posted: June 29, 2009

"Hey! What do you think you're doing?! Come back here! Come back with my squirrels!"

He knew he was officially off the deep end the morning he spotted two ceramic squirrels atop a mailbox post, pulled over, nervously fished a screwdriver out of the glove compartment and liberated them from their detail. Jogging back to his idling car, one squirrel in each hand, he heard the duffer chasing after him.

Tires spewing sand, he was gone before anyone could get a good look at him or jot down his license number, but it was too close. Zipping along, sweating, Ned tossed the evidence, heard their bodies smash on the pavement. He wiped his upper lip, turned on the radio, punching for a good song. That was almost a month ago, when he realized he'd lost it.

A round, red reflector, glinting on the barn in the Kansas sun, catches his eye, triggers a memory of when he thought it was ruby, like the stone on his maiden aunt's ring. He walks toward it, then stops, his stance listing slightly by the weight in his right hand.

Moving back home over a year ago, traction eluded him, his balance was off. In NYC, a head copywriter, he was the steady captain guiding the good ship Major Ad Campaign to Port Clio time and again. Marriage to Molly in Kinderhook hadn't been such a rousing success, but it was better than living with Dad, a boor and a bore, Mom, a bitch and a bane, and older brother Duane, the last living remnant of 19th century closet queendom.

He'd flopped as a husband, never mind that silly dream of the influential political blog designed to rake in ad dough, put him on the pundit map. What the hell was I smoking? He regretted the volleys of anger and impatience he'd fired at Molly, as well as hours wallowing in Internet porn.

But to return here, tail between legs, to have his résumé ignored by twenty-nothings in Topeka agencies? He was an Einstein snubbed by high school math teachers. Would it kill them to return a call, show some interest? Aren't they curious, haven't they seen my name in the annuals? We used to pore over annuals old and new, idolized those who paved the way for us, competed against our peers. We shot for the stars - and hit 'em! Today I'm earthbound, a rabbit trying to leap to the moon.

A year ago he searched for some sort of solace at church, but the local minister's homilies, commencing with a lame joke before coasting into airy platitudes, irritated him. The lamb wandered.

Trying to reconnect with his old friends was futile. Married with children, they weren't terribly excited by his return, didn't care much about the prodigal son's triumphs or defeats. All they yammered about was Little League or taxes. A catalytic moment, when his outlook slipped from charcoal gray, gave way to the inevitable cold undertow of black, was when he first heard of the big Memorial Day bash a week after the fact.

No one thought to call me.

I'm 40, left standing in a game of musical chairs. But we can only play the hand we're dealt. To be born into this family? My emotional arms and legs amputated before I could crawl, let alone walk.

What's the point? There has to be a point, something to wake up to besides the brick in my chest.

He'd known another Molly, in third grade. She sat directly behind him and would give him a little kick whenever she'd finished one of her latest drawings, always a variation on a theme: a smiling nude woman being attacked by army men with knives. The pee-wee pornographer, hair long and straight as straw, looked as prairie-wholesome as a girl in a Sealtest ad.

The girls were so cute back then in their jeans and little sneakers, missing a front tooth. We were all cute, even chubby me, before the thief took its toll.

It'd been a rush of adrenalin when Molly signaled. Furtively, Ned reached behind, held his breath, praying that Mrs. Conroy wouldn't notice. He'd feel the cool paper touch his fevered palm, sneak it into a textbook and behold.

The following September Molly wasn't in school. Her family moved, swallowed up by Nebraska. No doubt she was drawing her pictures for some other boy.

Eyes dry and focused on the horizon, he said, "God damn it all to fucking hell," pointed the .45 to his right temple and squeezed. The shot echoed between the faded red barn and the big, old white house, beckoning his mother out of doors, into the merciless August light, racing to the mess, screaming.

Memory Lane

posted: June 22, 2009

Leaving the hospital that morning I drove to Toad's for breakfast. The owner, a hippy dingbat, wasn't there. His son, a chip off the hippy dingbat, was running the joint. Fine and dandy.

I ordered black coffee and a plain bagel with cream cheese. At a neighboring table sat two elderly wiseguys: in an olive suit, a husky man sporting stylish eyewear; the other a compact fellow, crossed legs revealing argyle socks. Those two things nabbed my attention right off the bat: hornrims and argyles. The cats were sharp, different as night and day from the usual losers in Toad's.

Once upon a time, when their kind owned this crummy city, it spun like a top. A problem? No one wasted their breath in city hall, they visited the mob to set things straight. But the feds muscled in, turned over the show to politicians and now the place is a dysfunctional pisspot.

