The Colt 45 Chronicle #67

The goal for the holiday weekend is to post a letter a day from "The Colt 45 Chronicle," a project initiated January of last year (the 2012 season) during the Seahawks playoff elimination in Atlanta. For some reason at halftime, sizzling with mental trauma brought on by the prospect that Seattle's magical young NFL team would soon have their Super Bowl run aborted, I went hunting for a spontaneous prose document I had typed while living as a bachelor in Washington Heights over twenty years ago. I found it in a storage space; next to it was also a collection of letters composed during my first two years in New York City. 

The time was 1988 to 1990. I was married. My wife and I lived in a married-student housing high rise on the campus of Columbia University Medical School. Our marriage was collapsing. The letters chronicle this collapse obliquely; it has to be interpreted through the tea leaves of my constant pining for Berkeley, the college town from whence we came.

There are some persistent themes to these old letters besides waxing for the West Coast: the San Francisco 49ers, Cynicism (I was enamored with the idea that a philosophical school diametrically opposed to Platonism traced back to Socrates, and that school argued that a short cut to virtue existed by observing the behavior of animals) and of course the mundane horror of worklife.

The larger goal is to finish this letter collection off and then move on to the spontaneous prose Shit Stinks, a time of high drama.

Autumn 1988

Roger Craig rushed for almost 200 yards, and they don't telecast a single 49ers game here. So all I can do is read up on a few highlights in the Monday UPI release. I hope I didn't sound too bombastic and yahoo during my recapitulation of the aforementioned brawl. I worry about this, about my frat-boy pride that kicks like a cowboy to get out. But I see it in there and I know what's going on. My new pre-work fantasy is to drive across the country in December, after I quit my job. Take the ol' squeaky stallion on the road at least one more time; see the country during winter; take a different route from this summer's; have a car to tool around California/Oregon when we visit out West. Sooner still, Ashley and I have a trip to Boston in mind -- Thanksgiving -- to pay a visit to her cousin Sarah: smoke some dope, feel sanded down, drink a pot of Turkish coffee, do a set or two of push-ups in the bathroom, and lay on her painted-red wood floor. I've been nibbling at quite a few titles recently. Diogenes Laertius' LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS was this morning's subway selection. I read about Antisthenes and Diogenes of Sinope, the two great Cynic fathers. A lot of Plato bashing, like the time Antisthenes went to Plato's house to call on him but finds him sick and puking; so he says, "Plato, I see the bile, but not the pride." (I like that one.) I also liked the one where Diogenes comes upon a youth sunbathing in an exposed position, and says, "You best be careful boy or someone will spear you in the backside with a dart."

I wake up every morning just before seven. I look over at Ashley and she is wide-mouthed and dead to the world. Snuz is holding down the fort. at the bottom corner of the bed. The radio goes on two-minutes later; if I'm lucky, it's sports talk or the weather or the news; but a lot of times it's rancid fifties "nostalgia rock." I hit that shit off immediately. I keep my eyes open for thirty seconds and I'm awake. I don't have to take a shower because I've done it the night before. Coffee is the first stop. So I do that; put on my clothes; take a shit; wash my face and brush my teeth; go out the door and push the elevator button; drop down with some future Bush voters off to early-morning rounds at Columbia Presbyterian -- I've already got my book out at this point. I walk past all the sullen security guards listening to the radio, and pass through the two glass doors right out into the cold weather. It's a sprint to the subway; someone is gaining on you so try to crank it up a notch and keep pace. And then, Bam! You smell the dirt/grease/electricity and know you're home free. Skipping down the stairs, building momentum, you gird up your loins and pop the turnstiles hard. Then it's an attempt to be Tarzan in the Congo, testing all your faculties, "Is the train coming? Should I make a break for it?" You cock your head, point your ear, watch what others are doing . . . .

I never thought what was after Berkeley, what was after the West; so all this is still pretty shocking. I just did it, we just did it, and now we're here. For a good long while. And needless to say it's too different to like right off the bat. But I really feel that the only thing that is good in me is the West, So every time I feel positive about being out here I automatically begin to feel the demon in me. The West is still the frontier, is still space and freedom compared to this place. I lived in that shithole apartment like it was my life, for five years, with all the toil, like women, and Cain, and Job. I worked hard. Since I was eighteen. And I was just about to figure things out, which was only because I was just about to leave. I wish I could apologize, effusively, like a Pope. To all the people . . . .

