Diet Coke…week one.

It was a whim, fortified by the challenge of dumping some tonnage; I reluctantly stuck my Wendy’s cup under the Diet Coke spigot for the first time. I have never even been interested in diet drinks. In the old days they caused cancer, which I may get sooner or later, but I don’t want to get it from diet soda. The first diet drink I tried was Tab. It was awful. Then the onslaught of diet drinks. All awful; and they caused cancer to boot.

I remember Ferree giving me the low-down on cyclamates, the magic sweetening carcinogenic ingredient back in ‘77. He said something like the way we taste requires molecules to go up or down in the papilla of the tongue. The cyclamates go way down and are not washed away by saliva. That’s the lingering after-taste and since it isn’t easily washed away, it’s sitting there causes rot, leading to cancer.

Then they went to saccharine. Same shit, new name. They said it’d only cause cancer if you drank a gallon a day for ten years. Child’s play, I drink way more than that, so I stick with regular pop when I drink pop. Then Sucralose (splenda) in diet drinks and now Aspartame (nutrasweet) in the Coke Zero products. I’m sure they’ll eventually tell us these cause some terminal disease too, but now the crap they put in regular Cokes is horrible too.

When I was a kid sodas were sweetened with sugar (sucrose). Then around 1985 they were sweetened with fructose (high fructose corn syrup), which is cheaper to make and transport. Some people say it causes problems too, it makes you twice as fat as sugar does and is made by modifying enzymes that somehow screw with you and is generally uncool. Pepsi has gone back to its sugar formula, Coke that is bottled in Mexico is sugar based too.

Anyway, my first diet coke was from the fountain at Wendy’s. It was tolerable. I’m pretty much restricted to fountain drinks anymore, cans and bottles just taste weird these days. So the next day I drank diet again. Then I tried diet at Jack-in-the-Box by my house, awful. Jack-in-the-Box in Brea was fine. I haven’t found any taste consistency yet, but I feel strangely hungry these days. I’m sure part of the way diet drinks work is by the taste, you just want to drink less.

It doesn’t look as good either. Regular Coke has clear sparkling bubbles that generously fizz at the top of your cup. Diet coke has dull brown foam that fortunately dies quickly from view. When it’s splashing down into your cup it has kind of a dirty look to it, like beach-break waves at Newport.

So, week one. I’m thinking about it and writing it down. When I started drinking booze I kept notes too. It was a major undertaking and I wanted to document it. Looking back, I’m sure the notes are gibberish, mostly looking for excuses on why I should follow the self-destructive path of the great artists and writers I admired. Of course I was just stupid, being a great drinker doesn’t make you a great artist; but being a great artist might lead you to drink… cause and effect. I wonder how much weight you’d lose with the pre-1903 Coke when there was nine milligrams of cocaine in each glass. You’d be so amped up after a coupe gallons you’d lose tons of weight, and maybe make great art too.

One Finger Phil

All week I’ve been doing some work at a friend’s house and using his chop saw. It has seen better days. The link that pulls the guard up when the blade goes down is just hanging and the plastic guard is taped in the up position, leaving the full ten-inch blade exposed. It’s a little un-nerving when cutting little pieces and it takes a little more time to do anything because I want the blade to come to a complete stop before getting my hands in there to retrieve my cut pieces. All week long I kept hearing Dennis Martz’ voice calling me “one finger Phil”.

In the early seventies Brant, Dennis, Bruce and I headed north in Brant’s van. In Bend Oregon Bruce got out and hitchhiked east, ending up in Boston. We proceeded north to a little town called Cle Elum and camped outside town. Eventually they rented a house in the south side of town and every day Brant would disappear. One day he came back and says something typically cryptic like, “Do you want to go to my house?” He had been exploring and found a little town called Roslyn a few miles away and had arranged to buy a house from Guzzi Realty. The house had all the major appliances, was two story and cost around fifty five hundred dollars. We walked the road passed the high school into Roslyn and rooted around his new place. It was a fixer upper, big and dirty and falling apart, but that wasn’t a big issue. We explored until dark, found a French fried potato cutter in the basement and walked back to South Cle Elum where we fried up some greasy spuds.

It wasn’t long after that that Martz bought a place and soon Dale came up from Brea and bought one too. It was a deal too good to pass up. We had a little “Brea north” going for a while and it was idyllic.

