Being and Doing: A Sex Story

by Stephen Kemp

Emily stirred the kettle.  She was thinking about how much she loved to cook this soup, one of her favorite recipes, how it goes in circles.

Yesterday the broth was there in the bottom of the pot -- now it would start this day's soup.  She threw in the barley, stirred it swirling into more circles and left it to simmer, while she chopped the carrots and potatoes and celery. 

"How's it going, honey?"  Peter asked from the doorway as he peered in at her, "Something is starting to smell pretty good. What are you making?"

"Oh, it's just some chicken soup.  Same old thing, you know," she smiled to herself, "Nothing special."

Peter was so predictable.  He usually poked his head into the kitchen when the cooking smells got his attention. 

Peter privately marveled at her skill in the kitchen.  Someone had once commented, he recalled, that of all the ways there are for people to be creative, cooking was the highest form.  It engages the most senses -- the way it sounds when it's boiling, or boiling over, the way it smells from moment to moment as it cooks, whether or not it looks done, or feels done when you plunge a fork into it.  And of course the ultimate result: how it tastes. 

Add to this the timing of the whole process, Peter thought, for Peter was a scientist, and you have to realize it is actually applied organic chemistry, but with an elaborate creative flavor.

"My, dear," he smiled at her, "You are truly an artist in the kitchen."

She looked up from the cutting board at him.  "Okay.  What are you
after?"

She waited, suspicious, mildly amused.

"Well, nothing…" He loved that expectant look, the intensity of her when she was busy working in the kitchen, and now the twinkle in her eye.  "I'm just admiring the way you glow when you're cooking."

"Oh, come on.  What's going on?"

"You're very sexy, there, chopping."

"Oh, that," she laughed, recalling their lovemaking this morning -- very good and warm and satisfying.  She smiled and returned to her chopping,

"Well, there is something," he finally admitted, "Jesse just asked me where babies come from."

"Oh?" she continued chopping.

"Um, I guess I'm wondering what to do," he sounded hopeful.

"So, just tell him," she looked up at him, playfully.

"Sure.  Just tell him.  Right."  He frowned.  Jesse was six, but he was a precocious and very curious kid.  And he loves the girls.   "Emily, honey, I never had to do this before.  I don't know how to do this.  Can't you take care of it?" 

"Oh, stop your whining," she laughed, "I've never done it before either, you know, and I am pretty busy right now.  Why don’t you just take a whack at it."  She gave one loud chop, just for the fun of it.

Jesse bounced into the kitchen and plopped down at the table.  "Hi, Mom.
Whatcha making?"

"I'm making chicken soup, honey," she replied without looking up.

"Where do babies come from, Mom?"

"Your dad was just going to tell you about that."  She smiled again to herself, happy to have everyone in the kitchen amusing her here while she worked.

Peter sighed, and sat down at the table across from Jesse, who wriggled in his seat, trying to get comfortable.

"Okay, Jesse," Peter said,  "It all started a long, long time ago."  He paused, thinking.  "Back in the time before people lived in houses, a way long time ago…."

"Yup." Jesse said, helpfully, swinging his legs back and forth expectantly.

"Well, it's pretty hard to live when you don’t have a house."

"Yeah." Jesse was still listening, but now he was peering through the screen door at Sam the dog, sniffing around the tree, there, outside.

"So when it's that hard to live, everybody has to help out, just like when we camp."  This got Jesse's full attention again -- he liked to camp out.

Peter went on, "And the men's job was to go out and hunt and get things to eat.  They were hunters and they got the meat.  Now, the women's job was to take care of the camp while the men hunted."

Jesse lit up, "So everybody was camping all the time?"

"Yup, everybody camped.  So the women kept the camp, and one of their most important jobs was to gather things."

"Yeah, like gather the firewood, right Dad?"

"Yes.  The wood for the fire, berries to eat, and nuts and roots and vegetables, or any sort of food that they could find to gather up to eat."

Jesse waited, taking this all in, still with legs swinging slowly.  Peter continued.

"And while the women were waiting at the camp and gathering stuff, the men would be out running around hunting."

"Were there babies, too, Dad?"

"Yes, Jesse, we're getting to that part."  Peter was starting to sound nervous.

"Whenever the women were busy together, they kept each other company.
 They would watch and listen and talk to each other and tell each other where they had gone and what they had seen from day to day."

Emily was listening to all this.  She stopped chopping the celery for a moment, and looked up to see a squirming Jesse getting very restless.

"And what about the babies?" she chimed in.  Peter coughed, and peered up at her for a moment.  She smiled at him and winked.  She gave Jesse a carrot to chew on.

 Peter groped for words.

"Yes, the babies were there, too, at the camp.  And the moms watched them and took care of them.  That was the moms' other main job." 

Emily just shook her head, amazed and amused.

"But, where did they come from, Dad?" Jesse pressed.

"We're getting to that, but it's a long story."

Jesse squirmed, "I gotta pee."

"Go ahead, honey," Emily said, without looking up, "But be sure you put the seat up, you know."

"Okay, Mom," Jesse ran for the bathroom.

"Whew," Peter sighed, "This is tough."

Emily chuckled and teased, "At this rate, we'll be grandparents before the poor kid ever gets to the birds and the bees!"

"I am just trying to give him the big picture before I plunge into the details."  Peter explained, though it sounded even to him like an excuse.

He did know where he wanted to go with this -- he had just not quite figured out the route yet.

Jesse ran back into the kitchen, "Hey, Mom, I'm going to go play with Sam," and with that he was out the door, slamming it behind him.

Peter watched Emily pick up the cutting board and turn, dumping the vegetables into the simmering soup.  She turned around to look back at him, "I guess you're off the hook, buddy."

"You’re a fine woman, you sweet thing," Peter cooed, "But you sure can be heartless."

"No, Pete, don’t get me wrong.  I was just so curious about what you would say.  I had to hear it.  And now I am even more curious.  What the heck were you driving at, anyway?  Where do babies come from?" she laughed, and bumped him playfully with her hip on her way to the fridge.

Peter loved her dearly.  She understood him so well, he knew, and yet she often seemed surprised by him.  He found this mystifying -- and fascinating.

"Well, I wasn't entirely sure.  I guess I need to think about it a little more.  But I figured he'd eventually get bored and go out to play."  Peter reflected, remembering a conversation with his father when he was a teenager.

Dad had said, "Women are, but men do.  You have to understand that difference. Men are forever building, or discovering or measuring or analyzing -- they like fast cars, big trucks -- they are competitors, they want to win."

"Women, on the other hand, are largely more interested in how things are going, or how they are going to be -- they care about feelings, and their children and their friends, and their homes and their things, their security -- they want peace."

Peter remembered asking Dad, "So why do I have to give them flowers?"   He could see his father saying, "There is no explaining why a man is supposed to gather sexual organs of beings from a different kingdom and then give them to the girls," for Dad was a scientist too, "But one thing is for sure: it pleases the girls, and they like the feeling.  That's the only thing you have to know -- the feeling.  And once you can understand that, then you'll have some hope of understanding women.  Well, at least sometimes.  That is the being part of it, right there, in the feelings."

Peter got up to move behind Emily, then with one hand stroked the nape of her neck. "So, now I have you all to myself…."  He slid his other hand around her waist and whispered, "I'm hunting, hunting…"

She shivered and grabbed his hand, pressing it to her stomach.  "Yes, but I am trying to gather my wits about me," she kissed his cheek, "But you have to let me go, I've got this soup going!"  He kissed her neck lightly before she wriggled away.

He sat back down at the table and continued, "When I was seventeen or so, I asked my father to explain to me about women.  He went on at some length on the subject, and by the time he was done, I understood women a lot better."

"Really? What did he tell you?"

