The Remnants of Wanderlust

When I started out with this writing shit, I had my literary heroes I wanted to emulate, the usual suspects who speak to the wanderlust of the broken hearted: Kerouac, Salinger, Vonnegut, Bukowski, Westerberg.  You read these writers, and as amazing as they are, you're still thinking, I could do that.  It's just words and sentences, right? A pretty image, an analogy, metaphor.  How hard could it be? Pretty fucking hard. Especially when you try to condense the sprawling human condition down to short story format.

The first short story I ever wrote was called the Four Butchers.  It was quite good.  I wish I'd managed to hold onto it.  I did for a long, long time, actually. Through a lot of the drug years and homeless bouts, sleeping in the back of the green Ford Ranger I sorta stole from my brother in CT (sorry, Josh) and drove out west with that hooker I picked up in Minneapolis, I had this giant green trunk I dragged with me everywhere I went--from the East Coast, up through Minnesota, where I reunited (briefly) with my darling, crazy ex-wife, living at the Roach Motel in Rochester, working day labor on a corn farm, surviving quite literally day-to-day, I had my green trunk.  In it I kept my whole world, old drawings and cartoons I'd made; a Cat Stevens songbook for those times I stole a guitar and held onto it long enough to play songs of peace and hope and joy, even though those words increasingly played like bullshit; my copies of Catcher in the Rye (always had a spare); various odds and ends of a hobo's life.

One of the more beautifully ironic moments of my life was leaving Rochester to go back west to San Francisco, because I was sick of getting ripped off and beaten up by Minneapolis dealers, and leaving my wife, because, though I loved her very much, I loved drugs more, and Shania Twain's "You're Still the One" came on the radio just as I was pulling out of the Candelight Inn parking lot, and I looked in the rearview mirror and watched her just standing there.

My friend Matt used to say, when you are saying goodbye to someone at an airport (or Greyhound station, or roach-infested dump like the Candlelight), don't ever turn around; it will haunt you forever.

I picked up the hooker in Minneapolis as I made for San Francisco.  It's not like I just picked her up on the corner.  I knew her beforehand, sort of, the way all junkies seem to know each other.  And I didn't have sex with her.  She had the sickness. She simply needed a ride out west, and I was going that way, and could use the company.  Seems I've known a lot of hookers from Minneapolis in my life. Never got a Christmas Card from any of them...  (That's not true.  I've actually gotten X-Mas cards from quite a few of them.)

I hit the city...and then I lost my green trunk.  I lost the green truck, which held the green trunk, and I lost my dreams.  Lost most of my life.  After that, I carried everything I held dear in a tattered maroon backpack, which was pretty big, far as backpacks go, but obviously not as big as a truck or trunk.  You could fit a toothbrush, pair of socks in that maroon backpack, a journal, but nothing as big as a hooker, and I had no more short stories; the Four Butchers was the only one I'd written.

Most of those aimless drifting years, I still made art.  Or rather, I tried to remain creative.  Not sure you could call what I was doing "art."  The Wandering Jews made a CD right before I went completely mad, and there are brief moments on that CD I am still proud of.  A lot of it, though, is utter rubbish, parts where I was so high, so far from key, it's like I'm singing a different song.  But "So It Goes" came out pretty good, and there are a couple others that shine, albeit momentarily.

I mostly drew pictures and wrote poetry (if you could call it that) to keep the chops up.  That was easy to do, stealing drawing pads from Walgreens (I'd go in, pick up a pad and pencil, start drawing, and walk on out the door).  I held onto some of it. My buddy Kelp mailed me back the drawings after I got sober, and the poems/lyrics morphed into some of the material I still play today.  It's nice to have mementos. And of course I got the memoir, which I still believe will see the light of publishing day.  Just probably not until after I am dead.

Theses days I've been focusing mostly on writing short stories.  Short stories are a rather pointless form.  I like writing them.  Some people like reading them when they are done well, but for the amount of work required to create them, you get little bang for your buck.  They aren't as pointless as poetry, but if you're looking for the big hit, want to knock one out of the park, you need a novel.  Or better yet a screenplay.  And even then, mostly what you'll need is luck.

