Gentlemen prefer New Orleans

Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend.  Ladies speak highly of pearls as well.  Gentlemen prefer New Orleans.

No matter his vice of choice or his fancy, a gentleman prefers New Orleans.  Redheads, blondes, brunettes... coquettes, matrons, schoolmarms... librarians, debutantes, shop clerks, attorneys... dark, light, pale, dusky... calloused, polished, silky, hearty, demure, boisterous, shy or crafty... blue-eyed, green-eyed, gray-eyed, brown-eyed, doe-eyed, flinty-eyed... soft or coarse... dull or sharp... no matter his choice of vice or fancy, a gentleman prefers New Orleans.  

Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but New Orleans, a city that glitters and sparkles during all hours of every given day, is full of Gulf oysters plump with pillows of succulent and slippery meat.  A man may talk to a woman’s cleavage rather than look her full in the face.  The hand is quicker than the eye and beauty is both fleeting and permanent.  Look around.

Serpentine New Orleans winds along the banks of the mighty Mississippi River.  It spreads inland along tortuous blocks sandwiched between dry ridges and moist canals, levees and sink holes... the lay of the land is less solid than it seems.  A day in New Orleans has made sinners out of nuns and it has made saints out of sportsmen.  A gambling man bets his life when he sets foot on New Orleans’s pavement.  Watch your step.  There are potholes and hurdles along the walkways that parallel New Orleans’ neutral grounds.

Baubles and bangles and buckles and beads catch the sun’s rays as it sets behind the East Bank.  No deposit is safe.  Shifting soils continually settle and resettle.  A visitor to New Orleans never knows where he or she stands.  A citizen feels more confident while being just as lost in the moment.  New Orleans is an continuously unfolding present.  There is never more than the weight of the past and future balanced on the fulcrum of this second.  There is never less than the chance to lose oneself in the parade that is New Orleans.  

Ladies love New Orleans.  Gentlemen prefer it.

I kissed a girl

I kissed a girl.  She's really more of a woman.  Well, she's really more of an old woman.  The fact that I'm male and have kissed a few in my day (if I'm forced to blushingly admit) isn't particularly revelatory.  I doubt this report will go platinum, but here it is:

Old Widow McGrue was sitting on her front porch on Aukland Street looking rather glum as I was meandering my way to the Savin Hill T station.  Service has been reliable recently, running on time, so I wasn't rushing in a worry that I would miss a train.  I asked the Widow McGrue what ailed her.

"Today is my wedding anniversary," she said.  "Old Man McGrue and I would have been married 53 years today if he hadn't passed away in 1997."  I happen to know from previous conversations that the old man passed away on the job a few weeks away from retirement as a stevedore at the docks in Southie.  He was crushed to death under a pallet of bananas.  What a way to go.

"You know what the worst part is?" she asked.  "The worst part is that I haven't been kissed since my dear old man left me for a better world."

I walked up the front porch steps and planted a peck on the Widow's forehead.  "It's time to start counting again," I said.

I made my way to the T station.  The Alewife train was pulling in just as I got downstairs to the platform.

Julie & Julia & Goldwater

I am conservative in my tastes. Though fond of the Beats, it is from a distance of thirty years that I discovered them. Had I been alive in the 1950s, I don't know how attractive I would have found them. Though I was a punk, I was more the art school variety than an anarchist squatter. While I tend to be of a fairly liberal state of mind socially, my politics tend to run more conservative. I will come out and say that I am more Goldwater Republican than Great Society believer, for whatever that means. To me, it means that I am all for government spending on defense and other programs that benefit everyone in common and I am less inclined to support meddling in other people's personal affairs. "The government is best that governs least," and other bromides. I like to be left alone and I like to leave other people alone without judging their intentions. No political party captures my heart at the moment.

I am also a snob. I'm not ashamed to say it. I like what I like and I don't like what I don't. I'm happy to concede that other people can like what I don't and I don't begrudge them their enjoyment in wallowing in lowest common denominator entertainments. This statement sounds dismissive because it is, but these things aren't for me. So what? I am not refined so much as eccentric and whatever is happening in popular culture is usually outside the stream I am swimming in. I don't miss what I don't see. If I am highbrow, and I'm not certain I really am, it is because I tend to think too much. I think, therefor I am. I don't find any cause for shame in that.

This report is a movie review, however, though that hasn't been clear until now.

