No Tattoos in Heaven - 2026

After my best friend drowned in Sebago Lake in 1960, I became a non-believer. Chaney was a good boy and no God would have let him die. My atheism was kept a secret. I remained an altar boy at Sunday Mass. My mother prayed that I might take the cloth as a priest or at the least a brother. The nuns mother at Our Lady Of The Foothills also had high hopes for my avocation, however the Baltimore Catechism failed to teach me religion to resurrect my faith in the Holy Trinity and I bore my godlessness in silence.

My secret was sussed out by 6th grade teacher.

"I know faith when I see it. I know lack of faith too." Sister Mary Goretti was more tolerant of my puerile apostasy than her whip-bearing compatriots. "But you really shouldn't be an altar boy."

"My mother wants me to be one."

"And she wants more."

"I know."

"So if you can't quit, just lower your head during Mass and say whatever you want, but I don't want to see you taking the Holy Communion. That would be sacrilege."

'Yes, sister."

I might not have believed in God, but I did believe in Sister Mary Goretti.

She Mary Goretti was as ancient as dust. The old nun had taught school in Egypt. Her tales of children running over stalks of harvested crops without their souls touching the jagged tips was a magic miracle. Her students loved her and she loved educating us.

No question was undeserving of an answer and one day my friend Chuckie asked, "Do atheists go to heaven?"

"I don't know, but I think they would be surprised to wake from death in the after-life." Sister Mary Goretti looked in my direction and I shrugged, since going to heaven meant worshiping the man in a dress and hell was a burning oven. I was more interested in purgatory. Nothing bad ever happened in Limbo.

"My mother said if you get a tattoo, then you don't do to heaven."

"Leviticus 19:28 says, "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print or tattoo any marks upon you." She knew her Old Testament. "That's against the 5th Commandment."

"I thought that meant 'Thou shalt not kill." I got As in religion, despite my godlessness.

"St. Paul admonishes us: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?” She was no slouch with the New Testament either. "But my father was a sailor and had tattoos. He was a good man and I can't see him going to hell for an anchor tattoo, but who am I to question the dictates of the Church?"

None of us dared answer this question and we returned to our Baltimore Catechism lesson.

At year's end my report card was straight As for the year and Sister Mary Goretti rewarded me with a mother of pearl rosary.

"I know you don't believe, but that doesn't make you a bad boy. God loves us all."

"Thank you, sister."

She was playing a game, but I was lucky to have her as my teacher and while I don't believe in either heaven or hell, I have refrained ever getting a tattoo.

Out of respect for an old nun.

And only a little bit the fear of hell.

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Blows Against the Empire 2001

Early in April 2001 a task force supporting the aircraft carrier US Kitty Hawk anchored off Pattaya. Its 12,000 soldiers and sailors invaded the go-go bars of Beach Road and I avoided the chaos without taking into account my Thai girlfriend's displeasure at having to stay home night after night.

"I not leave farm to sit in house watch TV. I want to see friends."

I agreed to visit Walking Street, hoping the twenty-four year old would recognize the wisdom of my decision. Of course a had witnessed plenty of shore leaves during her two years at the Tahitian a Go-Go and enjoyed the attention of young sailors.

She sexied herself up in a pink halter-top and hot pants, then wound her long hair into a snaking braid.

"Not worry. I only love you. Not other Americans."

"What about other countries?"

"I only have you." She straddled my motorcycle with her thin arms around my chest.

"And I believe you." I drove through the diesel-belching traffic to Soi BJ.

On Walking Street teenage touts hawked sex shows to naive Chinese tourists. Toughs offered bootleg cigarettes with a keen eye for more profitable action from drunken Yanks. Legless beggars dragged broken bodies along the pavement. Cambodian illegals brandished mammoth snakes for farangs to photograph and a baby elephant competed in a chug-a-lug contest with a beer-bellied Swede to a Babel of pop songs blaring from over-sized amps. Pattaya's fun had been outlawed in every American town, which was another reason for its popularity with the US military.

Walking Street's main attraction were the go-go bars manned by bikinied dancers from the Isaan Plateau and discotheques filled with smiling girls in tight jeans and skimpy shirts.

The Thai government had benignly declared that nightlife was an example of young people having a good time, although even a blind man would have recognized the playfulness between Thai dok thongs and falangs bah as a facade for mercenary flesh transactions.

Ae and I were no different. She provided sex. I gave her money.

After her pretend orgasms she sometimes said, "Rak khun."

Love sounded good coming off her lips, but Ae had an Italian boyfriend coming in June.

He would save me from my 21st Century version of THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG, so for now we strolled arm in arm through the Last Babylon's bedlam. When a trio of navy boys stumbled noisily from a go-go bar, Ae asked, "Why you not same sailor?"

"I'm old and they're young." Two months shy of 49, I felt 25 and acted 15.

"You not old." It was a nice thing to say, even if the mirror stopped lying years ago.

"You still not same other Americans." She tugged me to a line-up of bootleg Prada shoes on the sidewalk. "You work computer. Not drink too much. Take care of me. Other Americans cheap. One time I go to hotel to sailor. He have sex with me. Not pay. He cheap Charlie."

"Maybe he thought you were in love and wanted to do it for free." I hated these stories.

"No woman do for free. Not Thai. Not western." She tried on black platforms. With the extra four inches she could look me in the chin. "Maybe some time I make love to you for free."

I handed the salesgirl the equivalent of $8 to disprove her claim about American Cheap Charlies. We stopped at Hot Tuna, my friend's bar. Ae listened to the bargirls' gossip of who loved whom, who had left whom, and who had a broken heart, knowing one day that my name was destined to fill a slot in their conversation. Their talk accelerated into rapid-fire Thai and I listened to a young swabbie's boast about kicking Chinese butt.

"We'll knock their planes out of the sky in less than an hour and sink their ships in two."

The Chinese had bought down a Navy spy plane. The President was threatening action. It was all politics and I said, "It won't come to war."

"The gooks been begging for a whooping," A blonde sailor with a Panhandle drawled belligerently into his beer.

"We won't have a war, if our president exerts a little diplomacy."

The Commander-n-Chief's predilection for straight talk excluded soft power. "If it does come to a fight, you'll splash them, but they'll nuke the fleet."

"Then we blast 'em into the Stone Age." The Texan spilled his beer.

"And they'll wax San Francisco and LA to save face." Face was as essential to an Asian as driving a big car was to an American.

"Screw their face, we'll bomb 'em until their fortune cookies glow in the dark!" another sailor exclaimed, earning the scowls of more pacific farangs. My young countrymen were beyond caring about the opinion of Italian perverts in soccer shorts. I tried to lighten the mood. "A couple of H-bombs will start the nuclear winter, solving the global warming problem."

"None of those missiles would hit America, if we had NMD," The Texan referred to the President's grandiose Star Wars shield against North Korean, Chinese, Iranians, or Israeli missiles.

"The Commie rockets have a range of 1200 miles. They might reach the Aleutian Islands. A war with North Korea would cost about $200 billion. "About $6,000 per peasant family." This same sum would provide each American with a week's vacation at DisneyWorld. "We give them an out and they won't fight us."

"That's blackmail," the Texan snapped with a corded neck. "You serve in Vietnam?"

"No, I protested against the war."

"How? By wearing beads and smoking pot?" His friend chuckled sarcastically and the Texan added, "And he didn't inhale either."

"And we don't too." They play-acted puffing on a joint and then shunned me to watch the Muay Thai boxing in a nearby ring, but my participation in the peace movement had involved crimes against the State dating back to a warm spring day in 1965, which was a long time ago in the suburbs outside Boston.

Having returned to my split-level house from Our Lady of the Foothills, I tore off my Catholic school uniform and dressed in a tee-shirt and jeans. My mother was in the laundry room. My brothers and sisters were watching WHERE THE ACTION IS on the TV.

It was too nice a day for the lip-synching of Paul Revere and the Raiders and I went outside to chuck a hardball against the wooden backstop at the end of our driveway.

My pitches struck the splintered strike zone with a thud. I called the strikes and balls. I was pitching a no-hitter in Fenway, until Addy Manzi crossed the lawn. My teenage neighbor was sexier than a Playboy centerfold in her white shirt, blue tie, plaid skirt and white knee sox. To show off I was more than twelve year-old boy I wound up in imitation of the Red Sox's Dick Raditz, and hurled a speedball over the backstop into the yard.

"Have to work on that control," she commented and I jealously imagined her flirting with the local high school ace. As I started toward the ball, she said, "Wait a second."

Wearing a baseball glove, I couldn't stick both hands in my pockets to hide my embarrassment. "For what?"

"How about a drive?" Addy asked with a mesmerizing lilt.

My toes twisted in my Keds.

"W-w-where you want to go?"

Nowhere special? She brushed back an auburn strand with practiced poise. Just around to feel the wind through my hair.

At sixteen she existed in a perpetually cool world of teenagers, while thirteen year-old boys barely had hair on their chins. I swallowed hard. "I don't have a car."

"We can drive my mother's Tempest. She's gone out with friends. My brother is at the dentist. No one needs to know." She dangled car keys from an index finger. "Can you drive?"

My grandmother had taught me to drive in her VW Bug. It had a shift and the Tempest had a push-button transmission. It couldn't be that hard. "I guess so."

