Nineteen

 

…Nineteen years, that is, since my double-lung transplant at the wondrous Cleveland Clinic (technically, I won’t hit nineteen years until August 26^th. Unless I step into an open manhole, I should make it.)*

My visit last weekend was both medical and pleasure. Besides my yearly checkup, I spent the weekend with my best friend Steve and his wife, Dede. Steve and I have been best friends since our first day of high school way, way, way back in the Nixon administration.**

My checkup was blissfully routine—my vital signs, breathing tests, chest x-ray and bloodwork were all unremarkable, which is remarkable. I’m a lucky man. I sat next to a woman in the lab waiting area and, as is my habit, nosily asked her, “Did you have a transplant?”

“Yes, lung, on April first,” she said. “Did you?”

It feels so great in situations like that to say, “Yes, in 2004.”*** I like to think laying that ancient date on patients like her gives them a renewed feeling of hope and possibility. She asked me if I ever get used to all of the medications. I told her yes. The whole routine has become routine for me and it will for her.

Then, amazingly, waiting for breathing tests on the ninth floor, I ran into another woman who had her transplant on April 21^st, and an almost identical conversation ensued. It felt great being an elder statesman of the transplant community.

The survival statistics say, sadly, that one of those women won’t make her sixth year anniversary. But nobody knows what the future has in store for them, or me, or any of us. Carpe diem!

* Don't put it past me

** Nixon seemed, then, to be the worst president imaginable. How naïve we were.

*** W seemed, then, to be the worst president imaginable. How naïve we were.

Song of the week(ish):

This Steely Dan outtake from the Gaucho sessions is making the rounds, and it gels perfectly with the rest of that album.

Here is part Thirteen:

While Danny was still working for Atari, he popped into a Record World store in the Syracuse suburb of Cicero and saw Abby Peterson. She was, at just nineteen, already the store assistant manager, which made sense. Abby was really sharp, smarter than Danny, and as big a music lover as he was, which was saying something. She was arrestingly pretty with spiked hair, a thousand-watt smile, and a voice like Peppermint Patty. She loved chatting with him about music and took great joy at mocking Danny’s mainstream tastes. “Bruce? He’s a squirrel! Mellencamp, yuk!,” she teased and then for emphasis made the universal gag me motion.

Her tastes were a bit more avant-garde. Since she was still a teenager, she naturally rejected most “popular” music. Her older brother, Scott’s punk sensibilities greatly influenced her; so did her boss, Phil Carfagno. Phil was an aspiring music producer and he exposed Abby to a wide variety of stuff that didn’t get played on the radio anywhere. Abby liked Lone Justice, the Beat Farmers, the Pixies, and the Cure. None of whom got played on “Casey Kasem.”  And she revered Marianne Faithful, ex-girlfriend of Mick Jagger and singer of the sixties hit “As Tears Go By.”

Abby thought Danny was kinda square but kinda cute, too. She thought he looked a little like Keith Richards, though Danny didn’t exactly consider that complimentary. She loved Keith, everything about him. Abby flirted with Danny every time he came in and he finally got the hint. He was six years older than her, but his immaturity probably cancelled that out, he figured. Danny finally screwed up the courage to ask her out and she said “yes.”

Hilariously, Danny decided that a first date with punk rocker Abby should be a James Taylor concert, at the State Fair, which was like inviting the Pope to a strip club. Abby probably considered James Taylor the antichrist, but she liked Danny and was a good sport. She turned out to be a really good sport because her date couldn’t find his car in the crowded parking lot after the show. It was a beautiful summer night, perfect for getting lost. Danny and Abby chatted and laughed and made the best of it as they searched. Literally a couple of hours later, Danny realized they were looking on the wrong parking level the whole time.

                Danny got lost, a lot, a trait he inherited from his father. Helen used to say Frank got lost turning around, which was sort of true.  Once, Danny and his friends set up a green ten-person tent as a base at the Thousand Island Music Fest and settled in for three days of music. All but Danny, that is. “I left my sunglasses in the car,” he told Rich. “I’m going back to the car to get them. I’ll be right back.”

