The Camelhair Coat.

The Camelhair Coat.

I realized this week that there is a story I have skipped, a fixed point in my timeline that was seminal to my understanding (such as it is) of the world. Given the “generational grimoire” intent of this column, I will tell it now. Perhaps the telling will reveal the reasons I took so long to tell it. Let’s see. Velcro. I loved it in high school. An engineering miracle. Velcro was a piece of The Future that was part of your wardrobe, like wearing a LASER. The fact that, every so often, the loop side would get stuck in my hair in no way disenchanted my fascination with the stuff. It could fasten a shoe, secure a watch to your wrist, and (most impressively) effectively seal the flap of a waterproof polyester winter coat, like the one my mother sent me freshman year of college. The coat was cranberry red, had a special pocket for a tape cassette Walkman™ and a built-in channel for the headphone cord to travel to the hood without exposure to the elements. SO. COOL. I wore it with pride. It had something like 12 pockets. No one had ever seen anything like it. I called my mom to thank her, and was surprised when she apologized. “I know they must be wearing fancy coats up there…I wish I could get you a camelhair coat.” she said. I didn’t know what that was. There wasn’t an internet for me to look it up on, but what I imagined was more Bedouin than Burberry. My mother has always admired two styles of “formal” coats. One is the trenchcoat, the London Fog™ brand. The other is the camelhair coat, which she finds very fancy. * First of all, it is light colored, which means you have to have the sort of lifestyle where your coat doesn’t come in contact with anything that could possibly put dirt on it. * Then, it isn’t really all that warm, which means you have to have a lifestyle where you go from a hot car directly into a warm building all the time, so no parking and walking… this coat is strictly chauffeur-driven. * Third, it isn’t really waterproof, which means you have to have the sort of lifestyle where if there’s rain outside, you’re not going to come in contact with it. A camelhair coat is not for putting groceries in the car, or shoveling snow, or even getting the mail. In her eyes, a camelhair coat is more than an elegant piece of outerwear, but stands as a clear indicator that one’s lifestyle is quite a few steps above merely comfortable. All that being said, I really, really liked that Velcro coat. In the interest of time we flash forward 10 years. Zoe and I have moved to the east coast - she’s in school in Westchester and I’m sharing a railroad apartment in the East Village while holding down an entry level secretary job in a midtown ad agency. Times being what they were, and salaries what they weren’t, I quickly learned necessary skill sets for survival: dinner at “happy hours” where the purchase of one (discounted) cocktail allowed access to buffets as vast as they were middling. I kept a box of Ziploc™ bags at my work desk, having been inducted into a secret society where, after a sumptuous client meeting, we would each receive a call to hurry to the abandoned conference room and scavenge the leftover lunch items. Filled with the sparkle of youth, I happily walked the 37 blocks to and from work to save on subway fare, and once a week I would get that one slice from the corner pizzeria… no, not that corner, the other one with the really good pizza. A block from that pizza place was the Tile Bar. We just called it that…at the time there wasn’t a sign or anything. Given that my roommate’s financial situation was a great deal more liquid than my own, she frequented the spot, meeting associates from work there, university chums, etc. It was a very small space, but with its golden lighting, large windows and glass door, Tile Bar presented a 1930’s party spirit, where everyone in there was happy. One winter night walking home with my roommate we happened to pass by, and she wanted to stop in and see if anyone she knew was there. I waited outside - peering in the doorway like a Charles Dickens waif, when a gentleman from the far side of the bar saw me and rushed toward me, hands outstretched. I couldn’t possibly owe him money because I didn’t have any to lend, so I didn’t have any idea why he - “…you’re Jd Michaels!” “I am.” He grabbed me by the lapel of my coat (still polyester), pushed me outside the door and slammed me against the bar’s outer wall. “I saw you in school. You did everything.” “I probably should have done less and studied more…” “No, you weren’t afraid of what people thought of you. Were you? WERE YOU?” Again, he had a WWE wrestler grip on my lapels. “No”, I honestly replied (though under considerable duress). “What are you doing now?” I told him - secretary at an ad agency, no money, wife upstate at school… “Are you happy?” “Yeah - but look at you! You look fantastic.” And he did. In fact, he was wearing a camelhair coat. I tried to calm to tone of the conversation. “So, what are YOU doing?” “Wall Street. It’s b******t. We work 20 hours a day but I’m only doing it for the money for 10 years, but they say it’ll take 30 off my lifespan.” “That sounds awesome.” It did not sound awesome. “It’s not.” I did not know who this man was, but I decided, given the circumstances, to be fully transparent. “Dude! I LITERALLY have nothing! I live down that street behind you with the friendly drug dealer on the corner in an eight by ten room! You are the dream. My mother would applaud for 10 minutes straight if you walked off the plane instead of me! Your haircut is worth more than my grocery budget!” “But you’re happy.” “You’re not happy?” “Come here -” Not giving me much of a choice, he let go with one hand and pulled me to the glass door with the other. “See that girl?” “The blonde movie star girl?” This was an accurate description. Her hair was a miracle, her coat entirely impractical, her perfect teeth evident from 50 feet away. “Yeah. She’s my girlfriend.” “Oh, well…that’s cool, right? That’s gotta be nice.” “SHE doesn’t LOVE me…I couldn’t afford to even talk to her if I wasn’t at this job, and I hate this job! Does your wife love you?” Yes, she did. “Yeah, she does.” “Listen to me: you’re happy. You may not understand it now, it seems like you’re poor or whatever, but you’re happy. That’s what happy is. You made good decisions and didn’t go with the crowd or whatever. You’ve got to keep doing that. Promise me! Don’t let this happen to you!” And there on the cold winter street, in his gorgeous yet impractical coat, he started crying. So I gave him a big hug and said, “Ok, man.” I eventually got a better coat, but I can tell you honestly after 30 years, I have rarely had better advice. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lowerblackpain.substack.com [https://lowerblackpain.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

I, Jaime.

