-Virginia Beach is dead. Nothing left anymore. New York City
blues. New Jersey depressant. Nowhere is life only dust, ash of once was— I
wanted it to live, really bad. Left Jersey and got home real late and headed
over Paula’s house to meet up with Rich for beers and to tell him about the
trip.
-We had been working for hours under the hot sun. Dano had
warned that engines were really tough to drop.
“Maybe it will just slide in,” I said.
“Yeah and maybe we can achieve world peace,” he said.
Four hours later, greasy and sweaty, the job undone, we took
a break. We sat beside the truck whose engine was getting replaced. I studied
the grass on the edge of the sloped driveway. A patch of flattened yellowed
blades were squashed beneath a tire.
“We could go to the beach tonight. Have a few drinks,” I
said.
“Possibility.”
“The whole damn thing is getting tiring— the booze, the
drinking.”
“I don’t have the stomach I once did. I don’t know. I still
like it. It’s anticlimactic now,” he said.
-New cold beginning. It’s become apparent that road travels
are to be put off for now. It’s been apparent since returning from New York,
maybe even before that, Virginia. I’m here now and I will be here for the New England
fall and winter. Goals other than travel: get a stable job and save and pay off
bills. I just landed a job at BP gas station in Randolph, a self-service gas
station and I’m the register man. Pay off Visa. Try and get extra work with
Slabs. Try and make money with photography or videography hopefully. That
avenue might be dead but worth the while through the winter. I’d like to pay
off Visa by late December or early January. Just in time for summer travels to
either the west coast again or Europe to backpack for a month. I could save at
least $1200.00 by then.
-When I got home I was still hurt, my eyelids strained like
wide yawns. New beginnings to familiar stories. White pages. Situations. Rewrites.
Landscapes. People. Yup yup… hear, hear. Bombastic boom, elastic doom.
-New England. Fall chills the bones of the paperboy on his route. He peddles along, house to house, papers lightly tossed on the porch or stuffed in between the screen and main door. Mist surrounds his tired face. Sullen and cold. Suburbia. He looks down the street to find the last house then puts his hand into his paper bag and counts the papers with his fingertips and knows the time by his count. He has to return home to shower, eat and catch Tom & Jerry before he heads off to school.
At night, the breeze is colder as the electrician stumbles out from the bar with a handful of stragglers. He runs his arms through the sleeves of his jacket and staggers along Main Street. His path is lit by an occasional dim street lamp as he measures his steps carefully. He passes a storefront, now closed and realizes he doesn’t care what time it is— that he knows he will be home “sooner or “later” and that everything will be all right. He begins to sing:
My brother’s buddy, Mal, has been gone for three weeks now. He escapes the mud of drinking, joblessness, weed and general lazy Randolph attitude. Gone are the days of finding him stretched out on the couch in front of the tube or his noon time drinking bouts in Belcher Park. Now he’s living with a relative at Lake Elsinore, California and is working. He wants to save money and get his own place. 70 Allen receives letters from him seemingly every day. He misses the people and comradery; in his letters there’s a sense of wonder awe and distance.
-New England. Fall chills the bones of the paperboy on his route. He peddles along, house to house, papers lightly tossed on the porch or stuffed in between the screen and main door. Mist surrounds his tired face. Sullen and cold. Suburbia. He looks down the street to find the last house then puts his hand into his paper bag and counts the papers with his fingertips and knows the time by his count. He has to return home to shower, eat and catch Tom & Jerry before he heads off to school.
At night, the breeze is colder as the electrician stumbles out from the bar with a handful of stragglers. He runs his arms through the sleeves of his jacket and staggers along Main Street. His path is lit by an occasional dim street lamp as he measures his steps carefully. He passes a storefront, now closed and realizes he doesn’t care what time it is— that he knows he will be home “sooner or “later” and that everything will be all right. He begins to sing:
“Show me the way to
go home. I’m tired and I want to go to bed.”
There is nothing left to do now but count the days until the
first snowfall.
-70 Allen Street. Sometimes it seems the characters forever
linger in place. Yet change will come. I look around me now and it seems some
of these characters— my dear friends are exercising their youth and freedoms
now. Dan has just left behind his parents, job and Mary (his psychotic
girlfriend who reminds me of Anne but in a more evil way). Mary is the kind of
woman who drags a man down and keeps him artistically dead. Well, Dano finally
broke his chains leaving behind the hum-drum of yawning neighborhoods and
paralyzing comforts and fattening habits of the soul, body and mind. He took
off on his motorcycle (didn’t tell Mary where he was going so she wouldn’t
track him) and drove through the great northwest to LA. A new man is born.
Maybe he had recaptured that lost flicker of youth or teen-age spirit. Now he
is free, for a time, to rediscover himself and redefine his purpose. Road trips
have those effects on people. It’s a release of everything buried within and covered
by the sentiment of time—he is like a snake shedding its old skin to reclaim
its lost luster and gleam. He is propelled away from the world of 70 Allen
Street. Where at one time, much like myself once, it seemed he lacked the
confidence to regain his composure and freedom.
Jamie Shea had left home some months ago, before Dano. The
plan was Jamie was coming to Hawaii to come live with me and Rich and that was
the plan the day he left. Of course by the time he reached California, me and
Rich were counting the days until we left Hawaii to thumb back home to Boston.
This was March or April I think. Gone from the south shore he left— Greyhound
Express through golden New Mexico and old Route 66. To start a new life. To
escape his own monotonous, lazy drudgeries and his parents who he felt were too
over the top disciplinarian; leaving his lonely regimented solitude, failed
girlfriend relationships and strained friendships to meet hope and expectation
in Hawaii. Nope. Not this time. He lives in LA now and I can see he is happy
and has found God and Salvation through a ministry and his life is problem
free. He doesn’t drink, smoke, have sex or perverse thoughts— he is a shiny
emerald now in the dirt and clutter of obscene LA— a shadow of who he once was
at 70 Allen Street.
My brother’s buddy, Mal, has been gone for three weeks now. He escapes the mud of drinking, joblessness, weed and general lazy Randolph attitude. Gone are the days of finding him stretched out on the couch in front of the tube or his noon time drinking bouts in Belcher Park. Now he’s living with a relative at Lake Elsinore, California and is working. He wants to save money and get his own place. 70 Allen receives letters from him seemingly every day. He misses the people and comradery; in his letters there’s a sense of wonder awe and distance.
As I write, another of my brother’s buddies, Hen is off on
his last carousal with friends and toasts and promises of reunions. He is
leaving tomorrow to be with Mal and no doubt in search of his own identity and
adventure.
-Leaving home seems to be in a sense, an inward journey. One
leaves an old stagnant neighborhood and moves on. I’m on the back end now.
Unless there’s new reason for me being here, something meaningful, i.e., school
then it will just become the same deep rut. Movement, whether it’s physical or
mental is the best way to grow, learn and live. Movement is meaning. Meaning is
life. Growth leads to understanding; understanding leads homeward bound.
-A swig of moonlight poured through the window and into the
bedroom. Two young lovers loved each other naked excited and on the verge of
entering.
“Do you have anything?” she asked.
He paused. He looked around the room then satisfied looked
at her face.
“Yeah. I always carry one with me.”
“No, no… I mean, diseases.”
-“Like my father said, ‘I’m like iron. I rust out later.’”
-One time at the gas station where I worked, I met a girl. The girl in front of me, standing in line is not the girl I met however she was sort of a regular in this gas station. The girl in front of me was a fat skin pocked fuzzy headed beast with brown raisin teeth. It seemed like she rolled in everyday with that empty stare. I’d force a smile and feign interest in her redundant remarks about how cool it was to work here. She always purchased the same thing: a pack of Marlboro lights and two dollars in gas (always nickels, dimes and pennies). Today, I noticed something different about her: a red blotch on her neck, a hicky, no doubt, a mark of passion and ownership.
“Quite the rug burn,” I said.
“My boyfriend is such an animal.” She leaned her head in
close and whispered,” all he wants to do is have sex— three, four, sometimes
five times a day. He’s wearing me out.”
“Really?”
That someone would voluntarily have sex with this girl, I
shuddered.
“Yeah, he’s crazy. You know my friend is looking for a
boyfriend.”
The line behind her began to swell and grumble so I had to
cut her off.
“Sure tell her to come in,” I said.
She took my comment more serious than I thought she would
and scribbled down her friend’s phone number. I looked at the number written in
big fat numbers and it said, call anytime. Apparently the boyfriend and her
along with this single friend lived together. I had no real desire to call her
anyway. I can only imagine what the friend looked like too.
The next morning at work, I answered the ringing phone. “Hello?”
“Can you tell me what time Jim gets in?”
“He’s right here.”
I heard muffled embarrassed laughter and whispers. Then the
voice continued. “Hi I’m Katina, Karen’s friend. She knows you from work.”
The beast had a name.
“Oh hi. How you doing?” I asked.
I couldn’t really talk so I promised to call her later that
night to meet her. Instead, I went to Maine for the week-end.
The following Monday at work, Chris the manager told me that
Katina had called him there a few times and now she wanted to meet him.
Apparently she spied Chris through the window and thought he was cute. Oh well,
no loss here.
Neither Katina nor Chris seemed to be able to make up their
minds. Chris confided to me that she was a whore but then tell her he wanted to
meet her for sex. Meanwhile, Katina was still calling me at work as well as
Chris, though he was the manager, he also worked shifts at the register too. He
was my age, a short blond haired kid with neat straight hair. Personally I
thought the whole situation was getting absurd and told Chris to have her.
“Take her. I don’t like these games. She’s all
yours,” I said.
That night Chris showed up on my shift, drunk. He had plans
to meet Katina finally. Then, Katina called and as I was about to hand the
phone over to Chris, she invited both of us over to her apartment or maybe,
meaning whoever showed up first. I told Chris and he went home to return his
father’s car. Fuck it, now I’m just going crazy to see who this fucking girl is. I tell her that I’ll be by after work. Then I sped along Main Street on my
bicycle, a warm quiet night. I was a little nervous and excited and had no idea
what to expect. I navigated through the apartment complex until I found her
building. I walked to the front door, pressed the buzzer and the door buzzed
open. I walked down the corridor, pushing my bike along as it left tire marks
on the rug. I hopped on the elevator and found her room.
Katina opened the door. She was a small blond haired blue
eyed girl, surprisingly cute. I followed her inside and left my bike just
inside the door on its kickstand. We went into her bedroom. It was littered
with clothes, magazines, dirty dishes with spaghetti remains, ash trays and
puzzle pieces. In the middle of the room was a huge mattress on the floor.
Karen sat on the bed and her boyfriend, John sat beside her.
Karen seemed to just ooze all over the mattress like Jabba the Hut. The
boyfriend tinkered with a broken phone. Katina had her back toward me and
seemed to be making bodily gestures to Karen. Then Karen blurts out, “she likes
you, Jim. I told you he was cute.” Karen and John left us alone.
I was relieved but embarrassed too. I studied Katina a little more critically now. Definitely cute, a modest pretty face like Meryl Streep. I would sleep with her sure.
I was relieved but embarrassed too. I studied Katina a little more critically now. Definitely cute, a modest pretty face like Meryl Streep. I would sleep with her sure.
Katina went on for what seemed like hours and I sort of
yessed and uh-huh'd my way through the boredom of her life and her problems.
"I'm sorry, really. It’s just… I’ve got such a headache you know. I never
get to relax. I’ve got to wait on Karen hand and foot. When I moved in here she
was like ‘come live with me. You won’t have to pay rent.’ So I said sure. I
needed space. My mom needed space so I moved in. A few weeks now. I just can’t
relax. I’m sorry. I just started working at Burger King and she already has me
paying the phone and fixing her car. It’s crazy.
“And John pisses me off. He’s always aggravating me and
Karen. They’ve been going out for five years. He thinks that just because I’m
trying to help out that I’m trying to steal her away from him. He doesn’t lift
a finger to help either.
“I don’t know, Jim. I know how important first impressions
are. I’m so aggravated. I can’t relax. My last boyfriend used to come over here
and after a week, all he did was sit with Karen and play Nintendo and talk with
her and it was like I wasn’t even there. All my boyfriend’s seem to end up
liking her better than me and I don’t want that again. I’m sorry, Jim. I’m glad
you came over.”
“Katina.”
“Be right there. Come on Jim. I feel a little bit better. I
don’t have anyone to talk to. I’m glad you let me talk and get it out. I hope I’m
not saying too much,” she said.
“Nope. Not at all,” I said.
As I followed her back into the bedroom, I looked at her
legs, her ass and I was getting turned on. I would love to get those pants off.
John stood beside the closet that was crammed with junk and
now he toyed with a broken lampshade. Karen talked on the phone and asked
Katina to pass her the cup of coffee John had made her. It was one o’clock in
the morning now. I sat on the corner of the bed and wondered if there was
anything living under the sheets. Then Karen snapped: “Johnny! This coffee’s
too strong. You know I don’t like my coffee this strong! I can’t believe you
Johnny. Where’s my coffee? You always
do this to me! You make it too strong. I don’t like it!”
“It’s all right,” said Katina. “He didn’t mean it. It was a
mistake. John why don’t you dump out her coffee?”
John mumbled something into the broken lampshade.
“I want my coffee! This is grotesque. I can’t believe you.
We don’t have too much left and you’re wasting it!”
“Then make some more,” said John.
“We only have a little left. You always do this Johnny.”
“We can buy some more when I get my check. Let me make a
little more,” said Katina.
As she got up to make coffee, I noticed the picture on the
wall above the bed of three cute kittens. John moved towards me, something on
his mind. “Look at this he said. An
ashtray that spins. What do you think, Jim? A spinning ashtray.”
I inspected it. The frame was made from the broken wire of
the lampshade and the bottom of it was an aluminum plate and a cup. It spun
easy.
“I like it. A lazy ashtray,” I said.
“I love fixing things— making things from junk. Check this
out. I found this unstrung guitar in the dumpster and put wire cable on them.
And these are just rocks from the parking lot. I chiseled them down,” he said.
“Do you read much?” I asked.
“History. I like history and I like science. Sometimes when
I get depressed I go into this world where we are not the only life form— but
just another race. People from other planets. They have proof you know of alien
visitors to earth and they keep coming back to study us. Not to hurt us but to
learn from us. They want us to succeed as a race because we are a very unique
race.”
Later that night, I was alone with Katina on the couch. It
was a bare living-room except for one bureau against the wall and a coffee
table. On the table was an unfinished puzzle of a unicorn in flight. Behind us,
through the window we could see the parking lot.
“I always have to put up my shield,” she said. “I’ve been
hurt so many times and I don’t want to get hurt again. I call it my bubble and
it protects me. It doesn’t let anything bad into my world. I can live without
hurt. It will take a long time before I let someone back inside my bubble— a
long time.”
We began to kiss and fondle in the right places. She began
to get caught up in the developing passion. As we groped one another she began
to whisper, as if she were alone, “Bubble. Where are you bubble? Where are you?
Don’t leave me.” I removed her pants easily and licked her pussy until she
came. It shot out in a burst as if from a garden hose. I had never experienced
anything like that before. Perhaps it was this bubble warning me to leave.
She called me the next night while I was working and asked
me to come by. So I did. We hung out on the couch. She hugged me as we lay down
in the dark. Then came the complaints again— Karen, John and ex-boyfriends. I
only caught pieces of it. I had already been through this before. I just wanted
to slip her panties off. I wanted to enter the bubble again.
However, the disturbance was unbelievable. In the middle of
some heavy necking, the kitchen light would snap on, illuminating the couch.
