November 19, 2007

Letter to the Editor:

As a “native son” of the Cedar Valley, I had often referred to Mr. Jimmie Porter as a “civil rights” leader.  However, as I grew and became a student of history, I came to realize that referring to him in those terms did nothing more than to diminished and devalue his life’s work.  He was much more than a civil right leader.  Now, I cannot deny that Mr. Porter (I have and always will refer to him as “Mr. Porter,” even though he insisted time and again that I call him by his first name) was a “race man,” one who cared deeply and dearly about the struggles black folks faced on a daily basis, however, if you look at his record, his sphere of justice was more inclusive than exclusive.

His involvement in the labor movement did not solely focus on the plight of blacks confined to the “Kill Floor” of the Rath Packing Company.  Mr. Porter’s sphere of justice included the plight of women working in an environment that was designed to accommodate men and exploit women -- economically and physically.  Why is it alright to deny a woman equal pay, a chance at advancement, and protection from harassment because of her gender?  Why should people who work by the sweat of their brow be disrespected, exploited, and denied a living wage?  These issues are not racial issues, but are issues of humanity.  This is not about civil rights, but about human rights.  Mr. Porter, in the tradition of Upton Sinclair and other progressives, exposed the exploitive nature of the packing industry that denied its workers a living wage and put their health at risk on a daily basis in order to make a profit.  Mr. Porter, and others in the labor movement, attempted to make the industry atone for the wrongs committed against humanity.

Mr. Porter and the protest at Logan Plaza are always mentioned within the same breath, and have been commonly linked to the larger civil rights movement lead by Dr. King and others across the American south – which I suppose is meant to be honor.  However, I prefer to link Mr. Porter and the others who “blockaded Logan Plaza” with the “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaign of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.  In the south, those marches and sit-ins were about the denial of services, whereas the businesses at Logan Plaza were more than willing to take black folks money, charge them a higher price, while also filing their applications for employment in the garbage can.  Although the focus of the campaign centered on fair employment practices and the denial of Fourteenth Amendment rights to blacks, let us not reduce its significance to that. When a reporter ask Rev. Powell if he was encouraging “Negroes” to stay out of those businesses that were being picketed for discriminatory hiring practices, Powell replied, “No, I’m encouraging AMERICAN CITIZENS to stay out of those businesses.”  This was Mr. Porter’s mindset as well – we cannot allow righteousness and justice to be “ghettoized.”   The three great documents (Declaration of Independence; The Constitution of the United States, with its Bill of Rights; and the Holy Scriptures of the Judeo/Christian tradition) that form the American Creed are ideas and principles that we in the United States claim we live by and criticize others for not embracing them as well.  What Mr. Porter, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and others were saying was that it was time for American citizens to “put up or shut up” – do you believe in the words and principles stated in those documents or are they meaningless pieces of paper that should have been burned with yesterday’s trash (I know that’s not “Green,” but you get my point). Although Mr. Porter was attempting to better the lives of black people, he was engaged in a much larger struggle – trying save the souls of American citizens by forcing them to face up to their hypocrisy.

Even though I had known Mr. Porter when I was young growing up in Waterloo, I really got to know him much better when I first moved back to Iowa to pursue graduate studies in Iowa City and then again when I took my current position in the Department of History at the University of Northern Iowa.  Throughout the years I was fortune enough to spend brief periods time with Mr. Porter (either at the radio station, at a meeting, or even standing in the parking lot of a local business) and each time he would give me these little “pearls of wisdom” that either encouraged me to extend my sphere of justice or served as words to live by.  One of my favorite and most fondly remembered pearls was advice he had given me concerning conducting business, especially with people who wanted something from you.  While it may not seem very deep at first hearing, Mr. Porter had a “folksy” way at approaching deeper issues.  One day he said, “John (I always loved the way he said my name because he enunciated the “H” in my name like my mother used to do), never have a business meeting over a meal because you will let your guard down.”  Now, honestly, at first I thought he was making a reference to my love of good food and my rather large girth, however he went on to explain that the act of “breaking bread” is a gesture of friendship and trust and that people will use it to their advantage to get what they want.   In his own way, he was teaching me that in any negotiation, the other side will use any means necessary to gain an advantage, even if it means corrupting an act that many of us view as sacred (Jesus did not serve his disciples bread and wine so they would do his bidding, but rather as an expression of love).  This is just one of the many little things that Mr. Porter left me with, in addition to the bigger contributions he left to humanity – that’s right humanity, not just the black community.

So, when the name Jimmie Porter is written, spoken aloud, or subsequently placed on a monument, do not reduce him to being merely a “civil rights leader,” because he was much more than that.   Memorialize him as a humanitarian, defender of the powerless, a voice for the voiceless, a husband, a father, a family man, and friend.  To me, he will always be a Master Teacher who taught me how to expand my sphere of justice and embrace all of humanity – even those who refused to see me as being human.  Mr. Porter, may peace be with you; maybe now you can finally get some rest.  But knowing you, you’re probably up in Heaven organizing.

John D. Baskerville, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of History

Mr. Jimmie Porter, 1931-2007

Alright, I know this is somewhat morbid, however, I am occasionally asked, “Who are you?” Or, “Tell me about yourself.”  Well, this is a good way to know who I am.  Actually, writing your own obituary is a good way to gain perspective on your life.  Give it a try.  So, this is who I am (or who I was).  PEACE

WATERLOO, IOWA – Dr. John D. Baskerville, 44, of _________., died ______________at ________________ of ________________. (You Fill In The Blanks)

He was born April 21, 1962, in Waterloo, son of Lester and Clarissa Baskerville-Beaman and Sam Hopkins.  He married Hiltje Christine Vierow, May 26, 1984 in Waterloo.

Baskerville graduated from Waterloo East High School in 1980.  He attended Ellsworth Community College in Iowa Falls and received an Associate in Arts degree in Music.  He received a Bachelor of Arts in Music Education and Performance and Secondary Education from Tarkio College in Tarkio, Missouri, where he also served as a Staff Assistant in the Department of Music and as Assistant Director of Student Services after graduating.  He also received a Master of Arts degree in African-American World Studies and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in American Studies from the University of Iowa in Iowa City, where he also served as a Graduate Instructor and Lecturer for the African-American World Studies Program.

Dr. Baskerville most recently served as an Associate Professor of History at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls and served as an Adjunct Professor for Wartburg College and Hawkeye Community College.  Baskerville also served as co-host of the radio program “Community Rhythms” for KBBG, 88.1 FM in Waterloo.  He was a scholar of African-American History and African-American Studies, with publications in professional and popular periodicals, books, as well as frequently serving as a consultant and a public speaker on issues related to the African-American experience in the United States.  He also served as president of the African-American Historical and Cultural Museum in Waterloo from 1996 to 1999.  Dr. Baskerville also worked as a free-lance professional musician (electric bassist) for over 25 years and performed with various bands in the Midwest, most recently with Checker and the Bluetones.  He also briefly served as a bass instructor at Bob’s Guitars, Cedar Falls. 

He was a member of St. Johns Lodge #35 of Free and Accepted Masons, Prince Hall Affiliation, where he served as Secretary and Senior Warden.  He also was a charter member of Rho Iota Chapter of Tau Kappa Epsilion Fraternity at Tarkio College in Tarkio, MO., where he served as Hypophetes and Faculty Advisor.

Survived by: his wife and two daughters, Marissa Lena and Aja Rose, all of Waterloo; two sisters, Julie E. Baskerville and Evelyn DeKoster, both of Cedar Falls; three adopted brothers, Brian Long of Webster City, IA, Ernest Baskerville of Waterloo, and Leonard Baskerville of San Bernadino, CA; a stepbrother, Lester E. Beaman, Jr. of Waterloo; a stepsister, Ethel Taylor of Waterloo; three half-brothers, Charles Hopkins of Wheaton, IL, Sammie Hopkins and Tim Gilliam of Waterloo; a half-sister, Shirley Starr of Portland, OR; as well as several nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles, cousins and in-laws.

Preceded in death by: his stepfather, mother, and biological father; his maternal grandparents, Walden and Lena Baskerville.

Services: At the request of the deceased, there will be no visitation, funeral, or memorial services of any kind.  The deceased was cremated immediately after organ and tissue donations were made, with Saunders Funeral Service being in charge of the final arrangements.  Dr. Baskerville’s ashes will be disposed of along the Iowa River next to the University of Iowa campus in Iowa City.

Memorials: Can be directed to the family at ___________, Waterloo, Iowa.

A very good friend of mine who works his ass off educating children wrote the following essay.  I wanted to share it with you  -- John B.

Mike Michalicek has taught in the Cedar Valley for the past thirty years. In
1994 he was selected Gold Star Teacher by the McElroy Trust and KWWL.  He
currently teaches elementary band at Elk Run, Jewett, McKinstry, and
Longfellow schools in Waterloo, Iowa.
 
I don’t think anyone can question how important reading is to learning and
later success in life.  Reading is the building block that gives us a strong
foundation to understand and use knowledge.  Currently, schools are putting
a strong emphasis in this area.  Many school districts now require classroom
teachers to have a reading endorsement before they are hired.  Computer
aided programs, reading coaches, Title One programs, among several other
initiatives are used in the quest to improve our students’ reading
abilities.  The movement is reminiscent of the back-to- basics push we had
in the 70’s.  Now fueled by No Child Left Behind (NCLB), school districts
are really feeling the pressure to make sure their students’ test scores are
increasing.  My questions are:  What is the impact of NCLB on other classes?
  And, what will be the long-term results of this impact?
 
There are elementary schools that have eliminated social studies and science
classes. There are teachers who deny their students cultural field trips and
special in-school assemblies; all in the name of raising test scores.  Some
reading grants require the students not be pulled from the classroom,
limiting the time they can participate in expanded learning programs, band,
orchestra, and other co-curricular classes.  These educational opportunities
provide another way to learn that teaches the whole child.  Evidence shows
teachers and school districts are changing the curriculum to avoid being
identified as a school in need of assistance.  The cost of NCLB is expensive
but it should not be at the expense of other educational disciplines.  What
will this mean to the child?
 
Brain researchers have found that the left side of the brain controls the
linear knowledge like math and language.  The right side of the brain
controls our non-linear knowledge like spatial awareness, intuition, music
ability, culture, and artistic perception.  Researchers state that it takes
both sides of the brain to create and to problem solve.  I once heard it
said that act of creation is the realization in the left-brain of a right
brain idea (synapse).  If we exclude right brain development from the
classroom, will future generations have the ability to solve the problems
they face?  We must not let the pursuit of higher test scores erode our
ability to teach the right brain or we will have people who can only
regurgitate information without the ability to reason.
 
I would like to pose one more question.  Where does meaning in our lives
come from?  I’m not talking about definitional meaning found in a
dictionary.  I’m talking about what is meaningful to you.  I believe the
road to discovery about ourselves and who we are emerges in the right brain.
  The more creative activities we provide our students to develop the right
side of the brain, the more chances they have to find themselves, what’s
important to them, and to become the person they want to be.  I have
witnessed the children who experience hopelessness.  Their chances of
reaching their potential, sadly, may never be realized.  Their destiny is to
live their lives on the back of the taxpayers, in jail, in poverty, or on
welfare lacking the wisdom they need to fix their problems.
 
Let’s remember in our haste to raise test scores that each child has two
sides to their brain and that the emphasis on NCLB should not rob the
students of a well-rounded education.  Let’s provide a curriculum that
teaches them more than just facts.  Let’s provide one that teaches them how
to reason and solve, one that leads them to discovery of their own
importance and what is meaningful to them.
 
PEACE

There is a verse in the famous gospel song by Thomas A. Dorsey, Precious Lord (Take My Hand) that is rarely performed.  The verse goes as follows:

Precious Lord, how I love your name

When I look back from which I came

I am tired, I am weak, I am worn

Friends and loved ones, I loved so dear

Man, they’re all gone, but still I’m here

Take my hand, Precious Lord

Lead me home

 Being a person who experiences bouts of severe depression, I think about this verse quite often.  During my forty-four years on this earth, death has been a constant companion that seems to enjoy mocking me.  Although I desire and surely would welcome “the sleep, from which no one returns,” the Grim Reaper continues to ignore my yearning and taunts me while ruthlessly taking away many of the ones I love.  I know that someday my time will come; the absence of so many loved ones from a life that is already insufferable ensures that day can never come too soon.