Each night at our home, in those twilight moments betwixt dinnertime and bedtime, I wash the dishes. It’s the end of the day, days long and deep and somewhat stressful, but a wholesome meal and bright conversation at the dinner table have soothed me, and all I have to do is make a clean bridge from that delicate balance to well earned slumber… …so I wash the dishes. But every so often, there at the sink, my mind would drift back to the stress of the day, and as I turned off the kitchen light I knew that sleep would be elusive, and fitful, and fretful. So I employed a mollifying strategy - placing my iPad where the water (probably) wouldn’t hit it, I watched re-runs of tv shows I was too young to watch at the time (M*A*S*H), didn’t see all the way through (Gilmore Girls), or wasn’t subscribed to the service they were on (Westworld). This was Plenty Distracting, but I soon learned that the material had to be very specifically curated - exciting enough to keep me from snoozily dropping a soapy glass, simple enough to follow without staring at the screen, and - most importantly - optimistic enough to provide sufficient emotional buoyancy to float my weary spirit off to bed. In the years I’ve been doing this, many shows have competed for the crown, but I believe that I now have a winner: the 1977 science-fiction classic: “The Bionic Woman”, starring Lindsay Wagner. I was only eight years old when The Six Million Dollar Man debuted on ABC - the story of Steve Austin, an astronaut who suffers a terrible spaceship accident, requiring replacement of his eye, both legs, and an arm with robot parts which provide him increased strength, speed and agility. Somewhere in his third season he got a girlfriend, who, as bad luck would have it, suffered a terrible skydiving accident, requiring replacement of her ear, both legs, and an arm with robot parts which provided her with increased strength, speed and agility. Lindsey Wagner’s guest starring role as tennis pro turned reluctant superhero Jaime Sommers was supposed to be a limited deal, since her character died at the end of the two episode run. But THOUSANDS of letters were written, so she became the first female lead of a sci-fi tv show in history. Soon, her worldwide ratings outpaced that of the Bionic Man, because her show, with the exact same premise as his, just felt different. Where Steve ran after a different villain every week (in slow motion), Jaime had a real job as a teacher and did all her adventuring on weekends and bank holidays. Where Steve was all power punches, Jaime was more of a MARVEL hero, with her intelligence, deductive reasoning, and empathy as her true advantages. Even their metal lunchboxes were different - Steve’s had him fighting Bigfoot on the front, and Jamie’s showed her teaching fifth grade history. She was a bright new story to tell, but it WAS made in the 1970s, so on last night’s episode, Jaime very reluctantly entered a national beauty contest to retrieve a “space age microchip device” (which was the size of a medium apple). There was lots of action, but there was still a swimsuit competition, and for her talent portion she performed the song “Feelings”, North America’s closest ever imitation of a Eurovision entry. Jaime Sommers has always been one of my favorite characters: she was gifted and talented before her bionics, and her kindness didn’t suffer when she got them. She was smart, and she was nice, and she was hard working - all which I was instructed to strive for. But I connected most with the fact that she was consistently underestimated by everyone. As a kid of a specific sort, I knew what that felt like. And one had to admit that while being a he-man hero type was all that Steve Austin really had to do, Ms. Sommers held down a full-time career in primary education and was a superhero on top of all that. Like Jaime, my mother was a fifth grade teacher, plus I had figured out that at least half the things Mom did at home everyday must've traditionally been “Dad” stuff to do, so she was technically triple-booked, and busier than Jaime was. The Bionic Woman lasted three seasons on two networks for a total of 58 episodes, which for me translates into just under two months of KP duty. So until mid-July I will stand at the sink, occasionally making that oddly percussive “tschee-tschee-tschee-tschee-tschee-tschee” sound to indicate when I’m using my bionic strength, just like Jaime does. Just like I used to do in fifth grade. And high school. And a few times in college, when I was lifting something heavy. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lowerblackpain.substack.com [https://lowerblackpain.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Spirit of '26.

