PREFACE
“Why,” you would probably ask, would anyone have a problem calling 9-1-1 if they were in serious trouble? Judging by the late-night “copaganda” shows on TV, the cops will go anywhere to “serve and protect.” This, of course, is Lazy-Boy World and nothing could be further from the truth.
The Lazy-Boy Recliner (chained to the biggest TV possible) symbolizes an abject withdrawal from Reality. I use 9-1-1 as a symbol of the State’s laughable promise of protection for the citizenry if they would just turn in their firearms.
Many people may have forgotten, when they read this, of a time from the early sixties to the late seventies when both sides of the political spectrum voiced the adage: “An unarmed public is subject to tyranny at any given point in time.” At the time, there was good reason for this point of view on the Left since the police and their newly formed gung -ho SWAT teams were considered the ground- zero enforcement wing of a repressive, pro-war, and racist government. On the Right, the Militias, White Supremacists, and Fascist wet-dreamers felt likewise threatened.
On the Left, we always had an aversion to calling the police for any reason short of the most heinous crimes. There was a certain pride in being organized and strong, with solidarity and purpose along with a willingness to take care of most of the problems of our community without their interference. Naturally, this radical viewpoint did nothing to enamor us to the powers that be. Actually, watching the police put half a million rounds into a small wooden structure in an LA ghetto and burning the occupants alive (the SLA) on prime time TV pretty much convinced, at least me, that the Government had no problem dealing with its perceived enemies, armed or not.
By 1977, the Vietnam War was over and the American Left, with no central issues and a lot of intellectual fatigue, more or less dissolved into small single-issue groups of varying intensities. Abandoning urban centers, as a "lost cause," many of us, found ourselves and our families holing up in “small town USA,” more or less in a self-imposed exile in the sense that being discovered as a “Lefty” could be most unfortunate, not to mention dangerous.
Not so eager to give up our progressive ideals, we chose to disguise our true sentiments from the local color, keep to ourselves, and try to carve out an economic niche of some kind. The only alternative was to “drop out” entirely and go to Lazy-Boy Land where nothing matters, paranoia rules, alcohol and drug abuse prevail, and, to prove that everything was alright, you got to call 9-1-1 every time you thought you saw the ghost of Richard Nixon lunging at you through the TV haze or the dark shape of a gun wielding intruder moving across your window shade, or some gang bangers from the drive-by drop-off center who have found your drunken door ajar and want to show you what some real “whackers” can do!
I hate to admit it, but, Lazy-Boy Land, at times, seemed pretty inviting. It was my artist wife Maria who constantly reminded me of my social responsibilities, my own artistic destiny, and my own Surrealist Manifesto! As clever as she was, she never really caught me in Lazy-Boy Land mindset and, since we didn’t own a recliner, laying on the old couch in a self-imposed coma was as close as I could get to that Nirvanic state. All Scorpios, we laugh under our skin, cop to nothing, and travel light, and often to no avail.
It was ten years and 15 jobs later (1986) and one didn’t have to be a personnel manager to see that I was not integrating very well into normal Capitalist life. I had a nomadic career (of sorts) in Screen Printing, which gave, rise to a lot of “shit happens” situations as we moved from place to place looking for opportunities for our art, our family, and a decent life.
Circumstances eventually found us stranded in a small fishing/lumber town on the Oregon coast called Coos Bay. A well-meaning photographer friend of ours had invited us there to share a huge painting and photography studio he had found. We had met Lee while on the island of Guam. This was his hometown and seemed like a cool place to "drop anchor". Maria and I loaded our studios up in the Red Dog (My ‘68 Dodge æ ton pick-up with 2 letters missing from the hood) and, with more bravado than funds, made our way out of California. Unfortunately, in the interim, Lee's new girlfriend had decided to commandeer our space, and since both of them were also lawyers, it was easy to understand how something this chicken-shit could have happened.
We didn’t have much choice but to accept this suck-butt turn of events. Lee felt bad about the double-cross but he really needed a sexually functional girlfriend. He put us up for a few days and then it became obvious that we needed to move on, what with all the bad vibes we were getting from his new Squeeze. Maria and I and Sara (her 12 year old daughter) went off to have some lunch and to try to decide what to do. We drove through the town getting more and more depressed as we went. The place was in shambles. There were few people on the streets and many of the storefronts were empty. At the last stoplight before leaving town, we spotted a greasy spoon and decided to have some lunch on Market Street.
