It was new territory for me and I could only fake it for so long, the dreaded "jazz" section of the piece. I was a pocket player, as in four in the pocket. All these fancy time signatures were a burden and it was going to show. Alternating single and double paradiddles on top between the ride cymbal and snare drum was a rudimentary parlor trick but I was running out of ideas. Toby was hammering away at the horse teeth and I could hear him coming back to the main theme. I couldn't wait to get out of this madness. Nora did the bendy bass thing she does so well and....Boom! I broke us out of the asylum with a classic Bonzo triplet. We were back on track. Rock n Roll.

Talking about my time there was something I wasn't ready for yet. Sports were a nice diversion and all of our enthusiasm on this front was genuine. Tod and Carla's hospitality, while nurturing, also kept me in a state of suspended animation. Routine is good stuff but a break in it sometimes is absolutely necessary, especially for a young man. The counter-culture movement that was happening all around was alluring enough, but I was hesitant to jump into this milieu. Would I eventually be deemed a fraud? What with my military history, prize fight betting, love of Dino and Frankie etc......Plus I was pushing thirty, and at that milestone the flower kids felt you were untrustworthy. I kept a low profile for a few months but in those days the winds of change were blowing pretty damn hard.

My return facilitated an agreeable arrangement which helped put my mind at ease. I needed to feel that I was not a bother and soon fell in line with a daily routine that proved to be therapeutic. I would walk the kids to school in the mornings, this would give Carla some extra time to help our father at the bakery. In the afternoons I would look for work, but that usually turned out to be futile. Half the country and most employers it seemed, were turned off by returning vets. For the last six months I had been growing my hair out. Got me some moccasins, tie dyes, the whole bit. But I just couldn't bring myself to lie on the job applications. Later in the afternoon I would either go to Dad's place, which was above the bakery, or I would meet Tod after work at the house. Our conversations usually centered around the Bruins or the Sox. Especially the Sox. They were a constant. Reliable and relatable as the drunken sage at the corner bar.

I had a dream I was sitting in my Dads bakery with Reggie Smith. It was dark outside and I could hear the sound of gunfire in the distance. Reggie was on deck. The front door opens and it's my father. He calls out to Reggie, "you're up!" Reggie gets up, takes a practice swing, and then goes out the door and into the fray. My father smiles and tosses me a bat. "You're on deck!" he says. The door slams shut. Reggie never stood a chance.

My book had fallen and Paula had picked it up and was gently placing it on my chest. The book was "Slaughterhouse Five." I sat up and said "I'm sorry." She smiled and said "for what?" Paula was one of the flower kids swaying to the bongo beat that I had noticed earlier when I first got to the commons. She was wearing a hemp hat, floral print dress with bell bottoms and cowboy boots. Even amongst the hippies she stood out. "Must not be that good if it put you to sleep." I sat up on the bench. "No, it's good." She was pretty and I was still half asleep. "Slaughterhouse Five? Sounds violent. Is it?" "No. Well not really. I mean it's violent, but the violence is kinda surreal." I sounded interesting when I said that. I could tell by her squint. "Surreal huh. I can dig that," she said. "I can too," was my lazy response. There was an awkward silence. She started to walk backward while still eyeing me carefully, "I will let you get back to your book then." She put her arms in the air and started to spin around. She looked like a rainbow parasol as she left me. Did I blow it or could these people just smell it on me? It didn't matter. I was hopelessly drawn into their world and it was all Paula's fault.

Tod was somebody I had known since grade school. His parents were first generation Polish and his mother used to make his pants for him. Carla was my younger sister. They were a good match. She was a doting Mom to my nephews Tod junior and Mario. She got to choose Mario, a good Italian name. After my father Mario Bottaro, which rolled off the tongue. Only in this case it was Mario Freijeikowski. Didn't roll so much as it came to an impasse. Tod was quiet and somewhat shy like me, but he had a sardonic wit and a keen sense of the absurd. And absurd is what we thought about the war in Vietnam, but that didn't stop us from going to enlist. It was the summer of 1967. The summer of love. Neither of us was particularly thrilled about going to fight in a war whose justification was founded on such murky pretense, but both our fathers fought in the great war and we felt it was our patriotic duty. Carla was relieved when she found out Tod has stomach ulcers and was rejected. Guess all that stoicism comes at a price. I wasn't so lucky. They shipped me off to South Carolina, Hue, Saigon, and then back to the North End.

Mitch was the most likeable of the rag tag misfits up close, excluding Paula of course. He was tall and lanky with a perpetual toothy grin. His curly red hair was parted straight down the middle and we both had a love of sardines. From afar the frolicking children's antics glowed with an impromptu elegance. Up close I could see cracks in their collective ideal. Mitch embodied the free spirit ethos that defined the era but some of the others were a hard read.

Gordy (real name Winewood Gordon Boles III) was a problem I kept denying. His eyes were always on Paula and he was a walking contradiction, which is a nice was of saying something else. He seemed to be their unofficial leader so I brushed off his constant needling into my past as dutiful inquisition. Most of the flower kids were malnourished and living wherever they could, which usually included the Commons. Honestly, some were pretty dirty and had a youthful musky smell. The Sox were having a good year and I could sense my rabid fandom was becoming a problem. Gordy continued to pounce on me. Whenever I tried to steal away a moment from the group to catch up on a score he was always somehow magically nearby with a smarmy remark. Usually something about how the Romans used Gladiatorial games to distract the masses.