I used to have to read the book before I saw the movie. My prime example is Jack M. Bickham’s “The Apple Dumpling Gang”, a 1975 summer family film that I earned a ticket to upon completion of the paperback. Disney changed a great deal from the original novel (its first line is, “The fact that John Wintle was drunk didn’t matter.”) and I had to discuss, compare, and contrast the two versions of the story with my Mom after seeing the movie. (We did stuff like that a lot. I’m lucky that my last name wasn’t Tenenbaum). The deal only worked for screenplays based on pre-existing books: “novelizations” of screenplays were considered cheating. It was important to begin with the original story before any adaptations were considered. Ok. Tie a ribbon around a finger to remember all that for a minute. I drove through Brooklyn in the early afternoon on this Spring’s first bright, dry and warm Saturday. Fresh from a triumph at Whole Foods (my Prime Code had discounted eight dollars and thirty-seven cents from my weekly total), I felt that I was at last emerging from both winter’s frozen desert and my last six weeks of dire allergy and illness. The universe and I were in some kind of sync again, moving slowly forward. This calmed me, because I’m gonna need all the help I can get this summer - New York is gonna be crazy with World Cup games, a potential basketball championship, and the city’s largest ever “Fleet Week” celebration, where record numbers of maritime vehicles and visitors will celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday. Navigation through all of that is going to be particularly challenging, but while the intricacies of international soccer dominate the news, I am personally focused on the sestercentennial. Which is why it seemed particularly significant when, at a stop light, a man walked past wearing a dull purple t-shirt with thin yellow lettering that read, AMERICAIS AN IDEA There was no modifier for the direct object. Not, “America is a great idea” or “cool idea” or even “bad idea”. Thus, the t-shirt was impossible to refute while strangely non-political due to its unique color scheme which plainly avoided every possible hue of red, white, or blue. At the next stop light I looked up the word “idea” in the OED on my phone: idea /ʌɪˈdɪə / ▸ noun 1. a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action 2. an opinion or belief 3. a defined aim or purpose 4. (from the philosopher Kant) a concept of pure reason, not empirically based in experience. This offered less clarity than I’d hoped, steering my interpretation of the shirt’s message in four different directions: America is a thought suggesting a possible course of action. America is an opinion or belief. America is a defined aim and purpose. America is a concept not empirically based in experience. Hmn. The rest of my drive home was a ponder. The Bicentennial was bonkers. Every magazine from People to Playboy to Time proudly featured a waving flag on their cover. There were collectible quarters, half dollars, and two dollar bills (and soda cans and jelly jars). There were minute-long historical lessons during prime time TV network commercial breaks. EVERYTHING was red, white and blue (ice cream, t-shirts, gum, bathroom tissue, lighters, sport shoes, breakfast cereals, chainsaws...), and the unofficial yet universal tagline representing the event, which we saw EVERYWHERE, read: “The Spirit of ’76”. I have not yet noticed the same kind of enthusiasm regarding this July. I thought it was just me, since when I was 10 years old, 200 years was a vast expanse of 20 lifetimes, and now 250 is just a wee bit over four. Context, perspective, exhaustion - don’t know exactly why, but I just don’t feel the old “Spirit of ’26” (which doesn’t really work because it lacks that self-aware ambiguity of “1776 or 1976?”). There will be fireworks, but there’s always fireworks. There will be bumper stickers and t-shirts, but the “Spirit” of the holiday seems to have shifted in the last (yikes) 50 years. You know. The “idea” of it. So I took into account that full OED definition. America is a thought, suggesting a possible course of action. America is an opinion, a belief. America is a defined aim and purpose. America is a concept not empirically based in experience. Thoughts, opinions, and concepts seem flimsy materials to build a nation out of - very “first and second little pig” architectural standards. Belief, aim, and purpose sound sturdier - solid bricks to form a foundation, and the group of documents known as the Charters of Freedom - the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution - are those bricks for the United States - our original national software. I have only read the Constitution once, decades ago. And despite the fact that I’ve memorized most of the musical “Hamilton”, I have only read twelve of the Federalist Papers. I have experienced more of these works through, embarrassingly, other peoples thoughts and opinions of them. So - The Apple Dumpling Gang. In the next seven weeks, I am going give all of these original documents a fresh read. First of all, it represents a low-level dedication to the concept of citizenship. Second, I owe my mother an apology for making gentle fun of her a decade ago when she spent an entire weekend painstakingly reading the entire iTunes contract before clicking the “AGREE” button to update it, for that is the kind of logic this undertaking mirrors, and the level of concentration I now must employ. Before our sestercentennial I will (hopefully) deepen my understanding of the ideas which form this nation, strengthening my position that America is not “a concept not empirically based in experience”, because our experience IS America, all of it, good and not-so-great. There should be room in these documents to fit those experiences. And once I’ve read the book, this movie should make more sense… …right? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lowerblackpain.substack.com [https://lowerblackpain.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

So.

