Getaway Car

Takashi Hososhima from Tokyo, Japan

My ex Dave was known by a few choice nicknames at Oneonta, notorious as he was for his good-looking "bad boy" ways, at a school famous for being the hardest partying school in the entire S.U.N.Y. school system back then. We called him "Dangerous" (because he was, to himself and others, but more for him than me), and "Mad Dog", because he raged at the machine like he was alien to it, which he was. His parents were high school sweethearts who thought much higher of themselves than two hard-partying, working class kids from upstate New York should have, and that was Dave's biggest problem.

They coddled him for being sick and beautiful, just like they did his older sister. Their kids had certain rock star components that they couldn't back up intellectually, which always left them frustrated, angry, confused, and feeling alone, attacking anyone around them during certain phases of the moon, like the half-deranged mixed Indians they are. It was maddening, because they can plateau for a few good years of productive work before bottoming out during their up-and-down cycles that characterizes the average manic-depressive. I hated it for them, but that was the best I could do without some hardcore medical back-up, which his parents refused to acknowledge, because it meant drying out for all of them (at the same time), as a lifestyle change too significant for arrogant Baby Boomers who refused to grow-up, stuck in their down cycles like the mental children they are.

They can shop and they can consume, and at their heights, they can party with the best of us, but during their dark times, they become rabid beasts unwilling to take a simple anti-depressant pill that's been around for ages, because their character flaws (like their arrogance) won't allow them to admit that they need medical help, minor as the cure sometimes is. It saddened me as I watched them make asses out of themselves in public from the sidelines of their disorders, powerless as you are when they are in the grip of their madness and addictions, knowing that one good doctors' visit is all they really need. Have you ever known someone like that?

I bet you have. Heart-breaking, isn't it? They were gorgeous on the outside only and deeply flawed from within, like a lunatic lion with his lioness, suffering from the same thorn in their paw that you can only pull out for them so many times. Get a grip, man, and get help, will you?! At the end of it (with certain types of Indo-Europeans), that's really the best you can do for them, by backing away to give them the space they need to disappear into the bottom of a bottle, and hope that they can finally learn to see through the haze of booze and their own distorted visions. It's actually born of a cowardice that can seem shockingly needy and co-dependent to healthy people, which is part of why they don't last that long around us.

You can either a) take care of them (for their families), or b) watch them they cling to someone else, like a barnacle stuck on the side of a rapidly wrecking ship that's taking on massive amounts of water. If you aren't a fucked-up "enabler" (and I most definitely not that), there's nothing in it for us to watch someone fall down drunk and then stagger slowly to their feet once again. It's sheer torture to watch sick people do that to themselves without reaching for help that's often inches away. So, I simply didn't do it after awhile, because getting ego-gratification from propping up a sick person is often ten times more sick than being the alcoholic him/herself. Know what I mean? What kind of sick fuck does that weird shit with loved ones, over and over again in a broken-down cycle? Not me!

Still, I loved Dave for loving me for so long behind my back (I admired his loyalty with its requisite hidden agendas attached) and he was incredibly physically beautiful, which warped his poor mind into further social distortion, because he couldn't handle his own looks. Some folks think it's "fun" to be almost inhumanly gorgeous but it's actually really scary, and it never goes away. People act so fucking weird and abusive to you, it's insane, and it's their kind of weirdness, not yours. People have these strange ideas that it's like wearing a pricey fur coat, or buying really expensive shiny jewelery that you can take on-and-off whenever you feel like it, but it sure as fuck isn't that. It's bone deep and it stays with you, despite weight loss (or weight gain), seasons of the year, age, hair color, skin tone, hair, or any other kind of superficial shit that average people get wrong all the time.

They thought (because their parents taught it to them) that they could barter off their beauty like their were prostitutes, which they sometimes verged on becoming, trading off their looks for petty shit like money, jobs, purses, and cars, as objects that are easily given and just as easily taken away. I thought they were dumb college kids saddled with their parents false expectations about creating scholars out of thin air without any effort, which is total bullshit. Ask any teacher. And that was it, too: we knew they were doomed to fail, because it remains the established pattern backing their disorders.

As working class New Yorkers, me and my best friend Karen were way beyond sympathetic to their pain. We lived with it at home with our own families, and because we'd already seen so many people go down as teenagers, you take the chance to help a brother out, man, when you can. You don't easily pass that up. They were more than our friends. They were family, and you don't disrespect soulful people in pain, you know? We were in it together. I didn't want to just help, I wanted to help them heal along with me, as we returned home to our families armed with knowledge and information, as they still struggled in pain. As soon as we learned lessons in college, we almost immediately tried applying it with vigorous strength to the family living in our homes, whether it worked or not, though we desperately hoped it would. What do you think motivates two teenage girls from roughly abusive families, besides minimum wage and part-time work?

We put our very heart and souls into the fight for our lives and the lives of the people around us who were drowning in drugs and alcohol, thanking our lucky stars everyday for the better health we felt so fortunate to have, hard as we worked for it. We knew they weren't made of the same stuff as us, but oh, did we want to help a brother out. It became the stuff our lives were made of, too, our life's mission and raison d'etre for being in it with them, for as long as we could manage it. It meant (and still means) that much to us. And so, when they fell down, we picked them up time after time (actually physically picking them up and supporting their often greater weights, athletes that we all are), and carrying them back home to the safety of our humble houses that we held together with our love, blood, sweat, and tears, but it wasn't something we could do on our salaries for very long, without facing down the fear of bankruptcy, which I finally did.