The only thing worse than the food was the utter sense of dread that was coming over me. Maria started to talk at me, but I couldn’t hear her. I was starting to go into that Scorpionic space we call “Internoggin.” The burnt Velveeta cheese sandwich and tepid milk had pushed the abort button on my need for nourishment. I stared out the window as my beloved rambled on about our predicament and my utter irresponsibility for it. Slowly my eyes, which had been crossed in despair, started to focus in on a dirty red “For Rent” sign in this old-timey looking storefront across the street.
As if in a trance, I stood up, pushed the lunch “special” away, zombied out the door, and crossed the empty street towards the storefront. As I came closer, I began to read the sign through the dirty window: 1500 square feet for $300! I started jumping up and down yelling, " YES! YES! OH FUCKING-A, YES!" Maria hurriedly paid the bill and ran to see what her idiot husband was yelling about!
We took this as a sign, literally, as well as a Manifest Destiny! The Dam of Despair was now broken! We even found a really cheap two-bedroom apartment above it. It was Whore-House Beautiful! The landlord was a shriveled up old good-heart and he gave us the keys without even asking for the last month’s rent! This was beyond belief! We headed for the Yum-Yum Tavern, which was right next door to the new digs for some liberating libations before off-loading the DOG.
The Yum-Yum Tavern was run by a husband and wife team that we called Sonny and Cher. Cher had no business sense whatsoever. Sonny had a day job as a pipe fitter that paid for Cher’s unending generosity to the customers. She had a side gig giving “Fun Parties” for all her girlfriends. Over the cash register was a huge dildo with Groucho Marx glasses and the words “see me” written on it with a magic marker. I was uneasy about this at first, but, as I got to know the people involved, I grasped the Surrealism of it. After that, it seemed quite natural. Also unheard of, as was Cher’s customary greeting to newcomers, our first beers were free! I could get used to the Yum-Yum!
Market Street looked like a two-bit side show you might find anywhere in small- town USA. In order of importance, it sported a hard liquor bar attached to an old hotel that was the last resting place for many of the oldest inhabitants of the town; a beauty parlor with sun-bleached pictures of Annette Funicello type hairdos which they could duplicate exactly; a similar barber shop with Bobby Darin type dos for men; a heavily air-wicked second-hand store with very little in it; a Trailways bus depot attached to the old hotel, that butt- awful cafe we had been in, our new studio, and, of course, the Yum-Yum Tavern.
Lee thought it wise for us to keep our political sentiments to ourselves and suggested that we paper over the big front windows of the studio, at least until people go used to us being around. Not knowing anyone and being slightly paranoid of street level curiosity, that seemed prudent. This was our first concession to Coos Bay.
As it turned out, most Oregonians are of the “live and let live” type. So, for the most part, the patrons of the Yum-Yum were pretty friendly. Maria and I both made friends quickly. Buying all those "Rounds" didn't hurt anything either! No one seemed to care what went on behind the paper which was fine with me. Eventually it would be discolored by the sun and look like most of the other deserted storefronts around town.
As a precaution, I spent many hours at the Yum-Yum. I had my own booth next to the pay phone and the pissoire. I didn’t do much business but me and my pals played many a fine song and told many a tall tale there, while happily guzzling beer and lunching on free baskets of that ghastly Wheat Chex Party Mix which, for some ungodly reason, Cher adored.
The resident clientele consisted of a menagerie of the chronic or recently unemployed, several Vietnam Vets with varying degrees of post- traumatic stress, some old war dogs left over from WWII and Korea in varying states of decay, a few dyed-in-the-wool assholes and other impoverished souls, one or two old geezers from the Hotel across the street who made an art of popping wheelchair wheelies after a few beers, a couple of bikers with smoky patchwork hogs, and last but not least, the standard coven of old beered-out apple dolls with yellow nicotine fingers, pasty red rouge cheeks, and paralyzingly foul breath still trying to get some young logger upstairs for the “thrill of a lifetime !”
For what it’s worth, these people had enough problems of their own just trying to survive to pay any attention to the squirrelly new kid on the block, especially when it was some Scorpio-fuelled heathen gathering info-nuts for the next leg of his faithless journey into Oblivion! In fact, with all the fish gone and most of the profitable timber too far back in the woods to bring in, it was just a matter of time before even they would all be gone. Staying drunk day in and day out was their way of dealing with it. I, on the other hand, actually found a job screen-printing in a small local shop. Not exactly a career move, but it helped keep us afloat.