This time of year is CRAZY busy, with May Day and Mother’s Day and Star Wars Day and Cinco de Mayo and our anniversary and Eurovision and Beltane and Free Comic Book Day… the days are just packed. Mixed into this is the birthday of this column, which is technically the second Thursday in May, which means that this is the week we mark the completion of four years of :lowerblackpain, together. Somewhere a medieval Warner Bros. cartoon herald is playing one of those long gold trumpets. Thank you for your time, and your company. Let’s review: I am still actively archiving that box of videotapes: * https://lowerblackpain.substack.com/p/that-boxful-of-magical-time-ribbons [https://lowerblackpain.substack.com/p/that-boxful-of-magical-time-ribbons], with the humbling understanding that No One Cares, Or Ever Will. I am not Barack Obama or Ernest Hemingway and my memories and bric-a-brac will never be stored at the perfect humidity and temperature behind glass under tasteful lighting. It’s…just not that kind of party for me, and I accept that. However, I am still trying to USE all these bits of time, like a magpie trying to build a nest from branches, twine and Starburst™ wrappers. I realize now that I may need to move into the realm of fiction writing in order to gain a more generous canvas. In the province of imagination, my card tricks and science experiments can dance jauntily to the bossa nova soundtrack I’ll make on that tambur I brought back from Istanbul. Where IS that thing? Hold on… …found it. I have zero idea how it’s supposed to be tuned, but I haven’t approached it in years because I didn’t have time to properly learn how to play it and wanted to show one of the world’s oldest instruments the respect it absolutely deserves. Ah, the stalwart determination of the Young. Feh. No time for all that nonsense now. I’ve got to get started on my third act. I’ll just make it up. Ok, maybe I’ll look it up on YouTube. I enjoyed the singing so much for this year’s Halloween Costume - * https://lowerblackpain.substack.com/p/life [https://lowerblackpain.substack.com/p/life] that I actually finished a song and sang it live for an entire room of classmates at a school reunion earlier this year. It reminded me how much I like to just belt out a tune, and how punishable by local law that is in Brooklyn apartment buildings. But there’s always the car, where the whole family can join in, and the good folks at Apple™ provide an endless cornucopia of musical choices. While Queens of the Stone Age is the family’s official favorite band, for in-the-car sing-along purposes my daughter develops these dynamic playlists of artists like The Jackson 5, The Cure, Dee-Lite, Stormzy, BTS, Chase and Status and Becky Hill, and David Bowie. It’s fun. I may have mentioned at some point that The Partridge Family was a seminal influence on my grade school life, and for a fleeting moment as a little kid I dreamed of growing up and singing with my wife and family. But then I saw The Sound of Music, and thought, well, maybe not. I would like to be able to say “that my kettlebell is going well”, mostly due to the rhyme scheme, https://lowerblackpain.substack.com/p/the-winter-of-this-content [https://lowerblackpain.substack.com/p/the-winter-of-this-content], but it hasn’t taken off quite yet. There were various Winter illnesses to contend with and a bit of confusion as to the proper technique. My family pointed out that most of the kettlebell enthusiasts online look like inverted squat isosceles triangles with a little circles on top for heads. I might be able to rock an inverted trapezoid resemblence, but don’t think I can rock that Tolkienesque Dwarf Warrior build. Maybe if I grow my beard out, like, a lot. Well, THANK YOU once again for dropping by. You’re always welcome. Next week I’ll be starting the fifth year (yikes) of :lowerblackpain, and for a guy who writes about the past so much, I’m actually really excited about the future. Meet you there. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lowerblackpain.substack.com [https://lowerblackpain.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Ember.

