing her music on a little radio twenty years ago.
A knock on the door trashed my moment. The newcomer was Jacques Dutronc. Francoise’s face said that she loved him and no one else. Any man would have been a fool to not love her the same.
“I know you.” He pointed his cigar. “Bains-Douches. Doorman.”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“A writer too.” Suzi was on my side.
“Pouoff” Dutronc had witnessed thousands of writers attempt to seduce his wife. “Women only love directors and producers. They prefer chauffeurs before a writer.”
Francoise laughed at her husband’s joke. Suzi thought it funny too. I might have joined them, if the riposte hadn’t struck so deep. After Suzi’s famous Swiss Chocolate cake rejoined to the living room, where Jacques Dutronc picked up the guitar.
“Francoise and I recorded a song in 1978. BROULLIARD DANS LA RUE CORVISART.”
He put down his cigar and sang the song’s opening lines. Francoise accompanied him on the chorus. I applauded their duet as well as their shared love.The odds of my getting anywhere with Francoise were stacked higher than the records in Mr. Osburg’s music store. An hour later the famed couple left with the gay friend. Francoise didn’t even said good-bye. Jacques winked to me. I wouldn’t make him wait at the door any more.
“Poor Boy.” Suzi patted my cheek. “Everyone loves her.”
“Yes, I suppose we do.”
“And I know how to make you forget, if only for a few minutes.” Suzi handed me a pipe. Opium was a good doctor for an unrequited love.
The three of us met several more times at Suzi’s apartment. The same routine as always, dinner, wine, and a joint or two. Jacques came late and they departed ensemble. Faithful forever.
I imagined myself being him, but I didn’t like cigars and my French was even worse than my German. Francoise loved Jacques and that was good enough for me, because all men at one time in their lives need a goddess to teach them about love.
I never met Princess Diana, although a friend of a friend married her brother. Diana would have been at the wedding. I never received an invitation. No great loss, because the Princess of Wales wasn’t my type, however I respeected the woman as the last vesetiges of the Crown and viewed her death as a blow against the empire of goodness.
On August 31, 1997 according to AI Princess Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris on August 31, 1997, after the Mercedes-Benz she was in crashed in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel. The crash resulted from the driver, Henri Paul, attempting to evade paparazzi at high speed, while under the influence of alcohol. Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul also died at the scene, and Diana succumbed to her injuries at the hospital hours later.
I arrived in London after a flight from JFK the day of her funeral. I exited from the Tube at Nottinghill Gate. People on the street walked with sorrowful steps in the direction of her Kensington Palace. Two grown men passed me in tears, as if their mother had passed away and women sobbed like they had lost their best friend. I walked to Sam Royalle's house. He was not at home. Everyone in London was observing the passage of someone whom they had hoped would be queen. The keys were under the mat and I entered his small house on Shrewsbury Mews.
Sam Royalle showed up at 5. His eyes were red.
"Are you okay?"
"I feel what you must have felt when JFK got killed."
"That bad?" I had been an eleven year-old schoolboy.
"Yes, that bad. Let's have a drink
That evening Sam and I went for a drink at the Westbourne Grove and then walked with thousands of the Princess' admirers to lay a wreath before Kensington Palace. The wall of memorial flowers rose chest-high. The scent of dying petals buried my senses and my eyes teared with the loss. Sam was a bawling baby. We walked away with our arms over each other's shoulder
Diana had been a real princess.
The next day I left London to go on a road trip through the Loire Valley with my father. He loved every minute. Seven days with me was enough and we returtned to Paris to catch his flight. Sam Royalle showed up in Paris at the hotel off the Boulevard St. Germain. We dined at La Coupole with father. After putting him to bed at the Hotel Lousiane Sam and I sat at a bar across the street.
"I got a problem." The Londoner whispered across the table. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth, so only I could hear him. My survival antennae perked into life. Only the guilty talked in that manner.
"What?" It's usually better to not know what someone's problem, so you don't ever have to get involved, but Sam and I were friends.
"Some Brixton yardies suspect me of switching a bank destination for a money wire transfer," Sam explained how the yardies had an auntie working at the transfer accounts in a Scottish bank. He had arranged for another swift code for them from an off-shore account. "The money never showed up."
"How much?"
"Over a million quid."
"And where is the money?" There were only three choices; with the yardies, Sam, or a 3rd unnamed party.
"I don't know."
It was the right answer and Sam expressed his apprehensions about leaving Paris for to London in order to discuss the matter with the Brixton yardies. They were habitual murderers. He ordered us another round of drinks.
