Economy Part 1

The question of how to keep fed, pay rent, and buy movie tickets while not overburdening my parents caused me some anxiety briefly, but it was resolved by me taking a job.

The job I took showed up as an opportunity offered by a classmate, a fellow composer. He was on a flyby of our pad, since he was writing a piece that involved flute and Yoshi was his man with the pucker. He heard me say that I was in need of a good part time job.
    "Come on down to the Westland Garage. We're looking for people at the moment."
    "Seriously?"
I didn't want false hopes.
    "Seriously. Talk to Lamont Dixon. He's the big dude with the pipe. Don't wait until the Symphony rush."

It didn't even occur to me to ask what kind of a job this was. I'm that obtuse, not of this world, from a different planet. Later that afternoon, having gotten my gumption up, I made my way down Westland Ave to the big old garage next to the Stop and Shop grocery. The big doors were open, as always. The new neon sign said "Car Wash" in big letters. The word  "garage" was spelled out in rusting white enamel on a fading red background; this was an old sign, lit by an overhead bulb under a battered green hat shaped shade. Inside, the car wash was roaring. An elderly, stately, handsome African American man was barking orders. As soon as the booming voice quit yelling, the pipe came back up to the lips.
    "Mr. Dixon?"
The most withering, quizzical gaze peered down at me.
    "Who wants to know?"
This response blew my whole prepared speech out of my head.
    "I'm Cal."
    "Glad to meet you, Cal, I'm busy."
    "My friend, Steve, said you were looking for people."
    "Stevie sent you?"
    "That's right."
His big brown eyes with their yellowed whites narrowed at me, surely making an attempt to size me up.
    "Can you drive?"
    "I can drive."
    "Come back down at six. HEY! HEY! GET the FUCK away from those pumps!!"
Dixon was yelling past me, at the bums out in the glare of the street. Interview over. I had a job.

I floated back to my apartment. I had about an hour to kill. I was antsy. This clearly wasn't just any job, but a parking garage job. Lamont never said anything about the car wash. Didn't matter. I figured he'd start me out with the soapy wand, and work me in to parking cars. I figured, even at that, I'd be parking cars at a relaxed, sedate clip for old ladies that were too rich or infirm to park 'em themselves. These were (to use the term I later came to use) the regulars. Never in my foolish young life did I think that in less than two hours, I'd be thrown headlong into the full Dean Moriarty. There! That was the romance of it! I was going to be a fucking parking lot attendant, slinging around old Chevies and crisp new Buicks like my hero straight out of "On the Road!" Eventually. I wandered over to Charlies, and splurged on a slice. Soon I'd have money and could buy real food. (Shit. Did I have to tell them down at the welfare office where I'd been picking up my food stamps? That, by the way, had been the idea of Tennant's wife. Lucy had told me to go get on the dole. I did, and it had saved my ass. But you still needed money. My parents' income made that the fact in the eyes of Uncle Sam.) My hour was about up by now. I made my way into the garage via the Burbank Street entrance and found Dixon.
    "Cal, is that it? You're name is Cal?"
    "Yes, sir."
He had a way of clicking his tongue in his mouth.
    "I think numb nuts is still up front. Go tell him you're starting and get yourself a time card."
Numb Nuts turned out to be the owner. He'll need a name, because Lamont Dixon called so many people 'numb nuts' it could confuse an ordinary narrative. Context alone kept us straightened out.
    So I sauntered up to Charles Winston the Third's office (shades of Huntington Munroe!) and told him what I'd been told.
    "That fucker hired another damn kid?"
    "Sir. Apparently he did."
    "I see you kids come and go so fast, I can't keep track of who's on my own damned payroll. Nancy, get the kid an application, get his social security, and give 'im a time sheet. For Christ's sake, I'm late. Betsy's gonna kill me."

In due process, I was back out on the floor having put my name, rank, and serial number on some xeroxed form. I was waving a crisp new time card. Lamont (we really never called him Dixon, except maybe at his funeral) took the card and jammed it in the clock, which went 'caCHUNK.'
    "See that? You gotta punch in, and punch OUT if you wanna get paid."
    "Got it."
Now a few more car jocks had gathered. A whole new cast of characters:

Alpo, from Dorchester, never pronounced his 'r's.
    "Boss, who's da new guy?"
    "Alpo, Cal; Cal, Alpo."
    "Alpo?"
    "My name's Albert (he said Albet), but the boss thinks I'm some sort of dog
food."
In from the street comes my benefactor, the composer Steve Harrison.
    "I believe you know Stevie."
    "Hey, Stevedor."

Joined by Jones. Jason Jones. A real skinny kid with a shock of hair that stood straight up like he'd had a shock. Seen a ghost. What the hell. We bantered pointlessly, listening to Alpo's story about his sexual conquest of his delicious Dorchester (Dawchestah) babe. About 6:30, the cars for that evening's concert at Symphony Hall, next door (!), started arriving at the open door. Stevie'd put out a sign on his way in that was a sandwich board affair that just said "Park."

The routine went like this:
Lamont had a fistful of tickets. When a car came in, he'd say:
    "Parking for the evening?" (Or just 'Park?')
Then, assuming he got a nod or some sort of affirmation, he'd rip the ticket while saying:
    "Two bucks." (Or 'two dollah.')
Then, while the customer fidgeted for money, he'd put one half of the ticket under the windshield wiper blade, and be holding the other half out to the customer, waiting for the money. In every transaction, there's a moment when the money changes hands. That is a vulnerable moment, and Lamont tried by sleight of hand to make it painless. He handed the customer a ticket, and the customer handed him folding money. If it was the exact two dollars, the deal was done. If it was a case where change needed to be made, Lamont rocked back, away from the car window and took from a capacious pocket in his eternal jump suit a wad of bills and counted it out quickly, efficiently, and accurately. I never saw him make a mistake. Customers "made mistakes," they changed their minds and tried to back out (impossible - or very nearly, and when this happened Lamont would guide the traffic with his basso profundo in full bellow), or discover themselves short, or have a huge bill only, whatever... Lamont made it seem easy. It wasn't. The movement of his hands alone, always in motion, was like watching an expert, a card shark. The routine always ended with:
    "Don't lose your ticket. You'll need it to get your car back!"
I watched this happen that first time, awestruck. Equally awe inspiring was what happened next. The moment the customer was out of the car, even if the passengers were not all out, the car jock, hovering while Lamont did his thing, was in the driver's seat, preparing to drive it. The attendant (my composer friend, Alpo, then Jones, working in a casual rotation) had to adjust the seat, find the break and release it if necessary, start the engine if it was not still running, depress the clutch if necessary, put the car in drive, (or put the car in first, be it stick, three on the column, or some other non-standard arrangement), and somehow, some way, get going, the subtlety being to try to not alarm the customer by peeling out. Then, it was like this: you pulled forward, making a sharp right turn between to cement pillars that were just forward of the car wash. Next, you sighted the opening of one of two freight elevators in the rear view mirror, and backed the vehicle up into it. You hopped out and grabbed the handle that operated the lift, and took the car to the desired floor. Lamont had called out the floor as you got in, or you knew what the situation was and you went for it. The garage had (has) six floors. Once you lined the elevator up at the floor you were aiming for (and there was no automatic stop, you had to do this by eye-hand coordination), you hopped back into the still running auto, and now, you could just peel out and park it in the first open slot.

I watched, and listened, as the cars peeled out above our heads. I saw the number of jocks on the floor rapidly dwindle as they hopped in a car and then disappeared into an elevator bay. My turn, I realized, was very rapidly coming. I'd said that I knew how to drive, but not like this. I did not really have the time to develop stage fright, this all went at such a rapid clip. The last thing I heard was "four." The bent old fellow whose Chrysler I had to park was a long time getting out the door. I held the door open for him as I had seen done. I got in and my knees hit the steering wheel. Short dude! I had to find the seat release on a car I'd never driven. Bar in front? Lever on side? I fumbled. I heard Lamont's basso saying,
    "Let's go!"
I found the bar in front.
    "C'mon, let's go! You're costing Mr. Winston money!"
It was, thank God, an automatic. I couldn't tell if it was running or not. I turned the ignition key. Loud chatter, as the starter engaged the running engine. Lamont, his rhythm broken, is leaning into the open driver's side window.
    "Son, I thought you knew how to drive."
    "I do. I do. Just let me..."
By now, Alpo is back on the floor.
    "C'mon, Alpo. Bail the rookie out!"
Alpo opened the car door and with a jerk of his thumb, indicated that I should get out. Out I got. The huge Chrysler was in the elevator and I was sidelined. I watched the team of Alpo, Stevie, and Jones put the stream of cars away in a running, rhythmic dance. It was fantastic to watch, but my ears were red and I was tempted to just walk out. Then I heard that voice of Lamont's in my head saying 'punch out if you want to get paid.' I was not going to not get paid, and the clock was way down at the other end of the floor, in the way of the manic driving. It would have been suicide to try to make a run for it! At last the traffic thinned, and the pace slowed. There was a breather. As soon as that was the situation, Lamont sidled up to Stevie.
    "Why don't you show numb nuts here how to run the elevator."
He meant me, and 'numb nuts' fit me perfectly.
    "Sure."
I was ushered to one of the two elevators and Steve showed me how to work the handle. When, eventually, the rush was completely over, and the BSO had begun its serenade across the street while we stood around baby sitting the cars of players, conductor, and audience, Lamont walked over to my still comically poised for action self and made a bit of a speech. It was similar to the one I heard upon flunking flute, but it was a bit more homespun.
    "I thought, I could have SWORN, I heard you say you knew how to drive."
    "I do know how to drive, sir."
    "I didn't get a lick of driving out of you tonight."
I still had a time card, and it was punched in, not out. I called his bluff.
    "You didn't give me much of a chance."
    "You had a chance, and you froze."
    "I said I could drive, but I have to learn how to park."
This was the truth, and the truth cannot be blinked away.
    "I guess then I asked you the wrong question this afternoon. But this is a parking garage..."
    "...and car wash."
    "Oh. Are you saying you want to work the car wash?"
    "No."
Now Lamont looked down at the cement floor, besmirched as it was with ground in oil, grease, and tire marks, years of punishment, years of grime. Do the crime, do the the time. I could see him struggle with what he was about to say. I reckoned, rightly, that he'd been down this road before, taken a chance on some stray art student that couldn't park a car, not like that, and had to cut him loose. I could see that the responsibility weighed on him. Even though I was about to loose the job I'd had for what?, all of two hours, I felt a surge of sympathy for Lamont Dixon.
    "I'm not sure that I can use you."
    "I understand. It's just a bitches brew. I'll go punch out."
I headed, dejectedly, towards the rack of cards and the time clock.
    "What was that you said?"
    "I said," I said turning back to him, "I'll punch out. I might have made a few bucks anyway."
    "No, you said 'bitches brew.'"
    "Yes. Miles Davis."
    "You like Miles Davis?"
    "Of course! I live that shit."
This was a lie. I barely knew what I was talking about. My remark about 'bitches brew' was an example of my tendency to get a phrase stuck in my head like people get a tune stuck in mind. (Sorry, Gilbert. I mean my 'wherever I think that.') This tendency was to become even more pronounced as the use of psychedelics altered my (and our) vocabulary. At the instant Lamont picked up on the phrase, I saw my opening and I went for it. I tried for a super hip response. It worked. Lamont now looked again at the filthy floor. This was a sign, usually, of serious thought on his part.
    "Well, fuck me. Once again, I'm too softhearted to fire another incompetent youngster. Anybody that listens to Miles has got to have something going on upstairs."

