Hall and Oates

We went to see Hall and Oates play the Saint Augustine Amphitheater this weekend. Before the show we had a quick dinner at a local restaurant that had moved all its tables outside to accommodate a small indie show.The fans were hanging about outside, waiting for the band to finish setting up, and were easily identified by their penchant for black and the orderly rows of small tattoos marching into their sleeves. They talked earnestly amongst themselves, snapped pictures with cell phones, and sometimes hopped up and down in place, their chain wallets jingling, their straw fedoras unsettled on their heads. A tremendously thin young man with black glasses and a mop of sandy curls held up a cardboard sign that proclaimed his need for a ticket. Later, possibly trying to carry of some subterfuge, he entered the queue only to be unceremoniously ejected when he reached the reception table that had been set up just outside the restaurant.

My wife and I ate our sensible dinner and felt very old.

We parked a few blocks away from the amphitheater and joined the rest of the crowd walking through the falling darkness. Ahead of me a was a gentleman wearing black pants pegged at the ankles, a mustard yellow shirt, his hair slicked with gel, his fingers smoothing a black John Oates-esque mustache. The crowd was a bewildering cross-section; gone was the stylistic uniformity of the indie show. Young louts in Slayer t-shirts mingled with mature ladies in nautical jerseys. Alcohol was carried and camouflaged in every possible fashion. One gentleman carried his beer bottle inside a sheaf of papers, raising the entire structure to his mouth when he took a drink.

Our seats were center right, perhaps 50 feet from the stage. Next to us was a group of Australian couples in their mid-40s. The ladies were dressed in a vague yachting style, with sweaters tied around necks, white pants, and boat shoes. They shrieked and waved their arms while the men, all sitting together, drained their beers without undue exertion. Then the crowd roared and the band came onstage.

Daryl Hall wore jeans, a black t-shirt, a leather coat, and sunglasses. John Oates work a snug jersey and a pair of black jeans. Gone was the signature mustache. They took their places on two stools while the rest of the band filed in. The saxophone player wore lavender suit, his long gray hair falling back over his shoulders in a ragged cascade. A percussionist in a short-sleeved turtleneck and dress pants picked up a pair of maracas, the drummer took his place behind the kit, and the band launched into one of their familiar hits. Several things stood out as noteworthy: First, Daryl Hall appears to have been living in a cryogenic chamber someplace, and his abilities with this technology apparently far exceed Michael Jackson's because he really does look, at least at a distance of 50 feet, precisely as he did in the 80s. The long hair still bounces and flows with the same shimmering elasticity as ever. The voice is pitch-perfect, absolutely assured, and so strong as to make you believe he's holding a gear in reserve, some special set of notes in a register only he could reach. He makes it look easy, flowing from one song to the next, hitting all the little soulful flourishes he built into his songs so many years ago and adding some extras here and there. It was somewhat disconcerting to watch him; one felt that somehow they were looking into a time warp, or witnessing the results of some Faustian bargain.

John Oates was not quite as faithful a replica of his 80's persona, but he filled the bill quite well. He's spread out a bit, gone somewhat egg-shaped, so that his arms seemed to rest against the bulge of his abdomen. The mustache is also gone, but the lid of unruly dark curls remains intact. He played the lead on many of the songs and showed his chops on several difficult solos.

They played all the hits, a non-stop onslaught of hits, from Maneater to Family Man to Sara Smile to One on One. The crowd was in raptures. All around the amphitheater one could see the ladies begin to rise, to flow into the aisles, to throw arms above their heads, to grind and shimmy. There was a collective sense of time rolling back, as if Hall and Oates's uncanny ability to hold the years at bay had been transmitted, via their music, to the dancing women. The ladies next to me were in ecstasies, holding beers aloft, whistling, singing the lyrics, making whoop-whoop sounds when the band entered a breakdown or a solo. The gentlemen in attendance were more subdued. Some approached their dates cautiously from the rear and pressed their hips forward in an awkward but unapologetic attempt to cash in on the sexual energy that had been let loose in the crowd. They were not rebuffed. The ladies didn't care; they were captivated by Daryl Hall's radiant presence and, without taking their eyes from the stage, they reached back to squeeze buttocks or ruffle hair, transmuting these awkward accountants and mechanics into the golden god onstage.

