You Bet I Would # 64

If only to hold hands with Charlotte Rampling, I would love to have a time machine.

$148 LEVIS by Peter Nolan Smith

My mother dressed my older brother and me in jeans for most of the 1950s and early 1960s, however when the hippies adopted the tough western trousers as part of their unofficial uniform, Cardinal Cushing of the Boston diocese banned Levis on his evening rosary program. A fierce Catholic my mother obeyed the Pope's representative refused to buy them.

One afternoon in 1966 I got off the school bus to discover her burning my treasured jeans and suede Cuban heel boots.

"No son of mine will be a slave to the Devilm" she spoke with a heavy Boston accent as would anyone reared in Jamaica Plain.

"I don't worship Satan." I had tried to sell my soul on several occasions to the Fallen One without his appearing with an offer binding my eternity to Hell. The Devil like God was a myth, except in the minds of my mother and the nuns of Our Lady of the Foothills south of the Neponset River.

"He doesn't want your worship. He wants your soul."

Beelzebub also existed as a villain in many movies, but neither their belief nor Hollywood's depiction of Lucifer made him nor God real.

"I'm a good boy."

"You better be."

"Yes, ma'am." My heels of my boots added a funny color to the flames.

My mother never suspected my disbelief in God. My father was equally ignorant of my apostasy, which was a good thing, since atheism was unacceptable to the vast majority of Americans. Thankfully heretics were no longer burned at the stake, but I thought it better for my mother to think that I was a good Catholic boy.

My grade for religion at school was an A. I served as an altar boy at Mass. Latin was my second language. I earned $10 a week from my paper route. My mother banked most of it. I kept the tips and after a few weeks my savings came to almost $12.

"What are you going to do with it?"asked my best friend, Chuckie Manzi.

Buy Levis at Walker's." the newest style cost $6 at the store opposite the Public Gardens.

"I thought your mother banned them."

"She did, but I'm unbanning them."

Fuck the Church?"

"Yes, fuck the Church."

That Friday after school Chuckie I took the trolley into Ashmont and then rode the Reed Line into Park Street.

We walked across the Commons into the Garden over to Walker's Western Store on Boylston Street. The store ran a radio ad on WMEX for jeans. I bought a pair of jeans. The salesman sold me a paisley shirt too. Chuckie got a buckskin jacket. Our hair was a little over our ears and we strolled over to hippie corner in the Commons to listen to a free-spirited band. <'>A hundred hippies watched a band.

We all wore jeans.

We were a tribe.

I recognized the lead singer.

The messianic leader of the Fort Hill Commune was famed for his 30 minute solo of ROCK OF AGES after Bob Dylan's electric performance at the Newport Jazz Festival of 1965. Mel Lyman blew in his harp, as longhaired girls danced in the sunshine. They smelled of patchouli. I loved the female singer. Her name was Lisa. No one at my school was named Lisa.

Chuckie and I left at 5. My father was on the same train. He looked at my jeans and said, "You better change out of them before you get home."

I did in the woods behind our house and I hid the Levis in the garage. My father never snitched me out, which was a surprise for a man 30 years older than me. All he cared about was that I scored good grades and that I didn't cause my mother any problems.

My waist size back in the 60s was a 28. It's more than that now and so is the price of Levis. Most stores offer them for $40-60. I buy mine in a second-hand stall in Pattaya. They come from aid shipments to Cambodia. Americans don't realize that Cambodians don't fit into big jeans, so the relief foundations sell them to Thai traders. I pay $10 for used Levis.

A good price, however the Wall Street Journal reported that Barney's on Madison Avenue are selling American-made Levis for $148 and investment bankers are buying piles of them. I went up there to look at these high-priced jeans. They felt the same as my used jeans and the $6 jeans from Walker's Western Store.

Some things never change.

Only the price.

To hear The Lyman Family with Lisa Kindred - James Alley Blues, please go to this URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DuE-7U8RTA

Steeple Fall On People

Here is the Church. Here are the people. Open the roof. The steeple falls on the people.

Yeah.

Jesus Is Not Back

The christians have been waiting for the Second Coming since the First Going of Jesus Christ.

Many men have claimed to be the Messiah. None have been accepted by the Bible Thumpers. And neither is this guy dressed as Jesus in Hollywood singing I WANT YOU TO LOVE ME.

That sog sucks.

To hear Rock and Roll Jesus, go to this URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy-rYaIOLrU

HIllary Drinks Beer

And Hillary Clinton drinks beer with gusto.

I like that.

Her husband didn't drink beer.

Not really.

Same as Donald J Trump, who is a tee-totaler, because sex is his thing.

According to a GOP operative I know and I prefer hanging out with beer drinkers than sex maniacs.

The former know their limit.

And sex freaks are out of control.

Especially blonde seekers.

Old Black Magic of Siam

Two years ago my friend, Pi-Noi, brought his work crew down from Ban Nok to install an air-conditioning system in a Pattaya bar. The 400-kilometer drive gave them a healthy thirst and that night under my mango tree we drank a case of Chang Beer. Nearing midnight the bottles were empty, but the out-of-towners wanted more and I introduced them to cheap Russian vodka.

The aficionados of lao khao downed the liter in minutes. The only evidence of being mao was the cranking up of the stereo volume and Pi-Noi asked for me to tell a ghost story.

"Pii ni-Thann?"

"Chaii." Thais love ghost story.

"

"Yes, very funny you tell in Thai." Pi-Noi has long claimed that I’m the last surviving speaker of Neanderthal Thai and another plastic bag of Lao magically appeared. Pi-Noi's friend poured a full glass of the white fire.

"Dhim."

