Choking your Chicken

Back in the earliest days of the 20th century, when my grandmother was a little girl, she witnessed the events that led to this blog, the events that led to a favorite family story of the infamous day when my great grandmother tried to choke her chicken.

I had best explain. My great grandparents, Louis Dillard Kirkpatrick (Daddad) and Mary Campbell Kirkpatrick (Mamie) lived with their daughter (my grandmother, Edna) in Bridgeport, Texas. They owned a large house on fourteen acres of land. They had pecans, various fruit trees, and they kept chickens. If the dinner-time meal was to be chicken, Mamie would ask Daddad to please go get her a chicken, and he'd go out to the hen house and select a tasty looking bird. He would hold it by the head and with a quick spin of his wrist, the chicken's head would come off, and he'd take the chicken to my great grandmother for cleaning and cooking.

But one day, she forgot to ask Daddad to get her a chicken. She had witnessed the deed on many, many occasions. And she thus thought, "Oh foot! I can kill a chicken! I've seen Louis do it a hundred times!" So she went out into the yard, snuck up on the feathered dinner-on-legs, and grabbed it by the head. It squawked and flapped its wings, and she took a deep breath and started to spin the chicken around. And she continued to spin the chicken.

The chicken was not amused. It still squawked and flapped its wings. But Mamie kept on spinning the chicken. Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, around the chicken went! All the other chickens looked on in wonder! Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, around the chicken went!

Eventually, my great grandmother let the chicken go. With a sigh, she went into the house to find something else to make for dinner.

According to family legend that chicken eventually died of old age - with its head permanently wrenched, turned backwards looking over its shoulder. When my great grandmother would see the chicken out in the yard she would look at it with remorse and sigh ... "Oh, Louis, oh ... oh..."

—David

Much Ado About Easy-Bake Ovens

EXTRA! EXTRA! Stupid Children get fingers caught in Easy-Bake Ovens! "Roasted Child-Digits" only 185 calories each!

So read the papers and blared the radio a couple months ago ... Dumb kids, dumb parents, dumb recall, dumb world... However, this silliness did bring up multiple memories and tales-to-tell of my own adventures with MY Easy-Bake Oven. And being a good little queer boy I didn't burn MY fingers. I made tasty things to eat!

If I recall correctly I got my Easy-Bake Oven for Christmas when I was about six or seven. I really liked it - mainly because it worked! You could actually "bake" cakes and stuff in it. The oven used two light bulbs, one in the top and one in the bottom, surrounded by a highly-reflective aluminum shell. You mixed the cake mixes in little bowls, greased up the little pan, and slid it into the oven where it baked for a time. When it was ready you pushed the cooked cake out the other side of the oven, and a baker you were!

The packaging shown above looks much as I remember MY oven - the late 1960s "Flower Power" decals included. I also recall thinking that the little girl featured on the box wasn't too bright. Look at her little cakes. You are SUPPOSED to bake TWO layers of cake and frost them together with a layer of icing in the middle! It's boring to simply frost a single layer!

My two big memories about my Easy-Bake Oven involved my Dad. He was all for it - indeed he was the baker in the family. When I made my first cake I was distressed that when I pushed it out the far side of the oven a sharp blade (inside the oven) hacked off the top of the cake and made a very flat shaved-off cake layer. This didn't seem right and wasted some very edible cake. My Dad agreed, so out came the tools, he opened up the oven and removed the "cake-shaver." Voila! Unshaved cakes.

The Easy-Bake Oven also gave my Dad an opportunity to give me a lecture on the evils of Capitalism. The oven was a really good toy, well-made, and fairly priced. But the company really gouged you on the cake mixes and frosting packets. And I was baking a LOT of little cakes!

So Dad explained all this stuff about monopolies, and evil-marketing strategies designed to take advantage of little boys, and he took me to the grocery store where we purchased inexpensive JIFFY cake mixes, frosting mix, corn-bread mix, and such. We found a little clear plastic container and carefully measured a "real" Easy-Bake mix, and using tape and a marker, made an Easy-Bake measuring cup so I could easily use the "real" cake mixes in my oven. These real mixes were even better than the expensive "Easy-Bake" ones. There were more flavors! I could make things like corn-bread! And this made the oven seem more "legit."

We chose the JIFFY mixes because they were the only mixes that already had the eggs and stuff in them. Thus they were ADD WATER ONLY just like the Easy-Bake mixes.

Toys wear out and I have no idea what became of my Easy-Bake Oven. But when I was nine, we traveled to Bridgeport, Texas because my grandfather was very ill. My Dad took care of me and my sister in the motel room while Mom was at the hospital all day. One afternoon, while walking the main street of Bridgeport, we wandered into a "five-and-dime" store and I spotted a treasure I had to have!

A SUZY HOMEMAKER OVEN!!!

Suzy's oven also worked via light-bulb, but it was bigger and looked and functioned more like a "real" oven. You placed your food in the oven through the hinged oven-door on the front of the oven.

Well, Dad sensibly saw this as a way to keep me occupied and amused during those long days in the motel room and he got it for me. This oven came with an assortment of "cake mixes," too, but it was suggested somewhere that one could also make pie! So when we went to the grocery store for the old reliable JIFFY mixes we got some JIFFY pie-crust and a jar of jam and I became the "Boy Baker of Bridgeport" for a time.

So here I sit thirty-five years later, I love to cook and I bake pies from scratch.

But the world has changed. Think of the fun to be recalled in 2043 when some forty-something brat will be writing mini-essays on how when he/she was ten, he/she stuck their fingers in their toy-oven, burnt them to shreds, sued Easy-Bake for Billions, and they are forever doomed to a life of store-bought baked goods.

Bon appetit, David

Almost Movie Time - READY? OK!

Lurie Poston and Michael Emerson (Ben on LOST) on location shooting "Ready? OK!"
Photo Credit: Adriana Breisch.

As you may recall, last summer I served as Production Designer of an Indy feature film. Well it is called READY? OK! and it is premiering at FILM OUT SAN DIEGO, Thursday april 17th. I can't wait to see it! A few early reviews have come in, too.

Beth Accomando, at KPBS radio, reviews FILMOUT SAN DIEGO and offers a great review of the movie toward the end of this several minute long sound file.

http://www.kpbs.org/media/assets/AUDIO/blogs/movies/2008/04/080410_BA_FilmOut.mp3

There is also an early print review from the North County Times. You can also read it online here - with a few pictures, too.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/04/10/entertainment/movies/d92eabc22863de9a8825742500659563.txt

READY? OK!
Premiere
Thursday April 17th, 7:15 pm
Ken Cinemas

4061 Adams Ave

San Diego 92116

Gimme Some Skin

I am currently working on AIDA for San Diego Opera - no, I was not cast as Radames (or Amneris) but am instead serving as body-makeup artist. What does this job entail, you ask?

Well, I must arrive at the opera two hours before curtain time and venture into the lower depths of the theatre where I (and several other makeup folk) get to spend three hours applying body makeup to various supers, dancers, and some of the chorus.

The vast majority are men ranging in looks from stunningly beautiful to elderly teamster. For about two and a half hours these assorted men wander over to the body makeup area in their opera-supplied skin-pink underwear and I ask them if they are Egyptian or Ethiopian. Depending on their answer they are made up with either Light Egyptian or Dark Egyptian body makeup.

