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Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Our House

To anyone who has ever asked me if they kept me up, to all of Matt and Hilary and Hannah’s friends, pretty much to anyone who is under the age of twenty-seven.

Many of you knew Matt’s mom, my wife, Diane, and some did not. Diane and I grew up together – I consider my life before Diane the playful years. We gave each other crisis comfort in addition to play, and we figured out together how to cope with the hard-edged stuff outside of us that we called the real world. I met Diane on the last leg of my 14,000 mile hitch hiking journey (see what I mean about play) after I arrived on my brother’s doorstep in Cambridge. I thought I was passing through town on my way back to Indiana.

When I knocked on my brother’s door at some wee-ass hour, having mooched my last ride at a rest stop on the Mass Pike , Brian didn’t answer. His Native American worshipping, left-leaning (both politically and physically), ganja smoking, self-centered mountain-man of a roommate did. Brian dodged the draft by joining Vista as had John. They met in Oregon. They both turned their backs on Vista and drove east together. I don’t remember why they chose this fair state, a girlfriend perhaps, or a dart thrown at a map? Our lives, back then, were chaotic compared to many of yours, with careers yet unknown, and the future (beyond the war) rarely considered.

Diane graduated from Wellesley College and moved to Somerville . She shared her first apartment with her college roommate, Ginger Candee, and Shirley, a friend from back home. However, that union was short-lived. When I came to town in September Ginger was already sharing Brian’s bed. Good for me because I needed a place to sleep and I moved into Ginger’s empty room. I think I thought I was always going home which is why I kept it so empty a friend referred to the style as “Early Nothingness.” Much like my bedroom today. A thin wall separated me from Diane and Rich, who was her love, and  a graduate of Fordham. He was destined to be a government lawyer, and an ex-boyfriend. Who would have guessed that this classical music-loving, rule-following, valedictorian would choose me, a long haired, bell-bottomed, rootless hippie. Like my bedroom, I haven’t changed much. Diane explained her attraction to me, “You’re not boring.” Rich was the lamppost outside, I was the unassembled parts to who-knows-what.

Shirley moved within that first year and that left Diane and me sharing our space with a succession of roommates … nine I think, only two of whom were men. Yeah, even then. When we moved to Littleton in 1978, we shared that apartment with three different room- mates, all guys this time. We lived a communitarian like with people constantly drifting in and out. We grew our first garden, and enjoyed watching the antics of the drunken college-age kids next door. Four years later, we bought our house in Acton with our friend Dan. He moved out and sold his share to another friend John, who left when he married Ruth. Finally, we had enough money to own the house without roommates.

I trust these details aren’t too boring. I think they’re important to our story. How does one house on Central Street become a place of refuge, love, joy, and shared sorrow? Most so-called hippies boomeranged back to their roots and became knockoffs of their parents. Diane and I did not. We both continued to value friends and family over our occupations and shiny objects. We all know that Diane would approve of her house transformed. Though she loathed rugs we know she would have loved the sight of the floors carpeted by your bodies.

I’m a guy from the fifties. My role models were my father who wore his belt not just to hold up his pants, and Charles Bronson who never met an emotion he couldn’t suppress, unless it was murderous rage. My parents were liberal and accepting (for example – I slept with my college girlfriend at home way back then). Neither parent seemed at ease with that word love. Diane taught me how to love. She showed me I didn’t need to keep my father’s distance from Matt’s friends. I watched Diane with so many of you : she played, she listened, she advised, and she accepted you as you are.

Now, our house is mostly just Matt and me.  I do love that, but, you know, I did love having you all share it as if it were your own home with fewer rules. Though you don’t share my last name, I feel as though you should. I’m writing this after listening to Thanksgiving night’s sounds of laughter and conversation, minus the breaking of dishes and the booming baritones on the back deck. I know you’ll be back, and I know there will be other times when I awake to find bodies strewn about in outrageous positions. I also know an era has passed. I am sad but happy. Happy for the growth I see in you all.

posted by michael at 9:50 pm  

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Back to Pahrump?

Ken Langer teaches music theory, lives in Maynard with his wife and daughter, and has written eighteen books on paganism. I met him at Sweet Bites, our local coffee shop. Ken usually stops in between dropping his daughter off at daycare and driving to work. He typically sits alone with his laptop and his latest inspiration. Our group, not so productively inclined, shares stories and laughter. Ken, not quite so focused as I thought, joined the verbal fun from afar and after a while, he permanently moved to our table and stopped writing.

