Like most 20-year olds, I had all the answers in 1982:
Plastic.
Cool plastic.
(This is symbolic.)
I'm in this cool, round, soft, comfortable plastic bubble.
They put me here, and I said, "Cool!"
because here, there's
football and
TV and
docksider shoes and
beer and -
a hole.
Covered, innocently, almost by chance,
with grass.
and OUTSIDE
its
COLD and
HOT and
LONELY and
HORRIBLE and
BETTER
and they'd rather
you didn't know that.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Four bad days in 1982
I do not remember what inspired this.
1. The room was littered with coffee cups, cigarette butts, glasses, clothes. The phone, buried under mountains of clothing and books inside the refrigerator, rang steadily the whole time I was in the room. I did not answer it. On one wall, next to what looked like the bed, the words "Beautify Death" and "Hooray Planet America" were carefully written in block letters. The other walls had nothing on them except chipping chocolate-brown paint. When I went over to the taped-up window, a tiny well-fed-looking kittne looked up at me from the windowsill and asked "Prowl?" I stroked its back while it writhed and squirmed the way kittens do. There was a poster on the door that said "Free Alaska" in sloppy white letters on a flat black background - nothing else. I took the poster and left.
2. Simon and I were in the car, listening to a terrible popular music radio station from Kenosha, Wisconsin, on our way from Kennebunk, Maine, where he lived, to Portland, Oregon, where I did. We had not spoken to each other since crossing the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. Only 1/2 hour ago it has been snowing intensely, and now the bright afternoon sun made the unbelievably thick white blanket on everything sparkle and shine. We saw (or thought we saw) a very psychotic-looking man wildly attempting to flag cars down, but there were no footsteps leading away from the place where he was standing. Simon and I looked at each other, back at the man and the snow, and returned our respective gazes to the road straight ahead. We did not stop.
3. One, while on a jet from Little Rock, where I worked at a small weekly newspaper, on my way to New York to cover something newsworthy (I don't remember what) I sat next to a little girl, 3 or 4 years old, who looked out the window, talked to her teddy bear, and ordered ginger ale from the stewardess. I asked the little girl her name, and she told me it was Homo. I said "Oh." I asked her who had named her that, and she said her mother had. When I asked her where her mother was, she said she didn't know. Father? "I don't know". Where are you going? "New York." What are you gong to do there? "Buy a new teddy bear."
When I asked her how old she was, she said "Nineteen."
4. There is a building on 29th Street in Manhattan with the words "Tour America by Train" on it. When I lived on 28th St., I walked past this building every morning and almost every evening. But although it was clean, obviously less than 10 or 15 years old, and sometimes had lights on inside, I was quite disturbed by it because not a soul ever went in or came out. Sort of like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. I asked my neighbors, some of whom had lived in the area for years - what is it? What happens there? No one ever had an answer, except "Bo-Bee", the wino who lived on the steam grate in front of my building. He said that building was Headquarters. I asked him what he meant. He said "That's where they run it all from".
1. The room was littered with coffee cups, cigarette butts, glasses, clothes. The phone, buried under mountains of clothing and books inside the refrigerator, rang steadily the whole time I was in the room. I did not answer it. On one wall, next to what looked like the bed, the words "Beautify Death" and "Hooray Planet America" were carefully written in block letters. The other walls had nothing on them except chipping chocolate-brown paint. When I went over to the taped-up window, a tiny well-fed-looking kittne looked up at me from the windowsill and asked "Prowl?" I stroked its back while it writhed and squirmed the way kittens do. There was a poster on the door that said "Free Alaska" in sloppy white letters on a flat black background - nothing else. I took the poster and left.
2. Simon and I were in the car, listening to a terrible popular music radio station from Kenosha, Wisconsin, on our way from Kennebunk, Maine, where he lived, to Portland, Oregon, where I did. We had not spoken to each other since crossing the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. Only 1/2 hour ago it has been snowing intensely, and now the bright afternoon sun made the unbelievably thick white blanket on everything sparkle and shine. We saw (or thought we saw) a very psychotic-looking man wildly attempting to flag cars down, but there were no footsteps leading away from the place where he was standing. Simon and I looked at each other, back at the man and the snow, and returned our respective gazes to the road straight ahead. We did not stop.
