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The UpStairs Lounge: Dead Men Do Tell Tales

This article originally appeared in the Winter issue of Etude: The Journal of Literary Nonfiction.  A much expanded version of this story was incorporated into my final project for my graduate program.

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The psychic is already on his second glass of cheap red wine, and he’s been in the bar only ten minutes.

Phillip is in his late thirties, slight of stature, intense in disposition and nearly bald. He sits stoically, cloaked in the gloom of murky bar air at the head of the table, regarding his fellow ghost-hunter Kalila, her dark, straight hair bobbing as she dances along to the routine of four muscular young men, a Village People tribute group.

The costumed performers, on break from a show at a competing club down the street, are in the throes of an impromptu performance of the disco hit “Y.M.C.A.” here in Jimani Lounge, an Italian bar at Chartres and Iberville, in New Orleans’ French Quarter. Kalila seems especially enchanted by the cop character, a friendly African-American man in an incredibly tight tee shirt.

Phillip is hitting the red hard.  He’d much rather be ogling the beefcake, but he’s already picking up strong psychic impressions from the floor above, and the wine, he explains, “smoothes out the edges.”  He’s more forthcoming when pressed: wine drowns out the telepathic barrage of voices and impressions constantly battering at his consciousness. His daily intake is in the neighborhood of fifteen glasses.  Phillip makes a point of never beginning a supernatural investigation without first bellying up.

Instead of watching the high kicks, Phillip has busied himself unscrewing the top of a plastic salt shaker.  He neatly dumps the contents into a small plastic baggie he has produced from somewhere on his person. Phillip twists the baggie tightly closed and pockets it, as if squirreling away an ounce of cocaine.

“Do you believe in coincidence?” Phillip drawls at me, in an accent that reveals his backwoods Oklahoma origins. “I don’t,” he states flatly. We’re here tonight to investigate the site of the gay bar that occupied the space one floor above us in the 1970s, and Village People look-alikes “randomly” showing up feels like fate.  Or prescience.   

Just a quarter-hour ago, Phillip left his night job at Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo, a French Quarter occult supply shop catering mostly to tourists. Phillip is one of the store’s in-house psychic readers, advising vacationing secretaries and sloshed frat boys how to get laid or get loved.

 The Jimani, pronounced like “Gemini” but misspelled to incorporate the given name of its founder, Jimmy Massacci, Sr., occupies the first floor of a building whose second story once housed the UpStairs Lounge, the gay club. The UpStairs had been a gathering place for the Quarter’s nascent gay scene, even hosting homosexual-inclusive church services, until a Sunday evening in June of 1973, when someone lit an incendiary device, lobbed it into the stairwell leading up to the club and locked the street-side door from the outside.

Twenty-nine people, mostly homosexual men, died in the flames that night, while another three victims succumbed in the following days.  The destruction of the UpStairs was the most deadly fire in the city’s history, and an event that quickly evolved into a rallying point for gay rights in the Crescent City. The arsonist-murderer was never caught.

Continue reading "The UpStairs Lounge" at Etude.

Drafting a Plan for Expansion

This article originally appeared in the June 25 issue of Eugene Weekly.  If only every reporting gig involved sippin' on likker.  Special thanks to friend-of-the-blog (is there such a role?) Brendan Mahaney, who offered a lovely and savory staging ground for cider tasting.

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When I was about 11, I was chosen from a crowd to help a costumed reenactor operate a wooden cider press at a living history demonstration. Surprised at how little liquid was squeezed from each apple, I learned a lesson about the value of hard work and scarcity of resources. That was the last thought through my little bowl-cut head, in fact, before I tripped over the cider bucket and dumped the fruits of my labor into the grass.

Happily for Mimi Casteel and Nick Gunn, the married couple behind Salem’s Wandering Aengus Ciderworks, cider-making technology has evolved, now allowing the fermenting, bottling, and kegging of the stuff on a massive scale. 

Casteel and Gunn left Portland-based forestry surveying jobs in 2004, tired of the travel involved, and cast an eye toward agriculture. Casteel’s parents own the nearby Bethel Heights Vineyard, and though his wife “really had an itch to get into farming,” Gunn says, there wasn’t enough work to go around at Bethel Heights, and they didn’t want to undermine her parents’ efforts by founding a competing label. So they leased a nearby orchard and went into the hard cider business.

