Sometime in New Haven - The Story of the New Haven Berlin Survivors
Part IX
(The Last Chapter - thanks for hanging with it this long... if anyone actually did! This was a mix of fact and fiction - but it is a work of fiction - because things never work out quite like they do in a good story!)
As we crossed the street, I asked Jack how he was holding up since he seemed pretty popped when we arrived at the house earlier.
“I’m pacing myself. Everything’s under control,” Jack said. “I’m sure tomorrow will be a rough day.”
Once at the lake, we all sat on the cold ground and listened to the water. There were a few times I’ve actually fallen asleep on the bank, and they were the most sound sleeps I’ve ever had.
“You know, Rory, I still feel bad about opening my mouth before,” Ray said. “I know you are a good guy. It didn’t come out right. I wasn’t trying to say I think you’re an asshole or anything.”
“Ray, it’s fine,” I said, although Ray seemed a little popped and stoned.
“It’s just that with our parents gone, I feel real protective of Sara,” Ray said. “And she’s the same way towards me.”
“It sounds like you guys are lucky to have each other,” Jack said.
“Yeah, we are lucky to have each other,” Ray said. “She’s saved me from myself many times. I think she’s always been the level-headed one. Our mother died in a car accident when we were in kindergarten and we’ve always been real close as a result.”
“Oh, man,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “I lost my mother. It’s a bitch to try to deal with.”
“That’s not even the worst of it,” Ray said. “While we were trying to come to grips with our mother dying, our grandmother had us taken away from our father because she said he was unfit to be a parent. She said he wasn’t a good father and I guess she blamed him for driving the car during the accident. It was real hard on us at the time. They physically dragged us out of my father’s house kicking and screaming one afternoon. We didn’t know what hit us. One minute we’re coloring, making up songs and feeling safe and the next. . .I don’t know, man. We were only kids. It was fucked-up. We were only kids. You have no idea.”
After a stunned pause, I said, “I thought Sara said you guys lived with your mother?”
“We live with our auntie: my mother’s sister,” Ray said. “A few years after we were taken from our father, and after we were bounced from relative to relative, our auntie showed up and took us away from all the bullshit. My father had died by then. They told us he died of a heart attack, but he was only 40 and we didn’t believe that bullshit. Anyway, she took us away from all the madness going on at the time. She’s really off-the-wall. An old hippie. But she’s been great to us. She put us first over everything. Even herself. We call her mom. . .she’s our mom.”
After a brief, but again very uncomfortable pause where we all just sat listening to the cold water, Ray added, “Look, I just met you guys, I shouldn’t have laid such a heavy story on you. This day has just been real weird. And I’m pretty popped right now. I’ve been thinking about my parents a lot today. I guess this John Lennon thing just opened the emotional flood gates for me. I always listened to John Lennon when things got too weird for me. It’s like his songs would talk me back into a clear state. Him dying and all is just too fucked-up, man. Sorry.”
“That’s alright,” I said. “We’re all there. It’s good we’re all not there alone.”
“And, please, don’t tell Sara I said anything to you about this, alright?” Ray asked.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I know what the wrath of a pissed off sister can be like.”
“The important thing is that you kids survived,” Jack said.
“Yeah,” Ray said. “We did. We weren’t going to let each other go through hell and not survive. I guess that’s why we are so protective of each other.”
“So, the kids survived,” Jack said looking at me.
We sat quietly listening to the water for a few minutes.
“So Ray, what do you do?” Ziggy asked.
“I’ve been working in landscaping, but I’ve been taking classes in architecture off and on for the past three years,” he said.
While Ziggy and Ray talked, Jack leaned over to me.
“At times I’ve been wondering if this whole day hasn’t been some sort of acid flashback,” Jack said. “Now I’m convinced. I mean, John Lennon’s dead and you bring home the ‘Berlin’ kids.”
“Yeah, I’m sure I’ll wake up tomorrow and John Lennon will be alive and I’ll still be watching Sara from a distance again,” I said. “You know, with all the acid we’ve done, and all the times people promised us that we would have an acid flashback if we didn’t stop doing that shit, I always hoped the flashback would come at a more opportune time. Like if I was stuck in traffic on the Quinnipiac River Bridge or at the West Haven toll booth on I-95 or something. If this is the best we can do with an acid flashback, I want my money back.”
“I’m with you on that one,” Jack said.
“Are you guys talking about doing some acid?” Ziggy asked. “Do you have some?”
“No,” I said. “Ronnie might. I don’t know where he is, though.”
“He’s crashed on David’s floor,” Jack said.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I did acid while watching an old Alice in Wonderland movie?” Ziggy asked, although Jack and I had heard the story many times.
“I was up for three days doing speed and was worried about the crash,” Ziggy started. “I always came down hard from speed. So I dropped some acid with a few friends of mine and we went to this bar called Doody’s Totoket Inn in North Branford. It’s a great place to have a couple of beers and mellow out. Anyway, I felt really uncomfortable being around people so I walked to my parents’ house, which was only a few blocks away. Everyone there was sleeping, so I put on the tube figuring there was probably going to be a good movie on since it was only 11 o’clock on a Saturday night. But I crashed on the couch. I woke up in a fog a few hours later with the television on, and there was Alice in Wonderland. It was the old 1940s version made by puppet-master Lou Buning. It was a mix of live action and puppets. Very wild. As it turned out, it was released the same year as the Walt Disney version, so it never really caught on. But it’s a wild version, with some catchy tunes…"
Ziggy was directing the story to Ray, so I leaned over to Jack.
“Do me a favor and don’t tell anyone about the ‘Berlin’ comparison theory concerning Sara and Ray,” I said. “Maybe you’re right and we should just lay off all this ‘Berlin’ stuff anyway. After Brian’s experience, I’m worried that we might place someone on the endangered species list.”
“I’ll keep this one to myself, just like I kept the haunting cry of ‘The Kids’ to myself,” Jack said. “Besides, Dick, I mean Brain seemed like a fitting send-off to our ‘Berlin’ survivors series. Actually, I’m just glad I met a real survivor in Ray. The kids survived.”
“You’re a survivor,” I said.
Ziggy was still chewing away at Ray’s ear and Ray was actually responding, which put Ziggy in paradise.
“But how do you know that maybe you never saw that movie before the acid trip and it was just the acid trip that made you think you had seen it before?” Ray asked.
“Can you run that one by me a little slower?” Ziggy asked Ray.
“Shit, Jack, John Lennon is dead,” I said. “What the fuck are we going to do?”
“We’re going to carry on,” Jack said. “I’m fucken numb, man. I still can’t believe it. As much as we only joked about it, I guess in the back of my head I always thought I might hitchhike to New York State and try to get a job on the dairy farm.”
We both stared at each other for a few seconds, watching the tears start to stream down our faces. Neither one of us considered ourselves very good in emotional situations so we sat silently for a few minutes, listening to Ziggy and Ray and the waterfall.
“Anyway, I decided what I have to do tonight,” Jack finally said, pulling himself together. “I’m writing a song. There’s too much going on around me not to. No more throwing my music books on the floor. I’m writing. Before I hit the bed tonight, I’ll have a song written.”
“Great,” I said. “I can’t wait to hear it.”
“Shit, Rory, I hope you play bass on it,” Jack said.
“I guess I’m going to have to learn how to play bass then,” I said.
“I figured I’d find you boys here,” a voice from the darkness said.
“Holy shit, it’s Aragon,” Jack said.
“Is Rory here?” Aragon asked. “I need to see that boy.”
“Hey, long time no see,” I said.
“Yeah, Cathleen went to sleep early, so I took the car for a drive,” Aragon said. “I was going to look for a good bar in Boston to drown my sorrows over John Lennon, but then figured I would just drive to New Haven.”
“So, this is just a short trip then?” I asked.
“It’s even shorter than that,” Aragon said. “It took me three hours to get down here. I figure I can only stay an hour and then I have to head back. So, I’m searching your house and what do you suppose I found in Rory’s room?”
“Aragon, this is Ray, Sara’s brother,” I said, hoping to prevent Aragon from saying anything crude about Sara being in my bed.
“Pleased to meet you, Ray,” Aragon said. “It’s a smart move, staying right next to Rory, especially since your sister is in his bed. So, let’s have it Rory. What is Sara doing in your bed?”
“I ran into her at Fitzwilly’s this morning and we just hung out,” I said. “I showed her around the city a bit. Ray came to give her a ride home, but he’s having too much fun to leave just yet.”
“Ray, let me tell you a story,” Aragon said. “Rory has admired your sister from a distance for the past six months or so. He would make some small talk with her, but most of his admiration happened from a distance. And he always made sure he was at Fitzwilly’s when Sara started her shift. But would he make it a point to talk to her then?”
“Sometimes I did,” I said. “But look. . .”
“Hardly ever,” Aragon said. “Now stop interrupting my story. So, Ray, when I left for Boston about 30 hours ago, Rory promised he would ask Sara out by the next time I came home. I always figured Rory had it in him to ask her out, he’s just a little shy sometimes. But I never expected to walk into his room and find Sara cuddled up in his bed. Thank God I didn’t put money on you not asking her out.”
“Why didn’t you just ask her out?” Ray asked me.
“Alright, so I moved a little slow in this case,” I said. “What’s the matter with that?”
“We were just worried that you wouldn’t move at all,” Aragon said.
“Well, let’s not make too much of this,” I said. “We agreed to go out soon, but that doesn’t mean anything. Besides, I think she said something about a boyfriend up north.”
“That’s an ex-boyfriend,” Ray said. “And he was an asshole. The real thing.”
“Well, try not to fuck this up then, Rory,” Aragon said.
“Thanks for all the advice, fellas, but can we get off this topic?” I asked.
“Sure,” Aragon said. “For a beer. I drove three hours to have a beer with you characters and I’m thirsty.”
As we started walking across towards Whitney Avenue and the house, Ray put his hand on my shoulder and told me my months of admiring Sara from a distance would be a safe secret with him.
I told him his childhood story was safe with me as well.
“You know Jack,” Ray started. “I overheard you talking about survivors a few times over there. I don’t know what you were talking about, but I always take pride in considering myself a survivor. I always use that word when talking about Sara and myself. And you know as well as I do, especially since you survived your mom’s passing, why we survived. Why we all had to survive.”
“Of course,” Jack said. “But why?”
“Out of respect for our moms,” Ray said. “Our moms wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s why we are survivors.”
“Of course,” Jack said.
Back at the house, we grabbed some beers and made ourselves comfortable in the living room, although Adam was crashed on one of the couches. There were still people scattered about the house partying, but nothing too loud or wild. We put on the “Plastic Ono Band” album.
“Fellas, this is the end of an era,” Aragon said. “I don’t know if we will ever again see anyone with the same creative flair or have the same impact on music again. What we ought to do is go to New York and pull this mother-fucken murderer out of jail and kick the shit out of him until he’s fucken dead.”
“I don’t know if any of us are capable of killing anyone,” Jack said.
“Alright, then, let’s break him out of jail and set him free,” Aragon said. “I can guarantee someone else will kill him.”
“I bet there are a lot of people in New York City right now because of this,” Ray said.
“I saw on the news that there are thousands hanging out at the Dakota,” Aragon said. “A lot of them were holding signs and pictures of John Lennon and singing Lennon songs. It looked like an amazing scene.”
“I don’t think I could have handled that,” Jack said. “All those grieving people.”
“David went down there,” I said.
“I bet he’s coming back with a great story,” Aragon said.
