Book of Days

Corduroy and elbow patches?
How did the ladies resist me?
Some how they managed.

Being a military brat, I spent the first twenty years of my life moving every thousand days. Between Kindergarten and Senior year, I attended eight different schools in two states and one foreign country. Always being the new guy, I came into the parade of new cities, schools, and military bases carrying this gnawing feeling that everyone around me knew something I didn’t. No one else seemed unsure, tentative, or insecure, like me. They were in on the joke, they knew what was going on and what to do. While I was an outsider, always floundering to keep up, looking for a way to fit in, for the place where I belonged. So there was this constant underlying sense that I was missing out on something that everyone else had.

My Big-Wheel was metal, my lunchbox was Tupperware, I got the Member’s Only jacket and parachute pants a half-size too small, and just as they were on their way out. My Izod Lacoste shirts were hand-me-downs from other families. In 10th grade, my Nikes were actually Pro-Wings with the tags cut off and the swoosh traced on and filled in with a sharpie. I pulled that off for almost a year before anyone noticed. In short, I perpetually felt less-than. Left out.

8th Grade Prom at the Parco Azzurro Ristorante Il Pentolone

As an adult, I realize that many of these perceived shortcomings growing up were caused by financial difficulties our family was going through that I was too young to understand or even realize were occurring. My parents co-signed a loan for a trusted family friend who got into drugs and welshed on the deal and made off with the Jeep. While we were stationed overseas in Naples, Italy, our home in Long Beach, CA was rented out to a charlatan who sub-let it to other tenants, who then became squatters while he stole their rent, sending the house to the brink of foreclosure. In the face of these things, name brand clothes are obviously petty concerns. But in their wisdom, my parents largely shielded us from the stress of those financial problems, and so the lack of vital social accoutrements seemed like capricious withholding, instead. One of the paramount injustices in all of human history, obviously.

One of the things I missed out on was the yearbook for my 7th grade class, ’83-’84. When I saw them being unpacked and distributed to all the other kids in school, my heart was filled with jealousy. It was the most beautiful work of art I’d ever seen. The front and back covers were embossed! What manner of sorcery was this? It looked exactly like a brick wall, with all the yearbook titles in spray-painted graffiti on the cover, all in our school colors. So cool! As they were being passed around for autographs and fond messages before we left for summer, I resolved in my heart never to let myself be left out like that again. And I never was, I collected each and every yearbook since then, but none of them were ever as good as the one that got away. 

Not even close.

So that one stayed with me all of these years, added to the small list of similar juvenile longings that I never outgrew. One of those little regrets you carry with you through life, no big deal in the scheme of things, really. I know everybody has those things, because my wife still laments the lack of an E-Z Bake Oven and Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine in her life. In addition to the yearbook, my own list included things like Kenner’s Imperial Walker from Empire Strikes Back, Mattel’s Magic 8-Ball, and a set of those wind-up chattering teeth that jump all over.

But then one day, in my early forties, a buddy of mine gave me that Magic 8-Ball as a gag gift and I discovered something. You know how all those things that you build up in your mind never seem to live up to expectations when they finally arrive in reality? Well, the 8-Ball totally did! It scratched an age-old itch and made for a great conversation starter sitting on my desk at work. After that, I decided to further test my theory and I bought a set of those wind-up teeth from Amazon. When they arrived, I set them out on the conference table at a morning staff meeting, and they totally killed. It made for a nice little icebreaker, and now I wind them up and let them jump all over my desk whenever I’m on hold for a work call. Surprisingly, this, too lived up to the hype.

Fast forward to last week. I was chatting with a couple of ‘89 classmates from my days in Italy, about the 8th grade Prom photos they’d unearthed during some attic spelunking in this lockdown. I mentioned that I’d always regretted not ordering this particular yearbook at the time, and so missing a little piece of my life’s history, especially of such a unique time and place in the world. One of them, my dearest friend Lisa, immediately did a quick search and came up with an eBay link to this little jewel. It had never once occurred to me to even try searching for it. I bought it on the spot!

Mail Call!

At long last, I would hold in my hands something that I’d coveted for thirty-six years! I was filled with real child-like happiness as I waited with baited breath for the postman to bring a treasure to me, previously believed completely unobtainable. And, true to form, it lived up to the hype. It felt exactly like I thought it would, holding all the nostalgic mystique of an actual trip through time. I perfectly recalled the moment that they were passed out to the class, on a Ferry during the class trip to Ischia at the end of 7th grade. I could almost smell the salt air of the Tyrrhenian Sea, and see all the faces of my classmates, satisfied and fulfilled by the magic Book of Days in a way I could hitherto only imagine.

Of course, I knew that I’d be purchasing a used copy. This isn’t exactly the kind of thing they make re-prints of, so I expected to find it filled with autographs and messages telling the former owner to stay cool, keep in touch, have a great summer, etc. All the earnest platitudes we dash off when we’re headed on to the next thing, when there could be mere hours left in our associations with people we may never see again. In the world of a military brat, there was just no way of knowing. 

As I awaited the arrival of that wondrous tome, I wondered who the original owner would turn out to be. Obviously, we were both brats, of similar age and station in life, both finding ourselves on the far side of the globe from our homes, in the exotic land of empires and ruins. Were we classmates, contemporaries, enemies? Was this one of the jock assholes that had stuffed me into a locker? Maybe one of the girls who had rebuffed my awkward, tentative advances? Perhaps an old ally with whom I’d traded comic books, or wiled away summer nights at sleepovers, maybe blowing shit up with firecrackers.