One day we were building a new staircase for Dale’s house. Me, Brant, Dennis, Dale and probably others too (it seems like there was a crowd when I think back on it) were working away. It was community tool chest, you grabbed whatever you needed off the floor or out of the truck and tended to your project. I think I was cutting treads for the stairs. I’d set the tread up on the case, hold the length mark with my thumb, then I’d squat down with the board across my lap, lay the Skill Saw where the cut needed to be, then put it back on the staircase for support while making the cut. This worked fine, but Dennis could see that it was an accident waiting to happen and started calling me “one finger Phil”. I had complete confidence in my technique a scoffed at his reference.

Phil was one of our buddies growing up. He was everyone’s friend and was recently referred to as "one finger Phil", having just lost his digits in a lumber mill accident. He didn’t make it too long into adulthood; a short time later he was killed trying to avoid a deer that had jumped into his car’s path in John Day Oregon.

The saw I had been using was getting dull, so I picked up another one and set it on the board resting on my thigh. This saw had a different safety switch, or no safety switch, and when I picked it up to go to my staircase cutting station it started running. I wasn’t prepared for it to go. The blade caught the edge of the board, kicking it out from between the blade and my denim covered leg. As durable as Levis are, they are no match for an electric saw with a 7 1/4” blade. It cut through my pants and plowed through my leg. I set the saw down right away.

Well, I looked at the wound and got depressed; I didn’t want that to happen. I announced that I cut my leg and wanted some else to look at it, which was met with the usual calls of “lightweight” and “get over it”. Dennis came over and looked at it. “Wow, you need to go to a doctor.” he said with no alarm in his voice. This was the response I was kind of hoping to hear. The saw had cut deep, the entire depth of the blade, which is about 3 1/2” deep, and ran diagonally across my thigh for about nine inches. A filet. The nerves were all cut too, so there was no sensation of pain. And it didn’t bleed a drop. It wasn’t even red, other than the red color of red meat.

I don’t remember the particulars, it has been thirty-five years or so, but there are no hospitals up there and so Martz took me to the ranger station. There we found the ideal ranger. He was older than us; we were just out of high school, but young for being a guy in a uniform. He was in the Navy and volunteered for this duty, fixing up errant locals who might have the occasional hunting accident or be bucked off their dirt bike. He assessed the situation quickly and started picking the frayed fabric out of the gash. “How come it doesn’t hurt? I asked. “You cut the main nerve that runs through here, that may be a blessing, but you may never feel anything in your leg again.” He spoke slowly and with authority, and was a very cool guy. “How come there’s no blood?” was the next obvious question. ‘Well, there’s two ways for bleeding to stop, you know about coagulation…” (Of course we knew about coagulation) “But that’s only for small cuts and abrasions. What happens is (at this point he interlocks his fingers at ninety degrees, one set of fingers representing veins and the other layers of skin) your veins and arteries are elastic and when you cut them they retract into the layers of skin, pinching off the blood flow.” As he said this he slid one set of fingers out from between the others which closed together as they left. “You have very elastic veins and they were pinched off before there was a chance to bleed.” I looked at Martz with astonishment.

Now that the wound was clear of debris he got out a syringe. “What’s that for?” “Well it was a dirty wound and I want to stop any infection from spreading” I really liked that he gave the name of the drug, how it worked and why I needed it. “It’s not gonna make me vote any different is it?” “He didn’t even look up “How’d you get so paranoid?”

Next it was time to sew it up. He started from deep inside, bringing the layers together slowly, row after row, until he got to the top where he used a different pattern of stitching, more decorative. Dennis took me back to the remodeling party and I kind of watched for the next few days, hobbling around on a crutch, trying to stay out of the way and look involved at the same time. Eventually the feeling came back to my leg and there’s still the impression of a great looking scar.

All week I’m using this chopped up chop saw and I can see how easy it would be to loose a digit in this contraption. Martz’ good-natured voice kept repeating with every stab at the trigger, “Hey Phil”. As a result, the project was finished with no injuries. Thank you Martz for reminding me, this time I listened.

Rip Van Winkle

It must’ve been winter of 1973, between Christmas and New Year when Arizona’s desert snow was deep and drifting against the side of the road. Diane Smith’s parents were out here for the holidays and had some sort of a need to go to Bullhead City. I had some sort of need to go to Phoenix so it came to pass that I would drive everybody to Bullhead, drop them off and take the car down to Phoenix, do my gig, come back and pick ‘em up for the return to Brea. The trip to Bullhead had no memorable moments, and once in Bullhead the most amusing thing to do was take a little ferry across the Colorado River where there was a single casino.