“Actually, we should try to watch the news today,” Jack said. “We’ll see everyone singing ‘All You Need is Love’ and we’ll hear a faint voice in the background singing ‘Mother’.”
“Mother” seemed to be David’s favorite shower song, especially the primal screams at the end. We always knew when David was in the shower because we would hear him sing that song. It was sometimes hard to wake up to, though, especially on a day off.
“So, Aragon, any fall-out from your television stunt last night?” Jack asked.
“No,” Aragon said. “I called the landlord this afternoon to make sure he got the key and he complained that someone broke into the apartment and broke a window. See, being crazy always pays off.”
“Hey, check this out,” Ziggy said, pointing to the abandoned Jack Daniels cart next to one of the couches.
“Check to make sure Jeremy isn’t attached,” Jack said. “He may be passed out in a corner nearby.”
“You know, this is so much different from anything else I ever experienced,” Ziggy said, taking a swig from the JD bottle and passing it over to Aragon. “I mean, I was bummed out when the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crashed. And I was only in junior high school when Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died. But this is something much different. It’s like a president or some world leader died.”
“John Lennon was a world leader,” Jack said. “He wrote songs everyone could relate to. I remember when Keith Moon died, though. That got a pretty strong reaction out of Rory and me and almost landed us both in a German jail.”
“Please continue,” Ziggy said. “You’ve got my interest peaked on that one.”
“Yeah,” Aragon said. “I don’t know if I ever heard this one.”
“Rory and I were both stationed in Germany and were working the 4 a.m. shift as cooks in the main dining hall,” Jack said. “I heard about Keith Moon dying pretty early in the morning while listening to Armed Forces Radio, which they played out in the dining room. In the kitchen, though, we were playing cassettes. Rory, of course, brought his extensive cassette collection and was making the rest of the crew listen to hours of Zappa with him. Some of us had heard about Moon dying, but we didn’t tell Rory, figuring he would freak out and be lost for the day. Well, it was 2 o’clock in the afternoon and we were sitting in the dining room bullshitting while we were waiting to be relieved at the end of our shift when the news came on and Rory finally heard about Moon.”
“I didn’t really freak out though,” I said. “I mean, I love The Who. They rocked. Townshend is a fucken genius as a songwriter and the band was great. I fucken loved The Who. I don’t think I freaked out, though.”
“Well,” Jack continued. “We stole the key to the lieutenant’s office, where the dining room stereo was, and locked ourselves in and started playing Who tapes. We eliminated Armed Forces Radio for the afternoon, and people loved it. No one really noticed until a bunch of old timers came in for some late afternoon coffee. They were wondering why all the younger people were hanging out and digging the music. Of course, we were also playing the stereo louder than it usually was played.. And, of course, the more we played the louder it got. I though we would bust the speakers with ‘5:15'. Soon, people started banging on the door, so we just turned the music up louder.”
“Finally, the staff sargent, whose keys we lifted to get in there in the first place, started screaming through the door that he was giving us a direct order to ‘get that shit off the stereo and unlock the door’.” I recounted. “We kept yelling back that we couldn’t hear him. Finally he called the lieutenant, who was off that Friday and had to drive about 30 miles to get to the dining hall. He unlocked the door, calmly walked into the office, turned down the stereo and locked the door behind him. When he walked in, we snapped to attention and he said, ‘Oh, cut the bullshit and sit back down. You guys are in too much fucken trouble to save yourselves by acting respectful’.”
“We figured we were totally fucked,” Jack said. “The staff sargent had the MPs waiting outside the door by this point. There was also a crowd waiting to see what would happen. The lieutenant says, ‘So, fellas, you are a couple of Who fans and thought this was a good idea, huh? Well it wasn’t. I mean, I’ve seen The Who about a dozen times or so, and I’m really upset about Keith Moon dying too, but I’m not about to take over an office on a military installation. People get shot for less. What the fuck were you guys thinking?’ So I ask him where he saw The Who, and the conversation turns into us sharing Who stories. We tossed on ‘Live at Leeds’ and talked for about a half hour. He was as big a Who fan as we were.”
“This guy was only a few years older than us,” I said. “The only difference was he went to college, so he was an officer, but he was closer to our age than the staff sargent’s age. The staff sargent was in his early 40s. It turned out that the lieutenant’s father was in the Air Force and was stationed in England, just outside of London, while the lieutenant was a teenager. The lieutenant had seen all the great rockers in their day. Finally, he said, ‘Well, boys, we have a sticky situation here. You broke a few rules and disobeyed the lawful order of a superior officer.’ I guess yelling at us to turn that shit off was a lawful order. Anyway, Jack tells him we couldn’t really hear the staff sargent’s orders because the music was turned up too loud.”
“And he says, ‘Oh, yeah, the music, we better turn Armed Forces Radio back on’,” Jack said. “He tells us to wait in his office and he goes out to talk to the staff sargent. About 15 minutes later, he walks in and says we could walk out clean if we agreed to apologize to the staff sargent and work on our days off for the next few months. Our other option was to get arrested by the MPs and probably face a worse punishment from the first sargent and squad commander, neither of whom, the lieutenant pointed out, were fans of The Who. I thought the punishment was a little light for the staff sargent to agree to, but he said the staff sargent wanted it over with because he broke a few rules as well by not securing the lieutenant’s office keys while they were in his possession. So he called the staff sargent into the office and we said we were sorry. The staff sargent assured us we would be working hard on our days off, probably washing pots and pans, and we walked “And they would have put you in a German jail for that?” Aragon asked.
“No, but we pulled the same type of stunt at a party at some GI’s downtown apartment later that night,” Jack said. “We took over his stereo during the party. Everyone at the party wanted to listen to Journey, Kansas and bullshit like that and we wouldn’t let anyone near the damn stereo.”
“They really wanted to listen to The Who, but they just didn’t know it,” I said. “We were only trying to help them out. So we played all Who. All fucken loud.”
“Finally, the guy whose apartment it was gets pissed off and physically grabs Rory from behind and tries to pull him from the chair he’s in,” Jack said. “To distract him, I start grabbing his lame albums and snapping them in half. We were totally fucked-up at this point. Anyway, one of the neighbors called the cops and we all left the apartment because it smelled like hash and the guy whose apartment it was was worried that he would get busted. So we all went to an after-hours club.”
“And everything was cool after that?” Ziggy asked.
“The guy still punched Rory in the club’s parking lot,” Jack said. “But Rory pulled his best Sid Vicious and just looked at him with a bloody smile and said, ‘Is that the best you can fucken do?’”
“Actually, Jack was about to try to take control of the sound system at the after-hours club. They wanted to throw us out because they had a sign on the door: ‘No Americans.’ But Jack offered to share our Who collection with them, so they offered to buy us drinks if we let them play the stuff they didn’t have,” I said. “So we listened to The Who and played pool with some Germans for a few hours. As it turned out, we started hanging out there regularly after that night. We would share a lot of music with the owner William. Once, he let us drink free all night because we gave him a cassette with the first two Cheap Trick albums. They were hard to come by in the Bitburg record shops, although we found them in Luxembourg. One night we had a large party, with both Germans and Americans to listen to these two cassettes – about three hours – of WPLR.”
“Get the fuck out of here,” Ziggy said. “That was cause for a party? A New Haven, Connecticut, radio station?”
“It was American radio,” I said. “With American commercials, American attitude, American culture, American everything. The Germans loved it because it was American radio and the Americans loved it because it was in English and gave them a taste of back home. Besides, Armed Forces Radio wasn’t easy on the ears. After I was in Germany for about 18 months, my sister sent me one cassette of WPLR so I wouldn’t get homesick. Everyone in the dorm ended up borrowing that tape. It was great. So I sent her a letter asking her to send me two more cassettes. When I told William at the bar, he said I should tell him as soon as I got them. I received them on a Tuesday and he planned an American Rock Radio Party for that Friday evening. He had all his regulars there, and then some, and I had about 75 Americans show up. It was a great night. A lot of fun for everyone, which was good because sometimes there was a bit of tension between the Americans and the Germans."
“You know, people on base used to go nuts over the Advocate, too,” Jack said. “My brother would send it to me weekly so I could see what was going on at home. Rory and I would check out all the club listings and stuff to see where we would try to play once we got home and put a band together. But the Advocate used to make its way around the dorms as well because it was a taste of the states for a lot of the guys there.”
“Yeah, there were guys from the midwest asking us who was playing at the Oxford Ale House each weekend,” I said. “It was a goof, but everyone loved having that connection to the states. One Friday afternoon the alert siren went off, so we all had to be dressed in our fatigues and ready for war for 24 hours and this guy from the dorm comes up to me, in full battle gear, and says, ‘I guess we’re not going to see The Dogs at the Roadhouse this weekend.”
“You know, one more point about the Keith Moon party,” Jack said. At the end of the night at that German bar, a bunch of us, including some Germans, walked to this cemetery at the outskirts of Bitburg to drink beer, smoke hash and watch the sun rise.”
“Oh yeah, and at the cemetery, tucked away in the back, there was a bunch of Nazi soldier graves,” I said. “Everyone made it a point to piss on them before we left.”
“Even the Germans?” Ray asked.
“Hey, most of them are no fans of what the Nazis did to that country,” Jack said. “But anyway, as much as we loved Keith and The Who, John Lennon dying is still very different.”
“Yeah, I know,” Ziggy said. “I think so many people felt like they knew John Lennon. Like he was a friend. A voice of reason.”
“Look,” Aragon said. “John Lennon spoke to us about everything. He wrote about everything, but he did it in terms we all could understand. At the same time, he was extremely witty and clever in his songwriting. He was unique. I always figured it would be a career for someone to write a song like ‘Imagine.’ But that wasn’t a career for Lennon. It was only one small piece of a career. And he made time for himself to raise his son. And someone goes and fucken shoots him. Why? I still can’t fucken figure that one out.”
“It’s fucked up,” I said.
“I’m worried that the way he died may diminish his message to some people,” Aragon said. “You know, he sang, ‘Imagine all the people living life in peace,’ but gets shot in the streets of New York City.”
“How will that diminish his message?” Jack asked. “If anything, it reinforces the need for people to embrace his dream of peace.”
“Yeah, but there were already so many people that wanted to dismiss John Lennon and his message because he was hanging out with the anti-war movement and writing about freeing prisoners in ‘Attica State,’ this may give them ammunition,” Aragon said.
“Nice choice of words,” Ziggy said.
“I hope it doesn’t diminish the message,” I said.
“People are so fucked-up,” Aragon said. “Fuck them.”
“The thing to take into account is how much Lennon moved people,” Jack said. “He chose to write music for peace. Consider for a second if he decided to move people towards violence. He probably could have prompted riots if he wanted. How many people could have that kind of power over people and not abuse it?”
“Probably only Martin Luther King and Ghandi,” I said.
“And they all ended up getting shot,” Ray said.
We paused to pass the bottle of JD around, although when it got to Jack he looked at it and said, “Oh no, you’re not getting me this time.”
“Look,” Aragon continued, “What I really want to know is if you guys are going to continue playing?”
“Probably,” Jack said. “We have a few options.”
“Like what?” Aragon asked.
“Well,” Jack said. “We could play with the same people, only without you, or we could jam with that guy Buddy who plays guitar around town.”
“The smack addict?” Aragon asked.
“Yeah, he’s trying to get off the stuff and thinks music will help,” Jack said.
“Do you know how long he’s been on that stuff? I think it’s been a long time,” Aragon said. “Besides, you have to hear the story from him on how he got into that situation in the first place.”
“How?” I asked.
