Being an excerpt from my new book that certain readers might want to skip Part Thirteen
NOTE: While everyone is, of course, free to read, these particular excerpts are, essentially, footnotes provided for readers of my books and are there to make sense of what they are reading AS THEY READ. So, they may not make as much sense to those who are not reading at the time...
Already behaving under the lack of impulse control, or maybe acting like an eight-year-old without the necessary aid of priests and nuns that Terry the future maniac assassin had, reading and an ad on the back of a comic book that promised if I sent back the coupon, I could earn $10,000 in six months. With that kind of money in the bank, and the interest I could earn—yes, brainy Irish-Jewish lad, I already understood interest—I could rid myself of that horrid Douglaston shithole in a few years. I stole a stamp from my incognizant father and off in the mail went that coupon.
A few weeks later a huge box full of greeting cards arrived with a letter promising that, great salesman they understood me to be, if I sold all the cards quickly to my friends and family members, at ten cents apiece, they’d send another box ASAP and another, and another, and, before you knew it, I’d have my $10,000! But, first, pay up $39.95 for this lot!
My father saw the box, beat the crap out of me, not for stealing the stamp, but for being so incompetently stupid, and told me that, after he paid the $39.95 now owed for the first box, I’d pay him back by finding a job. One thing led to a Rube Goldberg other and I ended up sweeping those floors in the garment district and I was shockingly happy about this because I saw an opportunity to earn money, save it up, and move the heck out. Anyway.
That was the garment district job which began this memory hole. I have a lot of experience sweeping up and doing other janitorial chores. I swept the floors, picked up choppings, and delivered racks on the street, like you see in old movies. Plus, that job afforded me the ability to travel into the city. On my own at nine years old. Then WOO. Where I started out sweeping the floors.
Yes. I do know how to handle a broom. Maybe I should have stayed in that line, like I said.
But, because I do know how to handle a broom, I became a writer, artist of sorts and met Robin, and a lot more at all of fourteen years old. Not old enough to carry a green card. Thanks to the broom, Benny finagled that house musician job for me at Steve Paul’s club, and all those gig’s around town.
Terry hung out at “The Scene” occasionally. I never spoke to him there. I would see him with various people, rarely the same people twice. But who knows. Before my second set, I had too many screwdrivers to notice much. I turned into a lush for a while, true. Terry hung around in the crowds at those benefit concerts, connected to some or another group we were playing for, but never there to listen, there to organize, mingling, walking around, talking to people.
Because Terry had become that young scholar, after all. Went on to college at Stanford. Became a hippie, if you want to call it that. He ended up at The Farm with Hugh Romney and Ken Kesey, up in Oregon, where he became one of the Merry Pranksters. But Terry wasn’t that “merry.” Yes, he was the prankster…ha ha...but not that merry.
One item that impressed me with myself for a long time happened as 1968 turned into 1969. A call came in from a friend of a friend to Dan asking him to provide a lecture on the underground press at the Society for Ethical Culture. He turned around. I was sitting next to him at the time, and he asked me to do it for him. Okay.
Snow waited in the pinkish clouds the evening of the lecture. I walked up Fifth Avenue and the mauve sky had fully descended upon the top of the Empire State building. I walked wherever I went in those days, whenever possible, despite distances, and this long walk to the Upper West Side captured the brisk December night full of beautiful sounds, the charming crowds reflecting the holiday lights everywhere, and I felt sober, merrily soaking it all in while rehashing what I would say. Freshly bathed with pine scent, clean shaven, wearing laundered-crisp white shirt, black commando sweater, right up to my Army jacket. Even ironed my jeans.
The marble and stone front of the building was not unfamiliar to me, having passed it by many times before. When I walked into the foyer, the face of Beth Gourmet appeared, and she greeted me alongside fellow Society members Sondra Goodyear and Neil Fabricant. Ah, ethics. We had met before at a cozy party where Dan invited me to share the snorting of some fine heroin with same Sondra and Neil, sans Beth. Sutton Place. Only the best for them. Not my last time for that dust.
We went inside to the Society rooms and the lecture hall, already filling up, and behind to the stage. They sat down and there, sitting between them, in the front row, wearing a black beret, wraparound sunglasses, a black turtleneck and black jeans was Terry.
