A quiet Friday evening at home, after a fatiguing week at my well-to-do high school wrapped up in my own Napoleonic illusions of tactical genius and God-given grandeur away from the tragicomic opera of life at the royal ball. My peers were laughing at me, not with me, because I may as well have been a blow-hard Italian opera singer roaring with indignation-- his ass sticking plumply out the back of his tuxedo pants behind the closed curtain after being pelted with rotten vegetables as I wiped off my tomato-splattered face with my shirt bill like something out of a "Three Stooges" short. The more he could not laugh, then the more ridiculous he became, even as he sat down for a grandiloquent meal of roast beef at his mother's table like Europe's overblown elite at the Waldorf-Astoria.

All is dark in this Frank Lloyd Wright-esque house, the lights are turned down low in the living room, and "Boo-Boo" the cat (-- in his fur "tuxedo") lays contentedly on your midriff in his "Mother Hen" position as you watch television with your aged mother-- a gray bun in her hair, a vague antsy smile on her face, as the two of you recline on the couch like Greek gods sated with food, like Cecil Rhodes and his "mummy" perhaps. For dessert, following a dinner of steak and garlic bread, the family cleared out about half-a-bag of those delicious "Famous Amos" miniature chocolate chip cookies that the average man struggling along like the comic-strip office drudge, Dilbert couldn't afford in such quantities in his crucified-to-the-cubicle helplessness.

Now you're in a stupor of carbohydrate meltdown, your blood-sugar metabolism taking a whammy-bar dive, and "to sleep it off" you're watching the meaty offerings on the networks meant to hook in "the homebodies" who aren't out bar-hopping or partying with their fist pumping in the air or snorting cocaine between a hooker's tits like 1990's degenerates. Mother in her 1960's "New Age" Jewish flake ways may object to such language, or such descriptions of the world, but such worldly tendencies exist inextricably in this sphere like toejam and anal rot.

But he didn't want to think about such things, no. Instead, a sultry girl two graded named Kate who made me lose my lordly composure and stutter out a greeting in the morning, as if my eyes were two jagged arrows being jolted by the electricity of this pretty, demure, independent, and interesting "god-woman". She wore a black trench coat that trailed down to her knees. My eyes all but bulged out of my head, drawn to her individuality and cynical teenaged grace.

I was like a clam at the bottom of the ocean, clapped up tight, but felt tingling excitement when a certain fish slipped through the water nearby. Such subterranean feeling, a cavern inside that was filled with the vast treasures of my soul. Chests of gold, spilling out with red rubies. Just to invite her inside, where the coral grew for her. Tenuous wisps, pulsing with warmth, waving up and down in the water. On a microscopic level geometric stars blossom forth with infinite complexity and wondrousness. But this pool of life would surely die and turn a calcified gray if turned down with a fleck of the tail. So I said nothing, waiting for hint or sign of "a golden opportunity".

But not all of life was potential romance, and was no more in evidence when I was doing homework around my Dad's dining room table. This was the lower middle-class house that clutter and "bargain-basement derangement" built, but actually a solid address constructed in the 1920's. You could pat your hand on the door mantel and feel it as you passed through the kitchen. Pots, pans, tea kettles, and tan wall paper with green, floral print designs. The refrigerator started up with a sigh. . . . the pathos of mouldering cabbage and liquid coffee stored in jars for the next morning's "pep-pep" jolt out of a lesser state of habitual low energy.

Then Dad needed my help.

The drain was clogged from the sink above, and we were both enlisted to play the part of plumbers. Down to the white-washed bathroom in the dingy basement, where a thick pipe curved into an elbow like the heart valves of a whale "in the belly of the beast". Dad stood on a red stool and unscrewed it while I waited off to the side holding the tools like the young assistant at a magic show. That was his style, easy-going and grimacing, and I usually got out of the dirty jobs.

