Journal Entry - April 4, 1981

This week the journliat staff from the magazine Actuel arrived at New York's JFK aeroport. The publisher Jean Francoise Bizot led the quintet of Bernard Zekri, Elizabeth D, music promoter Jacques Kourakas and another writer unkown to me across the tarmac.. Later this week Actuel will celebrate the tenth anniversery of French publication's existence. I met them through their New York Corespondent, Bernard Zekri, who is thriving for the first time in this city. He has discovered Rap and Break Dancing, traveling up to the Bronx and Harlem and Brooklyn. I've never accompanied him to the distant boroughs of the city, since I'm working at the Jefferson after-hours. My old girlfriend Karine had introduced us. While she has gone back to France, Bernard has become a good friend. I would love to go to Paris and France, although Bernard has said that the City of Light has become more bourgeois losing the edge described in Orwell's DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON. The vicious cops corralled the street whores and addicts obey the orders of the haute-class.

"The clubs suck."

Bernard has proposed that I come to Paris in June.

Jean Francois, the publisher, will be opening a club on the Grand Boulevard.

If the offer comes, I would leave here tomorrow.

Only ghosts keep me here.

Happy Birthday JFK

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29.

We shared the same birthday.

Along with the comedian Bob Hope.

And Sherpa Tenzing, the Nepali Sherpa mountaineer, who climbed Everest with illary.

In 1453 the Ottoman Turks stormed the walls of Constantinople.

I had nothing to do with that blow to Christendom.

Peace and Love.

The Fall of Berlin Wall 1989 - 2009

"Ich bin en Berliner."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Communism was dead.

George Bush and the GOP claimed the victory.

Democracy was safe.

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

The richer got rich and then got richer.

Both in the New East and the Old West.

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

My keys are on a communist key chain.

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

Communism failed, because there never was communism.

Not in Russia and not in China.

And never in the USA.

Not even under Obama.

But the revolution lives on.

No matter what anyone says.

Even me.

Polar Flight Seat #60A - 2016

Seat 60A in a window.

I slept most of the journey over the pole, waking occasionally to peer out the 777's porthole.

Below was the long Arctic night and overhead five stars were visible through the pitted flexi-glass.

Virgin was offering a real Space voyage to intrepid 'astronauts'.

$200,000 to ride Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Enterprise 250,000 feet to the very edge of Space. A porthole vista of the cosmos and 5 minutes of freedom from gravity. The space terminal will be in New Mexico. Not far from Roswell.

There have been no shortage of prospective passengers opting to witness the miracle of the universe such as the strange swirling Aurora Borealis seen over the Norway several years ago.

Scientists were at a lost as to explain the phenomena, however the boreal light show certainly had nothing to do with President Obama's refusal to lunch with the country's king during his Nobel Peace prize weekend.

I have only seen the Northern Lights twice in my life.

Neither was on this last trip over the pole.

The sky was as black as night.

As far as the eye could see above and below.

Unless you counted the old Chinese woman asleep next to me.

She was so celestial.

December 16, 1978 – East Village – Journal

A Pleasant Paradise
1963 Snipers murdered JFK
1968 A sniper kills Malcolm Luther King.
Gunmen assassinate Malcolm X and RFK
Our leaders dying before their time
Before their replacements
Richard Nixon betrayed the USA
But kept coming back
The Messiah of the Silent Majority
Why did you live?
When so many others died.
Almost sixty thousand US soldiers in Vietnam
Millions throughout Indochina
And Henry Kissinger
The blood of Cambodia on his hands
Palestine too.
He will live to an old age
Never to go to Hell or Heaven
Only finally to death

Leaving us in a pleasant paradise.

Bad poetry

The Dream Is Never Over

After spending a lovely night in Houston, JFK and his wife boarded the presidential jet for a short hop to Dallas. The crowds lining the route applauded the president and his hostess, Mrs. Connolly, commented that Dallas loved him and the president replied, "That's very obvious."

A second later a single bullet and then another struck JFK.

