7710. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt.138)

BELOW THE WATER LINE
(pt. 138)

Every so often I'd learn a few things, just

from obvious observation : sometimes it's

better to just leave things be and not disturb

a current situation; it's often advantageous to

take, and complete beforehand, each and every

preparation for an upcoming and expected project

or problem. Getting broadsided, because of sloppiness

or apathy, sucks; it doesn't hurt anything to be as nice

as you can be, to others, and to yourself too. Those

became the sort of things, a kind of Poor Richard's

Ben Franklin Almanac kind of junk, that were more

important to me than the usual pandering you'd read

in 'tips for success.' You know, stuff like having your

shoes always shined, wearing a neat and proper tie,

crease in your pants, coordinated look, not speaking

tawdry or out of turn to superiors or those who'd be

hiring you.  Yes, that's all OK, and obvious, but not

worth the skin on a groundhog. It's just meaningless,

a support mechanism by some jerk who's expecting

you to feel good by having him telling you things you

already know. I always steered clear of all that.

Which wasn't always easy once I was set in back at

home. My father's most dense reading matter always

seemed to be Parade magazine, some schlubb of a

rag stuffed inside the Star Ledger every Sunday. 

What an insidious bunch of crap  -  filled with the

sort of tidbits I just mentioned. Movie-stars, TV junk,

totally lame articles and off-the-wall stuff boosting

both America and the present culture  -  they called 

it that  -  which they claimed was around us everywhere.

A total bunch of fecund bullshit, written for nothing more

than to continue the regime that already had scrunched

people like my father and mother underfoot long ago.

You certainly didn't want this stiff to grow; you wanted

it to die. Well, it didn't. That was my father's complete

intellectual input, weekly. I went nuts every time I saw

or heard it referenced or talked about, as 'authoritative'

stuff no less. They'd run bastard articles about Generals

Giap, Khan, Theiu, and Ky, complete fucking American 

puppets and rulers of Vietnam, real scums, for whom 

they expected American boys  -  yeah, like me  -  to run 

after and die for. They'd extol the Kennedy's, and their 

kids, and Marilyn Monroe, never telling you they were 

screwing each other. All lies and misleading crap  -  every 

word. With your Sunday eggs and toast no less. Stupid 

ass comic strips too : Hatlow's Family Circus, Beetle 

Bailey, Dick Tracy, Sir Lancelot, Blondie....it all went 

on and on. These comics were used an information 

interdicts to put go-along messages in dumb American 

heads. It was so obvious to me I wanted to cut its nose 

off. You simply can't convince people of their wrongness

when they're convinced of their rightness. It all went 

together back then, and probably still does. Yes, I admit  - 

and I saw it all coming  -  that it blew up in all their faces

in a few years, the entire, rickety mess, crumbling about.

Dead people, bodies everywhere, riotous kids, hippie louts,

runaways, whores, hookers, and drones  -  all the young

people who used to be the children of people just like my

parents. A complete, ass-sucking basket-load of perverts.

Culture-chasers. Fake culture-chasers. Wouldn't know a

Bach from a Cock, but could mouth all the words to

'C'mon Baby Light My Fire' as if it were Holy Fucking

Grail. I knew that  -  at least in the seminary  -  I hadn't

been subjected to that level of intellectual graft and

corruption. There was still some idle dignity left, and 

it was given to us. I was sure glad of that. A person first

has to learn some discernment and breeding and grace in

order then to get around things and start making real noise;

good, genial, correct intellectual noise. I knew these jerks

around me, these new high-school skanks singing Beatle

tunes and exploring their girlfriend's bodies to songs by

Jagger and Richards, didn't have a blind-man's clue about 

anything except the next night's TV schedule. You can't

go around making histrionic noises about changing

society and demanding new things if you've got absolutely

nothing wise, real, or backed by a legacy of something, in

your head. Everybody all of a sudden wanted to be Elvis.

They turned out to be, instead Englebert Humperdinck.

False, weird, name-stealing geeks.

