My first reaction when I pulled off my son's diaper was surprise. I felt my eyes widen as I thought "will you look at that!"
I had revealed, much to my surprise, a nifty li'l boner.
I never expected to see this at such an early age. In fact, I think it's safe to say that I never expected to see my son's erection at any age.
I resisted the urge to shriek "oh my God! You've got a teeny tiny hard-on, honey!". I remained composed. Still, I realized that I was basically unprepared for these, the baser moments in child care.
Although I have been a mom for a while, for some reason, I still labor under the illusion that babies are as innocent and noncarnal as the plumpest, pinkest cherub from the most gilded of Italian paintings. And now, here's this woodie, spoiling that image. I'll bet Raphael never had to contend with this, I thought. My son grabbed himself and giggled. I had to laugh. He really was cute with that thing.
Later, I confided in a friend about the episode.
OK, I called her up right away. Hiding in the laundry room so I wouldn't traumatize my baby by discussing his penis over the phone, I scream-whispered, "OH--my--God! Joshie had a baby boner when I changed his diaper!" We laughed over this charming milestone and, as all mothers do, began to reminisce.
Remember when Stephanie shoved the aquarium rocks up her nose?
This was a deft piece of table-top surgery, requiring very long tweezers and a Herculean effort on my part to keep my toddler calm. This was so she wouldn't cry and inhale the various foreign bodies she'd crammed into her nasal cavity. (The fact that today, she takes Claritin half the year because her sinuses are so sensitive to microscopic particles amuses me to no end.)
Or how about when Matthew plastered his crap-filled diaper all over the hand-painted mural in his nursery
? (At this point I would like to ask how many parents out there have an amusing anecdote that could include the phrase crap-filled diaper?)
The winning story this day was the one where little Casey projectile-vomited from the back-back of the minivan, still managing to hit her mom, who was executing a turn into--where else?-- the church parking lot. Ah, memories!
How on earth could I think my baby could be anything but the little jungle creature he is?
Come to think of it, I don't know how this angelic image of babies got started to begin with. We parents clothe them in soft pastels, but all we're doing is perpetuating a myth.
Stick them naked in a tree where they belong, I say! With their test-monkey-in-a-lab screams, not to mention the way they spread body fluids like feral cats marking their territory--children are disgusting and babies even more so. How we manage to keep from killing them is anyone's guess. If science could discover the hormone or gene that makes babies, the adult's natural enemy, so wonderfully irresistible to us, we could achieve world peace.
I reach down to pet my neighbor's dog, Milo. I am pet sitting, so on top of child care duties I have a very hyper Wiemeraner to look after.
Milo appears stressed and has sought release by earnestly humping a pillow in the shape of Scooby Doo. I roll my eyes and glance back at baby Josh, who is grabbing what feels good in his diaper, letting out a gurgle of pure joy. Good Lord, it's like Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom around here! I hand the baby a rattle, hoping to otherwise occupy his hands. I wonder briefly if this will interfere with some important penile bonding moment. I shrug. He'll have plenty of others.
I open the patio door, figuring the cold air will help shrink that dog bone. But Milo knows what's best for Milo. He's got a good thing going on there with Scooby Doo, and he's not going anywhere.
I shut the door. Ah, what the hell. To paraphrase Marlon Perkins, we must learn from our animal friends. "I can't say that I blame you, Milo", I say to his industrious backside. "I can't say that I blame you."
What is it with Brooklyn people, I ask, what do they have against Jersey pizza? Everyone knows we got more Mafia here than anywhere, so why can’t we have good pizza, too? I'm trying to get an amen from my friend, but he is deeply absorbed. Across the Formica, under the brittle hum of the flourescent light, is a man who grew up eating Papa Gino's, and he's having his First Real Pizza. The Sacred Heart glares down at me from its shrine, tacked onto a faded photograph of Joe DiMaggio. I jerk my head toward its meaty halo. Hey, check it out, I snicker, The Church of the Holy Corpuscle. My friend doesn’t get it. Born lucky, born Protestant.
Maybe living in Mafia Central isn't so bad after all
, I muse absently as I mop oil from my slice. I flick the napkin off my fingers into the ashtray, and stare at the orange oil as it seeps down the paper like a tiny lava flow. My friend chews hard on his gaggy crust. I don't know, he swallows, is it really true what they say about the Mafia in New Jersey? I never see any of it.
I roll my eyes. Think, boyo, think! How long does it take to build an off-ramp in Minneapolis? I ask. How's your garbage collectionout there compared to here? I pick up my soda cup and the pizza box, the ones with the happy Italian chef curling his moustache. See these? I say, Pizza man's gotta buy these from the distributor, or else. You'll never see Dixie cups in a pizza parlor, man! What do you mean, ‘you don't see it’? He looks sober, then glances nervously at Pete and Paulie behind the counter, their hairy biceps submerged in dough. He looks back at me, and I watch him slowly put it together. Good concrete, efficient garbage collection, intimidating small business men...He stops, and looks a little scared. Let's go, he says suddenly. I think he's going to leave the last two slices, but he folds the box and takes them after all. You'll get used to it, I say. Soon you'll be a Jersey guy, living La Cosa Nostra like the rest of us.
A couple weeks later we're driving along, and see some police cars parked near the woods. It's time for a test. Quick, what are they looking for? I ask. Someone reported seeing a bear, he answers. See, I find this interesting, I say. Everybody I know would say dead body. He looks appalled. Doesn’t it bother you that you live in a state where people assume the woods is full of dead bodies and not animals? , he asks. I can feel my face looking stupid. I never thought about it before, I say.
I try to make it sound better. It’s no big deal, really. We coexist, we cope. We have 100 words for Mafia like the Eskimos do for snow. He looks unconvinced. I stumble on. You know, like ‘Gangland Associate’. Doesn’t that sound funny? Like, ‘come to Gangland and play all day!’? He looks very Midwestern right now, especially around the eyes. It’s not funny, he says. The Mafia aesthetic has informed every aspect of the culture in this state!
Sheesh.
I’m thinking on this whole thing all afternoon. I mean, is it worth it just to have great pizza, to put up with the Mafia in our lives? It’s so corrupt, it can’t be good for the kids. Common sense tells you it can’t be.
Then again, when I was a kid, I kind of liked the Mafia that lived in our town. Two parts gangster, one part Munster, they lived in these houses that were totally different from any other house in the neighborhood, but you weren’t supposed to notice. Gated and fenced, festooned with lurid "beware of the dog" signs, lots of coming and going day and night, and everybody–even old Nonna-- wore sunglasses. The sunglasses were the perfect accessory, since Mafia people enjoyed celebrity status that the rest of us could only dream of.
Mafiosi floated somewhere over the legal rainbow, occupying a place usually reserved for diplomats and CIA agents. They could park anywhere and no meter maid would ticket them. They’d set off kickass fireworks on the Fourth of July that would somehow evade the attention of the town cops (who were admittedly very busy arresting any 7 year old found clutching a sparkler).
Theirs was a charmed existence, one where they could show up to buy houses with actual suitcases full of cash, and yet not raise a single realtor’s eyebrow. It was a topsy turvy world, where owners of the most humble businesses inexplicably lived in mansions (if this were a rebus, I’d put a picture of a dollar bill in a washing machine here). Their teenagers were magically issued driving licenses well ahead of their 16th birthdays. Tossing cigarette butts at me while screaming Fuckin A out the windows of their Trans Ams, they’d stream past as I lumbered along on my Sears Free Spirit bike.
Once I had a Mafia Princess roommate. I don’t know why she was in college, or if she was even enrolled, because she never seemed to go to class.. She spent a lot of time on the phone. And I kept getting lots of wrong numbers. This went on for a few weeks and then it dawned on me that she was running a lucrative phone-sex business out of our dorm room. I moved out, "with alacrity", as my English professor used to say.
And then there were the bodyguards. Appearing en posse in church or in court, or in the case of one woman, at the high school football games, Mafia people were never without their burly entourage, who were usually the size of Led Zeppelin amplifiers. Occasionally there would be Bodyguard Failure and some Mafia guy would go missing. These stories always ended with a hushed whisper. He never came back. The anxiety over these disappearance were relieved somewhat when they built that unofficial Mob resting place, the Meadowlands Sports Complex. We figured they were somewhere under the 50 yard line. It was nice to finally have closure.
[#3118, 2 inbound blogs]: An awesome and prolific debut from Jef (yes, that's a girl's name) describing with startling candour her past and present -- relationships, beliefs, fears, crises. When she writes it's as if she's looking you right in the eye, and her writing is tight, relentless, almost brutal.
Well, thank you Mr. Dave Pollard from Canada for your insight. Of course the man is a genius. And don't go giving me that look, any of you.There are lots of geniuses from Canada. Look at Peter Jennings, or Pierre Trudeau. Or Gordie Howe.
And today was the most beautiful day in the most beautiful summer anyone can remember.
I am on my way out to work, when I hear the Yamaha rounding the corner. I know what window to look out to see him best, so he can see me best. See him best, see me best. This is how I know we are best friends.
