RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,371
(where am I going, where have I been, pt.1)
It was about Nov. 23, 1963, when
my eyes started opening to another
world - yet again. I was a 'freshman'
in the seminary (yeah, they used those
goofy high-school and college grade
level terms, for whatever reason). So,
I guess that was at the end of 1963, for
what it's worth. My eyes got opened by
the silliest thing. And my attention was
piqued by the same. Lee Harvey Oswald
had just killed the President, it was
immediately concluded that this little
fellow from Russia or Cuba was the
killer. The thing about all that stuff is
that, in such a sort of situation, the less
that is known, or revealed anyway, about
the assassin or the person in custody, the
better it can be - because the story grows,
as people roll with it and assume things,
go where the words lead them, add things
of their own, and assume the factuality of
all that they hear. People are dumb like that.
-
Oswald was pretty much, as it turned out,
a useless, drifting individual, but smarter
then they had let on about him. He knew
what was up; he knew why he was picked
up as the patsy for the crime he could not
have committed. Somehow he'd left a real
path of shit behind himself - Cuba, a CIA
connection, a Russia visit, a Cuban wife.
The Government used to keep track of all
that stuff, in those years - maybe they still
do it now, in their different and more magical,
less mechanical, days.. 1960 was a new entry
strange other eras for the USA. By 1963, they
were ready for this. A guy named Oswald,
ready, set, go - to be turned into a Presidential
killer, with all the qualifications already in
place. HE knew he was doomed - that the
line-up was a plant, his tee-shirt alone made
him different than the others in the line-up
and a stand-out. Bernie Tippit. I think it was,
the dead cop he'd supposedly shot leaving the
Texas Book Depository; nothing to do but go
along and hope for mercy. BAM! a shot or
two in the gut, while being led, by police,
along the supposedly protected basement
police corridor - by Jack Ruby, no less, one
of Dallas' mot notorious underworld, dark
figures, a mysterious man in deep trouble.
Oswald. Dead in another instant. Problem
solved. Now make the story fit.
-
The thing that popped out at me, a complete
naif on any of this, was his gun. Oswald's
rifle, supposedly, was a Mannlicher:
"In March 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald,
using the alias "A. Hidell", purchased
by mail order a 6.5×52mm Carcano
Model 38 infantry carbine (described
by the President's Commission on the
Assassination of President Kennedy
telescopic sight. He also purchased a
revolver from a different company,
by the same method. I couldn't see
how they would know this, in such a
detailed familiarity. I sensed immediately
that something else was up and if they
would go to great lengths (as I kept
finding out) to do this, setting up one
ordinary man for a fall, they could do it
to anyone. I was already convinced I
hated the system. Where was I to go?
-
My initial time, those first few months,
in the seminary were mostly comprised
of me trying to figure a persona out for
myself so as to somehow break into this
den of other-class guys. They weren't me,
for sure, many of them came from far
more privileged towns and circumstances
from my own, and that differentiation
was telling; not negligible. I'll be frank
with you, the only guy I at first was able
to connect with was this sloppy, lower
level guy, much like myself, I figured,
named Leo Benjamin. He hailed from
Bangor, Maine, and I was instantly
comfortable around him. His set-up
was of the same notions and outlooks,
verbalizing (except the accenting) as
was mine. He was sloppy, and unkempt.
Wore a lot of the same clothes, over
and over. The other guys, many of them,
came from the wealthier, Jersey shore
towns, were sons of influential people,
had fathers with big-deal state jobs, all
that kind of class-separate stuff. Spring
Lake and Rumson were certainly no
Avenel, I had to learn quick, and learn
on the fly.
-
There were locals, guys from Fords,
Avenel, Perth Amboy, but for whatever
reason even they didn't mingle with me.