I didn't dare start in on Ryle with Lamont, no matter how many stairs he wanted to climb to get to the alleged location of my ignorance about Miles Davis. I simply stopped in my tracks, the tracks that led to the time clock. I was about to open my mouth to say something lame by way of thanks for giving me a second (or first) chance. I was cut off mid-thought.
    "I can't say I can keep you on for long. Let's see how long it takes, or even if, you can catch on."
Then, he turned, shifting his girth and height like the Titanic, hard right rudder, all ahead full, and went in the direction of the office. He had chores. All of that cash must be counted. I found myself out on the floor noticing my audience for the first time. My fellow parking lot attendants were all just around the table that was just aft of the time clock. They had stayed out of sight during my near-dismissal, but not out of ear shot. Alpo, the motor mouth, spoke up first.
    "Nice. I can't believe he didn't shit-can ya."
Steve (my friend, now feeling more like an acquaintance):
    "I can, Alpo. He kept you when you were a rookie."
Jones, from whom I had heard not a peep, was slow of speech but sharp as a tack:
    "I think we'd better take this guy up to six, grab one of these clunkers, and give this guy a parking tutorial."
    "Won't Lamont kill us?"
    "It takes him fifteen, twenty minutes to count the cash. In that time, we can get up and get Cal in and out of a few slots just for shits and grins. Besides...he can't fire all of us. Alpo, you take the floor."

So it was, that with my education firmly in hand, I began to learn how to park cars. I did, eventually 'catch on.' It was not without a few setbacks. Not all of the setbacks were my fault. The customers themselves could do quite a bit of damage. In fact, on nights when we worked a light event ourselves, since Steve knew the drill with tickets, he'd sometimes open the car door on a balky, skittery customer and say:
    "Do you want us to wreck it, or did you want to wreck it yourself?"
This practice came after one customer, realizing too late that he'd gotten into a valet situation, hopped out of his car and tried to secure his CB antenna. It was crazy. The antenna, a truly worthless piece of hardware, was in no danger. It would have cleared the tall bays with several feet to spare. What happened happened fast. The customer, trying to get the antenna in the back of his hatchback while being scolded by Lamont, made the mistake of turning to respond to the badgering while slamming the hatch. The antenna was about two feet beyond the lip, and it snapped clean in two.
    "Shit!"
    "There you go, sir. We'll handle it from here."
Out the customer went, cursing and looking every which way to see how much his foolishness was cause for general derision, mostly back over his shoulder as I jumped in the hatchback and lurched forward towards the space between the pillars. The clutch was good and stiff, but I didn't pop it. There would be secure, smooth driving on this one. I was racking up points. Our laughter was strictly suppressed until break, when we let it fly.
    "Do you want to wreck it yourself?" Lamont himself provided this immortal line. He used it himself from time to time, and it always made him snicker.

One occasion for a setback that both added and subtracted points for me was, again, the customer's fault. I got in a very nice BMW after the nattily attired male had exited. While Lamont was making change, I found myself in the driver's seat next to a perfumed woman in a stunning gown, blonde hair streaming down onto a major cleavage situation. The glint of jewelry in the florescent glare was suggestive of a lush life (jazz title) I couldn't begin to imagine. I waited for her to get out, but she sat there looking at me. It was very rare for this to happen. It was unheard of to be actually spoken to, but I was still rookie and was taking things in stride.
    "My husband is a perfect ass."
Yow! I'm in the middle of a domestic dispute, with my ass in his still warm seat!
    "I can't say, m'am, but I think you'll want to join him. I have to put this car up on five."
    "You can put me up on five anytime."
She put a warm hand on my thigh. Yikes, shit fuck, Christ almighty. I'm going to pop a rod while popping a wheely. She almost got her wish, because with Lamont glaring at the delay, my almost reflexive reaction to her touch was to tense my leg. The BMW is a fine, sensitive driving machine. It's response to any pressure on its throttle was immediate action. I'd already put the car in gear. That's how fast we had to work. The car moved forward quickly taking the arc that began the three point turn. I braked in the nick of time. Lamont had caught up to me and was pounding on the Beemer's fender.
    "Let the lady get out of the car, for Pete's sake!"
Startled by her short ride with me, she instantly complied. Lamont, wad of tickets in right hand, guided her out of the building with his left. Her ass of an husband was nowhere to be seen. In the break, this story became part of the legend of the Westland Garage. Lamont listened to the recounting shaking his head.
    "You're a piece of work, Mr. Hunter. I'm surprised that you didn't keep right on going."
    "What, out the back door in the Beemer?"
Laughter all around at this.
    "At least into the bay."
    "Take her up to five, anytime!"
    "You'd have killed me, Lamont."
    "Yes, but you'd have died happy."
Alpo:
    "True. A babe like that comes around once in a lifetime."

In the beginning, there was a week of doing things slowly. Then came the acceleration of pace. Soon, in the second nature phase, I was up to speed with my peers. This was followed by a long period of plateaued competence with occasional, and sometimes spectacular fuck ups that were caused by the following factors: a), being too stoned, b), lack of sleep, c), preoccupation with school and worry over school, d), misjudging the timing of a dose of acid (separate from the haze of marijuana), e), mechanical failure of the customer's vehicle, f), pure and simple unaccountable fuck up (foot slipped off the brake pedal variety). There might be a 'g,' (on then to 'r'), but one factor was never involved: I never got bored parking cars. It has proved a durable, maybe even lifesaving skill. I can turn on a dime, I can drive anything with wheels, and I can will a car to enter a billowing arpeture with the power of my mind. At times like these, having slipped the bonds of time and space, I think of old Dean Moriarty, the father I never had. I channeled Dean, not Cassady. Though fiction be autobiographical, it distills out the essential oils and leaves only essence. The essence of Dean Moriarty was effortless competence behind the wheel of an automobile. Jack asks, "wither goest thou America in thy shiny car in the night?" I answer, 'straight down the road to hell.' The lessons I learned from slinging cars around in tight spaces were the lessons of teamwork and eye-hand coordination. I never really mastered the business side. I was a failure at making change down to the end, as you will read. I concentrated on those facets that made me a better musician. Teamwork and coordination, sitting next to someone playing the "Grand Duo" (Schubert) is essential oil. Otherwise, the banter was grist for the mill. The job itself outlasted my entire conservatory education.

Economy Part 2

At the end of a night, around midnight, (jazz title) I'd head back up Westland Ave to my apartment. I no longer had to struggle quite so much to afford it. The scene when I opened the door was ever shifting. My two roommates provided their own level of entertainment. The shifts in the landscape were swift in the sophomore year, best told, as I have remembered them, as a series of vignettes.

