Shake Your Coffee Maker

Behold the grandeur that is the Melitta ME10TDS Digital Coffeemaker!

Sensuous brushed aluminum surfaces. Stainless steel thermal carafe. Imposing. Important. Taller than a runway model. A coffeemaker that tells your friends "This is the coffeemaker of an imposing, important man, who doesn't have time to brew a pot of the best-tasting coffee in the world when he wakes up to begin his important day, so I, the Melitta ME10TDS Digital Coffeemaker, will wait all night and then start myself up and brew his coffee automatically, five minutes before reveille, like only the very best wives would do."

This was the promise. OK, I admit I was seduced by her looks. I mean, look at her. She's gorgeous. From the first minute I saw her, I wanted her. I knew she would be high maintenance, but I thought we could work things out. And let me tell you, the honeymoon was rockin'! I thought the buzz would never end.

But the problems started after only a couple of months. First she stopped brewing coffee automatically in the mornings. I took over myself, and did it manually. She became lazy and her appearance went to hell. Eventually, she even refused to make a full pot of coffee. As I told you in this post, she would make a few cups and then stop without telling me. I'd have to start her up again manually, only to have her quit on me again after a couple more cups. The coffee tasted bad, as the grounds were drying out several times during the process. Eventually we weren't making beautiful coffee together at all.

I couldn't help myself. A new coffeemaker caught my eye. Shorter and plainer. No grandiose promises, but practical-looking, and no nonsense. This one, I thought, might be one I can live with. Maybe, I thought, we can build something together. Melitta had already checked out, and so I brought this new one home. I'm happy to report the coffee is once again fantastic. This one, a Cuisinart, says she will make coffee automatically in the morning, but I have decided against it. I'll carry my own weight around here from now on, and perhaps there will be less bitterness in this new relationship.

The Melitta ME10TDS Digital Coffeemaker? Last time I saw her she was hanging out with the garbage cans in the alley, the trollop.

Blogger Blows Again

I don't know what's going on yesterday and today with Blogger,

but I am having a hard time commenting on anyone else's blog. Not only that but my own post below, titled "Adult Language" has six comments, but seems to be reporting only four of them on the main page. Then when you go to the comments page, you find all six comments, but further commenting is disabled!. And on this, the only time I have ever explicitly solicited reader response. So Blogger has a cruel sense of humor. I did not disable comments on that post, I encouraged them.

I fully expect Blogger to be up and working soon like a well-oiled machine, so save your comments and post them when you can. Or email me - my email address is in my profile, if you can get to that. In the mean time, I'll be checking out some other blogging platforms.

Update: Right after I posted this, everything seemed to get fixed. I gues the moral is don't use any tricks to try and get people to comment on your stoopid blog.

Goodbye Again

My heart has an endless capacity to break.

With apologies to Robbie Robertson and THE BAND, farewell to the Wacky Wild Woman:

Boards on the window
Mail by the door
What would anybody leave so quickly for?
Melissa
Where have you gone?

The old neighborhood just ain't the same
Nobody knows just what became of
Melissa
Tell me, what went wrong?

Was it somethin' that somebody said?
Mama, I know we broke the rules
Was somebody up against the law?
Honey, you know I'd die for you.

Ashes of laughter
The ghost is clear
Why do the best things always disappear?
Like Melissa
Please darken my door.

Was it somethin' that somebody said?
Honey, you know we broke the rules
Was somebody up against the law?
Honey, you know I'd die for you!

They got your number
Scared and runnin'
But I'm still waitin' for the second comin'
Of Melissa
Baby come back home.

Adult Language

In an effort to avoid writing anything myself, I have been, um, researching the blogging community.

I have been reading a type of blog that may be described as "adult oriented." Actually, many of them are adultery oriented. What they are is sex blogs. Blogs about sex, often described quite explicitly.

So far I haven't looked at any sex blogs written by guys. Being a guy, it might be enlightening to learn what others are thinking and doing in this arena. On the other hand, call me old-fashioned, but when it comes to sex I am mainly interested in women, and what they're thinking and doing.

And gosh, it's surprising what they are willing to tell, under cover of internet anonymity. Some of them are married and having affairs, which they are keeping secret from their husbands, naturally, but for some reason they just have to tell everyone else in the whole world about it, about how their lovers don't have much to say, but wow can they get everyone's pants off fast once that motel room door closes! And the gymnastics that people can do with only limited equipment -- a double bed, a 3-drawer chest, a Danish modern chair. Let me tell you, it's really been an eye-opener.

I believe some of these things happen in real life, otherwise how to explain the occasional motel-room shooting? And there may be a portion of this filthy stuff that I've been researching that has been written with, shall we say, some poetic license. All I can say is thank you Lord, for these naughty girls and their nasty stories, imagined or real.

That's not what I mean. I mean to make some kind of intellectual comment about the longing that so many of us have to be recognized, to touch and be touched, to reach out and say I'm here, won't somebody hold me, know me, take me. This isn't just a chick thing, either, although male bloggers may be more in touch with their feminine side than regular dudes. Hey, I'm not ashamed.