Off comes the helmet, and he stands there, ready. As if he is holding out a flower to me. "Where's my flower?" I smile down at him. His eyes light up, "I'm your flower, baby." he says. I approve of that answer. i come down the rickety stairs carefully, like Rapunzel climbing down her braids.
"Where am I going, when I should be going to work?" I ask. Jack looks at me, his green eyes searching my face carefully. "Scanning for signs of illness..." he mutters "well, you're very sick. sick of work." I nod in complete agreement with this diagnosis. He is, after all, a medical school dropout. And so I say, "OK, I'm in." He hands me the one and only helmet. Jack never hates to wear the helmet. He has a head like a cannonball, anyway.
And New Jersey looks so beautiful, all windy at 60 mph. I think this, but it's too noisy to say. So I squeeze his middle to tell him. Like all best friends, he knows just what I mean.
We buzz that little rice burner right onto West 4th Street and go straight to 1/5 for martinis. Real ones. Walter the bartender is wiping down the bar, but he looks up and smiles as we come in. "Here come the punk rock stars" he says. He likes to call us this, but maybe he does it so the manager won't kick us out, because we look like shit. Well, we look really cool, of course, but this is Fifth Avenue.
Walter is chilling the glasses and reaching for the Bombay.
I take out a twenty and lay it on the altar. "For Walter, on his altar." I laugh. They like that.
"Hey, guess what, Walter? Jack and I bumped into Joe Strummer Friday night at the Chelsea. He actually looked at us and said 'oops.'" Walter has to ask who Joe Strummer is. We tell him and he gives us our drinks. "Here's to a Grammy for you two for 1983." he says. He means it nicely so we don't gag in front of him. We are tactful, Jack and I. Always thinking of the needs of others first. So we wait till Walter retreats down the bar to make the vomit face. A Grammy! Pfft!
Then we wink for our toast. "What layer are you at today, Jeffie?" he asks. I toss my head and take the tiniest sip. Ah, yes, it's sick of work I am. "Well, Jacky, you make me sound like Sybill. Am I so mercurial that you have to ask, 'Who am I getting tipsy with today? Is it Jeffie, the nurse, or the helicopter pilot?'"
I know I'm funny when Jack snorts. He sprays a bit of martini on the bar, and I wipe his chin. "Aw, little baby martini drool," I murmur. Walter watches us and smiles "Don't waste that Bombay, boy." he tells Jack. "that's the real thing." Jack looks at me over his glass. "Yup, that's the real thing." he says.
That's a powerful glow I'm getting. If it were love I'd be getting a soft-on. But it's only friendship, so it's glow. Flow and glow. Pretty good trade off for sex, I think.
I hold my glass aloft. "I am not playing Charades, and I am not the Statue of Liberty. I'm toasting you, Jack. I'm toasting us. To flow. And glow."
Jack's black eyes gleam and he takes it all in. But he leaves the olive in the bottom for me. I pierce it with my tiny plastic sword and brandish it, pretending first to put it in my mouth, but ending with a nice little delivery to his tongue. "I was going to eat it myself but I changed my mind," I say. Jack chews and answers, "Yeah, you couldn't even fake being selfish, darlin, and that's your fuckin problem. Another woman would've eaten that olive, just to show me who's fuckin boss."
I sip and consider my answer carefully. I am, after all, a law school dropout.
"But Jack, I happen to know that you love the olive. It must by rights be yours." Whenever I start to get a little drunk, my turns of phrase get very English. He remains unconvinced, eyeing Walter as he chills our new glasses. "Well, another woman would eat that olive especially cos she knows I love it. See? You've gotta toughen up." I shrug. "Kevin says I'm selfish." Now Jack snorts but not in the good laughy way. His eyes lose the gleam, and I'm sorry about that. I shouldn't've mentioned Kevin.
At least I did it early in the evening, though. His name has to come up at least once when we're together, and it's better to have it come up when Jack is less drunk.
"Kevin Pratt is a chowderhead!" This is Jack's worst insult as well as his favorite term of endearment. Walter laughs out loud as he sets our drinks down. "Oh, Jacky, look, " I coo a little, softening the subject, "look how Walter cares for us, his favorite customers." I am being silly but sincere. Walter is a great guy and an old New York bartender. Between we three there exists a real affection.
Besides, he makes the best martini in the city.
Walter says "You two are the only customers under 50 that drink those things. Everybody else your age drinks Bombay and tonics or those drinks with the names that have dirty words in them."
We feel a little sorry for Walter. Of all the social changes in his lifetime, the civil rights and women's movements, the assassinations of the 1960s, the changes in New York City, the greatest shock to him is the rise of the trendy drink. He hates having to layer shots and run the blender. In fact, he hates that blender so much he unplugs it every shift and pretends it's broken. If the manager, who of course is half Walter's age, ever found out, Walter would lose his job. He's been there for twenty years, but it wouldn't matter. A corporation owns 1/5 now. Jack and I know about the blender. It is a carefully guarded secret.
"And the answer as to why I drink martinis is a good answer to Jack's earlier question about layers of personality, and in particular, at what layer I am currently functioning." Walter bumps off to serve some tourists. And Jack says "OK, go." "I drink gin because my favorite Leonardo painting is an early portrait of Ginevra di Benci, and it features the juniper bush prominently, as a symbol."
This makes sense to Jack. He loves the way I read life as though I'm reading a painting. Looking for symbols. "It's a good thing I'm not a PhD, " he says, "because then your love of symbols might seem contrived, sophomoric." I crinkle my nose at him in my best Myrna Loy imitation.
We finish our seconds. "Look, Walter!" I call gaily down the bar, "Jacky and I are in the clean glass club!" We hear Walter faintly, as he explains to the tourists glaring at us, "they're punk rock stars." The tourists seem somewhat mollified. At least they saw someone famous in New York, albeit famous scummy punk rockers.
As we exit, vampires blinking in the sudden light, we realize it's still summer. We stride down the street. People stop and stare as we pass. Maybe it's my old Catholic school uniform, stuck with safety pins and a picture of the pope, bleeding. Maybe it's my saddle shoes from 8th grade with the little white socks and my purple hair. But probably it's Jack. It's usually Jack. Black leather was made for Jack. It stretches across his thighs and biceps so beautifully. Really, it's a shame he's bi, I think. But I just can't kiss a man who's kissed a man.
I sigh, and say, "I love how we lose track of time with sex and liquor, don't you, Jacky?" He can't hear me though. He's got his walkman on. He stops near the Blue Note. "Jeffie! I'm gonna get you one! I will, I will, I swear I will!" He shouts.
I look my little boy indulgently. "What, Jacky, what will you get me?" He pulls off his walkman and puts the headphones on me. The Psychedelic Furs are blasting "No Tears Now." Happiness floods into my brain through my ears. "There's tripping flags for you." Richard Butler is singing. Jack points drunkenly to the Blue Note, its banner blue under the bluer sky. "Tripping Flags, Jeffie! I'm getting you one!" I pull off the walkman, leaving Richard Butler's voice tinning away through the trailing headphones. I'm drunk but not vandalism drunk. "No, Jack, don't." I say. I don’t implore, though. Cos I am, after all, a little drunk. Ok, drunk enough that I cover my mouth and giggle. This could be such a great adventure!
Jack is gazing at the Blue Note banner. "I've always wanted to steal that sucker." he whispers. He turns to me and rubs his hands together. He looks just like the old Darren Stevens when he does that. "Well, I've made my mind up. I'm goin in!"
Before I can stop him, or prolong the deliciousness of the moment by trying to talk him out of it only to have him do it, he is climbing the awning braces. Ironically, now that we are doing something bad, and illegal, nobody takes notice. That's New York for you.
His foot slips a bit, and he recovers, but not too neatly. Suddenly I realize that this is not Mission Impossible, and Jack is no Peter Lupus. He can't scale that fucking thing! The banner is on the second story. "Jack! Get down right now!" I hiss. "Come on! Before the coppers catch us!" Something in this makes me laugh, and then it's no good. There's no turning back.Even though I feel we may end up at the St. Vincent's Emergency Room, I can't stop laughing. I totally ditch the implore mode and move straight into uncontrollable laughing.
Jack is unsteadily on the top of the awning, stepping drunken-gingerly on the cloth. "Tripping flags, Jeffie!" he shouts. He is laughing and his face is glowing. He looks like a little boy at the Christmas tree. I almost want to cry, he is so cute. And then he makes his grab, gets the banner, and his right foot falls through the awning, of course, because it's cloth after all. Since an accident may be imminent, several passersby stop. This could be good. There could be blood, they think.
I desperately push his foot back up, and Jack scrambles up and over the side. He falls the last six feet and lands with the Blue Note banner wrapped around him on the sidewalk. And then the door pops open and out comes the bouncer.
"Shit shit shit shit shit!" We scramble, we run. We run fast. The words tumbling in my head like in those first grade readers. See Jack run! See Jef run! See Jack and Jef run from the angry bouncer. The big, angry bouncer. Run, Jack, run! Run Jef, run!
"I'm callin the cops!" screams the bouncer. For a fat guy he is surprisingly fast. We can hear him breathing, behind us. "Drop the flag, Jack," I pant. Jack looks over his shoulder, as he runs like Tom Tom the Piper's son, with the banner under his arm. "No fuckin way, Jeffie! This is a dream come true for me." He's my best friend, so I'll go to the lockup with him. "Then step it out, Jack!" I yell. He was in marching band, too, and he knows this means double time it.