"C'mon, it'll be fun." Addy cocked her head in the direction of the car in her driveway. She had babysat for my family and taught me the Twist. I couldn't refuse her anything. "Okay."

She clapped with more enthusiasm than a teenage girl should exhibit to a grammar school boy. I was scared.

"You mind if we go someplace no one will see us?"

"Fresh." She slapped my arm and I sputtered, "I didn't mean it that way."

"I was joking."

"Oh." I threw my baseball glove into a bush and followed her across the lawn to the car.

She slipped into the Tempest and turned on the radio. WBZ was playing 98.6 by Keith. I put the car in reverse and drove to the STOP sign on Rte. 28, where Addy said, "Now turn left to Chickatawbut."

"Chickatawbut?" The road through the Blue Hills was an infamous make-out spot.

"You said quiet." She raised an eyebrow.

I stepped on the gas. The convertible sped to forty.

At Chickatawbut Road I fishtailed through the intersection.

"Sorry about that."

"Drive like you belong in the car." Addy leaned closer to the open window. The breeze bore her perfume to me. My mother also wore Lanvin. Addy lifted her eyes to the canopy of trees overhead and said, "Stop at old CCC Tower. We?re taking a little walk to the next hill."

"A missile base's on top." My hands were damp on the steering wheel.

"Not anymore. LBJ pulled out the missiles to please the Russians."

?That means Boston is unprotected from nuclear attack.? During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis the nuns had drilled us to duck under our desks in case of nuclear attack. We pray for peace and our eternal souls. The bombs had never come, reinforcing the sisters? faith in miracles.

"Don't worry, it's too nice a day to die." Addy's words calmed my fear and I parked the car. The other cars were empty. No couples parked here this time of day. They went into the woods and that was where Addy led me too.

We scrambled along a muddy trail. The sunlight dappled through the new leaves onto her golden skin. I grew breathless with anticipation. We mounted a hillock. Two teenagers in leather jackets waited by a chain link fence. I recognized the taller one.

Two months ago Addy had come home near dawn. Her mother had grounded her for a month and banned the car mechanic from seeing her daughter.

Little can render a teenage boy more attractive to a girl than her mother's disapproval, if you throw in a tattoo, oil-slick hair, black engineer boots, and a silvery SS-SuperSport.

"What's Dennis Halley doing here?" Half the boys in town wanted to be like him.

"Silly boy." She ran to kiss Dennis, who asked, "Who's the kid?"

"He's cool." Addy vouched for my presence. "He gave me a ride."

"Way to go, kid." Dennis patted my back.

I had done him a favor.

He pulled out a pair of wire cutters and opened a hole in the fence.

His squat friend crawled through the breach and ran over an embankment with a whoop. Addy was the next to go. She climbed to the top of the hill and Dennis turned to me. "What about it, kid?"

I had smashed pumpkins on Halloween and set fire to the woods on Easter Sunday, but was paralyzed by my mother's warning to walk the other way, if I saw trouble coming. "The sign on that fence says they punished trespassers."

Dennis lifted a rock.

"Who this belong to?"

"No one."

"And that sign?"

"The government." Running hard, my yard was only ten minutes away.

"And the government belongs to you and me and the people in Boston." He threw the rock at the sign. "So?"

"This place belongs to us." The FBI parents wouldn't appreciate his logic.

"Damn right, it does. I spent last year fighting in Nam. Shooting at strangers. Possibly killed them. There are people, who think shooting strangers is wrong and they might be right." Dennis' treasonous statement contradicted the nuns? prayers for the fall of communism. "You know any Vietnamese?"

The only Orientals on the South Shore were Chinese waiters serving Pu-Pu platters and we never spoke to them, except to make fun of their accents.

"No, I don't."

"Those VC were peasants. Same as my grandfather from Ireland. Same as you and me. So you gonna run home or come with me?"

Leaving meant leaving Addy. I hunched through the opening and raced Dennis to where his friend and Addy stood beneath a tall flagpole. The South Shore spread beneath us like a map slipping over the edge of the world into the sea. The thug with the chin beard pointed out his house near the Quarries.

"Where you live, kid?"

I focused below the hill.

"The tan house next to the greenish one."

"That's my houser the green one," declared Addy.

"That's not tan. Don't tell me you live in a pink house?"

"Shut up, Bush." Kevin Halley warned and his friend replied grumpily, "Nothing wrong with living in a pink house, kid."

"Where are the missile silos?" Addy suggestively raised an eyebrow.

Kevin took her hand.

"I'll show you."

They disappeared behind a half-buried building. Bush wandered off to explore the concrete bunker. The wind died to a whisper and the hill became an end-of-the-world movie. I was the last man on Earth and twelve years-old was nothing to a teenage girl. I threw a rock at the nearest Quonset hut. It broke a window. I smashed pane after pane.

Bush ran up to me.

"Kid, you pitch a baseball that hard, you can start for a Little League team."

"Thanks," I panted and Bush motioned with his hand. "I need your help. C'mon."

Hundreds of fire extinguishers had been stacked inside a garage. We lugged out twenty and pulled the levers. Jets of CO2 gas shrouded the hilltop and Bush declared, "It's like the planet Venus and we're two astronauts looking for space girls in bikinis."

"I like that movie." I stretched my hands into the fog without touching an extraterrestrial go-go girl. Hearing a whistle, Bush grabbed my arm. ?Kev must have found some loot."

We jogged out of the mist. Kevin and Addy stood staring down a concrete shaft. The sunlight only penetrated a couple of feet. Kevin dropped a rock into the silo. I flinched in expectation of an explosion. The stone clanged on metal.

"Missile silos. C'mon, I'll show you something fucked up."

We followed him inside a damp bunker. He stopped at a wrecked console. The electronics had been wrenched out of their brackets. "This is where the buttons were."

"The buttons to shoot the missiles," Addy whispered secretively.

"Or order more coffee." Bush joked, but Kevin directed our attention to a floor-to-ceiling glass map of the world. His finger traced a line over the red circles dotting LA, Detroit, New York, Chicago, Boston.

"Targeting cities in the USA isn't funny."

"Why would they bomb them?" A-bombs were for the commies.

"To squash any revolution out of control of the National Guard."

"That's crazy talk."Bush disagreed with a voice shadowed by doubt, for Watts had burned to the ground the previous summer.

"Crazy talk, I'll tell you crazy. I get caught for joyriding. The Quincy judge said either two years in the Marines or three years in Billerica Correctional. I was in Vietnam to fight commies. I never saw one. I shot at trees, burned villages. It ain't like the movies. Not clean. Things I saw made me sick and I got this for my troubles." Kevin lifted his shirt. A long scar had been etched across his abdomen. "Fucking war."

Kevin chucked a swivel chair through the map. I had believed in stopping communism until the heavy shards of glass continents cascaded onto the concrete floor. The transparent seas splintered into a thousand pieces.

Kevin didn't lie and we took his revenge through an orgy of vandalism. We rammed doors through walls and smashed furniture with clubs fashioned from chair legs.

After ten minutes our rampage of senseless violence was waning, so I climbed a nearby slope with the flagpole's lanyard. Addy looked at me with puzzlement, until I ran forward to let the rope carry me into space.

She shrieked with delight.

I had made her happy.

It was at this moment a police car crashed through the missile base?s front gate.

I released the rope and fell to Earth. My legs buckled and I keeled over in pain. The other three fled to the fence. Addy stopped at the hole. Her eyes swore me to silence. My wave signaled her name would die within my lips and she disappeared into the woods.

Two policemen manhandled me to the MDC cruiser. The older was Sgt. Tully. Everyone in my hometown had heard how he hated kids. He twisted my arm.

"Who were your friends?"

"They were from Southie."

"We have ways of making tough kids talk."

He shoved me into the rear seat.

His partner sat behind the wheel.

"You?ll have to pay for the broken windows."

Last week I had batted a baseball into the Manzi?s dining room. One pane cost about $1. Hundreds had been smashed on the hill.

"I only broke a few."

"Kid, you tell us names and I might go easy on you." The young driver offered with a kind voice.

Sgt. Tully shook his crew-cut head. ?No deals. Why were you destroying government property? You a commie?"

I wasn't giving up Addy.

"It was a protest against the War in Vietnam."

The driver stomped on the brakes. The cruiser came to a rubber-burning halt a hundred yards short of the Route 28 lights.

"Get out of the car."

I was dead meat and his partner smirked, "Now you'll get it, you commie faggot."

The young cop hauled me into the woods.

"Were you really protesting the War?"

"Not at first, but that's the way it turned out."

The billy club dropped at his side.

"Kid, I'm gonna let you go."

I blinked in disbelief.

"Why?"

"My brother went to serve his country and they had him driving a beer truck. A fucking beer truck. It ran over a mine and he died for 3.2 Budweiser beers. It was fucked and it's only gonna get worse. I can't say nothing about it or else___"

"Or else people think you're a commie faggot."

He slammed his billy club into a tree.

"Kid, get home before I forget you?re a kid."

I ran away to the dull thuds echoing through the woods. Kevin was right. Viet-Nam was not a John Wayne western. People died bloody deaths and if my not wanting to be any part of it made me a commie, then I was willing to join the KGB. I just didn't have to tell anyone about it.

Arriving on my street I spotted Mrs. Manzi's Tempest in the driveway. Addy's brother bicycled out to meet me. Chuckie's lower lip was numb from Novocain, as he said, "Man, my sister took the car without my mother's permission and met Kevin Hally. Man, did she catch it.?"

