This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
The ideas of revolutionary Marxism do not exist in the abstract; they are carried forward by successive generations of revolutionary fighters. Jim Robertson, the founder of our international tendency, devoted much of his energy to politically arming a new layer of communist militants. That vital concern is expressed in the following quotes from Leon Trotsky, co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the October 1917 Russian Revolution, and James P. Cannon, the founding leader of American Trotskyism. The International Communist League seeks to maintain and extend the proletarian, revolutionary and internationalist tradition of our Marxist forebears in our fight to reforge the Fourth International, the necessary instrument to lead the working class to power worldwide.
I think that the work in which I am engaged now, despite its extremely insufficient and fragmentary nature, is the most important work of my life—more important than 1917, more important than the period of the Civil War or any other.
For the sake of clarity I would put it this way. Had I not been present in 1917 in Petersburg, the October Revolution would still have taken place—on the condition that Lenin was present and in command....
Thus I cannot speak of the “indispensability” of my work, even about the period from 1917 to 1921. But now my work is “indispensable” in the full sense of the word. There is no arrogance in this claim at all. The collapse of the two Internationals has posed a problem which none of the leaders of these Internationals is at all equipped to solve. The vicissitudes of my personal fate have confronted me with this problem and armed me with important experience in dealing with it. There is now no one except me to carry out the mission of arming a new generation with the revolutionary method over the heads of the leaders of the Second and Third International. And I am in a complete agreement with Lenin (or rather Turgenev) that the worst vice is to be more than 55 years old! I need at least about five more years of uninterrupted work to ensure the succession.
—Leon Trotsky, Trotsky’s Diary in Exile (25 March 1935)
* * *
I also remember the words Trotsky wrote in his Diary in Exile, when he was in Norway and he was bound hand and foot and he was not in good health and he was 55 years old.... He said: I must live another five years to prepare the succession. I’ve often thought of those words [and] that that is the supreme duty of the leaders—to prepare the succession. And some of us went about it consciously, I especially. One man can’t do it all, as quite a few nuts think they can. One man can’t live forever and his greatest contribution is to prepare others to take his place.
—James P. Cannon, Interview with Harry Ring (13 February 1974)
Workers Vanguard No. 1153
19 April 2019
Jim Robertson
1928–2019
Last week, Jim Robertson, a central founder of the Spartacist League/U.S. and the International Communist League, died. He was 90 years old and had been a member of the workers movement for more than 70 years. He remained an active collaborator and an essential component of the leadership of the SL/U.S. and of the ICL up until the very end.
His death is a tremendous loss to the ICL. We extend our condolences to Jim’s family and his numerous friends and comrades.
A thorough appreciation of Jim’s life and work, as well as notices for memorials, will be published in an upcoming issue of Workers Vanguard.
Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of early Robert Johnson work.
CD REVIEW
Martin Scorsese Presents; The Blues, Robert Johnson, Sony Records, 2003
I have heard the name Robert Johnson associated with country blues as long as I have been listening to the blues, and believe me that is a long time. I would venture to guess that if an average blues (or just music) fan was asked to name one blues artist the name that would, more probably than not, come up is Robert Johnson. Partially that is because his influence on later artists has been nothing short of fantastic, particularly the English blues aficionados like Eric Clapton. That said, Brother Johnson’s work leaves me cold. While I can appreciate some of his lyrics his guitar playing is ordinary, his singing can be tedious and his sense of momentum over the course of an album is very mundane.
His contemporaries, or near contemporaries like Charlie Patton, Howlin’ Wolf or Son House, to name just a few, are better in one or all these categories . Needless to say there is an element of subjectivity here but when the occasion arises I am more than willing to gush over a talent that makes me jump. Brother Johnson just does not do so. The source of his fame as an innovator is centered on his role of breaking the pattern of country blues established by Son House and other and giving the first hints of a city blues idiom, particularly as a forerunner to the Chicago blues. Okay, we will give the ‘devil’ his do on that score. Still, on any given day wouldn’t you give your right arm to see and hear Howlin’ Wolf croon "The Red Rooster" (and practically eat the microphone) or any of his other midnight creeps rather than Johnson on "Sweet Home, Chicago"? Here I will rest my case.
So what do you have to hear here? Obviously, “Sweet Home, Chicago". Beyond that “32-20 Blues” is a must listen as is his version of “Dust My Broom” (but isn’t Elmore James’ slide guitar souped-up version much better?) and “Hellhound On My Trail”. Keb’ Mo' (who I will review separately at a later time) does a nice cover here of “Last Fair Deal Gone Down”.
Lyrics to "Dust My Broom"
I'm gonna get up in the mornin',
I believe I'll dust my broom (2x)
Girlfriend, the black man you been lovin',
girlfriend, can get my room
I'm gon' write a letter,
Telephone every town I know (2x)
If I can't find her in West Helena,
She must be in East Monroe, I know
I don't want no woman,
Wants every downtown man she meet (2x)
She's a no good doney,
They shouldn't 'low her on the street
I believe, I believe I'll go back home (2x)
You can mistreat me here, babe,
But you can't when I go home
And I'm gettin' up in the morning,
I believe I'll dust my broom (2x)
Girlfriend, the black man that you been lovin',
Girlfriend, can get my room
I'm gon' call up Chiney,
She is my good girl over there (2x)
If I can't find her on Philippine's Island,
She must be in Ethiopia somewhere
50 Years Gone The Father We
Almost Knew One Jack Kerouac Out Of Merrimack River Nights-Searching For
The Father We Never Knew-Scenes In Search Of The Blue-Pink Great American West
Night-Down Sonora Way- The Ghost Of Bill
Higgins
By Seth Garth, known as
Charles River Blackie for no other reason than he slept along those banks, the
Cambridge side and some raggedy ass wino who tried to cut him under the
Anderson Bridge one night called him that and it stuck. Those wino-sapped bums,
piss leaky tramps and poet-king hoboes all gone to some graven spot long ago
from drink, drug, or their own hubris which they never understood gone and the
moniker too.
Frankie Riley was shocked, well
maybe not shocked but stunned when he heard the news of Bill Higgins’ murder.
Jesus, he had had just seen Bill in Los Angeles a couple of months before when
Bill was passing through on his way south and he and Maria, his live-in mex
girlfriend (immigration status fuzzy so Maria, okay), her of the sparkling
laughing eyes and dark brown skin, had let Bill stay in their apartment for a
couple of weeks while he worked on some plan that he had hatched, some vague
plan connected with making a pile down in Mexico, downSonora way that would put he and Clara on
easy street.
