Fresh Prince in the Era of the Info Boob Tubes

The mass media culture of the 20th Century has been killed by the internet, as the so-called intellectuals of our day tend to proclaim.

Possibly, and yet the internet binds us in multiple new prisons of our choosing, making it easy to identify us as consumers in ready-made subdivided categories to the marketers who have long since created/controlled our desires and dreams in the garish material world of modern capitalism.

No wonder advertising rates are down. The products no longer are required to hunt for us. We are captured, and the tags identifying us are clearly marked on each cage.

Caught in an invisible web, which differs from the 1940s only in that today we are connected by the newly improved media technology as "users", more tightly bound than ever, and thus less likely than ever to create anything new or different to challenge the hard wired totalitarianism inherent in the infoboobtubez era.

The internet revolutionized global capitalism and yet all we hear is the forever delusional attempt to convince ourselves that the internet is a tool for human freedom, when in fact the internet simply adds a more efficient, invisible lock on the jail cell of mass conformity than radio TV or movies ever could, albeit through sub categorization of the mass into non-dialectically-minded-conformists-within-the-subgroup.

All brought to us in living colour within the safety of our delusions by the Global Infotainment Industry.

Adorno/Horkheimer from 1944:

As late as Schönberg and Picasso, the great artists have retained a mistrust of style, and at crucial points have subordinated it to the logic of the matter. What Dadaists and Expressionists called the untruth of style as such triumphs today in the sung jargon of a crooner, in the carefully contrived elegance of a film star, and even in the admirable expertise of a photograph of a peasant’s squalid hut. Style represents a promise in every work of art. That which is expressed is subsumed through style into the dominant forms of generality, into the language of music, painting, or words, in the hope that it will be reconciled thus with the idea of true generality. This promise held out by the work of art that it will create truth by lending new shape to the conventional social forms is as necessary as it is hypocritical. It unconditionally posits the real forms of life as it is by suggesting that fulfilment lies in their aesthetic derivatives. To this extent the claim of art is always ideology too.

However, only in this confrontation with tradition of which style is the record can art express suffering. That factor in a work of art which enables it to transcend reality certainly cannot be detached from style; but it does not consist of the harmony actually realised, of any doubtful unity of form and content, within and without, of individual and society; it is to be found in those features in which discrepancy appears: in the necessary failure of the passionate striving for identity. Instead of exposing itself to this failure in which the style of the great work of art has always achieved self-negation, the inferior work has always relied on its similarity with others – on a surrogate identity.

In the culture industry this imitation finally becomes absolute. Having ceased to be anything but style, it reveals the latter’s secret: obedience to the social hierarchy. Today aesthetic barbarity completes what has threatened the creations of the spirit since they were gathered together as culture and neutralised. To speak of culture was always contrary to culture. Culture as a common denominator already contains in embryo that schematisation and process of cataloguing and classification which bring culture within the sphere of administration. And it is precisely the industrialised, the consequent, subsumption which entirely accords with this notion of culture. By subordinating in the same way and to the same end all areas of intellectual creation, by occupying men’s senses from the time they leave the factory in the evening to the time they clock in again the next morning with matter that bears the impress of the labor process they themselves have to sustain throughout the day, this subsumption mockingly satisfies the concept of a unified culture which the philosophers of personality contrasted with mass culture.

Adorno/Horkheimer: "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception".

Prince, yesterday, The Daily Mirror:

Prince has banned both YouTube and iTunes from using his music, calling the web obsolete. "The Internet's like MTV", he told the Mirror. "At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."

The Snake's Eyelids

The night started strangely and only got stranger. Ricky was home on semester break from SF State. He'd brought with him a goody bag from the dorms.

"Purple ozzie", he called it. Ricky never got the names right.

His favorite scotch was "Cutty Shark." He always ordered "Cutty Shark and Coke" because the Beatles' publicist once told Tiger Beat Magazine that's how John drank it. Ricky adored John, generously ignoring the fact that the moptops were anglos jotos.

Ricky took a drink then spit it out.

Ricky was changing colors on me, his ugly brown, acne scarred face turned purplish and his zits disappeared in a hailstorm of bluish red pebbles. Ricky, the velvet bull, like the ones they sold you on the streets of TJ for a dollar.

We drove around for awhile, aimlessly. Finally, Ricky said he was hungry. Bob's Big Boy was packed on the first Friday night of Christmas vacation.

=How longs the wait?

=Forty five minutes. Name?

=Zappa.

=Number in your party?

=Four

Ricky chain smoked Kools while we waited in the parking lot. The night was clear-cold and we were hot wired but surprisingly mellow. Reality consisted mainly of lavender flashes against a starry sky inside the rearview mirror behind the snake's eyelids.

We always had this thing about Bob's on a crowded Friday night.

We gave our name as "Zappa", our party as "four" and we always skipped out on the check. Usually, Ricky would take it with him to the toilet and flush it, while I slithered out through the crowd.

On this particular night, we didn't actually eat that much. I ordered a banana split, piled it on the table and played with it. On this night, Ricky ignored his cheeseburger and popped the bill into his mouth, a purple velvet bull chewing his cud.

And snorting fire from both nostrils.

=Less go see mi primero, he's home from San Jose State.

Ricky's cousin lived right down the boulevard in the unincorporated area of Azusa.

Sheriffs' turf.

When we get there, this dude's little brother, some badass cholo banger all of fourteen, or what the fuck, is all up into my face, belligerently. if he has a reason to be I sure as fuck can't comeprehend one. He expands like a gas air balloon and something brushes against my cheek.

=Did you just punch me in the face, motherfucker?

I touch my face then look at my fingers to see if he drew blood. I see the white bark of a ficus branch attached to my wrist.

Ricky drinks beer and laughs as his cousin forces the punk into his bedroom and slams the door. The sound of that slammed door never stops.

We sit in a circle on the floor, drinking some beer and smoking some dirt weed.

"San Jose Sense", Ricky's cousin calls it.

=Sorry, Pete. I don't know whats up with that l'il vato anymore. He thinks all white people are the devil, man.

He shakes his head, sadly. Ricky snorts a white flame.

=They fucking are, man. Motherfucking gringo motherfuckers.

Ricky throws beer in my face.

I feel the liquid seep through my skin. My soul is soaking wet and my brain is blinkered.

I smash my beer bottle on top of his skull.

The weight of an irrestible force bowls me over backwards. I'm pinned against the wall as Ricky drives me with legs pumping like the pistons of a Chevy V8.

We collapse on the floor, pummeling each other.

Ricky laughing the whole time, snorting yellow flames out his hornbeeked purple nose.

=Still got the skill. Still got the skill.

He'd been a terrific linebacker, sure-thing all league his junior year, until the final week of preseason practice, when, out of nowhere one afternoon, he drilled our starting quarterback on a blind side blitz, ending a most promising year for the team before it even started by causing a separated throwing shoulder.

Ricky became a legend that day and earned the enmity of the entire school and city, simultaneously.

I'm still laughing my ass off about it in fond remembrance of Ricky Ricardo Joaquin some forty odd years later.

But pinned to the wall on this particular night, with his shoulder buried inside my breastbone, pushing me through the drywall, basically, and I'm starting to better understand the majoritarian viewpoint, albeit obliquely, while hallucinating bent, curving white surface patterns across the dark spotted space filled night....

=Party...Ricky. We...have...a...party....ooomf!

Ricky springs up and yanks me off the floor.

=Lets go!

When we see the cherries flashing up and down the block we decide to park a few streets over and walk in.

The yard's roped off and a cop stops us two doors down.

=What happened, officer?

The cop stares at me.

=You're that Richards kid, used to play second base for Gladstone, didn't you?

=No, sir, thats my brother.

=No, officer, thats him. Whats going on?

=Hold it right there, boys. Party's over. Time to get on home.

Next morning we would hear the news.

Omar'd played shortstop and batted lead off. I'd played second base and batted second. My role was to sacrifice myself to allow him to steal second and advance to third whenever he got on base.

There'd been a confrontation with some 14 year olds. Omar never stood down from anybody. He was fast as the wind on the bases and fearless in every situation. He was home on Christmas leave, an Army medic attached to special forces operating inside the DMZ. We'd lost touch after he graduated. I had no idea that he was back in town.

The viewing was scheduled for Monday, the funeral set for Tuesday.

