The Jitters

     Today while mowing a lawn I got called a "fuckin idiot" by a young man on a bicycle.  He wore a baseball cap backwards, sunglasses, his book bag strapped to his back marking him as a college student.

     I had moved the mower over a crushed Pepsi can, the blades separating the aluminum into two pieces. I'd seen the can in the grass earlier but felt distracted after finding a dollar bill nearby.  Pleased with my luck, I switched focus momentarily to the mutilated can now in two pieces on either side of the mower.

     Lawnmowers are loud.  My attention for about five seconds was directed at the ground before I heard, "HELLO!"

     A sarcastic utterance from the bicyclist.  As I pulled the mower back, he passed, adding his judgment of my intelligence.  I can't know for sure if he's writing a blog, or making movies as I am, or if he's knowledgeable about the origins of the First Crusade, or if he knows anything about the strange career of Lee Harvey Oswald, or if he's read Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, but I know I'm not an idiot, as in dummy, moron, or one who would have difficulty understanding how to order a chicken sandwich from a drive-through menu at Burger King.  

     In addition, I knew some real fucking idiots at university, including an English major who picked up a woman in a bar and vomited on her breasts while they had sex.

     Earlier, backing out of my driveway to go mow that lawn, my car halted as I momentarily shifted from Reverse to Drive.  When I entered the street backwards I saw no cars using the road ahead of me or behind me.  A bulky white pickup truck, like a moving tower, must have speeded to my position with suddenness.  A long push on his horn seemed unnecessary, although maybe he couldn't wait two or three seconds until I got going.  

     Coming home, ahead of me, a Chrysler van's driver honked at a slow-moving man in rumpled disheveled clothes crossing the street.  By the time the driver honked, the man was already mostly across the street, an unnecessary blast of displeasure helping no one. 

     I said out loud but to myself, "Doesn't he already have enough problems, fuckface?"

     The van's driver moved up to a grand speed of 22 miles per hour in a 25 zone.  I drove behind this slow-moving person who had gotten irritated by a slow-moving man, feeling irritated until the Chrysler turned.

     Dwelling on these three incidents involving impatience, I've wondered about my own tendency to get pissed at people over the committing of minor acts.  It also makes me wonder if I am a fuckin idiot.  Maybe I am slow, oblivious to my surroundings?  One thing I don't do is honk my horn unless it's necessary--a rarity in ordinary driving in a city with just 70,000 people.  Sit for an extra three seconds when the light turns green, it's likely the person behind will honk, alerting one's attention, but that also sends into one's nervous system the hostility of another.

     The bicyclist's own idiotic contempt for me failed to take into account the lawnmower's noise and that street's busy traffic roar.  He knows lawnmowers are loud.  Does he know my hearing isn't what it was when I was his age?  Does he know he's a pussy for riding his bike on the sidewalk instead of on the street, like my friends and I did when we were under the age of ten?

     All three cases were minor road rage, one road being a sidewalk.  If such insignificant inconveniences provoked such displeasure from three citizens of my town in less than an hour, I wonder how we don't think more often and more deeply about boiling energies causing some to lash out, even if just by honking a horn or insulting a stranger.

     A friend told me he would never, while driving, give someone the middle finger, meaning "Fuck you!"

     Not only is it rude and pointless, "flipping the bird" could be done at someone with a gun in his car.  Pressures build in fragmented societies abused and warped by bad leadership.  Divide and conquer is those leaders' guiding philosophy.  A populace striving against itself constitutes a quiet civil war.  We each participate in society, even as loners.  Aggravate people with monetary frustrations, no health care, college   and medical debt, a war that never ends, political disagreements ruling out friendly dialogue, a species on a collision course with increasingly severe climate change, wealth disparity not seen since the time of Egypt's pharaohs, and the possibility ripens that a society will clash with itself while the ruling class laughs, murders people, and gets richer.

     I was in the bicyclist's way?  Maybe he was in mine?  

     The man in the white pickup truck, for a few seconds, didn't get to drive 35 in a 25 zone?  Maybe I have the intelligence to not suddenly shift my car into Drive while it's still rolling backwards?

     The van's driver was delayed for five seconds while a man I've seen in the Mental Health Services Building ambled at his own speed across the street?  Maybe his day's pace is also important?

     My mild enmity toward these three aggravated people today reflects my own occasional misanthropy, although I keep it contained as much as my nerves will allow.  Timon of Athens, mentioned above, deals with a rich man who gives a lot of money to his ungrateful friends.  Disgusted, Timon renounces  civilization to live by himself in a cave.  

     No traffic in a cave, no noisy machines, no slow-moving pedestrians, just dirt and echoes.

     Even with today's triad of hot-blooded incidents, I can't give up on society, nor can I help wondering if Timon of Athens lives inside the caverns of our minds, shouting occasionally, pointlessly, his cry from the heart an upraised middle finger at a world not always cooperating with our timetables and our hopes, inspiring instead spent, empty echoes.

Vic Neptune 

     

       

     

        

FDR Biden and Nancy Junior

     Joe Biden, malign inversion of a New Deal Democrat, puts portrait of FDR in the Oval Office, identifies with rich Roosevelt, the President who saved capitalism by helping out the American people until abandoning the idea in 1937.  Still, Hoover Dam; the courthouse in my hometown; the dormitories of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (no computer classes offered pre-World War Two); Carnahan Memorial Gardens in Jefferson City, Missouri; the City Hall of Omro, Wisconsin.