It turns out that it had belonged to a senior named Eric Lovett. He was known to me by reputation only, as our five year age-difference might dictate. He was a former football star, but otherwise I had little idea of who he was, or how I came to find his yearbook up for auction. A treasure I would surely never have released into the world to be hawked by some grubby eBay collector who specialized in random yearbooks and other high school memorabilia from around the country. 

I wondered if Eric might have come on hard times and sold some of his belongings, a situation that I can unfortunately empathize with, as I’ve parted with various stereo components and numerous different CD collections and over the years to make ends meet. I think I’ve re-bought The Cure’s Disintegration album five or six times over. It also occurred to me that perhaps, more tragic still, Eric had met an untimely demise, and this miraculous find from across the world was part and parcel of an estate sale.

Star Crossed and long lost. Alas.

As I was perusing the yearbook, looking at old photos of myself, my classmates, best buddies, bullies, and secret crushes, I came across a space in the autograph section that said it was reserved for a girl named Beth. I well recall reserving sections in my yearbook for those dearest to me back in the day, so I knew that whoever Beth was, she must have been someone special to Eric. Turns out that was a bit of an understatement. Because what followed was one of the most sincere and plainspoken declarations of love that I’ve ever read. Suddenly, I felt like I was trespassing in someone else’s story, or had illicitly read some stranger’s journal and found myself embarrassed by an intimacy I should not have witnessed.

So I went onto a half-dozen different Naples American High School sites I belong to on FB and posted about the find. I quickly discovered that FB would let me tag Eric, which meant that he was still alive and kicking. So I posted a few pics and a little history of the find, which lead to a lot of people, including Eric, chiming in about their yearbooks, their regrets, their wins-losses, and the old glory-days. Someone even figured out who Beth was and invited her to join in. I sent her a PM picture of the message she’d left for Eric and she told me the rest of the story.

It went about how you’d expect a tale of young love to go. Most of us don’t marry our first love or our high school sweetheart, and that becomes even more unlikely when you’re a military brat, living like a rolling stone, always on the move to the next place you’ll be from. She wrote those words in all sincerity, but ultimately broke Eric’s heart after they were separated by another move that summer. A pain she still regrets inflicting to this day. In the end, both of them are happily married and life has moved on pleasantly for all involved. Just one of those things you carry with you, I guess.

It turns out that Eric simply lost this—and a batch of other yearbooks and high school memorabilia—during one of the many moves that a military brat endures throughout their tumbleweed existence. Since I’m currently living in house number twenty-two, I can well empathize with the attrition of beloved belongings, evaporating into the ether where all the dryer socks now live. So I contacted Eric privately and have arranged to send the yearbook along to him next week. After I’ve had a chance to read it some more, take some pictures of the pictures, draw a moustache on Mr. Arena and black out a couple of his teeth. Clutch it while I rock myself in the fetal position. You know, completely normal human stuff like that.

The Book of Days. And what days they were.

It was nice to hold a piece of our shared history in my hands again, especially from a time and place in life that has so powerfully defined who I am. But it didn't seem very sporting to keep it when I know what that kind of loss and regret feels like, all too well. It’s really a part of someone else’s story, and I'd never want to be the kind of person who clutches at things that we're only meant to enjoy for a time as they pass through our lives. As it is, it set off a very satisfying chain of events and conversations with some cool people, which in turn seems to have completed the circuit and silenced the voice telling me that I missed out on something. And that’s the kind of thing you can’t buy for love or money.

Facing the Music

This Facebook fad about choosing ten albums that had an impact on you really has me scratching my head. I mean, it’s not coming up with ten albums, but somehow limiting it to only ten. How do you winnow it down? Thinking back on all the times that music has impacted me, I realize how many ways it shaped my perception of life, or changed my reaction to events even as they were happening. What does impact mean? Some albums opened me up to new styles of music, some to entirely new ideas. Others held my hand as we walked through the dark, whistling our way past the graveyard. Some were band-aids for a broken heart, others an excuse to let go and go crazy. I have a few friendships that are based entirely around shared musical interests. So...what impacts us? 

Maybe the better question would be, what doesn’t?

Recently, I’ve been collecting all the 70s music my parents played on the car stereo as we crisscrossed the country in service of the military. Captain & Tennille, Barry Manilow, The Carpenters, Helen Reddy, Linda Rondstat, Sonny & Cher, Dionne Warwick, James Taylor, Jim Croce, Gordon Lightfoot, John Denver, Roy Orbison, Carly Simon, Dianna Ross, Neil Diamond, Olivia Newton-John, George Harrison, Carol King. The list is endless because our trips were endless. Or at least it seemed that way, wedged into the back seat of a Datsun 710. Seriously, I’ve slept through more states than most people have been in, the sounds of the 70s playing the whole time.

Some of the music I didn’t even necessarily like. Dude, Muskrat Love? Really? C’mon Captain, you’re better than that! Still, I have such fond connections to it because of memories like rolling across Kansas wheat fields that spread out horizon to horizon like an inland sea as Olivia Newton-John sang Angel of the Morning. Or following the hypnotically swaying skeins of telephone wire as they looped over the relentless march of hoary poles, carrying Jim Croce’s message to the Operator all the way across Missouri. Endless rows of Nebraska agriculture flashing past, creating the illusion of someone on stilts running to keep up with us, ebullient as John Denver crowing about being a country boy. Driving through the Nevada night, marveling at how the moon was following only us as it hung outside my window, Carole King wondering why I’m so far away.