"Well, like I was saying, women are the gatherers and men are the hunters.  That is our nature.  Men are the seekers, women are the keepers. 

"So, men are forever in action, looking for things to do, looking for new toys, new tools, so they can find ever more things to do.  They go through life doing this, doing that, looking for every opportunity.  They build things, they blow things up. 

He continued, "But women are reflective, more interested in ways to be, how things feel, how they smell, how they look, how they taste. They know where their kids are.  They network." 

She turned around, smiling at him again, "So if men are the doers, how is it I am the one making the soup?"

He thought about that for a while, "Well, of course nothing is ever that black and white.  But if you think about it – generally, women are more aware and men are more focused."

"Maybe," Emily smiled, not necessarily convinced, "So?"

"Well, I guess what I am trying to say is that the sexes are different that way." 

At exactly this instant, she felt a little flutter that distracted her for a moment.  She moved closer to kiss Peter on the forehead, and blushed for a hot moment.  Then she turned to continue making dinner.  “Pete, why don't you go take a nap?  The soup'll be awhile anyway.” 

Peter smiled, happy and confident that Emily really did understand him so well, and headed to the couch for a nap.  He started to dream almost immediately.

2

Six thousand years ago

The woman was dawdling near the path.  The sun was out, shining brightly down on the group as they made their way to the high plains to hunt the woolly mammoths.  Up the trail ahead, the men led, spears in hand, with some of the older kids trailing close behind, lugging weapons and skins.

Whenever the band was trekking like this, she tried to find time to do a little exploring, always on the lookout for anything new -- anything that might be edible or useful.

She had spotted a purple flower she recognized.  As she sniffed it, her memory turned to last spring, when her man had given her such a flower after he returned from one of the hunts.  He said he liked the way it smelled, and nobody had seen such a flower before, so it made a good gift.

Now she sniffed this one approvingly, then pinched  off a leaf with her fingernails and smelled it, too --  a strong, spicy aroma.  The roots were too bitter and not very interesting, but she could see it would have some kind of berry, though nothing that looked ripe, yet.  She would remember this plant when summer came, and seek it out again to taste the berries.

She plucked two flowers, carefully put them in her hair, one over each ear, and returned to the path, where the oldest boys and girls were bringing up the rear.  She spotted her little sister, Lah, who was just in her twelfth year, and walked along beside her for a while amidst the chattering pack of teenagers.

She held out one of the flowers for Lah to smell, and then confided, "I think it will have good berries," as she placed it over Lah's ear, "We will go find it again when summer comes." 

Lah smiled at her and hugged her arm, then turned to gaze at her favorite young man so he could admire her face and this exotic flower.  He glanced at her, but right now he was showing the other boys how far he could throw rocks.  But finally he did look at her and smiled, moving closer trying to sniff the flower over her ear.  She pushed him away demurely.  He was too late.  She had no time for him, now.

Peter rolled over and the dream ended.  Another started after a few moments.

3
Sperm

Until a few hours ago, Zoa had only been one day old, surrounded by a teeming mass of other spermatozoa, all struggling, in motion, ready, willing, but captive in their great pressing anticipation to get out, to make room for the newest sperms always arriving.

But now, Zoa was alone for the first time, well beyond the others striving to get ahead, to keep moving, to be first to find the sweet thing.  There was no consciousness here except the focused will to seek the thing out, and the certainty of wanting it, needing, having to be the first.  And doing it soon.  The sweet thing was all that was missing.

Hereabouts, the surroundings were different, warmer, and the color was darker.  Zoa was a stranger here, but was energized by a sense of a different chemistry in this strange place, a welcoming sensation, a smell beckoning from afar, where the sweet thing was waiting and ready.

Zoa thrust and thrust and thrust again, seeking, vigilant, unrelenting, purposeful, focused solely on reaching the sweet distant thing that was now slowly growing ever closer, ever richer, ever more alluring, compelling.

And this was the single chance to be first, to deliver the magic fluttering touch.

To win.

4
Egg

The ovum knew no other, only the smell of the oneness of life.  It knew no space, no motion, only the waiting.

For many years it had been set aside here, still, kept in waiting, vaguely sensing a regular tidal flow of smells, and sensations, diffusely aware of occasional feelings pressed upon it.  It was somehow rooted, yet suspenseful, expectant, ready.

Then finally, to it came a whiff of the quickening and suddenly it was loose, had motion, tumbling slowly as a way opened to it, toward a larger place where the smell was ripe, somehow, with potential, with safety, with comfort.  With expectation.  The feeling was good.  It tumbled into a place to settle, and there, clinging at the shore of this gentle, surging sea, it was now awaiting an arrival of something from somewhere beyond its conception. 

So, now will be the time, and here is the place.  All is ready, well prepared.   It waits in stillness, receptive, fecund.  It is good.

Finally, just the right flutter at just the right time -- at this very instant a little tickle tugs at it, in this perfect place. 

Suddenly.  Life comes forth -- one madly dashing cell of spermatozoa does finally penetrate this ripe ovum waiting here,  They become one another, merge and dance, multiplying in geometric precision.  The doing becomes, and the being does quicken -- where quiet nothing was before, now everything is moving.

5

Dinner

Peter, still dreaming, heard his father say, "Women like it circular.  Men like to go straight in,"  and woke up with a start.  He smelled food.

Emily had moved on, preparing the main course, and now had called Peter to get up for dinner.  The three of them sat eating at the table.  Jesse was wiggling, as usual.

"Jesse, this is pretty good food, huh?" Peter prompted, "Mom's a real good cook, isn't she?"

"Yeah," Jesse grunted, too busy to add anything else, stuffing another spoonful of food into his mouth.  He ate with great gusto.

"Save some room for the strawberries, honey," Emily said.

Jesse looked up and beamed.  He loved strawberries.  "Can I have some now, Mom?"  He started wiggling again, in anticipation.

"Well, okay, I guess so… it looks like you ate it all up," she smiled, "You're a good eater.  You're a good boy."  Jessie beamed.

They ate berries in cream with a little sugar.  Jesse was taking his sweet time to finish while Peter sipped his coffee, now refreshed from his nap and openly feasting his eyes all over Emily as she cleaned the table around them.

Finally, Emily stopped moving for a second and then sat down, heaving a sigh at having a chance to take a little break, and happy that Peter was being so flirty.  She watched Jesse eating the strawberries, so slowly, so deliberately.  He was such a funny little guy.  She understood him so well, yet he was always surprising her.  She felt a wave of love wash over her.  "I sure love my Jesse," she tousled his hair and he beamed again, now done with the last berry, fidgeting, ready to go play some more.

"Honey," she looked at him, "You were asking where babies come from?"

He nodded.

Emily glanced at Peter, smiling while she answered, "Well, Jesse, babies come from moms, when they're good and ready."
"Okay, Mom," Jesse agreed, "Can I go out now?"

Emily's answer stunned Peter for a second, but then he quickly recovered to answer Jesse, "Yeah, sure, Jesse.  Go find Sam the dog and throw the Frisbee for him.  Here you go."  He reached to the shelf and tossed the frisbee to the boy.  Jesse just caught the Frisbee and was out the back door like a flash. 

Now, Peter thought, there was time.  He was growing more interested in Emily by the moment.  Their eyes locked.

She knew just what he wanted to do.  He knew just how good she would be.

