Bullying having bullied its way to the bully pulpit this week, I thought I’d tell a bully story of my own. I was in eighth grade, a somewhat solidly built klutz with a mind that was expanding at light speed. Then came time for football tryouts. I was not athletic in general, nor was I a practitioner of football, though I knew the game well enough and followed some teams and players.
I was a good kickball player, so when the coaches told us to group up according to position, I gathered where the kickers were gathering. It was a skill position, I knew that, and grunts like me were supposed to volunteer for wherever we would be least harmful. The quarterback candidates gathered right next to where the kickers were, and the best athletes in the class were there, including J, one of the school’s top athletes in numerous sports, but also to my estimation up to that point, kind of a mean and unpleasant kid.
I was a pretty fair ski jumper, not nearly as good as J and notably one other, K, but I was consistently fourth or fifth on our team. One time at a pretty big match, I had a good cross country run and a really good jump, and neither of them had great jumps that day and I beat them both in the combined. K congratulated me with all of the warmth imaginable and J didn’t say a word.
So there we were at the tryout and J spotted me in with the kickers. “Hey Elliott,” he shouted. “What are you doing over there?’
“Trying out for kicker,” I said.
“You can’t be the kicker,” he said with a mean, sneering laugh, and I felt myself shrinking. He was right. Who was I kidding? I was new at this. This was important to a lot of people. Nobody was ever going to trust me to kick the ball. And my being corrected on this point was coming from a likely candidate for quarterback that year. Surely if anyone had a say in who might kick, it would be him. “You can’t be the kicker.” He said it again.
Everyone in this story has been referenced by the first letter in their first names only. The next in this cast of characters will be called by his full name, for his act on this day, his simple act, is one that I have remembered since that day and will remember forever forward. Pete Richardson, all 180 pounds of eighth grader that he was, was standing by in the nose tackle group and overheard the exchange. He walked over closer and planted two feet not far from J.
“He can try!” he barked with a scowl that seemed to indicate to J that Pete would be happy to start the season early if he wanted to make his smart, funny, non-athletic friend feel badly about himself. J returned to whatever nothing he had been doing previously, and I have honestly forgotten whether I ever thanked Peter, so I guess this story is my way of thanking him now.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Hodes versus Ayotte, 2010 NH Senate Race
This year’s New Hampshire senate race is shaping up to be a critical one, as it is a referendum on our willingness to offer some modicum of resistance shouted from our prodigious hilltops to what seems a precipitous, and in my opinion, overly zealous tilt to the right, versus our willingness to go along with it, thus rendering our individual voice and the nuance of our arguments unheard. New Hampshire’s political personality has always been at best thoughtfully independent and at worst wonderfully cantankerous. We lose our bully pulpit by electing Ayotte.
What we will condone politically this November seems tangled up in why we will condone it. The Republican candidate is in the mold of the GOP’s best recent success model, an attractive, traditional conservative female who embraces the religious right. The reason we may elect her is because we are so darn mad that we are maybe even ready to vote for something we don’t endorse. I don’t think that’s a good idea.
The Republican machine will expect a rubber stamp from Kelly Ayotte if she is elected, and they will most likely receive it. And what table scraps would New Hampshire receive in exchange for its presumed capitulation? For the first two years, not much, then in the event of a Republican break point in 2012, an extra road here or there, a photo op with the big cheese, and maybe some property tax when America’s wealthiest can afford another mountain cabin or condo in Portsmouth.
Additionally, Ayotte’s position on abortion is a stone wall, and as such will win a certain gift basket of some number of single issue voters. While Kelly Ayotte’s potential influence on the abortion debate has little chance of being directly impactful to Roe v. Wade’s survival, the way these larger questions are dismantled is with smaller toeholds along the way. New Hampshire’s political personality is best summed up in our state’s motto, Live Free or Die, and Ayotte’s stated desire to revoke a woman’s right to choose stands in dramatic contrast to New Hampshire’s tradition of personal liberty.
A plucky, feisty prosecutor, cuter than most, her tenacity for her in my opinion misguided positions on both economic and social issues, is admirable. Her resume is born of a series of appointed positions and a dramatic resignation over Governor Lynch;s endorsement of a same sex marriage initiative. Appointed officials generally have less experience building consensus than elected officials do, but short of senatorial material among New Hampshire’s GOP ranks, the powers that be and the state’s Republican primary voters have settled for Palin Lite this year.
The other side of the race features Paul Hodes. Sure, I’m traditionally a Democrat, and I cop to having a sufficiently left lean that I was easy to tip, but I have voted for Judd Gregg before, and cannot be accurately called a straight ticket voter. Hodes is a level-headed, reasonable man, absent conspicuous religiosity and the hysteria that is never far away from it. Hodes’ resume seems to have a more sturdily built foundation than his opponent’s, and having run a campaign and served a constituency, he is more prepared for the senate than is his opponent.
I believe in equal rights for goose and gander, so it is fair to ask if Hodes will be a rubber stamp for the Obama administration’s executive agenda, and I think the honest answer is that no, he will not. Hodes is a skilled, honest and respectful debater, and my sense is that he addresses issues methodically and on their own merits rather than overlaying a template of accumulated previous perceptions. In this way, Hodes more fully embodies the Live Free or Die credo than Ayotte does. Paul Hodes would speak to Washington in the same polite but no-nonsense tone with which most of my New Hampshire friends speak to me. It’s too cold up here for any BS.
