Red’s Book Reviews: North Toward Home by Willie Morris

This is the autobiography of former writer and editor, Willie Morris. Born in the Deep South (Yazoo City, Mississippi), Morris became a voice of the progressive south during the 1950s and 1960s. As editor of the student newspaper, he took on the University of Texas and its administration on a bevy of topics including civil rights and integration. The book is divided into three parts. His boyhood in Mississippi, his time spent in Texas, and then his time as an editor for Harper Collins in New York. As a reader, the first two parts were riper with anecdotes and color, making for an easy read. The final part was a discussion on a southern boy in the northern city. His shortcomings, and the shortcomings of the Eastern intellectual elite. This was denser material and more abrasive to a casual reader.

What struck me is the bevy of statements made in the book that are applicable to today, despite being directed toward the social scenarios of the 1950s and 1960s.

The clearest themes were the divide between North and South that persisted in America nearly a hundred years after the Civil War. The realty being that the two sides still understood very little about each other, and on one side, you had a the southerner with a bitter inferiority complex that was exorcised in part with increased hatred of African Americans, and on the other, a snotty intellectual class that placed the big label of hick to everything and everyone not on the east coast. Considering our current national climate, it’s clear that little of this has changed.

Racial tensions, integration, civil rights and reconciling our brief yet brutal history of conquering and controlling rather than welcoming and cooperating. The ruling class in this country still behaves as if granting rights to all is a privilege they have to dole out at their leisure.

It even comments (remember this was wrote decades ago before school shooting were common) on the threat of mass shootings, and the helpless nature of our society to prevent disturbed individuals from inflicting massive damage.

Political corruption. Boy, was the Texas legislature a mess.

I’d recommend this one to those interested in society, American history, journalism, politics, and so much more.

Up next: Pontoon by Garrison Keillor

NYC Midnight: Sweet Dreams

Note: This first round of competition where I had 8 days to write a 2,500 word story. The prompts were Romantic Comedy (genre), Insomnia (topic), Man with a facial tattoo (character). I had fun writing this one.

Synopsis: Breakups are hard to handle. Some get angry. Some get even. For others, breakups trigger insomnia and talking pony tattoos.

The Dave Coulier Wormhole

You’ll have to excuse me for not starting with the talking pony tattoo. It’s tempting, trust me. See, when you can’t sleep, it’s hard to organize your thoughts. Ideas scatter. Themes blend. Time. Jesus, time. I can’t even begin to describe time. I can, however, start on that first night when I came home with breakup songs on my mind thanks to Lisa. We’ll get to the pony, I promise.

See, Lisa was a fan of The Avett Brothers, so her breakup line included how she could no longer say the words “I” and “Love” and “You” to me. Yes, my heart broke, but I knew that I’d have plenty of time to think about that since I never sleep after breakups. I’m not kidding. My first breakup was in second grade, and I didn’t sleep for four days after.

Top of mind for me this time was music. First, she ruined another damn band. It’s bad enough that I can’t listen to Springsteen anymore without hearing Lisa lambast it for being “liberal propaganda,” but now The Avett Brothers’ best record will conjure a memory of her tear-streaked face ending our three-year romance. The next relationship I have will require not a single discussion about or reference to music. It’s too important to me. Oh, and no more dating Republicans.

I spent that first night scanning my vast music collection, which has grown exponentially since I started working at a record store. I have crates of vinyl, six large CD racks filled to the brim, and my cassette tapes are packed in shoeboxes under my bed. And yes, I have a massive digital collection. So, whenever the idea to make a list starts, I have plenty of resources to study.

The first song to pop to my mind was “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette because Gus belts it out in the shower most mornings as he surveys the reminders of his lost loves imprinted all over his body. Gus is my roommate, and he’s gay. Lisa could never get over that. I suppose it’s weird for most that a straight man rooms with a gay man. I offer these three defenses:  One, he’s been my best friend since grade school; Two, since that time, it’s been clear to both of us that he could kick my ass, and if I ever broke off our friendship because of his sexuality, he’d be more than willing to prove it; Three, if I ever start a rock band, he’ll be the lead singer. He has a tremendous vocal range. I always thought Lisa could be a backup singer for us.

I got lost thinking about this Morissette’s song for a few hours thanks to the Dave Coulier Wormhole.  The assumption is that “You Oughta Know” is about him, and having been a Full House junky in my early teens, I can pretty much recite every inane plot from each episode. So, my mind assumes that every time that Uncle Joey leaves the house, he must either be out with his Canadian popstar or cheating on her. It turns even darker when you start to wonder if Uncle Joey ever offered to take one of his nieces to the movies. I’ll leave it there.

Here’s my top-ten list of breakup songs in no particular order.

