non-fiction

Mental Jukebox Tourette’s Syndrome Disorder (MJTD)

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Yesterday’s being 4/20 and all, I committed a cliche— got confunctificated on cannabis.[1]  

As I made my way home on foot from Chico Feo, East Erie Avenue was blessedly empty, which meant I could recite out loud the lyrics looping in what I’ve come to call my mental jukebox. Saying the words—or singing them—is therapeutic, much preferable to merely letting them swirl unvoiced like dust devils in the attic of your frontal lobe.

No doubt I’m not the only one who suffers from this niche obsessive-compulsive disorder, but I suspect it’s extremely rare. I can’t find anything about it on the internet, so I’ve had to name it myself—Mental Jukebox Tourette’s Syndrome, or MJTS.

Playing in my head on the walk home was a Beach Boys cover of the Hollywood Argyles’ song “Alley-Oop,” a silly novelty tune inspired by a comic-strip caveman.

There’s a man in the funny papers we all know
(Alley-Oop, oop, oop, oop-oop)
He lives way back a long time ago
(Alley-Oop, oop, oop, oop-oop)
He don’t eat nothin’ but a bearcat stew
(Alley-Oop, oop, oop, oop-oop)
Well, this cat’s name is-a Alley-Oop

Here’s what got stuck in my head and what I voiced aloud as I walked along:

There he goes.
Look at that caveman go.
Ride, Daddy, ride.
Switch them blades.

The only way to exorcise these jukebox demons—at least for me—is to listen to a recording of the song. So when I got home, I cued the Beach Boys’ version, and lo and behold, I’d gotten the lyrics wrong. After “Ride, Daddy ride” comes “Heigh-ho, dinosaur,” not “switch them blades.”

Actually, the line “switch them blades” comes from another cover on that Beach Boys album, “Hully Gully.”[2]

‘Hully Gully” is a 1959 tune recorded by the Olympians, one of those songs that celebrates a dance. It was covered by, not only the Beach Boys, but also Buddy Guy, Chubby Checker, the Grateful Dead, and the J. Geils band—among others.

Here’s how it starts:

Well, there’s a dance spreading round like an awful disease
Hully, hully gully
You just shake your shoulders and you wiggle your knees
(Play it like it is!)
Hully, hully gully
Well, there’s a dance spreading round from coast to coast
Hully, hully gully
Well, when me and my baby do it, that’s how we do it the most
Hully, hully gully.

And here’s the bridge:

Hully, hully gully
Do it with your left shoulder
Hully, hully gully
Do it with your other shoulder, now
Hully, hully gully
Switch your blades
Hully, hully gully,

Not “switch them blades,” but “switch your blades.”

Even though I was wrong, you have to admit: “switch them blades” sounds much better.

Anyway, like its ugly distant cousin tinnitus, I’ve learned how to live with MJTS. So don’t worry—I’m not going to hit you up with a GoFundMe request.

[1]I first heard “conjunctificated” from a Black co- worker in 1977 at Whit-Ash, a furniture store in Columbia. This cat rarely said a word ever, but one day—out of nowhere— he proclaimed, “This place is conjunctificated,” and I knew exactly what he meant.

[2] The album, Beach Boy Party, a 1965 studio recording of mainly covers played with acoustic instruments and overdubbed with chatter to make it sound as if it was recorded at a party. The one hit from the album is “Barbara Ann.”

The Old Testament Ain’t the New Testament, But It’s Pete Hegseth’s Testament

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The Old Testament Ain’t the New Testament But It’s Pete Hegseth’s Testamentthe

air without refuge of silence,

    the drift of lice, teething,

and above it the mouthing of orators,

    the arse-belching of preachers.

Ezra Pound, “Canto XIV”

One of the most puzzling paradoxes of the Trump era is the veneration he receives from evangelical Christians—those Bible-thumping Pharisees who once considered Bill Clinton’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky the Marianas Trench of moral decrepitude.

