When opportunity knocks...don't be afraid of the noise.

I had another coffee. Seattle may be known for it's java, but for my money North Beach has it knocked. I watched traffic and tried not to think.

That's when Bill Cosby sat down. If he were a light skinned, flamboyant homosexual, that is.
He wore a camel hair topcoat and horn rimmed glasses. He had a deep voice with a Southern lilt.
He asked if he could sit down and he called me darlin'. Oh shit. I was not in the mood.

"Look, I'm having a nice, quiet, cup of coffee, minding my own business...so if you don't mind."
"Please," he said, drawing it out into three syllables.
"You're too old for me...," and he laughed , a deep, booming laugh.

Now my head hurt, and the idea of a drink sounded great. I stood up to leave.

"Have you ever tended bar?" he asked as I was standing.

I sat back down. My principles have a price.

I gave him the short answer, and he flipped me a business card. He owned a small bar in a section of town called Hayes Valley. I was naive enough still to wonder if it was a gay bar.

"We open at 11, come by and we'll talk...if you're man enough. " He laughed loudly, stood up and sauntered away. He actually sauntered, and having never seen that before, I thought it noteworthy. I later learned it was more of a sashay, but I was new in town...

That was weird. Did he just cruise around town looking for young, tanned, blond guys to tend bar? I remembered where I was. Hmmm...

Maybe he did, it beat putting an ad in the paper.

Something new...

I walked through the Tenderloin, angrily dodging whores and homos until I calmed down. It took me close to an hour, and I found myself back at the apartment.

I entered and my roommate was sitting on the couch, cocktail in hand, wearing a smoking jacket.He wouldn't meet my eyes.
I stepped past two packed boxes and a very familiar duffel bag.

The door to my room was open and my bed had been stripped. The bathroom door was closed and I could hear water running, and what sounded like crying.

Then I saw her purse on the coffee table.

"So it's like that?" I stood at the edge of the couch.

"Afraid so, old man...I always held the lady in rather high regard. Shame, though, she really liked you. Bad form, I must say." He spoke in a British accent because the tourists loved it . He was simply a pretentious dick from Bakersfield.

I had enough money for a couple of weeks back at the resident hotel. I couldn't see working with him either.

I grabbed my stuff and hailed a cab. The two old guys who always sat in the foyer of the hotel were still there. "So, Mr. Irving Wallace is back. How's the great American Novel?" They laughed. And something funny happened, I did too.

I unpacked and walked a couple blocks to North Beach and had coffee. With nothing in it.
I sat at an outdoor table and considered my options for work. Didn't take long.

I didn't have any.

Back to work...now, where were we?

Ah yes. A real job. That's the great thing about gaining any kind of experience in the restaurant industry. You can get a job, for the most part, wherever you go. And waiting tables generates cash at the end of the day. Very important when one is rebuilding a life from the ashes.

San Fransisco was absolutely 'sick' with eateries. The following day I was a waiter, (they still used the term in the mid eighties. Now, we're servers. Whatever.) at an upscale joint on Fisherman's Wharf... Alcatraz out the window... when the Fog would lift long enough to see it, harbor seals barking and growling a few feet away.

I kept the drinking to a respectable minimum and learned another waiter, (also a writer-I told ya we were a majority) was looking for a roommate. Perfect. Out of that suicidal crib and into a real two bedroom in the Tenderloin District. Four stories above hookers, transvestites, bars and falafel dives. Brilliant. Just like home.

My roommate had yet to be published, but he wrote daily - in the mornings- and I picked up the habit. I had purchased a red IBM Selectric from a pawn shop and placed it on a door between the two bay windows in my bedroom. Instant desk.

I had no idea what I was doing. But over brandy and coffee, he taught me to find my muse, and he taught me she could be spiteful and vindictive. Sounded like an ex-wife to me, but what did I know?

He even introduced me to her, or someone I thought might be her, if she incarnated in the flesh.

She was Latin and several years older than me. She was a singer and worked for a car rental agency in the mornings. Afternoons were spent with me, before Cougars and cubs were popular.

My roommate and I would often get off work at the same time, and hit a few local bars on the way home. He taught me to observe...that sometimes the smallest things about someones behaviour...made for good writing.

