Why I Hate The Oldies

There’s another “Oldies” station in town with a pretty good playlist of nostalgia from the fifties, sixties and seventies. In the morning they play The Beach Boys, Ronnie and the Daytonas, Jan and Dean. American West Coast Beach Tunes to start your day. They’re also rotating plenty of British Invasion, Psychedelic and Rock Anthems. All of it is familiar and moderately enjoyable. Of course, there are a few duds, but generally the music is a way to endure the six-mile drive into town. Oldies.

I fucking hate Oldies Music. Nostalgia and Sentiment are stalkers, killers and thieves that lie dormant in my cerebral database, waiting for me to let down my guard, watching as I tap out the beat on the steering wheel and (god help me) sing along while trying to remember what I was doing, who I was with; suddenly it’s 1962, 1967, 1975 and I’m craving beer and I’m driving too fast. There are girl groups wailing about a sick, enmeshed, dangerous love for some greasy dirtbag. DooWop music and young men singing perfect harmonies, vocalizing illiterate sounds (dit dit dit, mumm, mumm, mumm) to fill space between the stupidity, women-fear and codependence.  Plenty of talent, but limited subject matter. Love, loss, sadness, anger; repeat.

I try not to get hooked but from the first Chord of “She Loves You” I’m back in Fairfax, California, watching the Ed Sullivan Show, sitting next to my girlfriend, my hand creeping into her unbuttoned blouse.

The insistent bass line from “My Little Red Book” by Arthur Lee and Love; I’m digging in the glove compartment for a half finished bottle of Canadian Club, driving my wasted ragtop Corvair deep into Oakland to take LSD for the first time.

I listened to the radio all night at Long’s Drugstore where I worked as a janitor during an unusually hot Northern California Summer while I waited for college to start, again, after I’d flunked out. Again

The bar, Jean’s Bit o’ Bohemia, closed at 2 a.m. and I pulled up in front of the store a few minutes later. I fumbled an alien key into the complicated security lock and tried to get inside the store within the allotted time. If the door was opened for more than 2 minutes a siren went off and lights would flash until the cops showed up. This was to prevent theft, but it also made it difficult for a doped up, half drunk janitor to get to work.

Work. On the Lob. Earning my Living. When I finally got the goddamn door closed and heard the lock snap into place, the first thing I did was patrol the store to make sure I was alone and that there weren’t any ambitious stragglers.

Long’s Drugs was a full service outlet, but there were some areas that were definitely off limits. The Pharmacy, for one. Locked, coded, seriously alarmed. No way. Expensive fountain pens and jewelry, rubbers, power tools were also under heavy lock and key.

 Once satisfied that I had the kingdom to myself, I hit the cooler. Coke, Wine, and Beer inventories were strictly controlled. The only thing they couldn’t keep track of, due to daily theft by alcoholic senior citizens and high school kids, were the crappy canned cocktails. Mai Tais, Pina Coladas, Martinis and Manhattans. They were like novelty items and not designed for people who drink. The stubby little cans of sweetened mixers had only about 30 percent alcohol, but I knew from eavesdropping on administrative conversations that they were nearly impossible to keep track of. I grabbed a half dozen, took them to the back of the store, arranged them on a shelf.

Next I found a comfy poolside lounge chair. I set it up in the Women’s Break Room. The women had their own break room and I thought this was unfair so I used it as my private space, my nightly vacation accommodations. In the interest of fairness and gender equality.

I’d grab a Science Fiction novel off of the book display, Theodore Sturgeon or Alfred Bester. The Sunlamps were boxed and neatly arranged on the Health and Hygiene aisle. I carefully arranged one over my recliner in the woman’s lounge, turned the artificial sunlight to “Low” for a nice bronze, then I’d strip and pop open a canned Martini. Wretched, but cool and alcoholic. Finally, naked, I’d power up one of the stereo systems in the Home Entertainment section and lie down for the first half of my shift.

