MY WAY / my way

I love Frank Sinatra's MY WAY, which was the English version of French song "Comme d'habitude" composed by Claude François and Jacques Revaux. The American words was written by Paul Anka and blisslessly adapted by Sid Vicious. At 56 I'm ready to do my version.

I FUCKED IT UP MY WAY

And now I’m no longer young
I have to admit to what I’ve done.
Of my past I’ve made a mess.
And I can blame no one.

My teacher caught me cheating
He said it would go on my permanent record.
I laughed thinking he was lying.
I was wrong, but I couldn’t care less
Because I fucked up my way.

Mistakes I’ve made a lot
And way too many to remember,
Some really stand out
Like the time I burned down the house
Cooking marshmellows with a lighter.

No one got killed but the cat
And I tried to be good after that.
I failed and crash the car
Because I fucked up my way.

The police they knew my name
By the time I was only 13.
The Juvie judge saw me more
Than the priest for confessions.
I’m not proud, but I’m not ashamed
Because I fucked it up my way.

I’ve won and lost without complaining,
My friends paid my bail
I paid them back by absconding
This life has been a laugh
I wish the cops would find it amusing.

I’ve seen the world
I’ve been in love
And I won’t ask for forgiveness.
Because I fucked up, yes, I did, I fucked up my way.

So here stands a man
I’m not a saint but I’ve not Satan.
I’ve lived my life to the full
And I sleep without any bad dreams
Because I accept all my sins,
It was me, I fucked it up my way.

MMMMYYYYYYY WAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY

Berth on Nantucket

Frank Sinatra brought his 21 year-old bride Mia Farrow to Nantucket in a rented yacht. My family was holidaying on that mythic isle. Mia had just finished filming ROSSEMARY'S BABY. I was 16. My love was reserved for Janet Stetson. She was the head cheerleader for my hometown's football team. I was true, but when my mother insisted on a holiday detour to view Sinatra's yacht we were rewarded with a sighting of the two super stars.

Mia was so young.

21.

Just like the restaurant.

The Wisdom of Sinatra

1956 "Get your hand off the suit, creep." To House Speaker Sam Rayburn, at the Democratic National Convention, as Rayburn requested Sinatra sing The Yellow Rose of Texas.

1963 Asked about his religious beliefs, Frank Sinatra tells Playboy magazine: "I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniels. But to me religion is a deeply personal thing in which man and God go it alone together, without the witch doctor in the middle."

1966 "I finally found a broad I can cheat on." Commenting on wife Mia Farrow.

According to Mia Farrow's biography, 'What Falls Away', he offered to have Woody Allen's legs broken when he was found to be having an affair with her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn.

1966 Glen Campbell performs as a session musician for "Strangers in the Night." Sinatra inquires: "Who is the fag guitar player?"

"I'm next. I ain't scared, either. Everybody I ever knew is already over there." After the deaths of Sammy Davis Jr., Ava Gardner, Jilly Rizzo, and Dean Martin."

"A fella came up to me the other day with a nice story. He was in a bar somewhere and it was the quiet time of the night. Everybody's staring down at the sauce and one of my saloon songs comes on the jukebox. 'One for My Baby,' or something like that. After a while, a drunk at the end of the bar looks up and says, jerking his thumb toward the jukebox, 'I wonder who he listens to?"

Sinatra was a man who knew his place in time.

To do is to be - Plato

To be is to do - Descartes

Do-be-Do-be-Do - Sinatra

WHITE BIRD by It's a Beautiful Day

Maynard G. Krebs made me a beatnik, but songs like WHITE BIRD transformed me into a long haired hippie. David LaFlamme's plaintive song with the greatest violin solo of the psychedelic era has me hankering for LSD, although listening to this classic by It's A Beautiful Day is enough to flashback to those days of the Summer of Love. I was 17 and that time has come again.

1968.

The year is vintage.

Some much good. Some much bad.

Last week I was riding the subway to work. Newspapers strew across the platform. The commuters grim. Wife #2 in Thailand unhappy with my love. My funds low. No prospects of more money. Despair was inevitable until the lilting violin of It's a Beautiful Day drifted out of the past from my cellphone.

42 years distant.

A plaintive violin.

The Bay Area band scored a 1968 hit with WHITE BIRD and this tune rescue my soul from the general malaise of 2009.

David Laflamme the band leader wrote the song about his life in Seattle. "Where the 'white bird' thing came from ... We were like caged birds in that attic. We had no money, no transportation, the weather was miserable. We were just barely getting by on a very small food allowance provided to us. It was quite an experience, but it was very creative in a way."

Hippies.

I picked up the garbage on the subway platform and sang the song to myself.

People thought I was mad.

They hadn't seen 1969 in a long time.

But it's still there at this URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmb69MdeJBc&feature=related

Aborted Concorde Landing

My apartment on East 10th Street was a good 45 minute drive from JFK airport. Maybe 12 miles as the crow flies from point A to point B. My building took its time waking up in the morning. The residents worked late and partied till dawn. Not everyone in New York were so dedicated to decadence and every dawn I would lie in bed waiting for the take-off roar of the SST Concorde bound for London.

Its twin spool Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 engines megathrusted during take-offs.

The turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner hit Mach 2.04 over the Atlantic.

I would think about those high-powered passengers cramped into that narrow Aero-Spatiale aluminum alloy tube. Paris or London for dinner or maybe an afternoon assignation with an expensive mistress.

Nice.

Too nice for me.

I never flew the Concorde.

Too low-class, but here's a video of an aborted landing.

They don't land sideways.

Tres scary.

