An Empty Mug

An Empty Mug

     It was late when I slowed down and turned off the dusty road. At the far end of the gravel parking lot, my headlights lit the murky insides of an empty, burnt-out building. Tumbleweeds from the desert plains collected under the rotting canopy over the front door. A faded sign with peeling green paint hung from one side of the canopy, the other side broken and buried in a pothole. Washed-out white letters spelled, “The Empty Mug.”

     I sat for a few minutes staring into the skeleton of posts and beams, through the jagged holes and broken panes. The Empty Mug was once a grimy little bar on the other side of the tracks where people gathered on Saturday nights. They shared stories of the week, drank some, and danced to the sounds of a piano that sat in the far corner of the back room. Sometimes it was me they came to listen to…I was the piano man.

     “Is this the place?” Sheila’s question startled me. It had been thirty years since that night…the haunting memory forever etched in my mind. “Are you going in?”

     “I suppose so,” I said. I opened the door of the Jeep, stepped out, and walked toward the building. After a couple of minutes, I pulled on the front door; its rusted hinges groaned and creaked, but gave way. Inside was dusty and dank, dark and quiet. A lizard scurried away under a pile of debris in a far corner. The headlights sent bats through a gaping hole in the rotted roof. I felt as if I had stepped back in time, to a place I tried to forget.

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

     It was thirty some years ago, in the mid-seventies. I was four months home from a bloody tour in Vietnam, met a girl, and got married. Six months later, she was gone, so was the money. She ran off with an old boyfriend. I tried to bury her with liquor, drugs, fast cars, and faster women. I never did. I lived in flop-houses and hotels, shacked up in one room apartments over filthy bars, other times I lived on the streets. All I had was tonight, nothing else mattered. But I loved my music.

     The piano kept me alive, kept me going, anchored to something, something tangible and real. When I sat down in front of a keyboard, the pain would fall away. Each hammer falling on a string would ease another ache, cover another scar. Every day back then felt like another needle in my arm. At night, the moment I opened the wooden cover over a line of white and black keys, I felt alive. So I played gigs whenever I could get them…mostly in honk-tonk bars and dives where people were too drunk to notice whether the music was good or bad, or were too stoned to care.

     The Empty Mug soon became a regular spot for me. It got so I played almost every Saturday night there. Ralph didn’t pay well and I lived on mostly tips anyway; a drunken couple, arm in arm, sweaty and smiling, would toss a couple of quarters or a dollar into a thick glass mug sitting on the stains and dust covering the top of the old Grand Piano. I got to know the regulars there. I would sing and play and drink until the place closed. I’d fill my pockets with the loose change from the mug, leave a few dollars for Jim, the bartender, maybe I’d take the new waitress home, maybe just leave her some change instead. Most nights I just passed out in the empty parking lot. In the morning, the Western Flyer would thunder past. Its shrill horn pieced holes through the morning light, and right through my ears. The clickity-clack of the boxcars sounded like lonely tires humming into the night.

     It was 9 o’clock on a Saturday, a hot summer night in ’79, when I turned into the parking lot of the hotel. Dewy the Drunk was passed out in the alley. Puke ran down his knotted beard onto his chest. Jack the Rat rummaged through the garbage can next to Dewy. Lulu stood on the corner under the street light waving at Cadillac’s and Beamers. Her black spiked heels did the walking. A worn-out mini-skirt did her talking. As usual, I was broke, hungry, hung-over, and sick of that place. I piled a garbage bag full of dirty clothes into the cab of the truck along with the few belongs I owned, washed down a couple of green-specks with a bottle of Wild Turkey, tossed the rest of the bottle to Jack, and headed for the highway. On the way out of town, I stopped at The Empty Mug to play one last time, collect some tips, and make promises I would never keep. I really didn’t give a rat’s ass about those people, any people for that matter. But they paid me to play, and I took their money.

     I pushed open the back door to the bar and stepped inside. A murky cloud stinking of cigarettes hung in the stale air. Ralph waved and pointed to the rack of dusty whiskey bottles on the back wall in front of the mirror. There is always a mirror; bars have to have a mirror. Ads for cheap beer and specials of the week from last year cover the nicotine and grime. The mirror makes everything look bigger. The crowd looks bigger, the rack of bottles look bigger, the stinking little room looks bigger, the little people huddled over the bar look bigger. I look bigger in front of the mirror…if I care to look. Usually I don’t look…or can’t.

