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
“There Ain’t No Cure For The Summertime Blues”-Bill Murray’s “Meatballs” (1979)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Laura Perkins
Meatballs, starring Bill Murray, 1979
This film review of former Saturday Night Live comedian Bill Murray’s Meatballs from 1979 is a case study in what my long-time companion and fellow writer Sam Lowell calls the “slice of life” take. By that he means, I mean, that there is no other way to get the “hook” on which every film review depends, maybe every piece of literature if it came to that, to set the film in its time as a way to look at what society was about, what it allowed and what it missed. The reason for invoking this rationale is that clearly other than some of Murray’s comic antics and no means all of them have withstood the test of time is that neither the so-called story line nor any of the other characters as they were developed offered much reason to see this film again when Greg Green, the site manager here now, asked me to do the film as part of a retrospective on some of the fates of those who started out on SNL way back when.
Bill Murray’s role here is as the max daddy summer camp counselors of all summer camp counselors. A look at that profession circa 1980 in any case when parents did not have to worry as much about leaving their charges with a bunch of mad monks and monkesses if there is such a term for the latter worrying about predators and pedophiles, perverts and punks abusing their own. Of course if looked at from that angle there is no way any responsible parent would let their kids run amok with the crew, led by Murray, who grace this production. Among the counsellors are the usual case of characters that show up in any kid-centered movie. Among the counselors the nerd, the camp Romero, the camp flirt, the camp fat guy, the chief counsellor (here Morty aka Mickey for some only kid-knowing reason), the tomboy girl, the female nerd if there is a distinction made between the two genders (and of course they never get together since “sames” don’t attract). Among the kids, well among the kids who get short shrift here at the expense of whatever the counselors are doing, mostly young feeling about on sexual matters, is one kid whom Murray takes under his wing, and whom he makes blossom before the end. All of this pretty ho-hum including the obligatory competition against “the camp across the lake” where the upper crust sent their kids. The upshot of the, the human interest side, is that that kid actually bails the camp out and helps them win-finally- against that other upscale camp.
Yeah ho-hum is right except these days with #MeToo and a million other such activist social media outlets on the alert I wonder, seriously wonder, whether some of the antics would pass muster, would make it on to the screen today in regard to the treatment of young women and to an extent young men. Now everybody knows, or should know although they act like it is something from a foreign planet that teens are all over the place about sex, interested in what it all about and fearful of what they don’t know or know from sources who many times know less than they do. There is much, maybe too much old-fashioned boy meets girl stuff here but also a lot that seems in 2018 rather intimidating and cruel in what pranks were played, how mostly young women were treated and how young men acted egged on by Murray’s aggressive if playful character. I am willing to admit having said that about the healthy interest in sexual understandings a lot of these antis today might pass to good-humored effect but maybe, just maybe we can no longer be cavalier about what we present on the screen. This is hardly the last word on the subject but since we are looking at this film from the perspective of what youth society looked like then, what was okay and what wasn’t then I don’t think I am being some modern day scold about the matter.
*The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love, 1967-The Anniversary Of The Resignation Of Richard Milhous Nixon, President Of The United States And Common Criminal -From The Pen Of Hunter Thompson Click on title to link to an excepts in Wikipedia from the late Doctor Gonzo published in some 1974 issues of "Rolling Stone" magazine entitled "Fear And Loathing In...." on Richard Nixon's pardon by fellow Republican, Nixon-appointed Vice-President, and Nixon's presidential successor, Gerald Ford.
I could not find a full "Fear and Loathing" essay from the series that he wrote for "Rolling Stone" magazine in 1974 so if you want more you have to go get the book "The Great Shark Hunt". As for me, the idea of even mentioning the 35th anniversary of anything that Richard Nixon did makes me want to yawn. Except National Public Radio (NPR) made a fairly big deal out of it. So naturally I had to as well, right? All I can say is that I no longer wake up screaming in the night at the mention of Nixon's name. I am reserving those screams for one Barack H. Obama and his current Iraq and Afghan war policies (among other things). I'm a big boy now and am not afraid of the dark. Thanks "Tricky Dick".
The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love, 1967-Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night- The Music Of Tom Waits
CD Reviews
Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night, Tom Waits, Electra/Asylum Records, 1975
The inner lives of the denizens of that late night diner in the famous painting by the American realist artist Edward Hopper, “Nighthawks” (1942). The scorching literary sketches of the rich and famous and the skid row bums provided by the late “Gonzo” journalist Doctor Hunter Thompson, accompanied by the renderings of the artist Ralph Steadman. The jingle-jangle high side lyrics of the legendary folk musician Bob Dylan of the “Blood On The Tracks” period. The reach into the far side of the part of the psyche exhibited by those down at the base of American society in an earlier period by the novelist Nelson Algren in “Walk On The Wild Side”. And that same reach later by the man of the “mean” Los Angeles streets, Charles Bukowski. Wrap them all up in a whiskey-soaked, cigarette-scarred, gravelly, rasping voice and you have the idiosyncratic musician Tom Waits. Placed in that same company as above? Yes, by all means. Not a bad place to be, right?
Although I have been listening to the music of one Tom Waits for decades, every since I heard Jerry Jeff Walker do a cover of his classic song of loneliness, longing and reaching for the elusive promise of Saturday night dreams in “Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night”, I am not familiar with his biography. All I know is that aside from his own far-reaching musical endeavors, as expressed in numerous albums over the years, he has acted in some motion pictures, most notably as a skid row philosopher of sorts in the movie version of William Kennedy’s “Ironweed” (a natural, right?) and has provided the soundtrack music to many movies, most notably the Al Pacino-starring “Sea Of Love”. That Waits soundtrack version of the late 1950’s, early 1960’s classic teenage anthem to longing and love is just the right example of what Brother Waits means musically to this reviewer. Taking that simple song of teenage longing, Waits’ husky-voiced rendition reaches back and turns it into something almost primordial, something that goes back beyond time to our first understandings that we are ‘alone’ in the universe. Enough said.
But so much for all of that because what I really want to mention is the “Waits effect”. Every once in a while I ‘need’ to listen to words and sounds that express the dark, misbegotten side of the human experience. You know, sagas of Gun Street girls, guys talking “Spanish in the halls’, people lost out there on the edge of society and the like. Is there anyone today who can musically put it better? If you need to hear about hope, dope, the rope. Wine, women and song or no wine, no women or no song. About whiskey-caked barroom floors, floozies, boozies, flotsam, jetsam, stale motel rooms, cigarette-infested hotels, wrong gees, jokers, smokers and ten-cent croakers. Drifters, grifters, no good midnight sifters. Life on the fast lane, nowhere lane, some back street alley, perhaps, out in the valley. This, my friends is you address. Listen up. Professor Waits is at the lectern.
