on bottom feeders and bigots:


ON THIS DAY, THEY SMOKE CIGARETTES...

MAKE SMALL JOKES, AND MUNCH ON GUM inside of their mouth.  A flat-faced, pig-tailed Indian woman has a stand parked by the roadside.  She sips soda.  Some of the men stare across the arid scrub and sandy chaparral at the blurred white buildings of the U.S. Texas town of Las Jitas across the river.  They wait patiently and do not hide.  You turn, and alongside the road there is a chain link fence.  It is 10 feet high.  On the other side of the fence is the United States of America.  And if you pull over, and buy a soda from the Indian woman, and speak some Spanish, they will talk.  If not, they remain silent.   They will try again tonight, says the man behind the wheel of the car where I am in the passenger seat.  His name is Jeronimo Perez and he is with the Border Patrol.  There were too many helicopters last night, too much light...He looks out at the open stretch of gnarled land, past the light towers on the other side of the Rio Grande, at the distant white buildings of the American Border Patrol.  They will attempt to work in the fields; or start a job as a runner for the Mexican Drug Cartel.  The coyotes will tell them that they will be safe.  And many will never make it across because they will have been gunned-down by men like me...


     He suddenly talked no more as we saw two young men running across the dried scrub on the U.S. side, kicking up little clouds of white dust, while a Border Patrol car goes after them.  The young men dodge, circle, running the broken field and suddenly stand very still as the car draws close.  They are immediately added to the cold statistics of border apprehensions.  It is even more dangerous for women, Perez said.  They soon will become a part of the commercial sex industry, because they  have no other way to make a living.   Many will die of disease.  If we do not allow them into our country, we will one day be responsible for the deaths of innocents who only wish for a decent life..


     ...Those words were spoken to me in May of 1980 by a legitimate member of the United States Border Patrol...


     ...So now let us fast forward to the illegitimate thoughts of the present day.  Before anybody could know how this would work out, the attacks started.  The Republicans, who had once cheered for an illicit war which slaughtered 100,000 innocent people, suddenly developed a new enemy who could not fire back. It was led by a man always eager to light the fire of prejudice, one with the brain the size of a pea, a bottom-feeder who is either stupid or  purposely ill-informed.  He happens to be a 65 year-old member of the United States Congress from the 4th Congressional District in Iowa and his name is Steve King.  These were his words spoken about immigration:  For everyone who is a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they have got calves the size of cantaloupes hauling marijuana through the desert.  Then there was this dull-witted humdinger: We could also electrify this wire (on the border) with a kind of current that would not kill somebody, but would simply be a discouragement to be fooling around with.  We do that to livestock all the time. He is obviously not a single-digit bigot.  He unleashed ferocious barrages, attacking not only all forms of immigration, but was the nutcase who said this: Do not look for  Unicorns, Leprechauns, Gay Marriages in Iowa - because they don't exist.  He recently held a wing nut Iowa Freedom Summit for GOP hopefuls in their run for the presidency.  Which  causes one to ask: Who is scarier, Steve King or the horror writer Steven King? 


     The old saying says that 'the Proof is in the Pudding' and when it came to the attendees  at Steve's party for Right-Wing cretins, even folks like Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz and Scott Walker, were not crazy enough to want to appear on stage with Steve.  But fear is a habit like any other.  Even though they are fearful of being seen with Steve, we've heard them all speak of the 19,250-mile-long border between the United States and Mexico, heard their voices bellowing rhetoric enraged at the border's weakness and those who want to cross it; until you stand beside it, the border is an abstraction.  Most of them, of course, have never even seen the border.  Up close, you see immediately is at once a concrete place with holes in fences, and not a game or a joke or a mere line etched by a draftsman on a map in order for these politicians to scream and rant and rave about...


     ...Those men who stood on that road so many years ago next to a pig-tailed Indian woman were members of a peaceful invasion.  Nobody is certain of how many have come across each year since that day, and sent back to Mexico by the border warden.  Thousand more made it.  Some are described by the outnumbered and overwhelmed immigration police as OTMs (Other than Mexican, which is to say, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, Costa Ricans fleeing the war zones, and South Americans and Asians fleeing poverty).  It is a shame that only a few people like Jeronimo Perez are around to defend them.  When you see a man or a woman crossing, he said, you know they are going to stay.  It means that their parents and friends and perhaps even children on the other side will know that they may never be coming back.  And we do not know what made them leave.  Why do we allow that to happen?


     Much of what now is happening on the political scene is racist nonsense, based on the assumption that Mexicans are inherently 'inferior'  to people who look like Brad Pitt.  But it ignores the wider context.  The Mexican migration to the United States is another part of a vast demographic tide that has swept most of the world in this century: from countryside to city, from field to factory, from north to south - the majority of folks living in America will no longer be white; and then perhaps the addled talk of a Palin and Cruz and King will no longer be in vogue because we Americans have stopped listening to their shouts of anger and learned how to listen with hearts of love.

after the party was over:


IT WAS AT THE TAIL END OF THE DINNER HOUR...

ON A TUESDAY EVENING IN SEPTEMBER, AND I'M in a taxi with two female friends of mine, Dafna Priel and Leslie Gelb, moving downtown on Seventh Avenue.  The birthday party had come to an end.  In the garment district, traffic inched along, blocked by double-parked cars, buses heaving their great bulk  across lanes.  Horns blare; men curse.  A tractor trailer  stands across 34th Street like a wall.  The large truck moves, and the blocked downtown begins to move.  Usually, it's like water rushing from a burst dam.  Today, the rush doesn't happen.  The lights are blinking all the way to 23rd Street, but there is no clear passage for traffic.  On every street, pedestrians are crossing the avenue, ignoring red lights, jaywalking in the center of the block.  A bearded older man comes close, allows the taxi to pass within inches, angrily performs his version of the New York finger, as if the taxi were challenging his right to jaywalk.    A sock less man with a Jesus beard stands in the middle of the avenue looking at the sky.  Our taxi is in the front knot of traffic; the driver is in his fifties, lean and dark, anxious.  He is beeping his horn, riding his brake pedal.


  This is crazy, I say.  The cab driver shakes his head.  We slow down at 31st Street.  A man reading a newspaper jumps back and curses.  The taxi driver crosses 29th, still riding the brake, clearing the path with his horn.  Most of the jaywalkers are young, but there's a second group beyond the corner in our lane.  Another tractor-trailer is illegally parked at a bus stop, and these people are waiting for the bus.  The driver slows, still making bursts with his horn.  And then directly in front of us, oblivious to everything, looking straight ahead as she walks west  against the red light, is an older  woman.  Until this moment, she has been screened by those who have hurried to the corner, and now she is suddenly,  vulnerably, alone.  The driver blares his horn, hits his brakes, attempts to move to the left, finds that lane blocked by another car, and then there is a hard thump, metal smashing into the bone, and the blurred image of the woman as we go by, the woman rolling, brakes screeching.  Dafna screams.  And we are stopped.