"She say anything about me?"

"Why would she say anything about you?" Chuckie gave me odds of one-in-a-million of ever kissing his sister. After today I stacked another bunch of zeros on top that number. "You weren't with her, were you?"

"No, I was throwing rocks at the Canyon." The less anyone knew about this afternoon the better. "I'll see you later."

Crossing the merger of our two lawns, I glanced at their house.

Addy stood at the window, a teenage Rapunzel with a ponytail. She raised a finger to her lips to indicate she hadn?t mentioned my name. She blew me a kiss. I walked on pillows to my house.

Entering the kitchen, my mother hung up the phone.

"You have anything to tell me?"

Mothers have a strange way of finding out everything, but only if you tell them. "No."

Her Medusa eyes studied me before softening to display the love deepest in her heart. She still believed whatever I said. "Then wash your hands and face before your father comes home."

I went upstairs, convinced that not telling the truth can set you free.

The next day Mother Superior called me into her office and asked me if I believed in God. I tried quelling her fear for my immortal soul by falling to the knees and saying the 'Our Father' in Latin. When I finished, the old crone blessed herself with her Rosary. "Stalin was an altar boy too. I have my eye on you."

She wasn't the only one. My classmates shunned me during recess. Chuckie and Kyla Rolla, who had been my sweetheart for the past two years, defied this silent treatment and I loved them for saying it didn't matter what anyone thought.

My protest against the War severed the ties holding me to this suburb. I accepted a scholarship to an all-boys high school ten miles away from my hometown. We attacked a nearby CIA lab during a rocket club exhibition. They had banned by cross-country team from using their fields. Only my father's intercession prevent the perpetrators? expulsion. I lost my free ride.

Chuckie knocked up Susan Fox in junior year. He married her before Christmas 1969. Kyla and I broke up before the senior prom. I still wonder why.

In May 1970 I hooked school to demonstrate against the invasion of Cambodia in Boston Commons. The government has rejected my pension claims for the years of protest. The money was unimportant, for my only goal had been peace. Now all America and the world gets is war.

After my fifth beer on Walking Street I gave Ae the keys to my motorbike. She helped me from my stool.

"Why Americans talk loud?"

"They think it makes people understand them better."

"Tam see-ahn-dang magh." Thais rarely complained about noise.

"No farangs are half as loud as your father and brother after they get a bottle of Mekong in them ___," My criticism was interrupted by the Texan sailor's bump. I clenched my fists and he raised his palms, "You weren't kidding about the war, were you?"

Informing him that a coke-addicted president concocted this conflict with China to get votes sounded like bitter grapes about the GOP stealing the election in Florida, after all Mayor Daley had robbed Nixon in 1960. I decided to play it straight.

"No, kid, it'll blow over by the end of the month."

"Thanks, sir, you had me worried. I didn't want the rest of them to know I didn't want to fight. I only joined the Navy to see the world."

"I understand completely." I had left Boston for the same reason. "And this is part of that world. Enjoy your leave."

"You have a good night, sir." He ran between two fat Germans, lifting his two fingers as a vee to the night sky. "Peace."

"Peace."

Before Ae sat on the Yamaha, I kissed her. She regarded me suspiciously, "What's that for?"

I straddled the bike, not explaining my affection.

Thais don't care much about the rest of the world and a go-go girl from the TQ bar with three kids even less, however a teenaged soldier flashing the peace sign in this century gave me hope for the future, since one peacenik will become two.

The many that follow will give us strength in numbers and in the end the balance will swing away from war. It always does in the end, because everyone is a better lover than fighter.

Man or woman.

Adam and Eve.

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July 16, 1978 - Providence - Journal Entry

Centuries are divided into decades. Ten Year stretches. This 20th Century began with European global domination, except for Tibet, Thailand, Ethiopia, and the Ottoman Empire. The flags of Russia, England, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Italy and the Vatican flew over conquered peoples, but the status quo was slipping from the grasp of monarchs. The 1905 Russian Revolution signaled the end to the Romanov Dynasty. Te Slavs fought for their freedom from the Turks and Austrians. The Irish seethed under British rule. This has been the American Century, but Vietnam taught us that we ain't all that.

On a train to Boston with Alice.

Amtrak is the third worst way to travel. The bus and hitching are #2 and #1. The Greyhound bus seats are designed for corpses and the dead never complain, only smell. Hitching is almost impossible with the cops harassing travelers and drivers are fearful of murderous hippies.

Providence.

Amtrak stop.

A black boy, Maurice, fakes retching. His older brother plays possum and starts snoring. Their older sister tells him to be quiet. He remains in the snoring state. Alice wants off the train. The hillbilly hasn't had her period. She is motion sick and needs fresh air.

Another forty minutes and the train will arrive at Back Bay. These past two months I have spent little time in New York. Weeks spread across the East Coast. This is Alice's third trip north. I too will be glad to get off the train.

Ann says, "I think my breasts are getting larger."

I check them. "They are the same size as always."

"I wish I had bigger."

"Not me, I like them small."

"Because then you think you're fucking a boy."

"Maybe."

My sexual urges have shut down for homos. I get my most satisfaction from females. Actually gay men were only a substitute for women. Some some reason picking up females was difficult for me. Now I am ease. At least whenever Alice is not around, but I don't need to be promiscuous in my life. Last night I dream of Alice assaulted by my past girlfriends turned fiends and I fucked them all in the dream. Faceless women licking my balls and asshole, as I fuck Alice.

The dream is a product of last night's too many beers at CBGBs.

I even forgot that I need to fuck.

Foto Old Union Station - Providence

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May 14, 1978 - East Village - Journal

Actors are all full of shit.

Expecting attention for an unending of neuroses. Pretending to be someone they are not. Unless they're funny they bore me. Artists are much better. I prefer workers like Patrick the cook and Kim's friend Amos.

Amos's a Southerner always quiet. I didn't know why Kim explained he was dyslexic. "He never finished high school. He can't read and he can't read it write "

Back in Boston I taught at a Special Ed school. The kids were very challenged. Most couldn't read. Most couldn't write. Some couldn't speak. I sang to them. Write. As a child I had trouble speaking. Stutters stammers mumbles lisps eating my words. My schoolmates were not kind. I wanted to kill them all. I wanted to join the Marines and come back to my hometown as a killer. Amos must feel the same way and that's why he's in New York. Because people like us belong here.

Home must have been torture for Amos to stay in school.

He's a good man and he likes me, because I dislike Marky from the Ghosts. But I no longer dislike Marky. He once tore up a picture of mine. It reminded me being bullied. I didn't hit him. Wanted to, but didn't, since my father used to say, "You have to compromise."

I never saw why, but maybe one day I might.

Four fat lesbians

I like the idea of Subway suicide Laying on the tracks The steel wheels running over me Not stopping Not screeching The A train 40 miles an hour heading to Times Square

At that Kim's apartment Amos Cyrena, Kim and I drink party shots. It's afternoon. Sean leans against the plastic wall. He falls through it. No fun. we leave for a dracula film.

NORTH END MIRACLE by Peter Nolan Smith

Throughout our childhood my mother cooked dinner for six kids, but most Friday evenings she drove us in our Ford station wagon into Boston. We picked up my father at 50 Milk Street, where he worked for Ma Bell as an electrical engineer. He took the wheel and headed to a restaurant as a family on the town

My father loved my mother and they loved dining out even with us in tow.

One evening my father strode from the NET&T headquarters like a man in a mission.

"Where to tonight?" asked my mother.

She always dressed for the occasion and dressed us accordingly.

"A little restaurant in the North End." He pulled out into the street. "A co-worker said George's was cheap and cheerful.

Feeding six hungry kids was a struggle even on a white-collar salary.

"Parking's horrible there," complained my mother.

"I always find a parking spot." My father crossed Atlantic Avenue and weaved through the traffic on Hanover Street to turn onto a crooked lane.

See there's a parking spot." My father pulled into the space strangely right in front of the restaurant.

The two burly men outside the eatery frowned at my father, but said nothing, as our tribe trooped into George's.

The restaurant had no customers. The men at the bar glanced over their shoulders and then returned to muttered conversations. The tuxedoed waiter approached our family, as if we were lost.

"You really wanna eat here?" He waved his hand at the empty tables.

"I have six hungry kids and you have food. Where else you want me to go?" My father came from Maine. There was only one Italian restaurant in Portland. Every Sunday night of my early years he had traveled across the Martin Point Bridge from Falmouth Foresides to pick up pizza and antipasto, which we ate while watching THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW on our Zenith TV. We were no strangers to Italian cuisine.

"Nowhere, but here. I give you da best table." He led us to a big booth underneath a painting of Naples. My father ordered meatball and spaghetti for us. My mother had a plate of pasta reeking of garlic and they shared a small carafe of red wine. A few more men entered the bar. Their gaze narrowed upon seeing us.

One of them pointed at my father and I ate with my head down to avoid his black eyes. My brother did the same, but my mother and father ordered another carafe of wine. The waiter put a coin into the jukebox and played YELLOW BIRD. The men in the bar spoke louder, until my mother sang along with Harry Belafonte.

