Bill Morrissey Is Gone

So another great musician dies unheralded in a lonely hotel room in Georgia. This time it was Bill Morrissey, at the age of 59, out on the road, playing, doing what he does. Or did. His passing was as quiet as a whisper – didn’t even know it had happened until I stumbled on a website that mentioned it parenthetically. Like Sean Costello, like so many others, he quietly slipped out the back door when no one was looking.

Maybe I’m calling my own shot, but that’s how I want to go one day. Not in a hotel room in Georgia, though. But that way of leaving, almost as an after-thought, you hear about it later, mutter “shit” to yourself, shake your head, and know that there’s just something about some people that ensures they will slip away like the wind, raise the curtains, rustle a few branches, and then they’re gone.

But I might be getting ahead of myself if you’re sitting there asking, “Who in the hell is Bill Morrissey?” A fair enough question, and you should ask it if you don’t know. This was Bill Morrissey at his best. Turn it up. I could barely hear it when I played it on youtube. Listen to the words, how he captures that feeling of something already fading on two people who won’t be able to grasp this for years. Very few songs can move me to the point of tears, but this is one of them. Using fire wood as a metaphor for how a newly-married couple were already worlds apart. That’s just good writing, whether it’s a song, a story, whatever. “She thought of heat/She thought of time/She called it an even trade” – that’s what you call life as most of us know it. You can wish good or ill on other people, but chances are when you peel away the layers, most of us feel this way: uncertain, grasping, making sense of some things, letting others go.

That song is up there with best of Dylan or any other American songwriter. Bill didn’t stop there. He had a knack for quietly nailing so many things about life, in that unassuming, sidelong-glance way of his, the sort of guy who would say something as an aside, and you’d sit there for days afterwards wondering why you couldn’t come up with anything half as insightful with all the time in the world. Some people have a hard time with his voice, but once you get used to it, you can hear how well it suits the material: no frills, gritty, stripped-down stories about people just working, just living, and stumbling their way through life, the way we all do at times. Bill’s not the guy to play when you’ve fucked up your life. He’s the guy you play after you’ve had a grind of a work day, aren’t doing so bad in general, no great crises on the horizon, but you sit there wondering what the hell it’s all about, that maybe you were meant to do better, but you’re really not doing so bad either. So you just sort of shrug, have a beer and watch some baseball on TV. You’re not a winner. You’re not a loser. You’re just as human as anyone else.

That’s what I learned from listening to Bill Morrissey. Some people might mistake that for embracing mediocrity, but that’s far from the truth. Seeing the humanity in yourself and others is about as good as it gets. Of course, doing so will negate things like ambition and greed, but sooner or later, you stop acting like a child, and try to help others get along instead of figuring out ways to cover your ass. Sometimes you fail. And other people fail you. Times goes on, you forgive. You learn by getting things wrong a few times over. You let other people live their lives, but more importantly, you let yourself live yours. You stop bullshitting yourself and try to figure out what matters to you.

This is how I sound in my head at two in the morning when I’m thinking too much to sleep. But that’s where Bill Morrissey thrived, and where his music will live on. The quiet, private place you think is yours alone, but everyone understands. To take that understanding of yourself and dare to see if anyone else feels the same way, and then help them define it for themselves. That’s what Bill did when it was all working right.

Not many people can write a song like “John Haber.” (Sidenote: folks, if you download this track, be careful not to download the lousy video player advertised on the same page. Looks like sendspace got strange in the past few months, and I apologize for any confusion.) Not many people would stop to think about someone like John Haber: a working-class guy living alone in an apartment over a supermarket who dies in a fire one night. Not from the fire – the smoke. Smoking in bed. The narrator recalls a night they spent two weeks earlier drinking, and John comes up with this as they’re about to slink into falling-down drunk territory: “I don’t know how it happened, but it seems what I want has drifted so far from what I now expect.” The smoke was killing him – the lack of clarity in his life, the sense that he was no longer in control of it – not the flame, whatever passion he felt for anything in his life.

Bill Morrissey understood moments and people like this. When I say “people like this” I mean just about everyone. Again, when you stop bullshitting yourself. Feel no need to pump your life full of self glorification and vanity. Nor any need to drag yourself down. Just that sense of moving on through life, getting your ass kicked by work, by things that don’t work, by things you think are working, but you realize a few years down the road, they didn’t. I wouldn’t call Bill’s music downbeat so much as black-and-white, again, referencing that contemplative side we all have, and the ability to see our place in the world clearly, with whatever beauty or ugliness that implies. And it will imply both if you’re seeing things clearly.

Bill could be funny, too. “Live Free or Die” is about a guy in a New Hampshire prison who sees the irony of stamping out license plates every day emblazoned with the state motto: “Live free or die.” I’ve never been to New Hampshire, but I suspect Bill Morrissey was New Hampshire personified. Not quite Massachusetts or Vermont or Connecticut. The place you pass through to get to those places. Looks nice, but the people look a little hard. Whatever factory sits on the edge of town, that’s where everyone works. And, of course, you get a few dozen miles outside of any city in America, past the suburbs, past the college towns, you get to those places that Bill Morrissey grasped intuitively. They’re everywhere, and nowhere. You pass through and wonder how people live there. Listen to Bill Morrissey, and you get an idea. Then again, pass through on a sunny day in June, with fields of growing corn, houses so far away from each other that you admire the solitude and ability not to put up with other people’s bullshit, and it doesn’t seem all that hellish or impossible. I feel that way a lot when I’m driving back in Pennsylvania and see a lonely farmhouse on a hill surrounded by fields. It’s a way of life I haven’t forgotten, that doesn't frighten or repel me, as it somehow seems to do with a lot of people in cities.

I can somehow picture Bill knowing his time was short and imagine the kind of conversation he would have with a friend in a bar:

Bill: I’m going to die on the road down south.
Friend: Don’t say shit like that!
Bill: I don’t mean to upset you. It’s just a feeling I’m getting.
Friend: We’re going to be having crazy talks like this 20 years from now.
Friend: I hope. But do me a favor. If I don’t come back, there’s a stray cat on my back porch every other night that I’m feeding bits of ham and milk. Could you go on doing that for me?
Friend: Sure. But you know I won’t have to. You know this is bullshit.
Bill: Yeah, you’re probably right.
They go back to their beers.
Friend: What if I’m not? Now you got wondering.
Bill: All I’d ask is that you remember me every now and then. I’d do the same for you.

Bill Morrissey will live on in mill towns, burned-out, post industrial cities on the banks of dirty rivers. In the rust belt. And corn fields. Vacant lots where fatherless kids somersault on abandoned mattresses. Towns that pass by like flashes of concrete and glowing fast-food signs through the trees on the interstate. Where people have kids when they’re 17 and have to figure out some way to get through life. Stopping when they’re 40, realizing they’ve somehow done it, yet their lives still feel as fucked up as when they were 17. You’ll feel him in gritty strip malls with slush-covered parking lots, his presence somewhere between the taxidermy shop and the take-out Chinese place with pictures of teenage girls from Peking on the wall calendar. The gas station owned by the crusty old vet in the CAT hat who calls everyone “Chief.” He’ll wave back at the slow kid who goes around town on the riding lawn mower, waving at everyone all day. In the local bar, in that silence after someone’s played “Tuesday’s Gone” on the jukebox at 1:45 in the morning, and everyone just sits there, knowing their lives ain’t right but that moment is somehow good enough for now.

When it snows, you’ll see Bill’s foot prints, faintly in the fresh powder, and then gone as the passing hours cover them. He’ll keep on walking through the winter night, seemingly directionless, going nowhere, but not lost. Train whistle in the distance. Passing snow plough slinging rock salt in a rhythm like crickets. You won’t miss him until he’s gone.

Sitting on the Carnegie Building Steps

Back in college, I could often be found sitting on the Carnegie Building steps. The accompanying photo seems a lot more officious and imposing than I remember it. You walk through those front doors, veer right down the hall, and you’re in the main room for the campus newspaper, where I struck gold as a weekly columnist my junior and senior years. Well, if not gold, then some mildly precious metal.

As a columnist, I didn’t have a whole lot of need to be back in that news room, save to check my mail, banter with my editors and avoid the “business side” people who worked on advertising for the paper. (I later found that Valerie Plame was working over there in 1985! Makes me wonder if we ever had any exchanges.) That mercenary sort of ambition you’d associate with a future CIA operative was there in spades on the business side, so I didn’t associate much with those people as a rule (although I made great friends with Aileen, who should have been on the creative side but was bound by parental expectations to be more business-minded).

I’ve commented that my writing from those days embarrasses me now, as it’s out there cataloged on the web, albeit apparently not easily linked to, so I’m more than happy to let it sit, locked away save for those who really dig to find it. It’s shit, for the most part. Some very funny stuff – I started out writing straight humor and specializing in one-liners. But around those flashes of comic brilliance, a lot of clunky writing. No depth … and it pains me to look at my awkward attempts at depth back then, just the worst Readers Digest sort of crap which was totally out of character with how I was (or am now). You want depth? You can’t have it. Either you have it or you don’t. And if you don’t, life somehow goes on.

