Red Lounge Saint

Asserting that I was not to do any of the talking, we headed out on our sacred quest for a lime. We had to convince a bar to part with some fruit. I suggested a simple story: we’re throwing a party down the street and we need a lime for gin and tonics. Our first mark was the lonely but expensive Gargoyles in Davis Square. I waited outside in my own expansive world scribbling notes. Chris approached the bartender, asked for help, and then set the scene: a car outside with a girl and bottle of tequila; you would make my day if I could have a lime. With some encouragement from two drunks at the bar, the bartender passed Chris a lime with a chuckle. We could have gone back to the bar for a pineapple by setting the scene: a car outside, a bottle of tequila, and a guy.

The parade of two promenaded the holy lime back to the Red Lounge with much rejoicing. The lime was properly heated and squished. After two iterations, the right amount of vodka was selected. A veil of heaven descended as dawn approached.

Work

Somewhere in Cambridge

Arggggggggh. At least that was my mantra for six months of madness. I began life as an industrial chemist on February fourteenth because then I heart my job. Unfortunately, my advanced scientist business card title meant that I got to stir improved paints all by myself. The camaraderie, intellectual curiosity, and exuberance from ten years of academics were gone. I was relegated occasionally to sitting in a gray box of a room sitting astride a large mechanical sieve that sprayed a mixture of water and gray paint everywhere.

Summer and fall were difficult times. I didn’t want to go home, I didn’t know anybody here. I became a professional sulker. The question wasn’t whether to quit, but whether it should be today, next week, or at the end of the month. Friends probably could sense a seething resentment.

I won’t say that all that has changed, but come winter and I feel like a different person than the eager but disillusioned worker that started last spring. Either it’s the passing of time, a mellowing of my frustrations, or all that meditation, but I’m no longer so ornery. It is just a job, not my whole life. On the one hand, the work is not fulfilling, I’m not learning much, I wish I were making a better contribution, and often I’m bored. On the other hand, I don’t put energy into work, the hours are short, I don’t take work home with me, the pay is good, I have little supervision or pressure, and the company as a whole is growing. Compared to my overworked brothers and chemists living in New Jersey, I’m doing alright.

So for the moment, little home projects dominant my energy. It’s editing pictures, shifting around the red lounge, going to parties, and planning trips. It’s been a lot of fun. Boston is not forever. When am I leaving? I figured out recently that I will leave when that nagging for a meaningful career grows too strong and the creative energy for all these home projects dims too much. I’ll know then that Boston’s turn is over and it will be time for a new phase of life with perhaps a different work/play/family balance. For the meantime, I and those that know me are surprised to hear that I am glad to be here, I am happy to be working as I do, and I’m pleased to know those that I know in Boston. I’m whistling a new tune and it happens to be a merry one.

Diversity

Although I might bitch about work excessively, I can’t complain about the overall organization. I have worked ten years now in advanced science and have frequently noted a lack of women in science. All of my brothers’ graduate schools had only one female professor. I can’t even remember meeting a black chemist except for one visiting lecturer.

Work is a different story. The question no longer is where are the female black scientists, but which one you are talking about. In a company of seventy, we have at least four black women. The director of Information Technology is a black man, also a violinist and a pretty good chess player, but he is not the lone black male either. Latinos. Yes. Jamaicans. Sure. Indians. Chinese, Korean, Japanese, even an abundance of Canadians. This is the most diverse organization that I have ever encountered and I applaud the management and hiring officers to make diversity a priority. Diversity is not going to happen on its own cause left to the status quo you will amass a big group of white and asian guys that stay away from each other.

Quotes of Note

These came up one night with the couple over bitters at Shay's tavern in Harvard Square.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
--F. Scott Fitzgerald (for Chris)
The Great Gatsby

Halcyon days like boats drifting along slow-moving rivers; spring evenings full of a plaintive melancholy that made the past beautiful and bitter, bidding them look back and see that the loves of other summers long gone were dead with the forgotten waltzes of their years. Always the most poignant moments were when some artificial barrier kept them apart: in the theatre their hands would steal together, join, give and return gentle pressures through the long dark; in crowded rooms they would form words with their lips for each other’s eyes—not knowing that they were but following in the footsteps of dusty generations but comprehending dimly that if truth is the end of life happiness is a mode of it, to be cherished in its brief and tremulous moment. And then, one fairy night, May became June. Sixteen days
now—fifteen—fourteen—
--F. Scott Fitzgerald (for Magda)
The Beautiful and Damned

There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die
--Hunter S. Thompson (for Chris)
foreword from "Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo" by Oscar Zeta Acosta

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes.
Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would
but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly.
Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away
from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves
to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful,
evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and
strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is
a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize
it as such. - Henry Miller (American Author and
Writer, 1891-1980)

And perhaps my favorite quote of all time, delivered in the most poetic of moments:

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.
- Batty, BladeRunner

I got a lot of living ahead of me.

Snowbound

The Red Lounge

“If I’m not having sex, I will answer the phone,” responded Holly in Seattle.

Friday night has come. I’m tickled pink, and not just due to the massive Red Lounge gimlet effervescing longingly in front of me.

Snow came today while I worked in the room with no windows. All afternoon the masses fretted about their cars and their commutes. Come evening, I strapped on my boots and took to the streets. Some of the sidewalks have been plowed and as I cut across the crest of the park, skating with a shuffle step on the finely plowed walk, I was happily alone in my winter reverie. It is December and snowy cold still resounds enchantingly on a still night. Come March and I will curse its dirty barrenness.

I climbed my frosty steps, locked the door, and settled in. Sage tells me she enjoys winter for its warm intimacy indoors when the weather prevents a quick dash to another locale. With a house full of projects and leisure, with a lounge glowing warmly red while the wind blows outside, I understand what she means.

The Thai dinner was eaten lovingly and more paper snowflakes were cut over a Simpson’s episode. This page fills, the glass empties, I am happy. Happy that I finally can be alone at home on a Friday night and rather not be anyplace else. Happy to be doing whatever I’m doing and not worrying that I’m not making enough of the moment.

Dr. Doctor

My last doctor was a pediatrician in my hometown, a real nerd of a guy named Myron Siner. I stopped yearly check-ups sometime in highschool when I got a bit too old for Myron to be fiddling with my bits and it appeared finally that I would live.

Fifteen years have passed and I haven’t seen a doctor since. I self-medicate, tough it out, and live with a chronic case of hypochondria. Recently I have been dying of almost everything: HIV, hepatitis, Parkinson’s, hair loss, even ovarian cancer that I hear is catching. Men don’t see doctors. If I have a life threatening condition – which I do as part of the deal for living is unfortunately dying – I rather not know exactly what it is.

Nonetheless, many of my underemployed friends lack health insurance. Hurt teeth, busted toenails, and regular exams have to wait until severities of one organ getting swapped for another. At the urging of these underemployed friends, I took advanced of corporate health care. I arranged my first scheduled doctor’s visit in fifteen years.

