Morning Chill and the Pavlovian.

We’re in the 80’s here in Texas, temp wise. That’s a 20 degree drop, over night. Sweet Jesus, I might sleep outside tonight. On my front lawn. I might even be sober this time. Huh? Right.

This cooler (seriously, 80 degrees is COOLER) weather kicks my long-term memory up a bit. Extreme changes in temperature do that to me. Odd little (pointless, yet fascinating to me) fact about Craig: when I’m in the shower (no this isn’t filthy), if I turn up the heat to steaming and hang my head under the faucet so that the water beats the back of my neck and head, I get crazy flashback memories. Of my childhood. Weird situations that have no bigger story, they’re just… “as of” situations. Or views. The most common flashback I get is of the view looking out a bay window into the backyard of some woman’s house. I was probably three or four years old, and we only went to this woman’s house once. She was some acquaintance of my mother, possibly through church. I don’t really know. But I must have stared out that bay window, cataloguing her fence line and crape myrtle trees for an eternity, because the image is crazy vivid.

Yeah. It’s pretty fucked up. I can’t remember the name of someone standing in front of me who I’ve known for over three years yet I remember how those myrtles listed silently dancing in unison against a rain-ravaged fence amidst a St. Augustine lawn that desperately needed some serious trimming. My brain very well may never work properly, and I’m okay with that. We all have our issues.

So, the memory that was triggered by my brain this morning was from way back. Back from my elementary school days. Back then, as soon as we hit autumn in Alief, all the kids would run outside and play some random sport. Baseball, soccer, volleyball, basketball, and of course: football. I was around seven at the time, so I was not yet aware of how little I cared about all of these sports, save for basketball. Back then, all the boys in the neighborhood would meet down the street at the Winkler’s house to play whatever the game-o-the-day was. This particular day, it was football. Fucking football. Oh, glory be.

The leaves had just started to fall off of some trees (like, two trees, because all the others were pine trees, or evergreens), and you could smell a hint of winter in the air (someone burning garbage somewhere, probably). It had to have been mid to late October, because it wasn’t winter enough to warrant long sleeves (no need for a “coat” in Houston, except for style). So the grand ol’ sport of organized gang-warfare had hit the Monday night lineup, and football was being pumped into all the delicate little brains of all the little boys in the neighborhood. Well, a couple were saved from this poison by being the frontrunners of the pale-skinned, ADD riddled “Nintendo Generation”, but we barely saw those joystick jockeys outside. They were almost a suburban myth at that time.

Anyhow. Friendly neighborhood game of football.

None of us really knew how to play this game, but we tried anyway. Again, I was seven, so I was just getting good at tying my shoes without parental aide. “Downs”, “hikes”, and “runs” described various diseases in my little world, not elements to a street game. We also had no concept of the “touch” or “flag” variations of football. We went “full contact”. Knowing of those variations probably would not have mattered since the organizers of these games, I believe, to this day, very well may have been questioning their own sexuality at the time. There would be much contact, much rubbing, and half of the guys involved would probably end up shirtless by the end of it all. The pre-confusion of pre-puberty is awesome like that. Regardless, we were small kids with no clue what we were trying to accomplish as far as the game went. So when this group of middle school boys showed up (with their sideline heckling girlfriends, no less), we got broke-the-fuck-down with a quickness. They were HUGE to us. Gargantuan creatures with fuzzy faces and volcanic acne. They scared the hell out of me with their high-fiving and cracking-voiced grunts. They talked mad shit to each other, and to us. That’s right. These dudes were about twice my age, and felt the need to talk shit [I’m gonna fuckin’ OWN you kid] as we lined up for plays.

