Time to Pay the Piper

The disco days are dead and gone

And the charges have all come due.

Worry about it tomorrow.

But tomorrow has come for you.

The details got away from us

In a haze of Bordeaux and Brie,

Fantasies and daydreams of Love

But no debt we ran up was free.

I wanted to save you, sweet boy

But this boat just had room for one.

And like Rose in Titanic’s film

I dropped your cold hand so to run.

And I survived. Big fucking deal.

I owe the drowned ones compassion.

I must help, and I must listen.

Don’t let the rich bastards cash in

On our foolish indulgences

That they controlled in secret ways.

To dazzle us with shiny things

And for which the blameless child pays.

Amazed, I see that Jack survived.

Finding his own way to the shore.

Stripped clean and redressed in new clothes

Ready to find a new open door.

I refuse to let them win this war.

Let’s give them a revolution.

With stronger, leaner, angry hands.

The product of our evolution.

What’s a Chick Got to do to Get Service in This Joint?

CANTO 6   September 13, 2011

This would be the pattern, three times in all.

It would take me forty one years to learn the truth.

So, when I returned to Cleveland after school was closed early

For the summer of 1970 and my Mother had found me a job

Her friend, Frank Stan, worked at the Dennis Hotel in Atlantic City

I had worked for my mother at the Statler Hilton in Cleveland

The summer before. There was a troupe of college students

From around the world, working at the scut jobs out of sight.

Did I mention that I had been born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

My father regretted that he hadn’t used the GI Bill after the war

And ended up in the steel mills that closed and forced us to

Make the move to Cleveland, Ohio.

And to be perfectly frank, I forget how I got to Atlantic City in 1970

I must have flown to Philadelphia. I know I wasn’t driven.

And from Philadelphia to Atlantic city, pre gambling, there was no air.

Somehow I got there and went up into the vast neo-french classic towers

Of the ancient Dennis, pre-gambling.  And I was assigned a dorm room

I think of 4 women one in each corner, with giggling “normal” college girls.

I know they were “normal” because they laughed at me behind my back.

There was a bevy of strapping, bonnie Scottish Boys

And one Miss Irene DiNola of Rome, Italy, who looked at me and said,

“You! You are interesting! I am Irene DiNola, of Rome, Italy! Let’s go

have fun!” And we left the “normal” girls behind and scoured the bars

of The Boardwalk. Understand, we were allowed to drink at 18 back

In those days. I smoked my first marijuana and as it was laced with

PCP and nearly caused me to happily jump off one of the amusement piers,

I never smoked marijuana (much) again.

The hotel was huge and horseshoe shaped with a bar outdoors in the center

I think we bussed the tables. I do remember eating in the kitchen of the hotel

And learning things about hotel kitchens that no client should ever know.

As the summer neared it’s end, I heard that there was a hippie coffee house

With readings done by poets and it was there I went one night and

Changed my life for 8 more years in the City by the Sea.

The Fantasies are Starting to Fade

Fantasies and daydreams are meant to

Fuel the young.

To inform their actions and impel them into life….

Where they learn the bitter lessons of

Survival.

How many mistakes did I make or chances

Did I blow?

And don’t tell me Happiness welcomes the aged

With open arms and passioned sighs.

Get a clue.

Did I really give up everything for Art or for men?

Not for love.

I always fantasized and daydreamed while married

To men who couldn’t earn a living.

And took mine.

Whoever I had in my arms wasn’t what I dreamed of.

That was all

Fictionalized characters that I turned into scripts

While I let myself be led around by real men,

Who hate me.

So here I am now, all alone, keeping all my money

Without Love

And too old to be the hot young playwright

In a world where the money all goes to retreads and

Spiderman.

I have way too much free time and I won’t starve or

Be homeless.

Anything is possible if I don’t lie down and give up.

But I’m getting tired of possible and wonder

What can be?

Get thin and strong and keep the fire burning, woman.

Pray for health.

What inspiration can you find in this messy society

That seems to want the elderly to die to

Save some bread.

I don’t know yet.

I’ll get back to you,

Soon.

What’s a Chick Got to do to Get Service in This Joint? CANTO 5

CANTO 5   September 8, 2011

May 4, 1970, in the Ohio College system

Someone was in rehearsal for my play “Lullabye Dance”

The little blonde bitch who deigned to direct it,

Was permitted to ban me from rehearsals

And casting and set design.

