FUCK, SHIT, CUNT, PISS / Boston Avatar -2017

Mel Lyman played banjo and harmonica for the Jim Kweskin Jug Band out of Boston in the 60s. The charismatic musician formed a neo-transcendental commune on Fort Hill in economically depressed Roxbury and in 1967 released a bi-weekly journal called AVATAR espousing the re-birth of the inner-self as reflected by the glory of Mel Lyman, who had toppe the Beatles by claiming he was God.

"Love isn't something you find, something you do, something you study. Love is something you BECOME after there is no more YOU."

I ran into several of their members in the late-60s. I was a teenager. They had no interest in someone as young as me, since I was male. I begged my father to buy property on Fort Hill. A bedraggled tenement cost a few thousand dollars. He thought that the neighborhood was a blight on Boston. They now cost $400,000-800,000. A hundred-fold return on that investment.

"Best to napalm the hill and start over again."

That was the end of my real estate career, but Lyman attracted followers and the Avatar recruited believers from around the country. https://www.splicetoday.com/ reported that at its peak, the Lyman Family numbered about 150 people, roughly three times the number associated with Manson. They settled into the ghetto neighborhood of Fort Hill, where they bought distressed houses and fixed them up, very early adapters to the concept of “flipping” real estate. They took over a newspaper and ran a printing company. Mel hated hippies and feminists. In the Lyman Family, men were men and women were women. Mel insisted that Family members present a straight, business-like appearance. Their massive consumption of LSD was legendary.

The commune expanded to several houses and the Boston police under orders from the city's judiciary sought to quell its growth by arresting the vendors selling the Avatar with the sale of obscene material. The Avatar responded with a centerfold provocatively printed with the words; FUCK, SHIT, CUNT, PISS.

According to famed defense lawyer, Harvey Silverglate the Cambridge and Boston police attempted to prosecute 80 vendors. Only five were found guilty, but their conviction's were overturn, due to the DA's inexperience with First Amendment issues and the assenting opinion of the State's Supreme Court stated that “this rather sad publication is not obscene.”

End of story and the Avatar finished its run as a mouthpiece for the beliefs of Mel Lyman. The Fort Hill commune moved into the future, but the leader passed away in April 1978.

According to Wikipedia the exact date and location are unknown.

I am going to reduce everything that stands to rubble
and then I am going to burn the rubble
and then I am going to scatter the ashes
and then maybe SOMEONE will be able to see SOMETHING as it really is WATCHOUT

Mount Ranier Snow Storm 1999

Hiking on Mount Rainer minutes before a snow storm 1999

The Non-Existence Of God

"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God."

The other day someone posted this quote on Facebook.

I commented, "I know nothing and understand nothingness is the basis of quantum mechanics, however my devotion to atheism comes from having died several times and seen the white light. no god no nothing. a white light. although a friend passed and after his return he said he had seen the Pearly Gates, but no God. No anyone. Same as me."

Science is basically Man's attempt to define nature to prove the existence of a God.

Although the quote has been redacted on facebook to read I'm am not an atheist. Actual quote "I am not a pantheist."

Einstein also has said, "'God' is a mystery. But a comprehensible mystery. I have nothing but awe when I observe the laws of nature. There are not laws without a lawgiver, but how does this lawgiver look? Certainly not like a man magnified,"

I remain an anti-Believer, although during my long illness and healing process I gratefully accepted the prayers of the Faithful. They were positive and positivity is a great tool against negativity.

THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL OF PASSAICH - BET ON CRAZY by Peter Nolan Smith

When Cecil B. DeMille released THE TEN COMMANDMENTS in 1956 and it was an immediate box office success, earning the cinematic retelling of Exodus over $180 million dollars. In 1962 Paramount Pictures re-released the film for screenings at drive-ins across the nation and my father loaded my five brothers and sisters into our Ford station wagon to view the epic with a cast of thousands at the South Shore Drive-In in Braintree, Massachusetts.

After paying for our entry my father cruised the left-handed lane looking for a good vantage spot. He was an ace at parking. My mother spotted an open slot, but before my father turned and a rock struck our car.