                      20050110

 

Working For Adventure

 Summer, 1963 -- My friends Sean and Stan and I had just completed our first year of college.  I knew a girl in Hollywood, Stan had a car, and Sean just came along for the ride.  We would go look for summer jobs in L.A. But what we really wanted was... adventure!
    After two days of checking out ads in the Times, we succeeded -- sort of -- in a hardware factory: Voi-Shan Industries.  But after another two days of standing there with little magnetic wands and kicking a pedal to stamp a little "vs" on each of 5000 tiny rivets -- one at a time -- we moved on.
    Now, this girl I knew had a mom who knew a guy who was a regional boss at the L.A. Standard Oil facility.  He lined us up with jobs as gas station attendants at Standard Oil company-owned stations in Hollywood -- we would be "pump jockeys."
    The three of us agreed that now we were really getting somewhere.  Standard Oil gave us physical exams, sent us to school for a week, where we learned proper regimented behavior, service protocols and paperwork, joined the compulsory "company union" -- and gained some knowledge of techniques used by short-change artists, which was cool.
      The uniform, with the silly little white hat we had to wear every single minute on the job, was definitely not cool. 
    We were placed in three different stations in downtown Hollywood.  I went to the one at Sunset Blvd. and Wilcox, the biggest gas station in town, with 24 pumps. 

    Our clientele this summer is mostly hordes of cars full of families, all rubbernecking tourists.  Management orders us not only to clean the windshields, as is customary for all gas stations these days, but also to swipe unto sparkling every single window surface of every car we serve, so the swarms of sightseers can stretch and strain, shouting to share every sighting of some simpering star or starlet's salacious smile.  Standard Oil is pushing service very hard in TV ads, so management is deadly serious.  This soon gets old for we who wield the squeegees, but the tourists are grateful, especially the kids gawking there in the back seat. 
    On my third day, a big guy rides in on a little tiny scooter, no longer than his leg, of a style I've never seen before, its tiny tires bulging flat under his weight: he just needs to get air!  I recognize the man himself right away.  He is a bit-part character actor from probably twenty movies I've seen.  Someone says his name is John Doucette.  He's the first of dozens of such unnamed people I eventually run into in Hollywood.

John Doucette

    I got a large dose of American popular culture during my nine-month stint at Sunset and Wilcox.
    We three pump jockeys rented an apartment together and could actually afford the rent and still have money left over to stay up all night and wander around Hollywood soaking up the 24 hour a day life-style: all-night movies, the Hollywood Ranch market with a deli that never closes, people on the streets till all hours.  But, aside from my new girlfriend in my private bedroom, of course, working at the station was where I found most of my adventure.

    One night a car full of pushy fat girls drives in, parks sideways across the pump lanes, blocking any other access, and immediately starts yelling for me to give them service.  I walk up to the driver's window, whereupon the sullen woman sitting there gives me a quarter and commands me to go get her some cigarettes from the machine.  Her accomplices sit there inside smirking at me in my plight.  Standard's TV ads are trumpeting that the customer comes first;  maybe they are thinking it would be fun to use me to try the limits of that claim.  Though no one else ever so imperiously makes such a request, I bite my tongue, pad subserviently to the cigarette machine, and  return to offer her the pack, in her stony silence.  Without a word, never meeting my eye, she snatches it from my hand, starts to roll the window up as they drive away laughing.

    I think I was more mystified than offended about why a person would choose to be so rude to a complete stranger.  I was starting to learn about Hollywood.  Later, the other guys would chuckle about me and the "excellent way I serviced that car full of butches".  But until later I had no clue of what they were actually talking about.
    Then there was John Abbott.  One week I went on loan to a different station over on Melrose.  The clientele consisted less of tourists and more of the Hollywood locals.  I didn't know it until later, but the guys I was going to be working with knew all about John Abbott. 

    So here I am, standing around waiting for a customer, and this old Jaguar sedan pulls in.  Now nobody else is going to go attend to this guy --  they all just sort of turn their backs and start talking amongst themselves -- leaving the task to me.  No problem.
    I walk up to the open window and recognize him instantly, because he is a very well known character actor since the 30s, and still winning roles in movies -- roles of executioner, undertaker, butler, or king. He is a veteran of over a hundred movies by this time: long, tall, thin, and veddy, veddy English.  I try to maintain my decorum.  I don't bat an eye.
    He asks for five dollars worth of gas, and then gets out of the Jag and stands back to observe.  I get the gas going and start to clean the windshield.  From behind me I hear him ask, "Excuse me, young man, but would you be so kind as to change the air in my tyres?"
    I think to myself that this is the dumbest request I ever heard.  But dutifully, I comply.  I move to each tyre in turn -- pssssssst as I empty it, and phhhht, phhhhhhht as I refill it.  He follows me from tyre to tyre, standing back, watching me.  Finally I finish up with the gas and collect the money, half-expecting a tip, which is not forthcoming.  He just smiles at me, pays me, hops back in the Jag, and promptly takes his leave.
    I turn around to face the local crew, still standing gathered together there, only now thay're all looking at me, grinning.  I walk over to the group to ask who is that guy, and what is it with the changing air in the tires? 
    The laugh goes up.  "That's John Abbott," someone finally fills me in, "He always asks for that -- I think he just likes to stand behind young men and watch them on their knees while their backs are turned!"   Then someone else says, "Nah, I asked him, and he said he just likes to listen!" which is met with a chorus of guffaws.

John Abbott

    Another time, back at the Wilcox station, I walked up to a big shiny brand new Lincoln Town Car to ask the driver what he needed.  Now I do know this guy's name: Andy Williams, a singer, very famous, with a TV show of his own.  Little tiny guy, big smile, red eyes.
    He requests a fill-up, and while the tank is filling, I ask him, "Check the oil?"  He looks at me and hesitates, speechless, finally just nodding at me.   I pop the hood and check the oil, then return to his open window.
      "It's down a quart," I say. 
    "What's that mean?" he says, quizzically.
    "Well, you're low on oil." I reply.
    He looks at me like I am the man from Mars or something.  "Is that bad?" he asks.
    I nod.
    "Well, um, uh, what should I do?" he wants to know.
    I offer to put a quart in, to which he readily agrees, then he pays me and drives out like a flash.

    I did puzzle over that for a long time, because he simply was not acting completely normal, though he did not behave or smell like he was drunk.  Only a few years later, after I joined Hippiedom, did I come to understand what he had probably been doing before I met him that night, red eyes and all:  ah, Hollywood.

Andy Williams

    That Christmas, my girlfriend had splurged and bought me a gift that bowled me over, because I had never seen its like before, and it was so cool: a palm-sized portable Sony AM-FM radio, the smallest ever yet made, and the first to come out with transistors.  I loved it. 

    This holiday season I'm scheduled to work graveyard shift the midnight to 8 AM shift for one week.  The graveyard shift is pretty lonely, even in Hollywood, so I figure I'll listen to my new radio here in my solitude.  Then, on the third night, long about 3 AM, the station phone rings.
    "Standard Stations. May I help you?"
    "I can hear your music," some guy replies, "And it sounds real good.  What's your name?" he asks.  I tell him.
    "Well," he begins, "I saw you earlier, and I think you are really a handsome guy.  Would you like me to come and keep you company on such a lonely night?"
    I pause.  Then I think of John Abbott.... "Um, no, thanks, I am not allowed to visit while I am working."  The phone is silent.  I start to hear the sound of heavy breathing, so I just hang up.  Then, there in my naivete, I think to myself, "Here I am, a GUY, getting an obscene phone call.  I bet that's never happened before."  Right.
    One afternoon a week or so later, I'm sitting at a stoplight on the Strip waiting for the light to change.  I've outfitted my old Pontiac with a floor shift, but I am only a poseur -- that car is a ten year old tank, but it does okay as a fake hot car. 
    So, up next to me pulls a brand new Ferrari, very hot and sporty, not uncommon to see here, but I can't let it go, because who do I see at the wheel?  Ernest Borgnine, who is an Oscar winner, now on TV playing McHale of "McHale's Navy."
   Well, I can't let this opportunity pass: I gun the engine a couple of times, and peer over at him through my window.  He turns his head slowly over to look at me and smiles his famous wicked grin.
    The light turns green and we are off... er, well, HE is off.  But even though my Pontiac is floor-boarded, it just sort of groans and roars and lumbers, waddling along behind, while the Ferrari shrieks on ahead of me, dwindling in my sight until it vanishes from view. I don't care.  I have a story to tell. I laugh. And Ernest enjoyed it.