"(Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night"
Well you gassed her up Behind the wheel With your arm around your sweet one In your Oldsmobile Barrelin' down the boulevard You're looking for the heart of Saturday night
And you got paid on Friday And your pockets are jinglin' And you see the lights You get all tinglin' cause you're cruisin' with a 6 And you're looking for the heart of Saturday night
Then you comb your hair Shave your face Tryin' to wipe out ev'ry trace All the other days In the week you know that this'll be the Saturday You're reachin' your peak
Stoppin' on the red You're goin' on the green 'Cause tonight'll be like nothin' You've ever seen And you're barrelin' down the boulevard Lookin' for the heart of Saturday night
Tell me is the crack of the poolballs, neon buzzin? Telephone's ringin'; it's your second cousin Is it the barmaid that's smilin' from the corner of her eye? Magic of the melancholy tear in your eye.
Makes it kind of quiver down in the core 'Cause you're dreamin' of them Saturdays that came before And now you're stumblin' You're stumblin' onto the heart of Saturday night
Well you gassed her up And you're behind the wheel With your arm around your sweet one In your Oldsmobile Barrellin' down the boulevard, You're lookin' for the heart of Saturday night
Is the crack of the poolballs, neon buzzin? Telephone's ringin'; it's your second cousin And the barmaid is smilin' from the corner of her eye Magic of the melancholy tear in your eye.
Makes it kind of special down in the core And you're dreamin' of them Saturdays that came before It's found you stumblin' Stumblin' onto the heart of Saturday night And you're stumblin' Stumblin onto the heart of Saturday night
The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love, 1967- When Doctor Gonzo Was “Riding With The King”- Hunter S. Thompson’s The Gonzo Letters. Volume Two, 1968-1976
Book Review
By Joshua Lawrence Breslin
Fear And Loathing In America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, The Gonzo Letters, Volume Two, 1968-1976, Hunter S. Thompson, Simon &Schuster, New York, 2006 I have written a number of reviews about the book s of the late outlaw gonzo journalist “Doctor Gonzo” Hunter S. Thompson. Those reviews have centered on the impact of his journalistic work in the pantheon of American political and social criticism and the jail break way that he presented his material that was like a breath of fresh air coming from out in the jet stream somewhere after all the lame gibberish of most reportage in the 1960s and 1970s (extending unfortunately to this day). His seemingly one man revolt (okay, okay Tom Wolfe and others too but he was the king hell king, alright) against paid by the word minute stuff of hack journalism told us the “skinny,” and told that straight, warts and all. The book under review however is more for aficionados like this writer who are interested in the minutiae about how this man created what he created, and the trials and tribulations, sometime bizarre, he went through to get the damn stuff published. And while one can rightly pass on the pre-Gonzo first volume of Thompson’s letters this one is worth reading for it provides the back drop to Doctor Gonzo’s most creative period, that period from about the publication of Hell’s Angels until his “discovery” of one Jimmy Carter. The period when Hunter S. Thompson was “riding with the king.”
In those earlier reviews (especially Hell’s Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing On Campaign 1972, and Songs of The Doomed) I began with some generic comments applicable to all his work and they apply here as well so I will recycle them and intersperse additional comments about this book as well.
“Generally the most the trenchant social criticism, commentary and analysis complete with a prescriptive social program ripe for implementation has been done by thinkers and writers who work outside the realm of bourgeois society, notably socialists and other progressive thinkers. Bourgeois society rarely allows itself, in self-defense or hidebound fear, to be skewered by trenchant criticism from within. This is particularly true when it comes from a known dope fiend, gun freak and all-around lifestyle addict like the late, lamented Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Nevertheless, although he was far from any thought of a socialist solution to what ails society, particularly American society, and would reject such a political designation we of the extra-parliamentary could travel part of the way with him. We saw him as a kindred spirit. He was not one of us- but he was one of us. All honor to him for pushing the envelope of journalism in new directions and for his pinpricks at the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Such men are dangerous.
I am not sure whether at the end of the day Hunter Thompson saw himself or wanted to been seen as a voice, or the voice, of his generation but he would not be an unworthy candidate. In any case, his was not the voice of the generation of 1968 being just enough older than us to have been formed by an earlier, less forgiving milieu. The hellhole, red scare, cold war night in all its infamy that even singed my generation. His earliest writings show that shadow night blanket, the National Observer stuff, well-written but mainly “objective” stuff that a thousand other guys were writing (and were getting better paid for). Nevertheless, only a few, and with time it seems fewer in each generation, allow themselves to search for some kind of truth even if they cannot go the whole distance. This compilation under review is a hodgepodge of letters over the best part of Thompson’s career, 1968-76.
As with all journalists, as indeed with all writers especially those who are writing under the gun and for mass circulation media, these letters reveal the tremendous time pressures put on writers under contractual publishing deadlines, the ridiculous amount of time spent trying to “hustle” one’s work around the industry even by a fairly well-known writer , the creative processes behind specific works (particularly the Fear and Loathing books) as outlined in several letters, including some amusing “cut and paste” efforts to use one article to serve about six purposes , and horror of horrors, damn writer’s block (or ennui). Some of these letters are minor works of art; others seem to have been thrown in as filler. However the total effect is to show the back story of a guy who blasted old bourgeois society almost to its foundations. Others will have to push on further.
“Gonzo” journalism as it emerges in the crucible of these letters, by the way, is quite compatible, with historical materialism. That is, the writer is not precluded from interpreting the events described within himself/herself as an actor in the story. The worst swindle in journalism, fostered by the formal journalism schools, as well as in other disciplines like history and political science is that somehow one must be ‘objective.’ Reality is better served if the writer puts his/her analysis correctly and then gets out of the way. In his best work that was Hunter’s way. And that premise shines through some of these letters.
As a member of the generation of 1968 I note that this was a period of particular importance in which won Hunter his spurs as a journalist. Hunter, like many of us, cut his political teeth on raging deep into the night against one Richard Milhous Nixon, at one time President of the United States, common criminal (unindicted, of course), and all- around political chameleon. Thompson went way out of his way, and with pleasure, skewering that man when Nixon was riding high. He was moreover just as happy to kick Nixon when he was down, just for good measure. Nixon represented the “dark side” of the American spirit- the side that appeared then, and today, as the bully boy of the world and as craven brute. If for nothing else Brother Thompson deserves a place in the pantheon of journalistic heroes for this exercise in elementary hygiene. Anyone who wants to rehabilitate THAT man before history please consult Thompson’s work first. Hunter, I hope you find the Brown Buffalo wherever you are. Read this book. Read all his books to know what it was like when men and women plied the journalist trade for keeps.