My father's head spun to the left and he spotted a teenager scrambling up the grassy slope. He jammed the column shift into P and jumped out of the car. He had played football in college and caught the young man within seconds. The hillside was too dark to see if he had punched the stone-thrower, although my father returned to the station wagon rubbing his knuckles.

"Damned kids today."

"Watch that language." My mother considered swearing a sign of moral decay and had never used a bad word in her life.

"Sorry." My father loved my mother almost as much as he loved his six children.

After parking in the perfect spot, he gave my older brother and me money to buy popcorn from the concession stand. Frunk was eleven and I was ten. This was the first time that we hadn't worn wear pajamas to the drive-in and we walked over to the refreshment stand. Teens loitered under the neon lights. They looked so cool.

Returning to the station wagon my older brother and I handed the popcorn and soft drinks to our parents to divvie out to our siblings. We set up lawn chair before the family car and watched the movie in the warm summer air.

Moses heroically faced down the Pharaoh's magicians, yet the bald Yul Brenner refused to let the Hebrews leave his land.

Moses warned of plagues.

His childhood friend laughed in his face, then the Nile turned into blood, frogs overran the land, gnats infested the dead frogs, wild beasts were driven crazy by the gnats, livestock died from the diseased wild beasts, a pestilence of boils spread on the skin of the Egyptians, a hailstorm destroyed the remaining crops and locust clouded the sky.

The worst was saved for last.

A darkness fell over Egypt and the first-born of every Egyptian died with the passage of the Angel of Death.

Azrael or 'Help from God' was merciless in his mission. I had been a non-believer since the age of eight and this depiction of God's ruthlessness rehardened my heart against the faith of America.

"Why would God kill innocent babies?"

"God acts in strange ways." My older brother had possession of the popcorn. This wasn't the place for an argument about God. Charlton Heston was awed by the burning bush under the starry skies of the South Shore. Hundreds of tiny speakers echoed his voice across the drive-in and at the movie's end the Hebrews reached Canaan, although without Moses who doubted God's promise and insisted this land of milk and honey wasnt the final destination.

"God doesn't act in strange ways. He acts like a creep." My best friend Chaney had drowned in Lake Sebago and he had been a first born.

"Sssh, you want Mom to hear you?"

I shut up, since my youthful atheism would have deeply hurt my mother, but over the following years I questioned my Jewish friends about celebrating Passover's ancient decimation of the Egyptian young.

Back in the last century Passaich I wandered into 47th Street to pick up a diamond before everyone rushed home for the high holiday.

Richie Boy greeted me with a shrug.

"When are you leaving?"

Everyone else in the exchange was closing shop.

“Ask the old man.” Richie Boy pointed to my former boss.

I knew the answer.

His father planned on staying to the bitter end of the day and I said, “Manny, it’s Passover. Go home already.”

“And what’s that to you? You're a goy.” Manny shared my anti-religious beliefs. “When you pay my rent, then you can tell me what time I close my business.”

Manny’s desk was cluttered with the usual piles of paperwork. In all the years I had worked for their firm, the pyramid of papers rose and fell without ever disappearing in entirety.

“Close now and I’ll buy you a martini.”

“I’m busy.” This office was the octogenarian's home away from home.

“Manny thinks he might make a sale,” Hlove commented under his breath. The junkie had replaced me when I left for Thailand two years ago. He hadn't a good word for me. I had none for the snitch, who's main skill was brownnosing Richie.

"No one is buying nothing today That’s it. We’re going home." His son signaled his two employees to pack up the merchandise. Hlove and Deisy didn't have to be told twice.

This decision ignited a fight between father and son.

I went outside to wait for Richie Boy.

“Damien, you have something to give for Passiach?” Lenny the Bum shambled up to the window. His bloated face shined with sweat and strands of hair were plastered across
balding skull. He was dressed in his usual attire of a filthy tee shirt and shabby trousers.

“For you, I always have something.” I dug into my pocket for a dollar. “Where are you celebrating Passaich?”

“I’m working the street.” Lenny was a workaholic like Manny. “I have to get money to take care of my sister.”

“You’re a good brother, Lenny.”

“Plus I don’t really celebrate Passaich.” Lenny didn’t look healthy, but he had disproven many rumors of his demise.

“Why not?” Lenny was no atheist.