 In the past few years, I have experienced some major losses, with my mother being the most difficult to handle.  In addition to my mother, I have also loss a few close friends, which has taken a toll on me as well.  Although a day does not pass where I do not think about my mother, lately I find myself thinking more often about my friends.  Albeit, a couple of them had severe health problems and are most likely in a much better place now, I cannot help but to continually grieve for them.  Now, I recently learned that someone else very close to me has a potentially life threatening condition that might take yet another person away from me.  Well, I am announcing here and now that I am done.  I am through with this life.  I want out of this contract that I never fucking signed in the first place.

 I have felt this way for a long, long time.  Really!  I have felt this way ever since I was a child.  Everyone, including myself, wrote these feeling off as “growing pains” or “you’re just going through changes in your life.”  But, now I know that was not it at all.  Life and I are not compatible.  It hates me and I FUCKING DESPISE IT!  Every morning I wake up and I cuss God and the world for being alive another day.  I hate this goddamned place and I hate him for letting me remain here.  It is a cruel fucking joke that is being played on people.  Well, I have always hated games and being the butt of someone else’s warped sense of humor.  So, I am DONE, DONE, DONE!  I am heading for the cashier’s window and cashing in the few chips I have left.  As “Dandy Don” Meredith use to sing at the end of Monday Night Football, “Turn out the lights, the party’s over.”  Well, I’m not only turning out the lights, I am blowing the motherfuckers out!

 Some people are able to live life and be happy, no matter how crappy things are for them.  I’ve have been very fortunate and have had a somewhat successful career and two beautiful daughters.  But, even with all of that, I can count the times I have been happy in forty-four years on one hand.  For me, like a few others, life is way too hard for me.  The wiring in my brain and in my heart is configured in such a way that makes living unbearable.  The only way I can get you understand this, is to have you think about this.  Think back to the worst day or time of your life.  Now magnify it by twenty thousand.  Imagine living everyday for forty-four years feeling that way.  That’s how I feel and have felt every single day of my God forsaken life, and I am ready to throw in the towel.  Stick a fork in me; turn off the oven because I AM DONE!

 So, here it is folks.  I am saying my goodbyes.  Hope the rest of your lives will be much better than mine has.  Those of you I have considered my friends, thanks for everything.  I have a couple of favors to ask though.  Check in on Hiltje and the girls every so often for me and raise a glass of beer, Jack Daniels, or burn one down every April 21 in memory of me.  I do not know the exact date and time of departure, but I do know the train is leaving the station before 2007.

 Hiltje and a few others are aware of my last wishes.  I am a 100% tissue and organ donor, so there will not be much of me left to put in a box.  I hate funerals; never have wanted one, so I am not going to have one.  No memorial services either, or any fucking thing like one.  I am being cremated and the girls will scatter my ashes in the Iowa River on the University of Iowa campus whenever they get around to it.  Then, about a month or so after I leave this hellhole, Hiltje will send out invitations to a buffet dinner in my honor, with food and drinks on me.   Hopefully, Checker and the Bluetones will provide the entertainment (however, do not perform Mustang Sally!  I hate that fucking song!).

 Well, as we Waterloo stoners use to say in the eighties, “It’s been real, and it’s been nice.  But, it hasn’t been real nice.”  Always go forward and never straight!

 PEACE

I can see very well
There's a boat on the reef with a broken back
And I can see it very well
There's a joke and I know it very well
It's one of those that I told you long ago
Take my word I'm a madman don't you know

Once a fool had a good part in the play
If it's so would I still be here today
It's quite peculiar in a funny sort of way
They think it's very funny everything I say
Get a load of him, he's so insane
You better get your coat dear
It looks like rain

We'll come again next Thursday afternoon
The In-laws hope they'll see you very soon
But is it in your conscience that you're after
Another glimpse of the madman across the water 

I can see very well
There's a boat on the reef with a broken back
And I can see it very well
There's a joke and I know it very well
It's one of those that I told you long ago
Take my word I'm a madman don't you know

The ground's a long way down but I need more
Is the nightmare black
or are the windows painted
Will they come again next week
Can my mind really take it

                                                                               -- Elton John’s Madman Across the Water

 Don’t Look To Him (For Your Pride) -- M. Michalicek, et. al.

 You were in the ring last night

He jabbed your heart, and then your eye

You’ve tried to stitch together

A life you both can survive

But when the second round bell rings

You’ll spar with all the words knowing

You can’t fix this fight

And you’re going down for the count

Can’t you see what ‘s true?

You’ve got to find yourself in you

Don’t look to him for your pride

All the things you’ll need are inside

In your corner you, you sit alone

He’s taken precious things you own

The blows to your head

Cut into your pride

So many times you, you have lied

Trying to figure out all the reasons why

But everybody knows

About the pain you hide inside

Can’t you see what ‘s true?

You’ve got to find yourself in you

Don’t look to him for your pride

All the things you’ll need

You’ll find them inside

Oh, look inside, find your pride

It’s up to you, It’s up to you

Don’t let him take away your pride

Don’t let him take away your pride

Can’t you see what ‘s true?

You’ve got to find yourself in you

Don’t look to him for your pride

All the things you’ll need

You’ll find them inside

Don’t you know your mother told you so?

She’s been living the same life, you know?

You’ve got to break away for your child

Don’t you know your mother told you so?

She’s been living the same life, you know?

You’ve got to break away for your child

 Repeat and Fade

When I read this, it was like looking in a mirror. -- John B.

Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving
by Joe Butt

Profile: INTP
Revision: 3.0
Date of Revision: 27 Feb 2005

INTPs are pensive, analytical folks. They may venture so deeply into thought as to seem detached, and often actually are oblivious to the world around them.

Precise about their descriptions, INTPs will often correct others (or be sorely tempted to) if the shade of meaning is a bit off. While annoying to the less concise, this fine discrimination ability gives INTPs so inclined a natural advantage as, for example, grammarians and linguists.

INTPs are relatively easy-going and amenable to most anything until their principles are violated, about which they may become outspoken and inflexible. They prefer to return, however, to a reserved albeit benign ambiance, not wishing to make spectacles of themselves.

A major concern for INTPs is the haunting sense of impending failure. They spend considerable time second-guessing themselves. The open-endedness (from Perceiving) conjoined with the need for competence (NT) is expressed in a sense that one's conclusion may well be met by an equally plausible alternative solution, and that, after all, one may very well have overlooked some critical bit of data. An INTP arguing a point may very well be trying to convince himself as much as his opposition. In this way INTPs are markedly different from INTJs, who are much more confident in their competence and willing to act on their convictions.

Mathematics is a system where many INTPs love to play, similarly languages, and computer systems--potentially any complex system. INTPs thrive on systems. Understanding, exploring, mastering, and manipulating systems can overtake the INTP's conscious thought. This fascination for logical wholes and their inner workings is often expressed in a detachment from the environment, a concentration where time is forgotten and extraneous stimuli is held at bay. Accomplishing a task or goal with this knowledge is secondary.

INTPs and Logic -- One of the tip-offs that a person is an INTP is her obsession with logical correctness. Errors are not often due to poor logic -- apparent faux pas in reasoning are usually a result of overlooking details or of incorrect context.

Games NTs seem to especially enjoy include Risk, Bridge, Stratego, Chess, Go, and word games of all sorts. (I have an ENTP friend that loves Boggle and its variations. We've been known to sit in public places and pick a word off a menu or mayonnaise jar to see who can make the most words from its letters on a napkin in two minutes.) The INTP mailing list has enjoyed a round of Metaphore, virtual volleyball, and a few 'finish the series' brainteasers.

INTPs in the main are not clannish. The INTP mailing list, with a readership now in triple figures, was in its incipience fraught with all the difficulties of the Panama Canal: we had trouble deciding on:

1) Whether or not there should be such a group,

2) Exactly what such a group should be called, and

3) Which of us would have to take the responsibility for organization and maintenance of the aforesaid group/club/whatever.

A Functional Analysis -- by Joe Butt

Introverted Thinking

Introverted Thinking strives to extract the essence of the Idea from various externals that express it. In the extreme, this conceptual essence wants no form or substance to verify its reality. Knowing the Truth is enough for INTPs; the knowledge that this truth can (or could) be demonstrated is sufficient to satisfy the knower. "Cogito, ergo sum" expresses this prime directive quite succinctly.

In seasons of low energy level, or moments of single-minded concentration, the INTP is aloof and detached in a way that might even offend more relational or extraverted individuals.

Extraverted iNtuition

Intuition softens and socializes Thinking, fleshing out the brittle bones of truths formed in the dominant inner world. That which is not negotiable; yet actual application diffuses knowledge to the extent that knowledge needs qualification and context to be of any consequence in this foreign world of substance.

If Thinking can desist, the INTP is free to brainstorm, calling up the perceptions of the unconscious (i.e., intuition), which are mirrored in patterns in the realm of matter, time and space. These perceptions, in the form of theories or hunches, must ultimately defer to the inner principles, or at least they must not negate them.

Intuition unchained gives birth to play. INTPs enjoy games, formal or impromptu, which coax analogies, patterns and theories from the unseen into spontaneous expression in a way that defies their own comprehension.

Introverted Sensing

Sensing is of a subjective, inner nature similar to that of the SJs. It supplies awareness of the forms of senses rather than the raw, analogical stimuli. Facts and figures seek to be cleaned up for comparison with an ever-growing range of previously experienced input. Sensing assists intuition in sorting out and arranging information into the building blocks for Thinking's elaborate systems.

The internalizing nature of the INTP's Sensing function leaves a relative absence of environmental awareness (i.e., Extraverted Sensing), except when the environment is the current focus. Consciousness of such conditions is at best a sometime thing.

Extraverted Feeling

Feeling tends to be all or none. When present, the INTP's concern for others is intense, albeit naive. In a crisis, this feeling judgment is often silenced by the emergence of Thinking, who rushes in to avert chaos and destruction. In the absence of a clear principle, however, INTPs have been known to defer judgment and to allow decisions about interpersonal matters to be left hanging lest someone be offended or somehow injured. INTPs are at risk of being swept away by the shadow in the form of their own strong emotional impulses.

Famous INTPs:

Socrates
Rene Descartes
Blaise Pascal
Sir Isaac Newton

U.S. Presidents:

James Madison

John Quincy Adams

John Tyler

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Gerald Ford

William Harvey (pioneer in human physiology)
C. G. Jung, (Freudian defector, author of Psychological Types, etc.)
William James
Albert Einstein
Tom Foley (Speaker of the House--U.S. House of Representatives)
Henri Mancini
Bob Newhart
Jeff Bingaman, U.S. Senator (D. --NM)
Rick Moranis (Honey, I Shrunk The Kids)
Midori Ito (ice skater, Olympic silver medallist)
Tiger Woods
John D. Baskerville (not so-famous university professor)

Fictional INTPs

Tom and Fiona (Four Weddings and a Funeral)
Dr. Susan Lewis (ER)
Filburt (Rocko's Modern Life)

I was exploring a website that publishes erotic short stories written by one of my online friends, when I came across this piece of shit.  Although the author has the right to publish this ignorant crap, it does not mean I have to like it.  This man is writing about something he knows nothing about.  Taking evil stereotypes and caricatures as truths, he attempts to reveal what it's like to make love to a BBW.  He thinks he's being humorous, but in reality, he is being hurtful and displaying his and society's contempt for the plus-sized community.  If he didn't have such a little penis, he could have had the experience of a lifetime being in the arms of a REAL woman.  You know what they say, "Little dick, little brain."  Check it out:

Sex With A Large Woman  -- By Robert Levin

 During my twenties and thirties it was my goal to have sex with every physical type of woman on the planet.

I'd prefer not to hear any stuff about this. I was proceeding from the belief that by sleeping with a representative of every kind of female body, and every category of appearance I would, in effect, come to know all women and that such an accomplishment would be good for my writing.

Okay?

Of course, even to gather only samples from what, you realize when you get into it, is a vast assortment of sizes, shapes and physiognomies, would have meant putting up numbers comparable to Wilt Chamberlain's. And being all of five-foot-six, more skinny than slim-and with a nose you would think must obstruct my vision-I'd obviously set my bar too high. But spurred by the
promise of the literary rewards that even limited success would yield, I determinedly pursued my objective, and had it not been for a prostate gland the Harvard School of Medicine will surely make a bid for upon my demise, I'd probably have been at it much longer.

Middle-aged now and long out of the hunt, I'm forced to concede that my writing would have been better served by writing more and researching less. Still, the time spent on my project wasn't entirely wasted. Collateral though it may be, I did reap one unanticipated and very practical benefit. While my collection of memories isn't as comprehensive as I'd have wished (variations on the theme of plainness are more than adequately represented but girls who look like Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Connelly are glaringly missing), the mental snapshots I've kept of the women I WAS able to cop have been more than sufficient in their quantity and variety to save me the price of a subscription to "Jugs."