Dorothy Parker is my favorite writer. She was born in 1893; by the 1920’s she was one of the most famous writers in America, with an unmatched rapier wit and seemingly endless supply of clever verses. Much of her work was famously collected in “The Portable Dorothy Parker” a rather thick volume covering the majority of her fiction and reviews. I’ve had five copies (I gave two away as gifts). She moved to Hollywood in the 1930’s, where her work garnered two Oscar™ nominations (including her script for the Judy Garland version of “A Star Is Born”). Then before WW2 she spoke out against fascism and got blacklisted and no one hired her anymore. But her books were still steadily being read. Particularly the Portable. In her will, she left the entirety of her literary rights to Dr. Martin Luther King (whom she had never met) to assist in his national fight for civil rights. Upon the death of Dr. King, again at Ms. Parker’s request, these rights were transferred to the NAACP, who receives royalty checks from her body of work to this very day. That’s it. That’s the story of my favorite writer. And I must admit, when I found out about the Dr. King part, I liked her even more, even though someone at school said it was just to get back at Lillian Hellman. If so, sick burn. My first Parker story was assigned in college, presented as a breezy distraction between the more weighed tomes of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. The way that she depicted people who felt very deeply yet expressed themselves in extremely shallow ways made me very very happy, so I went straight to be bookstore and bought my first “Portable”. See, I’d always wanted to be a writer. From the age of four it’s what I told everybody: teachers, preachers, other people’s parents, girls I was dating or wasn’t… I had no alternative employment plan or career path narrative, save maybe someday teaching at one of those colleges with old stone buildings. And I did write. A lot. I had LOADS of extremely very bad writing, and was looking for someone to teach me how to make it better. But when I finally got into an English composition class, I found that many students had already spent summers at “writing camps” with famous author seminars and inspiring lectures, at sunset, down by the lake. These kids were in that Writer’s WORLD already, and some of them hadn’t even written anything yet. I was late to the game. I explained all this to a girl who saw me reading my Dorothy Parker in the grass, giant Sears Optical glasses on as my near-fro attempted to waft in the wind. She was intrigued by my choice, but later admitted that she’d assumed I might be what today is called a “performative male”. A bit of conversation convinced her otherwise, and we spoke all evening. We agreed that the assumed “baseline experience” at a college like this was socio-economically impossible for a vast minority of the students attending, regular kids who “summered” the same place they “wintered” and “falled”. I mean, there were lakes in Kansas City, but all I was gonna get is mosquito bites hanging out there. “Well, you should just consider Dorothy your personal teacher.” my new friend told me. “She never took any of these people seriously - neither should you. Just keep them all in your head, and write about them later.” To follow Dorothy Parker’s footsteps, I later visited the The Algonquin, the famed Manhattan hotel where most every weekday of the 1920’s, one could find the New York’s premier literati surrounding their Round Table, enjoying another long and somewhat boozy lunch. Dorothy Parker was a key member of this group, I had learned. It was also the hotel that my grandfather stayed in when visiting New York as a young county commissioner from Kansas City. I appreciated the gentle luxury, as well as the fact that my grandparents had been welcome here in the early ‘50s. The concierge asked me if he could help me. I told him I was a student studying - “- the Round Table? Of course. Would you like to see it?” “Um, sure?” It was between meal services: the man walked me into the dining room just off the main lobby. A large round table was in the center. “This isn’t the actual table” he told me. “It was that one.” he pointed to the slightly smaller round table in the corner by the door to the kitchen. “People want to take a photo of the Round Table, but that one is 80 years old, so we keep this one…” he again indicated the table in the middle, “polished for pictures. I bet you actually want to sit over there.” “I feel I should tell you now that I can’t afford to buy anything.” I told him. “Don’t worry about it… do you want some coffee? Water?” “Water would be awesome.” I sat and drank a glass of ice water where my new literary hero enjoyed many hundreds of liquid lunches. Technically, that’s what I was doing too. Due to an incredible true story, Dorothy Parker has been buried two and a half times. Her (final) resting place is now in a plot with her family in New York City, under a memorial inscribed with cleverly appropriate lines from one of her poems. I haven’t visited: for me she either lives in her work or at that table in the back of the Algonquin dining room. I would love to pay the inspiration I have received from Mrs. Parker forward. I’m not quite there yet, but I feel lucky to have the opportunity to keep working at it. I’m a little bit more optimistic than she, but she paid close attention to the human condition, and I am grateful to carry her torch of polysyllabic empathy (if not sympathy) a bit further through time, because Dorothy Parker is my favorite author. Yes, I am a fan. But I want to be the kind that feeds a flame. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lowerblackpain.substack.com [https://lowerblackpain.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]