It went far beyond kicking someone when they were down, because we'd seen it up close for far too long, even though I'd escaped some of the worst facets of addictive disorders from my parents abilities to maintain drug- and alcohol-free existences for periods of time, weird as their disorders expressed themselves in other areas of their lives. Without healing madness at the root of it, it simply went into different odder directions, sublimated into an ever-stranger series of "fetishes" (self-described to me), like obsessive counting games, or folding laundry long into the night. We'd seen it's weirdness up close-and-personal in the people closest to us, as the very people who gave birth to us, and we hated their diseases with a passion that fueled our work at an almost inhuman pace, as we frantically tried to outpace their madness, sometimes falling down hard in the face of it by becoming overwhelmed, awash and swamped by the sheer number of illnesses we had to bear up under and support on a woman's salary.

We carried them as long as we could, and then we had to cut the chord to save ourselves, an enormously humble and selfless act that is not for juniors or beginners. Don't do it like we did, unless you have our gifts and genius, okay? Don't try this at home, folks, and don't "go it" alone. Gird yourself with as many strong healthy warriors as you can, and fire at it with everything you have in your arsenal, because that's exactly what I'm doing with you who are along for the ride today with me, out there in my audience, thinking that you're alone. You are not.

For all of David's supposed bravado in the face of life's challenges (as well as the normal day-to-day stuff he shied away from, too), at home he was just another scared New York kid too afraid to drive a car from my aunts' Brooklyn apartment to our parent's houses upstate. Despite his exaggerated tales of car chases and bank robberies gone wrong, you should know, my dear friends, that it was always just me driving him in-and-out of the city in the early morning light to avoid traffic, tourists, and fast-moving cabs that could cut you off at any moment, because he simply didn't have it in him to navigate an urban jungle as deadly as my native New York City. I did. You should know that.

Care Bear

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Care_Bears

My Irish twin married his high school sweetheart, years after they met working at DiNoto's deli in New City, down the big hill from our home off Germonds Road, and across the street from her private Catholic school "Albertus Magnus", also in New City. She worked as a pretty counter-girl selling cookies and pastries up front, while my brother and his friend Mike Ryan washed bakery trays in the back. Unfortunately for my shy brother, his friend said he liked her first, which I suspect was a secret way of motivating him into finally asking her out, and it worked. My brother told everyone that as soon as he met her he knew she was "the one" for him, even after college and his jobs in the city.

They were the first couple in my family of siblings to marry and have children, squeezed as they were into a tiny apartment on the Upper West Side that I only visited a couple of times (once for the birth of my first nephew), because Dave and I lived in Colorado. They soon moved to Hoboken after my second nephew was born, and that's where Annie lived when the Towers fell, because I finally got through to her from my office phone at The Denver Post, as she described to me (as best as she could) a scene from a horrific, real-life nightmare that unfolded right outside of her living room window with my baby nephew crying in her arms, cut off from my brother in the city, who once worked for an Internet start-up in one of the towers.

She has never been verbal or communicative (just like my brother), so I didn't expect to have a relationship with her, as the quintessentially shy and aloof Irish-Catholic girl. She could be chilly, distant, and arrogant, like the most difficultly clannish Irish can be, and those were the traits I distanced myself from the most, because that's the intended effect: keep away! And so, as I write to you today, she has never once called me on the telephone, nor written me a letter, or sent me a card, nor has she ever answered any of my correspondence through email, laughingly telling my brother once as I visited their home that he was "horrible" to me for not staying in touch, which is about as far from family as you can get. What's the point of marrying? To become more isolated and alone?

It didn't make any sense to me, and it still doesn't, but like I wrote, I didn't really have any high expectations for her, given my brother's ongoing difficulties, and her own family. Her mother chain-smoked into a thin reedy shape (like a twitchy, over-caffeinated, tea-drinking Mick, you know the type), while her father always hung back behind his strong silent cop facade. When I asked her parents what they planned to do now that they were retired, they gave me a long blank stare, broken finally by his wife "....nothing....", followed by a nervous quick shrug. Okay....so....no traveling? "No. We're just gonna stay home." Huh. Nice talking to you, I guess. Of course, it wasn't.

Her older sister and brother-in-law provided even less conversation, drinking beers morosely at my brother's family holidays, supplying very little effort. Her sister was a bit "butch", but that could be a persona crafted from years of elbowing her way through ER's as a nurse. Her husband seemed to have a slight lisp, deferring to her like she was the boss who ran the show, and their one kid said absolutely nothing the entire time they were at my brother's house in New Jersey. There wasn't much to do in their quiet suburban neighborhood but sit in their kitchen eating and drinking, which I grew up doing. It was intolerable.

My brother likes nature, hiking, sports, music, food, concerts, museums, and photography, but Annie often seemed like she was just there for the ride as his addition, and nothing more. I often thought that, excellent student though she purported herself to be, she went into Occupational Therapy because it seemed like a steady job to have, like her sister's nursing career, because I have honestly never received any sort of care or healing vibe from her. Ever. Not once. Not once has she helped with my mother's extensive therapies that she needs for her M.S., nor has she ever helped my brother with his sports injuries related to his martial arts training, and that's her own immediate family! She does absolutely nothing for anyone else, except perhaps herself and hopefully my nephews, some of the time.

It's a surprisingly selfish way to be, for someone who spent all that time and money (and her parents) to become a part-time housewife realtor (and she did the one task I gave her related to that poorly last year), and an occasional therapist. What the...? Why do all that work to stay at home? I didn't get it, except perhaps she's embarrassed to tell us that she feels the most fulfilled as a wife and mother, which is fine by me, but why not just say that? What's with all the creepy silence?! It's frighteningly dysfunctional, which makes me glad that she didn't take to the O.T. life after my nephews were in high school, and she became certified to practice it in New Jersey. I wouldn't hire her!

