When I Met Jim Tarricani, A Moment From My Life.

 

 

 

Mel (not you Melanie M, the other Mel!) and Mary were two friends I knew back through the '90s. Unfortunately, due to one misunderstanding and the usual drift in people's lives, I haven't seen either one in decades. Mary and I pissed one another off over what I can't remember now and Mel and I just wandered from one another.

Mel and Mary were friends for the same reason everyone else becomes friends, common views, qualities and each can fill in the other's missing parts. You ever see two people come together and the sum of those two parts is greater than supposed whole? With Mel and Mary, it was the opposite. Those two would come together and degraded till the sum of their particular parts went negative.

Mel, managed in certain people, to have them revert to a younger more immature self. It was what made Mel happy, to return to a time when she was childish and w/o any responsibilities. She was probably the first Peter Pan Girl I ever met, who vowed 'never to grow up.' She managed to get away with it (for a while) as her personality was vivacious, upbeat and quite energetic. Also, like people will do, they allowed her to be that way. We all make concessions to other's personalities as long as the cost isn't too great. We accommodate another's peccadilloes as a manner of course.

Mary 'n' Mel could act like they were 12 year girls at times. The whispering, gossip, giggling, attraction to things that were silly. When I used to drive a convertible, the two of them decided to crawl into the backseat and cover themselves with a blanket I had there, as we were flying down Post Road. At the Airport road redlight, the other drivers shot looks at me, the two hidden girls and then wondered...what I don't know. Mary, was married with a kid and from what I saw, enjoyed the time with Mel as a brief vacation, otherwise, Mary was as dead serious as cancer at times when it came to life at times. But around Mel...she was a different woman then.

I've said it before, I tend(ed) to live life close to the vest as I have seen how it all can go haywire, so keep your shit wired tight. However, show me a girl who didn't live like that, who did run into the street w/o looking, who chased fun at the drop of a hat, and I was immediately attracted. Those women I refereed to as roller coaster rides, not that they were malicious about it or some hidden drug problems in their lives, but addicted to fun and adrenaline rushes.

Mel mainlined adrenaline...and I liked that!

**

Mary, Mel and I were tooling around downtown Providence one Saturday night. We were just ambling around on a summer night, seeing what may be there. We ended up at Waterplace Park at a small event in that amphitheater. The girls were dressed in 90's girl fashion and I? I was dressed a bit cheap. I wore white jeans, top siders with a tasteful (sort of) Hawaiian shirt. I kinda looked like this guy pictured just below.  Yes, it was slightly tacky and vulgar but it gets you attention and I could be a hog for that if I was in the mood. It's a major reason why I tell stories so much, you're focused on me! Yes, I am quite aware of myself at times!

The event was chamber music and the crowd attending it were polite, quiet and behaved. We three never climbed into the seats but instead leaned against a security fence in center/front of everyone there and for a bit, watched the musicians saw on their violins and cellos. Of course, the two girls have to start goofing around with one another and I got in between them, wrapping my arms around their shoulders and we started this slow mamba dance to the music. Mary didn't excite me at all but Mel sure did. She knew damn well I liked her and she ground that feline body into mine as we slowly gyrated to the music.

I think we were the only ones there making any noise and it wasn't that loud to begin with.

I then, for some reason, turned around to look at the people sitting in the amphitheater and I noticed half the crowd was looking at us. The closest person gawking at us, about 10 feet away, was Jim Tarricani of New Watch 10. When our eyes met, I could see what his face said. He was disgusted with us..with me. We three were ruining this noble, staid event by my/we acting like a pimp with two harlots on my arms. Jim and I stared at one another for, oh I say, longer than one should because it started to make me uncomfortable. I know disapproval in someone's face when I see it and Tarricani's face said I was an ignorant, uncultured pig. Well, it depends on the setting doesn't it?

I turn to the two girls and tell them it was probably time to leave as we weren't making too many friends there. Mel, who asked why, then said “Oh Fuck them!” a bit too loudly after I told her the reason. With a little push on my arms, I guided we three right back out of the venue. I was sort of surprised with Tarricani's gaze following us out until we passed the support walls till it blocked his view.

Perhaps, just perhaps, Tarricani's front row, center seat was special? Perhaps there were other luminaries from the State and media in the other seats close by? Whatever that event was, there was no security at all. But how many goons do you need to control the gates at a chamber music concert? I would say...none. Leave the door open and we'll come in.

 

Sort of Barely Well Off Upper Middle Class

 

 

A few weeks ago I read an article about insufferable “new rich” who visit Nantucket. The article went on to surmise that many of the tourists were the nouveau riche who came to the island like it was a pilgrimage to Mecca. “If one finally 'arrives,' one must make at least one pilgrimage to Nantucket to bray about their financial status. Profess your faith through displaying conspicuous consumption.” In other words Rhode Islanders would understand, a spacone.