They are escorted over to an empty spot on the plastic-covered floor and I spray them down with a water bottle. This makes the makeup flow better, quicker, and more evenly. Using small round sponges and pancake make-up of the chosen shade, I proceed to daub, wipe, pat and otherwise apply the makeup to pretty much every exposed inch of them save their heads, hands, and feet -- which are their own responsibility.

We are basically just trying to apply an even, smooth color. There is not much time for subtlety. I have worked up a few tricks and quick-and-easy frills to this crank-em-out process. I try to make sure the body makeup fades realistically into their necks and faces which are sometimes too light or too dark. I also usually apply a quick dappled sponge effect to darken the tops of their shoulders, like natural sun exposure creates. And a last little trick of mine, when doing their backs, is to start with a very dark spongeful of makeup down their back bones. This makes a little valley of makeup which can then be feathered out with the sponge. It not only avoids streaks but also adds a subtle hint of muscle definition to their backs.

Other elements of the job include hiding tattoos, doing a body makeup quick-change on eight dancing girls in about eight minutes, and then a lot of clean up afterwards: washing sponges, refilling water bottles, preparing for the next performance, etc.

It's kinda funny having a job where a man in his mid 20s comes up to you in his underwear and apologizes for not shaving his armpits better.

This Light Egyptian makeup has an interesting backstory. It was developed by Max Factor for Lena Horne who desperately wanted to play Julie in the 1951 remake of SHOWBOAT. The studio apparently worried that Horne was "too light" and Max designed Light Egyptian to darken Lena Horne's skin to an appropriate shade for the studio. Then as Ms. Horne has told it, "They went and hired my good friend Ava Gardner to play Julie and covered HER in MY Light Egyptian!"

So in a few hours I must head to the theatre for my opera chores. SOMEBODY has to do it!

Aida, Aida, I just met a girl named Aida . . . that's a different show, isn't it?

--David

Click! Click! Click!

I watched a lot of television when I was a kid. In addition to the usual suspects like The Brady Bunch, Gilligan's Island, and Bewitched, I was especially drawn to That Girl starring Marlo Thomas.

This may have been partly due to the story-line echoing my Mom's life before she married my Dad and I was born. That Girl ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971. It was the story of Ann Marie, a young woman who has moved to New York City to be an actress. In the mid-1940s my Mom had moved to New York for the same reason. So Mom could tell me stories about living in New York, eating at the Automat, the subway, Central Park, Summer stock, dating, roommates, having pre-marital sex, all the things one does when one runs away to New York City to be in the theatre. Indeed, I did much the same stuff when I went to New York to do theatre in the late 1980s.

That Girl also shot a lot of location footage in NYC, so each episode was story-fodder for Mom. In the last couple years That Girl has finally been coming out on DVD. And since I had pretty much not seen it since the mid 1970s, I have been buying and rewatching it. It holds up quite well, the writing isn't bad, the cinematography is especially good, and the production and costume design is great! It truly is a little time capsule of fashion and fun circa late 1960s.

On rewatching the series I encountered a two part episode called "It's a Mod Mod World!" in which Ann gets a job as a fashion model after being discovered eating that old actor's treat, ketchup-and-hot-water soup, at the Automat. I had not particularly remembered this episode until I resaw it. But it immediately brought back a torrent of nostalgic glee. Because back in the summer of 1970 it set my little mind to working and got me all fired up to join the world of fashion. Mod Squad, move over! I got out my Instamatic camera, corralled my three-year-old sister, and decided that I simply MUST do a fashion shoot!

Now, of course I had much empathy with Marlo Thomas and her character Anne Marie. And perhaps deep down I wanted to be an actress, model, fashion-plate. Perhaps I still do! Yet this being 1970, me being seven years old, and my not being able to both click the camera and do drag at the same time—I enlisted my little sister.

I set up my photo-shoot in front of the sliding glass doors that led from the living room to the dining room (they looked sort of like store windows to me). I asked my sister to go put on her best dress, or as my grandmother called it, her "Sunday-go-to-meeting" clothes. And we were ready. I demonstrated the classy poses Marlo Thomas had used. A look of coy surprise! Click! Hands up and out so as not to cover the dress! Click! A big smile! Click! Sell it, sister, sell it! Click!

And then one has to take the film to the Skaggs Drugstore to be developed and wait and wait and wait. But eventually they were developed and I was the Fashionista of the Second Grade. No digital, no Polaroid, just a Kodak Instamatic, a box of blue flash-cubes, my three-year-old sister, and me.

Copyright © 2007 D. H. Maxine. All rights reserved.

Food for Thought

These days I do not make a habit of giving thanks to imaginary deities.

When I was four my grandmother came to live with us and she always said "Grace" before eating. This was something my parents did not do. My grandmother explained it as thanking God for the food we had been given.
I pondered this for a time.

When we moved to Albuquerque when I was three-and-a-half we had very little money. Mom was starting on her Masters degree at the University of New Mexico. Dad didn't have a job yet since the move, and we were dirt poor. The state did not give out Food Stamps to the hungry back in the mid-'60s. They gave people food. We went down to the "food place" and they stocked us up.

This was not a "food-bank" as one might know them today. It was all food packaged by the State or Feds. So no name-brand foods, and no processed "junk food" either.

On that Fall day in 1966 the state of New Mexico gave us something like the following:

10 pounds of flour
5 pounds of sugar
10 pounds of Pinto Beans
5 pounds of lard
4 cans of some meat-product called "Bulgar"
A large container of Peanut Butter

This was supposed to last us a month. Next month we'd get another batch of the same. One should remember that this was Albuquerque and the vast majority of the poor were Hispanic. Also, most people still cooked at home. Pinto beans were a nutritious staple. The flour and lard were meant for making tortillas.

But what was our family going to do with all this flour, sugar, lard, etc that we had? My dad learned to bake!

All of a sudden the house was filled with the smell of yeast and baking bread. We now ate fresh homemade bread every day. We had Cinnamon Rolls. Dad even came up with a use for all the lard. He made doughnuts! There is nothing on earth quite so wonderful as homemade, lard-fried doughnuts!

Dad eventually got a job with the Microbiology Lab at the County Medical Center. But he baked bread and rolls and cookies for the rest of his life. Later that year we moved into a bigger house and my grandmother came to live with us. This helped with the rent, and my parents decideded to adopt a little sister for me.

So, as I mentioned above, my grandmother had explained "Grace" as thanking God for the food we had been given. Ever a smart little boy, I finally asked, "If we thank god for the food we have, do we blame him when there isn't any food?"

My dear grandmother had no answer for that.

Today I am thankful to loving parents (now gone), a wonderful boyfriend, a slightly-deaf Boston Terrier, and the 1960s government of the State of New Mexico who gave us so much flour and sugar and shortening that my dad had to learn to bake bread. Now I do the baking of bread.

My Father, who art in the kitchen ...

David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.
Copyright 2007 D. H. Maxine.

If I Were a Gay Man, Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum!

The following blog is VAGUELY EXPLICIT!
If you are uncomfortable reading about a summer romp between two men - well, skip this blog.
Another one will be along in a little while.

---

SUMMER 1986

At this point in time I had been out for a little over a year - and been a non-virgin for about nine months. Happy little gay boy, la la la la la.  A good friend was stage managing a summer stock season in the midwest somewhere. The last show of the season was FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and she asked if I could come down and serve as an additional ASM (Assistant Stage Manager.) It was a big show, and the actual theater was a thrust-type stage with audience on three sides. My friend begged. She said she REALLY needed two ASMs backstage. Ever the genial fellow, I obliged.