Argyles reached out with today's newspaper and a smile saying, "Would you like the paper? Nothing but good news today, I don't see my name, that means I didn't get arrested."

I laughed, accepted his offer. It was just about the nicest thing anyone's done for me in the entire decade I've lived in this dump: a considerate offer with a funny joke. It put me in a good mood.

I drank my coffee, ate my bagel and read the paper, nothing but good news today.

In the hospital waiting room, I'd looked for something to read in the small pile of magazines on a fake-wood tabletop. A lady said, "Unless you're a deer hunter or five-years-old, don't bother."

Eyes were riveted to a big, black TV bolted to a ceiling corner until a big, black man with a shaved head entered. His ankles were chained together. So were his wrists. Those wrists were chained to another chain tightly looping his waist. Three white cops accompanied him, plainclothes but in a uniform of sorts: caps with team logos, nylon jackets, basketball shorts, little socks that didn't cover their ankles, running shoes and, of course, guns. What's a cop without a gun?

I resented their shorts. I really don't appreciate having to look at some guy's hairy legs - and it wasn't even hot out. But that's what the idiots around here do, even in winter, as if a heatwave's killing them. Have I mentioned what a city of loser morons this is?

Shorts aside, I'm not too crazy about cops to begin with. In fact, they turn my stomach. They're like dogs. There's an occasional good one, but that's the rule proving exception. Most of them snarl and bite and shit in my path.

The prisoner sat right down, turned his head sharply to the left and up, attentive to the show in progress, a morning program chirping about home improvements. He seemed quite calm except for the ten seconds when his legs jiggled violently.

The rest of us, making believe it was normal to be in a room with a chained man and three gun-toting coppers, joined the con, stared at the screen.

The prisoner's wait wasn't long, one benny for being a convict. A cop escorted him while another scouted ahead. The third trailed, looking over his shoulder, walkie-talkie in hand.

My tests, conducted by a nurse-like young woman in an unflattering hospital-issue outfit, were ultrasounds for my liver. Shooting the breeze, I found out she lives in my neighborhood. We talked about the city. I pegged her for a moron the second she started up about what a wonderful town this is, not that I contradicted her. I don't argue with people anymore, I just nod.

Every so often she'd stop yakking to say, "Inhale... Breathe." She smelled nice and was kind of cute.

Walking out the automatic doors onto the portico, I saw the prisoner and his guards sitting on cement benches, faces blank, the con allowed to taste freedom but not swallow it. The sky was slag, you couldn't even find the sun. Another day in paradise. I walked to Visitor Lot C, located my rusty Datsun.

After Toad's, home to my third-floor one-bedroom. I turned on the TV.

Around 4:00 I'd head over to my doorman job. The new building manager is a 27-year-old asshole with a blonde mustache. He'll be bounced within six months, just like the previous jerk. He listens to talk radio in his basement office and bitches about socialism. Let's hear the tune he sings while collecting. Schmuck.

For what the cheapskates pay, they'll never get a competent man. Meanwhile this dope is complicating my life with his stupidity. He can't even submit basic paperwork without it going haywire. I'm nutty that way: I like to get paid. On time, especially when my hours keep getting cut.

My job's non-union, just like every other job around here these days, Fuck you very much, President Reagan, may you rot in hell.

There was nothing good on TV but I didn't turn it off.

Maybe you'll laugh, but there's a crucifix on my bedroom wall. I pray to it daily and I say grace. One part of me still believes like the child I was in parochial school guided by nuns, the other part's a drowning man grasping.

I'd taken the paper with me, for the crossword. I love crosswords. And this being Friday, a toughie, the kind I like.

People have this notion about the Sunday puzzle being a challenge, but it's not. Not really. It's big, but I've got a formula to crack it. First, fill in all the three letter words you're certain of, the "givens" as I call them. Next, the four and five letter givens. After that, skim the clues for easy-peasies: Beatle trivia and the like. You're building a skeleton, a structure that can help you confirm or deny more difficult words. Soon you're ready to crack the puzzle theme. Once you've done that, you're pretty much home free. But Friday and Saturday? Those are the brain-teasers, black squares at a premium. You'd better be well versed in third century battles, trigonometry, Chinese emperors, Hebrew months and obscure mythological figures. Amateurs need not apply.

Doing the puzzle, I heard a hornet buzzing against a window. I caught its wings between thumb and index finger, used my free hand to open the window, tossed him out, saying, "If we happen to meet again, mon ami, please recall this moment and don't sting me."

Humanitarian rescue effort for a hornet? Don't tell me, I know. I need to have my head examined.

The commercials got on my nerves so I turned the TV off. I like commercials about as much as I like cops and dogs, maybe less. The door bell rang. A package? I ran downstairs, hoping for something good.