     PUT AMERICA TO WORK, PRESIDENT BIDEN!  No jobs program, and you've been in the highest political office for eight months?  Have you been napping for four of those months?  Were you asleep when your order to drone kill a suspected ISIS-K fighter actually resulted in the deaths by sudden physical obliteration of the family of the translator who was not with ISIS, somebody's mistake is actually murder?  Are you asleep now?  Is Kamala Harris, dressed in a blue pants suit purchased from the same outlet patronized by Hillary Clinton, placing your hand in warm water while a Mossad cameraman makes video of the old senile President pissing his pants while he naps?  What fun!  Put it on every channel in Europe, in Australia, beam it to the International Space Station along with the latest sex toys.  

     I watched a video on YouTube about politics.  AOC in particular.  She's supposed to represent New York as the Congresswoman for the 14th District.  To achieve her seat in Congress she defeated a veteran politician, Joe Crowley, groomed as a likely successor to Nancy Pelosi, if the sorcerer's spell ever wears off, cast in 1481 in a castle in Transylvania to make her young forever, but it's been wearing off for the last fifty years and the sorcerer was burned to death in 1482.

     Speaking of dark arts, Joe Aleister Crowley lost to the fresh-faced adorable AOC, twenty-nine years old, social media savvy, more Twitter followers than Donald Trump when he was on Twitter.  

     Alexandria O. took over America's hearts.  Even Morning Joe had her on.  The Congresswoman who ran on progressive issues didn't sound too interested in pursuing the implementation of Medicare For All.  In the interview with Joe and Mika, AOC sounded like a Centrist trying not to offend a table of Right Wingers.

     Still, AOC, in harmony with Aunt Nancy, supports policies that continue unjust illegal wars across the globe, spreading pain and fear.  AOC boosts the Capitol Police, those who failed in their main job: protect the U.S. Capitol.  What do you do when the field goal kicker misses the kick that would have won the game?  You give him more money?  If you're fucking crazy that's what you do.  The Capitol Police received a billion dollars.  They seek to open offices in each state.  They want to form an intelligence agency.  

     THE U.S. CAPITOL IS IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, NOT IN BEREA, KENTUCKY! (Home of the Berea Police and Municipal Center, a New Deal project).

     Watching AOC talk, explaining her positions on foreign policy, for instance, it's clear she's bullshitting, trying to remember talking points at times, resorting to giggling, knowing that little girl act will make some people sympathize with her, but really it's just nauseating.

     Some believe AOC was corrupted by Washington.  I disagree.  She was already corrupt, a power-seeker, wanting a lot of money comprising her net worth, to be on the rise, to have followers like Gwyneth Paltrow, to take no step towards getting legislation accomplished on what she campaigned on.  A fraud from the very beginning of her desire to run for office.  She was a Congressional intern.  Did she get sexually harassed by any of the many sexual harassing politicians running this doomed country?

     What convinces me now of AOC's long experience of corruption, her "before she was famous" corruption, is that she's really good at it.  She's taken to corruption like an apprentice vampire learning from the fangs of the master, Nancy Pelosi.

     As Pelosi is the Democratic Party's champion fundraiser, so will AOC run with that ball after the spell on Nancy cast in late 15th century Romania wears off, maybe on C-SPAN.  Words choked off in mid-sentence during remarks about banning alcohol to anyone who makes less than 50,000 a year, skeleton Nancy's bone dust from her jaw and the rest of her yellowish-brown skull collapse onto her designer black white and red mask, an anti-Covid-19 mask invented by one of Elon Musk's scientists, who never received the credit Elon Musk took, winning the Nobel Prize for Masking.

     AOC's purpose in the Party is to shepherd Progressives and convert Republicans to the Democratic cause.  I've come to find that not even the Republican Party is as repellent to human decency as the Democratic Party.  The Republicans' greed, viciousness, callousness, stupidity, make them revolting.  Even more disgusting, the Democrats act like they're good.  

     To see steaming devils pretending to be generous humanitarians as they sacrifice children to their weapons for profit, for influence, for no good reason, makes me sick; I wish every American to be sickened by these scoundrels and to not vote for them, or for Republicans.

     But the Democrats' cupidity, their magnificent egos, their precious committee assignments, their drama, their excuses, their inability to find any compassion in their hearts, naturally making them help people in need, and while they run the House, the Senate, and the Executive Branch, all point to their uselessness as an organization capable of aiding the American people.

Vic Neptune

Letters From Hollywood by Michael Moorcock

      In the late 1970s and early 1980s, English fantasy author Michael Moorcock (born 1939) dealt with a fractious breakup of his second marriage.  Faced with money problems, he accepted a lucrative job writing the screenplay for a Hollywood film about King Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot.  He relocated to Greater Los Angeles, stayed with friends (including science fiction author Harlan Ellison) until finding his own place in North Hollywood, and then a tiny place in West Hollywood, both shared with Linda Steele (an associate of Ellison's) who eventually became Moorcock's third wife.

