Greg's Gift, Part II

The second part of how a surprise visit turned an easy-going afternoon into a memorable couple of days I’d share more than twenty years later…

The Worst of All Possible Worlds

My entire adult life was built around avoiding any commitment to family, friends, lovers, and a career. But within the last 48 hours I had inherited the local drug dealer’s stash, an endless loop of the worst song in rock history, an Everest of ethnic guilt, and a live-in transgender hairdresser. The image of my dead neighbor suddenly came to mind, swaying on a rope in his closet.

He had suffered, and at long last, was free. If I envied his premature and macabre demise then something must be wrong with my whole state of being. Only a couple days ago I stood in my kitchen smoking a cigarette, sipping an espresso, and minding my own business. Thanks to Greg’s gift the world had rushed in, distracting me from inner peace and an enticing Amazon IPO.

Bzzzzzz, bzzzzz. Perfectly on cue, as if to rub it in, my pager vibrated — and displayed Greg’s number, of course. Bzzzzz, bzzzzz. “You’re buzzing, Babe!” annotated Alexa, her ridiculousness deflating my rage, at least for the moment. Greg? Seriously? The irony of the whole situation, reinforced by the self-realization of my passivity, stunned me. Why hadn’t I called that asshole?

My idol Nietzsche recast the French phrase amor fati, love of fate. You’d think the master architect of Zarathustra and The Will to Power would embrace the exact opposite, and insist on taking active and manifest control of every aspect of one’s life. But that’s missing the central, essentially mystical, point. Before physicists theorized the Multiverse, Fritz foresaw eternal recurrence.

Consider how infinite possibility begets repeating actuality. Some context: Theorists now calculate that the probability for all Nature’s constants to precisely align in the singular way necessary for our particular universe to exist is about 1 in 10⁵⁰⁰ — leading to the unprovable speculation that if at least 10⁵⁰⁰ universes physically exist, then ours is not only possible, but necessary.

In other words, the infinitely unlikely becomes infinitely more likely as you approach the infinitely many. Looked at another way, the more iterations you generate the higher the chance that patterns repeat — and the more patterns repeat the greater the probability that what’s happening now has happened repeatedly before, and will happen in the future again, again, and again…

So if the Multiverse is a Liebnizian House of Mirrors with every possibility branching endlessly in every direction, then regardless which path you take you’ll be moving through countless emerging and diverging realities. If true, that makes each of our lives and the Universe we share deterministic yet unknowable, ruled by fluctuating combinations of destiny and free will.

If all this sounds like total bullshit and crass rationalization for avoiding personal responsibility then it should, because that’s exactly what it is. I could have paged Greg days ago — or refused to accept his bag in the first place. As usual I cartwheeled from one absurd situation into the next, dominoes plummeting within the Rube Goldberg device that was my whole life.

Maybe love of fate was a price I had to pay for being stubbornly independent, a product feature of a hapless guy who thought too much and did too little. Avoiding emotional vulnerability was clearly my defensive strategy; but offensively I was relentlessly resilient, and zealously welcomed whatever random and zany adventure this particular universe chaotically hurled at me.

Bzzzzzz, bzzzzzz. My pager vibrated again, and again, perhaps echoing throughout the Multiverse — Bzzzzzz, bzzzzzz — I unclipped the device from my belt, gazed again at Greg’s number, hit the button to silence it. “Is Avon calling?” Alexa suggested, hungry again for my full attention. She’d hung pink curtains and vanity mirrors; my closets were jam packed with her dresses.

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

As curious as I was annoyed, I reached for my landline wall phone and gave the numbers a whirl. Within seconds Greg picked up — yes, that Greg. “Hello,” he said, not bothering to ask. “Yo, it’s Mook.” “Mook!” he replied, my name followed by his characteristically gravel-throated, meth-tweaked, and hustler-faked laugh. He sounded surprised, surprising in itself since he’d paged me.

“Ha ha, ha ha, ha ha,” he continued, already distracted by something else. “I’m back in town seventeen seconds and it’s hot as a bath house and this air conditioner dumps warm water all over me,” he complained, Greg’s way of saying hi. His long monologues were always whiny and self-pitying. “I wanted to return the bogus AC until I realized I was in someone else’s apartment...”

By the time we got around to discussing his telltale bag, Alexa had finished preparing her five course dinner and set a table for two. She’d changed into a French Maid outfit and winked every few minutes to assure me our new normal was, like this Universe, not only possible but inevitable. “Tell him we’ll keep his stash safe & sound, Babe. Until it’s light enough to easily carry home.”

Fuck that, I thought. I’m getting rid of this big bag of drugs now — and Alexa, with all her silicone- and estrogen-enhanced accouterments (no hard feelings, Babe) soon afterwards. She, like the Betty Boop on her ass, had become a symbol of cultural — and in my case, domestic — appropriation. Borrowing ideas and identities is cool, but where does the line cross into stealing souls?

“A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop — A-wop-bam-BOOM!” was how Little Richard launched his career, and arguably all of rock ’n roll. “Tutti Frutti” wasn’t “aw rooty” at first, instead “good booty,” a reference to anal sex, specifically the facilitation thereof, as in: If it don’t fit, don’t force it / You can grease it, make it easy and If it’s tight, it’s all right / If it’s greasy, it makes it easy. Really, really. Google it.

The lyrics got swapped to appease a broader audience, of course, as did the whole song as the audience further broadened: Enter all these white people covering the tune, from Pat Boone to Elvis, Carl Perkins to Johnny Winter, Sting, to Fleetwood Mac, to Queen. Little Richard got pissed off, but soon realized Pat’s milquetoast version opened more doors than closed them.

The question to ask when a song, food, clothing, language, sports, any cultural element is boosted from one society into another — especially when the booster is more powerful than the boostee — is: Does the appropriation pay homage, spread popularity, and add to the original’s allure, or does the lift shamelessly rip its essence and rob the actual creators of their power?

As Malcolm Gladwell reveals, singers like Pat Boone and junk food joints like Taco Bell are more like John the Baptist than Jesus: They invent entirely new versions of classic favorites, and in so doing often make their source content and cultures even more accessible and popular. In stark contrast is a star like Elvis, who early in his career simply re-recorded the demos of Otis Blackwell.

The controversy fuels today’s cultural and political wars, disparaging intentions driving damaging consequences. Bad mojo can be traced to the late 90s, arguably the height of American dominion: Housing and tech bubbles yet to burst, the seeds of pre-9/11 discontent were already sewn into the fabric of a society on the verge of absurdly obsessing over Presidential blow jobs.

Betty Boop had also been culturally appropriated, falsely attributed to Good Boy film star Helen Kane but eventually traced to “Baby” Esther Jones, an African-American jazz singer from Harlem. The “boop-a-doop” style was stolen without benefit to Baby or her culture, which got me thinking how Alexa borrowed the classic femme fatale — only to lure me, their typical mark.

Return to Sender

“What, are you doing?” Alexa asked, her purple lipsticked mouth gaping, her freshly tweezered jaw dropping. She’d changed into a Sex Kitten outfit, both hands on her hips, lithe and complicated body leaning against a chair to prevent her myocardial collapse as I started tossing all the remaining meth baggies, ketamine vials, and Rx bottles back into the tainted duffel.

“Greg wants his stash back,” I curtly replied, still furious about her invasion of my space and robbery of my liberty. “I’m meeting him in a couple hours. Please help me put his stuff into the bag…” I gestured to the Love Shrine, still intact and dominating the living room. Alexa’s heart visibly sank, although she had yet to sense the packing eventually meant moving her stuff out, too.