John exited Karen’s bedroom, his head newly shaved, dark eyebrows and face
unshaven— truly looked like a psychopath. Katina would get up and check in on
Karen in her dungeon. The clock read 2:30 am and I wondered if anyone slept
around here. I lit a smoke and joined him in the kitchen where John was
toasting two muffins for Karen. John started to clean the coffee pot.
“Isn’t this nice? I paid fifty bucks for it. You think it’s
worth it, Jim?”
I looked at it. He could have bought one at Sears for
twenty.
“It’s a little dirty,” said John.
The next night he went over, he asked Katina who paid for
the apartment. How could they live there if it was only her meager Burger King
salary coming in.
“The government,” she said.
“For both of them?”
“Yes. John was in an accident awhile back. His motorcycle
slipped off the Kangamagus Highway and he crashed. He suffered some sort of
brain damage. He can’t make it on his own. And Karen… well, I don’t really like
to talk about it,” she said.
As I waited for Katina to return from the bathroom, John
entertained me with his theories about junk and creativity. As he brought up
his many ideas he laughed maniacally. He promised that sometime soon he would
make a device that would make the phone ring louder. Soon he rose and walked
back into Karen’s room, the dungeon. Then he returned shortly and asked very
respectfully if BP needed help at the gas station.
“Yes. Badly,” I said.
“Can I get an application?”
“I’ll bring one by next time I come over.”
“Well… I haven’t worked for a long time. I don’t know how to
fill one out. Do you think you could help me?”
The next night I went out with my friends and it was a party
and we were drinking my favorite, Jim Beam. Of course I got pretty lit up and
flabby tongued. I called Katina and she invited me over. She was the only one
awake tonight and in the end I went over but was too drunk to appreciate the
lack of chaos and complaining. I said some real sweet things to Katina but I soon
fell asleep.
The next night she called and begged that I visit her at
Burger King. She had to talk to me. So I waited at a corner table and ate a
cheeseburger. Katina zoomed around the dining area, wiping tables, returning
trays and apparently pretending she didn’t see me. I refused to look her in the
eye and minded my own business. I had a sense that she was starting to like me
more than I wanted or expected her to. I was in no place in life where I wanted
a girlfriend. I just wanted to get laid, if that were even possible without the
complications of a relationship. I did feel guilty when she confided to me how
great it was to have someone to talk to. It just felt like she was moving too
close, too fast. So I sat there and watched her work in her Burger King
uniform. The uniform stripped her of her cuteness; she looked plain, perhaps
unattractive. She looked sweaty hot. Her fingers were greasy and food swill
dirtied her fingernails. Suddenly, she stopped, as if she were thinking the
whole time she had been cleaning and now she had something to say.
“I’m going crazy. I think I like being here working more
than I do at Karen’s. I’m so stressed out. Their damn cat meows all night
because no one feeds him. So I have to because no one else will. I have to do
everything. I can’t take it,” she said.
“Do something about it. Don’t let them boss you around,” I
said.
“You don’t understand. They’re not all there, you know. I
don’t have any place else to go. I can’t leave.”
“Threaten them. Pretend you will leave if things don’t
change. I think they need you more than you need them.”
“I’ve got no place else to go. I’m going crazy. I can’t
relax. I don’t sleep. They eat all the food I buy.”
I started to become disgusted with the situation really—
them, her and myself. Getting laid, like this, just wasn’t worth it. It would
be easier and less complicated to just jerk off. I told her I had to go and
that I would see her later. When I looked her squarely in the eye, I noticed a
broken pimple on the corner of her mouth. I kept my distance— I didn’t want a
hug or a kiss like a boyfriend and girlfriend do. I hated lipstick anyway.
Later that night, I stopped by again. Why did I keep going
over there? Was it just the sex? Some unrecognized loneliness in myself? Was it
the peculiarity of this situation? So after a round of more complaining, the
cat now fed, we fucked. I came in like twenty seconds and apologized. I told
her I was distracted and that next time I would perform better for her.
I was there the next night, like clockwork. Katina’s whining
was becoming more surreal and maddening. Instead of quiet long ramblings now
they were coming in short but loud random outbursts. As I waited for this
eruption to settle down, something weird happened. I had been sitting on the
couch waiting for Katina to find Karen’s pills when Karen emerged from the
dungeon. Up to this point, that is, since I had started to visit this dwelling,
I had never seen Karen off her feet and she emerged from the dungeon like some Tolkien
troll. It was almost as if the mattress was part of her beastly body, an
extension spilling out at her sides, her useless legs captured in thick pool of
formaldehyde beneath it. She slowly approached me, wearing underwear and
t-shirt. She went on how she thought I was really cool and that I could crash
here anytime and if I wanted to I could live there with them, rent-free. She
planned all kinds of events we could all do together like some big happy family—
and all I could wonder was that, in my amazement, was if Karen were good in
bed.
I stayed away for two nights thinking of ways to remove
myself from this situation. On the third night, I stopped by unannounced. On
the floor beside the couch was a small roll-up mattress and a guitar. Katina
explained that her ex-boyfriend was spending the night. He lived too far away to
send him home so late. Besides, he was only there to help fix Karen’s car. Of
course this caused an argument between us. She wanted me not Rob she said. I
listened to her babble. Why didn’t I just leave? This was my out and it was
guilt free. I felt a twang of jealousy. But I was not susceptible to lies. I
was no idiot. Katina seemed nervous, more fidgety than usual and hinted that I
should probably leave and call her tomorrow. No one was there— Karen, John and
Rob were out cruising the streets of Randolph. I threatened to stay and wait
for Rob.
“I don’t like being lied to,” I said.
“I don’t want a scene. I think you should go.”
I left. Fuck this whole silly schizo circus.
She tried calling me for two days but I ignored her phone
calls. On the third night, I went out drinking with my friends, Canadian Mist.
As usual I got trashed and as usual, I was at my most talkative when I was
trashed so I called Katina. It was three in the morning so I knew someone had
to be awake. Katina answered the phone. No I couldn’t come over. It was too
late she said. Fuck that I said: no one sleeps in that fucking place.
“You’re with Rob aren’t you? You’re a fucking cunt you know
that! You’re fucking him aren’t you. Fuck you. I don’t ever want to talk to you
again.”
When I woke in the morning, heavy headed and hungover, I
remembered what I had done and felt ashamed and sorry. I was an asshole.
-Darkened stirring sky... winds coming down the mountain...
a wild sea of butterflies— black dots, like bats raging toward us, evading
something… Camp Verde, somber still and the silence screams out from cliff to
cliff like old ghosts still at war… rebirth, déjà vu when in fact we were born
here… snow bowl reaches up and spreads down… Painted Desert… who might be home
back east?
-Dialogue from a tape-recording. A Dead show at Foxboro
stadium in probably 1989
(Slabs and Wabrek are tripping and very high and laughing—
we all are really out of our minds on acid.)
Wabrek: We got to stop in a restaurant and not laugh.
Hysterical laughter. On our radio plays the song Emotional
Rescue from an old WHDL recording of one of my shows.
Me: So who’s got cigarettes? I been dying for a smoke since
Dear Mr Fantasy… or Hey Jude, whichever.
Dave: I could go for a smoke.
Dano: Damn, I gotta burp, boy. It hurts.
Me: I wish I had this with me. About five times I went
racing back to find this thing but I said, ‘nah.’ I was tripping my socks off.
I’m still tripping but I’ve been tripping my fucking socks off. Have you been
tripping? I thought so.
(another excerpt later)
Dano: Best fucking day, man. Did you hear that music? Did
you hear it? Jimbo was that the best fucking show you ever seen or what? (his
voice groping and sluggish)
Jim: I farted and it sounded better than that did.
Dave: I talked to this nice… I talked to… this nice looking
chick from Washington. She was nice… she was fucking prime.
Laughter, more or less everyone
Dave: I talked to her for about twenty minutes. Then Babs
came in and fucking killed it.
Dano: Hey who the fuck are you!
(Wabrek screams loud and long.)
Dano: Oh Tarzan.
Dave: I thought of it. It was my idea. I took one.
Me: Karate Kid ate too many burgers.
Dano: There he goes. He’s out for the count.
(The DJ on the WHDL tape introduces another song, which is
me.)
Dano: Isn’t that typical conceited Utley. He’s taping a tape
of himself. If that’s not the god damn Utley attitude— listening to himself on
tape and trying to tape it.
(Wabrek, Slabs and Dano laugh mightily)
Me: Yeah! Listen to me. Yeah.
(more laughter)
Slabs: Listen to him!
Me: You wish I could be like you weren’t.
(Everyone sings along with Beast of Burden now, screams,
really as someone bangs loudly on Dano’s truck keeping a beat.)
-Oh thin summer
Ye fat winter
Fall.
Abandoned long
Time free form
Lines. Missed you
Forever; damn pursuits
Interrupt
Line, Image, Phrase.
The gale of creativity
Guides me through storms
Softly to dark shores.
-Angel broods alone
Unseen
Shadows.
I hear your name
It returns empty.
I wish I were you
And less the devil crash
And silences of sleep.
-Getting good enough to see all the horrible mistakes that I’ve
made.
-The commuter begins a series of poses— bent knee here,
cocked hip there and he wears a cool subdued face as the train bounces along
bustling Friday night Commonwealth Avenue. His poses struggle against the turbulence—
his skinny frame sways with every whipping turn. Then as if to defy the train
gods, he lets go, no hands, and his subdued cool still intact— a warrior of the
green line, an unflinching rebel in the face of train etiquette conformity. His
back arches just right, balancing the swerve and jostle, a quick foot
adjustment saves his pose and promises praise from train heaven. Such heroic
Nikes for immortal men. The train slows.
“Chestnut Hill.”
The door opens and in a flash, he is gone and I wonder: who
was that cool guy?
-Students mingle all over, of all colors and creeds.
Homeless in wheelchairs gather at the street corners. Cold November night along
traffic congested and rampant Massachusetts Avenue. Pedestrians take advantage
of red lights and bolt across the street. Long lines waiting to enter busy clubs.
Restaurants. Liquor stores. At train level of Harvard Square, a guitarist
entertains a few onlookers.
-Passport. Ticket agency for plane fare. Eurail pass info.
Medical shots. Tent and sleeping bag. Road atlas of Europe— from France to
Greece. Rain gear. New backpack. Europe bound this spring, baby orn summer!
-12/5/92— Wet snow flakes. I feel so alive this morning.
Last night heavy drinking in Somerville at Paul’s apartment. Now beneath the
bright Christmas garlands and red, green and white blinking lights strung
across Mass Ave, the hangover drums have ceased. Christmas season always
relaxes me. Paul and his girlfriend Donna and her friend have gone shopping at
The Garage but I wasn’t interested in shopping crowds. As I stroll along the
street, meter after meter, the snow falls a little lighter now.
Standing on the corner are ten men and women dressed in long coats, scarves and gloves. They hold hymn books and are singing beautiful Christmas carols. Some passer-bys , like myself, stop to listen and enjoy; others hurry by, late for appointments.
I stop into an art supply store and browse then hit
Strawberry’s Underground. Last I discover a little hidden bookstore off Brattle
Street and I purchase American Journals by Albert Camus.
I roam the street, high on Christmas spirit. Later I meet up
with Paul and Donna at Au Bon Pain for lunch. We sit outside under heavy sky
and pigeon’s surround our table, one particular huge and frightful bird who I
call Rotundra. He’s the bully and scares off the rest.
-1993
-The longer one stays, the more ghosts are met to return to
later.
-Somewhere along the way I screwed up. Around November 1992,
I decided to slow down on drinking and partying to maybe one night a week. I
stopped carrying around a condom in my wallet (which was kind of a joke anyways
because I wasn’t getting anything) as a way to avoid women trappings. I just
wanted to work, save my money and play in my dark room; Rich was working in construction now full-time and
had a girlfriend, Jeannie who he spent most of his free time with; Jamie had
since returned from LA and deeply involved with a girl named, Kelly; Bart is
preparing for architectural school and beginning a new high brow security
gig in Boston; Wabrek, as usual has Donna and his band, Auditory Imagery; Dano
still lived in California; and the party atmosphere swirls around 70 Allen
Street with Slabs and my brother and his buddies— Brams, Hen— Mal and his girl,
Lori; (not sure where Kevin had been though)basically it was still a full house
around here but I withdrew. My date with Europe took precedence over everything
at this point in my life. I was lonely yes but content in the knowledge that I
was doing the right thing. I certainly didn’t have the time or emotion to put
into with a girlfriend. About this time I started a job in Needham, a microfilm
business called Information Technology Incorporated.
Life and work went on steady. From 8-4 I prepped documents
to be microfilmed. I sat at my desk, counting the days until Christmas,
dreaming of good times ahead or replaying bittersweet memories some turned
sweet or sad by the passage of time— I listened to my Walkman player—
orchestras of Christmas music. My imagination wandered. At 10 o’clock and 3 o’clock
we had our break, usually out on the loading dock to smoke. At lunch we went to
Brother’s Pizza across the street. Chats with the my fellow workers— Rob, the
young kid from Hingham or Ray, the old timer with lots of stories. Sometimes I’d
just study all the names on the Hertz account paperwork looking for celebrities’
names. Eventually I started to get my friends' jobs working with me too— Slabs,
Bart, Mal and Tommy Blaine; then much later, Rod, Clint and my brother. I got
along with everyone. Work was easy and I was saving.
At night, I developed photographs in the dark room. Once a
week I’d get drunk with the boys i.e. whoever was around. By January we had
been pounded by a couple of good snowstorms. I brought my camera into work and
photographed the landscape, people while at break as the guys talked about the
Bruins, girls and summer concerts; Ray and Ed (a 50 year old Max Creek diehard
) were fond of discussing politics, economy, Presidential race— basically the
state of affairs.
There was one very hot girl, a red head who worked there,
Kristen. All the young kids vied for her attention. She was cool enough and we
got along well. She basically sat at the front desk and answered the phone all
day. She told us that she had a boyfriend but there was a rumor that she was
banging Jim, the boss who was married with children. It wasn’t until late
December when they hired another hot young girl, Jolene that the guys turned
their focus away from Kristen toward Jolene. The contrast between
Kristen’s formal business clothes and Jolene’s habit of wearing tight shirts
and stretchy pants was slam dunk. She was also happily married I was told.
Jim chose me for more responsible tasks. Often he’d drag me
away from the Hertz room to find important missing documents or take rides with
Joe, the happy-go-lucky resident shipping and receiving guy. After Bart quit, I
became Jim’s favorite grunt boy. I liked getting away from the monotony besides
there were whispers that I was going to be trained to be manager of the Hertz
account. However I was honest with my supervisor Wayne and Jim. What would be
the point? I was going to Europe come late spring. When I returned home I might
go back and finish UMass Boston.
One day at break, all the guys were huddled around Jolene,
the center of attention as usual. She was spinning yarns of wild nights at bars
or the beach and her crazy Roslindale friends. She was a firecracker, man. I
kept my distance and just listened. I wondered how a girl who lived this crazy
lifestyle ever got married. In the middle of one of her wild tales, she paused
and I realized the irony of the story and asked kiddingly,” are you my sister?”
She roared joyously at my timing.
Slowly we became friends at work. She told me she loved
Greek Mythology as well (one of my favorite reads). She knew I loved
photography and said she had been a model once. If I ever needed a model, all I
had to do was ask. I told her I wrote parodies sometimes. Immediately she
volunteered to help me write one I had planned on for a Greek myth. Whoa, I
thought. She sure seemed to have a bit of free time for a married chick. I
figured maybe she didn’t have many creative friends. Or she was just rambling
on.