     While in California, Moorcock wrote long letters to his good friend, the author J.G. Ballard (Empire of the Sun, The Crystal World, The Atrocity Exhibition).  Ballard at that time was fiction editor of Ambit magazine.  Some of these letters, originally published therein, eventually made it into book form, Letters From Hollywood (1986), an entertaining and honest account of Moorcock's observations of Los Angeles and other cities he visited; San Francisco and the Bay Area, San Luis Obispo, but concentrating mostly on L.A., a place the author enjoyed for its associations with the cinematic obsessions of his childhood.  Driving with Linda on the Pacific Coast Highway in a borrowed red Mercedes Benz 450SL convertible, Moorcock remarks about the numerous memories elicited by sights along the way, hillsides to the ocean he's seen involved in classic Hollywood car crashes, for instance, or beach locations he remembers from old pirate movies.

     Having been to Southern California three times, I can attest to this memory/movie location phenomenon.  In La Jolla in 1983 I saw and recognized the Coronado Hotel, location for the Billy Wilder comedy of 1959, Some Like It Hot, with Marilyn Monroe.  It's a startling thing to feel such a memory sparked unbidden, unexpected, conjuring moments from favorite films of one's past.

     Moorcock's appreciation for Hollywood's products, its films, is not much felt in the present day of circa 1979 to 1984 when he lived periodically in Los Angeles except when he was in England dealing with difficult personal matters.  The director of the King Arthur movie (name changed--I'm uncertain who the actual director is, but by the end of the book it's clear the movie never got made) is a great character even though he's based on an uncomfortably real man who drives Moorcock nearly nuts with his unsteady ideas about the movie.

     Ike (the alias given by Moorcock) is in his late fifties, drinks milk instead of booze, has no appreciation for historical accuracy, doesn't understand plot or narrative or logical character motivations, has made it in Hollywood by directing lots of sequels.  Moorcock, on his expense account provided by the unnamed studio, has to spend a thousand dollars per week, is given "anything" he needs--except for an escape out of an increasingly difficult situation--but has to endure Ike's crazy vacillating ideas about the movie.

     Ike has Moorcock over to his house a lot, throwing ideas at him, each one more batshit crazy than the previous one.  Pointing out two books on his coffee table, Moorcock is told to read the chapter in an Ingmar Bergman book about the Swedish director's film, Cries and Whispers, an intense interpersonal drama about sisters going through a difficult, painful time in their lives.  The book has Bergman's "letter" that he wrote to his crew and cast about the film, giving the participants guidance on how to proceed.  Ike loves this idea, wants Moorcock to write the script as a letter, borrowing psychological themes from Bergman's film.  The other book on the coffee table is about the films of Akira Kurosawa.  Ike wants Moorcock to emulate the bold action scenes of that director's Samurai films.  

     Samurai, Bergman, King Arthur, right.

     Moorcock needs to get a rough script finished, then a rewrite, to be followed by a second installment of his pay, which will go a long way towards addressing his debts.  Trapped in a kind of Hell, he serves a Master (modern Hollywood) that ultimately lacks any interest in producing the kind of good work Moorcock believes he must do to maintain his integrity as a literary artist.

     Michael Moorcock wrote some of the best Sword and Sorcery fantasy I've read.  His series of Elric stories and novels I've read and reread ever since high school.  His books following the exploits of his anti-hero Jerry Cornelius combine experimentalism with spy novel tropes.  He puts most of his fiction in a "Multiverse," a conglomeration of parallel universes so that his protagonists, like Elric, have counterparts in other universes with their own novel cycles: Hawkmoon, Corum, Jerry Cornelius, Erekosë, and others.  Numerous other books deal with different concepts and settings.  He's one of the most prolific writers in the field, already a literary giant by his early forties, when he was in Hollywood maintaining epic patience with some really stupid fucking people in the film industry.

     In spite of such literary accomplishments he wasn't rich at this time, his second marriage had flopped, he was in debt, he had to latch himself to the unpleasant job of satisfying the ever-changing decisions of a flibbertigibbet seeking to combine the quiet intimacy of a Bergman movie with the spectacular dynamics of a Kurosawa film; someone, too, disdainful of Moorcock's efforts at writing a script true to the film's time and place, 5th century Britain.  

     Much of the book, though, demonstrates Moorcock's eye for detail, this time not writing about a made-up fantasy world as in the Elric books, but a made-up real world place called Hollywood.  He lets his correspondent, Ballard, know about tattoo parlors, roller skaters in Venice Beach, Chicano gangs in his neighborhood, gunshots at night, sirens, neighbors yelling, radios blaring at two in the morning, the heat, but also his morning walks during which L.A. is cool and quiet, the smell of oleander in the air.  His descriptions of L.A., for anyone who's visited, ring true.  It's a fascinating place, a kind of decentralized mega-community founded in the early 20th century because of its light, movie film of those days requiring plenty of illumination, "interiors" for scenes open to the sky.

     In the end, Ike's unreliability, and whatever else is going on behind the scenes at the studio beyond Moorcock's knowledge, put the kibosh on the King Arthur movie.  He earns his two payments, but has spent a long time tethered to an insane business process.  His own fiction projects must wait while he labors on the idiotic take on the story demanded by Ike.  He drinks more and more, runs into fans who constantly offer him cocaine, marijuana, and whatever else.  His reserved "Englishness" leads to many disadvantageous encounters with movie business Americans who, in their direct way, assume he agrees with everything they say.  The drinking increases.

