America Essays Pt VIII - God Smiled As Precocious Children Played

Back in Salt Lake City the hour was getting late. Jodi and I sat on the couch and Christopher sat sideways on a plush chair, his legs dangling over the arm. Even though I was on his territory, the tables had somehow turned and he was the third cog in the wheel. Although I was the actual guest, he became the guest that wouldn’t leave.

It seemed to be a battle of wills between he and Jodi. His will was to chaperone us in hopes that she would tire and leave with him. Her will was to allow us a few minutes alone, something we have rarely experienced.

I tried to stay removed from the situation. ‘Whatever happens will happen’ I thought. The conversation in the room began to be punctuated by increasingly long periods of silence. Christopher seemed to mope, but Jodi remained firm. In a battle of wills, she was destined to win.

Eventually Christopher sulked out to the kitchen with his head hanging with resignation. Jodi followed him for a few moments of quiet conversation.

“Use a condom,” he implored in a hushed voice.

She hugged him and said goodnight.

‘Oh how civilized we all are,’ I thought. Perhaps he would have been better off to grab me by the scruff of the neck and toss me out the door. Better off to fight for his beloved or die trying.

But like it or not, she was a Goddess whose light mesmerized the minds of mortal men. A man cannot even dream of conquering She who is unknowable, She who he worships, She who he prostrates himself before.

And the true value of a Goddess is that she allows us to surrender ourselves like helpless children before her grace. Although it is to become drunk on a poisoned wine, it is a glorious and liberating feeling. It is like freefalling over a cliff while believing you can fly.

But to worship without reserve, to give oneself with utter and complete surrender, is certain death. It is to lose the soul. In fact, it is to give one’s very self to that greater soul.

I have knelt before that alter and died that certain death. But a man can only die so many times before he begins to inhabit a netherworld, to eat the fruits of life’s abundance like the kings of Olympus, to greet life’s folly with a wry smile, and to carry a serene secret behind his brow. To be banished to those lofty heights is to share a laugh with God, as we too, stumble our way through life. And our curse and our salvation is that we perceive that in each tear of sorrow there hides the sweetness of life, and that within each moment of joy and laughter there is the bitter reminder of life’s cruel game.

But along with the glory, the burden of being a Goddess must be exhausting. To bear the burden of men’s desires, and to hold the weight of their hopes and dreams, must be a responsibility that terribly limits one’s freedom. On occasion even a Goddess must long for something outside her life to surrender to. Like the Beatles seeking the Maharishi, or Jesus giving his fate to Judas. Dominatrix’ in New York tell me that most of their clients are powerful businessmen. It seems that after a week of controlling others and being in control, all they want is to submit completely to another.

It is strange, the writing process can give one self-knowledge, it can reveal the meaning of past events, and it can help one to understand those around us. As I write this it occurs to me that I may have answered my own question, and perhaps herein lies the answer to why Jodi sought me out.

As Christopher took his leave my mind wandered back to that evening on Jodi’s second New York visit when we made the disastrous trip to Webster Hall. Afterwards the three of us went to Heather’s apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn. We pulled out the sofabed that Jodi was to sleep on and all three of us undressed for sleep and fell into it.

I squeezed in between the two girls, thinking ‘this is my favorite place in the world to be.’ After the events at Webster Hall we were emotionally raw and a bit drunk. I slid my fingertips slowly up the inside of Jodi’s forearm, moving cautiously to see how she would react, and to see how Heather would react. Jodi laid her head back with her eyes half open and her lips parted slightly.

Heather sat up and gently ran her fingers down Jodi’s thigh. Her face registered ecstasy under our caresses. To allow Heather to be closer to Jodi, I moved to her other side. She gasped and bit her lip as Heather and I ran our fingertips across her belly and ribcage.

As I began placing light kisses on her neck, Heather began to kiss her belly and abdomen. Jodi moaned a weak, “aah,” as I ran my tongue across her breast before gripping her nipple between my lips. Her moans became a stuttered, “ah, ah , ah..” as Heather bowed between her legs and began to lap at her swollen lips.

I lifted myself up upon my knees and Jodi took my deliriously erect penis into her mouth. Her moans delivered a vibrating massage as I shook with pleasure. My body was enraptured by her ability to give oral pleasures, and my mind was maddened by the delicious sight of the two lovely bodies spread out before me.

I withdrew from Jodi’s lips as she shrieked with orgasmic pleasure thanks to Heather’s work. She was so loud I placed by fingers on her lips and whispered “shhh,” so she wouldn’t alert the entire neighborhood.

Soon we fell into each other with blissful abandon, a writhing mass of caressing hands, kissing lips, and thrusting pelvises. In our delirium we lost track of where one began and the other ended. We dissolved into a cleansing orgy of liberating rapture.

As the girls locked into a long kiss I pulled back, sitting on the bottom of the bed watching them from below. Jodi was atop Heather and their bodies were molded into a unifying embrace. Their thighs and behinds each created a V shape that came together to form a soft white diamond. I stared in awe of the rare vision before me, as if their flesh formed the arches of a great cathedral. Both were shaved clean and the lips of the cunts stared at me like two little prayer books, each open to page 69, beckoning all to sing a hymn that begins, “Oh dear Lord, for the gift of life we thank thee.”

The sight made me feel a little insane. It was shocking to the eyes and jolted my central nervous system. My mind was swimming with lust. It seemed to trigger impulses from the most primitive recesses of the brain. My blood surged with violence and greed. My breathing became quick and shallow.

I believe it was the only time in my life that I completely lost my mind to sexual frenzy. I crawled atop them, with both of them encircled by my arms. My erection was bucking up and down with a will of its own. With no help needed from guiding hands, I inserted myself inside Heather’s dripping womb and glided in and out with slow, deliberate thrusts.

After about 30 seconds I withdrew and raised myself up about six inches and touched the tip of my penis to Jodi’s lips. They seemed to pull me inside her tight hole with magnificent ease. Her grip was enthralling. My mind went white with ecstasy. After another minute or so I withdrew and returned to Heather, then back and forth, and back and forth, with a madman’s delirium.

Eventually the girls parted below me and I collapsed between them, my chest heaving with long deep breaths as I tried to regain my strength. In unison they moved down me, ten fingers tickled their way down my body, further enhancing my delirium. Their lips kissing their way down my torso, which was flushed pink with passion.

Once they reached my exhausted erection Heather took my balls into her mouth and tugged at them as she sucked. Jodi took my erection fully into her mouth, caressing it with blood filled lips. The pleasure they delivered was more than the mind can digest. I looked down at them and their faces looked positively angelic. The expressions they wore were of serene beneficence. The expression of a kind nurse as she cares for her favorite patient. With purity of heart they bestowed blessings too few men are lucky enough to ever know. They sucked, caressed, coddled, pulled and plied me into a mindless mass of throbbing nerve endings.

When I could summon the strength to lift my head far enough to look down at them, the juxtaposition of their innocent faces and their lurid behavior was glorious to the eyes. Call us sinners, call us perverted, but in my heart I know that if there is a God, that this God was smiling, as his or her or its precocious children played, reveling in the gift bestowed upon them.

As my penis became increasingly engorged my scrotum pulled upwards towards my body, but Heather pulled in the opposite direction constricting the erection tighter and tighter. Finally it began to spasm, jerking wildly like a psychopath in a straightjacket. Heather pulled and sucked with more force, causing my semen to shoot out with inhuman propulsion. To guess from the expression on Jodi’s face she actually savored the flavor as she drank, only a single glistening drop rolling out over the curve of her lip.

I screamed like a murder victim, my face went numb, and my arms and legs quivered uncontrollably. Trying to regain my composure I laughed, embarrassed by my own loss of control.

I don’t remember much after that, except the warmth and security of their bodies beside me. I slept with the peace of mind of a child on a summer’s morning.

As Jodi took my hand I reluctantly returned from my reverie, my face flushed by the heat of those memories. She lead me towards the bedroom of her mother’s apartment for our first real time alone. We closed the door for a rare moment of privacy. And for a rare moment that will remain private.

In the morning Jodi left early to go see Christopher to make sure he got through the night without too much distress. Surely he must have spent the night haunted by visions of what debaucheries went on behind that closed door with his beloved Goddess.

In the afternoon Jodi and I went to the great Salt Lake from which Salt Lake City derived its name. As we walked along the muddy beach we were greeted by a stench so overwhelming it made one want to gag. Jodi explained that millions of brine shrimp would die in the waters and their rotting bodies would fill the air with the smell of death. She said that on hot summer days the smell would permeate the entire city.

We went into a large public building that sat on the beach. The cavernous building was empty except for a few stragglers who wandered about. The place was a bit creepy, reminding me of the abandoned carnival houses on Asbury Park’s dilapidated boardwalk.

To look at the photos on the wall, the building must have been a relic of a bygone era. The photos appeared to be from the 1930’s or 1940’s. In those days the building was filled with happy people creating a carnivalesque atmosphere. In those days the beach seemed to be filled with families dressed in modest swimsuits and rubber-scalloped bathing caps. The lake seemed to have a glorious past. Given the stench that emanated from it, it was hard to imagine.

We sat on a bench holding hands, trying to have a romantic moment in these strange surroundings and amid the foul odor.

As evening approached I prepared to take my leave. Jodi was dressed in some kind of pink Indian or Middle Eastern outfit that reminded me of I Dream Of Jeannie. She seemed to inhabit the archetypes of masculine fantasies as a way of life. But I must admit she looked lovelier than ever.

In order to show me how to get to the highway out of town she drove in her car and I followed in the Blazer. She drove fast and I had to abandon my usual conservative driving habits in order to keep up with her. As we neared the highway she waved energetically. I imagined she must have been exhausted by the burden of having a guest to entertain.

Seeing her through the window of her car reminded me of another story I once heard her tell. She said that sitting at a red light she slowly unbuttoned her blouse until her breasts were exposed. She did it as an experiment to see how much traffic confusion it would cause.

As I drove away the highway passed by the Salt Lake and that horrid odor again filled my lungs. The strange pit of death that the lake had become seemed an odd contrast to the pristine streets of the city. Perhaps it is the price one pays for the sin of perfection. Perhaps the lake is the living embodiment of the darkness that I felt was so repressed in Salt Lake City.

I thought back to my second grade history book. I recall it with an unlikely clarity. It had an orange cover and was filled with black and white drawings to illustrate the stories for young readers. The section on the Mormons described how they were driven westward because of the practice of polygamy. The associated drawing showed three frightened men being chased by a group of men carrying torches as they ran through the dark forest. The section seemed designed to create prejudice in the young minds that would be reading the book.

Another section of the book explained that when the gold miners went to San Francisco, when they had dances there weren’t enough women, so some of the men had to dance with other men. The drawing showed two scruffy gold miners dancing arm and arm around a campfire. It went over my head that this was a warning that the city was inhabited by homosexuals.

Of course Utah officially banned polygamy in order to gain statehood, but some sects are rumored to still continue the practice. In a note of self-aware humor, there is a brand of beer in Utah called Polygamy Porter.

As the city receded into the background I thought about Jodi. Although she lived so far away and I have only seen her on a few short visits, she had become an important person in my life. Yet it seemed the more I knew her the more she remained a mystery. Perhaps she would always be so.

Then a troubling memory came to me. She once told me that when she was a teen her father used to watch porn movies with her in the room. She said he felt that if he was going to do it, he should be open with his family about it. She explained that because of these movies for a long time she believed that sex was something just for men to enjoy. It was a breakthrough when she learned to take pleasure for herself. Although I found this a little unusual she spoke of it as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.

At a later time she mentioned that her sister accused her father of molesting her, but she and her mother knew it couldn’t be true because her father would never do such a thing. Still, it was never clear to me why the father was now out of the picture.

With the smell of the lake behind me, the lush landscape begin to give way to a barren desert, leaving me alone with nothing but these uneasy thoughts to fill my mind.

Journal Entry 10/25/05 - An Honest Cop

Yesterday we had another great recording session. The girls are so amazing to work with. We did the vocals for Brave New Hymn and In America. They had only ever heard both songs once, and the vocals parts were complicated.

