“Let me understand this cause, ya know maybe it’s me, I’m a little fucked up maybe, but I’m funny how? I mean funny? like I’m a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh? I’m here to fuckin’ amuse you?” – Tommy DeVito, Goodfellas (1989)
I was in law school, on Christmas break, and Uncle Donnie was around. He always visited on the holidays. In this case, brought by some cousins. The extended family was quite so, scattered around the country. Many had other obligations, different places to be, with different in laws to see in different cities and states. My folks’ house was a central location, so the varying collections of relatives passed through in staggered sessions. Six, seven days in total – Christmas in counterparts.
“We ought to keep him.”
“Enough.” My mother fought with the hors d’oevres.
“Dress him in a tux, like Odd Job–”
“Like what?”
“The Chinese guy from the James Bond thing.”
“Goldfinger,” Katie fixed a drink.
“Right.”
“I know. And you need help.”
“He could answer the door, serve cocktails… He can garden.”
“It’s not funny.” Mom felt the need to play the heavy.
Uncle Donnie sat in the dining room, staring through a plate glass window, blinking every now and again. a spacy gaze on his face like “Reverend Jim” from Taxi.
“I think he could work the pencil moustache.”
“Make yourself useful.” Mom handed a massive crystal bowl of peanut butter cups – the miniature red, green and gold ones – to Katie.
“How?”
“Put it in the foyer.”
“Is it Halloween?”
“It’s decorative.”
“I should hope so. Are we having a hundred people?”
“You should have filled it with ornaments.” I had nothing to do but interfere.
“You should pour me some wine.”
“Who’s going to eat all that?” I searched for an opener in vain. Found a bottle of Grand Marnier in the liquor cabinet to busy myself with instead. “It’s a waste.”
“A waste of what? What do you do with it? Give it to the starving?” Katie was finishing college, at the age where you’re reading a lot. And listening to too many professors. “‘Here’s a sack of candy for the malnourished children.’ The UN doesn’t drop chocolate in Ethiopia. It’d be Hershey’s Syrup bombs by the time it hit the ground.”
“Had enough coffee?”
“There’s nothing you can do with excess candy. You have to throw it away.”
“Candy doesn’t go bad.”
“Where do you get that?”
“It’s like Twinkies.”
“Twinkies are pastries.”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly what? That pastry not going bad proves a Milky Way won’t go bad?
“If a Twinkie doesn’t go bad, then candy sure as hell won’t go bad.”
“So it’s like plastic? There’s a huge repository of uneaten candy building up right now, and if people don’t eat more Butterfingers, it’ll just keep on growing?”
“A Butterfinger is way up the food chain from a Twinkie.”
“Food chain? What alpha preys on Butterfingers? Lollipops?”
“Now they’re all equivalent?”
“If they were all equivalent, we’d have Snickers with continental breakfasts.”
“Ever had one with Twinkies?”
“A Butterfinger?”
“A continental breakfast.”
“Who the hell orders a continental breakfast?’
“It’s your hypothetical.”
“I was being absurd.”
“Agreed.”
“That’s not self-deprecating.”
“That’s an audience call.”
“I’ll make it simple. You can’t ‘waste’ candy. It’s impossible. From the start, the very making of it’s a profligate use of ingredients.”
“Profligate?”
“You need a reference book?”
“I’m the English major.”
“I forgot. How’s that skill working for you?”
“Well enough to know a lot of things are ‘profligate.’ How about liquor?”
“You ever seen that wasted?”
“Yes. Right now!” Mom signaled to a merlot near the stove. “I asked you to open that ten minutes ago.”
“Right.” I put the debate from my head. No use fighting with Katie. She never gave an inch on anything.
“The trick would be finding a stove top hat for him.” Katie shifted back to the urgent business at hand, studying Donnie through the doorway, now intently petting the cat. He’d no clue about his strength, pulling the skin back on the poor creature’s head until the white membrane around its eyes came into view.
“’Odd Job’ wore a bowler.”
“You sure lederhosen wouldn’t be better? He’d look great in one of those pointy hats.”
“Is anything with you kids sacred?”