So much for Ohio University’s
Quality Theatrical Training.

As I discovered later, no one knew

How Playwriting works.

I did not fight with her.

I think I met her once and was dismissed.

She always wore a little plaid hat

Trying FAR to hard to be hip.

So, I got involved in the Vietnam Peace Protest

I had gone to DC in November, 1969

Just missing the Dupont Circle Riots

Because we had a bed to sleep in

In Silver Spring, Maryland.

At OU in May, 1970, the protests were basically

Masses of us cutting classes to hang out

Wearing denim and armbands with

That damned peace symbol everywhere

Under banners, drinking red wine from Coke Bottles

So as not to be caught.

The girls provided sex and secretarial talents

To the men of the movement and were just

Starting to figure out that something wasn’t right

About this 60,000 year old arrangement.

We were starting to get together and talk.

Bread and Roses. Bread and Roses.

The Theater Department was rehearsing “The Front Page”

When we heard that Kent State had made the real front page.

And of the National Guard’s attack on the

Innocent.

My sister, the Good Daughter, was at Kent

Getting a bachelor’s in nursing

And still tries to tell me that Guard

Had to open fire with bullets

At the kids throwing rocks.

She had treated Guard Members at

The Health Center where she worked

And said that they had cuts from the rocks.

But she didn’t see the bodies of the kids.

And next, the very same Ohio National Guard

Was on it’s way to Athens….to get us under control.

I only remember the picture of crowds running through the

Streets that night, and feeling Mace in my eyes.

Not fired at us, but up from the basement of my dorm

Howard Hall. (Yes, of Scripps Howard)

Where the campus police were located

And someone had accidently set off a can.

The next day, silently, we watched the

Ohio National Guard rolled into town.

Truck after Truck, rifles at the ready.

Kids dressed in green fatigues and helmets

 As scared as we were.

They had fired in terror

And were now considered dangerous

And out-of-control.

You could feel it in the air.

The Peace Movement died that day.

The “Hippie” Movement died that day.

They shut down the college and my first production.

It would never be the same.

Experiencing 9/11 in both DC and NYC

So, my sister usually flies to Montclair, NJ (via LaGuardia) for my birthday on September 29 every year and in 2001, for reasons I still don't understand, I suggested since she could get a plane to Washington and I could get a train, why didn't we meet there and tour D.C.? We took 3 days off the week of 9/10 and not being rich, decided to only stay in the L'Infant Plaza Hotel for 3 days, 9/8, 9/9, and 9/10...leaving the morning of September 11, 2001. We had a terrific time and the morning of 9/11, went downstairs where there was an actual mall of restaurants, as we walked toward the restaurants, I had to grab the wall, nearly passing out. You see, I get ESP vibes when planes are crashing. It must be the passengers' terror and I got hit with a big one and my sister saw it. When we got upstairs to pack, I turned on the television and there was the first World Trade Center tower burning. My sister couldn't stand it and went out on the balcony, which faced the Potomac. I saw a white airplane in the sky flying low when I watched her walk out. When the second tower was hit. I yelled "A television news helicopter must have hit the other one! My God!" She yelled from the balcony...."Sue? Is this natural?" I came outside and saw a tower of black smoke. "It's terrorism." I replied, getting it right. The hotel management made us come downstairs and stand outside because there was another flight, Flight 93, still in the air while everything else was frozen. I was one of the people on the ground they died to save. Thank you, guys. We couldn't leave the hotel and no trains or planes were flying. The next morning the trains were back on and I abandoned by poor sister, whose daughter-in-law had gone into labor due to the stress, and found my way to Union Station. I was in the newspaper business. I had to get back to New York City. My brother-in-law drove in from Parkersburg, W. Va. and met my sister at the end of the METRO line in Virginia. That is one tough Grandma. Since there was no way out of New York, I had to leave the train in Newark, taking a bus ride through some horrible slums that we force our citizens to live in. We were all Americans on that bus, black and white. I was exhausted and asked my temp to stay at work one more day, filling in. Friday, after seeing it all over and over on the news, I got the courage to get on the bus to NYC. As we came around the Helix into the Lincoln Tunnel, I saw the smoking pile of debris under the gaping hole that had been WTC. When I got off the bus and walked onto Eighth Avenue, I saw every wall covered with missing posters of all shapes and sizes. The air smelled of burnt building and death and would actually hurt my lungs by the end of the week for the next 4 weeks. Ambulances and police cars raced madly among the stunned crowds. At work, the stories began of everyone's adventure, but I had to get hundreds of editorial cartoons out to 2300 newspaper subscribers. I had to! I was in the news business and I was 40 blocks away from the burning pile. I had seen the Pentagon burn and been saved by the martyrs of Flight 93. Both cities. Both tragedies. Would we had paid attention earlier and prevented them both.

