Samhain

It wasn't until a t.v. show talk host in New York with southern Baptist roots said to her audience last week that Halloween was about "evil" that I realized how many Americans (and many people around the world) probably have no idea what our holiday is really about. My Arabic friends from Jordan working the convenient store on the corner only further confirmed this for me, as purveyors of goods that feed the demons in their twilight consumptive world of gambling, smoking, and alcohol available for purchase 24/7, in a town that often shuts down around 8 on a late night.

The roots of many Catholic traditions are pagan. It's something we openly talk about, because it is so written in the Bible, and therefore it is not a taboo topic of conversation that we shun like the devil. In fact, Holy Roman Catholicism is designed (as it was from the very beginning) to coincide with humanity's most ancient festivals and feast days that featured the seasons and their transitional time periods. The gods themselves were the elements of nature immortalized, as man stood at the core of the earth's tremendous power in witness to it, from our very first stirrings of a higher consciousness.

For children of the northern United States, the change of seasons still mark every major holiday we have on our Roman calendar, almost exactly as it would have in ancient times, because we have four distinctly separate seasons that last exactly three months each, in a perfection of harmony and time existing between man and his environment. With the immigration of our ancestors from Europe came the link between the crops of America's "New World" (that we celebrate during Thanksgiving) and the recognition that this world is still very much with us no matter where we may go on the globe, as we brought along religious traditions tied to our non-monotheistic pasts.

For me, this connection is felt even keener in a town with strong Celtic roots like Pearl River: a place that can seem just like your quaint little village overseas on most days, squinting as you might be in the brighter New York daylight. Carving out traditional Autumn crops like turnips and squashes to place a candle within is both a prayer and a warning for us, at the same time. During the Gaelic harvest festival of Samhain (pronounced "Sah-win"), it is believed that the divide between the living and the dead is thinner than any other time of year, as the trees shed their leaves for the long winter sleep, to awaken again at the beckoning of a warm springtime sun.

So then did our holy masses quickly follow suit during this time devoted especially to All Saints and All Souls*, in recognition of the stronger powers of divination in this season of giving, now shown as holiday table centerpieces sold in American catalogs every year as the "horn of plenty" cornucopia that gushes out the richness of the earth in its astonishing variety of crops every year: G-d be willing praised, and G-d be praised. It is the crux behind our northern Indo-European wishes of goodness and plenty that we happily bestow upon one another, starting with our precious little ones in their adorable costumes first, when we ask them if they'd like tricks or treats before handing over the candy. We already knew the answer, my sweets. Be safe. Have fun. Happy Halloween.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Saints%27_Day

   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Souls%27_Day

Moondance

I knew that my relationship with a certain young Mr. Mulvihill wouldn't last for very long because he was too proud of being inbred and ignorant as fuck, in addition to his poor diet, lack of appropriate sleep habits, and near-daily drinking habit to the point of intoxication, not to mention his utter lack of a well-rounded education. Irish-American boys had become my comfort food, best dated between long-term romances like, say, during a summertime spent mostly at the beach, to be dropped once the party turned violent, and in their battered homes, it always did. Someone else always started swinging first.

But, for a time, it was easy enough for me to see someone who lived a half an hour's drive away from me (with no traffic), so I could pursue my work life in the city. He didn't like the patterns of our weekend romance, but I honestly didn't have much more to offer someone who, while financially successful, remained a high school dropout. He was lost without his "homies", even as he hated being stuck in a co-dependent drunkfest with the old gang at Gerritsen Beach. He was a mechanically-inclined millionaire with a depressingly unfinished house in an insular pocket of Brooklyn, with horrible social skills and a peculiarly small worldview.

There wasn't anything I could do for him unless he did it himself, and with the fistfuls of cash he always had on hand, he seemed to think that he called all the shots with me, a world-class art director. It was delusional and arrogant, but money will do that to ya. He could run his yard and his demented crew, and that was about it. I'd never had a life that small, and the tension of our ill-fitted pairing showed early and quick. I broke up with him often, and the stress of being stalked and pursued yet again in my late 30s, after all my life experiences, made me angrier than ever.