Often the music impacted me simply because it was an everyday domestic soundtrack, always on Mom’s record player. And make no mistake, it was Mom’s record player. The rest of us just lived there. She had eclectic tastes. Sometimes the music was just there to bebop along to. Dark Lady, Walk on By, or Copacabana; all the harmless mellow pop of the day. Looking back through the lens of adulthood though, I see that the music might also have been a statement about who she wanted to be, as a second wave feminist. Women singing about empowerment and freedom. Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman and Linda Ronstadt’s Different Drum stand out in my memory.

Sometimes Mom would walk over to the record player and skip a song, and when I’d ask why she’d say that what the song said about love or people was wrong-headed and she didn’t want to hear it. Of course, that meant that any time she missed skipping one of those songs I would listen intently to hear what secret message it contained. Later, after I had my own record player and she came into my room to confiscate AC/DC albums, I realized it was because it was actually me in specific that she didn't want to hear those wrong messages. Because she knew then what I know now: music has the power to change everything.

Some of the stuff she played seemed like simple novelty. National Geographic sent out an issue with a tear out “flexi-record,” sometimes referred to as a sound-sheet, that was just twenty minutes of whale song on both sides. Those plastic-y squares went out in magazines a lot in the 70s, kind of like perfume samples do today. Leonard Cohen’s wonderful Bird on a Wire was originally released that way. Other eccentricities included Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops performing a 70s disco soundtrack, humorously entitled Saturday Night Fiedler. Besides an eighteen-minute classical music disco-medley that ran from Stayin’ Alive to Disco Inferno, the album also boasted an arrangement of Bach’s Toccata & Fugue In "D" Minor. But, you know, Disco-fied? It’s a wonder I’m as sane as I am.

When we lived in Long Beach, we had a shed on the back corner of the property that served as a hobby room, an office, a rumpus room, and even a rental for a college student once. There was a sewing machine, a TRS-80 color computer, an inexplicable organ, and a parrot named Sam that all lived out their days there. My Dad's old bachelor-pad Hi-Fi system lived out there as well, and it was a pretty decent system with a milk-crate full of random records to go along with it. While my friends and I were hanging out back there, organizing and swapping Star Wars and baseball trading cards, or making prank phone calls, we’d listen to a variety of records that had found their way out there. That’s where I learned about Creedence. Three Dog Night. Willie Nelson. Really, anything that my Mom didn’t like and wouldn’t have on her stereo lived out in the shed. So most evenings, Dad would go out there to solder stuff, practice his clarinet, or just unwind listening to old records that were verboten in the house.

Before long, I had my own little collection of exiled records out in the shed. Disney’s The Black Hole Storybook and Record were on constant replay for what now seems like years on end, along with a couple of K-Tel Records pop-rock samplers that seemed to appear out of nowhere. I wore out both the Grease and Xanadu soundtracks by sheer ardent desire for Olivia Newton-John. There wasn’t much in the way of heat or AC in the space, so over time the records all began to warp from the temperature variance. But it happened slowly, so I hardly noticed the warbling and distortion until one day it hit me that ELO had started to sound like the Muppets. Or a bit like one of my other taboo records, Alvin & The Chipmunks. Today, I can see why those annoying cartoon voices would close out of town up in the big house. But in their defense Alvin and the boys’ Chipmunk Punk introduced me to Blondie, The Cars, Tom Petty, Billy Joel, and Queen all in one record.

Branching out, I found what an education it could be going over to friends’ houses, because I learned that what I thought of as normal, wasn’t everybody’s normal. You know, not like twenty minutes of whale-song or anything. My elementary school friends John and Andrew Padovan lived just a few blocks away, but it soon became clear that their house was a whole other world entirely. They listened to the radio, not records, and really just one station. KRLA AM-870 played both kinds of music: country and western. Eddie Rabbit, Dolly Parton, Waylon, Willie, Loretta Lynne, Tammy Wynette, and Kenny Rogers all became hallmarks of the world where their Korean War vet dad brought home practice dummy grenades and real guns with their barrels plugged and firing pins cut for us to play with. He was an Army recruiter, preparing us through playtime for when we went to war with the commies, as Merle Haggard and Hank Williams reminded us of what we were fighting for: Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

One sad day, without warning, our beloved KRLA 870 changed its format. They simply stopped playing Johnny, Merle, and Patsy and started up with the Monkeys, Elvis, and the Everly Brothers. Nothing wrong with them golden oldies, except they didn’t belong in the clear-cut, militaristic world of the Padovan house. The change was so abrupt that we assumed that there had been a malfunction in the hammered old transistor radio we listened to out in the converted-garage playroom. We spent hours over the next couple of days taking turns patiently scrolling the radio dial in search of a world now lost to us. The change was so shocking that it actually seemed illegal to me. Maybe it wasn't, but it shoulda been.

Still other times, albums that weren’t necessarily amazing (Psychedelic Furs: World Outside, I’m lookin’ at you) became emotional mainstays, lifelines during extended seasons of caustic loneliness, when all I had to look forward to was new music coming out at the record store. Whether it was a broken heart, or being the new guy every thousand days at a new school, in a new town—or even a new country—the music never failed me. When the world seemed empty of all but myself and the music, when their words and ideas, melodies and pathos were all the light there was, it was enough. I hold them all dear today, friends that never disappoint and to whom I owe an unpayable debt.