In search of… that sure as hell fit Dan Hawkins’ fix, his inevitable lost love fix that had this time taken him by surprise, taken him for a spin as well. That terrible fix had a name, Moira Kiley, whom Dan had had a long, long for him at thirty, relationship with for three years, three and one half years if you included the six months he had been in shellshock since she had left. It hadn’t been like he couldn’t have seen it coming, if he had had his eyes wide open for there were signs and word fights that came ever closer a few times. And then there was that time about a year before after they had gotten back from Paris, a freaking week after they both agreed that they had had a great time there and he had thought they had turned a corner, had thought about moving on from living together to marriage and such (that “and such” the question of children which he was ambiguous about and she was as well although less so).
That week after Paris one night, one Friday night, a night they called their “wine date” night which they were using as a way to touch base with each other, time to enjoy each other and be silly if they liked, silliness not a strong suit between them Moira first lowered the boom. She had told him that she was dissatisfied with their relationship in no uncertain terms, that the great time in Paris only made it clear to her that the episodic good times they had could not make up for all the times in between. Could not make up for his ill-humored fits of anger at her for no earthly reason making her afraid to mention anything in the slightest bit negative for fear of that rage. Could not make up for his usual indifference to her when he was hopped up on one of his work projects, one of his damn cases, one of his lawyer things.
That time Moira coolly suggested to him that they go to couples counselling, something like that or she was leaving, way “going to find herself,” going find out what she was meant to do in this wicked old world (Dan’s term not hers) before it was too late (she was about to turn thirty, a critical age for such decisions as Dan had to acknowledge in his own turning thirty). Dan, who had grown up in a strongly working-class neighborhood, the Acre, in Riverdale about thirty miles west of Boston had been no partisan of what he called, what the guys whom he hung around with there, in college, and in law school called “New Age touchy-feely stuff” and at first had balked but after several hours of discussion over that weekend as Moira literarily was packing her bags he agreed. The funny thing was that once they found a suitable counsellor, a New Age-type no question, in Cambridge but who was very much into letting the couples have the floor, work out between themselves what ailed them, he could see the wisdom of Moira’s suggestion. Could see that his off-the-wall behaviors and her reactions were the source of their problems.
Naturally he had to “kick and scream” a bit about this therapy business but after a few sessions he was, using his term, “all in.” And so it had gone for the better part of a year before the crash, the lowering of Moira’s boom. Some sessions were good, the ones where they had to deal with each other’s hurt, hurts started in childhood with Dan having to prove he was not-bum-of-the-month which his father constantly called him and she with a father who would shut her up anytime she uttered anything, anytime. No question not a happy mixture. Some sessions, and this would part of Moira’s final indictment of him, seemed like a match between two professional talkers, the counselor and the lawyer, with her on the outside looking in. Still he, they had held on until their summer vacation for a week up in Maine. That Maine trip was another great time, a time when they not know for goofiness had beside the usual beach and dinner out routine gone and played miniature golf, gone to an old-fashioned drive-in theater and to a bowling alley. Then, a week after that great time, this week after a great time for Moira to spring something bad which Dan had thought a lot about the six months she had been gone, Moira lowered that final boom. After a short indictment of Dan’s short-comings, after again expressing her desire to find herself, to see what she was on earth to do she packed her bags that night and told him she was going to her sister’s house where she would stay until she found a place of her own. That was the last he had seen or heard from her except a few impersonal e-mails about forwarding her mail and forwarding her cellphone number to any friends who might call expecting that she would be found there.
For that six months since Moira had gone Dan had had time to think things through, think about what made Moira tick the way she did and how what seemed like a union of soulmates (both had used that designation when they gave each other holiday and birthday cards and the like) had turned to ashes with nothing in the end left behind. So he had been sad, been in a funk, and had worked like seven banshees to try to get her out of his mind, to move on. Then one day he realized that working twelve hour days and moping around was not going to either bring her back or allow him to move on. That six months had been in any case the longest he had been without a woman, been without some girlfriend, serious or not. Dan was now aching to get back into “the game” even if he had been sobered up about his own short-comings and was slightly apprehensive about getting back into a relationship, serious or not.
Dan was not sure how to go about finding somebody since he felt that he was too old to go to the bar-hopping “meat-market” and he did not meet many available, or desirable, women in his profession so he left his feeling stir for a while. One afternoon he heard a fellow male lawyer on his cellphone talking to somebody in such a way that it was a female and that he did not know the woman well. Once the fellow lawyer saw that Dan had overheard the conversation and knowing of his alone status mentioned that he had found Susan, the woman that he was talking to in the phone with whom he had just set up their first date, on a well-known on-line dating service. Asked Dan why didn’t he try it since they had vaguely talked about how hard it was to meet interesting women who were in the same profession as they were. Dan laughed and said no way that he was going to “meet” somebody, who knows some monster or serial killer, through the Internet. He had always found a girlfriend the old-fashioned way-meet them and then get their phones numbers if he was interested and go from there. But that conversation put a bug in Dan’s ear.
The long and short of it was that a couple of weeks later he decided to try “just for kicks” this new form of dating and signed up for the same service he fellow lawyer said he used. At first he was put off by the idea of paying for a dating service which despite the “come-on” of a free membership entailed payment if you wanted to get anywhere (and before he succumbed to payment he was badgered endlessly by the service about the benefits of membership). What floored him though was the questions he was supposed to answer to fill out his on-line “profile” (complete with on-line moniker-he used zackjames12 after his old friend from high school as a name he would remember easily when he logged into the site. He filled out some of the formation, left some of it blank, told little white lies about some stuff (what he was looking for in a woman which really amounted to getting somebody under the sheets, somebody to have sex with and see what happened after that but he pull some bullshit about a “meeting of the minds”). And he was off.
Or Dan thought he was off but as it turned out he was having trouble connecting with most of the women on-line, probably because they were not Moira. One night when he was his father’s house in Riverdale he mentioned that since Moira had left him he had not had a girlfriend and then told the story about how he joined an on-line dating service but was not having much success except a few “chats” and a couple of cellphone calls that turned out to be not worth pursuing. He was down in the dumps about the situation. Dan’s father, Jethro, had to laugh. Women troubles would always plague the Hawkins men it seemed. Dan and his father had been estranged for several years after his father had divorced his mother to run after some other woman which had not worked out either. Dan had taken his late mother’s side and that had led to the years of estrangement (and had that constant belittling of him by Jethro). They had reconciled at his mother’s funeral and would periodically meet for supper and the elder Hawkins’ house.
Beyond the seemingly endless women troubles of the Hawkins’ men the reason that Jethro had laughed at Dan was that he had a few years before joined the very site Dan had joined, or the senior version of that same site, Seniors Please. Jethro had always been a lady’s man of sorts, had had several girlfriends after he had left his wife and his girlfriend he was abandoning her for left him. He told Dan that over the past few years it was getting harder to meet women in the flesh. Those he came in contact with now that he was retired were concerned more about their grandchildren than dating men or else they were too young and didn’t have a clue about what he was talking about when he mentioned the hell he had raised in the 1960s. One had threatened to call the cops when he mentioned that he still like to smoke grass and was glad that a number of states were allowing recreational purchases. Wished Massachusetts would get on the stick about it and stop keeping it as some goddam crime. So he was reduced to going on-line, or that was the way he put it to his son that night.