Oh, the “plays”. Right. In the wonderful world of seventh grade-dom, every boy thinks he’s the star. There is no teamwork, only highlight reels of savagery committed by one man-boy against everyone else (this goes for soccer, basketball, cricket, dominos, and tic-tac-toe). Especially when the opposing team is comprised of kids half your size and age. It’s survival of the most ruthless ball-hogger. So, these dudes just took turns as quarterback and simply RAN US DOWN. No passing, no blocking, no strategy. They’d hike the ball, and whoever got it would run STRAIGHT AT US with the intention of breaking all our limbs. We were the pins and they were the bowling ball. Elbows to the shoulders, fists to the face, kicks to the chest. It was mad brutal. No one even bothered to keep score. After the third grass-stain to my face, I started to wonder why the hell I was bothering to play with these cats. It certainly was not fun. Well, of course, they were enjoying themselves thoroughly. They were having a blast trying to crack the collar bones of second graders in order to impress their head-banging, Aqua-net addict girlfriends sitting on the sideline. I really hope one of them earned a handjob out of that disaster. Something for our pain. Something, anything.

So there I was, getting battered and then immediately standing back in line for more. Like a moron lemming. Silently, I was questioning the point of the whole game, but no one else on our team was pussing out. You could see it in their faces. Resolute to beat these guys, against all odds, without a clue as to how. No one was willing to back down. Even in the face of an absolute and utterly embarrassing slaughter, none of them had the notion to just say “fuck this shit, I’m gonna go play Frogger” except me. Well, I couldn’t let them down and just sulk my way back home. Even at seven, I had a fleeting understanding of the code of brotherhood (which is total bullshit, for the most part, by the way) and refused to abandon my post. Yet, I was getting a bit weary from these assholes and their repeated efforts to loosen all my teeth.

On the next play, this particularly big fellow planned to run the ball at us. Blond, wearing a fairy-ass half-shirt, gym shorts and fucking football cleats. Football cleats? I was probably barefoot for this particular game. He even pointed at me to let me know I was his target. What a sweetheart. They hiked the pigskin to him and he leaned forward with his right arm straight out, like a jousting lance of bone and meat, kicking up lawn as he barreled right at me, other seven year-olds bouncing off his thighs. I was seriously tempted to turn around and just run my broken ass home, but I’m pretty sure he would have kept up and eventually ran right over me and my ruptured spleen. In my living room, if need be. So what did I do? I curled up into a ball, like the complete pussy I am, covering my head with my hands, and prepared to be punted, if not worse. I braced for the impact…

Apparently, this particular tactic was (and is still) not very popular in Football. Some might say it is a sissy move. Whatever. All I know is that beefcake had no clue as to how to handle the situation and tried to hurdle me instead. His leg caught the arch of my back, and hit the grass like a fat person, with no hands out to catch himself. The ball popped out and was picked up by a fellow second grader who quickly ran it down to other side and scored our first and only point of the game.

A small victory amongst a crushing defeat, sure, but it was much more than that in our minds. Suddenly, we were using all kinds of tactics to stop them. Ganging up, punching dicks, kicking knees, we’d try anything outside the standard rules (which had us being beaten like slaves earlier in the game). Things got interesting. They started having to run plays, which were very successful, but at least we weren’t being punched in the ears anymore. We felt like we were actually playing the game instead of being played by it. It was fun, for a few plays anyhow.

It all came to an end for me when, that same missing-link motherfucker got a hand off and ran straight at me again. I tried to trick him with the whole “duck-and-cover” routine but his ID-driven mind knew enough not to repeat that mistake. He picked me up by my right arm as he ran by, dragged me maybe five feet, and slammed me into a pine tree on his way to score another point. That might have been the first of many minor concussions I’ve earned so far in life. I don’t remember the trip home, but I certainly left soon after that play.

Awesome.

I’m sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere. Something about ingenuity, perseverance, or not letting your children out of the house before they’re thirty years old, but I didn’t really glean too much from it. You lose some, you lose some more. Perhaps I should have learned to cut my losses, abandon hopeless situations, or only play games that I completely understand. But even now, many moons later, I still haven’t learned any of that for sure. I honestly haven’t been able to make a discernable pattern after lacing together similar situations throughout my life. It’s more chaotic than that, apparently. Not so hard-and-fast. [love that phrase!]

Besides, it’s just a memory, triggered by the cool weather, on my way to work. Right? Right. Coffee time.

