Courage

You risked your life, but what else have you risked?  Have you ever risked disapproval?  Have you ever risked economic security?  Have you ever risked a belief?  I see nothing particularly courageous about risking one's life.  So you lose it, you go to your hero's heaven and everything is milk and honey 'til the end of time.  Right?  You get your reward and suffer no earthly consequences.  That's not courage.

Real courage is risking something you have to keep living with.  Real courage is risking something that forces you to re-think your thoughts and suffer change and stretch consciousness.  Real courage is risking one's cliches.

Metaphysical Books. Rip

On Friday afternoon April 16^th at about 3pm, Joseph Benzola locked the door of Metaphysical Books and Tools in Sag Harbor for the last time, and walked away.  Forever.   After eight years Joe could no longer afford to keep the store going.   In the last few weeks of the store’s life Joe had put everything on sale, slashing prices in half. 

The store, which had been Joe’s lonely outpost for many months suddenly teemed with excitement, people walking away with armfuls of books or CDs, incense or the  wood icon of a Hindu goddesses. They bought large candles for a dollar and “The Films of Ingmar Bergman” for twenty and on and on and on.  When the sale ended Joe Benzola packed the remaining stock into several boxes and then into a station wagon until the store was entirely bare. 

How did it happen?

Metaphysical Books was open for business at 83 Main Street, six days a week for almost 30 years.  It was one of many local businesses that made Sag Harbor’s commercial center different from  other towns in the Hamptons.   No chain stores, no flagship stores for large brands and other designer stores that exist only to display items that will be bought elsewhere..  And, after a long battle, no 30,000 square foot CVS where the Seven Eleven stands.

The question is was Metaphysical Books the leading edge of a trend or simply an anomaly of poor timing and bad luck.

The movie theater is for sale. Romany Gallery was approached by Starbucks. Other stores have disappeared and some have limited hours because they have few, if any, customers out of season.

In the case of Metaphysical Books the reasons for its early success and ultimate failure are fairly straightforward. 

“A thirty percent decline over the last twelve months and a sixty percent drop in the winter combined with the financial crisis.  It was a perfect storm of bad news for the store,” Joe Benzola said, 

And then there is the internet.  “Internet sources like Amazon and iTunes took away business  by offering books and music at enormous discounts, often well below my wholesale costs,” he said.

Had something about the store changed, I wondered.  What had he done with the store after he bought it?

“When I bought the store, I changed it from a typcial new age store  to what became a cultural center for artists and lovers of the arts who enjoyed discovering uncommon items.  An Albert Ayler or John Coltrane box set or films by independent film makers, the likes of  Kenneth Anger or rare recorded performances by blues players from the first and second generation of that genre.”

The store was, for many people, the singular source of uncommon books, art, musical instruments, incense, rare cd and vinyl recordings, candles, crystals and more.  An eclectic array of merchandise not usually found in stores of its type.

There was always music playing softly in the background when you walked in.  Often music you hadn’t heard in a long time, if ever.  And the stuff was all there, out in the open, where you could touch it, read the liner notes or a few pages of a book, smell a scented candle or soap and sometimes talk to Joe about whatever it was.   The store was a mirror of Joe’s own wide ranging interests and he was usually able to discuss the items in question and the field they covered.

And there were the people you’d run into in the store.   People you knew or complete strangers.  People with a passion for Buddhism or an ear for Mingus or an interest in some subject you’d never heard of.   People often talked to each other in Metaphysical Books.  It was, many felt, an oasis, away from in the maelstrom of  the Main Street scene.. 

But much of the new age stuff didn’t sell well.  The incense sold a bit.  But less so books about telekinesis or Angel Charms made of soapstone.

Another issue Benzola raised were the rents.

“Sag Harbor is turning into what East Hampton was,” he told us.  Rents suddenly going from  $11,000 a month to $30,000”

I talked to other store owners along Main Street.  Most were under some financial stress.  It had not been a great year for anybody.    But most were determined to persevere.

As for Joe Benzola, his immediate plans are uncertain.   He said he would take a breather and then, maybe creating an online store, dealing in some of the same items that the store was prized for. 

Soon enough, there will be another store to take the place of Metaphysical Books.  A clothing store is rumored.  But for now all that remains is a spooky emptiness, where only yesterday the shelves were overflowing with wonderful stuff.

