Jenny Jenny, bad penny, cant quit you girl.
Zeus knows I've tried.
Mary, then Mary, both contrary
Not right for your feisty hide
Worry not, my daughter, your father I remain
And motivation drives your new home search
While still your dad is sane
Jen-Jen, I love you, baby, I'll miss you every day
But Aerie ways are not your flow
You'll thrive, when you're away
Henry James once defined life as that predicament which precedes death, and certainly nobody owes you a debt of honor or gratitude for getting him into that predicament. But a child does owe his father a debt, if dad, having gotten him into this peck of trouble, takes off his coat and buckles down to the job of showing his son how best to crash through it.
Clarence Budington Kelland
Don't tell me why, he's never been good to you, don't tell me why he's never been there for you, don't you know that 'why' is simply not good enough
Sarah McLachlan
Thats how I see it.
But I am not a Dad.
I have lots of cats, a dog or two. A friend who thinks of me as a mentor, but his dad is my dad almost, so he is my lil' brother. A woman I loved so much, and when she went and said 'Daddy issues'.
She meant hers.
Mine are old hat round here, see 'Fathers day for Guru' here
And you can catch up.
Cause we are on a roll.
Another friend, a young man, also walked away recently. He is angry, the way I used to get.
When someone I looked up to for being one way, and grew to love as is, failed.
To be.
What I need.
And it makes me cry. I loved him so much. I love him so much.
But never had a dishonest moment with him.
And when someone finds themselves in your absence, they have found themselves, and that is the point.
Of the exercise.
I met this chick.
Eleven years younger.
Obviously insane.
I like her, and she is somewhat fond of me. She has four daughters, and they are indescribably beautiful.
If you ever heard me screech, and thought that was my only note.
I demur. Five chicks in the Southern Hemisphere are teaching me new things and new songs.
Songs of joy.
Dads get easier to relate to with every failure, for sure.
But you also see the other side, cause the Dad who wasn't there at all? Was supposed to be a Super Hero.
And when he turned out.
To be.
Far away. Well, what the fuck does that do.
For.
Me.
This is a love letter to those who considered themselves of me, once.
And those who contemplate it in their futures, together, with me.
I am growing, I am grown, I am broken, I am home.
Wherever I am welcome.
By Matthew Barron Storey
Yeah, nonetheless it says the man sees the fuckin’ possibilities of the things. I mean, to come up at this fuckin’ juncture with the idea of creatin’ an emporium for the fuckin’ chinks takes brass fucking balls, and a long term vision for the future.
Al Swearengen 'Deadwood' Speaking of his heated rival who 'gets it' about where things are going.
There's a dark side to each and every human soul. We wish we were Obi-Wan Kenobi, and for the most part we are, but there's a little Darth Vader in all of us. Thing is, this ain't no either-or proposition. We're talking about dialectics, the good and the bad merging into us. You can run but you can't hide. My experience? Face the darkness. Stare it down. Own it. As brother Nietzsche said, being human is a complicated gig. So give that ol' dark night of the soul a hug. Howl the eternal yes!
Chris Stevens 'Northern Exposure' Reassuring a friend whose walk on the wild side has left her ashamed.
I don't like defining myself. I just am.
Britney Spears showing the reason that she, amongst all the swiveling blonde pop tarts, got the gold.Dr. Jekyll and Britney Spears
Guru, explaining to new friend what the ride would entail.
'48'
August 10, 1963, 2:29 am, 7th fl Obstetrics Ward, Klingenstein Pavilion - Mt. Sinai Hospital
Nurse Margaret McMullen is being ravaged by her coworker boyfriend, Arthur Cohen, in mop closet, adjacent to delivery room number 9. In that room, a 23 year old woman is in the midst of a delivery going horribly wrong....swirling clouds of cigar smoke and french caberet music blares from the bed... at the strike of 2:30...the snarling visage of a baby boy emerges from the comforting womb...holding an ice bucket, full of beer. At the precise moment the kid hatches - Nurse McMullen explodes in ecstasy and her prodigious bottom slides the cover off the cord guard that keeps the radioactive machinery safeguards plugged in, she shrieks as the lights go completely off and a loud explosion erupts in the next room...an arc of energy explodes through room number nine and sends a radioactive spurt into the beer bucket and the beer blows up, all over the baby...
In room 9, there is smoke and panic, the wild eyed mother is furiously crossing herself and talking in tongues (Texas twang, channeling Edith Piaf), Orderly Cohen and Nurse Maggie come running into the room, half naked, emergency lights come on, hideous slurping sounds fill the smoky room...
It's a shambles, trays have been thrown against walls, fluids are sticking to the ceiling in what appears to be an early Dali image, one nurse is catering to the deranged mother, another one is lustily servicing the obstetrics intern, who she has dreamed about, but forced herself to wait until there was a cataclysmic fictional explosion, before making her move (some smart women can be this dumb), the obstetrician is calmly sitting in a chair, reading the charts...
On the edge of the bed, sitting up, tiny cigar in his mouth ('for the look, I don light it') beer glazing his entire head is a boy, and with a leering grin he stares at the orderly and the nurse and says his first words on the planet;
'You both look pretty good, but just born here, so gonna be awhile for me to make up ground, but good news! You can still be useful to me...can you...please, get me a fuckin towel!'
'Cause these other people over here aint worth a fuck of a lot, I gotta tell ya, this woman here seems nice but a little off if ya know what I mean! (baby reaches up, pinches nurse Maggie's ass, she turns in fury then a feeling of calm comes over her...). By the way, 'Hey handsome, whats yer name? Nice broom handle for a scrawny kid! Grab me a juice, would ya gorgeous? I gonna finish up wit yer honey here and gonna need something for my dry throat because
...I got a LOT to say.
Name is Matty B, but you two, best if you call me Guru. And, lets face it, with these habits, I ain't gonna last forever, the sooner you two move your cute little asses, the sooner I can get to it!'
48 years later, my tastes aint changed and my trap aint stopped flapping, only now I get to flap with my keyboard, so hold the juice.
Forty Eight is not such a daunting number really. When in our teens, the 2nd moving up is scintillating, your 20's, it displaces us, thirties, pure anxiety as you creep closer to scary and further from hottie...
and Forty is all that (enjoy it those of you who have not yet had the privilege, bring chemicals or fine looking honey to survive)...
But Forty Eight don't bother me, its that 1st number moving up that I am concerned with now, high second number means still ain't moved that other one, which I am cool with, for certain. With the inevitable fears of demise is the newly discovered 'well at least I went before it gets gross'.
Yes, clearly, Middle Age aint exactly my niche.
But I am getting better at it, with the help of some friends.
A beloved friend, recently departed from me, spoke to me of older friends in my life being critical, when I was broken up over the loss of another beloved friend, a beautiful younger woman. I was furious with him, in part because he was the one she left me for, but more because having friends my age would mean that I was their age as well.
And it does.
And?
Thank Zeus. My young friend was right about that, and so many other things, and I miss him and I miss her too, but I think we probably will all live longer if we are apart these days to come. Someday, I hope, we will all be together again, wiser and gentler with one another.
I was thrown back with my peers, and its never gonna be a comfortable space for me, wasn't when we were kids - won't be now. I am not as they. I am not as thee. Like Brit, I just am.
But the am that I am is more easily understood when you have water under your bridge as well, when you've seen, heard, read, travelled, fucked and been fucked over. And come out of that amazed that every time your heart breaks, it gets so much stronger, so much deeper, so much more satisfying to be alive.
I turned 40 bitter as fuck about my lost youth and my disappearing country.
All my fears came to roost. I ain't what I was and America is disintegrating at a pace that shocks every person in the world. But I am not bitter, I am grateful. Cannot avoid aging, only option is demise, and no matter how fucked we are (and we are), above ground, curvy nurses and endowed orderlies roam freely, cigars can be had or grubbed, Beer is obsessively prepared, to my specifications, all over the planet, and Plant is grown by mavericks willing to dodge helicopters in order to deliver me relief from testosterone poisoning and help me avoid breaking my hand on some idiot's face...the Yankees win, or just miss, every year, the Triple Crown and Breeders Cup show up in war or peace, the Cowboys...well, I can die on that one, my Islanders are on the up and on the move, to Brooklyn, my future home where they will room with my Nets, in the swankest, hippest public space in the country in its 4th largest city (Brooklyn alone is this), F. Paul Wilson just finished his 'Repairman Jack' saga, gotta grab that and...and...and...
I love this life, I love these big fat fuckin bites I take out of it. A friend chastised me for my latest bout of irrational exuberance, and rightly so, but I am a gambler and and it's folly to bet that will be my last such Hop-a-long, after all, 'Cassidy' is one of those porn star names that works either way!
Social lives, experienced physically or digitally, are designed to network lots of people loosely, with defined parameters and boundaries allowing for comfort level, but also limiting depth amongst conversations. I don't interact with the World this way. Each relationship is deeply experienced and the need to connect and communicate so powerful, there is neither time in the day or capable candidates to fill my dance card with quantity.
Which is cool, because quality is what I seek and if you can be replaced, why would I have wanted you in the first place?
I don't count friends and build, I prune them and lose them to the fact my sharing is not to their taste, which is my approach. I ain't looking for comfortable, ain't looking for credit, I dont give a fuck about stuff, scratch, reputation or pedestals. I AM interested in the real. What is genuine. Who I AM, and who the fuck YOU are. You can be you, cause you can be fucksure I'm gonna be Matty B.
It is the only worthwhile advice that is universally applicable.
Be.
Yourself.
Because its too much energy to be anyone else, and you were actually designed to be only one thing well.
Be you.
And, once you do that. The rest is buttah.
I had a terrible year, I don't want to talk about that. I am not interested in the Yankees of 2009, its '11 that matters to me. I am engaged by what is in front of me and what matters to me and not interested in the past failures, I am interested in direction. Forward progress. Get 3 outs after you score and get back to bat. Limit the damage when you don't have your good stuff. Burn when you lose. Talk when you win, but just for a second, cause the rest of the moments are now frozen in time.
I need to write more and get more sober, I need to dump twenty pounds and make some semblance of an effort to groom myself, I want to spend more time with Benjamin Lucky, the one eyed stray I share with the glorious Trudy, who is a gift by herself, but when weighed by the ripples she left on my life is a giant to match with the notorious Herbie the Bookbinder, the only guy I ever knew who was smart as me and knew the street life as well as the books. Herbie, conservative prick and agitator supreme ain't good company for someone who likes 'em docile, but the love is there forever.
B squared are gone now, but they live in me forever.
Stevie B and New Hampshire Girl are my rock solid family. More devoted, loving, reliable, hilarious, gorgeous companions one could never hope for. Whatever, wherever - them's mine and harm comes to them, harm returns to the source.
With interest.
Mal is my creative genius collaborator, an amazing mind and gorgeous heart. Probably the craziest motherfucker I ever met. And when Matty Fuckin B calls you nuts, you are bonkers! I can't go a day without her in my ear, but she sends me departure letters and devotes output to our minutia. Which is how I act a lot of the time, too. Most of the things that piss us off in others are the things we have seen ourselves do and we are being given a perspective lesson. I fuckin' love you Mary, and take 'till dirt' seriously. Whatever your letters indicate, you are still here, still vital and essential to my life and work.
Feel the real, feel the love I am sending.
I lost my beloved Calla on June 20, she taught me much and in many ways - I grew into myself while caring for her last days. I owe her much, remember her with love and carry on in her home, caring for the cats and taking in all who need such to the best of my ability.
Its how we roll round my way.
Scoutie B died on February 4, Chester six weeks later, Teddie died in the Cave in January and Teddy B died the day before Calla in June. My old friend lost her dog, Bailey too. Mary has taken in many and lost many, like me, she has so many names, so many creatures it can get daunting to know them all. It is enough for them to know they are loved, especially the recently placed 'Lil Guru'!
Oh. I met a girl. An amazing one. We have some challenges. But she's wicked smart, gorgeous, and has a huge beautiful heart I adore almost as much as her smile (or that ass...). She was silly enough to wander too close to my gravity and got her spinning above the event horizon long enough for me to clear the smoke been swirling around since I got hatched...
On an August night, forty eight years ago.
Peace?
By Matthew Barron Storey
Behold, Human Beings living in an underground den...
Plato's Cave
Part 1 - The Woman
A woman I know, a friend, had a fall.
And she summoned me to her, asking that I care for her cats while she recovered.
I did as asked.
In time, I realized that this woman, 50 years in an apartment - one large room, one small room -
was different than the woman I had been casual friends with for several years.
She was wittier, kinder and was clearly, losing her mind.
She felt better from the fall, and told me I was no longer needed.
Two days later, she fell again. And I was summoned.
Bedridden and obstinate, she said 'I may need you more than I thought'.
Part 2: Journey to India
She is in the Hospital, she had a breakdown.
I found a place that specialized in Memory Care. She felt betrayed. I told her the cats would be fine, the bills would be paid, and I would bring her home as soon as possible.
She trusted me to do just that.
I told the kid when I met him, someday I will send you around the World, to put your training to work and to see the world as it is becoming.
The kid listened, and was brilliant, and devoted. Our bond grew.
When the woman went to the Hospital, the kid went to India.
I went to the Apartment, to feed and love and clean the cats. Twice a day.
The little one loved the kid, and she found me and asked me about him, and our life, and this, and that.
I became accustomed to these conversations, that ranged far and low and made me smile.
The kid came home, the little one went away. Then the little one returned. The kid returned to her.
The woman in the facility, improved. Our bond grew.
A dog I love, lives in a building and I see him twice a day, every day.
A young man helped me enter the building when I would arrive. Charismatic, verbal, comfortable in his skin. He reminded me of someone, but I could not place it.
Part 3: The Box
The woman was ready to come home. But her home was no longer safe, or practical, for her needs.
I bought a plant, and sat in the middle of the large room, and set the plant on fire.
Then I called Rasta O'Reilly and talked. The Box and The Vestibule were built in the large room, for the cats and the Woman.
The kid pledged his help, and me, and the little one came to live with us, and help.
The woman returned and she grabbed my hand.
'Thank you'. We both cried.
The kid and the little one parted. She left. We both cried.
The young man, at the building, was asked not to stand where he'd stood. He came to be with us. And help. The little one moved nearby, and returned in part.
Cats died, cats joined the colony, we all watched Tennis and News and life went on for the woman, and the kid, and the little one and the young man.
Part 4: The Cave
The woman thrived. The colony grew. Special ones would join us, and assist us, or visit us.
The kid studied Chinese, he knew he would be sent there soon. The young man became part of us, and we shared much, as a group, and individually. The little one and I spent time. Our bond grew. I shuffled between the Box, The Aerie and the little one.
I saw the small room at the woman's home was empty, since the little one moved away. I called Rasta O'Reilly, and built a Cave in the small room. Books, tunes, paintings, figurines, big screen, small fridge and a Nest above for me to sleep, and play and transform.
The young man and I would play in the Cave, and care for the woman, and the kid would come and go and care and study. The little one would come sleep on the weekends.
I started to spend more time in the Cave. There was another plant, and challenges to overcome.
I sat with this other plant, in my Cave, and thought of things.
What I was, could not be, and make all safe. What I could become would help me do so.
I saw that I was three things really. One who wanted this. One who wanted that. And one, a leader, who adored reason and peace and suffered from the vagaries, moods and excesses of the others. The one who wanted this, was easy on the others. The one who wanted that, who was the closest to the heart, was not workable, having been chastised and threatened with banishment.
The plant helped the one who wanted this to emerge, and the leader handled things. He took care of the woman, took care of the kid, took care of the young man, took care of the little one. The one who wanted this played with the young man, the little one and the kid. The one who wanted that, closest to the heart of the leader, died just a little bit every day.
And the leader realized it, and ordered more plant, more play with the young man and the little one.
The young man spent time with the one who wanted this, the one who wanted that, and the leader. All came to know him. Our bond grew.
Part 5: The Fall
The woman ran out of money. The kid went off to China. The young man moved in to the Cave.
The little one and I spent time. The young man and I spent time. The little one, the young man and I spent time. I understood how important the plant was to preventing the one who wanted that from upsetting things, as he had once done. The one who wanted this would be the one, and the leader would make it all work out.
The woman fell in the Box, and was sent to heal.
The little one got bored. The young man and the little one spent time. Their bond grew.
The leader, paying bills, juggling the kid, the woman, the young man, the aerie, this, that. Did not notice that things were not as before. Then he did. And the one who wanted that said 'Enough'.
'Its my turn'.
Part 6: Walter Pidgeon
Monsters from the Id! Monsters from the subconscious!
Forbidden Planet
The kid was home now, and working, and studying. He and the little one long estranged. The young man and the little one spent time. The woman healed.
Inside me, the leader knew the plant was no longer workable, that nothing could keep the one who wanted this around and nothing could keep the one who wanted that from being anywhere but around.
They fought inside my head, trying to make room for one another and I rampaged, ranted, rambled. My heart would break, my cock would stiffen, my mind would nearly split in three from the divergent viewpoints it contained.
I listened to the little one and the kid, the young man stopped talking to me as he had before. And I was mad, then sad, then in love, then depressed, cuckolded, rejected, humiliated, aroused. It was too much to contain, too much to decipher and too fuckin' complicated. The leader would lead, and the one who wanted that would rely on the counsel of the one who wanted this to secure that which he wanted. And we would be healthy and we would be fitter, and richer, and more genuine, and move devoted to the love of the woman, the kid, the young man and the little one.
And there are others.
Because, thats what leaders do. Put aside this and that, and move forward.
Just one me. Just one life. My Cave was built to give me refuge from the world, and the world came in the door.
And I'm glad it did.
By Matthew B. Storey
This is a story about my friend and I, our lives, our friendship, our work. It goes deep, it goes long and it is pure honest love. For none of which do I apologize.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Nelson Mandela
My Grandfather was Lewis B. Storey, my Dad is Ross Barron Storey and is known internationally for his Art and genius under the 'B' name. My Dad has two other sons, my brothers are Sam B. Storey and Taage B. Storey.
Its a 'B' thang.
That hasn't been a glue between us, for sure, but it does let us know that, whatever else we don't have in common - we share the B and it says 'one of my kind'. B meant family. That matters.
When I was a teenager, I played Softball in a league on 20th Street. I was a top player and lived on 21st Street, but there was another top player who lived on 21st Street and was older, more established.
His name was Matty.
As I emerged, in the '70s, people would say our whole names - but you don't talk about people and certainly not ballplayers, that way. He earned the right to the single name, I was Matty 'B'. B meant neighborhood, community, notoriety, excellence. Didn't matter which Matty they were speaking of, we both mattered. The kid with the B was different though.
I had a job, in the '80s, in an office 100 feet under Park Avenue, with a supervisor named Frank. But everyone knew him as Frankie D, Matty B was his running mate, his lieutenant, his advisor. B meant loyalty. He was in charge, but we both mattered.
I got my Dog, Scout, in the '90s. When his mom and I got himit was in San Francisco, I was living in my Dad's city, reconciled after longandlong, and when I realized I loved him and we were OK - the B was back. Scout and I bonded like Sonny and Trees. Tight. He became Scoutie 'B'. B meant unconditional love. Dad wasn't like me, but he was my Dad. Scout was my baby boy, he got the B for sure.
My cat Steffi 'B' followed, and today I have not one, but TWO Teddy 'B's, amongst all my animals, those two are the ones who bond with me deepest and they get the 'B'.
Now, everyone who is close to me does not need a B, many who are close like family are not family.
The B's are ALL family.
A few years ago, I was playing in a Co-Ed Professionals Softball league. A 'ringer' brought in by a CEO from my weekend pickup league to insure the success of his Team, a small garment business playing against huge corporations with 1,000's of Employees. I am a serious player and an intense guy, and never before had played the semi-serious, non-intense sort of game these silly leagues are about.
We met in the middle, however, and had fun and became great friends.