·            “Breaking Up is Hard To Do” by Neil Sedaka

·            “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” by The Righteous Brothers

·            “I’m Looking Through You” by The Beatles

·            “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Joy Division

·            “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” by Jimmy Ruffin

·            “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette

·            “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt

·            “Hate It Here” by Wilco

·            “Good” by Better Than Ezra

·            “Someone Like You” by Adele

The next morning, I went to the bathroom to be confronted by a pair of bloodshot eyes in the mirror, and for the first time in hours, I thought about Lisa. I considered adding “I Used to Love Her” by Guns N’ Roses to the list. Insomnia can turn pretty dark quickly, too.

Tattoo You

Gus’s first venture into body art was a plump spider near his right ankle in honor of Todd Olden. While even Gus will admit that he didn’t understand the swirling emotions in his body and mind in grade school, he did know there was just something about Todd Olden that he liked more than anyone else. Perhaps, it was the coke-bottle lenses in his thick-framed glasses. Gus still has a thing for men with spectacles. The problem was that Todd was only interested in two things: Collecting bugs, which still gives Gus the willies, and to a much lesser degree, Sandy Janssen. That little playground romance infuriated Gus to the point that he bombarded Bug Boy with a dodge ball one day in gym class until the poor boy’s nose started to bleed.

The next tattoo is a red Ford pickup truck on his shoulder blade. “A symbol of my lost innocence,” he likes to say with a gleam in his eyes. I’ve heard the details, you don’t need to.

When he was nineteen, Gus started a fling with a much older man from two towns over. Gus came home after nights with this man exclaiming shock that any human could be so hairy. Eventually the hair was too much, and now Gus has a grizzly bear on his calf.

Oh, and then there is the shamrock on his wrist, a token from a weekend with Rory in Chicago, and a white carnation on his bicep in honor of some florist, I forget his name.

I spent the other night doodling how I envision Gus will look at ninety if he keeps this romantic pace up. I didn’t have to draw myself. If I don’t solve this sleeping problem, I have no hope of making it that long.

My Three Loves

Okay, so I have loved three females in my twenty-five years. The first was Sandy Janssen. That’s right, I was the fourth spoke in the Gus-Sandy-Bug Boy love wheel. Lost in the lore of that epic is that before Sandy started doting on Todd at recess, she had held my hand for three consecutive days near the monkey bars. When I saw her and Todd together on that fourth day, I was devastated. I spent the next four nights spilling over our time together, wondering what went wrong instead of sleeping. To be fair, I probably split the time between thoughts of her and the story arc of the Star Wars franchise. I didn’t sleep until the night after Gus pummeled Todd with the dodgeball. We’ve been friends ever since.

I dated Marie for the duration of our senior year of high school. She favored raspberry lip-gloss and remains the most sexually adventurous woman that I’ve been with. She dumped me right after graduation before she left for an internship. I put on about ten pounds that summer eating ice cream, it was the only thing that tasted good, and I probably managed three nights of sleep total for the entirety of July and August. The job at the record store, which I got in September, proved to be my savior from the malady that time.

Finally, I bought an engagement ring for Lisa two weeks before she determined she’d had enough of me. The breakup came after a month’s long blitz about my career. Apparently, she thinks I am drifting through life. Damn it, if I lost the gig at the store, I’d really be miserable.

Lisa had a beautiful soprano voice, though. I still can hear her sing when I hold the ring box while I lay in the dark wishing for slumber.

Godfrey the Talking Temporary Pony Tattoo

“Sexy, sensitive, and he could work on cars. He was my mythical beast!” Gus exclaimed and then sobbed. Well, it was sort of a fake sob with the hope of empathy on my part. I was too exhausted for that, and I didn’t like how that pony was staring at me.

“So, you put a My Little Pony temporary tattoo on your forehead?”

“God, it’s just a practice run, and I couldn’t find a temporary unicorn.”

“But on your forehead?”

“He said I was too vain. I need that reminder whenever I look in the mirror…”

Gus continued talking, but the pony had my attention. Its white body with a rainbow-colored mane and tail rested just below the part of Gus’s blonde bangs. Along its hip was a red heart, and its eyes were large and round, and strangely, seemed angry. Perhaps, Gus’s skin gave it that affect.

Then it spoke.

“What the hell are you looking at?” The voice was that of Gilbert Godfrey, and without much of a mental leap, I started thinking of it as Godfrey.

Before I could answer, Gus caught my attention.

“When was the last time you slept? You look like hell.”

I had napped a good four hours during the afternoon before Lisa dumped me. It had been on her sofa with the sun beaming in on me. I’d dreamt about being my grandparent’s big black barn cat resting itself before a moonlit hunt. The days and nights are too muddled together to remember how long ago that nap had been.