Memory Lane

posted: June 18, 2009

From the attic's lone window, he watched the houses across the street. All was quiet, no traffic, just a guy walking his dog. The trees were still, not a breath of a breeze disturbed a leaf this Saturday. He filled his pipe with Borkum Riff, lit it and puffed. Idly, he tugged at his beard.

The crabbed room smelled of old wood, aging paper and stale tobacco.

He kept her picture in the bureau, the drawer with the mothballed sweaters and socks.

"Hi! What's your name?"

"Red, well really Ed, but everyone calls me Red because, well, you know..." He chuckled nervously.

When they met, late senior year at Marist, his long hair and full beard burst flame red, but now were dull.

"RED! LUNCH IS READY!" his mother called from downstairs.

On the second-floor landing he passed the door of the new tenant, Sheila, a young brunette. He'd seen her a few times in the hallway, said hey, but she paid him little mind. She had men to her place, he heard them having sex. There was no avoiding the sounds, even with a pillow over his head.

"My name's Cathy. I see you in English Lit. You sure know an awful lot about Poe and Browning! Very impressive."

"Yes, well, heh, heh..."

Her oily face was blemished. When she smiled it was like a grimace, her upper lip pulling back to reveal too much whitish gum, but Red was dazzled. She'd noticed him, spoken to him.

On the Formica kitchen tabletop, a tuna salad sandwich on Wonder Bread, potato chips, a sweet pickle and a glass of chocolate milk with an ice cube were his.

"How is it, Red?"

"It's delicious, Mom."

For desert, a Ring Ding, then he retreated to his room.

Their house was Civil War-era, but other than its vintage, not notable. In the 1970's what charm it may've possessed was eradicated with a quick makeover: cheap paneling, drop ceilings, vinyl siding. For years the second floor was rented to help make ends meet. The previous occupant, a car mechanic, was never late with his payments, didn't make too much noise. He was fine. But Red sensed something askew with this Sheila. What was with all those men?

Where the woods had been behind their house, where Red had romped as a boy, loomed an apartment building, a monolith casting its shadow across their yard. Kids tossed stuff over the chain-link fence into the family's above ground pool: a bike tire, rocks, an old sneaker, bottles. Red's dad cursed while fishing out the garbage. Thirty years prior he passed on the chance to buy that acreage for a song, instead investing his money in bookies.

Red took a break from staring out the window to lie on his bed. July sun beat on the roof. He was logy, felt a headache coming on. Lying there, he drifted to sleep, was just beginning to dream, when a rude honking from the driveway snapped him to reality. Jack.

"HEY, RED! I'M HERE! STOP JERKING OFF!"

Red bolted to the window and hissed through the screen to his friend below, "What's the matter with you?! My mother's home! Watch your language!" His face flushed in fury and mortification.

In response, Jack doubled over in laughter, slapped his knee. He lived to upset the hermit.

Jack ran up the porch, banged the screen door open, then to Red's aerie, two steps at a time, barging into the small cell.

"HEY, REDDY! TIME TO STOP PULLING YOUR PUD!"

"Shhhhh! My mother's downstairs!" That made Jack double over with laughter a second time, spraying spit on the brown throw rug. It was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. Red saw no hilarity in the situation, wondered if Jack was plastered, but didn't smell alcohol.

Red didn't drink, was afraid of bars and drunks. He'd only smoked pot a few times at college, the last time just before graduation when he'd had a bad reaction. He and Cathy were with friends in his drab dorm room, passing a pipe around, when all of a sudden it hit him like a ton of wet cement. Mouth parched, he felt himself get very tiny, the size of a bug. Cathy's face was chrome, he thought she was the Silver Surfer. The room tilted, then flipped. So did his stomach. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead, upper lip and underarms. The beige walls blazed and were reading his mind. To keep his teeth from chattering, he clenched his jaw shut with all his might. He didn't say anything for an eon, but one of their friends recognized something was amiss, so he and another guy walked Red to the nurse's office and left him there. Cathy didn't accompany them.

It was late when Red returned to his empty room after gathering his bearings with the help of the nurse's sedative. He felt washed out and the inside of his mouth tasted like pennies. He was hungry, but the cafeteria was closed. Finding a Hershy bar in his desk, he ate it and went to bed, staring at the ceiling for hours.

Cathy deftly eluded him on graduation day. He wasn't introduced to her family. His mother was anxious to meet Cathy, but it wasn't to be.

Confused, she kept quizzing Red, "When are we going to meet Cathy?!"

"I don't know. Soon."