To the Scale.

It is sad when you realize that you cannot run anymore because your knees just cannot handle it. It is sad when you realize that you cannot travel, visit most places of interest, or anything else that requires resources because your bank account cannot handle it. It is sad when you realize that the wide swings between highs and lows are because of each other, and your body simply cannot continue to handle the punch with any real resilience. It is sad when you realize that all your previous youthful possibilities have turned into the standard opportunity costs everyone has to grapple with to the grave, dancing with the shittiest of partners: regret.

It is happy when you find that you can pick up swimming instead of running. It is happy when you find that there are many free experiences that can be had, which are even more interesting than those hidden behind the colorful exterior of carnival tickets. It is happy when you find that those highs and lows which will never again be obtained as they were when you were able to properly distill them together, never actually balanced each other out nearly as well as your mature, wine-wise mind keeps balanced. It is happy when you find that nothing you have ever done really had any negative costs, because the end result of one’s life, along with everyone else, is death, and nothing worse than that.

One’s life is never wasted if it was lived, for better or worse, during their time, to the best of the liver’s ability. No judgment can be made. Just as there is no profit at the end of one’s life, there are no remaining costs. If the bill is guaranteed to be paid in full by the end of its term, then it should matter not where the balance may sit during its duration.

Repeat until either calm or insane.

ACL AFTERPARTIES on Saturday Night! Free!

Both are on Saturday night, so there's a slight conflict, but I plan to attend both anyway. Even after an entire day in the sun with the beer and the burn and the dirty feet. Yes.

The first, is with Austinist (that's that online zine that I write for, periodically) and Trojan condoms: and it should be much fun since all the bands are quality local acts. That's right. Rubbers. Get there early to make sure you're covered.

ZING!

It's at the Velvet Spade, next door to Club Deville (ahhhhh, Club Deville...).

Here's the flyer

The Second, is at Karma Lounge, and it will feature Ceeplus (Eric, for those who actually know him) and a couple of the guys from Boys and Girls Club in Houston. If you are familiar with the B & G crew, then I need to add nothing more to this invite. Beautiful insanity. Tommie Sunshine is the headliner, but to be honest, I am not familiar with his work. So there's that.

Print out whatever you need, and be sure you get however many jimmy hats you require. No lists to get on. Just show your ass up. Word.

Blending the Stroke.

To an old relationship, an old lover who knows too much.

Ahem.

On Black

Why you gotta beat me like that?
Why I gotta return and return and return to this shit?
Yes, why?
You’ve caused me immeasurable harm.
The money. The time. Oh, the wasted time.
You’ve taken what matters most to me: my pride.
No, not really. No one can do that to me.
But you DID set the stage for me to give that shit away.
Like a con game.
Like date rape.
Like a man who wants to believe he knew what he was doing.
When he obviously didn’t.
And yet my companions and compatriots are drawn to you.
They think you’re so funny and charming.
They do whatever they can to be near you.
They love the way you make them feel, how you see only them.
But it’s their reflection they see, not your eyes.
You have eyes for no one.
You are no one.
You are a dead relationship to me now.

On White

But you are so pretty.
So graceful in your movements and so well respected.
So cultured and educated!
And your cooking is beyond compare.
When we’re together, I feel like it’s all for me.
Like I’m special.
Like what I do matters to you, and when with you: everyone else.
We have so much fun together, you and I!
We never needed anyone else back then.
Just us.
Alone together, passing our days locked in constant caress.
That sounds really gay, but you know what I mean.
We’re more than that.
We’re more than ourselves when we’re together.
Like Wonder Twins, when we unite… it’s so on.
I still dream about us.
All the time.
Even though years have passed.
I will never get completely over you.
I don’t think I want to.

