songs for broken hearts, no.7

This is your Valentine's Day edition of SFBH. Valentine's Day is my favorite holiday, btw...

Shoot out the Lights is a great break-up album. It's up there with Rumours. ...In this clip, Linda's replacement is very cute and has a foxy mullet...

songs for broken hearts, no.6

In this lovely Old Grey Whistle Test clip, the late John Martyn's voice shakes with the pain of unrequited love, but the performance still has a wonderfully loose, almost scat-like feel to it. He mumbles some of the most intense lines, making you feel like your privy to his tortured ruminations. His music is just my thing in so many ways. He was a lover, a wounded spirit, a survivor, and a healer...

songs for broken hearts, no.2

Today's edition of SFBH features a lovely bit of pathos from the late Tim Buckley. This one's hard for me to listen to right now, to tell you the truth, given where my head and heart are at, especially when he sings, 'will you ever remember me?' ...Several women on separate occasions have told me that Tim Buckley is the best looking man they've ever seen. And it's hard to disagree. ...My dad had Goodbye and Hello and Happy/Sad in his record collection when I was a kid. Listening to those albums now, it's difficult to figure out how and why I took to them, only because the music is not very kid-friendly, what with its hippy-jazzy arrangements and free-form time signatures. I guess it must've been that they were 'rock' records and seemed like gold nuggets in the midst of all the dreadful Broadway musicals and Nelson Riddleish stuff that dominated the landscape. But also, every once in awhile ‘ol Tim pulled out a more accessible number, something in a folk-pop vein, like 'Once I Was', and those were the ones I liked best, and I still do today. There’s also the matter of that voice of his. Good god, his singing still melts me! It makes all my deeply rooted cynicism evaporate, for a little while anyway, and feels like the kind hand of a grownup who helps you find your mom after you’ve lost her in a crowded subway station. ...Nobody conveys the anguish of lost love quite like Tim Buckley. Yet tonight I noticed that when he reaches for certain notes and holds them in the special way that he does, my sadness turned to something different, something hopeful, and I began to think about falling for someone new all over again...

songs for broken hearts, no.1

Tonight at the gym I had this idea that I would post one sad love song on my blog every day until I don't feel like shit anymore. I hope I'm not still posting them this time next year. Tonight's inaugural selection is one of my favorites from the late Elliot Smith. When I lived in Los Feliz, he rented a bungalow next door to me that looked like something out of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Occasionally I could hear him playing the piano, and I would often see him at the Mayfair market on Hyperion Boulevard. I never said anything when I saw him because it's lame to do that. In any case, he did not have an especially approachable demeanor and usually looked depressed and lonely. The same vibe definitely comes across in his music, but its grievousness has a warmth and kindness to it that takes you in makes you feel that everything's gonna be ok. ...As it turns out, he was very troubled and struggled with drugs and alcoholism before finally taking his own life in a most gruesome manner in 2003. What a shame. His music touches something deep down inside me, especially at times like these...

canyon fodder, chapter 4

Jefferson White inherited his father’s high cheekbones and his mother’s dark-blue eyes. The boy’s light-brown hair split the difference between his two parents, taking what was beautiful and handsome from each. But as a student at Dwyer Middle School, his nice looks remained hidden underneath his detachment from his peers, which was manifested in his tendency to stare off into the middle distance and remain sealed inside his imagination, where he kept company with cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, and the Man from Mars.

On brilliantly sunny afternoons, tempered by cool ocean breezes, the bell rang at school and Clara White picked up Jefferson out front in a turquoise and chrome Chevy Kingswood Wagon with fins. The domineering automobile moved slowly through sand-swept streets, past pastel colored bungalows and tanned pedestrians heading down to the beach for an afternoon in paradise. Jefferson sat on the passenger side next to Clara, who wore dark black sunglasses as she steered the car in a Valium induced stupor, alongside silver Ford Fairlanes, blue Continentals with suicide doors, red Studebakers with whitewall tires… Mother and son cruised down Main Street, past the Huntington Beach Post Office, Grogan’s Hardware Store, Len’s Barbershop, Alpha-Beta Grocery and, at the intersection of Main and PCH, Jack’s Surfboards. Jefferson didn’t mind that his mother’s questions never strayed much from the most rudimentary small talk: How was your day at school? Do you have a lot of homework? Did you get enough to eat for lunch?… The mundane predictability of their daily after-school back and forth gave Jefferson’s life at least a tiny semblance of stability and diverted attention from painful problems he wanted to avoid discussing, mostly because even then he understood that his mother lacked the capacity to deal with them.

Clara always parked just outside the White residence, painted light green with white trim framing the windows. Small houses and more recent two-story apartment structures dotted the palm-lined neighborhood. Shortly after evening arrived, the family’s second car, a dark blue El Dorado, would pull into the driveway, very much akin to the ominous winds preceding a violent electrical storm. Alone in his bedroom upstairs, Jefferson would brace himself for yet another drunken beating at the hands of his father.

Jefferson’s Uncle Ray, Clara’s brother, worked as a librarian at the San Diego Public Library. Raymond was tall and thin with deep brown eyes and a thick head of light-brown hair that he combed into a neat part. His gentle conversational style conveyed a wistful thoughtfulness and was by no means extravagantly effeminate. Even still, his subtly lisped speech, habitually quick gait, and the meticulousness with which he dressed in fitted shirts and slacks, left little doubt about his ‘secret’ life, at least among grown ups.

John White took cruel pleasure in prying the closet door open. “That brother of yours is some kinda sissy,” he would say to Clara. Liquor, of course, amplified the brazenness of John’s sadism. At his own wedding reception he got progressively soused and at one point he pulled Raymond aside. “Ray, now that you’re my brother-in-law and all,” John slurred, “I’m gonna have to insist that you start acting like a man.” He then slapped Raymond on the face – not all that hard, but hard enough to leave a little sting – and walked away.

Raymond loved his sister tenderly, and the thought of her living her life and starting a family with such a horrid man broke his heart. But he did not attempt to talk Clara out of the marriage, nor did he put up much resistance in the face of John’s continual stream of abusive remarks in the years that followed. Raymond sensed that a confrontation would be futile and dangerous, not only to himself but also to his sister. So he didn’t say or do much of anything, swallowing his anger and turning away each time. But then everything changed on a Saturday in 1962.

On a northbound drive that Saturday morning, en route to visiting a friend up in L.A., Raymond decided to make an impromptu visit to his sister’s house. He turned off the highway at Huntington Beach and pulled up in front of the White residence at 7th and Acacia. No car stood in the driveway, but the garage door remained open. Raymond received no answer when he rang the front door bell. He walked to the back of the garage and entered the house through the door he knew was kept unlocked next to the washer and dryer.

“Hello? Anyone home?”

He walked through the kitchen and into the living room. John's war medal stood on the mantle piece in a purple velvet display case, along with several framed photos: A portrait of John looking solemn in military fatigues; a picture of John and Clara on their wedding night, each wearing saccharine smiles; and a photo of Jefferson at five years old, flanked by his parents and already possessing his unmistakably dreamy grin, one that placed his thoughts in another galaxy, where shooting stars stream across the sky every night but never lose their power to inspire wonder… Raymond wanted to see his nephew more often during those early years, but doing so would have meant dealing with John on a regular basis, which was something Raymond felt he could not tolerate. He sighed sadly in front of the photos, and then heard a faint noise from upstairs.

“Hello?” he called out. “Clara?” He walked slowly up the stairs. The dull thudding sounds became louder.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

“Hello? Anyone home? It’s me, Raymond.” At the top of the stairs, he heard a muffled plea.


“Help.” Boom. Boom. Boom.

The sound came from John and Clara’s bedroom. Raymond walked through the bedroom door.

"Hello?"

“I'm locked in here.”

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Raymond walked cautiously toward the closet door.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

“Who’s in there?”

“It’s me, Jefferson.”

Raymond unlocked the door and opened it. He gasped and covered his mouth with his hand. Jefferson sat in the corner of the closet, his pants and t-shirt ripped from some kind of struggle. A puffy black welt stood out under the twelve-year-old's eye, dried blood was caked under his nose, and a large gash had opened on his forehead.

Once Raymond got past the initial shock, he questioned Jefferson about what had happened as he cleaned and dressed the boy's cuts and bruises in the bathroom. At first the boy was cagey. He gauged his comfort level with Raymond, whom he didn’t know very well, and tested Raymond’s intelligence and the genuineness of his interest. Jefferson told his uncle that he had locked himself in the closet and attempted to break free, seriously injuring himself.

Raymond’s quiet incredulity contained an empathy that made Jefferson feel safe and in the company of a confidant. Raymond smiled warmly as he gently applied a cold wash cloth to the gash on Jefferson’s forehead, and the two of them chuckled softly at the absurdity of Jefferson’s fabrication.

