I am a big fan of Henry Rollins, incidentally. Not that you care. Not that he cares, more importantly. I state that for nobody in particular, least of all myself. Nonetheless, I dig the guy, for a bunch of reasons not the least of which being our apparent shared penchant for Kiss—mine all the time and his supposedly accidental and occasional at best. Mostly, though, I appreciate what he somehow managed to communicate to a too-tall, too-skinny, too-awkward youth growing up among the moneyed Hitler youth of Houston.
I hearken back to the halcyon days of Black Flag, when he helped me find a voice for my white middle-class mediocrity agony. I raged with him. I heard the message that materialism was bad in spite of my cravings for bigger, faster cars, niftier stuff, better clothes, and, most compellingly, a more “complete” Josh in the glamed-out plasticized pop culture sense. Men on horses, German import cars and little cloth alligators. At least I knew I was wrong. I was self-aware, and in spite of my parent’s best efforts when I was younger, that’s no small achievement at the hormonally-blurred ripe age of 16. Flash forward to my mid to late twenties, and via the Rollins Band, I knew that shallowness and selfishness still lurked in the dark recesses of the human experience (darkness, ironically as it would eventually seem, that drew my focus only inwards at the expense of outward wariness). It was something he helped me be on guard for, something I fought against.
I’ve liked his writing for years. I’ve thoroughly enjoy his self-deprecating style, the introspection, the inward journey into the depths of the psyche. His works are often simple journals, glimpses into his professional struggles, a 36-inch flat screen television view into the price extracted to achieve one’s art. Television? How ironic. TV party tonight be damned, at least I had the option, the leisure to turn it off every time it became too intense. But that was—is—the brilliance in his written word. Mr. Rollins takes you on a delightfully blackened bleak journey to the deepest depths of your own pain, your own misgivings and your own self-doubt, yet he graciously allows to you draw back and save yourself before it becomes too overwhelming and drowns you.
How sophisticatedly ironic and shit, dontcha know….
I’ve sincerely enjoyed his spoken word shows, for no matter how deeply invoking or painful his other art might be, at least he allows us to share in his humanity, his humility and his humor. The bottom line, according to me and perhaps him, is that if we cannot laugh at ourselves than we are little better than roaches infesting this planetrock. Christ, I laugh at myself all the damned time. Why the shit not? Whatever, I’m getting off on a tangent. Well, not getting off exactly, per say. Crap—you know what the hell I mean (and if you don’t I highly suggest you think less and drink more).
Anyhow, I too share the love for the iron, although instead of plates provided by Standard or Olympic, I find solace, redemption and cleansing in the beautiful agony of 4,000 meters of triceps and lateralis dorsai burning pain, hours upon hours of riding the Popsicle stick saddle of my human powered steed and miles upon miles pounded into my lower spine borne upon my feet. The pain, the sweat and the discipline don’t lie. Henry was right. You are the only thing that won’t let you down as long as you are willing to pay the physical price of suffering to achieve enlightenment. Iron or integrated indexed shifting and titanium components. It doesn’t matter, for he spoke the gospel of the universal truth of the crucible of self-flagellation and the resultant transcendental purity it affords. Trust in your physical being; tear it down and it will come back stronger and better. Again, sumthin’ like that.
I’ve been to his concerts. I’ve obviously read his books. I’ve listened to his interviews. I’ve seen the shows. I’ve paid attention. And, most importantly, I’ve never asked him to spit on me.
That said, I don’t necessarily agree with him regarding the state of American art, be it written, sung or simply presented. Let us look at music.
The Boss is the Boss, point blank. The Nuge may be the Nuge, but he never wrote anything as compelling, as soul-wrenching as “Nebraska.” For all his right wing, bow hurling, little furry bunny eating hooyah, Nugent can’t reach deep inside our guts and pull out our humanity, still beating, to show it to us before our disbelieving eyes. Bruce can. And so can C,S,N and Y. And James Taylor. And Public Enemy. The thing is that there is a defined demarcation plane between art and fluff. Brittany Aguilara? In Backstreet Synch? The latter. Lots of others, both known and anonymously living in artistic self-denial embody the former. The fact is that Paul Schaefer is the World’s Most Dangerous band (leader). Stevie Wonder can funk it out with the best of them. Bootsie Collins is, in fact, from space. John Coltrane may very well embody the spirit of the Lord. And Sheryl Crow can rule my world any day. Slayer? Durst? One need not throw angry, violent riffs to be in touch with the soul of one’s art. They might be there, but that’s not necessarily the defining criteria for ascending to the pinnacle of art.