And, indeed, I have been left with a story or two to tell.

Not least for the adventure it amounted to, a hookup I think of a lot was with a twenty-something woman named Peggie who'd just days before-and for the first time-come to New York from the Midwest on a month-long vacation.

We met in a bar. I was standing alone, casing the action, when I heard, right behind me, the sound of a sharp quick fart-like a wooden match striking. Turning to look I confronted a sight only the word "humongous" could accurately depict-a female at least a foot taller than I was and approximately the width of the Great Wall of China.

She was smiling flirtatiously at me and, though taken aback by her appearance (not to mention her method of getting my attention) and reflexively recoiling, I quickly recovered when I realized the opportunity she was presenting me with. Here was my chance to cross gross obesity from the list of body types I hadn't yet scored.

In a brief conversation-during which it occurred to me that she'd be almost agreeable-looking if she just lost 300 pounds-Peggie told me she was a cashier at a Kalamazoo, Michigan supermarket (a career chosen, she readily admitted, for the substantial food discount it offered); that she had once played a Packard convertible in a high school production of "Grease," and that her parents had tragically expired in a suicide pact just weeks after her birth.

Then she invited me to her hotel room.

(As we were leaving, I saw the bartender, who could not, of course, have understood my agenda, shaking his head in disbelief.

"That's it," he nudged the customer slouched in front of him. "Right there-that dude. That's the definition of drunk.")

At her hotel, to which we necessarily took separate cabs, the first thing Peggie did was crack open, and inhale, the complete contents of a package of Mallomars. Then, from a utility-kitchen refrigerator, she retrieved and devoured (in exactly what order I don't recall) a container of chicken wings, a combo plate of tacos and an economy-size tub of Velveeta.

Finally she put a Barry Manilow tape into her boom box.

Now it's not that I mind Barry Manilow all that much, but the more appropriate musical accompaniment to the night's activities would have been the theme from "Raiders of the Lost Ark." The thing was-and my insistence that we leave on no more than the bathroom light was definitely a contributing factor-I could not for the life of me find Peggie's vulva. I'd heard that this was a common occurrence with very fat women, and especially with very fat women in poor lighting, but it still took a lot longer than I
would have expected. What was compounding the problem? Simply put, Peggie's body could have served as a Special Forces training ground for the field of hazards and challenges it presented. I'm speaking of the twisting climbs and sudden valleys, the crags, the craters and the amazing plenitude of gullies, ravines and bogs that I was, and on my hands and knees, obliged to negotiate and traverse in my search. A dismaying project to begin with, my progress was further impeded by an extraordinary number of ambiguous fissures and crevices that, not quickly identifiable, required time-consuming investigation and study. You wouldn't believe how many deceptive nooks and seductive crannies I came across. In fact, at one point, when I thought for sure that I'd located and entered the secret cave, I discovered, to my chagrin, that I'd inserted myself inside of what was only a fold of fiercely perspiring epidermis. What's more, I realized, when I looked up, that I was seriously lost in some apparently outlying district of Peggie's anatomy.

You're thinking that I had only myself to blame, that not to stop and ask for directions is typical of a man. Well, I swear, I was just about to when I heard, in the distance, what sounded like the swift currents of a babbling brook. Groping my way toward the sound it increased in volume until it was a deafening roar and I knew I was directly above its source. Reasonably confident that I'd located Peggie's stomach, I paused to collect myself and survey my surroundings. In the absence of a compass I was looking for some sort of marker with which to establish my coordinates. When I noticed that the horizon ahead of me was blocked by an especially pronounced elevation in the terrain, I reasoned that I was likely facing north. With a cautious optimism I began, then, to crawl slowly backwards. You can imagine the rush I got when before too long my toes were caressed by a soft and lush foliage,
and then bathed in the gentle bubbling of a warm spring.

I was at last at the pleasure grove.

Feeling like a world-beater, I was glowing with a sense of accomplishment and I have to confess that I indulged myself in a moment of pride. Relying on my instincts and wit, persevering in the face of exceptional difficulties, I had achieved an elusive goal other men would certainly have given up on. The moment was short-lived however. After effecting penetration my mettle was tested some more. Twice I was jettisoned (and put in jeopardy of becoming a ceiling fixture) by the astonishing power of Peggie's pelvic motion. It was really disappointing. Each time I was forced to go back to square one and I had to reach deep inside myself for a stick-to-itiveness that I wasn't at all sure I possessed. But I hung tough and on my third expedition, with my eyes now accustomed to the dark, I was recognizing landmarks and proceeding with dispatch. At the treasure chest within minutes, I managed, this time, to more or less stay put and, let me tell you, like clinging to the back of a great whale in a high sea, those final seconds were every bit as exhilarating as the Splash Mountain ride at Disney World.

In the morning, Peggie, cheery and humming to herself (doubtless never before the object of such committed attention), seemed unaware of my odyssey. After eating a cake, and washing it down with a quart of chocolate milk, she asked me if she could take a time-delay Polaroid of the two of us naked in bed. (Should you ever come across this picture, I am in it. That's the top of my head, not a puppy, just behind her left ankle.) Then she announced that she was cutting her trip short and returning home. There was
no reason, she said, to remain in New York now, because no big-city experience that she might imagine could possibly surpass her night with me.

Having completed my mission and worried she'd suggest that we get together again, I was enormously relieved by and immediately supportive of her decision.

As I departed though, I did sense from her expression that she was maybe a little ambivalent about changing her plans; that she was thinking of something she might later regret missing. Not wishing to prolong the moment I chose not to ask any questions, so I'll never know just what the thing was. Yes, it could have been the Transit Museum or the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage. But I suspect

Posted at http://www.short-fiction.co.uk/newstories/show_story.php?story_id=1; accessed 11 July, 2006

Settle For Less – Karla Ruth

She thought she finally found

The soul mate this time around

She spent so many years alone

Tensions increase each day,

But she can’t seem to walk away

But she’ll lose herself if she stays

She’ll settle for less

Is an empty heart better than an empty bed?

Living a lie is the cost of compromise

And you’re afraid you may not find someone else

So you settle for less

They’ve been together since they were young

He’s been her only one

Though he’s had indiscretions along the way

She fills a loveless void

With hobbies and tarnished gold

But tell me, don’t those antiques get old?

She’ll settle for less

Is an empty heart better than an empty bed?

Living a lie is the cost of compromise

And you’re afraid you’ll be left by yourself

So you settle for less

You declared your love for me

You held me so tenderly

But you were otherwise engaged

You thought being married to

Someone who sparked no desire in you

Was the right thing to do

So you’ll settle for less

Is an empty heart better than an empty bed?

Living a lie is the cost of compromise

And you’re afraid of other love you felt

So you’ll settle for less

http://www.karlaruth.com/

As the nation declared its independence from Britain in 1776, stating, “. . . all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” almost four million slaves were enslaved within its borders based solely on the color of their skin.  Frederick Douglass articulated the irony of the situation as follows:

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour” (Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852).

In addition to the enslaved black population, white women were also locked into a system of oppression through domestic slavery and economic dependency, essentially considered the property of their husbands and their fathers.  Although I love my nation with all of my heart and cannot imagine living anywhere else in the world, I choose not to celebrate this day, but instead, I choose to mourn and remember those who were locked behind of the walls of oppression in a nation that had failed to live up to its own declared ideas.

 http://douglassarchives.org/doug_a10.htm

The Opium Poppy

"Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God
to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is
so universal and so efficacious as opium."
Thomas Sydenham
(1624 - 1689)

"There were opium dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new"
Oscar Wilde 

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

"A pipe is the fountain of contemplation, the source of pleasure, the companion of the wise; and the man who smokes, thinks like a philosopher and acts like a Samaritan."
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
(1803 - 1873)

"It banishes melancholy, begets confidence, converts fear into boldness, makes the coward eloquent, and dastards brave. Nobody, in desperate circumstances, and smiling under a disrelish for life, ever laid violent hands on himself after taking a dose of opium, or ever will."
John Brown
(1735 - 1788)

Elementis Medicinae [1780]

"I hanker too much after a state of happiness,
both for myself and others; I cannot face
misery, whether my own or not..."
Thomas de Quincey
(1785 - 1859)
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

"I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed, for centuries, at the summit, or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me; Seva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years, in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unuttemble slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud."
Thomas de Quincey
(1785 - 1859)
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

"I am engulfed, and drown deliciously
Soft music like a perfume, and sweet light
Golden with audible colours exquisite,
Swathe me with cerements for eternity.
Times is no more. I pause and yet I flee.
A million ages wrap me round with night.
I drain a million ages of delight.
I hold the future in my memory.

Also, I have this garret which I rent,
This bed of straw, and this that was a chair,
This worn-out body like a tattered tent,
This crust, of which the rats have eaten part,
This pipe of opium; rage, remorse, despair;
This soul at pawn and this delirious heart."

Arthur Symons
(1865-1945)

"Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a big fucking television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disk players and electrical tin openers...choose DIY and wondering whom the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on the couch, watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pushing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life. But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?"
Irvine Welsh

Trainspotting (1996)

"May my last breath be drawn through a pipe, and exhaled in a jest."
Charles Lamb
(1775 - 1834)

"Narcotics have been systematically scapegoated and demonized. The idea that anyone can use drugs and escape a horrible fate is an anathema to these idiots. I predict that in the near future right-wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police apparatus."
William S. Burroughs
(1914 - 1997)

"All penalties for drug users should be dropped...Making drug abuse a crime is useless and even dangerous...Every year we seize more and more drugs but the quantity available still increases...Police are losing the drug battle worldwide"
Raymond Kendall

Secretary General of Interpol 1994

My parents were “old school” and believed children should be in the house when it got dark outside or before 9:00 in the summer months.  I remember so many times being in the middle of some activity with my friends when I would have to go home because the sun had sunk below the horizon.  Neither my sister nor I wore a watch; we didn’t need to because our bodies would let us know what time it was.  My parents had our lives so regimented that would could gage time by bodily functions and sensations.  Besides looking as the position of the sun or the streetlights to determine if it was time to go home, I could tell what time it was by the ache in my stomach.  We generally ate supper fairly early (between 3:00 and 4:00) after my Pop got home from work, so Mama would always let Julie and I have some kind of snack an hour before we went to bed.  But sometimes, I think that ache in my stomach was caused by fear, knowing if I came in too late or if my mother had to call my friends’ houses to track me down, I was going to get it when I got home.  Once we got into the house, the routine was generally take a shower, get dressed for bed (which was easy for me because I slept in my birthday suit), and eat our snack while we watched television (Yes, I wore a robe.  Get your minds out of the gutter!). 

My mother was a huge fan of television, and spent most of her evenings sitting in her easy chair in front of the television set.  She had completed all of her housework before Pop got home, and the supper dishes and the kitchen were clean no more than a have an hour after the last person had finished eating.  Mama was a big fan of evening television, starting with Walter Cronkite and the local news, to game shows, reruns of McHale’s Navy, Hazel, Leave to Beaver, and other fifties’ shows in syndication on the local stations.  Then, at prime time, the hardcore television watching began, either beginning with a sitcom like The Lucy Show or a weekly drama like Gunsmoke.  The night, for us kids, usually ended with a variety show, depending on what night and what year it was.  Julie and I would then go to bed, and then Mama would end her night of viewing, laying in bed with Pops watching the late local news and Johnny Carson’s monologue on the Tonight Show.

When I was young, television was golden.  Like my mother, I loved evening television sitcoms, television dramas, and, my favorite, variety shows.  But, before I go further, I have to address the major television event of my youth – Alex Haley’s Roots (1977) and the invention of the mini-series.  It is so difficult to describe the impact Roots had on my family, my neighborhood, and classmates at Jack M. Logan Junior High School.  For the first time since my early childhood, my parents, Julie, and I spent five nights in a row sitting in our house, glued to the television set.  It was the same for the rest of the neighborhood as well; our neighborhood resembled the abandoned old west silver mining town, turned ghost town in The Outlaw Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood flick).