When I got down there, all was good and the other ASM was nice. He was in his mid-20s, kind of cute, Jewish, had a moustache, and he was engaged to be married two weeks after FIDDLER closed. Oh, yes, ASM (as I'll call him from here on) was the only Jew involved in the production, on stage or off! It was basically the "Viking production" - starring Leif Erickson as Tevye! Oy!

Tech period went fine - except that I was nearly killed by a dry-ice fog machine. But the show duly opened to thundering applause. The opening night party was held at a beautiful home on a lake. We were tired, happy the show was open. We could now relax, do five shows on the next couple weekends, and otherwise have fun.

Well, after a few drinks the other ASM and I were sitting on a staircase drinking gin-and-tonics and he starts asking me about my coming out, what it was like, hadn't I ever been attracted to girls (No!), and other typical questions.

Then he says, "Would you?"

"Would I what?"

"You know! Would YOU . . . ?"

"Would I what?" I repeat.

He seems VERY uncomfortable! "You're really gonna make me ask this, arent you?"

"What are you talking about!" I ask, utterly baffled.

"Will you . . . have sex with me?"

Now, this is a spit-take moment if ever there was one! I recover myself and say, "Aren't you supposed to get married in two weeks?"

He explains that he is getting married, he loves his fiancee very much, but he's always thought he'd like to try sex with a guy just once. And this seems like his only chance before he gets married.

What we have here is an ethical dilemma  . . .

Is it wrong to have sex with a straight boy who is engaged to be married in two weeks?
Am I doing him (and his future wife) a favor by helping get this out of his system? 
If I say "No," am I denying him the chance to discover he REALLY is gay, and that he should call off the wedding before he messes up his and his future wife's lives?

Big inhalation of air . . . "So, you really want to do this? You're really serious?" I ask.

He stands up, takes me by the hand, and says, "Let's go!"

He takes me out to his car. We get in and he asks, "Where should we go?"

"Look, ASM, this was YOUR idea! Where do YOU want to go? Why don't we just go back to the Techie House?"

He explains that we can't do that, someone might get suspicious or figure out what was going on, or something.

I think, "Silly boy! Who cares! We're theater people!" We're still sitting in the car pondering locales and I put my hand on his upper leg and . . .

"Oh my God!" he says. "You're actually doing it!"

Now I'm TOTALLY confused. I ask, "If you don't want me to touch your leg through your pants, how are we gonna have, ummm . . . sex? Any time you want to stop, just say so. This was YOUR idea."

"I know where to go!" he beams and starts the car. I leave my hand on his leg and his breath corresponds to my hand as it moves higher up, onto his lap, and into the warm space between his jean-covered thighs.

He parks the car across the street from the theater.

"The theater!" I say. "You want to do it at the theater?"

"I have the only set of keys!" He smiles.

We go inside. He's REALLY nervous and sits down on the vinyl-covered couch in the Green Room. "Do you really want to do this?" I ask again.

"Yes! Stop asking that!"

I kiss him on the lips. He closes his eyes and kisses back, really well, too. We break apart for air. "Whoa! I've never kissed a guy before," he says. "It's different. It's rougher."

"Well, I've never kissed a moustache before; and THAT's what's rougher!" I make a face, and we go back to kissing.

"I don't like it here," he says. "This couch doesn't feel right. I want a bed. Come with me!"

He takes me by the hand and I wonder where he's taking me this time! I see, and smile; and know I've got a fabulous story for the future. In the corner backstage, under the blue running-lights, is Tevye and Golde's bed from the "Dream" sequence in Act One. We jump into the wacky-looking bed, strip off our clothes, and go at it: kissing, touching, rubbing, getting sticky.

Before we finish, I have a vision that as we orgasm a bunch of gay ghosts are gonna appear at the head and foot of the bed, crawl out from underneath, and after a lovely harp glissando they will all break into a chorus of A blessing on your house! Mazel tov! mazel tov! And I pray that the spirit of the fiancee won't appear to curse me for coming all over her future husband.

The next day we had two shows and ASM barely mentioned our one night of love. Sunday we had the afternoon off and the production staff went to the nearby lake and I learned to water ski.

After the Sunday night performance ASM volunteered to lock-up. He asked me to stay behind and help. When everyone else was gone he asked me to come out on the stage with him. He'd turned on all the work lights so the stage was very bright.

"What?" I asked, following him out to the middle of the stage.

"Stay right there," he said positioning me dead center front on the thrust stage. He jumped off the front of the stage, crossed the shallow orchestra pit, and climbed out into the auditorium. He sat down fifth row center, smiled, and said, "Strip!"

Well, as I said at the beginning of this blog, I am a genial fellow, and I obliged. It was one of the hottest, sexiest things I've ever done, too. After I was properly unclothed we switched positions. I went out into the audience and he hopped onstage and stripped.

Let me entertain you, indeed!

Over the next ten days we did just about everything you can imagine. He didn't feel up to being topped - he thought I was too big. Silly boy! But pretty much everything else was tried at least once!

When the show closed he departed for home to prepare for his impending marriage. I never heard from him again and have no idea if he married the girl or not. That was twenty years ago!  OH MY GOD!  How time flies!

It was just about the best sex I've ever had. It was the first time I didn't feel like the newbie, the novice. I was now the expert. It was so uninhibited, so free, so very hot.

And to him, wherever he went, and whatever he chose -

L'chai-im!

David

Christmas Memories

Photo from Christmas 1964 - Arlington, Texas - Two years old

I've been thinking a lot about my childhood Christmas memories. Fearing they will one day fade I started writing down details I remember or have knowledge of, from my first when I was six days old, on up to last year's Holiday. I have some memories of Christmas 1965 when I had just turned three. And quite good memories of Christmas 1966 when I was four. The earlier Christmases are reconstructed from notes in my baby book, our home movies, and family anecdotes. Happy Holidays!

1962 - Six days old

This was probably an odd Christmas. Of course I don't remember any of it. I'm not even sure whether I was at home or in the hospital on this first Christmas. My mom had had a C-Section but I suspect we were home by Christmas. I'm sure she would have wanted out of the hospital as quickly as possible. At this time my parents lived with my grandmother in Arlington, Texas. My grandmother had a heart attack the day I was born. No doubt it was a combination of stress, subconscious jealousy, and needing attention from my mom. Sigh...

1963 - One year old

The next year I had just turned one. We were still living in Arlington with my grandmother and great grandmother. For Christmas that year I got a red wagon, a marvelous pull-toy called the Happy Hippo, a set of blocks, and a corduroy suit. I remember all these toys well. I had them for several years afterward.

1964 - Two years old

Now we are two. Same living situation as before. This year I got a Santa's Work Bench, a toy train, a toy mail box, and a little table and chairs. It is this Christmas morning featured in the photo at the top of this blog-post. We also have some great color home movies of this Christmas but alas they aren't digitized yet.

1965 - Three years old

Three years old and all is much the same. But it would be our last year in this house. My mom was about to graduate with her BA from University of Texas at Arlington and she was looking for Grad schools.

This year I got a bright red toy car that I could ride in. It had a push stick. So my Dad would push me down the sidewalk or street with something that looked like a pool cue. This little red car was made by Marx Toy Company. My parents noted with glee that I had a little RED car made by MARX. Perhaps to balance my early introduction to leftist politics I was also given a toy gas pump, and a cash register. My parents also surprised me with a Christmas puppy. When asked what I wanted to call the puppy I said, "Nuffin ..." So Nuffin became the puppy's name.