One Saturday night as I was getting ready to hit South Boston for a party, I received a phone call from Kim in New Jersey. I’d been avoiding contact with her since the last trip to New York. She had hurt me pretty good. For some reason I didn’t hang up. I sort of felt like talking to her and five hours later, we hung up and I was drunk and in love with her all over again. We began the conversation, drinking over the phone and reliving Virginia Beach. Her boyfriend was out for the night. She loved me she said and wished I lived in Jersey and that she’s missed me ever since I left. She never realized that I would actually take the time to go to New Jersey to see her. Deep conversations. When I told her about me and Ruth it disappointed her. Five hours later her boyfriend got home and she had to go. We agreed that at the end of February she would come north to visit me for the week-end and she hoped we could sleep together. “Don’t go out and get a girlfriend,” she said.
“I wouldn’t worry about that.”
That Monday I was beaming. When I saw Jolene I told her
about my phone call. I tell her that maybe I’ll take a ride to Jersey next
week-end. She says maybe she and her husband will go with me— after all she
said, he worked for Howard Johnson Company and could score good deals on
hotels.
Wednesday, Jolene asked if she could give me a ride home
from work. She had wanted to borrow my copy of the Iliad and I kept promising
and forgetting to bring it in for her. Why not? I told Ray, my usual ride, that
she was taking me home today. He punched my arm lightly. “Watch out. She’s a
wild one,” he said. We both laughed.
The drive home was nice. I had always thought of Roxbury and
Roslindale as slum towns but I was happily surprised to see that, on our tour
of back roads that it was a sort of nice community— well, I caught a good vibe
from them anyway. Big houses and bigger lawns and there was this one street, it
seemed electrified by the snow on the tangles of branches ahead of the
darkening colors of the sky as we followed a long and windy road to Randolph.
She talked about love and marriage. She was proud of her husband for working
two jobs. She seemed happy. I congratulated her on her marriage. Yet I detected
a hint of loneliness. I didn’t dwell on it. She was incessant about getting out
of the house to do things she said and besides, her husband was never around. We
abandoned the conversation about love. “Really,” I said. I’m not interested in
a relationship right now. It will only confuse things.”
“Yeah but love usually sneaks up on you when you’re not
looking for it,” she said.
We stopped off at a bar near her house to cash our ITI
checks.
At my house, Mal and Dave were in the driveway. “Why the
hell did you quit for?” she asked.
They just laughed. We went into the house and introduced her to my dad who was watching TV. We went upstairs to my room; my sister caught a peek as we passed her room. In my room she immediately gets comfortable on my bed. She asked to see some of my photographs. “Sit down,” she said.
“I sit down for 8 hours a day at work. I can stand,” I said,
smiling.
She told me about the kinds of clothes she could model and
backgrounds. When can I photograph her? she asked. She really wanted to do
this. She was fast. Maybe next week-end I told her. Maybe we could take a drive
to Blue Hills or New Hampshire. She was intent on getting this done.
At seven o’clock I politely told her I had to do some
writing and so we called it a night. She went outside to warm up her car. As I
was going outside to say goodbye, my sister her poked her head out of her room
with a big curious face. “Who’s that?”
I laughed. “Don’t worry. She’s married.”
That week-end I printed photographs and hung on with Rich
filming some video skits. I told him about Jolene and about how she seems to be
going out of her way for my attention but who was married. I asked him what he
thought.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Go with it I guess. Suzette was
married but we had an understanding.”
“Aw man, I’m probably reading too much into this,” I said.
The next Thursday she asked if she could come over again to
see some of my writing and maybe she said, we could write something together.
So at 4:30, me and Slabs waited for her to finish up some typing in the
production room. She tossed me the keys to her car to warm it up— it was a beat
up, 78 Dodge Aspen. It was cold out and I hoped it had working heat. As we
waited, I asked Slabs about her. He said that she and him went to a Wargasm
show when she first came to ITI. They worked in the same room and both loved to
talk so I could see it. Then, I said it. I told him I’d love to hook up with
her. He warned me to not even think about it. She’s happily married, he said.
She talks about her husband all the time. Of course it didn’t seem so cut and
dry on my end. I took his advice though and after tonight I wouldn’t bother
with her anymore— no more rides home, no future modelling dates and no joint
writing projects. I was feeling too weird.
When we got to my house, Slabs stayed downstairs and played
with Kyle, my sister’s new baby boy, born back in September 92. My dad watched
his TV. We went to my room and I couldn’t shake this feeling that I was starting
to like her. As she read some of my stuff, she looked genuinely interested in
what I wrote unlike Anne who I used to think had no idea what she was reading
when I gave her stuff to read. I felt truly comfortable with Jolene. I broke
out my road journal and she read selected parts. I had never showed anyone
except Rich, who was in many of them, these private journals. As she sat on my
bed reading, leaning against the wall she turned and lay down, head on my
pillow and stomach on my mattress. “Doesn’t my butt look like a speed bump?”
she asked. We laughed.
“No, it’s fine, really.”
As I sat on a chair across from her, I broke out my camera
and snapped some head shots of her. We talked about life and dreams.
Slabs wandered upstairs and we decided to order a pizza. I
had a little Jim Beam and made a drink. Jolene declined. Slabs was up for a
drink. I had a second. Me and Jolene started writing a parody about the people
at ITI. She wrote down all our ideas.
“Let’s drink tonight,” I said. They both agreed. I called
Paula and asked if it was okay if we came by. Sure, she said. Jolene wanted to
finish the parody so we brought my notebook with us. We drove to the liquor
store for whiskey and beer despite her
not feeling like drinking. At this point I huddled with myself. I know what I
can be like drunk. I ordered myself not to even think about putting any moves
on her— I put a block up in my mind. I did not want to make a fool of myself, embarrass
her— then have to deal with it at work dodging from the stupid awkwardness of a
drunk action. If I could just get through tonight, it was all over, this
strange blossoming relationship.
At Paula’s she called her husband and told him she was hanging
out with some friends from work. Jolene and Paula, like I thought, got along
fine. We drank and wrote more ITI ideas down into my notebook. We laughed. We
exaggerated the personality traits of our coworkers, mostly the annoying ones
and Ed who was a parody waiting to happen with his blind devotion to everything
Max Creek. I mentioned the funny sound of the word Scallions and bam, Scallions
was a character. We took turns writing paragraphs. Paula looked on laughing
probably not sure what to make of us. I had Jolene call Polaris Pizza and order
a Scallion pizza to be delivered to Anne’s house. It was all a good fun time
until Paula’s son, Brett woke up crying and sick. So we left. We drove to Slabs
house to drop him off. He happened to live across the street from Anne’s house.
We roared as we watched the delivery guy, Pappas, walk to the top step with a
scallion pizza in hand only to be sent back with his sad pizza.
Me and Jolene hung out in my room. We took some more
pictures. I was happily buzzed and a little flirtatious— lying on her, playing
with her hair and just goofing around. It was passed midnight. I laid down on
the bed. She took a marker and drew two black dots on my chin. When I opened
and closed my mouth, it looked like a funny face. Then I drew on her. She to me
again, this time with a blanket over my eyes for full effect. Then it happened.
She began kissing me, passionately. We lay on my bed, shut off my light and
made love.
She slipped out of my house at 4:00am. I was no longer
buzzed but wide awake and incredibly happy. It felt like a dream. What just
happened? Was this a one night stand or an affair?
I never woke up on time for work so I called in sick. I
remembered Jolene had a dentist appointment and she wasn’t at work. I could
just hear the rumor mill churning— especially with Slabs more than likely
filling in the guys with details of our night together. Late in the afternoon
she called me from her bathtub. She asked how I felt. I told her I wasn’t sure
really. In my mind, whatever I felt, I couldn’t comprehend. My outlook was to
just go with it, a moment at a time. I wanted to be with her no matter what
happened in the end. She said she’d come by later. We hung up and I noticed the
calendar— it was Friday, January 22, and there was a new moon. As January came
to a close, I had a new companion, a new situation.
The following Saturday, I hung out in my dark room and
printed photographs. At 11:30 pm my mom opened the cellar door and called me
upstairs for a phone call. It was Jolene and she sounded distraught. She was
alone. Her husband Paul hadn’t come home yet. He should have been home by now
she said. I told her if she wanted to come by she could. She did. I snuck her
through the basement door and into my dark room. On my radio, Been caught
stealing by Jane’s Addiction played. She looked so incredibly sad and
beautiful. I hugged and kissed her; she cried a little. At this moment I knew
we had something— I didn’t know what but there was something. She said she was
leaving Paul and that it was over. She cried more. I wasn’t sure if she was serious
or not. I saw my life turning— I had come to a surprise twist in the road— the
kind that makes life a wonderful thing and dangerous too.
The next few weeks were spent being in love. I loved being
with her. At night, as my parents slept, I’d sneak her into my room where we
fooled around til all hours of the night; at 6:15 she’d sneak back out in the
snowy mornings. Then she rented a room on Bigelow Street in Quincy. She’d go
there, shower and we’d meet up at work, secretly winking at each other. We
tried keeping it a secret— some figured it out and I confirmed it to only a
select few.
“I’m going to terrorize you at work Monday,” she said.
“Oh yeah? How?”
“I’m going to wear that tight striped shirt.”
“No not that,” I laughed.
“That’s right and you won’t be able to do anything about it,”
she said, smiling.
“Oh man. I’ll have a woody all day.”
At noon we ate lunch at Brothers Pizza. I’d cheer her up
after a tough day of ITI backstabbing. The other women were not fond of her and
talked about her behind her back. They gave her zero credit— had no respect for
her. When I saw her at work she busted her ass and had just about learned all
the tasks in the production room. She whizzed by— documents or microfilm in
hand from machine to machine. I mean she talked a lot, it was her nature but
she worked and didn’t goof off. I thought she did much more than what was
expected of her for six bucks an hour. Was everybody blind? No one saw that she
was working hard. They just viewed her as a piece of ass.
Smoke breaks on the loading dock, thick snow and patches of
ice. She’d stand beside me wearing my Bruins jacket shaking in the cold, her
big brown eyes full of love. When no one was around I’d try to sneak a kiss. I
always expected that one day her husband would be waiting for us in the parking
lot, hiding in his car until we went to lunch, holding hands or kissing and
then he and his buddies would spring out of nowhere and beat me to a pulp. She
told me how happy she was to get out of Roslindale and away from Paul who
apparently did a lot of cocaine. There was a lot of drugs and partying. She
felt good, healthy and clean.
After work on the long drive home, as I drove, she laid her head on my lap and I stroked her hair. We cuddled in bed. Sometimes as we lay together she would cry. The reality of the situation sometimes got to her, an empty feeling, the uncertainty of her new life after two years of marriage and stability and the comfort of their home. She was scared and I understood. One night in bed I said that maybe I should back off and let her get her shit together with Paul. She thought for a moment and said no. She wanted to be with me. I didn’t expect her to fall out of love with Paul anytime soon; just as I expected she’d probably leave me some day and go back to him. Unfortunately, as time passed I really began to fall in love with her and eventually, any hang-ups about her leaving disappeared and I felt safe because I knew she would always be there for me. Anne had fucked me over pretty good with her lying and cheating so trust was something I was not good at. But in time, I began to trust in her and believe in us. She was my lover and friend too— a new concept for me. I still wanted to travel but I wanted her by my side so I could show her how big and wonderful this world was.
Well, Rich was only working a day or two a week now with
winter work at a crawl. He broke up with Jeanie and continued to go to court
ordered AA classes three nights a week. Jamie was still madly in love with
Kelly and they were making future plans. He was living with her in Quincy,
playing the father role to her kids and taking them sledding. Bart was in
school and with a friend of his, Cody they shared an apartment together. He
also started dating Paula which was quite a surprise as they hit it off one night
when I brought them to the radio station. I filmed Wabrek’s band one night at Deringer’s in Brockton. He and
his band, Auditory Imagery, were putting all their energies into selling their
first compact disc. When I saw him at the Hanover studios, they were having a
huge party to promote the disc. Jolene got a chance to talk to old friends she
knew her were there drinking and partying.
The week before Jolene moved to Quincy was anxious. After
work we drove to their place in Roslindale so she could pick up her clothes and
other personal belongings. “Don’t worry. He’s at work,” she said. However if he
did come home, I had to pretend that I was Greg from Quincy who worked at ITI.
I was helping her move. Quite the moments, waiting for her as she ran around
the apartment collecting her stuff.
The next night she wanted a drink so we stopped at O’donnel’s
Pub in Randolph. I see a few familiar faces from the past but these days I stay
away from Randolph bars. Jake is there, a short roundish guy whom is legendary,
I hear for being an obnoxious drunk. He is pretty calm right now. Me and Jolene
drink beers and play pinball. Jake stops by our table and we drink and talk.
After a while Jolene starts to looks sad then starts to cry.
She excuses herself to call Paul. She returns in fifteen minutes, teary-eyed.
It’s definitely over, she says. She just wants to go to him now to talk. No, I
say. You’re too drunk to drive to Roslindale, I say. She argues with me but in
the end, I talk her out of it. After she collects herself, Jake offers to smoke
a bone with us. She loves weed and jumps at the chance. In Jake’s car they
smoke; she tries really hard to get me to smoke but I’m stubborn on it. She
offers up a kiss in the dark. I don’t refuse those. Instead of a kiss she
blasts a shotgun full of smoke into my face and she laughs like a maniac. At
the end of the night I take her home to my bed.
Bigelow Street. She moved into a boarding house for women.
It doesn’t keep me from sneaking into her room though. At night, she went in
first, unlocked the door and the bolt upstairs to her room. I tip-toed up the
creaky stairs, checked the corridor and slipped into her room. Most nights there
were people in the kitchen beside the bathroom so if I had to go the bathroom I
would piss into a two-liter bottle. Her room had an old radiator that blasted
heat and it was always too hot in her room, so hot that we often opened up the
window to the frigid winter air to even things out.
One day we took off work so I could drive her to Boston City
Hospital for tooth surgery. She was very nervous. I dropped her off and went
home to wait for the hospital to call me. By the time they called, it was
snowing, falling fast and 93North was slow moving. At the hospital, I got lost
trying to find the floor she was on. I wandered around for fifteen minutes
searching for any distinctive marking or clue but hospitals all look the same.
When I found her, she was wearing a blue johnny, sitting in
a wheel chair, doped up, pale and tired— her face bloated like a chestnut and
her cheek was black and blue. It was an awkward moment and didn’t know what to
say. “Jo, you look like you were in a war,” I said.
“I just had surgery. What’s your excuse?”
I laughed. My little firecracker.
At work, we were given overtime and we took advantage. The
Hertz account was in bad shape. ITI was on the verge of losing it because the
work was not up to date with the contract. By now I had become a kind of assistant
supervisor in training and Jim entrusted me with the keys. I would come on
week-ends, open the office and if people wanted to work, they came. Well one Saturday
morning, I prepared to go in. Jolene had slept over my house and had been up
drinking late. She was too hung over to work so I went in alone, grabbed the
keys to her car and drove to Needham. A few people made it in— Slabs, Ray, and
Milton and some of the older women. At noon, Jolene called and asked if I could
pick her up so she could come in for a few hours. There wasn’t a lot of gas in
her car so I figured it was a good excuse to use the company van. I always used
it to pick up mail from the post office. I grabbed the key and figured I’d
sneak out for a bit, pick her up and come right back. I punched out on the
computer. No one saw me leave— or so I thought. Sue Hathe (one of Jolene’s
detractors) was at her desk in the other department.
I flew home at 80 mph and picked her up, drove to Quincy so
she could shower. She was worried I might get in trouble. I assured her it was
no big deal. After her shower she stood beside the bed, naked and white and we
made love for a quick hour.