Bill Higgins and Frankie Riley had
known each other from the hunger days in the old 1960s Olde Saco (Maine, okay) neighborhood,
the old just barely working- class neighborhood where the chronically
unemployed, under-employed and just plain ne’er-do-wells, mainly Irish and
hence locally known as Irishtown (although more generically to outsiders,
combined with the French-Canadian streets, as the Acre), mainly third or fourth
generation Irish and thus firmly planted by the prior toil of forbears lived,
where they had met, beyond Olde Saco Junior High corridor nod (the junior high,
and come to think of it, high school nod too, a subject worthy of its own
sketch but not here, not now when dope, guns, and girls, ah,women, are central to what is what) met,
while hugging the walls (literally according to both sources at the time) at
the old Sacred Heart (Roman Catholic) Church at the weekly (except Lent, of
course, and other odd-ball feast days like the Feast of the Immaculate
Conception which even as ignorant, sex ignorant,flat- out sex ignorant, as these boyos were
drew a guffaw) “sock hop” held by the senior parish priest, Monsignor Lally.
Held to, well, “keep an eye, maybe
more than one, on the younger portion of his flock,” as the good father expressed
it each Sunday when making the announcement for the next hop in the line-up.
The real reason, of course, whispered among the young, including wall-huggers Higgins
and Riley, was to keep said young angel sheep, away from too much heathen devil’s
music (read: ersatz Protestant music probably a Baptist or Unitarian
conspiracy, the good priest spouted both theories); that rock and roll music
that was just then epitomized by that hip-swaying, butt-flaying, making the
girls “wet” (wet in the wrong places) praying false god praying Elvis Presley.
And by all means to keep them, that unprotected angel flock to a person, but
especially those with access to automobiles, from dark seawalls down at Olde
Saco Beach listening to fogged-up car radios in the back seat and digging the
beat while, well, just while and leave it at that. Or for those without golden
automobile access or who were too young, to keep away from the Strand Theater,
the exclusive upstairs balcony section of course, for the young set, the
car-less healthy young interested in lightless dark night s-x (you know just in
case the old bastard is still around).
Frankie still remembered the first
song that they had heard upon meeting at that fateful junior high school time
sock hop, Danny and the Juniors’ At The
Hop. And the reason he remembered that song so vividly was one sparking
blue-eyed, flaming red-haired Clara Murphy, just mentioned Clara, a girl who
had given both of them her come hither twelve-year old look that night (and
previously at school too) and they had been hooked, hooked as bad as men (okay,
boys) could be hooked by a woman (okay, girl). So it was not surprising that
they both had rushed over to ask her to dance when that number was being played
at that fateful dance. And Clara in her Solomonic wisdom turned them both down.
Or maybe not so Solomonic. Clara Murphy couldn’t, just that moment, decide
whether she liked Bill or Frankie better, or whether she liked either of them,
according to Frankie’s intelligence source, his younger sister Amy who was
friends with Clara’s sister Bonnie and so gave in to her budding feminine wiles
and had turned them both down.
Naturally that denial after those
come hither looks inflamed the boyos. So for the next several weeks Bill and
Frankie made every mad school boy mad attempt to win her favors. Both had
recklessly, although determinedly, courted legal danger by “clipping” (five
finger discount, oh, you know, petty larceny) onyx rings (Frankie’s had a
diamond in the center) for her at Sam’s Jewelry Store in downtown Olde Saco (again
intelligence, reliable intelligence, Clara sister Bonnie via Amy, had informed
them separately that she liked those kinds of rings). She accepted both as
tokens of friendship she called it. Ditto 45 RPM Elvis and Jerry Lee records from
Chuck’s Record Shop over on Main Street (an easy “clip” for these adventurers,
just place the record under your undershirt and walk out, or better slide into
your underpants, no salesperson, no girl salesperson on duty at the time was
going there, no way). Accepted, dispassionately accepted. Not ditto though, not
ditto “clipped” flowers and candy (especially when Clara heard how the previous
goods were “purchased” although she did not go so far as to give them back).
They had each worked, really dragged their butts carrying doubles, as caddies
as the local golf course to gather the dough necessary for those expenses. And
on it went like that for several weeks.
To no avail for Frankie though because,
also exhibiting another aspect of her budding wiles, Clara took up with Bill (and
had really, according to other reliable intelligence sources, her eye on him
all along. Girls, ah, women, go figure).Reason: stated Clara reason. Bill had a head on his shoulders and,
quote, was not so hung up on silly rock and roll that was just a passing thing
like Frankie, unquote.
Frankie laughed at the recollection,
a bittersweet recollection, since later Clara married Bill right out of high
school, right out of the Class of 1964, maybe not the wisest thing to do for
either of them in a lifetime sense but with war cries, real war cries on every
horizon, out in the killing fields of Asia (and who knows where else in that
red scare cold war good night) it had a certain logic, a way to keep Bill out
of harm’s way with any luck. Although at the time it had much more to do with
Bill being crazy for Clara, head on his shoulders or not, and since he had no
plans to go to college he figured it was just as well to start family life
early. Yes, he was that kind of guy then, and was not alone in that sentiment,
not by any means. Clara, for her part, had schemed and plotted to get out of
her shanty Irish-drunk father-cold mother house from about age fourteen.
Whatever she thought about Bill, and Frankie was a little hesitant to take her
undying love sentiments at face value (and miffed about his own Clara plight
for a long time, every time he caddied up at that damn golf course), she had
always had Clara and lace curtain Irish front and center even then.
Frankie remembered just then too
that he had been part of their wedding party, that June wedding over at the
Starlight Ballroom, where the trio had spent many a Saturday night listening as
the music changed from silly Danny and the Juniors to serious Beatles and
Stones stuff. The wedding the last big event of his youth before he kicked the
dust of Olde Saco off his shoes and headed out on the hitchhike highway and his
own dreams. Headed out for what became for many years the wandering road turned
into the hobo road, and then back, back a little, but this is Bill and Clara’s
story, or Bill’s anyway, so let bygones be bygones. But too he remembered that
wedding party night when Clara, out of the blue, while they were dancing the
obligatory friend dance, dancing very close, very close her leaning into him, whispered
in his ear that just in case Bill didn’t work out she still had some hot flash
thoughts of him. That helped, if he needed any help, getting him out of that
one-horse town just as fast as he could. Not for Bill’s sake, or Clara’s, but
just because he might have taken her up on the offer.