Community Service

I got a speeding ticket on route 27.   It happened where the road goes suddenly from 55 mph to 35mph in the space of maybe two hundred yards.   A state trooper pulled me over and gave me the ticket.   I had to appear in person in county court at Hauppauge, which is a bit more than an hour away.   I was going so fast that I plead not guilty because a guilty verdict would mean points on my license or the suspension of it.   My punishment was 35 hours of community service.  

They hand you a card with community service choices. There was the South Hampton museum, the town Dump, something I can't remember and the Senior Citizens Center in South Hampton.   I knew the museum was not going to make me a curator and the dump would probably be just as bad as it sounded.  That left the Senior Citizens Center which I chose because I thought it would be great to work with the old people. Lots of wise talk and memories, I thought.  When I called to set up my service I told the lady who answered that I even played the guitar, which I thought would be great for the old people.

"Your guitar," she said.
"Yes?"
"Is it water-proof?"
"Why?"
"Because," she said, "you're gonna spend your 35 hours washing dishes."

Secrets of the Hamptons Revealed

"When you’re a failure in the Hamptons you feel as though you’re in the witness protection program.  Best not to make much of a fuss or become too visible lest we be unmasked for the person we truly are." 
                                                   

Britain granted independence to India and Pakistan.   Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in his X-1 Rocket Plane.  The LP and Silly Putty were invented within weeks of each other.  The Yanks won another world series and Gentleman’s Agreement took best picture.  Gasoline was .15 cents a gallon and a new house could run as much as $6,000 for something really nice.   Oh and Harry S. Truman was president.

Into this world was deposited one Robert Austin, at your service.  The odds that this beautiful baby boy would ever find himself in a venue to communicate with an audience of many live humans defies all the laws of probability. Even my mother, who always told me I could do anything (even when she knew better) would have drawn the line here.

Yet here I am, fifty years hence, with a place to write and readers to read and prepared, come what may, for rejection or acceptance and ready, for all the world, to treat those two impostors (rejection and acceptance) each the same.   Sorry about that Rudyard.

This piece, it seems, wants to be about the  Hamptons  themselves.  Sag Harbor in particular. Austin's home almost all the time.  Robert Austin had what he thought was just the thing for such an undertaking.  Once on the Jitney to Manhatten, he had leafed through several Hamptocentric magazines.  He skimmed and wondered, wondered and skimmed about the Hamptons nobody ever writes about.  The article you never find in any publication.   Pieces with titles like  “The Hamptons On .50¢ A Day”,  “Down and Out in Amagansett” or  “Lifestyles of The Badly Beaten and Doomed”.

These people, who are never written about are, in fact, the dominant population here at “The beach”, the extremely irritating term used by seasonal visitors or renters, trying to sound casual and totally relaxed about the scene.  But this isn’t really the beach now, is it.  We are miles from any beach clean enough to swim in.

When not busy ignoring the Flagship Stores of East Hampton or the luxury showrooms that dot Montauk Highway as it winds through South Hampton, we’re hunched over our Formica  table, our spouse at our side, trying to decide for the life of us,  which, if any, of the cascading stack of bills can possibly be addressed, still leaving enough left for Moo Shoo Pork from the Chinese Take Out next to the Seven Eleven in Sag Harbor. 

Natives will sometimes tell visitors that this restaurant or that is perfectly fine, good, even very good.  Our advice is not to check your brains at the door.  Look at what other people are eating.  Does it look familiar?  A good sign.  But flacking for restaurants is part of the wider conspiracy to support local businesses.  It turns us all into flacks.  Lying flacks.

But why the long faces?   Things can’t be that bad, they say.   There’s always something new and exciting just around the next corner, they say.  Jesus. 

It happened like this.  We bought our homes when we were flush.   During days we thought would never end. We were fine for a long while and so was everybody else.  Now we cannot afford even to maintain these homes, except through the labors of men who fall a wee bit short of fully apprehending the art of landscape design.  They cut the grass and after that you're left, abandoned, in a sea of dandelions.

Of course we still like to play.  But now when we want to play,  it is not tennis at the club.  It is the re-run of last night’s Yankee game on the old square screen.

Then too, we are no longer consumed by the pressing need to re-grout the Egyptian tiles which frame the pool. We go to the beach, if we must, and, if they day is warm enough, we may go into the water, or, if we have children, we may inflate the plastic thing we used last year. 