1966 - Four years old

This is the first Christmas I remember in vivid detail. In the Summer of 1966 we had moved from Arlington, Texas to Albuquerque, New Mexico so my mom could get her Masters degree at the University of New Mexico.

A couple months before we moved Nuffin disappeared. My mom accused my Dad of "getting rid of Nuffin" to make it easier to move. Years later he admitted he had. I knew nothing of this at the time of course. Just before the move my great-grandmother passed away at the age of 92. My grandmother stayed in Texas, taking an apartment in Fort Worth. And we traveled back to Texas to spend the holidays with my grandmother.

We drove back to Texas in our white Corvair van: Mom, Dad, me, and our new pet basset hound, Zeb. I remember we drove straight through - which is a long drive. We put my mattress from home in the back of the van for me to play on and for me to sleep on once we got to Texas. In the middle of the night driving Zeb the Basset had a very smelly accident in the back of the van. We stopped, my dad cussed, and the van got cleaned out. We stayed at my grandmother's new apartment. I think she slept on the couch in the front room and my parents took her bed, and I slept on my little mattress we had brought with us.

I remember being very happy we were going to see my grandmother; and remember, too, that it seemed strange to see her in a new apartment. The apartment was a fairly big one-bedroom. My Grandmother was a pianist and she still taught at this time so she needed room for two pianos. She had downsized to one baby grand and one console.

There was also a neighbor lady who had a boston-terrier named Inky which I absolutely adored! I was also fascinated with my grandmother's red finger nail polish. I was thrilled when she painted mine red, too! Such a nice and obliging grandmother!

I don't remember much about the tree that year, but I'm sure we had one. I do remember my presents!

Model Tramway Car

This was a toy tramway car that I suspect my parents fot at the Sandia Mountain Tramway just out side of Albuquerque. We had gone to the Crest of the Mountain right after we moved and I had wanted to ride the Tram but it was too expensive. So I think this is why I got the toy one. I wanted to play with it and my Dad cleverly rigged it to run between two of the legs on the grand piano.

Creepy Crawlers

This was a very popular toy, probably considered too dangerous for today's kids. It came with a little heating plate and metal molds of various insects. You filled the moulds with liquid rubber which you then "baked"on the little hotplate. When the rubber became cooked and opaque you plunged the metal into cold water and peeled out the rubber insects. I really did like Creepy Crawlers a lot!

Cheerful Tearful

I had also asked for a baby doll. Well, my grandmother gave me one named Cheerful Tearful. I don't remember getting any flack from neighbor kids either. I've wondered what my grandmother thought of giving me a baby doll and of painting my little fingernails red. Maybe grandmothers always "know what's up" on some level. But this WAS 1966 and she was a straight-laced methodist lady, so who knows, but she was very supportive of my off-beat interests!

I also got $9 in pennies from my grandfather (who stored up pennies all year long in a big glass jar). I got a Remco Mouse House; and perhaps the most lasting of all the presents, my Dad built me a playhouse in the backyard of our house in Albuquerque. I was there when it was being built so I know it wasn't a surprise. But I don't remember if it was built before Christmas or right after we got home. David's Playhouse needs a blog post of it's own!

More Christmas to come ...

When you talk about this blog later, and you will, be kind.
Copyright © 2007 D. H. Maxine.

My Little French Emo-Boy

People go to France for many reasons. I went to France most recently in October because Eric the Boyfriend had been invited to Quai des bulles, la festival BD de St Malo (The Saint Malo Comics Festival.) Yes, the BF draws a comic book series called AGE OF BRONZE which is doing very well in France.

Our adventure began when we arrived in Paris. We went to the hotel and took a short nap and made plans to have dinner with our friends Virgine and Laurent. Virginie cooked us a wonderful dinner. The next day we made our usual trip to the Louvre for culture, a trip to FNAC for off-beat and obscure opera CDs, and then to the ALBUM comic store at Bercy so Eric could do a signing event.

The next day the mini-tour began. We left Paris in the early AM to travel by train to Rouen where we met the comic store owner and were taken to our hotel. We met soon after for lunch and Eric was interviewed by two French journalists. Rouen, like most of the towns we visited this trip, was badly damaged by bombings in WWII. During the interview the subject of WWII came up and I mentioned that my Dad had been in this area of France during the War. One of the journalists thanked me for what my Dad gave to France. That has NEVER happened to me here in the US.

The next morning we arose and traveled by train to Caen where we were met at the station by Jean-Marie and his wife Sophie who own a wonderful comic story called Le Cour des Miracles. We again dropped off our stuff at the hotel and then headed off for an incredibly tasty lunch. Then Eric went to do his signing at the store and I went to explore the remains of William the Conqueror's castle a few blocks away. Jean-Marie helped me track down the spiffy new French comic book version of SIEGFRIED I wanted and later presented me with a large 3-D plastic poster for SIEGFRIED. A review of RING graphic novels will be coming along soon.

The next morning we had breakfast with Jean-Marie and Sophie at their home and we were introduced to the music of Serge Gainsbourgh, ate croissants, talked about SHORTBUS, ate more croissants, and finally headed to the train so we could travel to Rennes and do essentially the same thing yet again.

Rennes was ok - but neither the store or the town had the charm of Rouen or Caen.
On to Saint Malo!

The walled town Saint Malo.

Saint Malo was charming beyond belief. It is an old walled city that was the home of the Corsairs (something like pirates hired to defend the Bretagne coastline). After acquiring our convention badges and stuff we checked into the hotel (inside the walled city!) and were given a couple hours to go find lunch and walk around the town. Our Parisian friends Virginie and Laurent had mentioned that the French writer Chateaubriand was buried on a little island, the Grand Bé, off the coast of Saint Malo - and that one could walk there at low tide.

So Eric and I bought a baguette, a Camembert, and a bottle of red wine; and when we saw the tide was out we walked to the Grand Bé to picnic at the grave of Chateaubriand having only the vaguest notion of who he really was. Was he related to the expensive beef dish? We had also heard that the previous year at Saint Malo, another cartoonist friend of ours got stuck on Grand Bé becuase he wasn't paying enough attention to the tides. Thus I wasn't absolutely sure we were in fact headed toward Grand Bé because it seemed hard to believe the ocean would come in to sequester this island. So off we trekked to the rocky little island. We walked to the top and there was the grave of Chateaubriand.

The grave of Chateaubriand on Grand Bé.

We found a nice rock to sit on, ate our bread and cheese, drank our bottle of wine, and felt worldly and sophisticated. But when one has purchased a bottle of wine one has little choice but to finish it. Thus by the time we had finished lunch and began the walk back to Saint Malo, well ... nous étions tres pompette! My French gets better when I'm a little pompette, too! Quand j'ai été pompette j'ai pensé ma Français était meilleur. Hien? . . . donc, comme je disais ... Well, Saint Malo was a wonderful experience. We stayed for three days and three nights. I walked around the city walls one afternoon and watched the tide race in and, indeed, it not only cut off Grand Bé from the mainland it completely smothered a number of other little islets and rocky outcroppings until the ocean was lapping at the walls of Saint Malo itself. Eric and I also had our best meal in France this trip when we discovered we liked mussels - a specialty of the region.