     In the end, though, it's the sunny smoggy magic of Los Angeles, the visuals, the smells, the sounds, that attach their enchantment to his spirit, as he considers, finally, living in L.A. half the year and in England the other half.  Moorcock eventually worked out such an arrangement, but with different locations.  He now lives in Texas and Paris, eighty-one years old, still writing, not as prolific as in the past, but a major author whose contribution to speculative fiction, if not to screenwriting, remains and will remain a major influence on the imaginations of millions of readers.

Vic Neptune

     

        

     

Chance Encounter of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella on an Operating Table

     From The Western Lands by William S. Burroughs:

     So the One God, backed by secular power, is forced on the masses in the name of Islam, Christianity, the State, for all secular leaders want to be the One.  To be intelligent or observant under such a blanket of oppression is to be "subversive."

     I first read Burroughs in 1986, The Adding Machine, a short book of essays.  Then I read Naked Lunch but wasn't prepared for it.  Still, trusting bewilderment would lead to understanding, I read The Soft Machine and Nova Express.  The cut-ups in those novels, whereby fragments of different texts mix

randomly like the outcome of a literary Big Bang, baffled me but served as preparation for The Ticket That Exploded, a novel I read after my second manic episode in 1994.  My brain's neural network, recovering after the inescapable disturbance of normal order from mania, helped me understand Burroughs' prose.    

     From The Ticket That Exploded:

     The sound track conjures up the image track--Word came before image--Shut off the sound track on your TV set and put in your own sound track words music what you will--Now play back your sound track and you will see the images sharp and clear...

     I haven't tried this, but plan to.

     Images gain new context as they associate with previously unrelated sound, original sound silenced as I experimented with American Capitalism's Super Bowl in 2019, listening with headphones to Atari Teenage Riot's Reset, a stunning mind-blasting album.  Images of the players, action, cheerleaders, the crowd, ads, blended with intense and compelling music, a new unique movie giving life to memories, individual images still with me.  

     L.A. Rams in blue and yellow, Tom Brady looking for people to catch his balls, the crowd's faces, celebrities watching just like ordinary people, Coach Belichick, head resembling a bag of expired flour.

     13-3 Patriots.    

     August 2, 1997, Burroughs died.  I found out the next day, saw a headline on a library copy of USA Today, a more mundane publication it's not possible to read, but William S. Burroughs cut many newspapers to form random patterns, so it's appropriate I saw the news of his death that way.

     I told my coworker Nicole about his death.

     "He's one of my favorite authors."  

     We talked a bit, then she went to her tasks, saying, "I'm sorry about your friend."

Vic Neptune

The Synod of Whitby A.D. 664

     Easter.  What does that mean to you?  As a non-Christian, for me it just meant candy.  It meant a big meal with extended family.  Some of them Christians, one's a Muslim.  Agnostics, too, plus a very scientifically minded one with no discernible religion but possessing beatific personality traits, like Dennis Wilson, drummer of The Beach Boys, actor in the masterpiece, Two Lane Blacktop.

     My mind wanders, I know, but know that there was a time, the seventh century A.D., when there were different competing dates for Easter.  The Celtic Church in northern England, Ireland, and parts of Scotland used a dating system based on an eighty-four year cycle.  In Rome this had been accepted until a different system based on a nineteen year cycle was introduced.  The differing Roman and Celtic Easters also meant differing Roman and Celtic Lents.  Within the royal household of Oswiu, King of Bernicia and Northumberland, both Celtic and Roman Easter and Lent observances meshed awkwardly, with one group eating Easter dinner with the King, while his Queen Eanflæd, a Roman Catholic, fasted with her fellow believers.  I imagine some of the Queen's gossipy courtiers and fellow Roman Catholics, hungry, mouths watering from the smell of roast mountain hare, woodcock, wild boar, and red deer.

     "Oh, those gluttonous Celtic Rite sinners!"

     Northumberland then was divided between two kingdoms, Bernicia ruled by Oswiu, and Deira ruled by his son, Prince Alchfrith.  Alchfrith sponsored a Roman Rite priest, Wilfrid, who'd been to Rome, giving him a monastery to run, evicting the place's Celtic monks.  This increased Wilfrid's power and influence to the extent that he argued the Easter case from the Roman side at the Synod of Whitby in 664.  

     King Oswiu, who had murdered a rival monarch, Oswine of Deira, and was feeling a need to atone before Hellfire could claim his soul, ordered the Synod, taking place probably in the first months of 664 in a monastery in Yorkshire called, get ready for Old English--Streanæshalch.   

     Colmán, Bishop of Northumbria, argued the Celtic Rite case for the eighty-four year cycle.  Wilfrid (Alchfrith's man) argued for the nineteen year cycle.  King Oswiu presided and would decide the issue.

     Colmán relied on tradition, going back to the authority of John the Evangelist, who, I guess, happened to endorse the Easter dating method preferred by later Celtic Christians.  Since the eighty-four year cycle had been practiced for so long, why change something with the background authority of Christ's Beloved Disciple?  What's more, Colmán argued, many countries in Europe used the eighty-four year cycle.

