"Baby don't cry, it's better this way"

I get thinking about all this sometimes, about the songs of my youth. Most of the really lush '60s pop hits came out mid-decade, when I was old enough to appreciate them, and they're recorded in my brain even more indelibly than my marriage vows.

There was a whole genre of hits which I call the "I'm not good enough for you/you're not good enough for me" style of song. The gold standard of this mass of music was Billy Joe Royal's Down in the Boondocks (which for some reason my Grade 5 class loved to parody as "down in the outhouse"). This was the first time I paid attention to a lyric which told a tragic tale of inadequacy - in this case, his, as he slaves away on the docks and pines for an unattainable princess ("Ev'ry night I watch the lights from the house up on the hill/I love a little girl who lives up there and I guess I always will"). 

Because this fellow is a sweaty, grease-caked Neanderthal, or at least a poor guy whose lunch money has been known to be blown on reefer, he feels inadequate. Near the end of the song we learn the two of them are meeting in secret, but the question is, does she make him shower first?

The female character in this drama looks to me like a prom queen with not a hair out of place. Or perhaps she is wearing white, like a virgin at a purity ball. But you can't tell me she doesn't like to lower herself. And that's how she sees it, make no mistake. She doesn't WANT him smartening himself up like he says he will ("One fine day I'll find a way to move from this old shack/I'll hold my head up like a king and I never never will look back."). The grease and sweat and funk and penniless penury turn her on, and both of them know it. But when it comes time to marry, goodbye Billy Joe.

The amazing Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons spewed out several tunes in this genre. Dawn was one of the best, especially that dreamy intro, "Pretty as a midsummer's morn,/They call her Dawn." You either love Vallli or hate him, and I admit he does sometimes sound like a man whose shorts are too tight. But he also had a certain earnestness, and a definite tough-guy charm that came across in nearly every song (with the possible exception of Walk like a Man, which was impossible to take seriously sung in falsetto). Dawn was kind of like Boondocks, in that the fellow feels so inadequate that he sings over and over, "So go away, please go away. . . Baby don't cry, it's better this way!" 

He even, incredibly, begs her to marry the rich guy: "Think what a big man he'll be. . . Now think what the future would be with a poor boy like me!" Masochism was never finer than this. The nobility here, spurning his love and sacrificing his happiness for her financial wellbeing, is, well, a bit much, but it's the gentlemanly thing to do. What he's hoping for, of course, is that she will kick over the traces and say, "I won't go away! I am the love of your life! I don't care which side of the tracks you're from! I love you! I love you! I love you!" (etc. etc.)

The flip side of all this male grovelling is Rag Doll, in which the girl isn't quite good enough for HIM, though he won't admit it. She's a secret Cinderella who deserves so much more than her shabby, shameful circumstances: "Such a pretty face should be dressed in lace." Though he insists "I love you just the way you are," he also seems determined to get her out of this mess, to smarten her up a bit so she won't draw the wrong sort of attention when they're sipping Coke floats at Pop Tate's Chock'lit Shoppe ("hey, who's the skank who's going with Frank?"). I can't help but see Rag Doll, who isn't even given a name, as sooty-eyed, skimpily-clad, with hair hanging down both sides of her face like a basset hound's ears. Is she "easy"? Well, can you guess? Rag dolls are passive, pliant, so easy to dress - and undress. 

Princess in Rags by Gene Pitney (he of Town Without Pity fame) echoes most of these themes, including his determination to "work and slave, scrimp and save, to change those rags to silk and lace". "All her wealth is in her charms," the pop bard insists, "and the sweetness of her arms/How I love my poor princess in rags." Once again there's an inference of meeting on the sly, the neighborhood girl everybody knows about, the one who will "put out". Funny that rags come up more than once - don't know which song came first, but they cover similar ground, including the fairy-tale sense of an unrecognized royalty hidden from the world (but plenty seen by HIM, especially after he removes those rags).

I bogged down at Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, though they had a slew of hits in the early '70s, including one that almost fits the genre. I think their first hit was Young Girl, in which an underage siren is being told to hit the road before something illegal happens. The power inequity has more to do with age than economic status, but it's still there, and she's still being told to get lost. The subtext is that she is a nasty little Lolita who keeps pestering him. Being too young, like being too poor, lends a stigma of sluttishness, of too much makeup, the familiar sooty-eyes-and-basset-hound-hair syndrome.  