The original subject of the article was about some nasty Islanders who callously dismissed the poorer residents (the “help”) concerns about finding affordable housing there. Bumper stickers were appearing that said: “If You Want Affordable Housing, Go Back to the Cape Where You Belong.” The author goes on to question whether the help was going to commute the four hour total, ferry to and from the Island, to work their jobs keeping the rich from having to do their own laundry and such. A response to the article had one threatening to introduce as many male and female skunks to the island, in hopes they breed like hell and stink up the place. I think perhaps some nice Lyme disease carrying tics stuck to the skin of male and female badgers would make island living more interesting.

But the author's trip to the Island took on a different bent when he encountered the stuck up attitudes of mostly the visitors of the Island vs. the actual residents themselves. He noticed the arrogant way they drove on that tiny island, with over sized Cadillac Escalades and giant Land Rovers. Add to that their inability to follow parking regulations and parked wherever they wanted. Also the comedy of seeing their purported off road vehicles sunk, up to their axles in the sand, on some of the beaches.

He spoke of standing in line at one of the many ice cream shops near the principal marina there and overhearing, rather TOO easily, some young 20 Something Trust Fund kids insult his choice in sunglasses. They weren't Jacques Marie Mage shades but a pair of knock-off Ray Bans bought at a Boston yard sale. Oh, How gauche! How tacky!

He ignored the comments but it perked his interest and began listening in to some other conversations he would overhear from the young rich he'd find. The best one was where he overheard a young wife, with a little one in tow, rip the hell out of her husband about not “being able to afford the White Elephant Hotel and instead staying at some B&B where they do NOT babysit the kids all day. The White Elephant boasts of a staff where you can dump your annoying, fun killing kids off all day, freeing you to get drunk and go wind surfing. If you're really rich, you can send them to some boarding school in Switzerland. Then you can sail the world in your yacht, docking at all the proper places and be seen.

Ugh, imagine a wife who was soo class conscious to ride you about not moving up as well as you can, so you can afford to brazenly display and shove in the face of others, your wealth? Even if she was hot that wouldn't be compensation enough.

**

On a 4^th of July once, I hung out with some friends I grew up with at their place of business to watch the fireworks at McCoy stadium. It was nicely placed to see it all and an easy in 'n' out as the city population would swell another 20,000 and jam up all the roads. For us, we knew how to navigate the side roads and avoid it all from where his business was.

At the time, I was driving a Sebring convertible which I loved. I always loved convertibles as they were a joy to drive and very relaxing. I had parked mine with the other vehicles there. It was the only “car” in the lot as everyone else drove oversized SUVs. As the night wore on, one of the wives came to me and asked why I was still driving a car. It was the way she said it that dripped of judgment and failed conformism on my part. I wasn't keep up appearances it seems.

I told her I didn't need a truck like that, and being very conscious of costs, I alerted her that the exhaust system on her husband's SUV costs more than than..say a very decent weekend on the Cape. That didn't click for her, she was too involved in her appearance and how she slightly tilted her white wine glass as she spoke to me. Also being desperately thin at 47 didn't help her in my mind's eye either. “You're not 20 honey..not anymore!” I thought.

As she walked back to her family, I mouthed, “You're married to a plumber for God's Sake, who was convicted of drug dealing in his teens. I know, I saw him being shoved into a cop car in Slater Park.” I suspect she was waiting for her invitation to join the Point Judith Country Club. It'll be a lonnng wait honey, you aren't their kind of people. You'd be arrested if you tried to walk in the front door.

At another cook out event, I ran into another conspicuous spender wife. She had questioned why I was still living in Pawtucket and not moved to Seekonk or Rehoboth where all the newly rich ones in Pawtucket fled too. I had told her that it would be nice to have the privacy a couple of acres would give me but the “need” to move just two miles to the east wasn't that strong. As we continued to speak, she fired jabs at me and I at her. When I found out she belonged to a home owners association, I really dug into her. I called them conformist shit holes where “bored rich housewives who have nothing to do but stir the shit in the pot by patrolling the neighborhood looking for petty violations of the association's contract...the wrong colored rose bushes...only red American Beauty roses are allowed!”

I go on...

“My God..it's like a bunch of teen girls ripping up another one over her lack of proper mascara...you'd think these women would've grown emotionally over the years, simply just grow up!”

When I said that, her head spun around and she gave me the worst look in the world.

BINGO! You gave it away! I nailed it! She WAS one of those girls! I thought.

“Hey Kathy, why did you get so angry at what I said? Are YOU one of those girls?”

Silence. Only crickets chirping.