Here is the funny part though, Bill
and Clara, just like Frankie at the beginning of the wave got caught up with
their generation’snew breeze coming
through the land, the music, the drugs, the experimenting with everything under
the sun, and maybe more, and had after a couple of years of married life drifted
west to the coast, formed and unformed a couple of rock and roll bands in the
strobe light dreams 1960s with Clara as a Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick
–like lead singer and Bill on lead guitar. Yes, playing that no account rock
and roll. Frankie, on the coast at the time too, trying to avoid the draft
(Bill had turned out to be 4-F, unfit for military duty, due to
nearsightedness), had run into to them several times, had stayed at their pad
on Fillmore for months at a time, when they had operated out of Frisco
town,had helped console (among others)
Clara when Bill ran off for a while with some surfer girl from La Jolla looking
for groupie acid rock kicks and she was at wits end. Yes, he had slept with
Clara as part of that consolation but by then Frankie’s road addiction had
turned him away from any thoughts of Clara lace curtain Irish dreams. As far as
he knew Clara never told Bill about the affair, or if she had he never let it
interfere with his relationship with Frankie. When Bill got back from his fling
with that surfer girl he and Frankie became closer than at any time since that
long ago sock hop night. Then in the late 1960s, he back on the road, out in
New Mexico back, they had lost touch. And then in 1973 Bill had been killed,
face-down killed, down in some dusty back alley, Sonora, back alley, when that
plan, that major drug deal went south on him.
According to the reports, the police
reports when he went to check, Mexican police reports, so maybe a little off on
the details, but on point on the face-down dead part, Bill and Clara had
“muled” many times for one of the budding drug cartels. (Frankie had known
this, hell, had taken delivery of some goods himself, and had, once,
accompanied Bill and Clara, down there, down there the time he had met Maria,
met her down in that Mexicali whorehouse and brought her norte but that was
another story).Bill, while he was
working on his plan in L. A., the details of which were unknown to Frankie, had
decided to go “independent” trying to take-off with one of his cartel deliveries
to be used as seed money for his own operation to Panama (the ideas being to
try to get to the Canal Zone and some Estados Unidos protection if things went
awry, he obviously never made it) and wound up in a back alley with six slugs
in the back for his efforts. End of story, just another number in the broken
dreams world, the fast stuff of dreams world.
What Frankie didn’t know, although
if he had thought about it for ten seconds he should have known, was that
Clara, Clara with her lace curtain turned chandelier Irish dreams, was the
driving force behind their new careers, and kept prodding Bill on that plan to
step up to the “bigs” and build his own operation. Jesus, girls, ah, women, go
figure. See here is what is finally strange though. Clara who had accompanied Bill
on that fateful trip (and had been holding that delivery, ten kilos of coke
just then becoming the drug of choice for the hipsters, and never cartel
recovered as far as he knew) was never heard from again. Just that moment, that
reflected moment, Frankie raised his finger to his head and nodded that old
schoolboy nod to Bill’ s memory and raised his drink to Clara Murphy, Clara of
the sparkling eyes and flaming red hair, and of his youth.
…Frankie,
few years later, maybe 1976, received a report that someone, second-hand, had
heard that Clara was running a whorehouse stocked with anglo girls serving the
booming drug cartels down in Tampico but he just let it pass, just let the
schoolboy nod and the drink stand.
He Threw It All Away-With Bob Dylan’s “I Threw It All Away ” In Mind
By Freeman Steel
He had it all. Jeffrey Davis had it all although until he lost it, until he gave it away, he did not realize that he had had it all. By the way for the curious who thing that they recognize the named party to this piece Jeffrey Davis is not the real name of our protagonist but like the Jeffrey Davis that you do think you know from his various screen exploits our Jeffrey Davis has his own similar reasons for using an alias here. Part of the reason is that he although not connected in any way with the screen, with movies or television is well-known in the literary field for his work and works of criticism. Part of the reason to be completely candid is that he was not sure that the statute of limitations might not have run out of various small crimes and legal evasions in his past so that publishing his real name might not bring to notice in the circles that he formerly ran in to haul his ass into court, especially the ex-wives he left high and dry. And part of the reason was that he just plain asked me as a long-time friend (and one time victim of his youthful cons) to not use his name as a test of my loyalty after all these years if I wanted the story. I did and so Jeffrey Davis it is.
But enough of subterfuges and diversions around identity confidentiality and on to the reason why our boy, my old corner boy from, well, I had better not say from when, what times or where since his beginnings are well known to part of the public and that would defeat his purpose in forcing me at virtual reality gunpoint to guard like a sacred temple his real name, had lost what he had, had given it all away. Jeffrey Davis’ wife, Lorraine Daley not her real name either since if you knew that name you, you the literary sort would figure out who that old corner boy from wherever he was from back in the day was and I would be out a “think piece” story about the pitfalls of statutory neglect (not a crime, a legal crime anyway, and not the reason that Jeffrey was worried about statute of limitation run outs), had recently left Jeffrey high and dry. Had left him for her own reasons mostly according to Jeffrey’s frail understandings in the matter to “find” herself whatever that might have meant to her.
Left in the middle of the night one night a few months back bag and baggage as they use to say around the old neighborhood when some married partner high-tailed it out of town with no explanation (in those unenlightened days either male leaving female or female leaving male but not one leaving one of the same gender just so you know we are talking about it has been a while back since that phrase had fresh currency). NO public explanation but it did not take much to figure out that some stay married forever woman had had enough of the abuse, physical and mental, from some bastard of a drunken husband (and father which is how we began to figure such abnormal leavings, abnormal for the old neighborhood), or that some husband had done the high-tailing with some barroom floozy. In any case Lorraine left and left no forwarding address-none. Had discontinued her previous cellphone and presumably gotten a new one although Jeffrey speculated that in the process of “finding” herself Lorraine may have decided to forgo the modern conveniences if she had wound up in some ashram as she had talked about, had threatened to do in previous versions of the downward slide of their relationship.
Despite the several month time lapse Jeff had not really reconciled himself as to what had caused him to forget that he had had it all with Lorraine, had given it all away. Then one night he called me on his cellphone, called me Sid Lawrence if I have not introduced myself before and looking over the previous paragraphs it appears that I have not although the important information, Jeff and my connection for the old neighborhood I did give you and wanted me to come over to his house in, well it is a big city so I can say it and he will proof this piece anyway, Los Angeles, over in the hills and canyons and sit with him while he tried to tell me how he had by his own freaking hand, his term, lost it all. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to hear what he had to say but in the interest of old corner boy friendship I agreed.
We met at his well-appointed bungalow a few nights later and after a couple of stiff belts of well-preserved scotch he sat me down in one of his comfortable (and expensive) easy chairs and sat himself down on his long couch to speak about what ailed him about what was on his mind. Jeff whatever his literary skills, whatever line of pure, unmitigated bullshit he could throw at male or female, but mostly female and whatever the gods had granted him in the wisdom department was not a reflective man, did not dwell on the past, conveniently forgot the past (as in the big time con for several thousand hard-luck earned dollars he ran by me back in the days when for what he called “literary” purposes he ran tens of thousands of somebody else’s dollars up his snowman nose) and lived in the moment. I could tell though by his demeanor (and his willingness to sit me down after only two stiff scotches) that he had been thinking about some past stuff, about his character which was so explosive, so unstable at times that giving it all away in the past was coming back to haunt his dreams-or his desires.
