Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars

Single and (Maybe) Staying That Way

Yes, I'm single and unattached. And, I'm thinking of staying that way. I took a look through one of the online dating sites, and well... that didn't encourage me. Nothing against the ladies. I love them. But I wonder if I'm not better off without them.

Truth be told, I'm not really a “nice” person. All my life, I've lived just on the edge of the law. At the top of the list of my defects, I'm interested in sex in a way that's beyond the pale for “nice” women. My late wife, Myrna, was my comrade in this arena of life. Few women have the courage to not give a damn about sexual convention.

I remember, shortly after Myrna died, having a drink with a gay male friend at a bar in Manhattan.

“Most women just aren't that interested in sex... or that good at it,” I said. “Myrna was a pretty amazing exception.”

”Yet another reason to be gay,” he answered.

Back when I was still involved in men's issues political groups, I was surprised to discover how many men I met had gone over to the other side because sex with women was just too confining and… well... infrequent.

I like “bad” women. How do you find one of those? Not easy. Certainly, they don't advertise themselves on the dating websites. “Bad” women generally keep their badness to themselves, even in dating relationships, out of fear of ridicule and censure. It takes years of building confidence within a relationship for a “bad” woman to come out of her shell.

Finding a woman who just doesn't give a damn about the opinions of family and society ain't easy. I stumbled onto Myrna.

I don't really have the money to wine and dine women. Women like a man to pay for the first date or two, and I can understand that. But, when you're working your way through the online dating sites, that can turn into an expensive proposition. Last time around, I found myself buying dinner for a parade of women that I didn't even want to know fifteen minutes into meeting them.

And the women want somebody to show to their families and their communities who's presentable. They want a guy making a good income (preferably more than their own), with a nice house and a nice car. $75,000 seems to be the median of what they want, if the websites are an indication. If they're pretty, they want about $150,000! For a 55 year old woman!

Now, I don't mean to be a pig (although I certainly am one), but if a guy is pulling down 150k, he's probably going to look for a 30 year old beauty. I'm not saying that's a good thing. It's just the reality of the sexual marketplace.

I'm not sure that I want to work so hard any more at making myself presentable to women. For the moment, I have a pretty good job and income. But, I'm working as a contractor, so that can disappear instantly. Spending my money chasing after women I'm not even sure I want is not a good option.

So, the old fart thing is really kicking in. Why go to all this trouble to impress a woman? Why spend all that money? Maybe I'm better off just living in my old fart splendor, doing what I want to do, spending my money the way I prefer, and living out my outlaw life.

And, there's another issue for you. Any idea how many women really want to ride on the back of a Harley? Damn few! And the problem gets even more complicated by the fact that many of them will pretend to want to ride the Harley for the sake of getting into the relationship, and then dump riding once they feel safe in the relationship.

Stop the BS in Washington Square Park

After work last night, I walked past this demonstration just getting underway in Washington Square Park.

Stop the BS stands for “Stop the Bullying and Suicides.”  The rally was provoked by a couple of high profile suicides of gay youngsters.

I stopped to talk with one of the demonstrators, because the issue does interest me (although, I want you to remember that I am completely inactive in all matters political, and I intend to stay that way).

“I wonder,” I asked the young black man, “are gays any more likely to be bullied than anybody else? I fought my way through an army of bullies on my way to school all through elementary school and junior high.”

”Well,” he replied, “everybody has to walk a mile in the other person's shoes. Gays are more likely on average to be the target of bullying and violence.”

I don't know if this it true. Could be. I want you to know, my gay friends (and I have them), that I abhor bullying and violence. I don't think any child should have to endure such abuse. One of my daughters is gay, and I hate to think that she would ever have to face that ugliness.

Here's the “but.” But, I'm extremely skeptical that governmental action, legal remedies or preaching by the educational system will produce significant change. Personal experience tells me that only self-defense will save a kid from bullying.

I think that there is a general perception that bullying and violence are always the result of the strong picking on the weak. Often, it is. Let me tell you what happened to me when I was a kid.

I was a star athlete in junior and senior high school in all three major sports, football, basketball and baseball. By the time I was 10 years old, I was routinely promoted to teams where the players were two, three and sometimes four years older than me.

The older boys were infuriated by my presence. They saw me as a competitor for girls and glory. They started to hunt me down in gangs of anywhere from three to six boys. They jumped me on the way to school and on the way home after practice, beat the hell out of me and left me face down in the dirt.

I dragged myself home after one of these incidents, and Dad knew just by looking at me what had happened. I cried and pleaded with him to do something about the situation.