Last June, Peter Langer, Ken’s eighty-year-old but very active father disappeared. Peter was still regularly collecting fossils, carving wood, trading stocks and running his apartments. Peter lived a solo life, so days went by before anyone noticed his absence. It seems he just got up from fixing his clock at his kitchen table and vanished. No trail. He left no credit card expenses, no bank withdrawals, no sightings of his bobbing head above the sage brush.

If you enter his home now, you will walk past a row of scruffy boots, all the same style, all near their discard date and all loosely laced, just as he wore them. Always up before the dawn, he’d step into his shoes and out into the desert, sometimes stopping to feed the neighborhood hounds or maybe bark back at them. Two hours later he’d return and greet his neighbor, Sam, who loved to tinker in his garage crafting custom motorcycles from parts he found at the junkyard.

I know what I know about Peter from Ken, from Peter’s neighbor, Sam, from Peter’s apartment manager, Mike, and the detective assigned to the case, another Mike. I flew out to Pahrump, Nevada, in late October because I knew in my heart that I could find Peter. Oh, just as I knew I could save Diane’s life by putting my hand on her forehead. I failed both times, but don’t feel a need to pat me on the head, because I know I’m delusional.

Ken, not so woven into the fabric of his fantasies, will someday fly to his father’s town, walk the desert cairn trail Sam and I found (the perimeter of Peter’s property is peppered with cairns), and then say his goodbyes. I want one last stab at finding Peter, but I can’t fly out there again. That town taps into my run-from-at-all-costs dark side. However, I can send my friend, Chris Grosjean (aka Goose). He’ll be in Tahoe in January and it’s only a short flight to Pahrump. To better understand the man he’s tracking, Goose will sleep in Peter’s house, talk to Sam and Mike, and then walk far past the end of the cairn trail, to the caves I did not have the time to explore.

I figure it’ll cost about $800.00 to send Goose and maybe a friend, if he can find another curious soul. I can’t afford all the costs; I spent enough last October, which is why I’m asking you all for small donations. People raise funds to walk across Antarctica. This trip has real meaning for lots of people. So please make a small donation, whatever you can, to Goose. On behalf of Ken, his lost dad, Peter, and myself, thank you.

Michael

All donations:

Chris Grosjean

54 Central St.

Acton, MA 01720

posted by michael at 8:48 am  

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

KO my Version

Karen’s Superman. She’s a well mannered professional during the day, but take her to a club with a live band and her inner Faye Dunaway appears. I know; I’ve seen it. She’s thin, slippery and attractive and her moves draw attention not shunned but played with like matador and bull.

At The Lucky Dog in Worcester, watching “The Wretched Souls,” we sidled up to a pillar on the dance floor. I leaned against the left side and she the right. Following her face and figure, a young guy of modest build and dark hair walked behind her and pinched her left buttocks, the buttock nearest me. She turned, smiled, waved one finger and mouthed, “No, no.” Her lips, her shape and her dance floor moves said yes, only her finger said no. He grinned at her and pointed at me, as if it were I with the roaming hand, and minutes later touched her again. Again she smiled, wagged that finger and again he pointed at me.

At Sweet Bites, our friendly neighborhood coffee shop, Karen’s more complex. The smile that rarely says no attracted attention from a-soon-to-be newly acquired friend, John, who stopped at our table  to tell her how compelling a figure she presented, framed in the lattice work of the large window,  bathed by early morning sun.  Sipping coffee, black,  she’s the confessor with heart on her sleeve, the professional on her way to work, and the friend of many who easily swaps hugs. Then there is this other Karen.

“Karen, why are you so aggressive with those guys?”

“I’m not aggressive.”

“Okay mean.”

“I’m not mean.”

“Look, Ken and Ray sit down and ask you easygoing questions and you snap back at them.”

“ I do not.”

“Is your vocabulary limited to no and do not? I’m telling you you’re like a third grade teacher telling the fidgety boys in the first row to sit still. How come you’re so much more docile with me?

Karen: Because you’re not a guy.

I peer down between my legs to rebut her point, to reassure myself,  and to be funny. Ray, sitting next to me, follows my eyes and says,

“Mine is longer than yours.”

I look up, catch his eye and say,  “ No, mine is longer than yours.”

“Mine’s longer.”

