But the more I got to know him, the more I was convinced that nothing he said was true. Drew wouldn’t exactly confirm his stories, but wouldn’t call him on them, either. But when Dan wasn’t around Drew would act embarrassed and sometimes angry at his brother’s behavior. Drew parents were older than mine; his dad was a WWII vet. His mom use to gripe about Dan to Drew. Dan would sometimes pass out face down in his dinner and when that happened Drew was responsible for getting him to his room.
Drew and I would be smoking pot through plumbing parts and drinking Pearl Beer in a can and we could hear Dan’s fold up Hi-Fi playing loudly, a sort of Egyptian belly-dance dirge with trance like repetitive phrasing: It was good background music for getting stoned. It also helped me keep my sanity from Drew’s incessant recitations of minutiae that my father always referred to as diarrhea of the mouth. His mom had it, too, and sometimes she would walk into his bedroom and start talking and talking and talking. At first it really freaked me out because I was stoned. But after a while I realized she was only focused on what she was saying and did not notice the cloud of reefer smoke or anything else in the room.
The Jelly Man was not allowed to use the car and no one was supposed to buy alcohol for him, but Dan figured out that if he paid for our booze we would buy for him. That is when we all started drinking Malt Duck, around that same time some Tuinol came to our area. Dan wise like a wise old soul when it came to pharmaceuticals. The Malt Duck mixed well with the Tu-ees, as he called them – something about the amytal.
One night the Jelly Man got us to take him to Timothy’s Pub. I was 15 and Drew was 16, Dan was in his late 20s. Timothy’s was the hangout of a local gang called the Kingdom, a bunch of Lynyrd Skynyrd-loving sons of WWII vets who hated anyone above their blue-collar station.
Dan, Drew and I drank many pitchers of beer and so did the Kingdom members. I was having fun but Drew seemed nervous and without explanation excused himself to go outside and puke. Dan was talking shit and seemed to be much higher than he should have been from the six or seven pitchers of beer we’d shared. He started muttering under his breath:
“Kingdom sucks! Kingdom sucks!”
As he got louder I could see Charlie, Skynyrd, Daniels, and Lynyrd all coming toward our table. I managed to remove my eyeglasses just as a Skynyrd or Lynyrd hit Dan across the face with a glass pitcher that cut his forehead open about eight inches across. Dan opened a buck knife and then it was an old-fashion bar fight, the two of us against twenty-five or thirty. I was attacked by several people at the same time. Then I was being choked and I somehow flipped someone over my shoulders: I still have a full set of teeth marks on my lower back from that moment.
As bad as I got my ass kicked, Dan got it worse. I tried to pull him out of the bar but he was swarmed, and by pulling on his hand I immobilized an arm that he could’ve used to defend himself. After thirty minutes it was over, everything was broken, and the police arrived. Some of the Kingdom women consoled me and helped me look for my glasses. I even got a few kisses. Dan was hauled off in an ambulance and I was left to walk home through a long, dark industrial complex. I was almost at peace, having survived the scariest event in my life. Some cars passed and I put out my thumb. But the car that stopped was full of thugs who recognized me from the bar and got out and stomped me again. In my head I could hear that dirge emanating from Jelly man’s room. I remembered the words, “shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather.” All I could do was try to protect my balls and head. They beat me and drove off. But ten minutes later they came back and did it again. After that I ran to the dinner theater at the edge of the industrial zone and went in the service entrance, where I found some friendly people. My face was swollen and beaten, they all were frightened when I burst in crying. But they comforted me and gave me a ride home.
Dan’s head wound healed and I stayed away for the designated number of days while our parents put the incident behind them so they could go back into denial.
One day when our routine of Malt Duck and resin-scraping smoke sessions picked up again at Drew’s, the Jelly Man leaped into the room with an album cover in his hand. In the background I could hear that music, that belly dance dirge and the words “Severin, your servant comes in bells.” Dan stood in the door way with a white album cover with a banana on it and demonstrated that the banana should be peeled like so. He began his diatribe on how valuable and rare this album was, and that the band had been introduced to the world by Andy Warhol a decade earlier at a psychiatric convention at the Delmonico Hotel in New York.
I thought to myself: This idiot who almost got me killed is trying to make me think he is smart by dropping some names and facts. I had a strong feeling that he had never left Rockville except to get thrown out of the Army, so any mention of New York by him involved speculation or something he read on an album jacket. But I was interested in the story nevertheless.