Jackson Pollock took randomness to insightful new levels in his day, Frank Lloyd Wright transcended mere geometric proportion, but I also see the wonder in the taggers who can so easily mask their names in wonderfully complex constructs sprayed onto the side of Pacific box cars. I can comprehend the sheer magnitude and profound importance of the underpaid schlub copy-editing for the local pulp rag. Art exists in every level, every facet of life.
That said I’ve got to agree on one particular subject with Henry. While the Kiss Army might seem anachronistic to the uninformed, it only takes a cursory exploration of the phenomena that is Kiss to explain an art that helped define a genre and is still as viable, as energetic today as it was in 1977. Think about the deeper ramifications, free yourself from the banal messages of “Love Gun” or “Detroit Rock City” or “Destroyer” or “Dynasty.” It’s not about packaging, no matter how much the industry machine would like us to believe that. It’s about some Jewish guys breaking their mothers’ hearts on an entirely different order of magnitude. God, Allah, Buddha, the Great Spirit bless ‘em. I whish I had that fortitude and that gumption.
And that’s where Henry’s message to me comes in. I live my life for the things that I think define “right.” At least I do now, and I’ve “been there, done that,“ so blow me if you don’t agree. Whatever.
I try to do right by others, to avoid doing wrong, harm or inflicting pain. Pain is a crucible reserved for the self, not something to be wielded against others. Who the hell am I to pass judgment on others such that I’d hurt them? My body is my one and only possession and therefore mine to do with what I please. But others? I think not.
Where then, does evil fit in to my warped view of the world? Well, I can say with certainty that evil cannot be found anywhere in the glass of Balvenie that I have gently melting beside me. Nor can it be found in the fish taco that I have preternaturally craved since my forced “relocation/reallocation” to a uniquely disenfranchising plane of existence an agonizingly lengthy but chronologically short time ago. (Confusing? Try being me some time…it gets worse.) I liked my beach bungalow, and I can say with fair certainty yet again that there was no evil there either. Evil, it seems, rests in the hearts and minds of a minor few humans. Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe can get fucked for all eternity for all I care; mankind is essentially good in spite of New Coke, the Spice Girls, Pokeman and Other Occurrences. We don’t need heroic sacrifices to prove anything differently, for in every culture throughout time there have existed basic rules that define how one plays kindly with the other kiddies in the sand box. Break the rules, and you’re right out. It’s that simple. The problem is those rare, powerful few who suffer from megalomania, delusions of grandeur or simple meanness and cruelty. These are the same creeps, mind you, who beat their children, abuse animals, engage in genocide or participate in aberrant behavior, and murder Innocent Women in parking lots. It’s not about corporations trying to take over the globe, nor is it about secret conspiracies of a select few to rule the earth. Evil is easy to identify in others. But, at the same time, it’s also harder to identify in others.
Fortuitously, providence and evolution have provided the means with which to gain clarity of vision, the ability to accurately survey the world around us and take stock of the good and the bad. Emancipate your self from mental slavery, Brother Bob told us—a lesson that I’ve taken to heart since first hearing his gospel in a dingy bar in Gainesville, Florida many years ago. I listened, and more importantly, I heard. But it was a lesson I lost over time. Perhaps it’s time for everyone else to do the same. Maybe it’s time I once again pay attention too.
And that’s where I get back to Henry. I listened, I heard, and I understood. Or, at least, I am trying to understand, and that’s all-important, all-consuming. There was once a time when I provided safe harbor for hatred and evil, when not-so-long-ago I lost the one who defined me, who was more to me than I. “A crushed larynx” the coroner’s report said, “strangulation following forcible coitus”—rape. I dwelled in the land of hatred; I subscribed to its tenants whole-heartedly. My word was consumed by darkness and hatred and putrid evil. A dragon that lived deep within for years and decades suddenly made its presence known and every day became a battle of will and force against the ultimate powers of evil that lay within me, the seed having been planted and nurtured darkly by the singular action of one anonymous person who stole Her from me. Shit. I understood murder, Nazism, race hatred—the whole gambit of the darker side of human existence that stood in stark contrast to the essential good of mankind, the things that She taught me to appreciate and foster.
Fuck. Fuckers.
The accused were never caught, or at least haven’t been to this day, and I lived in a waking nightmare state where I hoped sincerely to be able to exact my revenge. Death and suffering at my hand. (Him or me; in retrospect, I don’t know.) Slow, bloody and painful. That’s how the movies portray it. Stalwartly and stoically strong, the hard jaw line betraying only a hint of the power yet to be unleashed upon the wrongdoers. That’s how the movies portray it, dammit. …Except at night, for it was in those dark hours that my gawd-awful normality came upon me like a tsunami in the tidal flats, overwhelming my every defense and driving home the harsh reality that I had been graced with far more than I deserved in her, and I would never be able to exact a measure of revenge. Emancipation from the mental slavery of others is one thing, but the emancipation from the bonds of self-hatred and self-recrimination are another thing entirely.