“There was this local guitar legend named Jake who used to play hot blues to back up these beat-type lyrics he wrote,” Aragon said. “The guy was great. He was always booked in New York and Boston and anytime a big name would come around here he would be on the bill. Of course, like most people who think they are cool and start getting money, he started diving into the drugs. Next thing you know, he’s hooked on the smack. Now no one wants to play with him. He was sitting outside the Oxford Ale House playing for change just months after packing people inside the place. It was pathetic. Enter this young hot guitarist named Buddy who thinks he can help. He plays with Jake for months, all the time trying to get him to kick that shit. Finally, just as Jake starts making progress, Jake hangs himself. He leaves a note saying that, after heroin, the world will never have that same exciting feeling as before. Heroin numbed his creative edge. So he checks out. Buddy, though, was crushed."
“Holy shit,” Ray said. “Is that a true story?”
“I’m not telling,” Aragon said. “Ask Jack in a few months.”
“You guys are too much with these fucken stories, man,” Ray said.
“You know, Aragon, you can be a real asshole,” Jack said. “That story is bullshit. Fuck you, man. It’s bullshit and you know it.”
“You’re not sure if it is or not,” Aragon said, taking another swig from the JD bottle before handing it over to me. “So, what’s your other option, Jack?”
“I was going to write a song tonight,” he said. “If that works, I’ll write another tomorrow.”
“What the fuck,” Aragon said. “You might as well write your own stuff. You’re only the best musician out of the bunch of us. I guess that’s not saying much, though.”
“Do you guys ever write these stories down?” Ray asked.
“Actually, Aragon was writing them down for a while,” I said. “He had dreams of writing a television series.”
“Yeah?” Ray said. “What happened?”
“The story was probably a little too depressing for television,” I said. “He tried to write an inspirational comedy about someone who has cancer and only has a year to live.”
“Really?” Ray asked. “And you seriously thought that would work?”
“Yeah,” Aragon said. “I figured it would only last a season. They could have made a series out of it. Except it would be dealing with real issues and how this person comes to grips with things. The guy would spend one week accomplishing something he always wanted and the next resolving a relationship. And you could introduce some real humor into something like that. I think it could have moved people. It could have raised awareness about some health issues. But the bottom line is that it would have finally brought something real to prime time.”
“How far did you get?” Ray asked.
“It was a short story,” Aragon said. “I wrote an outline on how to expand on it and a friend of ours, who was an intern at one of the networks, tried to get it to the right people. Nothing became of it, though.”
“You know what would be wild?” Ziggy asked, not waiting for us to respond. “If this John Lennon thing was somehow a gag, like when everyone thought Paul McCartney was dead.”
“Oh yeah,” Jack said. “I’m sure John Lennon getting shot is just a hoax to get us all to buy more albums, like when everyone combed the Beatles albums looking for clues on McCartney’s death.”
“Do you remember that shit?” I said. “I’m somehow sure this is very fucken different.”
“What were the clues?” Ziggy asked. “I know on Sgt. Pepper it had Paul wearing an ‘OPD’ patch, for Officially Pronounced Dead, on his uniform jacket.”
“Yeah, and each one was pointing to a lyric on the back of the album,” Aragon said. “And there were the clues in the ‘A Day in the Life’ song and the ‘I buried Paul’ on the ‘I am the Walrus’ single.”
“The Abbey Road album had a ‘three’ in front of the Beatles on the back cover and the four crossing the street as the corpse, preacher, ditch digger and mourner.” I said. “And there was the ‘28 IF’ on a license plate, as in if he had lived he’d be 28.”
“O.K. Ray,” Aragon said. “Your turn. Give us an example and keep the exercise going.”
“You mean, this is a fucken game?” Ray asked.
“Everything we do is a fucken game,” Aragon said.
“O.K.,” Ray said. “I’ll think of something.”
After a pause, I said, “I think we’re pressing the time limit here,” although I wasn’t sure I could come up with another example so quick.
“Oh, wait,” Ray said. “Paul wore a black carnation on the Magical Mystery Tour album. The others were wearing red carnations.”
“Nice one, Ray,” Ziggy said. "You're catching on."
“Yeah, whose turn is it now?” Ray asked.
We looked at each other, but I ran out of the room when I heard the telephone ring. Saved by the bell, I guess.
“Speak,” I said as I answered the telephone.
“Rory? This is David. Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” I said. Are you in the city? What’s happening there?”
I made it a point to yell – not really to anyone in particular, “Dave’s on the phone – he’s got an update from New York.”
“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “There are thousands of people hanging out in Central Park near the Dakota. People of all ages are dropping flowers off at the Dakota and people are hanging out and singing at the Park. Some even have signs. We found the place because you can hear the singing and cries from a distance. Unbelievable. You can actually see the Dakota through the trees. It is unbelievable.”
“That’s wild,” I said. “How long are you staying?”
“I don’t know,” David said. “I just had to let someone know what’s going on here. You should be here. It’s the most calming feeling I’ve had since I heard about John Lennon getting shot. Everyone understands. The people here are all helping each other cope. It’s really O.K. to talk here; to cry here. I don’t think people will be leaving any time soon.”
“We planned on watching for you on the news,” I said. “We were going to check to see if you were singing in tune.”
“Forget that,” David said. “You know I won’t be. But we’ll be here tomorrow if anyone wants to meet us here. We’ll be at Grand Central between nine and ten in the morning if anyone wants to grab a train and meet us. Otherwise, we’ll be at the Park, but I don’t know if anyone will be able to find us.”
“I’ll let everyone know,” I said.
“Are you coming?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll let everyone here know, though.”
“It’s really amazing, man,” David said.
I briefly considered going to New York, but realized I didn’t have the train fare. I wasn’t about to hitchhike, although I have hitchhiked to farther places. I would just hate to be stranded on the highway for hours while I was already bummed out.
“You guys take care,” I said.
“You too,” David said as he hung up the telephone.
I went back to the living room and told them about David’s call. We all talked a bit longer, listened to more music, and eventually Aragon said he had to go.
“Should we expect to see you soon?” I asked. “I mean, you couldn’t even last two days in Boston without coming back to New Haven to see us.”
“Fuck you, Rory,” Aragon said. “I may not come back again. Unless Miles Davis dies or something.”
We all gave Aragon hugs, but none of us said anything; I think we were all upset with this good-bye.
After Aragon left, Ziggy said he wanted to put on one non-Lennon cassette for us to listen to; something he said would lift our spirits.
“This album put me back on an even keel that time I dropped THC with you guys and you tried to make me listen to that Lou Reed album,” Ziggy said.
Ziggy was a cool guy with a lot of varied tastes. We always loved it when he pulled this kind of stuff because he always picked out something we never heard of. He turned us on to some strange bands, like Pavlov’s Dog, and some great bands, like Fairport Convention. One night, he played a Gil Scott-Heron cassette; “The Revolution Will Not be Televised,” which blew us away - funky jazz, social commentary, cultural references and poetry. Jack and I bought the album the next day.
And the music Ziggy played wasn’t limited to one era. Once, while we were partying, he followed the first Black Sabbath album with a cassette by jazz musician Stan Kenton. He even played Les Paul for us once. He also knew that Aragon, Jack and I were always on the search for some good, new music. Ziggy actually was the one who turned us on to the Minutemen, which was a phenomenal band. This time, though, Ziggy put on a cassette that none of us expected: Tiny Tim.
“These songs are great,” Ziggy said. “I think most are from the 1930s and 1940s. Check out this version of ‘If I Could Stay 16 Forever.’ It’s fucken great.”
It was, but I was still ready to call it a night. Somehow Tiny Tim - as good as it was - was not great after dealing with the death of Lennon.
Unfortunately, I had to take part in one more challenge.
Ziggy poured a shot of Jack Daniels and set it on the floor in the middle of the room. No one wanted to drink anymore, which is what I guess made this challenge worthwhile.
“The game is rock food, but it has to be a band name; not a song title,” Ziggy said. “Who’s in?”
“I’m in,” Ray said.
“Me too,” I said. “Then I’m out of here.”
“I’ll fucken regret this,” Jack said. “I’m in.”
“Then I’ll start with Hot Tuna,” Ziggy said.
“Vanilla Fudge,” Ray said.
“Moby Grape,” I said.
“The Honeycombs,” Jack said. “And it was probably the first band with a female drummer.”
“Oh great,” Ziggy said. “A history lesson. Alright. Tangerine Dream.”
“Meat Loaf.”
“Strawberry Alarm Clock.”
“1910 Fruitgum Company.”
“No, that shouldn’t count,” I said. “That’s fucken bubblegum shit. That’s not rock.”
“Fuck you,” Ziggy said. “It counts. My turn. Hot Chocolate, they had that disco hit ‘You Sexy Thing.’ Are you going to say mine doesn’t count either?”
“It shouldn’t,” I said. “Disco sucks.”
There were starting to be longer pauses between names and I could tell no one wanted to take the shot.
“The Sugarcubes,” Ray said.
“The Electric Prunes.”
“Sweet.”
I don’t know why no one challenged Sweet, except everyone was so concerned with thinking up a band name that they didn’t pay too close attention to other people’s answers.
After each name, the person who said it looked relieved while the person whose turn it was next looked terrified. Sometimes we would play this game for weeks on the same topic. If we picked a topic and let song titles – or lines of songs – be included, it could go on forever.
“Bread,” Ziggy said. “And I’ll agree if you guys think it shouldn’t count.”
After a long pause, Ray finally said, “April Wine.”
We all had a blank stare. I think we had just about run out of names.
Why the fuck did it have to be my turn, though, I thought.
“Drunk fucker drunk,” Ziggy said.
“I think you mean DRINK fucker DRINK,” Jack said.
“Wait, I’m still thinking,” I said.
“I think it’s over,” Ziggy said.
“Wait, I’ve got it,” I said. “The Strawbs.”
“The Strawbs is a food?” Jack asked.
“Strawbs is short for strawberry,” I said.
“I don’t think so,” Jack said.
“I really do,” I said.
“I think you’re drinking,” Ziggy said.
“Hey, what the fuck,” I said. “I can’t lose on The Strawbs. Now when you guys let Bread and Hot Chocolate count. At least The Strawbs rocked. What about you Ray? You can deadlock this if you take my side.”
“Sorry,” Ray said. “You’re on your own on this one.”
“I fucken hate you guys,” I said.
“You should have tried Raspberrys instead of Strawberrys,” Jack said.
“Oh, now you’re going to help me?” I said. “Thanks a fucken lot.”
I drank the shot and announced a new game. “John Lennon. One song will be played at his memorial. You get to pick it. What is it?”
Everyone, almost at once, said ‘Imagine.’
“I think the better question would be, ‘You get to pick three songs; what are they?’,” Jack said.
“True,” I said. “But I’m sleeping on that one. I hugged everyone and headed upstairs. I planned on putting on the “Plastic Ono Band” album on the turntable when I got to my room, but I didn’t want to wake Sara. I sat by the window in my room, looking at Sara sleeping. God, she was beautiful, I thought.
I remembered the first time I saw her a few months back. It was Halloween and I had just gotten off work. All the bar and wait staff were dressed in costumes. One waiter, Jay, was dressed as Samurai waiter, which he base don the John Belushi character from Saturday Night Live. In fact, Jay wouldn’t even tell people the specials. He mumbled while holding up a piece of paper with the specials written on it. No one in the kitchen was dressed up, though, because it was hot as Hell in the kitchen in just a t-shirt. I couldn’t imagine wearing anything else. Jack and I, though, wore a couple of chef hats at the bar when we finished our shifts. I took the “Fuck Iran” button off my jacket and pinned it on my hat.
