I like to write, too.
TRUE STORY 001
Baseball Blues
A box of old photographs sits nestled among many others on a bedroom shelf at my mother’s house. Inside this box, in all of its desaturated, washed-out, early 70s glory is a photo of me and my sister. We’re stiffly posed, squinting into the sun along with two of our cousins in front of their raised ranch on the outskirts of York, PA. Just another formality in a long line of pictures taken over the years when visiting relatives. It’s a fairly unremarkable picture, save for one small detail: clutched in my little six year old hands is a small stack of baseball cards. It’s documented proof of when my childhood obsession with baseball began.
It's 1972. We’d packed into the yellow Skylark for a barnstorming series of visits to both paternal and fraternal relatives dotted around a handful of working-class Pennsylvania towns. The stay at the aforementioned cousins’ house was the jewel. It was the first time I’d been around them since I’d worn diapers. They were older and bigger and I thought that was pretty cool. Cooler still was my cousin Scott. He had a bowl cut, an odd accent and a huge collection of baseball cards. Up until that point, I’d never seen a baseball card. I’d heard about them, but never held one. The colors, the designs, the uniforms, the statistics on the back…it all appealed to me on a gut level. Being the stand-up guy that he was, Scott gave me some of his cards to keep. It was only 10 or so, all lesser-known bench warmers, but to me they were all-stars. Names like Ike, Ellie, and Gates. But the one that stood out to me the most was named Bart. Bart Johnson. He was my guy. Why? No idea. He had longer hair than most players. My beloved Beatles had long hair, so maybe I associated the two. Maybe it was the script “Chicago” on his jersey. It could have been the colors or design motif of the card itself. The brute power of his name? Again, I’ve no clue why this thing was the holy grail.
For weeks after, Bart was my traveling companion. I kept him in whatever free pocket I had. I’d pull the card out, examine, put it back. Ad nauseam. By then it was getting well-worn and beaten. There were dings on the edges and creases through the middle, but they made no difference to me. While playing wiffle ball, I somehow thought that keeping the card in my pocket would improve what few skills I had at the time. My sister, tormentor par excellence that she was, once held Bart hostage for a few hours but was forced to return him when I reached epic meltdown level. All for a 2 ½ by 3 ½ inch piece of cardboard with a picture on the front and some words and numbers on the back. It was my world.
On a beautiful late Spring evening we took a family trip to Boardman’s, one of those 70s mainstays known as a “catalog showroom”. The light was golden and I was happy and content, Bart secured in the pocket of my blue hooded windbreaker. Boardman’s was otherworldly to me. Aisles and aisles of merchandise in which to get lost, but nearly all of which was familiar due the hours I spent studying their catalog. When you found what you wanted, you’d fill out a form with one of those stubby little betting pencils, take it to a store assistant who would then hand it to someone in the hidden warehouse. After a few minutes, the order would emerge, riding on a conveyor belt that ran along up high near the ceiling and then down a ramp to the floor. Pure magic.
After wandering the store for a while, I got the urge to pee. My dad took me by the hand and guided me to the restroom. It was small and utilitarian. Sink, bowl, a roll of paper, gray floor tile and not much else. With my father waiting by the sink, I went about my business. In the process of fumbling with my shorts and equipment, someway, somehow, Bart got dislodged from my jacket pocket and dropped face down into the toilet. I shrieked with holy hell terror. Dad investigated and assessed, providing me with the response I didn’t want to hear: “Oh…we’ve got to let that one go, son”. I stood in stunned silence, lip quivering as I watched the card saturate, turning its bright orange back to a shade of dark brown as it sank to the bottom of the sea. Performing the necessary euthanasia, my father reached out and pulled the handle. Bart Johnson, my hero of heroes, swirled around and disappeared for good. The flood came soon after. I was inconsolable. Upon our return to the main floor, customers stared. Dad was patient and stoic. My mom was disturbed yet heartbroken. My sister laughed.
TRUE STORY 002
Lifestyles of the Broke and Feckless
J and I got in the car and headed out into the Los Angeles night.