II

She washed herself, then me, then got dressed and put on her make up in front of the mirror.

She wore a lot of dark eye shadow. I liked watching her put it on.

She was nineteen and worked the receptionist desk.

She'd managed to become quite the chatty Kathy with my wife during the course of the several weeks-long process where she allowed me to seduce her at work.

She had a boyfriend but they'd had a fight.

One day, as I wasted time pretending to make a fuss over the message slips in the carousel tray, she suddenly asked me over to her apartment for lunch.

=Nothin fancy. Tuna fish. I hope you like a lot of mayonnaise.

I hated mayonnaise but said nothing.

I stopped on the way for a sixpack of Bud.

Tallboys.

She laughed mirthfully when I asked her where to put the beer. She came in close to me and put her hands on my hips. Her breath tickled. I noticed a pair of men's gray running shoes piled next to the front door.

=He ain't comin back, don't you worry about that. Here, you stand here.

She guided me to the center of the small living room.

Then she knelt down before me.

=Could I have one of those?

I popped her a top before letting the rest of the six-pack fall to the floor. She took a long drink, then let out a loud cracking burp, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and started to laugh.

=Why are you here, Mr. Richards?

I started to answer with whatever frothing gibberish my shuttered brain could excrete under the circumstances, but she stopped me by placing her open hand against my chest.

She kept laughing at me, full and throaty, as the room spun around and round. Her merriment seemed to tease and mock me, until it stopped suddenly and she began to do the thing that she did.

III

The night air tasted sweetly of auto exhaust. Thin white linen curtains on wooden rings billowed away from the open window.

Gracie Joaquin sat next me, laughing and drinking a bottle of beer, always refusing the joint as it wended it's way back around. She passed it on to me and watched curiously while I took a long toke before handing it off.

Our knees touched insistently. I'd graduated from high school earlier that evening. A mellow certitude washed over me with the sense of something momentous but quiet and whole.

Janis. Twelve people siting on the floor together in a relaxed, lazy weave on the first day of the endless summer. Janis.

You don't know what it's like....

They glided through the screen door discretely as an onshore breeze. They walked up to Rudy Gonzales and handed him a piece of paper.

I tossed the joint under the table and leaned back to wait.

The breeze slowed and the curtains fell back lifelessly against the wall.

****

My parents bowled in the Las Vegas League on Sunday nights. I bided the minutes in silence until I heard the Buick fire up, followed by the familiar squeeking of the springs as Dad backed her down the driveway.

I sat in my garage-turned-into-a-bedroom with a shoebox cover in my lap, sifting seeds and sticks. I'd gone straight to White Front the day after and bought the album. The revelation of Janis on the first day of the rest of my life and then it had been prematurely snuffed out, extinguished like a flame in a jar. I needed to hear the whole album.

****

I'd walked all the way home in the early morning. My mom was sitting at the dinner table smoking her last cigarette before she left for work.

=How was Disneyland?

=I didn't go.

=Where were you all night?

A deep breath.

=Nowhere. A party and then just walking around. Thinking about the future, I guess.

****

The scraping of cardboard on cardboard. Three passes and scoop the provender onto the paper. Twist. Lick. Twist shut.

A car pulled up. I heard the crunch of boots on the gravel outside between the houses.

=I was sent here to kick your ass. Just so you know.

=What?

=She's 15 years old, dude. The old man's not very happy about it.

Ricky's dad was a welder at the concrete pipe factory, a glum and silent alcoholic until after he'd had a few beers, which he did like clockwork every day before dinner.

Budweiser. Tallboys.

He was capable of lighting up like a fire cracker and exploding into somebody's face about something or nothing. Usually, to his wife about Ricky. Ricky's mom would listen, nervous and fidgety, emitting a few hmmms and peeps but saying nada.

Then, he would run out of words and return to sit in front of the TV, drinking in his cups for the rest of the evening.

=I didn't take her to the party. We met there. She came with her friends...Brenda and Mona.

=I'm just telling you. Don't come by my house for awhile...like until the day after he croaks...

Ricky laughed.

I lit the joint and handed it to him. He took a humongoloid hit but couldn't hold it. Instead, he snorted it out through his nostrils in short bursts of harsh glee.

IV

The massive apartment complex squatted alongside the San Bernardino Freeway like a familial herd of giant, pink elephants. Pink wasn't it exactly, more of an indeterminate grog of blandoid, a mixed palette of baby shit beige, auto exhaust grime and male dog piss.

Pink as my ass.

I'd modified strategy for graduation night. I'd downed some reds and I'd chosen to spend the evening at a party with Graciela Joaquin instead of her brother Ricky, who had gone to the graduation night festivities at Disneyland.

Clarity sacrificed for eros.

Before the ceremony, Ricky and I had stopped at Carole Nash's house, which was down the block from school. Dennis Tyler greeted me warmly when we entered the house.

=Congratulations! The big day has finally arrived!

Clearly, Dennis was enjoying himself, an elder statesman and Vietnam veteran of twenty-two, a college man studying criminal justice at Cal State LA, supporting himself by dealing lids as a public service to high school retards such as myself. Oh, and did I mention that he was also my better in the competition for the affections of Carole Nash, who would not herself be taking part in the graduation ceremony?

She'd come back from Woodstock the previous summer with Dennis and decided to make eleventh grade the pinnacle of her scholastic achievement. Woodstock, apparently, had taught her everything she would ever need to know.

=So, where you going to college, Pete?

=I don't know. I thought maybe take a year off to "find myself."

Dennis laughed.

=You need that deferment, man. Take some classes at Mount Sac if nothing else.

=You know Dennis, that's a great idea! I never thought about Mount Sac. Thing is, I don't think my fucking car will make it up that fucking hill day after day.

=There's some apartments right across the street.

The "Mount Sac Apartments" were a legendary, local landmark of youth subculture, hosting what amounted to an open house acid test every Friday and Saturday night during the school year. The thought of life in the midst of nine months' of psychedelic insanity held much promise, but I rejected the idea entirely on functional grounds. Attending classes was out of the question, so what would be the point of living inside the parallel universe across the street?

The graduation ceremony went off without a hitch. Instead of holding me back 'incomplete,' the administration had allowed me to graduate with C's after I took and passed the final exam for each required course, after having attended zero classes for the entire semester.

I had sacrificed my final year of eligibility to play baseball and my title as 'editor' of the school newspaper. I'd spent most of my senior year down the street in bed with Carole Nash, and then, lost her too as the school year came to a close.

I was a loser.

Fuck it, who cares?

****

We followed the hoarse shouting of Janis up to the second floor. The door and the windows were thrown open, beckoning to whatever rode in on the cool night air. Gracie Joaquin was as tall, thin and lithe as her brother was stout and coiled. She exuded social ease and seemed comfortable in any situation, an attitude that I admired. Gracie wore her black hair long and used a lot of white makeup to pale her skin tone. Her large lips were painted a color that could best be described as 'apartment house pink.'

I'd known her since the day she was born and had fallen for her before she left the hospital with her joyous parents and a sullen, jealous Li'l Ricky in tow.

=Let me hold her.

I'd ridden in the backseat with the newborn Graciela Angelina Joaquin on my lap and I never took my eyes off her once on the ride home.

****

Rudy Gonzalez greeted us at the door. He waved his arm expansively across the living room, which contained several small groups of people entwined in separate conversations.

=Welcome to the rest of your life.

The crowd seemed mellow. Janis with horns was a revelation. I basked in the glow of a familiar chemical warmth after we squatted on an empty patch of green carpet.

My knee touched Gracie's and my other foot rubbed Ramona's ankle. Ramona had an exotic face which wasn't entirely ruined by the speckle of acne scars on each high cheek bone.

She'd been my first girlfriend a long, long time ago in second grade, only to cruelly dump me for my best friend, who had issued a challenge to leap off the roof of her parents' house one day after school. When I blanched on the precipice, I had lost her love forever.

But we were still friends, heldover for all these years by tradition if not actual warmth. Manys the night she waited patiently, wherever it was, until I would finally shut my blaring yap, just so she could drive my drunken ass safely home in the wee hours. Mona never asked for anything in return except for our friendship to continue, even as we hurtled toward the coming divide between those who would stay and those who would feel compelled to go, now that school was out forever.