The whole time, her husband was sitting right next to her and just dried up like a spider on a hot stove as we two had this little row. He wasn't going to say a damn thing..and didn't.

She cut me off after that for the rest of the night. No loss. I just felt bad for her husband who had to LIVE with that. 

 

 

 

 

Lite Brite

 

 

 

I usually post a Christmas story here if I'm in the mood. Most of my past Christmases fade into the dust as nothing exceptional sticks out. However, there are a few that do. Two of them I'll tell you about here. One is a great memory for me and the other, quite ugly. This is all true

The Good.

Of course I was up early for Christmas morning when I was five. I had managed to beat everyone at that. Even at that age, if I was the first one up, I knew enough to creep around as to not wake the others. So I crept down the stairs and came upon a sight. The whole living room seemed stuffed with gifts. As a little kid, everything in the world seems so much larger. The living room, the tree, the gifts and anyone older than me. Remember how your perspective was very different then? To me, it seemed that the living room had no more room in it when filled with so many gifts.

I walked up to them, trying to figure out who was getting what. I could see my brother's name and mine on most. The stockings hung up were bulging and on the stairway banister, six fist sized ornamental foiled balls were taped to them. I didn't know they were chocolate candies underneath that foil till I was told later.

When everyone else got up we tore into the gifts. It's such a blur that I really don't remember much except for that my Mom was sitting there on the couch, fully dressed and smoking her Newport cigarettes and drinking her fave earl gray tea. My Dad, was over by another chair, still half asleep in his paisley pjs.

“Richard, it's Christmas...aren't you getting dressed?” my Mom asks Dad

“Yeah...later.” If it wasn't for us kids being noisy, he'd easily go back to sleep right then and there, half sliding out of the lounger.

My Mom's style back then was to dress like Laura Petrie from the Dick van Dyke show. I really don't remember if she ever wore a dress back then. Then again, she was the youngest Mom in our neighborhood and I remember most of the other Mom's dressing in dresses, which looked like printed bags. Thinking back on it too, my Mom had a decent figure to wear something like Laura would wear. I know, I know....sounds gross to rate your own Mom, but compared to the other house-coated ratbag Moms I knew on our street, she was the better “looker.” 

 

Laura Petrie

 

 

The best gift that Christmas morning I got was Lite Brite. I had asked Dad how does it work and he said we'd set it up later as too much was going on now. I could be a fairly patient kid and knew he was right. No matter...Santa had brought the one gift I was wanting above all else. I can wait.

Later on that night, a few uncles had stopped by and of course, being Irish, there was liquor for the adults. My brother's friend, Bobby, had come by to play with my brother's new gifts. I was soon pushed into the background as the adults adulted with their Irish whiskies and my older brother with his older friend did what all older brothers do, shove you away.

“Will you STOP pestering us! Go away! Get Dad to set up that Lite Brite! Beat it!”

I was getting a bit desperate to get my Lite Brite up and running. To me, from seeing it on TV, it was a magical machine and I HAD to see it now. I returned to the kitchen and approached my Mom about it. She then got up from the table and with a “I'll be back,” came with me to my room upstairs.

For an adult, screwing in a 100 watt light bulb into a plastic box, snapping on a peg board, then a paper graphic with another peg board on top of that was not rocket science. It was to me. Hell, I'm five, give me a break! She then told me to look closely at the holes as they were printed with the first letter of each color. “B” for blue, “R” for red and to push the transparent colored pegs into that hole. She sat next to me on the bed as we did this and offered just enough help for me to figure it out. She was good for helping me as a kid but also would let me struggle with things to learn it myself.

As I filled the peg board, the outline of a sailboat was forming. I became excited because the colors were glowing right into my face and I kept telling my Mom how cool this all was. Here's the key memory that I still see today. I turned to her, excited, she looks at me and smiles. We were doing something together. I had her to myself and she seemed just as enthusiastic about this as I was. We both were experiencing this magic machine for the first time. My Dad and his brothers in law were getting louder, drunker in the kitchen. My brother and Bobby I could hear in his room thumping away on the floor doing God Knows What but the best scene in that house was my Mom and I. We were two best friends discovering life's miracles together.

Once the board was all filled up, I asked her to shut off the overhead light so to see this glow in the dark. She did and I was shocked. The full wizardry of the Lite Brite had shown. The colors were so deep, so bright that it just saturated our eyes, causing me to utter, “Ooooooh!”

In winter gray New England, this was Heaven, or it looked like what Heaven would look like, the deepest colors imaginable. I and my Mom were there to see it. We two had found another revelation together. We two included one another, enjoying each other. It's at this age you find out that sharing “fun” with someone increases it by so much more.