We pour it on, we reach the park. There are a ton of cops there, always. The bouncer collars a couple of them and points at us. We tear through the park, to the bike. Dodge the frisbee players and drug dealers, who, even though we are being chased by cops, still intone at us, "smoke, smoke, coke, coke."
We hop the fence, we leap, literally leap,onto that goddammed bike like it was the last boat out of Devil's Island. Jack stuffs the flag into his jacket. The cops and the bouncer lost us just long enough in the park. We get away, but not too fast. Nobody follows us.
As soon as we are through the Holland Tunnel and out on the Turnpike, Jack passes the banner back to me. He shouts over the engine, "lookit that turnpike!" He knows that my dad used to say that, for no good reason, every time he saw it.
But we actually do look at that Turnpike. For we love the Turnpike, Jack and I. "It takes me where I want to go, Jacky", I shout. He hears me and nods. We feel rich, we feel magnificent. So much road, all to us! And the never-ending expanse of oil refineries, belching flames, like dragons, Jack always says.
The sun is setting red and royal, a benevolent king beaming down on us, as if we'd brought him the banner as a gift. I unfurl it, and hold it over my head, like a Hell's Angels biker girl. I'm wearing the walkman now, and Richard Butler is screaming in my ear "no tea-yahs, yaaaah!"
"Tripping flags, Jacky," I scream, and I'm crying a little because it is suddenly so very beautiful, this time and place, this friend and this love.
Jacky guns the rice burner in answer. And we ride that motherfucker all the way home.
Living La Cosa Nostra by Jef Klein
This guy I know is a Midwesterner. I love to go out with him here in New Jersey. It's sort of a cultural exchange. But maybe inter-planetary is more like it.
We drive past police cars parked near the woods. He thinks they've found a bear. I prefer the dead body scenario. He'll say, "did you ever notice that all the pizza parlors have paper products from the same company?" I tell him that if they don't order from that company, the owners will have their pizza parlors burned down. He looks puzzled. . So I hum the theme from The Godfather. Then it sinks in. "Wow!" he says, "really? The mob?" I just shake my head at him, laughing. This alien cracks me up! The mob and pizza parlors, in New Jersey? Yeah, ya think?
I thought everyone knew that New Jersey is famous for two things: exporting talent and the Mafia.
Didn't you know? A lot of famous people come from New Jersey.
Notice I said from. When famous people actually admit to it, they say they are from New Jersey. Meaning not only that they were born here, but that they left, often as soon as they could. The talented people go to New York or LA, where they like to say they grew up in the "New York area". Whenever I see one of them on TV I want to scream, " 'Area'my ass! You grew up in friggin' Sayreville! Get over it!!"
But they leave Jersey, in droves. And what's left behind are the untalented shmucks like me, and the Mafia.
I get a kick out of the discussions that came up around the TV show, The Sopranos. Like The Godfather, it has started up the old topic of "is there a Mafia presence in New Jersey?" Whenever these discussions come up, usually on some show with "Roundtable" in the title, I am surprised. What is there to dispute? Of course there's a Mafia presence in New Jersey! It's not a question of if,but of who. (Or who isn'tin the mob, if it's the short list you're wanting.)
As the folks down at the FBI office like to say, we have a "situation" with organized crime here.
Over the years, we have learned to cope. Just like the Eskimos and their 100 words for snow, we have our quaint, slightly foreign-sounding terms for the Mafia. La Cosa Nostra. The Mob. Hit man. Capo. Member of organized crime. Wise guy. Bodyguard. And my particular favorite, Gangland Associate. It sounds like one of those greeters with the smiley faces at the Wal-Mart. Or someone who works at an amusement park. "Come to Gangland! Pay one price and ride all day!!"
The Mafia isn't a presence, or a situation, but actual people. People who stand next to you on line at the post office, or to receive Communion. They are actually a very holy bunch, the Mafia. I guess they have to make up for all the killing, and whatnot.
I had this neighbor, Mr. M. He disappeared one night in 1970. Last seen alive by his wife. That's how the stories always begin about these guys. Anyway, he went out to buy a pack of cigarettes. "He never came back", was the story. We'd stand in front of his house, nudging and whispering. His house was the only one on the block that had a fortified fence and large "beware of the dog" signs posted all over.
The anxiety over his disappearance was relieved when they built the Meadowlands Sports Complex, the unofficial mob resting place. We nodded knowingly as the concrete was poured and the turf seeded. "He's probably under the 50 yard line", was the local saying. It was nice to finally have closure.
And then there was the S. family. Big Mob family. Or at least that was the rumor around town. This rumor wasn't helped by the appearance of Mrs. S. and her bodyguards at the high school football games. These guys were huge. Led Zeppelin-amplifier huge. Once at a game I heard one lady say to her husband, "They're not her bodyguards! They're friends of the family!" to which her husband answered, "Yeah, the Genovese family!"
Nobody was too eager to sit close to Mrs. S. A lovely woman, but, still, you never knew. It's hard to dodge bullets when you're trying to concentrate on the game.
Most of all, there were the Mafia Princes and Princesses. These were the kids who had wads of cash. Who had new cars with vanity plates, two years before they could legally drive. The operative word being "legally."
Presumably in training to drive the getaway car should the need arise, the Mafia princes and princesses were driving, very publicly and very prematurely.They'd speed past the rest of us as we lumbered along on our Sears Free Spirit bikes. "Fuckin A!" they'd yell out the window, flicking cigarette butts at us. Butts of cigarettes from a hijacked truck, no doubt. The irony was absolutely pungent.
The Mafia Princesses got married right out of high school, their fathers buying the young couple a house. In cash. Always in cash. The Princes were usually set up in some sort of business. Bagel shop, investment capital firm, didn't matter. The logo could have been the same for them all. Just picture a dollar bill in a washing machine.
Some of the Princesses did make it to college. What they did there was a little vague, though. The incentive to succeed in the normal world just wasn't part of their makeup. Like Samantha Steven's cousin Serena, they saw no point in doing the actual work of mortals. Money just flowed to them, in the twinkling of a nose, or at least a call to daddy.
I actually had a Mafia Princess roommate. Of course, her dad was big in the garbage industry, but like all hardworking folks, they had some ventures on the side. She spent a lot of time on the phone, and very little time going to class. Maybe she wasn't even enrolled, I have no idea. I do know that, after some very strange wrong numbers, it dawned on me that she was running the family's phone-sex business in our apartment. I moved out, "with alacrity", as my English professor used to say.
Of course, Mario Puzo didn't help things. The Godfather was like a guide to New Jersey. For years, people would point to this person, or that house, and say "you know that character in The Godfather? Well, it was that guy!"
It was like we couldn't help ourselves. David Susskind was showing Mafia hit men? We'd be there. Forget the moon landing! State of the Union? Bah! But Mafia hit men on David Susskind? Move over!
Susskind always interviewed them in the dark, and they'd have a canvas bag over their heads. No kidding. It was like the Unknown Comic on The Gong Show. Only instead of stupid jokes, they'd be saying things like "yeah, well, I usually shot them once and threw them in the river." All muffled, through the bag. Hysterical.
We, the at-home players, would try to guess their identity. "I swear that's that guy who always wears the white patent leather shoes. You know, the one who cried when his car got broken into and they stole his Jimmy Roselli tapes!"
But you know, no matter how many years I've had to adapt to the Mob around me, it still shocks me a little to see how deep this corpse-infested river runs in our state. Sometimes it seems everyone is in the Mafia.
Once when I was a bartender, I was on strike. There we were, marching for our rights to earn crappy pay and decent tips. A stirring moment in labor history. As I was out picketing, one of my colleagues from another bar came up to me. He gave me twenty bucks because our strike fund hadn't kicked in yet. And he whispered to me, "hey, Jeffie, if you want me to have his legs broken, just say the word, darlin'!" I was stunned. He said it like "hey, honey, we're going out for sandwiches. Can I pick anything up for you?" But he was talking about aggravated assault on my boss.
I said very nicely, which is the only way to refuse such an offer, "Oh, Ricky, how nice you are! But no thank you, really, it won't be necessary." His innocence and seriousness was touching when he replied, "don't worry, sweetheart. It's on the house! I wouldn't think of taking your money." Seeing my reluctance he added, "Really it's no trouble. My boys could do it tonight, and we're not talkin about whackin him, honey, just hurting him so's he'll end the strike."
I remember thinking "Ricky has 'boys'? Boys to break legs for him, or with him?" I looked at Ricky, a truly sweet and generous man. And I realized that I was living in a world unlike any other. Of course, I didn't accept. And Ricky was so disappointed. Because he was the kind of Jersey guy whose greatest pleasure in life is achieving an equitable end to disputes of this nature.
Or as I like to call it, settling it Jersey-style, with a baseball bat.
