Secrets Buried With the Bodies of the Dead

Secrets will destroy us. Not all at once, mind you, but little by little. We hide them in the chambers of our hearts where we think they are locked away and have been forgotten about, but as they lurk in this dark place they are pulling tiny wires that connect to our every step and gesture and to every loved one we embrace. Each of our actions is affected by the secrets we keep, infused with a subconscious drive to set that secret free. And that’s the way secrets destroy us; if we don’t ultimately let them out, they will walk away with our lives and blot out who we might have become. I don’t think I’m telling you anything you don’t already know.

In the first ten years of this new millennium the race we call human has grown into a master race of secret-holders – our government agencies, our social system and our banks have all evolved into clandestine organisms. We may call it national security. We may call it the laws of capitalism. We may even call it individual privacy. But let’s call it what it is: it’s secrets running the show. A group of terrorists, working in secret brings down two buildings along with the nation where they stood, and that nation starts to drown in paranoia which leads to persecution which leads to more secrets. We grow a worldwide network of instantaneous access to people and ideas and instead of using it to unite the world, we use it to hide who we are through avatars and faceless chat and cybercrime that sequesters itself among the digital ones and zeros that now represent us. Banks with trillions in wealth that could have been used to save the sick, rebuild countries, and fill the bellies of every starving child, decide instead to use arcane financial plots that siphon every last drop of value out of our property and our people in order to build walls of money behind which these devious few can hide.

Yes, I’ve been thinking a lot about secrets as this decade comes to close. Working on these pages over the past months has caused me to think about many of the little secrets I’ve kept across my life - things I’ve thought but never told; actions I’ve taken but have been too ashamed to admit. And that has lead me to think about the secrets and lies we tell ourselves as a nation.

Like most of us with strong ethnic origins (which is to say all of us) I have been taught well to keep secrets. It evolved from a murkier time, centuries past, when men and women could not talk about the baby they had out of wedlock, could not share the loaf of bread they stole to feed their children, could not speak their innermost thoughts for fear of having these pieces of news bring a village or a church or a kingdom down around them. Those days may be gone now, but the fear under our secrets lives on – justified or not, real or not, we continue to keep secrets because we think they are saving our lives.

But you and I both know that secrets take more lives than they save. The root of the most hideous national events of this past decade have all stemmed from the secrets we withheld from each other or the lies we told ourselves. If you don’t believe me ask the families of the victims of 911 or Hurricane Katrina or the Great Recession. There are more than a few secrets buried among the bodies of these dead and in the empty pockets of those who have been broken.

Our own personal secrets may not have the potential to kill millions or to send a middle class into poverty and the poor into despair. And our secrets might be nothing more than a piece of family history we decided not to share or something done to us that we’d rather not talk about. But if nothing else every secret we keep locked up is one less opportunity to teach others about us and one lost chance to reconcile with ourselves.

So tomorrow on New Year’s Day - along with your resolutions to quit smoking or lose weight - resolve to share a secret or a thought that you have hidden inside. Share it with your child or your wife or your lover or your parent. Do it because you’ll be surprised by the forgiveness you’ll be granted and the understanding you’ll receive. Let it out because by sharing small secrets with each other we might teach others how to share those bigger secrets that could stop the water from rising and the buildings from crumbling and our people from dying before their time.

And if you don’t want to share your secrets and thoughts with someone close to you, share them here with us as an anonymous comment. We’re all here to listen. Go ahead, share a secret with us.  Go ahead, I dare you.  Share it and start to change the world.

Winter Noir

Dad Man Talking is on hiatus this week for the winter holidays. In its place we’re running an excerpt from a little known seasonal story by cult detective novelist Rex Handler. As fans of the crime genre know, Handler was born and lived in the Northeast and was a true suburbanite, taking the hard-boiled, Crime Noir style of such luminaries as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and transplanting it to the East Coast bedroom communities of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Those who knew Handler say that his fictional detective, Jake Mardo, was really a stand-in for the author who saw himself as a tough guy that just happened to have three kids to support along with a mortgage on a Dutch Colonial.

Note: This recently discovered story was rejected by publishers at the time as being too dark for the holiday season. Like millions of us who live on the East Coast, it is widely believed that Handler suffered at this time of year from seasonal mood swings which became even more acute around the holidays. Readers may recognize elements of Handler’s winter moodiness in the following excerpt.

'Tis the Season To Sleep My Lovely

By Rex Handler

I was sitting in my office watching an ant crawl across my desk like a lost man looking for something he couldn’t seem to find. The little bastard didn’t know where he was, but he knew he didn’t belong outside the house this time of year without a sturdy coat, a flashlight and a hand full of anti-depressants. To tell you the truth, I knew what this poor sap was going through – this ant and I we were just a couple of chumps trying to outlast the winter. It was 4:30 on a December afternoon and already it was as dark on the streets as the wrinkled skin under a nun’s wimple.