Now my muse drank...just not like me. She told my roommate she thought I might have a problem. (So much for control.)

The blow up happened one afternoon after a loud bout of coitus. The only sound was our panting and my room mates tip-tap-tip-tip of his typewriter. I asked her if she wanted a brandy. She declined, and said I should wait, too.

I lost it. My anger stuck to the walls of my bedroom like gasoline and liquid detergent. I forgot she was Latin.

She threw my clothes and my typewriter out the window. I threw her underwear after them.

An IBM is one stout machine, and from four floors up it exploded in the middle of Geary Street, mixing with her underwear like Guatemalan party favors.

I dressed, dodging her hard little fists, and walked to the front door.

"Be gone when I get back!" My room mate stopped me, cocktail in hand.

"Trouble in paradise?"

I gave him the finger. I had said enough.

A generational rant...this is for you, guys.

I am going to veer from the narrative, albeit briefly, to send something out into the atmosphere.

Next month, I will be 49 years old, which means, the guys I grew up with, who are all still 32 in their heads, are careening wildly into middle age. (yeah I know, fifty is the new forty, blah, blah... it's still 50, which makes you the new retarded.)

Yep, that's us guys...we have become our Fathers, and most of us are ill prepared for the responsibility. Do we love our children? Fiercely. Do we know how to raise them? Not a clue.

We were born in the Eisenhower era, and came of age in the shadow of our version of Camelot, to watch it all turn to fiery, blood soaked, rhetorical nonsense. (The bigotry, racism and 'free love' notwithstanding.)


We had no war or great cause, we had no real heroes, we had no great music. (Tell me we did and I'll beat you to death with a Culture Club album.) We had platform shoes , the mullet, and Chuck Woolery. It's no wonder I drank.

We saw most of the Beatles die and saw the Stones turn into deranged geriatrics. We were lied to constantly...and we learned to suckle the lie, lest we finally know the truth.

Most of us were raised by a single parent, and those who were not, secretely wished they were.

Our hopes and dreams, for the most part were never realized, we could never measure up to those who went before us, and now, those behind us are protecting our liberties, while we wonder why and how we got fat, and bald, and nothing ever came true.

I remember when my parents died..and I realized I was totally alone on this planet and had not been prepared for it. I was thirty five years old, and I felt about eleven. So I did the best I could, and wrecked lives, and gnawed on the truth, wondering when it would all stop or I would get the rule book I thought everyone else had. And one day, I realized no one had it...that we were all, just spinning on the rock, waiting... to spin into oblivion.

For me Chuck Palahniuk summed it up..."The people you are trying to step on, we're everyone you depend on. We are the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you're asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life.

"We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. And we're just learning the fact. So don't fuck with us."

A heavy drinker keeps his virtues for himself and cripples others with his flaws-Phyl Kennedy (George Axelrod)

Greek tragedies are filled with heroes. And they all share something in common. A fatal flaw.
My flaw was walking away when something got tough. This was one of the first times I could actually see me doing it.

I made it about a half a block when we started up the hill. I was carting close to six hundred pounds of prime American, corn fed Democracy, slowly towards Chinatown. And they were already unhappy.

I was straining. I was wheezing. I was shaking. For a moment I envisioned somehow making it to the top of the hill, only to begin descending the other side, brakes smoking, picking up speed, hurtling to a fat, gravy laden death.

Oh, I don't think so.

I locked the emergency brake, and, legs shaking, dismounted the vehicle. The woman was making sounds of protest from somewhere in the folds of her neck, and hubby was grunting with displeasure.

"Folks, we've got a little mechanical...whew...problem..., someone...hang on...will be with you shortly."

And I walked away.

I had a moment of clarity and realized this was how I dealt with anything even remotely difficult, that I could turn around, get back on, and finish what I started.

Or, I could get a beer and look in the want ads for work.

That may have been the coldest beer I ever tasted.

Lord, save me from my good ideas...

This was one of those times I felt like my head was on my shoulders for the sole purpose of keeping the rain out of my neck. I knew the move was a bad one, and I needed to do something quick.

