Laugh, You Dreary Russians!

It's a wonder I'm not bipolar, or schizophrenic--or worse. I don't mean that facetiously--I mean, it really is a wonder, considering the family dynamic I grew up with, that I'm not much more melancholy and introspective and philosophical than I already am.

Don't get me wrong; I love a good laugh. And I think I have a good sense of humor. Thankfully, I'm a free thinker and don't take any of society's rules and trappings too seriously. But, unfortunately for me, I seem to have gotten my core temperament from my Father's side of the family, not my Mother's.

My Mom had the cheerful, warm, happy-go-lucky, down-to-Earth disposition that people were drawn to. She rarely complained, even in the face of illness and personal tragedy, but instead, made those around her feel happy, comfortable, and welcome. I picture her teaching me to jitterbug and playing 500 Rummy in the kitchen with my Grandmother.

My Dad was honest, kind, loving, intelligent, well-read. Happy-go-lucky and cheerful he was not. My Father had an Old World, Eastern European mindset: Family, respect, and tradition were what he was all about. There were no off-color jokes, no inapporpriate TV shows, no profanity, no drinking, no referring to your parents with a pronoun. My Mother used to say he had Abraham Lincoln's morals and Gregory Peck's face. But when she got fed up, she would tell him he didn't know how to laugh.

Gregory Peck's face didn't do me a lot of good, but Abraham Lincoln's morals were always looming over me. It wasn't just Abraham Lincoln's morals, either. There was that dreary Russian thing. That grawing darkness that always hung over my Father's family like a dark cloud ready to pour torrents on my head. The "Nostrovia" at the holidays that sent chills down my spine before I even knew what it meant, just because it sounded dreary and scary.

My Dad was the second youngest of six children, and the only boy. Had they been a little less depressing, my aunts could have had successful careers in the funeral industry. My memories of them are of somber, stone-faced, stick-thin women dressed in black and smelling like camphor. They were "good," my Mother reassured me when I was very little and hiding under the dining room table because I knew my Aunt Olga was coming for a visit. I was an astute four-year-old, though. I quickly picked up on the fact that she said "good" and not "nice," so "good," for me, came to be synonymous with someone who wouldn't kill you but wouldn't ever hug you. The Gloomy Gene seemed to have skipped only one--my Aunt Betty--the middle sister, the sweetest one, who I always just assumed was adopted. She was married to an Italian, and I am sure some of his warmth rubbed off on her over the years. But Russian and Italian is a volatile mix; there's just too much intensity of different kinds to ever co-mingle in a harmonious way.

I liken the combination of Italian and Russian blood in my veins to the ethnic equivalent of a speedball.

On the Cusp

Technically, I'm a Baby Boomer. I was born in 1962, and the time span for Boomers is roughly 1946 to 1964. According to some, the "cutoff" for Boomers is 1962. By some accounts, Generation Xers are those born after 1962; by others, it is those born after 1964.

Either way, the age span for Boomers is nearly a generation. And either way, I am on the cusp. I've always known this, and have never felt truly part of either generation. I know where my heart is--in the 60s--but that doesn't change the fact that I grew up in the 70s and spent my adolescence awash in disco.

Sixteen years ago, I wrote an essay called "On the Cusp." I never published it, or tried to, but I gave it to both Eric Andersen and, with some trepidation, to Gregory Corso. I guess I was hoping for an icon from the generation I so admired to understand what I perceived as a "predicament." I don't think either of them did.

It seems I'm on a lifelong mission to understand--if not embrace--this "straddling" of generations myself. After many years of reading, writing, and experiencing, I've gotten closer--but still no cigar. Hopefully, there will be a "cigar" in the near future.

Catholic School and Bullshit: a Match Made in Heaven

I've always had a low tolerance for bullshit. I can see it and feel it a mile away, and I hate it. I just don't understand it. What is the need for bullshit? Why not just be honest and straightforward? Why lie? Why disguise? Why fucking pretend?

I have been this way all my life. When I was in grade school, the nuns used to call me "Curious Carol" because I never took anything at face value unless it made sense to me, so I asked questions. Curiosity—I know now—is a good, if not necessary, quality to have. But in Catholic school—Catholic school in South Philadelphia in the seventies—curiosity was not rewarded. I think it may have even qualified as a venial sin. Mortal sins, of course, were much more serious. Mortal sins included—at least back in the day—murder and missing mass on Sunday. (I don't know where child molestation by clergy members ranked; it was not something one asked. It was veiled by pedantic rhetoric and stoic bullshit.)