A Horse, Of Course

On the way to the store, Godfrey and I argued about the best “horse” song. I had discovered that I could answer him without actually talking, although in my growing delirium I sometimes forgot.

“‘Wild Horses’ by the Stones, case closed.” I telepathically told Godfrey.

“Idiot. You’re as bad with music as you are with women,” Godfrey said. Gus was driving and looking straight ahead so I couldn’t see the pony. “‘A Horse With No Name.’”

“No fucking way!” The damn pony had to be messing with me.

“What?” Gus glanced over.

“Nothing.”

“Man, you’re falling apart.”

Stud in the Store

“Maybe you could screw her.” Godfrey called out as Gus passed an old lady in the frozen-food aisle with her jaw unhinged at the sight of a grown man with a pony on his forehead. Her reaction didn’t improve when her attention turned to me.

“I don’t think I’m her type.”

“I’ll tell you one thing, you only get so many springs as the stud in the pasture.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Get over Lisa,” the voice sounded like both Godfrey and Gus, “and get some sleep.”

Putting that Pony Down

Gus killed Godfrey today. I came home from work, and he was wiping the pony from his forehead with a wet rag. I imagined streaks of blood running down his face, and it took all my waning willpower to not go into a rage.

I could really talk to Godfrey.

I am worried I might never sleep again.

Back That Ass Up

I have upwards of five hundred vinyl 78s stored in milk crates along the opposite wall from my bed. When I started collecting them, I put them in alphabetical order by band. At midnight on a Thursday, I decided it was chicer to organize them by release date. As it turns out, this is a painstakingly slow process. I skipped a work shift, and now it’s Saturday afternoon, and I am not even halfway done.

Gus left to get his real tattoo late this morning, and I confronted the reality that not only would I be living with a gay man, but he was also going to have some sort of flaming unicorn on his face. Here’s to hoping the unicorn has Godfrey’s personality.

The front door slammed shut and someone laughed. Time, like I said, is impossible for me to track, so I am not sure how long it had been. A stack of albums from the eighties had formed at the foot of my bed, and I was reclined back against my pillow staring at the ceiling. The bright colors of the eighties’ record jackets had left me loopy, and I was drawing on the ceiling tiles with lasers that shot from my fingertips.

“You awake?” Gus asked.

“Always.”

“Get up then, we’re going out.”

“I can’t man. I just can’t.”

“Look at me.”

Turning my head, Gus’s bare ass gave me a sideways smile from the doorway. Near the top of the right cheek was a pink unicorn with a golden horn. The skin surrounding it was irritated and red.

“What the hell, man?”

Gus pulled his jeans up, smiling back at me.

“So, as it turns out, there’s a new tattoo artist in town, and he’s super cute,” Gus’s grin grew so large that the tips of his lips almost touched his earlobes. “He convinced me that putting a tattoo on my forehead would be painful, and that if it’s vanity I am concerned with, then I should put it on my best feature.”

I rolled my eyes, worrying that another discussion on Gus’s legendary ass was going to follow. Inside my head, I heard Godfrey screaming, “What happened to me? Wait, where am I? NO!”

“Anyways, I brought him back, and we are all going out.”

“Why do you need me to go?”

“Well, he has a younger sister, and…”

“And?”

“And she’s got great hair and a nice bod. Give her a chance.”

Enter Sandman

When I returned to my room many hours later, I shoved the stack of records off my bed, not even caring if any were damaged. Exhaustion was winning.

Kicking off my shoes, I squirmed out of my jeans before hitting the mattress with a thud.

Her name is Jules. She colors her hair, currently its purple. For an hour, she quizzed me on insomnia before the conversation turned to music. She loves Metallica and even spent a summer following their tour bus. I am risking something here because I can’t afford to lose another band, but right now I don’t care.

Midway through the night, we discussed how songs talk about nightmares in the context of the bad dreams that happen when we are asleep, and when songs talk about dreams, they almost always focus on our daydreams, or our hopes and aspirations.

It’s easy to forget that we can close our eyes and good things can come. I can feel good things coming in only a few moments. My body aches for it. I am leaving my waking nightmare and dropping into something better. I can feel it.

There are some great songs with the topic of sleeping. “Enter Sandman” is one. “I’m Only Sleeping” by The Beatles, classic. Thin Lizzy sings “Me? I love sleeping, especially in my Molly’s chamber” in “Whiskey in a Jar,” and Jakob Dylan croons about the burdens of fame in “Sleepwalker.” There’s something by the Eurythmics, too. I can’t think of it now, but I am sure I’ll remember in the morning.

Her name is Jules, and she voted for Hillary. Maybe she’s the one.

“Sweet dreams,” that’s the Eurythmics’ song.