Episode Six -- Tufts and Orbs; or, Was John Updike Fucking Serious? (What The Hell Am I Missing Here?)

I. John Updike: Big Weirdo Creep

It's the Third of July. I guess at this point in our nation's history Thomas Jefferson was in the final stages of peer review and revisions. Does one wear a powdered wig when workshopping political treatises? Probably. One could only hope.

The only John Updike I'd read until now is Rabbit, Run. I thought it was alright. Some nice phrases. I just finished Rabbit Redux and I've come to the conclusion that I hate John Updike. Basically, somebody has sex in that book every seven or so pages. The descriptions are godawful. Why did this man use the word cunt so often? Was he trying to speak in what he thought was a "working class" voice? But why am I telling you this. Enjoy:

"It is true: all her talk, her wild wanting it, have scared him down to nothing. She is too wet; something has enlarged her. And the waxen solidity of her young body, her buttocks spheres too perfect, feels alien to him: he grasps her across a distance clouded with Mom's dry warm bones and Janice's dark curves, Janice's ribs crescent above where the waist dipped. He senses winds playing through Jill's nerve-ends, feels her moved by something beyond him, of which he is only a shadow, a shadow of white, his chest a radiant shield crushing her. She disengages herself and kneels to tongue his belly. They play with each other in a fog. The furniture dims around them. They are on the scratchy carpet, the television screen a mother-planet above them. Her hair is in his mouth. Her ass is two humps under his eyes. She tries to come against his face but his tongue isn't that strong. She rubs her clitoris against his chin upside down until he hurts. Elsewhere she is nibbling him. He feels gutted, silly, limp. As last he asks her to drag her breasts, the tough little tips, across his genitals, that lie cradled at the join of his legs. In this way he arouses himself, and attempts to satisfy her, and does, though by the time she trembles and comes they are crying over secrets far at their backs, in opposite directions, moonchild and earthman. 'I love you,' he says, and the fact that he doesn't makes it true. She is sitting on him, still working like some angry mechanic who, having made a difficult fit, keeps testing it."

So let's review: "he grasps her across a distance clouded with Mom's dry warm bones" -- what the fuck?

"the television screen a mother-planet above them" -- what the fucking fuck?

"moonchild and earthman" -- what the goddamn fucking fuck?

"'I love you,' he says, and the fact that he doesn't makes it true. " -- Okay. Fuck you, John Updike. You fucking charlatan. This is nothing short of fraudulent writing. It means exactly nothing. It's faux deep. It's wankery. It's horseshit. IT MEANS NOTHING. Do you know what means more than this? Oh, I don't know. Let's start with this: "Mama-se, mama-sa, ma-ma-coo-sa." You see, that means something. That I can understand. I can hear it, I can feel it, and I can dig it. John Updike encapsulates why people don't read anymore. Too much pretentious nonsense. Absolute utter nonsense. If you liked Rabbit Redux, you're a bad person. And stupid. I'm sorry, bud. I don't make the rules. I just work here.

You see, I hate "high art." I'd rather be on fire than listen to a symphony. I like pop songs. Three-minute pop songs. Everybody knows that civilization peaked with "Jumping Jack Flash." There's nothing better than "Jumping Jack Flash." Two beats of the main chord (bump-bumm) then the four-five-flatted seventh of the scale (bah-na-naa, bah-na-naa). See, it's that four-five flatted seventh that makes it. Puts it in the blues tradition. And it's a song about perseverance. It means something. Listen:

I was born in a crossfire hurricane
And I howled at my mom in the driving rain
but it's alright now
in fact its a gas
it's alright now
I'm Jumping Jack Flash
it's a gas, gas, gas

This is a song written by war babies. Born in 1943, maybe in a goddamn bomb shelter. Getting bombed by the Nazis -- a crossfire hurricane. This is what it means to survive. Who the hell fucks during a war? Who brings children into that? But it's alright now. In fact, it's a gas. Listen to more:

I was raised by a toothless bearded hag
I was schooled with a strap across my back

Child abuse! Surviving child abuse. One might also say: "Lift Your Head Up High/And Scream Out To The World/I Know I Am Someone/And Let The Truth Unfurl/No One Can Hurt You Now/Because You Know What's True/Yes, I Believe In Me/So You Believe In You." Yes, that's the point we need to get at. That's the point I need to get at: no one can hurt me now. That's empowerment. That's what it means. Please also consider:

I was drowned
I was washed up left for dead
I looked down
at my feet and I saw they bled
I frowned at the crumbs of a crust of bread
I was crowned
with a spike right through my head

But it's alright now. In fact it's a gas.

