The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 423
Where Everyone Gets a Dose of Puppy Love
CHRONOLOGY 53: TAPCO / ATR 11
Wed., Sep. 11, 2013
5:31 a.m.
No reply.
It’s the 12th anniversary of that awful day. For me it’s the 12th anniversary of the beginning of my teaching nightmare, which has been half of the full nightmare that my life became. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.
6:35 p.m Introduction. G. #4. [Reminds me of the Summer of ’69 this album and so I think of it frequently - the last good summer of my life perhaps.
No reply.
I’m back from DAY 3 at the new place, TAPCO or TAPCo as they sometimes put it. Today was a very good day. The teaching went well. The kids were good mostly. I even got my first “walk-through” observation by Ron and a couple of other people and it came at a good time and kids were good - a somewhat rowdy bunch of 30 juniors. It was 7th period and that’s one of the worst periods of the day but I’d just changed the seats of 2 boys who wouldn’t stop talking and so they were performing well to my power point presentation when the walk-through occurred. It was very brief, only a couple of minutes, but things were going well. However, you never can tell about these things. I’ve always been open to anyone walking in at any time because I’ve always got a lesson going. It’s the only way to survive in a ghetto school. If you don’t have something to try to make the kids do, you are dead. I guess I’ll find out. They’re supposed to give feed-back for every observation. They will probably tell me to get things on the wall. That hasn’t happened yet.
Anyway, in spite of drinking 5 beers last night - or maybe because of it since I slept well and felt fine and can now consider the possibility that alcohol consumption might be the only way to survive an association with a Zelaya female - I drank a tall one on the train coming home, stopped at Staples and then at Pathmark but my leftover Chinese from last night is still out there so I’ll opt for that tonight rather than the burgers I bought. I fell asleep last night in the middle of “Unfaithful” and want to see the end of that. It’s about how you have no control over your fate or anything that happens to you. You cannot control what others to do you, especially when the people you love and who are supposed to love you fuck you up. I did that to Paula and so I deserve these last 10 nightmare years. L .. Z and her son are going to have to pay for what they did to me since I didn’t deserve it. At least, I hope they pay for it. They deserve to pay dearly for giving me this awful life.
7:03 p.m. Poem 58. G. #6.
I’ll just finish this beer while listening to this LP and then eat ...
7:11 p.m. Free Form Guitar.
Okay, pure noise so this is a moment to talk - although I don’t think I’ll be talking much in these pages this month, good buddy. But I was wondering if I’ve talked about how it feels to be a failure the 2nd time around at marriage. The other night at the after hours joint with Ron, Gabriela and Bud, Bud asked if I’d been married. This is a question that I’m going to have to face now from both adults and kids. I held up 2 fingers and said, “Twice.” [Of course, I wear no wedding ring and … But it’s also interesting to note that I wore a ring on my wedding finger at times. In fact, I was wearing a black stone ring that was supposed to ward off evil spirits - L ... Z’s voodoo - when I started at JLHS 9 years go. But it was a cheap ring and broke. It broke at about the time that I met Amanda Bickerstaff. Maybe she had some sort of anti-voodoo to combat whatever L ... Z was doing and I don’t discount the possibility now that she has been working against me all along. More interesting perhaps is the fact that a little red bump appeared on my wedding ring finger at that same time. It’s still there - a little red bump on the back of the finger (facing me when I look down at it) between the 2 knuckles closes to the hand. It replaced that wedding ring and I’ve since wondered about the significance of it.] That was as far as it went but the clear implication was that I’m divorced for the 2nd time. I didn’t talk much about this with Ron but did say that L ... Z and I had spent most of last year in therapy, that it had gone nowhere and that we now had nothing to do with each other. I did say that I still had a relationship with Geoff although even that is tenuous and somewhat specious.
I’m mortified that I can’t say that I’ve been married for 31 years and that it is possible and wonderful. I used to love saying that I’d been married for 20 years and 25 years even - just before she fucked me over - and always impressed people. It’s not that I wanted to impress people but I wanted to be an example of some sort of someone who believed in love, found it, and made it work. L ... Z and her son Geoff fucked all of that up.
