R.I.P. Twinky

Twinky was a folk singing alter ego of mine for a spell in the mid to late 80's. He never quite knew fame. As his promotional materials pointed out this was due to the unfortunate fact that he was born four minutes and thirty-eight seconds ahead of his time. He was also from Holland. He left his country of origin and emigrated to the United States because the wind from the windmills kept messing up his hair. His unkempt wig of indeterminate hair-style was a testament to that fact. While wearing sunglasses he was dressed in high calf-hugging silk pants of orange, red, and gold vertical stripes. His shirt was pink with a floral arrangement and over it he wore an ill-fitting blue vest with gold braiding. It was also festooned with sequined red roses. His shoes were of a platform variety popular in the heyday of the disco era and they gave his six foot four inch frame an extra little oomph. He also wore black socks.

He played a guitar that was spray painted gold and emblazoned with his name. It had a neck so warped the strings were upwards of four inches away from the fret-board. As befitting such an instrument Twinky always told his audience that he was playing in the key of R.

Twinky was perhaps best known for his self proclaimed hit record, "If I had anything I'd probably do something with it." The song along with its existential lyrics featured frantic guitar strumming that had in its way a close approximation to rhythm. After strumming for close to a minute Twinky would suddenly stop and in the ensuing silence he'd solemnly address the audience with lyrics unadorned by music. This technique perhaps unequaled in this epoch engendered in his audience an overwhelming urge to boo and catcall such derision as, "You're weird," and "Go home to your mother."

Not one to fall prey to depression and silence born of rejection Twinky one night ventured up to North Hampton, Mass, a town widely known as the lesbian capitol of America. At an open mic night at a venue in that fair city Twinky unveiled a ditty sung to the tune of the Who's My Generation. It was called My Castration. The song which featured such lyrics as "People try to put me down just because my balls are gone" was met with glaring silence. It was a moment of self reflection in which Twinky thought, "Man that spotlight sure is bright."

Some time later in an interview with Nigel something or other that aired on a public access television station Twinky was forced to defend himself against the charges that his song Yellow Submarine Sandwich was ripped off from The Beatles similarly named tune. While admitting that the melody of his song was indeed quite similar and in fact completely the same as the Fab Four's better known song Twinky insisted that there the similarities ended. Later on in the interview Twinky revealed that during the 60's he played with The Beatles. A noticeably stunned Nigel was heard to say, "You played with The Beatles?" To which Twinky replied, "Yes. Water polo." Ringo it turned out was a cheater.

In an effort to drum up interest in an upcoming Cargo Of Despair show that featured an appearance of the inimitable Twinky he appeared late one night at an open mic before an inebriated audience. It was a memorable evening of boisterous hectoring and jeering in which Twinky followed a Jimi Hendrix tribute band. In keeping with the preceding act Twinky announced to one and all that he had played with Hendrix back in the 60's. After an incredulous moment of silence Twinky admitted that they had played not music but kickball. This was met with raucous booing. Twinky then played hendrix's Voodoo Chile with the amended lyrics, "If I stand up next to a mountain I say look, there's a mountain. And I can take a grain of sand and make an island out of it. But it won't be a big island, 'cause like I said, it's only a grain of sand." The Twinkies he then tossed into the audience were for the most part hurled back at him.

somewhere in the video archives of Cargo Of Despair there resides a tape of Twinky doing an interpretive flamingo dance to the spanish guitar stylings of Nick the Swede. At one point in their duet for reasons unknown even to this day Twinky breaks into several seconds of that Sock Hop favorite The Mash Potato before returning once again to the floor stomping drama of the Spanish ladened tune.

Shortly after the taping of that genre bending performance Twinky faced the facts. Even Frank Sinatra had to one day say good bye. So the day came too when Twinky retired. He parted with his signature getup and unique instrument and moved off the stage making room for other entertainers with songs in their throats and stars in their eyes.

And Twinky was no more.

By your leads

Bill Clinton was in the White House and the Monica Lewinsky story had yet to blow when I took a job as an office minion at a vinyl siding and replacement window company called Southeastern Summit. It was, as Wired magazine heralded it, the dawn of a new era. Every day brought news of start up dot coms and IPOs with instant millionaires. Even billionaires. I looked on bereft of ambition and with a modicum of envy I puttered about the company's front office pulling credit reports, answering phones, and making the daily pot of coffee, all for the unflattering sum of 18 thousand a year.

No one ever entered the front doors of Southeastern Summit seeking either siding or new windows. Most of our customers came by way of commercials aired on a local television station during the Jerry Springer Show. One episode however featured the confessions of deviant participants in amorous relationships with farm animals; it caused a flurry of self examination: Did we want the company to be in any way associated with such perversity? After much back and forth arguing our CEO, Lou, decided no, he wanted nothing to do with that episode. As he would come to do ever so harder in proceeding months he applied pressure that day to the boss of our cold calling tele-marketers, demanding, "Get me some leads."