November 22, 1963 was a bad day, however a video shows that he had a good time in Texas.

The love was real and real now too.

Johnny Boy we miss you.

To view the lovely night in Houston, please go to this URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQlw-U8l6YY

Who Killed the Kennedys?

The night Barack Obama was elected president, people danced in the streets of New York. Our man had beaten the GOP. I looked into the eyes of a man my age and we started crying, not out of joy, but in relief of having endured the lost years since November 22 1963.

Obama was one of us. He took office two months later. The presidential limousine drove him from the inauguration stage to a series of parties. Thousands of supporters glad-handed their president and at the end of the festivities Barack Obama found himself in the White House.

He had it all.

The Oval Office.

The Red Phone to Moscow.

The Briefcase.

They were his along with two wars in Asia and a shattered economy by billionaire tax breaks.

That evening he must have looked at his wife and said, “What now?”

If I was Michelle, I would have said, “What about the Kennedys?”

"What do you mean?"

"Who killed the Kennedys?"

"That's a dangerous question." And he dropped the subject.

The President had eleven years of access to the deep, dark secrets buried by various agencies; Roswell, Martin Luther King, Pearl Harbor et al. We had too many questions, yet nothing new came to light during his administration and considering the body count for asking the wrong questions, I can appreciate his patience.

It takes time to unbury the truth and even fifty years after the fact and it doesn't look like Obama is going to get it for us either before his access is gone.

So who killed the Kennedys?

Someone knows, but they ain't saying, but according to the Rolling Stoners, "It was you and me."

Sixty-Two Nine Years Later

Today no one in Montauk had mentioned JFK’s bad day in Dallas.

Neither the BBC, New York Times, nor Al-Jazeera wrote a single line about the November 22, 1963 tragedy, proving the old adage that as you get old you forget and as you get older you are forgotten.

Sixty-two years might be a long time for some people, but I can remember exactly what I was wearing, as Sister Mary Honore sobbingly announced over the St. Mary's of the Hills intercom, “The president has been shot dead in Dallas.”

The standard uniform for St. Mary’s of the Hills was a blue tie, white shirt, and navy blue slacks for boys. We were in shock and even more so, when the nuns sent us home early, but people recover fast from tragedy, because on the bus ride home 5th Grade Paul O’Conner said, “Well, I guess that settles what the Kennedys are getting for Christmas. A Jack in the Box.”

The older boys beat him up for his bad taste, because even 8th Graders understood that America had been changed forever and not necessarily for the better. School was cancelled for the rest of that week and I hung my school uniform in the closet till that next Monday.

There was nothing on TV throughout the weekend.

No cartoons.

No movies.

Only the dead president's funeral, although CBS showed NFL football on Sunday. The upstart AFL cancelled their games, which was the turning point for their league.

In the following months the Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey had acted alone. Conspiracy theorists have refuted this finding as well as the official Single Bullet Theory, attributing the assassination to the CIA, Castro, the Mafia, Cuban exile groups, and anti-communist Pentagon cliques.

Of course my theory runs counter to the mainstream in that I think RFK arranged his brother’s death for having ordered the murder of Marilyn Monroe by J. Edgar Hoover.

I wrote recently that I had only been in two movies; THE LAST SONG and a foot fetish short, however three years ago my friend Randy Koral came out to Thailand from Paris to film a version of my short story THE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH. We changed the setting from Michigan's Upper Peninsula to Thailand and the fat man was on the run to Cambodia instead of the Inuit nation. I played the lead and Nik Rieter starred as the black operative hitman.

My screenplay centered on a long monologue of my JFK assassination theory. The day of this scene I had a 103 fever. Every attempt to complete this three-minute piece ended in failure further proving the wisdom of my never having pursued an acting career.

Nik on the other hand was great.

Cockney accent and bad teeth.

The film was never edited to a rough cut. Randy was soon diagnosed with brain cancer. Two operations in France had him in remission. He was supposedly coming to New York this winter. Maybe we can reshoot the flubbed scenes then.

