November 1, 2024 – 12:51 pm
The November sun set behind the Jersey Palisades and flashed a feeble ray off a West Village window. The wavering reflection stalked the Christopher Street pier to a lone youth tuning a battered guitar. The blonde twenty year-old appeared unaware of the approaching glow, then he broke into a smile shy of surprise, as the sapphire shimmer transformed the leather boy into a fallen angel regaining his halo.
Nearly every parent in America would have ordered their children to avoid this heresy to the Bicentennial Spirit. His skin pallor rivaled the paleness of the rising moon and no suburban mall stocked his black leather jacket, torn t-shirt, or heavy engineer boots. Most teenagers would have obeyed their mothers and fathers, but not all of them and the guitarist disintegrated the heavenly mirage with a windmill slash of his fingers against the steel strings of his Les Paul. The chords sizzled in his ears and Johnny Darling shut his eyes to envision a small stage.
Overhead lighting enveloped a drummer, bassist, and keyboard player whose music meshed the Kingsmen with the MC5. A teenage Lolita rasped words of love and no tomorrows in imitation of the Velvet Underground’s Nico. The imagined feedback of Marshall Amps buzzed in his ears and the audience might have materialized within his eyelids, if a young boy’s voice hadn’t shattered Johnny’s trance.
“Hey, man.”
This time of night only gay bashers and leather freaks frequented the derelict docks. The guitarist waited for the last coda to disappear beneath the subsonic range and turned to address the intruder.
The Puerto Rican teenager in a distressed leather jacket was two inches shorter than Johnny and his slanted eyes hinted the taint of Chinese blood. Some Times Square johns found Frankie Domingo pretty, despite the multitude of scars crisscrossing his seventeen year-old wrists, front and back. Most of those wounds hadn’t not come from fights.
“Thanks for at least letting me finish?”
“I been waiting thirty minutes.” A gust off the river blew a shank of greased hair across the young latino’s eyes. “That a new song?”
“Just three chords strung together.” Johnny rubbed his calloused fingertips. The mirrored incandescence waded into Manhattan.
“Doesn’t get more basic than that.” Frankie rattled off a drum roll with frayed sticks. “Got these from Jerry Nolan at Max’s Kansas City last night.”
“How were the Heartbreakers?” Johnny had skipped the last night’s show for a date with a customer. Business had to come before pleasure for hustlers.
“Great and the crowd loved them.” Frankie shivered with hunched shoulders. It was getting colder. “I saw them get paid $100 each. When we gonna have a band?”
“Now I got my guitar back, we can audition for the other members.”
“Great.” Frankie stepped from side to side, as the damp seeped through his sneakers’ paper-thin soles, and then stammered, “Johnny, you got ten dollars?”
“The pawnshop took my last fifty.” Johnny slapped his guitar. It had been out of his hands for two weeks.
“Damn, I wish we could get out of here.” Frankie moaned like a runaway in need of a dime to phone Mom for a bus ticket home, but frankie had no one at home in the Bronx.
“And go where?”
“What about Florida?” Frankie glanced south, as if the Sunshine State lay beyond the New Jersey docks. “It got beaches and sunshine and palm trees. How far away is it? Five hours?”
“More like twenty–four, if you drive without stopping.”
“What about by plane?” The young Puerto Rican’s teeth chattered at a 10/10 beat.
“Where we getting the money for two plane tickets?” Johnny was down to his last$5.
“We could hijack a plane. Tell them to give us a million dollars like in DOG DAY AFTERNOON?” Frankie had seen that film five times on 42nd Street and each time pumped his fist in the air to Pacino’s cry, “Attica, Attica.”
“Aren’t you forgetting how the cops shoot Pacino’s friend in the head?”
“Movies aren’t real.” Frankie had seen enough of films on 42nd Street.
“DOG DAY AFTERNOON is based on a real bank robbery.”
“It was?” The drummer shook in his sneakers.
“Yeah, it didn’t have a happy ending either.” The guitarist grabbed the young boy’s arm, which was almost as thin as his own.
“Your parents live in Florida.” That was a fairy tale ‘happy ever after’ to him after livign on the street for years.
”So what?” Johnny’s mother and father were Frankie’s answer to everything.
”You called them, then they wire you money to come home?” Frankie lifted his eyebrows in hope of hearing Johnny say ‘yes’.
“Yes, they wire the money and tomorrow night we eat my Mom’s home-made apple pie.” Teasing the young boy with this dream of warm weather and a full belly was cruel, but Johnny couldn’t help himself.