What’s a Chick Got to do to Get Service in This Joint? #4

CANTO 4   September 5, 2011

1970.

Muddling through my first days in dormitory.

Figuring out the rhythms and having a date

Or two with a heavy set boy whose name

I don’t remember and whose advances

I resisted.

Then I met my first real “Hippie”, Bob Bolan.

Only, don’t call us “Hippies”…we are freaks.

Tall and skinny, dressed in fringed denim

With longish brown hair and such an attitude.

Playing something in some band

No one had ever seen, but mostly

Just smoking dope.

Supposedly a theater major but mostly

Just selling dope.

Through him I met the big pusher from Columbus.

The man who could get you anything.

Wearing a cowboy hat and mink coat.

As close to Pimpin’ as a white boy could get in Ohio.

I revived him in a play of mine called

“The Thirteenth Step”, and cast him as Satan.

But I didn’t get involved in any drugs.

No, never having done that with Bob.

Didn’t even have a date with Bob.

Didn’t know what Bob was doing that night

When he got me into his dorm room

And without asking, pulled my clothes off and

Threw me onto the lower bunk and put

Something inside of me, causing horrible pain.

I didn’t know that it was a penis or that he had

Raped me.

No.

No time to say “no” it had happened so fast.

And he was furious, ANGRY that I hadn’t enjoyed it.

That I hadn’t acted like a “Real Woman”

To what? Being hit by a truck?

He threw me out of the room, still bleeding.

And if it hadn’t stopped, I might have gone to

The Health Center and gotten him arrested.

But it stopped and he never looked me

In the eyes again, refused to speak to me

And showed off a new girl friend who must

Have known what he was doing.

Two weeks later, in the shower,

Something fell out of me.

A condom that he had never even

Bothered to look for or think about.

And my daydreams and fantasies started up.

With renewed vigor and deeper stupor.

What’s a Chick Got to do to Get Service in This Joint?

CANTO 3   September 3, 2011

Bipolar.

Schizophrenic.

Borderline Disorder.

I was over sixty years old when I understood.

All three major men in my life were college dropouts

Following a nervous breakdown.

Gee, you think I might have a pattern here?

But back in the day

Back in my day

We thought that every “fuck” and “shit” was rebellion.

Everything was good and clean.

Because we finally got that America was failing us.

Still, at Cleveland State, a boy handed me a copy of the book

“I am Curious Yellow” and told me to study it

I handed it back and never returned to him.

I transferred 200 miles away to Athens, Ohio.

I almost went home from Ohio University

My Junior year because it was all too new.

People in my bedroom.

People in the cafeteria.

People trying to be my friend.

I called and told my parents

I might come home and they said “No!”

Didn’t I understand that I had left?

All my things were stored in the basement.

I could not come home.

So I went to my first therapist.

Grad student, thought he was Freudian

And so, for the first time I talked and I talked.

And from there, started to talk to people.

And to men.

Now, I had dated in High School.

Dear, sweet, boring Ed Biebel who never

Tried to kiss me and had to go.

Dear, sweet Jimmy Hu, two years younger

And a Star Trek fan.

My parents didn’t want me to date Chinese.

Their bigotry cost me the chance to be Sue Hu.

Finally, M.C., the tall, good looking blond

That all the girls wanted but he asked me to the prom.

Which was a month later and I never dated him

Once in those four weeks, just danced at the prom

Took me to  Cedar Point and disappeared.

I saw him years later on a CTS train platform

Hair dyed golden and gay as the wind.

So, I knew less than nothing about men

I knew less than nothing about psychology

At the age of 20, fresh meat at Ohio U.