HOLLOW-E'EN

I was shocked this evening to see a bit of manifested holiday cheer on the streets, children and parents in costumes-- trick or treating, I suppose, at doorways of shops, grocery stores...  merriment in the park... adults on bicycles dressed as ghosts and Teletubbies.  I'm not sure what I'd be doing if I had young children-- does one keep up the illusion that life is going on as it did, that joy and celebration are still appropriate even during a pandemic?  We Americans-- we make the best of things, I've heard.  Some of us.  

In 1961 I wore one of my father's old suit jackets, pinned and rolled up-- a Stetson hat and a John F Kennedy rubber mask.  It was a good disguise for me, the perennial tomboy who at that moment hated makeup and princess clothes--  low-maintenance and warm.  I tried to imitate the walk of a war hero-turned political leader-- really the first President I celebrated in my young life.  He was a young, handsome father, like my Dad-- a former soldier.  We were old enough to follow the election in school and we loved him.  Again in 1964 I'd looked through my closet for ideas-- was way more enthusiastic about theatre and music and boys than trick or treating...  considered reviving the Kennedy mask, but post-mortem it seemed more tastelessly macabre and politically incorrect.  

Today I saw Trump masks-- left over from 2016?  New ones made with the irony of the very image of the mask-shunner stamped like a grotesque advertisement for the Corona virus?  Hard to decipher whether the wearers are haters or supporters.  An army of Trump faces on the street is as scary as Halloween gets.  Pumpkinheads. 

Last night I was so agitated about the upcoming election I slept not at all.  To distract myself I memorized the presidential sequence.  Incredible to me I've lived through twelve and hopefully will see thirteen in a matter of months.  As an early voter, I forgot I'd have this feeling of helplessness as the day approaches; not much we can do but encourage others.  It's politics, it's numbers... but I've still not fully recovered from the devastating mental hangover of November 9, 2016.  It can't happen again... but yes, it can.  

Out of the 45 names I litanised, there were some bad ones; we lived.  I can't blame the entire pandemic on one man... and yet he's become the symbol-- the mask, as it were, of evil-- of 'spread'... the very opposite of a Protector, a hero-- a blunderbuss opportunist who's turned America into a casino culture.  A cartoon-man whose flaws and failures have been woven into the very fabric of this country in a way that is unprecedented and more horrifying than any haunted house I can imagine.

I have this image in my mind... of a quiet parade-less Thanksgiving morning with one enormous balloon in the shape of an obese Donald Trump floating above the city, children being given old-fashioned pea-shooters or plastic darts.  Pin the tail on the Trump-donkey.  But today, after a sleepless night, I saw the boarded-up windows of Macy's-- a city on edge,  anticipating unrest-- catastrophe.  This is more than an election... this is not a democratic process but a seismic sociologic event.  

Just one year ago I was a musician.  Halloween for decades was not just a children's holiday but a gig-- revelry and dancing.  We played and shared microphones, sang our hearts out-- swapped sweat, licked strings and kissed one another.  We exchanged vampire teeth and masks, ate candy corn and hung plastic skulls from our guitar-necks.  We did Misfits covers and carved out pumpkins.  It is hard to think about being a musician when there is no live music.  What am I?  What are we?  We are diminished-- we are masked not from celebration but from fear.  

It's not just Halloween and a rare blue moon, but the one day of the year we are given an extra hour.  November is beginning on a 'loaded' night... spirits are flitting around, and the cold autumn air is fraught with socially distanced energy and urbanites jacked up on sugar and alcohol.  Kids are resilient, but even they know how much we've lost in the past seven months; the novelty has worn off.  I'm tired of thinking my future will be little more than nostalgic reminiscence-- story-telling.  Tonight I am measuring my life by presidents... ready for my thirteen.  Whatever lurks out there for us, let there be a little hope and humanity-- something more than candy wrappers and smashed pumpkins.  We have less choice than usual, but we can put our faith in a man with a mask, or throw our chips in with a human mask that camouflages a hollow man.  Once in a blue moon, we might deserve a miracle.  