The station in San Francisco that played the best music was KMPX. Hendrix, The Who, The Doors, Airplane, 10 Years After. Not Oldies, either. Then it was all New music, music no one had ever heard before, not nostalgia but groundbreaking, world changing stuff, shattering reality and illusions, great guitars, intelligent lyrics, really long drum solos; poetry, politics and pain.

A few hours later, toasted, coming down off of too many chemical cocktails, I’d spring out of my reverie, dress, put away the lounge chair and sunlamp, toss my empties in the trash compactor, return the books to the rack. Arnie, asskisser and over achieving Assistant Manager, showed up around 7 a.m. so I made sure to be fully clothed and busily emptying ashtrays and mopping floors, toting garbage and washing windows. He’d grunt, “Hello”, check the store for cleanliness, eye me with suspicion and lock himself in his office until the store’s ten o’clock opening, at which time I would punch out and go home, exhausted, to try and sleep in 100 degree heat, miserable, sporadically unconscious throughout the day, missing sun, fun, movies, drive-ins, my buddies and my girlfriend. All the stuff that I keep hearing on the goddamned Oldies station. Things others were doing while I goldbricked at Longs and later tossed and turned in a hot room, awake, sweaty, sick.

Today I listen to Avant Garde Jazz, 20^th Century Contemporary, and Nouveau Soul. Modern music. Newies, with no history. I don’t want to be reminded of the good old days of bad jobs, confusion, heartbreak and hangovers and all of the horrible good times that I never experienced. I hate the “Oldies”; memories of an unpleasant summer and another shitty job. I maintained a pretty good tan, though, for a guy who worked nights and slept all day.

Let's Get High

     Twenty-five years ago I worked in an overpopulated, violent, Level 4 maximum-security penitentiary. Two inmates were painting the office next to mine and I clearly overheard their conversation. One guy was African-American, the other white, both had lots of gang tattoos and were pumped from lifting weights, but they were working well together and discussing the nature of politics in the U.S.

     Inmate 1: Oh Man, I miss Oakland.

     Inmate 2: Yeah, Oakland a fine place, ‘cept for all the violence and shit.

     Inmate 1: All them families, kids and old people and stuff. Shit.

     Inmate 2: It’s still a good city, but it’s goin’ to hell fast.

     Inmate 1: That’s Nixon’s fault. He’s fucking everything up.

     Inmate 2: True. Nixon gonna push that button someday and fuck up the whole world.

     Inmate 1: Yep. Pretty soon, the whole world gonna look like Oakland, California.

     Nixon? This was in 1987 and Nixon had been out of office for over twelve years, but for those two convicts Nixon served as a metaphor for all government; uninformed, sneaky, vindictive, stubborn, dangerous and disinterested in their welfare.  In 1972, during the Watergate Scandal, the President and his cabinet were exposed for the venal pricks and liars that they really were and we’ve never recovered. Even the most virulently committed party members will say, around election time, that they don’t trust their candidates. I decided that I liked the idea of using the ugly word, Nixon, to describe the most arrogant and threatening elements of government.

      It seems that, lately, everyone has a Medical Marijuana Card. It’s cool. They’re in pain, disabled, undergoing chemotherapy or simply finding it harder to manage day-to-day existence. Me too; I get it. Life is complicated and sometimes I’d like a little bump, some external assistance, a few hours of benign intoxication. I’ve been have The Card for knee pain, anxiety, nausea, recreation. The dope came in the form of regular smoke or tincture of THC and I didn’t notice any change in their demeanor during the visits; no somnolence, rage, disappearing food or broken furniture. These are the things that I used to experience when I smoked dope. I may not be wired for marijuana.

     The battle continues among local, state and federal government about whom, exactly, has jurisdiction over the Marijuana Clinics. The legal businesses can still be busted by the feds, and often are. The DEA is active, well funded, intractable, and the War on Drugs continues in the same way that the Vietnam War was prolonged under Nixon until, as a nation, we realized that it was a no-win demoralizing money pit; the President resigned, his aids were arrested, the USA was embarrassed and degraded. Black eyes and missing teeth.