“Well, I could go to the school or I could go to the cops,” Dad said. “And, they will probably do something. But, then, those kids are going to find you alone in a dark alley someday, and they're going to beat the hell out of you even worse.”

This seemed terribly unfair to me, and I told Dad so. This didn't move him a bit.

Dad taught me how to build up my body and how to fight. He told me that there were no rules in a fight, except to win. And, he told me that most fights are won by the guy who strikes first with the determination to end the fight in a single blow.

Since the older boys were ganging up on me, I figured all rules were off. I hunted down my tormentors one by one, blindsided them and beat the bloody hell out of them before they had a chance to even respond. I left them lying face down in the mud and I rubbed their faces in the filth and taunted them.  I'm not proud of this.  I'm just telling you the truth about what happened.

After I'd finished up with them, I encountered the gang again one night after practice. They were geared up for another stomping.

”Go ahead assholes,” I told them. “But you'd better finish the job, because I'll hunt you down one by one again, and this time I'll kill you.”

They decided to leave me alone.

So, you see, my experience tells me that self-defense is the only answer. It's not a good answer, but life often doesn't present us with ideal answers to human difficulties.

Here's the problem with trying to solve the dilemma of bullying with legislation or education. First, kids are barbarians. And, since adolescence now lasts up to about 30, that means that college kids are barbarians. Second, preaching to kids makes you the pompous, stuff shirt authority figure that they are rebelling against.

Kids are savages. That should go without saying. They live in a world that is wild and lawless. Legal punishments, for the most part, don't even seem real to them. If you're a rock and roll musician, you know this, because part of the mystique of the music is that wild and lawless world of youth. What good does it do to preach tolerance to savages? You might as well piss into the wind.

I love South Park. The parents in that series are all veterans of the 60s, and they think that rebellion ended with them. They think that all of the issues of authority versus kids were solved when they were adolescents. So, they are constantly astonished to discover that their kids think they are pompous windbags preaching bullshit. Their kids are rebelling against them.

So, the adults preach endlessly about tolerance, and the South Park kids sit there bored and wondering when in the hell the adults are going to stop gassing at them. And, what do the kids do as soon as the adults aren't around? They mock the adults by doing precisely what the adults told them not to do. Sound familiar? We did the same thing when we were kids. It's called rebellion, and it didn't end with the 60s.

So, while I agree wholeheartedly with the goal of ending bullying, I am incredibly skeptical that there is anything to do about it other than to teach kids self-defense. It looks to me that bullying is just part of the human condition, and that it isn't about to go away. So, I'd suggest that you learn to defend yourself.

If you are offended by this because it seems in opposition to your politics, I'm sorry.  I really don't care about politics.  

Another Memorable Pic from Peter... Cowboy Stories

Peter Allemano, my indomitable friend, sent me this picture of my late wife, Myrna and me, featuring the also departed Annie, the doggie. Taken in 1997 on my front lawn in Woodstock. I was so young!

At every point in our lives, I think, we focus on the problematic issues. The things that annoy us occupy our minds. It was no different for me in those days. I'm sure that I was worried about an entire range of problems that needed to be solved.

And, as a result, I failed to fully appreciate that my life was wonderful and full. I was surrounded by incredible beauty, not just in my wife, but in my dog.  You really don't know what you've got until it's gone.

Annie was the perfect companion. Whenever I could, I took her for a walk around the lake. Annie knew what was important in life. She took keen pleasure in these walks, running far ahead to check out the landscape, then returning to touch base with me. Although strictly illegal (because the lake is Kingston's water supply), Annie and I sometimes walked to the lake at midnight for a surreptitious swim.

This was Annie's idea of heaven. I would do the backstroke and look up at the stars and moon while she swam circles around me.

The cowboy hat on my head is another story. Another one of Myrna's projects. Myrna just plain liked cowboys. I was insufficiently macho cowboy when she met me, so she set about trying to upgrade my macho cowboy skills. The hat, a genuine Charlie Horse hat that set us back about 130 bucks, was complimented by an equally beautiful pair of cowboy boots.

Myrna also insisted that we buy a number of those Roy Rogers style cowboy shirts, and that I learn country and western dancing. The dancing, in a way, was just another one of her strategies for shaping our relationship. She was determined that we would find harmony in all things... a part of her Chinese/Buddhist heritage.

Myrna's ultimate ploy in her drive to cowboy me up was to insist that we buy a Harley.

We visited the Woodstock Harley-Davidson dealership one day, just to window shop... or so I thought. There we found a used 1996 Road King, chromed to the max, with the high performance bored out engine and screaming pipes. I stood there taking in the view, while Myrna poked me in the ribs

“Buy it,” she whispered. “Buy it now.”