What we will condone politically this November seems tangled up in why we will condone it. The Republican candidate is in the mold of the GOP’s best recent success model, an attractive, traditional conservative female who embraces the religious right. The reason we may elect her is because we are so darn mad that we are maybe even ready to vote for something we don’t endorse. I don’t think that’s a good idea.
The Republican machine will expect a rubber stamp from Kelly Ayotte if she is elected, and they will most likely receive it. And what table scraps would New Hampshire receive in exchange for its presumed capitulation? For the first two years, not much, then in the event of a Republican break point in 2012, an extra road here or there, a photo op with the big cheese, and maybe some property tax when America’s wealthiest can afford another mountain cabin or condo in Portsmouth.
Additionally, Ayotte’s position on abortion is a stone wall, and as such will win a certain gift basket of some number of single issue voters. While Kelly Ayotte’s potential influence on the abortion debate has little chance of being directly impactful to Roe v. Wade’s survival, the way these larger questions are dismantled is with smaller toeholds along the way. New Hampshire’s political personality is best summed up in our state’s motto, Live Free or Die, and Ayotte’s stated desire to revoke a woman’s right to choose stands in dramatic contrast to New Hampshire’s tradition of personal liberty.
A plucky, feisty prosecutor, cuter than most, her tenacity for her in my opinion misguided positions on both economic and social issues, is admirable. Her resume is born of a series of appointed positions and a dramatic resignation over Governor Lynch;s endorsement of a same sex marriage initiative. Appointed officials generally have less experience building consensus than elected officials do, but short of senatorial material among New Hampshire’s GOP ranks, the powers that be and the state’s Republican primary voters have settled for Palin Lite this year.
The other side of the race features Paul Hodes. Sure, I’m traditionally a Democrat, and I cop to having a sufficiently left lean that I was easy to tip, but I have voted for Judd Gregg before, and cannot be accurately called a straight ticket voter. Hodes is a level-headed, reasonable man, absent conspicuous religiosity and the hysteria that is never far away from it. Hodes’ resume seems to have a more sturdily built foundation than his opponent’s, and having run a campaign and served a constituency, he is more prepared for the senate than is his opponent.
I believe in equal rights for goose and gander, so it is fair to ask if Hodes will be a rubber stamp for the Obama administration’s executive agenda, and I think the honest answer is that no, he will not. Hodes is a skilled, honest and respectful debater, and my sense is that he addresses issues methodically and on their own merits rather than overlaying a template of accumulated previous perceptions. In this way, Hodes more fully embodies the Live Free or Die credo than Ayotte does. Paul Hodes would speak to Washington in the same polite but no-nonsense tone with which most of my New Hampshire friends speak to me. It’s too cold up here for any BS.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
The Colonoscopy Monologues
A colonoscopy is a common procedure for people 50 and older who wish to remain among the vertical. It is a screening vehicle for early detection of colon cancer, a leading killer of men and women in my age bracket and older. I had my procedure this afternoon.
For those who know my writing, you are probably bracing yourself for a waterfall of proctologic humor, but I’ll spare you. While I am sure I will be unable to resist making my procedure the butt of at least a few jokes, for the most part this piece will be informative and factual, as well as occasionally philosophical.
Again, the procedure is common, and nothing to wring one’s hands over. My first sentiments as I observed the team of professionals assembling to turn their expertise in my direction was one of gratitude and humility. In the interests of my loved ones that they didn’t know (and of course their livelihood), a surgeon, a technician, several nurses and other staff busied themselves to deliver quality healthcare, an amalgam of decades of research, talent and intelligence, all brought to bear on my behalf. Like I say, humbling.
As anyone who has had a colonoscopy will tell you, the prep is the worst part of the procedure. The process begins the day before with a clear liquid diet in an effort to cleanse the colon, starting with a large glass of the clear liquid of your choice once an hour beginning in the morning and continuing throughout the day. Permissible clear liquids include broth, Italian Ice (with no fruit pieces), Popsicles, Jell-O, water, black tea or coffee (no cream or milk), soda, hard candy, white grape juice, apple juice and Gatorade. I had a lovely organic chicken broth for dinner the evening before, and it was both flavorful and satisfying. Vodka and gin are not considered clear liquids in this case.
At 1 PM on the day previous to the procedure, the patient takes two tablets of a Bisacodyl laxative, in my case, a stool softener called Dulcolax. So as to make sure you are not confused, applying a stool softener has nothing to do with upholstering a backless chair. Five paragraphs and only two jokes is still not a bad ratio where I am concerned.
At 5 PM, 32 ounces of Gatorade is mixed with 120 grams of Miralax (seven doses of a powerful laxative), which is then taken in four eight-ounce glasses ten to twenty minutes apart. This begins an excruciating evening in which you never want to be more than ten yards from a toilet. The effluence achieves a gradually more fluid state with each trip until the output is purely liquefied, becoming more and more clear in appearance. At 9 PM, two more stool softeners are required in order to prepare for the following morning’s repeat of the Mirilax and Gatorade mix.
I am not sure if it is common, but my trips to the bathroom continued throughout the overnight on an average of twice an hour, so I didn’t sleep at all the night before the procedure. I got out of bed at 7:15 and repeated the Miralax dosing, and the cleanse ramped up to a previously unrealized vigor, reminding me of my youth growing up in Vermont, always amazed at the neighbor’s Holsteins’ copiousness after trough time, and on the occasion when they would happen to be standing near a flat rock, you were well-advised to be wearing a poncho.