Then a tide of black gunk, like pure crude oil, splashed him full in the chest. Decomposing clumps of hair, soap scum, and possibly sewage. I couldn't stop laughing, and Dad had his arms to the side, hands raised in a teeth-bearing grin as he recovered from the stinking shock.

Such, such was the life of men.

"Old Man Mathis", an old college buddy of Dad's would stop by some Saturday nights. Ostensibly on his way to pick up the Sunday Post-Dispatch because he would never admit to anything so sociable.

He is of Alsatian ancestry, an old European borderland historically vied for between France & Germany, blessed with a red, ruddy face and blonde, bristly hair like the direct descendent of a Crusader that appears on stained glass in Cathedrals. . . . . though what kind of religious fanatic he would be back then, one can not say because he was a sour old realist "above that sort of thing".

What cinched it for him was the time he visited Italy with his son stationed there in the Navy and toured the Vatican. You had to pay to get in, and at the end of the day he saw a church man sitting at a sanded, wooden, antique table-- counting money with a green shade over his eyes like a bookie as millennia of ostentation hung from the walls. It was the Las Vegas of soul-saving. . . . . but with more carved, marble arches and hunched over priests conversing softly.

Quite a contrast, for the frugal and spare way he lived. When "Old Man Mathis" was growing up, it was common knowledge that everyone owned guns and that you shot and gutted your own food and that there were two types of volunteers in the Peace Corps when they were handed a chicken by the locals. . . . . those who could cut off its head and those who couldn't. And what you had since then was the long cavalcade of neurotic quibbling, like a train of pampered fools not allowing themselves to believe their senses when something flies in the face of post-McGovernick lifestyles.

Don't "get him going". . . . .

He is like an old Billy goat, standing aloof and superior from things. He listens to your fanciful notions at perfect attention, blinks once as your sentences cascade into dreamy ideas, and reserves critical judgment at first. This way, you can't get angry at him. He figures that you'll collide with dream-dashing reality sooner or later.

Needless to say, I kept my conundrum about "The God-Woman" to myself.

"Old Man Mathis" had joined the military and his officers wanted to prepare the recruits for "the real deal" and insisted that the top buttons of their shirts remain undone in wintertime so they would get used to the damp coldness of the mud. He remembers the barracks; a cot; and a trunk filled exactly what what you need-- and no more. The walls of his house are bare, everything neat and tidy. His only indulgence? A small carton of vanilla ice cream. And "a night cap" of whiskey to help him sleep, gritting his teeth through the night. He practically goes through a single pack of cigarettes a week, the sweet kind that smells ineffably good.

Once, he had a barbecue and invited us over. There was a pan full of meat, laid out on the table, and he each gave us a single steak. I reached out for seconds and he all but slapped my hand.

Reflecting upon "the struggle within", I was walking home one Friday night at 11 PM-- belly full from said "buffet dinner", moonlighting through Wydown forest-- a long stretch of trees, a grassy strip in the center surrounded by opposing lanes of traffic-- and thought of the words I couldn't say to Kate.

Our health class touched upon the subject of drugs, Coach Larry Frost pointing the way to honor with x's and o's like "a chalk talk" most of the class was too bemused to take seriously.

Making a guest appearance was none other than "Officer Maury", a name that could suggest none other than a good-natured "desk jockey" with a fatherly mustache where typical business in this town was blue-haired old ladies locking themselves out of their Mercedes outside of the yuppie supermarket. Of course, they were "the lion-tamers" to darker events and were prepared to deal with that too as keepers of public order and the more hare-brained, misguided actions of vacuous wealth without values.

I myself was impressed by his official capacity, red-blooded and all-American within my search for simplicity and correctness. Yes, citizens cooperating with the police against the lawless scourge as the social democrats and liberal judges did nothing, fighting for decency and the good life.

I made "the war on drugs" my personal war.