One night, I opened the door to find that Yoshi had brought home a date. He had big plans, but by the time I got in at midnight, he'd hit the skids. I walked down the hall to my room, taking off my autumn (first semester) coat and brushed by Yoshi as he stumbled to the bathroom. Yaaak! The perfect greeting, a puking roommate. A peek in the kitchen revealed the cause. A half empty gallon of rotgut. It was that red colored Burgundy shit that I hated more than anything. Back past the bathroom, I tried to put in a good word. I aped Van Dyke, who I had just gotten to know:
    "Condolences."
Yosh put up a wan hand, but then, yaaaak. Continuing to my room, I put down my coat and was about to settle down on the bed when it suddenly dawned on me that if Yoshi Akiwa had gotten drunk (on a whole half gallon of faux Burgundy), he had to have help. There had to be someone else in the apartment. I headed for his bedroom. I found her sitting primly on the edge of his bed. She was a darling woman, with straight blond hair and a hunched over posture that meant only one thing: a double reed player. She was traveling without her axe, so I could only hazard this as a guess.
    "Top of the morning to you, I'm Cal."
She put out a limp, fair hand.
    "Harmony."
    "You're a music student I gather?"
    "BCM, Bassoon."
    "Your date is indisposed."
    "So I hear. He went over the top. I'm still stuck at the bottom. Can I trouble you to walk me back to the dorms?"
    "Of course. I'd be delighted."
No sign of Stewart. He stayed out late, cruising for a bruising. We suited up in my bedroom, and Harmony looked around at my spartan life.
    "You have a ton of books."
    "I like to read."
    "Me too. What are you reading now?"
    "I'm mired in textbooks for school. Piston, Hindemith, Creston, Dallapiccola."
    "These are all books by composers. Are you one of those?"
    "Yep. Busted."
    "No, no. I think it's very cool. I would have nothing to play without the likes of you."
    "Perhaps I should write you a bassoon piece."
    "That'd be great..."
    "...as long as I don't have to learn to play it."
    "It's a specialty. It takes a lot of hot air."
Down the hall and out the door into the cool night air. Her breath in the chill was mingling with mine as we walked and talked. We were the only signs of life.
    "Thanks again for being such a perfect gentleman."
    "Thanks again for the opportunity to accompany a fair young maiden home."
    "You are...a very funny man, Mr. Hunter."
    "I get even funnier when I'm warmed up."
    "What does it take to warm you up?"
    "Just a little hot air."
    "A specialty of mine...say, all too quick, here we are."
    "Yes here we are."
    "It's too cold to stand out here."
For a second, I thought she was going to invite me in. After all, she'd been expecting some wild flute player action, and had been left at the altar, so to speak. Instead, she kissed me on the neck.
    "I've enjoyed our little chat, Cal. I really hope to see you again. Soon."
    "I'll look for you in the halls of higher learning."

As I walked back to the scene of my roommate's Waterloo (last seen praying to the loo), I thought to myself, this is the start of a beautiful friendship.

It was true. By the time we got to Halloween, she'd been by any number of times and had hatched the notion of giving blood at the blood bank to celebrate this spooky holiday. We did do this, and together as a weird date. With the badges of our gift of bodily fluid, our gauzed and adhesive taped arms, we flopped onto the bed to make out. She'd been timing the workings of her feminine affairs and decided that on this night, we should go all the way. Soon after this, she chucked the dorm and unofficially moved in. Having a woman in the house deeply offended Stewart.
    "You could have asked me, Calbraith!"
    "I figured it was my call."
    "Well, now we've got to deal with tampons in the bathroom. More dishes in the sink."
Oddly enough, given the way Harmony got in, Yoshi took my side in the skirmishes with Littlefield. Nobody liked his effeminate screech. We much preferred a true red-blooded tampon using female.

Since I was now carless, I was stuck in Boston, more or less, over Winter break. I also had a job and a schedule. Harmony invited me up to New Hampshire to meet her folks. We took the train. Her mother was a charming host, a woman on top of things, a homemaker and a wit. Her father was a wheelchair bound grouch who called his daughter in for consultation. He used the expression "intellectual work," which I snapped right up as a delicious phrase. He'd send us from homestead to town to pick up 'medicine.' I observed that his medication of choice was a large quantity of hard liquor. This was another thing I knew little about, but I detected the hypocrisy quickly. On the second day of our visit, as we coagulated in the old farmhouse for breakfast, I found Harmony's father to be in a very grumpy mood. I had offered to make the cream of wheat (shades of my failure at eggs on the Cape!) and as I stirred the thickening goop, I was treated to a lecture on pragmatic morality.
    "I know what you did last night."
    "Pardon?"
    "I had my son as a spy. He's just a little kid, he doesn't know how to evade interrogation. But I want to hear it from you. Did you or did you not sleep in my daughter's room last night?"
    "I did. I'm an adult, you're daughter's an adult, we consent."
    "The age of consent in this particular state is 21. You can't be 21. My daughter is certainly not of age. Besides, it's my house, and in my house, you go by my rules."

I'd been hearing this one all my life. What was it with parents? Did they all go to the same parenting school?
    "I didn't get the rule book coming in last night."
    "What did you just say?"
He thundered this out. I'd been sotto voce.
    "Nothing. I said I'm sorry. It won't happen again."
Harmony poked me hard.
    "OK. Just so we understand each other."
The cream of wheat was like a ball of rubber in the pot just now. I figured with a little milk and sugar it would be just dandy. I kind of liked it lumpy. We sat down, and then the 'great man' said grace. The height of hypocrisy, this, because I knew he was a drunk. I didn't understand alcoholism. It goes in the future file, fodder for a sequel. I had no modulated sense of mercy. I resolved, therefore to frost him out. So therefore, when he rocked back in the wheelchair, putting a few feet between him and his lump of cream of wheat in its bowl that matched the plate, and roared:
    "I can't eat this! It's just like carpet tack!"
I had no response at hand other than to say:
    "It tastes great to me. I like it lumpy."
I failed to notice the smoke coming out of Harmony's ears. Her mother, blessed soul, tried to ameliorate her husband:
    "Well, would you like more eggs? A bit more bacon?"
    "No, I've lost my appetite. You can throw this garbage out."
Harmony got up from the table and bolted to the upstairs bathroom. I glanced at her Mom, and we locked gaze for just a moment. It was as if she tried to telegraph the impossibility of her situation.
    "You have to forgive him. He's very distracted by his intellectual work."
    "Mom!"
    "Excuse me. Being a mother never ends."
Harmony had also lost her appetite. Me and the little tyke who ratted his sister and myself out sat alone chowing down.

Another vignette:
One evening after work, I'd been over to Xenia's. Xenia was Rodless; they'd had a tiff, so I had her in tow. Harmony was elsewhere. We didn't interfere with old friends, at least not at that point. I opened the apartment door to the unmistakable smell of cat shit. I didn't think we had a cat.
    "Yosh, what's up?"
    "I'm watching this cat for my sister's friend. I think it's sick."
Again, things feline were outside my knowledge at that time. When cats get sick, of course, it's time to either call a vet or contact a crematorium. The cat was indeed 'sick.' It was a jet black adolescent shorthair (again, applying future knowledge to memory), and it's fur was matted with shit, piss, and drool. It was lolling it's head and drooling. It had lost control of its bladder and bowels, and Yoshi was fooling around with paper towels trying to clean up after it. It had moved on to the next phase of its express train ride to oblivion. Xenia instantly became hysterical. She loved (loves) cats. I watched for a moment as the cat staggered around, it's pupils dilating in different unmatched diameters. I headed for the kitchen and started flipping through the Yellow Pages for a vet. We didn't have a phone in house, so this meant hitting the pay phone out on Westland Ave. It was late. There was going to be no vet open for business. If an emergency vet could be found, we had no car. Xenia remained in the room with the sick cat. I could hear her yelling now:
    "Oh my God! This is bad!"
I raced down the short hall and looked over her shoulder into the bedroom. I got there just in time to see the cat jump up in the air and fall all legs splayed out. It did this again. This time, when it hit the floor, it rolled over on its back and convulsed. It never righted itself. It howled, making an horrible sound. Then, blood rushed out of its mouth and the poor thing expired. Now, we had a corpse. Xenia was, as the expression goes, beside herself. Yoshi was wringing his hands, moaning.
    "What am I going to tell my sister."
    "You're going to have to tell her that her friend's cat is dead."
    "I didn't do a thing to this cat. I don't know what happened."
I didn't either. At the time I suspected Yoshi of advanced cat torture. I thought he might have slammed the cat's head in a door in his clumsiness. Now, looking back, I think the cat must've gotten into the roach bait. Maybe it just brushed up against one of those cakes of yellow poison we put out (particularly Littlefield, who was waging all out war on the roaches), and then licked it off its paws. That might have been enough toxicity to cause massive organ failure and, well, sudden death.

Xenia proposed that we go over to Hemenway Street and consult one of her favorite hip Theater Professors who lived there. I had no better plan. It was about 2 in the morning, and she couldn't think of anybody else who could be reasonably enlisted for advice. He was, she said, always telling her to call on him any time, any time at all that she had a problem. (When, after all, did the true art of potential seduction ever sleep?) We took the little walk, with Yoshi coming along as well, since he didn't want to be alone in the apartment with a corpse. I was dubious. Two AM? Who would be crazy enough to be arousable at this hour? Even the prostitutes were all nestled snug with their Johns. How would we get in the building? We had no outside door key. We arrived at the entrance, and tugged the locked door. I looked at Xenia and shrugged as if to say, 'now what?' Just as we were about to turn tail, a woman opened the door on on her way out. We averted our eyes and shot in past her. Then we identified the man's buzzer and commenced to wail on it. After an untheatrical pause, a groggy voice came over the intercom.
    "Who is it at this ungodly hour?"
    "It's me, Xenia."
The buzzer buzzed on the inner door, I grabbed it and pulled. We raced as a little straggling group to the top of the stairs where the man was standing in the open door, in his underwear and robe. His robe was open. Seeing three of us, he closed the robe and tied its belt.
    "The three musketeers," he said dryly. This was not going to be the fuck of his life. Just another fucked up event in the student life. He held the door open and gestured us in with his theatrical flourish. He was a director. He made endless fun of actors, particularly the non-method, pre-Stanislawski ones. I now learned that he kept this up in his sleep. We filed into the man's script stacked, cluttered apartment and Xenia poured out the cat tale in a rapid hysteria-laced rush. We came to rest in his kitchen and watched as he made coffee. Very civilized.
    "OK. Dead animal. Here's what you've got to do. You'll want to get a big plastic trash bag. I've got one...right...here."
    "I can tell where this is going."
    "I'm sure. You need to put the carcass in this bag, and then toss it in the dumpster."
    "Oh, what will I tell my sister," Yoshi wailed.
    "Such a sordid end for a noble pet."
    "You don't want a corpse in your apartment very long, trust me."
    "I trust you. On that, believe me, I believe you."
    "It's just so inhumane."
    "The animal is dead. It's all over now."
    "Baby blue." (That's me, I can't help it, it's a disease of my 'where ever I think that.')
    "Look, if it's any consolation, you can have a little ceremony. I can lend you a Bible."
    "I'm Asian, remember."
    "I'm afraid that's all I've got by way of advice. I'm sorry you've all been through this disturbing experience. Now drink up, and get going. I have class in the morning."