     I nodded back at Ralph with a smile and a wave. Big Bob waved his ten-gallon hat at me. He sat on the nearest corner. Steve sat next to him. Both their wives were at a table on the other side of the bar; Jean was portly and loud…bad tempered too. Sandy was Steve’s wife. She was lean and lewd with an hourglass figure. She looked good that night; gave me a sideways wink on the sly. I tipped my glass to her and made a mental note to pay more attention to her later on, after Steve passed out. JD and Ann huddled in the corner table like no one could see them cheating. Really, no one cared. Bruce usually sat in the center of the bar. Big Bob said he died last Sunday night. We all die. We struggle until we die, until we become unchained from a hell of pain and misery; our innocent dreams of life shattered by living. Yet, for some, for these people, they spend one night a week laughing, sharing, and listening to music. They dance and sing. They touch, and talk, and become more than pawns, pieces of shit that society has tossed into a garbage pile of rotting flesh.

     I picked up my drink, said hey to the regulars, and walked into the dark back room. A haggard old man hunched in a dark corner booth called to me. “Excuse me. Could I have a word with you?” His hollow voice trembled and shook. I strolled past the piano, to the booth where he started to get up.

     “Please, sir, don’t get up,” I said. He placed his cold and boney hand in mine and squeezed the best he could. His leathery skin was hard and grey, his cloudy eyes were sunk into his skull like empty sockets. A clammy chill shot through me when I took his hand…his two small fingers were missing. “What can I do for you, sir? My name is Will, William really. Please call me Will.”

     “Glad to meet you Will. My name is Joe, Joe Moynihan. If’n you could sit for a minute and listen, maybe you could do something for me.”

     “Sure, Joe. I'd be glad to.” I set my drink on the table between the scratches and the stains and slid into the booth.

     “Well, Will. You drew back at my hand. I'm used to that. I lost them fingers in the First World War. We was captured in Germany. I wasn’t nothin' but a kid, a private. I didn’t know nothin', no secrets nor nothin'. Them guards got bored and took to torturing us for fun. They called themselves ‘interrogating us.’ Well, they cut these here fingers off. Took them better than a month. They would take a saw and hack away at a knuckle a week. Some lost toes, hands, or arms…one joint at a time. They did other things too, Will, unspeakable things. Them who made it out...well, none of us could never have no kids—you know what I mean, Will?” He sat quietly for a minute rubbing his hand as if to erase the ghastly memory.

     “Well, we was rescued a year later and shipped us home. I met a girl before I left for the war; Sara was her name. She waited for me, Sara did, and stayed true too. She was all that kept me going, kept me wanting to live. We all need something to live for, Will. Sara said she knew I'd come home and she wanted to be there when I did. She said she didn’t care nothin' about having no kids; it was the only thing she ever fibbed about. But she gave me her love, gave me her life…and I gave her mine. Sara would always say, ‘Something ain’t nothing Joe, until you give it away.’

     “We got married right away after I got back. That was 60 years ago…60 years. We made every one of ‘em together. We went through so much all them years; the Depression was the worst of it. We was young and had nothin'. We went to living in a tent. We ate crumbs and stuff the rats left us. But we made a good life of it, me and Sara…made us strong, kept us living.

     “She always said she wanted to make to 60 years together. Well sir, Sara took sick two months ago. I took care of her, just like she took care of me all those years—she passed on last month. She looked so beautiful laying there with all those ruffles and silk. She had her blue anniversary dress on and her silvery hair done up just so. I sat with her, alone and quiet for the longest time. After a spell, I stood up, leaned in, and one last time I kissed her on her cheek, told her how much I loved her. Then I closed the wooden cover. When we got to the cemetery, they lowered her into the ground and I watched them toss dirt over my Sara. God, I miss her so.” Joe reached in his back pocket for a folded and stained hankie.  

     “Well, today would have been number 60 for Sara and me. It’s our anniversary day and it looks like we ain’t gonna make it--with her over there in The After, and me back here. We had this song we played once a year. It was an old ‘78’ of Louis  Armstrong when he sung ‘What a Wonderful World.’ I'd crank up the Victorla and set the old scratchy needle down on the record. Oh my, how we could dance. She'd wrap her arms around my shoulders, lay her head on my chest. She'd kiss my cheek and close her eyes like everything was ok, and she'd say real soft, ‘I love you, Joe Moynihan, always did, always will.’ Fifty nine times we done that, danced like everything was ok…and it was ok. It was always ok with my Sara.