Grace shifted her knee away from mine and grabbed my hand.

=I can't believe it! And Ricky is going to college!

She gave me a furtive glance.

=No doubt, he had some help along the way.

='And I was very well paid on both occasions.'

='But the winning side would've paid you much better.'

The two of us and Ricky had watched Casablanca together a million times.

We looked at each other and laughed. I pulled her close and kissed her with feeling. Time stopped for one shining moment.

=Pete? C'mon, man, that's not fair...you're my big brother. You can't french kiss me!

Grace laughed uproariously and pushed me with a sharp little punch to the chest. More of a light shove, really. Ramona looked away, pretending to be taken in by the discussion of the group on her right.

I rubbed my chest and played along. Gracie's warmth somehow carried me off into the vicinity of optimism, for the night remained young.

Ricky Ricardo Joaquin

We were a strange pair. Me, the skinny longhaired doper and Ricky, the rock solid football stud.

Ricky's problem was twofold: girls and reds. He couldn't get enough of either. And, necessarily in reverse order. You know the thing about reds: they turn men into lovers or fighters.

His sister Grace called me:

"He's dropping them again... and he's looking for his car keys... .I can't hold them out forever... he'll beat me if I don't turn them over."

"Call his girlfriend. Make her come over."

"La puta odalisca? Ayeeeee!...she's on the rag and she acted all scared that Ricky was gonna mess her up, too."

"Ok. Ok. I'm coming over."

There was one and only one consolation for being friends with Ricky......his little sister, Gracie.

My family lived in a small two bedroom tract house at the edge of the little desert. Saturday night. The next door neighbor partied in his backyard, serenading the neighborhood with the sound of his Tejano band. They had a keg of Budweiser working. It would be drained by sunrise. The music too, would eventually falter into a hypnotic stupor.

My bedroom in the garage at the west end of the house was directly adjacent to pachanga central.

In the near distance you could hear the PA announcer from the drag strip followed by thirty seconds of excruciatingly loud jet engine noise as the funny cars battled for supremacy of a car crazed state of psychosis known primarily to outsiders as "Southern California."

After a few hours of intermittent racing, you would begin to smell and taste the dragsters' exhaust fumes hanging in the sour night air.

Gracie sat in her mother's living room chair, already exhausted, as if from fucking me in my unremittant teenaged fantasies. She raised her arm and pointed out toward the front screen door from where I had just entered. She said nothing.

I searched my options. Where would that motherfucker go?

"Ricky que va a la casa odalisca?"

Gracie looked at me like I was the world's greatest all time idiot. Which I suppose I am. Still, she said nothing, simply stared at me with eyes dripping dark caramel venom.

I left quickly, blue ballz already formed...yet again!

The problem with Ricky Ricardo Joaquin was that he was insane even when sober, so the effect of drugs and alcohol, especially when combined in liberal quantities, was about like mixing jet fuel with a funny car. Shit happened, and it tended to happen at the speed of sound.

I headed back home to my neighbor's house. The band was on break, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer on the patio.

"Oye! Luis, any of you guys see Ricky tonight?"

"Hey Ghost, whats happenin, my man? Ricky no lo he visto... and you keep that fucking vato loco away from my keg too, Pete. Or I'll make your papa grande reimburse me."

The vatos all laughed heartily. Normally, I would have stayed for a beer myself, maybe shared a bit of my dirtweed with them, but there wasn't time for that now. I had to find Ricky.

Too late, I turned the corner to the liquor store behind my house and saw a dazed bleeding man down on the sidewalk. I helped him to his feet.

"It was that big Mexican kid, Ricardo something or other. The linebacker. He wanted me to buy him a quart of malt. When I told him no, he just started punching me."

His mouth was bleeding from the inside of his lower lip. No missing teeth. He would have a black eye in the morning. Otherwise he looked okay. No broken nose, no noticeable eye damage. He was lucky. He shouted after me as I walked away.

"You tell that punk I am going to prosecute his Mexican ass... "

I went to the next closest liquor store, which was in the shopping center downtown. The parking lot was crowded. I drove past the liquor store. Business as usual, no signs of Ricky pacing the sidewalk, hitting up adult strangers and forcing money on them to buy him some beer. I drove down the parking lanes until I spotted his van.

No one in the front. I approached the door cautiously.

"Door's open, Casper."

He sat crosslegged in the back cradling two quarts of malt liquor. He held up a bottle for my inspection.

"Polish quarts," he announced proudly, handing me the remaining unopened forty oz bottle.

I drank the malt, which at first had the taste of rubbing alcohol. About a fifth of the way down the bottle, though, I had to admit it tasted OK.

"Hey Casper, where's the party, man?"

"Its in your mouth motherfucker and we're all coming."

We laughed. Both the question and the answer were in keeping with a certain tradition between us, a perfectly catholic call and response, so to speak. Mass was said every Friday night and every Saturday night of our teenaged existences in hell.

"How fucked up are you, man?" I asked, more to judge the tone and slurriness of his vocal response than his perception of self awareness.

"Pretty fucked up man, pretty fucked up. My girlfriend just told me she is knocked up."

"Bullshit. She just told your sister she was on the rag."

"If only, homeboy, if only."

"Gracie said you were going wild at your mom's house."

"I just heard the news, alright? I just heard the news. My life is over, Holmes."

I thought about it for a second.

"Bullshit. You have no life anyway. Look at you, sitting in the back of your van in the parking lot on a Saturday night downing forties."

Ricky Ricardo Joaquin, high school football hero with nothing but daylight in front of him for a hundred yards, yanked the bottle to his backwardly tipped head and guzzled gustily. When he finished he wiped his mouth with the back of his shirt cuff, smiled the smile of a man standing before the gallows and slowly shook his head back and forth.

"My fucking life is fucking over, esé."

With a sense of finality, Ricky Ricardo Joaquin and I finished off our forties, then slid over the engine compartment and into the front seats of the van. Ricky cranked the potent little Chevy V-8 which connected us. The engine radiated deep, reassuring warmth.

We drove off into the night, searching for a party somewhere.

The Perfect Lawn

She stood quietly at the window and gave me a look that was neither sorrow, pity nor anger. Somehow, it contained all these messages and one more. My life had become a mess again. The tangles of time, people, business, alcohol, madness.

For years I had struggled against myself, kept myself heavily secured in emotional chains, mental bondage, a slave to others. I had worked very hard against all odds to remain a failure and had failed even that test. Accidental success had only deepened my misery. There are no chains wrapped tighter than those forged by easy success.

She took the glass I offered her and sat down across from me.

"What was your first job?"

"You mean as an adult?"

"No. Your first job."

I thought for a moment.

"My dad was a gardener. When I was eleven he made me work with him Wednesday, Thursday and Friday all summer mowing peoples lawns."

Not a single friend of mine missed a single moment of his summer that year, I recalled with an acuity not diminished one bit by the passage of some forty five years.

"Was your father the best gardener?"

"Not really. He did a lot of qauntity over quality I would say. We hustled."

"Did you know this at the time, that there was a better way?"

"Well, sort of...the wealthy people always hired the nisei gardeners to tend their landscaping. The Japanese Americans were the best gardeners."

I remembered a schoolboy crush I had on the daughter of one of the nisei gardeners who lived in our town. She never returned my valentines card the year I worked up the nerve to present her with one. She never spoke to me or looked me in the eye at all, that day or any other.

"You have a lot of lawn. What is your favorite part?"

"The side yard by the patio."

"Yes, its lovely. You must make it perfect."

I looked at her.

"Do you know what is meant when I say "perfect?"

I looked at her.

"Go work on your lawn until it is perfect."

I continued to look at her, not comprehending.

"You will know when it is...and when it is not. "Perfect" isn't a picture in a design magazine, no matter how beautiful. It cannot be found in anyone elses's yard.

The perfection I am talking about cannot be attained outside the place you inhabit. It cannot exist for anyone but you. The award winning lawn of your neighbor can never be your perfection."

I looked at her.

"You will find perfection only as a feeling which arises within you. You must make yourself open and available to it. Otherwise, there is no path."

I looked at her.

"The goal of your life is to maintain your perfect lawn each day. As you do so and it becomes a routine habit, the feeling will transform into an attitude, an attitude which you may then bring into other parts of your life."

I looked at her.

"An attitude which you can only build one perfection at a time."