I had seen her quiet a cathedral choir with her voice and my father beamed with pride as she wrenched every emotion from the Jamaican song. I was embarrassed by her singing so loud. In many ways I never understood her gift, however when she finished the men at the bar applauded my mother. The toughest man crossed the floor to our table. A scar bisected his forehead. He bowed to my mother.

"Lady, you have the voice of an angel. My name is George. This is my place. Anytime you want to come, you call and we'll have a table ready for you and yours." He gave my father his card and waved for the waiter that the carafe of wine and ice cream.

"The wine and ice cream for your kids are on me, but do you mind, if you song some more."

"I'll be my pleasure."

My mother sang Dean Martin's THAT'S AMORE. Her rendition of Dean Martin's hit bought the eternal gratitude of the gruff clientele and her version of I'LL TAKE YOU HOME AGAIN, KATHLEEN brought tears to every man's eyes.

After that evening we returned to George's at least once a month. My father parked in front of the restaurant and his kids marveled at this driving feat. We never strayed from the meatballs and spaghetti and my mother always sang a few songs for the bar, as my father beamed with love. She was the one woman in his life and his kids were his pride and joy, even as I rebelled against his way of life.

One night in the Spring of 1971 I decided to take my hippie friends from college down to George's.

Hank Watson, two co-eds from BU, and I took the T to Haymarket. We walked under the Artery into the North End. The parking space in front of the restaurant was filled by a big Cadillac. The two men on the sidewalk blocked our entrance. Hank had hair down to the back of his ass. Mine was shoulder-length. Hippies weren't welcome in the North End.

"Youse ain't coming inside." One of them placed a hand in my chest.

I looked over his shoulder. George sat at the bar. His eyes glared at me with a puzzled recognition and then he snapped his fingers.

"Hey, Louie, let them in, the good-looking one's the son of the songbird," George shouted from the bar.

"Thanks," I politely said at the bar.

"How's your mother and father?"

"Good." The bartender served us wine.

"Come here. I wanna talk to you a second." George led me into the back and spoke with his arm around my shoulder, "Listen, I don't got no problem with longhairs, but my people they don't like hippies. You coming here is no problem, but you bring other hippies and people will start talking, you understand?"

"You want us to leave?"

"No, I can't do that to you, but next time dress a little better and only come with a girl. No friends. Out of respect for your mother."

"Whatever you want." I was a good boy when it came to family. "Can I ask you one question?"

"Maybe."

"That first time we came to your restaurant and my father parked in front. He wasn't supposed to do that, was he?" THE GODFATHER had come out the previous year. Any questions about George's business were answered in that film. He was one of those guys about whom no one talked, if they knew what was good for them.

"That's my spot. Everyone in the neighborhood knows that, but after your mother sang it became her spot. Still is. Enjoy your meal and give your best to your mother." He started to walk to the bar, then stopped, "One more thing, don't ever tell your father that. He's a good man. Name's Frank, right?"

"I call him 'Dad' and my lips are sealed."

"Good boy, one more thing."

"What?"

"Cut your hair. You look like your mother with that thatched roof."

"My mother?" Like most teenagers in the 60s I had told myself that I would never grow up to be my father. Nobody had warned me about my mother. The hair had to go.

"Yes, your mother."

I never mentioned this incident to my father or mother, but every time they went to the North End I called George and the parking spot would be waiting for them. It was a miracle, but then again so was my mother's voice.

My Loved Nana

My Nana came off the boat from Ireland at the age of 14.

She broke her heel coming down the gangway.

Somehow everything turned out all right in that Year of the Crow.

The native of the West refused to pinpoint the date.

We thought the Year of the Crow had something to do with Chinese Astrology.

Nana loved us more than the moon and the stars.

All of the thirteen cousins.

We were her family.

We still are__

Anne Walsh Nolan 1954

My Nana left County Mayo and came off the boat from Ireland at the age of 14. Boston. She broke the heel of her right shoe coming down the gangway. Her only pair. Her Uncle Father Mike was waiting to take her into servitude for a rich family in Salem. She spoke no English.

Somehow everything turned out all right in that Year of the Crow. The native of Western Ireland refused to pinpoint the date. We thought the Year of the Crow had something to do with Chinese Astrology. A friend from Florida thought she might have native Crow in her blood. To this day we know nothing.

Nana loved us more than the moon and the stars.

All of the thirteen cousins.

We were her family.

We still are and will be as are was and will be all our generation.

Slainte

ps my older brother Frank on her left. I'm on her right. Foto taken in the backyard of our house in Falmouth Foresides, Maine

pps Her marriage license from 1919 to Peter Nolan, my namesake, in Boston notes her age as 26. He was a trainman and she was a housewife. Twenty-six years from 1919 pushes her date of birth into the 19th Century. 1883 in County Mayo if family legend is correct.

AI Overview

Based on the search results, there is no direct reference to a specific event named "Year of the Crow" in Ireland in 1883

A MOTHER'S LAST WISH by Peter Nolan Smith

After Christmas 1997 my mother entered the final stages of her battle with cancer. These last rounds were not a pretty site, but her beauty remained intact to the end. Several days after the New Year my mother held my hand and said, "I'm so happy I made Christmas."

"Me too." I thought about John Wayne at the end of THE SEARCHERS and forced back my tears.

"You've been everywhere in the world. You've never been to Ireland. I'm leaving you a little money. I want you to go to Ireland and find a girl like your aunts or sisters to marry. Will you do that for me?" Her grip tightened to crack my knuckles. She knew her own strength to the measure. Her grandmother had fled the Aran Isles as a girl of twelve. Nana never went back home. The one boat trip was enough for her.

"Yes, I will." There was no refusing here, despite the incestuous nature of her last wish for her second son.

"You're a good boy." She released my hand with a sigh. "Help me with the medicine."

By medicine my mother meant her morphine drip. I hit her up good. Her tender eyes rolled into heaven and I kissed her forehead. Three weeks later she passed from this life. No one in my family contested her will and in August I received enough money to survive four months in Ireland. I had a new computer and the germ of an idea I wanted to nurture into a gem of a book. The west coast of Ireland

My good friend Camp arranged a rental in the far west of Galway beneath the Seven Pins of the Connemarra.

"That would be great." My Nana came from that part of the West. "What kind of house?"

"It belongs to a very aristocratic family."

"So it has to be grand?"

"How grand couldn't it be?" Camp was English. He lived north of New York in a valley dedicated to the pleasures of the wealthy. I trusted his taste, even if the Brit had never been to Ballyconeeley. Camp was an interior designer. Straight, but still an interior designer. They had style. "Are you in or are you out?"

"Count me in." I had read about the nearest town. Clifden had fifteen pubs. The guide books mentioned nothing about women.

"One more thing. Buy yourself some Wellingtons."

"Wellingtons?" I knew that the Irish-born Duke had defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. "Are they cookies?"

"Nope, rubber boots. You'll be needing them."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Good luck with your writing and with your finding a bride."

"Thanks." I'd be happy with one out of two.

At summer's end I sublet my apartment and my boss at the diamond exchange wished me luck with my wife hunt.

"May you make your mother happy." Manny was a mother's boy. We all are in the end.

"I'm doing this for her. I doubt there will be any women." Most Irish women like women everywhere else left their hicktowns for big cities and the guide book had indicated that a small village could get more hickster than Ballyconeeley, which was renown for its cows and windy moors.

"Better you than me." The seventy year-old jeweler was in the first stages of divorcing his second wife. "I'm done with women. But you're still a young man."

"43." My father had six kids at this age. I had none.

"43. I would cut off your right ball to be 43 again." Manny slipped me a c-note. "Save it until you find a girl to take out to dinner. A yard has to go a long way with a girl from the sticks."

"Thanks." I stuck the hundred dollars deep in my wallet. It had to be good luck.

The next days's flight to Dublin took six hours. Customs and immigration went quickly and I caught a taxi from the airport into the city. The sky was crowded with low clouds trailing veils of rain. There was little threat of sun.

"Ah, so this is your first time to Ireland?"

"Yes."

"Well, get used to the weather. It's either raining, just rained, or about to rain. You got a good pair of shoes?"

"Yes." Heavy boots and also green Wellingtons."The driver recommended a cheap bed and breakfast on the other side of the Penny Bridge. The room was clean with a window overlooking an alley of brick walls. I didn't bother to unpack my bag and went to the front desk to I phoned my new landlord.

"So you made the flight over here okay."

"Yes, sir." I was respectful to my betters and elders.

"Why don't you come out here to pick up the keys for the house in the West. The taxi driver will know the way."

"I'll leave now."

I pulled on my cap and buttoned I caught a taxi outside on the street. The drive on the motorway was a short one. Upon arrival at the landlord's address the red-headed driver whistled in appreciation. The gravel driveway led through a quiet park to a large Georgian mansion with a nearby Victorian shed housing a steam museum. The only word for the estate was grand.

"What's this man do?" He impressed by my destination.

"I think he sells beer."

"A lot of beers from the looks of it. Me and mine must have helped pay for this with all the Arthurs I bought."

"Arthurs?" My ear was adjusting to the accent.

"Pints. The founder of brewery name was Arthur."

"So you know the family?" I had never met them.

"There's only the one, but I only know them from the glass in my hand. Good beer. Good people."

"Right." I stored this tidbit of local lore for use at a later time and tipped the driver.