      “I laid that ‘78’ in with Sara so she could keep it until I get there. I ain’t gonna be here much longer, I won’t make it ‘till next year. But, if’n you know that song Will, could you play it for me tonight? For Sara and me? Maybe she'd hear it and know how much loved her all these years, how much I miss her. Could you play our anniversary song, Will?”

     Joe’s story sent me to my last end. All this time, I played the piano for me, for my selfish sanity. I played for money, money to drink, money for drugs, women, and anything else that fed me. Sitting across the table was a decrepit and dying old man who dedicated his life to someone…and in return, she gave him life. I fought the mist trying to overtake me…I fought emotion. It seemed like I was always fighting something those days.

     “Sure, Joe. I'd be proud to. I’ll play the song. I’ll do the best I can. It might not be good, but I’ll sure try.” Joe thanked me with a warm handshake. His tired and sunken eyes were swollen and wet.

     I walked to the back corner where the piano sat. I turned on the old amplifier and the tinny speaker crackled to life. I sat my drink down on the dusty piano and stared down at the wooden keyboard cover. I slowly lifted it open expecting the underside to be lined with frills and silk. As I began, I couldn’t make two notes run together. The sounds were just noise, disjointed, out of tune, no rhythm. Nothing fit.  

     But it didn’t matter to the couples who made their way to the dance floor. They laughed and they smiled and they whirled around each other as I played. I watched Joe sitting alone, waiting. After a few songs, I began to get comfortable. The notes ran together and became music. My fingers started to melt into the keys. I began to play for them, with them, the people out there, who dance together and give each other life. One song ran into another. When it was time for Joe, I kept the rhythm going.

“We have a request tonight, an anniversary request. Sixty years ago today, Joe and Sara were married. Sara couldn’t be here tonight, so Joe asked me to play their song, the same one they danced to all those years. Could you all get up? Could you dance for Joe…and dance for Sara?”

     I settled in to the song. My voice was alien, raspy and soft. The notes, the music came from a part of me I didn’t understand, a place I buried years ago. I played from inside. I sang from inside. The scene seemed foggy and foreign. They danced in the haze, all those people danced for Joe, and for Sara, and for me, and for each other. And I played, and I sang. When one couple sat down, another got up, and still I played. Right there, at that moment, I began to understand, that this was a wonderful world. And I played on and on, tireless without stopping. When I watched Joe turn ashen and slump in the booth, I played. When the shadows in the crowd opened up to form a circle, I played. I played for Joe. I played for Sara. I played for the blurred young couple who danced in the iridescent light in the middle of the floor…her arms around his shoulders, her head laid on his green uniform, her eyes shut like everything was ok…and still, I played…I played for them, all of them.

    That night, thirty years ago, was the last time I ever touched a piano, that night in The Empty Mug. Long after the last couple left, confused and dazed I stuffed a wad of dollar bills into my jeans and walked out the back door. I sat in the truck until the sun shined through morning dew on the windshield and the Western Flyer thundered through my head. Eyes swollen and head spinning, staring straight ahead, I switched on the key, and headed the Chevy east…toward home .

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

     “Hon?” Sheila’s tender touch and soothing voice broke through the past. “We better think about getting along, Hon. The kids will be waiting.”

     She stepped around me, wrapped her arms around my shoulders, laid her head on my chest, and she closed her eyes like everything was ok, and it was.

     “I love you, William. Always have, always will.”

     “I never thought I'd be happy, Sheila...not until you came along. It sure doesn’t seem like twenty-five years, does it.” I looked at the dusty keys, and closed the wooden cover back over them.

     We turned and walked away from The Empty Mug, Sheila and me, and never looked back. “Do you think we'll make it to sixty years?”

     “Sure we can, Hon. Happy Anniversary.” Let’s go home.”

A Change of Pace

After six months of Creative Non-Fiction, I want to change gears a bit and go for some fiction. Fiction for me allows me to write about different thoughts from a sterile standpoint. Many times fiction brings out feelings or thoughts through analogy or metaphor. Other times, fiction is merely a vent or a venue for play outside of the confines of cultural or sociological norms.

This first story is a piece of "flash fiction" I wrote for my Fiction Workshop. Some have read it and comments range from shock to an enthusiastic, "YES". Please feel free to leave comments. I hope you will enjoy this change of pace as much as I will.

Until Death Do You Part

There is a dying glow on the beach a mile away. You stare into the campfire and relive the horror of what you did. You reach into the cooler for the whiskey bottle and fill your empty glass. You know that nauseating image will haunt you every night—the flaming naked bodies running toward you, screaming, blinded, dying—the van from which they ran, engulfed in a raging inferno.

