“’There were three-legged lambs, one-eyed, but not six-legged, bisexual one. The lamb eats well, but moves with difficulty.’” There is video.

A Drynuary Diary

Week Four: The Wettening

by Jolie Kerr and John Ore

John Ore: Hey, Jolie! We’re in the home stretch now, only a couple of days to go and we can close the books on another successful January of not drinking. A little solidarity and we can get through this final weekend.

Jolie Kerr: HA HA, SUCKER YOU FORGOT: I GET TO DRINK TONIGHT. WOOO!

John: [long, unblinking stare] You know I’m happy for you. I really am. Like when Andy Dufresne busted out of Shawshank. You’re happy for him, you miss him, and you hope to join him one day. But you’re also a little scared for him out there, facing the world alone. You don’t want him to end up like Brooks.

Jolie: You know? I’m happy for me too. Leaping lizards, that martini is going to be soooooo good! Oh but is that rubbing it in? Am I being ungracious? Yes? Well perhaps you should have thought of that when you denied me my O’Doul’s, ya big jerk! (Actually we’ve got a free spot at the Luger’s table tonight since Jill bailed on us to go to Iceland. I just say…)

John: I guess now’s not the best time to reveal that after reading last week’s installment my wife reminded me that she had O’Doul’s last Drynuary?

Jolie: I’d be mad except that, oh right, I GET TO DRINK TONIGHT, WOOO! Since this is the end of the road for me (WOOO!) I propose that we take a look back, work ourselves into an introspective lather and then drink our faces off, because WOOO! So how are you feeling? What have you learned? Can you explain to me once and for all why we do this terrible thing to ourselves?

John: I’m actually feeling really good. Slimmer, healthier, better rested, motivated. Optimistic, probably a combination of the tangible benefits that I can feel and the ability to see light at the end of the tunnel. Because: I won’t lie, I would love a drink right about now.

I think the reasons we do this are as varied as all of our compatriots out there who have helped make Drynuary a thing. A break, a commitment, a fast, a challenge, what have you. I may not be particularly religious, but I appreciate the Lenten aspect of Bon L’(h)iver: denying myself something I (really!) enjoy, not quite in observance but with the idea of it making me a better person? I don’t think we need to kid ourselves that this is doing any sort of meaningful physiological repair, but it ain’t hurting either.

What did you get out of this Drynuary, now that you’re an old hand at it?

Jolie: Well, I’m happy to report that I did indeed regain that clarity I found in the labyrinth in Mexico. That’s really the big thing I got out of our fast, a noticeable calming effect. I’m no longer the giant bundle of nerves and stress and feeeeeelings I was this time a month ago. And it was pretty bad: I spent part of the last day of 2011 chain smoking and sobbing while “Hand In My Pocket” played on loop, sort of bleating at myself, “everything’s gonna be fine fine fine.” It was not one of my prouder moments. But that feels like a million lifetimes ago, and now when I look forward at what the rest of this year holds I’m not scared or overwhelmed. I also feel much more confident in my ability to see through some of the Big Picture items I’ve got ahead of me, because I’ve just shown through action that I am capable of setting my mind to a task and seeing it through, no matter how tough it gets.

John: Yeah, right? So doesn’t that bring up a sort of scary question: why don’t we do this year-round?

Jolie: Because we want to know what joy feels like?

But yeah, it’s kind of a creepy thing to consider and while I’d like to pretend like I simply have no idea what you’re talking about, clutches pearls, it’s something I’ve spent no small amount of time mulling over during these last four long (long, long, long, oh my God so long you guys) weeks. In part because — and this is Real Talk time — I struggle with anxiety issues that are ratcheted up greatly by alcohol, even in small amounts, and that have been diminished significantly during this dry spell.

For me, the takeaway has been this: I’m not giving up my wine. Absolutely not, no. But I am going to make a concerted effort to alter my social life such that not everything revolves so much around drinking. So: a friend says, “Let’s grab drinks!” and I say, “How about getting a bite to eat?” Because one thing that Drynuary teaches you — and I have to apologize because I know we agreed We Were Not Going To Discuss This — is how often you drink. I mean, God, it’s kind of mortifying really.

John: Well, I’m so glad we avoided discussing THAT. If there’s one theme that emerges out of the ascetic practice of Drynuary, it’s that doing to much of anything for a prolonged period kind of sucks. Especially teetotaling. All work and no play makes John a dull, etc. I want to prolong the positive effects of Drynuary without having to become a Mormon (offense intended, Romney fans). So once I get over my post-Drynuary bender, I think I’ll try to take a little bit of Drynuary with me in the ensuing months. Maybe a week off every month. Yes, including a weekend.