I could have told Greg to swing by and pick his shit back up, but my paranoia had returned with interest accrued the instant I experienced such complete loss of control with Alexa. I felt irrationally safer carrying his big bag out into the street for a rendezvous rather than risk him following me back to my front door — or was I embarrassed to reveal a tranny had moved in with me?

Alexa didn’t seem alarmed by my mood shift. One second we were both head-over-heels in love, so to speak, and the next I was fuming furious, getting rid of the drugs and shrine, and exuding evil get-the-fuck-out vibes. Ever the Drama Queen, she instead interpreted my shift as a juicy lovers’ spat, simply a sign that I cared — and not a message that I actually wanted her to leave.

Considering our long-term relationship a given, she regretfully but dutifully dismantled her shrine and returned all the memorabilia into the bag. Finishing up, she winked and with comic exaggeration removed several of the baggies and bottles. “Saving a few for later, Babe!” she giggled. “Greg owes us a storage fee.” I ignored her and the drugs, any excuse to stop talking to her.

All told, we had snorted a couple baggies of meth and not even a full bottle’s-worth of ketamine, along with miscellaneous amyls, downers, etc. Even if you factored-in Alexa’s “storage fee” our flamboyant partying left an imperceptible dent in Greg’s vast stash that, coupled with replacing all his bulky lovers’ memorabilia, meant I was returning his bag essentially untouched.

Alexa must have been thinking what I was thinking as I strapped the artifact closed and threw its bulk onto the couch. “You sure we shouldn’t take a few more samples, Babe? Maybe for quality control purposes?” When joking she sometimes accentuated her natural lisp, an Elmer Fudd-like “Shuffering Succotash!” turning purposes into something more like purpuhshez.

That wasn’t all, folks. After this insanity and despite my re-surging paranoia l wanted to not only skim but rip all the heavy drugs — and return only the scrap heap of Greg’s disastrous relationship. That wishful thought flashed in a nanosecond, though, as I couldn’t wait to get Alexa and Greg out of my apartment and life. Nuking the sex and drugs, at least I still had rock ‘n’ roll.

Around 7 o’clock, we had two more hours to kill before I met with Greg and unloaded his bag. That left plenty of time to confront Alexa and kick her out of my pad, but good time management had never been my strong suit. Straightforward interpersonal communication had never been one, either, usually resulting in hurt feelings, destroyed friendships, and broken hearts.

Besides, we were ravenously hungry, and she had just made an elaborate Italian dinner. Neither of us had eaten anything since yesterday afternoon, before she set foot in my apartment. Not much more than 24 hours had passed but it seemed like a week, time dilation and loss of appetite caused by the meth that excited our minds and the ketamine that sedated our bodies.

One Small Step for Man

Binnnng! the oven timer rang. “That’s my starting bell, Babe.” Her lasagna and garlic bread smelled great, and we sat and ate like adults compared to Liza’s Mad Tea Party. Speaking of which, I peered through the side alcove window to make sure she wasn’t peering back. The coast seemingly clear, I opened a bottle of red wine and poured us each a glass. “Cheers!” I toasted.

“Queers!” Alexa goofed. Gay, indeed. She’d appropriated a female body and behaviors, then appropriated my whole damn apartment. More Pat Boone than Elvis, closer to Taco Bell than Helen Kane, Alexa held no illusions about who she was, just as I was clear as to whom she wasn’t. Far as figuring out who the hell I was, well, that was a whole different story, averse to analysis.

Akin to Alice in Wonderland, I’d shrank and grown this week thanks to Greg’s gift—several times, actually, making it difficult to explain myself. Luckily for me, no Caterpillar ever demanded any back story, because everyone around me was so utterly self-absorbed. Being a Narcissist Magnet was fun but often a drag, also proving a great way to hide — and when necessary, run away.

We each have our pivotal defining childhood moment, an incident of acute crisis when under extreme duress we reacted in a way that successfully saved us from emotional annihilation. That winning strategy is hardwired into our minds and bodies, and utilized for the rest of our lives as an effective survival technique. I remember my incident — I draw on its advice constantly.

I’m six- or seven-years-old, circa 1970-71. The Apollo Moon missions are central to the American zeitgeist, and I’m staring through the glass of a gift shop display at a foot-tall Snoopy doll wearing an astronaut’s uniform. My father and I are waiting in a Southern California hospital to hear about my mother Marianne, recently admitted following a jarring nervous breakdown.

We were visiting my father’s Hungarian boyhood buddy, a prankster nicknamed Majom, or “Monkey.” Both families were touristing the Sunset Strip when mom started freaking out, going mad with thirst. Quickest stop we could make was into a random taco joint, where after finally getting some water she anxiously paced back and forth, repeating “I need professional help!”

I remember the look on the young cashier’s face, trying to assure us — but mostly herself — that she’d just called for help and everything would be OK. My mom meanwhile continued to frantically pace, visibly hysterical, repeating in a crazed, endless mantra “I need professional help! I need professional help!” I was ashamed and felt somehow responsible.

Shame and guilt flipped to fear and excitement when uniformed police swarmed in. They were tall and intimidating, then assuring and cool, reminding me of officers Pete and Jim from my favorite TV show, Adam-12. Appraising the scene, even the cops shrugged WTF as my mom couldn’t stop repeating she needed professional help, needed professional help...

She got it when the paramedics finally arrived, freaking me out when they took her away in an ambulance. Part of me was terrified I would never see her again; another part — perhaps for the same reason — felt relief: my whole life she either obsessively worried about me or completely ignored me. “Mom” was a toxic maternal mix of asphyxiating love with withdrawn abandonment.

The hospital waiting room is next to the gift shop, full of flowers for ailing adults and toys for sick children. Astronaut Snoopy stands defiantly on a glass shelf, just above my head, and I gape up at the doll with wonder. The black and white space suit adorned with the American flag reminds me of an inverse version of the cool cops I had seen. All I want is Space Dog Snoopy.

Whitney Houston, We Have a Problem

If mother smothered me with nervous nagging or neglected me with mentally ill self-absorption, then father provided the perfect complement of deafening silence punctuated by torrents of screaming abuse. Between these states none of us had much room for conversation — so when I ask dad a dozen times if he would buy me the totemic cartoon character, he impatiently shakes his head.

“Pleeeeeeease?” I grovel. I’m fixated on that Snoopy — the doll will comfort me, its uniform will assure me, the spirit of exploration will free me. My father finally acquiesces, probably just to shut me up. My heart races as I watch the store clerk unlock the glass case and remove the toy. “Want it gift wrapped?” “No,” I nod dreamily and excitedly, my arms shaking. I finally have it now…

Snoopy plummets to the floor as in slow motion, the thrill of finally possessing it overwhelming, my hands losing their grip. A plastic snap! shatters my heart and raises the ire of my father, who picks up the figure, turns it over, points at the crack in its helmet, and stares into my being with razor-sharp contempt and derision: “Look at what you did,” he grumbles.

I broke everything, father fixed it. That encapsulated our relationship from busted toys to his whole life, which nose-dived right after I was born when his wife fell into a postpartum depression she nor the family ever escaped. The Snoopy Incident was typical — but given how mother had just publicly lost her mind I am particularly raw, this moment forever defining and transformative.

My parents never showed their love, and that was totally my fault. Mother was crazy and father was an asshole because I was a Bad Boy: Proof being I stood helpless as mom lost it in West Hollywood until they took her away, a feeling repeated as I stood helpless after dad bought me the best toy in the world and I wrecked it. My emotional annihilation looms: I have nowhere left to go.