“I love apple pie.” Frankie licked his lips.
“Only one problem.” Johnny gestured toward Manhattan to reel the young drummer back to reality.
“Don’t say what I think you’re going to say.”
“I’m not leaving this behind.” The Drifters’ lyrics floated in his ears. He could make it here just Rudy Lewis sang on ON BROADWAY.
“Fuck this city?” Frankie spun on his heels and chucked the battered drumsticks into the river. “All I got here are hustles, an empty stomach and the smell of old man’s hands on my skin, and you don’t have it much better.”
“That’s true.” Johnny slipped the guitar into its case and walked toward the elevated highway. ”But I ran away from Florida for the same reason you want to run away from New York.”
“I hope this isn’t an intro to the gypsy lady story.”
“Why not? It’s true. The first day I arrived here, a gypsy lady in the Village read my palm for free. She liked my eyes and said my name was destined to be up in lights and I’m going to make it here. It was her who gave me the name Johnny Darling.” Johnny stopped on the curb of West Street. “Me and you are going to make it here as rock stars.”
“But not tonight.” Frankie kicked an empty beer can into the Hudson.
“No, not tonight.” Johnny couldn’t lie to Frankie. “What were you doing the night I met you?”
“I was at the hot dog stand across the bus terminal talking to these guys from Jersey.”
“Two chicken hawks wanting to rape you was none of my business.” Minding your own business was one of the first rules in New York.
“And you’ve never explained why you helped me.” Frankie blew on his hands, warming the tips.
“Yeah, and I’m not going to now, but since that day you and me have been a team and that’s more than what most people got in this city. Tomorrow Max’s will serve up a turkey dinner for us orphans and we’ll be okay tomorrow, right?”
“And what about tonight?” Frankie could handle anything as long as he was with Johnny.
“Tonight it’s time to go to work.” The uptown light on West Street changed to green. Cars accelerated to catch up with the synchronization of the signals.
“53rd and 3rd?” Frankie had had his fill of the sissies at those piano bars.
“We’re not competing with the midnight cowboys tonight.”
Across the street the bars filled with men in search of nameless sex. A few lurked between the trucks underneath the elevated highway. It was no mystery how they planned on celebrating the night before Thanksgiving.
“Times Square then?” Frankie sighed with resignation.
“Times Square is all about luck.”
“Luck being when head I win, tails you lose and never give a sucker a break.”
“You’re learning fast.” Not all of Johnny’s lessons were good advice for a young boy, but they had kept him alive for now.
“I try.” Frankie regarded the snow-skinned guitarist as a veteran of the streets.
“How I look?”Johnny slung the case’s strap over his shoulder and pulled up the collar of his torn leather jacket.
“Like a prince.” Frankie stuck his frozen hands in his leather jacket.
“Where anyone from Jerome Avenue meet a prince?” Johnny was two inches taller, ten pounds lighter, blonde and white than the teenager. Johns cruised him and ignored Frankie, unless they were after young meat.
“My grandmother read me fairy tales.” The old lady had only read Frankie the ones with happy endings asked, “They really have princes and princesses?”
“Real as you and me, except they were born in a palace, instead of a dumpy apartment.” The chilled air scrapped over Johnny’s right lung like a boat striking a reef. He spat out an unpleasant taste and touched his chest wishing his fingers cure whatever festered beneath his ribs.
“You meet one?” Frankie was oblivious to his friend’s discomfort.
“Not this side of the silver screen.” Johnny fought off the shakes, figuring his ‘jones’ was knocking on the door. “Princes and princesses are like any suckers. We meet one and what we do?”
“We take them for everything.” Frankie snapped his fingers.
“And leave them begging for more.” The ache faded from Johnny’s chest and he draped his arm over the younger boy. Family might more suitably define their relationship, except they were more comfortable with never saying what they were to each other. “Just one more thing.”
“I know what you’re going to say.” Their conversation were scripted rituals on these occasions.
“You’re going to tell me not to trust anyone.”
“Trust no one is survival rule # 1 in New York.” Times Square killed people, who broke that rule and he turned to Frankie. “And that means me too.”
“I’m a big boy.” Frankie accepted the warning with stubborn resignation, for his childhood had revealed the worst of what the New York had to offer the young.
“Then let’s head to Times Square.” Johnny dashed across West Street between two taxis. Both vehicles swerved to avoid hitting the guitarist and he arrived on the other side without a scratch.