He drove off and I walked up to the front door." Selling beer was a good business and I thought to myself, "If the cottage is a hundredth of this barrack, then I will be living in the lap of luxury."

The door opened before I had a chance to ring the bell.

"Welcome." A silver-haired gentleman greeted me with a handshake and ushered me inside the house. "See you had no trouble find the place."

"None at all, sir." It was a palace complete with medieval tapestries and 16th Century paintings. I tried not to stare. This much wealth was usually reserved for museums.

"Call me Robert." He was tall and slender. His clothing suggested a life of grace.

"Yes, sir." Shaking off my place in the world was not easy, despite Robert's bonhomie.

The two of us sat in the kitchen and conducted the business of exchanging money and keys. The big room was colder than the outside. We drank a glass of an excellent St. Emillion to seal our verbal agreement.

"You'll find the house easy enough. It's the first one on the right before Ballyconneely. There's peat for the fireplace, but I suggest getting a hot water bottle for bed. Houses out that way are not centrally heated like back in the States."

"Thanks for the advice." A light rain pattered against the lead window. I was glad to have my cap.

"One more thing. The phone is on, but only for incoming calls. You want to use it for calls?"

"No." I knew no one in Ireland and international calls were expensive.

"Okay, smart thing. You're writing a book, so I hear?"

"Yes." It was about a black pimp in Hamburg. The subject matter seemed out of place in this house and I closed the subject by saying, "A quiet place without any interference from the modern world should be great for writing."

"The old schoolhouse is quiet."

"Glad to hear it." I also wasn't telling him about my mother's last wish.

"Let me drive you back to Dublin. We can go for a drink at the Shelbourne. It's the best bar in town."

"I'd like that."

Robert's ride was a gray Ferrari from the 60s. The 250 GTE hit 120 mph on the rainy motorway. The windshield wipers worked over-time. A mansion and an Italian sports car were good omen for the cottage in the West.

"I love this car, but I'm getting too old to drive it." Nearing Dublin he slowed down to 60.

"I know what you mean." Getting in was easy. Getting out required a man-servant.

We stopped at the hotel on Stephen's Green for drinks. In the bar my landlord was greeted by several of the men. He ordered the finest whiskey at the bar. My rent money paid for both rounds. It was an early night for both of us. He dropped me at my bed and breakfast and I bid him fare-well.

"Enjoy yourself. My friends have spend many summers in that house."

"You don't stay there?"

"Oh no, we stay at the family house."

Oh." I entered the B and B thinking how bad could the guest house be. The man had a Ferrari.

The next morning I rode the train to Galway. A bus brought me to Clifden. The town was small, but five bars crowded the main square. The rain fell with ease. A taxi was at the curb. A beer could wait.I got in the back.

"Where you going?" The fortyish woman's accent was thick than a slab of breakfast toast. Her face was worn from hard work. Gold glinted on her left hand. Her married status eliminated the driver from my list of eligible.

"The old school house in Ballyconeely."

"Right, it is." She stepped on the gas and we traveled down a two-laner too narrow for the passage of two cars. The sea was to the right on occasion and small farms rolled over the small inland hills. To the north mountains fought for my attention. Their summits were blunted by clouds. Not a single person was working the fields. They belonged to the cows.

"Here we are." We were passing the ruins of a church.

"There?" My great expectations diminished to utter disappointment. I had been scammed by his Lordship.

"No, that's the old Protestant church. It burned down unexpectedly in 1920. Stayed burned too. The schoolhouse is that one."

"Oh." A squat white house lay across a gully from the ghostly church.

"Ah, yes, it's a fine building." The turn indicator presaged our entering a dirt track. The uneven surface would have broken the axel of the 250 GTE. "This is it."

"I guess it is." I got out of the car and shivered in my light jacket.

The lawn was overrun by thistles and the tufts of grass wavering in a wet wind. The whitewashed house was devoid of any modern design or ancient practicality. The tall walls stood facing the west. The Atlantic lay beyond the field. The color blue matched the shreds of sky visible through the tattered clouds.

"You'll be wanting to wear a few more sweaters in the house. It's cold inside." She joined my shiver. "I went to school here. The teacher lived in the upstairs. Some people say the house is haunted. What do they know. You have a good day now?"

"Thanks."

"You need a ride, call me. The name's Peg."

"I will." I watched, as she drove away in the direction of Clifden, then turned to examine my home for the next three months.

The old schoolhouse was not a mansion. Part of the roof was in need of repair. A neglected graveyard lay in the bog separating the schoolhouse and the burnt church. The wan sun slipped into a cloud bank and the rain beat on the hard dirt. I ran inside the house. Peg had been right, It was colder within the old schoolhouse than outside.

The simple decor of sitting room reflected its use as a summer house and the well-used furniture have been rummaged from the local dump. I lifted the phone. There was a connection. I blew in my hands and bent over to pile peat in the small fireplace. The prehistoric carbon lit fast and generated a soft heat, although smoke was curling into the room. Something was wrong with the flue. The old schoolhouse was no mansion. A nearly empty bottle of whiskey was on the desk.

The view out the window was bleak. The wet grass gave way to savage gorse. The sky was descending to the earth. No houses were in sight. Finding a woman here was going to be a challenge.

I poured two measures of Paddy into a fruit glass grimy with fingerprints. I downed the fiery antithesis of Jamison's Malted Whiskey in one go. My body shook with displeasure.

"Cheap whiskey."

I had a second glass and sat by the fire. The glow within matching the glow from the peat.

All and all the old schoolhouse wasn't bad, because this was where my mother wanted me to be and wherever she was in the afterlife, she knew that I had obeyed the first part of her wish.

Getting to Ireland was easy.

Meeting a girl like my sisters or aunt was the hard part.

There was only one way to make it easy and I finished off the bottle. It went down a little smoother than before and I wouldn't have expected anything different from the old schoolhouse.

Whales for Sale USA

Written Feb 20, 2013

Back in 2007 two humpback whales became befuddled by the backwash of mobile phones in San Francisco Bay and swam seventy miles up the Sacramento River. Oceanologists failed to seduce the errant sea mammals to the open sea with love sirens from other whales and Japanese researchers offered to lend California marine biologists a sonar signature of their whaling ships in hopes that the whales will flee the estuary in terror. The Bush administration responded with an entreaty from a Sapporo fish market, which would purchase the pair for scientific culinary purposes should the whales die.

"Maybe this gesture will ease the entrance of US beef into the Japanese market," one FDA official mused at a Georgetown sushi restaurant.

Whale meat?

Yes, whale meant.

In the 1960s a Haymarket fish market served whale sandwiches to Bostonians. My friend and I tried one. It tasted nothing like beef or chicken or salmon. It was much better, although my great-grandaunt Bert who sailed around the world in the 1870s said that that the cheaper slabs were very blubbery and full of fat.

Despite its deliciousity I never ate it again for moral reason.

I guess it was too much like eating a fat person, but it's a good thing whale meat has no aphrodisiacal properties or else the Chinese would have sucked the bone marrow out of the last whale decades ago.

Lip-smacking good.

ps thankfully those whales made it to the sea after feasting on the fish in the estuary.

I HATE PAUL by Peter Nolan Smith

The Beatles began their infestation of America in 1963 and the following April the Fab Four dominated the US charts with 5 #1 hits. I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND was followed by one chartbuster after another. Teenage girls adored the Fab Four. Paul McCarthy their #1 Moptop. My next-door neighbor and I favored John Lennon. His sister, Addy Manzi, had seen the group at Carniege Hall in December 2, 1964. Her father had played with big bands in the 40s and his old music contacts had scored the tickets.

”I screamed John’s name a million times. He never looked my way,” the beautiful brunette told her brother and me after she came home from New York. My ex-babysitter remained flustered until seeing the Beatles at Boston Garden a week later.

“John played every song for me.”

Every girl in the audience thought the same about Paul and John, less so for George and Ringo and the adoration of teenage girls transformed the English group into gods with the release of A HARD’S DAY NIGHT and RUBBER SOUL. No one in the rest of the world paid much attention when John Lennon claimed that the Beatles were more popular than Christ in the summer of 1966, but priests and preachers throughout America burned their LPs in Nazi fashion, however the bonfires of the Bible Belt were shunned by millions of virtuous girls willing to sacrifice their maidenhood to Beatlemania.

This defloration fantasy was shared by the majority of New England girls.

Most girls pined for Paul McCartney. My younger sister wrote ‘the cute Beatle’ a dozen letters. She was not alone.

Kyla Rolla was the cutest girl in my 8th Grade class at Our Lady of the Foothills. She wore her brown hair long like Paul’s girlfriend, the British actress Jane Asher. I knew her since we were eight. She hadn't said three words to me in five years.

My band was the outlaw Rolling Stones. I couldn’t tell Kyla that SATISFACTION was the greatest rock song of all time or that I loved the B-side of the 45, UNDER-ASSISTANT WEST COAST PROMO MAN. In order to gain her heart I committed treason to the best rock and roll band in the world and pretended to like the Beatles.

I stopped visiting the barbershop in Mattapan Square, who was rge father of Star Trek's Spock. My hair grew over my ears. Desert boots were abandoned in favor of Beatles boots. I wore a Beatles jacket without a collar. It cost $15. Matching pants were another $10. I wore the suit to school.

The nuns sent me home with a note for my parents, breaking my perfect attendance streak, but Kyla noticed my belated surrender to Beatlemania and after school on the bus ride home, she sat next to me for the first time in years.

