Blue Heron Publishing House

The Way to Walsall

2008-05-20T18:21:00.010+01:00

Monday, 29 July 2002 12:45:

I’m in the garden attempting to read the plays of Samuel Beckett for some pretentious reason. Our thermometer attached to the back of the house reads 29. Heat and Beckett do not mix well so I sit perfectly still trying to capture what breeze may be making it over the neighbour’s wall. It is as hopeless as my desire to get my sticky fingers through these pages. The heat has done us all in -- me, the flowers, the warblers, the Beckett.

Dazed, I dream of cooler temperatures, of autumn, of...…cool mists swirling around the Centenary Stand just before the Hammers take to the pitch. Doves’ Caught By The River drifts from the tannoy. Played out over the laddish chanting and choral arrangements performed down below, it serves up a certain dose of willowy, pop-flowered anticipation when squeezed through the woeful sound system in Upton Park.

Leafing through my program I consider food options, but then hear the crowd noise elevate significantly as the players get ready to come on to the pitch. The pie will need to wait. It’s a special moment. The waiting is just about over. Below the East Stand, the sides are lined up parallel to each other in the tunnel, the players all ready to emerge and entertain. They dance with energy, hearing their boots on the cement and the rumble of expectation above.

"You’ll get burned," I hear from behind me.

When I look around Jillian is standing in the kitchen. I squint into the fuzzy, hot sky, then look down at the Beckett plays in my lap. "Yes, I suppose. It’s no use trying to read when it’s like this."

"Let’s go down for a swift half." She tosses a dish rag on to the counter and steps to the open back door. "Remember you're to collect Christopher later." Stepping outside and into the light, she adds, "say, is it true they’re going after Izzet?" Jillian shields her eyes with a hand and squints, attempting to bring me into focus.

I get up from the lounger. "So you’re saying Paolo, Defoe and Kanoute aren't enough? Can't Christopher take the tube?" Tossing the book down, I add, "there’s no money for Muzzie Izzet. There’s no place for him right now either."

"I just thought I read that they were going to get Izzet, in case Paolo goes to Man U and of course Christopher can't take the tube. Remember, he's only ten.""Right. Well, there isn't a place for Mustafa, nor the cash." I wipe my forehead and stretch, struggling to stay on my feet.

"How’d you know I was thinking about football?"Jill steps back into the kitchen and I follow. "It’s the end of July. It’s hotter than hell. Obviously you were thinking about West Ham."

"United!" I add a little too emphatically.

"The Hammers." She sighs humourously.

"The Irons." I enthuse. "The lads! Okay, okay. Right. Well then, specifically, what was I thinking about?"

We go to the front door."Do you have your key?"

I pat my pocket. "Yes, right here. So?"

We walk out the door, greeted by a hideously bright sun."Let’s see." She ponders for just a moment as we start down the road toward our local. "I think it was the usual, oh, what song will be playing beforehand. Some food thing, probably. You were thinking about grilled onions, I reckon. And, maybe something from childhood. Like, when they won the FA Cup in ‘80 and you had just been in hospital for your tonsils."

"I didn’t get that far. " I smile at the thought, though. "Ah, yes. Arsenal." I shake my head still amazed by the television highlights permanently burned into my brain. Key Image: Trevor Brooking's header getting by Pat Jennings. "1-0. Pure euphoria at Wembley. Absolute nirvana.

And I couldn't be there."

"You’re slowing down. Considering how long you were staring into the fountain, I would’ve thought you’d have been well beyond that memory."

"It’s the damn heat. It retards me.""It’s that Beckett, you mean."

Monday, 29 July 2002 13:05:

The Goat & Trumpet was the perfect place to escape the afternoon heat. Having a swift half with Jill in a deep, dark hole beat reading Beckett in the bright sun of the garden any day. Not surprisingly, we were not the only ones with this idea. When my eyes adjusted, they all appeared. The man across the road, Mr. Banhill motioned for us to come over, but we both signaled our desire to head for the bar and get a drink.

"He looked particularly well on. Excuse us, lads." Jill remarked as we cut through the Hennigan family.

"He always looks that way. Hiya, Gripper."

"Hiya, Macky." Grip Hannigan replied with a big, well-lashed up grin.

I continued through his gang. "Even when I see him coming home from church or down at Boots he looks well on." We reached the bar and wedged ourselves between a couple of labouring types smelling of curry take-aways and the couple who lived round back of us. They rarely said anything to us, much less gave a polite wave over the fence. Quiet coexistance. I held my hand up for Polly. "Should we go over and say hello to him?"

"He’ll ask about Christopher, you watch."

Polly arrived. "What will it be, then, for you two?"

Jillian made the universal sign for a swifty and I nodded along. "Right." Polly already had the glasses in her hands.

"What’s wrong with him asking after Christopher?"

"It’s a little creepy. I mean, he always asks."

"He’s old. He’s lonely. But he isn’t particularly creepy."

"I simply think that if you like kids that much you would have found a way to have some of your own along the way."

"That’s a bit rash. What if it just has never worked out for him? Or he has a medical condition. There are loads of reasons."

"I suppose."

"Bet he wants to talk about Gary Breen. He’s in love with the man."

"Do you think he’ll be fit enough to make an impact?"

"Mr. Banhill?" I joked just as our Young’s Bitter arrived. "Thanks Polly." I took a quick sip and looked at Jill. "I’m not sure. I haven’t heard anything more. Hernias are an unpleasant thing to try and rush along. But he’s been around and strikes me as an intelligent lad. I suspect he’ll make a suitable substitute."

"Cheers." Jill said with a wink. "Why does Gripper call you Macky?" We both took long pulls from our half pints. The Bitter tasted quite good -- clean, dry and as it was mercifully light on alcohol, perfect for an afternoon session.

"Can’t really say. For three years now he’s called me that and I’ve never corrected him. No one else has either."

"Do any of the other Hennigans call you that?"

"Come to think of it, none of the others call me anything. I’ll see them down the bus stop and they’ll say hi, but never use my name. I saw Oliver at Bow Church the other day and he was quite effusive, but…"

"Down right gregarious."

"…he just said hello along with a big slap on the back."

"I don’t think the Hennigans know your name."

"Next time I’m in their shop I’ll introduce myself."

"Why bother now?"

I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see Mr. Banhill tottering next to me where the Vindaloo Bricklayers were just a second ago. "Hello, there."

"Have you heard?"

I looked at Jillian who just flashed the ‘who knows’ face. "Haven’t heard a thing."

"He’s going to be in the side. Roeder said today."

Jill thought this very funny and turned away. I took another drink. "Now who would that be? Who are you talking about?"

"Breen! Of course. Gary Breen is fit." He held up his nearly empty glass.

"I can’t understand why the Beeb didn’t have it." I replied as serious as I could.

"They’re all Arsenal supporters over there."

"Of course."

Monday, 29 July 2002 14:30:

Cann Hall Road bustled as we emerged from the pub. It didn’t often bustle in the right way, but when it did the road gave out the impression it was ready for resurgence. As it stood, the area we lived in was more or less a blank canvass awaiting the gentrification that places like Hackney have recently enjoyed. For now, our little corner of Leytonstone remained decidedly undervalued – shall we say. There are a few pioneers here and there that have made the pilgrimage from elsewhere to buy some space, but mostly our area remained firmly on the kerb, waiting for a ride.

We had moved into the area before there was any discussion about revitalisation. We were either brave, visionary or stupid. Regardless, we wanted space and an area with potential and in Greater London, options are extremely narrow. After an exhaustive search involving a mesmerizing number of postal codes, we landed on the edge of N11. And so there we were, walking down Cann Hall Road.

"Someday this will all make a comeback." I said as we rounded the corner and headed into Woodhouse Road.

"You say that every day." Jillian chortled.

"It’s a mantra. You’ll see. It’ll work."

"Do you think Breen will start?"

"No. I don’t think so. I don’t know what Mr. Banhill was talking about. Christian Dailly is first choice. But he may bring Breen on."

Jill nodded the nod that tells me a new subject was at hand. "Are we going to the Waltham Forest Community thing tomorrow?"

"Don’t know. Are we?"

"I overheard Omar saying something about it to one of the Hennigans. They were talking about transport. And something about the college?" She nodded as though she did not believe that was a clear recollection. "Anyway, it reminded me to ask you after you were done chatting with Mr. Banhill."

"He does go on about it, doesn’t he? Especially after he’s had a few."

"Did he ask after Christopher?"

"As a matter of fact, he did not."

"Gary Breen really does have him in a bit of a state, then."

"Completely distracted."

She changed the subject again. "What are they going to do about the Model Yacht Pond?"

"They’ve dug the bomb out. That’s what worried me most. Now, who knows.

Friday, 19 September 2002 16:05:

Jillian’s mum, Henrietta, has lived in the same Hornchurch terrace for forty seven years. Strathmore Gardens changed little since Jillian was a girl. These days a few more plastic Iceland totes blew around in the wind, but everything else preserved itself well, which nicely served a widowed pensioner like Henrietta.

Loaded down with all sorts of bits and bobs, Henrietta’s house held many mysteries for Christopher. For instance, why didn’t the door to the loo close properly? And what was in the hut down back of the garden behind all the bushes?

The answers were simple. The door to the loo had racked, because of a foundation shift. No one had ever bothered fixing it. There wasn’t anything in the little hut as it had been cleared out ages ago. But these were still items that nagged little Christopher.

Something in the house mystified me as well -- an autographed picture of Charlton’s Bob Bolder. It hung upstairs, given to Jillian’s father, Arnold, upon his retirement from the Ford Plant in Dagenham. He wasn’t a Charlton supporter. In fact, he didn’t care for football much at all from what I understood.

I asked about the photo once years ago. Henrietta never answered me and I didn’t bother to ask again. So there hung Bob Bolder, in the little room across the hall from the wobbly loo door up on the second floor. It was signed, "To Arnold. Good Luck, Bob Bolder."

Friday, 19 September 2002 18:28:

Christopher spent much time at Henrietta’s place. We didn’t mind shuttling him, other than the A12 traffic. Jillian would not let him use public transport and honestly I wouldn’t either. He sat in back and picked at a flower he had taken from the garden.

"What type of flower is that, Christo?" I said to the rear view mirror.

He looked up and grinned. "An Oleander, I believe."

"Is it from Gran’s garden?"

He shook his head. "Dad, do you know how the town got it’s name?"

"Leytonstone?"

"No, Hornchurch." He pulled a face.

"I don’t. Do you?"

"There’s some bull horns on the church. On St. Andrew’s. Gran showed me. Horns on the church."

"Hornchurch." I shook my head to that one. I had never given it much thought, figuring it was some bloke’s name.

"Do you want to know something else?"

I looked at him in the rear view. "Maybe. More horns on churches type stuff?"

"It’s about Bob Bolder."

We were stopped at the Green Man Roundabout – for no apparent reason. "The picture?"

"When he came to Charlton from…from wherever he was before…"

"I think it was either Sheffield Wednesday or Liverpool."

Rightfully, Christopher ignored me. "…he came round to the recreation centre near the factory where Mum’s dad worked. Where they made the cars and stuff. There were some players making speeches and signing pictures and it was the day that he was leaving work so a load of the lads went there to see what was what and they got that picture for him. Like a present."

"That’s it? That’s the story? He hung an autographed picture of a player from a sport he didn’t like, because it…"

"It’s a momento. That’s what Gran calls it." He held the flower up. "Here’s my momento."

Nothing was moving in the Roundabout. But this was typical and I had learned long ago not to get lathered at the Green Man. "I remember when he came to Charlton."

"You hate Charlton." He put his flower down next to him. "And hates a strong word, right? That’s what Mum says."

Friday, 19 September 2002 19:42:

We were all assembled in the kitchen, a bustling day behind us. I started it by nipping round to grab a carton of milk at Hennigan’s and had reveled in the crisp, early morning air. Gone were the furnace days of summer. I absolutely love this weather. Weather that gave you hints about the coming winter through the breeze's clean, cutting edge.At the cornershop the talk was all about the Hammers inability to get their first result of the season. They go over to White Hart Lane tomorrow and no one expects much from the match. Spurs look keen to press for a spot in Europe and the Irons look keen to fall into a season-long relegation battle.

At home, round our small dinner table, talk was about road improvements. "What do you think of the proposal for the A406?" Jillian asked me while I gave the paper a quick study.

"I vacillate back and forth. While I understand what the Mayor is proposing, I don’t know if it’s realistic. The road is a terrible mess. It’s rubbish. The traffic has got to be dealt with.""Maybe they could do a combination of things."

"Dunno. I guess it comes down to really committing to finding alternatives to driving. Commit to Ken Livingstone’s vision. Fewer cars in London’s future."

"I’m committed to Ken’s vision!" Says Christopher who has been eating purposefully.

I look at him and smile. "Course you are. You’re the one always wanting everyone to ride the tube."

"The tube is brilliant. Everyone ought to ride it.""Well, you don’t have to ride the Circle Line at rush hour."

"I don’t get to ride any of it."

Jill sits down. "That’s right. Just keep reminding your father about that." She smiles wryly, gives me a wink and takes a bite of some bread. "So, is Gary Breen going to get into the side? They can’t be any worse off."

I put the paper down and take a drink of wine. "I don’t think so."

Christopher drinks his juice, finishes and sighs. "Mr. Banhill would be really happy if Gary Breen got to play."

Jill pours herself some more wine. "Well, I am sure Mr. Roeder is taking in account the feelings of our neighbour from over the road."

I take the paper and playfully hit Christopher on the head. "Aren’t you supposed to be on your way up the stairs to perfect your PlayStation Cup Winner before bed?"

"I ‘spose." He gets off his chair and picks up his book bag, which is this enormous thing that is practically his size. "Oh, here." He digs down into it. "One of the lads gave me this yesterday. And I thought you would want it." He takes a trading card out and hands it to me. "Here."

I take it. "Well, how about that. A Billy Bonds card. Look honey." I hold the card up for her.

Jillian makes an amazed face. "Wow, sort of looks like Pete Townsend."

Saturday, 20 September 2002 11:30:

The closest I came to dreaming recently was bringing home a brochure for a Jaguar -- to howls of amusement from Jillian and Christopher. I mean what could I have been thinking? It’s like back at St. Chad’s when I thought reading history would set me up for a life of writing novels and driving Princess Caroline around Provence in an Aston Martin. Well, you have to be a fantasist if you’re going to be alive these days."You coming anytime before Bonfire Night?" Jillian calls up to me from below, her edginess snapping me from self-absorption.

"Yes." I look at my watch. Noon. Match Day. How can I still be at the computer? West Ham is off to a miserable start. My enthusiasm for leaping down the road to Upton Park is dampened somewhat. But it’s early. Very early in the season. "Just hang on a moment. Go ahead and get Christopher ready."

"I’m ready." Christopher is standing in my study door, wearing two year old home kit that doesn’t really fit him any more. "Come on. Mum’s going spare."

"You think?" I shut the computer off and whirl around. "Don’t you want to wear the new kit?"

"This one’s lucky."

"Blymie. Well, Man City today. So we’ll probably need your luck." As I said, you need to be a fantasist these days.

Friday, 11 October 2002 08:12:

The jetliner seats filled with members of the straw hat machinist’s congress buckle under the tomato sunlight of ocean sadness. Acclaimed for the day to be carrying beekeeper gloves, they’ve never known which door to go through to see the scientist goggles rattling from chainsaw noise. Down upon the floor instructions for creating new dreams dry into the shape of horse heads. We awaken to imagine funny means to carve sensible presents of socks and shirts from plastic globes, before turning to windows filled with conservative viewpoints. The words have clockwork causing sentence fragments to accumulate green leaves of tropical depression.

It’s amazing the thoughts that come in and out as you stand wedged into a pack of commuters bouncing along on the District. Randomness is under-rated. It’s a fine way to pass time. An exercise much needed, but rarely performed. I am going into the City for a meeting at another division of our company. The ingenuous wonks at our Internet wing await my files and facts on particular clients. I would sooner clean the khazi down the pub than see these anoraks, but duty calls. The more pleasant morning pursuits of reading the paper and talking with Jillian were unavailable to me. The only consolation was that she had to leave early as well, so no discussion of England’s chances in Slovakia with Christopher and no leisurely cups of coffee. Did I eat anything?

There surely would have been something from Christo about the defenders. He loves Rio Ferdinand – his first hero as the Hammers dawned on him at age five (he was inconsolable when we sold Rio to Leeds). But Rio and Sol have been ruled out. So apparently, Sven is going to go with a couple of Middlesbrough defenders or start Woodgate.

Our train has paused at Whitechapel. Everywhere I go these days, there is a wait. All of us just stand there. Strangers packed next to one another, some trying to read, others lost in thought and a few looking quite possibly dead. There’s an announcement, but no one hears it.

"Did you catch that?" A young Asian women next to me asks.

"I didn’t. I don’t think anyone did." I shrug and go back to thinking about football. Southgate has quite a few caps for England, but Ehiogu would be making only his third (maybe?) start for us. He has a fine understanding with Southgate, so maybe these blokes can do some business in Bratislava. But I think it will be Woodgate. I hope he can stay out of the nick long enough to make the match.

We start moving again. I once felt as though I knew a lot about everything. Whether trivial or not, political or football, I was a know-it-all. It bothers me now, because with age comes wisdom and with wisdom comes the realisation that massive gaps reside in the brain. I don’t know very much at all. The useless shite that once passed for knowledge simply masked the fact I didn’t know who I was, what I stood for or where I should be heading.

I know now. For instance, this morning I am definitely inbound on the District. But really, that’s all I know. There are bits and bobs about redundancies and executive placement I suppose I sort of have down, but most of it allows me to do a creditable job of imitating a professional. It’s all fairly depressing. I mean, who do I think I am? Robert Half?

As the doors open to the Cannon Street platform, I force my way out through a tight gang of Moroccan lads all carrying on in French about Iraq. Why can’t they be talking about Zidane or Henry? The world should be discussing football, but instead it discusses politics.

Friday, 11 October 2002 18:12:

Standing at the Stop, waiting for the bus to round the corner, I sense Winter’s grey limbs hanging over us all. The breeze, with an icy, North Sea edge, rakes across from East Anglia. The smell of leaves and earth and wet pavement over-power the ever-present deisel exhaust, providing further evidence of Autumn turning. My thoughts of coming winter chill are broken by a jaunty, "hiya." Next to me, Mr. Banhill had materialised from, from, well, Aisle Ten of the Safeway? Hard to know for sure. "It’s getting colder by the minute, eh?" He adds.

"It is. Yea." I nod.

"Fulham coming up."

"I think they’ll have a tough go." I check to see if the bus is rounding the corner. No #58 yet.

"Dailly, instead of Breen again, I reckon." It was a cheap shot.

"It makes sense. Breen off the bench last weekend. I think he’ll do that again."

I am attempting not to be shocked by this statement. "I think they’ll need him against Fulham." I say in consolation.

"Sinclair looks to be in form." There was an odd pause and I waited for more."You know we’re from the same part of town." Mr. Banhill finally offered.

"Pardon?"

"Breen and Me."

"You’re from Ireland?"

"No, no. Hendon. That’s where Gary Breen is from." Mr. Banhill shuffles his feet, "I was born over there, but then we moved over to the East End when I was just a baby. But me mum was Irish and always followed Ireland, eventhough me dad fiercely supported England. Oh, the rows they’d have." He chuckled strangely and closed his eyes as if remembering something specific.

"Is that right? Well, how about that." I did not know that Gary Breen was actually from Hendon. I should have known that, though I don’t know why. He only just came to us from Coventry City in the summer. I guess the lack of accent never computed or I had assumed he’d been in this country for so damn long and talked in the media’s bright light for so long he’d lost it. It’s a funny revelation.

Mr. Banhill changes the subject. "You coming home from work?"

"No. Been over to Broadway Market. A bit of shopping. Trying to find a gift for Jill."

"In Hackney?""Well, there’s a couple of shops…"

"Hackney." He said it again like we were discussing a shopping trip to Mongolia.

"Jillian likes a couple of shops over there." I wish that I had kept hold of the paper. Could use it for a distraction. I certainly did not want to enter into a conversation about retail with anyone, much less mercurial neighbours.

Another period of awkward silence. "Do you remember that Cup match in 97 against Spurs?"

Did I remember it? How could I forget? "Yes, of course. I was there."

"I bet you were."

"Never miss a Cup tie."

"Good, then. I’ve been trying to remember who got our winner. Was it Hartson?"

"No, no. Dicks, from a spot kick. Howells had taken Hartson down to give us that. So maybe that’s why you thought it was Hartson."

"Bloody Spurs." He shook his head, then added, "Dicks? Are you sure?"

"Look it up."

"I would’ve called Ladbrokes and bet Hartson

You would’ve lost." And with this, the 58 turned in to the road.

Monday, 11 November 2002 23:05:

The first round of the FA Cup is always fun in that it always seems to give me a glimpse backwards into English Football as it once was. And it’s coming up on Saturday. You see some interesting match-ups. For examples, let’s look at this year. Orient, just up the road a bit, plays Margate, which is nothing special. Margate is a pretty fair Conference side, which should ask plenty of questions. I only mention it for local interest and Jill has relations down in Kent so we’ll just put that one aside. No, digging deeper into the list, we find plenty of compelling, perhaps even romantic, matches. Here are a few jumping off the page at me. Luton Town - Guiseley, Tiverton Town - Crawley Town, Vauxhall Motors - QPR and Team Bath - Mansfield Town. Plenty of clubs with Town in the name and that's almost always good to see.

Luton Town gets the awesome challenge posed by Guiseley FC. Guiseley, from up in West Yorkshire, make their home at the wonderfully named Nethermoor and currently reside at the bottom of the Unibond League’s Division One table. Guiseley will be making their way down to Kennilworth Road. They face a mid-table Second Division side coached by former Spur, Joe Kinnear. What will Guiseley make of the pitch quality, not to mention actual heat in the changing room?

Tiverton Town matches up against Crawley Town at Ladysmead. Tiverton is 9th in the Dr. Martens Premier Division. Crawley is third in that same division. It’s a bit unlucky for them to face each other in the first round without getting a whiff of Nationwide pints and pies. Tiverton Town qualified by traveling to Barnet and shutting the Conference side down with two goals from the stylish boots of Jamie Mudge. The Crawley Reds emphatically beat Flackwell Heath 4-1 to qualify for the match against Devon’s own Tivvies.

Vauxhall Motors will play QPR at Chester’s Deva Stadium – apparently the back lot amongst the Corsas waiting shipment is not good enough. Vauxhall Motors Sports and Social Club, reformed in 1995 as Vauxhall GM (then just Vauxhall Motors FC), toils in the Unibond Premier Division. Vauxhall is mid-table right between Gainsborough Trinity and Droylsden. They normally play at Riveracre Stadium close to the big car plant at Ellesmere Port. What will be the effect of a Motormen result on the quality of automobile produced the day after? Only GM Quality Control will really ever know.

Team Bath presents itself as a most unusual club, widely reported as a bunch of stoo-dents from the leafy campus of Bath’s esteemed University. True, for the first time in 122 years a crowd of students has qualified for action. They face a pretty fair, though struggling, second division outfit in Mansfield Town. And must play host to them.

However, Mansfield Town will be taking the waters, so to speak, against no typical gang of students. The current Bath side includes players who have been with Aston Villa, Charlton Athletic, Coventry City, Hibernian, Newcastle United, Southampton, Watford, and West Bromwich Albion. Sure they participate in something called the Screwfix Direct Western Football League, but make no mistake, these lads can play footy. You see, Bath University runs sort of a halfway house for former players looking for more out of life (i.e. an education) and has thrown open the doors to some pretty fair talent. So it’s not exactly like the last student organisation to qualify for the FA Cup – 1880’s Oxford University side.

Where will I be this Saturday? I could go over to Brisbane Road. I think I get in free for being a West Ham season ticket holder. It might be good for the soul to take in a quiet little First Round Cup match. Besides, the Hammers don’t play until Sunday when the Satanic forces of Manchester United invade Upton Park. But I have a load of DIY projects to do around here so bugger off Orient!

Wednesday, 20 November 2002 06:38:

I’m a list-maker. But not in the Nick Hornby way. No Top Five Power Pop albums of all time (Big Star’s "#1 Record", Cheap Trick’s "Heaven Tonight," Etc.). No, I keep lists like football matches watched on the telly, films watched and books read – which reminds me to put that book on Oscar Wilde down.

I also keep a list of all football matches witnessed in person, though I don’t write that one down. Let’s face it, if I can’t keep track of a thing like that, what use am I? And as a season ticket holder it’s even easier. All I have to do is remember when I didn’t have season tickets, then recall which fixtures I missed that season. The last time I missed a home match was the last season I didn’t have season tickets -- seven years ago. It was the opening match of the Centenary against Leeds United.

We lost, 1-2.

So why do I write these other things down? It’s fun to look at a list and see that I completed Martin Amis’ "Money" on 24 May 1999. Why is it fun? Nostalgia is an interesting phenomena. And that’s exactly what this is, I suppose. People like old music for the same reason I like my lists. Both can take you back to a highly specific time.

For example, I recall that when I finished "Money" we were on holiday in Salema. Christopher built his first sand castle and presented it to me right after I tossed the book aside. Jillian stepped on a sharp rock a few minutes later, but it did not cut her. There was an overly amorous German couple nearby on that beach. There were many jokes over dinner at the Boia Bar, mostly from Christopher who at age three did not know how funny he was being. It rained that night, starting just after we finished dessert. We all ran back up the road to the villa. Jillian and I drank a lot of Port after Christopher went to sleep.

Sure, I probably could have remembered most all of that anyway, but having a specific detail pinpointed brings it all into exceptional focus so quickly. So I suggest everyone start writing those lists. It’s really quite easy.

Tuesday, 26 November 2002 16:58:

Jillian’s two cousins in Kent -- one in Margate and one in Canterbury -- both seem to think we are Orient supporters and that we should come down for this evening’s Cup replay against their beloved Margate FC. I find it difficult to dampen their unbridled enthusiasm for this idea, because they seem to be so sincere. Ian’s voice had such an earnest and entertained pitch to it when he was laying out the grand scheme on the phone. Since Jill was not at home I was left with the chore of explaining that a) it’s a midweek first round cup replay involving a horrible third division side and a conference side that only recently became so and b) we don’t like Orient, though the club is just a couple of good football kicks away from our house.

True, I will go to Brisbane Road and watch Orient, but I get in for free and usually go to see some other club that falls into the special case category of support. Darlington, for instance, which goes back to my university days in Durham. If West Ham is not playing and Darlington is going to be in at Brisbane Road to play Orient (and Peter Cockroft has told me the weather is going to be splendid), I'll go, because I can relive a few odd memories from ages ago. And do it cheap as old chips too!

Darlington: We’d all get lashed and let some steam out down on the terraces at Feethams Ground. It was just after the crazy Cyril Knowles era at Feethams when bizarre things like knocking Boro out of the Cup happened. No one really concentrated too much on the quality and the match was only a small part of the entire experience. We’d have a bag full while down there, then on the way home we would always have to stop in Newton Aycliffe, pile out and have a wee at the McDonalds off the A1. After chatting up the young, impressionable counter girls, we folded back up into Tom’s Berlinetta and headed back to St. Chad’s. Those were the days!

I guess it was at Feethams that my attitude towards Orient formulated. During my time up North Darlington were Fourth Division, then third, then fourth again before finally sinking into the conference. Orient did the same sort of dance back and forth, yet they always seemed to have that certain luster that accompanies our London clubs. This sheen of superiority would send us off the end of the pier.

But I digress. Gone are the days when I thinned my blood with Lager and chanted from the ice-glazed terraces of a fourth division side. These days, it’s hot tea, prawn sandwiches and the family seats in the Centenary Stand. Someday, if Christopher voices some desire to take to the terraces for first round Cup replays on a freezing midweek night, I’ll have him give Cousin Ian in Margate a call. For me? I’m preparing myself for Southampton on Monday night. It’ll be grand and comfortable, but there’s no guarantee the football our Irons play will be any better than what Orient produce.

Tuesday, 3 December 2002 07:00:

There he was down there on the touchline. Glenn Roeder with his arms crossed and his long, black leather coat. He looked remarkably like a Gestapo chief watching Hitler Youth train. That he is one of the nicest gents in all of football doesn't matter to us in the upper reaches of the Centenary Stand. It was cold, rainy and Southampton were giving us the match if we would have it. We were ill prepared to watch the hulking Mr. Pearce work up front as a striker. We were less prepared to watch Roeder keep this experiment going all match long. Christ, we were all going round the bend even before Beattie stuck his boot out and gave them the winner. No, even before the final blow we were talking open revolt against the board. But now, after getting back home and warming up a bit, having a night’s worth of sleep, I can relax and be thankful that cooler heads prevailed. We shall let nature run its course. I'm glad Christopher wasn't there to see and hear the vitriol, the seething bile of the collective. Since it was a school night he remained safe and sound back at home with Jill. Her brother and his mate replaced them, despite both being Spurs supporters. We kept that all quiet down the pub, of course. Stuart, seemed pretty pleased I'd asked him to come along and through the rain, wind and DiCanio wizardry I think he might have seen what we've been on about all these years (I guess he never really knew football was played outside N17). Hope the next time he joins me at Upton Park, we can furnish the genuine article.

Friday, 13 December 2002 09:50:

I've been sitting in Victoria for the better part of an hour this morning watching tourists find their way to the photo booth to take their pictures for a tube pass. A few, lacking the necessary change wander into the American Express office in search of the right coins. They leave disappointed and end up having to go across to the W.H. Smith and buy something to get it right (I suppose a purchase at the Swatch kiosk would be too conspicuous?). Pretty resourceful, I suppose, but it's all just a clever rouse by management to get them immediately into retail orienteering. Why waste it on Ben Nevis or some sodding Cotswold walk? Spend now. Spend Here!I'm not certain what I'm sitting here for, really. I suspect it has to do with the fact that I am working extremely hard to avoid having to do anything of any worth this morning. I'll make up some story about delays and such. Make a call or two and put things right -- temporarily anyway. That's what I used to do when I was sane. When I had balance. Perspective. Grace. Walking in front of me right now is a young woman who I presume to be an American (yes, that look of being over-worked along with those white trainers have turned her out), but she could easily be Ingrid Bergman from Casablanca. I wish Jillian were here beside me to see this girl's hair, the nose, that jaw line. It's striking. She is consulting a small notebook and looking towards the stairs down to the tube. The back-pack looks under stuffed, ready to receive all those woolens and such -- the loot from a Cotswold walk?She isn't doing the usual route. Any of it. She has stopped right in the middle of nowhere, right out in the open. She is just looking around and quite slowly, I might add. Ingrid is methodical. Ingrid is waiting for Victor.I am waiting for Gadot. I think it will be a long wait.

Tuesday, 17 December 2002 09:10:

I see where Ken Livingstone is a new father. His plans are to keep the baby under wraps and not turn it into another Leo Blair. Well, good for him, I say. How old is he anyway? 56? When his offspring makes it to Cambridge or Phillipa Fawcett Teacher Training College, he'll be a young 75 or so. Just hitting his stride. I wish him well in the endeavour. Hope his two weeks off gives them all a grand start. I’m trying to think of what it would be like to have Christopher now, as a little baby, instead of ten years ago. It seems like my capacity for dealing with tiny objects has diminished significantly as my age advances. On the other hand I have much more patience these days than I did before. At his age, Ken should be the varietable Buddha of patiance.

Ken is celebrating his new fatherhood by raising our council tax 62 quid a year. Got to pay for all his new police some way, right? He says it's going to mean another 1200 officers on the streets, bringing the Met pay roll to just about 30,000. It seems like a small city of Old Bill should do it. Yet, we need more and we certainly see why along Cann Hall Road. He also wants to give teenagers a break on public transit, which is brilliant. Why not give them an incentive to start using public transport early? Good habits early make sense. Need to keep them out of automobiles for as long as is possible. This is highlighted by my current state of affairs, attempting to get across to Perivale -- by car! What am I, insane? My first mistake was not going into Stepney, then cutting right across using a variety of routes. You’d say, "oh, the traffic would have killed you before you hit Bow," but it is killing me anyway and I’ve driven 400 kilometers out of my way. I must concentrate on something else.

There’s always football…

Man U sure did expose everything last weekend. A devastating visit to Old Trafford is not what we needed. Roeder insists on playing Pearce up front. It’s farcical. We just had to meet Man U when they were getting to top form -- so depressing. They looked good, even Veron. And there was Roeder again, in his black Mac, pointing, then putting a finger to his cheek in wonderment. I imagine him saying something in German. "Verschieben Sie weaklings! Zerstören Sie den Feind!" This, of course, would not be the way for a gaffer to gather favour with his young men. Maybe he should think about a different haberdasher.

How can our lads look so quickly like a second division club? Cole was Captain, because Paolo is out until well into next year. This might be okay, but I’m not sure the youngster is up to the task just yet. The passing was inconsistent at the best of times. The attack ended in the same spots over and over. We simply coward through the match. Now I’m getting upset again. I don’t need the aggro. I’m sitting at a light in Hanger Lane Gyratory (always love that name!) trying to inch from the North Circular on to Western Avenue. It has taken me so long to get to this point so I must not cock it up and accidentally edge my way to Acton instead. Next time, it’s the rails for sure. I’ll rent a car from over here if I need to make it to Marlborough by mid-afternoon.

Wednesday, 8 January 2003 06:05:

It’s snowing. It’s bloody snowing outside this morning. I can’t believe it. Been ages since I’ve seen snow out in our garden. Brilliant. Christopher will go mental when he wakes up and sees it. And all I can think about is what this will do to traffic round the East End. Can you digress before you have even started? So about the ice breaking result last weekend…Secretly, I’ve always sort of favoured Forest. Brian Clough has always humoured me to no end. In recent years they seem to either be going up or coming down or beating the odds by staying one step ahead of the gray men of the City. That said, I certainly didn’t want them to come into Upton Park and do well in the FA Cup 3rd round. But for a dubious call by Paul Durkin we’d have a replay on our hands up at the City Ground and still no home victory. They outplayed us for much of the match and I started to get the terrible impression we were seeing the future – First Division football at Upton Park. We’ve all been talking about relegation, but there it was right before our eyes. A first division side scudding around our pitch, outplaying our lads. And now I hear that Lee Bowyer from Leeds is on his way. This is just what this club needs now. Maybe we can get Stig Tofting too. If Bowyer can stick some goals in then, maybe I’ll change my tune. And isn’t that always the way in football -- a hated player at another club comes to your’s and suddenly all those elbows and dives and yellow cards are forgotten. Sweetness and light. He's a local lad (Teviot estate in Tower Hamlets) and that's supposed to help us all forget some of his antics. Well, maybe we will after that first goal goes in. Glenn Roeder said he’d go to war with the likes of Cole, Carrick and Defoe. I’m not too comfortable with war analogies at the moment, sir. Can you go a different direction Glenda? Speaking about going to war, wearing a sinister-looking mac and bringing in beer hall punch up specialist Lee Bowyer is not the way to stay up in the senior bracket.

Thursday, 16 January 2003 08:02:

Our woes give us comfort. Something to think about. Worry after. Discuss and diagram. Where would we be without the relegation battle? Probably chatting about reality -- Iraq, the Good Friday Accord, gunmen in Hackney or the Congestion Charge.

It’s not much of a battle. Battle implies fighting chance and we don’t even have that. Most of us are resigned to First Division football for next season. We shouldn’t be that way as loyal supporters, but we are indeed realists at heart. We have too many injury problems, too many draws on the books and a board whose answer to this all is to buy troubled midfielders.
I’m not worried about it. In fact, I’ve decided to not really think about it at all. Go to the matches, cheer the lads, do some singing, eat dodgy pies, then be done with it. To make this more effective I need to work on my non-football thinking skills. Brush up on all this UN inspection stuff, the Ark Royal battle group, what our Labour MP (Mr. Harry Cohen!) has to say about it all. I’ll be a hit down the pub, talking about things said by shadow cabinet members. They’ll hail me a bleeding well-rounded bloke.

Jillian is coming down the stairs. Soon to follow will be Christopher and then our small kitchen will be all busy and loud with the breakfast.

"You still here?" Jill asks as she enters.

"Just have to get to Ilford. Shouldn’t be bad."

Christopher troops in, setting his considerable book pack by the door. "Dad?"

"Yes."

"Is it true we’re going to have the Olympics here?"

"There’s been talk of it, yea. But I wouldn’t count on it."

"Hope we don’t. It’s busy enough round here without loads of people coming in."

"And that, son, is all the argument it will take, I think."

"Did you call your Uncle about, you know?" Jill asks cryptically, referring to my Uncle Jack who has been known to produce seats at the Arsenal for us. Uncle Jack isn’t really my uncle or anything. He’s an army buddy of my step dad’s who has done very well for himself after leaving the forces. Again, I pointlessly digress. We have been speaking in code so as not to alert Christopher about the possibility of going to Highbury on Saturday. We would be going under cover, so to speak, and sitting in seats belonging to my "Uncle’s" partners. I called him a week ago and then promptly forgot about it, because that’s what I’m supposed to do now that I am determined not to let anything football related concern me.

"He hasn’t gotten back to me." I reply as circumspect as possible.

Christopher sits down next to me with a banana and a cup of tea. "Oh, that’s right. Forgot to tell you. Uncle Jack called yesterday to say we could go to Highbury this Saturday. He has the tickets for us all." Cue funny, sit-com music here.

Jillian hands him some toast. "Thank you for giving us the message."

"You’ll be up for acting like a Gooner, then?"

"They’ll never suspect." Christopher does not look up from his toast as he begins to sing, "there’s only one Martin Keown, One Martin Ke-own."

"That’s enough of that. You’re sounding too authentic." I reconsider the Guardian and my cup of tea. Now, why is it necessary to send the Ark Royal to the Persian Gulf?

Monday 20 January 2003 22:48:

Kicked out of Highbury. That suits me just fine. Found out after we went mental, because Bergkamp put his fist in Bowyer’s face on the way to delivering the ball to Henry who promptly scored. Not that I’m any friend of Lee Bowyer’s, but that was totally uncalled for on the part of the Arsenal player.

Christopher tried tugging at my jacket and reminding me where we were sitting. Then I started to get pelted with paper missiles and jears, then the steward showed up and waved us all out (well, really just me), the Met not too far away in case I was a threat. Uncle Jack will get a nice reception when he goes and takes his seat next. But, really, was I supposed to sit there on my hands while the Gunners cheated their way to another three points? I suppose.

So we buggered off and went home stewing, hearing about Henry’s third goal when we arrived home. Jay-sis it’s going to be a long run out until May and a miserable summer afterwards.

Thursday, 30 January 2003 07:32:

I want the FA Cup to mean something, but I don’t know exactly why. Is it nostalgia? The Premiership is the best league in the world. That should be enough and what the Hammers should be concentrating on right now. But something tugs on me to will the competition back to where it was when I was a young, impressionable supporter on the terraces.I’m still, to this day, bothered by missing West Ham’s last victory in the Finals. Against Arsenal of all sides! I was in hospital and they went and won the bloody thing. I missed it. The glory. The parade through the East End. Damn tonsils. Should have waited. I was in pain, but I could have endured it. Really. What kind of a football supporter am I to let something like tonsils keep me from Wembley? Maybe it's more to do with some sort of inferiority complex.

Jill sticks her head in. "I’m just popping down the road to Hennigan’s. Need anything before leaving?"

I look up. "No, no. I’m set. I’ll grab some tea at Waterloo."

She comes all the way in and kisses me on the top of my head. "Good luck today."

"Thanks." She’s been keeping a close eye on me since the reckoning -- since the utter humiliation suffered at the hands of Satan’s Earthly forces at Old Trafford. I should be happy the Cup has lost some of its magic after that performance, because her concern would have been more justified back in the glory days. I would have been inconsolable I reckon.I’m not one of those geezers who think the clubs should all feature lads from the Commonwealth and the stadiums should go back to open terraces and that a little pitch invasion is good for the spirit. No I like the more cosmopolitan flare the international players have brought to the league, like the comfortable seats in the Centenary Stand and certainly don’t like seeing some gobshite tosser running on to the pitch to give the wanker sign a spin. All this aside, there must be a way to restore a certain caliber of magic to the FA Cup; to inspire the clubs to play their best talent; to get stuck in on those midfield tackles and to above all, care a little about the result. If once again made prominent, the thorough head knocking, arse kicking West Ham took at the hands of Man U would send me round the bend and under the table. But then, could you imagine Man U if the competition actually meant something? They'd be a bit like Panzers running across Holland -- though Hammer supporters could make the argument that they have already achieved that. So perhaps it's best that the FA Cup mean something to the lower reaches, but not to Prem sides trying to beat the drop.And with this thought, I am off on my day’s travels. Bournemouth! Hip Hip Hoorah!

Thursday, 6 February 2003 17:45:

There aren’t any really good record shops in the neighborhood. Not really in the entire borough. This nagging fact focuses a bright spotlight on a host of issues, but above all it illuminates the absolute chaos that revolves around negotiating the streets of London these days. Freak snowstorms aside, just wanting to visit a good, solid record store creates instant anxiety. I have no faith that I’ll be able to keep up with salient trends in Pop music or worthwhile back issues as long as we fail to address the movement of our populace.

Ken Livingstone has stated that the Congestion Charge will begin on schedule, despite the Central Line being completely out of commission until who knows when. This puts additional pressure on the entire scheme at a time when nothing more needs to be applied. The big circles with the "c" painted in the middle are all consuming. Yet, if you examine where these circles are placed, along the boundary of the zone, you’ll notice that it isn’t really a big area. I bet it’s really only half the size of Zone 1, though I have no idea. Just a guess. How many really need to drive to Whitehall each day? Or across the Tower Bridge?

I’ve heard one is far more likely to be hurt in an avalanche than in an airplane -- a remarkable statistic. Funny enough I haven’t heard what the odds are for those of us who try to use the trains. Whether above ground or below, they’re expensive, unsafe and crowded, yet necessary. Jillian and I are fortunate in a fashion. She uses a reasonably reliable surface line (Silverlink) and I use the motor (Skoda) and the District Line if pushed to go into the City office.

How do the French do it? We were in Paris for a bit of a quick one on Saturday as West Ham played Sunday – they lost miserably to an underpowered Liverpool. Lunch at Le Voltaire. Carpeaux’s "The Dance" at the Orsay. A spot of shopping at Au Printemps. Anniversary type stuff. Anyway, it’s a quick shot on the RER from Gare du Nord to the station at Musee d’Orsay. Granted it was a Weekend morning, but everything worked smoothly, elegantly and about half of what it would have cost us for a similar transport in London. The Eurostar wasn’t cheap, but that’s a separate issue. I’m talking intra-city, not intercity.

It is obvious that the French government has recognized the value of this and continues to make handsome investments, without any silly half measures or hand wringing debates about privatization. And since we were so easily able to negotiate the city using le Metro and the blindingly quick RER, we ended up spending more time there, spending more money there and spending a good amount of conversational capital discussing the virtues of our get-away in Paris amongst friends.