But I had the right idea sitting on the steps in my beat-up, knee-length khaki field jacket purchased from the downtown Army-Navy store. Carnegie Building was centrally located on campus, just across the way from the English Department in the Sparks Building, and a sort of crossroads for all of us in the creative majors. I loved sitting there in the fall and spring with time to kill before or after a class, because I knew the people I hung with at the paper would saunter around, and we’d engage in that tribal right of youth: hanging out.

It wouldn’t be the last time I hung out – this would go on well through my 20s, even into the 30s when you consider going to bars – but so much of college was the art of hanging out. There was that crew of guys down at headquarters, but there was also this more newspaper-related group at the Carnegie Building. And we all felt like we were in on a secret with that building, working on the paper in whatever capacity, getting to know who the pricks were, the saints, the cool people, the workaholics, the people who would leave footprints on your back to succeed, and the people like me who were sort of befuddled by the immediate success and found it just as enlightening to sit and chat with people who knew me as a guy who hung out on the steps.

There was a tree across the way that burned a flaming red then yellow every fall. I remember pointing it out to Aileen one day and saying, “Jesus, that tree looks like it’s plugged in.” That was the sort of banter, the loose association and non-sequitirs of people in their early 20s trying to be off the cuff. Just as often, I’d be sitting there with pal Justin, and he’d say, “You know what? I bet I can kick your ass in a game of pool.” And off we’d go to the pool hall on campus, for an hour or so of indulgence … it all just seems so free to me now, that sense of taking off in the middle of the day and doing something totally relaxing. That’s how college was. If it was noon and you didn’t have another class until 2:00 pm, shit like this would happen all the time. Why not? You could study later. It seemed much more important to feel that free … maybe sensing we wouldn’t be in the near future? Even with a part-time job on campus, I still had plenty of down time like this any given day.

I also recall a fellow columnist named Dion who a lot of my friends didn’t like, but I did. He wasn’t a bad boy or in any way obnoxious. As I recall, he had been in the navy a few years and had come back to school, explicitly to sew his creative oats and spread out a bit. We got along very well. Oddly enough, what I remember most about him was the one time when we were downstairs working on stories, finishing, leaving at the same time, both using the Men’s room, me taking a leak, him dropping a deuce … and I had assumed in doing so, I would have to leave him behind as that normally takes a lot longer. But he somehow did this in the amount of time it took me to use the urinal and was out in the hallway moments later, “Say, man, you can’t leave me hanging when we’re debating Hunter Thompson vs. Tom Wolfe.” All I wanted to know was how he did the deed so fast.

Sometimes the conversations would be along those lines, other times heavy philosophical discussions about the events of the day or where we were going in our lives. The one thing I always liked about creative people was their open sense of life – still do. Nothing written in stone. Roll with it. Throw away the outline. Just live it. That was in direct opposition to some of the people on the paper, and I gather you’d see that now in spades in terms of how we live our lives. It seemed important to me at the time, and now, to keep your radar up, to observe, to feel, to pick up a sense, to understand. That doesn’t happen when you’re guiding yourself like a torpedo through life. You could usually tell the difference in people, even at that age.

I had always pictured college as a sort of Mount Olympus. When I took philosophy classes, I enjoyed reading how the Greek philosophers would sit around all day bouncing concepts off each other. Granted, not on the “can’t believe you just took a shit in 15 seconds” level, but the idea of these enlightened beings gathered to make sense of their world. That was the guiding principle behind seemingly innocuous acts like hanging out on the steps, or late nights in somebody’s apartment, talking music, movies, the comparative worth of our majors, crazy shit we had done, crazy shit we wanted to do, just taking in each other’s beings and enjoying it. Too many kids were either geared to be fanatical zealots programmed into a “successful” way of life, or if not engaged at that level, just drunk all the time and making no sense. Which was great fun, but not all the time. You always knew around creative folks that their minds were not geared into this either/or campus existence. It was all fair game.

I have to believe people’s favorite college memories are those times they just hung out, with that full sense of freedom we had so fleetingly, our lives mostly blank slates (at least compared to two decades on), realizing there were other people in the world who “got” us in some sense, and vice-versa.

When I wrote for the paper, I was constantly getting thrown into situations like that, probably because of the minor fame associated with my column, and my column known for being “wild” in that cheesy college sense (but was not really wild at all). I remember hitting on an Indian girl at one of the newspaper Christmas parties, going back with her to her dorm room, I guess thinking “here we go” … but instead walking in on her roommates, all of whom were fans of my column, and us having a blast that night, singing “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd while one of the girls strummed the chords on her acoustic guitar and hanging out until about three in the morning.

But I also have some pretty pompous memories of that minor-league fame. It does strange things to your head. I can see being a celebrity on any level must wreak havoc on one’s self image, as you’re encouraged to think constantly only of yourself and how great you are. It’s a horrible trap, and I gather the best that you can do is just avoid that shit all together, not encourage people to see you as anything more than yourself, don’t seek out situations that make you seem more than human. But I guess that would negate the concept of celebrity all together, and a lot of people living that way clearly love and crave that level of attention from strangers. I did, for a short while. I recall showing up for a reading at a dorm, for which about 200 people showed up, and I sat there on a couch with no shoes or socks on, acting like a fucking guru while these kids laughed in delight at everything I had to say for the next hour. You get to feel “special” when you’re placed in roles like that.

And I didn’t know how to tell those guys, shit, you just show up at the Carnegie Building tomorrow at around 2:15, we can do this again, save you’ll be sitting next to me on those cement steps, we’ll be totally equal, and we’ll probably find you’re just as if not more interesting than I am. Those steps were important in the sense of talented people, not trying to impress each other, relaxing, being open, killing time because it was there to be killed. That’s the birth place of creativity, where it takes root. I think when we went inside, the roles took over, we all became whoever we were supposed to be in there, from foot soldier on the Classified page, to glorified columnist or editor.

It made more sense to take the side door and hide in the basement of Carnegie Building with the lowly Arts and Sports staffs to work on my stuff, as I always felt on display in that main news room, people pointing at me, that’s him, as if I was typing up that week’s column in a display window at Bloomingdales. Downstairs, they understood you were there to grind it out with no fanfare. Both staffs were given short shrift, although I think Sports was held in higher esteem simply because of Penn State’s legendary football program. To this day, my life is some strange mix of arts and sports, with little to no emphasis placed on politics and such. It just doesn’t interest me, never really has. Leave that to the “important” people.

So, in a sense, that’s where it all began. It all began, of course, when I picked up a pen and started jotting in that spiral-ring notebook back in high school, trying in vain to be Hunter Thompson or Jack Kerouac, slowly realizing who I was (neither of them), getting better at understanding who that was, learning how to transfer that knowledge to printed page. But it seems like the essence of wasting time on those steps at college, like a bum who snuck into a seat among the columns and concrete of Mount Olympus, was where the senses of wonder and belonging came into being. And you need those to pull this off.

Everything happened. Nothing happened. The janitor swept up the leaves, and then the snow, and then the pollen. We graduated. Life went on without us. I can feel those memories as a real part of me now, so there’s no need to go back or long for those days. That’s what I’ve learned over the years, pick it up and take it with you, because there's no going back. Go back and you'll find it's more than likely stayed the same, and you've changed.

Lost Worlds

Last time I was back in Pennsylvania, I hit a place in the local mall that’s a sprawling flea market. Used to be called Phar-Mor, a cross between a large drug store and small chain, but that went out of business a long time ago. A few years ago, like weeds sprouting between the cracks of downtrodden concrete, that space was taken over by some odd coalition of flea-market folks, the concept being each had their lot (of which there are a few dozen), stocked with whatever second-hand items they have for sale, and there are cash registers on the mall and parking lot entrances, so shoppers can peruse and buy at their leisure.

It’s a strange place, filled with memories, useless gadgets from the 60s and 70s, beer cans for extinct beers, mothbally clothes, albums, cassettes, jewelry, paintings. The same stuff you’d find in Salvation Army stores and lower-end antique shops. The kind of place you can get lost in. Just wandering around it, seeing toys I used to play with, books I’ve read, posters that were once hot stuff at Spencer’s, old army gear of the kind we used to sport as kids playing army – it was an oddly reassuring place to spend a few minutes.

The mall is dying. I remember when it opened back in 1980, a momentous occasion, like a new world was opening, stores everywhere, the place to be. But this was before Walmart took over everything. Malls themselves at the time were usurpers of downtown shopping areas, which went destitute almost immediately afterwards and have stayed that way decades later. You walk through that mall now, half the spaces are empty, and it just feels like the wind has been knocked out of the place.

A perfect environment for second-hand shopping! I saw the usual selection of vinyl and cassettes. It seems like now is the time to hunt down vintage cassettes if so inclined. Every lot in the place that had music-leaning items, there was a box or two of dozens of cassettes, reminding me how hot those things were through most of the 80s.

