WHY I HAVE FRETTED FOR YEARS...

ABOUT BEING A GRUMPY TRAVELER and just don't relax and have a drink is mostly due to the fact that I have never seemed to be up-to-snuff when it came to taking a pleasure trip of any sort, particularly a long one.  First of all, there are many folks who are much better at reading guide books than I am.  I often read them on the way back from where I have been and am astonished when I find out what I have missed.

 My wish has always been that I could be the adventurous sort of a man James Bond always seemed to be, one who was able to spend an inordinate amount of time on a glamorous gleaming golden boat surrounded by two bikini-clad women who graciously ushered me aboard, then pampered me and waited on me  hand and foot, one offering me a glass of champagne while the other bent in front of me while giving me a robust and yet gentle loin massage.

 That, however, has never seemed to be the case.  There was an island I once visited briefly.  It was a pretty atrocious place.  The island itself was charming.  The resort built on it was not. It was a perfect example of what not to do to a beautiful subtropical island, which is to cover it with hideous high-rise junk architecture, and sell beer and picture postcards of how beautiful it used to be before all the postcard shops arrived.  I had ended up there on a fluke, exhausted and disappointed.  The brochure was splattered with words like "international" and "superb" and "sophisticated," and what that meant is that they had Mariachi music pumped out of the palm trees and themed fancy-dress parties every night. 

 By day I would sit at a table by the pool, slowly sipping on tequila and listening to conversations at nearby tables which seemed mostly to be about who and where somebody had gotten mugged along about dusk on the evening before.  I usually spent the evening at a table by myself getting stonkered and listening to conversations nearby and retired woozily to my room in order to pump out the remains of the alcohol I had recently downed, while other folks were rampaging half-naked through the night in whatever costume the theme of the evening was.  

 On one occasion I happened to talk to a German couple on the beach late one afternoon in between the smallish squalls of rain and wind and blowing sand. They lived on a pig farm 80 miles east of Dusseldorf , where all they ever heard, they said, was the squealing of little piglets sloshing about in the mud.   I said that must be rather boring. They said that it was, and added that they loved the Mariachi music which was still pumping through the palm trees in spite of the wind and rain and sand, because it had a real bounce to it.  They then happened to take note of the fact that I not only had vomit stains on my shirt but my fly was also unzipped. After that the conversation quickly petered out.

 It was then and there that I realized there was a huge difference in the adventurer I wanted to become and the sloth that I actually was.  I suddenly felt like an extremely idiotic American whom everyone one would loath and deride and point at and make fun of, a hopeless joke of a man...

 ...The huge great thing is that my load has recently somewhat eased-up, in that I seldom venture out these days. There is an occasional trek to the neighborhood grocery now-and-again, of course, but I now find myself addicted to watching the Travel Channel and old James Bond movies on TV, which saves not only time and money, but the rawness of being derided and mocked by folks I hardly even know in languages I barely understand.   

I SHOULD SAY RIGHT-OFF-THE BAT...

THAT DOWN THROUGH THE YEARS I have grown less than enamored about having any real or imagined  relationship with any animal whatsoever.  I did not want to feed them, give them a bed, groom them, find kennels for them when I go off on a vacation, or arrange for some neighbor to shoot at them when they annoy me.  I did not, in short, ever want to own one ever again.  On the other hand, I now find myself in a rather awkward position, in that I do now have a somewhat recent and clandestine relationship with two dogs.  And as a consequence I think that I may be changing my mind. 

 The dogs live with my Son and his girlfriend.  They reside in Sacramento, California, which is an odd place for a dog, or indeed, anyone else, to live; since it happens to be in the State of California.  If you have ever visited or spent time in California, then let me say this: the odds are that you might be becoming an addle brained eccentric.  I can't bother to explain why I say that, in that I, too, now happen to be a resident of California; so the best thing for me to do is just leave well-enough-alone, other than mention that many of the Californians that I have seen thus far seem to enjoy a morning run, jog, or gentle stroll in order to live a healthier lifestyle, which a former New Yorker like myself never ever began to think about, and I found it more than a bit off-base that they would want to take their dogs on the jog with them, in that I seriously doubt whether the dogs give a hoot-in-hell about their own health or how well-toned their owners happen to be.

  The names of the two dogs are Loki and Moe.  Moe is the real classic of the two, obviously a mix between a schnauzer and dachshund, who turned out to be rather good-looking. Loki is vaguely sort of a hound sort of thing with some other breed like a pit-bull tossed-in as an after thought, a little like a poorly mixed salad which did not turn-out all that well. They seemed to be so deliriously pleased to see me when I first met them that the two of them jumped upward with all four legs simultaneously.  Once the jump was completely done, they would sniff and lick one another on the heinie, then attempt to do the same thing to my face.  My advice: Do not ever allow a dog to get close enough to your face to give it a lick after you know where their tongue has recently been.