 Through a smudge in the window of my office behind the garage I could see Mrs. Minervini next door hanging her Christmas lights and happily whistling carols through a hole in her dime store dentures. Although I’m usually filled with the milk of human kindness at other times of the year, right at the moment I could have gone outside and wiped the smile off that old dame’s face with a snow shovel. Sometimes I get like this in the winter. Sometimes I also dance in my underwear to Ethel Merman singing Everything’s Coming Up Roses, but this dark day in December wasn’t that sometime.

 The phone rang and it woke me from the nap I had started to drift into as I fixated on my new pal crawling up the side of an empty carton of egg foo young. I had been doing a lot of sleeping lately and when I wasn’t doing that I was thinking about sleeping and when I wasn’t doing that I was eating my way through Chinese takeout containers, cold pizza and boxes of cookies. On top of always being tired this time of year, I was so hungry that if the little elves on the side of the cookie box had been flesh and blood I would have eaten them too.

 I picked up the phone from somewhere inside of my nodding head. “Maaaadoooo …” I yawned into the receiver.

 “Mr. Mardo?” A voice purred. It was a woman at the other and of the line and the sound of her voice alone could have made a monk rip off his sack cloth and break a 25 year vow of silence. I might have done the same if I my sex drive hadn’t already hitched a ride south for the winter.

 “Yeah, this is Mardo…” I said, seeing if I could get to any of the leftover egg foo young in the carton before the ant got there.

“Mr. Mardo, I have a problem and I was told by some very reliable people that you were a man who could handle a problem like mine.”

“Well, well, well,” I thought, “a job.” This could be good if it wasn’t for the fact that my spirits were sagging lower than Mrs Minervini’s upper plate. I felt like working right now about as much as I felt like smearing my body with bacon grease and waltzing with a grizzly bear. Come to think of it, at the moment waltzing with a grizzly bear would have been preferable to having to show up for a job. Then I thought of my kids. That was the problem with kids; they demanded the finer things in life, things like food, clothing and shelter.

“To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking,” I said in my best happy Tom, matinee idol voice. I didn’t fool her for a minute. From the way she replied I knew that this dame could see right through me.

 “You sound sad, Mr. Mardo, Is something wrong?”

 “Nothing that a few weeks of intensive daylight therapy and a month or so on a shrink’s couch couldn’t cure,” I shot back. “And you still haven’t told me your name.”

 “My name is Missy Horne, and I‘m offering a two hundred dollar a day retainer and a five thousand dollar bonus when you solve my problem. Do you think that might put a smile back on your face?”

 Probably not,” I had to admit. “Look, you sound like a nice dame and I don’t want to hurt your feelings but why don’t you call me back in April, say about the time we switch the clocks back from daylight savings. I’ll probably be feeling a lot better then, and I’ll be happy to take any money you want to give me.”

 “I don’t think this can wait, Mr. Mardo. You’ll need to let me know right now whether you can take the job or not …”

 This was the problem with winter - you had to find a way to fool the fools and keep making your daily bread even though the prince of darkness and the iceman were out there trying to kill you. I listened to Missy Horne breathing at the other end of the line while I watched the ant dig into the egg foo young. The little schnook could have it for all I cared. What I needed right now wasn’t at the bottom of an egg foo young carton anyway.

“Well, Mr. Mardo …?”

I could tell that Missy Horne was the impatient sort, and sooner or later I knew I’d have to say yes to the job. Out on the streets the fat man in the red suit was ringing his bell. Throughout the land, little children had stars in their eyes, and Mrs Minervini next store was about to flip a switch that was going to electrocute hundreds of innocent lights bulbs. Guys like me we pay a price at this time of year. It’s a price those happy saps who believe in Santa and Hanukah Harry never have to pay. It’s the cost of living through winter, my friend, and it’s a debt you pay off with the big sleep.

_________________

Dad Man Talking will be back with a brand new blog posting sometime between Christmas and New Years (if we’re not too tired or depressed to write it). Happy Holidays to all, and to all a good night.

MTV’s ‘Jersey Shore’ or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Guidos

All Italians are gangsters; all Jews are good at making money; all young inner-city African-American men are drug dealers; and all Asians are smart and sneaky. All Hispanics have too many children; all blonds are dumb; all midgets have big penises; and homosexuals are all bitchy and love show tunes. Stereotypes are helpful, don’t you think? These pigeonholes allow us to face the truth about ourselves and each other - and the truth is that we’re still just primitive cave dwellers who are not only ignorant about other races, religions and creeds but are even more ignorant about the tribes to which we ourselves belong.

