Sometime in New Haven - Part VIII

SOMETIME IN NEW HAVEN
The Story of the New Haven
Berlin Survivors

Part VIII



Sara and I slipped out of the kitchen and headed to the living room. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next. I had a great time with Sara, and I wanted to pursue some sort of romantic relationship, but I didn’t want to say anything that might ruin the day. At the same time, I would hate for her to leave and think I wasn’t interested.
Sara and I seemed like we were connecting though. As we sat together in the living room, we chatted about work, life and Beatle music for a while when I decided to take the plunge (or at least dip a foot in the water). There were quite a few people coming and going and sitting within a few feet of us, but we didn’t seem to notice.
“I had a great time today,” I said.
“So did I,” Sara said. “Now I know a lot of cool places to go in New Haven.”
“Well, we only hit on a little bit here today,” I said. “There are plenty more places left to hit.”
“What are you? A professional tour guide?” she asked with a laugh.
“No, but actually I was hoping we could get together again,” I said. “I can be your tour guide, or we can just hand around or go to the Lincoln Theater and check out a movie or something.”
“I would like that,” she said.
Not as smooth as I would have liked, but a safe landing anyway.
Before we could say another word, I started to lean over hoping to kiss her, but David walked over and plopped down on the couch with us, squeezing next to me. He almost sat on us in the process. He also spilled half his beer, but not on us, fortunately.
“Hi, I’m David,” he said to Sara.
“This is Sara,” I said. “Sara works at Fitzwilly’s also.”
“Great,” David said to Sara. “That will get you either a spot in Rory’s band or a room in the house here.”
“It must be my lucky day then,” she said.
“So, Jack mentioned something earlier that you were thinking of going to New York City, did you go?” David asked me.
“No, I said. “When I left here this morning, I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do. Fortunately, I ran into Sara and was able to show her around New Haven.”
“Rory makes a wonderful tour guide,” she said.
“Jeremy and I might still go to New York tonight,” David said. “I’m going to wait and see if Rudy wants to go. Have you seen the television? There are hundreds of people – maybe a thousand or so – in New York. Just hanging at the Dakota. That's the place to be. At least we can be with other people who feel as lost as I do."
“I haven’t had a chance to watch the news yet. I think we will all be lost for a while,” I said.
“Well, what Lennon song said the most to you?” David asked.
“It would have to be ‘Imagine’ for what it says,” I said. “Although ‘God’ and ‘Working Class Hero’ said a lot too. I really like the song ‘John Sinclair’ because it was a protest song that worked and ‘Scumbag’ because John and Yoko wrote it with Frank Zappa. Actually, ‘Happy X-mas (War is Over)’ almost always makes me feel like I could cry. I don’t even want to know what it will be like listening to it now that John is dead. I don’t know. I like just about every song he did. I can’t name one song. They were all great. And I didn’t even get to the Beatle songs. I don’t know. But since it’s December, let’s go with ‘Happy Christmas.’ Hey, you should know better than to ask me to name just one Lennon song. What about you?”
“I like them all too, but ‘Imagine’ probably does the most for me as well,” David said. “I really like that Beatle song ‘You’ve got to hide your love away’ too. That was obviously a John Lennon song.”
Then David turned to Sara. “What about you, Sara?”
“Well, ‘Imagine’ is a beautiful song, both in how it sounds and for what it says,” she said.
‘Yeah,” David said.
“I probably shouldn’t say something like this,” yelled John Marshall, who stumbled into the living room unnoticed during the conversation. “Why couldn’t Yoko have been shot? Why John?”
“Yeah, you probably shouldn’t say that,” David said.
“But why not?” John Marshall asked. “Don’t you think some people are asking that question?”
“Yeah, some very fucked-up people,” I said.
“And what are you? Some sort of fucken Yoko lover?” Brian chimed in.
“No,” I said. “But already she’s probably one of the most disliked people in the world because everyone thinks she broke up the Beatles and now you want to see her dead. That’s fucked up.”
“So you would rather see John dead than Yoko. . .” John Marshall started.
“Fuck you,” I interrupted, trying not to raise my voice. “I didn’t know any of us had a choice. No one asked me before it happened, ‘Oh, by the way, someone is going to get shot tonight, who would you like it to be?’ I’m saying it’s fucked up what happened to John Lennon and it would be fucked up no matter who it happened to. And it has probably already happened to a few people in this world since last night.”
“Besides,” Jack said, walking towards John Marshall. “If you are such a John Lennon fan, and if you know anything at all about him, you know that he probably couldn’t go on if someone shot Yoko. By the way, you are a pretty fucked up individual.”
“Maybe so, Jack,” Brian said. “But all he’s saying is Yoko still sucks, her music sucks and she has no fucken talent. What has she ever done besides fuck a Beatle?”
“I saw her and John on the Mike Douglas Show about six years ago,” I said, actually hoping to diffuse what looked to become a tense situation with my storytelling skills. “They were there for a week as guest hosts or something. Anyway, I remember one show where she was talking about how people should say that they love each other more. But, not happy just to say this should happen, they picked a random name out of the Philadelphia telephone book and called this old woman and told her they loved her. They told her she should pass the message on. It was taking an old theme, which is all any of us can do, and giving it a fresh look. She was saying, ‘All You Need is Love’.”
“I think I saw that,” said Ken, another housemate. “When John introduced himself to the woman on the telephone she said something like, ‘Oh, yes, I’ve heard of you.’ That bit was pretty cool.”
“Yeah, pretty cool,” John Marshall said. “But everyone knows his music would have been so much better if Yoko didn’t ruin it with those fucken noises.”
“She was just spouting a bunch of radical feminist bullshit,” Brian said.
“I’m curious,” Sara asked Brian. “What part exactly do you have a problem with? The fact that she’s a feminist or the fact that she’s a radical?”
“What?” Brian asked, looking confused by the question.
“This is all very interesting,” John Marshall said, shaking his head as if he were amused by everything, but still wobbling to keep his balance. “You guys would make great hippies. You know: peace, love all that stupid bullshit, but you are a few years too late. Besides, that shit doesn’t fly in the real world. You are all living in some fucken la-la land. I’m out of here.”