Some of the messages I read are so plaintive that I want to get right in my car and go wherever I have to go to comfort the poor, horny, lonely writers. And some are so swaggeringly in-your-face and self-assured that I wonder why the women bother to put their inner thoughts on the internet.

Most of you reading this will not remember the CB radio craze of the 1970's, either because you weren't born yet or you were high at the time and have blacked it out from your memories. But there was a period of years when otherwise normal people were using these little low-power two-way radios, mostly in their cars, I think, to talk to complete strangers at random. Big-time high-power amateur radio operators (hams) had been doing this since the thirties, but CB radio was for the masses. It was relatively cheap and easy, and you didn't have to get a license to transmit. So God knows how many good buddies were gettin' their ears on and chatting with anyone and everyone on the air. As a society, we must have been too uptight to run numerous popular magazine articles about this fact, but my guess is a lot of those conversations revolved around s-e-x. Anonymous, safe but oh-so-tantalizingly real-time.

CB radio died out, mercifully. Now it's back to just truckers warning each other about where the Highway Patrol is, and the rest stop hookers. But now we have blogging. No, it's not the same thing. Blogging is a much more noble, intellectual pursuit. Downright dorky, the unenlightened might say. But if the number of raunchy blogs that I have stumbled upon, completely by accident and without intending to, is any indication, there are a lot of amateur pornographers out there.

Of course, an infinite number of monkeys taking an infinite number of meetings and making an infinite number of notes to themselves would eventually conceive, script, fund and produce "Deep Throat." Sure, there'd be some false starts, such as when they cast a monkey in the Linda Lovelace role, but sooner or later there it would be at the Pussycat Theater, up in lights: Deep Throat, an Infinite Monkey Production™ (leave it alone - I own Infinite Monkey™). Given this, maybe it's just a coincidence that I keep coming across all this sexy blogging.

Or maybe not. Here's what I'd like to know: Does writing sexy stuff, uh, get you off? When you write sexy stuff and put it on the internet, are you hoping someone will read it and get off? Would that be fun for you? Or are you (hypothetically, of course) thinking that some day someone will track you down and actually do sexy stuff with you, based on your naughty blog? In the words of the great Cecil B. DeMonkey, What's your motivation?

How I Want You, Part 2

I wanna want you in all the best ways.

Lift your heart and make every day your lucky day. Hold you safe, Sweet Thing.
Sing you sweetly, love you softly, drink you deeply. It's what I want and I think I will.

But maybe I will take your heart that you give so sweetly, and maybe I'll lock it up, that precious, beating thing, where it never will be seen.

Maybe I will seek until I find, search until I destroy.

And maybe one day you'll find the doors are locked and the house is empty.

I want it to be real. I want it to be right. I want to want you in the best possible way.

How I Want You

I want you in the worst way.

I want to take you away from your friends, get you out of your comfort zone, make you think about me. When you're walking, driving, reading, talking, I want you thinking about me. I want to know everything right now. I want to talk all night and all next day, explaining me to you, learning you, studying you. I want to know all you've done, every thought you have. I want to go over the books, the movies, the places, the things, the music you love and I want to love them too, and make you love all the things I love, make you see the beauty, feel the groove, laugh at the perfect rhythm and rhyme. I want to take you to my special places and I want them to be your special places. I want you in the worst way.

I want to know who you've fucked and I want you to deny them, deny them all, forsake them for me, and I will forsake all mine for you. I want to own your body, touch you freely whenever and wherever I want, and I want you to want it, want me, arch toward my hand, lean into my arms. I want you to need only me, desperate desire without reserve. I want you in the worst way.

I want you to call me from work and say you want me, that you just can't wait. I want to call you at night and talk dirty, and I want you to like it. I want to wake you in the morning by sucking your toes, licking behind your knee. I want you naked in my arms, naked in my kitchen, naked in my dreams. I want to give you all I have and take all you have. I want you in the worst possible way.

I want to fuck you all afternoon on a hot Sunday, and I want you to fuck me back, vulgar slut, beautiful angel, crying, laughing, moaning. I want to take your heart, your mind, your soul, and never give them back.

Because I want you in the worst damned possible way.

L7

I am a square.

Just the title of this post makes me a square, coming as it does from the lyrics of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs' 1965 frat-rock classic "Woolly Bully." Let's don't be L7, come and learn to dance. What kind of a dork would quote that barnacle-covered old relic?

I guess the term comes from the Beatniks, and it might not have meant literally "square," but rather it might have been meant to describe someone who is squared away in life, all neat edges and perfect alignments, no disarray, no eccentricity, thus no creativity. Of course, there's a good chance the Beats stole it from the blacks, who have always had better slang than white people in this country, often incubating entire sublanguages for months or years before white kids find out about it and "mainstream" it, which means "bring it to the attention of marketers."

Wherever it came from, it evolved to mean dull, old fashioned and out of it. Square.