At ITI, no one said anything. Only Milton was there now and
one of the sales reps. I figured I’d cover my ass Monday morning anyway and
tell Wayne what I did. Me and Jolene were the last to leave. I set up the bins
for Monday.. I cleaned up the huge mess of documents loosely sorted on desks—
matched up sorted batches of RT documents with their corresponding dates. I
cranked the radio as I worked. Day turned to night. Jolene typed and made some
calls to friends she hadn’t talked to since she left Paul. I asked her to make
love to me on the desk. She declined with a smile. At 9:00 pm we left.
Jim and the two owners, Hogan and Zugami were in New Orleans
on a business trip. That Monday I asked Wayne if I could talk to him. I told
him that I borrowed the van Saturday. He looked me in the eye.
“I know,” he said.
“You what?”
“I know. Everybody knows.”
He said he was disappointed in me. He said to just put it
behind me and not let it happen again and he’d drop the whole subject. I was
pissed that someone leaked it first but happy that everything was cool.
On Wednesday, the big guys returned from New Orleans. I
heard Jim talking just outside the Hertz room then he came in.
“Hey Jim. No banjo on your knee,” I joked.
“I want to see you in my office,” he said.
On my way to his office, I passed the Hertz room and made
eye contact with my brother. I raised my finger to my neck as if to cut my
throat. Fuck. He knew and was pissed. I thought Wayne “forgot about
it.” Now he knew. The whole fucking world knew. I had no idea what to say to
him. I just borrowed it. I was probably going to get yelled at. That was his
way. I despise getting yelled at. Then Wayne walked in.
“Wayne. Does he know what happened?”
“I had to tell him. I had to cover my own butt. Let him say
what he’s going to say and that’s that. Don’t worry about,” he said.
Jim came in and I sat down facing him. Wayne stood to my
right and now, to my left was Sue Collins, the bitch in charge of the
production room. It felt like a firing squad or a hanging. Jim’s face seemed
tired, his eyes were glossy and red.
“What you did was wrong and irresponsible… I appreciate all
your hard work… I have no choice but to terminate your employment… collect your
things and punch out.”
I got up, said nothing to no one and left his office. I was
hurt, shocked. I grabbed my radio and cassette bag from the break-room and gave
my tapes to Jolene. I told her what happened. She gave me the car keys and I
said I’d pick her up later. That was it. The end of ITI. I’d been there since
October and I enjoyed working there— despite all the chatter and backstabbing
that seemed to increase when Jolene was hired.
I wondered how this was going to affect my trip to Europe. I
had been saving and counting on this salary to put me over the top. Just two
weeks before Jolene and I hooked up I was going to get my passport. Things were
all fucked up now. It sure seemed the idea of Europe might have to be postponed—
though I must admit, each day with Jolene, my adventure had been sliding away
from me. I was sad for things lost and pissed I had to start over with a new
job. I was bringing home over two hundred bucks a week and was in line for that
promotion and raise. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. A few months prior, life was so right.
Now it was all sliding away. But I had Jolene.
Not only that, two weeks before I was fired me and Jolene
had talked about sharing an apartment. The boarding home sucked. Meanwhile, Rob
from work was splitting up with his girlfriend and he was actively looking for
a new place to live. I wanted to get out of my parents too. In my mind, I
wanted to live with Jolene. At this point, I was head over heels in love. The
idea of sleeping beside her every night excited me. I had felt the first pangs
that first day I moved her into the boarding house. After I brought her stuff
in, she unpacked. I lay on the bed staring out the window wanting to get out of
70 Allen and get on my own again.
So the three of us decided to get an apartment together and then a week later I was fired. At least I had money in the bank plus a remaining check from ITI, a good sized check due to a lot of overtime. March rolled around. I borrowed Jolene’s car and went job hunting.
After work, we
checked out some nice apartments in Quincy but they were too much— too much
because I wasn’t working yet. I called about a place in Stoughton and made an
appointment for Saturday and despite a huge snowfall on Friday we still met the
owner. It was an easy sell to me— I liked the area— a supermarket, hardware
store, gas station and fast food all within walking distance. In an emergency,
70 Allen was only a seven minute drive. What I really loved about it was the
view from the living room. The back yard had a thin receding line of woods
where squirrels jumped from tree to tree and the fresh snow only enhanced the
view. I dreamt of baby chipmunks, chattering Blue Jays and wandering cats in the
sun. I pictured a writing desk at this window.
Jolene wasn’t crazy about it. She’d just been living in a
condo the past two years. This was just a place to live for 615.00 a month,
heat and water included, two bedrooms. She came around. She said if she was
going live here she was going to decorate it how she wanted it. I had no
problem and we threw down a deposit.
I applied at all the food services and convenient markets in
the neighborhood. Shaws hired me for three nights a week, from midnight to 8 in
the morning at five dollars an hour. As I filled out tax forms, I thought at
least it was a job to hold me over until I found something better. I was to
start in two days. When I was at 70 Allen I realized I would be foolish to take
the night job. Five an hour, three graveyard shifts a week. The next day I was
hired by D’Angelos in North Randolph at 5.50 an hour delivering subs, Monday
through Friday from ten in the morning to four in the afternoon. That was a
huge weight gone. Jolene didn’t seem to mind that I used her car as long as I
maintained the oil.
Moving into the apartment was a bitch. We signed the lease
March 8 and we had wanted in immediately. I spent the week driving all over—
Randolph, Quincy, Roslindale and Hyde Park (where her mother lived). The roads
were snow and ice. More uncomfortable moments in her husbands mother’s house as
we carted off some of her belongings and small furniture. I expected him to
walk in at any moment. By the following week, I was mentally exhausted. Seemed
like she had stuff scattered all over Massachusetts. I was dying to finish. On
Wednesday we spent our first night there— me and Jolene had our bed and Rob had
his and it was all good.
Our first weekend we were hit with another big snowstorm. We
didn’t even have our furniture yet, nothing really. Saturday morning I looked
out the window and it was snowing lightly. Happily I got dressed then drove to
70 Allen to get a few things. Jolene and Rob had been up late drinking and were
now hungover. By the afternoon the snow
was clumping and I headed back to our apartment with a VCR. Most stores were
closed now because of the storm. It raged all around me. I was having trouble
seeing the road and the car hit a pile of slush and I slid back and forth
momentarily. The winds were picking up now too. Snowbanks formed above the
curbs and sidewalks. White blind streets. Long rows or tire markings. Love New
England weather. Eventually I made it back, overcoming getting stuck at a few
stop signs.
On the job front, I had started D’Angelos on Wednesday and
by Friday, decided that I hated it. They had just begun the delivery service on
my first day and it was slow. I found myself sweeping floors, changing trash
bags and swilling dishes; I had to wear an ugly blue uniform and cap. They
taught me the D’Angelos way to make subs and at lunch time madness they threw
me behind the counter to make subs; I constantly kept an eye out for phone
orders and they had a second driver waiting with me. The manager, Paula is a
complete bitch towards me. I just want to take her face and press her tongue on
the grill. I persevere. I sweep the outside walkway. I feel like a total
failure, a goof in this uniform and bright green jacket. I hope no one sees me
as they drive by: ”Hey look! It’s Jim, the sub boy. He does all right for
himself ha-ha-ha.”
Well there I was. Now I had to get used to a few things like
the use of pronouns— no more me and mine but we and ours. I took a long bath
and felt good. I lay down, on my back, legs spread open, my cock floating on
the water around the soap bubbles. I thought about Hawaiian seascapes.
That night I had a dream that I was working at the Wash N
Dry again. It is filled with new washing machines and dryers. I’m in the office
and Al, my boss is there and we talk. He says he has a sister who lives in
Michigan and he could have hooked me up with a place to stay and a job. He didn’t
think I was that serious.
The dream/scene shifts
Al and a customer are on their knees cleaning an air vent on
the floor. Another customer walks by, carrying a large pizza; then another tosses
out his last two slices. I notice the color of the dryers are different, once
orange now they are green and white with blue and pink flower patterns.
Another dream: an upcoming camping trip or simple getaway to
Maine or New Hampshire. Jolene was coming and Rod and Dawn as well as Kevin and
Lori. We all sat around, waiting for someone to motivate us to get up and go.
From nowhere Anne comes walking up to me, smiling and flirtatious with that
loving tone in her voice to soften me up and win me over. She wants to come on
the trip. She tries to kiss me. I hold her back and tell her that I’m taking
Jolene, not her. Stay away from me, I said.
-What form free form;
the man jumped over the cow
to grab a spoon,
the man jumped over
the cow
to grab a spoon.
-The boy steps outside and the wind rushes through his hair
and whips up frost as he dreams of worlds far away. Leaving behind the shadow
trail for the western sun, the hero’s run.
Cold streets of New
York City, The Times crinkles at his feet; he crashes in a strange room with an
Indian who spoke of life in empty ways.
Mississippi stroll to the Arch, passed a homeless man with a
cup and he stares hard through the Arch, back toward the East but it was too
late now.
Then he would meet a girl and fall in love.
-In the news: Moscow Russian’s Congress of People’s Deputies
meets in an emergency session today to consider impeachment of Boris N. Yeltsin…
the violence in Northern Ireland claimed more victims yesterday with the
killing of four Roman Catholic workers… Sarajevo, Bosnia-Kerzegovenia— as
Serbian forces maintained their pressure on the town of Srebrenica yesterday, a
senior UN official warned that the Bosnian government’s remaining enclaves in
the east could fall within three weeks and charged that the Serbs had started a
new round of “ethnic cleansing” (Serbian euphemism for emptying newly captured
area of its Muslim inhabitants by deportation, intimidation or massacre or
combination of all three) in areas they had seized.
-At Blackstone River spring, the moon shone through the
trees like a ball of blue light rolling across the wild night. The girl in the
tent had been dreaming.
“Go with purple,” she said. “Before I become a mother.”
-Can’t unlock the door, stuck
in mid-stream thick
canal walls
what’s-it-all-about-mud-castles.
Free form nothing
puddles splashing
worms turn memory inside out
dark caves echo
muffled by night, slip
on rocks, spilling out from black,
a crimson light
towards it he goes.
-Life goes on and after having quit D’Angelos after a week
and a half, I seek work again. Me and Jolene fought heavily on this one and we
nearly broke up. We made up. I promised her not to up right quit again. Money
was scarce now. Unknown to me, and she not realizing I quit, she quit ITI. She
could no longer take the backstabbing and the talk about me and her. It’s just
as well— everyone was going to get laid off eventually.
I had no experience whatsoever but Papa Ginos hired me as a
grill cook. I knew the general manager, Don and he hooked me up. However he
could only give me 4.75 an hour. Hey it sucked but it was money coming in and I
figured grill experience might help me down the road. It was five days a week,
at least, 9 to 3. Jolene let me use the car to drive to work at the Randolph
Papas as she contented herself with staying home, watching soaps and phoning
friends and her husband who she now talked to on a regular basis as they remain
friendly.
A week or so later, Jolene was hired as a waitress at
Friendly’s in Randolph. Her first night during her training I stopped by and
ordered the famous quesadillas I’d heard about. I sat in the non-smoking
section where she was working and she sees me and smiles, happy to see me. She
comes to my table, notebook in hand and followed by Tonya, the assistant
manager training her.
“Hello, My name is Jim and I will be your customer for the
evening,” I said.
She laughs. “I’m going to get you Mister.”
She wears the ugliest drab puke green uniform with a navy
blue shirt beneath it and in no way a reflection of the body beneath it.
-In my free time I kept up my journal contemplating images
and truths. I was happy living with Jolene and things were going good. The sex,
the companionship eased my thoughts and made me comfortable. At our apartment
or at Friendly’s drinking coffee or smoking, I’d write in my journal— phrases
that I would dissect or make them live, snatching them from oblivion,
preserving them like a photograph:
Since she got home she has been cranky, uninspired and distancing herself from me. She barks at me. She pouts like I’m an incredible dork in the way of her happiness. I have so many questions. She’s angry all the time. I don’t know. I’m miserable. When she goes back to her husband I’ll just split to California. I’ll never want to see her again. This is too hard. If she stays with me, in the long run maybe this is all for the best. Maybe we just need time away from each other.
A T bus rattles up the street; CD players opens in a cloud
of dust; the dilapidated wooden fence; gingivitis smile; the coffee cup
transformed into a door knob; the laundry basket and clothes spilling out like
chocolate syrup; the weight of it… like a pallet of dead batteries and blustery
and boisterous; the desire to be of free mind yet to love blindly, ironic and
objective; the dreamer dreams on two levels— an inner personal variety of dream
myths, of symbols deep with meaning and second, the dreamer who creates his own
myth, vocation or career… once in a dream week I remember crucial events,
numbers, places and characters and then try and seek out their significance and
trying to lift the shroud of symbolism intent on it’s true meaning but, if not
at least, dreams are entertaining and create a sense of wonder and fiction in a
surely domesticated life….
“Finish your coffee and take off. All right?” Jolene asked.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
… a camera is a monkey pod tree
a butter knife is a TV antennae
a bottle of ketchup is a flashlight
the old wallpaper, a lonely man in sandals
pack of smokes is a plastic fork
a pothole, an ounce of hash
a Christmas tree is a shiny icicle
a full moon, a low sun
the hopper is his throne
a menu is the key to good TV reception
shiny happy people are a legion of robo-cops
hot buttered legs
“I was working 85 hours a week. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t
sleeping. I think she read my diary.”
“So, it’ll hurt more. Doesn’t mean I can’t handle it.”
-Thunder that frightens dogs and children— ahead, a
lightning bolt lights the sky in a flash; this puzzle originated in Europe; a
fireside favorite in revolutionary colonial America; the man that shakes your
hand is the man who hands you a paycheck; scattered balloons over the sea; ice
cream and frozen yogurt, a Friendly treat; snoopy man on all fours in the big
shadow; the crash of a fork rack splashing on the floor and heads turn and one
says,” she’s such a friendly waitress”; the paragraph he wrote about dreaming
lacked focus; someone asked him how he was doing and he thought long and hard
as if it were a challenging question but he was tired and exhausted and his
thoughts rolled together like a ball of frazzled yarn and he had nothing, just a
familiar white blank— was he dead and hadn’t realized it? No memory, no plans
or schedules, just loose broken phrases and nothing else, no answers. Then he
simply walked away from his old friend, confident in his response.
-At Papa Ginos I often spotted old teachers of mine as they
crossed the street for lunch. I felt a little foolish, behind the grill in my
red shirt and hat— an unaccomplished grill boy. Since leaving for Hawaii, a
year ago, I hadn’t been too concerned about the future, about any career, other
than travel. Now in this new situation in life, it gnawed at me that someday I
had to get on with real life and make something of myself.
One day I ran into Mr. Pierra, my old Humanities and Creative
Writing teacher— a class I aced with minimal effort. He was one of my favorite
teachers at Randolph High (back then I had confided to him that I wanted to
travel the world and write about it). I approached him and he remembered me.
“I finally did it,” I said. My Kerouacian-like journey— New
York, St Louis, Denver, California and Mexico. It was great.”
“That’s good,” he said.
“I kept a journal.”
“Publish it,” he said.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to be redundant or cliché. It’s
all been said and done before. Writing is still a hobby with me now— like it
was in High School.”
He bit down on his cheeseburger. His eyes still burned with
cynicism.
“How are things across the street?” I asked.
“Crazy. I’ve got kids in there well below the stupid meter.”
“I thought you got laid off.”
“I did for a year. I’m back now.”
“I’m thinking about going your route— teaching,” I said.