John Marshall left, although I worried that Jack was going to get himself slugged because he held the door open for him and asked if he wanted to blast any other “people of peace.”
“Have you ever read a book?” Jack asked. “Do you even know how to read?”
“Fuck you,” John Marshall yelled back.
“Oh, and a skilled debater as well,” Jack countered.
Jack paused before closing the door. He was talking to someone out front. I just hoped it wasn’t John Marshall. I was actually pleased with Brian’s demise, although I wasn’t sure why he was still hanging out. He was huddled with a few people at the bar in the living room quietly trying to make his case.
Ken leaned over and said that John Marshall was probably overloaded on “Sometime in New York City,” which was on the stereo before we arrived.
Then I saw Jack shake hands with someone at the door and point in my direction.
“Oh, it’s Ray,” Sara said.

Chapter 4

“Ray, this is Rory,” Sara said as we both extended our arms to shake hands.
“So there weren’t many John Lennon fans in Madison today?” I asked.
“No, Madison is a hide-away for Nixon Republicans,” Ray said.
“Well, make yourself comfortable, would you like a drink?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said looking at his sister. “We have time, don’t we Sara?”
“Yes we do,” she said.
“Right this way,” Jack said to Ray. “I’ll show you where the beer garden is. The Jack Daniels cart should be by in a while.”
“A Jack Daniels cart?” Ray asked with a smile.
The party continued, with people moving from room to room as they talked mostly about John Lennon, although the conversations were peppered with other topics, such as the American hostages in Iran and the U.S. Olympic hockey team winning the gold medal - an old topic, actually, that usually found new life in gatherings where alcohol was served. Jack and Brian were talking at the bar in the living room for a while then left the room together. I couldn’t tell which one was more popped as they walked by. Actually, they both seemed close to the limit.
“I can’t believe what a Neanderthal Brian and the other guy were,” Sara said. “I mean, people already know that Brian is a bit of a put-on, but that show before took it to a new level.”
“Well,” I said, trying to muffle my elation. “You just never know.”
“Yeah, but I guess it was pretty obvious with those two,” she said.
Jack returned alone a few minutes later.
After awhile, Ziggy and Jeremy started another one of their great debates in the hallway outside the living room door. The only time anyone could hear them, though, was between songs so it was pretty comical.
“You know the guitar lead on ‘You Really Got Me’ was really played by Jimmy Page,” Jeremy said.
“Bullshit,” Ziggy countered. “That is Dave Davies. There’s no question about it. Listen to the guitar leads in some of the other Kinks’ songs of the same time period, like ‘All Day and All of the Night,’ ‘I Need You’ and ‘Till the End of the Day’.”
“It’s the same lead, I know,” Jeremy said. “He stole them.”
“It’s not the same lead,” Ziggy said. “But there are a few trademark notes and progressions in those leads that were classic Dave. They’re trademarks.
Another John Lennon song played on the stereo. When it was over, we all were able to hear the debate again, still in progress.
Both were not only trying to top each other with their points, they were also raising their voices a bit. I guess they figured they got extra debate points if they were the loudest.
“I think Jimmy Page played the lead, and then Dave Davies just stole what he was capable of playing from it to use on the other songs,” said Jeremy, although I think at that point he was only trying to piss off Ziggy.
“That’s bullshit,” screamed Ziggy, letting his status as a Kinks’ fanatic show. “Listen to Jimmy Page’s early work. The guitar lead in ‘You Really Got Me’ was not his style.”
Another John Lennon song, and yet another brief pause before the next song. The debate did seem to give everyone a break from the heavy mood.
“Look, the early Kinks’ music was like the definitive core sound of rock ‘n roll,” Ziggy said.
“Listen to early Jimmy Page. Listen to the Yardbirds and early Led Zepelin. Those songs are great, classic, blues-based rock, but they were not The Kinks. They couldn’t touch the early Kinks.”
“And the Kinks couldn’t have done what Led Zeppelin did,” Jeremy said.
“They didn’t have to; they had already left their lasting influence on rock ‘n roll,” Ziggy said.
“Are these guys really getting mad at each other?” Sara leaned over and asked once the next song started.
“No,” I said. “They do this all the time. This is their version of a verbal steel cage match. It’s like wrestling for them. They only time they ever got physical was when they argued over which is better for cotton mouth: grape or orange soda.”
The heavy smell of marijuana started drifting from the kitchen; a sure sign of a successful party, I thought.
“This is a great place,” Ray said. “And the entertainment value of the hallway debate can’t be beat.”
“Actually, you missed your sister joining in one of the earlier debates,” I said.
“When?” Ray asked.
“Some asshole was wishing Yoko Ono dead and then complained that she was a ‘radical feminist’.” I said.
“Oh shit,” Ray said. “Real smart move on his part; complaining about feminism in front of Sara. Did she hit him?”
“With a good line,” I said. “Which probably hurt him more than hitting him physically.”
“Are you familiar with Yoko’s stuff?” Jack asked.
“No,” Sara answered. “I just had a problem with that guy’s attitude. And besides, I thought Rory was probably going to hit him.”
“Not me,” I said. “I’m a non-violent kind of guy. At least, I’d like to think so.”
David walked into the living room to announce that he and Rudy were heading to New York City.
Ray offered to drive them to the New Haven train station, that way he could grab a bite to eat. “I haven’t really eaten all day and these couple of beers and all is starting to go straight to my head,” Ray said.
Sara, though suggested that she drive to the train station, that way she could get her bag from Fitzwilly’s and pick up some food for Ray. Besides, she said, Ray looked as though he was enjoying himself. Jack offered to drive as well, but there were no takers on that one.
“It looks as though I might need a tour guide on this trip,” Sara said to me.
We were off in Ray’s car.

“You guys should come to New York with us,” David suggested.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Besides, I have to work tomorrow.”
“This is something you could blow off work for,” he said.
“I’m staying,” I said. “But, hey, if you kids stay in the city longer than a few hours send me a postcard, alright?”