I headed on down to Phoenix, and headed back in the evening. It was very cold. The snow on the mountains in the backdrop continued down to the flatlands, resting on top of the Bob Ross sagebrush and piled high against the roadway. I drove the complex monotony of the highway well into the night, evenly spaced telephone poles keeping time for the music in my head. Then it occurred to me that one of the poles had seemed different. There was a weird bush or scarecrow or something a ways back, and with the carefree spirit that once dominated my actions, I turned around to investigate.

Sure enough, a few miles back there was a forlorn figure. An old man with no coat and bare feet was almost frozen solid, attached to a pole like a tongue to an icebox. I opened the passenger door and hollered for the guy to get in. He moved in small painful gestures and took an inordinate amount of time to pry his frozen limbs into the car.

We sped off, heater cranked up full blast and he shook. He shuddered like nothing I’ve ever felt before; it was like the wheels were going to shake off the car. I had nothing to offer him but a cold beer, which he declined, and the heat from the vents, which he accepted with silent grace. He was a perfect throwback. He had that drawl that you equate with hill people, speaking slowly and clearly with simple words that spoke volumes. He had on a dress flannel shirt, like a Pendleton or something, and those nifty sans-a-belt pants with the built in crease; obviously his go-to-meetin’ attire.

After a time he was able to speak. He thanked me and introduced himself as Gene Van Winkle, a miner up the mountains who liked the drink and was frequently ripped, hence his nickname, Rip Van Winkle. I asked him how he came to be attached to a telephone pole with no shoes a hundred miles from anywhere and he told me his story.

Rip had been married for all eternity. She was a good woman; looked after him, took care of all his needs and was patient with his ways. She passed away just after Thanksgiving. Being lonely he decided to head into the city for a little companionship. He loaded a few provisions in his truck and made his way down the hill to Phoenix. There he was making new acquaintances in a tavern when he was invited to a woman’s room. He went. No sooner that the door closed behind him than he was struck from behind, robbed of his wallet and keys, his coat and his boots, and most regrettably, his wedding ring. He knew he didn’t like city people and had reservations about going off the hill, but loneliness got the better of him and ultimately clouded his judgment. So we rode along for a long while, telling me stories a miner tells until we came to the crossroads where I continue on the 93 and he goes up the hill on 89. Only he had no way to go up the hill. I gave him all my reasons why I couldn’t go up the hill and he gave me all his reasons why I couldn’t leave him there. I had a schedule to keep in someone else’s car, which was low on gas. It was colder now than when I found him and there was no shelter here or chance for another ride. He won and we went up the hill to a little town called Yarnell where he lived in his trailer.

He opened the door and turned up the heat. We talked a little more, but he was exhausted and I was tired. He went to his room and I slept with one eye open under a pile of Indian blankets on the living room floor. In the morning he made himself coffee and we looked at pictures of the wife. He showed me his outbuildings that contained his prospecting equipment, picks and pans and such. He pulled out a neat piece of petrified rock he had cut and polished and kindly gave it me. I said had to leave, being very late already. “No no, you must take me around to the neighbors so I can tell them the story of how you saved my life.” We filled my gas tank from a 55-gallon drum fitted with a hand crank and spent the better part of the morning going through rock trails. First to one trailer, then another, where Rip would tell his tale and how he was froz’d to the pole and all. The neighbors were all suspicious of a strange car pulling on to their land and even looked at Rip with a bit of trepidation until he told them who I am. Once it was plain I wasn’t a revenuer they warmed like the late morning sun.

Soon we said our goodbyes. He must’ve in his seventies and I thought I should make my way back to see him sometime. I was rolling down the hill with my petrified pet rock sitting next to me, thinking about his life, needing both isolation and companions, but not too much of either. Even though I liked the idea, I knew I’d never make my way back. This was a secret place, hidden from time; where outcasts and fugitives burrow between the mountain rocks, where I‘d returned an thawed out old man one cold cold night.

Smokes

Cigarettes are probably the epitome of peer pressure and passage. Smoking had all the elements you needed as a kid; looking for danger, adventure and that cool, older look. Smoking had it all, it was the ticket to acceptance with the rebels who hung out on the campus perimeter who showed up for school but didn’t go in. They just sat on the corner and smoked until some authority figure noticed them. Then they blew smoke in their face. How can you beat that?