*

After I got straight, I was in my early 30s and getting a check-up from our family doctor, Dr. Lawson.  He just died.  He was a good man.  I was down over how little I had to call my own.  And at my age... It was like I was starting from scratch.

"Most people don't start accruing personal wealth until their early 30s anyway," Dr. Lawson said, matter-of-factly.  "You're right where you're supposed to be." 

It made me feel better.  Maybe I emerged from the fog with more than an empty, tattered backpack.  I still had people who cared about me, who believed in me.  Like Dr. Lawson, who knew all about my scumbag ways and didn't judge me.  Or at least he didn't think I was a totally hopeless case.  And he was right.  Little by little, bone by bone (or bird by bird, as Anne Lamott would say), I started rebuilding.  In the end those things I lost weren't all that difficult to replace, and what I couldn't get back, the music and hard copies and lovers, I carry them with me.  They are a part of the new stories I tell.

It's probably good I don't have that first short story.  Because in my mind, it was very funny, terribly clever, an example of irrefutable genius, but in reality, knowing how hard it is to write a good short story, probably the hardest of all writing forms (besides the villanelle, of course), it probably sucked something awful.  It's best to let nostalgia airbrush those flaws away.

Record Reviews and Fan Mail

It's been a weird few days re: artistic validation.  On Friday this guy (Barry) contacted me about an old band of mine, The Creeping Charlies, reforming and playing a (paid [gasp])...gig.  It's probably not going to happen, I realize.  Not unlike when Joe Corbin offered to "buy" my first "song" back in 1985, once he cleared it with his "manager," these sort of things fall somewhere between wishful thinking and self aggrandizing prophecy.  But the cool part of the story is that Barry still thinks enough of a band I was in (back in 19aught7) to write me and even ask the goddamn question (the show would be for his tech company's annual retreat, if I'm not mistaken; and, yes, Barry, if you're reading this, we're all in [just keep in mind Dan, our leader, has a wedding he has to go to on the 20th, FYI...]).

But there's lots of other stuff, too.  Besides the Big Game Hunting of trying to get Junkie Love published (or The Boys of Belvedere as we're now calling it to separate ourselves from its dark, drug-addled past), or a TV show on the air, it's the little things that keep us going (in the third world plural).  Because those big things also seem to fall between those aforementioned far-fetched points.

If you read this blog enough, you know that validation is one of its predominate themes.  I don't mind getting naked in front of you.  I think the only truly special asset I bring to the table is unapologetic candor.  Or, as a rehab buddy of mine used to say when we'd make anagrams of our names, I need a lot.

(This guy, Russel, and I would wait for group for the really special cases to end, and then we'd sneak in after everyone was gone, and on the blackboard there were all these names from the class, big, blocked letters, and after each letter would be these really nice things written after them, because we lived in a long-term treatment facility, and most of these people were really wrecked, feeling pretty shitty about themselves after years of living on the street, being sick, having no education, criminal records, etc., so the counselors were trying to install them with confidence, so, like, the name "Chris" might have after it C -- caring, H -- helpful, and, well, you get the point, but what Russel and I would do is we'd write our names on the board and do the opposite, so, like, I'd write his name, R -- retarded, U -- useless,
S -- stupid, and this would make us laugh till we couldn't breathe because, yeah, it was our stupid sense of humor, but moreover, when you've sunk that low, to the point where you literally need Stuart Smalley, you have to keep laughing at yourself, like you've been in on the joke all along, otherwise you're jumping out that seventh floor window.  Anyway, for me (because we used "Joseph" for the extra letters), Russel wrote "super needy."  I remember literally holding my stomach because he had me cracking up so hard.  Fucking still makes me laugh.)