Hang On Sloopy is just the opposite: don't take off, hang on! This is about a girl who lives in a very bad part of town, with obviously loose morals, but she is oh, so misunderstood: "Sloopy, I don't care what your Daddy do (janitor? Pimp? Hit man?)/'Cause you know Sloopy girl, I'm in love with you." I can't help but see the similarity between "Sloopy" and "sloppy", a sort of literal looseness, and there is even a reference to letting her hair hang down, a symbolic phrase if ever there was one. I don't know if the McCoys ever had another hit, but this one guaranteed them a place in the wrong-side-of-the-tracks hall of fame.

(A side note: for some unknown reason, references to "Daddy" abound in these songs. In Boondocks, he's the thwarted suitor's employer; in Princess in Rags, he's a pathetic, "worn-out man" who can't even put food on the table. I'm reminded of that song, whoever recorded it: "in the summertime when the weather is hot. .  ": "If her Daddy's rich, take her out for a meal/If her Daddy's poor, then do what you feel": another line that reeks of unequal social status and the quasi-ownership that still shows up in wedding ceremonies when Daddy "gives the bride away").

I hesitated to include I Who Have Nothing here, as caterwauled by Tom Jones, but the lyrics are so funny I couldn't quite omit it. "He, he buys you diamonds. . . bright, sparkling diamonds. . . but believe me. . . hear what I say. . . he can buy you the world but he'll never love you the way. . . I LOVE YOU!" But I have saved the best until last.

Long before she was a superstar on her own, Cher coattailed behind a seemingly lamebrained young man with a  fake-fur vest and bangs, Sonny Bono. Sonny "made" Cher in more ways than one, and even wrote some of her best songs early on, including Baby Don't Go, one of the finest pop numbers ever. At that point Cher sang in a fresh, natural alto that had real warmth, bringing out the heat in the simple, poignant lyrics. It's the only song in this category written from the girl's point of view, expressing her her hurt, her needs and desires.


"Baby Don't Go"

Baby don't go,
Pretty baby please don't go

I never had a mother,
I hardly knew my dad
I've been in town for eighteen years
You're the only boy I've had
I can't stay,
Maybe I'll be back some day

Baby don't go,
Pretty baby please don't go
I love you so,
Pretty baby please don't go

I never had no money
I bought at the second hand store
The way this old town laughs at me
I just can't take it no more
I can't stay,
I'm gonna be a lady some day

Baby don't go,
Pretty baby please don't go
I love you so,
Pretty baby please don't go

When I get to the city,
My tears will all be dry
My eyes will look so pretty
No one's gonna know I cried
Yes I'm goin' away,
Maybe I'll be back some day

Baby don't go,
Maybe I'll be back some day
Baby don't go

In this case, instead of the boyfriend making himself worthy of her, or making HER worthy of HIM, this girl is making herself worthy in her own eyes, a quest for dignity and real self-esteem. It's about the only song I can think of with those dynamics, which is what makes it so touching .Though she insists "you're the only boy I've had," there's an inference of nasty rumors, of pregnancy and having to escape to go into hiding or "get rid of it", which may or may not be true. And then there is that chorus, my God, it's incredible: it's very close, tight, dissonant harmony, the kind you don't hear in pop, its overtones suggesting a train whistle late at night, and all the longings of a girl running far away from the hell and damnation of a pitiless small town.

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Charisma to burn

I would have to call these two my favorites from Old Hollywood. They acted the stuffings out of a part while keeping it real. And they were gorgeous: the camera ate them up.

Both of them smoked too much, but Bogie fell far sooner, in an awful sort of way, consumed. He kept smoking even after contracting fatal throat cancer. Perhaps it was a "what the hell, it's coming anyway" thing. Somehow Bette was tougher, but cancer devoured her too, eventually, until she was an unrecognizable wraith.

Our heroes flare briefly. It's always brief, when you think about it. Each of us climbs only a tiny segment of the wall (just like Harold and his fake aerial sets in Safety Last). It's hard to put any of it together. I once had the thought that if you kept going back and back, and back and back and back, through the thousands and mega-thousands and millions and billions of ancestors that spread out exponentially behind you, you would eventually reach the first cell of life that winked on out of nothingness.