I used to be painfully shy. Now I'm just shy. There was a time when social situations caused terror to well up in my stomach and chest, and almost come out my mouth. I was insecure and unworthy, and I thought everyone knew it, could read it on me. I thought it made them look away and try not to let me know that they knew. But I knew, and their kindness added to my humiliation. I looked with longing at the ease with which the normal people would laugh and talk and touch each other, making plans for after school, after the game, after the dance, and I had no way in. I was isolated and afraid, a perfect candidate to join a gang. Little boys walkin' away from it all, so cold.

I retreated into music. Huddled over the old kitchen radio after everyone had gone to bed, listening to whatever came through the static. Walking the city, the tiny six-transistor radio pressed to my ear, decades before Sony gave us the Walkman, in splendid, rockin' isolation. Touching no one, no one touching me.

In ninth grade, as if my pain and alienation had been judged not horrible enough, I got my first pair of glasses. Black plastic frames. The stems hooked over and around my ears, like my Uncle Dick's glasses. I wore them only when my parents or the optometrist were there watching. Fuck them. I never knew Buddy Holly, until it was too late. It would be years before John Lennon would come along and make them a hip fashion accessory, and make it cool to read books and write poetry and know about Neitzche and Buddha and painting, before I could say it right out loud: "Fuck them." That's when you fall. When you fall into a trance, sitting on a sofa playing games of chance.

In my shyness I learned to play guitar, by myself in my bedroom, until I dared to come out and show myself. Shielded by my guitar I could join all those people, the ones who were better than me, who pitied me and ignored me. I still couldn't be of them, but I could be with them. And I found that if you don't act shy, it is as if you are not shy. No one knows. No one cares.

You're not hip. You're not square. You are merely the word made flesh. That's the thing to do. Get you someone really to pull the wool with you.

Thanks and apologies to Van Morrison, Paul Simon and Domingo Samudio (Sam the Sham).

Tax Time

Isn't this cute?

The children want me to pay my taxes.
I guess it's not painful enough that I am expected to fill out complicated forms every year, ratting myself out to a government that can barely even fix a pothole. What do those kids have to do with income tax, anyway? I'm sure the money isn't going to schools.

Everything is Everything: The Post About Comments

What's happened here is I've been neglecting my guests.

OK, you are virtual guests, but I know you're there, because you leave pertinent (and impertinent) comments. Things have happened to me lately, and my mind and my emotions have been spinning, and, it turns out, the universe is not entirely under my control. Probably these things would make a gripping story to put in a blog post, but I think not, at this time. Maybe I will figure out some way to tell it in which I am a heroic yet sympathetic yet inspirational figure. Maybe not.

But in this fast-moving world of blogging, each new post sits on top of the previous one and supplants it, and none of you will look at anything other than the top post on anybody's blog, let alone this one, so, since I have been in a tizzy and haven't participated in my own Comments section for a while, you'd think I don't care about you. And nothing could be farther from the truth. (Before I go on, will someone please write and tell me if I should have said "further" instead of "farther?' And what is the rule governing that usage?) So to dispel all concern, I will now move the previous two Comments sections into this post, and participate. The first five are for the Ketchikan story, and the rest are for "I'm Not Quitting." Here we go:

theresa said... It's a good story; brusque and dirty, but rich with honesty and compassion.

Fri Mar 11, 09:01:13 PM 2005

Jones sez... Thank you sweetheart. If only I were dirty and rich.

MPH said... "Cry to Me", what a great, great song.

Fri Mar 11, 09:45:21 PM 2005

Jones sez... Solomon Burke has a new album, and it's bithchin'. Who'd a thunk?

HeroineGirl said... Thank you for your comments on my Heroinegirl Blog, the memoirs are the best reading, which are to the right of the blog( at the top)

Thanks for stopping by,
Heroinegirl
XXX

Sun Mar 13, 06:41:42 AM 2005

Jones sez... HeroineGirl's story is utterly heartbreaking and inspiring. Go read it.

jericmiller said... well told, larry. it does what you want it to do.

Sun Mar 13, 08:18:25 PM 2005

Jones sez... This is the Professor revealing himself. But I am flattered. I owe you a valium.

L said... I tried to comment on this a couple of days ago, but gave up in utter despair. I was going to post something incredibly insightful here today, but promptly forgot what it was after the comment box took so long to come up :) I think Kung Pow Pig is right...

Mon Mar 14, 06:01:37 PM 2005

Jones sez... Glad you got through the Blogger anti-comment firewall.

**And now the "I'm Not Quitting" section**

Kung Pow Pig said... It's called exit strategy. Do not ask the president, he has no clue how to conceive or implement one.I, on the other hand, do.It's a strangeness after you let go of something. And I won't be deleting the blog. I left some things in there I'll need.Good point on Blogger taking a shit for the last week. I can't really say that the fiasco had nothing to do with it, but it most likely was the straw that did that thing to the camel.