She rose and walked out the french door to the patio, then stepped back across the threshold.

"Its a big yard and there is still some sunlight..."

She left quietly without saying goodbye. I stared at the open door for a moment, felt a sudden heaviness pass through my body, then got up and went outside.

Teachings of a Fake Monk

Once, there existed a young couple who met, fell in love and set up housekeeping together in an apartment. Like so many of their generation, neatness, tidiness and order were paramount considerations in their lives. They worked very hard to make their place spotless, sanitized even, day after day.

After a few years they saved enough money to buy a house. This was an initially exciting event but soon they came to realize that they were unable to keep the house as clean as they would like, and nowhere near as clean as they had previously kept their apartment.

So, they began to work at it harder and harder, scrubbing floors daily, cleaning furniture, to the point of exhaustion in order to maintain their ideal sanitized environment, but, alas, it was no use. Their house just never seemed to be as clean as they wanted.

One day a friend visited.

-- You must really enjoy owning your own home! What a great feeling it is to have your own space and privacy. I love my house. It grounds me in a way that renting never could and provides a tremendous amount of satisfaction.

The couple glanced furtively at each other before the wife replied for both of them.

-- Well, to be honest, we think we made a mistake buying this place. We have never seen a building that created so much dirt before! We clean and clean and clean the house every day and nothing works. it gets dirty too fast. In fact, to tell you the truth, we are planning to sell this dump and move back into an apartment as soon as possible.

The friend listened knowingly and nodded, for he had already been through what the couple were experiencing. He felt empathy for their plight and began to speak slowly, carefully, so as not to offend them.

-- I understand how it is when all of your efforts, all of your hard work, seem to go unrewarded. Maybe its that your efforts, while well-intentioned, are not quite right, in this instance. Maybe you are focusing your house cleaning efforts in the wrong way.

The couple looked confused.

-- Your circumstances have changed, and you must become aware of the difference between keeping a house and an apartment. The reality is that you now possess the outdoors as well as the indoors. Have you changed your efforts to match? One thing I learned from owning a house, it only will remain as clean inside as you maintain the cleanliness outside.

The couple looked at each other. Of course! They thanked their friend profusely, subsequently took his advice and refocused their efforts to reflect their changed circumstances. This was difficult at first, as old habits are resistant to change for all people. But they persevered, never doubting the wisdom of their friend. Soon they began to see and feel the progress, which only made them more eager to press forward and eventually they were able to create and maintain the home to their standards of cleanliness.

The couple stayed on in that house for the rest of their natural lives, never forgetting the lesson they had learned from their friend, applying it over and over again, whenever and wherever warranted by the ever changing circumstances of their lives.

One thing I have learned is that its better for you to become a leader among kids your own age than it is to be some older kidz flunky.

But if you find the right older kid to guide you, life becomes a lot more interesting.

Bet on it.

We had this dingy old movie theatre downtown. The floors were chronically sticky. Your shoes would catch and snap as you walked. Dennis and I always walked in a syncopated rhythm to the same seats---fifth row in the back right side, second and third seats off the aisle.

Dennis had somehow discovered that the seat directly in front of us in the next row had a broken back. He would lower himself and push the seat back into position with his knee.

The matinee always sold out on Saturday so we got there early and started larding up at the candy counter. I was a red licorice and cinnamon man. Red Hots. Fire Stix. Atomic Fire Balls. Firestix you held on until a bout 45 minutes into the movie, then bent it up smaller and stuffed it into your mouth, where it melted for the rest of the filmmm.

And what films! Where the Boys Are. Y.v.e.t.t.t.e M.e.m.i.o.u.x., or wtf. Cinderfella. I fell for Anna Maria Alberghetti watching that movie and I fell hard. Tammy Tell Me True.

Elvis. Doris Day with Rock Hudson and/or James Garner. Instinctively, even before puberty, you knew damn well that you never wanted to hook up with any chick like Doris. This was, of course, well before you attained the age of reason and realized that Doris is everpresent in all chicks only she never outs herself until after the wedding.

I mean, did you ever even see a movie where Doris was single? A young man could learn all he truly needed to learn if only he'd paid attention, which, of course, he hadn't.

Chubby Checker. "Twist Around the Clock" or wtf. I loved Chubby Checker. EEEEYAH! TWIST!

Seventh Voyage of Sinbad was the best of the best. The Cyclops. That dude was fierce. No mercy on the peeps whatsoever. Worse than facing my old man after I did something wrong then lied about it.

Twenty thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda. Burt. Kirk. Tony Curtis! Ancient Greco Roman Brooklynese.

RIOTOUS!

John Wayne movies, of course. Out the ass. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Who shot Liberty Valance. We sang that stupid theme song in our headz for daze afterwards.

Anyway, we'd get back to our seats, occasionally havin to tell some other kidz to move because those were our seats, see.

And along would come some kid and sit down in that seat, and Dennis would spring into action, allowing the seat back to lower a crucial inch or two so that the kid would be startled a bit when he kept falling back beyond where he expected to be stopped. Usually, the kid would look around like "wha?" and then settle back into the seat.

We'd be laffing our asses off as quietly as possible.

Dennis played it beautifully, always. Understated, picking his spots for maximum effect. A true professional in the best sense of the word. The tops would be a kid with a soda, taking a sip as he leaned back and Dennis letting the seat fall away just right so the kid would tumble back and spill soda down his shirt.

RIOTOUS!

Course, we usually were tossed after an episode of that magnitude. The Theatre had a policy on bad behaviour: first citation, which basically consisted of anyone at all complaining about you to an usher for any reason (especially if you were known to have priors), 15 minutes suspension. They made you stand outside by the ticket window.

It didnt matter. We were staying through two showings of the double feature anyway.

Second citation was automatic expulsion.

Fuck it, who cares?

In the dark, comfortless morning

The patient sat in silence, staring down at his dangling shoes. His wife leafed through a fashion magazine that she had brought from the waiting room. After the interminable delay, the doctor came in, a laptop tucked under his arm. He perused the patient’s medical record, jotting notes on a piece of paper while he tapped and clicked the keyboard with his other hand.

Finally, he looked up and spoke, offhandedly.

= It’s been eighteen months since your last checkup. Everything OK?

The patient shrugged. The doctor looked at the woman.

= So, whats up with him?

The woman put down the magazine, tears already formed in her eyes.

= He’s not working, he’s not eating. Nothing seems to interest him. He sits and stares straight through me.

= Still smoking pot?

= He’s been arrested twice this year.

= Don’t forget to tell him that I totalled your car when I was drunk, too…

The doctor grimaced at his laptop.

= Oh. Let me make a note of that. Totalled wife’s car in drunk driving accident. Has not lost ability to speak. Injuries?

= No. He ran straight into a wall going forty five miles an hour and walked away unharmed.

The doctor got up and began to probe the patient's internal organs.

= Parents still living?

= His father, yes. His mother passed away last summer.

= Didn’t I treat her for the flu once,?

= Yeah.

=Very lovely woman, your mother. That was many years ago. Did she decide to stay on in Texas?

= She moved back to LA after my son started preschool.

= Cause of death?

= Lung cancer.

= Do you smoke?

= Just the green ones.

=OK. Good. No tobacco. Did you get a chance to spend much time with her?

The patient hadn’t spent enough time with her before she'd died but now he spent all of his time with her memory. She’d been given less than six months after they discovered the cancer had spread to her liver. But She held on, cheerfully at first, then growing more frightened and weary for two more gruesome years. His sister's harsh voice wouldn't let up.

= God damn you, Pete. God damn you all to Hell…



When he made the journey back to that little house he'd always blamed on his parents, he wanted to turn around forthwith, re-enter the traffic line and return to LAX. There slumped before him in his mother's favourite chair, a pale, withered toothless hag raving at ghosts that only she could see.

He retreated quickly to the kitchen to calm himself, found some beer in the fridge and stayed ast the table, smoking his nephew’s weed until well after the others had gone to bed. Surrounded by silence he began to feel that there would be no solace. He began to cry softly but stopped himself and looked around sheepishly, once he realised that the empty kitchen didn't care.

Gathering strength, he bumped his way along the narrow wall into the living room, and kneeled down before the gasping apparition of his mother. She was still slumping in her chair, which had been her world, in front of the TV, which had been her universe, and had provided her a facsimile of what those closest to her had never given.