I mean, yeah, I enjoy my cocktails, and judging by our commenting community (and my immediate family), I’m not alone. But it’s nice to know that if I lose most of my liver heroically rescuing fifths of Templeton Rye puppies from a burning liquor store strip club, I could confidently carry on with a year-round Bon L’(h)iver.

Zoiks, the Leaderboad is looking a little lopsided.

Week Four

Alcohol Consumed (units)
Jolie: 0
John: 0

Days Without Booze
Jolie: 26
John: 25 (start on January 2)

Disposition
Jolie: ECSTATIC, I GET TO DRINK TONIGHT WOOOO!
John: Abandoned

Irritability (scale of 0–10)
Jolie: 0, I GET TO DRINK TONIGHT WOOOO!
John: 6, going up with each Jolie entry on the Leaderboard

Outlook
Jolie: I GET TO DRINK TONIGHT WOOOO!
John: Giants 27, Patriots 21

Shakes
Jolie: SHAKING WITH EXCITEMENT
John: #smdh

Smugness (scale of 0–10)
Jolie: 0, I GET TO DRINK TONIGHT WOOOO!
John: 8, Oh, look who caved early!

Sounder Sleeping
Jolie: WHO NEEDS SLEEP?
John: Keep it down, some of us are trying to sleep the sleep of the righteous

Substitute Activities
Jolie: DRINKING TONIGHT
John: Recruiting volunteers to hold your hair while you barf later tonight

Jolie: God, I really am such a barfer. But I am not CAVING, John. I said from the outset that Drynuary ended on the 27th for me! Also: it must be sad for you having to go through life as a Giants fan.

John: It’s more like I’m an anti-Patriots fan, but yeah, I’ve jumped on a bandwagon or two in my day (go Lions!). Speaking of wagons, what fishbowl are you falling off of this wagon into? I hear mention of martini(s)? Careful!

Jolie: I’m going in for a Gray Goose martini, straight up, extra dirty. (And before the “vodka martinis aren’t martinis” crowd shows up to ruin my party I need to explain in no uncertain terms that I do not touch gin, as gin makes me mean. And I’m a pretty vicious mean girl under normal circumstances, so right, no gin.) It’s a bold choice, I know! But steak and dirty martinis are a pair I can’t resist. I will probably leave it at just that though, maybe a glass of wine, but I’m not planning on getting blotto.

John: “Planning.” LOL! OK, well then, way to Play Us Off, Sober Cat!

With one final weekend to go in Drynuary, how are the rest of you planning on breaking your Drynuary? Be sure to etc. in the etc.!

Jolie Kerr is going to be drunk later. John Orebelieves that jealousy is a feeble emotion.

Got an hour? Sure ya do! Put on the headphones and Leonard Cohen’s 1988 “Austin City Limits” appearance.

Voodoo Heals, D’Angelo Returns

“The religion is like a glue. We attract each other. If a drum is beating, and someone hears it, the next thing you know, this place is packed.”
 — Brooklyn Voodoo priestess Marie Saintil talks to the BBC about how her religion has helped Haitians recover from last year’s earthquake. Coincidentally, probably, the beloved and troubled singer D’Angelo played a concert in the Swedish capitol of Stockholm. It was his first performance in ten years. And he is apparently preparing a new album, which would be his first since 2000’s Soulquarian masterpiece, Voodoo.

Busy week. Asteroid 2012 BX34 will safely pass Earth on Jan. 27. Distance: 36,750 miles (59,044 km) or about .17 lunar distance.

— Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) January 26, 2012

Asteroid 2012 BX34 is small, ~11 meters/37 ft diameter. It wouldn’t get through our atmosphere intact even if it dared to try.

— Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) January 26, 2012

That’s right, asteroid, we dare you. Eeesh.

“According to a survey, one in four of us have regretted posting something on a social media site, mainly because it was inappropriate or upset someone. Around 40 per cent of 2,000 polled said they used websites such as Twitter and Facebook to speak up on an issue they felt passionate about. Almost half believed that what they said had made a difference.”