 Ernest Borgnine

    Now, I always hated that damned silly little white hat we all had to wear, and would never be caught dead wearing it -- unless I had to because I was at work.
    One Saturday night on Sunset Boulevard I was driving home from work and needed to stop for cigarettes. I pulled into the next Standard Station and jumped out to buy a pack from the machine.

    So I get the smokes and look around. This station is hopping, a car at every pump, and now with even more cars lining up behind them. I spot James Garner.

        He's been parked, waiting at a pump for awhile, and now he's getting out of his new white Caddy convertible, and he's starting to look cranky. He looks around and says, "What's going on around here?" to no one in particular.
        Then he spots me in my Standard uniform, so he looks at me and says "I would sure expect better service than this from you Standard Station guys."
    But I'm game, and I say, "Fill her up?"
    "Five dollars worth," he says.
    I pump his gas while I wash the windshield. It turns out he is in a big hurry, he gives me the five bucks, says thanks, and guns that Caddy out of there.
    So now I have to go find whoever's running the station's till. I've never seen the guy before, and when I start to hand him the money, he just looks at me: I don't work here, he doesn't know me from Adam, and I'm not wearing a white hat.  He finally looks at my Standard uniform, gives me a funny look and just takes the money.
    I love this thing of being the poseur -- the only one who actually knows what all the players are doing.

 James Garner

    Now, though I thought Garner's remarks about Standard Station service were pretty corny, to me he did come off as the kind of man who has a strong character, is used to the best, and who appeals to the best in others: an Oklahoma gentleman. His demeanor reminded me of Marine Corps drill instructors.
    As I recall, the dominant feeling I had that night was... defiance. I was on my own time, a civilian kid making one guerilla transaction, with no oversight, no permission, and no damned little white hat, for my own small pleasure of being able to assist this man, to take the measure of him, and give a little payback for all his good work. He never had a clue, and everyone came away happy.
    But the best story I got from Hollywood happened one quiet night at the station.  I was working swing shift, and my friend Stan had just gotten off his shift down at the Gower station.

    So he stops by to show off his new guitar, sitting in the office while he plays and we sing some folk songs. Then, in drives this normal-looking guy in an old Chevy, who pulls right up to the office because he's not interested in getting gas: he was driving by and he spotted Stan playing the guitar. 
    Stan is already pretty good on guitar and knows quite a few songs.  The guy just stands at the door, leaning against it, listening to Stan play.  We invite him to come sit with us in the office where it's warm. 
    "My name is Roger," he tells us.  He admires Stan's guitar and starts describing the one he has at home.  Stan offers his guitar.  Roger smiles and starts to entertain the two of us for the next half-hour.
    These days, he tells us, he writes his own songs.  His lyrics are funny, wry, clever.  He asks us to please listen to a couple of tunes he is writing.  The first one is named "Dang Me (They Oughtta Take a Rope And Hang Me)."  He has another unfinished one; it is titled "King Of The Road".  He's eager to hear what we think of his stuff.  We love it.

      We only learned his last name a year later, after his songs started playing on the radio.  Today, you can hear his music in movies such as "Brokeback Mountain" and "Into the Wild".  His name was Roger Miller.

Roger Miller

    I heard a few stories about other celebrities. It was said that Johnny Mathis hung out at the Hollywood YMCA, lusting after the boys there at night. Somebody else recounted that one night up on Mulholland Drive they were sitting in a car smoking pot, and someone walked up to the car and said, "Is that marijuana I smell? What's chances of smoking a little of it?" They obliged. It was Robert Mitchum -- who was later the subject of a scandal about smoking weed.

    I was truly going through some kind of rite of passage at this time, and being tested fairly often and discovering my limits by events unfolding around me, and being thrown into unfamiliar situations, sometimes by chance, sometimes by my own behavior.

I could go on and on about the stolen credit card scam, or the bright red purplish-veined besotted naked faces of Dana Andrews or Macdonald Carey;  or the time I caught the station manager trying to steal gas from me at four in the morning; or the Hungarian named Tibor, and the German, Dick, that I worked with while they were waiting to get acting auditions, in their own quests for their own adventures as actors; or even the Pacific Cinerama Dome Green Stamps scam. And then I might mention the fact that my friend Sean eventually turned out to be gay -- or that at the end of that nine months, my girlfriend wound up pregnant.
    But these stories are all for another day.

On Death: Post-Mortem Dump

20080902

Post Mortem Dump
or What I Did While I Was Fangling.
by Stephen Kemp

    At our life's end, just as it ebbs away, the last bit for us is said to be that of watching our lifetime flash before our eyes. Somewhere along the line, I started actually planning for that moment, trying to pack into it everything I can, over the course of my life, in hopes that the moment will last as long and be as meaningful as possible, in the expectation of the final realizing that life and death come together in the world,
    So far I have accumulated something like this, written as I imagine it might go, just after my dying rattle, as my life unwinds into the cosmos:
     Not here before I was born: where did I come from?  Not here after I die: where will I go?  Now and for always, being as far away from death as ever I will be, and as close to birth as ever I will be: born with a black eye as the North Island noon whistle blew.

SONG: In the Mood - Glenn Miller - 1944

   

Being a very small boy, living next to the ocean in Sunset Cliffs, loving the smells and sights and feeling of it, riding the bus, seeing a man pick his nose, learning to do it, too. At a downtown bus-stop, standing behind a woman with a fur collar, petting it, smooth, furry. Mom in a polka-dot dress doing a load of wash, watching her run the wringer. Scary. Dad telling me to eat the pill so my belly button will glow in the dark. Thinking how happy I am to live in America.  Humming, with my teeth just barely touching, making a little buzzing sound along with my voice making my first harmony.

SONG: Old Devil Moon

  Going up the hill and around the corner to a big black tall box -- mystified at seeing a phone on the wall. Going back down the hill to home, banging and banging on the back door, but the kids aren't letting me in. Crying and crying, kids finally coming to take me to the right house -- so relieved. A pony coming for taking my picture. Visiting my little girl friend down the hill, her dad curling his index finger to beckon me, dumbly just looking at him, her explaining that that means 'come here.'
    My brothers taking me to the secret passage leading down into the great cliff cave grotto, scary, candles, climbing down, climbing up, excitement, and all the way them protecting me.  Mom fixing me tapioca pudding with nutmeg and mace, eating macaroni in hot milk with butter.
*****
    Moving far away one Fall to live in cow-smell country, eating the cattle's oats, electric fence, tiny first bike, dad making me itch just by suggesting it. Earning a quarter by riding the new bike across the lawn. Discovering cherries from the kids, who go to pick them, ruining their tee-shirts from the color of the cherries. Snow coming, getting real cold, making angels in it, the boys peeing in it to write our names. New words: coaster sled, galoshes, mittens, snowball fights.  Holding a lamb, riding in the Marine pickup truck with dad, drinking grape Nehi and listening to the radio while Dad is teaching me to search along the road for bottles to buy beans. Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer all new to me.