We left Saint Malo and headed back to Paris. But Eric had one more thing on his schedule. He was to be interviewed on a popular "live" radio program (sort of the equivalent of "Fresh Air" on NPR) called Minuit/Dix which starts each night at ten past midnight. We arrived at the Radio France studios around 11:30, met the host, and the show began. It was very interesting. And I was allowed to sit in the studio during the broadcast.You can hear the interview by clicking the link below and clicking on the little red "Ecoutez" button. There is a little SLIDESHOW of PICS of the interview on this page, too.

CLICK to listen to Eric Shanower on MINUIT/DIX

The next morning Eric went to the airport to fly home to San Diego. Actually he missed his flight and he had to spend the night at Charles de Gaulle/Roissey Airoport. But I didn't find this out till later, as I was off to Belgium to visit my mySpace friend Katerine and her family. One of the best things I did was visit Breendonk, the Nazi Concentration Camp/POW camp in Belgium. I also visited the Mechalen Deportation Center which processed all of the Belgian Jews on their way to the Concentration Camps in the east. This will all get a blog of its own but it was quite over-powering. We also went to see SIEGFRIED, the Vlaamse Opera's latest installment in their new RING cycle. The next day I returned to Paris and flew home the following morning.

Now, I know what you're wondering ... where's that French Emo-Boy David promised! Surely there is some brooding and intense, floppy-haired, dark-eyed, tight jean-clad boy for you somewhere in this blog! Where is the Emo-boy?

Well, you have already met him. The Emo-boy par excellence, François-René de Chateaubriand. After I got home I decided that if I had gotten all tipsy at his grave, the least I could do was track down one of his books and read a little about him. It turns out Chateaubriand was the founder of French Romanticism. He was a lonely little boy, born in Saint Malo where he wandered the beach with his little mates. He was born in 1768 and he lost a number of family members in the French revolution and Reign of Terror. He came to America to find material for his writings and later produced his two best-known works from this material: Atala and René.

So I tracked down a paperback copy of Atala and René which kind of go together, and they each contain some of the same characters. Atala involves a love relationship between two Native Americans in 1669. The story is told by Chactas to a young Frenchman, René, as a memory about 75 years after the events have unfolded. But the true charm of the book is Chateaubriand's vivid descriptions on what is now the southeastern United States. The European descriptions of the surging rivers, mountains, wild life, and Native American culture are truly fascinating. Occasionally Chateaubriand goes a little over the top, but always with the most vivid results: "Down avenues of trees, bears may be seen drunk with grapes, and reeling on the branches of the elm trees." Contemporary reviews made fun of Chateaubriand's "drunken bears" too. But so much rings true - especially the details of how Chactas was captured and tortured by the Muskogee. It reminds me much of several books I've read on the early Iroquois. The book is also about the difference between a modern civilization gone awry (France in the revolution) and the Noble Savages of the Americas. It was most enjoyable.


The sequel, René, is a different sort of beast. In it, the brooding René finally tells his pitiful troubles to his American friends. René has become almost paralyzed with grief, woe, and misery and after unloading his troubles at last, Father Souël gives René some advice:

"Nothing in your story deserves the pity you are now being shown. I see a young man infatuated with illusions, satisfied with nothing... Know now that solitude is bad for the man who does not live with God. It increases the soul's power while robbing it at the same time of every opportunity to find expression. Whoever has been endowed with talent must devote it to serving his fellow men, for if he does not make use of it, he is first punished by an inner misery, and sooner or later Heaven visits on him a fearful retribution."

Wow, is that David's prescription for happiness or what! Hmmm...

Interestingly, René had an odd effect on French society by inventing the French Emo-Boy of the early 1800s. In typical romantic tradition Chateaubriand came to regret the monster he created. He later wrote:

"If René did not exist I would no longer write it; if I could destroy it, I would. A family of René poets and René prose writers has been swarming about. We can hear nothing now but pitiful and disconnected phrases; they talk of nothing but winds and storms, and mysterious words whispered to the clouds at night. There is not a scribbler just out of school who hasn't dreamed of being the unhappiest man of earth, not an upstart of sixteen who hasn't exhausted life and felt himself tormented by his genius, who in the abyss of his thoughts, hasn't given himself up to his vague passion, struck his pale and disheveled brow, and astounded men with sorrow which neither he nor they could describe."

Sigh ... thousands of little René-wannabe emo-boys wandering the French countryside, flopping their hair, oozing attitude, and looking for love. J'aime ça!

A+ David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will, be kind.
Copyright © 2007 D. H. Maxine
Quotes from ATALA and RENÉ translated by Irving Putter, University of California Press, Copyright © 1952.

Dancing Naked with PUFNSTUF

In 1971, when I was eight years old, I was taken to see the then new PUFNSTUF movie. I already loved the psychedelic television show of the same name. But the movie appealed to me for many reasons. I wanted to escape, I thought Jack Wild was cute, it was a movie musical that resonated of many things I loved including a similarity to the plot of THE WIZARD OF OZ. I adored Jack Wild's peculiar British accent, and now as an adult, I can see other reasons that the film spoke to me.

For those of you too young, too old, or too foreign to know the film, the story goes thusly:

A boy named Jimmy is picked on by his classmates and teachers. Jimmy plays the flute and one day his flute comes to life and starts to talk. A nasty old witch named Witchiepoo wants Jimmy's talking flute for herself and she tricks Jimmy into boarding a beautiful boat which traps him and brings him to Living Island. Jimmy escapes the witch's clutches and befriends a yellow dragon named Pufnstuf who wore little white cowboy boots and a Stetson. Jimmy wants to get back home, protect his flute from Witchiepoo, and in the end finds peace and love with his friends on Living Island.

There's an interesting Freudian interpretation of the film that I've heard about. Our boy hero Jimmy is about to enter puberty and his "flute" which had been inanimate suddenly comes to life. Witchiepoo (the mother figure) wants to take away Jimmy's "magic flute." For protection, Jimmy seeks out an even bigger phallic symbol, Pufnstuf himself. I wonder what PUFNSTUF creators Sid and Marty Krofft think of this interpretation. Pufnstuf himself does look pretty phallic. Look at his "head" in the photo at the top of this blog.

Okay, back to being eight years old... Well, I loved the movie and I loved my copy of the soundtrack album. I played it to pieces, played it for my friends, and being a little gay boy I had as big a fascination with Witchiepoo as I did with Jimmy.


Soundtrack album cover for PUFNSTUF (1970)

In the movie Witchiepoo hosts the Annual Witch's Convention in her castle. Witches are quite "political" it seems; and there is a power struggle to obtain the title of "Boss Witch." The current Boss Witch was played by Martha Raye; and other contenders for the title included Witchiepoo, and another witch named Witch Hazel who was played by Mama Cass Elliot. Witch Hazel sang a song called "Different."

"When I was smaller and people were taller
I realized that I was different.

It's kind of an ode to being gay (from a little gay kid's point of view anyway). It's not unlike Cass Elliot's big hit "Make your own kind of music." On the soundtrack album, this song is followed by a spectacular production number called "Zap the World!" which is what the witches want to do. I lapped it all up!

My best friend at the time lived next door. One summer afternoon while we were playing my PUFNSTUF album we decided to make "magic wands." In the movie the magic wands look kind of like striped pencils. And indeed that's what we made. We took some unsharpened pencils and carefully wound them with colored tape making spirals about the pencils. We also made them "magic" by putting spells on them and saying magic words and stuff. At some point my best friend said, "You know if we want to make them really magic, we're supposed to be naked."

"What are we supposed to do then?" I asked in my best naïvely coy eight-year-old manner.

My friend said, "We have to dance with them."