It was a rare one in that we were actually getting along and being civil to one another. On a whim, we’d hastily moved 3000 miles together and had spent the first few months of our fraught relationship holed up in a 2nd floor dingbat apartment (look that one up) on the edge of Venice, scanning the papers for work, watching late morning reruns of Love Boat and Little House on the Prairie on a portable black & white TV, all the while trying to figure out if we’d made a mistake. The chance to associate with people other than ourselves was a welcome diversion.
Paul was an aspiring jazz musician and kindred upstate New York naif. He was also J’s cousin. By day he worked in the promotions department for a major record label offshoot. By night, he'd tag along with his co-workers, trying to keep pace with their non-stop party people regimen. To his credit, he’d usually choose to watch from the sidelines, bemused as they burned like roman candles. His boss, Brett, was no exception. We had to pick them both up on our way to a house party somewhere in Hollywood.
We got to Brett’s place. The door’s ajar, but still we knocked. “Come on in!” came the voice from somewhere in the belly of the townhouse. We entered. It was dimly lit save for the glow of the bathroom, the air thick with the sweet smell of hash. He and his model girlfriend Josie were both half undressed, but obviously getting ready, walking back and forth between the bedroom and bathroom, a new article of clothing added with each trip. As instructed, we made ourselves comfortable on the couch in the living room, unsure of what will happen next, the dope haze jazzbo vibe of the Happy Mondays’ “Bob’s Yer Uncle” playing for what would be the first of many times throughout the night.
Brett finally comes out to greet us, lank wet hair hanging in his face while he rolls up the cuffs on a crisp white shirt, skull rings on his fingers. Inviting us to share a “rail” (a new one for us at the time...”lines”, yes, “rails”, no), he proceeded to shovel a quarter of the Columbian GDP up his nose from a mirror laid on the dining room table. We hadn’t noticed it upon entering and we pretended not to notice his prodigious ingestion, politely declining. Josie ambled out, all 6 feet of her afroed, angelic self, ready to go. An unlikely misfit crew, but we all piled into my clown car and drove off to the first stop of the night, ready for anything.
It was a typical LA bungalow. Nothing special on the outside or the inside. People were standing about in the living room, in the hall, and of course, in the kitchen, “Bob’s Yer Uncle” in the air once again. Nearly all were record label types, some from Brett and Paul’s label, the rest from other labels. Introductions were made…smiles, handshakes and hugs all around. It was a quality bunch, and for J and me, it was a dose of therapy we both needed. While making the rounds through the house, we heard a distinct laugh coming from the kitchen. Loud and boisterous, the kind you know is coming from a life-of-the-party type. Once in the kitchen, we met Tommy. He was what I figured he’d be: big, bearded and burly…an overgrown stuffed animal of a human. Along with being the US promotions director for Jesus Jones, he was also a New York City wiseass of the highest caliber. Perfect.
Drinks were flowing, weed passed. Tommy and I were quickly joined at the hip. Aside from testing each other’s encyclopedic knowledge of music and discovering our shared ability to recite “Paul’s Boutique” from front to back, we dug deep into our love of late 70s/early 80s New York television. We’d both grown up on a steady diet of what was peddled on WOR (Channel 9) and WPIX (Channel 11). Sure, there were the cartoons, like Minute Mouse, Underdog, Wacky Racers and Popeye. There was “TVPIXXX”, where a kid would call the station and control a rudimentary video game by yelling “PIX” into the phone, all in hopes of winning a Carvel gift certificate. There were Mets games, Yankees games, the Yule Log, etc. But for us, the gold was in the commercials. Four in particular held sway.
The first was a promo commercial for the New York Mets. Over footage of games and of fans, the jingle told us to “Meet the Mets, meet the Mets. Step right up and greet the Mets”, sung by what I imagine to be a 60s glee club of Brylcreemed dads with short-sleeved dress shirts, action slacks and sensible shoes. The second probably came from the same jingle factory as that of the Mets, but this one was for crosstown nemeses, the Yankees. The Mets’ jingle was a long one, of which we only knew the words written above. But since we were both die hard Yankee fans, we knew their much shorter jingle by heart: “Y! A! N! K! E! E! S! / Here come the Yankees / Let’s get behind and cheer the Yankees / They’re gonna learn to fear the Yankees / Everyone knows they play to win, cause /they’re the new York Yankees”. Inane as shit, but we sang it that night with gusto. Drunkenly, and due to our respective states of mind, repeatedly.