On Grey

Really, this is ridiculous.
We keep doing this to ourselves.
To me.
I keep doing this to me.
Because there never was an “us”.
And that’s okay.
Sure, we had some great times.
And we’ll have more, if we see each other again.
But we’ll never be as intimate as we were then.
We were new to each other, and that has weight.
Well, you were new to me.
You had seen guys like me a million times over.
Old hat.
And that’s fine. I hold no grudges, for that is who you are.
And I still love you anyway.
I cannot help myself.
You will always be carried in my soul.
But we will never carry one another again.
And I know that now, more than I would admit before.

Thank you for everything NYC, you filthy bitch of a fuck hole place that I cannot help but love with all my might with every bone and every fleshy cell of my body. Fucking fuck, you can be such a shit sometimes. Such bullshit... Such. A. Shit. And so can I.

Okay then. Now that I have that out of my system, let’s stay friends in the grey. Cool? Cool.

Love,

Me (you asshole)

Saaaaaay WHA?

I have successfully returned from a couple of weeks out and about. I LOVE to travel. Seriously, it makes life in a smallish, townish-type city worthwhile. It helps to relieve the pressured, sinking feeling I begin to acquire after being planted here for so long. Perspective is a great gift that you can give yourself, for free, just by paying some attention to wherever you happen to be. My travels, lately, have not been fruitful in the same ways as they were before. I’ve been picking up a-lot more thought than airport trinkets and hangovers. I’m not sure how I feel about it all just yet.

Regardless: lots of recent traveling!

Two weekends back: Amarillo for a wedding. Fantastic wedding between two fantastic people. I seriously doubt they would ever read this blog, so I do not feel obligated to give them a whole-hearted shout-out. It would be a lost sentiment. Suffice to say, they were worth me driving over 1,300 miles round-trip, through shit-hole north Texas towns, while gas was cha-chinging between $3 and $3.30 a gallon. And I would do it again if requested. My love for them runs that deep.

Moving along.

MY LORD, Amarillo is an interesting place. If you’ve never heard of it, you are far from alone. Most of the modern and moving parts of the world have not either. But here in Texas, Amarillo is a pretty sizeable fish. Thar be oil in them thar plains.

I don’t really know the complete history of the city, nor do I particularly care. It’s in the middle-of-nowhere panhandle (insulated from the outside world by the sheer and understandable disinterest everyone else has in visiting), there’s an obscene amount of oil money there (held by like, ten families), and it is quite possibly the most conservative place I have ever had the displeasure of hearing people express themselves in. One comment I heard (NOT overheard, as this comment was specifically directed to me for response):

Well, you know, the real shame about the New Orleans “situation” is that a city like that, with, you know, “elements” such as those who stayed behind, is that it’s kinda like a rock. New Orleans is. And when you pick up a rock, well, there are cockroaches down there, hidden most of the time. And it’s a shame that this is how we have to see them.

Whoa. That one really threw me back. I said nothing in response. What the hell can a person say to THAT? I mean, all cities have their share of disenfranchised, underemployed, addicted, criminal, or just plain lazy people. And… uh, so what? Takes all kinds in this world, and to even try and classify such things based on CNN coverage seems beyond brash and cavalier. Hell, it borders on straight-up, textbook prejudice (potentially racially based, depending on what video footage or personal experiences birthed her insect metaphor).

Well, if I could have gotten over the shock of the thing, I suppose I could have asked what I honestly wanted to know: “are you seriously comparing those who are stuck in New Orleans to filthy insects which we only associate with disrepair and waste? ‘Cause that’s mad-fucked-up if you are.” And it would be.

And I think it was.

She was in her late fifties I would guess. Very well-off. Probably educated up to at least the lower collegiate level. Hell, she is probably fluent in French and collects genuine Egyptian obelisks (along with an astonishing amount of Elizabeth Arden interior décor, which as a side note: makes me want to vomit in a cotton candy gin while tightening a vice on my dick - it's that unpleasant for me). But obviously not terribly active in the day-to-day workings and recalculations of a modern and moving society composed of an ever-increasing and ever-heterogeneous mix of races, nationalities, and socio-economic backgrounds. In other words: at the risk of fighting accidental ignorance with brazen ignorance, I pose that her viewpoint is not a minority viewpoint in Amarillo. Further more, I am tempted to believe that such an insulated community, having more than enough financial resources to avoid coming to terms with the real world can and will remain that way. I see no motivation in and amongst similar populations for advancement in perception. If your Daddy (Pappy, Lord of The Manor, whatever) or your Daddy’s Daddy was a bigot (as historically, most of the white folks you’ll ever meet are familiar) and you essentially live in the same if not MORE comfortable environment touting as much… then I’m just not sure how something so culturally anchored would miraculously fix itself. In an experience vacuum.