After class, I stayed after to talk further about the crusade and what could be done to throw my wayfaring pothead schoolmates who laughed at me in jail. Officer Maury was impressed with this "young, upright citizen" in his midst. I felt privy to the informal world of integrity and authoritarianism one could glimpse "behind the scenes", where cops called each other by their first names down at the station, drank from Styrofoam cups of coffee, and put their feet up on the desk. If they pulled over a drunken pillar of the community, sloshed from a late night round of cocktails at an upscale restaurant, they would drive him home and all but tuck him into bed with "The Code of the Samurai" with a quiet understanding "that rank had its privileges".

Weeks later, in the fragrant early summer, I attended an outdoors book fair. Like a law-abiding citizen, moving about with caution so he could never be mistaken for a thief, academic and upright. Officer Maury was on the beat, standing on the outskirts, saw me, and all but tipped his hat like something out of a 1970's New York City tourist film.

It was how the emblem of "The History Channel" was a big "H" and might as well have stood for "The Hitler Channel" because that's all they ever ran.

And what made it worse was when the studios put out yet another accolade-winning Holocaust movie (-- and what one didn't win accolades?) where a man loses everything-- his home, his family-- and then finally years later is sitting on a bench in Israel as little Palestinian children frolic and play, and by then has turned into an ancient gargoyle with hair sprouting out of his ears. With a grimace, he struggles to lift a flower up in the air to admire it and croaks out "BEAUTY. . . . ." as the audience applauds and the violins play a sad Hasidic ditty.

If this was supposed to be "some kind of answer", I was not convinced.

As a joke, one would randomly page through "Mein Kampf"-- a hidden Luciferian knowledge-- like getting into Tarot cards or joining the Libertarian party. No matter what, kids would always have an attraction to ominous things. . . . . and rebel against their surroundings.

For this was our world of global neoliberal policies. . . . .

On PBS during the daytime slot when "The Teletubbies" pivoted into more adult fare such as "The Tavis Smile Hour", essentially a talk-show with leading figures that fit the fashion of our approved discourse, one looked back and forth "and really couldn't tell the difference" between the two. One was children's programming for kids, and the other was essentially "children's programming" for adults, since the establishment increasingly treated us like children who couldn't face "the hard stuff".

In my local community the fact you could even have an ice cream parlour that went by the name of "Maggie-Moo's" and two or three doors down in the shopping center you had "Blockbuster Music" with the affirmative-action help in the form of giggly, presentable black boys who were shaped like teddy bears and had all the character of Al Roker on "The Today Show" who eventually had to have his stomach stapled, his forays into the pastry table were so out-of-control.

All the sponginess made you uncomfortable in a way you could not quite put your finger on, even as you watched Impassive-faced tri-athletes in wrap-around sunglasses that shined with a rainbow glimmer endure like slender, ropy sticks of human beings. You could see them with their panting, grimacing expressions as they headed into the final mile with an almost Catholic agony, paying for the couch-bound sins of those watching the network documentary at home.

Gatorade and electrolytes, the body beginning to feed on its own muscle as the contestants sat out and were down on their haunches with a charley-horse upon the sulfuric stink of the black Hawaiian lava flats like a cruel cosmic joke played on the human spirit "that could not die", but ultimately would be snuffed out "soon enough". You questioned the vanity of this hobby as these self-abnegating types logged in endless miles like the saints of the sporting world, why they didn't work construction or build houses or "save the world" with the misguided, snail-eyed futility of our service organizations that our ex-Presidents chaired and called upon a greatness American didn't have.

Yes, in our neoliberal globalist world. . . . . its inconsequential anthem a jangle of angsty alt-rock and an explosion of random techno music from "hip Britannia" that hung upon the overlying sump of our one big Hollywood/entertainment/Wall Street/Ivy League/New York Times/ Washington D.C. "cosmic egg" that was going indisputably ROTTEN. Yes, the perpetual state of the depthless present where history stopped and became a disconnected series of tragedies, scandals, and news-feeds. Where the tendency was toward outlawing "the right to complain" while handing you a lollipop in the world of "Eurocrats" and bankers whose jobs seemed bland and equally meaningless, where even the most serious criminals "did no time". . . . . other than, of course, those who challenged the system like a Teutonic caveman.