The last time I had a reaction to color was at a Pink Floyd concert decades later. The opening song, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” had a single, gallium-arsenide laser appear and bounce around inside the Civic Center. The beam had an electric blue color to it and a ghostly feature, a semi transparency with what looked like static within the beam itself. Gilmour plucked away at his guitar as this other-worldly thing glowed and sizzled 20 feet above my head. This was the first time I had ever seen a laser in real life. The five year old in me thought “Oooooh!”

The Ugly.

My brother had was on leave from the Navy for the Christmas of '83 when I picked him up at the airport. While driving home, I had warned him that our Mom was in another depressive episode again, this one stronger than the last. She had fought with depression ever since I was alive and it's cycles just repeated itself. She'd get into a deep funk for about three to four months and then somehow get out of that rut, mostly by herself. The treatments for it were lousy back then in the '70's and she had tired of them not working as promised. Eventually, she gave up on Dr's, psychiatrists and would just tough it out alone.

This bout of depression was worse though in '83. I had known that trying to get her to see a physician was not going to work as she'd completely balk at the idea. So I did what I did most times I saw this in the past, wait it out. She'd come around again in time.

“Holy shit!” my brother says to me when he encountered our Mom again on Christmas Eve. “She's really bad this time around!” He had not seen her in two years so this was a shock to him.

I had told him “Yeah” but was hoping for that turnaround we both had always seen before. It happened so many times in the past like this.

“I don't know man...I don't know.” he commented.

She has lost weight, let her hair turn into a rat's nest and had this completely blank expression on her face most of the time.

“I'm calling her GP tomorrow.” he says.

“She won't do a damn thing, she'll tell the Dr to buzz off...she'll fight any advice he has! She won't on her own accord look for help.” I reply

“Yeah...I know she will, but what else can we do?”

On Christmas morning, my brother gets off the phone, “The Dr says to take the 'bull by the horn' and literally kidnap her to Butler Psychiatric Hospital. He says not to worry about any legal problems with it...and if she fights, just drag her there anyway, anyhow. I'll back you two up.”

So my brother and I come up with a ruse, we were all to just take a ride this morning. She had gone without any resistance. Once inside the main entrance to Butler was when I felt her pulling away from me and him, trying to get back to the car. I just gripped her arm harder and shoved her along towards the ER desk they had there. Within two minutes, three large oak sized men showed up and grabbed her, pulling her along and past two doors that slammed shut behind them. I then heard some mechanical sounds coming from those doors. Automatic locks engaging so I figured. It was that sound of the doors that got me. The gravity of this finally sunk in. My Mom has been locked up in crazy bin.

On the drive home from Butler, my brother turns to me and in his particular black/dark humor says, “Merry Christmas!”

I got the joke. Life was just too absurd at times to make any sense. We both, for some reason, had this kind of humor and outlook on life.

Butler Hospital then, was beautiful. It looked like the best hotel I had ever seen. Quiet, clean with expensive paintings on the walls and other artworks placed in the halls. When my brother and I arrived for a family meeting, we were led by a psychiatric graduate student to the “Locked ward.” On our way there, we had passed through an arboretum filled with bushes, trees, flowers and ivy, all growing inside this large room that led to a staircase and open walkway in the center of the building. It smelled like summer in there, it being just the day after Christmas.

Family meetings include everyone, kids, parents, relatives. I instinctively knew what was about to happen there. This meeting was not about my Mom, it was a surreptitious staged event by the Dr's and assistants to watch the family members as they talked about Mom. They were looking for family dynamics and would find them, I was assured of that. I doubt any other relative knew that they were the subjects that morning. I knew I would be. How? I was a psych major at RIC and had seen this very same thing at a visit to a mental health center we had to witness and then write about.

Dr Martin Furman was her assigned Dr. He had an odd Afrikaner accent which made sense, since he was born and lived in South Africa during Apartheid's heyday, later emigrating to America, landing in Rhode Island as a psychiatric physician at Butler. This guy looked like a German SS officer to me and with that German exactness for detail and mannerisms. This guy wasn't about to fuck around at all, with anything.

Furman starts with me. So I tell him of the past twenty or so years of her illness, life and whatnot. I was fairly truthful but felt a bit defensive as he probed me further on details. It then happened, Furman's match lit the fuse. The interactions of everyone there fired up and accusations, old hurts, bitterness came out. Events happening 20 years before I was born came to light. Three graduate level interns sitting with us then started scribbling away on their legal pads as everyone talked at once. Furman just became quiet and leaned back, just watching everyone else and not really my Mom at all. I myself shut the hell up, not taking part in this as I knew that the people there were dissecting us. I didn't want to be dissected at all. My past, bad decisions and general personality I wasn't about to divulge or even reveal via body language.

Later on, after it was over, my brother and I were checking out that arboretum we saw earlier. It was really nice to see a little, living forest in late December. He then turns to me says, “Oh..I forgot...and Happy New Year too!” Even more of his nihilistic humor!