Here’s Franklin Graham in 1998: “The Bible says we’re to pray for our leaders—but it also says we’re to hold them accountable. When a leader lies and deceives, that’s a serious moral failure.”

And here he is twenty years later: “We’re not electing a pastor. We’re electing a president.”

I mean, hypocrisy of this magnitude makes Tartuffe look like Atticus Finch.

Of course, unless you’ve just emerged from a two-week coma, you’ve seen the above illustration posted on Truth Social by none other than Donald Trump—the same “gentleman” who famously suggested that “pussies” are there for the grabbing.

Trump, of course, claims he didn’t interpret the image of himself miraculously healing one of the eight white figures as Jesus, but simply as a physician.

Graham concurs: “There were no spiritual references—no halo, no crosses, no angels. It was a flag, soldiers, a nurse, fighter planes, eagles. … I think this is a lot to do about nothing.”

Hey, somebody remove the scales from Frankie’s eyes. There might not be a halo, but either the recumbent man (Jon Stewart? Jeffrey Epstein?) has a king-hell high fever, or the divine touch of Trump has transferred the light he’s holding to the man’s body. When’s the last time your physician made a house call in flowing first-century robes?

However, my favorite Trump-administration foot shot belongs to Pete Hegseth, who paraphrased Jules Winnfield’s monologue from Pulp Fiction at a monthly prayer service.

Here’s Jules from the movie:

Ezekiel 25:17. “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the
Inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in
The name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of
Darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost
Children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious
Anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know
My name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

Here’s Hegseth’s rendition:

So the prayer is CSAR 25:17, and it reads—and pray with me, please— “The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherds the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children.”

“And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother, and you will know my call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee. Amen.’”

Okay, I’m willing to give Hegseth the benefit of the doubt. He didn’t say he was quoting the Book of Ezekiel, only that the prayer reflected it. Nevertheless, this is O.T. war-god Yahweh bellowing, not the Jesus they claim to worship—the Prince of Peace, admonishing us to love our enemies.

By the way, the aircraft that was shot down wasn’t dropping flowers on southwestern Iran.

Lord, help us.

                                                                                

The Joys of Invalid-hood

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When I was five years old living in Biloxi, Mississippi, I was fortunate enough to contract rheumatic fever, an autoimmune reaction to untreated strep throat that triggers the immune system to rev into overdrive, attacking healthy tissue along with invasive streptococcus bacteria. I say “fortunate” because the disease left no permanent heart valve or joint damage and no doubt changed the course of my life because, to echo Jagger and Richards’ “Street Fighting Man,” what’s a poor bedridden boy to do but play with puppets, put together picture puzzles, and be read to?  

Whether for good or ill, these lifelong habits have formed my character.

Spending a week in a hospital ward and another month in bed on Laurel Street in Summerville contributed to my becoming an avid indoorsman. Even in my young adulthood, I preferred the vicarious adventures reading provides —hunting down that great white whale with Ahab and the boys—to actual deep sea fishing, which I’ve done once but never will again. Not that it wasn’t interesting seeing flying fish skim across the surface of the ocean and that waterspout lazily twisting in the grey distance, but when all is said and done, Wordsworth’s nature just ain’t my thing.

Of course, I’ve moved on from picture puzzles of my pre-kindergarten hospital bed to more sophisticated pastimes like crosswords, sudoku, Wordle, Connections, and Spelling Bee.  Solving a set series of on-line puzzles has become an unalterable beloved morning ritual during my retirement. 

As far as puppetry goes, you can catch a video of a late life puppet show by hitting this LINK.

But more importantly, back in the day — the summer of 1957 to be precise— by mother read to me. I especially liked the Uncle Wiggily books, featuring a set cast of characters like Peetie Bow-Wow and Neddie Stub tail, the bear chap, and I also enjoyed Mother Goose and the brothers Grimm’s fairy tales.

Newtonian physics de damned!