“Well… then teach math. It’s easy. Kids will drive you crazy
trying to teach them English. This is my twentieth year teaching. Still drives
me nuts.”
I wonder about the bullshit that High School teachers put up
with and the low pay, layoffs and general crappy teenager attitudes. Something
drives them on. There is clearly some sort of passion to educate the kids.
-Time to dream— that mind-set, pre-action. Undo the
lengthening cobwebs in soul. Too busy domesticated and in love. Free the mind.
Take of the comfortable shoes… again.
-At work, I’m smoked by the lunch time crowd. The heat from
the grill makes me sweat. On sunny spring days, like today, the restaurant
fills quickly, bulldozes through and rolls away just as abrupt. I flip burgers,
chop steak, throw down hot dogs and sprinkle vegetables across the sizzling
grill; it hisses and smokes. I throw down another order. I microwave spaghetti,
ziti and ravioli. I slice sub rolls and layer them with cold turkey, hot ham or
smother them with seafood salad. The fryolater is constantly on the move— French
fries, mozzarella sticks and chicken parm. “Serving,” I call out above the
chaos. As the orders slow down I wipe down the stainless steel countertops littered
with lettuce, mushrooms, tomatoes, bread crumbs and sauce. Then I scrape the
grease and burnt cheese from the grill into the grease pit where the excess
grease is as black as dirty car oil.
-“Where could I come up with five hundred bucks real quick?”
“Deal drugs… the lottery.”
The writing chore is the thrifty hobby. Kids eat free and
adults pay the way.
Onramp, hum of trucks. Hope dies for the weary hitchhiker in
hot La Mesa.
-The apartment wasn’t that bad. Nothing really bothered me.
At times, everything seemed to bother her. Rob didn’t give a shit one way or
another. I mean it was far from perfect— the paint job was shitty, white
streaks left behind on the brown kitchen cabinets and outlets were painted over
and the screw holes where the blinds were going to go were not very supportive.
The hallway outside our door echoed of footsteps and the door that lead outside
banged loudly when it shut. Upstairs, especially in the morning we hear the
thud of footsteps as if furniture were falling over and other times the radio
or news report comes cranking through the ceiling. Downstairs live two young
guys around 22 and they love to crank their stereo and we hear the sounds of
The Chili Peppers or Spin Doctors blasting through the floor. Apparently, the
sound meter goes two ways. One day the guy from downstairs asked me, “don’t you
and Jolene ever sleep? Damn. I hear that bed of yours rocking the floor almost
every night— sometimes at four in the morning!” I laughed mightily.
Here, I was free from interruption— from parents imposed
laws. No fighting with my mother which drives me nuts. Here I didn’t mind doing
things for Jolene or Rob. We were a good team with bills and chores.
I put the groceries away and sat on the couch and listened
to the radio. Jolene was sick and asleep in the bedroom. Rob was working, still
at ITI, the lone survivor of everyone I knew. A place where many friends came
and went— it had been a few months now since I had been canned. I still regret
my actions and really missed that job. However they were on their way out of
business anyway so in the end it wouldn’t have mattered I guess. Rob had
managed to hold on. He was 19, a Dead Head and casual and low key about
everything. He still loved his ex-girlfriend but she treated him like a dog
while she whored around Quincy. The Hertz department, where he worked, was soon
expecting a big lay off and he searched quietly for another job.
I sat on the couch wondering how things would have been
different had I not been fired or had I not hooked up with Jolene. My guess was
that I’d be close to leaving for Europe— financially I was well ahead of my
goals then. Of course those “simple twists of fate” intervened and caught hold
of me in the dark. What did I care? I was in love and happy. That night when
she kissed me, my path turned left— toward a new kind of adventure, an
adventure in relationship and love. I wanted to go the distance. Such subtle
turns in life! At that time I didn’t even mind sinking my entire tax return,
1500 bucks, into the apartment, furniture and other miscellaneous things.
I sat there in the living room and looked up at the
entertainment center beside the front door— stocked with a TV, a stereo, VCR,
tapes and CD’s. We had two couches, one along the window I had dreamed of
having a writing table, and the one I sat on facing the TV. We had two corner
tables flanking the couch and a coffee table at my feet. The couches were beige
and streaked with soft tones of pink, aqua and black that matched the light
brown carpet we just bought. Hell, the room no longer smelled like paint but of
lilies I had just given to Jolene on Easter Sunday and they sprang from the
vase and filled the room with sweet aroma.
The kitchen was small to Jolene’s dismay. She liked big kitchens
to make big dinners. But all we had was a refrigerator, a sink with small
counter space beside it for microwave, toaster and coffee pot. We have a small
kitchen table near the refrigerator. Sometimes Jolene gets pissed when she
finds a coffee stain or sugar packets left behind on the counter. She is
somewhat of a control freak and wants clean, clean, clean— except the bedroom,
which is a mess. Go figure.
The bedroom is the master bedroom. It’s beside the bathroom.
I walk into the bedroom and she is still asleep on the bed. Our bed is made up
of two single beds pushed together which typically is pretty comfortable except
when I roll in my sleep into the middle of the crack and my body weight pushes
me through the crack into a very uncomfortable position. I figure it’s a small
enough price to pay to sleep beside the softest whitest skinned beauty I’d ever
met— I can’t keep my hands off her. We each have a bureau for our clothes. She’s
got too many clothes— her bureau packed full as well as the closet and the
floor. There are two windows, one on each side and tattered shades. A blanket
is draped over the window closet to the bed. Rob’s room is a cool bachelor
pad/room with huge queen sized bed and a couch for friends to crash on when
they have been up late drinking and playing video games.
Jolene is the first girl I’ve slept with on any regular
basis. Other than a couple of accidental one night stands or even my time with
Anne— we only actually slept together on vacations or camping trips. Now I don’t
mean fucking, I mean sleeping beside one another and everything that is
associated with that. Previously I had spent my time sleeping alone. I was free
to snore, kick, turn, mess up sheets, and not have to make my bed. I can sleep
just about anywhere and I have. I must say it takes some time getting used to
it. I love waking to her nakedness, cuddling until we snooze off, watching her
undress, feeling her warm feet on mine, listening to her gentle breathing, her
fingertips, hugs, her lips parted open during sleep, her red hair like a
sculpture over her face in the morning. I am also a hornball in this new
situation. Sometimes I will touch her when she sleeps and this pisses her off
(not necessarily in sexual way more like flirty strokes on her body). We fight
about it. I can’t help it. I promise to control myself.
Divorce is an amazing thing. It affects so many people from
two families and friends. I had never given divorce an iota of thought, ever.
Now I was part of one. Her leaving Paul affected her family deeply. In the
beginning I’d visit her mom or her Nana and I was the “new boyfriend.” Awkward
moments in Paul’s shadow. He was well loved. It wasn’t until after the first
few times meeting them that they even acknowledged me. On Easter she took me to
a big family dinner. It actually went well— they talked to me, laughed with me—
even her brother, who was good friends with Paul, seemed to let his guard down
as we discussed the hockey playoff picture. Still I wasn’t blind. I knew her
family still wanted her to work her marriage out.
Me and Jolene didn’t discuss the divorce much. If I brought
it up, she didn’t want to talk about it. These things take time, she said. I’m
not ready, she said. So I stopped bringing it up. Still it weighed on me— hell
I was living with a married woman. And I loved her. She hadn’t seen him since
two weeks before we moved into Stoughton. I didn’t encourage her to go
straighten things out with him but if she did, I wouldn’t stop her. As the days
rolled on I wondered how she would feel when she faced him again. I wondered
also if the divorce was really going to happen. For now I put it on the back
burner and tried to enjoy my time with her. Still… there was much at stake and
at some point we all had to look the future in the face.
I remember that night on Bigelow Street. I’m waiting for
Jolene to get out of the shower. I lay on the bed. The ripped shade framed my
vision as I looked out the window at the parked cars on the narrow street. In
spirit, I was far away— no phone or address— alone and unattached. Dylan was on
the radio and I grew sad. It reminded me of simplicity and freedom. If someone
could wear my eyes at that moment. As I lay there, I sensed that I was falling
in love with a married woman.
-He knew the cleaning crew would arrive soon. Something had
to be done.
“Thank God you could come in,” said the manager.
“I’m only here because the Bruins are losing four to
nothing.”
“Again?”
Game 2, 93 playoffs, first round against Buffalo
-Between five and seven o’clock, his mind fizzled like alka
seltzer. Yet here was this strange slab, topped with blood and oil. Beside it,
she was slumped over, tangled bed hair wrapped around her white neck.
-Sometimes I drive for Papa Ginos when I have Jolene’s car.
As I drive, sometimes I’m struck with old memories— bicycling the morning
streets with newspaper bag in tow and my dog Brandy running beside me. She is
young and strong; sometimes she branches off to chase a squirrel or to bark at
a cat hiding in a bush. When I’m off the
bike and walking from house to house she will sniff out a lawn to drop a stack
and as she lifts up her rear-end, I tell, “no, no,no!” I’m not exactly prepped
with pooper scooper so I just pray that the customer is sleeping. I continue my
deliveries— running up and down walkways, opening screen doors and slipping the
Boston Globe into the door. I was 14 or 15 then and newly arrived from
Watertown— the only world I had ever known before we moved to Randolph. I was a
popular kid there, captain of my hockey team, and perennial all-star in
baseball and hockey, the only two sports I played.
Up to that point, there had only been two girls in my life.
Tina Ricci. She was starting catcher on the other little league team. She was
tom-boyish and tough but a cute freckly faced girl. We had been “going out” for
some months and I hadn’t kissed her yet. We were quite opposite in our approach
to sex. She was experienced, willing and impatient she said. I was shy, distant
and fumbling. She was getting upset at my inability to even kiss her. One
Friday night we went skating at the Watertown Skating Arena. I went every Friday
at 8 o’clock usually with my friends. I liked to get away from my parents and I
loved skating. Growing up in Watertown, hockey was big and they always had good
teams and coaches.
This night, everything had been arranged so that I would
have to kiss Tina. All of her friends were there. They teased me. I skated in
jittery circles for the entire hour. I was terrified. Afterwards, all our
friends were out front of the rink, babbling on, skates in their hands. Tina
approached me from the dark and brings me out back and we sat down. My palms
were sweating. In the dark I could barely see the whiteness of her face but I
felt her face getting close to mine. I closed my eyes. I puckered my lips and
she kissed me. My mouth burned under the softness of her lips. It was like the
burn of Tobasco sauce. After the kiss, she bolted off into the parking lot. I
felt helpless and strange but in a weird way I liked it.
Long before this night behind the rink, there was that night
where we were all hanging around in Sean Monahan’s basement. We cranked Sean’s
expensive new stereo system, the new Cheaptrick record and then moved on to
play Spin the Bottle. Four couples were playing, including me and Tina. When
the bottle stopped spinning and pointed at me, I chickened out. Everyone teased
me and I ran out of the house crying and ashamed.
The second girl, my first love or puppy love crush or
whatever you want to call it was Ann Woods. She was two years older than me—
blue eyes, blond hair and huge boobs, boobs that all the kids (and probably
adults) used to gawk at. I was 15, a virgin and still painfully shy with
kissing and girls. She was so beautiful and funny. She also boasted to not
being a virgin. Anyway we were real close and got into trouble in those days.
Once she ran away from home. I wanted to be with her so much, I joined her on
the run. For the entire day and most of the night we roamed the side streets
and backwoods of Watertown and Waltham— down along train tracks and farm land
with no place to go. Our parents had the police searching for us and eventually
later on deep into the night, they found us and brought us home.
When my parents bought a house in Randolph she visited a few
week-ends in our new big home on 70 Allen Street. To her disappointment, after
much encouragement, I remained a virgin. In the end I would only kiss her on
the cheek a couple of times despite her efforts to grope me into more. One day,
I received a letter from her ending our relationship. She couldn’t deal with
only seeing me on weekends she said, blah,blah, blah…. So, for months
afterwards, I couldn’t get her face out of my mind, it was etched there. As I
rode my bike delivering papers, Brandy at my side, I was unfocused in mind. The
image of my blue-eyed angel, Ann caused me to hold back tears— my first true
heart break.
Such were my thoughts as I drove Jolene’s car around
Randolph delivering pizza.
Everything was still smooth between me and Jolene until the
day her husband called to inform her that his father went into the hospital and
probably wouldn’t survive. She burst into tears and the rest of the day just
cried. Selfishly, I also realize that she will want to visit him in the
hospital and get together with Paul and had no idea where that might lead. I
began to see hints of the end. I did my best to comfort her though and not get
in her way. I was afraid the old chemistry between them would spark up at such
an emotional time— compounded by the fact she hadn’t seen him since a few weeks
before we got our apartment. Days passed. She worked. I worked. She talked to
Paul and other family members on the phone every night. She never did get a
chance to visit him and he died soon afterwards. Jolene was crushed,
guilt-laden and an emotional wreck.
Fight fight fight— we did much in that time, mostly stupid
things like dirty ashtrays and coffee stains on the table. She was a real bitch
then and never ceased to take her emotions out on me.
One night I took her to the radio station. We were both
pretty buzzed and it got late. She was really babbling over the air to a caller
about proper prom night etiquette. When I tried to cut in with a word she would
shoot me a look of hater and disgust and continued babbling. Finally I cut in—
she’d been going on for too long now and I made a joke about prom night to the
caller. She turned down the microphone, put on a CD and we started screaming at
each other, mostly her.
After things calmed down, she tells me that she’s confused
and afraid of her feelings and where they might lead when she faces her husband
and family. She starts crying and says she loves me. It feels like a tree just
fell on my head. But on the one hand, I’m afraid of her seeing him on the other
I have to let things run their course. On the ride home her words haunted me.
The next day we fought, again, her starting it. Something
about sex that was actually just a lack of understanding on both parts. She screamed,
“I’m moving out!”
I tried to talk to her. Deaf ears. On the drive to work I asked,”so
you’re breaking up with me?”
“Basically, yeah,” she said.
At Papa Ginos I got out and gave her my set of car keys. I
told her I loved her and I turned and went inside. I passed the register and
turned around and she was still there, sitting in her car, looking through the
glass at me as if it was a long goodbye and it hurt badly. She waved. I
returned it then felt upset at myself for acknowledging her wave.
That night at Rich’s house I let out some steam. We drank
beer and wine. I explained the nature of our argument— that it was all a big
smoke screen. She’s going back to her husband. It was a big waste of time,
three months down the tubes and my Europe funds all decimated— all towards the
apartment. She better give me money, I said. In two months we’re moving to
California with Dano, I said. Next week-end we’re going to Jersey to hook up
with Kim and Kelly, I said. Fuck Jolene, fuck everything. We continued swilling—
me with purpose. Later met up with Paula, Todd and Dina at Piccadilly Pub in
Randolph. I blew all my money and the bartenders shut me off from Frozen Mud
Slides. Went to Lauderdales. Don’t remember much from that point as everything
was sort of a blur. I remember a couple of girls playing pool with Rich and he
tried to get me to stay and hook up with one of them. I wandered away,
uninterested and lonely and stayed away from socializing. Got dropped off at my
parent’s house around 3:30 am and crashed on the couch.
At 8 am, Kyle’s crying woke me and I pleaded with Dawn if I
could go upstairs and sleep on her bed.
At 9:30, I awoke to Jolene sitting on the bed, looking down
upon me. At first I thought I was dreaming. Startled I focused on her face— all
the hurt and pain at that moment, gone. All my thoughts about her and Paul
disappeared as she smiled with an apology and a Hallmark card.
“Is this a getting back together again card?” I asked.