The Colt 45 Chronicle #25

This letter, number 25, highlights three great loves of mine from my early-20s youth: Thomas Hardy's final novel, Jude the Obscure (1895); the San Francisco 49ers of the 1980s; and bar brawling/street fighting. After reading it -- it's deeply embarrassing -- I realize it's from an era long gone. Nowadays such a brawl often ends up with gunfire. I remember that the bar was across the street from the southeast corner of Tompkins Square Park. The evening described took place not too long after the Tompkins Square Park Riot. The letter is addressed to my college buddy Niall who was attending law school back in San Francisco.

Autumn 1988

God, if only we were one pint of the man that Jude was. -- From Arabella to Sue, he drove the length of the gridiron. Taking the ball off tackle, like Roger Craig, high knee action and three linebackers piggybacking, he strode to Marygreen, in the rain, for fucking paydirt. How about the second marriage in the butcher's shop? The blinds were drawn so the morning sun couldn't get in, the booze was still being hooched, and Arabella looked as pretty as a 12-week-old cadaver. Yeeouww! There's a wedding. I got into a fight on Friday with a big fat bouncer at an East Village bar. It all started when he wouldn't let Ashley back into the bar. We had all stepped outside to go to another bar; it was about 1:30 AM; but she had left one her fucking knitted hats, and she had to go back inside and search for it. To make a long story short, I told the guy to let me back in to get it because Ashley had started to freak out -- screaming obscenities and grabbing at the guy. I searched and searched and finally found it, but when I got back outside the situation had elevated into something even uglier than when I'd left. -- Ashley is totally drunk and screaming at the guy; he pushes her, and then Terri goes crazy -- because he pushes Ashley -- and starts hitting this big fat asshole. Okay, so now it's my turn. I see that Terri is going wild and that this guy might slug here. So I step in. We do the obligatory lip-to-lip macho smooch. He thinks he's got a poo-see on his hands. -- I was wearing an Art Quinn tweed and a knit sweater. He started in on the foreplay oration, you know, the "Watta ya gonna do? Are ya gonna party?" shtick. But he became suddenly surprised, eyes changing dilation, when he heard that I knew how to converse in the same tongue. I don't know exactly what my riposte was, but it was something I had said before, in a similar situation, with an equal amount of fuck-you fearlessness. Then, all of sudden, I was being hurled backward, diving and flipping into the rainy-wet sidewalk. Apparently Tweedledum -- big fat asshole #2 -- had grabbed me from behind and tore me down. But that was it; that was all I could take; that was the moment that I saw red; that was the moment that Peter Parker traded in his reporter's badge and his camera for the Spidey suit. -- I shot up -- Tweedledum was shouting, "Nobody fucks with my friend!" -- and I went for Tweedledee. I let out the Bosworth grunt, driving Dee hard, about ten feet, into a parked car. -- He felt like an old sofa bed, a lot of puff padding, and you could feel the thin sinews underneath, springs as thin as guitar string. And I knew my body felt hard to him. I was the road. And I took him off his feet and down to the pavement. And no fear filled my body. I knew he was scared. (Lucky for me, in hindsight, I had been following my eighty-push-up-a-day regimen for that week.) But then Dum ran up and started dropping fists on my head; and the little ladies, Terri and Ashley, came out the woods like screaming furies, long finger nails and crazy energy, making everything a pot of boiling Hollywood water. This gave me an opportunity to get on my feet, which I did, and I started driving into both Dee and Dum. And I knew that I had already won the battle; I knew that they couldn't beat me: I was stronger than they were, spiritually, physically, whatever; and they knew it. They could bloody me and rip at me and go for my eyes, but they knew it wouldn't beat me. My equilibrium was solid. I wasn't wild. I was determined and ready to keep going. So they backed off. There was a lot of shouting and cussing afterward, but they weren't ready to go again. I got a few bruises, on my neck and head, but I fancy that they're worth it.

The Colt 45 Chronicle #4

I worked with both Oliver and Lyn at Doe Library -- actually a book delivery service called Baker that was part of Doe. They were friends approaching the status of kin. They're the couple, referred to in a previous post, who my wife and I were with when we came across the guy mugged and moaning on the sidewalk in front of the Fort Washington Men's Shelter.

Looking back on my university years this Super Bowl weekend I realize that one of my finest achievements of that era was to suffer through every single game of the 49ers 1985 season.  I did that with Oliver. 

That season San Francisco was coming off a big Super Bowl win against Don Shula's Dolphins. Expectations were high for a repeat. On Sundays my wife and I would get into a Volkswagen Beetle (that we had purchased from another one of my Baker coworkers) and drive south down Telegraph to where Oliver and Lyn had a sweet little duplex cottage at the Berkeley-Oakland border. We'd usually bring beer and, if it was a game with a 10 AM kickoff, we'd stop off along the way at Dream Fluff Donuts. Oliver and Lyn were excellent hosts. Their home was always clean; their TV large; and they always prepared food.