The cider produced by Wandering Aengus isn’t the pulpy, syrupy, kid-friendly concoction enjoyed on chilly autumn evenings. If anything, this hard cider is a bit like champagne: crisp, sweet and a little tart. Perfect for enjoying with cheese, pork or other musky savories.

The proof, says Wandering Aengus marketing director James Kohn, is in the fruit juice. “Most ciders are made of concentrated juice or dessert apples” like the ones found in grocery store produce sections, Kohn explains. Wandering Aengus cider, on the other hand, is made from apple varietals specifically for cider-making, and in fact, the ingredient list printed on the side of a bottle of the Semi-Dry cider amounts to a single item: “Fermented apple juice from certified organic cider apples.”

Continue reading "Drafting a Plan for Success" at Eugene Weekly.

Hello Dear

Today a friend asked me to go to coffee.  He's facing some difficult choices in his relationship, and told me he wanted someone objective to talk to. The episode, oddly enough, added an extra layer of meaning to a weirdly contemplative spam message I received this week in my Gmail inbox:

It was kind of a surprise, actually, as I kind of thought the whole point of Gmail was its spectacular spam-blockers. 

But what really struck me about this e-mail was its poignancy.  Spam messages usually try to lure their suckers in by way of lust, or greed, or envy.  This one is more insidious; it preys upon a desire for companionship, for the need for a “long lasting relationship.”  Yes, Miss Joy does proceed to offer photos, the features of which can be invented in the heads of her panting readers, but she also wonders, in writing, whether “you are interested in knowing more about me.”

The content of this phishing attempt speaks to our national alienation, our disconnect, our discontent.  The whole thing is sort of sad.

Oh, and by the way, Yahoo!’s Babelfish translator helpfully informs me that Miss Joy’s auto-postscript is an Italian advertisement for the e-mail program’s increased graphics functionality.  Too bad the spammer didn’t include a photo: I imagine an earnest-looking Neapolitan beauty with soft, pleading eyes: “I am ready to invest in a relationship with you.”

Ciao, Signorina Joy.   Hope you find what you’re looking for.  Just so long as it’s not my social security and credit card numbers.

The Gifts that Keep on Gagging

Much like Dr. Fate’s Tower, the incomparable Smith Family Books in Eugene, Oregon, always seems somehow magically larger on the inside than it does on the outside.  Recently this alternate dimension of bibliophilia coughed up a treasure beyond value: the Johnson Smith & Co. Novelties catalog, 1950 edition.

If you’re having trouble picturing exactly what I mean, gents might recall the ads for chintzy, silly crap they used to find consigned to the back of Boy’s Life or early 80s Marvel Comics.  (Sorry, ladies, I don’t know the female equivalent.)  This book is 500 pages of crudely-drawn, vintage-styled ads for whoopee cushions, costume jewelry, and coins that squirt water.  In short, it's bliss.

Some of the ads are bizarre.

Some are horrendously offensive.

Some are illegal!

Some make me think this catalog was actually printed in 1994.

Some of 'em are, um, “spicy”...

...while others are quite chaste.

Some could have really helped me out, if I had discovered them while in grad school.

Some are for the rich...

...and some, for the poor.

But all of 'em are stuff I wanna own.  Anyway, just wanted to share.  And if you happen to dig this particular flavor of kitsch, I hereby nominate Kirk Demarais' Secret Fun Spot and Mr. Bali Hai's Eye of the Goof for your reading and viewing pleasure.  Did any of you actually get suckered in with sort of junk when you were kids?  Or, uh, now?  Let me know in the comments corral, pardners.

Memorial Day

When Sallie Carter was a teenager, she used to sneak down the trellis of her family’s 19th-century Tennessee plantation house at night, to dance with her father’s slaves in their quarters.  I don’t know if her boyfriend minded.  It’s possible he wouldn’t have been able to say anything, anyway.  John Montgomery hailed from a farming family, likely of a lower social class than the Carters.  

There had been some confusion over the year of Montgomery’s birth, listed as 1832 in his front-page obituary in a 1931 Eugene Register-Guard. But descendants of the Montgomery clan have in their possession a family Bible that says he was born in 1840. Montgomery, it appears, fudged his age a bit, perhaps to collect old-age benefits from the government.