She nodded. She said she had spent the night at our place
and hadn’t slept much. She had tried to track me down, she said. We hugged and
lay down together for awhile. Then we played with Kooky Kyle for a bit and then
drove home. The world seemed right again.
I started to plan trips. Gram’s house. Vermont. A long road
trip to California. I planned on taking Jolene with me. I longed for her to experience
the road with me. Unfortunately, working at Papa Gino’s and having an apartment
to pay for dimmed my prospects.
I was driving alone to Randolph along 139 on a warm sunny
day when I started remembering scenes from Hawaii— 85*. I was sitting at the
divider between kitchen and livingroom. I always wrote there— journal notes,
letters and post cards for friends back on the mainland. Sometimes I copied
newspaper quotes or images from books I liked. Sometimes I read at the counter
but mostly I read laying on the couch with the big fan rotating on me.
Rich was at the store buying some croissants. The store was
close to our apartment and expected him back any minute. I wasn’t hungry. I
drank my coffee and smoked my cigarettes. When I first arrived Rich didn’t have
a coffee pot in the house. One day, fed up with old muddy leftover afternoon
store coffee, I bought a coffee pot in Wahiawa at the Goodwill for 7 bucks.
Rich had never been a coffee drinker before and now he found himself drinking
it not because he liked it but because it was there.
I wrote more
Beside the sink was a crumb covered by tiny ants, a legion
of them marching in a straight line from between the tile and counter-top to the
sink. I had left the crumb there on purpose, waiting for them. I am awed by
their predictability and symmetry and work ethic. Before I had come out, Rich
would tell me over the phone about these ant gatherings. If I leave the
smallest morsel of cake or meat or bread— whatever, in its tiniest form, they
will come to swarm it. They are like soldiers on a raiding party.
The sun filtered through the kitchen window. The palm trees vacillated.
Where was Rich? Maybe he stopped over Frank’s house.
I turned back to my notebook and read the images of my new
world— long rolling stretches of country and ocean… sharp pineapple fields
below hulking green mountains.
Voices are heard coming from the driveway and the rustle of
shopping bags. I stopped and looked up and waited for the door to open. Fumble
of keys.
“It’s unlocked,” I called out.
Rich enters wearing his trademark bandana and shades;
followed by Sue, dressed in shorts and tank top. She was a tall blond, sort of
awkwardly put together in bone structure with big hair and lips. She has been
here on vacation. She and Rich weren’t dating but they were sleeping together
some nights. She was from a wealthy family and didn’t think twice when it came
to supplying us two jobless bums with food or alcohol. She had a good sense of
humor, loved to drink and I thought she was a really cool person, regardless of
the situation.
Rich put the grocery bags down on the counter. Sue was
cradling a 12 pack of Coors.
“Hi Jimbo,” she said.
“Oh jeez, look who’s here, huh, Edith,” I joked in my Archie
Bunker voice.
She laughed.
“Our roomies are back I see,” said Rich.
“I was lonely… a little shopping?”
“Yeah, well actually Sue here picked up some goodies.”
“Someone’s got to support you two,” she laughed.
“I got an interview at McDonald's tomorrow,” I said.
“Climbing the ranks,” Rich said.
“At least I’m looking.”
Sue cracked open a beer.
“I just got laid off last week.”
“Well, I haven’t been jobless like this in three years. It
sucks.”
“Both of you stop your whining, have a beer and let’s go to
the beach,” Sue said.
“Sunset?”
“Sure.”
-With May here and the spring push, softball season and
tennis would be in gear soon. I kept up my journal, thanks a lot to Jolene, my
muse. She loved to read my stuff too.
Really proud of myself for keeping it up. Since I moved out
of my parents’ house I’ve put the pen to the page with more frequency than any
time since being on the road last summer. Last summer the fire in me raged but
it cooled once the winter moved in. Then I met Jolene and for the first time
ever I’ve been inspired by a muse, Jolene. Fucking weird. Big hearted lady
Jolene. Sometimes, I’ve realized, unconsciously I’m writing for her. She likes
to read my little stories and parodies and that excites me. She has a fine
feeling for language and imagery.
I find myself in plenty of new situations mostly of the
spiritual plane; at times total tranquility. Sometimes more tangible. She is
different from any girl I’ve ever been with— her life circumstances are both interesting
and scary. I think we’ve grown since moving in together two months ago. We came
together from different circumstances and try to build a life together— she to
build over; me to build up. Emotionally we’ve been through much in such a short
space of time but I think that has helped us grow together.
I’m no longer in the stagnancy of 70 Allen but I still lean
on my parents for help sometimes. Since my firing from ITI, I’ve yet to find a
good 40 hour a week job which sucks because I’m barely getting by— trying to
pay bills but save cash for summer adventures just isn’t happening. I’m also
thinking about going back to UMass to finish that.
Got to keep the writing alive— grow, skip stones, build
sandcastles, discover unique shells, a sunrise, a birdsong, a long cigarette, squirreling in the sand by the sea— dark, haunting and powerful. Elements to
fuel the writing life.
-My dreams lately have been taking place in faraway lands— possibly
Spain, Morocco or Mexico. I was walking along a main street much like
Revolucion Ave in Tijuana with an old class mate, Dave DiCenso. He is one of
the best drummers in the country. We were walking up and down the street window
shopping, buying things and shouting at locals. Then I was alone. I searched
but could not find him. Then I didn’t care if I found him or not and I walked
off alone. End of dream.
-Still working at Papa Ginos, grill cook. Today was long,
greasy and sweaty. One of the young kids wants to help me on the grill now but
it’s too dead now. I’m tired and miss Jolene. She’s home either sleeping,
watching afternoon soap operas or chatting on the phone.
“I love Frank Sinatra,” the kid said. “I just bought a tape
the other day. He’s great.”
“Doesn’t he sing Unforgettable?” I asked.
I start to sing it and for some reason it lifts my spirits.
I don’t know why. I hear the words in my head and I’m happy now, relaxed and
uncaring.
That night, me and Jolene went out with Pat, an old friend
of mine and Gina, a waitress at Friendly’s. We are playing Cupid and trying to
hook them up. First we go for drinks and dinner at Ground Round in Braintree
and later more drinks at Amvets. While the band is in between sets, the jukebox
plays and Unforgettable blasts out. Strange.
-What does a dash in these journals represent? Usually, a
pause or break in sentence or in a thought or image— being that they are just
journals anyway— I typically use them when my thoughts are going too fast and
don’t want my hand to stop or get interfered with by periods or any other
bothersome grammatical detail— keep the words flowing, ideas rolling, and ink
invading the blank white page— no interruptions— write, write, write— ignore
the rules of grammar and prose and follow the creative steam engine; one can
always clean it up later and it’s much too easy to forget such quick thoughts
when stopping for technical reasons—
-After work we played softball. Jolene called out from work
and played with us. She’s been sick and miserable the past couple of days and
besides it’s a beautiful day to get out. We head to the Lyons School. Huge turnout—
more players than positions available. Because I’ve been a regular in this for
years I’m able to squeak into the game while Jolene hangs out with my sister,
Dawn, Lori and the kids. I want to get her into the game though— she looks like
she may be athletic enough and I know she has a good arm from the ITI days when,
at break we would toss a football around.
After a few innings Kevin tells me his team needs another
player. I run over to Jolene and ask if she wants to play.
“Jimmy, if you can just pitch some to me so I can warm up I’ll
be ready,” she said.
I throw her a few practice pitches and tell her she’s on
Kevin’s team.
“I can’t be on your team? Good,” she says laughing.
She heads out to right field. She guards the foul line. She’s
wearing blue jean overalls, a tight black and white striped shirt beneath that
and her hair is up in a scrunchee. She’s crouched over in defensive position, glove
on her left hand with both hands resting on her knees— ready to spring towards
anything hit her way. She really has beautiful legs and I love the whiteness of
her skin— the prettiest right fielder I’ve ever seen. It’s so cool to have a
girlfriend with such spunk who can play ball and who really wants to play and
not just because their boyfriend is playing.
Then she gets to hit. Bill tosses the ball toward home plate
and she swings ferociously but misses it. The next pitch she slams— but it goes
behind third base foul. Her batting stance is so cute but intense at the same
time— she leans out over the plate, feet wide apart and bat above her head,
cocked and ready. Her next swing is another monster swing but she misses it and
strikes out. She starts walking back to the dugout and Bill calls out to her, “one
more.” She turned and glared at him as if she were being treated like a child,
insulted really.
“Shut up,” she said.
Of course she didn’t realize we always give girls extra
strikes to give them a better chance at hitting the ball. I was laughing my ass
off as she returned to the batter’s box.
-Grilling. WZLX turned on the radio. Papa Ginos is slow.
Boring day. Peaceful easy feeling comes on the radio and it thrusts me back to
the age of 17— the age of woods parties, all night camp fires and long drives—
tents, hammocks, rivers, piney forest floors and sing songy nights by the
firelight. I hum, temporarily lifted away from doldrums.
-Band names: The Fried Chickenfingers
Mozzarella and the Mustard Seeds
The Jalapeno Dip Five
Alliterations: Nymphonic Nelly needs naked men non-stop.
Big Bob the butcher beats bohemian bread beside Betty Crocker cook book.
Bill Buckner bobbled the ball
and Boston booed.
The Marlboro Man’s mouth trembles at its mention.
“No matter how stoned I get, I play to win.”
The theater darkened and he lifted the camcorder to his eye
and watched the entire movie through the eye piece.
-Envisioning more images of Hawaii— just another day on the
island. Rich is outside with his nephew, Justin and peeling a coconut from its
sac. I sit on the chair trying to play Nintendo but losing. Dave Jr sits beside
me watching intently as I madly finger the joystick. He is a pudgy little 1
year old baby and very alert. Like his father, Frank, he has dark skin. He just
has one of those faces that could easily pass off as being of pure Hawaiian
blood.
He begins crying. I put down the joystick and toss his hands
lightly up and down. He cries on. His cheeks are puffed out like chipmunks. I
pick him up and walk outside to find Rich. My feet pass through an assortment
of scattered toys— plastic boats, buckets, yellow tennis balls. Justin is
playing on the tire swing.
“Justin. Where’s Uncle Rich?”
He spun in smooth easy circles. “Weeeeee.”
“Justin. Rich?”
Justin is four years old and gets in trouble easily.
“I don’t know.”
I walk around the house through the big grass and passed the
papaya trees. Dave Jr’s tears are streaming down my arm. I walk along the fence
passed a banana tree— little annoying bugs hover over my face. After almost a
complete circle around the house, I find him in the front yard. He throws a big
coconut up into the coconut tree trying to knock off a fresh one from a cluster
of green and brown shells. It’s harder than it looks.
“Hey Rich. Davy boy’s going sick here.”
“Let’s see.”
He took him from my arms.
“He probably stacked himself good,” Rich said.
“Well that’s your department.”
Rich held him up and smelled his diaper. “Oh yeah.”
“Nice paste?”
“very.”
-I’m at Friendly’s where Jolene is working.
I stare blankly at my journal and listen to a young girl
from Spain. She speaks to an older man who drinks coffee. She says she loves Spain.
The French are nice people too…. Outside, the weather is beach hot and I admire
the blue sky and the temple rooftop.
Philippine phrases: patayin kita— I kill you
Magandang umaga—
good morning
Mahal kita— I
love you
Sip sip may
boto— suck my dick
-Getting some things off my mind today that fester like a
boil. Money. Shit part-time job. The little I’m getting is flying off out the
window. I don’t need much to live. I don’t go out. I don’t spend money on booze
anymore or clothes. Bills. I make a hundred a week at Papas. I got $28.00 left
to show for it. I’m frustrated. Since being canned from ITI money has been a
problem. I rely on Jolene for smokes and beer. Really frustrating.
-Got a call from Tanya at Friendly’s. Jolene slipped at work
on the wet floor and went air-born. She said she reinjured an old hockey knee
injury. I must drive her to the hospital. On top of that, we think she is
pregnant.
One word, an image or an all-encompassing experience caught…
in the grip of a basket with looping handle that sits on the mantel brimming
with new mail or inside the heat of a locked car on a summer day. The poets
vocation.
-Started work at Friendly’s as night grill cook. Between
both jobs now I should be able to start saving money again. And here I am
working with Jolene again.
-The sun got to me today. My eyes water; my step, slow.
Walked “uptown” (Randolph Center) on my old path to High School. Cut through
the Sudbury Farms parking lot (once upon a time Fernandes) and then the grass
lot behind it before skipping across 139 and on into Papas to sit down, drink
coffee and write.
I am unhappy. Jolene is off in Roslindale for the week-end
with her girlfriends. I suppose she will mett up with Paul eventually. Over
Paula’s house, Rich is there and a few friends drinking. Tonight in Hanover
there is a big studio party— Wabrek’s band and Wargasm are jamming.
Yet as I sit in Papas,
with the heat and noise it’s hard to concentrate. What to do? What to
do? What to do?— life,life, life and here I am again. No energy for traveled
trails— not even for the monotonous. It will always be the same thing— a
recycling vat, a big fat vat of recycled events, places, things. Why are we
content with repetition? It feels like I’m trapped in my unconscious. I won’t generalize and get into stereotypes— it’s easy to categorize and do less
thinking. The vat is there. It does exist. It is bubbling over.
-I want something different from life but I don’t even know
what it is. Today, after two softball games (in which I had four home-runs and
seven RBI’s in eight at bats), I sat with my family at 70 Allen. I don’t know
what to do. I have nothing going on— nothing tomorrow or the next day. I don’t
want to wake up hungover, fetching my glove for a softball game to hang out in
old Randolph. I want out. Cape Cod. New Hampshire. Travel across country again.
Go to the moon. Have a drink below the sea. Smoke a butt inside a volcano. Jump
from a plane into a foreign country. Buy a new pair of road shoes. Something
bombastic and cleansing to the soul. I’d like to take Jolene. I love her. I
also love spontaneity and would love to live in a world where we were expected
to work one day only a week and the other days were meant for adventure.
One of the kids at Papas, on break comes over to me and says
he just popped two hits of acid and he can’t handle the fast pace of the grill.
It jars me from my thoughts and I lose track what I was thinking. By the time
I’ve talked him back into facing the lunch time crowd, I’d forgotten everything
I was going to write which leaves me no choice but to invent or force words
while regaining my relaxed mind all over again. If I could video tape thought,
now that would be something.
-End of a situation, I guess. Jolene has returned from her
week-end of partying in Roslindale. She says she’s moving out— moving into her
brother’s place in Hyde Park. She needs her space to deal with all her emotions
for me and her husband. She needs family support. She has to quit drinking she
says.
I knew it. I knew this would happen— sweet painful irony of
life. All the personal turmoil. She’s leaving and I can sense that it’s over.
She says we will still be together as a couple but I can see the end like a
road and a bridge back to Paul. When it happens, I’m out of here. She was the
only reason I stayed here. Now I love her. I’ll stick around and see what
happens anyway. Obviously I can’t stay in Stoughton with no car and not living
on the bus line to Randolph where I work. Looks like back to 70 Allen I will
go. I got the rug pulled out on me. I suspected as much but didn’t want to
believe it. I miss her already.
I sit at the kitchen table at Bennet Drive. How much longer
I don’t know, maybe a week or a couple of days. In the TV room Jolene is asleep
on the futons, stretched out beneath her blanket and cute as any morning I’ve
woken beside her. We’ve been sleeping on the futons for a while now. Late at night after work we’d lie down
together and cuddle and watch a movie or Cheers reruns. In the early morning,
we’d make love, at times fits of sexual passion often leading back into the
bedroom. Now its noon and I hope she wakes soon so we can go out and take some
pictures. Ever since she broke the news to me, my mind has been flooded with
memories of our brief but intense time together. It’s been four months since
our first kiss.