“Come come now, Jefferson,” Raymond said. “You can tell me. It’s quite all right.”

Then there was a momentary pause before Jefferson told his uncle the story in an eerily matter-of-fact tone.

“I was watchin’ Mr. Ed on T.V.,” Jefferson said. “Wilbur couldn’t make Ed talk to the policeman. I was laughin’ my head off.”

Raymond wanted to get to the crux of the matter quickly, but he forced himself not to rush the boy.

“I didn’t know my dad was watchin’, too,” Jefferson continued. “Mom was out shopping, and I thought my dad was golfin’ or something. But he was standing right behind me. I was on the couch. I wouldn’t laugh if I knew he was there.”

Raymond’s heart pounded as he listened to the story, but he was careful not to make the boy feel self-conscious, putting up a relaxed facade as he rinsed off a nasty looking cut on the side of Jefferson’s eye.

“My dad gets real mad when I laugh,” Jefferson said. “I don’t know why, but he does. So he hears me crackin’ up and he surprises me from behind. He says, ‘what’s so funny about a talking horse?’ He was real mad.”

“Your father became angry with you because you were laughing at a television program?” Raymond asked.

“Yeah.”

Raymond put the washcloth down on the sink, sat on the side wall of the bathtub, and couldn’t help now but give Jefferson a morose frown. “Go ahead,” he said. “What happened next?”

“He pulls me up off the couch by my t-shirt,” Jefferson said. “He says, ‘what’s so funny, you dimwit? What’s so funny?’ He’s yellin’ it. Then he slaps me three times, real hard. He throws me—“

“All right, Jefferson,” Raymond said abruptly, holding his hand up out in front of him. “That’s enough.” He looked down at the checkered bathroom floor and massaged his eyelids between the thumb and index finger of his left hand. “How did you end up in the closet?”

"My dad made me go in there. He locked the door and told me I could think about how stupid I am for a while. Thing is, I was happy to go in there ‘cause at least he couldn’t hit me. Then I heard him go off in his car, and I wanted to get out.”

Jefferson changed into new clothes, and then sat with Raymond in the kitchen sipping ice tea. Clara’s house keys jingled from the front entrance to the house. She walked down the hall and into the kitchen. Raymond detected her blunted senses right away.

“Hi mom,” Jefferson said.


“Raymond,” Clara said dizzily, seemingly not hearing her son. “What’re you…here?” She placed the groceries down on the kitchen counter and removed her sunglasses, revealing glassed-over blue eyes. “I’ll fix you something to eat. Want a sandwich?”

“Thank you, Clara. I’m not hungry.”

Clara removed her royal blue suit jacket and matching silk scarf. She stumbled a bit as she went to hang the jacket in a closet just outside the kitchen, but she looked well-put-together in a blue skirt and ivory-colored, semi-diaphanous shirt with a gold-colored broach.

“Jefferson,” she said, “you’ve got tape on your forehead. And nose."

Jefferson looked awkwardly towards his uncle, unsure of himself.

“Can I have a word with you?” Raymond asked Clara. “Jefferson, why don’t you go watch television. He can bring his drink into the living room, right?” Jefferson obediently left the kitchen. Then Raymond lowered his voice but spoke with urgent indignation. “Clara, what in the name of heaven is happening in this house?”

“What? Nothing. What is it?”

Her head tottered clumsily on her neck, and her eyes remained closed for several seconds each time she blinked. Raymond stared at her, shaking his head.

“You’re at those pills again. I thought we agreed there'd be no more of that."

“I…I didn’t take any pills—“

“Clara! Don't speak to me like I’m some kind of fool. It’s insulting. You can barely stand up straight. You can’t even speak properly.”

Even through her hazy perceptions, Clara sensed the pointlessness of evasion. But she tried all the same, moving about the kitchen with a false look of preoccupation on her face as she opened and closed cabinets for no reason.

“Don’t you care about your son?” Raymond said plaintively after a few moments of the charade. “I stopped in here, just to say hello, and just by chance, Clara, I find your son locked in the closet and beaten senseless.”

“Raymond, don’t—“

“This is insanity!”

Unable to keep contained any longer, Clara involuntarily dropped two cans of Campbell’s soup on the floor before she was able to put them in the pantry. She covered her face with her hands as her shoulders heaved up and down against the rhythm of quiet sobs.

“Clara,” Raymond said, softening his voice. “Clara, I’m sorry.” He approached her and put his hands gently on her shoulders. “It’s just unsettling.. You can imagine how I… But I shouldn’t--.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Clara whimpered. “John gets so angry. So drunk. He doesn't mean anything by it. He's under a lot of pressure at work.”

Raymond looked down at her sternly: “That’s no excuse for any of this, Clara."

“So what do you suggest, Raymond?” An angry edge now competing with her hopelessness. “What can I do?”

“Leave him, Clara. You’ve got to take Jefferson and leave him.”

“You don’t understand.”

"Did you see Jefferson's bruises? Did you? I'm sure it's not the first time, either. I’ve seen those bruises on you too, Clara. I’m more observant than you think."

"You don't understand."

“No, I do understand. I see the situation quite clearly. You’ll get a divorce. There's no other way.”

“Ray, do you know what John would do if—“

“I’ll be there to protect you, Clara.”

“No! You don't know what you're dealing with. He’ll kill you.”


Fearing that John would return home at any moment, Clara insisted Raymond leave the house. The desperately beseeching expression on her face overpowered her sedation and left him with no choice but to go. As he drove back to the highway, passing a dark blue El Dorado coming from the other direction on 7th Street, he felt a visceral heaviness in his stomach. Clara’s drug induced paralysis filled him with anger and sadness. Her words – the half-hearted denials, the flimsy rationalizations – reverberated nightmarishly in Raymond’s ears. He wiped tears from his eyes and then something terrible occurred to him, against which he could muster no contravening evidence: Clara was beyond saving.

But Jefferson… Jefferson was still young enough, unformed enough, to be rescued. Instead of continuing on up to L.A., Raymond drove back to his apartment in the Pacific Beach section of San Diego, his head awash with ideas in the process of formation. Behind the wheel of his car, Raymond shook his head to himself as the image of the boy, beaten and battered, appeared in his mind's eye and blended with the white line running down the middle of the highway.

Raymond fixed himself a small nip of sherry in his apartment on the second floor of a Mediterranean-style building, two blocks from the beach. He paced from the brightly toned kitchen, warm and alive in yellow and white, to the dark, lugubrious dining and living room area. If he reported John to the police, they would likely look no further than the surface appearances and simply see a husband, a wife, and their son, living in a normal suburban home. If on the off chance the authorities were to make inquiries into John’s behavior, Clara and Jefferson’s safety would be further compromised. So what then? Kidnap the boy? Kidnap his sister’s child? No. Too many things could go wrong. No ready-made answer presented itself. And yet, Raymond felt a powerful compulsion pushing him forward towards a course of action he could not yet recognize.
He walked back and forth, from one side of the neat and nondescript living room to the other, between the brown cloth couch and the television. He picked up a leather-bound copy of The Leopard off a small table in the corner of the room and opened it to the bookmark, about three-quarters of the way through the novel. Just as quickly, he closed the book, put it down, walked into the bathroom, and turned on the light. His gaunt face stared back at him from the mirror, and he neatened his hair using a thin black comb he kept in a drawer under the sink. In the bedroom, he raised the window shade and looked out at the ocean, two palm-lined blocks in the distance. Dusk approached with its golden-orange luster, coasting back of a warm, whispery breeze. Champagne-like waves washed ashore in all their mysterious splendor. Peering down at the boardwalk, Raymond spotted a young man and woman walking arm-in arm. Ah, to be normal. If only…





Jefferson’s plight presented Raymond with a chance to feed paternal longings that would otherwise remain starved. And there was something different about Jefferson. His calm in the face of crisis; the adaptive emotional void into which the horrors of his daily life seemed to disappear. The boy possessed a strange intuitive quality, something appealing but not fully defined at this point…

Raymond retraced his steps down the short hallway in his apartment, back into the living room, through the dining area, and into the kitchen. Then the idea came to him, though it was only an impulse, not yet fully informed by a coherent line of reasoning. He pulled a telephone book out from the kitchen drawer.

Michael’s Music Shoppe was open for a few hours on Sundays. The bells attached to the front door of the store jingled Raymond's arrival, but only a black cat and a German Shepherd seemed to be minding the store, and they were both fast asleep on the dingy brown carpet. Age-old dust filled Raymond’s nose and he sneezed as daintily as he could, blowing his nose into a hanky that he produced from the inside pocket of his suit coat. The shop was musty and poorly lit. Musical instruments lined the dirty walls – a tenor saxophone, $8; a clarinet, $6; a viola, $12; a xylophone, $5; a guitar, $10, including the case…

“Ain’t Misbehavin’” began to chime from a piano in a distant corner of the shop. The cat awoke and hopped up on the counter, using the cash register as a brace to help her stretch her back. The dog remained conked out on the floor. Raymond wandered through a dark aisle of sheet music, and then another aisle of accessories – pics, reeds, sticks, strings… The music came from a second, smaller room in the back of the shop. Raymond poked his head through the door and saw a little bald man seated at an upright piano against the wall, dressed with casual elegance in a blue shirt and grey waistcoat. The man’s eyes were closed in concentration, and his grey trousers moved up and down as he tapped his feet on the ground in rhythm to the music he played. Sensing another presence in the room, he opened his eyes, and when he saw Raymond standing in the doorway, he abruptly stopped playing.

