Red Mazzo was smitten. If one could have spring fever in the midst of an Indian summer, he had it, in spades.
Her name was Jolene and she had long hair, chestnut brown, and eyes to match.
Red enrolled at Middlesex Community College, four years after receiving a bachelor's in English Lit from Marist College. He'd spent the time following graduation doing nothing, more or less. The pressure from his parents to get a job had become intense, excruciating.
Red's chum, Jack, suggested he take a course in advertising. "Look, Reddy, you've got a talent with words, but you’re never going to make a living by being a poet. Your parents paid through the nose to send your ass to college. The least you can do is get a job, a good job, and start a life of your own, rent an apartment, find a girl, get married, buy a house, make a buncha babies! It's the natural way."
The thought of such drastic moves made Red dizzy.
But, buckling under the pressure, Red decided to take a class in advertising copywriting at the local community college. Much to his surprise, he found himself called into the dean's office. She said, "Mr. Mazzo, we see that you're a graduate of Marist. So, what we'd like to do is offer you free tuition if you'll agree to be a dorm resident counselor. You'll get room and board, the latter supplied by the cafeteria. A cot and three hots, so to speak." It was an offer too good to pass on.
"You shouldn't have any serious problems to encounter. If something is serious, we have a doctor, a psychiatrist, our security police. All you really have to do is monitor. And be there to listen. Any questions, Mr. Mazzo?"
"No questions! This is such a great deal! Thank you so much, Dean Walters! Oh! Wait! One question. I don't drive. Is there a Catholic church in walking distance?"
"We have a Catholic chapel. Mass every morning."
"Excellent! I can't wait to tell my parents! This is such an opportunity!"
The first time he saw Jolene she was walking across the quad, hugging a Stephen Stills LP to her flat bosom. She wore a fringed buckskin jacket and denim bells and blue Adidas running shoes. She seemed lost in her own little world. But as she approached, Red summoned the courage, from somewhere deep within, to comment, "Stephen Stills!"
She looked up from her reverie, looked into Red's eyes, a jolt, a volt, that zapped him to the core. "Excuse me..?"
"Stephen Stills!"
"Oh, yes! I love Stephen Stills!"
"Me, too! In fact, I first became aware of him when he was in Buffalo Springfield!"
Confused, she said, "Where is that?"
Now Red was confused. Then he replied, "Oh. Oh, it's not a place. It's a band. Or it was a band. It was his first band, before Crosby, Stills and Nash..." Red sagged.
Regardless, he fell in step with her as they crossed the quad. Before he realized it they were at Carr House ordering big mugs of coffee and oversized chocolate-chip cookies and were seated at a corner table where they spent an hour just talking, yakking about this and that, so easily that the hour sped by in what seemed a few minutes. He found out that she was a frosh, only 16, had skipped a grade, and was from Simsbury, one of the few on-campus kids in a mostly commuter college.
After she scooted off to a class, Rad ordered another mug of coffee and stared out the corner window, marveling. "Simsbury? That's pretty posh, but if she's so bright and here, not at a fancy school, must be from less than upper crust. Like me." Red's dad was a janitor, his mom waited tables. The second floor in their old house was rented out, often to less than desirable sorts.
Red hoped he hadn't bored her with his ancient history lessons of Buffalo Springfield and folk-rock and folk music and the Beats, especially Corso and Ginsberg and their poetic influence on Dylan, and so on. But she seemed attentive, asked some good questions! And she's majoring in English Lit, especially interested in poetry. They had much in common, but each could teach the other. When he got back to his room, Red dug out an old LP, one he hadn't played in years. The scuffed cover was white with a big bold cartoon of the band. He put the record on his cheap portable stereo's turntable and carefully, very carefully, dropped the needle into the groove and was swept up in the song, played it over and over and over.
"... Said she'd never been in trouble, even in town."
Sleep was sparse that night as Red tossed and turned. When he did slumber, he dreamt vivid dreams of his mother and his father yelling at him, and of Jack mocking him, then... Jolene, brown eyes smiling and warm, a wave of sunny ocean washing over him. There was a meadow, a pond, songbirds, then a rattlesnake. He woke with a start. It was dawn, a new day.
He didn't see Jolene for a week or so, although he always had an eye peeled for her. When he did spy her she was afar, too far to call out to, then gone. He noticed that her buckskin jacket had been replaced with a black leather motorcycle jacket.