3. One, while on a jet from Little Rock, where I worked at a small weekly newspaper, on my way to New York to cover something newsworthy (I don't remember what) I sat next to a little girl, 3 or 4 years old, who looked out the window, talked to her teddy bear, and ordered ginger ale from the stewardess. I asked the little girl her name, and she told me it was Homo. I said "Oh." I asked her who had named her that, and she said her mother had. When I asked her where her mother was, she said she didn't know. Father? "I don't know". Where are you going? "New York." What are you gong to do there? "Buy a new teddy bear."
When I asked her how old she was, she said "Nineteen."
4. There is a building on 29th Street in Manhattan with the words "Tour America by Train" on it. When I lived on 28th St., I walked past this building every morning and almost every evening. But although it was clean, obviously less than 10 or 15 years old, and sometimes had lights on inside, I was quite disturbed by it because not a soul ever went in or came out. Sort of like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. I asked my neighbors, some of whom had lived in the area for years - what is it? What happens there? No one ever had an answer, except "Bo-Bee", the wino who lived on the steam grate in front of my building. He said that building was Headquarters. I asked him what he meant. He said "That's where they run it all from".
Religion Poem
I was clinically depressed for years - starting around the age of 9 and ending, thanks to a summer on Prozac and a dedicated therapist, in my mid-20s. This is evident in a lot of my writing, and was influential in my development into an adult. Part of the process of getting through the depression for me was developing my personality more fully - that included defining myself as a gay man, gaining a very emotional love for music, and exploring religions. At this much later date I am content with my agnosticism - but there have been times (and there still are) when monotheism really bothered me, not to mention its followers.
Sweeping, screaming,
blaring through time and space
comes the sense of social justice
and though it slaps you 'cross the face
you are blind to its necessity
can't accept its recipe
of freedom
and peace
and love.
Many, legion,
multitudes
of you and your closed-up kind
have not survived the real man's
demands for expansion of mind.
You will die and go to heaven
or so you hope and pray
but you'll just die,
just die, just die,
just die and go away.
Sweeping, screaming,
blaring through time and space
comes the sense of social justice
and though it slaps you 'cross the face
you are blind to its necessity
can't accept its recipe
of freedom
and peace
and love.
Many, legion,
multitudes
of you and your closed-up kind
have not survived the real man's
demands for expansion of mind.
You will die and go to heaven
or so you hope and pray
but you'll just die,
just die, just die,
just die and go away.
Sinus Infection
February 27 1982, and the beginning of a long-term love affair with Sudafed and Nyquil.
Comment: While waiting, in bed at the Health Center, to find out why I'm so sick.
I cannot think
nor even hear
they've got me quite drugged
my dear, my dear
I sit having flashbacks
and hearing strange voices
that are in -
or is out out -
side my head.
In bed.
I'm feeling so weird
'cause I'm stoned with a fever
and my ears loudly ringing
are telling me "Leave here"
And still I sit here
incoherently seeing
I've cig'rettes and school books
as proof of my being.
Comment: While waiting, in bed at the Health Center, to find out why I'm so sick.
I cannot think
nor even hear
they've got me quite drugged
my dear, my dear
I sit having flashbacks
and hearing strange voices
that are in -
or is out out -
side my head.
In bed.
I'm feeling so weird
'cause I'm stoned with a fever
and my ears loudly ringing
are telling me "Leave here"
And still I sit here
incoherently seeing
I've cig'rettes and school books
as proof of my being.
Agony in Spring of '82
Spring of '82, the second semester of my freshman year in college, was a productive time writing-wise; I also began developing life-long friendships, experimenting with drugs, and exploring my sexuality. For a short time I thought I was in love with another young man - fortunately I got over that pretty quickly as his life descended into a nightmare of heavy cocaine abuse.
Two poems inspired by him:
FOR ONE PERSON April 21 1982
Why does it have to be impossible
to express what you feel without schmaltz?
Why is it that when you say how good it is,
people always seem to find the faults?
It happened in a dream (it didn't happen at all)
A soft, wonderful dream (We were drunk. It was wet.)
Oh, comfortable dream! (Oh, nothing hurts more)
God damn my soul! (Then will it feel better?)