The family made sure Montgomery’s real date of death was reflected on the grave marker erected for him Eugene, Oregon’s Pioneer Cemetery:

PVT JOHN G MONTGOMERY
CO H
5 TENN CAV
CSA
DEC 18 1840
JAN 6 1931

That’s CSA as in “Confederate States of America.” The modern U.S. government recognizes even Johnny Reb as an American serviceman, and maintains a program to recognize unmarked veterans’ graves with simple slab markers.  Montgomery’s 2000-minted stone stands in sharp contrast to Sallie’s, a by-comparison ornate, almost Victorian affair, just next door in the neighboring plot. Sallie passed away in 1923, and was buried in a plot that probably cost around $30 at the time of purchase.  The family interred Montgomery next to his wife when he died eight years later, but had no money at the time for a stone.

Falling Into the Reflection

Over the past week I’ve been working on my publisher’s letter for the upcoming summer issue of Eugene Magazine.  It’s our Top Doctors of Eugene-Springfield issue, and, seeking to draw from my own experience, I open the letter with an anecdote about what it was like growing up with two psychotherapists as parents.  

In the letter, after I set the scene and (hopefully, presumably) draw the reader in with personal detail, I expand my theme and apply the anecdote’s simple lesson to the larger world. Lots of nonfiction is structured the same way… this blog post, as a matter of fact.

The publisher’s letter is a prime example of a frequent writer’s dilemma: How much of myself should I put into this thing?  Writers of fiction have to ask themselves the question, but it becomes even more pertinent to writers of poetry and nonfiction. 

Even writers who produce literary nonfiction have to gauge their involvement.  John Berendt is a central character, for example, in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.  But I’d argue that Erik Larson may communicate almost as much about himself in The Devil in the White City (perhaps my favorite book), a narrative that takes place a good six decades before Larson was born.

The writer wants his work to convey something about himself, his values, what matters to him.  But it can be difficult to tread the line between self-inclusion and self-absorption, between personal storyline and base narcissism.  (And no, I’m not ignoring the narcissistic overtones of writing about narcissism in a personal essay, appearing on a personal blog.)

Though in essence, the writer conjures only the illusion of personal connection. After reading this mini-essay, for example, you, the reader know that I wrote a publisher’s letter, but not what was going on at the same time, or whether I produced two drafts or twenty, or whether the writing took ten minutes or ten hours, or how I feel about it, or whether I even like the thing.  You can guess, based on clues I might include here or what you know of me outside this writing, but you can never know for sure.

So how about it, writers?  Or creatives in other fields?  How much of yourself do you insert into your work?  How do you avoid sharing too much?  How much of the “you” in your work is illusion, and how much is genuine contact with your readers or audience?  My comment corral is feeling snubbed…

Secret Origin

News of the impending Geoff Johns/Gary Frank miniseries Superman: Secret Origin has got me thinking about the Superman mythos, and about its implications for modern storytelling.  Superman’s world and story are filled with unrealistic storylines and absurd plot points – and I ain’t talkin’ super-speed, alien worlds, or mad scientists, either.  Let’s take a quick (x-ray) look at three of the most unrealistic plot points of Superman’s universe.

The Farm

Clark Kent’s moral core, the values that make him Superman every bit as much as his alien heritage, derive from his simple upbringing on a Kansas farm.  Out in the boonies, Clark had a safe environment to experiment: accidentally flying into the grain silo, tipping cows faster than a speeding bullet, and training those x-ray, telescopic peepers in Lana Lang’s direction.  Or hey, maybe toward Pete Ross.  We all experiment in our teen years, right?

Frankly, it’d never work today.  Large corporation agri-business has replaced the family farm through most of the U.S.  I can just imagine Pa Kent bowing and genuflecting as he shows Greg Kinnear from Fast Food Nation around the plant, er, farm, motioning behind his back for all the undocumenteds to go hide behind one of those laughable “Home of Superboy!” billboards of which the municipality was so fond in 1960s. 