He hugged her clumsily, for as long as he could endure knelt down on the floor before her. A low moaning sound rumbled into the room, insistent and full.

He recognised the funeral dirge outwardly but stopped listening when she tilted her head ever so slightly, in response to the song. He wished he to quell the vibrating inside his diaphragm and evaporate into the silent darkened void, but there was no use. Did she hear him now? He proffered his guttural offering, but there would be no grace.

When he could take the strain no longer he shifted his weight forward and clutched his mother as if he were still a little boy and she were still his totality.

She stirred and he brushed his against her face. He thought her cheek felt wet. He rubbed his fingers together than placed them to his lips. They were dry.

= I’m sorry, mom. For everything. I’m so, so sorry.

He didn't actually speak those words but imagined them, for the low pitched rumbling sound had re-entered the house, gaining some urgency as he rocked back and forth to comfort himself. After awhile he stopped, leaned back and looked at his mother for the last time. He hugged her to him then whispered into her ear.

= Let’s go now, mom. It’s time to go. Everybody is waiting for us back home.

And, just like that, she departed, leaving him all alone in the dark, comfortless morning.

Blaze of July

I just got in from a business trip to Austin and back. Round trip in one day. The good news is that I finished up way out there in the Hill Country on a lumpy, winding dirt road until you reach the yard dogs barking a hard panting racket in the 101 degree blaze of July. The sky is the thing that first attracted me to Texas, day like this, white puffs forever; an endless blue nullity.

Nutty's dad was a mainline minister of some type in some shitbox small town South Texas, Nowhere.

Nutty played high school football until he fucked up his knee, had surgery and rehabbed it all the way back into becoming a major league doper.

The dad's ministerhood earned Nutty a free ride at some small private college for eggheadz where Nutty majored in philosophy, graduating magna cum laude, or wtf. After college he took a job managing freight for a trucking company, making it all the way to General Manager of the Terminal for ten years or so before he retired to the life he loves at age 40, or wtf.

We're about the same age, both late fifties now, although we are far apart in many ways. Nutty's broadened out handsomely and wears a long charcoal grey ponytail, a single silver earloop in his left ear and an unkempt beard. My pretense of being the semi-athletic seniour leaguer ah whats the use?

I work and strive while he doesnt do shit all day. The laundry maybe. The dishes. He lives in a natural setting. No gardening required whatsoever. His wife of thirty some odd years commutes all the way into Austin, which is a beating that keeps her out of the house about 14 hours a day but she loves her job and she's a cheerful, youthful presence.

WTF is up with these people?

Here they are laid back in the Hill Country gracefully going to seed in rustic splendour, mastering life, while I'm still restlessly beating the streets day upon live long day, skittering from city to city like a June bug nearing the end of August, trying to coerce a living from my weakened and dulling mind, except when I'm not because of frequent troubles with the law, which become commonplace as I grow older and more insane with each passing breath. Nutty likes to make a big show of being overly sensitive to my legal dilemmas. He asks a few innocuous type questions about my case which lead inexorably to this incisive, final judgment: I'm guilty as hell under the law of both God and man but the longer my case drags out the lighter will be the eventual disposition. Nutty should have been a lawyer. His son, a sports agent in LA of all places is a trained chisle, and after the father expertly trips me up, catching me in the obvious inconsistency of the typikkkal looser's alibi, Nutty always enjoys a huge belly laugh at my expense, a coarse and crusty expression of utter delight. That fucker hasnt had in his entire life so much as even one single infraction of the law of any kind, not even a traffic ticket.

Yet he's the career criminal and I'm just a dude.

Apple Asia

Yesterday was the first day of skkkool. We have this new kid name of Chester and he wear a funny hat just like Dan'l Boone. All the kids laugh when teacher tell him that tomorrow better wear some shoes or she gonna send him back home.

Chester come and sit down next to me at the back of the class. He look over at me all serial.

=We don't wear shoes to skkkool where I come from.

=Where you come from?

=Apple Asia.

=Where's "Apple Asia?"

Chester point up to where the wall meet the ceiling.

=Its way up there and it gots lotsa trees and snakes and bears! And the sky is blue!

=How come you here, then?

Teacher say "shush" so we stop. She wheel out this machine in front of the class. She call it a tape laccorder.

=When I call your name I want each of you to come up here. I'm going to hand you this microphone and when I say "ready" I want you to say your name, yur age and what you want to be when you grow up. Everyone else please remain quiet. We're going to seal the finished tape in a time capsule and bury it under the new tree in the playground with instructions 'do not open until the first day of school 2001'. Someday, when the little tree grows up to cover the playground in shade all the children in the 21st century will get to hear your voices. Maybe some of them will be your grandchildren!

Chester lean over to me and whisper.

=What you gonna be when you grow up?

=A baseball player.

=Me, too!

There's lotsa doctors and nurses, mommies and daddies, some scientists and Presidents of the United States. There's some baseball players and football players, too. Moody stars.

When it come Chester's turn he stand there in front of the whole class, take off his coonskin cap and scratch his head. He look at me. I shake my head because teacher tell us not to talk.

=My name is Chester Morton and I wanta be a...a...I wanta be a... bear. I'm gonna be a bear when I grow up!

All the kids laugh at Chester. Teacher turn off the tape laccorder and stare at us with her hands on her hips until we stop.

Chester's the funniest kid in the whole wide world!

Today I walk to skkkool and I see Chester there on the curb pull off his new shoes.

=Hey! Teacher said you have to wear shoes!

=Make my feets hurt.

=New shoes make everbody's feets hurt. Thats the way it is, Chester. My mom put a bandaid on my feets.

Chester takes off his other shoe and throws em in the bushes.

=I don't care. Don't feel right.

I look at Chester wiggle his toes.

My feets hurt where the top of the shoes bend.

=Yur right. They don't feel right.

So I take my shoes off and throw em in the bushes!

***********

Dad's face turn all red. He leave work and come pick me up at the principle's office. He drive slow along the curb.

We look at each house go by on Edgerow Street.

=There!

I point over to the honeysuckle growing over Mr. Saenz's fence.

=There! Thats where I left 'em!

Wooden Ships

To be honest, I never liked the prim, fussy, deeply religious man who exemplified bedrock Indianan conservative values.

He was so-o-o not LA.

When he forced Walton to get a haircut or else......that was it. I was done with the wizard of Westwood for all time.

Until today, when the knowledge of his passing hit home like yet another insistent blip across the radar screen of my own shelf short space, as I awoke once more to those middle-aged reflective memories that both sustain and depress an old man whose best days are in the rearview.

A wide-awake nightmare.

Then again, when you think about it, LA, the real LA, is so not LA. The real LA is the dirty, grimy, scalding cracked asphalt of the deadend American dream.

There is no LA.

There never has been an LA.

There never again will be an LA that never was LA in the first place.

Some people are born and raised, live and die surrounded by family and friends, their souls anchored to a sense of place that radiates timeless enlightenment.

Every unremarkable stop along the highway where folks make the most out of their limited surroundings and manage in the process of life and death to imbue the universe with an infinitesimal speck of human dignity.

But "LA" is just a trickfucking that gets inside your head and then keeps moving you around, changing you, shrinking you, breaking you, eating at you until you haven't anymore the slightest idea uncontaminated by remorse.

For many years I exalted pridefully in the fact that I was "from LA" whenever asked by people who passed fleetingly in the night as I wandered everywhere in this dubiously grate banana republic of zero redemption.

I took immensely foolish pride in their conference of automatic respect for this accident of my birthplace, because they hailed only from some nowhere land like Malden, or Milwaukee, or Missouri.

John Wooden left Indiana but Indiana never left him. He’s died but he never succumbed to the temptations which buried me alive.

I left LA and LA laughed in my face, mocked me and scorned me every dogged step I traced along a meaningless path, allowing myself to get blown about like some shallow rooted weed that wouldn't last the season amidst an eternity of damnation.

Boite de los Angeles

It started as just another Friday night, as so many of those Friday nights did, with nothing to do, nowhere to go, but an insistent adolescent libido pulsing through my veiny joy stick until it drove me crazy and I became frenzied with desperation, like a dog chasing its own tail.