What is the value of efficient and easy transportation to a city? Happy movers and dreamers spend more money? Is that it? Maybe, but they also make peaceful citizens. I believe the Student Riots would have been far worse without the cool, smooth delivery of les masses générales around the city. Paris has long planned to minimize unrest. The wide boulevards allowed better troop movement to put down nasty little flare-ups by pitchfork-wielding opposition. "Grapeshot down rue de Rivoli -- Now!" But le Metro keeps everyone humming along in their day no matter what barriers are thrown up by striking truckers or anti-WTO activists or Tour de France organisers.

Upon our return, it took us almost as long to go out to Hornchurch and retrieve young Christopher from his grandmother’s than it did to get from Gare du Nord to Waterloo. Preposterous. The A12 is going to be the death of me and thousands more before it’s all said and done. What are the odds of a hideous jam in Romford Road? 1:1.

I have read where there is a reissue of Fanny’s Reprise releases on Rhino. For Sleater-Kinney fans this is from where the sound comes. I can get it right over the web direct from Rhino so I don’t have to go down to the Virgin MegaStore (right, as if they’d have this) and hand over my hard-earned quid. I’d like to hear this stuff -- music I’ve read about in magazines for ages -- but I don’t want to mail order and pay shipping, further pumping the price up for this curiosity-inspired acquisition to a level unreasonable for a family man. I want to go to a proper record store and hold it in my hands. I want to examine the packaging and feel the shopping chemical pulse through me. But here we are again talking transport. I really don’t want to face going over to Championship Vinyl and Rhino knows this. That’s why they offer it up over the wire. Maybe that’s the only place to get it anyway. Who knows? But they know there are thousands who find the task of procuring obscure recordings of all-girl bands from the early seventies daunting in this day of traffic overload.

It’s a giant leap, but I blame the Tories for me not being able to hear Fanny. They started this whole privatization scheme as part of Thatcherism. Started under-funding transport. Fostered mismanagement just in time for Bob Crow and the RMT to take over and finish the job of scuttling the system. And now we’re left holding the bag. We’re left with motors dropping out of Central Line trains, causing inconvenient derailments, nearly constant industrial actions and a lot of frustrated patrons. I say get the Lib Dems in and we’ll have brilliant transport, cracking good schools, they’ll get that NHS mess sorted and we’ll have Fanny reissues for the masses!
Talk at the Corner Shop these days is not about Fanny reissues (amazingly enough) or about Ken Livingstone or council taxes or even congestion charges. No, talk orbits around beating the drop. Still. Even after the recent non-turn of events. It’s good to have faith, but realism is critical too. I am astounded by the conversation in the shop. This reminds me of the days back in autumn when Mr. Banhill talked inexhaustibly about a starting place for his hero-God, Gary Breen. Faith is good. Reality important. And perhaps this is a good lesson for me to take into the great transport debate. Faith good, reality important. Don’t let your spirit be snapped…by the man!

I’ve often talked about the value of ignorance. Haven’t I? Well, I meant to do it. But what is the value of ignorance to the facts as displayed by Gripper Hennigan, Mr. Gohadhi, his son Rafi and the Wedmick brothers. These were the characters down the corner shop. And they all firmly believe West Ham United will be in the Premiership next year – even after witnessing Sunday’s debacle against the Reds. Here’s the value: Within their ignorance to the simple facts we find hope -- the foundation for happiness. Yes, I’m over-reaching. But that’s what I do. Example: I can’t get Fanny reissues, because of freaking Margaret Bloody Thatcher and good old Bob Crow.
We are keeping the public at bay by fostering ignorance through distractions such as relegation battles. I’m half-serious! Corporations have learned there’s nothing that becalms the general public better than sport. Becalms and insures copious consumers are waiting at their doors, despite massive upheaval on the rail lines and roadways of the Capital City. If you can’t becalm the masses with smooth and reliable transport, befuddle them by relegating important football clubs.

Wednesday, 12 February 2003 14:30:

I should be in Harrow at a meeting. But instead I am looking at works by William Blake inside the Tate – a place I have not been for a good many years.

"Beatrice Addressing Dante" in pen, ink and watercolour.

I was in a little, Islip Street sandwich shop having lunch and decided to walk over here to see some Turner’s. But I went the wrong way after weaving through some Asians at the Octagon, turning left before ducking into this room, just off the Goto exhibit. Blake’s grim biblical illustrations grabbed my meager attention. These are not the types of pictures I need to be looking at, but they somehow captivate me.

"Judas Betrays Him" in pen, ink, pencil and watercolour.

They’re all a bit frightening in one way or another. I imagine these pictures are sort of what the Hammers back line see inside their heads each Saturday. Dark, serious doom. Well, maybe only Repka sees them.

A big knot of American tourists comes through for a cursory look about before rumbling off, not taken with the Blake vibe. For a time there isn’t anybody in the room. I think about my complete abdication of responsibility today. The prevarication put forward makes me feel uncomfortable, but the secretive part appeals.

"The Blasphemer" in pen, ink and watercolour.

Will there be anyone I know in here doing the same thing? No one at the office would be in here and that is all I’m concerned about, because I’m supposed to be in a surgery seeing a consultant about chronic back pain.

A tall, thin old man strolls into the Blake gallery, walking in as though he entered a Victorian ball. He was obviously influenced by what he saw in the Landscape and Empire room next door. Johann Zoffany’s "Cock Match" for instance. He stops and considers "Beatrice Addressing Dante", clears his throat, clasps his hands together and strolls out into the John Goto exhibit.

"The Ghost of a Flea" in tempera and gold on mahogany.

The Ghost is perhaps the scariest damn thing I have ever seen. I remember this painting. Now THIS is what the Hammer back line envisions when they take the pitch -- grim visage of the darkest evil. No wonder this is hanging here. Where else would it be? Someone’s country estate? St. Paul’s crypt?

I finally make my exit, though not as stately as the old man. The Goto exhibit is imaginative. The photographs are a fresh departure from William Blake, though there are similarities. More people meander in this room – those gangs of Asians I mentioned before. It looks as though we have been moved suddenly to Hong Kong. It’s really impressive.

Finally, I leave the Tate. It’s now 3:15 and I feel comfortable making my way over to Pimlico to begin my way home. The air outside feels like it’s about 5 to 10 C, but the wind is mercifully dull as I walk up Vauxhall Bridge Road. I’ll have to get this nagging back pain much more often.

Monday 24 February 2003 15:00:

We’re sitting right beneath Bolton in the table and have a legitimate shot at over-taking them -- eventually. We have Spurs coming in and Bolton enjoys the weekend off. We could be level with them on points Saturday afternoon. But Spurs will pose a definite challenge to a club looking to build on a fine result last time out. Christopher is of the belief that the result against West Bromwich is a clear indication that the Irons will be the first club to be at table bottom at Christmas and avoid relegation. I’m not too sure and we’re not heading to the Ladbrokes shop. But there’s some hope, if not glory around these parts right now. (we just have to continue to believe the back line will fall into some sort of shape).

Talk around here is nothing unless centered around Paolo di Canio. As you would suspect, there are two camps. One of those camps is glad to see him off. Another can’t believe he’d go and worries about the future without the fiery Italian striker. A third camp could be legitimately started by me who thinks it is all a negotiating stunt. He’ll be back. Where else will he go? Celtic? Portsmouth? Christopher is beside himself over this issue. His devotion to all things Paolo is a little disconcerting, but typical for his age.

The neighborhood club, Leyton Orient, wants to redevelop Brisbane Road. There’s some scheme to put blocks of flats at each corner. I say fairplay to Barry Hearn for dreaming, but don’t hold your breath for Council approval. I’m picturing some enterprising football supporter being able to sit in their reception watching the Arsenal on Sky, then getting up and having a look out the window to catch live action -- Orient trying to break through against Kidderminster.

Picking up Christopher at school and racing (ha ha) out to Hornchurch for dinner with Jillian and her mum. I hope we will make it on time. You know the A12! The congestion charge has not done us any favours in these parts. It may have helped in Central London, but we still are in the thick of it.

Saturday, 1 March 2003 19:45:

Jill and I met in June 1987 at a Kentish Town club where young people sometimes went to enjoy loud music. We were all queued up, waiting to get in. She was with her boyfriend at the time and I was with a bunch of lads. Drinking, I reckon. We did that back then before going to the Town & Country.

The whole thing was a fluke, because she made some casual remark and the rest just happened perfectly. Jill made a comment about West Ham United and my ears got all warm. I’d never heard a girl approximately my age (or really any age) make a comment about my football club (or any club) and certainly would not have expected to hear such words spoken while waiting to see Husker Du.

"You? You like football?" Her boyfriend asked.

"Very much so. My parents aren’t too keen, but somehow my brother and I are. West Ham United. That’s who I support." Replied the girl in back of me.

I turned round and encountered a fresh-faced, beaming young girl from someplace leafy and suburban. I could not contain myself. "Nice one. Good choice. I think they’ll win the League next season. It’ll be brilliant, yea?" This was puckish since we ended the previous season 15th in the table. John Lyall was gaffer then and had managed the side to a respectable and shocking 3rd place finish a couple seasons before. But no one in their right mind seriously believed the Hammers were up to winning Division One -- ever. But West Ham United supporters are clearly not in their right mind.

"Oh, you think so, do you? Last season gave you confidence, then?" She said back with her leafy, suburban voice delivering a gentle barb.

Her boyfriend, who was this enormous wide boy, took a small step towards me. "Hey, you never mind." He said in an Essex burr. "Go back to minding your business, mate." Why was someone like him here in the first place? He looked like he should be at a disco or the very least at a track wagering on Man of War.

Since me and the lads were pretty much a bunch of anoraks we felt it best to indeed mind our business. We were there to witness the great and powerful nexus that was Mould/Hart/Norton and not get into any scrums with hardmen from a Chelmsford council estate (do they even have council estates in Chelmsford?).

After we got in I encountered her once more. We were able to exchange freely as her enormous wide boy pursued drinks in the mayhem. She thought enough of me to provide her phone number and a not so subtle dismissal of the wide boy. "Nothing serious -- he supports Norwich," she yelled into my ear over the pre-concert music (Pere Ubu, maybe?).

Our first phone conversation lasted 45 minutes. I was just finishing up my gap year so I held forth on a category of issues of the time with barely a hint of self-consciousness. I’m sure I embarrassed myself greatly with some diatribe regarding Margaret Thatcher (two weeks on the beaches of Ibiza will provide all the necessary training for this).

She was going to be off to Wadham and seemed noticeably excited about the prospect of college. I made an ill-advised and quite bourgeois reference to punts and Pimms. One misstep in 45 minutes. Not bad. I didn’t mention I was off to the far north to read at St. Chad’s. Incredibly, we didn’t even get to the Hammers and whether they could cure their left back issue in the close season.

I think about this now, as we arrive home from another match. We just watched West Ham defeat Spurs. Jill and I have now been to a lot of matches together and you would think we would be more casual about such a resounding victory. We should be jaded. But we’re not. It’s been 16 years with football always in the background and both of us are well chuffed. Say nothing of young Christopher who is beside himself. It was a marvelous result with Les Ferdinand getting the opener and our back line keeping Sheringham out of goal. Christopher called it "poetic." (He’s reading the Guardian a lot).

None of us in the Centenary Stand were sure if the Irons were really that good or Spurs really that bad. We didn’t do much exploring of this deep philosophical question, though. We didn’t care. Suddenly, the sun is shining above the East End. West Ham United does have a shot at avoiding the drop. Who could have imagined this? Who could have even thought this possible a month ago?

A month ago I would have been looking for my copy of Husker Du’s "Metal Circus" so I could play "It’s Not Funny Anymore." Now, I’m digging around in some boxes at the back of our wardrobe, looking for a cache of CD’s that would include Husker Du’s "Warehouse: Songs & Stories." I want to dig it out and play "These Important Years."

Tuesday, 11 March 2003 06:37:

I see where Sunderland sacked Howard Wilkinson. They’d only hired him in October. Things move pretty fast in the Prem. Except at West Ham. Glenn Roeder is still with us, despite what they’ve said about him in the press, what they’re saying about him down the pub and at Hennigan’s. But, he is actually digging the lads out of it, as opposed to Wilkinson who had not done the job. Guess Peter Reid feels pretty good about that. He should. Their board cocked it up but good.

Christopher and I watched Arsenal and Chelsea the other day. Great to see Lampard’s late equaliser send it back over to the Bridge for a replay. That’s all Arsenal needs is another match on their calendar. I suppose at this point, it’s just so busy one more date on the fixture list won’t matter. I think Chelsea just may get by, though their form at Stamford Bridge is a bit like my Hammers at home. Well, not really. Chelsea at least will win at the Bridge, but it isn’t often convincing.

Watford and Sheffield United are through to the semi-finals representing the First Division capably in the FA Cup. I don’t like Watford very much. This goes back to a boss I had at McCreavy Stone. He was a big Watford man and he seemed to like stressing the notion of Elton John as a board member like this was cool or something. Might explain their current financial problems, though Sir Elton is not figuring these days.

Which leads me to thinking about why we dislike clubs we know nothing about. Watford, in this instance, suffers, because they had a useless fuckwit as a supporter ten years ago. But, really, every single side in the country has useless fuckwit supporters. No more than perhaps right here at my own side, West Ham United. But when you have nothing to recommend a club, its supporters have to do.

I don’t like Norwich, because of an old boyfriend of Jillian’s. I don’t know anything about the club or the players. It’s terribly unfair, I realize, but that’s just the way it is these days. West Ham has played Norwich some over the years and I’ve never really witnessed anything too unprofessional about the players – unlike Bergkamp’s elbow to Bowyer a couple weeks ago (that still obviously bothers me). So is it time for an amnesty for Norwich and Watford and all the other sides I’ve grown to disrespect over the years? What fun would that be?

Thursday, 13 March 2003 09:07:

Shouldn’t I be doing some sort of work? It’s a big question these days. A big, important question as I scudder across the outer atmosphere of depression. Actually, today is one of those light days that come after I have had some success. The pressure is temporarily lifted and my schedule is conspicuously light. So I can take it easy this morning after getting Christopher off to school and Jillian off to work. It’s so quiet in here right now.

I have a good feeling about going up to Everton. Wish I could join the club, but it isn’t possible at the moment. We’ve won two in a row and I have a solid feeling about it. What a change from not very long ago when it was all doom and gloom. Outrageous turn of fortune. I have to say, Christopher should take a lot of credit for the faith he has shown through the season. An unshaking belief that the lads will pull through. So on to Everton. I guess I better get on with something resembling work.

Wednesday, 19 March 2003 23:25:

We find ourselves on the eve of war. Literally within hours there will be bombs falling on Baghdad. In fact, there may already be violence in the works. I do not know for I have been staying well clear of the telly and the Net. It really is depressing us all in this household. All we can do is try to concentrate on the constants. Take some small joys in the fact our football club is making an amazing run.

We drew at Goodison last weekend, which I suspected. I had a small flash of confidence that the lads could snatch a surprise result, but we’ll take the point. It was a remarkable clean sheet turned in by the Irons. We were able to keep the indelible Mr. Rooney out of goal. Sinclair and Lomas were brilliant, just magnificent quality there.

Next up we have Sunderland coming in. This will be nothing short of festive as they are going down for sure and we are looking the part of Houdini at the moment. Sunderland have appointed Mick McCarthy as their gaffer to replace Wilkinson. This is quite late in the show to be changing the actors, but I suppose they already have their eyes on next season’s promotion battle in First Division. Wilkinson is not the man you want for such a campaign. Don’t know much about McCarthy other than his time at Millwall and then of course his tour with Ireland’s nationals.
I think Freddie Kanoute could be in for a goal or two this weekend. I’m not even sure he’ll be starting so why I make such predictions is beyond me. I wonder if we put together a few more results and climb clear of the zone, will di Canio be signed? Now I’m not so sure.

Tuesday, 25 March 2003, 06:10:

Another three points last weekend. We’re beginning to make a habit of it, this winning. Of course it was Sunderland who provided the points this time round, so I shouldn’t gloat. Why not? Gloating seems to be frivilous during these times. When we’ve got lads enduring violence in Iraq, maybe we shouldn’t be talking about football. I made the argument last week that football allows us all to forget the bad stuff by presenting a consistent vision of fantasy. But I’m not so sure of that anymore.

You can’t avoid the war. It is down the news agent’s, in the pubs, in the trains and it all acts to just beat you down. In sales we're scolded if not always upbeat and cheerful. But when people are being killed, shot, captured, humiliated and all the other stuff that comes with war, how can we put that aside and act as though all is well? How can we balance this out?

Maybe I’m just worried about West Ham going down to Southampton next. Don’t think we’ll keep the string going against a side that has been in rare form this season. I am hoping for another draw like we got at Everton, but how many of those can you get against quality?
I’m listening to a lot of Echo & The Bunnymen lately. For some reason, they fit my mood precisely – especially their early stuff. The first two albums just feel right to me in my current, brooding mood. Takes me back to being on the barricades against Thatcher and Reagan and Pershing Missiles and all that lot. Maybe I shouldn’t be listening to it, given my earlier declaration about the importance of consistency and normality. Should go back to listening to Coldplay. At least there we are confronted about Fair Trade and more current, pre-war events.
International weekend coming up. England playing some cute Alpine cottage of a country. Liechtenstein? Why do they even bother? I hate international weekends. Delays the good stuff. Delays our continued ascent up the table!

Wednesday, 2 April 2003 22:34:

Will Paolo even be on the bench at St. Mary’s? He and Glenn have had another row and that puts even his presence at Southampton in question. Oh, he will be there, but perhaps only in body. We must salvage a point there and it will be extremely hard to do.

We can take solace from the Everton performance. The Hammers can keep quality people out of goal. But can they keep Beattie out? Everton didn’t have anybody of his caliber to throw our way – the talented Mr. Rooney came on as a late sub and made noises, but didn’t do the business.
I must say, Wayne Rooney showed his quality tonight during the England-Turkey match at the Stadium of Light. He got man of the match. Extraordinary for a 17 year old. England won 2-0. Vassell and Beckham scored. We were down the pub for the first half and it was tense. Very tense, indeed. Everyone still talks about Istanbul three years ago. We can’t be rid of the Turks it looks like. We came home and luck changed.

In other news, the Central Line is supposed to be open tomorrow. Nobody I know really expects it to be. Six weeks of noodling and they’ll still make a mess of it, you watch. Who’s running this asylum?

Well, I suppose I should be getting on to bed. I hope Paolo can work something out with management. I sort of like having his dramatic input into the Club’s daily routine.

Tuesday, 9 April 2003 07:00:

It is damn cold this morning. We had a hint of summer, and then it went away mighty quickly. Peter Cockroft on the Beeb says it will be with us a while, but then we’ll moderate. Pleased to hear it.

West ham grabbed a draw at Southampton that pleases me tremendously. Despite Bowyer continuing to play like rubbish, we were able to get a point and suddenly it’s hard to remember the last loss (not really, it was at Elland Road on 8 February). Bowyer spent the afternoon at St. Mary’s having a kick around on the left flank. What happened to his surges forward? The crisp passing? Does the lad need a bust up down the pub to get his form back? Oh well, it’s nice not to lose, but we need some results to climb out of it. West Brom and Sunderland are done. They are well out of it now. Bolton has decided to go on a run themselves and we can’t seem to keep pace. There’s much optimism around the neighbourhood, but discomfort as well. There isn’t very many matches left to get the business done.

I read in the Guardian this morning that TfL has started a web site to teach children to look both ways before crossing over the road. Amazing how much technology it takes now to get that point across. Apparently and here’s a shocking statistic, a child gets hit and killed almost every day here in the capital. That is a striking fact. Over 200 kids died last year at the hands of vehicles on our roadways. If TfL thinks a web site with games will help cut that number by one then I’m all for it. I’ll need to talk with Christopher about this to see if he thinks it’s daft or not. Kids are the best judges, because it effects them directly. I am curious to see if he thinks the web site is at all interesting. We’ll see how well they’ve done their homework.

Let’s see what else is going on. George II’s war in Iraq is sizzling right along. Our lads are popping around Basra with the heavy armour looking close to securing it. Blair is meeting with George II in Belfast this morning. How odd is that? How symbolic is it that they meet in the land of balacavas and bombs down the betting shop, Orangemen and Catholic hardmen with itchy trigger fingers, Bobby Sands murals and, well, you get the idea. Very odd. Hope everyone behaves. So far there’s just been the usual bomb scares.

Jill comes skipping into the upstairs reception. "Are we really going out tonight or was that a hollow offer?"

I immediately turn from the computer screen. "Absolutely not hollow. And we aren’t just going down the pub. I want us to go to a proper restaurant. The Green Papaya? Fancy a trip to Hackney?"

"Now you’re talking, young man. I can taste the sweet potato fritters already." She comes over and kisses me on the top of my head. "Ciao."

"See you soon."

She stops before going down the stairs. "You are going to work today, right?"

"Oh, yes. Over to the Queensway office."

She disappears, but I hear her call out, "Enjoy. See you tonight."

I like going out to eat with the family. It’s an event and takes us away from the routines that sometimes get us into role-playing ruts. We don’t do it very often, but it is nice to break out and have a bit of Vietnamese or something else a bit out of the ordinary. We don’t count going down to the local as "going out." It’s somewhat like going down to the kitchen for a beer and sandwich, only there are streets and neighbours involved.

So this morning I get to try out the newly reopened Central Line as I am heading for one of our branch offices. After much teeth-gnashing and new motor mounts, some new track and more teeth gnashing, they think they’ve got it right. We’ll see about that. It’s been a pain in the arse having it out of commission. The Silverlink has been having a spot of bother lately as well so Jillian and I have resorted to sharing (rationing) the use of our Skoda Octavia. We think it needs valve work now so the less we drive it the better.

Friday, 12 April 2003 22:00:

Talk down the pub is all about Freddie Kanoute and Paolo DiCanio and Lee Bowyer. Many say the side will be better without these players. I am not so sure. Freddie is unhappy with his playing time, but is he a player that can reasonably expect a better shot at a different club? Maybe dropping down would get him that first team experience he craves. Three goals this season, compared to 11 last and 13 before that. Each year production has gone down, but so have his appearances. He’s only been in 8 league matches this term. It’s easy to say he’s a quality player that lacks enough heart, but in his case, I think he’s got a case for moving on.
Lee Bowyer is another matter. If he doesn’t stop hiding out during matches he’ll be seated on the sidelines for the last matches and certainly will be shipped out in the close season. Good riddance, I say. But I’ve never rated him, eventhough he’s a local and started for England and all that.

Paolo is a different kettle of fish altogether. Niggling injuries, age, tempermental behaviour are all catching up with him. Would he be better off in Portsmouth with Harry Redknapp? We might see. I still think he’ll stay, for some reason. These are all questions and complaints of a side involved in a fight for it’s big league life during an ever shortening run-in to the close season.
We have Villa tomorrow and we all anticipate a fine match at Upton Park. Weather could be about perfect. Villa played Arsenal well last weekend, but can still be had, particularly away from Villa Park. They’ve only been able to get two points in the last five or six matches. We’ll be in for at least another draw, but the hope is for the full complement of points for us. Another three will bring us within three of Villa themselves and go a long way to supporting the notion that the Hammers are Houdini!

I can hear Coldplay’s "Whisper" from Christopher’s room down the hallway. It’s getting a bit late for him to be listening to music, though I applaud his choice of bedtime entertainment. I should go and let him know it’s time for lights out, but Jillian is already beating me to it. A gentle reminder, the music goes away and the light goes out. Such a good little boy we have indeed.

"Do you want a glass of wine?" She asks already heading down the stairs.

The weekend has started. "I do. I’m coming down."

Time to pack it in and breath a little. Big match tomorrow. Big weekend too. We’re going to go and watch the marathon crowd go running by on Sunday morning. Jill has a co-worker who has entered and fancies himself as a modern Abebe Bikila. Doubt we’ll be able to pick him out of the 25,000 barmy runners, but it will be quite the site to see. I don’t think I’ve ever actually witnessed that many people running in one place. It’s sort of like the entire crowd at a football match, emptying out of a ground and running down the road at once. Madness.

Sunday, 13 April 2003 18:10:

I saw Mr. Banhill earlier today. First time in a long, long while. He was coming from services down the road at St. John the Baptist’s. He stopped to watch me check the oil in the Skoda. His opening gambit predictably concerned West Ham United. "Well, yesterday was a little frustrating."

"What’s that?" I pulled my head out from under the bonnet just as his statement registered.

"Yes. Yes it was. We all thought we were in for a result. You have to like the chances when Kanoute and Sinclair score goals. Sinclair’s goal was a cracker and we all thought we were on our way."

"Lomas should have opened it. Listening on the radio, I thought it’d gone in."

"It hit the cross bar, then the post. Crazy bounces. The place went spare."

"What is wrong with that bloke, Repka?"

"He can’t control himself. He just can’t. It certainly didn’t help our cause pushing Allbeck around. If we go down, there will be plenty places we can look for the reasons. Repka is one. That penalty let them back in the match…"

"…with the greatest of ease, I’m afraid. And now we’re really up against it. A result there would have taken a little pressure off."

"Yes. A draw wasn’t a whole lot better than a loss. But we’re still close with a good chance of saving ourselves."

"You reckon?" He shrugged. "Looks like you’re low on oil, there." He pointed to the dip-stick.

"This motor is always low on oil. A perpetual state."

Mr. Banhill continued his stroll down Woodhouse Road. "Enjoy the day. Say hello to that little lad of your’s for me."

"Sure thing, Mr. Banhill. You have a nice day too." I went back under the bonnet and replaced the dipstick. No mention of Gary Breen. The spell has well and gone from Hendon’s own, I thought, before straightening up and seeing Melaffa Boabica walking my way. A nice young lad, Melaffa and his wife lived three doors down and had a boy above Christopher, plus one below him in grade at Cann Hall Primary. For some reason, though, Christopher had never forged a friendship with the lads. Guess that’s how it went sometimes. Hard for me to recall what sort of selection process there was at his age. How did we decide with whom we spent our time? "How are you Mel?"

"I’m feeling terrible."

"Oh?" I close the Skoda’s bonnet.

"Yea. It's no good. No good. My mother is ill and I must go home to Rio tomorrow to see about that. Such a long, long trip back to Brasil. But she needs me."

"There’s no one else closer that can help?"

"My brothers are all without any use."

"I’m sorry to hear that." I pushed the bonnet down to latch it, then wiped my hands. "It must be pretty serious, then."

"I think so. She has not been well for many years. But now it is much worse."

I wasn’t sure what else I could say. It’s always tough when you encounter a casual friend who is having a tough go. You don’t feel like you know them well enough to comiserate in any meaningful way, yet you can’t ignore the fact they are dealing with weighty matters. "Well, I hope for the best." Then I got a bright idea. "Would you like Jill and me to look in on your family?" That sounded like a nice thing, but then I felt awkward.

He smiled. "That is nice of you, but I think they will be fine. I have not been away from them before, but they are prepared." He nodded to the car. "Is your car sick?"

"Just running through the oil pretty fast."

"Ah." He nodded again. "That’s a Skoda for you." Mel started to walk away. "Thanks for your nice offer. I will ask Lorinho to call Jill if she needs help."

"Have a safe trip." I waved to him.

My back hurt so I decided to go in and fix some lunch. I had the Sunday Times waiting for me and a garden chair out and dusted off, just for the purpose of a little afternoon reading. We had been out all morning to the marathon, trying to pick out Jillian’s co-worker. She thought she saw him, but wasn’t sure. How could we be sure with tens of thousands of runners? It was all a blur to me, but Christopher seemed to be well chuffed. He’d never seen so many joggers. After that, we came home and I noodled a bit with the aforementioned car so now lunch and The Times. Maybe a nap?

While slicing ham I thought of our starting 11 yesterday. James, Johnson, Repka, Pearce, Brevett, Lomas, Cole, Bowyer, Sinclair, Kanoute, Defoe. There is no reason West Ham United should be fighting for Premiership survival with that lot. There are only two I have serious reservations about: Bowyer and Repka. We could play donkeys in their two positions and be just as well off.

Jillian enters the kitchen and plucks a piece of ham off the cutting board. "Are we heading to Mom’s for Good Friday supper? I have to call her today."

"Sure. That sounds fine." I go to the Smeg for some lettuce. "I just saw Melaffa in the road and he has to go back to Brazil. His Mom is very ill."

"Really? That’s too bad."

"I told him we’d check with his family when he’s gone to make sure they’re doing okay."

"Did I see Mr. Banhill earlier?"

"Oh, yes. He was in fine Sunday spirits, indeed. Says hello to Christopher."

"Hey, the Full Monty, eh?"

"No mention of Gary Breen. Hasn’t brought him up since before Boxing Day, I reckon."

Friday, 18 April 2003 09:35:

Good Friday. A nice weekend ahead of us here in Cann Hall. We hope the weather cooperates with the proceedings.

We’re off to Bolton tomorrow. Well, not us personally, not the family unit. The club. The club is off to Bolton for a massive match tomorrow. Aren’t they all massive this time of year when you’re in the relegation zone? But Bolton is right above us in the table. A good result at the Reebok tomorrow with the right amount of goals and we can jump over them. Officially, the Hammers would be out of the zone, though certainly not out of danger. Such excitement. How can professional leagues around the world not have relegation? It adds so much to end of season.
I think we may go down the pub for it, though it might be best to stay home and avoid the clouds of cigarette smoke. I see where New York has banned smoking in bars and restaurants. Can London be far behind? It would be fine with us. Make it a much more enjoyable session if we don’t have to suck in Rothman’s smoke while attempting to refresh.

Talk down the pub last night was about the rail strike. RMT has an industrial action going, but it doesn’t look like it is going to bother the trains north too badly. That seemed to be the prevailing concern last night. No one really wanted to discuss the real issue behind the action. Safety. Service reductions. None of that seemed to matter as long as supporters can get to the match!

Monday, 20 April 2003 10:30:

The tackle was beyond out of control. The Guardian said, "too much, too late," which sums up everything about the Hammers this season. Ian Pearce’s challenge on Pierre-Yves Andre in the closing moments of Saturday’s Bolton match, which ended 1-0 to Bolton, meant an immediate dismissal for Pearce. Then the final whistle blew and Joe Cole went ballistic. Brevett, in on it too, showed a bit too much temper for someone who has only been in the claret and blue for a month or two. So now we have six points between us and safety with only four matches left, one of them this afternoon against Boro, who are unluckily for us coming off a whipping by Arsenal.

We’ll be going over to the ground this afternoon with a sense of dread. We have one foot in First Division already and this afternoon, Middlesbrough may just put our other foot there. Then it’ll be a quiet coast into the close season as we start trying to figure out which big club will end up with Joe Cole or where Jermaine Defoe may end up. Doubt if we’ll be watching them next term at Upton park against the likes of Walsall and Rotherham. It’s damn depressing. These are dark, footballing days indeed round the East End.

Aside from this mess, it was a fine Easter weekend. We were determined not to let the mess up at the Reebok interfere with the greater good. Jillian’s Mum came in yesterday and we had a big meal. We actually dodged some showers and spent some time out in the garden. We’ve been doing a lot of relaxing, preparing for a return to work tomorrow. I like these four day weekends, even if they see the relegation of my football club.

Monday, 20 April 2003 20:30:

We’re hanging by the thinnest of threads after taking it to Middlesbrough. Personally, I was a bit shocked with the result this afternoon. We’re only three points behind Leeds, though they have a match in hand and we’re four points behind Bolton with three to play. It will be a vicious end to the season. I think we’re doomed, but you have to have hope after today’s performance.

If we do stay up, I feel a lot of the credit will need to go to Rufus Brevett and Trevor Sinclair. Brevett saved James’ bacon by golfing Massimo Maccarone’s shot out of the danger area. That’s just another in a number of critical plays Brevett has made for the Hammers since coming over from Fulham. Unlike Bowyer, Rufus seems keen to impress and make a mark. Then there’s Sinclair who is scoring vital goals during this run-in. He put the only tally of the match across around the 70 or 75 minute mark and we all went spare. The roof came off Upton Park. Honestly, we didn’t look to bother Boro much with questions until Lomas hit the post and Sinclair scored ten minutes later. Then it was time to cross fingers and pray to the almighty footballing gods that Maccarone or Ricketts or Job didn’t equalize.

And they didn’t.

Interesting note about goal differential: As of the Bolton match, West Ham was –4 at home and –15 away. The –4 at home is the big issue, as I see it. No one should be –4 at home. Not that I’m completely overlooking the away form, but at Upton Park we should be pouring the goals through. Don’t our strikers enjoy home cooking? If we stay up with those sorts of differentials, I will be gobsmacked.

Tuesday, 29 April 2003 20:07:

Well, it was not a pretty thing up at Maine Road, though effective. Can someone buy Joe Cole some better boots? How can a professional spend so much time on the floor? And what of our David James? Has all that bleach he uses on his barnet soaked into his head? Thank goodness for Kanoute who came on to do the business and get us the points needed. It’s still a tall order, but there is belief round these parts.

Trevor Brooking looked like a businessman given a special gift by his staff -- an afternoon on the touchline of his favourite club. But that’s okay, I reckon. If it means three points, let’s institute a whole program next season. We’re starting to get serious about Chelsea coming round next weekend. Should maybe avoid the topic and think about May Day.

May Day is Thursday and you would think it’s going to be a right pain in the arse. What with Iraq and all, the demonstrators have extra stuff to complain about this go round. But May Day is always one of those days you hear about, then forget is going on, because you don’t encounter it. I mean to say that there will be marches and random demonstrations, but 99% of London will go about its business without a thought. Not that travel into city centre will be easy, but it never really is anyway. I will be visiting my clients in Norwich and Great Yarmouth so it won’t effect me one way or the other, unless of course, the anarchist’s roadshow appears in Wensum Street.
Glenn Roeder is out of intensive care, which is good news. The bad news is, he’ll have to under-go brain surgery in the not too distant future. That’s a miserable prospect for anyone. I hope he can stay away from the club long enough to make a decent run at recovery (am I thinking of the man or the club, here?). This West Ham United is not the one to watch for calm and tranquility.

Friday, 9 May 2003 12:45:

I actually wish I didn’t have the afternoon off, because while the weather is absolutely fabulous, I don’t have anything to do or any place to go and all this time to think about West Ham United going up to St. Andrew's on Sunday.

Just walked out to the garden and checked the thermometer -- 19 -- and it feels like there is virtually no humidity in the air. This has convinced me to take a walk over to the park. I have not walked the Wanstead Flats since last July, which is peculiar, since it’s right round the corner from us -- practically. But in July, Christopher wanted to go look at the Model Yacht Pond where the MoD recently had exploded an old World War II ordinance. They’re working on the old pond to turn it into something a bit more usuable and wildlife friendly. There wasn’t much to see at that point as the bomb stuff was all gone and there was a lot of excavating going on. We continued on to Aldersbrook and walked round the pond there, then came back home. I might retrace the route today. Go by what is now a pond with water in it that is going by the more elegant name of Jubilee Pond.

I just saw on the one o’clock news where some protester jumped off Nelson and actually survived. His parachute opened impressively to break his fall to the Trafalgar Square floor. The Met was right there to haul him down to the Nick. Not that the lad wasn’t jumping for a good cause (Tibet), but I question the effectiveness of this type of protest. Does it not only further the perception that the Free Tibet folks are all a bunch of loonies? On the other hand, I must say that they got a lot of coverage from the stunt. It is remarkable that the lad who jumped got the parachute open enough to provide a soft landing. How he didn’t end up breaking his legs is beyond me. How tall is Nelson’s column? Anyone know?

It has been a year since the Potter’s Bar crash and no one can say what caused it. The going theory is some sort of vandalism on the rails, but nothing more definitive has been put forward. One would think with all the sophisticated technology at the government’s beck and call a cause could be determined. Someone needs to call in Sir Topham Hatt. He’d get to the bottom of it. Sort them out, but good.

It’s unsettling for the millions who travel the rails daily to know there are these unsolved mysteries hanging out there. What were the incident statisitics before privatisation? I’m sure a comparison has been made and I’d like to see it. So many questions to be asked. Not enough answers to them.

Speaking of questions, how many will be asked of Birmingham City Sunday? We were all in near shock most of last weekend’s match as we watched some side wearing our kit beat Chelsea and look like they should be playing for a Champion’s League spot rather than pure survival. Kanoute really impressed us all with his work rate and the aerial displays. But how fitting to have DiCanio come off the substitute’s bench and score the winner. But that was last week. Sunday is everything. We must win and preferrably win big to try to get round the whole goal differential question. Though I think we would need to win by five and that’s not very plausible unless you’re Arsenal.

Bolton must lose. I’m not even sure where or who they play. They will be giving it the gas, so it matters little. I think they have Boro at the Reebok. Not long ago I would have instantly picked Boro for the result. But they’ve come across a load of poor form lately. So I hope it’s someone else Bolton plays.

We’ll be piling into the pub on this one hoping that Trevor Brooking has some more charms. It will be magic if they stay up. The first side to do so when at the bottom at Christmas. I am going for a walk now with my fingers crossed.

Monday, 12 May 2003 06:45:

I can’t get over what a sense of relief I have this morning. The season ended yesterday with relegation, despite a battling draw at St. Andrew’s against a rugged Birmingham City side.
Defoe really got our hopes up early when he broke through and Les fed him a perfectly gift-wrapped ball only to diddle it away inside the area. Why didn’t he blast an immediate shot to the right of Bennett? Or why didn’t he try going a little wider if he wanted a first touch? Instead he broke back to the middle and City was all over him by then. This play said it all about the Irons this year.

Yes, the season ended with my West Ham United being shown the door down to the First Division. And while there is no doubt this is a depressing state of affairs, I have this overwhelming sense of calm about it. Is this shock? Maybe. Of course, I’ve had since about November to prepare myself, so how shocking could something taking that long to finalise be?
Christopher had just come into the world when we were promoted to the still-new Premiership ten years ago. I recall, with pinpoint accuracy, our first goal in the Prem. It was 1993 and Dale Gordon, whom we just signed from somebody up North like Partick Thistle or Rangers, scored in a 1-1 draw at Coventry City. Christopher was just three months old. Insert sound effect of a "sigh" right here. And now we’re going down when he is already showing signs of being quite the young lad.

Sure it has been a nice run, but aren’t we too big and too good a side to be facing Walsall and Rotherham and all those small-timers next season? Does anybody even know the way to Walsall? I think part of the problem with relegation is that it’s one massive, extremely public rejection of a community’s focal point. There’s no question this sort of thing is a blow to a community’s self image -- unless you’re West Bromwich where they made no pretenses of being anything other than a First Division side on holiday this season.

Will we keep any of our stars? Probably not. We’ve seen the last of DiCanio and Kanoute. Cole and Sinclair will no doubt move on. The sale of those two alone should make up the club’s short fall. Defoe? Undoubtedly gone (hope not). Is there anyway we could unload Repka? Maybe throw him in on a deal. "Okay, Villa, you want Cole? Well, you have to take Tommy Repka too."
Will Glenn Roeder be in charge for the promotion battle? Many questions are with us this morning.

Maybe it’s time for Mr. Brown to promote Glenn Roeder to Vice President in charge of finding a new job. He is just not the right man for the position. The board should admit it and carry on with the change. Not to be too insensitive about it, because of Glenn’s health issues, but it’s a business right?

Well, now we have the FA Cup Final next weekend. Southampton and Arsenal. I have to pick Southampton automatically. Hell, Arsenal kicked me out this year, so I’m still upset about that, although I am still more upset about Bergkamp’s flying elbow. My heart says Gordon Strachan and his Saints hoist the cup, though my mind logically expects to see Thierry Henry and company up on the podium.

The Cup happens, then it’s all quiet on the football horizon. There will be bits of news about the player movements and such. Moans and groans as DiCanio gets signed by Portsmouth, etc. I’m beginning to seriously reconsider that man. But that’s another story. The fixture list will eventually come out, probably when we’re in Salema trying to rest our minds and bodies in the glorious Portuguese sun. I’ll look at the schedule in the newspaper, while digging my toes into the warm sand, but it won’t really register. No, I won’t be getting my head around football until the weather is hell here in London and we get into July. The training will start. The friendlies will go on. In August, we’ll open up our First Division account and only then will the true force of the relegation take hold. The sight of an aging Les Ferdinand dropping a header past the Stoke City keeper will be too much to handle, I’m afraid. He’ll probably move on to somebody like Wolves. Join Ince and Irwin in the Pensioners section.

My hope is that this is a much needed cleansing of the soul for me and everyone around the East End. It will weed out the casual supporter -- all those sunny day fans from places like Thaydon Bois -- leaving a core of strength. We should embrace this relegation as a bit of Zen -- whatever the hell that means. All I can say is the strong better be left, particularly when Millwall comes calling with their hooligans ready to dispense some good kickings out back of the station. There are rough days ahead for us, but we shall emerge better for having endured. Right? It will give us cache, cool and street cred. Without the meat of the Prem, we’ll certainly feel the same moral superiority and righteous indignation that vegans feel. It will be another fresh start.

Note: I’m going to miss singing, "we've got Di Canio, you've got our stereo" to the tune of La Donne e Mobile from Verdi's Rigoletto. Particularly effective when sung to visiting Scousers.

Monday, 12 May 2003 07:37:

Cheers!

Jillian just walked in and held up a small plastic wand with a small window in it. Seems to be a couple of blue lines in there. Crikey, we’re going to have another little one around!

We had to mop up some serious tears, rally the senses and get all the hugging done, because she has a train to catch and so do I. But my oh my oh my oh my. A funny old life, this. Just never can say what will come along.

Tennis with Nabokov's Butcher?

2008-04-08T00:14:00.008+01:00

I will never be a writer. Just like architect, historian or mountain climber, being a novelist or any kind of writer is no longer possible. It’s not hard to make the final call, really. The realization writing won’t be my grown up career has been coming on gradually for the last twenty years. A little longer than it took me to understand I will not design cutting edge buildings, teach history at a small eastern college or be my generation’s Sir Edmund Hillary. Nor will I be a striker for Arsenal, fly jets off a carrier or direct critically acclaimed independent films.

All those fantasy careers led me through rough stages of early adulthood and gave me hope while studying what otherwise looked to be bleak, stolid dead-end choices (particularly when you’re about to graduate). No one sits around his or her dorm room and imagines quiet unassuming existences in the bowels of maturity. At least, I hope not. You don’t sit at your desk, stare into the cinder block wall and envision the stacks of bills or the mold on the vinyl siding. You can’t fathom the kids that do not maneuver through the house without exceeding OSHA-approved sound levels, the crab grass, the car that needs tires or the cordless phone that loses its charge in about four minutes. Dreams of the future when I was in school involved creative achievements of some kind that had no connection to actual experiences or talent. Whatever those things were I let them define me along with the music I listened to and books I read. Not having any idea who I was then did not discourage me from thinking I could have everything set up in about three and a half years, including knowing exactly who I would turn out to be as an "old" man. I mean, come on, how long can it take to learn how to make the final assault up Everest from the South Col?