“I’m going to live forever,” Johnny told himself. Believing in anything other than his immortality would have been a sacrilege, at least until he reached twenty-one and that birthday was more than a year away and a year was an eternity when you were only twenty.
November 1, 2024 – 1:02 am
In April of 2011 I drove south from New York to the Northern Fork in Virginia. Ms. Carolina was recovering from yet-another battle with cancer. Her husband thought my visit might cheer up the blonde beauty. The Potomac River was cold, but I jumped from their dock into the frigid water.
Ms. Carolina laughed at my shivering and handed me a towel. Her husband called me a crazy Northerner with a smile.
“You’re right about that.” My affair with Ms. Carolina had ended in 1995 after meeting her husband. We remained friends, but only friends. Charles was a complete gentleman, but had a .38 under the seat of his car and I said, “I’m just a crazy Yankee.”
“And I’m a crazy Reb.”
“That you are.”
Later that afternoon we toasted the Great State of Maine and the Army of Northern Virginia. Both our people had fought at the Fredericksburg massacre. General Ambrose Burnside had been insane to assault the rebel fortifications on Marye’s Hill and the 20th Maine passed the night behind barricades of dead comrades.
After dinner we watched the rise of the moon and drank whiskey on the dock. The winter night air was giving way to spring. The bourbon freed out tongues and we spoke about our pasts. Our lives went back many years. We held different beliefs. They didn’t really matter tonight.
“Do you believe in God?” asked Charles.
“My best friend drowned in a lake in Maine. Chaney was only eight years old. My parents said God moved in strange ways and I realized one truth.”
“Which was?”
Ms. Carolina shook her head. My belief was better kept a secret, except I was never good at lying.
“There is no God.”
Charles frowned at this assault on his God and Ms. Carolina wasn’t happy with my rejection of the Bible, so I added, “But I respect your belief in God.”
“I never understood how you people, atheists, lost your faith.”
“One of those things that just happened.”
“That I understand. Care for some more bourbon.”
“Let MY unconsciousness be my guide.”
Throughout the evening I drank enough to feel like a drunk Cary Grant in NORTH BY NORTHWEST.
Ms. Carolina laughed at my jokes.
A little after 1 we watched the passage of an orbiting satellite.
“We are not alone.” I pointed in the sky.
“And I’m never alone with my lovely wife.”
Ten minutes later Ms. Carolina shook me awake and said, “Precious, time for bed.”
Charles helped me up the stairs.
“Sweet dreams,” wished Ms. Carolina from her bedroom door.
Guided by bourbon I dreamed of old times and a better future.
Some time after midnight someone entered the bedroom and I opened my eyes to a .38.
Charles’ hand was steady.
I said nothing.
“I’m going to miss her.”
I nodded in agreement.
“You’re not a good man, but you’re not a bad man either. Go back to sleep.”
I knew better than to argue with an armed man and crashed back into a bourbon coma.
At dawn my wife called from Thailand and asked about Ms. Carolina. She had visited us twice in the Last Babylon.
“Maii dii,” I explained Ms. Carolina’s condition.
“Kor thot,” Nu apologized and said to tell Ms. Carolina that everyone in Ban-Nok was praying for her.
Me too, only not to God.
Later that morning I groggily accompanied Ms. Carolina and Charles to their church, a temple to that Old Time religion, where her husband preached the Word of God.
“Never too late to repent.”
“Sinners exist to show the good which path not to take.”
“That we do.”
I didn’t step inside the small white church and bid them fare-well. Charles shook my hand.
“Say a prayer for her.”
“I will.”
Ms. Carolina kissed me on the cheek. She smelled of Chanel # 5.
I didn’t know it then, but I would not see her again.
I drove the back roads to Washington and stopped to survey the Potomac from Lee’s plantation.
It was a broad river and I called Ms. Carolina from atop the high bluff.
Charles answered and said she was resting.
“Thanks for coming to visit.”
“My pleasure. I’ll be down in the fall.”
“You drive safe, Yankee.”
“That I will, Reb.”
I got in the car and continued north, listening to country-western music on the radio.
I arrived the Capitol slightly before noon.
I conducted a fifteen drive-by of the White House, Washington Monument, and Capitol before calling my nephew Matt. The capitol of America was empty.
Tourists didn’t travel in the winter.