  The older woman is on her back.  Blood pumps from her mouth.  She is shoeless.  Her body doesn't move.  And then the crowd, frozen in horror, comes alive.   The driver is sobbing aloud, his head on the wheel, holding the wheel with both of his hands, gripping it.  Oh my God!, he says.  He gazes to his left, away from the fallen woman, and then slowly turns, sees the smear of blood.  No! he screams, No!  No!  No!  Dafna and Leslie are sobbing now.  I try to comfort them, and I hear people shouting, Don't move her! and Call the police, you prick!  And then the crowd turns ugly.  A young man in a zipper jacket comes to the door on the driver's side,  You was doin' seventy miles an hour, Man!  What th' fuck is wrong with you?  A woman in a yellow coat shouts:  Fuckin' cab drivers!  You back to your own goddamned country!  You fuckin' motherfucker!


   I am uncertain about what I ought to do, so I get out of the cab.  There are no police on the scene yet and all of this has happened in a couple of minutes.  I attempt to calm down  the angrier people, explaining that I was in the cab, the taxi driver was not speeding, that the old woman had not responded, that she was clearly walking across the red light.  One kid shouted, He should'a gone slower!  Another man looks at the kid, I seen him!  He was goin' slow!  That was the way most New Yorkers respond.  An old woman is knocked to the ground by a cab, her life spilling out onto the dirty tar, and people want to hurt someone back.  The cab driver explains with some heat about his speed, about his horn, about the red light, but the passions of a mob are stirring in the cold damp air.  Mothafucka, another man shouts, you drive like a crazy man... 


  I tell the driver to get back in the taxi and keep quiet.  Then behind him, slowly pushing through the clotted traffic, comes a police car.  The crowd transforms into sudden silence.  More sirens in the distance.  The sense of time slowed becomes that of time swift.  Cops and medics work on the stricken woman; her body is covered with rubber yellow sheets for warmth; they press down on her chest.  Younger cops move the crowd  off of the street and onto the sidewalk, others attempt to get traffic moving.  An older cop with a sad grave face picks up the woman's brown high-heel shoes.  The cops take a statement.  An ambulance arrives from St. Vincent's and the bloody-faced woman is placed on a stretcher and into the back; it moves off with sirens screaming, slowing behind jammed traffic on 23rd Street.  From the lofts of the buildings above the avenue, people gaze down at the scene, looking at the two-foot stand of blood, bright red against the dirty tar.  The woman's grey-plaid hat has rolled against the curb.  I see a policeman's had reach down, circle it with chalk, pick it up.  Then he drops it back into place.


  The cop shrugs sadly.  The driver leans on his cab, his body wracked with dry heaves.  The police are also careful; they first want to notify the next of kin.  The taxi driver, still waiting for formal questions, hears this: Is - is she dead?  The cop says, Yes.  The driver moans and falls to his knees and the cop eases him back onto his feet.  All the questions had been asked, the forms filled in, names given, witnesses questioned.  About an hour had passed.  Traffic now moves down the avenue.  There is tape where the taxi's wheels had come to a halt, darkening blood and chalk marks and a hat where older woman had come to an end of her life.  A young man moves between two parked cars, waits for a break in traffic, hurries across the street...


  ...As a gust of wind lifts the dead woman's hat and rolls it back against the curb...


  ...It was not the way that I had expected my birthday celebration to come to an end...

a small sketch of two people I adore:


HIS NAME IS RICHARD SCOTT...

HER NAME IS TAYLOR MARIE.  He is 48 and she is 23. Taylor is my Granddaughter and Scott is my Son.  What follows is not a tale of two saints, it is a sketch of two human beings who have produced an uninterrupted series of amazement's in my life and grabbed my heart the first moment I ever laid eyes on them.  I have witnessed their births, cuddled them as tots, given advice as they have grown older,  and adored who they eventually became.  They have given me laughter when I was depressed, courage when I least expected it, forgiveness when I made mistakes, and love when I least deserved it. 



   In the cross-cutting of memory, I have been with them to hear chimes ring at midnight from a  Denver cathedral bell and see the sun come up over  a California mountain called Diablo.  There are visions of buying lemon ices from carts for Scott and ice cream cones for Taylor, warm moments of holding them both in my arms, having complete strangers  telling me how fortunate I was to have them in my life, the energy I felt when they were standing at my side, and the satisfaction of seeing them laugh and smile when they looked my way.  


     Etched in remembrance are twin bright faces I would watch when I took them to museums, saw how fascinated they were when they saw canvases that had been magically turned into paintings, of perfect summer evenings strolling through a park and playing baseball until after the sun had set, the pulsing heart and wondrous smile  when they had on their faces when they saw something they had never seen before, and the wondrous memories I have of the both of them as I watched them begin to grow into adulthood.


   There are so many other things.  Like the laughter of my Son when his Mother and I took him to a free concert in Denver's City Park and watched him as he clapped with glee when a song had come to its end.  Or the look on Taylor's face when I was at a cafe table with her and as she listened to old men with  foreign accents argue over something at the next table then asking me why she couldn't understand a single word they said.  Or the day she asked me if God made spiders too. 


     Then, of course, there was the rather infamous afternoon when the two of us were baking cookies on her Pretend Play Cooking Set when she was 4 years-of-age and living in Fremont, California.  A stern look came over her face, as she informed me that my imaginary chocolate-chip cookies were not up-to-snuff, and she thought it best if I would never attempt to cook with her ever again.   She immediately rose to her feet, grabbed her Play Pretend Cooking Set, stomped out of her bedroom, and slammed the door shut behind her.    


   But the event that I remember the most was being with with Taylor when I moved from the City of New York to Brentwood, California where she lived. We  were walking through a stand of trees along a small river shortly after I had arrived.  She was then 7 years-old, informed me that she didn't like me because I was living in her house and her mother and father had let me have her old room, and I can still recall the stunned look in her eye when I told her that I wasn't certain that I liked her either, so we would both have to work on getting to know one another.  The next day, she told me that she loved me.  I informed her that I felt the same way about her.  We then began to laugh and she held my hand.


   Nobody has ever loved harder than my Son.  Prior to my arrival in Brentwood in 1999, I had invited him to visit me in the City of New York.  We spent hours walking the snow-drowned avenues in the bitter cold of a ferocious winter, dining at the finest restaurants along West 46th Street, looking at all the glitter and neon in the lurid parish of Broadway at night, where dreams existed side by side with folks who were standing in some grimy doorway, and talking in my apartment on West 44th through the early evening until almost dawn.  One Sunday afternoon we went to a matinee at the Saint James Theater to see The Who's Tommy.    When returned to my apartment in early evening, he stood looking at me with his hands buried deep in the pocket of his coat, then said: Dad, other than my daughter Taylor, I love you more than anyone else in the world. It was one of the finest moments of my entire life.