     Americans have learned that weed probably has medical benefits and isn’t dangerous, doesn’t cause outbreaks of aggression, but for some reason a lot of the voters still think that the feds should control the drug and keep us in line with arrests and fines and imprisonment. It’s all a little schizy and I figure I should get The Card now before Nixon closes down all the clinics.

      A lot of my friends, people in their fifties, sixties and older, have gained access to “legal” marijuana. They have The Card and smoke, drink, eat a bit of cannabis in the evening, around nine o’clock. Get a little high, listen to music, read, watch some Netflix. They’re not getting toasted and driving around at 10 in the morning diddling with their CD players and giggling, blocking the drive-thru windows. They stay home and are trying to have a good night’s sleep. Sounds pretty damned civilized. I could get into that. Again.

     Except that was never the way marijuana worked in my life. For me dope leads to brandy which leads to narcotics which leads to cocaine which leads to infidelity, theft and shouting, spitting, angry traffic incidents. Every goddamn time, unless I’m bedridden, and I can still create remote disturbances as long as I have access to a telephone. It’s been proven time and again. Jesus, could it be that I’m not a good candidate for The Card?

     I don’t use intoxicants any longer because the above-mentioned behavior became too hard to manage. So I stopped. I watch other people, though, relations and acquaintances, and I am envious of their ability to get high and not offend anyone. Perhaps I’ve changed. Sure; I should get The Card. I’m aging and there are plenty of legitimate symptoms: back pain, vertigo, diverticulitis, financial anxiety, nausea, hair loss, external referral, creative self doubt, clumsy social interactions. Maybe now I can handle a little smoke in the evening without raging at the neighbors. No more yielding to the urge to instruct and educate others. Screw them. I’ll be loaded and if someone abuses my high I’ll bet I’ve changed enough so that I can deal and stay cool. Serene and modern drug use. Evolved. I will use marijuana and become transcendent, deeply moved by the music I’m hearing, the books I’m reading. I’ll be relieved of pain and I’ll sleep well. Perhaps I can avoid the frozen dairy products aisle at the grocery store. Smoke weed, calm down, and take off a few pounds. That’s it. The new approach to dope as a helpful, life affirming substance instead of my old “stoner” model where paranoia, indolence, weight gain and morbid thoughts followed the first joint. Possible. I always thought that if they gave every criminal in the country two ounces of decent pot and all the Haagen Dazs they could eat there would be no more violence, gang wars, assaults. Bad guys would all weigh three hundred pounds and sleep 20 hours a day.

       I should get The Card whether I use it or not, so that I’m prepared for the future. Because it’s possible for Nixon to push the button and then the whole world will look like Oakland, California.

The Poet of Indolence

      

   

     When Carlo Castorelli died in 1983, few people remembered that he had been universally acknowledged as the world acclaimed “Poet of Indolence”. Born in 1916 in Tamalpa, California to an Italian father and an American mother, he lived a relatively obscure life until he reached puberty sometime in the second week of November 1928. He was in the bath, which is not an unusual place to experience such a significant occurrence. Unlike most boys his age, however, Carlo did not linger after his discovery, ruminating and questioning the event. Instead, he writes in his journal, “I stood up from the tepid water, wrapped a towel around my then slim waist, and dashed to my desk. I scribbled the first thoughts that came to mind and they needed no editing. The result was my first ode, 'Oh, My Foot'.” The poem was included in the Spring 1929 edition of Arden Wood Magazine and clearly indicates the direction in which the young wordsmith was headed.

Oh, My Foot

My foot, my right foot

It is beautiful beyond belief, and

More lovely than all other feet

I soak it until the skin is pink

And soft and

Then trim the perfect nails that punctuate each

Similar yet varied digit, a quintet of flexible flawless fantasy,

The final extensions of my sacred self, forward facing and

Perpetually prepared, balanced, they

Splash and flicker in warm water

I massage the heel

Gently

Making small circles

With a rough cloth.

When I am finished my fine foot

Is opaline, pearly

It catches light with a creamy

Iridescence as I turn it this way

And that.