When I think back on all the youthful hours spent hanging out or cruising in cars—no deeds to do, no promises to keep—lounging or roaming anywhere just so the music could play on and on, I can scarcely believe that now I just go to work everyday. What the hell am I doing with my life, when I could be laying in a beanbag chair in the dark with my friends, staring up at the glow in the dark stars on the ceiling, listening to The Cure’s Disintegration? Seriously, that was what passed for an 80s Friday night for years. Or Saturday nights, driving to nowhere, taking hours to get there as we devoured the music that we chose for ourselves, breaking each other’s hearts and imputing our own meaning to all those lyrics, until every song was somehow about us. The tragic, misunderstood heroes of our own stories.

Those days may have given way to mortgages, 401(k)s, staff meetings and lower back pain, but at least my iPod sits on my desk with 4,101 albums and 25.2 solid days of back-to-back tunes just waiting for me to hit play. And play it does, eight to ten hours a day, making the soulless drudgery at least a toe-tapping affair. And so my days wile away. 

So how do I define impact? Maybe it’s found in the surprise discovery that my niece Kailee’s favorite song was Yellow, by Coldplay. Or in wishing that I hadn’t learned that fact only as we planned her funeral service, after she was killed by a drunk driver in 2009. Pretty mature choice for a five year old. In discovering it, I felt like I understood her just a little better. Like another piece in the beautiful mosaic of her had dropped into place for me, even as Yellow played over pictures of her life floating by on a computer screen, only to fade and dissolve into the next in an endless loop that could have no more added to it.

Most days when Yellow comes on, I simply enjoy the beauty of it, and how wonderful life can be. Given its fragile, clockwork delicacy, and all the things that can go wrong, life is actually pretty great most of the time. Sometimes when Yellow comes on I really remember that revelatory moment of connection with Kailee, that affinity of our souls, and I smile and soar on the memory of her. I sing at the top of my stupid voice, “Look at the stars, see how they shine for you. And all the things you do. Yeah, they were all Yellow.” And it’ll be the best thing that happens all day. Because around here, we don’t talk about Kailee in hushed tones or the past tense.

Or maybe I found it on day six of passing a kidney stone, when the Doctors wouldn’t give me any more drugs because they thought I was 'scrip-shopping. So I waited out in the reception area, pacing in a tight little circle, sweating and shaking like the junkie they thought I was, my earbuds jammed far enough into my ears to play directly onto the surface of my brain. I alternated between Vivaldi’s Magnificat and Metallica’s Black Album, and stifled my screams into more socially acceptable whimpers until the Doctors agreed to take me seriously, over two hours later. As much as I appreciated the Percocet they eventually gave me, if I had to choose, I’d still take music as my panacea, any day. Because Percocet is only good for one kind of pain. 

But Music can do anything.

The Last Ride of Mustang Sally

I have to admit, I took an immediate dislike to Parker Tennessee the second I laid eyes him. No good reason, aside from his athletic build, heroic jawline, and soulful brown eyes. You know, because an outdoorsy REI catalogue model-type is just who you want hanging around when you look like Ducky from Pretty in Pink. Especially in the opening weeks of mix-and-match dorm life with a bunch of horny twenty-somethings coming and going through a summer adventure working in Yellowstone Park. I didn’t need any comparisons with the likes of Parker Tennessee to feel like a Fig Newton on a plate full of Christmas cookies, believe me.

Look at him, just sitting there with that wavy mane of chestnut locks, smoking out on the porch of our dilapidated little dorm like he owned the joint, just blasé as hell. How dare you, sir? I invented smoking on this porch, you smug sonuvabitch. And those cheekbones of yours are sharp enough to cut glass, which is a safety hazard! Ever think of that? No, you only think about yourself, Mr. Fancypants. This porch ain’t big enough for the both of us, pal. And I was here first.

Me and Runa New Mexico on the Lodgepole Dorm porch

All of this I thought as I sat there studiously not talking to him, nonchalantly ignoring him, all Zen and shit. Yup, just Zen as fuck as I watched the parade of lovely ladies giving him the side-eye or exchanging little smiles with him as they passed. He never said a word to any of them though, snootily preferring his stony silence instead. In fact, it was days before I heard his aloof ass say a word to anyone. As it turns out, that someone was me.

“Hey, b-b-bro,” he began. “C-c-can I bum a s-s-m-moke from you?”

At first, I thought he was making fun of me. He was tall, athletic, and good-looking. It wouldn’t have been the first time a member of the genetic elite had seen fit to mock a guy like me out of the blue. Although the stuttering routine seemed like an oddly specific way to ridicule someone you’ve never met. He had a baritone voice, rich and deep, with a courtly southern accent. If he was insulting me, I didn’t get it, so I decided to play it off.

“Sure.” I offered him my hardpack of Camel Wides. He started to take the only upturned smoke from the center of the pack. “Whoah, whoah. Not the Lucky, dude,” I said.

“Huh?” he asked, looking perplexed.

“The Lucky. You turn that one up when you first open the pack and then smoke it last so’s ya don’t get cancer?” I replied. Surprised that a fellow smoker didn’t know to take the precaution. “You never smoke another man’s Lucky.”

Obviously bemused, he smiled sheepishly and took a different smoke. Then said, “Sorry, n-n-ever heard of that. W-w-we d-d-d-on’t do that in T-t-ennesee.”

“Well shit, brother. What do you do about the cancer stick?”