I empathized a lot with the inhabitants of Market Street since most of my childhood was spent moving from one cotton-mill town to the next because some Cotton Baron thought he could make more money elsewhere or avoid the Union organizers for a while longer. Just below the surface was this nagging feeling that, likewise, they had been double-crossed by the American Dream; supposedly with hard work, a faith in something greater than oneself, and a hefty dose of patriotism, the rewards of Democracy would surely have been coming their way. In fact, to insinuate otherwise or cast aspersions on the good ol’ USA would have resulted in bodily injury. Even worse, it could have lost me my resident status and open-ended bar tab (Cher liked me), and this rag-tag bunch of crazy’s that were now my overextended “family”.
Fortunately for me, the patrons approved of my working -class appearance and my other persona: popular delta blues musician known for breaking into song at the mention of a free cold mug or from the friendly persuasion of a collar-bone crushing lumberjack who just loved black field songs. These shenanigans were a welcome smokescreen to my real identity: Microcosmic Voyeur and Disenfranchised Anarchist of the Disemboweled School of Attack Surrealist Metaphysics and Propaganda!
We soon left that latter day "Cannery Row," but not until I finally realized that the script was writing me! When I realized that time had run out for the detached observer, I knew that I was being sucked into the vortex of a small town's Delirium and Pain.
The catalyst for this insight revolved around three incidents that occurred around closing time one fog cloaked Saturday night and on into the next day, an old Baptist favorite: Easter Sunday.
The first incident involved the flash- bulb intervention into the attempted post-traumatic-stress murder of a young boy (the son of my blues playing partner's girlfriend who lived in the tenement above the Yum-Yum) playing A.W.O.L at 2:30 AM by a Vietnam Vet I had met in the Yum-Yum that I had been sitting next to and "shooting the shit" with. It was the anniversary of the loss of his entire unit. He was ashamed that he had somehow survived. His story would chill us all out and conjure up this night of karmic and cosmic retribution. I also was not aware that he was "packing".
The second incident involved the cowardly non- intervention in the public abuse and abandonment of a pregnant junky woman by her recently laid-off husband who was trying to skip town on a bus across the street from the studio. I knew them, but 9-1-1 was all I could come up with.
The third situation involved the infiltration of my studio by Predatory Evangelical Porn-Agains who, through hostile hearsay, were convinced it was full of sacrilegious paintings. Where could they have gotten that idea? My defense of the Safe Sex Exhibit was admirable, as well as costly.
Agitated by their idiotic dogma, I physically threw the Body of Christ Snatchers out on their asses! The backlash from this carelessness of mine was to prove ruinous to my Mission. The actual contents of the studio were now known to a very hostile entity. It did not take long for my livelihood to be disrupted as the sanctimonious gossip spread to most of my civic-minded screen-printing customers.
Basically, I was "black-balled," eventually bankrupted, and forced to leave. I was tired of all this small town intellectual constipation anyway. I had managed to make some art there and Sara had graduated in one piece and gone on to study theater in New York. The Safe Sex exhibit was done and needed to be shown. The AIDS battle was heating up, my cover was blown, and generally, I never stay where I’m not welcome. And as Che said, "Never start a battle that you are not predisposed to Win!"
Maria and I moved out of exile to the urban sprawl of Portland, Oregon. Looking back I knew, in no uncertain terms, that I had come perilously close to ideological suicide: mythically within my own Surrealism and spiritually within my overdeveloped sense of the comedic. If there was anything heroic left in art, it was wasted on the pathetic reality of Coos Bay.
I now admit that the true Revolutionist does not have the luxury of “falling out of grace with Reality.” We Surrealists, on the other hand, do it all the time. It is our way of rejuvenating our souls, and for that, we take the risk of never being taken seriously again. What we Surrealists ingeniously perceive as a purposeful transmigration of the creative spirit is often viewed by those more disposed to recreating History’s mistakes as something politically selfish. Rather than seeking emancipation from mass stupidity by imagining a way out, these politically correct wanna-bees couldn’t care less about the consequences of their quest for the perfect “ISM!"
This, of course, is not a big loss to the cosmos or us. In fact, we do not only get to fill out our own Death Certificates (poetically, of course), pontificate Life’s earthly meaning, and generally Schmooze in Paganistic Intercourse, we also get to announce and commit the Coup de Grace in perpetuity.
CREATION = DESTRUCTION = CREATION = DESTRUCTION = CREATION