I miss JFK, especially after seeing the film 13 DAYS, which shows how a real president should act in a crisis.

His last words in Dallas were in in response to Governor Connelly’s saying, “You can’t say the people of Dallas don’t love you.”

“No, I wouldn’t say that.”

Four shots proved them wrong.

Here's to you John, We barely knew you.

Debunking the Debunkers - 2013

Supposedly Time-Warner controls up to 90% of certain segments of the USA media such as TV , newspapers, and books.

Time-Warner tells America what to think through CNN, HLN, TNT, TBS, The Legal Talk Network, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies, truTV, Turner Sports, The Legal Forum Radio Show, Atlanta Medical Journal as well as Time Inc. and Warner Brothers.

Recently the media giant has attempted to debunk the Kennedy legacy by attacking JFK's progressive politics on race and civil rights.

They ignore his sending troops to the South.

He was not a conservative,

He believed in changing America,

The media also suggested that JFK was a fiscal hawk.

Anything to suggest that the government of today mirrors that of the Kennedys.

Not true and more than JFK not wanting to go to Space.

The man had vision for this country.

To help the poor.

Something Time-Warner and Fox News have never done.

So fuck them.

They are lying for the rich.

When the time comes their place will be against the wall.

All we have left is the revolution.

ps the BBC is no better than CNN.

Absolute crap.

Fly Me to The Moon plus 49

July 20, 1969. The eyes of the world broke away from this mortal coil. Our vision was fixed on the Moon. TVs and radios around the globe reported the lunar landing of Apollo 11 to every continent. This space mission had been inspired by the late-President Kennedy and Neil Armstrong immortalized the epic moment with the words. "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

July 20 1969 was a Sunday. I was 17. I have no recollection of watching his first steps on the surface of the moon. It was something that monumental should have been as indelibly etched into my memory as the JFK assassination and losing my virginity. This memory lapse lends credence to those conspiracy theorists claiming that Man never landed on the Moon.

Maybe it wasn't on TV after all.

Let's face the facts. The Lunar Landing supposedly was televised by every channel; ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS. Teenagers watched almost 30 hours of TV on the 1960s. I was a teenager, therefore if the Lunar Landings had been on TV, then I should remember seeing them, instead I can't recall anything.

Ergo no Lunar Landing.

NASA has yet to refute my analysis, but for further research into the Moon Hoax, here's a video from Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

One theory is that I could have been making out with my girlfriend. Her mother let us stay at their house unchaperoned and Janet Stetson was certainly more important to me than a silly moon landing.

Oral History Of Presidential Fellatio - 2011

On January 17, 1998 Matt Drudge broke the news that President Clinton had asked Newsweek to kill a story about his affair with an intern. Her name was Monica Lewinsky. The Big Press ignored the scoop from an Internet free-lancers, however the story featuring President-pizza-intern-cigars-sex created its own audience.

“Mr. President, if there is a semen stain belonging to you on a dress of Ms Lewinsky’s, how would you explain that?”

Clinto responded as most men caught after their pants had been down in the wrong place and time and lied, saying, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

No other president had been asked the same question for the simple reason that none of the recent White House residents have had sex while in office.

GW BUSH had been too coked out to maintain an erection. His father kept his tete-a-tetes clandestine. Ronald Reagan allowed Nancy to have sex with Frank Sinatra, but the Great Communicator never got head from his second wife, infamously renowned in Hollywood for her fellatio. Jimmy Carter merely entertained impure thoughts and Gerald Ford’s wife suffered from a wasting disease. Richard Nixon only masturbated to nude photos of Jackie O and LBJ scheduled his peccadillos to this Texas ranch.

JFK had scores of women in the White House. He once confided to British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan that he suffered migraines, if he went three days without sex. At state dinners the president would disappear with women into the recesses of the White House. His paramours included Pamela Turnure, Jackie's press secretary; Mary Pinchot Meyer, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee's sister-in-law; two secretaries nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle, and mob moll Judith Campbell Exner. Marilyn Monroe was a beard for his conquests. Despite all the trysts, JFK was too cool to get caught.