Things got better within a month. By the times in the early '80s, they had much better drugs and therapies to deal with depression. I would shake Martin Furman's hand today if I happen to come across him. He had managed to make my Mom's life bearable for the next 13 years.

**

It goes without saying that I prefer the Christmas of 1969 better than that of 1983. I had, for a time at least, a Mom who was lucid and stable for it. And when she was healthy, she was there for me and we both enjoyed each other's company. It wasn't all crap and there were times some absolute gems we two had found together. I haven't forgotten about that.

Poles Apart

 

 

The door is halfway open to the hallway. I can see well from my little examination room as a Dr wheels his touch screen up to my room, but before entering it he taps some icon and a song comes on from the overhead speakers. He's pleased and turns it up more by sliding his finger up. Pushing his touch screen in he introduces himself, “I'm Dr SuchnSuch!”

I then say to him because I immediately recognized the guitar solo, “You like David Gilmour??

He stares at me for a second...”You KNOW who he is?”

“Yeah, that's “Poles Apart” from the Division Bell you're playing now.” It's a song where Gilmour tries to patch up the past he had with Syd Barrett and Roger Waters.

He again stares...”How...? None of my patients know of this..you're the first to make any mention of it. I play it all the time.”

We then kill 15 minutes speaking of Pink Floyd, Roger Waters and comparing concerts we've seen, before we get to the task at hand, checking me out.

The tests come back, “Yup, didn't really have to do them but wanted to confirm what I thought. You have lobar pneumonia, lower right lobe, could hear it on the stethoscope. It's pretty common...it can last days or weeks, depending on who you are and in your case, you were probably walking around with it for a week w/o knowing it til the last days it kicked in.”

I think, “Great...same damn thing my Dad would get, again and again,” but he hated Dr's and never would see one. Last time he got the big P, it took him out.

“Go to CVS, get these meds and it'll be gone in a day or two.”

Then...

He's following me through the maze in the office space speaking of other Pink Floyd stories he had. The other patients waiting are sort of looking at us, hearing us speak of things NOT medical. At the entrance, he says...”Kudos for knowing 'Poles Apart!' You certainly surprised me on a Saturday.”

The only other Dr story I have was when my brother was in RI Hospital and his Dr had paperwork for me to sign so they could do surgery on him.

“Oh, There's Dr Adair now, she'll take your papers”

I turn around and see this little girl scout in a white lab coat emblazoned with RI Hospital/Brown U emblem. She looks 17. I almost say, “You're a Dr...really?” I didn't but was stunned at how young she looked. It then reminded me that I was above the median age for Americans..way above it. The chances of me running into anyone older than me were getting shorter and shorter. It looks like most I meet are younger than me. Well of course they are....statistics back it up. But damn, she looked like jailbait. And apparently she was the one who did the laparoscopic surgery on my brother. Sigh...this little girl has far more talent, degrees and money than I will ever see. 

 

Poles Apart

 

A Little Fun

 

 

That was a first. I crashed a high school reunion I had no business attending. It was the 1982 Tolman High school 40^th. I, instead, was a St Ray's 1982 graduate. The reason I went was because I figured I'd run into kids (now old adults) I knew in Goff Jr High back....in 1979. When we all left jr high, most of the ones I knew went to Tolman. You get older, you look back a lot and these people I knew then did figure in my life to some importance. I wanted to see how they turned out.

A few did recognize me and a few others did once they learned my name. After looking at them sort of intently, I could recognize their eyes. They were amazed by my white shock of hair I sport now. Their last memory of me was of auburn/reddish haired Irish kid.

Dave asks: “So, what are you up too?”

I then tell him I have to compress in 4 minutes 40 years of my life. I tell him of my career path, domestic life and how I just ditched a job and the whole scene a year after covid ravaged the nursing/rehab homes. I stayed “retired' for about a year. His eyes widened when I told him that and I caught it. If you work with the deaf, you learn to read people quick.

“You're retired? He asks, with a bit of surprise.

“No..well...sort of..maybe...I don't know yet.” I tell him. “I am working again and the future I kind of leave open ended as to what's next. To tell the truth, I don't know what the future holds. No one does. Work till I drop, quit, retire and feed the ducks at the pond...take up water color painting? Who knows?”

He then tells me of his three daughters that he's pushing through college. I then think, “No wonder he was surprised at me, he's working to pay off what the state won't.”

A situation occurred where I had the same reaction at my 35^th reunion for St Ray's. I was introduced to a guy I knew back then and then tried like hell to hide my light horror. The guy, I'll call Phill, looked like he was 69 years old. He was bald, covered in old age spots and sort of hunched. I tried, really tried not to look shocked but you can't hide it all. There are days where I feel that old but I don't look like this guy. We spoke for a few and I just scanned him as we talked. “God...how some people age badly” I thought.