“What!” I answered. “Don't you think we ought to think about this for a while?”

”Buy it,” she said. “If you don't buy it now, it'll be gone.

I prevailed, and we drove home, with Myrna fuming in the passenger seat. She spent the next couple of days working on me, until I finally gave in. I'd never ridden much more than a 500cc Honda. That huge Road King, bored out, was about 1650cc. And, the fucker weighed over 700 lbs.

When we returned, we discovered the bike had been sold.

“I told you!” Myrna scolded me.

The upshot of this story is that, rather than face the full force of Myrna's fury, I bought a brand new 2003 Road King. And, that's how I became a biker.

I'm still working on the cowboy thing. Haven't worn the cowboy hat since Myrna departed this physical plane.

A Peek Into the Past... and Myrna

Yesterday, my wonderful lifelong friend, Peter Allemano, sent me a few pictures of my late wife, Myrna, and me. These pictures were taken in 1996, near Columbus Circle in New York City. Peter was experimenting with a new, unusual camera. As he has told me, these aren't great pictures, but... you know what... they made me laugh and cry at the same time... just like Myrna always did.

The picture above reminds me of the great myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Now that Myrna is gone to the next world, I often think of myself as Orpheus, struggling to find my way to Eurydice in the underworld. Myrna went through a startling physical transformation over the next five years. If you take a look at pictures of her in 2001, you will barely recognize her. In these 1996 pictures, she looks very exotic and very Filipino. Myrna had the ability to dramatically transform her appearance. She did this quite intentionally. By 2001, she had transformed herself into an almost entirely western appearing woman.

“Now that we're married,” she told me long ago, “we're going to change one another.”

This rather ordinary picture tells you a lot about Myrna. First, she's draped around me. She seldom took her hands off me in the 16 years we were together. And, she's wearing her pink passion outfit. When she wore this outfit, I knew that I was really in for a workout when we got home. Myrna burned at a much higher temperature than any other person I've known. Perhaps, this is why she died so young. Everything she did, she did with a passion that verged on fury. If you were incapable of running with her, best to stay away from her.

The pink passion outfit didn't really do much for Myrna's figure, which was spectacular. This little dance picture rekindles memories of when we went out dancing. Myrna, as in every part of her life, produced drama on the dance floor. When we danced at the country and western clubs, the crowd would move to the periphery to watch. Myrna was an absolute sex bomb. If she wanted to (and sometimes she did), she could provoke an entire room full of men into a barroom brawl. I miss that part of her, too, although she sometimes terrified me with her vamp act. She thought it was all good fun.

From an artistic sense, this picture didn't really succeed. The ghostly montage seems appropriate now, doesn't it? She is fading in and out of my consciousness all of the time. Sometimes, late at night at my cabin in Woodstock, I sing the songs I wrote about her and I feel her presence so powerfully. She has certainly never traveled far from me. She could not bear it. Myrna may be in the next world, but she is waiting patiently for me. Her energy may be speeding across the universe (and I have no doubt of that), but some part of her remains here, watching over me.

This is the most ghostly picture of them all. Send shivers up my spine.

Many people have tried to tell me that I should get over Myrna and move on. Others don't quite grasp what an extraordinary woman she was.

Few people have ever had such a transcendent person pass through their life. How can they know what it was like to experience that kind of brilliance every day? She wasn't just a sex bomb... sex was her religion. She loved drama and thrived on it. At times she terrified me, because I knew she was going to force all hell to break loose, no matter how I pleaded with her to cool down. I learned to love that part of her, too.  She simply had no patience with boredom or the mundane.  Better to blow everything to hell than to suffer fools and bores!

She was a brilliant intellect, a fierce warrior, and an even fiercer lover. I don't expect to ever encounter a creature like her again.

Saturday Night Paper Route

My father had a paper route almost his entire life. On Saturday nights at about 10 p.m., he met an Illinois Central train at Gilman, Illinois. There, the baggage crew unloaded huge bundles of newspapers... the Sunday editions of the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times. We loaded the bundles into a quarter ton truck and drove all over Iroquois County, and even a bit into Ford and Champaign Counties.

When I first ran the route with Dad, I was probably six years old. In 1956, steam locomotives were still running on some routes. In those days, we met the steam locomotive in Sheldon, Illinois. I remember keenly standing out in the frigid winter weather as the massive engine thundered into the station. I was terrified and thrilled.

Dad was teaching me to work. Thank God for that. The men in the baggage cars, the conductors and the depot staff would all be sure to pat me on the head.

“That boy's growing up to be a good worker,” they'd say.