“Uhhh, n-n-not s-s-smoke, I guess?” He had a bashfulness about him when he spoke, but a really nice, genuine smile. It was getting harder to hate him by the second.

“Well, sure, if you want to be all sensible about it. But since I’m not about to start doing that…”

“The L-l-lucky,” he said.

“The Lucky,” I agreed.

He lit us both from his zippo and leaned back against the rickety porch railing next to me. For the first time in the week we’d been sharing the Lodgepole Dorm porch, we smoked in affable silence for a minute. Funny how stony silence can become affable silence in the blink of an eye.

“So what else don’t you Tennesseans do?” I asked.

“C-cuss, chew, or g-g-go with girls that d-do,” he replied at the ready.

“Well that eliminates a lot of candidates,” I replied.

“It sure d-does. Wh-why do you think I’m h-h-here?” he asked.

I thought about that for a second. “To find a nice girl who chews tobacco and date the hell out of her, I guess.”

L-R: Sean Pennsylvania, Lawrence Oregon, Jesse Utah, Lang South Carolina, Kristin Illinois, and Eddie Arizona

Spending the summer working in Yellowstone Park drew folks together from all fifty states and a half-dozen foreign countries. We sang for our supper in return for room, board, and minimum wage, as we provided logistical support of the tourists who also came from around the world, performing all manner of services from vacation reservations, to housekeeping, maintenance, and cooking. As such, all of us wore employee name-tags with our first names and the state we hailed from, which seemed to confuse an alarming number of Touron (tourist + moron) who thought it was strange how many of us had the last name of states. The employees took the expected Touron inanity in stride and referred to each other as though the state were indeed our last name.

So Parker Tennessee called me Lawrence Oregon and proceeded to drag me about eating granola and hugging trees. In reply, I just whistled Dueling Banjos back at him, which every southerner just loves. If you’ve never been an insult battle with a proper southerner, I highly recommend it. They can lay down a pretty sick burn and you might not actually realize it's happened. In fact, maybe you even agree with them a little bit. A knife so sharp you don’t even feel it going in.

Over the course of the next couple of days, I’d meet Parker on the porch for a couple of smokes a day at various times. He was a cook over in the employee cafeteria, and was biding the days until we got our first paycheck because he’d run out of smokes a few days shy of the finish line. I was sitting on a carton I’d hoarded against just such an eventuality, so I had enough to dole out a few per day to him and a couple other poor souls in need, because I’m a helluva guy. He was on a break from Culinary School in Kentucky, just looking to kick up his heels for the summer before his senior year. Which was more of a plan than I had, just on the run from life in general.

As I spent more time with Parker Tennessee, I saw that each interaction with a new person cost him a little something. Because in those opening moments, when the other person didn’t know about his stutter, they had varying degrees of surprise and/or confusion go across their face as they decided how to react. Most people were cool, and just rolled with it. But one or two snickered, several more got uncomfortable and found an immediate excuse to exit the conversation, and still others openly pitied him. Even the ones who were decent human beings about it still had a moment of realization that went across their face in some form or another.

Parker was highly attuned to it, and mostly stayed in the background when he could. I didn’t blame him. If even I could see the whole script play across their faces in that moment, how much more for him who had been dealing with it his whole life? With every new person, every time? That’s rough. He’d jump in a kick a hacky-sack or shoot some hoops if he knew everyone in the crew, and he was well liked by the small-ish circle of those of us he hung with. But he rarely ever talked to girls, which made him seem like a snob because he was ostensibly a talented athlete and a perfect specimen. When I thought of my own troubles breaking the ice with the opposite sex—shyness, nerdiness, goof-ball looks—I suddenly felt glad that those were my only handicaps. I’d never seen a girl outright reject Parker, but when we were hanging out in the employee bar I’d seen a couple of them excuse themselves to go to the bathroom and not “remember” to come back. I guess all of us are fighting our own battle in one way or another.

After a few weeks, the players had all sifted into place for our summer adventure, and we’d sort of picked our crew that we hiked, camped, and drank with. We’d spend a few nights a week in the smokey employee bar, shooting pool and hooking up. The head bartender, Bob Minnesota, was always looking for ways to keep the natives happy, because employee turnover in an environment like that was a huge problem. Although Bob Minnesota was voted the guy least likely to be named Bob, he had the best ponytail I’d ever seen and he excelled at drumming up business. Trivia games, drink specials, dart tournaments, just about anything you could think of to keep a flighty group of drunks, neo-hippies, and perpetual party people from moving on down the road before their employment contracts were up. I guess it was inevitable that he’d dream up an open mic night at some point. Hell, we’d had a magician come through to do card tricks and pull a bra out of my shirt for me. How much worse could an open mic night be?

As it turns out, Parker Tennessee was going to test that theory for us.

I formed a little power trio with Dave Michigan and Jesse Utah to perform a couple of Pearl Jam songs, which were met with a rousing response. Full disclosure, I doubt a sober crowd would have received us as charitably, but I take my wins wherever I can find them. You’ve heard worse, I promise. After us, a couple of less-than-stellar Grateful Dead covers were met with tepid reactions, at which point I saw Parker get up from his stool at the bar and walk over to the little stage. I thought he was going to help one of the poor Grateful Dead guys with their instruments or equipment, but he didn’t. Instead, he leaned in like he was whispering conspiratorially with Tre Florida, the poor bastard who’d just finished murdering Fire on the Mountain. Tre looked at Parker dubiously, then shrugged and handed Parker his guitar.