My doctor has a clinic in a medical building whose parking lot conveniently is the same lot for my work. If I ever keel over at work from too many fumes, doc will see me out of his office window. My doctor, recommended by a colleague, is a genial middle-aged man named Ricardo Wellisch. Six months after I called to make an appointment, I got a chance to meet him in the middle of October.

Ricardo and I talked some about my job, my parents, my health, and my excessive alcohol consumption. He palpated my chest, took my blood pressure, and checked my ears. When he walked out briefly and told me to take off all my clothes, well I took off all my clothes replaced with one of those unfortunate gowns that ties in the back. Little did I know that take off your clothes means leave the underwear and socks on.

For six months, I haven’t slept well due to some of the most horrible words in the English language: blood test. Few things are more grueling psychologically. Now I didn’t faint, but the world did go fuzzy for a bit while the nurse hurried a conversation to keep me involved in terrestrial matters. If the blood test is required for a marriage license, looks like I’ll be lifelong bachelor.

I got my test scores. Grand Master Chris, whose father is a doctor, even interpreted them for me. You will like to know that I’m hepatitis C, HIV, and liver cancer free. My platelets are good. I have glucose. My cholesterol is at 145mg/dL with HDL of 51 and LFL of 79. I hear that these numbers are pretty good. I feel ready to snort coke off two prostitutes.

Unfortunately, Ricardo cured my chronic hypochondria but I am already dreading the next blood test in two years. Can’t they knock me out first?

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Advice from a Dutchy

He remains nameless but here's his picture

You know......we Dutchies have ruled the planet once! We sailed the seven seas, hunted for new slaves, explored new markets to manipulate, and leaving chaos behind to return home and be treated like kings. It's not just something we do; it is a way of living. Due to an unclear array of events we ended up with the smallest country in the world. But to compensate we allowed the use of the herb so we could expand our mind but still occupy the same amount of space. That's why we call it space-cake its the cake that introduces the space. Other civilized countries introduced television to sedate their citizens. We, the Dutchies that is, were in that experiment too. But TV has always been in serious competition with weed. Nowadays, some combine the two, which inevitable will lead to mindless staring. Uhhhm, I guess am drifting away......... The point is I've been practicing on you guys. So I know that the human species that occupy northern America are not as bad as the movies make you want to think.

Mindfulness

Dance Studio on Huron Ave

My friend Alyson has undergone a remarkable transformation of well-being from scattered divorcee to exuberant, centered bon vivant. It has been, I surmise, a lot of hard work for her, getting reacquainted with herself and rebuilding confidence. I admire her muchly for her beaming peaceful joy.

At her urging, I started yoga in April every Monday nightsat a Cambridge studio called Baptiste Yoga. It’s ninety minutes of hot-box exertion, but the yoga has insinuated a refound awareness of my body. I stand differently now, I hope, on the center of my feet and not on the edges. I sit differently now, bending at the hips instead of at the waist. I can balance on one foot; I can finally touch my toes.

Yoga may be primarily physical so in September, I enrolled in a night class on meditation through the Cambridge Center of Adult Education. The title simply was “Beginning Mindfulness”. We meet Tuesday evenings for ninety minutes in a dance studio. We don’t dance. Instead, the twelve of us spend most of the class catatonically sitting in chairs, breathing.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I thought the instructor would be a new-age organic hippie girl, but instead we got the benevolent Andrew Weiss, a scholarly middle-aged scientist from the suburbs. He is both quietly encouraging and enthusiastically methodical. As the weeks go by, I grow more fascinated with Andrew’s life. He was once a lawyer; he now is an optometrist. Somewhere in between were long stays at Buddhist monasteries leading to ordination in two different world orders.

Our class never got to bend spoons psychically, but some of the mental exercises are challenging. In the first week, we simply closed our eyes and concentrated on our breath. Say inhale, count one, say exhale, count one, say inhale, count two, and so forth on to ten and then back down to one. From this concentration on breathing, we moved on to concentrating on the four Buddhist foundations of mindfulness: of the body, thoughts, feelings, and objects of mind.

The class dwindled to eight people but these eight stayed the entire ten weeks. I don’t remember anyone’s name, but I did hear much about boyfriend problems, adversities conquered, and uncertainties at home. Although the mindful speaking and listening part of the class was a verbal interaction strictly between the instructor and the speaker and not between members of the class, the presence of the group encouraged us to keep at daily mindful practice. Every morning now I meditate in a chair in the Zen room; at night another five minutes. We were three men and five women of a range of ages from a bit younger than I to probably fifties or sixties. Many were teachers or artists, some self-employed, others – like myself – contemplating a career change.

An objective of the class – as I perceive it now – was not unraveling Zen puzzles or life quandaries, but rather a grounding in the present and the development of tools to live a conscious life. I enrolled in the class naively hoping that the course would solve my work crisis. A little meditation would convince me that I should become a lawyer or go to business school. None of that happened. However, meditation at least temporarily has fundamentally reworked my life. I am more than my job. Whether I stay or go is no longer this oppressive constant decision. I’ll leave when I’m ready. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy who I am and what I am doing.

Host

In the 1960s, my grandparents bought a large agricultural plot in New Hampshire. Dubbed the Pitcher Farm, the large clapboard house, lake cottage, and silo was frequent destination for the Dudek clan as well as all sorts of family and friends Evelyn and Robert accumulated through a long and merry life together. The Pitcher Farm was our gathering place for Thanksgiving and swimming hole in the summer.

Robert kept a guest book by the dining room table. Over the years, an assortment of folks left notes to the Pitchers and logged their comings and goings. I’d like to think that I could figure out when my father first came to the farm as a non-Pitcher with my mother. Good ol’ Granddad lived to greet folks in the morning with a large breakfast – often blueberry pancakes – that he made. He was the consummate gentleman host.

Through my much shorter life, I have been often the guest and rarely the host. I have traveled too much with few belongings so when I have rested, it is in small, cumbersomely empty quarters, like in college co-operatives or in a small room in a large shared house. With my arrival in Boston and the opening of the Palace, for the first time I feel comfortable – like my grandfather – to trade roles and be the gracious host. And they have come. In my eight months here all sorts have spent the night. I don’t have a guest book, but here is the log, in roughly chronological order, or those that have slept here:

John
Ray
Alex
Fiona
Steve Andrews
Dr. Shaw
Theodore (disaster)
Holly
Matthew
Andy
Mike Bada
Alejandro (who?)
Robert
Sage
Lee
Danielle
Chris
Magda
Becky
Rene

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The Mines of Moria

Panamint Range - California

Every Thanksgiving, Steve Andrews leaves his residence in the Bay Area to travel south to Death Valley to camp. He asserts that late November is a perfect time for the desert as the heat and crowds have long since left, but the snow has yet to come. Usually he and his slightly older brother eat turkey sandwiches in the car and then head out for the trail for the next few days.

Thanksgiving rolled around this year and I knew I had to be part of the Death Valley adventure. Sadly, ever since my grandparents passed on, the large family Thanksgiving has been replaced by a smaller family gathering in transition. Steve and I had known each other quite well as fellow part-time graduate chemists and full-time dilettantes at Stanford University. As he was raised by wolves, his natural environment involves sleeping on a frozen lake in a loin cloth.