I feel enclosed (I'm all alone in space)
My head reels madly (I am in control of my life)
A fantasy come true (A living nightmare)
And fire in my eyes (cold water in your heart).
-- Later the same day I wrote this, and then when I was looking through this pile of papers some years later, I added a comment: "I have not yet met the person I wrote this to."
FOR ANOTHER PERSON
You never worried 'bout it
you never cried
you just said no
all the times that I tried.
I hate this damn feeling
that can't be denied
and I'll never look long enough
into your eyes.
Never look long enough
into your eyes.
Two poems inspired by him:
FOR ONE PERSON April 21 1982
Why does it have to be impossible
to express what you feel without schmaltz?
Why is it that when you say how good it is,
people always seem to find the faults?
It happened in a dream (it didn't happen at all)
A soft, wonderful dream (We were drunk. It was wet.)
Oh, comfortable dream! (Oh, nothing hurts more)
God damn my soul! (Then will it feel better?)
I feel enclosed (I'm all alone in space)
My head reels madly (I am in control of my life)
A fantasy come true (A living nightmare)
And fire in my eyes (cold water in your heart).
-- Later the same day I wrote this, and then when I was looking through this pile of papers some years later, I added a comment: "I have not yet met the person I wrote this to."
FOR ANOTHER PERSON
You never worried 'bout it
you never cried
you just said no
all the times that I tried.
I hate this damn feeling
that can't be denied
and I'll never look long enough
into your eyes.
Never look long enough
into your eyes.
Experiment
I've always liked writing short stories and I've started several novels (not more than a couple of pages, thank you ADD). In the summer of 1982 I was intrigued by the idea of writing within odd restrictions - like that novel without the letter E in it. So I decided to write without periods. This is what came of it - mercifully the Muse left me before I got too far into it.
And so it happened one day that Thomas Edison was standing on a gas stove in Corpus Christi, Texas, with no shoes on, as part of a $750 bet between himself and a friend, that working with electricity all these years had made Mr. Edison impervious to unhealthy occurrences such as having the bottoms of your feet burned off by your own stupidity because you were too deaf and too lacking in common sense to realize that your Texas companion was saying "robe", not "stove", and actually meant for you to walk around downtown Dallas in a pink velvet housecoat with white fur around the collar and sleeves, which action would have won our friend the aforementioned sum provided Mr. Thomas Alva had additionally managed to commit sodomy with fourteen teenagers during the course of the day, and it being Saturday, and since the carnival was one block down the street, Edison ate one of his light bulbs and became Rock Hudson, a known homosexual, and proceeded to accost no fewer than twelve girls and seven boys before the day was through, and since no unhealthy occurrences happened to our friend in the course of the day, his wagering partner, Cecil.B. DeMille, was forced by his own word to go home to Los Angeles, where his wife worked as the world's first female fire hydrant, procure his checkbook, fly back to Corpus Christi and see Edison/Hudos in the military hospital there where he was recuperating with charred feet, to present him with a check for seven hundred fifty dollars.
------------------------
Quite embarrassing, but it's mine. ;-)
Influenced quite heavily by Bill Griffith's writings in Zippy the Pinhead.
And so it happened one day that Thomas Edison was standing on a gas stove in Corpus Christi, Texas, with no shoes on, as part of a $750 bet between himself and a friend, that working with electricity all these years had made Mr. Edison impervious to unhealthy occurrences such as having the bottoms of your feet burned off by your own stupidity because you were too deaf and too lacking in common sense to realize that your Texas companion was saying "robe", not "stove", and actually meant for you to walk around downtown Dallas in a pink velvet housecoat with white fur around the collar and sleeves, which action would have won our friend the aforementioned sum provided Mr. Thomas Alva had additionally managed to commit sodomy with fourteen teenagers during the course of the day, and it being Saturday, and since the carnival was one block down the street, Edison ate one of his light bulbs and became Rock Hudson, a known homosexual, and proceeded to accost no fewer than twelve girls and seven boys before the day was through, and since no unhealthy occurrences happened to our friend in the course of the day, his wagering partner, Cecil.B. DeMille, was forced by his own word to go home to Los Angeles, where his wife worked as the world's first female fire hydrant, procure his checkbook, fly back to Corpus Christi and see Edison/Hudos in the military hospital there where he was recuperating with charred feet, to present him with a check for seven hundred fifty dollars.