Hey, diddle, diddle,

The cat and the fiddle,

The cow jumped over the moon;

The little dog laughed

To see such sport,

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

After I learned to read myself, I started collecting Classic Illustrated comic books in which the authors and artists attempted to jazz up novels like Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment with action packed illustrations that actually belie the dark claustrophobic interiority of the novel’s 720 some odd pages. 

Anyway, in retrospect, I’m okay with swapping two months of playing tag out-of-doors to the subsequent decades of living a life of imagination, and, of course, I know Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy, and my pal Jason Chambers have proven one can both love literature and the wonders of nature. Indeed, that love no doubt has deepened their understanding of how it all works.

C’est la vie.

Resting Ogre Face

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I’ve come up with the male equivalent of “resting bitch face,” that sexist slight used to describe women who don’t dutifully beam sun-splashed smiles as they slog through yet another day of taxing responsibilities. Unfortunately, my term for the male equivalent—resting ogre face—aptly describes—to echo Eliot’s “Prufrock”—the face I prepare to face the faces that I meet. In other words, I shuffle through my world looking like an angry old man, projecting an aura that conveys get out of my way, don’t mess with me, whoever you are.

Even when I should be attempting to look somewhat pleasant—for example, in a public interview at a book festival—I come across like a put-upon asshole. Take a look. Notice the interviewer’s cheerful demeanor. Now notice the expression of the man sitting next to him.

I don’t even know, at this late stage of my existence, if it’s worth the effort to emend this unfortunate aspect of my demeanor. After all, a genuine scowl, as opposed to an ersatz smile, might be preferable in today’s timeline, when our country is led by an amoral, narcissistic vulgarian who sports a white baseball cap at a solemn ceremony where he meets the families of slain soldiers in a war he started under false pretenses—apparently to distract the public from the almost assured likelihood that he’s a pedophile.

In any case, until circumstances improve, resting ogre face may simply be the most honest expression available.

Submission for Beeple Art Show

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I’ve submitted this one minute video entitled Edge Connections for an art show in Charleston. If accepted it would play in a loop projected on one of the walls of the gallery. The audio would be provided by the curator. The theme is Folly Beach Noir, the Edge of America. Click on the box below to engage, even if it’s black.

In Memory of Jack McDonough

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Well, here I go again—only three months after lamenting the death of my high school buddy Adam Jacobs, now mourning the death of another of our crew, Jack McDonough, who died unexpectedly last week in Asheville. 

Unlike, Adam, whom I hadn’t had seen in this century, I was lucky enough to hang with Jack each fall when he would visit Folly for three or four days. Here we are with brother Barry at Chico in late October, about three weeks after Adam’s death.

Jack, Adam, and I were among the handful of Summerville kids who surfed. In fact, it was Jack who sold me my first board, a five-foot needle-nosed, home-shaped piece-of-shit that barely floated me, a 135-pound skeleton wrapped in untannable, freckle-mottled skin. In fact, on his last trip, we reminisced about that board, which indeed was fast if unstable.

In addition to his kindness, which you could see embedded in his facial expressions, Jack possessed an enormous amount of stoicism. He suffered from childhood diabetes, which did a number on his feet, and had a stroke some years ago that left him hobbled but unbowed.  With a hiking cane and later a walker, he unselfconsciously inched his way without a scintilla of self-pity. There’s no substitute for self-confidence.

Jack was descendent of the Irish patriot and martyr Thomas McDonough.

Thomas McDonough

I write it out in a verse—

MacDonagh and MacBride   

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

                                                William Butler Yeats, “Easter 1916”

Jack loved the land of his ancestors and studied Irish literature at Trinity College in Dublin and developed lifelong relationships with his Irish cousins. Family was so important to him, his brothers who predeceased him—Patrick and Matthew—and his surviving brother Barry and sister Casey and mother Edith who’s still somehow going strong in her Nineties.

Perhaps he was happiest hanging with his daughter Kate and her two children, whom he adored. 

