The Fringe and The Underbelly (instrumental version)

I read somewhere once that those who work in the sex industry, typically have low self-esteem. The theory goes, that because the have so little worth for themselves, they decide and set upon an arbitrary price for that which should be beyond recompense. Qualities like beauty, charm, and grace are ephemeral, and totally subjective, and thus, should be share with those with the sense and the right eyes to see it. It is a romantic view, but not a wrong one.

I don't think that's what's at issue though with those who ply their gifts for monetary recompense. It's like I say about film Directors who's work I don't particularly admire. I don't begrudge anyone for finding their audience. In the end, we're all just trying approval; people who find value in what we bring to the table; love, if you will. It comes in more than one form. And in today's reality, the value of that, does come with a price tag, especially if one is to survive on more than good wishes and a pat on the back.

We live in a world where porn stars make six figure incomes. If strippers and call girls could be accused of having less ambition, it's only because the value their anonymity to such an extant as to effectively place it off the market. But a girl's still got to pay the rent. And their aren't many easier ways to do it, and still dictate your own hours, and to an extant, choose your own client base.

So they finance their dreams... of independence and creature comforts, or even classes to insure against that day... when finally their youth and beauty begin to fade.

And after, not all we Johns are scum. Some of us are grateful, and value the time that is spent.

I have been high, and I have been low. And one day, I found myself stranded across town, with no way of getting home. Now there are more than a few strippers across town who have made good money from me. And sometimes, when I don't have THAT kind of cash to spend, I'll bring some flowers instead, and a sincere and warm thank you, hanging on my lips. I don't go unless I have a dollar for every dance. But when you can't afford to even buy a lady a drink (because they're twenty-one bucks for a split of champagne!) it's a good way to say, I'll get you next time. Your're not far from my dreams.

And so, on THIS occasion, I was in the neighborhood, and really had no one else to ask. I went inside the club and told her simply, "I'm here because I had a job interview, but I have no way of getting back. Can you lend me ten bucks?" To be honest, I was thinking about more than the ride home, which would have only cost me five. I was thinking of the ride, and picking up a cheap pack of cigarettes along the way.

And this dancer whom I have known for 7 years said simply to me, "Is that all you need? Which took me aback some, and I replied, "Twenty?"  To which she repeated, "Is that all?" I said, "Forty?" And again, she stared me right in the eyes and said, "Is that all?" And I couldn't in all good conscious go much higher than that. This is a girl who works on tips and as any independent worker hustling for commissions will tell you, there are good days, and there are slow days, and there are no guarantees. So I said, "Fifty?" And she said, "Let me go to the back and get my tips." When she returned, she slid a fifty across the bar, bought me a bucket of beer, and sat ant talked with me until I was done.

Let me make something clear here. Despite my qualifier before about about the money I've spent, or even about being the Mercury florist guy of the stripper world,  I'm not saying I ever did anything to deserve such kindness. I'm not even laying claim that I'm a particularly nice guy. As time will reveal, I have sinned, and carry those sins, both in my heart and on my sleeve. And just because I do so, doesn't give me a free pass. As time will reveal, they are numerous and they are there, for you freely, to judge or disdain.

But if one thing can be said, it is this: I AM grateful. And I keep a running tab of all my debts. This ledger, I carry in my heart. And this heart can know no rest. Not 'till the ledger is cleared. Not 'till the scales tip on its opposite side.

The Fringe and the Underbelly (on Avenue D). It's that place where we are reminded of our dreams. We negotiate their worth, in order to pay for a better day.

Emeterio Was My Dad, And So Too Was Stan Lee

My father was an immigrant, a dreamer, a gambler, a hero, a broken man. Like all of us, a bevy of contradictions to say the very least.

He was a cop in Cuba, before the Castro regime. He had a wife and three sons, and fell in love with a girl half his age. He'd seen her grow to womanhood, and then marry another man. She carried a child, and then watched that child grow. Until that young woman's husband died of cancer, just as the insurrection swept like a tide, leaving questions, contradictions, imprisonment and death in its wake.