I haven't been to the Transformers movie that is very popular and I won't be sitting through the latest GI Joe screen gem. I did succumb to going to the latest Star Trek picture, but I left unsatisfied. Too modern, too much skittery camera work and violence and characterization shorthand, since we are all already familiar with the characters. Nothing new and little of interest.

Tonight we went to see Julie and Julia and if my description of my background hasn't turned you off, I would like to recommend it. It was an choice between an Errol Flynn flick at the Brattle or Julie & Julia at the Loews on the Common. I didn't think the lady of the house would enjoy swashbuckling (though I had never heard of the film playing at the Brattle tonight, had it been Robin Hood, I may have felt differently) so I pushed what I thought would be a chick flick at Loews. The lady of the house agreed without putting up a fight. I'm not macho by any stretch of the imagination, my admiration for John Wayne and my motorcycle notwithstanding, but sitting through film geared toward a distaff audience doesn't necessarily appeal to me. I had read a few reviews and thought I would be able to tolerate two hours. I not only tolerated the running time, I enjoyed it. Immensely.

It was a pretty full house for a 7:00 Wednesday showing and there were plenty of men in the audience without female companionship. They were young men and not all of them outwardly gay, though I don't really have a radar for these things. This film isn't camp and it isn't just for women. The men in this film are good men, as good as the women who are the main characters. This isn't a film about dysfunction, which is a kind of film for which I have little patience (Little Miss Sunshine, or Clerks, or any number of 'indie' pictures). This is a film about pursuing your goal honorably and succeeding. There's no shock value. It is wholesome while being adult. There is no nudity, no violence and little cussing. Yet it is adult. Imagine that.

There is little glamour. The characters are real people, likable people, people who overcome their foibles, or, rather, who make their foibles their strengths, the way real people do when they succeed. The two title characters have their counterparts in partners that love them for what they are. The men in this movie are not John Wayne, but in their own way they are: they have values, they love, they don't bend but they support. They are honorable.

I left this movie, not dizzy from consuming two hours of empty eye candy. Neither did I leave the movie with the message that "I'm a fuck-up and that's okay." I left thinking I would like to be a better partner for the woman in my life. I don't think I am a particularly bad partner and the lady of the house doesn't seem to think so either, but this isn't a bad impulse to take away from watching a film. $11.00 well spent. Nothing about this film left me feeling guilty or soiled or used or gulled into giving up eleven bucks. I left with inspiration.

This is where my conservative tastes come in. I want to see a film, or any artwork, that appeals to my better instincts. If I want to watch something base there is plenty of pornography and pseudo-porn available. If I want to confirm that my shortcomings are acceptable there are plenty of outlets that will comfort me, but being content with being small is a nutrient-deficient gruel. Witnessing an example of nourishing love and persistence and fortitude in the face of commonplace odds, not world-threatening ones but life-satisfying ones, gives me hope and food for thought. Character, not special effects or sound tracks, get us through to the end of our days and make us the best human beings we can be. A few more films like this probably won't be financial successes, but the bottom line isn't always measured in dollars and I thank whatever show biz deity is responsible for bringing them to the screen. This is the kind of entertainment I crave.

Two women wrote two books and a movie was made of them. Smart men loved them. Good women, good men, these things, and love make the world go round.

Obama and beer

Seems like our President has spent some time in Dorchester, Mass. and learned the local custom for conflict resolution. Disagreeing sides should sit down together, have a beer, and chew the fat that separates them. This is an old Dorchester tradition that plays out every evening, sometimes earlier.

Henry Gates Jr. and James Crowley shouldn't have to fly to the White House to meet with President Obama. That's two plane tickets at taxpayer expense, while the President only needs one to fly into Logan. He can pick up the Silver Line to South Station, then the Red Line to JFK/UMASS. The perfect place for a summit is Tom English's Tavern, less than a quarter mile west of the station and amply equipped with Pabst on tap. There's even a pool table where the participants can unwind will discussing their differences. Should the President need a quick smoke, the back parking lot will keep him from prying eyes and cameras.

Dorchester beer is cold, crisp and clean and has been known to cool many a temper. Dorchester is a part of Boston built on talk, the kind of talk that brings people together. It will be neutral ground as Dorchesterites as a rule are without prejudice and don't seem to be taking sides on the inflammatory matter that divides these two participants in the recent kerfuffle.