Jethro told Dan that he had had the same troubles at first in reconciling the old-fashioned way he had always previously met women just as Dan had in the days before cellphones, on-line credit card payments and the Internet. But eventually he got the hang of it. Realized that all he had to do was write a couple of cogent paragraphs and the women would jump at the chance to meet him. Well not quite that easy but it seemed from what the women told him when they “chatted,” on-line, on the phone or the few he met for a date that most of the guys, older guys remember, who trolled these sites were loons, guys who thought they were twenty-something and talked boyish sex talk or about how nice some mature woman would look in a black dress and high heels. He had learned to avoid the on-line grandmothers whose idea of being appealing to a man, an older man, was to fill their profile pages with photographs of each and every grandchild. Had learned to avoid sixty-something women who had never been married since what the hell would they know about life. Was lukewarm about women who had children at home but overall he had taken the position that the rest were worth checking out-and not be too choosey looking over the on-line “meat market, senior version.” They talked some more about the do’s and don’t like don’t give a woman your real e-mail address since one woman still sends him messages about getting together and that was months before and don’t respond to anybody, woman or man, who asks for money. That dough will be long gone.
That night Dan when he went back to his Cambridge apartment he turned on his computer and worked for a few hours “hitting” on every good-looking woman who did not look like a mass murderer and who could write a couple of complete paragraphs. But mostly that they did not look like Moira. Yeah, in search …
“Hitting the sawdust trail”-Preacher Jack Holds Forth
By Zack James
“I am saved, I am saved, I am finally saved. I had sinned against the sanctified sons of Adam, blessed Cain for his courage and fallen Abel for laughing at him for falling down after the serpent screwed up their former digs East of Eden. Had flung my seed far and wide among comely women, tarts and the just curious who got the big brush off when I took off with some latter apple-fetching Eve leaving them barren for a time. Had spent my hours in avarice, the midnight sneak a specialty but armed robbery if necessary starting that first night at the Citgo gas station and debauchery-wine, women and song if I haven’t covered all of them previously. Had coveted, coveted wives, land, pigs, plastic, pottage. Had been lost in the rain outside the gates of Eden looking for Saint Anne up on some faraway hill but hitching up for a three day crawl and sheet fest with sweet Melinda who could cure all your nightmares with those bloated lips made for undercover sheets. (She said she was just a girl who like to play the “pennywhistle” as long as a guy didn’t try to con her with crazy talk of love and going places.) Had trammeled the hedges of the wise and the thoughtful hags of evil misdoing showing old Macbeth what was what and that damn psycho he was hitched up to as well so much for the sirens of thickets and brews.
“Had been bent around a stick of jade, a stick of hash, a stick of jimson, a stick of the everlasting good and said my say in the midnight hours around the black hole of Calcutta. Had worshiped Stone Age totems from afar and prayed for dinosaur-etched dreams. Had been in that windswept night when all the cauldron of sinners were lined up for their daily soup. Had seen visions of cocaine codeine elixirs mired in sweated muddy fields of May. Had spoken ill of virgin sisters who repented their lustful ways to find chastity in the nomad hills out around Big Sur. Had been the poster boy for 24/7/365 sprees unto the death totems along windswept California beaches that Big Sur I mentioned when the virgin sisters had repented their lustful ways. Fuck them, sorry. Had drawn blasphemous guns in the desert night facing tommy-hawks and tommy guns. Had blanketed seven vestal virgins down in Delphi town and cast them out like lost sheep looking for fodder. Had sworn a sacred oath to Baal in the secret crevices of my mind. Had not thought twice about the slaughter and mayhem when Baal went behind the clouds looking for sweet Melinda and her long-line penny-whistle.
“Had repented, how I had repented, for an hour, a day, and then murdered sleep. Had told death straight out that I did not believe in him, her or whatever gender-bender was being played out. Had seen visions of the great unmasking on the seven hills but I would be damned which seven hills seeking a sign that maybe Saint Francis would come and rescue a poor sinner. Had swollen my tongue unto the seventh generation of the seventh son and me an only child. Had been conceived in a dark cave by midget anglers who sent me forth to reek of whiskies, of fetid dopes, of sexed-up layaway plans. Had blasphemed against the sons of evil’s sons. Had laughed when the angels came by and spread their noisy wings. Had been a harlot with my head on fire swaying gently in the crosswinds of desire. Had seen the land of the righteous which some call milk and honey and detonated a time bomb box for the eternal. Had lifted up my head toward the sky seeking praise and pissed in rivers of pure noxious gas. Had seen lights in the sky giving me the okay to drive the pure from their abodes and sink them in clammy sea-beds beyond tepid seas. Had burned amulets and charred my face with the residue of empty desire against the great Western blue-pink night. Had danced the Day-Glo canyons around Death Valley and known what the ancient heathen warrior had craved when they reached for a man’s scalp. Had been besotted and wetted by pure rage against the coming of the light. Had done all of these things in fearless desire to crush whatever profit I could out of the flinty stone of Smith& Wesson,” cried out Preacher Jack.
Cried out to the throng that was standing, mostly standing except the few cripples, no they don’t call them that anymore even if they are all crippled up, something like handicapped or disabled or differently abled, under the big circus-style tent where he was have his yearly revival meeting in Peoria. That is in Illinois for those who have forgotten that town used to be a bell-weather for a million trends from the latest in overalls wear to skinflint motion pictures. Preacher Jack had just then completed the “call” part of his sermon to those who were in the audience who had traipsed from far and wide to hear his yearly message to the fallen angels of some strange Miltonic dream fest.
Preacher Jack had been being calling out the saved message for at least the previous forty years ever since he had come back to the “real” world from over the Japan Seas in Asia where most of the stuff he declared himself saved from had occurred. Most of the rage, pillage, murder, arson. Had found himself beached in Southern California after running through a couple of marriages, run through a couple of benighted fortunes on dope, women, sin, gambling, more women, more sin and tagging along with a bunch of “brothers” from ‘Nam who also were having a tough time coming to terms with the real world after they got back. It had been there that Preacher Jack, then just Jack, John Lewis Jackson, Junior first heard the word, first got his senses back and began that long uphill climb to speak to those laid out before him in the seats between the freshly laid sawdust aisles. As he waited his usual few moment before he came to the “response” part of his ceremony he could, he could as he had counted on some many times, hear the soft sound of moaning of those out there in the dark as they ran through their own sinful litanies in word silence.