But the real find for me was eight-track cassettes. Not every place had them. The ones that did, the selection was sparse. Most were selling them for anywhere from $3.00 to $5.00 a piece. Just picking up one, for me, was like touching history, a part of my life that no longer exists, and I can’t find my way back.

I have the music on the eight tracks, on my iPod. Shit, I have the music, I have bootleg copies of demo tapes of the music, I have unreleased live versions of the music, I have songs the band never released because they thought they weren’t good enough. I have a vast knowledge and grasp of that music that I never could have had at the time – who had demo recordings of bands in the 70s, but the bands themselves and maybe guys who worked in studios?

But, I don’t have the eight track! I had eight tracks for some of these bands. I didn’t have a lot of eight tracks. In their prime, maybe two or three dozen, tops. Some guys had way more, carrying those massive suitcase-style storage boxes that they’d flip open on the hood of the ’76 Nova and marvel at their rock expertise (Frampton, Styx, Foghat, Head East, Heart, Steve Miller, Joe Walsh, etc.) before kerplunking one into the Sparkomatic to blow everyone's mind.

Eight tracks sucked. In my opinion, the absolute worst product the recording industry ever put out. Cassettes were a close second – they sounded a little better, and the songs wouldn’t split between tracks. And the timing was such that cassette recorders were much more available in the 80s than eight-track recorders were in the 70s, thus we could make our own mixes. Both eight tracks and cassettes had the same problems: sound bleed-through from other tracks/sides, and the tape would often snarl in the player, thus ruining the recording. Happened to me many times with cassettes and car stereos. So, if you liked the music enough, you’d have to go out and buy another copy.

Something came over me while perusing those eight tracks. Not necessarily nostalgia, but something similar. Touching those things reminded me how far I’ve slipped away from that 70s rural existence, moving to a major city in the 80s and staying there. I felt like I was physically touching a burned-out memory. It just seemed like such a different world then. Before computers. Before the internet. Before MP3 files. Before so many things that are part of my daily routine now.

I didn’t mourn this loss – just became more aware of it. Like how when I’m back there in summer, that feels more like a gateway to that time, the green grass, the heat, mowing the lawn for old times sake. I guess a similar comparison would be an older man in the 1960s in Europe going back to visit his home village that was devastated in World War II, walking around, everything’s different but the same in a sense, and he comes across something that touches him like a direct path to the time before all the shit happened.

Not like a war has occurred here. But I’m trying to recall that world where I would go out and buy an eight track, listen to it religiously on a stereo, dogging the same album for weeks, read about the band in Creem or Rolling Stone, maybe see them on The Midnight Special if I was lucky, but otherwise just going about my teenage life, riding around on bicycles and then in cars, writing it all down in spiral notebooks on my bed, a bed I still sleep on when I go back there.

There was such an intense bond I had to certain bands and artists back then that I don’t have now. Certain albums, I know every moment, sometimes even have skips and glitches memorized from the vinyl albums and tapes I had at the time. Back then, it was like I was married to music, whereas now I have thousands of relationships that overwhelm me sometimes. Quantity over quality. I still hear plenty of quality, it’s just the sheer volume of what I can listen to now is so much more than what it was then. I’ve turned over every stone that was a mystery to me for decades throughout my musical life. But the emotional connection just isn’t the same.

So when I pick up an eight track, it reminds me of that emotional bond, not just to that eight track, but to that way of life, being a kid, living in the country, being fairly happy with it all, not a bad childhood or way of life, parents in their 40s and 50s at the time, so many other kids in the neighborhood, some good friends, others pains in the ass. I guess that sense of everything being in front of me. Whereas now, I’m halfway through life and feeling much more constricted, whether I am or not. The eight track feels like freedom, in a sense, or a doorway to a lost world. Of course, I realize that world and feeling are an impossible way of life to me as an adult, but it doesn’t mean I can’t tap into it every now and then, in a car, driving at night with the windows down, few days off from work, just taking it easy as opposed to resting before the next work day kicks into over-drive.

And that is nostalgia: romanticizing a time that, I know from memory, didn’t feel romantic at all. I don’t think it’s that specific time period that I’m romanticizing so much as time itself, the passing of it, how you can see it move in with you and everyone you know. I’m good with moving for the most part, but shit, over 20 years in the city, living a way of life that can get to be a bit of a grind at times, and it’s easy to lose track and fade out memories and connections that should remain as guide posts, if nothing else.

I find it good to slow things down in my spare time and do this, just write, like I always have, or honestly, don’t do much of anything. People at work are always carrying on about going this place and that, doing this, doing that, social get-togethers like a crowded business schedule, but, man, I just want to take it easy when I’m not working, do some errands around the apartment, help the landlord keep her place clean and in order, hit the gym, listen to music, get take out. I don’t know if that’s insecurity with people that they have to feel like they’re gunning it in their spare time and doing thousands of things, but it seems more important to me at this point in my life to take it easy and relax. Whether or not that impresses anyone else. When I read a good story or see a good movie, it’s that sort of understanding I value more than any flashy plot or visual aspects. I want to know people – I want to know myself. Which takes time, a lot of it, and doesn’t happen when you’re trying to do a thousand things that, I guess, make you think you’re a more interesting person.

In any event, the eight tracks I picked up were Sleepwalker by The Kinks, Dreamboat Annie by Heart and The Slider by T. Rex. All of which I had on eight track at the time. I want to get Heaven Tonight by Cheap Trick and Hermit of Mink Hollow by Todd Rundgren, as those, too, were key eight tracks at the time. I realize how goofy this all sounds. Not just buying eight tracks in this day and age, but buying them not for the purpose of playing them, but more as a form of recent cultural archeology. I found these fossils, and now I’m remembering all these other dinosaurs that used to roam rural Pennsylvania in the 1970s.

The Drill

I sit here now with the vague taste of blood in my mouth, and a hole that my tongue curiously darts through every few minutes. Went to the dentist yesterday. Wisdom tooth extraction. Actually, going a few times in the coming weeks as I haven’t gone to a dentist since roughly 2000.

Why so long? Well, not having medical insurance for years was a large part of that. I’ve been working freelance/temp gigs, two stretching on for years, like now. From what co-workers tell me, especially those with kids, the insurance where I’m working now, even on group plans, is astronomical. Sure, we’d all be better off with medical insurance, but when I know people in my freelance boat telling me they’re dropping $300/month on this …

Man, forget it. Last time I was to a doctor was in the 1970s when a dog bit me on the ass while I was riding my bike. I had a few sports physicals after that, consisting of a doctor checking my blood pressure, heart rate and the traditional jamming of his rubber-gloved fingers into my balls/coughing hernia check.

I’m not thumbing my nose at the medical profession … I just don’t want these people in my life because I don’t trust them and have rarely needed their services over the past few decades. When Dad passed on, my faith in them plummeted. (Ironically, the only person in the medical profession who had acknowledged Dad’s passing was the family dentist, who sent Mom a nice card.) I have a fairly healthy life style, have never been prone to illness (haven’t taken a sick day in decades), am not accident prone, purposely avoid high-risk nonsense like motorcycle-riding. I don’t live in fear. If a job comes along with insurance, I’ll take it, but not for that reason, and can’t really say I’d end up using many of the covered services.

But I’ve realized it makes sense to keep up with the dentist, because there’s just so much you can do with toothpaste, mouthwash and floss. This guy I’m going to now gave me a deep cleaning on my first visit that was revelatory, like I had a new set of teeth afterwards, the spitting of blood into the rinse basin was worth it. He had some sort of high-pressure water/scraping device that obliterated any substance on or around my teeth, and while I felt like I had been punched in the face afterwards, I couldn’t deny it really was an improvement.

Flashback 30 years, and it’s another story, and probably the real reason I’ve been more than OK with letting the dentist go by the wayside the past decade. Being a kid in rural Pennsylvania in the 70s, I was used to the concept of a no-frills way of life. Everything Mom and Dad bought in the store was cheap and made to be re-used. Pants were hemmed so one kid could pass them on to another. Gallons of soda were bought instead of more expensive fruit juices. The idea was “bang for the buck” more than subscribing to some type of “American Way” of raising kids where everything they had done for them was healthy and undeniably right.

I won’t bust my parents for much, but one thing I surely will was that crazy sugar-pounding diet we had, and their lack of enforcement on sound dental habits. And I mean to the point of watching us brush, gargle and floss ever morning and night. I would have chafed like hell at this, but would have been thankful for that sort of discipline today. You know kids … they hate to do stuff like take baths and brush teeth. But I wish they would have enforced the teeth thing … it would have saved all of us money in the long run, and saved us many mouthfuls of pain, then and now.

Going to the dentist back there at that time, man, I KNOW Novocain existed and was in popular use back in the 70’s … but we never got it! We went to Dr. Morrison, an aged dentist a few towns over. Can’t recall his first name, so we always thought it was Jim. A ride over there would have my brothers chanting, “Mr. Mojo Rising … Mojo Rising … Rising, Rising … Got to keep on rising!” Or crooning, “This is the end … beautiful friend, the end.” Because it was a Doors-like experience of darkness and doubt to make that long station-wagon ride to the dentist’s office, like we were riding to hell to meet Satan.

