RUDIMENTS, pt. 186
Making Cars
How much of what we do is real?
I thought about that too. There were
a few times I couldn't figure things
out at all. It had to be fake.
-
After all that 1967 fighting the
Draft Board and Vietnam stuff (it
all running over into my e11th street
apartment) I was shaken and ruined.
I didn't much want to hear anything
from any of those people ever again -
all those war-resister types had worn
me out; they all seemed vain, and
egotistical, fake, and, even more
important to me, Jewish. I realized
quite quickly by that Summer that
the entire hippie thing and the
anti-war movement stuff, both
together somehow embodying, along
with the music, the whole of the
'social culture' fabric being made up,
was a Jewish manufacture. Not
that it bothered me, but it lost any
authenticity in my eyes. It may as
well have been a Jewish 'joke' past
that point. One thing after the other,
that's all I saw - and then they blew
up (by mistake) their own rich-dad's
(one of them) townhouse, bombs, nails,
dead people, runaways. What a mess.
It was all jut a miserable culmination.
I recalled how stunned I was that day
sometime previous, one of those
Democratic Convention riots or
something in 1968 when I saw that
the TV cameras had broadcast and
aired the entire scene of Mayor
Daley - Chicago's rank and foul
Mayor - as he cursed out (and by
doing do, in his mind, the entire
anti-war movement) Senator Abraham
Ribicoff, of Connecticut, who was just
then at the podium giving an anti-war
speech - "Fuck you, you Jewish son
of a bitch, you lousy motherfucker,
go home!" Those words are exact.
I was fixated as I realized that some
sort of divide had just been crossed,
and I'd vicariously witnessed it. There
seemed nothing left to be done, as a
country or a people, to salvage the
mess. I was wrong, of course, as
the mess salvaged itself and people
more and more just faded away
into a weird mediocrity of time
and energy in which nothing any
longer mattered - of course that
was 50 years later-to-be, but
nonetheless there were the seeds,
and that flower would grow.
-
No one could say anything like
that on live TV now, let alone
the Mayor, scowling or not, of a
major city. It just shows how far
things - all things - have gone
along since. My own staggering
dyspepsia seemed matched
every step of the way, right then,
by the manner in which society
itself was falling apart. It was all
being matched, on a one-to-one
basis, by the world around me. I
remember reading somewhere,
I forget when, a phrase that went
'The Revolution Will Be Televised.'
Yeah, I believed that. There are so
many, but JUST so many, of these
vague things I can recall, and then
it all stops. One time, I remember
being in some corporate office lobby,
one of those smaller facilities that
large companies keep in different
cities, for representation and back
office work. I'd done some few days
of factory work there, in their rear
area where they made product, and
I had a few days pay due. I was
there to pick it up and while I
waited, on the TV there was some
mad scramble being broadcast,
something about riots and Newark in
flames and the death of Martin Luther
King and its aftermath and police and
tanks and guns. A real scene. I just
sat there, taking in the logistics of
it all - watching the comings and
goings in the office : chubby guys
with coffee cups coming in, saying
things like, 'Damn Niggers, burning
down the whole country. They should
just shoot them all.' Little petite
office girls and ladies, in ridiculously
come-hither and get-me short skirts
and clothing to be leered at, saying
things like 'Oh my, I hope it doesn't
come here. I just want to be able to
get home. You should hear what my
husband says about this! I don't want
any trouble.' The entire place was falling
apart, as if manned by nervous little
midgets. I had to laugh. Somebody
was winning, somewhere; and
somebody was losing. Always the
way. Also, what cracked me up was
I'd see these little paperbacks at
desktops - apparently every
snickering one of them was reading
either 'Portnoy's Complaint,' or
'Everything You Wanted To Know
About Sex, But Were Afraid To Ask.'
Philip Roth, the first one, and some
Doctor Rubin guy, the sex one. Big
titles back the; big sellers. Had to
laugh. America reads, and goes home.
-
Sometimes just for the fun of the
difference, I'd take a train ride back
to Avenel (home), or a Port Authority
bus. Either way. It became a way for
me to juggle in my head some sort
of travel between two places, to keep
alive and keen the differences. In
reality, I could have gone anyway,
jumped a train or bus to any other
destination (Scarsdale, Rye, Nyack,
New Brunswick, Trenton) had I
chosen to, but that never really
dawned on me. Besides, I had a
girlfriend in Avenel worth 'checking
in on.' Sometimes we'd never even
let on that I was home, for those
6 or 8 hours, and instead just hang
out somewhere. The contrasts
between the two places sometimes
seemed staggering - little homes,
the Halloween decorations, or
Christmas or whatever they had
out. The way people just looked,
crawling to a slow-down in their big,
dumb cars, to gape, watchng me
walk by. It was weird. Sometimes
I'd take the Carteret bus, and stay
on it after the Turnpike and Carteret
turn-offs and it would eventually
get me to this corner in Woodbridge
at what was called the 'White Church.'
I always pretended I was in some
racist, southern town, as a stranger
passing through, getting off at the
corner bus-stop at the 'White church.'
Fun stuff. Hell, it almost could have
been real anyway : sleepy, weedy
meadows, a long walk through nothing,
a golf driving range and a coal company,
and then the very same railroad tracks
and exact spot where I'd gotten
creamed by the train. Goosebumps?
Not one; I hardly even thought about
it. It was a generalized dump - a
trailer park (same one I used to hawk
vegetables in, off that truck with
Ed Aetoff [previous chapter somewhere]).
Either way, the whole place was full
of nothing, or it was full of shit. I'd
walk though both the get where I
was headed, with those occasional
people staring. I couldn't even figure
out why these people were alive,
except maybe for having kids and
just extending the whole mess.
Problem was, it was kids like
me. Trouble on the horizon, from
A to Z. (Threw in a rhyme).
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