Moving back to Hawaii was out; Alaska too. Texas, well, I had too many issues to go back. I felt I needed to succeed at something before I went home. (My priorities were skewed.)

I realized I could start my life over, re-invent myself into somebody. Not change my identity, or anything creepy like that, I could simply do or be whom and what ever I wanted. No one knew me. Except for 'her' and she was not going to be a problem.

(I hear this idea at meetings, not being comfortable in our own skin-combined with the ability to observe and reflect any group of people we want to be a part of, very much the chameleons of the dependency world.)

I had tended bar, worked in restaurants, the Army and Hospitals and sport fishing boats. Maybe I could do something new.

I was strolling through Fisherman's Wharf, thinking of going back in to the food service industry when I saw the sign. Help wanted. The sign was in front of a large barn-like building, with a giant, empty parking lot.

I knocked on the tin door, creaking it open as I did. The place was dim, and there were odd contraptions parked side by side through out the building. Pedi-cabs. A whole lot of Pedi-cabs.

The sign also read "No experience necessary." A little explanation might be in order. The term Pedi-stands for Pedal. The unit itself is the front part of a bicycle attached to basically, a love seat, with two wheels in back. The machine is powered by pedaling and I thought "How hard can that be?"

(I know I mentioned earlier that San Francisco is a series of hills, very large hills. At the time, this information failed to register.)

The Manager was smoking a joint in his office, and didn't seem the least bit concerned. He looked me up and down, and told me to take one for a spin in the parking lot, get the feel. (I always get a strange rush when I stumble into a job I am not prepared for and start winging it. The rush would not last.) The parking lot was flat and level, and having two wheels on the back, it was like driving a huge tricycle. I couldn't fall over if I tried.

So my job would be to ride around and pick up tourists and cruise them to the hot spots, giving them a little verbal history, and schmooze for tips along the way. And it would be good for me. (Just another self deluding reason to try something stupid.)

So I was hired. There ya go, hit the ground running son, good on ya. (I can be my biggest fan club.)

I pulled into traffic. Easy stuff. At this time I had no passengers, so of course it was easy. A large crowd of six people were waving at me from the corner. Sweet, my first fare. They would have to decide who was going, couldn't take all six. As I pulled to the corner, a smile frozen on my face, I realized there was not six of them. There were only two.

And they were freaking huge.

He got the joke...

David Foster Wallace hung himself last week. The author of "Infinite Jest" now knows just what was so damn funny.
He knows the cosmic punchline, and I doubt it has anything to do with "Two Priests and a Rabbi go into a bar..."

It pisses me off when people of huge talent choose to go out that way.
(That is not me saying that people with mediocre talent, or none at all, should choose to kill themselves...I know how sensitive some can be.)
Did they burn so bright that they thought the only way to extinguish the flame was to do it themselves? Who knows... and it's too damn late to ask.

But you never know when the monsters in the closet may just turn out to be real, instead of shadow and boxes and sweaters in a lump.

I'll sleep with the night light on anyway, just in case.

Swingin' cats...

My room was perfectly seedy.

Lumpy, stained mattress and scarred night table. The bathroom was down the hall. My window opened onto a brick wall. My duffel bag sat propped in the corner. I had a small desk tilted unevenly against the wall and a hard backed chair.

There was no art on the walls. Domestic bliss.

I paid by the week and knew I would go stark raving batshit if I tried to sleep before I was exhausted, so I walked. Found an espresso joint on the corner with outside tables. Old Italian men sat smoking black, ropey cigars, and gazed into their cups.

Picked up a map at the front desk and unfolded it against the chilly night wind. I found China town, Fisherman's Wharf and Knob Hill.

I found it interesting that Knob Hill was no where near the gay epi-center of town, the Castro. Seemed only natural to me...(did I have to mention that? If you know me at all, you know the answer to that.) I also found it disconcerting that it was July and I was freezing my ass off. But that's the City in the summer, who knew?

And that's another thing. I had heard about the City being a Gay haven but thought it was probably just a neighborhood and I could avoid it if I felt it necessary. I soon found that being a straight male in his twenties put me in a minority and that the Gay part of town was, well, the entire town, with valiant pockets of ethnic heterosexuality here and there and possibly, three straight white guys out in the Avenues, and me.
Being a want-to-be writer put me into a majority, so I figured it balanced.

