by John Goggin

Memory is shards, just broken pots and bones hidden under the ashes, middens littering the shore of the common sea; memoir is mostly archeology.

From 30 some years ago…

One early March  afternoon, a raft of co-recreants is horsing around the big dining room table. Outside, it’s bitter cold, there’s rime on the branches, but a hint of spring hangs on the fence, lurks ’round the lilacs, breathes cruelty into the May to come.

We’re at the good Doctor’s,  gabbing, gesticulating, getting simple; some of the people, I know right well; some, not that well. There must be twenty souls on the raft. It is a big dining room table.

Of course, the master of ceremonies and his household are present; pack of kids running in and out  and the kitchen and bar well stocked and working. The youngest tads are sent upstairs; they needn’t be exposed to this crowd at full tilt. It’s a soirée, I think, but an early afternoon soirée,  a pre-soirée.  Powwow with the emphasis on wow, confabulation en masse, parley on terms yet to be negotiated.

The usual substances are floating around the table from hand to hand;   one of the spliffs is laced with tranq; “Stay away from that,” I tell myself, but don’t. A bit of blow comes by. Pabst Blue Ribbon is the drink of choice;  other libations at  your disposal. Desultory, ejaculatory, intense conversation; people interrupt, space out, turn euphoric, ecstatic, elastic. We have lost our nouns and verbs;  we can no longer narrate. Adjectives and adverbs take over, but there seems no loss of substance.

Doctor offers me  some vintage windowpane  pulled from his freezer,  a token of fraternity that I too readily accept. The afternoon is going to get distinctly different, I’m thinking. But I’m about to stop thinking.

Out of the hubbub. the doctor stands up and begins to declaim; it is poetry of the finest sort; we are  immediately engaged in “bedtime story time”.  Some  are rocking to and fro in rhythm, then nodding heads, calling out the chorus in unison, first one or two, then more. We’ve gone all Bronze Age, huddled ’round hearth and bard.

The cold out there, the warmth in here.

Our poet pauses. We all clap and shout. Another round of beer is needed; another round of joints is passed. The room is electric, but no one’s freaking. My brain is putting 2 and 2 together so fast that it swims the channel. Not a thing seems out of place.  No false note in the air. We’re all as cool as the other side of the pillow; grinning, laughing, cracking jokes. Snacks passed around.  I get up to take a piss….

… and when I get back, the good doctor is back at  it, the stanzas tripping off his tongue, everyone calling out the chorus. It’s a pop song, an epic, a gospel throwback, train a’rollin’ with all of us  on board. People are pounding the table; there’s whooping and hollering. The finale’s coming up; there’s not much more left to tell. It’s a story you’ve never heard before and yet  know by heart. We come crashing into the final chorus, and tag it one time, because he beckons us, calls us on, leading the band, this motley tribe. And then there is again clapping and laughter and shouts.  “Bravo!”   “Encore!”  Someone calls, “You should write that down!”  and there is  more laughter and clapping and shouts.

And our bard says, after a mock stare so good it quiets us all, a long  look around the table, and then a wink, “Oh, I am. I am….  I need a beer.”

One of the happiest days of my life, as I recollect.