 The way in which Moe would signify every morning that she was aware of my presence was was to allow me to see her scratch her ear with her paw.  This was also the way she let me to know that she was ready for a long and pleasant morning walk around the backyard, it was also her way to signify that she wanted to be allowed back into the house, and the method by which she would signify that she was ready to eat. It was, in short, her way of life.  A Morse Code of sorts in a simplified form.  I began to feel that I knew her well enough to admit to myself that she was either a brilliant dog or I was a somewhat birdbrained man.  Either way, it seemed to work out well for the both of us.

 Loki, on the other hand, seemed to be fond of taking a lick or two at my crotch whenever I chose to sit down in a chair.  She was extraordinarily good-natured and long-suffering about this whenever I would shoo her away, but every now and then would get monumentally fed up, and would execute an about-turn with her ears flapping, go to a corner of the room where she eyed me, gave me an extremely disappointed look and gently start gnawing her own left rear foot as if she were bored with me anyway.

 Further depths to their thinking were revealed when my Son's girlfriend Ginny told me not to even attempt to throw a ball for Loki or Moe to chase, that the two of them would just sit there and watch stony-faced as the ball went upward and then downward, and at last dribbled along the grass to a halt. They just hung out all day, every day. They would moon around at my feet and keep nudging at my elbow and rest their chins on my lap and gaze  mournfully up at me in the hope that I would see a reason to give them a pat-or-two so that they could continue to ignore me.

 In the evening Loki and Moe would be fed, watered, and trot off to bed for the night.  Which seemed to me to be a fine arrangement, because I got all the pleasure of their company, which was beginning to become immense, without having any responsibility for them.  And it continued to be a fine arrangement till the day when Ginny and my Son moved to another house and left me to care for Loki and Moe by myself until I, too, made the move.  

 It was a couple of weeks after that when Loki turned up bright and early in the morning ready and eager to ignore me on her own.  No Moe.  Moe was not with her.  I was startled. I had no way of knowing what had happened to Moe and no way of finding out, because she wasn't mine.

 "Has she been run over by a car?  Is she lying somewhere, bleeding on the street?" I asked Loki.  Loki looked restless and worried, too, but seemed unable to give me an answer.  I put on my shoes and hurried out with Loki trailing along after me.  Eventually, I realized that Loki wasn't looking for Moe at all, that she was only taking a sniff-or-two at other dog's turds that were strewn-about on the grass like she was Captain Ahab chasing a whale, so I returned to the house, and Loki sat at my feet and moped.  All I could do was sit and worry in silence.  That night, I slept badly.  

 And in the morning Moe was back.  She looked sly.  It looked to me as if she may have been out attempting to rob a bank.  I knew that she had been up to something. We went out for a walk.  I was embarrassed, frankly.  I actually wanted to know where she had been, what she had been up to while she was gone, and why she refused to tell me where she went?  In other words, I had missed having her around. 

  It was a few days later when I had to tell them that the three of us were about to move into the new house.  I tried to explain this to the dogs, to prepare them for it, but they seemed to be in denial.  They began to keep their distance, became tremendously interested in listening to anyone else's voice other than mine.  They began to ignore me, and I felt odd about that.  The only time the two of them seemed happy was when Ginny popped-in for a visit.  

 I knew right-then-and-there that sooner-or-later I would have get a dog of my own, and for some odd reason that really pleased me...  

ANYBODY WHO KNOWS ME...

WILL KNOW WHAT A BIG THRILL IT IS FOR ME to have a chat with my readers.  What is actually taking place here is that you are about to trail along with me as I battle my way to the conclusion of what you may or may not think is an inconsequential cock-and-bull story, so allow me to begin by stating that that some portions of what follows may be slightly out-of-focus, due to the alcoholic stupor I was in when many of these adventures were taking place. This also may be a complete fib, in fact. I ought to have said, "Were a guesstimate of what I thought might be taking place." First of all, you must realize that it is a very difficult and grueling and lonely business to write down everything you once did while you were boozed up unless you really, really, really want to do it... 

 ...So I will begin by saying that I once loved Scotch in every way.  I loved the way it looked in the bottle, that rich golden color; adored the names on the labels arranged on the shelf behind the bar - Johnnie Walker Black Label and Glennfiddich and Glenlivet Nadurra; and was stuck on the particularly smoky, peaty aromas of the single malts. In fact the only thing I didn't like about Scotch is that if I took the merest sip of the stuff it would befriend me and encourage me to drink more of it, and I would then begin to jaunt about in a very peculiar and somewhat offish manner, caroming into people and knocking over bar stools and howling at myself in the bar's restroom mirror; therefore, I knew I had to force myself to learn how to drink other intoxicants, because barking at oneself in a mirror would also cause me to say to my mirror image in a loud voice, "What in the hell are you barking at, you freakish oaf?"  It would then take me about two-hours to figure out that I was talking to myself, and that I must immediately go forth and find the world's most boring drink, one which I could sip with no ill effects whatsoever...

