close calls
that i can remember:
toboggan & spear
ten. a hill outside our front door in Philly spilled down past an old ice-house and a giant stump of a tree with a brass plaque: ‘this tree was alive when Ben Franklin lived in Philadelphia’. the tree looked like Methuselah. we’d toboggan downhill just to the right of the ice house. a slight incline chafed the toboggan to a stop. i sat up front, arms around knees, racing towards a thicket. we hit a bump, lifted off the ground and landed with a thud at a dead stop. a needle shard of dead branch quivered one inch from my eyeball like an accusing finger. the breath went out of my body. i turned and looked at the kid behind me, eyes wide in horror.
shark & barracuda
fourteen. zits like pizza. family trip to bermuda. ‘had feelings for’ this green-eyed kid from Oklahoma. long looks, no action. we took a walk down a scrabbly broken sea shell beach and climbed a coral cliff. when we got to the top we discovered a 100 foot deep, 3/4 round rough-sided open coral cylinder that ended in a turquoise slosh of ocean, shimmering in the heat. my show-off idea was to scale down with my friend and swim in the pretty water. i inched 10 feet below the lip when i spotted a fin circling and a school of had-to-be barracuda (we’d been told they were all over the island). i froze, hanging by fingernails. my friend ran for help and the handsome prince lifeguard appeared above, lowered himself delicately, grabbed my forearm and hauled me to safety. i felt like an fool, but somehow i knew i’d do stupid over and over again in romance land.
tin can & cherry bomb
twenty. on tour with my Yale singing group. in stilted love with one of the just joined freshmen. pit stop at my house in Philly. i decide to set off a cherry bomb under a can of dog food. like this was a cool idea? i set the cherry, lit it with the can over it, walked
away and BANG! i threw my arms up — an automatic reaction — forearm in front of face. the top of the can shot off like a tiny tin frisbee cutting a fat red blood smile on my arm, 3 inches wide and down to muscle. could have lost an eye.
shotgun & gas station
twenty three. my friend lilian and i drove her black MG midget cross country. ran out of gas heading towards Vegas, needle below empty, sky exploding with stars. up ahead slept a rusty gas station n snack shack. no neon. no light. no one about. we limped in and knocked on the screen door. nada. we had to fill her up. wanted to hit Vegas (no scorpions in desert sleeping bags). i clanked the nozzle loose and gurgled gas into the midget. i was about to slither a sawbuck under the door when i heard it: the bright double pump of a a shotgun being cocked. ‘what the FUCK are ya doin’ pumpin’ MY gas into your car, asshole?’ (muzzle pointed six inches from forehead). ‘ah…hmmm…let me explain’ as fast as i could talk. he held the gun at my head for ten infinite seconds before he lowered it. we paid double. the dude could have dug us a shallow grave. no one knew where we were. would have ended my brilliant career then and there.
umbrella & a sixteen wheeler
thirty four. luna playing a big room off a highway on revere beach. big stage, big lights, big sound, big crowd, big hair. coke insinuating its bad self into our amped-up lives. dealers in the dressing room. it was that kinda gig, that kinda band. i crossed the highway to grab a clam roll. it was raining. hard horizontal bullets. my umbrella offered flimsy protection. heading back to the club i teetered on the medial strip, balancing and waiting for the oncoming traffic to clear. i held the umbrella as a shield — to ‘read’ traffic through black silk skin. looked ok. no blurry headlights. as i took a step onto the asphalt. the umbrella was ripped out of my hands by a 60 mph sixteen wheeler. fucked up my 80’s hair do.
green light & drunk driver
seventy. returning from a gig in CT, happy mood. heading up the J-Way, home sweet home. at the corner of brookline ave the light changed to green. i paused a beat and started to move. from the left, roaring up the street like Evil on steroids, a low slung shark car shot the light. i hit the breaks. the dark missed us by inches. cold sweat on neck. this kunt would have a) totaled my car, b) crushed and killed me c) maimed jesse and sam.
some thing or other is watching over me.
This is an excerpt from my book, The Paragraphs — Cutlass Press
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