My arrival at the hospital was scheduled for 12:15 with the procedure to be administered beginning at 1:15, so I was required not to drink anything else after 9:15. I followed the instructions explicitly and arrived on time, courtesy of a friend who had also agreed to pick me up after the procedure.
After a thorough check-in, in which the nurse inquired as to whether I had ever suffered from what seemed to be a comprehensive list of every imaginable human ailment (I think they left off scurvy and leprosy), I was administered an IV and wheeled into the operating room. I woke up from my hour-long fentanyl coma having passed with flying colors and having had no recollection of the proceedings, or even that anything had happened. Dr. Epstein will not need to see me for another ten years. Modern medicine is a wonder, and it appears as though if something is going to kill me prematurely, I know that it won’t be sneaking up on me from behind.
For those who know my writing, you are probably bracing yourself for a waterfall of proctologic humor, but I’ll spare you. While I am sure I will be unable to resist making my procedure the butt of at least a few jokes, for the most part this piece will be informative and factual, as well as occasionally philosophical.
Again, the procedure is common, and nothing to wring one’s hands over. My first sentiments as I observed the team of professionals assembling to turn their expertise in my direction was one of gratitude and humility. In the interests of my loved ones that they didn’t know (and of course their livelihood), a surgeon, a technician, several nurses and other staff busied themselves to deliver quality healthcare, an amalgam of decades of research, talent and intelligence, all brought to bear on my behalf. Like I say, humbling.
As anyone who has had a colonoscopy will tell you, the prep is the worst part of the procedure. The process begins the day before with a clear liquid diet in an effort to cleanse the colon, starting with a large glass of the clear liquid of your choice once an hour beginning in the morning and continuing throughout the day. Permissible clear liquids include broth, Italian Ice (with no fruit pieces), Popsicles, Jell-O, water, black tea or coffee (no cream or milk), soda, hard candy, white grape juice, apple juice and Gatorade. I had a lovely organic chicken broth for dinner the evening before, and it was both flavorful and satisfying. Vodka and gin are not considered clear liquids in this case.
At 1 PM on the day previous to the procedure, the patient takes two tablets of a Bisacodyl laxative, in my case, a stool softener called Dulcolax. So as to make sure you are not confused, applying a stool softener has nothing to do with upholstering a backless chair. Five paragraphs and only two jokes is still not a bad ratio where I am concerned.
At 5 PM, 32 ounces of Gatorade is mixed with 120 grams of Miralax (seven doses of a powerful laxative), which is then taken in four eight-ounce glasses ten to twenty minutes apart. This begins an excruciating evening in which you never want to be more than ten yards from a toilet. The effluence achieves a gradually more fluid state with each trip until the output is purely liquefied, becoming more and more clear in appearance. At 9 PM, two more stool softeners are required in order to prepare for the following morning’s repeat of the Mirilax and Gatorade mix.
I am not sure if it is common, but my trips to the bathroom continued throughout the overnight on an average of twice an hour, so I didn’t sleep at all the night before the procedure. I got out of bed at 7:15 and repeated the Miralax dosing, and the cleanse ramped up to a previously unrealized vigor, reminding me of my youth growing up in Vermont, always amazed at the neighbor’s Holsteins’ copiousness after trough time, and on the occasion when they would happen to be standing near a flat rock, you were well-advised to be wearing a poncho.
My arrival at the hospital was scheduled for 12:15 with the procedure to be administered beginning at 1:15, so I was required not to drink anything else after 9:15. I followed the instructions explicitly and arrived on time, courtesy of a friend who had also agreed to pick me up after the procedure.
After a thorough check-in, in which the nurse inquired as to whether I had ever suffered from what seemed to be a comprehensive list of every imaginable human ailment (I think they left off scurvy and leprosy), I was administered an IV and wheeled into the operating room. I woke up from my hour-long fentanyl coma having passed with flying colors and having had no recollection of the proceedings, or even that anything had happened. Dr. Epstein will not need to see me for another ten years. Modern medicine is a wonder, and it appears as though if something is going to kill me prematurely, I know that it won’t be sneaking up on me from behind.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Requiem for a Friend
It has been five years since the death of Bill Davies, and apart from his obituary, I have not written much about losing the company of the man who was my best friend ever since I was a teenager. Bill lived in York Beach Maine, and I was what the locals called “permanent summer folk.” My Mom had a cottage in York Beach, and we stayed there along with my sister and two brothers during my summer vacations away from St. Paul’s prep school, and later, Yale University. My father had died about the time I met Bill, and he being four years older than me, perhaps I was looking for a male figure of greater experience and wisdom than I then possessed. Bill was brilliant in numerous soft sciences, and perhaps he recognized me as someone who had an intellectual orientation, just like him.
During one’s teenage years, four years is a far vaster chasm than it is now, but he being 20 and me being 16 somehow did not present itself as a dividing component of our relationship. We would sit on the boardwalk of York’s Short Sands Beach, he with his nylon string guitar tuned to open E and me with my knack for melody born of six years of studying trumpet. Both of us were prolific lyricists, and over the course of the first few summers of knowing one another, we compiled a repertoire of catchy, smart, original songs that would be the basis of the material played by the rock band I would later form with my brother and three other York musicians.
I think the main gist of this essay is going to be the reverence in which I held and still hold Bill’s friendship. Friendship, it seems, is viewed by society as taking a back seat to love and to family, but with Bill, at least as far as his effect on my essence as a person, this was not the case. A best friend is the family that you choose, and also the person you talk to when you cannot understand your lover. Love, family and friendship, I believe, should be regarded together as the triumvirate of human relations, each an indispensible aspect of being a person.