Be seeing you.
Tue Mar 15, 06:01:30 AM 2005

Jones sez... I'm sad to see Kung Pow Pig leave us. Now he will get way ahead in life, and we'll be sorry.

theresa said... Thank you for the forewarning. You'll be missed when the time comes to say goodbye.As for myself, I know that my time in the blogosphere is limited as well. I'll know when it's time to go when I've discovered my reason for coming here in the first place.

Tue Mar 15, 08:12:00 AM 2005

Jones sez... OK, now I feel better about quitting. I'm just not sure I'll ever know why I started. (Also - Hahaha -- you said "blogosphere.")

Ron Southern said... In a world where having a blog for a year or more makes you feel like you're very experienced and where anyone who's been writing one for 2 years or more is an old-timer, it apparently becomes the thing to do to quit or talk about quitting. It's a high-octane burn-out environment out here. Probably that's just the kind of people who are drawn to this self-absorbed form of talk-fest. You're getting that lemme-outta-here bug up your ass a little early, seems to me, but I guess you're anticipating the moment more than threatening to jump overboard soon. It can be a terrible thing to be so self-aware or self-conscious. Still, a blog can be a great safety valve, it releases some of the pressure.

Tue Mar 15, 09:21:22 AM 2005

Jones sez... It releases some pressure, and adds some of its' own. I can only imagine how real journalists feel. I mean, deadlines! How sick is that?

Steph said... I think a courtesy last post is good blogging etiquette, don't you? Unless you meet an untimely demise and are physically unable to post. Well Larry, glad to know you're not quitting yet--you've got more blogging left in you, I know it.

Tue Mar 15, 11:53:54 AM 2005

Jones sez... Etiquette, schmetiquette. My Last Post will be for my own aggrandizement.

MPH said... Hmph. Not one mention of my role in this whole blogger comment fiasco.

Tue Mar 15, 03:27:13 PM 2005

Jones sez... I can't mention it here. That's what your blog is for, and you've covered it admirably.

Brent said... Glad to see that a good blogger is not quitting. Good blogs are rare in this sea of sucktitude.

Tue Mar 15, 04:08:34 PM 2005

Ha! Suckitude. Can I say "Suckitude, Schmuckitude?" It's you and me against the world, Brent. Where were you when I needed a wingman?

L said... well goodness -- take your time :) don't quit yet!

Tue Mar 15, 09:07:28 PM 2005

Larry Jones said...

L - I think it bears mentioning here that I commented on your
post tonight at exactly the same minute that you commented on mine. Isn't that some kind of sign? Do you think you and I should run away to Rio together and spend our days drinking daiquiris on the beach at Ipanema and our nights dancing like fools in the city? Or does it mean it's time to quit blogging, for real?
Tue Mar 15, 09:17:32 PM 2005

Pops said...

Viking funeral. Only way to go. Drink lots of mead, put your computer in a boat and light it on fire as you push it out to sea.

Would make it hard to post pictures of the event subsequently, however. Plus it seems a little harsh, burning and then exiling your whole computer just to be rid of your blog. On second thought, this needs more consideration.

And the post-eating... if you hit PUBLISH and it gives you a PAGE NOT FOUND screen, then you hit BACK and you get a nice, freshly scrubbed CREATE NEW POST screen devoid of your magnum opus. So the anal retentive among us save to a Word file before we PUBLISH.

Tue Mar 15, 10:45:39 PM 2005

Jones sez... This reminds me of my own pathetic Vikings, drinking mead and trying to compete in the NFL, but I like your thinking! Will you say a few words at the ceremony? Can I wear the helmet with the big horns, or will you need it?

SJ said... I know I'm late on this matter, but the best way to find links to your blog is to type your url into www.technorati.com. It will show you all the links here.

Wed Mar 16, 01:34:27 PM 2005

Jones sez... Thank you for this tip. I tried it, and I was deeply disappointed in what I found. I may have reciprocal links on my site for people who never ciprocated in the first place.


I'm grateful to all of you, even those who do not comment, although you should. Speaking of which, it will be a cool warp in the blog universe to use the comment section of a post about comments. So be my guest.

I'm Not Quitting Yet

I can hardly write another word without mentioning the Great Blogger Fiasco of 2005.

Especially since it is still going on. At least let us hope it's the only Blogger fiasco of 2005. First the Comment system went down. For one whole day, clicking on the "Leave a Comment" button led down a spiral of despair, an eternity of waiting and watching for the comment box to appear. And this happened so soon after the Big Improvement! So much promise. Blogger popup comment boxes that looked like Haloscan's, only with pictures! An easy way of reading the post upon which you were commenting, so you could stay on topic, God damnit. Maybe it was just too cool. Maybe the system got overloaded because millions of lurkers saw the coolness and came out of the woodwork, trying to comment on everything, spewing commentary until the servers could no longer stomach another pun, another clever riposte, not one more bon mot, and crashed, to save themselves.

Whatever the reason, the patient seemed dead.

