My Five Stays In And Around Bean Town

I lived at five different addresses in and around Boston, from June, of 87, until September, of 93. Each one had its particulars and peculiarities that amused and oft times aggravated until that abode's welcome wore out. Then I would move once again in search of more pleasant living conditions. It was a goal that eventually drove me to give up that city with frigid winters for a metropolis deep in the south. Until that time I was finally highway bound I bounced around Boston, collecting in a little black book each stay's serving of anecdotes.

Stay One: In our apartment on the second floor at 26 Haskell St. in Allston, Mass, we bachelors three engaged in mutually accepted "funstility," a marriage of fun and hostility. Inspired in part by the antics of the british comedy The Young Ones telecast on MTV we treated one another to repartee and mild slapstick. I'd say for instance "Yea, touchdown" when the Celtics scored a basket and my roommates would pelt me with empty beer cans and tell me to go to my room. It was a grand time and we were tightly knit. We could finish each others sentences and we were in essence one happy family. But different goals and life with a capital L saw to it that we went our individual ways and the three of us left behind what was for me my most enjoyable experience in shared living arrangements.

Stay Two: I crossed the river Charles to reside Cambridge. I became a roommate with a woman named Sue, who I would later learn was raped while on acid, and a guy straight off the plane from Ireland. I forget his name. One evening soon after I'd unpacked my things my roommates had a keg party that I intentionally missed. The following morning I returned to an apartment that reeked of beer and two roommates who were both acting skittish and doing their best to not cross paths with one another. They took turns scurrying around the apartment like frightened mice. The tension was due it turned out to drunken folly in the guise of a sexual overture by the male on the night of the party. In the ensuing days the awkwardness escalated until Sue was physically shaking. She confided in me that she was stooping her shoulders because the other roommate kept ogling her breasts. But nothing happened. The days passed and the problem was swept under the rug, and there it lay with a noticeable hump. Life continued on. Then one night a short time later Sue threw her typewriter through her closed bedroom window. At the sound of the shattering wood and glass I stepped out of my bedroom to see what was the matter. Her bedroom door was slightly ajar. I called out to her and as she turned my way to slam shut her door I saw in her face a look I will take to my grave; it was one of utter madness. I tried my best to calm her calling out in a soothing voice the possibility of hope as she rendered destruction about her room. When finally she settled down enough to speak she confessed that on her ride home she wanted to drive her car straight into a highway abutment. I urged her to believe that there was help available. I'm not sure if I ever convinced her because I returned to my room without her vocalizing acceptance of what I offered. A couple of days later I moved out.

Stay Three: Still in Cambridge I moved into an apartment a block away from a YMCA in Central Square. I had two roommates, both of them male. One was balding and spent his weekends handing out Left centered pamphlets and gathering with anti government protesters. He also introduced me to Cafe Bustelo and an appreciation for strong coffee. The other roommate was effeminate and gay. He blushed a lot, took long showers, and was frequently engaged in hushed telephone conversations. The apartment was dark and every night around 10:00, our neighbors above us dragged across their wooden floors heavy furniture. It would take them several minutes to finally settle on a spot and cease the dragging. This was also the apartment in which I was introduced to cockroach infestation. You'd turn on a burner on the stove and out they would scurry. The more I thought about it the more I had to admit that the over all dirtiness of our apartment verged on squalor. In a few short months it sent me seeking a place with cleaner conditions.

Stay Four: Back in Allston, I took a spot in an apartment whose only common room was the kitchen. The living-room had been converted into a fourth bedroom to cheapen the rent. We each got a shelf in the refrigerator and there was a small black and white television on the kitchen table. At first all was ducky. We each carried on independently of one another. Two of us worked days and two were late night rock and rollers. This factor would later lead to my eventual departure. Of the two rock and rollers Sharon was tightly wound and given to sliding notes under my bedroom door rather than speaking directly to me. One note complained that I went to bed too early and therefore infringed on her peace of mind to do her vocal exercises in her room aside mine. Another note demanded that the culprit who had stolen the bread off her shelf should confess and pay restitution. A similar demanding note under the bedroom door of Barry caused him to churn so much in anger he vomited. The loaf of bread it turned out was placed on the wrong shelf by Sharon's boyfriend. The problem was Sharon was blind to everything in the refrigerator not on her shelf. A couple more notes under my door led me to search for a living situation without any roommates.