“You got it,” Rudy said.
“Actually, I bet it will be quite the experience,” I said.
“I’m sure it will be,” David said. “There are Lennon fans swarming on Central Park. We just feel we have to go.”
We dropped those guys off at the train station and headed back downtown.

“So, where do we get Ray something for dinner?” Sara asked.
“What does he like?”
“He’ll eat anything.”
“Mamoun’s falafel restaurant on Park Street,” I said. “Guaranteed good stuff.”
We ordered five falafels, figuring there may be a couple of other hungry people back at the house. We sat down and listened to the Indian music that was always piped into the dining room and chatted while we waited. She talked about friends she left behind and I told her about Aragon. Mostly we talked about our work schedules as we tried to come up with a day to get together again. We decided on Friday night.
I decided Mamouns was perfect. I leaned across the table to kiss Sara. She met me half-way.
Her lips were soft and the kiss sent a warm wave through my body. Our tongues met briefly and we pulled away. We were both smiling as we sat looking at each other for a few minutes. As I did at Sprague Hall, I admired her freckles and wished I could just nibble them right off her face.
“Your order is ready,” the woman behind the counter said.
We paid and left. In the car, we exchanged another kiss, this time a little longer as we embraced over the uncomfortable console between the two front seats.
“You know, Rory,” she said with a playful smile. “This is as far as we’re going on a first date.”
“Well, Sara,” I said. “This isn’t really a date. We’re just hanging out with each other. So we could. . .”
“In that case, we’ve already gone too far,” she said with a laugh.
“Fine,” I said. “Actually, this day is going far better than I thought it would when I woke up this morning.”
“Yeah,” she said, starting up the car. “I’m having a great day.”
We headed back to the house, which still had about 25 people scattered throughout the rooms partying. I was curious, though, as to what happened to Brian and what he and Jack were discussing earlier, but I figured he was probably passed out somewhere.
Ray was in Jack’s room with Jack and Ziggy. All three dug into the falafels.
“I’m glad you went to get some food for your brother, Sara, and didn’t leave it to Rory,” Jack said. “Rory would never have gotten us anything to eat. He might even learn some manners hanging out with you.”
“Well it was Rory’s idea to get some extras,” Sara said.
She took my hand, gave me a kiss and headed off to the bathroom.
“What a difference a day makes,” Jack said to me as Sara left the room. “It must have been the ‘Just a cook–slash–poet living in an animal house’ line that got her.”
“No, it was my charm,” I said, although I didn’t really want to say much of anything in front of Ray.
“Yeah, but is it a 1-4-3?” Jack asked.
“What’s a 1-4-3?” Ziggy asked.
“Buddy, the heroin addict, told me it is a code for ‘I’ll always love you’ that he learned from one of his fellow smack fiends that he met in Rhode Island,” Jack said.
“What, do they have their own code language?” Ray asked.
“Beats me,” Jack said. “But Buddy said this one guy from Rhode Island used to talk about how he fell in love with this poet who would end all her poems and letters to him with a ‘1-4-3'. She finally left him because of his smack habit but he would say 1-4-3 every time the needle would pop the skin. He told Buddy the 1-4-3 would carry him through the uncomfortable feeling of sticking a foreign object into his arm until the high kicked in.”
“Is that a true story?” Ray asked.
“Well, it was told to me by a heroin addict, so who knows if it’s true,” Jack said. “He probably made it up for money.”
“It’s not a bad story, though,” Ziggy said, lighting up a joint.
“Well, 1-4-3 or not, just make sure you are nice to my sister,” Ray said. “She doesn’t need someone being an asshole to her.”
“Of course,” I said, although he threw me off a little with that comment. “I like her. I’ll be nice to her. Besides, I’m not an asshole."
"Yeah, I can vouch for him,” Ziggy said. “I mean, he's not too much of an asshole. Not all the time anyway."
“Thanks,” I said.
“I know,” Ray said. “I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t want to sound like a jerk or anything. I just feel comfortable talking to you guys and thought I could speak my mind.”
“You can,” I said. “It’s cool.”
At that point, the door burst open.
“Jack, what the fuck is wrong with you?” a pale Brian yelled.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s a waiter. And you’re just in time to clear some glasses.”
“Fuck the glasses,” Brian said. “You guys are fucked. I can’t believe the shit Jack pulled with me.”
“Brian, calm down,” Ziggy said. “Take a deep breath and tell us what the fuck you are talking about.”
“It was nothing,” Jack started. “He just. . .”
“Fuck you it was nothing,” Brian yelled. “I told Jack downstairs I was feeling too high. I was fucked-up and he said he knew just the thing to mellow me out.”
“He usually does,” I said.
“Sure he does,” Brian said. “He hands me a joint and an ashtray, sits me on a fucken bean bag, hands me the fucken head phones and plays this fucked-up fucken tape. I couldn’t even listen to it all it was so fucked-up.”
“And the key word there is fucked in case you guys missed it,” Jack said.
“Yeah, fuck you!” Brian said, walking towards Jack with clenched fists.
“So Brian,” Ziggy said, stepping between Jack and Brian. “What tape was it?”
“Berlin,” Brian said. “It was so fucked-up. I mean, I melted into that bean bag. I was just about passed out so I kept listening to that tape because I couldn’t muster the energy to get up and turn it off. I just kept listening figuring it would get better. Wrong fucken answer, man. I should have figured this was going to be a fucked up day when Mike started pouring me shots of cheap booze at Fitzwilly’s when I got off work.”
“Cheap booze?” I said. “That’s not right!”
“Dick, I mean Brian, look,” Jack started, still trying, but failing miserably, to contain a smile.
“Look nothing,” Brian said. “You’re a dick! I’m fucken out of here.”
“I really hate to see anyone go away mad, though,” Jack said, trying to hold back a laugh.
Brian was out the door.
“Gets ‘em all the time,” Jack said.
“I thought you were through with that ‘Berlin’ shit?” I asked.
“I am, now,” Jack said, lighting up a joint. “I guess I just wanted to see how ‘Berlin’ worked with an abundance of cheap booze, cocaine and dope.”