In order to understand the phenomena of Roots, the times must be put in context.  Not since the racial rebellions of 1968 or the news coverage of the Attica Prison uprising of 1971 had there been so many black faces on a television screen; and they even weren’t being arrested on the news or on a television police drama.  In social studies textbooks of the time, the only mentions of anything resembling African-American history were one or two paragraphs mentioning slavery; pictures, with captions, of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and George Washington Carver with his damn peanuts; and of course, an excerpt from Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech (which has become the only speech he ever made in his entire life!).  Roots, even though a dramazation, gave Americans, regardless of race, a look at a period of the past that been ignored far too long in the American educational curriculum and the national consciousness.  Although the mini-series revealed the brutality of the “peculiar institution,” it also showed the complexities of race and class in the antebellum and post-Civil War south with the characters of Ol’ George Johnson, the white overseer, and his wife Martha.  Although Ol’ George is a white man living in the newly reconstructed South, he and his wife ally themselves with the black sharecropping family in a conspiracy against the wealthy landowner and his sons.  At first glance, one assumes that the Johnsons’ allegiance to Kunta Kinte’s descendents is based on the fact that Tom Harvey’s family provided the homeless Johnsons with food, shelter, and the prospect of a job on the plantation, when in reality, the Johnsons’ loyalty was based on class consciousness – the exploited against the exploiters in the so-called “New South.”

Each episode generated discussion in our house, with BOTH of my parents slipping into teacher mode, explaining their experiences with race and class (good and bad) in their lifetimes.  They also wanted to hear what Julie and I thought about what we had seen during that night’s episode.  In a house where my parents assumed and embraced the roles of benign dictators, the discussions that took place after our viewing were democratic and very open.  However, it was the next day at school where the impact of Roots could be seen best.  Black and white students did not know how to respond to one another because of varying reactions to what had been shown on television the night before.  The black students, most of who had watched the mini-series, emotions ranged from anger to understanding, where the emotions of white students ranged from anger to guilt to not giving a damn either way.  The gathering of students in the morning waiting to get inside to start the school day was always a little tense and very much segregated along racial lines, however, by lunchtime and late afternoon sports practices things had got somewhat back to normal with all students interacting with one another.  I give a lot of credit to our school’s administrators and teachers who were insightful enough to see the potential for racial conflict with the airing of the mini-series and set out to quash potential racial misunderstandings before they occurred.  I remember that in every class before noon, regardless of subject matter, we spent the first ten to fifteen minutes discussing the previous night’s episode which allowed students to vent or express any emotions they were experiencing at the time.  The teachers allowed us to be blunt and open, though always keeping the discussions focused and with the understanding that when the discussions were over, so were any disagreements that might have occurred among us.  I learned so much about teaching pedagogy and how to conduct a class discussion over a controversial issue during that week – I never realized that until this very moment.

In the early 1980s, it was revealed that Alex Haley had stolen the concept and some of the content of Roots from Harold Courlander’s late 1970s novel The African (Bantam Books), with Haley paying Courlander a huge $650,000 settlement, that the presiding federal judge, Robert Ward, encouraged the plaintiff (Courlander, by the way, is white) not to reveal to the media because he “thought that Haley had become too important to black people to be torn down in public” (Stanley Crouch, Jewish World Review; Jan. 18, 2002).  Although I am in agreement with Stanley Crouch, that Judge Ward’s admonishment “was paternalism at its very worst: Treat them like children; they can't handle the truth,” and that the continued cover up represents “an opportunistic insult to black people, and [that] no amount of excuses will change that harsh fact,” the impact of Roots cannot be denied.  In addition to sparking a discussion on race, class, gender, and history around the world, Roots is also credited with starting a new genre in the television industry – the mini-series.

I will discuss the importance of the mini-series when I continue my discussion on my love of television of the seventies and the early eighties.

Peace

I have this theory that I have been working on for a while and I’d like to try it out on you.  I believe that male heterosexuals’ sexuality is reinforced by contact with their mothers at a very early age.  I know what you’re thinking, “John that sounds similar to the Oedipus Complex theory.”  You’re right, it is close, but here’s where it differs.  The Oedipus theory deals with that whole “wanting to replace you father to be with your mother” thing, but that’s not what I’m talking about.  For example, I believe when our mothers held us close to them when we were very young, we associated the feel of our mothers’ breasts with the pleasure we were feeling at the time.  We didn’t know that breasts could be sexual, and the feelings we were experiencing were not sexual; our feelings were about feelings love, comfort, warm, etc. 

As we grew, we began to connect visual images and sensory stimulus generated by our mothers’ actions to pleasure as well.  Once again, it is not usual for mothers to dress in front of their sons when they are toddlers.  We saw our mothers in different stages of getting dressed; from nudity to lingerie to being fully dressed.  Many times our mothers applied certain scented lotions, oils, and perfumes, as they got dressed as well.  Just being within close proximity to our mothers was enough to stimulate the pleasure areas of our brains, but we also began to connect the images we were seeing and the scents we smelled with “the pleasure of mother” as well. 

So, as we grew even older and approached puberty, we became even more conscious of our sexuality and began to connect sexuality with the pleasures we had experienced as very young boys.  For instance, during puberty we not only begin to notice changes in our own bodies, but we also become aware of the changes that are occurring in our female peers.  We see the young girls in class developing breasts, and even though we have not felt or mouthed a breast since childhood, we begin to connect breasts in general with pleasure.  But now, the innocent pleasure we experienced as children begins to merge with our newly discovered sexual consciousness.  We have similar experiences with certain scents and images of women in various phrases of being clothed.  When we picked up one of our mothers’ women’s magazines, we saw a variety of advertisements with women in various stages of being dressed.  The scents of perfume samples within the magazine combined with the images and the most likely result was a maturing young boy growing “a woody.”

For the first six years of my life, my mother, my sister, and I lived in the same room in my grandparent’s house (remember, mom was not married at the time).  Julie and I slept in bunk beds and Mama slept in a full size bed by herself.  Mama had a number of personality traits and physical attributes; two being that she loved to cuddle with Julie and I, and 2) she had ample mammary glands (big boobs).  Mom was also very attractive when she was young (my oldest daughter looks just like her) and occasionally she would go out on dates.  My mother had a very healthy and open attitude about sexuality.  Some of my earliest memories are of my mother getting ready for her dates.  With the assistance of my cousin Diane, Mama would dress in various types of lingerie (which was common at the time; e.g., Marilyn Monroe), salacious outfits, and medium pumps; my Mama looked like the African-American Jayne Mansfield.  I wonder if there is connection between these memories and the fact that the postal carrier occasionally delivers a Victoria Secret catalogue to my house?  Mmm, I’ll have to investigate that further. ;-)

Anyway, between the ages of seven and twelve, I found myself very attracted to women who knew how dress like “a woman”; especially pin-up models like Jayne Mansfield, Betty Page, Mamie Van Doren, or women who looked like them.  Although I was way too young to understand my attraction, I was drawn to them like moth to a flame, even though they all were fully dressed.  Then, in junior high, one of my fellow classmates introduced me to naked women (Oh Boy!).  While I was never quite sure of the details, this classmate had deal with a local pawnshop dealer who supplied him with adult entertainment magazines.  He then replaced the original covers with comic book covers and sold them at school for five dollars a copy.  He had quite the lucrative business, until I became a customer.

One day before the beginning of eighth grade social studies, I decided to examine some of my classmate’s merchandise, on an approval basis of course (Hey, I’m cheap).  So, he gave me the magazine and I began thumbing through the pages, when the idiot sitting behind me got a glance of what I was looking at over my shoulder.  Now this guy wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, and the next thing I knew, he was trying to snatch the magazine out of hand, while yelling, “Come on John, let me see it. Let me see.”  I was trying to tell him to chill and shut the hell up, but he kept on making a scene.  So this guy was having a conniption, when the teacher walked in and saw this clown making a big deal over this magazine I had in my hands (remember, it had a comic book cover).  The teacher told us to “settle down and get to work” and told me to “hand over that comic book” and he would give it back to me after school.  In that room, at that very moment, three adolescent boys knew that their lives were over, when to our amazement, the teacher just tossed the magazine on the top of his desk without looking at it and started taking attendance.

We let out the most gigantic sigh of relief in unison that mankind has ever known, but I just knew my luck wasn’t that good, so I was sitting there trying to work on my assignment while watching my teacher’s every move.  I was so scared that I was beginning to shake and beads of sweat were rolling off my forehead onto my paper.  My paper was beginning to look as if it had been placed in a wash machine, with the ink running and the paper beginning to tear.  I looked at the clock, there was roughly ten minutes left before the bell for the next class.  I thought, “Yes, we got away with it,” when all of a sudden, the teacher sat down and grabbed the magazine off the top of his desk, put his feet up on his desk, and opened the damn magazine.  I tell you; right there I literally shit my pants, because I had seen the photo on the first page he was looking at. 

Folks, I really hate to describe the photo that was on that page, but it is necessary in order for you to appreciate my panic.  The magazine that I was going to buy, that was now in my teacher’s possession, was not a Playboy, Penthouse, or even Hustler (I wish it would have been one of those magazines), but it was the most hardcore piece of pornography ever published in the history of humankind.  The photo was a close up shot of a well-endowed man “depositing his man juice” all over a woman’s face and ample breasts; the photo was so large, it took up two whole pages.  I cannot put into words the look of amazement that slowly shot across my teacher’s face.  His facial expression had such a look of horror that you might have concluded that he had just witnessed his entire family tree of ancestors being hit by an Illinois Central locomotive.  He looked at the magazine, and then he looked me straight in the eye and said, “Mr. Baskerville, I want you to take this to the principal’s office and explain to him that this is YOUR property and that I confiscated it from YOU in my classroom.”

To be perfectly honest, I had gotten away with more things than I should have at school.  So when he told me to go to the principal’s office, my first reaction was to just walk out of the front door and just keep heading north right out of town, because I knew that the principal was not going to deal with this little problem himself.  Oh no!  I knew that he knew, all he had to do was call my mother and explain to her the circumstances and she would be there right away.  Failing to have the courage of my convictions, I reported to the office as I was told and the situation played out as I had expected; he called Mama, she came to school, she saw the magazine, said “I’ll will deal with this,” I got three days suspension, and I got one of the worst whippings of my life!  My mother’s anger was not so much about me looking at those images or having the magazine, but rather she was angry because I was not focusing on what I should have been and that she had to take time out of her busy day and come deal with my “foolishness.”

Even though I was a somewhat sophisticated, deep thinking young boy, there was no way in hell that I was going to try and explain to my mother that any of this was her fault because she had held me tight to her breast when I was a child or that seeing her getting dressed when I was a toddler caused this to happen.  She would have thought, “This Negro has lost his f*****g mind,” and that she needed to beat some sense back into my head or take me to Fairview Cemetery for an extended vacation (if you know what I mean).  That’s how the world found out that I had discovered my sexuality.

Sex, sexuality, sex orientation, and sexual images have always been hot buttons in this country, due to our puritanical roots and values.  Could it be that our nation’s repressed sexuality and hyper-moralist attitude towards anything sexual contributes to the high number of sexually motivated crimes committed in our nation?  Societies with healthy and open attitudes towards sexuality, like Holland and Denmark, also have more progressive social policies that benefit women.  For example, prostitution in Denmark is seen as a woman’s right to have control over her body, while in the United States, the federal government is attempting to restrict a woman’s control over her own body through the most likely reversal of Roe v. Wade.  I feel very fortunate that my mother provided me with the opportunity to develop a healthy and reasonable attitude towards sex and sexuality.

Recently, the current administration has indirectly targeted one of my favorite websites (SuicideGirls.Com) because they publish artistic photographs of consenting adults engaged in fantasy scenarios and various kinds of fetishes over the Internet.  Those type of photographs represent a very small portion of the sites’ content: they also offer artist, musician, actor, and political figure interviews; discussion forums; alternative culture news, music reviews, dating services, various Ipod downloads, etc.  Because of the administration, with its unconstitutional relationship with the religious right, and Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales' “new war on porn task force” and its attempt to bring obscenity charges against any provider distributing content defined as “Deviant,” SuicideGirls.com has removed “any images with fake blood and any images [they] felt could be wrongfully construed as sadist or masochist.”  The SG website adds, “Given the natural disasters in Louisiana and Texas, the U.S. Government's numerous foreign wars and the growing U.S. deficit, we feel there are far better uses of government resources than pursuing the legality of imagery created by consenting adults, but as is usually the case, our opinions are not shared by the current U.S. Administration.”  I could not be more in agreement.  Fight all attempts at censorship in our nation!