My first experience with cigarettes came in junior high. Bruce and Joey and I would meet on Brea Blvd. in the morning and walk to school. Brea was a small town then, around fifteen thousand people who had for the most part grown up together. A couple generations of small town folk who went to the same schools and worked in the local businesses and had kids who went to the same schools and played in the fields until the streetlights came on.

On our way to school we passed through the downtown, a small strip of shops that was typical of any small town, with a bakery, bowling alley, a retread shop and movie house. In front of the drug store there was a stack of newspapers. As the store wasn’t open at this wee hour, trusting people would slide their dime under the door and take a paper. We would then slide the dimes out from under the door and walk to the end of the block to Canning’s hardware store. Along with the nails and wheelbarrows, they sold candy and cigarettes. There we would pass a specially prepared note to Earl the proprietor, which would read something like, “I’m sick today. Please sell cigarettes to my son so he can bring them home to me.” Or “Please sell Bruce a pack of cigarettes for a science experiment at school” Every time we came up with a different ruse, and Mr. Canning would patiently take the note and read it carefully, apparently pondering whether or not it was credible. Of course it was written with twelve-year-old penmanship on torn notebook paper, but he’d play the part, “Sorry boys, you have to be 18 to buy cigarettes.” And we’d leave to think up a plan for the next note.

One day Joey meets us on the Blvd. and has three or four menthol cigarettes that he took from his mother. We huddled in the alley behind the hardware store to divvie them up. Bruce didn’t take one. Joey would shake the crushed green and white pack at him, “Here” he’d offer again. “I don’t want one.” he’d repeat. While being distracted by how we were going to get matches, I asked him the logical question “We’ve been trying to get cigarettes all year, and we finally get some, and you don’t want one?” I still remember his sincere matter-of-fact response as he shrugged them off, “I think it’s fun trying to get them, but I don’t want to smoke one.” It just never occurred to me that someone who was so obviously cool would not want to smoke of these babies. But I fell for the pressure and smoked. Later, whenever possible, I’d smoke on the way to high-school to get the stink of being hip on me.

Being illegal to buy cigarettes added to its charm. The best guarantee of getting a pack of cigarettes was to go to Thrifty gas station when Mike Rude was working. He was a little older and had anchored prestigious employment at the gas station behind the Tastee-Freeze. The Freeze was the hang and had tables on either side of its orange roofed a-frame construction; one side was reserved for juicers, the other side for dopers. Often times the over-amped juicers would come over and wail on the laid-back dopers. No matter what side of the Freeze you were on, cigarettes were a common bond. This is where I learned to smoke in earnest. A very wise person in her thirties was asked if it was hard for her to quit smoking. “Not as hard as it was to start” she said. The things you put yourself through under the guise of peer pressure, gasping gagging dizzying smoking. It was great.

It didn’t take long to figure out that buying cigarettes was for chumps. The really cool guys just bummed them from the guys that paid for them. Somehow it occurred to me to buy cigarettes nobody wanted, so I tried Lucky Strikes. No one wanted the unfiltered smoke, even for free. Not knowing how to smoke properly (after all, I was self taught), tobacco often got in my mouth. So I switched to Old Gold filters; another cigarette no one wanted to bum from me. Plus there were coupons.

This continued for about ten years. Then I actually quit for a time. I was working at my brother’s auto repair shop and was rolling a tire across the lot when I found myself winded from the effort. I stopped for a spell. Then Scotty offered me a Mexican cigarette, Ovalattos, a novel little bent job. I liked it and went full steam ahead after that.

Over time I became a very good smoker, sometimes having two or three lit at the same time (one or two in my mouth and one in my hand, or visa versa). Jeanne Gladden was a legendary smoker; she smoked heavy duty Pall Malls. Sometimes when she talked, if the light was just right, you could see little hints of smoke lofting from her mouth. That was my next goal, to have smoke come out of my mouth even when I wasn’t smoking. Way cool. I only smoked when I drank and I smoked three packs a day; so this goal was achieved.

One night I was editing a video for a time-share promoter and I ran out of smokes. It was late and I wanted to get the job finished before morning, so I studied on how to get cigarettes without getting up from my desk. I could call any number of people and ask them to drop by and, oh yeah, bring some smokes. I could call Johnny O at the liquor store and he’d bring me a carton when he closed up. There were a number of options and I thought, “How many favors would you call in for a smoke?” This was sort of humiliating and I thought for a moment about Joe Lee and his quitting smoking.

