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An old nemesis December 11, 1985

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    Surisky hated me from early on in grammar school, although “hate” may be too strong a word to describe his reaction to me. I was simply available to him for abuse, Third grade was pivotal for both of us. Prior to that, we were simply feeling our way through Catholic School routine, emerging eventually as whole personalities from the muck of early childhood. He came across as a thug, trying to convey the image of a tough guy. He wore a leather jacket and spiked boots, and snuck into see James Dean movies. Third grade was tough on everybody, including the teachers, who considered us the worst class in the history of the school – even in the safe grades of Kindergarten, First and Second. Two of the three nuns retired after passing us on. But it was in the third grade that we began to work our magic, driving even the stout-hearted nuns crazy. Later, the nuns tried to break our spirit. But we fully represented our age and had the full impact of the 1960s behind us. So,
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Better than 1984 was Dec. 31, 1985

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   I keep thinking of the Paul McCartney lyric about nobody being left in 1985 as this year concludes even though the year did not open as ominously as 1984 did with the front-page article in The York Times talking about scary FBI surveillance – which only further reminded me of just how right George Orwell was about our society. But 1984 started in the aftermath of the death of U.S. Marines in Lebanon and the American invasion of Grenada. I just published my story “Joe’s Diner” to reflect that strange Christmas with Hank had hung out with a number of outcasts. Phil had already sold the Willowbrook Dunkin, sabotaging the new owners with rumors. My uncle was already back in Graystone after yet another series of attempts at suicide, and I was making plans to move back into his apartment, leaving Pauly to occupy the old apartment on his own, giving me desperately needed privacy I could have living with him. I was worried about my cat Dudley, who was jealous of my relationship with
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Looking back on 1985 Dec. 30. 1985

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   It’s nearly year’s end and everybody is doing their reviews: music stations and magazines talking about the latest hot songs, newspapers and television going on all the sad events of the last year. For me, the year began on a prophetic note with Fran and I breaking up just ahead of Christmas, then briefly reuniting, only to have it fall apart permanently. I saw her only a few days ago on the street, a bitter sweet moment that made it clear we would never get together again. We put out our Sixties issue of our zine, a marked improvement on almost every level, better writing, and editing, and this sense of hope for our literary future. Early in the year, I quit Dunkin, enraged at the new manager, Jerry and partly as a compromise with Fran, who hated my working the overnight shift (even though it paid twice as much as I could make in the Fotomat.) But I went back to Fotomat at the end of January anyway, and found my predictions for financial ruin coming to pass – though the mov
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Other times on Bertrand’s Island Dec. 28, 1985

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   I have almost no memory of coming to Bertrand’s Island with my family, although I’m sure I did. My visits here came later originally with Hank, who assumed that the aging amusement park in the middle of nowhere would be a great place for us to pick up girls. Hank did not fully comprehend how rural that backwater part of the planet was and how unreceptive locals might be to the arrival of two long-haired hippie types from the edge of Manhattan, Our brief sojourn to local pubs filled with rednecks soon apprised us of the circumstances but did not stop us from wandering into the amusement park itself where we might have had a beer and hot dog before moving on to better hunting grounds elsewhere. Although my family had talked about the place, the fact that it had survived as long as it had actually surprised me. All the other lakes in the area had been taken over by invaders from Mars – those yuppie types that spread out from New York City like locus, following newly constructed
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Woody Allen slept here? Dec. 27, 1985

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   Woody Allen slept here. Well, at least a part of his movie, “A Rose for Cairo” was filmed here, the last great act for an amusement park that has existed here for more than 60 years. Bertrand’s Island has been abandoned, a ghost town full of memories and relics, partly covered over in snow. A handwritten note scrawled above the jungle boat ride says, “Condominiums,” more foul than any curse words anyone might have thought to write. A crude prediction for the old park’s fate. Sixty years ago, it had all the prestige of a Northern New Jersey Great Adventure with trolley tracks running all the way from here to Landing, Pennsylvania where crowds filled the cars and came here for amusement. Saturday nights, locals claim, were as thick and wonderful as any major sporting event, people dressing up as if for the Easter Parade. Swimming, boating, concession stand playing were merely excuses for people to gather here. Even in the mid-1970s, fifty years after the place’s constructi
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A Christmas Tradition December 26, 1985

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   We celebrated a traditional Christmas – traditional for us, if not the world, just like in the old days, a fellow might say, me, Hank, Pauly and Garrick, all in the same place at the same time, singing old dogs, drinking until we were drunk, smoking dope the way we did each Christmas Eve as long as we could remember, feeling the age old pain lonely men feel this time of year. Only Hank seemed reasonably content, having met a new romantic interest last fall. The other three of the Four Musketeers ached with the same old pangs that drew us together in the past, bringing us to Frank and Dawn again for our reunion. Although the location changed over the last decade, the mood never did, nor the atmosphere – and even when one or more could not stay the whole night, we all made our appearance if only as a gesture of the past, to maintain a tradition we are reluctant to surrender for fear we might not have it when we need it again in the future – when suddenly four years ago, it stopp
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One last gesture Dec. 23, 1985

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  I saw Fran today – well, technically yesterday this being 6 a.m. on the 24th and since I have yet to slip into serious sleep. So, this is Monday even though it still feels like Sunday. But then, I’m caught up in self judgement and the action/reaction of having once again possibly done something stupid. Last week, I deliberately found her car, and from this, her mail box, into which I put in a copy of our latest zine, scrawling on it a simple cartoon and a balloon wishing her “Merry Christmas.” I suppose fate played a hand in all this, pushing and pulling at me all day, timing my actions to coincide with hers. My original plan was to buy her a plant and leave it on her doorstep. But lack of funds and time to cross seven towns to the plant store forced me to settle for buying a single pink rose and a box of butter cookies. It was even the wrong time of day, traffic thinning after the 3:30 rush. She should not have been there. Neither should have I. But it was all too fa
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