Dee Dee Ramone Figures Into Things (2)

Dee Dee Ramone Figures Into Things 

(Part 2 of 3) How to Care About It in the Wrong Way 

During a summer rainstorm that you could hear from inside a windowless bar on California near Diversey, I got stuck in a longer conversation between my neighbor, Brian, and a skinhead.
        We were lined up at the stools and initially talked about leather jackets. I wanted to know where Brian bought his. My old jacket got ruined through rips and soakings.
In minutes I lost all footing in the conversation, which had turned to Johnny Thunders, who I knew of only as a tattoo on the arms of bleach headed punks.

        Brian and the skinhead worked me through Johnny Thunders' history with the New York Dolls, into The Heartbreakers and up to his New Orlean's death and posthumous rising stardom in books and record shops.
        Then I remembered what I read in Poison Heart, and I said, "Hey, didn't Johnny Thunders steal a song from Dee Dee Ramone? Was it Chinese Rocks?"
        Then skinhead looked into space.
        "Oh no!" he said. "That has never been established." 
        Seeing this, the bartender stopped pouring a draft and watched us from a few feet away as the skinhead explained to me with the aggression of a man abused that Thunders, as a songwriter, played miles ahead of DeeDee. 
        And further, that the man who fronted The Heartbreakers would never stoop to steal a song in all his life. 
        "Especially not from a Ramone!"
        "But maybe he'd steal your watch for heroin," I guessed. Then I got a dirty look. Eventually, Brian was talking hockey and then I knew it was really time to leave. 

Dee Dee Ramone Figures Into Things

Dee Dee Ramone Figures Into Things

(Part 1 of 3) Where Songs Can Come From

Rather than visit the library or plan a quicker way to teach Huck Finn, I usually slink around collecting stories about bass players, almost exclusively from punk bands. I do it unprofessionally and lazily, but putting the years in perspective, its graduated from coincidence to hobby. How Sting claps slowly, and like a caveman. Or the way Kira Roessler who played bass for five Black Flag albums used to respond to groping fans at shows: by smashing them in the jaw or eye socket with her heavy bass's body, all without missing a note any of the thousands of notes she touched off without a pick.

A recent continuation of this collection has been reading DeeDee Ramone's first book, Poison Heart. My experience oscillated between wanting to light some sage or a sizeable candle to put DeeDee's soul to rest and giggling over his ritual of loss: his headhitting, his life of setback and willpower to whirlpool himself into disasters. (Here place two examples from text).

Born to an unlucky young German mother and an older alcoholic US vet in 50s Berlin, you get the feeling that Dee Dee never had a chance to be anything other than a Ramone. Not a hotdog vendor with a cart in the park nor a candy store owner and not a doorman in a suit, career choices he regretted not choosing.

Regrets like these cause Dee Dee to dash through apartment doors away from police and Phil Spector, and to leap from the tour van into Florida swampland or congested intersections, his fellow bandmates yelling, "Dee Dee, no!" but only half able to dismiss one of the lead songwriters.

I Turned the Heater On

Today I found a grey hair on my head. Or maybe it was white? My Grandma and aunts and uncles have white hair. That’s what I’d like, though my dad is grey, though he can grow a mustache and I cannot, so maybe I’ll get the hair I want.  

I’ve been listening to New Order here and there, which is skinny music. Then I drink a stout, which is fat beer.

But both New Order and stout are important for a meaningful winter walking in the sun or being by the window feeling satisfied with your choice of having a beer that is actually almost a solid and listening to a band that is more melodic than Joy Division but not less deep. The song “Ceremony” is important to me in title and feel, and it reminds me of the end of The Third Man, which every dopey melodramaticist enjoys.

Yesterday Brianna and I were bumping around and saw Brendan. He and I have the same black jean jacket and we all talked about rock music and cats and screenprinting. I don’t think he has washed his jean jacket once and it is an excellent color. It has a patina.

