“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again." Marcus Garvey
Saturday, February 11, 2017
Kiss My Black Ass
Election night 2008 had people celebrating in the streets. The desire for change had swept the GOP from the White House and Congress. The effects of Obama's victory over the Old White Guy reached into the Deep South and this week the town of Alligator, Alabama ousted its white mayor in favor of a black leader.
37 votes for Tommie "Tomaso" Brown versus 27 for Robert Fave, whose family controlled all aspects of the smal town's economy. long.
A landslide for the challenger put Alligator on the map for the first time in recorded history. The Mississippi Delta town has had little to cheer about over the 20th Century as its population shrank from 1000 to 200 and the new mayor's supporters taunted the loser by running into Fava's general store and shouting, "Kiss my black ass."
30 years ago Tommie "Tomaso" Brown would have been strung up in a tree for such uppityism.
Several citizens expressed reservations about the new mayor.
“He says there’s going to be lots of changes and everything with all these kids running around here. But he do the same thing they do, drinking beer and stuff. You’ve got to stay at home and study the town. Alligator is the kind of place where if you leave your door open, when you come back there ain’t nothing in your house."
For a town of 200 that sounds like chaos, however the ex-mayor admitted that Alligator was a quiet town.
"There’s only been one murder in all the time I’ve been here. About five years ago, there was a white lady coming in with a black guy and they got into it and he shot her and tried to burn the body up. They got him and he’s doing time in the penitentiary.”
Huntsville Prison has certainly more populous than Alligator, but I doubt the 'change' will penetrate the penal system to have a black warden at the institution.
Some things stay the same more than they change.
Postcard is from Quincy Florida 1909.
White people get real stupid around alligators.
A LOSS OF MEMORY by Peter Nolan Smith
The Catholic Church and other derivatives of the Judaeo-Christian faith extol monogamy as the true state of man and woman, then explain sex through the mysteries of the birds and bees. Actually my parents never lectured their children on that subject, although they said that the stork had delivered each of my new brothers or sisters from the hospital.
“A stork?” The long-winged bird was not native to New England.
“Yes, a stork,” my parents said the word with reverence and they remained faithful as mating pigeons to each other. Bees never entered into the conversation about babies, because the queen bee had so many lovers.
Just like me.
I can’t count the number of my paramours on one hand and while I don’t remember all their names, I do recollect their faces, smiles, and smell, yet very little of the sex.
Woman on the other hand pride themselves on their acute memories and quote a man’s utterance twenty years after the words left his lips, so I imagined that all females would be equally recollective about the act of love, but not all of them.
Several years ago I ran into Valda at a Lower Manhattan studio opening. The ex-La Rocka model was still a beauty. Not a surprise, since the Polish emigre had been Jean-Michel's muse as had many women in the artist's short life. We sat on a gallery's window sill recounting our past and a younger women with a younger male asked, “Are you a couple?”
“Not really.” I smiled at the tenderness in her voice. I had once been that young.
“You seemed so comfortable together.” Her beau beamed with the glow of two hearts beating as one and he held his girlfriend’s hand with tenderness. They had a lot to learn, but I wasn’t in the mood to educate them about the hills and canyons of love, so I said, “No, we were never a couple, but we once were lovers.”
“No, we weren’t.” Valda harshly answered with darkening eyes.
“We weren’t?” I remembered certain spending hours together on a hot August night in 1979.
“Not at all.” Her adamant denial bristled with certitude.
“Are you sure?” Her kiss was etched on my mind.
“100%.”
That encounter couldn’t have been a phantasm of my fantasies. She had scratched my back to shreds.
“Really?’
“Yes.” A fury settled in her eyes.
The young couple fled from the charred ashes of my displaced memory.
“Sorry, guess I was thinking about someone else.” I waved the white flag of surrender.
“And there were plenty of someone elses.” Valda sway from the window. I remained seated, thinking that she was right, because a woman is never wrong about a man, but I had slept with one of her best friends.
Lucille and I had lasted a weekend.
My imaginary tryst with Valda went on for a month.
1979 wasn’t a time for monogamy.
I stood up. Valda stood by the bar. I was exiled from her thoughts and I wondered what other men else dwelled in her gulags. It really didn't matter, because 1979 was a long time ago and even worse maybe I wasn’t so memorable in the affairs of the birds and bees, then again I had slept with one of her best friends.