My other foot

Is a bastard and not worth the sock

I regretfully pull over it each morning.

But I must. For the sake of symmetry.

      A Whitman-esque celebration of self is apparent in this youthful paean but within the short, brilliant poem, Castorelli also sets the tone for a life of personal praise, individual appreciation and a complete disregard of all others; he created a new form of poetic expression and selfish imagery. When he was refused the Nobel Prize because, as one member of the committee stated, “Castorelli is a despicable little runt. His poetry is wonderful, even deserving of the Prize, but all members of the commission have gone on record and stated that they cannot be in the same room with him. He poisons the air and pollutes the intellectual discourse with his constant referrals to his proportions and his wheedling requests.”

      Devotees will be delighted to learn that there is a movement afoot to award a posthumous Nobel Prize for Poetry to Castorelli, a man whom Ernest Hemingway once called, “The only one of us with the Goddamn guts to truly love himself. If I were him I would die from sheer delight.” Great praise, indeed.

      It is that final line of the above poem, though, the resigned and mawkish, “But I must,” that has captivated critics and scholars for decades. What did Castorelli mean? What, or who, was pressuring him to give equal attention to his other foot, a foot that he so clearly despised? Why was symmetry important? How did a young inexperienced boy, only slightly past his twelfth birthday, achieve such unmistakable poetic sophistication? And why did young Carlo disappear between the years 1938 and 1941? Where did he go? Who was the “Blue Woman”? I hope to address these questions and more in my critical biography, “My Wonderful Extremities: The Secret Life of Carlo Castorelli, The Poet of Indolence.” Look for it on Amazon this Fall.

The Big Questions

Where did I come from

Where am I going

Why am I blah, blah, blah?

Is there meaning to life,

Where were we before we were borne?

How long should I wait for someone who is late?

Is there a God in heaven?

Is heaven on earth or in my mind?

Aren’t there too many styles of shoes?

Why do we dream and

What do they mean and

Do I talk in my sleep?

What is mucous?

Why would a bird walk anywhere?

Quick, would you rather be rich or invisible?

Is the beginning of the end

The end of the beginning

Or just the last episode of the first season?

Sleeping is a little death

And if death is eternal sleep

Why do I wake up on the floor?

What is the soul and does

It plug a hole or is it just a way

To make excuses for overeating?

How does metabolism engage

With the endocrine system

to create anxiety and low self esteem?

What’s the difference between right and wrong

And should we be punished for

Lying about sex?

Ask the universe a question.

Why does The universe always answer,

"Shut up. How should I know?”

In a past life, in a different incarnation,

In another body, haven't we all been

Civil servants who are allergic to shellfish?

Angels, ghosts, specters

Immortal essence, eternal spirit, 

And Baboons. Always, baboons.

Where did you come from

Where are you going

Why are you blah, blah, blah?

Last Day at the Asylum

Scene: The wide porch of an expensive and luxurious Mental Hospital. It is an early twentieth century estate, perfectly maintained and landscaped. There are wicker chairs, tables, and baskets of hanging plants. In the distance several people sit on the lush green lawn engaged in an al fresco therapy session. There is distant laughter and several psych techs dressed in white monitor the patients from a discreet distance. A man throws a Frisbee to his attendant who catches it and throws it back. It is a pastoral scene.

An attractive woman in a pale yellow dress sits in a comfortable chair on the porch. There is a bowl of fruit on the table at her elbow. She carefully chooses a banana from the bowl, peels it, takes a delicate bite and turns a page in the magazine that lies on her lap.

The door swings open and a handsome man carrying a suitcase steps out. He is wearing a gray suit, white shirt with a flowered tie and a fedora.  He puts down the suitcase, tips his hat back on his head, stretches his arms and breaths deeply.

He speaks without turning around.