Weird nebulous crucifixion imagery. Resurrection! Rebirth! Perseverance. Rock and Roll music, the beat, that's the Lifeforce. We're all Pagans now, and in the end we'll be better for it. Fuck you John Updike. You big weirdo creep. Everybody, please read books that don't suck. And listen to these songs. They're like church, man:

1. Bo Diddley -- Bo Diddley

2. Somethin' Else -- Eddie Cochran

3. Jumping Jack Flash -- The Rolling Stones

There are many more. But let's start with those. You'll be on your way to good mental health, lower blood pressure, and an understanding of what it means to live at peace with the universe.


II. The Deaf Guy Upstairs

Halloween 2008 was particularly bad. People across the alley, a floor above us, were having a party and pissing and vomiting off of their balcony. They were drunk and loud and engaging in the general douchebaggery that has made living near them the special treat it's been. Let's be honest. Isn't this why we have ground wars? So one nation can agree with another nation to clean these types out of their gene pools? What a terrible thing to say. A lot of decent and intelligent people have died in ground wars. Yeah, that's more than true. It's just that when I get to thinking about binge-drinkers and hockey fans and Metallica concerts, I think that it has to be possible to give nature a gentle nudge. Isn't there an action I can take now to prevent my future children from getting picked on while riding the bus home from school?

Anyway. Wife and I decide to go upstairs and ask the people above us how they stand it. I mean, for them, those fucktards are even closer. They're directly across the way there. So up we went. Turns out the guy who lives there has a girlfriend that visits there one weekend a month. She was having some trouble dealing with them. And the guy, well, it turns out he just turns off his hearing aid. That's right. He pulls a Stockdale. He told us, "I just turn off my hearing aid," and he turned his ear toward us and showed us his ear, which had in it a hearing aid. Now I may have mentioned before that I, in many ways, envy the deaf. You don't have to listen to the stupid things people say to each other. You don't have to listen to people chew, slurp, and all of the other horrendous noises they make when eating. I'd miss the goddamn rock and roll music, though. Hmm. What a quandary! I don't know what to wish for!

But the thing about the deaf guy upstairs is, he walks around like he's got goddamn cinderblocks attached to his feet. He must have no idea how goddamn loud he is when he's stomping around. Crashing, booming, and bamming. Man alive did that guy make a racket himself. Not musically. Not drink and vomit-y. Just Stompy. Wife and I called him Stompy McStomperson. I like the guy, though. We always exchanged pleasantries in the building after our Halloween conversation. We're allies.

So recently, a month or so ago, I run into the deaf guy upstairs and he tells me he's moving. I said, "Oh man, that sucks. What the hell happened?" He didn't hear me. He turned his hearing aid toward me about half way, half way so he could keep his eyes on my lips. Knowing this, I enunciated and shouted, "WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?" And he smiled a bit and said that graduate school wasn't working out for him, that his boss over at the university "threw him under the bus." That's a phrase I never heard until I met my wife. Her family said it all of the time, usually in reference to my wife's mean old granny. They were always throwing somebody under the bus, as in, Mean Old Granny is mad about this, so we threw [insert poor bastard's name here] under the bus and said he is the reason we couldn't make it because he has to be at the airport by dawn. Or something like that. To throw under the bus is to scapegoat. Then the goddamn conservatives tried to say that Obama "threw his white grandmother under the bus" during his historic race speech in Philadelphia in March 2008 when he basically saved his campaign from the Reverend Wright debacle. So anyway, the deaf guy upstairs said, "My boss threw me under the bus." Apparently his program, his boss, and his getting thrown under the bus were all interrelated. And he's not in the program anymore. Whatever it was. And he's moved. So anyway, I see he's moving his stuff out a couple of days later, and like a lot of people who move, he's leaving a lot of his stuff on the curb. Guess what's there? Two big-ass cans, the kind that could have been super big cans of tomatoes or coffee, filled with cement and attached to a barbell. Seriously. It was some kind of deranged, Mad Max post-apocalyptic homemade weight set. Well, that explains the occasional crashes. The deaf guy upstairs was pumping iron. Lifting steel. Uh, pumping concrete. Lifting cement.

Oh, and I almost forgot the best part. He had a vibrating alarm clock. Because obviously, what goddamn good would a beeping alarm clock had done him? Because he's deaf. So some mornings, the goddamn thing would go off before 7 AM (on a Saturday). And it would rattle his floor, our ceiling. One morning, it went off for an hour before we had to call the property managers and they had to go into his place and turn off the crazy thing. He was gone, presumably to visit his girlfriend. And he had presumably left his set vibrating alarm clock behind. One other morning it was going off for going on a half hour when wife and I went up and pounded politely on his door. The roommate answered and said "turn off your alarm." We heard a "What?," which was followed by "TURN OFF YOUR ALARM." "Oh, sorry."