Third on our list of greatest hits was an obscure one for the JFK Express, an extension of the NYC subway that shuttled people from the City to JFK airport. Yet another jingle, this one was even simpler with a jaunty tune that told us to “Take the train to the plane” The melody was sung multiple times at the beginning and end of the spot. Sandwiched in between were interviews with real New Yorkers, giving us the reasons why they do what the jingle stated.
The last entry was the crown jewel and the purest high-octane fuel for our evening’s stupidity. It didn’t have an ear worm jingle, but it didn’t need one. Only six words mattered: Phil. Rizzuto. For. The. Money. Store. For the sports history-challenged, Phil Rizzuto aka “The Scooter” was a pint-sized former shortstop for the Yankees from the 1940s through 1950s. After leaving the game, he became a Yankees play-by-play announcer, where a great play or towering home run would elicit his iconic exclamation of “HOLY COW”. Phil’s side hustle was as a pitchman for the Money Store, a shady mortgage lender with storefronts around New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Nearly every one of their commercials started with Phil’s vigorous, nasal announcement “PHIL RIZZUTO FOR THE MONEY STORE!”. Ask any New Yorker about the Money Store and they’ll recite that line. Tommy and I barked this out any chance we had, much to the chagrin of those around us. And the greater our intake of alcohol and amphetamines, the funnier it became. For us, anyway.
Armed with our greatest hits, the party moved on to Small’s, a hipster rock n roll bar on Melrose. Dark, smoky and loud, the place was packed. The right jab of “Bob’s Yer Uncle” our walk-in music, followed by the left hook of “Kinky Afro”. Throughout the night, Tommy and I would break into a “MEET THE METS”, “HERE COME THE…YANKEES” or “TAKE THE TRAIN TO THE PLANE” chant at top volume, throats raw and getting rawer. The Money Store gag still had legs and it had gotten to the point where, if we weren’t yelling it, we could see one another across the bar, give a simple nod of the chin, mouth the words and then fall apart. With a swirling head, I headed off to the bathroom to get my act together. It was tough to escape the din of the bar and the Cult’s “Love Removal Machine” on the PA. It was goddamned LOUD. As I stood at the urinal, trying to steady myself,
I heard it. Over all that noise and through the heavy bathroom door came “PHIL RIZZUTO FOR THE MONEY STORE”. I nearly wet myself. It wasn’t getting old and we were definitely not done.
After more rounds and a brief encounter with a balding and inebriated Nicholas Cage, we spilled out onto the street, headed for our next destination. Someone in our crew mentioned another house party up in the Hollywood Hills, so off we went. Wisely, we chose to walk it, with Phil Rizzuto, the Mets, the Yankees and the MTA as our guides. In an LA moment, a drunken James Fearnley, accordion player for the Pogues and his It Girl Patsy Kensit joined us on our trek, only to disappear into the ether when we weren’t paying attention.
The night was cool and breezy, stars bright. It felt as though nothing could possibly go wrong. We finally arrived at the party house, yet another Angeleno bungalow, packed to the rafters. We walk in. “Bob’s Yer Uncle”. Again. The front door opened to a living room, a couch in the middle, facing toward the back wall. I staked out my spot, leaning against the back of the couch, facing the front wall. “Way too many people in here”. My first clear thought in hours. Tommy puts yet another drink in my hand, turns and heads off into the crowd, “MEET THE METS! GREET THE METS!” I survey the room, looking for people I might remember in an effort to get my bearings. Across from me, standing next to the front door, back to the wall is a girl and I can’t take my eyes off her. She’s straight out L7: surf-dirty bleach blonde hair, biker jacket, Sabbath T shirt, cutoff shorts, ripped tights, boots, studded choker, Kohl eyes. I’d been staring too long because her eyes meet mine and her upper lip curled into a sneer. I turned my head to the left only to be confronted by a huge mop of curly hair, my nose right in it.