In the early days of Vatican II, the nuns loosened up a bit. In the early 70s, they gave up their long, cumbersome habits for to-the-knee uniforms and mid-shoulder veils. They also played songs like "Day By Day" and "Morning Has Broken" on their guitars at Friday morning mass, under the guise of being hip and modern and open-minded. But it was all bullshit.

When I was in fourth grade, in religion class, Sister Rosemary—who, physically, was a cross between a linebacker and a lumberjack—gave me three demerits for insubordination when I raised my hand and asked her what "manna" was. She was lecturing about how manna fell from the sky to feed the Israelites in the wilderness and what a miracle it was and how it fed so many hungry people, so I thought asking what manna was was a reasonable question. (I stopped short of asking who the Israelites were—which, of course, wasn't explained to us either—because I instinctively knew that the Israelites, whoever they were, certainly weren't Catholic, and that kind of question would make Sister Rosemary's fat, doughy face all red and blotchy, and she'd look at me with those sternly knitted eyebrows and those big yellow buck teeth, which looked even bucker when she got mad.)

So I asked her what I thought was an innocuous question because I really wanted to know what I was believing in before I said "I believe." But Sister Rosemary said I was being disrespectful. I was crushed and I cried—not because I got demerits, but because I loved God and thought God would be angry at me and maybe also punish me for something I didn't intend to do. After all, if Sister Rosemary thought I was being disrespectful and she was a representative of God, God would think I was disrespectful, too. And that would hurt me more than being punished. So I asked God silently to forgive me and, equally important (to me, anyway), to still love me.

It was probably 20 years before I was able to admit—and really believe--that a) I was a good kid b) God not only still loved me but was probably rooting for me and c) Sister Rosemary didn't know what the fuck she was talking about and had no idea what manna was so she punished me for her own stupidity. It was another 10 years before I would allow myself to believe and really internalize that most of it was bullshit anyway.

The world is rife with bullshit—always was, probably always will be. And, though I have even less tolerance for it now than I did back then, I somehow always find myself having to deal with it.

Coming of Age: Girls High and Dylan

The winter of '77 might have been totally bleak and desolate, except that a whole new world had exploded open for me—in more ways than one. I'd started Girls High the previous fall—my Mother had allowed me to attend, albeit under duress: I told her flat-out that if she made me attend the all-girls St. Maria Goretti--where it was a prerequisite for students to be pregnant by junior year, engaged by senior year, and in hairdressing school upon graduation—that I would run away, or kill myself, I hadn't yet decided which.

It was the first time that I'd blatantly rebelled against my parents. They had my best interests at heart, as they always did, but this time—for the first time ever—I knew they were wrong. They just didn't understand that Girls High was the best school in Philadelphia--it was a magnet school for serious students, for college-bound girls; you had to apply and take a test to be considered, and I had been one of only three girls selected out of my entire eighth-grade class to attend.

In my parents' minds, Goretti was a better—and safer—choice: it was a Catholic school—which, I knew even then, meant nothing more than that you had to pay to attend and you'd get easier penance for saying "fuck you" to your brother than you would otherwise. But it was also close by, and safe—"safe" in the sense of "the devil that you know is better than the devil that you don't." Really, they were just worried about my taking the subway from one end of the city to the other—a valid concern, no doubt. But I was sure I could take care of myself. Even though I was innocent as a lamb, I could have an attitude when I wanted to, and even feign street toughness when needed.

So with tears, pleads, and half-hearted threats, I convinced my parents that if I had any chance of going to college and following my dreams, of getting out of the 'hood once and for all, Girls High was my ticket. Plus, there were lots of things more dangerous than taking the Broad Street Subway. And my sitting in a classroom full of brainless gum-cracking Goretti guidos for four years was one of them.