I learned you couldn't swing a cat in this town without hitting an artist, writer, actress or homosexual. Now I've never been one to condone striking homosexuals with swung cats, but if that was your idea of a good time, then this was the town for you.

The mid-eighties were a vibrant time for San Francisco. Headline politics; murder, scandal, Hunter Thompson writing for the Chronicle (giving Herb Caen fits) -The O'Farrell theater, all of this pre-big earthquake time.
AIDS was making itself known but was no where near the epidemic proportion it would later become, turning the City into one big funeral pyre.

So I walked. I found City Lights bookstore-the mecca for beat generation writers. I walked the same streets as Richard Brautigan and Dashiel Hammett. Earl Thompson had died a few years before across the Bridge in Sausalito, at the unexpected age of 47. (I carried his novels with me for years, and still own a copy of "The Devil to Pay.")

I settled in as best I could, figuring I would only be at the Hotel for a couple of days, then 'she' would beckon me with open arms, and we could play house across the bay. So in the meantime I met my fellow residents. Two actresses, (one, the hairiest little Armenian girl I had ever seen,) another writer, two academics, and a handful of old Jews.
"The whitefish is looking particularly good today...did I tell you, I knew Sophie Tucker...give me back my T.V. guide you gentile bastid!"

The two days passed that we had agreed on, or I had, and I took a cable car across town, and hiked it to The Golden Gate Bridge, standing and peering at the Pacific, in swirling Fog, the ghosts of Alcatraz at my back.

I waited for her to come strolling out of the mists, taking me in her arms and making me complete.

I waited until I was too cold and wet to wait anymore. I slowly walked away.

She was right. I was an idiot.

When the dust settles...you're left with dust.

I somehow talked her into picking me up at the airport. She asked me where I was going to stay. (I could scratch 'with her' off the list.)
I told her to take me into the City, somewhere colorful and artistic. In San Francisco this does not narrow your choices.
We talked on the way in.

Yes, she was glad to see me, but she had just returned from a date, so starting up again was not really something she wanted to do. As I had just relocated a couple of thousand miles, give or take, for her, (granted, without her knowledge or consent) my feelings were hurt. I had definitely seen Casablanca one too many times.

So the hamster wheel kicks in. (The hamster wheel is an alcoholic/survival mechanism when, up against a wall, the hamster begins running his ass off, generating survival techniques for the owner of the wheel.) Okay, maybe not all of us, but I know my hamster was kicking it in at this point.

She drove into North Beach and I begin to see this as a new adventure. I could write here, be inspired, eventually even bring her over to see just how wonderful I was. (Still completely deluded, but that would soon change.) My blanket of denial was more of a tarpaulin. Covering Candlestick Park.

While I was thinking about where I would stay, and what I would do for a living, I even had time to fantasize about proposing to her on the Golden Gate Bridge. The idea of romance can be as seductive as any opiate, and I was hooked.

She would whisper something in the car on the way in that I never could catch, more to herself than anything else, and she kept repeating it. I was curious, but who was I to intrude?

So, I asked her, as long as it was out in the open, what our time together meant. She owed me that much.

"What it meant? It meant I was a single woman on vacation, and you were a cute little Island guy and I had fun. That's what vacations are for." She had stopped smiling.

"We can talk about it later, I know this may be a shock," never say die, even when the bayonets against your throat. My mouth tasted like copper and dog shit and my heart was somewhere around my topsiders.

After a half hour of silence, we rolled into North Beach. Shrouded in Fog, strains of jazz and traffic, and smells of Italian food and strong, dark coffee.

She parked on a hill. (She actually had no choice, the City is nothing but hills.) A faded, green neon sign down the block showed rooms for rent at a resident motel.

"Here's the deal, (I was all in at this point, with nothing left to lose) meet me on the Golden Gate Bridge in two days, eight o'clock, if I'm the one you want. If not, no harm no foul, I'll get by."

She wouldn't even look at me, she just mouthed something and pulled away.