Remember (the Axis-Bold-as-Love kind)

November always leaves too quickly for me.  It is my favorite of the cruel months—nearing the end, but far enough for quiet sinning reverie--- still the magic feeling of 9 and newness, and the soft ember of the word.  The annual Hendrix birthday gig brings up a sad tale I have been unable to write or commemorate—not in a song or a poem… so I will try here, in the lingery last hours of the month of long lunescent Rockwell Kent-ish nights….

My friend met this woman on a crosstown bus—she picked him up, she’d boasted… he looked so eligible and kind and ‘presentable’; she, the black-haired, black-clad, black-eyed stranger who in another time might have had a veil.   The sex was great—you could feel that… he treated her with uptown attention, and she led him across the soft boundary of downtown edge.  They’d show up late at my gigs—both of them tall and giggling… and they’d dance, like some old-world ballroom couple… they’d drink, go out to get high, come back and dance until the end.  Although she was much younger, she instantly embraced my dark sisterhood, and  confided with abandon things I felt I hadn’t deserved.

Anyway, it went on--- the relationship had its webs--- maybe a wanted or unwanted pregnancy, a dangerous flirtation with one of his friends…. some street drama, some interior drama…the usual.  When they’d show up, I was happy.  She always asked us to play ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ and we would oblige.  Jimi would have loved her--- she was leggy and unafraid and so dangerous in that black-Irish witchy sort of way. 

I visited her once or twice at her place; it was an appalling mess.  Clothes everywhere, food containers, ashtrays overflowing--- bottles, the scent of marijuana and sex and perfume.  She was obsessed with shoes and had maxed out not just her own credit cards in a sort of charming way because everything was smashing on her, and worth every cent. 

But most of all, she wanted my hat-- the old black Stetson which I could let her wear, but couldn’t give up.  Until one day she called me urgently---I had to come over that minute… and she greeted me stark naked except for the new hat—she’d managed to find a twin—and her great hoarse infectious laugh and a joint and a filthy martini glass.  So her fall outerwear debut—the hat and a new black Raymond-Chandler-esque raincoat, with whichever of her spectacular shoe choices--- was well received by all.

As the year wore on, her silly insistence on my friend making an honest woman of her began to wear on him.  He was distancing himself slightly from her indiscretions, her excursions, her junky ex-boyfriends, the debt and the hangovers.  I, of course, forgave her everything.  All I had to do was watch her dance, listen to her stories, receive.  You are my angel sister, she used to tell me; when you find a diamond on the street--- it will be me, giving.  

One day he called me—in utter grief.  She’d been standing on the platform at West 4^th Street, 11 AM, about to change trains—and the rush of tunnel wind blew off her hat.  Undoubtedly she was stoned--she generally smoked a joint before her morning coffee--  so as she reached for the hat, with impaired leggy grace,  she leaned in and something jutting from the oncoming train slammed into her head with mythological force.  And there she was, stunned and silenced, the white skin and the black hair, with streaks of red now, bleeding profusely into the lap of an NYU law student who spoke eloquently to the NY Post, the hat trampled and lost somewhere by the voyeuristic crowd.  She was DOA, in her black trenchcoat--- hatless. 

Somehow I felt responsible.  Somehow I couldn’t grieve.  It was more than I could stand.  Her family came and probably witnessed with horror the mess of her apartment, apparently made judgments, because they refused to disclose the circumstances of her funeral.  I craved a piece of her, I wanted to call the law student who maybe had a bloody souvenir.  But I couldn’t find her. 

I have yet to find a diamond, but I am always looking down and occasionally pick up a shining dime which I know is a wink from somewhere.  And I silently dedicate the Hendrix always to her.  Maybe they are together somehow, and he is playing 'The Wind Cries Mary' or 'Angel' or something new he wrote just for her.  And she is dancing—with the shoes, and the trenchcoat she never paid for, naked underneath,a cigarette in her mouth, the mascara’d eyes closed, locks of black hair falling everywhere, wearing Jimi’s hat.  She had a hat, I complained to some version of God, who took her for his own one rainy November wish, eleven moons in, never to grow old.