“Classic rock?” Mom had asked a silly question.
“We could teach him to yodel. Get him a big horn.”
“Seriously.” Mom’s tone grew a jagged edge. “I’m not going to say it again.”
“It’s a joke.” Katie took the bowl to the hallway.
“He’s a person.”
So he was. But as much as Uncle Donnie was a person, and as much as he was an elder, and family, and we’d all have gotten his back, that didn’t exempt him from the cross-hairs. With jokes it’s all in play. Nothing’s ever off the table, and really, Mom had to understand. By twelve you grasp the rules of humor, and one of them we rarely address but everyone knows as fact is the closer you get to taboo, the sharper and funnier the punch line. It’s not mean or cruel or immoral. It’s just the way we’re wired. Amusement and offense stand hand in hand, balancing each other on the opposite sides of a shared razor’s edge. Humor finds the fulcrum of that stasis, lays its observations right there. I shouldn’t be laughing at this and still, it’s impossible not to.
See, Uncle Donnie was “touched.” “Challenged,” some might have said. Nothing severe, just different. He’d lived on his own and even once held a job. But he wasn’t operating at my speed, your speed, or most of everyone else’s. A shade off the state of the art, running Windows ’98 in an ’07 framework. No matter, of course, as he was one of us, and as he was he was happily taken. Family’s family, and they all get a seat on the holidays. No son of any of the great aunts – the vanishing family matriarchs – wouldn’t pay a visit to our home. As I said, though, nobody, nothing, was off limit. It was cheap, lazy and low – fishing in an overstocked pond – but Donnie was a source of material nobody could ignore.
And anything in lederhosen’s funny.
The rest of the relatives showed up an hour later. A couple cousins, their kids, a dog, and a foreign exchange student. Marko was from Eastern Europe, and he liked to drink. His present for the hosts was three bottles of foreign vodka, and he insisted we sample them all. It was humbling every time I saw Marko, a reminder of how soft our kind were. What we’d call a celebration, view as excess, was a warm-up in his native land. He ate anything he liked – meats, cheeses, “pastries.” The fattier and congealed the better, what he could of it slathered in butter. All of it chased with Parliaments. And nothing seemed to bother his liver. No bingeing – just sustained consumption. Standard leaded fuel intake for a body that had never heard of spin class, green tea’s antioxidant powers or the purity of hormone free chicken.
“You like Iron Maiden?” He caught up with me on the deck, ducking out to catch some air. I had to avoid too much hooch, as there was driving to be done that night.
“The band?”
“What else?” He fired up a smoke.
“I have a soft spot for ‘Run to the Hills.’” Cheap answer, of course. Who in my demographic didn’t? It was impossible not to know the song if you’d gone to high school anywhere near the Eighties. To not remember driving to a party, car packed with Busch 16 ouncers, whacked on idiot adrenaline – knowing somewhere in the evening ahead, some girl would gift you a hand job – and singing along with that tune. “…Riding through dustclouds and barren wastes/Galloping hard on the plains… Chasing the redskins back to their holes/Fighting them at their own game… Murder for freedom a stab in the back/Women and children the cowards attack… Run to the hills/Run for your lives…”
So it’s a lament on settlers massacring Indians. So what? It’s got a killer fucking bass line.
“That’s a pop music hit.”
“They play too much on radio. That’s commercial Maiden.”
Powerslave, Piece of Mind, Killers… What other songs have they done? I dug deep, trying to recall all their records, trying to avoid insulting Marko. What he didn’t seem to know at the time was heavy metal was dead. Nirvana’d destroyed it with “Teen Spirit,” kicking in the door for Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and the Pumpkins. This was the age of Grunge.
The really hard stuff was alive and well, with Metallica still selling out arenas. But the big hair, leather-and-spikes metal era was over. And frankly, even when it had still been in its prime, “Maiden” was B-grade product. But I couldn’t say that to Marko. He’d grown up in a Communist stronghold, just emerged from a despot’s fiefdom, and as much I wanted to explain, as much as I wanted him to ‘get it,’ I knew he was in a band. And I knew they covered Iron Maiden, and the rules of what was in and what was out would only seem strange and cruel.