"On me."
"In that case make it a margarita with good tequila."
The waiter took our order and I suggested to Sam that he take a long vacation in Thailand.
"The food is good, the girls are friendly, and I've never seen a Brixton yardie in years that I've been traveling in Asia. Plus it's hard to get extradited from there."
"I didn't do anything wrong."
"Oh, I forgot about that." I said nothing about his arranging a different destination for the wire transfer. Our drinks came to the table. We drank them swiftly. Another two rounds and I mentioned that Diana had stayed at the Ritz only two weeks before.
"That's where she left from for that fateful drive."
"Is it far?"
"No."
Sam looked around the bar, as if to see Diana's ghost.
"Something about that accident isn't right." I felt like Oliver Stone filming JFK. The French police had blamed the crash on the driver. "Henri-Paul had been drinking and maybe doing drugs, but I've driven in that condition on more than one occasion without a crash."
"Twice the speed limit."
"65 mph is not fast for an expert driver."
"The newspapers reported 90."
"English newspapers love sensation. I'm surprised that they didn't publish any naked photos of her corpse at the Quai de La Rapee." I had been to the Paris morgue to ID a friend. It wasn't a cheerful place.
"Stop joking." The English were loyal subjects to their nobility.
"I'm not joking and I can prove it."
"How?"
"By driving the rented car through the same street at the same speed." I had drank enough margaritas for this evening.
"I'll re-create the accident.”
“Fuck you.”
“Someone killed her.”
The whys were too numerous to count unlike the four margaritas that I had downed in the last hour and the Londoner tried to talk me out of my test.
"Tomorrow morning would be better."
"No way. This test needs the right conditions. Nighttime, Drinks. Tomorrow morning the quai will be jammed with traffic." I also had to drive my father to the airport to catch a flight to Boston in the morning.
We walked outside to my Fiat Panda. I turned the key in the ignition and peeled from the curb to snake through the narrow streets of the Left Bank. I crossed the Seine at the Louvre and sped down Rue Du Rivoli to whip into the chaotic merry-go-round of Place de la Concorde and 90kph.
I needed to go faster.
Diana’s Mercedes had paparazzi on her tail. A score of them were on motorcycles. With strobe lights on their tail, Jodi must have told the driver. “Plus vite.”
Diana laughs. Jodi joins her.
I hit 110 KPH and skittered onto the Quai like a billiard ball sliced with extreme English.
I don’t hear Sam’s shouting.
The entrance to the death tunnel loomed ahead. I reach it at 120 KPH and the Fiat Panda went airborne. The Fiat bottomed out underneath the tunnel with a slight swerve, but I controlled the car.
"See I told you the accident was no accident."
"It was a heavier car."
"It was no accident." I slowed down coming out of the the Place de l’Alma underpass.
Two more cars followed us. The look on their faces told us that the drivers had just attempted the same re-enactment. Not everyone was convinced that Diana's death was an accident. I dropped Sam at his hotel on Rue De Seine. He checked the street for Brixton yardies. The coast was clear.
"See you in the morning."
"Thanks for the ride. It's always good to have a near-death experience before bed."
"Don't mention it."
We arranged to meet in the morning after I drove my father to the airport. I parked the Panda on the street of the Hotel Louisiane. I went up to our room. My father raised his head from his pillow.
"You smell like you've been drinking." My father was no tee-totaler, but he didn't like drunks, especially those related to him.
"Just a few glasses of wine." I fell into bed wearing my clothes.
"Smells more like a vat. I hope you didn't do anything stupid."
"Nothing more than talking with a friend."
"Then good-night and see you in the morning."
I crashed into the pillows without any further thought about Diana Princess of Wales.
Sam and I traveled to the South. After a week he booked a flight from Paris to Thailand. I went off to Ireland.
A town called Ballyconeeley.
Three months later the paparazzi released the last photos of Diana. She was a queen then and a queen now. I would never be as good as her. I could only try to follow her example. It was all of us could do.
I took several minutes to study the prints in The Times, while eating my breakfast at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin. The driver's face was aglow with excitement. I was convinced that he had been drugged like Teddy Kennedy at Chappaquiddick.
By whom?
I have my suspects.
They know who they are too.
That crash was no accident and I'll prove it again if anyone wants to buy the drinks.
During the early 1990s ULYSEES by James Joyce accompanied my travels around the world. The hardcover classic sat on desks in bungalows across Asia without my turning a single page to read the first line of the modernist novel published in 1922 in Paris. 732 pages. 265,000 words with approximately 30,030 distinct words.
