Britain Go Home

I'm a peaceful drinker. My local on Fulham Street is only two blocks from my atelier. The regulars have accepted as one of them rather than 'one of Them'. The core of the bar numbers about ten. We converse about racism, neighborhood change, Mississippi cops, the Celtics, Knicks, Prince versus Michael Jackson, food, and pretty much everything else that popped into our heads. I can say what I want. No one gets offended by my being whitey and I'm happy as the token peckerwood.

I know my place, which is to play the role of Harry Bentley, THE JEFFERSON'S well-mannered British neighbor.

I'm happy with my role. My lines are background noise. No one really cares what i say, but last week the fashion media scourged Dior's star designer for a drunken rant at a Paris bar. His words were no taken out of context. They were meant to hurt the Italian girl at the next table.

Here is the transcript:

Girl: “Are you blonde?”

Galliano: “No, but I love Hitler. People like you would be dead today. You’re mothers, your forefathers would be f**king gassed, and f**king dead.”

Girl: “Do you have a problem?”

Galliano: “With you? You’re ugly.” *snarl*

Girl: “With all people. You don’t like peace. You don’t want peace in the world.?

Galliano: “Not with ugly people.”

Girl: “Where are you from?”

Galliano: “Your asshole.”

I worked the most popular nightclub in Paris.

1980s.

If I had heard this trendy enfant terrible du mode speak like this, I would have directed my bouncers to chuck him in the street. Nowadays I'd have to do it myself.

A task not beyond my powers.

Assholes on Holiday

TripAdvisor.com surveyed thousands of European tourists to discover that the British holiday-maker is more devoted to drink than any other nationality. Almost two-thirds consume more alcohol away from home. Italians won the gold for smoking and the French championed care-free tanning habits and scored the most for traveling to foreign destination to receive plastic surgery. The number of tourists injured and killed by motorcycles in Thailand is an unknown number. I once came around a corner on Koh Samui. Two drunken Brits were weaving lane to lane up a hill. A big joke. An oncoming Thai took the turn at speed. He avoided a head-on crash by driving into the scenery. The boozed Brits thought it all so very ha-ha. I helped the Thai out of the jungle. He was lucky to be alive.

The Brits.

A danger to themselves and others.

And that's why we like them.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen in the sun.

Quote of the Day / Billy Wilder

“If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.”

Billy Wilder Oscar Winning Director and Writer

Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, and my favorite The Apartment