I’m also very appreciative to Jack for his support in my writing, not only purchasing and reading the books (the latter a rarity with my Summerville brethren) but by offering specific praise that demonstrated an intimate knowledge of the texts. I can’t tell you how much we non-best-selling authors appreciate that.

I’ll end by saying that despite his physical challenges and the tragedies his family suffered throughout the seven decades of his life, Jack was a fortunate man because he was a man of love. He was a devout Catholic who attended Mass daily, so he probably wouldn’t approve of this sentence, but goddamn it, I’m going to miss him.

I’ll end with a bit more of Willy B:

Now shall I make my soul,

Compelling it to study

In a learned school

Till the wreck of body,

Slow decay of blood,

Testy delirium

Or dull decrepitude,

Or what worse evil come –

The death of friends, or death

Of every brilliant eye

That made a catch in the breath – 

Seem but the clouds of the sky 

When the horizon fades;

Or a bird’s sleepy cry 

Among the deepening shades.

A Winter of Discontent

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I’m rereading Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, a collection of semi-autobiographical, first-person narratives recalling his years in Nazi Germany before the war. The most famous of these pieces, “Sally Bowles,” later became the source for the musical Cabaret, dramatizing a reckless Englishwoman’s decadent sojourn in the German capital.

As Hitler gears up his war machine (at least he had the decency not to grovel for a Nobel Peace Prize during the buildup), Berliners hit the clubs in a final spasm of decadent hedonism—one last binge before the Jews disappear and the bombs begin to fall.

Many have drawn parallels between Hitler’s Germany and Trump’s America, and the similarities are unsettling: paramilitaries (Brownshirts/ICE), megalomania, bigotry, contempt for established law—not to mention basic human decency. The difference, however, is that we-the-people have access to real-time video documentation of atrocities.

Take the killing of Renee Nicole Good, whom the Trump administration claimed attempted to run down her killer. Video evidence clearly shows otherwise: she was trying to drive away. Her last words were, “Look, dude, I’m not mad at you.”

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
It was their final, most essential command.”
—George Orwell, 1984

I keep hoping that such footage might turn the tide against Trump’s authoritarian overreach.

“And so yesterday, without any fanfare whatsoever, ICE distributed a ‘legal refresher’ to their thugs, reminding them that constitutionally protected freedom of speech is still a thing—and that, as much as they’d like to, they can’t execute anyone for calling them a ‘pussy-ass bitch.’”
—Jeff Tiedrich, “ICE Is Big Sad Because Everyone Hates Their Guts”

* * *

At any rate, last night I found myself at Folly Beach’s cozy Bounty Bar for an indoor version of 

Foxy G’s Soapbox. Sitting there, it occurred to me that the darkened room and tiny stage of the Center Street tavern bore a faint resemblance to the Kit Kat Club of Cabaret—especially when John David Kulpa took the stage to perform three songs from three of what he calls his “hard rock operas.”

So what’s a poor septuagenarian to do
But sit in the dark while the singers sing through?
In a red state fast asleep, way down in Dixieland,
There’s no just place for a street-fighting man—

In the Year 2025

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Each December, I assemble a month-by-month retrospective with links to what I consider that year’s greatest hits. Alas, in 2025, we have what my curmudgeonly grandfather Kiki would call “slim pickings.” Most years, I crank out 60 or so posts; however, this year I only produced 40 (and not a one in November). The good news is that the paucity of publishing is a by-product of greater productivity elsewhere. I’ve just finished Too Much Trouble, a sequel to Today, Oh Boy. The new book is essentially “a Southern Gothic romantic Comedy,” and who doesn’t love a “meet cute” during a serial killer’s murderous spree?

Now I’m attempting to land an agent so I can upgrade publishers, a tedious exercise in filling out forms on on-line platforms. Here’s a common request: In one sentence, pitch your novel.