"That's odd. In sixth grade, Bobby Moore wore one. And even back then it seemed like an anachronism, like something out of the Eisenhower era, not the JFK years."
Red kept his door open, unless he was sleeping or indisposed. He wanted any kid in the dorm to feel free to knock and walk in, welcome to discuss whatever. Not that there were takers.
What Red really wanted to talk about was Jolene. He wanted to talk and talk and talk about her. He wished Jack would drop by, so he could extoll the beauty and virtues of her, but realized that was folly. Unless Red "scored," unless he "got in her pants," Jack would ridicule him.
A few days later on his way to class, Red bumped into Jolene rounding a hallway corner. They laughed in recognition, and much to his surprise, she hugged him and gave him what may have been a kiss! It happened so quickly he wasn't certain about the kiss, but the hug was real, no question! Then she handed him a flyer, a Xerox announcing a "punk party." She was wearing the motorcycle jacket.
"What's this? Punk? Why do they call it punk? Doesn't that mean second rate..."
Jolene laughed, "No, Red! Punk is cool! Punk rock! Stop by my dorm room tomorrow evening and find out!" Then she was off. Red stumbled to class and tried to focus on Mr. Marlboro's lecture. "Remember this first and foremost: as an adman, your job isn't to be clever, it isn't to impress the Clio committee. Your job is to move product off the shelf! Period!..."
He had a date with Jolene! Try as he might, he couldn't concentrate on Mr. Marlboro's class. A date! Tomorrow!
After dinner, Red called Jack from the floor's payphone. After a bit of chit-chat, Red asked Jack what he knew about punk rock. Last Christmas he and Jack had met up with an old friend who'd gone punk. Red didn't get it, then or now.
Jack snorted, "Give me a break with this punk rock booshwah!"
"But what is it?"
"It's the worst. Worse than disco. It's like, I dunno, like David Bowie or Alice Cooper, but even worse. If those bozos couldn't play their instruments it'd be punk rock. You know me! I'm a bluesman! Just gimme the blues, straight up, no chaser! Rory Gallagher, Alvin Lee, Bonnie Raitt, Johnny Winter! Musicianship is key!"
"Remember last Christmas, when we saw Foran? He'd gone punk. But I still don't know what it's all about."
"It's BS! 100% USDA BS! Trust me."
Red hung up, with no more of a clear idea of what he was in for tomorrow night. And Jolene is nice, so nice. She’s not like an Alice Cooper fan. Doesn't Alice Cooper bite heads of bats or snakes or something?
Was punk rock like Invasion of the Body Snatchers?
On a cocktail of trepidation and desire, Red approached the girls' dormitory, entered, walked on down the hall of painted cinderblock and linoleum tile, both tense and relaxed in subsequent rushes of emotion. He found Jolene's room. He arrived 10 minutes early, hoping to talk a bit before a crowd filled the tiny room, hoping to tell, at least a little, of his feelings for her. He knew that her being only 16 and him clocking in at 27 was a problem, not the least of which was legal. That said, he was more than willing to keep things platonic for the time being, until her 18th birthday, say.
"Oh, Red! You made it!" Jolene hugged him, tight, an extra squeeze, no kiss. He was about to hug back when she broke the hug and said, "I've got to get some supplies, I think more kids will arrive than I'd anticipated! Make yourself at home! I'll be back in a jiff!" There were two other kids in the room already, drinking Budweisers. There was a tub of beer cans in ice. Red struck up a conversation with them; neither looked like what he imagined a punk rocker would look like. Both guys wore denim bells, Western shirts with snaps, not buttons, and Frye boots. One fellow had a beard, the other a Fu Manchu mustache. Red asked them, "What is punk rock?"
"A phase! She'll be over it by Thanksgiving! I hope!"
"It's bullshit is what it is. Pardon my French," added the mustachioed guy, Bill.
Bill handed Red a pile of albums as if to say, "Evidence." Red looked at the one on top. It featured a man who looked like Buddy Holly, holding an electric guitar, while standing knock-kneed.
Red wondered, "Is it like old rock and roll?"
Then he looked at more LPs: Graham Parker, Blondie, Mink DeVille, Devo, The Motors. Jolene returned with a shopping bag full of chips and Cokes. "Help me set up, Reddy?" With her was a girl with a blouse festooned with safety pins.