    He loves other things too: almost all forms of music; the Oakland Athletics; good food and spending hours cooking in the kitchen, bringing to perfection the details of the simplest meal; good cake and cookies; his two trucks, our two dogs; and, of course, that god damned beer which he swears he will one day give up.  Down through the years, the journey with him has been filled with love and laughter and tears and argument.  But love always seemed to prevail.   

   Scott had been in the Army, stationed on a mountaintop in Germany and toured other portions of Europe, seen the idealism of others, learned how to live in the corrosive realities of adulthood and knew how to provide for others by the giving of himself to those who needed him.  He had, after all, taken me in after I had lost almost all of my semi-fortune in New York City.  Doing all of this while always trying to affect the I'm-only-a-regular-guy pose, which he most assuredly isn't.   He is an intelligent reader, a seeker of knowledge and excellent mechanical ability, so much so that he designed a robot in order to speed-up and make more efficient the dispensing of parts for Toyota trucks.  Nobody I know works harder or laughs more.


  Meanwhile, my granddaughter as she grew older insisted upon living her own life to serve as a witness the life she wanted to live.   By then, she had become a young woman with the beauty of model, delicate in both stature and face,   stubborn as a mule, and what saved from preposterous narcissism was that she is devoid of hypocrisy with a style which was exuberant and gentle and kind and loving. I have often winced when I have seen her sad and was unable to make her happy, and sometimes completely missed the point when she told me why.  If I'd only had a better answer, or were more intelligent than I actually am, perhaps the answer would have been there.  Yet, she always forgave me. Each day, she has taught me something new.  She gave me everything.  Song and dance and declarative sentences were a part of her.  She has always been attempting to define the tone and rhythm of her life.  Sometimes she has failed.  At other times she has been victorious.  But she has always survived because of her own human decency and in her ability to find her own language, or style, to plunge ahead and begin anew.    




   ...In spite spite of my venial sins and  minor misdemeanors, the both of them have always stood at my side and I am proud to be in such grand and gracious company...

she was a young and attractive woman on the run and he was a lawyer who wanted to save her:

HER NAME WAS APHRODITE AND HIS NAME WAS EMMETT...
AND  BOTH OF THEM WERE MY GOOD FRIENDS.  SHE WAS  originally from Athens, Greece, arrived in America with her mother at the age of 10 and came to Houston at the age of 20.  One rainy evening in the winter of 1981, I was home alone when the telephone rang.  I picked up the receiver, and heard Aphrodite's voice on the other end of the line.  What are you doing? she asked.  Reading a book, I answered.  Is Barbara there? she said.  No, I answered.  Finish your book tomorrow.  I'm at the club.  I need to talk to someone. At that time,   I didn't know Aphrodite as  well as I would in the future, but even then I liked her very much.  I admired her singing talent, and thought that she was one of the most seductive women I had ever known.  I had first met her the year before and we'd met through my girlfriend Barbara, who made it clear that Aphrodite was a little odd and seemed always be  secretive, like she was hiding from someone  or something; which intrigued me and may have made her seem to me to be more attractive than she actually was.  

   I took a drive to The Stone's Throw Bar on Westheimer Road, which was a seedy time warp of a saloon usually filled with Rice University students who were there to lust after off-duty strippers.  When I walked to the back room, I fully expected Aphrodite to be wearing one of those gowns that she always wore when she sang: skin-tight, ones that always seemed to plunge lower and lower, revealing her long legs and rather ample bosom, with long-black hair, amazingly beautiful blue eyes, and wonderfully white teeth.  She turned nervously when she saw me, her eyes moving past me to a waiter, who she immediately waved away.  He left the room.  Aphrodite was not as sleek as she usually was.  She wore a simple dress without high-heels and lipstick and her blue eyes were  cloudy with tears.  


   She stood and put her arms around me and then said:  I'm sorry, but I really need to talk.  She then sat back down and lit a Marlboro and took a sip of her vodka, as I slowly sat across the table from her.  Do you want something to drink? she asked.  No, I'm fine, I answered.    Maybe you need to know why I called you, she said.  Sounds like a good idea to me, I answered with a smile.  Then she said: I just found out that I'm about to be extradited and deported back to Greece to stand trial for murder.


    I  sat silently, attempting to process in my mind what she had just told me.  She then took a moment to check out the room to make certain that no one else was around.   Her usual laughing tones  had now become something personal when she said: This is something I have never talked to anybody about.  My Mother shot my father when I was 9 years old because she knew that he was a psychopath, and was afraid that he would one day do something to me like he had done to her.  One evening, after she had been beaten by him in our kitchen, she went into our bedroom, got his pistol from the dresser drawer, came back into the kitchen, and shot him.  When the authorities came, I told them I did it. 


   Why did you confess to something you didn't do?  I asked.  She replied: I needed to protect my Mother.  The following morning, she and I packed a few belongings fled to America before the authorities returned to take me in for questioning.  She began to have explosions of guilt and anger.  She was angry with my father for what he had done to her, and felt guilty that I had confessed to a crime that she had committed. She eventually took her own life.  And after that, I moved to Houston.  I want you and Barbara to help me evade extradition.  Could the two of you do that for me?


   I wasn't quite certain how to reply.  


   Her mere presence was enough to make me afraid.  For her.  For me.  For Barbara.  If you don't want to do it, just say so, Aphrodite said.  I replied, I honestly don't know how I am or how I feel.  I do know one thing, however: We both need to talk this over with Barbara.  Do you have some place to stay?  She said, No.  I can't go back to my apartment and I'm afraid to stay here.  I then told her that she could stay with us.  And so for more than an hour, on this somewhat rainy Houston night, the three of us sat in our apartment living room while Aphrodite explained everything to Barbara.  We then drove around the empty streets.  Barbara and I talked about what options we had and Aphrodite sat silent, looking out the window at the empty night.


   The following morning, we went to the law office of our friend Emmett Flemming, a tall-gaunt man with a handle-bar moustache and ever-present smile, who had once dated Aphrodite.  The entire situation was then explained.  Emmett sat listening and taking notes and nodding his head from time-to-time.  He then settled back in his chair.  He said: That wasn't the brightest thing to do, Aphrodite.  It takes an idiot to confess to a crime they didn't commit.  He then paused, took another drag on the cigar, exhaled, and added:  You stay with Barb and Richard, while I try to determine what the legal ramifications are. He then gave a small smile.  The last thing I want is to see you become an old busted-down hooker on the streets of Rome after you've gone to jail.  I'll stay in touch.


   And with that, he sent us home. 