Photo by Sergey Peterman, via Shutterstock

by Josh Lieberman

Even among music fans the name Ronnie Lane doesn’t come up much. I’m not sure why. He was an original — “the East End urchin with the pastoral vision,” as Mojo put it — and about as unlikely a rock figure as you’re likely to find. The bassist and songwriter for British bands the Small Faces and the Faces, Lane gave it all up for a curious (to put it mildly) solo career: he ran away and formed a circus. But then he never had been a good fit for heady 1970s rock stardom: consider the fact that while the other members of the Faces were buying mansions and Rolls Royces, Lane remained in his £7 a week apartment in the uber-British-sounding town of Twickenham. And while the Faces toured America in private jets, Lane drove with his family from city to city in a Land Rover.

The Faces had formed in 1969 as a successor to the Small Faces: singer Steve Marriott had gone off to form another group, and in came vocalist Rod Stewart and guitarist Ron Wood. After four strong albums Lane left the band, unhappy that they were increasingly perceived as “Rod Stewart and the Faces.” After this departure, Lane made his best (and least remembered) music. It was a short, fascinating and, ultimately, tragic career — and it was largely received with indifference. As his friend Bucks Burnett said, “Ronnie Lane entertained, and the world — for the most part — yawned.” But Lane must have known something like that could happen: he named his post-Faces band Slim Chance.

You may actually be familiar with one of Lane’s best songs. That would be “Ooh La La,” and if you do know it, it might be because of the movie Rushmore. The bittersweet Faces song was an appropriate closing track for not only Rushmore but for the Faces’ final album as well. It’s Ron Wood, not Lane, who sings the version above. Here’s another version with Lane singing.

It was after this album, also titled Ooh La La, that Lane exited the Faces. So what do you do once you’ve left a lucrative, world-touring British band at the height of their massive popularity, bearing in mind that this is the 1970s? If you guessed, “buy some land on the English-Welsh border and sink all your money into a ruinously expensive traveling circus and musical act (plus an Airstream converted into a mobile recording unit),” you’d not only be correct but remarkably precise. A circus complete with barkers, lion tamers, musicians, and regrettably “the world’s unfunniest clowns” was the “only answer,” Lane told Circus (a music, not big top, magazine).

The assessment in Mojo was a little different: they called it “a grand yet foolhardy undertaking.” However you see it, the circus was certainly fitting for Lane, who by all accounts was a charming rascal of the highest order, given to playfulness and pranks. One of his funniest: in his early days working at an electronics factory, Lane would lock himself in a soundproof testing room with a coffee and the paper; when someone banged on the door demanding he open up, Lane would wriggle out of the room through a hole he’d cut in the wall, sidle up behind the person knocking, and say, “Are you looking for me?” Perhaps it comes as no surprise that Lane was born on April Fools’ Day.

While his first single “How Come” was a hit, coming in at #11 on the charts, things generally had a way of not working out for Ronnie Lane. He failed to achieve a crucial second hit with “The Poacher”: when Lane was to perform the song on Top of the Pops the BBC cameramen went on strike, causing the song to languish and barely crack the Top 40. (The above video is from a later performance.)

But Lane was anyway busy with The Passing Show, his traveling circus, and when he wasn’t on the road he herded sheep and played music on his hillside. Not only did he play on the that hillside, he recorded there too: on his first album with Slim Chance, 1974’s rustic, wheat-between-the-teeth Anymore for Anymore, you can hear band members’ children running around and shouting.

Lane eventually had to shut down the circus. Given all those performers and trucks and tents, the Passing Show was the exact opposite of profitable. Lane did manage to earn some money, and a few rock history footnotes, by renting out his Airstream recording studio: Led Zeppelin recorded part of Physical Graffiti and the Who part of Quadrophenia there.

Soon things changed dramatically. After releasing two more excellent Slim Chance albums, Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance (1975) and One for the Road (1976), Lane began work on an album with Pete Townshend. During the recording of that album, the critically lauded Rough Mix, it became apparent that something was very wrong with Lane. As recounted in The Passing Show, a BBC documentary, Eric Clapton noticed his friend’s problem when Lane was onstage: “He wasn’t actually hitting the strings… it was sort of just hovering above.” Townshend saw it too: “He couldn’t balance, he couldn’t stand up, and I just thought he was drunk.” Lane, who certainly loved a tipple, wasn’t drunk: he had multiple sclerosis.

Thus ended his most creative and productive years. (He managed to release one more album in 1979, See Me, but it’s his least engaging.) Lane experimented with various treatments — including injections of snake venom — and in hyperbaric oxygen therapy he found both physical relief and a new cause. With an eye towards opening a London hyperbaric oxygen chamber Lane organized a benefit concert with some of his friends, among them Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Bill Wyman, and Glyn Johns. The 1983 Royal Albert Hall concert was such a success that they took the act to America, but (to make a sad story short) Lane entrusted the proceeds to a charity (which he helped found) run by an MS-afflicted attorney with a penchant for misappropriation. Lawsuits, countersuits and vanishing funds: it was all a great embarrassment for Lane.