And it worries me quite a bit.

We live in a Red State. Texas is blood-red-Republican, politically. Now I take no issue with our state’s political leaning, regardless of my personal feelings, because I do believe in the rule of the majority… to a point. If I lived in a place where the MAJORITY of the population beat their dogs with aluminum bats and believed that the Chinese were all too mentally deficient to live outside of holes in the ground… well, that would kinda fuck up all that faith in the “will of the majority” now wouldn’t it?

Sometimes, I wish there were some sort of requirement, as awful as it sounds, which provided a measure that would ensure that anyone in a position of authority, political influence, or financial wealth, had to have a testable understanding of the necessity and beneficial interest behind diversity: different countries, languages, customs, religious practices, skin colors, sexual preferences, favorite Star Wars movies, whatever.

Because it seems to me that with the influx of that information and experience comes understanding. And with that understanding, comes acceptance (NOT “tolerance”, which to me is a bullshit word used to establish majority/minority relationships, which is hollow unless you intend to capitalize on those lines, making it an even deeper bullshit word) which leads to collective involvement, which eventually leads to a reasonably educated and rational political base. A well-groomed, intelligent, and logical political base which will make decisions without being confused or manipulated by the use of subtle metaphors which may or may not be dehumanizing for those who lack the means to rebut.

Better yet, a well-groomed, intelligent, and logical political base which would never say something so casually callous. A political base that would know better than that. Better.

But for the record, all the friends of the happy couple were cool as shit. Well, except for that one dude who smoked with me out front when everyone else was too scared to look like a dirtbag in front of the families (who all smoked it up after they got blasted). He was cooler than the rest of them.

Word.

They Never Do.

The scenes don’t seem quick to change.

And the people keep keeping the same lines propped up for “the ready” to grab and read. I feel for the ones on the inside. The outside. The ones that everyone forgets until they’re getting gone. The Machine’s leftover parts. The fuel for fires of relentless progress and the reason for books that preach blind justice. I feel for them the same way I feel for a fourteen year-old girl in Sudan. A distant, yet ever-present Janjaweed prospect. A part of a system of take-and-taken where they’ll never, never ever, by the design of the thing, ever see a fair dealing of cards. Off suit every time. I don’t see victims. I see a machine at work. A fantastic machine, with cold and smooth edges. Lots of blinking lights. Input-output-throughput-execution-results. I don’t see the bending over. I don’t see the “sudden abandonment”. I see no given targets. I don’t see any new hatred.

I see the same scenes that dance in history books, flowered-up with partial and ultra-partial language. The language of The Machine. The Machine's preferred language.

The Machine’s been working like this forever. Forever and ever. And The Machine sees no color, region, or time as an important context. Everyone has been on every side of The Machine because The Machine knows no loyalties. The machine cares not. The machine only knows what it has always known to do: maintain The Machine.

I feel. I feel for the burgeoning intellects of twentysomethings in rural Idaho that read the interweb and pray on it like gospel. As if CNN has anyone’s interest in mind but that of The Machine. As if anyone holding out on being moved has anything in mind but The Machine. As if stories of raped babies and sewage sammiches were trying to be hushed by The Machine. As if the Bush regime IS The Machine. As if The Machine would ever bother stooping to such pointless levels. It needs no evangelism. It needs no figurehead. It needs no purpose.

It is its own purpose.

The scenes don’t seem quick to change.