“It just seemed like a waste of some perfectly good art on that dick,” I said.
“And drugs,” Ziggy said. “I guess we’re just white punks on dope.”
“Yep,” I said, adding to The Tubes song Ziggy started. “Mom and Dad moved to Hollywood.”
“Hang myself when I get enough rope,” Jack chimed in.
“Jeez, it smells like a party in here,” Sara said as she entered the room, carrying a few steins of beer. “I washed a few glasses downstairs so I could get us some more beer.”
“Now Rory would definitely never have done that for us,” Jack said.
“Only because you guys never use clean glasses,” I said.
“Hey, what’s up with Brian, he looked like a crazed animal as he ran down the stairs,” Sara said. “Did you see that?”
“Jeez, I didn’t see that,” Jack said. “I wonder what’s up?”
“As he was heading down the hall to the front door, Michael and that new hostess, you know, the one that was working this afternoon, came in,” Sara said. “Brian just stopped dead in his tracks and moaned.”
We smoked a little and had another beer in Jack’s room, but decided to head to the door when a dozen or so other people poured in, including Michael and the hostess he tormented earlier in the day.
“I heard you ran into Brian,” I said to Michael.
“Yeah, he was bumping into the walls,” Michael said.
The hostess walked over to Sara and started talking, which gave me a chance to ask Michael what was going on.
“Hey, I didn’t know she would get so upset about the car accident call,” Michael said. “I felt guilty so I asked her if she wanted to join me in a drink. This won’t lead to anything, but it was great running into Brian. Jesus, Rory, what did you guys do to him? He looked terrible.”
“We didn’t do anything to him,” I said. “He just can’t handle a good party, I guess.”
“I guess,” Michael said as Sara and the new hostess joined us.
“Welcome to the house,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said. “Michael was nice enough to bring me here. I’m glad he did after the miserable day I had.”
“Really?” I asked. “What happened?”
“Well, this gentleman called the restaurant this afternoon looking to cancel a luncheon engagement because his wife died,” she said. “I don’t think his friends ever got the message. It was rather upsetting. Michael suggested we go out for a cocktail.”
“Well, Michael knows what he’s talking about,” I said. “Especially when it comes to cocktails. After all, he’s a trained professional.”
“Ray, we will have to leave soon,” Sara said to her brother as we left the room. “It’s already past 10 and I have a lot to do tomorrow.”
“Lock the door when you leave,” Ziggy said, although he knew we didn’t have locks on the room doors. “I want to keep Jeremy out. Once the Dave Davies argument was over, he started in on his theory about how the ‘Scooby Doo’ cartoons featured television’s first openly stoned and homosexual characters. I can’t take it anymore.”
As we headed down the hall to my room, we ran into Jeremy.
“Hey,” Jeremy said to me. “Aren’t you guys going to play tonight? I was kind of looking forward to hear how you guys would play some John Lennon.”
“No,” I said. “Aragon’s not around anymore.”
“Yeah?” Jeremy said. “What happened to Aragon?”
“He moved to Boston last night,” I said.
“That’s wild,” Jeremy said, walking into Jack’s room.
“Is it just me, or is everyone in the house now partying in the smallest room in the house and the room with the least amount of furniture?” I asked.
“This place is something,” Sara said.
“Yeah, there’s some really good people here and your brother seems to be enjoying himself,” I said. “He’s a cool guy.”
Sara was humming that song again. I still didn’t know what the song was, but I was actually enjoying it.
We walked to my room where I poured myself into the cushioned chair near the window and lit a cigarette. Sara sat on the arm of the chair, took the cigarette from my mouth and ran her fingers through my hair.
“I’ve got to lie down,” she said, handing me back the cigarette. “I feel like I can fall asleep standing up.”
She leaned over and gave me a kiss then walked over to the bed.
I walked over to the stereo and switched through a few radio stations before putting on a cassette of ‘The Kinks are The Village Green Preservation Society.’
“This doesn’t sound like John Lennon,” Sara said.
“No, it’s The Kinks,” I said. “I will probably put on John Lennon right after this even though all my Lennon tapes and records are scattered throughout the house now.”
“The Kinks sound good,” she said.
“So, is there one person that you wished you never lost touch with over the years?” I asked Sara.
“Yes,” she said. “My father.”
“Anything you want to talk about?” I asked.
There was a long pause.
“How about you?” she asked. “There must be people you wished you never lost touch with.”
“Yeah, I guess there are a few people.”
Another long pause passed, I added, “You know. I was in the military, so I always saw people come and go. What about you? Where were you where you had to say ‘good-bye’ to so many people.”
After another long pause, where I figured Sara probably drifted off to sleep, Sara finally said, “I can’t do this now. It’s not easy.”
“Hey, forget it,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“I had a tough move as a little kid, where I was taken from my friends,” Sara said. “I was taken from everyone except Ray. We had to move an awful lot for a few years there. When we finally got settled, I was still afraid to get too close to anyone. As I grew up, a lot of the other girls thought I was just a snob. There were a couple, though, that I was really friendly with. They were my best friends, I loved them, but I still couldn’t let them get too close. I wanted to. I wish I had told them how much they meant to me. I wish I could now. I don’t know. . .”
I looked out the window, over the calm of Lake Whitney, and finished my cigarette. As I pushed what little was left of my cigarette into the ashtray, I looked over at the bed and saw Sara was sleeping. She looked peaceful. She looked very Irish. She looked beautiful. I wished I could have climbed in bed with her. Instead I walked over and kissed her on the forehead and put a blanket over her.
I put my feet up on the coffee table and slouched down, figuring I might get a little shut-eye as well. I was debating whether to try to climb into my bed, although I didn’t want Sara to get spooked. I pulled my sneakers off and got comfortable in the chair. After all, I had to be awake in seven hours and I needed some sleep.
That was not to be, though, as Jack, Ray and Ziggy quietly entered my room.
“Rory, are you asleep?” Jack asked.
“Around this house?” I answered. “Never.”
“We are taking Ray over to see the waterfall,” Jack said. “Do you want to come?”