When he began talking about Annie Dubois, his first real love, his, well, I had better not mentioned marriages and leave everything as affairs so the smart reader will not figure out who Jeff really is and we would have wasted good time and cyberspace creating a ruse, I knew he been in a sullen introspective mood. That sullen part no literary device on my part Jeff really did get sullen which showed up remarkably clearly on his face when he had to think through some ramification of some off-the-wall thing he had done. He just hid that trait these days better in public than when I first noticed his reaction back in sophomore year in high school.
What I know is that he had not mentioned her name in front of me for years, hell, decades so I knew that sullen look was real. I should mentioned here before I tell you how Jeff related his feelings about how he had loved and lost that young woman, had given it all away, that I was half, maybe more, in love with her myself, had seen her first at a college mixer but she after looking me over on a few dates had decided that my roommate Jeff was more to her liking (they called them the now rightly taboo “smokers” in those days for some unknown to me reason but probably because since everybody was hopped up to find some companion the air was filled with anxious smoke, anxious Marlboro, Salem, Newport, Winston smoke). So I was not disappointed those many years when he did not mention her name. That night my heart raced at the mention of her name just like it had when I was some smitten schoolboy. Damn, Jeff.
I never, because I did not want to know and you can understand why now, knew the details of the break-up between Jeff and Annie. Painfully I listened as Jeff went through the litany. He and Annie stuck like glue together all through college. They essentially lived together for much of that time after freshman year in an apartment in Cambridge (not the real location but close-what I do for Jeff in the interest of a story) during the school year and at various seaside resorts in the summer. A classic 1960s romance with the sword of Damocles hanging over it. That sword –the raging crazy and unjust Vietnam War that we were all very aware of, we males anyway, since its’ seemingly endless travails put despite huge and growing protests and calls from even many governmental quarters to stop the damn thing placed us all at risk of being drafted. Eventually as the reader can probably figure out by now Jeff’s number came up with no further student exemption and no serious reason not to accept induction he allowed himself to be drafted. That “allowed” his term later for what had happened to him. (Although he and Annie were prominent anti-war rally attendees he did not consider himself under the rules for such status and under his Catholic upbringing a conscientious objector and under no circumstances was he going to jail or to Canada the other options that faced almost every young male then. I was 4-F, unfit for military duty, because of a crippling knee accident as a kid and the Army may overlook lots of disabilities but they want their charges to be able to march- and march great distances- as necessary)
Once he got his draft notice Jeff began to panic. Started worrying about things like never having been married if he was killed in Vietnam. Not having any family to mourn him (he had been estranged from his parents for many years, had lived with his grandmother who just before senior year had passed away). Stuff like that that if the times were different he would have not given a fuck about, my term. So he and Annie tied the knot, got married. A bad move, a “war-time marriage” bad move that they could have seen coming if they had watched just a few old time movies like I did although even that might not have helped.
He eventually like some horrible nightmare coming to pass as things developed against him was trained as an infantryman, the only thing in the late 1960s the Army cared about training since the attrition rate with one year deployments in Vietnam was eating up personnel at a fast clip. And at just that time the only place in the great wide world that a U.S. infantryman was heading for was that hell hole Vietnam. So after his training and month’s leave Jeff had orders issued to him report to Fort Lewis in the state of Washington for transfer to Vietnam. He panicked, or maybe if not panicked then reverted back to his corner boy ways-or part of the corner boy ethos-lie like a bastard and hope things worked out
After his leave was up he suddenly told Annie that he had through political connections had had his orders changed and he was to report to Fort Dix in New Jersey where he was to be discharged under some administrative regulation so that he could go work on the staff of a Congressman in Washington, D.C. Annie was elated (and relieved) by the news and ready to run to D.C. with him for their new future. The whole scenario seemed very reasonable since Jeff had worked like seven dervishes for the late Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign and even as he was telling me this over forty years later I could see where if he had told me the same story then I would have bought it hook, line and sinker.
The problem though, and I would have been harassed like crazy for believing one word of the story back in corner boy days when he (and we) thought nothing of lying about everything from having sex with hot girls to how much we paid for a shirt (usually nothing since we stole stuff like that), it was all bullshit. He had just unilaterally taken himself AWOL for that whole time, the whole few months. The way the whole thing exploded was that the FBI had come to Annie’s parents’ house (he had used their address with their permission on his Army information file) looking for him, AWOL him. He did turn himself in and faced the music. That however was the last straw for Annie and her parents. Especially Annie since as it turned out he had done a number of unsavory or illegal things unknown then to me during their courtship. She left him to go back to her parents’ home. Eventually Annie got a civil divorce and as a Catholic member of a church who at the time, maybe now too, had very strict rules about remarriage after a divorce finally got a church annulment from Jeff. As for Jeff he on his return to the Army did the honorable thing and refused to go to Vietnam and wound up in the stockade for his efforts. But the details of that story are for his next serious giving it all away and besides this is about his first serious love life, his giving it all away when the deal went down. Typical Jeff though a heel one day a hero the next.
As Jeff started to explain why he had never forgotten about Annie I urged him to change the subject and something in my tone told him that I meant it, meant that I too had not forgotten Annie and what she had meant to me back then. So he went on about his thunder-struck whirlwind relationship with Josie, Josie Stein, a woman who I had never met because I had stayed on the West Coast while Jeff after a wild man run with me and a few others from the old neighborhood at various times there returned to the East. Josie would be the first, and most serious, of a string of young Jewish women that would checkerboard through his later relationships. Fine women who he never fully understood either. This meeting up with Josie had come about because like half of the things that Jeff did in his life he was on a vengeance roll to obliterate all the stupid things he had done by letting himself be inducted in the Army.
As I mentioned before after blowing up the world, the Annie world, with his fears Jeff when he went back into the Army made up his mind not to go to Vietnam, not to be complicit. He paid the price with two special court-martials for disobeying orders and did altogether something over a year in an Army stockade (partly broken up by what amounted to house arrest in between times). He wound up though getting out of the Army with an honorable discharge to boot as a conscientious objector through a writ of habeas corpus which his civilian lawyer had managed to convince a federal court judge was due him. As part of his struggle, his righteous struggle okay, a number of anti-war activists and Quaker-types came to his defense, publicized what he was doing and held vigils and other events in and around the Army base where he was being held. This was a time when some elements of the anti-war movement began, after the war was dragging out to what seemed like eternity, to pay attention to the soldiers, the “grunts” who were carrying out the war on the ground. So Jeff became for a while before he and I left for California and some mad but harmless dope-enhanced adventures up and down the Pacific Coast Highway something of a poster child for the local anti-war G.I. resistance. Some of that reputation would stick for a while as the war finally wound down.