I've just sent Rahm Emmanuel the address for the President's consideration.

#%@$@*** yuppies!

Percy Chareinczekski stubbed his boot toe into a cigarette butt on the sidewalk when a UMASS student of Asian descent walked past his front porch while he was talking on his pay-as-you-go cell phone. He made an ugly face once she had trundled past with her backpack full of books. "Fricken' yuppies!" he shouted into the phone, "They make me so mad. This is our neighborhood and its going the way of the DNA Lofts!"

He was standing in front of his front porch on Buttonwood Street when this outburst occurred. His neighbor, Mrs. Fair, got out her chair on her front porch next to Mr. Chareinczekski's and grabbed the phone out of his hand. "You don't know what you're talking about," she said.

"Damned if I don't," he replied, a vein in his forehead pulsing as he stared down his neighbor who was fifty years his senior. "Damned if I don't," he repeated.

The old woman looked the younger man straight in the eye. "I remember when your parents moved in," she said. "Nobody here liked your folk very much. Most people on Buttonwood thought you Slavs should have stayed in the Polish Triangle up the road. That didn't stop your parents. They settled in right here amongst the Irish and while they took their lumps they eventually became part of the neighborhood. These students will do the same thing if they stay. We need people to stay."

"I've stayed," young Mr. Chareinczekski said. "I still live with my parents, where I was born and raised."

"Yeah, so what good do you do anyone?" Mrs. Fair asked. "You lounge on the stoop and insult the newcomers. You're half drunk three quarters of the time you aren't sleeping. You hate any change like a big, crying, baby boy who never grew up. When did you ever work an honest day in your life? The students, at least, are trying to better themselves. What are you doing but antagonizing them? You're still a foreigner though you're part of the Dot. I don't hate you for that, I love you as one of my own, but the students are part of the Dot too. We should make them feel welcome. They're welcome to stay if it suits them, the way it suited your parents. That's why you're here and don't forget it."

Mrs. Fair handed the phone back even though now it was only tied to a dead signal. "We need everyone in the Dot that can be comfortable. Remember that. Don't turn away guests. My house will be empty someday and you, as sure as Hell is hot, won't be able to afford the mortgage with what little you earn being ornery."

Dottywood

I passed Mrs. McMurphy on the way to work this morning while she was smoking a Pall Mall on her front porch. I stopped to discuss how late the recycling truck had been last Friday when she pursed her lips and pointed across the street. "That's Mary Jones-Smith," she said, "Look at how she's aged."

The woman across the street, carrying two shopping bags from Shaw's Supermarket, did indeed look to be in her 60s. She was about 5'6" and seemed to weigh 175 lbs. She was huffing and puffing under the weight of her groceries. "I never wave hello to her anymore," Mrs. McMurphy said, "I haven't for thirty years, since she went all Hollywood on us."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Mary was a pretty girl when she was younger. In 1973 she started dating a Hollywood actor who was shooting a commercial here in Boston, I think it was for Shawmut Bank. Anyhow, the two of them became quite an item until he broke it off. She went to California a few times and he flew into Logan nine or twelve times a year. I think he ended his courting during the Bicentennial. He would stay downtown in one of the hotels but come calling for Mary every day at her mother's place on Sudan Street. They would go to Castle Island and he would buy her two hot dogs. Oh, she used to brag about that. Mr. Big Spender! Two hot dogs at Sullivan's! Back then they probably cost a quarter a piece! She looks like he took her there for every meal and she ate two hot dogs every breakfast, lunch and dinner every time he was in town and didn't stop when he left. Look at her... what a fine figure gone to waste."

I asked who her boyfriend was. Mrs. McMurphy told me, "It was none other than Larry Storch! Can you beat that." I couldn't. My only brush with Hollywood fame was when Robert Vaughn told me to keep the change after he bought some cat litter when I was a cashier at my hometown supermarket.

"Can you believe Larry Storch fell for her?" Mrs. McMurphy continued. "If he could see her now he'd thank his lucky stars. Well, she got uppity after rubbing elbows with all those celebrity types they used to hang out with and now I won't have anything to do with her. Larry Storch! Personally, I always preferred Ken Barry, myself."

Can't put a face to the name? Investigate this and prepare to be entertained. Mr. Storch is in the upper right hand corner. Mr. Barry is the male in the bottom half.