This is why I’m getting a lot of entertainment value out of the MTV reality show “Jersey Shore” – not so much from the group of 20-something, gold chain wearing Italian American kids who are using too much hair gel, beating each other senseless and sleeping with each other’s boyfriends, but from the Italian American Anti-Defamation League, UNICO and other organized Italian Americans protesting to save society from this mish mash of hormones and cultural failings.

Speaking as a full blooded, first-generation Italian American, I can authentically tell you that we Italians have never been very good at seeing the truth about ourselves. We get mouthy and obnoxious about our dignity and ethnic pride, and while we are blathering on, carrying signs and having parades honoring our heritage, there always seems to be a group of Italian guys in the background wearing sleeveless t-shirts and slapping their girlfriends to the tune of “That’s Amore.” Yes, we Italians do have a long, lineage of men and women who have contributed mightily to society (just like every other ethnic and religious group on God’s earth), but we also have the MTV Jersey Shore “Guidos” out there acting like young gangsters in love (just like you might have a segment of your own ethnic group that makes you a little less than proud).

And whenever we think we have the lid down on these self-titled Guidos, they just pop up again to show us all how human and prone to stereotypes we are. It’s impossible to hide this behind censorship, or cancelled TV shows or parades or ethnic pride, so we really need to somehow learn to embrace it. After all, everyone has to start somewhere – even the Guidos need to be given the chance to evolve - and if we can face who we are, admit it to others and learn to fix the problems (not just the symptoms), then we might not have to worry so much about stereotypes.

I learned early on how important this is. And I learned it the hard way. We all did.

It was June 28, 1971 and I was a fat 15 year old riding with my father and uncle in a chartered bus filled with actual mobsters and a gaggle of other men who someday hoped they would be. We were on our way to Columbus Circle in New York City to rally for the first ever Italian American day. This might be a colorful image to you, but it’s important to note right here that Italian American day had been organized by Joe Colombo - a mobster who had done more than his share to give Italian Americans a bad name – and it was Joe’s stroke of genius to organize this day to protest the FBI’s harassment of Italian Americans and undo the image of Italians as gangsters. It seems to me that Joe was just asking for trouble.

And trouble is, of course, what Joe Colombo – Mr. Italian American Day – would get. No sooner had our merry band of murderers, thieves and wannabes arrived at the corner of 8th Avenue and 56th Street, no sooner had the ‘Little Tonys’ and ‘Joey Jockey Shorts' and ‘Mickey Eyeballs’ disembarked from our motor coach and lumbered up the avenue to join the crowd of 4000 at the edge of Columbus Circle, than did we learn that we had all been played for a bunch of suckers. Approaching the multitude, we could see that the horde of happy paisans that had come to celebrate their honesty and work ethic were either ducking for cover, looking for weapons or running for their lives. My father and uncle picked me up by my arms and ran with me back in the direction of Times Square, knocking over anyone who got in the way. I didn’t know what was happening to me. But I’ll bet that Joe Colombo knew what was happening to him. Joe had just been shot behind the Columbus Circle stage and right after that Joe’s bodyguards had shot the guy who shot Joe. It turns out that Italian American day was stereotypical business as usual for the mob, no matter what Joe wanted us to believe.

Having had this experience firsthand, I see the Guidos on MTV as not very threatening at all to Italian Americans. Stereotypes exist because we are all human and all humans do stupid, unforgivable things. We do kill each other, we do cheat each other, we are all at times dumb and some of us do have more children then we can afford, we are sometimes sneaky and too smart for our own good and evil does lurks at the edges of all our hearts. Taking this behavior off TV won’t make it stop or cease to spread the stereotypes, no more than having a day devoted to Italian Americans will make mobsters stop killing each other.

So I choose to laugh at stereotypes of Italians. What else can a sane man do? I try to teach this to my children as well. Have a sense of humor, I say. Then after we’re done laughing, we can get down to the business of what we can do to make a better world.

On Christmas Eve about ten years ago we gave our kids a guinea pig. My brother was over the house along with a good friend of mine who is Jewish (but who we all know really wants to be Italian). We named this little guinea pig 'Rudy' after Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and, once my kids had him out of the cage and were playing with him on the floor, my brother, my friend and I took one look at this fat, fury little rodent, and we starting making ethnic slurs about him.

“Hey,” my brother said, “why do you think they call him a guinea pig? Is he Italian?” “I don’t know,” said my friend, “but we should get him a tiny sleeveless, wife-beater t-shirt and a couple of gold chains.” “No,” I said, “That would just be wrong. He may be a guinea, but if we dress him like that he might start organizing the rats and mice in the neighborhood and then they’d try to rub out all the cats.” At this point the kids had stopped playing with Rudy, whereupon this plump creature on the floor gazed up at my brother, my friend and I. We all knew what Rudy was thinking, so one of us – doing our best imitation of Sonny Corleone from 'The Godfather' - said what Rudy might have if he could talk. “Hey,” we heard Rudy bellow, “Who you calling a guinea?”