So, it came to pass that I was elected to scoop the remains of the cat into the bag we'd woken up a Theater Prof to obtain, using a chunk of cardboard we'd fished out of the dumpster on Hemenway Street, the very one in the little space between two buildings that we'd selected as the final temporary resting place (out from under our noses) of Madame X, the defunct cat. This was the hard part. In the end, the corpse was in the bag, which Yoshi was left holding. I went for paper towels and mopped the thickened blood off the wooden floor. Xenia hopped up and down in horror at this, but it all had to be done. She had been very useful. Without her, I'm not sure how this would have played out. Out once more into the night air we went. Yoshi was pall-bearer. I had a head full of poetry and felt I didn't need my Bible. When we arrived at the dumpster, Yoshi handed me the bag. Xenia said,
    "Do we want to say a few words, or just, you know, toss it?"
    "I have a few words."
I cleared my throat and commenced:
    "Put the rubber mouse away.
    Pick the spools up off the floor.
    What was velvet-shod and gay...
Yoshi:
    ("No, don't say 'gay.' That cat was not gay.")
Xenia elbowed him in the ribs.
    "...will not want them any...more."
We heard footsteps and voices approaching from around the corner. In a burst of not wanting to be caught in a serious violation of some public health ordinance, I heaved the plastic over the rim of the dumpster. We all turned and began walking back in the direction of... oh, we were just aimlessly walking. Xenia tugged my sleeve in the direction of her place. Yoshi was on up ahead. He could not be stopped. He was heading back to our place. Almost to myself, I continued the doggerel (sorry kitty) in stentorian tones.
    "What was warm, is strangely cold.
    Whence dissolved the little breath?
    How could this small body hold
    So immense a thing as Death?"
I looked over at Xenia, who was weeping. Had I been a warmer, less cautious sort, I would have given her a hug. I couldn't. I was merely a reciting automaton, my emotions spent. Xenia sniffled. At length, we got to her door.
    "Did you write that?"
    "No. I wish. It got to you. I never managed to."
    "Not true, my dear, not true."
    "No that's from a book of poems I've had since Elementary school. The book is called "Reflections On a Gift of Watermelon Pickle, and Other Poems."
    "That was one of the 'other poems.'"
    "Yes. I'd have to look it up to learn the name of the poet. I forget."
(As gloss: Sara Henderson Hay.)
    "So immense a thing..."
    "...as death."
    "Are you coming up?"
    "No, I'm done. I'm heading home."
    "Well, thanks for a most interesting evening."
She gave me that French peck on the cheek that I never mastered. Up the steps and in, she was gone. The curtain fell on another whacked-out sophomoric scene. As I think of that poem now, in light of the storms to follow, I wonder how Tennant would have taken it, had I ever thought to bring it up to him. After all, the immensity of death cannot be 'held' in a body of any size. Death, the cessation of life functions, is, like the university, more a concept than a thing. It was very Gibert Ryle, the death of that cat. It may as well have been Schroedinger's cat, for all the philosophy that swirled around it.

Rhythm Changes Part 1

I opened the apartment door on the following vignette:

My parents were up from DC. Harmony's parents were down from New Hampsire. Littlefield's parents were over from wherever, helping him move out. This was a ton of parents in a three bedroom apartment, almost, but not quite all at once.

To back up a page: We'd taken to torturing Littlefield in an effort to get him to move out. I wanted Harmony in and Stewart out. The tipping point came when he performed an all Chopin recital and put us through homo hell both decorating for the after-party and trying to coach us on what to say to his many admirers and parents. Both Yoshi and I found this insulting. He assumed that we could not be trusted, so we moved from being sympathetic to being deliberately untrustworthy saboteurs. The most infuriating aspect of his nagging concerned his misogyny. He couldn't stand the fact that I'd allowed a woman in his living quarters. This was a familiar point of view. It had been presented to me by Goode before meeting Davis, and tacitly reiterated by Davis when he recounted the story of the naked lesbians. The outrageous lesbians on the beaches of the Cape remained in my mind as dystopian models. I had seen a couple of dykes arguing on the beach at Truro, and realized that they had the same burdens as the rest of us. To single out a gender or a sexual preference as abhorrent had worn thin in my mind. I was getting around to the idea that we are all in this together and we are all equally unworthy of being included in the party. The idea that Stewart might have been still remotely fond of me, and that it chafed that I had blown him off did not ring true. His behavior as a wastrel, out all night, home with different boys each dawn, and his increasingly shrill rejection of anything I liked (jazz, women) ruled this out. I wish now that I could have found something sympathetic in him. He had, for a short time, been an exemplar of an ideal of physical male beauty. Now I simply found him pathetic. I was also beginning to fight back for my aesthetic. Davis and company had played endless recordings of the same handful of Chopin pieces. They sighed in rapt admiration over 'the quality of the writing.' The more I heard the Revolutionary Etude, the Polonaise in A Flat Major, and the Raindrop Prelude, the more I became convinced that this composer had no sense of humor. I was beginning to see through Van Dykes eyes, and they dimmed considerably when it came to filigree. I think, actually, that Van Dyke would argue that filigree that had structural purpose was tolerable, even referring to it as passagework rather than curlicue. I know that he himself played some Chopin.  I myself eventually came to play, enjoy, and to try not to parody, the Nocturne in E Flat Major. That work itself parodies Bellini and Donnizetti by way of Field.

Oh, right. Littlefield. I was getting around to the night of the party, from which Harmony was banned and Yoshi and I labored under a list of instructions as to what we could do, say or think. The recital program was on a music stand in the kitchen printed in pink ink. The bunting and crepe paper were all in perfect place and not to be disturbed. We sat there trying to decide whether we should even attend this travesty when Harmony knocked on the door in her evening gown. She had a key, so her knocking was a gesture of respect towards the delicate Littlefield.
    "You look great."
    "Yes, Harm, you're a knock out for a persona non-grata."
    "He never let up on that did he."
    "Nope. You're banned from the party."
    "Well, he can't ban me from the recital hall. We'd better get going."
    "We were just trying to decide if we were actually going. I mean, I'm not sure I can get through all of this pink ink."
I flicked a hand towards the program with its all Chopin gobbledygook.
    "Shit. There's another complication."
    "What's that, Harm?"
    "Sorry to shock you Yosh, but Cal, I'm on the rag. I need a quick change of plug."
    "The bathroom is still down the hall."
Off she went. In a moment, she calls:
    "Hey! Cal, where're the tampons? I had a whole new box over here!"
    "I don't know," I yell back. I'm getting up to check on my lover in the loo.
I push past the cracked open door. She's sort of skirt up, panties down, looking vulnerable. I look in the medicine cabinet where only this morning the tampons had lived, causing a Stew to boil over again. I looked beneath the sink. A pile of scotch tape balls and crepe paper remnants filled the wastepaper bin. I saw that the bulk didn't quite match the contents. Littlefield, in his obsession with neatness, had emptied the bin just yesterday. I peeled back a layer of crepe. There, buried beneath the detritus of party prep was the whole new box of tampons. I fished them out. I handed Harmony one.
    "Mystery solved. Here's a fresh plug."
    "That's a bit over the top, don't you think?"
    "C'mon, we been going at it for months."
    "No, I mean for Littlefield to throw out my tampons."
Before we quite knew what damage we were doing to the peace that passeth understanding, we were, all three of us, tying tampons from the arcs of turquoise and pink crepe. We taped some to the walls. We laughed our heads off as we taped one to the bathroom mirror. The final touch, I taped one over the blushing letters on Littlefield's program that said "Prelude Number 15 in D Flat Major (Raindrop)." It took a bit of time for all of this ersatz creativity. Littlefield's program was not extensive. We had dawdled quite a bit beforehand waiting for Harmony. So timing wise, just about the time I stood back and looked our devil's handiwork over, there was a burst of merriment in the stairway. I heard loud, congratulatory voices.
    "You were simply marvelous, fabulous."
    "A thousand and one kisses."
    "Not half bad for an old queen!"
    "And that last bit, that "prelude" thing...
    "...love that one! And I nailed it!"

The door burst open and for a moment there was a flicker of consternation because the instruction to loose the 'bitch' had not been followed. Then, when, like the Colonel in "The Bridge Over the River Kwai," the first tampon was spied hanging from the crepe, and then another, and then yet another...the queer eye racing all the way to the one taped to the fancy paper triumphal banner, the consternation became a scream of mortal anguish.
    "How could you!"
Murmurs from the inrushing gathering. What in hell was going on here?
    "You! And you! All three of you!"
Littlefield's parents, his father slowly bouncing back from an incapacitating coronary, were in the very rear of this well of humanity. They made it inside to find their only son in tears, sobbing at the dining room table, being consoled by his latest boyfriend. For a good Catholic mother and father, it would have been hard to determine which indignity was worse, the roommates and their despicable, utterly tasteless redecorating scheme, or the blatant fact of their son's aberrant  sexuality. They already knew about it, I assumed. And Catholics aren't quite Baptists. Still, we three didn't linger over this scene. We passed them going in on our way out. We three went to Charlies in our tuxes and her gown of green satin. We sat there trying to rekindle the merest hint of our former mirth. It was not a good feeling. Looking back, I still think tolerance and restraint would have been preferable. As it was, it set in motion the next scene, which, as noted, began with opening the door on three sets of parents.