Here’s how it worked with the heavy shit… You had Black Sabbath, AC/DC and Zeppelin. These were the big bands, the baseline stuff. You started listening to that in fifth, sixth grade. After that, you branched out into the leather and hair genres. You had your Judas Priests, Motley Crues, maybe some Van Halen. From the there you got into the speed stuff, like Metallica, Anthrax, maybe Slayer, and that got you into the hardcore and punk. That started off with the Pistols, then you got into Black Flag (Everybody bought this record called ‘Damaged.’ It’s really great.) From there it was the Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, Suicidal Tendencies and sooner or later, you wound up listening to the Clash or the Bad Brains, which introduced you to reggae, which got you into Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, which goes along with the Dead and then you were into the Allmans, and then college comes around and suddenly you forget about heavy metal. Until this time you take acid and hear “How Many More Times” blaring in the fraternity basement and remember, ‘Holy fucking shit. Zeppelin’s fucking amazing.’ You dust off those discs and dabble in the old stuff a little and remember AC/DC’s underrated, and as much as chicks hate it sober, they love it when they’re loaded.* And Sabbath only gets better because that’s the only really heavy shit that sounds perfect absurdly high. Even Judas Priest has a place because in the right frame of mind, “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming” sounds like an electric version of the theme from Jaws, and “Breaking the Law” has a great campy element to it.
But Maiden? Nobody holds any love for Iron Maiden. They’re kind of like Rush. Only where Rush has some brilliant songs that unfortunately had to be sung by Geddy Lee, Maiden’s a bad heavy metal opera. But just good enough to avoid being bad in a good way. And just serious enough to be impossible to wink at. Which is all a long way of telling you what everyone who’s had his Iron Maiden phase knows: It’s got to end by nineteen. You can’t fuck, drink, bake, get wired, trip or dance to it, and if you can’t fuck, drink, bake, get wired, trip or dance to it, it means you won’t be listening to it around the college chicks you want to fuck. Music doesn’t have to score you women, but it damned well better not keep them away. And this I have to tell you, as hard it might be to swallow for a guy just learning to cover the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” – you should never, ever, swap fluids with a woman who’s into Iron Maiden. That shit just isn’t right.
“Die With You Boots On.” I stole a drag off Marko’s smoke. “That’s a good tune.”
“Amen! A drink?”
“I actually have to run soon.” I was supposed to be at my buddy Charles’ apartment around eight. It was the holiday break, high school friends were in town, and we had to do the yearly review of the merciless aging process… Which chicks were blossoming in adulthood, and which had gone south after school – exploded into two of what they’d been. The Italian girls always bloated worst. They had breasts and hips before everyone else, most amazing asses in school. Then off to college they went. Then a job at a desk, where what was once taut and curved turned into rolls. It was terrible watching that happen. Not enough drinks in the world to see a girl you would have died to fuck in tenth grade turned into her mother so quickly. You weren’t able to bag her back then, and now that you could you wouldn’t want to. But there wasn’t any feeling superior. More a fleeting nasty recognition – that time was still on your side, only speeding up in leaps as it passed.
“One more! You’re going to bar anyway!” Marko wasn’t letting it go. I fixed my eyes east from the deck, across the expanse of the city. How many nights in this place, staring out at the lights? You could look out on the whole of the valley, all that was left of the town, a glistening grid of houses, bars and billboards. Sixteen, eighteen, nineteen… Now I was what? Half way out of my twenties? Where the fuck had it gone?
At least I wasn’t aging badly. Hell, I wasn’t aging at all. Just toying with the concept.
“A small one.” I didn’t trust Marko’s pours. “I have to drive–”
“It’s holidays.”
“So it is.” I gulped back the medicine. “To Iron Maiden!”
“You don’t smoke, too, do you?” Donnie appeared at my right.
“Only when I drink and they’re around.”
“Smoking gives you cancer. It’s an awful, awful habit.”
“I don’t do it much.”
“They put you on oxygen.”
“I understand it’s not good, Donnie.”