I was videotaping the proceedings to have some documentary footage. Angelica is sort of like Robin Williams. When no one is paying attention she chatters to herself using little voices and characters with different dialects.

Frank, our drummer, also arranges the vocal harmonies. His knowledge of music theory is amazing. During Brave New Hymn, on one note the three harmonies happened to merge on a single note. I would have never noticed it, but he caught it and quickly rewrote the parts to give the note a full harmony. The girls are so good they can change things in one try. For a songwriter, having talented people like this bring your music to life is really something of an honor.

The Brave New Hymn chorus brings the three harmonies together singing complex lines of political lyrics. When we played it back Frank kept yelling enthusiastically, “Listen to that, it sounds like Peter, Paul and Mary!”

Frank also does my horn arrangements. We just began working on an arrangement for Good Girl. It’s not one of my favorite songs, but I think the horns will bring it to life. I want to add a section to the song that features the horns. Last year I went to see the Mingus band. I had never heard his music, but I was pretty blown away by it. I’ve wanted to do some stuff based on his ideas. I especially liked the way his horn arrangements used avant guard harmonic ideas. I hope to employ some of that in the new section, and maybe throw in a little Tom Waits and Frank Zappa to spice things up. Zappa for the surprising rhythmic variations he used, and Waits for a nice waltz pattern in the middle of one of the lines. We’ll see how it goes. I’m going to write the melodies and then Frank will arrange it into harmonies.

I have another session Thursday to begin mixing In Praise Of Shadows.

The weather in New York has been lousy. We get the tail end of these hurricanes and it is cold and rainy and windy.

Heather stayed over last night. In the morning she had to walk a bit to get to the subway to go to work. She was complaining about the walk and the weather, hinting for a ride to the subway. The only problem with obliging her is that I lose my parking spot and have to drive around looking for one. She was moping around so finally I agreed to take her.

As I went to drive down the street a bus turned into the street in front of me. I cold see that a garbage truck was parked on the street and the bus wouldn’t be able to get around it so the street would be blocked off.

Although supposedly the hipster capitol of the world right now, this area is really an old industrial area. On weekdays the street are clogged with 18-wheelers delivery supplies to the warehouses and factories. They always block the roads and on a daily basis I drive down sidewalks to get around them.

Seeing the stranded bus I drove up two blocks to take another road. Before the turn there were a group of cars at a near standstill blocking the main road. I drove around two of them and turned down the road I wanted.

Immediately I heard sirens. I pulled over and a round-faced police officer came up to me and asked for my license. It seems one of the cars I passed was an undercover cop. He warned me about my driving and I complained about him being parked in the middle of the road.

Then I sat waiting for him to fill out his paperwork, hoping me might just give me a warning. When I saw the yellow ticket in his hand as he returned to my car, I decided to ride him a bit.

Taking the ticket I said, “now that I have you here, maybe you can help me with something. A few weeks ago my tape deck was stolen. I waited two hours for a cop to come so I could fill out a report and none ever came, but if I drive half a block without my seat belt on I get a ticket. You guys need to focus more on catching criminals and less on extorting money out of the public.”

Ever since 9/11 it has been widely known that police were instructed to give out as many tickets as possible in order to raise government funds. I have gotten parking tickets on my car while there was still time on the meter. Fighting them is more expensive than paying them, so it’s a no win situation.

I know from experience that when you lip off to a police officer it can go downhill very quickly, but he diffused the situation with professionalism and sincerity.

“I’m sorry for being the bad guy here,” he said, “I know people are getting tickets every time they turn around so they can get money out of you, but we don’t ignore complaints. We just get backed up and that’s likely why no one came about your tape deck.”

He went on a bit, talking about the police force and asking about our jobs. In the end I couldn’t feel angry with him, he was so straight up about it all.

Looking him straight in the eye I said, “Well I thank you for being honest about extorting money.”

“I wouldn’t vote for Bloomburg,” he interjected, “He screwed us out of our raise. I can’t pay my gas bill on the raise he gave me.”

Starting to leave he said, “Good luck, and don’t hold it against us.”

“I won’t,” I said somewhat sadly.

He began to walk away, but after three steps he stopped dead. He came back and said, “Listen I’m going to take care of this for you and save you 90 bucks. My name is Shelby. Say ‘Hi’ when you see me. You have a friend on the police force.”

I was astonished and moved. An honest cop. What a wonderful thing to find. Despite my problems with a few corrupt cops, I never held it against all of them. In most of my experiences with police they have treated me respectfully and I try to return the favor.

America Essays Pt VII - Who The F**K Is Caeser Pink

As Jodi turned through the final pages of the photo album the timeline changed to her teen years, revealing the first hints of the woman she was now. She looked thin and delicate, less confident but poised. Her parents had definite ideas about how a young lady should act, even going so far as to send her to finishing school.

In the final picture the father stands with his brood. The brother has a precocious smile on his face, but one might imagine there is a hint of anger concealed therein. The girls are lined up line summer daisies, dreaming of sunshine, but knowing they need rain. Everything looks perfect.

I think the biggest mystery about Jodi is where do I come in? Why did she seek me out? I look into her eyes searching for an answer. She looks back at me with doe-eyed innocence. But if I look deeper, I see the wisdom of Eve in the moments before she offered Adam the apple.

To the woman who would soon be the mother of all humanity the garden must have seemed an awfully boring place, and Adam a never-ending lout. Sure, he could be counted on to always be there, but as each day faded into another, without direction, without change, without a crease ever crossing his brow, or a new idea ever lighting up his face, perhaps she thought it better to live in struggle and savor each meal procured in toil, then to enjoy an abundance of food with no flavor.

Jodi found me over the internet. She found The Imperial Orgy in a Google search. One can only guess what word she must have been searching. But why seek out a stranger named Caeser Pink? The image that is projected of Caeser Pink on the internet and through the media is…well, I really don’t know what to say. Perhaps a few press clipping would explain it best;

"I have never seen anything like it! I was truly blown away. Caesar was a snarling, predatory beast-like man, venturing out onto the dance floor and enticing women to take a bite of his apple and writhe around with him. His persona was pure sexual confidence. The stage was his and the man was drawing out the crowd's sexuality almost beyond their control. At one point the stage was covered in bodies gyrating to the music, falling over each other and Caesar was in the middle of it all, a sinister smile playing around the corner of his lips. This was the magic man." -Bully Mag

Caeser Pink easily seduces everyone in the audience with his animalistic stage presence...pink is a little bit more than just hypnotizing...he's a new rock and roll icon for the millennium, and most definitely ahead of his time. -Dig This Real Magazine

A most original, original band. Newsprint doesn't do them justice. Looking sort of like an English cousin of Leonardo DiCaprio, Caeser Pink and his crew takes their mission to have a blast very seriously. Their pop-fun songs keeps fans dancing while giving them brain nourishment in the form of serious lyrical themes mouthed by the confident lounge singer cool of Caeser." -The Bronx Times

The Imperial Orgy is a creative feast. Lead vocalist Caeser Pink exudes an air of sel-fassurance and sex appeal reminiscent of John Travolta's character in Grease. Their music embodies a free spirit that infects everyone in the audience. The Imperial Orgy is an experience that broadens the mind and the senses." -Good Times Magazine


"Caeser Pink is the enigmatic leader of a troupe of entertainers called The Imperial Orgy. Take yourself higher with this great show, these great artists and let your mind move to new and higher highs. There's no let up in the rush...takes you places you've never been. The best stadium show in the nation!" -Online TV


The Imperial Orgy is a multimedia onslaught of music, video, artwork, and performance. Mr. Pink is the tall, dark, and devilishly handsome frontman. The Imperial Orgy follows his lead and tries their hardest to break down the boundaries that keep you and me from partaking in the feast of life. The Imperial Orgy's sound has a striking diversity with no limitations. Caeser Pink and the Imperial Orgy want to blow your mind, but they will be content to make you stop and think for a second. -Ampcast.com

This image is something I have grappled with on a daily basis. It was a never-ending tug-of-war between the peasant boy reared in the trailer park, and whatever this other being is. Although I created it, and live it, I didn’t really understand it.

The first time I stepped onstage with The Imperial Orgy I knew I was possessed. Possessed, yet I felt more truly myself than ever before.

In the months before The Imperial Orgy’s first full performance I began falling into deep trances. Sometimes while in these trances I visualized things that would be used in the music or staging, other times I saw events that would soon come to pass, yet seemed too outrageous to be true.

Our first full performance was at a little bar near the Penn State University called Stoney’s Posthouse Tavern. Usually the entertainment consisted of top 40 bands and alternative cover bands who were ignored by the audiences who came to drink and party with friends. That was about to change. Due to a series of provocative flyers and radio ads, the room was filled to capacity.

Along the back wall of the empty stage a dark video collage created by the multimedia artist Jon Mertz began to flicker. Fog, soaked a deep pink by the red lights began to seep from the corners, blurring the disturbing images on the video screen. I walked out onto the empty stage dressed in black jeans and a shiny 1970’s style leather jacket. As I looked at the faces of the silent crowd I could see the skepticism in their eyes. To make matters worse, instead of singing a familiar cover song I began shouting an apocalyptic poem.

As I move through the days I experience nature’s duality
As I enter the physical realm
I see all men striving blindly to fulfill their desires
Creating a mad, frenzied, insectile order

My delivery challenged the audience. I hurled the words at them like insults. Meanwhile our guitar player Michael Mordes wandered out onto the stage dressed in a red pair of coveralls and with a brown beer-ball over his head, giving him the appearance of a surreal spaceman from a 1950’s sci-fi movie. Underneath my tirade he began playing abstract guitar lines that had nothing to do with the words I was shouting.

The Poor live lives of desperation
Their dignity stolen by poverty's cunning
The rich search for ever more subtle means
To carry out their genteel acts of self destruction

As I read the words I paced back and forth in the red haze, reading the poetry from a black notebook like a caricature of a bad beat poet. One by one the musicians wandered onstage and began playing random atonal noise. As the cacophony grew the audience became increasingly agitated.

“Sing it. Sing it!” people began to shout. The sound beneath me evolved into a horrendous barrage of chaotic noise. Overtop I screamed the final lines of the poem.


Down on my knees
Worshipping, eating, fucking, sucking the beast
The flames enter my stomach
Burn my lungs
Singe my senses

I tried to maintain eye contact with the audience, challenging and taunting them. Their faces registered anger and confusion. Just when I thought they were about to get up and walk out the door, with a flick of my wrist the entire ruckus came to a dead stop with razor’s edge precision.

I stood silent for a moment, allowing it to register with the crowd that the cacophony they thought was the ramblings of talent-less children, was actually a purposeful assault completely under our control. Slowly I walked over the invisible line that separates audience and performer, by doing so announcing that I would not hesitate to enter their territory. Staring into their collective eyes I read the poem’s final lines.

With my eyes finally opened
I see all things are on fire

With another flick of my wrist the band broke into a punk rock version of Brave New Hymn. As the song went through verse, chorus, and back again, although the song was not safely familiar, at least we seemed to be behaving like a nice little rock band should. I could see that the audience was becoming comfortable with the idea that the first assault was just an aberration and they could now settle into a night of drinking without further annoyance from the living jukebox.

Just when they thought it was safe I disappeared from the stage and the band switched into a minimalist new wave funk groove. I returned in a few seconds with the background singers on each side of me. They were dressed in matching skin-tight black lycra skirts. We walked in unison to center stage, right on the first beat of the verse I hit the microphone and the girls froze into a pose with their arms crossed and their chins held high, each in half profile aimed away from me, looking like sexy sentry guards.

Again the lyrics and presentation challenged the audience, asking them to take part in an evening of carefree partying while children starved in Africa and racists raped in Sarajevo.

Now I'm looking out among you
Now I'm speaking right to you
This is my condemnation
Can you look me in the eye?
Murder, famine, rape, and poison
We unleash upon the world
But weekend is the time to party
We will drink and dance tonight

Between verses the girls broke into angular dance routines. During the chorus I again went into the audience, imploring them with outstretched hands, “Can you even call me human?”