Peace

Whenever I think about it, it seems like I have been working all of my life.  My parents believed that hard work built character, and I guess they wanted me to have a whole lot of character.  I remember being asleep in my bed and my mama rattling her shoehorn against the heater cover (my bedroom was directly below my parent’s bedroom), and yelling, “John, it’s six o’clock.  Time to head for the farm!”  No, my parents weren’t farmers and they didn’t own a farm, but a friend of my Pop (my stepfather) gave them two acres to plant a vegetable garden.  Every weekend my parents, my nephew Glenn, and I would drive forty-five minutes north to go work the garden; and I mean work (I think in a past life my folks were slave-drivers on a Roman war ship; you know like the one in Ben Hur).  Since there wasn’t an irrigation system on the farm, we would have to haul water from the farmhouse to the field; and this was after having hoed all of the rows.  Then, we’d finally get home, and Pop would look at the lawn and say, “I think you better get out the Lawnboy and take ‘er down a little.”  Except, before I could mow the yard, I had to pick up all of the apples in the yard (we had six apple trees and a plum tree).  When I was finally finished, mama would have freshly cooked hamburgers and cold Pepsi waiting for me.  Pop would always say, “Thanks, until you’re better paid.”  He was never going to pay me; he had given me my five-dollar allowance the day before, and that covered all of the chores for the week.  Sometimes I thought they should have named me Kunta Kinte or Toby – “Toby be a good nigga’ now master” (pop culture alert: Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton/John Amos) was the main character in the mini-series Roots).

Now all kidding aside, my parents were actually doing me a huge favor by teaching me that everything I obtain in life has to be earned, and that I’ll have a greater appreciation for everything I own if I had to work hard for it.  Unlike some of my friends and cousins, I never destroyed my toys or any of my possessions, because I had to work to pay for them.  That concept has stayed with me today; band members from various bands I’ve played in have always teased me about how “anal” I am about my gear (I keep most of my accessories in their original boxes, and I have cases and covers for ninety-nine percent of my gear).  Furthermore, my parents were also giving me an opportunity to see the types of work that existed, in hopes that I would realize that a good education would give me a better chance at a better type of job.  As I have said before, my Pop worked at a packinghouse for thirty-six years and hated everyday of it.  My mother cleaned other people’s homes, washed and ironed their laundry, and catered their parties.  Even though it was honest work, my parents wanted something better for my sister and me.  But I think it gave me a much better appreciation of the people who perform those so-called “less desirable” jobs; the people Jesse Jackson call “the people who ride the early bus,” the people that have to be at work early so they can serve the rest of us.

Although I had a number of minor jobs as I was growing up, I remember my first real job fondly.  I worked as a “pump jockey” and a “car wash hop.”  Those were the days when the price of gas was less than seventy-five cents and the idea of  “self-serve” was offensive.  I first worked at a Deep Rock/Kerr McGee station (pop culture alert: Cher’s and Meryl Streep’s 1984 academy award winning film, Silkwood) and then I got a second job working at the Mobil station right down the street from the other station.  My boss at the Kerr/McGee station was a very interesting man, who had a saying for every possible scenario that happened at the station.  My favorite saying was, “It takes all kinds of people to make this world, and sooner or later they’ll all cross this drive(way).”  Boy, was he right. 

We were located,. . . oh how do I say this without offending anyone.  We were located,. . . okay, I’ll just say it, we were located in the damn ghetto.  Our clientele definitely reflected the neighborhood (the forty ounce malt liquor and menthol cigarette crowd), we had pimps, hookers, sleazy exotic dancers, drug dealers, outlaw bikers, and every kind of criminal that walked on the face of the earth (I guess my boss was right).  I remember having to work in the winter in fifty degrees below zero weather.  A car would pull into full service, so I had to run out and pump the gas (we tried to copy the Vickers stations who were the “Home of Running Service”) and the jackass in the warm car would roll down the window and say. “Gimme a dollar’s worth of regular and a pack of Kools.”  I tell you, I wanted to pour gas on the fool and light him on fire!  I’m standing out there, freezing my gonads off for a dollar’s worth of gas and a pack of cancer sticks.  My other favorite scenario was working Saturday afternoon, understaffed with the store, pumps, and car wash full to the max, and some grandma drives up and wants you to not only check the air in her tires, but wants you to replace the winter air in the tires with summer air (honest to God, it happened a least five times a year).

But not everything was bad; we had some really good times.  On Friday and Saturday nights in the summer, we would watch the parade of hookers and stripers going to work.  We saw as many nipples in the station as you would at a dairy farm (“Utter Central”).  Also, watching cheating spouses get caught having intercourse in the car wash was another one of my favorites.  When I worked at Mobil, my boss and two of his best friends, who were also pump jockeys (we had a tight brotherhood and knew every gas station attendant in town, except for those Vickers clowns), would come by to help me close the station for the night and take me to the dirty movie theater.  Now, what makes this funny is that 1) I was not eighteen yet, so they had to sneak 300 lbs me into the theater; 2) the average weight of the four of us was roughly 350-375 lbs., Scott was the smallest at 275lbs., so watching us try to fit into the seats was like trying to stuff an elephant into a Geo Prism; and 3) instead of watching the movie, Ed (my boss), Scott, and Oscar would sit there adding their own dialogue and commenting out loud (very loud) in the theater.  Oh my God, I wanted to die.  Also, at Mobil, we had to take a lie detector test once a month or anytime the cash count was more than one hundred dollars short.  I didn’t have to take the tests because the lie detector would not work on me for some reason (maybe I’m some kind of pathological freak), but the other guys would be sweating up a storm, because not only did they ask you about stealing (which everybody did), but they also asked about any illegal drug use and buying or selling of drugs on the premises.  I knew few of the guys could pass, but they kept their jobs somehow.  I think it was because no one else wanted to work at our station; we stayed open on the weekends twenty-four hours and got robbed at least once a month.  The rule was “give up the money and ask them if they want a six-pack for the road,” because no one was going to lose their life for some rich guys’ cash.  Which reminds me.

About ten years ago, one of our friends, Scott Meyer (we called him Oscar; you know Oscar Meyer wieners), was working the late shift at a convenient store, when three teenaged punks walked in with guns and robbed the store.  Oscar gave up the money without any hassle, but to prove how big and bad their were, the punks emptied one of their guns into Oscar and then kidnapped a woman who came in at the wrong time.  Needless to say, Oscar died instantly, lying there on the dirty floor of that store.  The punks were eventually caught and were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.  After Oscar’s death, the state required that all convenient stores and gas stations have surveillance cameras installed.  Sometimes I think back and realize how lucky I was to have never been robbed.  Ed always said that the reason I didn’t get robbed was because I was African-American and that the robbers feared that I would know them.  Most of our robbers were African-American because that was the make up of the neighborhood, and white robbers used to be reluctant to rob black attendants for some reason.  You know, I generally believe that the government has no business killing anyone, let alone its own citizens, but I believe those punks should have been hung by their scrotums and tongues, covered with honey, and placed in an area know for its vicious grizzly bears.  Oh, by the way, Ed (my boss) died about three or four years ago of a heart attack.  Ed’s weight had got up to around 600 lbs. and he smoked two to three packs of cigarettes a day.  He died exactly a month after he buried his mother.  He worked as a custodian at a facility for mentally challenged adults, and they named their activities hall after him.  Every year for Halloween, Checker and the Bluetones plays a dance in that very same hall named after my friend.

I have been in my current position for thirteen years.  When it comes down to it, my job really isn’t that bad.  I always say that I got lucky.  I didn’t want to get a real job, so I stayed in school and ended up with a doctorate.  My wife, my best friend, and I have discussed the idea of our daughters getting jobs once they become sixteen, and we all agree that we don’t want them to work until they absolutely have to.  We decided to let school and extracurricular activities be their jobs.  We don’t think they are too good to work or that we have a whole lot of money.  We believe they have their whole lives to work, let them be kids for now.  However, sometimes I wonder if we are spoiling them; my oldest daughter is helpless like Jessica Simpson – she can’t do anything (cook, wash laundry, etc.).  They get an allowance, but they really don’t perform any chores to earn it.  I wonder if they will have the type of character my parents tried to instill in me.  Will they have an appreciation for the value of money and the idea that everything of value comes with hard work?  But then I think, “Well hell, they could become President.”  George “Dubya” never worked an honest day in his life.  Even as president, he has put in more vacation days than any of his predecessors, including Ronald Regan, who was older than Moses and had Alzheimer’s to boot.  So, we’re going to let the girls have their fun while they can.  Plus, it gives me material for when I want to compare how easy their lives are to how tough I had it when I was their age.  It also allows me to tell them stories about how tough I had it when I was growing up.  “We walked to school in ten feet of snow uphill – both ways.  And we had to fight off pimps, hoes, and drug dealers with our spiral notebooks and didn’t loose a single sheet of paper, because we knew the value of things back then.”

Peace

If you have been around me enough, particularly when performing in a drinking establishment, you know that I do not drink alcoholic beverages.  This is somewhat ironic because one of my favorite public places was Mainly Lou’s, down on the parkade in Cedar Falls.  Lou’s was a great place to eat, sit, listen to conversation, and meet some of the best people in the world (that’s saying a lot because I really hate people).  As I sat there for hours drinking glass after glass of Coke, someone who did not know me well would always offer to buy me a drink.  When I said, “No thank you.  I don’t drink,” an expression would come over their face as if they were thinking, “Why in hell are you sitting here?”

One night after I had played Lou’s with the National Horseshoe Champions, I stuck around to watch Chad, Lou’s primary bartender, close down the bar.  There was about six of us sitting around the bar, with everyone drinking something except me.  Chad had known me long enough that he must have felt he could ask me a personal question; “John, why don’t you drink?  Is it because of religious reasons or what?”  Many people have asked that very same question, trying to figure out why I abstain from drinking alcohol.  I think it is very funny that many people automatically assume it is because of religious reasons.  I am the least religious person in the world, and if my religion did ban the consumption of alcohol, you can be assured that I would probably drink like a fish because I do not like anyone telling me what I cannot do.  Some assume that I never acquired a taste for it, because I am, in their eyes, a clean-cut kind of guy.  It’s funny how few people guess the obvious and real reason I do not drink; I am an alcoholic and have had only two drinks since July 29, 1988.

When most people think about someone who is an alcoholic, they usually get the image of 70s comedian Foster Brooks or Otis Campbell from the Andy Griffith Show.  But we alcoholics come in several varieties, with many able to conceal their disease.  Some alcoholics do not feel the need to drink on a daily basis; this is the kind of alcoholic I am, one who binge drinks to excess.  The one thing all alcoholics do have in common is that we cannot control our drinking.  When I used to drink, it was with an all or nothing attitude; not being satisfied until every drop of liquor was gone.  And even once it was all gone, I would be the first to volunteer to go get more.  My war cry was “Party until you puke!”  However, my road to alcoholism was not a high-speed expressway, but rather a long gentle slope downward.

I was raised in what I think was your typical working class home, with a mother and a stepfather who worked hard during the week and tried to enjoy their weekends as much as possible.  My mother really loved the taste and smell of beer, but she really did not drink much at all -- two to three cans of beer at most during a single sitting.  My stepfather, on the other hand, could really put it down, primarily drinking beer, but occasionally he would drink shots of Old Granddad whiskey (I can see the orange, silver, and black label now).  I always thought it was odd that he would not have a single drink Sunday through Friday afternoon, but when the work week ended around three o’clock on Friday, he would begin drinking in earnest.  It was my mother’s responsibility to see that there was plenty of beer for Friday night, if not the entire weekend.  The top shelf of our refrigerator was reserved for two things: the water pitcher and all the Budweiser that could fit (most of the time only in a single layer, but if we had company over, she would stack them double high).  Beer and cigarette purchases came out of our weekly grocery budget, so if large amounts of beer were consumed, Mama would have to figure out how to get the most food out of what was left.  On the other hand, if additional beer was needed for Saturday (which was quite often), my stepfather would pay for that beer out of his own pocket.  So drinking had always been a part of my life, even though I was too young to drink.

My parent’s attitude toward Julie and me drinking was, I believe, somewhat unique.  We could drink all we wanted of whatever we wanted, as long as we were at home or at my aunt’s house, who lived one house away.  I believe the thinking was, they would rather have us drink at home where they could keep an eye on us than in the streets, where there was a real chance of us getting in trouble or hurt.  I also think they believed that if they took away the mystique of alcohol and drinking, we would choose not to drink; which they were very right.  Occasionally, Julie and I would ask for a sip of beer or during the holidays, we were given a small glass of Mogan David Concorde Grape Wine to toast the holidays and make merry (I sound like Bob Cratchit), but we never became real big drinkers.  I started to drink in small doses throughout high school and even more by the end of my senior year, but it was in college that the bad habits began.