ADVERTSING POINT OF DIFFERENCE:

Unlike those bulky white marble rectangles with Life Sized Statues of The Buddha facing the deep end, inflatable pools are so portable they can set up anywhere on the little patch of crab grass behind the shed (You do have a shed, of course).

Now an abbreviated  tour of several Hampton towns revealing some interesting facts and useful information.  

East Hampton.   Best appreciated on a rapid walk, in good weather, down a couple of blocks, where you will pass what remains after the blight that turned this sweet little village into a ghost town.  And, even if you find an open store, entering an East Hampton shop begs an awkward exchange.

“May I help you?”

“No thanks.  I’m just browsing.”

“May I ask your size?”

“Doesn’t matter.   Like I say, I’m just browsing.” 

“I understand, but the tops on that rack are a size 1.”

You have not been a size 1 since the cradle and are therefore embarrassed and upset by the ever helpful and smilingly overbearing staff in most of these stores.   Why do they talk?   Leave me alone.  Please. We’ll ask if we need something.  Sound like a plan?  

And this is a pointless exchange in any event, since there is not a chance in hell you can purchase the top or whatever it is.  After all, it would likely run you several months of salary.

Sign in the window of an East Hampton Antique Shop:

 “For the price of a small house, you can own this beautiful chair.”

Now some of the stores in East Hampton are only flagship stores, not really intended or staffed for the sale of anything.  Merely a displaying of the cream of an absurdly expensive crop for purchase elsewhere.   Entering such a shop is a recipe for the kind of deep depression that only heavy meds or shopping itself can abjure.

And no visit to East Hampton would be complete without a drive past the densely privitted  homes of Georgica Pond, homes with gates and dogs. Homes one cannot even glimpse from the car, but which are the haunt of Steven Speilberg Jerry Seinfeld, Martha Stewart and big money men whose names we’ll never know.

One very well known resident of this exclusive community is known to call all the people who tend her grounds, “Mexicans.” regardless of where they actually come from.  “Where are our Mexicans today?” she has been known to ask.   She does this even when the Mexicans are Japanese, African American, Filapino or Guarmian.

Then there is South Hampton, noted for its banks and jewelry stores.  Here you will discover another good place to nuke the nest egg.   Overheard in South Hampton:

“When the Jews start wearing plaid, you know it’s time to get out.”  This sentiment still reflects the charming legacy of an earlier time, when the first English settlement was taking root.  And Jews are a relatively new item on the menu.  Used to be you had to have had a direct ancestor who came over on a Mayflower and then came to own a home in South Hampton.   

There are, of course, Indians surviving all over the Hamptons.  Especially adjacent to South Hampton, where you’ll find the  Shinnecock Reservation and a strip of bodegas selling cartons of cigarettes at wholesale prices.  It is primarily during these exchanges that most of us ever get to actually speak with a real (live) Indian.   Should you decide to take this side trip to the reservation I strongly urge you to avoid sounding solicitous, asking questions about the history of these or any other native people.  It has the same flavor as getting into a taxi with a black driver and beginning a conversation with something like “Joe Louis. Hell of a fighter; Hell of a fighter. Under rated, if you ask me”

There are also a few other towns that are sometimes considered part of the Hamptons.  These towns may include West Hampton, where summer rentals to gum chewing executive assistants were invented.  Or Quogue, which, as it turns out, nobody has ever visited.

All in all, the Hamptons are still a happy place.  We do have our beaches, fishing boats for hire and many beautiful automobiles cruising Main Street in the summer months. 

We do however share one trait for which the Hamptons are well known.   It is smugness.  It’s just that in our case it’s the smugness of knowing which valves are the critical ones during those precious first moments of a catastrophe. The better not to flood the kitchen with sea water or fill the house with carbon monoxide, a real bummer even on Georgica Pond. 

I'm With the Singer

This was 1977. We met for the first time in a bar called "Tramps".   She was the singer. I had known her manager since high school. His name was Karl. Her name was Anne.  She was a mini-star on the cabaret circuit and she was drop dead gorgeous.  She sang popular songs.  Her best were the torch songs.  What made her unusual were the things she said between the songs and the way she said them.  There was a reason or explanation for every song.  Something that had gone on in her life or therapy or imagination.