     Wilfrid talked about five times longer than Colmán.  He said that Saint Columba of the Celtic Rite was by no means as important as St. Peter, whom Our Lord made his rock upon which to build His Church.  Mention of Peter, keeper of the keys to Heaven, Heaven's Doorman, swayed King Oswiu in favor of the Roman Rite, even though he had supported the Celtic Rite.

     A political decision as well as a religious one?  The result of this Synod was the expulsion of the Irish (thus Celtic Rite) monks and Colmán from their stronghold at Lindisfarne.  Their return to Iona, to Ireland, left the Celtic Church weakened in Northumbria, the Roman Church strengthened.

     Easter represents rebirth.  It could be a moment in your life when you feel different, your perspective has changed.  A seventh century king you've never heard of has decided on the dating method of a Sunday in early Spring when you get to look for jelly beans hidden the night before by your mother, along with an Easter basket filled with goodies and fake grass,

     664, year of the Synod of Whitby, was a time of plague.  A solar eclipse on May 1 of that year preceded the plague and was regarded as an omen.  The plague devastated the peoples of southern Britain and wiped out many Northumbrians, including a few prominent churchmen.  In the southeast of Britain, the plague claimed the life of King Eorcenberht of Kent.

     Oswiu's motives in choosing against his Celtic Rite bias may have been due to his guilt over ordering the execution of King Oswine of Deira in 651.  Oswiu in the Synod was persuaded by the Petrine argument, that St. Peter, as Christ's Rock and the Keeper of the Keys to Heaven has authority over who gets in and who stays out.  Oswiu sought forgiveness from God for his heinous act, or so the idea goes.  His son Alchfrith wanted to assert the Roman Rite and his own man, Wilfrid, over the Celtic, which may have had the position of the old-fashioned religion, and definitely the minority faith.  Most of England followed the Roman Rite by then.  Eanflæd, Oswiu's Queen, backed the Roman side.  She, Wilfrid, and Colmán were all beatified, Alchfrith "vanished from history," and the Celtic Church lost some of its power in the north, while Mediterranean Christianity grew in influence and strength.

     When is Easter?  The fact that some obscure (to us) personages in seventh century Northumbria cared about that means they impact to this day our calendars with the roving date commemorating a day regarded by Jesus as two days after he was executed, but for me, Easter was sugar.

Vic Neptune

    

     

     

       

Chris Kolodny, Second String Forward, Game of Games, Valentine's Day, 1981

      Before that fateful night in the winter of 1981, Christopher S. Kolodny of Cotillion, Pennsylvania, a garment industry community fifty miles north of Harrisburg, was unknown to his classmates at Arlen Specter High School, home of the Specter Ghost Bullets, red and white uniforms, the football helmet sporting an illustration of an Old West handgun firing, held by a spectral hand.

     On the Basketball side of things, the teams over the past four years of the school's history had failed to place even in the playoffs of state championships.  Due to Kolodny, that was about to change.  

     Christopher, or usually Chris, Kolodny came from a quiet street with families all around, none of them loud.  Chris's father was a slow burn alcoholic and an insurance man who enjoyed relaxing for the five or so minutes he could obtain after another boring day of work before his wife, Cherry, would interrupt him with inane comments about her day, about their neighbors, about the new postman's leaving others' mail in their mail basket, a piece Cherry wove herself.  She took many classes, was always seeking to improve her mind.  She spent an afternoon studying the topic of the medieval Cather heretics of southern France and then never thought about the subject again.

     "Chatty Cherry" talked with her only child often.  She heard him out about his concerns, frustrations, his feeling of invisibility in a school run by overpowering jocks.  The culture of the school disgusted Cherry.  It elevated sport and spectacle above the arts and learning for the sake of learning.

     Chris excelled in English class, Calculus was tough, but he was managing well under the guidance of his Math teacher, Mr. Walton, a white-haired man who could add in his head really fast.

     Chris's abilities during the basketball unit of Junior year physical education were noted by his teacher, Mr. Quilmer. 

     In their shared office, Quilmer remarked to Mr. Haskins, a teacher who coached the basketball team, "Mind young Kolodny.  He's a good dribbler and has some good moves.  I believe he would make the team."

     Haskins, a pragmatic man who resembled Lee Iacocca but with a softer and less psychotic look, spoke one on one with Kolodny, at that time a junior.  

     "So, your first name?"

     "Chris."

     "Chris, I'm Coach Haskins.  I want to see you do a lay up.  Right now."

     Chris Kolodny knew this to be an audition.  He didn't care if he got the part, though.

     Not graceful, but an effective lay up.

     "Do another!"

     Muffed the second.  Hit the third, good net sound.

     "Do five more!"

     All of them successes.  Haskins offered Kolodny Second String Forward.  The team was in the dumps since four of their top players graduated.  Bummer.

     Kolodny's joining the team meant that fifteen adolescent boys had someone new to fool around with.  They teased him, tested his gullibility, shoved him on the court and pretended it was accidental, threw basketballs at him and yelled at him to dance--he refused.

     Kolodny, in his home life, preferred time alone in his bedroom.  He had a Star Wars poster, a copy of the Star Wars novel, a model of an X Wing Fighter he made, he read Breakfast of Champions by Vonnegut.  He wrote in a journal later self-published, Christopher Kolodny's Journal, 1977 to 1997.