In Republican central Illinois, that was considered the ultimate compliment.

The paper route built into me a love for being out all night. We drove until 6 a.m., watching the sun come up. In every little town, we'd stop at the drug store or supermarket and drop off a few bundles of papers. We were the only vehicle on the road when we stopped in Milford or Donovan or Watseka. Dad rewarded me at the end of the route by taking me out to breakfast in the truck stop in Gilman.

At first, we ran the route with only a trailer attached to the car. As the range of the route increased, Dad bought an old truck and built a wooden box over the cargo bed. Then, the route became even bigger, and my mother ran a separate leg, once again with a car and trailer.

I ran the route with Dad until I left home for college. By the time I was 16, I took over driving the car and trailer leg of the route, first with my mother and then by myself. Driving through a midwestern blizzard at 4 a.m. with no help in sight, I learned self-sufficiency and toughness. Dad thought that it was a very good idea for me to face this, and he was right. God bless you, Dad.

When I was still a kid and riding with Dad, we would talk until midnight or 1 a.m. He told me the story of his life, his aspirations for himself and for me and he regaled me with stories of the legendary figures of Illinois high school football and basketball.

And, we listened to the Grand Old Opry on the radio. This is where I first became entranced by music, and by the world of performing. Ray Price was still young. Minnie Pearl played the clown.

That was all so long ago. Dad departed this world over a decade ago. But, I still remember his lessons about hard work and facing tough circumstances on your own. Once I left for college and became temporarily smarter than my father, I was a little embarrassed by this experience. The liberal professors at the University of Illinois ridiculed me for my redneck past... for knowing what it is to bale hay and shovel cow shit. (Nothing has changed there, either. The liberal professors are still ridiculing the values of middle class America.)

Now that I'm old my father seems so much smarter. As Mark Twain said:

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he'd learned in seven years.

The Most Important Election Since the Last One

I used to be interested in politics. I had a shitload of opinions about everything. At some point in my life, however, I just stopped giving a shit. (Notice how shit is an important part of this posting.)

As the rest of the universe works itself into an uproar over the midterm elections, I don't give a shit more than I usually do... if you understand what I mean. I don't expect (or want) politicians to fix anything. More than anything, I want them to “shut the fuck up.”

I have, I think, a somewhat unique perspective on politics. I grew up in small town conservative Republican Illinois. Most of my adult life has been spent in liberal Democratic communities. Despite the opinions on both sides, people don't seem very different in those supposedly very different communities. Politics is about the same thing in Republican Illinois and Democratic New York City: who gets their hands on the swag, sanctimonious preening and having an enemy to hate.

So, it's all a waste of time. Political opinions are pre-programmed. You don't have to listen to either side for very long to know everything they have to say. After that, it's all repetition with the volume turned up and more vicious insults.

“I'm good and my side should get everything.” That's the start of political discussion. “You assholes on the other side are pieces of shit. You've got too much stuff. They should take your stuff away and give it to me” And that's the end of political discussion.

Once in political office, the inner asshole in every human emerges. Corruption and self-dealing... well, that's the natural state of humans. So, I don't hold out the hope that one political candidate will be any better once in office than any other candidate.

So, who to vote for? I'll vote, but without much hope.

I used to write a lot about politics. Many more people used to visit my site. The way to draw people to a website is political controversy... or tits and ass. People will scream at one another into the wee hours of the morning in the comments section of a blog. They never seem to tire of this.

Doesn't interest me any more. A complete waste of time.

I don't hold out much hope that everybody will shut the fuck up after this election. As soon as it's over, everybody will start gassing about the presidential election two years in the future. We all really need to find something better to occupy our time.

UPDATE: Here's something worth your time:

Old and Alone

Nobody really wants to be alone. But, life deals us periods when we are alone. I'm going through one of those, and I think it's going to last for a long time.

Now, I'm trying not to feel sorry for myself. There's no need for that. I've got plenty to do to keep busy. Being alone gives me ample time for playing music and writing. I can do as I please in my house. If I decide to sit around all day in the same underwear I wore yesterday... well, who's going to care?

It appears that I'm going to be alone during the holidays. That's particularly difficult. For the first time in decades, I don't think I'll be decorating the house or cooking a feast for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don't know what I'll do on those days.

I'm trying not to be desperate and needy. What good would that do? In my 61st year, nobody really cares. There's that old saying: When you're young you worry about what people will think of you; when you're middle aged you don't care what people think of you; and when you're old you know that nobody is thinking about you. My time in this world is passing. The young have more important things to do than to worry about me.