Oh, and we won back to back championships, and city wide tournaments, going 19-1 the 2nd year.
Maybe we don't fight and obsess and drill and scream...but we were FUCK sure going to W-I-N.
One of the young women on the team caught my eye. A terrific athlete, a smart and engaging teammate and a terrible, terrible player. Despite my endless hours of coaching! I was smitten from day one with this young beauty. After making the requisite fool of myself over her, she gently ushered me aside, but not before I got to meet her family. She asked me one day, after our mid-July game, to mentor her Brother, Steve, about business and she introduced me to her Mom, Rose.
Their family name is 'C'.
It was the first time I'd even thought about a woman in my life since breaking it off with my last love, who was, and is, still my roommate and beloved friend, but never took the 'B'. In the years I'd been lying in fields of clover, pondering my navel and living experimental versions of myself, I'd also gotten older.
Too old for a woman the same age as all the women I'd ever been with, back when I was their age or close to it. It was humbling and I took on the task of helping her brother with the resignation of someone who would never deny a friend, never let down a beauty long desired and realized the task would not change the math.
And the math didn't change for me and this young woman, who has gone on to greater successes and locales. But it sure changed the Math for me and her Brother, as well as her parents.
Steve was 2 years older than his sister, returning from a 2 year stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guyana, the poorest country in this hemisphere. He had graduated from Boston University, with honors, in Chemistry.
And gone to Guyana.
That told me something. Something I look for. Something I like. Something of value.
I warmed to the task and was grateful for the chance to leave my Aerie, a self-imposed prison I retreated to during the Bush years, as I was in the midst of the tortured 2004 Yankee collapse (to Steve's Red Sox!) and devastating Kerry loss. I'd stopped doing much of anything professionally by this point, just banging out endless books and endless diatribes about economics, sports, politics...(something I still do, and will always...).
Steve came from a nice Rhode Island suburb, outside of Providence. An 3rd Generation Paisan whose parents lived in a leafy developed area adjacent to the older 'downtown' neighborhoods of their parents, who immigrated first to Rhode Island. A place and a family where connectedness is primary to identity. His grandparents worked as Civil Servants and Factory workers. The jobs of first and second generation immigrants from anywhere in 20th Century America. His parents were well educated, an accountant and a school teacher, their intellectual lives and perspective had broadened, but their devotion to family and community every bit as unshakeable. His sister, the beauty, was a gifted mathematician who held an engineering degree. She had broken the bonds of the local community, gone to Philadelphia to school, then to NYC for public school teaching in situations beyond her ken and, finally to San Diego, to the ideal environment for her triathlons and easier pace of life. She was no longer in Rhode Island, but her connectedness is essential (and her San Diego guy, like her NYC one before, is from Rhode Island!). His other sister, the youngest, took more to the grandparents world and to the local bonds. She lived for awhile in San Diego, but her heart, her guy, her family and her identity are in the Ocean State and that's where she belongs.
I could tell Steve was not to be contained by Rhode Island. And I suspected he'd take to NYC in ways that his sister never would and his parents, or other sister, would not really be able to identify with. And, over time, as we discussed things, twice a week in person - Weds evening and Saturday afternoon and daily via email conversation, I realized that NYC, and even America, would not hold him as they did me, like his parents - I was a construct of an earlier time and my ties were laid, for better or worse. His tracks were yet to be set, and he was determined to use his scientific method to explore and develop those tracks along the best tracks available. Like his Mom the chef, making the meal but adjusting the ingredients to account for new information.
I knew Steve's world, although it was not mine. I'd grown up amongst the sons and daughters of Italian-American immigrants, their families, their generational struggles, the reconciliation of the deeply conservative Catholic devotion to family and neighborhood with the free expression and interaction of the North Eastern, Urban dominated lifestyles. Raised with the mythology of the old country in the new country as even that country began to blend and morph into something newer and less easily understood. I knew only too well the stresses and responses engendered by newer waves of immigrants repeating the experiences of the grandparents and inconveniencing the established, who now included themselves. When I was a kid, those families were leaving my Manhattan for suburbs or family oriented, Italian centric places in the boroughs. Where the life taught at home, in church and at the Knights of Columbus could be more easily projected, and protected, than it could amidst the blending, whirling dynamism and diversity of 3rd Avenue.
I knew his parents discoveries in their daily lives were tough to translate to those who had come before, or traveled less far in their own discovery and I marveled at the grace and expertise they utilized in finding ways to make the blend work. His mom was a marvel in the kitchen as is her beautiful daughter (can't help it, but hey it's my voice!) as had been HER mother, and her husband's mother...
But Rose had taken charge of the ingredients and informed by nutritional understanding and endless attention to detail, turned the calories around, substituted seamlessly and made the stomach busting fare healthy and every bit as delicious as the original versions. She and her husband got fitter and healthier every time I saw them, even as they watched their unreformed friends diets fatten them up and begin to age them prematurely. These were people, who despite different lifestyles, I could relate to.
Not revolutionaries seeking to blow up the older ways, but modern people, affectionate and devoted to the past and those who made it, but able to separate what was essential and timeless about that and what was tangential and unessential, even, like extra calories and gigunda portions - unhealthy.
My kind, after all.
Steve and I put the time in, from day one and forged first an intellectual bond. He is a scientist, a stoic, a listener with photographic recall and rigorous discipline. He has his mothers attention to detail, his fathers decency, his sister's intellect and his other sisters reverence for what came before and where he came from, without reverence for the particular elements of mythology, which, like those calories, are no part of the magic.
Like his Dad, he had the ability to avoid allowing his deeply felt emotions to cloud his judgement. In many respects an opposite to the Matt he was meeting, a big picture thinker, an epicurean, a hedonist, an emotional wreck, alienated from family and personal history. A border line maniac who'd figured things out and was loudly going insane watching the world move in all the wrong directions, a slow moving train wreck unfolding as a 200 pound loner tried to hold it from certain disaster.
Steve has been raised in the carefully constructed cocoon of suburbia, of his Italian heritage, of his family. His brilliance was ticketed for Medical School, or law school, or business school and, eventually to local politics. Which is where smart, telegenic, Italian kids from Rhode Island are expected to go. There would be a pretty Italian girl whose smarts and presence would both translate to the family and add the next generational lift, the kids, the lessons for his siblings...
At least, that was the plan.
It has almost nothing to do with who he is.
Which is something I learned, in my email box, in our twice a week meetings, in regular visits to the family enclave, in my relationship with his Grandmothers, who share their name with my Mom, and Steve and my closest colleague and confidante. His Dad taught me, at 40, everything I never knew about what a parent is supposed to be. He never was anything but who he is, but always was about anything but putting his needs first. His wife, his family, his children, his work, his home. Solid. Unshakeable. Loving.
In his Dad, I saw what I had not known as a boy and what I did not possess in myself. When I met his daughter, I was still a man who held my younger dreams of marriage and family. She taught me to realize things had changed, he taught me that would not have been the right path anyway. Both were healing lessons, hard to swallow. Like that cough medicine in your cabinet that works, but twists your face on the way down.
In his Mom, I saw the absolute dedication to quality, in all aspects, that could only be admired - if sometimes obfuscating the way the larger picture coalesces. Details ironed out require such single mindedness, we need all perspectives and focuses to make the bigger picture develop.
In his younger sister, I saw the fierce opposition to changes and modernity, the unwillingness to modify or adjust the details of the Grandparents construction for the substitutes proposed by her parents or her 'clueless' brother.
And to lots of folks who love him, thats what my Stevie is. Just as that is what Matty is.
Lots of people who knew me 'when' are disappointed in me. Too. You are so smart. Why aren't you married? Why don't you work for a firm? Why don't you have kids? What happened to your suits? What happened to your travel? What happened to your dreams? Why do you live in Manhattan still, or again...blah blah blah. I was never concerned about the rabble or the opinions of others, so it never took any courage for me to forge my own path. I was always someone who was adored, or reviled.
I'm used to it.
Steve was the Prince. He was going to be the one to take it to the next level. And he is, and he has.
But it doesn't look like it was expected to and won't. And he takes flak, has lost prestige, even suffered, incredibly, disdain from those closest in. It has hurt him deeply, but it's reality and, as mentioned, he lives in that place and has taught me to, as his Mom and Dad taught him. They don't always understand his path either, but they know him and they know me, and they know we are wicked smart, we are committed and tireless and that we love them. They don't know where the story goes, or how it headed this way or that, but they trust in their boy. With good reason.
When I met this young man, he was a brilliant kid who was trying to grok a wider world. He was a person of many moods and tastes, from different influences trying to sift his self image through a blueprint designed by others. If I taught him anything, it was to STOP DOING THAT.
The only opinion that matters in life. Regardless of proximity, is your own. The only one who knows who you are - is YOU. Steve knew who he was, he just wasn't giving himself permission to be all of it and to do so in his way. That permission, as Nelson mentions above, was not mine to give, the direction, not mine to chart, the answers not mine to suggest. I told him that he would make mistakes in life, as I did, as all of us do, but, if he listened to me - he would not have to make the same ones that I did. And, if he did that, in combination with his intellect and drive, and got away from trying to please others with that which could not be reconciled with himself - he would be pretty much unstoppable.
And he is. And we tight. And we have only just begun.
There is a lot more to the story, but it'll have to be discovered in future days, future columns, future developments.
For now, its his Birthday, he goes from Jim Brown to Tony Dorsett. From 32 to 33.
And he does so under a new name, a special one reserved for special creatures in my life.
Stevie B.
By Matthew Barron Storey
Everyday is so wonderful, suddenly, its hard to breathe...now and then, I get insecure, from all the pain, so ashamed...I am beautiful, no matter what they say, words can't bring me down...
Christina Aguilera -Beautiful
I went to the Gym today.
Went with a woman I love, a beautiful, brilliant wonder of nature who I adore like the precious gift she is.
It was weird going in there. I used to go there, just a few years ago, and strut in, looking hot and showing off. And the whole time I was thinking about how much hotter I used to be.
Hot wouldn't capture me on my visit today. Middle aged, a bad dye job making its way to my ends and a steady diet of high carb takeout well in control of my 'core', a terrible allergy afflicting my arms and legs and leaving me just short of a leper in a mirror. I was late, sleepy and had no lock, dressing in a hurry and disheveled as all get out.
We walked up the stairs and the vision I was with headed to her wheels, and left me to my mirror, my floor exercise, my reckoning.
I like the guy I saw.
He rocks. I never really knew it before. I exalt the people I love and their infinite variety and, while I don't pray, if I did - it would be to do so further, to let them know the love they bring to me and the myriad blessings they bestow upon my life. But I have a problem being Ok with ME, and I am always game for a project, problem, protege or projection that will get me away from the man in that mirror, the life he leads, the heart, the mind, the cock.
Got clues on most things, can at least hold my own. Got none on Mr. Storey.
Not a one.
But I saw something today, in the pudgy guy with the tight leggings and the strut.
He is beautiful.
Still.
And I owe it to that little one who put me there, who tells me againandagain and again, that I AM all that and I deserve to be all that I am and not only can strut, I owe it to the world to do so.
She is but one of the heroes in my life.
We are all this way. We are all beautiful, and we have all gone too far from who we are in that mirror.
We are in a fight here, for our country, for our place in the world, for the destiny of what this place, and this progressive experience will mean to the world who have largely adopted its lessons, only to see them abandoned by their teachers.
We have to do better.
We have to make it so that a Father in Howard Beach, Queens, knows that the kid he saw on the news who married the boy he loves, is beautiful, and brave and all of what we are.
We have to make it so the Single chick on the Upper West Side, knows that the son of that Dad, on that couch, in Queens, whose parents came to America with their pride and their faith, and worked hard to make a better way, is beautiful for putting his beautiful young life and beautiful young wife in harms way because he BELIEVES that we stand for a better way. That we stand AGAINST those who would suppress the basic decency and freedom of human beings in the name of religious fantasy.
That unemployed High School dropout, in Youngstown, Ohio, needs to know there is a whole life waiting for him...
That furloughed teacher in Wilkes-Barre, PA, needs to know that her fight is a righteous one and that we shall prevail...
That economist, who is working his ASS off on our behalf, amidst world spanning pressures, and succeeding, while the President works to make a fairer, more decent society, despite the visceral abandonment of his 'devoted' constituents. The one who is used, abused and villified, despite an almost surreal effectiveness (GM?) and has somehow become 'part of the problem' instead of what he is, an American HERO....He needs to have a government and a PEOPLE solidly behind him and working to make this country competitive and fair for ALL of us.
We ARE beautiful. And I was yesterday as well.
Gorgeous even.
But someone who loves me knows I am not even scratching the surface of what I am and how much I can be and offer. She loved me enough to demand it, to find a way to get me in that Gym. Off my ass. Looking at myself. Loving myself again.
She reminded me that I am beautiful.
In every single way.
There aint nothin I cannot do.
How about you?
By Matthew B. Storey
'Power of love..make you do right, make you do wrong, make you come home early, make you stay out all night long'
Al Green
'Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.'
Robert Heinlein
'We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.'
Frederick Keonig
'Ok, so your hearts broken, you sit around moping, cryin' and cryin', you say you even thinkin bout dyin'? well, before you do anything rash....dig this.'
The Main Ingredient 'Everybody Plays the Fool'
I know.
More moaning about nonsense, instead of discourse that matters.
I'm hip, working on it... Stuff gets in the way. And this be the stuff Ima here to talk bout.
Today.
It is time to move past the topic and the focus, and I get that. Let this be the last in this series.
For awhile, anyway....
Been all over my inner world, taking inventory, checking my heart, reading my history...examining my relationships for what works and what doesn't.
Getting nowhere fast.
The truth is my inner world works, the result of tumult longandlong. I know who I am, how I happen, what to avoid, what to embrace....but the truth doesn't really set you free, because the answers are hard ones. Reconciling the lonely is important work, like confirming the asteroid IS going to hit the planet.
I was right!
'wow...that's...um... great?.'
Right, but still fucked. Or not fucked, as the case might be. Is.
Joyless revelations are tough to herald. Celebrate. Or heed.
Thing is. The Asteroid don't give a shit if you believe in it.
Dig that.
People I love have their own dynamics, not to be discussed here. We all do. The reconciliation between the real and the fantasy is the core challenge of our lives. The more we know, the more deeply we perceive the world around us, the people we encounter, the bigger picture...
But its like stripping a true believer of his faith...his god...his beliefs might be the thing getting him out the door in the morning. God got my back!
Amend the previous, the truth DOES set you free, an accurate saw. But free from the fantasy doesn't equate to 'happy'.
We all look back at the moments of love in understanding...'I was young', 'she wasn't right for me', 'he turned out to be a jerk!'...but that doesn't change the fact, these are the best moments of our lives.
Paradox of human experience. The center of our fractured culture. The truth about love, and happiness?
Maybe this chat aint so nonsensical after all?
And I am starting to look at it that way. Love gets a bad rap from me. I saw clearly backwards and found the shining moments hollow in retrospect, and lost the FEELING of surrender to another that creates such joy. I lived with the wrong girl, who I loved with all my heart. How do I quantify this gap between my understanding and simple pleasure. A kiss. A laugh. A cry from the depths, knowing she'd catch me.
Nothing is worthless. There is no such thing as 'empty calories. Love is a bitch.
But that Bitch got to be tapped, she needs to be kept in line. And, if you don't do that thang with your heart, you just gonna have to listen to her. And talking? That aint love's best talent. Bitch'll talk you round and round, let you believe in nonsense and act like a fool. A damn fool.
For sure.
So we do this half-ass thing. We know, but we don't apply what we know in cases where, maybe, just maybe...what I think I know, ok, know I know...aint gonna apply. Cause, you know....of course, the thing you know continues to be what there is to know, and you know you gotta stop checking that empty fridge. Its just that...
I'm hungry.
You dig?
I'm lucky in some respects. Love that ails me, or lack of it in my case, leaves me with an empty space, but other spaces matter more in my makeup. Love might be the lipstick, but ideas are the foundation and the future is my mascara. Love on the lips, the unknown closer to the eye, knowledge seeping into my skin. An addict I am, correctly and simultaneously called by many of my savviest and dearest chick friends. But I been in the rooms, of church basements and addled memories, broken heart and damaged psyche.
I got tools, and interests, that get me through. A woman loved, as she is with what she has to give, is a treasure no less than if she was more, had more, wanted to give more. Each one is precious, and her heart is precious, she gets the love I got, however I can bring it to her.
I'm good over here, alone. I really am. I'd struggle to snuggle with one who thought me less for what I am, and struggle to compete for any woman. Nothing of the heart that can be 'won' is worth having, at least for me. I save the competition for safe and trivial matters, sports or politics - trivial not because they do not matter, but because our impact is negligible. The heart is all bout giving...what is given matters deeply, what is competed for, strategized over, plotted, planned, executed?
That aint love, G. It just aint.
What makes me happy is simple.
I like a small universe of people I adore. I do not like social interactions with strangers.
I Like a limited schedule with lots of time to write, to read, to party and to reflect. I do not like a full calendar or events and responsibilities.
I like to occupy different poles within myself. I don't like having to explain this or make allowances for others to struggle with it.
I like knowing the ones who I love are well tended, be they being or beast. I don't like being herded, by a sheltie shape, into 'right thinking'.
I am happy and I am alone. I sometimes tend to concentrate too much on the latter, and ignore the former.
But thats reality for you.
Our Bitch's cousin.
'Is she hot?'
By Matthew Barron Storey
The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don't have.
Woody AllenMen and women, women and men. It will never work.
Erica JongToday, over half of China's undergraduate degrees are in math, science technology and engineering, yet only 16 percent of America's undergraduates pursue these schools.