“Oh, y’all, it’s so good, set in 1972, a page turner, literary, with characters you care about, a weird ass combination of pathos and fun, Harry Met Sally meets Night of the Hunter.

Already, even before official publication, David Boatwright is working on a screenplay, and his short film Summerville 1970, inspired by Today, Oh Boy, has recently won a handful of awards on the festival circuit.

So, anyway, grab a beverage, kick back, and gaze into the rearview mirror of 2025 as Jalopy USA races towards the edge of a cliff.

NOTE: WORDS IN BOLD ARE LINKS TO THE POSTS.

January

One of my favorite filmmakers David Lynch died in January, which prompted Caroline and me to take in several of his works, including Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, and, of course, Eraserhead.

February

I’m what our narcoleptic president would consider “a lunatic leftwing communistic fascist low IQ individual,” so I revel in doing political hatchet Howitzer jobs on Donny; however, for the sake of my sanity, I’m only including two in this retrospective, and this one is more of a hit job on Nancy Mace than it is an excoriation of 45/7.

Take it away, Nancy!

Governing as a Performative Art.

March

As an astute reader might infer from the above, I’m also not a fan of Lindsey Graham.

After reading the next one, entitled “Bad Poems, Fake Paintings, and Commerce,” you’ll definitely gonna wanna DM me so you can buy one of these fake paintings before they become unaffordable. By the way, Lowlife Bar now features the very first image in the post on the back of their hoodies. Lowlife’s located on the first block of East Hudson. Go grab you a hoodie before they sell out.

April

I attempted, unsuccessfully it would seem, to transform Today, Oh Boy into a screenplay, and this post explores the differences in the genres from a narrator/filmmaker’s perspective. Click: Novels Vis-a-Vis Screenplays.

May

Here’s what you get when you ask AI about Summerville 70.

“Summerville 70” refers to a recent 15-minute short film, an adaptation of a chapter from Summerville native Wesley Moore III’s novel Today, Oh Boy, depicting life and coming-of-age lessons in Summerville, SC, during the summer of 1970, directed by David Boatwright and produced by Paul Brown, which premiered in late 2025 and has been winning film festival awards.

(AI needs to work on its syntax. You could practically hang yourself with those dangling modifiers.

Anyway, I visited the set and gave Hitchcock a run for his money in fat boy cameo appearances.

June

Oh, yeah, I had a book come out in June. Here’s eloquent Alex Werrell’s introduction of Long Ago Last Summer at its launch at Buxton’s Books, which was, to quote my friend Lee Robinson quoting Alan Shapiro, “the storm before the calm.”

July

What’s real? What’s not? I can’t hardly tell (sic) cause Everything’s Ersatz.

August

Imagine if Flaubert had written the Hardy Boys series.

September

After the premiere of Summerville 70, I wrote this review in which I claim that David Boatwright, like David Lynch, creates “moving paintings.”

October

Caroline and I went to see Elvis Costello and Charlie Sexton.

November

the sound of one and clapping

December

Here’s the first chapter of Too Much Trouble, read in my gorgeous Lowcountry baritone.

Happy Holidays, Happy Solecist, Happy New Year and thanks for reading!

Pee Wee’s Here, Pee Wee’s There, Pee Wee’s Everywhere, Pee Wee’s Dead, But Be Aware

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Probably my favorite and most oft-repeated personal anecdote is my half-hour ride to Folly Beach chauffeured by none other than that legendary folk hero and serial killing cut-up Donald “Pee Wee Gaskins,” nee Donald Parrot, AKA Junior Parrot.[1]

In fact, the Kirkus review of my memoir Long Ago Last Summer highlights the Pee Wee incident:

One of the standout pieces involves the author hitchhiking to Folly Beach as a teenager—he and his brother survived an encounter with someone who was likely the serial killer Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins. Even though the hitchhiking story is only four pages long, it fits a lot of frightening intrigue into a short space; the reader not only learns who Gaskins was, but gets to see the monster in action, doing things like casually burning a boy with a cigarette. [2]

Of course, during that harrowing hitch-hiking experience, Pee Wee didn’t formally introduce himself or the beer-swilling, cigarette smoking ten-year-olds accompanying him, but twenty years later when I read his autobiography Final Truth, I put two-and-two together when he mentioned that he’d take nephews on beach excursions to Folly.