“ I remember you talking about yours and I know mine is longer. Karen, who’s swims with me, can back me up.”

Karen, looking around at the crowded café and aware that for whatever reason our table is sometimes viewed as a sideshow, waves her cape.  She reaches over and tousles my hair believing this argument is staged and knowing the end. Surely, she thinks, they’re about  to compare the length of hair on their heads.  But she’s not totally confident because she knows I’ve been wandering the perimeter of civilized society for the last three years.

I’ll prove it to you. Mine is longer.

Whereupon we both stand up, not yet the absolute center of attention, but soon to be. Ray reaches for his belt, me for mine, and Karen begins waving her arms and yelling that we can’t possibly be about to do what it sure seems like we’re about to do. Her decibels have gone from slightly above normal conversation to Aretha Franklin’s restaurant  scene in Blues Brothers. “You better think (think) think about what you’re trying to do to me.”  She slows me down as I fumble for my belt, as Ray unbuckles his. Karen yells, “No, no, stop,” with her left arm outstretched, palm towards Ray and Me,  while hiding her eyes behind her other hand. Ray he’s smooth, real smooth. He yanks his belt out of his pant loops and  says, “See, mine is longer than yours.”

 

 

 

posted by michael at 12:16 pm  

Monday, April 11, 2011

Another Blue Light Special

“License and registration please.”

“Here’s my license but my registration is in the back.”

“Why?”

“It’s with the manual and … .”

“You know why I stopped you?”

“I do.”

“You roared away from the light.”

“I know. I spent the morning at Sweet Bites drinking coffee and I have to pee. For emphasis I grabbed my crotch. “I know it’s a lousy excuse.”

“You might say it’s a piss poor excuse.”

“You might.”

 

posted by michael at 5:04 am  

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Little Balls

“Adam told to write about the Ice Hotel and dipping into the frozen river with Marianne. He thinks I can develop a story that follows on one I’d already written about cold water swimming in Maine. Start there, weave into it last year’s obsession with White Pond, add a dash — am I mixing my metaphors? — of Québec City and voilà! the blog lives again.  But I can’t because it’s so all about me. Mainecourse is full of what I see as  my woe-is-me will I ever find happiness sob-stories. How do I write about stuff I’m doing without it being about stuff I’m doing?”

KO: “Write it in the third person.”

“You always say that. The third and I’m still me, I’d have to write in the  sixth or seventh person.”

KO: “Breathe, Michael, breathe. First those stories aren’t as self centered as you think. Secondly, the third person gives you more freedom to play. You’ll have less obligation to stick to the truth.”

“Not that I do anyway.”

KO: “Not that you do anyway.”

Time passes and no new stories magically appear on this here blog so  Adam offers less work: “Post a bowling photo and link it to the bowling movie — how  hard does it have to be … ? Or do you fear the slippery slope of re-immersion & expectation … ?”

Bowling? Yeah, bowling. Compare our passion with Ralph Kramden’s and the “Hurricanes.”  Maybe begin with Ralph yelling at Alice, “Hurry up with the eats, I’m going bowling,”  because often at our table it’s something like, “Why’d we start dinner so late we’ve got to get bowling.”

“Pick an Oak,” was a toe dipper. Water’s warm.  This next one could be a dive off Caroline’s pier, and if so, then I’d hope to have more than voyeurs. Here goes.

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

In the depths of last summer’s humdrum,  Matthew and friends chose Wednesday nights to meet at the “Drome,” the local candlepin (small bocce-like balls) alley down the street across from K-Mart and the only McDonalds in America to have gagged on its own grease and gone belly up.   Why Wednesday? 1960s prices: A dollar a string and two bucks for a beer. Some nights Matt and his crowd commandeered multiple lanes, and he’d return home with stories of his high scores and near fistfights. I remembered my early competitive days bowling against my roommate, Jim McMahon, and later taking Matt and the foster kids to what was then called, “The Bowladrome.”

But this latest entry is not going to be  about Candlepins and little balls, this one, or the upcoming one which I hope materializes, is about big balls, chainsaws, and ice.

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

“Hey, Matt, I need an editor. Your mom’s gone and I have to have someone tell me I’m not embarrassing myself before I embarrass myself. I’d like to keep it in the family and you’re a writer.  Will you read my latest attempt to get the blog rolling?”

“Sure, I’d like that.”

(Thought bubble : You’d like that?  What, no, “Is this punishment for living in the same house with you?”)