“Oh, hi there,” the man said in a high, elfin voice. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Hello,” Raymond said. “You play very well.”

“Oh, jeez. How can I help ‘ya?”

“I’d like to buy a guitar for my nephew. The one up front on the wall looks just right.”

“Let’s have a looksee.”

Raymond followed the little man back through the aisles to the front of the shop.

“Yes indeed,” the little man said, fetching a small stepladder from behind the counter and then climbing it in order to reach the guitar on the wall. “This is a nice one. I bought it from an old jazz player, Len Valentine. Shame about old Lenny. Down on his luck.” He grabbed the guitar off the wall. The dog on the floor awoke and let out a few friendly barks. Raymond didn’t care for dogs and turned away. From atop the step ladder, the little man held the guitar and played a few quick scales on it. “Did you say the guitar is for your nephew?” he asked.

“Yes. A present.”

“I see. How old is he?”

“He’s twelve.”

“Oh. Well, see, this here is a very good instrument, but I think the action will be a little high for such a young ‘fella, 'specially if he's just gettin' started.”


"The action?”

“That just means it’ll be harder for him to press the strings. Wait here.” The little man disappeared momentarily down an aisle and returned with a second guitar. “This one here’ll be much easier on the boy’s fingers,” he said. The guitar was a handsome looking Epiphone with pearl colored tuning knobs. “I can sell this one to ‘ya for $8, with the case included.”

“I’ll take it,” Raymond said.

"That was easy. I need more customers like you, mister.” The little man chuckled and Raymond briefly smiled. “So the boy really likes music, huh?”

“I’m not sure just yet. He needs a hobby, something to keep him out of trouble.”

“Well, music is good for makin’ you forget your troubles. That’s what I always say.”

Raymond paid for the guitar and carried it out the door and into the blinding San Diego sunlight. He walked to Island Avenue, where his car was parked, but before driving home he ducked briefly into a second-hand book shop just across the street from the old Horton Grand Hotel.
Clara was at the pharmacy and John was on the golf course when Raymond returned to their house in his two-door, red Plymouth Belvedere, later that day. Jefferson still wore a band aid on his forehead and medical tape on his nose when he answered the door, and in the time since Raymond last saw him the day before, the boy developed two shiners, giving him a frighteningly ghoulish look. He smiled when he saw his uncle standing at the door.

“Hi Uncle Ray!”

“How are you today, Jefferson?”

“I’m OK. I’m bored. Mom told me to stay home.” “Really. Well I have some things for you in my car.”

“For me?”

“Come. I’ll show you.”

Out in the driveway, Raymond opened the trunk to his car and pulled out the guitar case.

“A guitar!” Jefferson said joyfully. “Neato. But I don’t know how to play the guitar.”

“Of course you don’t. Not yet. But you can learn. And then you’ll never be bored.”

“Neato.”

Jefferson laid the guitar case on the ground and opened it. The guitar’s hollow body, shaded somewhere between orange and brown, was sleek and pristine. The copper strings shimmered against the guitar's brown neck in the sunlight. Jefferson took the instrument out of its case and gave it a few strums. Then he flashed a loving grin at his uncle. Raymond reached back into the trunk and pulled out two books.

“Are those for me too, Uncle Ray?”

“Yes, Jefferson.”

Raymond handed Jefferson a manual titled, The Guitar Made Easy: Learn to Play in Two Weeks.

“Thanks!”

"And I think you’ll enjoy reading this, too,” Raymond said, handing Jefferson the other book.
Jefferson read the cover of the book out loud. “A Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger. What’s it about?”

“It’s about a lot of things, but it tells the story of a boy, just a few years older than you. I think you'll like him."

For the next three weeks, Raymond's attempts to get in touch with Clara and Jefferson were thwarted. Clara either sounded drugged or seemed preoccupied and hurried on the phone, in which case she would rush Raymond off the line, telling him she was too busy to speak. When John answered the phone, he invariably sounded drunk and ill-tempered, his hostility making the word 'hello' sound like 'what do you want?', and then when he heard Raymond's voice on the other end of the line, his irritation would rise to the level of outright belligerence, and he would simply say, "Clara's not here" or "Clara can't come to the phone", before hanging up. One time, John meant to hang up on Raymond, but in his clumsy, drunken agitation he left the receiver off the hook. Through the telephone, Raymond heard another set of footsteps enter the room on the other end, and then he heard Clara's voice, faintly. "Who was that on the telephone?"

"It was that sister of yours."

"Sister?"

"Yeah, Clara. Your sister Raymond. Goddamn nance, always callin' here.”

Failing to make contact on the telephone, Raymond tried going back to Huntington Beach in person. On his first trip, no one seemed to be home and the garage door was closed, though Raymond wondered if Jefferson might be trapped and bleeding in a closet somewhere inside, and he briefly entertained the possibility of jimmying the front door open. He waited around in his car outside the house for an hour but nobody returned home. A few days later, he drove back to the house and Clara's car stood in the driveway, but John's car was also parked in the open garage, and Raymond lost his nerve, quickly turning the car around and racing back towards the highway. On the drive back to San Diego, Raymond had an uncharacteristic temper tantrum, cursing his cowardice and continually smacking the steering wheel with his open hand in anger and shame. "Damn! Damn! Damn!"

Finally, Raymond arrived at his sister’s house at a time when only her car was parked out front. Up in his bedroom, Jefferson played scales on his guitar. When he looked through the window and saw Raymond’s car pull up in front of the house, he ran down the stairs, past Clara vacuuming the living room, and out the front door.

"Uncle Ray!” Jefferson yelled, throwing his arms up in the air and waving them excitedly.

“Hello Jefferson.”

“I can play scales, and chords, and even a song from the radio.”

They walked into the house. Clara turned off the vacuum cleaner and greeted her brother.

“How are you, Clara?”

“I wish you'd call first.”

“Clara, I've tried--"

Before Raymond could finish, Clara plopped down on a couch, took her face in her hands, and cried.

“Ma, don’t cry,” Jefferson said.

Clara whimpered through the tears. “Take Jefferson upstairs, Raymond. Please.”

Raymond stood over his sister for a moment and felt himself pulled from two sides. He could take Clara in his arms and tell her everything would be OK, which would be a lie, told for the purpose of calming and comforting her for now, or he could attend to Jefferson and help the boy begin to find a diversion from his disaster of a family. He glanced at Jefferson and saw the boy glancing expressionlessly at his mother, a broken woman. Clara waved Raymond away and Raymond put his hand on Jefferson’s shoulder. As Raymond and Jefferson walked upstairs, Raymond glanced back over his shoulder towards his sister, still sitting on the couch, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief.

"Look what I got at the library,“ Jefferson said when they entered his bedroom. He held up a copy of Salinger’s Nine Stories.

Remarkable! Raymond thought to himself. The boy seemed unmoved by what had just transpired downstairs. “Ah, yes,” Raymond said, fending off the temptation to talk to Jefferson questions about his mother. “So you like Catcher in the Rye.”

“Yeah. I already read it twice.”

“Twice! My goodness.”

“It’s one of those books you can’t put down, and you’re sad when it’s over ‘cause you just want it to go on forever. You know what I mean, Uncle Ray?”

Raymond simply smiled at Jefferson, pleased with the boy’s enthusiasm.

“I wish I had a friend like Holden Caulfield,” Jefferson added.

The boy and his uncle looked at each other in mutual recognition. Then Jefferson’s eyes darted around his room until he spotted what he was looking for leaning against the closet door. “I love my guitar,” he said as he grabbed the instrument and then sat down on his bed with it. He had practiced quite a bit and showed his uncle that he was able to play basic chord progressions. “And watch this Uncle Ray,” he said, starting to play a song. His tempo was a little uneven and too slow, but there was a look of nascent passion on his face as he sang the words.

I’m the type of guy, likes to roam around
Never in one place, I roam from town to town
When I find myself, fallin for some girl
I hop into that car ‘o mine, ride around the world
cause I’m a wanderer, a wanderer…

canyon fodder, chapter 3

Jerry Wachs earned his living running numbers, making collections, and doing other sleazy odds ‘n ends for Sidney Gold’s crime gang, based out of Gardena. Jerry met Mona Green in 1946 at the Turban Room, an after-hours joint on Central Avenue. Mona sold train tickets at Union Station. The two of them enjoyed each other’s company for a few months, going to clubs, seeing a few pictures, and even driving several times out to a secluded beach up near the Ventura County line for pleasant little picnics.