She didn't speak up when my grandmother needed transferring to a hospital for an infection from the rehab facility she was in for the elderly, preferring instead to ignore the old women in wheelchairs turned to facing the wall by some minimum wage orderly who took their sweet time changing the sheets in their expensive rooms. It was one of the most shockingly abusive things I have ever seen in the healthcare industry. I was the one who went up to the desk (after visiting with my grandmother), to inquire about my grandmother's transfer status to Nyack Hospital, to be told by the office staff that they had called the ambulance service for her transfer, and we were all waiting on that. Huh...I turned around for support to see my brother, his wife, and their two sons standing mutely behind me, powerless and motionless, like they were avoiding capture and eye contact upon penalty of death.

The last time she seemed to have any impact upon healthcare was her first job after graduation from the pricey Boston school her working class parents paid for, after she bragged to us about having a total academic scholarship, when we were all broke and in college, which turned off us S.U.N.Y. kids about as much as possible, even when she told it to us over a few beers as part of her point of continued disdain towards us. She worked in Westchester for a depressing hospice run for children with terminal cancer, living for free on their campus in a small apartment that my brother stayed in, under the false pretext of living with my mom during their engagement period, like the rigidly Catholic stance her family portrays to outsiders.

I visited them there, to gently inquire why children would need occupational therapy. What did she do, exactly? Again, even over several bottles of beer, it was excruciating to get any information or the barest of answers out of her. She hemmed and hewed, finally saying that she rotated their limbs to prevent them from getting bed sores. Oh....that must be hard for you, since none of your patients ever recover. Yeah, with a shrug and a downward look. We were there for a graduation party to start that she was giving for one of her fellow classmates, which included a girl from my school (hi, Shiela!) who has since helped my mom with PT, when she did that type of work.

They even had a theme for the party, giving each other cutesy cards and little stuffed animals that they giggled over like schoolgirls, because they had dubbed themselves "Care Bears" while in school together, after a dopey cartoon made for kids and the greeting card industry. I was surprised my brother didn't say anything, because we typically outed obviously gay stuff in cartoons, like the infamously purple-triangle "Tinky Winky" from the twee children's show "Teletubbies"*. My classmate Sheila was a total hippie burn-out in high school, smoking cigarettes and pot at "The Wall" with the other low-class metal-head kids, even dropping out of Honors English class (which I stayed in), as well as Honors French. I talked to her about dropping after the few first classes, because I was scared as the youngest kid in every single class I attended at school, and she said the same thing back to me, then actually did it.

I was shocked to find out that she earned an O.T. degree for something as "square" as being a healthcare aide, because she had never once mentioned having an interest in science, let alone attending advanced science classes in high school, in any of the sciences! Her friends in high school attended B.O.C.E.S. in the afternoon for grease monkeys who wouldn't attend college (in lieu of matriculated classes at Clarkstown South), and carried cosmetician cases with their dummies to experiment hair dyeing on. I actually thought she dropped out of school senior year, because she was really into doing LSD, like the harder core Rockland rednecks who came from seriously addicted farm families. "Why excel?", they said in response to us. They were going to die anyway! That was her crowd, back in the day. So, it was a bit of a shock to see her there at my future sister-in-laws party, especially since I now worked in publishing, just like my advanced English Literature skills in school directed me to.

Sheila avoided talking to me at all, or making eye contact, or making the obligatory awkward small talk, preferring instead to adopt the gay "Care Bear" identity that this strange group of girls had. I suppose it was in deference to their training, like brothers-in-arms have after serving in wartime together, but as I watched them pass these little kid items between one another, I thought it was one of the gayest things I'd ever seen in my life, and I suspect that my brother's wife knows the powers of observation I have by now. Perhaps that's the real reason behind all this "radio silence" her and my brother use as a weapon against anyone and everyone. I called out my parents recently for his latest communication blackout, which was met with the same patterned resistance that reeks of enabling, but that ends today, my dear readers, because now you know that I know. I know.

Murphy's Law – Care Bear Lyrics

I just broke a bottle
I just broke some glass
I don't know much more to
And I'm kicking your ass

So what if I broke a bottle
So what if I kicked his ass
Quit counting on me
You're a pain in my ass

I don't need no doctor I can't pay the fee
Don't need no social workers counting on me
I'm not sick there's nothing wrong with my head
Better leave me alone you're gonna end up dead

Care bear
Caring on me

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletubbies

Goth Kid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peek-a-Boo_%28song%29

When we were in high school, we knew who the gay kids were, because we'd known most of them all of our young lives thus far. It isn't very difficult to suss out the shy Irish boy who speaks with a light lisp and hangs out with the same group of tight-knit Irish-American boys we took First Communion with at the older, smaller St. Francis of Assisi parish back in the day. Our classmates were simply part of our lives, not some over-dramatic assimilation into another alternate universe. They remain they same down-to-earth New York kids I grew up with.

Their teenage years were a bit rougher, though, as the drama queens dug deeply into Glee Club, A/V classes, and art studios with an intensity that spoke more of a desperate soul seeking kinship or validation during those fragile, ego-forming years than the truer scholarship behind those disciplines. Imagine incorporating an undesired sexuality into your adolescence with a traditional working class background? Yeah..it was like that. We could talk to each other about what was going on in our lives, and that was about it.

That funny kid with a flair for the naughty limericks we passed back-and-forth in religion class at Albertus Magnus after public school became "Brion" in high school, with an ascot and attitude to match it, followed quickly by his acting debut on television with a widely aired commercial for a popular board game that he announced in art class with an alarming frequency. And it didn't stop there.