I wander away from Disappointed Dad into the labyrinthine hospital. Initially I have a purpose, ostensibly to find Manic-Depressive Mom… But as I get lost I realize the farther away I get from them both the more liberated I feel. In that moment I learn the power of escape, gain the resilience of relying on nobody, especially those who asphyxiate me with their Judgment and their Anxiety…

Decades later, I continued to wander randomly and purposelessly through the maze of adulthood. An anti-Theseus who avoided fighting the Minotaur and accepting help from Ariadne, only gradually did I realize that the monsters and lovers I fled from were the roaring beasts inside my own head and heart. Living alone I remained invulnerable; attempting nothing I never failed.

A vivid imagination and penchant for reckless rationalization filled my void. An obsession with creative fantasy and unattainable perfection protected me from banal reality and hard work. Whenever the going got tough, I got going. But somewhere along the way the signals crossed between the world fucking me up, and me saying fuck you to the world. Was I finally getting unfucked?

Ding, dong: My Felix the Cat cuckoo wall clock chimed and swished its long black tail eight times, another ode to pre-digital tech reminding me I now had an hour before my long overdue rendezvous with Greg. Alexa leaped as if hearing it for the first time, calming herself with a contagious giggle and cartoonish plummet into my lap. “Your pussy just freaked me out, Babe!”

That was easy enough for her to say. She was a male-to-female transgender POC attracted to men; I was a bald thirty-something white guy with a penchant for jumping into the sack with anyone of any race or gender who had drugs or seemed interesting, sadly rarely both. For me, sex was just another thing you did with people — relationships were what crossed the line.

Somewhere Under the Rainbow

Speaking of which, I was eager to end my relationship with Alexa before it even began, so I took the easy way out and decided we might as well have as much sex as possible before I threw her out. Like junkies doing more heroin to help ease themselves off heroin, my Trainspotting strategy never worked, and was yet another tool in my vast armamentarium of reckless rationalizations.

As you might have guessed, another useful tool was drug abuse. In case you’re ever in the mood to consume a cornucopia of contraband from high octane speed to animal tranquilizers to rancid poppers to heavy duty meds, don’t dive in right after a big meal. The baked lasagna and fresh garlic bread we could handle, but the bottle of red wine is what likely pushed us over the edge...

After our post-lasagna snorting, popping, and dropping blitz, Alexa and I couldn’t decide whether to stand up, sit down, or lie around. My pad suddenly seemed too small, so we both got naked, compressed into fetal positions, and spooned to make more room. Again I’m sure you’re wondering “Who spooned whom?” which is a good question considering all the possible combinations.

Arguably a sign of societal evolution is for you to ask that question now with impetuous curiosity, and me to answer it with shameless impunity. Twenty years doesn’t seem like much in the grand scheme of things, especially culturally, but in retrospect many of our American mores have changed as radically as our communications technology has, and often because of it.

Consider recreational marijuana and gay marriage, both illegal in the late 90s. Nowadays weed is decriminalized in fifteen states and same-sex unions are performed in all fifty. Drug laws and gay rights have lagged behind civil and women’s rights, but in the past two decades they’ve made impressive and often surprising progress, social media as societal agonist and antagonist.

These changes are striking, especially for OK Boomers like moi who grew up getting high and fleeing cops — in contrast to walking into a store in 2020 and openly buying joints, gummies, and bags of commercially grown grass; or in the 90s living a risky and ridiculed “alternative” lifestyle — one now practiced by pansexual college students in campus “safe spaces” across the country.

Nowadays we take for granted an openly gay athlete or Presidential candidate, transgendered CEO or celebrity homosexual. Yet we so easily forget — especially in urban “blue” states — that not long ago most gay people were closeted from family, neighbors, and colleagues; businesses could fire anyone based on sexual orientation, and gay marriage remained a fantasy.

As Alexa and I spooned and Liza likely peered in, America distractedly stumbled through cultural crossroads: protease inhibitors turned HIV from a death sentence into a manageable chronic disease, consumer electronics and the Internet began to give everyone a voice, and human rights advocates implored federal and state legislators to protect personal and civil liberties.

In the theaters Tony Kushner’s Angels in America brought to life the repression of the 80s and the “Great Work” looming ahead — but on the streets we were still the Demons of Boystown inhabiting an island of tolerance surrounded by a sea of racism, homophobia, and shame. As any minority group will candidly reveal, nobody is more vicious to its own members than its own members.

That made the gay ghetto a complicated mix of progressive freedom with repressive self-loathing. Carousing was liberating, but the baggage of projected gender and racial hierarchy infused the scene with brutality: At the top loomed the buff white male, and at the bottom transgendered blacks. In between shone the rainbow — and its futile search for a pot of identity gold.

Enter the Snearchman

“Woahhhhhhhhhhhh!” blurted a familiar siren’s call from outside my window and down on the street. Who was that? Where was I? What time was it? Alexa and I were no longer spooning, now awkwardly sprawled on opposite sides of my couch, gaping at each other’s naked bodies and wasted expressions. “Woahhhhhh!” beckoned again, a wail that could only have come from Jackie.

The street was replete with hustlers and their marks, drug dealers and their addicts, a yellow brick road of liars, and cowards, and thieves, oh my — but the riff-raff also snugly nestled some of the greatest talents in the city, let alone the country: gifted actors, musicians, artists, writers — and so many accomplished business people, relentlessly driven movers and shakers.

What should have been comfort and transparency between peers and colleagues instead exacerbated competitiveness and caddishness; familiarity had a mirroring effect that often internalized then released harsh projections of rabid racism, class distinction, cultural snobbery, and sexual conquest. At the core loomed endless identity crisis, everyone trying to be someone else.

Nobody on the street both embraced and dismissed this paradoxical dynamic better — and lived it more thoroughly and successfully — than Jackie “The Snearch” Ryder. Likely a portmanteau of sneak and search, “snearch” described her uncanny ability to simultaneously lurk and look, furtively shun the spotlight yet flirtively remain at the very center of everyone’s attention.

Used in multiple parts of speech and often within the same sentence, “snearch” gave an eccentric yet fitting Dr. Seuss zaniness to her unabashed world of drugs: “The Snearch (noun, glamorous Jackie) snearched (verb, deftly procured) some snearchy (adjective, high quality) snearch (noun, methamphetamine) — and sex: “The Snearch snearched some good trade.”

The Loki of Halsted Street, Jackie combined the omnipotent sycophancy of a Shakespearean Fool with the flippant wisdom of an amoral Jiminy Cricket. Tall and lanky, bespectacled and nearly bald, her butch style was sleeveless t-shirts and jeans; she took drag seriously but not as a contender, performing as she did everything else: expertly well but with a mischievous, campy wink.

All the world her stage, simultaneously paid performer and paying customer, Jackie magically created a captivating persona as unique as she was derivative, living embodiment of the moment. Along the way she channeled the agony and ecstasy of non-stop sex and drugs into a lascivious lifestyle of hedonistic abandon that would have made Caesar and the Czars blush.

And all that grandeur from the vantage point of a bar back, a guy who hauled beer from the basement and ice from the coolers. Hating customer service, she rejected in principle offers of promotion to bartender; brilliantly creative, she accepted every opportunity to spice the dance club up with her colorful murals, paper mache displays, and cardboard cutouts of celebrity performers.

The community Jester, she held no power yet hovered around it, never ruled the kingdom yet bent it to her will through sheer force of personality. Her playful excess and limitless access bestowed total impunity: both angel and demon, she was your best friend until stabbing you in the back — rushing to mend your wounds, she’d slide it out and lick the blade, saving it for later…

Figuratively and literally fucked, we always forgave and forgot. While most of us searched, found, lost ourselves again, Jackie gleefully sneaked around and searched behind the scenes, consuming all the street offered with insatiable enthusiasm and infinite variety. She lurked in the “bookstore” and prowled the alleys, snearching through endlessly recurring nights of lusty wanderlust.