Happy people

Happy people make life nicer, even on a gloomy day, even in a neighborhood that doesn't have a reputation for generating good news. Happy people have a secret they are willing to share: when you smile, the world smiles with you.

The Ryan Playground on Dot Ave was a happy place this afternoon. Some neighborhood teens, pleased to escape from school due to the local holiday, had wheeled a portable basketball hoop to the park and they were playing a few sets of pick-up. It was all good sport and clean fun, no machismo or braggadocio, no foul language and plenty of fair play. The wind off Dorchester Bay rippled their tee shirts with hints of last month's abominable weather while they worked themselves into a sweat, passing and feinting, guarding and dribbling.

Over on the swing set, tots tried to touch the clouds with the bottoms of their tennies. The slide was well polished by tiny backsides. Mothers and nannies knit on the benches while their charges squealed between the fences that separate the Ryan Playground's oasis from the busy streets that surround it.

Retired bricklayer "Pudgy" Murphy won a large scratch-off prize while sitting at the bar at Tom English's Tavern. He bought a round for the house. He said, "There's no point in having wealth if you can't spread it around." He was smiling when he said it. Everyone else was too.

Big beauties bulk up Dorchester

The most current edition of The Bay State Banner (Vol. 44, No. 29) reports that the second annual Miss Voluptuous Beauty Pageant is being held in Woburn in the very near future. What does this have to do with Dorchester?

Well, firstly, the most beautifully voluptuous ladies call Dorchester home. You know the kind. Art history majors have seen them in Rubens' paintings. They are sensuous and intelligent with plenty to love. They are strong women with big bones and ample curves. They walk Washington Street and Dot Ave and Blue Hill Avenue and all the side streets in between, turning attentive heads. They can be spotted taking out thier recycling bins at the crack of dawn. If you haven't been to Dorchester, you may want to take the Ashmont Branch of the Red Line and maybe then the Mattapan High-Speed after that to get your full quotient of Ooooo-la-la....la-la-la-la-laaaa...Ba-boom! Big, beautiful women inhabit the Dot.

The second reason is that the pageant's organizer is Dorchester's own fellow citizen Fabiola Brunache. We are not going to paraphrase the Banner's crack reporting here nor will we second guess why Ms. Brunache is holding the pageant in Woburn rather than closer to home base. We will provide a link for more information: Click Here. We will encourage everyone to see the contestants strut their stuff and show off in competition for the title they probably all deserve. Admission to the event in Woburn is free, as free as a Dorchester walkabout.

Ever spring

Where do the dead leaves go in Dorchester? I don't know. The wind tosses them in autumn and then they disappear. The trees remain. The trees cut their spindly silhouettes against winter skies but the leaves are naught but memories before the first snow falls. This is a tidy neighborhood. When the climate warms, buds burst from broken twig tips.

There is salt still caked around the cracks in the streets. I swerve to avoid the piles on my motorcycle during my morning commute. From a distance, I mistake them for ice. They are salt, the opposite but just as treacherous of what they are meant to prevent, but a hazard nonetheless when leaning in at a tilt on two wheels. One season blends into the next in Dorchester. Life goes on according to its rhythms. What you supposed yesterday is likewise true today. The streets are navigable and safe, but only if you keep your senses sharply alert to potential danger.

In October, the trees are golden with burnished rust ,and honey brown, and orange and yellow like a freshly stuck match head. In February, the trees are kindle sticks waiting for the right breeze to blow them down. The ground is hard with hoarfrost and ice crystals that glint prisms in the rising sunlight. I haul my back tire over the remnants of winter's churned and refrozen ground and then I speed off, free as a canary out of a cage, along Boston's pockmarked roadways free of ice, if not hazards.

In September, wet leaves are as slippery as ice. In spring, wet leaves are a half-forgotten memory. Where do the leaves go? They go where all dead dreams in Dorchester go: into the scrap heap, the ash can, the garbage bin dumster, back-loading truck full of yesterdays gone and discarded, swept up, bundled up, collected for sanitary disposal. Every season in Dorchester offers its own hurdles and enticements. The weather is a pleasure year-round for different reasons every month. Some dreams don't die, however.

Dorchester lives on. It is a community that wants to thrive, just as the first settlers wanted to make their mark on a new continent in a new colony on Massachusets Bay that was settled before Boston itself was founded. The settlement of Dorchester precedes the settlement of Boston by a few months. Dorchesterites were here first. Boston gets the glory but Dorchester does the work. Where to the dead leaves go?