I don’t remember who told me the story, Brant or Jeff, but one night Joe, the Lee patriarch, stood up from the dinner table and made everyone go into the bedroom. There he took the cigarettes out his pocket, put them on the dresser and, in an authorative voice, posed the question to the pack o' nails, “Who’s stronger, me or you?” That took balls, to stand up in front of your family and declare a war of wills against tobacco that was engineered to be addictive. Man vs. science and greed. Well, old Joe won and it always impressed me. I liked that he made it a competition.

So I figured I wouldn’t smoke at all until morning when the stores open. Morning came, I had gone all night and I thought I’d just see how deep into the day I could go before loosing to tobacco. I made it the day, and the next day too. The third day I was ready to fire up again, but then I felt like that was two days of not smoking wasted, so I’ll go another. I never really set out to quit, so there was never a major psychological struggle, I was just out of cigarettes, for life.

Although it’s sometimes an effort, twenty five years later, I can look at a pack of cigarettes and answer the question, “Who’s stronger?”

Cotillion

(This was a note to a friend who encouraged me to publish my writing.)

Here's a weird note for you.

Whether working or hanging out, you always look sharp. So how'd you get to be such a snappy dresser? We both grew up in t-shirts and tankers like everyone this side of the golf course. Yet you have evolved to a higher couture while I still haven't gone shopping yet.

The issue comes to mind because I went to another funeral last week. It was for an old guy so I put on the suit and tie, well not the tie, but a clean shirt and shiny shoes. On the way there I decide to get a Big Gulp and while sauntering through the 7-11 parking lot, wearing Sears finest, I'm thinking, "I like being dressed up for a change". But as I fish for change in the side loader pockets I realize I'm not good at wearing these kind of clothes. I have no experience in it. It's a peculiar foreign feeling of being in someone else's shoes. The pants keep moving even after I've stopped and the shirt is a lot tighter than it's supposed to be. When it comes to panache, I'm pretty much a fish outta water (even talking about real clothes makes me use strange words like "panache").

As a clothes horse I'm pretty much a bob tailed nag. Not quite ready for a cotillion. Leaning toward the counter culture, my taste has never quite been at the forefront of fashion. Once Doug Storm borrowed my clothes to go on "Let's Make A Deal". His dog "Lucky" ate them and I never got them back.

My sole suit was purchased to go to the Nixon funeral in 1994. I was working security and they insisted everyone comply with their dress code, a navy blue coat, white shirt, red tie and khaki pants. So I go to Sears and try to put together a winning ensemble. I had no idea what a khaki was, and the clerk wasn't a big help, but when I got to the funeral I saw I was the only one who had complied with the code. Even though my vintage polyester feels good, though tight, I know there is more to dressing nice, more than my thrift store rack has to offer.

How did you become aware of good clothes and what made you want to wear them? You always look great, sharp without a hint of gay, and I want to know how.

Death in Venice

I’m thinking, “My wife is going to come home and find me dead, lying naked on a Venetian floor”. And word will get back to the states “Maestrejuan dead from too much milk. The one thing he did that was healthy; killed him.” Nothing is more extraordinary than leaving your body while on vacation. I started to laugh and knew I was getting better.

A couple days earlier I had this sensation in my neck. My neck seems to be my health barometer. I always feel things first in my neck. In times of stress my neck feels tense first, and when physically taxed I can feel blood surging through my neck. I noticed the neck thing decades before when I’d take LSD. The first indicator that it was “coming on” was that I could feel the walls of my throat like a peristaltic cylinder. My acid intake was high and my neck had that hollow feeling a lot of the time.

Twenty years ago I had this pain in the base of my mouth and my neck got solid on the side like a flexed muscle and there was an awful taste like poison. A friend who was a new doctor suggested it was Aids or cancer but I knew it was neither; I wasn’t the type. Not being a doctor, I concluded it was wisdom teeth coming in, and the blood or puss or something was causing the irritation and taste. It went away for a full ten years and then came back for a few hours, only to go dormant for another decade. A few days ago it returned with a vengeance. This time my neck had swelled and produced a little golf ball sized lump at the base of my jaw.

Deborah and I had taken an apartment in Venice and everything was un-familiar there, which is the point of foreign travel, I guess. But the one domestic thing I missed was a good old-fashioned glass of American milk. Ever since I was young I drank a lot of milk. In high school kids said I would turn into a cow if I didn’t slow down. Later, as I got deeper and deeper into alcoholism, I would imagine the milk lined my stomach wall and helped keep the booze from eating away my guts. I knew this vitamin-enriched nectar was my last connection to anything nutritious; if not my only hope of salvation. It was my symbol of health. I drew power from it like Sampson drew strength from his hair. Italy had shops where you could buy “drinking milk” but it was the high-test, high-fat thick milk and I was used to non-fat back home.