And the people keep pouring over the same frames… whether paper or screen, scroll or minstrel, tablet or blimp. They’ll consume the output given proper throughput, processing the results by the tick-tocking of the execution schedule. They take as it’s given. They empathize at The Taken, as if it were their experience when in fact the opposite is more true. The experience is what is taken from The Taken. That is The Machine doing the bidding of itself, for the benefit of the unknown majority. Double-dealing amongst everyone so that turns are taken, and The Taken from one time are the voyeurs of another.

The Machine needs no friends. Only the apathy of its voyeurs and the spite of its enemies.

From Pampers to lost dogs to bloated forms to reunited families to suicidal cops to feces-flooded toilets to horrendous heat to that saved baby to the blanketed wheelchair that obviously seats the dead to “gunmen” and mobsterish playground bully stories of hospitals under siege to Astrodome Bedouins given open-bar privileges to the family that took in that darker and less fortunate family to the reworking pump systems to the bus driver that drove that family from Minnesota straight out of the mouth of hell to the cholera, e coli, West Nile, and pages that list each threatening “itis” that currently cooks over cobbled streets. When The Machine speaks, listen close to not miss a beat. Not a dime.

But allow a brief pause for thanks. For but a second, that Bourbon Street is still dry. And that five years from now there will be the most powerful frozen brain demolisher ever made, offered from tattered and wretched street booths... and it will be named the Katrina Hurricane, served from pink vessels resembling the form of an empty soul, sucked through a straw forged from the nightmares that stream from the minds of fourteen year-old Janjaweed prospects. The Machine will name it as such. The Machine names all things of wanton nature. All things of traded value. All things of lost value. All things.

The scenes don’t seem quick to change.

They never do.

PART 2 of Work in Progress

This is a continuation of this post from last week. I shall be out of pocket for a bit, so feel free to actually read any of this whenever your job gets insufferable.

We pushed through the rain toward the bay, back to Broadway. The Chinatown trash, stacked in messy piles all along the curb was starting to topple under its own rain-soaked weight and fall into the gutter to migrate down Grant. We moved with it.

We entered the first open bar to seek refuge from the trash and weather. It was a stately place, with a long well-carved bar that covered half of the entire left wall. The ceilings were somewhere near twenty feet up, and were covered in pressed tin plaques with highly ornamental brass chandeliers looming below. The walls were a tasteful red, with stained bead-board running a good three feet up from the wooden-plank floors. Barstools and tables dotted the entry with a pool table and juke box in the rear. There were perhaps ten people drinking merrily at the bar, and the bartender greeted us as we walked in. “Come on in out of the rain and warm up!” She wore a cheery, dimpled smile and her face was daintily framed by locks of curly brunette hair. She was petite, and she was the only one behind the bar.

Two shots of whisky were in order, just to get the flavor of death from our mouths. It took another beer to completely cleanse the ill taste of that evil Ng Ka Pi from our palates. Once that was taken care of, we set our minds to conquering the pool table in the back. Red felt, full size, with top-notch pool cues. There were already some balls on the table, but there was no one back there but one lone fellow who was lazily flipping through the selections on the juke box. He had a slight build, average height, draped in an oversized team jersey with bright-white K-Swiss kicks. He seemed thoroughly busy with music selection, and uninterested in the pool table. So I pulled out the racking triangle and began to herd the balls my way.

“What the fuck are you doing man?” The juke box was not his only interest. He was obviously miffed, but he was not aggressive in any way. Being drunk enough to forget that some questions are purely rhetorical, I continued to pull balls while I answered.

“Oh, we’re here from out of town. You know, came in to play some pool. Why? You want to play or something?”

“We WERE playing.” Hm.

I continued to disregard him, as if he was just being a nuisance. I have no idea why I continued that way, but I did. “We? Who else are you playing with?” As if he could not possibly be playing alone, with a severe psychological disorder where his personalities would play each other for control over his conscious self. Or something like that.

“With Steve, at the bar. He’s getting drinks. We were playing a game here.”

Oh, I see. Semantics and shit.