Josie had been born in Manhattan but had gone in order to get away from the city, her parents, her Jewish roots you name the reason to the University of Wisconsin which the way Jeff told it was a magnet for New York City and Long Island Jewish kids looking to break out back then, maybe now too. While there she had become radicalized, had become somewhat prominent in the campus anti-war, anti-imperialist and the beginnings of the women’s liberation movement. After graduating from Wisconsin she had decided to go to graduate school in Boston (at BU for the School of Social Work). While in Boston she again took up her political causes in the red-hot milieu there. Jeff had met her a couple of months after he had returned East at an anti-war conference, no, I have that wrong, at a meeting to discuss having another in the long line of anti-war conferences. This one to take place in a rural conference center which had been converted from being a farmhouse about fifty miles from Boston and had donated by some movement “angels” for such purposes. Such things happened with some frequency then.
When Jeff was introduced to speak about his G.I resistance experiences he spied Josie in the audience. During a break he, she, maybe both at the same time Jeff had forgotten that detail took dead aim at each other (that part he remembered) although nothing occurred that night. Their big moment came when both had showed up at the rural site for the conference and they were almost inseparable for the rest of the weekend. So started the torrid off and on again five year love affair between Jeff and Josie. According to Jeff they had their ups and downs, mostly toward the end downs over Josie’s increasingly incessant desire to settle down, to have a family, to be “at peace” with herself as the turbulent ‘60s shuttered down around them. Jeff in an uncharacteristic denial of some kind of realty thought that the whole experiment would go on forever and he could ride that wave into old age.
Funny about that, funny that he would still remember that he had felt that way those many years ago since I remember that we had both distinctly understood that after May Day, 1971 when we foolhardily thought we could close down the U.S. government if they would not close down the war and had been militarily defeated, had taken tens of thousands of arrests, we had reached an ebb tide of the movement, had passed the high water mark.
That however was not what laid the relationship between Jeff and Josie low but yet another of the contradictions of the angel-devil Jeffrey Davis. Jeff, and I could see where this came from since I had thoughts along those lines a little myself, had a hard-edged chip on his shoulder, thought that because he (and I) had come up “from hunger,” from utter poverty, from the old projects ethos that the world owed him a living, or something like that. I got over it by high school, maybe a little later but Jeff took much longer, maybe still hasn’t gotten over it even now but if you want to understand why he periodically would give it all away you have to know that hard sad fact. The particulars this time were that he had gotten seriously into dope, first speed and mescaline and later as it became more popular and more available cocaine. Now we all did our fair share of dope during the 1960s, usually marijuana and other light-headed drugs like hashish and peyote buttons. This cocaine thing though was something else, had Jeff by the balls. Had laid him low. This is where all his past kind of came up and bit him. He couldn’t or wouldn’t stop. Kept it from Josie mostly although at the end she asked him point blank if he was on heroin or something. Of course a young guy with no dough, or not much, not working much with a habit that called out to him needed dough. So he ran though everybody, everybody including leaving me high and dry out on the Coast broke as well, who he knew for dough using every lame excuse in the book to get the dough-and of course would pay it back just as soon as he could.
He didn’t hit Josie until the end, or near the end. That was when he was seeing some hopped-up Judy on the side who kept him company in his wanting habits. Once he started asking Josie for money for this and that after a while she started getting wise, found out about the Judy from some friend and that was that. She broke off with him in a minute once she knew the score (prodded he said by her parents who were not happy that she was serious about a non-Jewish guy). She got an unlisted number, moved from their sometimes shared apartment which she paid for, or rather her parents paid for. The end. Gave it all away for a razor, mirror and a rolled up dollar line.
Which brings us back to Lorraine and Jeff’s newly discovered troubled mind and why he gave it all away once again when she left to find herself. Or whatever had driven her away from him. After a number of years out in the West Coast trying to “find” myself I finally headed back to the East, back to Boston via Riverdale after my last stormy marriage that ended not well. Not well enough that despite being broken as a smashed soda bottle, splintered if you like that better, I desperately hitchhiked across the country to get away from that last horrible scene (which was partly, a big partly, due to my own “from hunger” thinking that the world owed me a living from getting deeply in debt to the gambling gods). But enough of that this is Jeff’s story and my travails can wait another day. I just wanted to point that out since this return to the East meant that I was back in touch after several year’s absence with Jeff which was deep in the throes of his stormy relationship with Lorraine. So unlike Josie whom I had to take Jeff’s word on I knew Lorraine although unlike Annie of blessed memory I had no half in love thoughts about her.
Jeff quickly went through how he had met Lorraine since I knew most of the details of the story. He had been half in and half out of a bunch of relationships which had not worked out for several Jeff reasons when one night he happened to be in a bar in Harvard Square, a country bar if you can believe that, when there had been outlaw country music minute around the East after people tired once again of the way rock was heading. That “if you can believe that” reflecting the hard fact that Jeff, whose father hailed from the South, having been inundated with that stuff around the house hated that music with a passion growing up. One night by accident he had heard the late Townes Van Zandt at a local club and something in his mournful lyrics and presence “spoke” to Jeff. So for a while he was hopped up on the outlaws, took in the scene. You know it had to be some kind of fad if in high Brahmin Harvard Square a couple of country music bars had sprung up and so he headed to one of them, Jackie Speed’s, it is no longer there, to hear some local country band which was making some noise about breaking out and heading to the bright lights of Nashville and stardom. He sat at the bar as was his habit when he was “single” in order to survey the scene and maybe an hour in and a couple of Anchor Steam beers put away, a beer we had both developed a habit for in Frisco town, he spied Lorraine all in white sitting at a far corner table with a couple of girlfriends. When one of those girls came pass the bar he mentioned to her that he thought her friend in white was cute, pretty, something like that and to tell her his message. And she was. A delicate flower, thin, longest black hair and a nice smile that he could see even across the room. His type no question. That girlfriend not knowing what else to say told him to go over and tell her himself. For some reason Jeff usually only a little shy about meeting a young women for the first time definitely did not like to approach a table full of women to make his play. His play was one on one, in a barroom scene maybe sitting on a stool at the bar. While they took peep-a-boo meaningful glances at each other nothing happened that night.