Despite being called America's first black president, Bill Clinton was not so cool, however he survived the interrogation and impeachment proceedings to serve out his term, because he had committed no crime.

Examine the facts.

On Feb. 1995 a GOP-controlled Congress shut down the Federal government by balking at passing a spending bill. A storm storm further isolated the President in the White House. he ordered a pizza and a buxom twenty-one year-old intern delivered the pizza to the Oral Office.

As I have said many time the worst thing that happened to America when there was no government was that the President got head and a pizza.

Clinton denied having sex with Monica more than once.

The American public asked, “Isn’t oral sex ‘sex?”

Not according to the President, who admitted, "I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate", but he denied committing perjury because, according to Clinton, the legal definition of oral sex was not encompassed by "sex" per se according to Wikipedia.

Their presidential affair lasted eighteen months, but you can sure that some women saw Hillary’s post-Iowa tears as residue from that awful period in her life. The pain. The betrayal. The humiliation.

“Let’s vote for the crying game.”

And American voter again elected a President human enough to shed tears shed before the TV cameras.

Clinton was now a elder statesman for the USA. His betrayed wife has been Secretary of State. The other women weaved into the sex scandal have not been so fortunate.

Paula Jones posed nude and lost a boxing match with Olympic skating terror Tonya Harding. Most of the $850,000 from that bout went to her lawyers.

Kathleen Willey had a sexual encounter with Clinton. A grope and the forced touch of an erect penis. The former White House volunteer aide who didn't talk about it, except whenever the media pays her, which is not every often these days. Clinton's favorite Pizza Girl debunked Willey’s accusation by saying, “Willey’s tits were too small.”

>Monica Lewinsky survived the maelstrom of Press abuse. The former intern graduated in December 2006 with a Masters in social psychology and has been studying at the London School of Economics. Hopefully she is faring well.

In a time of crisis she helped a president in need, following the words of the immortal JFK.

“Ask not what your country can give, but what you can give to your country.”

Irish Cold Revenge

I can remember what I was wearing on November 22, 1963. A white shirt, sky blue tie, and dark navy trousers were the boy's uniform at Our Lady of the Foothills south of the Neponset River.

I can remember what I was wearing on November 22, 1963. A white shirt, sky blue tie, and dark navy trousers were the boy's uniform at Our Lady of the Foothills south of the Neponset River.

It was a beautiful autumn day.

Then Mother Mary Superior spoke over the intercom and tearfully announced, "President Kennedy has been shot in Dallas."

These words did not change our lives for more than a few weeks as America accepted the single gunman theory.

But not for all of us.

Irish Cold Revenge tells a different story than the Warren Commission.

It's a true as anything else.

Peter Nolan Smith filmed by Kai Effron

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goI6LuLco2E&t=166s

THE BIRTH OF THE BOUFFANT by Peter Nolan Smith

In the late-18th Century Marie Antoinette' coiffeur sought to camouflage the queen's baldness by upsweeping her thinning tresses to cascade over her ears. The femme fatales of the ancien regime imitated 'le bouffant, until the royal coif lost its popularity with the Marie's final haircut by the guillotine.

Two centuries later Jackie Kennedy, JFK's wife, reincarnated the fashion during her tenure at the White House.

American women idolized the glamorous First Lady regardless of their politics.

Overnight millions of housewives hit their local hair salon to acquire the look.

Movie stars such as Audrey Hepburn and Kim Novak further popularized the rage and within months the only women rejecting the coif were Durgin Park's gang of crew-cut bull dyke waitresses and the nuns at my grammar school, Our Lady of the Foothills.

The bouffant died out with the advent of the hippie era.

Young women grew long hair and the coif was once more threatened with extinction, except for brief respite from the lead singers of the B-52s and the late English singer Amy Winehouse.

Last year Jamie Parker and I were happy-houring at Solas in the East Village. We had the Irish bartender to ourselves. Moira liked a good laugh and Jamie told her stories of his go-go bar in Pattaya.