It was the end of the semester, the beginning of another winter break, and the beginning of the end of my relationship with Harmony. I killed it by sheer obtuseness. This is the difficulty with a memoir. Either you make yourself the hero, or you tell the truth. It's a sliding scale; some things can be fudged for self-interest. Leaving out of considerations things that are not worthy of reportage (every burp and fart), some things may not be felt to be recordable for the sake of those still living or for that same self-interest. It boils down to the same thing. If you blow up your support group, you've damaged yourself. Every autobiographical author has a bottom drawer and also, likely, a hidden compartment. That is the human condition. I have a place where I draw the line, but the rush of words in a confessional has a therapeutic effect. I'd rather skip this next bit, just as I skipped the bitter end of the Goode affair. I can't. Too many plot lines emanate from this conference of parents.

My parents sat at one side of our dining room table, and Harmony's sat at the other. I walked in and saw that this was the case, and that Harmony was serving as hostess. She was at the sink, making tea. I took this mental snapshot, and it remains in memory unblemished. These days I would have joined the party no matter what the level of my animosity for the participants. I loved my parents of course, and love them still. That sort of affection is part of the bond that brought us into being in the first place and radiates out in all directions, across time and space. (There's another metaphor that a philosopher might want to get hackles up over!) The sight of Dr. What's His Name, however, made me recoil. My disregard for him had increased since my visit to New Hampshire, not abated. I did not wish to sit down with the estimable Professor Hard Tack.
    "Cal," pipes Harmony, "sit! Have some tea!"
    "Mom, Dad, How was your trip?"
I stood in the doorway to the dining room and kitchenette, still in winter gear, my snowy boots making puddles on the floor.  My Mom answers,
    "Fine, fine. We drove the new car."
    "Really. What kind of car did you buy?"
    "It's a Chevy Wagon," offers Dad.
    "Great."
I nod at Harmony's Mom, but I can't get myself to acknowledge her father. His wheelchair is folded against the cabinets, his cane is by his side, and he's not looking at me either. He's staring at a spot on the table about two feet in. There's nothing there but cheap vinyl tablecloth. In a way, his surliness is a feature that excuses mine. It almost, but not quite, lets me off the hook.
    "OK then. I need to get out of my boots and stuff. I'll do that in my room."
Down the hall I clomp.

I'm not sure what sort of opera I thought I was in. It surely wasn't buffa, though there was going to be a confusion finale. I like a lot of literature, but I come up short when trying to analyze or name the genre or even the mood of the following scene. It was anti-dramatic in a way. Dramatic would have been to confront the Old Fart and be a lively participant in the debate over my own future. I sat down on the bed and took off my boots. I continued on and took off my wet socks. I threw my coat and scarf on the back of a folding metal chair. I tossed my hat on the seat. The steam heat was clanking and I was upset, so off came the flannel shirt. In T-shirt and jeans, pants legs rimmed in snow melt, I grabbed Lao Tzu and flopped back on the bed. I cracked the slender book.
    "The way that can be named is not the unchanging way."

It took about 15 minutes for Harmony to realize that I was not forthcoming. I heard the footfalls of her platform heels coming down the hall. I saw her head poke in the open door. She saw me in bed with a book.
    "What in hell are you doing?"
    "I'm reading a book."
    "I can see that, but we have guests...your parents, mine..."
    "I don't want to be in the same room with that asshole."
She realized, face reddening, that I was talking about her father.
    "That's just as assholian. He's my father. I can't change the fact, or him."
I turned back to the book.
    "Watch your actions. They become habits."
I heard her footfalls as she went back down the hall.

My next visitor, quite a few pages of the Tao later, was my mother. She had no trouble barging in to my room. She stood for a moment quite near the bed, then threw my hat on the bed in the general area of my head and sat in the folding chair. Now I was in deep shit. The battle of wills had come to me, despite the fact that I remained in my private space like Achilles. I smiled to myself at this thought and, as though Mom and me had done the mind meld, I glimpsed myself as small, foolish, and engaged in uncivil war. After all, what had the man done other than speaking the truth and insulting my cream of wheat?
    "Cal, I don't know what's the matter with you. Can you explain it to me?"
The temptation was strong to read another morsel of ancient wisdom at random. The image of the paperback pages, yellowed with age, and bearing a serif type that seemed to hover before my eyes in eidetic memory provided a quip, even as I stared directly at my mother.
    "When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you." Did I say that out loud?
    "That makes no sense. What you're doing, by staying in your room is rude. It's embarrassing your father, Harmony's folks, and, most importantly, me! She's a lovely girl, bright and talented and sociable. How is she going to enjoy life with a baboon like you?"
    "I like her too, Mom. But I can't stand her father. Being in the same room with him is intolerable."
    "Her father? What'd he do to you?"
    "Oh, nothing really..."
    "Then why are you being so silly?"
    "He accused me of sleeping with his daughter."
    "You are sleeping with his daughter, aren't you?"
    "Of course."
    "He said I had to abide by his rules in his house."
    "That sounds very familiar. I think it sounds like good policy."
I'm rapidly running low on ammunition.
    "He said my cream of wheat tasted like carpet tack."
At this, my mother begins to laugh.
    "You get your sorry self out into that kitchen and stop making a fool of all of us!"
She was always good at moving from one emotion to another. She'd laugh and joke. We'd fool around like a pair of kids. Then she'd pop me in the nose. It always made it hard to find 'a girl just like the girl that married dear old dad.' She was a hard act to follow. The blocking, for any actors following along, was as follows: she rose to her feet while delivering her last line, and then exited, stage right. Mother-son conference over, I picked up the Tao again.
    "He who controls others is powerful, but he who controls himself is mightier still."

With heaven and earth in agreement that I was being an asshole, and that two assholes does not make for a spotless toilet, I renounced the necromancy of my sit down strike, and padded barefoot out to the kitchen. I got there just in time to see Harmony's mother helping her husband to his feet. As he took the coat from her and went for the cane, he leaned forward to me and said:
    "We came a long way to wait too long for you to put in an appearance. We're leaving."
Then, turning to Harmony, he said:
    "You know, you don't have to move in with this guy. We can afford a nice apartment down here for you."
    "I know, Dad."
She had the wheelchair and was going to brave the elements for the time it took to get her elders in their car and on their way. She was a devoted daughter and a good woman. She didn't, as her father had said, have to move in with me, or even put up with me.

Fathers in wheelchairs move slowly. The confusion finale was about to commence. As one New England patriarch made his way out, another was out on the sidewalk working his way in, with the rest of the clan in tow. On this evening, with the crunch of snow cover underfoot, the result of that other blast of incivility was coming home to roost. It would be better to mix a metaphor that involved large moving vans such as the one that was now clumsily lumbering down the Fenway access road to my address. Roosting?  No. Stew; moving out. At the steering wheel of the truck was Stewart Littlefield. The elder Mr. Littlefield was also moving slowly. His coronary had set him back. A roaring lion of business, he now took care and plodded. Meanwhile, in the outgoing clan, Harmony's mom did all the driving. The car, by miracle was parked in front of our stoop. The clans met up at about this point. Do I need a Gettysburg-style electric map to tell of these armies of the North? The men did not know each other, and the women were preoccupied, so it was merely a matter of choreography. Old Cream of Wheat had to be installed in the Buick. It occupied the exact piece of real estate that Stew hoped to occupy. He pulled in close and turned on his blinkers. His ineptitude as a driver had him pulled partially abreast of the car that needed to exit so that he could enter. Riding shotgun with Stew was his lover, and the sole truly able-bodied member of his moving team. The lover stayed in the cab while Stewart jumped out to help his dad get up the steps. He encountered, therefore, the hated Harmony. We were all hated, of course, but she was the one with the tampon supply. They nodded at each other. No words were necessary, the truck told all. At last the New Hampshire clan was ready to pull out of the coveted space. They could not, since the truck was in the way. I stood in the entrance hall, and watched past the lace curtain. I was now a professional driver. I possessed the skill to pull Old Futz and Gutz out despite the obstacle. I was in my bare feet, which were cold on the marble. I was still frozen inside. I did nothing to help, but watched. I watched as the slow moving Mr. Littlefield, guided by his son, and followed by his mother, worked his way past me on their way upstairs.
    "Oh, God!," the old man gasped. "I'd forgotten about these stairs!"
    "It's OK, Dad, just take it slow."
They were impeded by my parents, who'd put on their coats and had come down the stairs to say good-bye. They were not so lucky as parkers. They were parked at the Westland Ave Garage. (Two dollars.)

Harmony, having been outside enough to turn a bit blue, went past me also, the crowd on the stairs forming a bit of a bottleneck. The impediment inside was the slow moving father and son. The impediment outside was the truck blocking the Buick. Harmony's mom was a patient woman. I took the time to say farewell to my parents. It was tempting to walk them down to the good old Garage and introduce them to the cast of characters. Obviously, though, I had the night off and was not that keen to put on shoes. The traffic inside had abated at last.
    "Bye, Mom."
    "Bye Cal."
We're not a hugging bunch, old Calvinists that we are.
    "Dad...sorry about all of this confusion.'
    "Son, I wish you the best of luck with all of this."
Down the stairs ran Stewart. The door flew open and my father held it open for my mother as they filed out. I thought of marital harmony, but not of marrying Harmony. Her wretched father could never be my in-law kin. Both sets of impediments had now dissolved. I watched from the window as Stewart clumsily maneuvered the truck out of the way of the Buick, which then slowly pulled away into past history. Then Stewart commenced the act of parking a truck in a tight spot. The voice of Lamont Dixon filled my head.
    'Pull it up once,' he'd be saying.
I was about to turn tail and head upstairs, but I held the door for Yoshi who was returning from somewhere.
    "Yosh, the Littlefields are here. Stew's moving out."
    "Well, so what?"
    "I suppose we're breaking up the old gang."
We're up the stairs together.
    "Old gang? We're losing a fag..."
    "...and gaining a babe."
    "Long live the gang."
Harmony and I retreated to our room (and now, it was ours at last, though she still maintained a presence in the dorm her parents paid for). We lay on the bed and turned towards make up sex as we listened to the furniture moving opera raging in the hall and on the stairs. Yoshi, too, stayed out of it. We occasionally heard, 'take it easy, Father, just do what you can do.' The fluting voices of Stew and his lover were mostly engaged in swearing. The swearing out of furniture is the only way to move your shit. I never heard a peep out of Mrs. Littlefield. I wonder how she did as a light hauler? I suspect she mostly packed stuff.