“Let me guess,” said Michael, tossing a few cocktail napkins on the bar in front of us. “You guys are supposed to be a couple of cooks. That, gentlemen, is a real fucken stretch.”
“Yeah, pretty unbelievable,” Jack said. “We’ll take two Tuborg drafts.”
Michael was dressed as a priest, complete with collar.
As he placed the two drafts in front of us, he looked to the two women, dressed as exaggerated punk rockers, sitting to our left.
“What can I get you ladies?” Michael asked.
“A couple of strawberry daiquiris, Father,” one said.
“My children,” Michael said. “A blender drink? That is a mortal sin.”
“Well, Father, what will my penance be?” one of the women playfully asked.
“Let me make these drinks and I’ll let you know,” Michael said.
“Hey fellas,” Kelly the manager said walking over to Jack and I. “I want you to meet the new hostess. Sara, this is Jack and Rory.”
Something about her stunned me. She looked beautiful in such a natural way. I couldn’t take my eyes off her while Kelly was making small talk with us. I felt a warm knot in my stomach.
“So, you boys are going out as a couple of chefs for Halloween?” Sara asked.
“Oh,” I said. “You noticed. Pretty scary, huh?”
“Terrifying,” she said.
I think my heart stopped with her smile.
“The scariest part is, they are really cooks here,” Jill said.
“What’s this supposed to mean?” asked Joan, a waitress, tapping my “Fuck Iran” button.
“It’s a button,” I said.
“Yeah, well I don’t like that they have hostages, but I won’t say something like that to all the people of Iran,” she said.
“Then don’t,” I said, irritated that this bitch was trying to ruin my day. “I’ll say it for you.”
Kelly and Sara were talking to Jack and I wanted to be part of that conversation.
“Why do you feel you have to attack an entire people?” Joan asked.
“I actually am not the one who attacked anyone,” I said.
“Hey Joan, why don’t you fucken lighten up,” Michael said, coming to my rescue. “I wouldn’t mind if they dropped a bomb and eliminated that whole fucken country. Hey Rory, give me the button and I’ll wear it tonight.”
“You guys are hopeless,” Joan said, walking away.
“It was certainly nice talking to you,” I said, although Joan didn’t turn around.
“I think it’s fine that you are expressing yourself,” Sara said with a smile.
The conversation was broken up by a startled customer who screamed when Jay pulled out his sword when she said she needed a sharper knife.
“I can’t believe the amount of baby-sitting I have to do here,” Kelly said. “Come on Sara.”
I was sure I could have watched Sara sleep for hours.
I really wanted to get a couple of hours sleep, but my mind was racing. I started thinking that I had to do something different tomorrow. I would have to take at least one step to better myself. With Aragon gone and John Lennon dead, I decided I didn’t want to be a mere observer anymore. Hell, even Jack decided to become a songwriter in the course of a day. I had to do something, but I wasn’t sure what. Maybe I needed a clean break. Quit the job? I kept thinking that going to school was probably the best route. I knew it would be fun to learn about writing. But at the same time I was terrified.
I started to wonder if Aragon was right about music? He always maintained that learning the correct way to play would only serve to dull any creative edge he had. The same could probably be said about writing.
Maybe I was just afraid of starting something from square one. I think I was also afraid that I would find out I sucked. Then what would I do? I had to leap into something, though. I certainly wasn’t getting any younger.
The one thing I was sure of was that I was through watching life from the sidelines. I felt like the guy in the song “The Kids” when he sings, “I am just the waterboy. The real game’s not over here.” Fuck that, I thought. It’s time I got into the game. But I knew I needed sleep first.
The whole day caught up with me, though, and, as I heard the Lennon songs and then the Beatle songs come from the other rooms in the house, I cried myself to sleep.
The sound of the alarm clock at 5:30 in the morning felt like someone was grabbing me by the collar and smashing my head against the floor. In one motion, it seemed, I jumped from the chair, punched the top of the clock to stop the alarm, grabbed a towel hanging on the back of the door and headed to the shower. As with every morning, I knew that if I didn’t act quickly I would drift back to sleep.
The John Lennon song “Mother” kept running through my head, so I figured I would toss on the “Plastic Ono Band” album when I got back to the room. I felt sore from sleeping on the chair–and then the floor–and I still felt at a loss because John Lennon was dead, but I also felt a bit upbeat from having such a good day.
The lump in my throat, that first came when Rudy told me about John Lennon, was still there. I figured it might stay forever. Then that song Sara was humming all day drifted into my head.
I wondered when Sara and Ray left and why no one bothered to wake me up. I wish I had a chance to say good-bye and would have loved to stake a claim to my bed after they left. I also started wondering if there was any way to smoke in the shower. That way, I figured I could combine two of my three favorite activities.
When I got back to my room, though, I found Sara and Ray sleeping on the bed.
At least they looked like they were having a comfortable sleep. I got dressed and set the alarm clock for 9 a.m. for them. I didn’t put any music on, but combed the room looking for a cigarette. Cigarettes are one of the casualties of a party at our house. If everyone starts running out, they search the house and grab any that are left out. People have gotten cigarettes out of my shirt pockets while I napped. A talented bunch of bastards, I thought, as I sat on the chair.
“Ray, jerk, you fell asleep,” Sara said, pushing Ray’s shoulder as she sat up.
“So did you,” Ray said without opening his eyes. “Leave me alone. I called home last night. Everything’s cool.”
“Do you need a ride to work Rory?” Sara asked.
“I can grab the bus,” I finally said. “You don’t really want to get up now. Go back to sleep.”
“I don’t mind getting up,” she said. “I’m a morning person, actually. Let me just hit the bathroom first.”
As she walked by me she gave me a hug.
“I really had a wonderful day with you yesterday,” Sara said.
“I had a wonderful day too,” I said. “And I can’t wait to tell everyone you spent the night in my room.”
“You wouldn’t do that, and if you did I’ll never spend the night in your room again,” she said as she walked out, humming that tune again.
Jack popped – or maybe sleep staggered – into my room moments later.
“What are you playing?” Jack asked.
“I’m not playing anything,” I said, still on my cigarette search. “What are you doing up? You know, you look like hell.”
“I was actually on the floor in the next room,” Jack said. “I thought I heard that song ‘Sisters, O Sisters’ coming from your room. Maybe I’m hearing things. I thought maybe you were humming along with it. I need to get back to sleep. But we’ll have to talk later. I think we may have a few people interested in seeing ‘Harold and Maude’ at the Lincoln Theater tonight.”
Alright,” I said. “Get some sleep. I’ll see you later.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “We'll probably all meet at Malone’s Tavern after work.
“Ah, a Malone’s run,” I said, wishing I was going back to sleep. “I’m in.”
Once Sara came back, we figured she could get her bag from Fitzwilly’s – something we forgot to do the day before – and then she could swing back and get Ray.
“You know,” I said as we drove downtown. “I was thinking about our conversation yesterday, when we talked about always saying good-bye and letting people leave our lives. Well, I thought maybe we can both try something different.”
“Like what?” Sara asked.
“Well, maybe we should both sit down and write a letter to an old friend,” I said. “We could track down the right address and mail it out. What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s kind of early for this, isn’t it? What are the letters going to say?”
“Nothing heavy,” I said. “Just a ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ letter.”
“You know, that’s not a bad idea,” Sara said. “It’s a good first step kind of move. But it’s still early.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Every once in a while, I come up with a pretty good one.”
Since we were early, we stopped by the Yankee Doodle, which is a tiny breakfast joint near Fitzwilly’s, and ordered a coffee and tea to go. I also bought a pack of Marlboros.
“Why don’t we just drink it in there?” Sara asked as we walked out into the chilly morning.
“Because I know the perfect spot for a morning tea and cigarette,” I said.
We went into the back door of Fitzwilly’s and up the concrete stairs to the second floor, where there was the kitchen and more dining room seating. In the corner of the stairway, behind the ice machine, was an iron ladder leading to a doorway onto the roof.
“You are kidding? Aren’t you?” Sara said as I grabbed hold of the ladder.
“No, but I don’t think we can make it with the coffee and tea, set them on the ice machine,” I said. “Follow me, you’ll enjoy it, really.”
“Alright,” she said.
I moved the never-pushed-closed lock from the chain and unwrapped the chain from the handle, pushing up the doorway to the roof. Once onto the roof, I reached down and helped Sara through the doorway.
“Well, here’s New Haven,” I said pointing out to the city as I unwrapped the cigarettes.
“Amazing,” she said.
Fitzwilly’s was not the tallest building in town, but it was almost as tall as any other building in the Broadway area and the roof provided a great view of the neighborhood, as well as the Yale rooftops – which were probably the best architectured rooftops in the world. You couldn’t see too far in either direction, down Elm Street towards the Green on one side and towards Rudy’s and Bulldog Pizza on the other side. The surrounding Broadway area, with the large signs for Cutler’s Record Shop and the Yale Co-Op staring back at you, looked alive from the roof. It provided a whole different perspective of New Haven.
“I would love to draw from up here,” Sara said.
“You’d have to do it in the morning because they aren’t too fond of letting anyone up here,” I said. “I come up here sometimes if I get here before seven. I’d love to catch a sunset up here. It’s like an observation deck, and we can just check out all these people rushing into the Greek Village convenience store or just driving by as they head to work.”
I had always thought the Fitzwilly’s roof would have been an ideal spot to make love, although I figured the timing really wasn’t right to mention that.
“This place has everything but heat,” Sara said.
“Yeah, it’s cold,” I said as I put my arms around her and gave her a kiss. “So, how did this happen between us yesterday?”
“Oh, come on, you don’t remember the great day we had?” she said.
“Yeah, how could I forget?” I said. “I mean. I don’t know, how. . .So many things could have happened. It just seems like we easily could have missed each other yesterday. It’s just amazing that everything worked out like it did.”
“Maybe there is no answer to how it happened,” she said. “You and your friends seem like they need to have answers for everything. Ray is the same way. Maybe we were just pulled together by some cosmic force. I don’t know. A lot of things are left to chance. Look, if we didn’t keep bumping into each other at the restaurant before my shifts started, I would have never known who you were or that you are a nice guy and yesterday probably would never have happened. But that in itself doesn’t account for too much. Once we were together yesterday, everything worked fine and that’s what’s more important. That’s something we have control over. For me, I really liked the way you wanted to share all your favorite spots with me. It made me feel special. I had a lot of fun.”
After a brief pause, she added, “Oh, I’m rambling now. I’m sorry.”
“No. Rambling’s good, I do it all the time,” I said. “Besides, that made a lot of sense. I had a lot of fun, too. I just know I really like hanging out with you.”
“So, will I see you here when I come into work at 4:15 or will you be long gone by then?” Sara asked.
“Depends on how my day goes,” I said. “But I tend to be here at 4:15.”
“What do you have planned?” she asked as we headed towards the ladder.
“Whenever I’m done with work, I plan to go to Goldie’s and look for a base guitar teacher, head over to Southern Connecticut State College and get an enrollment application and then hit Festoons to see if they had any good records come in,” I said. “Of course, I have to find a newspaper and read Doonesbury before I do anything else today.”
“That’s a pretty full day,” Sara said as she climbed back into the building. “You’re not leaving anything to chance there.”
“Yeah, but I’ll still probably be here when you come to work,” I said.
“You are usually here when the dinner shift starts,” she said, climbing down the ladder. “I noticed that.”
“Oh you did, huh?” I said, catching one last glimpse of the chilly New Haven morning skyline before climbing back into the building.