Art had to be state sanctioned, property was repossessed. Friends and family arrested and killed, or disappeared from one day to the next. And a woman with a young daughter, with no education or skills to barter her life with in the service of the state, became afraid of the days which loomed ahead.

In steps my father to save to save the day. By hook or by crook, or the methods in between, he got her daughter out, and his sons too, who then were able to claim their parents on humanitarian grounds.

So that's why he's a hero, because all this was no mean feat. Captain America kicked Nazi ass, but the Castro regime still stands today. My dad did what he could, giving them the middle finger salute, all the way from the shores of Ellis Island.

My father was an elderly man. At least, that's how I remember him. I don't remember him having a job. I just remember him visiting once or twice a week. Because he was still married when the affair commenced in earnest.

That affair took its toll in lives disrupted. A woman with a broken heart, caring for a child mostly on her own. An unruly child with temper tantrums and hard to control. Fights I could hear from my bedroom, desperate, clinging make up sex I inadvertently walked in on, curious why the familiar noise had stopped.

My father was a champion poker player...who loved to play the ponies.

Poker is a long game. It's one of small wins and losses, and then small wins again. And even if you possess that rare ability to count cards, and keep it all in your head, (and from the accounts I've heard of my dad's play, he most certainly did) it ain't like Rain Man. There's no system that's fool proof. But he was good enough to buck the odds, enough to let them win, so they'd come back another day.

But he loved to play the ponies. He liked the action, the big payouts, and the long odds that made his winnings sweet.

Of the people who knew him, someone once remarked, if he'd been alive today, with all the Poker Tournaments, and the legitimization of the game... he'd be a millionaire.

But maybe not. Because my dad was always smart enough to set some money aside. Enough to meet his obligations: to buy his food, and to pay his rent.  He had enough to buy presents and toys and comic books for me. But he died without a penny to his name. All I inherited was a brass ring whose gold patina had faded, and the cubic zirconium stones long since gone cloudy and dull, but which he never took off his hand. 'Cause he liked the long odds. So he took it all with him, and left with just a pretty corpse to mourn.

I'm grateful to him. I see the flaws now. I see the heartaches, and disappointments, and my the reasons for my mother's patience wearing thin. This is a life that demands so much from you. So much more than just a dream.

But I got my ability to dream from him. The dreaming was his legacy to me. 'Cause my dad liked the long odds, and I guess I do too.

He used to ask me, "When I'm a millionaire, what do you want me to buy for you?" And I answered, "I want an animal of every kind! I want a dog, and a cat, and horse, and a dolphin!" And the next day, a pekingese puppy showed up to call our place home. I remember when he died I asked, "Where is Snoopy? I can't find him anywhere?" And my dad replied, "Snoopy was sick, and we had to send him to a farm where the air is pure so he can get better."

God bless you dad. Because I believed you at the time.

My dad was a dreamer, and so now I am too. He bought me  comic books, which my mom didn't see the sense in. They were "funny books", and beyond that, I don't know what she thought. Was she afraid they would corrupt my mind? Was she afraid they would fill it with trash? Did my father know what he was doing? Filling me with an insatiable curiosity to read? Or was he simply indulging a son, in the sunset years, of his last journey through fatherhood?

Regardless, that's how I discovered Stan Lee. Stan taught me to love the written word. It helped that Jack Kirby and John Romita were there to make the words palatable. They kept the story moving. They gave it breath and life. But Stan would look at the thesaurus, to find another word to say what he meant. He banked on his readers insatiable curiosity to find what it meant. And he wasn't wrong. It's how I learned to read.

He wrote EPIC stories: about Galactus, a force of nature; the eater of worlds! And he wrote of a power far greater: the will of man to stem the tide of chaos and steer destiny by the reigns.