The season opener was on the road in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome against a mediocre Vikings team. San Francisco lost and Oliver, keenly perceptive when identifying the dark cast of clouds, said something to the effect of, "Get ready. It's going to be this way the whole year."

I wasn't prepared to accept that. I thought the loss was a one-off. How many times are you going to fumble seven times in a single game? And sure enough the next two weeks the 49ers chalked up impressive wins against the Falcons and the Raiders. But then the turd again appeared in the punch bowl when New Orleans, a weak divisional opponent, came into Candlestick and beat the 49ers in the fourth quarter. David Wilson threw for more yards than Joe Montana and Wayne Wilson out-rushed Wendell Tyler. I don't recall much of this game, other than when I study the box score a mist of pain settles anew on my heart.

After beating Atlanta again, the 49ers hosted the ascendant "Super Bowl Shuffle" Bears on a perfect sunny day at Candlestick. Walter Payton ran the ball down our throats and the vaunted Bill Walsh offense was blanked in the second half by Buddy Ryan's 46 defense. Oliver and I were speechless. I remember stumbling out into the bright California autumn sun afterwards. Oliver and Lyn's cottage was tucked back off the street; they had a nice front yard with grass and flowering plants and small trees; it was a little Shangri La. And there I stood stunned, reeling in their little Shangri La; the world had turned upside down. Mike Ditka must have felt the same way because he was arrested after the game for drunk driving.

The 49ers were .500 at this point, but worse was to come the following week on the road at the Pontiac Silverdome. This was for me the nadir (excluding the the season-ending, soul-crunching Wild Card Round playoff loss to New York in an icy Giants Stadium). I sat on Oliver and Lyn's couch drunk by 10:30 AM, eating glazed donuts while my wife knit a sweater next to me. When Detroit scored first on a punt return Oliver and I bellowed in agony. And it would just get worse. Lions running back James Jones rushed 30 times for 116 yards; Eddie Murray kicked three field goals; and Joe Montana was ineffective, passing for less than a hundred yards. By the time the game was over at 1 o'clock I was wasted; the day ruined. Oliver once again was speechless. I went home and slept the rest of the afternoon away.

The season, close to the halfway point, would turn around for San Francisco. There was the one-point loss to Denver on Monday Night Football that was questionable due to a snowball tossed from the Mile High Stadium seats as holder Matt Cavanaugh and Ray Wersching attempted the game-winning field goal. Then there was another loss on Monday Night Football to the division arch-rival Los Angeles Rams led by Dieter Brock. But other than those two games the 49ers won the rest of year including an amazingly gritty victory against the despised Cowboys to close out the regular season. Roger Craig became the first player in NFL history to rush  for 1,000 yards and receive 1,000 yards in a single season.

That tough win against Dallas cost San Francisco. Everyone was banged up for the playoff game against the Giants at the Meadowlands. Ronnie Lott basically played with one arm after getting a finger mangled in the ear hole of a Cowboys helmet. Roger Craig had two sore knees and could hardly walk let alone run, cut and take hits on frozen Astro Turf. Wendell Tyler returned early from knee surgery to provide a spark for San Francisco in the second half. It was a truly selfless, heroic effort, but it didn't stop the Parcells Giants from administering a brutal 17-3 thrashing.

I was devastated. Oliver and I didn't watch the game together. I was at my wife's mother's house in snowy Southern Oregon. I was in excruciating pain. I had completely transferred my identity to that team. So when they were hurt and humiliated so was I. No one around could understand what I was feeling. Oliver was 350 miles south. My wife was mildly sympathetic, but she really didn't have a clue as to the kind of pain I was in. I remember after the game I had to help lug a hide-a-bed sofa through the snow and it felt like I was performing Stations of the Cross. I was that low.

I was twenty-one. Little did I know that the 1985 San Francisco 49ers season, with its bright promise overshadowed by crushing disappointment, would serve as an accurate template for adult life ahead; in this experience of suffering I am forever bonded with my buddy Oliver.

The letter below, the fourth installment taken from a folder I retrieved from storage as I sizzled in agony during the Seahawks failed comeback attempt against the Falcons three weeks ago, is one of the few that I actually dated. The poetry reading of my friend Ben that I refer to was noteworthy in that I saw pre-Poetry Grand Slam Champion Paul Beatty read stuff that would end up in Big Bank Take Little Bank. He was awesome that night. The friend recuperating from a broken back in the hospital was a paralegal who was my supervisor at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. I introduced him to the literary pleasures of Charles Bukowski, to whom he wrote and received a reply.