The comment system has been returning to health over the past couple of days, although it still feels like it takes longer for the comment box to arrive than it used to, and whenever the delay is more than 10 seconds (it really shouldn't be even that long, I don't care if it is a free service), I am tempted to click on another blog, or even another site completely outside the blogosphere. And thanks for asking, yes, that word still cracks me up.

And now I am reading that Blogger is eating your posts! I'm not sure of the exact manner in which this particular technoabomination is occurring, because so far it hasn't happened to me, but several of my bloggin' buddies are writing that Blogger has eaten their posts. I assume this means that carefully researched and constructed gems of journalism are written in the little "Create Post" boxes, only to vanish irretrievably at some point after clicking the "Publish" button. Of course, this could just be the blog writer's excuse for publishing bad or plagiarized writing. I don't believe that for a second about anyone that I read, but I'm just saying, you know, it could happen.

Or maybe Blogger really is eating your posts. As I said, It hasn't happened to me, so I can't complain, or confirm the glitch, but I would certainly be able to feel the pain, the heartbreak of crafting the perfect post, and then to have it disappear, with no backup. The humanity.

Whatever, the effect seems to be that some blog writers are simply quitting. I don't mean they just can't cope with the technical failures. If there's one thing that almost everyone knows by this stage of the Information Age, it's that computers crash, and information is lost. We all know how to cope. Go get coffee. Reorganize your desk. Make phone calls (unless you are using a computer-based phone system). Smile apologetically at your customer and wiggle the mouse real fast for a few seconds and say "Gee, the system sure is slow today," as you look at a screen completely filled with gibberish.

No, it's not the inability to cope. It's probably that some writers have been feeling guilty about all the time they are devoting to their blogs. Time that, by any normal measure, is completely wasted. The time spent putting together their posts, thinking about their posts, checking their stats, replying to comments, commenting on other blogs, returning to those to see if their comments have been replied to, or even referred to, looking upon everything that happens in your life as a potential blog topic.

A few days of the system not working right, and these folks are outta here.

Frankly, I don't blame them. This is an entertaining pasttime at first. I know, I know, it's a writing excercise. OK, I'll give you that. But you could write longhand at a park bench, or even on a computer at a park bench, and not post it on the internet. If you're posting what you did on Friday night after your last final exam, you are probably not practicing your writing technique. You are probably entertaining yourself. The bloggers I read are entertaining me, of course, and maybe a lot of others. But if you find yourself getting sucked into Blogging Madness, all but abandoning your job and your family and traveling the path of solitary obsession, well, hey, welcome to my world.

A break in the action, so to speak, is just what a lot of blog writers must have needed to come out of the ether and make another grab for that elusive je ne sais quoi that we call reality. OK, I'm getting all tangled up trying to be clever here, but what I'm saying is just that some of those whom I have come to think of as "bloggin' buddies" (only because I read their blogs, and I think they read mine) are stopping their blogs. It's none of my business why they are doing this, but since I have let then into my mind and heart over the past several months I can't help feeling a little pang of regret with each one who writes that final post: "Dear friends, I can't do this any more. You have seen the last of me here. I go now to other things, where you don't get to follow." I prefer Holly's method. She just stopped writing, and didn't even delete her blog.

But now that I've started thinking about it, the Final Post seems like an irresistible grand gesture. How many actors work all their lives for the chance to make an exit speech? To leave the scene and be truly missed (one imagines), while at the same time summing up the meaning of life for all who remain? What glory! I am starting my final post tonight. It may take a long time to finish, and in the meantime I will continue putting up frequent but lesser essays here, especially the always popular "What If You Were Tied Spreadeagle to the Bed?" variety. But all the time in the background I will be working feverishly on my Grand Gesture, the Final Post to end all Final Posts. Or at least this blog.

Don't hold your breath. These things take time.

Ketchikan

On my third night in Ketchikan I was drinking J&B.

It was expensive, because everything is expensive in Ketchikan. You'd think it was Manhattan, or Paris, if you looked at your bar tab. If you looked at the bar, on the other hand, you'd think you were in Ketchikan. The place was decorated with totems, wagon wheels and stuffed animal trophies, heads with frozen angry faces bursting out of the walls here and there. Sawdust on the floor. The owner of the joint says it's last night's furniture, like no one's ever heard that one before.

The owner's name was Jeff, and he wasn't from around those parts. He was a good-looking guy in his thirties, five-ten, 175, sandy hair, hazel eyes behind wire-rimmed specs, two shades too pale for the neighborhood. He was trying to go native with a plaid flannel shirt and a patchy beard, but it wasn't working. I never got it straight exactly what he was doing running a bar in Alaska, but he'd been there a couple of years, and he seemed to be doing all right.

Right around last call Debbie the waitress brought a tray of six drinks to my table, where I was sitting alone, recovering from five sets of rock'n'roll. J&B neat, water back. I asked if she was planning to join me. She told me no, that I'd been six-packed.