The talk between the songs was often more interesting than the songs themselves.  "Song for My Father" was George Shearing's song for his father.  But when Anne sang it, it was for her father, Joe, a jazz piano player in DC, whom she was learning, in therapy, to separate from.  It was, at first, more than you wanted to know.  But as the sets developed you found yourself waiting for the songs to end to find out why.

Between sets that night, Anne came over to the table and we had a brief conversation I can't remember.  When it was over, I coasted home on a wave of happy feeling and Anne had a new fan.

The following week, an amazing thing happened.  In the mail came a postcard from Anne.  She said she had loved seeing me - LOVED SEEING ME - at Tramps and could I come see her at The Tin Palace next weekend.  I had a visceral reaction and marveled about what a strong impression I'd made.  After all, we'd only talked for a minute.  But of course I'd go and see her again.  Romance was in the air.

I arrived at The Tin Palace just a few minutes before Anne would start the first set.  I had decided I would stay for all three sets.  I went backstage to find Anne.  I found her right away, locking lips with the saxophone player,  a kiss that seemed to last for twenty minutes.  I stood there watching for some reason and when it was over, she saw me and waved cheerfully. What a floozie, I thought.

What I didn't know, but found out later, was that Anne had sent out almost three hundred hand written postcards, all of which said exactly the same thing - how much she'd loved seeing the people and would they please come to the next gig.

The Smuggling Story

I waited about a month, until I thought it was safe for me to travel again and then returned to Europe. I made a brief stop in Rome to pick up the little bit of stuff I'd left there on the earlier trip and took the late afternoon, overnight train to Barcelona.   There I saw the unfinished Gaudy church,  his wavy, organic looking apartment buildings and park.  Then, satisfied with my brief tour of the city, I left for Ibiza.   Ibiza was not the never ending party it is today.  Still, it was a place to lose your inhibitions and have lots of good times.  An English ex-pat bartender named Martin Knebel, from a bar whose name I can't remember,  put me up the first three nights until I found an apartment near the beach in Ibiza town.

I began to settle in and, at some point soon after my friend Carlos sold me a chunk of black Afghani hashish only slightly smaller in size and shape than a major league baseball.  Black Afgani Hashish was highly prized and considered the best hashish in the world and yet it wasn't very expensive.  Because I shared it with everybody I knew for several months the baseball sized chunk soon became the size and shape of a ping pong ball.   But now, with my money running low I decided I needed to return to the states to get some work, make some more money and then return to Europe.

Unfortunately, I didn't have any idea what to do with the hashish.  Although it had shrunk, a ping pong ball sized piece of hash is still a lot.  It was way too big to give away and, frankly, I wanted to keep using it and really impress my friends back in New York.  But there didn't seem to be a way to get the hash into the US and stay out of prison.

Then, almost on cue, I met a  guy whose name was also Rob and claimed to be an expert at getting contraband across boarders,   He told me it was easy to smuggle hash and that he'd done it many times without incident.   This Rob claimed a lot of things, said he done a lot of things and I was naive.

One afternoon, about two weeks before I was scheduled to leave for New York,  I met with Rob in his apartment and he showed my how to smuggle hashish.   He had some tin foil, an iron, some glue and a stack of hard cover books.   Rob showed me that if you placed the tin foil over the hashish you could iron pieces of it as flat as a sheet of paper.  The idea is to then steam off the paper that is always pasted on the inside and back covers of hardback books,  then place a sheet of flattened hashish against the book cover and re-glue the sheet of paper over the hashish.  We used at least ten books, hiding the hashish in the the covers.   I thought the result looked damned good.

The next idea was to hide the books, as many of the ten as possible, in plain sight.  We strapped them into several open shoulder bags, the kind that have long straps and large woven baskets.

For the next two weeks, we let the books dry and forgot about them.    When, finally, the day of the flight arrived I felt relaxed and confident.   I had hidden the hash well and I knew it.

As I boarded the flight,  some of the book bags came aboard with me and some were stowed with the rest of the luggage down below.    I sat back in my seat, closed my eyes and soon heard the sounds of the doors closing and the gateway moving away from the plane.   It was at that point that I picked up Clipper Magazine,  the official in-flight PanAm reading material.

When I opened the magazine I noticed an article listed in the index:   "School For Customs Agents. Where alert students learn smuggler's secrets".

In a panic, I flipped to the page.   In addition to the text there were the pictures.  The first picture was of a false suitcase bottom, the second of a false heal on a boot.  The third photograph showed the old paste-it-in-a-book routine, for smuggling hashish.