Man: Well, finally. I’m going home. I’m free and I’m out of here. After six months it is an enormous relief to be cleared; I am recovered, mentally fit and ready to assume my place in the world. I’ve missed the world. I’m really looking forward to working, to get back to my law firm and take charge again. I miss the challenges and rewards that come from a job well done. And, I must say, I am going to miss you, too, my dear. I’ve had my eye on you since you first arrived, you know. You never appeared dysfunctional at all; just the opposite. And, if you don’t mind, I think you are incredibly attractive. Beautiful. (The woman smiles, perks up, crosses her legs. Her summer dress rides up just above her knees.) I can’t tell you how great it is to be released from here, to be told that I am sane, functional and healthy. No more hallucinations, depressions or delusions. No violent outbursts or hysteria. Now that I am well, I hope I’m not being forward when I say that I’d like to see you, when you leave, when you go home, if that’s OK?  I am divorced, have significant funds, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way in my life. I am terribly attracted to you. In fact you have occupied my thoughts exclusively for the past several months. You are one of the reasons that I've made such breakthroughs, that I’m prepared to leave and that I am in good health. I don’t think I could have done it without your help and I hope we can meet when you are free and we can get to know each other better. I feel we have a future. Please say “Yes”.

Woman: Thank you. I’m flattered. I’ve been watching you, too, and I would very much like to see you when we get back to the city. So, yes, I feel the same. Very much so.

The man turns around, surprised and shocked.

Man: I wasn’t talking to you; I was talking to your banana.

Adventures in Adultery

Clay, a philanderer from San Francisco, writes:

My affairs became more about eating and driving than sex. Don’t get me wrong; the sex always starts out terrific and, probably because it’s illicit, can continue to be terrific for years. I spent a lot of time on the road, though, driving, always in a hurry. Weaving in an out of traffic I’d ask myself, “Is this really worth it? This driving and lying and worrying? The danger?” The answer was obvious.

To get to Maria’s I’d cross at least one bridge, merge onto a jammed freeway, get off twenty minutes later at an off-ramp that took me through a bad neighborhood, and then I’d pull up to her crappy little bungalow. Her street was anonymous but a few blocks away there was the sound of gunfire and breaking glass. I lived in the suburbs for Christ’s sake, I had a nice house, two new cars and a swimming pool, but three days a week I’d thread my way through unfamiliar streets, avoiding eye contact with pedestrians, worried about carjackings and stray bullets, so that I could be with Maria for two hours. Always two hours. Afterward, I’d retrace the same hazardous route home. I didn’t have the time to stop off for a drink so I kept a bottle of brandy in the glove box and I’d sip from it when I was safely back on the freeway.  Lots of times, when I pulled into my driveway, I was holding my breath. I was home, exhausted, undamaged, and slightly drunk, ready to face my wife. A component of the infidelity was the lie that I had to have a few drinks with coworkers and that’s why I was a little late. The brandy was a necessary, welcome part of the scheme.

 But the eating. Always eating. Goddamn, if you’re going to cheat get ready to eat an extra five or six meals a week. I weighed 240 pounds by the time everything came apart.

Maria and I always ate lunch at the same place. The Hunan Garden was a Chinese restaurant with 25 tables and a frothy, glittering pink ceiling. Our waitress, slim, shy and pretty, spoke very little English and welcomed us with a big smile, probably because I tipped well. Mr. Impressive. I was fat and exhausted, but boy, could I overtip. Maria always ordered Lemon Chicken. The place had a huge menu, lots of exotic items, but she only ate Lemon Chicken. I should have paid attention to that. Fifty items, plenty of variety, but she ordered the Lemon Chicken every time, no variation whatsoever.

After Maria and I had been seeing each other for a year we developed a routine.  Morning breaks in the company cafeteria, lunch at the Hunan Garden and two hours at her house on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons. Infidelity for morons.

One Friday night my wife, Claire, had made dinner arrangements for us. We were going to join two other couples at a new restaurant in Kentwood. I’d had a very filling lunch of Walnut Shrimp; the lovely waitress brought an extra large helping because I left extra large tips. Maria ordered her Lemon Chicken. After lunch, stuffed and sleepy, I drove the perilous roads to Maria’s, dodging traffic and knots of jaywalkers; I was tense and worried that Maria would want to talk about our future. I was calculating how long it would take to get home in time to pick up my wife for dinner.