So I’m left with having to either say nothing or lie about the last 31 years. I don’t like lying but I’m certainly not going to talk about it with mere acquaintances. Worst of all is that it is devastating to me to admit that I am no longer married and made a big mistake - in fact, ruined my life.
7:17 p.m. South California Purples.
L ... Z could have done so much for me in the Bronx. She could have given me real legitimacy since she is that. She is a Bronx Hispanic but she couldn’t be bothered to support me when I ended up teaching in that very place. She could have done so much for me with kids, school officials, colleagues - everyone. All she had to do was to do for me a fraction of what I had done for her. All she had to do was show up when I wanted her to - to hang out with me and my teacher friends, to come to the school for various occasions. Not only was she completely unable to do any of that, she actually plotted against me and looked for the thing that would fuck me up the most. She certainly found that when she called up Elizabeth Upton. That’s why she won’t admit what she did. She deliberately fucked me up rather than support and help me, which was what I deserved from her after doing so much for her through the 90s.
Now I’m left stranded. I am not looking to start anything new. I don’t want to start over with another person. I’m desperate for a life in old age with someone that I have shared memories with. That’s what I want and so that is another thing that she took away from me. She might be blaming me for taking that away from her and her son might be also. He’s got it backward because he sees things only through her skewed prism. She took it from me and left me here in this fucking nightmare. This is all in addition to taking away the recording studio and the music we would have made up there.
Also that, of course, was always my justification for leaving Paula.
7:25 p.m. I’m a Man. G. #7.
7:34 p.m. Liberation.
7:45 p.m. Liberation. G. #8.
7:58 p..m. Does Anyone Know ...
“Introduction” is the best song on the album. Someone knew that and put it first. They had to seriously edit other tracks to turn them into hits but fully formed songs like “Introduction” and “Poem 58” couldn’t be edited for single release.
Anyway, time to stop the beer drinking - I mean, put it off for a couple of days - eat my leftover Chinese and watch the end to “Unfaithful” - rather than listen to the Yankees talk about how Derek Jeter’s year came to a painful end just short of 8th place on the all-time hits list - I read the Christy Mathewson book in and out today,.
Note: I ate about 2/3 of the 2 Chinese dishes I bought last night - large chicken fried rice and cold sesame noodles. The leftovers were still sitting on the counter where I left them last night after falling asleep out here. How much do they think of me?
8:39 p.m. Unfaithful.
The only problem with this movie is that L ... Z fucked me up far worse than Diane Lane fucked up Richard Gere. An affair is forgivable. Destroying your dream is not.
Note: I always thought South California Purples must have been inspired by Sunshine of Your Love. It always seemed as though the descending chord riff in Lamm’s song was the reverse of the rising riff that Jack Bruce claimed to have come up with after seeing Jimi Hendrix in London for the first time. I also thought that even at six minutes long Purples would have been the best single from that first Chicago album but that never came to pass. Lamm jams in a decent solo but leaves it to Kath to lift the song into the air with a solo not of the fast picking he did on 25 or 6 to 4 but with more soulful note bending leading into some Hendrix like wah-wah before tossing in a couple of quick scales as the finish, at which point the horns take over again. Sunshine of Your Love, of course, made #5 in America and became the classic that it deserves to be with the vocal thrown back and forth between Bruce and Clapton and Clapton’s brilliant solo.
AUDIO INSERTED: Cream, Sunshine of Your Love
(Once again I insert this track without permission and will take it down upon request.)
IMAGES INSERTED: Record Labels / Sleeves / Promo (Note mixed up photos)
AUDIO INSERTED: Chicago (Transit Authority), South California Purples
(Once again I insert this track without permission and will take it down upon request.)
IMAGES INSERTED: Album Sleeves
I wonder if anyone ever asked Lamm if he had Cream in mind when writing Purples. There’s certainly that obvious Beatles allusion. Maybe Kath’s bluesy solo is all the answer needed.