Reddy! She called him Reddy! Getting familiar! He liked that! He relaxed as he helped her set up, pouring chips into big bowls; it was domestic, almost as if they shared a home. The room began to fill with partygoers as a Patti Smith album played. "Reddy, you'll love Patti! She's pals with Dylan! And she adores all those old beatniks whom you so admire! She's a poet, like you! But she's a rock poet, like Lou Reed." Red sat on the window sill, holding the Patti Smith cover, the cover a B&W photo, stark. As was her voice. Stark and grating. But maybe that's how Dylan sounded to older people back in 1965? He tried to listen to her with fresh ears. He didn't want to be an old fogey, not like someone who booed when Dylan went electric. He didn't want to be Mr. Jones! Times change, as the Hibbing Bard had opined... Red found himself tapping his foot to a radical reworking of an old song, one that bands used to play at high school dances. "Humpin' on a parking meter! Leanin' on a parking meter!"
Someone handed Red a Budweiser and absentmindedly he drank, finished it, and accepted a tumbler of gin from Bill.
"Make her mine!"
Red took a long swig from a second Bud, followed by the rest of the gin.
"Knocking on my door!"
Yes! This is the stuff!
"And the nightmares! And the nightmares! Gee! El! Oh! Are! Eye Yi Yi Yi!"
Alcohol coursing his usually sober veins, Red was carried away like a crimson leaf on an October's brisk breeze. This was like Highway 61 Revisited reworked by some sort of lesbian crazed on Rimbaud and Little Richard! If this was punk rock, Red was all for it! Jack, the ignoramus, be damned!
"DING DONG! DING DONG!
Red had entered a new zone, the world of punk rock! Where had he been! He looked over at Jolene, lovely as ever! Outside of the black leather jacket, she still looked the same. Denim bells, running sneaks, long hair.
Intoxicated, he imagined how lovely she'd look 10 or 20 years from now, as Mrs. Red Mazzo, while they wiled away the hours in wicker chairs on the veranda of their Old Saybrook home, she the famous poetess, he the Mad Ave genius who retired to write mad poetry after he'd moved many tons of product off the shelves as fast as the shelves could be stocked...
Then Red sensed a mood shift in the room, an abrupt unwanted change. He looked over to see a kid staggering in the doorway, also in a motorcycle jacket, but his jeans had torn knees. He wore motorcycle boots and a dog collar! And sunglasses, even though it was evening, indoors. His hair was a buzz cut, and he scowled while guzzling from a pint of whiskey. One of Jolene's friends lit a joint while Jolene put the Graham Parker album on the stereo. The punk slapped the joint out of the kid's mouth and snarled, "Pot is for hippies! And hippies are dog food!"
The room went dead silent except for the record. Then the kid kicked the stereo over. "That ain't punk rock! That's pub rock! None of this bullshit is punk rock! Patti Smith is an old hippie! None of you have even been to CBGB! Well, I have! Three times!"
Bill walked over to him and said, "Not cool, man! Not cool. I think it's time for you to hit the trail, buckaroo." He put a businesslike grip on the punk's arm and led him to the door.
The punk broke away and crouched, fists raised. He spat, "Yah, I'll hit something, but not the trail, hippie!" With that he threw a punch, which missed the mark by a mile, and found himself slugged in the gut. The fight went ballistic, spilled into the hall. Getting the worst of it, the punk skedaddled outdoors, pursued by Bill and a gaggle of thrill seekers, where the fight continued in the cool evening air. Bill delivered a solid right to the punk's jaw, sending him and his sunglasses airborne, the back of his buzzcut head hitting the cement sidewalk with a nauseating THUD! Red and Jolene came running up to this final scene.
The punk didn't get up. He didn't move, not even a twitch.
His eyes were open but seemed to cloud over. The crowd that had followed the fight backed away. A student knelt and felt for the punk's pulse. "I... I think he's... dead."
The crowd gasped. Numb, Red couldn't believe what he was seeing and hearing. Bill stood there, stock still, fists still clenched, slowly realizing that he was in over his head, that his ordinary and reasonably happy life, his life as he'd known it, was done. Someone said, "Call an ambulance! Call a doctor!" Red said, "That's my job! I'll do it!" But he didn't have a dime in his pocket, only a penny. "Does anyone have a dime?" A kid was already running to the dorm, a dime in hand. The girl in safety pins looked at Red and muttered, "Useless! You should always have a dime! That's your job, idiot!"
Jolene wandered to the bushes, bent over and vomited. Red had never ever heard a sound so uniquely dreadful as that of Jolene retching.