   But the fact was that I knew that Emmett knew some real shady people, including some on the Houston Police Force.  He was friendly with hoodlums.  He also had friendships with the Mayor and other politicians.  And I was certain that he was still attracted to Aphrodite, and when the crunch  came, he would do anything he could do for her.  Legally or illegally.  It was about 8 o'clock that evening, when I got a call from Emmett and he said, How'd you like to take a little evening trip with me tonight?  I said: Where?  He laughed, then said, Into the dark underground river of Houston's underbelly.  I'll have you home no later than dawn.


  I know some really awful guys, he had once told me.  Sometimes they come in handy.  And an hour later he introduced me to a man named Mooney Malone inside of the Big Star Bar on 19th Street.  Mooney apparently was a gangster of some repute, who once had an affair with a stripper by the name of Candy Barr.  Candy had also happened to have had an affair with the notorious Los Vegas gangster Mickey Cohen and also knew Jack Ruby who had shot President Kennedy.  Candy once had shot her estranged and violent husband too, when he kicked in her apartment door in Dallas, she was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, waltzed into the court in a low-cut dress and short skirt, and the charges were immediately dropped.  


  She was now living a quiet life in Victoria, Texas with the daughter of the husband she once attempted to terminate.  Apparenly, Candy was quite a gal.  After Emmett had called Mooney Malone earlier in the evening before he and I met, Mooney had dialed-up Candy and, for some odd reason known only to Candy and Mooney and perhaps Emmett but obviously not to me, she immediately volunteered to help Aphrodite out by coming to Houston to see what she could do.  Let me say this about Candy, Mooney said,  Not only does Candy know how to work a court room, the gal's a real friend and she's never let no one down.  He then looked at me.  You ought to see th' porn movie she made.   An' even though that was awhile back, th' lady's still a real looker.


   I found that to be true when I found Candy perched seductively on my living room couch at about 10  o'clock on the following morning. 


   By then, I had traveled throughout the night with Emmett after we left Mooney to travel to a home in River Oaks, one of the most opulent neighborhoods in Houston, to see a one-eyed man who happened to be a judge that Emmett knew.  He was an expert in International-law and, as Emmett said, Is prone to taking bribes and an expert at making deals.  They had gone-off into his den to talk.  I waited for them in the kitchen and was served a slice of apple pie by a maid, who asked if I'd like a glass of milk too.  We then returned to my apartment.  And there Candy was, smiling at up the both of us, while we couldn't  take our eyes-off of her rather ample bosom.  This was something that neither Barbara or Aphrodite seemed to appreciate, so we both turned and looked at them. Emmett then asked Barbara for an introduction.  Babara introduced us both to Candy.  Candy stood-up and gave us both a kiss on the cheek.  Emmett asked Candy if she had talked to Mooney.  Candy said yes she had.  Then Emmett said to Candy, Are you ready to go see the judge?  And Candy replied with a sweet smile on her face, Of course, I am.  They went out the door, got into Emmett's tan Volvo, and drove-off down the street. 


   The room then fell silent. 


  Both Barbara and Aphrodite seemed to be glaring at me.  Barbara then said in what I thought to be a rather sinister tone, What exactly is going on here?  And I replied, I honestly don't know.  Then she asked: Where were you last night?  I replied:We met with a gangster in a saloon by the name of Mooney and then drove over to a Judge's house in River Oaks.  She seemed to be glaring at me when she said: What was the judge's name?  I replied: I don't know.  I didn't ask.  He and Emmett went into his den to talk.  She was now less than 6 inches from my face.  And? she asked.   I answered: I sat in the fucking kitchen and ate a slice of apple pie.  By then, it had become a rather rapid back-and forth between the two of us. And then what did you do? she said.  I drank a glass of milk after I'd eaten the pie.  Emmett and the judge came back into the kitchen, Emmett and I walked outside and then we drove back here.  It was obvious to me that her trust of me was less than it once had been when she asked, What time did the two of you leave the judge's house?  And I said: How the hell should I know, I'm not wearing a watch!  And she said: Why not?  It was then that I knew that it was best for me to go out for a walk.


   After I finished my stroll, I then got the silent treatment from both Barbara and Aphrodite throughout the remainder of the afternoon up until the time that Emmett and Candy returned, and was more than thankful that Barbara and Aphrodite happened to be out in the backyard when they entered the door and Candy said to Emmett: He really wasn't a bad fuck for an older guy with one-eye.  By 5 o'clock that afternoon, Candy was inside the coach of a Lone Star bus back on her merry-way to Victoria, Texas with much more loot in her purse than she had when she had come to town earlier in the day at 7 o'clock that morning. 


   Somewhere deep within Emmett Flemming, I knew he felt more than a small amount of satisfaction when he returned to my apartment after having made sure that Candy would have a safe trip back home, then said: Aphrodite won't be extradited, after all.  Aphrodite immediately jumped up off of the sofa, gave him a hug then kissed Emmett fully on his lips and asked him: How  can I ever repay you?  Emmet lit a cigar, replied with a slight smile on his face and said: I'll think of something.  And all four of us went out to dinner at Maxim's, possibly the finest restaurant in Houston's history, where Emmett pulled a ring out of his shirt pocket, proposed to Aphrodite, and Aphrodite immediately said, Yes...


   ...Which I assume may mean the old saying: All's well that ends well is true, no matter which road you take in order to get there, whether it be straight or somewhat crooked. ...

what follows is what I would like to call: Shedding  new light on a topic revisited through the art of imagination and a dose or two of reality:


MY IMAGINARY GLIMPSES INTO THE MINDS OF SLIMY DICTATORS, EVIL POLITICIANS.....
AND STUPID SCOUNDRELS WHO I WOULD LIKE TO INTRODUCE TO YOU IN WHAT YOU are about to read is because folks like this have always piqued my interest.  I am aware that when I begin by saying that the world needs more evil guys, you may think this is a bit odd. So allow me to clarify by telling you why.  It's really rather simple.  What I would like us to do is to take a tap dance into their soiled minds in order that we do not become who they became.  The more, the better.  We really won't be dealing with much brain power here.  I'm talking about a rather immature study of those intense, unalloyed, concentrated, power-hungry men like Mitch McConnell and Dick Cheney, as well as other men and one woman, who seem to get their edge back when it comes to obtaining more power for themselves.  What I want us to do first is to shut our collective eyes for a moment,  use our imaginations, in order for you to see what I mean:  You will be taking a little walk with me in their shoes by pretending that we have become someone just like they are.  In this make-believe scenario, we will have collectively become a Korean guy with freckles and a big hook nose in order to confuse anyone who may ask who it is that we actually are;  one who allows himself to be almost beaten to a pulp in prison by other inmates for exposing himself while he stands in the mess hall line.  We  have now become men who are willing to risk it all, to go full-steam-ahead, just to prove that we actually are the biggest Dick in the Joint.    