Stay Five: I scored a basement efficiency on Lee St. in Boston. It was behind a Dunkin Donuts and many were the nights fragrant with their appealing sweetness. I had a hot plate and I was for the first time in my life living on my own. My landlords granted me washing machine and dryer privileges and I had an easy chair and a reading lamp. There was also child's size desk in my room that the owner assured me had served him well in his years in college. I never could get comfortable while seated at it. I slept naked on a futon and one morning when I sat up my scrotum landed on an undulating centipede. The tickle shot me wide awake. But life was good. I enjoyed being on my own and beholden to no one. It was a delicious freedom and I reveled in it until I made my mind up that I was sick and tired of New England winters. I gave my landlords notice. Two weeks later I moved out and was on my way to Atlanta.

Some times known as L S DUKE

Something weird always happened or so it seemed whenever I was tripping on LSD. Sometimes it was just a hallucination, like for instance when Mr. Pasternak's nose fell off as he scolded me for not paying attention in Civics class. Or the time I was standing in line at a public snack shack and a tall and lanky black woman standing nearby eating a hot-dog looked exactly like a giant upright ant. Those visions were strictly chemically induced and were as a golfer would say par for the course. What I had in mind were more the moments when I bore witness to a realm of happenstance outside the confines of normalcy. For instance...

One winter's night in the depths of the President Carter era energy crisis three tripping buddies and I stepped inside a donut shop. We were ravenous for confectionary goods. There was an older gent manning a stool and sipping coffee and a middle aged counter woman standing at the register. It was very still and the colors were saturated and it seemed as if we'd entered an Edward Hopper painting called The Night Clerk. One of us told the woman we'd like a dozen donuts. She pointed to a red plastic latticework basket atop an adjacent display case. There were two donut-holes in it. "That's all we've got," she said. "You're welcome to them." In that moment we noticed all the empty shelves and took in what was abundantly clear: we were in a donut shop without any donuts. She had to be on to us. "Come on," said one of us to the woman. "You know were tripping. Right?" She arched an eyebrow and a wave of apprehension passed through us. Oops. We stammered "Never mind," turned around, and exited. We were soon in a fit of laughter over our silly question and the fact that reality had played a trick on us.

LSD or acid as we called it back then was two dollars a hit and quite often came in the form of a quarter inch by quarter inch paper square with an aspirin size dot in the center. There were also times when the dot was exceedingly small and the hit of acid was called Micro Dot. Sometimes the paper square was colored something other than white and had a name corresponding to the color like Purple Haze or Pink Jesus. Once in a while the paper had an image on it, usually a Disney character such as Goofy or Mickey Mouse in sorcerer garb and wielding a magic wand. Sometimes the little square was plastic and called Window Pane. Acid also came in pill form and was about one fourth the size of a Tic Tac. Orange Sunshine was barrel shaped. Purple Pyramid was the 3 D shape of its name. But no matter what the particulars of the acid the results were always the same. About an hour after "dropping" a hit the altered state fun began. And with it came the weirdness.

Franky and I were hallucinating like crazy in a world turned unbalanced and liquified when we decided to head for the safety of his bedroom. It was painted entirely black with day-glow stars and space-ships that glowed and pulsated when viewed with a black-light. It was dusk and we'd almost made it to his house when five children appeared out of nowhere. Their arms were outstretched and they called in unison, "Satan, Satan..." I plunged instantly into a Children of The Damned paranoia. Never had such evilness existed. I didn't know what to do. I looked to Franky, but he was as I frozen in place. Surely we were about to die. I could barely breathe. Then the kids german-sheppard came to their calling.

Another dusk acid had me enthralled in the mysteries of the moment while at a spot in the woods where friends and I partied. As I hallucinated and saw the world anew in pretty shapes and colors a cohort kicked apart a rotting log revealing hundreds of agitated ants. I suddenly felt all creepy crawly. The log kicker poured gas out of a plastic gallon jug onto the ants and gave it light. The flames leaped and the burning ants writhed. I squirmed in simpatico. The log kicker sloshed more gas on to the fire and the flames shot up the sloshed out gas. The top of the jug was instantly alight. He jerked the jug back towards himself to blow out the flames. When he did so gas splashed out of the jug and on to his head. And in that moment his head was engulfed in flames as if he were a human match-stick. He dropped to the ground and rolled out the flames but not before the fire had singed his hair, eyelids, and eyebrows. It was a frightful sight. I spent the rest of the night staring with due diligence into the devious flames of our subsequent camp-fire.