Much to my poor Mother’s consternation, I booked a flight in June with a convoluted flight plan. Come Thanksgiving morning and my dear brother John wakes much before dawn. In the first snow of Boston, he arrives at The Palace at five as chauffeur to take me to the airport. I board a six-thirty flight to the opposite of Boston: Long Beach, California.

There I am met by Kenneth Andrews, a boy that looks like Steve but - as Prof. Boxer says – has a different ear to nose ratio than his brother. We pick up affable brit Kate and drive through Los Angeles and over the mountains into the desert to the China Lake Naval Reserve. There we meet up with the car that departed early from San Francisco. Together we continue to our final destination, the Panamint mountains overlook ing Death Valley.

Our large party of ten camped in the rudimentary parking lot in the Panamint foothills our first night. It was warm so I slept outside with visions going through my head of cowboys chasing turkeys. I woke at dawn, fixed to help fix breakfast, and then broke camp. With loaded packs we climbed four thousand feet. The trail was treacherous and exhausting. We forded streams, climbed short rock faces, brushed through thorned plants, scrambled over scree, and endured hot sun without a beer to be seen.

Our hearty pack of ten made it to the high plain of Panamint City. City ain’t a good word as this town lacked people. A former gold rush town of a thousand people that prospered twice, the last time in the 1970s, Panamint failed when heavy rains washed out the road up as well as several of the buildings of the city. What remains are a few wooden structures, lots of shot-up trash like twin RVs, and the mines.

Damn that Steve Andrews, he plans everything. Friday might have been the day after Thanksgiving and the busiest shopping day of the year, but in the dark, we were thankful for a full Thanksgiving meal cooked on three Whisperlite camp stoves. We ate sliced turkey, cranberry sauce from Massachusetts (thank you, I mean thank me), green beans, Israeli couscous, sweet potatoes, even pecan pie with port. Such a welcome feast to this weary hiker.

Saturday, we woke leisurely and then hiked to Panamint pass for a view of the two valleys, Panamint Valley and Death Valley. From the height of six thousand feet, Death Valley looked like a flat plain of ground with white and brown splotches but not much more. An energetic group climbed further to Sentinel Peak, but I stayed with Kate and Chris to lounge in the pleasant sun.

That evening, after a meal of Thai red curry over noodles and cheese fondue, we explored the mines by starlight. Panamint City contains the remains of a tall brick chimney probably for ore smelting. Furthermore, there is a smallish warehouse with gear and cog equipment. Beyond that, further up the hillside, are two mines. The first, behind a heavy steel door, has just a hot, small cave of a room with a wooden floor covering the shaft down below. The other mine, however, is cut from the rock face and retreats horizontally into the mountainside. We ventured in with headlamps. After about twenty yards, the guy in back with me mentioned that the mine might collapse so the two of us retreated and waited under the stars. Minutes passed. My imagination grew. In the occasionally barely discernable light from the mine, I presumed that the group got eaten by cave dwellers or attacked by a miner or just got lost. In that perpetually dark shaft little could be seen. The few photons of light appeared as a beckoning wil o’ wisp to ensnare me. The mine lunged for a third of a mile and had two small side shafts. Eventually our group was reunited.

Over the night, we froze. Temperatures, I guess, plummeted to the twenties as water bottles froze. Six of us slept in a white tee-pee that the winds buffeted all night long. I thought the Andrews brothers were outside: one rustled a metal sheet to make the wind noise and the other shook the one tent pole. Fortunately, because of Esther’s sound knots and rocks on the tent stakes, our little home survived the night.

We broke camp Sunday morning after breakfast and hustled down the mountainside. Through streams again and darting through rock piles. The cars were a welcome sight. I was tired.

Although a few of my friends are inveterate outdoorsmen, I camp about once a year. I like to be outside but don’t get many opportunities. Campers, climbers, and kayakers are geeks in their own right with frequent talk of gear, destinations, and gnarliness. Me, I rather see the tourists’ sites and rummage through the culture than to hike on breathlessly to scale peaks and get exercise. I was a bit sad that I didn’t get a chance to drive through Death Valley, but that will happen another day on my own time in a Fiat. On the other hand, nobody but Mr. Andrews takes me camping and I’m happy for the adversity he throws my way. It was a tough slog up the mountain but o the view.

Chocolate Cake

Whenever I see chocolate cake, I have an immediate urge to eat it. I could be stuffed on Ethiopian injera or sated on tapas, but when I see cake, I must have it. It’s more than just about consuming the cake; it’s visual, euphoric, sense-tastic, some primal urge-craving for the ultimate in dairy decadence. Others have their own chocolate cake. For Chris, it is carrot cake. For Mike, it probably is potato chips.

Men have an instant visceral response when looking at women. For the right women, the response is quite analogous to the craving for chocolate cake. I see her, wham, and I want her, bam, almost not for the sex, but in an odd way, to consume, to stretch my mouth around and ingest whole like a famished boa constrictor. The sultry but difficult to describe combination of lines, eyes, hair, and gate engenders salivation. Furthermore, I sense that if I were married, that chocolate cake response would not go away. I could be full, but my eyes want more.

And so when I wander through town or stroll by the river, I occasionally see chocolate cake run by with a flutter of pony-tail. Not everybody is chocolate cake. I see a lot of meat loaf, runny eggs, even borsht. Someday I may even have my own slice.

Realizing my penchant for chocolate cake, Chris creatively orders chocolate cake to go at restaurants, delis, and road stands all over town when he is out with the wife. On his visits, he will bring me a new slice to sample and savor. These chocolate cake slices are all good and yet all different, a veritable orgy of limbs and gyrating bodies. All this talk of cakes has renewed my urges for more cake.

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Speedy Gonzales Dating

Newbury Street - Boston

Don’t try to write anything coherent after a Red Lounge Gimlet. Words come out amusingly garbled.

Many moons ago as a temporary resident of Dutchyland, Netherlands, I attended a speed date evening for ex-pats at a ritzy hotel in Amsterdam. It was tons of fun even if number 22 did not respond to my entreaties. Probably because by that point I was drunk and raving. I feel bad for the Polish girl I turned down.

Moons pass and I move to Boston. Finally time to date speedily again in a city in which I live. On Sage’s urging, I signed up for a Hurry Date evening. Talk about corporate excess: this hurrydate site really pushes its events and monthly fee benefits under a veneer of love and romance.

Nonetheless, come one rainy Wednesday in November and I’m jumping the subway with the General Tito as companion. I wind up on elegant Newbury Street at a two-storey bar/restaurant with a red glow and a name of INQ. The young meat has assembled. The women order cocktails; the men look disappointed at five-dollar bottled beer.