So long, deaf guy upstairs. You seemed like a good guy. And you never played music. So all told, it was a mixed bag. I dug you, though. You seemed profoundly decent to me.

III. The Library Downtown

I'm in love. Oh, baby. I'm in love with the Boston Public Library. The Boston Public Library might very well be the greatest place on earth. First of all, it's downtown, and it's beautiful inside, and it has an ambiance, an essence, a real spirit to it. And the train leaves you off literally in its basement. Oh my Lord how I do love that library. And do you know what else? Suppose you want the Fortune magazine from December 1969? Well guess what, Captain? You just fill out a little piece of paper, hand it to a lady or dude who will tell you, "Come back in twenty minutes," and then it's there waiting for you. In fact, it's there waiting for you in less than that. More like fifteen, tops. I'm getting excited just writing about it. Thinking about it. I want to scream it, shout it, shake my mind all about it. You understand, don't you? You know what I'm talking about. Come on now, people. It's cold outside. I got on my long-ass scarf. My black and orange scarf that is modeled in design (if not color) on the one Keith Richards wore in the film Gimme Shelter. I have on my knit black cap. Come on, people. It is cold outside and I have my list of sources that I need to make my dissertation a reality. Put in that time and place. I need a context for this literature. Yes, you know that I do. A context via periodicals. Sources ascertained from the bibliographies of the books I have read. Come on now, people. How is this going to happen? How is this dissertation going to live and breath if I have no electricity with which to fill the volts in its poor cobbled together neck? You know how. You know how. Copley Square is where. Copley Square. Where Craig's Lists hookers are killed by gambling addicts. Ah, yes. Muggers buggers and thieves. I do indeed love that dirty water. You fill out a piece of paper and they bring it to you. They bring it to you. Love that dirty water.

So I did just that again and again. Bound periodicals from anther time. A copy card. Copies copies copies. Reading and discerning. Constructing a narrative. Finding that line. All that place has to offer plus the New York Times, which of course you understand is available on the Boston Public Library's site now that yours truly has a card. A library card. A library card, which does indeed make the PDFs of articles from generations ago downloadable to one's computer. Mine all mine. History at my fingertips. Another lifetime in this one.

And one time I was walking down the street after a particularly successful day at the greatest place on earth. It was cold outside and my spirits you must know are always in direct inversion to the thermometer. Ah yes, the thermo-meter reads oppositely of my mood-o-meter. And there I am bipping and bopping and non-stopping and you must see that part of the sidewalk is closed off. The chainlink fence lined with a green tarp because what these workers are doing is a secret. It's a union thing, you understand. Shhhhh. And the sidewalk has us walking single-file and this makes it easier for the homeless man with change in a plastic cup to reside at the mouth of the chain-link fence and panhandle the river of people spilling into the double-lane sidewalk. I told him I didn't have any change. And I didn't. The copy machines done got all my change, and I am walking down the street with history in my backpack. And the man said to me, "You got yourself a long scarf, though." Yeah. I got myself a long scarf. Life is just that good in wintertime. Life in a Northern Town.

Oh, one more story about the library. It was a cold winter last year. And as you can imagine, homeless folks were in the library. The librarians would try to move them along. One gentleman told the librarian, "Well, I have to find me a book first." And seeing the section he was in, said, "Russian. Yeah. I'm going to be learning me some Russian."


IV. We Try To Avoid That

I made a mistake at my work. I coded something incorrectly. The supervisor, literally the overseer, told me, "We try to avoid that." I replied, "You try to avoid mistakes?" Supervisor said, "Yeah. We generally try to avoid making mistakes like that." I told her I understood, and from then on out, I have tried to avoid making mistakes. Because up until then, I was all about fucking up.

Oh, and here's a conversation I heard one night at work. I jotted it down word for word:

Helen: They should close this place for a day and give it a real cleaning.

Mary: I brought in a Swifter Duster, but I don't know what became of it.

Linda: Are you talking about a dictionary?

Mary: No.