I am riding in a car with my friend Eileen. And suddenly she pulls over. "That son of a bitch!" she yells, looking out the window fiercely. I follow her gaze, expecting to see a friend who owes her money or at least a rogue brother in law. Instead I see nothing but a pond with a blue heron on it. A magnificent specimen, in fact. "What?" I ask. Eileen turns to me, eyes blazing. "That bastard ate $400 worth of koi from our pond!" She added, "I can't believe he's alive after the beating Joe gave him this morning." Huh, wuh? "Yeah, Joe went out there with the baseball bat this morning and beat the shit out of him." She snorts in disgust. "And look at him! Still alive. Son of a bitch."
Please note her use of the term "the" baseball bat, which denotes a familiarity with this implement as a handy weapon. She did not say, "he happened to espy a baseball bat, and decided to deploy it as a means of deterrence." Nope, you're never gonna hear that sentence comin out of a Jersey girl's mouth. It's "the" bat, as in the bat that is always kept nearby in case things get busy.
I start to laugh uncontrollably. The shock and the cartoon-like visual of someone beating a large blue bird was too much for me. "Only in New Jersey", I gasp, "would somebody actually attack a bird on the endangered species list with a baseball bat!" Eileen is grim. "He had it coming", she says.
Which is just what Whacking Tony said when they carted him off to Rahway State Prison for doing his job a little too well.
On the way to my midwestern boyfriend's house I ponder this Mafia-enhanced life we all lead here. I think of my friend Peggy, the lawyer, who has an inches-thick file we affectionately refer to as State v. Meehan. Although Irish, her brother regularly uses some good old mob methods for problem-solving, thus resulting in the single phone call to Peggy. Each time she gets one I say to her, "keywords: driving on suspended list; public drunkenness; baseball bat." I am rarely wrong.
I stop by my boyfriend's house. He is no Jersey guy, and I am so glad today. No slicked back hair. No pinky ring. And no PDCH (public display of chest hair). The kind of guy that only carries a baseball bat in his car when he is actually going to or from a game he's playing in.
Today h e is having a problem with a tenant. As he talks, right away I toughen up a bit. Would he like me to talk to them? I ask. He looks at me and laughs. "You and 'a friend', honey?" he asks.
I don't blame him for assuming that I'd pull some of 'the boys' out of my hat and go upstairs. After all, that is often the natural course of events here. It is the reputation of my state, and sad to say, a well-earned one.
And so, as if explaining an error to a tourist, I shake my head, and say softly, "No, no, I just meant talk. Honest. But if it will make you feel better, I promise to leave my baseball bat in the trunk, where it belongs." I can tell he is not quite sure I am kidding. I can tell because he watches me go up the stairs, just to make sure I am empty-handed.
how bob dylan metaphorically knocked up my sister and ruined my family
by jef klein
I’m listening politely, nodding my head. I’m on a date. It’s been a great date, following on some outstanding predate correspondence.
We’re talking music, warily of course. What if he used to like Air Supply? Or Billy Joel? Favorite band. Favorite album. So far, so good. Hey, remember when MTV had no commercials and three videos? And we were happy with that? He laughs, I laugh, but I feel an uneasiness creeping around the edges, like a cold draft along the wood floor. This is all going to be shot to hell in a minute. For the moment is coming, I can feel it.
It’s coming to that point where the person I’m sitting across from is going to use the B word. B as in Bob. Bob Dylan. And I will be forced to choose between being honest (thereby appearing like a total nut job) or pretending. Pretending to like Dylan. Pretending to love Dylan. Pretending he is the god of American music. It’s a tough choice each and every time. Cool guys invariably love Bob Dylan. It's this unwritten yet always true rule of cool guyness.
I squint at this guy across the table. How would he take it, if I told him my real feelings about Bob? Can he handle it? He seems like the perfect guy for me. Yet I have this feeling that it won’t sit well with him, my bitterness against Bob.
Oh boy, here it comes. "So, you know, I’m a big Dylan fan, you probably guessed by now." He is looking at me, sheepish, yet proud to profess his ardent love for Bob. Bob probably got him through the worst breakup of his life; he seems to do that alot for cool guys.
My cool guy looks at me, all hopeful. I am remembering Mr. Linton, my high school biology teacher, and his instructions on using litmus paper. Why am I thinking of that? Oh yeah, cos this is a litmus test question. I sigh. His blue eyes have orange flecks in them. Like Levis and their orange stitching, I think. Oh Jeez, I can’t let this guy go! He is everywhere I wanna be! I must lie. I must pretend. I must --love that Bob!
I open my mouth, fully expecting to hear the words ‘legend’ and ‘genius.’ Instead, though, I actually hear myself saying, "Your honor, I hate, and have always hated, Mr. Bob Dylan." I can barely look at him, but I must. His eyes, his beautiful Levi’s eyes, look hurt. I’ve seen that look before. Dozens of men have crumbled under my withering contempt for Bob Dylan. To make matters worse, it is not a dislike based on any objective analysis of the man’s work, but on purely subjective experience. I just hate the guy. I hate him because he ruined my family.
This cool guy is strong. This one has an inquiring mind. And so he asks, "Why? Why do you hate Bob Dylan?"
I like that he asked. Most men just kind of yelp at me stuff like how can I hate the greatest song writer of all time?? And stuff. This guy, though, is more interested in my life and way of thinking than on making sure I share his opinions. I like that about him.
I launch into my own litmus test, the explanation. "It’s not that I doubt his talents as a musician or a writer," I say. "I have no complaint with his placing in the pop culture pantheon". "Then what?" My date asks. "Weellll...," I say, looking sideways. How can I explain? I never met Bob Dylan, yet as sure as I’m sitting here, he had such an impact on my life and on my family it's as if he'd been my sister's first, worst boyfriend. "It’s like this", I begin, "see, it’s like..." my voice trails off. "It’s like Bob Dylan knocked up my sister, you know? He kind of came along and overnight she turned into a raging hippie and took off and our family was never the same. I was a kid and I kind of blamed him. He ruined her. He ruined everything."
I look up. Does this guy think im a nut? Maybe, it’s hard to tell. He's smiling, but it could be a smile that says can I make it to the car before she realizes I'm gone? Then he says, "How? Tell me how." "You mean, 'what the hell do I mean?'" I ask weakly. He smiles broader. He's got nice teeth, this date. "Yes, exactly, my dear. What the hell do you mean?"
"Since you called me 'my dear', I will do two things. One, I will order us a round of scotch, 12 year old, since that was the age of my sister when I was born, and two, I will try to tell you what the hell I mean. Settle in, my friend, go to the bathroom if you need to. This takes a while."
It is a rare gift to find the moment. The moment when everything changed. Every family has this moment; some families are lucky and they elevate. Things turn around, for the better. My family was unlucky. The patient took a turn for the worse. Still it's a moment of reckoning when you can pinpoint the moment, for it is really the only way you can control it. And even that is an illusion. However, illusions can be comforting. It's why women wear makeup.
I was a kid when I found my family’s moment. The moment when my family fell from grace, from normalcy. One minute my sisters cheerleading squad was in a Tide commercial. Next we were on J. Edgar Hoover's shit list. How does the perfect Catholic school girl turn into poster child for the SDS? In a moment we went from Jesus, Mary, and Joseph to Peter, Paul, and Mary. It happened fast, and we never got over it.
***************
I am six years old and my sister Ginny is teaching my sister Lizzie to do the Twist. There's a stack of 45s on the hi-fi, the kind with the tweed speakers. I sit on the brocade couch, my feet swinging to the music. Meet me baby down on 45th Street. They are wearing pedal pushers and penny loafers. Lizzie's had pennies in them, but Ginny's had dimes. Ginny was in high school. High school kids had to have dimes, to call home with.
This was the night of the Fall Hullabaloo at the Immaculate Heart Academy. I sit on the toilet in the bathroom and watch Ginny make her face more beautiful. How does she do that? Eyelash curler, Coty powder, Maybelline cake mascara. She spits on the little brush and rubs it into the black wax. Quick flicks to her lashes. Wow. Pout the lips for the Revlon lipstick, in 'love that pink". I catch my reflection in the mirror. I am making the pout, too. I straighten up and hope she didn't see me. She slips on her girdle and half slip, worn for modesty's sake. She deftly rolls up her stockings, and snaps them to the garters, a striptease in reverse.
I zip up her beige boucle shift, she pops on her black spike heels. Hairspray, but not too much. The teasing of hair was not permitted at the Immaculate Heart Academy. Still, she manages to artfully defy the laws of gravity and achieve a decent bouffant.
'Jeffy, go get mommy's Chanel", she whispers and winks. I tiptoe into our mother's room. Her vanity table neglected and disused, like her own beauty, taken over by her daughter. She still guards her Chanel Number 5, though. She is unwilling to relinquish her powers to the apprentice priestess. Ginny dabs it on just behind the ears. "Why there? Nobody can smell you there." I ask. "Mike will," she says, and smiles a naughty smile. I put the Chanel back, being careful to line the bottle up right on the dust mark.
I shake my head, thinking. The idea of a man wanting to smell behind my ear intrigues me. I'm not sure how I feel about it. Does it tickle? Maybe it would be nice, I decide, if it were Robert Vaughan from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. I pause before my mother's dusty mirror. I tilt my head and pout just a little. But i don't look beautiful. Not yet, anyway, I think.