11/05/89

I want to thank you Oliver and Lyn for sending those cards along. I've got 'em up on the refrigerator: the Jesus crucified and the Palenque tomb; the Giants getting their butts kicked by Dave Stewart and the drunk getting bruised up for a half an hour by your two Mexican buddies.

I saw Ben's poetry reading when he was here in New York a couple of weeks ago. It was at St. Mark's Church. It was nice and short. I took off immediately afterward. Ashley has me on this new thing where I can't drink in public; and since everybody was going out to drink after the show, I figured it'd be best if I didn't hang around.

You've got to wake up and sniff the coffee grinds sometime, Oliver. I mean come on, best case scenario the Giants couldn't've beat the A's; I mean jeez, Tony Phillips outhit and outplayed Robbie Thompson -- what does that say? I'll tell ya, it says that it was the A's year, plain and simple.

I just got back fron Brooklyn. I took the B line out to see a friend who's in the hospital at 55th and 2nd Ave. He broke his back falling down a flight stairs. He was drunk -- too drunk to walk down a flight of stairs. The hospital is in a neighborhood that looks a lot like East Oakland; so to make my scenic tour a touch more embracing I stopped off at a corner market and got myself a couple of 16 oz. Colt 45's. I perused the streets, sipped my beer, and found the hospital. I took the elevator up to the third floor, meandered down one hall and then up another, passed a few surly looking cops (apparently there because of some bank robber they had freshly shot), poked my head in the door of rm. 3326 and bam! -- there he was: looking doped up and miserable and like he hadn't had a shower in thirty days (his hair looked like a scarecrow's). I delivered him some parcels, chatted peaceably for fifty minutes (he really was doped up), said my goodbyes, and took off back into the East-Oakland-Brooklyn night. I got back on the subway at 52nd and 4th Ave. The Colt was doing me just right. When I walked on the train the first thing I noticed was how clean it was. -- It shone like lemons and polished porcelain and oily hair. Nobody was on the train except for me and maybe three other people. I started thinking about a plain and simple life. I started thinking about a big old house, after it'd been scrubbed and painted; not a new house, but an old house; -- an old house you'd sweat over and pour into, one that'd breathe back golden comfort and white light. Aw shit, where am I gonna find that outside of a beer can and a subway car?

Shut Off the Idiot Box

I've done something I haven't done all season. Shut off a football game -- a divisional playoff game no less, Texans-Patriots -- before the game is over. Ninkovich's interception of Schaub was all I could take and I couldn't take anymore. I didn't think I'd make it out the apartment today but after I shut off the TV I washed the dishes in the sink and actually took the recycling downstairs. I opened a fortune cookie that had been sitting on my cutting board for the last four days. It read, "A quiet evening with friends is the best tonic for a long day." So now I'm listening to some Iron & Wine albums I checked out from the library, drinking a cup of green tea and soon I'll pick up a book. (I'm still checking the Texans-Patriots game online.)

Here's a doomsday scenario for this bachelor. An Atlanta-New England Super Bowl. I'm confident that the 49ers can rush Matt Ryan in a way that the Seahawks were unable to.  But domes on the road are tough.  And, sure, the Ravens might be a team of destiny, but they're beat up from double OT. So it's a distinct possibility that we'll be watching the most unappetizing spectacle of Brady vs. Ryan in the Superdome.

I haven't felt as low after a playoff loss since Roger Craig fumbled in the 1990 NFC Championship Game (against a Belichik coached defense). It spelled the end of the Montana-era hegemony of the San Francsico 49ers. I had just moved from Morningside Heights back to Washington Heights. I was low, so low after that game that I was staring down at myself from outside my body. I referred to this period -- the break-up of my marriage and then the failure of San Francisco to three-peat -- as "Valerie disappears the 49ers umbrella." Valerie was a young lady I met on the streets of Upper Manhattan and with whom I spent a few sad nights. The 49ers umbrella was the shield from emotional harm provided by being a San Francisco football fan.

During the Seahawks comeback in the second half of today's game I fished out of storage my attempt at a spontaneous prose document -- I wouldn't want to call it a novel, more like a proto-blog written to myself on a manual typewriter -- from the period when "Valerie disappears the 49ers umbrella." It was my first official run at being a bachelor, a time of no little drama and a great deal of suffering. Hopefully in the days going forward I'll have the time to post it here. You'll read of street fights, bar fights, whores, malt liquor, subways -- the whole pitiful yarn of a young man trying to be sincere in the big city.