After our second margarita an attractive woman walked into a shadowy bar. Her bleached blonde hair was stacked high on her head. Stiletto heels added another five inches to her Amazonian height.

"A model." Jamie Parker smirked at the passing beauty in designer drag.

"Probably coming from a shoot." The actresses in TV show MADMEN had revitalized the early 60s, although few woman in present-day America could pull off the time-travel make-over.

"She looks like a 1960s transvestite." The lanky ex-con squinted down the bar.

"And that's a bad thing?" I caught the scent of Chanel No.5. She was high-class.

The goddess sat at the end of the bar and Moira went to attend to her need. She was into girls.

"Not in this light." It was almost night that deep in Solas.

"You don't like the bouffant?"

"Not at all."

"And why not?"

"Because the Mr. Kenneth who re-invented the hair style for Jackie Kennedy was queer."

"You have something against gays?" Back in the 60s gays were feared by young men, unless they were looking for a good time, but his was the modern times and gay-bashing was not in fashion.

"Me, I love gays, but gay hairdressers used the bouffant hair style as a strategy to turn straight men gay."

"What do you mean?" I wasn't following Jamie's line of thoughtlessness.

"Just that it's not a really natural look and women refused to have sex to avoid ruining the helmet of hair on their head, so men sought release elsewhere."

"With other men?"

"The sexual revolution freed us from our chains." Jamie was a couple of years older than me, although he didn't look it.

"I had a girlfriend with a bouffant in 1965." Jo and I met in the Mattapan Oriental Theater. We were both 13.

"And you went all the way?"

"Not even close." Steel-rimmed bras safeguarded against any attempts by unschooled boys to reach 'second base'.

"See."

"It had nothing to do with the bouffant."

"You're from Boston. Men from Boston love Jackie Kennedy's bouffant. You probably went to bed jerking off to the First Lady."

"Not that I can remember." Jackie O rode horses and spoke French. Women like her were destined to marry rich regardless of their hairstyle. "Jo was my muse. I know my place."

"Don't we all." Jamie was in the States visiting his mother. She lived in the Bronx and thought that he was teaching school in Thailand, instead of running the Pigpen A Go-Go featuring fat pretty bar girls and skinny ugly pole dancers.

"My mom had a bouffant."

"Mine too."

"It had them feel like a queen."

"Better than knowing your place."

"Send the princess a drink on us," Jamie told Moira.

"Happily." Moira played for the other side.

"Do you like the bouffant?"

"It's very Kim Novak." The blonde had mesmerized Hitchcock in his film VERTIGO.

"Wasn't she gay?" Jamie asked eying me.

"I think so." Moira played for the other side. She was holding the model's hand. They looked like a nice couple.

If only for happy hour.

"Ah, here's to the bouffant." Jamie raised his glass.

"And Jackie O."

At my age I might think about her once in a while.

After all she was the mother of the modern bouffant.

Honest To Goodness Patriot

"I didn't vote for him but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job."

John Wayne - On John F. Kennedy's election

Disgruntled GOP voters should learn from that as well as Democrats.

We are one.

e pluribus unum.

Latin for 'out of many one'.

ps Donald Trump is no president of mine.

I am truly a hypocrite."

BERENTI MISTAH by Peter Nolan Smith

In 1991 I bought a round-the-world ticket for $1399 from Pan Express. The owner set up a magical itinerary.

"New York - LA - Hawaii - Biak - Bali - overland to Jakarta." John recited the trip from memory, since he sold hundreds of these tickets every year.

"What do you mean 'overland to Jakarta'?" Their advertisement in the NY Times offered a flight between Bali and Jakarta.

"Oh, sir." The Hindi travel agent produced an Indonesia brochure extolling the volcanic beauty of Mount Bromo, ruined temple of Borobuder, and ancient palaces of Yogakarta. "Many people prefer to travel overland to see the sights of Java of which there are many. I will reserve you a flight from Jakarta to Padang."

"Padang?"