     On November 12, 1979, the day Haskins recruited him, Kolodny wrote,

          Jerry Haskins, the coach of the b-ball team, invited me to join.  I accepted.  I felt pressured by his gruff enthusiasm.  He's a backslapper type, like Dad's friend Bobby.  Bobby hurt me once with that come up behind you back slap.  It made me tense my muscles, I felt it for two days.  You bastard Bobby!

          As part of the team I will be allowed to date a cheerleader, maybe three at a time.  Robin or Cheryl I would prefer, not that I expect it.

          My height, six-two, enables me to play on a basketball team, Backup Forward.  The two Forwards are Mike Hopper and Gerry Wohler.  Hopper has never acknowledged my presence, in junior high either.

          Gerry Wohler is a psychopath, he's injured two people I know of.  Rough conditions at home, it's said.  Gerry Wohler turned his life around last year with the aid of Coach Haskins acting as basketball teacher and mentor.  He adopted Gerry, he brought Gerry to live with him in Fortinbras, a rather working poor area.  In a year Gerry was not only a good basketball player, he was a "fine young man."

          No, he's a terror to others.  He scarred people.  Now I'm backing him and Mike Hopper.  They're hateful but I will work with them.

     Kolodny worked.  Hopper shoved him often, was penalized and admonished not sternly in practice games, Kolodny missed half his free throws, better than ten members of the team, but he was ridiculed by Hopper and Wohler, Steyer and Prince, with the little Guard Lester Retz chiming in to fit in with the First Stringers, who, all except for Prince, were vicious jock morons who required constant tutoring.

     Wohler confronted Kolodny in the locker room after a strenuous practice.  "You better shape up.  You're dropping the ball, literally.  You're missing baskets, today you TRAVELED!  You don't run with the ball in your hands, dummy!"

     "I was trying to get away from Mike.  He scratched me, see?" Kolodny showed a red welt on his right cheekbone.  

     "You did that to yourself!  You're clumsy!  You're stupid!  You're worthless!  Clumsy Kolodny!"

     Wohler's punch deliberately missed Kolodny's head, but he heard hurtfully and felt jarringly the vibration of the indignant boy's fist denting a locker, Mike Hopper's.

     "Shape up, Cuh-riss!"

     The exit door got punched, too.

     Kolodny's father sat with his drink, nodding, saying nothing about his son's getting nailed on the cheek and menaced by a handsome blonde goblin.  Mrs. Kolodny, though, listened raptly, pursing her lips and shaking her head at the more intense parts.  

     "Honey," she said to her husband, "don't you think it's time Chris be taken off that team?"

     "Why?"

     "Haven't you heard what Chris has said?"

     "Every word."

     "Well?"

     "Chris, do you want to play basketball with these creeps?  It's okay if you do, it's okay if you don't, how's that for reasonable?"

     "Chris honey--"

     "Mom, it's okay, I never intended to leave the team.  I just wanted to tell you my story."

     "You can manage with these savage players?"

     "Sure, I think so."

     

     The Kolodny Kool from that point on was in play.  He spoke little, studied much, practiced basketball, played for thirty seconds in the season opener, got knocked down.  In the second game, played in Harrisburg, Kolodny scored one basket in the fourth quarter when the team was ahead by 21, then, per Kolodny, 23.  

     Chris wanted to be a Finisher.  Someone who comes in during the last minutes, fresh, ready to play, uninjured, full of vim.  Only in games, usually, where the outcome was certain did Kolodny bounce the Wilson.

     He scored 14 points in Game Six, all baskets coming in the last 90 seconds.  Final score, Ghost Bullets 60, Johnsonville Strikebreakers 85.

     Still, such scenarios gave him game practice.  He got steadily better, less clumsy, more just-given-the-silent-treatment by the First Stringers rather than the previous doses of brutality and verbal abuse.

     By season's end, Kolodny had definitely earned the respect of Coach Haskins.  Even Gerry Wohler said "Good game" to him after their last one, a disappointing loss at home that kept them from the playoffs.  Kolodny scored 20 points in that one, Wohler 18, Hopper a mere 5.  Mike Hopper also missed 9 out of 10 free throws.  Kolodny didn't make fun of him in the locker room for that, but his teammates did.  

     Nobody could glower better than Michael A. Hopper, some found it fun to accentuate the glower through relentless verbal damage.  The First Stringers were sometimes shitty to each other. 

     

     Kolodny practiced every day, layups in his parents' driveway, driver's education for summer school, his driver's test successful, license by the end of August, able to drive his Mother's Pacer to school on Mondays and Wednesdays.

     Until b-ball started again in November, Kolodny worked on differential calculus, he read Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, he read the novelization of The Empire Strikes Back.  