I should never wash my jean jackets or hoodies; just let them collect color and leave them in the freezer for a week like the man in Pittsburgh said in a song:

            Put your jeans in the freezer / they’ll feel good

            Put your jeans in the freezer/ smell like they should

Matt Whispers, I saw him last week and he recommended I read Borges’ short book, A History of Iniquities, which he has out from the library. I use my money to get stout and books. One day I’ll give up stout, but books, nope. I don’t think so.   

Sometimes I ride my bike and my bone fingers hurt from the rattle. But that’s all right because I need something to complain about.

Here and there I worry about things – the plumbing in my apartment, when I will teach sentence variation lessons, and how to assess it. That’s in my DNA, I know it’s normal. Deeper, I get concern that unfair things happen to people I love, or that I do not speak to my friends often enough because I’m too busy pacing or grading or almost grading and zineing or blogging instead, but I think that is probably adulthood.

Generally I am in favor of staying at some place until 3am with my friends and to have it be in the winter when it’s snowing and we all have to be driven home.   

My Dad called and asked if I wanted one of my Grandpa’s flat Irish caps. He says he found a box in his dad’s closet. They are either Scottish or Italian or English nobleman by origin, but if I were a revisionist, I’d say they were formed in Ireland.

I do want one my Grandpa’s hats, but I will never wear it outside of the house. Seems like the kind of hat you wear if you lift things for a living. And I sure don’t. But I will wear it around my apartment when nobody is near, and take on my Grandpa’s powers of being organized and driven, and being nervous, and saying houryoudoin and merciless handshakes.     

Valentine Note

I have been a wicked blogger, never posting. Now I'm biding my time or something, backlogging posts. Here is an old story that never found a home. Names have not been changed, and nobody was hurt, really. As per usual with these story things, my emotional climate is pretty regular afterward. Think I saw this lady on the bus last year. Elvis pinball machine, RIP. Anyhow! A seasonal posting. 

Rachel was the sexy librarian. We worked together. Once when I was clunking my bookcart out from an ancient freight elevator decorated in fraternity hieroglyphs and teenage clichés, the rear left wheel caught on the floor’s threshold and a deluge of hard covers spilled across the linoleum. Rachel stood nearby wearing a corduroy hat. Wordlessly, she started piling books and slipping them back on my cart. I was trying to figure that hat out while she smiled at me and left, disappearing into the book stacks.

I explained the event to my roommate, Munchie, recalling that the books were mostly the letters and memos of Warren Harding.

“Someone must’ve checked out all those books in a row,” he said, distracted. “Someone made the biggest mistake of their life…”

I looked at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “what did you say her name was again?”

She had a nice Specials patch clipped on her ratty backpack so I told her so. (In case you’ve never heard The Specials, listen to “Monkey Man.”) Rachel and I became eFriends with email. For a week we exchanged cryptic notes. Giving me smiles and nods as we passed through the stacks, she didn’t seem to want conversation. But she kept sending me reading lists. Annotated lists of titles to check out from the stacks. Shamefully, I read through one of the lists.

One night before closing I read some Rilke, a poem called “The Lute.” I read it in my little booth by the revolving doors. Some people swished in and I forgot to check their IDs. “If you wish to describe 
my body,” goes the poem, “…
 speak of me as you would of a ripe/
full-bodied fig. Exaggerate.” I couldn’t help but think she was trying to tell me something. Did it mean pursuit?

One night at Skylark, the 22^nd street bar under the overpass, I was drinking with this marketing major who was working on a fashion blog. He told me about Paulo Coehlo and how Coehlo solved all his problems. I said no thanks I’ve already got a reading list. Then my friend Munchie padded in like an old dog, wet and smelling of smoke. He scrunched into the booth with us and laid his claims for affection on Rachel.

“You can’t lay your claims on someone,” said the marketing major, “people aren’t property!” 

“We know, we know, would you shut up?” I said. “It’s just a fun cowboy expression.”

The Librarian knew how to work things. She ran the heart-strings ragged for a month. Eventually, and at the height of my form, I made it about halfway through her reading list and recorded her a mixtape. I travailed a blizzard to find a store selling cassette tapes. I had to buy a 12-pack of them; you can’t buy single tapes anymore.