"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed."
I only read the first line today, yet carried the weighty hardcover from Biak to Bali to Java and beyond. I think I left ULYSEES in Penang, Malaysia. At the Swiss Hotel on Chulia Street. It was still there in 1994. I carried it to my room hoping the reunion might resuurect a desire to read the celebrated tome. Not a chance. I left it there again. Never to know anything of Eccles Street, Davie Byrnne's Pub, and the Ormond Hotel. nor any of the characters. I do not pride myself in this ignorance, bur millions have read ULYSEES. It has never been made into a movie and I respect that.
47 has ordered 4,500 Marines and sailors on a naval and air task force into the Caribbean as a military threat against the leader of Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro and his socialist regime. Millions of Venzuelans have fled their homeland and traveled by any means possible to the USA. THere is a colony of over two thousand refugees in my neighborhood of Clinton Hell. Most of them are families with large numbers of undernourished children. NOt one of the adults are over 5-6 due to malnutrition resulting from the American embargo to prevent the sale of oil fro the World's second largest reserve of oil. The millions are also seeking escape from the terror of the narco-traffickers, since Venezuela exports 15% of the cocaine from the Andes to feed the USA.
Over the last months the Pentagon under Captain Hesgeth, who has admitted announced to the press, "According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Venezuela is not a cocaine-producing country.
No matter. The USA has conducted several attacks against fast boats on the open sea. No investigation. No intl. Strictly eyeballed from a drone and greenlighted by (SOUTHCOM) located in Doral, Florida. According to CNN the latest overnight strike against killed six bringing the total number known of targeted boats to 10 and the number of people killed to 43 since the US began its campaign last month.
The Pentagon has yet to win a war in this century, despite waging an eternal war against everything and everywhere. The DEA lost of the War of Drugs but like the Japanese soldiers stranded on Pacific islands post WWII, the DEA refuses to accept defeat. The Sackler family's promotion of oxycontin killed over a million Americans with millions more physically destroyed by OD. For their role in this ongoing epidemic the Sacklers will pay approximately $6.5 billion in installments over the next 15 years, with a $1.5 billion payment upon the plan's effective date. Aux le guillotine!!!
Meanwhile the USA imports approximately 1500 tons of blow for domestic consumption. OR about four billion grams. Valued at $200 billion. Deaths 20,000 plus. But the Sacklers remain free.
Why Venezuela? East answer. To create the Fog of War to allow more importation by the CIA of course and nothing better to create fog than a Category 5 hurricane. Melissa. We are # 1.
In the late summer of 1985 Candia and I took the train to Deauville for a vacation from Paris. The closest beach was Deauville on le Manche or 'the 'the Sleeve' or the English Channel. The Normandy sea resort was not the Riviera, but it was only a two-hour train ride away. Deauville was out of my budget, so we stayed in the pleasant neighboring town, Trouville or 'city of a hole'. The weather was pleasant and after checking into a small hotel we went swimming at the broad sandy beach. The water was cool, but the sun was hot. Candia loved lying in the sun.
The first night I intended on dining at Les Vapeurs, except the famed seafood restaurant on Boulevar Francois Morceaux was closed, so we went to another eaterie. Starting with a bottle of Sancerre I decided to be adventurous and ordered something other than sole for my main course, however the raiee au beure noire was abominable and I sent it back. The cook came out and insulted me as an ignorant American. The waiters took his back. He might have been right, but I stood up, told Candida to leave, and then picked up a fork, asking ,"Oui, veux perde un œil?"
The threat of lossing of an eyeball was said in Boston-accented French.
The answer was silence, pobably not udnerstanding what I had said, but the fork in my hand translated the danger.
I dropped 200 francs for the bottle of wine and carried it outside.
Out on the foggy street Candida asked, "So now where do we eat?"
We had a crepe.
Candida was not happy, but was happier after I got us cups to drink the wine. It was nice to be out of Paris with someone you loved.
Last evening after sunset I looked west out the window of my top-floor Fort Greene apartment and even without my glasses I spotted the awe-ionspiring triple convergence of the crescent moon, Jupiter, and Venus hovering over the western horizon. I called down to my landlord's ten year-old son in his in his bedroom, "Come on up here. I got something you have to see."
"I hope it isn't your broken tooth." James shouted back from the floor below.
"No, it's not my broken tooth." Since January I had been pestering him to smell my shattered molar, which had been yanked from my lower jaw by my Sri Racha dentist. I had the shattereed molar in a vial. Months later it was still rank. "It's something special in the sky called the Triple Convergence."