The world lacked a humanity while liberal arts types "sang the virtues of humanity" that rang empty like a hollow shell as one stewed in resentment like slowly-boiling crude and wished for a deliverance that may or may not ever come as far as the eye could see. . . . .

It was "the going fashion" in the art world to say that "it was all relative", that there was "no higher or lower" and "it was all subjective". . . . . with the question, "what does it mean to you?" thrown in to confuse things. Certainly not multi-millions in an art world that was extremely prestige-conscious and lived under a profound sense of hierarchy and pettiness. Where someone Afro-Caribbean and gay like Basquiat and so "hiply other" and is welcomed into the inner circle while some of the client's my Dad dealt with in the mental health system-- oftentimes dumpy, 350 pound bald guys with creepy, loam-like eyes-- were not.

Phony, phony, phony.

No worse than the brass trim of a bookstore made to look like gold, like a British reading room, that catered to every lonely and/or base whim. Yes, with "hooks" and "sales bytes" that promised the stars but couldn't turn you into "a winner" with a girl like Kate at your elbow.

One remembers reading a bad horror pulp novel, that featured a man beaten into a bloody slurry by the inherent forces of revenge in the universe. . . . . then a sea of rats came out to feed. I thought it was pretty good, along with a romance writer's token pornographic passages thrown in there to make it interesting with frenetic rounds of masturbatory inspiration.

Not helping matters any were the Christians out in the "Red-State Outback", losers going on about "Satan Claws" and holding a mock trial against our favorite Yuletide hero, "Jolly Old St. Nick" and trying him on various offenses for misleading children from God and showing up on liquor and tobacco products. Then they sentenced him to death and burned him in effigy.

It had all the air of our 19th century "Uncle Tom's Cabin" excess when they'd have three (3) Simon LaGree's out there whipping the poor 'Tom in question, with a cat o' nine tails as the audience would "eat it up" in raptures of emotion.

To make matters funnier, you had the mixture of commerce and showmanship down in the ghetto where you had a black man dressed up like "Uncle Sam" outside of a Payday Loan storefront, holding up a sign to remind passing motorists about "Tax Day" who looked more like "Uncle Remus" or even the chiselers out of "Sanford & Son".

The only "hell" I was sure of was right here, in my own time with a world that would not hear. They were flawed, cracked vessels of life whose expression of consciousness was either inferior or distorted and you could not tell them anything even if you tried.

Needless to say, I could not take the existential risk with Kate. I was only 15 years old.

******************

At a 4th of July celebration our eyes locked.

Her name was Lira, and she was a fiery little pistol at the age of 11. She was smart, impertinent, and charmed me to the bottom of my tired heart.

I would be like a Silas Marner to this child, like a philosopher walking with her through a garden-- teaching her things about like like St. Francis of Aggisiz. To feel so old and "played out", yet so "young and raw", like the freshest and the best was gone forever.

Ideally, getting older should be like aged wine and not stale bread that you would break a tooth off trying to nibble. I would hold a torch for this youth, a little mascot who seemed so unaffected by the sad attrition of the world. He would tell stories to himself about this child, and think about her often as "humanity's lost innocence".

But lightening up my heart was the time I rented "Rambo" and his old mentor, Colonel Trautman was trying to counsel the sheriff on how to deal with this out-of-control, former "Green Beret".

"I'm not here to protect Rambo from you, I'm here to protect you from Rambo".

The sheriff dismisses him, and says that he's in charge and will bring him in.

"You're going to need just one thing".

The sheriff asks what that is in the midst of this heated exchange.

Michael had come down to fight.