Here’s the pitch as he continued, “Sinners against the bedeviled blessed night, the devil’s blessed night for that is his calling card time who will be saved” [Not a question and no response but some shuffling-the “no response” an expected one since Preacher Jack was just warming up to his subject and the crowd was still taking in his own confessions against their expectations and were not ready to “hit the sawdust trail” leading to the redemption center behind where Preacher Jack was holding forth.] “Ah, shy, huh, shy or sly thinking that no judgement can penetrate you can take you away from your worldly profit-gouged sins. Thinking that Preacher Jack will absolve you with merciless attentions for your intentions. You brother, you over there with the Robert Hall suit on and lust in your heart, be gone, take off your cloak, go back out into a candid world and tell the brethren of your new found understanding of what makes the world go round, about who shall be the king of kings, who shall benefit from your new-found nakedness.” [And on cue the man in the Robert Hall suit who just so happened to be one of Preacher Jack’s confederates, Jimmy Jamison, a guy who he had met under the bridges in Southern California, a fellow ‘Nam veteran who when he, Preacher Jack, “got religion” after attending a revival tent meeting near Saddleback Valley and saw the profits to be made getting the world-weary to cough up some salvation dough was when cleaned up was the perfect non-descript guy to pull off the “naked go forth” routine off and get people a little antsy seeing a totally naked guy heading out the back of the tent, or wherever the Preacher was holding forth, and would draw many disbelieving stares but no followers. No followers as expected since the idea was not to lead the sheep out the back door but up the sawdust strewn aisle to show true repentance with cash, credit card, no personal checks, in hand to continue the work of the, well, of the lord]
After due time for the Robert Hall man to clear the premises the Preacher went in for the kill, went into the long harangue which produced the dough just as long as the “saved,” getting salvation on the cheap if you think about the matter closely did not have to show skinny shanks, desiccated stomachs or ground-sagging breasts. Beautiful.
“You, you madam, you with the short dress on and the young children hanging off your arms, what evil thoughts drove you to cloak yourself in garb unfit for the Lord’s eyes. Did you come here for salvation or to continue your wicked whorish ways, looking to smite Adams once more before the Fall. Looking for a whore’s bounty in your hour of need. Speak up, sister, speak up we are all sinners her.” The women immediately put a sweater she was wearing over those tender knees and spoke of how in the past she had had to take any man’s offer to provide for her children, had to do things against the Lord’s word.
[Preacher Jack had a habit of scanning the crowd in front of him before his performance or during the “call” section to eye who he would bed that evening. Usually it was a good-looking woman like the called upon one with the kids hanging her but sometimes it was some young thing that had a virginal look about her, and very occasionally a married woman who took his talk for good coin. Amazingly he was able to con them into bed by the old “hook” that they were serving God’s message or messenger by “putting” out for the good man of the clothe. Preacher Jack called it a fringe benefit of the job and claimed, without proof, that half the time he would be confronted by a woman who propositioned him. In any case on the night in question that short-skirted woman did give herself to the Preacher in order to be “saved”. ]
He asked the woman, not expecting her to, to come forward and testify, to “hit the sawdust trail,” to come and be “saved.” (As mentioned above he had other plans for her salvation.) As he warmed up to the audience he sensed a certain reticence in the crowd to bear witness after that woman did not come forth. He then went into overdrive. To a male cripple [disabled person] on the ground in front he said “Fallen brother I know your affliction, I know you have sinned against the father of us all [the man lowers his head], have had evil thoughts in your heart, have cursed the Lord, his son, for putting in your condition. Have called on the demons to restore you to no avail. Look up brother, hear my words, hear what the Lord has directed me to say to you. Get up, walk, walk the sawdust trail, for a sign. [The man dumbfounded cannot move just yet.] Come now believe, believe in the word, believe in the holy word of God which I bring forth unto you, unto this crowd of sinners. [The crowd a little restless stirs.] Walk dear brother and accept the Lord’s bounty. [The man makes the first struggling inept attempts to stand up and falters.] Come now the Father of us all will take away the stain of your misbegotten sins, will free you from your affliction if you believe in him. [Once more the man, now in focus to the Preacher, a young man, moves, drags himself forward a bit, pushes on his arms to rise and falls back. The crowd begins to become fixated on the man’s struggle.] I am an agent of the Lord, come and join me, come up the sawdust trial which in the end times will insure the ‘rapture.” [On hearing the word ‘rapture” the young man moves with his arms forward some more the crowd softly urging him on.] Come brother a few more steps and you will be free. [The young man moves close enough for the Preacher to grab and raise him up to a standing position giving a victory sign before quickly sitting him down on the chair behind him. The crowd visibly draws collective sighs and some motion forward is to be seen.] This brother has been raised by the Lord who can deny it. He is saved, he will walk henceforth. Who else will be saved. [The Preacher points to various hearers and direct them to the sawdust. Several come, eyes closed, hands raised in praise of the Lord.]
The pitch over Preacher Jack said to himself that that night’s take would be good, very good. This saving souls business was good, very good to him. Strangely he had had to exert very little effort to raise that young man so for a moment he thought maybe there was something to this whole thing, began for a just a slip of a minute to believe his own bullshit. Then suddenly his thoughts turned to that short-skirted woman and the kinky little things he would have her do that night in order for her to gain salvation.
Tom Wolfe-Fashionista Of
His Own Kind-And A Hell Of A Writer When The Deal Went Down Has Cashed His
Check
By Bart Webber
I had been, strangely
enough, in La Jolla out in California attending yet another writers’ conference
which seems to be the makings of my days these days, attending writers’
conferences that is instead of taking pen to paper or rather fingers to word
processor keyboard, when I heard Tom Wolfe had cashed his check. “Cashed his
check” a term (along with synonymous “cashed his ticket”) grabbed from memory
bank as a term used when I was “on the bum” hanging out in hobo jungle camps
and the whole trail of flop houses and Salvation Army digs to signify that a
kindred had passed to the great beyond. Was now resting in some better place
that a stinking stew-bitten, flea –bitten, foul-aired and foul-person place. No
more worries about the next flop, the next jug of cheapjack wine, the next
run-in with vicious coppers and railroad bulls, and the next guy who was ready
to rip whatever you had off to feed his own sullen addiction.
By the way this is not
Thomas Wolfe of You Can’t Go Home Again,
Look Homeward, Angels, etc. but the
writer, maybe journalist is a better way to put the matter of tons of
interesting stuff from acid trips in the 1960s hanging with Ken Kesey and his
various tribes of merry pranksters, the Hell’s Angels, drifters, grifters and
midnight sifters, to marveled space flights in the 1970s to Wall Street in the
reckless 1980 and back who had cashed his check. The strange part of the
“strangely enough” mentioned above was that on Monday May 14th 2018,
the day he died, I was walking along La Jolla Cove and commenting to my
companion without knowing his fate that Tom Wolfe had made the La Jolla surfing
scene in the early 1960s come alive with his tale of the Pump House Gang and
related stories about the restless California tribes, you know those Hell’s
Angels, Valley hot-rod freaks and the like who parents had migrated west from dustbowl
Okies and Arkies to start a new life out in Eden. These next generation though
lost in a thousand angsts and alienation not having to fight for every breath
of fresh air (with the exception of the Angels who might as well have stayed in
the Okies and McAllister Prison which would have been their fate.