He wrote of a young man, not much older than me, who in a fit of selfish pique, caused the death of his uncle, and learned we are all responsible for so much more than ourselves. At least that's how I took the lesson, "With great power, comes great responsibility", whenever I stopped to dwell.

He wrote of a Doctor, searching for a cure for himself, and a way back to his old, selfish life. What he found was enlightenment instead. I think the Rolling Stones still said it best: "You can't always find what you want. But if you try, sometimes, you get what you need." (Ahh yeah)

And in the midst of the civil rights movement, he wrote of a group of teenagers, shunned for no other reason, than being unique.  And I could relate to that.

Stan Lee not only taught me to read, he taught me some of literature's great themes. Those themes that resonate in your heart, because they feel true, and color the way you view this world.

I have learned to love the written word, and now here I am writing some for you.

I was illiterate before I picked up my first comic book. I was shy, and introverted, and wanted nothing more than to be not noticed by anyone on either side of that aisle between the teacher's desk and ours. I lived in a world where I din't know anyone, having moved around from time to time. I lived in a world where the only thing constant, was that my parents loved to fight.

But I learned how to dream: past the shouting, and the fighting, and divorcing, and the getting back together again just in time to see my dad pass away.

I learned how to dream, and express those dreams, in terms which I could control.

In that respect, I'm luckier than my dad, though not as skillful by far. I have to work twice as hard for everything I do, when it seems to have come so easy for him. But I recognize where my talent lies. And the same cannot be said for him.

He never knew Damon Runyon, but I knew Stan Lee. These word I've shared today, are all because of him.

Dreams Do Persist

So here's the thing. My life is shit. I'm hanging on by a finger nail. But I had a good night, and so I've given myself permission to dream.

I had a job interview today. Now a couple of days ago, I had another interview, in which the two that led up to it I aced, but then bombed on the final third.

It was for a part time store security position in which I had practiced responses by now for the same standard questions.

But the interview took a slightly different turn when at first he asked me, "Why store security?" and then "Tell me about the duties and responsibilities of the position and how you intend to fulfill them." Which took me aback and I blurted out, "Well I haven't read the job description in over a month, when I first applied for it, but based on my responsibilities in store sales, I see it as such..."

And I think I blew it right there. I think the interviewer was not pleased that I didn't have the job description memorized and available right there.

So today, I had an interview scheduled for a furniture sales position, and area of fashion in which I have no experience. I was determined not to let that be a determining factor.

So I did the research. At first, I tried to memorize all the pieces they carry. I don't know what I was trying to memorize, but I went from page to page on their web site, looking at different furniture pieces, styles and prices, and quickly realized I cannot possibly memorize all this in just under forty eight hours.

So the next day, I decided to memorize the "About us" page, detailing the history of the company and where it stands today. I learned it is a family owned business, three generations deep. I learned about how it started in Cuba under a different name, and continued in America just seven months after escaping the Castro regime.

I learned about a particular designer who's signature pieces we carry ("WE" listen to me now...) but because of poor web design, when I did a search on the company web site to find his pieces, all I got was two pages of mattresses. And so I googled him and found his web site where I found many pieces designed in that Spanish/Mediterranean style that is so prevalent here in Miami.

I researched the names of the people I was interviewing with (again, with no clue or idea why, or what I might find) and found that one of the interviewers received a humanitarian award for saving the life of one of her co-workers on the verge of a major heart attack.

I arrived to the interview the next day and said, "I'm sure you have a lot of questions about my background and experience, but one of my strengths as a sales professional is I like to research and know about the merchandise that I'm selling, so that any questions that may arise in the process of making a sale, I have an answer for. That gives me confidence. And when I researched the company, this is what I found."

