The Rec Room

Some say a man is a crude thing. A course thing. A crass thing, even. Lacking finesse and personality. Or a finished persona. Like a bull in a China shop charging hither, thither, and yon without thought or reason. Charging everywhere. Breaking everything. Signifying nothing.

This thought is without merit, methinks.

Perhaps a man just thinks… differently...,

Perhaps…,

Perhaps he just thinks with his nose.

There once was a girl. And I loved her.

A girl named Diana,

Though she wanted to be called, ‘Diane.’

I called her whatever she wished,

Men always do. To please her.

The girl I loved in high school.

My first love.

My only love, perhaps.

We met in a mutual friend’s house.

Her name was Cheryl and she knew my friend named Gary.

We were in different high schools,

They were the exotic girls from the next town over,

Close but distant,

Like all mysterious things.

We met by happenstance.

Cheryl had a house with a rec room in the basement, a favorite of 1950’s houses at the time.

Lots of things happened in rec rooms back then.

Wonderful…,

Things…

Gary and I were invited over to a party at Cheryl’s house.

Cheryl had a friend named Diana, pronounced ‘Diane.’

Cheryl had Diana over for the same party.

We played a game called spin the bottle.

Perhaps you’ve heard of it?

It was a favorite in 1950’s rec rooms,

In the half light of candles and posters of the Beetles on the walls.

You take a bottle of Moxie or Coca-Cola or something or other and drink it.

Then you gather a group of boys and girls in a circle and place the empty bottle in the middle.

One boy or girl takes the bottle and spins it.

It spins,

It stops,

It points to some boy or girl in the circle.

The spinner of the bottle then kisses the one pointed to by that bottle.

Or the nearest person of the opposite sex. Let’s be real, now.

It was quite simple, really.

Brilliant, even.

Clever.

It was responsible for many surprising things happening back then, which was the 1960’s by my time.

Wonderful…,

Things…

In Diana’s and my case, it was love at first spin.

It was wonderful beyond belief.

The first time I kissed her I was terrified.

I gave her a peck on the lips.

Barely above what you would give your mom on her cheek.

Pathetic, but what did I know?

Songs of innocence…

…It progressed…, …I learned…, …I improved…,

…And experience.

I don’t remember kissing any other girl that night. They wouldn’t have, well, held a bottle to the girl I did kiss.

Cheryl would take my bottle spin and turn it toward Diana…,

To kiss her only…,

Cheryl took my hand…,

And placed it gently…,

…Gently on Diana’s left-

It was lovely beyond belief.

Every woman I loved since then was a chore,

Or a burden,

Or a thing,

Just a thing.

A thing I did by rote.

Because I had to, I guess.

I was supposed to.

Maybe for sex, maybe for obligation, maybe for the tedium of it all.

Maybe because that’s what I ought to do, even if badly.

And pretend it was what I wanted…,

Desired…,

Beyond all others…

I was a man, after all.

What society and propriety demand of men:

To be a mule to bear his load for hearth and home…,

…To work the fields, dig deep the mines…,

…To go down to the sea in ships and bring back all riches…,

…To build cities and govern them…,

…Then to be a stallion upon demand to your woman back home…,

…You had better satisfy…

…And to go back to being a mule when the servicing is done.

That’s is a man’s role in life.

Or sex as pastime. Sex as something to do.

Or maybe because sex demands it.

Sex for sex sake and no other,

Just to pass the time,

To fill the void,

To make full what was empty with some other empty person as filler,

A person…,

In a place…,

To satisfy a need…,

Of loneliness…,

And glands.

It is a slog in the park,

A plug to stopper up a need.

Why not?

Biology is, after all, biology,

Nasty bits gonna do what nasty bits do.

The magic was gone.

No more spinning bottles,

No more tender left breasts,

No more first kisses, awkward and sweet.

It has all become dog fuck dog.

And yet…,

…In the back of my mind…,

…Just below the threshold…,

…In the sub basement…,

…Brewing…,

…Gathering…,

…Spinning…

…The bottle spins…,

…And it points to…!

In the scented back room of my soul,

The nostrils that want filling with a girl’s scent…,

The memory of a girl…,

Who wants her name pronounced a certain way…,

With braces on her teeth…,

And blond hair…

And a loose shirt…,

Where a hand passes easily up…,

And round breasts…,

And lovingly feels-

A girl’s scent.