I drank as commanded and launched into a ghost tale about a underwater photo shoot in

Another plastic bag of Lao magically appearederwater photo shoot. LIFE had hired my friend as a photo assistant to shoot the female lead of SPLASH in bathing suits and bikinis. I had never heard of the actress and neither had my Thai friend, although when I mentioned she was the star in a comedy about a mermaid falling in love with a mortal man, everyone sat up straight in the shadows under the mango tree.

“Ngeuuak?” asked Pi-Noi.

“Ngeuuak.” The mermaid myth was known to every sea-going culture.

“Suay?”

“Suay mak.” Darryl Hannah was a blonde goddess. The photographer was working to seduce her. I explained to the Thais that I was his ‘thaat’ or slave. They understood this term, since all Thais had been slaves until 1095.

“We stayed at an old hotel. Hotel have ghost.”

“Pee ngeuuak?” Thais have scores of designation for ghosts; phee phohng ‘evil spirit’ phraai water ghost, bpee saat or ‘animal ghost’ et al.

“No, ghost old lady,” I continued how the actress had complained about a female ghost entering her room. She was barely visible. Her words were echoes. The encounter frightened the actress, who wanted to sleeping my room.

“Sex with mermaid, good.”

“No, my friend is jealous. Says he won’t pay me, if I sleep with me.”

“Farang kee-nok.”

“Yes, he was bird shit. I get revenge by drinking rhum. I drink lots of Rhum.” 150 proof quelled the disappointment of not having sex with a movie star. “Mao mak. I go sleep. Someone touches my shoulder. I think it’s puying farang suay.”

I really had thought it was Darryl Hannah.

Instead my visitor was a long-haired apparition of an 80 year-old woman.

“Mai puying suay. Phi gair. Phee.”

I acted out the part of an ectoplasmic old lady.

“Guah.” Pee-Noi and his crew shivered with collective fear.

“Not scared. Mao.” I dismissed the old ghost and fell back to sleep in a drunken stupor. The tale was meant to be funny, but at its end Pi-Noi demanded with a chill, “Ching?”

“True 100%. The ghost was as real as you or me.”

“You sex with her?”

“No way.” I was too drunk to do anything but tell her to fuck off.

“Mai shua.” He preferred to think that I had made love to a ghost.

A really old ghost.

His friends told it was funny, but Pi-Noi rolled his eyes.

“Didn’t you like my story?”

His face was set with anger. “You don’t make fun of ghosts.”

“They do in the movies.” Thais at the Big C Theater roared hilariously about headless ghosts chasing fools through the night. I laughed too.

“Not same. This your house.”

“You believe in ghosts?”

Pi-Noi shrugged, as if he take them or leave them.

"I only scared my wife."

"I understand that."

I was scared of his wife too.

And I suspect so were most ghosts, then again my Irish blood grants a special affinity for spirits and I don’t disrespect the beliefs of this or any country.

Every year thousands of Thais and tourists line the Mekong River to view the glowing gas balls floating into the air from the mythical Naga creature. Temple steps are often decorated by a representation of this serpent. Farangs tend to deride the Thais’ belief in creatures eating your intestines or a greedy man doomed to wander eternity with a worm-sized mouth without taking into consideration that 65% of Americans believe in guardian angels.

While not 100% convinced, I really did see a ghost in Jamaica and ten years ago during a visit to Isaan with my one-eyed girlfriend we drove to a mae-mod or witch’s house. The old crone’s house was located beyond the electrical grid. A score of women sat in the candle-lit hut listening to their fortunes, while men lingered nervously outside. At one point the oldest women were assembled in a circle. Lots were chosen and the most wrinkled of them was led into the jungle by two men.

“Where she going?” I asked Vee.

“Women have lottery. See who die so others live longer.”

“They’re going to kill her?”

“No, she picked same woman every time. Other ladies never know or don’t remember.”

It was a scam, but a scary one in this setting.

The next morning a green potion was smeared on the rim of my glass. Vee said it was nothing and I drank some. We were both sick for two days. A year later we broke up and neither of us could leave the other. When I returned to the States for business, I didn’t sleep for three days and sweated out a fever. A Thai friend smiled knowingly and said, “Red-lum.”

“Magic?” Jack Nicholson had said the same in Kubrick’s THE SHINING.

“Red rum.”

‘Murder’ backwards.

He nodded. “At least she drink it too."

Ban-thee."

"Maybe?"

"Thai women like simple magic."

"That they do."

And like that I became a believer. Of course being half-Irish I wake at night to the slightest whisper, because not everything going bump in the night is a thief.

Mai Sa Bai for Phuket's Ka-Toeys

For decades the US Navy exercises shore leave rights at several Thai coastal cities, most infamously. Pattaya on the Gulf of Siam and Phuket on the Indian Ocean. Thousands of sailors and marines embark from their warships to enjoy a holiday of booze and broads. All good harmless fun unless the religious right in America receive news that our fighting men and women might be losing their immortal souls to the free-wheeling fun of these two Babylons and nothing threatens eternal bliss in heaven than a night with a ladyboy, the epitome of wickedness.

Several years ago fearing that the swabbies and jarheads can tell or really don't care whether their companions for this shore leave are female or very attractive 'ka-toeys' or she-males, the Pentagon had requested that the governor of Phuket call for a wave of repression against the Asian nation's exotic women of a second kind.

The famed porn star Moo was caught up in this do-good dragnet. The local police shorned the redhead of her long locks. Her soulmate Wawa was luckier and the two have hit Phuket with revenge in their evil minds.

The CIA investigated the pair for links to terrorists, but each agent sent to catch them came back smelling of ladyboy. Even the women.

Moo and Wawa.

WMD extraordinaire.

ps having sex with a ladyboy is like driving a Vespa. It's a lot of fun until one of your friends see you.