THE BEST FORM OF FLATTERY by Peter Nolan Smith

Written Sep 24, 2010

Midtown traffic was snarled by the security measures protecting foreign dignitaries from any harm during the annual UN General Assembly. Crosstown streets were closed east of 5th Avenue and the beeping tentacles of the congestion packed Madison Avenue. My bus took twenty minutes to cover ten blocks. I was late for a gallery opening on 78th Street and abandoned public transportation for the more ancient mode of walking. My pace was accelerated by two panicked calls from my landlord AP and Billy O. Our dinner guest, an Irish hedge fund banker, was on a 'craic'.

"This is polite society up here." Billy O was looking for clients. He was a real estate broker in the East End. Most people living above 72nd Street had money, especially in between Park and 5th Avenues. "I'm afraid that he's going to shag an old heiress."

"Would be the worst thing to happen to her? When I was living down in Palm Beach, I dreamed about seducing a wealthy octogenarian with three weeks to live."

"You would have given her the best two weeks of her life." Billy O and I went back to the 80s.

"At least." I was never stingy with love or lust given the right circumstances, however my time on Palm Beach had been off-season. Secondly those crones with money knew the game. Men fought over them at the Leopard Lounge. I was too proud to enter that arena.

Except for once.

"Hurry up." Billy O sounded desperate. "He's offering the owner a line of blow."

"Ten minutes."

I made it in 15. The police had blockaded 72nd Street for the passage of POTUS. This evening Obama was speaking at the UN. High-level conversations were scheduled between the Israelis, Palestinians, and our leader. Peace initiative # 257. The presidential cavalcade passed at 65 mph. A fast-moving target. I waved to what I guess was his car. My support for change remained strong.

After disembarking from the bus I hurried the final six blocks to the gallery. It was located in a small townhouse. The crowd was gentile. The artist hailed from the Hamptons. Some of his paintings had crows in them. Two women complained about the crows on their property.

"They're bad eating and worse as pets." A tall man in a Versace suit slurred from his slouch. It was Irish Johnny. His accent was pure Hollyfield drenched by the slobber of art wine.

The two middle-aged women in matching Chanel summer drag glanced over their sloped shoulders at the intruders. Their noses wrinkled with disdain. They had the expression down pat and clattered away from Irish Johnny in spiky stilettos. Popular footwear this season.

Irish Johnny staggered to the bar and grabbed two glasses of Chablis. The first one lasted a second. The second balanced his careen through the gallery. His trousers were rolled to mid-calf and his sneakers were unlaced. He was drunk enough not to recognize me. We had drank at a bar in Easthampton a year ago. I didn't say hello, but nodded to Billy O and my landlord. They signaled to keep an eye on Irish Johnny. The banker was difficult work after closing time on the NYSE. I engaged him in a long conversation on John Kelly, Ireland's premier DJ, and drinking at the Shelbourne Hotel Bar. Irish Johnny couldn't have been happy and neither could the gallery owner.

The dead drunk was with the living drunk.

Billie O and AP schmoozzed the rich. A hard crowd to work, but the two had been laboring in the Hamptons for years. AP spoke to a prospective new client. He owned a football team. His girlfriend was an old friend. The connections were snaking together. It was time to leave. Irish Johnny was hitting on a painting.

"How much you want for one night?"

Billy O took charge. Irish Johnny was his boy. They proposed dinner at Danielle's. A posey place. I begged off that future. Billy O and AP said, "Come."

"Veni, vidi, ibam."

"I came, I saw, I went." Johnny Irish was a Latin Scholar too.

I waved my goodbyes and walked to the 77th Street Subway. Lex Line to Bleecker Street. D train to Atlantic Avenue. Key in the front door at 8:23. I climbed the stairs to my apartment and wrote about Hoegaarten Beer. My wine-weakened fingers were slow on the keyboard.

A knock on my door.

AP.

He wanted to smoke some pot.

"Dinner was fantastic, but you were so right to go. He never broke open the bag of cocaine."

"Better to have a $20 bag with a friend than an 8-ball with a fiend." The lack of an 'r' made a big difference.

AP and I smoke some weed. We drank some wine. We listened to garage rock. Our favorite genre of music, although he loved the Beatles and I hated them as pop poseurs. At least we agreed that WORKING CLASS HERO by John Lennon was brilliant.

"You know I really love having you live here." AP considered me a NY legend.

"Thanks." I loved living here too.

"No one in New York is like you now and no one writes like you, but I have to say one thing and that's you have been plundering old writing and putting it on your website as if it was new."

"So you noticed."

"I'm one of your most faithful readers."

I had been adding stories to gain girth on treads of interest. Not lazy, just that I don't have much time in the day to write with my boss asking me what I'm doing every two minutes. No much of a defense for AP.

"You should be writing all the time."

"Agreed." I love writing on the 4th floor of his brownstone. My view of the downtown Brooklyn skyline. The changes of the sunset. His kids sleeping on the lower floor. Their falling asleep to the MC5. "I'll try to be more original."

"No one is more original than you in these days of mediocre." AP truly was a fan. "All I want to see is more new."