Now at 42, I am seated here firmly in the typical cliché, telling you I had no idea it would be like this. But how could I not have known I would end up in this sweeping landscape of cliché? And so what have I become? Well, certainly not a bad person or a degenerate, dull waste of space. I am a father of two, a husband to one, a neighbor, brother, son and American. I used to be a salesman and worked at the same company for years and years as a loyal soldier of commerce. Then a neighbor gave me a stock tip on an emerging tech company and for some reason we took him deadly serious and plunged everything liquid into the investment. The resulting lottery win suddenly provided a huge amount of time for me to sit around and contemplate. Contemplate stuff like, how come stories involving rich people far out number the ones dealing with average folks. It seems like stories about average people would sell equally as well, because so many could identify with the characters. Again, how naïve can I get? Well, I did say I was an American. Perhaps it’s because we all believe we’ll end up rich.

It’s a strikingly beautiful September day. I am sitting outside at a café in the Central West End. The Chemistry Lab serves spectacular coffee and their Wi-Fi set up makes "working" here a snap. It’s a smart little café during the day before crossing over to become a heaving gay dance palace at night. Such is life in this neighborhood and it’s one of the reasons we pulled up stakes and moved in after selling off the suburban movie set a few years back. Lynn and I always had some vague sense or vision we were more cosmopolitan than we gave ourselves credit for. We’re pleased to announce that we were right (when do I get my free subscription to the Atlantic Monthly?).

Anyway, the air carries just a hint of autumn. There’s a clean edge to the breeze cruising down Euclid and though the leaves on the trees don’t look too close to turning, I can tell they’re giving it serious thought. A school bus just snuffled down the street, squeezing between a garbage truck and a parked laundry van. There are other signs this part of the world is changing out of its summer clothes. Fewer tourists clog the Zoo and the Art Museum over in Forest Park. The Unitarian Church up the street is back in session and just yesterday I saw a dilapidated truck heaped with firewood plying the streets, up from Perryville with a nice load of walnut for someone’s hearth.

The only other person here is a suspiciously familiar man sitting at the other end of the terrace reading the Austin American-Statesman. I pause from my daily journal to chew my bottom lip trying to figure out from where I may know him. Old work associate? Someone I went to school with at Mizzou? Is he famous? Maybe not so famous, but notorious? He’s smoking Marlboro reds and wears a jean jacket. I would say he’s a bit older than I am and is one of those people who can get away with wearing jeans despite advancing years, because there seems to be an assured casual air surrounding them. You know some people just look comfortable and timeless and secure. I take note of this, because I am not comfortable, timeless or certainly secure. If I were I think I’d just call over to him and ask his name.

I am obviously not the person who calls over to a stranger at a café and asks their name, particularly at a café that doubles as a gay bar. Not that I should care if there was a misunderstanding, but you can see what I’m getting at, right?

So it’s back to the droll manuscript I have been pounding away on for the last year. Bit by bit trying to hammer it into something I can call a story. Something I can send around to friends and family as proof that I don’t let my open-ended days drift by. Moving over to the right folder on my Power Book, I make one more attempt to identify my coconspirator in coffee drinking this morning before beginning work. Nope. Nothing.

>>
Sitting in a conference room on the 52nd floor of Kantler Tower, William tries to stay focused on
>>

Wait. I know who it is. It’s Eliot Crudup. Eliot fucking Crudup! Why would he be drinking coffee and reading the Austin American-Statesman here at The Chemistry Lab on a Wednesday morning? He’s a world famous author. An author who I thought lived in New Orleans. Or is it, in fact, Austin? Now if I’m the type of guy who doesn’t call across a terrace to ask, "don’t I know you?" I certainly am not the type of person to ask Eliot Crudup where he lives. I’m guessing he has a reading at the Left Bank or perhaps at Washington U. Someone obviously clued him in on The Chemistry Lab’s excellent coffee and pleasant sidewalk terrace.

"Say Eliot, mind if I join you? I’d like some advice on a couple chapters of my book." I bet he hasn’t heard that…in the last hour. I can’t imagine being a famous person having to deal with people calling over to them at a deserted café, asking who they are or where they live or worse, asking them for an instant critique. It’s not an even trade. Okay, we’ll let you be rich and famous, but you’ll have to put up with idiots of all shapes, sizes, sexes and talents.

I’m just about ready to start reading my stuff again when my super uber-fon rings. The tone is a Joy Division baseline. I notice Eliot look over at me, before turning a page.

I look at the large, colorful screen of my Treo 600. It’s Lynn (and 67 degrees at the airport). I click and answer, "Yes?"

"Sorry to bother you, but can you go by Straub’s and pick up more cheese? I can’t believe we’re out of cheese."

"What are the odds? Sure. Any requests?"

"No. Anything that looks good."

"Great. I’ll do it. I’ll be home later. I’m still at Chemistry."

"That’s fine. No rush. Just thought you could walk over and get some cheese."

"You’re liking that word today. Cheese."

She laughs. "Isn’t it strange how a word will suddenly become funny for about two minutes?"

"See you later."

"Bye." And she’s gone from the airwaves and my screen.

^
Eliot Crudup grew up in Hornchurch, east of London, studied at the University of Durham, and kicked around Europe for about ten years before exploding on to the literary landscape with three novels. The son of a bitch is just a few years older than I am and has ten books to his name and has made the short list for a Booker prize twice. His last, The Party Makers, set against the back drop of bright Mediterranean days and neon pulsed nights on Ibiza is a raucous satire of Euro trash club culture in all its E-taking, water swilling, over-sexed electronica. I’ve been trying to figure out how a guy so removed from that scene can make it sound so convincing. Research. Probably packed up and moved over there for a good year or so to get the vibe just right. Also must be where talent becomes a factor, no?

Maybe I should ask him. In the right forum, that is. I zip to the Left Bank web site and check the calendar. No Eliot Crudup party. I go to Washington University’s schedule for their English Department’s Lecture Series. No Mr. Crudup showing up. Rubbing my chin I check the Biggles and Court site and feed in my zip code, which takes me to information for their blimp hangar of a store in Brentwood. And there Eliot Crudup is -- a book signing tonight. Marketing in support of The Party Makers.

It should not surprise me that he is within the firm clutches of the devil. A man has to make a living. But Biggles and Court? They’re the Wal-Mart of bookstores. Huge, over-sized boxes usually located within a ghetto of retail thrown together around hundreds of asphalt acres. Funny thing is they always have what you want, the staff is pleasant and knowledgeable, discount tables are extravagantly stocked and their coffee and muffins are magnificent. Fucking hell, it’s all a bit vexing. They make it so hard to hate them. On the other hand, this is exactly what makes them the Devil.

Satan is not going to be caught dead foisting bad experiences on the book buying public, because that just would not serve his needs. The dude is trying to suck as many in as possible and to do that, he needs to be as inviting as is possible while still being able to carve away at key standards of society. Slowly but surely we lower our standards in order to get that discounted Franzen first edition and double mocha grande (sans whip cream). But God damn it, I’ve heard Eliot on NPR countless times. He’s been published in Granta and The New Yorker too many times to count. There have been numerous pieces in publications as diverse as The Guardian, Newsweek and Vanity Fair. When he did Parkinson on the BBC last year he sounded so sincere, intelligent, humble and, well, talented. How could anybody who does all that agree to lure the lambs into the belly of the beast?

Money does funny things to everyone. It sure twisted us and took a massive commitment to sanity and well being to hold everything together. Going from suburban slave to urban nouvo riche in the space of about 25 months nearly caused disintegration of our value system. If not for our small family’s general integrity and foresight, we’d be in Vegas, waiting tables to scrape the money together to get back home after losing it all on the craps table.

I might as well walk on over to Straub’s.

On my walk to pick up cheese, I recall my first visit to this neighborhood in the early eighties. It was still quite the experiment then and had not yet captured the imagination of enough intrepid developers to become the buzzing center of New Urbanism it is today. There were just a few restaurants around then and some other notable shops, mainly of the used record variety. West End Wax and Euclid Records interested me, because I came from a world of crappy Mall stores where what selection existed was over-priced and no one had ever heard of a used record. If you wanted a Michael Jackson picture disc, the mall store was fine. But for the budding Velvet Underground maniac, the Mall store had little to recommend. "Velvet who?"

I always thought it was a neighborhood crying out for a big ass bookstore like you see in cool sections of cool cities around the country. No disrespect to Left Bank, I trade there all the time, but my vision was of a multi story, post-industrial bookstore. Like Biggles and Court, accept with soul, taste and an expansive used section with gigantic windows that looked out over the street or some café or fountain.

Turning into Maryland to go west into the open arms of the French confection and cheese perfection that is our neighborhood Straub’s, I walk by Bar Italia, then by the hulking mass of what used to be the Saks Fifth Avenue store. I stop and study it. Vacant for years and years it appears to be the perfect building for that dream New York style bookstore. Punch some big old windows through that hideous Bauhaus exterior and you have a gallery of used books overlooking a fountain in the annoyingly cobbled Maryland Plaza. But alas, the owner finally worked something out with some group and it is to become something else -- probably a Crate & Barn or a Pottery Barrel.

But of course I couldn’t have done such a thing to Left Bank. So plenty of dreaming, but no killer retail appetite. There used to be a rough model for my vision in Clayton, but it was too refined, open and lacked the requisite huge windows in the right places. Anyway Biggles and Court came in, offered the owners a pile of cash and off they went to retire in Napa. Biggles and Court kept it open for a few years to make it look like they were sincere. They fed the fish in the little pond running around the children’s section. They kept collecting the black and white head shots of authors that visited, but then they saw the opportunity to shut it down and conform to their corporate schematic.

What would retiring in Napa Valley be like? We don’t have the baskets of cash that those folks came into, but we’re all right. The bond portfolio we converted to at just the right moment gives us the endowment to waste time staring at old department store buildings during a mid morning autumnal sun burst, to walk over to Straub’s and purchase some imported smoked Gouda or goat feta. I reckon retirement in Napa would feel similar, but with a few more wine fueled hangovers. Probably go to the beach a little more often than we do here in the hinterlands. That is, if the beach holds any amusement for your retired self.

We like to take our beach time in Europe. It is hard to avoid sounding pretentious when you start talking about European beaches and travel in general. I strive to be as matter of fact about it when in a conversation, avoiding the usual hyperbole. But we normally go to Portugal, which in and of itself is lacking mightily in pretension. The pace and people are just right. Though often spoiled by some huge naked German couple, the beaches are pristine. And talk about wine. Were we talking about wine? Oh, yes, Napa and all that. Right. Well, the wine we have in Portugal is good, not great, inexpensive, but not cheap.

^
Back in the day, I’d sit in front of the TV and watch Soccer Made in Germany, astonished that it wasn’t a more popular program. It languished for years on PBS, Toby Charles delivering spirited commentary to an audience of what, a few dozen? But those rainy matches between Schalke and Kaiserslautern taught me the basics of how to watch the beautiful game. I’m not sure why I am thinking about this as I leer at the huge cheese bin at Straub’s, but I am. Perhaps the Germanic offerings got me thinking, festooned with their Aryan graphics and pungent potential, they seem to offer glimpses of life in lederhosens. Not that I’ve ever seen Germans in lederhosens that were actually in Germany. Usually it will be some portly operating engineer at Strassenfest who claims some lineage. But when you see Germans actually in Europe, they’re a slick bunch all dressed up in sleek black and cool superiority without a Panzer or Stuka in sight. So will it be Allgäu Emmentaler or a Butterkäse?

The goat feta looks good. From Greece, it sits in the reach-in cooler without pretending to be something else, awaiting the inevitable marriage with Kalamata olives and a rustic red wine. We eat entirely too much of the stuff. But when you find something that suits the appetite, why venture much further? Why strike out with a chalky French farmer’s cheese or salty Brie when that feta works so well in the hot St. Louis summer? A picnic in Forest Park? Feta on toasted triangles of phyllo dough. A snack before the children’s soccer match? A hunk of feta and a glass of the aforementioned red.

Where is Kaiserslautern? The Ruhr? Bavaria? The years I watched that program and all the times I saw that club and I never bothered looking it up. Over in the next aisle I grab some bottles of wine. Randomly selecting without much care. This is what shopping when you’ve got plenty of cash does to you – indiscriminate selection of wine at an over-priced swankster haven like Straub’s. I sort of miss the days when we had to make everything count, everything add up. There was greater quality control then. Now it’s sort of scatter shot. Is that a term?

I buy the cheese and all the wine only to realize that the bags are pretty heavy and I have a journey ahead of me. Some five city blocks to carry this stuff. Oh well, I wanted to be the New Urbanist so here I am, lugging wine and cheese through the leafy streets of the Central West End. All I need now is a copy of the New York Times tucked under my arms and a Playbill or two in my coat pocket and I would be quite the dandy. I have my Power Book strapped around my neck hanging off my backside and three plastic Straub’s bags dangling from my underachieving arms as I clink and waddle back up Maryland towards Euclid. The Saks building mocks me for earlier making fun of it’s ugly Krafka-inspired architecture all the while I’m a disgraceful poseur lugging groceries back to the castle. Wait, can a building mock?

With bottles thunking against each other through their brown paper bag sleeves, I carry my shopping bags towards home, weaving through clutches of people walking to wherever lunch plans take them. For me, the plan was to make it home before breaking any of the six bottles I purchased (and before the goat Feta turned to mush).

Seeing Eliot Crudup at Chemistry has not bubbled through my brain during the last 45 minutes. Funny how I can see a world famous author having coffee, then promptly allow cheese and wine shopping to push it aside. But, of course, what was I supposed to do, ask him for his autograph? Tell him how much I enjoyed "Esta Bien," yet loathed the next one, "412?"

Few famous figures have crossed my path in real life. I suppose the last one before Eliot was Former Illinois Senator Paul Simon who we found ourselves standing next to waiting to board a flight to Boston. He looked about how you would expect him to look – bow tie, old suit, huge ears and holding a manual, portable typewriter. And again, what was I supposed to say to him? I think it is always best to let these people enjoy their day without bugging them. Let them enjoy reality in some fashion.

Back in college, when I worked as a waiter, I once served breakfast to Timothy Leary. He was reading the local paper and obviously enjoyed being anonymous. I so wanted to ask him about imprinting Tibetan-Buddhist Experiences using LSD (or that Moody Blues song and, well, about a dozen other pop references to him I could think of at the time). But no, I served him his English muffin and coffee in peace. Yes, give peace a chance.

In through the side door and I set our bags of wine and cheese on the steps leading up to the kitchen. I hang my keys by the bulletin board and check the big calendar hanging on it to see if there is a soccer match later this afternoon at which I will be expected. It looks to be so as my oldest lad will be playing for Westminster Youth FC against the likes of St. Anselm’s Under 10’s. It was not very long ago that I could not imagine having an up-and-coming midfielder, nor a budding geologist. Having two lovely boys has been an epiphany. A change in lifestyle on many levels. And hurrah for that!

Up the three stairs to the kitchen I can now stow the Goat Feta in the fridge, leave the two whites in there as well and haul the four reds to the basement where we keep a quasi cellar of twenty to twenty five reasonable bottles. You never know when you’ll be snowed in! If we ever are snowed in, which would mean an unlikely amount of it falling rapidly on a City that does not believe in clearing secondary streets, we will not have much else to keep us going. Besides the wine, I think we may have a few tins of tomatoes or something. Maybe a few boxes of souvenir short breads left over from the last trip into London.

^
If Bush wins I am seriously going to think about moving us to Portugal. We have given it some thought back when we hit the jackpot and cashed out, but decided to hang in there for a while, see if things turn around.

I swear, if the Nimrod-in-Chief gets handed another four years, I think we’re off to Lisbon. There, you don’t have to worry too much about somebody spraying the local Pingo Doce with Teflon-piercing automatic weapons fire. Schools are excellent and health care free. You definitely don't wait too terribly long for a bus or a train to show up at the station to whisk you off on your day (yet don’t try to get down to the Algarve with any speed).

Yes, it is official. I have political season fatigue and do not know where to go for help. My first thought would be to stop racing around Cabledom looking for a phantom soccer match. Second idea would be to stop going online and the third idea would be to avoid the New York Times like the plague! But then, where would it leave me? What else could fill my day properly other than near-useless information?

Card tricks. That’s it!

^
Television is here to kill us. We will all perish from the evil force beaming into our homes and schools. We should resist now while we still have a sense of decency and while there are still people around who remember life before this horrible creation came into being. I personally don’t know what to do about it, since I am rather hypocritical about the topic. I love to make fun of it, call it names and generally denigrate it whenever I can, yet when there’s a soccer match on, who is the first to the remote? My hand is up in the air.

Many call it a drug and so have I in the past. Right now is a perfect example of what I mean. It has sucked me in and engaged my autopilot. My thumb keeps pressing the channel button so I continue to race around Cabledom unabated. Somebody please help me. Step in. Put a brick through the screen.

The side door opening and closing snaps me out. Lynn is home from shopping and the entrance gives me the perfect out. I throw the remote back on to the sofa and go into the kitchen in order to highlight the big cheese purchase. "Hello," I say with hands in pocket looking more avuncular (I imagine) than husband-like. Ward Cleveresque?

"Hey." She leans across the corner of our counter and gives me a peck. "What have you been doing?"

"I went to Straub’s, then lugged 83 bottles of wine home after seeing Eliot Crudup at Chemistry."

"Huh? Who?"

"Eliot Crudup."

She stows her purse on top of the fridge and turns back to me. "Oh, right. The writer. What was he doing there? What’s he doing in St. Louis? I mean, of all places."

"Strange. He was having coffee." I move to the fridge and open it. "Look at this giant hunk of Feta I bought."

She looks in. "Jesus. What were you thinking?"

"Can we freeze some of it?" I let the fridge door close.

"Where’d you get that? Costco? Did you bring it home with a fork lift?"

I change the subject for no particular reason. We launch into a lengthy debate about how to handle transport to and from the soccer match this afternoon. We have a tricky bit of moving around to do between the two boys having to head in different directions, yet two parents who want to watch the entire match. Lots of chin wagging and head scratching works out a complicated scenario, which I almost feel compelled to diagram. I will leave at half time and get Nick from his dance class and move him over to a friend’s house where he is helping to build an elaborate model of Vesuvius for Science Class. And as if this huge cliché could not get any worse, I will then get back to the match and hand the keys over to Lynn who will go to pick up her mother and deliver her to the doctor’s office, then, well, you get the general idea. Somewhere in there my hope is that Jack and his soccer team grab a result.

But this is our world. A world in which automobiles follow close behind television and Super-
sized Retail in the race to be the Great Satanic force of all time.

^
Bird names can be extremely funny. The boys like the Rufous Sided Towhee and it is hard to think of another as funny. Personally I like Stellar’s Jay and I don’t know why. In Nick’s room he has rigged a nifty feeder out his window, which over looks our hopelessly over-grown back yard (I’m going to do something about that one day!). But all he usually reports are Common Sparrows and Purple Finches, both of which are decidedly unfunny.

I walk into his room to place a stack of laundry on his bed and before exiting, shoot a glance out the window. There, sitting uncomfortably out of place is a Male, Adult Cedar Waxwing. A gorgeous bird and for about ten seconds it pecks away at the sunflower seeds before taking off. It has easily been ten years, since I have seen one of these birds anywhere and it pleases me to no end to confirm they still do actually exist. Will it come back? Will it cause a guffaw of derision at the dinner table when I announce the sighting? Will I get a little bit of a laugh?

Inevitably, I won’t even bring it up. This will be one of those private moments you can have with a bird. Looking them in the eye for a second and hoping you can convey a sense of security to them so they will stay longer.

Yes we have never figured out a way to independently confirm sightings at the feeder, though Nick attempted to rig a toy camera to work this problem, until I pointed out the toy aspect of the experiment – a delicate conversation to have with a science-oriented six year old. After all, who wants to be the wet towel with this sort of thing? It was so cute particularly as he was using a stack of Golden Books for a Tri-pod.

I walk down the hall and take another stack of laundry out of the basket resting at the top of the stairs. Jack’s stack is considerably bigger what with soccer clothing and school uniform pants and more underwear than someone should be using in a three-day period. Going into his room is always a test of my orienteering skills. I weave through the mess to place the neat stack on the knot of covers and sheet forming a loose interpretation of bedding.

There isn’t a nifty feeder set up for Jack. Instead his theme is of the large poster on the wall variety. We have the usual Coldplay poster, but then there are numerous soccer-oriented ones. Let’s see, there’s Thierry Henry of Arsenal, Alan Shearer of Newcastle and (against my better judgement) Paul Scholes of Manchester United. Why he chooses to defy me with this poster of the Ginger Prince is frustrating (not really). I reckon it is a bit of rebellion in our boy. Two strikers and a midfielder. Couldn’t he at least replace Scholes with Giggs? After all, Giggsy turns out for Wales. Jack awaits the arrival of a David James poster, which would be the first Goalkeeper to grace the walls. Wall posters are sort of a kid’s way of having bumper stickers – a way to convey a sense of personality quickly and conveniently.

For me, the huge Beatles poster (from a 1969 photo shoot) did the job for me almost all the way through High School. Senior year, I heard The Clash’s London Calling and nothing was ever the same again. Indeed, phony Beatlemania bit the dust.

^
I will never be the lead singer of a critically acclaimed indie rock band. It’s getting pathetic, but when you’re 42 fatalism seems inevitable. I once had dreams, then I had goals and now it seems I have remote, fuzzy schemes. But still no idea about what the final few chapters should look like.

Which is fine. Never figuring life out might be life’s best policy. Or should the word be aspect? Why should we get it all figured out. Religion steps in for many and offers what could be considered a route and an answer, but should that be its roll in a person’s life? What happened to a certain level of mysticism in your spiritual soup?

So how about the lead singer of a critically acclaimed indie rock band? Well, it seems as though the field is extremely crowded. Michael Stipe has already been invented and played himself out of the indie culture and into another, spurring a never ending line of imitation Stipes, which ended up inspiring still others and so on. This thought is predicated on the notion that modern day indie rock sort of started around 1981 or so in a town in Georgia. Not quite true, but for my sake it’s close enough.

I tried for a while to follow the steps that people like Michael Stipe laid down, but my fondness for playing drums, instead of singing was the first chink in the armor. And my further fondness for power trios and laziness probably put the final nail in the guitar case. Damn the work. It always comes down to that. When trying to achieve something within the context of a dream, hard work and solid thinking stand in the way.

Of course, talent is fairly handy as well. Lack of inhibition also may prove terribly necessary and I never conjured either of these. Thus, I did the next thing on the list by working at an independent radio station so I could play all my heroes on the air. But the hours and pay stink in that industry. And so the next thing on the list after that was advertising.

Next to our bed a stack of magazines clutters the nightstand, all of them filled with corporate communications. In my soccer magazines, hundreds of column inches try to sell the reader shoes. In Lynn’s home decorating magazines, its paint. Powers of persuasion on at full throttle attempting to lure consumers, make a buck, and pay the good people of Malaysia or Shanghai or the Dominican Republic a fraction of what they deserve.

Shoes used to be made right here in Missouri. My grandfather was a company architect for one of the biggest manufacturers. He designed their warehouses and factories scattered throughout the countryside. I can’t imagine a company employing its very own architect let alone actually building factories in this country and hiring workers here. How last century can you get!?

^
It’s very late at night after a day finished off with a fine result for Jack’s soccer team, a late pasta dinner accompanied by a smart Rioja and a bit of tutoring for Nick in geography. As smart as the lad is, I can’t seem to get him to visualize maps very well at all. Something spatially that just doesn’t compute. Jack could always figure such things out. From day one it seemed as though he had the Rand-McNally gene. Strange.

Earlier watching Jack put in some solid crosses for the strike tandem up front I could hear in the background, "Giggs lays it off for Pembridge, then to Hartson – Gooooaaaal, Wales! Hartson with a spectacular bit of skill on the edge of the area." This during a match of eight and nine year olds being watched by a knot of keyed-up parents, none of which I believe would have been hearing the same thing in the background.

^
Eliot Crudup examines William Faulkner’s "As I Lay Dying" while drinking a giant cup of coffee. Placed before him by Max, the terminally pale waiter with a penchant for eyeliner and the Cocteau Twins, the coffee sits while Eliot glares at the pages of the tattered novel. I’m trying not to look over very much this morning, attempting to concentrate on my Chapter Thirteen, but, well, why is a famous author at my café? Chemistry is my haunt, damn it!

But Max told me in one of those whispered replies with his back turned to Eliot that this famous author was there to meet someone later. This said with a certain nuance indicating mystery or intrigue or an idolization that spawns jealousy. After this bit of news there could be no other move for me this morning than to wait and see with whom he will meet. Is that the right way to say that?

I recall reading "As I Lay Dying" during that period of time a number of years ago when I still worked. It read quickly, but was such a downer it turned a typical flight from Denver into a dismal, vodka-soaked affair, complete with me getting so exasperated by the mindless characters trying to cross a flooded river in a wagon that I carelessly dumped my drink into my lap. The guy next to me handed me his cocktail napkin in a pitiful attempt at being nice. I don’t often react to characters, but in this case I really wanted the river to rise suddenly and sweep Cash, Darl, Dewey Dell and the rest of the crazy family away. Away far, far away. But that’s Faulkner for you, I think. He does that. He really can suck you in and make you read about people you would sooner not know. Now that is talent for you, no?

Could Eliot Crudup write like that if he chose? Look at him over there with his book and casual ways – the coffee getting cold. He’s so talented of course he could write that way and he has a number of times. This is interesting for me, because I’m having a devil of a time trying to write something where the main character isn’t somebody I can respect. I believe it is a mark of talent to be able to write from a disappointing character’s point of view. I really don’t think I am making any sense at all.

Max came around and filled my coffee. He smells like clove cigarettes and vaguely of ladies perfume. Chanel? And as he turns away, I look up from this screen. "Max could you get me a glass of water?" Max nods and silently pads away back inside Chemistry to find a clean glass, a few ice cubes and maybe even some actual water.

I don’t know much about Cocteau Twins music, but I’ve always thought the name to be pretty cool, in a telling sort of way. It’s a great brand. They’re Scottish, I think. Used to play a song called "Ten Five Fiftyfold" or something like that, when I was in college working at the station. That was somewhere along about 1984? I recall it being ethereal and maybe a bit jazzy and/or really hard to categorize. And thus, I may have just described Cocteau Twins to the world without knowing any of their other songs.

Eliot Crudup just put the Faulkner down and took a big drink of coffee, of lukewarm (at best) coffee. My younger brother drinks lukewarm coffee. He says, "I want to drink it, not sip it. Why should anyone want to burn their tongue?" Cal says this with the faintest of an Old Jewish person’s accent. Why he can’t say it sounding like a young Atheist is beyond me.

Associate Professor Ralph Tipton meets Eliot Crudup with a gregarious handshake and hug. Ralph ran a writing workshop I attended for a while last spring as part of some coursework I did at St. Louis University. He ran the workshop the same way one might run an after-school club in High School. "Welcome to today’s meeting of the A/V Club, guys. Who was cooler, Jim Rockford or Tony Baretta?" We talked 75% of the time about shit and spent 25% of the time arguing about the Beat Movement or Fugitive Poets or some such thing. The Writing we did seemed to get carved up outside of class without any explanation or context (or subtext for that matter). No discussion of theory or point of view. Strange, indeed – but then again it was a pretty cheesy course. He was a nice guy and we got along well after he learned I was a Paul Desmond fan.

My "idea" of a little story back then had something to do with a struggling writer and mislaid files on a disc that ends up containing secret programming information. Essentially a rip off of the Charade plot, but using information on discs, instead of postage stamps. Every single copy I got back from the others said that the world had too many stories about writers and writing and that sort of thing. I agreed and ended up scuttling the whole cliché. Indeed it is like rock songs about the rock life or songwriting or life on the road. No one dinged me for clearly stealing a plot line from a Stanley Donen film. I was slightly vindicated later when someone in Hollywood remade the movie starring Marky Mark.

It is doubtful Professor Tipton will talk to Eliot Crudup about writing about writers and their lives. Doubt he will harpoon the man whose third novel was, you guessed it, about a writer coming to grips with her talent. However, in the workshop he really didn’t rip the cliché either, because it never came up. The other story I handed in featured Vladimir Nabokov as a main character, which obviously must have been a bad choice, because I didn’t hear anything about it. This made me reconsider the work part of the term workshop.

The two men have settled into their table and Max wonders over to see what he’ll need to do for a sufficient tip. I notice that Ralph hands Eliot a packet of some weight and that after receiving it, Eliot’s eyes shoot around the terrace as if a transfer of ICBM launch codes has just occurred in Cold War Budapest. I take a sip of coffee and type out something about this package either being an advance copy of Crudup’s next big thing or a major section of the next big thing that Ralph has ghost written. How should I know what it is, but at least I can use the scene somehow, right?

After dropping off a soup bowl of coffee for Ralph, Max comes circulating by on his way to an umbrella table he needs to set for lunch. "Max, come here." I half whisper.
He stops by and bends down (the whisper an obvious tip-off that some decorum may be necessary). "Yes?"

"What are those guys talking about?"

"Oh, who knows. I try not to numb my brain."

"Well what fun are you then. Can you get me another glass of water?"

He nods and cruises away, leaving behind (despite it being a gorgeous fall day) his Cocteau Twin vibe shrouded in Chanel, B.O. and Clove.

^
Now early afternoon, I am sitting on a bench looking out at the lagoon in front of the Muny Opera. The bandstand on the island was designed by a committee, a member of which was none other than my grandfather – moonlighting from his day job at the shoe company. After spying on Ralph and Eliot this morning, I am compelled to rework Chapter Thirteen and the geese are not facilitating the exercise. They demand tribute!

>>>
They’re at the battle lines in this conference room, hotly discussing brand this and brand that – phrases involving words like brand "awareness" and brand "portability" are the shuttle cocks in this game. He is indignant and ignorant of the process, bored with it all and ready to draw some conclusions. So what does Post-modern mean anyway?
>>>

The fact of the matter is, that my longstanding belief in the story within the story should not be read as cliché. It should be read as a clear example of trying to have it both ways. If I can’t decide where a story should go, why not throw in a whole separate line? Because it is tired and old and silly, you dumb ass.

There’s one goose who keeps giving me the eye, firmly believing I have food and just holding back for some human-taunting-fowl reason. How to be honest with the neighborhood flock. Should I stand and pull my pockets out, hold my hands out, look furtive? This bird is hissing at me, like I’m sitting in its seat on an over sold flight. "Go away. You’re freaking me out!"

Two young Asians walk up at this moment and attempt to pet the bird with which I’m having the stare down. They don’t appear to be put-off by this goose’s aggressive nature. In fact, in the great tradition of Asians around the world, they are taking pictures of it, of the lagoon, the band shell and front of the Muny. I’m waiting for them to ask me to take a picture of both of them in front of…well, something. But no, they move on towards the boathouse down the road, leaving me behind with the malevolent Canada Goose.

It is another startling autumn day here in St. Louis. The Cardinals are in the Baseball Play-offs and to those who follow such things this means that everything else in the world of note takes a back seat. "Another three boys killed outside Falluja? Who cares, Williams is starting Game One." Perhaps that is a little unfair. All through World War Two Baseball was played in this country, under the belief that it took the nation’s mind off defeating the Axis. Once again, corporate interests in anesthetizing the culture strikes.

I don’t want to think about this sort of thing. Don’t need to think about it, yet this sort of thought has a nasty habit of surfacing. One problem with being an idle white rich guy is your mind is opened up to a conspiracy of wrenching big thoughts. Maybe this is the best reason of all to get a job.

There’s a rain on the way and as I walk home from the park I swear the smell of it is all around. Adjusting my glasses, this need to think in lyrical ways not unlike a Dylan song has given me a powerful headache. Headaches used to be common for me along with persistent back pain, but now in a relative life of leisure where I get a lot more exercise, these maladies don’t trouble me. Except for now.

Warding off hissing geese and photo-crazed Asians in the otherwise serene environs of Forest Park somehow resulted in a wicked throbbing behind my eyes. I don’t even stop up here on the walkway above Metrolink to wait for a passing train, a habit I developed out of love for rail travel and fondness for this old Victorian Footbridge. The bridge that heads out to the Northeast corner of the Park (where not many trod) was lovingly restored not too long ago and I feel a sense of duty to use it as often as possible. Metrolink trains sizzle beneath all too infrequently these days as the Transit Authorities attempt to keep the thing running, despite a shortage of passengers and funds.

This part of the park does not get the attention other sections do and that is one reason we like it so much. Our favorite place for picnics is in amongst the Cypress trees on one of the Isthmuses in the fish hatchery ponds. Talk about a place you’re sure to be left alone. The other reason we like the area is that it is the closest corner of the park to our house and getting to it is quick and painless.

As I reach the corner of Lindell and Kingshighway, the clouds make further argument for precipitation. Darkened low clouds sweep from over the Westminster neighborhood and a bit of a wind generates from the more subtle autumn breeze enjoyed over by the Muny. I cross the street to cut through the Chase heading to Maryland and who should come out of the doors going the other way, steaming towards an awaiting Taxi? That’s right, Eliot Crudup. As I walk into the lobby and take a left to head from the Chase to the Park Plaza next door, I am aggrieved somewhat to have chickened out on greeting him. Three times I saw him, one of my favorite contemporary authors of pop culture fiction and I failed to make a peep. He will undoubtedly be forever grateful.

Out the side entrance of the Park Plaza, I now go heading towards Euclid and back by that Saks building that has finally (FINALLY) stopped mocking me for calling it an ugly Bauhaus eyesore – a selfishly designed fortress of fifties retail grandeur. Maybe mocking isn’t the right word. Perhaps it taunted me for the careless way I routinely pass judgement on it. At any rate, it will soon be reconstituted into some other form and I guess we should all look forward to that.

Bar Italia’s lunch time crowd has dwindled, leaving behind smart, crisp-looking servers in bright white aprons to pick up the pieces before the showers dampen spirits (and the white table cloths too). It puts me in mind to take Lynn and the boys there this weekend, partake in a moveable feast, some grappa and to tell stories of Paris in ’24.

Oh, here comes the rain down the street. Run, run for your lives!

^
The White House obviously does not know what Mainstream America really is, though they claim to be the real guardians of it. I mean, think about it. They seem to believe Mainstream America is a white man and woman with three children living out a quiet, Disney-visiting existence driving to and from the local Power Center where they shop at Wal-Mart, greet strangers with a gregarious wave and purchase many Proctor & Gamble products. What "they" fail to realize is that this vision is a fantasy. Mainstream America is a divorced mother of two kids jittery from too much sugar and Xbox. She’s holding down two low wage service jobs all the while hoping her two hyper kids don’t get sick, because she already owes the Hospital $7000 from the last Emergency Room visit when Billy accidentally set his brother on fire while trying to kill bugs with a flame thrower devised out of a can of Lysol and a Bic Lighter. She huffs at the thought of universal access to medical care, thinking that it’s more accurate to say the country has universal access to immediate, long-term debt. She blocks out the constant calls from the credit card thugs looking for their cash, wondering how did it go so wrong so quickly. One day she worked third shift at the Magnavox plant, married to the foreman over at Wheeling-Davis Construction, owned brand new cars, lived on a quiet, leafy cul-de-sac in Abrams Acres. Then the next day, Magnavox closed domestic operations, her husband ran away with the personal assistant of the Korean Concern that bought Wheeling-Davis Construction, the bank foreclosed on the cars and house and her lush medical benefits provided by Magnavox went away. Poof, all that was left was wreckage -- two freaked out boys, massive consumer debt and a string of useless boyfriends that turned out to be far from husband timber. Mainstream America is a whirlpool of failed dreams papered over by wide ranging, high interest consumption -- consumption as spiritual dextromethorphan. Or is it really a suppressant? Maybe it’s fairer to call it a replacement, in which case some other drug needs to be inserted in that sentence. But I conjured the DXM, because Jack brought home a flyer from the Academy about it, cautioning parents to be on the look out for excessive use of NyQuil. And here again we grasp another visage of Mainstream America. A flyer warning parents about cough medicine. This is not what the White House would call Mainstream, the staff locked in their Miss Landers view of schooling as they are, can’t imagine the scions of wealthy white America getting into serious drug trouble by purchasing cough medicine at the local Walgreen’s. But they should ask around. Won’t take them long to encounter the problem. How do kids have time to drink the stuff when there are so many performance tests to study for (or to develop sophisticated cheating methods for)? Mainstream watches reality TV, surfs the Net for Porn, does not attend a church or temple and thinks going to war to line the pockets of golfing buddies who wear Cosby sweaters in the clubhouse to be business-as-usual. Mainstream is beating the youngest at the latest edition of Armed and Dangerous.

^
Sometimes at night while curled beneath puffy blankets we can hear train sounds rumbling in through the open window up here on the third floor. It astounds me we can hear the click-clack on the tracks this many blocks away, because there are so many distractingly loud noises a city makes. But if you’re focused on the romantic, low frequency rumble of freight trains moving goods, then you’re more apt to pick out the sound. Stands to reason, then that this noise fuses into a Robert Penn Warren dreamscape complete with kudzu and an L & N Locomotive kerthunking across a grease-dripped trestle beside which sit two men in clay-smudged dungarees quietly fishing.

Long coal train running down from Sugar Gap, along the Watcheegatus River, heading towards Peek Minnow, Tennessee. It is like something straight off an old train lay out of mine, which makes the dream of rail travel all the easier, because really all my tiny brain has to do is conjure things it has already envisioned in one fashion or another. I certainly do not want to know what others dream about, but reckon most 42 year old men don’t dream about trains.

Robert Penn Warren said, "A young man's ambition is to get along in the world and make a place for himself-half your life goes that way, till you're 45 or 50. Then, if you're lucky, you make terms with life, you get released."

^
Our phone system has competed itself into Third World condition. I remember back when it was Ma Bell or nothing, you picked up the phone and it was crystal clear. The audio was free of clicks and clucks and pops and fizzies. Now, almost every time I go to use a land-line I’m greeted with all manner of noise. I swear I have been transported suddenly and effortlessly to some tiny village on the Angolan/Zambian border.

Sorry to get off on another tangent, but I called over to the Chase a few minutes ago to see if Eliot Crudup was still checked in there. It was as though I was trying to phone in a story from Tora Bora on a Satellite phone rigged from river stones and wheat stalks. My goodness I’m calling a hotel not six blocks away within my own Central Office network. At any rate, the answer was yes he is still a guest and then before I could say anything else they connected me to the room. Yikes!

"Yes?" He answered.

"Um….."

"Yes? Can I help you?" said the voice with a Home Counties accent via Central Texas Hill Country.

"Mr. Crudup?" I manage to get that much out.

"No. Mr. Crudup is back in England. This, however, is Eliot. What can I do for you?"

Wow, he’s right to the heart of the matter. "I wanted to discuss a story with you and wondered if you’d be having coffee again at The Chemistry Lab."

"What?"

"The coffee place."

"Oh." Eliot sighed and I could tell he was rolling his eyes and rubbing his forehead. "No. Sorry. I’m on my way to the airport."

Finally, I wanted to say. "Oh, well, maybe another time, then."

"And this is?"

"Ed. I have been your co-conspirator in coffee consumption at Chemistry." This jaunty, obsequious statement pleased me for some shallow reason.

"I see. Well, another time."

"Right. Yes. Oh, one thing. Where do you know Ralph Tipton from?"

"I taught him at University."

"You taught at Tulane." I said matter of factly. "Right. Sure. He’s a good guy."

"Yes, a good friend. Is there anything else?"

"Er, um, no. Thank you. Have a nice flight."

"It isn’t up to me, really. I will try though." And with that, he became a dial tone.

I placed the phone back on the kitchen table and tried to calm my heart down as it was wildly thumping away due to an enormous surge in adrenaline. Why should I get keyed up about breaking my own covenant and actually talking to a world famous author? It is not the fame he has garnered in the world of literature, but rather the fame inside my head. I am in awe of someone who can write so prolifically and speak directly to me. This used to happen when I would reach a really tough prospect; someone I had been trying to reach for days, maybe weeks. Suddenly my pulse rate would shift quickly through the sequence into 4th for a sprint down the straight-away. There’s racing in the tunnel. Shumacher is over-taking Barrichello in the tunnel. Magic!

Now that Eliot Crudup thinks me a fool, I can go on with my day to day rumination without so much as a wink of regret that the hotel operator put me through to his room. At least I made some sort of an attempt to say hello, though it barely should count. The man sat across from me three days straight at my favorite coffee spot and I never mustered the fortitude to strike up a conversation. But it’s for the best. It’s one thing to make a fool of oneself on the telephone and quite another to do it in person. Many people have said that, but after spending nearly 20 years as a salesman, it is woven into my very fiber.

I would have loved to ask him his inspiration for the novel "412," but I am too certain that such questions are so boring to an author, particularly one who keeps an active schedule of readings and signings that I firmly believe I was right in not bugging him. While I would love to pick his brain, so to speak, about "412," particularly the ending, I know I would not have been satisfied. Eliot certainly would not have cared to go into explanation for a book he wrote some years ago. So why did I have the idea to quiz him in the first place? Why do we feel an impulse to have contact with heroes, stars and publicly famous individuals?

An easy answer would be an internal demand to be liked and to assure ourselves that those folks are just like us. But they aren’t like us at all or me anyway, because of that all important talent factor. However somewhere inside me I still hold out hope that if we all could just get to know the real Russ Feingold or James Spader or Eliot Crudup we would have the assurance that we’re just as cool. So bottom line is now that Eliot Crudup thinks me a fool, I can go on enjoying my small city existence with firm proof I not only don’t have the talent to write, but the cajones to promote my "agenda."

I am well pleased to be a responsive and responsible (I think) husband and reasonable enough father. Enormous joy is mined from this rich seam of love. So I am not talking about this side of me. It is on the vocation front that I wander and only due to a pure accident of capitalistic greed and technological avarice (and some ridiculously long coat tails of both) that I have plenty of time to consider what to do with my time.

Exercise, eat well, read a lot, stay engaged with Jack and Nick and Lynn, pay the taxes, get the Volvo washed, write incredibly silly e-mails to soccer fans in the UK and here in the States (it’s a simple hobby, but fun anyway). Let’s see, what else? Drink coffee, shop for cheese and wine, watch Metrolink trains pass, consider running for office, pay tuitions, wash the windows, sleep, etc…

The drone can be intense and can force me out of the house with any old small excuse. Right now I have left the house to walk over to the Cathedral. No, I have not taken up that sort of vocation, nor have I become particularly religious. I like going into the Cathedral, because of the sound and smell and feel of the place. I can close my eyes and transport myself to the Giralda or Chartres or St. Paul’s. The Byzantine interior gives me a sense of European grandeur. Its biggest claim to fame is the mosaics, which at over 80,000 square feet, is the largest expanse of tile art in the world. Strange that it’s just a couple of blocks away. What strikes me about the place is the number of tourists. I am used to encountering them in Forest Park, because of the Zoo, Art Museum and a few other smaller attractions, but at the Basilica it amazes me. Perhaps because I don’t think of religious tourism as something practiced in this country. Europe and South America? Sure. Here in St. Louis? It’s just a bit of a shock to find us on the Papal trail.

