Coffee & Donuts Documentary

                           A little something different today, a guest contributor who's been with us from the beginning - Glenn Schaefer.   He had developed a drug an alcohol abuse problem in his thirties and fourties but with the help of Jesus and the wonderful  twelve step program at AA he was able to shake off the demon  - take a bow Glenn!  Glenn has several degrees from universities in psychology  and history and has written several books including the  Paul Rusher Trilogy "Journey to the East",  The social commentary Roman a "clef"  Jeffrey Landover  and some smaller genre pieces.

               We employ him to clean the toilets!  Hah hah who says the system doesn't work   

                           Under ALF's tutilege of late we're trying to develop  some frisson  in the brand.  Is he a rascist? Is he a Nazi? Or is he a humble Christian white dude who feels threatened by the passing of a way of life? 

  "As I opened Fire" Roy Lichtenstein (1964)

   Coffee and donuts

                   A long time friend of mine named Mike O’Conner moved from NY to Florida a few years ago. We kept in touch for a little while but eventually drifted apart. He was eager to get me to move down south but I was not enthusiastic about the idea. Even for a New Yorker I tend to have European sensibilities. Nevertheless we’re from the same essential cloth – working class catholics.

                              In my Tamlin role I try to assume a more protestant persona because obviously being Catholic in America is not the road to wealth and riches. What can you say about a religion that not only doesn’t worship profit but actually condemns it? Not that I practice the faith, but the residue remains and I went through all the sacraments. Ironically in as small as space as between I and my younger siblings there’s a definite pattern of lack of interest in the god thing. Then again it might be a baby boomer characteristic to be interested in self awareness – I’m not saying and it hardly matters.

                                       Getting back to the story though, Mike kept wanting me to move down south. Actually he’s in the deep south, over towards New Orleans, but I hesitate. Beyond that though, as the years went by Mike started listening to Rush Limbaugh, a chap who is laughable to his opponents and deadly serious to his followers. I’d never question Michaels’ basic decency but likewise one of the things we have in common is that we have survived some rather unpleasant circumstances.

                                      To reiterate and in the interest of full disclosure, not everyone in our socio-economic bracket did poorly over the past few decades, but most did. There just wasn’t a lot of work. As a criminal justice statistician I got to review the hard data and you have to deal with trends more then anecdotes, but one is reliably able to do so. Paul Krugman, of the NY Times, who at times seems totally isolated from his fellow “word writerz” came from a similar background, and if you’re interested, my own belief is that anyone who experienced what we did would feel the same way and it is primarily for this reason that so few of us have been allowed positions of prominence in the greater media spheres.

                                Anyway, a big part of the problem of being a working class white is, obviously being on the losing end, there’s no great rush of people to defend us. And, to make an inadvertent pun what kind of a movement is it when the best leader you can find is Rush Limbaugh? Let’s face it, radio tends to draw the isolated extremist crowd.

                          Then again there’s what they call in Britain “the Red Tops,” which are the less eudite, picture friendly newspapers, so dear to Mr Murdocks heart. They have columnists after a fashion but such writings tend to be one dimensional and utterly predictable. Once upon a time there was Breslin, but he’s another story. He idolized Runyon as a child then later on found his hero to be explainable, and life sans mystery can be problematic, but in any case he stays with what he knows and what he knows is nt presently in fashion. He’s also from white lower class Catholic roots so the fact that he’s not in fashion is not too difficult to understand.

                            In some regards I’m all over the place. Like Bertrand Russell I’m a bit of a liberal aristocrat ( without the money of course) in that my core belief is that a strong nation is best achieved by taking care of the poor. In so much as I support limited powers for the nobles I’m even something of a monarchist. Put that in yer pipe. I’m not sure I want to go quite as far as Plato’s Republic however.

None of what I’ve just written is germane to todays story however, which concerns another acquaintance, a young, bright black man named Alex.

                                   Actually it’s hard to say how bright he is. I don’t know. He’s in his middle twenties and like most of us at that age is looking for the main event. A woman he tried to hit on, who I also tried to hit on, told me that he was a Harvard dropout, something I could believe. He speaks authoritatively, confidently and waves his arms around a bit more then I am comfortable with. Unfortunately his presentations have something of what we call “the shuck and jive,” but realistically I don’t recall myself having anything very intelligent to say at that age either.

                                   I don’t have the impression his study skills are that good yet, but academics are like actors. A pretty actor can learn the craft, but a skilled actor can’t learn how to be pretty. In other words I’ve seen time after time cases where bright, motivated people stopped learning because of external factors. Conversely if your father happens to die young you become eligible for free college, tuition, and living expenses – a sweet deal and I’ve seen people take the deal and run with it.

                                Alex and I met while we were both staying at a hostel in a University town. I was waiting for my social security to clear and he was just hanging out, living off his parents. Quite honestly I don’t as a rule hang out with younger people, and especially not with children. I don’t feel the urge plus you’re liable to come off as some sort of perv, but he was often expounding on things and seemed able to maintain himself, so we began a limited acquaintance – such as people on ships knowing they’ be together for a few weeks might do.

                                          Then I moved to another place and he did too, both in the same town. We’d speak occasionally, have a cup of coffee, because after all we’re both strangers in town.

                         One time then we pass each other by while walking by a pizza place. So we go in a sit down to chat. Really it was a monologue on my part. One skill I have learned is conversing with strangers about trivialities. I have a lot of experience in part because it tends to loosen people up. So I go into this rap about all the different Pizza places in town and their respective merits. (For the record I rarely touch the stuff anymore) He’s saying nothing but smiling. He had manic-depressive tendencies before I a little roll. The infant is the classic manic depressive after all. One minute they happy the next minute they sad.

                                       But never the less I’m getting a little peeved. Still he doesn’t say a word, just smiles that enigmatic Egyptian smile. Whatever secret he was withholding was not of sufficient interest to me to keep me there expounding on cheese density and garlic level. In a way my having made a comprehensive study of the many local pizza parlors was funny, but at the same time it was tragic. I see that now which I did not see then. At the time I saw it in the light of the Zen Master sweeping the toilets, it was practice in humility, but I’m not sure most Zen Masters actually continue to sweep toilets through out their entire budda nature hoods.

                                    It was about three fourty five, no, no that I thik of it, it was closer to four o’clock when I finally ran out of steam. I had been talking at the guy for twenty solid minutes and received no more response then an occasional laugh and a coy smile. In days gone by, I , or someone like me would have lynched him for the crime of nothing more then not pretending to pay attention to me.

But those days are gone. The superior man does not allow himself to become unsettled by the actions of immature children. So I got up and left.

                                  A week or two later I realized what the secret was that had so amused Alex. He had up and left the small town, and with it its aging hippies talking about the comparative merits of pizza parlors. He had gone on to better things and he didn’t even have the courtesy to leave me a forwarding address!