   Then we rapidly move forward to other idiotic assholes who would do something like that, but may be more fun to be around.  Sometimes, when I'm laying around on my sofa and pondering recent history  and looking back at evil-doers of not so long ago, I begin to wonder if Hitler were still alive would he be more objectionable than Dick Cheney and Mitch McConnell are?  And then asking myself if they had been living in the same time and place that Hitler was, what the difference between the three of them might have been?  My  bet would be: Not much; and I can't help but smile at the thought which comes next, when I begin to imagine what Dick and Mitch might have done if they had been mistakenly arrested by the Gestapo, falsely been accused of being Jewish,  sent to a camp called Dachau, spotted the ovens that they are about to be pushed into, then began  screaming to high-heaven We're not Jews! You stupid Kraut son of a bitch!  We're Republicans!  And finally say Holy Shit!  when they begin to realize what is about to happen to them.  And my bet on that one would be this:  That they  would no longer be the big fans of Adolph that they once may have been...
  


   ...Now here is where a fun read really begins: I can almost conjure up a vision of what a letter to donors from these three psychopaths back when they were still bosom-buddies may have been.  I think it may have read like this: Dear Friend:  Let us begin by saying that this letter is intended to be read by Caucasians only, and your name has been provided to us by various White Supremacists Groups around the country and terrorists around the world, who we keep in touch-with on an almost daily basis.   Through them, we have discovered that you too are a hard-driving  person with a truly big ego and if you will pardon our saying so, we only know this from personal experience of course, but most likely a man with rather small penis, as well.  One who continues to require even larger amounts of money to satisfy your ego and are far too busy to attend to this sort of direct appeal for yourself.  Therefore we must ask if you might take a moment two to think about the three of us.  We are also rich and powerful and need your financial support to have even greater influence over national discourse and world events, and of course, over your own life, as well.  In the initial stage, your money would be needed for basics: stationary, office supplies, phones and rent.   If everything runs as smoothly as we hope it will, after that, we all will have enough money in order to provide all of us even more of our favorites: Like expensive clothing, imported cars, fine jewelry, gourmet foods and exotic women as well as delicious men that guys like us need and deserve.  Not to mention how delightful it will be to have nuclear devices and interment camps within easy reach, just in case others do not see it our way.  You will take satisfaction knowing you have done your part.  Please make your check payable to  The Joseph Megele Memorial Fund: In Care of  Mitch and Dick and a Fellow We Call A, but if the address below is too long to scratch out all of our names attached to it,  just write down the name of the memorial fund and address it: For Dick's Eyes-Only; and don't worry, all three of us have been called that at one-time-or-another.  Your check will be your receipt and will be coming to you from a bank somewhere offshore.   


   John McCain is another annoying guy who is almost as fun to castigate and deride as Dick and Mitch were, but was apparently not available when the letter above was written.  John is the former war prisoner hero turned into a grunting grouch, one who has had himself quite a few ups-and-downs in his political career.  I will attempt to avoid terms like mentally disturbed and emotionally impaired when describing him.  My preference would be: The Bag Man for War, in that he never yet seems to have found one that he absolutely doesn't adore.  He has devolved into becoming a bag man, even more evasive and crazed after having lost a presidential election to a black man, but retains enough sanity to spin his words in politically correct language.  Although he still appears to be somewhat rational: His desire is, of course, to have the delivery of what he has in mind upon innocent men and women and children, done  by remote-control devices so he won't get his own hands dirty.  In my opinion the closest we are ever going to get to a good descriptive name for a lovable guy like this is: Grimy Old Goat.


   Let's face it, that's what a lot of these people on the political Right are, you know.  When I think of a Ted Cruz, for example, the words that immediately come to mind are: loony, insane, egotistical, and nuts!  Perhaps you will think I'm a bit loony  too when I express that for the most part, I believe that he actually may be the illegitimate son of an unshaven and somewhat other infamous fellow whose cheese also fell off his cracker a long time ago due to the the daily use of alcohol and possibly compulsive masturbation, who thought that symbols of plenty meant putting what he called Commie's  in jail, and that would be:  Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Communist hunter from Wisconsin. When I think of either one of them, I immediately want to find a way to quickly sanitize my brain.


  Here's the oddest of the odd in the lunatic bunch:  Louie Gohmert, the run-of-the-mill alarmist Congressman from Texas with the looks of a Court Jester and the mind of a garbanzo bean, who apparently lives out where the buses don't run, and is quoted as once having said: I will not allow the Attorney General to cast aspersions on my asparagus!  and defends almost all of his erratic positions with other non-sequitur's like: Gun control will lead to bestiality! and Jesus hates taxes! And then is ignorant enough to spew these words, ones which perhaps only a rural Texan might understand: Caribou would enjoy the warmth of an oil pipeline, whatever in the Hell that is supposed to mean!  His history may still be open: But it is obvious to most of us that he doesn't yet have both feet in the end zone.


   We will now pause for a moment to step-down a bit, almost to the bottom-of-the-barrel of the powerful and corrupt to a lady who obviously has less than a full bag of marbles for a brain, and whose squeegee doesn't even begin to go to the bottom of the proverbial bucket.  She happens to be from the State of Alaska, and her name Sarah Palin, who is commonly referred to as The Tea Party Tinker Bell.  Sarah is a gal who spends her time sitting around thinking about brainless stuff to say just before she steps to the podium with a slick smile on her face, as if each smile were a significant achievement, which for her, it probably is.  In my opinion, poor Sarah has never had enough steam to squeeze her brain around into where she can spew-forth a logical sentence.  It's as if she is still sitting back in grade school, smiling blankly up at the male teacher who she may or may not want to boff, as she's rolling a half-dried piece of snot between her her thumb and forefinger hoping to think of something to say just before she strolls up to the podium, clears her throat, then barfs partially digested facts like when she once said that she could almost see Russia from her house, which she expects us to believe, like we were kids waiting for another lemon drop.  When the only thing that we are really hearing are: Verbal farts.


   And before we wind-up our tour into the land of the untrustworthy and dishonest, I just want to remind you that we are the ones who elected them.  And if you're going to have an irreverent description of these men and lone woman, it would not be they  belong in insane asylums, mental institutions, or psychiatric facilities.  That is not the descriptive language for folks like this.  What is more appropriate is and a personal favorite of mine would be: The Disenchanted Kingdom for the Evil and Somewhat Slow Minded or The Twinkymobile for the Truly Inane...

another short political rant:


 IT SEEMS THAT THE POLITICAL THEATER AND DOUBLE-TALK...