I don’t know how Tom
Wolfe did at the end as a writer, or toward the end, when things seemed to
glaze over and became very homogenized, lacked the verve of hard ass 1960s,
1970s, and 1980s times. Although I do note that he did a very although I note
he did an interesting take on the cultural life at the Army base at Fort Bragg
down in North Carolina in a book of essays around the theme of hooking up. That
hooking up angle a sign that social cohesiveness in the age of the Internet was
creating some strange rituals. Know this those pound for pound in his prime he along
with Hunter Thompson could write the sociology of the land with simple flair
and kept this guy, me, flipping the pages in the wee hours of the morning. RIP,
Tom Wolfe, RIP.
*The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer of Love,1967-When “Doctor Gonzo” Was 'King Of The Hill'-The Master Journalism Of Hunter S. Thompson
Book Review
The Great Shark Hunt; Gonzo Papers Volume One, Hunter S. Thompson, 1978
Most of this review of “The Great Shark Hunt” the master journalistic work of the late Hunter S. Thompson, a man much missed in these quarters by this reviewer originally appeared in a review of one of his latter, lesser books, “Songs Of The Doomed”. Most of the points made there apply here as well but I want to add some additional comments concerning specific articles which you NEED to read to know what mad man journalism in search of the truth, some truth anyway, was all about.
“Generally the most the trenchant social criticism, commentary and analysis complete with a prescriptive social program ripe for implementation has been done by thinkers and writers who work outside the realm of bourgeois society, notably socialists, like Karl Marx. Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky and other less radical progressive thinkers. Bourgeois society rarely allows itself, in self-defense if nothing else, to be skewered by trenchant criticism from within. This is particularly true when it comes from a man of big, high life appetites, a known dope fiend, a ferious wild man gun freak, and all-around edge city lifestyle addict like the late, massively lamented, massively lamented in this quarter in any case, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Nevertheless, although he was far, very far, from any thought of a socialist solution to society's current problems and would reject such a designation, I think out of hand, we could travel part of the way with him. We saw him as a kindred spirit. He was not one of us-but he was one of us. All honor to him for pushing the envelope of mad truth-seeking journalism in new directions and for his pinpricks at the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Such men are dangerous.
I am not sure whether at the end of the day Hunter Thompson saw himself, or wanted to been seen, as a voice, or the voice, of his generation but he would not be an unworthy candidate. In any case, his was not the voice of the generation of 1968, my generation, being just enough older to have been formed by an earlier, less forgiving milieu, coming of adult age in the drab Cold War, red scare, conformist 1950s that not even the wildly popular Mad Men can resurrect as a time which honored fruitful and edgy work, except on the coastal margins of society. His earlier writings show that effect. Nevertheless, only a few, and with time it seems fewer in each generation, allow themselves to search for some kind of truth even if they cannot go the whole distance. This compilation under review is a hodgepodge of articles over the best part of Thompson’s career, the part culminating with the demise of the arch-fiend, arch-poltical fiend, Richard Nixon. As with all journalists, as indeed with all writers especially those who are writing under the pressure of time-lines and for mass circulation media, these pieces show an uneven quality. Hunter's manic work habits, driven by high dope infusions and high-wire physicial stress, only added to the frenzied corners of his work which inevitably was produced under some duress, a duress that drove his hard-boiled inner demons onward. However the total effect is to blast old bourgeois society almost to its foundations. Others, hopefully, will push on further.
One should note that "gonzo" journalism is quite compatible with socialist materialism. That is, the writer is not precluded from interpreting the events described within a story by interposing himself/herself as an actor in that story. The worst swindle in journalism, fostered by the formal journalism schools, as well as in the formal schools of other disciplines like history and political science, is that somehow one must be ‘objective’. Reality is better served if the writer puts his/her analysis correctly and then gets out of the way. In his best work that was Hunter’s way.
As a member of the generation of 1968 I would note that the period covered by this compilation was a period of particular importance in American history, the covering of which won Hunter his spurs as a journalist. Hunter, like many of us, cut his political teeth on wrestling with the phenomena of one Richard Milhous Nixon, at one time President of the United States, all-around political chameleon and off-hand common criminal. His articles beginning in 1968 when Nixon was on the rising curve of his never ending “comeback” trail to his fated (yes, fated) demise in the aftermath of the Watergate are required reading (and funny to boot). Thompson went out of his way, way out of his way, and with pleasure, skewering that man when he was riding high. He was moreover just as happy to kick Nixon when he was down, just for good measure. Nixon, as Robert Kennedy in one of his more lucid comments noted, represented the "dark side" of the American spirit- the side that appears today as the bully boy of the world and as craven brute. If for nothing else Brother Thompson deserves a place in the pantheon of journalistic heroes for this exercise in elementary political hygiene. Anyone who wants to rehabilitate THAT man before history please consult Thompson’s work."
******** Beyond the Nixon-related articles that form the core of the book there are some early pieces that are definitely not Gonzo-like. They are more straightforward journalism to earn a buck, although they show the trademark insightfulness that served Thompson well over the early part of his career. Read his pieces on Ernest Hemingway-searching in Idaho, the non-student left in the 1960’s, especially the earnest early 1960s before the other shoe dropped and we were all confronted with the madness of the beast, unchained , the impact of the ‘beats’ on the later counter cultural movements and about the ‘hippie’ invasion of San Francisco. The seminal piece on the Kentucky Derby in 1970 which is his ‘failed’ (according to him, not others) initial stab at “gonzo” journalism is a must read. And finally, if nothing else read the zany adventures of the articles that give us the title of the book, “The Great Shark Hunt”, and his ‘tribute’ to his friend the “Brown Buffalo” of future legend, Oscar Acosta. Those are high water marks in the great swirl of Hunter S. Thompson’s career. Hunter, I hope you find the Brown Buffalo wherever you are. Read this book. Read all his books.”
I had heard through a
different source that Captain Morgan had although an American been active in
the French Resistance in Martinique and eventually other places in the Caribbean.
I had also heard that Monsieur Gerard was the last link to knowledge about Captain
Morgan’s exploits and more importantly about how Harry and Marie Browning known
affectionately as “Slim” in those days met and got out of Fort-de-France by the
skin of their teeth. I contacted Gerard in Nantes and he agreed to tell me what
he knew about the affair, about the skin of their teeth and about anything else
he might know around that initial meeting since “Slim” had gone on to be an
editor of a high-end fashion magazine after she married Harry. Harry had become
an agent-ambassador for Cunard out of New York. Below is in his own words the
way Frenchie described the meeting and match-up between Harry and Slim. He did
stipulate that I was only to use most of the information after Slim passed on.