But there was nothing unattractive or disappointing or shopworn in any of this. The band was clearly having a wonderful time, every one of them. A cool breeze blew through the venue, forcing Daryl Hall to run his hands through that gorgeous hair. He smiled and blew kisses. The saxophonist strode downstage in his purple suit blew his solos at the stars. The percussionist danced as if he'd never danced before, and even the sober John Oates cracked a few wry smiles as the crowd bathed him in its lusty cheers. The songs held up well after all these years and the band's skill made them work beautifully in a live setting. This was no indie show. There were no important Ideas put forward. No earnest speeches from the stage. No long and challenging instrumental passages. This was all about having a good time, this was about raising the average to the sublime. And for two hours and two encores, Hall and Oates did just that better than anyone.

Cheese for Me

I was living in Atlanta at the time, in an apartment above a real estate office in midtown. You turned the faux-brass handle and entered a short hallway whose carpeting looked like the pelt of some malnourished cat. A pair of bedrooms on your left. On the right was the door to the bathroom and just past that the small kitchen. Beyond the kitchen was a tiny living room which had been turned into a third bedroom by dint of large sheets of pink Styrofoam that our third roommate had scored from a construction site nearby. The name of an industrial manufacturer was embossed diagonally at upon these sheets at 18 inch intervals. It was a small apartment, made smaller by the makeshift room, but well-supplied with views. Each of the bedrooms looked out on the city and the window at the back of the kitchen led out to a flat rooftop from which one could see the trees above Piedmont Park.

We took possession in October and by the middle of that month I'd found a dealer. I worked at a software company all the way out in the suburbs and each day I'd drag my drug-poisoned body through the clogged channels of the city to my job in the basement of one of those office complexes that are typically occupied by dentists and insurance agencies. I shared my cube with a software developer named Ernest Shanks. He was a saggy black man who favored shiny pants and shirts and who talked incessantly about all the money he'd made in his career as a consultant. His confidence was in sharp contrast to my daily terror of being exposed as a disinterested addict who'd lied on his resume. We had company meetings in a little boardroom that had been outfitted with garish carpet, a faux-mahogany table, and a bay window that seemed more suited to the hosting of pork-chop dinners or the reading of Christian Science literature than the machinations of a future software giant. Our CEO was a short man with a brittle comb-over who held himself very erect and who constantly swigged cans of strawberry slim-fast from a small paneled refrigerator against the wall. His speeches were accompanied by the refrigerator's contented purr and the loud gurgles of his stomach as the slim-fast established its laxative effect. Sometimes, with a slight wince, he would lean his fists on the table and then, after a moment's pause, he would hurry to the bathroom just off the conference room, pulling shut the hollow door with self-conscious firmness. We would wait quietly while the exhaust fan's roar was interrupted by a quick series of muffled explosions. Moments later the CEO would reappear, serene, contemplative, his tones softer, exuding confidence.

Autumn came on fast and the days were gray, the gutters overflowing with the brilliant pulp of fallen leaves. By the time I left work in the evenings it was already dark and as I drove back to that little apartment, just another set of of brake lights in a river of red, I was frequently gripped by a feeling of loneliness so intense that it approached a kind of ecstasy. The gray office towers floated like ships above the misty expressway, and as their countless lighted windows loomed out of the fog I felt my anonymity, my smallness, my lostness. It was easy enough for me to justify another visit to the dealer.

During the Christmas holidays my brother went to New Orleans to visit his friend, an avuncular lawyer he'd known since college. I was invited to go but declined. I knew they'd spend all day drinking and visiting blues clubs and I was not in the mood for music. Our roommate in the foam compartment went to South Carolina and was then scheduled to represent some obscure magazine at a political conference in California. I was all alone. This idea both thrilled and terrified me. I had become merciless with myself. I was at a great distance from my body and used it only as a vehicle for pleasure. I'd learned to ignore its protestations. I slept very little and ate only when it was necessary. With nobody about and no work to regulate me I was afraid I might overdose. To guard against this possibility I instructed my dealer to switch me, for the holidays, from heroin to cocaine. On the 23rd I began my new regimen. At first everything was fine. I deposited a yellow mound of cocaine on the office desk I'd rescued from the curb outside a local fire station. It had metal drawers and plastic top made to resemble highly varnished wood. From the desk I looked out on the sodden city, a field of gray in which red and amber lights twinkled. During one of my trips to the store for cigarettes or beer I returned with with an old issue of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. I vaguely remembered bargaining with the Pakistani behind the counter and of pressing bills up against the bulletproof glass to induce him to slip it into the bag with my sweating bottles.