The girls responded with silky voices, “Don’t say yes, don’t say yes.”

“I just close my eyes again,” I finished then turned my back on the crowd and returned to my space between the women.

Near the song’s end a young man who had obviously had enough of this nonsense ran up onto the stage and demanded that we stop the music. We continued on as if he wasn’t there. He took an angry stance behind me with his arms folded over his chest as if to say ‘I’m not leaving until you stop this music.” I noticed a few of my backwoods friends stood up, ready to provide assistance if any trouble broke out. I stood directly in front of the angry fellow and let myself fall backwards unto him. I’m not sure what happened to him after that. He disappeared and was not seen again.

By this time it was beginning to dawn on the audience they we weren’t going to provide an evening of safe entertainment, and they would have to go with it or get out. By the fourth song a few of the more confident women had begun to dance in front of the stage area. Throughout the first set we took them on a musical journey. We sat down for an unplugged-style acoustic ballad, I wore a large dunce cap for an industrial rocker called Idiot Love. With each song the group of people dancing in front of the stage grew larger.

By the set’s end the audience had grown to trust us. Although we stepped far outside the boundaries they were used to, they began to feel like they understood the parameters of where we might go. Now it was time to break through those parameters and see how far we could actually take them.

As the keyboard player began to fill the room with sounds of church organ, I introduced “The Imperial Orgy’s spiritual advisor and pharmacist…the Reverend Blue Blotter.”

Guitarist Michael Mordes stepped up to the mic and began preaching with the voice of a Southern Baptist evangelist. Between lines I lead the audience in shouts of ‘Amen’ and “Halleluiah.”

"Good evening my people out there. I am here with a message from the Lord. I am here to tell you that we're all going to heaven. Yes everyone that's here tonight. And I know you may be lookin' for meaning in your life and I'm here to tell you that you'll find it! You'll find it in heaven! Because many don't know this but God is a woman. Yes, that's right. A beautiful, sexy, big-breasted woman.

"Now God wants me to tell you that while we're on this earth we need to love each other. Wait a minute people, God is speaking to me right now...and God wants me to spread the word of love right here to you. So children right this very moment turn to that person beside you, be they stranger or friend, and extend your hand. Extend your hand and touch them...in a very intimate place. That's right my friends, feel the spirit of God's creative powers. Cause while you're here God wants you to practice for Her. So please people do God's work, and while you're here... F**k like Bunnies! "

At that moment a pair of copulating rabbits filled the video screen, followed by a Noah’s Ark’s parade of mating animals both large and small. As he completed his sermon I walked to the microphone and yelled, “Let the orgy begin!” The band broke into a funky prince-esque groove, and I pulled a large red apple from my pocket and began blowing my breath on it and shining on my shirtsleeve.

I walked slowly out onto the dance floor, my face aimed downward, but my eyes peering upwards at the faces in the crowd, providing an expression of lechery as in the old movie posters for A Clockwork Orange. I bit into the apple as if taunting the crowd, chewing nonchalantly as the guitarist took a solo. When the chorus came I held the apple out to an innocent looking college girl. She hesitated for a moment than grabbed my hand, pulling the apple close to her mouth and took a large bite as the crowd cheered in approval.

I wanna show you sex salvation
I wanna give you a sensual revelation
I wanna show you sex salvation
I'll lead you to erotic devastation

Now that they understood the game, the women were not only willing to bite the apple, they seemed to be jumping out of the skin in hopes of being next to take part in the new ritual. By the middle bridge, three apples had been chewed to the core.

Finally the musicians broke down to a simmering groove. I walked through the crowd of dancers searching for an appropriate consort. I chose a woman whose dark eyes suggested she was more acquainted with the ways of love than the average schoolgirl. As I whispered into the microphone I circled around her.

“Woman you look so fine. What I wanna know is do you read the Bible?
Cause I wanna know you.”

She looked into my eyes as she danced. Feeling the heat she pulled her outer shirt off over her head, leaving on a thin white undershirt covering her medium sized breasts. Bringing my mouth close behind her right ear I continued.

“Can I kiss the back of your neck three times? Maybe even seven? And then
down and down and down…”

Circling around her I fell on my knees in front of her. Taking her hand in mine, I slid down flat on my back. She straddled me, placing her behind on my crotch as she sat upright atop me. She began grinding her hips against me in rhythm to the music. Looking up at her I asked,

“Baby can you thrust?”

On cue the band responded with a loud James Brown style ‘horn blast.’ With the blast I thrust against her, raising her into the air with my pelvis. I repeated the question.

“Baby can you thrust?”

Again the band responded with a blast and I raised her into the air with my hips.

“Gimmie two,” I begged and the band obliged

“Make it faster, faster, faster, faster!”

In quick succession the music hits responded and with each hit I lifted her skyward as she gyrated atop me. The audience seemed stunned. The women seemed in a frenzy of sexual excitement. With that we ended our first set and ran towards the basement storage area that we were using as a dressing room. The audience had never seen anything like The Imperial Orgy, but in all my years as a musician I had never seen a crowd reaction in the bar band circuit.

During the second set we took them on a new journey. The first third of the set focused on political rock and reggae. During Dancing Now I dressed like a third world guerrilla with a ski mask and toy machine gun. The girls dressed like corporate executives. With strings attached to the shoulders of my jacket they controlled me like a puppet, slipping money into my pockets and pointing at people in the audience, who I would then pretend I was shooting with the toy gun.

The middle section of the set was all deep funk and trip hop. During Exhibition I carried a video camera as I sang. The plan was to film people in the audience as they danced and project it onto the video screen behind the band. The first woman I put the video camera on immediately ripped her shirt open, her naked breasts filling the video screen and bringing cheers from the crowd.

For the set’s end we went into dark gothic music. The set finished with Struggle The Void. As the song came to a close I stared into the horizon screaming at God like a madman. Behind me the band de-evolved into a barrage of noise.

Standing on life's edge
Looking out into the darkness
How can one live in the face of death
Knowing all is nothingness?
I call out to you from the darkness
But you remain silent
Hiding in a mist of unspoken promises
Is there anyone out there? Speak to me
Reach out your hand
Reveal yourself
I want answers not faith
In our fear we make an image
A myth
A babble of insanity
I will tear you from my heart
And if in the final hour you are there
I will spit in your face
I am alive!
I search and I find nothing


With the din still echoing in their ears we ran offstage. As we changed our costumes in the kitchen’s basement, using cardboard boxes for dressing tables, a writer for the local papers yelled down the stairs with an excited voice, “You guys are fucking great!”

For the third set I dressed in a shiny turquoise suit and the girls dressed in evening dresses. As we walked single file out onto the stage the audience stood up and applauded. Another first for the bar band scene. Throughout the evening the sexual tension continued to rise. Twice women dropped to their knees and imitated performing felatio on me as I sang. Another time I reached out for a woman’s hand and she responded by bending down and kissing mine.

During Sleepwalk Heaven I was tearing the strings off my guitar, each making a menacing twang as they popped, when suddenly a young man ran out of the audience holding his middle finger in the air and yelling “Fuck you, Fuck you!’ angrily into my face. He then ran into the crowd and disappeared.

For the encore we performed a ragged version of Iggy Pop’s “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” During the third verse we brought down the music to a sexy grind. On my hands and knees I crawled onto the dance floor and collapsed on my back. One of a set of Armenian twins crawled on top of me as gave me a long slow kiss as the crowd danced around us.

As I moaned the chorus refrain, “Now I wanna be your dog…” I pulled the dancers into a pile on the floor. The crowd writhed in a slithering pile of bodies that became an impromptu petting orgy. Video of the performance shows our guitarist looking down at the scene on the dance floor with a comically confused look on his face.

Upon awakening the next morning, the previous night’s events seemed unreal. Usually on the morning after a performance I am in a contemplative mood, but on this morning I felt like I had undergone a transformation and was unsure how to grasp what had taken place. I felt as if a long hidden part of myself had suddenly emerged and briefly taken control.

It was a gray autumn Sunday morning. I walked the empty streets of State College trying to make sense of it all. As I walked an unknown voice shouted “Caeser Pink,” from a passing car as if my name was some kind of football cheer.

I wandered into the Ye Ole’ College Dinner,” a worn-out hangout for college kids and visiting parents. The place was almost empty.

“Seating for one?” a fresh-faced hostess asked me.

I nodded through my haze. As I followed her to the booth my eyes traced the soft lines of her form. He hair was a dirty blonde and fell in cheese-ball curls around her shoulders. Without thinking I reached my hand out to touch her, catching myself only inches away running my fingers across the nape of her neck.

As I sat down it dawned on me that last night so many social taboos had been broken with such ease that my mind believed such freedom is natural. For now on I would have to live day-to-day life censuring every action so that I didn’t get myself in trouble. As I thought about the behavior of the women at the performance, I felt as if I had peeked behind a curtain to catch a glimpse of the truth behind women’s repressed sexuality.

I looked down at the thick wooden table that my arms rested heavily upon. Although it shone with a glossy coat of shellac, the wood was etched with a jumble of twenty-plus year’s worth of graffiti. ‘Jenny is a bitch, Delta House bar tour 93, AC/DC, Billy Z. died here,’ one and on. A history of college-town names, rude comments, and insults to lost loves, carved one upon another to create a mosaic babble of meaningless words and symbols. It felt like it buzzed with an electric energy that was frozen into the grain of the wood. I felt exhausted by looking at it. I laid my head upon the table, feeling like I could sink down into its depths, never to be seen again.

My sense of self was both found and lost by the transformation that was taking me. Sometimes you just have no idea who the fuck you are. The Rolling Stones once sang, “What’s a poor boy to do except play in a rock and roll band.”

I respond, “Hail, hail, rock and roll.” These gifts of life given to me by rock and roll, had blown this poor boy’s mind.

In the months that followed the events of the performance became a template for a ritualized ceremony that was repeated in a variety of venues and to a growing number of fans. We seemed to be especially popular with Catholic and Indian girls. Both come from some sort of sexually repressed background I suppose.

At the same time The Imperial Orgy was surrounded by controversy. A performance was canceled due to threats from Christians groups who warned of terrorist acts against a frightened bar owner, claiming that they would riot if the performance was allowed to take place. The Penn State University banned the group’s flyers from public display because they were “distressing to some students.” When the local newspaper took up our cause as a first amendment issue, lawyers were called in and the university officials backtracked, even claiming the flyers were never banned in the first place.

On any given day the local paper would print a letter to the editor either for, or against The Imperial Orgy. Women’s Studies classes argued about the group’s presentations of sexuality. Eventually they sent an emissary to invite me to speak before the class, to defend our behavior I assume. Ironically, although I was willing to meet the class, after the emissary offered herself to me for an afternoon of fun, the event never materialized.

During one concert chaos broke out when a bouncer became offended by the performance and threatened to turn off the electricity. When I responded by getting the audience to chant “Turn off the power, turn off the power,” he upgraded his threat to ‘giving me a beating I wouldn’t forget.’ Eventually the police were called in and a couple fans whisk me away to avoid arrest.

During this time the community of people who were following the group were using us as a catalyst to explore their own sexuality. First time lesbianism was rampant. A photographer who was photographing the group for a school project invited me to her apartment to look at proofs, then offered herself and two of her friends to me for a late-night pleasure-fest atop a local mountain.

Some women became confused by it all. A kiss shared on the dance floor during a performance lead to delusions that affairs were taking place that never existed. Overall, it seemed everyone was questioning their sexual identity, expanding their boundaries, and trying to overcome the repression hard-wired into the brains by family and society.

Most of the women who followed us were brilliant, but bordering on lunacy. There was Sasha, a neurotic Indian lotus who would one day earn a doctorate, despite her never-ending mental turmoil. Sasha was a new age hippie type and when she was nervous would say things like, “What color are you feeling right now?” She would ply me with homemade baked goods and her dreams of sexual abandon.