Two people came up from WOO, Dean Lattimer, a contributing writer, and a friend of his, a nursing student from Alabama, the first down-home Southerners I’d ever met. They sat a few rows back, quite stoned, smiling profusely, and waving to me giddily. Dean wore his armor, a buckskin coat with full leather frills and Kitty, the nurse, a feathery boa that I stared at probably too long, wondering if and how it could possibly keep her warm.
Sondra Goodyear—yes, that Goodyear—arose gracefully and introduced me from the audience. They all applauded. More applause than I ever received for my music, or anything else. I hadn’t yet said a word. I began, talking about the history of alternative press in the country, highlighting Tom Paine, the broadsides, the freedom presses that exposed slavery before and during the Civil War, the birth of Harper’s and The Nation and about the rebel journalists and muckrakers during and after the Gilded Age and moved quickly to the 1950s and 1960s, focusing on I. F. Stone. I felt Terry staring at me through those black lenses. I knew I this covered territory people had heard of in their social studies classes. I attempted to glance past him when I scanned that portion of the audience. I could not but help myself, pausing at Dean and Kitty, who, when they weren’t talking to each other and drawing stares from the people around them, were smiling and waving at me.
As I reached the conclusion, I improvised a scoonch, and expanded upon what I already had to say about the new Underground Press Syndicate, which Dan and I had formed, and our connections with the Black Panther Party’s newspapers around the country. In fact, this had been work I instigated on my own, without Dan Zimmer’s knowledge, originally. I talked about the common issues and common goals—I pointedly used the term “common enemies”—that the majority of those on the left had being voiced through the underground newspapers of the day, and which was a marvel in terms of their diversity of expression. More applause. Lecture over.
No.
Terry stood up. “Very good, man. Very insightful.” He turned around to face the audience. “However, my white friend here has overlooked several factors. First, ever since the foundation of this country, built upon a lie by seemingly good people, the white man has been arguing with himself, this so-called left-right dichotomy that supposedly brings some white brothers together with the genuinely oppressed brothers and sisters. It is an artificial thing, man, a mockery of reality. It comes out of a fascination with philosophy and idealism. The roots for it are in the mind, man. The real struggle,” he turned back to me for a moment, and back to the audience, “the real struggle for the oppressed comes from the lived reality they carry with them as a daily burden, the poverty, the distress, the hunger. Not,” without looking, he waved at me, “this.” More applause. For him. And he walked away.
The crowd broke up. Sondra, Neil and Beth chatted with Terry while Dean and Kitty nudged through the crowd to coo with me. Terry came back and, with a quick smile, shook my hand, walked away, and took the main attention with him. I saw it, and felt it, while I stood there with Dean and Kitty fawning on me. I had a feeling like surrender itself. As if he’d delivered the KO punch and I could hear the bell ringing and the announcer’s call ringside. I wanted to scream for help.
“You knocked the motherfuckers out!” Dean blew into my face.
“That was sooo exciting!” Kitty’s added, stumbling and folding over herself, clutching Dean’s arm.
Other people were mingling, a few walking up to me, telling me what a nice talk I gave, thanking me and asking if they could chat with me at the reception. Nice words you hear. I know. I’ve said them myself. I smiled. After all, this was not a Warhol party.
I looked at Dean and Kitty. “There’s a reception. I’ll bet you’ve got the munchies…”
“Shit, yeah…” Dean giggled.
A man in quicksand keeps sinking whether he is immobile or fighting for escape. What he needs is a rescuer from the outside to pull him from the pit. That’s his singular chance. I’ve never been in quicksand, per se. I don’t know if there is a discrete moment of self-discovery when you decide there’s no point in panicking. Or that it is equally conscientious to panic all you want because it makes no difference.
I suppose that, when you are in a panic attack, an anxiety attack, there must be a similar moment of discovery. But I should insert a word of caution here because there are no generalizations about panic attacks. To each his own. There must be one. There must be a moment when you feel the full impact of the fact that you are inside a panic attack, that you’ve reached the point of lost control, when you can’t pull yourself out. You need help from the outside. If that help isn’t there you keep sinking into the panic. And that’s when you are gone. After which it’s a question of time, or fate, or whatever you want to call it.