I knocked a little too hard and Maria opened the door. She wore a lavender negligee and was beautiful, at that moment, standing in the doorway, holding a cigarette in her long fingers and smiling. The drive, lunch, the worry and the lies all faded. We kissed for a few minutes and for the time it took to get to the bedroom my life was perfect and I was too overcome to think about consequences or risks. Afterward, we caught our breath and Maria murmured about love and the future. I knew there was no future, but she had constructed a story about my divorce and our marriage and a rented house and probably a dog. I agreed, nodded, and stole glances at the clock.

I was preoccupied with the dinner engagement and I told Maria that I needed to leave, sorry, but I had to meet a real estate appraiser to get a price on my house for possible sale. I knew each lie brought us closer to the time when everything would reach its inevitable rotten end.

We dressed. I kissed her long, lovingly, and I meant it, and then I broke traffic laws on the way home, sated from sex and full from lunch.

At 6:30, Claire was ready and waiting. I said I was sorry but I couldn’t get away from work earlier, I changed my shirt and drove, more driving, to Kentwood. The restaurant was a new Dim Sum place right on the water with a deck and beautiful views of the bay. Our friends waved and we all shook hands and pretended that our lives were going well. I belched some Walnut Shrimp, we ordered drinks and the waitress came to take our dinner orders.”

“Hello, good to see you. You want Walnut Shrimp? Want Lemon Chicken?”

It was the girl from the Hunan Garden. I tried to hide my shock.

She said, “I work here, too. Another job.”

“Pardon?”

“Hunan Garden and here.”

I shrugged.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

She tried to help. She spoke slowly.

“Lemon chicken. You already eat. Walnut Shrimp.”

“I’m sorry, I, I don’t know what you mean. We’re here for dinner.”

She looked distressed, peeked at Claire, who raised an eyebrow and asked, “Does she know you?”

“No I’ve never seen her before. I’ve never been here. She’s confused. Or drunk.”

It had grown quiet at our table. I told the waitress, “Sorry, you are mistaken. I’ll have the Number 12 Dim Sum Dinner, please.”

Her face went slack and I thought she was going to cry. She took the rest of the orders and her hand shook as she jotted symbols on her pad, flicking glances at me. Claire was suspicious and our friends looked away. The waitress left our table; she was worried and confused. The expression on her face was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen and convinced me that, pretty soon, everything was going to hell; it was my fault and everyone would suffer. I even hurt waitresses.

Hell and The Roots of Atheism

     I learned about hell as a kid. It was a word that parents used when they spilled a drink; it was a modifier they slipped into conversation. It was a benign word that didn’t hold a lot of menace.

     “He had one Hell of a hangover.”

     “I’m going to give him Hell when he gets home.”

     “Hell’s bells, Joe, what the Hell is wrong with you?”

     No threat.

     Then I met the nuns. The Sisters. Handmaidens of Our Lord.

     And, man, did they understand Hell. Plus, they practiced all day; suffering, celibate, lonely, angry, no skin products, wearing uncomfortable clothing, waiting until some dopey little kid spoke out of turn, laughed out of turn, thought, moved, picked his nose out of turn. Then they would wail on him and rehearse for their next life. They communicated the agony of the underworld to us. Some of those women were clever, too; they had creative minds bubbling under the wimple.

     I couldn’t get my head around the idea of God, the Trinity, The Holy Spirit, which was either a ghost or a conscious light or something else that was impossible to understand. If we didn’t or couldn’t or wouldn’t understand the concept of The Holy Spirit, we were condemned to Hell.  Automatic. It was in the Bible.

     I was seven for Christ’s sake. Biblical and Christian and religious scholars have been struggling to figure out this crap for ages, and I was expected to get it all, without question, by the time I was seven.

     The punishment for not getting it? Hell.