In the course of two hours, I sat at fifteen different small tables meeting one woman after another for four minutes each. The demographic said 25-35 but they forgot to add boring and uninteresting. I feel sorry for the large chick from Southie who just watches movies and her equally uninteresting friend not surprisingly also dating. There were, however, some standouts like the demure and suave Sophia who grew up in Africa and whose father once ran the Peace Corps. Then there was supa hot Kimberly studying social work for needed cases of luv like me. Surprisingly, I bumped into a coworker, Joanna, who was equally shocked to see a fellow dater from a company of just sixty. Of course, the perplexing question is whether to check her box or not. No and I’m stuck with a co-worker who feels jilted; yes and I acquiesce to dating someone who I’ve already met and know there is no chemistry.

That’s all there is to speed dating, the very male one’s and zero’s. You either circle her number or you don’t. In the sack or in the bin. Naturally, the women wrote notes with names and salient features like salaries, but for myself, it was just instinct and the additional beer or two to rely on for needed advice. If you want to see her, and she wants to see you, email addresses are exchanged and electronic flowers are sent in due course.

Of course you want to know what happened. A few days later I got around to entering my responses electronically. I said yes to four of the fifteen women including Sophia, Kimberly, and two others. Five of the fifteen women wanted to see Mr. Stud here again. One-third success rate ain’t bad, although reaffirming my circular theory of love, none of the four I wanted to see again (all at once, please) overlapped with the five that wanted to see me. The vend diagram had no intersection and so I sit home alone on a misty Wednesday night.

Fortunately, a few parties later and I have realized that my wife shall spring forth from the Burner community and not from the masses that date speedily. My Burner, yoga, creative intellect, manic, humorous, driven, supa-fine goddess is out there; she just don’t know it yet.

Armin van Buuren

Out of randomness emerges an appearance or order. In certain genres comes a preponderance of people from one country or region. For a while Spaniards dominated men’s tennis. Perhaps a fad takes hold. The little country of The Netherlands exports a hell of a lot of techno DJs.

At the Burn, I caught a few outdoor sunrise sets from the popular Tiesto (from Tilburg, Dude). Another Dutch DJ came to town on Friday, the hard to pronounce Armin van Buuren (van Leiden). He’s a scrappy blond kid of twenty-nine with tons of vibrant enthusiasm. He spun records for a few hours at the packed Avalon, one of many big club on Landsdown Street surrounding Fenway Park.

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It was raining heavily but Kyle, Kim, and I caught the bus from Central Square into Boston. The club was unexpectedly crowded with lots of young collegie kids. For once, I felt ancient but at least there was lots of eye candy. We stood in a bad spot in the cavernous white interior between the bar and the floor, meaning folks pushing through took me for more of a door than a wall. Once we moved, we were happier. Armin started with lots of arm-pumping, cheesy, short crowd pleasers, but as the night hit one, his music opened up. See, I get out. Sometimes.

New York Party, Part Deux

At sometime between the godly hours of four and five in the morning, the New York Decompression ended with a halt like a record arm jerked away from a moving track. The thugs that ran security moved the herd of disoriented burners to the exit and out into the street. Much muddling ensued. I bade farewell to my new peeps with a “It is beginning not an end. Make beautiful music.”

What to do at such a wee hour? Go to another party, of course. We hopped into the rental Jeep and zoomed through Brooklyn. Zoom isn’t the right word since none of us could drive completely properly and some of us were just plain silly, disoriented, and tired. We picked up two: Meridian, a man in green who, in another live, performs with Blue Man Group in Boston; and Matt, a guy who looked eerily like my brother Ray to the point I just called him Ray and had extensive pretend conversations with him about teaching in Ohio. A party ensued in the back; we considered just parking for thirty minutes, having fun, moving the car again, and so making our way through Brooklyn and Manhattan. Some of us wanted to drive by committee.

Circling blocks, avoiding police, we made it to another warehouse district. Supposedly there was a club somewhere, but all we saw were police cars with their lights on and sketchy guys prowling the streets, both in a game with the other. After all that energy spent at decompression, I could hardly move. Nonetheless, at Sage’s magnificent urging - this is New York, we got to go on – we disembarked

into the most fantastic, convoluted space I have seen in many years. It was an artists’ collective, a maze of three floors with lounges, bars, dancing, a ladder to the roof, and a fire escape linking everything. It was On the Waterfront meets Fear and Loathing with a bit of innocent Disney thrown in. Odd, intricate decorations were everywhere, so much so that it was hard to bite whole. A guy at the door took our five dollars for the adventure.

I was pretty much done running around, but I did get to wander and take it all in. I bought a Pabst at one of the bars and then sampled the music from at least four of the random dj rooms. A great guy in orange and white pajamas with a wide-brimmed knit hat lined with beer can parts turned at one turn-table. Unlike at the sugar factory, there were plenty of places to sit, escape for the comfortable couch on which one guy had already passed out.

The word on the street was that a group of artists worked and lived in the building. Once of month they cleared out their belongings, set up the space differently, and then invited the world in. Some people came over from the decompression party like the blond marching band major and his hot, hot, hot date; others seem to run the place like the enormous jolly black guy that shook everyone’s hand and dug the horns on my head.

I climbed up a steel ladder bolted to the side of the building, hoisting my Pabst in front of me. The roof had a spectacular view of Manhattan as well as a look at the psychedelic light garden the tenants were cultivating and the large “No Gulf War” sign. In a hole in the roof, another ladder led downwards through an opening emitting heat and music, a passageway either to hell or fun or a bit of both. I climbed back into the.

Outside by the fire escape the sky lightened and the sun rose. I watched a quiet guy contact juggle with a glass globe. The crowd thinned and grew more intimately tired. Sage, Meridian, and Matt stayed in New York. Mr. B, Holly, and I plodded to the car and lumbered off. We crossed Brooklyn lost. At a traffic light, we saw a Hasidic man all in black with a black hat and long forelocks. Another was crossing the street the other way, then a third, and a multitude, none interacting and all in a rush everywhere. It was a little bustling alternate reality like coming across the birds in a Hitchcock film. We ventured on to the highway, crossed the Whitestone Bridge, and made it back to Boston by noon, plumb out of energy but full of contentment.

New York Decompression

Um…Errr…Wow. A usually voluble person is at a loss for the right words to describe last weekend. The Burning Man festival ended a long time ago in September, but various cities have a last send-off as part of a decompression ritual. Boston’s decompression threw on the scene over the Halloween weekend.

New York waited until last Saturday. The party was billed as:

“Now, as we brush the playa dust from our tents and hunker down for the long
winter ahead, it's time for one last blow-out. Get ready for Psyche's
Sideshow, a thirteen-hour interactive carnival where we bring the Playa to
the city and reveal our souls through art, music, performance and revelry.
Pull out your top hat and fishnets, dial up your inner freak and become part
of Psyche's Sideshow…

This year's Decom will be held in a cavernous space with a massive outdoor
area and a panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline. There will be theme
camps, art, demonstrations, live and electronic music, dancing, a grill,
cotton candy, monkeys, drink specials, porta potties, fire performances and
daring acts of unprecedented skill and genius. Nothing is too wild and weird
for Psyche's Sideshow.”