-

I was home home again, home again, bippity-boo, or however

that thing went. I used to hate, as well, as those old adages and

nursery-kid sayings, like that one. There are actually adults

who'd go around using them. My mother was always singing 

crazy dumb ditties like that. 'Froggie Went a'Courtin', 'When 

I'm Calling You', etc. Never a clue. Maybe I was missing a

fun gene or something. Back when I was still in the seminary,

there were a few times when, instead of having my father or

my family drive me back to Blackwood -  a big noisy hassle

actually  - I'd take a bus from New Brunswick. What was cool

about it was how the seminary, like after Thanksgiving, or 

Christmas, those two anyway (days we actually got off for 

a day or two and were allowed 'home' if it was doable), they'd

charter a bus, have it parked behind the old taxi stand in New

Brunswick (under the overpass behind the train station  -  this

was the old New Brunswick, when it still had real rows of

stores and pizza joints and little eateries and retail junk. It's all

gone now, Johnson and Johnson having come in in the late

70's and wiped their ass with the whole town, tearing down 80%

of the old downtown to leave a putrid, white-towered, sterile,

office mess that's somehow still there). Anybody within rocket

distance of New Brunswick and headed back to Blackwood  -  at

most there could have maybe 30 kids, from varied places  within

30 miles could take advantage of this bus, though few actually

did. I always rode a fairly empty bus alone, unbothered), could

ride along. My father, after some cursory goodbye-agains to

my siblings and mother, would jump in the car, with me, and

a few times my Uncle Joe too, and drive me to New Brunswick. 

They start talking about New Brunswick and stuff and then they'd

always get around to asking me weird questions. My father always

got different when his brother was around  -  more talkative, hokey,

inquisitive. To be honest, mostly I think they always wanted to

know what we kids did for kicks, with all those priest guys around.

I figured they were more interested in who whacked off with whom

than anything else, but I never had really anything to report. They 

thought it was a big joke, and my uncle, and then father, would make

sure, before I left, that I knew what a waste of a life they thought 

I was entering into. I knew damn well that, to them, that just 

meant no women, no girls, no loving, no kids. I hated that, and I

could never understand how stupid grown men could stoop to

messing around with ideas like that. They missed the entire point

of my eradicating their shit from my life, to put it bluntly, and they

just continued to go on about it all. Yeah, bye, see ya next time,

maybe Easter, maybe in the Summer.

-

I'd get on that bus, in the half-dark, and everything would

suddenly feel all right once more. I was alone. I was singular 

again, by myself, tending my own domain. I didn't have to 

hear any cockamamie crap from people who read comics and 

pulp. I could rule, free, intellectually, and conceptually. The 

bus would grind off  -  I loved the noise, the feel, the travel. 

The smokey gray little city of New Brunswick would go 

swaggering by, and we were off to the NJ Turnpike, for one 

big smooth ride. Tiny light on above my head, if I was to read

or whatever, on the Turnpike, and we'd go on down to exit 3

or whatever it was. Once we got off the Turnpike, again that's 

where love and happiness of the real world began. One after 

the other, we'd pass these tiny little podunk South Jersey towns,

decorative lights, pharmacies, police stations, Dairy Queens 

and diners. Everything in a row, lonesome, quiet. Somehow

serene, but you knew not too  -  in any of those homes could

be some guy beating up his spouse, or a kid punching his

mother, people hungry and poor, or fat and sedated. Sex on

the couch, or sad crying upstairs, alone in a room somewhere.

All I ever got was the warm creeps, good creeps, but creeps

nonetheless. Not knowing anything, I'd always assume the 

worst. At least the roads were clean and smooth, and the

lights worked  -  for the rest, I just did not know. Like an

immigrant, my understanding stopped at the water's edge.

My uncle and my father notwithstanding, (true confessions 

time), on any given street corner I was looking, looking out

that bus window, just as much for Wisdom and Understanding 

as I was for the most beautiful, singular, all-mine, girl in the

world. I would have jumped right off that bus, right through

the glass, if that's what it took, to get her. Everything about me

was ripe for love and ripe for the picking. Looking back at it

all now, it's so difficult to understand my predicament. 

Cloistered like a seasoning ham in a smokehouse, in some

lame-ass seminary on a long sandy bullshit road, waiting hand

and foot on every crank-twisted religious fantasy that was

handed to me to believe in, I was a lost soul. Let me repeat

that : a lost soul  -  in the middle of all that Godhead and

Godhood too. A lost soul, pining for something that

even then didn't yet exist for me. A true, new world, just 

around the bend  -  a Magellan bend of blood and water

and ice and fire, that my leaky ship had yet to endure.