(The Last Chapter - thanks for hanging with it this long... if anyone actually did! This was a mix of fact and fiction - but it is a work of fiction - because things never work out quite like they do in a good story!)
As we crossed the street, I asked Jack how he was holding up since he seemed pretty popped when we arrived at the house earlier.
“I’m pacing myself. Everything’s under control,” Jack said. “I’m sure tomorrow will be a rough day.”
Once at the lake, we all sat on the cold ground and listened to the water. There were a few times I’ve actually fallen asleep on the bank, and they were the most sound sleeps I’ve ever had.
“You know, Rory, I still feel bad about opening my mouth before,” Ray said. “I know you are a good guy. It didn’t come out right. I wasn’t trying to say I think you’re an asshole or anything.”
“Ray, it’s fine,” I said, although Ray seemed a little popped and stoned.
“It’s just that with our parents gone, I feel real protective of Sara,” Ray said. “And she’s the same way towards me.”
“It sounds like you guys are lucky to have each other,” Jack said.
“Yeah, we are lucky to have each other,” Ray said. “She’s saved me from myself many times. I think she’s always been the level-headed one. Our mother died in a car accident when we were in kindergarten and we’ve always been real close as a result.”
“Oh, man,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “I lost my mother. It’s a bitch to try to deal with.”
“That’s not even the worst of it,” Ray said. “While we were trying to come to grips with our mother dying, our grandmother had us taken away from our father because she said he was unfit to be a parent. She said he wasn’t a good father and I guess she blamed him for driving the car during the accident. It was real hard on us at the time. They physically dragged us out of my father’s house kicking and screaming one afternoon. We didn’t know what hit us. One minute we’re coloring, making up songs and feeling safe and the next. . .I don’t know, man. We were only kids. It was fucked-up. We were only kids. You have no idea.”
After a stunned pause, I said, “I thought Sara said you guys lived with your mother?”
“We live with our auntie: my mother’s sister,” Ray said. “A few years after we were taken from our father, and after we were bounced from relative to relative, our auntie showed up and took us away from all the bullshit. My father had died by then. They told us he died of a heart attack, but he was only 40 and we didn’t believe that bullshit. Anyway, she took us away from all the madness going on at the time. She’s really off-the-wall. An old hippie. But she’s been great to us. She put us first over everything. Even herself. We call her mom. . .she’s our mom.”
After a brief, but again very uncomfortable pause where we all just sat listening to the cold water, Ray added, “Look, I just met you guys, I shouldn’t have laid such a heavy story on you. This day has just been real weird. And I’m pretty popped right now. I’ve been thinking about my parents a lot today. I guess this John Lennon thing just opened the emotional flood gates for me. I always listened to John Lennon when things got too weird for me. It’s like his songs would talk me back into a clear state. Him dying and all is just too fucked-up, man. Sorry.”
“That’s alright,” I said. “We’re all there. It’s good we’re all not there alone.”
“And, please, don’t tell Sara I said anything to you about this, alright?” Ray asked.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I know what the wrath of a pissed off sister can be like.”
“The important thing is that you kids survived,” Jack said.
“Yeah,” Ray said. “We did. We weren’t going to let each other go through hell and not survive. I guess that’s why we are so protective of each other.”
“So, the kids survived,” Jack said looking at me.
We sat quietly listening to the water for a few minutes.
“So Ray, what do you do?” Ziggy asked.
“I’ve been working in landscaping, but I’ve been taking classes in architecture off and on for the past three years,” he said.
While Ziggy and Ray talked, Jack leaned over to me.
“At times I’ve been wondering if this whole day hasn’t been some sort of acid flashback,” Jack said. “Now I’m convinced. I mean, John Lennon’s dead and you bring home the ‘Berlin’ kids.”
“Yeah, I’m sure I’ll wake up tomorrow and John Lennon will be alive and I’ll still be watching Sara from a distance again,” I said. “You know, with all the acid we’ve done, and all the times people promised us that we would have an acid flashback if we didn’t stop doing that shit, I always hoped the flashback would come at a more opportune time. Like if I was stuck in traffic on the Quinnipiac River Bridge or at the West Haven toll booth on I-95 or something. If this is the best we can do with an acid flashback, I want my money back.”
“I’m with you on that one,” Jack said.
“Are you guys talking about doing some acid?” Ziggy asked. “Do you have some?”
“No,” I said. “Ronnie might. I don’t know where he is, though.”
“He’s crashed on David’s floor,” Jack said.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I did acid while watching an old Alice in Wonderland movie?” Ziggy asked, although Jack and I had heard the story many times.
“I was up for three days doing speed and was worried about the crash,” Ziggy started. “I always came down hard from speed. So I dropped some acid with a few friends of mine and we went to this bar called Doody’s Totoket Inn in North Branford. It’s a great place to have a couple of beers and mellow out. Anyway, I felt really uncomfortable being around people so I walked to my parents’ house, which was only a few blocks away. Everyone there was sleeping, so I put on the tube figuring there was probably going to be a good movie on since it was only 11 o’clock on a Saturday night. But I crashed on the couch. I woke up in a fog a few hours later with the television on, and there was Alice in Wonderland. It was the old 1940s version made by puppet-master Lou Buning. It was a mix of live action and puppets. Very wild. As it turned out, it was released the same year as the Walt Disney version, so it never really caught on. But it’s a wild version, with some catchy tunes…"
Ziggy was directing the story to Ray, so I leaned over to Jack.
“Do me a favor and don’t tell anyone about the ‘Berlin’ comparison theory concerning Sara and Ray,” I said. “Maybe you’re right and we should just lay off all this ‘Berlin’ stuff anyway. After Brian’s experience, I’m worried that we might place someone on the endangered species list.”
“I’ll keep this one to myself, just like I kept the haunting cry of ‘The Kids’ to myself,” Jack said. “Besides, Dick, I mean Brain seemed like a fitting send-off to our ‘Berlin’ survivors series. Actually, I’m just glad I met a real survivor in Ray. The kids survived.”
“You’re a survivor,” I said.
Ziggy was still chewing away at Ray’s ear and Ray was actually responding, which put Ziggy in paradise.
“But how do you know that maybe you never saw that movie before the acid trip and it was just the acid trip that made you think you had seen it before?” Ray asked.
“Can you run that one by me a little slower?” Ziggy asked Ray.
“Shit, Jack, John Lennon is dead,” I said. “What the fuck are we going to do?”
“We’re going to carry on,” Jack said. “I’m fucken numb, man. I still can’t believe it. As much as we only joked about it, I guess in the back of my head I always thought I might hitchhike to New York State and try to get a job on the dairy farm.”
We both stared at each other for a few seconds, watching the tears start to stream down our faces. Neither one of us considered ourselves very good in emotional situations so we sat silently for a few minutes, listening to Ziggy and Ray and the waterfall.
“Anyway, I decided what I have to do tonight,” Jack finally said, pulling himself together. “I’m writing a song. There’s too much going on around me not to. No more throwing my music books on the floor. I’m writing. Before I hit the bed tonight, I’ll have a song written.”
“Great,” I said. “I can’t wait to hear it.”
“Shit, Rory, I hope you play bass on it,” Jack said.
“I guess I’m going to have to learn how to play bass then,” I said.
“I figured I’d find you boys here,” a voice from the darkness said.
“Holy shit, it’s Aragon,” Jack said.
“Is Rory here?” Aragon asked. “I need to see that boy.”
“Hey, long time no see,” I said.
“Yeah, Cathleen went to sleep early, so I took the car for a drive,” Aragon said. “I was going to look for a good bar in Boston to drown my sorrows over John Lennon, but then figured I would just drive to New Haven.”
“So, this is just a short trip then?” I asked.
“It’s even shorter than that,” Aragon said. “It took me three hours to get down here. I figure I can only stay an hour and then I have to head back. So, I’m searching your house and what do you suppose I found in Rory’s room?”
“Aragon, this is Ray, Sara’s brother,” I said, hoping to prevent Aragon from saying anything crude about Sara being in my bed.
“Pleased to meet you, Ray,” Aragon said. “It’s a smart move, staying right next to Rory, especially since your sister is in his bed. So, let’s have it Rory. What is Sara doing in your bed?”
“I ran into her at Fitzwilly’s this morning and we just hung out,” I said. “I showed her around the city a bit. Ray came to give her a ride home, but he’s having too much fun to leave just yet.”
“Ray, let me tell you a story,” Aragon said. “Rory has admired your sister from a distance for the past six months or so. He would make some small talk with her, but most of his admiration happened from a distance. And he always made sure he was at Fitzwilly’s when Sara started her shift. But would he make it a point to talk to her then?”
“Sometimes I did,” I said. “But look. . .”
“Hardly ever,” Aragon said. “Now stop interrupting my story. So, Ray, when I left for Boston about 30 hours ago, Rory promised he would ask Sara out by the next time I came home. I always figured Rory had it in him to ask her out, he’s just a little shy sometimes. But I never expected to walk into his room and find Sara cuddled up in his bed. Thank God I didn’t put money on you not asking her out.”
“Why didn’t you just ask her out?” Ray asked me.
“Alright, so I moved a little slow in this case,” I said. “What’s the matter with that?”
“We were just worried that you wouldn’t move at all,” Aragon said.
“Well, let’s not make too much of this,” I said. “We agreed to go out soon, but that doesn’t mean anything. Besides, I think she said something about a boyfriend up north.”
“That’s an ex-boyfriend,” Ray said. “And he was an asshole. The real thing.”
“Well, try not to fuck this up then, Rory,” Aragon said.
“Thanks for all the advice, fellas, but can we get off this topic?” I asked.
“Sure,” Aragon said. “For a beer. I drove three hours to have a beer with you characters and I’m thirsty.”
As we started walking across towards Whitney Avenue and the house, Ray put his hand on my shoulder and told me my months of admiring Sara from a distance would be a safe secret with him.
I told him his childhood story was safe with me as well.
“You know Jack,” Ray started. “I overheard you talking about survivors a few times over there. I don’t know what you were talking about, but I always take pride in considering myself a survivor. I always use that word when talking about Sara and myself. And you know as well as I do, especially since you survived your mom’s passing, why we survived. Why we all had to survive.”
“Of course,” Jack said. “But why?”
“Out of respect for our moms,” Ray said. “Our moms wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s why we are survivors.”
“Of course,” Jack said.
Back at the house, we grabbed some beers and made ourselves comfortable in the living room, although Adam was crashed on one of the couches. There were still people scattered about the house partying, but nothing too loud or wild. We put on the “Plastic Ono Band” album.
“Fellas, this is the end of an era,” Aragon said. “I don’t know if we will ever again see anyone with the same creative flair or have the same impact on music again. What we ought to do is go to New York and pull this mother-fucken murderer out of jail and kick the shit out of him until he’s fucken dead.”
“I don’t know if any of us are capable of killing anyone,” Jack said.
“Alright, then, let’s break him out of jail and set him free,” Aragon said. “I can guarantee someone else will kill him.”
“I bet there are a lot of people in New York City right now because of this,” Ray said.
“I saw on the news that there are thousands hanging out at the Dakota,” Aragon said. “A lot of them were holding signs and pictures of John Lennon and singing Lennon songs. It looked like an amazing scene.”
“I don’t think I could have handled that,” Jack said. “All those grieving people.”
“David went down there,” I said.
“I bet he’s coming back with a great story,” Aragon said.
“Actually, we should try to watch the news today,” Jack said. “We’ll see everyone singing ‘All You Need is Love’ and we’ll hear a faint voice in the background singing ‘Mother’.”