Mona didn’t really care much when Jerry eventually wanted to end their relationship. By that time, he bored her as much as she bored him. But five weeks later, after it seemed like they were comfortably far off and receding in each other's rear view mirrors, Mona tracked Jerry down at the Turban Room and told him she was late.

“It can’t be mine,” Jerry said to Mona. “You’ve banged a lot of guys, I bet. Haven’t you?”

“I haven’t been with anyone else, Jerry. It’s yours.”

“Can’t be. I always pulled out.”

“It’s yours, Jerry”

Cursing his bad luck, Jerry asked around and found out it would cost $500 to make the thing go away. He didn’t have that kind of scratch handy. Mona didn’t either. Jerry’s only option was to go to Sid Gold, the guy people saw when there was no one else to go to.

“First of all, Wachs,” Sid said, “the going rate is 25 percent a week, and it compounds. You’d be working it off for a good long time. That’s the first thing.”

The two men sat in a red Naugahyde booth in back of the Sit ‘n Sip on Western Avenue, where Sid conducted almost all his business. A glassy nervousness clouded Jerry’s hazel eyes as he groveled for the abortion money. He schvitzed under his tan sport coat, ran his hand repeatedly through his sandy colored hair, and had a hankering to calm his nerves with a cigarette, though he sensed it would be disrespectful to light up a smoke unless Sid did so first.

Two toughs in sharkskin suits guarded the front door of the joint and two more were stationed outside. Every 20 minutes or so, Niggy Feldman, the joint’s proprietor, came by the booth to refill Sid’s coffee cup. “Thanks, Nig,” Sid would say each time.

“Look Sid,” Jerry said, “I’ll work it off. I got no other choice.”

“Sure you do, Wachs. You can do the proper thing.”

“I don’t have time for a kid, Sid.”

“That’s something you shoulda thought of before you took your shvontz outta your pants.”

One of the toughs from outside approached the booth and whispered into Sid’s ear. Sid took in the information. His green eyes offered a distant glimpse of how handsome he was as a younger man. With slicked back silver hair, he still looked pretty good at 57, in his blue shirt and loosened yellow tie.

“Screw that fat fuck,” Sid said angrily to the messenger. “If Mickey Cohen wants me to keep the junk south of Jefferson, that’s just too fuckin’ bad. I’m not limiting it to the schwartzes no more.”

The messenger walked away quickly.

“Now where were we, Wachs?”

“I need five yards.”

“Right. You knocked up some floozie, and now you’re fucked.” Sid leaned back in the booth and glanced up thoughtfully at the ceiling before returning his gaze to Jerry. “Answer me this, Wachs. Why should the kid growing inside the girl’s stomach pay the price because you were irresponsible? That don’t seem right to me. The kid might grow up to be President of General Motors.”

Six weeks later, Jerry and Mona were married downtown at City Hall, and one month after the marriage, Jerry was pinched for car theft. Mona gave birth to Zolie Leonard Wachs in May of 1947. With Jerry in stir, she rented a house on 12th and Gaffey in San Pedro. Her mother, Rose, came to the house almost every day from Boyle Heights and took care of Zolie while Mona waited tables at the Bay Breeze diner in Hawthorne.

The house at 12th and Gaffey stood among a number of lovely cottages of all different architectural styles - Mediterranean, Craftsman, ranch, California bungalow... Several were shaded by large oak trees and had fragrant, colorful flowers growing around them, either planted in gardens or just appearing wildly. The southwestern end of 12th street dropped off into a cliff, beyond which lay the vast blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Catalina was visible in the distance beyond the ships entering and exiting the harbor. To the south, Long Beach and the quaint island of Naples. To the north, the rocky cliffs of Palos Verdes.

The house Mona rented was exceptional – by far the crappiest in the neighborhood. Years later, Zolie would tell friends that he "grew up in a shack that looked like a smelly turd floating in a pool of piss.” The place was decrepit, it’s yellow and brown paint peeling, its tiny windows opaque with years of built-up filth. The dark interior smelled of mildew.

Shortly after Mona signed the rental lease, her new neighbor, an elderly Ukrainian woman, came to visit. She told Mona that the previous resident living in the house was a fireman who had hanged himself from the living room rafters after being fingered in an arson investigation.
By the time Jerry got out of Terminal Island on good behavior, 14 months after the birth of his son, prison life had already stripped him of the capacity to feel anything. “I didn’t give a shit about getting beat up in the joint,” he told an acquaintance. “The beatings make the time pass. I just didn’t wanna get fucked in the ass.” Even still, Jerry’s heart swelled the first time he saw little Zolie lying in his crib. The infant instinctively held his arms out to his papa, and something primal pierced through Jerry’s otherwise cold-blooded sensibilities, filling his soul with a love that ached.

Jerry’s sole reason for stopping by the house at 12th and Gaffey was to visit Zolie. He rarely spent the night, and when he did he slept on the living room couch. The only evidence that he was still married to Mona was the legal piece of paper that said so. Conversations between them tended to be terse and purely practical. No intuitive understanding or mirth ever slipped into their words to each other, and they stayed married for no reason other than that neither of them could be bothered to go through with the divorce proceedings.

Mona’s skinny, small breasted physique and blond hair continued to attract men, many of whom spent the night in her bed. She treated the men who came home with her as sources of immediate and fleeting pleasure, nothing more. The sounds of vigorous lovemaking often traveled through the walls into little Zolie’s room at night. At first Zolie took the sounds to mean that Papa was home, talking to Mama. But the mornings after would bring disappointment as one strange man after another emerged from Mona’s bedroom – the butcher, or a guy from down on the docks, or the mailman, or just some guy she waited on at the Bay Breeze.

Eventually Zolie stopped expecting his Papa to be there in the kitchen at breakfast.

Mona fed, clothed and washed Zolie, took him to school, and she worked at the diner everyday until she was dead tired so that they could have a roof over their heads, but she would not give Zolie the answers he needed.

“Mama, who was that man in the kitchen before school today?”

“Just a friend, Zolie. No one you need to worry about.”

A hardened, peeved expression had by now burned itself permanently into Mona’s face, forming premature lines at the corners of her green eyes.

“How come all your friends are men?” Zolie asked. “And how come they all sleep in your room at night?”

Mona smirked in a manner at once cynical and droll.

“I don’t know, Zolie,” she said. “All your friends at school are boys, aren’t they? All my friends are boys, too. No reason.”

Zolie frowned thoughtfully for several moments.

“Mama,” he finally asked, “why don’t you like Papa?”

Mona lit a cigarette. “Don’t ask me dumb questions, Zolie. You give me a headache."

Just then, The sound and vibration of footsteps from the porch made Zolie's body stiffen with excitement.

“Papa’s here! Papa’s here!”

Jerry walked through the front door of the house. “How’s my boy?” he said, grinning as he lifted Zolie up to the heavens. Zolie's legs made short, ecstatic kicks through the air. “Are ‘ya glad to see your old man, kiddo?”

“Where the hell have you been?” Mona asked Jerry.

Jerry ignored her.

“Mama, Papa’s here!”

“You know what we’re gonna do next week, kiddo?” Jerry said to Zolie. “We’re gonna build a train set, with toy choo choo trains.”

“Mama, we’re gonna build a train set, with toy choo choo trains!”

The calm in Jerry’s hazel eyes, and the invitingness of his thick, sandy blonde hair, suggested a gentle, empathic man, as opposed to one involved in daily acts of usury, extortion, robbery and violence. Two months before Zolie’s eighth birthday, Jerry sat with his son in at the counter in Fosselman’s Ice Cream Parlor. Zolie was a tubby little boy. The black cowboy hat Jerry bought for him could barely harness his curly blond hair, and he already had such bad vision that the lenses for his glasses looked like two huge magnifiers on his face.

“What flavor you gonna have?” Jerry asked. “You can have anything you want.”

“Can I have a chocolate sundae?”

“Anything. Maybe you’d rather have a banana split?”

“Yeah! A banana split!”

“You gonna have whipped cream on that?”

“Yeah! Whipped cream!”

“And how ‘bout some sprinkles?”

“Yummy sprinkles!”

“You got it kiddo.”

Al Bergman, another one of Sid Gold's bag men, walked through the front door of the ice cream parlor, wearing a cheap pinstriped suit, a porkpie hat, and a look of dull resolve on his pock marked face.

“What the fuck?” Jerry said under his breath as he saw Bergman approaching.

“Hello, Wachs. I saw your car outside, figured I’d stop in. Sid’s been lookin’ for ya.”