Today I am numb and sad. She’s moving out Sunday— in four
days. I’ll be moving my things back to 70 Allen this week. I don’t have much to
bring home anyway. I’ll get my old room back. I’ll leave the furniture with Rob
who will stay here until the end of June. I think back to all the time and
energy I spent moving in here. I don’t know exactly what transformed her over
the week-end but it really shook me up and I’m numb.
Since she got home she has been cranky, uninspired and distancing herself from me. She barks at me. She pouts like I’m an incredible dork in the way of her happiness. I have so many questions. She’s angry all the time. I don’t know. I’m miserable. When she goes back to her husband I’ll just split to California. I’ll never want to see her again. This is too hard. If she stays with me, in the long run maybe this is all for the best. Maybe we just need time away from each other.
I want her to stay here. If I could do it again, I would
have picked an apartment in Quincy. At least I would have access to work by
bus. I regret signing this damn lease on March 8th. I wished I had a
car too but before Jolene, I was carpooling to ITI and I was going to Europe
anyway and didn’t need one. Yeah how did that work out? In Stoughton, I took her car all the time.
It’s funny how things work out— how situations arise. It’s
so difficult to navigate the moments as they unfold. You try to stay out of the
storm.
Such sappy love-struck writing and nostalgic thoughts. For
some reason I feel like everything’s my fault. I can’t wait until I’m happy
again. I love feeling happy. I haven’t written anything in about a week. I’ve
had no desire, reason to or push. Jolene says that her marriage is still
salvageable. She wants no doubt in her mind that it should end or grow. Still…
in between the fighting, we make love. There seems to be a part of her that
doesn’t want to let me go. She says her relationship now with her husband is
friendly and platonic. Yet we continue to be friends and fuck and I wait until
some sort of settlement is made. It doesn’t make sense why she would see me
while she is feeling out her marriage. I’ve told her that if she truly wants to
be with me, I would stay and we could somehow get on with our life together. If
not, I’ll give it two months and me and Rich will jet to California with Dano.
Speaking of Rich, he just called at 12:30am, trashed and wants to trip on
peyote in the desert.
I’m back at 70 Allen. Hasn’t really hit me yet. I got my old
room. Lots of boxes to store in the closet. I’ve got more stuff than I have
room. How did that happen? I figure in two months I will be out of here anyway,
either in another apartment with Jolene or California. My work schedule is as
follows: 11-2pm at Papas and 6pm- midnight at Friendly’s through the week. I
want to kick start my photography and work out regiment— two things I stopped
once I began dating Jolene. Softball on week-ends. Stop getting depressed about
my situation. I need my cutting edge attitude back— my whatever happens happens
code— not this sappy pathetic shell of me.
Now I’ll listen to some music, let my brain wander and
unpack some stuff. Crazy mixed up life. So many faces and names to remember in
such a short time.
Travel, man
got a plan, do
it now
while you can.
See your girl
watch unfurl
at the edge, love
hangs on the ledge.
Don’t know when
say it again
destroy the past
go, at last.
No desire and empty— very drained. I still see her. She
spends most of her time with friends and husband in Roslindale. It hurts;
everything sucks. I’m sick of sitting on my ass waiting for her to come. I hear
the roar of her broken muffler and I jump to the window. It’s only a passing
motorcycle. I’ve got to do what I want. Stop blubbering and stuttering through
this— wasted too much time over this anyway. I can’t help but feel likesome piece
of meat. Move on with things. Be who you want, Jolene, I think. Go with your husband. Go to your Roslindale
bars. Grow old and die there. No more waiting for me. I know, the horrible
thing about life is that everything dies and we are left with but a memory like
a resin stain.
My friends say to take the back roads but I don’t want to
miss out on anything on Main Street.
-Alone on the bench
waiting, scattered icicles
on the ground— you
caught me by surprise.
Your lady hands upon the wheel
winding streets electrified
by snow; at night, a drink here,
drink there and I was drunk
and fell heavy upon my heart.
My bedroom window
ripped shade framed the moon
startling new like a muse—
my big-hearted lady
tangled red
hair shimmers along white neck.
Your wedding band hides,
the candlelight on the dresser casts
fleshly shadows, sullen eyes filled
with love like rains in dark lands.
You cry. I touch your shoulder and point—
western sky calls
your brown eyes roll
towards the new world,
but winter haunts your soul
the wound
bleeds through
the tourniquet.
Are you still lonely?
-I’m sick of this situation. I’m sick of her attitude. I can’t
take working with her anymore especially when she goes out with the guys from
work to get stoned and whatever else. Something’s got to be done.
Tonight I go to bed having decided to quit Friendly’s and
find new employment in the morning.
Woke up and made coffee. Wish I didn’t have to wait until
August to leave. Too much shit in my head. I scan the classifieds but it is
barren. My eye drifts over to the travel section of the classifieds and come
across a ticket for sale— a one-way ticket to San Diego for a hundred bucks.
The flight leaves in a week. I call the ad and tell the woman I’m interested in
the ticket. I told her I would call her tomorrow and she said fine but no
later. That night I called Dano to ask if I could come out. He said go for it,
come on out. The next night, Rob drove me to Holbrook and I bought the ticket.
Jolene was very upset with my decision and stormed from my
room in tears. I was going back to California and I felt nothing.
It’s 5:30 am and I’m
barely awake. I only slept two hours last night. Bart is here to drive me to
the train station.
Jolene had stopped by after work to say goodbye. She cried
and cried and left quickly as if she were tormented. I was calm. I watched
through the window as she pulled her car out of the Belcher Park lot and then
her entire muffler system dropped in front of my house. It had just been fixed
that day but apparently not good enough. She was freaking out. She tried to fix
it. She refused my help and we started screaming at each other. She came into
my house to use phone and called her husband to pick her up at Friendly’s. This
made me irate. I told her I could use my sister’s car and drive her home. We
fought more. Eventually I would drive her to Friendly’s where she would meet
her husband. At 3 am I went to bed. Then the phone rings and its Jolene,
apologizing and telling me that she loved me.
What a fucking night. I was dead tired— so here was Bart
picking me up for a ride to the train station. He parked at the Braintree T and
we hopped on the red line— me to the airport and him to work in the financial
district. As the train rattled through Quincy, I couldn’t dodge those winter
memories— searching for a rooming house, Bigelow Street, our happiness and our
sin.
At South Station, we shook hands and parted. He is a great
funny guy and one of the loneliest on earth.
I jumped on the Logan Link and arrived at the airport at
6:30 am— two medium suitcases packed with what life memories were important
enough to bring to California— about 400 bucks, a plane ticket and a pack of
smokes Jolene had bought me last night. Outside the Northwest terminal I
confirmed my ticket and a huge black man who could be a wrestler, grabbed the
bigger of my two suitcases, ticketed it and sent it ahead on to the plane.
Upstairs as I reconfirmed my ticket, I found out that the plane stopped at LAX
(my actual destination) before heading south to San Diego. I tried to track
down my suitcase so I could bail in LA but shortly some airport bitch started
to hassle me about its size— that it was too big to carry on so either way, I’d
have to pick it up in San Diego. I end the argument. The name on my ticket is
Kevin Ellard and obviously I don’t want any fuss and possibly having my ticket
taken away. The plane leaves in 15 minutes.
Glumly, I board the plane, flight #161 gate 1A. I walked
down the hollow white corridor and felt a jerk in my heart. I had this strange
feeling that I was walking into a new life, shedding the old skin. But I was
sad and very tired. I sat by the window and glazed over the grey eastern sky.
Numb. Empty. Nothing more to give. Those simple twists of fates knocked on my
brain. I wondered if Jolene was awake and if she were still beautiful. The
plane began to taxi down the runway and soon we were off and Boston disappeared
below and I stared out the window and in no time, we were above Manhattan, in all
its dirty glory.
A plane ride across the country is the quickest most
convenient way to travel. However, it is lame, uninsightful and uninspiring.
You look down upon great cities and feel nothing; great mountains are
trivialized in their flatness on the earth. You can’t appreciate how small we
really are, how insignificant we are in contrast to the natural world around
us. Only once did I flinch, over the southwest— New Mexico and Arizona and a
long stretch of flat rusty rocks and trenches twisting, bending and straightening
back. The only way to truly appreciate and understand the magnitude of this
great country is to travel it by car or motorcycle or bus or train or thumb. By
land is the way to go. Only then can one communicate to ourselves the beauty of
it all— feel and touch it— dream and love— on this vibrant incredible planet of
ours.
At 11:30 we land in LA (western time) and there is a half
hour layover which really blows because it is my actual destination so if I
want my other suitcase, I have to go to San Diego to get it. I smoke. I’m still
tired and dream of sleeping. I call home and talk to my sister to give her the
update. She tells me that Jolene called and she couldn’t believe I really left.
Ha!
At 12:30 I walk outside Jack Murphy Airport into the sun. It’s
hot. I wander over to a shuttle bus. A smiling chubby-faced Mexican asks if I
need a ride.
“Can you take me to the nearest Greyhound?”
“That would be downtown. Cost you five dollars.”
Having thumbed it once before, I thought about thumbing to
LA but I had two suitcases this time, no tent and fatigued to no end
I took a seat in the van and half listened to the Mexican
joking with three policemen. They took turns ragging on each other but if I was
keeping score, the Mexican would have won.
So we head out and it’s only a five minute ride. I thank and
pay him and he’s off. As I stand there on the curb I realize that I’d been here
before with Rich only a year ago. Strange feeling too. I go in and buy a ticket
to Glendale. Dano is supposed to be there to pick me up. I cross the street and
grab lunch at Wendy’s. I give my change to a homeless black man. At 2:00pm, I’m
sitting on the bus reliving some road memories— some good some bad. The bus
heads north on the 405. I actually catch an hour’s worth of sleep… and suddenly
the bus pulls into the parking lot of good old 1716E 7th— the
downtown LA Greyhound.
So it’s 4:30pm now. I’m starting to wonder about Glendale. I
approach the ticket agent who tells me the next bus to Glendale isn’t until
9:00pm. Fucking great. Once again stranded in the middle of nowhere on the west
coast. There’s nothing around me— more homeless than commuters and no stores or
cafes— just scarred redbrick industrial buildings.
I call Dano’s work but he’s not there. I call his apartment
but the message says it’s been disconnected. Do I have the right number? I call
collect to Paula’s because I know Rich would have the right number. However
someone refuses to accept the call. Fuck. I call my mom and while she rummages
through my stuff we get disconnected. I call his apartment again and yes it’s
disconnected. I call mom back and she says that I have the right number but I
forgot to dial the area code. At 5:30pm I get through and leave a message on
his answering machine. At 6:00, “Dano!” At 7:45pm I’m drawn to the sight of an
ugly black jeep circling the parking lot. But then, a scruffy bearded Grizzly
Adams Dano wannna-be skipped across the parking lot toward me, smiling.
Inside the jeep it is littered with tapes, smells like burnt
oil and the passenger seat is missing. He lives in Winnetka in the San Fernando
Valley, not far from Sally’s old place— we pass streets I once traveled on
foot— Sherman Way and De Soto. We pull into his driveway, 20708 Lull Street.
As I enter Dano’s
apartment, my road band falls to the floor. Jolene had tied it on my wrist the
night before I left. A sign I wonder. However it’s a huge place— four bedrooms,
three bathrooms, a huge kitchen and living room. In the backyard is a built in
pool, piss warm, a diving board and thick rows of fig trees draped over the
fence for complete privacy.
Dano makes rounds of daiquiris— strawberry, peach and black raspberry.
We sit outside by the pool catching a buzz and discussing the past, present and
clouded future. My life is up in the air right now, I tell him. I’m just as
undecided as I was three years ago. I get him up to speed on Jolene, the
abruptness of my California landing. He’s glad I’m her though and he wants me
to get serious about life— school, writing, photography. Towards the end of our
conversation, a numbness overcomes me and I fade in and out of Dano’s dialogue.
At 11:00pm that night Jolene called, whispering on the other
end— probably with her husband. Strangely I’m not angry, hurt but not angry.
She just called to make sure I got here safe and couldn’t talk long. I was
pretty buzzed, wanted to talk but we said goodbye and hung up. I wish I had
told her I loved her.
The next morning, when I first awoke, it took a few seconds
to register that I was not at 70 Allen. A small room that Gene (Sally’s
husband) had been using as an office/study. I had slept on a small mattress on
a box spring. Dano was at work; Sally and Gene were in Massachusetts on
business and Mike, at work. I was out of it and didn’t do much. I wrote a
little. Dano had left me the jeep key so I drove to the store and bought milk.
He never told me the jeep had no reverse so when I piled back into it, it
wouldn’t move— like a dead animal— I had to throw it in neutral and push it
backwards out of the parking lot until it faced the street and then I jumped in
and drove off.
When I got back, the answering machine was blinking red. I
hit play. It was Jolene in a broken voice. “This is a message for Jimmy… I’m
going into the hospital for a couple of weeks. Don’t worry. I just want to dry
out. I’ll call you when I get out and I’ll probably meet you out there… I love
you.”
That made me the happiest man on the planet. She is coming
back to me!
-So, my roommates other than Dano— there’s Mike from
Indonesia who is not around much but when he is he quietly slips into his room
and hibernates. Sometimes, Dano told me, he sits by the pool and meditates.
Then of course Sally and Gene— Sally being Dano’s sister and Gene, her husband
but they are moving out in a couple of weeks and their huge master bedroom will
be mine when they leave. Gene is a somewhat thin quiet oriental man. A few
weeks ago they had a bitter fight. She quit her job as an actuary and stole
away in the night— driving her truck back to Boston. Since then, they have made
up and now Gene is in Boston delivering a speech for his company.
I cruise around the valley looking for help wanted signs.
The mail jeep— ugly and rough— spray painted jet black. Inside, a messy
collection of bottles, wrappers, oil stains and dust congealed to the floor.
The driver’s seat is on the right— like all mail jeeps. I reach for a smoke and
I touch a sticky coat of something on my hand. I love this jeep. I drive along
7th Street searching for the freeway. My body shakes with the
contours of the road, popping along downtown LA. Jamie Shea had bought this
jeep when he lived here and he gave it to Dano when he left. I think Jamie owed
him money. The speakers crank though. I just have to be aware of how I park or
I’m going to have to Fred Flintstone the jeep out of the way. Slabs would love
this machine too.
One night me and Dano took a drive up Topanga Canyon Boulevard
to a rest area off the side of the road— “a make out spot” Dano called it. I
saw the whole valley below— city lights heaven spanning for endless miles,
flickering, dancing and blinking surrounded by the black night. Despite all
this beauty I noticed clearly, a darkish ring of fog above the valley.
We drank a few beers and talked. We carried on about our
outlooks, concerns and philosophies. Sometimes we bleed on each other and
tonight I bled. Heartbroken. Eventually, I reiterated, I would return to myself
and sharpen up my mind.
One day Dano’s friend Roya called looking for Dano but he
was at work. I was bored and invited her over for a beer or two. She lives on
Mason just a few blocks away. She’s a modestly attractive girl with long dark
hair. She wears ripped jeans, a hippy shirt with a Head symbol and on her feet
a beat pair of sandals. She smokes weed like others smoke cigarettes and is not
much of a drinker. Her boyfriend, Steve is moving in here in July. She is from
New Jersey and Steve is from Providence. They met because they often bumped
into each other at Dead shows and eventually hooked up. Quite the east coast
collection! They moved west a few years ago.
Today me and Dano decided to hit the tennis court off
DeSoto. We hopped on his motorcycle and sped off beneath the hot LA sun.