------------------------
Quite embarrassing, but it's mine. ;-)
Influenced quite heavily by Bill Griffith's writings in Zippy the Pinhead.
Probably October 1982
You call yourself an expert
of the things of time and space
and yet you can't see well enough
to recognize your face
To watch you looking in the mirror
at a visage unfamiliar
makes me take a moment out
to wonder - why?
Just like old Richard Corey
you have everything you want
and your wealth (though not in riches)
you've been known to loudly flaunt
You try to tell me it don't matter
whether I believe or not
but the way the you declare it
makes me stop and wonder - why?
of the things of time and space
and yet you can't see well enough
to recognize your face
To watch you looking in the mirror
at a visage unfamiliar
makes me take a moment out
to wonder - why?
Just like old Richard Corey
you have everything you want
and your wealth (though not in riches)
you've been known to loudly flaunt
You try to tell me it don't matter
whether I believe or not
but the way the you declare it
makes me stop and wonder - why?
February 1982
Inexplicable.
Why I Don't Watch TV
Always remember
that if you dismember
a corporate member
on the twelfth of September
you're bound to encounter
a fourteen-eyed flounder
which, as it gets rounder,
will quote out of "Sounder"....
Why I Don't Watch TV
Always remember
that if you dismember
a corporate member
on the twelfth of September
you're bound to encounter
a fourteen-eyed flounder
which, as it gets rounder,
will quote out of "Sounder"....
Letter to Todd
Spring 1982
"I guess it was really sort of my fault. It was, oh, 4, maybe 5 years ago. I had just gotten my driver's license."
"Okay, go on."
"Well, there were 4 of us in the car, me, John, Sara and Clay, going to McDonald's after school 'cause I had my dad's Continental. We were on the road, driving through town, when suddenly I just tromped on the brake as hard as I could."
"What next?"
"My mother is hysterical, at the hospital, my father telling me everyone else was dead, that I'd never walk again, and Mom going 'Why? Why?'"
"And you think you're crazy now? I don't. You sound emotionally fixated."
"And fixated, of course, means.....?"
"Wrapped up."
"What wrapped up? In a blanket?"
"You know, involved. Emotion centered on one particular subject."
"You're saying that you can only be involved with one thing at a time, right?"
"No! That's not what I'm talking about."
"Well, then, what are you talking about?"
"Jesus Christ, Todd, I hate talking to you."
Actually I really liked talking to Todd.
"I guess it was really sort of my fault. It was, oh, 4, maybe 5 years ago. I had just gotten my driver's license."
"Okay, go on."
"Well, there were 4 of us in the car, me, John, Sara and Clay, going to McDonald's after school 'cause I had my dad's Continental. We were on the road, driving through town, when suddenly I just tromped on the brake as hard as I could."
"What next?"
"My mother is hysterical, at the hospital, my father telling me everyone else was dead, that I'd never walk again, and Mom going 'Why? Why?'"
"And you think you're crazy now? I don't. You sound emotionally fixated."
"And fixated, of course, means.....?"
"Wrapped up."
"What wrapped up? In a blanket?"
"You know, involved. Emotion centered on one particular subject."
"You're saying that you can only be involved with one thing at a time, right?"
"No! That's not what I'm talking about."
"Well, then, what are you talking about?"
"Jesus Christ, Todd, I hate talking to you."
Actually I really liked talking to Todd.
Drawing
I was shocked, really shocked, to discover several years ago that this was not an original idea.
I drew this in high school - probably in 1980. Several years later when I lived in a shithole group house I drew a black and white version on an interior wall. I don't remember if we got our security deposit back.
I drew this in high school - probably in 1980. Several years later when I lived in a shithole group house I drew a black and white version on an interior wall. I don't remember if we got our security deposit back.
Letter to myself
For James 6/25/81
Have you ever heard the voice inside
Saying "Come with me and hide"?
Inside a place that I once knew
There lay an old and broken man
Whose eyes called out to me and said:
Listen to your heart and see
Who that is inside you.