Just the door on that office, with the pebbled glass and wire-crossed window, scared the shit out of me. It was like an office out of a 1940’s private detective movie: dark, foreboding, always twilight, shadows everywhere. I expected to open the door and see Humphrey Bogart sitting there with his fedora and cigarette. Instead, I found copies of Highlights magazine for kids, the sight of which still scares the shit out of me. And the tense sound of drills whining in the background.

I can’t even recall if Dr. Morrison was a nice guy or not. I suspect he was a crotchety old man, as I seem to recall him being in his 60s or 70s at the time. I can’t even remember what he looked like, save for the white smock and ever-present surgeon’s light he wore in a headband.

What I do remember, to this day, is getting drilled repeatedly without the benefit of Novocain or any other anesthetic. It’s laughable today to envision that scene, a kid undergoing a medical procedure like this without having his mouth numbed, but I guess Dr. Morrison was of the era where Novocain was for pussies. World War II, longshoremen swinging hooks, why, all I ate was a baked-bean sandwich all day Depression era shit. I had a bellyful of it from Dad, but Dr. Morrison lived it.

It was agonizing. There were two types of drills: the high-pitched, keening drill that was used for the fine-styling along the edge of a tooth. Which sounded horrific, but really wasn’t that bad. And the low-rumbling, deep drill that took out the bulk of the cavity.

And that thing was a pain machine. Tear-inducing pain. White-knuckled, seat-rail clutching pain. Fucking agonizing. Smoke coming out of my mouth. Afraid to move despite numerous alarms going off in my synapses. Shaking in the chair like a dog dreaming. All I could do was stare at the light and try to put my mind somewhere else. The dental assistant at this recent trip commented that I was the most relaxed patient she’d ever seen. Another dentist years ago called me “stoic.” No. I just go back to those horrible visits to Dr. Morrison’s office when I realized the only way out was to disassociate my mind from the situation. Feel the pain, but put my mind somewhere else. It’s clear to me I still do it now, despite having serious dental work done under well-administered sedation.

You would think, having that done to me once, I would have said, forget Mom and Dad, I’m going to brush and floss twice a day, maybe more, now that I know what will happen when I don’t. But kids are stupid: I use myself as a prime example. I have a mouthful of fillings now as a result: not a bad set of teeth. But worked on … seriously worked on!

The stint with Dr. Morrison must have ended by the early 80s, because I remember a series of dentists in my teens and early 20s. Dr. Hale in Frackville? He seemed like a good guy – can’t recall why we stopped using him, unless he retired. A few quacks along the way apparently, as one of them did a number on my sister in terms of lousy decision-making that she still pays for today. Those few I saw in my teens and early twenties are a blur. I didn’t go that much.

In New York in my late 20s, a coworker turned me onto her dentist just around the corner from us at work in Manhattan. And he did all right by me, until he started in with mentions of the possibility of multiple root canals. This after having a clean bill of health the previous two visits? Come on, now. By this point, I had recently left that job and was uninsured. I didn’t get a second opinion because I thought he was pulling my leg … the kind of guy who took x-rays every visit. He did good work, but gave the impression he was running up the bill, too, with unnecessary work. That was my demarcation point from dentistry: had enough. Here was a guy who knew I was uninsured, had seen nothing wrong with my teeth just the week before, and now I need root canals?

“You’ll be in terrible pain if you don’t get these some time in the next two years,” he warned.

Yeah, well, those two years ended eight years ago, and my mouth hasn’t really bothered me too much in the last decade. Some pangs during very cold days in winter, a filling eventually falling out (which I just got replaced), but with daily care and a nightly mouthguard, my teeth have held up reasonably well. Granted, I could have used the cleanings and an occasional re-filling. The wisdom tooth he warned me about is going to get extracted two Saturdays from now. The tooth has been positioned above a gap over my last molar, which was taken out in my 20s. Thus, this tooth didn’t serve much purpose: teeth are meant to grind together to chew food. I know we don’t stop to think about that much, with all the crazy shit we’re being fed about million-dollar smiles and whitening (which always look like dentures to me, you can tell when someone over 30 has gone that route), but that’s what they’re in our mouth for. If a tooth can’t do that, especially a wisdom tooth in the back where not much chewing is going on, it becomes expendable. You surely want to hold onto your front teeth and that row of chewing teeth just behind the incisors: lose them, and life gets rough on you.

I didn’t appreciate the dentist back then not presenting me with that option: an extraction for a few hundred dollars as compared to a root canal for well over a thousand … on a tooth that was no longer serving its function due to the opposing tooth no longer being there. I realize these guys are in business to make money, but it seems to me they do pretty well just providing basic dental services to patients without looking to create situations for higher end/much more expensive work.

This recent dentist, in the neighborhood, seems to have that understanding, probably because he’s served a traditionally working-class neighborhood (that’s been gentrifying in alarming ways the past decade). The two times I’ve been in his no-frills office, when I’ve gone back out to the waiting room, it’s elderly Greek and Italian women in Terminator shades and leopard-skin prints. I’m hoping this doesn’t represent his entire customer base! It would be a shame if this guy’s business declined because of a changing neighborhood and lack of that “word of mouth” promotion most dentists thrive on.

This guy has a good, no-bullshit demeanor about him that I appreciate. He appears to be in his early 60s, was playing classic rock on the PA when I came in, so I immediately felt at ease. Before that massive cleaning, he took x-rays, the only ones he assured me, and gave me an exact rundown of what would need to be done over the next 3-4 visits, at which point, my teeth would be perfectly fine and working as well as they’d ever been.

What originally broke me down and made me go was two chips in my front teeth, on top and bottom, the top giving me a hillbilly-esque little gap, the bottom not even visible, but the back part of the tooth chipped, which was causing me to whistle my S’s and drive my tongue nuts when it touched the tooth and felt that craggy gap. This shit has been driving me nuts since just after Christmas. He took care of that back one first and will save the moonshine jug gap for last.

I feel all right. Will surely be going the “six month cleaning/check-up” route from now on which, I can guarantee, will be mostly cleanings and the occasional re-filling. But I still got that strange feeling in his office, as I’m sure I will in all dentist offices, of Dr. Morrison’s dark mahogany waiting room, the stifling fear, which is more anticipation than actuality, even knowing this guy was modernized and would be shooting me up for any sort of deep work. Some fears you never shake.

Consideration

Life is made up of odd little moments that stick with you afterwards, sometimes briefly, others for the rest of your days. Brother J had one on Saturday that will probably hang around for months: one of those little things that seems innocuous, but leaves you pondering mankind for a long time afterwards.

He had to haul some heavy debris to the county dump: an old refrigerator, an air-condition unit and some bags of cement that had solidified in the tool shed. So he got in his pick-up and made the half-hour trip to the dump. Along the way, he noticed something awful. He had to go. Number 2. Real bad. A feeling that just kept getting worse with each passing minute. You know the feeling: bad.

So, he gets to the town dump, goes through the motions, gets the load dumped, then drives as fast as possible to a near-by McDonalds. At that point, he was scouting out heavy bushes by the side of the road, but thought, no, have some dignity, keep driving, hold it in.

He gets to McDonalds, beelines to the men’s room, and there’s a guy just coming out of the stall. Thank God, J thinks, he’s just leaving. The guy didn’t wash his hands and went straight for the exit door – even better. So J busts into that stall … only to find this guy had pissed all over the toilet seat and floor. The dilemma: do you run out into the restaurant to confront this jerk, and run the risk of shitting your pants in public, or do you just get wads of toilet paper and clean up after this over-grown baby?

It’s a pretty obvious choice. I’ve done it myself too many times. This is one of those things in gyms that drives me nuts. Happens at work, too, but not as much. Guys pissing on seats. Sometimes dumping on them, too. Or leaving a load behind. Spitting gum into urinals so they get caught in those little plastic urinal guards. I’ll see it this week as I go to the gym, at least once.

Again, there are so many things in life, little things like this, that just leave me shaking my head. What goes through a man’s mind when he does this? I can understand a child or teenager doing this out of some misguided universal spite. But a grown man? I’ve come to the conclusion that the guy is just a prick. Not absent-minded or full of jovial, mischievous humor. A prick. He knows someone will have to clean that up. Not a janitor. The next person to use the stall. It speaks volumes about the man, none of it good.

And let’s not forget the telltale sound of a guy standing on one foot to flush a toilet with his other foot. (It’s a slight shuffling of the feet you can hear if the restroom is quiet enough. Usually you hear the left foot coming down and slapping on the ground.) This guy is so conscious of sanitary issues in a rest room that he’s afraid to touch a commode lever … so instead uses the bottom of his shoe, which more than likely has even more germs than his hand … so the next guy behind him will unwittingly touch a lever that might have remnants of dogshit or human saliva on it. Thanks, pal. Ever hear of wadding up a ball of toilet paper to touch the lever instead of using your foot, or is that too much work?