Within a week of starting Girls High, I realized that I wasn't crazy—there really was more to life than watching my brothers' friends drink beer on 7th and Porter. There were other people—Girls! Teenage girls! Pretty, popular, smart teenage girls who weren't nerds!—who read books—for enjoyment. Girls who contemplated the meaning of life, who wanted more out of life than a hairdresser's certificate from the Helena Rubenstein Beauty School and a cloudy quarter-carat diamond from Penney's jewelry department. There was a different kind of existence, a life that I'd had since I was four years old—and other people had it too: a life of the mind. Maybe I wasn't nuts; maybe I was just smart.

My 10th grade Italian class at GHS (I'm
in the back row, with the black/striped
sweater, making "devil horns" over Mary
Martucci).

At Girls High, though, everyone was smart. All the girls who attended were there because a) they wanted to be and b) they were allowed to be. It was a college prep school that drew the best students from all over the city. I had some tough competition—but I never competed. I had no desire to be valedictorian. I just wanted to learn. To learn and to be—to be me.

Also within that first week, I'd developed my first high-school crush. Since it was an all-girls school, I had no choice but to fall in love with Mr. Kauriga, my music teacher. He was tall, dark, handsome—and Russian. He had a goatee and looked vaguely bohemian. And he had a cute name: Dimitri. But most important, he was a musician—he spoke my language.

Mr. Kauriga took a liking to me and was impressed by my knowledge of sixties music—a bit of an anomaly for teenage girls in the disco era. He gave me full access to the music room after school, and suggested that I use my knowledge and fascination with the music and culture of the sixties to create something. He said I could use the music department's soundproof studios to write, practice, record—whatever I wanted to do. I decided that I was going to write a play. It would be set in the sixties and the music of the British Invasion would be the soundtrack. I would need to record some songs. Actually, I just wanted to use Mr. Kauriga's studio-quality reel-to-reel, and thread the big Teac spools of tape, so that I could pretend I was in a real recording studio, like Abbey Road, or Electric Ladyland, or the Hit Factory—a little bit of training for what, at that time, I thought my future career would be: a recording engineer.

I took vocal music as an elective that year, taught by Mr. Murphy. Half of our grade would be based upon a book report of a vocalist of our choice. This is a shoo-in, I thought: easy "A." I'll just do The Beatles Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies—which I knew word-for-word, fact-by-fact. But when Mr. Murphy announced the criteria and the parameters in class, he was clear: "You may write about any singer or singers of the twentieth century for whom a full-length, written biography exists. Except Carol—you may not write about The Beatles. That would be cheating." Everybody laughed, I blushed and my heart sank.

Mr. Murphy then proceeded to hand out a list of suggested biographies, which included such names as Mario Lanza, John McCormick, Barbara Streisand, Maria Callas, and lots of other people who sounded as boring as their names. About two-thirds down the list, one name and three syllables that would change my life: Bob Dylan.

Grey, Grey Winter

It was the coldest, rawest winter I could remember. A desolate, damp, tattle-tale grey winter whose soundtrack was Dylan's Blood On the Tracks and Desire and Paul Simon's Greatest Hits. They were released at different times, yes, but in the winter of '77, that's what I was listening to--it was almost like I needed Paul Simon to take the edge off of Dylan. I'd listen to "Idiot Wind" and then temper it with "Slip Slidin' Away." Dylan's music was so raw and naked and forceful, I was almost embarrassed to listen to at that young age--I'd never heard anything like it before. I didn't know you could say things like "You're an idiot, babe, it's a wonder that you still know how to breathe," and set it to music.

Everything that winter was happy for me--on the outside. It was before Gregory died, and his life seemed relatively carefree. I was a good kid, sheltered. I didn't smoke or drink, didn't have a curfew because I didn't need one. My life was about school and friends and records and shows like "Happy Days" and "Laverne and Shirley." On the inside, though, I was a jumble of existential questions, quiet rebellion, and young teen angst.

The winter of '77 was a winter whose landscape was dotted with car exhaust-blackened snow and ice, dirty abandoned, graffitied rowhouses all 'round, and trees that would have been just nondescript, except that they were ugly and putrid. Didn't know there were putrid trees, but there were, and the only ugly trees I knew where here, in this ravaged part of the city, lining the tiny smudges of patchy littered crabgrass and weeds that passed for parks in this bedraggled urban hellhole I called home.

I imagined the aroma of fragrant pines and spruce and cedar in some forest primeval as I walked the broken concrete path that cut through the "park," adorned only with industrial orange barrels and garbage cans burning last month's rotting leaves and last year's smelly trash.