Finally done, Ginny turns to me, her velveteen bow against her black hair. She throws her head back and does a Suzy Parker pose. Arms akimbo, legs astride, Dentyne smile. The finest and best the suburbs of New Jersey have to offer. She is joking, but she doesn't know that I think she is more beautiful than Suzy Parker or Ann-Margret. She is like a big doll, a real Barbie. I melt into her beauty, too in love with it to be jealous. In love with the promise that one day, all of this would be mine.
I never played with Barbies as a kid. My mom thought their bosoms were too big. She even wrote to the Catholic Legion of Decency to complain about it. But I didn't really care that I wasn't allowed to have Barbies. My big sister was my doll. And maybe she was only going to the high school dance, but Ginny looked like she was headed to the Peppermint Lounge in New York City. Meet me, baby, down on 45th Street.
The early 60s. It's hard to remember a time when music and fashion were more happily united. Light fabrics and simple lines in the clothes, light colors--beige, aqua, pink-- the high, floaty hairstyles. And the music! It bubbled, it frothed. It danced by itself, it begged to be danced to, not listened to, not memorized, but danced to, man! With lots of crazy dances. The Twist. The Mashed Potato. The Frug. The Monkey. Like some sort of pagan ritual. The music and the colors floating up to the gods, like smoke from the sacred fire.
Ginny was in a girl group back then. Barbara Jean and the Teens. She was a teen. I guess that's why I always wanted to be a backup singer. When I was little, we'd watch Ed Sullivan on Sunday nights and when Ray Charles or the Supremes were on, or Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, I'd be in heaven. Sequins, elbow gloves, stilletto heels, and hair up to the boom mikes! Incredible. Bright black spots would sparkle on the screen, as if even the tv cameras were squinting at all this radiance.
It was so lovely. Like candy floss. Like the first crinkling back on the tissue in the corsage box. Mmm, smell that? That's what pink smells like.
mike comes to pick ginny up. he is 21 and in the navy. he is the biggest man we've ever had in our house. bigger than my father. his voice is bigger, though he is young and respectful to my parents, you can hear that he's got a good yell in him. his hands and feet are huge. he's wearing a suit, navy blue of course, with a thin silk tie. 'here you go, sport," he says to me, and he gives me a quarter. i smile up at him, dazzled by his munificence. with his crewcut and blue eyes, he looks exactly like ken. especially when ken picks barbie up for the fall formal in the barbie mystery date game. (which, by the way, we were allowed to have because those barbies were two dimensional. i wish i were kidding.) My mother takes the corsage and pins it on Ginny. But not before she gives a significant look at the long stickpin and then at Ginny. Ginny pretends not to notice but the message is plain, Mom says it every time dating is discussed. Each of her big girls is given a stickpin to take on a date, to be thrust into a boy's thigh "if he tries anything". Unwittingly, Mike has bought and paid for a weapon to be used against him in that court of Catholic chastity, the back seat.
the door shuts behind the god and goddess. our house seems dimmer, sadder, now that they're gone. i watch the headlights on mike's 64 mustang recede down the driveway. i turn and face the family. lizzy is looking hopeful, and i know why. when will my turn come?, she's wondering.
that spring, 1965. barbara jean and the teens are singing at palisades park.
in those days, and at that time, it just didn't get any cooler than that. they wrote a song about this place, it was so famous. the farfisa organ sounding like a wild calliope ride. "you'll never know how good a kiss can feel/til you're stopped at the top of the ferris wheel/...way down at palisades park". barbara jean and the teens had a single, called "marty at the party". they were opening for the beach boys, and cousin brucie, the dj from wmca, was going to be the mc.
on the day, we piled into the car, we kids in our madras shorts and sleeveless cotton blouses. ginny in her costume. all the teens and barbara jean wore these matching outfits, just like the ray-lettes. sleeveless powder blue shifts with those big round sequins. the kind that went, shimmy shimmy coco bop.
Palisades Park. We got to park up near the bandstand. The guy at the gate smiled at my folks. But i knew his eye was really on gini. I knew that because he winked at her.
"Did you see that?" my mother huffed. My dad pretended not to hear her. She angrily adjusted her skirt, spit on her hanky, and turned around to wipe our faces. We ducked. Is there anything grosser than the smell of your mother’s spit on your skin?
We got there and tumbled out of the Ford station wagon, the aqua one with the push button transmission. (Because push button transmissions were the wave of the future.at least that's what they said at the ford pavilion at the 1964 world's fair.)
we looked around for Barbara Jean and the other Teens. A nimbus of blue sequins and piled up hair bobbed across the staging area. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" hissed my mother. "That Barbara Jean is wearing false eyelashes and a chest!" We little kids hooted at the idea of someone actually wanting a chest. Ginny was mortified. She turned to my mother and said, low but intense, "do not say anything! Hear? Anything!!".
we jumbled through the staging area, on a wave of amplified sound, tuning instruments, and people pushing, shoving. Backstage was the first time I’d ever seen grownups rude.
The Beach Boys were nowhere to be seen. But honestly, to me, even though I was a big Beach Boys fan, I was more thrilled at the prospect of seeing Cousin Brucie up close. This guy was an idol in New York, right up there with Murray the K. We listened to Cousin Brucie every single day. Lots more than we did to the Beach Boys or even the Beatles.
The producer came up, with his assistant, who was a woman. A career woman. It was the first time I’d seen a woman up close who had a job besides teacher, nun, or nurse. My mother gave her a quick up and down and then turned to my father with raised eyebrows. He pretended not to notice.
The career woman spoke up in a firm voice. ‘Ok, girls, here’s the lineup, you’ll go on after Bruce introduces you, and make it snappy ladies, you understand?" The girls nodded, too afraid to speak. One of the other Teens was shaking so much her false eyelashes quivered. "Who’s their manager?" the woman asked. My mother stepped forward, ironically becoming career woman herself. The assistant told her where the marks were and how much time they had. "And for goodness’ sake, keep them away from Bruce and the Beach Boys." she added. I shot a look at my mom. Her slapping hand was twitching in an all-too-familiar gesture. I wondered if my mom was going to hit her.
My mom pulled herself up and looked that career woman evenly in the eye. "My girls are from the Immaculate Heart Academy. They are here to perform, not to"-- she searched for a term she could use in front of us-"--hang around." she didn’t say ‘hmmph’ but you felt it, just the same.
The producer’s assistant was not impressed. "Very well’ she said, and turned to go. But you could tell she was thinking of all the nice girls she’d pulled out of the guys’ dressing room.
so there we were, backstage. choking in the clouds of ice-blue secret deodorant spray and dippity-do fumes. "don't anyone light a match", my dad grumbled. it was too much even for him, and he lived with six females.
cousin brucie pushed his way thru to talk to the producer. he had very big, very white teeth, and a pinky ring. i'd never seen a ring on a man, except a plain gold wedding band. it was as exotic to me as if he'd had a big gold earring in his ear, like a pirate.
cousin brucie spoke in his rapid, hoarse way. like he was pushing the words out of himself. i stared at him. it was so strange to see his voice animated, not coming from the black leather pinholes on my transistor radio. while he talked, the makeup girl came along and sprayed his hair with hair spray. my little sister jodi and i snorted in laughter. a man getting hair spray! really, we never felt the same about cousin brucie again. after that, whenever we heard him on the radio, we'd always laugh.
we took our seats out front. my first concert, asides from "pops in the parks'. i was very excited. i looked around at it all, the people,. the stage, the skywriting airplane puffing out a message about castro convertibles. i asked my mom, "why do they have lights on? it's daytime." she couldn't hear me over the din.
and then my sister stepped out on the stage.
more beauty than i'd ever beheld. more beautiful, still, than annette funicello or shelley fabares. my little girl's heart was full to bursting. my mom dabbed her eyes with her hankie. dad coughed. gini with her black hair, curled and piled high, her frosted pink lips and white elbow gloves. powder-blue, just like the virgin mary, on this, our altar, the stage of the palisades park bandshell.
this is the moment poised forever as the pinnacle of my family's happiest times.
barbara jean and the teens sang. they gestured to the music, arms outstretched graciously, seductively, like carol merrill displaying the refrigerator behind door number one. it was all so smooth, so effortless, so blissful. a pastel haze.
not long after that, in fact just a couple of weeks later, gini packed off to college. the college of new rochelle, where good catholic girls went. gini would study english. she'd gotten an 800 on her english sat.
my mother sewed name tags into her clothes. sweaters and skirts, all good quality, from stern's. gini was being launched, and we younger girls watched as the trunk was packed. 'they can use it as a coffee table in the dorm room." explained my mother. she'd read that in good housekeeping.
my parents came back from new rochelle and told us all about the dorm and her roommate. my little sister jodi and i wondered if they had bunk beds like we did.
that night at supper, for the first time, gini didn't sit next to me. she had always put pepper on all her food, and it used to get up my nose and bother me. but that night, and for a long time after, i missed that pepper.