Pete was unknown to me until junior year, when he became our resident "Goth Kid" in a big way. His rebellion was epic, and totally 80s. He wore heavy black eyeliner (like the singer of his favorite band "Siouxsie and The Banshees"), an Egyptian ankh symbol (like she did), tons of black turtlenecks, Doc Martins, and occasionally a flannel tied around his waist, like any true-to-life Goth* would. It didn't hurt (or help) his look that he was six feet tall, which is a lot of black clothing to wear around so many pastel-colored Yuppies in Izod shirts with the collars popped up in the back, or the bright primary-colored Guidos and the Guidettes who loved them, with their shiny hot rods bought by daddy in the school parking lot, wearing gold crosses on thick chains. It got easier and easier to stand out from the herd.

It was made even weirder by his obvious Nuyorican background, because his full name was Peter Costales, and I write "was" because (like Mikey from the Life cereal commercials), it was rumored that he died from an overdose, though I am happy to say that isn't true. Instead, he became really serious about painting dramatic portraits in oils like Sargent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Singer_Sargent), and that's what I remember most about him, besides his large dark frame stretched out across a studio desk to recover from an experiment with clove cigarettes that went awry, in a furious bout with nausea that took him all class to recover from. His work was beautiful and very sophisticated for a teenager.

Unlike posers, he had the real thing, though in the political game that is high school, he lost a rigged contest for "Best Artist" to the Vice Principal's son Paul Bierker, which turned him off from school for good, as it should be. He was definitely better than him, and so was my boyfriend Raphael, who also painted in oils to great effect. Whereas Ralph dropped out of school to party (and blame it on me), Pete took his act to the S.U.N.Y. school system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_University_of_New_York_at_New_Paltz), like two other friends of mine from that senior year art class. We had no idea how to make a portfolio for submission, because there were no teachers to help us with it, or mentors to teach it, so we applied to a bunch of state schools to see which ones we got into and could afford.

The last time I thought about that group of dedicated artists from high school was when I saw Keith from our senior year art class, as we waited for an Adirondack Trailways bus upstate in the Nanuet strip mall off Rte. 59, where there used to be a Dunkin' Donuts. I asked him about John and Pete, and they didn't see each other as much anymore, what with classes and life taking over. Made sense to me. My best friend and I were destined to part ways as she became a student history teacher, and I went on to earn a B.F.A. from R.I.S.D. after my Liberal Arts classes at S.U.N.Y. Oneonta. They had a much shorter bus ride than I did! It almost made me wish I went there instead, because it was the first stop we made before the long difficult mountain bus ride in snow and ice laying ahead of me, but I knew that.

I was going to take a much harder road than they were, and I knew that meant something to them, too. Pete fucking hated high school for being oppressive and juvenile as much as we did, with an art teacher so burnt out, he announced on the first day of class that he would give an "A" to anyone who showed up for his class, and that was it. There was no talent required, or intellectual thought, or rigorous training involved: just a bunch of brilliant, ethnic, New York kids riding out a senior year we didn't really need, because we all had Regents credits for college already, with one tall, gay, Goth kid wearing pronounced eye makeup included. Thanks for staying strong, Pete. You big weirdo!

Kiss Them for Me

Siouxsie and the Banshees

It glittered and it gleamed
For the arriving beauty queen
A ring and a car
Now you're the prettiest by far

No party she'd not attend
No invitation she wouldn't send
Transfixed by the inner sound
Of your promise to be found, oh

Nothing or no-one will ever
Make me let you down

Kiss them for me, I may be delayed
Kiss them for me, if I am delayed

It's Divoon, oh it's Serene
In the fountains pink champagne
Someone carving their devotion
In the heart shaped pool of fame, oh

Nothing or no-one will ever
Make me let you down

Kiss them for me, I may be delayed
Kiss them for me, I may find myself delayed

On the road to New Orleans
A spray of stars hit the screen
As the 10th impact shimmered
The forbidden candles beamed

Kiss them for me, I may be delayed
Kiss them… Full lyrics on Google Play

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goth_subculture

Dutch Boy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Boy_Paint#Logo.2FTrademark

Me and my best friend Karen were psyched to be in college, unlike a lot of the other kids struggling with big changes and major culture shock. Given our hardcore working class backgrounds, we were happy to have arrived at school safely, because we almost didn't. The drive up there was epic, involving duct tape from my mom's trunk for Karen's old car bought with her after-school money from working at a drugstore in New City, some of the gnarliest twist-and-turns on one of the scariest mountain roads in all of New York State, a bit of MacGyver ingenuity (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2012/01/kitchen-mission-accomplished.html), and good old fashioned luck.

We landed! We had officially arrived to everything we ever wanted: the freedom to be "you and me", which included working hard, studying, playing harder, and working part-time jobs in between classes, which was just like high school, but with the intellectual freedom to do so unimpeded by our dysfunctional families not-so-hidden agendas. We excelled at writing our thoughts out in essay form, something that had to be actively suppressed during the show-pony multiple choice tests that lower level students needed to make the grade on a curve. Take a "D" test and earn a B?! Oh, my stars....it was heavenly!

Where other students struggled, we blew past as obstacles, running over them or leaping sky high, way above above their heads in leaps and bounds, and our dorm room conversations were no different. Most kids wanted to get high and check out from their life, but this was the stuff we'd been waiting all of our lives for, and we loved it. We quickly found a tight-knit group of other cool, working class New York kids, and we made them our friends for life. Neither of us had ever had so much in common with so many people, and we once again relished in our ability to socialize easily, with a natural charm. With our advanced learning and understanding, we could talk to anyone we wanted to, though not a lot of kids made the cut into our inner circle.