It sounded like a good idea to me! So we locked my bedroom door. We put on the PUFNSTUF album, and played "Different" as an invocation while we got undressed. When we were both naked we stood on my twin bed and waited for "Zap the World!" to begin. At which point the eight-year-old, wand-waving, naked, wannabe-witches began dancing excitedly, jumping up and down on the bed!

So what do you do when the music stops?

Well, you put on your clothes, you put the magic away, and you grow-up. You try to make friends with other people, hoping for a friendship like Jimmy's and Pufntuf's. And you long to find a Living Island where you attempt to avoid the witches, where you can play your magic-flute, and when the planet gets too obnoxious, you can …
Zap! Zap the World!

David

Blog copyright © 2007 D. H. Maxine.

Below, you can enjoy "Zap the World!" from PUFNSTUF the movie!

When I think of Tom

I discovered a couple months ago that my first love, Tom Ladd, died on January 22, 2006. I found an obituary on-line and it said only that he had died of unknown causes. He was 44. I fell madly in-love with Tom in January 1985, when we were both working at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. I was 22; Tom was 23. Tom gave me my first real kiss, too. I hadn't seen or communicated with Tom for about twenty years. But I thought about him often and really wanted him to know how my life turned out. Tom was cute; but his magic power was that he just radiated sexual energy. One simply HAD to look at him, his face, his movements, he flirted with everyone, slept with many, and he just oozed sexiness. Here is our story. 

"Anything Goes!" 

In January 1985, I was working as a stagehand at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. On this particular day we were beginning two weeks of "tech" rehearsals for a large-scale production of Cole Porter's ANYTHING GOES! It starred legendary belter Karen Morrow as Reno Sweeney, Steve Hanan as Moonface Martin, Maureen Brennan as Hope, and featured Broadway veteran Justine Johnston as Mrs. Harcourt. Johnston may be best remembered today as "Old Heidi" in the original production of FOLLIES in which she sang "One More Kiss." I was one of about five permanent stagehands - but this production was bigger than anything the Guthrie had ever done - and they had hired an additional ten people to fill out our ranks. On this first day, we had an orientation meeting up in the balcony of the theatre; the stage was a-buzz with saws and screw-guns where the Carpentry Shop was building a three-story ocean liner! I was paying only slight attention when . . . my eyes scanning over the new stagehands when . . . "Who's that boy!" And thus, Cole Porter struck me gay!

Well, maybe I was always gay, but I certainly didn't know it until then. And I didn't know it as an irrefutable aspect of my being for another few weeks. I was twenty-two, I'd never been on a date, I'd never had a girlfriend, and I was waiting for the "magic" to happen when I'd meet the right girl and feel like a grown-up. But really, "Who's that boy!" This was Tom. He was almost exactly a year older than I was. He was about 5' - 8" and 140 pounds. He had sandy brown hair, blue eyes, a stunning smile, and he simply glowed with sexual energy. I know now that I was in love. But at this point, I was probably falling back on a repressed gay-boy's safety-emotion - "I want to BE him" instead of "I want to have sex with him." Over the coming days I discovered that Tom was gay. OH MY GOD! And that did the trick. I had to become gay, too, so I could have him. I didn't say anything about my new feelings; I didn't know how. But I quickly discovered that not only Tom but another couple stagehands were gay, too. As was the entire gang of chorus boys. And this was a Cole Porter show! My soul was suddenly being informed by Porter's double-entendre lyrics, scads of young men in sailor suits dancing their asses off from eight till eleven then changing into t-shirts and jeans so they could go dance at some gay bar called The Saloon in downtown Minneapolis for several hours more. 

"Blow, Gabriel, Blow!" 

During a break in the Green Room one-day, Tom was just beginning to eat a banana when one of the other gay stagehands said, "Is that for practice?" Tom, without batting an eyelash, said, "I dont NEED to practice." And Tom expertly deep-throated the entire banana and slowly pulled it back out. I was speechless, awestruck, and insanely in love. I became a love-sick puppy and followed the poor boy around. Luckily many of our assignments kept us together during the run of the show. One of my favorite moments was during Act II when Tom and I would have to wait in one of the Guthrie's downstage tunnels during the song, "All Through the Night." It's a beautiful song, and all this blue light would spill down the tunnel shaftway, and Tom and I would sit and wait for our cue - sometimes whispering to each other. I was nearing a point when I felt I could say, "Tom, I'm gay, too. I don't know what to do." 

"Break a Leg!" 

On Valentine's Day 1985, after the show had been open for about two weeks, we were presetting the stage about 6:00 PM and someone said that we needed to find a replacement for Tom. My heart stopped. Why isn't Tom gonna be here? In a few moments I heard the dreadful news. Tom had been hit by a car on the way to work that night. He was fine - save a broken leg. But he would not be back to the show. My ticket to homosexual joy was snuffed out by a speeding motorist on Hennepin Avenue. I was appointed by the cast and crew to assemble Tom's "get well" package. Yay!! I knew his favorite candy, drinks, and also added in the SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE cast album. I visited him in the hospital a couple times. Then he went away to recuperate. Tom did make it back to work the last few weeks of the show as ANYTHING GOES! proved so popular the run was extended. On Memorial Day 1985, I went home with him to talk and have a drink. I desperately wanted to sleep with him. Tom felt it was a bad idea - since I was so clearly in love with him - and for him it would just be sex. But he walked me part way home and gave me my first boy-kiss. I always thought it was a cliché about floating on air. It isn't! I wouldn't brush my teeth that night, either. I didn't want to lose even a molecule of Tom from my mouth. 

"But if, baby, I'm the bottom, you're the top!" 

About a year after we initially met, Tom and I finally had sex for the first and only time. It was okay. It simply meant too much to me - and not enough to him. I was so scared that it be wonderful that I made it mediocre. But he was glorious naked. He had arguably the most beautiful penis I have ever seen! Tom wanted to screw me but we didn't have any condoms and I wouldn't let him. God he was hard to turn down that night! I wanted him SO much. But I was a very good boy. 

"It's Delightful, it's Delicious, it's Delovely!" 

So I've now known I was gay for twenty-one years - slightly less than half my life. You know, I had an incredibly painless coming out. My family was cool with it. Within a year I would meet Eric, my lover, whom I've been with for a little over seventeen years. Eric's family is fine with everything, too. I wish I had tracked down Tom so I could tell him how I turned out. I miss him. I remember signing in on the Guthrie Theatre's call-board and suddenly Tom appeared, put his hands around my waist and said, "Hi, sailor, can I buy you a drink after the show?" Instant hard-on time, instant adrenaline rush, instant puppy love. 

Tom and I both loved musicals, too. He was jealous I'd just seen SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE. We both jokingly talked about how we could have "saved" MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG. Tom introduced me to Carly Simon's TORCH album which had a stunning version of "Not a Day Goes By" on it. He introduced me to the the cast albums of BABY and LITTLE SHOP. I remember Tom's 24th birthday party and how he wore this incredible football jersey he had gotten from a previous boyfriend whose last name was Savage and whose number was 69. The very real football jersey said "Savage 69" on it. It was the hottest "get laid" clothing I ever saw! 

After ANYTHING GOES! Tom got a job as manager of the Uptown Theatre in Minneapolis. The Uptown was an independent movie/art house/revival house sort of theatre. Eventually he moved back to Chicago and we lost touch. Tom and I wouldn't have worked out. I was freshly out, a virgin when we met. Tom had been fuckin' like a bunny since he was sixteen when he'd been picked up by an old man of thirty-five at the supermarket. But I joked to him that someday, in twenty or thirty years, he'd be tired of screwing boys and he'd come to me like Frederick to Desiree in A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC. He laughed and said it sounded great! It was a fun fantasy. 