“Who’s your favorite Beatle?” Her uniform skirt was four inches over her knees. The nuns sent home any girl with a higher hemline. There was only one answer.

“Paul.”

“Me too.” Kyla moved closer.

Her skin smelled of Ivory soap and her hair bore the faint fragrance of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. Her green eyes were the color of the emeralds stolen by Murph the Surf from the Museum of Natural History in New York. I prayed that she didn’t notice my breathing her scent, as our conservations revolved around Paul McCartney trivia.

Paul was a Gemini like me. He was 22. I was 12. His favorite color was blue.

"Mine too." It was the truth.

I told Kyla that she looked like Jane Asher.

She let me hold her hands.

I sang her songs off BEATLES 65. ‘YOU’VE GOT TO HIDE YOUR LOVE AWAY.

Kyla closed her eyes dreaming that I was her Paul.

“Kiss me, Jane.”

“Oh, Paul.”

Our lips met at the red light before the local church. Paul’s soul invaded my body and my hand touched Kyla’s cashmere sweater. Her ribs felt like thick guitar strings. My fingertips inched higher.

“Oh, Paul.”

My hand grazed the bottom of her breast and Kyla gasped with outrage. A slap to my cheek devastated my imitation of Paul.

“But I thought that____”

“You thought wrong. You’re no Paul.” Kyla pulled down her shirt and stormed down the aisle to the girls her age.

My older brother had seen the entire episode. His eyes warned the other boys to not make fun of me. It didn’t stop their snickers.

Every day I begged Kyla for forgiveness. She ignored my every entreaty and went steady with Jimmie Lally for the rest of the school year.

His hair color was closer to Paul’s than mine.

I didn’t hate him or her, because they were accurate caricatures of the greater world beyond the confines of Boston’s South Shore.

Kyla broke up with Jimmy in May. On the last day of school she came up to me and said she was leaving for Miami. My birthday had been in May. I was now 13. A teenager

"You can write me in Florida," she said. Her parents were divorced and her old man was living in Miami.

"But why didn't you talk to me all this time?"

"Because I wanted to teach you a lesson."

"About what?"

"About wanting to hold my hand."

I wrote her letters that summer.

In September we were a thing again, but I could tell that her kisses were for Paul same as her caresses. I hated him and his poster over her bed. He stared at me all the time and I gave him the finger whenever she wasn't looking.

My parents bought SGT. PEPPER for my birthday. I listened to it once. Kyla had ruined the Beatles for me. The Rolling Stones regained my devotion. I played HIS SATANICAL MAJESTY’S REQUEST twice a day as if the Devil could transform Kyla’s love for Paul into stone, but like Jesus the Beatles were more powerful than Satan.

Over the next few years Kyla and I never went all the way. We were saving it for our wedding night. Her mother was going a man from Chile. They spent nights out in Boston. We had the run of the house until midnight. I was almost a man.

Kyla introduced me to WBCN on her FM radio. “Mississippi Harold Wilson” was the first DJ to play Cream’s I FEEL FREE. She loved the Velvet Underground. I was a big fan of the Jefferson Airplane.

We lay on the couch of her dark living room. Our nights were everything except have sex. My parents understood that we were in love. My mother was okay with our dating as long as I got home before midnight. I felt a little like Cinderella.

My hair grew longer. Kyla and I talked about running away to San Francisco for the summer of love. We got as far as Wollaston Beach.

At summer’s end I spent a long night on the couch. Time disappeared from our universe, as WBCN’s night DJ played the Modern Lovers’ ROADRUNNER and Quicksilver’s MONA, then JJ Johnson announced over the air, “I have a special song to play this evening. A masterpiece. HEY JUDE by The Beatles.”

I stopped rubbing against Kyla’s thigh. WBCN never played The Beatles. Paul McCartney, my old rival, opened with vocals and piano. F, C and B-flat. The second verse added a guitar and tambourine. Simple and purely The Beatles.

“I love this.” Kyla pulled me closer. The four minute coda of ‘Hey Jude’ went on forever. At the song’s end I was still a virgin, but only just. Kyla opened her eyes and sighed, “That was good.”

I read the love in her eyes.

Paul.

Always Paul.

I looked at the clock on the wall. It was 2:10. I kissed her lips and dressed fast, as if my speed could turn back the hands of time. Kyla waved from the door way. She was wearing a silk robe.

“Tomorrow.”

“Manana.” I had learned the word from her mother’s boyfriend. He let me drink wine.

The streets of my hometown were suburb quiet. No cars. All the houses dark. My home was three miles away. I was on the track team and ran my best time for that distance.

A car appeared around a curve. A VW. It was my father’s car. He must have been coming to get me. His mood had to be dark. He liked his sleep. The VW 180ed in the street with a screech. It had a short turning circle. The car braked to a halt and the passenger door shot open.

“Get in.” It was a command.

I sat down expecting the worst.

My father read the riot act.

"All you had to do was call. Ten seconds and say you were all right. But you were only thinking about yourself.”

I never saw the punch coming. The VW never swerved. Blood dripped onto my shirt. My father handed me a rag. I could tell that he was sorry for having lost his temper. He had never hit me before.

“You’re grounded for a week.”

“Yes, sir.” A month was punishment. A week was an apology.

He turned on the radio to WBZ. The disc jockey was playing HEY JUDE.

Soon The Beatles song seemed to be the only song on the radio. Kyla played it at home. My mother and my father knew the words. I couldn’t get them out of my head.

At the end of my grounding I went over to Kyla’s house. Her mother was out on a date. I looked up at Paul. Kyla put on SGT. PEPPERS LONELY HEART CLUB BAND. She pulled me to her and I should have walked out, but leaving Kyla wasn’t in my heart and I sang along with Paul. She smiled and kissed my lips.

I might not have been her Paul, but I was holding her hand and Paul never did that other than in her dreams.

THE CURSE OF A NE'ER-DO-WELL by Peter Nolan Smith

Back in the winter of 1974 I was driving taxi for the Checker Cab company at night and attending college during the day. I had never wanted to further my education, but I had a low draft number and the government was still drafting young men. I had no intention of going to Vietnam.

One night I picked up a fare outside of outside the Other Side, Boston’s premiere drag bar. A young blonde in a fake fur, red satin tube and hot pants, plus hgih stacked platform shoes. I guessed her to be a teenager. She wanted to go to Brookline. A nice neighborhood. She wasn’t a transvestite. She just like dancing and felt safe with the queens. Her laugh was almost a cough. Her name was Helene. She had just turned eighteen.

We smoked a joint on the way up Beacon Street and told each other’s history. I was living in the suburbs. Helene’s house was a family commune. Her stepfather was a VP at Bose and her mother was divorced from a Boston Globe editor. They were both hippies into alternative consciousness trips.

We started seeing each other. I stayed he night. Her stepfather and mother were cool with that. So were the rest of the family. Eight children between them. It was a lot of handle for Ann and her laugh sounded mad to me.

Ann was a loving mother of six was troubled by demons, but capable of living a normal existence most of the time.

Her new husband believed in New Age cures, but one winter night Ann got hold of a bottle of vodka. The drink reincarnated her devils and she ran naked out of the house into blizzard, shouting, "I'm the queen of the snowflakes."

Spindrifts of snow swallowed her from sight.the street. The temperature was near zero.

"Get her," Helene pleaded with urgency.

"I will.”

Helene and I ran after her. Snow clotted on my face. I followed Ann’s footsteps. We found the older woman hugging a tree in the neighbor's backyard. She wasn’t even shivering. Her drunken madness kept her warm.

"Ann, you have to come back to the house." I took off my jacket and covered her shivering nakedness.

"Leave me alone."

"You'll die out here. Come with me." My bones were rattling. Helene was crying. This was all bad.

"You dare tell me what to do?" Her mad eyes grasped my face.

"I'm not telling you what to do, but Helene is worried about you."

"My daughter is eighteen and you're twenty-two.” Ann threw her head back. Her hair wrestled with the wind.

"Twenty-one.”

“Your age doesn’t matter. You’re just a taxi driver," Ann spoke with MacBeth's three witches voices. All together and added, "You are the ne'er-do well. You'll never amount anything."

"Probably not." I ripped her off the tree and dragged her through the snow to the house.

"Ne'er-do-well." She repeated the phrase all the way to her house. Each time with weakening force, but the words bit into me like snake fangs. By the time we entered the house Ann was silent. Her husband was smoking a joint. He was used to her madness.She said nothing to anyone and her husband brought her upstairs to warm her in a hot bath.

Upon reaching the second floor Ann turned and mouthed 'ne'er-do-well'.

Later Helene and I sat by the fire.

"Don't listen to her."

"About what?"

"About being a ne'er-do-well. No one is a ne'er-do-well anymore."

"I suppose you're right."

Down in the kitchen we smoked a joint and her sister made us a cup of tea. Her sister was working in the Combat Zone. Strippers didn't have snow days.

Helene and I broke up that Spring. She left me for a car thief from Hyde Park. I graduated ‘sin laude’ in the Spring. I moved back into the commune in Brookline the next year. Helene and I were just friends. Her mother slipped inland out of mental institutions. There was no cure for her madness. in 1976 I left Boston for New York.