^
Reality television is an oxymoron. Why do people want to watch television, a medium of escape, only to be reminded of how ugly everything actually is outside? Some of the time the damn box redeems itself – not often.

While I struggled to wiggle a chalky cork from a temperamental Tempranillo in the kitchen, Lynn tuned in to Channel 9, our lavishly appointed local PBS outlet. We wanted to see Eliot Crudup interviewed on the McClifton Allory Show. McClifton Allory: sounds like a Civil War General; someone who led the 80th Ohio Regulars up Goat’s Herd Ridge against Buell or Jackson. You get the drift. Who names their boy McClifton and lets it stick?

"Hey, Cliffy, throw the ball over to Mommy!" This sounds better to me than "excuse me, my dear boy, McClifton. Propel the orb towards your Mother." Nevertheless, the man McClifton became is a great interviewer all Owl eyed and bow tied. And there he is across a dark, round, wood table from our story’s shadowy hero, Mr. Eliot Crudup.

Cliffy: "Eliot, you’ve had a mixed bag of best sellers both in the UK and here in America and you’ve also had commercial disasters, yet critical glory. You were runner up for the Booker Prize with "Amiable Discordant" – I could go on and on…"

Eliot: "Yes, please stop. You’re (laughs) embarrassing me in front of your many dozens of viewers.

At this point I give up on the wine to step into the living room to see what Eliot is wearing and what he looks like on Television, instead of reality.

Cliffy: (Laughs and clears throat) "What can we expect around the next turn? What landscape of modern culture do you care to turn your rapier-like satirical skills toward this go round?"

Eliot: "Well, I’ve had a little time off…"

Cliffy: "Yes, it’s been almost an entire month since you last published."

Eliot: "Um, yeah. Um, well, I have been having a look round and while doing so I became highly annoyed with all the books about writers and about their wildly fascinating (he makes quotation marks in the air) lives. I’m sick of it.

Cliffy: "I’ll point out for some of our viewers that your third novel was, indeed, about a writer."

Eliot: (Buries his head in his hands) "Oh God, don’t remind me of that crap. (Laughs) Let’s just say I am going to re-examine the phenomena."

Cliffy: "In what respect?"

Eliot: "It’s just very simple. Basic satirical trappings draped round standard plot convention with a reverse narrative arc."

Cliffy: (Adjusts his glasses) "Okay, for non-members of the literati what does that all mean.

Eliot: (Leaning far back in his seat) "It’s going to be so loaded with cliché that even the semi-technical jargon used is a cliché. It’s one huge (spreads arms out wide) gigantic cliche. (Bellies up to table and points vaguely at McClifton) And you know what Mr. Allory? It will be on the New York Times Best Seller list for 42 weeks.
Cliffy: "You know, you lack such confidence, Eliot. How can you push yourself to even produce (smiling and checking something off an imaginary list).

Eliot: "No, no. Really. I am very humble. Even my bravado is a cliché."

^
"The Etruscans never had anything like this. They may have thought of it in some dreamy Tuscan evening, but they weren’t able to consummate the notion." Our neighbor, Sideburn Larry, is waxing on and on about "box wine." Sideburn Larry, or Lawrence O’Hamlin as his mail reads, likes to pontificate on a great many things and wine is only a sub-heading in his monologue’s outline. Larry teaches at Bishop DuBourg High School and for some unearthly reason he seems to think that this gives him the same intellectual footing as say, a tenured, published and famous professor at Princeton. He has some handsome sideburns and a radically bushy mustache propping up a thin, Irish nose, which is placed between two dark, narrow set eyes. This gives him kind of a demonic sort of look not unlike John Wilkes Booth. I mean, he’s all right and his wife is great -- a tiny, child-like personage of vague saintly demeanor -- but man can he talk some shit.

We are sitting out on our mossy brick patio, which is way overmatched by the surrounding bushes that have gone noticeably unchallenged, since a year ago last Spring. Yard work, for me, is something that comes in fits and starts, ebbs and flows – and recently (the last two years) we’ve been in the "ebb" part of the cycle. This has not gone unnoticed by Sideburn Larry, Dante and Carol across the street or Dr. Chinzsoc on the other side of us. They have been gentle about their prodding, but certainly persistent enough to make me feel a flicker of guilt now and then. I suppose what I should do, as a still-new member of the landed gentry is to hire some refugees from the slums of Guadalajara, hand them a translated list of goals and stand back.

Lynn feels the same way about it. We do just enough to keep the house presentable and certainly not the worst case on our block, but other than that our ambitions are strikingly limited. It really comes down to a lot of shrub trimming and some ivy tending out front. Here in the back yard, well, I wouldn’t know where to begin. I’d like that Irish bloke, Diarmuid Gavin, from the BBC to just jet in and turn the place into a dreamscape. On the other hand (I look around at the riot of autumn color produced by our cavern of foliage) there’s something to be said for "shabby chic."

I retune on the high pitched whir coming from Mrs. Sideburn Larry – Trudy to her family and (other) friends. She has expertly moved her husband off the subject of aseptic packaging and over to politics where she holds the conversational cards. Larry does not ever seem to have an opinion on policy, which appears to be the one and only arena to successfully accomplish this Herculean task. "I don’t see any hope for Kerry in either Colorado or Pennsylvania. I mean Pennsylvania elected that Nazi Rick Santorum. What does that say?"

Lynn is of the opinion that Trudy is actually the one and only Communist left in the State of Missouri. She would like to say the entire country, but I remind her that a great number of Communists live in more receptive precincts – Berkeley, for instance. "Nazi is a pretty harsh term," I offer.

Trudy leans against one arm of her chair (we almost offered her a booster seat when she sat down nearly hitting her chin on the tabletop). "Well, if the Brown Shirt fits…"

^
I’ve been avoiding my story lately, because the last time I addressed it the whole damn thing looked forced and silly and self-conscious. If you’re forcing things I figure it is time to do something else. It has already been established that I will never be a writer, but that does not mean I can’t try to hammer out some sort of nonsense as something of a past time. But if it sounds canned or stiff, maybe is a better word, then I should have the good grace to stop the agony. Instead of writing, maybe I should fill my quiet time with more reading. I’ve been reconsidering all of the Eliot Crudup books and reading them in order as a tutorial on style development. There has to be some sort of new, fresh insight I can gain about the development of his style (now that I have talked with the man, watched him read the newspaper and drink coffee).

Which goes back to a few days or weeks or whatever ago when I was blathering about our collective need to press ourselves into interchanges with "famous" people. Maybe it comes down to the mystery of their celebrity and attempting to figure out once and for all that question many ask in our culture – "why isn’t it me on the cover of Vanity Fair?" Also, I am certain that part of it is the idea that maybe we’ll somehow forge a friendship with some famous person and we’ll become a member of an entourage and so, by association, get plugged in to the good life. Who knows what it is really all about, but the sycophantic nature of an ordinary human encountering a talented and famous human (or actually just famous is good enough) tends to make me feel embarrassed and something akin to shame.

So when I called for Eliot Crudup the other day and spoke to him briefly (accident or not), what the hell was that all about? What really did I want out of that? Validation?

^
I am reading his first novel. It’s a blindingly funny farce about a young bus driver (Simon) in suburban Manchester (Stretford) who stumbles into fame and fortune by doing a flawless imitation of an educated and well-bred painter. The social engineering perpetrated by young Simon is a thing of beauty as he navigates the clubs, pubs, flats and University dining halls of Greater Manchester.

When I first picked this book up years ago, the very first paragraph blew me away, because not only did he mention A Certain Ratio, Charlatans and the whole Madchester Scene, but wrote the entire opening without a prepositional phrase. How the hell do you do that? I have attempted to do it and actually say something and can’t. The other amusing thing about the book is that there are no chapters. It just races from that first, no prepositional phrase paragraph to the very last sentence, which is actually a parenthetical note about Greenwich Mean Time. So cool and to a wannabe writer, catchy and clever!

I vividly remember reading a review in the CMJ, of all places, that started with the (I guess) positive, "When will this book be made into a film, because we want to see who plays Tim Burgess?" This review interested me, because it sounded like the person only read the first page, then switched to some sort of Cliff Note version. I wanted to write to CMJ and let the reviewer know that the lead singer of Charlatans (Burgess) does not feature anywhere in the book. Our bus driving hero listens to them, but does not encounter anybody from that band or even the white hot music scene of Manchester, mid to late eighties. This stood out at the time, because two months later I read a review of the book in People Magazine, of all places. So, CMJ was out in front of the mass publications by a long shot. Unfortunately, the review in People was quite a bit better and it appeared the author actually read the entire 289 page blast.

Reading this book again takes me back to the days when Lynn and I were both working and living in a small bungalow in Maplewood, with plenty of cash to blow on books, music and trips to the Wine store. I remember going to Vintage Vinyl and loading up on Primal Scream, New Order and Happy Mondays CD’s, all excited by the glow careening off the pages of Eliot Crudup’s sparkling debut. The book always puts me in the mood for autumn. I can’t explain that part of it, except to say that the prose are so engaging and describe a stylized England so well, I can see and feel the cool dampness that acts as an ever-present back drop for Simon’s role changes.

You also have to admire the way Crudup worked in a detailed explanation of Thatcherism, during a chaotic love scene involving two acid-dropping Stockport College kids. Another thing I will never figure out. The man is brilliant and he drinks coffee at The Chemistry Lab!

I’ve been thinking about this sort of thing, because the prose are saturated with mentions of political references, trendy bands and actual events, thus flying against the conventional wisdom that counsels against loading a story with such things for fear of dating it or confusing future readers. I can agree with this to a certain extent, but if you are writing for the here and now and wanting to speak to a particular group of individuals, then there can not be restraints placed on what is acceptable. Doubtful that when the young Eliot Crudup penned his story about Simon the bus driver he thought about how the book would be received in the future (or by anyone unfamiliar with Stone Roses, James or EMF).

The bolder you are with place, time, mechanics and plot the more pay-offs await the audience. At least that’s my opinion. It could very easily be wrong. The big risk with this sort of pop music and culture as milieu is it can look forced and pandering. Let’s insert stuff just to have it in there. That kind of thing happens way too often, but talent usually can avoid this tendency.

I’ve had about 83 Hershey bars today as I try to give myself a lift to get up and passed the election results. Two days now after the Moron in Chief was given another four years to screw us all the more and I still haven’t "gotten my head around it." I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about it by reading the Crudup novel, segments of Ellsworth’s "Jenny’s Amble" and a couple of Hemingway’s Nick Adam’s Stories, all done with a perpetual Charlatans soundtrack playing into my ears from my iPod.

As far as mentioning music, well it only matters when you listen to the stuff. I mean, trendy music sounds dated. The more fashionable a tune, the shorter the shelf life, I hear. But is that exactly true? Is it more or less a way to gauge the relative talent of the performer/group? For instance, many Beatles songs sound as fresh and mystical as they did nearly 40 years ago. Example: Tomorrow Never Knows.

I recall listening to a Bar-Kays album somewhere in or around 1985. It sounded so far out in front and cool, but now I am positive the vibe from that mid eighties synthesizer, those soprano sax runs and electronic drum beat would practically induce out right laughter. Sort of like listening to the music on an old ChiPs rerun. So how does that sort of thing happen where some music transcends time and some does not? Why is it some stories work well over time and others get dated and forgotten. This is the difference (perhaps) between high culture and entertainment.

I certainly do not have anything against being entertained. In fact, that may have been the point I tried to make earlier. It is okay to write for pure entertainment value. Really, it is. I promise you it is. But some entertainment stands the test of time and indeed becomes part of college curriculum. Now will there be courses on Eliot Crudup somewhere in the future? Maybe there already are classes. I should check with Professor Tipton.

^
Nick and I sit on Art Hill to watch clouds and people. I like spending time with the boys, particularly the moments of one-on-one, which are all too rare these days. But today Lynn took Jack to her Mother’s and Nick and I took off for the park to do some exploring.

In some respects I liked the Park before the overhaul began, because you could come across quirky, hidden gems. For example, the Friedrich Ludwig Jahn Memorial, which is more or less a monument to gymnastics. It sat amongst overgrown bushes at the base of Art Hill’s right flank. It’s this big, limestone edifice attempting to glorify the significant contributions made by the father of the Turner Society. Or something like that. The Turner’s were a creation of German immigrants to help encourage and maintain rigid physical activity (and loosely provide a para-military group that could defend the immigrants from ruthless "Nativists"). Anyway, you used to pick through thick under-brush (not unlike the Ardennes), a lot of broken 40’s (not unlike Watts) and other accumulated litter (not unlike everywhere in the USA) to make it to the place. Friedrich stands high in the middle, then two walls or arms go out to pedestals where viral junge männer flex poetically.

But now after the complete reworking of the Park, Friedrich looks positively polished and proud as he overlooks Post-Dispatch Lake. He’s accessible to the flocks and it’s too early to tell what the effects will be, but one thing is for sure, the mysterious isolation of Friedrich has been eliminated. On our walk today, Nick noticed the general lack of effacement on the memorial and that is a positive change from the past. It always seemed like Herr Jahn was getting tagged.

Nick favors the General Edward Bates statue, which, as we found out sometime ago, was the first statue in Forest Park, having been plunked down in the Park as early as 1876. I can’t imagine the Park as a wild backwoods spread of land, which is essentially what it was when the Bates piece was brought in. We also found out when we looked it up that it was originally supposed to go into Lafayette Park, but that association could not come up with the money to pay the artist. But I digress. Nick likes it because it’s huge and bronze and looking like a legitimate historical piece. When I tried to point out the Crusader King, Louis IX once, Nick wrinkled his brow and nodded, "they just put him here for the World’s Fair."

I see his point.

Taking a statue off the hands of another Park seems way more legitimate than the huge contrivance that was the World’s Fair.

Can you tell we’re all trying our hardest to forget the election results? We work hard at this these days, lest the wheels fly off and we collectively sink into deep depression. What can we do, but take long walks, plot a lengthy stay in Portugal and lead our minds into the thick morass of Forest Park trivia?

^
A sale is the art of manipulating in the wide-open spaces of avarice. Well, no shit.
I spent twenty years selling and now that I’ve spent a few years not doing it, I can definitely say I am fully relaxed and at total peace with myself. Reflecting back at all those thousands of presentations, airport delays, smelly hotels and bad restaurants, I can thank the Gods I don’t have to do any of it for the rest of my life. This assumes, of course, OPEC does not switch to the Euro, thus scuttling the Dollar and sending a torpedo into our play on the DAX and Nikkei, the boys’ annuities and the big enchilada, our thirty year Treasuries. Maybe we need a position in Gold.

If I had a dollar for every Sales seminar I sat through hearing how sales professionals "fulfill needs" and "solve problems," man I would be even richer than I am already. Face it, the main objective is to convince someone that doing or having a certain thing will improve their situation, thus making the hand-over of cash effortless and, if you’re doing it right, endless. The ultimate purpose is to make money.

This bubbles in my mind today, because I’m on my second Crudup novel now and "Discovery" always unsettles me. Every time I read it I get a strange sensation. At dinner tonight I mentioned this to Lynn and Jack cut into the conversation by asking what the book was about. So I explained as quickly as possible so as not to loose my train of thought on the original subject. "It’s about a computer software salesman who finds God." Unfortunately, this synopsis opened up a huge can of worms.
"So." He answered. "What’s so great about that?"

"Well, not much, unless you have the talent to make it do something for the reader." Let’s see, how to get existential with an almost ten year old. I didn’t want to, but ended up giving a potted oral presentation on morality versus ethics and how certain aspects of each can become compromised when one is attempting to put food on the table. But he didn’t want to hear about this. He was more interested in what sort of "stuff" happened in the book and where it was set, what sort of cars the characters drove. If only literature could be that easy to explain.

One very interesting point about the book is that it doesn’t have a place or a setting per se. This profoundly confused Jack. "What do you mean? How can it not have a place where it happens?"

I took a long drink of ice water and tried to figure out how to explain this quirky little feature. "It’s really very simple. When I try to write a story I always make place part of the plot, or maybe calling it an extra character is a better way of saying it. The author of the book Mom and I were discussing decided it would be a good idea not to do that. About the only thing you know is it takes place somewhere in the English-speaking world."

He considered this for a moment while appearing mesmerized by his carrots. "I wouldn’t like that, I think. Like, isn’t it better to know where things are happening?"

"Sometimes. But the author felt like it was a story that could be about a lot of people in a lot of places. The setting and timeline aspects of a traditional story aren’t important. There are plenty of books like this, you know. It’s just that this one is by a guy who made his name by writing extremely well about a specific time period in a specific place."

"So this book was really to show that he can write without all that, right? Jack lands a fork full of potato into his mouth.

Lynn thinks this funny.

^
When the boys are sick, the emotional gearbox gets a workout. They go from being lovable and vulnerable to acting like Satan’s Spawn in a nanosecond. So you have to be on your toes, when sitting bedside, dirty facial tissues in one hand and a digital thermometer in the other. What always, without fail, gets me is the breathing. The range of noises made by a small nose laboring against metric tons of congestion amazes me. Pursed lips occasionally release air as the mouth acts as the all-important by-pass valve. The pillows and bedding act like a wick to pull heat and dampness away. A nightstand light casts a low beam out over the floor covered in the flotsam and jetsam of a Hot Wheels Grand National Event held earlier.

Nick feels bad. I’m sitting here, standing guard, waiting to swing into action if he needs anything at all. But he is deeply asleep at the moment. And that is for the best. Rest and liquids are the best medicine now and so we take turns acting as servant. It has been a day and a half since he has been outside and that was upon his return from the doctor’s office. We’re in that helpless stage when all we can do is cater to his wishes and keep him as comfortable as possible, although comfort is relative when your nose will not stop and coughing can not be brought under control.

In the quiet of his room (only broken by the wheezy inhales he produces), I can almost bow my head and fall asleep sitting here. His pattern lulls my brain and the eyelids become laden and leaden and impossible to hoist up and over the pupil. Dimness sets in with a penetrating wave and I can no longer be held accountable as I drift off to a thin snooze.

^
Marketing for "The Party Makers" is relentless. Mr. Crudup’s esteemed publisher, Leroy-Crummings-Brigg-Townsend (or LCBT for those of us in the know) have put on their top hat and tails for this one. I seem to be running into Crudup everywhere. First, he shows up in person, then on Evening PBS chat shows. Then it’s as a display at Left Bank, page 14 of the New York Times Style section (I have noted the absence of a mention in the venerable Review) and of course, radio in the form of today’s offering from NPR’s Fresh Bagels program hosted by Emily Grimpull. LCBT have laid it out there and pushed Eliot to make his mark all in the hopes of bucking the disturbing trend of low readership and high publication numbers. Yes, more books than ever are being churned forth, yet it is for fewer and fewer eyeballs. How can this be allowed to go on anymore? (Kill your television immediately).

So why would I have ever wanted to be a writer anyway? To toil and grasp for crumbs, have nervous breakdowns, become alcoholic or drug dependent and starve all the while holding down multiple jobs just to make a third of what I used to make being an agent of capitalism? Forget about it.

I knew pretty early on in my nascent writing years (roughly junior year of High School through two years out of College) that I didn’t have it. Did not possess the talent, the wit and the persistence to make it happen. I kept hoping an easy way into it would reveal itself, but no, there is no short cut to the New York Times Book Review. Just look how Eliot Crudup ground out the gains bit by bit until he was at a point to command the immodest resources of LCBT and the blessings of its German holding company, Spindelkromm AG. Crudup bounced hither and yon for years before he had a regular gig carved out, a teaching position at Tulane and guest shots on Fresh Bagels. He has been relentless and prolific at just the right times. So despite the relative lack of readers out there, LCBT pours it on. Go Eliot Go! I turn the radio in the kitchen up just a bit more so I can hear him over the boys stomping around upstairs.

Emily: After your fifth novel, "412" was badly received you said you went through a period of denial and personal anguish as though you had lost a loved one.

Eliot: Yes, yes, I did.

Emily: So tell us why? Take us through that period.

Eliot: Right (coughs) Yes. Well, you see Emily, I had been on a hell of a run up until then and you know how the ego works. It's really the Devil’s playground while the idle mind is where angels sleep. And I had poured life and limb into "412", more so than the previous books.

Emily: You’re not supposed to ever fail? Is that what you were thinking?

Eliot: I don’t know about that. But hubris carries us all away a lot of the times as we are stroked and cared for in innumerable ways. But to cut to the heart of the matter, what I found out. What it all comes down to, is that I stink when I try too hard. It’s something I had been told repeatedly when I got into the game and always agreed with. But you see, you see it’s not always easy to detect when you’re trying too hard.

Emily: How do you know now, then?

Eliot: Well, I have a superb editor in Andy Gray and he knows right away. And now I have good friends inside, a cadre of mates who can read and see right through.

Emily: The old ‘No Man is An Island’ revelation.

Eliot: Precisely. You get too big for yourself sometimes and you absolutely have to have people close to you to say, hey Eliot, this is shite, mate. Go back to the drawing board.

^
Rainfall has dampened all enthusiasms beyond any reasonably acceptable level. But maybe that’s a good thing. This Thursday rainfall pinned all of us down under our own roof for the afternoon. After retrieving the boys from school we all took up stations in far-flung corners. I am in the study on the couch surrounded by buttes and bluffs of newspaper and magazine. Jack is downstairs trying to turn an old bicycle into an electric generator not unlike the Professor on Gilligan’s Island. Upstairs Nick works at the boy’s computer (our aging, over-worked, under-paid iMac) on some strange kid’s program, which I couldn’t begin to explain. I can just make out odd, muffled cartoon collision noises though and that can’t be good. Lynn is at the kitchen table reading a book. We are lucky enough to have a house that can disperse such a group effectively, because the rain does not look keen to end any time soon.

We are officially in low key setting around the house. I have just finished an article in the New York Times about how a large number of Bush supporters still believe there was a connection between Saddam and Al-Qaeda. This means there must be guilt by association for the September 11th attacks. Of course all of this is nonsense and it amazes me this thinking still prevails in certain quarters. How could this sort of ignorance maintain any sort of level, much less a level above 30%? All right, I better cool it or I’ll work myself up and ruin an otherwise calm late afternoon.

Calm, quiet afternoons for the family are good therapy. They counter the squawk, bang and buzz of a light speed world helping to slow the brain down and hopefully give the old blood pressure and resting pulse a nice break as well. Perhaps it should be a requirement for us to do this at least once a week – several hours of doing your own thing in the quiet inglenooks and crannies of our turn of the century mock Tudor.

In this spirit I pick up the latest issue of The New Yorker, a magazine I used to read religiously, but then found redundant and close to being a parody of itself (which maybe was always the point of it and I just finally got it after 15 years). Paging from back to front, as is my habit with magazines, what should I come across? You guessed it, an article by Eliot Crudup. And as is the tradition of the venerable New Yorker it looks to be about 150 graphs long. He is quite literally everywhere at once and this trend is disturbing on a couple of plains.

First of all, no human should have this much attention paid to him or her, unless they are a man-chimp leader of the "free" world with an inability to understand or recognize the truth. Secondly, it just plays into the hands of an author’s detractors particularly Eliot’s who are always quick to point out the many hypocrisies surrounding the man. Third it’s just boring after a while to be subjected to this many thoughts from the same source.

Of course, if it were my thoughts in the magazines, newspapers and television shows it would be a completely different matter. Or would it?

^
"That is not writing. It is typing." Hemingway or somebody like him said that about somebody’s efforts (Kerouac?). And it certainly frames what I think of those writing books telling me I should sit down and write 1000 words a day, preferably in the early morning, when all is quiet. How is forcing yourself to write each and everyday a set amount going to yield anything useful? If authors talk of how damaging writing for writing’s sake is, can’t we automatically assume the 1000 forced words will be vacuous nonsense?

The idea behind the daily writing exercise is to develop the habit and to get the mind thinking a certain way about language, the assembly thereof and to stretch (hopefully) the imagination. I gather, then, that 90% of what is written in these conditions is going to be useless. What other habits do we develop that are 90% useless? Let’s see, smoking, gum chewing, drinking alcohol (though I am still debating this) and watching television – to name a few off the top of my head. We will give each a 10% useful rating, because there are times when releasing tension or enjoying a nicotine rush or becoming informed about the Coastal Wolves of British Columbia proves to be worthwhile.

I already think way too much about language, but I suppose it is not the right sort of thinking, or of the kind writing workshops mean. Part of my trouble when speaking is I am thinking too much about what I am saying. This is trouble because I end up second guessing thoughts before they leave the head so I end up not saying exactly the right thought at the right time. I am often slow to respond. The sort of thinking "they" mean is more of the word choice and sentence structure variety – stretching the vocabulary, which goes unchallenged during daily conversation between non-academics. So we should all grant this one to the writing instructors. It makes sense, because we all write differently than we speak (with any luck). Right?

Which brings me inevitably to the question of imagination and exercising it. How this works has never really been made clear to me, but from what I gather, I am supposed to capture on paper or in computer memory what presumably would typically only be fleeting thoughts, then think more about them and capture the expansion. And so on and so forth until they are "fleshed out." Is this an exercise or a nuisance? Do I really want to do this with fleeting thoughts?

^
Waldo Pierce does not have a painting in the Museum. This is hard to believe. The guy was at it a long, long time. I hadn’t really heard of him until a few weeks ago, so why should I be shocked? Not that I am, by any stretch of the imagination, an art historian or even art oriented, but you would think those who would know better would, well, know better. I came across the name in an article about "The Lost Generation," which was discussing the probabilities of such a rich cache of talent pooling off shore again, what with this country going to hell in a hand basket. The article, in Journal of Modern Letters (don’t ask), drew broad comparisons to where we are now politically and culturally to where the nation was back in the twenties. I don’t want to digress into a discussion of this article, though I probably should. But in naming off some notable members of the storied generation that drank, wrote, painted and sculpted their way through Parisian streets, the esteemed Waldo Pierce came up -- twice.

The American Renoir lived to the grand old age of 86 (despite knowing Hemingway well). He described himself as a painter, not an artist. This phrase in the article really intrigued me, because I like that sort of self-effacement from a notable genius. So I hiked over to the Museum and went to where I thought a work by Pierce would be displayed but did not get that lucky. I went down to the information desk to ask the tiny, black garbed art elf if they could check to see if any Pierce works were in the vast collection. The woman checked the mainframe and swiveled back to say "No. We don’t have a Pierce. I didn’t think we did, but it’s always a good idea to check the catalog."

This was no good at all. I had walked over to the Museum, because the Internet had proven completely useless. But no "Summer Bathers" or "Girl With Viola" to be seen here in St. Louis. Now it looks like the library next before my curiosity gets the best of me. Outside the Museum I get set for the trek back to the neighborhood, setting course for a new library branch, which is swanky and stylish while also being tucked under a parking garage – imagine! With my iPod poised I take note of a whole bunch of college kids posing by Louis IX. They’re huddled while a cohort takes a picture or two. Strangely, they look as though they have just been sprung from a Maersk Container down portside someplace. Emaciated, pale and even down right sallow, they grin as though Louis IX provides them with the same gilded feeling of unbridled freedom Liberty once did to the huddled masses of Ellis Island – um, or something like that.

As I start down Fine Arts Drive, they break up and run to their awaiting bus shouting something that sounds like Czech or a dialect of Polish the world may not have discovered. Why are they here? Why would the shady underworld black market types spring open the Container, load them on a bus and drive them to Louis IX?
I continue my search for Waldo Pierce information by cranking up the iPod and listening to The Promise Ring.

^
Associate Professor Ralph Tipton eats a scone at The Chemistry Lab. I walk up to take the usual position at my table and there he sits -- a pudgy sort, clearly ten years younger than me, he had spiky blonde hair and wore hopelessly outdated wire rimmed glasses – the aviator shaped ones popular in maybe the seventies. I stopped at the table and turned towards him. "Dr. Tipton?" I asked, sure that he would not know me from Adam.

He looked up at me with an irregularly shaped chunk of scone protruding oddly from his mouth, paused for a second, before snapping the unruly section into his mouth like a Striped Bass. "Yes?" His eyes narrowed as the brain files whirled to an ungraceful start.

"I took your Theories of Modern Writing Workshop a year ago at SLU." Extending my hand, I helpfully offered, "the name is Ed."

He began to nod in a pronounced fashion as he struggled to down the food and engage properly in the annoyance of casual conversation with a former student.

"I wrote a wildly self-conscious piece revolving around Nabokov’s butcher, when he lived in Berlin. The Butcher takes tennis lessons from Nabokov and gets so good he can beat Nabokov, but then the Nazi Party, well..." I stop myself from going further into this Hollywood Pitch and add, to make sure he knows I was not serious, "anyway, thoroughly derivative of half a dozen writers."

He swallows finally. "Yes, yes. Of course. Nice narrative. Great dialog. Really nice piece."

And that right there is the most feedback I had ever received about the little story I cranked out over strong coffee, between helping Lynn with her courses on Poetry and Oil Painting (we were filling our time grandly at that stage of our "retirement"). Unfortunately, those comments have the sound of a stock response trotted out for any former writing student encountered. "I noticed a couple weeks ago that you know Eliot Crudup. I was sitting over there when you met him."

"Yes, yes. I met him first at Tulane. He was my advisor and I took a couple of his classes. Great guy. Great guy." He wiped his mouth. "You should have come over and said hello. I would have introduced you. He’s a great guy, really. A good friend." He pushes a chair out from the table and motions for me to sit down.

I sat down and put my lap top case under the seat. Remembering the large envelope Ralph passed to Eliot, I asked, "anyway, does he ever take a look at your work?"

"No, no. I can’t do that to him. Since he stopped teaching a couple years ago, he is consumed by writing, rewriting, reading and rereading."

"And marketing." I add while looking around for Max.

"Yes, that is too true. He is a machine." He pauses to take a drink of coffee. "A very wealthy machine. Oh man, you have to try the Colombian Hilltop Mist today. What a brew."

"As soon as I locate Max, I’ll do just that. So are you working on a new book?"

"Just finished it, as a matter of fact. It went to my editor a week ago yesterday. We shall soon see how much work I have over the winter. If it’s anything like the past, I won’t come up for air until June."

"Are you still teaching at SLU?" Max appears, grabs a glass and water pitcher and heads towards us.

"Yes. Just enough to keep me in clover."

^
When Lynn and I attend Dr. Tipton’s holiday party in a couple of weeks, I’ll have to introduce myself as an independent investor and philanthropist rather than what I would like to say – novelist. But we have already firmly established I will never be one, so why the desire to give that response. Maybe, because it sounds so much deeper, or at least less vapid and gives me a sheen of intellect I otherwise don’t believe projects (maybe because I am not an intellectual and never will be, but that’s a subject for another time).

When you’re at a party it is already difficult to talk with people. Lynn and I really hate parties, because we never know how to gain entry or make connection with anyone. We end up spending the time circulating and having small talk exchanges with people and hovering over the food and drinks. It would be more productive to rake leaves.

But when Dr. Tipton invited me to his party I could not very well say no, when we had spent 2 hours drinking coffee at the Chemistry, talking about the publishing business. It seemed an appropriate way to pay him back for granting me an audience. Sure, we’ll come and stand around in your living room holding glasses of Vouvray. He promised there would be all sorts of interesting guests, but everyone always says this don’t they?

He seemed remarkably unjaded by the business of writing, considering critics have kicked around his few efforts – terribly chatty for a guy who has to deal with inane students like me on a continual basis. But I guess he is one of those who never tires of discussing the split infinitives, shaky gerunds and dangling participles of everyday hacking. Some people just have the knack.

Lynn rolled her eyes when I told her about the party. Don’t blame her. We’ve been to a few neighborhood events that were pretty painful, even for the hour or so we made the appearance. We’re not precisely sure why we prefer dinners amongst small groupings over the wildly social gatherings of our peers, other than we are mostly an introverted couple. I say mostly, because there are those times at Jack’ soccer matches when I just have to yell approval for a skilled cross or well timed back pass (usually met with a negative gasp from those unschooled in this basic element of sound organization). But being effusive at a sporting event is an acceptable way to be emotive and its possible to share views without raising too many eyebrows. It is no wonder even the most meek in society can go crazy while watching their team surrounded by complete strangers.

What is shyness and is there a cure that does not involve assertiveness cassettes from the multi-media section of the local library?

^
I can not sleep. Laying here in bed, watching the ceiling fan turn round and round, what comes around goes around, I just can’t make my mind shut down. It keeps taking me backwards to a crap apartment I had as I finished up college. My first place all by myself and what a hole -- a converted basement, actually half the converted basement of a house on University. Above me lived the football team’s starting backfield. Why should this place pop up tonight? Absurd what the brain does. Absurd!

A horrible smell clung to the place that was chemical in nature. Bugs were about, though only at night did they dare make an effort. I listened to way too much REM, Rain Parade and Long Ryders in that place. And it was fucking cold. I seem to recall a small gas heater in the main room and snow coming in under the outside door where I hung a blanket to try to cut down the draft. Absurd. It’s all a bit too murky now 20 years on and besides, these irrationally oriented images started life in a pool of alcohol and cigarette smoke. How meaningful could they have been?

"If you twist and turn away
if you tear yourself in two again
if I could yes I would, if I could, I’d let it go
Surrender…dislocate."
-- Bono (naturally)

I remember walking around the University Golf Course in the middle of a snowy night, listening to U2’s "Bad" on a Walkman (the Great Grandparent of my iPod). Why did I do that? Must have been the thing to do when my only responsibility was to wait tables and do a radio show once a week. How bizarre to think of these things, because unlike many, I certainly don’t like or think fondly of college days – for the most part. So I will let it go, let it fade away again for another twenty years.

I’m Wide Awake.
I’m not sleeping.

And the fan still whirls. Lynn just moved, readjusting some pillows. I like watching her sleep. She’s peaceful and relaxed. This always makes me feel peaceful and relaxed. She’s a hell of a person, my Lynn, constantly underestimating her own abilities at being a Mom, friend and wife. There she sleeps, the Lady of the Lake or whatever that mythical character from the King Arthur sagas was. What dream landscape is she walking through right now and why can’t I join her?

Rain begins to fall again outside and that will surely help. I never sleep as well as when we’re in London. Must be the rain, though come to think of it the weather is often quite nice for us when there, so I suppose that isn’t it. Probably very London-like outside tonight with a temperature in the upper forties and that pelting rain, but will it do it’s number on my brainwaves?

Still not sleeping. The clock burns 1:05 and nothing can be done. Guess I will have to succumb to more weird dregs of imagery shooting across the projection screen, making a certain effort at memorializing the black hole of mid eighties psycho-drama.
Where do we go from here?

^
Strangest moment in marketing: Eliot Crudup in Sunday’s Parade Magazine. Blimey that’s just stranger than a Charlie Kaufman script. He is absolutely everywhere to the point of haunting me. So I am paging through the Post-Dispatch that was lying on the Chemistry Lab’s counter and whom should I encounter in Parade? It just is phenomenal, this push. Next thing you know he’ll be on Regis and Kelly or picked as People Magazine’s most eligible novelist, or some other outlandish silliness common to such publications.

AUTHOR AND BRITNEY
CAUGHT IN SOUTH BEACH LOVE NEST

"I’ve never been one who worries about the future, how my writing will be perceived or whether I will be able to keep doing what I do," says Eliot to the interviewer. To which I can only follow up and ask, "what do you worry about then?" Don’t all humans have some type of worry, some kind of concern, at least? But that question did not get asked, or it did not make it by the editor if it did. So Eliot is free of the type of worries plaguing philistines like me.

I told Lynn about this and she couldn’t believe I was reading Parade Magazine. She said I was obsessing over the man and needed to think about something else other than writing.

But I am not obsessing on Eliot Crudup. I am merely in awe of the public relations/marketing offensive his publisher has unleashed. I am also amazed that he seems to be playing along with it – and still has street cred with the literati. This is a bit like the U2 mystery. How can they crank out something in the neighborhood of 11 albums over 25 years and still remain relevant, fresh and critically acclaimed?

The question of talent is a beguiling one.

^
I’ve made a decision. I am going to give my "book" to Dr. Tipton at his holiday party. Won’t he be thrilled? Won’t he be ecstatic over receiving 260 pages of nonsense from a former student? Wouldn’t you be excited, answering the door with a glass of Zinfandel and a robust holiday cheer scrolled across your pumpkin head only to be handed a manila envelope with 260 laser printed pages of American satire too vacuous for even the author to read with any remote pleasure? I shouldn’t be so harsh. After all, I have made this decision only to provide an artificial deadline to cut me off – to cut it out. Stop the madness.

I am slogging through Crudup’s "412" and remember why it did not strike my fancy. The middle third is a thick morass of widely complex sentences and pretensions. The plot is weighted down so laboriously with bobbles and bangles that end up dead ending, frustration continues to mount. Currently, I am right in the middle of that swampy mess, though the story places me in the middle of the Arizona Desert. Anyone reading this would see that the great man pushed the outer limits here, yet he survived and went on to write wonderful books. No wonder he fears nothing. Free passes are granted to those with the talent and desire and back catalog to recover the investment of their publishers and readers.

So now, with Dr. Tipton in mind, I will need to go back and spike my novella up and get with my weak-link technical side. Why bother? Because a small, extremely powerful part of my brain thinks it could lead to something. Maybe he’ll slip it to his agent or know someone who knows someone who looks at this kind of thing for the Utne Reader. I kid myself about stuff like this, because something needs to push me.

Lynn pokes her head into the study. "You coming to the match?"

Jack’ Westminster Youth FC is having a go at Lindell School’s Under 10’s and they need this one to advance into the League Cup. Jack explained that they really don’t want to leave it up to goal differential. "Yes, let me shut this down and we’ll go. Where’s Nick?"

"Nick is at the Florio’s and is going to stay through dinner."

"He doesn’t want to come along? Support his brother?"

She disappears down the hall, but calls back to me. "You know he’s not a soccer fan."
I look at the words of my opening sentence one more time.

>>
He decided to buy the sleek technological summary without giving the consequences any thought.
>>

It’s just never going to grab anyone. Before I finish the sentence I am yawning and wondering how that small extremely powerful part of my brain thinks this will lead to something? The ego is nothing to trifle with and it makes us all do silly things from time to time. If only I understood it more there wouldn’t be such a commanding pull on my common sense.

A call from the kitchen echoes up the stairs to me. "Edward! We’re going to be late."

^
The trouble with decisions can be described in one word: pressure. In my case it is purely self imposed, but I still have slapped a deadline on myself and now I must perform to meet it or look worthless in my eyes. This can not be healthy. But I want to be done with this so I can rid myself once and for all from the reflexive pronouns, verb disagreements (heaven forbid) and split infinitives and just live my life.

Maybe my life needs a little tension, a self imposed nervous hum. There’s no credibility to it, because it’s all just made up, conjured out of magnetic files and an analog clock face. The thing is, I am making real progress. I have hacked out two sections and strengthened three others. I have cleaned up a lot of grammar and pesky spelling errors and this tightening is giving me more energy to finish it off. I am only two chapters away from having freedom. A deadline and a person to write towards as something of a target have made all the difference. Why didn’t I think of this before?

Lynn is out Christmas shopping, trying to accomplish this chore before Thanksgiving spins around. Fortunately we never go hog wild for St. Nick’s arrival so her task should be easier – made even simpler this year by not having me to contend with at the stores (I have great difficulty making up my mind). She is a master at finding the right thing to the point that it strikes awe in the boys and me. How does she do it? Is it genetic? Who knows the answer? At any rate, this has provided a silent house to work within today so I did not make my coffee trip -- home brew and the Power Book this morning.

The achievement level started high, but has steadily bled away to the point now where I am working on this rather than editing that other thing. It is almost as though I need a bit of distraction to stay dialed in on the task. No, wait, it isn’t "as though," it is exactly that. I need a bit of small turmoil to keep the head right in the thick of this story. It goes back to my college days when I did my best work at the Library where a constant level of activity orbited whatever work station I chose. Something about being in Ellis with hundreds of my closest pals (not) kept me in a productive mindset. It might also have to do with working in a noisy office for twenty odd years with coworkers who, never, shut, the, fuck, up. So damn the silence.

Going to the small stereo we have in the study I call up a CD of assorted songs. Neko Case’s "If You Knew" flies out of the little JBL bookshelf speakers. We collect these types of songs all the time. Through downloads or the selection Magnet Magazine sends us each month, songs like "If You Knew" find their way into this home’s vernacular. With the technology and distribution channels available today, why does anyone listen to the radio for music?

We turn to NPR’s Eric Westervelt in Mosul for an update…

^
I will never be a television meteorologist with skin tanned to the point of baked and a smile featuring perfect teeth that reflect the studio lights. Lynn and the Boys watch closely to see if we’re in for snow or not. There seems to be a bit of mystery over where it shall fall and where it will not. Obviously the Boys are pulling for the Central West End to be in the white belt. Lynn hopes to be in the cold rain section. I have no opinion as I rarely drive these days (so snowy traffic is not an issue), but love the sound of rain on our old copper gutters so I can, figuratively speaking, go either way.

Weeks ago Jack pulled the Flexible Flyers out of the rafters in the carriage house and cleaned them up. Remarkable on several levels: First, the carriage house is melting into the earth and the Boys are certain it is haunted; Secondly, Jack had to negotiate our 6 foot aluminum ladder out from beneath a pile of dusty, cobwebbed lumber; Thirdly, he had to find space between Cal’s canoe and old kayak to set the ladder up and hand the bladed instruments of Wintery hysterics down to Nick (without my little brothers water craft avalanching down upon them).

Lynn is supposed to go to Shaw’s Garden for a meeting of her Garden Philanthropy Group and while it is only a few miles away, she does not fancy having to return in a blizzard. She enjoys the Club, but it is not a high enough value target to risk ending up rear-ended on the Kingshighway Viaduct by some South Sider with lapsed insurance.

My ambivalence arises from my "work," which steams along nicely and can almost be pronounced DONE. Since the party at Professor Tipton’s place is next weekend, I am happy to report my progress. The good Doctor and his life partner live in the St. Regis, which is a building Lynn and I have coveted for ages. It’s got location, sprawling floor plans and embellishments that accurately take you immediately to the Upper East Side of Manhattan in a flash! My only stress now is to decide where to cut the ending, because both Lynn and I reread it a couple weeks ago and agreed that it needed to end a lot sooner than it does.

I need to rid the thing of spurious, self-serving and pretentious dialogue, but I also need to insure that I am not hacking something that ties up a dangling rope left earlier in the narrative. Not hard, but this may be a task left for a snow day (if one happens in the next four days).