I had also researched design tips for furnishing your home, and learned about two design styles; the Modern and Spanish and some of their relative strengths and weaknesses. I didn't get to use that with as much detail as I would have liked, partly because it's an area in which I still feel I have much to learn, and partly just due to nervousness. I was after all, in effect, taking over the interview process; and indeed, when I stated I wanted to make a presentation, the first reaction I got was a pair of raised eyebrows and the comment, "Well, we really wanted to go over your resume, but go ahead." And so I launched into my presentation, at the conclusion of which, I patiently sat and waited for their questions. When it was over, and we shook hands to part ways, I asked if I came across as too pushy, to which one interviewer replied, "No, no. You came prepared. You had a presentation and everything."

And I left with my head held high, and with a confident stride.

I left and celebrated by going to my favorite sports bar and ordered the happy hour bucket of drinks.

I talked to a pretty girl and shared a drink. I told her the story, and no, no numbers were exchanged. I was honest about my financial situation, and she was far too young for me.

But she was warm, and supportive. And positive and upbeat. She was studying to be a medical assistant and went to school three times a week.

But the persistence of dreams prevail, and so I started to think... Wouldn't it be nice if this panned out, and I could afford to move into a place of my own? I could start an open mike night and charge a dollar for drinks.

I could be THAT guy, who creates his own atmosphere to thrive in, beginning with the creature comforts of home.

I could make something, do something, build something, that however permeable it may be, could sing to the heavens, this is how it should be.

And isn't life grand, when you're able to say that? Isn't life good, when you can say you've done more than pass the time and eat food?

I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm in danger of running off the rails. But the persistence of dreams calls forth our secret selves. "This is who you really are, and this, the path towards your becoming. Take a look, this is what your life can be."

And is there a better moment, than that one in which you answer,  "Yes, it is."

A Circle of Drums

Five days now since I got stood up by a woman I should've known better than to ask out on a date. Five days too, since I got word I didn't get that job I hardly wanted but so desperately need. Five days since a "friend" I don't know posted on facebook she was going to the drum circle in Coconut Grove.

I had had a few beers and wallowed in self pity, stuck with the incessant chatter of the voices inside my head which patiently explained, "these are the days" and "this is the way things have always been."

I see Nikki's post: as if to say, "You know, this is what I'm doing. Nothing much. Just the usual."

Nikki is a Fine Arts grad who runs and event; sometimes at her house; sometimes at an outer venue. "Words and Wine" is an open mike, spoken word event. She has a tattoo of her favorite poem, not by Wordsworth, or Cummings, but by a very dear friend, that takes up most of her back. She has a Chihuahua that is jittery and curious, and which she carries as her baby, nestled in her arms.

And she was going to the drum circle, because this what you do, when you're young and art matters.

When you're young and art matters, you seek out the forces that transfix and transform.

When you're young and art matters, they do.

I'd been meaning to go to "Words and Wine" for some time. But honestly, I can't even afford the bus fare, and I don't write poetry anymore.

I want to write scrips, but I'm stymied by the form. I want to tell stories, but I have nothing to say. I want to feel alive, but feel dead inside instead.

But this day, I needed to get out of the house. This day, I needed to step outside of myself, away from the voices inside my head.

And so I punched a few keys on Google and found... the address and the time... and ate a big plate of shit, as I rummaged the net, to all the familiar places, the ones and the zeroes I call home.

Then decided: "Fuck it." I need to get out. I got there 45 minutes late. By the time I left, it had started to rain. I showed up with a six pack, a book, and a journal (just in case) not knowing what to expect.

A full pack of cigarettes. A clean pair of jeans. A black corduroy jacket and a t-shirt underneath. An open mind and a prayer barely realized, I step off the bus, see Nikki and her date, introduce myself as I thank her for her post, and stood outside the circle, to see what is what.

A drum circle is the truest form of communal spirit and communication you can find. It is an expression of a vast consciousness searching out and speaking directly to you. It finds its expression in the rhythm you create or the dance you articulate, and tells you, you are not alone.

I stood outside the circle, listening to the rhythmic voice, watching the dancers fill the spaces in between.

Now there are parts of me that are closed: that are guarded and are jaded as disappointment has taken its tole. There are neurons that do not fire, and so no longer listen to the music of the spheres.