I didn't want the whole juvenile "push-and-pull" dating thing; I never had. I wanted a hot love affair that lasts forever. I was the "queen of clean breaks" who bore her former suitors no ill will, but John had inroads with my family that made me worth pursuing in his mind, which also made me incredibly dangerous to someone as small-time as him. I could wreck him and his family forever with a call to the cops because of his past, and he knew it. Ultimately, after one night's big showdown, that was it. He knew better than to push his way into my life and my home, because he begged me afterward not to press charges.

His "ex" wife (not officially divorced though legally separated, as I later found out that he lied to me) had pursued domestic violence charges with a vengeance designed to chain him even tighter to her, and I was more than fine with that. I didn't need their brutal mind games in my life. Besides, the whole weird love triangle between him, his best friend, and his best friend's wife totally freaked me out, as did the strange semi-incestuous attachment his half-sister had to him. It was creepy and weird, and it felt like I was living someone else's life besides mine. I wanted out, and I got it by fighting for it.

That isn't to say we didn't ever get long. Obviously, a handsome Mick with a good job rolls off me the way water does a duck's back. It wasn't exactly unflattering, and cute New York boys have tons of confidence and charm, especially on a Friday night with their pockets full of pay for boozy food-and-drink extravagances. But, I was no ingenue. More than one girl has sat back and watched a parade of savvy boys try to play me like a fiddle. It takes a lot of finesse. Suffice to say, we had enough cultural commonalities that being with him could be as fun as getting drunk at a football game with a tailgate party full of cheeseburgers. You don't do it often, but once in awhile is fine, you know? I just didn't need season tickets to the show.

One of our last dates was one of our best, though with his crew's challenged perceptions about time, it went on for far too long. They tried to squeeze a good time out of me the way show-biz parents overbearingly set up their kids for child molestation: maybe they didn't mean to hurt me at first, but after their tenth beer or ninth hour, I could feel the suppressed rage of their intolerance towards me chafe like an ugly wool sweater that itched a red rash all over you. It was oppressive. The concert we went to see at Jones Beach* was like that.

They were a little too happy about seeing a show by a notoriously temperamental artist who'd walk off the stage in a huff if he felt the "vibe" from the audience wasn't right. I had that to look forward to, as well as the long car ride (with his sister and best friends, again) who still thought drinking and driving was fun, like being trapped in a time machine from the 70s or 80s. It was a bad feeling, especially with their young girl in the car, too. We got there way too early, which meant more boring hours in a parking lot trying to drink and have fun with people who don't know how to talk.

Finally, it was time to see the show. John was huffy with me in the seats because he hated one of my more mild college stories that I told to pass the time. His best friend defended me by saying that John had an experience like that, too, and he was more subdued after being caught in another lie. And then, just like that, the magic happened. Van Morrison sang one of his most famous songs about the moon in October skies just as a pair of swans entwined neck-in-neck swam by the stage in the surrounding Long Island Sound, sparkling moonlight and twinkling pianos and all. I wished that could have been our good summertime ending, but it was not. Still, I have one more memory to go along with one heck of a talented Irishman, diva or no. It was much appreciated, lad. Ta!




* http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/66660.html

Howling (In The Name Of)

Having a real Alaskan Malamute like Teddy was both a privilege and an honor, and one of the most difficult jobs I've ever had in my life, as one that's so often been filled with brutally hard work. He was absolutely astonishing to look at: a stunning, spectacularly beautiful animal of an uncommonly large size that marks the Giant M'Loot tribe of Mals, with their distinctive bandit face-mask of lush black and white fur. He was a lot like me, too, of a spiritual kind that's way deeper than mere pet ownership.