Bill became the lighting designer for our band, and we traveled all over New England performing, practicing and trying to make our band as good as it could be. Men traveling together to strange places become close. While not nearly as much is at stake in the case of touring bands, the best metaphor I can think of for the sort of bonding that occurs is that of combat soldiers.
A young band of long-haired men is often met with hostility on the road, in Laundromats, in restaurants, at gas stations, and depending on the potential difference of what the audience wants to hear relative to what the band wants to play, sometimes at the venues themselves. This was especially acute for our group, because when the audience is requesting Bob Seeger covers and we are instead delivering weird original rock songs with titles like Robot Crime, Dancing with the Pygmies, and Winnebego Full of Nuns, there was often great negativity projected toward the band. In those environments, your band mates are your only advocates, and your only source for the moral and sometimes physical support needed to survive.
The band fell apart and I left for San Francisco to see and live in a city, and to become a better trumpet player, and to get the best gigs I could get. We remained in touch over the course of those five years, and every time I returned, I would always seek him out to get my dose of wisdom, humor, and advice from my best friend. I returned in 1990 and quickly rekindled my relationship with Bill.
Having determined that I would not likely make it as a rock star, I began experimenting with more literary projects. Over the next 15 years, we would collaborate on two full length novels and a book length collection of short stories, one of which won second prize in a novella contest held by Francis Ford Coppola’s website, www.zoetrope.com. I remain convinced of the literary quality of both of our novels, one of which generated a pretty hard nibble from Random House, it having been kicked upstairs to the senior literary editor, who wrote me a two page letter praising the book, and explaining why no offer would be made. There have been a lot of close, but no cigar moments in my life, and not only was Bill’s wit, imagination and sense of story responsible for getting me that close, he was also always there to console me in my frustrations.
In the last two years of his life, I was working at a retail music store and he was managing a movie theater in York Beach. Every Tuesday, and I mean every Tuesday, I would drive from my town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire to York Beach, and I would show him what I had written that week, and leave him a copy. We would read it aloud and he would make suggestions for potential plot elements, and he would give me back his red penning of the manuscript I had left him the previous week. It was then that we wrote what I think is the best piece of fiction I have ever been involved with, a book called You Are Now Leaving Sprague City, a sympathetic look at the impoverished and often inbred, abusive and criminal residents of western York County in the 1970s. Tarpaper shacks, outhouses, rusted cars on blocks and piled up broken appliances were the milieu for this story of incest, persecution and eventual redemption. It still holds a special place in my heart, and whenever I read a passage from it, I feel Bill’s kindness and innate understanding of the suffering that is endured by the poorest and most marginalized elements of society.
Bill loved everyone, except maybe rude tourists. There was one celebrated incident in which Bill was crossing the street in a crosswalk that had a Stop for Pedestrians sign, and it became obvious that the motorist had no intention of yielding. Bill calmly flicked his lit cigarette through the open passenger side window and landed the burning missile directly in the driver’s lap. He stopped and began to yell but Bill interrupted him and dressed him down with a vigor and clarity that drew a crowd, each member of which stood in lock step with Bill. The driver got back into his car and Bill’s last words to him were, “Maybe next year stay home.”
He was also a guardian of young people on the beach, and would have harsh words in private with people who were selling hard drugs in town, letting them know that they could either stop, or suffer the consequences. These were scary, intimidating criminal people, often much younger and stronger than Bill, but he would never back down in the face of anything that he thought was harming the young people of York Beach.
One day, I went looking for Bill and couldn’t find him at the theater. I went to the Union Bluff Hotel which is located next door to the theater to inquire around. I was told that Bill had noticed that his urine had started to smell like honey, and that he was undergoing tests at York Hospital. A pack a day smoker, Bill was diagnosed with cancer in his liver that had metastasized from his lungs. I visited him every day as he underwent his first rounds of chemotherapy, but it was becoming evident that the treatments were not going well. One visit, Bill was sleeping as I peered into his room. He was a sickening, pronounced shade of orange, and in that moment I knew with certainty that my best friend was dying. I remember driving to the beach, getting out of my car, and walking down Long Sands with a cruel February wind whipping my face and body, screaming to a God I didn’t know, “Don’t take my friend! Don’t take my friend!”
I visited Bill the next day in the hospital, and he walked me to the hospital solarium in his Johnny, pushing his IV on wheels ahead of him. Stingy winter sunlight daubed the room as he told me that he hadn’t given up, that he would still fight, and that he loved me. He also said something I will never forget: “And if I have to die, I’ll die.”
On the evening of March 8, 2005, I got a call from Karen Mason, a mutual friend, who told me that Bill was actively dying and that if I thought I could handle it, I might want to go see him one more time. I drove to Wells, Maine to where he was staying with his girlfriend. I remember it was snowing that night, big flakes the size of half dollars. I cried all the way up, trying to get it out of my system so I could display some composure when I got there. It turns out that wasn’t necessary, as he was coming in and out of consciousness from the morphine, mostly out, but as I knelt by his bed holding his hand, I kissed his forearm once and he magically returned. He looked into my eyes, smiled and said to me, “You’re the best,” and then drifted back into the morphine’s embrace.