Despite coercion, she did not accept the tape. We were to meet in the library. I sent her a note via email:

“I have made you a tape, it’s very good. It’s probably worth a lot of money, too, if you decide to sell it. Meet up this afternoon? –Jim”

“I’m sick,” her email said. “And what’s more, I don’t have a tape player.”

Did I mention it happened to be Valentine’s Day? Our affections became a mockery when she showed up at our Anti-Valentine’s party, lamenting her lack of a boyfriend.

            “Boy, you really are sick!” I said, but nobody heard my joke and she pretended to ignore me, so I made it again, only louder, then she glanced at me as of to say “stop.” Halfway through the evening Munchie assured me she had laid claims on him, too.

We all had our hearts in the fire for a while there. Maybe not our hearts.

Everyone was surprised a week later when she started dating the video game programmer. It came to a head around 11pm on a Thursday at Skylark. The programmer had a beard and a heavy watch. My friend Ange and I angled ourselves across the bar. Ange popped the top button on my collar in Rachel’s eyesight. Rachel hung her hat on the coat hook. She stared at my dead-eyed from the Elvis pinball machine. We were all shook up. 

Booked - The Way We Sleep

Hey faithful readers, an essay I wrote on sleep, Catholicism, and death appears here with pieces by fellow Chicagoans Billy Lombardo and Jeffrey Brown plus fun others who you can discover on your own. 

As of now, they're shucking these glossy bad boys for $10 with free shipping. I might  rewrite/remix the heck out of this essay later and release 20 copies as a choose your own adventure zine, but hey, this is a cool book and Curbside Splendor is a grand supporter of Chicago writing. My friends Billy and Frank gave me some heavy editing advice and I'm finally starting to figure out this essay form.

Anyway, I ordered a copy few weeks ago. If you don't need to add another book to your life, I'll show you mine over coffee and you can humor me since this is my first book-thing I've been in.  

As to  the cover, if it were of me, the picture would display --  

• a frail man child spooning a pillow 
• drool all over the place 
• and since I moved, no bed frame, floor mattress 
• no facial hair and babe less.    
• but isn't it a pleasing blue? Appearing below, a message from the publishers: 

The Way We Sleep is on Black Friday sale for TEN FREAKIN’ BUCKS (FREE SHIPPING!!!) from Curbside Splendor Publishing this weekend.Jessa Marsh and I are honestly just insanely proud of this thing we’ve been able to put together over the last 2 years with so many creative, talented people, working with friends and making new ones along the way. I know I’m biased on this, but if you’re literary friends or friends who are just into cool stuff, you really can’t go wrong buying this anthology for $10. And you didn’t even have to sleep outside Best Buy all week to get it! Get it today at http://curbsidesplendor.bigcartel.com/product/way-we-sleep

Prose Poem #5

Here is another piece I wrote, this one about 

the neighborhood on 111th and Western.  

"Beverly"

The rosary in my Grandma’s hands holds Oh My Gods in the beads: slinks to life on the table, shivers when she turns away.
          My one grandfather is in the cemetery. The other chops ox tail in the kitchen. He has dim eyesight, he has not told me of his friend who suffered from severed head, which Latino parks I am not to visit, or that my oldest uncle’s wife has left him for an Argentine florist. “Infidelity is the risk of the entrepreneur,” my grandfather will say, tapping his union pin. 

Bands/Shows/Nights

Last night I saw a new play by Beau O'Reilly, a Chicago playwright and director. My
friend Charlotte drove me. She and I took one of O'Reilly's week-long classes in Iowa
City last summer. He's got one of these immense personalities that fills a room when he
speaks, so we thought it'd be good to see him onstage, as he acts in this recent play.

I've spent many hours on stage, in varying states of consciousness, steadily getting sharper
in recent years. Playing bass in bands, my big thump and crush Fender keeps time with a lot
of musicians named Dan, and many others with single syllable names, Pat, Bobby, Brett, Ben.