"Oof." More work.

A sign of the times.

"I promise to not rob the grave, unless it makes a nice flow."

We smoked more weed and drank the rest of his Hoegaarten.

They were good and we were safe from Irish Johnny.

SINKING SHIP by Peter Nolan Smith

Snobbery is an art in the Hamptons based on proximity to the City. Most of my friends have summer places in Easthampton and Montauk, but a few ignored the elite sneers in favor of a shorter drive back home to Manhattan.

Last summer Richie Boy and I stopped in Westhampton to show a large diamond to the heir of a schmatta fortune. We knew Errol from Xenon and 54.

His beachfront mansion was an extravagance anyplace along the shore. He led us into an expansive living room. The windows were opened for the evening breeze off the Atlantic. A blue period Picasso hung on the nearest wall opposite a Jackie O Warhol, but a painting of a long sleek yacht dominated the room.

"Let's do this fast before my wife comes back." Errol opened a bottle of Veuve Cliquot. We clinked glasses and took a sip. The champagne was vintage.

"Here it is." Richie pulled a 5-carat D Flawless Pear Shape Diamond ring, which was a steal at $560,000. After some serious hondeling Errol and Richie Boy settled on a price and said 'mazel', after which we talked about old times.

"The goy still has 'ludes." Richie Boy glanced at me.

"No way."

"two years ago my doctor and I were cleaning out his father's office in Staten Island and we found a couple of jars of Rorer 714s. In their original boxes from 1974."

Ludes were the only drug to have gone extinct.

"No way." Errol's eyes lit up like he was a born-again virgin. "They couldn't be any good."

"I did one with a friend at a bar." I didn't mention any names. "Thirty minutes later I did another half, thinking they were stale. An hour later the owner of the bar came up to me and asked where I thought I was. I was pissing, so I said, "The Bathroom?" The owner said the hallway and the bouncers threw me out of the bar with my friend."

"So they worked?"

"Very much so."

Errol wanted to know if I had more.

"Maybe." I wasn't telling him the truth for less than $5000.

We weren't there to sell drugs and Richie Boy offered a story of era of errors. Champagne was a good truth serum.

"One night me and the meanest man in New York were coming out of Studio 54. We had to go to school in a few hours, so we did our last 'lude. Herthel was driving. I don't remember anything about the ride back to the Island, but woke up in a wreck. Herthel had crashed into a parked car. The police came and asked what happened. Hershel and I said we didn't remember and they let us go."

"Didn't they take you to the hospital?" Errol poured us the last of the champagne. His wife was due any minute.

"We weren't hurt." The 'ludes had saved them from any injury.

"That's a good story, but you see that yacht?" Errol pointed to the photo over the fireplace. "That was mine. It was called 'la bella bella'. One night we steaming between Sardinia and Sicily and a storm hits us. A rogue wave breaks the hull and the ship sinks fast. I had a jar of 'ludes in the safe. I went below and dove under the water to get them. Everyone thought I drowned, but I came to the surface with my 'ludes."

Richie Boy and I exchanged a look. Errol was a serious 'lude fanatic.

"Where are those 'ludes?"

"Back in New York."

"How much you want for them?" Errol pulled out a check book.

"$5000." They were the last Quaaludes on Earth. I waited for his counter-offer. There was none, but he wrote a check to Richie Boy for the diamond.

"My wife will love this, but you know what I'd love."

"You can reach me that the store." The 'ludes weren't going anywhere.

"Maybe I'll call you."

"I'll be waiting."

Richie Boy and I exited from the house. The night was young. His wife was making dinner for us at their cottage in Ditch Plains.

"You don't have those 'ludes with you?"

"Nope." They were in a safe place.

"Just a thought." He got into the passenger seat of his Rover. He liked me to drive at night.

"A good one."

But not for that night and I drove east.

Montauk was a good hour away.

Tora Tora Shark Tora

href="http://www.mangozeen.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ar-shark.jpg"> Last week a teenager tourist was killed by a shark attack in Brazil. The big fish tore apart her left leg and doctors were not able to save the girl, even after amputating her leg. There have been 21 shark attacks in the region since 1991, although the young woman was the first recorded death by shark on the records. The holiday tragedy was a great loss for her family and friends. Landlubbers mourned the girl's demise. I have been scared of a shark attack ever since watching JAWS. But in reality sharks killed 6 people in 2013, while Man killed 100 million sharks in the same time period. It could have been more, but sharks don't like the way we taste. My closest encounter came in the early 90s. One July 4th Richie Boy and I were surfing in the Hamptons. It was a scorching day and I noticed no one was in the water. Everyone was on the shore looking about a 100 meters to our right. Big bluefish were leaping from the sea and a vicious dorsal fin sliced the surface. Richie Boy and I didn't have to say word. SHARK screamed in our minds and we paddled to the shore, as if our lives depended on it. After reaching the sandy safety we watched the phenomena and agreed to call it a day. That first beer tasted so good, as did the next seven. Certainly better than human flesh, then again sharks don't have taste buds on their tongue. To view shark attack in Brazil, please go to the following URL http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/24/brazil-shark-attack-bruna-gobbi-video_n_3645277.html

THE GHOST OF MOJO by Peter Nolan Smith

I don't know how many people I've met in my life. I've never tried to count them, but they must number in the tens of thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands since I worked 20 years in nightclubs in New York, LA, London, Paris, Nice, and Hamburg and have also circumnavigated the globe over twenty times. Some people I have forgotten. Some names I've forgotten. Some people I remember very little, while others exist as a story surrounded by shards of memories and Mojo is one such person.