OF THE NEWLY ELECTED REPUBLICANS HAS ALREADY BEGUN.  I believe that it was Groucho Marx who once said: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies. With this in mind, let us have a peek at our newly elected Congress:  Prior to even being sworn-into office, the league of political newbies have joined hands with the rather ancient oldies in order to institute a plan to deregulate Wall Street, help aide big business in downgrading hours for the employees of big the box stores like Walmart and Lowe's who will no longer be eligible to participate in the Affordable Care Act; and then have the cheekiness to compound all of that by attempting to put an ax into the knees of Social Security without so much as a blink-of-a-political-eye.  


   If we have come to understand one terrible truth it is this: for all underclass Americans, life in the United States will become infinitely worse than it already is, as we continue along the present path into becoming a Third World country within the borders of a First Class nation. 


   We are the ones who have allowed this to happen, only because we didn't seem to care much.  We sat back and watched our politicians with their faces flushed, mouths contorted, as they split the damp air with slogans so abhorrent that they ought to have automatically deleted from memory as the double-dealers they actually were.   What chance do we have with people like this in office?  How can we deal with those who desperately want only to kill foreigners with icy dispatch, and forget about the nation they happen to reside in?  Why are we not finding solutions to the problems of immigration and women being sexually- assaulted in the workplace and the poor and disabled and the guys with hyphens in their names who are living below poverty level?  If this goes on, escalating by the hour, our country is doomed.


   We have already succumbed to our own jagged forms of tribalism as we have become a nation filled with black-versus-white, a country who no longer welcome or absorb new arrivals, reduced all discourse to the most primitive level in order to use naked power to get our way; and above all else, sold our souls for comfort and ease, because we now have become citizens too lazy to think for ourselves, allowing our politicians to come at us like the slow seepage of water, who only give us unrepaired fractures to our present society and instability for our future needs.  The politicians, who cheer for intervention in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and the rest of the Persian Gulf, suddenly develop the white wings of doves when it comes to the repair of their own country.  


    Or as another famous man once said:


   Experience hath shown , that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, perverted it into tyranny.  Thomas Jefferson

a quickly written note asking how mad has the world become?

TWELVE PEOPLE WERE KILLED IN PARIS TODAY...

BECAUSE THEY DREW CARTOONS OF MUHAMMAD.  We have recently read about the changes in the world under a new organization called ISIS, who tape their beheading of journalists, of the lifting of the heavy hand of terrorism by blowing themselves and others up in public venues like train stations and weddings.  In a way, this crack in decency and human discourse once seemed to isolate certain parts of the world, and has now made all civilized nations unsafe. In the City of New York a wild man with an ax attacks 2 cops on the street, and all I can do is keep thinking about those angry and somewhat insane individuals who would even think of doing something like that.  And yet,  they now  seem to have the whole world listening, trembling with fear of what may or may not lay ahead.  


   This revolution seems to be a triumph of terror over the minds of average man or woman with any human intelligence.  In essence, on the surface it seems to be a matter of religious belief.  In  Indonesia and Iraq and Iran the caricature of Muhammad leads to death and destruction because a hit-list has now been placed upon  political cartoonists who happen to publish a satirical magazine and journalists or average cops who just happen to be walking down a street.  These people are not terrorists.  They are murderers.

   The political Right, of course, has already begun to use this recent Paris incident to pander for ethnic war; the fading American Left speaks wistfully about what ought to be done without coming to a conclusion.  But neither seem really to care very much.  There are other matters to divert us: The new Congress, the Affordable Care Act, abortion, drugs, various gurus of Wall Street giving Stock Market predictions, the religion of always being politically correct; while saying that it will be an all-hands-on-deck affair to correct the problem.  These thugs call themselves freedom fighters  but are in reality nothing more than political blow hearts, who talk about what kind of weapons are being used, our President indicates to the victims how sorry we are as a Nation that this has happened to them, and every American stands behind them;  while on slow newspapers days the entire event vanishes from view until another one happens to burp back up, and the entire rap begins all over again along with the drumbeat of the same old familiar tune.

   Like all countries ruled by totalitarians, these are people ruled by an oligarchy of the stupid. 

   What does that tell us about ourselves?  Most major networks refuse to show an actual beheading of any journalist for fear of reprisal from the average American, who seem to be unable to see a sight like that without an upchuck or two.  The lunacy of killing-sprees by people who want to kill is never seen and thus does not seem real, mostly due to the fact that we Americans seem to tender to be allowed to witness such events.  Instead, we listen to newscasters attempting to tell us what has happened, always there to explain to us what is going on in order that we still remain feeling somewhat safe-and-secure.  The tragedy is that this has now become our reality, graphically and horribly and violently without any of us having to actually witness it.


   Thus, the question now becomes:


   Should we live in fear? 


   The answer is, of course: No!  


   But all I have seen thus far is people gathering in mourning in places like Paris and London and New York and Washington, D.C.  Where are the voices asking for action?  When will there be young folks gathering together in an organization along the lines of a Peace Keeping Force under the protection of Armed Forces, going into Afghanistan and Iran and Iraq to educate and inform average Muslims about the American Way of Life?  Instead, we have performance acts by our president and politicians and religious leaders blowing hot-air without any hint whatsoever of what action might be taken to stem-the-tide of absolute evil.  We have chosen to stay behind the scenes only because it is much safer.  And far more easier.   We have yet to send the message out: We are not going to do to them what they have been attempting to do to us. 


   We ought to have begun our lonely fight a decade ago, believed enough in our cause to place our minds and energies before the might of tyrants and terrorists.  They may have guns.  They may have machetes.  They may have money.  As do we.  We now need to win for those lonely men and women who feel that they have lost everything.  We ought to wish that we could find some of them and say that we are sorry for not listening to them in their separation and solitude and fear.  And that we are listening now, because what has been happening to them might soon be happening to all of us. And that is something worth fighting for through the teaching of human decency and the love of all humanity.


   The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference - Elie Weisel

a long tale about the return of a prodigal son named John:


BY THE AGE 20, HE LIKE SO MANY OTHER CHARACTERS...

IN HIS SQUALID WORLD, HE WAS INTO THE ART OF weight lifting and he had begun taking karate lessons from a Memphis cop named Theo McCorkel.  His name was John.  He had spent the majority of his youth beating up people for 50 or 100 bucks, by the time he had reached the age of 20, his yellow sheet was lengthening: three arrests for aggravated assault, one for resisting arrest, two for assault and battery, another for buying and possessing stolen property.  All charges were dismissed and he wasn't nailed by the police until he took part in a drug rip-off and was caught attempting to sell drugs to an undercover cop.  Even this didn't convince him to go get himself a different style of life.  When she thought he might get in trouble again, his mother Lulu and his father, who he had never known, sent him off to the Navy.


  In short, that changed his life for the better.


  And would change mine, as well.