My nephew Matt and his girlfriend met me at the National Gallery. She came from Cleveland. Something about them said they were in love and only one thing happens to people like that.
They get married.
That summer I went out to Thailand to see my kids.
My daughter Angie was getting tall.
So were Fenway and Noy.
I hated myself for not living with them and their mothers, but there was no money in Thailand for me.
Certainly not in rural Ban-nok and I returned to New York, scheduling on my next trip for the New Year.
Nearing October Ms. Carolina called from a Richmond Hospital. Her voice was weak and I asked if she wanted me to come down.
“No, I want you to remember how I was. I know you don’t believe in heaven, but we’ll meet each other again.”
“I know we will.”
In September my father joined my mother in the Here-After.
My best friend in the world was gone, but he didn’t go alone.
Right around Thanksgiving Charles called with bad news.
“Barbara’s gone. She was a fighter, but had no more fight in her.”
“You want me to come down for the funeral?”
“She’s already in the ground.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Me too.”
We wished each other good luck and life went on without my father and Barbara.
I went through some bad times.
They lasted longer than necessary.
Not for everyone.
During the summer my nephew Matt called to say that he had moved with Kristen to Cleveland.
“Cleveland?” No one on any side of our family had ever lived in Ohio. We were New Englanders.
“It’s coming back.”
“From the dead.” The city on Lake Eire had lost half its population since the 1950s.
“Like Dracula and what about you?” Matt had heard of my troubles from my sister.
“Not bad. I’m working in a metal shop six days a week.”
“That must be hard at your age.”
“Yeah, but it won’t kill me.” It was tough work for a man of 61, but my kids were getting older. “Good luck in Cleveland.”
“Thanks.”
Matt and I spoke regularly.
I knew him all his life.
He liked Cleveland and loved Kristen.
I was happy for them.
Right before winter I received the phone call from Matt. What he had to say came as no surprise.
“We’re getting married and I need to get a diamond engagement ring. Something over one-carat in a platinum halo setting.”
“Your wish is my command and congratulations.”
I had worked in the diamond industry and arranged the purchase of a diamond to be set in the platinum mounting of Kristin’s desire. She was happy and the only thing better than making a woman happy was making her happier.
I figured that the ring would buy him two years.
I was wrong and Matt called in the Spring to say, “Kristin and I are getting married on Halloween.”
“This Halloween? What’s the theme?”
“Tuxedos. No costumes. Only masks.”
“Only masks? No way.”
At the age of five I had fallen off my next-door neighbor’s stairs wearing a Halloween skull and had avoided masks since then.
“I’ll wear my tuxedo. Only one problem. It’s in Luxembourg at the British Residence.”
“I’m sure you’ll find a way to get it.”
“Me too. By the way congratulations.”
I really meant it.
I had worn the monkey suit to the RAF ball and danced with the French ambassador. We had a good night.
The next day I phoned the ambassador to have her send my tux over to New York.
“No way.” Alice was a longtime friend. “You come over and get it. I’m leaving the embassy for Africa in the New Year.”
“Okay.” October was six months away from April.
Like Matt said I would find a way.
April turned to May. I visited my big family in Thailand. I wished I could have stayed. I loved being with my children and wives, but I needed money to support them and there was none to be had in the Land of Smiles.
Summer came fast. I went to the beach.
Matt called in late July to ask another favor.
“I need you to become an online minister to sign the marriage documents for the state of Ohio.”
“Aren’t you getting married by a priest?” His fiancee was Catholic by baptism.
“No.” Matt had been raised by my sister. She was a devote Old Religionist, but there was more than one atheist in our family.
“As long as I can give a sermon.”
“No sermon.”
My mother always wanted me to be a priest. My rejection of her God had hurt her and this was my chance to make her happy in heaven. Not that I believed in the place and I asked, “You want me to mention the sanctity of marriage.”
“Weren’t you involved with a married woman?”
“Yes.”
He was talking about Ms. Carolina.
“He who commits adultery lacks sense.”
“Proverbs 6:32-35.” I hadn’t been an atheist all my life.
“No sermon.”
“Okay.” I accepted his condition and wondered how I was going to get my tuxedo at the British Residency in Luxembourg.
I had no money for a flight and checked the online prices for a rented tux.
Powdered blue polyester cost $49.99 and it could second as a Halloween costume.
Sadly I wasn’t able to exercise that option.
My bad luck ran worse.