~

You knew they were in there—two bodies, skin against skin, lips touching, tongues exploring, forbidden acts of hunger, lost in intoxicating passion. You walked up to the side window and stared into the moonlit scene. You knew as the van rocked from within, they wouldn’t feel you cut the gas line. You knew they couldn’t hear the fuel splashing in the sand over her climatic screams. You knew they couldn’t smell the fumes over the salty mist of the surf, of their sweat, of their musty scent of sex. You could see her silhouette, like a wolf howling against the full moon—her head thrown back, her back arched, her long hair falling over her shoulders, breasts pointed and hungry…and watched her in anguish as you tossed the lighter into the gas-soaked sand. You could feel him shudder in release, as the gas tank exploded. You thought it strange that their screams of passion sounded the same as their screams of pain.

The side door flew open as the windows shattered—the interior fully engulfed. First, the woman, naked, running, flames strung out behind her, chasing her, arms outstretched and reaching for you—her screams of agony melting on her skin. She lay face down in a stinking pile of flaming flesh at your feet. Then the man—his muscles exposed and burning, his face glowing, skin hanging like stringy moss on a swamp willow. His frantic escape ended at the edge of the surf, face down, sizzling in the steaming sand— both gruesome masses of blackened bone and smoldering death. The van burned in a hideous fanfare of melting metal—a gutted framework was all that remained—like another lonely campfire speckling the summer beach. You knew it might be early morning before the horrifying scene would be discovered…you knew.

~

Faint footsteps pad the sand behind you. The distant glow is gone—sirens penetrate the night. Your twin sister glides past you—her arms folded tight. She stares at the burned-out van, a mile away. The putrid stench of charred plastic, of melted flesh—of her husband, violates the floating mist of the morning.

“Is that him?” Her quivering voice is soft.

“Yeah. It’s him. He’s gone.”

“And her? Was she with him? Is she gone too?”

You take a long drink and empty the glass. “Yeah…her too.”

She turns, wraps her arms around you and pulls you close. She whimpers softly, her tears fall on your shoulder—your tears fall to the sand. You take a worn-out picture from your pocket—lovingly stroke your wife’s face with your thumb…and toss it into the fire.

“Yeah…her too.”