SONG: Ghost Riders In The Sky - Vaughn Monroe

*****
    Moving into Salt Lake City, much nicer. Brothers shaving a peach, making itching powder to use on me and laughing at me. Stealing dad's lighter, playing with fire with my Swedish friend Kennit, him teaching me how to cuss in Swedish, learning how to charge things at the store, charging up lots of cookies. Nobody teaching me to skate. My earache popping and yucky stuff running out. Getting the measles and scratching them, the kids letting me go out at night to crawl under bushes, gathering night-crawlers. When I lay me down to sleep, not really comfortable praying "If I should die before I wake."
    Going to school even if I'm not six yet, taking naps and singing. Teacher taking me out in the hall to shake me, shaking and shaking, with me never knowing why. Liking the girls but them not letting me play along with them. A boy named Rusty picking on me. Loving to play on the monkey bars, but hearing that a person could fall off and die. Hating and fearing Rusty. Reading being easy, singing being fun. Singing at Christmas, up on the rooftop, click click click.  Getting stung on the hand by a yellow-jacket, getting a toy train.

SONG: Tennessee Waltz - Patti Page

    Discovering how to pick apricots off the trees.  Brother Jon spraying my throat with perfume saying I will sing better, and me breaking out in a rash, but Mom worrying that I have scarlet fever, and getting me a shot, but not hurting too much, and me being brave. Playing on a typewriter, typing my name. The NCO club, while Dad hangs out with buddies, me plugging nickels into slot machines: three cherries!  The folks at Bingo, Dad painting me up as a Halloween clown, cute kid.  Free films at The NCO club -- Sands of Iwo Jima.  Going into a real movie theater to see The Day The Earth Stood Still, eating a Three Musketeers candy bar: only a nickel, and big enough for two kids.
    Brothers telling the family about fighting off the Mormon boys by standing back to back. Mom listening to music and frowning about the UnAmerican trials on the radio -- she loves Lucy. Her getting a job at Keely's restaurant.  Me falling off the chicken coop at the babysitter's, front teeth slicing far into lower lip.  Close call.
    Brother Rob having a bullwhip and going to ride horses with Sue while he is supposed to babysit me. Dad bullwhipping him, making him run away for a long time. Dad as a clown at the Shriner's circus for the orphans and me getting to go too, but never getting to wear a fez. His big first aid kit in the trunk of our shiny new maroon Chevy. Hiding in the back yard next to the neighbor's chicken-coop and looking under the Kennedy girl's panties. Brother Jon saying he'll tell Mom and feeling really scared that he will. Looking under another girl's dress in the bushes around the flagpole before school. Big 78 records, but no one letting me run the wire recorder, or even touch the piano.

SONG: Wee Cooper o' Fife - Burl Ives

    Dad taking me to visit a bakery and a cannery, but then leaving me in the car for hours while he goes in the bar. Crying and crying, trying to start the car, but when I push the button the car lurches forward. Too scary.
    Later, Dad getting mad at something and trying to chop the car tires with the ax, but Mom driving us away into the night, sister claiming that I want to take the raggedy andy, but I don't.

SONG: Lavender Blue

SONG: The Thing

SONG: It's In The Book - Johnny Stanley

Driving for hours, through the night, while I try to go to sleep, but then us turning back in Montana. Walking home from first grade and the snow being over my head beside the sidewalk. Vowing to myself that I will never live in a place with snow when I grow up, but feeling too young to make a vow.  Peeing down the heater vent - stinky, so we had to move.
*****
    Getting back to California palm trees, the ocean, seaweed and smelling the tacos again!  Third grade, hunting craw-dads, having two ducks, they chase the little MG.  Girl with ugly name Stella, real mean bully named Angel.  Schoolgirl desk partner teases, taunting: Me snapping, rageful, turning desk upside down, Mrs. Ross understanding. Dad going to fight in Korea, brother Rob finally coming back home. Barbed wire head gash, getting caught again at the panties of girl friend Sally under her house and then yet again in plain view on the pickle-weed slope.

SONG: That's All I Want From You - Jaye P. Morgan

1954: Moving onto Camp Pendleton and going to play at the camouflage range, the obstacle course; overnight camping at Combat Town, half Asian, half European, sitting in the old Japanese pagoda tank, cranking the turret around, sitting in the top of the German bell tower eating beanie-weenies and K-rations. Crawling through a captured Japanese landing craft; out on the tank range wearing a helmet to take a ride in a tank - it has periscopes! Close order drill, Marine Band parades.
Right after sundown, speeding down a hill on a bike, trying to race a car to the intersection at the bottom. It almost hits me, did not see me coming, I almost lose the race. Close call.

SONG: Semper Fidelis

Brother Jon stealing dummy anti-personnel mines. Dad taking me to get first ever computer label printout: my name on labels. Wow. Hearing Earth Angel and Sh-Boom, loving the new style of music, but Dad calls it jungle music.

SONG: Earth Angel

SONG: Sh-Boom

A drunk driver killed Dad's friend's young son, seeing him in the casket. Grandpa Tony dying, and seeing Dad cry for the first time, sobbing. Bringing home a cat with 25 toes -- riding horses, an hour for a quarter, and seeing the movie for a only a dime. Tamales and lobster with butter, big fresh Mexican shrimp, corn on the cob, lemon meringue, and a big giant turkey leg all to myself. New words: science fiction, battalion, glow-in-the-dark, 3D and drive-in movies, pregnancy.
*****
1955: Moving back to San Diego, middle of fifth grade. Hating long division, loving fractions. Baseball being fun. Not being fast enough for football. Poring for all possible sex in Readers Digest or True Magazine or topless native women in National Geographic. Smoking my first Hit Parade brand cigarette. With friends, exploring down into a mile-long drain pipe just tall enough to stand in, pitch black, very scary, but go through to the end. Hearing Heartbreak Hotel, That'll Be The Day. New words: filter cigarette, sitcom, VW, hula hoop, Calypso, frisbee.

SONG: That'll Be The Day

SONG: Heartbreak Hotel

Then junior high, lots of trouble, me sneaking smoking, talking back to the teachers, rebellious brat. Hating the vice principal's office, teasing the girls, them taunting me. Wishing I could dance. Not much good at sports, but loving writing and reading tons of science fiction. Them putting me in dumbbell English making me bored and rude and noisy. Them calling me defiant, psych testing, getting transferred into a better class, then writing and talking about cool stuff. First taste of pizza pie. Learning Aikido at the Marine base, and learning how to use my ki. Digging rock and roll.

SONG: Roll Over Beethoven

SONG: Blue Monday

SONG: Banana Boat Song - Day-O

Clothes being important. Sputnik shocking everyone. Hearing about Castro kicking out the dictator, freeing Cuba -- revolutionary hero. New states Hawaii and Alaska, newfangled penny. Up in Pendleton hills in Rob's camper truck, deer hunting, beautiful ivory-inlaid 30-ought-six, M1 in hand, sliding two seconds down gravel slowly, vision of valley floor below, tenuous rotten-branch slowly sliding grip, yelling for help, slipping, thrown rope-grab. Close call.

SONG: Swinging Shepherd Blues

1959: Trip to Salt Lake City, blistered fingers from hammering too much, not no carpenter. Train trip back for a fantastic desert sunrise, pining for the smiling little blond I keep spotting on the train, but no, too shy, no satisfaction. New words: IQ, high-fidelity, beatnik, satellite orbit, Gran Prix, dragster.

SONG: Tom Dooley

*****
1960: High-school, them putting me into dumb-bell English again, but Mr. Carey figuring it out, rescuing me and getting me my own column on the school paper. Finally starting to feel like I am fitting in. After-school job making money to buy an old Chevy.

SONG: I Pity The Fool - Bobby "Blue" Bland

    1960: La Costa Beach State park
    Unchaperoned California Easter-break beach park camping trips -- girls girls girls, drinking rum with the guys, night body surfing in red tide fluorescent flashing waves, running down the beach leaving behind a trail of disappearing footprints glowing in wet sand.
    Sunset bundles of grape-stakes pilfered from coastal flower-field forays for firewood fueling the flickering at nightfall.