He was my puppy soul-mate: a "totem", a link to my ancient indigenous past like the first canines his pack still resembles so closely today. His temperament was as excellent as his looks. He was gentle yet powerful, strong and kind, intelligent while also being playful and fun. In short, he was perfect, and sometimes I was scared of the awesome responsibility that comes with taking care of such an extraordinary animal. Because of his rare genetics, he was also extremely high maintenance after human exportation to the "lower 48" states; not a lot of moose meat or seal chunks to go around the mainland U.S. As a result, he suffered from terrible diarrhea because of the filler food sold at commercial pet stores, which made me stick to him in a "mommy" way even more, that did not go unnoticed or unappreciated by him.

But our true joy with Ted was in the snow-filled mountains of the cold rocky west. There, he ruled supreme, just as he was designed to do. He was a King among animals, and as the strong wind blew back his thick mane to reveal his sharp eyes, his majestic lineage was clear for anyone to see, as his careful gaze swept cross the freezing landscape with each measured turn of his massive head. He was brilliant, he was my "baby bear cub", and he was a stone-cold killer in the deep-freeze chiller of the northern United States, which meant we loved him with all of our hearts. He was ours to protect and nourish, just as he would easily lay down his life to protect us in the wilderness, if it was necessary. He was way more than just some dog. He was part of our family. He was a part of my tribe. He was mine.

One of the most beautiful sights in the entire animal kingdom is a Malamute running through the woods in deep snow with their incredible snow-shoe paws, through one of the most difficult terrains on earth, with all the grace and elegance of a champion figure skater. He was our Olympic sport. Mals are powerfully-built athletes made for humans who can both respect that and keep up with it. Within a month or two of Ted's adoption into our human family, Kent and I easily lost our "courtship weight" that we'd gained while dating, because the "call of the wild" was too strong for all of us to resist, now a tight-knit family of three.

Our trips to the Coloradan backwoods now had a more acute focus than our nature walks of the past. Ted was a like Tasmanian Devil of unchained energy. He needed lots of fast-paced exercise to burn off his growing puppy stuff, or our apartment and any of our most precious belongings immediately paid the price for any laxity in his routine. He was "hardcore military": up at the break of dawn daily, disciplined in his habits, and voracious in his appetite for life. I was glad that Kent was former Coast Guard, and that hiking with my ex-Navy Dad meant that my pack had been carefully packed (and sitting by the front door) the night before, with a 5 a.m. wake-up that either had my father switching our bedroom lights on-and-off quickly in a jarring strobe light effect, or snapping up the window shades of our bedrooms with a loud "RAP!" (daylight permitting), because "the early bird catches the worm." Aye aye, captain...ugh...so sleepy. "Do you want to go hiking? We're leaving in five minutes."

And so it was with Ted, except that as soon as the cold mountain air blew into his snoofer stuck out the truck's window, his werewolf eyes went "something-something" that meant the crazy would start as soon as snow was quickly huffed up his nostrils. It was an altered state of reality. I've never seen anything like it, in any other types of animals, and I watch a lot of nature programming. It was unique to my snow-beast, and it was done with an urgency that had to be addressed properly. In the summertime, we had him iced down in air-conditioning and wet t-shirts that put him into a glorious bear-like hibernation state, making him sleepier and easier to manage. It was with this genius parental thought in mind (haha) that found us happily driving into the foothills at 7 a.m., greatly looking forward to a walk in the woods.

Because it was summer and hotter than we liked, we parked at a more easily accessible roadside spot than we normally would, what with wintertime skiers posing a serious threat to an off-leash Ted that frightened us once on a trail, never to happen again. Kent knew of a spot with running water, so off we went on a light walking trail. We let the fur beast loose to allow the magic to happen, feeling fairly confident of a smooth hike on a beginner's path. He lopped off to disappear down the top of a small dirt rise, which didn't concern me much. There was a lot of visibility on a trail like this. Kent and I relaxed and chatted, confident that we'd catch him around the bend. Famous last words. No sooner had we established a groove, than we heard a high-pitched shriek and a man's yell. Fuck...so much for our pleasant little Sunday stroll. Now what?