What to do with such entrancing entertainment? Go, of course. New York, however, can be a dark and scary place. Naturally, a party this big requires reinforcements so I flew Holly Blue out from Seattle and Mr. B out from Denver.

Saturday morning I rented a car – actually a Jeep SUV – and with Sage in tow to make four, we motored west in the descending afternoon with a fuck-yeah. Through Massachusetts, through Connecticut as the sun set over the Merrit Parkway, and finally into New York. We scurried down a few highways and through a bunch of interchanges. Brooklyn came and we hit the end of the line at the East River.

We parked and looked for victuals. A party of this length requires sustenance. We tried one diner with bars on the window to find inside eighteen-dollar entrees and flounder bisque. Instead we foraged at the diner a few blocks over, a hipsterical joint where lounging twenty and thirty-something Manhattan and Brooklyn-ites in unkempt two hundred dollar jeans and the freshest of vintage T-shirts drank cosmopolitans and Schlitz beer. Dinner, however, was a fantastic lemon-sage chicken with truffled polenta and asparagus.

We parked next to a warehouse and spent thirty minutes changing clothes in the street as the wind picked up and tiaras went flying. Holly pulled on a black leather dominatrix outfit with lots of chains, arm bands, and corset straps; Sage had elaborate taffeta pink geisha garb; Mike loaned a Mozart costume from me consisting of a white overcoat, leggings, and black vest. I have spent the last couple weeks absently sewing together a tiger outfit with lots of tiger fur and black velvet. It’s not strictly a tiger costume as the tiger on the headdress also has one-foot styrofoam horns that glow orange.

The party gyrated in an old Domino sugar factory right on the water near the Williamsburg Bridge. Magical. There was a cavernous space for the DJ and dancing. Behind it sat a costume tent, a mirrored piece of art, and a drinks stand. Outside on the roof was a veritable funhouse of booths and tents with a panorama view of Manhattan and the Empire State Building. Outrageous former citizens of Black Rock milled about.

And yet it was all wrong. The cops had come to shut off the outdoor music. The wind picked up and the cold prevailed. The porta-potties stank and places to sit warmly outside were hard to find. Malevolent, unattractive faces lined with wrinkled came out of the darkness. The bouncers hassled a couple that danced wildly on the roof. It was an intimidating New York party with the movers and shakers of this enormous city.

Go inside, young man. Holly chatted up a storm. I met a woman from Boston’s scene. She had traded her white go-go boots and blue wig for a flowing, shimmering purple dress and futuristic make-up. A woman with a pink cowboy hat and a pink baton asked me about my life, but I didn’t want much to tell her that I was a humble chemist.

Mr. B started to waver. All the motion and anarchy was too confusing. Despite reassurance, he drooped, intoning circularly: I am so confused, I am So confused, I am So Confused. Of course it was confusing. Everybody is fancifully dressed; there’s lots of lights and crashing sounds.

I had to push forward and join the throng. I left Mr. B, aka Vicount Vivacious in Dominatrix Blue’s capable care to go dance.

A switch was thrown, a button was pushed, a lever was raised, everything changed. For perhaps the next five hours, I was a ball of joyful energy, constantly in motion, not always coherent, beaming radiantly with wonder. I haven’t been able to figure it out. I’ve never felt so profoundly innocent, bubbly, wild, effervescent. I jumped to whatever looked good talking to everyone. It became a mania like a dog running around a building as I made my way from the video screens into the throng of dancers up on to the stage, back out the rabbit hole into the quieter mirrored section and then back down the corridor to the start again.

I created a disparate community out of random assortment of people that I unconsciously gravitated towards.

There was the tall, stocky, feral man that saw the horns on my head and charged the tiger-antelope. We would circle each other for minutes and then part. Whenever he saw me again, his infectious energy would transfer and the crowd would clear to see the dance of the prey and predator.

There was the lithe blond woman in a red, white, and green Native-American dress capped with a red and silver Mexican wrestler mask. I told her mysterious mystical things like “we will meet again in the future. Think of the adventures that will happen in between.” Two minutes later and a dominatrix spanked me much to a crowd’s amusement.

There was the rasta-African in beige and green kinte cloth. He had wedged his feet between the railing. With medusa-like dreadlocks, he pulsed electrically and frantically forwards and backwards. I thought at first that he was a mechanical doll, run by a piston.

There was Meridian clad in furry green and covered in glow sticks. His head is preternaturally bald because he is a Blue Man in Boston’s Blue Man Group. Learning from Holly that I made my own clothes, he insisted on coming to my house for lessons.

There were the video screens. What the fuck were they showing? I looked up to see a tyrannosaurus rex eat a stegosaurus. Then evil skeletons shot fire from their eyes. Such darkness.

When my energy flagged, I sat, letting the party come. A tall, skinny carnival man with a hula hoop materialized and hooped in front of me. With the fleeting rotation of the hoop around every part of his body, awestruck I said not much more than “Wow” over and over and over again. A crowd assembled and I had the decadent luxury of watching the crowd’s glee watching the masterful energy of the hoopist.

And then there was her, my savior. We locked eyes early on. Our revelry was oft broke by an inflatable Spiderman doll that crowd surfed on top of our heads. She grabbed the doll and had her doggy-style way with it. She asked whether my horns glowed. I told her sheepishly that the batteries were in my coat but that I had lost it much earlier. She went to find it amongst the piles of stuff, found it readily, and hooked up the glow much to our delight. Her tall Asian female friend was similarly a divinity, feeding me apples and gum. They made me a brother.

It was all so strange, so over-the-top, so uncharacteristic of me. Furthermore, I asked for no names and gave out none of my own. It was about the moment, about immediate powerful connections. I told her, “I’m photographing you in my mind so I will always remember you.” I never was aware of what I was saying, but it just came out right with such energetic wonderment.

Several people wanted to know where I was from. I didn’t really know. Other people wanted to know where I was going afterwards. I didn’t really know. I could sense that some wanted me to go home with them, but I just wanted to stay. I did know instinctually that as long as I was willing to accept the world, it would provide. Despite flinging my coat in the oblivion, swinging around a tiny, expensive camera, wearing clothes that came in many pieces, separating from the three I came with, all of it came back and without any effort or anxiety.

Part of my blissful energy came from pharma, but a lot of it came from finally attaining peace with my life. It’s been a horribly difficult year of transitions and stasis, optimism followed by grim reality. And yet the time alone, the meditation class, the projects worked on at home, the commitment to my far-flung friends, and yoga has brought me some degree of inner harmony that I haven’t felt before. This party was a heightened manifestation of that contentment, joy, confidence, and happiness. It’s about the little things, the appreciation of the small. For example, ten years of college parties and I would frequently lament not coming home with someone. I realized in New York that I don’t want that. I’m not looking to get anything for anyone anymore.

