So Don't Show Up Around Here till Your Social Worker's Helped

This Song is About One of the Stories...Right Click!

Some of the better stories I could tell you would probably get me sued because they involve people currently living and at times, still in my life...and they don't want any of those stories publicized. Also, it would be rude as shit to tell the WHOLE TRUTH as it would cause some personal pain.

But...they would be sooo good to tell! So here's some first lines to subjects I can't really write fully about..

“Ron..she LIKES you! She keep asking questions about you! She asked me if you had a girlfriend. She's been by your house in Pawtucket and all that! C. tells me

“Didn't she just get out of a rehab unit kicking a heroin addiction...and why is she stalking me?”

“She's all about you when you're here! She really lights up!” he says further.

End of that story!

**

“YOU live in that house all alone! You have TWO full floors and you can easily have a second person there!” K moans to me.

“No...the dog doesn't like others around.” I say.

“THAT monster loves girls! I know this! How many times have I been here and he loves me because I'm a girl...he hates men instead!”

“What are you getting at?” (I know where this was leading, I wanted her to come out and say it)

“Well, if not that...YOU have money...you know my car is a piece of shit....”

I get up to leave the couch as reaction to that request and I hear a faint “Fuck you,” as I walk away. I then turn around and feel something slam my lip. I raise my hang to my lip and there's blood. On the floor is a TV remote.

“You THREW a remote at me because I won't buy you a car?!”

End of that one due to ugliness...

**

“Hey, I need a ride to Central Falls...just a quick 30 mins...” M asks me.

“Ok, I got nothing to do..c'mon.”

We get to some three decker and M goes in, spends about 89 seconds in there and comes back carrying a full Almacs paper bag and hops in.

“Ok, we're all done.”

So we drive back home.

I park in front of his house and M takes the paper back and shakes it onto the floor of my car and out falls three compressed, giant bricks of marijuana.

“YOU MUTHA FUCKER! WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME YOU WERE DONIG THIS???!!!”

“Shit, what's the problem? He asks.

“IF I got pulled over..anything...ANYTHING in my car is legally MINE!”

“But we didn't get pulled over.” he complains.

“THAT'S NOT THE POINT!”

End that one with a louder argument with all sorts of past shit brought up...

**

Mike, Dave and a few others are hanging out around the corner when JR shows up carrying a notebook, college-ruled mind you!

“Hey, listen to this..(giggle)..it's so funny!”

He reads an excerpt.

“It was so wonderful! I know he's the one..and he's my FIRST boyfriend! It sort of hurt at first but I kept quiet because I didn't want to mess things up. It was romantic too because it was raining a bit by the side of the garage.”

“What are you reading?” we all ask JR.

He giggles more, then busts out laughing and finally....when he can control it he bellows out:

“It's my sister's DIARY!” AH HA HA HA HA HA!”

We all instinctively knew which sister too...

End of that one! There are others...

The Sound Track To Your Life

Right Click n Play, Mazzy Star

I wish I came up with that phrase above but no. JB105 constantly uses it to promote their 80's retro to their audience. How can the 80's be retro? But there you are..it's been over for 30 years!

Shit...30 years...

I spend an undue amount of time cruising Youtube for songs I haven't heard in years, then find a flac recording of them and steal them, or if not that, then to joggle some memories of my life when a particular song was hot. I'll tend to post them on Facebook to the very few fans of that song that give a rat's ass. Many times my memory and the song's placement on the hit list don't jive. But there it is, dated and stamped...I guess my memory isn't what it used to be. To be honest too, there are gaps in time back then when my life wasn't producing any significant signposts. You work, sleep and slog along and those months become a blur. Why would you remember redundancy? Any songs that were popular then were not paired to any remarkable event in my life at the time. And then there are the “Holy shit..I had forgotten all about that song!” flashbacks.

Mazzy Star's “Fade Into You” was hitting it's highest peak in September 1994. The girl singing it was Hope Sandoval,. She was pathologically shy and would only do live stage work IF the lights were not shown on her. She'd also refused to engage the audience or give them eye contact and instead stared at the floor while immersed in darkness. Very rarely would she do any work and be easily seen doing it w/o some coercion. To this day she hides. Hence the expression, “shoe gazer music” came into being. It was popular for a bit back when alternative was really about alternative.

Sept. '94 found me unemployed and typing off resumes like a bandit. I had finished up a year long battle with a former employer after hiring three, yes, 3 lawyers to make their lives shit. Boy, when I have a vendetta, I sure go balls to the wall doing it. Don't worry about me now, I am old and too tired to mount such a offensive. AND...looking back on it all, I now see I should have not wanted their heads on a platter and just settle for the cash buyout. But hindsight is always that, hindsight.

I didn't know it but in a month's time I would be hired by a place that dealt with the deaf population on the East Bay. I didn't know I'd be learning ASL either. It's amazing how you don't know anything really about the future and how it'll steer your life in a different direction. You can make plans, point your life a particular goal and still be surprised at that new details you have to deal with. You can't anticipate everything! And this is happening now still. When does it ever stop?

