not me, only the Hitler-type of mustache.
Anyway, this interesting mindset has all the makings of intrigue, and a memory file played out of key and lost somewhere in the computer directories abandoned along with the lost art, gold jewelry, gold from teeth, insurance policies, and confiscated property and businesses. The new technology has caught up with the thrill of living, and radiation threatens to spray over Europe, just as the big earthquake hits Tehachapi. Is that spelled right?
So who is talking here? Yes, it’s me, Jesse, telling a tale that cannot be told only in first person, or third, or by following the rules.
3.
Lost Youth
in America
Sotheby’s just sold Jackie’s last negligee, and Jerry Garcia’s ties are going like hotcakes. Will Jesse ever return? No, he never returned, and he got lost somewhere on the Viennese U-Bahn heading for Floridsdorf or some god-forsaken place. He tried to seek asylum at the U.N., but the Atomic Energy Commission wouldn’t let him in, so he disguised himself as Amadaeus and brought his harpsichord along to the L.A. bus depot, downtown, and played a little tin pan alley.
Jesse got lost somewhere between Hollywood and Vienna. Perhaps we can see him swimming across the Atlantic. So what? How irreverent Jesse is. A real “Rebel With a Cause.” Just what that is, we may find out. He’s a real borderline/narcissistic American with anxiety disorders-plus.
You may say I’m a dreamer . . . Was it Robert Anton Wilson, or was it Tom Robbins? Was it another plagiarizer, or an Indian “wannabe” writing of the Native American plight? Anyway, I was standing on the corner, Twelfth Street and Vine, or was it Sunset Boulevard? Sonny and Cher playing at the teenage fair on Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood. They were all in leather with frills, and they pretended they were hippies, or maybe they were then. How this Republican Bono loved his conservative agenda, and he, the Congressman, laughed all the way to Palm Springs Savings. I remember one night listening to Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis with Chuck Berry, at the Palladium. Man, my “great balls of fire” were on fire after that. Or was it the Beatles, seen from that tall tree in Brentwood, West L.A., fade away? We got privy, through some actor-neighbor’s children, to that private party. Or, was it the time we saw that girl in our sixth grade class trying on her bra? Joan Crawford walked into the class with her daughter, as did Betty Hutton, and Van Heflin . . .
Ooh, baby, won’t you take me back in time... Marilyn Monroe’s death in the neighborhood caused a steady stream of cars, and the mortuary nearby had a lot of flowers, including some sent by Joe DiMaggio. She lived within a five-minute walk from our house. Did she do it with Jack and Robert, right over there? I’ll never know.
What ever happened to the class of ’65, no, it was ’64, on the cover of Time Magazine? We were to be the future of America, the hackers who would set it straight, the promised landsmen of upper class intelligentsia. The boy up the block who used to hit us all the time, and the guitarist for the Doors in phys ed and math classes, the decades blended in and cashed in, and the dadaists-to-the-bohemians, beats, hippies, the me-decade, generation X, etc.,—post-punk and the avant-garde and the pop culture, icons, advertisements, new age and slam-dance, hip hop, techno, DJ, rap, blues, the stroll, jelly roll, jazz, world beat, acid jazz, house music. Rave-on baby, techno-squeeze. What’s next, please?
The customs and dress, the flappers, the twist and ideologies and humanists, the transpersonal, the conservative, the liberal, the establishment, Vietnam, Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights. And what ever happened to . . .
Time marches on when Jesse is having fun or is in therapy, processing, loose ends, traumas . . . Freud lived here, in Vienna, back here now with a touch of the keys, like I never left. The pre-WWII circumstances for Jews finally forced him to leave Vienna, the birthplace of all that mind stuff, psychoanalysis, the couch, the endless talking, the infantile, sexual archetypes, the unconscious, paranoia, etc. Have we begun yet? Are we having fun? I was walking with my friend, Richard Black, the names have been changed to protect the innocent . . .
Da dada da, da da da da, daaaa . . . remember the jingle to the old FBI series?
Richard and I used to climb trees. We had decided to sneak back into a neighbor’s backyard where two girls in our sixth grade class (one, my wannabe girlfriend at the time, the one receiving our heart-shaped chocolate Valentines boxes), were trying on bras, (as in brassieres), to show their newly budding nubile breasts. Our eyes, (our tongues, our breathing increased) were bugging out as we beheld those little white cloth cups and straps and we couldn’t wait to tell the rest of our class about the new clothing that the girls were now needing. Like wow, man, these girl classmates were now getting ready for puberty and growing their own for the boys to look at and fantasize about. Our pubic hair was coming of age, as was masturbation.
Richard had this big black dog that used to carry in the paper for his papa every morning. Flicka used to roll around with us and follow us down into the canyon where we could find a little stream running down to the golf course. Of course we snuck under the storm drain and bobbed our heads up into the exclusive golf course, next to the green, and ran with the little white ball back down into the tunnel as the mad golfers went looking for their balls, the very same Spalding or Wilson, white ones, of course. There was the time I snuck that Hostess chocolate cup cake up my sleeve and proceeded to walk out with it at the old Vicente Foods, as the manager chased me out and they called my parents and my father gave me the belt, and I cried. For ten cents plain — or rather, chocolate icing on the outside with chocolate cake under that, and in the middle the white cream: pure sugar blues.
Chico Marx was nice. He used to walk his dog and we sometimes talked, shmoozed together. He was old and in his twilight years. He was very friendly to me. A short man with his schnauzer, chatting with me next to my house. I can see now why they caused all America to laugh. There was this gleam in his eye and his presence was wholly engaging. I think he loved kids. I was just passing the time and so was he. Duck Soup, Animal Crackers . . .
One time we were looking for the A.Z.A. meeting, which is a Jewish youth organization supposed to provide us with young exotic-looking Jewish girls to date. We pulled over near La Brea, on Culver Blvd., and asked these two young black teenage boys and a black girl where this street was that we were looking for. I think it was near Western Avenue. One of the boys hit my friend Charlie in the face and then came over to me as I locked my door. We passed the police station just as the boys and girl did. My friend was bleeding a bit, nothing major . . . We told the police, they picked them up, and we later testified against them in court. They had a record for stealing cars, etc.
Those were innocent days in the City of the Angels. This wasn’t the drug era or the dangerous streets, the drive-by shootings, gang wars, semi-automatics, etc. One time I shook hands with General, or was it former President, Eisenhower. He was campaigning at the Ambassador Hotel. I also pressed hands with John Kennedy outside the Democratic Convention, and later with Carter in car town: Flint, Michigan . . . Memories, first hand, in “Lotusland,” as it is sometimes referred to. “Who you know counts, time is money and timing is important in business,” my father used to say. I used to sell all sorts of things door to door, up and down celebrity row, where all sorts of well-known people resided in the community around me. Who cares?
Now it’s Europe, and I am often glad that I’m not living there in the USA. I once worked for McGovern, in those early, naive days of campaigning where idealism ran before money. Elections are the so-called “democratic way,” and the rich are still backing the rich. Millions of dollars are needed to help elect, to pick your candidate. The lobbyists and special interests usually have their way. Thus sayeth the tobacco, oil, pharameceutical/medical, insurance or gun lobbies. This even goes for the progressive/liberal left-oriented, and the middle-of-the-roaders