Years earlier. One gloomy, damp, and cold morning after the bus drop us off at the parking-lot of Kosciusko Jr. High School a friend and I each copped a hit of acid and headed off for parts unknown. About two and a half hours later after standing around shivering and waiting for the acid to kick in with no results we decided to return to school and get our money back. When I opened the doors to the school I was hit with a blast of warm air. It was as if someone flicked a switch. My legs went wobbly beneath me. I had to grab a railing in order to remain upright. I was inexplicably tripping my ass off. And so was my friend. We giggled and decided what the hell we might as well stay were it was warm. I believe that was the day I later saw Mr. Pasternak's nose fall off. And everything was fun and games.

Years later. I had a classic bad trip. Some forty minutes or so after I dropped the two and a half hits of acid I felt that emptiness in my stomach that announced a heavy trip ahead. Soon I was down the rabbit hole and the world was oozing and wobbling all around me. I made the mistake of looking into a mirror. In doing so I discovered what CIA operatives had known for decades: You can easily break the mind of someone unstable with hounding questions and a liberal dose of LSD. My subconscious was my cruel and viscous interrogator that night. As it howled at me I saw before me in my reflection every vile sin I'd ever committed. I looked on in horror as my face morphed into ever more hideous grotesqueries. With herculean effort I pried myself away from my reflection. But it was too late, for I knew with every fiber of my being that I was more putrid than a rotting corpse. And the night had just begun. In the horrific hours that followed I screeched at myself and ran a gauntlet of hallucinated ghouls and demons. The experience left me shellshocked and jumpy for many years to come. And although it was heavy price to pay for chemically induced wonderment I still look back with fondness on those years of hallucinations and weirdness.

9

Size queen

My penis is small. It is while flaccid about the size of my thumb, though thicker in girth. For most of my life I bore that fact with shame. In the school gym locker rooms of my early puberty I changed quickly never doffing my under-shorts or taking showers after play and exertion. I settled for the discomfort and stink of dried sweat rather than the scrutiny of friends and foe. No one would see my penis, or so I vowed.

While engaging with the world however my word was not easily kept. For the time always arrived when I had to drop my drawers or pull down my zipper. And no matter the reason, I knew shame. Be it a doctor holding my testicles and telling me to cough. Or the sudden freeze and dribble at public urinals when regardless of my bladder's insistence the close proximity of another's arrival turned off my water works. And worst of all as I was soon to learn was the shame inherent in my sexual awakening.

Her name was Kelly and we were both fifteen when she took me by the hand one chilly night and led me through the woods to an improvised bed, a pile of fragrant autumn leaves. Up until then I knew barely more than spin the bottle kisses. A parking-lot was nearby and its humming lights illuminated us with a flat white glare. She was by kiss-and-tell accounts an easy lay and I knew she was initiating me into the world of coupling at the behest of my best friend Peter. Soon enough Kelly and I were reclining in the gathered leaves, exchanging tongues and groping. I fumbled at her buttons and the clasps of her bra and suddenly before me she lay half naked. But I was not erect. So when she reached for my belt buckle I stilled her hand. "What's wrong?" she asked. But I could not speak and felt my cheeks flush red. There was no way out. I gave up. There is no other way to describe it. I was utterly defeated and let go of her hand. As she reached into my under-ware I was worlds away. And I replied near tears with a wordless mumble when she asked me once again what's the matter.

In the ensuing couple of years I knew no moments amorous. Although I longed after several cute classmates I did not pursue or make plain my affections. For the memory of my limp floundering with Kelly kept me mute.

