RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,145
('it little mattered in the foxholes')
I've always had problems with
'obedience.' To me it's always
been merely a codeword for
accepting collectivism. As a kid,
for sure, it meant 'doing what
others said,' and I noticed a
lot of different people impressed
that idea in a lot of different ways.
Some of the 'Dads' I've seen over
the years of my growing up were
truly discipline-oriented psychotic
basket cases, with Marine-like
tunnel vision and a demand for
seeing things ONE way: Theirs!
On whatever street that was, in
Avenel, which ran behind A&W,
back then - (some 1950's glimmer
of California idiocy, with carhops
and a sort of collected car-port
wait area with remote voice-boxes.
All that California car-hop business
was always so dumb, to see and to do,
and it never fit NJ very well, and the
A&W is now a pizza joint without all
the car stuff) - there lived some kid
whose father was a crazy man,
always ready to wield a hammer,
and most especially at the sort of
'me' he apparently thought he saw
me becoming. (I always figured he
was just angry about all those new
lights in his backyard. from the
car-hop. I pitied the kid whose
father that was. On Clark Place, right
near me, the same thing went on with
some cop-sergeant guy who took a
constant umbrage at my presence.
It was harassment, and nothing more;
by today's standards I probably could
have had him dragged in.
-
Obedience to me always meant
'Obedience to others.' I never liked
that. As a kid you really have no
choice - reform school beckoned,
and that phantom-dark-image always
loomed. In fact, it became more myth
and legend than anything else. I forget
the names now but we had a few
locations (place-named, Yardville,
etc.) which were meant to evoke the
spectre of imprisonment for wayward
boy miscreants. As I grew older, and
in the seminary years too, I realized
the game of 'obedience' involved a
collective agreement to ask no questions
and just do what one was told. That,
in turn, grated as well.
-
Seminary 'obedience,' for instance,
was a cruel joke. The element, the
low-buzz, of perversion and gayness
always hummed through the corridors,
never with an explanation nor even a
recognition of its own presence. The
idea of 'obedience' became the catch-all
phrase by which the dictates of man-boy
love or attraction was diffused. Once I
sensed that, as much as any of the others
things, I began to know the exit door
was meant for me. I just had to find a
means of extricating myself from a new
mess. Soldiering on? Jesuit-like disciplines
for Rome and Jesus in the guise of a
jerk-off planet of male lust? Man, I was
flabbergasted before tomorrow's breakfast
even got started. I saw how demands for
'discipline' usually just end up to be the
mechanisms by which other people make
their own formats of controlling others.
If something is enforced, but you're
never told what it is, and can never really
question it, then why observe it? Why
be obedient? Life's a big risk anyway; ask
any regular German creep from 1938 how
they managed to wriggle or observe what
they were told to do, what was coming, and
what they saw - and what they did about it.
Saying 'no' to something is always a risk.
These Salvatorians that were holding their
'obedience' over my head were all Germans,
of whatever order and degree. Was that
something endemic? Did it all come with
cause? How in the world did that get all
tied up with God and church and Rome?
-
In NYC, I never once really observed anyone
I dealt with being that way, nor undertaking
any of that discipline and obedience stuff.
The place was so wild and anarchic that it
went beyond all the bounds of propriety
I'd ever know. I'm sure there was, however,
plenty of 'obedience' and 'discipline.' I just
never saw it - as I read now the varied
memoirs, tales and recounted life-stories of
New Yorkers, famed or otherwise, I see that
it all was as legion for them as ever it was
for me. Even the Park Avenue rich kids
thought life stunk. That's because 'obedience'
as an idea never stops. It's present at every
level of society, and adheres its miserable
way onto whatever that societal 'detail' is.
For rich kids and the wealthy, it all was
just at another level. The 'collective' there
is the same collective misery by which we
all are born, grow and mature into our
own batch of mistakes and miscalculations.
Trying to shut all that down by obedience
ends up making one the equivalent of
today's Chinese minions getting pushed
and shoved and bashed around. And now
everyone calls that the future!
-
I always had escape hatches; they saved
my ass. Hell's Kitchen escape hatches -
of which I saw plenty - involved theft
and deception and murder and mayhem.
I'd seen any number of Irish dock thugs
get taken in, harbored and hidden by
compatriots, after some or another of
the gruesome crime-tasks they lived by.
There were warrens of buildings in the
west 30's and 40's with interconnected
passageways, secreted rooms and
doorways to hidden areas. The most
innocent-seeming panel could open
onto the craziest of scenes. Much of
it was leftover stuff, from the previous
75 years or more. Nothing was new.
Prohibition, immigration, even fleeing
fugitives and slaves and criminal
reprobates came through these places.
Guys thought nothing of slicing someone
to shreds, and life was lived on that
knife-edge of moment whereby at any
one time something else could break
out. Mothers, daughters, and sisters
were often in on it too. The point for
the 'criminal' was to decide risk - how
much of anything ought he to share
with others? Would this or that
information end up compromising
him? Can this or that person be
trusted? Who knew what? Cops of
that day were very often of the same
ilk, just on the other side - covering
for others, or taking cuts to look the
other way sometimes paid off. The
connections of family and place never
hurt either. A person had to remain
alert. There was a time when most
of the reporters and such from the
nearby New York Times would hang
out after hours or after-shift, at a
chop house named Gough's (an
Irish name; at 212 w43rd). Linotype
operators, reporters, editors, all
together. It was a good place to step
in and listen - and often the crime
beat guys would blab stuff. Irish
hoods from around the docks and
areas nearby would use that as an
information conduit - if any new
developments or leads had come up,
some murder or heist or whatever, any
one of these guys, believe it or not,
loosed-up enough by beer, could talk.
It was the sort of intelligence-gathering
that went with the conduit-tunnels and
the hideouts too. Grand old world it was.
-
So, 'Obedience' again? To what? To
some Catholic-Irish saintliness that
most often ran off the tracks anyway?
That was for the mothers and old ladies.
They could abide and listen and bow
and pray to whoever it was they chose.
It little mattered in the foxholes and
ranks of the firing-line guys; which
is where real life was lived, and how
it was done. Screw obedience. It
never meant anything at all.
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