Sitting in the back seat of his parents' car, heading home to Schenectady, his throat was tight, his face and eyes stung in humiliation. He managed to hold it all in for the ride, made it up the stairs to his room, closed the door behind him, buried his face in the pillow. Then he let loose.

A week prior to his freak out, Red and Cathy sat under a big campus tree on a sunny day, kissing. It was heavenly for him. He had a girlfriend. Unbelievable. Life was good. That evening in her room she even permitted his hand to creep under her bra. Red wondered if this would be the night he yearned for. But no, she had to study. Finals. However, before he left she handed him a snapshot of herself. Back in his room, he put it in a frame, placed it on his desk near his typewriter, a muse to favor him. The following day Red called his mother, collect, from the dorm hallway pay phone. With a wide smile he hinted about an engagement in the offing.

A few days after graduation, from his parents' bedroom, he called Cathy but her mother said she was out.

Whenever he phoned, someone said she wasn't there. One time he could've sworn that someone was Cathy, but the voice impatiently insisted it was her sister, then hung up on him. At the end of August, not a single call returned, he took her picture off his bureau and stashed it in the drawer.

"Reddy, what say we hit Albany?"

"Um, I don't know... I don't think so..."

"C'mon! Don't be a pussy! Come ON! We'll have some fun! We'll go to the bookstore! C'mon!"

Red's room was filled with books, mostly paperbacks he picked up at neighborhood tag sales for a nickel or a dime. No job, he depended on a dollar a week allowance from his mom. The volumes mounted, largely unread, collecting dust. He'd always been the bookworm, but post-college he didn't knock himself out. An English degree, yet when he sat down to write a poem? A blank. How did Dylan and Ginsberg manage to just bang out the masterpieces?

Once Red really tried rally his forces, to pinpoint on his childhood, conjuring up autumnal days, straining to channel Robert Frost, attempting to put into magical words the nostalgic images and scents of pumpkins and moldering leaves, but after an hour of awkward stabs, he crumpled the paper, tossed it into the metal wastebasket, the same one that Jack had violently vomited into one night before passing out on the floor, snoring like a bear, keeping Red awake most of the night.

Red detested riding with Jack. Sober, he was an asshole, but drunk he was worse. Invariably on an outing he bought a six of Bud tall boys. Inhaling one beer after the other while driving, he'd toss the empties out the window and quip, "Dee-scar-deeng zee evvy-DANCE!" Red fumed when Jack assumed that Frenchie voice, it was so inane. Jack was such a moron. And when drinking, a dangerous moron, veering out of his lane, speeding. There were times when a motorist, threatened by this erratic driving, would honk, thusly prompting Jack to lean on his horn in retaliation while flipping the bird. Red would sit there, terrified, mute, his mouth a small inverted V, like a mouse's.

Regardless, as always, Jack's bullying worked: In his puke green Pinto they barreled to Albany, Jack having sworn on his grandmother's grave he wouldn't drink. Red felt he had little choice but to trust him. He didn't know how to drive and he had to get out once in a while. What other option was there? Maybe the air would clear this headache. He'd swallow this sword of Damocles and pray that Jack's granny would use her influence from the other side.

In Albany, approaching the Plaza, Jack lit a Winston with the car lighter, then slammed on the brakes. Arm extended, pointing with the two fingers holding the cig, he said, "Fuck, Reddy! Look at that!"

Red squinted out the window and saw: His father strolling along the sidewalk hand-in-hand with Sheila, the renter. The lovebirds stopped for a passionate kiss, Red's dad rubbing her ass, right there in public. She moved her crotch tight against her man.

Cackling, Jack said, "Holy shit! Your old man's getting some on the side!" Behind them a VW bus bleated. Jack muttered, stepped on the gas.

Nauseous, Red gagged it down. He felt numb all over.

Jack scoped out a free parking spot, pulled in, then said, "Maybe you can get in her pants, too?" The devil dancing in his eyes, he added, "You must be pretty backed up, bwah!"

They entered the bookstore, Jack zeroing in on the underground comix rack, Red shakily working his way to the poetry section, not that he could focus on spines or pages. He was lost, as lost as when he'd endured the psychotic pot reaction or desolate graduation day. What if Mom finds out about this? It'll crush her. It's crushing me...

Suddenly dizzy, everything turning fuzzy white, he cautiously eased himself to the linoleum. Lying there he closed his eyes and recalled that time, sophomore year at Marist, when a kid he didn't know approached him and said, "I see you around campus, and I just wanted to say, you seem pretty cool. Not in any flashy sort of way, more understated. Literary..." before walking away, melting into the crowd.