Or not. A good rain will do. The copper guttering right outside the study has a fine tone particularly when the rain comes from the Southwest and the wind is such to create a perfect 25 degree pitch to the drops. Ping, pock, tonk, ping, tonk, pock, ping, ping. The gutters tell me we’re in for rain only. The Boys will need to wait a little longer before sailing down Art Hill.

My final task to meet my self-imposed deadline involves coming up with some sort of pitch. I need to develop a way to quickly explain what this thing I’ve been writing means. I have a couple of days to hone ideas, shaping them (or hammering them) into sense.

Here’s what it looks like this morning:

The American Dream is not what it used to be. We have left the materialism and self-centered fifties behind in favor of the new vision. The characters of "Moral Kiosk" jettison a variety of responsible executive madness in order to take up the new dream of simple pragmatism, of faith, friends and family. Within the backdrop of a round-the- clock New York City, moving so fast its society does not immediately notice, a cultural shift happens away from the office towers and towards the Green Spaces, the churches and the dwellings of our three main characters.

Okay, looking this over I can see it is a complete mess. Perhaps I better sit down and read "Moral Kiosk" without a red pen within reach. Then I might actually know something about it. I can’t hand it to Dr. Tipton and spout that crappy paragraph of nonsense out to him while great hordes of his associates look on in disapproval. If I am going to make an ass of myself by handing in some work, I better have something snappy to say about it.

I look at the pages stacked on my desk and it certainly looks good. But I am done with the whole idea of typing a lot of pages up so it looks good. It reminds me of High School when I would create "songs" and record them on to cassettes just so I could do the artwork and liner notes. What needs to happen is the almighty fresh approach, coming at this couple hundred page meandering from the position that perhaps I can be a writer after all, despite stating a couple months ago that I was through with that sort of wishful thinking, that kind of gossamer-like American Dream.

Gathering up the pages and slipping them into a file folder, I march out of the study, down the hall, down the stairs and into the kitchen. "My love," I announce to Lynn, "I am off to Chemistry for coffee and to become a writer."

Lynn folds a dishtowel and places it on the counter next to the sink, then turns to me with a smile. "Well, good luck then," she says with appropriate sarcasm.

"No. Really. This time I really, really mean it." I smile while shrugging into my coat.

She hugs me. "Really. Good luck."

I give her a kiss. "With such support, how could I not succeed?" Descending the stairs to the side door I grab a scarf off the unused hat rack and open the door.

"Do you want lunch?" She calls after me.

"No thanks." And off I go up the walk towards the street. I didn’t realize how cold it became overnight. There’s also this funky, half-assed drizzle making a nuisance of itself. Do I need an umbrella? Did James Joyce use an umbrella? Hemingway?

I sense Martin Amis would use an umbrella.

^
It’s complete shit. I know that it behooves me to avoid characterizing my prose in such a way, but I can’t help it. I am sipping my Venti Guinea Moonbeam and my story is nearly bringing me to tears. Okay, it isn’t that bad, but it is the same feeling I have always allowed to wash over me when reading through one of my stories and it is exactly what I hoped to avoid this time around. With a more mature conviction I might just have something to say (along with some ruthless and objective editing) and this feeling supposedly could not get a grip.

So much for becoming a writer – again.

I must keep plugging along and hope there is climax and resolution and that the freaking arc falls properly. I want to keep the misspellings and grammatical nightmares to a minimum. Some of these spurious pieces have ended up making some sense, though I chopped most of them out realizing they existed completely for my benefit and not the "readers." Looking at a tree across Euclid I am made to ponder, did John Milton struggle like this? Is that why he really went blind? Shaking my head I return to the pages, not even bothering to figure out why John Milton would pop into my brain at that moment.

There is no doubt my mind is overcoming earlier confidence by flashing images of Dr. Tipton reading the first page, skimming the second and then tossing the entire piece into the garbage. So what? Why does this image trouble me? I am not, after all, a writer nor will I ever be. I am just a guy who likes to write preparing a story for someone who likes to (presumably) read. Of course a great review by The New Yorker wouldn’t be so bad either.

Why would someone like John Milton enter my head? The writers that typically pop into my head are Hemingway, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald and not someone like John Milton. This is the type of name that must have been served to me subliminally some way. Perhaps the TV in the living room blared a PBS documentary on Oliver Cromwell and Milton’s name came up while I concentrated on dicing tomatoes in the kitchen for stew (all conjecture). Perhaps I really need to get back to reading this story so I know how to properly pitch it. A different strategy would be to just leave it somewhere in Dr. Tipton’s house so I can avoid having to talk sensibly about this.

Interesting fact: It says here John Milton went blind reading too much. The man read round the clock and eventually the little words absorbed by candlelight took their toll. He was fluent in most European languages. The Internet gives you facts at light speed. It may just catch on someday. It sure does make fact finding and achieving a quick education on some character (like John Milton) insanely easy. Search Engines do all the legwork and come back with a long list. Then it’s up to you or me to cull through the list to find the nuggets. I always wonder how accurate the information is that is beamed world wide, but I reckon most stuff about old historical figures holds up. Who would make up the fact John Milton went blind reading too much?

I may go blind if I have to continue reading my crappy prose.

^
News blackouts work to calm the post election depression. It’s been a month since this Great Country re-elected its Not Great Leader. It has also been a month since I have listened to, read and watched any news. I feel that I am a better person for having gone "dark," at least temporarily. Some people live their whole lives this way (which explains the re-election of the Idiot-in-Chief) and I would not want to join them in that way of life. But on a temporary basis, it’s a good idea to leave the growing deficit, Falluja offensive, latest cabinet member to resign information overload BEHIND. It’s cleansing and renewing, allowing for a refocus on retail issues, stuff close to the heart, on the ground, next door, etc.

Yes, I am advocating tuning out and dropping in -- tune out the static pushed upon us by the media cabal and drop in on your neighbor (if you have any you like, that is). Tip O’Neal is credited with saying, "all politics is local." Well, I want to be credited with saying, "all sanity is local." It’s so much more sensible than moving to Canada, which is all the rage these days amongst those alienated by their once loved nation. No tests to take, either.

After you have gone a sufficient time unhooked from the world, after you start feeling certain and relaxed (two mindsets seemingly lost long ago), then you can go back to being plugged in. But with the proviso you now will have to be the most cynical and sarcastic individual who knows the cabinet scalp count is now up to seven. Come on, it will be fun! We all know the death of irony happened somewhere back about, say 1992, so there’s room for more cynicism.

I am supposed to be coming up with the pitch for "Moral Kiosk" and yet here I sit, talking about tuning out and dropping in, becoming less embittered through blackout therapy. You see, I’ll do anything to avoid the reality. I finished the story and still can’t boil it down to three or four sanguine bullets. It still boils down to the American dream is now just a murky illusion used as an instrument of corporate greed. Looking behind the characters and their movements, you see that it’s all about the marketing. Suburbia is a public relations disaster covered up daily by corporate and government interests. Can you imagine the revolution when people find that they’ve been suckered into living in vinyl clad boxes strewn around cul-de-sacs with anything resembling culture completely out of reach, simply because there’s over capacity in world wide auto manufacturing (besides the asphalt and concrete junta’s desire to keep building roads)? Well, this is not very sanguine, nor is it ground breaking.

I am not worried about the pitch, because I am quite clearly NOT a writer. I am also not an astronaut, mountain climber, teacher, film director, physicist, fighter pilot or television meteorologist. But that’s okay. At least I can pretend to be a writer.

^
Associate Professor Ralph Tipton’s life partner answers the door. I’d met her once before at a lecture by a William Buroughs scholar from Colgate, but did not recall the uncanny resemblance she bore to Lisa Loeb. "Hello and welcome. You guys come in, come in." Her comfort with strangers surprises me for some inexplicable reason. As we shuffle through the door we introduce each other and Dr. Cole insists on taking our coats. She doesn’t even ask about the manila envelope I hold before leading us into the living space, pointing to the bar tender in the far corner and allowing us to wade into the small crowd on our own. Lynn remarks that with the Miles Davis playing and cocktail shaker sushing, "it’s like a party from another era. Where’s Rosemary Clooney?"

Expansive, the Cole-Tipton apartment rambles along the fifth floor on the St. Regis’ Eastside. After we each secure a giant glass of a rugged Spanish red – a Grenache-Tempranillo blend from an estate near Lodoso (for those keeping score) – we make ourselves busy by gazing out the window across the Central West End. Professor Tipton comes up behind us and puts a chummy hand on my shoulder. "It’s a hell of a view. I never get tired of seeing the city from up here."

I turn to him. "Say, Dr. Tipton. Happy holidays." We shake hands and I introduce Lynn and there is some more small talk involving views and cityscapes. Then, with my heart pumping a little too heavily, I hand him my work. "Not to be too presumptuous, but I wanted to give you this piece in the hopes you could read it some time."

He casually regards the envelope, then looked at Lynn. "It’s a never ending trail, I’m telling you." He then looks at me. "I’d be glad to look it over. Say, there’s someone here I’d like you to meet." Ralph tucks the envelope up under his arm and motions to us to follow him in the direction of what looks to be the kitchen. "Come this way, you will not be disappointed."

We all pile into the sleek kitchen and are confronted by the man himself. It might as well have been St. Nick, because the character leaning up against the cabinetry is as equally mythic to me.

"Eliot. Here’s the guy I was telling you about." Ralph steps out of the way to let Eliot Crudup shake our hands. He is in solid black, from his turtleneck to his worn loafers, a beatnik only too tall and too much of a presence for accuracy. Standing next to him is a much older and quite stately looking woman.

"Ed." He smiles. "The Vladimir Nabokov man."

This throws me most sincerely and I stumble a bit introducing Lynn. She is, of course, much cooler and calmer, able to exchange some small talk with Eliot and Ralph, getting us introduced to Eliot’s mother who is traveling with him for the month of December.

Eliot turns back to me. "Ralph mentioned your story to me when we were arguing about Pale Fire. And it interested me so he sent it down. Cracking stuff. I laughed my arse off."

Good lord I can’t say whether I’ve been so embarrassed in my life. I am speechless and look at the floor for a moment to gather thoughts and come up with a reply. "I’m, uh, thanks." Brilliant.

Ralph takes a big drink, then helps me out. "Ed, Eliot says he has notes for you on it. Notes! So you might just want to revisit that story." He chuckles into his cocktail, then pulls his nose out again. "Take it a little more seriously."

I look at Eliot. "Really?" I peek at Lynn, then back at Eliot again. "Sorry I’m so taken aback, but I just have no idea what to say. I didn’t hear anything back on that story and haven’t given it another thought." I glance at Ralph. "Maybe I should have kept coming to your workshop."

He smiles knowingly. "Maybe."

Eliot crosses his arms. "Let’s get some coffee tomorrow at that place we like and we can talk about your butcher and some reworking of your German dialog. You did a creditable job of simulating a translation, but to the detriment of flow. The story works well though and it plays well off Nabokov’s ego."

I can NOT believe what I am hearing. A totally unexpected turn of events. After this, maybe Lynn and I will change our opinions of parties. I am holding a conversation about writing with a hero of mine. Next thing you know Peter Buck and Kevin Spacey will walk into the kitchen.

Bricks & Mortar

2008-03-26T17:10:00.005Z

- Part One -

Box

Isabella and I watched the huddle, a dark collection of figures with hands holding umbrellas, on shoulders, around waists, consoling, soothing. Inevitably the day could not be anything but sad. While I like to think of rainy days as hopeful, death usually is far less so. And yet as I watched the Federers try to come to grips with their husband, father, brother and son being laid to rest, I could not ignore a strange feeling. I nodded my head in closer to Isabella’s. "I hate to admit this, but I feel kind of almost happy. Not about Calvin finally passing away. Not that."

Having endured my thoughts for almost twenty years, she didn’t even look my way. "What are you feeling almost happy about, then? I’m glad to see the suffering over with. I think Kim is as well."

"It’s nothing like that. I am actually pleased to have a good friend to grieve. Before I started visiting and getting to know him, I would have been hard pressed to come up with someone to grieve for other than you or Stella or, you know, the ordinary suspects."

"Gee. Thanks, honey. You make it sound like a privileged list."

"I know. I know full well this is selfish, but on such a miserable, crappy day like today, I will take it. If I had not gotten to know Cal so well, I would feel differently, worse for sure." I looked at Cal’s very old and extremely frail mother being wheeled towards an awaiting conversion van. "Maybe I would be lost in the loss. Effected by the lost opportunity for friendship."

"If you wouldn’t have gotten to know him how would you feel anything? You would have read the obit – maybe – and went on, probably just noting the fact that it was the father of Stella’s friend."

"Good point. I guess I don’t know what I’m trying to say then."

The service had been remarkably serene and typical. A fair accounting of his life, both the storied and domesticated, came and went followed by a few nods to protestant orthodoxy. Then a short ride out to the cemetery, Spruce Hills, nicely positioned on a ridge crest a mile outside city limits. The rain had let up only to be replaced by giant dollops of snow, which would not stick enough to be troublesome. They put the shiny lacquered box in the ground while everyone gazed either at their shoes or some middle distant fuzzy mass of contrived distraction. A few more ceremonial phrases made their way out of the minister before concluding the exercise.

Isabella and I wanted to say something to the Federer huddle, but knew nothing that would add anything to the long ordeal, except to share Stella’s best wishes in her absence. An aged Ethan and his wife were in from Vancouver, Ethan looking like he had recovered well from the accident in Sweden. Kirsten hung tightly to Cal’s pillar-of-strength wife, Kim. Assorted Iowa-looking relatives formed a picket around the core, so we stood there reflecting amidst the snowflake showers in Spruce Hills, me remembering how I had pop music and the untamed youth of Cade County to thank for having such a good friend as Calvin. I immediately heard background music for a flashback welling up inside my head.

Spring

Our daughter convinced us to go to her high school’s Spring Talent Show – a program audaciously entitled, "Creativity is Blooming." Somehow we could not conjure a good enough excuse and since she was growing into a bright and sociable sophomore it made a certain amount of sense, from me and my wife’s perspective, to see what sort of talents existed at Cade County High. Who knew that when we piled into the car to make a quick drive over to the school auditorium we would witness something close to history (in so far as history can ever be made in Cadeville)? Nothing against our fine town, but it is not exactly culturally alert. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say Cadeville was culturally inert.

Stella simply wanted to see a band her best friend’s brother had put together and normally we would have let her go with Kirsten, but she made a special appeal for our presence. "Dad, I so think you’ll kind of like this band," she said while we were assembled in the kitchen. I have to listen to her, because she’s our beautiful, wonderful child and she has this power over us. Sure she’s an only child and all that, but she’s also smart, quick and intuitive. We used to call her precocious, but she out grew that.

Stella knows what sort of music I like (we take such things seriously in our house) and so when she says we should listen to something the recommendation is not brushed off. She has a keen sense of aesthetics. Something I did not develop (if I can even profess to having it now) until much later, despite having older brothers secretly replacing my Partridge Family albums with The Beach Boys Pet Sounds and The Beatles Revolver.

Significant Music Side Bar #1:

Beatles -- Tomorrow Never Knows -- It blew me away and shook me out of my Beach Boys rut (which had in turn rested me from a serious Partridge Family fanship). I found out that those songs about drugs and/or politics could mean something to me too as a pre-teen. This song advanced my thinking well beyond cars, the beach and girls. The drums were so engaging with that cool Ringo syncopation thing going and then there was Lennon’s amazing vocals that sounded, quite impressively, like they’d miked him while off having a dream. Then there are the fun sounds of backwards guitars and who knows what all creating more craziness over a mystical drone, all generating the dreamscape for the vocals. It’s as if this song formed a collection of all Beatles production tricks. They were saying, "okay then, we’ve had our fun writing about girls and love, now we’re just going to mess with you and sing about whatever." This song, incidentally was the first to be recorded for Revolver, which is astounding to think about. It’s just a superb piece of work that stands up even to this day.

Anyway, either Isabella or I could come up with anything better to do than to witness some of Stella’s friends exercise their wild, chemically unbalanced egos in front of peers.

"What are they called?" I asked while looking over the top of the paper.

"Bricks & Mortar." She said while extracting a container of milk from its hiding place behind a bunch of withered grapes.

"Uh-huh. Sounds pretty industrial for Iowa, my dear." I sniffed while letting the band’s name sail over my head just before returning to a feature on immigrant families over in North Cedar worried about the government’s next move.

Isabella got up from the kitchen table. "Are they loud? What sort of music is it?"

Stella held the milk up to her mom. "Want some?"

"Please." Then she added, "Okay, this is not racist, but it’s not Rap is it? I am not fond of rap."

Stella pulled two glasses out of the cabinet. "Ma-omm. Jeez. No. Definitely not Rap. I know better than that. Promise. They aren’t really loud. It’s, well, like, melodic sort of guitar stuff. You know like British Invasion stuff. That sort of thing. You’ll like them. They’re good." She chortled,

"I mean they are REALLY good."

Isabella watched Stella fill a glass and hand it to her while she took a big drink of milk for herself.

"It wouldn’t have anything to do with providing cover for your continued infatuation with Kirsten’s older brother would it?" A fond smile arose on Isabella’s face. "Are you sucking us into an intrigue?"

At this, milk shot from Stella’s nose and she pitched forward theatrically, attempting to keep the milk running down her chin from hitting her field hockey jersey. This all made it appear as if she was surprised her parents would be familiar with those rustic, aboriginal teenage thoughts of lust. "Ma-omm. What is this Dawson’s Creek? He’s like sooo much older. And, you know. All like a gentleman and all that." Her face had a rutabaga look about it. Red at the bottom that faded into a floury, pasty white.

I gave Isabella a rueful smirk. "Stella, we aren’t living in a Jane Austen novel. I doubt very seriously that gentlemen enter into the modern equation."

Again, Stella guffawed. "Dad, you are such a dork. What, like now I want to see this band I’m gonna be mackin’ the dude?"

"Dork, you say?" I repeated in a game show announcer’s voice. "Very passe term used ironically, I presume."

Talent

We traipsed over to the auditorium the following evening. The night was one of those clear, early Spring evenings when the heat of the day makes a quick retreat and cool breezes sweep from the big trees around President Polk’s statue in City Park. The type of evening that almost had us forget about crazy young men driving airliners into far away tall buildings to kick off a grim autumn of fear and discontent. You think you can smell the speculaas dough being mixed for the next morning over at the Dutch bakery on Oak Street; lots of stars overhead; a faint sense that Harold Hill was about to burst through the oleanders and sing about "76 trombones" or some such thing.

But instead of the Music Man, we were undoubtedly about to be treated to loud, atonal sound washes by metal head Senior boys attempting to impress their girlfriends with their take on Iron Maiden’s catalog. Or so I thought, despite Stella’s descriptive use of "British Invasion." Which Invasion would she be using as her bellwether? As we took our seats along with the one hundred other souls who couldn’t avoid the show, I must say watching Stella wave and greet friends and classmates made it instantly fun. Isabella and I were not like her when we went to high school. Somehow she did not get the genetic predisposition to introversion that ran particularly acute and heavy in her parents.

The show began as expected. Three awkward Senior girls did something like juggling while lip synching to a Beyonce tune. From there, it went down hill with each odd performance some of which inspired enthusiastic reaction out of the students in the audience while completely mystifying adults. I found myself pleased with this disconnect between the two generations, sensing something akin to maturity and a modest awareness of good taste.

Then the night began its turn around when one skit actually turned out pretty well from the standpoint of entertaining the wider audience. It was a take-off on a reality TV show and the six kids that did it fairly nailed a decent satirical edge. Isabella and I wondered who had penned such snappy dialogue, but Stella either legitimately did not know or for some reason beyond us she would not say. We never press these sorts of things, because it really doesn’t matter anyway so why make her feel awkward about letting us into some perfect circle of teenage confidence.
It came time for Bricks & Mortar. Isabella and I braced for what may come shooting an eye towards an escape route. We knew from the rules printed in the program that they only had a five-minute window so the pain and suffering would be limited. I flashed on a memory of my own painful sojourn into making rock music as a sophomore at Iowa. What did I think I was going to accomplish making a complete fool of myself trying to front a band that played Gun Club covers? I closed my eyes for a moment and worked hard to avoid shuttering with mortification. The debut, in front of fifteen clearly deranged fellow students, was in the living room of Robin Corwood’s duplex on Woodside Drive -- the most incomprehensible, beer- fueled dream. We just knew we had made some cosmic connection with Mission of Burma or Pere Ubu. And as I dug a bit deeper into that memory, I remembered the exhilaration back stage (the kitchen) we felt after slogging and droning and brooding through our first six song set. So this is what it felt like, we thought. But oh my, the Lightning Terns were so incredibly horrible and yet we insisted on playing almost two dozen "shows" mostly at blurry, alcohol-fueled basement parties on the back streets or the sun-bleached Ped Mall for one lame event or another. I can still picture my Converse All-Stars all Sharpied up with revolutionary slogans. Who did I think would be reading my shoes as I stood there hanging on the microphone stand attempting to channel Ian Curtis? It all just fulfilled a desire I had harbored since high school to not just be in a band, but have the band fulfill my vision of art delivered through two and a half minute pop-like tunes. I wonder if the cassette tape of that first show survived somewhere? Next question should be why had it survived?

Significant Music Side Bar #2:

Velvet Underground -- Sweet Jane -- High school hit and I had a serious crush on New York City. The Velvet Underground fed this perfectly. Everything about the group said New York to me and Sweet Jane perfectly communicated it. Listening to it with my eyes shut I could picture Washington Square, though I’d never been there. Hell, I could practically smell the place, the Frisbees of dope. The Velvet Underground also showed me how simple music and crap vocals could still make an important connection. It was okay not to have great harmonies and suberb instrumentation. With the right attitude and words and production, many things are possible -- even being able to smell Washington Square from a 1000 miles away while driving to a FFA meeting.

Up on stage an impressive array of young people wheeled out an even more impressive array of amplification, including a rather professional set of Ampeg PA speakers. Drums (a white Tama set with sparkling Zildjin cymbals) on a riser materialized from back stage in an instant, then everything cleared. Kirsten herself came out and stepped to the microphone under a blue light drawing an excited little squeal and clap from Stella. "Um, hi." She said quietly giving a slight curtsy and wave that all parents find endearing. "Everybody, um, please welcome to the…" she consulted a note card, "um, Brixton, er, Academy?" She looked around a bit more nervous and uncertain than was normal for Kirsten, who usually appeared very strong and confident when around the house. With the mention of Brixton Academy, a venerable venue in London, my ears immediately perked up. "Well, um, this is, um my broth, I mean, this is Bricks and Mortar." And with that she walked off stage left.

Well-directed red and blue lights went up on the set and a huge Union Jack banner (painted with what must have been the town’s allotment of tempura paint) unfurled as a backdrop, giving the gear a rather dramatic appearance. From stage right, three boys walked on amongst polite applause looking extremely dapper and much more confident than their fellow performers. They looked as though they had walked on to stage a thousand times. Dressed in matching, tightly tailored light gray suits and what looked like bowling shoes, they stepped to their places in a compelling way – smooth, confident and rehearsed. My eyes narrowed as I felt sure I had seen this before. But I knew I hadn’t, I mean, at least not like this. I recognized Kirsten’s brother, Ethan from the Hy-Vee. He plugged his shiny Rickenbacker into a refrigerator-sized stack of Vox amps with a hum and pop. The bass player may have been the boy two streets over from us who once jumped out of a moving car when his mother wouldn’t stop for the ice cream truck. It was a famous stunt in our little section of Cadeville. The lanky drummer, whose pageboy haircut made him look somewhat like a wild lepiota mushroom, wasn’t familiar at all.

They looked at each other once, then just catapulted into a blistering account of Gang of Four’s "Natural’s Not In it," complete with remarkably angry backing vocals from the jumping out of car boy and perfect, kinetic restraint from mushroom drummer. It was letter perfect, except for the sheer volume of Ethan’s slashing cuts sizzling from the stack and rib shaking thump from mushroom boy’s kick drum. Ah, live performance mix can be delicate, I thought, while they tore it up (in a good way). They segued right into The Jam’s "London Girl." This took my breath away. It was an impressive, assured performance and one totally unsuitable for the venue. Halfway through "London Girl" I was nearly in tears laughing. I yelled over to Isabella, "Oh my God. They’re fucking amazing. How can this happen?"

The Mods came to Cade County R-III Senior High, peeled the roof off and left the stage to a near riot of cheers, applause and freaked out parents trying to stop their ears from ringing -- a Quadrophenia moment in East Iowa. They didn’t win, I might add. No, they were disqualified, because of inappropriate lyrics and going over their allotted time. Later Stella told me that Mr. Quinn didn’t like that the "material glorified cigarettes and beer." He made no mention of the Gang of Four’s exceptionally politicized, sexual lyrics apparently (I wondered what Dr. Ganthide, the mayor, thought of young Ethan belting out the word "fornication"). Instead the official ruling zeroed in on the smoking and alcohol of "London Girl." Our Mr. Quinn was a good enough principal and generally had a levelheaded approach to most things, but putting the gong to Bricks & Mortar when they had obviously KILLED gave me pause. Also later, Stella told me that the band feared winning, because it would be part of the band’s bio for eternity. I nodded sagely. "One two song set and they’re image conscious already," I added.

Stella clucked her tongue and added, "Kirsten says Ethan was born image conscious."

It dawned on me as we pulled into the garage that "Bricks & Mortar" was a song on The Jam’s debut, "In the City" and it amused me that it had zipped right by me from the start. How was I supposed to know that in this small town in Iowa there were three excellent young musicians who were The Jam incarnate? I mean moving from the chop of Andy Gill to Paul Weller’s clean buzz so effortlessly?

We got out of the car and stood for a moment in that springtime air, breathing in the cut grass and motor oil smell of the garage. I turned to Stella and just looked perplexed enough I didn’t even have to ask the question.

She looked at her mother, then back at me blinking almost comically. "Their Dad was like some rocker guy back in the eighties." She affected a cute shrug. "Like, out in California or something. You know, before he became manager of that fan belt plant in the business-park." She walked by me. "He’s a big influence on Ethan."

I didn’t know what to say. "Dayton Rubber? That’s a radiator hose plant."

She disappeared through the door to the kitchen, calling out "whatever."

Surf

That night I did a search on Google using Ethan and Kirsten’s father’s name and came up with telling results. Calvin Federer turned out to be a former member of seminal Bay Area punk outfit, Mercury Charge. This took me aback, because when I was a student geek at Iowa, doing a late night shift on KRUI, I had played the hell out of Mercury Charge, usually in an unimaginative set with Flipper and The Nuns. If I was feeling particularly ironic (this was well before the death of irony) I would sandwich Mercury Charge’s "In and Around" between something from Uriah Heep and then maybe 13th Floor Elevators. But I digress. Cal Federer played bass for eight long years of Mercury Charge history -- through four releases on the Branch One label, an ill-fated major label dalliance with Sire, countless shows at Mabuhay Gardens, national tours and a few dismissed felony charges.

So how does the former bassist of Mercury Charge end up managing a radiator hose factory in Cadeville, Iowa? This question would need to be asked of the man himself someday. I rarely saw him, despite the shuttling that goes on between our two houses involving either Kirsten or Stella. And here I sensed late night radio kinship I didn’t even know we had! Though, as I sat there at the computer, a distinct feeling came over me that this was history Calvin had left and only wanted to use as the basis of paternal wisdom to help his son and presumably daughter with their initial forages into adult life. In my brief conversations with him over the years there had never been an occasion to start dredging up each of our personal resumes. As I thought further about this, there wasn’t much worse than coming across someone whose whole anchor in discourse was reminiscence.

Launch

Tipped by Kirsten, we all made a trek to watch the more legitimate debut of Bricks & Mortar at Gabe’s Oasis in Iowa City about two weeks later. They were on a bill with a band from Des Moines called North of Grand. Stella was granted a yellow under age wristband, which Kirsten avoided by slipping in when the band loaded and sound checked (she was very proud of this slightly subversive fact). Isabella wisely crammed cotton into her ears as we set up shop near the bar. They opened with "Natural’s Not In It," but then went into a goose-bump inducing version of "Paperback Writer," followed by "London Girl." They then rapidly clipped through three songs of their own I imagine would meet any test for Anglo-mod revivalism -- socially conscious and politically charged, bristling with punchy bass and wonderful melodies. They then played what sounded to me like an Aztec Camera song before finishing with another Jam song, "Saturday’s Kids", a Kinks song, I think, though I couldn’t quite place it and something from the New Order songbook, "Primitive Notion." The last tune being quite tricky without the requisite New Order keyboard treatments. Ten songs that impressed everyone (including Jason the long-serving, hyper-jaded bar tender), delivered with professionalism and staggering, sweat-soaked swagger that again belied their 18 year old minds.

Afterwards, as they worked to get out of the next band’s way, I flagged Ethan down as he was carefully packing his Rickenbacker. He was quite damp and a little jittery, but nice enough to take a moment to chat. "Where’d you pick up that Ricky?"

He shrugged. "It’s my Dad’s so I guess I’d have to say I picked it up from our basement."

"You don’t see so many of those anymore." I tried hard not to sound like a pretentious asshole. Hard trick when speaking with a prodigy some twenty-five years younger.

He nodded slowly in agreement while closing the case. "1967 Sunburst 365."

"And your Dad let’s you out of his sight with it?"

Another shrug. "He’s very supportive, Mr. Carraway."

"How old are you Ethan?"

"We’ll be getting a lot of that, I’m sure. I better get used to it." Unbuttoning his suit coat, he handed his guitar case to the Mushroom drummer whom, for the occasion apparently, had cut his pageboy hair and now looked like a member of Madness. "This style of music is our point of, like, entry? You know? We decided a couple of things when we started to practice last fall. Like, we’d just play and play. No recording, no web site and all that messing around with computers and shit…"

"The Luddite approach to rocking."

Rightfully, he ignored me. "We would practice and get it right where we wanted it. We decided that there is no substitute for performing, whether it’s in my basement after school every single day…"

"…or here." I added holding my arms out as if to highlight the enormity of this New World the band stood in.

He looked up into a rack of lights clearly trying hard to tolerate an over enthused senior citizen.
"We’d play some covers from The Jam and you know bands like that. I mean nothing too current, like, I don’t know, The Hives or whatever. Our one break is trying to play New Order, which is sort of for Kirsten. A secret or, um private thing, because she’s been a big help. But anyway, really, those songs, it’s a way to get tight." He clasped his hands together as if I suddenly didn’t know what tight meant. "The Jam." He smiled and nodded dramatically. "Wow, like, we all love London. We’ve been like Beatles fans since, I don’t know, sixth grade? But you know, playing Beatles’ songs is…" he shrugged, "so over done?"

"Except for Paperback…"

"One of THE greatest rock songs written. A song basically built around one chord. You know?" He cocked his head in amazement. "Man, McCartney was an under-rated guitarist."

"I agree."

"Listen to his solo during Taxman, Taxman! A George Harrison song and McCartney’s playing lead guitar. But also remember when that song was written."

"Again, how old are you Ethan?"

He laughed. "You’re really bothered by that, aren’t you Mr. Carraway? Anyway, you obviously know The Jam and know how amazing they are or were. It just feels right when we play it."

"And Gang of Four?"

"Gets everybody’s attention, don’t it? I mean, who can believe that we would even have a political point of view? And that we’d get away with it, that tight chop, that jungle beat man. Fucking absurd. But it’s a cool song and we think it works, you know, um, a little serious social commentary to set us up."

"Ethan, come on. You’re too much."

"Stella told us you liked the talent show." He peeked over my shoulder and directed a little wave towards Stella who was practically cowering behind Kirsten who stood next to Isabella. Stella looked embarrassed that her old man would be so uncool as to talk with one of her acquaintances, which I thought funny since Kirsten had practically moved in at various times over the previous couple of years.

"You got ripped off that night."

He grinned broadly. "Oh no. No, not at all. We had a deal with Mr. Quinn. We’d been, like, practicing for months and needed a place to, sort of, I don’t know, kind of get in front of people and break the ice. Shake it down. And Mr. Quinn, he’s a pretty cool human being. But the last thing, I mean the LAST thing we wanted to do was win a High School talent show. How lame would that be?"

I squinted at him and cast what I imagined to be a skeptical frown. "I think you guys are ringers. Ringers shipped in from somewhere far away…"

"Yeah, Surrey maybe."

"…to wake us all up from a deep sleep."

"Aw, Mr. Carraway, you know I’m a Senior. Shit I’ll be handing you a cantaloupe at Hy-Vee tomorrow." He laughed and brushed through his short, yet fashionably highlighted hair.

"Was that an Aztec Camera song you guys played? I couldn’t place it."

He blew air out the side of his mouth. "Good guess. No, it’s an Ocean Blue tune. ‘Marigold.’ It gives Caleb a chance to sing. Gives me a break. You know? I just stand there and strum for three minutes. Anyway, his mom sang it to him all the time when he was a baby. He fucking loves singing that song."

"Before he started jumping out of cars?"

He grinned and nodded. "Man loves the Bomb Pops, know what I’m saying?"

So it was the kid from a couple streets over. I was right. "What was the Kinks song you played?"

Ethan grimaced and looked at his shoes. "She’s Got Everything." He wiped his forehead. "We really shouldn’t have done that. We don’t know it well enough. I think, anyway. I don’t like bluffing through songs. It’s not right."

"You been to London?"

"I’ve been to an Outback Steakhouse in London, Ontario. We drove through on our way to Niagara Falls two years ago. But that’s about it." Ethan noticed there were more attractive alternatives to this conversation and I could sense he’d had enough of this foolishness. "Chalk it up to Globalization, Mr. Carraway. You don’t need to fly anywhere. I mean, with the Internet, you know?" Before turning to a group of three young women fresh off the University campus who had been patiently waiting to have a moment of Ethan’s time, he added, "we’ll get there soon enough. Make our pilgrimage to Woking, to the Weller house. Then we’ll be all down and shit, because it doesn’t measure up." He smirked and held out his hand. "Thanks for coming down."

"Enjoyed it." I shook his hand. "I didn’t see your Dad here tonight."

"No, no. He’s vowed to stay out of the way. He thinks rock is for the kids."

"Oh. Right. That’s my cue."

Sunbath

Despite Ethan saying he would be handing me a cantaloupe the next day at the Hy-Vee, that evening was the last time I saw him for a long time. Two months after the Gabe’s show, Kirsten was over doing summertime things with Stella and as they traipsed through the family room on the way to the back yard, huge towels and sun tan lotion in hand, they paused and lingered over the central music library. I sat on the couch quietly reading an Ian Rankin novel and taking great pains to be as inconspicuous as possible. But I couldn’t help overhearing their patter as they pawed at the compact discs, which were cataloged below the vinyl, but above the 78’s.

Kirsten selected something. "Oh-migawd. You’ve got Chapterhouse?"

Stella looked at the CD. "Um, so it seems."

"Ethan went through a Chapterhouse phase, which was followed by his Verve phase." She slid the CD back. "He used to be the worst streak listener." She spoke with a tinge of awe and fondness that made me wish Stella had an older sibling, instead of distant and vague cousins in the far away lands of Nebraska. I pondered whether teenage girls should be referring to hypnotic shoegaze-dance hybrids from Reading, England whose most salient release came out the same year they were born. But then I recalled my teenage fascination with Beach Boys music, most of which came out well before I was on the Earth. I should know by now current conditions do not necessarily have anything to do with what catches a music fan’s interest. I also had three older siblings who funneled their collective taste down to me so mine could reach beyond the womb (Capitol released Pet Sounds on my first birthday).

"Aren’t most people, you know, streak listeners? Here, check this out. We’ve gotta listen to this. It’ll block out all the damaging rays." Stella handed her a CD.

Kirsten sort of half guffawed and half snorted. "Totally."

And with this exchange they flitted out the sliding glass door and out to the far reaches of the back yard, where the lawn meets the Soybean plants of the mighty Jamessen Farm. It is there at the edge of our yard and Cadeville City Limits that the sun is at its most lethal and where Stella and Kirsten employed not only a portable CD device, but also SPF-60. They awaited Lars Jamessen and his propensity to motor by shirtless, tan and fit atop his father’s Versatile 435. I nodded at this before returning to intrigue and violence of Rankin’s Edinburgh, thinking that Stella and her friend provided a wonderous glimpse into teenage lust and limitless energy in a very different way than Bricks & Mortar did -- Voyeurs versus the performers.

I went back to Inspector Rebus for a while, then stopped reading and looked across the room at the wall of music we’d accumulated. It brought much to the house, but mostly it had been a companion of mine for most of my life. Really, since before I was Stella’s age. The magic, the art, the expanse of ideas. For Isabella, the relationship is more practitioner to art form, a craft really as she was a concert quality cellist firmly within the grip of the university’s music department when we married. She can look beyond the cultural ramifications and see a narrower aesthetic. Performance and theory are key and anything that avoids 4/4 time will always catch her attention. Kids like Ethan and maybe Kirsten and possible now Stella need music as a way to look beyond limits. After the show at Gabe’s Oasis Ethan referred to a sense of quasi globalization brought his way by a wired world and the music his family enjoyed. It’s everything I can do to restrain my enthusiasm when I’m around the kids. No one likes a cultural snob or a busy body. Mix the two and it’s a certain curse, but music as essential building block is incontrovertible.
Later that day, gathered for dinner, I very much wanted to ask Stella what Bricks & Mortar news she had for me, but as I imagined myself asking this, it made me cringe. There was little doubt that I had already tread on the fervent territory of youth with my enthusiasm for the band. Perhaps it was time to exercise the sort of common sense Ethan’s parents had and leave rock to the kids. But then again, maybe just better awareness of boundaries was all I needed.

"Stella, what did you listen to this afternoon out in the sun?"

"Verdi’s Requiem."

Isabella shot her an incredulous look.

"I can guess the performance." I said a little too jauntily for some reason. "Sir Neville Mariner and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony." Stella and Isabella stared. "A Phillips Recording released in July 1987." I added while spooning peas.

Stella and Isabella looked at each other. Isabella nodded and smiled. "You are a Class A dork, my dear."

I stopped spooning. "What?"

Stella laughed, dislodging a pea and shooting it into her plate. "Dad. I was joking."

"Oh. Then. Well? What were you listening to?"

She quickly became reverent. "Moby."

"Oh. Um, you should check out Verdi’s Requiem." And here I thought I was going to work on the cultural snobbery and busy body stuff. Irrational exuberance is not just bad for stock markets.

Hyperbolic

Six months later I came across a piece in Magnet about the Bricks & Mortar debut -- a glowing, positively fawning review written by someone who really didn’t know much Mod history and how to authenticate an influence. But I needed to judge the locals for myself. I downloaded it from eMusic and after listening to it a couple times found myself wanting a copy of that Gabe’s performance. Their debut, Free With Purchase (on Bridlemile Records for those keeping score) lacked the torrid low end and manic energy of the live show. The production seemed too cool and bright for the content. I fixed blame for this on the producer (DJ Brooklyn F for those aforementioned score keepers) whom I gathered from the Magnet article was a stalwart of the Williamsburg Scene. How he was let into the Boston City limits to ruin a recording is still a mystery. Hope he took points, rather than up-front. But arrangements had kept their meaty melodic hooks on Brit Pop. There was no way to fault the singing, mercilessly avoiding auto-tune, or the musicianship, which was impeccable – a bit too impeccable maybe. Song topics were the usual grab bag of youthful subversion regarding the government and corporations (not one song about a relationship of any kind). So Bricks & Mortar had settled into life in Boston apparently and were cautiously optimistic about spreading socialist gospel or some such thing. Though (in a shocking coincidence) I came across the band not a week later in a Forbes article (Forbes? Who was their publicist?). They were mentioned along with a few other bands in a piece about young rockers with astute and suspicious business sense. Bands that hooked up with intellectual property attorneys early and only licensed music to record companies as opposed to the traditional deal made with a tenacious A&R rep from a keen indie record company being run out of the shotgun shack in Austin (my imagery not the Forbes writer’s). The new day had risen and in its bright light I clearly saw the wisdom of Mercury Charge’s Calvin Federer being disseminated.

A quote from Ethan in the article hangs with me to this day. The type of quote you don’t often get from a nineteen-year old. The type of quote you may hear a young person in a hop television show spout making you huff and think, kids don’t talk like that.

"The trick is to not let sound judgement get in the way of your creative decisions and vice versa. Music is history and the music business is revisionist. What I mean by that is a lot of bands in the past have made stunning music, but died at the hands of poor management and bad business. Unfortunately that tarnishes the accomplishments because it sharply reduces the art’s exposure and impact."

Jesus H. Christ. And to think what I was babbling about when I was nineteen – Larry Byrd’s free throw percentage? Of course, I did not grow up with a worldly musician for a father -- a punker stung from pre-dawn raids and malfeasant accounting. Then I recalled a few lines from one of the songs on the Bricks & Mortar debut -- something about a rocker’s death. Was Ethan singing about Mercury Charge’s leader, Yello? A long stretch maybe, but his death inspired a Che-like silk screen image being printed on millions of T-Shirts; whose heroin over-dose in a squalid, Los Feliz apartment in 1985 spawned an entire clothing line; whose passing into the eternal netted the Yello estate – Zilch.

Significant Music Side Bar #3

The Clash -- London Calling – Well, I’m a little embarrassed putting this on my list, because it’s so over-done. I mean, come on. Maybe I should put down something from "Give’m Enough Rope." Well, just as cliches are no less real, London Calling did, in fact, refocus my thinking. I had been part of "phoney Beatlemania" and was glad to hear it had bitten the dust. London Calling marked a sharper turn towards the punk ethos. The Who had laid the ground work, predisposed as I was from Velvet Underground listening. But the Clash pounded it home. They brought direct action to me through the speaker cabinets. A bunch of art students from London with backgrounds not too disimilar to my own and they could still spit in Margaret Thatcher’s eye.

Vestibule

I ran into Calvin at the library for the first time after getting to know Bricks & Mortar. Kirsten was with him and she politely and quite precociously reintroduced him. He had dark, long-ish hair highlighted by gray strands on the temples. Calvin was taller than I remembered, more muscular too with an urbane and assured atmosphere surrounding him, as though we were running into each other outside of Webster Hall in New York. "Good seeing you again." He said with a pleasant, supper club approved smile. We shook hands and I fumbled around a bit in the vestibule looking for something substantive to say. I worked hard to avoid asking him what it was like to play on the bill with Black Flag. What it was like to rebuff SST Records in favor of the highly esoteric Branch One, a label more famous for releasing avant-garde Berkeley jazz ensembles and spoken word albums by radical communists. What sort of bass effect did he use throughout the recording of the Underwater Heat record? Obviously, I knew this would be craven and stupid trivial noise completely out of scale and place. These were the urgent questions of a twenty-year old music nerd deep in the bowels of a college radio station, not the questions of a middle aged business editor of "wildly popular" monthly, Tomorrow’s Farm. It was Kirsten who bailed me out. "My Dad was helping me with that project Stella and I have for Mr. Waters’ class. He was showing me a few resources."

