storeeze

My wife Babs heard about a history professor who crafted wine cabinets, and thought it would be the perfect birthday present for me. We saw him one evening to pick the style, wood, and finish. A month later we brought the finished cabinet home in the back seat of the car. We were so impressed we decided to have a dinner party for it. Babs invited the professor, her shrink Paul Arnold, and his wife June. I brought the menu to Haskell's, a fashionable wine dealer, and came away with nine bottles and precisely when to drink them during the meal. The christening came on a warmish evening, beginning with #1, Weingut Muller Privat Rheinriesling Spatlese.  #3, Chateau Thivin Cote de Brouilly, was uncorked when Paul and Babs went to the kitchen. The professor sampled the rogue bleu while he stared at the Girl with Red Chair, Brick Wall, hanging over the fireplace: “She has a beautiful little body, hasn’t she?” June leaned in, wearing a clingy red jersey knit. “You should see mine.” “Can th

I don’t even think they know where they’re goin’.  What are they tryin’ to prove, anyway? —The Wild Ones (1953) You know how every neighborhood has an eccentric? When I slipped my Harley up Richie’s drive on a wonderfully hot Saturday afternoon, he was sitting on his bed surrounded by clothes and boxes. It was one of those wacky Saturdays where the sight of Richie sleeping in would cause his father Ollie to turn purple and thrust a finger in Richie’s face: “Goddammit Richard, you'll be out of my house by six o’clock tonight, I GAR-UN-TEE!” and dump the contents of Richie’s bedroom into the drive. “Where’s the Olds?” I asked. Richie sighed, “They’re at the Hub.” We got it back into his room—the heat didn’t help—and cracked open a couple of Ollie’s cold ones. We’d been in crises since Kardis frosted us with the Angels: “Totally unreliable.” “I like his sister.” “Yeah, fourteen.” Richie opened his little black book. “The prom queens. They put out.” “Remember what happened last time?”

What happened to the girl I used to know? You let your mind out somewhere down the road, Don't bring me down, down, down, down, down No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no —from Lynne, Jeff. (1979). Don't Bring Me Down [lyrics] The army? It’s bullshit, really. Two years amid spells of senseless madness, where life can be short. I took off my uniform and notified Peavey Company. I soon began handling all things computer at the new Tech Center, back working days and schooling nights, busy with responsibilities. Since returning I had been on the lookout for enemies, strange sights, sounds and smells. Diesel churned my stomach. I looked up every time I heard a helicopter. The 4th of July was tense. Fireworks and the lingering smell of sulfur—incoming or outgoing? At first I slept well, but then I would wake up suddenly in a cold sweat not knowing where I was and had to change my t-shirt. The doctors suggested hypnosis. I demurred—who knows what that might bring. * “I don’t know you a

The sun drives the seasons and the days between Legion ball and football practice. These were the best of times—running with Richie and his brother Larry, living on unemployment and sponging off the old man—more interested in getting laid than getting paid. Traffic tickets, pecker tracks in the back seat, a police escort home after midnight. Mom wringing her hands like Lady Macbeth, crying out loud, “Where did I go wrong?” On one of those dog day Friday afternoons, I turned my Harley onto Diagonal Boulevard. A mile from home, the bubble machine lit up on a cop car parked at a side street. I grabbed a handful of throttle—my risk insurance had expired—no license! The Harley roar and the siren alerted mom as I swung past the house, wind in my face, the fuzz on my ass. I looped on 74th Street and flew past Marlys Pederson's, my fantasy until I saw Phoebe Crouch on the first day of seventh grade. At Portland, a busy thoroughfare, I said a prayer, goosed it and blew across without lookin

CONTENT WARNING:  READER DISCRETION ADVISED “Whilst Man, however well-behaved, At best is but a monkey shaved.” —W. S. Gilbert (1884) What I remember is a  bitter January morning wrangling a junkyard transmission into a ‘53 Packard,  jacked up on blocks. Richie and I should have been trudging through the snow to classes at the U instead of o ur backs jammed against a freezing curb,  lining up an Ultramatic, biggest I’d ever seen.  Two cars rolled up.  “Charlie?” ( Alan would come upon you anywhere, anytime, and frequently intoxicated.) “Yeah, what?” “It’s your lucky day.” “Oh, yeah? Then what could you be doing here?” The transmission teetered. “We got two women.” Alan peered under the car. “Hear that? Back-to-back racks.” “Hold it, right there, Richie. It’s Alan.” “Not Alan. Fuck no!” “Check it out,” said Alan. I edged out for a look. "I don't see your brother." "He went in for a hernia operation." Alan fished a loose cigarette from his jacket and lit it

CONTENT WARNING: READER DISCRETION ADVISED Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air. —from Plath, Sylvia. “Lady Lazarus.” 1962. It was 1960. I was nineteen, living at home with my parents. “Charles!” “Uh?” “Richie has a flat.” I rolled out of bed and stumbled after my mother into the kitchen. She thrust a receiver into my hand and lit a Chesterfield. I grunted. “Richie?” “Git your ass over here.” The receiver crashed in my ear. My mother stiffened and clasped her robe. I threw on my cleanest dirty shirt and hopped into the '52 Pontiac—a hunk of junk that cracked up Ollie, Richie’s father. An anxious excitement propelled me through the ghostly streets; I parked behind the dark shapes outside Richie’s and hurried into the suburban house using the passage way between the garage and the kitchen. An atmosphere of blighted camaraderie prevailed in the tidy, Sears-chic living room. Larry, Richie’s older brother, was saddled with a welfare cheat and five kids in th

My first sense of a Higher Power walked in with death: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. —Child's bedtime prayer, 18th century Before my mother taught me the prayer, I had had no thoughts about death or God. Afterward, those were all my thoughts. The prayer, a childhood favorite at the time, established a supernatural realm and the agency to connect it with the material world. It reminded children of the impermanence of life and the certainty of death. Withal, it promoted the curious idea that the sovereignty of the prayer would not only reassure children before bedtime, but also preserve the innocence of childhood slumber following its recitation. This can’t be right, can it? How could I go to sleep if I might not wake up? Terrifying. As we prayed together each night, she taught me to pray for others. Would they die, too? This sad bedtime poem generated more questions than answers. What is a