Memory Lane

posted: June 15, 2009

I've got a favorite CD for driving, something I burned, 20 cuts of Cheap Trick's Surrender, the same song over and over, so I don't have to bother with the replay button. Yesterday I hopped in my 'Vette, took to the the road, V8 roaring like a lion, popped in the CD. El perfecto.

I have another CD that's 20 tracks of my penultimate favorite driving song, Bang a Gong (Get It On). That's for when I'm in a slightly more mellow frame.

I can't really explain it, what happens to me, that feeling of freedom, total freedom, I get when sailing to a great song. It's heaven. I transfigure.

MOMMY'S ALRIGHT! DADDY'S ALRIGHT! THEY JUST SEEM A LITTLE WEIRD!!!

I was shouting along, rolling my R's on "alright" like some kind of freaked-out kraut, punching the air like Sonny Liston.

It's my personal space, I go a little wacky behind the wheel.

NOW, I HAD HEARD THE WACS RECRUITED OLD MAIDS FOR THE WAR!!!

Whoa! Almost hit that dude on his bike!

ROLLING NUMBERS, ROCK AND ROLLIN', GOT MY KISS RECORDS OWWWT!!!

I don't drink and drive. Or do drugs. I do, however, keep a loaded .45 sitting by my side, just in case.

SOME INDONESIAN JUNK THAT'S GOIN' RRROWND!!!

When I was ten or eleven I got super into the astronauts, first the Mercury guys, then the Apollo team, but especially those Mercury men, the lean loners that get shot straight up in the air in tight tin cans, human bullets. That took guts of titanium steel, man, not like these candy-asses today on shuttles: jerks, school marms, creeps, pudgies. I hate all of their esprit de corps, all of that phony, goody two-shoes garbage. Everybody up there making nice-nice, joking around for the Today Show. Hey, you're in outer space, asshole, not on Leno. Get real.

Man, I'd love to be in space, and the opportunity gets wasted on those dweebs. Fuck.

Something else: No one gives a flying frozen cumquat about those shuttle crews. They launch, then putter around up there for months on end, doing God knows what, then they land. Unless they crash, who notices? And even then, can you name any of the deceased? No one cares.

On the other hand, the Mercury shots were a sensation. Your teacher would wheel a portable TV into the classroom. The world came to a halt. We had to beat the Russians. On the playground, and later at home, it was all we talked about. I got really wound up. My bedroom walls were plastered with photos from Life magazine: capsules, astronauts, rockets, Wernher von Braun. I didn't care about Woodstock. For me 1969 was the moon landing, not a bunch of bare-ass freaks sitting in the mud.

I moved to Ohio just so I could vote for John Glenn. I pulled the lever SO hard for him it must've registered 20 votes. That was in '74, been here ever since, great state, wonderful people. Try us, you'll like us! With God (and Buckeyes!) all things are possible! The birthplace of aviation!

On eBay I found this NASA surplus silver space-suit, just like the ones the Mercury guys wore. I suit-up before going on a rock and roll spin. I don't wear the helmet, it would interfere with my vision. That'd be nuts.

Even at age 58 I condition like an astronaut: pushups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, jogging, every day, rain or shine. It gets tougher to maintain my regimen over the years, but when the going gets tough, the tough get going!

There's a Zen to what I do, I become one with my vehicle. Me + Car + Music = Missile. I get into the zone, a place where it's impossible to make a mistake. I've never zapped anyone.

The thing about these so-called bicyclists that really bugs me is how superior they act, as if their you-know-what don't stink. Well, no one's ever made a movie like The Right Stuff or Apollo 13, something of that caliber, about a loser pedaling around.

MOMMY TOLD ME, YES, SHE TOLD ME, I'D MEET GIRLS LIKE YOU!!!

Like that putz I almost hit yesterday. He really pissed me off, just coasting along, gazing at the birdies and the flowers, head in the clouds. Being on the road is serious business, no place for amateurs and lollygagging. A helmet's not going to save your legs from getting crushed like tomatoes, yet all these dinks strap on their helmets, as if, "Hey! Now I'm all safe!" Idiots.

Now, I'm sure that moron crapped his Spandex shorts. I was, admittedly, too close. No doubt, I left him cursing like a sailor, shaking his fist. But instead of dancing a hissy fit, he should've thanked me for teaching him an important lesson regarding the gravity of being on the road. You have got to be awake, man. You've got to know the drill. Pay attention, man. You never know what's around the corner.

BUT DON'T GIVE YOURSELF AWAY!!! UH-WAAAY-AAAYYY-AAAYYY!!!

My husband's not real into the astronaut thing, but he's cool with me being into it. I love my hubby.

Memory Lane

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