We were protective of the kids from "around the way" who'd been beaten and battered in their own homes, trapped for years in cycles of frustration, poverty, addiction, and/or madness that we didn't cause or control. This, we could control. You only did as good at school as you wanted to (or needed to), without answering to anyone beneath your abilities, and it was so freeing, we almost forgot our bearings early on in the semester that we quickly corrected within a few simple lessons. "Earl, the First Duke of Puke" reminded us that even seemingly mild kids could become lurking predators with enough drugs and alcohol, and the frats were busy hazing the pants off their pledges in the school's cafeteria. OK. We get it. Stay sharp.

But, it didn't stem the damage as much as we hoped. Kids dropped out (or failed out) an alarming rate that shocked us. We couldn't believe how bad freedom was for the coddled ones with rich parents. They were fucked up in a scarier way than the boozy Irish-Americans who tended bar in our neighborhoods, as those nice beefy lads manning the door and cutting you off safely after you had one too many. This wasn't no easy bounce, yo. A lot of them didn't recover their bearings; either from an overdoses, alcohol poisoning, poor grades, or mental health issues, often all of the above at the same time.

We had a great time (per our beach pact on LBI, at the beginning of the summer), but we kept a look-out for trouble spots we could either escape from easily or "man up" on, with as little static as possible. We were greatly assisted in our safekeeping endeavors by my boyfriend's best friend at school, who we'd promptly named "Dutch Boy" the first time we met him. He was a country kid who lived outside of the dubiously named area called Utica/Rome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utica%E2%80%93Rome_Metropolitan_Statistical_Area), without any of the attractions of other twin cities, because it was basically a wide spot in the road. At the time, we knew it for having the only t.v. station that aired locally without cable (you read that right, ONE station with enough reception to reach O-Town), and a terrible low-end beer that tasted like watery piss called "Utica Club", and this was wayyy before hipsters with their fruit-flavored artisanal microbreweries. 

We bought the cheapest beer we could find, because that's what we could afford, like the horrible Black Label Piels. It was a rough ride of a night when we drank bad beer, encouraging each other to down it quickly through fun games like beer pong or "Quarters", and Dave was right there with us; on a budget and flanneled up with the Timberlands you had to have for the deep snow drifts. They were (and probably still are) the only boots that can survive an upstate winter for more than a few years. It wasn't a state of mind that other types of kids could handle well, but we got where he was coming from.

We met him after he met Bart, stopping by our party room decorated for the occasion with a tie-dye tapestry hanging from the wall, and with his collection of vintage rock tees from rock concerts he attended, we knew he was the right fit for our burgeoning group. He had the perfect receding hairline of fine blond hair to match his round-tipped nose, like many a New Amsterdamer before him, and we kind of freaked out on that for awhile. He thought we were funny wasted New York girls from downstate, blowing his mind with all of our attention. It was near Halloween (Bart and I got together officially in October), and we started riffing on costumes to freak him out as part of our captive audience.

"Hey! You know what, dude..." passing a joint around, "you should, like, totally be that logo from a paint can!!" Hahaha! We shrieked loud girly giggles at him, and he backed up a little from the unforced gaiety of it all. "You guys are wack!" He put up his hands with the palms up, in a relenting gesture we knew meant that we had him hooked on our growing group. Haha! Yeah, we are wacked! "You know...," Oh no! These girls are going on with it! What to do?! "You could totally do it!" Karen picked it up right away. "Yeah! Just get some denim overalls and a can of paint!" Hahaha! We loved it! It was such a great idea, he had to do it! "No way, man!" He wanted to play it off like he was too cool for school, as an old guy of 28. "I, like, barely, dress up for Halloween. Halloween's for kids!" 

Yeah, old man! You should still do it. "Maybe! I don't know...I usually wear a black turtleneck with a mask or something, but it's totally last minute." Ha! Yeah, right, "Dutchboy". Lame. So lame. Totally lame-o! But, he wouldn't budge, so we knew he meant it. Ah, well. Can't win 'em all! Still, we had him as part of our circle for the entire time I was there, including my boyfriend's semester at McGill, when he still drove us out to the lake in the summertime, whenever we felt like it. His loyalty meant something to us, even as he doubted the wisdom of dating a super-douche like Bart. He was right, and we did indeed split, but not until years later, after Dave fell out of contact with us.

The last time I saw him was at a Smashing Pumpkins concert upstate, with my boyfriend "Dangerous" Dave, who'd been a friend just like Dutchboy. He was dressed like a gay frat boy, in a polo shirt and slacks, something he never would have done at Oneonta, where he played a classic burned-out hippie guy from a rough town. It disturbed me, and he gave me a nasty look when we passed by his group of boys all dressed the same. Something was really weird about it. Years later, Bart told me during a mini-reunion we had when I moved back to the city, that Dave was "closeted" and "just trying to fit in" with this new group of college kids, like some sad perpetual teenager who enrolls in school after school as a way of putting off life indefinitely, and that definitely wasn't party of our group's ethos at the time. Still, it was fun while it lasted. Thanks for the good times! Next one's on me. Promise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Brewing_Company

Bunny Boiler

My maternal grandmother and grandfather always told me the best stories, so when they didn't remember some of them in their advanced ages, I did it for them. I began telling them their stories back to them, as a reminder of who they were to me, as they still are, and forever will be. They taught me that having no money wasn't the same as true impoverishment: a soul-deadening condition that only the power of faith can take away. A lot of their rowdiest stories happened during their heady youth that coincided with the Jazz Age of "The Harlem Renaissance", and because my grandfather loved photography (he used to develop his own film and print from his negatives), they had the photos to back it up, which stayed with me, informing me and my work as a publisher to this day. Words are wonderful, but nothing beats the hard evidence photos provide. Period.