My favorite frontmen and the occasional women were probably better with talk than with
song. I hear Tom Waits is like that, but I've never seen him. Once, a band called Horse
threatened to murder the entire front row if another audience kid called the piano player
Napoleon Dynamite again. After the threat, the singer kept whipping people with his mic
cord and made fun of everyone for having the same haircut. It was beautiful.

The play I saw is Evanston, Which is Over There. The TV Guide type summary might read,
"neurotic people enter middle age in Roger's Park," but I don't know what else. There were
two chairs, a small stage, and O'Reilly plays a side bit as an old prostitute who's slept with
Ray Charles and BB King. There are aging musicians, loser sons, Montenegrins, lovers gone
friends. At one point these two ladies double as an elevator; at this my heart had palpitations.

I tried to make sure everyone in my dreamband Krayola acts as a defacto frontman. Our
playing can be staggeringly bad due to tuning and nerves. But everyone has to talk. We
have routines at practice that take a second life on stage. Our music set is so short, I try
to see how long we can go without playing a song. Only five minutes is the answer.

Some nights, I've looked at the crowd with shame and grief, but afterward people ask us
back. I think because of our banter. But I never think about acting and I am a bad, bad
dancer. Still, I would like to write a short play if an idea ever came. Part of me also
wants to drink coffee in Roger's Park on quiet intersections or drink beer on dates near
the lake. I get these Chicago fantasies in my head and I can't shake them out.
         

Prose Poem #4

Below is Carl Sandburg's "Wilderness." I am typing this from Sandburg Court, an
apartment complex in Chicago, how about that. There is a rough sketch of him in
the security office by an elevator I take, but I can't see any other note of this place
being his namesake.

Anyhow, this is a longer one, I guess. But Sandburg's phrasing is always evocative
of bodies and primal things, so reading him moves quickly. His sense of balance
with these paired "A & B," "sniff and guess" moments is great. I feel like he had a
slim secret dictionary full of power words when he wrote. Check out "The Mob,"
too, if you like this one.

*                  *                *  "Wilderness"

There is a wolf in me … fangs pointed for tearing gashes … a red  tongue for raw meat … and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this  wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will  not let it go. There is a fox in me … a silver-gray fox … I sniff and guess … I  pick things out of the wind and air … I nose in the dark night and  take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers … I circle and  loop and double-cross. There is a hog in me … a snout and a belly … a machinery for  eating and grunting … a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the  sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will  not let it go. There is a fish in me … I know I came from saltblue water-gates  … I scurried with shoals of herring … I blew waterspouts with  porpoises … before land was … before the water went down …  before Noah … before the first chapter of Genesis. There is a baboon in me … clambering-clawed … dog-faced …  yawping a galoot’s hunger … hairy under the armpits … here  are the hawk-eyed hankering men … here are the blond and  blue-eyed women … here they hide curled asleep waiting …  ready to snarl and kill … ready to sing and give milk … waiting —I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so. There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird … and the eagle  flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights  among the Sierra crags of what I want … and the mockingbird  warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles  in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the  blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the  mockingbird from the wilderness. O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony  head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a  man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother  and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to  God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and  no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from  the wilderness.

Prose Poem #3

Here is a short thing I wrote about a CD release party in 2005. A guy bit me, and I scared coworkers.

 "My Education"

            Bobby the night engineer would call at 4am to confide things. “I do not like my job,” “Whiskey leaves a bad smell.” 

            Once he told me he'd been thinking of faking his death. I asked how. 

            “It will look like an overdose…” he whispered. 

            “People will believe it,” I said. 

This, the year of my education. I learned to stop kissing my boss, be fearful of the Halsted street police who struck me in their cars and mourned the death of tsars, and soon after I lost my limp Bobby returned to become our shitty Lazarus, threw a revival party in October. Everyone came. Leaves hopping from trees made us cinematic. Denim boys smoking outside with neck tattoos made me nervous. As I ascended the stairs I heard a thud, and I arrived in time to see everything begin.

“That’s no way to treat a lady!” – the last thing Greg said before his nose was shattered, a milk carton exploded against Bobby’s chest, a man with a swallow on his throat bit my thumb while friends leaked through the window onto neighboring roofs. This went on for some time.