Cathy McMorris
Riding the aptly named Peter Pan bus from Hyannis, Cape Cod through Providence, Rhode Island to Manhattan. Mind on women, work and China. Women are a long neglected topic in Guru's life. There was a girl in High School, then someone after, then relationship for ten years, East Coast fling for a moment, West Coast fling for another, relationship for two years. Then? Nada. That was 12 years ago. I've lived these 12 years with a beautiful woman, a friend, roommate, life partner...but not lovers, no romance, no sex. The bus rolls off of the Cape, where I've had a frustrating few days, diving into fantasy that evaporates, struggling with my solitude that had always brought comfort, trying to juggle and decipher feelings that back up in my brain, or is it my heart? my cock? Had some crushes over the time, but nothing really substantial. Have two female friends who I adore, and they both adore me - but not lovers. No romance, no sex. The names of the women I love roll through my brain, and tantalize in snippets, but the un-reality of all that holds sway. I do fantasy well, too well, but un-reality is just not worth it. I like keeping it real, even if the truth is ain't nothin goin on. Over time, I've learned to be at Peace with this alarming state of affairs (or lack of affairs, in this case), I take comfort in the truly terrible job I did in the relationships I had - loving amazing women who were wrong for me in different ways, and being unable to see that until decades passed by. Knowing that helps me to understand that I won't necessarily know when someone IS good for me and if I think she is, she almost certainly isn't. I tell myself I've 'retired' and have such a vivid and voluminous imagination, I am able to be several of Christine O'Donnell's worst nightmares and continue to be sexually charged, if also quite celibate. And I am not actually celibate, I am able to throw down for an occasional bout of fantasy jump-about, but nothing that sustains beyond sticky - it counts more for solo remembrances than continuing interest and, if it isn't fueled by Bolivia - 'taint gonna go down anyway. No that sort of play, while good for a trembling cum or nine, ain't gettin it done. The bus rolls into New Bedford, Fall River, Providence...once thriving places in an America that has lost its way. Being Out East is to see folks suffering with not enough energy, not enough money, not enough of the sort of employment that inspires. I often think about investing some of my own energy and coin in such places, filled with people I care about...but investment cannot negate stagnation. Whats wrong here is deeper than empty coffers and my fix isn't gonna go down smooth. Going to need to keep the focus on Manhattan and go looking for places to invest that are further East by quite a bit... Over these lonely years, I've taken solace in the intellectual life, my books, my ideas, my writing, my chemicals, my role play, my fantasy connections...but lately, my mind is less fruitful, my words not flowing...my ideas cramped up in there. The phrase even distracts. That's hard up. I got it bad. Not for someone, not in particular. Sometimes I hear or read phrases that thrill, compliments, suggestions, proclamations...satisfying and ego burnishing. My mind will wander towards possibility, but the reality intrudes and I'm back with my brain, my heart, my cock...alone with the three of us just looking around... But I'm lovesick, just the same. What an odd thing, this resurgence of silly feelings in one so far down the path. Its going to be an ugly fall if I don't get this thing whipped, and I don't mean that thing - that's already enough of a problem. The trouble with early retirement is the nagging suspicion you can still PLAY THE GAME! Of course, there is no proof of that anymore, a drunken rut notwithstanding. Life has gone on this decade plus without me being laid (hardly), or loved (fully), or in love and will continue to do so. Gotta be in an acceptance space and concentrate on the satisfactions of work, knowledge, animals, chemicals and the love of friends. The bus barrels down I95, on its inexorable journey to Manhattan. Home to New Hampshire Girl and the Buhbs, Scout and the Cats surrounding me with love...its a good life in spite of my whine. Tomorrow there will be time for my new digs, the Cave and time with my bachelor self, time to sort things and make choices about my trio of unloved parts. I will take the counsel of my right hand, and my right hand man, check in with the beauty I love who is too young and the other, who lives far away and take solace in their quality and unsuitability, pangs are better than passion when its not the way to leap. At 47, would not make sense to come off the bench for anything less than a chance at a ring. And I mean that in metaphor, but not marital metaphor. No marriage, no matter what. And no mirage either. Only interested in getting back what I bring, and being up for that is a rare creature indeed. If it turns out, she is too rare for discovery, will that mean I should have chosen more common fare? If you said 'yes', you don't know Guru. Work is shifting now, towards the East - and China, where Steven will travel on the Vagabond Guru dream machine this October 10 and spend six weeks. When we met, six years ago, I took Steve under my wing and asked this Chemist/Traveller to undertake a graduate study program in Generalism...he has read history, politics, economics, philosophy, science and science fiction - a futurist's broth designed to un-shackle his mind from preconception and open it to perception. We've shared endless hours of discussion, launched successful projects, been on the right side of the Real Estate crash, the weakening dollar, the strengthening Euro, the strengthening Yen....we've launched a website with Mary (you are here!) and, in February, Steven went to India for VG and filed several of his 11 total columns elsewhere (The Blue Penguin Report) on this site. Now, as he prepares to go to China and confront the 21st Century at its home address, I am strangely detached, not from Steven - who I love like a brother, or from China, of whom I have no doubts. But of my own role in these events, cannot find a way to pull my research together in inspired fashion and send my herald Eastward on Marco Polo's journey with the Guru's ideas. Truth is, the kid knows what I am thinking and registers what I seek without being told. The inspiration has long taken hold and the kid is a man. He knows what to do, and I am just a facilitator and a fan, waiting to hear word of his journey and to have him returned safely to those of us who love him, head stuffed with sights, sounds, ideas and memories that I can heartily feast upon. Over the time he is away, will try and focus my brain again on the study, the learning, the development of ideas held dear. But the heart and flesh are nasty masters, and I expect I will take more than my share of beatings.
I aint into pain.
By Matthew Barron Storey
“Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The important thing is this: to be able, at any moment, to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.”
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
"That's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it..."
KC and the Sunshine Band
I was writing with a friend yesterday, and we talked of War...I wrote:
'We celebrate those who put aside their OWN dreams and lives to make those great historical leaps. The Union man didn't want to go fight, the Southerner was raring to go. The Union man made a sacrifice and we all live the benefit. The same is true for the American teenager who went, in distress, to battle Nazi and imperial Japanese forces in foreign locales, knowing his own life might be snuffed long before any of it could be lived but COMMITTED to the proposition that it wasn't ABOUT his life, but the lives yet to come.'
That is the thing. It ain't about us. Not us as individuals. Not about us as a country, a race, a nation, a neighborhood, not even a family.
Its bigger.
A species?
Bigger.
A life is one of billions, over tens of thousands of years passed by and millions to come. A life is a foam panel on a space shuttle. Insignificant.
Critical.
They can make lots of panels. And humans.
But you are in that spot now. And its riding on you. You won't get out of it in great shape. The heat is intense, the conditions extreme. You are done-fer, but while you are here...think about the mission of that shuttle, the place that mission has in the arc of humanity, the epoch of the Earth...and let go...
Its riding on me. I got a spot, right up front cause I like it best when the shit flies and the heat is on.
No more worrying about the way it looks from out there, or how it jibes with how I thought it'd play.
This is showtime. Turns out it has been all along.
Who knew?
I came around on August 10, 1963, and started these annual B'day columns with 'Fo-di-Fo', in 2007.
Makes this my 47th and my 4th.
I never look back or read the old stuff, so I can't really speak to how I was feeling then...I know that its been a search inside for longandlong and that this year...
The search ended, Matt found Matt, Matt accepted Matt and...it no longer is about Matt.
Which should be a relief for you out there, reading these words.
This was a year in which, as the Army says 'I found the strength to get over myself'. This was a year about the other people in my world, their battles with aging, self-discovery, relationships, new children, divorce, death of a loved one, death of beloved animals, adoption of new animals, business travails, financial hardship...
All that work I put in, inside, to get to know myself again
I know me, inside and out (and you've been on those paths of discovery with me if you read here regular, and if you don't - you should, cause its the shit)
And turns out, I always knew me. But along the decades, I'd grown apologetic for myself...my unique energy aint for everyone, and that made me want to edit myself, smooth out the rough edges, not speak truth if that truth was scary for some...I thought if I could just find a way to make myself more mainstream, I'd build a world around me or be asked to join one.
I don't worry about that anymore. I am 47 years old. Healthy. Happy. I like myself. I have incredible people in my life. I have great and interesting business to do. I have everything I could ever want and want for absolutely nothing material. I ain't been asked to join any worlds, so I've built my own and its made me far happier than you've heard before in this space...
When I was 44, I was an ancient 25 year old. At 47, I am a kid of 47.
Aging is relative, of course. I have my Calla, who is 84 and depends upon my care, last year that was scary, I was new to it and the workload seemed endless. But then we got some help from Calla's Niece and her longtime friend and counsel, Serph, and I was able to find a facility which helped Calla ride the changes she is experiencing and train me for the task of her care...when we both got what we needed, we blew that joint back to her home, with her cats, in a specially constructed room I designed that we call The Box. I hired a team, my herald, Red Sox Steve (who's India columns are up and must read material) who stays with her during the day, Flo the Jamaican Angel, who stays with Calla in the night and Bethie D and Marisa, who grab the shifts when Steve and Flo are off. I visit Calla every morning from 8-10, we have Breakfast and then from 4-8, when we have dinner. I stay overnight on Saturdays. The Valley of the Box is a Cat Shelter as well, and we've got ferals, rescues and special needs animals of every age and shape. We just got another one this morning, a 1 year old boy. Since its August 10, I took Trudy's suggestion and named him...
Little Matt!
Caring for Calla 7 days a week, caring for the 8 cats New Hampshire Girl and I have and Scouty B, my dog, caring for Cowboy Mama, who has had her usual share of Mama Drama, 7 days a week, twice a day with Trudy and her brood, investment clients, readers, other pet owners...its a busy life. And a rewarding one, but it hasn't left a lot of time to write this year.
I haven't written a single Baseball column all season. The Yankees are back on the rampage, but my favorites have been discarded. The International cool of Hideki Matsui, Chien-Ming Wang and Melky Cabrera are gone, in their place a squad of guys who don't have the NYC vibe. Winning is still the goal, and the focus, but rooting isn't the same for Mark Teixiera, who likes to talk faith on the golf course with his PGA buddies as for Jason Giambi who wears a Gold Thong to get on a hot streak and can be found offseason doing lines off his girlfriends breasts lying on a Roulette wheel in Vegas.
Ye-Ahhh Boyyyyeeeee!
I like what I like, I am what I am.
And I don't apologize. I let you be you too, its only when you being you involves pushing stupid ideas or hurting on the weakest that we'll ever clash. I am a love thang, after all!
I have so many wonderful people in my life, old friends like Wendy from 15B, Dawn from the RightField Porch, Jack and Dink from the ballpark and 3rd Avenue, George from 15th Street and Physics class, Jon whose fierce gentle and agile mind makes me thankful for the restraint I've always needed to avoid pointing out his athletic and intellectual shortcomings! There is Nick in Buffalo, formerly of Queens, always of Metsies, Blueshirts and J-E-T-S - afflictions he shares with Jon. And Tanya, the breathtaking, brilliant one married to the dashing Western hero, Clint the Progressive - whose steely eyes and gentle soul comforts all, they are busy and far from me, but held tight in my esteem,..New friends like Bethie D, the pixie doll who lights me up and shares my passions and Marisa, the dark beauty with the gentle soul and the devastating curves. Progressive friends abound, but Paulette, Pam from Cape Cod, Mani the Future Mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island and newbie, Lisa...broke through and got to me more and more this year. Smart decent women on this list, hard working, clear thinking, loving...easy on the eyes and ears, with just enough kick in the tukhus to reel me back in...when I float away, which happens more than not.
I'm lucky.
My old loves are there with me, as well. We don't talk as much as we once did, they already paid their dues, and took on those scars and really, how long can one be expected to listen to this crap?
These are gorgeous women, fiercely bright, tough, kind. Genuine.
But they know I love them, and I always did. And their lawyers asked that I not use their names!
And the luck doesn't end there. I have Mary and Steve, my Vagabond Guru crew-who, the ones who know my mind (and have to review endless shots of my ass, which, happy to report, is still almost supernaturally fine!) and my roomie, the wondrous New Hampshire Girl, who long ago learned not even to look when I posed the booty - she just says 'yeah, yeah...looks great'.
Smart girl.
Steven went to India for all of us in February and will venture to China this fall. He's learning Mandarin, loving on Steve and Rose, Deana and Bethany, Mary and Mary...learning always and always my right-hand man, my herald and my baby brother. Not by birth, by choice. The best kind of all.
And that's what I got goin' on...love, work, play, learning, writing, partying, trying to fix a broken world with proven understanding and finding that a task of some size...
Its cool. I got time.
I'm just gettin' started.
By Matthew Storey
This song was written in 1985. One of my favorite years. I was 22, long hair, power bat, an ass that could break a neck or stop a bullet.
I never thought a lot about my 'life' back then. A woman fell for me, and she seemed nice enough, and that was that for the next ten years. It never occurred to me to search for the 'right one', or tailor my likes and needs to who my partner would be. She was a good person, an attractive, kind, intelligent woman. We had fun together and she was strong where I am weakest. We made each other cum. It was enough for me.
Decades later, I realize that my lady wanted more than I gave her and expected me to want the same things.
I didn't. But I knew I was supposed to, instead of understanding this, I acted out and our parting caused deep hurt that has never healed for her.
Sometimes I get mad at my 22 year old self for not thinking things through. But I just miss the fella so damn much, I can never bring myself to get too upset with him (go have fun, little Matt!).
I was always the one who not-terribly-bright folks like to point to and snidely remark...
'Get a LIFE!'
I gave it a shot, a few of them actually...but the concept never took hold.
No spouse. No kids. No mortgage. No car. No frequent flyer miles.
Been laid once since Clinton was President, but don't ask me about it, since I was blackout Drunk. Only the presence of a trusted correspondent at the event helps me to know it even happened.
Aint got a flat screen TV. Or a bed. Had a closet full of beautiful Brooks Brothers suits, Burberry Overcoats, London Fog raincoats. Didn't think about them much, then one day I noticed they'd been eaten to shreds by moths.
Do have a roommate, eight cats and an old dog named Scout. Got some books, some baseball bats. Friend gave me a Lava Lamp. I have a spectacular collection of figurines. Got a little money stashed in a foreign place, don't ever think about it though. Had some expensive new glasses, got Drunk and lost 'em, now I wear a beaten down pair I bought in South Beach, May of '98. Work seven days a week. Manage investments. Walk dogs. Feed cats. Care for old women. Every time I can, I sit down here and write. I am close to my roomie. I love my VG Partners, Mal and Steve, and Steve's Parents and his girlfriend, Beth. Got a couple of cherished old friends, cherished old girlfriends, digital buddies on Facebook. Clients of my businesses. Readers of my work. Family outside of Mom is absent.
A life, for sure. But a 'LIFE!'.
Not even close.
So, now I'm 46 and at a crossroads. Been living with a wonderful woman for the past 11 years and it works well for me. But, like my old relationship, I am not sure its so great for her. Our lease is up and we can move to a larger place for the same money. Or stay. Or move separately. My work is clicking, my future is secure in terms of having enough money, enough to do, enough to hold my interest. I've never been bored and live in my head easily. I can probably do anything I wish to, if I wish to, but what would I do if I could do what I wish to?
This does not excite me. Or scare me.
But the fact it doesn't excite me, scares me a bit.
Clearly, there is something that lots of folks are 'getting' that eludes me here!
...sigh...
I am thirteen days Sober this morning, as I write. A routine I am familiar with. Ize drinks a bit and, sometimes when Ize drinks I fall down, hit my head or some such and scare the few who love me. So Sobriety is called for.
I got sober for the first time in 1992 and am well familiar with the rooms of recovery, a beautiful experience that changed my life as it has uncounted millions and has remained a central part of my personal philosophy, drunk OR sober.
But 29 is not 46, anymore than 22 is.
At 29, I was a desperate guy, deeply in debt, in a relationship that was not working and drinking was threatening all that I had. Recovery gave me clarity back and encouraged me along the path my beloved had been urging...
...to get a LIFE!
Ugh. I've already detailed those results. Back then, a 'spiritual transformation' that would allow me to focus on myself, on the here and now and leave past and future aside, was exactly what I thought I needed to save things with my lady and to move towards places I needed to be moving towards.
Now there is no lady. There is no desperation. I like my life, simple as it is, busy as it is, unconventional as it is. Unlike then, this life is built around what works for me. And what doesn't. I spend most of my time studying the past to help me better understand the future. I carry a detailed, dynamic understanding of markets, client finances, health and needs of pet or human lives under my care into every day. But I don't have a 'plan' for ME. I consult with my roomie when needed, about adjustments to our space and shared obligations. Mom can rely on me for financial help, laundry, shopping, getting creeps out of her face...I mentor, coach, teach, share, explain, listen.
The days are full ones. I sleep well.
And now I gotta figure things out and make active choices. Not for others. For myself.
Help!
Well. Lets start with the booze. I like it, but I don't love it. I am the child of an alcoholic who is dying of the disease and the grandchild of another, who died in its throes. I suffer, but not as they do (did). My demons, robust and numerous, were nonetheless slayed and/or bargained with in those battles of yore and do not assail me anew. I do well with my red wine and champagne at home by my keyboard. I do less well when out and about in bars at night, smitten with a pretty young thing and pounding bourbon. That's where broken bones come from. Whatever plan we devise (and, oh yes, you are in this with me if you are reading these words and will be asked to submit a life plan for me when you have it completed - any plan will do as long as I don't have to do it) has to include ways for me to get my dancing ass on the floor, enjoy the company of pretty young things and NOT break bones or worry loved ones. You dig?
Second. I like things organized and my situation is anything but. The reality is I am too busy and too scattered amongst diverse responsibilities to focus my ability on any one area. Everything does OK, but nothing can thrive because there is too much for one person to do. I have help, but its hard for me to delegate because you have to PLAN that, there isn't time, I stay on the treadmill and talented assistance remains underutilized or deeply frustrated (you know who you are!). My roomie and I have different tastes, styles and approaches to space and the space we move forward in, if together, needs to work better for BOTH of us.
If I could live elsewhere, differently, what would that be?
If I could work more intelligently, how would I organize my time and resources?
I haven't taken care of my health for years and have only my decades of athletics to thank for having survived intact and reasonably representative of the hottie I once was. But that is wearing thin on the margins and my fitness, diet and regimen demand attention.
Whats the plan there?
I haven't thought seriously about a relationship with a woman since the '90s. I look back at the special women I have loved and lived with and marvel at their variety and quality, but also at how uniformly unsuitable my array of gifts was for their needs, and vice versa. I fall for women who don't make sense for me and women who don't make sense for me fall for me. I am a serial monogamist from a broken home who doesn't cheat or lie, but has no clue how to make somebody happy or create a comfort level for friends, relatives, colleagues in her life. It would be harsh to say I don't give a shit what people think about me, but would it be inaccurate?
Not the best platform for a Romeo renaissance!
And my courtship strategy can best be boiled down to political and cultural harangues blurted out during ads between innings of the Yankee/Cowboy/Islander games.
Line forms to your left....
So, lets see. Money is ok. LIving situation needs evaluation. Sobriety is in. Work need organizing. Health needs my attention. Pussy is probably never going to happen again!
I've got my work cut out for me.
By Matthew Storey
When I was in first grade, at a school called 'Bentley' on East 71st Street that no longer exists (REALLY doesn't, all Google has is an obscure NY Magazine article from 1972), I was cast in Mrs. Sussman's class production of 'Peter Pan' - in the title role.
I'd been shuffled from Manhattan to Texas and back to Manhattan in my young life and was a gifted, troubled sort of kid - acting was a tremendous outlet for me, because I was fascinated by language and physicality and a born exhibitionist. A poor kid in a rich kid's school, shuffling on the bus from my 21st street home, while my classmates arrived in Chauffeur driven...Bentley's (!) from the West Side or walked over with staff from nearby Park Avenue luxury. My hair was shoulder length blonde and my clothes were often mismatched, as my Secretary mom was stretching every dollar to afford a 'doorman' building and a private school that made zero sense for our finances or my life prospects.
Despite the monetary situation, I was a sharp kid well ahead of my peers and the teacher connected well. Mrs. S saw that I took to the story and learned the lines and songs easily and the whole experience shines like a beacon from the dark memories of those days. Memories that included angry outbursts in 2nd Grade, expulsion from school, hospitalization on a child psych ward resulting in a Thorazine prescription (prevailing science for hyperactive kids from broken homes in 1971, but by 1977 it was called a 'chemical lobotomy' - great!), bill collectors calling the apartment day and night, alcohol at home and angry fights between Mom (who I lived with) and Dad (who I did not). Mom taught me to love learning and love myself. I never wanted for a warm bed, warm meal or knowledge of being loved. She did what single parents, who are kids themselves, do - the best they can.
But before our precarious situation unraveled and I flipped out - there was 'Peter Pan'.
I loved everything about it. Mom made me a green outfit and I pranced around, hammily singing and charming the adults and Mom soaked in the praise I got. It was a high water mark.
For sure.
I never really acted again, which was probably a mistake.
The story of 'Peter Pan' is iconic, of course. It was written by a Scottish Author named James M. Barrie, and has been performed, on stage or film in near continuous rotation since its 1904 debut. It is a story about a boy who lives in 'Neverland', a world of Fairies and Pirates, and was based on the author's brother who died at 13 and, like Peter Pan - 'never grew up'.
Living in NYC, of course, even whacked out on Psych drugs, sure as shit ain't 'Neverland'. Its R-E-A-L, and the best thing that ever happened to the actor who played Peter was getting tossed from the fantasy land of Bentley into the real world of PS 40 Grammar School. I was a healthy, active, intelligent kid who was going to grow up around all types of people from all types of circumstances - going to Public School introduced me to those kids and their lives.
Lives I could relate to.
It was down the block from my home, across the street from the playground ballpark which would be my own 'stage' for more than two decades.
At Bentley, everyone was white and wealthy.
