They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
“This Be the Verse”, Philip Larkin, 1971
For a century, my family has been preserving a bunch of factoids about their history, stories told to bolster our psychological positions in relation to acts that have long since been long forgotten by anyone else. Feel free, dear relatives, to tell me if you detect any falsehoods. Despite my best efforts, I’ve long since lost the ability to tell.
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In the winter of 1970, after a visit with my girlfriend in Chicago, I hitchhiked back to New York. I left in January just in time to get back to Columbia’s spring session. It was 17°F and snowing as I stood in my orange motorcycle jumpsuit on LaSalle at the entrance to I-90 with a sign that said New York. After a ride or two, I was picked up outside of Toledo by a Plymouth Duster pulling a trailer with four passengers already aboard, and the word “Daredevils” written down the side.
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I watched the entire Fischer-Spassky chess match in 1972. Professional play is completely different from amateur games. For one thing, many amateurs play “blitz” or chess with a chess clock. A chess clock has two clocks, which add up the cumulative time each player has used. You move and push your button, which stops your clock and starts your opponent’s. Skilled players play through known openings very quickly, reaching well-known positions called “tabia” before slowing down and beginning to think. Many have memorized opening books, which recommend the best moves up to a point and deal with unusual or trick openings.
(more…)In 1979, when David “of the wandering Schlange” (German for snake) would periodically ooze off to find, as he called it, “futon-filler”, it behooved his invited guest to politely dismiss his odd figure of speech and praise his hospitality, if not his delicacy. Life in Kyoto was lonely at times for the single philosopher, however charming his roommate. “Don’t wait up for me, Watson,” he would say over his shoulder as he chose one from his wall of hats, “I might come back late.”
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By 1978, I had been in schools for 20 of my 25 years on the planet. All that education and my recent separation from my first serious girlfriend of the last five years gave me a garden-variety nervous breakdown so rather than do intellectual work, I found a job as a car mechanic. I had been fixing cars for spare cash in Providence while at Brown but I needed something full-time in San Francisco.
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In 1974, Spanish men had to serve in the army for a period of three years. In Spain, the joke was: Why does a Spanish policeman’s hat have three corners? So he can lean against a wall easier. The next year, the dictator Francisco Franco died, which was a huge relief. Everyone understood that the draft law would not survive the new socialist government. Nobody knew when the draft would be abolished. Just as the Lost Generation of Hemingway and Fitzgerald were driven to France by Prohibition, an entire generation of the most intelligent and creative Spaniards came to New York, about 60,000 people determined not to spend their youth leaning against a wall carrying a submachine gun. In art, this explosion of activity was called the movida madrileña or the Madrid Movement.
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I came back from San Francisco to New York in a rainy and cold January of 1980, and went to live with Brian Muni at 21 1st Avenue, a location that I called Foist & Foist. Brian, whom I had met at Brown a few years before when he was playing folk tunes in a college bar, was living with four or five roommates in a suite of rooms there. Before long, I found my own apartment on 12th Street.
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I first met Joey in 1981 by running an ad in the Village Voice for a drummer wanted for a tour in Spain. He called and came over and I liked his wry smile immediately. He had a mop of black hair and evident sincerity and kindness. At 22, he seemed quite professional, a real rock ’n’ roller from Bayside, Queens. One of his bands in high school was called the Creedmore State Band, named after a mental institution in their neighborhood, that played in weird time signatures like 7 and 11, which is difficult for the drummer. He had toured the U.S. with a band called The Fast and had stayed in a Jefferson Airplane house in San Francisco. The Fast played Max’s Kansas City and hung with the Velvet Underground and Warhol’s crowd there. He told me that the other two members of The Fast were gay so he got every woman in every gig on tour all across America and all the way back. OK, one or two got away but all in all…
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In 1986, I worked for a Japanese real estate broker in New York City that helped Japanese companies buy or rent American properties. Japanese salespeople in the office brought me customers and requirements. I then would find the appropriate property. The Japanese handled all the customer relations while I dealt with the property owner, the legal aspects, and the bargaining.
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