There was Ornelia, a tall Catholic Goddess with a mane of flaming locks surrounding her ivory-white face. Her icy demeanor struck fear into the hearts of the other girls. I kissed her before I ever spoke a word to her. We were playing in a large industrial club with a set of high balconies. She was standing against the railing on one of the balconies when I spotted her. I crawled up onto a barstool and then unto the bar, then crawled up onto the balcony. As I hung over the crowd while clinging to the outside of the railing, with Ornelia facing me on the inside of the railing, she greeted me with a warm wet kiss.

And there was Sneha, another Indian princess and future doctor of psychology. Her dark beauty and sensual playfulness hid the fact that she was fighting her family to avoid a prearranged marriage to an Indian man who she only met during the marriage ceremony on a trip to the homeland.


There was Jenn, one of the Armenian twins who was spreading her wings and her love for the first time. Her guileless innocence was like a leaf that had broken free from the tree and was willing to float on a breeze, going whichever way life would take her, as long as she could experience life to its fullest.

And there was also Monica, another wounded Indian princess who carried her virginity with her like Atlas with the globe on his back. Every word that came out of her mouth was sex. Sex swirled around her like an impenetrable fog.

The first time I went to her apartment I noticed tampons were hung from the lampshades as decoration. In every corner penis shaped candles burned and melted into soft mush, I suppose much as did her suitors at the gates of her blessed virginity. She wore a thin gauze dress that barely covered her bulging caramel colored breasts. She tuned the TV to a soft-core porn cable channel and sat down beside me on the couch.

Then in an environment swollen with sexuality, she began to sing the praises of her virginity. She bore its burden like an albatross. With words dripping with sex, she told stories of every man who tried to seduce her, the lurid details of every blocked advance, and every frustrated suitor. How far they went, the debaucheries they wanted to assault her with, and how she ached for the one love who would one day receive her bounty. She was a bear’s trap waiting to maim, so I kept a safe distance no matter how much she paraded herself before me.

Then there was Chrissanne, a well-read intellectual and local legend as a free-love hippie-chick gone-cynical. She was thin as a rail and almost six feet tall. She had a model’s fashion sense and used her provocative attire like a whipping post. I once took her to see a movie. With an elderly couple sitting just two seats away, she nonchalant took my hand, lifted her long flowing hippie skirt, and placed my hand directly on her silken snatch before calmly smoothing her skirt and settling down to enjoy the flick.

Beyond this menagerie of half-insane, over-sexed fallen-angels, was a parade of faces that came and went. I know there must have been some men mixed in with them, but I can’t seem to remember much about them. What I do recall is that our fan-base transcended social and musical cliques. We had Dead-heads, metal dudes, aging prog-rockers, Goth kids, funk fans, and the random folkie who hid safely in the back The only group we didn’t connect with was the grunge crowd, whose shoe-gazer aesthetics found our unseemly displays of fun and passion far too uncouth to suit their ‘misunderstood and always suffering’ middle class pretensions.

This chaotic period went on for about six months. During these days I seemed to have boundless energy and health. I think it was the only winter in my life that I didn’t come down with at last one cold. It was a snowy winter and it seemed every other day I was digging the band’s van out of the snow so we could do a gig.

As a way of dealing with the changes in my life, and in my self, I began to think of my stage persona as a separate identity from my true self. I was a child of the 70’s feminist’ age and my ideas of manhood were shaped by those values. I was taught that a good man was expected t be sensitive and non-aggressive, and definitely not a chauvinist pig, as they were once called.

Because of this I felt that my new persona was somewhat embarrassing and offensive. Plus this was the age when political correctness was rampant on college campuses and women’s studies classes were teaching young women that if a man makes sexual advances of any kind it is bordering on rape.

To the women who knew my stage persona before they knew me personally, I often found myself exclaiming “That’s not me, I’m really not like that.” This approach to self-identity soon created an unworkable psychic schism. Events were soon to make this problem worse.

I convinced the group to move to New York City to be at the center of the music business. In late summer the band members made the move, but due to a run of bad luck I wasn’t able to follow. Worse yet, as I tried to come up with the money to move to New York, I found myself homeless and mentally deteriorating.

I had spent months suffering endless humiliations and at times living like an animal. By the end of it I was physically ill and in deep depression. In a period of nine months my ego had been swollen to its greatest heights, and then deflated to its lowest depths. My sense of self was nil.

When I finally came up with a little money and was ready to join my friends in the big apple it was late October. For months I had not played or written music. To get myself back into the frame of mind I gathered my lyrics together and bound them into a little book at Kinkos. As I proofread the lyrics I noticed that some of the songs seemed to be written with a voice that was clearly not my own. Among them was Circus Circus.

Caligula was a friend of mine
The Marquis De Sade used to drink my wine
I was with Krishna when the gopi danced
Now I'm here won't you take a chance?

I'm the author of the Kama Sutra
I'm the singer of Solomon's song
Embrace the sinner, liberate the saint
Lust for life baby that's the way

Often I don’t remember writing my lyrics and this strange voice seemed very alien to a man who had been laid so low. Even though my self-esteem had been trampled into the ground by life’s events, I thought back to the performances and my stage persona. It all seemed very far away. It seemed that to inhabit that persona and bring about those reactions were now an unattainable dream. It was always hard for me to reconcile the trailer-trash peasant that I saw myself as, and the persona of Caeser Pink. Now it seemed incomprehensible.

On my drive to New York City I was dealt one final blow to my self-esteem. During this time I was having a maddening love affair with a young woman who lived in New Jersey. She came from a wealthy family and her parents didn’t approve of me. As her mother said, “If he was a doctor or a lawyer it would be different.” This made my poverty and homelessness even more frustrating and humiliating. It brought back a lifetime of financial struggling and memories of my parent’s struggles with poverty.

The turmoil of this situation caused my girlfriend to self-destruct. In a misplaced suicide attempt she had gotten into a bad auto accident and broken her back. On the way to New York I stopped to see her. In her bedroom she was propped up by a heavy back brace and her hair was matted to her forehead with dried blood. It now seems understandable that she would want to take a beak from the relationship to get her health back, but at the time I was devastated.

I arrived in New York late that night without anywhere to stay and without enough money to get my own place. Samantha, one of the Orgy’s background singers allowed me to sleep in the basement of the house she shared with the group’s keyboard player.

I felt completely destroyed. This was supposed to be the beginning of an exciting new life, but here I was sleeping on the floor of a dingy basement with no confidence in my self and no will to live. I felt as if my sense of self was dying. My perpetually racing mind was my worst enemy. Although I always thought suicide was a coward’s way out, when each passing moment is unbearable, you simply don’t want to live anymore. I bought a shotgun and rested it in the corner beside the layer of foam rubber that I used as a bed on the basement floor. Each morning I gave myself one day’s reprieve in hopes that the sickness that had invaded my body would leave. It was the only time in my life when I ever lost all hope, and although I never pulled the trigger, I died a spiritual death.

In some ways the fracture in my identity was related to issues of how manhood is defined in America. Although men always receive messages in the media that we should be sensitive guys who defer to their partners on all things, it seemed to me that within relationships this behavior did not make women happy. The women I was with would have preferred a strong man who took control of situations and provided direction. It seemed that the women who mouthed feminist ideology, were the ones who most wanted a stronger man.

Around this time I saw Camille Paglia in a debate on Larry King’s TV show. She was brash and aggressive, obnoxious even. She was attacking the current state of feminist thought on gender issues. She argued that masculine aggressiveness was good for society and should not be something to be ashamed of. In my emotionally raw state I was surprised to find that her words brought tears to my eyes.

For my birthday a few days later Samantha bought me a copy of Paglia’s book Vamps & Tramps. Her iconoclastic ideas seemed new to the world, but rang true in my heart. Her words helped me to embrace the masculine feelings that seemed natural to me, yet which I always rejected. It made me feel less ashamed of the part of my persona that women seemed to respond to, but which I disavowed out of fear of being a sexist jerk.

There was something else in her book that captured my attention. She kept referring to rock and roll as ‘pagan.’ She compared rock stars to modern incarnations of ancient gods and goddesses. She argued that despite our lip service to Christianity, America was a wholly pagan society.

The idea seemed mysterious to me. Over my life I had made an effort to study all the major religions and most of the minor ones in my never ending search for truth and meaning. But one area that I had neglected was pre-Christian European earth religions. I went out and got a couple books on the subject in order to learn more.

In the books they described an ancient ceremony where a man personifies a spirit that represents masculinity as a universal principle. He was a god of hunting, war, and fertility. In the ceremony the man wore animal skins and deer antlers on his head. As Christianity was trying to give the old religions a bad reputation this is where the image of Satan as a horned demon came from.

The job of this horned spirit was to evoke the Goddess in a woman at the ceremony. The modern Wiccans call it drawing down the moon. The goal is to fill a woman with the universal spirit of femininity and female fertility, the counterpart to the masculine spirit that the horned man represents.

When I read this a light of recognition went off in my head. This seemed very similar to the ritual that played out at Imperial Orgy shows. If one believes Carl Jung’s theory that universal images reside in our collective unconscious, I may have tapped into something both in myself and in the audience members, something that none of us were conscious of, but that had a powerful effect when triggered.

I always felt in some way that the women in the audience were reacting to something more than myself as an individual. And that reaction seemed to cause them to act, almost against their will, as if taken by a spirit of feminine sexuality that caused them to behave in ways that they normally never would have.

In this light the strange voice that wrote the lyrics in some of my songs suddenly was revealed.

I'm the Satan here to possess your soul
I need your body, I'll take control
Have mercy baby, I want you on top
Forgive my passion, it never stops

Further, this verse from Sex Salvation seemed to describe this pagan ceremony outright.

Life is sacred, don't let it pass
Take my desire, break from your past
You're the Goddess, I'm the beast
Join me in life's wanton feast

I knew nothing of these things so it came from somewhere in the unconscious. For the first time the conflict in my identity made sense. At the time I heard Howard Stern say that when he is on the radio he is more truly himself than at any other time because he can be more honest and uninhibited than in his day-to-day life. I have also heard actors say that playing a role has made them discover a part of themselves that they didn’t know existed.

With this revelation I was able to integrate my fractured psyche. Since I felt that my ‘self’ as a man was spiritually dead, I embraced ‘Caeser Pink’ and allowed the more dominant persona to absorb the weaker into its whole. For the first time, perhaps in my entire life, I began to feel whole.

Now that I understood my self, and had more control of my identity and how it related to my creative work, I decided to write a new song that would make use of this knowledge.
It is called Oak King Blues, named after a Celtic god who dies and is reborn each year.

Spear to cauldron, lance to grail
Death and resurrection, surrender to love

Good evening children, without horns or fur I rise tonight
Our golden father sleeps in the West and the moon hangs heavy with seed
In the forest deep, the odor of musk rides the warm summer breeze
The fecund fields give birth to green and the peach is swollen with sweet nectar

Here I am
And I've come for you tonight

I possess this man so I may find you
I am the mirror, I'm the flame that burns inside you
Look into these eyes
Do you see something you recognize?
Look deep into these eyes
Without beginning, without end, your deepest secrets lie within

On summer's eve I'll ask you to dance with me again
After the autumn feast I'll invite you to sacrifice yourself at my hands
Close your eyes, I'll pierce your soft flesh and slice your middle through
Blood will flow and your mother's tears with spill on the fallen body of her innocent child

Girl you must die
And I've come to take your life

Your corpse is my possession, but from dust a woman will arise
I call to the virgin within you, I call out to the whore
My soul needs yours
Let my desire awaken you from your child's sleep
I evoke the Goddess
Know your beauty, feel your power, can you recognize yourself?
Because life is calling and I've been waiting since time began

My eternal bride

Mystery of the waters, desire in the hearts of man
You are the alter that awakens life
He has died for love of earth
Kiss of lips, harvest of womb
Bewildered mind but heart adores
Love crystallizes into blood
Communion of polarities
His wounds to heal

From that time on the name given to me at birth was an empty shell that had no meaning to me. Out of courtesy I let my oldest friends call me whatever they want. Although when they call that name from my past I might respond, I my heart that person is a ghost. A soul consumed by a greater soul.