A few weeks later Jeff was sitting at that same bar one night getting ready to listen to what somebody had told him previously was the “next best thing” band coming along the pipeline to break-out Nashville this young woman who he had not recognized came and sat down at the stool next to his and ordered a drink, an exotic one if he remembered correctly. She was thin, pretty, had longish black hair and a nice smile. When it came time for her to order another one Jeff offered to buy her a drink. She accepted and that kind of broke the ice as they found that they had several interests in common around art, literature and folk music which was in a serious hiatus then and the reason that she, Lorraine, was taking in the insurgent country scene that was beginning to take root around town. She had been brought up in the country, on a farm in upstate New York so she had heard country music, a different old-timey Grand Old Opry kind of music, and also hated it growing up. Toward the end of evening as they were chatting like two jaybirds Lorraine asked Jeff if had ever seen her before. He said no he did not think so. Lorraine then reminded him of the night several weeks before when they had done their peek-a-boos. She also told him that she had looked for him a couple of times later when she had been at the bar. Funny Jeff said he had done the same. Fate and an exchange of telephones numbers got them on the start of their torrid romance.
For a while, a fairly long while by Jeff’s standards things went along pretty well. They had plenty in common not only in the like to do things department but a commonality in the ways they grew up, the hard family lives they had faced as kids. Especially around holidays when under normal circumstances there was to be a shared joy they shared a “get through the day” kinship. Like a lot of Jeff things though known to me or not something in his inner life, something in his vacant soul, his term, would not leave him alone. Would not let him break from his youthful defensiveness inherited from years of mother harassment and ill-will when dealing with Lorraine. In the end, or rather toward the end, the last few years anyway for a whole assortment of reasons from health to intimations of immortality to use the phrase from the poet’s brain he shut down, became unresponsive to Lorraine’s needs. They lived together but were in his words two ships passing in the night (and hers as well as they tried to figure out what had gone wrong before she had had to flee for her own sanity). Both tried to do the right thing, sought various forms of help but in the end she had to flee, had to find herself and what she wanted to be in this wicked old world. Jeff didn’t like the idea, actually hated it but he grudgingly respected her for her bravery in striking out on her own. Had to admit that rather than his lying, cheating, stealing destruction of his companionships he could be accused of statutory neglect-a more serious social crime, much more serious.
One night many weeks later after I had written up this piece from the notes I had taken over the course of time we were sitting in Jimmy’s Grille, symbolically enough only a couple of blocks from where Jeff and Lorraine had met at the now defunct Jackie Speed’s, when he was feeling kind of melancholy since her birthday was approaching, something they both made a big deal over he mentioned a song he had heard recently. A song by the old-time folksinger Tom Paxton whom he had liked to hear in the old folk minute days and whom the local college folk station was playing to honor Paxton’s birthday (forget his age), She Is My Reason To Be. Yeah, too late Jeff figured that hard truth out. But maybe he should have also checked out Bob Dylan’s I Threw It All Away because once again he had thrown it all away.
End Raytheon’s support for death and destruction in Yemen
End arms sales to Saudi Arabia
Demonstrate at Raytheon’s Boston Career Fair
Thursday, May 16, Noon to 1pm
Hilton Boston Downtown
89 Broad Street in the Financial District
(State Street T)
Through its arms sales and integration with the Saudi regime, Raytheon continues its major role in the destruction of Yemen. Paveway bombs, an intimate partnership with the Saudi Military, hundreds of personnel based in Saudi Arabia, establishing Raytheon Saudi Arabia in Riyadh – the Raytheon-Saudi collaboration is extensive. It sees working with the vicious regimes of the Middle East as an incredible economic opportunity. And the blood money rolls in to Raytheon’s coffers from the epic catastrophe that is Yemen today: starvation, deaths, disease, bombed hospitals, destroyed infrastructure. Raytheon is based right here in Waltham.
Saudi airstrike on a dairy farm in Bajil in Yemen’s western province
Raytheon is right in the middle of every U.S. war: Yemen, Iraq, Syria, you name it. it brags that it has trained “virtually every U.S. army soldier in the world”. At this Career Fair Raytheon says it is seeking skilled employees who will support U.S. wars through enhancing electronic warfare capabilities.
Sponsored by the Raytheon Anti-war Campaign (Mass. Peace Action, AFSC, Coalition to Stop the Genocide in Yemen, Veterans for Peace, Peace and Social Concerns-Friends Meeting at Cambridge)
The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love- Out In The Seals Rock Inn Frisco Town Night –Take Two
Funny he, Adam Evans, thought, a little sweaty and overheated from the turned too high thermostat put on earlier to ward off the open- eyed chill of the room, as he laid in his toss and turn early morning Seals Rock Inn, San Francisco bed, the rain pouring down in buckets, literally buckets, at his unprotected door, the winds were howling against that same door, and the nearby sea was lashing up its fury, how many times the sea stormy night, the sea fury tempest day, the, well, the mighty storm anytime, had played a part in his life. He was under no circumstances, as he cleared his mind for a think back, a think back that was occupying his thoughts more and more of late, trying to work himself into a lather over some metaphorical essence between the storms that life had bestowed on him and the raging night storm within hearing distance. No way, too simple. Rather he was just joy searching for all those sea-driven times, times when a storm, a furious storm like this night or maybe just an average ordinary vanilla storm passing through and complete in an hour made him think of his relationship with his homeland the sea and with its time for reflection. And so on that toss and turn bed he thought.
Funny, although not humorously funny like his nymph tryst with Terry that he had just finish thinking about, or ironically funny like his bonding with the sea from birth that got him started on this think, but kind of sad sack funny how he and Diana had met, met in Harvard Square in the summer of love, 1967 (check it out on Wikipedia for the San Francisco version of that same year but basically, in both cases although more flagrantly in ’Frisco, it was the winds blowing the right way for once when make love not war, make something, make your dreams come true with sex, drugs, music had its minute, has its soon faded minute via self –imposed hubris and the death-dealing, fag-hating, nigger-hating, women-hating, self-hatingbad guys with the guns and the dough leading, and still leading, a vicious counter-attack), she from Podunk Mid-West (Davenport out in the Iowas if you need to know) far from ocean waters, but thrilled by the prospect of meeting an ocean boy (okay, okay man, twenty- three, she twenty-one)who actually had been there, to the ocean that is.