SONG: Bongo Rock - Preston Epps

It's happening!  Young wonderful women being drawn to our biggest fire on the beach, bongos bang out rhythm, tentative folk music, but then the serious making out as eyes are starting to close while lips are beginning to part; crawling rolling, sprawling spreading, splaying playing upon warm shadow-driven fire-ring blankets, in our first-ever gathering together, untethered surging into a smoky blazing free rush of hormone-tetched teeners, a circle of strangers, couples stroking groping probing, touching fingers flicking and teasing tongues tasting, raising the stakes of freedom to test the odds of these new-found stud pokers, a roiling crowd bubbling flouncing flouting flirty bouncing, mingling, tingling, bungling, giggling or crying next to the glowing embers, seeking the night's soothing finally silent sound of the eternal surf tumbling down upon itself, as the beach is left with only the running of the grunion, tiny fish wriggling, burying their eggs or spewing their milt upon the sand in their comforting climax here, appearing as a single wriggling mass, a silver sheen reflecting the light of this full moon's cycle.

SONG: Tonight I Fell In Love

SONG: Stand By Me

    Eating abalone sandwiches, cooking for everyone, watching a few fights -- get into one, silly pointless harmless.  Fifties Chevys and Pontiacs. Long time coming, prom night back-seat first sex, coming too quick, damn!  But yet, being grateful, then smiling at the memory.
     Barefoot summers hitchhiking to body-surf at the beach.  In winter storm surf, wanting to surf in the 14 footers, but no one would come with me.  Great fun in the big waves, but finally one being too big for me, violent slamming, smashing me head-first into the wet sand concrete on the sea-floor, really hurt, would have killed me except for my staying conscious.  Close call.

SONG: The Lion Sleeps Tonight

 

    At school, senior year, hating Beowulf, teacher hating Zen and Kerouac, writing only what I choose, Reader's Digest parody, stream of consciousness, funny stuff, but yearnings for philosophy and social science.... D in Honors English.  Drinking rivers of coffee.
    Stupid showing off squirrel laying rubber '57 Ford around corner, wet pavement fishtail wheel-spinning starting to roll, up. over, two wheeling sideswiping spiderweb glass shattering slow motion crash, back to earth, safe.  Close call.  Graduating from high-school with precisely a C average.   New words: DNA, birth control pill, ICBM, Viet Nam, stereophonic, letterman, proof-read.
*****
    1963: Cuban missile crisis, everyone anxious, waiting for the A-bombs to fly above us.  Getting bored with junior college, splitting to live in Hollywood. New words: Cinerama, transistor FM radio, pill-box hat. Sunset Blvd. gas pumps, movie stars, apartment sex, too embarrassed for buying rubbers: pregnant, wife, father, baby son, first household near Disneyland, workaday aerospace slave -- folding blueprints, learning printing, ditto, paper paper paper.

SONG: Satisfaction

 Driving like crazy on road rallies, murdering that damned Simca, a semester and a half in The Valley at a real college, landforms, symbolic logic: The Sentential Calculus - good profs, feeling mature, running out of money, going back to being a printer.  Buying an old '53 Plymouth for a buck and 1 half -- the price of a voltage regulator -- grass growing in it, the headlights going out when I push the clutch in.
*****
    1965: San Diego atomic reactor factory, finding a path into learning computing, keypunches, beginning of programming.  At home, collecting music, recording. New word: stereophonic tape recording.  Scary earthquake, the draft, Viet Nam TV news.  First joint while sitting on the floor leaning against a friend's piano, then love-in pot smoking, researching psychedelics and religion, Baba Ram Dass, Tibetan Book of the Dead, the I Ching, Zen one-hand clapping.  Wow! -- acid plunge, wet brain sloshing in skull pan, laughing hysterically, watching my weird pulsing and deformed limbs, listening to the music, seeing God flowing in the grain of wood, time stretching. -- Bang! -- ego dying,   I hate being Frank Zappa. This agnostic morphing instantly into devout mysticism forevermore.

SONG: Tomorrow Never Knows - The Beatles

   Temporary Autonomous Zone Newport rock festival, throwing a mustard bottle to that unruly band of mud-covered people. Hari Hari, Jeff Airplane, Quicksilver.

SONG: Pride of Man - Quicksilver Messenger Service

SONG: Somebody To Love - Jefferson Airplane

First drop-out Leary tells lies for money, Sergeant Pepper, Beatles, Stones, drunkard Jim Morrison, loving tonette, flute.  New words: every other word!
*****
    1968: Migrating to San Francisco hippies, the Fillmore, stoned telephone operators, stoned DJs, satisfying job, cop a plea, expunge my record, buying the lawyer a Corvette, another son, tasting first Reuben sandwich at the Pup Hut, soap bubble art, Crescent Park, Berkeley, Temporary Autonomous Zone People's Park, Cal campus, choppers, tear gas, shotguns, underground newspapers, underground comics, psychedelic art, posters, communes, radical economist, hip architect, alternative psychologist, Grateful Dead, Big Brother, loving one another, Temporary Autonomous Zone Speedway Meadows free concerts, free store, free love, free clinic, free speech, smoke bubbles, geodesic domes, R. Buckminster Fuller, World Game, man walking on the moon, eating laced brownies while posing at post-grad parties, intellectuals, folk, alternative -- new words: ecology, ten-speed -- friends named Apples and Parsley being FBI civil rights fugitives, VW campers, computer hacker-sent bills marked "For God's sake, stop the war now." Flashing the Vee. New words: protest, hippy, right on, service bureau, mini-computer, modem, floppy disk, organic, ten-speed, power to the people.

SONG: Get Together - The Youngbloods

*****
     1970: Divorce pangs, empty bed, phony commune, tripping and a wrong-way one-way in front of close-call cops ready to arrest, flute stolen, pale future, shredded emotion,  worry, recession, unemployment, desperation, homeless ten days in a warm beetle, Clapton's Layla, getting a shower at a swimming pool, bottoming out.

SONG: Layla - Eric Clapton - Derek and the Dominoes

    Finally settling into peach and apricot orchard valley soon to be called Silicon, finally finding ultimate super-computer lab salvation. Henceforth forever a hippie-hearted poseur.  Single dad, nice little cabin with fruit trees and both boys, sullen drunken brother Jon, learning to cook more than breakfast & hotdogs & hamburgers, remembering to separate the colors and the whites.  Grocery bag half-full of stolen opals appears, lingering for fingering the fiery things, then stolen again by the nameless Lebanese villain.  Hearing "Doctor My Eyes, you must help me if you can."

SONG: Doctor My Eyes - Jackson Browne

    Saved by my first actual lover, daring deep brown-eyed erotic satisfied Rita satisfies, lithe leggy lively lovely willing finally filling-belly-full Rita, fantasy drive-in movie beetle sex.
    More workaday world, trying too hard to be good dad now to one latchkey lad, no roots, free school, working at NASA space lab, watching first live planet Jupiter probe, 60 mile commuting worker bee, then a bobbing string of loving one-night beauties. Surfless, oceanless, empty, aimless, homeless feeling numb.
****
    1974:  Whoring to build loan-shark systems at AVCO Newport Beach, no integrity, but subversive software and cool computer people, boring bosses, disco, Jaws, The Sting, Rule of seventy-eights, turning into a good home with both boys together again in Our Town.  Next door rock concert back stage press-pass poseur.