A real girl, billowing natural perfume.

Not artificial scent.

No need for make believe.

I wanted a love affair.

One made from sinew and bone,

Muscle and flesh,

Soft flesh…,

And soft breasts,

And yielding…,

And perfumed.

Even if just for the scent of a woman.

No, a girl.

And I a boy,

In a rec room,

In the near dark,

Just dark enough.

Perfect.

With posters on the walls.

And candles.

The fragrance of her body, her glands, her pours, her skin, her eyes,

Her mouth,

Wafting vapors.

Vapors, in my direction.

Lips that kiss and linger.

A subtle scent that hangs over the body,

The face,

The lips,

The skin,

The breasts,

The-!

The magic of it all,

Of her all.

The mystery,

The wonder.

It just lasts forever and tastes of ecstasy.

Forever, all in a moment,

And then it is gone.

You must know what I mean,

Otherwise, you are heartless.

The taste, the feel, the real fragrance.

Sex incarnate in a fragrance than no man can resist.

Certainly not a teenage boy,

In a rec room…,

With candles…,

And posters on the walls…,

With an angel.

No! Not an angel!

Angels are noncorporeal.

Diana, pronounced Diane, was as corporeal as it gets.

With the real perfume that comes…,

Not in a bottle. But in a body.

No need for Chanel number 5,

Or musk,

Or any Egyptian Myrrh or Frankincense no matter now sensual…,

Personal…,

Sexual…,

Or artificial.

The real thing is a perfume that a boy can drink in, luxuriously,

Forever,

And he knows the difference between the fake and the real.

The real thing is a perfume that he can and will make love to even before entering a girl’s body…,

Her sanctuary…,

Her life…,

Her soul…,

Your pilgrimage…,

Willfully…,

With her begging…,

Longing…,

As does he.

Even perfume free, no need for exotic French perfume, a woman exudes power.

Even just for her raw, naked body, the lusty want of trust and friendship, raw energy and sex. Willingness to give and yearning to trust. The promise of she for me and what I see and hear and taste and smell-and touch-is just for her…,

Us…,

We.

“If you want it.” She says. “Come and take it! I’m yours…!

“What do you have to give me in return?

“I’ll take it!

“If just once…,

“Twice more…,

“Thrice again…,

“And many more.

“Take it! It’s yours….

“I’m yours…

“Two bodies yearning, one for the other…,

“The other for the first…,

“And around again…,

“Always…,

“Just once…,

“Forever…,

“Now!”

Lust is such a strong word.

This is desire…,

Each to the other…,

One to its opposite…,

The opposed to the other…,

And equal.

That is enough.

Time enough later.

If only that later could be once more…,

The same as once was…,

Once again…,

When the rec room is gone and desire becomes…,

Something else.

We would write sentimental love letters to each other, Diana and I.

Sappy little things only teenagers in love could conceive of.

I made her a pair of sterling silver earrings in jewelry class.

The teacher thought they were sappy,

I suppose he was right,

But he let me make them anyway.

They caught in Diana’s golden hair, but she wore them anyway.

The beach.

Making out in the dunes, barely hidden from sight.

Sand got. Well. You can guess where sand got.

Everywhere!

Hanging out on the boardwalk.

Basking in the July sun.

And August.

Playing mini-golf.

Eating ice cream and playing carnival games, ten tickets for a nickel!

Splashing in the Long Island Sound.

Watching Diana’s bathing suit get wet.

Feeling a stirring in mine.

Belly flopping in the pool while trying to impress my girl,

What a sop!

She came to comfort me,

What a girl!

Diana filling out a bikini with all the right padding.

All natural.

Me feeling inadequate, but quite willing to play along.

Lucky me!

Snoozing in the back seat of her mother’s car as she brought us home.

I wonder what she thought watching us doze in the rear view mirror?

Diana’s head on my shoulder?

My arms around her?

Occasionally kissing her head?

Her mother was young once, though at the time youth could not believe such a thing was possible.

I broke up with Diana when I went to college and she stayed home.

It was a mistake.

Big.

Mistake.

But life marches on…

Even if the loins want each other for no more than pleasure…,

And the perfume becomes no more than mere pheromones…,

Why not?

Tomorrow, we grow up.

The bottle stops spinning,

The posters are torn down…

We become adults…,

Big mistake!

All becomes stale…,

Sex smells dirty…,

And compelling…,

And unavoidable…,

And plain…,

And pedantic…,

And something to do, no longer something to desire.