Afterwards cruised to Malibu Beach and I’m pretty
comfortable “riding bitch.” It’s an 1100 Honda, very big. Up Ventura Boulevard,
Topanga Canyon Boulevard we climb— curving with the twisting road, twenty
degree turns and hairpin lefts; then as we level out on a straight away, the
bike begins to shake and slip as we hit an oil sick and Dano yells but quickly
regains control, saving us from a big hurtle down on to far away rooftops. He
slows down the bike. The oil slick continues on for at least a mile but we keep
our distance from the slick. To our left are tall sharp rocks and to our right,
the mountain wall in shadow now splotched with patches of grassy vegetation. As
we leave San Fernando the air cools. Great mountainsides cradle us for about a
twenty minute stretch of mountain road.
We arrive in Malibu, “the slum part” Dano calls it. We park
along the beach. Ahead of us Mexicans lounge on the beach, others listen and
dance to the car radio and eat watermelon. I catch a chubby Mexican girl
looking at me and she smiles. I smile and wave hello. Down the beach and
through the haze I can see Santa Monica some five miles away. It’s high tide.
Three foot waves roll in that leave little room between the ocean and street.
Off to my left there’s something sticking out from the water like a shattered
pier with cracked planks of wood. I look out toward the horizon. I light a
smoke. I still can’t believe I’m in California again.
Long lonely Winnetka days writing and oodles of phrases with
scrabbles of notes.
I haven’t spoken to Jolene in a few days. The last time I
had heard her voice was the answering machine message. My sister said she
already checked herself out of rehab. I’m assuming we are over as the silence
grows. I guess life will go on without Jolene as part of it. She’s probably
back with her husband as I write.
Too much time on my hands. I’m going crazy. I’m looking for jobs— again and there’s not much around. I can’t stop thinking about her. No one is home. I write. I crank the stereo. I wait for the mail or a phone call. Every day at 1:30 the ice cream truck drives by the house, jingling and jangling slowly down Lull Street. The mail arrives between 3 and 4 pm. I’m going nuts.
Some nights when Dano has time, we have a few drinks and
talk by the pool or play tennis. I’m too lonely. I don’t know how Dano has
taken this place for 8 months. Working helps I guess. And a healthy heart. The
valley just seems to be in the middle of nowhere. Even though I have wheels
(Dano has his own truck, a Chevy pick-up) I can’t escape this feeling of being
trapped. I’m sad. Jesus! I’m in California! I should be happy and adventurous,
not down and out and pathetic.
I’m blowing my money on booze every night. I’m beginning to
realize that I came here to escape Jolene. When I’m hanging around with nothing
to do, that’s when it’s the worst. All those hateful emotions spill out from my
depths and I drink to muffle their sounds.
Last night I wasn’t even in the mood to drink but after
dinner, Dano had the blender rocking and strawberry daiquiris were made and
well, the next thing you know, I’m drunk. It’s midnight. Dano goes to bed and I
hop into the jeep in search of a store to get mix for my rum. I’m off—
cranking Tangled up in Blue, drink in
hand as I cruise along Topanga Canyon (am I weaving?). I drive up to the “make
out spot” and hang there for a few drinks I’m too drunk to appreciate the view.
Afterwards, I barrel down the canyon road. I stop off at a
bar close to home called, The Rock. It’s pretty dead. I strike up a
conversation with the bartendress who, I find out is from Wellesley Ma— met a
couple of guys from Baltimore— they are hammered but cool. Mike tells me his
vinyl siding company could use a grunt and gives me his number. At closing
time, 2am, I finish my beer and head for the jeep.
I hit the 7&11— about a mile from home. After the store,
the jeep runs out of gas in the middle of the street. I push the jeep into an
empty parking lot. From the darkness came a young Puerto Rican kid who offers
to help me push it to Sherman Way where there’s a 24/7 gas station. I can’t
leave the jeep here— the only thing of value— the Pioneer stereo system would
be easy pickings— so push it we do. We push up and down hills— I’m totally
expecting to get jumped any minute but indeed we finally made it to the Mobil.
I give the kid my last three dollars then dump in just enough gas to drive
home. Inside I crash on the couch.
I’ve been rewriting old pocket journals, not really changing
or editing them just, putting them all together in one big notebook from a
collection of little notebooks. I’ve got about ten pocket journals, pages are
torn, fading and falling out. They are easy to lose too. I lost one already.
Sometime in the future I may do something creative with what I got. Sometimes I’ll
clarify a sentence or shorten it but mostly the rewrite is verbatim. I even
keep the dull stuff— hell, I went through the process of writing it in the
first place
(Present time now. I can’t help but smile as I’m now doing
the same thing, rewriting them again from over 20 years ago… ok back to the
past.)
I started keeping pocket journals in 1990 when I was still
dating Anne. I’ve been fairly consistent with them since then. They are not
diaries that chronicle my every move (though there is much of that too) but
words, poems, ideas, images— many times before, something would come to me, a
thought or observation and as much as vowed to remember to write it down later
I would forget. So I started carry pocket journals so I could capture stuff
instantly.
Now I just want to keep things together. It’s an interesting
project— reliving old feelings and events from a faraway life. It was an idea I
conjured up three days before I came to Winnetka. I figured the quiet and
solitude would be too great to pass up. In Hawaii, I spent time rewriting my
old poems, just my poems and even that was a lot of work.
-One night me and Dano were talking about work. It bums me
out that I have no professional work experience. I say, “imagine if the
want-ads had listings for fiction writers.” Dano is an elevator technician and
makes $10.00 an hour though he says he should be making $15.00 but his bosses
blame a bad economy.
-I’m hit with an old memory and I’m driving to ITI in
Jolene’s car to pick her up. I’m listening to the new tape, REM’s Automatic for
the People and loving my new twist of fate and can’t wait to see my beautiful
Jolene.
-I’ve heard rumors from back home that she is back with her
husband and wearing his wedding ring again. So I called her mom’s house and she’s
there by the pool. She confirms the rumor. I blow up and yell some things at
her and hang up. She calls right back and the machine picks up her message: “don’t
kid yourself, Jimmy. That’s why I was calling to tell you that I wasn’t calling
you anymore. At least I can say it with being courtesy and not with an
attitude. Have a nice life. I wish you the best… I’m just sorry… take care.”
Friday 10:06 am
That is that.
I drove to the packy for beer then drove to Venice Beach. I
found a bar and sat glumly alone drinking and playing U2 songs on the juke box—
especially, Who’s gonna ride your wild horses. The symbolic gesture, when my
road band, the one she tied around my wrist before I left, fell to the floor
when I first arrived. Got real drunk.
-Getting on with new situations… alone… again. I’m inspired
by Dylan today. Tangled up in blue— it’s scope and layers of truth. Though I’m
hungover, sick and depressed, today his music lifts me up from my mud slide.
Simple twist of fate.
-I’m going to write poetry and send them back east to Rich
and Paula.
-Drove to Malibu for a job interview at Pacific Coast
Greens, a health food supermarket. Steve, Roya’s boyfriend and soon to be our new
roomie, works there and he said there was an opening in the meat department. He
says movie stars shop there. He cites
the regulars— Cindy Crawford, Richard Gere, Emilio Estevez and Martin Sheen. According
to Steve, Cindy is really cool to talk to but Richard is a grey haired goof. Emilio
is very down to earth and has a great sense of humor. I drive along Malibu
Canyon Road. Great cliffs on either side of the jeep. I turn on to Pacific
Coast Highway and there is the bluest of blue waters, radiating life.
Inside the supermarket I keep a cool lookout for a celebrity
until I receive my application, fill it out and return it to the manager of the
meat department. He looks it over. Seems uninterested. He said, “well, I’m kind
of looking for someone with a lot of meat department experience.”
On the way home I pull off the road into the breakdown lane
along the beach. The waves roll in, cool air on my face. I ask, why am I in
California? God knows what will happen in the next few months. I’ve got to get
my old take-it-as-it-comes attitude back again. It’s the best attitude to have
before someday you settle down, get married, have kids and build a house
somewhere on this great big planet.
-I’m at The Rock sitting at the bar with Jason, a guy living
here from Boston. We’re drunk and having a good time. I meet a girl named Anna
who was at the bar when I noticed she had a road band too and I asked about it.
She hangs out with me and Jason. She tells us she’s a witch. Jason is all over
her, hitting on her and she seems receptive to him. She’s dressed in black, a
little overweight but with long red hair. She says drinking blood excites her.
For a second, a thought crosses my mind to grab a knife from the bar, cut
myself and have her prove her drunk talk. She says she drinks her own blood and
points at her neck. It’s very amusing to me. She loves
dark clothes and rooms. Jason looks at her strangely and
strays off, leaving us alone. She goes on about witchcraft and her love of the
dark side and her fear of it that she might cross over completely.
Later we meet up with her friend, Alexus and she’s a witch
too. She’s very big but has a dark sexy face. At the end of the night we all
exchange phone numbers and I almost succeeded in bringing them back to Dano’s
place for drinks and spells. Me and Jason go there anyway for frozen mudslides at
2:30am and I hope Dano doesn’t wake up to the sound of the blender.
Things I remember from the last time I was in Hollywood— La Brea, Highland, McDonalds, Fredricks of Hollywood and the starry sidewalk. Now construction workers have dug up half the sidewalk and traffic is at a crawl. I turn down Wilcox Street and pull up in front of the Mark Twain Hotel to say hello to Vinny. Inside no one is at the front desk so I walk passed it down the corridor to my old room, where it seems, my travels began. I think of Howie, poor little Howie tapping at my door as I sat on my bed hunched over writing in my journal or reading On the Road.
-I drove to Jimbo’s old place on Laurel Canyon Boulevard—
101 south to Laurel Canyon, take a right. I follow the very long and steep
road, ascending and twisting through the canyon, looking for the small market
where behind it is his old haunt— and I’m pretty sure it’s the market he
mentions in the song Love Street. I park the jeep near the market and walk for
a little bit. It’s from this house that he used to observe out his window and
capture them on paper. I bought a soda in the market and headed for Hollywood, not
far off.
Things I remember from the last time I was in Hollywood— La Brea, Highland, McDonalds, Fredricks of Hollywood and the starry sidewalk. Now construction workers have dug up half the sidewalk and traffic is at a crawl. I turn down Wilcox Street and pull up in front of the Mark Twain Hotel to say hello to Vinny. Inside no one is at the front desk so I walk passed it down the corridor to my old room, where it seems, my travels began. I think of Howie, poor little Howie tapping at my door as I sat on my bed hunched over writing in my journal or reading On the Road.
Back at the front desk an Indian man is there now. I leave
him a note to give to Vinny that I’m back in town. I hop back into the jeep and
cruise Sunset toward the Whisky to see if any bands are playing tonight. Feels
good to be driving here as opposed to walking and busing.
-She is told that they are happy and she blindly believes
it.
-The sun sets around 8:30 this time of year and longs days
of light.
-girl gets man
gets broken
like crushed shells.
Love lost—
A letter sealed
buried in clutter.
Try
Deny
My
Love.
-I started my first job in California. Shit job but I was
beginning to run out of money. It took two weeks of job hunting but finally got
something. I’m a housekeep or more specific, a maid. The company is called
Custom-Maid and the pay stinks and I’m only averaging four hours a day. The man
who hired me, Mark (also a musician), promises that there will be full time
work but only my first day of employment was a long and productive work day. So
for now I will work it and try and save money for further road trips down the
line or maybe a vehicle.
With this job comes parking tickets up the ass— in a week
and a half I’ve managed over a hundred dollars’ worth of tickets and once, the
jeep was towed while I was on a job and that alone was $83 bucks. These fucking
color coordinated curbs are killing me. Give me a no parking sign, something
other than colored curbs.
I report to the office every morning at 8 and the office
gives me the job description— the address and what type of work has to be done.
I grab a vacuum cleaner, polishes of all sorts, rags, bags, feather duster and
whatever else I might need. Then I drive to the house and I clean it. Real
simple. I enjoy the cruising around looking for the houses and I’m getting to
know the valley well. But the parking tickets! I have no intention of paying them
though so eventually the jeep might be grabbed.
-Pasta la ziti… baby— July 3, 1993. We are at a party,
Robert’s house who is a friend of Roya. I called Paula’s house to say hello to
the gang and found out that Jolene was there. I can’t believe it. Especially
after all those times she used to whine about how my friend’s didn’t like her
and how uncomfortable she was there— so now here she is hanging out with my
friends over Paula’s house while I’m in California. This sends me into a
drunken depression so I sit outside alone and drink a nasty mix of tequila and
orange crush. Dano eventually finds me and tries to talk some sense into me and
I tried to make sense of that. But I remained behind and listened to the night—
nothing, no firecrackers, bottle rockets or roman candles shooting flaming
balls of light over rooftops. This adds to my depression. Back home, car alarms
would be popping off across the night. God, I love fireworks.
America began on the east and spread to the west, like a
stain.
The next day there is a big 4th of July party in
Huntington— someone Jason knows. We load up Dano’s new truck with a big batch
of homemade brew (his new hobby) and head south on a gorgeous day. Lots of
people there— long haired dudes with tattoos— very grunge scene, including the
live band. The singer is a madman jumping around as if his hemorrhoids are
popping off. One guy in the crowd is dressed like the American flag. Meanwhile
Dano is networking his brew, letting people try it and they love it. Lots of
pretty girls— with their guys. Long drunk night. We meet a woman who lives
across the street who lives with a guy from Germany names Hans. Late night with
them. Somehow Dano got us safely home to Lull Street.
-Went to Hermosa Beach to help Steve move out and into
Dano’s place. Long day sweating over furniture. Gene and Sally have already
moved out— seemed like forever as Sally seemed to pull more stuff from hidden
closets. Endless job from house to truck— even Dano is a little
pissed. Anyway they got a big apartment in a complex not far from here. It took
a long few days to get them out but hey, I got their old room now and have
graduated from the couch.
Confidence is still down.
Seems like I’ve been writing forever and pointlessly. The
days here move slow. Work is at a minimum too. I’ve been here a little over two
weeks and it feels like a month.
My room looks good— a big bed and writing desk.
-Something within me still ties me down. I can’t write
anymore. I try to force things in my journal. I hope I’m sent an angel of
inspiration (woeful scarce muse).
-Spending much time recopying some old journals. Other than
that, haven’t done much in three weeks. Dano works 60 hours a week and hits the
sack early. I do my little part time gig and look for others to compensate. I’m
unhappy and lonely. I dislike the valley. This month I will turn 25 and I still
don’t know what to do with my life or if I want to do anything.
I’ve thought about thumbing back east and finishing up my
degree at Umass Boston or maybe enroll at New England School of Photography.
Dano wants me to settle down and go to school here. I checked out a college in
North Ridge. I’d have to be a resident for at least a year to catch a break on
tuition. And still I can’t get Jolene out of my mind. I try and drive her away
but fail every time. She recently called here to tell me that she was in fact
getting divorced. We didn’t discuss getting together again. I’m getting real
jumpy about everything. So much crap on my mind. I tell you this, if I go home,
I won’t sit on my ass.
I just don’t know. I’ve met some cool people here. It’s a
beautiful house and I got a sweet ugly mail jeep. Here there’s the hope of
something new. Back east I’d be with my parents again, no wheels, no tracks
laid down— only dead trails. Only a smart choice of trail would save me. I’ve
got no one to discuss this with as Dano would probably get pissed and angry;
Rich would think me an idiot if I came home.
What’s the next move? I don’t know. I still want to travel.
Maybe I could go to school for two years then travel. I’ve been so young of
mind in this life.
-I’ve pretty much
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