In late June of 1969 there was a Love In at the Commons. By that time the romance between Paula and I had blossomed as much as my relationship with Gordy had soured. Our relationship was monogamous and that incensed him. It did not fit into his worldview of free love and how the youth movement was about distancing one from the antiquated norms of past generations. We were in the "age of Aquarius." I doubt he ever knew what that meant. I soon became as leery of him as he was of me. He was off. I could see it and he was starting to sense it. The others were too stoned or just too caught up in the joys of youth and the times to notice. I started asking questions to his questions. I even followed him home after a late night of bongos, grass and philosophy. He lived in a nice brownstone on Beacon Hill. Something was indeed off.

Mitch had brought psychedelic mushrooms to the festivities. Paula and I took some as did most of the group. By noon the love fest was in full swing. I danced with Paula as the pulse of Jefferson Airplane and the effects of psilocybin took control. At some point Tod had shown up and I had stopped dancing. He brought Schlitz and started talking about the Fraiser Quarry fight, which made me nervous. I looked around and started to laugh. Tod did too, but only because I was laughing. I introduced Paula to him as my girlfriend and she started laughing too. I decided to throw caution to the wind and talk book with Tod about the fight. I took Fraiser on a TKO in the seventh and I said it LOUD and it felt good. It didn't take long for the inevitable. Gordy had descended upon us and was hurling a slew of insults. "Pugilistic philistines" was one of them. Then he actually grabbed Paula by the arm and pulled her away from me. Nobody was laughing now. The big Pole acted fast but not fast enough. Still, he beat me to the punch, literally. I recognized it immediately, it was an M1911, standard issue for grunts like me, and he managed to get one shot off before Tod landed his crippling blow. I had dropped to one knee and felt a dull ache in my left shoulder. Paula was standing over me. It was the closest I would ever come to proposing.

All life fell upon the scene.

It suggested a fall forward.

According to the evidence

blunt trauma caused the defect

that would be the root reason

for the steady decline.

How I long for an e-ticket ride

during these days of steady decline.

Gone are the days when chemistry and magic

danced together. Now there's no magic,

just tiny specks of meteor

cascading down upon us with the

best of intentions.

The Surfer stared at him. "Aren't we a joke?" Otto's gaze panned the fractured mirror tiles behind the bar. The young man speaking to him was colorful. On the outside anyway. The reflection turned his profile into a cubist interpretation. He turned to face him. "How do you mean?" The Surfer summoned the darkness for two more drinks. "Well, like, a Surfer and a German Expressionist walk into a bar......" The young man stopped. What at first seemed like a dramatic pause turned awkward. "That's all I've got," he said finally as he looked to Otto for more. It was in this moment that Otto became aware of his own grayness. Not his hair, or his gray tweed herringbone suit, but his grayness of being. He looked at the warped ashen forms that were his hands and quickly hid them in his coat. He wanted to sit closer to the young man but the one stool between them was an ocean. " I'm sorry but I don't know this one," said Otto. The Surfer spun around in his stool surveying the darkness around them. "There's a joke in here somewhere! I just know it!" His exuberance belied the encroaching resolution. Otto watched with regret as the youth sauntered into the black. The sound of his footsteps seemed to zig-zag. The remnants of this joke weighed heavily on Otto. He suddenly became aware of someone behind the bar. "Can I help you?" said the priest.

The six of us piled out of my Corolla. Our supervisor seemed to materialize out of the chemical dust that the trucks would kick up as they funneled down. His greeting was without formality as he handed each of us cheap dust masks. He was a large man who spoke in a high pitched shriek, which was good because it cut through the roaring, toxic wind. The orders he gave were simple enough, we were to chase down the plastic grocery bags that swirled aplenty about the great hole. Once these "critters" were caught, we were to stuff them into a larger plastic bag. Once this bag was full it was to be buried deeper into the hole. Was it catch 22? Yes. Was it steady work? Also, yes.

Two of my colleagues were taken aside. They were to separate the municipal waste from recyclable to non-recyclable. Then the non-recyclable waste was to be separated into hazardous waste, landfill waste or incinerator waste. In other words, they got promoted. Poontar kicked up yet more dust. He was passed up for a couple of rookies.

About three hours in I was starting to fade. The landfill was becoming a Saharan dust storm. I was able to make out a shape in the distance. As I got closer I shouted above the din "I'm sorry, I'm going to have to leave, if you guys need a ride back......" The figure came closer, it was Poontar, "that's okay, we all need the work. We usually get a ride back to the agency from one of the truck drivers." He waved goodbye to me as he walked away and disappeared into the chemical clouds, the plastic bags swirling above him like vultures. I guess some of us need the work more than others.

Two chairs and a table. Still there. Must be a mistake. There wouldn't be too much time to ponder. When you want the light to last a bit, it just doesn't. Did time stand still in unit 4A? It had been what, at least ten years? The black wrought iron stairway that cut diagonally across the front between the two bottom apartments had lost it's sheen, and the fallen foliage gave an indication that the complex was in a transitional state. But the two chairs and a table were still there. No mistake. The small white plastic garden table was naked now. We used to dress it with a cheap couch throw. After work we'd grab a couple, sit on the folding chairs and solve all the worlds problems. Too bad we didn't write any of that stuff down. Muted sirens permeate through tinted glass as a crow perches itself on the table. The light turns green and I move on.