It was odd…

I was behind a dark wood podium, with thousands of strangers wearing the same multicolored lanyard staring at me. I was spewing something about bettering mankind, or some bullshit of the moment, when in my feebling mind, I was remembering a skinny, dirty-blond teenager who wanted to stand close to me in the darkened upstairs studio. I remember turning the deadbolt on the downstairs door, the soft foot bounce up the stairs, the Motown bass beat in a Rick Ashley song, and the doe-eyed look of the girl in the half-light. I smiled behind the podium with the conqueror fred in my mind. I bleated out ad-libbed analogies like a priest on Easter. She hesitated as I reached out my hand to walk her to the backroom. I had a sofa strategically placed in the shadows of the streetlight. We sat. When my mouth found her naked neck, I felt her racing heart desperately trying to escape through her throat. I started to quiver. “Design and Technology should remain allies not compatriots,” I said, “when ever they sit in the same room, they are governed by gravity.” We ended up on the floor, under the backroom table next to the boxes and boxes of albums. My mouth was docking with her tongue. It was magic. “My first car was an eight cylinder Ford,” I continued, “I used to get seventeen miles per gallon. Now two decades later, gas is four times that amount and most you drive a survival vehicle that gets less miles per gallon than that old Torino. Oh, it may a sweet ride, killer sound system, global positioning, and an LCD screen for DVDs in the back seat, but at what cost? Where did the technology go? It went into design!” I have always loved kissing—the private battle of mouth to mouth, the calm, anxious moments before the frenzy, the frenzy, the taste of someone new—I was given a blessing under the plywood storage table. “I’m sure everyone here tells everyone they know how they predicted the rise and fall of the internet. But truth be told, how many of you really have a cool domain name? I thought so. Came on board a bit late, didn’t you? All the good cabins were taken. Truth was, the internet was a technology left alone. And look how fast that grew. Then it became commercial and boom, next thing you know you elect a Republican President.” I didn’t want her to go; She had to. We stood on the landing halfway down the stairs. Her car was parked behind the bank, I was walking her out. She tried to take the next step. I stopped her. I grabbed her arm and turned her around. I wasn’t going to kiss her. I couldn’t top the pre-frenzy and frenzy of what we had just survived. I just wanted to look at her. I stroked her hair, tried to put it back into place, and tried to remember her exactly as she was that moment. “Then out of Cupertino, a Bondi blue-anti-box appears and the next catalog run offers raspberry scanners and lemon printers and ice keyboards. Ice? Don’t you mean white?” I was standing in front of these strangers and they were listening to me. I was invited to tell them what I thought. I didn’t have to research or cross reference; I just had to say what I was thinking. And they bought it. I looked into her eyes and wondered what she was seeing. For the longest time, and still today, I try to be the person she saw that night. At that moment, in front of the dimmed auditorium, I said what I wanted to say and succeeded.

But…

I was comparing a supermarket from half a century ago to food marts of today when I looked out into the crowd and saw you. You were lanyard-less and standing, not sitting, in the middle of the audience. I tried to concentrate. “Paper or plastic, bar code scanners, soup for one; but were was the advancement in food? Canned green beans, lean pork roast, chicken noodle soup, TV dinners—nothing had changed.” I saw two eyes expose the fraud. I tried to assassinate the assassin. I point out to the crowd. “Dead Air Cole, What Up?” You shook your head and turned to walk out. There was a momentary buzz. “How many of you have Nat King Cole or Chet Baker on mp3s?” I got them back.

Later I found myself on a lonely king sized waterbed spinning through my iPod to find a song that would recreate the pre-frenzy and frenzy of some many years ago. I did…

You know, I once knew a woman who looked like you, She wanted a whole man, not just a half, She used to call me sweet daddy when I was only a child, You kind of remind me of her when you laugh.
Sweetheart Like You/Bob Dylan

Here is to a past I can still recall, a present with relevance, and a future with fraud-busters. I need a good friend right now.