"Yes, sir, in Sumatra." Another brochure praised the cultural heritage of the Batak, the awe of Lake Toba, and the jungle paradise of the orangutang reserve. "You fly out of Medan to Penang and Malaysia and overland to Bangkok."

"Let me guess." I was falling into step with the program. "Most people do this overland."

"Yes, sir. What are you going to do on the trip?" Hindi are a curious people and John was no exception.

"I'm writing a novel." NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD was a story about a hustler forced into a contract murder of a porno producer by dirty NYPD cops and who avoids violating the 5th Commandment by escaping into the desert with two lesbians filming a movie about the last man on Earth. John didn't need to know the plot. Hindi men were in some ways very curious about sex.

"Oh, sir, I must warn you that many countries in Asia do not like writers, especially journalists."

"I'm not a journalist." My typing was atrocious and my grammar was even worse.

"Whatever you do, do not tell anyone you are a writer." His head bobbed side to side like a broken bobbing dolls. "The police do not like journalists in Asia."

"I'll keep that in mind."

John was 100% correct about overlanding across Java.

I saw the dawn from the rim of a volcano, met the sultan of Yogakarta, drove up to the vertiginous heights of the Dieng Plateau, endured the scorching equatorial sun riding a motorcycle around Lake Toba and watched male orangutang masturbate without shame. The females shunned the jerk-offs. I arrived at the Medan airport for the flight to Penang. The police spotted my typewriter. I

"Berenti, mistah.

"Saya?" I had learned a little Bahasa in three months.

"Yes, you." A short pineapple-skinned officer nodded and his two uniformed compatriots pulled me from the line. The other passengers smiled with relief, happy to not be me. The police sat me in their very official office and the head officer asked, "Journalis?"

The trio wore grim faces. A single overhead fan wobbled in its socket. The chair was nailed to the floor.

"Tidak journalis. Penulis buca." I claimed the higher status than journalist.

"You write books? About what?" The lead interrogator leaned forward with a metal sap in his hand.

"About the mafia. Porno. Hollywood." I was one smack away from squealing the truth about any crime dating for Adam's eating an apple .

"Hollywood?" The three cops intoned the word with sanctity normally reserved for Allah. Indonesia was 90% Muslim.

"Yes, Hollywood." I followed the lead and told them about how JFK was killed by the CIA. They spoke about the betrayal of Sukarno by the present dictator. A bottle of Johnny Walker Black hit the desk. Red is beneath them. We drank toasts to freedom.

"Beraka," I spoke every language with a Boston accent.

Whiskey in hot weather was a hard slog. It was getting late and I asked the chief officer, "So I missed my flight, how do I get to Penang?"

"You didn't miss your flight. We held the plane. One more drink and kamu boleh pergi."

"To whiskey." Without it the Irish would have ruled the world.

The police drove me to the waiting plane. The other passengers were gobsmacked by re-appearance from the belly of the beast and even more so by the power fist salute of the police.

"Beraka."

It was a small world after all.

THE BIRTH OF THE BOUFFANT by Peter Nolan Smith

In the late-18th Century Marie Antoinette' coiffeur sought to camouflage the queen's baldness by upsweeping her thinning tresses to cascade over her ears. The femme fatales of the ancien regime imitated 'le bouffant, until the royal coif lost its popularity with the Marie's final haircut by the guillotine.

Almost two centuries later Jackie Kennedy, JFK's wife, reincarnated the fashion during her tenure at the White House.

American women idolized the glamorous First Lady regardless of their politics.

Overnight millions of housewives hit their local hair salon to acquire the look.

Movie stars such as Audrey Hepburn and Kim Novak further popularized the rage and within months the only women rejecting the coif were Durgin Park's gang of crew-cut bull dyke waitresses and the nuns at my grammar school, Our Lady of the Foothills.

The bouffant died out with the advent of the hippie era.

Young women grew long hair and coif was once more threatened with extinction, except for brief respite from the lead singers of the B-52s and the late English singer Amy Winehouse.

Last year Jamie Parker and I were happy-houring at Solas in the East Village. We had the Irish bartender to ourselves. Moira liked a good laugh and Jamie told her stories of his go-go bar in Pattaya.