Henry and the iron at that time were the on-ramp to my salvation. They were the means with which I sought the ability to rise forth every day from bed to face a cruel, cruel world. And it worked, well…for a time. No offense intended to Henry, but I’ve realized of late, that absolution and forgiveness are hard to come by in a cold, cold world, particularly from oneself. Especially for oneself.
Mostly for oneself.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Part Uno
Let’s you and I begin the begin, shall we?
Me
To assume the responsibility of writing the Great American Novel is not only an awesome responsibility, but also poses the distinct risk of disappointing more than a few people while dangerously flirting with the probability of demagoguery. Good thing I don’t care. Of course, a wee bit of single malt over ice combined with an MSG-infused meal of highly processed, over-cooked meat-stuff, seasoned with a sardonic sense of reality, a smattering of disconnected antipathy, and a sprinkling of sleep-deprivation all combine to help stack the odds in my favor even if I am lacking a plan, a plot, a list of characters and, of course, a book deal. But then again, he who plans early plans twice, and I don’t like to sweat the details. Let us then consider this a journey into one man’s depraved, slightly drunken mind and see where exactly it takes us. Who knows? Maybe we’ll enjoy the journey, or perhaps you’ll chuck it, toss the book and defer to the intrinsic brilliance and social commentary of Jerry Springer in stead.
Yet again, good thing I don’t care. I don’t write for you. While I’d very much like to assert that I don’t write this for you, I know in my heart that is simply not true. Why tell a story if you don’t want others to partake of it, to share some measure of the experiences you describe? Writers who maintain anything else are daffy egocents. Incidentally, I might be an egocent, but I assure you that I’m not daffy. No, truth be told, I’d like you to share some of your valued time with me. I’d like to tell you a story, my story, and while it isn’t always happy or easy, there’s a net sum in the positive column that I’ve arrived upon after no small amount of tumult. I’ve learned some stuff, while other aspects are still being processed by my brain housing group even today. Still, I’d like to share two things with you. The first is a rare soul who was named Beth. She wouldn’t want me to hold her to myself, and to that end I sincerely hope I’ve honored her appropriately by sharing her beauty with you. The second is a sequence or series of lessons that I have spent the past how-ever-long learning in her absence. I would be remiss, selfish and, yes, daffy if I didn’t offer that which I’ve become as a result of Things That Have Transpired. I write for me; that much is the honest truth. That you elect to partake in this torrid, sometimes nonsensical diatribe is something that I wonder about, yet I sincerely hope you’ll share this journey with me. As some have said, I might be as deep as the children’s end (maybe they’re right), yet I nonetheless think there’s something to be gained by sharing This with you, something that Beth no doubt approves of. Thank you, but enter at risk to your sensibilities or, at the very least, your time well spent.
So, where to begin? I suppose two of my good friends—both also writers intent on penning the Great American Novel—would have a well-scripted plan to lead you into an exquisitely developed plot line that, through an intricately woven tapestry of character development and heart-wrenching drama, would snatch your attention and convince you to follow them on their journeys to the fabled lands of intellectual enlightenment and empathetic awareness. Felcher and Toots (yes, those are actually names, not in the proper sense; but we’ll get to that in a bit) of course are of that nature, preternaturally anal retentive and meticulous planners who are, as I spew forth this dribble, no doubt plotting, scripting, drafting, designing and creating.
In a more formal sense, Maugham once suggested the perfect sequence and/or convergence of activities that were required of a good novel’s ending while, at the same time, offering the humble disclaimer that Larry would prove to be normal in appearance yet sublimely unique within the context of his time. I harbor no such delusional vision of literary grandeur. I offer not the sacred confluence to define my ending that Mr. Maugham suggested, nor do I even so much as dare to suggest that my main character will prove to be anything more than supremely normal. In that sense, then, I suppose that the only meager similarity I share with Mr. Maugham is that I too begin this story with trepidation and fear, but therein the similarity ends. Others plan, slave and skillfully craft their stories. At least that’s what I’ve heard.
Not me, no sir.