Susan

"Hi. How many?"
"No one else. Just me."
"Sure, right this way." The hostess leads me to the back corner of the quiet little restaurant.
"Would you like coffee?"
"That would be good. Thanks." I pull off my coat and slide into the booth facing the floor. The hostess brings me a coffee and tells me the waitress will be right there. "That's ok. Ask her to give me a few minutes. Ok?"
"Sure. take your time."
I say thanks and scan the rest of the restaurant. There are booths lining the walls. Tables with chairs in the center. The kitchen is off to the left. The rest rooms are next to the kitchen.
"Ready to order yet, hon?"
"Not yet. Can I have another coffee?"
"Sure. I'll be right back." The waitress smiles warmly and glides away. She is younger than the other two waitresses, probably 30 or 35. Her dark brown hair is pulled into a pony tail that moves as she walks. Her breasts bounce ever so slightly. Her perfectly shaped hips sway with a shy innocence. She is dressed in black pants, black blouse, black apron. She moves effortlessly across the floor toward the coffee machine. I wonder what she is thinking. Maybe nothing. Maybe she is just moving through the day, her mind merely processing her job. I turn my head toward the window.
It''s winter in Rochester. Not a normal winter; there is no snow. Last year at this time, between Christmas and New years, we had over fifty inches of snow already. This year, only a couple. Yet it is dark and grey out side. The window pane has fake slats, three horizontal, four vertical. They make the window look like twenty small panes linked together. To me they look like bars in a jail cell; like I am a prisoner who cannot be outside. I wonder if those bars are in my eyes; like I am a prisoner in my head, alone with my thoughts, alone in the world.
It's getting darker out. There is a winter storm settling in. Sea gulls have been coming in from Lake Ontario all morning. The air is still, not a breath out of place. The trees, bare of leaves, look like long grotesque arms shooting up from graves, branches like thousands of fingers bent and twisted, stiff with arthritic rigor mortise. The lake is still warm. I've seen this happen before; the storm system brings moisture deep from the Gull of Mexico, then passes over Lake Erie, picking up more moisture and dumps it on Western New York. The back side of the system pulls bitter cold air from the arctic across the warm Lake Ontario, freezes the rain, then turns it into snow. I think, we could get a foot or two, maybe more.
"Here you go. Ready yet?"
"Not yet. Thanks. A few more minutes."
"Sure. No problem. Take your time." She glides off again. She reminds me of my ex-wife when I met her. She was younger, but a waitress who floated when she walked. Her voice was soft too, like the waitress here. I turn back to the window, to the bars. I remember long ago when I met her. I remember the years after, the hard years, the not so hard ones. Like the time the transmission went out of the rusted old pickup. The only gear that worked was reverse. It was winter. I was laid off from the farm. She worked at a local grocery and had to get to work. We backed up all the way to town. I backed up to a friends garage and we swapped transmissions. I picked her up going forward.
Then there was racing. We both loved racing. It was expensive and took all of our time, but we did it together; won some, lost some, crashed some. That all went away when we split up. Everything went away when we split up. It was like I died that day; the day I left my home, my family. I was to leave, or she would. She couldn't have rebuilt. I had done so before and felt I could again. I never dreamed that I could never rebuild what lived inside me.
The reasons don't really matter. I drove her away, into the arms of someone's husband. When I found out, I died a little inside. It was decided that I would move. We lived in North Carolina then. We bought a ranch house on the north side of Charlotte; a quiet development with a long circular street, trees, a pond, a small woods, a fenced yard for our beagle, and a big garage with a workshop. We both had jobs that paid well. Mine took all my time and energy. Hers, not as much. We rarely saw each other. When we did, either I slept, or she did. I suppose that was the beginning of the end...money, jobs, erosion of the family structure. First our cat died in January. He was 17. A year later, in February, the other cat, the oldest, died. The next year, in March, we split. The next year, the third cat died. Then the dog and my family was gone. I was alone.
I remember the day I left. It was March 30th. The day started off cold. I worked part of the day. A friend got me a couple of weeks of work before I left. Supposedly I was to work all day, go home, put my few bags of clothes into the truck, say good-bye, and leave. I couldn't even imagine that. So I left work at noon while she worked. I walked around in a fog, mechanical, no emotion, I was numb...cold, mind-chilling numbness. I was about to do what I had thought would never happen again...I was leaving another home.I pulled into the concrete driveway, unlocked the door, carried three garbage bags of clothes out, placed them into the back seat, petted my dog, left the keys on the counter with a letter, and closed the door to my home for the last time.
I stopped at the street, before backing all the way out of the driveway. I looked at the front of the house with windows like sunken eyes and the porch looking like it was sagging to one side, like a sloping face after a stroke. Salty cold sweat dripped into my eyes, distorting the image. It looked like the entire house was swaying, ready to crumble into a pile of rubble...it was me who was crumbling. As I backed out, I could feel my heart being pulled from my chest, attached to my recliner where her and I sat last night. She sat curled on my lap, head tucked into my chest, arms around my shoulders. I ran my fingers slowly through her long blonde hair, the scent of it implanting a lasting memory into my brain. We said nothing for hours. We cried, and wondered silently how we ever let this happen. We both knew it was too late. I slept in my chair, she on my lap. By morning, she had gone to bed. I walked in silently, took a shower, dressed, and for the last time, kissed her forehead, said I love you, and walked out.
As I finished backing out of the driveway, as emotions flooded through every fiber of my being, as blood poured from the open hole in my chest, I died there. When I dried my eyes, I put the truck into drive, and slowly drove away from her house, for the last time.
"Excuse me, I'd like to order."
"Sure hon. What can I get you?"
"How about a heart..."
"Excuse me?"
"Never mind, can I just have the check, please? I have to go."

Rambling thoughts

The semester is over at Brockport and I'm wondering if anyone is still out there. I wonder if these blogs will remain active or if they will merely fizzle, fade away into the world of dashes and dots, pluses and minuses, memories held within the neural pathways of cyber-space. For me, the entire experience, the Creative Non-Fiction Workshop was good. I would say that the class in and of itself was worthy of a memoir. Aside from some great discussions about a variety of creative writing, there was emotion. There was laughter and anger, feelings of bonding and separation, acceptance and rejection, elation and sadness. Some essays were side-splitting funny. Others, we fought tears. I think the last project, the "unwritten essay" which we each read in class was the most revealing. The entire semester, I thought we all were being honest and revealing about ourselves until that last essay. What a stark contrast. It was the difference between a formal ball-room dance and running naked in the rain; between sipping french wine in a posh Hollywood restaurant and staggering into a parked car, hurling on the passengers door handle. I have to say, Ellen's piece was the hardest hitting for me. I can't get "the last time" out of my head. There have been too many "last times" in my life. The hardest was the last time I held my ex-wife. It was the night before I left. I suppose if I am to continue writing here, it is time to venture into that memory
So, with Black Friday behind us and Christmas in front of us (I wonder about those two contrasts being juxtaposed), and the soccer-moms scurrying around the malls like squirrels raiding my bulbs, fighting amongst themselves for that last x-box, I stand in the cold outside my house, peering into the living room, the room with four windows, searching for the guy inside who looks for an escape...maybe I can help him open the Fourth Window, now that I know how.

Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love, and Death in the Kitchen--A Book Review

Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love, and Death in the Kitchen

                                                                                                By Jason Sheehan

If you ever had a notion to find out what goes on behind those swinging doors that lead toward the kitchen in your neighborhood family restaurant, don’t. What goes on back there isn’t what you might think. Jason Sheehan however does. He is a cook and the author of Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love, and Death in the Kitchen. Cooking Dirty is a memoir outlining Jason’s journey first as a kid growing up in Rochester, how he began a career in cooking, and how he regained a foothold on life with a girl he would marry and how she prompted him to become a writer. What is of special interest to me, he is, or was, my neighbor; his mother still is.

Cooking Dirty is hilarious and riddled with the smart-assed wit of Jason Sheehan. His escapades behind the closed doors of kitchens across the country, of how he survived, drank, screwed, lived, worked, and generally existed in an environment where five or six cooks served up three hundred to a thousand dinners a night, gives the reader a glimpse into who he is a person. He tells how he started by learning to keep a dilapidated dishwasher from flooding a local pizza shop when he was only fifteen and how he came to bartend, underage, at a local Chinese restaurant. He learned what the back alleys were used for, the drug dealers, the black market food sources, and a home to those just too tired to make it any further. Jason worked and moved up in the pecking order of kitchens the hard way; by slicing fingers along with filets, by leaving burnt skin on the handles of fry pans, by collapsing from 140 degree heat, and getting back up, falling into line, never giving up, never giving in, always for the food and the other guys in the kitchen…his friends and family. Yet he, like most cooks, the ones who didn’t commit suicide, overdose, get mugged for 9 bucks an hour, or end up in the psycho-ward, eventually burned out. His girlfriend Laura, who he married, was as ill-tempered as Jason, but wittier, showed him the way to a successful career as a food critic, a food writer, and now an author. As Jason remembered:

Laura and I are two angry, opinionated, stubborn, smart, and damaged people who have never backed down from a fight in our lives, never able to leave well enough alone, never had a scab we didn’t pick at until it scarred. And yet through it all, we’ve loved each other with a fierceness born of absolute honesty. She knows I’m never going to leave her. And when I come home at night, stinking of cheap beer and salami. It’s to a woman who knows exactly what kind of a broken, fucked-up, beaten-down, ill-tempered asshole I am and stays with me anyway.

Until you get there yourself, you have no idea how reassuring a feeling that is. I know what true love is now. True love means never having to wonder who’s going to be with you when you die.

She'll probably be standing over your corpse with a smoking pistol and a really good reason.

This particular argument led Laura to ask Jason why he didn’t just start writing about food since he couldn’t cook any longer. In a quip he explains, guys just cannot keep up with an angry female:

“No, Jay. I mean really write about it. Like somewhere that someone other than you will see it. Because really? I’m sick of hearing about it but you’re obviously not sick of talking about it. So why don’t you look for a job as a writer?”

“I…Uh…”

The argument ends with Jason wondering why she could be right and what he could do about it. Laura popped open another beer, sat on the couch with her legs folded under her and a Jason put it, “…signifying that the discussion was over.” And Jason became a writer.

Although Cooking Dirty is one of the funniest and provocative memoirs I have read, the book in paperback form is 355 pages long. In my opinion, and I’m sure Jason wouldn’t care for my opinion, since my life about mirrored his in the good-for-nothing asshole department, the text could very easily have been pared down at least 50 to 75 pages. Every chapter goes into a repeated list separated by a mountain of commas about cooks, the low-down drunks who step outside during a Friday night blast or to shoot-up, or have a smoke and a warm beer in the alleyway, and through all this cooks are dedicated to the only thing in life they are good at, cooking food. While he most generally uses rants and lists to set the reader up for a rib splitting punch-line, the constant exposition gets redundant and burdensome. One such rant comes just as the cooks at Jimmy’s Crab Shack beat the snot out of the kitchen boss, the wheel man, for pushing a waitress:

There are many ways to offend a cook and inspire him to violence. We are, as a rule, a passionate and fiery people prone to the expeditious use of fists to settle our disputes. Mostly it’s done in high spirits and good humor. I’ve been punched by more good friends than I can count and rarely held a grudge. But if there is one thing you do not want to do in front of a cook, it’s hit a waitress. For that, we’ll just fucking kill you.