“What does Passaich celebrate?” Lenny leaned over to whisper what he had to say, as if it were a secret.

“Passover commemorates the Angel of God passing over the Jewish houses in Egypt, which is the Greek name for Kemet, but I agree with you. How can anyone in their right mind celebrate the death of innocents?"

"Damian, I didn't kill any Egyptians and I didn't kill Jesus either. I'm just a harmless Jew," Lenny whined with a shrug. "But the Pharaoh was a bad man."

"Or so the Bible says."

"Please." Lenny lifted both his hands in defense. He was a religious bum. His head was always covered by a yarmulke. "Don't think bad of us. We have had a hard time over the centuries. You know that there was no angel of death. The young probably died from infected food, since the first-born always got the food first. Who knows, but it was a sad scene when Yul Brenner carried his dead son in his palace."

"You know the Hebrews weren't slaves. No one working on the pyramids was a slave. They got paid for their labor."

"The Bible says different."

His Yahweh and the Father of the Nailed God of my rejected religion were cruel gods. Jehovah let his son die on a cross. As a father I could never sacrifice my son, but then I'm human and gods are divine. They get away with everything.

"You know I saw THE TEN COMMANDMENTS at the South Shore Drive-In."

“It was a good movie, but Charlton Heston was no Jew.” Lenny rocked back and forth on the heels of his busted shoes. "Plus there was nothing good about the Ten Plagues as you say. Especially the death of the first-born of all Egyptian humans and animals. Yahweh instructed the Hebrews to sprinkle lamb’s blood on this doors, so his spirit would skip their houses in his search for the first-born males of the Egyptians.”

“I was taught that God was all-knowing and all-seeing, so why couldn’t He see which houses were Jewish?”

“Damien, Yahweh moves in strange ways.”

“Most people think the killer of the male first-borns was an angel, but it was actually Yahweh blundering through the night killing young boys. Do you think there was any collateral damage like how smart bombs hit schools in Afghanistan and Iraq and Palestine?”

“How should I know? I wasn’t there, but enough of this narishkait, because Passaich is a celebration of death. Death of the guilty, but also the innocent. This I can not celebrate. Freedom, yes. Extermination, no.”

Several people had gathered around our discussion and a religious diamond dealer angrily demanded of Lenny, “You really think Yahweh was a murderer?”

“It wasn’t the first time.” Lenny depended on the kindness of this street to support his sister and didn't need this attention.

“Actually I think that the second-sons of Egypt plotted to kill all the first-borns to destroy the rules of primogeniture and then blamed the Hebrews.” I was talking nonsense to deflect the flak aimed at Lenny.

“Primogeniture?” The diamond dealer had a yeshiva education.

“Primogeniture is where the first born inherits everything from the father. Like Cain and Abel.”

“Cain killed Abel.” Lenny nodded in agreement.

“The second son plot."

“Es iz nit geshtoygen un nit gefloygen," the diamond dealer muttered in Yiddish.

“What’s that mean?”

“It never rose and it never flew.” Lenny smiled with the pleasure of hearing Yiddish, which had been abandoned by the Hassidim in favor of Hebrew. “In plain speaking ‘bullshit’.”

“It’s not foolishness,” I protested with the fervor of a devotee to the untruth. “Worshipping murder is an abomination. Be peaceful is better."

“God does not murder. He takes revenge.” The diamond dealer spoke with words with conviction. “And in this case it was his Killing Angel doing the killing.”

“Isn’t that the same name used by Josef Mengele?”

"Feh." The diamond dealer was feed up with us.

“That fucking Nazi was called the Angel of Death.” Lenny soured on the mention of his name. He had lost family in the camps. “Passaich was over 3500 years ago and the apotropaic rite actually predates Exodus."

"Apotropaic?" I had never heard the word.

"Something to ward off evil."

"Magic, feh." The diamond dealer spat the two words."

"Not magic, just a ritual of daubing the door lintel with a blood-soaked hyssop to prevent demonic forces from entering the house."

"Hyssop?"

"Yes, a mountain flower."

"Magic. Devils. Double feh." The diamond dealer looked at his Rolex watch and stormed down the sidewalk.