Kent chuckled as he said "let's speed up and see what that moose is up to", so we did. We ran down the path like two concerned pre-school parents to greet two very white and very scared suburbanite kids without any real hiking gear cowering in their tracks. Aw, poor Ted! He stood there at the top of the little hill a little freaked out with his head tilted cutely, pink tongue out and bushy tail slightly wagging. Wha'd I do? Oh, nothing, beast-man, and I harnessed him back to me. He was perfectly lovely. The idiots on parade were much less charming. The guy (about college age) had picked up a fucking tree branch, and he was slightly hysterical. "WHAT IS THAT?!" he yelled out to us.

He and his girlfriend thought Ted was a wolf, and they visibly relaxed when we explained he was our dog, though keeping their distance by walking off the path and around us on the small trail. Whew! As a big man, Kent knew the stigma. He'd been bullied before for being a big lad. And so, he couldn't resist tweaking out the wealthy "Trustafarian" college kids from out-of-state just a wee bit more. As we passed by them, he laughed. "Yeah, hey, just so you know, my Malamute would have chomped through that branch like a toothpick snapped in half because of the massive size of his jaws. Like a pit-bull!"

With that, they grew pale and wide-eyed again, hurrying off down the trail to warn any other hikers they met about the friendly "werewolf" walking with his family in a beautiful sun-dappled forest. It was the only real scare we had that day with our precious little beast, and "Amen" to that. We breathed easier knowing he was with us, so I didn't let him off-leash for the rest of the hike. Oh, well. So much for my easy summer day. It was a parent thing, you know? A werewolf like Ted just wouldn't have understood. But, you do. Right? Yep. You do. I can tell.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totem

The Tank

Being poor as a teenager in an aspiring, upwardly-mobile "bedroom community" meant that country kids had to bum rides from their friends in the rural Rockland County of the 70s and 80s. People still hitchhiked their way across the USA, though me and my friends never had much luck with it. Cabs were slow to arrive from neighboring towns, and our unmarked country lanes were even harder to find, if the car even bothered to show up at all. We had one county minibus that went to the mall every couple of hours during the daytime, and that was it.

When my dad told us there wasn't any money for college after his divorce (after years of telling us that we had to go to school to get a job), a luxury like a used car was so far out of my reach that I knew better than to inquire about it to any of the adults around me. I should be grateful for food! I was "lucky" to be alive! It was always the same answer from our disordered parents, anyway: if we wanted something bad enough, we had to earn it for ourselves (unlike them), and if I couldn't get a job that paid me well enough to buy a used car, oh well. Them's the breaks, I guess. Tough luck, kid. Maybe get another job?

This, from pampered city folk who always upgraded their own cars, while we walked several miles to make up for the differences in their finances that they couldn't earn, to properly provide for children living far away from an easily accessible school or town. It was always our fault and our burden to bear alone, because well-meaning people who asked after our well-being or expressed their concerns about us were harassed or shut out of our lives, forever. Our parents knew how to maintain a tightly controlled circle of abuse and fear around us, to keep away the good (while telling us it was to protect us) so they could get ahead at our expense, because they saw children as disposable and/or replaceable items in their commercially-fueled halcyon fantasies about "suburban living" from 50s-era t.v. shows. 

Because we had to, we figured out often insanely difficult transporation situations, as one of the most mobile and independent generations of children to be raised in America since The Great Depression. By senior year of high school, my best friend Steve drove me to school almost every morning and back home. If he was having car troubles and/or "crazy mama" problems, my other best friend Karen would pick me up and drop me off at home, though that was much less frequent. She worked a lot of hours. Both of them worked in the town of New City that they lived close to. Karen worked at a drug store (both before and after college) and Steve ws a check-out clerk at the grocery store. 