My boss closed her jewelry store in mid-September. I was hoping to last until Xmas. She didn’t pay my salary or commissions, which was a really uncool thing to do to a father of five kids, however the rich are well-known for their shabby treatment of the poor and almost everyone in New York was poor now, except for the rich.
Thankfully a wealthy business associate needed to meet an art dealer in London. I knew Kenny well. My price for arranging a secondary-market purchase was 1% of the sale, plus an all-expenses paid trip to the Continent.
The ambassador was happy to see me.
I was too.
Luxembourg was a comfortable city, but very boring.
Thankfully my tux fit.
London was fun.
I saw my friends.
They asked about Ms. Carolina.
“She’s gone.”
“Sorry to hear that. She was a good lady.”
“That she was.”
I told Kenny about my well-heeled friend wanting a painting.
He wasn’t willing to sell his paintings and my business associate was disappointed by this refusal. He left London without saying good-bye. Rich people are like that. Right before I left for Heathrow, Kenny gave me a small drawing by David Tidball.
“Don’t sell it. It might be worth a lot one day.”
I wanted to stay in Europe, but I had to get back to the States.
My nephew expected me in Cleveland within two weeks.
Back in New York Matt called about rings.
I ordered them from the Diamond District the next day.
They cost $300. I had no money. Not having a job was becoming a drag.
I showed Tidball’s drawing to my business associate.
He knew my situation and lowballed an offer.
“Sold.”
The sale gave me enough enough to pay for the rings and booked a hotel in Cleveland through my business associate for $50 a night.
That week my nephew called from the West.
“I need you there Friday night.”
“I’ll be there.”
“How you getting here?”
“Not sure yet.”
“The Sotnicks are driving from New Jersey.”
“Alan and Barbara?” I had not seen the couple in years. They were best friends with my sister and her husband.
“Yes, give them a call. I’ll text you the number.”
He did so and I called them a few minutes later expecting them not to remember me. Barbara answered the phone. She was happy to hear from me and said, “Alan will do all the driving.”
“Great.” My sister had one time said Alan drove fast. I drove the speed limit plus ten.
We made plans to meet in Northern New Jersey. I would sleep at their house and we’d leave early Friday morning. It was a seven-hour drive. I was going to the Sixth City.
I had been there once in 1972. A friend’s family had owned a junkyard by the Cuyahoga River, which had infamously burned in 1969. We had drank at the Harbor Inn. I recalled someone pulling out a shotgun. He had shot at someone. We left the bar the following second and I departed from Cleveland in the morning.
I wracked my brain for memorable events in Cleveland.
The great Jim Brown played nine record-breaking seasons for the Browns from 1957 to 1965. The bruising fullback had told a college football coach, “Make sure when anyone tackles you he remembers how much it hurts.”
Cleveland loved him, because Cleveland was that kind of town.
On June 4, 1974 the Cleveland Indians staged a dime beer night to get fans into the stadium for a game versus the Texas Rangers. The crowd drank to their hearts’ delight and then spurred on by an eighth inning brawl and a fan’s attempt top steal the first baseman’s hat the attendees stormed onto the field in the ninth inning in the thousands.
NBC newscaster Tim Russert, then a student at the Cleveland–Marshall College of Law, had attended the game. “I went with $2 in my pocket. You do the math.”
Lastly the Dead Boys were from Cleveland. They were regulars at CBGBs. I loved them, because like Devo and Pere Ubu they would never be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and I considered that omission a badge of honor for the Young, Loud and Snotty.
Otherwise I drew a blank on the city, which didn’t matter.
I was going to Cleveland no matter what.
An actor friend phoned that week. He was making a film in Cleveland. Bill and I went back to the East Village. We arranged to meet in Cleveland. A Halloween wedding and a dinner with Old Bill made Cleveland sound like fun.
Thursday I packed my tux into a bag and caught a 4:16 train to Ridgewood NJ from Penn Station. It was a glorious Indian Summer afternoon to travel through the Meadowlands, even knowing that by 2050 most of marshlands would be underwater.
Except for Snake Hill.
The igneous rock intrusion had been the home the Hudson County’s infamous Lunatic Asylum from 1873 – 1939. I hated institutions like that, having grown up across the inlet from Portland’s notorious School for the Deaf. Bad things happened in these places and I was glad to be away from it, until the train pulled into Newark.
I had missed the train connection at Secaucus Junction.
Newark was filled with commuters heading home.
I wanted to get out of there fast.
The next train to Secaucus came ten minutes later.