She did a few months ago and so here for the first time is Frenchie’s long ago
take that torrid war-time romance which seemed the stuff of legends. Jasper
Jackson]
“I had seen Marie first,
had seen her as she came off the plane from I think that day Cuba, don’t quote
me on stuff before the match-up between Harry and Slim, with a sort of
threadbare tailored suit a little out of fashion that year and a small bag
which told me she was on, how you Americans say her “uppers.” By the way that
Slim and she called him Steve thing was some intimate bed-time talk thing that
I don’t know how it started since I wasn’t there when they messed up the silky
sheets that first time. She was sure slim no question so maybe that is where
Harry got his pet name from. I was an agent for Air Martinique then so I
grabbed her bag and offered to put her up at my hotel. She accepted. My idea
was after she settled in and I had bought her few drinks I could coax her into
helping me out as an exotic flower bar girl for the American tourists who were
flooding Fort-de-France looking for women, kicks, dope, gambling, and some fine
deep-sea fishing. I had her all lined up, had my own ideas about jumping under
the satin sheets with her although I was married at the time. Yeah, she was
that kind of looker, that kind of dame who guys would take great risks for,
would go to the mat for if it went like that.
“Then Harry entered the
scene and my day dreams were over. He had been out on a fishing expedient with
a client named Johnson, one of those Americans looking for women, dope and some
deep sea fishing, some kind of deep sea fishing if you get my drift. This
Johnson guy had had a shot at grabbing a big swordfish according to Harry but
all he did was lose Harry’s fishing tackle in the bargain. So Harry wasn’t in a
good mood when I asked to go to his room to inquire about using his boat for
some Resistance work that was coming up-bringing in some agents to get the
great freedom-fighter Renoir off of Devil’s Island where he was being held by
the Vichy bastards. He turned me down cold. Wouldn’t touch the thing then,
didn’t give a damn who was fighting who but wanted to keep clear of any
controversy, keep his boat, his livelihood for one thing. So whatever he did
for us later which was a lot didn’t get a leg up until Marie came in view.
“While we, Harry and I,
were talking a rap came on the door and when Harry opened up the door there was
Marie all dolled up and showered asking if anybody had a match. Harry flipped
her his box of matches. Then she asked if anybody had a cigarette and said it
in such a come hither way in Harry’s direction that I knew I was sunk. Harry
threw her his pack of Luckies (unfiltered in those days) which I got for him on
the black market since they were hard to come by after Vichy took over the
black market trade. She left and after Harry asked me who the hell she was I
left knowing that I was out of luck making a play for Slim. The only benefit I
got was that she did do some very good work for a few days as a bar girl and I
got many dollars as my cut of her action. I swear I could have been a
millionaire if she had stayed on the island. As a cover I also had her singing
at night with Cricket my junkie piano player whose habit was getting him
off-track once I found out in passing Cricket and her that afternoon that she
could sing and look good doing it. That Cricket was a story in himself since he
was on the run from some dope-dealers in the States and laying low in cheap
dope Martinique for a while. He wrote that song that was a hit after the war
when all the G.I.s headed back to America, How
Little We Know.
“But enough of Cricket.
Slim went to work after that meeting with Harry. Like I said she was good,
grabbed eight hundred bucks off of that stupid fisherman Johnson, and gave me
my four hundred without a murmur. Harry saw her in action and was sore from
what he told me the next day. Was very sore when that night Marie grabbed some
Vichy naval officer for half the liquor on the island. Called her a tramp, a
young pretty smart tramp but a tramp nevertheless. Here’s how you can never
figure dames though see she was, having seen him for about two minutes asking
for that match and cigarette foreplay, trying to make him jealous. And he was
trying to pretend to be sore. That interchange was if you can understand this
psychology solidified their relationship. That night without so much as a by
your leave they snuck under Harry’s sheets (or was it Slim’s, no, it must have
been Slim’s because I had left a set of silk sheets for her bed when I had my
own ideas about what I would do with her.)
“Of course that affair
business played directly into Harry coming over to work with us. That Vichy
naval officer bitched to Renard, a bastard who was an official in the Third
Republic colonial administration on the island and the day Vichy took over
without missing a beat went to work for them as their hatchet man, and he had
me, Harry and Slim down at police headquarters for a few hours. Took my money, my
four hundred from the Johnson con, Slim’s cut and for good measure Harry’s who
had nothing to do with it. That pissed Harry off. Also helped me rope in Harry
to the deal for his boat since he had no other dough.
“That job should have
been a piece of cake. Meet the agents who were going to get Renoir off of
Devil’s Island in a quiet spot about twenty miles from Fort-de-France, bring
them to town and then transfer them to other agents who would work out the details
of the tough Devil’s Island caper. Of course in those days you took whoever was
not a secret Vichy agent, anybody who had the guts to stick their necks out for
the glory of France but it turned out the guys, or rather guy and his fucking
wife, this Dubois, what was he thinking, that they recruited for the job had
feet of clay, had too much trouble worrying about his fretful wife. So Harry
had run into a Vichy patrol out in the harbor. That patrol shot up Harry’s
boat, shot up this Dubois guy and made things tough for all of us. Harry, no
doctor, had to patch up the guy while holding off his wife from jumping on his
bones. And holding Slim back from scratching Madame’s eyes out.
“Made Harry something
like persona non grata with Vichy, with Renard too once he figured the
previously don’t give a damn had part in the caper. Renard , the bastard,
figured out a way to prove that Harry was involved in the Dubois caper. Harry
had this old rummy, Eddie, whom must have been his father or something the way
he protected him. Renard had picked Eddie up and was holding him in the drunk
tank until he crumbled and told what Harry’s role in the caper had been. Harry
flipped out at this once Renard told him about where the missing Eddie was.
With Slim’s aid he took on Renard and a couple of his henchmen, shot one dead
as a doornail and made Renard after pistol-whipping him order Eddie back to my
hotel. That is when Harry handed over Renard to me and decided that since
Martinique was too hot for him and Slim, and Eddie that he would take Dubois
and his wife to Devils’ Island to get Renoir out. I’ll never forget, have never
forgotten how Slim shimmied her way out the door with Harry and Eddie carrying
their bags behind them after Slim said good-bye to Cricket (and got little stash
of opium for the road).
“You know that Harry did
get Dubois to Devil’s Island and that he eventually got Renoir to Europe to
work with Victor Lazlo coordinating the Resistance when it counted. Did lots of
other jobs too with the resourceful Slim in tow before heading to New York after
the war.
“Here’s something Harry
told me before he and Slim left town. That first night they hit the sheets
Slim, with a few drinks in her, was being very sexually provocative, had
mentioned that all Harry had to do to keep her in line was whistle. Then she
said in a unmistakably salacious way that “he knew how to whistle, didn’t he.