Consideration was something our parents drove into our head. I don’t mean “parents” in a generational sense. I mean my parents. It was made clear to me after a certain age that no one was supposed to clean up after me, literally or figuratively. Not in a forceful, negative way. More in a “you should be ashamed yourself” sort of way. Always think of others – that was a thought I had constantly as a kid. And I don’t mean in some universal “save the starving children in Africa” sort of way. I mean in terms of making space so someone else could sit down on the bus. Or not blasting music so the entire neighborhood would be unwilling listeners.

When I encounter people like this who don’t have that understanding, then or now, I always get this surly mix of rage and pity. This happens all the time in Queens with people blasting car stereos on the street. A guido night club sits around the corner from my apartment (is there any other kind in Queens?), thus we’re spared the full-on noise blast of a place like that. But people have to park to go there, and that’s an ongoing nuisance. People pulling up in party mode any time between 10 and midnight, car stereo blasting hiphop or metal, sometimes for over 15 minutes … right outside my window! And everyone else’s windows on the block. Then when they come out of the club between 2 and 4 am, yelling and carrying on like idiots. It just bespeaks of a cruddy sort of human being. Not people I want to know. To be jammed into a nightclub with ear-shattering dance music with people like this, all night?

Man, that’s my idea of hell. That’s something else I’m coming to terms with as I go along. The signal-to-noise ratio of our society is just so mind-bendingly out of proportion (too much noise) that we’re getting this class of people whose entire lives are like a radio tuned into permanent static. Nothing is communicated. It’s not possible. Everything about them is a nonstop stream of senseless noise. The level of thought engendered by such a mental state … can you imagine? You don’t really have to – just walk around for awhile, and you’ll run into people who are lost in their own little worlds, oblivious of everything and everyone around them, the kind of people who would take an iPhone picture of someone dying rather than try to save the person’s life.

You can blame it on the gadgets, but that’s not the whole story. I think these people have always been around, save it was less obvious in the past because there were less ways for people to show off their self absorption and crassness. I think the difference now is you have people raised inside a culture where their disconnect with other people is the norm, as opposed to being something out of place. I sometimes get a sense around teenagers and twentysomethings of people being anywhere from totally disconnected to mildly detached from their emotions … as if they were floating through life on a gentle cloud of irony. I’ve noted in the past, they seem like space aliens to me, not quite human. Pod people? They don’t seem like someone anyone could count on.

And it leaves me wondering … are there just people being people out there? Not wrapped up in all these silly trends, not trampling through life like rhinos, not more engaged with hand-held devices than the people and world around them? People are people – how stupid does that sound? But whether it was 1400. Or 1781. Or 1929. Or last year. The world is filled with people just trying to live, to make sense of it all, to get along with other people, to get by. There shouldn’t be all these weird/offputting cultural qualities attached to the way they live. I’m doing the attaching? Not really – I’m just noticing what I’m seeing repeatedly, which spooks me. As opposed to getting a sense of meeting people who, I’d gather, would be much the same if I met them 50 years ago or two decades into the future. People who have a sense of their humanity, who can laugh at themselves, or respect your presence, or grasp that the world will go on without them.

It just seems like the things so many of us choose to build our lives around have little to no meaning or value. We’re not looking to help other people, or even just keep an even keel so no one has to worry about us flipping out or becoming dead weight to everyone around them. Everything seems geared towards the self now, whether it’s in terms of rudeness or lack of concern for others, or just that sense of closing off communication from the people around us, even if it’s something as silent and non-intrusive as choosing to thumb a device all day long instead of engaging anyone else.

This is what I think about when someone pisses on a toilet seat and expects me to clean it up afterwards! Not in so many words. If I could drop it down to one word, it would be, “Asshole.” I think we’ve been veering towards a world where it’s just as normal to be a careless asshole as to be someone with half an ounce of sanity or pride. For a long time now. How to stop it? Man, you got me. I’m all for grabbing the guy who pissed on the seat and trying to drown him in the toilet bowl, but then that would make me even worse for over-reacting. I think we’re just going to ride this thing out over the course of years, and not be able to fully grasp how lost we’ve become in small ways like this, because no one will have sense enough to know.

Musical Memories

It’s often noted that people are drawn to the music of their youth, particularly their teenage years, sometimes to the extent of never again listening to any other kind of music. And that music is inextricably tied into memory, so that’s part of the reason why people get stuck in these permanent musical time warps. Part nostalgia, part memory exercise.

I’ve found that’s often true for people who aren’t really music fans of any sort. And the greatest irony of the recording industry, and what damages it so much, is that in their time, these people will be the financial engine driving the industry. All those kids buying Top 40 and such. In 10 years, or 20, or 30, most of them won’t be listening to any music at all … but they’ll have a greatest hits collection on the 2 GB iPod that recall a very set time period hearkening back to their teen years. When I say the music industry is being dragged around by people who don’t like music, this is what I mean. It won’t take long, less then a decade, to pan out the people who really love music and go on buying it for years from the people who won’t. And the people who really love music and go on buying it will be considered virtually invisible and worthless by the recording industry at large, as they're a much smaller marketing segment than senseless kids buying Top 40 crap. It's a short-sighted cycle of self destruction for an industry that needs paying fans desperately.

But I’m more interested here in memory. I’m not consciously aware of listening to older music from my youth as some form of nostalgia. I listen to it because I like it. Because decades later, it still sounds good. I don’t sit around pining for “lost youth.” I don’t listen to this music exclusively. I don’t really keep score. But I’ll always find myself popping over to certain folders and knocking out some old Joe Walsh songs.

Do I think that music is better than music now? Honestly, sometimes I do. There’s a lot more care taken in the vocals, particularly. And more time and money spent in the studio working on a sound. In pure pop/rock context, a lot of that music, simply stated, is a superior version of music that came afterwards, and the genre hasn’t grown or changed all that much over the years.

I know it’s a crime to say that for some music fans – you can’t acknowledge that music from your past is somehow better than music of the present – but I don’t feel any need to kiss that ass. There is still good music being made. Constantly. A never-ending stream from which I’m forever pulling new inspiration. And this isn’t apples (the past) and oranges (the present). I go on an artist-by-artist basis more than a time frame, and back in the 60s and 70s, a lot of great artists were in their prime. And I’m far from a lazy, middle-aged, pop-rock fan. I listen to a lot of new music (most of which goes right by me), across all genres, and I keep literally thousands of new tracks that range anywhere from good to great by my estimation. (The thing is, the great ones, will generally not be from great albums, from an artist not consistently putting out great albums. Maybe that’s what I’m getting at: consistency over a period of time as opposed to one-off shots of greatness. I’m used to the concept of artists having great bodies of work (or at least one astounding three-album run) … not a few stand-out songs over the course of albums.

It’s not a burning issue with me. I’m more interested in the concept of memory and how it ties into songs. What I want to do here is list out a few of those songs for me. The song, and what it means to me personally. May not have anything to do with the song, but something to do with my life. Supposedly the kind of thing people my age (in their 40s) do all the time … but this represents a very small fraction of my listening time and intent. Which doesn’t really matter, because I’m invisible anyway!

*

“Strange Magic” by Electric Light Orchestra. I don’t know why, but this song reminds me of summer, and mowing lawns. It’s a summer song. I should be thinking of romance, ocean breezes, a full moon. No. I think of bermuda shorts, tube socks, the smell of gasoline, pulling the chord on the lawn mower engine, watching the rows of grass fall in my geometrical progression, the smell of freshly-mown lawn and a $20 bill in my hand.

“Say You Love Me” by Fleetwood Mac. Another summer song, but this song reminds me of driving in the station wagon with my family, windows down, and we’re on a stretch of highway between Lavelle and Gordon, PA, the back road. We can smell the cow manure in the fields, over-powering at times. Sunlight, heat coming off the fields in waves, corn stalks, maybe even a pinwheel hanging out the window. We’re probably on our way to the public swimming pool at Hegins, down in farm country.

“Solsbury Hill” by Peter Gabriel. Lifting weights in the basement. Those cheap vinyl weights filled with cement. A shitty, no-frills weight bench bought at Sears (it’s still down there). No matter how much I lifted weights as a kid, I never got bigger. (Now I wish I could reverse the process, as I could easily make myself the size of a house with weights!) Stuck in my head because Brother M was playing this to death on his basement sound system, while he sat a few feet away, smoking and listening. I still don’t know how I managed to work out with someone smoking a few feet away from me, which happened routinely with us. The basement was his teenage domain, but I had no place else to exercise in the house. An uneasy truce. He didn’t like me being down there, but I didn’t bother him either.

“Love Will Keep Us Together” by the Captain & Tenille. My favorite song when I was 11 years old. Not the New York Dolls. Or Roxy Music. Or Led Zep. I was 11! This was the one song I recall listening to the radio constantly to hear, and I’d go nuts when I heard it. I never pasted myself to a radio like that before or since. I still think it’s pretty good for what it is. Only other song that had a similar effect on me as a pre-teen youth was “Crocodile Rock” by Elton John.