It was Bill’s final kindness to me and a gift that I will always treasure. It would have been easier for him to stay down, to remain behind the wall of opiates he had always fought to keep out of his town, away from the young people over whom he was a voluntary steward, but he clawed his way into consciousness for one reason, to see me one more time and to tell me how much he cherished our 31 years of friendship. I left him to the care of his girlfriend Donna and our friend Mike, and drove home, my tears a rival of precipitation to the swirling snowstorm outside. I got the call from Mike the next day that Bill had died peacefully. He asked me to write Bill’s obituary, which I did. Here it is:
YORK, Maine - William Barrett "Bill" Davies died on Wednesday morning, March 9, 2005, in the care of his friend Donna Lombardo following a brief illness. He was 51.
Bill was born on Sept. 23, 1953, one of twin sons to Virginia Barrett Davies and William Henry Davies. Bill graduated from Sanford High School, and then attended the University of Maine at Orono.
He worked in the hospitality industry in York Beach for many years, in addition to touring with a rock ’n’ roll band as a lighting designer. He was also a guitarist, songwriter and an accomplished entertainer himself.
He later worked as a landscaper and handyman for The Union Bluff Hotel in York Beach and served as general manager and projectionist for the York Beach Cinema, a job he adored. It was his duty to maintain and operate the fussy, arcane, 75-year old movie projectors that were purchased when the York Beach Cinema opened in 1928.
During his weeklong stay at York Hospital before his passing, he had more than 100 visitors, a testament to his fine standing in the town he loved so well.
He is survived by his mother, Virginia; his twin brother, Thom; his older brother and sister, Dick and Janice; a sister, Jen Fulmer; and hundreds of people who knew and loved him as the unofficial mayor of York Beach, Maine.
He loved the sunshine, and he loved the surf, and both were in ample supply on the morning of his death this past Wednesday.
During one’s teenage years, four years is a far vaster chasm than it is now, but he being 20 and me being 16 somehow did not present itself as a dividing component of our relationship. We would sit on the boardwalk of York’s Short Sands Beach, he with his nylon string guitar tuned to open E and me with my knack for melody born of six years of studying trumpet. Both of us were prolific lyricists, and over the course of the first few summers of knowing one another, we compiled a repertoire of catchy, smart, original songs that would be the basis of the material played by the rock band I would later form with my brother and three other York musicians.
I think the main gist of this essay is going to be the reverence in which I held and still hold Bill’s friendship. Friendship, it seems, is viewed by society as taking a back seat to love and to family, but with Bill, at least as far as his effect on my essence as a person, this was not the case. A best friend is the family that you choose, and also the person you talk to when you cannot understand your lover. Love, family and friendship, I believe, should be regarded together as the triumvirate of human relations, each an indispensible aspect of being a person.
Bill became the lighting designer for our band, and we traveled all over New England performing, practicing and trying to make our band as good as it could be. Men traveling together to strange places become close. While not nearly as much is at stake in the case of touring bands, the best metaphor I can think of for the sort of bonding that occurs is that of combat soldiers.
A young band of long-haired men is often met with hostility on the road, in Laundromats, in restaurants, at gas stations, and depending on the potential difference of what the audience wants to hear relative to what the band wants to play, sometimes at the venues themselves. This was especially acute for our group, because when the audience is requesting Bob Seeger covers and we are instead delivering weird original rock songs with titles like Robot Crime, Dancing with the Pygmies, and Winnebego Full of Nuns, there was often great negativity projected toward the band. In those environments, your band mates are your only advocates, and your only source for the moral and sometimes physical support needed to survive.
The band fell apart and I left for San Francisco to see and live in a city, and to become a better trumpet player, and to get the best gigs I could get. We remained in touch over the course of those five years, and every time I returned, I would always seek him out to get my dose of wisdom, humor, and advice from my best friend. I returned in 1990 and quickly rekindled my relationship with Bill.
Having determined that I would not likely make it as a rock star, I began experimenting with more literary projects. Over the next 15 years, we would collaborate on two full length novels and a book length collection of short stories, one of which won second prize in a novella contest held by Francis Ford Coppola’s website, www.zoetrope.com. I remain convinced of the literary quality of both of our novels, one of which generated a pretty hard nibble from Random House, it having been kicked upstairs to the senior literary editor, who wrote me a two page letter praising the book, and explaining why no offer would be made. There have been a lot of close, but no cigar moments in my life, and not only was Bill’s wit, imagination and sense of story responsible for getting me that close, he was also always there to console me in my frustrations.
In the last two years of his life, I was working at a retail music store and he was managing a movie theater in York Beach. Every Tuesday, and I mean every Tuesday, I would drive from my town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire to York Beach, and I would show him what I had written that week, and leave him a copy. We would read it aloud and he would make suggestions for potential plot elements, and he would give me back his red penning of the manuscript I had left him the previous week. It was then that we wrote what I think is the best piece of fiction I have ever been involved with, a book called You Are Now Leaving Sprague City, a sympathetic look at the impoverished and often inbred, abusive and criminal residents of western York County in the 1970s. Tarpaper shacks, outhouses, rusted cars on blocks and piled up broken appliances were the milieu for this story of incest, persecution and eventual redemption. It still holds a special place in my heart, and whenever I read a passage from it, I feel Bill’s kindness and innate understanding of the suffering that is endured by the poorest and most marginalized elements of society.
Bill loved everyone, except maybe rude tourists. There was one celebrated incident in which Bill was crossing the street in a crosswalk that had a Stop for Pedestrians sign, and it became obvious that the motorist had no intention of yielding. Bill calmly flicked his lit cigarette through the open passenger side window and landed the burning missile directly in the driver’s lap. He stopped and began to yell but Bill interrupted him and dressed him down with a vigor and clarity that drew a crowd, each member of which stood in lock step with Bill. The driver got back into his car and Bill’s last words to him were, “Maybe next year stay home.”