Then as a Senior in high school I met Linda while drinking under age at a local lounge named the Dial Tone. I was in my liquor lubricated self charming enough to win her phone number. My subsequent call to her elicited laughter and acquiescence when I answered "go to a motel" to her question, "What shall we do on our first date?" The following Saturday off we went. As Linda undressed in the motel bathroom I turned off the lights, stripped down to my under-shorts, and got into bed. My breathing was shallow and I was both excited and tense with dread. I need not have been. For Linda turned out to be a tender and tutoring lover. She removed my under-shorts and did not recoil at my size or semi arousal. She treated me gently with head to toe kisses and I surrendered my virginity to her in the missionary position in several minutes time.

I learned through Linda and subsequent lovers that though at the lower end of the spectrum I was while erect of average size. But the knowledge did not appease me. I was as a boy blue in the face over a lollypop I could not have. I fumed in want of a bigger dick. And shame ruled me.

Three decades on in a bid to finally rid myself of my oppressive feelings surrounding size I went to a nudist retreat. I walked naked among my familiars with myriad body shapes and sizes and I saw penises relative in size to mine. And then one night as I luxuriated in the camp ground hot-tub I was joined by a woman who had undergone a mastectomy. And as I gazed upon that serene woman with one breast and witnessed her self acceptance I found myself and my shame suddenly foolish. She was in those moments my teacher. I knew then what it was to embrace one's own humanity. And in the many days that have followed I have thought of her whenever I've found myself once more nearing that vestige of size shame.

With hub and without

Beginning in the waning years of the sixties when I was not yet in my teens our family vacationed at Hampton Beach, NH, each summer during the last two weeks of August. The first few years we stayed at a three bedroom cottage painted a milky yellow. It was named The Kay. My grandmother, Nana, who was the hub of our extended clan spent the entire two weeks with us. My aunts and Uncles who lived relatively close by in Lowell, Mass, visited us nearly every day. They did so with my cousins in tow. We had a grand time and I knew what it meant to be happy and carefree. I didn't even mind my sunburn which I got nearly every year within the first couple of days of hitting the beach. It meant I got to hang out with Nana who confessed to me that I was her favorite. She would slip me thick white peppermints and dollar bills for the penny arcades and tell me all about the joys of growing up. She would confide in me until the worst of my sunburn had passed and I was once again able to return to my family's blankets just beyond the sandy dunes.

Each morning we'd spread out those blankets and beach chairs on our spot in the sand. It lacked only an X to mark it. The adults would slather up with sunscreen and oils redolent in coconut and sun themselves. They would make idle chatter and reposition their chairs to the changing arc of the sun. My cousins and I meanwhile would play with our toys in the sand. We would do so until the heat of the day forced us to brave the waves with frigid temperatures that seemed to indicate that they came directly from the Arctic circle. We would body surf and splash each other with chattering teeth as we waited for the next big wave to take us into shore.

Lunch time back at the cottage was orchestrated by Nana. It was a good humored and chaotic affair of cold-cuts, chips, pickles, and soda which my cousins called pop. We'd eat until sated and then lounge around on the porch and play with our dog Toto until once again heading back to the beach.

Our second summer at Hampton Beach I fell achingly in love with the teenage daughter of one of my mother's friends from childhood. I was smitten with a dry throat and a throbbing chest in the immediate moments of seeing her. So moved was I I gave up my army men as a show that I too was all grown up. As fate would have it one night she was a babysitter for us kids while the adults went out on the town. I was so overwhelmed by my feelings for her I stayed in my room breathing erratically and too afraid to venture into the room where she sat doing what ever it was that big girls do. I stared at my door willing her to come to me. I did so unsuccessfully into the late hours of the evening.

My father took Toto for a run on the beach each morning. And on Saturdays and Sundays he would bring home donuts from Sullivan's Donuts. You had to get there early our father told us. A line started forming before it even opened, this donut shop that was run by old man Sullivan and his two daughters who were both nuns. Whether it was due to the nuns or not we were all in agreement, as corny as it sounded, Sullivan's donuts were heavenly.

Every four years the Olympics coincided with our vacations. In Sixty-Eight we huddled around the small black and white television and listened to my father rail about the embarrassment to our country as three black American athletes lowered their heads and raised their black gloved fists in a show of black power. Four years later Munich saw us stunned and dumbfounded by a world gone horrifically awry. Then there was Olga and Nadia and unheard of perfect tens. And we were moved by their sprite spirits into believing that the world was not so bad after all.