"I shouldn't be so smart. People don't like smart, especially when you challenge their religious beliefs and my people love a good book."

"The Torah?"

"It's the only book to them and they would be even more disapproving, if I told them that Passaich was a combination of a Canaanite and Mesopotamian rituals. The Exodus connection came later, but what do I know?"

"More than me."

"I'm still a bum."

"A smart one."

"That and $3 dollars and I can get a little bottle of brandy. You have something to give?"

"I already gave you, but what the hell." I handed over another two dollars.

“I love you Damian and pray you see your children soon.”

“And a Happy Bunny Day to you, Lenny.

The slumpy bum wandered off pestering another diamond dealer for a dollar. He was a hard worker.

“What was that all about?” Richie Boy exited from the exchange.

“The origins of Passaich.”

“Passover?” He looked into the exchange. His father was still at his papers. “You hungry?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too. What about getting something to eat at the Oyster Bar?”

Shellfish were very tref, but Richie Boy was a bacon Jew, “Sounds delightful.”

Richie Boy and I headed for Grand Central Terminal, passing Lenny.

“Happy Easter.” He offered us.

"I only celebrate the bunnies."

"And chocolate."

"I love chocolate."

I gave him another dollar.

"Enjoy." As a sinner I was willing to forgive almost everyone for everything, since to err is human, but to forgive is a divine trait.

Only forgetting is more human.

Just ask Lenny.

Until then I wish everyone had a good sedah.

Hag kasher vesame`ah, for the only exterminating angels I ever see are the bartenders at the 169 Lounge in Chinatown.

Dakota and Johnny know how to murder the next day, but I lived through this Passover.

After all I'm just a goy.

Man O Manischewitz 2012

In 2012 Fort Greene was a friendly neighborhood. People said hello to each other. I smiled greetings, glad to be here. It was a 'we' world, although I wished I was in Thailand with my family.

Across the street an elderly Trinidadian woman collected beer cans and bottles for the deposit money. I gave Jinny all my empties, at least ten a week. At five cents a can my annual contribution added up to $25.

One rainy afternoon I exited from the Fort Greene Observatory, Ginny was struggling to drag her cart loaded with plastic soda bottles onto the sidewalk. Her daily effort financed her yearly visit to the casino. She loves the slots.

"Wait there," I shouted and walked over to help maneuver her load out of the street.

"Thank you, sweetie." She smiled and scurried back to her basement apartment, "I have something for you. Watch my things."

"Sure." I estimated that she had collected over two hundred bottles this morning or $10 for her battle with the one-armed bandits of Aqueduct. Thirty seconds later she emerged from her flat with a plastic bag.

"This is for you." Ginny handed me a bottle of Manischewitz Concord Grape Wine, 100% kosher for Passover.

"Thank you." I accepted the bottle with gratitude. No one had given me a Christmas gift let alone a Passaich gift. I had first drunk the kosher wine at the age of twelve. 1964. it had been sweeter than Coke. "I'll drink a toast to you with my landlord AP."

"He is such a good man. And those children are lovely."

"Yes, they are." I pointed to her cart. "You need any help with that?"

"No, I'm going down to Pathway to redeem the money. I think I might go to the casino on New Years Day."

"Then I wish you luck." 2013 was a long way away.

I returned to AP's brownstone and showed my friend the bottle.

"Man O Manischewitz." AP made a face. His palate was used to more sophisticated wines.

"I can't remember the last time I drank it. It must have been back in the Zapple and Boone's Farm years." I examined the bottle for percentage of alcohol. "It says 11%. Care for a glass?"

"Not right now." He had just eaten pasta with clams for lunch, which calls for white wine and certainly not glatt kosher wine. Of course clams are tref, but AK loved his seafood and bacon too.

"Later?" I hated drinking alone.

"Much later."

I had no reason to wait and cracked open the bottle in the top-floor apartment. The bouquet was pure sweetness. I poured a glass and brought it to my lips. A simple sip renditioned me back to 1966.

Man O Manischewitz.

Some things in life never change.

"Here's to you, Ginny."

Dinner With Lazurus

According to John 12:1 six days before Passover Jesus visited Lazurus, whom he had risen from the grave the previous year. Dinner was served by Lazurus' sister, Martha. His last miracle.