“Mother” seemed to be David’s favorite shower song, especially the primal screams at the end. We always knew when David was in the shower because we would hear him sing that song. It was sometimes hard to wake up to, though, especially on a day off.
“So, Aragon, any fall-out from your television stunt last night?” Jack asked.
“No,” Aragon said. “I called the landlord this afternoon to make sure he got the key and he complained that someone broke into the apartment and broke a window. See, being crazy always pays off.”
“Hey, check this out,” Ziggy said, pointing to the abandoned Jack Daniels cart next to one of the couches.
“Check to make sure Jeremy isn’t attached,” Jack said. “He may be passed out in a corner nearby.”
“You know, this is so much different from anything else I ever experienced,” Ziggy said, taking a swig from the JD bottle and passing it over to Aragon. “I mean, I was bummed out when the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crashed. And I was only in junior high school when Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died. But this is something much different. It’s like a president or some world leader died.”
“John Lennon was a world leader,” Jack said. “He wrote songs everyone could relate to. I remember when Keith Moon died, though. That got a pretty strong reaction out of Rory and me and almost landed us both in a German jail.”
“Please continue,” Ziggy said. “You’ve got my interest peaked on that one.”
“Yeah,” Aragon said. “I don’t know if I ever heard this one.”
“Rory and I were both stationed in Germany and were working the 4 a.m. shift as cooks in the main dining hall,” Jack said. “I heard about Keith Moon dying pretty early in the morning while listening to Armed Forces Radio, which they played out in the dining room. In the kitchen, though, we were playing cassettes. Rory, of course, brought his extensive cassette collection and was making the rest of the crew listen to hours of Zappa with him. Some of us had heard about Moon dying, but we didn’t tell Rory, figuring he would freak out and be lost for the day. Well, it was 2 o’clock in the afternoon and we were sitting in the dining room bullshitting while we were waiting to be relieved at the end of our shift when the news came on and Rory finally heard about Moon.”
“I didn’t really freak out though,” I said. “I mean, I love The Who. They rocked. Townshend is a fucken genius as a songwriter and the band was great. I fucken loved The Who. I don’t think I freaked out, though.”
“Well,” Jack continued. “We stole the key to the lieutenant’s office, where the dining room stereo was, and locked ourselves in and started playing Who tapes. We eliminated Armed Forces Radio for the afternoon, and people loved it. No one really noticed until a bunch of old timers came in for some late afternoon coffee. They were wondering why all the younger people were hanging out and digging the music. Of course, we were also playing the stereo louder than it usually was played.. And, of course, the more we played the louder it got. I though we would bust the speakers with ‘5:15'. Soon, people started banging on the door, so we just turned the music up louder.”
“Finally, the staff sargent, whose keys we lifted to get in there in the first place, started screaming through the door that he was giving us a direct order to ‘get that shit off the stereo and unlock the door’.” I recounted. “We kept yelling back that we couldn’t hear him. Finally he called the lieutenant, who was off that Friday and had to drive about 30 miles to get to the dining hall. He unlocked the door, calmly walked into the office, turned down the stereo and locked the door behind him. When he walked in, we snapped to attention and he said, ‘Oh, cut the bullshit and sit back down. You guys are in too much fucken trouble to save yourselves by acting respectful’.”
“We figured we were totally fucked,” Jack said. “The staff sargent had the MPs waiting outside the door by this point. There was also a crowd waiting to see what would happen. The lieutenant says, ‘So, fellas, you are a couple of Who fans and thought this was a good idea, huh? Well it wasn’t. I mean, I’ve seen The Who about a dozen times or so, and I’m really upset about Keith Moon dying too, but I’m not about to take over an office on a military installation. People get shot for less. What the fuck were you guys thinking?’ So I ask him where he saw The Who, and the conversation turns into us sharing Who stories. We tossed on ‘Live at Leeds’ and talked for about a half hour. He was as big a Who fan as we were.”
“This guy was only a few years older than us,” I said. “The only difference was he went to college, so he was an officer, but he was closer to our age than the staff sargent’s age. The staff sargent was in his early 40s. It turned out that the lieutenant’s father was in the Air Force and was stationed in England, just outside of London, while the lieutenant was a teenager. The lieutenant had seen all the great rockers in their day. Finally, he said, ‘Well, boys, we have a sticky situation here. You broke a few rules and disobeyed the lawful order of a superior officer.’ I guess yelling at us to turn that shit off was a lawful order. Anyway, Jack tells him we couldn’t really hear the staff sargent’s orders because the music was turned up too loud.”
“And he says, ‘Oh, yeah, the music, we better turn Armed Forces Radio back on’,” Jack said. “He tells us to wait in his office and he goes out to talk to the staff sargent. About 15 minutes later, he walks in and says we could walk out clean if we agreed to apologize to the staff sargent and work on our days off for the next few months. Our other option was to get arrested by the MPs and probably face a worse punishment from the first sargent and squad commander, neither of whom, the lieutenant pointed out, were fans of The Who. I thought the punishment was a little light for the staff sargent to agree to, but he said the staff sargent wanted it over with because he broke a few rules as well by not securing the lieutenant’s office keys while they were in his possession. So he called the staff sargent into the office and we said we were sorry. The staff sargent assured us we would be working hard on our days off, probably washing pots and pans, and we walked “And they would have put you in a German jail for that?” Aragon asked.
“No, but we pulled the same type of stunt at a party at some GI’s downtown apartment later that night,” Jack said. “We took over his stereo during the party. Everyone at the party wanted to listen to Journey, Kansas and bullshit like that and we wouldn’t let anyone near the damn stereo.”
“They really wanted to listen to The Who, but they just didn’t know it,” I said. “We were only trying to help them out. So we played all Who. All fucken loud.”
“Finally, the guy whose apartment it was gets pissed off and physically grabs Rory from behind and tries to pull him from the chair he’s in,” Jack said. “To distract him, I start grabbing his lame albums and snapping them in half. We were totally fucked-up at this point. Anyway, one of the neighbors called the cops and we all left the apartment because it smelled like hash and the guy whose apartment it was was worried that he would get busted. So we all went to an after-hours club.”
“And everything was cool after that?” Ziggy asked.
“The guy still punched Rory in the club’s parking lot,” Jack said. “But Rory pulled his best Sid Vicious and just looked at him with a bloody smile and said, ‘Is that the best you can fucken do?’”
“Actually, Jack was about to try to take control of the sound system at the after-hours club. They wanted to throw us out because they had a sign on the door: ‘No Americans.’ But Jack offered to share our Who collection with them, so they offered to buy us drinks if we let them play the stuff they didn’t have,” I said. “So we listened to The Who and played pool with some Germans for a few hours. As it turned out, we started hanging out there regularly after that night. We would share a lot of music with the owner William. Once, he let us drink free all night because we gave him a cassette with the first two Cheap Trick albums. They were hard to come by in the Bitburg record shops, although we found them in Luxembourg. One night we had a large party, with both Germans and Americans to listen to these two cassettes – about three hours – of WPLR.”
“Get the fuck out of here,” Ziggy said. “That was cause for a party? A New Haven, Connecticut, radio station?”
“It was American radio,” I said. “With American commercials, American attitude, American culture, American everything. The Germans loved it because it was American radio and the Americans loved it because it was in English and gave them a taste of back home. Besides, Armed Forces Radio wasn’t easy on the ears. After I was in Germany for about 18 months, my sister sent me one cassette of WPLR so I wouldn’t get homesick. Everyone in the dorm ended up borrowing that tape. It was great. So I sent her a letter asking her to send me two more cassettes. When I told William at the bar, he said I should tell him as soon as I got them. I received them on a Tuesday and he planned an American Rock Radio Party for that Friday evening. He had all his regulars there, and then some, and I had about 75 Americans show up. It was a great night. A lot of fun for everyone, which was good because sometimes there was a bit of tension between the Americans and the Germans."
“You know, people on base used to go nuts over the Advocate, too,” Jack said. “My brother would send it to me weekly so I could see what was going on at home. Rory and I would check out all the club listings and stuff to see where we would try to play once we got home and put a band together. But the Advocate used to make its way around the dorms as well because it was a taste of the states for a lot of the guys there.”
“Yeah, there were guys from the midwest asking us who was playing at the Oxford Ale House each weekend,” I said. “It was a goof, but everyone loved having that connection to the states. One Friday afternoon the alert siren went off, so we all had to be dressed in our fatigues and ready for war for 24 hours and this guy from the dorm comes up to me, in full battle gear, and says, ‘I guess we’re not going to see The Dogs at the Roadhouse this weekend.”
“You know, one more point about the Keith Moon party,” Jack said. At the end of the night at that German bar, a bunch of us, including some Germans, walked to this cemetery at the outskirts of Bitburg to drink beer, smoke hash and watch the sun rise.”
“Oh yeah, and at the cemetery, tucked away in the back, there was a bunch of Nazi soldier graves,” I said. “Everyone made it a point to piss on them before we left.”
“Even the Germans?” Ray asked.
“Hey, most of them are no fans of what the Nazis did to that country,” Jack said. “But anyway, as much as we loved Keith and The Who, John Lennon dying is still very different.”
“Yeah, I know,” Ziggy said. “I think so many people felt like they knew John Lennon. Like he was a friend. A voice of reason.”
“Look,” Aragon said. “John Lennon spoke to us about everything. He wrote about everything, but he did it in terms we all could understand. At the same time, he was extremely witty and clever in his songwriting. He was unique. I always figured it would be a career for someone to write a song like ‘Imagine.’ But that wasn’t a career for Lennon. It was only one small piece of a career. And he made time for himself to raise his son. And someone goes and fucken shoots him. Why? I still can’t fucken figure that one out.”
“It’s fucked up,” I said.
“I’m worried that the way he died may diminish his message to some people,” Aragon said. “You know, he sang, ‘Imagine all the people living life in peace,’ but gets shot in the streets of New York City.”
“How will that diminish his message?” Jack asked. “If anything, it reinforces the need for people to embrace his dream of peace.”
“Yeah, but there were already so many people that wanted to dismiss John Lennon and his message because he was hanging out with the anti-war movement and writing about freeing prisoners in ‘Attica State,’ this may give them ammunition,” Aragon said.
“Nice choice of words,” Ziggy said.
“I hope it doesn’t diminish the message,” I said.
“People are so fucked-up,” Aragon said. “Fuck them.”
“The thing to take into account is how much Lennon moved people,” Jack said. “He chose to write music for peace. Consider for a second if he decided to move people towards violence. He probably could have prompted riots if he wanted. How many people could have that kind of power over people and not abuse it?”
“Probably only Martin Luther King and Ghandi,” I said.
“And they all ended up getting shot,” Ray said.
We paused to pass the bottle of JD around, although when it got to Jack he looked at it and said, “Oh no, you’re not getting me this time.”
“Look,” Aragon continued, “What I really want to know is if you guys are going to continue playing?”
“Probably,” Jack said. “We have a few options.”
“Like what?” Aragon asked.
“Well,” Jack said. “We could play with the same people, only without you, or we could jam with that guy Buddy who plays guitar around town.”
“The smack addict?” Aragon asked.
“Yeah, he’s trying to get off the stuff and thinks music will help,” Jack said.
“Do you know how long he’s been on that stuff? I think it’s been a long time,” Aragon said. “Besides, you have to hear the story from him on how he got into that situation in the first place.”
“How?” I asked.