“You have to walk around with a tank. They put hoses in your nose, from the tank into your nose, with a mask and a strap around your head. I’ve seen it.” Once Donnie got “on track,” there was no going back. No deviations, no casual asides – nothing would steer the conversation in any other direction. It was like someone invited a random person’s Id to the party. But instead of the usual variety that’d wave its freak flag too high, the Id we knew as Uncle Donnie was whirlwind of pointed judgments. He had no issues dropping science – popping off exactly what he thought in biting staccato quips. And lord was Donnie dogmatic. Nothing he liked better than rules, and reminding people when they’d been broken. He also liked Jesus a lot.
“Something has to get you.”
“You get tumors.”
“Understood… terrible.”
“They grow all over you. Inside.”
“That’s usually the way.”
“Mrs. Williams… Remember Mrs. Williams who lived next door to Aunt Mary? Her first husband left her and she married another man? Mrs. Williams smoked like a chimney and had a heart attack. She died in her garden.”
“That’s too bad.”
“They found her in her housecoat. Her husband came out to get her but she died. Fell down and died in the yard. In the dirt.”
“I—uh–”
“I saw the ambulance.”
“’Housecoat?’” I hated to extend the discussion, but somebody had to ask.
“She was Presbyterian.”
“What does that have to do with–” Katie choked, laughing through her drink.
“Forget it,” I waved off her question. The Schism, Henry VIII and the Anglicans… Donnie’d talk church stuff for days, and I’d no time for any of that epic discussion. It was eight or worse and I was already late to pick up Charles.
“Is it a coat you wear indoors?” Marko put down his drink. “If you have no petrol?”
“Presbyterians don’t follow the Pope. They don’t take confession.”
“Right.” I smiled but didn’t say a word. Rebuttal’s the only fuel. Kill the supply of that, watch a sermon wither.
“Her daughter’s dead, too.”
Or not. “What?”
“Mrs. Williams’ daughter. She’s dead. She took pep pills.”
Katie was red-faced now, coughing her cocktail into her hand.
“You want a cookie?” I knew one thing that worked on Uncle Donnie – food. It was the fastest way out of the conversation, and I needed an exit, badly. In a moment I’d be asked to have another, stay a few more minutes. I’d never make it to Charles’ and that just wasn’t an option. You can’t skip out on seeing old friends. Miss a few holidays and the chain’s broken, and once it’s snapped, it’s as hard as hell to rebuild. People get hitched, get old, and they’re not what they were when you knew them in those reckless stretches of your lives. You have to keep connections consistent to keep one another honest, remind yourselves What You Are.
“Judy Garland took pep pills.” Donnie just kept rolling. “That’s what killed her.”
“Judy Garland?” At this point, Katie had to leave the room.
“She is ‘Alice,’ from ‘Wonderland.’” I didn’t bother correcting Marko. It was disturbing enough that he recognized the name at all.
“Uncle.”
“Yes.”
“No. I’m ‘calling Unc— ah, fuhh— Screw it.” I couldn’t curse for real. Donnie’d admonish me. “Here. Try these. They’re are really good cookies.” I handed him a dessert tray and eased toward the side door out of the kitchen.
“Do they have chocolate chips?”
“One kind does.” I had no idea what they were.
“I like the chocolate chips.”
I ran up to a bedroom, called Charles and got changed. 8:15? Son of a bitch… I gargled with mouthwash, to kill any hint of booze, then down the stairs, on with the jacket, keys in the pocket and out the door to the truck. The last I remember from the house was running into Donnie roaming the foyer, I assumed following the cat, now hiding for its life beneath the stairs.
I turned on the gas, glanced in the mirror and for moment I was eight years in the past, racing from my place down to Charles’s. Only this time the scene was different. This wasn’t to his parents’ place, and we weren’t picking up girlfriends. Nobody’s folks were out of town. No keg party, no hand-jobs – just a night out at a local bar, marking time in the in-between years. Do I have any Iron Maiden in this car?
To be continued.
___________________________________
* One of the first times I met my future wife, she and a loaded friend were in my room, drinking Banker’s Club vodka and dancing to AC/DC’s “Squealer” with my roommate. My wife, of course, does not recall this evening.