You won't find any dead leaves on Dot Ave. You'll find dead wood in the bloated organizations that make up the banks, the hospitals, the remaining factories, the investment houses, the lobbyist firms, the law offices, City Hall, in Boston proper. Dorchester is full of rent-seekers but it is also full of people making a living parlaying their professions, their knowledge and experience. Capenters, electricians, plumbers, paper-hangers, bricklayers, linemen, grouters, mechanics and machinists all make good and perform their tasks well in Dorchester, Mass., a part of Boston.

I don't see dead leaves in Dorchester. I don't see skeletal siluhoettes. As I zip form one end of Boston to another though Dorchester, I see people getting by, adding their might and their rights and their ability to build a great city more solidly tenoned into the puddingstone that makes up the foundation. Boston is a world-class city. It is world-class because the people of Dorchester helped build it. The surroundings are proof that no detail is neglected. There are no dead leaves in Dorchester.

Those Wonderful Codman Women

Somebody should make a pin-up calender of the women of Codman Square. They come in all shapes and sizes, in every shade of skin color, of every personality and every aspect of charm. If any part of Boston can be judged by the character of the women on the street, Codman Square would be Destination A-Number-One, Double-Plus-Plus for bachelors looking to settle down.

The women of Codman Square (don't call them girls) are a remarkable breed. They stand straight and show off thier figures to best advantage. Therir conversation is as erudite as it is home grown; it is book smart and street savvy. When a Codman woman smiles, the sun shines brightly over the steeple of Dorchester's Second Meeting House.

These are Dorchester women, the best kind, no matter where their parents or grandparents came from. That old Dot magic gets assimilated pretty quickly. Maybe it's in the water, maybe it's in the air. Whatever it is, Codman Square is the heart of the Dot and the women who walk it overflow with love and good humor. It can't be easy being a Codman kind of woman but these women wear their grace good-naturedly.

From infant to great-grandmother, a Codman woman has an aura. It is self-confident and indomitable. Treat her right and a Codman woman will be a lady. Disrespect her and she will still be a lady, but this one will put you in your place. Foreign tourists looking for a quick pick-up be warned, Codman Square isn't a gathering place for floozies or tarts. There are other parts of Boston for that. Codman Square is where naive girls become seasoned women and they are all the more attractive for that.

The Mattapan Man

Some people say you tell a real Mattapan Man by his smell. He has the scent of honest, hard work about him. It is the kind of musk that makes women weak in the knees. Some people say you can tell a real Mattapan Man by the look in his eye, a flinty gaze that takes the measure of its surroundings and can tell fool's gold from the real thing in a glance. Some people say it is all in the posture. A real Mattapan Man holds himself upright with a spine like a rifle barrel that won't bend no matter how hard the winds of misfortune blow. Other people say it is the Mattapan Man's overall build that gives him away. A Mattapan Man is lean and muscled like he has spent every one of his adult days swinging a hammer, pushing a broom, balancing accounts in an oversized ledger, or just getting whatever job done that needs doing. A real Mattapan Man can wrestle Fate to a draw and then come out on top after another round.

When a Mattapan Man stands up, his knees pop and his vertebrae creak. He cracks his knuckles. He is full of true grit.

Back Bay socialites sigh with envy when they learn one of their girlfriends has netted a Mattapan Man. Is it because a Mattapan Man is a good provider? Loyal? Trusworthy? Gracious? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. These are common characteristics among Mattapan Men, but they aren't the whole story. A Mattapan Man is what women dream of in ways lesser men cannnot imagine. Most men aren't qualified to carry a real Mattapan Man's luggage to a taxi cab.

In 1998, Playgirl magazine published an issue featuring a photo spread entitled "The Men of Mattapan, Mass." The issue sold out quickly and rightly so. It can't be purchased on eBay. The ladies who bought that magazine are hoarding their well-fingered copies in penthouses, tenements and mid-western farmsteads nurturing a dream that someday they will know the company of a real Mattapan Man. The women of Mattapan know they are lucky.

Boston in Spring

It isn't summer yet, but at least it isn't winter. You need a jacket outside or a sweater inside, but you don't need gloves or Wellington boots. The trees have started to blossom and it is nice to walk outside without a scarf or chillblains. It is springtime in Boston. Let May bring what it may!