"Oh." I said as thoughtfully as I could. We had, of course, met several times before, but now, after having placed Calvin into some sort of new context, I just didn’t have anything to say. I felt a bit embarrassed having Googled him. The sort of embarrassment that comes from knowing far more about someone than is appropriate and indeed more then they do about you. It’s terrible having this feeling, like knowing some sort of secret about them. This may be the World Wide Web’s most subtle and negative effect on interpersonal behavior.

Calvin looked at her. "You make me sound like Wunder Dad. Remember, you’re the one doing the work." He smiled and shrugged. "She sees me as some sort of a whizz in project management, I guess."

"Life is all about project management, Kirsten." I offered with what I imagined to be a hint of sarcasm lacing my words in order to deliver the right satirical tone. I don’t know if I was successful in my attempt at humor, because they were both grinning at each other with the knowing expressions of a joke left untold. "By the way, congratulations on winning that award." I spoke on behalf of some shadowy town collective of boosters about his plant being named manufacturing facility of the year by the Iowa Chamber of Commerce.

"Thanks. We have a lot of fantastic people on the team." He said automatically as though part of the PR department’s standard Power Point."

"It’s a great honor."

He nodded. "I’m hoping it helps us stay put. Helps the company keep manufacturing here and not move it to GZ."

"Guangzhou, right? What about Nuevo Laredo?"

"Well, they looked at that already. We don’t compete with plants in this country or even Mexico, we measure ourselves, our productivity against the PRC. There’s always pressure to move it there, because of labor cost. But they can’t match the value our productivity adds."

"Amazing."

"Continuous productivity improvement is the only way to stay out of the way of that axe that is always hovering right over our head. Nope – it’s all about productivity." He glanced up as though he really was keeping a wary eye on a blade being wielded by the Board members.

This sort of earnest business statement astonished me. It came from a guy who was a member of a band that once sang about dollar bills having a worse influence on mankind than ‘the herion bought with crumpled dollar bills in garbage strewn parking garages of decaying urban centers all across the asphalt heated landscape.’ I wondered how Calvin ended up in the position of safeguarding the employment of 92 Iowans through continuous productivity enhancement. Cal Federer: Captain of Industry.

After their departure, I noted that the times I have seen him, he always seemed to wear long sleeves, perhaps to not freak out the aging populace of Cadeville with his many elaborate punk era tattoos. Or perhaps he was counter-revolutionary and avoided the needle, wearing long sleeves because he had a propensity to be chilly. Either way, it seemed as though I would never know, because there weren’t any graceful ways of entering into a conversation about someone’s past life, particularly a passing acquaintance, even one with near stardom in the underground. But then I wondered about my own snap judgement.

Walking home I reflected on an article I read about Greg Norton, the bassist for Husker Du, who is now a successful restaurateur. He must find great joy in the evenings he can operate without dealing with someone asking him about recording Zen Arcade. The man is just trying to sell some food and beverage. Perhaps it is good to know about the famous career that framed the person, but much the better to have it unspoken. On the other hand, if it is a vital part of who a person is, why avoid it out of hand? If they want to continue to express this past as who they are currently, then so what?

Wired

Within the blue glow of my computer’s screen, I looked up the Glastonbury Festival and found it next on the Bricks & Mortar agenda where they will be playing the John Peel Stage between The Indivisibles and June Varietals. Apparently, Glasto was back on after yet another year off. A few more clicks confirmed that Ethan, Caleb and Jonathon would also be playing a festival in Middlesbrough where Ocean Colour Scene would be headlining. The publicity shot used for this particular piece of information was one taken in City Park, which a very hard to believe. Yet indeed, President Polk looms above Ethan’s right shoulder. (One day I shall find out how it came to be that we have President Polk looming over anybody’s shoulder in City Park).
More quick reference showed there would be nine dates for the hometown boys with The Maginots in Spain and France. Good for them, I thought, just the sort of thing to do while building another record. Take some sun in along the Costa del Sol. Beats working the produce section at Hy-Vee, detassling corn or bussing tables at Culver’s.

I looked out over the PC screen, out through the picture window at what was once a field – the Jamessen sorghum crop now being commandeered by bulldozers and carpenters for a new subdivision or vinyl-sided mini mansions, soon to be choke full of plasma television glow. Our little corner of Iowa was in to displaying prosperity by plowing under the sorghum and growing consumers instead. I shook my head out of this tape loop.

Would the family like to make the trip to Glastonbury? Imagine: from Cadeville, Iowa with all the Mod Cons.

No, no. Rock is for the kids.

My new mantra.

Note: Apparently, Polk was the President when Iowa became a state in December of 1846 (beating neighboring Wisconsin by almost two years). 1846 also happens to be the year of incorporation for Cadeville, which, I guess, explains why we have a statue of a slave-owning one-term president from Tennessee in our midst.

Significant Music Side Bar #4:

REM -- Radio Free Europe -- Sure you couldn’t understand a word Michael Stipe was singing and the production was a bit weedy, but man was it fresh, inspiring and urgent. There was such promise in this sound. A return to basics, this music was an excellent counterweight to new wave with all its sythesizers and hair cuts and to punk with all its noise and hair cuts. Hearing it made you want to read Faulkner, suddenly wear FFA jackets and make little art projects. For me, it made me want to write. This song immediately drew me to REM and I’ve been under their spell on and off ever since. At the stage I was at in my college career (freshman) when I first heard Radio Free Europe, I was ready to be some sort of artist. It beat being an Ag major, which is what I was at the time and the artiness of Stipe’s voice and rootsy Americana of Peter Buck’s guitar all carried along by the pulsing bubble and bang of Mills and Berry grabbed at my lapels (if I would have had lapels). The music conjured strong imagery in me and the urge to write materialized quite out of thin air. I also wanted to be in a band like REM and heard nothing in Radio Free Europe that was out of reach – except for the talent part, of course.

- Part Two -

Interstate

We’re taking Stella off to college, an endeavor filled with difficult emotions. Isabella is stretched out in the back seat reading a Melissa Bank novel, Stella stares out the window listening to any number of possibilities on her iPod. I am left with Interstate 80 sweeping beneath the car attempting to tranquilize me as I gently hold the steering wheel at 10 and 2. Off to school she is going. Our youngster. The smart little girl got herself into a smart little school in the rolling hills of Southestern Ohio. Aspiration placed her there and I admire it, because when I was her age I applied to one school just 83 miles from the door of the family home and was relieved to be accepted for being the mediocre intellectual presence that passes in much of America as above average.

Now there she is across from me. Ambitious about her education like I never could have hoped to be and I am thankful she received Isabella’s school genes and not mine. We have some six hours of driving in front of us and I should think we should fill this time with witty conversation about expectation and anticipation, but then reality quickly sets in. We’ve been over all that and feel certain Stella is prepared for what a small liberal arts college may unleash upon her. Our small town girl from Eastern Iowa will be thrown into a fondue kettle with rich kids from New York and hippie kids from Tukwila. The result of this, I am sure, will be Stella never returning home again in any permanent fashion. We sense internships at glamorous-sounding organizations in hip, fast-paced locations sounding faintly exotic.

And what will college mean for her musical tastes? Will she become a more focused, disciplined music listener? Will she finally come around to see jazz as more than just music for music’s sake?
Stella is reading my mind again. She removes her ear buds. "When you went to college, what did you most want to avoid hearing from your parents?"

I gave her a look and out the corner of my eye I could see that Isabella had put her book down. "Um. Well. I can’t really remember way back that far."

Isabella huffed with a humor designed to discredit as well as reassure me. "Come on old man."
Mom and dad took me down to Iowa in the new pick up. I felt privileged that Dad was willing to put 166 miles on the new rig just to deliver me to college. We unloaded next to the dumpster at Reinow. The entire time we made our trips between the truck and the sixth floor, I hoped to not receive the same lecture my older brothers had upon their departures -- a standard "man-to-man" aside regarding the dangerous charms of smoking, college girls and any combination of the above. My father labored under the notion college life still resided somewhere in the rumble seats of the twenties, forgetting the presence of hard drugs and alcohol that flowed not unlike the falls at Niagara. For all my Mother’s silence, I knew she had a better grasp of what lurked in the halls of Reinow and beyond as she at least had a year under her belt at Grinnell and had listened more closely to my brothers accounts of life on their various campuses. But my Dad? He took nothing in other than what John Chancellor told him everynight at 6. "Okay, okay, I think I dreaded the sort of conversation, or, um lecture, we gave you right around the sixth grade."

"Oh gawd." Stella swooned before laughing. "Come on. It was the eighties."

"Exactly," is all I could think of saying. "Just say no was the official policy of the land." I grinned.

"And that worked so well didn’t it Isabella?" I looked into the rearview mirror in time to see her roll her eyes.

"So you were afraid of having a chat with Grandpa about the birds and the bees." She shook her head. "Sooo?"

"Sooo, what?"

"Did you have it?"

After putting my final box of records on the dorm bed, I remember turning to my parents half expecting them to sit down and stay awhile, maybe give me my lecture in some folksy, Iowa way. "When the last box of stuff landed in my dorm room, Grandma and Grandpa couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Grandpa actually had his hand on the door knob."

Stella didn’t think this image very funny. "I hope you guys won’t just dump me."

"No chance. I think the fire in the trash chute sort of got on my Mom’s nerves a little. I mean, the very first thing we see when we got off the elevator on my new floor is some guy pulling the fire hose out of the glass cabinet and pulling it over to the trash chute. It was about five minutes of chaos and then everything suddenly went back to normal. By the third trip from the truck all we saw was a fireman with a flashlight looking down the chute, my fellow students went about the business of unpacking and tossing hacky sacks down the hall. It was enough to freak Grandma out."

"Interesting, and she’s the cosmopolitan," Stella made quotation marks in the air and shook her head, "of the two."

"Yes, well." I shrugged. "The fact it was about a 1000 degrees centigrade in the dorm may have caused a hasty retreat. I think they wanted to get back to the polar winds blowing from the truck’s air vents. Anyway, they left and I never learned anything about sexual relations until I met your mother." I grinned in what I imaged to be a comical way.

Isabella made a face at me via the rearview mirror.

"I want you guys to stay as long as you like at Aversham."

"Ha!" I guffawed. "I doubt that."

"Hey. I’m not kidding. I mean, sure a part of me wants to get on with it, doesn’t want my parents around for a second longer than necessary. What kid wouldn’t feel that? But, you know, I am, well, it’s a long way back to home. It’s hard. It’s like when I went to Kindergarten."

"You remember that?"

"Miss Francis was, like a hundred years old and all. And it was all day long and I didn’t see you guys."

"Yes, but now you have a cell phone and a lap top and an iPod and something resembling maturity."

"You think?"

Isabella scooted up. "Stell, remember, you’re there to experience. Sure to learn and do good stuff. But above all, your dad and I want you to experience. Safely I should add."

"And you really can’t begin absorbing the world staying at home." I added. "Don’t worry too much about results. At least at first." I shot a glance over to see her smiling ever so slightly. It seemed like the best place to leave any attempts at parental advice. And we’re still two states away from campus.

Significant Music Side Bar #5

Husker Du -- It's Not Funny Anymore – I’d heard a fair bit of punk and had liked it okay. Then I heard Husker Du. "Don’t worry about the results or the effect it has on your career." Well, I did worry about it. I worried a lot about many things. But somehow, once again, as with many of the others on my list of significant music moments, this song showed me another world. The whole EP, ‘Metal Circus’ was amazing. It stood head and shoulders above everything else as far as I was concerned and so I became a huge Husker Du Fan. It’s Not Funny Anymore was a glimpse of what was to come -- powerful pop-laced post punk that spoke directly to me. Husker Du seemed to have an endless array of these songs speaking to me as I attempted to ready myself for the "Real World." When I finally saw them live, I’m pretty sure I had a religious experience when they played It’s Not Funny Anymore. I wanted to move up to Minneapolis, take up a "Flying V" and not care about the results.

Union

I was coming out of Nistelrooy’s Hardware when out of a fit of civic pride, I decided to cut across the town square to stop in at the library. This is hardly newsworthy, but for the fact that as I crossed in front of the courthouse, I ran into Ethan and his fiancee, a lanky girl named Senja (from Espoo, Finland as if there could be any doubt). I found her piercing blue eyes almost as unsettling as her threadbare Poison concert shirt. Ethan had just secured a license for their union. "Congratulations," I said after introductions, attempting to recalculate his age, back-dating from that long ago performance at the talent show. "So where’d you two hook-up?"

Ethan beamed. "On a barge in Paris."

"A barge?" An image of giant Mississippi barges hauling piles of coal southward came to mind.

"Man, it was crazy. Middle of the night. We had gone with our French distributor to see this group of Iranians perform on a barge. Like, I don’t know, what, maybe two in the morning? We had done a good show there, y’know one of those mystical nights where everything works and were really up for it." [I felt like part of the "in" crowd as Ethan assumed I knew what he meant by a mystical night on stage where everything goes right]. "So like, we’re down in the barge and through the clouds of cigarette smoke there she was." He leaned out away from Senja and motioned with his arms not unlike a game show hostess displaying a new washer and dryer combination. "She was a little too amazed with the Tombak player.

"But then there was up on the deck where the candies were bought." She smiled demurely, then added for ironic charm, "Ah, beneath the stars, waiting for the night bus after being left by the rest of the band."

"She’s a sucker for Turkish taffy. Next thing I know, she’s got credentials and is in The Garage’s dressing room with her cousin orchestrating an outing to some Chicken Balti place in Camden Town." Ethan laughed as he gazed at Senja with a thoroughly enraptured expression. "Weird stuff."

Senja put her hand on his chest. "Making a jealous man by flirting with Cory."

"Cory." He repeats flatly before looking at me. "Right. The always dynamic and intimidatingly tall guitarist for Crack Addicts of Yorkville Unite."

"Oh. Right. Of course." This was all a bit too world party kid for Cadeville and I wondered what Mr. Bricks & Mortar was doing back in the humble Midwest. "So, besides the obvious," I pointed to the envelope, "what brings you all the way home?"

Ethan’s face suddenly lost its brightness. "Well, um, didn’t Kirsten tell you? My Dad has, he’s been diagnosed with cancer, Mr. Carraway."

This was horrible news to get on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse on a sunny day amidst jet-set lovers. "I am really sorry to hear that, Ethan. We haven’t seen too much of Kirsten since graduation. Stella is at Aversham these days, but over the summer I guess everybody was working and …" I lost my train of thought, then remembered the shattering news. "Anyway, tell me about your Dad. Is he going to be, well, okay or …"

"He has been going down to Iowa City for treatment. But we don’t really know if it’s going to work. Modern medicine is pretty amazing and all, but there’s still a lot of mystery." He looked at Senja. "At least he’s into Senja here. He and Mom have really rolled out the welcome mat this week. I’ve got one more week before I have to go to Vancouver and start work on our next project."

Caught by surprise with the terrible news I didn’t know where to go with the conversation. I did not want to intrude on the family crisis, certainly did not want to ask about trivial matters like music, though truth be told I really wanted to ask what listening to Iranian’s play music in a barge on the Seine at 2 AM in the morning was like.

Significant Music Side Bar #6:

Joy Division – Shadowplay -- I have noted that I didn't find room for U2 on the list and this bugs me, because they were an important part of my mid 80's. But really, I had to soul search a bit and really it came down to what effected me more, New Year's Day or Joy Division's Shadowplay? I had to face the fact that Joy Division radically altered my thinking towards music and U2 really did not. U2 altered my fashion sense maybe and how I viewed delay effects on guitars and fed into my European travel dreams. But man, Joy Division brought me to a different place musically. It was dark and cool and decidedly in the basement of all our subconsciences. There was this sudden need to record music, though I really couldn’t play anything other than the E chord on a Woolworth’s guitar (but this took me a long way using Joy Division as a touchstone). They conveyed minimalism to me and Ian Curtis had a fine habit of being down right haunting, perhaps even vaguely gothic in some industrial way.

I stammered. "We’ll be thinking about your family. If there’s anything we can do, let …"

"You know, I think it would be cool if you paid him a visit, Mr. Carraway. To talk about music. He won’t with me. He has his reasons, I guess. You’ve always been so supportive and all and grew up with the same music my Dad did, he’d be into it."

"Really?"

"I used to think he had left all that far behind him. Or, I mean, like, the history stuff, not the business stuff, because his advice has been totally right on for the band. But he never would talk about the eighties. But I get this sense he’d be into it right about now."

"Well, I don’t know. There are few of us who are willing participants in nerd-like behavior."

"There is that word again, Ethan. Nerd." Senja spouted, then went on. "I hear this word and can not have the understanding." Her accent was not very strong, but the way she assembled her words amused me.

I smiled at her. "It means complete focus on useless trivia. I mean, in my case anyway."

"Oh, Mr. Carraway, that’s so wrong. Music is art and you can never know too much about art, about how it’s, you know, put together and all."

Senja snickered and hooked her thumb into the belt loop of her low riders. "Ethan you amuse me. All the things you have memorized is not the art. Who played what and when did they play it and what company made the music available to the world, to us. Those things are not the art."
Ethan looked at Senja and then at me. "Now you see why my Mom and Dad just absolutely love her. She won’t let me get away with anything." He looked at me again. "What are you doing right now, Mr. Carraway. Do you have time for coffee at O’Brien’s?" He nodded towards our one and only venerable coffee institution located directly opposite the door to the jail. "I’d like to convince you to visit my Dad."

Talk

Seeing Calvin at his home turned out to be easier than I expected. Because of the kids, we had a certain initial bond, but as it turned out he seemed to relish the opportunity to talk with someone other than the usual circle. I quickly realized that he had the same thirst for friendship I did.
He sat in a huge easy chair, hooked to several intimidating home health devices. "You know the hardest part about being sick?"

"I don’t know. What?"

"The family."

"Family?"

"Not the wife and kids, the immediates. No, it’s all the rest of them you try studiously to avoid. But you can’t when you have something like this. Anyway, I hate family gatherings. You know, people who think they know you but haven’t a fucking clue?

I thought about this as Calvin drifted off, his eyes looking out the picture window at the birds swarming a thistle feeder. Looking at Calvin wincing from pain was an altogether different experience, yet not too far removed from how many feel when they go to big gatherings of vaguely familiar relatives.

"You know Kirsten said something to me after I had surgery the first time. She said that she was really sad in the hospital not because I was going to die, but because the illness was really bringing us all together so tightly. It filled her with sadness to see that it takes a drastic illness and hearing death’s call in order for such intimacy to come out." Calvin looked at me. "Well, I’m sort of paraphrasing. But that’s a pretty profound observation for an eighteen year old to make." He smiled. "I told her that there shouldn’t be any question regarding the tie that binds us. We had a long talk about the relationships and she said she felt so much better after we’d talked about that. She learned a lot about me right then. I told her she has a terrific future in psychiatry. She wrinkled her nose at me and went, ewe."

This information had special significance to me, perhaps because the exchange they had was the type I wish I could have had with my parents. "Yes. We regularly get that reaction out of Stella. The wrinkled nose treatment."

"How’s she doing? We miss her being around."

"She loves Aversham. She loves college a little too much for my tastes. She’s going to end up being a perpetual student."

"Working at Kinko’s with Yo La Tengo on the iPod."

I laughed at this sharp, insider-type observation. "Well, maybe not Yo La Tengo, but something appropriately obscure I am sure."

"My God kids are amazing. Understatement, right? I think about the time of my life when I couldn’t imagine having them and, like a lot of that back then, I just can’t understand my thinking. Now I can’t fathom a world without Ethan and Kirsten. You think I have a certain level of despair now? Ho, ho, can you imagine if I didn’t have those two?"

I felt despair was a remarkable word for Calvin to use. He certainly did not appear to be completely defeated. At least I hoped it was not futile. This part of the world was in short supply of decent parents, production managers, all around good eggs and former punk pioneers who kept the roses pruned.

"I have so many salient observations now that I’ve almost had it. But there’s nothing like those that you get from your kids. It’s so much better when you can think of it as a reflection of yourself."

"That’s an interesting statement in itself. I agree with that. It makes sense. It’s like when Stella was young I was always worried about certain misbehavior on her part. Then one day I stepped back and asked, why am I sweating this so much? Ah-ha! Because maybe it reflects on me and Isabella."

"Yeah, we can all be regular wise men now." He readjusted himself in his chair. "I’m actually working on being as unselfish as possible. It's hard for someone with this. I got to be selfish with time. With not wanting strange cousins and such stopping in and dotting on me for no good reason. But what I mean is that I am trying terribly hard not to just say exactly what I think. Even more so than when I thought I had lots of time on my hands."

"I don’t follow." I said this, but then suddenly understood his basic idea. "What you are saying is that the bluntness of the terminal can be selfish?"

"I think so. I think suicide is selfish, obviously and I think making demands about how your ceremony, your memorial or funeral thing should be handled is kind of selfish."

"Yet you complain about relatives coming around."

He thought about this while watching a small skirmish between house finches on the feeder.

"You’re right. I’m being hypocritical."

"I think you have every right…"

"No. No I don’t. Not in the least."

We sat for some time without saying anything else. Filled with admiration for his attempts at being candid, I wanted to reciprocate, yet felt all my attempts would be far, far shallower.

"Remember the Housemartins?" He suddenly asked.

"Socialists from, where, like, um, maybe Peterborough?"

"Hull, actually." He grinned slightly.

"Right. Why?"

"I admired them. Poppy, yet wicked underneath. It was effective. Sometimes, back when I was a real revolutionary I got this feeling we were doing more harm than good. You know, our views became useless, because we had narrowed the band of our frequency so much. Who listened to us other than the already converted."

"You have to rely on people making the jump beyond the antic and into the idea. Getting beyond the attention getting segment of the program. I’m not sure if pop music is equipped to do that very well. Maybe nothing is able to that in our post-sixties world."

We were quiet for a few minutes, then Calvin added, "Damn it. Now they’re stuck in my head.
The fucking Housemartins."

"The Smiths, light." I offered.

Calvin looked at me with a wry smile. "No, no. Not really. I don’t agree."

"Didn’t one of them end up turning himself into Fat Boy Slim?"

"Norman Cook."

"You know a lot about pop music."

"I think I know far too much."

"Is that possible? Can a person know too much about something, anything?"

"If only I could have done something with it."

I thought of Ethan and Bricks & Mortar at their debut four years before. "You did." Then I thought about the whole idea that rock is for the kids or whatever Ethan used to say to me, which did nothing to help assuage my vague guilt regarding youthful enthusiasms being harbored by a middle aged music fan. It was now obvious that being a music fan is a hopeless condition.

Backyard

"I am constantly amused with the revisionist history critics churn out." Calvin sat in an aluminum deck chair on his patio while I sat on their picnic table. He was having a rare beer, taking sips and trying to avoid the pain chain sawing its way through his body. We both knew the end for him loomed somewhere over the milo plants in the distance.

"You mean how once scorned artists turn up as genius later on."

He nodded. "I’m thinking of the Gin Blossoms. Here’s a nice pop band from Phoenix or, I suppose Tempe, to be more precise and when they had their hits, wow the scorn they generated. Then I read something lately in one of Kirsten’s Indie mags how they were a bastion of excellent power pop in an ocean of mediocre flannel. Or whatever. I personally didn’t give them much of a listen, but that’s just personal taste. Ah, I don’t know. I guess I am pissed whenever critics put down music or a band and say they aren’t any good. What does a critic know about putting music together?"

"I think you’re going out on a limb. I don’t see anything wrong with making a quality assessment…"

"…as long as the quality assessment isn’t based inversely on a group’s popularity."

I smiled. "Pop has always been that way. That’s no secret."

"What way?"

"You have to ascend to a lofty purch, atop consistent high quality and ambition to render immunity."

"Listen to you Professor Carraway."

"I don’t understand the mechanism working." I was suddenly embarrassed by my meandering obfuscation. "Maybe something about fashion and assumptions."

"The guys in that band wanted to make a buck and have fun. Isn’t that the motivation behind Pop music?

"Everyone can’t be making statements. There are few Bob Dylans."

"Only one that I know of. But that’s not the only criteria for quality."

"No, I know. My judge of quality is suspect at the best of times." I said this, but then realized I had no idea what I was talking about. "I don’t know how to judge whether something is crap, but I do know how to judge whether I like something or not. I wrote something about Coldplay couple months ago. I don’t know, I was fed up with the blow back on them. Like they needed defending."

"You need defending, liking them." Cal smiled. "Look the fast of the matter is that Pop music revolves around group psychology. What other people think matters, but on the other hand, give these people a fucking break."

I crossed my arms and tried to bear down on my previous line of thought a bit more. "I listened to REM’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi the other day for the first time in years. I distinctly recall not liking it much when it came out."

"Critics liked it."

"But when I listened the other day I was like, hey this is really, really good. I’m in a completely different place life-wise now so why should it be a surprise that I get a different take on it. I think that’s what happens to these critics too. A lot. They pull something out from in back of their bins and it suddenly says something to them based on current conditions. Or they’ve been able to bury the expectations they once had for a particular effort."

"Well, right. That’s true. It’s not that they discover new qualities in the music, it is that they’ve what? Maybe discovered something new about themselves?"

"That’s revisionism in a nutshell, right?"

"But then there’s irony that clouds the issue. Somebody like Nancy Sinatra gets some props and starts moving units again, because martinis and go-go boots become popular. So then it surfaces that Nancy Sinatra was ahead of her time or something."

"I’m not following."

"Ah, neither am I. Sometimes the drugs in my head. You know?" Calvin’s eyes became more distant than usual. "I wonder where Ethan and the boys are at the moment. We got an Email from him the other day. They were going to be playing in some hole in Warsaw." Calvin laughed.
"What a revision that is. When I was playing we couldn’t conceive a moment in time when playing a hole in Warsaw would be possible. Fucking Ronnie Reagan had his Pershing II missiles aimed at Warsaw." He looked down at his beer. "Could not imagine a time…and I wouldn’t have it any other way. You know, Ethan, I mean. Being in a different, unimagined world."

Cup

I took Calvin over to O’Brien’s coffee house against the expressed orders. But he wanted desperately to get out and about again after being in the house, since last coming back from treatment in Iowa City. He was in a particularly poor mood, which was really the only way I could justify the breaking of rules. I would be in a poor mood if I were in his type of pain and state of less than easy mobility.

We settled into a booth towards the back door. "I can’t thank you enough for springing me from the house."

"Don’t mention it. Again. Please. If your lovely wife finds out I have taking you for a jaunt to purchase stimulant beverages, I’ll be grounded for life."

He nodded and took a sip of his coffee. "I know I need to store up what chips I have left to make it by Ethan’s wedding, but man, I can’t tell you how it is to be in the house day after day after."

"Are you and Kim excited about the big event?"

Cal shrugged. "I am so happy for Ethan. Senja is a delight. So funny. So perfect for the life of a young musician. But I feel a bit, well, daunted by the process of a wedding here in our little quiet town. Playing host to a contingent of Finns. It’ll be a trip. Mostly, it’s just going to be really difficult to be helpful to Kim. I mean, for me to be helpful. So she’s going to be having to coordinate much of it."

"What about Ethan?"

"He’s finishing up with the European leg of their tour, then he jets to Osaka, picks up Senja, then comes here. I thanked him for wanting to have the event here, because of, well, my situation, but advised him to do it in Finland. He said that Senja insisted on it being here."

"Thoughtful." I took a big swallow of Mozambique Peaberry dark roast.

"Yes."

"Who is doing the music?"

"It’s going to be some Finnish folk group from Telluride." He shook his head. "Globilization."

"What will be next? Mongolians blowing water buffalo horns?"

"Listen to you suddenly sounding as though you’re 60." He gave me a smirk I hadn’t seen before.

"I am pretty uncool when it comes to wedding music."

"Traditionalist."

"There are worse things to be called."

Calvin nodded. "I suppose." He took another sip. "Were you ever in a band? I don’t think you’ve ever said, but the way you can carry on, it seems like it."

He was a good five years older than me, but he suddenly sounded to me like an elder, a Yoda of Cadeville asking some penetrating question. I grimaced. "Define your terms?"

"Oh for fuck’s sake. Did you ever stand up and make music in front of anybody? What do you mean, define your terms?"

"Well, hell. I didn’t expect you to get so bent out of shape. Look at it from my point of view. Music nerd has to fess up to punk icon that his band once covered one of their songs."

Calvin smiled. "I will alert ASCAP."

"Mostly, we did a bad imitation of The Gun Club."

He nodded approval. "What was this project called?"

"We were the Lightening Terns. Lightening with an E, as though we were shedding weight as we flew."

"College boys."

"College boys and girl."

"Girl on bass, I bet."

"Uncanny guess."

"That was the thing in the late eighties, right?"

"Was it?"

Calvin shrugged and looked towards the front of the store, quiet for a few moments. "So what happened to the Lightening Terns?"

"We discovered that the market for a band such as ours in Iowa City was limited. Very narrowly defined was our fan base."

"Did you wear those knee high boots that Jeffrey Lee Pierce used to wear?"

"I think that may have been part of the problem. One of fashion or a lack thereof. We lapsed away from these roots and started to play sort of like The Leaving Trains. Then we wanted to be Mercury Charge."

"I’ve heard of them."

"So in the space of about six months, we went from affecting an LA sound to that famous Mercury Charge Bay Area punk swagger."

"Right up the 101." He straightened his back after a slight wince of pain. "I think you’re much too hard on your old band. Why be so critical? Think about this. At least you tried something. At least you went out in front of people – I mean I presume there were a few people anyway – and expressed yourselves. Granted, you tried to express yourself with other people’s music, but nevertheless…"

"That’s what I have always told myself. Makes it sound very nearly noble, or, I don’t know, like art or something."

"Does it?"

"I’m looking for a silver lining in my confession."

"I think you will always meet with a certain level of respect from musicians if you’ve had experience performing. It’s time well-spent. Usually. Good for the, um, soul?"

"You think so?"

"Maybe I am being a bit too positive, or optimistic."

"No, no. Please. Continue on. It’s encouraging to know that my time in back of a microphone drunk off my ass and singing Always Between Wars wasn’t a complete waste of time."

Night

When the phone rings at 1:00 AM not much good comes into the head in the first flashes of consciousness after the sleep slips away. Isabella’s first word was "Stella." I sat bolt upright and picked the receiver up, sounding a bit crisper than I should have with my, "Hello?"

"Nick? It’s Kim Federer."

Indeed it was and she sounded close to frantic, but holding it together so far, despite what I guessed was a sharp down turn for Cal. "Yes, Kim. Is it Calvin?"

"No, no. Ethan. Royce, from Comet just, I mean, their manager just called. There’s been an accident."

A split second of relief was immediately replaced with a deeper horror. "Is he alright? Are they…"

"He’s in a hospital in Stockholm. The road manager and um a keyboard player for The Indivisibles…killed."

Look, I have to leave to get to him right away. Kirsten is in Chicago. Can you come by and be with Cal?"

Schedules, deadlines, sleep, cuddling with Isabella (a cherished morning ritual) all swept away immediately. "Of course, of course. I can be over in a few minutes."

"Great. I have a morning flight to London with a connection so I can get to him pretty fast. Kirsten is coming with me."

"Okay, look spare me the detail. I’ll be over and Calvin can tell me."

"I wanted to call his brother in Des Moines, but he asked me to call you."

"Kim. It’s no problem. I’m happy to help." I was honored to help, but that really didn’t occur to me at that moment. Only when I was driving over to the house did I suddenly feel a great sense of fellowship, maybe even kinship.

She let me in through the garage. As she shrugged her coat on she gave me a quick tour of the medications assembled between the sink and the refrigerator. "Calvin is asleep right now and will probably stay that way for another hour. He knows you’ll be here for him so it won’t be like some sort of surprise."

"I’m glad he could get to sleep."

"He’s heavily medicated. Otherwise he’d be still trying to convince me he should go over too."

She paused awkwardly and stared out the kitchen window. "I won’t be able to make it over to Stockholm before Ethan wakes up from surgery, but…" She shook her head and looked down at her feet. "I’ll be…I need to get going."

"I’ll be here and however I can help, just let me know."

"Thank you so much. My cell phone number is on the fridge."

She left without any further instructions or frivolous banter. Dark and quiet, the house offered little in the way of diversion. I stood in the kitchen not knowing what to do with myself, how to avoid speculating about the accident, about the shape of Calvin’s mind when he wakes up or how would manage to be of use.

I walked into the family room where their desktop computer sat on a small desk, its screen still displaying a news story from the Guardian about the accident.

One member of the rock group, The Indivisibles and the road manager for American rockers, Bricks & Mortar were killed in a coach accident on a Swedish highway last night. Six other members of the tour remain in hospital after the bus they traveled in struck a parked vehicle on the E4 between Stockholm and Helsingborg. The victims, identified as Joe Jordan, 20 of Didcot and Sam Wessey, 41 of New York, New York, were thrown from the coach after it flipped on to its side after swerving and striking a bridge support.

Both The Indivisibles and Bricks & Mortar had completed a show in Copenhagen, Denmark and were to perform at Sockholm’s Club Mondo this evening. The accident occurred at 0220 GMT in clear weather conditions making …

"Anything new?" Calvin said as he made his way down the dark hallway. I pulled myself away from the screen, straightening up to watch as he emerged, a halo of darkness surrounding his thin self swaddled in a dark blue terry cloth robe. "I think the kid will be alright." He did not look good. Which is, in his advanced state of illness, an understatement. Of course, I have a different perspective than most."

"There was something up on the screen. I guess Kim did a quick search. Before leaving Here. Sit down." I motioned to the sofa. "Um, are you supposed to be out of bed this early?"

He shuffled over to the sofa and eased himself down. "Fuck it. I was laying there listening to Kim throw herself together for a flight to London, knowing there wasn’t anything for me to do, but continue to look as hopeless as possible. And, you know, I could not keep The Decemberists out of my head. Fuck, I hate when a band invades."

"Really?"

"But, you know, it makes sense. I mean, they have that maudlin, Victorian gothic ethos running full tilt. I’m nearly dead, so why not be literary about it."

"Either that, or you have a fondness for Chimney Sweeps."

He wiped imaginary crumbs from his lips and chuckled. "You mean Chimbley Sweep."

"How can you be so calm? Calm enough to continue to name check a wide degree of pop bands. Jesus, if Stella were involved in an accident, I would be mental."

"Well, obviously, I have a significant level of pain killer in my blood stream, anti depressants, all that, so my senses are dulled." Cal sighed. "I had a feeling that something would happen on this tour. That kid that did die was a smack addict, so he was doomed from the start. It would be either his brain landing on a Swedish bridge support or a bad score in Sheffield that did him in. I just really didn’t think there would be this carnage. Didn’t think of the second oldest cliché in rock. The tour bus crash."

"What’s THE oldest cliché in rock, then?"

"Come on, man. The overdose."

"Right."

"Do you know much about Ethan’s injuries?"

"Apparently he’s out of the woods, life threatening wise. But specifics are missing. I would bet I will have the complete story well before Kim even lands in London. The kid will be waking up later in the morning, after her flight leaves. So I’ll get a call from him or someone at Comet. What does it say that I am not handling this differently? If anything, my condition should make me even more fretful, uptight..."

"You said yourself the drugs have you numb."

He looked at me and nodded, then looked down at his lap. "He’ll be fine."

Bricks & Mortar had been on quite a roll, a veritable avalanche: supporting their fourth album, which had just been certified gold. The band resigned a management agreement with Comet Group on the verge of signing a big licensing deal with Protégé. Bricks & Mortar looked favorites to rock well on into the future. So now there would be several pots down on their career mix board. I wondered about Ethan’s wife. "Where is Ethan’s wife in all this?"

"Good question. Last I heard she was at their house in Vancouver. But then I heard something about her being in Singapore." He shrugged. "She’ll surface at the hospital at some point I’m sure. They’re crazy about each other." He put his hands in the pockets of his robe. "At least the last time I knew, they were a happy loving couple. But they’re kids. Global youth. Who knows from one day to the next? I am now sitting here hoping I am alive when Kim gets back from Sweden." Calvin looked at me with anthracite eyes. "I do not feel very well."

I went over to him and sat down next to him. "What can I do?"

He patted me on the knee. "Don’t worry. Don’t feel guilty if I keel over on you. Even if you were a wizard from M.D. Anderson there would be nothing you could do."

"Guilt hell. It’s not about quilt. It’s shelfish. It’s loosing someone to talk to about the loose drum production on Picaresque."

He huffed. "The fucking Decemberists again."

"A theme."

"Colin Meloy would approve."

"You think?"

"Call him up."

I actually considered this for a few seconds, then thought of something new to talk about. "Do you think that the album is dead? Is it even a relative term anymore? Album."

Cal sighed. "From a band’s perspective it is not dead. It will always be important to have songs collected and placed into context where they can be a marker in a band’s life span. The attitude and outlook of a group is put down at that point. Also you have to think of the economics of recording. Batching the process leads to economies of scale in the studio, mixing, mastering, etcetera. But from a marketing standpoint? It’s going to depend on the consumer. And we increasingly just down load our favorite bits and forget about the rest. It’s going real time and accelerating every year. That’s obvious."

"So what’s going to happen to the album? Will there ever be classic albums in the future?"

"Nothing will happen to the album. The document will still exist, but won’t be the economic engine it once was. Ethan and just about everyone else works on as many channels as possible, as many revenue streams as possible. Digital and physical units, streaming, merchandise, live performance, licensing, which is where he places a lot of his chips. Jesus, do you know that Bricks & Mortar has a holding company in the Netherlands? Ethan says you don’t have to pay tax on royalties there." He shook his head and shrugged. "There’s so many ways to control costs and places to go grab revenue now you have to be a damn business school grad to understand the P&L statements." This answer took a lot of wind out of Calvin and he fell silent.

I wasn’t sure if these sorts of large philosophical type questions were a smart way of conducting our conversations anymore. Those days seem to be slipping away for good.

Global

We had fallen asleep, because when I awoke, finally hearing the phone ring, the light coming through the windows had that clean, late winter slice to it. Scrambling to the phone I noticed Cal had fallen over on the sofa and slept deeply on his side. The caller ID read "Out of Area."

"Federer residence. This is Nick."

"Mr. Carraway? It’s Ethan." He sounded like he was down the street. His all the way from Sweden voice was void of any echo or hiss. Who was his cell phone provider?

"Ethan! Good to hear from you."

"Yes. Hi. Is my Mom there?"

"No. She’s heading your way. I suspect she is at O’Hare waiting to board."

"I can try her cell. She doesn’t need to come over. I’m okay."

"Define okay."

"A broken arm, cracked rib oh and they had to remove my spleen. Isn’t that weird?"

"Is it? I don’t know."

"Is my Dad around?"

"He’s asleep." I wondered how best to wake him. "You sound really good for someone who is recovering from surgery and is on the other side of the planet."

"Modern living. I can’t decide whether you should wake Dad or not. I mean, I can just call back. You know, he’s in a situation where he needs his rest."

"You think?" I didn’t mean that to sound sarcastic, but I think it did. "How are you, um, mentally speaking? You together?"

"Remarkable."

"You sound pretty okay."

"How’s Stella doing?"

This question took me aback somewhat. Weren’t we just discussing his injuries sustained in a horrible (and fatal for some) bus accident? "Um, oh, she’s doing well. She likes school. Lots of friends."

"Boyfriend yet?"

Again, another question that threw me. "Yes. Apparently. Some computer whiz from Louisville named Michael. We haven’t met him."

"That’s cool. Kirsten and I always thought of her as sort of another sister and I thought of her just a while ago and wondered what she was doing."

This turn of conversation would have been a major highlight for Stella if it happened three or so years earlier and I would have had the boldness to relay the inquiry to her. These days, I doubt she would give it a lot of thought. "That’s nice of you to think of her."

"All I can do here, right now, is think." There was a brief pause and Ethan said something to somebody, then returned. "You know something? As I was laying there with Caleb, a chunk of bus roof and the rest of his bedding on top of me, staring out the front of the bus through the broken windows, the bus laying there on its side, you know, totally fucked, I didn’t feel any pain. As I laid there in the strangest silence you can imagine, I asked myself, Ethan, are you satisfied?"

"Satisfied with?" I could sense that in his post-operative pharmaceutically enhanced head, he was going from reminiscence to the metaphysical without even checking the mirrors.
"Have I left anything behind? The planet is four or five billion years old and it will be another billion years or more before the sun goes supernova and makes rock music surplus to requirements. So, I mean, well, with history and all, will there be any history left behind? I laid there for who knows how long thinking I was a dead man. I could see the world through Dad’s eyes so fucking clearly. Accept, well, I didn’t have any pain. Or I mean I didn’t feel any. Shock and silence. And there was this apocalyptic scene in front of me. Like that old movie, Mad Max. Anyway, wow, like I have to say I’m satisfied. I think this is my religious experience. For me, God isn’t about fear of death. You know, like wanting ever-lasting life. God is about this all encompassing vastness. The huge expanse of infinity. It’s God. So. Like I said. I’m satisfied with my life."

"Satisfied?"

"Part of anticipatory grief, you know, I mean, me dealing with Dad dying…" I glanced at the sleeping Cal and wondered if he wasn’t sleeping at all. "…is making sure there aren’t any unresolved issues, feelings, questions, whatever. SO there’s been these long talks with him. And he always comes back to the theme of what do we leave behind? Are we satisfied with the body of work left to tell our story? With him, he’s happy with his marriage, proud of Kirs and I, happy with his work at the factory, with his earlier brush with fame. He laughs that at least his name comes up on Google as one of the first entries. That’s a joke now: how do we define a successful celebrity history? What the search engines do with you."

"So you’re happy with what you’d leave behind?"

"That’s what I can now say. I can also say I have a better understanding of what God is and yesterday, I don’t think I would have said that. I know I wouldn’t have said it. But I don’t fear infinity. I love and that’s good. I create and that’s cool. So I have stuff to leave behind."

"And you come up on Google now."

Ethan laughed. "Fuckin’ A."

"And what’s cooler than having a song used on an episode of Veronica Mars?"

He chuckled. "Plenty of things, Mr. Carraway."

"So should I wake your Dad? I think he’d want to talk with you." How often do you get to talk with your son about finding God, I thought?

"I think I will call my Mom and then call back there. She really does not need to come over."

"You won’t convince her otherwise. She called me up and installed me and drove out of here like shot from a canon."

A brief pause during which I thought I could almost make out some cell site interference. "I’m glad you and Dad have become such good friends. That’s another good thing he’ll leave behind."

"He said the other day that he isn’t depressed or anything. And funny enough, I’m not frightened for him."

"He’s satisfied. The theory is that you only fear the inevitable if you haven’t done enough."