Mojo had been the doorman at the Berlin in the 1980. The after-hours club was located in a four-floor walk-up at the corner of Broadway and Houston. The stairs were very steep. Mojo was big, black, and mean to women. On several occasions I warned him to calm down and he glared threateningly without making a move. My temper was legendary back then.

I hadn't seen him years, but I didn't forget him like other people.

Mojo was one of a kind and two year ago I ran into at a Williamsburg bar.

Mojo greeted me as if I had risen from the grave. He was smiling. All that meanness was gone.

"I've been working as a chef." Mojo was bigger than ever. I gauged his weight at near 300. Heavy people like working in restaurants.

"Where?" I like eating.

"Out in the Hamptons." Mojo shrugged as if it wasn't his first choice. "Tough living out there without a car, but I live about a ten minute walk to the restaurant. Even quicker if I cut through a graveyard."

"Aren't you scared about a graveyard?" I wouldn't walk through one at night.

"That's what I thought too, but a month ago I was drunk and decided to take the short cut. There was no moon, but I could see the lights of my house, so I knew where I was going. Problem was that it was too dark to see the ground and I fell into an open grave. The impact of the drop nocked the wind out of me."

"How you get out?"

"Get out? A man my size ain't getting out of no grave. I tried climbing out, but it was a waste of breath, so I sat down and waited for someone to come along. I had cigarettes and it wasn't a cold night. I might have even fell asleep, except I heard someone coming. He was drunk. I was about to call out for help, when this white frat boy fell into the grave. He gets to his feet right away and starts jumping out of the grave."

"Not easy." Six feet is six feet.

"Not at all, but I figured that he could climb on me and get out, then get help to get me out, so I coughed and said, "You can't get out of here that way."

"And what he say?" I was laughing hard now.

"Say? The white boy squawked like a chicken with a hot rod up its ass and practically flew out of the grave like I was Satan." Mojo laughed at the recollection of this moment. "Man, his eyes were bigger than dinner plates and ten minutes later the police come down to the cemetery. Nothing gets those lazy fucks working faster than a black devil in the grave, but one of them knew me and they helped me out of the grave."

"Soo more short-cuts?"

"None at all."

After a few drinks Mojo and I bid each other 'health' and went our separate ways. Each happier for his tale from the grave.

ps 'Mojo' is a magical bag of charms used in Hoodoo, an ancient Afro magic.

Hamptons Traffic Festival

The distance from Manhattan to the Hamptons is roughly 100 miles. Most weekenders own Mercedes, BMWs, Landrovers, and other luxury capable of speeds in excess of 120 mph, but the trip can take anywhere from 2.5 to 4 hours. While Suffolk County and local police enforce speed limits on the LIE and Sunrise Highway with a mercenary vigilance, the true cause of the length of the voyage is too many cars heading to the same destination and this Tuesday traffic came to a full halt as an accident closed County Road 39 and Sunrise Highway. No one was going anywhere. Fast or slow. They were trapped like rats no matter how rich they were on the clogged highways. Years ago I was riding out to Montauk with friends. I was predicting the end of cars. The driver protested, saying, "No one will ever give up the freedom of the road." We were sitting in bumper to bumper traffic at the time. I think that Jack Kerouac had been writing about another kind of freedom in ON THE ROAD. Above is 1905 photo of the Montauk Highway in East Moriches. And there as parking everywhere.

GIve Peace A Chance - 2008

Back in the last century Richie Boy, Ronnie D, and I were surfing in the Hamptons. The day ended with beers on the beach. A fire from driftwood warmed our bones and we rehashed old stories, as the sun sank over the salt marsh. Richie Boy's girlfriend asked us to pose for a picture. We stood together in our wetsuits. They took 10 pounds off our waists.

Dawn said, "One-two-three." and clicked a photo.

"Stop that." A man shouted from the hightide line. He was British and older than us. The man walked with a sickly woman. "We don't want any photos taken."

"No one taking photos of a loser like you." I yelled back and Richie Boy started laughing, "You idiot, that's Paul McCartney."

"Asshole." I muttered about myself under my breath, as the old Beatle waddled down the beach. Te woman was his wife. He didn't care about his photo but hers. I was the asshole. He wasn't even in Dawn's photo. I was never a McCartney fan, but that he stood by his wife I admired. Later in the autumn the Fab Paul showed his true colors by playing John Lennon's GIVE PEACE A CHANCE at a show in Tel Aviv. Maybe some of the Zionists will listen, although I think IMAGINE is much more effective a song.

Peace on Mars.