05-12/ 13-09 The spinet piano I played at the Redlegs gig was in perfect tune! Such enjoyment as it gave me has been an age since I last experienced the surefire pleasure that it gave me last Thursday night. The stage area was raised a foot above the dance floor and the piano was placed in front of the stage on dance floor level. I was out in front of Joe, Maggie, Jeff, Kim, and Joey. Fuckin Joey man, still has it; best drums I've known!: an added joy. Maggie is such a babe, still! Kim's bass is genuine and plenty good enough for rock 'n roll. Jeff Costello has been through kemo with throat cancer, but still sang a couple of tunes; and played some real vicious licks toward the end of our four hour gig (from 6:30 to 10:30 pm) that zinged my heartstrings. For the first time since I cannot remember when, really, I got to do what I have always been best at, as a performer: I wailed away at whamming my hammer/ stringed drum. Beat my hands and fingers silly, while rocking, rolling, and side-to-side shuffling as I stood before my axe. God! whatta sweet sweet dream, revisited! No one has ever let me do this since I swear: I cannot remember when, and I had no idea how much energy had become bottled up in my being, and for so very very long. I jumped and bounced and swayed to the music; both mine and theirs. My excellent good friends let me get away with an all out effort doing my only most favorite thing with a piano's percussednesses. And I feel so-oh fulfilled and happy as a lark for having been able to ignore all my fears about was I 'up' to it or not, and made the effort to go and do. And then they had to go and completely fracture my mind beyond what had already occurred (as a result of getting so musically high) by actually paying me, for my 'services', three times the most money I ever made, save for a very few $500 nights, doing my thing with a band: $102!!! Josie—Rainbow's mother—stuck a ten dollar bill tip into my pocket as she slobbered alll over my face and beard with the wettest kiss you might imagine. After her long history of exotic dancer/ sometimes (bisex) prostitute/ heroin, speed, and cocaine abuse, she is somewhat palsied and needs support of a girlfriend or two when she is on her feet and does drool. I smiled and everybody laughed as I wiped all the slobber off after—she had leaned over the piano and stuck her tongue- extended-lips my way and I kissed that mess without batting an eye or missing too many notes. Did it with a smile as I remembered how mad she was at me for having abandoned the waterfront and the last tiny bit of barge-stabilization work I had done on her waterlogged old worm-eaten barge under her houseboat. And now: All she wants to do is kiss me and sneak ten bucks into my waist pocket? Really, all I'm thinking about that whole ten second interchange in the middle of a song is: wow! fukkin kool! Crazy kool. The kind of kool that really gets me off, now and then; (almost) sadly, reduced instances of which come with increasing age, it seems. But the end result is a happy glow warming my heart, music spirit, and music soul; another satisfied customer, yesindeedy. I walked the length of the Sausalito waterfront on Thursday morning and ran into three of my old chums—bearhugs all around—and spent some time with each in friendly chit-chat. There was a dead body discovered on Schoonmaker Beach while I was walking nearby. Young man, bloated, and with no pants on; under a yellow police blanket by the time I got there. Yellow police tape stretched across half the beach, I strolled on. I had no hat and I should have, because—I did not realize until the next day—my forehead got sunburned; the first such burn I have experienced in decades, probably. My forehead, now, nearing a week later, is peeling. The lady—ex-bellydancer—Shoshaunna, who bought my first houseboat (built 1965) maybe twenty-five years ago, is still in berth #4 of “C” dock, and she and I had a short friendly visit as she showed me the old place, while all those associated memories came flooding through my consciousness. I walked over to Gate Six to pay a hello call on Penny, but she wasn't there. I walked back up her (and our) old dock to the parking lot when I spied her walking in from 'outside.' I leaned, nonchalantly, on a nearby car as she approached. Joe had warned me about Penny, and I notice her scowl and slightly unsteady gait as she trudged toward the head of her dock. As she walked by, I said, “Smile now,” but she was so drunk (or braindamaged) that she did not recognize me and muttered under her breath as she passed me by: “Fuck off!” Next night, she came to the gig and we stole some hard-pressed squeezes there, so: I forgave her. . .of course. To top off the whole trip down there, was the whole of the Fourman clan in attendance at Paula's for a Mothers Day brunch affair, wherein your fabulous 1rst cousin, Victor, bless his soul, cooked eggs Benedict, which I'd never had, by the way. Of course: it was yummy. The sisters started this feté off with gin fizzes before brunch, and popped champaign for chasers after the main course. It will take me some time to become able to describe how what I feel has been a lot of healing that occurred Sunday. I know I answered some of Paula's deepest-held, or longest-held curiosities about traumas she feels she must have felt before she knew what traumas really were; by relating experiences that she was present at that appeared traumatic to her at the time, but which she had been totally unaware of, and she thanked me profusely and sincerely for my having related what I remembered about stuff I was present for wherein she had been made howling-with-fright as a three year old. None of it my doing, of course, heh heh. The true magic of this trip was my ride, whom I gladly paid $100, each way, for Myrtle Point-to-Occidental and back here again. Within 24 hours of mentioning to my friend/ neighbor, “J D” of my desire to get to California, he found the perfect guy whose whole trip was planned concurrent to mine and was glad to make some gas money for his trip; and whose company was calm, friendly, and anything you could wish for in a traveling companion. And I now realize that I did not flinch once over the course of his driving me a total of 960 miles. Great, huh? Well, I better get for now and this letter, as it is already after midnight and my 480 mile ride to home. The tobacco seed I put in the ground 12 days ago has sprouted and survived not a helluva lotta water for the last many days! First thing I did after getting home last evening after putting the ½ & ½ in the fridge, was to run up to where I'd planted it and rip the sheets I had covering the ground to (hopefully) keep enough moisture to continue propagating the seeds while I was gone; leaving a dripping hose to dribble onto the sheets. 'Great! They made it.' See ya on 29th or 30th this month. Later little ol'me
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