Where are you now? Where have you been?
Are you really free?
Michael Tragers (this was a pseudonym under which I wrote several things)
How do you fare in your little spherical world?
You'd think you'd have moved out of there by now...
It's not happy there, but it's better than here;
isn't it?
WHO
Who is he
this face I see
who thinks he is so pretty?
He's just a boy with little boy thoughts
and a grown-up, faulty mind.
It doesn't rhyme, it never did.
I could never get it to sound sincere, somehow.
It always looked as if I spent all my time with a
thesaurus and looked up the words so You'd think I was smart.
Love
What is it?
Have you ever heard the voice inside
Saying "Come with me and hide"?
Inside a place that I once knew
There lay an old and broken man
Whose eyes called out to me and said:
Listen to your heart and see
Who that is inside you.
Where are you now? Where have you been?
Are you really free?
Michael Tragers (this was a pseudonym under which I wrote several things)
How do you fare in your little spherical world?
You'd think you'd have moved out of there by now...
It's not happy there, but it's better than here;
isn't it?
WHO
Who is he
this face I see
who thinks he is so pretty?
He's just a boy with little boy thoughts
and a grown-up, faulty mind.
It doesn't rhyme, it never did.
I could never get it to sound sincere, somehow.
It always looked as if I spent all my time with a
thesaurus and looked up the words so You'd think I was smart.
Love
What is it?
After my grandfather died
My father's father had Alzheimer's. After he died in 1984 I wrote this:
Barney
Barney sits at the funeral home
fingers in mouth
mouth in fourth
mind in neutral
it's a big story
he's trying to tell
bigger than me
bigger than him
-oops!!!
messed himself again.....
"Does he miss Marge?"
"Does Marge miss him?"
ha.
ha.
1984 and the people are
"indisposed"
"passed away"
"gone to meet their maker"
Where fucking were we?
Barney
Barney sits at the funeral home
fingers in mouth
mouth in fourth
mind in neutral
it's a big story
he's trying to tell
bigger than me
bigger than him
-oops!!!
messed himself again.....
"Does he miss Marge?"
"Does Marge miss him?"
ha.
ha.
1984 and the people are
"indisposed"
"passed away"
"gone to meet their maker"
Where fucking were we?
Several undated poems from the mid-80s
.....
Tell me another one
just like last weekend
I'll laugh at it, like I did last weekend.
And you'll think I don't believe you
like I didn't last weekend
but
Jesus
don't let it be true this time
...........
I used to be a younger man
with nothing left but time to kill
but now that I'm an older man
the days pass fast
the memories, dragging, swell.
What did you mean? To cause me fear?
I listened to you call me "dear"
and knew within me that you never meant it.
How could you hope to more offend
than write a letter to my friend
and when I asked you, say
"I never sent it." ?
............
I don't wait for birth
I don't wait for death
or pregnancy
or dinner
or the Metro
I WAIT FOR
............
Tell me another one
just like last weekend
I'll laugh at it, like I did last weekend.
And you'll think I don't believe you
like I didn't last weekend
but
Jesus
don't let it be true this time
...........
I used to be a younger man
with nothing left but time to kill
but now that I'm an older man
the days pass fast
the memories, dragging, swell.
What did you mean? To cause me fear?
I listened to you call me "dear"
and knew within me that you never meant it.
How could you hope to more offend
than write a letter to my friend
and when I asked you, say
"I never sent it." ?
............
I don't wait for birth
I don't wait for death
or pregnancy
or dinner
or the Metro
I WAIT FOR
............
Hi
I've been meaning to do this for years. I grew up in a military family, moving from place to place across the southeastern US, missing my father as he went overseas again and again. As a child I realized I was different from other kids; it wasn't until I was about 11 that I realized I was gay, and not until about 20 or 21 until I fully accepted it.
During, and for some time after, my painful adolescence, I wrote a lot. So - 25 years later, I have pulled out the box of papers (there's another one somewhere) and will be inflicting my gay teen angst on you here.
Enjoy.
During, and for some time after, my painful adolescence, I wrote a lot. So - 25 years later, I have pulled out the box of papers (there's another one somewhere) and will be inflicting my gay teen angst on you here.
Enjoy.
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