Snake Hill hadn’t moved in my absence and I remembered that Ms. Carolina was from New Jersey.
She was Yankee same as me.
Secaucus Junction was in the middle of nowhere.
Ridgewood was 30 minutes away.
The sun set before I got there.
Night came came fast this time of year.
Alan picked me up at the station.
“Long time no see.”
“About thirty years?”
I had taken Alan and my brother-in-law into Manhattan for a night on the town.
Back then I had been someone.
“That long?”
“I think so.”
During the ride to their house I recounted the tale of my life; nightclubs around the world, selling jewelry in the Diamond District, having a family in Thailand. I said nothing of my years with Ms. Carolina.
“Sounds like quite a life.”
“Some of it, yes.”
I liked the quiet life now and the Jersey suburbs were very quiet.
Alan’s wife cooked a chicken dinner, which we washed down by a good Pinot Grigio. Afterwards we watched the Patriots play the Miami Dolphins of Thursday Night Football. The couple retired to bed at the end of the 3rd quarter.
“We’re off early in the morning.” Alan figured on a 8AM departure.
“I’ll be ready.”
Once they went to bed, I finished off the bottle of wine and cheered silently as the Patriots remained undefeated for the season.
The next morning we set off at 8am in Alan’s Jaguar. The rear seat was comfortable. We stopped briefly at Dunkin’ Donuts before heading west on I-80 toward the Delaware Water Gap.
My sister hadn’t lied about Alan. No cars passed his Jaguar, as we wound through the steep-walled chasm. I wished we could stop to admire the autumn vista, but Cleveland was hours away and we crossed the Delaware River without losing speed.
I-80 spanned almost 500 miles across Northern Pennsylvania. Barbara controlled the radio dial. The station played Bon Jovi more than once. I spotted an exit for the Poconos and a billboard for a well-known hotel.
“We once stayed at Mount Aerie Lodge.”
“The motel for lovers.” New York City TV had run a famous ad promoting the resort throughout the 1980s. The motel for lovers specialized in erotic baths and beds for adulterers. Alan and Barbara were not that type. “How were the rooms?”
“Sordid. We spent about thirty minutes there.”
“That long.”
“An eternity.” Suburban women liked clean.
“Yes, the beauty of the Mount Aerie Lodge.” I liked clean too.
A hundred miles brought us to Williamsport. The Little League World Series was played there each year. There was no stopping. 80 mph was the traveling speed through the rural expanse of the Pennsylvania Wilds. This stretch of highway followed of the West Branch of Susquehanna River without sight of any towns.
Only exits.
We joked about Jersey Shore.
The town lay over the ridge from the Interstate, since the highway’s engineers had routed the road to avoid population centers, lending the early afternoon a special desolation. We could have been nowhere and Cleveland was still another four hours away.
The trees of the hillsides were losing their color.
Back in Thailand the monsoon had ended and the dry season was in full swing. I told Barbara about my family, my children and both my wives. Barbara asked, “How can you have two wives? A mistake?”
“Some might say, but then mistakes are the only proof of true free will.”
Ms. Carolina could have been my third wife, but leaving her husband would have been worst than a mistake.
“Men,” said Barbara.
“I’m not really an adulterer, but my great-great-great-great-granduncle had been Joseph Smith, the leader of the Mormons. So bigamy is a tradition for the Vermont side of the family.” We were from Maine.
“Yeah, right.” Married women had no time for adulterers.
Alan was smart and said nothing. I recognized his wisdom and stopped trying to explain myself, because women are always right.
Thirty minutes later we made a pitstop at a gas station. It was the halfway mark between New Jersey and Cleveland. Barbara and I went inside the mini-mart, which sold cheap sandwiches. The people paying for gas were fat. This was their only source of food outside the home.
This was civilization in the Wilds.
People living here spent their lives here.
I stepped off the asphalt onto the dirt.
The withered undergrowth hibernated in preparation for winter.
I took a photo.
Alan beeped the horn and Barbara shouted, “Let’s go.”
Alan was familiar with this road. He had attended Hiram College.
“James Garfield had been the head master there.”
“Ohio born if I remember correctly.”
“From the Western Reserve. This had once been the wilderness then.”
“Still is as far as I can see,” commented Barbara, as she fiddled with the radio to find a station from the next and only big town in Northwest Pa.
Dubois.
“How many times you make this trip?”
“Probably twenty or thirty times in four years. I paid my tuition by booking bands and even George Carlin.