Just put lips together and blow.” Harry assumed that she was using a sexual
double entendre. He found out that night just what he meant as she took him
around the world. Damn, Harry.
“You know, Dad, the only good thing that came out of the break-up with Moira was that I finally cooled the fire in my head a little, finally gained a little peace. Funny it came through taking up meditation which I used to laugh at when Moira would urge me to think about doing it to relax my fevered head a bit. Used to call it just another one of those New Age things that she was always touting as the next best cure for what ailed humankind,” Dan Hawkins said to his uncomprehending father, Jethro, a man he until a few years before he had been estranged from once the old man divorced his late mother to run off with some floosy who left him flat and broken, hearted and financially. They had only reconciled after his mother’s funeral when it seemed that such mending needed doing. That incomprehension of old Jethro about what Dan had just told him was nothing but the truth as the old man was “old school,” had grown up in utter poverty in Riverdale, had done his time in “Nam and had been and was proud of his service and exhibited all the traits of those young men, white men, who had come of age in the late 1950s and were unaffected, or claimed to be unaffected, by all the bullshit, Jethro’s term, that passed for wisdom during the counter-cultural 1960s. So his running off with some floosy, his heavy drinking (and at one point drug use), his sense of Vietnam, my country right or wrong, patriotism were all of a piece. All of piece that would make something like meditation, something he had seen the Buddhists do in Vietnam while good American like him were taking care of the shit train that they had let their country fall into by ignoring the “commies” until it was too late. If his wife, if his girlfriends of which he had had many after that floosy slipped away with his dough and his balls, had suggested that he take up meditation for what ailed him he would have shown, had shown for lesser offenses than that, the back of his hand. (And Dan could through a miserable childhood of merciless criticism, and back hands, testify to the truth of that statement. A truth that contributed mightily to those many years of estrangement between the two men.
“What the fuck are you talking about, Dan? How the hell was whatever that meditation bullshit that ball-buster Moira trying to lay on you going to help keep you to together when she wanted to run the show, ’’ old Jethro answered back with that unknowing grin on his face that what Dan should have done was given her his back hand, and maybe a couple of good fucks and that would have stopped that noise.
“Dad, you can’t do that with women anymore and you probably couldn’t even in your day and if you had tried to lay a hand on Ma she would have left you high and dry way before you got tangled up that floosy Susie that broke you. I don’t want to talk about that, okay. Just hear me out with a word and maybe you can learn something for once,” Dan responded plaintively. His father almost began to say something nasty but the look in Dan’s eye told him to back off.
This is the way Dan’s old high school friend, Rich Bruce, remembered what Dan had said to his father one night when they were having dinner at Elmer’s Diner in old town Riverdale where Rich still lived and Dan needed to confide in somebody about what he was trying to do to be less distraught about Moira’s quick disappearance from his life.
Although at first Dan and Moira were crazy in love like many twenty-somethings who were going through their first serious love affairs right from the start there had been tensions, tensions caused by Dan always being in overdrive as he was starting his career in law at a major law firm, Dale, Dale, and Rutgers where the pressure was great to perform or hit the bricks. Dan had met Moira one night at Jeff’s Grille, a local hang-out for law students at Suffolk once they got over the grind of 1L after he had taken his bar examination and needed to unwind. She was a last year student at the Museum School of Art who was there with a girlfriend and he had asked them if they wanted a drink to celebrate his “victory” since he believed he had passed the damn thing on the basis of the written questions. One thing led to another and they started dating and making plans, in the meantime moved in together.
That’s when the heartache began, that’s when that fire in Dan’s head led to many word fights and Moira’s first threats that things were not working out and that she was leaving. In lieu of that, at least for a while once Dan explained what pressures he was under from the high-pressure law firm he was tied up with, Moira decided to start doing meditation with Don Henderson, the locally famous Buddhist convert who ran classes each week at the Boston Center for Adult Education. Moira admitted for a while that doing her “meds” she called it helped to relieve the tensions between them.
Just for a while though as she became more distraught at Dan’s behavior, including a fear that he might strike he in a keyed-up moment. She suggested to him that he might benefit from meditation. He blew off that suggestion, laughed at her and said that if anybody he knew every found out that he was doing such a New Age thing he would be laughed out of town.
Probably Dan’s response set something off in Moira, he wasn’t sure if that was the moment when he had time to reflect on what had happened after she packed her bags and left but it didn’t help. She got moodier the more he got in that same condition, they made love less often and not as tenderly as before, a sure sign that things were going downhill fast. She would speak wistfully of having to find herself, having to see what she was all about in this wicked old world (Dan’s term, not hers) and the kicker, that she thought Dan’s frenzies were affecting her already delicate health. That last part, the affecting her health part got Dan’s attention and that was when he suggested the trip to Paris. She agreed.
The trip to Paris had been great, they saw the museums, ate well, made love better than they had in a while and came back refreshed. Or so Dan thought. A week later, perhaps seeing how great things could be away the pressure-cooker of their lives together Moira lowered the boomthe first time. Said she wanted out. Dan begged her not to go and the only way he could placate her then was to succumb to her request that they go into couples counselling. Dan had hated even the idea of that kind of thing (and when he told his father about what she had asked him to do the old man gave a look like wasn’t he just pussy-whipped). So they went to a counsellor in Cambridge that Moira had heard of through New Age network and while Dan had held his nose at first once he got into the sessions he told Moira that he was in all the way, one hundred percent.
Those weekly sessions went on for the better part of a year until he and Moira decided to take a week’s vacation to Maine. That week was another great time for fun at the beach, eating out and doing a few goofy things like playing miniature golf, going bowling, and going to an old-fashioned outdoor drive-in theater. A week later Moira lowered the final boom, packed her bags and left (that threatening to leave and leaving after a great vacation had Dan thinking about Moira’s own psychological problems but not much). Her argument was that like before she had to find herself, see what she was about and still thought Dan was aggravating her medical problems. She also told him in uncertain terms that he had better take stock of himself, seek some help, maybe see Don about doing meditation or he would become a human wreak.
Well Dan moped around for a while, several weeks, thinking about where he had let the thing fall apart. Knew that he had been responsible for a lot of what had gone wrong, had been an ass about stuff. Then one day on the bulletin board at the law firm he saw a notice that several institutions in Boston, including Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) were putting on a Hubweek, a week of social, physical, and medical therapy workshops and lectures to let people calm down essentially. He noticed that one workshop was being held at MGH with a Doctor Herbert Benson, a name he knew from a book he had read that Moira had left around the apartment one thing when she was looking for yet another New Age idea. This Doctor Benson had proof, had done research, that practicing meditation would help your health or as Dan put it put out the fire in his head, let him be at peace a little. So he went to the workshop and the rest is history. He started doing that previously scorned meditation. And he felt better, calmer. Old man Jethro Hawkins’ reaction:WTF. Some things never change.