The summer I was thirteen we moved from The Kay to stay at a larger cottage, 5 P street, rear. It was then that I investigated what it was that adults saw in drinking. Taking an empty quart size soda bottle I filled it with generous pours of gin, whisky, rum, and scotch. Booze was booze after all. With a liberal addition of cola to the mix I drank the God awful beverage down. I was not a pleasant drunk. I was quite obnoxious. Within no time at all I was down town standing at a second floor railing and spitting on the crowds passing below. Then I weaved into a penny arcade spitting on pinball machines. The proprietor caught me by the collar. He told to stand where I was while he went for a rag. The moment he was gone I was out the door. I ran in loping and stumbling steps for 5 P street, rear. I got home tottering and said I was going to bed and went upstairs. When my head hit the pillow the room began to spin. I raised the screen of my bedroom window and stuck my head out. My father who was directly below me washing dishes watched as my vomit hit the kitchen window that was opened horizontally.

In the spring of the year I was sixteen Nana was stricken with cancer. She did not tell us however when she found out. She waited until after the last two weeks of August. She withheld the news because she did not want to ruin the vacation for everyone.

There was a void after her departure, one that none of us could fill. We still had fun, gathered and jostled one another around the cold-cuts and chips, got sunburned, and tracked in sand from outside. But Nana was gone and you could feel the emptiness. There was no longer a hub and the course of our lives seemed not as true. We continued on for several years. But then my siblings and I reached the age of majority and vacationing with our parents lost its charm. We begged off joining them.

Then some twenty years later with a sepia toned glance at our days at The Kay I rallied my family around the notion that the chance of us all vacationing together might not come again. We booked a condo for seven days. The weather was questionable through out the week with rain, scattered sun, and blustery wind. There were tensions too between us. The family fabric that had frayed over the years through private demons and miscommunications seemed ready to tear completely apart. At week's end the best I could say about the vacation was that we got through it. The afternoon following that trying week I went for a run and ruminated over all that went wrong. At the end of my run I sat on a bench and bursted into tears. That winter my mother died. The ensuing years would find me pining for those early days at Hampton Beach and The Kay when I was still innocent and wished as I told Nana more than once that our vacation could go on and on forever.

Tree Shades of Blue

The pounding on my door accompanied by loud babbling woke me up from a fitful sleep. My vociferous late night visitor turned out to be my next door neighbor. He told me he needed to use my phone. The reason being I thought he said was that his roommate, M, had hurt herself. I asked him if she was depressed. My question was due in large part to a conversation I'd had earlier that evening with a suicidal loved one who, when not out and out trying to kill herself, had a propensity for wounding herself with knives. He looked at me queerly and dialed nine one one. It was then when the operator came on the line that I heard him correctly: My roommate he said has hung herself.

He had not checked to see if she was alive. The sight of her hanging limp in his kitchen had triggered him to turn around and bolt. We hurried back to his apartment. As soon as we stepped through his back door I saw her. She had an electrical cord noose around her neck and was slightly up on her toes with her back against the kitchen door. Her tongue was sticking out. I opened the door and she slumped to the floor.

She was cool to the touch. I loosened the cord from around her neck and did what I'd seen on oh so many television shows. I tilted her head back, pinched her nose closed, placed my lips to her mouth and blew into her what I hoped was the breath of life. When the air escaped from her it did so with a low volume "Ahhhhh." I thought I'd saved her. But my exaltation was quick lived for she did not otherwise stir. I breathed into her a second time and once more the air left her with a disconcerting "Ahhhh." I blew several more deep breaths into her. Each one escaped her with its life like sound. Then, again with my television viewed expertise, I switched off from breathing into her to press down on her chest rhythmically, one hand atop the other. After several moments of pumping away I placed my thumb to her forearm. There was no pulse. I returned to giving her breath. But I knew it was in vain. She was dead and beyond human intervention. When the paramedics arrived they labored intensely for a quarter of an hour before placing her in an ambulance that sped off with its sirens blaring, a false urgency for a mission without hope.

