John Lurie - The History of Bones

Just a speck. At the top of its arc, a mystical thing suspended against blue. Then it would come hurtling down and thwack to the earth. Always out of my reach.

My father could throw a ball, incredibly high, straight up into the air. I loved being hypnotized as it hung up against the sky, this thing that was no longer a ball. It wasnt really even a game of catch, because I could never catch them at that age.

We used to sit on the couch listening to the stinking Red Sox on the radio. I loved the smell of him, there was warmth in it.

Youre a foxy little newspaper.

My dad laughed. He was waking me up to go fishing, and this was something I said that was left over from a dream.

When I was a kid we used to go fishing on Saturday mornings. Hed wake me really early and wed go out, both so tired wed be laughing like idiots at everything. Boat stuck in the reeds. Incredibly amusing! You had to be there.

On the drive home, we saw an old lady in a fur coat hunched over the wheel of a convertible sports car. Her white hair flapping wildly in the wind. She pulled alongside us, hovered there for a moment, and then whizzed off, like we were standing still. Tears rolled down my dads face.

He wasnt much of a fisherman and didnt take it seriously. He just liked to be out in a boat with his son on a nice morning. He called me Boy Boy.

You want to go get something to eat, Boy Boy?

The throws got lower and lower until it wasnt so exciting anymore.

I went to high school in Worcester, Massachusetts. A horrible place, Worcester has a dome over it so that God is not allowed in.

The first thing that emerges when I think of Worcester is a metal pole.

I am familiar with its molecules. I know its deepest essence.

The pole was a railing around someones front yard on Pleasant Street, near Cotters Spa. It was about two and a half feet off the ground. Steve Piccolo and I used to try to balance on it and then walk from one end to the other. Wed get halfway, wobble, and then fall off. We never made it all the way to the end. One night, when I was fifteen, we took mushrooms and crossed it several times with ease. That was how I got to know the metal pole on a molecular level. That was the same night we went into Friendlys, grinning insanely, and said, Wed like to exchange these quarters for ice cream. We held the quarters in the palms of both hands, displaying them like they were gold doubloons.

They threw us out.

The first time I had sex was with a girl named Crystal. I was sixteen and Crystal was, I guess, twenty-five. We were in a hippie crash pad, sitting at this filthy kitchen table strewn with pot seeds and Twinkie wrappers. After the last person had passed out, we found ourselves alone. Crystal was a groupie and very proud of it, so I thought I had a good chance, but had no idea how to go about it. I sat there for a long time, not knowing what to do. Finally, I summoned the courage to take her hand and put it inside my fly. Crystal, not resisting, said with complete indifference, I guess we can ball. We went into this crummy room with a mattress, with no sheets, on the floor. She took off her clothes. I got on top of her and came in eleven seconds.

Crystal was rumored to have slept with Jimi Hendrix the week before. She gave me gonorrhea. It was nice to have this connection to Jimi through bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae.

But at that time, my girlfriend was Jeannie, who lived in the neighboring town of Leicester. A waif of a girl with a beautiful face. My parents had rented a cottage one summer on Thompson Pond and that was how I met her. Though I dont remember meeting her or how she became my girlfriend.

After the summer was over, to go out and see her, Id borrow the family car and drive about thirty minutes. This is how I learned to play the harmonica, driving with one hand and messing on the harmonica with the other.

Id pick her up at her parents and wed drive around. Jeannie would jerk me off while I was driving, but only if I used a certain kind of cologne. I dont wear cologne anymore. I believe that cologne is a good way to gauge somebodys intelligence: The amount of cologne being inversely proportionate to the IQ. But this was high school and I had to have my hand jobs, so Id splash on enough to kill a small animal before going to see her.

Jeannie called my cock Everett. She would say that she didnt like Everett because he was always spitting at her.

By this time my dad was on oxygen. The guy who brought the tanks came and went twice a week. Friendly little guy.

The tanks were set up next to the black chair in the TV room. A thin, blue-green tube ran up to a little thing under his nose. When they said that he was going to be on oxygen, I expected hed be stuck under a tent or have a big mask. I was thankful that this was a little more dignified.

He hated TV. Thought it was stupid. Evenings, before he got really sick, he would sit out by himself in the living room, reading, but the rest of the family was always in the TV room at night. It would have been strange if he was stuck out there by himself in the living room, so we moved the tanks into the TV room with us.

One night, it was just me and him in the TV room. Aretha Franklin was on the TV, performing live at a college.

It was the first time I had heard Aretha and something shocking happened to mechills went up through my body. I had never had that happen before, heard a piece of music or witnessed something so brave or so beautiful that it made chills happen.

What is this? This sensation?

I was embarrassed to be moved like that. It was so out of my control.

I didnt want my dad to notice.

She finished the last song with an explosive crescendo and the audience of white college kids leapt to their feet in a simultaneous roar. The reaction was organic and completely correct.

My dad looked so sad and disappointed when he said, I can see they are legitimately moved. But I dont feel it at all.