If Alaska had been a separate country, which a lot of the residents think it is anyway, drinking would be the National Pastime. It's a young, rough place. A lot of rugged individuals, also known as misfits, a lot of folks who have run away from something or somebody, losers who think they've got nothing left to lose. The days are short, the nights are long and the loneliness blows through your coat like the north wind. So you drink. First to get warm, then to stay warm. Then to loosen up, then to keep up. All the usual reasons, only faster and bigger, Alaska-style, until the whole room is buzzed and buzzing, everyone a little stiff, a little loose, ready for anything, prepared for nothing.

Six-packing, as it was explained to me, was the practice of finding out what someone is drinking, and buying him six rounds of it. If you don't kill them all before the ice melts, Debbie told me, you don't have a hair on your ass. I guessed that if you do finish them, you get to be an honorary Alaskan, drunk like everyone else. I had a little extra time to complete the challenge, since there was no ice, but I was young and stupid, and I wouldn't let my benefactor down.

She was a fortyish babe with impossibly black hair, sparkling dangly earrings and full lips. They were painted red, to go with the minidress. I'd seen her there the night before, in jeans, stalking the room. Tonight she was with a girlfriend, drinking, smoking and getting braver.

To show I was thankful she'd picked me, I downed two shots of whiskey fast, then held the third one up toward her table before hammering that one, too. After a minute the girlfriend got up and went to the bar, and I went over to talk.

I put both hands on her table and leaned down. "Are you trying to get me drunk?" My tongue was numb.

"Is it working?" She gave me a nervous smile and shrugged one full, ripe shoulder. She was wearing Ciara. I suddenly felt warm.

"Something is."

We danced. The jukebox played Solomon Burke, "Cry to Me." Grown-up heartbroke R&B. When your baby leaves you all alone.. She put both arms up around my neck. ..and nobody calls you on the phone... I bent a knee and she let it get between her thighs, the minidress riding up. ...Dontcha feel like cryin'? She clung tight and pushed herself against me. Here I am, honey. Cry to me.

We were strangers, but we had always known each other, the way strangers at last call always know each other. I didn't need her name, she didn't want my promise.

Later, at the door, getting into our heavy coats, I remembered my three remaining drinks. "Never mind," she whispered. "I've got something at home."

Housekeeping

I'm doing a little behind-the-scenes fixing up.

First let me say thank you to those who have put revision99 on the links list of their sites and blogs. I want to reciprocate, and I have done so in my list over there on the right sidebar, headed "Bloggin' Buddies." [UPDATE: The name of the list has been changed to "Reciprocity."] I installed the "Who Links Here?" javascript on this site, trying to find out exactly who does link here, and it half-way worked once or twice, but now it doesn't work at all. I have tried it on different computers, with my firewall disabled, at different times of day, and I get Bad Information.

So if you are linking here and you're not on the Bloggin' Buddies list (and you want to be), email me or leave a comment, and I'll get right on it. The Bloggin' Buddies list is in no particular order, so don't get your panties in a twist if you're not as high up as you think you should be -- I add you on as you add me on. I will entertain arguments about moving your link up, especially if accompanied by bribes or sexual favors.

And speaking of comments, you should know that I am notified automatically by email when anyone comments on any post anywhere on this weblog. This means if you find an old post that you have something to say about, you can comment there and be certain that I will see it.

Oh, yeah: My new banner has been up for a week and no one has mentioned it. What do you think? Where is the love, people?

So that's it for now. You know I love you all.

The Relationship Issue, Part 4

Spring is in the air...

...and Molly the Cat has a suitor. He hangs around the house night and day, lurking, prowling, and howling. He is a young black and white alley cat, previously only interested in our food. Molly is an indoor/outdoor cat, a former girl of the streets, and she values her freedom. She is used to going out whenever she wants to, but she is not interested in a relationship, and he is relentless.

I have a theory that no woman can withstand a determined, unwavering seige, and he is certainly mounting one, but Molly the Cat seems equally determined to remain virginal. The sounds her male visitor makes are startlingly human, and more than once I have rushed to see if someone is strangling a baby outside my back door. She is disgusted by his calling. She says she might consider him -- he is rather attractive, in a scruffy sort of way -- but he acts so needy.

I know how he feels, and I doubt if things would work out. He is a ramblin' cat. She couldn't keep him forever. Oh, he tells her he is ready to settle down, and maybe he even believes it. But he is looking for that first contact, nothing more.

Is there anything sweeter than the anticipation of those early touches, at first so casual? Maybe your knees bump under a table, or your hands brush together as you share a menu. And can any kiss, as long as you live, match the thrill of the First Kiss? The tantalizing softness of those lips as they touch yours for the first, tentative time. The shudder that runs through your body as that other body begins molding to yours, pressing gently and urgently to you.

Don't we want that fleeting moment to last? We try to go back there every time, every night, but the first time can only happen once. Some will wander, trying to find it again, that electric thrill, and maybe they'll find it. Maybe, like this fevered tomcat outside right now, they will think they have found it, the Fountain of First Touches.

And maybe, after a bit, they will have to move on again, down the alley to the next dark place, to continue the search.