Back in my bed I thought about the two times I'd interacted with M. Once we'd talked light heartedly for several minutes about my playful and friendly cat, Skinny. On the other occasion she'd invited me cheerfully to have a beer with her and the gathering of her friends. Both times she was fresh and vibrant. She was, as Richard Cory seemed, one beyond such despondent ends. What I wondered went through her mind just before tightening the noose around her neck.

In the minutes leading up to my second suicide attempt I was giddy with thoughts of my exit before me. For I was finally going to end the depression that had corroded everything with suffering. And in those last would be moments I reasoned in bleakness that I would destroy along with myself every creative endeavor I'd ever undertaken. Into the dumpster went my torn apart photos, drawings, journals, and manuscripts. I then doused it all with a gallon of insecticide. I wanted to leave nothing but a body behind. I went back to my bedroom, placed the plastic bag over my head, and stretched the packing tape around and around my throat. Then I laid down with a pillow beneath my head. I thought that I would go peacefully, slipping into death as if into sleep. But soon I was struggling for breath and awash with cold, panicked sweat. I held my arms tight to my side and strained for air. Unnerved and gasping I tore into the bag and faced the ugly and beautiful fact. I was alive and going to live.

With a fractured will I returned to my shrink with an urgent request to alter my meds. Over time, through trial and exploration, we found a combination and dosage that brought about for me a tenable self. Thus I was in the ensuing months resigned to living. Then my neighbor came pounding one night, a night it just so happened when I'd earlier spoken with someone precious to me who was in the dire straits of contemplating self destruction.

The following day I spoke once again with my loved one. The gloom of the day before had somewhat abated. After much cajoling she agreed to take the daunting step of seeking help. Before signing off with endearments we gave voice to just how close we both were to M and the precarious void. That night M and her family were in both of our prayers.

Anecdotal Labors And A Would Be Footnote

When I dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen I took a job peeling vegetables in the cellar of our town's best restaurant, the Mountain Laurel. On my second day of work I brought in a black, plastic, transistor radio that I'd borrowed from my mother. (The first day without music had been such a bore.) I tuned into my favorite station and the job didn't seem so bad. I got into a groove and peeled away. I hadn't been at it too long when the head chef came down the creaky wooden stairs and took one look at my mother's radio and asked, "What's this?" He then glanced in the washtub at the potatoes I'd so far peeled and found the sum to be a paltry one. "Less music, more work," he said before going up stairs. I shrugged it off. When I was done with the peeling I put the radio out of the way up on a shelf and huffed my load of potatoes up the stairs.

The next morning my mother's radio was not where I placed it. Without music peeling vegetables was once again a bore. I was a sulking half-hour into it when the chef came down the stairs to check on my progress. I asked him if he knew where my radio was. He told me there had been a burglary during the night. This surprised me. I ask him what else had been stolen. "Nothing else," said the chef. "Just your radio."

At seventeen I white-lied that I was eighteen with a steady work history. It was a Man's world into which I sought entry so I fibbed away on job applications and, when I was lucky, in interviews. The secret I had learned was to tell would be employers exactly what they wanted to hear. On one such occasion I took my place at the end of a long line of applicants. In the next room over I watched a gruff interviewer dispatch one job seeker after another. Nearly an hour passed before it was my turn.

I'd barely gotten comfortable in the seat when he asked the question. "Got any plans for college?" "Yes," I lied, showing him I had ambition. Instantly he raised his two arms together with my application held between his hands. For a brief moment he looked like a surly conductor bringing an orchestra together for a final dramatic chord. He ripped my application in half, lengthwise. "College boys I don't need," he said. He crumpled the two halves of my application together. "What I need," he said, "is men who want to work." He tossed the wadded paper into his waste bin. He had no more to say. The interview was over. I stepped out of his office thinking if there was a lesson to be learned here I wasn't sure what it was.

A few years later four of us were living out a van at Huntington Beach, California, when I got hooked up with a job as a carpenter's helper through the California Department of Labor. I'd fudged the facts by claiming I had experience. I figured how hard could it be? I imagined I'd be like a nurse in an operating room. But instead of handing a surgeon a requested scalpel or sponge I'd be handing a bidding carpenter a hammer or a saw. When I showed up at the job site the first thing the foreman did was ask me where were my tools. When I told him I'd left them in Connecticut, his eyes narrowed. He handed me several dozen L shaped pieces of metal and told me to borrow a hammer and "install these braces in the joists." I thought he said "Joyces" and I asked the guy I'd borrowed the hammer from if he happened to see any Joyces around. He pointed to a support beam over my head. "That's a joist," he said. "Oh, right," I said, as if I'd momentarily forgotten.