James loves Star Wars and dashed up the flight of stairs followed by his sister and his father, AP.
"Come in here." I stood at the bathroom window. It was easier to open than those in the bedroom.
"Ooooo." Lizzie held her nose. "This room smells of poop."
"No, it doesn't." I had just cooked pasta with gorgonzola cheese. "Besides my poop smells sweet."
"No, it doesn't." James checked the toilet bowl and held his breath before coming over to the window. "Look Dad, the moon has two friends."
"They're not stars. They're planets. One is Jupiter and the other is Venus."
"Which is which?" Speaking without breathing James sounded like he had a cold.
"Jupiter." AP pointed to one and guessed wrong. I said, "Venus is the brightest. Jupiter is the biggest."
"Are you sure about that?" AP narrowed his eyes with distrust. He had attended a better college than me.
"Venus is called the Evening Star." No one thinks Venus is a planet, but it's more obvious than the mothership in the blockbuster film INDEPENDENCE DAY.
"Why is it so bright?" James always had a surplus of good questions. "Shouldn't the big one be brighter?"
"No, the brightness is its reflection of the sunlight. If we were in the country, they would seem even brighter, because in the city are too many competing lights."
"We're going to the Hamptons tomorrow." Lizzie had yet to release the grip on her nose. "Will there be a triple convergence tomorrow night?"
"I think so." I actually had no idea.
"Cool." James ran out of the bathroom followed by Lizzie. AP gave me a smile. "It does smell a little of poop."
"It's the gorgonzola." I felt a little like Gallilo abused by the Pope.
"Yeah, right. See you in the morning." AP clapped his fingers over his nose and I sat by the window to watch the wonderment of the cosmos.
I later read that the sun's astronomical magnitude was -26. The full moon was half that on the brightness scale. Venus was -4 and Jupiter remained visible in the night with a -1, plus that Venus shines so brightly, because its solar orbit never veers more than 90 degrees away from Earth.
Tonight Venus will be on the longest end of its eastern elongation.
This weekend
October 23, 2023
The south Shore of Boston
At a family wedding
At a golf course
Atop a high hill
A new high hill
Created
From the debris of the Big Dig
Burying
Our childhood swimming holes,
The Quincy Quarries.
I surveyed the Blue Hills
Enthralled by their low line
Stretching west To Big Blue
635 feet high
My old neighborhood
Closer
Harborview Road
Beneath Chicktawbut Hill.
Invisible beneath the autumn trees
The world of my youth
I know this view well
But from a different angle
And another time__
June 1960
My mother sat me
Her second son
Eight years old
One of five children
In the family car
A Ford station wagon
Parked before our split-level rach house
Alone
Her
Saying two words
"Chaney drowned in Sebago Lake."
No explanation
Chaney my best friend
Eight years old
Her parting steps silent
Chaney and me swimming at Higgins Beach
I stared west to Big Blue Hill
635 feet high
Sunset close
The hill's silhouette a whale
Filling my eyes
Filling my horizon__
Chaney my best friend
From our old neighborhood
Falmouth Foresides Maine
Chaney and me throwing darts at seagulls
On the bluff
Across from Portland, Maine__
Then
I prayed
Alone
In the Ford Station Wagon
To God
For Chaney
To come back
From Lake Sebago
One prayer
Silence
I knew Death from before
Last spring Chaney had shown me dead puppies
We poured them onto the shore mud
The tide took them
Underneath the water
Same as Chaney in Sebago Lake
There was no God_
That day
The hump of Big Blue filled the west
God gone forever
Not Chaney
He is with me always__
Today
October 23 2023
Now the same view
From a different angle
From a hill higher and farther northeast
I see
Big Blue 635 feet high
No more a whale
Chaney always with me
I his eyes and ears of all the years__
In the autumn afternoon light
I turn my head
Boston Harbor a deep Atlantic blue
To the North___
Behind me
My nephew's wedding swirls in dance
I am happy
No, joyful
To be here
To see the Blue Hills again
To breathe the familiar air of home__
To feel the approach of the colder season ahead
It is a good day to be alive
For me
And for Chaney
Chaney never gone
I am never
Alone
Never
The two of us together forever__
Poems are never finished. every time read aloud they come to time and often a step from the written pat, although the druids exercised the power of memory in myth. Every epic poem memorized after twenty years of training without any help from the written word. Me, I can't remember anything other than sitting in the passenger seat of that damned car staring at that damned Big Blue at the age of age linking with Chaney forever.