Old Man

The old man drank himself to death, finishing the job on my nineteenth birthday.

I was in another city, having left home for good just two months before. I thought I was finally on my own, and now I was on a jet, called back.

He'd been drinking heavily all of my life and most of his own, and he was a loud, obnoxious, scary, threatening drunk. He left school after fifth grade, caroused through his teenage years and become a man just in time for the Great Depression. Watched as the life was drained out of people like him, second- or third-generation Americans, not stockholders, working people who had so little to lose, and lost all of it. I don't know what he did during those dark years. It might have been then that he turned bitter and hopeless. He may have tried to tell me at one time or another. I don't remember. If he did, I wasn't listening. Now I can never find out. From what I know now, he was a bum, in the finest depression-era sense.

But I just don't know.

On the night I was born, in 1947, he was out. Maybe he was with friends, or maybe everybody was his friend that night. He had a new wife, a new life, a new life on the way, a bundle of joy, impossible burden. Husbands didn't hang out in delivery rooms. They hung out in waiting rooms, or bars. He would have been the bar type, buying drinks, talking loud, a pocket full of cigars and a belly full of whiskey.

At some point during the 1930's, he joined the Army Reserve, and that's what he was doing when his country entered World War 2. He was sent to Europe, with the Signal Corps. The Germans jammed the short-wave radio, so the Signal Corps switched to FM, but it only had a range of 30 miles. Our guys had to lay wire between the radio relay stations, to ensure clear communications. You can't jam telephone lines.

I heard the story several times, starting when I was about twelve years old. I don't know if it's true, or even if it's possible. He would tell it softly, and it's a confused narrative, because, of course, he was drunk when he told it. 1944. Two German soldiers, driving some kind of military vehicle, probably an armored car. The war is lost to them. Still, they won't halt when the American sergeant orders them to, They won't comply. Maybe they don't understand, maybe they are scared, they are young and don't know the protocol of surrender. And maybe the sergeant overreacts. He has been crawling through the mud, laying wire, for six months, he is tired and angry, the war should be over, hell, it is over, why don't these assholes stop? So he shoots his M-1, which makes it OK for his guys to fire their rifles, too, and in a few seconds the two German soldiers lay dead. It turns out they are boys, barely sixteen. The first time I hear of this, the sergeant has two boys of his own. He weeps, for the boys he killed, for himself, the blood he can't wash off, for me and my brother and the world we will inherit, the world he has saved for us.

I hated him for a while. Then I pitied him. I'm sorry now. I was young and didn't know. Some things you're never old enough to understand. By the time I left, all the hatred and pity were gone. I don't know if he knew that.

Coming back home on that jet I tried to picture his life. I tried to see what could have made him so angry and fearful. But all I could think of was the electric train, the big Lionel freight that I had found under the tree on my sixth Christmas. The one he had bought for me on the night I was born. The one that he had been hiding for six years, waiting for the right time to give it to his oldest boy, his pride and joy.

Me and Mrs. Jones

They decided they liked the look of the chapel on Broadway.

They had scouted around the town for several months, no hurry, no plans, just looking, wherever they happened to be. Neither of them were particularly religious, but they wanted to have the ceremony -- if indeed they were even going to have a ceremony -- in a church, just for the tradition of it. They had peeked in the windows of various quaint and magnificent churches, but until now, nothing was working for them. This place on Broadway just felt right somehow, not Catholic or Lutheran or Baptist or any of the major superstitions. A non-sectarian church on a busy downtown street, not a storefront bible-studying kind of place, but a solid old building with a steeple, definitely built as a church, made out of stone, no less, as if somehow it had been transported whole from some New England village.

Once the place was picked it was a matter of time. When they could get time off their jobs, mainly. When they could get the legal documents taken care of. A few guests would be mandatory, so that would have to be timed as well. But there were no big plans, as there often are for these kinds of events. They didn't want anyone to make a big deal out of it. They were young, but too old for an official Big Deal, or maybe they thought it might not work out, and they'd be embarrassed later about all the hoopla.

When the day finally came, neither of them knew it for sure until the night before. They were that tentative, leaving each other every chance to back out, until there was no time left, a Best Man had been drafted, and a Maid of Honor, and the few mandatory guests had been notified.

In the days before, the girl had decided that she needed a hat, one just for the occasion, one that would never be worn again. So she and a girlfriend had gone shopping. Then there was something borrowed, something blue, and in the magical way that women have, the girl got herself ready.

Even though it was only the first week in March, Spring was in the air, and the boy decided to wear his white linen suit, but with a festive new necktie, light blue polyester with little strawberries on it. A silk tie would have blown the honeymoon budget.

They drove to the chapel together, in the little car they had bought together just a couple of months earlier. It wasn't until they were on the way that they realized that the bride had no flowers. They laughed and laughed at their foolishness, but they stopped at a flower shop along the way, where they got a great deal on a bouquet that another bride had ordered, but had never come to claim. Seeing this young couple in love, the lady at the counter found herself in the mood to make someone happy, and they ended up with an armload of some other bride's flowers.