Steve walked up to punctuate the last comment. “Here’s your water Carlos, you fucking fag!” Steve had obviously been drinking as much as we had. Either that, or they were related. An even further possibility was that Carlos was indeed homosexual, and did not mind being slighted for it. Actually, I was up in the air on the whole matter. I just wanted to play pool.

Carlos looked over at me, as I continued to rack the balls. “I’m drinking water because I don’t want to get all fucked up before we ship out tomorrow. Steve’s crazy.”

Ah, Navy. Made sense. Steve dove right into sloppy-handed introductions, which are my specialty.

“Hey man! What’s up? I’m Steve, just here to play a little pool and get a little pussy before we go to Japan tomorrow.”

He was significantly taller than his counterpart. And much more professional in his appearance. Early twenties, black shoes, fitting jeans, untucked polo shirt, nice gold watch and a buzz cut to match Carlos’s.

We all exchanged introductions. For the next hour or so we played games of pool. Carlos remained sober and aloof while Steve, Vance and I traded rounds of shots until we were slobbering drunk.

Periodically we would step out into the night to catch a smoke. Each time we went outside, we met up with an older gentleman named Charles, who was obviously a member of the rather large population of homeless in the area. Mid forties, heavy-set African American with graying hair, heavily stained clothing, and the crustiest set of lips I have ever had the displeasure of watching as he rambled on and on about himself. Between requesting cigarettes he entertained us with stories about his past, and all the amazing things he was supposed to become before an unspecified injury caused his pain killer addiction.

“I used to throw these barbeques back in the day. Danny Glover used to come over just for my ribs. They were that fuckin’ good man! Danny goddamn Glover, I’m tellin’ you!”

His stories always involved famous people hanging out with him in weird situations. He would sit with Tom Hanks during church. He and his cousins were in a high school play with Magic Johnson. Or John McEnroe would stop by his place to watch videos from time to time. I pressed him on the whole Danny Glover claim, just to see how far he would push it.

“Danny Glover came over to your house for barbeque? Did he ever live here in San Francisco?”

He stuck to his guns like a champ. And even though his defenses were as empty as the initial claims that required them, I really had (have) no reason to doubt his sincerity in believing the lot of it.

“Oh yeah man. My barbeques were famous. They came from all over. It’s in the sauce, you know. Like the best crack you ever had! Sharon Stone, Robert Redford, Eddie Murphy, all them used to show up for my Sunday ribs. I was THE KING! Danny used to call me all week to make sure I was still doin’ it. ‘Yo Chuck, you still doin’ the ribs this Sunday, ‘cause I gots to get me some of that!’ And I’d say ‘you know it Dee!’ ‘cause we were tight like that, back in the day. You just DON’T KNOW man.”

He was right. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about most of the time. I was flammable drunk, and he was spilling lots of strange stories about tangential relationships to rather famous people. But I kept pretending to listen.

As the night progressed, and our trips out front to smoke and talk shit with Charles happened with increased frequency, he got bored with convincing us of how many famous people he used to feed, and decided that we should all sing some songs.

Because he used to be in choir with Lionel Ritchie, or some such nonsense.

“You know what? You know what you guys need to do?”

Steve and I had no idea what would be said by this man. “Nah, Charles. What?”

“You got beautiful young voices. And beautiful young voices have to SING!” And with that, he raised his hands up in the air and turned slowly while drawing out “SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!”

Then he stopped to face us, motionless. “Beautiful voices must be heard. It’s your DUTY.”

With such a fantastic presentation, how could we not? Three smokers, sloppy drunk out in front of a bar at two in the morning, in the rain? The only thing we were missing was the incoherent off-key butchering of some rail yard bonfire tune.

He started by deducing who was what. Vance and I were tenors, Steve was the soprano, and Carlos was told he was bass before he muttered a single word. It did not even make sense that Carlos was out there because he certainly did not smoke, and he was sober enough to have the sense to keep dry inside. But there he was, the reluctant bass in a corner choir, led by a homeless addict.

