The River Is Wide

In August 2009 I took my daughter Angie to the highest point in Thailand. Doi Inthaton was wraithed by fog and I lent her my jacket, even though I had bought her a bright pink poncho in Chiang Mai. She liked anything to do with me. Angie is my daughter. She and I climbed to the highest pagoda and there she asked if i still loved her.

"Pon lak kunh mak." She was my first child. We spent most of her first five years together, until her mother deserted me for an up-country lover. I have gotten over the pain thanks to my new wife, Mam, and our son Fenway, but my love for Angie remained strong despite her mother's betrayal. I had to ask, "Why?"

Angie explained that she opened my computer and saw pictures of another baby, Fenway, and none of her.

I felt her hurt and held her in my arms.

"I will always love you forever." I told her this in Thai with a Boston accent. She made a face like I was speaking Klingon, but then buried her face in my chest. I could feel her heartbeat.

My daughter said nothing. She has never told me that she loves me. Angie is a funny girl that way.

Her mother waited at the car. We had a serious conversation about Fenway. I had kept him a secret. He was no secret now.

"Angie has a brother."

We drove to Sukhothai in long silence ripped to shreds by angry accusations.

"You left me. You had a boyfriend. You made your bed. You keep up this shit and I'll get out of the car now and you'll never see me again.Is that what you want for Angie." My anger was verging on cold blood. "I love her 100%"

She sat in the back.

Like always she said nothing.

Nu shut up. No one was right, but Angie came first.

Night came fast. The road was difficult. My phone rang. It was Mam. I spoke with her and said that Nu knew everything now. No one was happy, although i had Nu stop at a gas station so i could buy some beer.

Sukhothai seemed father away every time I looked at a distance panel, but around 9pm it was only 30 klicks away. The radio warned of flooding. The Yom River was over its banks. Nam tuam. Sukhothai was the ancient Thai capitol. The Burmese had burnt it to the ground on several occasions. There was nothing in the history about flooding, but as we reached the city proper, the water rose higher and higher until it was up to the doors.

"This is fucked up." I kept driving towards the muang bulan. The ancient city was on higher ground.

"Jam dai 5 pii gon. Anthong mii nam tuam." Nu was referring to high waters in Anthong 5 years before.

"Jam dai." Sandbags lined the Asia Highway. Water gleamed an inch below the rim. I had never seen flooding like this. It was like New Orleans a day before Hurricane Katrina went crazy.

We reached dry road and found an open hotel. Sukhothai is a town that closed early. We ate a late dinner and I had Angie sit on my lap. She was scared on the racing waters.

"Mai huang." I told her not to worry. "I will be there always."

And the same goes for Fenway.

We are family.

A Bus To Boston

March 9
Daylights Saving ends
Normall rise at 6
Today 7
The Flex Bus departure at 8
Pack my bag go taxi__
7:41
The Bowery and Canal
The old Fung Wah stop
Departure on time
Cross the East River
I know this route well
Chinatown to Chinatown
1962 to now in the 21st Century
Along the Connecticut coast
North at New Haven
Now New England
Home of my youth
Cross the Connecticut River
At Hartford
I-84
Into the Sturbridge Hills
Birch trees, hemlocks, ice pond, and patches of snow
Three Mass Staties conducting a traffic stop
A slow Sunday morning
The Pike ahead
I see the future
I-90
West to Seattle
East to 128
The Charles River
South Station
The 1:45 train to 128
To see my young sister Pam
Known as Auntie Beautiful
To her nieces and nephews
And her daughter Sara
and loving husband Steve
Family___
I have lived many places
Falmouth Foresides
The Blue Hills
East Village
Paris
Thailand
Brooklyn
And places in between
But as Jonathan Richman sang
"I've been to Paris and I've been to Rome,
but I'm there's nowhere else I call my home. Oh England."
And I'm on the train to 128
On a winter Sunday morn
To hold my sister's hand
Oh New England___

THE PRESENCE OF THE GONE by Peter Nolan Smith

Boston is a four-hour bus ride from New York. My brothers and sisters lived in the southern suburbs of my old hometown. After my return from overseas in September 2011 from my European posting I called several times to arrange visits, but my father’s death in 2010 had disconnected our present paths from the routes of the past.