I prefer in stead to take a healthy swig from the glass and step forth into the abyss of my goofy mind. That and I am not a well-accessorized, well-coiffed, well-educated member of the literary intelligentsia. Most importantly, I just don’t care all that much. In the annals of American literature, there have been well nigh enough self-stylized masters of the art, so I presume nothing in that stead. I am a miscreant, plain and simple. So tag along if you’ve got the fortitude, inclination and nothing better to do.
And yet again, we come to the same stupid question. If I am to tell a story, where am I going to take you? Into my own sordid life I suppose. Call me asshole; just don’t call me Ishmael. I am, to eloquently summarize, plane white bread, the antithesis of everything that has flavor or colour. In a different world, I’d probably make the perfect CIA agent—so unassuming and nondescript that nobody would notice as I blended into the background, able to pilfer secrets and do the whiz bang spy shit with ease. Unfortunately, I take the nondescript thing to an entirely new order of magnitude to such extent that I am so plain that I stick out like a cowlick on a freshly woken head of bushy black hair. I am the annoying hangnail that’s too small to bite off but so annoyingly “there” that I drive you crazy. I am neither tall nor short, neither smart nor dumb, neither heavy nor light, neither ugly nor handsome. Six-foot-something, one hundred seventy five, neither skinny nor heavy, accomplishments and education of no particular distinction; I simply am, and it hurts. Were I to be a super hero of some sort, either DC or Marvel Universe, I would surely be imbued with the super power of being able to dazzle and stun people with my overwhelming mediocrity. Call me Wonder Bread Man, champion of all that is bland, tasteless and lacking nutritional value. Hooray for me.
What-the-fuck-ever.
I am technically of Central and Eastern European descent, third generation American. I am the only human offspring of two loving, attentive parents who are both still alive and quietly disappointed in me for never achieving my full potential, whatever the shit that is. They are, of course, far too decent to ever say words to that effect. Regardless, having reached my mid-thirties, I have attained a degree of comfortable detent with my professional life and my finances, living in relative comfort but never destined for wealth, fortune or fame. I make my car payments and I can buy new blue jeans whenever I wish, yet I am still slave to droll industry, mired in the mindless dribble that keeps me codependent on my unappreciative place of employment. It’s the paradox of modern life I suppose, save those few annoyingly blessed trust fund children and/or those depraved souls willing to take vows of poverty in quest of their art. I have no art, brother; I have a mortgage though.
Nope. No such luck for me since I am also Jewish, which is a religion that exists in a seemingly conflicted reality offering the casual observer both the Humorous and the Tragic at the same time. In fact, I often laugh whenever I hear or read the monosyllabic words some inbred white supremist talk of the Great Jewish Conspiracy. Never have I unearthed any such beast, for if it did exist I would at least use that power for evil in order to pilfer millions and ensconce myself into the pornography industry. Maybe then I’d actually get laid with somebody other than myself. But, no, I am not that fortuitously endowed (double entendre intended), and I am subject to the same monotonous existence that afflicts most of Western Society. I wake, I work, I eat, I sleep—and then I repeat the cycle day in, day out. Judaism provided little more than a sub cultural framework for deeply buried racial memories of guilt and neuroses, and little else. God was someone that I obtusely believed in out of obligation rather than passion, kept at arms length to satisfy the most basic requirements of my pre-selected formalized religious indoctrination courtesy of Sunday morning reeducation camps as a child and such. God was there, but not close, not until adulthood, that is. God is now close, very close, but only in the context of utter resentment and enmity.
Ahh…and so it begins, as the truth of my motivation seeps upwards. In the background, I hear the spine-chilling creak of a door opening, and I smell the putrid smoke seeping out from the chamber beyond. Not yet, sister, not yet. Let’s focus first on beginnings, simple and humble as they might be. Excitement and colour were visited on me briefly, but it’s not yet time to discuss them. I promise to share that with you as the alcohol hubris builds the ramparts and fortifies the bulwarks enough to fight-off the beast long enough to share the tale with you, just not quite yet.
Currently, I’m living my final days in this particular life in a modest bungalow in Ocean Beach, California. By “modest” I mean that it is roughly 900 square feet, built in the 1930s, badly in need of repair and worth about $450,000. I paid $200,000 for it when I moved here nearly ten years ago. It’s a nice place by SoCal standards, for me a refuge from the intrusions of the world where I can walk along Sunset Cliffs and watch the sun sink into the vast Pacific every night, and where I can open the windows and enjoy the fresh air blowing off the water every afternoon, shooing away the agony of days spent confined in a self-imposed prison of servitude to the system and, more compellingly, servitude to What Happened. It’s home and it was once very comfortable for me. It is roughly square in shape, non-descript in color and equipped with a small but well-appointed kitchen including a side-by-side refrigerator, a four burner gas cook top, a matching in-wall range, and a dishwasher, which is rare in these goofy old houses. I’ve got a single bedroom and one-and-a-half bathrooms. The house has a nice family room/dining room and, perhaps most importantly, it’s got the world’s smallest pool in a back yard equipped with two small but healthy and prolific lemon and orange trees. It is my own personal piece of the Southern California real estate delusion and my own personal provision for Pleasant Valley Sundays…at least it was.