It just goes to show you. It’s not just a stereotype. All guinea pigs really do beat their wives and if you don’t treat them with respect they’re going to have you killed.

The Man Beyond The Mirror

I am a well-built man with dark-hair and strong, clear features that end in a handsome smirk which women love. I’m really quite impressive. Impressive, that is, until I look in a mirror and see that this young man I think I am has been replaced with the much older man that I’ve become.

These days I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror, pathetically adjusting the light above it, and I notice that my skin has wrinkled and the flesh under my eyes has pooled into comical flaps of sorrow. Stepping back, I can see that my stomach is now a silly little paunch that has spread out over my hips and down around my slowly sagging ass. Not wanting to look at this any longer, I sometimes step in closer again, only to find that most of the hair has dropped from my head and is now coiling from my ears, nostrils and brows. There are moles and pustules and all manner of protrusions sprouting from my face, and worst of all, as I glance behind me in the mirror I often catch a fleeting glimpse of pretty young women looking right though me. It would really be very funny, if it wasn’t me.

It’s as if all those who have aged and died before me are bending time, having a good laugh at my arrogance, not allowing me to ever again move the bathroom light or my body to an angle that will let me see the man that is in my mind. No longer can I find that young man who I once thought was eternal. Gone is that tireless father of baby girls who were as beautiful as he was. Absent from the looking glass is that newly married husband who had his chance with other women but who wanted his wife – and only wife - to love his looks.

Men of my age face their aging in various ways. There are those who, at the first sign of flabby pecs and graying or thinning hair, let themselves go altogether, throwing it all away in one toss, proudly pretending that they planned this all along as they eat and nap and smoke their way toward the grave in rumpled sweat pants. There are those who are Spartan and narcissistic and who build a dam against this aging with sun lamps and barbells and shaved heads, with extramarital affairs and diets of leafy greens and water and lean meat. There are those who have won the genetic lottery and for whom aging comes very slowly; their hair stays full and whitens only at their temples; their bodies stay trim and their skin smooth; they face very little in the way of aging until one day they wake up cursed and frightened like Dorian Gray to see that their peers have become fat and old and are dropping like flies around them.

And then there are the rest of us. Men who resist as best we can, who try within reasonable means to stay healthy and fit, but who by any means still continue to slide into old age first by inches and then – I am presuming – by feet, yards and miles. We ordinary men don’t eat any more than we used to, we don’t brush our teeth any less or take any less care with our grooming or exercise, but the returns are diminishing. One day we wake up and we can’t run as fast as we used to, the next our knees ache painfully when we run at all so we begin to walk as fast as we can until one day soon even walking fast will be a luxury that we will keep in reserve for the grandchildren we hope to have. There is only one thing that men like us can do - we have to lose our vanity to gain our peace.

No matter what the mirror tells me, I will always stubbornly look beyond the mirror to see myself as that young man who lived in part by his looks, who could attract and be attracted, whose body may not have been perfect, but whose imperfections only added to his beauty. This I believe is part of our survival mechanism, for if I truly allowed what was happening to me to register, I would likely not be able to go on.

And that brings me to the soul of who we are. And to the fact that we have to believe we are timeless. No matter how much the mirror argues with me, who I am is who I am and who I will always be. This is not vanity, but the path to something more promising than a perfect body and youthful looks. Those things will fade eventually no matter what we do, but the image of a young, fresh spirit – well that is something we can truck around with us forever, all through this life and into the next.

We must go on seeing ourselves as the young men in the mirror. We are 15 or 20 or 30. We are strong and vital and with our devil-may-care humor and our brazen intelligence we are making people smile and think. We are closer to the beginning of our lives than we are to the end of them and anything is possible. It’s all a cycle, anyway, and if you have been lucky enough to give birth to children or sound ideas or good work that has helped others even in small ways, than you will live forever as that man you see in your mind even if he can no longer to be found in the mirror.

Last week I was driving in a car with a female colleague, catching a ride from one work activity to the next. We were chatting about our parents, and this woman –who I presume to be in early middle age – just happened to tell me that her mother was born in 1954. If I had been driving the car at that moment, we surely would have crashed into a wall. This woman’s mother was only two years older than I am. How can it be, I thought, that this middle-aged woman in her thirties is so much younger than me that she could be my own daughter?

Well, I’ll tell you how it can be. It can be because God has a sense of humor and if we laugh along with him we will see that years and time and age are just the realities of a fool. When I thought of this in the car last week I started making jokes and talking as if I were a kid again. I became the young man with the smirk that women loved. I became strong and beautiful once more. And in becoming this, I was free.