SONG: The Entertainer - Soundtrack of The Sting - Scott Joplin

****
    Volunteering with bicyclist buddy surfer Stokes, for late night pre-chalking of the guidelines for all 22 turns of tomorrow's bicycle-benefit route for marathon ten-speeding pumpers....  At first, haggling with growling Sandy the dog for the shotgun seat in Stokes van, but by the time we finish turn 11, even Sandy has joined in, and we get really fast.  Pick up unsuspecting hitchhikers to blow their minds without any warning by repeating our wordless refined rhythmic routine: Drive on to find the next turn, pull up, jump out, open the back hatch, pull ramp out, wheel out the lime chalker, chalk up the line for this turn, then reverse, reramp, reload, slam the hatch with unmatched time/motion precision, then the dog, me and Stokes jumping back in, while clueless hitchhikers hunch haplessly in the back, goggling, agasp, gaping at what is flying by so fast in front of their very eyes. Fun fun fun surprise street theater, ending with everyone laughing at each other, even happy Sandy smiles.
****
    1975: Back home San Diego, sad, crazy, first real love of my life, Karina, both desperately craving, me madly loving her beauty. Family straits, worst end dire suddenly toothless Dad sad, silent, smoking through that throat hole, broken heart, burned out liver, Wallace Stevens Blue Guitar frown, then dead -- with Mom watching, helpless health declining herself slowly, slowly, suffering no pain, horrid, more silent, more still, nerves wasting awry, completely lucid excruciating mental torment grinding, hospital cockroach, dreadful, speechless, final death relief, rattling rale, aura.  Church full of dead bees.

SONG: Rhiannon

SONG: Darkness, Darkness

    Desperate, abandoned, my stupid surrender is half-assed bottles of pills and Cold Duck, but angel pulling strings to guide my puppet second chance mad dash to the ER, life now struggling to live. Stomach pump moron disgusting myself, ptui!  Close call.
****
    Move on, first room-mate, discover how to use a back-brush.  Meet pretty killer cooker Kathy, lithe, mysterious, clever, loving devouring her french onion soup, her honey bucket butter-creamy, gently folded fluffy crepes, mmmm.
    Still carrying too much death drama.  Wow, meeting pretty black belt silk white-skinned lover Tricia uttering "Arpanet" -- and then lying in bed alone the morning after, while she is off teaching karate class men admiring her moves, wondering about her belt, plying her every move, all making me yearn to eat her rose.  New words: e-mail, The Net, word processing.
    Bluegrass flute, more folk, first real vacation, Ink Spot Vegas jackpots, Boston travel improvisation, seeing Atlantic ocean, sunrise over the ocean lobster pots, beautiful Back Bay delicate French sauces, cross-continental railroad-riding Pullman trip back home.

SONG: High On The Mountain - OlaBelle Reed

****
    Friend piloting light plane trans-California north to Mariposa, and back, aloft, wings icing up over Grapevine pass, white-knuckled dodging lightning storm cells through LA, into clouds, and droning on out to sea -- where are we?  Air controller kid glove guides to return to dry land, finally seeing calm clear San Diego skies.  Feeling like a close call.
****
    Mission Beach with both sons, TI-99 talking home computer, beach life, first band, Waterbound, then sax, The Gnarlys, Skinn & Bones, The Oneironauts, Group Therapy, The Impounders. Dear burned-out Delta blues torch singer Lou Cole teaching me how to sing harmony, LIVE MUSIC at beach dives, zilch pay, priceless. Giant spewing storm surf slams seawall, swallows sand, unhidden silver bonanza surfacing, old cache of coins. New word: personal computer.
****
     Grinning camera girl sudden high-speed shutter-slapping wide-open eye-popping F-stopping unabashed flashing aperture: Dinah. Instant hard lust four year full-on full-time wide-on captive of no-escape tightest mighty grip funny sexy wondrous one, never-says-no Dinah.  Expo 86 Vancouver One o One road-trip, turning on safe in the Cuban pavilion, seeing the peeing boy at UFO-H2O flying saucer fountain, and a wop-bop a loo-mop balop-bam-boom. Lying next to her naked white skin for the loving under giant redwoods; in our own cruise-ship wardroom-mirror party peering on our private pairing; in the camper ever-coming bouncing on the bed, and then after Magic Mountain whooshing, ever-willing-whiplash-whirl-girl hot buttered Danish Dutch Dinah, dreamy drilling, wake-me-up-shuddering-sex: best ever.  But unlucky dragon. Too good to last, too hot not to burn out: sex drugs rock and roll not being enough, but whee! a great era!  Final.
    New words: sushi, segue, Reggae, mota, nose-candy, BBS, sysadmin, video recorder, MIDI, UNIX, Macintosh, WYSIWYG word processing.

SONG: Spirits in the Material World - The Police

SONG: Stir It Up - Bob Marley

****
    Ocean Beach assertion remorse, still in woeful wasted and lost love. New start, Twelve Step wonders, drugging away dragging depression, at long last my eyes finally opening, lovely Rebecca's Fifths serenade therapy, making Macintosh music, Tequila-Tango  MIDI four-track recording.