Down the street, within strolling distance are two of my favorite things in the neighborhood, a great “mom and pop” coffee house who’s proprietor knows me by name (it helps that I go there almost every morning for a steaming cup of Jamaican Blue, Tanzanian Peaberry or Kona Gold), and a local Central American grocery that makes the best lobster burritos north of Ensanada. The cliffs? What else can I say…if you’ve never seen the coastline of California, either north or south (but not the LA basin), then you have no idea that nature and physics could have conspired to create such awe-inspiring magnificence. Sunset Cliffs, located half way down the windward side of Point Loma and providing natural shelter for San Diego Bay, is a gentle promontory that has heather and ice-plant covered steep meadows descending to rocky cliffs below. A favorite of local surfers, hikers and trail runners, the Cliffs are slowly succumbing to the relentless assault of the Pacific, retreating towards my house and many others. It’s a shame only in the sense that the view will be lost over time—the incursion of man and the impact of real estate capitalism not so much.
Up the hill from my bungalow are larger houses of the half million dollar plus variety with commanding views of the ocean and, on clear days, San Clemente and Santa Catalina Islands. Wind swept Torrey pines dot the lots and street corners. This place is as close to heaven as I could have imagined once. My wife loved it dearly, eschewing the purchase of a new, affordable home in one of the many, anonymous inland cookie cutter developments in order to keep living in this wondrous place. To her it was paradise, small house, small pool, green cliffs and all. I used to think the same.
So, it is here that I live my abnormally normal life. It is here where things changed as profoundly as they possibly could have; it is where I changed and became Something Else Entirely.
One of the amazing things that living in California offers, however, is that I can, as often as I choose, get on the highways and travel to an amazing variety of diverse geography. Believe me; that has proven to be a blessing of immense meaning. California is naturally therapeutic for me at least. It’s a sublime comment on the sheer magnificence of this state to stand on a warm beach in the spring and gaze on snow covered peaks in the background. Thus, I travel as much as my work and my finances allow, visiting several favorite locations including the wine country, the Eastern Sierra, Mammoth Lakes, Tahoe, Shasta, the Anza Borrego Desert and the Central Coast, always alone. Remove the LA basin, and you’d most likely have the most culturally complete, geographically diverse and aesthetically gratifying place on this continent. Those are mighty lofty words, I realize, but I defer to what I said earlier. I don’t care. I make those comments for myself.
Well…mostly for myself.
Truth be told, I also say them in large part for the belligerent benefit of the citizenry of the unequivocally dumbest, most self-absorbed state in the Union; Texas. Having grown up there, I can attest to the stupidity that permeates that godforsaken dust bowl of dirt, hills, swamps and dumb-ass belt buckles. Eat shit Texas…secede already. Ha.
Memories of that place begin somewhere in time, buried in the recesses of a childhood neuro network that provides glimpses of sight and sound and color far more than tangible, effective memory. The landscape of my backwards vision is pocked with the scars and craters of exploded landmines as far as Texas is concerned. Memories of pain and alienation blown apart on the field of my memories. But, as SGT Ross warned, where as most of the mines are inert, some remain decidedly ert. Texas in terms of attitude and culture, I will discuss at a later point. For now, what I remember is mostly flat and plowed. Dirt clods for miles on the southwest side of town that would eventually be encircled by loop upon loop of concentric super highways. At that time, however, it was little more than pasture land with sporadic developments of planned communities and ubiquitous strip centers. In between was land, and lots of it, some of it speckled with trees, some of it without, most of it with fields of cattle, and all of it utterly barren-flat. This much I remember of East Texas just north of the Gulf Coast. Harris County had nothing of aesthetic merit, and in an odd sense, I think it provided the colourless pallet upon which my psyche and image were crafted.
Nothingness begets nothingness.
California would have held the promise of surf and mountains and nature to a young boy who was painfully aware of his awkwardness within his own skin. Texas only made it worse.
Fuck.
