Hello, Death

Marty Feldman & Spike Milligan in The Undertakers from Marty Feldman's Comedy Machine

I've always been a dreamer. One of the earliest dreams I remember having was when I was 16 and having sex with Angie Dickinson on a bumper pool table. Lots of excitement and wonder but with plenty of anxiety and frustration. Ever have sex on a bumper pool table? It's not easy.

I've been thinking of death a lot lately. I had a dream where Dad and I are sitting at this rustic table on a hard scrabble hill overlooking an Italian village.  We're sharing a bottle of white wine and Dad's eating pasta. In front of us is Death. He's 10' or so and in the black hooded robe but instead of a sickle, he's got a hoe and he's chipping away at the hard dry dirt and digging up skulls. Each time he uncovers one, he picks it up and tucks it into his robe.

I hear a cell phone ringing and look at Dad who's slurping up pasta and ignoring Death. 'Is that you ?' I ask. Dad shakes his head without looking up from his bowl.  I look at Death and he reaches into his sleeve and pulls out a flip phone.

"Hello,"Death says. "Hello?...Hello?...Hello?"

Death shrugs and returns the phone to his sleeve. Death's mobile rings again.

"Hello? ... Hello?... Hello?..."

I turn to my father, "Death sure is a pain in the ass," I say.   Dad puts his fork down and looks at me, "No shit. "

A La Broche: An Old Fashioned Christmas

1935 Lucky Bag - 1934 Army Navy Game - Army Loses, 3-0

If you're under 30 and hauling ass around blogs, scrolling through pictures at mach three while bouncing your knee wildly and chewing on your thumb nail -- I ask you -- No, damn it. I'm begging you. Slow down, focus and read this from my guest TRAWETS NILTGEOV author of, A La Broche. These are words but they create an image and most of them are not that long. For those of you over 40, I promise not only images but sounds and smells as well. It's about drinking, football and dying -- like a man. So pull your jeans up off your ass, turn your ball cap around straight and see if your attention span can last longer than my wire fox terrier on an extra shot Americano.

You see, what I do, what I’ve always done, is set a sugar cube in a glass and then introduce bitters. Set the thin orange slices in like this. Yes,you see, and the cherry, a maraschino, at its middle and wait until the sugar takes on this burnt brown stain. Then water it and muddle it until you’ve got this mixture you see and then well, yes, so ever slowly dribble whiskey down the glass. Then stir and stir and stir.

Time for ice. And it should be cubes, not crushed. But not too many though, you see. And it must be a good quality ice not like the goddamn garbage that comes out the old Kenmore, but a chiseled sort of ice, a densely frozen and crusty sort of ice, you see, and stir and stir and stir. Add lemon peel and a swizzle for swizzling yes, and then - ah yes - down the hatch. To your good health.

Hugh’s voice is still swarthy and deep and splattered with blueblood. But his health is not good. He’s a dying, wheezing, miserable mess, much like the Canyon Creek Trail home that keeps him. Air smells long dead of paper and liquor and traces of afternoon tea, bergamot, and hams boiled and suppered and lunched and snacked over for days endless and pain ridden. To the living room after one, two, maybe three more drinks. Modest color set fixed to Army Navy game. Flash of gold helmets and men uniformed and squeaky with pedigree misbehaving in ways tolerated two hours plus no excuses.

Papers, magazines, envelopes, must be six years of mail there stacked on the hearth. Christmas tree in right corner glistens with tinsel and balls silver and gold and crimson. I watch Navy score through a reflection sharp and unreal seen bottomless in big silver ball. The tree boughs sag with ornament. Grandmother walks through the room unkempt, eerie. Alzheimer’s has taken and turned her out a ghost. Hugh rattles the ice in his glass. He sighs. He turns the color set off. I watch him in the ball’s reflection and when he asks if I’ll read aloud from Kidnapped, where we last left off, his voice is broken and without breath.

We never finish Kidnapped. He lasts nearly a year. Few days before the Army Navy game, his sons carry a jug of cream sherry to his room and toast earnestly with Styrofoam cups. He dies hours later and is in the ground before kickoff. Dad returns from the Canyon Creek Trail home with briefcase and a silence that sits a strange fence-line stoic and existential. Dad’s brother loads dining room table with artifacts. Opera records and art books, gewgaws and bric-a-brac. A tired and weathered collection of random paperbacks: Fleming, Conrad, James, Stevenson, Twain. Bottles of gin and scotch and bourbon. An unopened half-gallon of Maker’s Mark. Dozen dusty bottles of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, grapes gone black with richness of age.

Dad opens shop with briefcase, clears out space amongst booze and books, pops the briefcase’s lock, invites storm of paper into the house to last weeks, months. Financial records, health records, records of records. Will unfurls as stretch of buck brush thorn ridden and wound in blackberry bramble a mile as far as the crow flies. Calculators click. The two brothers talk and whisper. Folks visit. Folks cover up death with food, don’t they? Kitchen buckles with casserole, chafing dishes of fried chicken and roast beef, platters of cold cuts and cheese and pickled veg, pastries and éclairs and Danishes sleazy with custards and glossy candied fruits and dustings of sugar.

House had never been so heavy. Folks whisper and tip-toe and console and serve food and drinks. Folks I’ve never seen before. Folks from up north, you know, cousins and uncles and aunts so-and-so, he’s… she’s… well, you remember, right? You, well, you were young. You’ve grown up. Lookit you and your sister… BOOM. Cannon fire. Cadets celebrate six more. Christamighty, dad’s rolling over right now. Folks nod. Folks whisper. Navy down fourteen in the first. Camera pans. Middies spill out into stands. Topcoats, dress whites, breath rolls from mouths agape, faces ruddy and fixed tightly in subzero temp. Hear them in the kitchen. Away from the other folks and close at the sink and talking while the transistor plays Christmas music quietly.