I was hammering in around the fourteenth brace on a joist I'd picked at random when the foreman came charging over. "What the fuck are you doing?" he barked. Apparently each joist only required four braces. If he hadn't stopped me there was no telling how many braces I would have pounded into that joist. "Gimme the hammer," he said. I was demoted to sweeping and fetching lumber. At the end of the day he fired me and I was once again unemployed albeit in the golden land of opportunity.

Two years after that I was driving along in my brother's Dodge Dart looking for work and listening to the Sex Pistols as loud as his stereo would go when I saw a sign: Help wanted. I pulled into the parking lot and stepped inside. After I made quick work of the application the manager came bounding out of his office and shook my hand with vigor while laying his other hand on my shoulder. "Come on. Let me show you the plant," he said, giving my shoulder a squeeze.

When he pushed the two gray swinging doors open I saw up on a raised metal platform a half-dozen women of color in pink uniforms and hair-nets who all turned to gaze our way. And in that moment that lasted perhaps a fraction of a second it seemed to me that each one of those women had a look in her eyes that said,"Please rescue me." In a flash the look was gone.They returned to the work at hand, processing chickens. "Not to worry," said the manager. "We provide you with hip booths." He'd been talking about the job non stop since he'd laid his hand on my shoulder but this was the first thing he said that made an impression: Did I hear him right? This is a job that requires hip boots? I gazed up at a slow moving conveyor of chain with hooks from which chickens dangled in various stages of postmortem, some with feathers, others without. "Don't worry," said the manager, describing one of the rooms in which I would be working. "You'll get used to the smell." A red alert went off in my head. It flashed, "No fuckin' way will you ever get used to the smell." "So," said the manager. "Are you ready to start? You can punch in right now and get to work." I feigned a need to go home first. "Alright," he said. "But hurry back."

In the safety of the Dart I mulled it over. I'd been out of work for quite awhile and was nearly destitute. And here was a job being handed to me. But I kept seeing the looks on the faces of those women and hearing the voice of the manager. "You'll get used to the smell." I drove on, giving it serious thought. When at last I'd made up my mind I cranked up the Sex Pistols and sang along, "No future, No future..." I didn't need a job THAT bad.

I was living in Boston, Massachusetts, some years later when I took a job with a temp agency. I was sent to work opening envelopes for a well known radio based evangelist. We worked in a small vault-like room in a bank. There were surveillance cameras overhead and an armed guard in the room at all times. There was no music in the room. Those of us who did not work directly for the evangelist had to roll up our sleeves, don hospital smocks, and sit with our bellies pressed against tables stacked high with various sized envelopes. If we happen to drop anything on the floor we had to announce it to the guard before bending down to pick the item up.

We were not supposed to read any of the written material in the envelopes. Our job was a simple one. We were to open the envelopes and stack the enclosed money governed by denominations, except for Fifties and Hundreds. These we turned directly over to the woman in charge. I could not help myself. I read some of the enclosed material. The appeal letters were varied. One boasted that the Evangelist had had a dream in which the computer generated undersigned had donated a specific amount of money and "All your dreams came true." There was another letter in a large envelope that contained a stiff paper "prayer rug" with two knee indents marked L and R. Another letter contained a piece of fabric that was to be placed under a person's pillow for one night, AND ONE NIGHT ONLY, and then returned in the envelope provided with a donation in a specific amount. There were individual numbers too that were noted as amounts to be tithed. The age that Jesus died, thirty-three, was one number a letter stated boded well as a dollar amount for the bearer to mail in.

Along with money many of the envelopes contained correspondence of desperation and pleas. A number were scribbled on scraps of paper. And because the reverend was paying for the postage and there were those who cared not to hear from him a couple of the envelopes contained heavy weights. Others carried porn and scrawled rants filled with curses and racial slurs. In one envelope was a bullet. In another a sheet of shit smeared toilet paper.