     Entry from Monday, October 13, 1980, of the Kolodny Journal:

     I'm looking forward to playing basketball again.  I'm not looking forward to often seeing Mike Hopper.  I ran into Gerry today in the Commons.  He looked the same, anxious head bob at times, like he's trying to figure out what he needs to do.  He said Haskins is getting difficult to live with.  He drinks, he yells at the television after Gerry has gone to bed.  The Coach had a woman over, like a lady of the evening, she looked Chinese, Gerry said.  They were very loud watching television, especially the Coach, and then very loud doing something else.  It was weird for Gerry, and I can understand why.  I wondered if Gerry is trying to be friends with me?  I've heard Mike isn't spending much time with him.  Mike has a new girlfriend.  Guess what she does.  Football cheerleader, yup.  Teresa Baginski.  Two years ago, before a class started, she was sitting on my desk, her feet on her chair.  I had a perfect view of her bottom.  She was in her Junior Varsity Wrestling red and white cheerleader uniform.  James Kline, next to me, gestured with his eyes at her backside, as if I hadn't noticed Teresa's butt on my desk.  Cheerleader butt at that.

     Mike and Teresa.  Every time I see him in the hallways he's got the same Mike Hopper glower.  The guy needs some sunshine in his life.  Maybe Teresa will lighten him up?  A happy Mike Hopper would make being his teammate an agreeable thing.

     November 10, 1980, a Monday, first day of practice, 3:45 PM to 5:45, rusty players getting back in the groove.  Verbal abuse at new players.  Mike and Gerry prolific with sarcasm and shoving.  

     Has Teresa Baginski's tender influence not improved Mike Hopper's biliousness and aggressiveness?

     Gerry, for all of his transformative experiences since coming under the influence of Coach Haskins, remained a sadistic physically strong boy effective at convincing those others not his victims that he was harmless. 

     No one complained about Gerry.  He scored so many points, he ran in track and field events, earning himself trophies and ribbons as well as female attentions.

     Gerry made the school, his and Kolodny's twelfth grade year of 1980-1981, proud of its basketball team, State Championship bound.  College scouts interviewed Gerry.  Some university in Indiana really wanted him.  A small Illinois college recruited hard, lost out to Penn State.

     GERRY!!!!!

     Two red Number 10s on his jersey, Wohler an arc of future glories on the sweaty garment's back. 

     Mike Hopper, Number 16, the Lovebird with the constant look on his face of desiring to murder someone.

     The little guard, Lester Retz, Number 13, a Three Point Man who never got girls due to his greasy face and awkwardness around the school's female half.

     Leo Steyer, the other guard, Number 24, not as good as Retz, but one of the handsome ones; arrogant and cruel, father a sheet metal man.

     Gabriel Prince, the six foot five center, Number 5, boyfriend of Homecoming Queen Linda Scholer, lived in the town's most expensive house with his gadfly parents.  Gabriel did whatever he wanted in his own wing of the house.  Kolodny was never invited there to any of Gabriel's parties.  Orgy rumors circulated, probably weren't true, or were exaggerated.  

     Chris Kolodny now played in less games than the previous year's first half of the season.  The five starters played excellently, the team accumulated five wins before losing a close one at home.  In Game Seven Kolodny played quite a bit for an injured Mike Hopper.  A very tall weighty boy slammed down on his foot, probably on purpose.  Taken to the bench, Mike had tears in his eyes.  Kalodny felt bad for him, felt bad for Teresa who would feel bad.

     Kolodny scored just three points, did not impress the Coach, by now a bottle of scotch per night man.  Kolodny's poor performance, at any rate, was shared by the team.  Gerry Wohler scored only five points.

     What could be happening with this splendid bunch?

     Five more regular season games to go.  Kolodny played in three of them, including the final one at home on Valentine's Day, 1981, a win needed to get into the State Championships.

     Coach Haskins pushed Gerry in this game, yelled compliments and imprecations at him.  

     "Be great!  Be grand!  What the hell was that?  Be overpowering, Gerry!  What are you doing?  Knock that little fucker over the next time he tries that!  Be a missile!  Be a gruesome foe to your court opponents!"

     Gerry played well for a while and then, defending against a dodgy Carmen Wildcats guard, he stepped hard on the paint, made a sudden move right when his foot was pointing slightly left and went down, eyelids wide.

     Kolodny, Number 14, replacing Wohler, in a whirlwind scored 16 points, narrowing the margin to 3 with 1 minute remaining.

     "How do you feel, Gerry," Doctor Bauman asked.

     "I feel fine," Gerry said hoarsely, voice tight.

     Doctor Bauman touched his knee, pronounced him fit.  He and Coach Haskins were old friends.

     Gerry went back in, not fast anymore.  He missed two baskets, missed two free throws.  Mike Hopper at least held up his end of the game, scoring by that time 13 points including 3 free throws.  

     Wildcats 62, Ghost Bullets 59.

     Haskins told Gerry to rest.  Kolodny, with 3 seconds on the clock, scored a three-pointer to tie it.  The crowd deafened anyone who thought about how loud it was. 

     OVERTIME.  

     To the crowd's surprise, Kolodny sat on the bench.  Gerry was back.

     The Penn State Man is in the bleachers, Haskins reasoned.  The Penn State Man has to see Gerry shine.

     Shine, Gerry!

     Gerry scored no points.  Gerry dropped the ball on an easy pass, picked up by a Wildcat guard to make it 67 to 63, Wildcats.  Gerry fell down though no one had bumped into him.  Gerry lay on the court for five minutes, attended by Doctor Bauman.  Lifted by rookie teammates, Gerry was taken with Doctor Bauman to the locker room.  Doctor Bauman had drugs in his suitcase.

     The crowd, relieved, cheered Kolodny's return.  Anybody with the slightest reasoning ability could see that Kolodny was the best Forward this game so keep him in.