At PS 40, everyone was not. Black kids, Puerto Rican kids, Dominican kids, Chinese kids, White kids from Stuyvesant Town who were almost suburban, White kids from the tenements who were as urban as urban gets.
Kids with two parents, who were happy families. Kids with two parents who fought, who drank, who didn't give a shit. Single parent homes. Only children (like me), kids with siblings in our school, or other schools. Poor kids, rich kids (yup, had them too), smart kids, dumb kids, violent kids, depressed kids...even kids with Gay Parents, although I didn't know what that meant nor would I have cared and didn't discover the truth of that until decades later.
To this day, whatever my problems are, and this confessional will only skim the surface, I don't have a prejudiced bone in my body and I believe that is due to Public School, which, like the Subway teaches you often and early that race, money and circumstance have nothing to do with quality. I was aggressive, and the kids at Bentley were passive around me. At PS 40, the kids didn't surrender the spotlight or stand aside for my insistence - I had to compete, and when you have to compete, you win some.
And you lose some.
Which is real life as well.
Life got easier for awhile. I excelled at school and had many friends from all walks of life, I loved reading books and playing baseball and became a Little League star and then a softball star at the park across the street.
And I made new friends, older friends, guys who I played ball with. I learned that you get respect for what you DO, not who you are or what you promise. I could play, it was obvious and I was smart too, that got respect.
But I was a kid, like Barrie's brother, and while my game could hang with the men - I was too young to make good choices about certain things.
Later in life, when I was trying to get sober (at 29), I learned in AA that emotional development freezes for alcoholics and addicts at the time when they start using. Which leads to an awful lot of adults who 'never grow up'. That isn't my story, exactly, I am in many ways a sophisticated person, intellectually, experientially and emotionally. But I was that when I was 13 as well. Sophistication and experience do not equate to mature action, lots of times the strength of making good decisions comes from being able to take direction from trusted adults and the instillation of good habits. I have some - I am a worker bee, I am a honest friend who puts others needs ahead of my own. But adult 'lifestyle' choices never really took hold with me - I like what I liked then, although generally able to manage things better...generally being a general sort of term.
I remember my first beer.
It was 1977, a late May afternoon, after the games had been played and I'd had a big day on the field. My protector and friend asked me to come hang out with the guys and we went across 20th street to the hangout area on 19th. I'd gone to school on the block for years and knew the park inside and out, but I'd never sat in with these older kids and it was thrilling to me, a man sized little boy with brains and ability but no real parenting or socializing. Guys were playing cards, teenaged girls drinking beer...my buddy from the games, Steve, offered me a 'Michelob' - he said 'if you can hit like that, you can drink one of these!'.
I had three.
I LOVED it, it made me feel something I had been looking for and I ran home with blood rushing in my head. Two weeks later, I'd go to the Feast of St. Anthony on Sullivan Street with Steve and some other older guys and drank red wine all night - returning home to my Mom with my first blackout drunk.
Two months later, I turned 14.
I'd grown up around beer. Mom would pop a Miller while doing her makeup before work, while we both listened to '70s AM radio on WMCA and WABC and then would listen to Howard Cosell 'Speaking of Sports'. She'd go off to do her thing and I'd do mine, school, dog walking, cat sitting. I took a job at the antique store later that same summer and was a kid who always had his own cash, which only helped the illusion of being older. I was the same height I am now, had cash and cred - I could, and did, buy my own.
Booze was different for me than mom, as it is for other drinkers. Everyone has their own way in life and with substances.
I had a mentor, who I looked up to then and look up to today, who was a fat 16 year old when we first met (I was 10), but had taken to being healthy and fit by the time I took to drinking. I'd learn from the guys I drank with about my friend, drinking, being a tough fighter...but what I saw was a guy always under control, who walked away from fights and taught me to do the same, who headed home when things got dicey, who could be counted on to come through and be his word. He'd take me to see his job at UPS when he started working and I could see that his co-workers had as much respect for him as the rest of us did at the ballpark.
But he wasn't a drinker anymore. So I hung out less with him and more with guys like me, who liked to drink.
I still got respect for my game, my smarts, my genuine friendly personality. But my behavior made me enemies as deep as friends, and I never really developed a keen awareness of that truth, in part because a lot of the negative stuff emanating from me happened when I was loaded, or showing off. Kid stuff.
Like I said, people respect what you DO.
And I was just getting started. I never liked to drink daily, usually because my hangovers are three day affairs and the insanity I can create often leaves me shattered for a time. But there were always flareups, and while my muscles and my knowledge continued to expand, in many ways, I was never as completely 'me' once I picked up that first drink. I'd go on to battle alcohol and its effects on my life till 29, when I was 'sick and tired' of being 'sick and tired' and checked myself into Rehab at St.Vincent's in Westchester. I was nervous having to tell my boss I needed the time and he jumped out of his chair and hugged me, telling me that was the best thing he had heard. My longtime girlfriend told me it was 'the best decision you ever made'.
I was there for three weeks, and then I was in AA for the next three years. Sober. Clean.
But not fixed.
My psychiatrist at the time was not terribly enthusiastic about my sobriety and I was perplexed, especially since my lady was a mental health professional who had recommended him (to this day she is furious with him over this).
I asked him why and he said, 'what I worry about is what you will do to yourself if you don't have the drinking', which you at least are used to dealing with. He told me that I was dealing with rage from years before booze, feelings that had never been confronted, and would likely find substitute ways to hurt myself and find 'Neverland' if I gave up hooch.
But I did give it up. First I got euphoric with my newfound health and clarity, then I made a pile of money in the Stock Market and then, five months after checking into rehab with 40K in debt, I put two carats on my lady's finger.
Of course, they told me in rehab - concentrate on sobriety and humility, don't make major life choices in the first year. Getting engaged, quitting my job and opening my investment business were all pretty major.
Taking advice was never my strength. As I have mentioned.
There were battles with gambling, with money, with cocaine...all without a drop of hooch. There was an issue, but it wasn't necessarily found in a bottle - it was the man-boy holding it who needed to be better. And, as predicted, I proved you don't get fixed while you are still broken.
I broke up with the fiance, discovering at long last that while her depth of character and maturity were naturally attractive to a wild child like me - her lifestyle dreams of suburbs, kids and catholic church were never going to match up with my own. Drunk or sober. I met another woman, not serious, played a bit, worked a lot, had some success, did a good job in AA and on surviving the loss of the only relationship I'd known since 21.
Traveled a bit and hit my stride in some ways.
Then one day I was in a fight, sober, with a drug crazed guy who thought I was a rival for a woman, I was not and it didn't matter - he was on Meth, which, thankfully, was never part of my tale. He drew a gun. Then he dropped the gun in his delirium. I reached down and picked up a piece of wood laying at a construction sight and swung at his head the way I used to swing at baseballs.
That was it for him. Self-defense. But you don't forget something like that.
Mom and her man did continue drinking, they both had more of the jones for it than I and it amazed me to see the damage, even as much as I had seen in my own life and the lives of fellow drunks.
I stopped chasing a lifestyle I neither understood or had a clue about, letting myself be about being the husband and father I dreamed of being but was woefully incapable of being.
I started to drink again in 2001 and party in other ways as well. I've made accommodations to keep myself safer - I drink wine or champagne at HOME with my long time companion, New Hampshire Girl and try to do whatever bar drinking in the late afternoon, before the crowds, the young women, the temptation to be...a kid again.
I am no kid, that's for sure, it'll be 33 years since that first drink for me next month and 47 on the planet in August.
A few weeks back, I stopped in to a local place that I like with my best friend and we met an adorable creature behind the bar. She was born when I was 23, in 1987, and while I loved the sights and sound of her, it was HER not the allure of a young woman. She's a special girl, and I am a fella who likes being in bars, likes being around special girls. We had a BLAST that visit and went back to see her on Tuesday.
It was 5:30, so she should have been on shift. But Red Sox Steve remembered she'd been switched to nights and we spent the 2 1/2 hours prior talking about health care, baseball, NYC politics, his incredible lady, our colleague and devoted friend, Mary...drinking light Pabst Beers at a leisurely pace.
The adorable one showed up for her shift at 8:00, and we were all happy to renew acquaintances, a love-fest ensued that had all the old juices flowing.
But that wasn't the only thing that flowed...I started ordering shots of Bourbon, which has always kicked my ass, whether it was Jack, Jim, Grandpa...in this case the maker left a mark on me that includes 4 broken ribs from an incident I cannot recall, lost $400 glasses, humiliation in front of a respected and appreciated new friend and a devoted member of my core.
Again.
Bad choices. Bad results. Broken ribs are no joke - let me tell you the pain trying to sleep last night was a reminder about me, bars, bourbon and young, beautiful women all in combination.
I'm no saint. I hate the pain in my side and the knowledge it will already be Summertime before I can walk around without the ache. But I am who I am, I like a bowl of plant, a sniff of egg whites, a glass of wine...I may always be desirous of smart, together, experienced women in my world and my life, I'd be an idiot and a liar if anyone thought warm eyed young beauties would lose their sway over my thoughts, or other body types...
Another tale.
Not a morality tale, this be, just a chat, between a guy who played Peter Pan 40 years ago and sits here, at home, watching 'Jeopardy' with cracked ribs, the loss of a fun new friend and a lesson renewed.
The world is filled with real folks like me, Kirstie gets fat, gets thin, gets fat. Tiger and Bubba want strange young tail, get caught and try to play the 'I'm bad, card'. But that aint it. We are all who we are, the key is trying to survive the weak areas and stress the strong ones.
For the most part, I do that. I got lost for just a few hours and my demons bit my ass, if I head down the street now and start banging back Bourbon, there will be a girl, a fight and damage.
I aint up to it. And I won't be.
At least until my ribs heal.
By Matthew Storey
At 8:09, I grabbed the leash from the window guard and Scout brushed past me into the hall as I opened the front door of Apartment 5C.
I held it around my own neck and headed down the first flight of stairs. Scout waits until I get a good lead before starting down, a game we've been playing since we were both in our athletic prime back in San Francisco and used to fling ourselves off steps and walls in a race to the bottom.
This isn't like that. I'm wearing flip-flops, white shorts and shades and feeling the Champagne and Omelet that accompanied the Yankee win. Scout is nursing a sore foot and various ailments that make flying over stairs impossible. We take it slow.
There was a great scene in a lousy movie called 'Shooter'. Marky Mark is showing some hottie how to shoot and tells her:
'Slow is steady, and steady is fast'
We are all over that.
The last flight on the way down is a bit of theatre, like older guys everywhere, we need to pay homage to bygone days. So he waits for me to look up as he poses atop the 2nd floor landing. A big, furry red mess with snaggly teeth and a joyful, soulful look. I sweep the first door open and turn my shoulders like I intend to run right out the door, a signal that says 'Eat my dust!', and the big old body comes rumbling down the stairs, sliding through the doors on the brake.
I put his leash on and sneak a nose kiss. His breath is no bargain, but aint no curvy been waking next to daddy for longandlong, so mine is not drawing crowds either. We don't care anyway, love is like that.
The first tree guard is our primary target, the key being getting Scout to circle around so his massive butt doesn't block the new wave of grads klick-klacking along towards new jobs, via the 86th Street station. It works for both of us, Scout gets to float a few parked cars with a stream worthy of Tom Sawyer and dad gets to enjoy the endless stream of working women, minutes removed from showers, mirrors, reassuring kisses from pets and boyfriends, heading off to face the day.
By the time they get there, jostled on the Subway, leered at by creeps, hit up for change by religious nuts, answer phones, deal with idiots, spill stuff on new skirts, sit on glasses...
the view and the proximity might get a tad
scary.
But in the glorious streaming sun of an early fall morning, the hair is perfect, the gait is measured, the lips are unsmudged and all is right with the world.
I root for them, I admire them, I am a fan. And if lovely curves and a smile catch an old man's eye, where's the harm?
Which Scout digs. He knows Mom was there, Grandma and The Lady too.
We head West on 89th Street, towards 2nd Avenue. I've got a button down shirt on, first time I've worn long sleeves since June. Blackberry is in the shirt pocket, and with the flip flops, disheveled would be the kind word. Scout catches some decent sniffs along the way. I've got my imagination, Red Sox Steve has that thing he treasures and Scouty B has the nose. Right smack dab in the middle of his face, taking up most of his head. His beloved teeth let him down years back and the chewing and gnashing is no longer on the schedule, but the nose! So much to smell.
And, the Dog deal is less discreet than the vagaries of a passed by guy staring wistfully at sweet young memories. Scout sees a dog he likes? He shoves his face in their crotch!
AND the booty.
It seems to be their thang.
He's sniffed enough, had his deluge, now he is spinning around signalling the main action. He finishes, I swoop it right up into a baggie (hey, I am, literally a PRO at this!) and we're onto 2nd avenue, making a slow serpentine flow towards the bodega on 88th, with mutual accommodations for sniffs (Scout) and looks (Dad). How much time have we spent together like this? Twice a day, minimum, for 10 1/2 of his years?
I remember when we were apart. Scout's mom and I took him home from the SFSPCA on January 5,1998, I moved to Miami in July, came back for visits every 6-10 weeks until April, 1999. But he was with his Mom in SF for that next year. I missed him every day. Women leave, they don't get me. But Scout? He and I think, and love, the same way. When he came back to me, with his Mom heading for a multi-year adventure in London, I was the happiest guy on the orb. (May 27, 2000 for the biographer).
Bodega is a good matrix for feminine dervishes, swooping for Red Bull or coffee, a Times or to mail a bill. Scout gets tied up on the mailbox legs. Not that he'd move. He is always right there, outside, I can see his beautiful face staring back at me through so many cities, so many parking meters, lampposts, store gates, trees...years. I grab the 2-Liter Diet Coke, a News, a Times...the overnight clerk and I share pleasantries, he knows to grab Scout's slim-jim without being asked.
I can tell the pretty young woman behind me on line thinks I am angling to get a better view, and she is cute, but no, just checking on my boy, thanks.
He bucks a bit when I get back to him, raining kisses on his snout. He wants it.
D'ya wanna SLIM?' I ask.
Um. Ye-ah. I bite off a few inches of the jerky and Scout launches his bulk upwards, meeting in a kiss between us and the transfer of the Slim.
We enjoy it.
Chicks dig it.
Win-Win!
Now I've got my paper and am anxious to drink copius Caffeine, arrange the day's trades, schedule the pet visits and handle calls. If we HURRY, I can read the stories about the Yankees latest win.
'Hurry' aint Scout's strength.
So its a slow-go, I plead and say 'In my day, a Dog was a Dog!'.
He just smiles up at me, his bliss entirely a result of spending twelve years with a babbling multiple personality, but understanding none of it, except for the words that matter to HIM.
I can almost hear his thoughts, though.
'Ya know, Dad. In all these years, I never know what the hell you are talking about! Don't you EVER shut up?'
OK, I got the hint.
We're at the base of the stairs. Scout hauls himself up in measured movements and I urge him on. His old bones and hypothyroidism make this exertion his primary exercise. I am sure it is what keeps him going. I love to watch his tail, languidly swaying above me as we amble up the four flights, huffing and puffing, but savoring the shared ritual.
Home. Key in. Leash off. Cats strewn about.
Another day is under way.
By Matthew Storey
'Love is a smoke and is made with the fume of sighs'
Romeo & Juliet - Act 1, Scene 1
'You cannot call it love, for at your age the heyday in the blood is tame'
Hamlet - Act 3, Scene 4
William Shakespeare
Forgive the Prince his mean streak, he's in the midst of ripping Gertrude a new one and almost assuredly would not have seen the meaning in the phrase for a middle-aged Guru, living in an (then) undiscovered land, up at 3:30AM and penning nonsense because nonsense addles his soul...
She, of course, deserved every bit of his ire and he, well he probably WOULD understand.
Funny that.
I used to love women. I spent the whole of my time from 16 to 35 thinking of little else, despite the demands upon my mind from other critical areas like work, school, putting on my socks...but I never really got it figured out.
I loved a girl in High School, an incredible spirit, a great beauty...but knew, ultimately I was not for her.
There was another girl who fancied me, but I could never center my thoughts upon her.
Still another seared herself into me, but so much else was in the way...and then, life changed.
I met another one, who came at me from somewhere I'd never have thought to look and I did not love in my heart, but I loved in deed, faithfully...trying to get where one wishes to get and, of course, failing to match her love with that which she needed.
I tried again, tried to force it on a spirit that needed anything but forcing and grasped at admiration, companionship, laughter and tears...but Love, elusive.
I went inside myself then, tried my hand at living in my mind, gave up on love, and on women...I thought I'd just grow beyond it.
And I suppose I have.
That was longandlong ago, I'm alone and I'm content. The world rises up sometimes and sends me down a rapids filled with treacherous pathways between the rocks and has done so tonight...but I don't worry too much, I've seen these sorts of canoe rides before and know I'll come out in the pond.
I grew a silly little patch of facial hair under my bottom lip, its got blonde, brown, red and grey in its array and is the sort of thing I might kid about if it showed up on a contemporary's lip. They call this a Soul Patch. It looks dumb.
But I love it.
I'm not sure why, however, it is so NOT me. Maybe that's what I love?
New Hampshire Girl went to her Brothers wedding two weeks back, the last of her siblings to marry off. She and I have lived together for longer than any of the four married couples. But this isn't love, not that kind anyway. I get to worrying about her heart - but that isn't my job and she wouldn't want it to be. I saw an old friend tonight and got to talking about the girls we knew, know...and my mind has been wandering a bit.
I'll come back around.
When?
I couldn't say.
By Matthew Storey
Lonely looking sky...lonely sky...lonely looking sky,
and being lonely,
makes you wonder why
Jonathan Livingston Seagull Lonely Looking Sky - Neil Diamond
Everyone does 'Goodbye' differently.
Some of us embrace the change that death or departure brings.
Some of us dread it.
Doesn't matter. The one you love one day decides to move on. The one you love gets sick. The one who was always there and kept the possibility of a smile, and a good world, isn't there anymore.
When I was 34, I was living in San Francisco, with Scout, and Scout's mom. My business got an offer to merge some of its operations with a firm back East, in Westchester, just North of home.
My lady had outgrown me and we'd both begun to travel a lot, for business, but also because being home was not what it used to be. Scout was my baby boy, but I wasn't hers. Not anymore.
I took the merger offer and on St. Patrick's day, walked into my new East Coast offices. There was a girl there, I couldn't take my eyes off her. She was thin and athletic, wearing a pastel suit and mini skirt, she wore heels that showed off toned legs and her blond hair was cut in bangs that covered her eyes.
I strutted over to her (in my understated way!) and asked who was the keeper of the Diet Coke. She moved her hair just slightly and I saw a flash in her eyes, I almost flinched for a brief second, looking into those blue eyes. She had looked frightened, then fierce. I thought she was going to hit me!
But, instead, she was the sweetest, most gracious person. She gave me some soda and I had to go chat up the new business partners, but thought only of the blonde girl and that look she gave me.
Like a cat.
Before I left that day, we'd exchanged life outlines and pictures of the ones we loved.
Scout.
And Babalou. The Blonde girl told me her Cat was the bestest there was, and once again, I got the feeling I better agree quick. And docile.
We became fast friends, in that way you do when you meet someone who is your total opposite.
And exactly like you.
I was lost somewhere in the air between coasts, somewhere in the space between a life that was ending and a new one beginning. The new venture crashed quickly. I moved to South Beach and my lady stayed home in San Francisco. We hadn't been a we for awhile, a country between us made it easier to deal with that.
New Hampshire Girl flew down to visit me that November, for her Birthday, and we became closer.
Her mom called me one day in December, a woman I'd never met before. And told me I was coming to New Hampshire for Christmas and that was that. I was on the beach across Ocean Drive from my place, on December 23, freezing outside of Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve in a little seaside town in New Hampshire.