“George Carlin?” The comedian was my hero. “If you can’t beat them, arrange to have them beaten.”
“Spoken like a true son of Ireland, but I prefer ‘Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”
“You’ve spent too long on the Jersey highways.”
“That’s the truth.” Alan had been retired for several years. I couldn’t stop working until I was 75. Another twelve years into the future.
I dozed off for an hour and woke in rolling farmland near Kent State.
“Four dead in Ohio.”
“Over thirty-five years ago.”
“Not many people remember that day.” Governor James Rhodes ordered in the National Guard. The raw troops shot into the crowd of students protesting the invasion of Cambodia.
“It was a long time ago.”
“And only yesterday for us.”
The fatal fusillade shocked a nation and turned the country against the Viet-Nam War.
Our destination was getting close now. Cleveland had top billing on the road signs.
“Another twenty minutes. We’ll drop you at your hotel.” Alan and Barbara were going to see friends.
“Thanks for the ride. I can’t wait until we do it again.”
“On Sunday,” Barbara groaned. She hated driving long distances and I couldn’t blame her after traversing the wastelands of the Wilds.
I spotted the city in the gloomy distance.
“It’s bigger than I remembered.”
“Cleveland had a population of 750,000 in the 1970s.”
“And now?”
“A little under 400,000, but I’ve heard it’s experiencing a revival.”
“My nephew said the same thing.”
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
The hotel was first-class. My room was more than adequate. I called my nephew.
“The rehearsal dinner will be at 5.” He gave me an address for an upscale brewery on the other side of the Cuyahoga River. I looked at a map. It was a walking distance and I threw on my suit. I hadn’t seen this side of Lake Erie since 1974.
The center of town consisted of empty parking lots for suburban commuters and newly-built luxury condos for young tech workers. The only people on the street were homeless. Most of them were black. None of this added up to a revival.
Few cars were on the street, because the cities of America were no longer destinations for a family weekend.
I wandered down to the Cuyahoga River. A tram line traveled between the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the outskirts of the city.
Cleveland had won the museum over Memphis, since WJW disc jockey Alan Freed had coined the phrase ‘rock and roll’.
Chuck Berry was the first inductee in 1986.
Many other stars followed him, but in 2006 the surviving members of the Sex Pistols rejected the honor of being inducted into the ‘piss stain’.
I had not come to Cleveland to pay to see rock mementos, unless they were from the Dead Boys, and walked along the river.
No one was here.
Not on the sidewalks.
Nor before the maritime store.
Nor under the I80 Viaduct.
I admired the solitude of the late autumn sky.
The beauty was mine and mine alone, but cities are cities not because of their ruins, but because of their people and I sought the company of homo sapiens.
They had to be someplace.
I found them at the Portside across the street from Browns Stadium.
The bartender was friendly.
So were three Browns fans, although they gave me the finger after learning I was a New Englander.
“Tom Brady sucks.”
“Not really. The Patriots had won three Superbowls with # 12 and answer me this. Who’s your quarterback?” I asked knowing that the Cleveland front office had drafted the 2014 Heisman Trophy Winner Johnny Manziel # 1.
They looked at each other with disgust and the youngest cursed, “Johnny Fuckin’ Football. We suck even more than Brady.”
“He doesn’t suck. Brady’s married to Giselle,” said one of his friends and they each bought a round to toast Browns, the Cavs, and the defunct NHL Barons.
“They used to be the Oakland Seals.”
“They were losers too.”
To avoid any trouble I raised my glass and said, “Here’s to the greatest band from Cleveland. The Dead Boys.”
“Who were they? asked the young bartender. She had rock tattoos.
“A punk band from here. Sort of founded punk in the USA.” Not everyone on that scene agreed with me, especially snotty hardcore fans.
“Never heard of them.”
“Us neither. Are they in the Hall of Fame?”
“Not a chance. You haven’t heard Sonic Reducer?” It was their best song.
“Nope.”
I repeated the question to the other seven drinkers at the Portside Bar across the river.
Seven more nopes.
I rejoined my beer and asked the Browns fan,”Then who’s the best band ever from Cleveland?”
“That’s easy. The James Gang.”
“Fuck that, they were just a bar band.”
I paid my tab and exited from the Portside. It was time for the rehearsal dinner.
The sun was almost down, as I walked through the Flats.
The light shone a boreal gold off the Lake Eire.
The Cuyahoga River mirrored the evening sky.