The cold calling telephone team was by far and large an ever changing down and out lot. They came and went by bus and beat up cars and were helmed by Lee a flamboyant and hectoring leader with a ratty ponytail and ever present stopwatch. He was full of bluster and promises of good leads in the offing. And each month when the itemized telephone bill arrived with evidence of calls to such locals as Tahiti and the Sudan he would sack whoever he thought had made the calls. He fired others too for reasons that smacked of whim and he did so with such frequency Lou had to warn him he didn't want any legal wrangles over terminations of unjust cause. This line of reasoning came to a head the day Lee fired one of his employees for being so drunk he fell out of his wheelchair. The last thing Lou said he wanted was to be sued for discrimination against the handicapped. Lee assured him his ass was covered and he returned to the phone room to once again berate his charges in the name of good leads.

Southeastern Summit had four salesmen. Number one was Lou's son, Jay. He got the most promising leads. Lou's nephew Jeff got second dibs. Then came Mark and Curtis. Jay was buoyant and jocular and turned many a lead into a profitable sale. Jeff too brought in a lot of cash. When the two of them were in the office they often bickered over tapes of Howard Stern on air that a mutual cousin in New York recorded and mailed to Jeff. But most often they were on the road and closing sales. Their customers almost always had good credit scores and their deals were often financed at favorable interest rates through an undisclosed arm of the company headed by Lou's wife Fay.

The deals of Mark and Curtis were more often than not accompanied by twisted circumstances and hard luck stories. Their customers invariably had poor credit ratings and outstanding debt. Mark was always surprised. To hear him tell it his deals frequently took hours of hard selling to land and were filled with cross the heart promises of good financial standing. His jobs were forever straddling that hurdle of should we do it and just not worth it. For they were literally without fail problematic. On one job he sold the crew who went down to install the siding returned with a video tape of the property. By the video footage you would have thought you were looking at a tornado ravaged house that had just eked by total devastation. When Lou called Mark into his office to assess whether such a house in its present shape could be fitted with siding Mark said no way. When informed it was one of his deals Mark blubbered that it had been night time when he measured the house for how much siding it would take to do the job and for that reason he hadn't gotten a proper look at just how dilapidated the house was. Perhaps the answer for Mark's poor vision was due in part to his habit of taking his son's extra Ritalin at the end of the month.

When a deal needed it Lou would say, "Irwin. give 'em a raise." And the latter would then work with eraser, exacto-knife and glue to change the sums of weekly checks or credit scores before submitting the paperwork to a finance company. This was a fairly routine undertaking and perhaps in some cases it gave that little extra nudge that sent some errant spending individuals free-falling into that dark chasm of inescapable debt.

The installation crews to hear Lou tell it were animals. With regularity they went disappearing from jobs not finished, or clashed with the home owners. Some of the installers were just shoddy workmen. This was the case with the Mac brothers. I dealt daily with the phone calls of customers upset with the labors of the two Mac brothers. One time it turned out they had installed a front door upside down and backwards and for reasons no one could ever explain they had also drilled several holes through the center of the door. Another one of the installers while waiting on Lou one day to send him on his way regaled me with stories of brawls in which he'd gotten the upper hand. The one he was most proud of however he'd lost. In that one he wound up with a hatchet embedded in his forehead. There it remained until a doctor in the emergency room extracted it. And through it all he beamed he never, not even for a moment, lost consciousness. With a big tooth missing smile he happily pointed out the prominent scar.

Over the course of my year and a half at Southeastern Summit the frequency of the phones ringing slowly diminished and sales petered out. It got to the point where Irwin would pick up a phone to see if there was a dial-tone. Then when the phones did ring it turned out to be customers seeking repairs. Our commercials on the Springer show brought in fewer and fewer leads until we reached a point where we could no longer afford to air our commercials. The telephone room too failed to generate any good leads. It got bleak and the mood in the office was sullen. Our salesmen called in ever more frantic, each with a plea; I've got to have some leads. Lou paced the hallway, muttering, "Jesus it's slow." I worried. For I was living paycheck to paycheck and couldn't afford to miss one. But it was all Waiting For Godot at Southeastern Summit. The leads just weren't coming. Then shortly before the company went belly up the dreaded day arrived. Lou said he was sorry, but you see how it is. I was laid-off. I promptly began collecting unemployment. And my days which followed on the government's tab were idyllic ones.