As the line cooks calmly continued on with the never ending food orders, stepping over Jimmy as he lay unconscious, bleeding into the drain, Jason was promoted to the wheel man.

Our memories are fluid; what we remember, how we remember it may not be fact. What Jason Sheehan writes, considering the many times he couldn’t remember his name, where he was, or who is was sleeping with, may not be entirely fact either. He does an excellent and seamless job at alerting the reader to these possible inconsistencies. For instance, early on, he “remembers” Angie, who owned the pizza place around the corner from our street, Belcoda Drive. Later in reflection of that place: “Maybe I’m over-romanticizing my time at Ferrara’s—remembering it as better, sweeter, more moving and affecting than it really was. I don’t think so. I look back now from a distance of about two decades…” Another, “The way I remember it…” And when remembering Laura accepting his marriage proposal: “Which isn’t to say she stopped trying to dump me or anything. In fact, she threatened to divorce me the very first time she read those last couple paragraphs, claiming that it didn’t happen that way at all…something I forgot? And she said that, yeah, I fucking forgot something. I forgot that there actually were rings.” While we don’t really know what the real facts are, Jason tells us that he might not be a hundred percent accurate. It doesn’t matter; it is his story the way he remembers it.

There is something eerie and strangely possessive seeing my street named in print, to read about a neighbor, the woman I know as Cindy Sheehan, Jason’s mom, about places I know and drive past every day. A great story draws a reader in by creating visions that the reader says: “I know that place,” “I know her,” “I’ve been there,” Hey, that’s my street,” or “I know how he lived, I lived just like that.” I can say that with conviction since I do know those people, those places.

Jason Sheehan lived in some of the rattiest places in America, drunk or stoned, dead tired and beat up. He worked his ass off doing things most will not do and did it for less money than normal humans would accept. He went to work hung-over, drunk, high, beaten-up and bruised. He crawled to the edge of Hell, fell in…and climbed out. And why? Because as he bluntly exclaims, “I couldn’t remember wanting to do anything else.” And for me, I can well relate. My life would read much the same as Jason’s in Cooking Dirty. In reflection, I have to wonder how my family, friends, ex’s, and enemies would react to seeing their name in print, to remember and read about places and events from long ago and perhaps wanted to forget. How would they react by reading my side of the story, or at least how I remembered it--in fact, I wonder if would care.

The Holidays

I had to get out of that store. Holiday rage, or anti-holiday rage was about to set in. I say anti-holiday rage in regards to the rage and sometimes violent behavior in response to the rage and sometimes violent behavior exhibited by mostly, and I hate to do it, but i must stereotype, mostly...soccer-moms. You know who they are; those perky and bouncy moms with the blond pony-tails sticking out of the back of pink ball-caps. They have black work-out pants with the white stripes, sneakers, a half-baked smile, and glassy eyes. Their mini-van has those white stick-figure families on the back window. There is no dad there, or the dad stick figure is relegated to the position behind the family dog. On the back door is always the white soccer ball sticker.

It all started when I drove through the Wegmans parking lot close to my house. Ok, I procrastinated about buying veggies for a tray to take to Mom's for Thanksgiving, but I am a guy and that sort of behavior is acceptable. The store was busy, real busy.  I spotted a car backing out of a spot in front of me and waited of the old guy to finish. I moved up to fill the hole and around the corner at the far end, one of those mini-vans, you can spot them a mile away, wheeled around the end and like a vision from a magic carpet, she was in that spot. I rolled down my window with my best "what-the-fuck" look, and promptly got a "fuck off" and a one finger salute from the driver. The shoping trip didn't get any better.

Inside, another one (yes, I'm stereotyping and will continue to do so), was running though the store, running, pushing the cart and tossing this head of lettuce, that bag of chips, a live lobster, I didn't see what else, she was out of sight in a flash. Another, that damn pony tail bouncing double time, it would be worn out before she got done, actually ran into my cart and politely asked me to get the fuck out of her way. I didn't, but I smiled when I said no.