Lane lived out his final years in Texas and then Colorado. Completely robbed of his musical gifts with the exception of his voice (itself greatly damaged) Lane performed from his wheelchair in small clubs. Playing with local musicians he became something of an Austin institution. Throughout Lane kept his humor: asked how his treatment was going, he would joke, “Well a mosquito bit me this morning — and it died,” and when President Reagan sent a personal letter Lane claimed to have celebrated by snorting coke off of it. But despite his humor Lane was obviously suffering. When he heard about the 1991 death of his old friend and band member Steve Marriott, who burned up in a house fire, Lane responded, “I’m jealous.”

But let’s go back a bit, shall we, and end things on a more positive, Lane-esque note. What follows is, to my thinking, the strongest available Ronnie Lane performance. Lane was always an eager and engaging performer, but I don’t think he gets any better or more soulful than he does here around the 3:00 mark.

It’s a song that should play in every pub at the end of every night. The best for last. One for the road.

Josh Lieberman holds a bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution. He recently wrote about lost travel writing for the Paris Review Daily.

“Christopher Herbert says he could not believe it when Simpsons fans started bidding for his bit of dried glue that bears a resemblance to Homer Simpson. The blob of dried glue, that can be said to bear a vague resemblance to the famous cartoon character, has attracted bids of over £2,000 on the internet auction site.” In related news I have officially given up on today.

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

The Girl Detective

“’So, it’s come to that,’ she said. ‘You’re jealous of policemen.’”
 — Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man

The girl detective does not date
She sits at home eating a piece of devil’s food cake
with red frosting She sits at home
with a pregnancy test
Icebox light slats the kitchenette

The girl detective rolls seamed stockings down
one at a time, slips off her crepe de chine
and navy pumps In dotted swiss pajamas
she yanks out the lousy Murphy bed
flips on her hot-bulb Hawaiian lamp
the hula dancer’s pampas skirt sways
hips like lava skin like kola nut

The girl detective sets her honey hair
in frozen orange juice cans
She double-checks
her clutch purse for Sweetheart tweezers, compact, blush
then badge and gun

Foundation caramelizes in her vanity mirror
a bullet lipstick ricochets
across the room The girl detective dreams
of handcuffs slanted grillework
lost keys and prison movies where the girls
are Lana Turner blond

All her exes broke
the law or moved to Hollywood
in search of starlets sunglass swimming pools
palm trees and palisades
green velvet theatres sinking into mossy film noir

The girl detective keeps a corkscrew handy
things always do go south it’s best to be prepared

Sideshow Banner: The Engagement of the Fat Lady and the Pocket Man

Jacques played my love-struck contract dwarf in tents
from Brou to San-Maur-des-Fossés.
He brought me saucisson, champagne,
and Gerber daisies wrapped in cellophane;

he stroked the triple strand of pearls that ringed
my clotted custard double chin
so tenderly, I almost thought
his sawdust-kneed proposal was sincere.

The banner painter captured our romance
on canvas. There I sit, enthroned
on gilt aluminum, my teeth
bared in a fox-trap grin, my dimpled bulk

blown up to fill a wincey sideshow wall,
forever fat, just twenty-two.
The joke was that a gentleman
that small could fall for someone oversized

and listing, like an alpine île flottante,
our false long looks some mastodon mistake.
I fed him tarte tatin, marceled my hair,
and kissed his biscuit porcelain brow,

but when the tour closed, he pocketed
my Carbanado diamond ring
and caravanned to Bruges with Snake Charm Elle.
These days, although the cook-tent steams

with boudin blanc, I find it hard to put
on weight. Bereft, I slouch beneath
our faded courtship scene, my heart
a punched-in bladder on a birch-bark stick.

Hilary S. Jacqmin is an MFA student at the University of Florida. Her poem “Wedding Album” was published in Best New Poets 2011: 50 Poems from Emerging Writers, edited by D. A. Powell.

More poems? Yes, they are here. You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.

by Cris Beam

Cris Beam left her mother’s home at age 14, driven out by a suburban household of hidden chaos and mental illness. The two never saw each other again. More than twenty years later, after building the happy home life she’d never had as a child, Beam learned of her mother’s death and embarked on a quest to rediscover her own history. What follows is an excerpt from her nonfiction account, Mother, Stranger, published today by The Atavist. It is available as an ebook single for the Kindle, The Nook, the iPad or iPhone and other outlets via The Atavist website.