“There was this local guitar legend named Jake who used to play hot blues to back up these beat-type lyrics he wrote,” Aragon said. “The guy was great. He was always booked in New York and Boston and anytime a big name would come around here he would be on the bill. Of course, like most people who think they are cool and start getting money, he started diving into the drugs. Next thing you know, he’s hooked on the smack. Now no one wants to play with him. He was sitting outside the Oxford Ale House playing for change just months after packing people inside the place. It was pathetic. Enter this young hot guitarist named Buddy who thinks he can help. He plays with Jake for months, all the time trying to get him to kick that shit. Finally, just as Jake starts making progress, Jake hangs himself. He leaves a note saying that, after heroin, the world will never have that same exciting feeling as before. Heroin numbed his creative edge. So he checks out. Buddy, though, was crushed."
“Holy shit,” Ray said. “Is that a true story?”
“I’m not telling,” Aragon said. “Ask Jack in a few months.”
“You guys are too much with these fucken stories, man,” Ray said.
“You know, Aragon, you can be a real asshole,” Jack said. “That story is bullshit. Fuck you, man. It’s bullshit and you know it.”
“You’re not sure if it is or not,” Aragon said, taking another swig from the JD bottle before handing it over to me. “So, what’s your other option, Jack?”
“I was going to write a song tonight,” he said. “If that works, I’ll write another tomorrow.”
“What the fuck,” Aragon said. “You might as well write your own stuff. You’re only the best musician out of the bunch of us. I guess that’s not saying much, though.”
“Do you guys ever write these stories down?” Ray asked.
“Actually, Aragon was writing them down for a while,” I said. “He had dreams of writing a television series.”
“Yeah?” Ray said. “What happened?”
“The story was probably a little too depressing for television,” I said. “He tried to write an inspirational comedy about someone who has cancer and only has a year to live.”
“Really?” Ray asked. “And you seriously thought that would work?”
“Yeah,” Aragon said. “I figured it would only last a season. They could have made a series out of it. Except it would be dealing with real issues and how this person comes to grips with things. The guy would spend one week accomplishing something he always wanted and the next resolving a relationship. And you could introduce some real humor into something like that. I think it could have moved people. It could have raised awareness about some health issues. But the bottom line is that it would have finally brought something real to prime time.”
“How far did you get?” Ray asked.
“It was a short story,” Aragon said. “I wrote an outline on how to expand on it and a friend of ours, who was an intern at one of the networks, tried to get it to the right people. Nothing became of it, though.”
“You know what would be wild?” Ziggy asked, not waiting for us to respond. “If this John Lennon thing was somehow a gag, like when everyone thought Paul McCartney was dead.”
“Oh yeah,” Jack said. “I’m sure John Lennon getting shot is just a hoax to get us all to buy more albums, like when everyone combed the Beatles albums looking for clues on McCartney’s death.”
“Do you remember that shit?” I said. “I’m somehow sure this is very fucken different.”
“What were the clues?” Ziggy asked. “I know on Sgt. Pepper it had Paul wearing an ‘OPD’ patch, for Officially Pronounced Dead, on his uniform jacket.”
“Yeah, and each one was pointing to a lyric on the back of the album,” Aragon said. “And there were the clues in the ‘A Day in the Life’ song and the ‘I buried Paul’ on the ‘I am the Walrus’ single.”
“The Abbey Road album had a ‘three’ in front of the Beatles on the back cover and the four crossing the street as the corpse, preacher, ditch digger and mourner.” I said. “And there was the ‘28 IF’ on a license plate, as in if he had lived he’d be 28.”
“O.K. Ray,” Aragon said. “Your turn. Give us an example and keep the exercise going.”
“You mean, this is a fucken game?” Ray asked.
“Everything we do is a fucken game,” Aragon said.
“O.K.,” Ray said. “I’ll think of something.”
After a pause, I said, “I think we’re pressing the time limit here,” although I wasn’t sure I could come up with another example so quick.
“Oh, wait,” Ray said. “Paul wore a black carnation on the Magical Mystery Tour album. The others were wearing red carnations.”
“Nice one, Ray,” Ziggy said. "You're catching on."
“Yeah, whose turn is it now?” Ray asked.
We looked at each other, but I ran out of the room when I heard the telephone ring. Saved by the bell, I guess.
“Speak,” I said as I answered the telephone.
“Rory? This is David. Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” I said. Are you in the city? What’s happening there?”
I made it a point to yell – not really to anyone in particular, “Dave’s on the phone – he’s got an update from New York.”
“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “There are thousands of people hanging out in Central Park near the Dakota. People of all ages are dropping flowers off at the Dakota and people are hanging out and singing at the Park. Some even have signs. We found the place because you can hear the singing and cries from a distance. Unbelievable. You can actually see the Dakota through the trees. It is unbelievable.”
“That’s wild,” I said. “How long are you staying?”
“I don’t know,” David said. “I just had to let someone know what’s going on here. You should be here. It’s the most calming feeling I’ve had since I heard about John Lennon getting shot. Everyone understands. The people here are all helping each other cope. It’s really O.K. to talk here; to cry here. I don’t think people will be leaving any time soon.”
“We planned on watching for you on the news,” I said. “We were going to check to see if you were singing in tune.”
“Forget that,” David said. “You know I won’t be. But we’ll be here tomorrow if anyone wants to meet us here. We’ll be at Grand Central between nine and ten in the morning if anyone wants to grab a train and meet us. Otherwise, we’ll be at the Park, but I don’t know if anyone will be able to find us.”
“I’ll let everyone know,” I said.
“Are you coming?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll let everyone here know, though.”
“It’s really amazing, man,” David said.
I briefly considered going to New York, but realized I didn’t have the train fare. I wasn’t about to hitchhike, although I have hitchhiked to farther places. I would just hate to be stranded on the highway for hours while I was already bummed out.
“You guys take care,” I said.
“You too,” David said as he hung up the telephone.
I went back to the living room and told them about David’s call. We all talked a bit longer, listened to more music, and eventually Aragon said he had to go.
“Should we expect to see you soon?” I asked. “I mean, you couldn’t even last two days in Boston without coming back to New Haven to see us.”
“Fuck you, Rory,” Aragon said. “I may not come back again. Unless Miles Davis dies or something.”
We all gave Aragon hugs, but none of us said anything; I think we were all upset with this good-bye.
After Aragon left, Ziggy said he wanted to put on one non-Lennon cassette for us to listen to; something he said would lift our spirits.
“This album put me back on an even keel that time I dropped THC with you guys and you tried to make me listen to that Lou Reed album,” Ziggy said.
Ziggy was a cool guy with a lot of varied tastes. We always loved it when he pulled this kind of stuff because he always picked out something we never heard of. He turned us on to some strange bands, like Pavlov’s Dog, and some great bands, like Fairport Convention. One night, he played a Gil Scott-Heron cassette; “The Revolution Will Not be Televised,” which blew us away - funky jazz, social commentary, cultural references and poetry. Jack and I bought the album the next day.
And the music Ziggy played wasn’t limited to one era. Once, while we were partying, he followed the first Black Sabbath album with a cassette by jazz musician Stan Kenton. He even played Les Paul for us once. He also knew that Aragon, Jack and I were always on the search for some good, new music. Ziggy actually was the one who turned us on to the Minutemen, which was a phenomenal band. This time, though, Ziggy put on a cassette that none of us expected: Tiny Tim.
“These songs are great,” Ziggy said. “I think most are from the 1930s and 1940s. Check out this version of ‘If I Could Stay 16 Forever.’ It’s fucken great.”
It was, but I was still ready to call it a night. Somehow Tiny Tim - as good as it was - was not great after dealing with the death of Lennon.
Unfortunately, I had to take part in one more challenge.
Ziggy poured a shot of Jack Daniels and set it on the floor in the middle of the room. No one wanted to drink anymore, which is what I guess made this challenge worthwhile.
“The game is rock food, but it has to be a band name; not a song title,” Ziggy said. “Who’s in?”
“I’m in,” Ray said.
“Me too,” I said. “Then I’m out of here.”
“I’ll fucken regret this,” Jack said. “I’m in.”
“Then I’ll start with Hot Tuna,” Ziggy said.
“Vanilla Fudge,” Ray said.
“Moby Grape,” I said.
“The Honeycombs,” Jack said. “And it was probably the first band with a female drummer.”
“Oh great,” Ziggy said. “A history lesson. Alright. Tangerine Dream.”
“Meat Loaf.”
“Strawberry Alarm Clock.”
“1910 Fruitgum Company.”
“No, that shouldn’t count,” I said. “That’s fucken bubblegum shit. That’s not rock.”
“Fuck you,” Ziggy said. “It counts. My turn. Hot Chocolate, they had that disco hit ‘You Sexy Thing.’ Are you going to say mine doesn’t count either?”
“It shouldn’t,” I said. “Disco sucks.”
There were starting to be longer pauses between names and I could tell no one wanted to take the shot.
“The Sugarcubes,” Ray said.
“The Electric Prunes.”
“Sweet.”
I don’t know why no one challenged Sweet, except everyone was so concerned with thinking up a band name that they didn’t pay too close attention to other people’s answers.
After each name, the person who said it looked relieved while the person whose turn it was next looked terrified. Sometimes we would play this game for weeks on the same topic. If we picked a topic and let song titles – or lines of songs – be included, it could go on forever.
“Bread,” Ziggy said. “And I’ll agree if you guys think it shouldn’t count.”
After a long pause, Ray finally said, “April Wine.”
We all had a blank stare. I think we had just about run out of names.
Why the fuck did it have to be my turn, though, I thought.
“Drunk fucker drunk,” Ziggy said.
“I think you mean DRINK fucker DRINK,” Jack said.
“Wait, I’m still thinking,” I said.
“I think it’s over,” Ziggy said.
“Wait, I’ve got it,” I said. “The Strawbs.”
“The Strawbs is a food?” Jack asked.
“Strawbs is short for strawberry,” I said.
“I don’t think so,” Jack said.
“I really do,” I said.
“I think you’re drinking,” Ziggy said.
“Hey, what the fuck,” I said. “I can’t lose on The Strawbs. Now when you guys let Bread and Hot Chocolate count. At least The Strawbs rocked. What about you Ray? You can deadlock this if you take my side.”
“Sorry,” Ray said. “You’re on your own on this one.”
“I fucken hate you guys,” I said.
“You should have tried Raspberrys instead of Strawberrys,” Jack said.
“Oh, now you’re going to help me?” I said. “Thanks a fucken lot.”
I drank the shot and announced a new game. “John Lennon. One song will be played at his memorial. You get to pick it. What is it?”
Everyone, almost at once, said ‘Imagine.’
“I think the better question would be, ‘You get to pick three songs; what are they?’,” Jack said.
“True,” I said. “But I’m sleeping on that one. I hugged everyone and headed upstairs. I planned on putting on the “Plastic Ono Band” album on the turntable when I got to my room, but I didn’t want to wake Sara. I sat by the window in my room, looking at Sara sleeping. God, she was beautiful, I thought.
I remembered the first time I saw her a few months back. It was Halloween and I had just gotten off work. All the bar and wait staff were dressed in costumes. One waiter, Jay, was dressed as Samurai waiter, which he base don the John Belushi character from Saturday Night Live. In fact, Jay wouldn’t even tell people the specials. He mumbled while holding up a piece of paper with the specials written on it. No one in the kitchen was dressed up, though, because it was hot as Hell in the kitchen in just a t-shirt. I couldn’t imagine wearing anything else. Jack and I, though, wore a couple of chef hats at the bar when we finished our shifts. I took the “Fuck Iran” button off my jacket and pinned it on my hat.