Heck, If Clark had made his debut more in the neighborhood of 2009 rather than 1938, likely our teenaged Smallville rustic would hold some crappy, after-school agri-job like juvenile delinquent Kevin Bacon.  (Forget the hormone-fueled dance halls, though: Clark’s petulant, adolescent stand against The Man would culminate in a rally at Town Hall to lobby for an ordinance making glowing green space rock a controlled substance.)

Or maybe he could just help Napoleon with the chickens.  They do have large talons, you know.

Ghosts of the Future

A couple nights ago I dreamed about my departed friend Paul Carlile, and perhaps those thoughts are fueling today’s writing. 

As anyone who reads this blog for any length of time can attest, I write and blog a good deal about ghosts.  Ghosts figured centrally in my graduate school final project work, and I’ve always liked ghost stories.  Ghosts are intrinsically tragic, sad figures.   Like all the monsters of folklore, ghosts stand for something specific in the human psyche and inn our popular culture.  Emissaries of the past thrust into the present, ghosts inform us of our sorrows, our disappointments, our regrets.  Our failures.

DC Comics, home of Superman and Batman, has known this for decades, resulting in one of my favorite comic book franchises.  One of the company’s earliest heroic characters, co-created in 1940 by Superman’s proud poppa Jerry Siegel, is the Spectre, a leering, chalk-white Reaper type sporting a green hooded cloak. 

The undead spirit of a murdered police detective tasked directly by God with exacting vengeance from killers (how’s that for a secret origin?), the Spectre isn’t a particularly nice guy.  He habitually slices and dices his way through the criminal set, wreaking divine punishment that almost always ends in the perpetrator’s grisly, and often darkly ironic, death.  Yeah, ol’ Spec probably shouldn’t keep hitting ‘Refresh,’ hoping for that eVite from the Superfriends Membership Committee.  The Spectre represents remorse, and sadness, and anger over past mistakes.  The Spectre represents human emotion in a much more visceral fashion than the usual capes-and-tights types.

Little Writers

Yesterday while I was cleaning the kitchen, my wife was in the next room watching the 1994 film version of Little Women. In one scene, the narrator and protagonist, Jo March, as played by Winona Ryder, has moved from Massachusetts to New York City, and wants to describe to her family back home what her new friend Professor Bhaer is like. Because the story unfolds during Reconstruction, Jo is limited in her writing efforts to… wait for it… pen and paper.

Allowing my mind to wander as I scrubbed the pan from the morning’s bacon, I conjectured how differently such a scene might unfold if it took place this year. Jo wouldn’t be limited to writing about the prof, to help her family gain an appreciation of his personality; she’d have multiple technological means to support her. Not only could our 2009 Jo chat with Marm March and the girls on the phone, she could upload a short video about her pal, or refer them to the man’s profiles on MySpace or Facebook or LinkedIn. Or heck, Friendster if the good professor is old skool. If Jo wanted to effect a meeting, of sorts, Second Life would be waiting. And of course, Jo could always blog about her buddy.

Two writers I know personally, both of whom I respect and admire, each recently penned an essay gently denouncing social media and networking for writers. Blogs are too easy, too informal, and frankly, full of crap, argues one essay. Twitter’s seductive micro-blogging format saps artistic creativity, argues the other. And so I, the official Luddite of my family, find myself cast as a reluctant Don Quixote championing the virtues of such tech applications, my windmill the common gripe that real writers write real essays, real books, with, I don’t know, a quill pen or something.

So what’s my point, aside from needlessly needling my colleagues?

Et in arcadia ego.

As a theatre major at Northwestern once upon a time, I got hung up for awhile on Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, a fantastic play melding past and present, life and death.  The play features “Et in Arcadia ego,” a Latin phrase  that translates as “And in Arcadia, there am I.” Even in paradise, death is never far.  It’s a recurring sentiment in art and culture of the Baroque period.  The concept stuck with me for over a decade.  In early January I was in a pensive mood for some reason, and even incorporated the phrase into a post on my Twitter stream.

A week and a day later, my friend Paul Carlile took his own life.

I wasn’t able to write for several days thereafter.  And I wondered why.  Other bloggers successfully and eloquently expressed their feelings for Paul in the wake of his death, but I have always been a writer who keeps something of himself reserved from his writing.  I’m the son of two clinical psychologists, and I always think a great deal about processing emotion.  But writing is seldom the way I do it.