Parker took the guitar, slung the strap over his shoulder, perched on a barstool, and slid up to the mic. You could feel the silence sweep across the room in a palpable wave as, one by one, every conversation came to an abrupt end when people realized what was about to happen. Within five seconds, we went from a chattering mass of drunkards to a uniformly silent congregation, solemnly considering the disastrous implications of what we were witnessing. You could have heard a pin drop as Parker Tennessee strummed the borrowed guitar, obviously stalling as he nervously tuned the strings. There wasn’t one person in that room that wanted to see him to drive off the cliff of humiliation he was careening toward, but not one of us could look away either.

When he could tinker no more, Parker cleared his throat and started to say something into the mic. A couple of stuttered plosives came out and then he thought better of it, sat back, and just started strumming. He played with a bit of confidence, and the steel-stringed guitar resonated warmly in the dim little pub. The chords were simple, a standard one-four-five progression, but there could be no doubt that he was in his element as he dropped into the groove. Whatever initial jitters he’d had fell away as he closed his eyes, leaned into the mic, and started to sing.

My God, you’ve never heard anything like the wall of sound that came out of that boy’s mouth.

“MUSTANG SALLY!” he belted, his powerhouse voice a visceral shock, like getting gut punched. “THINK YOU BETTER SLOW YOUR MUSTANG DOWN!” His baritone was as raw as a stray dog howling, so powerful and so completely unexpected, it shook the room.

After a moment of stunned disbelief—the whole room rocked back in their seats like they’d been hit by an earthquake, mouths agog at this breathtaking display of emotion and talent—a spontaneous burst of praise and enthusiasm enveloped the entire pub, briefly drowning Parker out. It felt like a mix of unparalleled relief at seeing him succeed in defiance of all expectation, and genuine astonishment at this huge talent confronting us. He was like a beast out of Greek mythology, equal parts Joe Cocker and roaring lion.

When he finished, there was a moment of dumbfounded silence. It only lasted for a beat, then we erupted into cheers, whistles, and cat-calls for the Tennessee Kid. A dozen people “rushed” the stage—by which I mean they took ten steps or less—to clap Parker on the back, smother him in high-fives, and buy him enough beers to kill two girls. It was like we’d all just found out that our hometown boy, li’l ol’ Clark Kent, was actually Superman. 

If Parker Tennessee was on the fringes before, he wasn’t anymore. After that, he got invited to join in everyone’s Reindeer Games. Girls that had been on the fence were suddenly lighting his smokes. And the open mic became a weekly event where Parker was King. I would certainly never follow him on those nights, and of course, I had no choice but to go back to hating him, just a little. You know, because of what a helluva guy I am. I heard a couple people ask over the next few days if Parker was faking a speech impediment for sympathy, because how could he have such a profound issue in one moment, and then literally transform into a rock star in the next? 

But I’ve long known the truth about Music. It’s not a human invention, like guitars and pianos. It’s a discovery, like fire. It exists as an intrinsic pillar of nature, irrespective of human existence. As such, it comes to us through osmosis, through inspiration, by way of magic and revelation. It has the transcendent power to circumvent logic, rationality—and every other reason-why-not—entirely as we channel it through ourselves and into the world. Nothing can stop it. Stutters, Alzheimer’s, traumatic brain injury, all be damned.

I’ve heard Mustang Sally a million times since that summer of ’95. I think of Parker every single time. Some people think it’s a Wilson Picket song, others swear that The Commitments made it their own. But they’re wrong. I saw Parker Tennessee take old Sally out for a spin in that Mustang and she never came back again.

It's All in the Wrist

I once had the pleasure of being on hand for a young woman’s very first day of work, at her very first job, ever. Although I say young woman, she was actually a couple of years older than me at the time (probably still is to this day), as it was 1992 and I was just 21 and she was 25. She was a single mom raising three kids, and had never held a job before, relying on her family and social programs up to that point. Admirably, she’d decided that she wanted to make some changes and do what she could to improve her situation and gain some independence. Her mom worked at Messenger House, the Alzheimer’s care facility where I was employed, and put in a good word for her. Thus, she found herself landing her very first job as a… janitor. Seeing as it’s been 27 years, I can’t say I actually remember her name, the reasons for which will become clear shortly. Let’s just call her Sally.

By that point, I’d been in exile at Messenger House for almost  a year, scrubbing toilets, waxing floors, and scraping dried tapioca pudding off of every possible surface. As such, I was one of the longest-running housekeepers in the joint, because it turns out that watching people lose their minds as they die in slow motion is actually kind of a bummer, resulting in high turnover, especially in relatively unskilled positions. It was like a factory that specialized in tragedies. But since, as an ex-pat Californian, no one else in the state of Washington would hire me, I was locked into my groove there and Judy, the acerbic, chain-smoking battleaxe that ran the Housekeeping department, knew it. 

I worked exclusively in the locked wards, which was where the residents with the most advanced forms of dementia were housed to prevent their escape. The locked wards were the source of the lion’s share of employee turnover, and I worked on Ward 3, which was the worst of the worst in terms of the mental health of the residents. So Judy sent all the newbies to me to train, because I was the Crazy-Whisperer, and she'd noticed that when I broke them in, I had a way of putting a spin on the horror-show that somehow increased employee retention by a few months. 