Rich, presciently, yelled to Danny, “Hey Rooms, don’t forget to use landmarks to get back. There are a lot of tents here.” By then, though, Danny was out of earshot. He eventually found the car, got his shades, but then turned around and all he saw were thousands of tents, most of them green.

He should’ve brought breadcrumbs.

Panicked and stoned (of course) Danny wandered around aimlessly, shouting “Rich! Dean! June!” hoping someone would answer, but after a while he was resigned to his fate. They wouldn’t find his body until after the festival.

                Inside the tent, Danny’s friends started getting worried after he was gone for about a half-hour. Rich said, “Why don’t we fan out and try to find him?” but then realized that he was also stoned and said, “Oh, that’s a bad idea,” laughed, and instead placidly rolled another joint.

Hours later, Dean heard a familiar voice, overcome with emotion and relief, outside the tent. “Oh my God, I found it! I can’t believe I found it!” said the voice, which belonged to Wrong Way Martini, the nickname Dean gave Danny after his escapade. Everyone laughed uproariously, and then Danny said, “Lets smoke a celebratory joint!” For the next three days, Wrong Way never ventured further than six feet from the safety of their home base.

Another time, while working for Atari, he parked outside the JC Penney entrance to the Arnot Mall in Horseheads, New York, went in and visited a few stores. When he left the mall it was during a torrential rainstorm. Naturally, Danny couldn’t find his car. He wandered around the parking lot in the driving rain for about ten minutes, screaming, “Where is my fucking car?” Finally, it dawned on him--he parked the car and entered the mall through the Penney’s entrance, but he exited through the opposite side of the mall on the Sears side. Danny would have required Superman’s x-ray vision to see the other side of the mall, where the Corporate Cruiser was parked.

Abby wasn’t attracted to Danny for his navigation skills, though. She truly liiked him, for him, and even grudgingly accepted his CF. They enjoyed each other’s company immensely, and Danny grew to love her family—her parents, Ruth and Otto, and her brothers and sisters. They made Danny feel welcome from day one. Abby’s laid-back personality contrasted nicely with his Type-A one. Abby had a wicked sense of humor, like Danny, and the two of them parried nonstop. Everybody loved Abby because she was so easy to like, agreeable, mellow and kind. The new couple dated steadily for a few months, but Abby got tired of schlepping to Danny’s apartment. Finally, one night they had the conversation—why not move in together? This was gonna be a big step for both of them. Abby had spent her whole life under her parents roof, and Rich was the only roommate Danny ever had.

The thing was, Danny and Rich had a great place that he would hate to leave if he got an apartment with Abby. The boys were now living in a formerly elegant apartment building on formerly elegant Park Street, on the (ditto) North side. The three-story brick building was located on the southeast corner of Park and Washington Square park. The park was really just a three-acre playground with a statue of—surprise!—George Washington in the center, and was bordered on all sides by old apartment buildings and a few single family homes.  

 The new apartment had high ceilings, lots of windows and two big bedrooms. The place had character. Sometimes, like in this case, “character” meant problems like the leaky ceiling that started dripping three weeks after they moved in. Buckets were arrayed throughout the apartment, but the  steady drip-drip-drip water torture drove Danny nuts. Six months later, there was a smoky three A.M, fire that roused Rich, who quickly woke Danny. A week later, Rich woke Danny up to another fire only a week later. Neither fire was serious, but deep sleep came with some difficulty for weeks.

Still, the boys loved the apartment.  Hardwood floors were a nice change from the wall-to-wall carpeting they had in the Baldwinsville place that was eventually dotted with a thousand pot seed burns.  The bathroom was tiled and had a clawfoot tub and a toilet with commercial flushing power. The toilet had to be reset if the power went out by banging on the flusher with a hammer. Old house, old quirks. They filled the apartment with furniture donated by Rich’s parents. At one time they had three sofas; two more than they really needed. The apartment had an enormous boiler in the basement, and steam heat in the winter easily offset the drafty windows--to a fault. The heat could be so oppressive, even on below-zero days, that they had to open the windows to cool off.

