1981 was 44 years ago. I drove to California with Perry Dedovitch. It was that trip to Canoga Park, and Perry told me I did not have to act so smart. Apparently, his relatives in Canoga Park thought I was putting on airs and trying to sound so intelligent when I was really just being myself. It was funny in an odd way, but it just goes to show how uneducated perhaps his relatives were, refugees from Clifton, New Jersey, resettled into the Los Angeles area.
I used to think there was a way for a long time, but I think it was less than a month took a week to get out there driving Perry’s van, stopping each night along the way.
We stayed with his relatives for a few days, then wound up having to go to Las Vegas because they were not going to leave us alone in their house while they went to Las Vegas, and then a drive back, which took about 5 days since we drove non-stop. Do I regret the journey? I am not sure, as it was an experience to say the least. Would I repeat it? Oh hell no.
This memory was brought to you via a social media friend who had posted that it was 44 years ago that Elvis Costello and the Attractions had released their country album Almost Blue. I flashed forward to New Year’s Eve 1981 with Dave Bell and two of his friends going to the Palladium to see Elvis Costello and the Attractions.
The trip to California with Perry showed that I was able to drive steadily across country and back, and a few months later, in 1982, when the driving to New York from Saddle Brook two times a day position opened up, I volunteered for it and got the job. And that opened up a whole new world, introduced me to Jet Watley, and showed me New York City from the inside.
Perry was the first one that I had come out to, and that was a big mistake since it resulted in a betrayal. However, Jet was accepting and welcoming since he was gay himself. The friendship between Perry and me crashed and burned. I was shocked, I was in tears, and eventually I got over it and got to be a very good guitar player, especially compared to Perry.
I was introduced to a group of people from Colgate University and fell in with them for a few years. Sometimes one of them turned blue in a bar on the East Village, but that’s a whole other story, one that the blue man would probably rather forget or at least would not want his children to know about.
So, thanks to that betrayal, as awkward and painful as it was, things definitely got better and removed me from that suburban daydream that I used to have and put me back into the world where I’ve been thriving sort of for a few decades.
Presently dealing with melancholy. It’s just very slow at the office today, hardly anyone’s in, so there’s no one to talk to or direct or help. So I’m left with my thoughts, and that’s necessarily not a good thing.
Bill is home. He came to the office yesterday and met Jimmy Chile. They got a long swimmingly is quite nice, and I had an enjoyable ride home on the PATH train, and then a walk through Hoboken at trip to the supermarket, where I almost bought hot dog rolls but figured I had bread at home, and then I got home to find out there was not much bread since Bill ate a lot of it. I got upset and let him know I was upset.
At work, there was the morning meeting, which I generally do not like to attend, but I have to, and so I do, and it takes about a minute for me to say my part, and then I have to sit there for another 45 minutes and listen to everybody else tell their stories.
Tomorrow I need to go to the main food stands for another meeting at this time, it will be in person, and the only redeeming value I can find in that is that I will add to my gathering steps for that day. This past Sunday, I set my counter to bike riding and did not set it back on Monday, which gave me over 600 steps for Monday, which I did not realize until I got home that night.
Oh, melancholy is overwhelming me at the moment.
It seems Mike’s beloved will be arriving tomorrow after a bunch of weeks where he backed out. If he actually shows up, that would be a major accomplishment. I am intending not to contact Mike over the weekend so he can focus on his beloved.
The owners of the fruit stand have arranged for people to get flu shots today. I inquired if it was for everyone, and they said no, since I am only contracted to work at the food stand, but not working for the fruit stand. No flu shots for me. So that means that if I get the flu, I get to bring it into work and spread it around, which is not what I want to do, but it is a possibility
Been 30 minutes since I’ve been outside, and it’s a bit chilly, so I’m going in in a moment.
Now, I am home with Bill. We’ve had Mike on the phone, trying to help him out so he would know which gate at the airport to meet his beloved. The beloved is flying from SFO to EWR, and all the info we’ve gotten thru Mike from his beloved is somewhat weird. Nothing matches up for United or American Airlines.
Bill has been handling these things since he thrives in itineraries. So when the phone rings, I have Bill handle it, which led Mike to think I was mad at him. He had to be reassured that I wasn’t, that this was Bill’s wheelhouse. When I travel with Bill, I just have to follow wherever he is going. It makes travel a pleasure for both of us.
Bill is wary of the beloved and the info, and it’s worrying me as well. And I think Mike is slowly feeling the same way. We all hope we’re wrong.
The Google Gemini AI rewrite as a Maya Angelou essay:
## The Sweet Sting of Memory
The number itself is a sharp thing: **1981**. Forty-four years ago. A whole lifetime stitched into that passage of time. It was the year of the crossing, the drive West with **Perry Dedovitch**. The dust of **Clifton, New Jersey**, trading itself for the sun-drenched, bewildering sprawl of **Canoga Park**, California.