  ...I soon gave a shot at sipping Margaritas, but they also made me do some far-out and freakish things.  Whenever I had a few of them I would awaken in the morning with a jittery sense of apprehension as to where it was that I may or may not have left my pants and underwear; and the astonishing thing about that was when I happened to look down, I seemed to be still wearing them both.  If my pants and underwear were still on, not only had I been on an injudicious binge, I had apparently failed to chalk-up a score with an itinerant female who was not only down on her luck, but desperate for love from any guy who happened to be reeling toward her along the dimly-lit street in the middle of Hell's Kitchen at three o'clock in the morning.  

 So I immediately took-a-turn at downing Stolichnaya vodka, in light of the fact that most of my fellow New Yorkers did so, and they were very smart and sophisticated and New Yorky, but, most important of all, it made me look as though I had couth, too; although I occasionally conversed in a rather rambling fashion when under the influence and generally found myself eventually talking only to myself, wondering why everyone else seemed to be sneaking off elsewhere at the very moment I began my usual blathering discourse on the comparative philosophies of Sophocles and Plato.

 I then took-another-turn at a Bloody Mary or two, but only ever had them at brunch on a Sunday morning.  I have no explanation for this, because it never occurred to me to have a Bloody Mary in the normal course of any other day, but put me in a restaurant on the Sabbath and I made for the Stoli and tomato juice like a nymphomaniac on the hunt for a one-legged man.

 Much to my surprise, I then found myself having to beat the bushes for hangover cures, compounding my futility by making resolutions that I would never ever drink anything again and having them fail, relatively speaking, about one-hundred percent of the time.    

  Incidentally, am I alone in finding the expression "much to my surprise" to be incredibly useful?  It allows me to make swift, succinct, and authoritative connections between otherwise unconnected statements without the trouble of explaining who your source of authority actually is.  It's great.  It makes me look  adroit and agile, something every boozed-up lush I have ever known has always wanted to be.

  I had slowly begun to realize that the brain actually is affected by alcohol. But there are different gradations to the effect, and therein lies the rub. The brain organizes its memories like a kind of hologram, to retrieve an image, you have to re-create the exact conditions in which it was captured. In the case of a hologram its the lighting, in the case of the brain it is, or can be, the amount of alcohol sloshing around in it at any given time.  And that is what is known as a conundrum.  I have found that these conundrums are completely beyond the reach of an abnormal, intoxicated mind. 

 Which is why, after some ill-advised evening out, I would seemingly be the only person in the entire room who was completely unaware of some boringly idiotic remark I made to someone whose feelings I cared about deeply, or even just a little bit.  It may be weeks, months, or, in my case, exactly a year later that the occasion suddenly returned to my consciousness with a sickening brain-bonk and I began to realize why people I once knew and loved had been avoiding me or meeting my eyes with a glassy stare for so long, which often led me to say "Holy Christ" to myself in a loud voice and reaching for a stiff drink, which would, of course, lead me to the next point of inebriation, where I would cause fresh shocks to those around me and guiltily embarrass myself further by having some complete stranger come up to me, slapping me in the face over something I said, or giving me a swift kick to the groin over something I was about to say.

 So what is the answer to this terrible, self-perpetuating problem? 

 Well, obviously, rigorous self-discipline.  A monastic adherence to a regime of long walks, regular workouts, early nights, early mornings, and probably some kind of tomato juice or something. The thing we are most going to want on New Year's Day, and be desperately trying to remember how to make, is a good hangover cure, just in case you happen to fall-off-the-wagon again.  The major problem is, we can never remember them when we need them, or even know where to find them. And the reason we can never remember them when we need them is that we heard about them when we didn't actually need them, which isn't any help, for the reasons outlined above. 

 I have found that nauseating images involving egg yolks and Tabasco sauce swill through my brain, and I am not really in any fit state to organize my thoughts, which is why my hangover cure is never effective, and that I somehow need to organize my brain while there is still time; which would be prior to my doing something else stupid, like settling for noxious cheap wine, which would make me feel as if I were a rat on a sinking ship.  I still have yet to work out how this happens.

 So, Dear reader, I have enjoyed this little chat, but must apologize to you, in that I have no answer to any of the above...and will get back to you as soon as I do... 

AMONG THE INNUMERABLE RAMIFICATIONS...