Her Mom hugged me. Her Dad made me feel welcome. Her sisters and brother all made me feel right at home.
Six months later, I was out of South Beach, back in Westchester.
With New Hampshire Girl. And Babalou.
We didn't have a lot. I'd lost nearly all in the time since I first walked into those offices. We'd both been broke and knew how it was done. You work. You get back up. You try. You back each other up.
You love on your bestest ones.
Babalou was the princess in our little attic Aerie. A shimmering coat of black and caramel, big, intelligent green eyes that looked frightened, then fierce. She scratched me. Often.
The first day, I was so lonely for the cats I'd left behind in Florida, and for Scout, back in SF with his mom. New Hampshire Girl went off to work, at the 'bad place' and I opened up my laptop - back to work. Babalou came over and rubbed my legs, then we sat on the couch and she jumped in my lap.
I called New Hampshire Girl and told her. The line was silent. I'd been expecting her to be thrilled.
She was mad! I asked her why, she said 'I'm just quiet'.
When she came home, she walked right by me, and went to Babalou and I heard her whisper 'you're not going to the other side, are you?' Babalou said 'Meow' and they melted into each other.
I've lived with New Hampshire Girl and Babalou for 10 1/2 years since that day.
Scout came and moved in with us the next year. We moved to a bigger place as things got better. We got two new cats the year after that, two weeks after New Hampshire Girl was at work, downtown, when the buildings fell down. I thought I'd die worrying about her that day, stuck in the Suburbs while my home burned and my neighbors jumped out of window, and my New Hampshire Girl was trying to make it home to Babalou.
And the rest of us.
Things got worse for awhile, my fault. We got through. We moved to Manhattan then. With Scout, Emma, Teddy.
And Babalou. She was the boss in our little family and New Hampshire Girl was her devoted mother, doting mother, as she was to all of our babies. But Babalou had come first. A scared little cat and a scared little girl from New Hampshire starting off in life together, before The Man, the Dog, the other cats.
New Hampshire Girl and I didn't make it as a love match. Her taste runs towards user-friendly solid citizens with at least a hint of Fashion sense. I'm a complex freak with a big mouth and a big heart who needs more love and tolerance than I'm probably worth. We both take solace in the animals, when our families ask us why we don't have spouses. Or children. We have each other. We have our creatures. Our house is filled with love.
It doesn't look like some peoples homes, or families, and some people can be mean about that.
We get frightened sometimes. But we're fierce.
Abraham joined us, then Mr. Biggles, and Sabine.
Emma died, the week after Thanksgiving one year, and we grieved so hard. Then Abe died too and I thought we'd die also. We clung to our remaining brood. As long as I had Scout and New Hampshire Girl had Babalou.
There is this little phrase she uses with Babalou when she comes home after a long day and they fall together;
'I love you to the Moon, and back'.
I've heard it 10,000 times, if once. We had a Hospice cat named Blackie, last year, she became part of us and when she died, it was sad. Then, this year, Jenny and Julie came to live with us.
About six weeks ago, my baby boy, Scout started to have pain in his mouth. He's touch and go, and so am I.
Saturday night, I was sleeping at a client's house, with another brood of animals. New Hampshire Girl called me and told me Babalou wasn't eating. We took her to the Vet on Sunday. The Vet said she looked pretty good on first glance. We sat out in the waiting room, for Babalou to be brought back out to us with whatever meds would make it all better. My mom called, worried. I told her 'Vet says she looks good'.
I hung up. The Vet walked out. She said 'Her liver...'.
What it did to me to see New Hampshire Girl's face in so much pain was like catching darts with my palm.
Babalou. Princess of the House.
'Miss B' to you, Man.
Scout has a song he sings 'I like Babalou, Babalou's who I like' (I help him). She's been the rock in our little clan for longandlong and her Mom's heart and soul for longer still. New Hampshire Girl's called her dad, crushed, he said 'Gee, you really like this cat...'.
That's the rumor.
People don't mean to be callous. Not everyone has a family of 4 leggers, just lucky, we are.
As I write this, New Hampshire Girl is Cat Sitting downtown, we've got a foster cat here in our home, Scout is resting quietly. Babalou isn't home. She is in the Hospital. With a Mass in her abdomen, a failing liver, and pancreas.
When New Hampshire Girl calls, I'll wipe my tears off my beard, my shirt, the keyboard. And take the Lexington line.
We're going to say goodbye to our little girl. And that's what she is to us. All of us. But she means so much more to her mom.
I'd do anything not to see those blue eyes ache. Those blonde strands soaked with tears. This house full of creatures, and love, without its anchor, in her spot. She's the one who is always in charge when her Mom is out, Scout is security, My job is to assist Babalou with anything she needs.
We'll need a new boss.
But that can wait. Right now there is a just a big hole in our hearts, all the way to the Moon.
And back.
By Matthew Storey
I cried because I had no shoes and then I met a man who had no feet
This is derived from a longer, but essentially identical, quote from 'The Gulistan' (The Rose Garden), written by a Persian Poet, Sa'di in 1258.
I see my folks, they're getting old, I watch their bodies change...
I know they see the same in me, and it makes us both feel strange...
No matter how you tell yourself, its what we all go through...
Those eyes are pretty hard to take when theyre staring back at you.
Bonnie Raitt Nick of Time
I was visiting my Mother yesterday, who lives in the same Manhattan apartment we moved to on January 1, 1969, and I shared an elevator with a woman who has known me for nearly 41 years, not well, but as person who sees someone on the elevator now and then, over decades. She made her way into the elevator when it stopped on her floor, using a walker for balance. Her hair was freshly cut and stylish, her clothes attractive and well arranged, her manner graceful and eloquent. She has always been thus, a beautiful, poised woman and has seen me go from an irrepressible hyperactive blonde boy dogwalker to a troubled teenager, a successful businessman flying home from points distant and now, a middle-aged dogwalker, back in the City, taking care of his mom as she once took care of him.
Guru: 'Well hello, my friend'
Woman: 'Hello to you, how nice to see you again!'
Guru: 'This walker looks like it must be a great comfort, I may need to think of one for my mom'
Woman: 'I hate it!'
Guru: 'But it does an excellent job of preventing you from falling, No?'
Woman: 'But I want to be Dancing!'
Guru: 'But you fell before you had the walker, didn't you?'
Woman: 'Yes, it was horrible'
Guru: 'And now you never fall?'
Woman: 'No, never, I rely on it'
Guru: 'Sounds to me like you are dancing as fast as you can and blessed for the chance'.
Woman: 'You were always such a wonderful man, thank you for those sentiments'
Guru: 'And thank YOU, what a nice thing to hear!'
Aside from the kind words, which are seldom heard, the encounter resonated with me for what I said to this woman and how I speak with myself, inside, ABOUT myself and my place in this life.
I meant every word and she knew them as truth.
But she still misses dancing, being the sexy magnet of younger days, moving freely without the device that makes any movement possible today.
Wisdom only gets you so far.
Acceptance is no-frills.
Fantasy is seductive.
Nostalgia tastes great, but its less filling.
I've never learned to age gracefully, or do much of anything with grace - except the ability to offer support to people who have been preyed upon or who need to know how vital they are and be encouraged.
I owe my father for teaching me about the most vulnerable and those who prey upon them.
I owe my mother for showing me how much you can do for another person by listening and encouraging and complimenting.
I have Birthday cards, from 1993, when I was turning 30, newly sober, had made my first substantial amount of money, was engaged to the woman I loved, was physically prime and safe under a Democratic President for the first time in my life and even had a Super Bowl champion in the early moments of a Dynasty.
On top of my game.
The cards make me cringe. They are the words of a soon to be 34 year old woman trying to make her petulant child-man feel less crushed about the 'calamity' of turning 3-0. I can remember being crestfallen about that time, so self absorbed that I lost sight of how much I had, and focused only on that I had lost - the breezy leisure of youth that I had never actually KNOWN, since I worked fulltime since I was about 12, the endless appeal of my youthful sexuality, which I happily chose to spend loving my woman and never considered the flighty other places I could put my heart, my lips, my cock. I regretted losing an idea, not a person, the guy who I was pining for was never the guy I WAS. The body I missed was just as hot, the woman I loved the same I had then, the life I'd dreamed of coming true (I'd begun working for myself that Spring), I still easily dominated on a ballfield or in a conference room, life held much and I did not appreciate it.
I do now, at least when thinking about THEN.
Which is a problem of mine, still. I am not a linear thinker, I swim in pools that are quite deep or shockingly shallow, but rarely swim with the school in the main stream. My mind will mull on great questions for a decade, will shift suddenly to trashy smut, sport, frivolity, and fill up with deep knowledge not readily sought and eschew the understanding that smoothes so many through the world. The result has always put me out of step with my fellows. What I think on and agitate for, often does not concern others. What they all know, I know not, the elements of life that hold their attention have never held mine.
My lady used to say that age never impacted upon her, because she was part of family, one of seven kids, and she saw the whole line move through the world and the years and kept her place in the greater whole.
I thought about that when I watched Derek Jeter play baseball last night in The Bronx. This mulatto kid from the Midwest by way of New Jersey, who clings closely to his mom and dad and they him, even at 35, who wakes up every day, puts forth an honest effort and suffers no neurosis despite his prominence and the demands life makes upon one so famous, so wealthy, so under a thousand microscopes.
Like Barack, Derek was born with one foot in each side of America's racial divide. But Barack, like Guru, never had the benefit of guidance or of place. Derek lives in the now, unworried about the opinions of others - positive or negative, he KNOWS he belongs somewhere and, if he was to suffer some calamitous injury that ended his Hall of Fame career, it is as difficult to imagine him pining away for what was lost as it is to think of him striving for the approval of strangers.
Guru never had that cool. I took about fifteen years to understand my 30's and appreciate them and now will set upon understanding my 40's, better than half way through them! I am never in the now, always buried deep in the past or journeying beyond time towards the future. I check to see there is a roof, a place to lay, chow, that the pets are OK, New Hampshire Girl is safe and then...poof...I am off in my Time Machine. I used to crave the attention and approval of the masses (Barack is going through this in public) and, having learned of the world and myself, walled myself off from those goals, finding as I did, that they held neither comfort nor chance of success. Unlike Derek, I have no sense of 'place' - I am untethered to that which came before me, and leave no lineage to follow.
A quantum creature for a quantum age, which might just begin - in about 150 years!
Pretty sure I will miss that one.
But I am still here, and I miss dancing, for sure. I miss the way it feels when I'd hit a Baseball and watch it fly over distant fences...the impact I once had on women...and, instead of savoring those memories and looking around me, I am that child-man still - now half a life again past 30, still moaning about the man I no longer am.
But, like my friend in the Elevator, I have a LOT to be thankful for. The ball no longer explodes off my bat and women no longer seek excuses to hang around, but the heart beats well and true, the legs stride powerfully and without pain, the mind is only as addled as ever, the eyes have faded, I sweat too much from my belly's burden upon my travels - but I am healthy and loved, despite myself, by my colleagues, my roommate, my mom, my dad, my animals...I have less, perhaps, than I once did but certainly more than I once lacked. I have all that I need inside myself and can get what I do not have from outside...I am in need, more than anything, of gratitude for all of that.
I am grateful. This work, this Vagabond Guru, is the only work I longed for and it is REAL. These friends, new and old, who share themselves and their lives with one such as me are precious. These colleagues who listened to me dream of a place like this and shared the dream and have made it ALL OF OURS, stronger, deeper and more genuine than it could be from me alone.
My life suffers from neglect, all that nostalgia has left me fat but undernourished. All that time travel has left little time for planning lifestyle, fixing broken toilets, sinks, air-conditioners, backpacks, sneakers, waistline...
But I aint dead yet, not even close, and I still want to dance...
While I still can.
By Matthew Storey
I wrote my first annual Birthday Blog at Fo-di-fo, and again at Fo-di-fi, so this makes the 3rd year for the column.
A different year, indeed.
For the first time since I was in my 30's, the Government is actually progressive and built around SMART people who rely on Reason and History, not faith and culture.
For the first time since 2006, the Yankees are comfortably in 1st place in August.
For the first time since 2004, I feel absolutely lost.
Things are better than I could have wished for out 'there'. Sonia Sotomayor is on the Supreme Court, Bill Clinton is performing yeoman service, the Social Conservatives are self-segregating around the likes of Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee and raising a ruckus over the idea of poor people getting health care, the way they once did about old people getting health care, old people getting pensions, blacks getting freedom, blacks getting equality, blacks protesting being arrested for no reason on their own property, blacks sleeping with whites, gays existing, gays loving who they love, gays wanting to love who they love under the law, women taking charge of their own bodies, women having sex with whomever they please....
They can always be reliably counted on to be AGAINST something that reflects common decency and progress, so hearing them yell and carry on is a pretty safe indicator that those things may be in the offing. Which is a good thing, with a bad soundtrack.
Things in 'here', not so good. I'm getting older, and I can feel that and I can see that. But I am still not anywhere near being in step with my fellows about being 46. I suppose I always thought I'd be done by 24, and I never really was around people who were well-adjusted, or who lived traditional lives...I just make it up as I go along and try to keep focused on what MATTERS to me - Ideas. I'm endlessly fascinated by the Future, and by the Past, but the Present has never managed much claim on my interest.
I don't have a mortgage, haven't driven a car since 2003, don't have any insurance policies, don't have any taxable income, don't travel anymore, don't have a spouse, don't have any kids, don't speak to my family, don't care what my place looks like, what my clothes look like, what my hair looks like...it all seems trivial to me. I want to know what is going to happen, in a 100 years, in 1,000, in 10,000...but the obsessive cultural slant towards celebrity relationship, celebrity babies, reality TV is disorienting, like being amongst a people heading full speed towards 'Idiocracy'.
I see the Chinese, making tough, long-term choices to move people from ignorance and faith towards science, to limit births to 1 child per family, to move massive populations from rural to urban life, to punish the corrupt and I admire their ability to understand the future, plan towards it and execute policies that will facilitate it. Then I think about Sarah Palin...and all you can do is sigh...oh America, my America, will the stupid and the selfish forever restrain thee?
I've been beating myself up about past relationships...haunted by memories of women who wanted me to be a husband and father, a 9 to 5 executive, a striving, productive member of society!
What was I thinking? That aint me, for sure!
I am still a kid inside, and an aging man outside. Not any way to make that popular, any woman will tell you she prefers 'Adult Male, comfortable in his skin and society' to 'Child-Man hybrid, ruminating endlessly on the state of the world, the future of the species, the battle for forever'.
Thankfully there are wonderful recreational drugs and on-demand pornography to fill in the empty spaces! I wonder how people make it without drink, drugs and porn and I must say, I don't want to know HOW they do it!
I'm a reaver, I suppose. A warrior whose life is built upon the shattering of other lives, a champion of the Future set upon wreaking havoc on those whose dreams are anchored in the past. I attack Social Conservatives like I breathe, automatically and enthusiastically. There never seems to be enough time in the day, to smack as many of them as deserve smacking, but it always feels good when my efforts topple a precariously perched life...
....timberrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
And there is satisfaction in knowing the ones who try and hurt the poor, the immigrant, the minority, the gay, the single woman....are getting theirs, and getting it good. As long as there are 'Tea Party' types around...creationists, xenophobes, homophobes, anti-semites, anti-intellectuals, feudalists...I will always have prey to dismantle, disembowel, balkanize, ostracize, belittle...I won't be around to see the shining future, the stars, the faith-free society...but I'll work towards harming its enemies every day I draw breath...through economic violence, imagination and verbal abuse. The only good Social Conservative is in the dirt with other extinct humans.
Actually, I am cheering myself up! I DO have a purpose, I DO love my work, I DO love my life...it just gets lonely.
I need to toughen up and get back to it. It is a shock sometimes to look inward and see that I am not such a 'nice guy', not one to see positive in drek, or be kind to those who make life ugly. But it is R-E-A-L, and it is the path I have chosen, the place in the sand I have drawn my line. A man whose life is battle is not a man for a love life, not a man for chatter about nonsense, not a man to break bread with. I suppose I am a worthy chronicler and a devoted defender and supporter of a select few, but a man such as I SHOULD be alone. I know that, now, of course, sometimes I just have to write my way back to the truth of the matter.
Until Fo-Di-Sven!
It's a beautiful noise
Goin' on everywhere...
Like the clickety-clack
Of a train on a track...
Its got a rhythm to spare
Its a beautiful noise
And its sound that I love
And its fit me as well
As a hand in a glove...
Neil Diamond
By Matthew Storey
I was born in August 1963. In Manhattan.
My Mom and Dad, both born in 1940, grew up in Texas.
Mom, the pianist and voracious reader, was a sensitive soul. She was the 3rd child of 4 born to John, a physician and Olivia. Papa's little girl lost her dad when she was 7, and my Mom lost her window to a world beyond Texas. The 3 kids and a pregnant Olivia, moved in with my Great-Grandmother, Alice, the widow of a prominent Dallas Baptist Pastor, who had a strained relationship with my Mom's Papa. Once the baby was weaned, Olivia went to work in the rough and tumble world of Corporate Energy and Alice, at 63, took over the care of 3 young kids and an infant. An educated woman who had been the wife of a brilliant man, Alice, was nonetheless a devout Southern Baptist who had little time for the curiosities of a pretty little girl who'd always favored her father and chafed at moving from the top to the bottom of the family pecking order.
Mom retreated into her books and the Piano and entered Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas, it was the fall of 1954...
Dad was a Motorcycle racer and gifted Artist. The son of Lewis, a Home Builder and Nita, an artistic soul overwhelmed by the conventions of Texas life and the responsibilities of being a wife to her traditional husband and mother to her four boys. My Dad, the oldest by 7 years, gradually became the confidant of his Mom, as she slipped into Alcohol and Mental Illness and away from her life as Wife and Mother. She fired his soul with love of Art and Music and a passion for a life that was unattainable in 1950's Texas. Dad straddled the reality of his boyhood and the possibility of a world beyond, channeling the disconnect into his studies and his Artwork. He too was a student at Good Ole Woodrow...
These two kids, from difficult home environments, who loved Art, Literature, Music...and were horrified at the racism, violence and fundamentalism all around them...gravitated to one another and after High School, headed first to Baylor University in Waco and then to Los Angeles, where my Dad enrolled at Pasadena's Art Center College and Mom went to work. After LA, they made their way back to Texas, and then on to Manhattan where the Art Director's, Advertisers, Publishers and Galleries were and Dad began his illustration career. The whole world seemed to be opening up...Manhattan, 1963, Camelot and JFK...as far away from Dallas as it was possible to be and still be in America.
In August, their son was born (the large head on the VG logo), two weeks before Martin Luther King spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Monument...it was must have been intoxicating, the sense of promise and progress, a repudiation of what they'd grown up despising and a celebration of that which they'd only dreamed might be possible.
Then Dallas happened.
Again.
In November.
The Handsome, Urbane, Sophisticated JFK was gone. In his place, a man who could have been one of the attendee's at Grandpa Rogers (Alice's husband) services at Ross Avenue Baptist or a client of Lewis's. A good man, LBJ, but a Texan born and a man of that world - the world they'd left had returned, the city they'd fled had killed their hero, their broken hearts were only two of uncounted millions.
On Christmas Eve, 1963, my Dad's mom, Nita, drank garden poison and left her suicide note to my Dad, she'd disapproved of my Mother, who she felt was beneath his station and was horrified by my birth, which she saw as cementing the mistake. Lewis sent money so Dad could fly home to see Nita in the hospital, but she was gone. Mom and I remained in Manhattan and waited for my Dad to return.
Decades later, in a 1996 Interview with San Francisco Weekly, Dad would describe the events of 1963 as the formative experiences of his life and work. The death of JFK. The loss of his mother.
There was no mention of a son born that year, or the woman who'd been his wife.