It’s never happened to me.
Already behaving under the lack of impulse control, or maybe acting like an eight-year-old without the necessary aid of priests and nuns that Terry the future maniac assassin had, reading and an ad on the back of a comic book that promised if I sent back the coupon, I could earn $10,000 in six months. With that kind of money in the bank, and the interest I could earn—yes, brainy Irish-Jewish lad, I already understood interest—I could rid myself of that horrid Douglaston shithole in a few years. I stole a stamp from my incognizant father and off in the mail went that coupon.
A few weeks later a huge box full of greeting cards arrived with a letter promising that, great salesman they understood me to be, if I sold all the cards quickly to my friends and family members, at ten cents apiece, they’d send another box ASAP and another, and another, and, before you knew it, I’d have my $10,000! But, first, pay up $39.95 for this lot!
My father saw the box, beat the crap out of me, not for stealing the stamp, but for being so incompetently stupid, and told me that, after he paid the $39.95 now owed for the first box, I’d pay him back by finding a job. One thing led to a Rube Goldberg other and I ended up sweeping those floors in the garment district and I was shockingly happy about this because I saw an opportunity to earn money, save it up, and move the heck out. Anyway.
That was the garment district job which began this memory hole. I have a lot of experience sweeping up and doing other janitorial chores. I swept the floors, picked up choppings, and delivered racks on the street, like you see in old movies. Plus, that job afforded me the ability to travel into the city. On my own at nine years old. Then WOO. Where I started out sweeping the floors.
Yes. I do know how to handle a broom. Maybe I should have stayed in that line, like I said.
But, because I do know how to handle a broom, I became a writer, artist of sorts and met Robin, and a lot more at all of fourteen years old. Not old enough to carry a green card. Thanks to the broom, Benny finagled that house musician job for me at Steve Paul’s club, and all those gig’s around town.
Terry hung out at “The Scene” occasionally. I never spoke to him there. I would see him with various people, rarely the same people twice. But who knows. Before my second set, I had too many screwdrivers to notice much. I turned into a lush for a while, true. Terry hung around in the crowds at those benefit concerts, connected to some or another group we were playing for, but never there to listen, there to organize, mingling, walking around, talking to people.
Because Terry had become that young scholar, after all. Went on to college at Stanford. Became a hippie, if you want to call it that. He ended up at The Farm with Hugh Romney and Ken Kesey, up in Oregon, where he became one of the Merry Pranksters. But Terry wasn’t that “merry.” Yes, he was the prankster…ha ha...but not that merry.
One item that impressed me with myself for a long time happened as 1968 turned into 1969. A call came in from a friend of a friend to Dan asking him to provide a lecture on the underground press at the Society for Ethical Culture. He turned around. I was sitting next to him at the time, and he asked me to do it for him. Okay.
Snow waited in the pinkish clouds the evening of the lecture. I walked up Fifth Avenue and the mauve sky had fully descended upon the top of the Empire State building. I walked wherever I went in those days, whenever possible, despite distances, and this long walk to the Upper West Side captured the brisk December night full of beautiful sounds, the charming crowds reflecting the holiday lights everywhere, and I felt sober, merrily soaking it all in while rehashing what I would say. Freshly bathed with pine scent, clean shaven, wearing laundered-crisp white shirt, black commando sweater, right up to my Army jacket. Even ironed my jeans.
The marble and stone front of the building was not unfamiliar to me, having passed it by many times before. When I walked into the foyer, the face of Beth Gourmet appeared, and she greeted me alongside fellow Society members Sondra Goodyear and Neil Fabricant. Ah, ethics. We had met before at a cozy party where Dan invited me to share the snorting of some fine heroin with same Sondra and Neil, sans Beth. Sutton Place. Only the best for them. Not my last time for that dust.
We went inside to the Society rooms and the lecture hall, already filling up, and behind to the stage. They sat down and there, sitting between them, in the front row, wearing a black beret, wraparound sunglasses, a black turtleneck and black jeans was Terry.