“Mistral Wind” by Heart. There are any number of Heart songs and albums I could pick for this, but all those mid-70s Heart songs take me back to Brother M’s car with the eight-track player. And driving around Point Pleasant, NJ on one of our summer visits. The ocean. Probably should have picked “Dreamboat Annie” as that’s surely the main connection. But when the drums and electric guitar kick in on this song, that’s like a time machine to a sandy beach road and the smell of the ocean circa late 70s.

“Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night. This song vividly brings back my second grade talent contest, in which all of us had to participate, and 80% of us did this song. Me, too. I was terrible. Chubby kid. Wearing red polyester checked pants. Skin tight in a bad way. Some florid dress shirt. Earth shoes and white socks. Dancing like The Brady Bunch in one of their show appearances. Warbling out this silly song in a cracking soprano as I tried not to shit those polyester pants. I suspect if this had been filmed and I saw it today, I'd go on a shooting spree.

“The Loco-Motion” by Grand Funk Railroad. Some nights in summer, kids would get together in a backyard with one of those Panasonic Hand-Pump Eight Track players, plug it in, and we’d get into our pajamas and dance in front of a blanket on a clothes line … the catch being all the other kids would have flashlights and would be shaking them wildly at the kids dancing, which would create a strobe-light effect. “The Loco-Motion” was the key song for this. I also recall another incident, while out collecting money for the Little League, in my uniform with all the other kids, doing our sweep through all the houses out on the main highway, this song came blasting out of a backyard, and when I went around to investigate, it was one of the girls from my class, dancing wildly in platform shoes, Daisy Dukes and a halter top in her backyard to this song … it gave me wood! So, there I was, with a hard-on in my Little League uniform, and this girl looks me straight in the eye and smiles as I peer around the corner of her house.

“Convoy” by C.W. McCall. All the kids in the neighborhood were carrying on about this song before I heard it. Carrying on so much that I thought I had to rush out and buy it to fit in. When I was buying it at Boscovs, one of the big mouths in our neighborhood was there by chance with his parents and saw me buying it – he somehow knew by the record label alone (think it was MGM with that lion’s head on it). Didn’t matter – he probably thought I was cool for doing so. But I rushed home. Pulled out the portable record player and plugged it into an outlet in the kitchen, I was so excited to hear it. And this hillbilly, piece of shit comes spilling out the tinny speakers! I was slackjawed. This stupid fucking song … they were carrying on about this like it was the coolest thing since Jimmy Page? I think that’s when I stopped chasing after whatever was deemed cool by other kids, recognizing other kids tended to be assholes.

“Black Water” by The Doobie Brothers. We played sports constantly in our neighborhood. Invariably someone would have a portable radio. Whenever “Black Water” came on, a kid in the neighborhood, George, would start singing the song scat-style in a strangely accurate Louis Armstrong voice, particularly that vocal breakdown part (“Take me by the hand pretty momma/Dance with your daddy all night long”). This song always makes me think of that 8-10 year old kid pulling off that perfect gargling baritone voice Louis Armstrong was famous for.

“Just When I Needed You Most” by Randy VanWarmer. This song doesn’t represent a memory so much as a realization. It was, what, summer of 1979? Well into my teen years, far into really good pop music like The Beatles, Kinks and Stones from the 60s, and Bowie, ELO, Queen and others from the 70s, the beginnings of punk and new wave with The Ramones, Elvis Costello, The Clash … so this song comes on the radio, and I love it! But can’t admit to loving it. It’s 1979. Man, I’m changing. Can’t have any more of this 70s ballad fluff. There were other songs like this that I couldn’t acknowledge liking in front of fellow teenage rock fans (“Heart of Glass” by Blondie and various ABBA hits), but this one really stuck in my craw for some reason. And just look at this guy in the video! That’s what 90% of all white males looked like in the 70s, and I was no exception.

Maybe it’s because I left this genre just when I needed it most? Nah. I’d go on in my teen years to be a sappy, lovestruck wimp a few times over, in ways that make this song come off like “Slow Ride” by Foghat. The strange thing about Youtube links: they let you know you’re not alone. When people aren’t carrying on like mental patients or pricks, they tend to be reflective in ways that can be overly trite, but they’re also just noting, this song floored them at a certain point in their lives. Could be a terrible song, which most seem loathe to acknowledge, but it doesn’t really matter. As noted, this type of listening experience represents such a small fraction of why I listen to music. And half the time, the memory is embarrassing! So maybe it’s good that I tie in memories of humiliation and awkwardness with youth, as opposed to glorification?

The Cornsilk Ghost

This short story was dated 10/25/99 when I wrote it for the folks at Leisuresuit.net. I did a lot of online writing circa 1999-2000, and some of it, like this, sort of disappeared into the mist almost immediately. At the time, I thought it was a pretty good short story that would have made a good movie. Still do, although it would take some fleshing out of the main character’s back story, which would be easy. Many opportunities for obscure 70s soundtrack songs, too. And how many ghost stories are there about the 70s?

But I digress. I’ll give it another chance here, doing some minor editing, but pretty much presenting it as-is. Enjoy.

*

Last week, I came across a ghost story on my hometown newspaper's Web site. Living in New York now for years, I miss that small-town paper, bad as it is. Reading the condensed front page every day fills me with strange nostalgia for a life I don't understand anymore.

In the story, the parish priest, Father Malloy, noticed something strange after a Saturday Midnight Mass. He claimed to have seen an "eerie visage" of a teenage boy in a blue plaid shirt and jeans hovering in-and out of the edge of the cornfield.

"I could see right through him," Father Malloy is quoted as saying. "He moved like the wind was blowing him across the ground. But there was no wind when I saw him. He was shimmering--like a flag."

Father Malloy wasn't the parish priest when I grew up there, so I can't vouch for him. But there's little reason to doubt his word, as two sightings followed over the next few nights. The same thing: a teenage boy, not walking, but gliding, through the cornfield. And the assurance of both people, a retired postal worker walking his dog and the town's police chief on patrol, that this vision was not human. The police chief claimed that the ghost had shoulder-length black hair and was bone thin. The old man simply said it was a ghost, and that the only time he had seen his dog so spooked was the night they had come across a dead skunk.

No one knows the ghost's identity. Since there seems to be no religious significance to the ghost's appearance, the Virgin Mary crowd hasn't latched onto the story, or at least it hasn't gathered enough steam yet to get their attention.

The strange part for me? I know people back there are talking the kind of talk that never makes the papers. Just by the physical description of the ghost, I recognize my brother Freddy. Freddy killed himself in that cornfield 20 years ago.

It's far away now. Fred was two years ahead of me in high school. Not popular, nor smart, nor handsome. He got high a little too much and pulled straight C's and the occasional B. He wasn't into sports. But he was known around school for one thing: his passionate infatuation with his girlfriend, Tangie. They had been dating for three years going into their senior year, and everyone was sure they would be married one day. Tangie ran with the same crowd as Fred. They thought they were rebels, but they never seemed to do anything beyond getting stoned.

One day out of the blue, Tangie dumped Fred for one of the guys on the football team. Not a certifiable jock--one of those borderline party animals who kept a foot in both crowds. No profound reason--just one of those random teenage controversies that people talk about at the 10-year class reunion. Fred was devastated. He played Bread and Carpenters albums in his room at night--and this from a massive Black Sabbath fan. There was something really wrong with him.

I knew it. Our parents knew it. Everyone knew it. He wasn't the first kid to have his heart broken like that for no good reason and wouldn't be the last. He was quiet to begin with, and stoned half the time, so no one could tell if he had developed any "warning signs."

One morning, he didn't show up for breakfast. Our parents immediately notified the police, as they thought he might have run away. Later that morning, his body was found by a few of Fred's classmates cutting school in the cornfield behind the Catholic church. It was a popular place for kids to go get stoned at night. No houses were nearby, and they could park their cars a few hundred yards away on a side street by the firehouse and walk there through the back of the field. The farmer who owned it lived beyond a hill on the far side of the field and had no way of knowing if anyone was in it at night.

He left no note. They found him lying peacefully in a small clearing near the edge of the field, hands on his chest, gazing at the sky, with dried tear trails on the sides of his face. Empty bottles of quaaludes and Jack Daniels were found next to his body. An autopsy showed an overdose to be the cause of death.

The funeral, as all teenage funerals must be, was awful. One of the worst days of my life. Tangie must have been too ashamed to show. After she graduated, she left town, without the football player, and we lost track of her. My mother was hysterical, and my father was numbed. Two years later when I went to college, they moved to a suburb of Philadelphia. After college, I left, too, and ended up here in New York. I visit the town, and Fred's grave, every year in May, when he died, but I don't hang around long. I simply stay at the town's run-down motel for a night, drive around the next day, look at the house I grew up in and feel strange, go the cemetery, put some flowers on Fred's grave, then leave.