And in the end, isn’t that what death is? And the often-repeated ritual meant to prepare us for that mysterious transformation, whether the ritual is the Christian being born again, the Buddhist reaching enlightenment, or the Freudian becoming self-actualized, it is the same as the process of spiritual death and rebirth that I experienced in those horrible and hallowed days of which I speak.

It is this image of Caeser Pink that is projected in the media and through our websites that brought Jodi to me. Of all the men in the world and on the internet, the millions searching for women in chat rooms and dating sight, the millions of web sites of every kind imaginable, it is this image that sparked her imagination and brought her to me.

10/18/05 Big Fish In A Small Pond or She Made Me Stupid

As I write these words my body is in pain and my mind is a little messed-up.

This weekend was the long rumored Friction reunion show. In the past, when I was in Lewistown, if I went out to one of the local dives I could always count on being recognized by someone nostalgic for the carefree days of their youth.

“Hey, weren’t you in Friction? What happened to you guys? You guys rocked! Are you still beatin’ them skins?”

Usually the gentleman saying this would have only recently cut off his mullet in favor of a grunge-goatee and a baseball cap with a drag racing logo plastered on the front. I knew these people were trying to be nice, but it still annoyed me. That part of my life was fun when it was happening, but it was long past, and I had moved on to more interesting pastures. Plus once you crawl out of the swamp, the big fish in a little pond syndrome seems a bit embarrassing.

When Jon Mertz, Friction’s bass player and a lifelong friend, asked me about doing a reunion show I was very skeptical. It had been ten years since I had played drums, and I wasn’t in any hurry to experience the social dynamics of being in the group.

I was also concerned because I had heard that Craig, the band’s singer, and Jim, the second guitarist, had become serious Christians. They were the same two that hastened the band’s demise with their drug and alcohol problems. Knowing what headaches they caused as addicts, I shuddered to think what they might be capable of as evangelicals.

When Jon first brought up the idea the other guys hadn’t signed on yet, so I didn’t take it too seriously. But as months passed, not only did the others agree to do it, they were enthused and excited about the project. Although I was not eager to relive past glories, when you are in a band other people depend on you. Seeing how much it meant to them, I didn’t want to be the fly in the ointment, so I agreed to do a rehearsal and see how it went.

At the rehearsal everyone was on their best behavior and happy to see each other. With Craig, there was no sign of the Jesus thing, and Jim kept it to himself. I got through the rehearsal without having a heart attack from the drumming, and really had fun hanging out with the old gang. Also, I had forgotten just how good Friction’s music was.

Sometimes in New York City I get sick of the spoiled brats who play artist while living off their parent’s wealth. It is something of a relief to spend time with working class guys who had nothing handed to them and who know how to work for a living.

After the first meeting we managed to get another four or five rehearsals in over a period of about six months. As the weekend of the reunion show approached the first sign of what I was in for came when two days before the show I got word that all the tickets had sold out in a day and a half. Old fans were driving in from Colorado, Ohio, and other far-flung locales. All in order to relive their misspent youths for a night, I suspected. The local radio stations were playing our music and hyping the show, and the papers did full page stories on the event.

Lewistown is a small conservative town with a long-dying economy. And although situated in the heart of Pennsylvania, the town has a real Southern redneck streak running through it. The music people listen to in Lewistown is usually either country or heavy metal-pop. All of it shoved down their throats by corporate radio stations, all of it commercial.

Friction was the first band in the area to play original music. We also introduced the young folks to a host of new underground music by artists such as The Clash, Talking Heads, Sex Pistols, Gang Of Four, The Specials, and on and on.

The band became the only voice in the area to stand against conformity and to speak against racism, religious hegemony, and Reagan’s politics. Our shows quickly became drug-hazed expressions of frustration and rebellion for our young audiences. The police followed us everywhere we went. Club owners were torn between the money we brought in and the bad behavior of our fans, who seemed to destroy everything in their paths. Since those days Lewistown returned to its conformists ways while basking in the decaying shadow of church and Bush.

Heather is a big fan of Friction’s music and was excited by the unexpected opportunity to see the band perform, so she accompanied me to PA. for the performance. The night before the show we made the five-hour drive from New York to Lewistown. I had reserved a Jacuzzi suite at the local Super 8 Motel. In the morning we filled up the Jacuzzi and relaxed in the massaging pool while gazing out the picture window that provided a lovely view of purple mountain and valleys underneath bright blue autumn skies.

In the afternoon we drove further out into the sticks so I could buy some shoes from a little store run by an Amish family. Inside the store, the electricity came from energy generated by a little creek that ran through the back yard. The women wore blue and black work dresses and white bonnets, and kneeled while slipping shoes on and off people’s feet. The men, dressed in white shirts and black pants held up by heavy suspenders, ran back and forth carrying boxes of footwear.

As the 10PM performance time came closer I struggled to control the nervous tension that was swelling up throughout the day. I had a real concern as to whether I would have the stamina to get through the show. I wanted to control my energy and not blow it all in the first few songs, then suffer throughout the rest of the two-plus hour performance.

As the hour approached, Heather wanted to see the warm-up act so I dropped her off in front of the club with a word of warning concerning how rowdy people might get inside. The venue had no dressing room, and in hopes of keeping my cool I wanted to avoid the opening act and the crowd inside.

I saw the band’s old manager (and coke supplier) standing in front of the club. Although he once burned me for about fifteen grand in a business deal that turned out to be shady, I stood chatting with him as the warm-up band churned out Nirvana and Pearl Jam cover songs.

It soon became clear that this event was bringing every backwoods freak out of the woodwork. My conversation with the ex-manager was continually interrupted by a slightly retarded woman who was my neighbor in the trailer park when I was a kid.

“Caeser, did you’ens still live there when I had my second son? He’s big now. He’s about six feet tall,” she said raising her hand into the air to impress me with the height of her offspring.

I confessed that I couldn’t recall, trying to be polite, but still attempting to continue my conversation.

“They took one of the trailers away this week, now there’s only eleven,” she interrupted with lamebrain innocence. I don’t quite know how to responded to this one, so I stood with a dopey smile pasted on my mug, all the while telling myself ‘be nice, be nice.’

Soon two female friends from years gone by arrive with tickets in hand. The first is Debra. When I was in college we worked together at the Dominoes Pizza shop. She was the daughter of the owner of local car dealership, so it was thought she came from a little money. Her boyfriend was a backwoods yokel who would kick the shit out of her every week or two just to knock her off her high horse.

After we became friends we took a trip to New York to see David Bowie’s band Tin Machine. After the concert we went to a comedy club. When we walked in it was dead empty, so the host set us down at a table right in front of the stage, meaning that we were in the line of fire for every comedian honing his ‘working-the-crowd’ skills. Usually each comedian began his routine by asking us a few questions with the tone of voice one might expect from Henny Youngman in the Catskills.

Just to liven things up I told them we were newlyweds from Maine, visiting New York for our honeymoon. Wedding night jokes soon flooded every routine and at night’s end the club’s manager came out and congratulated us on our marital bliss.

Although Debra was an attractive woman, our relationship never became more sexual than a kiss on the cheek. She walked up and hugged me and said with an excited voice, “Caeser, don’t you remember me.”

“Of course, I do,” I replied.

“I’m so glad to see you,” she said, bringing her face too close to mine.

Chrissanne stood a few feet away with a patient smile on her face. Chrissanne stood at five-feet and ten-inches tall, and on this night her hair color was a light brown, although at any given time it could be blonde, red, or any other color in the rainbow. She came over and hugged me and stared straight into my eyes.

“I want to kiss you,” she said matter of factly.

“That can be arranged,” I answered.

Without missing a beat she gave me a short, firm kiss on the lips.

Chrissanne and I had a long history. When she first began following Friction she was a lanky teenager who already had grown to her impressive height. She dressed in outrageously sexy clothes and had a Betty Boop shyness that was charming to behold when coupled with her flagrant sexuality. Most people thought she was a little bit batty because of her ditzy demeanor, but most of those people weren’t bright enough to realize that really she was quite the intellectual.

In her late teens she became a Deadhead hippie and went through a couple of husbands, coming out of it all with a few kids that she now raised as a single mother.

“There is so much I want to tell you,” she cooed, rubbing her open palms against my chest. “I took up painting…and I’m going to school now,” she announced like a proud little girl.

I began to notice that there was a little competition between the two friends as to who might know me better, Deb moved back towards me bringing her face close to mine as she recapped her life over the last ten years.

“I never got out of Lewistown,” she said with a frown, “ My father died and a bunch of stuff happened. I got married and had two kids. Now I’m divorced.”

Feeling a little uncomfortable with the attention I backed away and sent the girls into the club saying that I would talk to them later in the night.

Sometimes I find crowds are more than I can handle and I was having mixed feelings about going inside, but the warm up band was finally vacating the stage so it was time for me to find my way to the stage. Inside it was packed with drunken people. It was like going to a class reunion where everyone you’ve known since childhood is there.

Everyone was very nice, but my social skills were just not up to the task at hand. Over and over again I apologized to people for not remembering them when reminded of some moment when our paths crossed in some distant past. First there was a girl I knew in grade school.

“Do you remember I used to come into your basement and watch you play,” she asked.

“Sure I do,” I assured her.

The burly man she is with has some connection to me that I can’t recall at all. A dark haired woman scolds me, “Here I am at that bar and you’re hurting my hand. Do you remember? “

“Are you sure you don’t have me confused with someone else?” I ask

“Caeser, I’m tripping on X and you’re playing head games with me,” she argued.

Robin came up to me and hugged me warmly. “The last time I saw you, you were standoffish,” she whines.

“I was just feeling shy,” I explain.

“Is that what it was?” she asks, cocking her head to the side.

I always had a soft spot for Robin. We went out a few times and her down-to-earth friendliness was always nice to be around.

“Is little sister coming,” I ask.

“Marnie, yeah she’s coming. The whole gang is coming,” she replies.

Leaving her I make my way through the thick crowd shaking hands like a politician. The people who greet me like an old friend, range from actual old friends, to people who look vaguely familiar, to ones who appear to be complete strangers. In the middle of the room I find Brian. He looks wasted out of his mind. He tells me a story I can’t quite follow, but it seems the management is trying to throw him out of the club and the night hasn’t even begun.

The stage sat in the corner at an angle. There is a double-door to the back parking lot located behind the drum kit. The crowd stood at the edge of the stage, and even at this early-hour most looked rowdy and drunk. I picked up the drumsticks, eager to get the show on the road.

Part of my drumming style was that I stood up while I played. Since I began playing again I had not attempted to do so, but I wanted to stand up once or twice during the evening just as a reminder of my old shtick. I had it all planned out that I would wait until the third song and stand for a short guitar solo, then again later in the set. My plan was to keep it short so I didn’t exhaust myself.

A few seconds before the first song started I sat down behind the drums. I felt like there was a wall between the audience and myself. I knew right then my plan was going into the garbage. The guitarist started the song and I rose to my feet and stood for the entire tune. From that position I could overlook the audience as I played. There was a wall of people twenty feet deep crammed against the stage.

In the days when I was a drummer I never made eye contact with audience members. As a singer in The Imperial Orgy, audience contact is paramount. Now instinctively, even standing behind the drum kit I found myself making eye contact with audience members. With the recognition, men raised their glasses into the air. Women tended to have a different reaction.

When the first song ended the audience roared. A woman and her daughter kept yelling to me from the stage’s edge as if they had something important to tell me. I went over to see what they wanted and the mother yelled, “My daughter says, ??? ??? ?? ???? ??? ???.”

I had no idea what she was saying so I smiled and nodded my head.

“Is that true,” she demanded.

I shrugged my shoulders and returned to the drum kit.

During the second song I peered across the crowd. Chrissanne was dancing and looking back with a sweet smile. Deb returns my glance with a mischievous grin. Robin danced with her arms raised in the air. Then to the right of the stage I spotted Marnie.

At one time Marnie was the apple of my eye. It had been many years since I last saw her, but she looked amazing. The passing years only made her look better and sexier. Although blue-eyed blondes are not usually my type, in my younger days I thought she was the best looking girl in town. Since I had last seen her at lot had happened in her life, but to look at her you would never have thought a day had passed.