This struck me as hyper accurate. I recalled my own despair at the death of my father. There was still much unfinished business, many unsaid thoughts and emotions. Was he satisfied with what he left behind? What was my father's legacy? Farming 980 acres for fifty years? Sending my brothers and I to school where I delivered a mediocre performance while they learned to split atoms and calculate pi? Did he love Mom? This thought made my throat tighten significantly, because I did not have the answer to that important question. If I asked my Mom if Dad had loved her she would laugh and wave at me nonchalantly. Of course, dear.

I regained focus. "Ethan. Why don’t you try your Mom, then call back here in about an hour?"

"Yeah, okay. "

"Good talking with you."

"Take care. I’m out." The line went quiet, Ethan’s strangely buoyant tone replaced with line hiss. I hung up and looked at Calvin again. Was he breathing? Moving toward him I noticed his chest moving up and down and heard a slight whistle coming from his nose with each exhale.
I went to the kitchen to make myself busy with coffee so I would not have to revisit the topic of my parents, but it didn’t work. The question hung with me. Did Dad love Mom? It bothered me to have that question be just that. Something to question. Why was it even in doubt? That alone is sad enough. Then there’s the looming answer, which may very well have been or may very well be: No. As I scooped coffee into the filter of the machine it explained why there was so much drama in his last moments. The crushing fear and anguish he had. Dad was not satisfied with what he was leaving behind, which was doubt, missed opportunities, unfinished business.
I went to my coat and pulled out my cell phone. It was eight o’clock in Ohio where Stella attended college. I dialed her number. Inevitably – her voice mail greeted me. "Stella. Dad. Hey, I’m calling to say I love you and I’m extremely proud of you. Oh, and you’ll probably see somewhere that Ethan was involved in an accident in Sweden, but I just spoke to him and he’s fine. Okay, well, um, have a good day and we’ll talk with you soon."

Immediately, I dialed Isabella.

She picked up immediately. "What’s going on over there?" I could here the tea kettle whistling accompaniment to the toaster as she orchestrated a breakfast, of some type while getting ready for work.

"Ethan just called here from Sweden. He sounds fine. A little metaphysical, but okay. I’m letting Calvin sleep, because Ethan is going to call back after he tries Kim, who I would suspect is waiting for that morning flight to Heathrow."

"So have you spoken with Calvin?"

"We talked for a while shortly after Kim had left, then he went back to sleep."

"What did you talk about?"

"I can’t remember. The Decemberists?"

"Jesus." She muttered before crunching down on some toast.

"No, no, we didn’t talk about the son of God."

"Keep me in the loop."

I smiled at this phrase. "In the loop. I don’t think you’ve ever said that before. It’s funny."

"It’s silly. But it popped into my head to use. Say, why do you sound so cheery?"

"Do I?" I thought about it for a second. "I guess I do. Maybe having a pal that relies on me is a good thing."

"I rely on you and so does Stella."

"Of course. You are my family. My closest companions. But it’s different."

"Is it?"

"Maybe what I am saying is that it is good to have lots of people rely on you, me, um, you being a general pronoun here. More like second person narrative."

"I understand without all the explanation."

"The very definition of a long term relationship."

"What is?"

"Understanding without lengthy explanation."

"I don’t mind lengthy explanation unless I am getting ready for work."

"So noted." I glanced at the clock on the microwave. "I will keep you in the loop!"

"Thanks."

I folded up my cell phone and poured some coffee. Isabella always knows exactly how to bring a smile to my face and can always cut through some of my meandering thoughts so well. Yes, the
very definition of a long-term relationship.

Significant Music Side Bar #7

Mercury Charge – Bay Bridged – This is a late entry. I re-examined MC after many years and got stuck on this car crash of a hardcore tune. I was taking another look at this band, because a friend of mine, no, a close friend of mine played bass guitar for this particular, seminal West Coast punk band. Examining sexual politics by using a chainsaw as part of the rhythm section, the group pushed everything to a logical and sometimes violent conclusion. This song came on their third and best release and displayed a mighty, buzzy, loose low end that somehow incorporated the chainsaw whine so perfectly, to an untrained ear, you’d swear it was MC’s first (and only) use of a synthesizer. Being able to access and understand this song and get what the band was attempting to say announced to me that I had become a more mature music listener. Yesterday my friend who had been in this band, died. In our many hours of talking about music he always came back to a central belief. That rock music was for the kids. At this point, Cal, I am here to say, that this music, this visceral, complex abstraction of cultural commentary was and is by no means for the kids. Rock music in all its infinite varieties has the potential to change individuals and entire cultures. You should rest easy up on the brow of an Iowa ridge for eternity knowing that.

Wake

"I hope you aren’t too down about not being a pall bearer?" For some reason, I watched Kim’s mouth as she asked me this, buzzed as I was on wine.

"No, no. Please. That’s…"

"We just had a lot of relatives to think about. People who didn’t have a hand in his, well…" The corners of her mouth turned down and she ran her tongue along the bottom lip. "You did so much for Calvin, for me."

I looked at Isabella who was looking at me. "It was a real pleasure to become friends with Cal this year. He means a lot to me."

Kim gave my forearm a squeeze. "Well, I can not even begin to tell you what it’s meant for Cal to be able to talk with you about music." She leaned closer to Isabella and I. "He never would talk with Ethan about it. A point of principle I never understood." She straightened up. "And everything else you used to talk about. You were an impartial observer or someone not weighed down by family history. Yet, you know, you guys had a lot in common."

"Friends are God’s consolation for families." I stated. "Someone said that or I read it someplace. I can’t remember who it was though."

Isabella gave me a playful elbow. "Thanks a lot."

"You know what I mean."

"Do I?" She smiled ever so slightly.

"I think that’s a Jay McInerney line." Kim suggested.

"Oh terrific." I let my shoulders drop. "Now I’m quoting New Yorkers."

"There are a few worse things, Mr. Carraway." I heard a hoarse voice say from behind us. I turned to find Ethan holding a coffee mug that read Wisconsin Dells across it.

"You think?" I grinned. "I could quote lyrics from that funny pop band, who is that, you know, the ones from Iowa that say they're from Vancouver…"

"Ha, Ha." He switched his mug out of his right hand and extended it for a shake. "You have no idea how much easier it is to say Vancouver."

I gave his hand a firm shake. "We’re sorry for your loss." I could not think of anything else to say, which is pretty pitiful.

Ethan shrugged. "We were prepared. As best we could be. I wish I could have pulled a Bono and flown in every day to keep the man company. But oh well, we can’t all have a Gulfstream V gassed and ready on the tarmac." He took a sip from his cup. "It kind of helps me that Senja is pregnant." He looked beyond our group, across the room to where Senja was digging a chip into a huge bowl of dip sitting on the dining room table. "She demanded that we release the news, even though it is really early."

I turned back to Kim as Isabella touched her arm. "Grandma. How do you feel about this news?"
She smiled broadly and leaned in towards Isabella. "As a young widow, well, young-ish anyway. Ha-ha. I feel intimidated by the thought of being a grandparent."

I turned back to Ethan. "Amazing news."

He beamed. "It is isn’t it?"

Charade - Chapter Thirty Five

2008-03-25T17:08:00.002Z

So far, Michael had resisted his cell phone and perhaps the two dozen text messages he knew would be on it from his sister and Rebecca. Outside every window interesting things kept his mind occupied. His first ever trip on an airplane had taken him from Columbus, Ohio to New York LaGuardia. Out that window a dazzling array of clouds, other aircraft and the brown and gray carpet of land far, far below kept him occupied. Then, a taxi-cab, he could not believe it, but a real yellow taxi cab whisked him away from the terminal, off to Flushing. Not able to face being at home for the Christmas break and warned off going home with Rebecca (by Rebecca), Michael settled on accepting Cary’s invitation.

Beside him, Cary Grant effortlessly texted back and forth with Charlotte, having moved through the day so far with a practiced, cool elegance Michael found inspiring. "I can’t believe how jammed together everything is here. Everything is on top of everything else."

Cary did not look up from his screen. "Yes. Wonderful isn’t it?"

They fell quiet again as the taxi bounced along before slowing to a crawl on Northern Boulevard. Out his window Michael noticed the metropolis was everything he had expected and much more. Excited by it all he wanted to thank Cary again for buying his ticket or rather Cary’s mother, but he also knew his repeated thanks would get on Cary’s nerves. The taxi made a quick turn down a less busy street, then made two more, smoother turns on to a street lined with trees and narrow two story houses.

Cary looked up. "Here we are. Good old 152nd Street. Feels like only yesterday I left for college."

"152nd Street. Not great for your porn name, Cary."

"My what?"

"You know, you take the name of your first pet and the street you lived on when you were a kid to make a name. Rebecca told me about it. Her’s is Trixie Hillview. Isn’t that kinda hot? 152nd Street isn’t a very usable last name."

"I’ve never had a pet either, so it would be one of those names that is just a surname. Sting or Cher or something." Cary put his phone away anticipating arrival at the curb in front of his father’s place. "What’s your porn name?"

"Duke Fairlong."

"Nice." Cary leaned forward. "Right up here. Right passed the white car." The taxi pulled over. Cary immediately produced some cash and handed it through the window, then got out followed closely by Michael who pushed his backpack out first.

As they climbed the short flight of stairs to the door, Cary dug his key out of the pocket of his bag. "You know, these back pack things are darn handy."

"Yes, just one of the many conveniences you embraced this term, right?" They stopped as Cary worked to open the door. Michael looked around, taking a deep breath, then exhaling a large plume of condensation into the winter afternoon. "What are we going to do later?"

Cary finished with the final lock and pushed the door open. "I don’t really know. First thing’s first. We have to hang around a bit with my Dad." He stepped into the dark front hall, but held the storm door open with his foot for Michael. "Come on in."

They could see Cary’s father down the short, dim hall, framed by an arched passage. Tim sat reading the New York Times at the small kitchen table, but upon hearing the two boys, lowered the paper and looked at them over his large reading glasses. "Good gravy. It’s the scholars." He looked at his watch. "And right on time." Tim got up, tossed the paper aside and came through to them. "You both look as though you just landed on a steamer from darkest Africa."

Cary put his bag down. "It took about as long as that to get here." He hugged his father, noticing a brightness and energy about him. "You remember Michael."

"Yes, indeed. How are you? Welcome to Flushing." He shook Michael’s hand.

"Thanks. Glad to be here."

"Well, good, good. Glad you young men made it. Come in, please. Get comfortable." He led Cary and Michael into the small living room, rimmed with stacks of books and furnishings from what appeared to Michael as a late sixties garage sale. Tim picked up a stack of newspapers, which teetered high above a worn velour couch cushion. "Here. Sit. Look at you Cary. You look, well, I’m nearly speechless. You look like an average college kid."

"I’m trying to change a few things up…"

Tim interrupted. "Well, I approve. I approve! You look relaxed."

"Thanks. I am."

"Grades okay?"

"So far."

"Good, good. Well, can I get you boys anything? A beer? Some soda pop?" He stood waiting for an answer, holding the tall stack of papers.

Michael plopped down on the couch and watched as a cloud of dust enveloped him. "I’ll take a beer. Sure."

"And you son?"

Cary remained standing, still taking in the condition of the front room and the remarkably jolly attitude of his father. "Have any gin, dad?"

Tim squeezed his eyes shut. "Darn it. I knew there was something I needed to get at the store." He looked at Michael. "I stood for fifteen minutes staring at the dairy section trying to remember the one thing he asked me to get." He started to go back to the kitchen.

"Should’ve written it down."

Cary picked up a shoebox of index cards sitting on a wicker rocker and finally sat down. "No big deal. Just a Sprite or something. Whatever."

Tim called back from the kitchen. "Your mother left you her key. She’s over in Goa for a few weeks so she said if you wanted to use her loft for anything…"

Cary looked at Michael and shrugged, then called back to his father. "That’s pretty generous.
What’s that all about?"

"I think she thought you’d be coming home with your girlfriend, um, Charlene. Probably thought you’d need someplace to, well, you know, anyway. It’s in an envelope with Bilschein.
He has the floor above?"

"Right. I know who he is." Cary turned to Michael. "This is a bit of good luck. Mom’s loft is basically right across the river from Manhattan."

Tim came back into the room with a can of beer, which he handed to Michael and a glass of something fizzing, which he gave to his son. "Now, here’s your refreshment. There’s some cheese and salami in the fridge. I have to start getting ready to go out tonight. Something sort of came up. I meant to stay in and visit with you lads, take you to Pho Nuy for a spectacular Vietnamese dinner, but, alas, your old man has a date."

"Wow. That’s great." Cary took a sip of his soda happy to learn the excuse for his father’s constant, faint smile. "When was the last time you were on a date?"

Tim rubbed his chin. "I think Monica Lewinsky was a topic of conversation, so however long ago that would be."

"Hard to believe she would ever be a topic of conversation." Michael offered.

"Before her, I suppose it all was about O.J." Tim sighed. "So, I didn’t think it would be too much a hardship to release two young fellows out into the night."

"With the key to Mom’s loft." Cary put his soda down on a dusty magazine cover, which formed the top strata of an impressive butte of stacked publications. "So where did you meet up with someone that could be convinced to go out with you, dad?"

Tim smiled and rubbed his chin again. "I know, I know, I can not believe I fooled someone; a woman who speaks English! And by golly she has all her limbs too." He looked at Michael.

"Sorry. Bad joke."

Michael shrugged and popped his beer open.

Tim went to leave the room, then stopped. "The Entertainment section is out on the counter next to the sink. Thought it may interest you two."

Cary looked at his watch. "We’ll catch a train in."

Tim looked at Michael. "I know it’s a bit strange for you to arrive and your host to leave, but this sort of came up last minute and I am sure Cary will be an exceptional host." He paused, then turned to his son. "Well, I will leave you to your own devices, then." He started climbing the narrow, steep stairway to the second floor. "If you decide to stay at your mothers, just leave a message. Don’t want to have to call Jake out to go dragging the harbor."

Michael looked over at Cary who ran his finger along a magazine cover, plowing up a small pile of dust. "He has a very dark sense of humor.

"Yes, he most certainly does." Cary stood up. "Let me get the paper and you can see if there’s anything you want to do."

"The paper?" Michael leaned over and grabbed his backpack. "Let me at my old MacBook and we’ll…"

"Where do you think you are? My Dad doesn’t have any access, much less WiFi."

Michael pulled his laptop out. "Oh, I know. But someone around here does." He flipped it open. "Who’s Jake?"

"The police. My Dad likes to sprinkle his dialog with quaint terms like that. Shows he’s a man of the people."

"Oh." Michael waited quietly for his laptop to boot, taking a look around the room while sipping beer. "You know, I wouldn’t have pictured your home like this. I had some kind of image of, I don’t know, some huge apartment like you’d see on television."

Cary finished his cup of soda and looked around him. "It’s hard for me to picture this place too." He sighed. "And I lived here for what maybe thirteen years?" He rolled the empty cup back and forth in his hands. "My room used to be a little sanctuary of cleanliness and organization."

"Imagine that."

"Yeah, well, we’ll see in a minute what’s been done to it since I left in August."

"Okay, here we go. All sorts of signals here. Let’s see, this one looks good, WF Big Sal. Unsecured access" Michael pursed his lips and nodded. "Naughty, naughty."

"Sal Fromme, I bet. He lives across the street." Cary bent to look out the front window. "Right over there." He pointed toward a house with bleached pink shutters.

"The Most Serene Republic is at Mercury Lounge tonight." Michael looked up at Cary. "You’d actually like them. I know you would."

"Where is Mercury Lounge?"

"It’s on Houston." Michael pronounced the street like the city in Texas.

Cary nodded, not bothering to correct him. "Okay, there’s a cool bookstore on Prince Street. We could have some dinner, duck in there for a bit, then go to the show at Mercury."

Michael tapped away at his keyboard. "Oh here it is in Nearby Businesses. I think. McNally-Robinson? Looks like it’s just a few blocks."

"Any events this evening?"

"Nope."

"I hate when they have events and the place gets stuffed with pretentious, bearded guys in tweed and tennis shoes. So, this band you think I’ll like, do you like them?"

"Don’t know, really."

"Then why’d you say I would?"

"Because I’ve learned that you’d be more interested in going to a show if it would provide clues as to how I perceive you." Michael smiled. "Such a complex manipulation, don’t you think?"

"Oh, sure. You’re a real schemer." Cary looked at his watch, hearing the shower upstairs squeak to a start. "Let’s go. We can catch a bus over to the station to grab the Number 7. We’ll need to stop off at my Mom’s and grab the key, then go for dinner."

"The number 7?"

"Subway. It can take several moon phases to get into Manhattan even if you take an Express, but it’s pretty convenient. About thirty or so minutes and you’re in Times Square."

"Convenient if you don’t know how to drive."

"Particularly if you don’t have a license." Cary held up his finger. "I do know how to drive. Well, sort of. I mean, I grasp the concept. I’m licensed anyway."

Michael shook his head. "You should borrow Rebecca’s car sometime for practice."

"June? I wouldn’t dare risk it."

"She’s pretty relaxed about it. I’ve driven it a couple of times. It’s a fun car."

"That’s not what I mean."

"What do you mean?"

"Charlotte wouldn’t care for it."

"Oh, right. Whatever."

"It’s a bit of a hike to the station, but not bad."

"You’re the tour guide." Michael closed his laptop and turned toward the front window.

"Thanks Big Sal. Appreciate the band-width."

"Let me run upstairs and tell my Dad we’re going and that we’ll stay at my Mom’s tonight." Cary started for the stairs.

"Sure, in case he wants to bring back the English-speaking woman who has all her limbs."

Cary stopped on the first step and looked back at Michael. "Please. Let me get used to the fact my Dad is even going on a date first. That in itself is huge news. No wonder he’s blowing us off. Anyway, the thought of it going beyond mere casual conversation over a bottle of wine is too much for me to contemplate."

Michael watched Cary disappear up the stairway. He thought about how far the two of them traveled during the past semester; the high comfort level and easy banter they enjoyed. The two now met in the middle on almost everything. Michael wanted to see a band, Cary wanted to go to a bookstore and so they would do both without any thought of excluding one or the other from an agenda. It was a typical example for decisions made every day they were together for the last four months. An unlikely pairing put together by what must be an extraordinary piece of software run by Residential Life. As he put his laptop back in its bag, Michael wondered what the parameters were for the program. How did it run the match, in there case, so perfectly? Was it an anomaly? He finished his beer and took it back into the kitchen, looking around for a place to put the empty can and thinking about how no one on the hall battled with a mismatched roommate or indeed how anyone had requested a room switch. Michael put the empty on top of the Times and went back to the couch. He and Cary ended up being a lot alike despite coming from vastly different backgrounds, having significantly divergent interests and outlooks. "How did they do it?" He muttered, just as Cary came back down the stairs.

"Okay, let’s go." They picked up the bags. "Dad seemed pleased we wouldn’t be back tonight, but I don’t think he plans on bringing anyone back to this." Cary looked around the more-than-a-little-grim living room and shook his head. "He would’ve called someone to come in and sandblast the place. No, I think he genuinely wants us to have a good time."

They left the house and took off down the sidewalk, Michael following. "Hey, I didn’t get to see your room. I wanted to get some perspective, learn more about what makes Cary Grant tick."

"From my old room?"

"Sure. Maybe."

"My old room wouldn’t help you very much, I’m afraid."

They walked quietly for a moment. "Do you miss Charlotte yet? Ha Ha Ha."

Cary glanced at Michael. "Do you miss Rebecca yet? Ha Ha Ha."

"How many texts have you had so far today?"

"I number somewhere between 20 and 200."

Michael snorted. "I bet." They reached the corner and were met with a lot of foot traffic along the busier street. "It’s hard to believe how we ended up with them. I mean, Rebecca, in my case, I guess. You know, I mean, she is way out of my league. Way, way out."

"Don’t put yourself down like that. Look at me. Charlotte is an upper classmen. Juniors aren’t supposed to date Freshmen."

"Dude, you look older than half the professors on that campus." They weaved around a large contingent of Asian gentlemen. "You certainly, like, totally act older than most of them."

"Thanks. But really. Michael. You shouldn’t feel like Rebecca is out of your league."

"I know. She keeps telling me I’m money and I don’t even know it. Or something like that."

"Listen to her."

"So how come you didn’t hook up with her?"

Cary bobbed his head back and forth, weighing how best to answer. "I think she is a bit too, I don’t know, in your face for me? Maybe it’s just a chemistry thing. I didn’t feel a connection immediately like I did and do with Charlotte."

"She said she tried kissing you once and you turned into an ice sculpture."

"Not the smoothest of moments for me. I gave her a peck back on the cheek, like she was a great aunt or something. I was trying to say thanks, but no thanks and everything is cool between us." He sighed. "Like I said. Not especially smooth of me."

"She got over it."

"Between you and me, of course, I think Rebecca would have discovered how much I really admired, how much I knew about the real Cary Grant. It would have thrown me for a loop, you know, being discovered like that. I wanted an opportunity to change myself without that being the reason. You see what I mean?"

"Kind of."

"Charlotte doesn’t try to figure me out or make connections, assume anything other than what’s in front of her. That’s given me the chance I needed to retool. Keep the stuff that really makes me, me. Let go of the superficial, while maintaining my self confidence."

"Apparently."

"Besides, Rebecca always has the pop culture reference thing right up front. I’m used to that, of course, but it still bugs me. Charlotte isn’t like that."

"Hey, but I am. Half the time I speak in old sit-com dialog or I spout some lyric from a song."

"Maybe. But we’re not dating. It’s a lot different." They stopped to wait for the bus. Cary looked up the street. "And anyway, no one is saying we ended up with anyone. I keep reminding myself of that. She’ll graduate next year and be long gone. Hard to see her sticking with me beyond that horizon."

"That’s sort of funny. You know, we’re living in the hook up age. The friends with benefits and all that. Reminders about how temporary a situation is seems so last century. You see what I’m saying?"

"Well, we do still have some differences don’t we, Michael? I do have to constantly remind myself about not getting too far ahead of where Charlotte and I are at any given moment and it seems like you are always waiting for the penny to drop."

"That’s all Rebecca and I have been doing the last month. Focusing on the next ten minutes, instead of the next day or month or whatever." They fell quiet for a few minutes and Michael studied a couple of newspaper racks at the bus stop. "Which is what you were saying about why you aren’t with Rebecca."

Cary looked at his watch. "What are you in the mood for, food-wise?"

"Whatever."

"I think we’ll do some Indian. I feel like a good curry would be nice."

"Was that a Cary Grant accent I just heard, my man?"

"Have you been watching DVD’s of my work lately?"

"Rebecca and I watched Charade and The Bishop’s Wife the other night."

"Bishop’s Wife? Interesting choice. My Dad has a thing for Loretta Young."

Michael stepped over a pulpy mass of old newspapers forming a small moraine on the sidewalk. "Which character is that?"

"The wife."

"Right. Hmmm. Hard to really pass judgement on her. You know, black and white and all. Funny hairstyles."

A bus appeared up the street. "And Charade? The best Hitchcock thriller, not involving Hitchcock."

"That’s exactly what Rebecca said."

"He let his hair show a little gray for that. You didn’t do that as a leading man in Hollywood at the time."

"You were such a radical. I mean, you know all this stuff, don’t you?"

"Apparently. Here’s our bus." Cary motioned. "The Number 15. You have change?"

Michael dug into his pants. "Think so. I’m not sure why you always claim you don’t know anything about that guy."

"I know. It’s kind of dumb now that I’ve had the chance to think about it and talk it over with Charlotte. I guess I was hoping that my whole character is of my own design. Don’t want to owe anybody anything for my style, I suppose. But the other thing that I can’t quite get at is how I wanted to maybe keep people from thinking they know me, know where I am coming from."

Michael shifted his backpack and looked at the change he pulled out of his pocket. "Sounds like you don’t want people to get to know you."

"That, my friend, has changed." Cary looked at his watch again. "Guess we should have just taken a cab directly to my Mom’s, but who knew she’d leave me the key to her loft. Lucky for us, I guess."

"She should have texted you."

"She doesn’t know I have joined the rest of the modern world as yet."

"Really?"

"But in a good way." He wondered what she would make of his outfit – a pea coat over an At Proper Distance T-Shirt borrowed from Michael’s pile, new old-looking blue jeans and appropriately scuffed shoes. "You should take a picture of me when we get to her place. I’d love to email it." He opened his arms wide as the bus snuffled to a stop and opened it’s doors. "The new me!"

Michael glanced down at his feet as they climbed aboard. "I think I stepped in some dog shit."

"Ah, perfect. Welcome to the greatest city on Earth."

Charade - Chapter Thirty Four

2008-03-25T17:04:00.002Z

Cary sat at his assigned place in Mangum Auditorium, staring at the screen of his MacBook Pro. Fifteen minutes early for his Architecture & Society Final, he had set up shop, only to be greeted with a case of nerves. His rib cage vibrated faintly and his hands shook slightly. He wasn’t nervous about the test or the fact his entire grade for the class rested on it. Despite two weeks of getting used to working with technology and being expertly tutored by his roommate, Cary still worried about placing his academic wellbeing into the hands of a computer.

He sat back and stretched his arms, looking up into the high ceiling of the Architecture schools main lecture hall. An elegant space, as it would have to be, noted for clean, sophisticated mid century lines, exceptional lighting design and remarkable acoustics, the space seated perhaps 300. The seats were padded, retrofit ten years previous with work surfaces and plug-ins for power and network cables. His assigned position three seats in along the third row gave him a superb view of the lecture stage, with its glistening poplar flooring and contrasting gorgeous walnut lectern rescued from a pre-reformation Dutch church. Cary felt the space inspired and practically urged audience members to design well.

A smile crossed his face as his thoughts quickly shifted to Charlotte and her initial reaction to him using technology. They were in her room, Cary at the desk, typing on the laptop, Charlotte on her bed, facing him while reviewing for her Ethics final. She looked over her book with a look that caught Cary’s attention immediately. "What?"

"You know, I used to think your Luddite channeled via GQ approach to the world, well, kind of, I don’t know, sexy? But now, seeing you work that Apple laptop makes me want to jump on you."

Cary grinned, looking back at the screen that displayed entries on the Chemistry I Blog. "Oh, you’re just worked up after studying for four hours."

She got up, placed a bookmark in her reader and sauntered over to Cary, lifted her leg up, sitting herself down on his lap. "Believe what you want. I think it’s a clear manifestation of ambition. And ambition is very sexy." She kissed him.

Thurston Rosen sat down next to him and immediately started unpacking his laptop, bringing Cary out of his pleasant reminiscence. "I have sat next to you all semester, Cary and haven’t ever seen you with your laptop. I half figured you didn’t have one, but that’s a pretty fucked up assumption these days." He produced his Westec and put it on the work surface, plugging in and pushing the start button. "You can’t function these days without one."

Cary crossed his arms. "Oh, I don’t know. It’s not impossible."

"Are you logged in yet?" Thurston glanced at Cary’s screen. "Is that what I should be looking at?"

"Yes, this is the start screen apparently."

"Shit I hope he doesn’t ask anything about New Objectivity."

Cary felt certain Dr. Sweet would ask a lot about New Objectivity, perhaps even devote a third of the test to the movement. Cary knew Dr. Sweet wrote his dissertation at Columbia on Constructivism in the Soviet Union and had written important chapters in the text the school used for Arch 239 Contemporary Design. He had spent two lectures on the politicization of the Bauhaus school and another lecture and reading assignment from an article on Walter Gropius in Functionalism and Art. And if Thurston would have been interested, Cary could have directed him to Dr. Joshua Sweet’s authoritative biography of Bruno Taut. So Cary was not sure how to respond to Thurston’s concern. "Just remember expressionism and glass. Functionalism and the elevation of all levels of society. Oh and did I say, light? No, I said glass." Cary smiled to let him know it was meant to be a joke.

Thurston tapped in his network access to go to the class’ test site. "Gee. Thanks, man." He arrived at the same screen Cary had up. "So did you pdf your outlines?"

Cary shook his head. "No, I didn’t get around to that. I am going to rely on memory."

Thurston gave him a sideways look. "Whatever, man. You’re funeral."

"I suppose. But, I have a pretty good memory so I’m not too worried."

They sat quietly as the other 85 members of their lecture took their places. Cary tried to stay calm about his computer abilities and tried not to obsess on any one element of the semester’s worth of work in Architecture and Society. Finally, Dr. Sweet himself came in followed by his four teaching assistants. He bounded up on stage to the lectern while the TA’s went to the front of the stage, all holding, Cary noted immediately, stacks of blue books. Dr. Sweet always conducted himself as though a much older man, but Cary knew from his background work he was just 45 -- the same age as his father. While he went to Aversham for his undergraduate work, Cary’s father did not know him, both obviously traveling in significantly different types of orbit. This morning, Dr. Sweet looked refreshed and invigorated, actually appearing to be far younger, wearing a black turtle neck and jean jacket. The professor switched on the microphone. "Good morning."

A sleepy murmur of good morning returned from the audience made Dr. Sweet nod slightly and smile. "Well, I have a bit of a change in order for all you budding designers out there. Part of being a good architect is dealing with changes. Having specs altered or financial considerations radically shift. So part of today’s exercise will be to see how well we can cope without our technological crutch. The class began to murmur and whisper uneasiness. "My associates here will be handing out blue books and pens to everyone, but not until everyone has put their laptops away." Further complaining and some not so quietly done ensued. "Once the blue books and pens have been distributed, I’ll put up the three questions and you’ll have 90 minutes to get the job done."

Cary smiled as he powered down his laptop. Once again, he had been remarkably well served by his excellent study habits. And as it turned out, his lack of reliance on technology would pay dividends. He cracked his knuckles and waited for his blue book to arrive. Won’t Michael be blown away by this stroke of luck, he thought.

Up on stage, Dr. Sweet leaned casually against the lectern as his assistants began to work the room. "As some of you might be aware already, this semester is the last semester for the venerable blue book, ladies and gentlemen. It’s hard for me to get my old head around this, but that’s the edict anyway. There’s a lot of hand wringing about this over at A&S. A lot of English professors in a state of panic. But for me? For us? Well, an element of today’s Final is just plain old nostalgia."

"Nostalgia, my ass." Thurston Rosen muttered as he took a blue book and passed the rest to
Cary. "I busted my ass on my outlines."

"And before any of you think about complaining to the provost, remember, I’m not only tenured," he chuckled, "I’m the Dean of the School." He signaled to the back of the auditorium, presumably to someone in the control room and up on the screen above the stage flashed a header for the course. "So, assuming everyone has their blue book and pen, let’s have a look at your next 90 minutes." Three questions came up on the huge projection screen. "Keep in mind, you can answer these in any order, just indicate the question number at the start of your answer." He went to shut his microphone off, then stopped. "Oh, and good luck."

Cary looked at the very first question and could not help but grin.

1) What in today’s design fabric can be attributed to the modern architectural movement in 1920’s Europe as defined by Neue Sachlichkeit.

He then read the other two and considered them softball sorts of test questions that any good list-making student who had been present at Dr. Sweet’s lectures should be able to blow through. Cary could not believe that these were the questions for the Final. They seemed to him to be quiz material.

2) An Igloo is an example of vernacular architecture. Name four more examples and explain why you consider them vernacular.

3) What are the three principles of sustainable design and how do each influence planning?

After just 50 minutes, Cary closed his book, put his Dr. Sweet supplied pen in his shirt pocket and shook his writing hand. The test was his first blue book test and most likely, his last. Looking around he noticed a few of his classmates were looking finished, assembling their book bags and laptop cases. Cary did the same, then stood up. Thurston did not even look up as he continued to write furiously in what Cary thought of as second grader chicken scratch. He took his test up to the front and placed it in the box, noting that he was not the first to hand in his blue book, but probably the third.

Outside Mangum he found Charlotte sitting on a bench reading the Chicago Tribune. They didn’t say anything to each other until he had taken a seat next to her. She finished the story, collapsed the paper and handed him a tall coffee cup. "The new Fair Trade stuff from the Union. Thought you could use a Venti." She looked at him over her Sunglasses. "Soooo, you survived your first laptop final?"

"Nope. Didn’t have to." He put his laptop case between his legs, took a long drink of coffee, then stretched his arms out along the bench.

"What, pray tell, do you mean by that?" She asked with a melodramatic take on a Victorian schoolmarm.

"Blue Book." He took another sip of coffee and looked at the cup. "This is really, really good."

"Blue Book? She turned to him, folding the paper even more.

"A last minute change by Dr. Sweet. He said we needed to be flexible as architects and designers. He babbled something about how the elimination of blue book tests is sending everyone over at Arts & Science into an apoplectic shock."

"He said that?"

"Well, not exactly like that. I am not sure I have ever heard anyone use the word apoplectic out loud. So anyway, he handed out blue books and pens and put three essay questions up." Cary shrugged. "My guess? He didn’t have time to finish up the on-line exam so he decided to go old school."

"People going crazy?"

"What can you do? The guy who sits next to me was fuming, but, well, he’s the Dean and you know that makes him very much God-like here on this campus."

She shook her head and looked up into the brilliant blue December sky. "I can’t fathom how unbelievably lucky you continue to be."

"Luck is preparation meeting opportunity."

"Listen to you Mr. Insurance Sales Manager."

"Mock me if you like, but it makes it no less true. Anyway, I was ready." He looked up at the frosted glass and steel front of Yule-Tucker School of Architecture. "I could have killed any test put on the server."

Charlotte made a megaphone with her hands. "And I repeat: Listen to you!" She gave him a playful push in the side.

"I know, I know. I used to be so humble, so unassuming."

"Ah, but now we know that wasn’t really how you viewed yourself. That’s how you thought other’s viewed you."

"So it seems." He noticed a few more people coming out of the auditorium door. "Style and personal approach as passive aggressiveness. Is that even a word?"

"Aggressiveness? Of course. But there’s no reason to go that far." Charlotte jumped up. "Come on. Let’s go. I want to get another one of those." She pointed to the cup Cary held.

Cary got up and slung his laptop case strap over his shoulder. They began to walk towards Mullen Piazza. "Have you made a decision on the break? Manhattan at Christmas is a treat."
She studied the ground as they strolled. "I’m not sure if I am ready to be away. On the one hand, it makes a lot of sense to do something different. On the other, I just don’t know how I’ll do away from home during an already emotionally intense time."

"I think it would do you a lot of good to be away. It would do me a lot of good to show you around the world’s greatest city."

"Wait, I thought you invited me back to New York, not Paris."

He clasped his chest over his heart. "Ouch. You have stuck a knife in my heart. I am going to die." Cary looked at her to make sure that wasn’t taken the wrong way, but she appeared unfazed by his jest.

"I’ve been to New York plenty of times."

"True, but you’ve never seen my version of the city." Cary impressed himself with the sardonic tone.

"Oh, right. I’m sure you have quite a list."

"I’m telling you, Charlotte."

"The library, Grant’s Tomb."

"There are places we will go, things to encounter…and what’s wrong with Grant’s Tomb?"

"We shall see -- let’s just get by the next few days." She consulted her tank watch. "Shall we go and study?"

"Might as well." She skipped ahead a little, then turned to him, pressing a finger to his chest.

"Maybe you’ll get lucky and get another professor nostalgic for the golden age of the blue book. It’s probably the talk around the water coolers -- who will grade the last of the blue books."

"Sure does suddenly appear to be all the rage." Cary sighed and pulled his iPhone out. "I wonder who will grade the last of the blue books." He turned his phone on.

"Probably some subversive old prof in the philosophy department."

"Your advisor, perhaps. What’s his name?"

"Dr. Hewson?"

"Right, that guy."

"No, no. He’s got all the mod cons, my man. He has us use our laptops for everything. Now, if you want a hold out, I will point your attention to my ethics prof."

"Dr. McGuinley?"

"McGuinn. Totally. Now there’s a blue book kind of guy."

Cary checked the screen for texts, but there weren’t any. "Am I blue book kind of guy?"

She gave him a sideways glance, looking him up and down. "Not anymore, my love. Not anymore."

"Damn it. I’ve changed, then."

"It wouldn’t be a story without some of that going on, would it?"

"Good point."

Charade - Chapter Thirty Three

2008-03-25T17:02:00.001Z

"I made it all the way to December first without buckling, without bowing to the gods of technology." Cary was staring at a box sitting on the desk in front of him still wrapped in its shopping bag.

Michael, who had just come back from class stood motionless, mouth agape, eyes locked on the wrapped box, which he knew contained an impressive piece of machinery. "When, did you, get, THAT?" He finally unlocked himself and came over to Cary’s desk, placing a hand gently on the plastic.

"My Mom gave it to me last August. It’s been sitting up in the closet here since I arrived on campus, along with this." He opened his top desk drawer and pointed into it.

Michael looked down. "Holy shit, Cary. That’s an iPhone."

Cary smirked. "Yes it is."

"So let’s open it all up and get you going." Michael tossed his book bag on to his bed.
Cary stood and began to lift the box out of the bag. "I’ve been really dumb about this."

"So why all of sudden are you willing to jump into the twenty first century?"

He handed Michael the box, then held up two fingers. "Two reasons. First, my Architecture & Society final requires a computer. The final is the grade kind of thing and I was ignoring that most all semester, thinking I would be able to get around it somehow, which is ludicrous. Second, going home with Charlotte and learning more about each other showed me how completely ridiculous I was being about myself."

Michael looked at the box. "A fucking MacBook Pro and it’s been sitting here the whole time. I can NOT believe you, man." He started opening the box. "So how have you been ridiculous? Other than, you know, the fact you had three grand worth of electronics hiding in your dorm closet all semester."

"That’s some of it. I have been playing the part of Cary Grant, the actor, locked in some illusory fifties sensibility. By trying to affect this style, the sensibility, I found myself in High School getting a lot of what I determined was the right sort of attention. You know, in other words, not getting beaten up or shaken down or falling into a certain faction. So it just stuck. And by denying I knew anything about the other Cary Grant, I could always have that contrarian edge, where confrontation is futile. And maybe I thought at college I could carry on with my little world, a world where, I don’t know, people continue to cater to me." He sighed. "I’ve made a choice. I mean, I had a decision to make. Whether to just keep playing the part of the suave movie hero circa 1957 or become a normal everyday college student. From Grant in An Affair to Remember to Grant in If I Don’t Get an A in Architecture & Society I Will Be Sincerely Bummed."

"What’s that rated?"

"It’s an unrated director’s cut."

"I’ll stream it from Netflix."

"I look forward to the release and my new, more grounded existence."

"You sound like a corporate spokesman for yourself."

"Well then, let the re-branding begin!"

"Brooks Brothers will never be the same." Michael slid the machine out of its interior plastic wrapping and reverently placed it on to Cary’s desk. "This is big talk. This is historic self awareness."

"Well, we all have our no-go areas. Parts of us where we don’t want to go and don’t want anyone else certainly to go."

"So you’re going to fire up this amazing machine, having been forced by your Final exam and the realization that you have to meet the rest of the world on its terms as opposed to your own…"

"There is great irony in this, I think. But I don’t know exactly how to identify it."

Michael plugged the power cord in and opened the laptop. "Look at this 17 inch display. Unbelievable." He motioned to Cary. "Here, sit. You can do the start up. Apple tests the start up with mongrel dogs they pick up at the Cupertino pound. I think you can do as well as a Sheltie-Beagle mix."

"Is that true?"

Michael shook his head. "Urban legend. So was it really just Thanksgiving away from New York, hanging with Charlotte that gave you this sudden jolt?"

"It’s been coming on for a number of weeks, but what really helped was just a couple of sessions with a counselor over at Student Health. And by the way, I highly recommend their work. BY saying that, I’m not passing any judgement on you."

"Gee. Thanks."

"No. Really. I’m just…"

"What does Charlotte say about this new day rising?"

"She’s working on her own basket of issues, but I think she is generally in favor of me becoming a more regular guy. Particularly with the iron lung of finals coming in two weeks."

"Two weeks to get you up to speed with OS X and a fantastic MacBook. Actually, we may want to download Leopard, which is the latest OS X version. But let’s see what this thing is all about. Okay, first thing, push the power button."

"You may think that’s funny, but I am telling you right now, that Sheltie-Beagle mix in California probably has just as much computer skill as I do."

They laughed as the laptop sprang to life. "Your timing is pretty good, Cary. This is the last semester for Blue Books at Aversham."

"Really? They’d do that in the middle of the year? Make a switch of epic proportion like that?"

"That’s the word from Student Services. It’s being pushed by faculty and the provost."

"Wow. My Dad talked about Blue Book tests in almost mythical terms."

"So what. In the future, you can talk about your MacBook in mythical terms. Hell you can do that already."

"Why do you say that?"

"Dude. You sat on a wicked piece of machinery all semester long. I mean, speaking of urban legend."

"Please, stop. It seems almost patronizing." With this, Michael began teaching Cary how to use the modern world. After a short while Cary could open and close programs, create files, even get on line, check the weather for Flushing, New York and send his Mom a surprise email. Michael, who sat beside Cary for a time, but then retreated to his bed to do some texting, finally looked over. "So I think it’s time we get you situated with your iPhone." He swung his legs off the bed and stretched. "Wow. Man, it blows my mind to think of Cary Grant cruising around campus with an iPhone to his ear."

"Earbuds, stove pipes and Vans are next, I guess. Should I take up skateboarding?"

"Do you see me risking my neck? Not that I am your ultimate role model for this new life you’re talking about. But, you know, you’re always welcome to anything in my closet."

"You have something in your closet?"

"You know what I mean." He picked up the iPhone and started playing with it. "It is really inconceivable to me that you got this far into the semester without engaging technology. I mean, how does that happen? You know, like, you told me and all, but I can’t get my head around it."

"I imposed myself on a great number of people."

"Naw. Just some instructors who were probably happy to have someone like you who would come to their office and talk face to face."

"I wonder."

"Here." He handed Cary the iPhone. "Call Charlotte."

"No. I think I’ll wait and just produce this thing later when we go to dinner. She’s seen the box and all, knows I have it, but she’ll be stunned that I have decided to start using it."

"Then call Rebecca and tell her the news."

Cary took it and looked at the screen."

"Just tap the numbers on the screen." He gave him the number then waited to see if she would actually answer.

"Rebecca? It’s Cary." He looked at Michael. "No, no. Yes. It’s my cell phone. Right. I’ve had one all along. No. Yes. I thought it was time to learn how to use this stuff. Yes. Right. He’s right here." Cary handed Michael the phone.

"Hey there." Michael looked out the window. "I know, I know. It’s freakin’ me out and I am a witness to this. Right in front of my eyes. Yes. An iPhone, if you can believe that. Really. Yes. Okay. No, not tonight. Okay, I’m out." He ended the call and handed the iPhone back to Cary.

"She’s about to fall over. I think she sort of half thinks we’re trying to punk her."

"We’re supposed to get together tomorrow for a study session. Wait until I spring this laptop on her." Cary navigated his way to the Student Print Shop and typed in a special code he had been given earlier in the day. "The people over at SPS scanned my whole notebook. I just have to transfer it on to my computer."