The waterfall across the street was beautiful up close. Jack and I would often grab a couple of beers and sit on the bank of Lake Whitney and watch the waterfall while talking about life. It was a very relaxing little piece of the world. Even on a chilly December evening.
“Let’s go,” I said, putting my Chuck Taylors back on and grabbing my jackets.

Sometime in New Haven - Part VII

SOMETIME IN NEW HAVEN
The Story of the New Haven
Berlin Survivors

Part VII

As we left, I made it a point for us to walk down Lynwood Place, a short but absolutely beautiful piece of paradise off Elm Street between Rudy’s and Fitzwilly’s. With old multi-family brick homes and apartments lining one side and brownstone apartments on the other, Lynwood Place is a thin, one lane road about a quarter-mile long that I stumbled upon once by accident. Tony, one of the other cooks at Fitzwilly’s, has an apartment on Lynwood and I could usually hear him practicing his trumpet whenever I walked through at night.
On warmer days, there were usually people hanging out on the front steps of the buildings, reading, talking or playing music.
“This would make a great drawing! I never knew a little street like this really existed except on a sketch pad,” Sara said. “It’s beautiful.”
“This city is full of tucked-away spots like this,” I said.
“So, did you and Jack join the Air Force together?” Sara asked.
“No, I met him while we were stationed in Germany,” I said. “I’m sure if we had known each other before hand, we would have talked each other out of joining. Once we started hanging out together, we made it our mission to get out. I only had about 18 months left at that time, but Jack had about three years left so he was more desperate. I would do stuff like refuse to wear my field gear during base alerts in the hope that they would just throw me out. Everyone would walk around with their helmets, canteens and gas masks and weapons and I would have a cowboy hat and sheriff’s badge. I was into some fun protests. Jack, though, would write letters to the base commander and other high-ranking brass requesting a discharge. He put himself into a terrible position at times, writing letters and citing Tolstoy and Thoreau. He wrote in one letter that he thought the launching of the Seawolfe nuclear submarine in Groton should have been a cause for sorrow and not a celebration. These military types hated shit like that. All it did was piss them off.""
"And did they let you out early?”
“No, my time just ran out,” I said. “I tried some harmless protests, but compared to what Jack was doing I was just providing some comic relief.”
“Do you keep in touch with some of the people you were stationed with?” Sara asked.
“Not really. It seems like I spent most of my time saying good-bye to people and making new friends. There’s a lot of turn over. People are always moving,” I said. “I just looked at most of them as temporary friends, which is how they all probably looked at me. I got so good at saying ‘Good-bye’ that I never tried to learn how to call someone and say, ‘Hi, how’s it been going?’ I never even stayed in touch with my old friends in Stratford, and I really loved those people.”
“But did learning to say ‘Good-bye’ make it easy?”
“A little, I guess,” I said. “I don’t really know. At least I wouldn’t get tormented every time someone left. Why? Do you think it would be easy?”
“I’ve always tried not letting myself get too close to people ever since I was little just because I know I’ll only have to say good-bye at some point,” Sara said. “I guess I never got as good at it as you have.”
“I’m not sure I’m really good at it,” I said, reaching for another cigarette. “I just learned to say ‘Good-bye.’ Everything else, all the emotions, are still there.”
“Yeah,” she said. “There is no easy part.”
“Have you had to say ‘Good-bye’ a lot?” I asked.
“Enough,” she said.
“Is enough a lot?” I asked.
“Enough is enough,” she said.
We walked to Goldie & Libro Music Center, which was an everyday thing with me so I could longingly admire the bass guitars lining the walls. I loved my Rickenbacker, but I dreamed of a day I would have two or three bass guitars to choose from.
“You know, I feel like a piece of me died,” one customer said as he grabbed a guitar off the wall. “All I want to do it play, but I don’t know if that’s enough.”
“Hey, maybe that’s all any of us can do,” said one Goldie’s clerk. “Keep playing John Lennon’s music. Otherwise this will truly be the day the music died.”
“Rory, how’s it going?” came a voice from behind me.
“Ed, what’s up?” I asked.
Ed was one of my best friends in high school, although I hadn’t seen him in months. While in high school, Ed would play keyboards in clubs with a rock band on Friday night – even though he wasn’t old enough to be in bars – then play pipe organ for the Saturday afternoon mass at a church in Stratford. I used to accompany him to the mass and, during communion, while he was supposed to play religious stuff, he would play gothic versions of music by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, and the Beatles. Most people had no idea they were receiving communion to “Mind Games” or “Carn Evil 9.”
“Man, today sucks,” Ed said, giving me a big bear hug. “I can’t believe what happened.”
“Yeah, it sucks,” I said.
I introduced Ed to Sara and asked him what brought him to New Haven.
“I bought the album ‘Double Fantasy’ when it came out a couple of weeks ago, but it had a scratch at the beginning of side two that made the needle leap over half the album,” Ed said. “I put it in my car last week so I could bring it to Cutler’s and exchange it but forgot about it. This morning, when I heard about John Lennon, I figured I would just take off from work and exchange the album. I didn’t feel much like working today anyway.”
“So, did you get a good copy?” I asked.
“No, the album sold out this morning,” Ed said. “These people buying it today didn’t give a shit about the album when it first came out. Now they all want it.”
“Now it will sell millions,” I said.
“Well, that sucks, although I can’t help thinking that John Lennon would probably chuckle at the irony of it,” Ed said, giving me another bear hug as he headed to the door. "Take care man.I gotta run."
"You take care," I said.
One guy with a Martin guitar started playing “Isolation,” which drew a small crowd around him–and some applause when he was done. Throughout the day, in conversations you hear while walking about, the words John Lennon and murder were always heard. I thought it strange that those two words would be linked – probably forever. So unfair, I thought.
We left and followed Chapel Street into the Wooster Square area, browsing through some of the stores we passed. At Wooster Square, the brownstones and old houses lined the street and surrounded a large, but quaint, village green. It was after 5 o’clock and neither of us had eaten anything all day except those muffins at the Copper Kitchen. There was really only one culinary option, since I was trying to show off the city, and that was pizza, made in a brick oven on Wooster Street.