Me
To assume the responsibility of writing the Great American Novel is not only an awesome responsibility, but also poses the distinct risk of disappointing more than a few people while dangerously flirting with the probability of demagoguery. Good thing I don’t care. Of course, a wee bit of single malt over ice combined with an MSG-infused meal of highly processed, over-cooked meat-stuff, seasoned with a sardonic sense of reality, a smattering of disconnected antipathy, and a sprinkling of sleep-deprivation all combine to help stack the odds in my favor even if I am lacking a plan, a plot, a list of characters and, of course, a book deal. But then again, he who plans early plans twice, and I don’t like to sweat the details. Let us then consider this a journey into one man’s depraved, slightly drunken mind and see where exactly it takes us. Who knows? Maybe we’ll enjoy the journey, or perhaps you’ll chuck it, toss the book and defer to the intrinsic brilliance and social commentary of Jerry Springer in stead.
Yet again, good thing I don’t care. I don’t write for you. While I’d very much like to assert that I don’t write this for you, I know in my heart that is simply not true. Why tell a story if you don’t want others to partake of it, to share some measure of the experiences you describe? Writers who maintain anything else are daffy egocents. Incidentally, I might be an egocent, but I assure you that I’m not daffy. No, truth be told, I’d like you to share some of your valued time with me. I’d like to tell you a story, my story, and while it isn’t always happy or easy, there’s a net sum in the positive column that I’ve arrived upon after no small amount of tumult. I’ve learned some stuff, while other aspects are still being processed by my brain housing group even today. Still, I’d like to share two things with you. The first is a rare soul who was named Beth. She wouldn’t want me to hold her to myself, and to that end I sincerely hope I’ve honored her appropriately by sharing her beauty with you. The second is a sequence or series of lessons that I have spent the past how-ever-long learning in her absence. I would be remiss, selfish and, yes, daffy if I didn’t offer that which I’ve become as a result of Things That Have Transpired. I write for me; that much is the honest truth. That you elect to partake in this torrid, sometimes nonsensical diatribe is something that I wonder about, yet I sincerely hope you’ll share this journey with me. As some have said, I might be as deep as the children’s end (maybe they’re right), yet I nonetheless think there’s something to be gained by sharing This with you, something that Beth no doubt approves of. Thank you, but enter at risk to your sensibilities or, at the very least, your time well spent.
So, where to begin? I suppose two of my good friends—both also writers intent on penning the Great American Novel—would have a well-scripted plan to lead you into an exquisitely developed plot line that, through an intricately woven tapestry of character development and heart-wrenching drama, would snatch your attention and convince you to follow them on their journeys to the fabled lands of intellectual enlightenment and empathetic awareness. Felcher and Toots (yes, those are actually names, not in the proper sense; but we’ll get to that in a bit) of course are of that nature, preternaturally anal retentive and meticulous planners who are, as I spew forth this dribble, no doubt plotting, scripting, drafting, designing and creating.
In a more formal sense, Maugham once suggested the perfect sequence and/or convergence of activities that were required of a good novel’s ending while, at the same time, offering the humble disclaimer that Larry would prove to be normal in appearance yet sublimely unique within the context of his time. I harbor no such delusional vision of literary grandeur. I offer not the sacred confluence to define my ending that Mr. Maugham suggested, nor do I even so much as dare to suggest that my main character will prove to be anything more than supremely normal. In that sense, then, I suppose that the only meager similarity I share with Mr. Maugham is that I too begin this story with trepidation and fear, but therein the similarity ends. Others plan, slave and skillfully craft their stories. At least that’s what I’ve heard.
Not me, no sir.
I prefer in stead to take a healthy swig from the glass and step forth into the abyss of my goofy mind. That and I am not a well-accessorized, well-coiffed, well-educated member of the literary intelligentsia. Most importantly, I just don’t care all that much. In the annals of American literature, there have been well nigh enough self-stylized masters of the art, so I presume nothing in that stead. I am a miscreant, plain and simple. So tag along if you’ve got the fortitude, inclination and nothing better to do.
And yet again, we come to the same stupid question. If I am to tell a story, where am I going to take you? Into my own sordid life I suppose. Call me asshole; just don’t call me Ishmael. I am, to eloquently summarize, plane white bread, the antithesis of everything that has flavor or colour. In a different world, I’d probably make the perfect CIA agent—so unassuming and nondescript that nobody would notice as I blended into the background, able to pilfer secrets and do the whiz bang spy shit with ease. Unfortunately, I take the nondescript thing to an entirely new order of magnitude to such extent that I am so plain that I stick out like a cowlick on a freshly woken head of bushy black hair. I am the annoying hangnail that’s too small to bite off but so annoyingly “there” that I drive you crazy. I am neither tall nor short, neither smart nor dumb, neither heavy nor light, neither ugly nor handsome. Six-foot-something, one hundred seventy five, neither skinny nor heavy, accomplishments and education of no particular distinction; I simply am, and it hurts. Were I to be a super hero of some sort, either DC or Marvel Universe, I would surely be imbued with the super power of being able to dazzle and stun people with my overwhelming mediocrity. Call me Wonder Bread Man, champion of all that is bland, tasteless and lacking nutritional value. Hooray for me.