Sunday Quietude

Last night I took a young friend to see the Strokes at Saturday Night Live. The host was Miley Cyrus, the Disney teen sensation. The 19 year-old's current worth is in the hundreds of millions and SNL's producer followed the svelte brunette's every move, as if he had plans for the perennial good girl. She wasn't my type, but neither were the Strokes. The New York indie group played two songs. My young friend was enthralled by their performance. He had tickets for their April concert at Madison Square Garden. I couldn't visualize their impacting a 13,000 plus audience from a big stage, but decades spanned the chasm between our generations and I restrained from any derogatory comments about his favorite band. We said goodnight outside the NBC studio and I traveled south to Fort Greene on the D train. I made no eye contact with the other passengers. It was well past my bedtime, as I exited from the Lafayette stop. Frank's Lounge was packed with more young people. I hadn't had a beer in several hours and thought about stopping in my local, until Chris rock's line about old man in the club resonated in my skull." "He ain't really old, just a little too old." I agree, but the bouncers shouted out my name. I waved that I was done for the night. Henry and three of his girls crossed Fulham. His skinny girl winked at me. Henry must have told her that I have money. I nodded, "Thanks, but no thanks." I should have been safe, but LA exited from another bar. The Lakers fan wasn't accepting my refusal. "Fuck Chris Rock. You're having a drink on me." LA and I are basketball watching comrades. Lakers versus Celtics. Every other team in the NBA doesn't matter to us. Gold/Purple and Green/Black are our colors of Spring. "If you insist." I retraced my steps to the door of Frank's Lounge. The doorman and I exchanged a four-step handshake and then raised our fist in the Black Panther salute. Sandy the bartender poured a Stella as soon as she saw me. The Trinidadian is good to her regulars. LA and I spoke about the weaknesses of the Miami Heat and Duke's loss to NC that afternoon. LA had to take care of some business and I dropped $10 on the bar to pay for LA's next cognac. The brownstone on South oxford was dark from basement to the top floor. Everyone was asleep inside. I crept up the stairs with my shoes in hand. It was a bit before 1:30am. I was out cold within a minute of laying my head on the pillows. Rain splashed against my window. I checked my watch. 7:30am. My usual hour to get out of bed during the work week. Today was Sunday, a day of rest, and I shut my eyes in hopes of making it to noon. I came close. 11:16am. I read a little of Edward Eutherford's NEW YORK. The segmented series of interconnected stories about the city has a wonderful way of dismissing any urge for action and the book fell on my chest for a good half-hour. Waking once more I looked at my phone. No calls. I could hear my landlord/friend/architect's two kids on the 3rd floor. They were having fun with each other. The rain had been replaced by a drizzle. I opened the windows of my bedroom, despite recent reports of New York's horrid air quality. At 58 I don't have many fears about the impending doom of Earth. After a good ten minutes in the bathroom I was ready for the rest of the day. It had been over 10 hours since my last spoken word. If I didn't leave my top-floor apartment, I could spend the entire day without speaking and I emailed Ms. Carolina, my love of the 90s, that I would be incommunicado for the next 24 hours. She of anyone would understand my need for quiet. "Sometimes I think you're dead when you're reading," she said one Sunday back in the last century. "You barely breathe." The blonde heiress accepted my shrug as an answer. We had one week a month together. No one got more from me. She deserved more, but I could only give what I had to give. I had explained to her about the 'vow of silence' and was surprised when she retorted that the Trappist monks never really had a 'vow of silence'. "St. Benedict, their founder, had three tenets; stability, fidelity to monastic life, and obedience. Benedict preferred the monks to exist in silence, because speech was disruptive to contemplation." Ms. Carolina had been educated by the nuns. She was as good as a nun. Only wicked with the lights out. "He's got that right." I like my Irish mother have the gift of gab, although dampened by my father's taste for quietude. He held his piece for years faced with the blitzkrieg of my mother's monologues. "I've been to the Trappists monasteries in Belgium. They made good beer. Actually not good, but excellent. "I ever tell you how my 'vow of silence started?" "No." Ms. Carolina was a repository of my vocal history. She had heard many on our road trips through Guatamala, Peru, and the Far West. Listening was one of her better traits. "Back in 1979 the phone in my 10th Street apartment was shut off." "Non-payment." "Yes." I had racked up a $700 bill tracking down the whereabouts of my blonde model from Buffalo. Paris, London, Milano, Hamburg, and points in between. I finally contacted her in Madrid. She told me that she was going out with a dealer in Russian icons. I wouldn't meet him until Vadim helped finance our after-hours club, The Continental in 1981. My broken heart remained broken all that time. "My service was cut for years. I never could get together the money to pay the bill. The phone gathered dust under the sofa. One Sunday I was watching a BONANZA re-run and a telephone rang. I thought to myself, "That's funny, I didn't think they had phones on the Ponderosa." "And they didn't." Ms. Carolina laughed at the image. She was my best audience. "No, it was my phone. It rang for a minute and then stopped. I picked up the phone. There was a dial tone. I tried a number." My parents. I hadn't spoke to them in ages. "It worked and not only that I could call anywhere in the world." "Strange." "Even stranger was that the phone would ring the same time every Sunday." "During BONANZA." "Correct." I liked the chemistry between Little Joe and Hoss. "Did you ever pick it up to find out who was calling?" "No." I was scared it wasn't the blonde model from Buffalo. "The phone stayed in service for two month, then went dead again. After that I never spoke on Sundays. At least until I met you." "You're still quiet on Sundays." "I try my best." I led her by the hand into my bedroom. There was no need for words in the darkness. Our bodies did the speaking and this Sunday I've yet to say a word to a living human being. It's 1:36. No Sundays last forever.

Vow of Silence

Everyone in the world has a phone. I can call Fenway's mom in Thailand and Mam will pick up the phone on the other side of the world. Service is complete for Antarctica and many parts of the USA. Millions of cellular calls and SMS messages intersect millions of angled signals searching billions of destinations. We are so close, yet so far.

No one had called me on the phone in hours.

I look out the window of my Fort Greene penthouse. Not a soul visible behind our brownstone. The rooftops are devoid of humanity. I could be the Last Man on Earth, but I'm not Mada, Adam's dead end. AP, my landlord/friend/architect, is downstairs with loving wife and two adorable children. AP and I moved a set of headboards from the 3rd Floor to the penthouse landing. They were heavy. Neither of us hurt our back.

"Thanks," AP said, walking down to the 2nd floor.

"No worries." I ascended the stairs to my apartment.

Those three syllables were my last spoken words.

50 minutes of no communication with another human.

I've gone longer.

A day, maybe two without opening my mouth, except for nourishment. My favorite day of silence has long been Sunday. That day of rest was spend watching football or basketball, reading a book, luxuriating in the bath or all of the above. I'd check the phone to see there was a dial tone.

The phone was in perfect working order.

No one wanted to speak with me, until I started dating Ms. Carolina. She liked talking.I couldn't blame her. Ms. Carolina lived in a redneck community way south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Some of her neighbors entertained funny thoughts about the intermingling of races and religions. She lived in the wilderness of progressive politics. Sunday mornings the telephone would ring at 11am. The service at her husband's church lasted two and a half hours. Baptists wasted the entire day trying to save their souls. Her congregation was very advanced for the area. They believed blacks had a soul.

Ms. Carolina would recount the preacher's ranting sermon in accent. She was originally form New Jersey. Her family was Old Yankee same as half mine. We had more than those genes in common. I knew her husband. He was a gun freak. She kept the conversation low and ended with the wish, "Good luck with your vow of silence."

Luck wasn't part of Sunday's silence.