Oh yah, how they met in that Harvard Square good night for the curious, simplicity itself (his version), she was sitting about half way across the room, the cafeteria room, the oldHayes-Bickford awful dish- water coffee out of necessarily sturdy ceramic mugs , runny eggs, steamy to perdition everything else room, although the food and its conditions was not why you hung out there,just up from the old Harvard Square subway stop (and no longer there, long gone and missed, nor is that subway stop the end of the Red Line), if that name helps (and it did , did help that is, if you had any pretensions to some folkie literary career, somebe-bop blessed poet life, or just wanted to rub elbows with what might be the next big thing after that folk minute expired of a British invasion of sexed-up moppets andwet dream bad boys and poetrydied of T.S. Eliot and rarified air, or, maybe just a two in the morning coffee, hard pressed sudsy coffee, but coffee, enough to keep a seat in the place, after a tough night at the local gin mills, and hadn’t caught anybody’s attention), sitting by herself, writing furiously, on some yellow notepad, and she looked up. He, just that moment looked up as well (although he had taken about six previous peeks in her direction but she ignored them, studiously ignored, with her furious pen), and smiled at her. And she gave him a whimsical, no a melt smile, a smile to think about eternities over, about maybe chasing some windmills about, about, about walking right over and asking about the meaning of, well, that smile. And he did, and she did, she told him that is. And in the telling, told him, that she had half seen (her version) him peeking and wondered about it.
All this peeking, half- peeking(her version, remember) , got him a seat at her table, and her a cup of awful coffee and a couple of hours, where are you from, what do you like, what is the meaning of existence and what the hell are you writing so furiouslyabout at two o’clock on Sunday morning. And one thing led to another and eventually the sea came in, although, damn age against he couldn’t for thelife of him rememberhow that subject came up, except maybesomething triggered when she mentioned Iowa, and he said please don’t bury me there but near some seaside bluff, or something.
And what did she look like, for the male reader in need of such detail, especially since she was sitting alone writing furiously at two in the morning, maybe she was, ah, ah, a dog. Nah, she was kind of slender, but not skinny, slender in that fresh as sweet cream Midwestern corn-fed way that started to happen after the womenfolk, not prairie fire pioneer women any longer, had been properly fed for a couple of generations after those hard Okie/Arkie push on days of eating chalk dust and car smoke trailing dreams. With the long de riguer freshly- ironed (really, after the Joan Baez fashion or just some college girl fad) brown hair pulled back from her face (otherwise she would have constantly had to interrupt her furious writing to keep it out of her face as she wrote). And a pleasing face, bright blue eyes, good nose, and nice lips, kissable lips. Nice legs from what he could see when he went over. But who was he kidding, it was that whimsical, no, melt, smile, that smile that spoke of eternities, although what it spoke of at two in the morning was gentle breezes, soft pillows, of that Midwestern what you see is what you get and what you get, well, you better hang on, and hang on tight, and be ready to take some adversity, to keep around that smile. But that was later, later really, when he had figured it out better about why he tossed and turned all that night (really morning) and that smile thought would not let him be.
Memory bank of their first time up in ocean’s kingdom, the next day actually she was so anxious to see the ocean, or maybe anxious to see it with him, they talked about it being that way too but let’s just memory call it her anxiety, the rugged cross salvation rocks that make up Perkin’s Cove in southern Maine, up there by Ogunquit. There are stories to be told of his own previous meetings with Mother Perkin’s but this is Diana’ s story and those stories, his stories, involved other women, other treacheries, other immense treacheries, and other angel-sized delights too. That day thought she flipped out, flipped out at the immensity of it, of the majestic swells (and of her swaying, gently, but rhythmically to the rise and fall of each wave) of the closeness of a nature that she, she of wind- swept wheat oceans, of broken-back bracero wet back labor to bring in the crop, of fights against every form of land injury, dust, bugs, fire, drought had not dreamed of. And as if under some mystic spell, or some cornfield ocean mistake, she actually plunged fully-clothed (not having been told of the needfor a swimsuit since the ocean itself was the play, the hugeness of it, the looking longingly back to primordial times of it, the reflection in the changings winds of it), in to the ocean at that spot where there is just enough room if the tide is right, just ebbing enough to create a sand bar to do so (today there is no problem getting down there as the Cove trustees have provided a helpful stairs, concrete-reinforced, against old time lumber steps breakaway and lost in some snarled sea) and promptly was almost carried out by a riptide.
He saved her, saved her good that day. Saved her with every ounce of energy he had to take her like some lonesome sailor saving his shipmate, save just to be saving, saving from the sea for a time anyway, or better, saving like the guy, that long gone daddy, who did or said some fool thing to his woman and she flipped out and make a death pact with old King Neptune (and wouldn’t you know want to bring long gone daddy along for the ride) from that song Endless Sleep by Jody Reynolds. But get this, and get it from him straight just in case you might have heard it from her. That day she was so sexed-up, there is no other way to say it, and there shouldn’t be, what with the first look ocean swells and her swaying , and her getting dunked good (with wet clothes and a slight feverish chill), and her being so appreciative of him saving her (the way she put it, his version anyway, was that save, that unthinking save, meant that whatever might come that she knew, knew after one day, and knew she was not wrong, that he would not forsake her for some trivial) that she wanted to have sex with him right there, right in the cove. (In those days there was a little spot that he knew, a little spot off a rutted dirt path that was then not well known, was unmarked , and was protected by rows of shrubbery so there was no problem about “doing the do” there and frankly that thought got him sexed-up too. Today there are so many touristas per square inch in high season and that old rutted path now paved so that the act would be impossible. It would have to wait hard winter and frozen asses, if that same scenario came up again.)
Here’s the thing thought she, Diana, from the sticks, from the Iowa fresh-mown fields, new to Harvard Square summer of love and Boston college scene school didn’t take birth control pills or have any other form of protection that day, although she was fairly sexually experienced (some wheat field farmer boy and then the usual assortment of colleges guys, some honest, some, well, one- night stands). And he, he not expecting to be a savior sailor that day carried no protection, hell, condoms (and, truth, his circle, the guys anyway, and really the girls knowing what the guys expected too, left it up to their partners to protect themselves. Barbarians, okay). So before they could hit the bushes, before they could lose themselves in the stormy throes of love he had to run up (yes, he ran, so you knew he was sexed-up too) to Doc’s Drugstore (no longer there, since Doc passed away many years ago and his sons became lawyers and not pharmacists) on U.S. 1 right in the center of Ogunquit. And red- faced purchased their “rubbers”(and wouldn’t you know there was some young smirky high school sales girl behind the counter when he paid for his purchase, jesus, with that knowing look of I know what you are up, mister). So as the sun started blue –pink setting in the west and to the sound, the symphony really, of those swells clanging on those rugged cross rocks they made love for the first time, not beautiful sultry night pillow love in some high-end hotel (like later), or fearfully (fearful that her prudish dorm roommate would bust in on them) in her dorm room but fiercely, fiercely like those ocean waves crashing mercilessly to shore. The time for exotic, genteel, gentle love-making (“making it,” out of some be-bop hipster lexicon their want to way of expressing that desire) would could later, later intermingled with the seventeen differences and sixteen almost reconciliations.