When I found out that my mother was dead, I was enraged. Not because she was gone — for that I felt a slight uptick of relief. I was angry because nobody had told me earlier. I hadn’t known she was sick, hadn’t known there was a funeral, hadn’t been able to say good-bye. I had never known how to talk to my mother, but I wanted to say good-bye.

A lawyer had found my brother first to broach the news, and my brother had called me. This lawyer wanted us to sign some papers, but I called him directly to ask why no one in her family — in my family — had reached out to us. The lawyer turned out to be a friend of my mother’s. She had done his bookkeeping for years. He told me that the family didn’t know how to find us, his tone cool and professional. This, I said, was impossible. I am an author and a professor at three universities; a Google search of my name yields plenty of hits. For $1.95, you can see my last seven addresses and get a criminal background check thrown in for free. My brother has a website with an address and phone number on it. After all, the lawyer himself tracked us down.

The lawyer then said that my mother had written us letters to tell us she was dying and we didn’t write her back.

“Oh,” I said, stunned. “She wrote to us?”

I didn’t tell him that the few letters she had sent me over the years had been in direct response to mine, that she’d never mustered the courage to make contact on her own.

“The family didn’t think you cared,” the lawyer continued. “You didn’t write back to her letters, so why would you go to her funeral?”

“But I never got a letter,” I protested, sounding every bit the 5-year-old I felt like inside.

The lawyer knew her husband, Clem, and her sister. “Well, honestly, I think Clem and Phyllis thought you had already caused your mother enough grief in her life, why should you be allowed to cause any more?” he said.

In my mother’s will, I discovered, she had left the house for Clem to maintain his “health and standard of living.” After he passes, half the sale of the house will be distributed to her relatives: Mom’s sister and her sister’s two children are to receive a quarter, and my brother and I will collect an eighth apiece. In 20 years, I may get a hundred bucks out of the deal. The only other things she had to give away were two diamond rings. These she bequeathed to my cousin Kathy.

After I got off the phone with the lawyer, I decided to take the risk and track down Clem. I had never met him. I discovered that he lived in a house he had shared with Mom for 18 years in Benicia, a town 11 miles from where I grew up. I saw a picture of it on Google Maps: It was a one-story clapboard house, painted blue with white trim. Clem was 72, but when he answered the phone he sounded younger. Your mother, he said, was the nicest person he had ever known.

“Your mother loved you,” Clem said. “She cried over you all the time. She never understood why you never came and saw her. Birthdays especially.”

Clem confirmed the letters she supposedly wrote when she was sick, though he never saw them. He said she cried when she didn’t hear back from us. He said he didn’t know how to find us for the funeral. In fact, he said, “I didn’t know if you was even alive.”

There must have been 150 people at the funeral, he told me. Everyone loved her. I had done a real bad thing, leaving her like that, he said, but she was never angry — just the rest of the family was, for treating her so bad.

I remembered the way my mother had told her family that I was dead and wondered if they ever believed it. I thought how strange it was to be a ghost: solid enough for everyone’s projections to land and stick but too ephemeral to fight back. I also felt that Clem didn’t like talking to me.

She was the smartest person in town, he said. I sensed he was trying to get off the phone. “You really missed a lot not knowing your mother.”

What about our report cards and stories and drawings and photographs from when we were kids, I asked him. My mother kept all of these things in boxes labeled with dates. There was nothing to prove our childhoods with our mother, only the scattering of pictures of the visits with our dad that marked us growing up.

“No, no, we threw all of that stuff away,” Clem said. His voice was rushed. “She didn’t want it anymore.”

The depth of this loss stopped me cold. “Um, could I have a picture of her, something of hers?”

“The only pictures I got are the pictures of her and me, and they’re up on the wall.”

“Could I get a copy of that picture, just to see what she looks like?”

“No,” Clem answered, his voice firm. “I don’t got nothing.” He hung up the phone.

Cris Beam is an author and professor in New York City. She is the author of the young adult novel I Am J, as well as Transparent, a nonfiction book that covers seven years in the lives of four transgender teenagers, which won the Lambda Literary Award for best transgender book in 2008 and was a Stonewall Honor book. She is currently at work on a book about the foster-care system. You can find the full ebook of Mother, Stranger at The Atavist.