"Silami?" Aramaic for 'how are you doing?' must have been his Resurrectionist's greeting.

"Better than being dead or in Beersheba," Lazurus have joked.

"Anidanidi weyini ina yemībela negeri inidēti newi?" offered Jesus

"Love some."

This conversation is pure conjecture, since no one possessed a divine cellphone to record the dinner for the New Testament, but the Passaich fare was traditionally lamb and pita bread as ascribed by the tradition of High Holy Day celebrating the slaughter of the First Born to free the Hebrews from Egypt. Jehovah was a motherfucker.

After the feast Lazurus' other sister Mary about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. John 12:3.

As a child in Catholic school, the nuns taught that Mary Magdalene anointed the Messiah's feet, but it was Mary of Bethany based on Mrk 14:7

Judas objected, "“Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” 12:5.

“Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.John 12:7-8.

Luke 7;16 remarked a woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. The other books lean toward Mary of Bethany. A pure woman as was Mary Magdalene was a wealthy follower of Jesus much maligned by the Church since Pope Gregory's Easter sermon portraying Mary Magdalene as a repentant prostitute or promiscuous woman .

Later that week God's Only Son on the Cross called out, "Oh Lord why has Thou forsaken me?"

Mind that there was no capitalization in Aramaic.

Neither was there any further mention of Lazurus in the New Testament, although he and his sisters were rumored to have fled Judah to settle in Marseilles along with Mary Magdalene.

All of this coming from word of mouth.

And according to James Steele, "All stories are true, if interesting."

Last Supper For Thirteen

The Synoptic Gospels recount Jesus Christ's Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem on a donkey.

Seven days later the preacher had been betrayed by Judas, arrested by the authorities, tried by the Romans, crucified on the order of Pontius Pilate, buried in a cave, and rose from a deathlike coma a week later.

Over the centuries scholars have debated the date of the Last Supper. Most Biblical experts agree that the even took place sometime between AD 30-36 with one physicist, Colin Humphrey, pinning down that mythic repast with Jesus and the twelve apostles to April 1, 33CE.

A tumultuous eight days.

To celebrate Passaich one of the apostles hired a room just outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem in a joint called the Upper Room perhaps run by an Essene from Bethany, who must asked joked, “Everyone know what they want?”

"Something traditional," a member of the thirteen probably punned with a shrug.

There wasn't much of a choice.

According to culinary historians the Saarmeal consisted of leaven bread and other food cholent, a stewed dish of beans cooked very low and slow, olives with hyssop, a herb with a mint-like taste, bitter herbs with pistachios and a date charoset, a chunky fruit and nut paste.

No one ever said it was a good meal, but things soon went south with Jesus' arrest by the Temple guards of the Sanhedrin in the Garden of Gethsemane. His enemies within the temple wanted him gone and nine hours later Jesus was dead on the cross.

No last meal.

At least none I can find.

The Temple hierarchy really didn't like him.

A lot.

Last Passaic after a long walk to the Brooklyn Museum to view Jimmy DeSana's SM photos Dakota Pollack and I dined on cod, sweet potato, and broccoli.

Not glatt kosher, but none of it tref.

And since I don't drink anymore. No wine.

No beer either.

Sei gesund.

ps there is no such thing as a good kosher wine.

Feh.

Maundy Thursday

In 1977 I lived in Park Slope with James Spicer. The silver-haired jazz impressario representing several jazz stars only charged me $120 for a room in the spacious townhouse. We drank up the street at the Gaslight Pub. James thrived on the streetwise clientele and I sparred with a Frenchman for pinball supremacy. Michel the French bartender was better with the flippers, while I mastered the machine's bump and grind without tilting the ball. James drank hard and heavy, hitting on the young Irish thugs frequenting the old school bar. It wasn't unusual for him to get up in the morning with a black eye. He had a thing for rough trade.

Late on an April night I woke in my room. James knelt by the bed, anointing my feet with oil.

"James, what the fuck are you doing?"

"I thought you might like this. It's Maundy Thursday."

"So?"

"You're a bad Catholic." James disapproved of my atheism. "The word comes from the Latin Mandatum, ceremony of the washing of the feet."