Funny too in that same sad sack love way they early onhad vowed, secular vowed (no, not that Perkin’s Cove love day, sex is easier to agree to, to make and unmake than vows, religious, secular, or blasphemous), that they would not, like their parents fight over every stupid thing.. That night in her dorm room after that full day of activity they stayed up half the night (hell with a little benny that wasn’t hard, and perhaps they stayed up all night, and although her roommate never showed that night they did not, his version, did not make love) remembering his Velcro Ma wars and, as she related that night and many night after, her Baptist father repent sinners weird wars. He related in detail his various wars, wars to the death that left him with no option, no he option except to leave the family house and strike it on his own, on his summer of love terms if possible, since he had sensed that wind that storm swell coming for a while and was as ready as any “hippie”(quaint term, although he did not, and never did, consider himself a hippie but rather traced his summer of love yearnings to beat times, to be-bop boys and girls with shadedeyes and existential desires). She related in detail her devil father, with seven prayer books in all his hands on Sunday and a thwarted creep up to her room every other day, and ofhis bend bracero hatred short-changing the wages of the wetbacks who came via train smoke and dreams to bring in the crop (or have the complaisant county sheriffkick them out wage-less, or with so manydeductions for cheap- jack low rent shack barely held together against the fury of prairie winds room and board, food just shy of some Sally (Salvation Army) hand out in some desolate back street town (and Adam knew of such foods, and of kindly thanks yous but that was give away food not sweated labor food)that it made the same thing. Justified of course by some chapter and verse about the heathens (Catholic heathens and he, the father , still fighting those 16th century religious wars out on prairie America and, and, winning against hard luck ,move on to the next shack and hand-out worthy food harvest stop, endlessly), and theirsorrows .
And they didn’t , didn’t act like their parents, their he and she parents, that summer of love, that overblown ,frantic , wind-changing summer of love, when they sensed that high tide rolling in, hell, more than sensed it, could taste it, taste in the their off-hand love bouts not reserved for downy billows (and he glad, glad as hell, that she, his little temptress she, had freely offered herself to him up on those rugged cross rocks so that he, when he needed a reason, coaxed her to some landlocked bushes, or some river, some up river ,Charles River, of course hide-out and she, slightly blushing, maybe, with the thought of it, followed along),taste it is the sweet wines handmade in some friend experiment , hey try this (and experiment yogurts, ice cream, dough bread, and on and on, too) , taste it in the tea, ganga, herb, hemp smoke curling through their lungs and moment peace, or later, benny high to keep sleep from their eyes on the hitchhike road, or later too, sweet cousin cocaine, cheap, cheap as hell, and exotic to snuffed noses to take away the minute blues creeping in, taste it in the new way that their brethren, that small crowd (after all not everybody got caught up in the summer of love minute, some went jungle-fighting, some went wall street back-biting, some went plain old ordinary nine to five- routining, some went same old same, old love and marriage and here come X and Y with a baby carriage , and mortgages , and saving for junior’s college and ,and, and…, offered this and that, free, this and that help, this and that can I have this free, taste it in, well, if you don’t want to do that, hell, don’t and not face Ma, or kin, or professional wrath (or she father fire and brimstone), taste it out in those friendly streets, no not Milk Street, not Wall Street,not the Loop, but Commonwealth Avenue, Haight Street, Division Street, many Village streets, many Brattle streets, many Taos streets, Venice Beach streets, all the clots that make the connections, the oneness of it all, the grandness of it all, the free of it all.
They, they made the kindness, the everyday kindness of it, the simple air-filled big balloon kindness of it like some Peter Max cartoonish figure, and when they filled that balloon with enough kindness and against the sluttiness remarks ofhigh Catholic Ma disapproving of heathens (see not all bigots were out in the prairie wheat field strung out on the lord and, wheat profits) and she Pa disapproving of hippie (never was , beat, beat, yes) they married , justice of the peace high wind Perkin’s Cove consummated married, she all garlanded up like some Botticelli doll model picture (Botticelli’s mistress, his whore,from what they had heard, and she blushed at that knowledge), flowered, flowing garment, free hair in thewind and he some black robe throw around , and feasting,feasting on those rugged cross rocks . Too much.
And for as long as they could see some new breeze blowing that they felt part of they were kind to each other (and others, of course). Then the winds of change shifted, and like the tides the ebbs set in, maybe not obvious at first, maybe not that first series of defeats, that Loop madness in ’68, that first bust for some ill-gotten dope and some fool snitch to save his ass from stir turned on him, some brethren (he hated snitch, the very word snitch, from that time down in that rolling barrel slope in the water episode as a kid with his older brother, and he didn’t snitch on his older brother now name etched in black marble in Washington along with other old neighborhood names), that first Connecticut highway hitchhike bust as they headed to D.C. for one more vain and futile attempt to stop the generation’s damn war, that several hour wait in Madison for some magnificent Volkswagen bus to stop and get them from point C to point D on their journey to this very storm- driven San Francisco spot (a few blocks up over in North Beach the old beat blocks, Haight Street hippie having turned into a free-fire zone, that” no that is six dollars for those candles , not free anymore brother” sea-change, and the decline of kindness, first casualty their own kindnesses, their own big balloon kindnesses more less frequently evoked, more tired from too much work, more “sorrybut I have a headache ,”he too, and less thoughts about trysts in hidden bushes, or downy billows for that matter. Worse, worse still, he went his way, and she went hers, trying to make it (no longer their “make it” signal to chart love’s love time) in the world, hell, nine to five routining it but it was the kindnesses, those big ball kindnesses that went (and that they both spoke of marriage counselor spoke of missing), and seventeen differences, substantial differences, and sixteen almost reconciliations, they grew older and apart, and…
She left him for another man, another non-sea driven man, a man who hated the outdoors, hated the thought of the ocean (he grew up in lobstertown Maine and had his fill of oceans, of fierce winds, of rubber hip boots, and of rugged cross rocksthank you, she told him non-ocean man had told her) when she called it seventeen times was enough quits after they had spent a couple of months up in that storm-ravaged Maine cottage that he insisted they go to reconcile after the last difference bout where she, quote, was tired as hell of the sea, of the wind, of the stuff that the wind did to her sensitive skin ( big old sadness at that remark by him for he never said, kindness, said anything about that, or never said he could stop the ravages of time), and, and, tired of him playing out some old man of the seas, some man against nature thing with her in his train, unquote. Yah, she up and left him. Damn, and he had had thoughts of eternity, of always being around that smile, that quizzical smile, or the possibility of that smile, that he first latched onto that first Harvard Square night when he had smiled at her across the room, and she had smiled that smile right between his eyes at him.