Good points on Maiden. I was going through my music and found a discography i must’ve acquired at some point. I haven’t actively listened to them in years. This would articulate why.
PL: I had a buddy who was nuts for them and he was one strange fuck. Had all kinds of Chinese stars, guns and knives… It attracted bizarre fans.
“we’d all have gotten had his back”
The one typo I could find.
My family had a Polish guy renting a room in the basement for years. He couldn’t speak more than 15 words of English and wore tighty whiteys outside in the summertime. Poles are very strange people.
PL: Crazy bastard’s lucky you didn’t live near a school. He’d be doing five, with a sex offender mark-up in his record.
It’s always a flood of memories that come washing back when I visit home on the holidays. Its strange when you see how your parents are slowly turning your room into another hobbie area. It’s only natural though. I look around and remember; “Huh, I got laid for the first time right there. Only the bed was turned in a different direction. God…I should have fucked that girl more than I did. Why didn’t I do that?” Riding around on the same streets. Taking the same back ways to avoid cops when you’ve had too much at a hometown christmas party. And somtimes remembering why you got the fuck out of there in the first place. It never seems so smothering as it was when I was in highschool. I couldn’t wait to get the hell out. I think I had worn my welcome with the town, and so had the town worn on me. College was a new trip in another city. Only, it dosent hit me that way anymore. Visiting home is great. But after a few days of family and nostalgia with friends its time to hit the bricks again. That feeling never seems to fail.
PL: Everyone’s in a hurry to get out. Then you get where you’re going and you’re in a hurry to get out of there, too. I don’t think I’ve ever felt at home anywhere.
Quality as always brutha. Keep up the stories.
PL: I can’t stop.
Damnit, now I have The Trooper stuck in my head. Great writing, as usual. Even if the family doesn’t want to see me that much, the ol’ high school friends are good for a beer or 16. Plus, going to a bar at home in my Navy cruise jacket is a sure bet to get free drinks from old people.
PL: That’s actually a decent Maiden song. I forgot about that one.
Just got my copy of the book, and I have not laughed so hard at any written material since I read Tucker Max’s book. I am definitely enjoying it.
PL: Thanks. Takes a turn later on, but trust me… stick with it.
Awesome as always.
My dad loves Maiden. He worships Bruce Dickinson and blasts “Die With Your Boots On” when he takes me to school. He even took me to see them with Bullet for My Valentine a few years ago. Hell, I was practically born playing the riff to “The Trooper”.
God damn. Everytime I read your site I’m reminded how much I need to step out and do something. Like get a handjob. That’s my New Years Resolution. A handjob.
PL: Don’t work hard for a hand job. The best ones are performed in-house. If can’t give yourself the best and most effective after all those years of practice, you’ve got problems.
“Amusement and offense stand hand in hand, balancing each other on the opposite sides of a shared razor’s edge. Humor finds the fulcrum of that stasis, lays its observations right there.”
That’s pretty much a perfect description of comedy. Well done, although hard-core Rush fans have to disagree with your take on the Canadian trio (i.e., me and like three other people).
PL: Hey, like I said… I dig some Rush stuff. And they do have one of the greatest drummers in all of modern music.
“Not enough drinks in the world to see a girl you would have died to fuck in tenth grade turned into her mother so quickly. You weren’t able to bag her back then, and now that you could you wouldn’t want to. But there wasn’t any feeling superior. More a fleeting nasty recognition – that time was still on your side, only speeding up in leaps as it passed.”
It shocks me sometimes, how we are so different yet so often on the same wavelength. Cool story.
PL: Rational people are a lot more alike than different. Eating, fucking, having a good time. Everybody has the same simple goals. The world just gingerbreads everything up for us.
Though I rarely see anyone I went to high school with anymore, I have run into a buddy who went to elementary school with me a few times, along with a cousin I went to school with. It is one of the finer joys in life to discover what’s been going on with the people I went to school with. Who’s gotten pregnant, who’s gotten someone pregnant, who’s been arrested, who turned into the biggest sluts in high school, all that good stuff.