Now, with the mix to my liking, I can settle down and get the lawn chair of memory and wait for the fireworks. My narrative is now becalmed and the style is the sort of lightly accompanied singing that moves the dramatic action forward.

As I mentioned, many threads radiate from here. In the summer, with our school year ended and our lease up, Yoshi and I went our separate ways. He might have stayed in that apartment with all new people, but I don't remember. I moved out and moved across the fens to shack up with Harmony. I carried my books, clothes and stereo, including my battered tape recorder, over the roadway to the other side of Backbay by hand, no truck, walking each arm load, bit by bit. It was sunny and hot in our new place, and we were free to get sticky. We had a few good times, but the relationship cracked in a few months under the burdens of my doings with Van Dyke, Tennant, Rod, Xenia, and a few others from Dance. Especially damaging to that relationship with Harmony was the experimentation with psychedelic drugs which Harmony did not abide. The real killer, of course, was my unwillingness to tolerate the woman's father. Blood is thicker than water. It became water under the bridge, blood on the tracks. An apartment opened up in a basement row back on the Conservatory side. It was dirt cheap, painted in day glow, full of pipes and odd outcroppings of woodwork that covered the machinery of an old brownstone. It was accessed by an ascent then a descent via stairs or elevator. It had been inhabited by a graduating dancer, a thick waisted woman who never shaved her legs or pits, and who I found utterly exotic and resistant to any sort of flirtation. She was known as the Gypsy Queen. She worked in the costume shop. Perhaps she was a lesbian. When she offered me the place I took it. Had I taken to bitching about Harmony and flirting around? I carried my shit back the same way I'd carried it forth.

One thread that flows from this parental conjunction and aftermath is the hazy, perhaps inaccurate self-knowledge that my subsequent serial monogamy was predicated on the idea that I had trouble with commitment. In the mythology that I developed about myself, I thought that it was my commitment to art, art-making, the life of the artist, that made me turn tail and run at the first (or at least third) sign of trouble. It is certainly true that I remember, both going forward and back in time, the places I lived as much by the pieces I made there as the people I lived with. In 1974, I had Mara and her dancing to think of as I penned my ostinato. (This leaves out the assignment, given by Bonkowski.) Sophomore year was a drier, less fertile period. Perhaps that's what is meant by 'sophomoric:' you arrive at school full of youthful drive and ambition only to learn as a freshman that you don't know shit. The subsequent semesters, you have to claw your way back up, starting at the bottom. I remember working on a score that would have accompanied Dylan Thomas' play "Under Milkwood" while living with Harmony. I'd written an explication of "Do Not Go Gentle" for Nosh. He loved it. The 'Milkwood' score never made it out of pencil draft and certainly never sounded in any theater pit. It was aborted, like the relationship it paralleled temporally. Were the women to blame for art failures? Sex was a distraction, certainly. In the beginning, I made complete work for Harmony. I embarked on a series of studies for instruments that I couldn't play. For Yoshi and Harmony I made a duo. (The duo later made it into a larger work.) Then came a trio. I was clawing my way up. Far better that than to be making ambitious pieces for pit ensembles. I foundered on the quartet. Three voices were all I could manage. Still, I'm asking myself, what did my relationships have to do with the work?  One bit of my mythology was that as the relationship began to falter, I became distracted by the emotional noise. I needed a placid mind to work. There's some truth to that. If a woman has just thrown a plate of spaghetti at you, you can't think the sublime thoughts that art requires. Two questions emerge from this one. Why did she throw the spaghetti? Are artistic thoughts sublime? Answers: she didn't, I made that up, and no. Many of the difficulties I had with women were formed entirely in my own mind. I nursed and perpetuated the conflict with Harmony's father. Had I toughed it out with a willingness to bend, we might have gotten to know, respect, and maybe like each other. Art is made out of shit. You are better off digging down into the perverse nature of your psyche to find the muck from which creation springs.

So going forward into the 'book of babes,' as I jokingly refer to my journals, it seems an endless, un-dramatic repetition of making stuff up that makes things fail, and at the same time failing to acknowledge the primal ooze deep down in the psyche that would, ironically, make things work. This is true both in life and the making of artwork. There is no dichotomy, and the two efforts run in parallel. Wagner was a baboon (an anti Semite) that made good work. That's just the way it is. I was unable to keep at a relationship, and I managed to write some music. I might have worked a little harder at both. I remember Zoltan Eminescu saying:
    "An artist should be a good person. An artist must be the cream of society."
I was too obsessed with cream of wheat to be the cream of anything.

Places, people. It is a bewildering procession in a life. It doesn't make good fiction. To make the narrative work, connections must be made that were missed. An overly large dramatis personae  must be concatenated. I am not interested in the boring actual truth. I'm interested in the essence of the perceived truth, even though the perception does not occur until well downstream in the river of time. "Harmony" was some other parameter of music, maybe all of them combined. She was any number of my serial monogamies all mashed up into one essential tale. Same with Mara, Adelle, Linda, and onward to Heidi, Lori, Marcie and Anne. There once was a woman named Kim. That is not to say that I am not telling a truth. I am needing to cut it short and get on with it. Things are happening around me that cannot be put off. Scenes also, and not just people and places, must be concatenated. It's a fake memoir. Did I tell you that up front? My mother reading of my sex life will find this novel misleading. It is not meant to be accurate. She'll read the words I put in "her" mouth and know that I have lied. She'll understand, maybe, what is meant by the term autobiographical fiction. That does not mean that if published, I can't be sued. It doesn't mean that I won't be stopped by a cease and desist. From his prison cell, Wilde worked into the twilight. It is a thing that must be done.

Rhythm Changes Part 2

The new apartment on the South side of the fens became known as "Cal's Crib." (To proceed with lying.) The spring and summer of 1975 had waxed poetical and full of entertainment. As I prepared to move in with and then to ditch my babe of the year, the nation was entering its  bicentennial celebration. The events of the American Revolution coincided with my ascent as a parking lot attendant. It paralleled my struggles with music and musicianship. It set off fireworks in the background as Elmer Fudd confessed undying love as he sat beside me, having lured me to a park bench on the Charles with effusive praise. There were barges on the river with Handelian Haut Bois and trompettes, the drums echoing off skyscraper walls. There was baseball in Fenway Park as we fucked our way out of paper bags; we heard the roar of the crowd as far East as Copley as we danced and danced and danced. Arthur Fiedler was everywhere and nowhere, his white hair symbolizing everything corrupt about American music. (More on that of course.) The official kickoff was April 1st, and President Ford was in town at the Old North Church to light the lanterns warning the British and colonists alike on April 18th. Events happened all summer long, into the fall, and into 1976. The nation wasn't fully hatched until someone made a musical and manned a gift shop.

Somewhere in there, a procession got started at the Old North Church that made its way to "the rude bridge that arched the flood" in Concord. Van Dyke and I had been to the higher ground and babbled maniacally as we stared down at the lights of the city. We'd been so stoned at the back of the hall at Boston College where we dropped in on a performance of Beethoven's Fifth (I'm sure I'd drunk about that much too) that I pounded on the carpeted floor yelling 'yes, Beethoven, yes!' This was me making fun of Dean Moriarty, of course. Beethoven's hot jazz licks just got me off, then as now. I'd put away so much Wild Turkey out in Framingham, drinking from a coffee cup as Justin played Bach Suites, that I'd puked all over the bathroom, the bus, the subway train and the street in front of the Cal Crib. It took at least 24 hours to get that poison out of my system. For Sue and Greg, who had to more thoroughly clean up their bathroom after me, the poison never washed out. Ten years later, when seeking a job in DC from an agency that Greg recruited talent for, he refused to hire me, the reason being, "I can't be sure you won't puke in the piano." So Justin and I had put in some babble time. I was on the cusp of introducing him to Tennant. This would be like pulling back the pin on a pinball game, the thing that set the ball in motion. When it came to altered states of consciousness, we were just getting started. Tennant was finishing school. At the piece of time I need to examine, however, we were in that procession up to Concord. It was Justin's idea. He thought a good noisy walk would do us some good, and he brought along an old car horn of the folded tube and bulb variety to provide the racket. It is a good thing that this Concord is not the one in New Hampshire, as so many of our wayward public servants think. That would have been a much longer walk. As it was, it took a while to get up to Concord. When we got up there, there was a major party going on. The center of the bash was an outdoor stage where Pete Seeger and Joan Baez and who knows who else performed. We sang everything from "If I Had a Hammer" to "Love is Just a Four Letter Word." In between, there was a rousing reading of "We Shall Overcome." Then, at a certain point, we had to walk back.