She was a little light on the backside, but otherwise an incredible beauty. She still had the body of a teenager, her form was lean and tight, between the top of her jeans and her shirt her stomach was smooth and flat. Her breasts were just large enough to fire the imagination. The sight of her made me go a little crazy.

Between the second and third song I went to her and hugged her, “You look better than ever,” I whispered into her ear.

“Keep saying that,” she replied, “and you look really great yourself.”

When I first met Marnie she was a child of thirteen, but already looked like a woman. At that young age she followed Friction around, somehow getting into bars and wild late-night parties. With quiet and coyness, the little girl transformed herself into a woman of mysterious beauty.

We became friends during those days. She would come and spend evenings with me at my house. At the back door as she took her leave, long looks would pass between us, but we never shared so much as an innocent kiss. I was in a relationship and true to my partner, even though my heart had already fled with this young angel.

Years later she told a friend of hers that we had been sleeping together, even though I had never laid a finger on her. Her friend told my girlfriend causing untold troubles for me, and creating a rift that never quite healed.

Whatever innocence Marnie once had, as the years passed that innocence was lost. Rumors were whispered of her sexual exploits. Every guy in town claimed to have had her. Then one day she went to the hospital and gave birth to a boy. The unlikely story was that she kept the pregnancy a secret from everyone, even her family, until the day the child was born.

A year or two later I became single and tried to get her to go out with me, but it never worked out. I assumed she just wasn’t interested. Not long after, she married a police officer.

Years passed and she all but left my mind. Many women had come and gone and the past seemed very distant. Then about a year ago I called a Lewistown club to discuss a concert date, Robin was working there as a waitress and answered the phone. After a little chitchat I inquired, “How is your little sister doing?”

“She getting by, it’s been tough though,” she replied.

“Why, what’s going on,” I asked.

“I thought you knew. Troy, her husband, died of cancer.”

As it horrible as it seems, the thought crossed my mind that perhaps one day I would have an opportunity to see Marnie again. Now actually seeing her I felt excited and agitated. I think she could sense what I was feeling, and to tease me she would wave, blow kisses, and lick her lips seductively at me. It was truly maddening. She made me stupid like a nervous schoolboy.

Despite the fact that I was losing my cool over Marnie, throughout the set my stamina was buoyed by the energy from the audience. Between songs I paced back and forth behind the drum kit, unable to bring myself down from the heightened state of aggression I had reached.

The last song of the set was a tough one for me. It required a constant pounding on the floor tom with my right hand. I sat down until the final verse, during which the guitars dropped out, at which point I stood up and raised the volume level, pounding the drums as hard as I could.

When the song ended I grabbed my brown leather jacket and ran out the back door. Soon Debra came out and looked up at me with a naughty grin.

“So who do you want tonight, Chrissanne or me? “ she asked.

Only half joking I responded, “I want you both, of course,” as I pulled her hair back and kissed her neck.

As more people come out the door I snuck off and went to the front of the building where I met Jeff Gaines. Jeff is a folk singer who had a hit on the adult contemporary charts with an acoustic version of Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes. Signed to Elektra Records, he toured Europe with Tom Petty, and America with Melissa Ethridge. Jeff is a longtime Friction fan and drove in from Philly for the show.

A little later I returned to the back parking lot and rested against the side of a pickup truck. Soon Marnie came out and wrapped her arms around me. Taking her into my own arms I said, “I’m sorry about the events in your life.”

“Oh well, that’s life, “ she replied without emotion.

“You’re still the best looking woman in the room,” I teased.

She responded with a slow full kiss on my lips. Her body felt wonderful in my arms. Just then Jeff walked out the door, and seeing us in an embrace, turned away in embarrassment.

As we broke our kiss she whispered, “Take me away tonight. Anywhere you want.”

“I can’t tonight, but give me your number.”

She rolled her eyes disdainfully and shook her head.

“Caeser, take me tonight.” she said.

I dropped my eyes in frustration. I want her, but it just isn’t in the cards. One thing I know is that if you reject a woman, you usually don’t get another chance. She turns and walks away haughtily, like a small town princess with better things to do than waste time with me.

During the second set the audience seemed to be in even more of a frenzy. The ten-year old daughter of our guitarist Joe Martin, was standing at the edge of the stage. Suddenly a young man knocked her down and jumped on the stage and started dancing. Joe was understandably furious and pushed the guy off the stage.

A little later someone threw a beer bottle that shattered on the wall behind me. Soon after another one hit me in the middle of the chest. Brian snuck in the back door and began dancing behind me. Two security people ran across the stage and chased him out the door. The bedlam was becoming violent.

Throughout the set there was another woman who kept making eye contact with me. Her friend called me over to the edge of the stage and said, “This is Becky, she’s getting into you.” Trying to be polite I asked Becky, “Is this the first time you’ve seen Friction?”

She nodded her head without speaking. Feeling a bit awkward I excused myself and returned to the drum kit. As the night progressed Becky seemed to be increasingly intent on selling herself from the edge of the stage. Through sheer force of will her body seems to glow. Her white flesh swells and vibrates. Desire magically transforms her in a manner that is glorious to behold.

During the song Musical Chairs Marnie jumps onto the stage and starts dancing behind me. I kiss her on the cheek as I play. She is in her glory as all eyes are on locked her form.

During the encore Craig tells the audience he loves them for the tenth time. It all seems rather good-natured behavior for an old school punk band. We play three covers songs by the Talking Heads, David Bowie, and The Clash, as the audience sings along. Some seem to still have the same haircuts they did in the 80s.

“Do we still look as sexy as we did back then?” Craigs asks. For the first time the roar of approval was not quite what we might have hoped. “Maybe we weren’t even sexy then, just angry,” he responds.

As we came to the end, my body was wracked with pain and exhaustion. On the final note I ran outside trying to catch my breath. Someone came out and called me back in. “No more encores,” I thought in my head.

Inside it was a rock star moment. The crowd was reaching out their hands to the band members. I went to the edge of the stage and began shaking hands with people, I signed drumsticks, T-shirts, and photos, the women hugged and kissed us. A male friend of mine mocked me, holding out his arms and screaming in a high voice, “Oh Caeser kiss me.” I grabbed him and kissed him on the ear.

Heading back outside I rested against the pickup truck beside Jeff. People began to pour out the back door. In a row, Debra, Chrissanne and Marnie came out and headed towards me. As they circled me I felt like trouble was brewing so I backed away from the group. Debra cornered me by the doorway. She was drunk and aggressive, with her arm against the door blocking my way and her body against me she said, “Are you going with Chrissanne and I tonight?”

I apologized, explaining that I can’t tonight.

“You have my number, callme” she offers.

As I pull away Marnie comes up to me, “Do you want to be with that?” she hisses sarcastically in reference to Debra, “cause if you do, just let me know.”

I say, “No, but I have to be polite.”

Marnie pushed herself against me and I sat back on a guitar amp. She stroked my cock outside my jeans as she purred, “Take me somewhere tonight.”

“I can’t tonight,” I answered.

“Yes, tonight,” she insists.

“I can’t believe I’m saying no to you,” I moan, “I’ve been waiting fifteen years for you.” Her body is pressed against me, making me weak with desire. I want her so much that I feel sick inside.

“C’mon, what are you going to do with me,” She pleads.

The thought arises in my head that as I joke I should say, ‘marry you,’ but I catch the words before they come out of my mouth. The mere fact that the thought would come to my mind scares me. What the hell is this woman doing to me? In my mind I tell myself that she doesn’t have a lick of sense, it’s likely she’s never read a book, a year down the road I wouldn’t have a thing to say to her, but the arguments I make to myself are to no avail. At this moment I am twenty-two again and in my arms I hold the most beautiful girl in town, and nothing else matters. Her presence has unearthed some long-buried youthful folly. I am a fool before her. I feel as if I could fall into her like a dream.

Finally discouraged by my rejections she turns and walks away from me. Between turning down the threesome with Debra and Chrisanne, and passing up a long awaited chance to take Marnie, I feel half-deranged. My body aches from the drumming. I am exhausted, but my mind is wired. My emotions are raw.

The crowd was beginning to thin so I walked into the room. Becky comes up to me like a lady in waiting. I say, “Thanks for coming, I hope I see you again.”

Her face is emotionless, but her eyes reveal a trace of disappointment. She is a lovely woman. I feel like I am at a feast where the delicacies are free of charge, but I am not allowed to eat.

There is a strange air of emotion in the room. I am usually not the hugging type, but men who would normally never hug me, come up and embrace me without inhibition. I see Kit, a friend from early high school days. “No matter what, we go way back,” he says with a note of sadness in his voice.

Even Ron Boi, The Imperial Orgy’s first bass player, who usually calls me Caeser Stink and seems angry about the past, now embraces me with genuine emotion.

Robin comes up and hugs me then says, “Watch out for my little sister, she’s on the prowl.”

I’m not sure what I was trying to say, but I stammer, “she….she…”

As she walks away Robin turns back to me and asks, “Did I make you blush?”

I notice Marnie across the room. She’s like a butterfly flitting from man to man. Every man she speaks with tries to embrace her or get his hands on her body. She flirts for a minute then squirms away and goes to the next one. She’s got so much to offer, it’s hard to understand why she is so desperate for attention. Watching her brings the flavor of lead to the pit of my stomach.

I pass Karen Sue, a female buddy from grade school days. When I was in sixth grade, she was in eighth and seemed much wiser in the ways of the world. She looked out for me like an older sister. Even though I’ve barely spoken to her since grade school she says, “I love you.”

“You too,” I respond without thinking.

“I know you do,” she replies with a solemn understanding.

Love and emotion are thick in the air, but somehow it all seems a bit sad. Somehow the surface has been peeled back and we all became existentialist viewing life as a whole. Saying the things that usually remain unsaid. The love she expressed was the love of life and sweet memories of the past. Spoken with the knowledge that life passes by far too quickly, and that our shared experiences are what mean the most when death sums up the final tally.

As I look around the room I see the faces of the friends of my youth, their faces scarred with experience and worn with time. Most haven’t seen each other in many years. For tonight they once again taste the vitality of youth. So many have walked a rocky road and are still looking for something in life. The mixture of warm cheer and sadness is a bit heartbreaking.


I collect Heather and head for the hotel. I am wired and restless. We are expecting friends to come by for a late night party, but there is no alcohol to help me unwind. Heather is dressed in black knee-high boots, a short black skirt, and a gold blouse made of small metal links. Sitting on the couch with her feet on the coffee table and her knees in the air, I masturbate her. Before she comes, there is a knock at the door. Not taking the time to wash her fluids off my hands, I open the door and shake hands with my guests.

The first in is Robert L. Brown, a local filmmakers with a bizarre comedic outlook on the world. He once acted in my short film “ A Message From Satan.” With him is Gregg Specht. Gregg was one of the few people in our crew who had any business sense. His family made some money selling caffeine look-alike pill. Pills that appear to be prescription amphetamine, but are actually filled with caffeine and vitamins. As an adult he took over the business and took it legitimate, and then expanded to tanning salon equipment and products.

Soon Friction bassist Jon Mertz arrived with his girlfriend Erica. No one had any alcohol, but the rest shared a joint as we watched a video of the night’s performance. At about 3:30 AM my body began to ache and my mind was fading with exhaustion. There was also a sharp pain emerging in my chest.

When my guests leave I collapse on the bed expecting to fall into a deep sleep. Unfortunately my mind is too wired to sleep. I toss and turn into the morning hours. Visions of Marnie standing at the edge of the stage haunt my disoriented mind. Finally after 5AM I fell into a troubled sleep.

At 7:30 I awoke, my body still aching, and my chest filled with sharp intense pain. I am so exhausted I can’t think clearly about what I am experiencing. The chest pains begin to scare me. The anxiety makes it harder to think clearly. I ask Heather to get dressed and explain that I am going to the hospital. Still half asleep, we dress and head out of the hotel.