V. Applause Fascists

I am going to admit something to you that I'm ashamed of. I went to see a KISS concert from January 1976 in a movie theatre. Aren't you ashamed of me? I'm ashamed of myself. I shave in the dark because I can't stand to see my big ugly face. God, I hate KISS. Why won't they go away and leave me in peace? Older brothers listened to KISS in the 70s, you must understand. And when these older brothers, who stopped listening to KISS in those same 70s, yes when those older brothers die, you find yourself attached to a time and place trying to talk to him one more time. You want to get straight with him, love him by talking to him on that weird orange porch where you watched the rain fall in fat splats on the sidewalk leading to the rocky driveway. Can't I talk to him just one more time? I saw a KISS concert in person just days after he died. Years after the 70s had passed. Reagan was long gone then. Halfway between Reagan and Clinton, you will ascertain the year. My younger brother and his friends needed a ride and I agreed for a ticket. Older brother had just died. They opened with "I Stole Your Love," a song I hadn't heard in years. Literally years. And I stood on the arms of my chair in the rain, just out of reach of the overhang, and I sang every word. It was weird. Where were these lyrics coming from?

I'm something different
Ain't I correct?
How does it feel
To find out you failed your test?

Stupid lyrics, too. I knew every last one of them. God, I was so happy. I was so relieved. And when it was over, I found a sopping wet five dollar bill. It was my night. And when we got to the parking lot, somebody had slashed two of our tires. The two on the right side. The passenger side. My older brother's car. KISS fans. They're the worst.

So years later I want to see this goddamn KISS concert at a movie theatre south of Dayton because I'm retarded (literally in some goddamn sense, my guess would be emotionally) and I half expect to see a 1978 version of my brother appearing as a ghost in the corner of the goddamn screen. Lower right hand corner. Seems plausible. So KISS opens with "Deuce." And when the opening song's over, this fucking asshole stands up and applauds. He not only applauds, he looks around and starts shouting at people, "COME ON. PUT YOUR FUCKING HANDS TOGETHER. FUCK YEAH!!!" And the worst part? People around him start applauding and yelling. "Yeah! Whoo! Yeah! Alright!"

And this reminded me of the time I saw the Black Crowes, who were headlinging the Horde Festival. I'm thinking 1995. Hot fucking day. And do you know who I don't like? The Black Crowes. They suck. And they opened with a fifteen minute song. Who the hell opens with a fifteen minute song? I was high and tired and hot. I'd been at that godforsaken place for hours upon hours. I sat through Blues Traveler with their dipshit guitar player and fatassed harmonica honker. I can't even remember who else was on the goddamn bill. But I'm sure they sucked. They sucked, as Dick Cheney might put it, "Big Time." And the Black Crowes are up there, all of them stoned out of their pathetic heads, making goldawful noises with glass slides and harmonicas, just reeking like sonic cow shit. I ask you again, who the hell opens with a fifteen minute song? Jesus Christ I wanted to go home. Or die. I'd have settled for either. And this asshead, somewhere around the third song, which must have been at least a half hour into the concert, comes up behind me and my girlfriend at the time's friend's boyfriend and yells, "They're up there working their asses off for you. Get up and cheer for them. GET UP!!!" I look at the guy to make sure this isn't somebody who can beat the hell out of me. He isn't. So I yell back, "LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!!!" And he yells back, "I'M JUST SAYING, THEY'RE UP THERE..." And I yell back, "I DON'T KNOW YOU. I DIDN'T COME HERE WITH YOU. MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS." And he starts yelling again, "I'M JUST SAYING..." And I say, "LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE. BEAT IT, ASSHOLE." And he does. Until later when he realizes that girlfriend's friend's boyfriend has a tape recorder because the Black Crowes for some stupid fucking reason want people to tape their shows and further damage the planet by propagating the shit they blare. And the guy comes out of nowhere and starts yelling into the tape recorder the date, the location, the "fact" that the Black Crowes kick ass, and that this fucking guy (me) isn't giving "the Crowes" the respect they deserve. And that's all I remember. I probably left. I probably left a third of the concerts I ever attended early. I hate concerts. They suck. Do you know why? Because people go to concerts. Thousands and thousands of people.

So who are these applause fascists? How can I link them to the ones too scared to stop applauding Stalin? How can we link that to the movie The Wall? These and other questions just might get answered during the next episode of Frank Sinatra Ate My Pancakes.

But before I go. I should tell you how the KISS movie saga ends. Oh, I should tell you this, first. Paul Stanley's solo album Live to Win had just come out. (I know.) And there was a guy (different than Applause Fascist) in the concession stand line bloviating about it. He actually said in reference to it "...Paul's new album, which is excellent, by the way..." Yikes. Anyway, when that horrible concert from 1976 is over, I say to the guy next to me, "Man, I'd forgotten what a drummer Peter Criss was back then. His hands were fast. Shows you what a bastard drugs are." And the guy said back to me, "Yeah. He kicks ass." And I said, "Indeed."