A lot of this was surreptitious stuff - I
was alone, a young kid, just into being
13 that entry-September. My social
manners were nil; awareness little;
cares even less. Like driftwood, I had
just floated or washed ashore. Everything
was yet artificial. Heck, my entire life
was artificial by that time: a train wreck,
all that hospital time, a come, a slow
awakening back to 'real' life (which I
never did get back to believing in), school
BS, home life, friends and family, all of
that stuff went by me in a vivid flash of
something. And I felt myself stuck . All
else felt as if it had all just fallen out of
the sky and landed on my head, yet I
saw all these other kids with their finer
manners, more reserved ways, and
histories. I was a washed-up comedian
before I even got started, and my
stand-up routine had already fallen
flat. It had to be that, for me to perk
up at the strange-sound of a Mannlicher
rifle. Everything was going crazy.
-
I came into the seminary library one
day, after a shower, from sports, and
my hair was all fluffy and uncombed,
from shampoo, and this guy from Fords,
Joe Vouglas, said, 'Hey! You look like
one of those Beatles!' I had no clue to
what he was referring. Talk about an
isolated and cloistered existence.
-
30 kids, all boys, in a dorm room replete
with two long rows of metal cots. We
slept together, ate together, washed
and showered together. It was like a
and movie one would see, of a British
boarding school, out on some crazy heath
or meadow somewhere - playing fields,
mess-hall type dining, three meals a day,
marches, chapel, lectures, and discipline.
I always failed discipline, simply because
I felt the place, for me, was useless, and
without purpose; these bizarre priests
and monks and brothers, plodding
around with each their own bizarre
attitudes and approaches to things.
Most of the time their faces were
stuck in a Breviary anyway (a religious
guidebook priests have to read, and
continuously, from - a soft, black, book,
resembling a small bible, with its own
red-ribbon place marker built in). It
never seemed to me that any of them
had a proper grip on the world, and
yet I had been plopped down in the
middle of them as my 'guardians'
and replacement parents. I wasn't
seeking affection, but at least some
attention that was not prescribed by
rule-books and protocol. And I KNEW
for a fact that those things were broken
all the time anyway. There was a sadistic
undercurrent of male upon male going
on there. It had its locations and places,
most of them out of bounds.
-
Any location that would deign to put
some three hundred (4 high-school
years' worth) of seething adolescent boys,
brimming with bubbling testosterone that
was supposed to be worked out through
field events and sports, along with deep
study, all together as one, would be amiss.
This was surely. I channeled, as it ended
up, all of my excess energy into the small
drama department - which at least allowed
some better, more interesting companions: a
sort of 1960's avant-garde attitude-posturing
that most often led right out the front gates.
(There were none really. It's only an image).
It was all 'artificial' once again. We were
NOT who we proclaimed being.
-
We played jazz records. We drank black
coffee. Arranged plays and re-wrote scenes.
Back stage work, scenery stuff. rehearsing,
practice, reading for parts, designing sets...
There was a myriad of crazy, little tasks
always to be done. It was like a lumberyard
of activity, often with hammers, nails, boards,
and lighting. Amateur theater at it boyish best.
Two or three times a year, if all went well, we'd
get three or four weekends of performance. At
those times, an actual box-office opened, small
fees were taken, schoolbuses lined up from
the neighboring towns, and other high schools.
Parents and outsiders would come to watch
our performances; school trips, and other
witchy drama groups. It was pretty great,
and it twisted my mind up some too.
-
They were complete outsiders, and many of
them were girls! All the pent-up, real-boy
agitation got exercised - it was pretty crazy.
Stupid as all get-out too, but crazy. Autographs
being requested, girls squealing, as if the
adulation they extended was their own form
of excited orgasmic overflow as well. Myself?
I had a few delicious roles in a few of the plays,
acted them to the hilt, and came away on top.
One time I received some gushy love and fan
letter, from an unknown girl in Tuckerton,
NJ, just about proclaiming her fealty and ever
and forever undying love for me, and the
school powers (Father Carlton and someone
else, I can't recall - the pipe-smoking
'Spiritual Director- of the school, whoever
that was), bagged me big-time for that. I
hadn't even known this girl existed, but
they had conjured their own fantasy that I
had dangerous liaisons with her, or at least
had planned them. It 'had to be stopped, and
immediately.' These guys were crackers.
[END OF PART 1]
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