with gini gone, my two older sisters and brother were sort of promoted to the new harbingers of cool. stephen faithfully went to the valley fair the day the albums came out and bought every new record. this was the time of the avengers, james bond, the ventures a go go, the beach boys, chad and jeremy, dave clark five. the beatles' rubber soul. and still, frankie valli and the four seasons. west side story. my sisters would act out "hey officer krupke' and jodi and i would sit on the couch, and clap. we played the tennis rackets to the beatles. we saw hard days night 13 times. in our pajamas in the back of the ford at the paramus drive in on route 4, right next to the new cloverleaf.
things were pretty much the way they were when gini left for college. but then, she came home.
all tsunamis start with a drop of water. you're standing on a balcony and you feel something wet on your arm. you look down, oh, a drop hit me, you say to yourself. . is it going to rain?, you wonder. you look up. and that's when you see it. 100 feet of angry water, bearing down on you. the only option is to surf that sucker. or die trying.
the drop that hit me was gini's thanksgiving visit home. my parents walked out the door to pick her up and returned different people . my mother came thru the door first, looking strained and upset. she didnt' see me as she whispered to my dad "im telling you they were smoking dope! did you see the way they were staring at that candle when we got there? and that girl asked you (imitating the voice) 'did ya ever really realllly look at a candle while it's burning, man?' " my father shrugged, and said "you're always jumping to conclusions, eileen." my mother's voice squeaked out a whisper, 'she called you 'man', benny! only beatniks say that!"
at this point gini came in. i didn't recognize her at first. gone was the bouffant, the tasteful wool skirt and loafers. in their place was a pony tail and capri pants, capezio black leather slippers, and a black boatneck leotard. she was smoking a french cigarette and carrying the kind of book that would become a staple in her collection--small, thin, no pictures, with plenty of boring poetry inside.
holy moly!, i thought, my sister's a beatnik! all that was missing was the beret and the bongos.
she drifted past me in a cloud of jean nate and smoke. "pee-yew!" i said, waving the smell away. she barely looked at me. her eyes looked kind of vacant. my mom, worried, watched her go to her room.
muffled through the door came the moanings of folk music."how many roads must a man walk down/before they call him a man?" my father rolled his eyes and went into the living room to watch tv. but my mother stood still, listening. her hand and eye were twitching. i didn't dare move, for fear she'd see me. she looked so mad she'd probably forget which kid i was and just hit me for being gini. this had happened more than once. we had six kids, after all.
later, for dinner, gini emerged from her room, her eyeliner and pale skin making her black eyes large and round. she looked like one of those waif posters so popular then, with the skinny big-eyed girl, usually in tattered clothes. the waif was always in an alley, and there was a cat next to her, also with unnaturally big eyes. a fishbone on the ground completed the scene. i don't think there was a teenage girl alive who didn't have that poster.
we ate, a strange silence falling over the table. gini criticized every dish. she didn't eat much, and that was only vegetables. suddenly she dropped her fork in disgust. 'do you have to cook the fucking life out of every vegetable?" she snapped at my mother. we kids were shocked. i didn't know what a fuck was, but judging from my parent's faces, fuck was bad. stephen snorted a laugh into his napkin. "stephen!" crackled my mother. she turned to gini. i'd never seen my mother's blue eyes so hot. we kids paused, mid-chew. "how dare you! and in front of your sisters! leave this table at once!" my father spoke up, 'eileen, please, it's her first night back." but gini was only too glad for an excuse to leave the table and go back to mope in her room. she stormed off and slammed her door. sorrowful guitars and mournful voices wafted out over the table. stephen laughed out loud, "puff the magic dragon, all right!" my mother gave him a withering look. then she looked at my dad with an 'i told you so' expression.
silence again. and then jodi, who never talked much, spoke up. 'i don't know what she's talking about. i like vegetables mushy ."
***********
thanksgiving was a nightmare.
we had to sit through not one, but two lectures from gini on the plight of the farm workers. for, you know, virtually everything on the table had been picked by laborers exploited in the worst way. stephen found rich fodder for teasing in all this. he would hold up a fork and shake his head ruefully, saying "the poor worker who grew this fork". we kids loved that, but gini just grew more impassioned. it was like she left her sense of humor back in her dorm room. the horn of plenty had grapes in it, as always. it was the traditional centerpiece for the table. but grapes were the very symbol of the farm labor movement, and gini felt they should be removed and thrown out. that was too much for my father. 'oh, no you don't, ' he told her. "i worked like a slave myself to put this food on the table and i'll be goddamned if anyone's going to throw it out."
gini didn't throw them out but we did have to listen to her endless speech on the tireless efforts of the brave cesar chavez, who was second only to che guevara in gini's new trinity. i didn't know it, but i was about to meet the third, and chief, of the new gods.
after dinner, gini went for a walk, something nobody in our family ever did. for some reason, stephen went with her. while they were gone, i decided to do a little investigating in gini's room. maybe i could find out what was wrong with her.
the number one thing i wanted to find out about was her new music. it was so different from the stuff she'd loved and listened to. she'd gone to see jackie wilson with my dad, she'd loved diana ross, and ronnie spector. i stole in and quietly closed the door behind me. sniffed the air, like a tracker. her clothes and stuff smelled so different. like she came from a different home. a different country.
i flipped thru the lps she'd brought home. johnny cash live from folsom prison. ugh, he looked greasy and scary. what happened to frankie valli? paul and paula??
i flipped some more. john mayall and the blues project. muddy waters. peter, paul, and mary. and then i saw him.
bob dylan.
for years after this meeting, i would look at bob dylan and say to myself, that son of a bitch. or that was the feeling, anyway.
and it all came from this moment. for i hated bob dylan on sight. i knew, i just knew, that this guy was at the bottom of all this.
it was like he was uncle arthur on bewitched, putting the evil serena up to her nasty tricks on the innocent samantha.
only he wasn't funny like uncle arthur. he was not funny. at. all.
i decided then and there that bob dylan had turned my sister into her own evil twin.
i looked at him with disgust. his hair unkempt. his face, the closeup looking up at him, with his insolent eyes. the kind that sister john catherine would smack you just for having. i read the liner notes, by nat hentoff. there was one line that really made me angry. "bob dylan fistfought his way across america." hentoff gushed. and i looked at that puny boy face and thought 'this guy never threw a punch in his life.'
i just knew the whole thing was made up. that he was no better than frankie valli or paul anka. they had record guys gushing over them too, and making up stories about them. didn't i see hard day's night thirteen times? i thought of paul's granpa. he'd spit every time he saw a suit.
i looked at the front of the album again. his hair seemed more carefully messy. i'll bet they fixed him up just like cousin brucie. i'll bet they sprayed that kid's hair! i thought. i snorted and threw the album down on the bedspread. and left. i'd seen what i'd come to see.
gini and stephen came home from their walk smelling funny and very hungry. they made huge sandwiches from stuffing and cranberry and couldn't eat them for laughing. jodi stood there and laughed with them, but not me. i hated that laughter the first time i heard it. it was private joke laughter.
from that point on, gini was never the same. our family was never the same. never the same is a phrase that means different things to different people. in our house it meant bad things.
my parents took the change from catholic school girl to hippie very poorly. i can't blame them really. they were totally unprepared for the sixties.
after about a year, gini transferred to fordham university. she lived in the south bronx with her boyfriend. they got married, but my parents didn't go because it was not a catholic wedding. it was in someone's basement my mother said. they wrote their own vows. her husband's name was bob. bob was the president of the sds at fordham. i was in third grade by then. im walking down the hallway in my house, going to the living room for my monday night ritual of neglecting my spelling homework to watch the monkees and laugh-in. and my mom grabs me and pulls me into the bedroom where she'd been saying her nightly novena. 'jeffie," she whispered low, 'don't talk about gini on the phone anymore, ever. the phone is being tapped by the fbi." i thought, why is she whispering? is the house tapped, too?
"Such a day! Such a beautiful spring day!" Mom says I don't have to wear my jacket when we go downtown to get my sneakers. We're on our way home, laughing, talking. We pass the barber shop and I glance inside and see an old man and all of a sudden I realize, I can't remember Grandpa.
The bad and the guilt wash over me, but I don't say anything to my mom. The whole walk home, I hardly hear her, her talk chirping in my ear like the birds out front of the bakery. I am trying so hard to remember something about Grandpa. I can see the picture of him that's at home in the living room, and I can even make the picture move, sort of, as if he were on TV. I know that I loved him; we visited him every week and he took me all around town. I know these things, but I can't remember them; I can't remember him, his voice, his way. "Jacky, are you lost?", Mom jokes, standing on our corner. I hadn't even noticed I'd walked past it.
We get home, I set the table, Mom asks me about school, but I'm not sure I'm answering, because I'm trying to remember Grandpa. The phone rings and I go to the living room while she talks and I stare real hard at the picture. It's a photograph taken just before he died, when I was 5. I still had all of my baby teeth. In the picture I am sitting on Grandpa's lap under the big tree in our backyard. I don't remember getting the picture taken. I strain to feel a memory. I close my eyes and push with my heart, but there's only emptiness.
Mom gets off the phone and calls for me. I quickly put the picture down, as if I were caught stealing, and hurry to the kitchen. She is helping my little sister Jessie learn to add and subtract, using dried beans for counters.