I liked the part about the Europeans being untouched by antioxidants and hormone-free chicken. It resonates with a few things; namely, the uniquely American obsession with alcohol, wine especially, having good health effects, and the puritanical streak society has when it comes to booze and smoking. I mean, you can’t admit to drinking a beer by yourself without someone coming along and telling you that it’s a sign of alcoholism and you’re at increased risk for liver disease (as if your body is capable of telling the difference between drinking alone and drinking with friends).
PL: That American “obsession” is more a “belief” than anything else. We believe in all sorts of stuff over here. Religion, narratives about our history, narratives about the stock market, our culture, the list goes on forever… We can’t have faith without shame, and that’s where the Puritans come into the picture.
Why carefully examine the pluses and minuses of consumption when you can blindly cite statistics on it to support a belief about the subject you want to hold onto?
One of the things I hate is Geddy’s voice belongs to a satyr, and when he hits his high notes and yodels I imagine his fat goat legs kicking and jiggling.
Also gotta love the relatives who may be a wee bit autistic.
PL: Lee’s high octave shriek works when the background is loud, as it climbs above the music. In any a capella moment, however, he sounds horrid.
Wow. I started reading because of the lawyer connection and your ability to distill the most sublime and bitingly accurate portrayal of the profession’s absurdity that I’ve ever seen reduced to writing. I’ve kept reading because this skill extends into all aspects of human relatonships and situational dynamics which, again, you have absolutely nailed in this post.
I have to ask, when you set out to write something like this, is it your goal to end up with something you hope will resonate with everyone regardless of whether you’re in your early 40’s (I assume you are, based on the dates and cultural tie-ins) or in your early 20’s? Or are you simply describing your own experiences to the best of your ability and hoping that enough of your audience appreciates and relates? I’m a decent writer, both as a lawyer and otherwise, but dammit PL- I read shit like this and I know I’m not worthy. Thanks for the outstanding read.
PL: I’m not that old. I just retain a lot of references from various periods in my life, and in something like this, exploring the past, I’m digging back a little bit, so the references are older. But yes, basically, I just set out to offer an anecdote in the funniest way it cane be done, leaving the audience to draw from it what it will.
We’re all worthy. I merely had the luxury of circumstances and an interest in writing that allowed me to be able to pen it in a way some people find interesting.
Just discovered your blog as I was clicking my mouse around on my EDDIE mouse pad, killing time in my dumpy apartment drinking Schlitz in my pajamas, RUSH mirror proudly hanging on the wall.
To love metal/RUSH past the age of 19 is to take an oath of poverty and a pledge to be surrounded by open mouth breathers for the rest of your days…guess how I know?
I got no regrets as my Criminal Justice degree collects dust in the closet. Fuck it, beats being a DMB fan.
PL: I know a lot of very successful Rush fans. But I agree with you on Maiden. And Dave Matthews. However, I have to offer these caveats:
1. Maiden’s drummer is great and so is their bassist. Musically, they can be appreciated for that. Where they falter is ludicrous lyrics and less than excellent songwriting.
2. DMB is vapid yuppie rock, but his band is tight, and they can jam as well, if not better than, any other touring outfit around today.
In both cases, the bands suffer a bit because of the ridiculousness of certain types of fans they attract.
“PL: Hey, like I said… I dig some Rush stuff. And they do have one of the greatest drummers in all of modern music.”
And his name was John Rutsey… Rush died after the first Album. And that’s coming from a person who owns a pair of Powerslave Vans… But then, that’s coming from someone who thinks John Waters is the smartest man in America.
PL: You can take contrarian arguments only so far. Claiming John Rutsey, a capable drummer, no doubt (”Working Man” is a favorite Rush song), is better than Neil Peart, is stepping over the line. This isn’t a Bon Scott v. Brian Johnson, Mick Taylor v. Brian Jones or Dio v. Ozzy thing. Peart defined the band’s sound from the moment he joined it. Some would for the worse, but not many. I find a large portion of Rush’s later catalog unbearable, but even buried in the crap song selections on lamentable records like “Show of Hands,” Peart shines. The guy’s a ridiculously talented drummer, on par with Bonham, Moon, etc.