Window Shopping

On impulse I rushed to the front window and peered buck naked down three stories at Jackie, who shook herself with glee, lifted up her glasses, and squinted as if to make sure she saw what she saw. “Catherine the Great and the Romanovs got nuthin on you, Daddio… Bright light, bit gritty… Bud Light… Fright night… How much is that Mooooookie in the windowww?”

Snearch lingo was a Rumple Minze shot of non-sequitur Russo-Austro-Hungarian historical references and free association in iambic snearchameter. Jackie convulsed with joy, Cheshire Cat grinned, and waved as I turned around and shuddered to see Alexa standing naked behind me. “What brings Jacquois out so early?” she asked matter-of-factly. “Woahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

The commotion was enough to draw out Liza, a voluntary celibate chimera standing in her window across the alcove, staring mournfully at us, arms across her chest. The triangulation between Liza, Alexa, and Jackie also summoned the restless ghost of my perished neighbor, whose howling laughter echoed in my ears as he swung to and fro in his closet below.

The drugs were likely taking their toll, a cumulative effect. I hallucinated a visit from Mickey & Minnie, too, their serenading “Yes, Sir” and “Hey, Baby!” duet enough to trigger another impulse to dive into Greg’s bag, which started to glow like Marcellus Wallace’ briefcase. The drugs inside were calling out and teasing our spirits like Moses’ tablets within the Arc of the Covenant.

As we learned years later watching Big Bang Theory, despite Indiana Jones’ best efforts the Nazis captured the holy artifact, greedily opened it, and got zapped — essentially making The Hero’s struggles surprisingly superfluous to the adventure’s inevitable outcome. By now I was feeling like Amy’s Indie, admirably courageous and indefatigable, but essentially a Human MacGuffin.

The trajectory of that bag was set, and I was just a tool thrown into the mix. Along the way people hovered in pairs, incomplete halves orbiting each other, reuniting in bizarre and often incongruous combinations, fighting for equilibrium. I was no exception, struggling with independence yet succumbing to Liza, Alexa, and the damn bag, hypnotizing me into action.

Downstairs Jackie was in her element, feasting on this cringe-worthy scene with zeal. She somehow managed to simultaneously snearch above, below, and within all the absurdity, gathering data and snearchifying it, eager to fuel tonight’s bar gossip. Often referring to herself as “Bell, Ma Bell,” Jackie considered it her solemn snearch duty to broadcast the most scandalous fails.

Seemingly defying the laws of physics, biology, and psychology, the more snearch Jackie snearched the more immune she seemed to disease, debility, and death. Bearing witness to thousands around her who succumbed to AIDS, overdose, and suicide, Jackie was a stalwart survivor whom we sensed would, against and perhaps because of astronomically unlikely odds, outlive us all.

Despite our many obvious differences, Jackie likely had her own Snoopy the Astronaut Incident, an inchoate moment of crisis the escape from which molded similar compensatory behaviors into adulthood. We were both estranged from our families, allergic to monogamous relationships, under-employed and over-stimulated — yet steadfastly resilient, creative loners.

Judgmental and aloof, Jackie’s ferocious independence and tenacious self-reliance nonetheless far surpassed my faltering attempts. Behold the living embodiment of personal freedom, The Snearch as superhero, Super Snearch: preferring to haul ice from basements rather than serve any freak, snearch fresh trade each night than compromise within any relationship, she was free.

By the Numbers

I, clearly, was not — proven by The Snearch rolling her tweaked eyes and laughing her ass off from below as I continued to stand naked in my front window with a transgendered live-in girlfriend standing naked behind me, all of us enduring the judgment of by my Jewish Guilt Inferno Handjob-Only faux girlfriend. “Manager’s meeting? Wwwwwoahhhhhhhhhh!” Jackie croaked.

Everyone’s respective line of sight was mercifully incomplete except my own, a full 360 which now swung back around and looked beyond Alexa’s fake tits and boosted ass directly to Greg’s big bright blue bag. In German gift means “poison,” Jackie’s unexpected performance reminding me of that curiously apropos cross-lingual pun. Greg! The bag! Our rendezvous! What time was it?

Again on cue, Felix the Clock Cat chimed and swished nine times, scattering my three feral cats and again freaking Alexa out, who broke from her reverie and realized she was standing full frontal in front of Liza. They both panicked and leaped out of sight, my relief only temporary as I gazed back down to Jackie, who now huddled with — go ahead and guess, you get only one.

Oh my fucking god, the last thing I needed was for Greg to tell Jackie all about this toxic mess. I mean, seriously. What did I do to deserve this? The possible good news: Greg was often so incoherent not even Jackie could understand what the hell he was talking about; the more probable bad news: Greg told all and Jackie bolted upstairs in a nanosecond: “Gimme some snearch, Pops!”

Thankfully their various tits, ass, and dick gestures suggested more pressing interest in trashing me and my house guest than exposing felony drug storage and delivery services. As I watched them genuflect and gossip, I also realized Jackie was one of Greg’s best customers — making it a really bad idea for Greg to even hint that Mookie & His Tranny had all his goodies upstairs on ice.

Focus! Greg and I conspired during out call to do the hand off on Elaine Place underneath the Giraffe Statue, a neighborhood artistic landmark constructed entirely of welded chrome bumpers. In retrospect we should have planned to meet in an alley or even the lobby of a building, but the Giraffe sprang to mind, and I figured no matter how wasted Greg was he could likely find it.

So I left Jackie and Greg to their own shady devices, got dressed, and pulled myself together. Not only were we late to the drop zone, but I just remembered that the bar I managed opened at this time, and I needed some coverage. Fingers crossed, I paged Minnie, who miraculously called me back in minutes and generously agreed to fire things up until I made it in.

I felt wiped out, and the weekend bar shifts hadn’t even begun yet. Totally exhausted, I was disappointed in myself and everyone else. By 1997 all my superheroes had peaked: God outlived Friedrich Nietzsche, Eddie Van Halen lost his balance after Balance, and Thomas Pynchon would publish his most monumental yet last great novel Mason & Dixon a few months from now.

Where had all the good times gone? Having donned pink bunny ear jammies and fuzzy slippers, Alexa agreed: “You’re a mess!” She helped lift the bag into my arms, pulled its strap over my right shoulder and across my chest, finally resting its unwieldy bulk onto my left hip. I was now fully loaded with the active ingredients of two crazy days, and dreaded lugging it downstairs.

I also dreaded running into Liza. The probability of crossing paths could be calculated with a few variables, including the frequency and duration of our movement in shared spaces. Her spying on us was another variable, arguably the most significant, since she was likely listening at my door. Euler’s number e also figures into such calculations, but I was over it and didn’t give a fuck.

Secret Rendezvous

I ran right into her in the lobby. Liza stood flush with her mailbox, opening the tiny door then closing it, opening it again then slamming it shut. “Moving out?” she snapped, head nodding at the big duffel. “No, just doing some spring cleaning,” I winked, pulling on the bag’s straps. “Want some methamphetamine, ketamine, amyl nitrate, GHB, ritalin, or — “ “Stop!”

“What’s the matter?” I taunted, “you already stocked? How about a stack of love letters between two guys?” She winced, locked her mailbox door, stared at me. “Actually I’m kidding — Alexa’s in the bag, I got rid of her. Want to see? Want a piece?” Her lack of surprise surprised me; her lack of shock shocked me; she was credulous and fascinated: “Really? Are you telling the truth?”