It was a grim job, no doubt about it, and more than a little horrifying on an existential level. So much so that after a dozen years of clean living in the LA area, it only took 2 months up on Ward 3 for me to pick up what would turn out to be a fairly serious drug habit. On the plus side, being permanently stoned, all day everyday, meant that nothing going on in the Tragedy Factory really fazed me much. Between the perpetual haze of my altered state and my finely-calibrated sense of gallows humor, I pretty much took everything in stride. So no matter what fresh Hell a day put in front of me—whether in the form of bodily fluids or the relentless tide of human insanity—I was imperturbable. But don't get me wrong, kids. Drugs are bad, mm'kay? You shouldn't do drugs. I mean, you know, unless you really, really need them.

Sally, however, being a normal, presumably sober human, did not enjoy the aplomb and equanimity induced by the assiduously concocted mix of THC and mordant cynicism that protected me, and was thus in for an awakening. She had a slight frame, a no-nonsense affect, and her blonde hair was lying damp on her shoulders. No time to dry it, obviously. Rookie mistake showering before work at that job, though. There’s a lot to wash off at the end of a day in a place like that, believe me. But who wouldn’t want to show up at a new job putting their best foot forward?

So there she was, scrubbed and polished, ready to embrace this next step as a career woman. Having never held a job outside the home before—never flipped a burger, never stocked a shelf, never been accosted by a customer—Sally probably would’ve been a little daunted no matter where she landed. But instead of starting off on a bunny hill, like maybe at a convenience store cash register, she’d come to Messenger House and was staring down the precipice of a black diamond run, and she didn’t even know it. My God, the humanity!  

Our shift began at 6:00a, and the place was on the back end of nowhere that was somehow 40 minutes from anywhere you started. So on the first day, of her first job ever, she had to be out the door at 5:15a, at the latest. Maybe that’s why she seemed so exhausted right off the bat. Then again, since she was outgunned at home three-to-one, maybe not. By 6:05a, introductions had been made, Judy had admonished me to take good care of Sally, and we got all dolled up in the polyester smocks they made us wear to annihilate any vestige of dignity that might have accidentally regenerated in us overnight.

Walking toward the elevator, I tried to make small-talk with Sally, and met with only a little success. Then again, I’d long since gone nose-blind to the aggressive deodorizers used in everything from the laundry detergent to the carpet cleaners and furniture polish to cover over the sickly-sweet undercurrent of urine that permeated the place. I could only tell that it wasn’t really working when I saw the look cross a noob’s face when they got their first snoot-full and reality began to dawn. Awww… sweetie. That’s adorable. So we hopped onto an elevator that required a key to operate, and headed up to my personal fiefdom, Ward 3. Third floor: uncontrollable swearing, maniacal laughter, and adult incontinence at your service.

At Messenger House, the rabbit hole goes straight up.

Since the residents couldn’t be relied on to refrain from drinking the Lysol while your back was turned, we were in a constant battle to either stay ahead of them, or come in behind after they’d left an area. So before anyone was up for the morning, we headed into the communal restrooms to give them the first of three daily cleanings. First day of her first job ever, and Sally’s very first duty is to clean a public restroom? Obviously, that is not great. But we began with the Women’s room, because I wanted to start her off easy, as much as that’s possible in that world. Since men are absolute savages even at the best of times, you can imagine what a public men’s room in a place like that would be like. Actually, you really can’t, but whatever. Playing the odds, the women’s room usually presented the fewest unpleasant surprises after any given night shift.

Sadly, not so this fine morning.

The door swings in and there, smack dab in the middle of the room, was an 80 year-old, hatchet-faced Sicilian lady named Dolores. She was built like a fireplug, and had the temper of a wet tomcat, she smoked like chimney, and her voice sounded like a buzzsaw that spent its downtime marinating in Southern Comfort. On her more lucid days, Dolores had a great sense of humor and could weave tales about life in the Old Country that made you feel like you were in the Godfather. The rest of the time, she was cantankerous as fuck and known to swing for the fences on the unpredictable occasions when she came for you. She mostly acted like the whole of Ward 3 was an old school comedy roast, and the other residents and staff were the guests of honor. Over the year that I’d been there, I’d learned to do pitch-perfect impression of her, which she loved. Except when she didn’t. She would swear constantly, throw things at you, and then laugh like the Devil just told a good one. For all of those reasons, she was one of my favorite residents.

This fine morning however, Dolores had her Hawaiian-print mumu hiked up around her thighs and was squatting to defecate a lake of diarrhea right out in the middle of the floor. She looked over at us and, in that tender way she had about her, started shrieking at us to get the hell out. Like I would with a charging grizzly, I backed away slowly, not making eye-contact, and prepared to play dead at a moment’s notice. Although I’d herded Sally out the door along with me, she hadn’t know not to look directly at the horror. It ain’t for the faint of heart, and just like you don’t look right at the sun, you don’t look right at surreal carnival of everyday indignities that make up your 9-to-5 life here. Like Perseus dealing with Medusa by reflection, you get a sense of it, and then look away. Poor noob never had a chance. Well... it’s a black world, what are you gonna do?

Once we’d alerted the CNAs on the floor to the situation, they came and collected Dolores and wrangled her, kicking and biting, into a shower and some clean clothes before turning Sally and me loose on the environmental cleanup of Lake Biohazard. I’ll spare you the more visceral details of the job, but suffice it to say I poured a liberal amount of sterilizing agent all the way around the pool of vileness to contain its spread, then handed poor Sally the mop and said, “It’s all in the wrist.”