“This is really beautiful,” Sara said.
“You’ve been to Wooster Street before, haven’t you?” I asked, ready to fall over dead at the thought that someone could live in the state even for a short time and not visit either Sally’s or Frank Pepe’s pizzerias.
“Only in the evening, and we would always drive and park on the street somewhere,” she said. “I never walked around New Haven unless a bunch of people from work decided to go someplace after our shifts. Even then, it seems to always be someplace near Fitzwilly’s.”
Since it was a Tuesday, and Pepe’s was closed, we hit Sally’s. If both were open, and you had the right mix of people with you, there could be an hour-long debate on which pizzeria to hit.
I was always firmly in Pepe’s corner. But Sally’s was great also. If it was a weekend, it was best to have those debates while waiting in line at one of those places – especially since you will probably end up waiting an hour just to get in the door at either. On a Tuesday, though, we got in and seated right away.
As it turned out, we didn’t even debate what topping to have on the pizza. We immediately agreed on mozz and mushrooms.
I always figured that agreeing on a pizza topping is a key compatibility test.
“If you didn’t live in New Haven, where would you want to live?” Sara asked.
“New York City,” I said, without hesitation. “How about you?”
“Maine,” she said.
Oh, I thought, the anti-New York. I started reconsidering my pizza topping/relationship compatibility theory.
“When was the last time you went to New York City?”
“In high school,” she said. “We went to see a play on Broadway.”
“You need to really see the city,” I said. “We should go there some afternoon. Take the train, visit the Village and really take in the city. The people, the buildings, the art, the atmosphere; everything.”
“Have you ever been to Maine?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“I’ll spend a day in New York City with you if you spend a day in Maine with me,” she said.
“Done,” I said, as if I had to think twice. The pizza topping test may work after all.
“If you visited Maine, you would probably have a whole different view on this city living stuff,” she said. “Besides, if John Lennon lived in Maine, he would probably still be alive.”
“Look, you can find a nutcase with a gun anywhere,” I said.
“Yeah, but this one was in New York City,” she said.
“I really don’t agree with any of that,” I said, trying to talk softly. “Who knows what would have happened if he lived in Maine, Connecticut, New York or Wyoming. Maybe it still would have happened. Maybe it was just his time. I just can’t figure out how someone like John Lennon could end up dead by bullets ripping through his body anyway. None of this makes sense to me today.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “It’s just that I always feel so much safer whenever I visit Maine. Like no one could ever find me up there. You can hike for miles, for hours, for days even, and still never run into any people. It’s such an inspiration. The land is beautiful. But you’re right, I guess. John Lennon could have gotten shot anywhere.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess. It’s just that I always feel safer when there are a lot of people around. Like no one could ever find me in the crowd.”
There was a major non-compatibility factor here, but I figured it was nothing to get too concerned about right then.
The walk back down Chapel Street at dusk was chilly and almost depressing. It was a great day and I didn’t want it to end. The giant Christmas tree on the Green looked great – the lights shining like a treasure – but I still felt empty.
Once we got to College Street, we hung a quick left and got to the Anchor Restaurant.
“Let’s have a nightcap,” I said.
“Do you always have nightcaps at 6:30?”
“That’s about the only time I do have them,” I said.
We went to the bar and ordered two Rolling Rocks. I went to the juke box, tossed in a quarter for three songs and looked for some Beatles. I couldn’t find any so I played “Summerwind” by Frank Sinatra.
“I hope you like Sinatra, because I couldn’t find any Beatles,” I said.
“There’s a Beatles record in there,” Eileen the bartender said. “‘All You Need is Love’ is in there.”
I found it, but played the B-side, “Baby You’re a Rich Man.” I left one free song for the next person. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to play “All You Need is Love.” The television had some sort of news special about John Lennon on, although the sound was off.
“This is a neat place,” Sara said.
“Yeah,” I said. “There’s usually an interesting mix of people. I think most of the people that hang out here are the literary types. You know, either writing stories and plays or in stories and plays, although most don't know it.”
“Well, that woman is writing over there,” Sara said, motioning to a woman at a table writing in a cloth-covered notebook. “This looks like a great people watching place.”
“What time do you have to leave?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll have to call about a ride in a little while.”
We left the Anchor after our beers and cut through the city Green to Whitney Avenue. It grew chillier with the darkness, but a small group of about twelve people were standing in a circle talking about John Lennon. Some were crying.
We stopped to listen as three people in the crowd, two guys and a woman, started singing “Across the Universe.” One of the guys was playing a mandolin while the other two were playing guitars. They sounded great and the people around them started joining in as the song started rolling.
“Who are these guys?” I asked a guy standing near me.
“Irish Jones,” he said. “They are the only band I know that plays those Irish songs John Lennon wrote.”
“What songs?” someone nearby asked. “You’re not thinking of ‘Give Ireland Back to the Irish’ but that was written by Paul and Linda McCartney.”
“No,” the guy said. “They do that one too. But Lennon wrote two Irish songs he recorded on ‘Some Time in New York City.’ I think Lennon did his Irish songs before McCartney did his.”
“Hey, Rory,” a familiar voice nearby said. “What’s happening?”
“Jamie,” I said, recognizing my favorite cousin’s voice. “What’s up?”
“My girlfriend wanted to come to New Haven because she heard some people were going to meet on the green,” he said. “I figured if no one was up here, at least we’d see the tree. But, hey, this is New Haven, the tree will probably be up until May or June.”
“So what have you been up to?” I asked. “Are you still working in that piano store in the Trumbull Shopping Park?”
“Sure enough,” he said with his usual upbeat tone and curly black hair hanging in his face. “I had a John Lennon marathon today. For most of the afternoon, I played along with WPLR. They haven’t played one non-Lennon song all day.”
Every time I visited Jamie at the store, he would be sitting at a piano by the front entrance of the store playing rock-n-roll. While growing up, his family was only a few miles from ours, so we were always in touch.