I then looked around at the women. There were a couple of Sloppo-patomuses there but most were average. Though there were a few cheerleader types who must've spent 45 minutes trying to wriggle themselves into a pair of skinny jeans. The desperately thin at 59 years of age.

Since I crashed this party, I had no name tag. When I arrived I just sort of walked past the registration table, got a beer and started schmoozing. I wondered how long I could get away with it. Not too long apparently.

Thirty minutes in a guy comes up to me and asks, “Who are you? You have no name tag? Alot of people seem to think they know you but you have no tag.”

“Nope. I am a 1982 graduate of Saint Rays, but I figured I'd see people I know here.”

“Did you pay?” he asks.

“Nope.” I tell him.

“Well,” he goes on, “don't you think it's unfair that these people paid and you didn't?”

I then tell him why would I? I never attended Tolman high, and I was there for a short time anyway and had NO intention of eating their food. I'm not that much of a leech. I too, have some pride.

“But..the rules...you didn't pay!” he tells me.

I lift my glass of Blue Moon beer to him, sort of toasting him and say, “Ain't it funny how life turns out? How these things occur? You enjoy the party, I know I will.” And I walk off.

I knew that he'd rejoin his group and in about 28 seconds my crime would be broadcast to all there. No problem. I headed downstairs to the bar and ordered a greaseburger. There, I am no longer trespassing on the temporary property of Tolman's 40^th that's going on upstairs and I managed to continue my chats with some who were downstairs as well.

Crashing events you were never invited to can be fun. When much younger, a few of us would stumble across a wedding reception at some restaurant or event place and we'd slide ourselves in. The lure of falling down drunk bridesmaids was usually the motive. Or, the reception was really hopping and we'd invite ourselves anyway for a good time.

The best crash was at a Bruce Sundland, Governor of RI event. My brother at the time was a writer and he had written a scathing, satirical piece about Sundlund's dating habits. It was titled, “Bruce Sundlund's Dating Guide” and in it, my brother makes him come off as the sleaziest, woman using, male slutting, whore mongering prick you ever met. My brother managed to get away with it because at the bottom of the piece was written: “This is a spoof, a work of comedic fiction. In no way should anyone take this as a serious piece of journalism. All statements in this article are wholly made up” But it was written in teensy-weensy script so more than a few people never read that part of it and thought the piece was real and just an ugly political hatchet job on the governor. You have to be extra-specially STUPID not to get satire, but there are more than a few in RI who are dullards.

How did my brother know people took it as a real piece of journalism? The paper he worked for received dozens of pieces of hate mail. The editors thought it a goof and it sold more copies. Since the piece was stated to be a “work of fiction,” the paper was barely not liable for libel slandering.

Soo, my brother wanting to enjoy a good time, wants to shake the Governor's hand. The event was at the Biltmore and we go down, dressed sort of business casual and we drink, rob the buffet line and my brother is waiting for the moment to place himself in front of Sundland.

He gets his chance.

“Hello Sir, I'm Ken M____, I was the one who wrote that piece in the Providence Monthly.

It took the gov about 12 seconds to figure it out and then just icily stared at my brother.

My brother and I retreated to a corner of the room, trying not to laugh. I managed to finish off a beer when two very serious looking guys come up to us.

“You two have to leave...now!” they say.

“Why? Asks my brother.

“There's no why, youse two have to go!”

So we leave. Why spend the weekend at the Intake Center at the ACI?

Anyways, I managed to see a few I knew from so long ago at that reunion I might not have otherwise. Where and when would I be able to find them all stuffed into a single room again?

 

Swerve

 

 

I've been quiet huh? Well, there hasn't been much to talk about that I figure would interest anyone. Believe me, I could write about pretty much anything but I am sure the subject matter would bore the hell out of people. Who cares about the Battle of Agincourt except me and a few Medieval history professors? Quickie note on that battle, the English use of the longbow skewered thousands of French knights. It was a slaughter.

So, something new.

I am startled, look up and see I'm halfway into the middle lane on 95N just before I get into Providence. I swing the car back into my lane and wonder why I'm nodding off so many times driving home. I feel soo damned tired that my eye lids, if they close halfway, will drop all the way and I'm half asleep again. I do it again just past Providence center right after the bridge construction.

Not good.

I force myself to stay awake as much as I can and make it off the School street exit and am glad because swerving the car at 25mph is “safer” vs. doing it at highway speeds. I make it home but don't get out of the car. I shut it off and lean my head back and fall asleep for about 15 minutes. Anyone walking by might think I'm dead. I never sleep in my car. I wake up, finally get out of the car, make it into the house and start to get done the tasks I had promised myself I'd do once home.