Out-done in cynicism I bolted, aghast at her unexpected reaction to me murdering her rival. Was I also too passive with Liza? No wonder tough guys seemed to always get laid: Darwin favored brutes, biologically engineered to kill strange guys and impregnate their chicks. If I had actually killed my strange guy who was also a chick, would Liza have at long last fucked me?

Doubt it. Upstairs, Alexa was comfortably safe and sound, still pink and fluffy, giving me a thumbs-up. Outside, I saw no sign of either Jackie or Greg, so I headed a block over to our drop point beneath the chrome Giraffe. The bulky bag made me paranoid again, more eager than ever to finally get rid of the tainted thing, and with it all the intrusion and confusion hurled at me.

With these thoughts swirling, I hardly noticed that all the cars that usually lined both sides of Cornelia and Elaine Place were replaced by boxy white trailers, electrical service vehicles, and stand up tents. Neighborhood street festivals were common in the spring and summer, but I should have known better since the Market Days Fair wasn’t for two weeks yet on Memorial Day.

Swarms of people within the tents, hovering around catered food tables, and going in and out of the trailers should also have been obvious clues. But rather than sensing the clear and present danger, I took solace in the crowds and considered them optimal cover for my hand off to Greg — amid all that commotion, who’d notice? On an empty street we’d really stand out, right?

Another data point of false assurance was the Giraffe sculpture itself, which was cordoned off with yellow tape and given open space on either side. Portable incandescent lights were set up every few feet in lieu of the street lamps, which were turned off tonight. So despite the frenzy of activity, the semi-darkness around our meeting spot made me feel comfortably incognito.

I was more than twenty minutes late, but got there first, snooped around, felt curiously at ease, bent under the DO NOT CROSS tape surrounding the “sculpture,” and sat on its cement base. Most art is difficult enough to create without having to weld large car parts together; what the fabled steel Giraffe lost in subtlety and nuance it more than made up for in originality and effort.

I felt the same about the neighborhood and its characters. Today we inhabit a polarized culture of social media jacked tribalism: On the one side politically correct social justice warriors selectively outrage themselves into censorship; on the other race-baiting neo-fascists lurk disguised as freedom of religion and speech advocates, enraptured by a perverse cult of personality.

Back in the 90s people couldn’t rant through instantaneous, global, two-way digital, so they tended to listen to, speak with, and debate each other. Society grappled with statistically higher levels of racism, bigotry, and homophobia, yet battles of opinion were secondary to visceral expressions of physical immediacy and impact. Nobody cared how you felt — what did you do?

The Good Ol’ Days

We tore each other up — and thrived. My odyssey began a few years earlier when I quit corporate to work in the hood. First night was at the main bar of the Vortex nightclub, where I got trained by none other than Jackie herself. I greeted the Alpha Dog bartender “Hi! How can I help?” He stared at me like my father did, hurled a bar rag in contempt, and said “Go and fuck yourself.”

I was in. Not since middle school had I endured such enthusiastic self-loathing and incendiary bullying. Most of the gay clubs on the strip were gay-owned; this one wasn’t, turning up the Glengarry Glen Ross heat between an absentee boss and his cannibalistic staff who did whatever they could to stick it to The Man — and each other. A wretched hive of scum and villainy! I was hooked.

In a straight club you had to screw the manager’s girlfriend or renege on gambling debts to get your ass kicked. In this world simply having the audacity to show up let alone throw shade got your heart ripped out, tossed around and shat on, photographed, and reprinted in the local gossip paper. Good, bad, or ugly you were a moving target, and only the cuntiest survived.

These continuous battles — no matter how petty, repetitive, and infantile — gave us a sense of self and provoked a purpose. Being hated on the outside made us feel special on the inside. Identity is usually ad hoc and tenuous if you make it up yourself; but if your enemies define you and thrust it upon you as a way to marginalize, abuse, and control you, then game on #bringit

Today’s generation has the luxury of being more free, open, and accepted — but what’s lost in the struggle is, frankly, the struggle. Endless dynamic tension helped us navigate through disorientation; I wasn’t the only one lost at sea with no bearings or anchor. A misfit among misfits, I fit in; I made as much sense as anyone else around me, which wasn’t much, but was enough.

With the American Empire at its height in the 90s, hypocritical brutality was our way of getting woke. Many wax sentimental for a mythical golden age, personal or societal — but history once in a while actually triggers magical moments, transformative periods of disruption, paradigm shift, and quantum leap. We felt something special was going on, and in retrospect we were right.

In the thick of this visceral renaissance I accepted and consumed Greg’s gift, now eager to return it and move on. Part symbol, part catalyst, and all MacGuffin, the artifact embodied the essence of whom I wanted to become, and what I still needed to shed. How much longer could pointless defiance coexist with self-deprecating fatalism? Were slackers out of style, or still cool?

Twenty minutes later, I was getting nervous. Had Greg spilled the beans with Jackie? Did the freak show freak them both out and send them scattering, leaving me to literally hold the bag? When in doubt, follow the money — in this case lots of it, the street value resting on my lap far exceeding anyone’s discomfort, paranoia, or laziness: I was certain Greg would eventually show.

And within a few more minutes, he did. Greg had the annoying habit of sneaking up behind you — a bit snearchesque but lacking any of Jackie’s charm or creativity — so at first I only heard his deep but whiny voice, already complaining from the semi-darkness. “I’m so glad we’re meeting in a fucking circus. Watch me sell bumps to pedophile clowns and midget acrobats…”

I got pissed and wanted to shout “You’re welcome!” for harboring his shit this week, then suggest he sell his leftover photo booth phunnies featuring him and his boy Gary strung out at a Circuit Party taken just before they beat each other up — but I refrained. Truth be told he didn’t put a gun to my head to take his bag or any of the goodies inside it, and who said I wasn’t having fun yet?

Debt to Nature Due

Slowly the silhouette of his bald, sweaty head became visible through the soft incandescent lights. I realized he was always sweating, and always picking at his permanent five o’clock shadow, literally “tweaking” in-grown hairs with the annoying impulsiveness and fidgety precision of a meth addict. For Greg the bag was no MacGuffin: it held his livelihood and fed his insatiable need.

“Safe and sound,” I gestured to his duffel, assuring him all — at least most — of his drugs were still there. His terror over getting busted by the cops had been swapped with jonesing for its contents, and I could tell he was exerting considerable self-control. “I hope you helped yourself…” He winked and jack-o-lantern grinned a sly taunt: “Did you fuck that tranny, or did she fuck you?”

That question again — one coming from Greg in 1997 different than coming from you, dear reader, in 2020. Back when white body builders stood at the pinnacle of the food chain and black transgender people lay at the bottom, manly white men like me who had sex with trannies were trash. Greg’s jab hinted eagerness to take back his glowing stash — and with it, all his power.

That bullshit hierarchy of race and gender assuredly didn’t boost my street creds as a pansexual freako who screwed POC queens — but I didn’t care: I was amazed such shade came from a gay drug dealer whom most of society deemed sick and unnatural, too. Besides, what the hell was normal and natural, anyway? Ubiquitous prejudice fueled the hypocrisy consuming us all.

At the intersection of rioting queens at Stonewall in 1969 and sixty-grand-a-year college kids taking gender studies classes at Wellesley College in 2020 was the thrill of being weird & wild in Chicago in the 90s. Closeted liberators, repressed whores, idiot savants, and tainted saints, we defiantly embraced our collective schizophrenia with infinite gusto and zero self-awareness.

Without a how-to guide for defining post-nuclear family norms or surviving fallout from “toxic masculinity,” sex and gender had yet to be politicized by the Left or ridiculed by the Right. LGBTQ rights are indeed human rights, but do we now need 71 gender designations on a Facebook profile, or a doctorate in feminist psychoanalytic theory to correctly interpret Robinson Crusoe?

