On My Desk, This Week...

I had to admit, though, that I couldn’t open my paper (okay, Tommy’s paper) without reading a description of some dude’s secret sexually aggressive life.  There were a lot, even if you thought that some of them weren’t all true.  Most of them involved guys a lot more assuming than my buddy Perry, too. “Maybe he couldn’t help it,” Mrs.  Baxter offered. “Their hormones can be a lot closer to the surface than ours.” For a moment, I was enraged.  Then I was embarrassed, thinking about how gratified my high-school self would be on the undamaged side of “ours.”

“With all due respect, I think that’s a myth, Mrs. Baxter.”

She looked at me as if to say “Have it your way,” but she didn’t say anything else.  Somehow, though, I doubted that she’d give me space on the Sanity Bench again, and, stranger as she was, that gave me a pang.  On the other hand, at least I wouldn’t be tossing and turning in a strange bed that night over the gap between my stated beliefs and the things I was willing to talk about in public. That was a step in the right direction.

Just a taste from my as-yet-untitled False Confession story(partially based on a real incident, in which a neighbor was a witness. ) Thought about calling it "Saturday, In The Park" because I set it on July 4, but the band Chicago isn't very noir, is it? Not that my stories usually are, either, even though I've tried.

Media and Miscellany...

Hard times ahead for your Bohemian Crip, as the spring season that promises renewal for so many means that we here in the desert are headed inexorably to our indoor season.  Perhaps I have some kind of inverse of SAD, called DAS(for Damn all The Sunlight)Stranger things have happened, I suppose. Of such things are climate activists made.( Although I like junk food too much to properly be one, but I am trying hard.)

_Finished up Season 1 of The Deuce on Netflix this week. I think it’s great, but you might want to take a pass if nudity bothers you. James Franco did a nice job playing twins.

Also, watched a biopic of sort of a patron saint of unappreciated Bohemian Crips everywhere, Ms. Emily Dickinson.Cynthia Nixon did a great job of playing her as a human woman,rather than some elusive, booklet-making poetry fairy, but, as a consequence, I felt it too keenly when the walls began to close around her…that is a feeling I don’t really need to have in stereo.Let me know...can there be such a thing as too lifelike a performance? Although I think I told my mother that it was all the scenes at the pianoforte that got to me, which is probably a fiction the woman herself employed at least once.

In Which I Relate to McGruff...

and not only for being a "Crime Dog", although recently I devouredMichelle McNamara's book, and I could see myself in her single-minded quest. But the identification was at once smaller and larger than that, since it came from an insurance commercial.

If you haven't seen it, the crime-fighting hound strides around, all business, eager to share his latest crime-busting tip, only to be talked to in a cute voice like he is...a dog! He is left frustrated and the voice-over says that (Company) will have good rates for "as long as people talk baby talk to dogs".
It's funny, but I could also relate, too.  Although nobody has ever asked me if I had a "tippy-whippy" before, it doesn't take much to notice that something about my appearance plus the chair makes people use a similar voice on me, too.

There could be a whole metaphor in it, X-Men style, about him not getting the respect he deserves  because he is so different from the human detectives.But then, again, more likely, they are just trying to get children of the '80s to think about auto insurance, now that some of us are past those skin-of-your teeth insurers. The Baby Voice is not a joke, though. If you are impaired, you have lived it. Too loud, too much energy, morning show enthusiastic, also irritatingly willing to slow down so you don't miss any syllable as a stranger admires your "pretty, pretty blouse" when you are well launched in your forties.Able-bodied people, nobody likes this.Just greet us like you would a friendly neighbor at the mailbox or something.

Not only is it hard on my credibility, but in school, at least, it kept me from showing my real personality sometimes. Which held me back, I think, Although maybe not as much as it would if life was like a reunion rom-com, and all roads led back to that high school locker, but  between the social doubt trying to correct for it left me less fun than the average car crash, I still have a lot to live down.

Sample From "Somebody..."

All Darnell Watkins, paralyzed soul singer and reluctant icon, wants is some relief from the winter chill, his writer's block, and some persistent bad memories. Instead, when his best friend is murdered, he has to learn to cope with tragedy all over again. Here is an excerpt from "Didn't You Used to Be Somebody?"

"If you'd like to be alone to write this in your diary, I could leave."

      I snapped out of it, cleared my throat, and looked away. If I had known the clock would start winding down on our lifelong friendship, I'd have hugged the son-of-a-bitch and dared the world to write whatever down-low mess they wanted. Not that they would have; I'd been downgraded from pop act to survival story, any scandal wiped out with the snap of my spinal cord. Anyway, these young folks coming up put us to shame. So, I don't know why I snuffled and said "Allergies" only that it satisfied him, and he gave me this little nod, as if to say all was forgotten.

    I suppose I should have known something was up when I got a phone call before noon, although morning calls didn't give me an automatic jolt of fear since my mother passed.

      "Mr. Watkins? This is Detective Ken Ingram from the Phoenix Police Department. I need to talk to you about Alex Parsons."

     I honestly expected Alex, loopy from being up all night, to sing me some "great harmony" he found in his head after five Coca-Colas, and even after the flat-voiced detective identified himself, I only thought there had been more involved in the burst of creation than Coca-Cola, in which case, I'd be more than prepared to hound the backsliding motherfucker.

     Having made the resolution to start right then, if need be, I straightened my spine and said "Could I talk to him, please?  If he needs a lawyer, I can handle that."

       The cop coughed and sighed.  I figured he hadn't been doing it long if they let him make human noises.  "Sir," he told me patiently. "That won't be possible.  Mr. Parsons was fatally shot.   His body is at the medical examiner's office."

This story is available in Tales Of The House Band, Volume 1. Still looking for a home for the novel version.

Tales From The House Band, Volume 1