Go to the following URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79LE4ty_gkM

Loud motherfuckers, eh?

THE PRICE OF PURITY by Peter Nolan Smith

Natalie is sexy.

She doesn’t need the piercings or the tattoos.

Her libido sends the message to her customers she’s on the game and if they want to play them they have to pay. Riding her is like driving a Ferrari on ice. Your skill levels have to be honed to a professional level.

And if they aren’t, Natalie doesn’t mind. You paid your way.

“I was not always like this,” she told me on a rainy night.

“I know. Everyone was a young once.” I ordered a tequila.

Her favorite first drink.

“I came here when I was 15. My mother was working a bar.” She downed the shot and signaled for a beer chaser. Her belly is showing the early signs of this repeated investment in beer.

“You don’t need to tell me this.” My belly was a fat portfolio.

“Tell you. Not tell you. Same.” Her hand caressed my thigh.

“I’ve heard the story before. Girl comes to Pattaya. Has boyfriend. Boyfriend leaves her. She works bar. Can’t love anyone but me.”

“Not same story me. 15 not have boyfriend. Boyfriend can’t leave me. My mother work bar. Not me. I can love anyone. But only 4 men. Have maybe 3000 geeks. Love only 4. Maybe can love two more times.”

Natalie is 25. 3000 in 10 years works out to 300 a year at 1000-1500 baht each. 400-500k puts her in the top salary bracket in Thailand.

She has nothing to show for it.

Me neither for 55 years.

“Now I go with man old. Easy money. Only worry that they die on me.”

“Anyone come close?” Viagra, 60 year-old, and a young girl is a fatal combination in Pattaya.

“No, but sometimes think man will die.” She puffed out her cheeks. “Luat-keung-nah.”

“Blood makes their face go red.” I waved for my check-bin.

“Like red light.” Natalie doesn’t want me to leave. Not without her. Rain is starting to fall. It’ll get heavier in minutes. There are no men in sight. only me. ”Before i say I young once. 15. My mother works bar. She have friend want virgin.”

“And you were a virgin?” Ten years ago I was living with Vee. My one-eyed mistress. She was no virgin.

“Never kiss a boy.” Her hand moved higher on my thigh. “Borisut.”

“So why you want to have sex?”

“Not me. Mah.” Natalie swung between pidgin and perfect English. She had lived in the UK twice. Sweden once. “Mah needed money.”

“For what?” I wondered how many times she had told this story to kak or customers.

50, 100, every night.

“Krai lu?” she answered with resignation.

A Thai daughter has to obey her mother. No matter what. No explanation necessary.

“Man gives me 4000 baht. Not hurt because he know how to make love to virgin. I didn’t like it the first time. Second time too. After that. Love it all the time. You want me show you?” Her hand rested on my crotch.

“Wish i could.” I was faithful to Mam in deeds.

Thought was impossible.

I gave Natalie 200 baht. “For kin khao.”

She wai-ed gracefully as a 12 year-old and said, “You can run, but you can’t hide. One day i show you my pierced clit.”

“I’m sure you will.” I escaped before the downpour drenched the streets and came home to Mam and Fenway. They were both asleep. Mam will never know how hard I try to be good.

Or how hard I can be.

Hardness Factor

Men have many expressions for an erect penis; tentpole, wood, are so hard you can hang a bucket of nails off it are a few. Hardness is a matter of pride as well as how many times you can achieve an erection. Shame comes from the opposite result. No wood, Softitis, and the cashew are derisive terms banter about in the company of men. None are brave enough to admit suffering from ED or erectile dysfunction, but the clients number in the millions judging from Pfizer’s Viagra profits.

“I’m a man.” The Yardbirds.

Virile, hard, and hard for a long time. A schoolboy cock on a 50 year-old man and the harder the better. Superman hard? Kryptonite-proof Superman? No one knew the frontiers and the Journal of Sexual Medicine surveyed thousands of men to gain a consensus about the degrees of penile hardness.

The Erection Hardness Score (EHS).Patients were asked to rate their hardness on a scale from 1-4. Women were also included in this survey to give an objective eye.

The results are as follows.

1. Penis is larger but not hard (severe ED)

A classic pre-mature erection or softie.

2. Penis is hard, but not hard enough for penetration (moderate ED)

A so-so.

Most men will resort to oral sex in the vain hope they will hit critical arousal mass. It’s not a bad tactic, since ED can come from mental stress.

Like do I really want to have sex with my wife?

Loss of hardness.

If I fake an orgasm, will she believe me?

Back to the cashew state.

Viagra was invented for men with incompatible partners.

Especially their eyes say they don’t want have anything to do with your Johnson.

“It might be broken.” Most men think after too much of that look.

3. Penis is hard enough for penetration but not completely hard (mild ED).

This isn’t a problem as long as you get some help from your partner.

“Can I have some help?”

And we know what help means, for while the State of Georgia might regard sodomy ie fellatio a sin, Bill Clinton rightfully placed a BJ outside the boundaries of sex so that it is now more like a handshake between good friends.

Remember the word ‘help’, ladies.

It takes two to tango.

4. Penis is completely hard and fully rigid (no ED).

Hard beautiful wood.

This rating system was destined to help women and men discuss the ED problems and also to have men understand that an erection is a good indicator of the body’s health as ED may be a warning sign of a wide range of diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hyperlipidemia and hypertension.

I usually wake with an erection.

Women hate sex in the morning if you wake them up, but if they rise before you and find the erection then they might give you the green light, but not always since a French girlfriend considered a morning erection an indication that you had been dreaming about another woman.

“Or you want to piss.”

Now you can see why men lose wood.