If only…

If only for once more…

The rec room lived.

I loved Diana…,

As far as I could love anybody…,

As far as I knew how to love anybody…,

“Youth is wasted on the wrong people,” said a wise old man in a movie.

“The short kisser,” she called me,

With a wink and a tease. That’s what she did.

And I loved her for it.

Somebody…,

A woman…,

A girl…,

With goofy earrings catching in her hair…,

Her golden hair…,

And her head on my shoulder…,

And my arms about her…,

Like a protector…,

Which I saw myself to be…,

A girl in my life…,

No!

The girl in my life.

At the sound of a bottle jangling…,

Rattling…,

From far away…,

And long ago…,

In a 1950’s rec room…,

A love of my life,

Little. Frail. Gentle. Fragile…,

Strong. Powerful. Determined. Sexual…,

Loved…,

And as sexual as she was…,

How I loved her,

Love her,

And love her still.

In my memory, I guess…,

Every room is a palace…,

Every space is sacred…,

Every word is scripture…,

Every girl is a goddess.

Every rec room is a temple, spectacularly so,

Holy, even.

In the minds and emotions of youth, the rec room is heaven.

But rec rooms never last.

Goodbye, Diana.

After all these years…,

I miss you.

A Luncheon Visit

 

My son-in-law, Seeth, took me out for lunch the other day.

Just the two of us. It was a guys day out, I guess. It was nice. I brought him to a restaurant called The Great Catch, a Bit of Boston, in Zephyrhills, the town next door to where I live in Wesley Chapel, Florida. It is themed like a seafood shack on Cape Cod. There are several restaurants down here with references to New England.

One was called Coney Island Hot Dogs, which sadly went out of business a while back. I liked it. I think it is a Mexican restaurant now.

Another is a breakfast place themed like New York City subways and trains. I love trains. Always have. Since I was a kid. I remember taking the metro from New Haven into Grand Central station in New York as a child. I saw the 1964 World’s Fair that way. What a trip!

I assume a lot of northeasterners moved down here and felt nostalgic. I’m one of them.

It’s nice for an old nor’eastener like myself to see a brace of nostalgia from New England in my new home. Thanks, La Florida!

Seeth and I, along with talking about normal stuff, you know? The weather, how we are doing, what is new in our lives, our jobs, or in my case, what projects I’m doing currently in my workshop since I don’t, you know, actually have a job or anything,  the weather, world politics, what’s going on in our communities, the weather, he brought up something metaphysical.

What we thought about the world in general. You know?

You know: Life. The Uuniverse. Everything.

I don’t know how it started. But we’ve had conversations like this before. Seeth can be very philosophical. So can I.

My views have been all over the metaphysical spectrum all my life going all the way back to grade school and catechism in catholic school in the good old, very old, very catholic church days of my youth in eastern Connecticut.

My Polish grandmother was a devout catholic and had these weird religious pictures hanging around their farmhouse, like the Virgin Mary of the Perpetual Flaming Heart. Yugh!

And going through puberty and mean kids at school, and coming of age in high school, and having a girlfriend, who I loved and lost and regret.

And knocking my head against adulthood, and college, and marriage, and parentage, and obligations I did not anticipate, and religion whether it mattered or not-really let’s now be serious?, and working a real job, and kid raising, and divorcing, and rebuilding my life, and salvaging my daughter’s life, and at 70 years old today, I really don’t know what the fuck I believe in anymore.

I’m kind of agnostic now. I don’t know what I believe.

But Seeth’s words struck me. I follow YouTube channels of scientists and mathematicians who say the world is really stranger than we can imagine.

Like. Bizarrely. Strange.

Robert Heinlien is purported to have said, “Not only is the world queerer than we believe, it is queerer than we can believe.”

That’s not just a monstrosity. That’s a heresy.

A heresy of science.

The Scientific method, which is the guardian of natural philosophy going as far back as Francis Bacon, states that science is based on three principals. 

One: The world runs on rules. 

Two: The human mind can understand these rules. 

Three: The method of revealing these rules is called the Scientific Method.

That’s it. That is the basis of all modern science and understanding. All industry, technology, and modernity. And all of everything. Period.

Accept it like a religion or die as a heathen.

What Heinlein said was a violation of the second principle. He said that we can’t understand how the world works.

It makes no sense.