Houston Rollett lived a half mile or so from my parents' house. Rollett was a recent arrival from the projects of East St. Louis. His family, like so many others back in the day, had been lured west by the sunshine, the Hollywood movies, the beach, the mountains, the desert and the easy terms on the food stamps and welfare checks, which were decidedly more generous in the golden state than in more godforsaken places like Illinois or Missouri, or wtf.

Rollett's step dad even found a job, with the phone company no less, and the family was able to move out of the two room rented airstream hard by the freeway trailer park on Garvey, and into a rented two bedroom crackerbox in my northside neighbourhood.

Rollett had an older brother and sister. His sister was already not married with child, collecting her own AFDC. The older brother was a junkie who sooner later came home and nodded into a blissful three part harmony with Ma and Pa Adenoids, his pockets also ripe for the picking. I gathered Rollett had had a younger brother who had died just prior to the family making the trip west. This subject was the only one that seemed to pain Rollett at all and so I never was able to figure out how the kid died but I strongly suspected some form of parental negligence exacerbating extreme poverty.

I never saw Rollettt's mom when she wasn't passed out on the sofa. Typically, there would be a quart sized empty bottle of one fine bourbon or another lying about somewhere like an excuse slip. The only thing that ever changed about her was her weight. When I first met Rollett she was skinny but a few years later she suddenly ballooned into obesity. And then on one bright and sunny day to come soon thereafter she just up and died right there on the sofa, with the empty Ten High bottle standing sentry to another life destroyed. But thats a different story...
Rollett's step dad might still be half conscious in the easy chair, smoking a cigarette, watchin the Angels looose again, blanking on the legendary KTLA news lead in, by George Putnam.

"See you at ten, see you then." Or wtf.

Finally, say by 9:30 or so, they'd both be gassed and snoring in that peculiarly comforting/annoying mom/dad call and response that we cherish in our fading fondest memories of a distilled youth.

Rollett opened the door to let me in. He had a styrofoam cup filled with french fries that he'd rustled himslef up for dinner. I don't know why I remember that detail. When he finished he produced the car keys.

=You got any money?
=Couple dollars.
=Good. We need some gas but I have the oil in the trunk.

How their car ever made it I'll never know. A 1958 Bel Air, 283 cubes of Amerikkkan exceptionalism in a Chevy V-8, but this one's pure love had not been reciprocated by its abusive owners.

It was a wreck on four wheels, with worn out retreaded tires, burning through oil as fast as it guzzled gas and rolled on the loudest springs that seemed to echo after you hit a bump or crossed the tracks, or wtf.

Rollett popped the trunk to show me an array of coke bottles filled with dark spiritual matter. A case of used motor oil. Perfect.

Off we pounded into the beckoning Friday night, adding a billow of grey exhaust to mark our territory against the millions of other canines busily contaminating the demented raceway to nowhere AKA "Southern California".

=We have to pick up Pablo.
=What?
=I promised we'd take him with us.
=Why'd you do that?
=I don't know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Besides, he'll have some cash...

Rollett said nothing more after I played the financial card. But I could sense his annoyance.

Worse, I'd anticipated his reaction filling me with self-disgust.

Curiously, it did not.

Pablo had developed a crush on me during the school year. He began calling my house at all hours of the day and night for any reason at all practically every day of summer. My dad often took those calls, no doubt hearing the feminine-sounding voice on the other end of the line, and wondering where he had failed me along the way.

Finally, to end the silliness, I'd agreed to come over to Pablo's house one day if he would stop calling my house all the time.

He lived in one of the new subdivisions in town, and when I got there a gorgeous woman, one of the most beautiful I had yet encountered in my short life, answered the door.

She was a dead ringer for Pablo, except she wore long hair, expertly applied makeup and no clunky black eye glasses.

=I didn't know you had a sister.

Pablo looked puzzled.

=Thats my mom.
=Whoa. Why is she all dressed up like that?
=She owns a club in East LA. She works nights. She'll be leaving for the club in a few minutes.

It seemed totally incongruent that the mother of this kid, this nerdy brainiac who would in a few years graduate as class valedictorian with a full scholarship to Claremont, who lived in the "better" part of town, seemingly a charmed existence, was nothing more than an upwardly mobile lady of the night, but there it was.

Pablo brought out cokes and potato chips and we sat next to each other on the sofa. There was no papa around, never a single mention of one as I recall, and these being daze of strict Freudian hegemony, simpler times where every aberration had a clear, concise cause upon which most everyone agreed, I saw that Pablo, an only child, couldn't help being the "cute little girl" about whom everyone, including my closest friends, and me, expressed derision and mocking contempt as a daily feature of the skkkoool yard.

Why was I always drawn to the looosers?

Here I was, pretty smart myself, honours classes, near perfect GPA, an accomplished athlete, surething starter for the upcoming varsity baseball season, handcrafted for adolescent stardom by my father, who'd had none of my advantages himself growing up during the Depression, and I found myself spending summer evenings on the sofa alone with a faggot who was in love with me?

Life ransacks the thermostat when you are sixteen, and the blood which boils your body from inside out contains the power to free or imprison you. From a sulphourous steam spring on a volcanic field, there is the insistent hiss of the escape valve, whether you choose to listen or not.
You are kept unaware of the subterranean geology, then one day, by accident, the molten ground fissures beneath your feet, gaping wide open as you scramble instinctively for safety yet there is nothing to hold onto as you fall and fall and fall and fall.

I reached over, carefully pulled off Pablo's eyeglasses and laid them on the coffee table. He looked up at me expectantly with hands folded in his lap.

More than anything, I wished I'd never laid eyes on his mama.

*********************
I jumped out of the Bel Air before we came to a complete stop in the driveway and walked up to the front door, as self conscious as I had ever felt, and that was saying something. My movements were as stiff as a marionette's. My lower back and my head throbbed in tandem.

Pablo smiled at me as he opened the front door.

=I can't believe this. Pinch me. I must be dreaming...

Don't worry about it....but, y'know...

Pablo smirked.

=Ashamed of oursleves, now, are we Pete?
=Yeah, well, maybe...but....just stay cool, man. Just stay cool.

But Pablo was cool and I was the basket case. He seemed altogether a different person now, self assured, assertive, less the passive cardboard figure.

I'd already lost control. Shit! I had so much to learn...

=Hey Pablo. Glad you could make it tonite.

Rollet jammed the shift on the steering column into reverse and we screeched out of Pablo's driveway, bouncing backwards into the street.

He laid about ten feet of rubber for added emphasis as we fish tailed off. The oil light popped on.

=Motherfucker!

We pulled over and Rollet jumped out to grab a coke bottle from the trunk and come back around to pop the front hood.

I looked back at Pablo sitting quietly in the back seat.

=You sure you're up for this?

He smiled back at me.

=Are you up for this? Our first date...

Rollet jumped back into the driver's side, put her into low and off we lurched. He reached out an opened hand to me.

=I found this in my brother's pocket. You gotta match?

I took the joint and pressed it between my lips. I couldn't be less ready for anything but Lord have Mercy! At least there was weed...

I took a deep, deep hit and gagged it out immediately, choking and coughing.

=What the fuck is this shit?

It tasted like mint and chemicals.

Rollet glanced over at me.

=Whassamatter? You never smoke weed before?

He laughed.

=Not anything like this shit, man. If this is weed I'm Bob Dylan.

I handed it back to him. He held the burning joint to his nose and shrugged. Then he took a hit himself and also starting coughing reflexively. He handed it back. Not wanting to seem a pussy, I took another, though much smaller, toke.

We passed it back and forth a few more times then Rollett remembered his other guest and held it out for Pablo.

=Here, man. Ever been high?

Pablo hesitated then reached out for the joint.

=Don't!

I grabbed it from his hand and tossed it out the window. I was already more fucked up then I had ever been in my life but not in any recognizable way.

Rollet laughed his ass off and couldnt stop as we bounced and backfired our way to the freeway.

He reached under the seat and produced an 8 track player.

=Check this out. My old man hooked it up. We got one tape... I hope yoou like it...

He laughed and laughed as he snapped the the tape into the deck. The red light on the tape deck seared my mind.

We entered the San Bernardino Freeway, heading west, my forehead knocking against the dashboard as I wretched the dry heaves to the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, holding my head in my hands down between my legs repeating nonsense over and over into an echo chamber.

=Too late. Too late. Too late.Too late.