I barely get the laundry started when I give up and go to bed at 3PM and don't get up till 9PM.

I think I just of been really tired today, that's all.

A day or so earlier...

Halloween night, I could feel a molar on the lower right side heating up, a slight pain. That's nothing new to me. I have tons of fabricated teeth and on occasion, they act up a bit. But on November 1^st, that tooth started to scream. If you've never had a full blow HOT toothache, it's damn near impossible to explain that kind of pain. Ever stub your toe in the middle of the night? Ok, sort of like that but also set it on fire with no real way to calm it down. It just persists. My only go to remedy was ibuprofen which takes the edge off that agony. It's enough where you can't focus on the day's tasks. And that's the crux of the problem. You cannot focus on too much of anything else well when a tooth is pulsating in your mouth. It's deep bone pain under pressure, sharp, heated and throbbing. At work , we have two lines that you can reach us by, both “rings” are kind of similar but differ in cadence. So, the phone goes off and there I am, focused on the tooth making itself VERY known and I pick up...and no one's there. A friend, then asks me, “Are you alright?” He meant that why the hell did I pick up on a call that wasn't directed toward us. I stood there and realized what it was, the damn tooth had me elsewhere.

Unrelenting pain does a great job ruining your attention span and motivation to get other things done.

So I ate another ibuprofen, mindful not to pop them like candy mints. They'd last for about 3 hours and the label says four till you take the next one. Well, I shaved an hour off that. I'm no hard core drinker so my liver is in decent shape to handle that. I wait an hour and finally that loud mouthed tooth is shut up for a bit. Great, now I can focus.

Here's something about toothaches that I found odd and it's probably only me. If I can fall asleep, they don't bother me at all, even if it's a super stinging one. The trick is to pop some pills before bed and hope you zonk out before they wear off.

But...

The next morning I wake up, I'd say, give it about 15 minutes and my body's nervous system kicks in to tell me “you have a toothache!” and does it come back with a vengeance.
The pain is in concert with your heart beat... BANG...BANG...BANG!

I'm up and it's 5AM, I sat here, staring at this screen, occasionally out the window sort of hazed out. My jaw felt swollen and I was getting tired and spacey. Shit...is it spreading? Are we going to have nice systemic sepsis problem I can be admitted to a hospital for? That's the big worry about tooth infections. Will they spread and if they do, then tend to ape. I've never had that happen but I am acutely aware of the danger in that if you wait too long. I then realize the flesh on my right cheek, chin and lower lip is starting to sting. Fuck! It IS spreading.

By 9AM I was wiped out again. I was juggling the next options I had. Call the dentist and fork over about $1000 to $2000 of copays as the upper limit of my insurance would be wasted in seconds. Or, go to the clinic and cheat by getting some antibiotics which will kill the problem but it's only a few month temporary fix...or..go back to bed and see how I felt when I got up.

I went to bed.

A few hours later I get up, waiting for my body to start that cycle again. 'Hey, he's awake, start up that pulsing pain on him again!” But...it didn't happen. As I write this, I knocked on my maple wood desk here as a precaution that it doesn't come back. I hope my immune system won this battle, this time around. My face finally stopped stinging a day later.

I then thought of the time before antibiotics and pain killers and how the hell anyone then managed to tolerate a very hot tooth. . Alot of prayers to God? Booze if you had it? A witch doctor who waved a dead wombat over your head to cure you? You had nothing really but your own immune system which either fought and won or did not. Ugh..

Thank God for Louis Pasteur and medical SCIENCE..thank my lucky stars for being born at the right time too.  Not that I availed myself to them though, but they're there. Cheap prick that I am figuring out cost efficient options. 

I then figured out why I was driving all over the highway that day. Now that I'm older, illness's first symptoms hit me differently. They all seem to start by my becoming dead tired. The other usual symptoms, coughing, puking or turning various colors of red, happen secondly now. I sigh in my mind...”Great, it happens to me on 95 now...”

A paraphrased conversation with Dr. Casarella a couple of decades ago.

“I see your brother too you know...you both have similar teeth...soft enamel.”

Then he asks. “Did you have a lot of fevers as a kid??

I mumble..”Yes” and am very curious as to how he knows. So I ask.

“The molars...and the further back they are, have a dusty white color to them...it's indicative of high fevers...and softening...and it stays for life.”

I think, “Gee, what luck!”

 

Snake Den

 

 

 

 

I once worked for a summer with a start up financial firm back in '91ish. Equity Ideas was housed in a single large room above a knife sharpening shop on that shit hole of a street, Cranston St in Providence. It was a legitimate business, just barely incepted by Tom C., who quit his mortgage job at Citizen's Bank to make a go of his own doing mortgages, hence the lousy digs because he was just starting off. Tom was affable enough, with just enough sincerity to make him believable, most of the time. I found most others in that business to be lying sons of a bitches who would back stab their own Mom for a profit of $3.