Oh, the rapture on seeing Holly and Mr. B. Such an adventure and not even close to ending the night…

Work Advice from Matt

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<>Yeah, work blows. Maybe you should work like that guy in Office Space who decided he hated his job, his boss, and coworkers and decided to sit around and do whatever the hell he felt like. What's the worst that could happen, you get fired from a job you don't already like? That's what the internet was invented for anyway right. For people to kill time with who hated their job? But yes, I know, being in a job that you don't like depresses the hell out of you and affects the rest of your life. It makes you not want to go to bed, because when you wake up you know you have to go back to work. One thing that I've noticed being out of the working world is that people are afraid to change their jobs because they are afraid to look like slackers, slip on the corporate ladder, or afraid they won't find another job. In general, people don't give a shit what you do, when you move jobs you usually get paid more, and who cares what form of middle management you spend your life in. You will always be in middle management.

After way too much wine at the liquor store on Saturday afternoon, I took Kim over to the Palace for a dry-out sit in the Red Lounge. She's a great kid and fancied the leopard print fur coat I got months ago.

Of course drinking plus Red Lounge means art, well not in itself but with all the media I have around, it usually means art. Earlier in the day, I picked up some large sheets of black paper and a silver pen. With some magic help, I sketched Kim quickly without looking at the canvas. I'm still amazed at whatever appears. The leopard spots of her coat jump off of the body. A circle remains from a neck pendant. The figure looks a little li

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I'd like to set up a booth and draw portraits all evening.

Drunk Dialing erratum

With the advent of the cell phone came drunk dialing. Too many pints at the bar or a long night kicking back Red Lounge gimlets cause the mind to think of far-flung friends. The handy phone (so called “handies” in Germany) is ready to bridge the gap between unsuspecting sober friends and myself, usually a mess. All sorts of verbiage travels over the line that frequently is forgotten the next day.

Drunk dialing transforms into the more potent high dialing on certain unspecified occasions. High dialing reached its pinnacle at a rave party on a little island in the middle of the Colorado River in Austin, Texas. Due to an accidental and random press of phone keys when sitting on my side, Mr. Alexandro Hallock’s answering machine in California was subject to forty-five minutes of ravings from a small gathering expletiving “shit, shit, yes, oh my god, where are we again?” Fortunately, the recipient of this random high dial was Alexandro and not mother and father. As the late grate Ricky Ricardo said, Lucy, you have a lot of ‘splaining to do.

When the phone is not so handy such as in The Netherlands, drunk e-mailing is a satisfactory but more potentially dangerous alternative, more dangerous because the evidence of the drunken stupor lingers like fetid fruit and can be returned easily to the sheepish sender.

I thought that would be the limit to intoxicated means of communication, but after this weekend I thought wrong. You know those two tin cans you string together? Well on a lot of coconut rum… In order to explain myself, I must step back.

My local liquor store, the impeccable Downtown Wine and Spirits, purveyor of Generalissimo Tito, features a wine sale, but just twice a year. Alan, the head winesmith at his Somerville establishment, clears out some of the shelving to make room for wine distributors and their wares. It’s not just about buying, although if you do walk off with more than eleven bottles, you get an astounding 25% reduction in the mixed case. The distributors want you to buy, and to get you to buy, they want you to taste, and taste, and taste some more.

The sale occurred Saturday at a reasonable twelve to four in the afternoon while many are thinking of church the next day. The sale previously in April left our threesome quite a site at Redbone’s barbecue slobbering down a dizzy dinner. This time, however, I planned better and ate lunch – at Redbone’s – before the wine tasting.

All for naught. Twenty or so little tastes into the afternoon and I am chatting with everyone. A couple from the usual Wednesday night wine class wants my phone number and inquire whether I can host the class at my house. Sure! An equally intoxicated Lisa directs me to more wines to fuil my crate. A knowledgeable steward at the store, Lisa – black, slightly chunky, lesbian – is anti-matter to my matter (as Kim asserts) but is truly a wonderful radiant light. She pushes me to port and selects a few Californians for me to try.

Before I continue with the story, I should pause to list the wines that miraculously appeared on my doorstep like babies delivered by storks. I bought pairs of the following:

Annabella, 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon, Michael Pozzan Winery, Napa, CA
Chateau Sergant, 2001 Bordeaux, France
Benson Ferry, 2003 Red Zinfandel, Lodi, CA
Blaauwkippen, 2004 Semi-Sweet White, S. Africa
Crane Canyon, 2000 Pinot Noir, Rus. River, CA
Optima, 10 year old Port, Warre’s, Portugal

Heck, I don’t even like port. Towards the end of the afternoon, I spy a young fellow with an Amherst College ball cap. Having attended the aforementioned school, I made my introduction to Connor. We talked about Amherst and reflected on our college experiences. He graduated ten years after me. When I asked about his current profession, he said that he taught English at a local high school. Noble. I asked him where. He told me at the small school that I attended. Yumpin’ yimminy. We discussed my great high school English teachers and the caliber of the institution.

Worked up, I took out my notepad and started to write notes to all the English teachers I had in high school. Yep, drunk note sending. I think all these notes were lucid, but I don’t remember anymore the exact content. Come Monday there will be some smirking teachers in the upstairs English office. Comes with the territory when you get drunk and disorderly near the town where you were born.

That was just the start of the day. The rest of the day included a wonderful sketch of Kim in the Red Lounge, stuff you can do with a Red Bull can, and a make-shift haircut. Perhaps I need a chaperone.

From Decompression

This is floating around Craig’s list, and gives an indication of the intense frivolity of the party I attended at Red Lounge Studios:

Dead Dutch Pilgrim at Decom - w4m - 38
Reply to: pers-107883301@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-10-31, 12:51PM EST

You were dressed up like one at the Boston Burningman Decompression Party Saturday.

You are cute!
I was the woman with the short purple hair and the purple hat. I had the spiders crawling on my chest. The rest of my outfit was basically underwear, all purple and black.

You reminded me of a fabulous man I met at Pennsic, especially your hat. But he lives in Arizona. Still, you are cute in your own right and I wished I had the chance to meet you. By the time I was brave enough, you were talking on your phone in the hall by the coat pile. I don't know any good pick up lines which justify interrupting someone on the phone, so I let you be. Then you were gone!

If you read this, if you remember me, please write.

-Woman in the purple hat
this is in or around Watertown

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Decompression

Red Tail Studios

There’s a recent film called Groove that documents one night at a fictional rave in Oakland. With its happy, smiling people, the film calls forth the clichés at such parties and yet keeps true to the essentials of an all-night party. If you expand the film into eight hours of mania, I felt like I lived it.

As I turned the corner in the hallway of the seventh floor Boston warehouse, walking past the second bathroom and over the remnants of cocooned bodies, I saw something new and unexpected that night: daylight. It was seven in the morning and bright day had filtered in through the grimy plate windows. A woman in a black and silver ball gown, wearing a tiara, tiredly rested on a hallway folding chair. As she ushered in the morning, all I could do was press her knee on my way out.

I made my way over the bridge and through bright Boston. Only a few early-rising city folk remarked that I had a tiger skin hood on my head with two large glowing horns, big black eyes, a leopard skin coat, two tiger leg warmers, and a green glowing sword. The ticket woman smiled, let me right through, and asked, “Lion king? Right?” I got on the subway still foggy and took the long journey back like death warmed over.