I've asked myself why Fred would come back. Or has he always been there, and it's only now that a few people have seen him? He spent many nights getting wasted there with his friends. I knew because his sneakers would always have corn silk on them. And he made a point of wearing his blue flannel shirt out, as it sometimes got chilly at night, and it reeked of pot smoke, a smell our parents didn't know.

Maybe it was the one place he felt he belonged with other people. I wonder if kids still get stoned there at night. And if they do, do they talk about Fred? He must be a legend. Stories like that always drive kids wild. I can see them now, in the field on a summer night, sitting in a circle, joints and bottles passing from one hand to another, and someone saying, "I wonder if that kid who killed himself over his girlfriend back in the 70's is here tonight."

And even if he isn't, when the warm summer breeze rustles the stalks, everyone knows Fred is there--a lost soul at a stoner's séance, forever young in a way they'll never be.

Fred would be happy to know he had made the paper, even if no one seemed to know him by name. I wonder if Tangie, wherever she is, read the same thing I did and felt the same warm thrill. My parents haven't read it, and I won't be telling them about it.

I've started dreaming about Fred--something I've never done before. It's always the same dream. I'm lying next to him on that night. I can feel the corn silk and stalks rubbing against my back and smell the soil. I can hear crickets and power lines humming. I look up and see the lines and scaffolding of the dark tower against the purple sky. I turn my head and see him. He's quietly crying. The bottles are already empty. The dream starts here, but I know that I have shared the bottles. There's nothing to do but wait until he closes his eyes. I feel like vomiting but keep the urge down, as I know I'll live if I do it. In the dream, I don't want to live.

This dream is the closest I've ever felt to him. We were never that close. We certainly didn't hate each other and got along fine. But in the dream, it's like we're twins who've decided to end it on the same night. Ten year earlier on a sunny day, we could have been laughing at a picnic, naming cloud shapes in the spring sky.

He turns his head, looks at me and smiles. I feel the same way I did when I had my tonsils out and woke up under sedation: stoned, like I'm lying vertically on a wall of grass. I'm floating in some sense. And then we talk. I can recall one conversation we had:

Fred: I don't want to live.
Me: I know. You kill yourself tonight.
Fred: Because there's nothing here for me.
Me: It's only a broken heart. It'll go away.
Fred: I'd rather go away.

He leans his head back and closes his eyes.

I'm never going back there again. Who knows, maybe in the next few weeks, a reporter will do some research, or one of the teachers at the high school will get a flashback, and Fred's gaunt face, maybe his yearbook picture, will magically appear on my computer screen.

Would Fred appear to me if I lay down in that cornfield on a warm night in late May? Would my dream become real? If I saw him roaming the fields, would he stop to acknowledge that we were once brothers, maybe with a certain smile or a wave of his pale, bony hand? What would he say to me?

I don't care. I could drink ghost whiskey from the same bottle, and I don't care. I don't need to see it to believe it. The dream is real enough. Even if it all comes down to a drunk priest, a doddering old man and a paranoid town cop, I believe Fred is out there. I wonder if, as with all those ghost stories, he's doomed to wander forever, never finding what he's looking for, or if there, in the stoner's cornfield behind the church, he's found his home.

The Bad Haircut

It’s amazing how much a bad haircut will knock you off your perch, if only for awhile. I haven’t had a really bad one for years … until yesterday.

Allow me to preface this by saying I’m no stranger to bad haircuts. God bless Leo the barber – he was a kind old man. But when Mom used to drag me into his barbershop in Ashland, it was always a bad trip. She was in the habit of letting my hair get long as a kid – not hippie long, but definitely shaggy. And Leo specialized in one thing and one thing only: crew cuts. You could sit there and give him five minutes of detailed instructions. Didn’t matter. You’d always end up with the same box-headed crew cut. He cut hair like The Ramones made music – two minutes, electricity buzzing, and you were gone. The only difference was Leo didn't count off, "One - Two - Three - Faw" before dive-bombing in with his clippers.

His son who worked with him was a bit better, but it was always a gamble which chair would come open first. When I see small kids crying nowadays over what I recognize as very reasonable, longish haircuts, I have to laugh. Because Leo would give a kid reason to cry – it was like joining the army. It was that radical a departure from what you had previously seen in the mirror, just a total sheep-shearing experience that would leave most kids either wet-eyed or blubbering. The apologetic, post-haircut sucker was poor solace in that situation. You could have given me a complete set of Phillies baseball cards, and I still would have felt like shit afterwards.

This didn’t end at childhood – it went on well into my teen years, although I was relieved when Leo retired and left the business to his son, who always gave much more reasonable haircuts. And after that, I started going to a woman in my neighborhood with a chair in her basement who always gave great haircuts, which went on well through college.

New York City has always been a weird mix of barbers for me, sticking with Manhattan when I first moved here as barbers in the Bronx were geared to black and latin hair. The longest I stayed with was a Russian guy with his sons down by the gym I went to on Saturdays at 23rd and 8th. He and his sons were pretty good, but the price kept inching closer to $20 a cut, which is just too much for me.

Eventually, when I moved to Astoria, I settled on another Saturday barber on my way to the gym in the neighborhood, just walked in by chance, an old Russian guy and his son, and have stayed with him ever since. As time went on, his son stopped showing up, and the old man always seems to have a different barber working with him on Saturdays. Once, he had what was clearly a family relation, probably a nephew, and the kid made the mistake of giving me a haircut without buzzing the sides and back (which I like short … they grow in faster than the top). I should have sat there and made him do this at the end, but the kid also seemed a bit emotional, like he would be offended if I asked, and would do a bad job, so I just went to another local barber that Sunday and had him polish up the longish job the kid did on me.

Still, that wasn’t a really bad haircut. Too long, sure, but too long can be corrected. Yesterday, day before Easter, I walked in mid-afternoon, and the place was dead. The old man was sleeping. I’d have much preferred if he had snapped awake, cried out, “Hello, alt friend” and got me in his chair, because he knows my head by now and what I like. But he had a new Saturday helper, a younger guy with one of those “balding guy/closely-cropped hair” cuts who seemed real eager to cut my hair. I’m assuming he was bored out of his skull if business was so slow that the old man had been dozing.

This guy’s Russian, too, asks me what I want, I tell him #2 on the back and sides, but leave a little more on top, I like it longer on top. Da. He starts in on the sides, and man, he’s shearing me, which is good. I’m perfectly fine with the back and sides being short as I know they’ll grow in so fast, and the biggest mistake most barbers make with me is leaving them too long.

Before I know it, and without telling me, this prick runs the electric clippers over the top of my head, knocking off a huge plume of full hair.

“Hold on, buddy, hold on,” I yelled out, “I said leave it long on top.”

“But I thought you said #4 on top.”

Number 4 must be a buzz cut. I didn’t say #4 on top!

But right there, I asked myself, what does it matter now? This guy just took an alarming chunk of hair off the top of my head … it’s not like he can pick it up off the floor and glue it back on. The old man sees all this going on and cries out, “Oh, vat are you doink to my alt friend, he no like it that short!” But, again … what the fuck can you do when the guy has just made an uncorrectable error?

So, at this point, I resign myself to the fact that I’m about to get a buzz cut that would have old Leo beaming down from his cloud in heaven. There is no choice now. The guy runs the electric clippers over the top of my head … and I’m now left with the shortest haircut I’ve had since the early 70s, shorter than the one referenced above, I mean down to the nub all around, which I really don’t like, it’s just too fucking short for comfort, accents the shape of my skull, and I just don’t have one of those skull shapes that’s good for this kind of closely-cropped hair.

After he made that initial cut, the guy kept saying, “You don’t look happy.” No shit! I should have picked up on that assholish vibe the guy put out when I first walked in, that sort of brash cockiness I’ve come to associate with people who really don’t know what they’re doing, but think they can cover it up with an attitude. I’m assuming this guy must have spent some time in a barber school, getting his license and should know what he’s doing, in theory. But, as I find so much in my life, most people just don’t know how to listen. Not so much just don’t know how, they choose not to acknowledge what people tell them. Which normally doesn’t matter, but when you’re giving someone instructions on how to cut your hair …

So I’m resigned to the fact that I’m going to look like a mental patient for the next two or three weeks. Am steeling myself for going to work tomorrow, when coworkers take one look at me and ask what the hell happened. Worst of all, just feeling out of sorts and off kilter every time I look in the mirror. That's one place you should be able to look and like what you see. So I'll be avoiding mirrors for the next few weeks - really won't have any need as my hair is now so short I can't even comb it.

I’ll go back there again, probably late June or early July before I need it cut again, but that son of a bitch is never touching my head again. Hopefully he’ll be one in a series of Saturday barbers the old man has been employing, although I’m getting kind of tired of the quality of these guys coming and going. He had an Asian guy in there for a long time who was pretty good, but haven’t seen him the past two times. All I know is if I walk in, that guy is there, and the old man is there cutting someone else’s hair, I’m getting my hair cut elsewhere that rotation and trying him again in two months. I want to give this guy my business because I like him, but if his hired hands remain this incompetent and indifferent to customers, I just can’t do it. Something tells me I’m not the only one looking in the mirror after this guy got done with them and asking what the hell happened.