All of this walking and babbling began to alter my perception of Justin Van Dyke. I could now no longer remember exactly how he had seemed at first. I mean, I could, and I think I have, but now the portrait included so much new information. That's not to say that I didn't occasionally get slapped around. There were certain areas you couldn't go, certain topics you couldn't get to. He was not very big on talking about sex. He had a circumspect, almost puritanical reserve. He was, therefore, not subjected to my bitching and moaning on this topic. He never heard much about Mara or Harmony. He preferred to talk counterpoint. If I transgressed and tried to broach these boring topics, he'd fix me with a look and shoot me down with some pithy remark. This, actually, had been an admirable feature of his in my esteem, for 'limitations set us free.' Every now and then he made me have to sit down and think it over, so peculiar where his responses. I have said that I tracked people and places along with the catalogue of works I made. This included works I tried to play. In my sophomore year, I'd tired of playing in the practice rooms. I developed the habit of hanging out at school after hours on nights that I wasn't parking cars, leaving a matchbook in the lock for entry and exit. In the building on my own, I was free to poke around. On one such poking expedition, I came across an old piano by a back door to Hemenway Street. It was a beat up old upright, but most of it still worked. I skipped the middleman, Streator, and went right to President Gianini. I poked my head into the office and spoke to his secretary:
    "Is the President in?"
    "I believe he is, but he's in a meeting."
    "Can I wait?"
    "I can't tell how long he'll be. Is it urgent?"
    "No. Well, it's a personally important matter."
    "You want me to buzz him?"
    "Would that be impertinent?"
    "I don't think so. Just between you and me, he's in there with an old golf buddy. Who should I say is calling?"
    "Cal Hunter, sophomore. Composition."
There. Name, rank and serial number.
    "Hello, Tony?"
The crackly voice on the other end says,
    "Yes?"
    "Cal Hunter's here to see you. No appointment, just important personal stuff."
I interrupt:
    "Not all that personal. More like business."
She waves me off.
    "Sure, sure. Al and I are just shooting the breeze in here. Send him in, send him in."
He's as cheerful as ever. In I go. Yet another paneled office with high back chairs and conference table.
    "Cal! Great to see you. I see you're on the Dean's list again. With honors. Sit sit. This is my old friend Albert Weisskopf. You'll likely never see him again in your life, so your secret's safe with Al. Of course, if you want privacy, I'll have him wait outside."
    "No, sir. I have a question."
    "Fire away."
    "You know that old piano in the stairwell?"
    "Piano in stairwell..."
    "Yes, it's over in the other building, piled up with other junk, and it looks like..."
    "Oh yes, that's all old junk. I keep forgetting to call somebody about hauling away."
    "Mind if I take the piano?"
    "It's yours. You haul."

It took some doing to roll the piano on its little casters to the elevator in my crib, some block and a half. We (Van Dyke, Rod, Yoshi and I) must've been a sight wheeling that thing down the sidewalk, pushing and pulling over every crack. In due time, we succeeded. Getting it in the door was dicey, almost as bad as up the steps.

Now I could compose and practice without the inconvenience of having to go over to school. I had my stuff on the rack. I was trying to master a Novellette by Schumann, part of the opus 21 group. I'd played number one, the one that Goode and I had broken ice over so far back now. Smith asked me if I wanted try number two. It was a lightning speed bitch. I was playing it at a death crawl, just trying to get the notes right. Van Dyke was over and saw the Novellette open on the piano. He sat down and rattled it off perfectly, no mistakes, up to tempo. Missing notes on the old piano didn't stop him. I never got used to his reading skill, it always took me by surprise. When he finished, I said:
    "Man, I've been trying like hell to play that thing. You just nailed it like you've played it all your life."
    "I've never seen it before in my life, but I think it's a piece of crap, just a bunch of notes."
I might have payed better attention to the testiness of this reaction and skipped continuing on, but I was blown away.
    "Man, you read so well! It just blows me away!"
Now came the peculiar part: he grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me in towards him. He's about a head taller than me, remember.
    "If you didn't say shit like that, do you think I wouldn't do it?"
I was stunned. I was let go of instantly, and whatever task (smoke a bowl, get a slice, play some frisbee, drive up to Walden, go meet Tennant, take a babbling stroll down to the Gardiner, whatever...) proceeded normally. It was like there were two people lurking in that form, and you could never tell which was going to speak. I wonder to this day about that particular outburst. Was he sensitive about effusive praise? If that was it, I get it, because Elmer Fudd had made me purple with embarrassment. On the other hand, the structure of the remark as I recall it suggested that there might be some quid pro quo involved in music making. Performers and composers are at each other's throats when in fact, they should be in collusion. If nobody has the gumption to write, where is the literature to play? Wait until we get around to Van Dyke playing my piece!

I didn't mean to rattle on about Van Dyke. It's a breach of discipline and a good example how the telling of lies can get you caught up in your own bullshit. I meant to set up the pinball time machine of my fiction. I'd been hanging out with Tennant and his wife, another source of good dope. He'd been talking about 'scoring some acid' and that was a little scary. I'd heard about Tim Leary and all of that stuff, but it had come with stories about chromosome damage. Tennant would just say, "how do you know you've got chromosomes, kid?" The correct response that always got a hoot out of him was, "I don't. I've just thought I did in my wherever I think that." It was around this time that the topic of LSD came up in my babbles with Van Dyke.
    "Man, I haven't done that shit in years!"
    "But you've done it."
    "Yes."
    "What does it do to you?"
    "You have to do it to find out."
    "You think I should?"
    "Absolutely. I've got to meet this guy Tennant."

Thus, the pieces were all in place for the next big leap forward, right off the map and out into the infinity of inner space. All I have to do is come up with a chapter title.

Summit Part 1

Notes from a meeting of three scholars, the most significant gathering of Hunter specialists to date. Also in attendance: several of their wives and a pair of lovers. (One of the scholars is from the polygamous colony of Albany. It should be noted that one of the wives, that of the "Third Person," has also written popular articles on Hunter.

The agenda of the symposium included making copies of newly discovered documents, debating the implications of the new documents, sharing current findings, and writing up commentaries. We've examined a variety of these commentaries. It has been noted that there is an obsession with accuracy, though not when a personal reaction is involved. The expression of a personal reaction is deemed to fit within the protections afforded all forms of personal expression, save perhaps that of violent action, and the expression of such non-quantifiable emotions are also expressed as accurately and forthrightly as possible in written forms.

A symposium, of course, as practiced in the culture of the ancient Greeks, was the occasion to drink in fellowship.  Now, in 2525, they are a half millenium more ancient and the true meaning of 'symposia' is celebrated. Anything that can be done to lubricate the nursing of the population count back to health is done. (Only about 150 people inhabit what once was the Northeastern United States. The global population is on the order of ten thousand men, women, and children.)

It is important, therefore, to concentrate on the informal discussions and debates. Without having to absolutely prove anything and commit that proof to accurate writing, speculation in these dialogues is free and welcome. We get a lot further in understanding the true nature of their understanding. Since it's a mixed gathering, with women outnumbering the men, this approach is much more sexy. The surviving New Englanders are much more liberal than their guest, the so-called "First Person" from DC. The "Second Person," from what was once the great state of New York, is even more of a free thinker. His two lovers are openly seductive, and, to our ears, plainly promiscuous. It's all a matter of degree. The sole couple that might prefer restraint is out flanked. It is, as we shall observe, a rippin' good time.

10-16-2525 Warm, crisp, clear, the onset of the Autumn.
Brattleboro

We gather this at this summit to declare our recent findings on the matter of the narratives and works of composer Calbraith Hunter.