“This ain’t really a good time to talk, Al. I’m here with my boy. Zolie, say hello to Mr. Bergman.”

“Hello,” Zolie said.

“Hey there, kid. Cute kid, cute kid. Look, Wachs, this’ll only take a minute.”

“OK. But make it a short minute.”

“Yeah, mister,” Zolie said. “Make it a short minute.”

Bergamn grinned faintly. “Cute Kid,” he said.

Zolie spun himself around and around on the counter stool.

Bergman stepped closer to Jerry and lowered his voice.

"Remember that colored kid,” Bergman asked, “with an ear missing? The junkie Sid helped out two months back?”

“Which one, Oscar Parks?”

“No, not Parks. Parks has both his ears. I’m talkin’ about that other colored. Lives just off Avalon. His name’s Washington.”

“Oh, yeah. Right. Link Washington. That’s one crazy spook.”

“Spook - spook - spookey!” Zolie called out joyfully, continuing to spin around and around, pointing his face up to the ceiling. Then the spinning stopped suddenly. “Papa”, he asked, “what’s a spook? Is that the same thing as a ghost?”

“Wait awhile Zolie. I’m havin’ a conversation here.”

“You handled that Washington thing, right?” Bergman asked Jerry.

“Yeah, I handled it. I told the kid somebody would be coming to collect in two weeks.”

"Yeah, but it’s been two months now.”

“Didn’t Sid send somebody over there to settle the whole thing?”

“Sid thought you was gonna do it.”

“Me? He never said nothin’ to me about going back over there.”

“OK. It’s no big deal, Wachs. A misunderstanding. The big deal’s that Sid saw Washington last night at some dive in Gardena. And the minute Washington saw Sid, he ran out the door.”
“Crazy lowlife.”

“So you can understand that Sid is…concerned. He told me to tell you to deal with it by the end of the weekend.”

“Tell Sid I’m on it.”

“Yeah, tell Sid he’s on it,” Zolie said, pointing cheekily at Bergman.

“Keep quiet, Zolie,” Jerry said.

“And remember, Wachs. If Washington doesn’t have a payment, you’re gonna have to get rough with him.”

“I know. I'll bring Fats Bigman with me.”

“It’s a shame, but ‘ya gotta do what ‘ya gotta do.”

On his way out, Bergman tipped his hat to the waitress.

“Sorry ‘bout all that, Kiddo,” Jerry said to Zolie.

Zolie attacked the mountain of ice cream right away when the waitress brought him his banana split. Half way through the fiesta, whipped cream and chocolate sauce covered his face and shirt.
“How ‘bout if I take ‘ya to hear some jazz next week?” Jerry asked. “Would ‘ya like that?”

“Uh huh,” Zolie said with his mouth full, much more interested at that moment in ice cream than music.

Just then, Jerry’s mind drifted back, as it often did, to how he had tried to stop Zolie from being born. A pall of shame followed Jerry everywhere, becoming intensely oppressive in those moments when Zolie looked at him, through the huge glasses, with bright green, lovingly devoted bug eyes. And yet, Jerry could manage nothing more than to slip in and out of the boy’s life sporadically. He tried, and usually failed, to rationalize things to himself by telling himself that his work wasn’t a Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5 type of deal.

“I gotta take you back to your mother now,” Jerry said when Zolie finished his banana split.
“Papa, how come you don’t stay with me and Momma?”

“Oh. Well, Zolie, kiddo. That’s a long story, for next time. OK?”

“Do you like Momma?”

“Of course I like her. And she likes me. And you know we both love you, right?”

“Momma doesn’t love me.”

“She sure does, kiddo. And I really love you. You’re my boy, right?”

“Right. How come I can’t stay with you?”

“Well, because.”

“Because why?”

“Because…because you need to stay with your mother.”

“But I wanna stay with you.”

“I know ‘ya do, kiddo. I wish you could.”

Jerry was friendly with the tough guy working the door at the Lighthouse and otherwise would not have been able to bring Zolie into the club with him. The decor inside was a bamboo-based Polynesian kitsch. The place seemed to be lit by nothing more than a handful of Tiki lamps. Ukulele music blended hypnotically with the bossa nova shake-shake-shaking of dry martinis and the din of dozens of conversations. The men wore short-sleeved, floral-patterned shirts and sports slacks, the women breezy dresses in light beachy colors. Sitting with Zolie at a table near the left side of the stage, Jerry drank a Johnny Walker Black on the rocks and smiled contentedly. He ordered Zolie a banana daiquiri with everything but the rum and Tripple Sec. Zolie was glad to be there with his papa, instead of at home with his mean mama.

The emcee appeared on the stage at ten minutes past eight. He had salt and pepper hair and wore an off-white linen suit with a pink shirt. In back of him, the musicians took their spots - a trumpet player trying to sweat the monkey off his back, a chain smoking pianist, two golden haired saxophone players, an alarmingly skinny bassist, a huge trombone player, a tuba player in a light blue linen suit, a smiling drummer, and a French horn player working on his fourth whiskey sour.

"Good evening boys and girls," the emcee said into his microphone. “Welcome to beautiful Hermosa Beach.”

He grinned appreciatively at the applause, and as he panned over the audience with his gaze, Zolie caught his eye.

"My goodness," the emcee said, motioning with a jerk of his head towards Zolie. "That's how I know this place is doin' a good business. The crowd comin' here keeps gettin' younger and younger!"

The audience laughed and applauded. The spotlight shined on Zolie and reflected off his glasses. He became the focus of hundreds of eyes and froze with terror.

"You're in luck, kid. There's plenty of women here tonight lookin' for a good young man, just like yourself!"

The audience laughter and applause grew louder. Jerry smiled, raised his glass to the emcee, and patted Zolie on the head.

Zolie remained motionless.

"Boys and girls, we're glad you could make it out here to the Lighthouse this evening. And now, without any further ado, let's have a warm round of applause for our very own Lighthouse All Stars.”

For the first 10 minutes of the performance, Zolie remained disoriented as he recovered from the emcee and the spotlight. When the trauma finally faded, he had no idea what he was supposed to do while the musicians performed. Should he just sit there and listen? Does something else eventually happen? Boredom set in and Zolie played with his straw. Jerry periodically rubbed his palm up and down Zolie's back and wondered whether bringing the boy to the club was such a good idea after all.

But halfway through the band's third number, the subtle pitter patter of the bass pushed a magical button in Zolie’s brain. The perfect rhythm massaged Zolie's temples and eyelids, and his head began to bob up and down ever so slightly. He looked over at the next table. A couple with umbrellas in their drinks were smiling and bobbing their heads, too. Then Zolie looked around at the crowd and the entire room seemed to be smiling and bobbing. The bass led Zolie down a path at the end of which was a saxophone. With each velvety-smooth note, the sax increased Zolie's pleasure ten-fold. He wondered how the sax player could remain so calm while making such exciting sounds, and then his head began to sway from side to side.

"Bud Shank on the alto sax, ladies and gentlemen. Let's hear it for Mr. Bud Shank."

The sax continued to enchant Zolie as the band slowed the tempo down. Soon the other horns captured Zolie’s imagination as well. Their sweet sadness touched his soul and he closed his eyes momentarily. When he opened them, he saw Jerry smiling at him.
The tempo picked up again as the band broke into a Comanche-inflected number. The drummer unleashed a menacing war beat, and Zolie's body rocked and bounced. He stood up and drew an imaginary gun, out of an imaginary holster, and shot at imaginary Indians, on an imaginary corner of the western frontier. Grown ups smiled down on him and gave him encouragement, drawing their own make-believe pistols in return. The drummer broke into a faster beat and Zolie mimicked him, using two straws as drum sticks, waving them frenetically through the air, hitting pretend tom-toms, snare, cymbal and high hat. Then the horns picked up their energy and wailed away. Zolie danced in place and clapped his hands.

The piano moved into the center of the next arrangement. Zolie became completely rapt. The pianist leaned his body this way and that for emphasis here and there. The tinkering notes penetrated into the deepest regions of Zolie's head and lifted his little body off the ground. He floated up over his father, and then the sound waves moved him high atop the center of the room. He twisted and turned, did somersaults through the air, and then glided to a gentle landing back in his chair.

"On the piano, Mr. Claude Williamson. Claude Williamson on the piano…"

After the performance, Zolie sat in the passenger seat of his father's Lincoln, keyed up to the point of hyperactivity, trying to copy the movements of each musician all at once.

"Can we go again tomorrow, papa? I wanna hear jazz again tomorrow. Can we? Can we please?"

"Not tomorrow, kiddo," Jerry said, making the turn from Pier Avenue onto Pacific Coast Highway. “But we'll go again next week. I promise."

"But next week is such a long time."