In the waning Clinton years I was working as a banquet server at the Cater Center when President Clinton stepped out of a side room with a small retinue. I was standing aside a buffet table ladened with breakfast baked goods. He and his group were some twenty feet away when the thought took hold. I saw it as clearly as the black and white footage of Ruby gunning down Oswald in Dallas. The President drew nearer. I imagined the heft of a baked good projectile. There were dozens upon dozens at my disposal. A few feet closer. I saw the New York Post headline, Prez Beaned With Biscuit. I looked at the biscuits. The president was ten feet away. I had a clear shot. I could see myself explaining to the world that it was not so much a political act as a bit of irreverent performance art. There he was. Take the shot. Do it, do it. But no. The President and his yes men swept by and I was left in his wake, a disgruntled waiter who was, I like to think, almost a historical footnote.

The mystery of coincidence

One crisp Fall night as I walked home to my apartment in one of the student ghettos of Boston, I was wrestling with a fledgling belief in a Higher Power otherwise known as God when I all but cried out, "If you exist, God, show me a sign." At that very moment in the distant sky over my right shoulder a firework exploded in brilliance. Stirred by the coincidence, though still the agnostic, I asked half in jest, "Are you always so subtle?"

Some years later my therapist and I were in uncharted territory. I was for the first time broaching my deepest and most secret fear that I might one day stab or otherwise slash myself with a knife. As I gave voice to the words something I can only describe as an other self erupted from me sending me and my chair skidding backwards. It could not have been any more dramatic than an exorcism. My slack jaw therapist had to ask, "What the hell was that?"

At the end of our fifty minute hour I lumbered away from the office of my therapist. I wanted only to sit in the sun for a few precious moments to regain my equilibrium. Fortunately the Boston Common was only a block away. When I got there I started to lower myself on to a bench that I had picked at random when an inner voice said, "Not this one. That one." There was no difference between the two but I listened to that voice and took the other bench some twenty feet away. I collapsed into a sitting position with my elbows on my knees and my head hung down. In this way I noticed something between my feet. I could not believe my eyes. I bent down and picked it up. It was a toy knife, one that a child might get from a bubble-gum machine. The blade I noted was folded safely away.

Some time later in a ritual of self cleansing and opening the soul to unconditional love I took a moral inventory by writing down every aspect of myself, both good and bad, on several sheets of paper. I shared this with a mentor who suggested that I offer my reckoning to the gods and then give light to all that I'd written. I did so, placing the pages in a tin can sitting on my kitchen table. I gave light to my inventory which was shortly ablaze... and smokey too. My two fire alarms went off. I fanned at the smoke and filled a glass with water and poured it into the can. After quieting the alarms I looked inside the can. All was ashes except for a speck of paper the size of my thumb nail. I scooped it out and gave it a look. On it was a word and one word only. The word was "love."

A couple years after that the temp agency I was employed with sent me to work as a courier at the Deaconess Hospital. It just so happened, as coincidences do, that my mother was receiving experimental out patient treatments there for a lethal lung ailment. Two weeks into my job my mother was admitted to the hospital with the understanding it was for a short stay, just until she regained her strength.

Because of the nature of my job I had lots of free time. I spent quite a bit of it at my mother's bedside, at times holding her hand. As the days progressed I watched her weaken. At night after visiting hours I blubbered in the arms of friends, "My mother is dying."

There was so much to be said, grievances to be aired and rectified, apologies for past rancor and misunderstandings, grudges and hurts and words hurled in anger that needed to be addressed. But my mother was on oxygen and struggling to breathe. The last thing she needed was an emotionally charged exchange. I held my tongue. On one of the last days she was alive as I left her at the close of visiting hours I said "Sweet dreams, Mom." Removing her oxygen mask she replied,"Then I will dream of you." What a balm that has been over the ensuing years.

I have read that using words to describe magic is like trying to carve a pot-roast with a screwdriver. And surely if anything coincidences are magical. They appear out of the ether as if guided by a deity, and this is how I have come to see them, as gifts from a Higher Power that I can not explain or adequately give voice to. I can not make plain the mystery of coincidences. I can only revel in them and give thanks humbly before the great unknown which I choose to see as the nature and embodiment of God.