I always look for personal angles into songs and music I love. In "Hello, Young Lovers," from THE KING AND I, in which Anna is singing of her past, she begins the song with the line, "When I think of Tom . . ." and continues to tell of her memories and past love as she watches and sings "hello" to the newer, younger lovers. It's a melancholy song, full of ennui, full of love, full of gratitude and regret. "When I think of Tom . . ."

GRAMMY AWARDS and Me

Over the river, and through the woods ...
... to the GRAMMY AWARDS we go!

When I was a kid, I often fantasized about being famous and winning awards. I do not mean the spelling bee, either! I was certain one-day I'd have an Oscar, a Tony Award, or an Emmy Award. As I got a little older, PERHAPS I even fantasized about winning a Pulitzer or Nobel Prize! Yet I never even remotely imagined I would be nominated for a GRAMMY AWARD. Well, fate showed me.

But wait, there's a little back-story to fill in …

As some of you know, I have loved L. Frank Baum's Oz books since I was in the Second Grade. I've worked in and love musical theatre, and I have a passion for old recordings, really old recordings from the early 1900s. All of these various interests coalesced in the late 1990s when I started doing research on the long-forgotten 1903 Broadway musical version of The Wizard of Oz.

The Wizard of Oz is one of the best-loved fairy tales and one of the best-loved films of all time. Yet few people know that the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman attained fame in a hit Broadway musical in 1903. The show was legendary for its success and its impact on American culture. It made Oz, Dorothy Gale, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman household names.

The show opened on Broadway at the Majestic Theater in New York on January 21, 1903. The show toured, came back to New York, toured, and returned to New York again many times until finally disbanding around 1911. Stock and amateur companies continued to present it into the 1930s when it was overshadowed by the classic MGM film of The Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland which featured a new score.

To cut a long story short, I began a project to collect all of the old recordings I could find from the show: 78s, wax cylinders, piano rolls, music-box discs, as well as photos, newspaper clippings, etc. In 2003 (a hundred years after the show originally opened!) I produced a 2 CD set of said recordings with two picture-filled booklets.

Me and my 1906 Edison Home Phonograph.

I was very proud of my work on the project. A theater friend of mine in New York said, "You must make sure this CD is submitted to the GRAMMY Awards." I thought, "Yah, right…" But then another friend in New York said the same thing. And then my boyfriend started in on me! So I finally broke down and made sure the CD was submitted for consideration.

A month or so goes by, the GRAMMY nominations come out, and lo and behold:

Nominated for "Best Historical Album"
Vintage Recordings from the 1903 Broadway Musical
THE WIZARD OF OZ
Producer: David Maxine

I don't remember literally "pinching myself" but it was definitely one of those moments. So what happens when you're nominated for a GRAMMY Award? Well, you start getting mail from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, friends start congratulating you. And eventually you get to go to the GRAMMY Awards!

So I bought a tux. My BF rented a tux. And off we went. The night before the Awards were handed out there was a "Nominees" reception where we were given delightful things to eat and drink. They also presented the nominees with their GRAMMY Medallions! All of the nominees get them! It is a brass medal on a blue silk ribbon. It's very spiffy. They also take our "Official" GRAMMY portrait.

My CD and my GRAMMY Medallion!

The bulk of the awards are given out in a "pre-telecast" ceremony. There are about 125 GRAMMYs given each year; and only about a dozen are presented on the air. My boyfriend's parents came down for the awards, too. Mom-in-Law was kind of excited to see several members of Chanticleer a few seats away.

Well, my category finally came up and alas my GRAMMY went to "Martin Scorsese's THE BLUES" which I suspected it would. After my loss at the pre-show we headed over to the Staples Center in Los Angeles to attend the telecast part of the GRAMMYs. After the telecast we went to the big GRAMMY part at the Beverly-Wilshire Hotel, ate lots, drank lots, picked up our "goody-bags" and it was over.

Me in my Tux at the GRAMMY telecast.

I really do wish I'd won. I REALLY want one of those little phonograph-shaped awards! Maybe next time. And in closing I offer a shameless bit of self-promotion. Should you be interested in purchasing the CD set, it is available from Amazon.com or directly from the Hungry Tiger Press website.

Click here to take a look at the CD
and listen to sound clips!

Thanks for reading,
David

---

Ever wonder who actually votes on these award shows? Well, one of them is now me! As a nominee, I was offered membership in the Academy. Now I get to vote for the GRAMMYs each winter!

When you talk about this blog late, and you will, be kind.

Copyright 2006, 2007 by D. H. Maxine.

Daddy Dearest

I do not know how it happens that we learn to protect our selves from pain, and loss, and doubt. We freeze at a certain age and never really grow beyond it. We freeze at the moment of pain, unable to move, for fear of dislodging the knife in our soul, the thorn in our spirit.

I have mixed feelings about my dad. I remember him as a great dad, who worshipped me as a little boy. He was incredibly smart. He could explain anything to me. He could make the most wonderful things. He painted, sculpted, wrote, built his own stereo system. He built a black-and-white television! He knitted me booties! But he didn't know how to be a father to an adolescent boy.

Why do we feel such an intense desire to grow up when we are children and such an intense desire to return to childhood when we are grown? My life froze in the spring of 1976 when I was thirteen and my father was fifty-seven.

In 1975 and 1976 my dad was trying to get a veteran's disability pension. He had been in a M.A.S.H. unit in World War II and was involved in most of the big battles of Europe. He had been drafted and was over there for almost four years. He was traumatized by those years. He also had some nerve damage in one hand from a bad cut he got during the war. So now, thirty years later, he went out to the Veteran's Hospital and was supposed to check in to the Neurology Ward for tests. Yet for some reason never explained to me he was admitted to the Psych Ward. He proceeded to have a mid-life crisis and a nervous breakdown.

Dad was hospitalized in the Psych Ward for many weeks in the spring of 1976. He talked to his therapists, took tests, made little things out of clay. My mom, sister, and I went out to visit him daily. But he seemed to be able to take very little of us. He came home in early May for about a week. But on one Sunday, Mother's Day as it turned out, he ate a piece of my mom's Mother's Day candy, grabbed his side and passed out. He was taken back to the VA where we were told he had to have his gall bladder removed.

About two weeks after the surgery he was still in the hospital. We went out to visit him He seemed like a stranger. It was like he saw me, little David, as a thing to be conquered. Was my dawning adolescence a reminder to him of his getting older? Had his time in the Psych Ward aroused memories of his own abuse as a child? As we were getting in the car to go home I said or did something, I don't recall what. But Dad got a look in his eye and yelled, "You God-damn little ass-hole! You're not gonna do that to me! You're a little boy and you're not gonna forget it." He then jumped into the car and started slapping me across the face, his knees in my chest. I screamed and fought back, mostly just trying to push him out of the car. Mom was yelling, "Watch out for Dad's stitches!" fearing Dad would spill his guts in more ways than one. Mom got the now hyperventilating Dad off of me, out of the car, and into the hospital. I was in panicked hysteria in the back seat wanting an explanation for why I'd been hit for the first time in my then thirteen years of life.

