In the immediate aftermath of America's 'Shock and Awe' bombing campaign in Baghdad, Kristina and I made our way from Jordan into Baghdad and delivered the only gift we had: we carried my oud and we sang Iraqi love songs on the streets of the burning, smoky city... How did we get there? The story goes way back... To when I was a young teenager in St Louis, Missouri...
My comfort with black African Americans led me to show up on their behalf at various civil rights events. I went to some CORE meetings (Congress of Racial Equality) and reiterated that ‘we are all the same’ and that ‘some of my best friends are black people.’
My friend, Doug, sometimes attended those meetings with me. He and were amazed at the world we were growing up in. We saw organized religion as the perpetual culprit. Doug has remained a lifelong friend.
I remember attending a huge event at Kiel Auditorium when Elijah Mohammad, whose work facilitated the rise in popularity of Black Muslims and Malcolm X, first came to St. Louis. I felt proud to be one of the very few white folks in that huge crowd.
My twin brother friends, Tim and Terry, were still struggling to stay in school... not so easy with a father who would beat them if he caught them wasting their time ‘reading books.’ Tim was a natural master of the African-American dance moves and I would learn from him. Terry was a natural acrobat and we would hang out at the newly popular trampoline parks.
I bought a guitar and began to learn to play the blues. Soon my friend Bob Eagle and I had a small band and people hired us to play for dance events and would tip us with $20 bills. The fact that we played the same few songs we knew over and over again didn't seem to be a problem. I was amazed.
I played the bottom lines of the blues on my guitar to my Dad over the phone… No comment from him... He didn't get it…
My mom went back into the mental hospital and left me the apartment to myself. Endless parties materialized. Drunk teenagers plowed their cars into the corner of the apartment building which, fortunately, had a thick stone veneer. We kept the blues flowing on the record player and we danced ‘the slop’ just like the guys at the Lindy Ballroom in Wellston… or at the Imperial Club... all African-American moves. There were some beautiful young girls who liked to come to my parties. We would dance but I hardly knew their names or where they had come from. They were friends of friends of friends.
My mom re-appeared for my fifteenth birthday and gave me a fifth of rum as a present. She was around for some of our parties. A psychiatrist finally convinced her that she should just move forward with her life so she began bringing her new boyfriends home. Sometimes she forgot to close the door to the bedroom and I would get glimpses of her making love with men I didn't know.
My attempts to get really close to girls were still confusing and frustrating. I had an ongoing flirtation with a cute girl at work who came up from Texas to work in the medical school lab during the summers. Her name was Kay and occasionally she would sit close... almost snuggle up to me at work... and... what was the meaning of her smile? But she didn't really fit into my late night lifestyle. She didn't seem to be a dancer. I bought lots of candles and invited her for and date. I brought her home and lit dozens of candles and put on the music. We sat on the couch until I spilled hot candle wax all over her dress.
At some point I drove down to Ft. Worth, Texas to visit her in her home territory and realized what vastly different worlds we came from. Her house was the size of public school building... surrounded by groomed green lawns with gardens and walkways. I felt terrified by her house and its mysterious occupants, her parents and brother. They seemed to have no idea of what to make of me. After spending one night in a sterile bedroom alone, I excused myself and departed.
Still, back in St Louis, the flirtation persisted. But there was a fatal flaw: I had no realizations about the differences between male and female sexuality so of course erroneously assumed that girls were just like boys but with inverted penises called vaginas.
Our attempts to go out at night together were filled with confusion. It never occurred to me that Kay wasn't burning inside with the same desires I was experiencing.
One night I drove us out the highway into the remote Missouri farmlands. We were of course sipping from my ever-present bottle of bourbon which I kept in the glove compartment. Convinced that we must both be feeling what I was feeling, I parked the car on a country road and we began to snuggle and kiss. Once again I discovered that she was wearing armor-plated underclothing: some kind of ‘girdle’ designed to make it almost impossible to gain access. I just didn't understand how she could not be raging inside with desire. I would struggle to get my fingers underneath the armor with no real help from her.
Frustration took the upper hand. I did not know what to say or what to do. I started the car and swerved into a nearby field to turn around and head back for the city. Sensing the muddiness under the wheels, I spun the tires until we were good and stuck in the middle of that field: some kind of crazy expression of my desperation.
“Just wait here,” I told her and strode off across the fields towards the highway in some kind of confused rage. Sticking my thumb out I enticed a passing trucker to stop. The tractor was a single cab with room only for the driver.
“You can ride on the hood,” he yelled at me through the window.
Ten miles down the road we pulled into an all night diner where I aired my predicament sufficiently to enlist the help of a guy with a truck and a long tow chain.
Kay must have been waiting for more than two hours by the time we made it back and wrenched the car out of the muddy field.
We had no way to explain ourselves to each other and that night’s adventure marked the end of our romance.