For fuck’s sake can we all lighten up a bit? At least regain the courage to fight for our convictions, work hard for what we want, and boldly live the life of our own dreams? All that takes is creativity and cojones, pardon the patriarchal phallocentrism. Must the editor of The New Yorker deplatform Steve Bannon to help make us all feel better and safer? Like the Joker said: “Why so serious?”

Why so sensitive? is more like it. Peering back while shambling forward, it seems to me we get so easily triggered these days because everything comes to us so damn easily: Find information? Google it. Hail a taxi? Uber it. Go shopping? Amazon it. Enjoy something? Netflix it. Fuck somebody? Bumble or Grindr it. How has ADHD so quickly become an evolutionary advantage?

So take it from a guy who finally unloaded a big bright blue duffel bag packed with methamphetamine, ritalin, and other goodies: The road to our salvation is indeed navigable, like Disney suggests, if we simply let it go. Why not? Be the good girl you always wanted to be, let the storm rage on, all that. Distance does make everything seem small: no right, no wrong, no rules, folks…

Until we get exposed, the cost of freedom — and not paying attention. The time had come to return Greg’s Gift: I stood, pulled the strap off my shoulder and over my head. At the moment Greg gleefully grabbed it we heard someone in the shadows say “Copy.” We freaked, looked up, noticed a guy in a headset yell “Striking!” — A searing white light exploded, instantly blinding us…

Light Up the Sky

His duffel bag sacked and repacked, tugged and lugged, spurned and finally returned, Greg reacted immediately and impulsively: like a deer in proverbial headlights he instinctively lunged toward the bright light’s source, a 10 kilowatt Fresnel aimed at us and activated by the gaffer we heard, who leaped aside as Greg roared past him, frantically running right into the equipment.

As Greg struck the fixture it pivoted on its swivel head, swinging the powerful beam of light away from our line of sight and up into the sky. The blazing 10K was bright enough to become an impromptu Bat Signal, alerting the Caped Crusader that Greg was on the loose again, picking himself up and chaotically sprinting with his stash through the gawking techs and down into an alley.

For a few moments I stood there frozen, relieved that I had unloaded the burden but shocked at my exposure and stupidity. The absurdity of my absent-mindedness and nearsightedness seemed to have no bounds: I had walked us right into an active movie set, and exchanged thousands of dollars worth of drugs right on cue in front of blazing lights and rolling cameras. “Hi, ma!”

I should have been used to these ridiculous situations of my own creation, but they continued to surprise me. Passive-aggressiveness was one of my key product features, a tendency to avoid stressful stimuli until they built to a critical mass of stress and ultimately drove to an explosion — or impulsive, stupid decisions like this one that defied reason and basic common sense.

That quirky attribute makes me cool as cucumber — until I get triggered and go completely bananas. The dichotomy also makes me one of the most shockingly open yet inexplicably hidden of people. I tend to over-share yet under-communicate; I’m engaged yet disconnected, a born leader who needs to follow, a loner who loves company, a loud shy guy and social misanthrope.

Jackie could relate, but snearching from the other side of the mirror she successfully turned these contradictory eccentricities into a thriving and alluring persona. Greg having fled, I wondered what Jackie would have done had she been bequeathed that big blue duffel: The bag, all of its contents, and Jackie herself would no doubt have vanished for weeks — Snearch, Out!

That realization reinforced the wisdom of Greg choosing me as victim/recipient, and explained my acceptance of his stash — all in character. Far as Greg was concerned the whole ordeal was mission accomplished since he didn’t get arrested, got his bag back, and no one was any wiser except me, my new tranny girlfriend, and perhaps the film crew of Blues Brothers 2000.

The drop off eventually proved eminently satisfying for me, too, another instance of the world encroaching on my personal space, making unwelcome demands, forcing me to act, then going away and leaving me alone. Of all the infinite Universes I was stuck in one where — despite all my crazy shenanigans — I kept falling down stairs yet continually wound up back on my feet.

As the momentary solace calmed me, I idly gazed back up at the 10K Fresnel beam, still lighting up the sky with a shaft that swung to and fro as the electrician grappled with the pivoting swivel head. In wide arcs that in seconds crossed miles of dark sky and glowing clouds, the light created a mesmerizing show that reminded me of a story my father once told me..

Years had passed since The Snoopy Incident, and I was a dorky teen with bottle-bottomed glasses and greasy hair, obsessed with reading about science, math, history, and politics. I escaped into books the same way my father retreated into his daily newspaper and evening television shows, thwarted in our withdrawal one night in suburbia when the power shut down...

In the Dark

As we lit candles and sat in the flickering shadows, I asked him again about the war. I’d toss him this verbal hand grenade on the rare occasions we spoke, hoping for a morsel while figuring he’d respond in kind: blankly staring into space, his Zen-like expression revealing he was channeling unspoken universal wisdom — or more likely not having a coherent thought in his head.

That night I gave it another whirl, Laszlo predictably spacing out until — surprise surprise — he spoke slowly in his native Hungarian. He had a deep, Bela Lugosi voice, and I felt as though The Grinch Who Stole Christmas were narrating The Bombing of Budapest. He took me back to the summer of 1944 when Fifteenth Expeditionary Air Force B-24 Liberators bombed the city.

The heavy aircraft dropped mines into the Danube River, and bombs onto Hungarian factories, refineries, and oil tanks. They also released propaganda leaflets throughout Budapest that boldly threatened the enemy with retribution for deporting thousands of Jews to the gas chambers in Auschwitz. The world was watching, they said — too bad the Allies did nothing to stop it.

That summer an average of ten thousand people were murdered per day in the camps. Meanwhile, sixteen-year-old Laszlo lived large at a refurbished Jewish Community Center taken over by the Gestapo and SD. He was part of the expendable local help that had been rounded up by the Germans soon after the Tiger tanks clanked through the cobbled Budapest streets.

Jewish talent was recruited across various trades: tailors, seamstresses, carpenters, electricians. When the summons came to his high school, Laszlo was chosen as their designated draftsman, price paid for being the most talented in shop class. The Nazis gave him his own secretary and office; he decorated it with mounted animal heads ripped from a taxidermist’s shop.

Laszlo was a tall, dashing, Errol Flynn-looking kid with a deeply cynical sense of humor, and the Ubermensch thought he was cool. Laszlo thought the tall, dashing, blond-haired-and-blue-eyed Aryans were cool, too, creating an odd Ashkenazi-Nazi dynamic. Entertaining them as class clown and mascot, Laszlo felt invincible as most teens do, and had no idea what he was soon in for…

Before he was caught playing cards on the job, nearly beaten to death and thrown into solitary confinement, released without shoes into the wintry Siege of Budapest, hidden in a neighbor’s cellar, and nearly deported to Siberia by the Russians, Laszlo sat in his office one summer evening, drawing Wehrmacht uniform insignia. The air raid siren went off, staffers panicked.

“We must go downstairs to the shelter!” his young secretary shrieked, rushing into his office. Weighing whether to follow her and use the fog of war to try and get some nookie or see what was actually going on outside, he opted for the latter. “If we take a direct hit we’re all dead, anyway, so I’m going up to the roof. Want to join me?” Before he could finish she fled into the bunker.

So he went up, not down, made himself as comfortable as he could on the rooftop, and watched the show. Search lights darted across the sky and anti-aircraft flak burst around the illuminated bomber formations and escorting fighter squadrons. Laszlo watched streams of incendiaries pour out of the big planes, saw the distant explosions as factories and depots erupted in fire.