The idea of Equity Ideas was re-financing loans. Tom's company would scan the mortgage deeds in New England, get the personal details, which is public information, and call them up and hopefully get that person into a lower interest rate mortgage. Of course there would be a fee but still the homeowner would save thousands on the life of their current rip off bank mortgage.

The problem was calling them and that was part of my job. The success rate was two sales out of one hundred “leads.” That's not many. But I was selling a product that was in the area of $100,000 to $200,000. It requires some real tenacity to listen to hang ups, swearing and having to explain to sometimes morons how a mortgage works and how they were getting shafted by their current bank. The 2% I managed to sell were grateful beyond belief when we managed to lower their rates a few points. My commission was based on the size of the mortgage, 1% of the total. So refinance a loan for $150,000, I walk away with $1,500. I managed to sell two before I quit at the end of the summer.

It was also then when I learned that the sales manager felt it was his duty to put his hand into my pocket and clip a few dollars for himself. I was a newbie in the field and my protests really rattled that guy when he tried to walk off with $400 of my commission. The thing being, it was sort of expected that these guys dipped into your own profitable work. If you didn't allow it to happen, your good leads, support and general status in the organization would fall. So, bend over and allow it was the rule if you want to continue to survive. But I didn't know and my complaints got me $200 of it back, but after that, I was a dirtbag according to the sales manager. I wasn't “playing along.”

Tom had three partners, Tom himself, some loud mouthed Guido and this really prematurely bald young Italian who was so quiet and secretive it set off my own “smoke detector” and I was wary of this guy. Luckily, I didn't have to deal much with him. They spent their times at their desks making quiet phone calls or plotting their next profitable kill.

In August of that year, Tom comes to me and offers an idea, “Let's go white water rafting!” I thought it a cool idea as I had never done it before and it sounded fun. We'd be rafting down the Lehigh River in the Poconos in Pennsylvania and partying in rented condos nearby. It was one of those private bus trips where a bunch of people signed up, paid about $150 and you'd get three days of condo and rafting. What Tom told me then, was that it would be mostly young bankers, financiers and similar types he knew in the Providence area. Tom and the other two partners would be going too. Tom takes me aside from all the others and quietly tells me not to talk about any business with anyone as I would probably be pumped for any info at all by the others. Other competitors would like to know what we were up too.

So we board the bus and drive out. On the way out, I meet others in the RI banking industry. Most were sales guys, all braggarts and liars. What amazed me was that they were always “on,” always in that role no matter where they were or what subject came up. “I'm the best. I'm the richest/smartest/hottest/ and above all that, they projected the vibe of “You can trust me.” I realized I was riding on a bus full of snakes.

There was one guy NOT in finance but an owner of a jewelry store on Mineral Spring in North Providence. We got to talking and for some reason he felt comfortable opening up and confirmed to me he was just another kind of thief. He was amongst friends on that bus. He had told me that not only he overcharges for his stock and repairs, but he stole from the customer's jewelry as well. Here's how he managed to do it. If you brought in a gold chain that snapped or the clasp wasn't working, he'd fix it, but he'd also snip off two or three links of the chain, solder it back together and charge you for fixing it. “They never figure it out!” He proudly claimed. He also had tools for abrading the gold on rings. He'd sand off a bit of gold from them, polish them back up and again, the customer would never know. “At month's end, I'd have a nice little pile of gold, enough to make a 22kt ring I could sell w/o having to purchase any gold myself to make it, 100% pure profit!” He seemed rather proud of himself as he told me this story.

I sat there, being the only non business guy there and quietly thought, “You god damn thief!” Actually, most of the guys on the bus were all proud of their ability to BS people out of their money.

By the end of August, I had had enough of that job. I quit. Though I remained friends with Tom for a while longer. He struck me as being the least thieving of the lot I had met in that crowd. As life does, people drift apart and in time I don't see Tom for a few years except at a chance meeting at the Hot Club down at the river in Providence.

We have a short conversation when Tom tells me, “Remember those two others I was partners with? Well, they downloaded all my files, clients and prospective customers and sold out of the company. They used that information I had collected to start their own refinance business. They also stole a few piece of office equipment too”

“They stole your client base? Is that illegal?”

Tom tells me it probably wasn't as nobody signed any confidentiality agreements and it wasn't worth the years in court trying to prove it. He didn't want to blow that money hiring lawyers to recover as it would probably be a wash in the end. He'd recover but in essence, be in the same place he was to begin with. Tom did tell me he started another refinance business, doing the same thing. This time he was the sole owner.