What-the-fuck-ever.
I am technically of Central and Eastern European descent, third generation American. I am the only human offspring of two loving, attentive parents who are both still alive and quietly disappointed in me for never achieving my full potential, whatever the shit that is. They are, of course, far too decent to ever say words to that effect. Regardless, having reached my mid-thirties, I have attained a degree of comfortable detent with my professional life and my finances, living in relative comfort but never destined for wealth, fortune or fame. I make my car payments and I can buy new blue jeans whenever I wish, yet I am still slave to droll industry, mired in the mindless dribble that keeps me codependent on my unappreciative place of employment. It’s the paradox of modern life I suppose, save those few annoyingly blessed trust fund children and/or those depraved souls willing to take vows of poverty in quest of their art. I have no art, brother; I have a mortgage though.
Nope. No such luck for me since I am also Jewish, which is a religion that exists in a seemingly conflicted reality offering the casual observer both the Humorous and the Tragic at the same time. In fact, I often laugh whenever I hear or read the monosyllabic words some inbred white supremist talk of the Great Jewish Conspiracy. Never have I unearthed any such beast, for if it did exist I would at least use that power for evil in order to pilfer millions and ensconce myself into the pornography industry. Maybe then I’d actually get laid with somebody other than myself. But, no, I am not that fortuitously endowed (double entendre intended), and I am subject to the same monotonous existence that afflicts most of Western Society. I wake, I work, I eat, I sleep—and then I repeat the cycle day in, day out. Judaism provided little more than a sub cultural framework for deeply buried racial memories of guilt and neuroses, and little else. God was someone that I obtusely believed in out of obligation rather than passion, kept at arms length to satisfy the most basic requirements of my pre-selected formalized religious indoctrination courtesy of Sunday morning reeducation camps as a child and such. God was there, but not close, not until adulthood, that is. God is now close, very close, but only in the context of utter resentment and enmity.
Ahh…and so it begins, as the truth of my motivation seeps upwards. In the background, I hear the spine-chilling creak of a door opening, and I smell the putrid smoke seeping out from the chamber beyond. Not yet, sister, not yet. Let’s focus first on beginnings, simple and humble as they might be. Excitement and colour were visited on me briefly, but it’s not yet time to discuss them. I promise to share that with you as the alcohol hubris builds the ramparts and fortifies the bulwarks enough to fight-off the beast long enough to share the tale with you, just not quite yet.
Currently, I’m living my final days in this particular life in a modest bungalow in Ocean Beach, California. By “modest” I mean that it is roughly 900 square feet, built in the 1930s, badly in need of repair and worth about $450,000. I paid $200,000 for it when I moved here nearly ten years ago. It’s a nice place by SoCal standards, for me a refuge from the intrusions of the world where I can walk along Sunset Cliffs and watch the sun sink into the vast Pacific every night, and where I can open the windows and enjoy the fresh air blowing off the water every afternoon, shooing away the agony of days spent confined in a self-imposed prison of servitude to the system and, more compellingly, servitude to What Happened. It’s home and it was once very comfortable for me. It is roughly square in shape, non-descript in color and equipped with a small but well-appointed kitchen including a side-by-side refrigerator, a four burner gas cook top, a matching in-wall range, and a dishwasher, which is rare in these goofy old houses. I’ve got a single bedroom and one-and-a-half bathrooms. The house has a nice family room/dining room and, perhaps most importantly, it’s got the world’s smallest pool in a back yard equipped with two small but healthy and prolific lemon and orange trees. It is my own personal piece of the Southern California real estate delusion and my own personal provision for Pleasant Valley Sundays…at least it was.
Down the street, within strolling distance are two of my favorite things in the neighborhood, a great “mom and pop” coffee house who’s proprietor knows me by name (it helps that I go there almost every morning for a steaming cup of Jamaican Blue, Tanzanian Peaberry or Kona Gold), and a local Central American grocery that makes the best lobster burritos north of Ensanada. The cliffs? What else can I say…if you’ve never seen the coastline of California, either north or south (but not the LA basin), then you have no idea that nature and physics could have conspired to create such awe-inspiring magnificence. Sunset Cliffs, located half way down the windward side of Point Loma and providing natural shelter for San Diego Bay, is a gentle promontory that has heather and ice-plant covered steep meadows descending to rocky cliffs below. A favorite of local surfers, hikers and trail runners, the Cliffs are slowly succumbing to the relentless assault of the Pacific, retreating towards my house and many others. It’s a shame only in the sense that the view will be lost over time—the incursion of man and the impact of real estate capitalism not so much.