—
### Airs and Echoes
Perry’s kin, they were there, holding their opinions like tight little fists. Perry, my companion, became the messenger of their small judgment: *“You do not have to act so smart.”*
It was a strange comedy, that moment. They, the refugees of a cramped, cold dream, now planted in the land of endless summer, suspected an intelligence that was simply *my own being*. My very breath, my natural tongue, was perceived as a theatrical **putting on of airs**. It spoke volumes, not about me, but about the boundaries of their own world, their own education, their own humble, hard-won escape. It was a mirror held up to the fear of the bright and the uncontainable.
The journey was a blur of roadside inns and asphalt heat, a week of giving over to the road in Perry’s rattling van. Then the relatives’ close, stifling watch. Their escape to **Las Vegas** compelled ours, for they could not trust the strangers in their house. And the return trip—five days of the engine’s endless hum, a non-stop hurtle back East. *Do I regret the journey?* No. It was a thing lived. An **experience**. *Would I repeat it?* Oh, the soul knows the answer to that: **Hell no**. Some lessons need only be learned once, engraved on the heart and the weary joints.
The memory was not summoned by the wind, but by the modern echo of a **social media friend**, celebrating a country album by **Elvis Costello** from that very year. It was a chord struck in the hollow chamber of time, bringing forth a flash of **New Year’s Eve, 1981**, the clamor of the **Palladium**, and the brief, bright circle of friendship with **Dave Bell**.
—
### The Betrayal and the Open Road
That long drive, that testament to my own steady hands on the wheel, led to a different kind of freedom. A few months later, the job opened up: the double daily run from **Saddle Brook** into the heart of **New York City**. I volunteered, and I was chosen. The City. It ceased to be an outline and became an intricate, breathing reality. I was initiated.
It was on that same early road that I made a mistake of the spirit: I came out to **Perry**. A raw truth shared, met with a swift, shocking **betrayal**. The friendship, that flimsy house of cards, **crashed and burned**. The tears came, hot and bitter, but they eventually dried. And in the drying, a strength emerged. The tears forged a better musician. I became a **very good guitar player**, a quiet triumph over the one who had wounded me.
Then came the unexpected solace, the true brother: **Jet Watley**. He was **accepting and welcoming**, for he walked the same road.
The betrayal was a terrible, painful grace. It tore me from the soft, stifling confines of a **suburban daydream** and cast me, reeling, into the **world**. And here, in this harder, sharper place, I have been **thriving, sort of**, for decades now.
—
### The Weight of Melancholy
Yet, even in the thriving, the heavy cloak of **melancholy** descends. It is here today, in the slow, empty office, where the silence is vast and there is no one to direct or help. The mind, left to its own devices, becomes a dangerous, churning sea.
**Bill** is home. We had a lovely prelude yesterday: the meeting with **Jimmy Chile**—they took to each other like water. A good ride on the **PATH train**, the pleasant amble through **Hoboken**. But the domestic is always poised to wound. The almost-purchase of **hot dog rolls**, the certainty of bread at home, only to find the larder nearly bare—*Bill had eaten it*. A small thing, but the small things are the hooks that snag the spirit. I got **upset and let him know**. The feelings must be spoken, or they fester.
The days are marked by obligation: the **morning meeting**, a minute of my required contribution, followed by **forty-five minutes** of forced listening to the stories of others. Tomorrow, another meeting, across town at the **main food stands**. The only comfort is the physical act, the **gathering steps** counted, a meager reward for the soul’s exhaustion.
Now, the small drama of **Mike and his beloved**. Weeks of backing out, and now the rumored arrival. A hope against hope. Bill and I, we were the **itinerary makers**, trying to parse the conflicting, strangely coded information from **SFO to EWR**. Bill, with his great gift for organization, took the lead. This, of course, led Mike to an awkward suspicion: *Was I mad?* I had to assure him: **No, this is Bill’s wheelhouse**. When I travel with Bill, I simply follow. And in that following, there is a certain, quiet **pleasure**.
But Bill is **wary of the beloved**. And that wariness, that quiet hum of caution, has begun to **worry me as well**. Mike, too, is slowly coming to feel the strange tension in the air. We sit now, tethered by the telephone line, hoping that all our anxieties are wrong.
The body needs its respite: thirty minutes outside in the chill air, a quiet closing of the door. The flu shots, offered only to those who work for the **fruit stand**, not the food stand—a bureaucratic cruelty that threatens to spread the very illness it seeks to contain. It is a reminder that we are all, always, subject to the cold logic of the contract.
Melancholy is a heavy guest. It waits for the slow moments, the quiet office, the late evening, and settles upon the shoulders like an invisible weight. But even under its pressure, the lessons remain: the journey, the betrayal, the painful-sweet **thriving**. We wait, now, for the truth of the itinerary to land. And we will meet it, as we have met all the unexpected arrivals, with a mix of dread, duty, and enduring hope.
What lessons have you found in the quiet moments of an empty day?