"It'll be here before you know it." Jerry paused thoughtfully for a moment. "Say Zolie," he finally said, "you think you might wanna learn how to play music?"

demon summer

The summer of 1995 was a weird time in my life. I broke up with a girl. Shree Ram was her name. No joke. This is totally beside the point but when I took a yoga several years later, all of the instructor's incantations were punctuated with what sounded to me like 'shree ram.' The turning inward into the self, the achievement of a heightened level of self awareness, is a practice that enables you to feel more connected to the world around you, shree ram.’ Or, ‘your body is a sacred gift and should be treated as the blessing that it is, shree ram.'
I wondered what the fuck was up with this shree ram thing. Was it some kind of practical joke being played on me, like they used to do on Candid Camera, and then at some point the actual Shree Ram would appear from behind a curtain? …Shree Ram was a good person. Very sweet. We just weren’t right for each other. I’m not right for a lot of people, but especially not for Shree Ram. When we first got together, she said to me, ‘the thing about the two of us is that we’re both very good catches. It’s why we’re together. We deserve each other...’ How can you possibly take someone seriously after they've said something like this to you? I hated being brought into her wildly inflated self-concept like this. I looked at her with a pained smile on my face. ‘I’m no catch,’ I thought to myself, ‘and if I’m not a catch then you’re definitely not a catch either. Maybe that's why we're together.' But if I felt this way, why did I continue being with her? I don’t know. These things tend to take on a life of their own. Shree always had a hard time with my innate cynicism. When in doubt, the most cynical answer is more than likely correct. I've found this to be the case, and so Shree was too earnest to live comfortably in my world. She was also a very spiritual person, whereas I'm a materialist and an atheist. Somehow I always end up with women who take spirituality very seriously. I find the ability to believe attractive, even if I don't share it. Unfortunately, my inability to believe and unwillingness to participate often get construed as mockery or contemptuousness. It reminds me of the way people close to me always think I'm joking, even when I'm dead serious. I give off a detached vibe, I suppose, one that makes it seem as if I'm privately making fun of the things I don't believe in. And since I believe in so little, it seems like I'm making fun of almost everything...

I met Shree when I first moved to California. I was adrift and uncertain about my future. I knew I wanted to go back to graduate school, but where and in what field? I had a lot of great ideas about the things I wanted to do, none of them particularly practical. Why is it that the things that appeal to me most are always so impractical? I wanted to be some kind of intellectual universalist – read: dilettante – with far-reaching knowledge in the areas of literature, social and political science, philosophy, sociology, history, economics.


I imagined myself becoming a latter-day Max Weber, or C. Wright Mills. I wanted to be a generalist at a time when universities were increasingly training specialists with specific training in very narrowly defined areas. I felt then, as I still often do now, as if there just wasn’t a place in the world for someone like me, and I didn’t know if I could make myself fit in. But moving to California so I could get into a program at a UC school seemed like a wise thing to do. California was running on the last faint fumes of its mid-century glory. The demographics were changing so radically. There was a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment swirling around. The feel was very similar to what we're going through in the present. The economy was bad, though not nearly as bad as today.…


Berkeley was my first stop on the West Coast. A family friend offered to let me stay in his guest house on San Juan Avenue in the Berkeley hills. Shree was the live-in babysitter for their young son, and she was very nice to me, driving me around town and showing me all the hot spots on Shattuck and Telegraph Avenues.

We were walking on Telegraph one night after dinner when a riot broke out in People’s Park. The one thing I hate about Berkeley is the way it refuses to let go of the 60s. It was 1991 and they were still rioting over People’s Park! For all I know, they’re still rioting over it today. I’m as nostalgic for the 60s as can be, just not the part where smelly middle class white kids live on the street with their mangy dogs, beg for change, and riot over the ownership rights to some shitty little park. Give me the Beatles. Give me the civil rights movement. Give me free love. Give me the Whiskey-a-Go-Go. But I can do without the smelly faux hobos starting riots.

During those first few weeks in Berkeley, Shree and I went to movies together, hung out, and laughed a lot. She got my sense of humor, and I developed a big crush on her. I felt understood. Understanding is a big turn on. But I lacked confidence, and she didn’t seem to like me in that way. Then summer turned to fall and she returned to college on the East Coast for her senior year. Eight months later, in spite of retard-level GRE scores, I somehow got accepted to UCLA’s graduate program in sociology and moved to Los Angeles, three days before the Rodney King riots…

I don’t really remember the circumstances under which I reconnected with Shree except that our paths crossed while I was visiting my family in New York after my second year at UCLA. We became romantically involved, but it was a long-distance relationship, Shree in Pennsylvania, working for some weirdo theater company, me in LA, working on a graduate degree in sociology. But long-distance relationships never work. They make the time you spend together way too fraught. After a year or so of long-distance lovin', Shree agreed to move to LA. She even had her stuff shipped to my apartment. But she got cold feet and never made it. She's one of those Bay Area people who hates the Southland. I can't stand the Bay Area, and I really can't stand people from the Bay Area who look down their noses at LA. Once Shree started to vacillate and express doubts, I put an end to things and cut her out of my life completely. I don't do well with ambivalence and ambiguity. I treat ambivalence towards me as a full-fledged rejection. I was actually kind of mean to Shree. She sent me letters, begging me to at least hear her out, but by then I felt like the toothpaste was out of the tube. I would never be able to trust her again. I did cruel things, like returning a letter of hers back to her with a red C- at the top of it. Something about her being uncertain about me brought out my nasty side. I didn't hear from her again until a few weeks after 9/11. She found my email address and wrote asking me if my family was ok. Like I said, she's very sweet. But she also wanted to engage with me, figuring that enough time had passed (six years) for us to now have a dialogue about why things went bad between us, or, more to the point, why I closed off communication with her in the midst of her uncertainty about moving to LA and having a life with me. I didn't really want to have this conversation with her at this point, so I wrote her back a terse note that made as much clear...

While my relationship with Shree was falling apart, so too were the 1995 California Angels. I had adopted the Angels as a kind of stepchild alongside my 'real' family, the New York Mets. The Halos were absolutely terrible during my first few years in So-Cal. I used to go to the Big A on Friday nights with a buddy of mine and there'd be less than 10,000 fans in the stands. The place was lifeless. But I didn't care. Put a baseball game in front of me under almost any circumstances and I bliss out. The season was cancelled in 1994 when the players' strike couldn't be resolved, but play resumed again in '95. The Angels that year had a very likable team and started playing well for manager Marcel Lacheman. I loved guys like JT Snow, Tim Salmon, Chili Davis, Troy Percival, Rex Hudler, Lee Smith, Mark Langston... Salmon in particular looked like some sort of Southern California Captain America Bible Study dude. Guys like that are at once repulsive and alluring to me in a way that I can't fully account for. You know they're probably religious simpletons with right-wing political views, and yet you admire them all the more because of it.. ...On August 16th of the '95 season, the Angels held an 11-game lead over the Seattle Mariners, but then they proceeded to go on two separate nine-game losing streaks and lost the division to the Mariners in a one-game playoff on October 2. It is widely regarded as one of the most epic collapses in the history of the game and was very tough to sit through. ...I have a recurrent dream in which I'm looking out the window of the apartment I grew up in, peering down at the New York street from 14 floors up. A station wagon is bounding down the avenue. My parents are in the station wagon. My dad is driving. From my perch I can see that he's about to accelerate through a yellow light. I know he's not going to make the light and that he's about to crash into a taxi cab. I can see the crash developing the split second before it happens, but there's nothing I can do about it. I'm powerless. This is how the Angels made me feel that summer. With each crushing defeat, and the lead in the AL West shrinking every day, I knew how the season would play out, and yet I watched and rooted for some reason.

One day, right around the time the Angels began to choke their season away, I was getting my Saturn polished at a car wash on the corner of Santa Monica and Federal in West LA. As I stood in line to pay, I looked up at a mounted TV tuned to one of the local afternoon news telecasts. The newscaster reported that Jerry Garcia had passed away at a drug rehab center up north. I felt my knees go rubbery and a knot tighten in my stomach. I paid my bill, put my sunglasses on, and stepped outside where two Mexican guys polished my car. I watched them but didn't really see anything. I was thinking about Garcia, in token rhyme suggesting rhythm. Shine through my window and my friends they come around. Across the Rio Grande-ee-oh. He’s gone, and nothing’s gonna bring him back... I don't think Jerry's passing in and of itself was all that shocking to me. He had obviously been living on the edge, chasing the dragon for many years. But how sad that a man of such soaring talents could never conquer his demons. He had it all. The love and adulation of millions, riches, a life filled with beautiful music... And yet it wasn’t enough to fill some emotional void way down inside. I think I identify with this a little, the feeling of having demons that will always be a part of me. ...I left the car wash that day and drove around the city aimlessly. Everything is transitory, shree ram. We all die eventually, shree ram. All things must pass, shree ram. Except for those demons. They're pretty damn durable. They seem to stick around even when everything else is dissolving...

canyon fodder, chapter 2

Jefferson White was born at the Santa Ana Veterans' Hospital to John and Clara White in the fall of 1950. For the first 14 years of his life, he lived in Huntington Beach, in the shade of the imposing oilrigs clustered along Pacific Coast Highway, and in the longer shadow cast by the City of Los Angeles, some 25 miles up the road.