OF THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE is bigotry, which instantaneously resurfaced at the very moment an African-American was elected as our President and brought forth the age-old prejudices and long-held Jim Crowism; both of which were once thought of as dead-and-forever-buried; we were again thrown back into those years when an Emmett Till could be murdered in Mississippi for the atrocious atrocity of whistling at a white girl. Our infinite capacity for absurdity and the enraged disease of hostile animosity ejected rapidly; the belief that we could love our country and justice, too, quietly dehydrated into the squalor of the sordid past, as the featherbrained folk with decaying minds covered their own miseries by blaming them on the Underclass.

  For years I had chosen to ignore the existence of a permanent Underclass, dismissing it as the fevered dream of neoconservatives and the apostate liberals; there were too many signs of genuine racial progress in this country, and I was certain that what Langston Hughes called "a dream deferred" could not be deferred forever; that immediately changed the instant Obama became our President, and the fierce negative power of prejudice reared-up, hardened and condensed; the bitterness of bygone years was conveniently re instituted.

   Instead of retreating back to the ferocious subculture and into the cliches of glib racialism, let me give a few facts about how the Underclass came to be a permanent Underclass, not with reports of whites using force to keep blacks from moving into their neighborhoods, a resurgent Klan in some places, of white cops too quick to arrest, abuse, or shoot down black suspects; but the fact that racism continues to be real in the United States; only a fool would deny it. 
   
 Almost 40 percent of all black American families are now living below the federal poverty line, in New York City it is estimated that 70 percent of black youths never finish high school, in at a time when even a high school diploma is barely sufficient to function in the job market.  The national infant-mortality rate is 60 percent higher among blacks than among whites.   The living face even greater hazards.  One third of the black population in the city of Chicago between the ages of 5 and 19 are victims of homicide, and nationally the leading cause of death for black men between the ages of 16 and 44 is murder.  Not smallpox.  Not tuberculosis. Not influenza.  Not one of the ancient plagues of earth.  Murder.

  What goes on here?  

 When I was young and growing up in the city of Denver, this simply didn't happen.  If a young man got a young woman pregnant, her father, brothers, or uncles would come knocking at the door. Today, in the urban wilderness of the Underclass, too many young black men apparently think nothing of getting a woman pregnant and then moving on, leaving the children's care, feeding, clothing, and housing in the indifferent hands of the paternalistic state. Some feel that young black males are compensating for feeling so inferior in the larger society; that men like this are predestined to become who it is that they have become - insisting that human beings are prisoners of history and not its makers - which has been refuted by the stirring history of black Americans themselves, from Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King Jr. and many millions in between. To insist that only black Americans are permanent prisoners of the past, unable to shape their own lives, is itself a form of racism. 

  Common sense alone tells me that if that had been true, then the trauma would have affected all blacks; obviously it hasn't. Fear of the Underclass is about class not race.  This has much president in American history; at various times in our big cities, the middle class often felt threatened by the crime and moral disorder of the Jews, the Irish, and the Italian poor.  There are three elements of the current catastrophe that were not present in previous generations: drugs, television, and welfare; to the point that when we walk down a street at night, we follow the pattern of peering over our shoulders, always alert to danger; if a group of young Black men is seen, we cross the street or reverse direction.

   Not too many years ago, I had the opportunity to teach a writing class at a two-year college in the City of New York.  My classes were filled with Pell Grant students who had come into Manhattan by subway from places like Harlem and the South Bronx, noted only for being the birthplace of the hip-hop culture and utter despair; because they were eager to learn; youngsters who had never heard of James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Jean Toomer, or Ralph Ellison, to mention only a few extraordinary black writers. They didn't know that Alice Walker wrote The Color Purple. They had never heard of Max Roach or Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker. They knew nothing about Aesop's fables or the Old Testament or the tales of the Greek gods. Many white kids were equally as ignorant, but most of them did not have to fight their way out of the Underclass.

   The first thing I came to understand was one terrible truth: for the black Underclass, life in the United States was infinitely worse than I had ever imagined.  For them, King, Malcolm, and the rest had died in vain.  Unlike newly arrived Koreans, Pakistanis, Cubans, Haitians - all of whom seemed to move to the top in many professions; for these kids, who had forefathers who were once nothing more than mere chattel, the black Underclass seemed incapable of progress.

  And because they lived in the ghetto, they wanted role models that weren't crack dealers, pimps, stickup men.  They desired the restoration of genuine pride and lost dignity.  They wished to be a Duke Ellington walking along on Lenox Avenue or an Art Tatum getting out of a new car in front of Minton's; to speak like Adam Clayton Powell once did, or be as hip as Miles Davis or as elegant as Sugar Ray Robinson or Muhammad Ali. They knew that the time to begin was now; that they did have a chance to escape those "dead-end" jobs and make something of their lives; to repair the holes of the human spirit with hope for the future.  

  In the end, they taught me more than I could ever teach them.

  About life.  

  About myself.

  About racism.

  About the world they wished to bolt out of.