Two Kinds of People

In that aborted novel of my late 20s (thinly-veiled fiction related to my life … which made me feel a bit sleazy), the older brother of the main character had a habit, as older brothers often do, of wrestling the kid to the ground in the living room and farting on his head. Much like used to happen to me! But when he did, unlike reality, the older brother always had a snappy one-liner before emitting his gas blast: “There are two kinds of people in the world – me and everybody else.” Pffffttttt.

In reality, that was my line. A great way to acknowledge one’s individuality while employing that “two kinds of people” cliché people use so often. Generally to designate whatever problem they’re having at the moment, with the “two kinds of people” coming down solely to people who relate to their problem, or those who cause it or don’t give a damn. Even within the limited context of the analogy, they’re usually wrong, leaving spaces for dozens of other kinds of people in that given scenario.

But lately, I’ve been thinking: there really are only two kind of people in the world. It’s those who can acknowledge the existence of other people and those who can’t. I’m not even getting into some hokey concept of “those who can love and respect other people.” It has nothing to do with love or respect. I’m talking the simple ability to recognize the existence of other people. You don’t have to love them. You don’t have to respect them (although it helps). You just have to acknowledge that there are other people in the world, many people, and you’re just one of them, trying to get by and make sense of it all.

As opposed to people who don’t give a shit about anyone else. I’m talking sociopaths, and not in that Manson/Dahmer sort of extreme. I work with sociopaths. I live around them. Run into them on sidewalks and subway trains all the time. They’re pretty much everywhere you go, New York or not. That previous post where I noted some creep parking a stolen shopping chart filled with discarded clothes on the landlord’s sidewalk and walking away? That’s probably a sociopath: someone who takes zero responsibility for his actions and doesn’t care at all what sort of effect his lack of respect for himself and others will cause. A sociopath doesn’t have to be a mass murderer; he may never even commit a felony crime. This website offers a great thumbnail description of sociopathic tendencies.

Do you know how many sociopaths I’ve worked with in New York? More than I care to admit. I’m not saying that in a “ha ha funny” way. If you read the main criteria for sociopathic behavior on that website, these are all qualities that are well suited to office work, a place where glibness and superficiality routinely are valued as common currency. If you want to know why corporations and institutions are so needlessly heartless and cruel at times … they’re often run by sociopaths who aren’t worried about the morality of their actions or repercussions. Sometimes it comes back to bite them on the ass (think Enron), but most times not (think Wall Street). I’d also put forth that a vast majority of politicians are sociopaths, regardless of the goodwill façade they present to the public. But I don’t really want to think too long about this, because it’s too disturbing.

I like what that above-noted passage on sociopaths points out: “ultimate goal is the creation of a willing victim.” I must be like Dr. Van Helsing, the vampire hunter, when it comes to dealing with sociopaths. I know what they are. They know I know what they are. Obviously, they don’t care: they’re sociopaths. I try to leave them to their own devices as much as possible, and when I can’t, just discourage and avoid situations where they can indulge themselves.

But sometimes women in an office around a sociopaths? It’s high drama. They make the mistake of investing their emotions with people like this. They get “involved,” somehow. They must “save him.” They must find reason in this person’s inexplicably bad behavior, mixed in with the charm and moments of clarity. Remember the vampire hunter. There is no cure for vampires, only wooden stakes. There is no slow turning of thought and emotion for the person to “see the light” and start behaving like a normal, caring individual. It just doesn’t happen. I’ll never understand how people get pulled into this other clearly troubled person’s self absorption. Your average sociopath is an emotional vampire, sucking the life and energy from everyone around him. These people don’t present mysteries and enigmas to me. Shit, they’re like wallpaper in New York!

Obviously, not every driven, Type A person is a sociopath. But I think we all deal with sociopaths far more often than we’d care to acknowledge. It sometimes feels like the American way, this way we have of gauging success by financial worth, is geared towards creating sociopaths, or at the very least deeply selfish, uncaring people. I’m hardly blowing the lid off a deep dark secret here, but it pains me to acknowledge that what we consider normal is far from it. We’ve all had that feeling of being at work, or just walking the streets, and being presented with a situation or person that is just so radically wrong, we’re left breathless, thinking, “Doesn’t this person know how wrong this is?” And the answer is, no, he doesn’t. In his eyes, he’s right and everyone else is wrong. Doesn’t matter if we’re talking some creep sending text mails on a smart phone on a crowded subway staircase during rush hour, or a division head laying off everyone who does real work in a department and promoting all the wrong workers.

Happens all the time. If we’re feeling sensitive, we stop to ponder how crazy the world has grown, and it only seems to be getting worse. But it’s always been this way. Hell, may have been worse in the past when you consider all the wars, bad politics and power coups throughout history. I usually cringe when people advance that line of thought, because they personally witness some type of bad behavior, that the world in general must be “going bad” in some sense. Compare a negative experience on the street or at work with, I don’t know, say that of someone in Japan right now who survived an earthquake only to watch his house get swept out to sea by a tsunami, can’t find his wife and may be receiving daily doses of radiation that will shave years off the end of his life.

There are bad days and bad people we deal with, but then again, there are some truly horrific situations that people go through daily, sometimes to the point of death. I try to remember that when I’m carrying on about garden-variety sociopaths and bad manners. It is a sort of petty whining on my part, but then again, what I’m noting has some truth to it, too. It’s surely better to focus on the good. If you are one of those people who can acknowledge the existence of other people, keep that thought in mind, walk it as you talk it, don’t let yourself slip into not carrying around that sense of recognition.

And I don’t mean to paint this purely in terms of good/evil. If anything, I recognize sociopaths really have little control over how they act and do not intend to be “bad people” in some sense. Thus, I’ll feel a mild sense of pity for a person with this issue, much more than contempt. I’ve noticed that sort of strange unhappiness in the upper reaches of the corporate world. Granted, a lot of that is massive pressure, mind-bending levels of stress I tend to avoid on purpose. But I gather some of it is just that general unhappiness with life, and no amount of money will change that. You spend all your time in power plays, aggressive behavior towards real and imagined enemies, forever functioning with your back to the wall, distrustful of everyone you meet, it surely takes a deep psychic toll. Sometimes I’m amazed when I meet seemingly happy, well-adjusted executives, because everything else about their lives (despite the money) seems like constant, massive trouble. I guess we all decide how much shit we’re willing to take, how much money we’re willing to make, forgive me for sounding like a Billy Joel song.

What I’ll never understand is these men thinking their ways of life are the ultimate expression of manhood. True, there are men out there using their backs for a living, or engaged in some manly sport, who exude manhood like a musk that everyone notices. How much money do they make?

That’s where these guys gauge their manhood. But you look at what goes on sometimes … and it’s like being cast back to the schoolyard. Remember how you used to fight as a kid with your siblings or neighborhood friends? Those knock-down/drag-out fiascos that would find both of you wailing on each other, mentally or physically, in ways that were meant to leave permanent scars? Those deep blasts of psychic rage you weren’t mature enough to contain or see past because you were a kid and didn’t know any better? Each of you looking for ways to embarrass and dominate your opponent by exposing every possible weakness and secret place?

Take all those ugly, bratty blasts of irrational selfishness and anger, put them in a guy wearing a suit and tie, and this is not all that unusual in an office. It’s virtually no different from those brawls between eight year olds … the same levels of understanding, compassion and empathy. It’s not manhood – it’s the worst of childhood. With monetary value attached.

Where most people go wrong is trying to find reason to justify this. There is no reason. We’re better off focusing on what makes people “good” in some sense and moving towards that. And understanding that most of the good we do, others will not see. Sure, the people in our lives will, those who know us for who we are, but most people won’t have a clue as to what good we’ve done in life and what legacy we’ve left behind. That was a strong feeling I got at Dad’s funeral, that he was essentially a good person who quietly went through life doing whatever it took to keep his family going. And the only people who really knew that were us, the few dozen of us gathered on that frigid, cloudless day in December to lay him to rest.

I bring up Dad because it pleased him no end that I was living in New York, not working in a factory, and in his mind, making more money than he did. (Maybe I have, but I’m still lower end of the totem pole, by far and by choice.) I never quite understood how he never fully grasped that he had a pretty good life – at least the factory he worked in treated and served him pretty well over the course of decades. Does so to this day with a healthy pension for Mom after his passing. But he seemed to think having more money magically made your life better.

Then again, on some level, he knew, as I recall him passing up a few promotions over the years that would have moved him out of the area or put him on the road – two things he had no urge to do after traveling the world on the tail end of World War II and the Korean War. He drew a line, as most of us do. I guess all I’m saying is watch out for people who don’t draw lines. I used to think that sort of wild ambition was a wondrous thing, but now that I’ve lived around it in various guises for the past two decades, I’m not so sure about that.