I think that I've given up on finding a woman. No more searching the lonely hearts sites on the web. Myrna may have departed this world, but she will always be my wife. She completely ruined me for other women. I won't find again what Myrna had to offer. Probably, I've used up my allotment for this life. Myrna was all mine, and she was completely devoted. Why in hell would any woman want to be that for me again? I'm not a particularly exciting catch.

Thank you God for giving me Myrna.  If that is all that I ever receive in this life, I am blessed.

Trying to connect with another woman at this age is just a pain in the ass. Who wants the struggle of accommodating again to another person? Who wants to try again to find a way to mix together separate financial and physical assets?  I am tired of that struggle.  And, my pictures of Myrna are always going to be on the wall of my house.  Why would any woman want to put up with that?

So, no more looking for a woman to rescue me from loneliness. Now that I've given up on that, what do I do?

Truthfully, I don't know.

On the plus side, what I'm experiencing is that old nemesis, freedom. Freedom really is “nothing left to lose.” Nobody is relying on me for support. Few people even know that I exist. What to do with freedom? That's never an easy question, is it? But, it appears that I must answer that question again.

Mandala Painter in Washington Square Park

On a pretty fall afternoon, Washington Square Park features a wide variety of street performers. It's tough attracting attention out on the pavement.

The young man in the picture above succeeded in drawing a crowd, as you can see by all the shadows surrouding him. I stopped for a few minutes to watch him paint a mandala with colored sand. His tip bucket filled up with ones and fives. An awesome performance and a beautiful painting.

I watched for as long as I could before I had to run for the train. The young man simply drizzled the brilliantly colored grains of sand on the concrete. Amazing!

Why sand painting? Here's the scoop, according to Wikipedia :

The Sand Mandala (Tibetan: དཀྱིལ་འཁོར།; kilkhor) is a Tibetan Buddhist tradition involving the creation and destruction of mandalas made from colored sand. A sand mandala is ritualistically destroyed once it has been completed and its accompanying ceremonies and viewing are finished to symbolize the Buddhist doctrinal belief in the transitory nature of material life.

Sure enough, when I walked by the same spot in the park this morning, not a grain of sand remained.

In my 61st year on earth, I am keenly aware of “the transitory nature of material life.” Myrna is gone, her energy somewhere out there, speeding across the universe. Every day, my body degenerates just a bit more. Here today, gone tomorrow. Indeed.

What NYU Students Crave

OK, so Mom and Dad coughed up $45,000 a year and you're a student at NYU. Or, maybe Mom and Dad paid some of the bill and you're going in hock for the rest of your life through student loans. Could be you got a scholarship. But, after you pay the tuition, you're broke. So, what do you do?

Shop at the Army/Navy store! Cheap clothes! Bell-bottom trousers! Trashy motorcycle boots! Just like we did, way the hell back in 1968. You'll buy some business clothes when you graduate and you have to go to work to pay off those student loans. But, for now, you aren't going to sell out. You're going to dress for trashy style and to be seen at rock concerts.

You're away from home for the first time. No Mom and Dad to keep track of you. So, now what? Finally, you get to do whatever you want to do. And, college students want to be bad. The head shop combined with the tattoo and body-piercing parlor is a popular combination in the Village. Not much has changed here since 1968 either. Students want to get stoned and signal their sexual availability to the right kind of partners.  (And the shop is "Undergound!"  That's really bad ass, right?)

The thrift store might be the final trip on the college student tour of campus. Second hand stuff will have to do until graduation and that first full-time job. Here, you can buy those great, shabby tweed jackets that make you look like a saxophone player in a rockabilly band.

And the thrift shop makes a student feel noble. Buying retreads is “green!” Those straight sell-outs can wallow in consumerism. For now, it's the life of the enlightened student.

Everything has changed. Nothing has changed.

Working Men in the Village

It's a beautiful, cool fall day. So, I took a walk around the Village during my lunch hour. I immediately encountered these guys. They're busy placing a sign on a shop window.

Did you ever wonder how signs were applied to shop windows? If you look closely at the cutout picture below, you'll see that the workmen are applying a stencil.

This crew hails from a Tribeca shop, Sign Expo.  This is a pretty high powered firm. They even designed and installed a piece at the Guggenheim Museum.

The picture below shows a crew loading what appears to be a huge, rolled up sign onto a truck. Art is big business in the Village/Soho area.

And, finally, this artist was selling his canvasses on the sidewalk, right next to a sidewalk food vendor. The artist seems to have a Warhol thing going. He's painted tennis shoes and coffee cups, among other ordinary items.

A great day for girl watching, too! God, those college girls are young! Should be in diapers. And, I'm just the guy to change them.