As "Black Friday" approaches and these soccer moms, others too, take off work, lose a hundred, maybe two hundred dollars in wages to make the ultimate sacrifice for their darling little girl who is waiting at home, tapping her foot impatiently to make sure her damn mom gets the right I--PAD--PHONE--POD--PED--P--WHATEVER,  (she just knows mom will screw this up and embarrass her into becoming a recluse the rest of her miserable adolescence) and save fifty bucks. So, as this iconic day approaches and passes, I have to look forward to Christmas when each soccer mom who did screw up the Black Friday deal, panics and in desperation, runs amok and blindly smashes through the next 30 days trying to make it up to her darling "next-to-be" soccer star. Meanwhile, Dad is either living in his mother's basement, or drunk in the garage trying to stay out of the way...so am I. It's going to be a long holiday season. Good cheer, and good luck.

Not Me!

We were kids, if 25 year-olds should be considered kids. Steve had an old rusted out Buick with a loud exhaust and mostly bald tires.  All of us had long hair. Bob had the longest. We were out of the service by then and living life...enough beer to drown Otis the Drunk, Boones Farm by the case, and drugs every other night. (We would have gotten high every night, but we made a pact to drop, smoke, pop, snort, every other night just to make sure we wouldn't become addicts...and NO needles.)

One day, it was bitter cold, we were bundled up (the Buick didn't have good heat, enough to keep the frost from completely obscuring the windshield), Steve was wound tight (Steve looked and acted like John Belushi), and decided to do a few harmless donuts in the mostly empty A&P parking lot. I was in back, Bob was riding shotgun, and I got the bright idea to see if Steve could "drive with the Force", slipped over behind him, threw my scarf over his eyes, and tied it off behind his head. Steve's right foot panicked and hit the floor. That rotted exhaust belched out a roar that woke up the cashiers in the supermarket. Steve's tongue hung out the side of his mouth like a dog ready to drop, Bob roared in the front seat, I kept pulling on the scarf and the old Buick spun one way, then the other, whipping around the parking lot like a big brown turkey with no head.

Well there was one lady who deemed it necessary to shop that night. Steve finally figured out that if he held the steering wheel in one spot, the car would quit whipping wildly in ten different directions at once. Apparently his right foot had a mind of its own. Finally he hit a light pole, Bob smacked his head on the window, and I slid all the way over to the passenger side, pulling the scarf off Steve's face in just enough time for Bob to punch Steve in the side of the head. And the Buick stopped sliding right next to the shopper's car. Well this woman got out of her car and started waving her arms like the scarecrow on the Yellow Brick Road, screaming at the top of her lungs about us hippy bastards ruining the country. Strangely enough, she happened to have a "Peace and Coexist" sticker on her bumper. Steve didn't say a word, Bob got out and tore the bumper sticker off, tossed it into the snow, turned his back to us and peed on the sticker. The woman got this God-awful look in her eyes, opened her purse and stuck her hand inside. There were no cell phones then, nor was there mace sprays. there were however guns...and most people carried them and we weren't stupid. Bob leaped over the hood head first and was in the car before Steve got the Buick into gear. We backed out of there quicker than we drove in, leaving that peaceful woman to co-exist with her .22.

So that started my studies of gross hypocrisies. Over the years, my list has grown, been pared down, grown again, and pared down over and over. As our culture changes, as technologies changes, as our world spins faster and faster, hypocrisies change. Although I hadn't thought much about those double standards these days, as of late I have found it necessary to rejuvenate the list. I suppose this resurgence might have been brought about by the man standing out side of the Town Hall in my town. He was talking  about how well the meeting protesting the new Verizon tower was going. His agitation level was building as he finally pitched the phone into the brick wall and screaming about the shitty reception and how much money he pays for that shitty reception.

Then there is the cute soccer mom who lives on our street. She is a great person; loves her kids, teaches them all the right ways to live, how to grow up and get along with everyone...until she gets behind the wheel of her mini-van. Teeth clinched, knuckles white, kids strapped in, she is ready for the green flag to be dropped, unless a phone call comes in, then she will of course unclench long enough to take the call.

Hypocrisies are like a monster that feeds and grows by eating its own insides. Like the people who are adamant about finding alternative energies and protest about windmills ruining the landscape. Or the avid recyclers who are dragging bags of leaves to the sidewalk, neatly placed in Home Depot paper bags waiting for the garbage truck to carry them off to the landfill. MY favorite is the State Trooper who is topped out at over 100 mph on 390, talking on the phone, driving with his knee, and tapping on the computer looking for the guy who reportedly was driving 80 mph and talking on his phone.

While I am aware of hypocrisies around me and actually watch for them for their ridiculous humor, I am a perpetrator of them myself which is hypocritical in itself since I live in total denial of it.