   It was almost noon on a summer's day in 1948, when it all began.  I was sitting on the front porch of my Denver home, when I saw a cab pull up to the curb.  The man who exited the cab wore a blue sailor suit with a Dixie-cup white hat, had a long-lean body, a shock of black hair, and was well over 6ft tall.  My Dad came through the screen door smiling.  The two of them shook hands and gave one another a somewhat tentative hug.  My Dad looked down at me, then said: Dick.  This is your brother, John.  Which came as a bit of a surprise.  Since I had always thought that I was an only child.   At the ripe old age of 12, I was more than somewhat confused.   In those days, you didn't see many guys my age finding out that they had a brother at about the same time they were heading out of their childhood into what the adults had called maturity. 


  Then the door opened again, my Mom stepped out on the porch, and my Dad said, Bertha, this is John.  John, this is my wife, Bertha.  My Mother smiled.  They shook hands.  And she said, It is good to finally meet you, John.  I've heard so much about you.  And I was sitting there looking up at all three of them, thinking:What the fuck is going on here?  I did not understand a single thing that was happening.  The confusion continued to come in leaps-and-bounds when Dad asked John:  When did you actually find out that I was still alive?  And John replied:  When Mom was hunted down by the detective you'd hired to find us.  And you came bounding through the front door of our house after the drug bust. Then Dad asked: How is Lulu these days?  John gave a smile: She's been doing OK.  And my Dad said:  She tells me you're about to get married. Then John said: Her name is Ramona.  I want you to come to the wedding.  He Paused:  May I ask you a question?  Is it true  that you were hoboing around the country when I was born?  It sure is, Dad replied, That's when I met Bertha... 


  By then, I felt as if I were watching a ping-pong game with the ball rapidly moving back-and-forth.  And I was thinking: Detective?  Lulu? Hoboing? Drug bust?  Ramona?  When my Dad popped through what front door into whose house and where exactly was the house that he had popped into?  And most important of all: Where'd I been when all of this stuff had been going on?   


   It had become obvious to me that there was a great deal about my father that I was unaware of, and I felt as if I had been in some kind of a time-warp.  My Dad then informed me that we were going to drive in our old tan 1936 Chevrolet down to the Dolly Madison Ice Cream Shop on East Colfax Avenue, where he would explain everything to me.  When I left for school on Monday morning I couldn't focus because there was so much new information I had to digest.  My friend Bobby Dixon was waiting on the corner and he asked, How was your weekend?  OK, I guess, I replied, Except for the fact that I found out I have a brother.  Bobby hesitated, You mean your Dad knocked somebody up before he married your Mom?  I didn't know what to say or exactly where to begin.


  My Dad had told me the story in a detailed way.  In the summer of 1924, he had met a young woman by the name of Lulu who was a sharecropper from Oklahoma and working the Iowa corn fields for money.  One Sunday afternoon my Dad met her after coming out of St. Paul's Lutheran church in Monona, Iowa with his sisters Theodora and Gertrude and brother Frederick.  It was the church were my grandfather Albert was the pastor, and they decided to go on a picnic before the sun set, where they sat and laughed on blankets until Lulu took my Dad into a stand of trees and pulled down her dress.  Theodora and Gertrude tattled on Dad, and grandfather Albert informed him the next morning that he was no longer welcome in the parsonage, nor would his planned college education be paid-for.  My Dad immediately hopped aboard a train, became a Hobo, landed in Crook, Colorado in December of 1924, went to work in a pharmacy where he met my Mother, Bertha Winkle who was a school teacher, and they were married  on the 25th day of October in 1925. 


  Lulu had all but disappeared by that time.  John had been born on the 28th day of January in 1924.  It was at the tail-end of 1926 when my Father had told my Mother all about Lulu and that he assumed he was the father of child he neither knew nor did know how to go about finding out if the child was still alive.  It was my Mom who insisted that he hire a detective agency.  It would take a number of years until the Pinkerton's eventually hunted them down and the answers would come.  Lulu was living in Memphis and his son John, who had just turned 20.  Dad immediately flew to Memphis.  Did not like what he saw, insisted that his son join the Navy and the next thing I knew he was standing on my front porch.  He stayed with us for a week. I got to know him. I liked him. He reminded me of my Dad.  And then he went away....


  ...By the summer of 1950, the Sunday newspapers were telling  the story of the invasion in a sketchy way.   President Truman had flown back to Washington from vacation in Independence, Missouri, while the secretary of state had called an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.  It was the first Sunday of the Korean War.  By the Fourth of July, the mood of the neighborhood had changed.  It was clear now: the older guys were going off to war in Korea.  Truman was calling it a police action, but everybody else was calling it a war.  That fall, the oldest son of our next door neighbor died in Korea.  When I went back to school in the fall, my mind was scrambled.  I remember the evening when I was laying on my bed reading a book called The Disenchanted  by Bud Schulberg when I heard the telephone ring.  A few minutes after that, my Dad came into my bedroom and told me that John was going to Korea.  In December the telephone rang again.  John was Missing in Action and presumed dead; and my Dad was crying.


   When I went to school the following morning, a fat guy by the name of Billy Rezaab gave me his usual smirk and said: The word has it that your bastard brother's dead.  Without another word, I hit him hard in the face and his eyes got wide, and then I hit him again and again, blind with rage.  He fell and I kicked him and grabbed his hair and punched him in the neck, and then started to scream at him: He's my brother period!  And I love him you fat fuck, don't you dare ever say that again!  Then I walked away.  All the kids standing in the hallway were clapping.  That night, I was sure that my Father would be mad, and all he did was give me a hug and say: I'm proud of you, Son.  I tossed and turned, alternately worried about John, but was most worried about my Dad, who I knew was telephoning Lulu almost every night to give her comfort, and I could hear him talking to my Mom after he had hung-up the phone, then listened to him cry until he eventually fell asleep in her arms.


  That winter on Christmas Day, the news came that John was alive.  He had been captured and escaped enemy hand's by slowly inching his way through the hills and forests and feeding himself with whatever food he could forage or find until he had, once again, found himself safe behind the American lines.  He was now being transported to a hospital in San Diego, California in order to restore both stamina and health, and my Dad immediately flew-off to San Diego, where he was planning to meet John's wife Ramona for the very first time.  The two of them returned to Denver on New Year's Day.  Romona turned out to be one of the most enchanting woman of my young life:  She was dark-haired, sloe-eyed, with a body that was certainly one which could keep any fighting man happy.  And above all else, she was really truly pleasant with a good laugh and extraordinarily nice to me.


  On our Dad's seventieth birthday on February 18th of 1973, John and I threw a surprise  party for him in Monona, Iowa in his brother Palmer's house.  There were hams and pasta a chicken; cases of beer, bottles of whiskey and bowls of ice.  With all the kids and cousins and his brothers and sisters singing songs, we were back in the dense sweet closed grip of family.  The music rolled on, there was laughing and singing and hugs and kisses, making plump sandwiches and eating ham and chicken, and my Dad was beaming and happy and gave a toast to John and I: I am so happy to be with my sons, he said.  May they be as blessed in life as I have been are in having children as wonderful as they are ...  