So here is what I noticed, so obvious it hardly need be said. The drums: where they came from, I do not know. But the drummers were nearly all men. And the dancers were nearly all children... and women: young, old, and in between.

There were hula hoops aplenty. There was grace, and what I can only describe as possession.

There was one middle aged woman, graceful, a dancer in leotard, trying something new: a way to express herself with a pair of hula hoops, refining an art she was creating for herself.

A few days prior, I had seen on Youtube a dancer with a multiplicity of hula hoops and a command of her instruments that defied logic or belief.

This was not that. But I understood what she was getting at, and it was the creation of something uniquely her own, born in that moment, finding supplication and release.

The men continued to drum as a younger woman entered the circle. She was tall, thin, with long hair that went down to her hips. Dressed in Indian garb, she shut her eyes and allowed herself to be possessed. She shimmied and she shook. She undulated and swayed. She was beautiful: a Goddess who served her subjects by filling them with desire and the energy to enjoin her to continue to do so.

I stepped from outside the circle and joined the ring of drummers within, determined to beat those drums and pray for release. She danced for two hours as I beat my hands raw, and then, mindful of the rain, and the long walk I would have to make underneath, I got up and left.

There were children. Beautiful children: completely unselfconscious, reminding me what has been lost and can be so easily regained.

The event did not transform me. I am no mystic warrior. I do not commune with those gnostic gods of pre-consciousness who act as guides through the unfamiliar terrain of self and inspiration, past the demons of doubt and that remorse, which is at times extreme.

But you could say I walked up to the gates of Heaven. I walked up and strained my neck to see just past that guarded rail. What I saw will have to do for now.

Like a thumb tack on a world map for the places you mean to go, the route is obvious. It's the getting there that is the trick.
 

In an Alternate Dimension... (I would've rescued the cat)

There is me... and then there is the Earth 2 version. In Earth 2 Clark Kent wears a fedora; doesn't fly, but leaps over tall buildings in a single bound and strangely enough, is not involved in American war effort against the Nazis but elects instead to fight corruption at home. Lex Luthor is a scientist, Green Lantern's ring is vulnerable against wood, and his greatest enemy is the Sports Master who clubs him on the head with a base ball bat.

In Earth 2 I moved out of my parents home at the age of 18 despite protestations and warnings of failure. I moved out, self assured and confident that my destiny was of my own making and subsisted on Rament noodles and four hours sleep while I worked two jobs and payed for acting class and head shots I could ill afford. In Earth 2, I did not need the reassurance of others in order to validate my dreams.

In this alternate dimension, I wrote myself a check for one million dollars, tucked safely in my wallet with a promise to cash it as soon as I was able, for services rendered in the pursuit of my dreams. The Flash wore a helmet like the Mercury florist, Batman drove a plymouth and was free of the complex neurosis we demanded of him post Dirty Harry and the disillusionment of Watergate.

In this alternate dimension, I was nowhere near the corner of 36^th avenue and 28^th street in Miami, Florida when I heard a plaintive cry for help.

At approximately nine, as has been my custom of late, I was hanging around with cheap four pack of beer after buying my groceries for the day. With an armful of groceries, a knapsack slung over my shoulder, and a book and pair of reading glasses inside, I stopped at the midway point between the grocery store and home, and there, on the oudside lobby of a bank after hours, underneath the arc lights of the extended roof overhang, I sat on a bench intent to read a few pages of Supergods by Grant Morrison as I smoked and drank and passed the time just to get out of my closterphobic room that I rent because it's all I can afford. Crowded by books I cannot beaar to part with, and a cat who has too little room to play, and thus, misses me extremely when I'm gone even for a minute (though I cannot deny, it's a side effect that is extremely endearing to me) this is what constitutes a vacation from the certitude of failure that has become the passage of days in which I have travelled alone.