I worked my way through the cocaine. The skin of my face felt loose. My eyes floated in pools of warm oil. My hair seemed to hover like smoke above my twitching scalp. I found a picture in that magazine of a girl standing among the rocks of a dry creek bed. The day was gray and a chain of small mountains brooded in the background. She wore rubber boots, a yellow bikini, and a brown sweater. She was looking back over her shoulder at the camera with an expression of painful shyness in which one could discern glimmers of enigmatic hope. I was fixated on that picture. It was not perfect. Her bottom overhung her long tanned legs in what seemed a most unflattering way. It was an unflattering picture and yet here it was in the magazine. It seemed an unflattering picture and yet I could not stop looking. And it occurred to me that some photo editor had perhaps anticipated my state of mind exactly, the dreary darkened apartment in an empty city, the mound of cocaine, the overflowing ashtrays, the feckless blob of sentiment and adipose moving restlessly about inside, waiting for a deliverance that would never come. It was a picture from the end of a world and perhaps from the end of my world. There was something there, in that picture. The sky was so cloudy, the terrain so forbidding. The girl must be cold but she bore it patiently. Her little bikini. It was not so unflattering. I could not stop looking. It seemed to me that if I could only focus long enough I would come to some understanding that would set me free. It seemed strange to me that the sight of this girl filled so perfectly the void in my heart. I held the magazine up to the light, I went to lie on my bed and contemplate it there in complete silence. Sometimes the girl would waver and disappear in a blaze of thick blue fire, only to emerge again with white boots and gray skin and a black bikini, her lips moving as if trying to tell me something, something.

I allowed myself to fall in love. I lay still and imagined our life together from start to finish. I began to talk to her, to tell her all, my fears and my dreams. I told her about my crazy fantasies of transcendence and easeful death. She listened to all with an expression that was at once fixed and mutable. I could see small waves of feeling pass across her face from time to time. I loved that face. I felt its lines were written on my heart and that I would never forget her. I cried and held her close when I became paranoid and could not sleep. Sometimes I would press myself up against the wall, tennis racket in hand, while I waited for the footfalls on the stairs to reach the landing and for the doorknob to turn. She did not like this behavior. She felt I was losing my grip on my sanity. I told her that I might doubt anyone or anything but never her. And I told her that if I could survive this time in my life I might become a decent man who could treat her with the care and tenderness which she deserved.

When my brother and his lawyer friend found me I tried to tell them everything. I'd written four pages in a notebook and was attempting to crack the code of my own nonsensical scrawl. They made me drink vodka and V8, and then they ordered a pizza. The lawyer took me out on the little back roof where he spread out a poncho on the wet shingles and, patting it with his hand, invited me to sit. He told me it was time I considered a change in my life's direction. The night was not cold. The sodden bare branches of the trees seemed to wind like roots through the darkness. The lawyer's face hung in the air nearby, glowing like a lantern. I closed my eyes and focused on the soothing vibrations of his voice and the way it relaxed my aching brain. When I came back inside they made me eat two pieces of pizza, cut into small pieces and softened in a bowl of beer. Then they led me into my bedroom. My brother had cleaned. The cocaine and the ashtrays were gone. The carpet had been vacuumed. The sheets were clean and the magazine was gone. I was very glad the magazine was gone. I didn't want to see the girl again; she'd left me heartbroken and I resolved to never think of her again, but when I closed my eyes she reappeared, twitching, shuddering, palpating her limbs like a crazy woman. A buzzing sound came from her mouth. She did not remember me at all.

Man on Street

As a general rule anyone walking along the side of a busy road is going to be interesting in some way although even here, two types predominate. Most common is the vagrant: faded eyes, lank hair, tattered clothing, an expression of lust and longsuffering. The other type is the accidental pedestrian: sweat-stained, clutching gas can, tottering through the grass with an aggrieved expression.

But the really choice subjects belong to neither of the above categories. The other day I saw a young man strutting along the grassy median, clad in black pants and a tight black shirt, wearing a black backpack. His head was shaved in a Marine Corps fade and his red, round face was twisted in an expression of disdain. He pumped his clenched fists with each stride, as if pounding the belly of some invisible victim. He was clearly enraged but with what or whom I would never know. He slipped into the rear view mirror, an anonymous black shape beside the endless river of automobiles.