He was also a guardian of young people on the beach, and would have harsh words in private with people who were selling hard drugs in town, letting them know that they could either stop, or suffer the consequences. These were scary, intimidating criminal people, often much younger and stronger than Bill, but he would never back down in the face of anything that he thought was harming the young people of York Beach.
One day, I went looking for Bill and couldn’t find him at the theater. I went to the Union Bluff Hotel which is located next door to the theater to inquire around. I was told that Bill had noticed that his urine had started to smell like honey, and that he was undergoing tests at York Hospital. A pack a day smoker, Bill was diagnosed with cancer in his liver that had metastasized from his lungs. I visited him every day as he underwent his first rounds of chemotherapy, but it was becoming evident that the treatments were not going well. One visit, Bill was sleeping as I peered into his room. He was a sickening, pronounced shade of orange, and in that moment I knew with certainty that my best friend was dying. I remember driving to the beach, getting out of my car, and walking down Long Sands with a cruel February wind whipping my face and body, screaming to a God I didn’t know, “Don’t take my friend! Don’t take my friend!”
I visited Bill the next day in the hospital, and he walked me to the hospital solarium in his Johnny, pushing his IV on wheels ahead of him. Stingy winter sunlight daubed the room as he told me that he hadn’t given up, that he would still fight, and that he loved me. He also said something I will never forget: “And if I have to die, I’ll die.”
On the evening of March 8, 2005, I got a call from Karen Mason, a mutual friend, who told me that Bill was actively dying and that if I thought I could handle it, I might want to go see him one more time. I drove to Wells, Maine to where he was staying with his girlfriend. I remember it was snowing that night, big flakes the size of half dollars. I cried all the way up, trying to get it out of my system so I could display some composure when I got there. It turns out that wasn’t necessary, as he was coming in and out of consciousness from the morphine, mostly out, but as I knelt by his bed holding his hand, I kissed his forearm once and he magically returned. He looked into my eyes, smiled and said to me, “You’re the best,” and then drifted back into the morphine’s embrace.
It was Bill’s final kindness to me and a gift that I will always treasure. It would have been easier for him to stay down, to remain behind the wall of opiates he had always fought to keep out of his town, away from the young people over whom he was a voluntary steward, but he clawed his way into consciousness for one reason, to see me one more time and to tell me how much he cherished our 31 years of friendship. I left him to the care of his girlfriend Donna and our friend Mike, and drove home, my tears a rival of precipitation to the swirling snowstorm outside. I got the call from Mike the next day that Bill had died peacefully. He asked me to write Bill’s obituary, which I did. Here it is:
YORK, Maine - William Barrett "Bill" Davies died on Wednesday morning, March 9, 2005, in the care of his friend Donna Lombardo following a brief illness. He was 51.
Bill was born on Sept. 23, 1953, one of twin sons to Virginia Barrett Davies and William Henry Davies. Bill graduated from Sanford High School, and then attended the University of Maine at Orono.
He worked in the hospitality industry in York Beach for many years, in addition to touring with a rock ’n’ roll band as a lighting designer. He was also a guitarist, songwriter and an accomplished entertainer himself.
He later worked as a landscaper and handyman for The Union Bluff Hotel in York Beach and served as general manager and projectionist for the York Beach Cinema, a job he adored. It was his duty to maintain and operate the fussy, arcane, 75-year old movie projectors that were purchased when the York Beach Cinema opened in 1928.
During his weeklong stay at York Hospital before his passing, he had more than 100 visitors, a testament to his fine standing in the town he loved so well.
He is survived by his mother, Virginia; his twin brother, Thom; his older brother and sister, Dick and Janice; a sister, Jen Fulmer; and hundreds of people who knew and loved him as the unofficial mayor of York Beach, Maine.
He loved the sunshine, and he loved the surf, and both were in ample supply on the morning of his death this past Wednesday.
Tommy Cassidy
This is a true story as told to me by the son of a colleague of the story’s protagonist. It is a fine example of old school bare-knuckle lawyering.
When Tommy Cassidy got up in the morning, he put on his tie, but he didn’t tie it right away. First, he barked at his eighteen-year old son. “Benny, pour me a scotch and water.”
“Scotch and water?” Benny answered. Benny was a handsome kid, enjoying the summer off from his freshman year at Harvard. He was black Irish like his father, but his beautiful French Huguenot mother, long since divorced from Tommy, had managed to tame the Cassidy nose a bit, and refine the burning Irish eyes, giving Benny a chance at being more handsome even than his father in his prime, and also a prayer of avoiding a lifetime plagued by alcoholism.
“Scotch and water. And I’ll take the water in the form of ice cubes,” Tommy said. He put the tie around his neck and sat at the kitchen table, holding one end of the tie with each hand. Benny arrived with the drink and set it down in front of Tommy as he had done a dozen times already on weekday summer mornings. His mother had wanted him to spend the summer in upstate New York where she had moved with Benny and his younger brother Sam, but Tommy had a nice oceanfront house in Nahant, and Benny had an internship at the Boston Globe, so he was staying with the old man all summer.