By the way, the memoir also boasts an original poem entitled “Pee Wee Gaskins Stopping at a Lake House on a Summer Evening.”  Because of its macabre content and abject vulgarity, I dare not post it here in its entirety, but I will share its first stanza:

Whose corpse this is I ought to know

Cause I’m the one what killed it so.

I hope no one comes by here

To watch me in the lake it throw.

So you can imagine how delighted I was last week to receive unsolicited through the mail a pre-publication copy of Dick Harpootlian’s upcoming book Dig Me a Grave: The Inside Story of the Serial Killer Who Seduced the South.

I’ve not quite finished it, but when I do, I’ll post a review here. For now, I’ll just say it’s a real page turner written in noirish prose as Harpootlian, who prosecuted Pee Wee, weaves the narrative of Pee Wee’s life with his own.  Exposure to cold blooded killers transforms Harpootlian from an underground newspaper publisher[3] into a prosecutor of murderers and from an anti-capital punishment advocate into a diehard (forgive the pun) proponent.

And as luck would have it, just last night I was privileged to hear my pal David Boatwright and his band Minimum Wage perform David’s song “Pee Wee Gaskins” at art reception at Redux Contemporary Art Center where Buff Ross is showing some of David’s murals that have lost their original homes in Charleston’s real estate shuffles.

The murals are so great.  My favorite is a street scene in which Fredick Douglas is operating a Trolly Car that runs from White Point to the Neck.

Cool ass art is displayed throughout the building, which is located at 1054 King Street.

It’s not every day you see an ad for a James Brown inflatable sex machine sex toy.

Anyway, here’s a snippet of Minimum Wage performing “Pee Wee”Gaskins.”  The iPhone video doesn’t do it justice.

[1] He’s also the namesake of an Indonesian punk rock band. 

[2] It’s floundering at number 1,125,593 on the Amazon Best Sellers list, so why don’t you do a senior citizen on a fixed income a favor and order yourself one.

[3] The Osceola, which I read as an undergrad at USC

I Read the Obituaries Today, Oh Boy

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At my age, with 2.7 billion heartbeats (and counting) above my belt and 26,598 days (and counting) marked off my calendar, I’m not surprised when I learn that one of my highschool classmates has departed for “that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns.”[1]

A couple of weeks ago, for example, news that my junior-and-high school acquaintance Roanld Pinkney had died appeared on Facebook.  Ronald was one of the pioneering Blacks who integrated Summerville schools years before wholesale integration. No telling what indignities he suffered in silence. I’ve likened these pioneering Blacks to Jackie Robinson, intelligent, thick skinned stoics courageous enough to subject themselves to abuse for progress’s sake. Ronald was a genuinely good guy, and I toyed with the idea of attending his funeral, but didn’t, of course, because I’m selfish.

However, this Wednesday when I turned to the obituary pages of the Post and Courier and saw the name Adam Martin Reiley Jacobs VII, I was taken aback. Although Adam and I lost touch after he was drafted and I left for college, he was one of my best friends in my last two years of high school. I often stayed at Adam’s house, or we’d hang for days at Jerry Locklair’s beach house across from the Washout. 

The thing is, even though I hadn’t seen Adam since his Uncle Sammy’s funeral a quarter century ago, I’ve been hanging out with him over the past few years because he’s the inspiration for the character Will Waring in my novel Today, Oh Boy. Perhaps that’s why I’m taking his death so hard.

Right now I’m in the process of writing a sequel to the novel set in 1972 when characters from Today, Oh Boy return to Summerville for Christmas after their first semester of college.[2] Will has just been drafted, has received orders to report to Fort Jackson in early January.  