I think she said, "You're an idiot."

Paradise lost...to coin a phrase.

If there is a cosmic scoreboard keeping track of my major life mistakes (for those who believe there are such things) then my actions following my infatuation have to be in my top five, okay, maybe ten, but up there just the same.

My Skipper's teenage son had arrived and I was to train him in my position. I was training my replacement. I have done this on several occasions, after being a certain age, and it is never a good time. Especially when you know you are being replaced.

The Charter fishing game is as mercenary and fluid as the restaurant business. Someone is always looking for a better boat, better conditions, a Captain that's not clinically insane, a first mate that's not too drunk to work. But my Skipper lined up a job for me with a boat a few slips away. It was not a Bertram. It was a tubby little Bayliner, with a tubby little Captain from back east some damn where, freaking Yankee...(I couldn't be grateful for the ease of transition, I was too busy pouting.)

It was this same time that my new 'her' went back to California. She asked me to come visit, if I was ever in the neighborhood. Boy was that a mistake.

So I was working on this little gut bucket, not getting any charters, watching my old boat cruise out on trips. I think I even waved, and smiled as they passed, wishing they would sink. What a brat.

I stopped going to meetings and stayed sober the old fashioned way, out of resentment and bitterness, and don't you know that's a good time? Not. So my brain began thinking.

It does this on it's own, when it comes to drugs and alcohol, especially when I am not pulling the maintenance needed to keep it intact. It will wake me in the middle of the night. "Dude, what are you doing sleeping, we could be thinking, and looking at your life right now, you need to be. Jesus, are you screwed. I can't believe you are letting 'them' get away with this. You have every reason to smoke weed, ya know, I mean it's not drinking, so what's the problem. And it's been so long since you had a drink, I think you deserve one. The nerve of these pricks...they don't know who they're dealing with. Shit, a few belts would make all this easier ya know, I mean, you deserve it..." Yeah, that's a good time. And so this litany becomes a constant barrage, waking, sleeping, doesn't matter. Eventually the only way to quiet the noise...yeah, you guessed it.

But here's the thing, and folks who don't attend meetings, or have this affliction don't get it. When I go to meetings, the noise stops. I don't drink, or use, and life is not too bad, although I can screw it up with one bad choice, but meetings also help in making the right choices, providing I'm not believing my own crap, again. At any rate...

The job came to an abrupt and splashy halt during a half day charter with Captain Tubby.
As my brain was was noisier than a room full of cub scouts at Michael Jackson's house, I was not paying attention to my job. And part of my job was to secure the large rods and reels in their holders with a lanyard and clip, lest a large fish take the bait and pull the whole shit and shebang over the side. Unh huh, yep, sure did.

The outrigger popped and in slow motion, the rod came up and out of the holder, over the side and was last seen heading at an alarming rate towards Guam. My Captain turned purple and was struck with the inability to articulate intelligent sound. Our client thought it was funny, "Whooee, look at it go, hot damn, bet ya don't do that again!" Too right, that.

'I'm sorry' seemed lamer than Clinton's definition of 'is', so I put my head down, and we spent a very, very, quiet trip back in. We docked and I walked off. What could I say that would make things better?
I didn't have the money to replace the lost gear, and a charter boat with only one rod and reel was not going to make any money. I was done.

I sold my little used Toyota and used the money for a one way ticket to California.

Once at the San Francisco Airport, I called her, thought the surprise would be nice.

"You did WHAT?"

This was not going the way I had imagined.

I digress for some family time...

I'm taking a break from the narrative as today is my Father's birthday. He would have been 88 years old. (He died of congestive heart failure when he was 76.)

Without him, there would be no narrative, as there would be no me.

We had a strained relationship at best. Dad was a difficult man. Difficult to know, and difficult to love.

But I owe him thanks as he stood up, and tried to raise me after my mother was declared unfit, and he brought me back from Las Vegas when I was seven, where I had been living with my mother in the throes of her own addictions, selling herself to strange men, in our little travel trailer, and I tried not to listen.