Tommy extended a shaky right hand holding the fat end of the tie and grasped the glass. With his left hand, he pulled the skinny end of the tie downward, providing just enough stability to get the glass to his lips without spilling it all over the table, an alcoholic human pulley system that by minimizing spillage, slowed ever so slightly the pace with which Tommy went through a jug of Dewar’s. He downed it in a long chug and held the glass to Benny, who wordlessly refilled it. He could usually get the second glass down without the help of his tie, and that meant he was ready to go to court.
That day’s first case was going to be tricky. It was a snotty rich kid named Joey Fontana trying to beat his third DWI. Cassidy had gotten him off twice before, and was pretty annoyed with the kid, but his old man had promised a $5,000 bonus if he could pull it off again. The cops were all the way sick of both Tommy Cassidy and Joey Fontana, the reason for the first two acquittals being some trivial piece of botched paperwork on the part of the cops. One thing about Cassidy, he forced the cops to learn how to do their jobs better, and Tommy was concerned that they might have done everything right this time.
The cops were convinced of this, and the arresting officer taunted Cassidy as he walked into the District Court hallway.
“We got your boy this time, Cassidy, dead to rights.”
“I’ll bet you a McDonald’s cheeseburger you’re wrong,” Cassidy said.
“You’re on, Cassidy. Let’s make it a Big Mac.”
When the judge sat and asked for a plea, Cassidy said, “We plead not guilty judge (Tommy never said ‘your honor’), but before we go much further and waste the court’s time, be advised that the arresting officer Mr. Delahay has placed a wager with me on the outcome of the trial.”
“Is this true, Officer Delahay?” the judge asked.
“It’s for a Bic Mac your honor—“
“I don’t care if it’s for all the gold in Fort Knox or a nickel. This court finds the defendant not guilty. Mr. Fontana, you are free to go.”
Tommy knocked off early that early that day. Hell, it wasn’t even 9:30 and he had already made ten grand.
When Tommy Cassidy got up in the morning, he put on his tie, but he didn’t tie it right away. First, he barked at his eighteen-year old son. “Benny, pour me a scotch and water.”
“Scotch and water?” Benny answered. Benny was a handsome kid, enjoying the summer off from his freshman year at Harvard. He was black Irish like his father, but his beautiful French Huguenot mother, long since divorced from Tommy, had managed to tame the Cassidy nose a bit, and refine the burning Irish eyes, giving Benny a chance at being more handsome even than his father in his prime, and also a prayer of avoiding a lifetime plagued by alcoholism.
“Scotch and water. And I’ll take the water in the form of ice cubes,” Tommy said. He put the tie around his neck and sat at the kitchen table, holding one end of the tie with each hand. Benny arrived with the drink and set it down in front of Tommy as he had done a dozen times already on weekday summer mornings. His mother had wanted him to spend the summer in upstate New York where she had moved with Benny and his younger brother Sam, but Tommy had a nice oceanfront house in Nahant, and Benny had an internship at the Boston Globe, so he was staying with the old man all summer.
Tommy extended a shaky right hand holding the fat end of the tie and grasped the glass. With his left hand, he pulled the skinny end of the tie downward, providing just enough stability to get the glass to his lips without spilling it all over the table, an alcoholic human pulley system that by minimizing spillage, slowed ever so slightly the pace with which Tommy went through a jug of Dewar’s. He downed it in a long chug and held the glass to Benny, who wordlessly refilled it. He could usually get the second glass down without the help of his tie, and that meant he was ready to go to court.
That day’s first case was going to be tricky. It was a snotty rich kid named Joey Fontana trying to beat his third DWI. Cassidy had gotten him off twice before, and was pretty annoyed with the kid, but his old man had promised a $5,000 bonus if he could pull it off again. The cops were all the way sick of both Tommy Cassidy and Joey Fontana, the reason for the first two acquittals being some trivial piece of botched paperwork on the part of the cops. One thing about Cassidy, he forced the cops to learn how to do their jobs better, and Tommy was concerned that they might have done everything right this time.
The cops were convinced of this, and the arresting officer taunted Cassidy as he walked into the District Court hallway.
“We got your boy this time, Cassidy, dead to rights.”
“I’ll bet you a McDonald’s cheeseburger you’re wrong,” Cassidy said.
“You’re on, Cassidy. Let’s make it a Big Mac.”
When the judge sat and asked for a plea, Cassidy said, “We plead not guilty judge (Tommy never said ‘your honor’), but before we go much further and waste the court’s time, be advised that the arresting officer Mr. Delahay has placed a wager with me on the outcome of the trial.”
“Is this true, Officer Delahay?” the judge asked.
“It’s for a Bic Mac your honor—“
“I don’t care if it’s for all the gold in Fort Knox or a nickel. This court finds the defendant not guilty. Mr. Fontana, you are free to go.”
Tommy knocked off early that early that day. Hell, it wasn’t even 9:30 and he had already made ten grand.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Pottymouth!
I have been writing songs since I was in high school, and as a result I now have a deep catalogue in a wide variety of idioms. So here’s the concept: I intend to release a trilogy of CDs in the coming months, the first of which is Pottymouth, a collection of a dozen dirty songs, the second will be Prettymouth, a collection of a dozen beautiful songs, the third will be Funnymouth, a collection of a dozen humorous songs.
Pottymouth is underway. I am working with a talented musician and recording engineer on the project, which should be complete by the end of September, at which point I plan an assault on the open mics in and around Portsmouth, Portland and Boston. With the vast revenue collected from Pottymouth CD and tee shirt sales, and possibly a little plastic toilet that emits curses when the handle is deployed if I can find a manufacturer, I will fund the Prettymouth and Funnymouth projects, unless of course, I can find an angel investor who recognizes the limitless financial bonanza that this concept will undoubtedly birth.
