Red Autumn Leaves: Elvis Has Left The Building

Even when I was a puppy, friends, family, acquaintances, strangers and so on, encouraged me to write about my life. I would smile internally knowing there is no way I would do such a thing. I had too many sensitive secrets. It just was not going to happen.

Decades later I find the proposition of an autobiography in my breakfast burrito smothered in green chili. Now, I laugh out loud at the thought. It's just not going to happen; or is it? My spine twitches.

How would I remember everything when so much of it is a blur? Do I tell about the time I set my furniture on fire in the middle of the street or keep it trendy and only tell stories of famous people and places? Should I mention being stranded in Haiti without money or identification or maybe living in LaPark, in West Hollywood, a few doors down from the African musicians who where playing in Paul Simon's band and occasionally seeing Ozzy in the parking garage? Do I call lovers by name? Now, that would be rich. And why write such a thing now? I am far from gnawing my life line in half.

The last few days I have been down with a cold, which should be called a hot. Fever will make a man think funny. Not clown funny, abstract funny. I will write this book and keep it in a secure place. All my life I have been flirting with death, as the book will testify. When death finally winks back, someone will find the manuscript. You can't put a dead man in prison.

Coffee - Part II

When I was a little boy, about four or maybe five, I started drinking coffee each morning. My father, Alvin, woke before sunrise and waited by the door, looking for the newspaper delivery while the percolator pumped a viscus, oily brew. I positioned my bed just right so when he turned on the kitchen light, the beams would glare into my face, waking me. I joined my dad at the kitchen table and waited for my cup of darkness to cool. He liked his coffee black and hot enough to blister your lips. I liked mine with milk and sugar. I poured the milk just so, watching the clouds form and reform. I still do this. Mornings were not about coffee for me. Mornings were about watching my fathers hard knuckles wrapped around the sides of the newspaper. It was our time. Men stuff.

When my father died, I took his wedding band off his finger. The 50 year groove made it difficult to remove. I knew the ring as well as I knew his face from all the years of staring at his fingers wrinkling newsprint. It is heavy and scuffed. Men stuff.