We all go back to the primordial ooze. There goes the  neighborhood.

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The magnificent four

Motor City madness: Bob Seger's East Side Story

Beneath the bare light bulb above
She gazed into the eyes of love
Bathed in the dirty neon lights
She begged him "don't go out tonight"
If we work out somehow maybe
We could find a way out baby
And he laughed and said "I got to go"

And she cried "no"
Johnny Johnny no
Oh Johnny Johnny no

His arms were warm and strong and young
"I promise I won't hurt no one"
"Oh baby when you gonna learn,
Them folks uptown got bread to burn,

When they see me flash my knife,
They'll be fearin' for their life,
They won't give me trouble this I know"
And she cried no
Oh Johnny Johnny no
Johnny Johnny no

[organ solo]

The night passed like a thousand years
The tenemant room had culled her tears
Then came a knock upon the door
Two men she'd never seen before

"Did you know Johnny Brown miss?
We hate to tell you this but
Has he a relative you know?"
And she cried no
Oh Johnny Johnny no
Oh Johnny why'd you go?

In posting this, I'm trying to touch something that is virtually untouchable. When I first heard this song, I was still sleeping downstairs, hadn't yet inherited my sister's room upstairs with its strange artifacts in the bureau drawers (garter belts, a rubber douche bag, rollers, several girdles, a pink angora sweater which I once wore to school, and a hair drier with a puffy plastic hat that you wore like a shower cap).  I had a radio beside my bed and constantly listened to CKLW Detroit: we all did, it was just what you did when you lived in Chatham (within striking distance of Windsor, Detroit's boring younger brother). I remember Chatham days now with a kind of ecstasy, which is strange because I did not have a happy childhood. Maybe it's just the escape to something once known, or revised brilliantly, the grass made of emeralds, and the crickets sounding like something out of Handel's Messiah.

When this song came on the radio, a funny feeling came over me. Electric. It's an opera in 2 minutes, a brilliant lyric really, tightly compressed, laden. The vocals are heartbreaking, the "no, no, nooooooooo" in the slightly choked voice that squeezes all the violence and pathos out of the scene.

A funny feeling. Electric. Buzzing. I was beginning to come awake. Given that this was 1966, and that The Doors hadn't even happened yet (or not full-on: that was 2 years later), the bridge and keyboard sound remarkably Morrison-like, meaning that Jim and the gang must've been listening to Seger. But didn't all bands listen to all bands back then?

I am convinced now that the first hormones were stirring in me, and probably I wrote a story about this song because I always wrote about everything. I couldn't explain it. It wasn't just sexual feelings, though I am sure they were included. They had to be. I had been sexual ever since falling madly in love with Maynard G. Krebbs in Dobie Gillis when I was six years old. It was something else, an elevation, a lifting of the vibration of my life. An intensification of the frequency.

Johnny, Johnny, noooooo.

I had some sort of a vision of a man killing a rat with a knife. There were no rats in the song, but at about the same time I watched West Side Story on TV, and the two things may have become conflated. The guy who played Bernardo,  he looked something like Johnny, tough, with his long-suffering girl friend begging him not to go. Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, no.

I knew almost nothing then, had not "had sex", not even with myself (though I think that was going to happen pretty soon). I was somehow throwing myself into the centre of the violent scene, smelling the smells, sucking it up. That raw roaring Motor City sound was primal, dangerous, wild. The music came right up out of the core of it, bursting through the scalding pavement, immensely alive, but frightening.

When there was a gang fight, it was a rumble. When there was a biker race, it was a scramble. I had also watched The Wild One, or was soon to watch it, and even though Brando was fat and lethargic and mostly slept through it, there was something about that leather. The danger.

"I promise I won't hurt no one" echoes Brando in another movie, the touchstone movie of my life, On the Waterfront. He says the same thing to Edie when he pulls out his longshoreman's hook and heads over to confront Johnny Friendly and his minions for a final showdown. "And don't worry. I ain't gonna hurt nobody."

That's not exactly what Edie or the unnamed Motor City girl were worried about.