It has begun to rain, what wound up a very slight drizzle, but I don't know this yet, only that it feels as if I have arrived in time. Time to relax. Time to escape. Alone. Always alone. But a different alone at least, from that which I usually feel. And as I pop a can, and open to the marked page, I hear a mewling; a squeeking sort of meowing; high pitched and defenseless and crying or rescue.

At first, and for a while, I try to ignore it. I am not in a position to rescue anybody or anything. I own a cat I am barely allowed to have in a space too small for him as it is. I am on foot, I am blocks away from home, with an armfull of groceries and a knapsack I have to hold the strap of, lest it slip from my shoulder. I could not carry him if I wished, and he's not a dog who would follow me home. I resolve to mind my own business and continue reading my book.

But I do not move from my spot. Just get up and move to someplace out of earshot. I do not. I cannot (and more on that later). Time passes, and the mewling is sometimes short, sometimes long; sometimes loud, and sometimes soft. Until at last, I get up to investigate. I cannot do a thing for this poor creature that needs more than I can provide.

I stand and I walk towards where I think the sound is coming from. I am reminded of the pain in my right foot because I've been sitting down for five minutes now, and whenever I'm off my feet for more than two minutes, the heel of my foot screams in exucrutiating agony to me and reminds me of the Podiatrist I cannot afford to see because I'm not working and I have no health care. I just let the problem get worse, which seems like an acurate metaphor for my life as I try to make a difference for someone else's. I make kissing noises, and meowing noises, and move the branches of the bushes as try in the dark to peer inside, and the noise subsists, as if afraid, and I see nothing... and begin to doubt what I have heard. So I go back, take a sip of my beer, and pick up my book because I'm minding my own business when a page and half later, I hear the noise again.

I go back to the bushes. I make the same noises. I get the same quiet response. I still see nothing as I circle around trying to peer from every angle. And I go back, and when next the sound fills the air, I wait a good long fifteen minutes before I get up again.

It is at this point I think of moving to the other side of the building: escape the sound; escape responsibility for an action which who's conclussion is doomed to end in disappointment. And I cannot. I am afraid of what that says of me if I do. I'm not a saint. I'm not even a good person. I have lied, I have cheated, I have stolen and sinned against the angels and played upon their sympathies for absolution, knowing that the world is what it is, and I'd do what I had to do in order to get by.

But I have stuck my hand out and helped those better off than me based upon their needs in the moment. Because if anyone can relate, it's me. I have known the kindness of strangers, and I have resolved to do no less than the same. It's not karma or grace that I seek. It's a way to live with myself.

Bono once said, if you can play three cords, you can change the world. So I got up and searched for those three cords, as I got up again to search for the cat. And this time it seemed as if the sound came from across the street. So that's where I went, as I searched the bushes there and drains there, making kisses and meowing noises to the same strangely silent effect. In the dark. With my groceries and open beer across the street; feeling foolish and mystified.

We are all helpless: subject to forces we cannot control.

We are all capable: moved by forces we cannot comprehend.

People, like satelites, come withen our orbit, pulled by the gravity of our lives as they slingshot to their own exit point. Signal to noise. Some we save. Some save us. Some we bear witness to what seems an inevitable downfall. And what and how we feel, is the only choice we can make.

I am not asking for absolution or a reasuring statement that I did what I could. When next I heard that kitten, it sounded as if the sound was coming from the glass door of the office building I was sitting in front of. No matter where I went, the sound was just as loud as it was before, just as likely to be there as anywhere else, and just as silent as my reply with an offer of help. So yes, the sound carried both ways. And none of that matters. Because I'm making a statement of fact. The fact being, how I felt, and how I feel still.

In an alternate dimension I am a successful and working actor, rescuing a helpless kitten too small to climb the walk up steps from the basement of a tenement brownstone, and taking him home to meet a jealous and wary cat of my own.

I could have done better. I should have done better. In an alternate dimension, I did. I owe that dude, that other me, an explanation, and they all seem like excuses to me. I'm still searching: for those three cords that'll change the world; or at least, take me to the other one.