In a very real sense, the man who'd been my Dad never did return from burying his mom and his President. My mother, who'd lost her first love when her Papa died, freaked out as she watched her husband retreat from their relationship and home, and, by 1967, Dad left Mom and I for a woman we knew who lived across the courtyard of our Kips Bay apartment complex.
I played with her kids. One day he was my dad, the next he was theirs.
I was three years old.
Mom took one page from her own Mother and got to work on taking care of us, and one from her Mother in Law by descending into pills and booze when the hurt got too deep. She was a bright, vibrant woman of 27, with a 3 year old, who'd lost the only two people she'd ever counted on. We detoured to Texas for a year, where my Mother's sister explained that she'd 'lost her husband' and became a pariah.
It was 1968.
The broken hearted progressives who'd lost their champion in JFK could never warm to LBJ, they lurched to RFK, and watched him gunned down, they flirted with McCarthy and insured Nixon, the same man that JFK had beaten back in 1960. Camelot was dead. Grandma was dead. Mom and I were miserable in Dallas and Dad was remarried back in Manhattan. The dreams we held were the deadest things of all.
Mom chose to leave Texas, chose to marry Dad, chosen 'that life' and failed...a year later, we returned to our real home and I grew up in Manhattan, with my single mom - two damaged kids trying to care for one another. Dad lived with his new family, had a son with his new wife and fought in court with my Mom over Child support for me. We'd meet for weekend visits and they'd tear into one another on the street outside our 21st Street apartment. We'd hang out at Dad's places, first in Brooklyn, than Connecticut and I'd be dying inside and my Dad would ask me things like 'why hasn't your Mom remarried?' - which, to someone who lived with the broken woman in my house, seemed like the cruelest of cruelties.
Dad and I were not close.
Life went on. I boarded a plane at 12 to visit my Dad for the summer in LA, excited to be a kid flying alone, but also dreading the experience of being with my Stepmother, who I was scared of. I'd grown into a dynamic kid, extremely well read and informed, a gifted athlete and a curious lover of books, comics, skateboards, music, animals...I was hopeful that my Dad would see how much I had going for me and would help me get that feeling I'd been missing, of having a DAD in my life.
I walked off the plane and my dad greeted me with his 2 stepkids, the son he'd had with her, a strange woman and a red headed kid I didn't know.
He said 'Matt, I'd like you to meet my new family'.
I'd long since learned to roll with changes that might seem bizarre to other kids. I met the 'new family' and was relieved to find the 3rd wife was a terrific person, who had a handle on what I'd been through and made time for me, where the 2nd wife (like my Grandmother) had always seen me through a prism of who my Mother was. Dad was busy, a thriving career and juggling two families on the West Coast, it was not going down the way I dreamed. But it was cool in its own way, I loved Skateboarding down the Hollywood Hills and into downtown, buying comics and checking out street scenes so different than the ones I was accustomed to.
Dad and his new family moved back to Kips Bay, which meant my neighborhood, and we had a period of relative normalcy in that we saw each other regularly and formed somewhat of a relationship. I was a teenager now, a smart, damaged kid who spent my after-school time playing ball and hanging out with my working-class buddies on the streets. I was the sort of ballplayer who was able to play with the men, and the men drank and drugged after games, I joined in and picked up habits that would alter the trajectory of my life. Habits that had similarly afflicted my Grandmother, my Dad's brother and my mom.
Dad broke up with his 3rd wife, after the birth of his 3rd son, and lived for a time in a studio on Mercer street in the Village. I'd breeze in from my escapades and find him working hard on his art, preparing lesson plans for his art students or meet new women in his life. He married again, and moved to San Francisco, and we didn't see each other for a decade. I got engaged in 1993 to a woman who I'd been dating since 1985, my Dad wondered how I would be dealing with her Catholicism, a question that I bitterly resented when he posed it but one that turned out to be prophetic when it came down to discussions of having children and where we might live. We never married.
In 1996, I was dealing with the fallout of several bad decisions I'd made in business and my mom suggested that I should go spend time with my Dad in San Francisco. I picked up and moved to SF to live with Dad five days after Christmas, 1996. Dad had a wonderful little apartment in the shadow of Coit Tower, with a little porch in the back for me to sleep in...I took it slow, worked on my business goals during the day and my fitness through the various 12 Step programs I required and the little Y in Chinatown. We did our best, as two adult men, to form a bond and succeeded to some degree. But after only a few months, his 4th Wife, who now was a trusted friend, began to appear more and more in the apartment and it became clear I was cramping dad's style. He was amiable and kind, it just wasn't the lifestyle he loved - having to be a care giving parent to a child of 32, who'd been aching for that care for almost three decades. The re-run rejection had a predictable impact, I met a woman and moved in with her, then got a place in The Mission and dad went back to the life he'd known.
We lived in the same city, but we never got together.
I moved back East in '98, first to Miami, then Westchester and back to Manhattan in 2003. Dad lives in San Francisco with his once and current wife, teaches Illustration at two different colleges and has a career in Illustration and another in music and performance art. His brilliance has been reflected in generations of devoted students who themselves have gone on to glittering careers in the Art world. Dad has combined his unmatched ability as a draftsmen with his searching, probing intellect to generate an incredible body of work.
We speak on the phone occasionally, typically when I've had too much wine and need a break from writing. Dad is kind and genuine, its good to talk to him and to share our views on matters that matter.
Last week, my roommate, Erin, told me I'd received an e-mail from my dad's companion, it was an invitation to a Lecture Dad was giving at the launching of his featured show this summer at The Society of Illustrators. The Society is located on 63rd Street, between Lexington and Park Avenues.
I know this because I am a Dogwalker, and I walk my beloved Chester right in front of the Society every single day of the year. My walk down the block is filled with conversations with doormen, hot dog vendors, embassy employees, event planners, other dog owners...it's my backyard.
Today, when I walked by, the front of the Society was flanked by two placards announcing my Dad's show, 'Life After Black: The Visual Journals of Barron Storey'.
I took a cellphone picture of the exterior signs, and I tried to go inside to get one of the announcement cards. The door was locked, labeled 'Private' and the two women inside acted as if I wasn't there, perhaps put off by my Yankees Backpack? My High-Top Converse Sneakers?
They knew right away, this was not a place I belonged.
Dad and I will get together, we'll have a meal or a chat. I think he realizes I won't be making the show.
I'm not the sort of fellow you'll find at an opening, for the same reasons it wouldn't make sense to bring my Dad to the Yankee game I enjoy, or to sit in the Grandstand at Belmont Park, or lay out on Long Beach...we're different men.
And there's the political tenor of his work as well. I respect EVERYONE's right to believe what they wish and to express that belief as they see fit. That right, however does not extend to doing so in my presence. Dad's the same way. He wishes me well here at VagabondGuru.com and understands that, for me, these columns and these rooms are my journals. But we disagree on much, and communicate to audiences in our own ways.
If you know me or have read my work, you know there are two rooms you never want to invite me to.
The first being the sort of rooms my Texas family favor, where the crowd is Anti-Immigrant and Pro-'Life', where homophobia, anti-semitism, anti-catholicism and feudalism are gospel and Progressive, secular, bisexual, stoners from New York City are the 'Bad Guys'.
You know. Guys like me.
Invite me to that sort of room, and fights will ensue.
The other room, which I suspect might develop for my Dad's opening, is a place where the group consciousness runs towards Anti-Capitalist and Pro-Palestinian. Here, the folks known as 'Them' are financial speculators who engage in global currency and equity deals for profit, people who fill their leisure time with spectator sports, moderate progressives who are Pro-Israel and hawkish on Islam.
You got him. That's me, right here.
In this sort of room, the disagreement is more cordial, no fighting. But the disconnect is heartbreaking, and the distance no less firm.
Every son wants to look up to his Father, and to feel that his Dad would do anything, pay any price, make any sacrifice, for him. I've watched Red Sox Steve's Dad these last few years and I've seen what that looks like.
Every Wife hopes her Husband will find joy in devotion to his family and sublimate himself to their care and her happiness.
Every Father wishes his son will grow to share his values and appreciate the choices he has made.
But most of us will never live those lives. The next time you hear someone say that we need to re-stigmatize single parenthood, I hope you will remember the story you just read. Single parents happen, and not just in the ghetto. For every black or hispanic family dealing with this situation, there are three white families dealing with the exact same circumstance. I've got a picture of Mom, Dad and I, circa 1965, and you could easily be looking at a snapshot of Marilyn Quayle's fantasy life (ewwwwwww!).
Doesn't matter. There is no such thing as 'looking the part', only 'living your ideals' and, when your ideals don't match the circumstance, its time to go. Regardless of the situation left behind.
My mom and dad married before they knew who they were.
Each other.
Themselves.
They saw and experienced things in LA and NYC that were beyond the expectations they had when they bonded back at Woodrow Wilson High. It happens. It always will. You cannot and SHOULD not legislate those relationships and you can never make a man stay and provide for a family that he no longer believes in. When you read this, you are reading the story of people who MADE it through, but two of them did so with scars so deep, their lives were never what they might have been.
Tough. That's life. We all had chances to move on and make our own way, and two of us were not able to make the transition. There is ZERO value in demonizing the person who makes a change. There is PLENTY of value in figuring out a system in extracting cash from the departing parent while it STILL MATTERS - the State of California finally came for my dad's income while I was living with him, in 1996, and on behalf of his then, 25 year old son, from his second marriage to a woman who had killed herself the year before. They collected half his pay, but the money went to the State - not the children or wives who went without decades before. What is the point of that?
The point that DOES matter is to make sure that the sorts of kids who can make it out of these family dramas intact do not have to be the sorts who are so gifted they will then make it all the way to the White House.
All kids deserve a real chance at life and as many helps and pushes along the way as it takes, let's put ourselves towards the answers.
By Matthew Storey
We...know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.
Henri Poincare (1854-1912)
We've had another Century to 'wonder' about this since Monsieur Poincare submitted his Prostate problem to Pre WW1 Medicine and received an embolism as a reward, costing the world one of the finest minds we've been blessed with, at 58.
And what have we learned?
On the one hand, there is nothing to wonder about. Delusion is CLEARLY more consoling to those of us who indulge in our private little rationalizations in order to hop out of bed (or stand up, if you're Guru...) and certainly the consoling nature of delusion has been the primary source of comfort for the 'Faith-based' throughout the Millennia.
If reality gets tough, delusion can provide the bridge to sanity.
But the problem, of course, is delusions aren't REAL. Learning that your carefully constructed crutch is made of paper mache can lead to buckling. Will you be able to remain standing?
And is Sanity possible, if the sane person believes in delusion?
If a crowd of hundreds of thousands believe their god is a living being, whose whims determine the daily lives of all humanity and further believe this deity has instructed them to wage war on some group of non-believers who do not ascribe to the rules, as delivered to their prophet...
Is that crazy? Maybe.
Are THEY crazy? Not necessarily. If generations stretching for centuries have purchased a stake in the delusion, certainly it can not be considered 'insane' for a person born to that climate to take the delusion as fact. Undoubtedly, the person who REJECTS the delusion is the one accused of Insanity, which has a dual meaning;
1.) Bonkers
2.) Different
So, perhaps, in our example, we've got a group of mostly sane people, who believe in the insane and condemn the different, who realize this.
Who's crazy now?
We all do this in our daily lives as well.
Then there is the benefit of living in the 'Real', taking life as it IS and working to cut a swath through your delusions, which form as automatically as toe-nails and require a similar pruning regimen.
Learning to live in the genuine is a gift we are endowed with, we start out taking the world in as it comes and find the magic in the 'what is'. Then we learn language, custom, faith, culture...delusion comes along to plug the gaps. When an adult lives in the real, it is likely to have come from a depth of experience and reflection, a lifetime of watching the vagaries of one's own extremes - endlessly nudges a being...
...towards the center, of ideas, of habits, of self...
and away from the center, of existence, of attention, of decision.
It is a liberating thing to NOT be the be all and not be the end all. But rather, to be.
But it takes practice, and it only goes so far. Human, after all, and all those tapes playing on your hard drive...
By Matthew Storey
Lately (the past forty five years or so...), I've been ruminating on the fault lines in the crust of American life. The ones that continue to shake our foundations before we can build them back up.
The ones that drove some on the Left to remove LBJ in 1968, and thus allow the transition from the champion of 'The Great Society' towards Richard Nixon. These same lines are with us today and can be seen from Howard Dean to Michelle Obama, both of whom, on some level, do not share their Presidents easy facility with the heirs to LBJ.
The ones that drove some Religious fundamentalists to agitate FOR 'Separation of Church and State' when JFK was about to become President, for fear of his Catholicism...then towards prohibition of inter-racial relationships when Civil Rights made open racism less societally acceptable, then towards condemnation of the Gay and the Sexually Independent Single Woman and, finally...in the current climate, not only towards eradication of 'Separation of Church and State' but towards Taliban-style 'Biblical Law'!
The ones that drove working class Americans to vote for anti-working class Presidential candidates like Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and who rally to Sarah Palin.
Why is it that, 233 years after 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal', 144 years after Emancipation, 133 years after 'Bring us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free', 89 years after Women's Suffrage, 64 years after The Holocaust, 44 years after The Civil Rights Act, 40 years after Stonewall and 35 years after Roe V. Wade...
We are STILL grappling with Race, with Gender, with Anti-Semitism, with Sexuality, with Homophobia...?
Why are Americans, amongst the most privileged and successful peoples on Earth, moving AWAY from Education and towards Faith, in large numbers and why has 'Anti-Intellectualism' that was the hallmark of Reagan, become so ingrained in much of our National fiber?
One of the strangest dualities in American life happened during the 2004 Presidential campaign.
A man left Yale and headed directly to Vietnam, where he assumed a small command and saw his equally privileged best friend and fellow Yalie, killed. While in the Navy, this man was superficially wounded on three occasions during combat and received three Purple Hearts, he successfully led his command ('A Swift Boat', PCF94 and two other vessels) in a victorious engagement, which resulted in a Silver Star and received a Bronze Star for his actions that resulted in the rescue of an injured Green Beret.
When he left the service, he advocated for the end of the war he'd seen firsthand, and used his educational skill and depth of knowledge to bring the matter before the United States Senate. As he spoke to the Senators, one of the senior members of that body, Howard Baker of Tennesee, commented that he's someday expect to see the young man as a MEMBER of that institution.
At that point, he began his career in the law and politics, eventually leading to his election to the Senate. Upon his election, as a Liberal Democrat in the largest Conservative landslide in American History (1984), he stated that his service would"emphatically reject the politics of selfishness and the notion that women must be treated as second-class citizens."
In 2004, appalled by the Bush administration and seasoned for the effort, this man ran for President.
He was broadly condemned, by the right as having a trumped up military career, for being an 'Intellectual' and for supporting Union workers, minorities, women's rights, reproductive rights, progressive taxation and other causes that marked him as one of the Senate's most liberal members. He was broadly condemned, by the left, for being wealthy, for having served in the Military and for having been 'hawkish' in supporting military intervention in the Middle East after Americans were attacked and killed on domestic soil. His opponent in the Democratic primary, when vanquished, identified this man, the aforementioned champion of liberal policy and former Anti-War leader as being 'almost a Republican'.
His opponent was another man who'd gone to Yale, was born to privilege and spent time in the Military. This man had not been engaged in the Vietnam combat, but served his time in the Texas and Alabama Air National Guard units. He was a vigorous proponent of the Vietnam war and openly contemptuous of the Anti-War movement that existed at Yale. He tried his hand at business and ran, unsuccessfully for Congress. His father then was elected Vice President for two terms and President for one, when the Father was defeated in his re-election campaign, the son ran for Governor of Texas and his lead campaign adviser, a man named Karl Rove, alleged his opponent, the sitting Governor, Ann Richards, who had, famously said of the man's father 'he was born with a silver foot in his mouth' was a closeted Lesbian who had 'appointed activist homosexuals to State Jobs' (horrors!).
The man won that election and another in 1998, before running for and winning the Presidency in 2000, despite losing the overall vote by 500,000 votes. During his first term in office, the United States was attacked and 3,000 Americans died on home soil, while the Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon burned from the attack. The man responded by invading Iraq, a non-combatant in the attack, who were led by a man who'd insulted and threatened the man's father during the earlier Gulf War during HIS Presidency. He also dramatically lowered taxes for the wealthiest Americans, extended government surveillance of its citizens, blacklisted political opponents and created a 'no-fly' list that was entirely secret and in-actionable that denied American citizens the right to fly, advocated for fundamentalist religious causes and moved the United States away from the digitally-based economy of the 1990's towards a commodity based model that concentrated on Oil and Gas, extraction industries, homebuilding and a broad de-regulation of industry and finance. Upon his election, he embraced the Wealthiest 'Have-Mores' as being 'my base'.
He was broadly loved by the Right for being a man of 'faith', 'strong' on Defense, proud of America and its ideals and a champion of lower taxes for the Wealthiest. He was held in contempt by the Left, who recognized him as an enemy born, but could not embrace the opponent whose every activity defined him as a champion of the opposition.
The latter man won the election, not the least of which, because many felt that he was 'somebody you could have a beer with'. He did this despite a series of televised 'Debates', in which, his opponent demonstrated such an easy facility with the subject matter in comparison to his own that it beggared belief and left the electoral winner in a petulant, childish mode that got worse with each successive drubbing.
But, in America, that guy - WON.
His administration would go on to allow the City of New Orleans to be destroyed and abandoned, escalate the failing conflict in the Middle East while diverting Billions of Dollars to firms previously controlled by the Vice President, alienate most of the World, so much so that his travels abroad, to allies and enemies alike, featured rabid protests of thousands of people...at the conclusion of his two terms as President, the National Surplus had been spent and a deficit existed that was close to 1 Trillion Dollars, the US Dollar, worth more than the Euro when he was elected, was now worth 66 cents to the Euro and the Markets had plunged to their lowest levels in 15 years, the housing market has surged, then crashed, forcing the Government to inject billions of dollars of taxpayer funds into the banks and Millions of people lost their jobs.
The exceptional man, who lost the election, remained in the Senate.
The guy who folks wanted to have a beer with, went into retirement and began to focus his energies on raising hundreds of millions of dollars for his Presidential Library.
Why would a free people choose thusly? What does it say about us?
On April 6, 2009, the New York Yankees opened their season at Camden Yards, the Baltimore Orioles stadium, in Baltimore, Maryland. Baltimore is a small, Urban City (20th Largest in the US, about 650,000 people) that is surrounded by much larger suburban populations in an 8 Million Person Metroplex that also includes, Washington, DC. Baltimore is a city that has lost nearly half its population since World War II and it's population is 64% Black, 32% white and has a small Hispanic population (about 2.5%). The average citizen of Baltimore is Working Class ($30,000). More than 23% of Baltimore lives below the Poverty Line.
One of the new Yankee players was born nearby, in a place called Severna Park, Maryland, the small suburb has a population of about 30,000 people and is 92% White, with smatterings of Blacks (3.3%) and less than 2% Hispanics. The average citizen of Severna Park is Middle Class ($70,000). Less than 2% of Severna Park lives below the Poverty line.
During the previous Winter, as the player, an acknowledged 'Star', shopped his services, he chose not to go to play in Baltimore, near his hometown, but rather to accept a big-money, long-term contract to play for the New York Yankees, in The Bronx, a Borough of New York City. The Bronx is home to approximately 1.4 Million people, 51% of whom are Hispanic, 32% Black and 21% White. The average citizen of The Bronx is Working Class ($27,000). More than 31% of The Bronx lives below the Poverty Line.
When the player was introduced in Baltimore, fans from Severna Park held up signs that said;
'Severna Park HATES you!' and others held up signs with sentiments ranging from '$ellout' to 'Traitor'.
These examples illustrate fault lines in American society that defy easy understanding.