An unlucky Liberator took a direct hit, left wing breaking off as the bomber dipped and started to plummet. As it spiraled downward several parachutes became visible, bobbing dreamily as they floated serenely over the roiling city. Laszlo wondered what it must have been like to be an allied serviceman flying in those planes and now shot down, descending into a strange city at war.

The First American

As a kid, Laszlo loved watching American movies, and like most Europeans romanticized the States based on what came out of Hollywood. His emulation of Errol Flynn was no accident, the actor smoothly embodying the epitome of a swashbuckling lady’s man. Laszlo loved The Adventures of Robin Hood, seen when he was ten-years-old. In class he dreamt of becoming a Yankee Doodle.

Laszlo watched the swiveling beams of light reflect off the flak bursts and vapor trails as the surviving heavy bombers released their loads and flew into safety, the anti-aircraft fire dying down and search lights thinning. Still alive, he trundled back downstairs and returned to his office. “You are crazy!” his secretary said breathlessly, still covered in nervous sweat from the experience.

Everything went back to “normal” until about an hour or so later when Laszlo heard commotion and loud, guttural German voices coming from outside his office. He took a break, went to his door, opened it and saw his Nazi buddies standing nearby chatting, pointing, and calling out. One of the parachuting bombardiers had been caught, now put on display for his merciless captors.

Three decades later in flickering candle light, Laszlo shared his wonder at making direct eye contact with his first American: A young man only a few years older, not even twenty, red haired and freckled, wearing a US airman’s uniform and boots. Beaten, his face was covered in gashes and welts; too weak to walk, he was dragged down the hallway, his crimson blood trailing behind.

Laszlo knew nothing about the Geneva Conventions, and neither did the Gestapo, who tortured Laszlo’s First American to death a few doors down the hall. As I watched him speak, I imagined young Laszlo at his desk beneath the mounted animal heads, trying to concentrate as the American flyer cried out. His screams of agony were followed in minutes — hours? — by eternal silence.

Only a few months earlier Laszlo was minding his own business, hanging out with his friends, complaining about his parents, ignoring his younger brother, trying to get laid, and wondering about his future when the biggest and most brutal war in human history literally came knocking at his door. Of the hundred or so students in his high school class, only sixteen survived.

He happened to be one of them. The price usually paid for survival is guilt: “Why me?” Another — often overlooked — cost is the jealousy, defeatism, and victimization those guilt-ridden survivors hurl at their family. A few decades after that fateful evening, Laszlo stared into the face of another American — his first born son. I likely filled him with equal curiosity, wonder, and terror.

Survivors also gravitate toward one moral and political extreme or another: After witnessing unimaginable atrocities, the Viktor Frankl types preach humanism — while the John von Neumann’s urge we nuke the commies immediately. My father fell squarely into the latter camp, declaring in a fit of rage and pride that if he wouldn’t be a Jew he’d be the world’s biggest Nazi.

Talk about projection! Laszlo Spitz was Jewish Dirty Harry: He hated all Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Gays — especially homosexuals. Sporting a big bushy mustache and thick caterpillar eyebrows, plaid shirts and work shoes, he was taciturn yet manly, silent or screaming, Burt Reynolds butch to the core. Of course I disappointed him from the start: I read books and had opinions.

For years I idolized him, boasted to the African-American kids at Skiles Junior High School that my cool dad ate sauerkraut and hot paprika peppers, drove his nifty 1970 Camaro Z28 at a hundred miles per hour, and had Nazis as best friends while growing up. But when I entered adolescence my awe-struck adoration flipped into abject hatred, my hero turned to zero, and I was lost.

Through the Lookingglass

I don’t remember precisely when I became disappointed in Disappointed Dad, the shift likely happening gradually anyway. But when it did I jettisoned with him all my natural defenses against criticism and judgment. The result made personal excellence impossible: My ridiculously high standards were self-created, and lacking an external benchmark I became my own worst critic.

Unable and then unwilling to please him, I refused to satisfy anyone else, either. Negativity became an effective shield, nothing ever good enough, especially if I did it. We all have our strengths, the brightest lights leaving the longest shadows as Jung observed; that makes imperfection inevitable and even desirable, but I left no room for that, and uncomfortably hid behind it.

As a result I mirrored my father’s worst qualities, that painful irony making me even angrier and crowding my teen years with paradox: I became a young intellectual who hated school; a born storyteller who shunned the limelight; and a sentimental romantic terrified of getting laid. The source: My father’s penetrating stare and savage rebuke, pointing to the Snoopy doll I’d broken.

You’ll find dynamics like these in survivor families, especially between refugee fathers and their spoiled sons. I’ve met several first generation Holocaust kids with stories eerily similar to mine, their dads struggling through Hell to get their children into Heaven, and once there reminding them in every way they could—thoughtfully or hatefully— of exactly what that generation endured.

The result is often a twin-like dichotomy, where the grown son either accepts or rejects, converges or diverges with the father’s personality and profession. I knew one kid who emulated his corporate exec dad directly into the nepotistic boardroom; another tried to out-do his father at his same game but crashed and burned; while I, as you’ve likely noticed by now, went full anti-Laszlo.

That frenzy reached its height shortly after my twenty-fifth birthday, when my mother committed suicide by overdosing on her psychoactive meds. Despite receiving the professional help she kept asking for, her demise was a decades-long slow burn of chronic depression and agoraphobia: Think Leo’s mom from What’s Eating Gilbert Grape sans chain smoking and grotesque obesity.

Mother was crazy and father was an asshole — that I could handle, even if all my fault. But mother killing herself was a devastating burden too heavy to bear. A week before her suicide I called dad at work, insisting we do an intervention. He snapped back that I was disturbing him, that Marianne was always this way, I should get over it, and goddammit stop bothering him.

A week later she was dead. That was the proverbial last straw, the long overdue excuse I needed to resolutely walk away from the gift shop and wander throughout the hospital forever. With that one-two punch of death and estrangement I lost both parents, and what I thought was the soul-destroying combo of judgment and anxiety that had crushed my youth.

We all have choices. Become a card sharp, marathon runner, day trader, jet pilot, or homeless vagabond. How we end up doing what we do in the way we do it has always been mysterious to me. “Talent” is a mixture of aptitude, attitude, and appetite: But which forces do we control, and which control us? If we can dream anything we want, then why do we have nightmares?

I had good reasons to hate my parents, as kids often do. Some feelings were justified, others banal expressions of my own failings — but eventually I came to the unavoidable realization that none of this mattered. Nobody ever said life is fair or we’re born surrounded by cool people. Instead, the definition of adulthood is the stubborn embrace of personal responsibility and hard work.

“I’m Sorry, Dave — I’m Afraid I Can’t Do That”

With Greg hauling a big bag full of drugs and lovers’ mementos down a Chicago alley and me gazing up into the sky and flashing back to the Bombing of Budapest, I still had a way to go for that adulthood thing. But as Greg again donned the mantle of unFriendly Neighborhood Drug Dealer and the electrician swiveled the light back to the Giraffe statue, progress was made.

The swiveling bright movie light blinded me again, a reminder to get out of the way and extricate myself from this zany adventure. Ubiquitous illumination is disorienting and can trigger agoraphobia by making you feel everywhere at once, the entire Universe spying on you. Since that was the last feeling I needed, I leapt aside and rushed through a crowd of mystified extras.

Staring into the searing 10K Fresnel beam had contracted my pupils to the size of pinheads, so bolting away from it I experienced the opposite sensation and feelings — black out. By destroying all perspective and reference points, total darkness is frightening and can trigger claustrophobia, making you unsure whether you’ve gone blind or the entire Universe has ceased to exist.