For a few seconds there, I actually thought she was gonna do it. She trudged over to the event horizon like she was climbing the steps to her appointment with the gallows, and stared at it for long moment. Then she executed a crisp about-face on her heel and handed the mop back to me.

“Nope. I’m out.”

Sally walked straight onto the elevator right behind the CNA who was taking Dolores’s soiled clothing down to the industrial laundry, and I never saw her again. Can’t say I blamed her. Hell, it was actually kind of a baller move, and I grudgingly admired her for it. Her illustrious career at Messenger House lasted a grand total of 15 minutes, which I imagine must hold the record to this day for shortest ever. Mine, on the other hand, went on for another year and half until the stink of California blew off of my résumé and I finally earned the right to be a dishwasher at a local Tex-Mex restaurant.

But before that fine day arrived, I still had a job to do in the wake of Sally’s exodus. So I went out to the maintenance shed to “gather some supplies,” and smoked a blunt that would have embarrassed Bob Marley. Then I waded straight into Lake Biohazard and took care of business on Ward 3.

Like I said, it’s all in the wrist.

Legends, Lies, and Fairytales

Mark Twain once said that a lie is halfway around the world before the truth even has its boots on. Of course, he was only thinking of that obsolete nervous system, the telegraph, when he said it. If he could have foreseen the web of fiber optics and microwave transmissions encircling the globe, he’d have known that the lie would make it around the world so many times that it would have festered into fact long before the truth had even gotten up off its ass to head out the door.

By the time we’ve actually done the research and looked into the last lie to be churned out into the world, two more have been born. At least. And each of those spawn two more, and so on exponentially, so now fact-checking is basically a full-time job. Sadly, the agencies we rely on for that often have their own political agendas and can’t always be trusted. Intuitively, the invention of the internet seems like it would make it easier to discover the truth. Unfortunately, the web's Groupmind often makes the truth harder to find, because it sifts down into the morass of comforting narratives and palatable lies. Of course, this only amplifies the natural human tendency to draw conclusions based on whatever we’ve heard repeated enough times.

For example, as everyone knows, you eat 4 spiders a year in your sleep. Or is it 8? Neither. It’s actually zero. You eat zero spiders. Not only would they find the temperature and moisture in your mouth repellent on an instinctual level, but the whole stat was purposefully made up by a journalist named Lisa Holst for an article she wrote for PC Professional magazine in the mid-90s. She was attempting to illustrate how easily disinformation—even preposterous claims—could spread via the Internet (even as rudimentary as it was at the time) and other electronic means, so she purposefully fabricated an absurd statistic for her illustration. Unfortunately, she proved her point a little too effectively, such that there was no defense against it becoming a “fact” after enough years of ignorant repetition. She started off trying to show how easily lies become the truth and now her invention is more believable than the truth itself. Now the truth sounds wrong, because EVERYBODY KNOWS…

Here are some other things that everybody knows that are also totally wrong:

1.      Richard Gere never had that infamous liaison with a gerbil.

2.     Half of marriages don’t end in divorce. Not even close. Divorce rates in the US peaked in 1984 at 41% and have been declining steadily ever since. They’re now down to about 15% nationally. A couple of the Midwestern states actually have about a 2% rate.

3.      Al Gore did not invent the Internet. He also never actually claimed that he did. But it’s funny, so let’s keep this one going.

4.      Henry Ford didn’t invent the automobile.

5.      Edison didn’t invent the lightbulb.

6.     Penguins don’t mate for life, and those famous gay penguins at the Berlin Zoo were really just good friends. When they went to the next zoo, they both mated with other females and the caretakers at the first zoo later admitted that although the penguins were noted to have performed mating rituals, and even babysat a rock together, staff never actually witnessed the two having sex with each other.

7.     The Great Chicago Fire wasn’t caused by a cow kicking over a lantern. That was invented by a reporter.

8.     Orson Wells’ War of the Worlds did not cause any mass panic. That was also invented by newspapers that saw the radio as a competitor for news. Wells and the radio station decided that it worked in their favor and began repeating the hyperbole themselves.

9.      The Earth is not round, it's actually… Uh, wait. It is round, right? OK, scratch that one.

10.  JFK did not refer to himself as a jelly donut. Berliner is a nickname for a confection, but also for the residents of Berlin, in the same way that a subway is a nickname for a kind of sandwich but also a form of conveyance. If you told someone you took the subway to work, they wouldn’t assume you rode a sandwich to the office, any more than the Germans assumed JFK meant he was a jelly-donut.

11.  The Declaration of Independence was actually signed on August 2, 1776. The language was approved and distributed for signatures on July 4^th. It took until August 2^nd to gather all the signatures.

12.  Pasta wasn’t invented by Italians, but by Arabs from current day Libya. It was introduced to Sicily in the 9^th century during an invasion.

13.  Gum doesn’t take 7 years to digest. It passes right through, just like everything else. Although gum is only about as digested when it comes out the other end as that penny you swallowed when you were 5. What’s that? That was just me? Alrighty then.  

Also? Mark Twain never said that bit about the lie being halfway around the world. That’s been attributed to any number of people from the 1700s on—most popularly to Twain, although he’d been dead for 10 years by the time he was supposed to have said it. See? I started off with a lie about lying. Now you don’t know if that business about the gay penguins, Al Gore’s Internet, or the divorce rates are even true. You just can’t trust anyone these days. 

Or is it that you can’t trust just anyone?