"By Mary Magdalene?" I didn't recall her having anything to do with Jesus' fatal visit to Jerusalem.

"No, no, no, that was early in the New Testament. "Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair." That was that time, but this is before the Last Supper. The washing of feet was by Lazurus' sister."

"James, thanks, but I really would like to go back to sleep."

"Sure, I understand you have no traditions." The forty year-old New Yorker stumbled from my bedroom and I wiped the oil from my feet.

I haven't had my feet oiled since, but across the world Catholics and Christians annually celebrate Maundy Thursday, on which Jesus hosted the Last Supper and washed the Apostles' feet to demostrate the sanctity of humiity."

In Luxembourg children wander the streets with wooden clappers calling the faithful to church.

Throughout Western Europe and America bishops bless holy oils for the sacraments.

None of these rites can compare with the ablution of a drunken gay man.

It was an act of love.

Passing Judgment Over Passover

Passover is the most important religious holiday on the Jewish Calendar, celebrating the Angel of Death passing over the first-borns of the Hebrew as Yahweh's Holy Annihilator murder the first-born of the Egyptians. This last plague of Moses freed the bonded Hebrews from the Land of the Pharaohs. The actual date is lost to time as is the name of the Pharaoh. Some religious historians date the Biblical tale to the rule of Rhamses II, although no historian from that time recorded the plagues and the story of Moses sounds a lot like the Neo-Assyrian version of the birth of the king Sargon of Akkad in the 24th century BC.

But if Passover is not plagiarism, how to explain the last plague.

The massacre of the first-born.

Possibly the first-born were first given food in the morning and the bread could have been poisoned by a toxin or else died from sleeping too close to the ground as was their privilege and breathed a toxic gas or more plausibly the children were poisoned by the slaves.

Every slave-owners feared that fate,except the Hebrews were never slaves, just workers trying to flee their debts.

Serves you right, but all part of the ruthless God of Israel.

"I'll fuck your eyes out." Exodus 12:11

And people ask why I'm an atheist.

Many reasons.

please be peaceful, Azrael.

Palm Beach Sunday 2008

In April 2008 I lived nowhere. My apartment in the East Village had been taken over by the faceless management company. I had lived with my wife and daughter in Pattaya until this April. We had had good times and bad times. It was home, then again I considered anyplace home once you buy a roll of toilet paper. I had been sad to leave, but my January arrest by the Thai cyber-crime police had necessitated a change in employment.

My wife and I discussed the options.

Teaching English in Thailand paid little. At tops 20,000-30000 baht per month.

My friend Lisa in Palm Beach listened to my story over the phone and said, "You can come here. I have a house for you to take care of. It's a little money, but you can get a start." Palm Beach in the middle of a recession seemed a good destination and I kissed my wife and daughter good-bye at the Bangkok airport. I had no idea when we might see each other again. The flight was long. I stayed in New York three weeks and then headed south to Palm Beach. Lisa greeted me at the airport. At fifty-five I was almost the youngest male passenger in the terminal.

"Good to see you." Lisa gave me a hug.

"Thanks for having me."

"No problems, just remember it's low season." Low season meant the rich had vacated Palm Beach for more temperate climates; the Hamptons, Duchess County, Tuscany, Switzerland, the south of France, and the more tony zipcodes of New England. "I'm not going anywhere, because I'm broke."

I had $200 in my pocket.

That evening I sent my wife half and my mistress half. Mem will be having my baby in July. I took over a house near Donald Trump's Mar-o-Lago. My job required walking the owners' Airedale. She was a crazy dog. My only social contact here was Lisa and her son Kris. They were bunkered down at her villa on Chilean Place. We watched Euro Football 2008 together, cheering on France, which didn't make the knock-out round. Life was simple. Beach. Walk Pom Pom. Go for a swim on the empty beach. Write my novel about teenage devil worship in the 1960s, eat lunch with Lisa and her loving son Krys, drink beer, then a bottle of cheap wine in the evening. Few tourists ventured this far south on the beach. too many mansions. Better that way for Pom pom, but I craved more humanity and Palm Beach ran short of that commodity any time of the year.

My friend Bruce lived in Miami Beach. Normally the writer resided was in the East Village, however he had rented out his flat to support a life in Florida. I called and invited him up to Palm Beach.