The flip-flop freaked me out. Filmmakers frequently use extreme techniques to grab attention and capture mood: enveloping brightness conveys revelation, knowledge, the after life; total darkness implies helplessness, loss of consciousness — death. Stanley Kubrik used both effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey to depict the infinite vastness of space, the inexorable flow of time.

The night after she was buried, my mother Marianne appeared in a dream. My bedroom was a stone crypt lit by flaming sconces adorned with iron and bronze. I was drawn to a side chamber where she was standing in her burial shawl, adjusting her mangled hair. In the flickering light she appraised herself in a warped mirror, turned and asked me in Hungarian, “How do I look?”

I told her she looked great. She seemed to have her doubts, so I assured her again. She nodded, smiled nervously, her attention drawn elsewhere. The candle flames shot up, suddenly extinguished — and with them my burden of absorbing her anxiety and depression throughout my childhood. The calm and support she couldn’t share in her life she at long last gave me in death.

“Are you OK, man?” I squinted into the darkness, my eyes slowly adjusting, a random crew member coming into focus. I smiled awkwardly, waved, and scurried up Elaine Place back toward my apartment. I felt comfortably lighter, rubbed my arms and chest, reminding myself that Greg’s bag was indeed officially out of my hands and off my body, and I was free of it forever.

Light to dark, happiness to sadness, we oscillate between boundaries of birth and death. My refugee parents survived the war but not each other, our family a nightmare in the country of their dreams. Fleeing the anguish, I left a stone on my mother’s grave and didn’t speak to my father for a decade. Releasing a burden tonight, I oddly felt ready for another one… Yes, dad — I can do that.

A decade later, Laszlo would be mercifully euthanized in a hospice, his morphine drip set to fire hose. I’d played-out his deathbed scenario a hundred times over the years, variations ranging from kicking his ass to not bothering to show up at all. When the time finally came I was there, simply sitting next to him and softly speaking. Maybe he heard what I said, his mouth twitching.

The courtesy I could only give my mother in a dream I gave my father on the last day of his life: I assured Laszlo that everything was all right, said that his life was meaningful and he should be proud. He certainly didn’t need my validation, but after enduring our broken father-son relationship and agony of estrangement, he deserved to hear it from his first and only American son.

Saving Grace

I zigged & zagged between the now glaringly obvious trailers, tents, and lighting equipment, making my way to the same place on the sidewalk where Jackie had mocked us. I looked up at my apartment, warm lights illuminating and pink curtains adorning my once gloriously unkempt and unfinished bachelor’s pad. Seeing into the future, I wanted to yell: “Alexa! Go home.”

Busy losing and picking up burdens tonight got me to an emotional par: I had no room left this evening for a live-in tranny girlfriend, let alone a cis chick neighbor who never fucked. I was at long last free of Greg’s gift, which proved to be a mixed bag of tricks that somehow brought me closer to self-awareness, and pushed me farther away from stabilizing my irresponsible existence.

Outside, the spring air was cool and breezy, chilling me out and clearing my head. Avoiding problems — especially emotional ones — was my specialty, so I effortlessly defaulted back to my ground state and turned to walk away, only to run right into Mickey. “Good evening, Sir!” He saluted and stood riveted at attention, his haircut perfect, button-down shirt ironed, tight jeans pressed.

“My brother is at the bar,” he continued, letting himself at ease. “He’s getting things ready, Sir.” Ah! He reminded me that I was late for my shift, and Minnie was still covering for me. The business was just up the street, so I thanked Mickey and hurried over. And as I ran past an alley I could have sworn I saw none other than Jackie and Greg, huddled with the bag — Woaaaaahhh?

Was I hallucinating? Every culture has its own food, clothing, music, and drugs ripe for appropriation. Packed with goodies, Greg’s stash lacked a major pharmacological category: psychedelics. Although ecstasy was often enjoyed at circuit parties, the gay scene predominantly favored drugs best for sex: meth to rev up, ketamine to calm down, and viagra to keep things working.

High school in the late 70s was instead all about weed and LSD, the neural pathways of our young brains hungry for serotonin-agonists that made video game arcades and midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show the bomb. Fast forward thirty years and “micro-dosing” has become the rage, Upper East Side housewives tripping as researchers rediscover psychedelics.

Wading into the 21st century, big pharma has appropriated marijuana and ketamine, liberals have appropriated gender wars and censorship, conservatives have appropriated liberal outrage and deficits, and appropriation itself has become the OCD of identity politics, social justice warriors, and a presidency appropriating jingoism and corruption.

By revisiting a time when America was arguably at its height in power and prestige — witnessed through the eyes of a freaky outlier — our current state of Imperial decline seems inevitable and even necessary. As a nation and culture we still have so much unfinished business; and as a freaky outlier it took me two more decades and getting zonked on MDMA to start figuring it all out:

Our ongoing challenge as an ideologically pluralistic but stubbornly polarized society isn’t so much our obsession with individual identity and cultural appropriation, but our collective incapacity to show appreciation. Simple courtesy, you know, giving thanks and expressing gratitude. Just shutting the fuck up for a second and acknowledging what others have done for you.

Nothing comes for free, especially things worth fighting for. Of all possible Universes, in this one few if anyone says “Thank you!” anymore. Such inability or unwillingness to give credit where credit is due not only shatters essential communication, but annihilates perspective and the lessons of history. Now we’re all stuck holding the bag for a delivery never wanted or appreciated.

Techno Remix

It took my mother’s suicide to release me from the shackles of her mental illness, and my father succumbing to Parkinson’s to liberate me from the relentless disappointment that paralyzed my connection to the world. But thanks to Greg’s stash and its many gifts I was starting to figure it out — not forgive or forget, but somehow appropriate and appreciate the beauty of it all.

Even though I defrosted my father’s estrangement I never thanked him for his service. I never acknowledged either of my parents’ struggles, actually, or deeply considered and appreciated their herculean ordeals that were on an historical, almost cosmological scale. Too busy obsessing over present and future, I failed to appreciate my past — and like the rest of us, paid the price.

Families spawn tribalism and perpetuate the worst in us all, but they leave an indelible mark as we dodge their ghosts into adulthood. Peering back through ten, a hundred generations, what would my ancestors think of what I was and could become? The first and only American, my misadventures embraced the extremes of culture and behavior two world wars and genocide couldn’t stop.

The vagaries of memory and the solipsism of the moment make life its own roman à clef, the names changed to protect the guilty, fact appropriating fiction to create the most compelling story: Liza moved out faster than I could kick Alexa out, and Jackie vanished one night only to be found again a week later in a relationship that would last for nearly two decades. Who knew?

My own life would unfold in various unexpected ways, thrills and spills galore — but that evening I was already late for my first shift of a non-stop meth-fueled 120-hour weekend of insanity ahead. The neighborhood was springing to life as I raced across Halsted Street, dodging traffic and gazing up at the old school plastic letter marquee freshly updated to my myopic specifications:

WHERE EVEN BLIND DOGS FIND BONES

Before dashing inside, I could have sworn I heard, pumping through the vibrating shatter-proof glass, a familiar and exuberantly remixed tune:

So if you’re tired of the Same old story Oh, baby, turn some pages I’ll be here when you are ready To roll with the changes Baby, roll with the changes Oh, you know, you know, you know you got to

Keep on rollin’ Keep on rollin’

And who was that snearching from across the street? Jackie, of course, sneaking and searching then scurrying off with the goods just like Mr. Pink from the last scene of Reservoir Dogs. Who, after all the smoke cleared and everyone paid the ultimate price, absconded with the glittering MacGuffin — in this Universe a big bright blue duffel bag with black velcro straps…

Baby, roll with the changes Oh, you know, you know, you know you got to

Keep on rollin’ Keep on rollin’