No discussion of Park Street was complete without the inimitable Mrs. Korczak. Jadwiga, a sixty-something Polish immigrant and WW II survivor, lived across the hall from the boys. She and her husband Zbigniew were empty nesters. Zbigniew worked for General Electric and Mrs. Korczak stayed in. Her adult children had long ago moved to far-flung spots in the U.S. and Europe, and she was often alone and lonely for company. The Korczaks were the only seniors in the building. She craved adult conversation and settled for chats with her two stoner neighbors. No matter how quietly the boys tried sneaking in, she heard them. Often, as soon as Danny turned the deadbolt of his door, the tell-tale click of her door followed. “Hello, Daniel. How are you today?...” Danny was always in a hurry to do nothing, really. He broke off those conversations as quickly as he could.

Which was something he ultimately regretted. Mrs. Korczak was a wonderful woman. She and Zbigniew were intelligent, pleasant, and worldly. They had lived a life Danny only knew of, often inaccurately, from movies and old newsreels. She never talked about it, but the numbers on her arm spoke loudly enough. They saw and experienced  the horrors of WW II, first hand. The only time Danny ever saw her angry was once when she spoke about Holocaust deniers. “No Holocaust? Tell that to my mother, and my sister, and Zbigniew’s whole family!” she exclaimed, her voice shaking, before she caught herself and the shield went back up. “And how are you today, Danny?”

She used to bake for the boys--cakes, pies, and other goodies. She also made them large dinner rolls which were delicious when warm but were hard as diamonds roughly thirty seconds after they cooled. The boys never refused the rolls—it would have hurt her feelings—but had to eat them when warm or they might have lost a tooth or two.      

One evening, the Korczaks invited the boys to their apartment. It was luxuriously appointed, with a couple of Tiffany lamps and sturdy and timeless Stickley furniture, a far cry from Danny and Rich’s dorm room chic. Zbigniew peppered them with questions: what did they want to do with their lives? Are they working toward those goals? He bore in like a Polish Mike Wallace. Zbigniew played them a Mort Sahl record and explained that Sahl was the father of the modern social comedian’s movement. Danny had heard of Sahl, maybe even seen him on Ed Sullivan, but wasn’t sure. This guy is good, but he ain’t no Carlin, thought Danny, not realizing that, without Mort Sahl, there wouldn’t have been a Carlin.

Forty years later, Danny himself was in his sixties, and he often thought about the Korczaks. They were history come alive, a horrible history but they represented, in the flesh, one of the worst times in human history. Much of the wisdom they tried to impart to the boys was wasted by Danny and Rich’s youth and marijuana.  Danny, especially, could have benefitted greatly from their guidance, callow as he was. Now, at sixty, he understood better how the Korczaks felt--invisible, or at least, irrelevant. Twenty- somethings naturally have their own culture and their own concerns. They don’t have much in common with, and often reject, their parents’ generation. Nobody in their twenties or thirties cares much about what the sixty-something Danny and his peers think. They don’t want to spend any more time with them than absolutely necessary, which was exactly the way Danny felt about Mrs. K in his twenties.

Now that Abby and Danny had decided to move in together, he needed to tell Rich. “Rooms, Abby and I are looking for our own place and I’m gonna be moving out, I think.” Danny had a habit then of qualifying declarative statements. There was no “I think” about it—he was moving out. “What do you think?” he said, again qualifying his previous statement.

Rich was surprised. He knew that Danny and Abby were getting serious but didn’t know they were that serious. “Well, that’s cool, Rooms. Life goes on, right? Debbie and I were talking about doing the same, but this just hastens our decision.” Debbie was Rich’s new girlfriend, a vivacious registered nurse. Danny liked her and was happy for Rich. “I think the easiest thing would be for one of us to move and one of us stay here, right?” They still had nine months on the lease.

Danny smiled. “That is a great idea. How do we decide who gets the place?”

Rich smiled back, and said, “I’ll play you for it.”