When Dad came home about a week later nothing was the same and nothing ever would be again. It seemed like everything I did resulted in another beating. He said I was incorrigible. He said I was not going to make myself the man of the family. He acted like he was jealous of my relationship with my Mom. And as she would try to protect me from his violence, it seemed to irritate him even more.

A typical scenario would run thus: David doesn't finish his dinner. Dad says, "Eat your damn food!" David replies, "I don't have to eat it!" Dad, bellows: "Why you ungrateful little bastard, quit trying to one-up-me! You are NOT going to drive me out of this house! I'll put you in a boy's home before I let you ruin my marriage!" By this point I'd try to get up and run away; he'd chase me around the house, and he'd eventually tackle me. He'd straddle my chest, pinning my arms at my sides and he'd slap my face back and forth asking if I was ready to behave. Finally I'd give in. But as soon as I was loose I was filled with such anger that I'd yell something horrid like, "I wish you were dead you crazy old man!" And the chase would begin again.

I only wanted to grow up and run away. Or did I only want to be six years old again.

Once he broke my wrist. I was told to lie at the Emergency Room and say I'd stumbled on the driveway. Being a good son, I did. As I remember it the chasings, beatings, and captures occurred almost daily for about a year.

There is so much more to this story! How Dad fell in love with his therapist from the VA (who was also a practicing sex therapist on the side.) How I was threatened with being "committed" when I was the only sane person in the crazy family. How Dad introduced his therapist-darling to the family. My sister and I could tell she was the "other woman" Mom didn't catch-on. The therapist-darling wormed her way into the family, bringing her two little girls over to swim in our pool, play in our yard. Dad loved those little girls. He beat me up. My dad finally decided he wanted a divorce; which Mom reluctantly gave him. Before my parents divorced they tried a few months of couple's therapy. Their "marriage-counselor" was none other than the "other woman" herself, therapist-darling!

All right, dear readers, you can close your mouths now.

The divorce occurred fourteen months after I was first "punished." After we moved out Dad never struck me again. The year of terror passed, the beatings ceased, and the scars grew deep. Dad came over for dinner many nights a week; and we talked every day. Dad introduced us to his new friends as his "Ex-Family" an unusual appellation to say the least. But Dad was pretty-much back.

There is always balance, a love and a hate. I remember as a boy climbing into my father's lap, smelling his T-shirt, rubbing my face into the man-smelling cotton. His hands rough, his whiskers a torture of pinpricks. His breath smelling of cherry Kool-Aid and cigarettes. I knew I was loved. But the same smells and textures and memories are also tied to my Dad sitting on me, straddling my chest, my arms pinned to my sides. He slaps may face, my head is banged against the hard linoleum of the family room floor.

If we turn off our lives to dull the pain of tragedy, we sacrifice the present, the now, the living. And it is only with time that we begin to heal, to learn to feel again, to accept, and to love the past with all its delights, with all its blemishes, and all its horrors.

David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.

Copyright 2007 D. H. Maxine.

That Seventies School

I hated sixth grade. And I hated my teacher, Mr. Reinecke, at Aztec Elementary School in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

He was a crappy teacher but sixth grade was expecially bad becasue I was tormented to two bullies in my class. No one but me seemed to object. The dreaded twosome of Shane and Mike did all of the usual things bullies do: they punched me in the arm, gave me noogies, gave me "Indian burns." They called me the usual epithets like pussy, and freak, and fag; the latter altered into a nickname riffing on my last name: "Fagzine." Now this was all in the first half of the year; it got much worse.

The terror twins eventually started bringing pen-knives to school. These knives were little more than toys. But it hurt if you got jabbed and they were kind of threatening to twelve-year-old me. The last couple months of school were abysmal. Shane and Mike thought up a new game. Lots of kids were wearing "waffle-stomper" boots, which had thick rubber souls. Well, Shane and Mike (their initials are S & M; I never thought of that before!) started sticking broken razor blades in the tips of their boots and kicking me, which tore up both my jeans and my legs.

The teachers and principal were no help at all. They suggested boxing lessons! Or maybe a "playdate" so we'd all become friends (otherwise know as drown David in the pool day!) I was getting a little psychologically messed up. I was scared to go to school. I started getting a little obsessive/compulsive, too. I suspect I was trying to gain control of a world I felt was totally out of control.

Oh, you may have wondered where my parents were through all of the above. My Dad was a pacifist who felt victimized all his life and I think he just kind of withdrew from it all. Mom would yell at the teacher and Principal; the teachers would go look for the knives or blades; S&M would look innocent and show their empty pockets. Major dysfunction.

What to do! If Elementary School was this bad; I could just imagine Junior High! Well, Mom started looking for a new school. My Mom at this time had recently completed her doctorate and had accepted a political appointment as the "Executive Director of the Governor's Commission on the Status of Women" for the state of New Mexico. But she remembered that while she had been a TA one of her students was helping to start an "Alternative Education" school. Mom looked them up.

That next fall I was enrolled for seventh grade at The Twelve Gates Free School. What was this private academy for alternative youth like, you ask? Have you even seen AUNTIE MAME? It truly was the spitting image of the school that Mame enrolled little Patrick Dennis in. It was GREAT!

Twelve Gates was modeled on A. S. Neill's Summerhill School in England, and Orson Bean's Fifteenth Street School in New York City. The guiding principle of the school was "freedom and equality" between teachers and students. The school was run democratically by both students and faculty (two Lesbians and a straight woman.) You could take classes or not. You could sign out and go on a self-field trip. It may sound like anarchy; but to me it was heaven! I was even on the school's Board of Directors! After a year of stifling abuse in sixth grade - I was at last in heaven!

I took a year of Japanese. We had extra-curricular tea ceremonies, and cooked Japanese dinners at a teacher's home. Instead of a boring "civics" course we older students got together and assembled a petition to stop this thing called "Senate Bill One" and another to try and stop production of the B-1 Bomber. We then went out to Malls and the University campus and collected signatures and mailed in the petitions. I learned to use a camera and darkroom. We took a field trip to meet singer Alberta Hunter.

We sat around and read what we liked. There were tens of thousands of books at the school. One of our teachers read us certain parts of RUBYFRUIT JUNGLE aloud. Now THAT'S an education.

I learned to play the guitar (sort of). One kid who was about my age was a bit of a capitalist and he decided to start a school store. He bought food at the supermarket and sold it to hungry students with a big mark-up in price. I felt ripped off. So I formed the Twelve Gates Student Food Co-op. And brought back my own supply of groceries which students could buy at approximate cost after paying a nominal "membership" fee. This twelve-year-old's trade war only lasted for a few weeks --but what a way to learn economics, improve one's math skills, and deal with internal school politics!

In the spring we went on a school trip to Mexico. We drove several hundred miles into Mexico to a place called Bahia de Kino (Kino Bay). The bay was gorgeous. Out in the water a Bali-Hai-like island called Tiburon, rose from the blue horizon. But lack of organization on a school trip can be a big and dangerous mess (see my previously posted story Stingray.)

Sadly, the school and my life would soon implode. The adults in the school began to squabble; and so did my parents. That Mother's Day my Dad had a nervous breakdown--and this would lead to my parents divorce later that year.

Why do we feel such an intense desire to grow up when we are children and such an intense desire to return to childhood when we are grown? Life froze in the late spring of 1976 when I was thirteen and my father was fifty-seven. Just as I was reaching out to become a man my father decided he wanted to be a boy. And THAT will be another chapter entirely.

David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.

Copyright 2006 D. H. Maxine.