John White had fought in the Philippines during the War, serving as a bombardier in the 21st Airborne. He was the only survivor when the Japanese shot his plane down over the Island of Leyte, but he parachuted right into the heart of enemy territory.

“The Japs put me to work at the point of a riffle,” he told Jefferson when the boy was eight years old. “Think about what it’d be like to have some slant eyed jap pokin’ you with a sharp stick every time you try ‘n rest for a minute or two.”

After V-J day, John received a medal for valor but then quickly devolved from war hero to just another one of the thousands upon thousands of faceless servicemen returning home to civilian life. He wanted to go into business for himself as a contractor in his hometown of San Diego, but he had no capital, nor anything to put up as collateral, and he could not obtain a loan in spite of everything the GI Bill promised.

“You put your life on the line for your country, for God, for all that crap they preach about,” he told his parents. “But in the end, all they do is piss on ‘ya and then tell ya to go fug yourself.”

"You won a medal for bravery,” his father said. “The country is very appreciative of everything you’ve done. And we’re all very proud of you.”

“The medal don’t mean nothin’ if I can’t earn a living, pop. You want me living in your house for the rest ‘o my life?”

Tom Hendrix, a guy John had known in the service, looked John up and found out things weren’t going so well for him. Hendrix was originally from San Antonio and now lived with his wife and baby girl in El Segundo, a sleepy little seaside town just on the outskirts of L.A.. Hendrix worked in regional management at the Standard Oil Company and had connections in the industry. He set John up with a good job at one of Standard Oil's contractual partners, Pacific Industrial Oil and Exploration. John had no experience to speak of outside the Airborne Division and no credentials other than a high school diploma. But he was a quick study and in a few short months he was supervising 40 men on two small offshore drilling rigs, about a half-mile out from the Huntington Beach Pier.

On an overcast afternoon in February of 1950, John made the rounds at rig no. 2 and approached four men talking amongst themselves when they should’ve been working. He had a pretty good idea what they were talking about, too. In company parlance, the men were ‘problems’. Sources had informed management that these men and others like them were having regular pow wows with pests from the Oil Workers Union, which was looking to gain recognition from Pacific Industrial, one of the last open shop hold outs in the oil industry on the West Coast. Even the mighty Standard Oil Company had signed a union contract. But Pacific Industrial, a relatively small firm with tight profit margins, was determined to keep the union out at all costs, a company directive communicated loud and clear to all supervisory personnel, and one to be backed up with force if necessary. “You wanna slack off, do it on your own time,” John barked as he approached the four troublemakers. “We’ll dock ‘ya if you don’t get back to work. Now!”

For a brief moment, the sun broke through the heavy clouds and fog, streaming down in a thin shaft onto one of the four men, Dexter Bodine, a stocky, silver haired worker who had been with the company for more than 15 years. “Get a load ‘o this, fellas,” Bodine said as he glared disgustedly at John and slowly placed a yellow hard hat back on his head. “Big time war hero likes to tell us all what to do.”

“You said it Dex,” another one of the workers added. “Maybe we should all stand at attention.”
The four of them stood up straight and gave John a mocking salute. John’s eyes narrowed and darted from one man to the next.

“At ease,” Bodine said. “It’s only Colonel White. He don’t have the balls to do nothin’, ‘cept tow the company line.”

The four men laughed derisively. John’s temples pounded with growing anger. The sun became completely obscured by the clouds again and the moist breeze stiffened. A motor sounded from out in the ocean. John turned his head momentarily and saw a transport boat approaching the rig, which meant he couldn’t beat the shit out of Bodine because his boss would be coming aboard momentarily. Still, he wouldn’t let the present conflict rest.

“You got somethin’ you wanna say to me?” John said, turning his attention back to Bodine.

“I’ll settle the score with any of you, any time you want.”

The motorboat docked at the base of the rig.

“Fuck you, White,” Bodine said. “I’m not scared of you. You’re just a pathetic company stooge.”
The four workers dispersed, leaving John standing by himself. For the rest of the day, John’s head seethed with rage and revenge fantasies. He replayed the confrontation with the four workers, and with Bodine in particular, over and over again in his head.

He don’t have the balls to do nothin’, ‘cept tow the company line…
Big time war hero likes to tell us all what to do…
Just a pathetic company stooge…

At the end of the work day, John rode back ashore in a transport boat with a dozen workers, including Dexter Bodine. The two of them made toxic eye contact several times as the boat rocked and bobbed along the waves. When the boat docked, John thought about pulling Bodine aside and doing something, but then he remembered his bills, his mortgage, his wife…

…just a pathetic company stooge…

That night, after serving John a dinner of roast beef, mashed potatoes, carrots, and peas, along with homemade apple pie and coffee for desert, Clara White stood at the sink, rinsing pots and pans, losing herself in the caress of the Valium she swallowed right before dinner. John stood behind her, leaning on one side of the entrance to the kitchen. He held a J&B on the rocks in his left hand. A cigarette hung from his lips. His end-of-the-day stubble shadowed his shiny, sun-baked face. His black hair, combed back for much of the day, now fell freely over his right eye.
When Clara smelled the cigarette smoke, she turned around and faced her husband. She noted to herself that, although he kept the innate scowl on his face very much intact, John looked quite handsome this evening, fit and muscular in his white t-shirt and chino pants. They hadn’t made love in several weeks. They looked at each other for a few moments in silence. When John spoke, the running water drowned out his words.

“Say again?” Clara said, turning the faucet off.

“I said, it takes you a long goddamn time to clean those dishes, Clara.”

“W-what do you mean, honey?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean?”

“I’ll be done in a few minutes.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were avoiding me.”

“What do you mean?”

“There you go again! What do you mean? What do you mean? Do you know how stupid you sound when you ask me what I mean, especially since you know what I mean.”

“I’m almost done with the dishes, darling.”

John took a long, squinty-eyed drag from his cigarette. He jingled the ice cubes in his glass ominously and then killed his drink. Clara returned to her work at the sink and put the faucet back on. But in turning her back to her husband, she tripped a wire in the darkest part of his mind. In a sudden explosive motion, John threw his whiskey glass against the wall just beyond Clara and the sink. Clara started, but the sedative coursing through her body muted her response to the breaking glass. She turned again to face her husband. He walked towards her slowly, menacingly, until he was right next to her, staring her in the face with a razor sharp sneer.

“I’m so sick of you avoiding me, Clara.”

“Avoiding you? I don’t know—“ He slapped her face before she could finish. “Don’t—“

“Do you know what it’s like for me, Clara? Do you?”

“John, no I—“

He grabbed her by the arms and tossed her to the floor. “You’re not gonna avoid me anymore, Clara.” She looked up at him from the floor as he undid his belt. “I’m the man in this house, and you’re gonna pay attention to me from now on.” He had her trapped against the wooden door of the cupboard under the sink. He looked at her on the floor and unzipped his pants. As he began to take his pants down, she rose up and tried to dart through him to get away, but he caught her and he threw her back down, and then pinned her to the floor. “I’m the boss in my house,” he said.

“John, you’re hurting me!”

“This is what married couples do, Clara.”

“Stop! Please!”

“Shut up! Shut the hell up!”

John pressed her down on the kitchen floor and lifted her dress up around her waist. He pulled down her stockings and jammed himself in her with hard thrusts. “No, Please stop!” she cried.
When John looked down, Dexter Bodine was struggling on the floor. John thrust harder and harder. Bodine screamed and started to cry. John's cock moved forcefully, in and out and in and out, with unholy abandon. When John looked down again, Bodine’s head knocked loud and rhythmically against the cupboard under the sink.

“I’m not a company stooge!” John yelled. “I’m not! Do you hear me?”

He smacked Bodine with the back of his hand and stabbed him with his dick, again and again, and again, and again, and again…

When John came, he collapsed on top of Clara, and he lay on top of her with all his weight. He caught his breath for a few moments and then lifted himself off his wife. Clara stared up at him with haunting vacancy. He pulled up his pants, fastened his belt, and left the kitchen with his wife on the floor. The water continued to run out of the faucet.

Clara gave birth to Jefferson White on November 21, 1950.

canyon fodder, chapter 1

When the elevator doors opened on the third floor of Sunset Sound in Hollywood, Zolie Wachs stepped out and felt a blast of frosty air conditioning against his face. Aural shrapnel from an Elliot Randall guitar lick cut through the walls of Studio 3D in the distance and ricocheted around the insides of Zolie’s ears as he ambled down the hallway towards the head. Framed Gold Records lined one side of the narrow corridor. On the other side, a glass window offered a view into a corporate-looking room in which Charlie Watson sat alone at a long table, looking disheveled with his long hair flying in all directions. But Charlie wasn’t sitting upright, and it took Zolie a few seconds before he figured out what the fuck the guy was doing in there. Hunched over, Charlie pressed his face against the table’s surface, his nostrils vacuuming freshly cut lines of Bicentennial powder.