In 1966, there were few single Fathers. Dad stood up and said he would do the best he could and care for his son. At first I lived with my Aunt, Uncle and five cousins...and for the first time, learned what life was like in a big family, a real family. We fought like rat terriers, all five of us, but no one at Catholic School messed with us, as they would have the whole lot of us down on them with a fearsome vengeance.

After third grade in Catholic school, Dad was able to get us a small apartment, and I moved in. I got used to his girlfriends, and later his wives, as I distanced myself from them, already an observer, hiding in books and movies.

An early memory is riding in the car on a Sunday morning, going to get the newspaper with Dad. I was two or three, and I remember his smell, and the smell of the newsprint, and a feeling of safety.

I also remember my first lesson about telling lies.

My parents were still married, and I was all of five years old. He asked me if I had brushed my teeth as it was bedtime, and I told him I had. (I was already tucked in...I didn't feel like getting up.)

He checked my toothbrush with his fingers, finding it dry and went insane.

He threw me from bed, holding me to the floor and kicked me all the way to the bathroom, screaming "Don't you ever lie to me! Ever!"

All that taught me was if you lie, don't get caught.

He was an explosively violent man, whose passions centered around his music (a professional musician, jazz and big bands) scotch, women and his mother. (And I thought I had issues...)

But he loved me, in the only way he knew and would have died to protect me. He had PTSD before it was fashionable and memories of World War II haunted him for the rest of his life.

Five wives, three kids...I was the baby...and he always wanted to be a star.

We lived in Dallas at the time Kennedy was assassinated, and Dad worked for Jack Ruby. I knew him as Uncle Jack.

My mother danced at the Carousel Club. The FBI interviewed them both, and Dad would never speak of that November.

He was the most self centered man I have ever met, and a few months before he died, I moved in with him, to try and care for him, as the quality of his life had declined to a point where he opted out, he was tired, and life had lost it's sparkle.

Two days before he died, he squeezed my hand and said, "I'll love you forever..." That's the last thing he ever said to me.

I still miss him.

Misanthrope, mysoginy and other 'M' words...

Life. The pendulum swings...things are good, not so good, suck really bad, better again, aw hell this is great... then back again. It took a while for me to learn that life was not static, that things change, always.

I went through a rough patch getting off the pain pills, but found that if I rolled with it, the urge would subside. Sometimes not for very long, but hey, small battles right?

So life was nice. Until I got my mail.

I have found that historically no good ever came from me checking my mail, even less if something were sent 'certified'. Nope, no sir, no good at all.

Divorce papers. Pages of legalese that amounted to my marriage being over. Now, I was not even close to being considered a good husband or father, and my first marriage had to be one of the most disastrously dysfunctional relationships ever imagined...but the finality rocked me.

I brought the parcel with me on the boat one day, just me and the skipper, and read them in front of God, his world and a pod of bottle nose dolphins that had been following us from our leaving the harbor.

They required I sign the documents and send them back. I couldn't understand why there were tears staining the pages as I read, as I had no barometer for loss, as of yet, but there it was.

I was now an official, court documented failure.

"Never again, skipper." I grinned through my tears.

He laughed, and pulled deep on a Doral. "I'll give you five years."

"You're crazy."

"Nope. I've seen it before. You are the marrying kind. Dead set on someone else being responsible for your happiness, you don't have a choice."

Smug asshole.

What could I say, deep down I knew he was probably right, although I couldn't see me doing it any time soon.

(After three marriages, I can see he was right. It took me eight years of being alone to come to a place, a place where I am absolutely complete being alone, and pretty damn happy. Not to say I'm not open to the right possibility, but today, I don't chase it. If it ever happens again, I want it to be for the right reason...but there's no hurry.)

So I swore off women. Lasted about a week.

But it was a start.

That's the thing about exotic locales. They are, by nature and definition, romantic. I had a friend in recovery whose sister was visiting the Islands from California. He thought I should show her around the Island. I did, and the forces that be donkey punched me in the heart.

I blame a full, yellow moon, walks on the beach at night and the bane of my existence...holding hands. I am an absolute sap for holding hands.

I knew she was a tourist. I knew it was a vacation fling. I failed to see this was a rebound affect brought on by my losing my first family.

When you're tumbling in the dryer, it's hard to focus on your socks.