Now this goiter in my neck had grown to an unprecedented tennis ball size and had cut off my ability to swallow. Then it took my ability to breathe normally and I was semi-conscious for a miserable day. Then one day Deb went out with friends, with my blessings, and I stayed behind in the flat to rest and recuperate.

They had left while I slept and had conscientiously locked the door for, I guess, my safety. When I woke, I found I was locked in with no chance for escape. I thought about tying the sheets together and shinnying down the four floors to the narrow street below. I thought about a lot of things, and drew a hot bath.

I remembered that years ago I’d gone to get my wisdom teeth pulled and was surprised to find later that only two were gone, two others were still there and caused me some intermittent pain as they went through their growth spurts; but this was ridiculous. Lying in the bath and unable to swallow, breathing shallow through my nose and unable to go out for help, I couldn’t help but thinking this might be it.

In the bath, physically drained and unable to swallow for days, a mighty thirst had developed. If I put some water in my mouth it might just sort of trickle down, slide through some unfelt opening and at least minimally hydrate me. So I pulled my weak self from the bath and gingerly made my way around the hall and onto the linoleum kitchen floor for a glass of water.

As I neared the sink I felt my wet feet slide out from under and suddenly my forehead slammed into the sink. In a reflex jerk I snapped my head back smashing my cranium up into the kitchen cabinet above the faucet. This must’ve looked like some kind of slapstick comedy dance and may have knocked me out for a bit. But the fore and aft head banging definitely put me on the floor, bent and feeble, and I’m thinking, “my wife is going to come home and find me dead, lying naked on the kitchen floor”.

I started laughing at my sorry state and lay there, slowly gathering energy, slowly taking a painful swallow of spit. In no time I was on my feet and cheerily functioning in my normal healthy state. Apparently I had knocked my head hard enough to put my teeth in a better position to displace the poison or whatever was going on in my jaw. Whatever happened in the concussion, it seemed to have cured me.

Eventually everyone came home and all was fine. For the next week I drank a lot of milk, hoping it’s vitamins would rebuild my strength quickly. It was like nothing had ever happened, and then came a recurrence even more severe than before. I was ready for professional help, and we were flying home soon. I’d wait it out and see a doctor I was familiar with.

Arriving at the clinic I found the doctor I liked was gone so they scooted me off to some other guy. In this strange doctor’s office I chose the fewest words possible to explain my wisdom teeth poison theory and he listened earnestly. He was old and kept looking at me with suspicion, like I was faking this and he was on hidden camera, trying to catch him in some dubious act. He asked if I would mind going to an “ear, nose and throat” specialist and I nodded in the affirmative. See a guy who knows about throats? You bet. There the young Asian doctor seemed to have been briefed on my condition and recognized the problem right away. He reached in and squeezed my goiter with authority. “You have a blockage of the saliva gland. Probably a calcium deposit, like a kidney stone.” He gave it a steroid shot, another good squeeze and a prescription for lemonade. “Four eight ounce glasses a day, the acid will break down the calcium and it’ll be fine. Drink it forever.”

Although a possible cure, that sentence was worse than a jail sentence. Overnight I was to go from high alkaline intake to high acid intake. I assumed the lifetime milk overdose had caused the calcium build up and I knew I had to surrender my only link to any form of nutrition. Doctor Delilah had cut my hair and I felt limp knowing there was no more practical source for healthy intake left in my limited diet.

For two sorry years I went without as much as a sip of milk… then I had to go see the doctor for something else, maybe just a check-up, and I told him the story. He agreed with everything that had been diagnosed and prescribed, but disagreed with my conclusion about milk causing it. “Your body assimilates the calcium from milk a different way than it produces the calcium that caused the blockage, drink as much low-fat milk as you want.” Well okay! I knew I liked this doctor better that any other. So I’m back to thinking I’m healthy and therefore I am healthy.

But when I look back at the rag-doll head banging in Venice, I can’t help but think about all the things that had to fall into place for me to hit my head properly to clear the blockage (that I didn’t even know I had). On some level there was a diagnosis and simple remedy bestowed on me. With no conscious effort I had to get the floor wet and there had to be some level of awareness of the cabinetry layout so I’d bang my head properly. I mean when you get down to actual mortality, there’s a lot in play on all sorts of unseen levels.