I pull back to assess and it’s a skinny dude wearing a Hawaiian shirt. The guy turns to see who’s got their face in his hair. What the fuh…it’s Weird Al Yankovic. “Shit. Hey Al.” was all I could sputter. I apologized, introduced myself and began some idle conversation. I don’t remember what was exchanged, for just as we started in, a shadowy male figure came through the front door and stood in front of L7 girl. They obviously didn’t care for one another. Voices getting louder, things are escalating, and fast. With Al and I watching, the guy grabs L7 by the face and rams the back of her head into a framed picture. It was violence on a level I’d not experienced up to that point. Glass, blood and screams all around. No sooner did the brute come through the door and leave his mark, he was gone. The place was a mess. Chaos. We stood inn stunned silence as some people helped L7 off the floor and into the back of the house. I scanned the room to find friends, Tommy, J…anyone familiar. I see J and grab her hand just as the order is shouted: “EVERYONE GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! COPS!”.
It turned the house into a roiling sea of sharks, everyone pushing for the front door.
Once outside and into the starry darkness, everyone started running downhill toward Hollywood Boulevard. Police cruisers raced in the opposite direction as we dodged and ran through yards. We had no idea where we were going, or how we were going to find our group again. But then, from somewhere way off in the darkness, we heard it one last time: “PHIL RIZZUTO FOR THE MONEY STORE!”. Somehow I knew everything was going to be OK.
TRUE STORY 003
The Hop
A Doctor Suess story and a sock mannequin. They’re fairly innocuous in nature, but in my early childhood mind, they combined forces to conjure a beast of pure horror. It lurked in the corners of my dreams and in the corners of the house in which we lived. My late 60s/early 70s life was consumed with thoughts and visions of this thing, so minimalist yet so damned frightening. If it wasn’t haunting my nightmares in sleep, I was always looking over my shoulder with dread while awake. Known simply as “Dah”, it would scare the living shit out of me for the better part of five years.
SOURCE 1: Seuss
I used to get sick when I was a youngster. The croup, to be exact. When it landed, I’d spend days in my room with a vaporizer running in an effort to loosen up all the junk in my lungs. During one particular bout, our neighbors sent over some books that they thought would help me pass the time and maybe feel a little better. One of them was Dr. Seuss’ “Sneetches and Other Stories”. It was a collection of four parables that subtly tackled issues such as equality, individuality, fear and acceptance, all told in that magical Seussian meter. I loved the book EXCEPT for the very last story that centered around a haunted pair of pants. If the book were mine, I’d have ripped the pages out. As much as I enjoyed the other stories, it may as well have been dipped in anthrax, to be avoided it at all costs. The thought of an empty pair of pants with a mind of its own, chasing someone, drove a deep ribbon of fear into my young brain. It set the stage for more frightening things to come.
SOURCE 2: Hosiery
My grandparents lived just outside of Scranton, a former Pennsylvania coal-mining boomtown. Once or twice a year, we’d visit for a weekend, the highlight of which was a day-long trip to the Globe Store. The Globe was one of those swanky joints from the golden age of department stores, cut from the same cloth as Saks or Bergdorf Goodman. Dozens of departments across five floors, with names like “Intimates”, Millinery”, “Stationery” and “Coordinates”. It was a massive playground for a little kid, with toys, books, circular clothing racks to hide in and elevators with sliding metal gates and and uniformed men who operated them. Amidst the wonderland, there was one department where I drew the line and would not enter: Hosiery. Perched atop the sock and hose shelves, standing bolt upright were flesh colored mannequins that looked as though a leg had been amputated from the knee down, each adorned with its own carefully selected sock. Among them all, it was the one with the plain black sock that got me every time…dark, ominous, evil. I’d avert my gaze 180º once I saw it or knew that we were nearing it. Plainly said, it freaked. Me. The. Fuck. Out. With the Suess story firmly planted in my subconscience, the limb conspired with it to form a heady, toxic, nocturnal brew. They set the stage for a fear that gripped and wouldn’t let go.
The first time Dah appeared in a dream, I was alone, walking down the 2nd floor hallway in a huge house my parents once rented. The hall was long, running the length of the house. It never seemed to be illuminated well enough and at night, the ends of it became black voids. While approaching one of the extremities, something caught my eye. Barely visible through the gloom, there it was. The leg. The black sock. I turned to run and it gave chase, doing just what a disembodied leg would do: hop. It was a mechanical, rhythmic hop, like it was on a pogo stick and it was fast. Dah was coming to get me. Just as it closed in on me I woke, startled, shaken and crying. The first night of hundreds.