Matt reads this while I burn an omelet with cheese, veggies and beans.  I hear a snort and a laugh which I take as good signs. Then he looks up from his computer, “I like the way you say you’re going to write something and then you don’t.”

“Or that I act like I’m going to write about bowling but don’t? Or is it more like saying I’ll finish a job like the bathroom and then don’t?”

“ And, I’d take out the pick-an-oak sentence.”

“You mean I can’t publicly pressure people to help out here like they did in the  old days?”

 

posted by michael at 9:41 am  

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Newburyport

These are hum drum posts for being out of the business for so long, but it’s what I’ve got.

I drove over to Newburyport the other morning and got there too early to wait in the beach for the sunrise. Blame in how late the sun rises this time of year. Here’s the best I’ve got, a shot from the bridge on my way home.

About a week before that I went swimming off Halibut Point. Some people familiar with the shoreline think it impossible, but it really isn’t. All you have to do is wait for the waves to slacken and choose a place from which you can get back out. Believe me, getting in is always easy.

posted by michael at 12:03 pm  

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Colors

We ( I should say they : Matt, Jen, Emma, Goose, Joe, Karen) painted the downstairs bathroom, my office, the kitchen and now the living room. Of all the colors, clearly, the living room is the riskiest. Four people corroborated on a color Matt chose, which is to say we all agreed. Now, it’s hard to get accurate color representations from photos without elaborate light set-ups, still you are pretty much looking at our living room.

The sedate, by comparison, dining room.

posted by michael at 7:29 am  

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Meanderings

You might think I’d say something about the election, but instead I’m posting this photo of Roland’s grave and his wife, Shirley, in the distance visiting over family members. I’d wanted to make this visit since he died over two years ago, and even tried once on my own, but it’s a big cemetery and flat markers are hard to see. Shirley drove, and after Roland, we visited with her two aunts and then had lunch, where Marty Burr worked in college, at the Old Mill in Westminster.

posted by michael at 7:15 am  

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Goose and Kristin

The photo below is a slightly altered version of this one posted on Goose’s blog.

goose_kristin.jpg

posted by michael at 12:18 pm  

Saturday, December 9, 2006

Waving Up At Me

Kate battled late afternoon traffic in New Hampshire to work on her college essay with Diane at our house. They sat at the kitchen table and blended active verbs and colorful adjectives to create a compelling narrative while I struggled not to “Pollack” our kitchen creating Diane’s weekly smoothie.

As I listened to sentence juggling, I filled our old blender with fruit, flax seeds, and orange juice. Instead of Odwalla’s green potion, I added Bolthouse Farms vanilla chai tea with soy protein. Then I reached into the refrigerator and pulled out an old carton of pure soy milk. Maybe too much soy, I thought, and then I shook the container to make sure it was still fresh. We buy this stuff by the truck load, and that’s a good thing because once opened soy milk spoils quickly. It never smells bad, it just turns into one long clot.

Listening to the buzz at the table, and multitasking, I popped a pizza into the oven and then raised the soy milk to my mouth for a quick, freshness-confirming taste. One gulp and the sides of my mouth slammed together like a collapsing Big Dig tunnel. I pulled the carton away from my lips and stared down at the top. Surrounding the spout and waving up at me was a trim layer of mohair-like carpeting in three shades of hackle-raising green. I tried to spit out what was in my mouth, but like the Alien spawn, the spores had found a host and they wouldn’t let go.

I clutched my throat, fell over backwards behind the oven island and heard Diane say, “What are you up to now, weirdo?”

posted by michael at 11:27 am  

Monday, December 4, 2006

Nadler's Potluck

all_that_food.jpg

We had another one of those potluck dinners last night, this time at the Nadlers. There were too many people scattered through too many rooms for a group photo, so here’s a mini gallery . On the whole, (my apologies to Lorraine for the final frame) I think they’re pretty good candid images, but I did miss Mark Schreiber as he arrived just as everyone was leaving.

posted by michael at 9:52 am  

Monday, December 4, 2006

Nadler’s Potluck

all_that_food.jpg

We had another one of those potluck dinners last night, this time at the Nadlers. There were too many people scattered through too many rooms for a group photo, so here’s a mini gallery . On the whole, (my apologies to Lorraine for the final frame) I think they’re pretty good candid images, but I did miss Mark Schreiber as he arrived just as everyone was leaving.

posted by michael at 9:52 am  
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