“Let me guess,” said Michael, tossing a few cocktail napkins on the bar in front of us. “You guys are supposed to be a couple of cooks. That, gentlemen, is a real fucken stretch.”
“Yeah, pretty unbelievable,” Jack said. “We’ll take two Tuborg drafts.”
Michael was dressed as a priest, complete with collar.
As he placed the two drafts in front of us, he looked to the two women, dressed as exaggerated punk rockers, sitting to our left.
“What can I get you ladies?” Michael asked.
“A couple of strawberry daiquiris, Father,” one said.
“My children,” Michael said. “A blender drink? That is a mortal sin.”
“Well, Father, what will my penance be?” one of the women playfully asked.
“Let me make these drinks and I’ll let you know,” Michael said.
“Hey fellas,” Kelly the manager said walking over to Jack and I. “I want you to meet the new hostess. Sara, this is Jack and Rory.”
Something about her stunned me. She looked beautiful in such a natural way. I couldn’t take my eyes off her while Kelly was making small talk with us. I felt a warm knot in my stomach.
“So, you boys are going out as a couple of chefs for Halloween?” Sara asked.
“Oh,” I said. “You noticed. Pretty scary, huh?”
“Terrifying,” she said.
I think my heart stopped with her smile.
“The scariest part is, they are really cooks here,” Jill said.
“What’s this supposed to mean?” asked Joan, a waitress, tapping my “Fuck Iran” button.
“It’s a button,” I said.
“Yeah, well I don’t like that they have hostages, but I won’t say something like that to all the people of Iran,” she said.
“Then don’t,” I said, irritated that this bitch was trying to ruin my day. “I’ll say it for you.”
Kelly and Sara were talking to Jack and I wanted to be part of that conversation.
“Why do you feel you have to attack an entire people?” Joan asked.
“I actually am not the one who attacked anyone,” I said.
“Hey Joan, why don’t you fucken lighten up,” Michael said, coming to my rescue. “I wouldn’t mind if they dropped a bomb and eliminated that whole fucken country. Hey Rory, give me the button and I’ll wear it tonight.”
“You guys are hopeless,” Joan said, walking away.
“It was certainly nice talking to you,” I said, although Joan didn’t turn around.
“I think it’s fine that you are expressing yourself,” Sara said with a smile.
The conversation was broken up by a startled customer who screamed when Jay pulled out his sword when she said she needed a sharper knife.
“I can’t believe the amount of baby-sitting I have to do here,” Kelly said. “Come on Sara.”
I was sure I could have watched Sara sleep for hours.
I really wanted to get a couple of hours sleep, but my mind was racing. I started thinking that I had to do something different tomorrow. I would have to take at least one step to better myself. With Aragon gone and John Lennon dead, I decided I didn’t want to be a mere observer anymore. Hell, even Jack decided to become a songwriter in the course of a day. I had to do something, but I wasn’t sure what. Maybe I needed a clean break. Quit the job? I kept thinking that going to school was probably the best route. I knew it would be fun to learn about writing. But at the same time I was terrified.
I started to wonder if Aragon was right about music? He always maintained that learning the correct way to play would only serve to dull any creative edge he had. The same could probably be said about writing.
Maybe I was just afraid of starting something from square one. I think I was also afraid that I would find out I sucked. Then what would I do? I had to leap into something, though. I certainly wasn’t getting any younger.
The one thing I was sure of was that I was through watching life from the sidelines. I felt like the guy in the song “The Kids” when he sings, “I am just the waterboy. The real game’s not over here.” Fuck that, I thought. It’s time I got into the game. But I knew I needed sleep first.
The whole day caught up with me, though, and, as I heard the Lennon songs and then the Beatle songs come from the other rooms in the house, I cried myself to sleep.
The sound of the alarm clock at 5:30 in the morning felt like someone was grabbing me by the collar and smashing my head against the floor. In one motion, it seemed, I jumped from the chair, punched the top of the clock to stop the alarm, grabbed a towel hanging on the back of the door and headed to the shower. As with every morning, I knew that if I didn’t act quickly I would drift back to sleep.
The John Lennon song “Mother” kept running through my head, so I figured I would toss on the “Plastic Ono Band” album when I got back to the room. I felt sore from sleeping on the chair–and then the floor–and I still felt at a loss because John Lennon was dead, but I also felt a bit upbeat from having such a good day.
The lump in my throat, that first came when Rudy told me about John Lennon, was still there. I figured it might stay forever. Then that song Sara was humming all day drifted into my head.
I wondered when Sara and Ray left and why no one bothered to wake me up. I wish I had a chance to say good-bye and would have loved to stake a claim to my bed after they left. I also started wondering if there was any way to smoke in the shower. That way, I figured I could combine two of my three favorite activities.
When I got back to my room, though, I found Sara and Ray sleeping on the bed.
At least they looked like they were having a comfortable sleep. I got dressed and set the alarm clock for 9 a.m. for them. I didn’t put any music on, but combed the room looking for a cigarette. Cigarettes are one of the casualties of a party at our house. If everyone starts running out, they search the house and grab any that are left out. People have gotten cigarettes out of my shirt pockets while I napped. A talented bunch of bastards, I thought, as I sat on the chair.
“Ray, jerk, you fell asleep,” Sara said, pushing Ray’s shoulder as she sat up.
“So did you,” Ray said without opening his eyes. “Leave me alone. I called home last night. Everything’s cool.”
“Do you need a ride to work Rory?” Sara asked.
“I can grab the bus,” I finally said. “You don’t really want to get up now. Go back to sleep.”
“I don’t mind getting up,” she said. “I’m a morning person, actually. Let me just hit the bathroom first.”
As she walked by me she gave me a hug.
“I really had a wonderful day with you yesterday,” Sara said.
“I had a wonderful day too,” I said. “And I can’t wait to tell everyone you spent the night in my room.”
“You wouldn’t do that, and if you did I’ll never spend the night in your room again,” she said as she walked out, humming that tune again.
Jack popped – or maybe sleep staggered – into my room moments later.
“What are you playing?” Jack asked.
“I’m not playing anything,” I said, still on my cigarette search. “What are you doing up? You know, you look like hell.”
“I was actually on the floor in the next room,” Jack said. “I thought I heard that song ‘Sisters, O Sisters’ coming from your room. Maybe I’m hearing things. I thought maybe you were humming along with it. I need to get back to sleep. But we’ll have to talk later. I think we may have a few people interested in seeing ‘Harold and Maude’ at the Lincoln Theater tonight.”
Alright,” I said. “Get some sleep. I’ll see you later.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “We'll probably all meet at Malone’s Tavern after work.
“Ah, a Malone’s run,” I said, wishing I was going back to sleep. “I’m in.”
Once Sara came back, we figured she could get her bag from Fitzwilly’s – something we forgot to do the day before – and then she could swing back and get Ray.
“You know,” I said as we drove downtown. “I was thinking about our conversation yesterday, when we talked about always saying good-bye and letting people leave our lives. Well, I thought maybe we can both try something different.”
“Like what?” Sara asked.
“Well, maybe we should both sit down and write a letter to an old friend,” I said. “We could track down the right address and mail it out. What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s kind of early for this, isn’t it? What are the letters going to say?”
“Nothing heavy,” I said. “Just a ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ letter.”
“You know, that’s not a bad idea,” Sara said. “It’s a good first step kind of move. But it’s still early.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Every once in a while, I come up with a pretty good one.”
Since we were early, we stopped by the Yankee Doodle, which is a tiny breakfast joint near Fitzwilly’s, and ordered a coffee and tea to go. I also bought a pack of Marlboros.
“Why don’t we just drink it in there?” Sara asked as we walked out into the chilly morning.
“Because I know the perfect spot for a morning tea and cigarette,” I said.
We went into the back door of Fitzwilly’s and up the concrete stairs to the second floor, where there was the kitchen and more dining room seating. In the corner of the stairway, behind the ice machine, was an iron ladder leading to a doorway onto the roof.
“You are kidding? Aren’t you?” Sara said as I grabbed hold of the ladder.
“No, but I don’t think we can make it with the coffee and tea, set them on the ice machine,” I said. “Follow me, you’ll enjoy it, really.”
“Alright,” she said.
I moved the never-pushed-closed lock from the chain and unwrapped the chain from the handle, pushing up the doorway to the roof. Once onto the roof, I reached down and helped Sara through the doorway.
“Well, here’s New Haven,” I said pointing out to the city as I unwrapped the cigarettes.
“Amazing,” she said.
Fitzwilly’s was not the tallest building in town, but it was almost as tall as any other building in the Broadway area and the roof provided a great view of the neighborhood, as well as the Yale rooftops – which were probably the best architectured rooftops in the world. You couldn’t see too far in either direction, down Elm Street towards the Green on one side and towards Rudy’s and Bulldog Pizza on the other side. The surrounding Broadway area, with the large signs for Cutler’s Record Shop and the Yale Co-Op staring back at you, looked alive from the roof. It provided a whole different perspective of New Haven.
“I would love to draw from up here,” Sara said.
“You’d have to do it in the morning because they aren’t too fond of letting anyone up here,” I said. “I come up here sometimes if I get here before seven. I’d love to catch a sunset up here. It’s like an observation deck, and we can just check out all these people rushing into the Greek Village convenience store or just driving by as they head to work.”
I had always thought the Fitzwilly’s roof would have been an ideal spot to make love, although I figured the timing really wasn’t right to mention that.
“This place has everything but heat,” Sara said.
“Yeah, it’s cold,” I said as I put my arms around her and gave her a kiss. “So, how did this happen between us yesterday?”
“Oh, come on, you don’t remember the great day we had?” she said.
“Yeah, how could I forget?” I said. “I mean. I don’t know, how. . .So many things could have happened. It just seems like we easily could have missed each other yesterday. It’s just amazing that everything worked out like it did.”
“Maybe there is no answer to how it happened,” she said. “You and your friends seem like they need to have answers for everything. Ray is the same way. Maybe we were just pulled together by some cosmic force. I don’t know. A lot of things are left to chance. Look, if we didn’t keep bumping into each other at the restaurant before my shifts started, I would have never known who you were or that you are a nice guy and yesterday probably would never have happened. But that in itself doesn’t account for too much. Once we were together yesterday, everything worked fine and that’s what’s more important. That’s something we have control over. For me, I really liked the way you wanted to share all your favorite spots with me. It made me feel special. I had a lot of fun.”
After a brief pause, she added, “Oh, I’m rambling now. I’m sorry.”
“No. Rambling’s good, I do it all the time,” I said. “Besides, that made a lot of sense. I had a lot of fun, too. I just know I really like hanging out with you.”
“So, will I see you here when I come into work at 4:15 or will you be long gone by then?” Sara asked.
“Depends on how my day goes,” I said. “But I tend to be here at 4:15.”
“What do you have planned?” she asked as we headed towards the ladder.
“Whenever I’m done with work, I plan to go to Goldie’s and look for a base guitar teacher, head over to Southern Connecticut State College and get an enrollment application and then hit Festoons to see if they had any good records come in,” I said. “Of course, I have to find a newspaper and read Doonesbury before I do anything else today.”
“That’s a pretty full day,” Sara said as she climbed back into the building. “You’re not leaving anything to chance there.”
“Yeah, but I’ll still probably be here when you come to work,” I said.
“You are usually here when the dinner shift starts,” she said, climbing down the ladder. “I noticed that.”
“Oh you did, huh?” I said, catching one last glimpse of the chilly New Haven morning skyline before climbing back into the building.
posted by Kane | 12:52 PM
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