My Daily Supplications

My Irish descended mother and father raised me Catholic. No great mystery that. I was baptized shortly after birth in the waters of their faith. Later came catechism classes and my first question of a religious nature: "How could God be without beginning and without end?" The nun who I asked this burning inquiry of brushed me off without meeting my gaze. "You need only believe," said she. Thus was I introduced to the world of blind faith. I would later reject such tenets of my parent's religion in the onset of my teens. I would adopt instead an adamant stance; there was no such thing as God.

I remember with clarity that Sunday morning when seated upon a church pew I resolved to no longer believe in a deity. The sun through the stained-glass windows was radiant and I addressed myself heavenward and spoke the following words. "God, I no longer believe in you." Only later would I realize that such a worded rejection betrayed a fundamental belief in Him.

A short time afterwards my parents no longer required my two siblings and I to accompany them to Sunday Mass. They believed we'd reached an age to make such decisions for our selves. I was then severed as I wished from any religious doctrine. I stayed out of church save for the occasional Christmas season midnight mass. I would on those holiday visits enjoy the ritual and pageantry of the service, but I would in the end walk away without any spiritual nourishment. Church remained merely a task master before which I cared not bow.

When I was sixteen my grandmother, Nana, died and I attended my first funeral service. On that day bells were rung invoking God, and great plumes of incense smoke rose ever upwards as the priest intoned the reasons that made my grandmother a good Catholic. If there was comfort in what he spoke I did not feel it for his words lacked the resonance of poetry. And there was in his speech the steady drone of delivery by rote. The dead before him could have been anyone. At the end of the service I walked away feeling bereft with loss and further estranged from the would be comfort of religion.

Two years later my grandfather remarried. In the midst of the ceremony the officiating priest invoked the name and memory of the dearly departed Nana. He rattled on and on about her until a chill swept through the gathered draining all of good cheer. His words could not have been more inappropriate. I thought the priest a jerk. During the reception afterwards he approached my brother and father and I as we were getting some fresh air on the back porch of the wedding couple's home. He asked my father if either of his sons was a candidate for the priesthood. "I don't think so, Father," said my father with a chuckle. "I can't even get them to go to church with me." You would have thought my father had slapped him. For the priest exploded. Sputtering and fuming he denounced my father for failing his children. Then he turned his wrath on my brother and I. He vehemently swore we were both going to rot and suffer in Hell for all of eternity. Had he been an actor I would have said you're way over doing it. But he was not an actor. He was a man of God. And he would serve for the next two decades as a livid example of why religion was not for me.

I was in those ensuing years unmoored from God although I admit I did during that time petition the almighty for this and that. After all there are no atheist in the foxhole as the saying goes, and I was at the time at war internally with psychological strife and spiritual malaise.

Then I was introduced to the Twelve Steps and its concept of salvation and spiritual recovery through a belief in a God of my own understanding. Here was comfort outside the bounds of religion. I had only to believe in a power greater than my self. And I was free to pick and choose the attributes of this self defined higher power. The notion at first struck me as farce. If this was not God made in my own image than what was? But over time some fledgling belief took hold. For instance I came to see that I was blessed many times over with fortuitous coincidences. This led me to believe there was a benevolent power at work in my life. I was made humble and reverent too before the majesty of all living things, and saw within mother nature a power most divine. And I was comforted and struck with awe at just how precious life was. In that way I ventured forth with a concept of God that was as simple and complex as all encompassing love.

These days I begin my mornings down on my knees asking God to help me do His will, which I believe is to be loving and kind. I also end my nights on my knees thanking God for at least three things that occurred during that day. In the hours between my supplications I do my best to live each day as if there were a higher purpose, a gift if you will, to share with one another unconditional love.

And a final thought. "A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all other virtues." So said Marcus Tullius Cicero over a millennium ago.

What'll You Have?

I was not the stuff of your standard waiter, given as I was to brooding silence and sullen introspection. I had to put it bluntly my share of issues. But I could put on a cheerful front at times which was exactly what I did one afternoon to convince the general manager of a Friendly's Restaurant that even without any food service experience I would make a good waiter. With a firm handshake we sealed the deal, and I was outfitted in the Friendly's uniform: a light-blue and white polyester knit smock-like pullover shirt, dark-blue dress pants, white socks, and black dress shoes. I was all set to go.

My first few shifts I shadowed a seasoned waitress named Pam who was perky and had her hair permed like Marilyn Monroe's in the Seven Year Itch. As I followed at her side she showed me the ins and outs of the Friendly's way. There were abbreviations and codes to learn for all the various food stuffs the restaurant offered. I was nervous and thought I would never learn them all; confidence was never one of my stronger traits. A couple of days later it was my turn to take the orders while Pam observed me. I kept making mistakes. But she was reassuring. "You'll learn. Don't worry." And sure enough I was soon on my own with a three table station.