While he was talking about rock history, Drew debriefed me about the Timothy’s Pub diabolical. It turned out Dan was on Tu-ees that night and that Drew had known but did not share that intelligence with me. Drew stepped out of the bar before the fight broke out because he knew what was coming.
Dan kept talking, explaining to us that Severin was Satan and “Venus in Furs” was about S&M. I thought to myself that Severin must be a Methodist devil that Catholics did not have. So Dan sparked our interest and we listed to the whole album. I thought the Velvets sucked.
“Who was that creepy girl singing?” I asked.
“Nico,” Dan responded. “She is an artist.”
Dan went to great lengths to explain the songs: “Waiting for My Man” is about a drug dealer, “Heroin” is about smack, “There She Goes,” is about some transsexual who likes to get beat. What a bunch of shit music, I thought. And why is this album presented by this fey albino artist? Does he play guitar? He doesn’t appear to do anything on the record.
I was looking for something to believe in. Hanging out at Drew’s wasn’t a great way to spend my time. But he turned me on to Adrian Belew, Magazine and David Bowie. And his other brother, Doug, would play records by Patti Smith and all those other bands that came out of CBGB.
Doug took too much acid and snorted too much coke. He hooked up with a younger girl and they formed a two-person cult. Doug sampled too much of his own wares, though, and freaked out. One day he showed up at my community college; it was odd to see him there. He had come to see my medieval history professor, an ex-Jesuit named Cronin. Doug believed that Satanic forces in the form of people he called “red ants” were out to get him and his girlfriend and he wanted Cronin’s help.
The next thing I knew, Doug and his girlfriend were arrested in the lot of Baptist Church after they’d parked their rented van there. She was wailing because she was having the devil driven out of her in an exorcism. Doug was dressed as a shaman. The van was filled with African spears and weird occult paraphernalia, plus sheets of acid and a few ounces of cocaine.
While awaiting trial, Doug cut his hair and got rid of his beard, found Jesus and married the girl. The day of the wedding, he had a weird light in his eyes, and his face was cut all over because he’d shaved too vigorously.
I transferred to a four-year college. That fall I received a letter from a friend with a newspaper clipping folded inside. The article told the story of the double suicide in a Montgomery County courtroom.
Doug and his bride had made a pact. They’d agreed that if the judge sounded like he was going to separate them, they would both take cyanide. And that’s what happened.
Dan the Jelly Man was pissed. The middle brother had upstaged him. Dan had wanted to be the first to do such a dramatic thing.
The Jelly Man moved to Sin City – Gaithersburg, Maryland. Drew served as a sort of babysitter for him, and would buy me beers if I went out there to check on the Jelly Man with him. On our last visit, the Jelly Man was on pure vodka, nothing else, his eye were jaundiced, he’d grown out his beard like Jim Morrison did in his last days and he
had loaded guns all over the apartment.
He disappeared for a few minutes, then came running into the dining room with a bomb he had constructed. He was so drunk he dropped the bomb and black powder leaked out, but didn’t explode.
The Jelly Man said he wanted Drew and me to move in with him rent-free, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. He then showed us his new gun, a 22-caliber long-barrel pistol. He was trying to tell us something about the barrel and how something was engraved on it, but he was too fucked up for us to understand him and we left.
One day the Jelly Man turned the TV all the way up and took a practice shot through the patio window to make sure the gun was going to fire correctly. Then he pointed the 22 at his forehead and pulled the trigger.
Drew called and called, then knew something was wrong. So he went to Gaithersburg and had the super let him in. Dan’s body was blocking the door. He had wanted Drew to see him right away. The engraving on the barrel of the gun was the date he killed himself. No one knew the significance of that date, but it was weird that the Jelly Man was trying to tell us what he was going to do and we couldn’t understand. Drew felt guilty about leaving Dan alone, but what else could he have done?
* * *
One time at an AA picnic a guy asked me how I could play the harp like I do. He said he’d been trying to play harmonica for years but could never get those sounds out of it. I told him it is because the music is in me and then I make it come out of the instrument. I owe it all to my father – and God for letting me survive.
These were powerful events with soundtracks. Even my father being tough on me growing up was powerful. That is what he wanted it to be, powerful. But the best part was the ditties he used to sing. I love my father for giving me those.
Postscripts:
THE PROJECT called for choosing a song by Lou Reed or the Velvet Underground and incorporating a few words from the song in a story, then explaining the choice of song and lyrics:
Litteratzi started with “Venus in Furs.” He wrote:
I chose this song because it’s lyrically quite vague and oblique. Some hear it and think prostitution, others sense the delights of a S&M relationship, some see the disparity between the impoverished and the affluent. I attempted to convey the thought that sometimes the line between good and evil becomes blurred. In “Plan B,” Evil is right in following the company guidelines, and Good turns out to have a Machiavellian streak. Really, though, what is Good and what is Evil? But, I also choose this piece because sometimes, I am tired, I am weary, and I could sleep for a thousand years.