Because my grandparents and I liked to cook and were proficient at it, we often talked about food when we were together, happily cooking up something on small stoves in smaller apartments, but always glad to be together. Food was something we shopped for almost every day, for economy's sake and freshness, because anyone who's carried groceries up four flights of stairs knows that over-shopping is a curse in of itself. Besides, when you pass by a store every day, what's the point? There isn't any reason to hoard when there's plenty!

They lived through economic recessions far worse than anything their children went through, and it made them softer for it. Not for me, though, because I kept pace with them intellectually, which was freeing for all of us. There were no excruciating back-and-forths with a table of fat psychos more interested in checking out mentally and/or stressing out intentionally to create friction they could get high from. Ick...go away! We got into the real stuff of life, enjoying it pleasurably in a way that the inept among us would never do be able to do. We respected their illnesses as separate from us and our reality, without giving in to their crazy demands or insane schedules.

Eating for us was part of G-d's inheritance to us, as the good life we deserved as His Most Faithful. We savored the dishes we made excellently without showing off about it, because it was a part of our everyday lives, and because crazies are often deeply insecure and ravenously envious about a prowess and excellence they can never really participate in. Even as we spread our gifts evenly among them, they greedily wanted ever more from us, in response to our daily productivity. Still, the margins can be great places to live in, especially when drama queens display the same drab colors over and over again.

Our disordered family were easy to checkout on mentally-speaking, fast-paced as our real lives were in the very large world that is the greater New York City area. Like me and my brothers, my grandparents lived real lives, working really difficult jobs with a long list of great experiences to show for it. We laughed easily and often, passing the fruits of our labors among our small social group within a group, going over the heads of our sick family and friends. 

One Easter when I was little, my grandmother and I sat at her dining room table listening to her youngest prattle on and on about shopping and bunny rabbits, like the nervously immature girl she is. She lived with them all of her life, until they died. She had a pseudo-lesbian relationship with another sick woman from the old neighborhood she called her "best friend", but really, they were simply two sick women living with their parents long-term, because it was either that or an expensive mental institution. It was sad and tortuous to be around them, because they spoke repetitive nonsense to each other, in the similar way that compulsives do. She called my mom's sister her "Bunny", which made her hoard rabbit statues in response to her gay friend's devotion, relishing trips to the local mall like you and I look forward to riding the surf at the beach in summertime.

Yeah...we ignored them...a lot. For my beneficial and habitual blocking out of their inanity, I was rewarded with actual stories by my grandmother about her wild Depression-Era childhood, when her ability to survive might be the only thing that pulled her through the day. I could relate. My own parents (her daughter) were dangerous like her parents. We understood each other well. Back then, butcher shops were on the street, barking out their wares for your close inspection, because every penny counted. If you made a poor decision with your one purchase, you might not make it through the week with a decent meal, because your parents rode you about that, too.

On the week leading up to Easter, her mother purchased a live rabbit for their Sunday bolognese sauce, and barring an indoor cage for her to keep it in, she stored it in the tub for the few days until the big holiday weekend. My grandmother loved the little creature, rare as pets were for poor immigrant families recently arrived. Tenement living was rough, and space was scarce. Families often shared a bathroom on every floor, and baths meant you lugged buckets of hot water up some flights of stairs. If you've never done it, then you don't know to what lengths you'll go to keep yourself neat and clean. She loved the cute furry thing as a welcome diversion she could entertain herself with, after schoolwork and her chores were done.

On Sunday, she was delighted to eat her mama's handmade macaroni (that she cut on a bed covered with a white sheet, in great lengths) topped with a sumptuous red sauce, because meat (expensive as it is) was a rare treat for them, too. Sometime during the day, though, she went into the bathroom to peek at the bunny rabbit in the bathtub. But...what?! It was gone! Quickly, she ran back to the kitchen to tell her mama that the bunny had escaped. Oh no! "Haha...oh no, no, my dear little one," my great-grandmother Rosa laughed, "she was in the pot!" Slowly but surely my grandmother realized the price of her great Sunday dinner. Ohhh...

"Were you upset?" I asked my own dear Italian grandmama. "Oh, no!" My grandma smiled back at me! "I loved my mother's cooking! It was delicious!" It was as true then as it is for me, today. Nothing beats home cooking. Absolutely nothing. And I still love cooking Italian-American food as much as we still enjoy eating it, because the recipes we make for each other in gladness is the true wealth that we inherit, as a real manifestation of His Love for us all. That's what Easter, rabbits, and family mean to me. "Mangia! Mangia! Mangia!"

Per Angelina , proprietario di Angel di Dio.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rag%C3%B9

Rabbit Rescue

Every year around Easter, the number of rabbit sales double and triple the closer we get to the holidays, as do the subsequent number of rescued rabbits needing adoption, as each generation of kids learn that keeping a rabbit is not like having a domesticated cat or dog, because those animals have been purposefully bred to live with us as our working companions or household pets. I learned a bit more about taking care of rabbits through an old work acquaintance I bumped into at one of our annual industry parties that used to be called the "Barge Bash", but as the price (and number of careless drunks) went up, we settled into publishing parties at the piers of South Street Seaport.