The world is just... fucked up. Totally. And there is no way any of us can ever understand it.

Period.

Science, from what I understand, seems to agree.

Richard Feynman said that his graduate students would often come to him and say, “Dr. Feynman. Quantum physics just makes no sense!” And his response would be, “Just shut up and do the math. The math works.”

That’s it? Shut up and follow the protocol?

Math is the holy spirit of science?

It is ineffable?

Un-understandable?

That’s just plain fucked up. Like in every other religion.

But it works. Don’t question it. Just use it. Take it as given and shut the fuck up you little, acolyte, scientific heathens.

Do not blaspheme the mathematics!

I heard recently that some quantum particles can go backwards and forwards in time. Simultaneously. I can’t fathom it. (Hey? Just shut up.)

Evidence or interpretations or incarnations of stuff at the Large Hadron Collider in Cern say so. So it must be taken seriously, even though nobody can understand it Scientifically. (Do The Math!)

I believe it. So here I stand. I can do no other.

Shit, yes. How fucked up is that? Put that in your differential equation and derive it.

Science doesn’t tell us what the world is. It tells us what it looks like. How it behaves. How we perceive it to be. It tells us how it appears. What it means to us. What it puts on our plates and offers us for dinner. Take it or leave it, as our mothers used to say. That is all.

Science tells us nothing about what the world is.

Some think that universes are born all of the time. There is something called the inflaton field, which sounds like something out of a Marvel movie or Doctor Who. The inflaton, or inflation field, is a fundamental part of the Universe and this field is eternally making more space, due to the fairy tale rules of Quantum Mechanics (believe the science.) And it is doing it faster than light. Every so often, once upon a time, a piece collapses from its breakneck expansion and somewhere a big bang occurs.

This is the multiverse. Not the Marvel one. This one is creating random universes, all of which have different rules. According to String theory and Quantum Mechanics, this is possible. Inevitable, even. Once in a while the inflaton field will hiccup and a universe is left on the floor of the cosmic kitchen.

According to the math (trust the math!) these baby universes can all have different starting conditions. The dials in the control room of the universe machine can be set to a baffling array of positions. And scientists know how many positions there are.

10e500. That’s 10X10X10 500 times. Most of them are inhospitable to anything and just fall apart as quickly as they appear. And a very, very, microscopic number of them can sustain life.

We are in one of them.

When I heard this revelation from string theory years ago, I thought, “Oh, they’ve got it! There’s a machine that just keeps popping out universes like Roman candles. Sooner or later one of them has to be a hit.”

I had brought my teenage daughter and a friend to see a lecture by Alan Guth at the Coast Guard Academy in New London. It was an amazing lecture and he spoke of his theory of inflation.

But the other scientists weren’t impressed. They thought a theory of everything should answer the question, “Why is THIS universe here?”

To which I say, “Why?

“We’re nothing special. Why should we expect the universe to treat us any more than that?”

And according to the rules of statistics, if something happens once it will happen again. In an infinite universe, everything that can happen will happen. And it will happen an infinite number of times.

“I think that now I am mostly agnostic,” I replied to Seeth’s observations about the world earlier. “I just don’t know what is going on in this world and I probably never will. And you know what? I’m good with that.”

I guess I’ve reached a comforting conformity of non-committal commitment. Make of that what you will.

“Though I have gone through phases all my life of religious beliefs and atheism,” I continued, “which is a normal oscillation, I think. All things considered and all people included. People have been knocking about in the Philosophy sections of libraries for millennia. We all change our minds now and then.

“Now I don’t know what to believe.

"Though if I was pressed for it today, if someone wanted a direct answer. If my feet were held to the fire. I would say that I am left of center in my beliefs; political, social, and spiritual. I am an old school liberal from the Baby Boomer era of the 1960’s and proud of it, but I am not someone whose beliefs lie at the extreme, nut job ends of either side of the spectrum. Either way. Right or left. I am sympathetic to my fellow man and woman.

“And above all else, I try to understand other persons, places, and things. I always have. And I love everybody.”

(That includes you, by the way. My son and you, my reader of this essay.)

“Spiritually,” continuing. “I believe there is something out there, something greater than us. A god/God if you will. And that It/He/She is controlling everything. But I don’t think any religion in the world has a real concrete idea of what that God is like. They are all right and they are all wrong, which makes no sense at all. But that is life. Ultimately senseless.