Lucille wouldn’t know if I was right, but I was gracious enough to allow Valda her victory, for as the philosopher Pascha Ray paraphrased, “As you get old you forget. As you get older you are forgotten by everyone but yourself.”
Sad, but sometimes true.
Especially in the mind of a woman.
Other photos of Valda and Mary Beth and Lucille.
In 1979 we were friends and I never forget friends.
La Rocka Modeling
Janice Dickinson, Cheryl Tiegs, Jerry Hall, Iman Abdulmajid, Patti Hansen, Anna Bayle, Beverly Johnson, Gia Carangi and Christie Brinkley populated the superstrata of high fashion modelling in the late 1970s. Their natural beauty was rendered flawless by the airbrush artists of Vogue. Designers such as Halston and Calvin Klein adored their haughty height. Men dreamed of meeting these goddesses of haute couture ala Studio 54, however another school of mannequins was fostered by the artist Neke Carson catering to the antipodes of disco, punk rock.
La Rocka featured new wave nymphettes more suited to the Mudd Club downtown scene than the commercial fantasies adorning the pages of slick magazines. La Rocka flourished like a mushroom set in the sun.
But I knew some of the girls.
Valda, Mary Beth, and Lucille were my superstars.
And still are in the chasms of my youth.
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Thai Etiquette (Speaking on the cellphone)
Twenty years ago the cell phone weighed over a kilo and looked like it could survive a nuclear bomb.
Over time its ancestors have shrunk to pocket size and people converse anywhere at anytime with anyone. The only time a Thai won't answer a call in a movie theater is during the national anthem.
But there are three other times you shouldn't pick up the phone.
On the toilet.
No one wants to hear a fart by fart account of your bowel movement.
During sex.
>Unless it's to tell the woman's husband how good it is.
Several years ago I saw a motorcyclist laughing on the phone and he drove into a ditch.
Eating Insects in Thailand
>My greatest fear in Pattaya was having a motorcycle accident with a scooter sidecar selling insects. The collision would send me flying into the slop of fried fly grubs, cockroaches, scorpions, and crickets. Of course my wife loves eating these delicacies and the grubs are good with beer, but whenever my wife bites into a giant scarab bug, I get the feeling I’m living with an extraterrestrial.
And there is also the issue of how the insects die.
Electrocution, drowning, individual pithing of the brain?
My hunch says none of the above.
DDT?
Perhaps and it's no wonder they’re so yummy.
Thai etiquette #1 (wai greeting)
When I was traveling through Tibet, the natives greeted strangers by sticking out their tongue. At first I thought it was a come-on, but my guide explained that Tibetans devils don’t have tongues, hence I stuck out my tongue before entering any encampment. If you didn’t respect this custom, then the villagers would sic their dogs on you and Tibetan curs are fierce ass-biters.
Western greeting traditions include Americans shaking hands, the French kissing cheeks and the English knocking you out with a head butt.
Thais rarely shake hands and if they do it’s a limp-wrist clasp like they fear you’ll snatch away their arm. Instead they prefer the traditional wai, where joined palms are held to the chest and the head is lowered in deference.
The higher the status of the person you are greeting, the higher you hold your hands and the deeper your bow. A revered monk blessing your house deserves the class A treatment. Bringing your hands to the bridge of your nose. The over-the-head wai with floor prostration is reserved for the king.
I had a high-born friend from Yala. Apihka was an elderly woman running a school. Her family was connected to the royals and when we traveled her lessers would instantly drop to the ground. On more than one occasion she said, “I like being with you, because it’s hard to talk to people like this.”
I wai authority figures,doctors, lawyers, and my wife’s father.
Never a cop looking for tea money, unless he’s angry. A wai is a perfect gesture for eating crow.
You do not have to wai beggars or girls in short time bars. Kids don’t receive a wai either. People will think you an idiot if you do or rather more an idiot than they think most farangs are just stupid.
A simple nod or a tip will suffice for most people not your better, but exercising good manners can earn good results. I was staying on TiomanIsland during the visit of a Malay sultan. After finishing his address to the locals, his highness made his way back to his yacht. The backpackers gawked at his passing. I wai-ed him and he came over to me and asked where I was from.
“New York.”
“New York.” he smiled and held my arm. “I went to Studio 54.”
“I worked at Studio.” I was doorman during its last month.
“Really. How would you like to have tea on my boat?”
“Love to.” The tea was sweet and the view from the deck sublime.
The reward for obeying etiquette.
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