Waiting tables with all the emotional baggage I was lugging around was at times torturous. For without warning my smiling front would falter before customers and I'd feel like a raw and exposed nerve. It happened all too frequently. By my second night of waitering the thought that had been dogging at my heels from the moment I'd put the uniform on raised its head and sank its fangs deep into my flanks: I just wasn't cut out for waiting tables. I told Becky a cheerful and inviting waitress just that. She in turn told me how during her first week of waiting tables she went home each night and vomited out of nervousness. She assured me that like her my jitters would pass. With that in mind I labored on. And after that night it got if not easier then at least less painful. I took on a thicker skin and thought of myself as an actor playing a part. It was a role I grew into, ever so haltingly, until I had a level of self-confidence that brokered a relaxed and engaging smile. My tips increased accordingly.

Group dynamics among restaurant workers I soon learned were different from what I'd experienced at any of the various factories, foundries and warehouses I'd worked at. They were more playful. There was a camaraderie too of us against them (customers) that I'd never experienced before. Personalities were also larger, especially among the wait-staff. They were more alive and not bogged down with chip on the shoulder struggles of dead end jobs. They were going somewhere or else wise flourishing in their autonomy and pursuit of outside interests. There was also it was readily made clear soap opera intrigue between wait staff and cooks. But never with busboys.

Marilyn Monroe Pam for instance was soon scheming to hook me up with her good friend the night manager. Her name was Dawn and I found her unattractive. She had red and blotchy skin that was also pitted from unsuccessful wars with acme, and I had no interest in her. The only thing the two of us had in common was a mutual appreciation for Elvis Costello. But Pam insisted we were meant for one another. I however had my eyes on Roberta a tall and pretty brunet given to throaty laughter. When I made my interest known to Pam she bad mouthed Roberta and told me she had said less than kind things about me behind my back. Besides she reassured me Dawn was more my type. In the end, after countless whispered huddles, I dated neither one.

A short time later Pam who was married with two young girls took me into her confidence. She was having an ongoing affair that she had no intentions of calling off. She told me this in large part because her husband had come home early the day before and found her with the other man. She'd introduced him to her husband as me, her coworker. Now Pam wanted me to do what I could to collude in the ruse by keeping my identity secret from her husband. I felt used in a way I'd never felt before. But life moved on. And I chalked up Pam's actions to the notion that you could never really know another person no matter what their outside appearance.

Take for instance one of our busboys. He was studious and wore Ben Franklin specs and was named Charles something something the third. When you heard his given name you thought of patriots in the age of Concord and Valley Forge. But to us he was Chuck Smuss. He was known to finish off peoples discarded food that he'd cleared from tables and he had an unquenchable taste for nitrous oxide which he drained from whip-cream cans every chance he had. The results of this baffled our general manager who could not figure out why so many whip-cream cans were gas free and useless. Dawn who knew the truth of Chuck's inclinations warned him that he'd have brain damage if he didn't change his ways. Chuck laughed it off. Then one night there was a loud crash in the dish washing station. It was Chuck Smuss. He was sprawled out on his back with his glasses half off and a whip-cream can in his right hand. His arms were shaking akimbo and his legs were kicking to beat the band. He looked epileptic in full seizure mode. It lasted for several minutes. Afterwards Chuck promised to give his nitrous oxide habit a rest.

A night didn't go by it seemed without one of the wait staff pulling others aside to say, "Get a load of this..." followed by relaying some moronic action or request of a customer. They may have been our financial life's blood but they remained objects of inside humor, ridicule, and scorn. And sometimes revenge.

Late one evening a single man was seated in my section. He was an odd duck who exuded rage. His voice was clipped and raspy. He ordered coffee and a fried fish sandwich. I put his order in and went back to ask him if he wanted a refill of coffee. He glared at me in silence. So I turned around with no further ado. He slammed his fist down on his table so hard his utensils bounced up and down and I instinctively crouched. When I looked back at him he jabbed his coffee cup my way with a sneer and barked, "More coffee." I was reluctant to go near him. But I refilled his cup. When I told the cook what had happened he smiled and said, "Is that so?" He then took the guy's piece of fish and dunked it several times into the rank contents of the grease trap. Then I served it. Giggling in cahoots we watched the guy eat every last bit of the fouled sandwich.

Most nights though our camaraderie didn't take such dark turns. Things were typically business as usual. There were however times when disgusted with humanity in the guise of bad tips one of the cooks and I would turn off our Welcome To Friendly's signs early and locked the doors to bar further customers. We'd shrug our shoulders as they pulled at the doors and pointed at their watches letting us know we should be open. We didn't care. They were only customers. And by then we'd had our fill for the evening.