We all came from rough homes, so there wasn't anything leftover to go around in our crowd. Karen's parents were chain-smoking drunks, and Steve hadn't seen his dad for many years. I don't know if he even remembered his father, because he took off one day to leave them boys alone with one seriously crazy Jewish mother struggling to pay a big mortgage and hold onto her remaining sanity. But, we got by, and we all got into college despite the abuse. Because we had it more or less the same at home, it made hardship conversations easy for us to have. Needing a ride might be the least of our problems, on any given afternoon.

In between the struggle to survive, we managed to have some really good times, albeit simply country pleasures like riding around the surrounding hillsides with the windows open and our hands out of the car to feel the cool passing breezes, something that had been taboo for us during our childhoods. We had Clarkstown South H.S. gatherings in the parking lot of Rockland Lake, and after a few beers, Karen might let me ride on the hood of her car in another test of courage that had us in a game of chicken: more speed or hang on for dear life? 

We'd skip school to go sailing on the hood of her car in circles around the parking lot, splashing through puddles of rain that'd collected during school hours, now glowing like liquid gold in the fading light of another autumn day. That dang thing was as ugly as sin and covered almost entirely in a dull flat primer for whenever she saved enough money for a new paint job, but, until then, it just didn't matter what it looked like. That car got us to school and back, and really, at the time, what more could we ask for? Though "The Grey Beast" has surely been in Car Heaven for quite some time now, I can't help but feel grateful for it, especially during these days filled with schoolkids walking home from school amid the slanting rays of a beautiful October sun. Thanks, mate.

http://www.nynjtc.org/park/rockland-lake-state-park

The White Man's Grave

Years ago, I read a fictional novel by Richard Dooling about the hazards that the rich white man faces while trying to impose his cultural constructs upon Africa, resulting in the loss of his soul. When a local cabbie picks up a generic-looking businessman at the airport, the first question the white man asks him is: why is that big old tree in the middle of town hung with so many brightly-colored flags? He'd never seen anything like that before! What did it mean? The cabbie smiled at the sweating, overweight, red-faced white man sitting in his backseat, dressed too formerly for his trip in a "power suit" and corporate-approved necktie. "That's a 'witch' tree." Another warlock is born.

You see, the tree's decorations were caught in the branches by flying witches on their nightly midnight rounds, leaving their tattered garments hanging from the ancient tree that only other witches could see. The white man had come back to his own heart of darkness. He was looking for a relative working overseas that was said to have been lured into the bush by evil spirits, which naturally unleashed his arrogant condescension upon a nation that had him down cold a long time ago. Sure enough, out came his expensive leather briefcase full of American money, to better expedite his superior search with bribes. But, witches don't feed on just that alone. They wanted his soul.

And they got it. He was so poorly prepared for the cultural shift that he lazed in a dopey haze on the plane ride over there, with not one single true fact in his head about countries that were there long before his boardrooms and executive meetings. He'd make appointments with native people that were never kept, bribing warlords and government officials who laughed at his silly currency, until he realizes that those gleaming eyes in the bush are also calling his name. And so to goes his fate, the same as the pushy social do-gooder with a matching sense of overblown entitlement towards the world about needing our "relief", when they wanted our guns instead. That's where most of the money went to, anyway.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15788.White_Man_s_Grave

Alley Cat

The backyards of brownstone Brooklyn are a magical hidden world that the rest of the world doesn't readily know about, and before the massive explosion that brought about its gentrification by so many white Americans to our fair city, that was just the way we liked it. The apartments were beautiful and affordable, though not to my newly-established boyfriend from upstate New York. He was saddled by credit card debt elicited by his manic phases of unrest and urgency that told him he needed to do something now nOW NOW! It didn't dig him out of his depressive holes, but rather kept him there with something more to be upset over, which got him back on the binge cycle of drinking all-nighters that kept his diseases well-fed, if not happily cured. 