My freshman year in college I lived with two guys from New York and a guy from Chicago (actually, they were my second set of roommates which I’ll explain at a later date), who considered me a country bumpkin choir boy -- “naïve, dumb, and full of cum” as they used to say.  They made it their mission to introduce me to “the wild side,” even though I had already begun to take Lou Reed’s advice.  Although we were more into non-liquid forms of entertainment, drinking beer and Jack Daniels was used to complement the other stimulants.  We used what I call the Charlie Parker method of partying, -- use up everything you have in possession, leaving no evidence behind – so we did everything in extremes.  Later, I transferred schools and ended up in a small rural town in Missouri.  On the weekends, there was nothing to do but sit in our dormitory rooms trying to loose the boredom.  My partying habits began to resemble the drinking habits of my stepfather, abstain Sunday through Friday afternoon, then blow it out on the weekends.  Our motto was, “Throw all the (bottle) caps away because they would not be needed anymore.”  The first one to pass out or puke was the winner! 

So, that became my pattern, and then it became the only way I knew how to drink.  I never understood those people who could only have one drink; each drink made me want another one even more, because in my mind they were getting better.  However, things were beginning to change; the next day I could not remember the things I had done the night before, and the recollections of my friends were very embarrassing.  One time I got so screwed up, that I hugged the leg of one of my friends’ mother and would not let go.  To make things even worse, she was wearing a dress at the time!  Another time, a group of us went to a very important music teacher convention, where you met potential employers and graduate school admission directors.  The very first night there, I drank way past my limit and proceeded to vomit all over myself in the shuttle van that took us to our cabins in the resort.  The next day, everyone at the convention knew what had happened because the van driver had to stay two hour past his shift to clean out the van (the smell still remained).  I did not know what had happened until I awoke the next morning and discovered vomit all over the clothes I had been wearing.  You would think that would be enough to make me want to quit drinking, but it didn’t.  It had to get even worse before I got my fill of drinking and had enough.  I will spare you the details, but just know, it was not pretty and it almost caused several people their lives.

Well, I stopped drinking cold turkey (pardon the pun) and haven’t looked back since.  The two drinks I’ve had since I originally stopped were connected with some very strong emotions: 1) to calm my nerves to keep me from killing someone and 2) to raise a toast in honor of my mother who had recently died.  In both cases, the people I was with promised to use every means necessary to keep me from having another drink.  I still get the urge to drink, especially when I get a good whiff of Jack Daniels, but I know what will happen if I take that drink.  I have been fairly lucky, being able to stop drinking mostly on my own.  But, believe me, if I ever find myself getting weak, I will not hesitate to get help.  I never want to go down that road again, because I know it will not be a long gentle slope to the bottom this time.  But rather, it will most likely be the expressway to my own personal hell.

This afternoon I watched James Lipton interview Dave Chappell on Inside the Actors’ Studio.  Chappell, trying to explain why he started smoking pot, explained to the predominantly white audience that most whites have access to doctors and psychiatrist to help them deal with their problem, but in many African-American communities, there are only liquor stores and drug dealers.  The reason why I started drinking was much different than why my stepfather drank.  I first started drinking for recreation, and then I continued to drink as a way of self-medicating myself against my depression.  The reason my stepfather drank was because he was an African-American man, stuck in a dead end job with someone always watching him, waiting for him to make a mistake.  He also had the pressures of supporting a family on a salary that barely kept up with the rate of inflation.  Drinking served as a pressure value, allowing to him to decompress after a week of working for “The Man.”  My stepfather was no different than thousands of other working class laborers, of all races, who are functional alcoholics that work hard everyday just to keep their heads above water.  When will America realize that this form of alcoholism costs American businesses hundreds of hours of lost productivity, hundred of absentee days, and millions of dollars in health costs.  It also costs the nation something even more important: Charles G. Curie, Administrator, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) says, "A truthful self-assessment about alcohol use may not be easy, but denial can be devastating or even deadly . . ..  Alcohol misuse can cause incredible losses: lost family and friends, lost jobs and opportunities, lost lives" (National Institutes of Health, April 2004).  This is something we all should consider.

Peace

It’s rough getting older.  You begin to feel as though the world changed over night, until you look in the mirror and discover that the world did not change, you’ve changed.  You find yourself not being able to relate to the world around you.  Watching television or a movie is quite the adventure, with all of the reality shows, violence, language, and sex.  And don’t bother going to the mall, with throngs of teenagers either wearing clothes that appear twice their size or young girls wearing jeans that not only show their panties, but also gives them “plumber’s crack” as well.  However, I think the hardest part about growing older is that my mind continues to write checks my body can’t cash.

When I was young, I could never figure out why my father made all of those sounds when he got up in the morning.  He would spend at 10 to 15 minutes just sitting on the side of the bed swearing (oh, s**t; oh, f**k; hell, damn, etc.).  Then, he would start hacking, sounding as though he was trying to raise something from his feet, through his throat, and finally out of his mouth.  Then finally, the verbal groans as he accomplished his first urination of the day (it really was an accomplishment, after having stood there for 5 minutes before a thin stream would begin), and then capping it all off with the customary fart and the verbal “Ahh.”  Lately, I find myself conducting the same ritual every morning, but I am much younger than my father was when he first originated the ritual.  What the hell is going on?

I have also noticed that standing from a sitting position has become a major operation, as if I was preparing to go into battle.  First, I have to psyche myself up just to begin moving; “Alright John, this is it.  You have to get up!”  Then, I move very slowly to the edge of the chair, couch, or whatever apparatus I am sitting on at the time, and then I pause to prepare my body for the full push upward.  But, before I make that final move, I have to study the terrain to make sure there is nothing in my way because there will be some forward motion in that final push upward.  Once cleared for take off, I let out a long groan as I use my arms to assist my legs in the final motion upward.  Yet, sometimes the legs are not quite ready to accept the load or I underestimate the amount of power needed for propulsion, so I find myself falling back into the seated position.  When this occurs, I find that I must take a brief respite before I start the process all over again. While this operation has been taking place, I have not noticed my daughters and wife observing me in awe and amusement.  You would think they might offer a helping hand, but no, they rather watch and be entertained by my failure (them good for nothing heifers!).

But the most degrading aspect about growing old is. . . .  We’re all adults here, right?  The most degrading aspect of growing old is not being able to perform at the once established high level of competency in the (whispers) boudoir.  Hey, when I was young, I established a high level of expectation from my partners  -- that was one of the things that drew them to me (word spread rapidly on small college campuses).  And I felt that it was my duty to give each young lady a 110 percent in order to maintain quality control.  But now . . . well, let’s just say thank God for medical science and the pharmaceutical industrial complex.  Then again, many times science fails me, leaving me with a handful of nothing (please forgive the imagery).  And even when science does hold up its end (once again, pardon the imagery), my, umm, “famed stamina,” like Scarlet O’Hara and her beloved Tara, has “gone with the wind.”  Sure, I receive compassion and understanding, but I sense a tiny amount of ridicule, disgust, condescension, and mourning just below the surface.  However, there is a positive side!  I get a hell of a lot more sleep now than I did when I was younger.

Finally, the one aspect about getting older that bothers me the most is . . . once again we’re all adults, right?  The most troubling aspect for me is not being able to take a real healthy dump.  “Dropping the kids off at the pool” has always been one of my favorite diversions.  There is nothing like going into “the library” feeling bloated and coming out, thirty or forty minutes later, feeling ten pounds lighter.  But nowadays, my physicians have me on so many medications, that my colon and lower bowel resembles downtown Chicago at rush hour – all backed up.  Rather than drink glasses of fiber powder mixes or taking over the counter laxatives, I will occasionally make myself a pot of chili, red beans and rice, or some kind of bean dish, which provides me with enough fiber to get things moving again.  But beans are like a double edge sword: on the good side, I get to “break wind,” which is my other favorite diversion; the down-side is that once the beans get everything “flowing” again, the plumbing in my house suffers dearly.  I think we have to buy a new toilet plunger at least once a year.

So, I find my life changing quite a bit, as I grow older.  If it is this bad at forty-four, what is it going to be like at sixty?  Nevertheless, getting older has its benefits as well.  I’ll be able to get the “senior discount” at Denny’s Restaurant.  I will be able to see both of my daughters graduate from high school, go to college, return home, get married, have children, get divorced, and return home once again with the grandchildren (a sarcastic “Yeah, hooray!”).  I will be able to join AARP, and finally have some political clout in Washington D.C.  And finally, the best aspect about getting older is that I will be able to retire and spend my days driving my significant other crazy.  That alone makes all of the negatives worth it.

Peace

Occasionally, I get to watch a show on NBC called “My Name Is Earl.”  The main character is trying to atone for all of the bad things he has done to others during his lifetime.  He believes he must correct all of the items on his “list,” so good luck will come his way.  Earl believes in the Buddhist concept of karma.  Does karma exist?  Do you really “reap what you sow?”   Do you really have to pay the fiddler, if you danced to the tune?  These are questions I have asked myself for a long time, beginning with my first love affair.  Like most adolescents, I had my crushes but I experienced what I thought was true love for the first time during my second semester as a freshman in college.  It seemed so powerful, so all consuming, but it was not meant to be and shouldn’t have happened.  But, I fell hard, and none of my friends could convince me that she was not the right one for me or I for her.  It’s interesting and unfortunate how it all played out.  I haven’t thought about this in a long, long time, although I have been thinking about her often these days. 

She had been in choir with me since the beginning of the school year, but I really never noticed her.  I was more interested in her best friend with the big beautiful eyes, but she was older and way out of my league.  Anyhow, towards the end of the first semester we both participated in the annual college musical (No, No Nanette), with her working backstage and as an extra while I played in the pit orchestra.  By accident, we discovered that we both liked stupid jokes and began to communicate through humor.  I guess we became friends, but there was a little flirting going on as well (I wasn’t a “Mack Daddy” yet). Unbeknownst to us, this flirting was the seeds of a budding romance.

Every spring the choir as well as the jazz band went on tours around the state, performing primarily at rural high schools.  Since my work-study assignment was to assist the director, I got the opportunity to play a role in the leadership of the tour.  So, as I was helping load the bus (some big leadership role), she stuck her head out of the bus window and suggested that I should sit by her so we could exchange jokes during the ride.  She also gave me her great smile, which I really liked as well.  We sat near one another, but not together, and had a good time, so when the bus pulled into the Holiday Inn in downtown Des Moines, the environmental conditions were right for something big to happen.

As customary, the nights in the hotels were used for blowing off steam through the consumption of spirits and other recreational enticements (translation: damn near everyone was getting drunk or stoned).  Almost every room had its own party and attendance in what room was determined by your particular vice, preference of beverage, or your particular clique.  Since I was an instrumentalist with the swing choir as well as a vocalist in the concert choir, I hung with my fellow instrumentalists.  There came a point in the evening where our group needed more soda for the bar (two fifths of Jack Daniels and a case of Miller on ice in the bathtub), so I volunteered to go to the lobby and get change for the vending machine at the end of the hall.  Astonishingly, I ran into my female friend, headed for the same destination and on a similar mission.  Now, you have to understand that the partying began shortly after an early dinner and it was about midnight when I serendipitously ran into my special female friend, so we were pretty much smashed out of our gourds.  Well, on the ride down to the lobby in the elevator, I laid my head on her shoulder, primarily because I couldn’t stand up straight, and she French kissed me.  “Holy Cow,” I thought, “what the hell is going on here?”  So we kissed until we reached the lobby, we got our change, returned to the elevator, and kissed all the way back up to our floor.  When we got off the elevator, we acted as though nothing happened at all and returned to our respective parties (I don’t know if I ever got the soda or not). During the next couple of days on the tour we attempted to act as though nothing happened, although her good friend knew what had happened and was trying to play Miss Dolly Levi (pop culture reference: main character in the film Hello Dolly and the play, The Matchmaker). 

Somehow during the course of the tour, we discovered that we both enjoyed playing backgammon and made plans to play each other when we returned to campus.  So when we returned to campus on that Friday, she asked me if I wanted to bring my board over to her dorm room and play a few games; her roommate always went home on the weekends.  I said, “Sure, that would be great.  See you after dinner.”  After dinner, I went home, freshened up, grabbed my backgammon board, and headed for Thompson Hall, the women’s dormitory.  Her room was the first door off the lobby, on the north end of the building.  She escorted me to her room and closed the door.  I know what you’re thinking, but we actually played several games of backgammon while listening to Styx’s Paradise Theatre, Teddy Pendergast’s TP album, and Neil Diamond on the Jazz Singer Soundtrack (I love Neil to this day).  Nothing happened because she was not going to allow anything to happen before her favorite television show, Dallas, was over -- she never missed Bobby Ewing.  Well, after Dallas, I was laying on her beanbag chair when she leaned over and planted a huge kiss on my lips.  We continued to kiss, got to know one another better through conversation (she was a good and devout Catholic girl), and listened to music until the end of visiting hours (men had to leave the women’s dorm by midnight or 1:00 a.m., I cannot remember).  That was the beginning of our short-lived love affair.