She seems surprised to see me so soon. Usually she has to call at least twice. "Is everything OK?", she asks, making her worry wrinkle deeper. I say yes but inside I say no. No, no, no, because I am a terrible kid who can't remember his own grandfather, who only died four years ago. She doesn't look convinced; I can tell that by her eyes. "If you want to talk about it, just let me know, OK?" I say OK, but I'm not sure. What would she think? She would think I didn't love Grandpa, her own father! She would be angry, disgusted with me, and maybe never forgive me.
I feel terrible.
Dad comes home, and we eat dinner. For once I don't ask for seconds. I'm not hungry tonight. It's light out now after dinner so he and I go out back and shoot baskets. "We'll try out those new sneakers," he tells me. Jessie plays too; she's not bad for a 7 year old. We play until the street lights come on and then it's time for bed. I'm glad to come in; all the chill has returned to the air for the night. In my room I finish up my spelling while Jessie's in the tub. Mom comes in with clean laundry in my put-away basket. She stops for a moment, resting her hand on my shoulder. She says softly, "you know, your Grandpa was such a good speller and a great reader. You are turning out just like him." I wonder, does she know what I've been thinking about all afternoon? My nose gets hot, from holding back tears. I put my head down on my spelling homework and then the tears come squeezing out, even though my eyes are shut tight.
"Oh, honey, what is it?" whispers my mom, and she kneels and hugs me. She feels bad that I'm upset, as if somehow it's her fault. "Is it something at school?" I shake my head no. "Is it something I said?" and I say no, not really. "What?" she asks. But I can't answer. She gets up and closes the door so Jessie won't hear. She comes back and hugs me again, her clothes smelling like fabric softener and the chicken from dinner. I wipe my nose on my sleeve and Mom doesnt' even say anything. I look up at her and whisper, because I am afraid to say it too loudly. "I can't remember Grandpa."
As soon as I say it, I know everything is going to be all right. Just saying that secret thing made me feel better. Lighter.
Mom's eyes look sad and sorry, the way they do sometimes. She says, "It's good that you told me." Then she tells me that her Grandma died when she was around 6 years old, and even though I knew that already, now it feels more real. Mom says that as time went on, she couldn't remember her. "I felt guilty, like I was letting Grandma down. And I couldn't tell my parents, because I thought they'd be hurt, or mad."
She goes to my dresser and gets me a tissue and hands it to me. "Memory is a tricky thing, Jacky. If you try too hard to remember something, it doesn't seem to work." Mom pauses, thinking. Or maybe she's waiting form me to stop blowing my nose. "It seems like it's the little things that bring memories alive. Like, hearing a phrase that someone used to say, seeing an old car....or a bit of a song, even an old commercial jingle. The funny thing is, once I stopped feeling guilty about forgetting my Grandma, I started to remember more about her. So don't worry, Jacky, you'll remember Grandpa again."
"How did you stop feeling guilty?" I ask. She smiles at the memory. "Well one day my Sunday school teacher said that people in Heaven never get mad and that they understand everything. So I decided that Grandma wouldn't be mad at me for forgetting her. And I don't think that Grandpa is mad at you for forgetting him."
I smile a 'thanks, Mom' smile, my first smile that whole long afternoon. And I think about Heaven while I take my bath. I play that my submarine is an spyplane and it can secretly fly missions to Heaven. But when I try to picture Grandpa up there, all I can see is that photo. So I stop trying.
That night I dreamt of Grandpa. It was amazing! I first dreamt the sad part, which was the day my mom came to get me at kindergarten, the day Grandpa died. Something was wrong; her eyes looked like they held a strong, sad secret. As soon as we got to the car, she told me. She sat down in the back seat next to me, and I thought how weird that was because she always sat up front."Jacky, Grandpa's died today, I'm so sorry to have to tell you." I knew dying was bad so I started to cry. Then in the dream she took me home and went to the funeral but Grandpa stayed to babysit me.
That's what I love about dreams. They never make sense!
Anyway, in the dream I remembered everything about Grandpa. I could hear his deep voice and his funny accent and his way of saying things, like how he called aluminum foil 'silver paper.' I could feel his dry warm hand holding mine as we went downtown to get his newspaper and some ice cream. "Don't tell your mother I let you have ice cream before dinner," he said, and we both laughed.
I even smelled his smell of cologne, it was always so strong. And I remembered how sometimes Mom would say "Dad, do you have a big date or something? You are wearing so much cologne!" And they would laugh. "Big date, " he'd chuckle, "big date." He got a real kick out of things like that.
Anyway, in the dream, Grandpa and I came back from the store and he read me the funnies, every one. His favorite was Ziggy. Ziggy said he'd have to tie a string around his heart to remember Valentine's Day. Grandpa thought that was very funny. "Hey Ziggy, watch out, you'll get a heart attack!" he joked. I laughed with him in the dream and it felt so real. So warm and so happy. That's all I remember.
My eyes pop open but I close them right away. I want to go back to sleep so I can be with Grandpa some more. But I am also so excited that I'd seen him in my dream, that I can't help jumping out of bed and running into my mom and dad's room to tell them. I haven't done that since I was littler than Jessie.
It was 5:45 a.m. "Mom!" I try to whisper, "I remembered Grandpa!" "Mmmmggggg", mumbles Dad from under his pillow. "Oh, Jacky, that's wonderful!" murmurs Mom. Even though she's still asleep she knows exactly what I'm talking about.Then her eyes blink open, like the aquarium light when it goes on. She sits up in bed, her hair stuck up all over, like it always is in the morning. "Did you dream about him?" she yawns.
And I dont' say one word. I just let my eyes tell her. All that I had seen, and heard, and felt. And remembered.
In Which I Suffer Fools, and Meet Jack by Jef Klein
At that place, and at that time, I lived up over Dominic's Restaurant across from the hospital. The apartment was really a house, that had been on the street level when it was originally built. Then in 1926, someone decided that it would be a good idea to jack up the house, and build a restaurant underneath it. So the house sat perched on top of Dominic's, like a Sunday hat.
Roommates came and roommates went. To Europe, to New York, to Frisco. I was poor, I always had roommates. One room that I rented out was actually the utility closet, and had the water heater in there. "This is our one-star accommodation," I'd say when showing it to prospective renters. I felt it was only fair to be honest.
The right person for the room usually showed up. They didn't last long in there, but they were my most interesting roommates, being the most desperate. I rented that space for 50 dollars a month. I had several Europeans, not at once, of course, singly. The Europeans were either on their way home or had just come over. I never bothered to have them sign a lease. They'd stay two weeks or two months, and when one left, another would pop up on my doorstep. I think they thought I ran a youth hostel.
At least two of them were named Peter, and one was a model from Milano named Maurizio. Of course he was gay, and of course he'd bring his lovers home at all hours. Still, he was so hot looking, how could I resist? And once when I had to go to the emergency room, all the ER nurses gathered around me when they saw my address. "You're that woman who lives with that sexy guy! We take our coffee breaks and watch him walk around naked! You know he walks around naked, dont you?" I made a mental note to pull down the living room shades more often, and then said, "yeah, well, Maurizio's a prince. Now, how's about that blood poisoning I've got?"
I had one guy who was borderline homeless. The kind of whom people would say "oh, you live with that dude? Isn't he a bum? Didn't I see him on Albany Street, eating out of the garbage and talking to himself?" And I'd answer, "Oh, you mean Charles? He's a writer." I figured that would explain everything.
Or I'd say he was an actor. People would never understand that I took this guy in, really for free, when I was on food stamps myself. They'd think I was nuts. But I had other roommates there to protect me, and I could tell Charles was totally harmless.
And he was. He fixed lots of broken stuff, he was the cleanest of all the roommates, and when he left, he left me a haiku written with a seagull feather.
I dont' remember if he ever paid me rent, come to think of it. He tried to, I know, at least once. I have this image of Charles earnestly unloading his pockets onto the worn kitchen table, in a tumble of coins, subway tokens, and S & H Green Stamps. "You can save these for a new toaster, Jeffie.", he'd said, holding the ratty stamps up. "Hey, thanks alot, Charles." I told him. I'm still hanging on to those suckers, too.
You can get a toaster with those things, you know.
It may seem strange that I had guys like this streaming in and out of the apartment. But that was only for the utility closet, um, third bedroom. The other bedrooms were more stable. Mine and the other permanent roommate's. Ours were the First World countries, the utility closet was the Third World. A proud Rutgers graduate, it is a comfort to know that I can offer up a sociopolitical analysis worthy of "Gidget Goes to the U.N."
At any rate, the craziest roommate I ever had was the most successful one, materially. Winnie had gone to Rutgers with me, and after graduation moved into the biggest bedroom. She had an entire Ethan Allen bedroom set, with a huge canopy bed. In this crappy apartment, it was weird and almost delusional to put that furniture in there. I always felt she should have just stored it at the Publix til she hooked a husband, and used milk crates and a mattress while she lived with me.
But no, Winnie had to affect the condo lifestyle. She worked at AT and T and delighted in telling me all about the different levels of advancement. She wore noisy high heels that woke us all up at six am. When she wasnt around I'd take people into her room to show her magnificent bed, finishing the tour with the large photo of herself, unbelievably graduating college. She was lunging across the stage, grabbing that diploma lest anyone figure out she was an idiot and change their minds. The Dean looked a little alarmed. Perhaps it was the timing of the photo, perhaps Winnie's expression. She wasn't smiling so much as showing her teeth. Her strong, sharp, white teeth. "Hey, check it out," I'd say, "lookit Winnie takin a bite out of the dean." That always got a laugh.