The Dream

In a dream last night it had all come together. I'd figured it out. I was a successful writer. I had a following -- modest, but devoted. I was earning a decent income pursuing my craft. I was happy with my position.

I would never be popular: I saw that. I could not sway the crowd but I might appeal to a little circle of kindred minds. The English critics, perhaps, would recognize me as one of the Celtic school by reason of the melancholy tone of my poems; besides that, I would put in allusions!

Yes, it's true that my dream may have resembled Little Chandler's musings as he made his way through the streets of Dublin but by GOD Little Chandler never worked as hard or as long as me.

The Randy Gent

He belonged in another era, when randy gents of his type had so many outlets; starlets, prostitutes, charwomen. Trysts in hansom cabs, her pudgy hand framed against the slanting rain -- steaming horses, spasms of engorgement, satiation

Revolution Nein

Yesterday morning I took my son to the carousel park. We were early enough to interrupt a man working out amongst the playground equipment. He was in his mid-forties, wearing black from head to toe, and when he saw us approaching he frowned and exhaled violently through his nose. He had a strong but poorly defined build. As we timidly approached the swings he dropped to do a series of on one-armed pushups, then sprang up to the overhead bar where he executed a series of vigorous pull-ups, counting off a number somewhere in the 300s. He finished off this his creepy calisthenics by attaching plastic handles (which he’d secured to his leg with a black Velcro strap) to the chains of two swings and performing a routine that vaguely resembled the Olympic rings. The police were setting up a bicycle safety exhibition on the mulch and, as the fitness buff wobbled and groaned in his awkward flights, one of the policemen began to stare him down. The fitness buff finished his routine, re-attached the handles to his leg, and then ran down the street, only looking back when he’d crossed the intersection.

There were three officers. One older and bald, his once-powerful build gone to flab but still impressive in the leather-and-polyester of his uniform. He stalked around the tent, taking pictures with a digital camera. A younger officer unpacked bicycle helmets and the third officer, a tall and genial black man, filled out paperwork. Each of the policemen was accompanied by their preferred mode of transport. The older officer represented the police car, the younger the bicycle, and the black officer the motorcycle. My son was partial to the motorcycle. He asked to sit on the seat and when the big policeman reached down to shake his hand he gazed upward with undisguised awe. He was given a badge-shaped sticker which he patted now and then to make sure it hadn’t fallen off.

I took my son back to the swings while the policemen finished their set-up. The wind was blowing hard from the north but the sun was bright. Trucks and motorcycles ground through the intersection beyond the sleeping carousel. The policemen were talking about AIG. The older one rubbed his tan baldness as he scolded his younger colleagues for their anger over the bonuses.

“We’re shareholders in this company now. The taxpayer,” he said.

The younger policeman squinted.

“Which means we own this damned thing, and we’re letting these senators go crazy up there in Washington. This witch hunt, it’s driving down the value, don’t you get it?”

“You think we should just pay these guys?”

The older policeman took a sip from a soft drink, grimaced, and said, “You tell me. You think we can stand to have more failures in the financial system? Or you think we need to move on already?”

“People just don’t like it,” the younger one said.

“There’s lots of things people don’t like. That don’t mean it ain’t the right thing to do. Just pay ‘em and move on. It’s done now. You know what I’m saying? Let it go. It’s done.”

“There’s going to be a revolution,” the black officer said. “And people like you and me, man, we’re going to have to fight them back.”

The older officer pondered this, shrugged, and said, “I plan on being retired by then.”

I had come to this park a few months ago with my father and he’d told me, as we watched my son go up and down the slides, that things were bad in the heartland of America and that a secret movement was afoot to buy up all the guns available in preparation for a revolution. It would happen in the next five years, he said. Riots in the streets. Domestic terrorism. Lynchings. Currency collapse. Famines. Independent states. When I scoffed at this he only nodded his head and said it was always people like me who were caught unprepared and swept away in the tide. I’d put all of this out of my mind at the time. When you’re trying to raise a two year-old you don’t have much time to contemplate revolution.

But then last week I got an email from my uncle in which a Christian blogger predicted a rash of fires on the Eastern seaboard. God would punish us, the blogger said, by destroying New York, Boston, and DC. Of course, this fellow had been predicting the immolation of the east coast for the last 10 years. If he kept it up he was bound to be right eventually. And, I reminded myself, my father’s aggrieved and dramatic temperament had always been fixated on the overthrow of power. Still, it seemed strange to have heard the same idea from three independent sources. Would it really get that bad? Were we headed for total collapse? It made me tired and slightly sick to think about it. I had a little boy, after all. I wanted him to grow up in a stable and peaceful society.