But, my aunt's old apartment by Ocean Avenue was sad to be in, and the neighborhood was too far a commute to Manhattan. I told him I would pay any monthly rent he couldn't afford, and for the next year, we had full use of the entire first floor of a garden apartment in central Park Slope, for the now mind-boggling low fee of $950/month. It was deemed an extraordinary luxury by some, and a horrid "frontier" land in the ghetto by others, depending on the individual's agenda. After we pulled out the fridge to clean it and found hypodermic needles, one could presume either a diabetic lived there or a heroin junkie, again, according to the bent of your imagination.

We didn't care. The neighborhood was great, and the apartment was gorgeous; a classic "railroad" style place where each room opened into the next to the garden in the back, separated by old wooden pocket doors that closed off the bedroom from the living room. The kitchen opened up to the garden by sliding glass doors, and by the reactions of our guests, I knew I'd struck gold. My dad joked about my lack of a green thumb because of the tree in the middle of a concrete area that died before we got there, which meant that some envy had taken hold. We hung sparking white Christmas tree lights on it that lit up at night, and as the evening wore on, the magic took hold until there was nothing else but happiness around the patio table.

An opera singer did her warm-up scales almost every afternoon with the window open in the building behind ours on the next block over, and thick ivy covered one of the walls that had a simple bench of concrete blocks under a bower of grapevines from next door. Without the partitions of so many walls, the whole city block is basically one big garden that no one can see from the street. Back there, it was a different world; gardens sprouted lush vegetables every year, as the bees and butterflies fluttered around huge sunflowers in the summer sun. Like our beautiful neighborhood with great rents, it felt like a secret we had earned as hard-working New Yorkers. It felt that good and that right, to me.

My friend from RISD had a place in Brooklyn, too, in a different neighborhood that's also well-considered, though less of a garden district. He'd gotten a kitten to ride out the loneliness that comes with the single city life and long hours at the studio. He'd found work at MTV Studios: a factory of drafting tables where he was one of hundreds of production artists who painstakingly filled in the minor details for the then-popular "Beavis and Butthead" show that caused him painful embarrasment as a classically trained draftsman. The creator, Mike Judge, could give a shit about the fine art of animation, and basically told them that at meetings. Oh, well. Looked good on the resume, though.

His parents still lived in Mass., as well-to-do Armenians who owned a successful car dealership. They spoiled Ed and his siblings rotten, but that's first generation affluence for you. Any problems could be solved with money, right? That's the American Dream! It wasn't, of course, but who were we to tell them that? They went on ski vacations every year, and turned out functional illiterates who could draw alone in a room for many hours. Done deal. Back in Brooklyn, we agreed to babysit Ed's kitten while he flew home for a holiday, with the warnings that me and Dave were solid dog people, and that a lot of cats roamed through the gardens, getting into loud fights almost every single night.

He tentatively agreed to drop off the cat with a backup plan of a kennel, in case the deal went bust, and it did, no surprise to us. He'd assured us that the animal had been well-socialized and could mix it up with other cats, but within a half an hour, me and Dave ran back to the kitchen to the sound of a deathly kitten scream, finding it being clawed through a window screen by a big orange tabby street cat with a really angry look on its face. That kitten won't make it through the night, here. We called him up with our concerns, and once again he was back at our place in a quick cab ride to drop it off at the kennel. Within a few months more, Ed and my other RISD friend Lisa would leave the city for southern California, never to brave the streets of New York again. Ain't that the way of it, though?

Oooh, Oooh, Oooh, Oooh,
Black and orange stray cat sittin' on a fence
Ain't got enough dough to pay the rent
I'm flat broke but I don't care
I strut right by with my tail in the air

Stray cat strut, I'm a ladies' cat,
A feline Casanova, hey man, thats where its at
Get a shoe thrown at me from a mean old man
Get my dinner from a garbage can

Yeah don't cross my path

I don't bother chasing mice around
I slink down the alley looking for a fight
Howling to the moonlight on a hot summer night
Singin' the blues while the lady cats cry,
"Wild stray cat, you're a real gone guy."