“Basically, I have no fucking clue, I guess.” That seemed like a good note to stop on.

“I’ve always been fond of Zen philosophy," Seeth said, to which I readily agreed.

“Buddhism,” I advanced, “preaches that everything is God,” finding myself glad of some common ground with my friend/son in law.

“I feel that might be true. You are God, I am God, those trees, grass, and houses are God. As well as that toxic waste site at the edge of our town is God. God is St. Paul having an epiphany on the road to Damascus. Or epilepsy.

“God is all tyrants and terrorists, saints and martyrs who ever lived. And who ever died.

“God is torture. God is ecstasy. God is doldrums. God is delirium.

“God created the world, they say. That he is a benevolent dictator over all.”

“But what if that's not true? What if God IS the world? Every rock, every river, every mind, every body. Every plant every mountain. Every star every void.

“God is the totality of living and life. The earth, the planets, the galaxies. God is reality. God is existence. God is good. Great, even. God is evil. Horrific, even. God is right. God is wrong. God is everything,

"God is a horror. And an honor.

"That’s funny. And frightening. Terrifying, actually.

"God is a joke.

"Horrifyingly so.

"But a joke on whom?

"God is consciousness. And consciousness is one thing that I believe science, mathematics, and philosophy will never understand. As Dr. Roger Penrose so eloquently wrote about in his book, ‘The Emperor’s New Mind.’

"That’s just my belief."

The most horrifying thing I have ever heard in my life is that we are actually eternal. We live forever. Or instances of ourselves do, at least. Like a computer program that keeps getting loaded into other machines and then fired up for a while.

We just keep coming back. Over and over again.

New universe. New planet. New life. New history. New everything. New nothing. And nothing ever changes even though everything is new. And different. But the same.

Maybe there is a consciousness field and we are all rooted in it? Why not? Is that any crazier than an inflaton field?

And the physicists agree. I’m told that nothing is actually nothing. There is something in nothing. Energy. And it is fluctuating constantly. Popping particles in and out of existence then annihilating them. Some particles oscillate between states trillions of times a second. How fucked up is that?

And once in a while. Once in a lonely, nihilistic while, that inflaton field burps. Then a big bang happens. Another universe is born. Full of matter and energy and space and time and consciousness.

Don’t laugh. It’s no more crazy than anything else I’ve heard.

If that is truly true then we will just go on living.

Life.

One day after another.

One life after another. Eternally.

Doing good things. Doing bad things.

Making civilizations and building dungeons.

Fighting wars and constructing cities.

Writing plays and epic poetry.

Doing great deeds. And dread ones.

Trashing our planet and fouling our nests.

Raising our children.

And being human.

Or whatever species we evolve into.

Loving and hating each other.

And dying at the end.

And being reborn.

Somewhere else.

When we die in this life, we will be reborn in another somewhere else as someone else, man or woman, sinner or saint, great person or grisly one, and keep on living in another universe. On another planet. In a distant world. Much the same as this one. Like we have done eternally before. And will do eternally into the future. Just like the slice of that ever conscious God that we are. That you are. That we all are.

You are eternal.

Forever.

And the world continues to be queerer that we can believe.

I reminded Seeth of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the Reality Bomb, the explosive device that was so powerful it could destroy everything, past, present, and future. Time and space. Matter and energy. Now and eternity. All dimensions. All universes. Every shred of existence.

Everything. Everywhere. All at once.

Now and forever. Gone. And how horrible it was.

When Arthur Dent, the protagonist of the story, heard about the bomb he asked, “And why didn’t they use it?”

Good question.

“I believe we just have to make the best of the time we have,” said Seeth as I drove into the driveway of my house in Wesley Chapel, Florida. The American southeast. Just above Tampa, Florida. With its New England themed restaurants. In the United States of America. In a universe that exists. For now. For a little while. And then is gone. And replaced by another one. Happier or sadder.

Or just, different. New. Or the same. In the end. Or the beginning. Universe. Full of us. Doing it all again.

May we have a world supporting essence when we get there. A reason to be.

Wise words from my son in law.

I must consider them.

But in the end, I have one last desperate thought.

You are all that is. All that was. All that will be. All that can be and all that can not be. All that will ever be. All that will not ever be. Never. Forever.

Always. Nowhere. Everywhere.

Life. The Universe. Everything.

You, me, we all are God. World without ending.

God Pity us