Why was I attracted to this stuff? A shy, introverted, slightly nutty, not-very-well-liked (some things never change) girl with unremarkable looks and way too much intensity for her own good? I wanted to be with that East Side Story guy, tame him down, or else go out with him, wild, my hair like Raquel Welch's in that prehistoric  movie, what was it called? A mane, a mop. I wanted to be with Terry Malloy, walk beside him, shine my light on him like Edie, change him. I wanted to bust out of dull old Chatham with its milk-horses and bread trucks and sugar beet factory and Lloyd's jute bag company and Darling's slaughterhouse that smelled like damnation on a hot day, the museum that should have been in a museum, and the medieval convent where I had to take my violin lessons. I was sick of the nighthawks with their skee-ix, skee-ix, skee-ix, and that bizarre roaring sound that I was later to learn came from air rushing through their flight feathers as they dove to the ground. All that stuff I ache for now, knowing it's gone forever. Most of those old Victorian -era houses would be ripped down, and I happen to know the house I lived in was made into a doctor's office.

My life wasn't, isn't important. Lord knows I've had that jackhammered home since joining Facebook (a handy way to top up your pain when the tank is low). I've felt out of kilter all through my life, and at my age it ain't going to change. I have been told, and I don't believe it by the way,  that "most people" feel like me, feel like they don't belong or fall short in some way. Bull-hoo. All I can say in my own defense is that I have kept my aliveness; even in the midst of howling anguish, experiences you would not wish on someone you loathe, the light has not gone out, I have not opted for deadness or shrinking a size so my shoes will fit. And I can't be around anyone who has made that choice.

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Dirtbags: go look in the mirror!

DIRTBAG LITTLE WOMEN


MEG: Jo

what are you doing in Father’s office

all the time?

[JO kicks her steel-toed boots

onto the desk]

JO: writin smut

wanna read it

MEG: …yes



MEG: all right

we’re off to the play with

Laurie

JO: don’t wait up

AMY: can I come too?

JO: don’t be ridiculous

AMY [whispering]: I’m going to burn what you

love and marry your boyfriend

JO: what

AMY: have such a fun time

at the play



[MEG runs into the room]

MEG: I’m getting married!

BETH: Congratulations!

AMY: Congratulations!

(JO is idly poking at the ashes in the

fireplace]

MEG: Jo, did you hear me? Mr. Brooke

proposed to me and I accepted him!

[JO draws a dick in the ashes]

JO: I heard you

JO: has anyone seen

my manuscript

MEG: no

BETH: no

AMY: no

saw a fire that looked an awful

lot like your manuscript though


[The girls are ice skating on

the pond]

AMY: i’m tired

i’m tired and this sucks

winter sucks

take me home

[Amy falls through the ice]

AMY: HELP ME

JO: sorry

cant hear you

AMY: CHRIST I’M DROWNING

JO: let me know if you see my manuscript

down there

[JO skateboards over LAURIE's head]

JO: I got your note

you’re not my boyfriend



JO: I got a haircut

what do you think

AMY: oh, Jo!

how could you

your one beauty



[JO climbs into AMY's room late one night

and begins to shave her head]

JO [whispering]: Oh, no, Amy

how could you?

your one beauty

[JO draws a mustache under AMY's nose]



AMY: who did this

JO: who did what

AMY: THIS

JO: you dont look any different to me

LAURIE: oh, Jo

please marry me

JO: no

LAURIE: but why

[JO strikes a match on LAURIE's chin and

lights her cigar with it]

JO: because that’s exactly what they’ll be

expecting

LAURIE: who is ‘they’?

[JO slowly rollerblades offscreen without

replying]



MEG: Beth is dead!

JO: Oh, my God.

MARMEE: No, no –

AMY: can I have her room

MEG: Oh, my God.

AMY: sorry

may I have her room

I want to tell you exactly why I find this so sickening.


I found it, of course, on Facebook. All the comments

were screamingly positive. Everyone found it hilariously

funny, irreverant, etc. etc.The implication was, if you don't

find it funny you're un-hip,probably old, and don't

understand contemporary satire.


When it comes to satire, I've seen piles of horseshit

that are funnier and wittier than this. This thing sends up one

of my favorite books from girlhood, a book that has been

made into a movie at least three times (most recently with

Winona Ryder as Jo, an unlikely choice - but hey,

we also have the very dishy Gabriel Byrne as her love

interest, Professor Bhaer).