From the ages of 3 to 8, Dah was there. Not every night, but often enough that it crept into my daytime life. It had appeared in a dream set in a grocery store, so naturally I peered down every aisle with dread while on shopping trips. I always feared it would be in a dressing room, behind a hedge, or waiting as we opened a garage door. In dreams, the locations were always different, but the M.O. was the same: a chase. And they never got any less scarier.
In 1970, we moved to another part of town. It was exciting, for it would be a new house and neighborhood to explore and the home would belong to us. I also thought that I would be making a fresh start, leaving Dah behind to hop through the halls in the old place with no one left to chase. I was wrong. The very first night in my new bedroom, it came back with a vengeance. The nights were filled with hopping and chasing, ad nauseam. The fears were strong and real. Dah consumed me for three more years. I never wanted to sleep.
By the age of eight, I was growing sick and tired of Dah. It didn’t appear quite as often, but when it did, the horror was just as fresh. But the powers that be must have heard my silent pleas to please, please, please make it end. I was searching our unfinished basement, bare save for the concrete walls, a washer, a dryer, a furnace and a hot water heater. The water heater was of particular interest to me, more so what might be behind it. I crept toward it slowly and as I neared it, stopped and peered behind. Of course Dah was there. Once again, the chase was on, the white hot blade of fear running up my spine as I ran and ascended the stairs to the kitchen. But this time, the plot was different. As I reached the top of the stairs, I turned and dropped to my knees to confront it. As Dah hopped up the stairs and threatened, I reached out and grabbed it. Arms outstretched, I did the only thing I could think of and squeezed as hard as I could. As I increased the pressure, Dah simply melted like candle wax, leaving me with an empty black sock in my hands. From that moment forward, I never saw it again.
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Exuent. Fin. The end.
TRUE STORY 004
Punch Drunk
I made an Irish exit out the back door of the bar, ditching yet another dreadful Friday night agency happy hour and entering the cold winter blackness of Albany. Drunk out of my skull with a freshly broken big toe, I needed to sober up somehow. The booze did a good job of numbing the pain, so I decided to walk. My apartment was a half mile away and I could have started off for it, but I wasn’t ready just yet. I needed to clear my head and to be alone. So I wandered…with a limp. A sad state of affairs.
After a few foggy aimless circles through the downtown streets, I headed down Broadway, guided by the illuminated sign at Coulson’s News, a 24-hour newsagent lined with endless racks of newspapers and magazines from all over the globe. I walked in and realized that I had the whole place to myself, save for the gruff, stringy old guy behind the counter, cigarette in hand, ear bent to late-night talk radio. I took up residence in a far corner at the front of the shop next to the display window that faced the avenue. With a copy of the Village Voice in hand, I scanned the club listings, want ads and apartment rentals, dreaming of a different life in a bigger city than the one I was in. My blurry visions of NYC were suddenly disrupted by the arrival of a vehicle that had pulled up to the curb outside. I gave it a quick glance and then had to look again. Bright white Lamoborghini pickup trucks with gold rims and accents were definitely not of this town. “That’s fucked up”, I thought. I stared at it for a bit and then returned to my paper, trying all the while to regain focus through the blear.
The store was still deathly quiet but I soon realized that I was no longer alone in my space. Sensing a presence to my left, I looked over to see a guy wearing a brown, floor-length mink coat. He’s MASSIVE, equally wide as he was tall. He’d just glided in from nowhere without sound. Spooky. Training my eyes on his head, which seemed to be bolted directly to his body, the realization washed over me: holy shit…it’s Mike Tyson. My mind started racing as he stood stock still, perusing a copy of Ebony. Should I say something? Should I leave? Christ, if I had a roll of quarters in my fist, I could give him my best shot in the temple and get my name in the papers as the only guy in town to have knocked Mike out cold. That thought was soon replaced by a vision of hitting him with no result whatsoever, soon being buried in a tornado of magazines and overturned shelves, jaw broken or an eye swollen like an orange. So I abandoned that thought. He continued to silently leaf through his magazine as I waffled. Finally, mustering up all the courage possible, I croaked “Hey Mike”. Without even looking up from his magazine, he said exactly what he should have: absolutely nothing.