    "No argument with that, number 3."
    "The truth is stated plainly."
    "Thanks to both of you, but I've got to summarize what we've been saying."
    "I know you will do it perfectly with your storied memory."
From another area of the enclave, the sound of female laughter.
    "It is so good to gather like this, despite the difficulties. The women are having a marvelous time."
    "I confess to falling asleep last night with a female stroking each end of me."
    "I'll gladly raise your child, should it come to pass. You're intelligence would be an ideal trait to cultivate."
    "Number 3, don't be giving him any ideas about my Andrea."
    "I think Andrea was on top."
    "No, that isn't factual. She was atop me!"
    "I'm joking. Make it light. Keep it light."
    "OK. So back to Hunter."
    "Yeah, I'm amazed by the new narratives. We knew the Boston stuff was an extensive and revelatory set, even as we had it pieced together before, but we didn't know about the expression "cease and desist."
    "Are we sure we know what that means?"
    "Oh, I think we do. There was a huge law library back home in DC. I had a chance to read about 'cease and desist' in a decent, trusted copy. Its legal meaning is the same as its apparent meaning. It means stop doing what you're doing right now, and then don't start doing it again in future. The interesting part was that there were several ways to issue such a command. One way was to get a legal person, called a lawyer or attorney, or even, more formally, a counselor, to draft up a letter. A higher legal authority that might issue such a document would be a Judge. The judge would have a clerk do the writing, but there were books of pre-fabricated documents of all sorts into which specifics might be inserted."
    "Pre-fab. A wonderful old term. But I think you mean 'form letter.'"
    "Right! A form letter!"
A burst of laughter, and then a feminine head pokes into the doorway. There are no doors.
    "Hey, how you menfolk doin'? Ya need a refill?"
Assent is expressed all around.
    "You should get Eve in here. She's keen on legal matters, and her lust for Hunter knows no bounds. She'd do well to join this discussion on the topic of "cease and desist."
Eve enters, bearing the earthen jug of wine.
    "Here you go, my friends, my husband, my lovers."
    "Stay Evie. We were talking about the 'stop what you're doing and don't ever do it again' idea."
    "Sure. I'm interested in such an affront to free expression."
    "Go on,  number 1, you were saying..."
    "I was saying that there was a formal way and then there was an informal way. Anyone could issue a C & D."
    "No special language?"
    "Yes, you needed to know how to write it so that it would..."
    "...stand up in court."
    "Very good, Eve."
    "My father used to say that all the time. I always had the idea that it was a way to wiggle out of doing something."
    "Opposite, likely. It was a way of getting your action upheld."
    "The 'stand up' part is very humiliating sounding."
    "It's a metaphor."
    "I won't stand for it."
    "Exactly. A figure of speech."
    "A fancy lie."
Giggles all around. And a pause to sit back and imbibe.
    "So when Hunter writes about being stopped by a C & D, do we think that explains the truncated nature of the narratives?"
    "How truncated are they when we keep finding more? We doubled our page count last year in DC."
    "Number 3, I can't believe you got so lucky at my back door."
    "You were a most gracious host, 1."
    "I should say. I let Andrea rub your back after all that scrounging."
Eve exclaims:
    "But that's as far as it went!"
    "Our good friend from the southlands has a sense of propriety that Albany lacks."
    "Back to Hunter, please."
    "Do we think he was stopped? That was my point."
    "I think he was worried about being stopped, but that, no, he was too obscure to be actually stopped."
    "I think it was the character, perhaps the model for the character of Harmony that caught on and, in memory of her father stopped him."
    "Really!"
A reflective pause.
    "Well, the text is not disrespectful."
    "He fails to give us a name for that character."
    "He quotes that bit about the 'way that can be named.'"
    "We don't like names that much. We have them, but men don't like to use them."
    "I never say my husband's name out loud unless he's been very good or very bad."
    "Eve, I'm never 'bad.' You're being inaccurate."
    "I'm joking, keeping to the light side."
    "A better case can be made, if we are going to indeed accept the idea that Hunter was stopped, or even merely ordered to stop, which he then, clearly didn't do, likely couldn't do... I think the case can be made for the idea that it was the model for Goode who stopped him."
    "Or, as you say, merely threatened to stop him."
    "Since he clearly continued."
    "You know, Number 2, that makes some sense as a speculation. Goode's character is described as being well known. He may have traveled widely, and been, therefore, a person with the means to hire a counselor and deliver a cease and desist letter."
    "But the characters are disguised, and, of course given names. How would anyone find out about a libelous defamation, which requires the implication of factuality? Hunter never tires of pointing out his artifice. He tells his readers that he's lying."
    "What if he's not? A reader would recognize a scene in which they'd been a participant, particularly if it involved buggery."
    "Good point, Eve. Leave it to you to remember the buggery."
    "It was one of my favorites of the 3rd person narratives."
    "Not MY narrative. Though a recent find, that's not in MY new material."
    "She means the part of speech, not you."
The Third Person blushes and puts a hand on his wife's thigh. She draws closer. This discussion is heating up.
    "Sorry, dear. I think the question is how was he found out, if that was the situation."
From the other area of the enclave, the remaining three women enter. They've fallen silent and have been following this plot for the past few minutes. Everyone always loves a courtroom drama, even in 2525 when justice is meted out by councils of elders rather than competing attorneys. We've heard from Andrea. The lovers of Number Two are Lori and Elspeth. Elspeth is also a scholar, her area of specialty the ancient social customs. She knows a thing or two about Facebook and Google. She has a wicked sense of humor and loves a good laugh. In her ironic way she looks for the moment to enlighten the men.
    "You said the writing was copied from hards."
    "I've been meaning to tell you, number 3, that you keep saying that wrong. I can tell you that I've seen the expression 'drives' more often that 'hards.' In fact, I think the term drive should be used in place of hards."
    "Hard drives, jump drives, sex drives, short drives."
    "Right. Andrea has it right."
    "And there once was a company called Google"
    "The, um drives, held the words. The writing was done at terminals. It was a network."
    "So then, there must've been a way to search the network."
Elspeth knows the answer. She holds back. Her lover, Number Two, is clearly making the connection. She'll let him take the leap and suck him off later.
    "OK, so anyone at any terminal anywhere on the planet could search the network for any string of text."
    "It is a frightening level of research potential."
    "Or waste matter collection. Anyone could write anything."
    "That's what it means when we say 'don't google me.'"
Now Elspeth jumps in with her matter of fact. Her long red hair is shaken as she leans in to speak.
    "In the days of the social networks, to 'google' something, as a verb, referred to a search. The company, called Google was a searching mechanism on the network. To catch a string on a public blog, all you had to do was 'google' it."
    "Wow."
    "So the model, as you say, for Goode..."
    "He'd be predisposed to want information about homosexual activity in cities that he visited. At what point does a man of means give all of that up? He'd also have access presumably to all of these, what did you call them Elspeth...?"
    "Social networks."
    "Presumably, but we have a picture of him as something of a technological throw-back."
    "But not a non-adopter."
    "My friends," said the reigning authority Elspeth Payne, "all he had to do was google "blowjobs in Boston."
Their laughter was profound. When, at length the discourse resumed, it was a coda to the insight.
    "It could have been discovered by just such a likely accident. The exact term comes up in a search, you follow the thread, you find yourself as a character in a novel only thinly disguised. You get a lawyer to draw up a cease and desist."
    "The haunted, hunted Hunter."
    "Say, after a break, let's look into the matter of the string quartet."
The women get up and, forming two pairs, walk towards the entrance and the evening air. It's been a very good, if typical session. Andrea turns to Elspeth:
    "All of the speculation is, for me, far better than the drier facts that make into the parchments."
Elspeth shrugs.
    "Without facts there's nothing real to go on. It's just an old bunch of stories, a legend. 'Only the music doesn't lie.'"
    "Nice quote. Eminesque?"
She nods.
    "What do you really think about the idea of the C & D?"
    "You know, I think that if anybody shut that blog down, it would have been the school. He makes a mess of their reputation. And they would certainly have had the means."
    "But if the blog got shut down, how did the text survive?"
    "I guess the kitty cat was out of the bag."
No google.

Summit Part 2

10-16-2525 Surprisingly cool evening.
Brattleboro

Evening session. Discussion of the "string quartet."

    "The new narrative mentions the failure to finish a string quartet in 1975 or '76. Is this something we want to take up?"
The women, who have been lounging in postprandial bliss, get up en masse. The exception is Eve who hesitates.
    "Ek. It's not something I want to take up." Elspeth is out the door.
    "I'll admit, the quartet is not my favorite piece."
    "Aw, Evie, not everything can be a turn-on."
    "I think the question is, does the narrative refer to some nascent form of the extant quartet, or is it some earlier piece that was never finished."
    "It's even too academic for me, Number 1. The quartet is noteworthy because of the handwriting, which is crisp and clear and well preserved. With Hunter, the better the score looks the worse it sounds."
    "So you are all in agreement that the mention of this failure to finish a quartet in the narrative is not significant."
Nods of assent.
    "What about the question of the "Milk Wood" score?"
    "Again, we don't have it, so what's the point?"
    "Parking cars as eye-hand practice?"
    "We knew about that from Number 1's research. Big chunk of stuff about Lamont Dixon in the original DC copies."
    "I agree. As they used to say, 'waste of gas.'"
    "This is a very dispiriting session. Is there anything you want to take up in discussion?"
    "I'd like to know more about these 'psychedelic drugs.'"
    "I'm assuming they were like our mushrooms. Hunter mentions psilocybin."
    "The 'lsd' must have been a synthetic compound and much more powerful."
    "Yes, Hunter describes the experience vividly, referring to the nearly parallel timing of the synthesis of 'acid' and the development of the 'a-bomb.'"
    "The info on 'the bomb' is lost, so it may be nothing more than an odd metaphor that we can't understand at this point."
    "This is a very disappointing session. We did so well this afternoon."
    "We had a lot of laughs, but I'm not sure I can write anything down out of all of that."
    "Then I say we get back to copying. In that endeavor, we may learn something about bombs and acid."
    "Agreed, but we only have an hour before we lose the light."

The copying of documents continues into the next day. Discussions break out periodically. For the Omniscient Narrator, the interest in this symposium rests in the way past art is regarded. Opinions are freely expressed and the discussion is much the same as it always was in circles dedicated to aesthetic matters. We like what we like and that won't change. We find in this similarity across years and traditions to be a comfort. Though our numbers will fade and the glory of our civilization will be reduced to rubble, we will still enjoy art and still relish gossip about artists. We note with pleasure that we will not become prudes. That requires a huge, repressed population. We love that expression is treasured despite the inconveniences it certainly engenders. We find the sexes free to be comfortable in their roles and not excluded from any domain. It has taken a cataclysm to straighten us out. If anything, the walking on eggshells regarding any upset to the balance of nature, human civilization included, is reassuring. Keep in mind that this is not utopia. There are cannibals just up the path. Warring bands still practice the arts of conquest, with death and continued destructiveness the outcome. These enterprises tend to be self-limiting. When a set of thugs have murdered off another set of thugs, there are fewer humans (but everybody fucks like bunnies), and also fewer thugs. The aggression of aggressors against fun loving people like our scholars is not unheard of. Shit happens. Our scholars and their mates and families all know how to defend themselves. They will kill if they must, though they prefer to talk. No one is so besotted with culture that they don't protect themselves. All in all, though, we like this new age.

The lively discussion of the likelihood of a cease and desist delivered to Cal Hunter as he published his memories on a blog, in comparison to a lame and dwindling discussion of lost or obscure music, proves that writing reaches out to more than the more abstract art forms. We know many people forward and back in time that know Paul Bowles as a novelist. Not so many know his music. That's just the way it goes. If you want to engage both hemispheres of either brain or planet, you have to combine text with tune in song. Hunter wrote no surviving songs. His tiny few art songs suck and are never sung. Everything else he made he did with bits and bytes, and they are in the ether.  That hardware is memorialized by bits of metal and a ton of plastic. This is the summit of civilization. It is the summit of our little narrative ski lift. It's all downhill from here. I recommend taking out reader's insurance. The management is not responsible for singed whiskers. If you don't like the landscape, send us a C & D.