When I introduced him to Sara, I told her how, during the summer before I joined the Air Force, I always checked the front porch when I woke up to see if Jamie was crashed on the couch. If he was partying a little heavy at the Frog Pond or Lion’s Den – a couple of local Stratford dives – he would just leave his car and walk to my parents’ house and crash on a couch in the screened in porch. My mother would always bring him breakfast and say, “Jamie, come into the house next time. It’s much more comfortable.”
At the piano store, Jamie would sit all day playing, always wearing a sharp suit. Most of the time, he would play music by The Beatles since he often said Lennon/McCartney songs provided “the absolute best examples of all types of music ever written.” Jamie was also fond of saying, "you know, the songwriting team of Lennon/McCartney are right up there with George Gershwin."
The amount of people meeting on the Green was growing, some telling stories between songs.
“My favorite Beatle story happened in Boston in 1974,” one guy said. “It was one of the first Beatle conventions. Back when the conventions were actually good. I hitchhiked up to Boston with my friend Gary and we checked out the convention. We didn’t have much money, just enough for a little food and a couple of six packs of Schlitz draft style bottles. In the lobby of the hotel where the convention was, a large group of people were hanging out killing time while they converted the convention hall from a Beatles memorabilia flea market to a theater where they were going to show Beatle movies all night. Anyway, this guy who played guitar with John Lennon on “Instant Karma” started jamming in the lobby. It sounded great and people were clapping along with him. Then this old guy, wearing what looked like his Sunday best brown suit and hat, started walking through the lobby. But he stops and starts dancing. It was a riot. A real nice moment. It bridged generations. It was great!”
“This is a tough day for me,” Jamie said. “I always thought that the absolute perfect day for me would be to play the piano at work, like I always do, and have John Lennon sit down at a piano across from me and jam. It was just a silly thought, a fantasy I would have while playing sometimes. Like he would travel to Trumbull, Connecticut, to buy a piano. But hey, crazier things have probably happened. And it kept me playing all day. Man, what a bad day. A real bad day for all of us.”
“Maybe you can play with Paul McCartney some day,” someone next to us said.
The Jones's played another Lennon song and then one of the guys playing guitar, who introduced himself as “Southside Ed,” said that each of us had to find a way to carry on with John Lennon’s message of peace. He said it was up to Lennon’s fans to insure his legacy continued. It made sense, I thought. We said good-bye to Jamie and his girlfriend Yolanda, left the circle of people, which was still growing steadily, and headed up Whitney Avenue to find a pay phone so Sara could call home. We were also getting pretty cold.
“I can see where this would have been a fun trip to make while in high school,” Sara said.
“Yeah, we used to park in front of one of the churches and hit the music shops and then Wooster Street for pizza at least once a month while we were in high school,” I said. “But my first taste of New Haven came when I was about 12 years old. Me and this kid Dan were hanging out at the Trumbull mall when we decided to jump on a bus to Bridgeport. In Bridgeport, we decided to catch another bus and head to Milford. We just stayed on the bus, though, and ended up here. It was quite an adventure.”
“And you guys weren’t afraid taking bus rides to places you’ve never been to?” Sara asked.
“Only once was I afraid in New Haven,” I said. “I think it was about 1971, when I was 13. Actually it was May 1 - May Day. Dan and I had saw on the television how the Green was packed with bikers because Bobby Seal of the Black Panthers was on trial up here. I was living in Stratford and there were a few bikers who were sleeping out in this park near my parents’ house. I thought the motorcycles were really cool looking. They had these really clean looking choppers. So, Dan and I hopped on the bus and headed to New Haven to see all the bikes. During the entire bus ride, which was about an hour and 15 minutes, we were talking about how much we wanted to mingle with the biker crowd. But once the bus took the corner around the mall to the bus stop on the Green our jaws dropped. There were more people than I imagined. The bikers all looked tough and pissed off. Really mean. And there were groups of Black Panthers standing around with their arms crossed looking like they were guarding the place. The bus drive looked over and said, 'Are you fellas getting off?' Dan said, 'No sir' and sat down. I called him a 'chicken shit' even though, deep down, I was sure he made the right choice."
“What do you think would have happened if you got off?” Sara asked.
“Probably nothing,” I said. “Actually, we figured that our parents were a bigger threat to us. If we got off the bus and somehow ended up in a picture in the newspaper or on the television news, our parents probably would have killed us.”
“Well, I can see how someone could move to New Haven,” Sara said. “It’s a neat city.”
“Yeah, I really love it here,” I said. “When I got out of the Air Force, I could have gone anywhere. I knew I wanted to come here.”
“And you seem to know people wherever you go,” Sara said.
“Hey, it’s my city,” I said, joking. “Actually, it was great running into Ed and Jamie, I haven’t seen them in months and the odds of running into both of them during the same day are probably amazingly high. But I’m sure we won’t see another person who knows me.”
A car pulled over. “Rory, is that you?” someone yelled out of a car window. “You want a ride?”
We looked in the car and saw Ziggy Manfredi, another cook at Fitzwilly’s.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To your place, actually,” he said. “I talked to Ronnie before and he said there was a party going on. And I have to say, Rory, sorry about John Lennon, I know you were a big fan.”
“I still am,” I said. “Let’s go see what’s happening up there.”
We both climbed in the car and took the quick ride to the house.
“This is a neat old house,” Sara said of the historic grey salt box. “Is the barn yours as well?”
“No, that’s the Whitney Barn they use for art shows and plays and stuff,” I said.
As soon as we opened the car doors we could hear the music blasting from the house; John Lennon, of course.
“Hey guys, welcome,” Jack said, opening the front door, holding a stein of beer in one hand.
While in the military, I collected a lot of glass steins and beer mugs. Unfortunately, every time someone brought a keg of beer through the door everyone scrambled to grab one. Inevitably, during the night of drinking, one of the steins would end up in pieces.
“Sara, is that really you?” Jack asked.
“Hi Jack,” Sara said.
“Yeah, I saw these two walking along Whitney Avenue so I loaded them in the car,” Ziggy said.
“You mean Rory was hanging out with Sara? He actually talked to you?” Jack asked Sara.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t he?” Sara said, looking puzzled at me for the answer.