Jason was my apprentice at one time, though more accurately, we were assistants to the Senior Production Manager, and he was our new trainee. I showed him the ropes, because we had to give new hires at least a week (sometimes two, depending on notice) of overlap between employee shifts; that's how complex the manufacturing of books can be. It was all very civilized, given the politics at the time. I was the first scholar/artist to work in production, because my mentor was gifted enough to know that she needed to steer her ship through hand-done mechanicals to desktop publishing with some serious guidance that my generation of thinkers represented as a group.

We never had clean easy changes as a part of our lives, so becoming adept at "multi-tasking" was just another phrase for "staying alive" to us. We didn't have a say in any of it: not the language(s) we used, or the systems we had to learn just to earn a meager paycheck, nor the kinds of media we made...none of it was ours for the taking, or asking. Jason was really smart and cerebral. He fit in with the hardcore nerds a lot better than I did, and that was part of the problem for him, too. He fit in a little too good for it to be healthy. Within weeks of me leaving the lower floor for the art department upstairs (in continuation of my apprenticeship as a leader, not a follower), I began to hear stirrings in the weekly production meetings, some of them staffed by my friends.

He attached himself to a flamboyantly bisexual "art fag" called Mary Louise at the time, and for a sheltered fragile kid from Brooklyn who lived with his mom, she was a bit too much of an exotic out-of-towner for him, with her bright red lipstick and chain-smoking ennui that seemed feigned to me. She claimed that the violent sexual offender who climbed through her open bedroom window on one warm Southern night turned her to women in response, but given that she loved to lie (ahem "act") in front of a captive audience, it was all up for grabs, including her highly mannered persona that could just be a reflexively fearful response to our overwhelming native city. I didn't really buy into her act, though she was a firm part of our crowd.

He attached to her hard, though, falling in love at work way too quickly at his first real job. He got into some serious trouble at work, so badly that my former work mentor from production had to ask me some pointedly direct questions about his conduct with me (which was strictly professional though friendly, since he was my responsibility as a younger trainee), and for her, that was rare, because she was (and is) that good at reading people, just like me. Mary Louise threatened sexual harassment lawsuits and discrimination, with the gay card thrown in...it was a total mess. Jason landed in rehab, because after accosting her in the hallways and company stairwells, he took his act to the streets, haunting her neighborhood like a love-struck teenager, and that's when it really got scary.

She was deeply rattled by it, because I asked her about his conduct, too. She shakily smoked a few cigs in the middle of the day just talking to me about recent events, and I could plainly see that this was no act; her hand shook lighting each cigarette in quick succession. He took to stalking her at the local cafe she went with her best friend and roommate in the Village, banging on the glass and mouthing "I love you" to her over and over through the window, as they sat inside. It was too much for him and her. Years later, after we met a party, I kept his card out of curiosity. I wanted to know about him, as one of the few trainees I had, and so I sent him an email to renew our acquaintance, which was gladly met.

He did indeed "make it", working as a professional Production Manager for a slick commercial packaging group, and I was satisfied with that. He was disabled after all, so I took care. We met for a dreadful "art fag" movie showing one warm evening downtown that horrified me, because the gay woman who made it was there for a tortuous "question-and-answer" period, and his was the very first hand to shoot up. I slouched a little in my seat, because the movie was terribly pretentious, as he asked inane questions about the sound recording and audio. I suppose he wanted to seem like an aficionado to impress me, which it didn't. Who cares about the background?!

But, as a disabled man, he clung to ephemera the way you and I might hold on to bread and water as the staff of life. I could see him at home, rocking back and forth obsessively over some soundtrack. It just fit his whole persona. Besides, he could afford to have such eccentricities, because he still lived with his mom in Brooklyn and he was in his 30s, which told me all I needed to know about his illness. He seemed stable enough, but that could all change at any time with the wrong combination of elements. So, we talked about rabbits waiting on the line to see this art film showing, and that's when he showed me some cute pictures of his pet rabbits.

He was a bit nervous about leaving them alone, sometimes even hiring a pet caregiver when he went away on business trips or the odd concert that kept him away from home for a day or two. He was the ultimate fan. We didn't connect romantically, so he asked me if he could "put me on the back burner", which I knew was language he picked up from his therapist giving him permission to see other women, and I was just fine with that. I liked him like I like all my friends: not like that. We'd see a few local shows around, but that was before I went bust during the last economic recession. He tried to pull me into his weird group of freelancers who worked completely backwards, and I quickly bailed out of their mutual business venture for the insane. No, thanks. I can belt-tighten some more, man, and that was it. Poof! He was gone from my life, after I got a small paycheck from him.

I was happy that he was grounded through his rabbits, and his album collection of odd music, because given the depth of his illnesses, he was doing phenomenally well, and I didn't want to see that disturbed in any way. We took it as far as holding hands, as he tried to comfort me about my "bad luck" in a rigged game I was destined to lose, with his arm companionably around my shoulders in a warmly affectionate gesture. He was off to another hipster show in Brooklyn that I passed on, but not before he gave me a kiss on the cheek full of well-wishes. He couldn't help me out. No, it was never that for me, but we had this: a beautiful sunny day in our beloved Brooklyn, walking around as if we had no cares in the world, because at the time, we didn't.

We had the company of each other, our full lives, pets, romances that came and went, and one of us went in for a voluntary vasectomy when he reached 30, after going through a full psychological screening for readiness. When I asked him why, he told me that he always knew he didn't want kids, and maybe it had something to do with his father dying from cancer when he was just a baby? I enjoyed the deliberately vague response, so I tentatively offered the actual truth as a bait for him to open up: perhaps you're afraid of passing on your DNA and your mental illness to a child you'd be hard-pressed to parent well? Hmm...interesting theory. "Yeah, maybe." I knew right then that he knew I knew without saying it to him, because I knew it a lonnng time ago, Jay. Good luck with those adorable bunny rabbits, tho. You deserve every happiness that there is out there in the real world, kid.