SONG:Tequila

SONG: One Ring Tango

At work, twelve years of public eyes, own neat newsletter, hopeful help desk, UNIX writing reams, wide-eyed teaching, building software. Then stupid PC DOS stumbling up like a tongue-tied drunk, just as monster mainframes hit the wall, world-rocking recession layoff.  Damned ignorant Microsoft career bye-bye. New word for my computer work: legacy systems.
    Realizing I am running into more people who are younger than me than those who are older; and very many more new-fangled objects than old-fangled. The artifacts of my time get sparser as the new-fangledness slowly covers their traces and fangledness itself is disappearing from view, slowly dissolving.
****
    1990: Hawaii Halloween arriving Kauai, alone, two years Hawaiian living, Barking Sands missiles, white guy dumb haole, try learn talk da kine pidgin, but no hula girls for me, nor music, nor writing, just Kill a Haole Day, being a victim making me discover my own racism.
    Becoming addicted to Japanese bento lunches, sticky-rice... spam?  Plunging face into burst-open passion fruit, gooey, tangy, now learning why they call it passion.
    Stupid smoker me, swimming alone in Hanalei beach surf rip current, panting, tiring, panting, failing, panic pecking at me, heaving final breathing exhaustion toes-touching sand success. Close call.
    Hurricane Iniki, weird siren, mournful wailing Dale the cat.  From high school shelter, watching 140 MPH winds lofting a church steeple by in midair to dismay the scared chattering Hawaiians, turning all idle observers into participants, floor-diving under tables after the shrieking monster outside flinging flying logs flogging thumping at the cafeteria walls.
    The eye is serene for twenty minutes.  Brave souls exploring.  Me too. Too scary. Running back into the cafeteria. Wind reversing then rushing again, whipping the giant mascot football helmet flopping and fumbling down to the football field's far final foot -- back to where it came from, four hours ago.  Comical.  Spawning of mini-tornadoes twisting flying corrugated metal, spearing a two-by-four into someone's bedroom wall, a pickup truck bouncing around up off the ground, trying to go aloft, two-wheels in the wind, but must be a good emergency brake. And two restroom-hiding German boy scout campers clutching the bowl for dear life, being a close one for them.  But funny.
    Then now all are reverent souls, equal, vulnerable, kind, simply aloha, facing danger everywhere, walking over unrecognizable moonscape devastation neighborhoods, among fallen poles, shattered glass shards strewn, laying over electric and phone wires, maybe dead, maybe not. Downed pole's power lines scrubbed wash-boarded gashes leaking through my roof, Dale the cat being thoroughly pissed at me, no eye contact for days. Poor ancient giant rootless goner mango tree now laying safely next to the house. Lucky. Sad bent black-frond palm trees, old rusted van roofs peeled up curling like old sardine cans. Slime rife, ready to spread strife, ancient fungus goo, God only knows what, blown to here from the actual wettest place on earth, that swamp above, there on Mt. Waialiali.
     Black of night, National Guard silhouettes silently slogging in along the highway, three days no water, flute plays Amazing Grace over the flattened sea of smashed stick houses. For now, no power, phone, or radio -- no news, no clues, no idea, just deep lingering silence and black silent nights. Much later, announcement of seven dead, 6000+ homes wrecked or vanished in the wind.
    Humvees rolling by, weeks of eating hot Army chow, or cold MREs -- too hard for local mokes to understand cooking instructions:  radio station comes back, on-air explaining how to "knead" the MRE peanut butter: "Make lomi da peenot bottah.".  Have to laugh. No ice for weeks.  Really missing ice.  Busy ants appear at the bedroom, three-inch ones racing away from my unsuspecting out-reached hands, and then very fast tiny ants making living paths on a dresser.
    Becoming a Civil Defense poseur delivering desperate young girl a 12-year birthday cake, copping cases of Kotex for cranky Kekaha clapboard weary wa-heenays, all da kyne bleedeeng too-ghedda. Pitiful castaway Hawaiian honeymoon newlyweds nesting in a rental car.  Everyone aloha for them, but have to laugh.
    Silly goony Guard, but welcome aboard to Marine Corps, shrewd and able, saving a suffering USMC mosquito net baby, making refrigerator ice, putting out reverse osmosis fresh water bladders. Salvation Army there firstest with the mostest, solely kind unassuming humble helpful souls. Then tardy Evangelicals arriving -- but with them, none can eat until all first obey, be silent, and pray their christian prayers.  Pissed.  But Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park company surviving the storm, leaving behind their big generator for the duration, no prayers required.
    Forty GeneralTel phone booths appear in Kekaha - free phone calls, big relief all around.  SitRep ex-vet Viet tunnel-rat down to eating the last ugli fruit, Marine Major surfer, ten weeks no power, sweeping swamp-borne rampant wind vector fungal infections, forgotten forest, lost bewildered birds just hanging out, and weeks of burning huge heaps of refuse and rubble. Dozens of erect phone poles stretching off into the horizon, each with a lineman perched aloft to pull cable.
    Fly out for resting and recreation Oahu relief tour -- ICE! -- car stereo driving driving driving for fun. Movies and room service, TV, big relief concert: Crosby Stills Nash, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Jimmie Buffett, all stars, but Bonnie reigning with such a BIG voice.
    Boiling Big Island lava bubbling and a total eclipse, mid-day birds roosting, and dogs wanting to be fed again after totality. Funny.
    Finally a cop-chasing suing eviction summons, and a sneaky skulking path to make good my airport escape. Aloha grand total sum of two friends, named Tom -- Tom the astronomer, and Tom the geodesic domer, and a friend named Angie -- but otherwise lonesome toiling sentence.  Adventures in Nature!  Nice place to visit, but.... new words: akamai, kama'aina, pupus, pau.
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    1992: Blown off islands into Christmas serene SoCal sand sculpture scene, mellow OB with pelicans, seagulls, kelp smells.  Fat Hawaiian unemployment checks, FM synthesizers, fruitless recession job searches -- two mangled eyebrows after a grinning witchy stink-eye nutcase speedfreak haircut.  At Halloween. being a scary dark-glassed mohawk studded leather big boots bike-punk, finding myself herding fleeing fear-filled patrons off into other aisles and scaring unsuspecting no eye-contact clerks.  Suddenly, strange Halloween-party women gravitating toward me to check out my stud and then wanting to love me. Actual big biker stranger cordially sayin howdy. Best halloween ever for me: it is all poseur unexpected mind-blowing.
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    1994: High on a mountain watching telescope cataclysm on planet Jupiter, with everyone on earth sharing the sight of that string of comets thundering down upon the surface of the planet, in awe, eyes catching the very light of cosmic events unfolding there across hundreds of millions of miles. Scary.
    1996:  Wowie zowie!  WWWeb wonder: Internet becomes a brand new giant bright and cosmic light shining into every earthly nook and every spiritual cranny, a final answering avalanche of all the answers ever sent begging for questions: what does hallelujah really mean!!?
    Re-hooking up with Karina for ten day American dream cross country Route 66 motel love fest, through Vegas visiting one dying good friend Ken, and then, 300 miles later, a different good friend Ken, dying the day after us getting back to San Diego, a music disaster, tears, struggling and funk following. and Karina slipping away again.
    Dodge Colt, innocent rambling, narrow two lane road, blind-sided by dumb tourist smashing rear quarter, whoop-dee-doo 180 spinning, steering to safety sitting backwards, stunned silence, no more hits, like a flash. Close call.
    New words: erotic breathing, multimedia, browser, search engine, interactive gaming.
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    1999 - Rich strike from my buddy Wall Street bull, up 2600%, paying cash for half a tiny beach duplex, touring Chicago, then Manhattan, seeing Temporary Autonomous Zone "De La Guarda" off-broadway -- it was flying people, wet, steamy, sexy, defeating reality, way fun.  Year 2000 ten day trip to stay in Wimbledon, beans for breakfast, Mind The Gap, London, -- then chunnel to four-star hotel New Year's eve on the packed Champs-Élysées in Paris, and then the sex museum -- but no potatoes for breakfast.
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    2002: Ocean Beach doldrums, Y2K trench-job with moron bosses, one morning treadmill-watching 9/11 falling towers, home price doubling.  New old truck, new paint, new heads, new tires, LA freeway at speed, from behind, idiot dithering, slithering sloppy slewing skewing slipping four lanes over then insinuating up and past me, darting to dash over in front of me towards off-ramp, changing mind, jamming back into my path, my full-on brakes suddenly stomping screeching sliding save me, only neatly nick him with one bumper in passing, barely safe, and no pulling over for me: fuck him. Close call.
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    2003: nearly overwhelming fear and paranoia over dirty bombs and the submarine nuclear arsenal harbored in the hill behind me, and all only 60 miles from Mexico.  Cash in, moving away to search for survivable greener pastures.  With all my beans in one big pile, embark on seeing, playing, smoking and pleasuring: Christmas season in Amsterdam, way cool, even with lost credit card and a case of pink-eye, everything else being all a young man would ever want, everything but the rock and roll: the ten days added years to my life.  Listening to Holland's seagulls with their barely recognizable curious guttural Dutch accents.
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    2004: Rent an Oregon basement at the Seaside promenade, living with a funny borrowed black cat.  Two week later Super Bowl day cross-mountain snow drive, following carefully, downhill black ice brake one tap and oops, fishtail, back, forth, way back, way forth, slippery steering wheels whoop-de-doo 180 wind-up way backward on shoulder. Adrenalin. Not a snow driver. Close call.
    July Fourth Seaside beach charred shell holes sulphur smell aftermath conjures the vision of a deserted Iraqi mortar battlefield.  Irony.  One Jennifer.  Then boredom for a year.
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    Astoria cottage living around Finns, Swedes, Norwegians still reliving Viking Baltic battles for control after all these years, alcoholic, provincial-thinking, proud.  Music drought, string conspiracy -- "not from here" mentality: so, no new pioneers please -- disconnect, cut-throat hungry working-man town (got-a-buck?) by many desperately unemployed.  Great Coastal Gale of 2007 wind bashing roof banging finally stops, go back to sleep only to awaken to one half a roof. Minor annoyance, insurance boon so convenient.
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    2009: Finally finding some solace, gray panther in college, breaths of fresh air one semester at a time, great profs, something very cool here at last. Yoga, madly writing, yay, 24 track recording, composing, web music collaboration, NetFlix, grandchildren, too much to mow green lawn, sparsity of apt females, paying taxes, keeping up, getting older.... not enough. All shades of gray emotion, except for this flaming surge of writing. Yearning for company and good conversation: poring over old grave-sites is just not enough.  I feel like some kind of mirror universe Rip van Winkle who has awakened long ago in mouldering Astoria: is this it? The end?

    Not here before I was born: where was I?  Not here after I die: where will I go? 
    And I am, yet still, now and forever, being as close to birth as ever I will be and as far away from death as ever I will be.