Up the hill from my bungalow are larger houses of the half million dollar plus variety with commanding views of the ocean and, on clear days, San Clemente and Santa Catalina Islands. Wind swept Torrey pines dot the lots and street corners. This place is as close to heaven as I could have imagined once. My wife loved it dearly, eschewing the purchase of a new, affordable home in one of the many, anonymous inland cookie cutter developments in order to keep living in this wondrous place. To her it was paradise, small house, small pool, green cliffs and all. I used to think the same.
So, it is here that I live my abnormally normal life. It is here where things changed as profoundly as they possibly could have; it is where I changed and became Something Else Entirely.
One of the amazing things that living in California offers, however, is that I can, as often as I choose, get on the highways and travel to an amazing variety of diverse geography. Believe me; that has proven to be a blessing of immense meaning. California is naturally therapeutic for me at least. It’s a sublime comment on the sheer magnificence of this state to stand on a warm beach in the spring and gaze on snow covered peaks in the background. Thus, I travel as much as my work and my finances allow, visiting several favorite locations including the wine country, the Eastern Sierra, Mammoth Lakes, Tahoe, Shasta, the Anza Borrego Desert and the Central Coast, always alone. Remove the LA basin, and you’d most likely have the most culturally complete, geographically diverse and aesthetically gratifying place on this continent. Those are mighty lofty words, I realize, but I defer to what I said earlier. I don’t care. I make those comments for myself.
Well…mostly for myself.
Truth be told, I also say them in large part for the belligerent benefit of the citizenry of the unequivocally dumbest, most self-absorbed state in the Union; Texas. Having grown up there, I can attest to the stupidity that permeates that godforsaken dust bowl of dirt, hills, swamps and dumb-ass belt buckles. Eat shit Texas…secede already. Ha.
Memories of that place begin somewhere in time, buried in the recesses of a childhood neuro network that provides glimpses of sight and sound and color far more than tangible, effective memory. The landscape of my backwards vision is pocked with the scars and craters of exploded landmines as far as Texas is concerned. Memories of pain and alienation blown apart on the field of my memories. But, as SGT Ross warned, where as most of the mines are inert, some remain decidedly ert. Texas in terms of attitude and culture, I will discuss at a later point. For now, what I remember is mostly flat and plowed. Dirt clods for miles on the southwest side of town that would eventually be encircled by loop upon loop of concentric super highways. At that time, however, it was little more than pasture land with sporadic developments of planned communities and ubiquitous strip centers. In between was land, and lots of it, some of it speckled with trees, some of it without, most of it with fields of cattle, and all of it utterly barren-flat. This much I remember of East Texas just north of the Gulf Coast. Harris County had nothing of aesthetic merit, and in an odd sense, I think it provided the colourless pallet upon which my psyche and image were crafted.
Nothingness begets nothingness.
California would have held the promise of surf and mountains and nature to a young boy who was painfully aware of his awkwardness within his own skin. Texas only made it worse.
Fuck.
It starts here.
Lacking the motivation to seek yet more representation, lacking the conviction in myself to begin another tale, lacking the motivation to do something more proactive and productive, and lacking any other original thoughts, I thought I'd start this little gig to at least get the story Somewhere.
Story? A Promise In Sorrow. Begun in 2001, finished three years later. My first complete attempt at a manuscript. Is it good? Frankly, I don't know. But, perhaps by placing it here rather than simply on a magnetic portion of my hard-drive, I can finish its gestation and move on to other projects.
So, that's the objective. Read it in pieces as I post. Feel free to shred it. They're only words, and when we start fearing words then we have truly surrendered to the darkness.
Allsalami-ilike'em,
Scott
Story? A Promise In Sorrow. Begun in 2001, finished three years later. My first complete attempt at a manuscript. Is it good? Frankly, I don't know. But, perhaps by placing it here rather than simply on a magnetic portion of my hard-drive, I can finish its gestation and move on to other projects.
So, that's the objective. Read it in pieces as I post. Feel free to shred it. They're only words, and when we start fearing words then we have truly surrendered to the darkness.
Allsalami-ilike'em,
Scott
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