It’s the sugar that starts the drink off, and, well, what dad always did was hit it with the bitters and bring the fruit to it before he muddled. Sometimes he poured a little of the maraschino syrup in there and muddled—it gave it this festive blush he said—and then the bourbon. Here, open that, okay, great, and then he poured it down the side of the glass like this, slow, and then the stirring—like one of those goddamn old fashioned egg beaters, banging the spoon around the glass.

He was real particular about his ice too; there was something he said, a phrase, something like densely frozen he’d call it, and he never finished off the drink with club soda like most bartenders now do. Here, cut me a little lemon peel, okay, great, and then he added the peel and, you see, look at this, it’s a very colorful cocktail, orange and red and brown and it smells, well, it smells Christmassy, like fruit cake almost and it tastes, well, ah. To your good health.

A Quiet Death

For my in laws, Art and Mary. Written June 2001.

He sat in front of the television. In his wheel chair. The size 14 corduroy slippers looked like the fins on an old Cadillac. We walked in. My wife and I. Afraid to say what we had come to say. Art turned from the TV and smiled when he saw us. A big smile full of his own teeth. They were yellow but they were all there. It was the Friday before Memorial Day weekend and Art was watching TNT's day long John Wayne movie marathon. As far as hospitals went... Art could do a lot worse than Lake Forest. Reproduction 18th Century furniture surrounded his futuristic hospital bed while the TV had a built in VCR.

My wife and I were his only family in town due to the holiday. And so we told Art his wife had just died. The light in his eyes went out like a switch had been thrown. His smile disappeared and his lips trembled as he brought his hands to his face and cried, "I just talked to her." My wife cried, "I know, Dad. I know." She did not hold him. She did not touch him. And he did not reach for her. I thought it odd my wife's legs were crossed. I was suddenly aware my legs were crossed. Uncrossing them I wondered what to do with them.

We went to the funeral home. The nice man in the rep tie and blue blazer showed us the caskets. I pushed Art around the show room in his wheel chair and slammed his foot into a casket named the Virginian. "Goddamn that hurts!" "Sorry, Art," I said as I thought of a parchment map of Virginia City burning on my television screen. The Virginian was a dark walnut with a cream quilted interior. It did look comfortable. It was nine thousand dollars. Not too bad when you figured the daily cost spread across an eternity.

Every ten minutes or so I would wheel Art into the bathroom. I would bend down in front of him and he would pull himself up on my shoulders and we would stand together as he peed. I looked at his penis and noticed how big it was. "What am I doing looking at my father in law's dick," I wondered. But not out loud. I realized my brother in law must have a big penis as well. That fucker is lucky in everything.

We looked at more caskets and discussed the advantages of more expensive vaults and after all was said and done -- close to thirty thousand dollars had been spent. All of it, tossed in a hole, so to speak. Nine months later my wife and I knelt in front of the Virginian Art was lying in. His hands were folded on his chest and covered in a thick pan makeup not unlike the stuff used on stage. His lips were sewn together and looked odd. There was some truth in my wife's observation, "Dead people always look Italian."

For Dana

The East River at 57th Street. There's something about a bridge that makes me think of a journey.

A friend died this morning after a long fight with cancer. We both started work at a brokerage in Chicago on the same day in May of 1992. At the time I thought Dana was a light weight. As head of the small business unit he knew little to nothing about the technical side of our job. I worked on large commercial accounts and knew little to nothing about selling. Selling is where Dana excelled. Despite my looking down on Dana's knowledge - - he always treated me decently and with respect.

I watched Dana and two other friends take down a Chicago Icon. Our former boss. That businessman was all over pay-to-play Illinois politics. You've heard a little something about this phenomenon recently. Today that iconic Chicagoan is in jail and won't get out until after Obama's first term ends.

Dana had balls. That's for sure. He also had the kind of humor that was bodacious, intelligent and way off the reservation. Presenting to a client after getting whacked with a $10.00 haircut the day before - - he spoke no truer words, "My haircut is a good example of what can happen when you buy price."

At a Chicago Bull's game in a luxury box, both of us were so bored that while our clients oohed at Michael Jordan, we wiled away the time throwing cubed cheese at each other. We left the game early and Dana took me home in his new Infinity. I think he was prouder of his new ear muffs that stayed on like little suction cups than that car. A year or so later I heard of the cancer. He put up a long fight and a couple of years ago he had a party to celebrate his life. It was a massive blow out with some of Chicago's hardest drinking and partying I've ever seen and we all knew why we were there.

After the party broke up, Dana treated me to a late dinner with his girlfriend and a model. The model was young, tall and beautiful and I had no idea why she was so interested in me. All through dinner she told me about the cosmetic company she wanted to start. Dana was in tears laughing. When I called Dana the next morning he admitted to telling the model I was extremely sad over my divorce and my personal net worth was over fifty million dollars.

In the last 5 months Dana's health declined fast. I phoned him and for the first time he didn't return my call. We were co-workers who became friends. In the plain vanilla - white bread world of my profession he was a colorful and grateful man who feared no one, played it straight and always reminded me to lighten up and have fun. I'll never forget him or his laugh. My heart goes out to his family and his many friends.