Decompression usual implies a relaxing spread of the psyche, but this party wound folks up. For the Burning Man crowd, Decompression is an annual set of parties, primarily in San Francisco, in the fall after the Labor Day Burn. Boston’s Decompression set up shop last night in Red Tail Studios, an artist’s collective on the seventh floor of an industrial building in the Fort Point section of Boston. The organizers this year combined Decompression with Halloween. The space had been modified to feature some of the darker sides of the Burn: a black-lit cemetery, bodies wrapped in clear plastic cocoons, and a red paper fan fire in the smoking lounge.

While artists were decorating, my afternoon was a rush of sewing pieces of tiger fabric together to make a coat. Sleeves are a bitch and getting a black velvet lining to look right for a reversible coat is a degree of difficulty more advanced than my fledgling haberdashery skills.

What a party. These kids don’t fuck around. Do you know when you go to a club to hear a band and wish that there was a DJ set afterwards? Or want a drum circle? There must have been at least six performers on the line-up starting with an ethereal cello-violin duo and moving into Incus, a tribal group with massive drums. Psylab in white lab coats and jumpsuits played trance, but not with turn tables, but on conventional instruments like drums and guitar. Afterwards, they kicked it back to a bay of computers and then made way for a DJ who teasingly challenged with break beats.

And yet there was magic everywhere. While careening around with folks from Incus, I ran into Bjorn Borg practicing serves with an electric fly swatter. I watched the tongue stud fly out of someone’s mouth on to the floor. The smoking lounge was thick with thieves. There was a guy there named Ian the Greater and Mike the Lesser, occasional Theresa in a chicken costume as Avian Flu. It all came together and fell apart.

At two, Dr. Sewell doned his professional psychiatric garb, came on the mic, and announced a rift in the space-time continuum. Due to the daylight savings time change, sixty minutes from now, the time would still be two. Because it was the hour that time forgot, the unwanted child, the good Doctor urged us to do whatever we wanted, and so that’s what we did. I met a circus performer with a fire staff and burns dressed as a bad fire dancer. Another woman convinced me that if this were Boston then Boston can’t be bad.

My hosts went home fairly early. Fellow chemist Kyle and I had a good chuckle at the intricate glassware dispensing Bat Flu Vaccine. He tried to figure out all the parts like the Soxhlet extractor; I just enjoyed the coiling of the bright blue fluids. When Kim left with Kyle, unchaperoned I had the run of the house. For once I didn’t try to figure out what it all meant or what I was supposed to be doing.

The world’s best hula hoopest twirled a hoop on her neck at four in the morning. The center of the dance floor had a small platform with a pole so a man in 1950s-esque Dickensian costume did sideways splits. I encouraged the ineffably charming bartender in a gold smoking jacket to do his worst as he swirled together a gin and tonic with dry ice. The pineapple glowed oddly orange probably because of the ten foot spinning vortex of light behind the stage.

I rested – um, passed out – on a couch in the cemetery. A gladiator wearing not much more than a latex tunic left his girlfriend so she could rest her head on my arm and chest. I think she found relaxing the tiger fur and leather that I was wearing but we were not doing much talking. My other arm was draped over the legs of formerly manic Corey who spent much of the evening rescuing either drifting souls from alcohol poisoning or an out of place dog dressed simply as a dog.

It was a significant night for me. With all this little moments of poetry, I realized the new course my life is taking, to recognize, savor, and create those fleeting moments. Furthermore through my meditation class, yoga, little parties in the Palace, and odd projects, I really am on the right path. Work will always be work and I still have the call to wander the world, but it’s the small things, not the big questions.

Tripping Over Hippies

Yellow Springs – Columbus Day

I felt like Livingstone trekking through Africa or Perry searching for the Pole. Golly, Martha, pack my bags and bring the taser, because I’m going to the Midwest for the first time. Now Ohio ain’t exactly the Midwest; it’s more east-mid-west if you catch my drift, but flat, fat, and ol’ Cadillacs rusting on the lawn, Ohio is Midwest enough for me.

Me dear brother Ray moved to Ohio early in August. He took a temporary job as a big-time professor at little Wittenberg, a Lutheran college of two thousand students located in the cracker crack hood of Springfield, Ohio, a Springfield not to be confused for any comedy found in the Simpsons. Ray teaches physical chemistry as well as the Chemistry of Art to the inept. In one class, he’s got one-third of the fraternity presidents, and neither of them is doing well.

Nonetheless, three months after he moved west, young man, it was high time for me to pay a visit to my brother and play anthropologist. I told folks in Boston that for Columbus Day, I was traveling to Columbus. I did not get further than Yellow Springs, Springfield, and Dayton, but there will be more exploratory Midwest trips in the future.

Let’s talk money. Ray earns about half of what I do, but his apartment of the same size costs about a third of the one I inhabit. He does not have red couches or a Zen-Africa bedroom, but his dark mansion has charm, wedged as it is behind the tattoo-piercing parlor just off main street, called Xenia Avenue, as the street goes to Xenia.

Saturday morning brought the townspeople to town for the biannual Yellow Springs street festival. Yellow Springs is a one-street, whistle-stop town of about four thousand people and three thousand nine hundred ninety-nine are hippies, and not just your young vagabonds, but you have all sorts of diversity here ranging from teenage stoners to aging Marxists. For me, Yellow Springs is a beautiful place. One man said to his biker friend sitting outside the deli, “Oh, my wife, she’s at Tai Chi.” A candidate on the upcoming election is named “Judith Hempfling.” Ray has been to town long enough to meet the owners of the local bar, local wine shop (I notice a trend here), and local yoga studio.

Yellow Springs is more famous for its college, the we’re-too-good-for-grades college of Antioch. Unfortunately, parents like grades so the enrollment of Antioch is dropping. Still, the school has an extensive arboretum called Glen Helen. Sunday morning, Ray and I explored the glen to find the local swimming hole as well as the ochre colored spring for which the town is named. Yellow Springs, although reminiscent of something that occurs after too many beers is at least more euphonious than Ochre Springs.

At this street festival, we saw fiddle bands, soapstone sculptors, tie-dye salesmen, and Hells Angels bikers. I bought a whole mess of stuff including sweets from the elderly community center, a tie-dye shirt (fight the man, yeah), a three-headed hemp dragon, and a set of four psychedelic portraits. I would have bought some expensive crystal vases if I had needed them. Ray met the yoga teachers for which he has already been featured for his testimonial. We ate burritos served by the local fraternal order and then drank cheap wine at the cheap wine store.