It was a delightfully crisp morning. The sun sparkled on the backs of the slow-moving cars. My son kicked his little legs and yanked on the creaking chains, his solemn expression racing through thick lattices of shadow. It was a springtime morning and the world was pursuing the joy of rebirth, oblivious to our human problems. It was in this tangible, actual, and immediate world that my son still lived. He had not yet learned to substitute a collective human fiction for the simple reality of life. And standing there, pushing him, I could almost remember what it was like to live that way.

Higher Power

At the request of a friend of mine I will elaborate here on a line of thought which I have been pursuing for the last few weeks. It all started with a contemplation of the third step (never investigated the twelve steps? Congratulations, you're still in the gilded era of your addiction or you were born healthy), which says, "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the power of God as we understand it."

I've always had a problem with this step. I could never take it seriously. Oh, I would say the prayers but I didn't like them much, and no matter how long I "acted as if" my experience with my higher power just didn't seem to improve. I was still going it alone. After eight years I began to hear those recovery-blues whispers: "Is this all there is?"

A few years go I was in a meeting when a strange-looking fellow walked in. He had a red fleshy face, an unkempt mustache, and unruly hair which he slicked across his head. Dandruff lay across his shoulders like fresh snow and the buttons of his shirt strained against his expanding belly. He was always tugging at something: his nose, ears, shirt tail, mustache, blue jeans. He was one of those rare birds who appear unexpectedly in your meetings and who leave without warning: a mad scientist of recovery. When he spoke I experienced a sense of freedom and exhilaration which I'd come to associate with great works of art or spiritual truth. He told me to read Joe Klass's "Twelve Steps to Happiness." I did. Then he disappeared.

So now as I considered my situation I remembered Joe Klass's advice to always look closely at steps which are not working as designed. I thought about the second half of the third step: "as we understand..." and I remembered the conversation between Bill W. and Ebby in the kitchen. This is one of the canonical episodes of recovery literature. Ebby tells Bill to choose his own conception of God.

I really thought about this. I really considered it from all angles and decided maybe, just maybe, this was worth investigating. I was tired of serving an agenda-driven higher power. I didn't want to pray any more to a god who had some master plan into which I must fit. I am selfish. I want to be happy and get what I want. And the Gods to which I have prayed aren't very helpful. The more I thought about it the more I realized that my conception of God encompassed (and elicited) emotions like fear, loss, loneliness and despair.

I became convinced that I was not praying to God at all. As matter of fact, when considered dispassionately, I was praying to the devil, Satan, whatever you want to call it. I was praying to an unintelligent, disdainful, agenda-driven, penurious, punitive deity and asking it (soul a-tremble with fear and foreboding) to have its way in my life.

So I decided to create my own God. It was fairly easy. I just listed 10 characteristics of this deity in no particular order. I review these characteristics before I say my third step prayer. Things are much easier now. As a matter of fact the higher power defined below is in direct opposition to the one I used to have (and the one which unfortunately is hardwired into my brain, necessitating a review of these characteristics each time I pray). So with out further rambling, here are 10 characteristics of my higher power (whom I choose not to call anything).


1. Intelligent -- the smartest guy on the block. Reads the New Yorker, the New England Journal of Medicine, and Science Magazine cover-to-cover on Sunday afternoons while the neighboring gods grind away on their heavenly lawns. He can read Proust in the original and has read and understood all Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. You get the idea.

2. Wants me to live authentically, to be my true self and would rather I err on the side of directness and authenticity.

3. Provides me with talents for my enjoyment and thinks I am already pretty special. Wants me to use my talents fearlessly and joyfully.

4. Doesn't want me to think too hard about solutions. Is at work on solutions and will reveal them in his time for me to admire, like a chess master.

5. Loves me dearly, which really means that everything I do delights him and amuses him to some degree. When he goes to hang out with the other deities he takes a picture of me in his wallet and bores them all with it. And after the picture has made the rounds, he props it against the water carafe and glances at it while he's eating.

6. He will solve any problem that I bring him. No questions asked.

7. He loves my writing.

8. Doesn't mind a bit of a mess, and when he feels hemmed in by his books and papers he bids them alight and fly back to their perches on his shelves.

9. Has never hurt anyone, not even people who deserve it.

10. Rewards me richly just for being me.