Chapter Three- What Consumes You?

Chapter Three

What Consumes You?

Everybody is pretty much okay with me. No, everyone is good with me. Really good. The fact that I stay to myself has more to do with the difficulty that I have in approaching people than it does with my opinion of them. I'm really talking individuals here. There are entire religions that I'm not comfortable with. Sports teams. Professions. Yeah, when you bunch them together you'll see the worst of folks. Turn on cable news and cue up a national anthem and you can count me out. Those chants of "USA, USA," bring to mind those old photographs of lynching scenes for me.

Still, I don't really consider myself a loner. I certainly don't enjoy drinking alone.

Pickens seemed to be the same sort. When we met I hadn't begun to worry about my age. He obviously had a decade or more on me. He also had class. I don't. He had a sense of style and if I notice, it must be extreme. He wore Jack Purcells and I do, too. The fashion similarity ended there.

At the risk of sounding hokey I will tell you that I am somehow aware of auras. Not that I see them very often, but Pickens Klay had a definite glow. Now, I'm sure that there are negative auras but I don't know anything about that. If it were my job to recruit a guy to infiltrate the Hollywood hip set, Pickens would get the nod.

At the end of his LSD adventures the Company had my friend negotiating with garbage men to poke through Santo Trafficante's trash and Frank Ragano's refuse. He knew, of course, that he was looking for any scrap that might shed any light at all on the Kennedy assassination or Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance. He never found anything more interesting than old fudgesicle sticks and a few dirty pictures of girls and donkeys. I begged him to tell me more about the pictures, trying to sound like I had an interest in Cuban history.

Well, sir, the story gets good when Pickens is sent to Los Angeles to finish the cleanup of a mess that is colossal, even by government standards. We're talking stupidity and ineptness at the level of the Castro exploding cigars. Francis Gary Powers. Bay Of Pigs.

This time, though, we're talking about millions of lives lost and millions more shattered. Late in 1980 gay men all across the United States started getting sick. Really sick. At first most of the population tried to avoid an unseemly, uncomfortable statistic. We had legislators and evangelists at every level hinting that Jesus was out to teach a lesson. Then practical problems- the public blood supply, Key West real estate values and here we go- Rock Hudson's death.

Now the stories all become this jumble of history. Some of it is factual. Every anecdote from Pickens Klay's own portfolio, well, you can take that stuff to the bank. I don't talk like that but then, I'm not used to telling stories like these.

The rest of this stuff comes second hand from gangsters and whores, drug dealers and worse- the CIA. Pickens Klay moved to Hollywood to piece together facts and lies from lots of folks with a lot to hide and more to lose. It started with a trip to the monkey island at the Los Angeles Zoo and a dinner that evening with Liz Taylor.

Chapter Two- Have You Heard The One?

Chapter Two

Have You Heard The One?

Well, I'm one of those people who will tell anybody anything. I mean I can keep a secret but you'll have to remember to tell me that it's a secret. By the time that Pickens and I had been hanging around swapping tales for a couple of weeks he knew every story of debauchery that I have. There aren't that many. Oh, I wish there were. I've always had bad intentions.

I'm a writer because there comes a point where you can't call yourself a rock'n'roll musician. It's not that I outgrew rock'n'roll. I never outgrew anything, fercrissakes! I just outlived it I'm sad to say. Of course I went into the rock'n'roll racket to pick up girls. That's the only reason anybody ever went into that line of work and yes, I use the term loosely. Really loosely.

Aptitude tests from the eighth grade on all indicated that I was destined to be a preacher. There's only one reason that anybody ever went into that line of work for the most part and that's the same reason. Well, that and the good hours. An hour a week, that's my kind of profession.

Turns out, to my surprise, that I've used most of my time in the rock'n'roll industry preaching. It took me the first twenty or thirty years to notice.

Never picked up any girls, either. To say that I have failed in my chosen career is to grossly understate the situation. I've pretty much ended up with some stories, some memories, a bunch of songs and a permanently broken heart. Could have been worse.