Aside from my horse stories, this was my favorite

book in childhood. Like Anne of Green Gables, Little

Women was set in another time, an era when people made

their own entertainment and pleasures were simpler.

While waiting for their sainted father to return from the Civil

War, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy took part in boisterous yet

highly literate activities such as the Pickwick

Club, which implied they all knew how to read. (The

screamers here probably don't get much farther than

Cosmopolitan.) The characters were well-developed, and in spite

of the quaint setting and manners, all believably human. How do I

know this? After seeing the June Allyson version on TCM, I recently

downloaded the manuscript from Gutenberg and read it again.

This is a very well-written book, with shades and

nuances beyond anything you see in children's literature

today. In a way, it's far too good for girls. The people making

these vulgar comments (yes, vulgar, though I could use a worse

term) probably have not read Little Women at all, but have

only seen the latest movie version. Even in the 1960s, which

seem like a great literary flowering compared to the scorched

earth of today, there were many references that sailed over my

head, such as Apollyon and Vanity Fair (NOT the magazine!).

These were references to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress:

not a jolly book by our standards, but a classic with great literary

depth. Meaning: intellectual depth, which seems to have

virtually vanished in today's shallow and virtually illiterate world.



Much is made of the feminist nature of Jo March's matriarchal

household (which is loosely based on Louisa May Alcott's

unconventional upbringing),

and while Marmee does insist her girls be educated

(apparently, by an early form of home-schooling, or they surely

would not be reading John Bunyan), she also tutors them on the

value of never speaking when angry. In fact, when very angry,

women were expected to leave the room, a baffling instruction

in a day when everyone speaks their mind even if they don't

have one.

Though I can see where it's coming from - I'm not THAT much

of a fossil - Dirtbag Little Women is not a funny piece. It is lousy

satire, without even a glimmer of originality or wit.We won't

even get into the implied lesbian stereotypes embodied by the

butch-ish Jo.True satire has an underlying respect for its

"target", which adds an extra dimension, somehow makes

it funnier. It isn't just primitive spitting, mocking and throwing

mud and shit at a classic that millions of people once cherished,

loved and learned from.


In short, this is a cheap shot.


I don't even know if girls read Little Women any more.

They are much more likely to read the scummyand unfunny

Dirtbag version, which is both sad and shocking.

I'm not saying we should adhere to the quaint morals of the

Civil War era, in which even the most liberated family adhered

to a strict moral code we can never understand. But can't we

keep a modicum of respect for writing of this depth, writing

that until recently has stood the test of time? Is it all getting lost?


What is wrong with these people? Why do I feel so alone in this,

why does everyone shriek and guffaw their approval in the

comments? "OMG, ROTFL, I HATED this book and I'm so

glad you fucking trashed it." Some of us aren't so glad.

It dismays me, not so much

that someone would rip this thing into bleeding pieces but that

the jackals of conformity would so quickly swarm the carcass,

eager to display their hipness with their shrieking

and jeering.

I used to think human beings were herd animals,

but now I realize they flock like chickens or even run in packs,

as surely as jackals or wolves.Almost no one has any individual

courage any more. It makes me sick and fills me with despair.

Sure, go ahead and eviscerate a classic, make it "hip" and "funny"

and distance yourself in the most cowardly manner possible.

That way, you won't even have to form a real opinion.

Pack animals don't have to think: in fact, in the

grand scheme of things, it's better if they don't. It's

one of the immutable facts of nature. Don't think for yourself.

Don't even THINK of thinking for yourself. Just follow the leader.

Paperback writer (paperback writer)

Paperback writer

Paper back writer (paperback writer)

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

It took me years to write, will you take a look

It's based on a novel by a man named Lear

And I need a job, so I want to be a paperback writer,

Paperback writer.

It's a dirty story of a dirty man

And his clinging wife doesn't understand.

Their son is working for the Daily Mail,

It's a steady job but he wants to be a paperback writer,

Paperback writer.

Paperback writer (paperback writer)

It's a thousand pages, give or take a few,

I'll be writing more in a week or two.

I can make it longer if you like the style,

I can change it round and I want to be a paperback writer,

Paperback writer.

If you really like it you can have the rights,

It could make a million for you overnight.

If you must return it, you can send it here

But I need a break and I want to be a paperback writer,

Paperback writer.