Zolie pissed at a urinal. The image of Charlie was still imprinted on his brain when the men’s room door swung open behind him.

“Zole! You ready to do the harmonies?” It was Jefferson White, Zolie’s friend, producer, and savior, just coming off the Gold Record success of his own fourth album, The Man Behind the Mask.

“I’m hung over,” Zolie said.

Jefferson joined him at the next urinal. “None of that,” he said. “We’re gonna lay down some beautiful harmonies. Everybody’s here to do it with us.”

Zolie’s doughy 29-year-old body stood at about five-and-a-half feet tall. He had long, curly blond hair, thick glasses over his brown eyes, and he wore a cream-colored blazer with dark blue jeans and white tasseled loafers. Jefferson, a few years younger, dressed his tall, skinny frame in a faded red t-shirt and form fitting dungarees, which he wore with a pair of white and green Adidas Country sneakers. His light-brown hair grew to just above his shoulders, framing a face with well-sculpted features and handsome eyes of Pacific Ocean Blue.

When Zolie was close to being done, he closed his eyes, pointed his puffy face towards the ceiling, and wrung his dick out, as if it were a wash cloth, before waddling away from the urinal without flushing or washing his hands. Jefferson, on the other hand, gently tapped his corona, flushed, and then glided effortlessly towards the sink.

“I just saw Charlie,” Zolie said, pointing in a vague direction outside the men’s room.

Jefferson glanced at himself wanly in the mirror above the sink. “Yeah,” he sighed after a few thoughtful seconds. “Poor Charlie.”

the summer of dirt

You may have noticed that I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the past. It's always been this way for me, and it's why I'll never be a leader of men. People like myself who are habitually backwards looking can never be more than moderately successful at anything we do. Wildly successful leaders of men feel comfortable in the present and look forward to the future. I feel out of place in the present and spend much of my time trying to protect myself against the nasty things I'm convinced the future will bring, all the while clinging to some pathetic insistence that everything used to be better than it is now. I'm old school, meaning I can't or won't adapt to the way things are done today, can't break free of familiar patterns...

Ten years after the summer of Helene, and Sharon, and Mike Vail, and the house in Wingdale, and Green Knoll Day Camp, and my dad's music room... Ten years after all that stuff was the summer between my junior and senior years in high school. When you're a kid, ten years feels like a century. But then when you're 40-something, ten years feels like a mere blip. I can't believe it's already been almost ten years since 9/11, ten years since I could at least entertain the idea of transporting a few joints in my coat pocket through an airport. Time seems to accelerate with age. It's been ten years since I started my current job, more than ten years since the hanging chads, since the Subway Series, since the dot-com bust, since none of my friends had kids yet, since I believed I could achieve something more meaningful in my career than simple survival. Time is a constant, and yet subjectively it gets more and more compressed with the attainment of perspective. Time doesn't heal all wounds. On the contrary, it becomes increasingly punishing as it picks up speed. And it doesn't spare anybody...

There's a splinter in your eye and it reads 'react.' I associate the summer of '85 with REM. I had become a 'New Music' devotee by then, spraying Sun-In in my closely cropped hair, sporting Chuck Taylors with rolled-up jeans, and basically dressing myself up like a Nancy boy. But it was cool to look a little bit androgynous and to live life with REM and Husker Du blasting through your Walkman headphones. My friend Drew had introduced me to REM the previous summer, and it was love at first listen. The chiming jangle of Peter Buck's Rickenbaker hooked me right in. I spent hours upon hours alone in my room, trying to decipher the cryptic meanings behind Michael Stipe's lyrics. I never did figure out what he was on about, but I knew the words somehow applied to my life, expressing all the promise and freedom of youth, and the loneliness and pain as well. REM was the perfect thing for me at the perfect time. Their music still makes me feel so damn good. It's mysterious and familiar at the same time...

Nowadays a lot of music from the 80s sounds horrible. It's not that the music itself was all that bad, but the in-vogue production style - tinny and brittle - has not held up well. REM was certainly not immune to this. Fables of the Reconstruction is one of their best collections of songs, but it sounds absolutely awful, buried under turgid layers of 'atmosphere' that only serve to make everything sound muted, distant, cold. But the biggest casualty of the way records were produced in the 80s was Prince. He was/is an amazingly talented little fellow, an incredible songwriter and performer with an amazing feel for melody, right up there with Paul McCartney in his ability to pack so much sweet stuff into 3 or 4 minutes. But try going back to a Prince record now, say Dirty Mind, or 1999, or Purple Rain, or Sign 'O the Times. Personally, I can't sit with those albums for more than a few minutes. They sound so murky, as if Prince is covered in thick tar and playing inside a small aluminum shed. The stuff's horribly overproduced and corporate sounding, lacking of any real warmth to latch onto. Perhaps the production value merely expresses what the 80s were all about? ...I'll have to think about that one...

Apologies for the long digression there. Sometimes my mind wanders. During the summer of 1985, I worked as a counselor at Camp Greylock in the small town of Becket, Massachussets. I had been a camper at Greylock for eight years and now returned as an employee. Having the tables turned in this way did not agree with me. As much as I loved the camp as a paying customer, I hated now having to deal with spoiled Jewish punks from Long Island and New Jersey as a worker. But there were some good times here and there... Baseball was, as ever, my constant companion. As a Met fan, one of the things I remember most about the ’85 season is Keith Hernandez testifying in a Federal case against several guys who had for years been supplying Major League ballplayers with cocaine. His testimony included an admission of his own cocaine use while he was a member of the St. Louis Cardinals, including during the 1979 season, when he was elected the NL MVP, and during the 1982 season, when the Cards won the World Series. With hindsight it seems that uppers came into the Major League Baseball in the 60s and early 70s, and then were replaced by coke in the second half of the 70s and the first half of the 80s, which was then replaced by steroids and HGH in the second half of the 80s and 90s… I remember Keith testifying in ’85, and I remember the Mets not having quite enough to get the job done. They really should have won it all in ’85 and ’88, along with the championship the won in ’86. They could have been a dynasty...

At Greylock that summer I became friends with Rod, an arts and crafts couselor from Baltimore. We bonded over our mutual love of REM and Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. Some nights when we'd have nothing better going on, the two of us would sit in his little Honda Accord, listening to music and drinking Schaefer Beer. Do they still even make that stuff? They had the best advertising jingle ever. 'Schafer is the one beer to have when you're having more than one.' Genius. Rod and me usually had quite a bit more than one, as I remember it...

During the previous school year I had developed a lust crush on Adelle, a sexy and totally unattainable girl in the same grade as me. I call it a lust crush as opposed to just a crush because I think by then I was walking around with an image of myself as some kind of unlovable loser. I didn't really think about romance. I just thought about getting my cock sucked, though that never happened, of course. I didn’t have a lot of self-esteem, but you don’t need self-esteem to be horny, and I was very, very, very horny. All the time. All day long, every day. A veritable jizz machine was I. Many years later, a friend of mine told me that he had had sex with Adelle a few times back in the day, and that she never bathed or groomed, and that she smelled like rotting garbage, and especially that her privates smelled like throw up, and that he could barely concentrate on what he was doing at the time because her personal hygiene was so incredibly awful. This pleased me a great deal, needless to say.

I like having my illusions shattered, as long as they’re illusions attached to memories of things I wanted but couldn’t have…I mention all this because, during that summer of ’85, somebody other than myself or a doctor actually touched my junk. There was a girl’s camp affiliated with Greylock called Camp Romaca, which had lots and lots of Jewish girls from the Tri-State area, and especially from Long Island, with their accents that would hit you like a battering ram. A great many ugly girls went to Romaca and one of ‘em got her hooks into me, literally, if you get my drift. It happened behind the rec hall, on some balmy night, under cover of darkness. You could not imagine a more loveless, pointless encounter if you tried. I remember almost nothing about her, except that she was overweight and that I closed my eyes and imagined that it was Adelle’s hand. I don’t even remember where she was from. The only thing I can recall clearly is what she said to me upon completion: ‘You got your dirt all over my shirt.’ My dirt. I still love that. For many years afterwards, it became code for masturbation between me and my friend Charlie.

'Hey, what are you up to?'
'Not much, I just unleashed some dirt.'

I think this is how I will always think of the summer of '85. If 1964 was Freedom Summer, 1967 the Summer of Love, 1977 the Summer of Sam, then 1985 - well, how else? - 1985 was, at least for me, the Summer of Dirt...