All 36 songs are complete, so the only thing in the way of this idea is money and my well-documented personal inertia. Stay tuned here to be kept abreast of my fatal flaw’s obliteration. Go Pottymouth!
Pottymouth is underway. I am working with a talented musician and recording engineer on the project, which should be complete by the end of September, at which point I plan an assault on the open mics in and around Portsmouth, Portland and Boston. With the vast revenue collected from Pottymouth CD and tee shirt sales, and possibly a little plastic toilet that emits curses when the handle is deployed if I can find a manufacturer, I will fund the Prettymouth and Funnymouth projects, unless of course, I can find an angel investor who recognizes the limitless financial bonanza that this concept will undoubtedly birth.
All 36 songs are complete, so the only thing in the way of this idea is money and my well-documented personal inertia. Stay tuned here to be kept abreast of my fatal flaw’s obliteration. Go Pottymouth!
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Blogging and My Band
I am new to blogging per se, though I am not at all new to writing. They are indeed different disciplines. I once upon a time had a haughty attitude toward blogging, viewing it as a lesser form of written communication than writing op-ed for newspapers.
Before the stranglehold was placed on Seacoast Media Group, I had a weekly column under the auspices of seacoastonline.com, and when I would field a comment on my column in which the commenter would refer to me as a blogger, I would always take care to articulate the distinction that no, I was not a blogger, I was a columnist. I am slowly, kicking and screaming, embracing this new, or if you are young, old form of written communiqué. Now that I am one, I respect the blogger. It’s kind of like Mark Twain’s whitewash chapter in Tom Sawyer. Once you are doing it yourself, your tendency to recommend it goes from zero to sixty in a second.
So, blogs are legitimate, though let me say here, as a slave to nomenclature, the word blog should rather be articulated as ‘blog. It is an abbreviation of the word weblog. Just as don’t is an abbreviation of then expression do not, the omitted ‘o’ being substituted with an apostrophe. But I digress.
The tradition of blogging is real time communication of events and observations as they transpire. The aim of this blog is to participate in that tradition. Boy, I really am capitulating. So what did I do last night? I had a gig and it was fabulous. In 1980, the band The Substance was formed in York Beach, Maine. I was the front, singing and playing trumpet, with my brother on second guitar, the amazing George Mason on lead guitar, and Paul Chadwick on bass and harmony vocal. Our drummer was a jazz player named Dave Whittle who was amenable to the rock and roll we were stuffing down his throat. It was mostly original songs that I wrote with the assistance of one or more of my band mates.
We began playing together again this year with a different drummer, rehearsing once a week, learning new material and doing some fresh writing, but spreading the lead vocal duties around much more liberally. My brother has been fronting his own bands, George has been singing more, and Paul, the best singer out of all of us, has been living and playing with much more dedication and focus than he ever did back in the crazy old days. The gig was a block party on Plum Island, just off the coast of Newburyport, Massachusetts. It was pretty magical. We played two sets to an audience that ranged in age from three years old to eighty years old, including my mother who clocked in at 78.
We are playing and singing better than we ever have and I have to say I am really proud of this project. We have some gigs booked for later in the summer and the year, and I hope to develop this into a songwriting factory and a powerful thread in the vast tapestry of entertainment here on the New Hampshire seacoast.
Before the stranglehold was placed on Seacoast Media Group, I had a weekly column under the auspices of seacoastonline.com, and when I would field a comment on my column in which the commenter would refer to me as a blogger, I would always take care to articulate the distinction that no, I was not a blogger, I was a columnist. I am slowly, kicking and screaming, embracing this new, or if you are young, old form of written communiqué. Now that I am one, I respect the blogger. It’s kind of like Mark Twain’s whitewash chapter in Tom Sawyer. Once you are doing it yourself, your tendency to recommend it goes from zero to sixty in a second.
So, blogs are legitimate, though let me say here, as a slave to nomenclature, the word blog should rather be articulated as ‘blog. It is an abbreviation of the word weblog. Just as don’t is an abbreviation of then expression do not, the omitted ‘o’ being substituted with an apostrophe. But I digress.
The tradition of blogging is real time communication of events and observations as they transpire. The aim of this blog is to participate in that tradition. Boy, I really am capitulating. So what did I do last night? I had a gig and it was fabulous. In 1980, the band The Substance was formed in York Beach, Maine. I was the front, singing and playing trumpet, with my brother on second guitar, the amazing George Mason on lead guitar, and Paul Chadwick on bass and harmony vocal. Our drummer was a jazz player named Dave Whittle who was amenable to the rock and roll we were stuffing down his throat. It was mostly original songs that I wrote with the assistance of one or more of my band mates.
We began playing together again this year with a different drummer, rehearsing once a week, learning new material and doing some fresh writing, but spreading the lead vocal duties around much more liberally. My brother has been fronting his own bands, George has been singing more, and Paul, the best singer out of all of us, has been living and playing with much more dedication and focus than he ever did back in the crazy old days. The gig was a block party on Plum Island, just off the coast of Newburyport, Massachusetts. It was pretty magical. We played two sets to an audience that ranged in age from three years old to eighty years old, including my mother who clocked in at 78.
We are playing and singing better than we ever have and I have to say I am really proud of this project. We have some gigs booked for later in the summer and the year, and I hope to develop this into a songwriting factory and a powerful thread in the vast tapestry of entertainment here on the New Hampshire seacoast.
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