Magnet and Steel popped into my head this morning. Good song, reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac which is just as well since Stevie Nicks sings background vocals and Lindsey Buckingham provides backing vocals as well as production duties. 1978 it was, and it was 48 friggin’ years ago. I was 14 going on 15, and my world was changing all around me as well as inside of me. For some reason, I picture the song being performed on the Mike Douglas Show.

The Roses of Kay Benkovitch. When I walk my route to the Path train in the morning I see a few rose bushes. I am reminded of Kay Benkovitch. The Benkovitch family lived across the street from my family. They were good people, solid and dependable. Kay was married to Jon and they had two sons, Bobby and Jay. Kay was sensitive, and may have had a nervous breakdown at some point in her life on Riverview Avenue.

Their house was next to the playground, and Kay had rose bushes on the side of the house where the playground was. Those roses would sometimes grow through the playground fence making them fair game for suburban kids of Riverview Avenue to smash them to bits. That is the memory I have when walking to the Path train and seeing the roses growing outward.

A Dream with Kate Dunn. Kate Dunn and Doug Maxson. Good people that I have not seen in about 40 years. Their son, whose name I cannot remember (Raphael), is in his thirties now. Doug & Kate were from Louisville, and were part of a minor migration to Hoboken in the eighties with Antietam and the various musicians involved.

One out of the three people in Antietam who are not Tim and Tara, I remember fondly, Mike Weinert. Doug was a good artist and a funny guy. Kate was the sensible one, yet sometimes a coconspirator in Doug’s shenanigans. I am friends with Tara on the social medias

In the dream I was in a room with Kate who I hadn’t seen in ages and we had a hug and I was taken aback by the thickness of Kate’s eyeglasses and how scratched up they appeared to be. It was as cordial as it ever was. Doug and Kate were close to my former roommate, Kevin, as well as the denizens of what used to be 923 Garden Street. I was just a satellite of all that I suppose.

My first space in Hoboken was an illegal loft at 1st St and Park Ave. I had a roommate named Nolan Poole and some guy who was in a band called the Malkotians. My part of the loft was next to an elevator shaft, filled with stagnant water where mosquitoes bred 10 months out of the year.

After a few weeks of living in the loft, I was swollen with mosquito bites. They asked me if I was going to stay and that day I said yes. The next day I announced I was moving out much to their dismay. Luckily, Doug & Kate were living in a local hotel in Hoboken and were looking for a spot. They did not mind the mosquito situation and moved in. It was a seamless transition it was.

So long ago, time does fly.

Now I am listening to David Bowie 1. Outside. I remember seeing David Bowie on Letterman in 1995. David and his band were performing The Hearts Filthy Lesson and it seemed a return to form for the Dame. The Dame is a name the UK Music press gave David Bowie and I thought it was funny. Not sure if David felt the same.

I do remember having a bit of a breakdown when working at Right Track Recording and playing this CD. I think it was during a song called The Motel. I just remember everything getting bleak for a while back then. Not one of my favorite tracks, and easily overlooked and passed over.

Now I am playing Cosmic Thing by the B-52s. I am almost done with one of those 33 ⅓ books about music. This one was about Cosmic Thing. It was enjoyable, written by a queer young man from Toronto, and he places everything in that context which is fine but just not the method I would use. I don’t like the term ‘queer’ anyhow, and bristle when I am called ‘queer’. Growing up it was derogatory and I preferred Gay. I still do.

Lodi NJ. The place where I lived. Perhaps even the place where I grew up. I have almost no ties to that borough though. My family lived on Riverview Avenue, closer to Rochelle Park and Saddle Brook. My father was a member of the Saddle Brook VFW Post 3484 as well as the Saddle Brook American Legion.

The VFW was where I learned how to smoke and watched the veterans get drunk and smoke cigars, which can explain a lot about me. Not so much the drinking but rather the smoking aspect. Initially it was cigarettes about for the past 25 years or so it’s been cigars more and more. If Gauloises were still manufactured, I’d probably be smoking those roll ups.

I do recall hanging around some bad boys at the Boys’ Club in Lodi, trying to bum a cigarette, maybe around 1972. I certainly remember being at the VFW with some other bad boys who actually taught me how to smoke and flick a cigarette to the curb.

And then there was Johnny Serpone, with whom I planned to get some cigarettes from his father and go to Industrial Lane on a weekend and smoke some Salem cigarettes. One cigarette was all it took, I got high and promptly rode my bike home furiously pedalling my bike home, trying to gulp as much air as possible so that my parents or my siblings would not smell the cigarettes on me. It was not until sometime later that I realized there was no way they could smell the cigarettes on me since just about everything smelled of cigarettes back then.

Cigars always got my attention though. Something about them appealed to me. The smell, the look of a man smoking one. Not every man, but there is a type. And of course, there is an erotic connection for me, which brought Mike into my life.

But where I smoke cigars whenever possible, Mike only smokes if he is in front of a camera. It was that look that got me on the hook. He recognizes me as a cigar man and I suppose I am.

I worked as you know at Davidoff in Columbus Circle, the Time Warner Mall. I wrote about it as the cigar shack, and I made friends with some of the customers and two or three staff members, I did not find any of the customers to be sexy.

There were the two guys from Delaware, in town for a car show. They let me know they were coming and we hit it off but it never went any further than the walk in humidor. One of the couple did post a tasty erotic video that has provided some enjoyment before bedtime.

This was supposed to be about Lodi NJ but here I am writing about my history with nicotine. I admit that I am happy with Bill enjoying cigars though not with the passion I have. He smokes in a manner I would call theatrical. Lots of flourish and exaggeration.

I am a daily smoker and I ain’t got no time for that. Is it something to be proud of? I can’t say. I know other people would put me down for this vice, and there is always the chance this vice will kill me one way or another but that makes me tense, and to relieve tension, I will smoke…