The President who proceeded Bush, Jr. and followed Bush, Sr., was a poor kid with a single mother who grew up on the fringes of society, but managed, through intellect and effort, to elevate himself in his own lifetime to the pinnacles of academic achievement, professional accomplishment, power and wealth. The President who SUCCEEDED Bush, Jr., was a poor biracial kid with a single mother who grew up on the fringes of society, but managed, through intellect and effort, to elevate himself in his own lifetime to the pinnacles of academic achievement, professional achievement, power and wealth.
Many who champion the first of these men, distrust the second.
And vice versa.
The differences in policy and the structure of basic beliefs between the vanquished candidate and the two who became President, are not substantial.
The reactions to them are dramatically different.
The ballplayer, from Lily White Severna Park, inspires rage...NOT from the inner-city folks who are struggling, but from comfortable suburbanites who feel a sense of entitlement. Something has shifted from 'Local boy makes good, to play with historic Yankees' as proud Baltimore felt towards that favorite son whose statue graces their beautiful city as well as the Yankees Monument Park and the Hall of Fame, a fellow named Babe Ruth...to the diatribes on those Severna Park signs.
There is something IN THERE, something like 'you OWE us', that makes what the player himself described as an easy decision 'anyone in my position would make' (playing for a franchise dedicated to the best of everything and relentlessly focused on winning, while paying millions of dollars more, rather than one who've experienced 11 straight losing seasons and seen their once proud brand tarnish in the process) seem like betrayal and be portrayed as somehow malicious.
And there's something more. Those Hispanic Bronx residents, who are making less than half of the income they are taking home in Severna Park, are NOT up in arms about the ballplayers salary and they do NOT feel like something is being taken from them. They feel like things are getting better and the future holds MORE opportunity, not less.
Disparate circumstances and diametrically opposed reactions, despite the reality of those circumstances.
Tough to Grok.
Guru grew up about as non-traditionally as either Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, which is to say, there ain't a lot of 'tradition' being talked about in relation to our common lifestyles, but there sure are a lot of us who've lived it that way. I was never taught that I was due anything because of my lily-white visage and it took me into my twenties before I realized that didn't matter, because people around me sometimes held me in esteem simply BECAUSE of my fair hair, pale skin and manner of expression.
Then, later in my career arc, I was in line for a position with a progressive advocacy group and the multi-racial, lesbian from the University of Chicago, who was 'The Decider' let me know, directly, that she felt it would send the wrong 'signal' to put me in the position, but she was anxious to have me donate my contributions to the organization in a pro-bono capacity. I wouldn't need pay, because that would be inappropriate somehow, to her.
Later I heard they hired someone for the position. A multi-racial, lesbian, who'd attended the University of Chicago with 'The Decider'. She was paid what the job warranted.
Us versus Them is the same game, regardless whose calling who by the titles. After a fashion, it is possible to see the latter circumstance as a healthy balance to the earlier ones, but in reality, BOTH are equally insidious and detrimental to this American experiment we've been trying to get going since the Enlightenment.
Ideas like MERIT, FREEDOM, EQUALITY...the sorts that drive this project and this Guru, are getting crossed up in the mix of racial, cultural, sexual identities that Americans hold closest to their hearts.
I've got a friend, a good friend, who despite his intellect and life experience (he's from an Orthodox Jewish family who lost many family and friends in Poland during the holocaust and he lives with a black woman from the Ghetto who has four kids and receives public assistance) is openly Homophobic and reacts with ANGER at the suggestion that Homosexuality can no longer be condemned in polite conversation and has been removed from the list of Psychiatric disorders (36 years ago!). He screeches to me that 'Homosexuality is a Pathology' (which was the Psychiatric excuse for homophobia until 1973) and claims its removal from the DSM (Diagnostic Manual) is a result of 'all the faggots who became shrinks!'. His girlfriend, who has dealt with racism her whole life, forcefully agreed with the blacks who voted FOR Obama and AGAINST Proposition 8 in California. Both of them feel, on some level, that full acceptance of the Gay is somehow a reduction in their OWN status.
To me, that's all just bullshit, an excuse for hatred.
The rationalizations are always artful and always phony.
There is something about RACE and CULTURE that drives sane people crazy, and I must say, I have no idea what they are thinking about. It is alien to me and, for all my efforts to understand the rage and sense of displacement that is so GLARINGLY obvious (take a look at the crowd at a Palin rally or go onto her Facebook page and read what you find...), I still can't really connect with what these folks are feeling.
I don't have any answers for any of this. I live as I always have, totally INSPIRED by these American 'ideals' and totally bewildered by the widespread disconnect between the ideals and the perceptions of so many Americans, on both sides of the Electoral Aisle.
What do YOU think? I'd love to know...
Half an hour ago, at 8 A.M., I was awakened by a tremendous explosion.
Before I was even fully awake I heard the words come out of my mouth: "It's a terrorist attack!" In that split second I knew that it was not nuclear (I've given some thought to what a nuclear strike would be like), but that it was very bad. Though the blast was some distance away -- who'd bother to bomb Greenwich Village?-- the sound tore into me with a sickening sense of damage, as if my already mutilated city were my body. This takes many words to describe, but it was all instantaneous.
Listening, like on 9-11 in the moments after that queer metallic thud, I thought I heard screams and sirens. (But you can always hear screams and sirens in New York.) Then there was a sharp flash and another explosion . . . rain. Slowly, I realized that it was just an extraordinarily violent thunderstorm.
Like most New Yorkers, I live my life as if it's not going to happen. Oh, I have been saving water in gallon milk jugs lately, just out of a kind of anticipatory embarrassment: if something did happen, you'd feel so dumb if you hadn't. But as weeks go by and threats prove empty, you can start to believe, consciously at least, that maybe they really have been decoyed off to poor sacrificial Iraq, and they won't hit us here anytime soon.
It was interesting to meet my own subconscious certainty that they will. My heart hammered for quite a while.
- amba
By Matthew
'Is it getting better
Or do you feel the same
Will it make it easier on you now
You got someone to blame ...'
'We're one
But we're not the same
Well we
Hurt each other
Then we do it again'
U2 - 'One'
Are you a fair-weather friend?
Did you come around for Obama rallies cause it got you off and made you feel like striking a blow at the Bush sickness? And did you gleefully extend those angry shots to include the 'Bush/CLINTON' years?
Never mind history, it felt good.
And are you now bitching and moaning to your fellow acolytes about 'THIS' or 'THAT'?
Let me tell you something...
This is a FIGHT. And we've sent a boy to do a 'man's' job...
But he is a BRILLIANT boy, and a principled one and one who is utterly unbound by prejudice and ideology...
Which is EXACTLY what we need.
You were right about him, and Guru was wrong, when I doubted his experience and his demonization of the Clintons. They are MY people.
Move from Arkansas, to the White House and then, to Harlem and you've got my heart.
Repair Reagan and unleash commerce and technology - I'm yours.
Take the hits you took and the shenanigans you endured, and still come out as a powerful POSITIVE and hit the ground running as Secretary of State?
My girl.
My guy.
You WERE right about Barack, but you were wrong about Bill and Hill.
Bill summed it up at the Convention, Barack is on the 'right side of history' and that showed up on election day.
You know what I've heard since?
Outside of the surreal January celebration?
'Where's mine?'
Which is what THEY always say.
According to the GOP, they of the Rush voice, the Murdoch voice, the Palin voice, the Huckabee voice...
'We told ya'
This is who they ARE.
Who are you?
Cause Guru loves this kid.
Thats how I work.
Didn't believe Bill till I S-A-W. Now I love him.
Not terribly impressed by the spark of a new 'crush', incredibly so by the day-in/day-out art of coping and loving the less than ideal.
Guru makes a lousy first date, but a great lifelong friend.
These boys from Ireland, Rock Stars in their day jobs, are not the types to necessarily be Dubya fans, but they spent the Bush years advocating for African poor and gave the Bush people their only intangible gain that wasn't a smelly, authoritarian scumbag pulled from a hole
(not Cheney! Saddam, silly!).
I spent those years complaining about the bad luck of things.
How about you?
I used to say, if ONLY I had a President who could relate to an only child with a single mother who was wicked smart but didn't know where he belonged, and understood that America was the NATURAL place for people like us...
Bill knows, so does Barack.
And so does Guru.
So, if I may ask...where the FUCK are you now?
We all need you. Not in Denver for a concert. In AMERICA for a fight.
Do you have it in you?
Barack is getting the Jimmy Carter treatment - where every thing he says is used as a chance to muddy the water and find a way to the mid-term elections, where, presumably, he can be out-maneuvered.
Happened to Clinton. And he out-maneuvered THEM and led us to one of the greatest terms in our history, while dealing with the puritans...
But it would NOT have happened to either man (and I wish my lifelong sample was larger at this stage of life...but isn't that the POINT?) if those of us who understand the founders progressive vision stood with our champion and said...
'No!'
I saw a bumper sticker today 'Pallin 2012' You can keep 'The Change'.
And that is who they are.
Who they will remain.
Will YOU, having all your dreams come true..fail to show up for the fight that insures their implementation?
It is TIME to forget about YOURSELF
Can you even relate to that?
The Right-Wing have chosen the path the Taliban took, Hamas as well, they are 'True Believers' and that is the only path they understand.
But It's more complicated for us, we are subject to the subtle but CRITICAL differences in values and policy...
Doesn't matter...not now, we are CALLED UPON to united behind this man, this PRESIDENT and make his initiatives OURS.
He needs us.
We need him.
One.
Nation, under god, indivisible....
'Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law.'
Boethius, 'The Consolation of Philosophy', 524 AD
'You little slut'
John William Hines, Husband, affectionately, to Wife in Fort Worth, Texas Trailer Park
'If a guy's wife ISN'T a slut...he's gonna be needing a new wife'
LaHoma Hines - Wife, in response
'I hate to quote Andrew Dice Clay, but I completely agree with him on this one; "There is no bisexual, either you suck Cock or you do NOT suck Cock." By the way, I'm gay too.'
Gay Man 'Bronco69' in Bisexuality Forum, Online
'I'm not a TV anchor babe. I'm a big lesbian who looks like a man'
Rachel Maddow, MSNBC
'Drag is when a man wears everything a lesbian won't.'
Author Unknown
'... by the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private parts is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant.'
Paul Newman
'One should no more deplore homosexuality than left-handedness.'
Towards a Quaker View of Sex
'Wouldn't it be great if you could only get AIDS from giving money to television preachers?'
Elayne Boosler
'Trust a nitwit society like this one to think that there are only two categories - fag and straight.'
Gore Vidal
'The world is not divided into sheeps and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. The sooner we learn this concerning sexual behavior the sooner we shall reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex.'
Alfred Kinsey, 'Sexual Behavior in the Human Male', 1948
'Bisexuality is a blessing and a curse, but viewing it as a schizophrenia will make you insane.... I am not a whole person with split desires: I am a whole person with desire. As everyone is, regardless.'
Agavé Powers
'Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.'
Harvey Fierstein
'There is just one life for each of us: our own.'
Euripides
'Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.'
Dr. Seuss
'The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.'
Friedrich Nietzsche
'There aint no good guy, there aint no bad guy, there's only you and me and we just disagree'
Dave Mason
Image Composites - Mary Hannington 2009
1.) My 5th Novel, 'The Pencil and the Penis' has, strangely, only sold well in Alberta, Canada.
2.) 'Survivorman', Les Stroud, once asked me for the time in midtown Manhattan, but insisted that I provide the accurate time for some South Pacific Island and I had no idea how far ahead/behind EST it was. When I told him that I could only provide NYC time for him to convert, he darted across traffic and disappeared.
3.) Car trouble? I'm your guy!
4.) My inability to accept the fact that there is 'no such thing as a Religious Hot Dog' has sent me to hundreds of Meat Packing facilities all over the world, without satisfaction.
5.) My obnoxious demand in the Drag Bar that the dancer 'take it off!', ended poorly for all concerned.
6.) I usually watch 'Dancing with the Stars' and DVR, 'The Biggest Loser'.
7.) My roommate has had six kids in the ten years we've been living together, and she thinks I don't notice how fast the TP runs out or how we never have any Peanut Butter left.
8.) Can never decide 'Regis' or 'Howie'? When queried regarding contemporary Game Show Greats.
9.) Although I am now 45, my stamina hasn't altered since my late teens.
10.) Women stop me on the street to compliment me on my luxuriant mane.
11.) North Korean Dictator, Kim Jong Il, borrowed my 'Roswell: Season One' DVD and it came back late AND sticky. Only my concerns about dragging the rest of the World into Nuclear horror have stilled my tongue.
12.) Coincidence? On two SEPARATE occasions, when Britney was photographed without Panties, I was also commando.
13.) I never even noticed her breasts.
14.) Paco, of Disco 92 Fame, is my Uncle.
15.) Jeanette Vigoreaux and I made out in Mrs. Altschuler's 3rd Grade class, but the scar on my tongue turned her off.
16.) Six toes on my left foot. Extra Testicle. 34B Breast implants in my freezer.
17.) I went on a killing spree in Chicago for awhile, dressed as a confused kid and targeted fat, sadistic, corrupt men in Clown outfits, who I then buried in my crawlspace.
18.) The Vatican condemned my memoirs, costing me millions in Advance fees.
19.) I, like Millions of other Americans, can see NO potential succesor for Tom Daschle at Health and Human Services, and am resigned to see the position remain unfilled.
20.) I cracked three ribs sucking in my gut and now don't enjoy eating Fries.
21.) Meredith Vieira is now angling for MY job.
22.) It's cold outside, so it will be Red Wine, Prezel Nuggets and 'Lifetime' TV all weekend long.
23.) I can never figure out why women can't resist me, but I've boiled it down to the understated elegance, verbal reticence and magnificent apartment.
24.) The Vatican condemned my 'Choreography for Jumpers' DVD, which was designed to allow people on the edge to leap gracefully and make an artistic statement with their last step.
25.) My 2nd Business was a Tranny Whorehouse on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, called 'Shiksas with Dicksas'. Twas a roaring success.
I've been having the same experience that you have.
Facebook.
High School Friends. Old Lovers. Readers and friends from another site (The Sporting News, where I blogged The Magic Carpet for much of the past two years).
Being Guru, it will come as no surprise to hear that I have a pedestrian 'friend' count of 28...my colleague here on VG.com, Steve, adds that many every week and, despite joining a month after me and posting a profile that alludes to his intense need to dominate women (or perhaps, BECAUSE of that?) has something like 500 friends.
I can honestly say, at 45, that I have not had that many friends in my lifetime.
I was social enough in High School, but then, as now, more in a close circle...Guru is just not built for large groups. My High School Girlfriend is there...but she and I became friends a few years ago, while she was ending one relationship and she has now moved on to a wonderful new one with her beautiful daughter. Whatever allure my dysfunction held for her at 16, she has long since evolved beyond.
Smart girl.
I always used to think about her when Karl Rove went onandonandon about George W. Bush (he was the President for the past eight years, if you've blocked it out) having a 'reading list' and the 'contest' between them to read the 'most books'. Setting aside how utterly fitting and juvenile that would appear for most adults...let alone the 'Leader of the Free World', the thing that always made me giggle was the claim the President was reading Albert Camus, 'The Stranger' (L'Etranger, 1942). Once AGAIN, moving beyond the absurdity of THAT person;
a.) taking time out from 'swaggering' around, destroying the United States...
b.) sitting still for hours with a book...a FRENCH book...
And avoiding the ghoulish possibility that they used that particular book because, in it, an Arab is shot dead by an indifferent assassin...
It reminded me that the first time I became AWARE of the book, was when, my FIFTEEN year old Girlfriend, was reading it...
in French.
Now, SHE would have made a hell of a 'Leader of the Free World' - she's always been good at everything else and she did all that pesky 'reading list' stuff back before the demands of the big job would take her away from the art!
Anyway...old lovers leave for reasons. The girls are there, on my page (Wall) and their little icon photos reassure me...but they've heard my rap and left it long ago, so we don't chat much.
I post my stuff there sometimes, doing a little marketing for the site...but not too much.
Mostly I chat with readers of some of my material, other writers and two friends of mine and Alice back in the day, at Stuyvesant High School - 1981-1983.
They both live in San Francisco now, Guru lived there briefly in the Late '90s and Guru's Pop still does.
I've been euphoric to find them, find them well and find their brilliance continued and expanded upon since our last discussions, 25 years ago. They are very special to me, were then, are now.
But I hit a blip this week with one old Friend. We were Baseball teammates, Old Movie fanatics (back when this meant 'Revival House' - not 'NetFlix') and had the benefit of living in the same neighborhood as our school, so plenty of time to do important teenage boy things...a not inconsiderable gift given the great distances our friends traveled to take advantage of Stuyvesant's excellence - My Girl from Staten Island, bus+ferry+subway+school+subway+ferry+bus and our friend from Queens, endless hours on one of the Subway's slowest routes...
We shared a lot back then and our bond was genuine and special. I felt it immediately when he contacted me and fell right back into our old mode.
But that was a long time ago. My buddy is married and has a two year old (Guru has been celibate since Clinton was President!) he made some coin at a Tech in the '90s and writes cultural material for two excellent websites.
He is insightful, hilarious, edgy without being creepy...sensitive and agile with language.
So whatsamattah?
It's me.
I've been cooped up in The Aerie for a long time, writing my stuff, battling my battles with the Evangelicals and the Moveon.Orgers...formulating the rationale that has become VG.com. I've become so routinely abusive to those who D-A-R-E to disagree with me (at last count, 307,317,293 Americans, from 307,317,320) that I've whittled my ACTUAL friend count to about 8, three of whom I've never actually MET. Three of whom are in their late '70s. One is my roomie of ten years. The other is Steve.
Now I have other people I talk to...doormen, porters, countermen, delivery people, cabbies...I have clients for my businesses and the occasional intern or protege in one area or another, but not really FRIENDS. And the friends that I DO have are not my peers. They are younger, or older. Have different experiences, we don't have conflict areas because we don't really have any intrinsic commonalities - the mix and match works well, natch.
My business partner and friend, who does the spectacular Graphic work on this site and who is trying to help me network and spread the word is pulling her hair out (and will soon resemble Guru, whose noggin you see all over this place) with a writer who attracts readers and then TELLS THEM TO FUCK OFF.
Or some such nicety.
Interesting, isn't it.
An adult, reasonably gregarious, cultured, warm...his appearance in DRAMATIC decline due to age and weight, but still not yet hideous...who lives in a Metropolitan area of 22 Million people, a city he knows like he knows to breathe - effortlessly.
And alone. Or close to it.
I've thought about it a lot the last 24 hours and I think it comes down to 'Shame'.
I have always been ashamed of what I come from...who I am. My mother's family, Texans, Arkansans, Oklahomans are riddled with Southern Baptists and Feudalists, they are comfortable with words like 'nigger', 'faggot', 'yankee' (not the club, that's its own drama!) and concepts like 'home schooling', 'race mixing', 'last days'...Hillary's 'vast right-wing conspiracy' - that's my kin. At least most of them...there are some decent human beings in our family, who are not going to get any air here.
My Dad, on the other hand, is an internationally known illustrator and art teacher, whose work and students have made him a recognizable figure of stature and import in the Art world AND in Leftist Political thought. He is comfortable with words a host of words and concepts that are diametrically opposite to those of my Texas family, but which also define folks like Guru as being the source of the world's problems. Folks who dabble in finance ('carpet bagging', 'paper pushing', 'exploitation') - I can never get the look he had on his face when I was living in SF at his house (he split when I was three and we'd been long estranged, I decided to go and be with him so we could 'meet' each other as adults), seems SF is where this stuff is destined to occur for me, and the 3,000 miles sure comes in handy!
I was being picked up by my SF assistant (he had wheels, Guru is strictly a public transportation sort) and he asked me where I could possibly be headed at 2AM..I told him 'got to trade currencies, Dad'...he made THAT face and then asked me worriedly 'but Matt, that is wrong!'.