"You’re on your way. And it’s only the first semester. You’ll be dispensing with physical notebooks, paper and pens in no time. The woodlands of the world thank you. You’ll see the advantage one of these things can mean. Academically, for sure. In your case I can see it being a positive with your productivity. Maybe in someone else’s hands, like, say, mine, it would send a titanium tipped torpedo into my productivity."

Cary watched as the file from SPS began to transfer. "You shouldn't short change yourself."

"Pot, Kettle, Black."

Charade - Chapter Thirty Two

2008-03-25T16:59:00.001Z

After dinner, Cary and Charlotte stood out on the gray cypress deck, slick with rain and wet leaves. Half-bathed in yellow-tinted light escaping from the expansive, modern space of the expensively decorated living area, Charlotte looked out into the darkness of the backyard. Up in the trees the ambient light painted the barren tree limbs with a sodium glow. Cary looked the other way, back into the house, in through the wall of glass where the Sundquists still sat beneath the Kandinsky. Cary judged it to be from the twenties, perhaps the Blue Four period of his work. It hung against a veneer of stacked dolomite high above a crackling hearth. He second-guessed his judgement on the painting, which snapped him back to the reality of a cool autumn evening in Northern Illinois. "Your parents have impeccable taste."

She glanced around to see what Cary meant. "They used to have a Klee in the dining room, but Dad sold it and bought a house in Umbria." She went back to looking at the back yard.
Cary could only muster a "wow" in response.

"Why did you tell my Dad you didn’t know how to drive? I’ve seen your license. Why the lie?"

"You think it’s a good idea for me to drive your father’s $70,000 automobile around in the dark in a place I have never been? I’m not a very accomplished driver anyway."

"Ah, but you are an accomplished liar, apparently. He believed you." She glanced at him. "He’s supposed to be harder to fool than that."

"I doubt I fooled him. It just saved us from going back and forth, until I was forced to capitulate, then nervously drive an LS 430 through a shop window. If I can’t drive to begin with there’s little room for debate."

Charlotte didn’t say anything for a long period of time, but then nodded slowly. "I’m not sure what you and Dad talked about, but he has been in way too good of a mood. Dinner was charming. Which in itself is fine. But…"

"I think he’s satisfied I am not going to duct tape you to a box springs in the back of a conversion van. Leave you under a bridge in Parkersburg."

"You think? Jesus, sounds like you’ve given it some thought."

"It’s a dark world."

"Parkersburg?"

Cary shrugged and shot a partial grin. "In general."

"I never picked you as such a dark cynic."

"You’ve had a profound effect on me. In case you hadn’t noticed."

She huffed. "Whatever you guys said in the thirty minutes you were gone to The Wine Cask it sure seemed to brighten his day."

"He unloaded a lot. It seemed to me, anyway. He has the same gift for candor that my Mom has."

"I assure you that’s a late developing gift. Wish you could have the same effect on Mom." She turned around and looked in on her parents, seeing her father pet his wife on the head as they watched the fire. "But I think she’s beyond cheering up. Even with a drugstore’s worth of prescriptions she takes."

"She’s hanging in there as best she can given, you know…the holidays and all." He offered knowingly.

Charlotte glared at him and turned around to the back yard again, hugging herself. "Ah. Right. Of course."

"Don’t be upset with him for telling. He felt a need to clarify or…"

"That explains his mood, then. He thinks he got one over on me. But really, I secretly hoped and understood you would learn about it."

"Terribly elaborate way of going about communicating a life changing tragedy."

"It’s impossible for me to talk about it."

"Apparently."

"It just is. I wish it wasn’t."

"It’s hard for me to believe that considering your openness about other things."

"Everybody has one or two no-go areas. A demilitarized zone or no man’s land of emotion."

Cary thought of his very small secret. That he not only knew everything about his Hollywood namesake, but worked mightily as a Freshman in High School to affect the man’s persona. He knew every movie after all and every aspect of the original Cary Grant’s biography. But then, in the face of merciless fellow students at a street toughened urban high school, he had adopted the idea that his style and personal bearing was all just happenstance. "That is very true." He paused, thinking of how comparatively trivial his charade when stacked against the ghost with which Charlotte lived. "Have you talked with, you know, a professional?"

She glanced at him and huffed. "Legions of the best. It hasn’t ever made any difference."

Cary didn’t really know what to say so he offered, "You’ll figure out a way someday. You’re the smartest person I have ever met."

"And yet I can’t talk about something so central to myself." She sighed heavily.

"At least you know why you are the way you are, despite maybe not being able to talk about it. You have that context."

"Yeah, well, maybe. I guess."

Cary turned to the back yard, but kept quiet, looking all around with false curiosity. They stayed quiet for a long time, watching their breath drift up into the late night air. Cary finally looked at her and saw Charlotte’s tears. He pulled her into him and Charlotte’s head dropped on to his shoulder. "Holidays are the worst."

"I will never disagree with that, Charlotte."

"It’s the family."

"Family?"

"Not really Mom or Dad. It’s all the rest of them I try studiously to avoid. But you can’t when you have something like this. Anyway, I hate family gatherings. You know, people who think they know you out of, I don’t know, maybe proximity? Proximity to your life, I mean. Like they know you, because they’ve been aware of you forever. But they never really listen to you, never try to understand. Their understanding is a projection of the character they remember or the idea of you or whatever. Everybody spends their time trying to make points about where they are in their lives, but no one is out to really receive the information. Blah, blah, blah. Here in the Midwest, we all think of our families as just slightly South of perfect, but really all we’re good at is ignoring the blatant short-comings of a particular group of individuals simply because they’ve all endured the lutefisk at the Great Aunt’s – the shared experience paradigm."

Cary knew exactly what she meant. "You are explaining why I am not in Yonkers tonight with my Dad. He’s got this sister, my aunt, and her never-ending family. It’s a circus. All I can say."

"You know my Uncle said something to me the first Thanksgiving after the funeral. He said that he was really sad not because P.J. was in a better place, but because my Mom and Dad were showing real tenderness and caring for each other. It filled him with sadness to see that it took an unspeakable tragedy for such intimacy to come out. I just looked at him and said, fuck you."

"Well…"

"Not because he had a point that I wasn’t in the state to hear, which I guess maybe was part of it, but at the time I was thinking, fuck you, Uncle Giles for laying that out like you really know us. This is my Mom’s hippie brother from Vermont channeling some sort of spiritual bullshit. I had seen the guy maybe five times my whole life. Maybe. And he’s making these observations."

"In my limited experience, people from Vermont love to make those types of observations." Cary smiled. "Sounds rehearsed, like something he’s said before."
Charlotte huffed. "Or read in some crap new age book."

"What is new age, anyway?"

"Crystals, organic peaches, wind chimes."

"Is your Uncle Giles coming tomorrow for dinner?"

"Oh, no. Thankfully, he and his crew are staying put. Interestingly enough they haven’t been back after my outburst. Not that I’m proud of that fact. He’s just, I don’t know, getting close to going over the edge."

"Sounds like he’s over that edge already. And maybe he likes it there."

She glanced at him. "Okay, I am really unfair to him. Just because he said that to me that one time. I admit it. I mean, so what if I’ve only seen him five times. He’s still Mom’s brother. That should mean he gets accorded some sort of respect, right?"

"This was Thanksgiving he said this?" Cary cocked his head and considered for a moment. "You know, with the spirit of the season and all. Thanksgiving. Forgiveness. Togetherness. All those nesses."

"Listen to you? As you pointed out, you didn’t exactly jump at the chance to be in Yonkers tomorrow."

They fell quiet for a moment. Cary looked up into the sky, attempting to affect a casual edge to his sincerity. "So he was extraordinary in every sense."

Charlotte sniffled and whispered, "It’s impossible to describe how close we were, finishing each other’s sentences, teasing in a short hand, obtuse way our parents couldn’t decipher. A profound sibling love that collapsed into a morbid grief…a deep hole impossible to fill."

Charlotte raised her voice above a whisper. "I am quite amazed I survived it. My Dad kept wanting me to talk about P.J. Insisting that doing so would keep us from forgetting anything. Keep his memory razor sharp. I battled with him about that. I let him know that I think about P.J. every minute of the day and that there was no way I would ever forget anything about him. Anything. I’ll be 90 years old and still remember how he tossed his toothbrush into the holder with this theatrical flare every single night." She sighed. "Talking about him doesn’t serve me at all. The pain it reveals doesn’t serve anybody else either."

Cary could not say anything to this, through lack of experience with not only death, but of having a sibling. They fell quiet for a few minutes.

"I’ve always wondered. Wondered." She faltered and wiped her eyes on Cary’s sweater.

"Wondered why we limit our goodwill to, to, just a few days forced upon us largely by Christendom."

"It’s the custom."

"Folk tales cloaked in mysticism hardened into commercial expectation, commercially sanctioned goodwill. A big chunk of the world economy riding on the birth of Christ. Container ships leaving China hourly, spreading the good tidings for balance sheets everywhere…"

"I suppose…" He tried to get a word in, but failed.

"…the birth of a myth coinciding happily with the winter solstice. Well…"

"Well…" he tried to interrupt.

"…at least Thanksgiving is largely based on a pagan feast. How do we choose our folklore?"

"Touched another nerve."

She nodded slowly.

"You could write a book." He shrugged, "but then again, you are the philosopher."

She sighed heavily. "Let’s talk about the weather."

"Okay. I can do that."

"Anything. Limiting goodwill is the sort of conversation I would have with him on a night like this."

"It smells like it could snow. There’s a low pressure system coming out of Alberta. Hope it doesn’t effect travel plans."

"It’s been fun, Cary. Let’s keep it at that." She whispered.

They stood wrapped in each other for a long time.

Charade - Chapter Thirty One

2008-03-25T16:55:00.002Z

They pulled into the driveway of the Dando house on Spindell Avenue and Michael could hear the noise even before Rebecca turned June’s engine off. He looked beyond the line of cars they parked behind and into the large picture window to see a knot of humanity all standing around holding drinks, arms flailing about as everyone appeared to be telling some great tale at the same time. Rebecca looked to where Michael’s gaze appeared locked. "The party’s started already. So much for being early and inconspicuous." She took a deep breath. "You ready for this?"

"No. But what is the alternative?"

"You’re right. Welcome to Shaker Heights."

"Boyhood home of Paul Newman."

"Somebody has been busy on Google." She opened her door.

"Wikipedia is my friend." He opened the passenger door and got out quickly, noticing two or three of the throng in the window were now pointing at them, smiling and waving enthusiastically.

Rebecca waved back. "Oh, this should be great fun. Aunt Di and my cousin are already in full bloom." They went around to the trunk to retrieve their bags. "Why did I think this would be a good idea, bringing you home for Thanksgiving?" She popped the trunk. "You’ll get to answer without saying anything. My family is very good at asking questions, then ignoring or talking over and right passed the answer. It’s the very definition of not getting a word in edge-wise."

They pulled their bags out. "It’s just insane."

"How many sisters do you have again?"

"Too freaking many, my friend. You’d think my parents didn’t know what contraception was." She rolled her eyes and closed the trunk. "Catholics. How my parents afforded six kids and sent them all to college is a bit of a mystery really."

"Hard nosed work and sweat and all that."

"More like help from my Grandparents on my Mom’s side. They’re loaded. Or my Dad’s kept his membership in the mafia a secret."

"Really?"

"Right. As if…" They climbed the stairs to the front door, but before Rebecca went for the knob, the door exploded inward and they were greeted by laughing girls. Rebecca and Michael stopped. "Ah. Here are two of my lovely sisters now."

They ignored Rebecca as they came out on to the front stoop to admire Michael, each taking an arm. "We know who you are…" said the shorter one followed by "the famous Cary Grant," from the taller. He tried to lock eyes on Rebecca as he was swept inside, into the humidity, heat and beehive chatter of a packed living room. The taller one waved her arms around. "Hey everybody. Hello! Look over here. It’s Becca’s new boyfriend!" The crowd of maybe fifteen fell nearly quiet for a brief moment, then after a few perfunctory greetings returned to its former garrulous fervor.

Rebecca poked her head in between Michael and one of her sisters and said into his ear, "let’s get rid of the bags and find my Mom."

He turned to her. "I wasn’t anticipating being confused for my roommate." They slipped from the room and down the stairs to the lower level where five men sat around a bar at the far end of a rec room festooned with various movie and sports posters. "I feel anonymous."

"Well, I haven’t really talked to anyone for a while. Been busy. All they know is what I was talking about two months ago."

"You were talking about Cary Grant two months ago?"

"Who wasn’t?"

Michael thought back to his many texts and emails with his sister and had to admit his roommate had been a source of curiosity for a while. He conceded by moving on. "Lots of people here already."

Rebecca directed him to a closet near the rack of pool cues. "Here. Put your bag in here for now. This isn’t even everyone. Tomorrow the numbers will double." She leaned into him.

"Like I said, insane."

"Becca!" One of the men called.

She looked around. "Uncle Tom." She waved.

He waved them over to the bar. "Come here, come here. I need a hug."

Rebecca and Michael went around the pool table and approached the bar, constructed of inexpensive paneling and a linoleum top. Rebecca went around to the back and gave Tom a hug. "Uncle Tom, this Michael Slocum, my friend from school. Michael, this is Tom," then she pointed around. "These are my cousins, Jim, Dave and Greg." They all shook hands with Michael, but didn’t have anything to say to him. She looked at the television. "What a surprise. You’re watching soccer. Who’s playing?"

Cousin Jim handed an empty bottle to his Dad. "Arsenal and Blackburn."

"Magic." With one easy movement, Uncle Tom reached into the fridge, produced another bottle of beer, opened it and handed it to Tom. "Cheers, son."

Cousin Jim saluted with his bottle and took a drink. He then turned to Michael. "You want anything, dude? A beer or something?"

Rebecca moved around to Michael’s side. "We’re going to find my Mom and then possibly hunt down my Dad. We’ll catch up with you hooligans later."

"Your Dad’s out in the garage with Henry. They’re trying to fix the tap. I think your Mom went to Heinen’s or somewhere. Getting more cups, whatever."

They went upstairs and turned into the kitchen, greeted by another faction – a gaggle of matronly older ladies. Rebecca stopped, grabbing hold of Michael’s hand just as one with a pronounced arch to the back and a walking stick turned to her. "Now, now. Here she is. My Becca." The old woman moved her body around. "Let me see you."

"Hi Grandma Bert." She moved to her and gave her a gentle hug. "How is my favorite Grandparent?"

Bert chortled and moved to face Michael, looking him and down. She took her walking stick and tapped him on the chest. "I’ve heard about you. You’re the one who doesn’t think he’s named after the movie star."

Michael grinned and shrugged, looking to Rebecca to say something, but she listened to another old woman explaining how she still called a refrigerator an ‘ice box.’ Michael looked back at Bert. "Um, no. That’s my roommate. But he’s a…"

Bert frowned. "You aren’t Cary?"

Michael shook his head slowly and looked at Rebecca.

Bert touched his arm. "Well, then you won’t be helping Becca here get a job in Hollywood someday."

"Um, well. No." Michael did not know if the woman was really confused or simply joking with him and he suddenly really wanted to be back in the dorm at school playing Halo 3 with the foreign kids left behind by the wholesale Thanksgiving evacuation. "I’m Michael Slocum." He stuck out his hand and she ignored it.

"You’re from New York City, though, right?" Bert winked at him for some reason.

Michael thought Rebecca had imparted a lot of the wrong information on her family. "Louisville."

"Louisville?"

"Yes. Home of bats and bourbon."

Bert squinted at him and moved closer to him. "I used to go to Louisville every year for the Derby, but stopped going after Majestic Prince won in 69. You go to Churchill Downs often? It’s a lovely place. I always liked it there." Michael realized this was what Rebecca meant by not getting a word in edgewise. "There’s so much history. But we stopped going, because of one thing or another. A shame really. I miss the paddock. The show. It was always so exciting."

Rebecca turned away from the woman who still carried on about ‘ice boxes.’ She grabbed Michael’s forearm and started to guide him through the group. "Grandma Bert, we’ll catch back up with you after we find my Dad."

"Oh, he’s out with Henry trying to fix something in the garage." As they passed her, Bert grabbed Michael by the arm and he stopped to listen. "Between you and me I think my sons are just trying to avoid this crowd in here."

He smiled, then turned to Rebecca who began pulling on him again. "I can’t imagine avoiding this crowd."

They sprung free out the back door on to the walk leading back to the garage. "Wow, we were in there for all of ten minutes and I’m sweating." Rebecca said. She stopped and turned to Michael. "I promise to make it up to you. I do. I really do."

"Don’t worry about it. I prefer to have a huge crowd than just a small one. Less chance of people focusing on me. Y’know?"

"Oh, just you wait. Everybody’s laying back at the moment, but then it will come time for them to try to impress you. My sisters that is. Not sure about anyone else, really." They went to the door to the garage and peaked in the window. "There’s my dad. The one with the screwdriver trying to pry something loose. We better say hello before he stabs himself and has to go to the hospital." She opened the door. "If you think sabotaging the beer tap is going to keep Uncle Tom and his gang from drinking all your beer…"

Jack Dando did a comic double take, then looked at his brother. "Damn, I thought we were shot of that one. Now she’s back, Hank."

His brother, idling his huge frame on a wobbly stool next to the workbench smiled. "I can never seem to shake my kids either. They just keep coming back. Dory wants me to change the locks."

Jack went toward Rebecca, arms out-stretched. "Not a bad idea, brother. Come here, you. I am very glad to see you." He hugged her. "And who’s that in the doorway looking as though he’s lost his wallet?"

Rebecca turned to Michael. "That’s my college friend, Dad. Michael Slocum."

Michael walked further into the garage to shake Jack’s hand, going for a plausible imitation of his roommate and concentrating on delivering a firm grip. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Dando."

"Mr. Dando died two years ago. God rest his soul. Call me Jack." He pumped Michael’s hand vigorously, then turned to Rebecca. "Your Mom is at the store and she’ll have final say as to whether Michael is good enough for you." He looked at Michael. "So you can relax until Viv gets back with the extra rolls and whatever the hell else she just had to get."

"Funny, Dad. I thought I had final say on Michael. Although, one of his pet peeves is when people talk about him as though he isn’t there." She looked at Michael and smiled. "So maybe he has final say on himself.

Henry Dando chortled. "Viv sure has her fooled, huh Jackie? Come on. Get the fuckin’ tap working so I can start drinkin’ some half decent beer."

"Go back in and watch the match. I just need to loosen this set screw a little more, then realign the pressure gasket." He then handed Henry the tap and his screwdriver. "But on second count, why don’t you fix the damn thing and let me talk to my daughter a while."
Michael, Rebecca and Jack left the garage and walked up the cracked cement path to a back patio, wreathed in large drifts of fallen leaves. "So Michael, are you studying film too or…"

"I’m in computer science." He shrugged. "Not nearly as fun."

"I already know how you two met, given Rebecca’s habit of killing computers. I bet you’ve had to rescue her’s a few times."

Michael suppressed a smile at Rebecca’s expense and looked at his shoes. "Not quite how we met, but, you know, like I do admit to having a look under her hood a couple of times."
Jack nodded. "So to speak."

Rebecca looked around the yard. "Okay, well…hey, you finally got rid of the swing set."

"Sold it to some Tacos that moved in down the block. Should have seen it. About ten guys in landscaping clothes showed up in the back of a pick up and in the space of about fifteen minutes the thing was taken apart and hauled away. It was like locusts devouring a corn plant."
Rebecca looked at her father. "Michael, excuse the racism. There’s great diversity here in Shaker Heights, but you’d never know it listening to some of its older residents."

"What’d I say? I simply described the scene." Jack held up his hands. "Okay, never mind."

"I do so love the holidays," Rebecca sighed.

Michael watched a rusty minivan squeeze into the small area in front of the garage. He knew the van well. The same year and make driven into a farm pond down near E-Town by his oldest brother when he was a sophomore.

"Okay. Here’s the final piece of this crazy-assed puzzle." Rebecca grabbed his hand and yanked him toward the car. "It’s my mommy! She’s home! She’s home," she called with great irony in the delivery. A woman with bleach blond hair, significant eyebrows and a skeleton of wire came springing out before Rebecca and Michael reached the car. She wore an orange bowling shirt and tight jeans with an iron-on knee patch. As she enveloped them both in a tight hug, Michael smelled cigarettes and alcohol and despite obvious flaws in the analysis, thought of Rebecca’s Mom as a female version of Noel Gallagher.

"Becca and her mmmaaan!" She drew back and gave Michael a look. "Handsome, sort of, but not dark, and, um not so tall, eh?" She looked at her daughter. "What happened to your taste, my dear? On the other hand, you’ve brought home worse before." She paused, then gave Michael an elbow in the ribs. "I’m just pulling your leg, hun." She handed him a bag. "You’ll do just fine, I’m sure."

Vivian Dando dived back into the car and grabbed another two grocery bags. "Come on let’s get inside before the whole damn gang riots." They all started for the back door and Michael couldn’t help but notice that Jack had silently disappeared.

Rebecca leaned into Michael and whispered, "it’s going to be a long, long, terrible weekend."

She squeezed his elbow. "I’ll make it up to you."

As they retreated into the stuffed house, he decided the consolation would more than make up for the inevitable discomfort of this cacophonous knot of humanity.

Charade - Chapter Thirty

2008-03-25T16:52:00.002Z

Paul Sundquist followed Cary out the door to the garage. "Here." Cary turned to him just as he tossed his keys. "You can drive. I’ve had enough of traffic."

Cary caught the keys then looked at the sleek, dark Lexus parked before them. He blinked, knowing the last thing he wanted to do was drive the father of his girlfriend’s luxury automobile around unfamiliar streets. He turned to Paul. "Mr. Sundquist I'd love to drive this. But I don’t know how to drive." He regretted saying this immediately, but hoped to skate through it okay.

Paul seized up on his trek around to the passenger side. "What? Is this some sort of New York humor? What do you mean you don’t know how to drive?"

Cary moved to Paul holding the keys out to him. "I’ve never driven a car. I’ve never needed to. I just haven’t learned."

Paul stared at him, but did not move, taking the keys back almost in slow motion. "This is just like in the movies." He became animated again and went to the driver side as Cary went around to get in to the car. "Do you like movies? A guy with your name sort of has to, right?"
Cary thought of Charlotte’s warning about subtexts, then quickly searched for hidden meaning in the question about movies, coming up empty. He sat down in the plush leather experience of the Sundquist Lexus, not truly believing an automobile could be this radically comfortable. "Well, believe it or not, I am not much of a fan. I mean, I like movies okay. I don’t have anything against them, but I don’t know much about them." He wondered how convincing he sounded to a sharp attorney used to ferreting out prevarication.

Paul got in as well, his door swinging shut with a solid, muffled thunk. "Really? I read statistics that said kids your age are crazy about movies. Spend a lot of money on them. Charlotte, though. Well, she’s like you. Not much of a movie-goer. Is that a word? Goer?"

"I’ve noticed. She’s never menioned my Hollywood doppelganger. It’s one of the many things I appreciate about her." Cary closed his door and Paul started the engine, pushing the garage door button almost simultaneously.

"I’m glad we’re going to have a little time running this errand together. It’s important for a father to gauge the worth of the young man who is sleeping with his daughter." He began to back out.

Cary buckled up and tried to look at ease with this sudden notice of intent to depose. "Uh, right. Of course."

"I just hope for your sake you haven’t told her that you love her."

Cary felt a head and heartache coming on along with a powerful longing to be back on campus. "Charlotte warned me about you, Mr. Sundquist." Cary thought this note of comic honesty a winning response. But Paul remained quiet as they drove down the driveway and out on to the leafy suburban street. As they drove Cary studied the other houses intently. He decided to break the silence. "I have to say that you did the right thing in going contemporary with your house. It’s really the best in the neighborhood. And I don’t mean that to sound so patronizing. Displays a great sense of the site. As a student, maybe I can get away with saying that."

"Thanks. It wasn’t an easy sell in this development. Most everyone is enamored with the traditional McMansion. But we had to have something different. We both did." He took the wheel with both hands and shifted in his seat. "You know, after P.J. died, we simply had to make up our minds we would change. We rededicated, we took Charlotte out of a lot of her endless array of activities, we stopped the ridiculous charade of attending church, we stopped judging our friends, we built the house we wanted and we started taking our medications. Hell, Cary we were all supposed to be on something and had avoided it for years. Felt ashamed of what drugs could do for us."

Cary became even more uncomfortable on two new levels. First, because Paul Sundquist suddenly felt a need to become exceedingly intimate and the second at the mention of a family death. A death Charlotte never mentioned before and one he desperately wanted to know more about. "I envy your ability to radically make changes. I don’t know if I can ever be so radical. For me, things just sort of occur. I’ve spent my life reacting."

"Well, if you are your Mother’s son." He shot a glance at him as they turned out on to Higgins Road. "You will someday embrace a more proactive approach."

"I’m sorry, but can you tell me about P.J.? Is it okay to ask that? Charlotte has never…"

"Five years ago, Charlotte’s older brother, Paul was killed in an auto accident coming home from school. I am not really that surprised Charlotte has never talked about it. It was devastating, of course, I mean, as you can only imagine."

"I am really sorry to hear about this, this, I, well, I don’t know what to say."

"That’s surprising. From what I hear from Charlotte you rarely find it difficult knowing exactly what to say."

Cary watched light sprinkles of rain begin to dot the windshield, evening descending upon the Northwest suburbs as they rode to the wine store. "I don’t think I deserve that reputation. Afterall," he looked at Paul, "I actually did tell Charlotte I love her."

Paul shook his head slowly. "Caused trouble, didn’t it?"

"Well. Perhaps communicating it was, maybe premature?"

He made a face. "Here’s a little tip on that. She used to be quite an empathetic soul. Almost to the point of being unhealthy. Her first year at French Camp she latched on to a kid battling cancer or M-S, because of something, who knows. Anyway, she professed a love and deep understanding of this kid." Paul looked at Cary. "Understand these were eight year olds. But she stayed closely in touch with this girl who lived in, I don’t know, maybe Colorado? They traded letters all the time, then eventually, after a number of years moved high tech into their own chat room. Then, one day, nothing. The girl stopped communicating. Drove Charlotte crazy. The girl just disappeared. Quite obviously she was a sick little girl and she probably died." Paul nodded and paused for a moment. "And, of course, there’s P.J. They were nearly inseparable, always told each other how much they loved each other -- in an honest way. I mean, nothing weird, you know. It was genuine and they expressed it. He didn’t just disappear, obviously. He did die. But what it means is she’s probably not going to profess love for anyone for a long time." He turned into the parking lot of a posh-looking, multi-storied retail establishment. "Here we are -- Nirvana for a snob. The Wine Cask." He eased into a space and turned the engine off. "Look, Cary. My daughter may not like that expression. Maybe she hasn’t been as open as she needs to be with you, but she’s the one with subtext. She’s constructed neat compartments these days. Compartments with airtight seals. Maybe find a tactful way of having her open up a bit about P.J. I think she may want to, but is so trapped by her rules. She’s," he gathered himself up tightly, "protective of that, of that relationship. Maybe afraid of the feelings still surrounding her. On the other hand she may blow a gasket." He shrugged his shoulders, then looked up and out the windshield, presumably at the drizzle now picking up pace. "By the way, you are nothing like P.J., if you were going to wonder about some sort of a projection issue." He opened his door. "Now, let’s go find the right thing for tomorrow."

Cary got out as well, deep in thought. Charlotte’s father did not seem interested in cross-examining him or discovery or whatever subtext he would normally search for. It seemed to Cary that he was all about putting Charlotte’s approach to the relationship into context. They entered into the dimly lit and cool confines of The Wine Cask, wove through the bustling holiday crowd and climbed stairs to a loft. "Up here, Cary. This is where they keep the Iberians I like. Those tremendous Riojas." He stopped at the top of the stairwell. "These stores are great for my pretentious side. I can nearly be drawn into self-parody here." Paul began to browse, Cary following after him, still deep in thought. "So what do your parents think of Charlotte?"

Cary heard this and once again found words difficult to conjure in response to such forthright questioning. "She was a hit."

"You can do better than that."

"My Mom thought she was lovely and my Dad rendered no opinion, which is typical of him. But we don’t have those types of conversations anyway. It’s not like he’s going to volunteer anything. Just the way he is." Paul stopped and looked at a bottle, then moved on.
Cary looked at the same bottle before moving to catch up with Paul. "So, if you don’t mind me asking, how do you cope? I mean, Charlotte is amazing, given what’s happened in her life."

"For me?"

"Sorry, you don’t have to…"

"I cope by going to a shrink twice a week, Yoga, 300 milligrams of Zoloft, unhealthy levels of caffeine, an occasional Percocet." Paul shrugged. "Unfortunately, this regimen doesn’t help my wife. She leans hard on a variety of Schedule 2 controlled substances." He stopped and looked at Cary. "She’s been dying ever since the phone rang."

"Really, sorry…"

"Relax."

"I didn’t…"

"Look, with so much shit that’s gone down, I’m not worried what you think of me. Hell, holidays are when you get to find out why people are the way they are. Am I right? Your girlfriend is going to get some dimension to her."

"I shouldn’t have…" Cary did not know what else to say so he pulled a bottle out, looked at the label and handed it to Paul. "Here. What about this?" Paul took the bottle and began to look at it. "Who knows what other little, tiny, subtle land mines she has placed within me that will float to the surface this weekend."

Paul smirked and nodded. "Christ almighty kid, this is a good choice. Really solid. Let’s find a few others. It’s a long weekend. You hold this for now." He handed the bottle back. "I am going to instruct Charlotte that she is not allowed to let you go. A young man with your kind of aesthetic…" He turned and nodded his head again. "Well, it just doesn’t happen."

"Please, no flattery. It’s genetic or something. I take little if any responsibility."

Paul sighed. "When is your generation going to start taking responsibility?"

"When the revolution is televised. That’s what my roommate says. I say it’s when the televisions all get thrown out the window." Cary stopped again and pulled another bottle out from a coven of wicked looking Catalons.

"I was being sarcastic."

"So was I." He put the bottle back in. "Too much of the sea breeze in these. Do they have anything from Portugal?"

"What are you, fifty? We should be wearing ascots and discussing your position on debenture bonds.

Cary smiled. "Cut it out, Mr. Sundquist. I’m just trying to be helpful. Don’t start sounding like the guys in the dorm."

"Okay. No debenture bond jokes. That’s noted. So what are your parents doing this Thanksgiving? Your Mom and Dad are divorced, is that right?"

"Have been since I can remember. Mom and her assistant are in Milan and my Dad is at my Aunt’s in Yonkers tomorrow."

"Milan! Excellent. Have you been?"

"Sorry to say I have not been out of the country yet." Cary shrugged. "Maybe some day."

"You’ll get there." Paul pointed across the room. "Let’s go over there. Some unassuming Vinho Tinto might be there for us. Blends are good in mixed company." They began to walk.

"A wine should always be unassuming, don’t you think?"

"Jesus. What are you, a sommelier too?"

"My Dad insisted I be well rounded."

"But you don’t watch television. How well rounded can you be?"

"Good point. Maybe he meant well adjusted."

"So the scene in Yonkers isn’t your cup of tea?"

"Yonkers? It’s an okay place. My Aunt’s okay in a vacuum. You put the two of them together, add my Uncle and four wild cousins and it becomes insane very quickly."

"Don’t be too harsh. You haven’t seen what tomorrow may bring."

They stopped in front of an impressive array of Vinho Tinto. Paul pulled out a Vale de Bomfin from 2004. "Look at this. Eleven bucks. Can’t beat this, kid. Hell, I should buy a case."

Cary pulled a different bottle. "Maybe you should buy a case of this too. You know, for Christmas."

"Evel Douro. 2003. Wait a minute. This is seven dollars. Outrageous." He chewed his lower lip and turned on his heals. "Okay. Two of these and two of those. Yes. We’re done being pretentious. Time to go home to the women and drink."

Cary put his hands in his pockets and followed Paul down the stairs. "As an officer of the court…"

"You’re surprised I’d be willing to violate Article Ten, Section six dash sixteen of the Liquor Control Act of 1934?"

"Wow, that’s impressive."

"I have no idea if that’s right, but it sounds good, doesn’t it? I really only know parts of the tax code."

"Corruption of youth." Cary shook his head.

"Class A Misdemeanor. It’s living on the edge, Cary. We’re living on the acceptable fringe of the unacceptable." They pulled up at the check out and Paul turned to him. "Do you have any money?"

Cary searched Paul’s face for a sign of humor, but didn’t find any hints. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. "I thought you got your allowance today?" He said while starting to root around for the bills.

When he looked up he saw Paul handing over his AMEX Platinum, shaking his head. "Cary, I swear. Keep your milk money, kiddo. You’re covered. Put that away and I hope I don’t see it again for a long time."

They completed the transaction, interrupted momentarily by Paul waving and saying hello to someone he knew. Bag in hand he and Cary scurried out into the steady rain and into the warm dry Lexus. Paul handed the bag to Cary. "A penny saved is a penny earned." He glanced over. "My wine-buying motto."

"You are a utility purchaser. It’s not a mere hobby." Cary peeked into the bag. "Very European of you."

As they drove back to the house Cary considered the last few set pieces in their shopping experience. Charlotte’s father seemed to be giddy with relief Cary had proven worthy of the wine store. Either that or he saw a chance to regain a father-son dynamic. This prospect concerned Cary. "Do you think Charlotte is going to be upset with you for telling me about P.J.?"

Paul kept quiet for a few seconds, bouncing his head back and forth as he considered. "I give it 50-50. She should not be upset, because it’s a critical piece of who she is now and she should have told you when things became serious. So I guess she should be pissed at herself. Then again, maybe she’ll be relieved you know about our tragedy. I think…" Paul suddenly shifted in his seat as though a sudden great idea made sitting impossible. "…part of bringing you home was to tell you about the brother she lost."

"I feel tremendous responsibility."

"And nary a television went out a window."

Charade - Chapter Twenty Nine

2008-03-25T16:49:00.002Z

Charlotte leaned over Cary sharply, trying to get a first glimpse of her home city as they felt the G-force of their plane banking tightly to get into the pattern over Lake Michigan. The first of the holidays were before them, Cary having agreed to go home with Charlotte, thus avoiding the debate about time share with his parents and secretly hoping to convince Charlotte she really did love him after all. It had been a dull and routine run-in to Thanksgiving as the relationship settled precariously on the thin ice of unspoken emotional disparity. If only to avoid the enormous triteness of only one in the pair being capable of love, he plotted ways to break through to the other side, to persuade her of the feelings he believed smothered in some sort of heavy shit from perhaps not so long ago. He could sense this only, since evidence proved impossible to come by in the hermetically sealed confines of their student life. Cary hoped to be correct, hoped he could figure it out.

Cary looked out the window of their Airbus 319 and looked at the scalloped shoreline running North toward Wisconsin. "You didn’t tell your parents this was my first time to Chicago did you?" he finally said, looking into her ear as she continued to study the view.

"Oh no, come on. If anyone is more unlikely to say something to trigger a rage of parental tourism, I’d like to meet them. Anything to avoid embarrassing bouts of and here’s this and there’s that." She straightened up. "I first flew when I was two months old and haven’t gone a year since without being on these buckets, yet I still never get tired of looking out the window when we land."

"There’s a post-modern beauty to looking at cities from above. The architecture is in abstract, but the patterns formed by the land and the streets and the structures give you the first impression."

"Okay, professor. Settle down. You’ll have plenty of time to spout design-speak with my father. Wait till you see the house."

"Oh?" Cary kept looking out the window.

"You’ve been warned." She added. "A rock, steel and glass box in a neighborhood of twisty streets and vinyl sided mini mansions."

"You should see my dad’s place. I pass no judgements on residential architecture. It’s a result of far too many variables out of the hands of a designer."

"Oh, my. You and my Dad are going to get along really well."

"Are you being sarcastic?"

"No. I was being maybe a little facetious."

"Tell me the difference?" He whispered into her ear. "I love it when we mince words."

"Stop it."

"Really."

"Anyway, Dad likes to talk about every pretentious subject there is, so…"

"So architecture is pretentious?"

"Oh, not at all. Maybe talking about it is." She shrugged. "You’ll see what I mean."

"I know, I know. You met my mother. I know exactly what you’re talking about. She doesn’t speak unless it’s laced with pretension."

"I thought that was your father who was like that." She settled back into her seat, tightening her lap belt.

Cary looked out the window. "No, he only sounds pretentious, because of the language, not the subject matter." His face became a question mark. "Does that make sense?"

"A little, yeah." She pointed to his belt. "Tighten that up. We’ll bounce around because of the heat island. And, you know, mincing words could be construed as pretentious. Should we be concerned about that?"

"Right now I am only concerned that you just referenced the term heat island."

She cocked her head and smiled. "Well, some chicks know what Ingmar Bergman was trying to say with the Seventh Seal and others know, um," Charlotte pointed out the window just as the plane pitched up, then down, "science!"

Cary entered this pointed reference to Rebecca into a log of quite a few over the last few weeks, since Celebration Day Weekend when she and Michael became a couple. The two were nearly inseparable, texting constantly, arguing whether or not Network Television was dead, discussing the literary merits of comic books and being witnessed in various stages of undress. "Remind me to ask you about The Seventh Seal when we’re down." The plane pitched again, the wings waddling across an invisible ocean sound."

"Don’t ask me. I pulled that out of thin air. Ask your other girlfriend."

"Ouch. What is that supposed to mean?"

She didn’t say anything in reply, instead looking by Cary, out on to the flat gray and brown carpet of Northern Cook County. "Ah, Skokie!"

"Maybe what I meant by asking you about The Seventh Seal is I wanted you to tell me what is going on in your head -- why you make these little comments." He looked out the window
too, then at her. "Maybe later?"

She sat back again. "If we have any time to ourselves. Maybe." The plane pitched again. "But think about this. All those pop culture-spouting people out there in the world. Are they really just trying to dazzle us with a different kind of trivial intellectualism?"

"You mean, rather than the standard version of trivia about, say, oh, heat islands?"
Charlotte released a quick and quiet laugh, looking out the window again. "Look at the wing tip. They’re fighting a heavy cross wind."

Cary looked out too. "I can relate."

"Oh stop that." She pointed out the window. "Look it’s the Rosemont Arena. They call it the Allstate Arena now, but I saw my first concert there when I was 12." She nodded. "Everything has to have a brand name attached to it."

"Now who’s having a here’s this here’s that moment?" The plane dipped, then came up. Cary tightened his belt a bit more. "Can’t wait until we get down on the ground."

"Just another 30 seconds or so. I remember when I was a kid we were landing at Narita. Wow, did we bounce. I was on the ceiling. And we were in a 747. Getting tossed like a lawn dart." The plane eased to the ground and as they rolled out Charlotte leaned close to Cary. "Just remember something about my Dad. Remember he’s a lawyer. A hot shot one at that. Everything he says or asks has a subtext. He may be a bit of a blubbering sycophant when it comes to creative types, but he is still looking for everybody’s angle."

"I’ll keep that in mind."

"I’m not too worried about you. I don’t know if I have ever met someone so void of angles as you. He’ll be disappointed."

Cary looked at his watch, because it seemed like a good thing to do, then straightened his cuffs. "I have only one angle."

Charlotte watched him fuss with his cuffs and shirt. "I don’t believe you." She pulled her cell phone out of her backpack and turned it on. Then she realized what he meant. "We’ve been through this now, right? Just because you’re coming to Thanksgiving with me doesn’t mean, like, we’re going to measure up for a life long love affair. And don’t look all tortured on me. You know the rules." She hit the speed dial and put the phone up to her ear. "Mom. Hey. Yep. We’ll be coming out just as soon as our little feets can take us. Right. Yes. Bye."

He looked at her. "We’re just going steady."

"Singles going steady, Cary. That’s what we have been all along." To him, this sounded too contrived, as though she was quoting someone else. He did not believe the statement reflected the entire picture. They sat quietly until the plane docked at the gate and the seat belt sign went off. Charlotte put a hand on his knee. "You’re not going to be your father and I am not going to be your mother. But we are here for next couple of days to find out what we are going to be instead of that."

Cary felt a mixture of disappointment, revelation and frustration. As he waited to deplane, bent beneath the overhead, super-cool air shooting into his ear and small carry on in hand disappointment clouded up inside him. Yes, over studying and sailing a relationship in a heavy-handed manner attempting to maintain order, to understand, to be accepted and loved, repeated family history. He had as much as admitted this paradigm on occasion and it had never appeared to bother Charlotte. This revelation caused a new sense of frustration. So why had she made this empty statement at this point, at the beginning of the holiday weekend? Charlotte, beautiful and smart to be sure, did not want to appear in love and yet by sheer insistence, there they were, traipsing down the aisle of an Airbus 319 on the way into a moment of time where the unspoken agenda would be crowned by gaining parental acceptance.

The smell of musty indoor/outdoor carpet and bite of Northern Illinois November darting in through the cracks between the jetway and the Airbus brought Cary out of his trance. "So what am I doing here? What’s the objective?"

She stopped and waited for him to catch up. "What do you mean what are you doing here, what’s the objective? There has to be one?" Charlotte hooked her arm into his. "I would try to wink at you right now, but my contacts are killing me and my eye might not re-open. You’re my man, Cary. It’s a Holiday." They continued up the ramp to the terminal door. "We’re here to relax, eat, drink, show you off to the relations. Oh, and for you to finally figure me out. Again, I’d wink, but that airplane air has screwed up my eyes.

"You are so full of warm and fuzzy Thanksgiving spirit." Cary said this more sharply than he wanted.

"Hey, you know, I try."

They burst out into the terminal concourse, the bustle of which reminded Cary of Midtown. This similarity relaxed him as he quickly felt more in his element within the noise and diversity of a major international city. It made him quite nearly homesick, but then he remembered some Thanksgivings from the near past and immediately became re-enthused about spending time safely tucked away with Charlotte, regardless of her program.
They met up with Charlotte’s Mom just beyond security. Cary did not remember her looking so old and frail when they had met a month earlier at Aversham. Donna Sundquist seemed like she was about to keel over at any moment, put upon by the labor of retrieving her daughter from O’Hare. "Cary it’s good to see you again." She said automatically as they turned toward the escalators.

"Nice being here. Thank you for inviting me. I look forward to spending some time in Chicago." Cary rattled this off as though he had been rehearsing it all the way from Columbus.
"I assume you didn’t check anything so we’ll head straight for the car. Paul should be home by the time we get there. He had a meeting, naturally, but promised to be home to welcome you two." As she spoke Cary could not get over the fact that she sounded so tired and mechanical. Even her hug with Charlotte seemed perfunctory.

"The beat of commerce never ceases." Charlotte offered up. "A corporate tax attorney’s job is never complete."

"Naturally." Donna sighed.

"It seems colder here than it was in Ohio." Cary blurted not knowing what else to say. The Sundquist women chose to ignore his meteorological observation to his great relief.
They began to descend the escalator leading to the passage for the parking garage. Cary thought about his expectations for the long weekend, then thought about Michael and Rebecca, wondering how their time together will play out.