“Because these guys think I'm too shy to talk to anyone except them,” I said. “Don’t pay attention to Jack. Hey, Jack, have another beer. Its obvious that the few dozen you already had aren’t working.”
“Well, I guess I better do something about that,” he said, as we walked into the house and awaiting party. “Everyone’s a little bummed, as you can expect. There’s only about 25 people here, and I think we know most of them. Our buddy Brian, or Dick the waiter, is here. He’s pretty popped as well; zipped on cocaine and bopped on booze. He came over with John Marshall, or I think he maybe met John Marshall here or something. I’m not sure. But the two are hitting it off famously and acting like assholes.”
“Oh well,” I said. “At least they are outnumbered. What else is up?”
“Ed and Kyle stopped over before with their acoustic guitars and sounded really good. They may stop back later.”
“That sounds cool,” I said. “So, how have you been holding up, Jack?”
“Alright,” he said. “All day, no matter how I run this through my mind, it doesn’t make sense. I hate when things don’t make sense.”
“Maybe it never will,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s probably it, but shit, I don’t know,” Jack said. “It just seems like there was so much left. How does someone work for peace, and sing about peace and people loving each other and then end up shot in the street?”
“That’s what we may never know,” I said, although Jack had already started walking towards the kitchen.
“Is there a telephone I could use?” Sara asked.
“Sure, there’s one upstairs on the table in the hallway,” I said. “I’ll show you. You probably need to plug it in.”
Sara called home and talked to her brother Ray who agreed to pick her up. I got on the telephone and gave him directions.
“Sounds like a party over there,” he said after writing down the directions I hoped would get him to the house, but not in a hurry.
“We just got here ourselves, but there are some people hanging out and having a good time,” I said. “Sara tells me you are a huge John Lennon fan.”
“Yeah, it sucks, man. I heard the guy who shot him was a fan that was hanging out in front of Lennon’s apartment building,” Ray said. “The radio was playing Lennon all day and people were calling up the station talking about how fucked-up this whole thing is. How much they will miss him. I wish I went to New York this morning, at least I would have run into a lot of people who understand this.”
“Or who at least understand what each other are going through,” I said. “I don’t think I will ever understand this. But there are a few people here who understand what’s going on. We’ll see you in a little while.”
We went downstairs to the living room, where the main party was. The Lennon music was taken from everyone’s record and tape collections in the house – including mine, those bastards – and everyone was sitting or standing around drinking beer and talking over the loud music.
We had to move from the doorway when Jeremy, one of the housemates, came through pulling a kids’ wagon that had a bottle of Jack Daniels and about a dozen shot glasses in it.
“You guys want a shot?” Jeremy asked.
“No thanks, not for me,” I said. “I think I’ll grab a beer.”
“It’s in the usual spot,” Jeremy said.
As we walked out of the room, the song “Give Peace a Chance” came on and everyone started singing the chorus with it.
We went to the kitchen where we found Jack, Ronnie, Ziggy and some guy I never saw before standing around the keg.
“Thank God we have you fellows guarding this,” I said. “Ronnie, I stopped by Fitzwilly’s looking for you this morning. I see you survived last night. Did Aragon get off alright?”
“Yeah, he left last night as planned,” Ronnie said. “Cathleen picked him up from the Times Square and they drove off to Boston. I stayed to watch a little bit of Monday Night Football because I needed to resolve some of the ‘Berlin’ album stuff before I went home. That’s when Howard Cossell told everyone about what happened to John Lennon.”
“Yeah, I heard it from Cossell too,” Ziggy said.
“Jeez, of all people,” I said. “At least he was a fan, I think. I mean, he interviewed Lennon during a Monday Night Football game once.”
“It’s been a fucked-up day,” Ronnie said. “I couldn’t sleep last night and I was a mess at work. I’m just glad there were people here when I came over today because I really needed to talk to someone.”
“But, you are a Berlin Survivor now,” said Jack, who was slightly slurring his words.
“What’s a Berlin Survivor?” Sara asked.
“Do you have a little time, I have a cassette tape you can listen to,” Jack started. “Hey, you too, by the end of this night even, can be a Berlin. . .”
“Don’t even think about that now,” I interrupted. “Besides, I thought we were layin’ off that?”
“We are, but I feel like I have to use the cassette one last time,” Jack said. “O.K. then, what can we talk about? What did you guys do today?”
“I ran into Rory at Fitzwilly’s,” Sara said. “I was stranded in New Haven and he showed me around.”
“Oh yeah? Nice job; where did you guys go?” Jack asked.
“Sprague Hall for some music, Sally’s for some pizza and we hit some shops in between,” I said.
“Sally’s? You guys should have hit Pepe’s,” Ziggy said. “It’s thicker and the sauce is more flav. . .”
“No,” Ronnie jumped in. “Sally’s is the best.”
“Fellas, it’s Tuesday, Pepe’s is closed,” I said, hoping to end the debate.
“Yeah, but if it were Wednesday, then you should have hit Pepe’s,” said someone at the keg who I didn’t even know.
“What about if it was Thursday?” asked Jack, not too drunk to know a stupid argument when he heard one.
“Come on, Pepe’s has the best pizza in the world,” Ziggy said. “I’d put Sally’s third, behind Pepe’s and Modern Pizza on State Street.”
As the great pizza debate got underway, I grabbed a couple of glass tumblers from a cabinet and poured us two beers.
I leaned over to the guy I had never seen before and introduced myself.
“Oh, hi, my name is Adam,” the guy said. “I came this morning to check the furnace. Your landlady wanted me to check it to see if it needs cleaning. It was my first stop of the day and I heard about John Lennon when I got here. It just seemed like it would be a miserable day, man. I just wanted to sit down and cry, and these guys let me do it here. I’ve been listening to music with them. We picked up the keg and some grub in my work van. I just never left. These guys are really cool. They helped me out on a bad day.”
“There are good people here,” I said. “Just watch out for the great New Haven pizza debate, sometimes they get physical.”
“O.K.,” Adam said.