Some people get glimpses of these powers through their faith, others through drugs, meditation or other means that seem to strip away the immediate limitations that are all around us; things like being confined to our bodies or to the gravity laden earth. Ancestral people used rituals and intoxicants to disorient their perception of the world around them. Modern people may perform their ceremonies in churches and get their hallucinogens on the street; both seem to seek a peek at some world other than this one.

You think about this stuff when you’re wet and naked and helpless in a foreign land. These are the moments you live for. When I was a kid I loved being in Europe, every few hours you had to change your money, speak a different language and order from a different selection of beverages. Everything you learned in one country flew out the train window when you arrived in the next country. This constant disorientation was the lure of international travel. In these homogenized days almost everyone speaks English, everyone uses the same boring Euro-dollar and in even the most remote villages everyone wears Dockers and Nikes and talks on cell phones.

So this physical malady was the perfect way to get the exhilaration of being in a foreign place. Nothing is more extraordinary than leaving your body while on vacation.

Central Casting

In many ways getting old is like getting rich. It doesn’t change you, just exaggerates what you already are. I’m already deficient in face recognition. I used to notice it in the movies. If there were two or more actresses with similar hairstyle or color, I was never sure which character was which. Now it’s crossed gender lines and I can’t tell anyone who looks similar in the movies, like they all come from central casting. Maybe that’s why I don’t like “period” movies, ones that are set in a different time or place, where the costumes are accurate to the era, but confusingly the same style.

We try to go to the movies once a week. Further, we try to see small movies, documentaries and foreign flicks, movies that are experimental or have a limited appeal. Generally, if I’ve heard of the star, I look for another movie. Of course there’s the odd times when we see movies with friends, that’s the time for mainstream cinema.

So we went to see Amelia. It was okay, it looks like they spent a lot of money on pretty scenes, but there was no heart. The next week we saw the Men Who Stare At Goats. It was funny and I liked the dialog. On the way home Deb is telling me that she liked Ewan McGregor’s role in Amelia, but didn’t think the guy he played in Goats helped the movie any. I didn’t realize he was in both movies. So I ask, “Who’d he play in Amelia?” “He played the boyfriend” I drew a blank. “The guy she had an affair with and they flew around together…” I was a bit embarrassed, but I had no idea who she was talking about. When I got home I Googled stills from the movie and couldn’t pick him out or figure out who he was in the movie. There was one scene I remembered where he was prominent, but I couldn’t distinguish him from one still to the next. This isn’t good for his career or mine, after all, I paint portraits.

So I’m thinking about this latest affliction and I remember years ago I had taken a young lady to dinner. I didn’t date a lot and certainly had no polish in this activity, but when I returned from a bathroom visit, I had no idea which table to return to, no one looked familiar. So I made the rounds, saying “Hey, how you doin’” to every table, “Everything goin’ good tonight? Alright”, until I got to a table where a young lady says, “Gee, you’re a gregarious one.” So I figured that was my table and finished up the date quickly so I could get back to the bar. Maybe back then my obsession with “disorienting the senses” played a role in the homogenization of strangers, but I haven’t had a drink in almost eighteen years and yet people still look strikingly unfamiliar.

This might play a part in my sad attempts at name recognition. Maybe I don’t remember people’s names because I’ve never seen their faces before. None of this speaks well for my entertaining skills. I’m self conscious about it; it’s an obvious shortcoming. I rarely introduce people to Deb because I often don’t have a clue as to who they are. I get as far as, “this is the guy from…wherever,” but she’s on her own getting the name. So they shake hands and lean in to each other with anticipation of the next logical word… ”Hank” he blurts out. With great relief I‘ll interject, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you two had met, this is Hank…” and I think no one notices; dodged another bullet. But this cute little mis-cue is turning into my self-identity. I’m the guy who knows everybody and no one at the same time. I’m the new Mr. Magoo who may as well be blind except that I paint portraits. I may see your every pore and each stray hair in your brow, but apparently, unless you have a nametag, I’ll just deliver the painting to central casting.

The Day I Got Old

Saturday October 17th, 2009 was the day I got old. I was really fifty-five years, three months and a couple days, but up until that day I was still a spring chicken in my demented mind, free of aches and pains, able to leap tall buildings, stop speeding bullets…

So Saturdays are workdays around the house and this one was typical. My duty was to run speaker wires throughout the house so I could listen to my Hendrix LPs from any room any time. Our house is on a raised foundation, stem wall; pre-1933 Long Beach earthquake, unsecured construction. I’ve been under the house many times for different reasons, plumbing, strapping the floor joists to the foundation, general maintenance junk. I always kind of like being down there, it’s an adventure. I pretend I’m Kirby or someone from the TV show Combat! and Sgt. Saunders has sent me down there to wire up a bomb or tap into the kraut’s communication system. Always something noble and important to convince me that dragging my ass through the dirt and cobwebs and rat crap is something that is for the betterment of man.

