Route 175, 1972

I picked up the payments from Eddie Finnegan, $56 a month. My first car. A 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado. Lots of power, though I didn't know, or care, about that stuff. The kids I taught at the high school filled me in as to how many cc's or liters, or whatever it was. It was cooler than I first knew: a speedometer consisting of a rolling cylinder you viewed on the dashboard straight in front of the driver, headlights that lifted up so that they looked like mechanical, futuristic spaceship eyes. They stubbornly and frequently stuck open. Eventualy the one on the right stayed half-open, giving the appearance of a driver whose eyes were barely open or droopy. Which was true. I drove drunk countless times. Only fender benders. One night, my birthday, 90 miles per hour on Seneca Turnpike. Why? Death wish? The invincibilty of youth? Unconscionable and indefensible. How did I survive? Or those in collateral range. A big hump through the middle for the automatic transmission. No, not so much a cliche as to escape my virginity in the back seat but not for lack of trying (another cliche). Yes. Late bloomer. But it was the car I owned in the time when that rite of passage transpired. Why am I saying all this? Like some scene in a movie, her hand on my thigh, beer can between my legs, radio full blast, windows down, her honey hair sailing out the window and shrouding her face. Screaming and laughing. For a minute or two.  

runaway

He ran away from home. Although we were a real city, with 37,000 people, it made the papers. We were in fourth grade. It was 1961, ironically the same year as "Runaway," the hit by Del Shannon. We weren't close friends, but close enough that I went over to his house once, over in the projects. His projects, not ours. What did we do? We went upstairs to his room and looked at his shoebox of baseball cards. No brothers or sisters. Just his mom and him. His mom yelled at him. He hadn't done some sort of chore. Dishes? Laundry? Make his bed? It didn't matter. You could tell she just liked to yell at him. She was making some kind of point, as if to say, This is how we do things around here, kid (me). Don't try to get smart with me. She smoked Camels. But the part I wanted to forget, the thing I didn't want to remember, was the walls. The walls in the hallway were black. At the bottom of the stairs, the hallway that greeted visitors, if ever there was another visitor, was smudged as if charcoal was rubbed over the institutional yellow paint. I imagine he and his mom braced themselves if they came down the stairs too hard and pivoted left to the kitchen or right to the living room. Or the wall was a casual pushing-off point, a way to launch oneself up the stairs. Or they leaned against the wall to put on or take off their shoes or boots. I don't know. I was thunderstruck. I almost blurted out, What's that? Where did that come from? I, who came from an apartment on the other end of the cleaning spectrum. Today people would use the OCD label, but it was just the way it went, the way we were. Saturdays were consumed with my brothers and I sweeping, vacuuming, washing, waxing, scrubbing, vacuuming again to meet Dad's white-glove inspection Army standards. We hated it. But this. The walls. The outer fringes of the wall beyond the opposite steps had handprints, vestigial symbols of origin. These marginal imprints left no doubt as to the source of the fully darkened portion. Hands. I didn't know how to respond. I didn't go home and tell anyone. Who was there to tell? And what was there to say? 

He was gone a few days. There was no manhunt, no panic, no search, but it was on the radio and in the papers. They covered the story as if it were an entertainment, a curious amusement, rather than a dangerous incident. They were flippant. And kids in our class? Nobody said much of anything. Some crude jokes, wisecracks, about his riding a freight train like a hobo. This came from some of the boys, and the girls shushed them. Mrs. Anastasia never said a word. Open your books. Practice your penmanship.

He came back. 

He came back to school on a Monday.

Nobody asked him where he had gone or how, nobody asked him what he did, or why. We didn't greet him or welcome him back. He just sat in his regular chair at his regular, assigned desk, in the second row from the window.

When Mrs. Anastasia read the roll, to which we were to say "present," she got to his name near the end, because of the letter his last name began with.

She got to his name and he didn't say anything.

He was crying; he had been crying all the while.

She went on to the next two names.

"Present."

"Present."
 