The other side of the river was devoid of life.
No cars sped on Columbus Road.
No people were in sight either.
No one was in Hart Crane Park. The poet had been lost at sea after a drunken beating by sailor offended by his homosexual advances. Some said suicide and others say the crew threw Crane off the Orizaba.
I remembered one line from THE REPOSE OF BUILDINGS and roughly recited, “I could never remember that seething, steady leveling of the marshes till age had brought me to the sea.
Lost at sea indeed and I wondered if anyone was in Cleveland.
Population zero in Ohio City.
This was how the world would look seven days after the death of the human race, except Cleveland had been deserted by the whites after the Hough Street Riots, which I remembered watching on black-and-white TV in 1968.
On July 17 The Jewish-Mafia proprietor of the Seventy-Niner’s Café refused a black man any ice to accompany his bottle of whiskey and posted a sign ‘No water for niggers’. A crowd chucked rocks at the bar. The owners phoned the cops. The police ignored the call and the Afro-American residents of Hough Street looted the white-owned stores. Snipers shot at the cops. A lot of men had returned from Vietnam with arms. Molotov cocktails lit up houses and stores. A thunderstorm stopped the rampage at midnight.
Even though all the bars in Hough were closed, more rioting erupted the following night. The National Guard patrolled the streets with heavy weapons. The insurrection against White Rule continued until July 22.
The police blamed everything on Black nationalists.
The nation’s newspaper ran the same storyline.
No one accused Abe Feigenbaum, the owner of the Seventy-Niner’s Café of anything, because racism wasn’t a crime in America.
And like that Cleveland became a ghost town, but not for the Dead Boys or those that remained behind the whites fleeing to the fucking suburbs, making Cleveland the perfect setting for a Halloween wedding.
People were loading up on food at the restored marketplace.
Clevelanders liked eating judging from the weight of the shoppers.
Most were XXL. More than a few were XXXL. I felt thin and wandered past the fish stalls to a beer brewery.
The man of the hour was at the door.
Matt gave me a hug.
I didn’t like the way he said that and he explained that my brother-in-law was presiding over the ceremony.
“He’s a state judge. Sorry.”
“Don’t be, just one thing. I walked over here and didn’t see a single soul or a car.”
“That part of Cleveland is always deserted. Like the zombies ate everyone.”
“”Nope.” More people arrived at the entrance. Matt turned to them and said, “Go get yourself a drink. There’s lots of old and new faces.”
My younger brother’s kids; Eric and Andrea.
Padraic greeted me with a brotherly embrace. I hadn’t seen him since the previous winter in New York. He was still working the the phone company in Boston. Retirement was only another ten years away. I would be working well into my 70s.
“But I did bring fireworks.” Pyromania ran in my family.
“Or during it,” Padraic was adventurous in a time of unpeopled cities and I asked, “Do you remember the Dead Boys from CBGBs?”
I found my older brother Frunk at the bar. He ordered us beers.
“Good to see all of us.” We clinked glasses.
In a big family not everyone is talking everyone all the time.
“And Michael too.” My brother had succumbed to AIDS a year before my mother.
“They liked a good wedding, but you’d have to drive him here. Dad would have been 94.”
“And Mom 88.” I would have been hard getting the keys out the Old Man’s hands.
“How we get so old. Seems like only yesterday we were Halloweening in Maine.”
“What about the time you dressed up as John Glenn and fell off the neighbors’ steps.”
“Yeah, for some reason I thought it was cool to wear sunglasses under the helmet. I couldn’t see anything.”
I can still feel the impact now.” My mouth had filled with a metal taste, as I tried to regain my breath.
I later switched to vodka and tonic.
After the bride and bridesmaids lined up for photos my sister thanked everyone for coming. A bus took everyone to their hotels. I didn’t want to be with the crowd and got on the trolley to the Tower City.
A few people strolled through the terminal. Most were heading for the casino. Having lost a thousand dollars driving across Nevada in the Spring of 1974, I had no desire to play blackjack or throw away my money on the slot machines. Reno had murdered me.
My hotel room was comfortable.
My hangover demanded sleeping off the day.
My burner rang on the night table.
It was Bill. His first scene was not until the evening and he invited me to a vegan brunch.
We had been friends for decades.
“You got that right. I’ll meet you in thirty minutes.”
I had been hoping for bacon and eggs. The vegan restaurant probably had tofu bacon on the menu. I showered and dressed in ten minutes.