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To relieve ourselves of excessive hippie-dom - I almost gave away all my material goods - we attended a potluck dinner for the Wittenberg chemistry faculty at the former chair of the department’s house in Yellow Springs. It’s a different world there. Midwest potluck involves lots of mayonnaise, eggs, and something called Cinncinnati Chili. This concoction is a cinnamon-tomato-hamburger sauce served on beans and onions poured on to spaghetti. His faculty colleagues are not the driven, arrogant types you find at Stanford. Instead, they have their own non-chemistry passions. One teacher will take a month off in August to travel to China with her husband to adopt a child. Another professor plays flute for the local symphony. We escaped before the Star Trek conversation began in earnest requiring a rush to reference books.

As the arts are too expensive in Boston, I got my dose of theater at a mediocre production at Wittenberg on Saturday night. The play, the Cripple of Inishmore, was a contemporary rural Irish comedy about as well put together as a sit-com, and a bad one at that, like Friends.

After that, I needed to hit the bottle like an Irishman. The General – Generalissimo Tito, as in vodka, joined us as Ray and I walked down the street to the one main bar in town called Peach’s. It’s not much on atmosphere, but the beer selection is phenomenal with stuff like He-Brew and the patrons are friendly. We listened quietly at first in rapt admiration to a guitar duo and then busted a move later on when the college crowd got going. These guys played short snippets of familiar songs but in their own colloquial, acid folk style. Around one in the morning, I was banging conga drums hard enough that my middle finger still is bruised days later.

Sunday, we drove the twenty minutes through decaying Springfield for a tour of the Wit, the small university whether my brother teaches. It’s odd to check out his office, his lecture halls, even the faculty list board in the chemistry department with moveable type featuring his name: RC Dudek. For me, it was an important impression of first year university teaching, something I may start twenty-two months from now. Too bad the chemistry labs look decrepit and the students are not the sharpest knives in the drawer – they are more like spoons. Ray is such a great fit for the position as he is animated, dedicated, and tough. The department thinks so too as the word on the street is that he can have the job as long as he wants. After touring Yellow Springs, meeting his fellow teachers, and then checking out Wittenberg, Ohio isn’t such a bad place after all to spend a lifetime.

Art Collecting

An article in a local Boston paper asked, “When was the last time you bought an original piece of art?” I bought some art last weekend from a street vendor in Yellow Springs. The work isn’t original as they are screened prints, but it is not massed produced either. Some guy in Dayton makes psychedelic portraits of beasties. The wide-eyed innocent beasties are for children’s bedrooms; the more aggressive cracked-out beasties are for strange people like myself. Now I got four prints. Where to put them?

I’m trying to limit my wall space to either my own photographs or art that I buy directly from artists. I got a photograph of my great-grandfather Albert Pitcher in the study and a portrait of the ship R. B. Fuller, one of the boats an ancestor Baker McNear owned. Unfortunately, the big blue woman, the huge ugly mauve painting of irises, even the seascape in the study – they all have to go.

There Once Was a Man From Nantucket

Nantucket – Sunday, 2 October

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who had a dick so long, he could suck it.
And he said with a grin
As he wiped off his chin,
“If my ear were a cunt, I would fuck it.”

What to do with a depressed Dudek? Take him away, far, far away to places without chemistry or work or even many Bostonians. Although I have lived in the Boston area for about nineteen years, I have yet to sail out to either of the famous Massachusetts islands: Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard. Both of them require a boat trip as they lie beneath the tricep of the Cape.

The couple suggested an early fall trip. The crowds have mostly scattered then, the water is still warm, prices for accommodation fall, and the weather holds. All were true this unusually warm October weekend as the three of us drove from Beacon Hill to Hyannis, much like Rose Kennedy with John and Bobby. We picked up the ferry at a freaky early nine o’clock and sailed with luggage (P.O.S.H. of course) to Nantucket. Lumbering off the ferry about two hours later, we walked up a cobblestone road to a bed and breakfast at 76 Main.

Nantucket is an odd, little barrier island. Its distinctive stretched triangular-disc shape is emblazoned on everything from belts to street water main covers. Although about eight miles wide and three miles thick, the island has principally one town called Nantucket full of quaint tourist shops, a few bars, and lots and lots of weathered gray shingled houses, many of which were built in the boom years of the early to mid 1800s when the island sat as the whaling capital of the world. Melville’s Pequod from Moby Dick is a Nantucket craft. The declining need for baleen for whalebone stays in corsets, whale oil for lamps, and ambergris for perfumes caused the industry to collapse. The island reinvented itself as a summer tourist town for the wealthy and the seasonal European help that caters to it. Or so I think; the Whaling Museum wanted a fifteen-dollar extortion charge for entry so as a non-visitor, I can be more liberal with my facts.

We rented sturdy bicycles for the weekend and set sail ourselves through the streets of Nantucket. The cobblestones are murder on the groan, a bit more bearable with a cushion of alcohol. For an island town, there are scarce views of the ocean. First, because the island itself is so flat, but second, I think the initial builders picked high, inland spots to construct their houses to avoid flood destruction and erosion. Cars are remarkably tolerant of all the tourist yahoos on two-wheelers.

We pedaled south to where else? a brewery. Off a small road in a windswept agricultural area sits Cisco brewery, vineyard, and distillery. This growing joint concocts beverages of all alcohol contents. The grapes come from other parts either as intact grapes or juice. The stills ferment Triple Eight vodka that is sold neat or flavored with orange or native cranberries. In an open barn with a chatty group or inebriated, iterant cyclists we samples five beers. A wedding couple came by in an SUV for a picture among the barrels and a well-deserved beer. I got a tap on the shoulder with an inquiry “what do I get for a thousand euros?” referring to my cryptic “wil je nummertje maken?” red Dutch shirt. I talked for a while to some Aussies and Yanks, one of whom just got back from six years of living in Gouda and had figured out my shirt’s proposition. The three of us pedaled a bit wobbly but happy from bank to bank all the way to the ocean. As the sun set, we spread out beach towels and looked for the green flash. Dinner was a massive affair in an old basement called the Den of Thieves. Over exquisite fish tacos, we talked to a particularly trashed woman and a New Zealand waitress. Most of the staff on the island come from somewhere else.

The next day we ventured farther on the trusty bicycle steeds to Madaket, a village on the west side of the island. As the midday sun reached its zenith, we spread out more beach towels and frolicked in the surf. The sun beat down heavily for October and all of us turned an unexpected shade of red. The water had a heavy undertow; two surfers in black wet suits fought the mushy waves.

Nantucket irked me from the beginning. The place reeked of entitlement. Entitled middle-aged yachting New Yorkers, entitled bratty kids, entitled smarmy tourists. I never went to Nantucket as a kid. Yet, a few hours off of the ferry, cruising on a bicycle over cobbles or through marshes towards the ocean, the aura of the island took hold. It is a wonderful spot. The little towns have clumps of gray houses some which shelter rotting boats, little lanes, barking dogs, and gas lamps. Unlike colonial Williamsburg, Nantucket is a working city but determined to preserve its character. I tried to figure out whether the island votes Republican or Democratic. I think most of the citizens - tootling sea-shanties in their boats, quaffing pints in the whaling basement of the Coffin House, climbing to the working corn-grinding windmill, or scouting the next idyllic scene for a watercolor – are just too busy to vote.

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