Francais wrote:
Here’s why I picked the lyric “Up to Lexington, 1-2-5” from “Waiting for My Man:” I went to see Bowie in 1972 at the Santa Monica Civic. Got to the show early to buy an extra ticket. (We had three tickets, but a fourth guy decided he wanted to come along.) While we were at the window, we heard the musicians doing their sound check. We went for a walk around the building, and happened past the stage door as they came out – in full glitter makeup and spacesuits with ten-inch platforms. Bowie must’ve seen the look on my face. “And you thought you were weird,” he said to me. I was 15 and I was wearing jeans, cowboy boots and a workshirt, so I don’t think there was anything weird-looking about me. Later that night, I saw him cover “Waiting for My Man.” It instantly became my favorite VU/Lou Reed song and remains so today. “Lexington 1-2-5” is possibly the real location of where the key event in the story took place. My grandparents lived on 114th at the time and it seems that my great-grandmother pushed that cart for fifteen blocks each way every day. So if you figure six blocks across and then nine up, there you are. Thanks to my uncle Alfred for the story.
R_Toady wrote:
Within “What the Baby Birds Sing as They Fall From the Nest” I buried a number of lines culled from “The Murder Mystery,” one of the Velvets’ most unwieldy songs. Musically I prefer the lovely “Stephanie Says,” but the lyrics weren’t strong enough to support the story I wanted to build around them. The lyrics to “Murder Mystery” remind me of Dylan at his most Blakean and apocalyptic, a wild tangle of poetry read by multiple voices. Its narrative is schizophrenic, ominous and funny. I also included a line or two from “Heroin” as a red herring. I think of life as kind of a reverse murder mystery. All these clues… fingerprints covering everything… plenty of suspects… yet no real proof to speak of.
CGT:
He claimed “Chaz” was simply the lyrics from “I Want to Boogie With You,” without anything added or deleted. This isn’t true, of course. He dared Francais to find the Lou Reed lyric in “Chaz,” which was easily detectable with just a quick scan: “I Wanna Be Black.”
Ghostofmajestic chose “Sweet Jane,” and the lyrics: “And that, you know, children are the only ones who blush, and that life is just to die.” He wrote:
Most people are familiar with the Cowboy Junkies version of this song. They’re different songs lyrically, though. I don’t have any story about this one. I had a friend in high school that used to be a fan of Velvet Underground. He used to play VU records (well CDs, but it sounds more authentic on vinyl) well after they were popular, and teach himself guitar riffs by ear. He turned into a damn fantastic guitarist. He is now a professor of philosophy at a university back east. I wonder if he still listens to them, or even plays the six-string.
Sandshovel wrote:
I found the lyrics to the song “The Calm Before the Storm” and it inspired me to write this piece. At first I was writing about my parents’ experience with the aftermath of the war and I’ve always wanted to write about my uncle’s daring escape, but then another story emerged. My own war with my mother had everything to do with the line: “There was a time when ignorance made our innocence strong.”
Litteratzi chose “Femme Fatale” as the springboard for “Banana,” and referenced the lyrics, “See the way she walks, hear the way she talks.” He wrote:
I chose this song because I have a penchant for dating women who live off divorce settlements. Most of the research for this piece was done on board a commercial helicopter. I’d like to thank the pilot and the patient, who mercifully did survive.
Laiadevorah wrote:
I chose “Rock ’n’ Roll” and “Lady Day” simply because those two songs evoke the image of New York City and the girls and boys that came for the glamour and the passion. In New York, if you’re tough enough, the possibilities are endless, so is the danger and desire. I wanted to show the loss of that glamour in this piece. New York is Lou and Lou is New York: both a little more aged and weathered, but still tough as nails.
TapasTonight wrote:
The short story “Dickey Hartley’s Mallards” was inspired by the VU song, “After Hours” and the verse: “If you close the door, the night could last forever; leave the sunshine out, and say hello to never.” A family friend died in the same manner that Dickey Hartley did: plucking mallards in a drafty garage. In the text of this story, you will find the line “never have to see the day again.”
Kohno:
He finished the collection as Litteratzi had started it; with “Venus in Furs.” There was really no need for a postscript, because his story fulfills the mission of the postscript: It covers why he wrote about the song. And other things, too.
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