Pickens, now- there's a different story. I can't tell you that he's my hero because I'm trying to give up heroes. He does serve as something of an inspiration and source of fascination for an aging hippie with a Peter Pan complex.

All of my stories are from the sidelines, Forrest Gump-like. I held up Jimi Hendrix's Marshall cabinets in case he whacked them. Elvis offered to teach me karate. I watched Janis change clothes and Jackie Wilson showed me his scars. My only role in my stories is that I was there. I exist. Not really much of a legacy. They're never gonna put up any statue of me in any hall of fame, much less squabble over whether or not I deserve to be there.

But our man-he's the star of his stories and, great god almighty, what stories they are. Pickens has memories, too, not to mention a fine government pension.

We can probably agree that most CIA tales are meant to be kept secret but he never actually told me that I shouldn't talk about any of this stuff.

Apparently Pickens Klay started his career with the Company right after graduation from Florida State University in the early '60's. He had actually been recruited by the FBI during his senior year in high school at a private Catholic boy's school in Miami. He never really said that the government paid for his college but that's my impression.

His first real assignment consisted of destroying Company files that showed that LSD studies were being widely conducted in loony attempts at mind control and memory erasure. What sexually transmitted diseases had been for the Company in the '30's and '40's, acid became in the '50's and '60's. Pickens got to meet and party with Kesey. He was able to get to dance to the Dead in the park while picking up a healthy paycheck. Uncle Sam didn't invent the hippie but he was on the Development Committee.

The real stories, the real stories are the ones that fit in between. Anticipating a youth culture that might eventually destabilize the culture of Eisenhower's America, the CIA went to work heading off peace and love at the pass. We're talking now about race music, marijuana, disposable income in the hands of kids and s-e-x. Of course the Negro is the worrisome ingredient here. The Negro and the queer. Is "queer" supposed to be capitalized here? I'll check later.

Me and Pickens and the Conspiracy

Chapter One

Don't Let Them Catch Your Gaze

Maybe the best thing about drinking with Pickens is that he won't stop as long as you don't. It's like those wrestling bears that you used to run across at those weird little rest stops along the smaller highways in northern California. You would always hear that the bear would only squeeze you about as hard as he thought you were squeezing him. I don't know if that's true. I never did and never will wrestle a bear. There were always the stories, though, of the tough guys who would come along from time to time with the idea of teaching a bear a lesson.

Let me say here and now that I was never going to teach Pickens Klay any lesson about drinking. I've been called lots of things, "lightweight" among them.

"Socially awkward" is another one. I'm pretty sure that I'm just shy.

Well, I would usually head up to Flynn's around four in the afternoon so that I wouldn't have to struggle with small talk. Most weekdays would be empty enough so that I didn't have to sit right next to anybody and there would be enough folks so that I didn't have to make awkward chitchat with the bartender. Usually it was a pretty, young girl and I hated the idea of making them feel obligated to entertain me. Most of the time I would have a major crush on them by my second or third visit on their watch. The really pretty ones didn't usually last for more than a month or two.

Flynn's advertised as a restaurant, a grille. It was a dive bar that served a little bit from a menu to keep their liquor license legal. I've never understood how that works. I've never really been interested. Smoking had been prohibited for several years but you still left Flynn's reeking of tobacco after a minute or two in the place. There were four or five little round tables and an L-shaped bar with seven or eight stools, usually with at least one or two of them broken.

The first time that I made eye contact with Pickens was when I looked up to see who had played Clarence "Frogman" Henry on the jukebox. He might have been testing me. Within a month I knew his name and I knew that he drank rum. Well drinks, usually rum and coke. I'm pretty sure that he usually had a crush on most of the pretty bartenders, too. Of course I found it admirable that he didn't seem to flirt with them. Maybe it's just that he didn't make me jealous.

By the time that we actually spoke to each other he seemed like one of my closer friends. I think we talked about hot rods. Either that or Donald O' Connor movies. Pretty soon I was getting there by three or three thirty. I wasn't really drinking much more, I was just having fun.

It was probably close to a year before I had any idea about just exactly who Pickens Klay really was. Neither us was at all the type to ask, "What do you do?"