Hypnotized, held down, as if I were fighting against an irrestible force that pinned my shoulders and wouldnt let me move.

=What the fuck, dude, what the fuck, dude, what the fuck, dude?

I glanced over at Rollett but could see he was in no better condition. He had the steering wheel and he had the freeway in front of him and that was pretty much it.

The night blazed passed in disassociative flashes. I searched outside the window for the comfort of well-known landmarks. There went the Cal State LA sign lighting the hillside. Then County-USC Medical Center. The Brew 102 wall sign on the curve as we passed the old brewery signalling the transition from the San Bernardino Fwy onto 101 downtown.
County Jail.

=My brother got cut looose just last week. A week ago.

Rollett chuckling to himslef. Pablo sitting silently in the back looking on, increasingly terrified at the two invalids up front who controlled his immediate destiny.

To his credit, he said nothing. Nothing at all.

Some time may have passed. We sat at a red light in Redondo. How we got there I couldn't tell you. We'd forgotten all about the Bel Air's craving for oil. Moving was what mattered. To stop moving was to die.

A 1967 Pontiac, raised rear end, Cragars all around, classic ricky racer mobile rumbled up next to us at the intersection, revving provocatively. Three dudes laughing at us. A cranked skull leaned out the passenger window and leered. We sat helplessly adrift, shrouded in the blackening exhaust. The Bel Air stalled.

=You girls wanta hava go?

Rollett looked over at the skullbones and proceeded to hock a green projectile lugee straight into his face.

=Fuck off!

The light changed and the Pontiac veered hard right, forcing Rollett up over the curve and into the parking lot beyond the sidewalk. It was shit luck that nothing or no one had been in the way.

We heard a creaking, pounding racket behind us, signalling that we were being followed.

=Ah fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Now we're dead.

I looked over at Rollett who worked the wheel best he could, maneuvering his way through the cars and the pedestrians, maintaining his cool, thankfully hitting no one in the process. The wide parking lot drive lanes were laid out in a square shape, but we had no idea. The lot seemed full and there were many people strolling to and from their cars. Looking back, we could see the Pontiac hadn't yet made the corner.

The Bel Air stalled. Next, one of the rednecks yanked open the driver side door and began pulling Rollett out. I grabbed onto him and pulled back, my feet planted in the floorboard. In his absurd position of being torn apart, Rollett still kept working comically at the ignition and the gas pedal in a futile attempt to get the Bel Air running.

The crankbrain holding onto Rollett laughed his ass off while punching him repeatedly about the head and shoulders, as if he were the angel of death laughing in our faces, to assure our final moments were the most painfully humiliating of all.

I managed to pull Rollett away from his attacker and he slammed the door shut just as another of the boneheads reached through my side window, twirled me roughly around and began to administer a repeat pummeling, only this time it was on my face. I flailed and fought to get free but the blows continually rained in, too many of them connecting. I couldn't escape his grip and I began to taste blood.

Suddenly, there came a shriek from the rear and my assailant yelped in pain and flinched just enough so that I could pull away from his grasp. Pablo had jumped the goon's back and buried those sensitive, long-nailed fingers into my tormentor's eyes and face. I leaned back across the bench seat, swung my legs up and kicked the death angel squarely in the neck and chest, sending both he and Pablo staggering back away from the car window at the very moment the Pontiac came roaring up to catch them both square in the grille. The goon went down under the front bumper while Pablo sailed into the air before crash landing onto the hood.

I jumped out and grabbed him as he slid off the side of the Pontiac and dragged him quickly back to the Bel Air.

The skulls attended their downed friend, momentarily forgetting all about us. I held Pablo gingerly not knowing where he hurt.

=Get us the fuck out of here!
=Can't. Flooded.
=Shit!

Pablo lay moaning with his head in my lap. He wasn't really conscious but I felt him reach up and clasp my hand tightly. Rollett wheeled around to look back. A small crowd of onlookers had gathered about the fallen kkkreep. We were free. For the moment.

=That dude's deader than dust, man.
=Lets get outta here! NOW!

Rollett tried again. The 283 wobbled then mercifully turned over. We sputtered out of the parking lot spewing black smoke and made for the nearest freeway entrance, holding our collected breath every inch of the way.

I can't say why but I've always felt safer on the freeway. I worked on Pablo while Rollett headed south on the 405. I pulled off Pablo's shirt, shoes and socks after he complained of intense pain on his right side and right ankle. His hip was badly bruised from the impact with the Pontiac and had somehow managed to either break or sprain the ankle, which was swollen a hideously reddish shade of purple.

Rollett looked at me in the rearview.

=Where we goin?

I thought first about the emergency room, but then had another idea. I looked down at Pablo, who had regained full consciousness. Thank God for the lucidity of pain.

=How late does your mom stay at the club?
=Pretty late. She usually gets home about sunrise. Sometimes later.
=Where's the Club exactly?
=It's on Whittier Blvd....not far from the freeway...the Long Beach Freeway. About a block east.

As if on cue, the green sign for the "California 7 - Pasadena" exit loomed ahead. Rollett was already in the correct lane.

But we faced another problem. The Bel Air was dying fast. Overheating and making odd metallic noises.

=Fuck it, man, just keep going as far as we can go. Nothing else to do.

The Chevy chugged heroically northbound on its last legs, sputtering and lurching, the steam beginning to rise from the hood vent clouding Rollett's view of the road. I prayed that we would make it all the way. Pablo seemed like he would live and we didn't relish any encounter with the pigs, especially under the circumstances.

I sat back in the darkness, stroking Pablo's head and looking out the window into the luminous dark night of the city. Pablo relaxed under my touch. He peered up at me and smiled, same as he had that first night.

=Sorry for, uh, fucking you up like this Pablo, I wasnt thinking at all, I guess...

I felt humbled, perhaps as much as I would on the coming day when my first child would be born. Pablo kept smiling through the pain. I let him snuggle his head deeper into my lap for comfort. I no longer felt any shame for my feelings toward Pablo. Fuck it, they were my feelings and he deserved them as much as anybody did, for he had shared his love with me in a way that nobody had before and very precious few would afterwards, for that matter.

But the shame was instantly replaced by guilt, for I knew that I wasnt what he would need in his life, that I wasnt the right one for him nor he for me. We'd used each other in the natural course of adolescence. And the truth is that we will never know what we truly need in this life anyway for how do we overcome the shackled ability to learn only what we laughably consider "knowledge," out of the enormous circulation of the world and the infinite, which exists inside of us? Or if we do stumble upon salvation out of shit luck, out of sheer happenstance, how can we recognize and value it in that case without feeling compelled to toss it away as blithely as we might push out a burning cigarette butt through the wing window of a speeding car in the Angeles National Forest, always searching, insatiably searching for the next, the new and the better?

Suddenly, the engine began shaking so violently in its death throes that Rollett killed it and coasted off the freeway, taking the Bel Air expertly down a short embankment off the shoulder of a freeway exit, coming to a stop in a ditch alongside a chainlink fence. We were pretty much hidden from roadway view.

=How far are we from Whittier Blvd?
=Not very far. Maybe a few miles, I just saw the first sign. I'll go.

Pablo stirred and sat up.

=No! Pete needs to go. My mom already knows Pete...she knows all about him, in fact...she doesn't know Hugh at all. Pete needs to go.

Both Rollett and I looked curiously at Pablo, surprised at the determination settled on his face.

=Ok, ok. Whatever you want. You're the hero. Now, how in the hell will I get there from here?

The clock on the S&L across the street read "2:09" when I reached the "Boite de los Angeles," which sat under the shadow of the freeway bridge, one block east, just as Pablo had said.
He'd instructed me to go around to the back. It was locked. I rapped loudly on the heavily reinforced door. A large Mexican man answered with a pistol aimed at my midsection.

=What do you want?
=I'm....I'm here to see Gabriela...Miss Perez...I'm a...a friend of Pablo's...there's been an accident....he's hurt his ankle and our car broke down a few miles from here....

I babbled on with my hands up, like in the movies. The man looked me over suspiciously, then relaxed when he realized that I was just a punk high school kid in trouble. He waved me inside with the pistol but kept it trained on me.

=Gabby!

He called out. She was sitting at the corner of the bar, either talking intimately or making out with a man in the shadows. When she heard her name, she unlocked, rose and came forward. She freaked when she recognized me, trying to block my view of the man she'd left dangling in an erotic daze at the bar.