I imagined long-haired English boys in Carnaby Street and King's Road. I imagined flower children in the Haight and scruffy young men in the mountains and hippies in the Canyon. I imagined mini-skirted Mary Quant models and mods on mini bikes and lovers in convertibles and what I got were greaseball hoods dressed like Rocky and singing flat, dated a capella on 10th and Porter.

Somewhere was that scene, that timeless, placeless scene that had been with me, that had rested deep inside me, in my core, in my soul, that had resonated with me and made my pulse race, that felt like home though it was so foreign. Somewhere it existed in reality. But it wasn't in this fucking shithole, that was for sure.

Hangin' with the Dharma Bums

I remember the first City Lights black-and-white softcover that caught my eye. It was Gregory Corso's Gasoline, and it cost something like $2.50. It was the mid 1970s and I can guarantee, without a doubt, that I was the only young teenage Catholic girl in the city of Philadelphia who was scoping out Robins Bookstore for City Lights titles by Ginsberg, Corso, Ferlinghetti, and Kerouac.

It was listening to Dylan's Blood On the Tracks that first opened my mind--opened it way beyond my comfort zone at the time. Remember, I was only 14--and a sheltered, innocent 14 at that. Before Dylan, I'd thought that John Lennon was the ultimate intellectual rock god. But Dylan was a whole new world. I wanted to know everything he knew. To be inspired by everyone and everything that inspired him. He was my new guru. But I had to keep it a secret, for fear of humiliation among the girls in the hood.

In smoky, seedy Robins Bookstore on 13th & Market--where dirty old men with cigars and trenchcoats used to buy their porn, across from the big old church--St. John's, I think--I'd indulge in my deep, dark secret--poetry, the poetry of the Beats. It felt irreverant, exciting, scintilating. Corso wrote about things that shouldn't have been written about--like "Greenwich Village Suicide"--in such a powerful, real, no-bullshit way. It was refreshing--and a little scary.

Fast-forward 14 years or so. I'm hanging with Allen Ginsberg--a friend of a friend who I worked with in the music biz--overhearing him whisper in his sweaty, porno-intellectual voice about the charms of "pretty young boys." I am mortified, pretending to be asleep, and that same day, my hero, Rick, the proverbial nice guy come to life, rescues me from the admittedly literary, often gentle--but absolutely profane--reality that is Ginsberg. Rick walks in, nonchalantly, smoking a cigarette, and chats with Allen--who is wide-eyed and immediately taken with him. They talk for a sec about Bob Dylan, then somehow the small talk meanders to desserts (one of Rick's favorite topics). Rick's talking about apple pie, cake, and ice cream, as the most famous poet in the world sits mesemerized, fascinated, smitten by this sweet, unassuming guy--a rock-and-roll legend.

Then Rick cuts the chit-chat short with an amiable, "Alright Allen, see ya later, Buddy," and we leave. A minute or so of silence as we walk, then Rick gently admonishes me: "That's no place for you." In hindsight, it was quite endearing.

But this Beat journey of mine was just beginning. A few weeks later, at a poetry reading/book fair in the Village, a vodka-soaked, dirty, toothless, track-marked Gregory Corso, a literary rebel I'd admired from afar for so many years, is groping at me and, before I can react, I feel his hand on the small of my back, when I turn around and grab his arm, and yell in the South Philly dago accent I forgot I had, "Oh!!! Whadaya doin?!" As genteel as a nobleman, he takes the stack of books that I have, in my naivete', brought for him to sign, and autographs every one of them. The one I remember most vividly says: "Carol--I'd love to shove a rose up your heart--without thorns."


Somehow, I was able to handle myself with him. I guess that was the Beat way of saying "hello." And, in a strange way, I admired the fact that Gregory was real--his poetry was a true reflection of him. Plus, his name was Gregory--my brother's name--so he had to have goodness in him. We actually became friendly for a while and I ended up booking and promoting a poetry reading for him in Philly. By that time, he was calling me "Kiddo" and when he autographed my last of his books, he wrote "Thanks for a nice time in Old Philly. Be Good--love Gregory."


When I told Rick about the book fair, he reminded me that instances like that were one reason women had knees. Then he said "How do you get into these situations?"

All these years later, that's what I'd like to know.