After our second margarita an attractive woman walked into a shadowy bar. Her bleached blonde hair was stacked high on her head. Stiletto heels added another five inches to her Amazonian height.

"A model." Jamie Parker smirked at the passing beauty in designer drag.

"Probably coming from a shoot." The actresses in TV show MADMEN had revitalized the early 60s, although few woman in present-day America could pull off the time-travel make-over.

"She looks like a 1960s transvestite." The lanky ex-con squinted down the bar.

"And that's a bad thing." I caught the scent of Chanel No.5. She was high-class.

The goddess sat at the end of the bar and Moira went to attend to her need. She was into girls.

"Not in this light." It was almost night that deep in Solas.

"You don't like the bouffant?"

"Not at all."

"And why not?"

"Because the Mr. Kenneth who re-invented the hair style for Jackie Kennedy was queer."

"You have something against gays?" Back in the 60s gays were feared by young men, unless they were looking for a good time. This was the modern times. Gay-bashing was not in fashion.

"Me, I love gays, but gay hairdressers used the bouffant hair style as a strategy to turn straight men gay."

"What do you mean?" I wasn't following Jamie's line of thoughtlessness.

"Just that it's not a really natural look and women refused to have sex to avoid ruining the helmet of hair on their head, so men sought release elsewhere."

"With other men?"

"The sexual revolution freed us from our chains." Jamie was a couple of years older than me, although he didn't look it.

"I had a girlfriend with a bouffant in 1965." Jo and I met in the Mattapan Oriental Theater. We were both 13.

"And you went all the way?"

"Not even close." Steel-rimmed bras safeguarded against any attempts by unschooled boys to reach 'second base'.

"See."

"It had nothing to do with the bouffant."

"You're from Boston. Men from Boston love Jackie Kennedy's bouffant. You probably went to bed jerking off to the First Lady."

"Not that I can remember." Jackie O rode horses and spoke French. Women like her were destined to marry rich regardless of their hairstyle. "Jo was my muse. I know my place."

"Don't we all." Jamie was in the States visiting his mother. She lived in the Bronx and thought that he was teaching school in Thailand, instead of running the Pigpen A Go-Go featuring fat pretty bar girls and skinny ugly pole dancers.

"My mom had a bouffant."

"Mine too."

"It had them feel like a queen."

"Better than knowing your place."

"Send the princess a drink on us," Jamie told Moira.

"Happily." Moira played for the other side.

"Do you like the bouffant?"

"It's very Kim Novak." The blonde had mesmerized Hitchcock in his film VERTIGO.

"Wasn't she gay?" Jamie asked eying me.

"I think so." Moira played for the other side. She was holding the model's hand. They looked like a nice couple.

If only for happy hour.

"Ah, here's to the bouffant." Jamie raised his glass.

"And Jackie O."

At my age I might think about her once in a while.

After all she was the mother of the modern bouffant.

When It All Went Bad

The Dream Is Never Over

After spending a lovely night in Houston, JFK and his wife boarded the presidential jet for a short hop to Dallas. The crowds lining the route applauded the president and his hostess, Mrs. Connolly, commented, Dallas loved him and he replied, "That's very obvious."

The single bullet and then another struck JFK within a second of his reply.

November 22, 1963 was a bad day, however the video shows that he was having a good time in Texas.

The love was real and real now too.

Johnny Boy we miss you.

To view the lovely night in Houston, please go to this URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQlw-U8l6YY

Wear What November 22,1963

Not only do I know where I was 50 years ago when I heard about JFK, I know exactly what I was wearing.

The school uniform for St. Mary of the Hills.

We miss you JFK.

Always have.

Always will.

Fuck the debunkers of Camelot.

Wear What November 22,1963

Not only do I know where I was 50 years ago when I heard about JFK, I know exactly what I was wearing.

The school uniform for St. Mary of the Hills.

We miss you JFK.

Always have.

Always will.

Fuck the debunkers of Camelot.