We are still family and that December my younger sister asked, “Are you coming home for Christmas Eve.”

“I’m working late on the 24th.” I also had to open the safe at the diamond exchange the morning of the 26th and I apologized for my holiday no-show.

“I understand.” Pam was heading to her in-laws in New Haven for the 25th.

We wished each other ‘Merry Christmas’ with love, thinking that we might see each other until some distant date in 2013.

Happily Pam phoned from New Haven on the 26th to announce that her loving daughter and she were arriving at Grand Central Terminal that morning.

“We’re having a ladies day in the city with the various members of my husband’s family, but I could meet you for a drink at the Michael Jordan’s steakhouse after our shopping.” My sister had promised to take her daughter down to Chinatown to purchase cheap knock-off fashion bags and glasses. Sawah was an easy teenager to please.

“That sounds good to me.” My boss Manny wasn’t at work, so we could close early. “I’ll see you then.”

My co-workers were more than amenable to my suggestion of cutting out at 4:30 and we packed away the jewelry in record time. After Hlove and I double-checked the safe and security alarms, we were good to go.

Twenty minutes later I entered the Grand Central Terminal from Vanderbilt Avenue. The elegant train station was bustling with comings and goings of commuters and holiday shoppers. There was few open spaces like it in the world and I glowed in the power and beauty of New York before noticing my sister waving from a table shared with three other women and my niece, who greeted me with a kiss.

I shook hands with the older woman with a pleasant smile
“I’m Ryan’s mom.” She was married to my sister’s husband’s brother. Her son was serving his fourth tour in Afghanistan.

“I’m Ryan’s fiancee.” A pretty girl with long brown hair offered from across the table. “We met in Afghanistan.”

“She worked for intelligence,” Pam said to prevent my asking any questions. Her hair stylist had worked a miracle on her color, then again she was known as Auntie Stunning to her nieces and nephews. I was simply Uncle Bubba. “If she told you what she really did she would have to kill you.”

“I’m not a spook,” Marie protested with a laugh.

“My brother says the same thing.” My sister has joked that I have been in the CIA since graduation from college. “His last job was writer in residence to a British Embassy in Europe.”

“Unofficial position.” Madame l’Ambassador was a long-time friend.

“Definitely a spook.” Another young lady commented from the banquette. “I’m Marines too. Just back from Afghanistan.”

“Happy you could make it.” My sister hugged me with tenderness.

Whatever difficulties separated us during our youth have been buried under the hubris of time. The defense lawyer was my good friend and saved me with a timely loan after Hurricane Sandy. She knew me well and asked, “Care for a glass of wine?”

“A Mer-LOT.” I mimicked my father’s pronunciation of the wine and my sister laughed, “Glad to see that someone is keeping up the tradition.”

“Not only that, but I teach people about the milkman’s and lumberman’s handshakes.”

“Oh, no.” My sister and niece groaned in familial harmony.

My father loved to show children these handshakes on his travels with the Elder Hostel. The tour operators warmed him that parents might think that he was strange. We did the same. He ignored everyone and I demonstrated both to Ryan’s mother.

“Another Smith tradition.”

Their train was leaving in twenty minutes, so we rapidly conversed about our connections and histories. I told them about my petitioning to the Pentagon to get a pension for my anti-war protests in the 60s and my sister mentioned our entering Studio 54 with the legendary wrestler Andre the Giant.

“The greatest athlete of all time.” I liked saying that because it’s true and most people don’t realize how true it was.