I didn't know I'd meet a girl there who was sort of similar to Hope Sandoval, extremely shy and had protective walls three feet thick and 20 feet high. Funny how sometimes, and maybe just barely, a song dovetails into your life just a bit. More likely, you MAKE the song your own even though it's lyrics may have very little to do with your life at all. “OMG...That's about ME!” (say that with a teen girl's shrill voice)

So how do you approach a shy girl like Sandoval or Beth as I'll call her? You go very slowly and you carefully worm your way through the cracks in the wall. But, since her radar was on it's highest setting, she saw any attempt to “reach her” as a breakdown in security. But, there were times I manage to have her lift that protection and see what I knew was there, a too sensitive heart that at one time, or more likely, many times, was dragged across barbed wire. So she did the only thing she knew, she walled up to protect it.

I never managed to get through though for any appreciable amount of time. Her fear was too great to allow it. After some months, she quietly quit that job and moved back into her Mom's house in Bristol I was told. Gone forever. Perhaps now after years, she has managed to trust...somewhat. It's too bad, she was one of the few people I knew whose heart was “good,” even if it was a bit banged up.

That month also had me driving a Dodge 400 convertible that was falling apart. I had salt and pepper hair at 30 and was dying it. I also thought then that being 30 was “old.” At that point in you life it is because you are expelled forever from the 20 Something set. Expelled from waking up hung over in your car in a beach parking lot. Expelled from making rash decisions that can haunt you for years. Expelled from taking last minute road trips to “we don't know where yet”. Being 30 demands you act like an adult. Just the sound of that number alone will do it. You brag to those around you then about how mature you are, and your just 30 friends brag right back. You talk of careers, first homes, marriage and buying “sensible” cars. Sensible meaning a 90's “mini van.”

At 56, 30 now seems to me just a more sober version of a 20 Something, but still not knowing life well enough yet and winging it as best as you can.

Ask me, if I make it to 70, what “56” really means...and life will still be doing what it always does, not showing you the future at all and surprising you...and there will be a hit song to mark it.

Bugs...

I hadn't tried lobster till I was 30 years old. Yeah, that's right, 30. Up until that point, it was fried scallops for me. In my mind, nothing beats them, well...maybe baked scallops would take second place.

Why did it take so long?

As a kid, the family, after visiting Scarborough beach would go over to Galilee to eat at the Portside restaurant. Half the time we'd go to that take out window, order clam cakes and chowder and sit on the picnic tables and eat it. Once in a while my Dad had the patience to wait 30 minutes in that line and we'd all get a booth instead. Their chowder was the color of used dishwater and I had to be told it was the Rhode Island version, just clam stock. I was too young to know there were three versions; red, white and “Rhode Island.” To me, it looked like the RI kind was just watered down garbage fed to tourists. It came barely warm or scalding hot.

My Dad would order the lobster and every, and I mean every time the waitress brought it, I just saw a GIANT BUG on a plate. Anything that has an exoskeleton is a BUG in my book. I would eat my scallops and watch my Dad tear apart this...thing and I'd be secretly disgusted by it. Food you have to post-butcher yourself was NOT food. It looked like you were tearing apart an entire cooked cow to eat it.

He'd go on about how great it was and then my Mom and Dad would discuss if there was any “green stuff,” or roe in it. That was when the lobstermen could take pregnant females. Regulations then didn't really care about lobster populations. “Green stuff?” are they kidding I thought to myself. I did see my Dad eat that goo once, it looked like baby seagull shit.

Quietly I thought...”You're gross..”

**

In my 20's, when we all had jobs and money, I'd see friends order lobster as well. Again, I'd be ordering scallops. I'd get ribbed for being cheap bastard for NOT getting the lobster but any protests from me about that not being the reason were shot down. I couldn't convince them that I didn't like it nor the idea.

“But EVERYONE likes lobster” was the reason I was given as to why it was good.

“I don't.” I told them. Oddball I was...just leave me alone to enjoy my damn scallops in peace, would you?

**

Finally, in Johnson & Wales, we ended up having to cook lobsters. They brought in this crate of 30 of them for each of us to work on. Ok...I have to do it..but I don't have to eat it later. We did all various kinds, steamed, fried, Newburg, lobster rolls, Diablo, Thermidor....you name it we did it. Afterwards, when we all sat down to eat it, I finally told myself I had better find out what all the hoopla was all about. I picked a simple, steamed lobster to try. I wanted to get that base flavor w/o any other ingredients confusing my tongue.

I had told the guys I sat with that this would be my first time trying it. One guy, a Navy guy, who was from Arkansas had tried it long before me and was goofing on the fact he was raised in a state not near to any salt water and he had had it before I did, a Rhode Islander.

So I tore off the claw, busted it open and pulled out that meat. I dipped it in the butter and I was expecting to see Jesus because EVERYONE saw Jesus when they ate lobster. It was that kind of experience to them. I popped it into my mouth and chewed...

I chewed...then swallowed it and I thought...

“That's it...that's all?” I was not impressed at all, Jesus had NOT returned and I was NOT impressed at all.

“OK, it's a seafood...” I could taste the ocean in it. Then a few seconds later I said to them.

“Big.Fucking.Deal...That's it? That's ALL there is? Where's Jesus? Everyone acts like it's the Second Coming when they eat this!”

Know how many lobsters I”ve eaten in 56 years? Less than the fingers on my hand. Know how many scallops, sea and bay ones in the same time? Way more than 10 and I counting in pounds.