"I'd love to come up." Bruce wrote stories about his sexual adventures with young foreign men. His last book won the Prix de Flore in France. The French had toasted him at Cafe de Flores. He was considered a young artist. Bruce was a little older than me and the mirror loses its youth juice after 50. We both only regarded out shadows at sunset.

"And I'll bring some friends. Two Romanian writers and a young New York one, I think you met at my party." Bruce had hosted a party in honor of a French artist in early May. I couldn't recall the name.

"Young man."

"In his 20s."

"Too old for you."

"Fresh."

My directions were simple. Up I-95 and turn toward the ocean at US 98 after. That Sunday they arrived in a rental car. Bruce was the first out of the car. The writer wore knee-high black sox and a Romanian soccer uniform anonymously tailored by machines to flatter his XXL frame. "Stop staring at the sox. They hide my varicose veins. Yes, even gods get old."

He introduced his friends. The Romanians were my age, however Glenn was a youth. Gay too, but not in that horrible steroid Chelsea gay way.

He shaking my hand and introduced his friends. "Scottie and his wife, Sylvia. They are the best people. Glenn's my slave,"

I idn't ask for an explanation and escorted my guests inside the house. They were impressed by the swimming pool and scared by Pom Pom. She growled a little too easily to be kidding around and I warned them to keep their distance. She snapped at Bruce, until I whispered our secret command.

"Darling, you didn't tell me the mansion had a monster dog."

"Pom Pom is a little crazy."

"Crazy? She tried to bit off my asscheek. Would have had it too if I wasn't so athletic."

"More vicious than crazy."

"Vicious, hah." Bruce was fearless. "I spend twenty years with hustlers on 42nd Street. I know how to deal with tough."

He tamed Pom pom with a slice of cheese. The big dog begged at his side the rest of the day. We concocted a dinner out of my left-overs; pasta, carrotte rapee, toast with cheese. Wine was our drink of choice. Bruce whispered his desires for the driver's wife, although only in the most cerebral of liaisons. After lunch we strolled through a garden path to the beach. Bruce and I walked down to Rod Stewart's mansion. Pom Pom and Glenn in tow. The Alaskan was a good slave. Not Pom Pom.He confided several secrets to me. We had known each other over twenty years. I gave him advice on love.

"A man with a wife and mistress in a foreign country must know the meaning of love."

"I do when I hold my daughter in my arms."

"And when will you go back?"

"I don't know." The sun dropped behind the palm trees. We swam in the ocean. I hadn't been with this many people in nearly a month. Lisa came down from Chilean Avenue for a beer. She was a good laugh. Happy to be away from her Palm Beach friens. Bruce taught Pom Pom tricks. He was the master of ceremony. Palm Beach almost seemed paradise, then it was time for them to go. Bruce pulled me to the side and duked $20 into my hand.

"For some more wine."

"Thanks, I need it." Dixie Supermarket sold big bottles. $7 for 1.5 liter. It wasn't so bad with ice. for I wasn't looking for veritas in vino, but oblivio.

"Darling, everything will be fine. You were arrested. You didn't go to jail. You came here. You still speak with your wife and mistress. You'll be a father again and________"

"And?" I hope for him to say I was a brilliant writer.

"And you're living in a mansion."

"Yes, with a crazy dog." Pom Pom ran up to Bruce seeking a last favor.

"Silly dog." Bruce patted the Airedales's head. "The only cheese I have is under____"

"Spare us."

"If I must." Bruce kissed me good-night and slipped his arm around Glenn. Pom Pom barked good-bye and I waved, as they drove to Ocean Drive. Lisa beeped her horn. I walked over to her car. The sky darkened overhead.

"That was something we never see in Palm Beach. Real people. I can't wait till we get out of here."

"Me neither."

She always talked about selling her house and vacating the USA for Paris, but she like me wasn't gong anywhere, but low season in PB. She backed out on the driveway. Pom Pom and I stood outside for several seconds. Rain splattered down from the now black sky and we retreated to inside the house. It wasn't home, but I didn't need a home in Palm Beach, only a place to rest my head and this house suited that Pom Pom and my needs fine.

ps I still have that jean jacket.