That's my Pop.
Split for Mom's best friend, ditching the woman who put him through Art School and their three year old for the family they met up with every day in the courtyard of our Manhattan apartment complex.
Had three sons from three wives, spaced seven years apart. Speaks to none of them, unless you count the times I call him, pathetically, after too many and aching to connect with dear old dad...
And my livelihood is what is 'wrong'.
He came to see me in The Aerie a few months ago, in the Summer...he'd been on a lecture tour through the prominent Art schools on the East Coast, something he does once or twice a year. He dug the feel of the place, or at least he said he did and seemed sincere. But he looks at me and sees my art and my talent as wasted and it shows. Moreover, he discussed his belief that Spectator Sports are the harbinger of doom for our civilization, particularly 'violent' ones...(the 'Bread and Circuses' rap, think back to Social Studies, 7th Grade and you'll have it...) sitting in a room with hundreds of photos of sports figures for his financier/sportswriter son to savor...
Then he switched the theme to the insidious perils of Overt Gender Roles and sexualized Masculine and Feminine archetypes...sitting in a room filled with the images of petite starlets in tiny outfits and muscular hunks flaunting their endowments. Images that please their owner, the man's son, the Bisexual who EXISTS for overt gender roles, submissive women, dominant men...
So, to summarize. Guru - Finance, Sports, Babes, Studs...
Dad admires Noam Chomsky, an Political thinker who Guru has spent decades eviscerating.
Dad is a Palestinian sympathizer, a position that Guru holds in unbridled contempt.
Dad is a conspiracy theorist, who has publicly identified 1963, the year of the JFK murder as the worst year of his life and formative beginning of his belief system. Guru was born in 1963.
He feels sympathy for the 9/11 victims has been overstated and the momentous damage their work caused the Islamic world has been understated. Guru buried nine friends from that event. Guru's mom, the woman Dad left, worked at #7 until six months prior to the attack and lived through the earlier one, in 1993. He exulted when American troops suffered setbacks in Iraq and spoke of being 'at war with our government', not with Bush but the whole thing, a common Chomsky/Nader sentiment...
I've felt the bigotry and ignorance contained in BOTH of the prevailing attitudes in my family, from the Left and the Right, and long ago recognized them for what they are...people should be/think/believe more...like...I....do!
Or they have to be part of the problem.
It's why you'll see Vagabond Guru's homepage with two heads, one holding it's Right eye 'Blind to the Right' and one holding it's Left ear 'Deaf to the Left'...it's our identifying ethic.
Progressive, yes. But centrist. Progressive in the sense of the founders, Paine, Jefferson, Franklin...
This place is set up to analyze data and comment, FROM the data and ignore the two polar forces exerting gravity on American minds. NOT the 'strong' force, the other one.
So. Guru, all that is well and good, but what happened with your old friend?
My buddy is a Chomsky admirer, a Palestinian sympathizer...he referred to Guru's great President, Bill as an 'asshole'.
It hit me all at once. I took in the Bill remark and didn't go on auto-attack, I thought I was growing...
I shook off the Palestinian sympathizer reality - remember Guru has bodily thrown himself into protesting mobs on Manhattan streets - spewing venom and Federal Prison system-approved abuse on marchers with Palestinian flags and anti-semitic, anti-Israel agendas.
But when I read the Chomsky admiration, I was crestfallen.
I'd assumed that we would fit each other comfortably, the old way...that his skills and experience, which dovetail perfectly with my needs, would become part of this place.
It was a dumb thought. We've gone longer without talking then we'd had IN THE WORLD when we knew each other. He has changed, grown in different ways then I. Reality.
No way to know how it turns out yet. He's hurt. I'm hurt. Nobody did anything wrong. He has his views, and it just so happens that I've carved my place in the world as being the one to stand AGAINST those exact sentiments and beliefs, as I have also done against those of my Texas family (and I must say, I've run into many, many potential friends who thought as they do and similarly blown those relationships up).
My friend is entitled, as we all are (see 'Let Freedom Reign') to his own views, beliefs, passions... of course. That's not in question.
There are two that ARE though;
1.) Can people actually bridge such fundamental differences?
2.) Should they?
Hey, I told you...I'm not the friendliest fellow.
I've got other things on my mind.
'There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity, hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom.
The other vision finds its roots in the spirit of our founding revolution and in the leaders of this nation who embraced the age of reason. It loves freedom, encourages diversity, embraces science and affirms the dignity and rights of every individual. It sees America as a moral nation, neither completely religious nor completely secular. It defines patriotism as love of country and of the people who make it strong. It defends all citizens against unjust coercion and irrational conformity.
This second vision is our vision. It is the vision of a free society. We must be bold enough to proclaim it and strong enough to defend it against all its enemies.'
- Rabbi Sherwin Wine
Guru spent all night with the words from 'We're Not Gonna Take It' by Twisted Sister, banging in my brain...over and over again...that is how things come to me and columns write themselves.
Something bothers me or occurs to me and then I find in my noggin' the sentiment or quote that pertains to how I feel on the topic.
Boy, does Dee Snider, capture it!
'We're right, We're Free...We'll fight, you'll See!'
He wrote the song in the Middle of the Reagan years, a time when those of us who love Freedom were watching the disciples of that first group of Americans, listed above by Rabbi Wine, attempt wanton destruction upon the individual rights of their fellow Americans. Don Henley 'End of the Innocence', Gil Scot-Heron 'B Movie' and Tony Kushner 'Angels in America' capture that period beautifully with their art (if you weren't around - L-E-A-R-N and then you'll understand what the Rabbi is talking about).
And love of freedom is not IN ANY WAY, the sole province of the Left. It is just as easy to find repression and conformity on that side of the aisle. For every family member who will tell one of us what we can and cannot do with our mode of clothing, sexuality, reading material...comes the likelihood that this individual will fall on EITHER side of the political aisle. Guru's Aunts and Cousins are only too happy to share their belief in being 'Born Again', beholden to social engineering and religious indoctrination with racial, sexual, gender and cultural condemnations. Guru's Pop will convey an insistence that Americans jettison overt gender roles, spectator sports and finance, stand away from their businesses, their televisions, their pleasures and embrace the arts - as determined by?
You guessed it!
For the Fundamentalist, the 'bad guys' are those who insist on personal freedom.
For the Doctrinaire Leftist, the 'bad guys' are those who insist on personal freedom.
It makes no difference that they disagree on WHAT the 'bad guys' look like, or who they are (each other) the point is that others should adopt a external world view that makes one or the other most comfortable. THEIR hopes and dreams should be everyones.
That ain't Freedom.
The person who BELIEVES in Freedom, by definition, has no opinion on the private behavior of others, their sex lives, their belief systems, their clothes, books, songs...the only lifestyle that should concern an American is his or her OWN.
'The only part of the conduct for which he is amenable to society, is that, which concerns others. In the part, which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself. Over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign'
- John Stuart Mill
'Freedom is the last, best hope of Earth'
- Abraham Lincoln
'Freedom is the right to live as we wish'
- Epictetus
We Americans have been under assault from the Rabbi's first group since the beginning of our Republic and never more so than these past 30 years. Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, wrote with dripping contempt for these cretins and yet, some of that strength and resolve has been LOST.
Out national discourse seems to have become permanently entwined with the gossip and biases of SOME Americans who feel only TOO 'Free' to foist their absurd little fantasies upon the rest of us.
Where is the Courage?
Where is Integrity?
The Founders separated Church from State and defied the religious dogma that covered the world of their day. Have we become so docile that we no longer stand UP for our Freedom?
* 2005 - 'SpongeBob SquarePants' creator, Stephen Hillenburg, was lambasted by 'Focus on the Family' leader, James Dobson (again, see the Rabbi's classification to understand Dr. Dobson...) at a PARTY to celebrate the re-election of George W. Bush - a moment when the Christian Right that assails all we value was at its APEX of power and influence. Dobson claimed that SpongeBob, who Wikipedia notes
'...is a Sea Sponge, but in shape and color, his body more closely resembles a Kitchen Sponge'...
Was a covertly Sexual being whose message of diversity and tolerance was/is covert propaganda for the 'Homosexual Agenda'.
This causes the usual reaction - uproarious contempt on the left and furious screeching on the right, all of which was met by timid assurances from Hillenburg, to the effect that 'Bob was, after all, just a Sponge'.
* 2007 - Kyla Ebbert, a passenger on a SouthWest Airlines flight was asked to de-plane because her Mini-Skirt was too revealing! She eventually was allowed to fly and the airline had to scramble some serious damage control, but the point is SOMEONE ON THAT FLIGHT FELT EMPOWERED to deny her freedom due to their personal tastes.
That is NOT freedom.
* Alex Rodriguez, Yankee Baseball Player and owner of the largest contract in Baseball history has been asked to account for his Sunbathing in Central Park with his Shirt off!, his interests in women, his relationship dynamics, his interest in mysticism, his dissimilarity with his teammates, his disinterest in being 'like everyone else' and now, just in time for Spring Training - the annual 'Steroids Rumors' this time, based upon evidence that has 'emerged' after six years and has already been dismissed by a Judge in the Barry Bonds case as being hopelessly disconnected from the men.
Alex, like another Fatherless boy, Bill Clinton, exudes OTHERNESS to those who would have us all in the same family structure and bound by the same behavioral dictates. These people wage a NEVER-ENDING assault on the liberties of individuals, focusing on these men whose success and disregard for
their desires - literally, drives them C-R-A-Z-Y!
The story follows DIRECTLY a series of overheated columns relating to the 'explosive' revelations of former Yankee Skipper, Joe Torre, for ten days prior to the book actually being released - at which point, it became readily apparent and the author openly forthcoming, as to the fact the book contained NO SUCH MATERIAL or revelations.
That's how this game works. Throw slime on the wall, act out cultural rage (Pat Buchanan's disgusting 'villagers with pitchforks') and seek to condemn publicly, thereby forcing concession that there IS a
'there' there.
* Michael Phelps, he of the FOURTEEN Olympic Medals has been captured on video taking hits from a bong of Marijuana and been SUSPENDED by the governing body of USA Swimming, dropped by some endorsement contracts and forced to sheepishly admit his 'irresponsibility' and 'poor judgement' for doing something that is ROUTINE for hundreds of millions all over the world, including those on staff at every media organization, in every profession, in every community... One despicable South Carolina Sheriff, unable to resist (do South Carolinians EVER?) the right to opine on social matters AND promote himself to his Freedom-hating constituents went so far as to threaten Phelps with arrest!
'Freedom is not something that can be given. Freedom is something People TAKE, and people are as Free as they WANT TO BE'
- James Baldwin
'If you want to be free, there is but one way. It is to guarantee an equally full measure of Freedom to ALL your neighbors. There is no other.'
- Carl Shurz
'He who does not enjoy solitude will not love Freedom'
- Arthur Schopenhauer
'They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty OR security
- Benjamin Franklin
This is the time, fellow Americans. This is the time to reclaim our Freedom to be EXACTLY who we are, beholden to nobody's vision of what is correct but our OWN. We have spent three decades with the slime on either side of the aisle jockeying to herd us into sameness and conformity, as if it would even be POSSIBLE. If we are not to join our European friends in DEMANDING tolerance, defending diversity and condemning Social condemnation now, then when?
When will a Hillenberg, Rodriguez or Phelps STAND UP and say 'E-N-O-U-G-H'. What I do is NOT your business, your values do NOT matter to me, your acceptance/approval has ZERO worth and I assert both my privacy and my FREEDOM to do, say write, be, fuck, think as I deem appropriate and extend the same rights to all others'.
For every fan they'd lose, they'd gain TEN, for every lost dollar, there are a HUNDRED.
Spine sells.
'The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously'
- Hubert Humphrey
One of the truths of Freedom is that those who oppose it will use its presence to steal the freedom of others. Al Quaeda does it, so does 'Focus on the Family' and, in a hundred thousand little ways, the fellow citizen acts as a coercive agent. Coercing conduct and undermining America. FOX news has built a Network and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, an Empire, by using freedom of speech to say the equivalent of 'Red is Blue', using the idea of freedom to remove objective truths in the name of subjective opinion.
If one network tells the 'truth, who is the law to prevent another from describing an OPPOSITE version.
The law contains no such ability, only the citizenship - through its disdain and the courage of its leaders, can insure such a thing. Do we have it IN us?
My colleague, Steve, recently posted to his 'Facebook' page a profile, which detailed EXACTLY who he is and what he likes in others.
His Sister called him to tell him that was the wrong thing to do.
There was never any question that he was being honest. The problem was, apparently, that by being honest, he was allowing others to see him as he IS and therefore JUDGE him (and perhaps his siblings?).
Nobody has the right to Judge you or your behavior, unless you GIVE them that right. Don't EVER do so.
I think he's a Hero.
Any others out there?
I Genesis
‘I learned the truth at Seventeen…’
Janis Ian – ‘At Seventeen’
My 17th Birthday was August 10, 1980.
I celebrated it alone, in a tent somewhere in Southern New Hampshire.
I’d fallen in love with New England in the Winter, working in New Hampshire and Maine, the Teddy Kennedy campaign.
I’d fallen in love with Andrea that Spring, playing High School Baseball and being teammates with her Boyfriend, Dave.
Andrea was a camp counselor in Southern New Hampshire.
My first road trip, via Greyhound Bus, outstretched thumb and Chuck Taylor High-Tops. Being a literary type, I was over-the-top to make my pitch amidst great drama…not some coffee shop in Manhattan, but emerging from the woods, heart on my sleeve and mud-soaked Kerouac under the arm. Andrea was the first girl who had WANTED me, that was heady stuff back then (I assume it still is, though I cannot confirm as much). She was the sort of smart, savvy, lefty I imagined I might meet at Stuyvesant, and that fails to even account for the swivel. Or the fact she liked ballplayers.
Both were KEY.
She was hot and she thought I was too. That sent me on my adventure, planning, financing, executing, coping & returning by myself. That was huge as well. As an only child with a single parent, I’d flown and traveled by myself since I was ten, but I went where mom sent me, on her dime.
This was different.
II The Gospels
‘But then if you’re so smart, why are you still so afraid?’
Billy Joel – ‘Vienna’
Andrea went back to Dave, right before heading off to UCLA (lots of ballplayers). I went back to School.
Senior year. My life was about everything BUT school, and despite my dalliance with Andrea and the Baseball team, it didn’t occupy a lot of my energy. I was amiable and approachable, but distracted by life. It was hard to find common ground with many of my classmates over matters other than intellectual.
Working full-time in an Antique store, baby-sitting three nights a week for a pair of swingers who had two boys.
Heavy partier. A lifestyle I’d picked up from playing ball.
Gifted, I played with the men.
Men drink and smoke after the game.
So did I.
Booze and Books were everywhere in my house, always had been. It was a natural progression for me to take to them both.
I ran indoor track and made half-hearted attempts at my academics, but my self-study was destiny…I made history and English my home and audited the sciences as needed to answer questions that had arisen in my reading.
A student I wasn’t. More like an Alien visitor in such august academic surroundings. I was qualified, but didn’t belong.
I felt like the oldest teenager in the world.
One day in October, I was sneaking out onto 16th Street, ditching something critical, no doubt, when I saw the pretty girl I’d noticed the prior year.
She had a cast on her foot, and a swivel that displaced Andrea from my thoughts on sight.
Think Sanka - Instant.
That was Alice. She was 15, a Sophomore and a cutie to melt a wisened street urchin like me into puddles of self-conscious kid-hood.
Overnight, I loved being at school. I let my outside interests wane and checked in on my instructors more regularly, to contribute or to attempt invisibility (I didn’t have the Physics, but appreciated the irony).
Her friends became mine too. My friends met her friends. I had a peer group, of sorts, for probably the only time in my life.
We dated that November. She dumped my sorry ass a month later.
Which, of course, allowed me to play the poetic suitor and enable my true self in ways that scripted movie-nights never could.
She and I came back together at her Birthday Party, an adventure in teen angst and beery drama that lives on in the minds of many of us who were there.
She and I had more emotional honesty than I ever had again.
I could never figure out if that was because we were kids or in spite of it.
III Revelation
‘Happily ever after fails and we’ve been poisoned by these fairy tales’
Don Henley – ‘The End of the Innocence’
When I started to write this remembrance, I was riffing on the re-establishment of some precious ties from those days gone by.
At first, I looked back in the haze of middle-aged pining…Baseball friends, urban adventures. road trips, boozy failures and beautiful, soulful girls with well worn library cards and subtle curves crafted in some higher place…
1980 was so many things for me. The end of childhood crossing over the only childhood I recall. I was never an ‘innocent’ in the conventional sense, an old soul, even then.
Had seen and done more than I enjoyed running back over…
The parts of being a kid that I might have missed entirely - I tasted that year, and in parts of two more before adult life crashed upon my damaged tangle of selves.
But the lingering memory of Seventeen isn’t a sweet one.
November 4, 1980.
That would have been my current roomies 10th Birthday.
Her mom’s birthday is December 7, 1941 and her sister? March 15th.
That Tuesday belongs in company with the “Day of Infamy’ and the ‘Ides of March’, just hasn’t got a catchy moniker.
It was ‘Bowling Night’ for a group of Upper East Side guys who had recruited me to be a ‘ringer’ on their Softball team, playing under the lights beneath the Queensboro Bridge. They were regular guys, a cross-section of city types, the youngest several years older than I.
They’d put together the idea of a Bowling team so we’d get used to hanging around together and be closer during the season to come (it worked, we won a Championship on the night I left 17 behind…). Bowling wasn’t really my speed, but there was cold beer and winsome waitresses. I survived.
The trouble that night wasn’t in the alleys.
It was on the TV.
I was the first person in my family to be born in the North. Mom and Dad were from Texas and mom’s family was fundamentalist, for the most part, spread across Oklahoma, Arkansas and the Dallas area. My sensitive parents were traumatized by their Texas lives, they came to NYC so I would grow up amongst diversity, intellectual curiosity, secularity. I did, I was bred to be the creature I became.
All my life, I’d gone to visit the family and noted their peculiar take on faith and culture, so alien to my life in Manhattan and enlightenment influences.
I thought it was benign, even the racial stuff.
I would hear the homophobia and the comments about single women, the demeaning of sexuality, the snide remarks about the sorts of body conscious clothes I wore and rationalize their mindset as an anachronism that wouldn’t be around to do any damage in the ‘future’.
That was the night all that changed forever.
The night Ronald Reagan became President.
The night my parents careful plans to leave the nightmare of the past safely behind in Texas while learning to be prepared for the ‘real world’ blew up and my Texas cousins were suddenly the ones on the ‘path’.
That night, at Seventeen, the real world became that feudalist, racist, homophobic place that I thought stayed behind in Texas when we flew home.
It wasn’t going to be a great time to be sexually charged, have a fiery intellect or be a blue collar radical. In fact, it was going to be the worst time to be exactly who I was. Space exploration was out and the Moral Majority was in. I retreated from class, into my chemicals and my girl…starred briefly on the field before flunking off my team and taking a GED to leave school on time.
A few years later, in 1984, the first year I could vote…68% of those in my age group voted for Reagan.
I’d been in tune with the world when I turned 17, but needed to learn more about myself. When I turned 18, I knew just who I was, but had lost the world.
I was 29 before it seemed real again. 37 when the Twilight Zone returned.
Now I’m 45 and we’ve got another chance to live in the real and say goodbye to the fantasy lives of cretins.
I hope it happens.
Since the female leads simply cannot move sinuously or sensuously enough to match their partners smolder, might a better staging be achieved by having the ladies contribute as they might in a real-life erotic mismatch. Lay passively and allowing the lead to perform unencumbered? If he wasn’t worried she was going to wriggle herself right off the side of the steps into a heap, he could perform some aesthetic pushup above her and perhaps even thrust his arm forward with a flourish, freed from the burden of using it as a life-saving device.