But it was too late. I recognized him, alright.

How could I not know him, for that man sitting there befuddled in his sexual arousal was none other than.... dear old Dad.

Flutter WIngs

I have an idea. Ok. I know. Its seriously fucked up. I've been thinking about contacting my first ex-wife and apologizing for the time I broke up with her when our daughter was still so young. I'll never forget that day...my daughter crying, her pleading two-year old baby face savaging me in that awfulest moment. Thunder rolled as I stepped out of Maria's VW for the last time, my daughter's shrieking and the rain pounding as her mother sped off and I just stood there, the pathetic fool in a puddle from which I couldn't escape.

I saw Maria recently, first time in decades, at our daughter's wedding awhile back...she's quieter now and composed, matronly, settled. Married to an old school Southern gentleman who is as different from me as La. is from L.A.

I was nervous about them meeting but my wife took to her immediately. They found a corner of the apartment and locked onto each other, as women so often do, as if they'd both planned for the chance meeting and of course, thats exactly what both had done. I stood off to the side with Maria's husband, sipping an Italian beer, mostly in awkward silence, while our wives whispered and nodded knowingly.

="Pete hasn't changed."

Frau Tale reported Maria's assessment later, once we were back in the hotel room with the commanding view of the Jackie Robinson Apartments, which they built after they tore down Ebbetts Field on the day America died.

=She feels very, very badly for you. How everything's turned out.

Probably another phone call I need to make is to this woman I know in New Orleans. I spent the better part of two years with her there during the mid-90s.

New Orleans is where I should have gone and should have stayed. My destiny feels as tightly wedded to New Orleans as an oyster to its shell, just before the knife removes it.

Lena's a successful businesswoman and amateur ballerina, a powerhouse, a demurely Southern sweetness that is always in total control.

Over you.

I captured her heart momentarily in my hands and can still feel the dust from her fluttering wings on my fingers.

I still want her so bad I can taste it.

Recently, I went searching online and found her company's website. I clicked on "About Us" and there she was, serene and everwise, a gracefully aging fortress of feminine vulnerability.

Surely, I had my reasons then that made perfect sense, didn't I? There were male ego issues involved. There's the fact that my son was just a baby at the time and I still had these nightmares about a lost little girl crying in the rain.

Lena had two kids of her own and I couldnt bring myself to live with them while leaving another one of mine behind. They are both college age now and he's in high school. Ha! I didnt really raise him up, anyway.

Damn it!

I can still feel the heat and the resentment rising off the prison walls of her fancy house.

We spent every weekend together, mostly in bed, drinking red wine, making love, talking, making love, eating, making love, sleeping, making love, sleeping. Five times, ten times even, as I expertly picked the lock to her soul in the upstairs bedroom which overlooked the pool, the guest house and the rotting garden. I stood at that window so often, in self-satisfaction, overlooking so much.

She informed her elderly, Catholic parents that I slept in that guest house because I had nowhere else to go. She insisted that we always lie to them about the nature of our relationship. Lena's way of resetting the lock, which of course I never noticed.

Her dad saw through me clear to the third rung of hell...never once failing to graciously enquire about the well-being of my boy.

=You own me.

She'd gasp and shudder in spasms once we were alone, always with her riding tall in the saddle. She'd get so inside of hers, which took such a long, long time to develop, a very long time, so long that her facial expression when it finally happened made me laugh out loud sometimes.

Selfish, wasn't it, in that odd way of sexual bargaining, the expense of so much middle-aged energy and for what purpose, really, except to exult ourselves through casual degradation?

One day during a dispiriting trip to the home office in DFW, I was introduced to a new staff support employee, a freckle-faced Vietnamese girl who possessed the silky, underdeveloped body of a preteen. This was like her third day in town, and my schedule was open, so I invited her to lunch. It started out innocently enough, sharing lunch and then a few drinks after work. Soon I found out that she had left behind an abusive ex-boyfriend, her first and only, back home in Arkansas.

I guess she must have mentioned something to the ex at some point, because he began to call me regularly and leave messages on my voicemail, ominous in that he sounded quite buoyant, always ending cheerfully with the threat that he was coming down to meet me, just as soon as the judge restored his drivers license.

He actually did show up finally but only after I'd already quit and gone to work somewhere else. One of my ex-co-workers contacted me and relayed the scene with relish. Oh, my god. He came up and made quite a row, asking every startled employee he could find to point out my office. Glory pleaded with him to calm down, to please leave, that I wasn't there any longer. He ransacked the office for awhile, calling Glory a cunt and threatening to cut off my balls with a butter knife when he got his hands on me.

The police were summoned.

I might find Glory's number and give her a call, too, now that I'm thinking about it. I know what you are thinking, don't I? That I am making all this up, all this false bravado about me, that this is nothing more than a deceptive trick to bare my guilty soul, like that devil in the Camus story, seated in his crummy bar in Amsterdam, who draws in the listener by weaving a sordid tale and magnifying its significance out of all proportion, as if to offload his share of the blame for the evil nature of an entire civilisation.

But really, I must tell you, it was all simply an unfortunate circumstance at the intersection of overabundance, how the corner of Rodeo and Wilshire must feel to the lonesome hobo begging for dollars along it's curb, when suddenly, out of nowhere, he gets handed a twenty.

Right before the mind police happen along to dump his wasted ass back on skid row, where he belongs.

RIOTOUS!

Glory ended up marrying the whackjob and they now live happily ever after in the north Dallas suburbs with a house, two cars, a kid and a dog.

Lena kept wanting more and more. She became for me the opposite of what she projected, concealing an insatiable selfishness beneath the composed, kindly exterior. She assumed that I had to be simply as ecstatic as she was, darling, with the way in which our relationship blossomed, never seeming to notice at all that it was me, not her, doing the sacrificing, the career changing, the priority shifting, all of the endless traveling back and forth. Or did she?

Flights into and out of Louis Armstrong International slowly started to taper off, first every other week, then every third week, then less than that.

Then, the lame excuses.

=I have too much work. I have to take my son to gym lessons. Did I already say I had too much work?

Finally, I said goodbye to Uptown, forever.

My life immediately underwent miraculous improvements in other departments. I'd started up a business with another guy I'd met by chance and it's success overflowed beyond my dreams. Mephistopheles could not have planned it any better.

One night I met a guitar player in a club during the final call band break. Drunkenly, I described to him this song I had written about my relationship with Lena. Three/four time, an unusual minor key progression that I had discovered by accident while doodling around on the old Martin. It had fallen together somehow. On a whim, he asked me if I wanted to get up there with them after the break. Sure, why not?

I wrote out the chords on a napkin, hummed a few bars of the melody and tapped out the tempo on the bar top. He called over the bass player and the drummer, who then fooled around with it onstage for a few moments until a groove revealed itself.

Wow. Just wow. When we finished, there was a generous smattering of applause from the dozen or so patrons. You know its real when you hear it.

They decided to do one more with me and the guitarist started playing a very familiar old school riff. How did he know?

Sympathy for the Devil. The live version. They invited me to join them for a weekend gig at a different venue. I couldn't make it but thereafter I did stay in touch with them for a time. When they recorded an EP they honored me by including "Lena."

I thought about sending her a copy but that seemed too triumphant.

So I mailed her the lyrics, instead...without an accompanying note.

In the beginning

you came

every morning

You were the sun

rising up

without warning

In the end

I lost you

in a fog

In the end

me frothing

like a dog

But in between

you were alive

beside me

Unseen rope

confined me

You were alive

you were alive

beside me

You crossed the rubicon

astride me

And in between

I was alive

beside you

Your poetry

revived me

I was alive

I was alive

inside you!

I crossed the rubicon

inside you!

She never wrote back so I called her about a month later. She answered and spoke to me in a glum monotone. I didn't ask how she liked the song. I could tell she was acting, but haha, so was I.

Neither of us could ever be free.

Some lawyer who'd chased her around town for years had recently presented her with a diamond ring.

I felt compelled to tell her all about my three-sided relationship with Glory.

=Oh, Pete. Will you ever learn to value yourself?

She hung up abruptly, leaving me to stare at the wall for the longest time. I turned to catch my reflection in the window, a statue of a man with a telephone held to his ear.