My ravaging hangover silted the mouth. I hadn't really spoken with Ms. Carolina. My function was to listen to a woman's yearning. I was good at it. As a junior in 1968 one weekend was spent on a spiritual retreat at a suburban monastery. My buxom girlfriend, Kyla, wanted to join the sisterhood of the god. My best friend, Chuckie Manzi, feared losing me to the priesthood.

"I'll be okay." My mother's uncle was an arch-bishop. We prayed at church for a priest. I was her choice. Kyla was a threat to my avocation. Her mother was an agnostic. Her divorced father Opus Dei. The church was in our blood and on Palm Sunday Weekend a score of similar couples were bussed into the deep woods to shuck the temptation of the flesh. We were met by an equal number of priests and nuns.

"Purity is the one true love." Kyla and I had never gone all the way. Our sex was blunted by her unwillingness to be naked. A pastor had convinced the 17 year-old cheerleader that our wanton behavior was Satan's work.

"Pure as snow." Kyla's skin was whiter than baby powder. The 10 Commandments skipped over dry humping and the pastor asked if I wanted to be his altar boy. I had stopped believing in his god at the age of 8. Saving Kyla's soul meant my damnation at his hands, for I loved the girl with the green eyes more than the loss of my masculinity. The Nuns of Chastity escorted the girls from the monastery to a nunnery hidden by tall pines.

"See no evil." The Pastor led us inside.

The weather was warm and the sky free of clouds. The pastor and his friends indoctrinated their young charges with the ways of god. Boys and girls were separated upon arrival. The priests spoke about the fulfillment of God's love. They denied access to Kyla.

'A woman will steal your precious fluids."

I had already spilled my see in sin. I did so twice in the novice barracks that Saturday evening. Other boys joined my one-handed prayer. Several boys refrained from touching themselves. They were scared by the flames of forever.

On Sunday morning they celebrated the ancient mass and the pastor preached about the eternal satisfaction of serving the Church. The climax of the weekend was the grand one-on-one session with an unknown priest. 1 PM in the basement. I was thinking of selling my soul to their god. The love between Kyla and me was untainted by penetration. The trinity would absolved our trespasses. Sweet surrender was on my agenda.

"We will never talk about this day. This upcoming moment. Silence shall save the soul."

Chuckie walked through the doors at 12:40. He had Led Zeppelin's first album in his hand. The stereo was off-limits to the boys of retreat Chuckie placed the LP on the Zenith stereo and turned the volume to 10.

DAZED AND CONFUSED.

Bass and guitar. High-pitched vocals and then the avalanche of drums.

6 minutes and 25 seconds later I went upstairs and packed my bag. Chuckie put on HOW MANY MORE TIMES The rest of the boys acted in unison. The priests tried to stop Chuckie from playing the album. He had a knife. A Boy Scout knife. It was more than enough to fend off the soft palms of the church. The invitees stormed across the lawn to the nunnery. The girls were already to go. We walked to the road. Chuckie had somehow organized enough cars for escape. He was a good friend. None of us went to Mass after that weekend. We defied our parents' deity. Our Sundays were centered on breakfast at the local diner. I celebrated the Sabbath with simple words.

"Bacon and eggs over easy."

Kyla and I made it as far at the Senior Prom. Our love was a death sentence to my ambition. She married my best friend. Chuckie and she made a good couple.

My present vow of silence has endured into the darkness of night. I don't have to be anywhere until 10:15pm. I'm going to SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE with a young friend. A 20 year-old rock fanatic. The Strokes are the musical guests. Milie Cyrus the host. I'm heading in town. The vow of silence will die in Manhattan. It's a city which doesn't like silence.

And neither does Milie Cyrus.

Spiderman #1 Marvel Comics 1964

Spiderman #1 is a valuable comic. Even more valuable is the Marvel Tales introduction to the superhero. This comic book is worth several hundred thousand dollars in mint condition. I bought Amazing Fantasy #15 in August 1962 at the little soda shop near my Nana’s house in Wollaston, Massachusetts and purchased Spiderman #1 a year later at the drugstore down the street from my other grandmother house in Westbrook, Maine.

My grandmothers appreciated my devotion to reading, plus that I had paid for these comics with my own money. I had a paper route for the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, and the Record American. Mornings and afternoons. My father was less supportive of my collection and several times he tore them up in my face.

"A waste of time."

Millions of other fathers throughout the US of America felt the same way and destroyed the comics like they were a Nazi book-burning mob. A few survived this purge and their value is based strictly on their existence on the verge of extinction.

I had the Fantastic Four #1 too.

My father ripped it in half.

I forgave him years ago.

After all it was only a comic book and I can remember holding Fantastic Four #1 in my hands, a memory both priceless and worthless at the same time.

Amazing Fantasy #15

Spiderman was first featured in Amazing Fantasy #15.

August 1962. 12 cents.

Today Amazing Fantasy #15 sells for over $50,000. Spiderman #1 costs $40,000 in mint condition. My father ripped up that too. Needless to say I rejected his values as a hippie. This conflict of philosophy made us even years later. My father had been more right than I had wanted to admit as a young young and I was less wrong as an adult as a child.

But never right.