Ann's curse had been on money. Over the years I never could hold onto anything of valuable, then again possession is 9/10ths of meaninglessness and while I might be ne'er-do-well, I'm the best of the ne'er-do wells and in these days, when life has little meaning being a ne'er-do-well is a blessing, because we know how to live with nothing.

ps Helene and I are still friends and she married a rich man. Me, I am what I am. A happy ne'er-do-well with a large family. A kucky man indeed.

Wernersville Home For Wayward Boys

The Boston photographer Bobby Busnach posted this entry on FB in 2012.

Wow, this was a small part of wernersville state hospital, which was on a large grounds with maybe 9 old huge buildings with tunnels underneath that connected the buildings. the three shots of a building with a 9 sign on them was the young adult unit, where i was put and spent a year for running away and getting high and fighting with teachers in 1968 and 69 when i was 12 to 13. i was put on 900 milligrams of thorazene a day to control me cause i would start riots with the inmates :} it took me a year to learn to play the game well enough to be released. my brother ended up there a couple months later when i ran away for a year and lived with a bunch of hippies. he met his wife there at the hospital.

That was another side of the 60s than Flower Power and Sexual Revolution.

Bobby broke free to become the chronicler of the Gay Revolution in Boston and New York. This photos of that era bring me back home to another time.

FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL / Tura Santana - 2011

Back on the 1960s Braintree’s South Shore Drive-In was located off 128 outside of Boston over the Blue Hills from my suburban development of split-level houses. No one went to the twin screens in the daytime, but on summer nights my father drove my mother and their six children to the open-air theater, where we watched THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and Doris Day-Rock Hudson movies from the back seat of our station wagon. We loved the popcorn from the concession, however neither my older brother nor I left the car, since my mother insisted on our wearing pajamas. “I want you ready for bed when we get home and what’s the problem with wearing pajamas?” She thought of us as her babies, even though we were 12 and 11. “They can’t go to the concession stand dressed like that. They’re almost teenagers.” My father interceded for us. “Other teenagers say things.” “They shouldn’t care what those hooligans say.” My mother had heard about the wickedness of ‘submarine races’ from the parish priest. “The drive-in is for movies. Not sin.” My mother was never more right than when the Holy Roman Church backed her up, but the South Shore Drive-In was more like a Midnight Mass in comparison to the Neponset Drive-In off Route 3. The single-screen regularly featured adult fare. Biker films were screened as the first show and the second movie offered bare skin. Whenever we passed the silver screen off Route 3 on the way into Boston at night, my mother ordered us to shut our eyes. “These films are filth born from the loins of Satan.” Our pastor, a seventy year-old Irishman condemned this torrid combo in his Sunday’s sermon. His brogue rang with his devotion to a decades-old celibacy and he sought to enlist altar boys into the ranks of black cloth. None of the boys on the cusp of teenagerism sought to suffer the curse of lifelong virginity, especially not in 1965, which was a good year for go-go girls and outlaw bikers. My older brother was in 8th Grade. He had kissed a girl at the matinee of the Mattapan Oriental, The upper balcony. She had let his hands roam to second base in the pitch-black balcony. My next-door neighbor, Chuckie Manzi, and I had found stroke books in the woods below Chickatawbut Hill. Our hands belonged to the Devil and our souls were lost to God, especially since I had been an atheist since age 8. In the August of 1965 we wanted wickedness and no Hollywood film preached sin more fervently than FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL. Ads from the Neponsset Drive-in for Russ Meyer’s movie were splashed across the local newspaper entertainment sections and lurid posters promoted the no-holds barred cinematic experience were plastered on brick walls throughout the South Shore. The star of the movie was Tura Santana. The buxom lead actress was mix of Japanese/Sioux/Irish blood. My hometown was a white suburb, mostly Italians, Irish, and a few Jews. No one in our white suburb was as exotic as Russ Meyer’s star. The first night showing was scheduled for the upcoming Friday. Our parish priest pleaded with Sunday worshipers to tear down these offensive placards and our parents obeyed his edict. Their devout fingers bled from the effort. One evening my older brother and I salvaged two tattered black and white posters of three buxom Amazons proudly standing before a foreign sports car. A Porsche 383. James Dean had died in the same Porsche. our next-door neighbor Chuckie guessed that the sports car’s color was red. I kept my poster under my bed. My brother stashed his in the attic. My mother would have killed us, if she found one, but we worshipped them as unholy relics of our increasingly rebellious youth. On Monday morning the boys from 7th and 8th Grades discussed the upcoming Russ Meyer film on the bus en route to Our Lady of the Foothills. “What do you think they do in the film?” I whispered to our friends. “No sex, but a lot of flesh and big breasts.” Chuckie’s answer was a good guess. We had seen more in the dirty books we have found in the woods. “There’s only one way to find out for sure.” My brother looked at us and we instinctively knew what we had to do and that week we plotted an expedition to the Neponset Drive-In to broaden our adult awareness. Our plan was simple. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO was playing at the local movie house by the Expressway. The film starring Julie Christie and Omar Sharif had won almost every Oscar at the previous month’s Academy Award. On Friday evening I asked my father for permission to see it with Chuckie and my older brother. My mother objected to my request. “It’s a love story about communists.” She remained a McCarthyite a decade after Tailgunner Joe’s death. “Pasternak was a great poet, but this is only a love story.” My father had attended college in Maine. He spoke French and overruled her politics. She stormed upstairs and slammed shut the bedroom door. “Boys, remember when you’re teenagers that your father stood up for your rights.” “Yes, sir.” On the cusp of forty he belonged to another generation, but he was a good father and drove us in the station wagon to the local theater. The early show coincided with the sunset. He would pick us up later. Where he went, we never asked. FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL screened twenty minutes later. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO ran three hours. The theater was a mile from the drive-in, A twenty-minute walking distance or a ten-minute trot. Our scheme was planned to the last detail. Chuckie had even hide his father’s binoculars under his coat, because we would watch the FAST PUSSYCAT KILL KILL for free from the other side of the river. Upon arriving at our town theaters, we were surprised by the line of young boys snaking around the corner. We waved good-bye to my father. He was heading someplace. We never asked where. “Certainly a long line for a love story,” commented my father. “Julie Christie is beautiful.” My brother had her magazine photos under his mattress far from the posters of FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL. He was a die-hard romantic and dreamed one day that he would end up with Julie, but it wouldn’t be tonight. “Yes, she is.” My father liked her too. “I’ll pick you up in three hours.” We bought tickets and waited out front for several minutes. Several clusters of other pre-teen boys also lingered on the sidewalk. None of us had any intention on seeing DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. Darkness drenched the eastern sky and stars clustered across the overhead sky. Chuckie nudged my ribs. “Let’s go.” The three of us walked down the side street and around the corner we broke into an easy lop. Within minutes we were running over the hilly golf course overlooking the Neponset River. “There it is,” Chuckie declared from the summit. The drive-in was packed with cars. The big screen showed ‘Coming Attractions’. Inbound traffic on the Expressway was snarled for the free show. The other boys behind us whooped upon seeing our goal within reach. As we pelted downhill to the river, I recounted the plot of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO to my brother and Chuckie, in case our fathers and mothers quizzed us later. They weren’t fools. We reached the river’s edge to discover that the drive-in was not visible from this vantage point. “We could swim to the other side.” Chuckie suggested and unbuttoned his shirt. “And how are we going to explain our wet clothes?” My older brother was determined to attend law school and his concern for his permanent record deterred his detours from the straight and narrow. “We’re not.” I pointed to the highway to where boys filed across the expressway’s bridge. It was a good way to get killed and cars beeped their horns, yet we joined their procession to the opposite bank. Our next obstacle was a dump rank from the stench of trash burning in the glowing incinerator. We spotted the top of the screen and ran like hounds hunting a fox to the twenty-foot chain-link fence preventing any unpaid entrance to the drive-in. None of us needed to go any farther and we sat on the ash heaps of the garbage dump. Forty-feet high big-breasted women in skimpy clothes filled the screen. “Tura Satana, Haji, and Lori Williams,” Chuckie spoke the actresses’ names, which he had memorized the poster.

Nothing had prepared us for the female mayhem and violence. No man was safe from the Pussycats’ terror and for the first time in my life I realized that women were not the weaker sex.

Ninety minutes later we walked away from THE END in a state of exhaustion.

“Why did they treat men like that?” asked Chuckie.

“Because men treat women worst. Remember last winter when those boys took the girls under the Mattapan Bridge. They slapped them around and made them take off their shirts. Worse things happened to girls and women too.”

“The men in the movie got what they deserved,” said my older brother. We had two sisters and would kill anyone who messed with them.

Back at the theater showing DOCTOR ZHIVAGO we gave the usher our tickers and sat with the audience. The film had another hour to go. We exited after THE END. My father asked about the movie. We said it was good. As we approached our neighborhood, Chuckie whispered in my ear, “I’m in love with Tura Santana.”

“Me too.” She looked a little like his raven-haired sister, Addy had been my babysitter. Her breast-size was a 36-B. Chuckie had once shown me her bra. It smelled of baby powder.

Chuckie never met Tura Santana, although years later I interviewed the director Russ Meyer at the 1984 Deauville film festival. We had a couple of drinks at the Hotel Atlantique. I paid for them. My expenses were backed by a French magazine. The big man spoke about his serving in the Army’s 166th Signal Photo Company.