For Jason

http://www.rabbitcare.org/

"Jits, bitch!"

I understand that some celebrities and other well-known personalities are often portrayed as targets for public aggression, but sometimes all that static is justified. I didn't need to see the entire video of a rapper trying to game some neighborhood kids to know that it's not right for a grown man to sucker punch a teenager, no matter how much a youngin' sasses back at you. Anyway, what the heck is he doin' trying to run a soccer game in their 'hood? He ain't from Atlanta. He's from Ohio (I checked), so why does he step up to manning their game? Is he a soccer pro? What's with the one-glove action?! 

What makes him qualified to step in and boss some kids around, kids who look like they're having a local game on their block, not some group team practice? Chill, mutha! And if you got grown-ass men actin' like children in your game, then do what this smart kid does: drop him in a tackle, take the back by holding your mount, then finish him with a reliable hold like the "rear naked choke". That's how you win without ever having to throw one single punch (might hurt your hand, yo!), and that is the magic of Jiu Jitsu, friends. Stay safe out there, kids. Urban jungles can be rough with the wrong crowd!  And have fun :)

http://www.afterschoolalliance.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_jiu-jitsu

À Votre Service

Vocational service is odd to outsiders, until you try it. My mother and her family are sometimes so disabled, that to them (mostly on the surface, when being a true "drama queen" really counts), the idea that I have a business where I can publish to you daily from a public library cannot penetrate the denseness of their disordered consciousness. "But...someone else gives you a job...and you don't have a 'job'!" 

None of them have business degrees, or MBA's, or business degrees from famous Ivy League schools with MBA's attached to it, like my brothers do, nor the entrepreneurial experience all of us as a family have, because as proud members of the merchant class, we believe that honest trade is a good measure in any kind of society. Fair trade is defined to us as a "win/win" situation, which is the only type of business I transact. You read me, and we all benefit from it. You see?

I do not have commercial advertisers because I am a not-for-profit, and I come from religious family. Who better to fund me than my own kind, the same people who first showed me the beautiful traditions of our faith? They drove me to all those extra "Religion" classes after our regular public school curriculum days ended—our parents, grandparents, and anyone else who was trustworthy and going to Confession on a Saturday afternoon before a big holiday. They drove us to classes, church services, and all those devotional duties (besides religion class) that are required by canonical law for us to accept the rites conferred upon us through our ancient rituals, beginning at birth through to today. It's an important part of my service.

Yeah. It's a lot of school, study, and thought. Why do all that?! Lazy people have a hard time with honest labor that they can't easily game for a quick buck, and I have family who are much less ethical than me. My mom had the audacity to tell me the other day that I "just go to the library", after I showed her the Claddagh pin that the Director of the Library gave me as I sat here typing to you on St. Patrick's Day, because I'm here Monday through Friday, every single week (barring emergencies and holidays), banging it out on some old PC keyboard, off the top of my head, sitting next to your New York "public", and if you think that isn't hard, try it on your own with my minuscule budget, without any staff to assist you. 

Then, I presented my mother with the works of two master children's book illustrators, old books that I found here and bought at a bargain rate (to assess her ongoing decline, and any lessening in her acuity), a soil conservation program shadily sponsored by a pharmaceutical company through a Midwest university that I thought she might be interested in (as a former botanist who had a blessedly quick brush-up with breast cancer), and a coupon from our local carpet guy that we always use, with deep roots in the community. She heard...uh....some of it. Attention spans were never their strong suits, but that's a long list of medical diagnostics for another day other than today.

Suffice to say, I have family so disordered at times that they don't understand (and this is a very short list of their ongoing ignorance): devotional service (unless you're part of a clergy they can pay/control), vocational service (like doing social work, volunteer charity work, and/or teaching with skills that you can't buy at some broke-ass dollar store), and my continually ongoing artistic devotion with hardcore spiritual high notes, as endeavors so outside of their norms that they can't figure out how to infiltrate a presence like mine on the Internet, because computers are to be demonized and feared, lest someone "beats" you in that, too. It's arrogance and insecurity at its worst, and quite of few of them go down hard because of it. False pride is the worst kind of sin to carry. I strongly urge you to free yourself from it, through the Rites of Confession before this Easter Sunday.

Since they can't marginalize my website by attacking its quality, they say it isn't a "real job", like every threatened amateur afraid of artistry before them, and that truly is scary, because those inherited genetics are built from their fears. Because I don't work through a corporate entity someone can attack (like a public holding), then I must not be "in business", and since I can't be railroaded into accepting a high interest bank loan, then my father must not be my venture capitalist, since there are no shareholders to manipulate. There's just me and the obvious strength of my gifts. Ahhh....I see a dawn of recognition in your eyes. Good! You have to be as good as we are in this game called "Life" to know when someone is helping you build an edifice that can't be disseminated in thousands of little ways that gangsters, er, business lawyers can gain off your labor without you even knowing it. 

Needless to say, my few brush-ups with court systems, judges, and lawyers (none of my doing, actually, and through no fault of my own) taught me all I needed to know about how those venues are gamed by the players operating them economically, and that is not my joint. This is. What about me? As someone who's been in this little game called "media" since, well, almost all my life, I know that this freedom I have with you, my audience, is a much harder currency to earn than any money you can deposit in someone else's bank for their financial gain, and this New York girl ain't havin' none of that. You've already had more than your fair share, my dear family. Pour la Belgique.