  It would be the final time that the three of us would be together.


  My Dad passed-away on the 20th Day of October in 1975.


  My Brother did the same on the 14th Day of February in 2005. 


  Over the years that had come prior to their final Earthly days, the two-of-them had become close like a father-and-son ought to be; catching up on lost years, enjoying one an other's company, treasuring the time that they now could spend together.  And it was then that I happened to recall the words of my Dad...


  ...I was equally as blessed to have shared a life with a Father and a Brother...


  ...Two men who I had the privilage to forever get to know and love and adore...
  

why I do what I do:


FOR THIRTY-THREE YEARS NOW, I HAVE...
WORKED AT THE WRITING TRADE.  IT HAS provided me astonishment and joy.  I attempt to do it every day, because when I don't, my body aches, my mood is terrible, I become a bore to those who live with me or have to deal with me on a daily basis.  I've spent months at a desk on a manual typewriter, years on a computer, labored over each-and-every word, written in parked cars, scribbled notes to myself when riding a bus and have written in bars, too.  And the older I get, the more I am humbled by the words of a Hemingway or a Fitzgerald, who have always seemed to me to be much better at the craft than I have been.  This is no longer, of course, a mere hobby.  It is now a part of who I am, of who I have become.  I have written stage plays, a book, newspaper articles, and essays in longhand on yellow pads and restaurant menus.  Writing has now become so entwined with my life, that I can't imagine life without it.


    Like so many others in the writing trade, I wanted in my adolescence and young manhood to do other things.  My desire was to play professional baseball when I was 8 years old, and that passion gradually led me to the craft of cartooning by the time I was 11, and when I reached the age of 21, I was on my way to becoming a Lutheran Minister.  The first words I ever wrote were back in the days when I was attending Gove Junior High School in Denver, Colorado for a teacher named Miss Smiley, who reminded me of the voluptuous Miss Lace in the Milton Caniff comic strip Terry and the Pirates.  She was a young woman who filled my mind with infinite possibilities.  My first essay in class was for her.  She wore red-framed glasses.  So I wrote about a beautiful woman who wore red-framed glasses, and won first prize.


  As a young man in college, my ambition was not to embrace those general qualities of an Ernest Hemingway, or any other writer of note.  By then, I was a pre-theological student wanting only to get a grade-point average high enough to enter the seminary.  I was, however, an English major who happened to take a writing class under the tutelage of Professor Antes, a woman not nearly as attractive as Miss Smiley had been; and due to having been a baseball fanatic from childhood through my teenage years, when Professor  Antes had us write an in-class essay from memory, I wrote about the 1927 New York Yankees, which was filled with the names of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Tony Lazzeri and Waite Hoyt, and the rest of the famed Murderer's Row, along with the batting averages of every Yankee in the starting lineup.  Miss Antes was greatly impressed and attempted to persuade me to take writing up as a career. 


  Due to the stupidities of youth,  I never even considered it.


  By that point in time, the desire to be a cartoonist had derailed by the simple factor of lack of talent, I played a little professional baseball but was afraid to commit to a vocation which would eventually end when I still was a young man.  So I was ordained at the age of 23 as a Lutheran Minister, and although I was proud to be making my way in the world in such an honorable profession, I didn't much  care for the strict structures of the church and demitted the ministry at the age of 30.  So I found work in the retail industry.  There wasn''t much romance in serving customers or ordering goods or having a schedule where I had to work weekends.  But within months, I found myself on a typewriter again, working in the advertising trade for a small  Houston agency,  writing copy for a clothing store called Harold's Men's Store...


  ...Which led me into writing for Blaze deSteffano's newly-minted weekly tabloid This Week in Texas Magazine in 1980, which catered to the rather large homosexual community of Houston.  I was now a straight man in a gay world and had no plans for the future, no certainties about a career.  It was a part-time adventure writing for a tabloid which  could fold the next week.  There definitely was no pension plan, but I found newspaper people were bohemian anarchists, with great gifts for obscenity and a cynicism based upon the experience of being gay in a straight world.  I loved being in their company, in the news room, interviewing people on the streets, or standing at the bar after work.  Blaze asked me to do a series of articles for the paper called The Bending of a Straight,  which would center around my views as a heterosexual in a largely homosexual community, and the series won The Series of the Year Award from the Writers and Artists Guild of Houston.


   At the age if 44, I thought I had started late and therefore must throw myself into my work.  Nothing before or since could compare with the initial excitement of going out into the city and coming back to write a story.  No day's work was like any other's, no  story repeated any other in its details.  I loved it.  All of it.  I loved living in the permanent present, and had no idea at the time of my initiation into the romance of journalistic writing would flow into a book, stage plays, too many screenplays which would never be produced, and thousand of words for other newspapers in other cities and other states.  I didn't know that I was apprenticing in a trade that I hoped to practice until I died, or that other writing awards lay ahead.


  By the time I had reached the age of 50, I had won The Texas Playwright Festival award for a stage play I had written called Wunderlick.  This is not a claim that I have produced an uninterrupted series of written amazement's.  I have often winced; if I'd only had another three or four inches of space, perhaps this piece would have been better or that piece written would have been wiser.  There were too many pieces written limited by my ignorance or lack of experience.  Sometimes I completely missed the point or was far too egotistical to see the truth in my writing ability.  Once a piece is published or produced on a stage, there is no going back; it's too late to deepen the insight or the stale language of past pieces written.  The only thing that a writer can do is vow never to make that error again and start fresh the next day.


  Over the decades, I have written newspaper articles for This Week in Texas and The Brentwood Press and had stage plays produced in Houston and London and New York, all of which became a kind of public diary of who I was and where I was and what I saw along the way.   I have written about Houston or New York or Mexico, in memory, myth, and lore: and often chose subjects which I knew nothing about.  My ignorance would force me to learn, to engage in a crash course of reading new books, attending fresh stage plays, talking to strangers on a variety of subjects.  Along the way, I learned about myself from Hemingway and Faulkner and the blues and the love of fine jazz, or by reading the history of Sparta and looking at the drawings of George Grosz. 


  When I began my writing career, my hope was to be another Ernest Hemingway.  That obviously did not come to pass.  That ambition was amazingly presumptuous, but as I attempted to fit my articles into 700 words or less, I always remembered his words about  what must be contained within the writing of all good works: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.  That small piece of wisdom has helped me to understand that even fragments could serve a larger purpose.  His words helped me to understand that there was no great novel roaming about in my soul, and with that, the modest knowledge of a more unassuming ambition awaiting release,  came to me...


  ...I only needed to understand the way the world worked and how I fit into it...


   ...And if I did that and only that, I would be doing just fine...