And it's been coming in droves of late, these little things, which are really big things if you think about it,  stories getting taken, etc., since they mean so much to me. Like, for instance, this recent review of the Wandering Jews' EP Down on the Farm. http://shitforfuckheads.blogspot.com/2011/07/wandering-jews-down-on-farm.html. As the review states, I went to high school with one of the guys, like a hundred years ago, but not the other guy.  Chris and I reconnected like everyone does these days, via Facebook, but he didn't have to review my album, nor did he and his partner have to say nice things about it if they hated it.  They'd simply find a reason not to review the damn thing.  But they did review it, and they got all the influences right, and what the band was trying to do, and even nailed all the miscues, and that shit means a lot.  I'm not getting a record contract at this age.  That's not the point. What is, I've recorded some god-awful music over the years.  This was the last cogent moment (http://tinyurl.com/3tg2umo).  Uppers fuck with your pitch something fierce, and when I lost it at the end, I really lost it.  I kept playing. Because I have the constitution of a wronged bull on steroids.  But it was bad.  It took me years to pick up a guitar again, and even longer to sing in front of people again.  And it's still hard to do.  But I love rock 'n' roll, and I have to keep playing because that's what I do.  And I am damn proud of this new record (which I am hoping will soon be available in iTunes.  At which point, I will shamelessly promote, promote, promote...), and I am thankful that shit for fuckheads (http://shitforfuckheads.blogspot.com/) saw something worthwhile in it too.

The other thing that happened was a phone call I received Sunday afternoon.  By now, anyone who talks to me should know that that conversation is fodder for this blog, and all my work really (unless I am explicitly told not to use said person/conversation, a wish I will respect).  I got a call from this girl, Carrie, although when I knew her, she was Bubbles (Bubbles appears, briefly, in Junkie Love, in the chapter "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" http://www.undergroundvoices.com/UVCliffordJoe.htm).  (And since I just linked a piece in the awesome Underground Voices, let's do it again, this time with this uplifting, cheery nugget they just put out about my failed suicide bid: http://www.undergroundvoices.com/UVCliffordJoe3.htm.)

After I'd gotten sober I reconnected with Carrie/Bubbles at City College, where we were both taking classes to get our Drug & Alcohol Certification.  She didn't recognize me at first.  I used be smaller.  A lot smaller.  But then we start talking because we both knew Gluehead and all those crazy bastards, and when you go to get your DAC certification, you inevitably run into people you used to run with, and it's amazing how everybody just sort of...grows...up.  Or they die.

So Bubbles calls me yesterday, Sunday, to tell me she with a woman who wants to talk to me.  This woman, Stephanie, apparently has read my memoir (because a long time ago, when I first wrote the damn thing, I sent a copy off to Pete French, who made copies and began passing the damn thing around, and this actually happens a lot), and she now reads this blog (Hi, Stephanie), and says I'm the "new Bukowski," which is always nice to hear, and OK, on the surface, there is the obvious answer as to why I'd write about this.  I am a vain, egotistical man, who, like most men of that ilk, is fraught with glaring, crippling insecurities and in constant dire need for reaffirmation.  Not denying that.  But there is also a subtext to this as well.  Because I don't have that book deal (yet), and I don't have any fellowships to buoy my adrift artistic spirits.  I am lost in a sea with every other fucking wannabe writer, because who's to say I won't one day be forced to self-publish my opus where it will be stored on Lulu's non-existent shelves right next to Aunt Edna's poetry collection about homemade jams?

But I get these calls a lot--I mean, enough that I'd care to remark on it--the random e-mails and phone calls from strangers who tell me they've read that book, Junkie Love, and that it's made a difference in their lives, however you define that.  It's been happening regularly since I returned the Bay Area.  And these are sincere reactions from people who actively seek me out.  We're not talking thousands, or even hundreds.  But there have been six, ten people, who didn't know me, read something I wrote, and it moved them enough to try to find me and tell me this.  I won't deny the ego boost.  (Of course, it's an ego boost.)  But writing, like all art, needs to be an ongoing dialogue.  The best of it at least.  Creation doesn't occur in a vacuum but with an audience.  And phone calls like the one I got on Sunday means that, even if my agent hasn't found our book a home (yet), I am doing something right.  And that is enough to get going.  At least on this Monday morning.

And in conclusion, a complete non-sequitor.  For Jimmy.  Because I love Jimmy, and I need him to stay alive so I can steal this thoughts.  (And it's true.  I have the monkeys.  And I will let them loose.  Someday.)