first kiss

Not the first first. Not counting paternal, maternal, fraternal, or sororal kisses. (I don't have any sisters; not biologically; metaphysically, yes). And not counting that time with my cousin Paula, the one she initiated on the couch at her house on Avery Street, the same day I was wearing her jeans. Why? Did I have a pee accident in mine? The surprise and the confusion of girls' dungarees having a strangely configured button and zipper, on the side, not in the front, like mine. Her jeans fit. We all knew they would. I grew up with Mom holding up a dress, sweater, or blouse in front of me, to discern whether the purchased gift for Paula would fit, which it always did. This continued into high school. You're thinking, Here comes the transvestite confession. It didn't go that way; I suppose it's not too late if that's what my readership wants or if that's where sartorial adventure leads me. The Paula clothes trial run was awkward and frustrating but inconsequential and without shame or fear. These days? No one'd care if I tried the clothes on, for feck sake. I was, what?, twelve the most. We had all gone to the circus, down on Magee Avenue, near the dump. The smell of peanuts, shit, straw, and cotton candy in the air under the big-top tent. The kiss was quick and nothing, a joke. It was Paula's way of demonstrating how she was more worldly, more "mature," than I was, though she's only six months older than I. She had to check that box off; I'll teach Paul. It didn't teach me anything, nothing except grist for an oft-repeated, shallow family tale: "My first kiss? It was with Paula. Can you believe it?" But it was innocent, dry, fleeting. I was like, Really? That's it? But that's not the kiss we're talking about, is it? No. We're talking about a first kiss, that kind that crossed a line into another country. Sure, I had kissed my high-school girlfriend, on the huge rock, at night, by Long Island Sound. It was Paula Kiss 2.0. You're incredulous? Believe me, in this day and age, some fifty years ago, such innocence existed. Correction. More fear than anything else, more than innocence. She was the same way. Our platonic arrangement worked well enough, albeit with anxiety and frustration, speaking only for me. Fifteen-year-old boys aren't that innocent, you say? fine. Philip Roth covered all that in Portnoy's Complaint. No one can top that, least of all me. So, fast forward to college, sophomore year. College! Nineteen years old. It's a mixer. A dance with girls invited from a neighboring women's college and a nursing school. A live band doing 1968 covers. Sweaty dancing. Fast dances and slow dances. During a break, we're sitting on two folding chairs, on the sidelines, as it were. Her name was almost Sue Lamb. Leave it at that since there's an infinitesimal chance she is reading this; what's the need for anonymity? It's a salute to her, not a shaming. It was dark, most of the lights out. The band resumed playing. She kissed me. It had to be her move, had to be by the very nature of the players playing. She kissed me. I mean kissed me. the heart-stopping thrill of liquid galvanic surprise. Humans do this?! No one told me. and what could they have said? The time in the seminary when we, at a boys' prep school, were performing a play in English class and I wisecracked to the protagonist, played by Emmett, "Give him a French kiss." Everybody laughed, including me, as if I knew what I was saying. I knew it was sexual and a joke of frivolous inappropriateness. Beyond that, I knew nothing. Our kiss, Sue and I, was a mutual exploration, an anatomical festival through molten rivers and thunderous rapture. A forbidden meandering of lips, tongues, teeth, and hot breath. The band, the crowd, the lights, the night, the crickets all stopped. As did the planet. Does this ever have to stop? So many fleshly boulevards and alleys to traverse. "I love you." I couldn't help it. So what if I had just met her? So what if she recoiled? "What?"

I would have married her. I would have, on the spot.

dream lover

At the stoplight, he glanced into the rearview mirror. It framed a vision. She was looking down, obviously at her phone, at a text or a message, who knows perhaps a YouTube video. She was young, with dark hair, dark eyes, dark eyebrows, long, dark hair. Time stopped before the light changed. What a dream, he thought, relieved the light was turning green, relieved she never locked eyes, as can happen in those mirrored exchanges. "Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream" floated into his head as he put his left foot on the clutch, pressed the gas, and turned left.

Twilight Transcendence

Transcending the All-Star game itself last night was the ceremony paying tribute to Willie Mays, "The Say Hey Kid." [check out the video link; or just picture via words, the old-fashioned way]

Why and how does this transport us beyond sports and enter the realms of myth? No one else played with such wild abandon, glee, and elan. Willie Mays channeled all the pride and fury of raw youth into the battle of the game. And he made it all look easy.

Although Jackie Robinson became a symbol of racial pride and progress, Willie Mays, for me, was baseball. My adoration of him transformed my own attitudes toward race as I grew up in an integrated public housing project.

So, tears formed in my eyes as I watched him being honored with unabashed sentiment at AT&T Park last night in San Francisco. Willie in centerfield, Willie teasing, Willie tossing balls from a pink Cadillac into the crowd.

Willie.

I could still see the flash of youth in his eyes, and even an echo of his great arm as he lobbed baseballs to adoring fans. Sure, it was a bit corny. But the ceremony also conveyed a reverent dignity. It worked.

What I'm having trouble articulating here is this: watching Willie Mays (for me) transcended wins or losses, success or failure. His performance transcended athletic prowess. Here was someone who exhibited sheer rapture and delight in what he was doing. Period. It was exhilarating and inspiring.

He was the best, and made it look easy. (He later admitted to showboating, sometimes making a catch look harder than it was.)

Thanks for the show, Willie.

What grace.

Is there sadness now in seeing the ravages of age? I suppose so.

But Willie was cool. He truly seemed to be having a great time.

As always.

Would that I brought the same verve to my daily tasks.

Maybe I do sometimes.

(Especially if I wear that T-shirt with number 24 on the back.)