Anyway, Winnie was the worst of all my roommates, even worse than Maurizio, for bringing home strange men. The episode that caused me to kick her out was when she brought this guy home, but neglected to leave me a note in the morning when she went to work, that there was a strange man still sleeping in the apartment. So she called to tell me.
I ran, dripping wet and naked, from the shower to answer the phone. And there in my kitchen is some guy, smoking a cigarette, with the receiver in his hand. " You Jef?" he said to me. I grabbed a towel and the phone from his hand, on which fingers were the tattoos, L O V E and H A T E. A jailbird, even better. "Oh hi Jef, that's, um, Joe, he's an old friend from high school."
"Yeah, well good, Winnie, you're gonna need all the friends you can get cos you are outta here". I hung up, and um, Joe, says to me, "So, Wilma has a real job, huh?" As I pushed him out the door, I said, " Tell everyone at Bedrock High that Wilma says hello."
I guess god took pity on me and sent me a consolation prize, cos not long after the Winnie episode I met Jack.
He was peeing at the time.
I was taking out the garbage that day. I looked up at the brilliant blue spring morning and saw this guy looking at me from the window across the street. I said "It's a fine day!" and Jack answered "A fine day for taking out the garbage!" I shrugged. "Ok, so what is it a fine day for, then, may I ask?" He answered, "You may. It is a fine day for taking a leak."
His head popped out of sight and just then I heard a toilet flushing. His bathroom window was right over the toilet, but the sill was at chest height, so he would stand there peeing and looking out but nobody could see what he was doing.
From that day on, when Jack'd see me out that window, he'd call out "Oh, darling! I'm urinating!"
You can see why we became friends.
Anyway after his head disappeared I went inside. A few minutes later my doorbell rang. I should say doorbells. We had no electricity in the hall way so I'd run a string down to the street and drilled a hole in the door. On the street side I put a lead weight and a note that said "pull me." and on the other end of the string in my apartment was a bunch of Tibetan prayer bells.
I opened the door, thinking it was the Jehovahs. But it was Jack.
"I thought it was the Jehovah's" I said. He answered, "They were here a minute ago. I told em to fuck off and die." I thought he was joking til I saw the well dressed couple hurrying down the sidewalk. Well done, neighbor. I thought. "Enter and sign in, please." I said.
Jack came up, admiring the string doorbell. "I've always wanted to pull that thing" he said. "and you used coffee cup hooks to suspend the string along the ceiling. Ingenious."
He came up and made himself at home. "Why dont you finish getting dressed while I make coffee?" he said, looking significantly at my silk robe. "I like the blue flannel one better" he added. I must've looked mystified cos he added, "I watch you guys when I pee. And I pee a lot." "How come I've never seen you?" I asked. "I pee a lot, too." Jack's face crinkled in a smile. With his brush cut and small black eyes, he looked like a comic book character, like Tin Tin, or Skeezix from Gasoline Alley. "I have a two pronged answer for you. One, your bathroom does not face the street. Two, you never look up when you go out. Today you looked up."
I liked his answers, I let him stay. I got dressed, and when I came out there is good coffee smelling and waiting.
"I like those pants on you." Jack said, "you just got them a couple of weeks ago." Then he added, "is your roommate home? The cute one?" I sipped my coffee. It was surprisingly good. "Hey, whose pants are you trying to get into, anyway?" I asked, opening the tin of Stella D'oro cookies. Jack scoped out the pink circles. "Haven't had these since Grandman Pat died. Taste like mothballs." He popped one into his mouth. "Aaahh, that's the stuff!" He swallows and says "I'm bisexual, so technically you both have an equal chance of fucking me." I smiled, and said in my best June Cleaver voice, "That's nice, dear."
Jack laughed and said, "Gee, Wally, did that Eddie Haskell really suck your dick or what?" I liked this guy; he was funny.
Just then I spied a lumpy package sticking out of his jacket pocket.. "Hey Beave, that's a pretty lumpy bag you got there." Jack got up, the pink crumbs clinging to his black tshirt. "Housewarming gift."
And this was the essence of Jack. His playfulness, his generosity. And I saw it all in these first minutes. And after that, it was impossible not to love him.
But I only said "Baby, you had me when you said you were peeing."
"I'll bet you like this a lot. I'll bet this seals the deal." Jack leaned over me while I opened the bag and took out the hand.
It took my breath away. It was a religious statue from Botanica Chango, this odd store two doors down. They sold all kinds of island religion stuff, their store window a wild paisley of voodoo, Christianity, and Bob Marley posters. "You've had your eye on this for a while." he said. "But it disappeared a week ago!" I answered. "I was so broken up about that." Jack nodded, " I bought it. And then I was coming here and I thought, 'I'll bet that girl would love this thing.'" When he said this we realized we didn't know each other's names.
"Jef, I'm Jef. Jef is short for Jeffie, which is short for Jennifer. It's just a nickname, not a lifestyle." I gave him the usual spiel. We shook hands, just like grownups do. "I'm Jack. Just Jack, not John. My mom hated the name John."
We look at each other, getting the details. Then our eyes turn back to the hand. 'What is this thing?" Jack whispered. Suddenly we feel as if we are in church. "It mesmerizes me, like the Amazing Kreskin" I said softly.
The hand had a Sacred Heart in the middle of its palm. "OK I get that, that's Catholic" I said. We look at the tiny painted flames that extend from each finger. Each flame finger had a different scene in it, some recognizable from the Bible. A couple though, looked as if they came off a wall mural in Haiti. "Is that Reagan?" Jack asked and we squinted real hard, at one of the figures. "Shit, what religion is this, " he wondered. There's blood dripping down the hand, and the sickening flesh tone made it all seem like a combination of Sunday school and Halloween. "Jeez, jeffie, aint it sexy?" he asked. I had to admit, it is. "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, Jack." Because at that moment, it is.
We put it on the kitchen window sill. It stayed there till Maurizio came back from West Germany from his modeling assignment (and second job as a rich man's boyfriend). "Jeffie, please to take away the hand of God from the kitchen," complained Maurizio, "the fucking a, it makes me sick to look at it."
What can I say? Life is a compromise. One woman's art is another man's barf. You meet a sexy funny guy, but he's bi and you're not. Oh well.
"Jeffie, let's go riding two." Jack announced suddenly. I turned to him. The part of me that wants to be cool and pretend I knew what he meant compromised with the part that had no idea and wanted to learn. "What's that, riding two? " I asked, finally.
"Motorcycle, darlin'. You are going on your first trip. Your virgin excursion, as it were."
"I am, am I?" I asked, hands on hips. Jack turns his back to me and took my hands and put them on his hips. "Like a conga line" I said. "Riding two Jeffie" he said.
His hips were bony thru his black stove pipe jeans. I liked those hips. I thought of them banging into mine during a horizontal polka, but I shook the image out of my head. Not now, I thought. Time for that later, maybe.
We got on the motorcycle, a Yamaha. I knew this bike. I just didn't know it was his. "I'm glad I finally got to go inside your house" said Jack. "and you?" he asked.
I leaned into him and told him, "And me? And me, I'm glad I met you , Jack. And me I'm glad I met you."
Syd's eyes flicked up at Steve across the table. He had just said something interesting, that's why. "I used to have one of those", he'd said. "I used to have a wife who didn't wear her wedding ring."
"Yes, well.", Syd said. She looked at him, straight on, over the chipped formica table at Pizzapino's. "Suddenly this table feels wide, like the Continental Divide" she smiled. "But there is a difference, my friend," she said. "I am nobody's wife. I am a wife from a marriage torn asunder. So it is wrong for me to wear a ring." He nodded. He understood, he was pretty smart that way. In fact, he was working on a PhD. But the man was a total idiot in other ways.
Complete, and total idiot.
Syd left Pizzapino's with Steve, parting as lovers often do, in the parking lot. They didn't give the pecks yet, they were still in the hungry hug stage. She smelled the Steve smell as she pulled him to her. And every cell seemed to perk up inside. Steve's here!
In the car, in the traffic, gotta get to the radio station. Syd darted in and out of cars, like a silver fish fighting my way upstream, she thought. oh Wait, it's malesthat spawn.
Males. Sheesh. What is with that Steve, anyway? Doesn't he know how it makes me feel when he goes on about Kim like that? How she dumped him. How she looked at pick up from school. How she's lost weight, for chrissakes! He's forty years old, is in graduate school, and he doesn't know that you never tell your girlfriend that your exwife looks skinny?
Syd smiled, remembering how she'd lit into Steve that day. "Good god, man! Don't you know that there is only ONE way for the ex wife to look and that is BAD?" She hooted out loud as she heard Steve's answer: "But I said she looked skinny." Syd curved into the parking lot. "Reserved for Addy Reed", (can I take her spot? Sure.) She parked in her sister's spot and ran into the station. She pressed the elevator button and mumbled, "Don't guys understand that to a woman, skinny = beautiful?"