Two people came up from WOO, Dean Lattimer, a contributing writer, and a friend of his, a nursing student from Alabama, the first down-home Southerners I’d ever met. They sat a few rows back, quite stoned, smiling profusely, and waving to me giddily. Dean wore his armor, a buckskin coat with full leather frills and Kitty, the nurse, a feathery boa that I stared at probably too long, wondering if and how it could possibly keep her warm.
Sondra Goodyear—yes, that Goodyear—arose gracefully and introduced me from the audience. They all applauded. More applause than I ever received for my music, or anything else. I hadn’t yet said a word. I began, talking about the history of alternative press in the country, highlighting Tom Paine, the broadsides, the freedom presses that exposed slavery before and during the Civil War, the birth of Harper’s and The Nation and about the rebel journalists and muckrakers during and after the Gilded Age and moved quickly to the 1950s and 1960s, focusing on I. F. Stone. I felt Terry staring at me through those black lenses. I knew I this covered territory people had heard of in their social studies classes. I attempted to glance past him when I scanned that portion of the audience. I could not but help myself, pausing at Dean and Kitty, who, when they weren’t talking to each other and drawing stares from the people around them, were smiling and waving at me.
As I reached the conclusion, I improvised a scoonch, and expanded upon what I already had to say about the new Underground Press Syndicate, which Dan and I had formed, and our connections with the Black Panther Party’s newspapers around the country. In fact, this had been work I instigated on my own, without Dan Zimmer’s knowledge, originally. I talked about the common issues and common goals—I pointedly used the term “common enemies”—that the majority of those on the left had being voiced through the underground newspapers of the day, and which was a marvel in terms of their diversity of expression. More applause. Lecture over.
No.
Terry stood up. “Very good, man. Very insightful.” He turned around to face the audience. “However, my white friend here has overlooked several factors. First, ever since the foundation of this country, built upon a lie by seemingly good people, the white man has been arguing with himself, this so-called left-right dichotomy that supposedly brings some white brothers together with the genuinely oppressed brothers and sisters. It is an artificial thing, man, a mockery of reality. It comes out of a fascination with philosophy and idealism. The roots for it are in the mind, man. The real struggle,” he turned back to me for a moment, and back to the audience, “the real struggle for the oppressed comes from the lived reality they carry with them as a daily burden, the poverty, the distress, the hunger. Not,” without looking, he waved at me, “this.” More applause. For him. And he walked away.
The crowd broke up. Sondra, Neil and Beth chatted with Terry while Dean and Kitty nudged through the crowd to coo with me. Terry came back and, with a quick smile, shook my hand, walked away, and took the main attention with him. I saw it, and felt it, while I stood there with Dean and Kitty fawning on me. I had a feeling like surrender itself. As if he’d delivered the KO punch and I could hear the bell ringing and the announcer’s call ringside. I wanted to scream for help.
“You knocked the motherfuckers out!” Dean blew into my face.
“That was sooo exciting!” Kitty’s added, stumbling and folding over herself, clutching Dean’s arm.
Other people were mingling, a few walking up to me, telling me what a nice talk I gave, thanking me and asking if they could chat with me at the reception. Nice words you hear. I know. I’ve said them myself. I smiled. After all, this was not a Warhol party.
I looked at Dean and Kitty. “There’s a reception. I’ll bet you’ve got the munchies…”
“Shit, yeah…” Dean giggled.
A man in quicksand keeps sinking whether he is immobile or fighting for escape. What he needs is a rescuer from the outside to pull him from the pit. That’s his singular chance. I’ve never been in quicksand, per se. I don’t know if there is a discrete moment of self-discovery when you decide there’s no point in panicking. Or that it is equally conscientious to panic all you want because it makes no difference.
I suppose that, when you are in a panic attack, an anxiety attack, there must be a similar moment of discovery. But I should insert a word of caution here because there are no generalizations about panic attacks. To each his own. There must be one. There must be a moment when you feel the full impact of the fact that you are inside a panic attack, that you’ve reached the point of lost control, when you can’t pull yourself out. You need help from the outside. If that help isn’t there you keep sinking into the panic. And that’s when you are gone. After which it’s a question of time, or fate, or whatever you want to call it.
It’s never happened to me.
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