     Kolodny appreciated the crowd's approval, but he had a big job to do.  A two point stuff by Gabriel Prince made it 67-65.  Kolodny got fouled, scored a free throw, 67-66.  The Wildcats rallied, their best Forward put the ball through the hoop, 69-66.  

     With only 5 seconds on the clock Kolodny burst past two opponents, made his way to just outside the three-point line and launched a successful trey.

     69-69.

     Crowd even louder than before.  Unbelievable, who is this guy, sunk two three-pointers at the absolutely needed time!  Kolodny, never heard of him.  Oh, he's that guy in my English class who never says anything.  Kolodny, yeah, I used to think he was a fag, but no way is that guy a fag, the way he plays.

     

     No question now in Haskins' mind: Kolodny is the one. 

     The second overtime period began with Kolodny threading through his opponents for a layup.  71-69.  Ghost Bullets in the lead!

     Cheers, they love him!  Next possession, Chris Kolodny scores a three-pointer from the side.  74-69!  

     Wildcats rally, score six unanswered points, 75-74, time running out!  

     Kalodny bursts, a layup makes it 76-75, such a narrow edge, such a minute margin!

     The Wildcats' best guard scores a three-pointer, 78-76 Wildcats!  

     Fourteen seconds frozen on the clock, last time out.

     "Get the ball to Kolodny!" Coach Haskins yells at his men, barely heard in the din.

     Gabriel Prince has the ball, shoots it to Steyer on the side, Steyer shoots it back to Prince, Prince finds a brief opening as Kolodny breaks away from two opponents, zooms back from the paint, catches Prince's throw, turns, looks down, steps quickly outside the three-point line, aims and launches.

     79-78, 2 seconds...1...Horn!

     Nobody thinks about Gerry.  Everyone celebrates Chris Kolodny!  

     

     Gerry Wohler joined the Marines and was killed in Lebanon in 1983. 

     Gabriel Prince became a Pennsylvania Republican Congressman and then a lobbyist for Big Coal.

     Teresa Baginski married someone named Mike, though not Mike Hopper.

     Mike Hopper became a cop in Allentown, a bouncer in Philadelphia, and finally, a mercenary.  Missing in Afghanistan since 2004.

     Mr. Kolodny died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 2019.

     Mrs. Kolodny died of liver cancer in 2015.

     Lester Retz became a landscape business owner and married a nice woman.

     Leo Steyer became a licensed therapist.

     Chris Kolodny went back to being a normal person.  Fame and glitter last briefly, people once enthusiastic forget and think of other excitements.  For part of one evening, Valentine's Day, 1981, Kolodny was a dribbling god.  He scored 26 of the team's 79 points, nearly a third.  He rallied them to make up for the loss of Wohler.  They played better that night because of Kolodny, the school newspaper said so.

     Coach Haskins approached Kolodny in the locker room afterwards, asked him to meet with the Penn State Man who'd come to watch Gerry.  The Penn State Man wasn't interested in Gerry anymore.  Even before the injury, Gerry had scored just six points and missed four free throws.  Gerry hadn't been practicing much lately.  Riding high on the team's first half of the season victories and the sexual experiences following from those, Gerry Wohler made the mistake of assuming superiority on the court.  On the positive side, he also felt proud of his teammates, no longer bothering to torment any of them during this winning season.  

     Gerry was on his way.  Gerry was going to college.  Gerry was about to fall from the tower he constructed in his mind.

     Chris, lacking troublesome ego, knew it didn't matter if the team won or not.  

          It's how you play the game.  I played well tonight, my teammates played well, most of them.  I'll hand it to Mike.  He and I cooperated well, allowed each other the basket when we saw that was the right move.  He's still a sourpuss, but at least he wasn't a problem.  Gerry glared at me when I went in at overtime.  I hope he's better for the next game, State Championship playoffs in Harrisburg!  We're up against the Sloane High School Tomahawks of Osweguish.  Said to be a good team.  Said by somebody.  Well, we'll maybe beat them!

     They didn't.  Eliminated in the first round.  The Tomahawks destroyed them, 67-27.  Kolodny scored 2 points, Mike Hopper 7, Lester Retz 12.  Gerry watched from the bench, knee taped. 

     Coach Haskins now regretted having the Penn State Man talk with Kolodny.  The Penn State Man had gone home, missing this horrible performance, but he would read about it in the newspaper.

     The Penn State Man didn't call Kolodny as he said he would.  The Penn State Man was looking at Henry Nightbird of the Sloane Tomahawks.  Nightbird was darting.  Nightbird was fast.  Nightbird's free throw record was number one in the state.  

     Coach Haskins kicked Gerry out of his house.  "Why don't you do something with your life?  Join the Marines or something!"

     After graduation on Saturday, June 13, 1981, Chris Kolodny drove his mother's Pacer to the grocery store to buy a four pack of Stewart's Key Lime Soda, the ambrosia of soft drinks.  Driving home under the sunlit waving leaves of his quiet neighborhood, Kolodny spent the rest of the day drinking Key Lime, eating popcorn, and reading Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock, heroic fantasy at its best.

     His mother made him a beautiful steak dinner, his father told him he was proud of him and then went to drink and watch television.  

Vic Neptune