I wish I could be as carefree and wild,
but I got cat class and I got cat style.

I don't bother chasing mice around
I slink down the alley looking for a fight
Howling to the moonlight on a hot summer night
Singin' the blues while the lady cats cry,
"Wild stray cat, you're a real gone guy."

I wish I could be as carefree and wild,
but I got cat class and I got cat style.

Werewolves of London

Me and my best friend from school were genuine in our desire to get a good education at a great price, but it was most definitely not reflected back at us. The spoiled upstate kids of our generation saw it as practically a free ride that was easily dismissed, so good were the deals of the SUNY school system back then. The application was a simple two-sided form you could write in your sleep to apply to ten schools at once, which made college acceptances rather anti-climatic. I think I applied to five schools at once, as a fail-safe.

Just like my passion for narrative was derided by supposed industry professionals in publishing who just happened to "land" a job in the field, my friend Karen was looked at as an oddity for knowing she wanted to be a teacher and then going to a teacher's college in New York for her NYS certification. I know; too straight a line between points, right? One of our favorite sayings is the basic "clarity is key" phrase, often seen as a threatening balm to the rather scattered psychoses we would encounter throughout our lives, starting in our fucked-up family homes.

We became adept at explaining concepts to disordered minds over and over again, wearing down even the most brutal game of repetition to brass tacks, as a necessary part of any real educator's toolkit. Before our generation would take to "Special Needs" and "Special Education" like the obscuring terms for mental illness and retardation that they are, we had levels at school: Above Average (that's me), Average (occasionally me, especially if I didn't care for the material), and Below Average, or those BOCES kids who will fix your car for an exorbitant price after graduation from high school as a petty revenge for your hard work and natural aptitudes.

At Oneonta, we had a lot of financially successful "white-bread" kids from upstate New York riding the first wave of affluence from their orthodontist/lawyer dads, like the rich Jewish kids of New City. Irish, Italians, and Hispanics were still coming up through unions and the police force when we were kids, commuting to a loud ethnic city with stronger ties to the motherlands "across the pond". For upstaters, America was a generic Rachel Ray type of "EEVEEOHOH!" accent, spoken in an annoying "doncha-know" MidWestern twang. If they were Micks or guineas, they sure as fuck didn't show it as much, up there in north country.

Fiona was like that for us. She'd been born in Ireland, but with her softball mullet that somewhat expressed "butch lite" and her yuppie turtlenecks with the alligator icon on them, we had no idea she even was a Mick 'til we invited her over for a pre-party beer on St. Pat's Day. She's "Dark Irish", like Colin Farell: someone with dark eyes and hair that's linked to the Roman occupation of Ireland, leaving behind their genetics with their legal system and paved roads. That's a harder thing for a lot of Americans to understand with their weaker grasp of world history, but with a History Major roommate/best friend and boyfriend, I didn't have much of a case for pleading ignorance.

Just like Latin folk are pegged as Italian-looking for merely having dark eyes, dark hair, and olive-toned skin (see the show "Jersey Shore"), so did many Irish in America "pass" for other ethnicities, simply by not being the fair-skinned, freckle-faced "ginger" stereotypes portrayed on t.v. True to form, Fiona came from a hard-drinking family rife with tensions, which made her the right fit for our crowd and most of our occasions, but she just as often blew a good party by taking risks that were connected to her deeper ties to addiction than the ones I manifested in school. At first, we thought it was a lark: a Catholic schoolgirl away from home "stretching her wings" sort of thing.

But then she took a bunch of serious nose-dives that me and Karen stayed far away from, like taking full hits of blotter acid with her on-again-off-again boyfriend from high school that she cheated with while he dated another girl, introducing this blond girl from back home as his "girlfriend" at our parties, when he'd been talking our friend Fiona "down from the ledge" just the night before in our suite. We'd find her next door in the boy's suite, sitting with him in a corner on a beanbag while he petted her hair and read her a children's book in a creepy dad voice. What the...?