“You must have lived a great life?” Marie asked with envy. She was young. Life in the 70s was nothing like today. “I read about those times. They seem like a dream. Everyone and everything was so free, especially the drag queens.”

“Really?” Her comment took me off guard. Maybe she was a spook.

“Yes, there nothing like that now.”

“There was back then.” I told her about Boston’s The Other Side, the trannies of the Meat Market and a transvestite trapeze show on 45th Street. “I think the place was called GG Barnums. I had a friend Dove. She was always trying to get me to go home with her. I refused her each time, even though she looked like a vogue model.”

“Some of them were so beautiful.” Marie cooed, while her future mother-in-law frowned with moderate disapproval. America was changing albeit step by little step.

“Dove was gorgeous and she saved my life once.” I recounted how Dove had stopped a beating at the hands of a New Jersey biker pissed that I had interfered with his roughing up a gay ballet dancer.

“Where is she now?”

“I don’t know. So many of them are gone like so many of my gay friends.” I think about them often.

“I know what you mean.” Her future sister-in-law was talking about fallen Marines.

“My brother died of AIDS. He comes to me in dreams along with my mother. They visited me at a Cape Cod cottage, then he runs out to a beach filled with all the gone like that movie LONGTIME COMPANION.” The final scene filled the empty beach with the dead and I started crying about the loss of my friends and family. I could feel the gone in the air. They were everywhere.

Pam put her arm around me as did the Marine, who said, “I know, I know.”

I stifled the tears with my palm.

The mother nodded with sympathy. Her son was halfway around the world.

“Thanks.”

“We all have these stories.” Marie grasped my hand. She shared the trauma. “Everything will be better one day.”

“I like to think that.” I wanted the troops back home and a cure for AIDS and to see my kids in Thailand soon, each a simple request complicated by hard times.

My sister signaled for the bill. She paid fast. The train departure was in four minutes. We rushed down the stairs to the platform. They caught the 7.05 to New Haven with a minute to spare. Pam hugged me with my niece joining her embrace.

It was good to be with family and I waved goodbye walking back into the terminal.

No one is really gone as long as we remember that they were here.

Not my brother, my friends, or the fallen Marines and soldiers or the Afghanis lost to decades of war.

We are all here.

Then, now, and later.

Objects Are bigger than they appear

Back in 2007 a British wanker in a pickup sped down my street in Pattaya.

Nearly ran down my daughter Angie. I chased him on my scooter and at Soi Buakow banged on his passenger window.

My bike fell over and as I struggled to right it, the driver got out of his truck and I thought, "Damn, he's big."

I covered up my head.

Whack whack whack.

I'm on the pavement. Him over me. He gets up.

"You had enough?" I've heard the question before in similar situations and replied the same way as always, "Yeah, but but you still are a wanker."

I don't learn easy.

Journal Entry December 27, 1977

After midnight I left Diana and hitchhiked to Milton. I refused two men wanting sex. I walked across the Blue Hills in the dead of night and arrived in my suburban neighborhood after 2am. Only my parents' bedroom light shone on our street.

I crept upstairs to my mother's bedroom. My father was snoring hard on his side of the bed. He was a good sleeper, if not a little loud. My mother put down the book she was reading, regarding me with relief. I was home safe.

"Hi, mom, how are you?"

"Tired, but I never could sleep good." She took off her glasses and I noticed a purple splotch under her left eye.

I sat on the bed and caressed her hand.

"What is that? You get burned?"

No, it's skin cancer, but I have a salve to treat it, but it's very strong and knocks me out."

She wasn't telling the truth and I was a good enough son not to ask her for the truth this late at night, however the word 'cancer' shook my belief in my mother's eternity and I came close to breaking into tears. "Don't worry about me. The salve will take care of this. I'm going nowhere soon." The concern on her face hid not the lie and she said, "The doctors took a biopsy. They will clean this up. There will be no scar."

"Good."

Both of us suffered from narcissism.