The plane was just pulling away from the gate.  I had eight hours ahead of me to consider my situation.
By the time we landed I was in New York, I was drenched in sweat and out of ideas about how to handle the now desperate situation.  After all, they would see my books which even smelled of hashish.

I looked down the line of customs inspectors, to pick a person who looked like they might be sympathetic.   At the very end of the line was a woman about 35 years old with kind eyes.  I got on her line and when she got to me, I had three large baskets with books right out in open.  I also had a red Valentine Olivetti typewriter which she noticed first.

"Where'd you get this?" she asked.
"It's mine," I said.
"I didn't ask you whose it was," she said,  "I asked you where you got it."
"Here,"
"Here New York?"
"Yes"
"I notice it's got an enyay as well as an "n".  Only a Spanish typewriter has that"
"I'm sorry.  I meant to say  I bought it here, in Madrid."
"You're in New York."
"I know.  Im a little confused."
"I see that," she said

Now she came to the books.   She picked up the book that was right on top of one of the baskets and  never looked down at it as she flipped through the pages.  She kept a steady, level gaze on me.

"Where'd you get these books.  They're all in Spanish.  You speak Spanish?"
"I'm learning," I said, "The books are for that."

She never looked down at a book and there was a long pause before she spoke again.

"Let me tell you what I'm going to do about this," she finally said.

My heart was pounding right out of my chest.

"We both know what you've got here, young man.  So I'll tell you what I'm going to do with you.  I'm going to let you go this time.  But you never, ever try this again."

She never said why she let me go.  I guessed that she must not have believed in jail time for kids.  At least that's what I've thought all the years since it happened.

 

Rome and Beyond

I arrived by train in Rome and took a cab to Via en Caterina, just off  Piazza Farnese, where friends of my parents had a villa.   A real villa.   A villa with lots of ancient rooms, some even overlooking the Vatican.   For me, my parent's friends had only open arms.  "Please stay with us.  Stay as long as you'd like"  That's the way I remember it.  But it's possible my memory here may be just shy of accurate. You see, I stayed for eight months.  In about the fifth month of my stay, the friends actually took a vacation from Rome. If they were dropping a hint,  I didn't pick up on it.   I had the place all to myself, that's all I knew.

The friends of my parents also had a son. We became friends. I'd like to call him Frank. Frank went to the American School in Rome and had lots of friends, who soon became my friends.  Especially a friend named "Mary".   Mary had a great laugh, liquid blue eyes and a wild streak that would very soon come in handy.   Mary was, it turned out, only 16 years old.   I was 21.  But the age difference meant nothing to us.  We got to talking, Mary and I, and it turned out that while Mary had seen much of the world, she had barely seen anything of her own country..  I told  her about some of the places I'd been and she was particularly taken with The Great Salt Lake.  Could you really float on it?   Was it true about all that salt making you buoyant?   I had never been to Great Salt Lake, but I assured her that it was all true.

Mary snuck into her house and picked up her passport.  I already had mine.  We headed for the airport.  There was a plane to Salt Lake City with lots of stops of course, leaving in about seven hours.   We hung around Leonardo Da Vinci Airport, which had all the security in the world, having recently been the target of terrorists.   Finally they checked our tickets.  They checked our passports.   I don't recall having the sensation of getting away with anything.  Certainly nothing illegal.  Soon we were in the air.  An adventure lay before us and we didn't have a care in the world.   That's what we thought.  

We landed first at JFK in New York.   Mary had not seen New York either so we decided to get off the plane and explore the city, which I knew quite well.   Soon I was in touch with my friend Richard (real name).   He was out of breath, even over the phone. "Where have you guys been?" he said,  "Do you realize everybody's looking for you.  Her parents.  Interpol.  Everybody."

Interpol?  I said.   Why?   Because, Richard said, she's underage and left Rome without permission.  Not only that, her parents don't know you and they're scared.  Richard put us up for one night.  A good night, it was too.  But when the next day arrived, it was obvious that Mary had to go home.  We were in lots of trouble.   Incredibly, on this end, Mary couldn't get a plane ticket back to Rome.   She was, Pan Am said, too young to get one on her own.   Mary pleaded with them and a sympathetic supervisor finally let her go.  I never saw Mary again.