It could be that I'm not comfortable telling strangers that I'm a writer, knowing that their next questions are all going to be about what I write and how I manage to support myself. I don't much think so. I'm pretty sure that if I practiced law and wore suspenders and drove a new Audi that I still wouldn't go for the "What do you do?" stuff.

Pickens? I suppose that he had official reasons not to lay all his cards on the table. Practical ones, too. This story that I'm warming up to tell you could get a fellow shot or locked up. Or both.

By the time that he mentioned the CIA I had already figured out that my pal had been around several blocks. I mean he knew stuff.        

A Word From Our Sponsor

My intentions were to let you know that I plan to start running my book here, chapter by chapter, day by day if that's okay. If for some reason any of you miss my babble about peace and love and rock'n'roll and adolescent sex fantasies you can always go back to the archives. I seem to have written only four or five columns and then repeated them ad nauseam. 

I met Elvis, that girl was mean to me, war is bad and animals are good, maybe I'll kill myself, blah blah...

It ain't the Literary Review. You get what you pay for.

Before I get off my high horse, though, I have to mention that collateral damage is in the news once more. Unfortunately, it's the U.S.A. again. This time we've bombed a hospital in Afghanistan run by Doctors Without Borders.

At the sure fire risk of repeating myself, there are no good wars. Use your love.

What Am I Worth?

It took a funeral for me to figure it out. A dear friend called some years back and asked if I would sing at her mother's funeral service. Of course I was saddened to find out that she had lost her mom and I was flattered that she wanted me to sing. I had never done any such thing and it had never occurred to me that anyone would consider me for such a thing. She mentioned Amazing Grace and I thought that seemed fine. I've always loved that song. I had never played it but that didn't seem like much of a problem. Then she dropped the bomb. She wondered what I thought about doing Sentimental Journey, too.

While I fumbled and cleared my throat, she told me that it had been her mother's favorite song. Well, it has always been one of my favorites, too, but I surely didn't want to ruin a funeral. I couldn't find the words to turn her down so I asked for a little time to see how it might work out. 

As soon as I began to bumble through all those minor sevenths it quickly began to sound just like any Ronny Elliott song. I did the two songs at her beautiful church service with her dog at my feet and it was a wonderful, moving experience for me.

Nobody has to tell me that I'm no singer. My rudimentary grasp of guitar is not news to me, either. I've said it before. I don't make good records. I don't make bad records. I make Ronny Elliott records. Sure makes life easy.

Now, I'm taking a lesson from myself. I've always spent a lot of time wringing my hands about not being the person that I should be. Not being kind enough, patient enough. Not forgiving more quickly.

Suddenly I'm giving myself a little breathing room. I figure that as long as someone is more loving than I am that I have a lot of work to do. 

Now that I have figured out that I'm never gonna be another Mother Teresa, just like I was never going to be another Little Richard, I'm free. 

I'm lucky to have had so much love in my life. My teachers have been the best. This is the best I can do. I'll get better.

Best I Can Do

How much can one person do? Well, you never know what opportunities will end up in your path. Before the news of today's shootings, the state of the world's well being was already ruling my thoughts.

My opposition to guns has never saved a life. Probably never will. My vegetarian diet for the last fifty years has never saved  a cow, a pig, a chicken. I try not to preach, aware that it is a waste of time to lecture and wag my finger at someone who already sees things as I do and extremely annoying and condescending to anyone who feels differently.

There are a few things that I know, though. Kindness brings happiness. Everyone needs love and everyone needs to love. Hurt people hurt.

I really don't mind criticism of my naiveté. I am a simple man. I love you.

Light At The End Of The Tumble

Maybe it's not so much that we become inconsequential as we grow older. Maybe it's just that we're more aware of things. Sometimes I wish that I believed in heaven, redemption... something. 

I've got dreams and I've got memories. I've got stories and a few scratches, scrapes and bruises.

If I could control my dreams there would always be dogs and cats playing poker and Fats Domino music would play in the background. Everybody would be happy, of course.

Oh, happy day.