Back at our homes, we were the adults who handled stress well, not the other way around. This...this crazy shit that they did? It was everything we were afraid of becoming: a bunch of brain-dead drones with loose morals cuddling each other in the light of dawn, rocking back-and-forth like retards. We wanted to experiment and have a good time, within reason. Who attends a teacher's school just to soothe their fucked-up dark-haired mistress? Not us, man. We'd just as soon cut stuff into halves, think about it, and then divide it again into quarters. We wanted to run things, not sit it on the sidelines of life like the deranged people around us.

My final break with Fiona happened gently junior year, while I was the sole inhabitant of the ground floor (barring any party crashers on the two couches) of the big old house we shared off-campus, while she and the two Karens were on the second floor. I had volunteered to take the one bedroom on the first floor because of my big boyfriend who frequently stayed over (or vice versa), since it was a bit of a hazard not to have the front door locked 24/7. Nothing bad actually happened, besides some of our wilder parties that were starting to get a little bit out of hand and scary, as the addicts busily sorted themselves from recreational party-goers like myself.

Fun became besides the point, with so much freely-floating booze and drugs around. Despite Fiona's brush with a nervous breakdown sophomore year, she decided to trip out at one of our parties again, probably in retaliation for a visit by Steve's girlfriend, or something like that. That's the "alchie" way of problem-solving: become an even bigger problem, forcing someone else to sort it all out. By the time the band was unpacking their gear and setting up amps in the huge basement of the house, Fiona was already getting into vicious fights with my punk rock crew who wanted better music than the same old hippie song for trick-or-treating kids on Halloween being played over and over again, to calm her down while the first rush of blotter acid kicked in.

Once again, there was a square-looking Steve by her side, who studied meteorology so he could do the t.v. news of upstate New York in a strait-laced suit and tie, talking his mistress out of stabbing someone with a kitchen knife in his weird "dad" voice of calm authority that was as fake as Fiona's whole "white girl" routine. I may have partied like a rock star with other rock stars in my day, but this down-home girl knows that when the lights come on, everyone goes home. Now. Party's over. I gotta go to work tomorrow, ya dig? This shit, though? Some things were way too kinky to handle well, even for a hardcore city kid like me. This was one of those things. "Aah-ooo!"


I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of SoHo in the rain
He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fooks
For to get a big dish of beef chow mein

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo
Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo

You hear him howling around your kitchen door
You better not let him in
Little old lady got mutilated late last night
Werewolves of London again

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo
Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo, huh

He's the hairy-handed gent who ran amok in Kent
Lately he's been overheard in Mayfair
You better stay away from him
He'll rip your lungs out, Jim
Huh, I'd like to meet his tailor

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo
Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo

Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen
Doin' the werewolves of London
I saw Lon Chaney Junior walking with the Queen, uh!
Doin' the werewolves of London
I saw a werewolf drinkin' a piña colada at Trader Vic's
And his hair was perfect, na!

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London
Heh, draw blood
Ah-hooo, werewolves of London

I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of SoHo in the rain
He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fooks
For to get a big dish of beef chow mein

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo
Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo

You hear him howling around your kitchen door
You better not let him in
Little old lady got mutilated late last night
Werewolves of London again

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo
Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo, huh

He's the hairy-handed gent who ran amok in Kent
Lately he's been overheard in Mayfair
You better stay away from him
He'll rip your lungs out, Jim
Huh, I'd like to meet his tailor

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo
Ah-hooo, werewolves of London, ah-hooo

Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen
Doin' the werewolves of London
I saw Lon Chaney Junior walking with the Queen, uh!
Doin' the werewolves of London
I saw a werewolf drinkin' a piña colada at Trader Vic's
And his hair was perfect, na!

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London
Heh, draw blood
Ah-hooo, werewolves of London