Paperback writer (paperback writer)

Paperback writer - paperback writer

Paperback writer - paperback writer

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Writers you want to punch in the face

http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/writers-you-want-to-punch-in-the-facebook/

OK then, here is a link to something I particularly liked on FB. I don't like much on FB, and every time I (compulsively) go on it, I see a lot of things that are not nearly as good, or see something that makes me mad and feel I can't say anything because most comments begin with the word, "Awesome!!!!!" If you say anything else, you're a party pooper and "negative", which is the worst thing you can be.

Social media hasn't done me a whole heck of a lot of good. It has distracted me from real writing, which is what I need to be doing, always. Right now I am stymied as to how I am supposed to use it to sell my book. I seem to be nowhere with it. I know I'm not supposed to admit this, in case the unusual happens and somebody reads this. It has been known to happen, but a large number of views is rare on this blog because I write it mostly to please myself.

I finally have a book in hand, but feel a little lost. The things that helped me stay afloat and promote and get out there with my last two novels are mostly gone. The independent bookstores have been driven out of business, and Big Booky isn't too friendly these days. It's not the way I thought it would be, at all, and all too often I feel like a dinosaur.

That said, several times a day I look at the published version of The Glass Character and just shimmer all over. As it turns out, the cover has a high shine that resembles that antique turquoise glass, and it's effective, as if Harold is looking through a windowpane. It was a long, long haul writing this, and twice as long selling it, and now, though I don't know exactly where I am going with it, it has been externalized, it's no longer just a story or a thought in my head or a hope or a dream: it's a BOOK, and always will be, even if it goes out of print. As an ebook, I suppose it will always be around in some form or another.

I've written about Rich Correll, and I did ask my publisher to send him an advance copy, but I haven't heard anything back. Rich Correll knew Harold, even touched his films and became his unofficial filmographer. What he thinks of  The Glass Character matters. But I have had almost no feedback, and it's kind of like waiting for a medical test to come back. You tell yourself, it's just a precaution, I'm sure everythng's fine. . . but you know that the possibility of "not fine" exists. You tell yourself, for sure, this is your last book. Has to be.

I remember a time when Rich Correll was just some far-flung possibility. I opened a file last night in Word, my first letter to him, dated 2010. I had no idea what his mailing address was, could only find vague references to talent agencies and taxi companies. I even sent a letter to his lawyer. I gave up some time in 2012, and he phoned me in 2013. I could not believe how long ago: last summer. I thought it was maybe two months ago.

I think a lot of what I am doing now is distraction. I should be working feverishly on Facebook and Twitter (though I loathe the thought and would rather be hung upside-down by my toenails than open a Twitter account) to "try to get the word out". What word? My book is out.  Buy it, it's swell. End of message.

I suppose if I don't promote my face off, I won't be eligible for the awards that can propel a writer out of the Paperback Writer zone ("Dear sir or madam, would you read my book, it took me years to write, would you take a look"). I don't know quite how that works. Do I sound super-confident here? I doubt it.

I do feel good about the book. It's not that. Or, I don't think so. It's everything else, what goes with it. Writers are jerked back and forth: stop being so sickeningly self-congratulatory! Get out there and be a shameless self-promoter! Go away, come back.

And then there is Cinderella Syndrome, the great lottery win, with some obscure or completely unknown author catapulting to the top of the New York Times bestseller list (Nirvana for every writer, supposedly). I should have called my novel 50 Shades of Harold.

It's a weird place to be in. I wouldn't want to go back. All of it has been hard. The writing was the best part, as always. I'll never forget it. And a few people have commented on it. Even my daughter liked it! She's the toughest critic I know, one of the few people who actually speaks her mind when you ask her about something, so her opinion matters to me.

All I want to do is make Blingees, right now, to take my mind off things. I have had no reviews at all so far, and there may not be any (not that they lead to sales). One would be nice. And hearing back from Rich Correll. Now THAT would be nice. An invite to read somewhere, so I don't have to phone an organizer and say, "Please, sir. . . "

But I remember the day the idea fell on me to write this book - just fell on me like an anvil out of nowhere, and my first reaction was, "Nooooooooooooo." Somehow, that led to this. The strange "this" I'm in now, which is a long way from the initial assault.