In 1963 I thought that if a boy kept his mind on his work and eschewed bad companions, he stood a chance to grow up right, toward an orderly and predictable future, free of bewilderment and free of defeat. So at ag 13 I left home to begin studies at a junior seminary.
Kennedy was president and the world was Catholic. I was playing soccer when I heard the news he was shot. We all stood about in our long shorts, tugging at out shirts.
Perhaps six weeks later I was playing shuffleboard, and the Beatles came on the big upright radio against the basement wall. It was "Please Please Me." The sound stuck in my head, like bees. I could not get it out. They were not like other bands; they were a group, a new word, a new kind of matrix. They wrote their songs, and all four sang, but the words were always first-person. I want to hold your hand. All my loving. They were like a new kind of person, bashing through each song as if it were the last one left on earth.
And whatever they sang about seemed to matter terribly. "One, two, three, faw!" At the seminary we sang from a Gregorian hymnal called the Liber Usualis. But I put mine down and took up this much more usable other book. One, two, three, faw -- I went to sleep at nght thinking about the syllable faw, its secular belligerence, the damnation of it. It was more than music, it was madness. I was taken up in it and swept away. Deny it by daylight, but every night I dreamed I joined them.
I dreamed they invited me to join them and though I played no instrument and sang only a little and my hair wasn't right, they sensed I was one of them and let me belong. They seemed to enjoy being in Pennsylvania and strode my front porch in their Cuban black heels, and I did my best to fit in. There were never misgivings or resentment that I was studying Latin or that I was American or that I stood about stiffly during concerts, banging a tambourine against my hip.
We were all doomed of course. I never made priest. Priests take vows that effectively rule out pop stardom. And English pop stars don't wait for 13-year-olds in Bucks County to catch up to them. Neither fantasy, neither priesthood nor Beatlehood, proved corporeal enough to include me in.
Seventeen years pass, and the optimism sags. Tonight, listening to John Lennon's "primal scream" songs, I recall that it began with one killing and now ends with another. I will listen to his songs all night and all morning, grieving for his murder, and for the smirky murderer who was out there in a dream all his own. Angry that I had to hear the news from Howard Cosell on the Monday Night Football. Fourth down and punt for the Patriots.
I feel the same sudden cramp in the stomach. I stand to fix myself a drink, and when I reach down in the dark for a bottle of ginger ale I hit my head on the open door of the microwave oven. Lying face down on the kitchen carpet, I feel the wetness in my hair. When I pull myself to the bathroom mirror, a red line streams down the middle of my face and drips from my nose into the sink.
How different we are when we bleed. I see on my face that seventeen years have passed. And I hear an echo which seemed positively ancient now: Well she was just seventeen and, you know what I mean, and the way she looked was way beyond compare.
One, two, three, faw.
December, 1980
Last night I dreamt I was in LA, and a mutual friend said George was anxious to see me. We drove along the beach till we came to his wife's fashion salon, and I was led in. A busy, happy woman with cropped curls gestured behind her and laughed. This was where all the money went, she said. I shook hands with the retinue.
Some of the members of the old band were still there, including the saxophonist with the scars on his nose whose name I could never remember.
I met George's son, whom I had never met before, he was almost grown, and resembled his mother, handsome and quiet and composed. I was taken aback by him, and couldn't think of anything to say. They wheeled out an exquisite cake that said "Welcome back, Mike," with a picture of us five lads, one without an instrument, with buttercream dahlias and frosting cherries, created by some impressive celebrity baker.
And when George arrived everyone crowded around him, but after touching his son's face he went straight to me and hugged me and we rocked happily for a moment, reunited, and I remembered the good times on tour, and how they always dropped me off again at the gray house on the little hill, and I would sneak inside to bed.
I could see the lines in George's eyes, and his hair had thinned but his grin was still stupendous, and he peppered me with questions about my family and my life and rebuked me for not bringing a photo with me.
During the meals, seeing the love they all had, I felt tears come to my eyes, and I burst out and told them I didn't deserve them as friends, they were so genuine and kind, and I was sorry I had not stayed in touch, and I was so sorry about John, and I was sorry I had gotten old and fat and become a business writer and lost the music, and someone patted my back while I sobbed.
And in his thick scouse George quietly said none of that mattered, I had gotten away but we were together again, and we would always be mates, and this day was for us to remember and to share. And they all lifted their glasses of soda water and lime.
When the alarm sounded I went to my daughter's room. She lay there sleeping with her finger in a closed paperback. I kissed her several times on her smooth forehead. She emerged from her sleeping bag like a rose in bloom and told me my hands were cold, and smiled her lovely smile. We could hear the diesel idle of the garbage truck in the alley and the birds in the maple tree sang.
April, 1995
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