Outside it is a perfect fall morning. Puffy white clouds are suspended in blue skies. The mountains look like mirages. The entire panorama looks like a giant painting set against the horizon. Given that I fear I may be dying of a heart attack, nature’s beauty takes on a bitter vitality that my eyes try to absorb greedily.

We get into the Explorer and begin to drive. Somehow the car got locked into low 4-wheel drive and won’t come out. As we drive to the hospital the car rumbles and shakes. The noise heightens my anxiety. The whole thing is a surreal nightmare.

I walked into the hospital and explained my situation. Immediately they put me into a wheelchair and pushed me into the emergency room. They put me on a bed and a team of nurses swarmed around me. One took my blood pressure, another pasted stickers on my chest for an EKG, another stabbed a needle into my arm and drew blood, another put a plate behind my back, while another pulled up a large machine and x-rayed my chest, and yet another asked questions while writing on a clip board. It looked like a bad scene for ER. I felt like an old Buick being ravaged for parts in the junkyard. For the finale a nurse put an IV in my arm and injected me with drugs. A creepy, cold feeling, traveled up my arm as the saline entered my body.

Then suddenly they all disappeared and I was left alone waiting and wondering…for two hours. Fear of death is a horrible thing. My father faced death with such calm. The only complaint he ever uttered was once when he turned to my sister and asked, “Why does this dying have to be so hard?” The fear is like a bad acid trip. Colors become vivid and the air shakes. Usually it is the fear itself that kills you.


As the 2nd hour crawled to an end the pain in my chest began to subside and I became more concerned about the pain in my stomach from not eating. Finally the doctor came and said I was OK, I had just strained a muscle in my chest. Perhaps from being hit with a bottle I thought to myself.

Grateful to be alive, I left for New York feeling overwhelmed by the events of the last twenty-four hours. An hour into the drive I began to fall asleep so we pulled over by the Susquahanna River and took a nap. Afterwards the long ride home was made longer by an hour sitting in construction traffic. We arrived in New York at 10PM. Since the hour was late we threw my mattress on the floor and passed out.

In the morning I awoke to find that Heather was stroking my erect penis. Still exhausted and half-asleep, she mounted me like a jungle gym. I cleared my vision enough to see that she was wearing a T-shirt from the concert. It was black with a large white Friction logo in the middle of it. As she rode me the logo bounced in and out of my field of vision, Friction, Friction, Friction…

I closed my eyes to make it all go away. My life makes no sense to me. There is too much and too little. I can’t bring the picture into focus. I dread facing Monday. The incredible and exciting experiences that punctuate my life, also make the mundane existence of day-to-day life more meaningless.

America Essay Pt VI - A Slap Of Reality

I met Jodi the next morning at a busy outdoor mall area. She was conservatively dressed because we were attending a Mormon church-service that would include a sermon on 9/11.

Inside the large temple we took seats in the very back. Although the wounds of 9/11 were still fresh, and I was more susceptible to sentimentality than at any other time of my life, the sermon was an absolute bore. The preacher droned on with a voice drained of any sign of passion. Soon I was wishing for just a little speaking-in-tongues, or maybe some snake handling to liven things up. But there wasn’t even a soulful gospel choir to raise the spirit.

At the end we drank a thimbleful of water in a ritual so devoid of visceral meaning that I might as well have been drinking tap water from the men’s room sink. I guess this is the kind of squeaky-clean religion that we can blame for unleashing Donnie & Marie on the world. Perhaps this what happens to the heirs of white Europeans when alcohol content is reduced to a 3.2 per cent and you need a photo ID to purchase soda with caffeine in it. Take away our stimulants and sedatives and we become as vibrant as Wonder Bread.

That evening we went to Christopher’s apartment. I must say, considering that in theory, I was his rival for Jodi’s attention, both he and Jeff were as hospitable as could be. Christopher’s bachelor pad was decked out with Halloween decoration spider webs, medieval weaponry, and assorted sci-fi toys.

By way of entertainment Christopher treated us to a show and tell of his BDSM toy box. As he demonstrated each device he often made spanking motions in the air, and seemed to be imagining using them on Jodi. At one point he took a few playful swats at her, which was greeted with a mild reprimand.

At night’s end he graciously offered to let me stay at his place, but I felt more at home in my usual bed in the back of the Blazer.

I awoke with the morning light, hungry and in need of a men’s room. I had slept along the street of a residential neighborhood lined with pretty white houses. I decided to take a walk and explore Salt Lake City. The city seemed to be set upon the slope of a mountain ridge. As I walked toward the heart of the city I traveled downhill, which provided a panoramic view of the place.

The city was sparkling clean. Not a shrub was out of place. No garbage, no littered streets. Everything was healthy. Everything was good. The city didn’t even appear to be pock-marked with the porn shops, strip clubs, or fetish shops like good ole’ Gotham was. Only private clubs serve alcohol, and even those looked respectfully clean.

The place was also oddly devoid of blacks, Latinos, or any of those other pesky minorities. But I must confess that being around nothing but white people always gives me a bit of the creeps.

Despite the squeaky clean appearance something seemed askew. Nature is made of light and darkness. If you upset that balance the results can be ugly. Repress one side of the balance and it can transform into something evil.

As I walked past picture-perfect homes, immaculately groomed lawns, and sterile looking business fronts, I had the odd feeling that the sidewalks were about to break open and all the pent-up darkness would burst out into the open air.

I have noticed that Puritanism often gives birth to alcoholism, drug addictions, unsafe sexual practices, and criminal behavior of all sorts. There is a Hindu saying that goes, “each extreme creates its opposite.” Nature demands balance. When puritans tell people that they are evil for having natural human instincts, people will begin to believe it, and then play it all out with self-destructive behavior.
The hometown of my youth has been scourged by this dynamic.

Carl Jung had a theory that the visions in the book of Revelations were brought-on by a psychic eruption caused by living in a community of Christians, who in the process of trying to live up to the high ideals of love and goodness that Christ offered, had created a repressed psychic imbalance. The repressed impulses finally broke through with a hallucinogenic vision of death and destruction.

I believe a similar principle might be at work across America. America is a country founded by puritans and criminals. The Puritans were trying to escape religious persecution, the criminals were trying escape prison. This dynamic of extremes still polarizes our culture. In recent years America has been gripped by a wave of religious fundamentalism. What few are aware of is that during that same time there has been a parallel explosion of sexual exploration in urban America. Communities of people interested in alternative lifestyles seem to be crawling out of the woodwork in every city across the country.

Walking the streets of Salt Lake City one could feel that things were out of balance. The questions I kept asking myself was ‘How does all the repressed energy reveal itself?”

Down in the shopping district I went inside a mall where there was a food court with tables and chairs. There were a few large-screen TVs sitting around the court and all were tuned to CNN. I had not seen a newscast in a few days so I took a seat close to one of the screens.

It seemed the horrible images of the towers collapsing were repeated endlessly. For the first time I saw the images of the dust cloud that rolled through the streets when the buildings fell. I kept wondering what I would have done if I had been there.

I always arrived to work early so I definitely would have been in the office. Maybe I would have cowered under my desk? Or perhaps I would have just stayed with my co-workers and followed the herd? On the other hand maybe I would have run to the towers to see if I could be of any help? If so, I might be dead right now. The images on the screen made that much clear.

Although days had passed since 9/11, my mind was still enveloped in a haze. Each moment in the day was weighed down by an undercurrent of mourning, regardless of how light things might appear on the surface.

That afternoon Jodi, Jeff, Christopher and I went to a German festival at a park high in the mountains. We ate sausage and sauerkraut while a polka band played. The musicians were decked out in Robin Hood hats and green shorts held up by suspenders.

The four of us were a strange crew. Given the messy details of the tangled social web, one might have expected it to be far less friendly than it actually was. Perhaps it is a tribute to Mormon goodwill that I was treated, or perhaps tolerated, with such hospitality.

In the center of it all was Jodi, the apple of everyone’s eye, and the reason we were all here together, cheerily eating sausage and bouncing our heads to lively polka rhythms. Then there was Christopher, who seemed to have devoted his life to Jodi, body and soul. And there was Jeff, the long suffering, or maybe not suffering at all, husband of a marriage of convenience. I could never quite make out what his take on it all was. And I, of course, was just here for the sausage and polkas.

Jodi and I left the boys behind and rode to the mountaintop on a sky car suspended on cables. Unfortunately I have an irrational fear of heights. I can control it intellectually, but my body still reacts. Even when I watch TV, high camera angles overlooking drop offs make my stomach turn. As we soared through the air, even though I tried to play it cool, my body tensed up. Jodi put her hand on my arm and whispered, “It’s OK,” in a soothing tone of voice.

At the top of the mountain the air was cold. I stood behind Jodi and put my arms around her as we looked out over the mountains and valleys. The air was crisp and clear. Neither of us were dressed for the cold, making it even more pleasurable to feel the warmth of her body against me. The thin air of the high altitude made my mind go woozy and the beauty of the majestic landscape as I held her made my heart go soft.

I was well past the halfway mark on my journey to the far ocean. Someday I would return to a home that was wounded and mourning, but that was still far in the future. Standing there with her in my arms was a moment onto itself. It was one of those rare moments when you awaken to life as you live it, and realize no events elsewhere in the world, nothing in the future or the past, could take away this moment.

On the way back to town Jodi was driving and I sat in the passenger seat. Christopher and Jeff sat in the back. The highway wound down the mountain, snaking through sharp turns and running along steep cliffs. Jodi drove like a wildcat, pushing the speed limits and following close behind slower drivers.

“Don’t follow so close,” Jeff growled from the back seat.

She pulled back for a while, then began to push it again. It had been a few years since I had rode with another driver and the whole thing had me sitting tensely in my seat.

I always thought it said something about a person’s personality when they drive aggressively, and I was surprised to find that she did so. Although it certainly wasn’t the first time that I met a seemingly demur young lady who pushes everything to the limit when behind the wheel. Between bracing myself on each turn, I tried not to let on how on edge I was.

Having survived our ride down the mountain, we pulled over to get gas. Christopher got out to pump the gas and Jodi went inside to pay. When she came back out she was carrying a small white bag.

“He gave me doughnuts,” she said with thinly disguised satisfaction.

“What?” Jeff asked.

“That guy, I went up to pay for the gas and he gave me doughnuts.”

“Here we go,” Christopher said, shaking his head with a weary laugh. “Jodi lives in a free McNugget world. Everywhere we go people give her free stuff.”

“The guy at McDonalds always gives me a couple extra nuggets,” She explained as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.

Later that evening Jodi, Christopher and I went to an apartment owned by her mother. He mother was away for a few days and offered to let me stay there while she was gone. It was a large apartment decorated with taste appropriate to an elderly Mormon lady. It was immaculately clean and even had a silver Christmas tree in the living room that apparently stood all year long.

Jodi and I sat on the couch and Christopher rested on a lounge on the opposite side of the room. We chatted and joked lazily. The evening had an air of boredom that I rarely experience in New York where there is always some frenetic activity filling one’s time.

Jodi got out a book a family photos and took me on a tour of her past. They looked like an average American family in the 1970’s. She had two sisters and one brother. Her father owned or managed a restaurant, I believe.

“They treated us like little princesses,” she said warmly.

The color in the photos had faded into hazy sepia tones, giving them a slightly haunting appearance. The males wore polyester and shiny silk shirts, the little girls wore Sunday school dresses. As I paged through her past I searched for answers to the mystery of this woman who was both extraordinary and odd.

Although the photos presented the appearance of a happy middle class family, it seemed something must have gone of course. Her father was now out of the picture and estranged from his wife and children. Her brother was a junkie who was hiding out from the law. Her sisters seemed to have strings of failed marriages, and one had ruined Jodi’s credit rating by running up piles of dept in her name, and without her knowledge or permission.

They were a good Mormon family. How could things have turned out as they did? I thought back to the dark undercurrent I felt when walking those pristine streets of Salt Lake, wondering how the repressed energies reveal themselves.

There was a soft warm feeling in the room. Jodi sat beside me, her hand resting gently on my arm as she explained the stories behind each photo. When someone opens up and shares their past with you it is always a moment of vulnerability.