And then, in the stone chapel with the incongruous New England steeple, the boy and the girl stood before their friends and family and said the ancient words, made the ancient promises. Good times, bad times, ready or not, here we come...

Their little, almost impromptu, ceremony was exactly twenty-five years ago today. The few guests wished them well, but nobody gave the marriage much of a chance. Maybe it was good that there was no hoopla.

When they got in the little car and headed up the coast that bright winter morning, they were starting a long ride. To their surprise and delight, the ride still isn't over. It's been bumpy at times, and they are still not sure where they are going, but I guess that doesn't matter all that much. It's the journey that matters.

To my beautiful, smart, funny, sexy wife: I love you.

Radio Radio

Near where I grew up there's a place where the Mississippi River is narrow enough for a ten-year-old boy to step across.

And I did so, as many times as I could, because it's not often that a young boy gets to dominate something as huge and powerful as that river. I don't know if I gave any thought to the city at the other end of the river's 2500-mile run, but it's a pretty thought now, looking back, that I might have pictured New Orleans, the French Quarter, Bourbon Street and the bawdy back alleys where so much American mythology was born.

I know that late at night, after all my brothers and sisters had gone to bed, and I should have, too, I would listen to the family's old AM radio, a hefty wooden tabletop model, and the sound of those Louisiana musicians would come bouncing up from down there, ricocheting off - what? - clouds, or the ionosphere, I don't know, but I knew then that in the night, AM radio traveled farther. Mysterious and riding waves of static, fading in and out, Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, Professor Longhair, Freddie Cannon, Fats Domino, Clarence "Frogman" Henry, Ernie K-Doe... Magical voices that sang in a strange tongue of village queens and gris-gris, and played with a wild laid-back freedom that thrilled the kid that I was, bent over the table with my ear to the speaker.

In the daytime I listened to the local rock stations, although they probably weren't called that then: KDWB (Channel 63, went the jingle) and WDGY, known as "Weegee." I fell in love with Patsy Cline on the school bus. I had no idea what she meant, but she was crazy for tryin', crazy for cryin', and when I heard her haunting voice, so was I. For some reason which I didn't understand, kids had powerful loyalties to one station or the other. You were classified by which one you listened to. I just switched stations to the one that was playing the best music at any particular moment, which made both groups mistrust me. But I didn't know, so I didn't care.

Later as a teenager in Los Angeles, the stations were KRLA and KFWB. In ninth grade I had a tiny transistor radio and I carried it everywhere. "What's Your Name?" by Don and Juan, "Surfin," Gene McDaniels' "Tower of Strength." I was new in town, and for a while I had no human friends. All my friends were in my radio, and they carried me through that first lonely year.

Suddenly it was The English Invasion. Elvis disappeared for a while, returning later as a bloated caricature. Beatles, Stones, Animals, Zombies, Pacemakers, so much action on the airwaves, these guys practically grabbed me by the throat and forced me to pick up the guitar. It was then that I made the transition from listening to making music. I became a player, but I never stopped being a fan.

We are all into different kinds of music, different styles, different artists, but I think what we love, what we call our music can be traced back to what was the soundtrack of our lives during the formative years, the teens and twenties. We become citizens of the world during those precious years, and we are open to new sounds and sure that we are right about everything, and the music embeds itself and stays with us for the rest of our lives. Each new generation identifies with some particular strain, and all the rest of us call it noise, and go back to our favorites.

Listen to your kids' music. Really. And listen to your parents' music. I'm serious. We are all people, and in our music we have been saying the same things for millenia. We come at it in slightly different ways each generation, but only slightly, and in these songs we celebrate, we mourn, we teach and learn.

Right now it's the middle of the night, and I think I can hear, somewhere way down the river, Little Willie John singing "Sleep, Sleep, Sleep."

Good Rockin' Tonight

Music is the theme this week.
The blogs I read are all about it. They are going to concerts, gloating about their new theme songs, planning to get back to it, getting ready to jump into it, worrying if their taste is hip enough - some bloggin' buddies are even sharing songs with me, all totally legally, of course. [Update, March 3: Even the fabulous Breakup Babe has joined a band!]

I am a fallen-away musician myself. I used to do it for a living, but the living wasn't that easy, and after a long time, I gave it up in order to make money. The money hasn't completely satisfied me however, and for the past few months I have been jonesin' for a jam.

The universe must have noticed this, because in recent days I have had no fewer than three offers to sit in at local jam sessions. I have actually gone and done this twice, and it is as good as sex (if I remember sex accurately). God, I had almost forgotten the glory of electric guitar! And now, playing just for fun, it seems better than ever. All pressure is off, and only the joy remains.

I do miss the ritual Wearing of the Tight Pants, however (see photo), and the sensation that the whole world is dancing just for me. But for now rippin' a few good licks with like-minded players is positively transporting.

Also, this moves the Michael Jackson post down out of sight. I am deeply sorry about that one.