Last Wednesday, the morning I learned of Adam’s death, I had just finished writing a scene where Rusty’s visits Will at his place. For Christmas, Rusty gifts Will his beloved blue jean jacket with the rolling paper icon Mr. Zig Zag silkscreened on the back. [3]  Will had openly coveted the jacket.

“Damn, Rusty, you scared me!”

“Sorry, man. I knocked, but those headphones make you as deaf as Helen Keller.”

Will stiffly rises from the sofa, and they shake hands.

“I guess you’ve heard the news,” he says.

“God, yes. I’m so sorry, man.  Whatcha gonna to do?”

“Bite the bullet.  I thought for a second about going to Canada, but I’m just gonna bite the bullet and hope like hell I don’t end up in Nam.”

Will looks – what’s the word? – haggard – though 20-year-olds aren’t supposed to look haggard.  In their friendship triad, it was always Will who preached chill to AJ and Rusty, chastising them for what he dubbed their “reel-to-reel anxiety.”

Rusty extends his arm that holds the present. “Merry Christmas!”

“Man, looks like whoever wrapped this was on smack.”

“Guilty but not guilty,” Rusty says.

Will removes the paper and sees that it’s the Zig Zag jacket. He pauses, holds it out at arm’s length to admire the silk-screening.

“Wow, man, thanks, but I can’t accept this. Though really appreciate the gesture.”

“But I want you to have it.”

“When I wear it, people behind me will mistake me for you.”

“So you’re planning on dying your hair red?”

“You mean like a dick on a dog?”

They both laugh.  

After Today, Oh Boy was accepted for publication, I worried that Adam might read it and get pissed off I had partially based Will’s character on him.  I worried that Adam might not appreciate the scene where he and AJ share a joint or how I portrayed his mother, a source of comic relief, though she’s really not his mother (and I find her sympathetic). 

There’s a bit of solace in that no one in the novel comes off worse than Rusty, the character based loosely on me. Wesley Moore III probably has the strongest case for a lawsuit. But the thing is, even though Rusty and I had red hair and both our parents smoked like fiends, he’s not really me. He’s much stupider than I was, but also much nicer.  When an interviewer once asked my pal Josephine Humphreys if any of the characters in her novels were based on her, she said, “No, but I sometimes let them wear my sweaters.”  I can relate.

When I posted news of Adam’s passing on Facebook, I was surprised by how people seemed to be moved by his death even though their constant refrain was “I haven’t seen him in 50 years.”

Here’s my brother David’s response, “This has affected me more than I would have thought.” Mutual friend Susan Wallace Hoppe, though she hadn’t seen Adam since the 1970s, wrote, “This death has really hit hard.”

Why? Why are we so moved by his death when he’s been absent from our lives for a half century? 

I believe it’s because Young Adam was handsome, charismatic, kind, modest and came to be a sort of icon in the early days of Summerville’s rather tepid counterculture.  He was an artist, a drummer, a rebel, a sympathetic friend.  In our minds, he’s the avatar of our youth, so to speak, a sort of immortal. But, of course, he wasn’t immortal. If dashing Adam is dead, we can’t be far behind. 

I was expressing all of these sentiments to my wife Caroline, and she said she thought that Adam would be grateful to be in the novel because he’ll come to life whenever someone reads the book.  

I don’t know if Adam would have liked Will, but I’d like to think so. I created him to be likable like Will. He’s, in a way, the most humane character in Today, Oh Boy. 

In fact, at least in the novel, I’d rather be Will than Rusty.

Anyway, goodnight, sweet prince.

[1] From Hamlet’s 3d soliloquy.

[2] Those of you who have read the novel will be happy to learn that Ollie Wyborn’s dream of attending the Air Force Academy has come to pass. 

[3] The jacket actually belonged to Tim Miskell, and Adam, who was an artist, had done the silkscreen.