I pulled back a few inches to look at her. She was like a picture I couldn’t quite get into focus. A jigsaw puzzle whose center pieces had been carefully hidden beneath the cushions of the couch. She was intelligent, but acted with naiveté. She was good, kind, pure of heart, but chaos and confusion swirled around her. She was chaste with husband and suitors, yet drawn to salaciousness.

I tried to make sense of the bizarre stories that trickled out from time to time. There was the boy who attempted suicide after she broke up with him. When she went to visit him afterwards, his mother chased her out of the house.

I seemed every man she came in contact with became obsessive, husbands abandoned wives, gentlemen became madmen in her presence. One suitor so completely lost control of his senses that during a quiet conversation he unexpectedly jumped her, penetrated her, and came the instant he touched her skin, and all in about ten seconds time.

Saudi princes offered her the lavish life of a millionaire’s concubine. Suitors showered her with gifts with no expectation of finding her favor. Even women were not immune to her enchantments. One frustrated girl grabbed a knife and cut a gash into Jodi’s forearm in order to “give her something to remember her by.” A few days later the poor girl attempted suicide. Although I never met the woman, somehow I ended up being her suicide counselor over the Yahoo instant messenger.

In casual conversation these stories would slip out. Even in Utah she managed to catch the eye of celebrities. As a teen, a member of the heavy metal band The Scorpions became her frustrated suitor. Artists wanted to draw her. Photographers wanted her as a model. Everyone wanted to possess her. All would fail.

You never knew what was coming next. At any moment she might be torturing herself while studying the disciplines of the geisha. On one visit her skin was slightly burned. It turned out she had taken part in a religious ritual where her skin was coated with a flammable substance and she was lit aflame.

She was kaleidoscopic. A shape-shifter who performed the dance of Kali on the sterile streets of Middle America. She was a shattered house of mirrors that sparkled in the void, hypnotizing all who beheld the spectacle, while concealing a non-existent point of ultimate weight and gravity.

As we paged through the photo album and I pondered the mystery of her, my mind wandered back to her second trip to New York City.

On this trip it was preplanned that she would stay with Heather. Among the fun times on this visit was a disastrous night at Webster Hall, a four-story dance club in the East Village. Although I’m not a big fan of the club scene, I started out the evening with a positive attitude.

As we entered the club I was feeling a bit proud to have two lovely women at my side. We got some overpriced drinks and headed for a side room on the fourth floor. It was around midnight, which is early in the evening for a New York City club, so the place was pretty empty. The room was dark except for a few black lights and some lamps with red shades. The club music echoed in from the main hall that was right outside the door.

The girls were dancing and flirting with each other and I was taking it all in when four club boys came over to our area and made a show of being loud and obnoxious. Immediately I began to feel aggressive. I’m not a tough guy, but when I am angry I become fearless to the point of stupidity. I suppose it’s that nasty mix of Irish, Polish, and Apache blood handed down from my father and which made him such a wild man when in one of his endless barroom brawls.

I just wanted to have a nice evening with my lovely companions without any trouble, so we moved out onto the balcony of the Grand Ballroom. The three of us stood at the balcony’s edge looking down onto the dance-floor. From that lofty vantage point it looked like some kind of hedonistic pagan festival as hundreds of scantily clad bodies twisted and twirled, writhed and rocked underneath the flashing lights. Puffs of fog filled the room with a multicolored haze. At the end of the gigantic ballroom two large pedestals were arranged symmetrically on either side of a giant video screen. On each pedestal a G-string attired goddess did the bump and grind.

I became so taken in with the spectacle that when I turned around I hadn’t noticed that Jodi had left my side. Through the shadows I could see that she was talking to man in the corner. As long as I could keep an eye on her I wasn’t too concerned.

In a place like Webster Hall, if you get separated from someone you might never see them again. In a scene like this, nice young ladies have been known to disappear in a flash, only to turn up years later as crack whores spotted on Cops or as junkie sidekicks on America’s Most Wanted.

In public Jodi could be a challenge. She had an innocence about her that made me feel like I had to protect her. (I once put her on the wrong subway train that left her lost in a bad neighborhood, and about went out of my mind till I found her.)

On the other hand, that innocent demeanor seems to bring out the lecher in men. She would naively insist that the world was simply full of very friendly people. (All of who just happened to have erections, I might add.) It was a deadly dynamic to get tangled up in.

But this wasn’t Salt Lake City, and it sure as hell wasn’t Kansas. In Webster Hall men are aggressive, and they will push the boundaries until a woman stops them forcefully. Some women know how to limit such behavior without much effort. Jodi didn’t seem to possess those skills.

I went to the bar to get a drink and when I returned she was nowhere to be found. Heather and I hung out for a bit, assuming she would return. Once some time passed I decided I better go look for her.

Webster Hall is a huge place with multiple dance-floors and endless side rooms and hallways. Trying to find someone in this maze was almost impossible. As I wandered from room to room, trying to see through the darkness and colored lights, I became increasingly annoyed to be spending the evening this way. After lapping the place a couple times I returned to the balcony to find that Heather had gotten sick of waiting and went off on her own.

The place was beginning to get crowded. I stood watching the people all around me. This was definitely not my scene. Club culture always seemed shallow to me. Perhaps the dull look in everyone’s eyes came from too much time spent listening to the soulless music that blasted through the place. With inhuman precision, a giant electronic bass drum thumped flat on every quarter note. It was the same mind-numbing beat in every song, and so oversimplified that even the stiffest white folks could find it. None of those confusing syncopated rhythms found in funk music, which require you to actually feel the groove before you can move your body to the music.

To look at the men it seemed that John Travolta’s turn as king of the guidos in Saturday Night Fever still echoed through their fashion sense. The men were all about easy pussy and the women were all about men with money. It was the human mating ritual distilled to its basest elements. The men were trying to get it for free and then flee the scene, the women were hoping the product was so good that it would seal the deal on along-term partnership.

As I stood alone in the midst of the growing crowd I wondered how I allowed myself to get stuck in this place. With my temperature starting to rise I decided to take another tour of the place looking for the girls. Heather had been through this scene and knew how to take care of herself, but I still wanted to find her since the plan was to spend an evening with friends. As I strode through dark hallways, up and down endless flights of stairs, past crowded bars, and weaved in and out of dancing couples, I became increasingly angry to be wasting my time with such nonsense.

In one room a man walked through the crowd perched on ten-foot high stilts. Couples made out on couches, and go-go dancers shimmied on every bar. On an average night this place made Fellini’s Satyricon look like an Avon party.

Finally I found Jodi in the basement rap room with a large black guy whose body was pressed tight against her from behind as they danced. The rap room was a small room with red walls that was always packed tight with wall-to-wall people. I’d been in that room many times and it was always thick with sex and violence. The men were there to fight or fuck. The line between a club dance and a lap dance did not exist there.

I lead Jodi out of the room to a lobby outside the women’s bathroom.

“I’m not one of your boys, treat me with some respect,” I yelled angrily.

As I grabbed Jodi’s arm to lead her out of the basement, she responded with a hearty slap across the face. And it wasn’t just a little slap. She delivered a full force whack that left me stupefied. Stars swirled around my head, and people stood staring at the spectacle with bemused looks on their faces.

“You don’t even know me!” she replied, her eyes filling with tears.

I have to confess that the shock of the slap pacified me a bit. Somehow we made our way up the stairs just as Heather was passing by. I lead them out the back door into the fresh air. The three of us stood leaning against the velvet ropes while I tried to get my wits about me. After some conciliatory conversation we decided to go back in and try to have a good time.

Jodi smooth-talked the bouncer into letting us slip in the back door. This time we chose a smaller disco room and settled into a soft couch in a quiet corner. As I nursed my vodka the girls decided they wanted to dance. Jodi ask if I would hold her purse while she danced.

Once you find yourself holding a woman’s purse, somehow you immediately feel like a eunuch. So here I was sitting alone on the couch as the girl’s danced to some long-forgotten 70’s disco hit. Usually I am not a jealous guy, and I am definitely not a violent person, just the opposite. Unfortunately this night seemed to bring out the worst in me.

Many times during my youth I watched in horror as dear old Dad exploded into a violent rage over some slight from a drunken lout in one of the beer joints he frequented. Barely over five foot in height, he was a barroom-brawler who could go from calm to ballistic at the drop of a hat. Because of this, it has been a lifelong project to control such impulses within myself.

In my younger days I had a tendency to let people walk all over me without a word of complaint. As I became older and supposedly wiser, I have been careful not to allow myself to be in situations where I felt disrespected or became entangled in people’s dramas. Despite this I seemed to be regressing into behavior I thought I’d outgrown long ago.

On the disco floor a large muscular black man began to dance with the girls. He focused on Jodi as the dancing became increasingly dirty. What was pissing me off was that he was completely ignoring Heather. It seemed to me that the etiquette of dirty dancing should prescribe that it is rude to ignore one woman when invading a pair of dancers.

In her high school days Heather was the ugly duckling who never had a date. Now that she had bloomed and those days were long gone, she always showed complete confidence. Still I felt protective of her feelings and it seemed insulting that she should be so obviously ignored.

As the dancing steadily became more erotic between Jodi and this African Adonis, my blood began to boil. Completely losing my composure, I walked over to him and although he stood a good six inches taller than me, I grabbed him by the back of his neck and pulled his ear down to my mouth.

“Dance with her, don’t fuck her,” I shouted, “and give the other one some attention!”

I must say he took it all with a mild temperament. I strode back to mind Jodi’s purse while things cooled off with the dancers.
I felt like a fool. An image came to my mind of a nature documentary I once watched where an alpha male mountain goat was running around in a frenzy trying to protect his harem of nannies when another goat wandered into his territory.

Back in Salt Lake City Jodi turned the page in the photo album and laid her head on my shoulder. On the page I looked at the photo of a smiling little girl. With my index finger I traced the line of her face through the thin sheet of plastic that covered the photos. Wondering who this person truly is, her words after she slapped my face in the basement of Webster Hall, echoed in the recesses of my mind, “You don’t even know me.”

In my youth I had the arrogance to imagine I knew a lot about women. I theorized that being an artist opened me up to my own feminine side and allowed me to have more insight into their souls. Plus I had two older sisters, and growing up, I was always surrounded by female friends, making the ways of women familiar to my mind.

But the older I get the more I realize I know nothing of women. And perhaps it is this unfathomable mystery that enchants me so.

The Goddess Kali is the creator and destroyer, she is nature itself, she is the dark moist earth from which all of creation grows. Further she is the wheel of life around which man’s ceaseless activity swirls. Need we mention that man, born from the womb, spends his life trying to conquer that from which he came?

There was a time when I believed there was one woman and life without that one woman seemed unimaginable to me. I lost my self within her. I died and was reborn mired in her chaos. The flavor of her womb was still on my tongue as I shed the tears of separation.

It was she who asked me to reveal my wounds. She opened those wounds with the intent to apply a soothing ointment, but upon seeing how deep they went, drew her own dagger, concluding it was better to just complete the job. And I testify that she succeeded where all others had failed.

But as I look back over life, what I see is that people come and people go. The knowledge of love’s impermanence helps me to savor every moment, every smile, every act of kindness or beauty, every sweat soaked kiss or impassioned moan. The acceptance of that impermanence allows me to savor every drop of life’s essence and yet approach it with a sense of detachment. Possession is a fragile illusion, and people desire that which they cannot possess.

But also I cannot forget that through women I have traveled to foreign lands, eaten exotic foods, lived among strange cultures, and yet never left the shores of America. Through women I have danced to music in foreign tongues, bowed my head to strange gods, and breathed-in the odors of incense and spices unknown in the house of my humble beginnings. Every lover has been a teacher who taught new words, new ideas, and new customs with which to live day-to-day life.

In my secret mind I believe every one of them are with me at all times, that no matter what twisted paths their lives may take, we are wedded in spirit and will remain so until we settle into dust and our atoms mingle in the invisible electric dance that underlies the material world and upholds all of existence.