“I was 15 and somehow was assigned to a combat film crew. I shot a camera across France, but when I got back to LA I couldn’t find any work, although I did some of the camera work on GIANT.” That George Stevens film was being honored by the Deauville Film Festival.

“Can you remember which scenes?”

“I’m lucky to remember my name, but enough of my blowing wind. You’re here as a journalist. You have to have some questions for me?”

“Only one. What ever happened to Tura Santana?”

“Why do you want to know?”

I explained about Chuckie, my older brother, and countless other boys going to see FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL.

“Ha, you’re not the first kid to tell me a story like that. 1965 was twenty-one years ago. I was in my forties. Up until I shot MOTORPSYCHO I was a nobody, but I sold the producers that I’d make a film like MOTORPSYCHO with three women. The audience didn’t get three women with three women. Now you can find porno everywhere. I still don’t know why they let me make that movie.”

“Me neither, but we were glad they did. Why was Tura so angry?”

“It wasn’t any act. She told me that when she was ten years old some men raped her. They got away with it. Tura trained in martial arts and over the next fifteen years got them all.”

“How?”

“How do you think? She was no act.”

“What happened to her?”

“I saw her a couple of years ago and you know what the worse thing about my movies. Not that feminists think that I was sexist, because they’re wrong. All my women beat up on men. They even kill them, so I can live with that label. The worst thing about my films is seeing all those beautiful women lose their beauty. It makes me feel like crying. Same with Tura, but she hung onto it longer than most and if I close my eyes I can still see her on the set in the Mojave. What a woman.”

And she still is.

Journal Entry - December 26, 1977

Christmas dinner at my parents in Milton has been very pleasant, although my youngest brother Michael, was dying to tell the family that he was gay. I whispered at the dining table, "Don't do it now. Only Mom doesn't know you're gay."

"Dad does?"

"He never said so much, but you're sort of obvious only not to Mom. Let me be the one one to ruin Christmas. At least she expects that of me."

I ruined nothing. I smoked weed in the backyard and went to sleep in my childhood bed, reading SOUTH by Ernest Shackleton and fell asleep dreaming of ice.

The next day I took the T into Boston. I had old friends to see. I wandered over to the MOOD on Newbury Street, where I met Kathy who had just returned from London and appeared as manic as ever. Wanting to escape called Tara at NESS and I left without saying good-bye.

Tara was sitting with a handsome blonde man. He checked my package and frowned, when tara said, "Michael, this is my boyfriend, Nolan."

"Boyfriend?" laughed Michael. "No one has boyfriends anymore. At least not my friends. Have you slept with Tara?"

"More than once."

"And I came everytime."

Her admission bushwhack me. I had always thought she was faking orgasms, but I evidently answered her sexual needs by existing as a fantasy, which was easy for someone protected by their parents' money and delicate self-deceits.

After this introduction she and Michael blathered about every bar in bar. I realized once more that we had nothing in common and held no desire to assault her chunky body, recalling the scratchiness of her hairy white thighs. Our conversation went nowhere and I left, saying I might be back later.

On Newbury Street I ran into Diana, a slender fag hag from the 1270. She spun into my arms

"Nolan, I'm so glad to see you. How's New York?"

"New York is New York." I was a busboy at a gay ice cream shop and felt like I couldn't make it anywhere.

"We were wondering if you would come up here for Christmas. Everyone is looking forward to seeing you." She led me by the hand into MOOD and sat me in the office surrounded by vintage clothing smelling of mothballs to hid the scent of the dead. Kathy was not pleased to see us together and went to door saying without looking over her shoulder, "I'm going out for a drink. Maybe I'll see you later."

I couldn't wait for her to leave." She popped a 'lude in my mouth.

Later I tried to grope Diana on a sofa.

"Sorry, I don't like sex on 'ludes. I just like the feeling, plus I wish you really were a fag, the it would be easy to love you."

I could fake it." I had been with men.

Sorry, but you can't. You're not angry, are you?"

"Not as long as you give me another 714."

"50/50."

"Okay."

She cracked a pill in half. We dropped them. She settled into cushion and nestled close to me. Within minutes we were so happy to be together.

Journal Entry - December 25, 1977

Dec. 25, Boston.

Yesterday after dancing at the 1270 Kevin and I ate Monte Cristo sandwiches at Ken's Steak House on Boylston Street. The nineteen year-old played bass for the Mumps and like most young people he had with more future and less of a past than me, but we talked freely about punk and modern depravity. Kevin was pleased with his playing, but said, "My bass sucks, but not as bad as my amp."

At 2am I wished him a Merry Christmas and walked over to Copley Square to meet Andy and Therese. The blonde, go-go dancer had just finished working at a Combat Zone after-hours bars. They were headed down to Long Island to see his parents. We sat on his Firebird smoking a joint. I had gone out with Therese's younger sister, who lived with the rest of their clan in a chaotic family commune in Brookline. I hadn't seen Hilde in months.

The rising sun brightly lit the Boston Public library and the morning was unseasonably warm for late December.

My friend put out the joint and got inside his car. Therese lit a cigarette and asked, "What do you think about Andy and I getting married?"

You won't like what I have to say."

"Why?" The ex-go go dancer dropped the cigarette and crushed it under a stiletto heel.

"One, I don't approve of your living with your family. Your mother and step-father are crazy and will interfere with your life."

"Like they did with my sister and you?"

"Hilde and I were different." Neither Joe nor her mother Kate said anything about us, probably knowing I had no future with a high school senior. "And secondly I don't think Andy is responsible enough for marriage."

Therese looked at Andy and raised a finger to wait another minute. He started the engine. She turned to me and pouted, as she said, "I can make him happy."

"That is true. You have my blessing."

She got in the Firebird and they drove away to the Mass Pike.

My family was waiting for me in the Blue Hills and I went to the trolley station, knowing that there was no evil in the pursuit of happiness, even if fearing disaster, but that was me and I was the king of disasters. Even on Christmas Day.

12/07/1960

Eighty-three years ago Japanese aircraft attacked the US Pacific Fleet. Nearly every capital ship in Pearl Harbor was sunk or severely damaged by bombs or torpedoes and the Pacific Ocean became a Japanese lake until the BattleMidway.

The next day President Roosevelt declared before Congress, "December 7th shall live forever as a day of infamy."

This morning I asked a score of NY teenagers what was special about December 7th.

"Today?"

"Yes."

"It's a Monday."

"No." I shook my head.

"It's the start of winter."

"No, that's December 21st."

I decided to give them a hint.

"It has something to do with Pearl Harbor."

"Where's that?"

"Hawaii, so you don't know that December 7th is Pearl Harbor Day or what happened that day?"

The group of high school students shrugged with disinterest.

"It's the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor."

"Are the Japanese Muslim terrorists?"

"No, the Japanese come from Japan?" I gave up on my attempt to comfirm that FDR's Day Of Infamy has receded into the mists of history, proving that America's blissful ignorance is a long-cherished national asset, but I know what December 7th means most to me. It was the birth date of my youngest brother, Michael. A day I remember better than most, because fifty-four years ago I was standing in the parking lot of Our Lady of the Foothills. It was recess time. The weather was cold for December. My classmates were kicking a big red ball for fun and warmth. Our family station wagon pulled up before the school’s front door. My father stepped out of the car. He waved for my older brother and I to join him. My younger sisters too. We were all in uniform.

"You have a baby brother," he proudly told us. The nuns appeared annoyed by his unapproved appearance, being fiercely protective of their authority. My father was a late convert to Catholicism. His faith was newborn and he ignored their glare.

"We have a brother?" Our mother had exhibited no sign of pregnancy over the past months and I was mystified by this potential immaculate conception.

"Yes. Michael. Your mother named him after your uncle." My father hugged my two sisters close. They were a little more than a year apart.

"The priest?" Uncle Michael was a monsignor for Cardinal Cushing. He had met my grandmother Nana at the Boston docks after her passage from Ireland at the tender age of 14.

Six years older than me in 1960.

"Yes, and he's going to baptized your brother at the church. Go get your things. Your mother wants you to see Michael."

The nuns protested his request to take us out of school, but my father's greatest love was for his children and we piled into the station wagon. The drive to Boston Lying-In Hospital took less than fifteen minutes. My father liked to drive fast.

Our small tribe entered our mother's hospital room. She was holding Michael in her arms. Nana was holding Padraic, the fifth of our brood. He was all of two. Our family was now six. A family of eight counting my mother and father.

"There goes my pony." My older brother whispered in my ear.

Year in and year out Frunk had requested a pony from Santa Claus. I never thought that he had a chance of getting one since my mother hated animals.

I stepped closer to the bed. The red-faced baby in my mother's arms looked more like a furless monkey than a human.

I touched his small hand. It was warm.

"Say hello to your brother." My mother beamed with a Madonna's love.

"Hi, Michael."

He was my baby brother that day and has been every day since.

Sadly Michael passed from this world in summer of 1995. I think of him often and my father's telling me that I had a baby brother. I still do have one, because December 7th is a day that will live forever in my memory as Baby Brother Day.

Michael Charles Smith RIP.

My baby brother is sorely missed by family and friends.

He would have been 54 today.

Forever young.

I'll raise a glass for Michael later.

He was my Pearl Harbor Boy and I'll never say to him or his ghost, "Sayonara."

Only.

Up the rebels, boyo.