     Deep, dark and hot. Not just hot. Hot was sunburn and the nuns tried convince me that neverending sunburn times 1,000 was considered a treat, a pleasure, in hell. How about skinning me alive, over and over for, oh fuck, Eternity? How would you like that? And remember having a splinter? Well, lost boy, can you conceive of splinters the size of a pencil wedged under every square inch of your skin, infected, pus-filled, tormenting and they will be there forever? Eternity.

Barbecued alive. Snakes. Maniac demons.

     Bad smells. They kept talking about bad smells. I didn’t know sulphur or chemical waste but I knew the bathroom, the toilet. I think that convinced me, the fear of everlasting stink. I’d better do what I could to avoid perdition because entering the boys bathroom during a stomach flu epidemic, that smell, magnified by a million, tangible and surrounding me, everywhere, for ever, was really something that I could sense, literally. I imagined the horror of thick, cloying bathroom smells and gagged. For Eternity.

      Which, like the Holy Spirit, was pretty goddamned hard to grasp. I could barely tell time. I had to look at my feet to figure left from right. So I had to have an absolute grasp of Eternity, Infinity, and advanced Physics in order to avoid everlasting, unending bad assed torment.

     Most of what frightens people is bullshit. What makes them anxious, disturbs their peace, is generally something they’ve learned to be afraid of. None, or little, of it is real. I learned to be afraid of the same stuff that frightened my family. When I was a kid I worried about foul balls at baseball games, rattlesnakes, getting locked in a refrigerator and suffocating, swallowing glass or nails, being torn apart by animals, other people, burning up, losing a body part, being dragged behind a bus. Looking back over my life I’ve only been hit by one foul ball; I have not experienced the rest of the stuff on the list. Most of what I learned in school and at home was not true. I get that now. It was made up in order to keep me in line, make me obey, or to scare me into submission. They were stories and examples and tortures that were the result of generations of unexamined fear.

     I had a hard time believing. I think everyone did, but we were taught Faith. That is, I was encouraged to believe things I knew weren’t true. The scary tales of hell, rattlesnakes and foul balls were made up by frightened people and repeated to convince kids to stay out of the way, obey, and do what we were told and not to ask questions.

     I don’t know where all the legends and anecdotes and warnings originated, but the combined fertile imaginations of the nuns and the dire warnings from parents kept me on edge.

     Until I was around eleven.

     I’d spent four or five years looking over my shoulder, watching my language around adults, trying not to steal, hardly every touching myself in the bathtub and then one day it all became clear.

     When I was eleven years old I was in the sixth grade at St. Anselm’s school. I sat in the back of the class at the end of the row, and, for a few weeks, my desk was turned around so that the rest of the student’s couldn’t see me. I suppose I was being punished, again, for not maintaining the code of fear and silence.

     The nun, Sister Mary Timothy, a tall woman with a well-trimmed mustache, was blathering on about God, The Trinity, or some other concept that was losing its grip.

I heard a car accelerating, fast, loud, and I looked out the window. Some guy with greasy hair was skidding in a beat up car with a broken windshield around the corner just outside of the school playground. He bumped up on the curb and a hubcap bounced off of the tire, rolled along the sidewalk, wobbled into the schoolyard and came to rest. As the driver was speeding away, another car, a cop car, black and white with lights flashing, slid around the corner and followed at increasing speed.

     Sister Timothy continued her lecture, a few of the kids glanced up, momentarily distracted from her tales of horror and misery.

     But I was changed forever. I’d just had a clear demonstration of the difference between fantasy and reality.

     Sister Tim, Hell, someone’s concept of obedience and fear, were all fantasy. All bullshit.

But a guy in a car, probably stolen, trying to out run a cop through a residential neighborhood, losing a hubcap and disappearing up the road and into my imagination. Absolutely true. Observable and measurable.

     At recess I got out of class before anyone else, ran through the schoolyard and picked up the hubcap. It was about eight inches across, dented, and the chrome was scratched. I put it in my book bag and took it home. Later, when I started smoking, I used is as an ashtray. It’s gone now, but it sat in the middle of my coffee table for years, full of cigarette butts, matches and the unsmoked ends of joints.

     It was a small monument to truth.