The Other Side of the Coin

The Century
On January 1, 2000, and for a while after, the 21st Century felt titillatingly unfamiliar. The feeling didn't last long. But for a long while it still felt weird to say "the last century." An inhabitant of the 1990s is accustomed to the previous century feeling further away.

It's more normal now. A quarter-century in, the 20th century has finally begun to feel previous.

The Townie
I was living in a shabby district of Queens when Ron Howard arrived to shoot "Ransom". Needing a shady nabe for the scene where the kidnappers stash their victim, they'd chosen a grim tenement a couple doors down from my own grim tenement.

At first, it seemed exciting. Another show biz prong in my life. But I'd never for a moment framed myself as the inhabitant of moldy tenements in shady nabes. I was a hipped out 30 year old jazz trombonist and cult food writer, and I was camped here because it was all I could afford "for the moment".

So when the hipped-out production staff showed up to keep the idiot townies from ruining their outdoor shots - idiot townies like me! - it sparked an identity crisis. Did living here make me someone who'd live here?

I struggled to understand which side I was actually on. And how much time, if any, was left on my ticking clock before the concrete set and this was no longer a way station.

At the time, I was still thinking of myself cinematically, a habit I began to opt out of on the night I figured out this, as catalogued here.

Then a couple production assistants tried to hand me clipboards, assuming I was on the team, and all was well. In the "Munsters" framing of it all, I was still Marilyn. At least for a while.

The 11-Year-Old
As I've explained, I'm eleven. Not "I feel youthful", nor "I am an immature man/baby". When I was eleven, I saw clearly. And I recognized that older kids, and adults, don't get any clearer. On the contrary, they tend to lose their damned minds, though they enjoyed certain perqs. So I've been holding right there this whole time.

As I acquired the perqs - a driver's license, a girlfriend, disposable income, erudition and experience, release from my mother's miserable cooking into a world of deliciousness, etc. - I relished it out of all proportion. But never having transformed myself into The Person Who'd Passed Those Milestones, I remained a gleeful, clear-headed eleven year old - perhaps the only one in history who ever scored all the perqs. It turned out to be an effective approach. Give adult assets to a particularly clear-headed eleven year old and he can do anything.

As a child I was always comfortable with elderly people. None ever condescended to me. We spoke like peers. I felt like I was burning the candle from both ends - old-but-young, young-but-old. I felt like I could nearly reach out to touch my own elderly self - and, a half-century later, I feel the same reaching back, hence my series of Postcards from My Childhood (scroll down to #1 and read reverse-chronologically here).

I remained good with old people. They found common ground, through some strange logic, with my entrenched eleven-year-old's perspective. But now, on the brink of old age myself, I find it difficult to socialize with people my age. They seem puckered; tight; congealed. Having fully given in to neuroses (remember the Sammy Davis hit "I Gotta Be Me"?), the Crazy sets in concrete like frown lines on the face of a worrier.

All my life I've struggled to make at least a flimsy effort to portray the myriad guys I've seen in the bathroom mirror - a proposition that grows more comedic with passing time. But, lately, I'm hardly trying. Less dread-driven, and (even) less compelled to provoke any certain reaction, I feel freer to be myself, regardless. Maybe I've given in to neurosis; the crazy has set in concrete.