“I’ll play you for it,” meant “Chess.”

Danny and Rich played chess at least once a day. They were a study in contrasts; equally skilled but their playing styles reflected their personalities. Danny was rash and undisciplined, even reckless. He usually surveyed the board, looked for obvious traps, then quickly decided, “Ah, that’s a good move.” He liked to self-deprecatingly say his style was “Move first, evaluate later.” He was ultra-aggressive, and usually rushed his powerful queen out at the start, augmented by his pesky, dangerous knights. Sometimes, though, Danny’s queen was surrounded and lost, and the loss of his most powerful piece always led to Danny tipping his king over as he conceded defeat.

Rich was ultra-conservative. He never made a move without the next three already mapped out, and almost never made an unforced error. Danny was always surprised by the gift of a mistake by Rich and usually jumped all over it. Rich sometimes slowly fought back from one of those early errors and came back to win, but the opposite was almost never true.  His endgame, when there were fewer pieces and more empty space on the board, was far superior to Danny’s. Danny needed to take his time and play an error-free game to beat Rich, and that just didn’t happen that often.

The ”Contest For the Couches” (as it was billed) was set for the following Saturday, and the couches were filled. Abby, Debbie, Ann, Dean, Gary and Dale all came to root, the guys mostly to kibbitz. About seven o’clock, Dean hid a white pawn in his right hand and a black one in his left. “Ok, Rich, choose,” Dean said. Rich chose Dean’s right hand, so he was white and got first move, a slight advantage.

Rich started by bringing out his king’s knight. Danny mirrored that move. Rich predictably moved his queen out next and after only seven moves, had Danny’s king in trouble. Gary and Dale were both skillful chess players but that didn’t stop them from shouting out nonsensical things. Dale yelled out “Jump him!” (a checkers term) after every move. It was funnier each time he said it.

After nine moves, Rich had Danny’s king boxed in. Any miscalculation by Danny would have been fatal. He studied his limited options. Then Dean yelled “Yahtzee! You’ve got Yahtzee!” Danny shot him a dirty look, but then took some of the pressure off by swapping his knight for Rich’s bishop, and on the next move took Rich’s knight, as well. That gave Danny a power piece advantage (power pieces are rooks, knights and bishops, and of course, the queens) and completely broke Rich’s assault on his king.

“When is halftime? It’s gotta be halftime soon, right?” Gary said and added “Will we see highlights of the first half?” then did his best nasal Howard Cosell impression—“You are live, at the contest for the couches!” he shouted. Once he had the knight advantage, Danny blocked out the fake-moronic asides from his friends. They hurt Rich and his more cerebral style more than Danny’s seat-of-the-pants approach.

Or so he thought, because Rich then put Danny’s king in check, and after Danny was forced to move safely out of check, Rich captured his rook in the home row, a huge gain.

“You sunk my battleship!” Dean shouted.

                After a few moves, Rich used his remaining knight to protect his rooks. A few moves later, Danny’s queen was trapped in no-mans-land between Rich’s rook and Danny’s king. Danny had no choice but to take Rich’s rook, and then Rich took Danny’s queen.

                “Double Yahtzee!” Dean hollered, and Danny, furious with Dean and himself, started to say something, but shut up. It was Danny’s idea to have the guys over to watch the game. After that flurry of moves, Rich had Danny’s king in open water and his queen, knight and rook circled Danny’s king like a pod of orcas. Rich, boasting superior manpower and an excellent endgame, smelled blood as if they were orcas.

                “Hucklebucklebeanstalk!” Ann yelled out from the sidelines, as she tried to get in on the fun. Hucklebucklebeanstalk was a game they played as kids on Syracuse’s south side. It was more commonly known elsewhere as the “hot-cold” game. One kid hides the stone, and everyone else looks for it, with the hiding kid hinting, “Warmer…warmer….ice cold!” If you found it, you had to yell out “Hucklebucklebeanstalk!” before someone else did. Danny often asked other people what they yelled when they won the game. “Uh, ‘I found it,’ I guess,” was the common answer. What a bunch of bores.