Although we tried to downplay our relationship, in fear that word would get back to her father that she was dating someone like me, everyone on campus knew we were seeing each other.  When a guy visited the women’s dorm, you had to go to the front desk and announce whom you were there to see, so every woman in the dorm knew whom was seeing who on a regular basis.  After a point, we did not even attempt to hide our relationship because the whole campus knew we were seeing each other.  She would occasionally stay the night with me at my place (however, we both practiced abstinence; I told you, she was a good, devout Catholic girl), but most of the time I was in her dorm room – her roommate hated me and stayed over her boyfriend’s place most of the time.  Our relationship continued to get hotter and hotter, though without sex, and we began to fall in love.

As the academic year was coming to an end, she began to act distant.  I didn’t know what the hell was going on.  So, I had a long conversation with her best friend (the one with the beautiful eyes) and she explained to me what was going on.  My girlfriend was attempting to wean herself away from me because she was going to graduate, return home for the summer, and attend another university in the fall and she could not see me fitting into those plans.  I was a freshman and was committed to stay where I was; she didn’t like the idea of a long distance relationship because someone always cheats; and the major problem, there was no way that her parents were going to accept someone like me – they would disown her.  But I was sick in love and couldn’t imagine living a single day without her, so out of desperation, I proposed to her.  She was shocked; she never expected a nineteen year old, “partying” musician to be serious enough about anything, especially marriage.

We talked, we talked, and we talked some more.  Friends and professors offered their opinions; with most of them believing that getting married was a huge mistake.  Finally, we had our final conversation on the matter.  She laid it all out for me -- if she said yes to my proposal, she could never go home again because her father would renounce her.  She felt her mother would be able to soften him over time, particularly once we had children, but it would be rough in the beginning.  She wanted me to know this, because she wanted me to understand what she was giving up if she chose to be with me.  I thought I understood, but I was a selfish, immature fool who only cared about myself.  I told her I understood and that my family would become her family – she had met my parents and they liked her a lot.  So it was set; we would spend the summer apart and she would begin at her new university in the fall, with her making occasional road trips to visit me.  I would finish my sophomore year, then we would get married and I would join her at her new university.  In the meantime, she, her mother, and her younger sister would gradually let her father learn about me and we would keep in touch through weekly phone calls.  That was the plan.  Then again, what did Robert Burns and John Steinbeck say about “the best-laid plans (schemes) of mice and men?”  “They often go awry.”  It’s even worst when one of the mice is a dumb nineteen-year-old kid.

I will not go into too many details, but I screwed up royally.  With her being hundreds of miles away, and even with the weekly phone calls, my eye began to wonder to a nice little young sweetie who lived on the same hall as my fiancée’s old room.  Ironically, when we were just beginning to date, I once went to the dorm to visit my fiancée, but she had not returned from the cafeteria.  So, this young lady offered me the option of playing backgammon with her in her room until my girlfriend returned, rather than sitting in the lobby like a fish in a bowl.  We left a message at the front desk telling my girlfriend where I was, and we went to play backgammon.  My girlfriend eventually showed up, and she was not pleased at all.  When we reached her room, she yelled at me and accused me of wanting to be with the other woman because she had larger breasts (for some reason, my girlfriend was always insecure about her breast size).  Subsequently, this was the young woman I began seeing when the new academic year started – she had no clue that my fiancée and I were still together and planning on getting married.  It all blew up in my face when my fiancée and a few of her friends decided to take a road trip to surprise me.

I had been trying to tell my new girlfriend that I had a secret, but I just could not figure out how to tell her.  Being very cryptic, I told her that I had made a promise to someone and that I was obligated to fulfill that promise, barring death (I had a flair for the dramatic).  Well, my fiancée showed up at my dorm room, surprising the hell out of me, while her friends went to the women’s dorm to visit some old friends.  Do you see where this is heading? 

Women on my campus: “What a surprise to see you here.  What are you doing here?” 

Fiancée’s friends: “We rode with ________, because she needed to visit John.  She misses him.

Women on my campus: “John who?  Not John Baskerville.  He’s going out with __________.”

Fiancée’s friends:  “He can’t be seeing ___________.  He’s engaged to marry ___________.”

Women on my campus: “Wonder if ____________ knows that?  Let’s talk to her.

You can figure out the rest:  I was busted; I loss both women; I was branded a goat on my campus; and every woman that lived in the women’s dorm hated my guts.  I was scared to eat in the cafeteria because that was where the second young woman worked.  The second woman eventually got over it, and we got back together (oh, but did she make me pay first).  But, the first woman, my supposed intended, I heard she did not fare well for some time.  Because of me, she had to mend relations with her family, her education suffered for a while, and she had to deal with the guilt of losing her virginity (we thought it would be okay since we were going to get married anyway).  All of this was because of me.

A friend of mine in graduate school, who swore she could “channel” people from the great beyond, once told me that I had been a dog in two of my past lives.  In one, I was an actual four-legged animal, but had experienced a violent death.  In the other life, I was actually a man who treated women badly; cheating on them, taking their money, having them support me, etc.  She said that I had died a violent death the second time as well; one of the women got tired of being taken advantage of and put a bullet through my thick skull.  It makes me wonder how I am going to die this time around. 

I think I have lived a much better life this time, with the exception of the story above.  And even though my life has been pretty good so far, there have been times when hard luck has visited me and I wondered if it was karma.  I really fear that my karma will pass on to my daughters; that they will have someone like I use to be come into their lives.  I truly believe I need to check this item off of my list so I can move on without fear.  I have wanted to get in touch with my old fiancée to apologize for being such a dog, but all of my attempts have been futile.  I know where she is; she is married to a farmer, has two beautiful girls, and teaches elementary art in a small town in the southern part of the state.  I have seen her photo on the school’s website.  She looks the same, just a little older.  She still has the same smile.

 So ____________, if by some chance you see and read this, I want to apologize for all of the pain that I caused you.  I was young and stupid, but that is no excuse.  My Mama taught me how to treat people, so I knew better.  You had everything to loose, while I had no risk at all.  Please forgive me.  I am glad your life has worked out well; you deserve your happiness.

Peace

My mother, Clarissa, was born on Christmas Day, 1922 in Boydton, Virginia (Mecklenburg County) to Walden and Lena Baskerville.  She was the first girl born to Walden and Lena, and unbeknownst to them at the time, she would remain very near to them for the rest of their lives.  Shortly after Clarissa’s birth, the family moved to Buxton, Iowa; her father’s brother had moved to Iowa months before to work in the coal mines and encouraged Walden to do the same because of the economic opportunities open to African-Americans.

Buxton was very unique for its time.   Being one of several mining company towns in the region, Buxton had an interracial populace that lived relatively harmonious, integrated lives, with the majority of the residents being African-American.  Because of this, African-Americans who grew up in Buxton possessed a much different view of whites than other southern blacks who moved to the North during the Great Migration of the 1920s – whites were not necessarily seen as the enemy.  Even though the company owned the town and damn near everything in it, African-Americans had a high degree of autonomy and lived relatively middle-class lives.  The mines would eventually close in the 1930s, forcing the residents of Buxton to find jobs elsewhere.  Following the railroad lines heading north, the Baskervilles landed in Waterloo, Iowa, where Walden acquired a job in the foundry at the John Deere tractor plant.  The plant had just begun hiring African-American workers for jobs most of their white counterparts refused to take, but offered African-Americans a greater economic opportunity than the coal mines of Buxton or the tobacco fields of Virginia.  With the move to Waterloo, the Baskervilles established a permanent presence in the city and soon became respected members of the African-American community.

Like most young girls of her time, Clarissa (whose brothers and sisters now called "Sissy") was responsible for helping her mother take care of her younger siblings; her parents would eventually have eleven children (and they didn’t even live on a farm!).  Sissy became a second mother to her brothers and sisters, nurturing and caring for them as if they were her own children.  She would go on to raise several of her nieces and nephews as well as her grandchildren, just as she had raised their mothers and fathers.  Along side her mother, Sissy soon became the family’s matriarch, and received the respect and the love of her entire extended family.

So far I have told the story of Clarissa as an historian, from a perspective that has been objective and without passion.  But now, I want to tell the story of my mother from the perspective of a son.

My mother gave birth to me relatively late in life at the age of thirty-nine.  I was her second child and her only son, my sister Julie had arrived one and half years earlier.  She had us late in life because she was always so busy taking care of others that she just didn’t have the time to focus on starting her own family, though her life had not been without pleasure and happiness.  Both my sister and I, at the time, were considered by the rest of society as “illegitimate,” however Mama refused to let us or anyone else see us that way.  To her, we were gifts from God and as precious as anything else God had put on this planet.  And because my mother was loved so deeply by her family, Julie and I were recipients of that love as well (she would not have it any other way).  Though throughout the earlier part of our lives we lived with our grandparents, Mama still dreamt of having a house of her own and a father for her children.  She married my stepfather when I was six years old, and we left the utopian confines of my grandparents’ home to begin a new life, across on the other side of the black community.

My stepfather could best be described as a rather complex man, that I am beginning to understand more as I get older with a wife and children of my own.  He had a good heart and desired to be a good father and husband (which he was eighty percent of the time), but this was not his first marriage and his previous wives, who proved to be less than faithful, caused him to have a suspicious nature towards woman.  He was also an African-American man, having lived through times when black men were devalued and relegated to the bottom rungs of society, saw himself capable of being far more than he was allowed to become, which gave him what some might call a “rough edge.”  And although Mama never gave him any reason to be suspicious and attempted to make the household a sanctuary from the outside world, he was determined to be in total control of his domain and ruled as a “pseudo-benign dictator” which did not always make life pleasant in our house.  When I got older and after my stepfather had passed away, I asked my mother why she chose to stay.  Her answer was typical Mama . . . she had stayed for us.  Working in the packinghouse, she knew my stepfather made enough money to provide Julie and I with the things we needed; something she could not do working as a part-time housekeeper with a G.E.D.  She also wanted to keep us from having to move back to our grandparents’ house, which was always quite full with extended family that Grandma had given shelter.  So Mama, once again sacrificing her own happiness for that of others, chose to stay in a marriage that was less than ideal.

Now that I am grown, with a family of my own, I have come to realize what all of those sacrifices my mother made on Julie and my behalf really meant.  I am of a generation who puts one’s own happiness and needs above those of anyone else's.  The person that makes sacrifices, even for their family, is seen as commendable and warrants special recognition these days.  We have come to the point where we convince ourselves that spouses going their separate ways is what’s best for the children, when in reality, it is what’s best for us (I am as guilty of this as anyone).  In our deposable world where three year old computers costing hundred of dollars are thrown away for the latest model with all the new bells and whistles, our relationships and commitments to others are thrown away in hopes of obtaining the “new and improved” as well.  The media has convinced us so much that our worth is determined by what we consume, we have become consumers of people – always hoping to surround ourselves with those we are told are hip, cool, dope, phat, or whatever the phrase of the month is, while abandoning those who have become passé by today’s standards.

Most of the time when we think or speak of parents, we think of them as the ones who taught us how to tie our shoes, taught us how to ride a bike, or who gave us a choice of either picking up our messy rooms or not being able to go out with our friends on Saturday night.  But what a parent truly is, is a person who takes responsibility for the well-being of others, putting all of ones own personal needs aside in order to fulfill that responsibility.  I remember my mother wearing the most hideous looking housedresses and seeing her torn and tattered underwear in the laundry, and I would think, “Mama just don’t give a damn how she looks.”  I was probably right, she didn’t give a damn how she looked because it was much more important to her that I had enough to eat, that I had a roof over my head, that I had clothes to wear, or even that my bass had a new pair of strings.  So on this Mothers’ Day, I remember my mother not because the calendar says I should or because Hallmark wants to guilt me into buying a card.  I remember my Mama for everything she sacrificed on my behalf and never asked for anything in return but my love.  So Mama, here’s to you and thank you for all you did when you were alive and what you continue to do now that you’re gone.  I love you.

Peace

I started playing bass guitar between the age of nine and eleven, then the acoustic bass in junior high school.  My sister Julie played bass, and was a very good symphonic player, until she dropped out of school.  However, she still loves the instrument.  A friend of mine, Reggie Roby (yes, the former NFL punter), got a bass and a cool VOX bass amp for his birthday one year, and he and his family would let me stay down in their basement for hours fooling around on the bass.  Reggie was a great musician, playing trombone, guitar, drums, and bass, but sports were his true passion and it paid off for him.  As you might know, Reggie recently died at the age of forty-five of a heart attack.  Even though I had not seen or talked with Reggie in a number of years, I miss him and think about him every time I strap on a bass.  Thank you, Reggie.