"Go sleep." She reached over to the light and pulled the chain.

The darkness this late at night is never complete and I kissed her forehead before going to my childhood bedroom. I stripped off my clothes and huddled under the covers. My father's snoring was the only sound in the house. I shut my eyes hoping to dream of everything, but the future.

MIss You Long Time - Michael Charles Smith

In the summer of 1995 my baby brother succumbed to the ravages of AIDS. I miss him every day along with the rest of my friends and family who died from that killer. I will remember them forever.

My brother's name was Michael Charles Smith.

He's the smaller blonde boy in the photo.

And still always the youngest.

The Diet Of Fools

My mother thought that you weren't really sick unless there was blood. Aches, fevers, and high temperatures were normal occurrences for children and I didn't miss a day of school from 1959 to 1966, despite twice suffering from extreme cases of poison ivy. If she was in charge of Health Care in America, the budget for medical treatment would drop to zero. Last year my younger brother ignored a nagging chest pain. His wife asked him to go to the hospital. "There's nothing wrong with me." My brother was his mother's son. Several weeks later he and his family came to New York. His wife's cousin was marrying a Brahmin Hindu from Bombay. I took care of his two teenage kids while they were attending a fancy function. Later that evening he stormed into the hotel room with a large McDonald's bag in his hand.

"Damn, the food at the rehearsal dinner was uneatable. Veggies and more veggies. I'm not a cow. You think that they were trying to kill me with veggies." He pulled a double cheeseburger Happy Meal out of the bag. "Dad, you really should be careful about what you eat." His son warned in a quiet voice. "No one is going to live forever." He chomped into the burger. His kids grimaced at his resolve. They wanted him to live into their future and his diet of meat meat meat was a ticket to an early grave in their young eyes. Upon his return to Boston the chest pain worsened and he relented to his wife's pleas Being covered by a union plan he visited a hospital in Cambridge.

My dearly departed mother must have been rolling her eyes in heaven, until the doctors announced that Paddy was in immediate need of a by-pass operation.

"When?" Paddy had tickets to the Bruins-Canadians game that evening.

"Tomorrow morning?" The doctor was dead serious.

"I'll see you in the morning then." My younger brother had paid scalper's price for the seats.

"Yes, you will, but you're not going anywhere." The doctor explained to my brother that this was a life or death issue. His wife further begged him to stay overnight in the hospital. Paddy had one condition.

"I want a bacon-cheeseburger." It was a last meal request. His diet consisted of meat, fried foods, and more meat. "I want a cheeseburger. I want it now." He was acting like a little child and the nurses treated him as such. No cheeseburger and the next day Paddy went under the knife for eight hours for a quadruple bypass. Only a quintuple bypass is more extreme. The doctors discovered that his coronary system and arteries were in horrible condition. The hospital kept him in the ICU for several days and then released him to his wife.

"What about my cheeseburger?" He whined on the way home. His kids yelled at him and his wife threatened to make him walk home. He was in no shape to fight them and whimpered, "No more cheeseburgers. What kind of life will I have? Damned veggies."

His loving wife has said that Paddy has been suffering meat withdrawal. Vegetables are pushed around the plate without reaching his mouth. He has basically gone on a hunger strike and his resistance to good nutrition is endemic to most Americans, for the # 1 cause of illness in the USA is the food. People eat like pigs. Their diets of soda and fast food are taxing the health care system to the breaking point, but no one is willing to look in the mirror and see themselves as the major reason for their ill health.

Personally I eat well; vegetables, fruits, fish, olive oil, and natural foods. Steak once a month. Still I also have stopped looking in the mirror. I too am overweight and I prefer my shadow against the wall, for my weakness is drinking. Too much for my own good.

My younger brother’s brush with death taught me a lesson.

No more Pina Coladas.

Beer is the drug of choice. You are what you drink as much as you are what you eat.

And I'm willing to pay the price for that delight.

Happy Beermas.