Under Charles’s arm-waving direction, we destroyed the same two bars of “Chain Gang” in between dodging back inside for more shots. Eventually, Vance was asked to stop because he really could not hold a tune, and Carlos wised up and kept inside where it was warm and soul-free. So there we were. The three of us. Steve, me, and our crazy director, shouting at the top of our lungs down Broadway, bellowing the deep pains of the imprisoned by way of slave-song.

My memory of the session is filled with overwhelming emotion. I honestly thought we were good, and was honored to be part of something beautifully irreverent. It was inspiring, even it sounded atrocious.

I was so impressed with what I thought was his talent for voice training, that I invited him into the bar for a drink.

“Fuck it Charles, let’s go inside and get a whisky man! It’s cold and I’m thirsty!”

Charles hesitated at first, but then agreed with a grin. “Ah, yeah. Yeah! A drink’d be nice!”

I figured he was a recovering alcoholic, and that was the reason for his staggered response. He must have been overcome by our wonderful performance and wished for a single celebratory drink to mark his success as a street-trio director.

Straight to the bar I went and ordered four whisky cokes. The bartender, with her curls dangling down, did not register my order. Her eyes were fixed on the door I just staggered through. Steve was struggling at the entrance with Charles, I could see jittery motion from the corner of my eye. The mood in the bar had obviously taken an uncomfortable turn, and I was having trouble understanding what was souring the situation. The bartender, still staring at the door where Charles and Steve continued to fumble with each other, asked me with a flat tone, “did you invite him in here?”

I turned to follow her eyes and saw Steve with a look of irritated shock on his face, hands up in a non-threatening manner, stepping back from a slowly disrobing Charles. “Goddamn it’s hot in here WOMAN,” he bellowed while tugging at his shirt.

“I, uh, yeah. He’s in here with us.”

She set her vibrating eyes on to mine. “I don’t want his ass in here.” Then she leaned forward and whispered “he threatened to…”

“I’LL KILL YOU BITCH!!!” Charles was visibly angry, but not moving a whole lot. Just sort of shuffling in place, not but five feet from the door. Steve moved toward him with the obvious intention of calming him down.

The bartender, matter of fact, “that’s why we don’t let him in here.” Then she yelled out over my head. “You get your fucking ass out of here Chuck or I’ll call the cops again, and they’ll fuck you up even more!”

I had no idea what was going on around me, but it was not pretty. Suddenly, all the patrons at the bar rose from their stools and made two menacing steps toward Charles. Steve put an arm on Charles’s chest and stood between him and the drinking mob. “Whoa! I got him, no problem here folks! We just came in for a drink! No trouble here!”

Charles was not making things any easier.

“FUCK YOU BITCH! AND FUCK THE GODDAMN POLICE TOO! I’M GONNA KILL YOU BITCH!”

We were obviously in over our heads. It was time to reverse the damage we had inadvertently done. “Forget the drinks, we’ll get him out of here. No problem.”

“You do that.” She was more irritated with the whole exchange than she was intimidated.

Steve, Vance and I shuffled Charles back through the door while Carlos watched with his hands in his pockets, and the booze crew returned to their seats at the bar. Charles continued to hurl threats and slurs back over his shoulder as we pushed him back out into the night. He bolted from our grips and made his way down the street, still yelling about police brutality and the potential murder of a certain “bitch bartender whore!”

He was right about the duty to sing when you have a beautiful voice. But he was not so clear on what one should do if their voice is less than pleasant. I suppose he was too close to the problem to have formed useful advice for that end of the spectrum.

We shrugged it off, had an awkward smoke, and re-entered the bar to continue drinking. Apologies were made, stories of Charles and his drunken disasters were told, and then last call punched us in the collective, limping liver.

Out on the street again, we said our goodbyes and good-lucks. Vance and I made our way back to the hotel, falling down on and spreading the garbage that littered the slimy surface of Grant St. I do not remember entering our hotel room, but I have splintered memories of jumping on the beds, knocking over a side table, and kicking my luggage like a football across the room (presumably to get it through the window and down into the street, which was rather distant from brilliant, but whatever).

A beautiful voice should indeed be used. Lucky for us, such beauty is in the ear of the beholder.