Anyhow, I fell in love with the bass right away, and finally saved up enough allowance to buy my own bass (my first bass belonged to my cousin; I traded her my stereo for it).  It was a cheap Kingston bass that I think my mom ordered for me from the Sears, J.C. Penny, or S & H Green Stamps’ catalogue.  I didn’t have an amp, but I spent hours in my room down in our basement playing that cheap bass.  I knew how to read bass clef, because I played baritone horn in the school band, so I went to the Music Corner (that’s where I first met Bob Guthart, owner of Bob’s Guitars) and bought a Mel Bay lesson book and taught myself how to read music on the bass.  I practiced reading by playing my baritone charts from band, and I worked on learning songs by ear by listening to the radio -- trying to work out the bass parts of songs.  A lot of the songs were old funk tunes, like “Slide” by Slave; “Hollywood Swinging” by Kool and the Gang; “Fencewalk” by Mandrill; “Skin Tight” and “Fire” by the Ohio Players; “Stretchin’ Out” by Bootsy Collins and His Rubberband; “Pick Up The Pieces” and “Cut The Cake” by the Average White Band; etc. 

I then discovered jazz when I met my sixth grade band teacher, Doug Sorenson.  I was sweeping and mopping the floor in the school’s lunchroom/gym, I worked in the lunchroom in exchange for free lunches, when I heard someone playing a trumpet.  Our old band teacher, Ms. Vargas, played trumpet but she didn’t play like this.  Whoever was playing this horn, played like Gabriel and had a whole lot of soul – screeching high notes and playing with a funky feel.  I stopped sweeping and peeked into the little room off the gym used for band lessons, and sitting there was this white guy, with his eyes closed and leaning back in a chair while his feet were up on another, playing his ass off.  He must have sensed that I was standing there, because he opened his eyes, nodded and finished what he was playing.  When he stopped, I asked him what he was playing.  He said he was just fooling around, improvising on some jazz riff.  I asked him what jazz was, and he looked at me with shock.  “You don’t know what jazz is?  I had heard the word jazz used around the house, but never really understood what it was.  Well, Mr. Sorenson told me to take a seat and he began trying to explain it to me.  I told him that I played a little bass guitar and the baritone horn, but I didn’t like it because it was too square.  He asked me if I would be interested in playing valve trombone, because he was thinking about ordering one.  First, I asked him what a valve trombone was, and then I said, “Yeah, that would be okay.”

During my weekly sectionals, I would stay after and discuss music with Mr. Sorenson.  He would tell me about gigging, different songs, and about different artists.  One person he always mentioned was Maynard Ferguson, a trumpet player whose big band played jazz standards as well as funkier tunes.  He told me Ferguson invented something called the “Superbone,” a valve trombone with a slide, and that I should check it out.  Shortly after our conversations, Mr. Sorenson learned that Ferguson was coming to the area, and asked my mother if I could go with him to see Maynard Ferguson and his Band at Coe College in Cedar Rapids – he was giving an afternoon workshop and an evening concert.  That was the year that Furguson’s album Chameleon was released and, at the time, he had a hell of a band.  We went to the workshop in the afternoon (Mr. Sorenson asked a million questions) and then we attended the evening concert, after going out for pizza (it was the first time I had Pizza Hut pizza).  The concert blew me away, and afterwards, Mr. Sorenson even took me back stage to meet Maynard and the rest of the band (he apparently knew most of the players the band). He had me sold; I would be a musician and a jazz fan for the rest of my life.  Mr. Sorenson was the first of many great music teachers that followed.

When I started playing in the jazz band in junior high, I became even more interested in jazz music – particularly jazz-fusion like Weather Report, Stanley Clarke, and Chick Corea.  The first jazz album I bought was Weather Report’s Heavy Weather, and it changed my world.  Although George Clinton claimed the P-Funk Band was sent to Earth from outer space to rescue the world from “funkless” music (The Mothership Connection), I was convinced that Jaco Pastorius and Wayne Shorter were gods sent to Earth to walk among us and rescue the world from mediocre music (you have to remember, this was the time of Debbie Boone’s “You Light Up My Life” and disco music).  It’s funny; I still kind of feel in awe whenever I listen to “A Remark You Made” off of the Heavy Weather album.  WOW!  In addition to listening, I read every issue of Downbeat and Guitar Player magazines (Bass Player did not exist yet), devouring everything thing they said about the music and the instrument.  One of the first things I learned (there were so many things) was that the best way to learn how to play was through trial and error, playing with skilled musicians.  Over the next few years, I kept this in the back of my mind.

I knew two old-school jazz musicians through my uncles Jack, Walden, and Chubby, David Graves and Dickie Van Arsdale, so I attempted to talk with them.  I could not find Dickie, but David mentioned that he ran a jazz/blues gig on Sunday nights at Readell’s Living Room Lounge, and that I should stop by and listen to the group.  Being only about sixteen, David okayed it with my mother (we didn’t dare mention it to my God-Fearing grandmother that I was going to be in a bar on a Sunday! . . . Holy Cow!), he also cleared it with Readell.  I started out by sitting and listening to the guys, a quartet with piano, vibes, bass, and drums, and also asking them questions during breaks.  I eventually got up enough nerve to sit-in, and I sucked!  But, the guys were great, giving me encouragement and asking me up again the next week.  The guy playing bass, Mike Anderson, began showing me how to walk bass lines over chord changes and my playing soon became passable.  David eventually asked me to be a regular with the group, so Mike could play guitar and the group could do a blues jam in the final set.  David said, he would pay me; I think it was thirty dollars.  To a sixteen-year-old kid, thirty dollars might as well have been a hundred dollars.  I couldn’t believe it . . . I was going to get paid for playing music.  In my mind, that made me a professional.  So, the group now consisted of me on bass, David on drums, Mike on guitar, and two University of Northern Iowa music students -- Dan Hummel on vibes, and Mike Michalicek on Fender Rhodes.  They were a great group of guys, and for it being my first “real” band, it couldn’t have been better.  I would learn later that one of Hummel and Checker’s roommates was my junior high student teacher, a bass player named Jay Hahn.  Dan, Checker, and Jay would let me drop by their place and hang.  I thought I was so cool, hanging with college musicians. 

I learned so much by playing and jamming with more advanced musicians -- musicianship, how to drink, how to smoke, etc.  However, the one lesson that has really stuck with me is that the music must always come first.  The superficial things like money, fame, fans, girls (yeah, right) are all secondary and don’t mean a thing if the music is jacked-up.

I have been pretty damn lucky when it comes to playing in bands.  I have not only played with excellent musicians, but they were also people I enjoyed being around.  Today, when I have to miss a rehearsal because of work or a family conflict, I am truly saddened because I am away from my best friends.  Sometimes, I’d rather be with my band members than with my family, especially when Hiltje, the girls, and Katie are all at each other's throats.  Maybe I’ll suggest that the band get a band sanctuary -- I mean a band house, like the Grateful Dead, with limited family visits.  Wasn’t it the Dead who sang, “Lately it occurred to me what a long, strange trip it's been?”  My journey as a gigging musician sure has been that and more.  It has been a life of good people, good _______ (you fill in the blank), and especially good music.

“If you see something that looks like a star
And it's shooting up out of the ground
And your head is spinning from a loud guitar
And you just can't escape from the sound
Don't worry too much it'll happen to you
We were children once playing with toys
And the thing that you're hearing is only the sound
Of the low spark of high-heeled boys” -- Traffic

Peace

In his first inaugural address (March 4, 1861), President Abraham Lincoln closed by saying, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”  As most of my friends and family know, I suffer from long-term chronic depression, better known as Dysthymia, with episodes of disabling major depression.  I used to be embarrassed by the fact that I had a mental health disorder, but when I discovered 1) how busy my psychologist’s and psychiatrist’s offices are, 2) that more prescriptions are written for depression than any other health conditions, and 3) that in many cases, depression is inherited from ones parents, it was no longer an issue.  I have learned that it is part of my reality and it is something that I have to deal with, the same as I have to deal with my weight, my big flat feet, and my very strange sense of humor (I actually think some of Checker’s jokes are actually very funny).

My last episode of major depression was in 2004, shortly after the death of my mother in December of 2003.  Even though I had been battling depression all of my life, my mother’s death was the event that pushed me over the edge.  As with most of us, my mother meant everything in the world to me.  I was her "beautiful baby boy” that she spoiled from the day I was born until the day she died.  So her death was very devastating to me . . . I had lost my biggest fan and my humanist touchstone.  It was as though I had loss everything that made me who I am. 

Over the course of the spring semester, I found myself deteriorating mentally – not being able to concentrate, think, interact with or tolerate people, or sleep.  In an attempt to explain what was happening to me, I came up with this phrase (which I appropriated from Lincoln and the character Toby from NBC’s The West Wing), “My demons are shouting down the better angels in my mind.”  My demons would not allow me to see anything positive – about life, about family, about anything.  All I could do was sit comatose, literally with nothing going through my mind at all.  I also was trying to keep it together when I was in front of my classes or when I was around people. 

By June, I was really struggling to keep it together and by July, the fight was over.  The depression had kicked my ass, had me down on the ground stomping my face to a pulp.  I was at the point of climbing up into a clock tower, dressed in a complete clown outfit and makeup, along with a high-powered rifle (okay, that’s a pop culture reference – do you know what incident I’m referring to?  If you do, you are a pop culture god/goddess!).  What else was there for me to do?  I am not a celebrity, so I could not go on MTV’s TRL and take my clothes off like Mariah did.  I did not have any money, so I could not go to South Africa like Dave Chappell did.  And I sure was not going to stand in the middle of a busy intersection screaming and pointing a gun at folks like Martin Lawrence did.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my police officers but they would blow a brother with a gun away in a second, and without a second thought.  So, I did something very uncharacteristic for me or men in general, and certainly untypical for a black man; I went to someone for help.  I didn’t go to my pastor, my bartender, or the crackhead on the corner; I went to a trained professional.  I went to an actual physician.

I don’t give a damn what Tom Cruise or the other Scientologists think, psychologists and psychiatrists are miracle workers.  Actually, it wouldn’t hurt Tom at all if he’d visit his local mental health provider.  They could treat him for that manic/bipolar disorder he is suffering from (if I was Oprah, I would have kicked his ass for jumping up and down on my furniture: SMACK! “Fool, this ain’t yo mama’s house -- Homey don’t play that!”  I’m sorry; I had to get ignorant there for a second).  Anyhow, through the process, I learned a lot about myself.  I was able to ferret out and exorcise some of the demons that had been “shouting down my better angels” for a long time.  By December of 2004, I was doing really well and ready to get back to work.  It was strange going back at first, and even though personnel matters are supposed to be confidential, it was obvious that everyone knew why I had been on a leave of absence because they talked to me using a very soft voice and with their heads cocked to the side.  You know what I mean, you know how people hold their heads when you’ve told them you have cancer, are getting a divorce, that somebody died, or that you have a case of hemorrhoids from hell (Oh, the pain and itching!).  I know people were just trying to be caring, but sometimes I wanted to take a hatchet and perform a tribute to Lizzy Borden (another pop culture reference; that has become a real bad habit with me.  Lorelei from the Gilmore Girls has corrupted me).  Almost two years later, and I am doing much, much better.

Now, you must be wondering, “John, why are you telling me all of this?”  Well, I just wanted to share this part of my life to help you understand me a little bit better.  For example, most of my friends and family have criticized me for being anti-social and that I need to get help in dealing with it.  But after almost a year of analysis, my doctors have come to the conclusion that not wanting to be around people is an innate part of my personality and should not be considered a character flaw.  Think about it, I spend most of my time, and enjoy immensely, reading and thinking, which are activities most people do alone.  I choose these as my favorite activities because they appeal to my personality and not because I use them to avoid contact with people.  Another aspect of my personality that my doctors discovered is that I am naturally a gloomy or morose person and prefer seriousness to jocularity.  So, all of those times you thought I was moping I was merely just being myself.  I choose to and enjoy living inside of my head, welcoming only a few people in at a time (thus, the irony of the blog).  Finally, I will always have Dysthymia, and the most I can do is to treat the symptoms and try to remain functional.  But occasionally I experience times of deeper depression.  During these times, I choose to take what I call “permanent vacations” or “lost holidays,” where I disappear from the face of the earth (figuratively, not literally; I’m not that far gone) and do not re-emerge until I am able to “maintain” once again.  So, if you don’t see me, hear from me, or cannot find me, and Hiltje and the girls don’t know where I am, be assured that I am fine.   I am just taking a little time away.  That is how I embrace the better angels of my nature and reconcile myself with the world.  It’s nothing personal.

Peace