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The Hull and Keel

In the sweet swirls of cigar smoke I recall watching her bark, no, roar at a pair of jeans so bitterly frozen they stood up on their own in the backyard of the Antarctica of my youth. Her sweet black muzzle buried in the white powder. Smoking a corncob pipe in an old decorated uniform shirt, epaulets and all, ancient rifles on the wall, an oversized black and white of Sir John Franklin just a few months before he left for, and never returned from, the Northwest Passage, with a giant flag of the British Royal Navy behind glass, beyond the bunk and Edward England's Jolly Roger and a framed letter from Amundsen to his lover a year before his famous South Pole expedition. Its an old boat and the wood is wet. Because of the damp, rot has probably infected the wood even though she looks sound and seaworthy. Sealing the wood then traps the moisture and the rot spores. She'll rot from the inside and the rot is generally not evident until you are left with a sad empty shell. Certainly you can dry her out but that'll cause the wood to shrink, and create gaps between the planking and seams like the old Navy minesweepers of my youth. But she, she was all curves: Bow, Deck, and Gunwale. She was a soft chine below the waterline – and the shape of the stern and transom made my mind wander where even the buoys wouldn't dare dwindle. I was her Barrelman and she my Beacon. Southern Belle and the Magnetic North.

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The youth are getting restless at the gate. Bad weather in New York. April hailstorm; a maelstrom really. The drawls are on their mobiles and they’re not happy but they’re keeping it to a quiet roar. Rule #1 in bartender school is: bring the ice to the cup, don’t bring the cup to the ice. Have you ever smashed a glass in an ice bucket? Good luck deciphering the ice from the glass. Talk about a dirty martini. The Admiral’s Club ain’t what it used to be. Now it’s just a room where wayward travelers read crisp foreign newspapers, steal pens and sip watered down gin and tonics. I mean how many hours can one spend browsing in Hudson News before insanity sets? The answer: not very long. Paperbacks and expensive candy. Sighs and rolling eyes. Last minute cologne or Toblerone anyone? It’s a far cry from the duty-frees of yore. I’ll find a cab and hopefully it will get me home. We won’t land until tomorrow what with the time change and all. But when it was good, it was good. She never cared much for pomp and circumstance. She sat on the floor of the veterinarian in the middle of the night and stroked Budgie’s bleeding head. “You gotta try harder than that!”, he told the debt collector. “You can’t give up that easy!”. It’s getting stuffy now. Everyone seems resigned to the fact that we’re not going anywhere for a while. Cue the chirping birds. The guests have arrived. Its a long hallway filled with gold wood fillet and chestnut frames. Diplomas in Latin, certificates and awards. "Meet me at the Hyphen"... down where Yigael met with Mar to buy the Dead Sea Scrolls. I drift to sleep with thoughts of claustrophobia and le tunnel sous la Manche. Take my hand and I’ll follow you there. Into the maelstrom and hail. Into the land of the lost. Into the world without end.

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Bowline on a Bight and Bats in the Belfry

The evening began with a screening of "Master and Commander". All the fat cats would feast on grog and period correct maritime fare. The putrid smell of lamb trotters with white beans and lumps of Milton Keynes pork hung in the air while they bellowed and howled reciting their favorite passages from the canon. The décor was that of a Gilded Age bachelor; lots of rich, dark wood, groaning grandfather clocks, Magnums, Melchiors and big-game taxidermy. But it was after a brunch & brandy tasting we met. She was on the arm of an unnamed French aristocrat waiting for the valet in the rain. I found it odd they each had their own umbrella. I read their body language fast and furious and sized it all up on the back pages of a wide ruled marble notebook in my brain. She didn't look unhappy so much as she looked uninspired and unadored. It was a travesty, really. A silver Flying Spur pulled up and she rolled her eyes. She opened her own door while he allowed the valet to open his. I almost threw up my eggs benedict (hold the bacon Québécois). As they pulled away our eyes met in a flash behind a galaxy of raindrops on the passenger side window. And that right there was the start of a lifelong love affair as famous as the smell of leather, coffee, sugar and sea. As immortal as sweet revenge, the sound of a ticking clock, rubber tires rolling over crushed gravel and the wind weaving through the cedars.

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Morse Code and The Vibrashons

I was at the philharmonic when I first felt her violently rubbing on my thigh from a remote location. The orchestra was tuning up to Bernstein's "Opening Prayer". I'd set my phone on quiet and nodded to the Concertmaster - we'd studied together at Fordham. A series of specific vibrations would tell me when she was calling even if the ringer wasn't on. Technology, Pavlov and the human heart in love. I fanned the tight pages of the program book nervously knowing my eyes were wild surrounded by Meryle Secrest and ladies who lunch in the House of Guerlain and Shalimar. Later I'd burn the bottoms of my feet walking on the black-sand beaches near Kāwhia after falling in love with a Tasmanian Devil. I'd scribbled some things on the back of a floury Balthazar napkin about Pierre Boitard and "Paris Before Man". What can I say? I got carried away, caught up in the Julienne and Rémoulade. I'd met this girl on the beach near Dennisport. She was from D.C. by way of West Harwich - had fled there after the big East Hamptons exodus. She'd worked for the CIA in Sea Rescue as a file clerk and wound up helping develop a shark repellent. They used the repellent during the war. Lathered it like butter on underwater bombs set for the U-boats because sweet curious sharks would sometimes set off the explosives when they bumped into them with their curious little shark noses. She still had sand in her dirty blond on blond hair when she got in my car barefoot and dreamy. It was as if I'd had the whole thing planned. She jumped in, I put the car in drive and "California Dreamin’ " immediately came on the radio. I swear I was waiting for someone to yell "cut". Years later they still haven't.