I haven’t been down there for some time and the last year at work I’ve been pretty complacent physically, a lot of sitting at a desk and not a lot of exercise. I knew I’d added some tonnage recently, my once-a-year funeral clothes were really tight and on the occasion when I’d go past a reflection I was always amused at the fun-house mirror effect but didn’t recognize who was looking back at me… but you know, in my mind’s eye I could still wear the same belt I wore in high school.

Anyways, I’m getting prepped to go under the house. I’ve got on my prized Ferrari overalls and I clear the ivy away from the screen door that is the passageway to the underworld. First thing I encounter is a couple black widows. Little ones. They’re the worst kind because you know there’s a big mother lurking somewhere near, watching you clobber her kids and planning her revenge when you’re at your most vulnerable state, probably tonight while I’m trying to sleep.

I’ve got my suddenly dim flashlight and a staple gun to tack the wires up off the ground and I’ve got my orders from the Sgt., ready to go. Once under the house there is a specific route to follow. There are gas and water lines, sewer lines that go from the floor to who knows where under the soil and old duct-work from an abandoned heating system. You go over to the gas line, shinny underneath and head left, around the drains and you’re in the clear to get to the other side of the house.

For some reason I can’t get under the gas line today. I squeeze under to a point and just stop. My belly is putting such a strain on the line it’s starting to bend. “Maybe I go over the gas line and under the water lines…” I’m thinking; so I try that. That is immediately proven to be wrong so I try under again, amazed there is either so much more dirt here than last year or the pipes have drooped considerably. Now I’m trapped under the gas line. I can’t squirm left or wiggle right and the pipe is looking weak. Suddenly I picture the black widow mother licking her chops and saying, “now I’ve got him” and in a big jolt I free myself from the predicament. I’ve still got my work to do and it looks like a long way to belly crawl to the other side of the house. The flashlight is dimmer now and I have to go completely around the perimeter to avoid these damn pipes and it’s gonna take a long time and the krauts are likely to hear me bitching down there and unload their 8 mm machine guns on me and I may never get out of here.

I get to my destination, wires in tow. I left the stapler way back there so it won’t be the clean job I’d hoped. Actually it’s only a few feet away but I can’t get to it because of this new restricted clearance. I feed the wires up to Deborah, who is patiently waiting in the safety of a well lit room, and I begin my trek around the perimeter to get back to this tiny little passage in the concrete wall that I’ll never get through.

Well I do get out, filthy and paranoid and looking for fang bites on my bare neck and I can’t shake this creepy feeling that being under the house isn’t as idyllic as it used to be and I’m not as nimble or fast thinking as my dull mind perceives it is and, jeez, I must be getting old. Fat and old. Maybe that’s why all the grey hair and skin that’s starting to look like crepe paper. Then I tripped going up the back step to the kitchen, fell and skinned my shin. Although it didn’t hurt, I was sure I must’ve broke my hip. I noticed I get winded easier than I used to and there’s still that old fart looking at me in the kitchen window reflection.

The following Monday I was to jury an art exhibit. There were eighty entries and my job was to whittle the selection down to a reasonable number that the gallery could comfortably hang, maybe forty of fifty, and pick seven award winners. This was a task well suited to my new elderly status, a job where years of exposure to paintings and considerable experience in passing judgment on others would come in handy. I weeded out the crappy, no-effort paintings right away and started on the failed attempts next, followed by the clueless and the downright misled artists who are in need of counseling. 

        The next week doesn’t offer anything to counter my new status as an old guy. Then Saturday at the gallery I give a little speech and hand out the awards for the exemplary entries. Tim the M.C. had made an impromptu dais for me out of a little step ladder and as I ambled up there, a good twenty inches above all these bright shiny faces with youthful eyes full of hope I realized most of them are over forty and I’m the old guy, some sort of sage on top of a hill to bestow trinkets on the plebeians. This perked me up. Now I’m back to my rightful place above the masses, doing something noble and important, convincing me that dragging my ass through life’s dirt and cobwebs and rat crap may have been something that is for the betterment of man.