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Punk is Dead. Irony is Immortal.

French Lessons: A Parisian Coaches Radicals in the Art of Protest

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She and the Saltwater Breeze

"This time of year Kenwood bursts with great big cherry blossoms. Like a canopy of pink clouds." She fell asleep so fast. She'd always asked how I did it but I'd fall asleep before I could explain. This time I stayed awake to watch her dream. I ran as fast I could. Faster than I thought I knew how through the early stages of rapid eye movement. I pulled up an old chair and watched the parade go by. I made it just in time. And as the sun tea brewed the colors infused and suddenly this black and white day had gone to an arc of spectral colors. We used to pretend we were smoking but it was only us exhaling warm air into the cold wind. That clean plastic smell of a Superman bubble bath. Now she was in the backseat of her grandfathers old Jaguar and the safe, warm Burlwood click of the glove box. Swinging her little feet off the caramel leather seat, looking out the window and talking to the trees. I hitched a ride on one of her neurons into another room where she was hanging with her grandmother, planting seeds in the backyard. She stared at a dandelion as if it were a person and starting talking to it. I was on her front porch now drinking sweet tea. Just me, the breeze and the gentle seaside groan of the rocking chair and the wood porch beneath speaking to each other. The marching band came now, with all sorts of people dressed as animals and all the children were smiling and laughing. Me and the neurotransmitters sat back and relaxed. I poured a glass of sweet tea for the monoamines and they were thankful. Now norepinephrine!, now serotonin! and now histamine! Finally I took her paw, kissed her forehead and joined her in dream.

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Garfunkel and Simon

So I've been knee deep working on my dissective thesis about the success of brands with a distinctive syllabic formulaic pattern for the past few months.

When you're naming a business or a product, you look at words through a different lens than a novelist or historian and I am attempting to prove and thereby uncover the psychological prowess of stores/chains companies/brands and bands with names like “Dean & DeLuca” , “Crate & Barrel”, “Hale and Hearty”, “Belle & Sebastian”, “Guy & Gallard”, “Penn & Teller”, “Barnes & Noble”, “Smith & Wollensky” and so on.

There is something about a simple monosyllabic word followed by a more unusual or exotic multi-syllable word. I mean none of this happens by accident. Maybe back in the day when it was “Smith & Wesson”, but even then, they decided to put Smith first because they liked how it sounded best. Imagine if it were Davidson Harley? or Garfunkel and Simon? or Hardy and Laurel? These names become phrases which become woven into the lexicon of our everyday psyche by repetition and memory... and that's how they make money.

They make money by brand recognition. They start selling you shit before you even step foot in their store. The key to opening your wallet is opening your mind, first. They start by selling you the name, a select cult of personality of their products and the people who buy/like/use their products, etc.

The cadence and rhythm of these percussive phrases becomes so woven into your skull, you may not even know what such-and-such place sells but you know the name; you know the name because you remember the succession of words.

It's a lot like that mix tape you made back in 8th grade. On that tape you put “Loose Nut” right after “Pictures of You” and now everytime you hear “Pictures of You” when its over, you're waiting to hear “Loose Nut” because your mind has memorised it in that order.

I knew the name “Belle & Sebastian” for a good few years before I even heard a note. I'd heard a friend mention it in passing and from that day on I was intrigued. The name of a band I'd never heard had burrowed its way into my hippocampus.

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Murray Hill was always good for The Times. Pick a doorway, any doorway, and it was there. There was always a tall brown bag of fresh bread outside the Italian place ripe for the taking too - if you got there early enough.

I told her to meet me on the corner near the guy who sells the children's coloring books with the pages missing.

She got in the car. It was a gun metal gray Jaguar. Before they were owned by Ford. So it was nice - unreliable, but nice. As soon as the door clicked a warm wood shut she said, "Do you party?"

"Do I what?!", it was a green light.

The cabin was burlwood and warm. Clayelle Dalferes was on WQXR 96.3 and it was raining. She knew I was in a good mood because I was wearing my favorite dark blue pinstripe suit, a pink shirt with a red Brooks Brothers tie. Francis Poulenc sounded best through six or eight strategically place Bang & Olufsens. She handed me two new gold sleeve garters wrapped in Tiffany-turquoise tissue paper and said, "Happy Anniversary." I smiled and put my hand on her thigh and finally made the left down 34th Street and jumped on the FDR headed South.

She was from Southern Louisiana. Her parents were French by trade, so the original spelling of her name was Gallicized, but we'll get to that later. One thing at a time. First, before I forget, remind me to tell you later about the banker with the magnetic collar stays and the new boss with the old pacemaker.

By now we were late to meet Avi, the diamond dealer. Not to mention I had a table waiting for us on Old Fulton and Front underneath the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a standing order every Thursday night. Sometimes we showed up, sometimes we didn't and by the way the day was going this was going to be one of the nights we didn't.

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