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    The Baltimore Kid
    The Baltimore Kid
    The Baltimore Kid
    Ebook158 pages2 hours

    The Baltimore Kid

    By Tom DiVenti

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Thirty essays from Tom DiVenti's original Splice Series, an American mythology in plain language. The author defines himself, his context and our shadows, all in flickering neon. Mr. DiVenti survived the game and took the trouble to write it all down, aware of this moment in history. The essays are meant to be read aloud, where drinks are served, and lighting isn't great.
    He writes of the confused emotion defining an age in which we are saturated in the deep fried oil of advertising. Used car salesman are synonymous with American politicians. The collection is timed perfectly. Not since the sixties has there been this much outrage with the irrationally driven state of affairs, our cycles of corruption and abundance of hidden information. Tom writes about what we have stepped in, that pile on the sidewalk, communicating like a beer bottle thrown against a barroom wall, shattering beside the black and white broadcasting evening news that reports on all that is being "destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked . . ."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHekate Publishing
    Release dateMay 10, 2019
    ISBN9781912017768
    The Baltimore Kid

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      Book preview

      The Baltimore Kid - Tom DiVenti

      PAGE

      To Bronwyn

      For everything

      PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

      Holley carburetors, Pennsylvania Birch Beer, vacuum cleaner salesmen, Dodge City, the Ramones, the Donner party, the Lafitte brothers, Bob Gibson’s fastball, Grauman’s Chinese Theater, the World Trade Center, an Amish buggy at a four way intersection and Tom DiVenti’s Baltimore: This is our American Mythology. He lost the thread, found it and survived the game, a horse that made up twenty lengths in the stretch and took the trouble to write it all down. Tom was aware of this moment in history while sharing Henry Ford’s sentiment: History is more or less bunk.

      I started reading the essays silently and finished them aloud. The words are better spoken where drinks are served, and lighting isn’t great. Tom writes of our present. We have become saturated in the deep fried oil of advertising, when nothing is good for you and used car salesman are synonymous with American politicians, all of it blow jobs in the White House: There is good reason for this collection. Not since the sixties has this much outrage been voiced collectively with respect to the state of affairs, cycles of corruption and abundance of hidden information. Tom writes about what we have stepped in, the pile on the sidewalk, communicating like a beer bottle thrown against a barroom wall, shattering beside the black and white broadcasting evening news, reporting on all that is being destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked . . .

      He takes stock in plain language, defining himself, his context and his shadow, all illuminated in flickering neon.

      We are thrilled to present this selection of Tom DiVenti’s essays, originally serialized for Splice.

      Kerouac began On the Road:

      Somewhere along the line I knew there’d be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.

      Every writer waits for their pearl. Tom DiVenti’s had been rattling around the bottom of that can of Natty Boh for years.

      A.F. Knott

      INTRODUCTION

      Tom DiVenti is a force of nature, a tornado of words and ideas that blows the roof off the ordinary, knocking down established norms with a razor sharp wit and eagle eye, cutting the meat of the matter down to it’s essential bone.

      He’s brutal in his honesty, never pulling his punches in order to crack the nut of the daily nonsense that’s life. Averse to grand subjects, characters and the artificial flavoring of capital A artistic endeavors, he in fact thrives in the gutter, where he Knights the down and out low life’s of his Kingdom with a royal prose worthy of a good belly laugh, a few tears and finally…silent meditation upon the oddly unique and exceptionally unimaginable road he leads you down.

      In this artist’s world there’s is no difference between life and art, writing like composing music, creating sculpture or paintings is as natural as breathing and The Good Lord has blessed DiVenti with one Hell of a set of lungs. A word of caution before you open and read: Be prepared for the hangover of this intoxicating book.

      William Moriarty

      (Bill Moriarty, Photo by Paula Gillen)

      (Tom DiVenti, family photo)

      THE BALTIMORE KID

      It took only six decades to arrive at this moment. All my fears, lethargy, apathy, self-loathing, insecurity, failure, and fuck it attitude have delivered me here. Looking back at myself, I can see the braying oafish imp the late Pam Purdy, of Baltimore’s City Paper, wrote of my behavior at a William Burroughs reading in D.C. in the early 1980s. It was Pam’s polite way of saying I was a drunken asshole. Burroughs was 45 minutes late, so I passed the time chugging vodka and tequila. By the time Burroughs arrived on stage I was in a blackout. I’ll never understand why the police didn’t drag me out of the auditorium. The other poets I was with probably saved me, but I can’t recall. Two of those poets are long gone, my mentors, Joe Cardarelli, and David Franks. The other mentor, a Romanian poet, Andrei Codrescu, is still kicking at this writing. As for Pam, also long gone, we became the best of friends in the years that followed.

      By the time I turned 18 my fate was almost sealed. The Vietnam War conveniently ended and the draft lottery was over. They did it on TV just like the State Lottery today: If your ping-pong balls came up with your birthdate, you won a one-way ticket to Vietnam. All my fears of going off to war were gone. I was free to pursue freedom. My senior year of high school at Mergenthaler Vocational Technical was one long party, partially due to the Baltimore city teachers’ strike and the close proximity to Montebello Lake and Herring Run Park. There were many idyllic days by the lake and in the woods partying with my classmates and existing in the moment. They don’t call it High School for nothing. One friend was an LSD dealer, and always had the best acid. One day he got busted at school with 200 hits of orange sunshine. They gave him the choice of prison or Vietnam. I forget his choice but that’s how surreal everything was then, or so it seemed. And either way, he was fucked.

      A few years later anarchy, revolution and rejection of all authority, was the rage. Punk had reared its pretty but ugly head and No Future was the theme. I founded the first punk rock band in Baltimore in 1976, Da Moronics. But I believe these feelings were brewing long before Vietnam and LSD. I realized at a young age that the American Dream was a nightmare. I understood that the history we learned in school was all lies and the religion we were spoon-fed was a big fat lie too. We knew war was evil and stupid. Our history was built on greed, slavery, exploitation, and genocide. That civil rights movement was 200 years too late and we still have questionable rights now. Our alleged leaders may as well be used car salesmen. Yet the world still wobbles and we all go on pretending everything is normal. But I still love America because we have freedom. Just don’t get caught exercising your freedoms. That’s as patriotic as it gets. I’m no flag-waver. In the words of the late Leonard Cohen, It looks like freedom but it feels like death, It’s something in between I guess.

      I have vague memories of the 1950s. They appear in my memory like old black and white Kodak Brownie snapshots. I was born at Baltimore City Hospital in the summer of 1956. One more baby boomer. We jump from the Korean War right into Vietnam. I have a few visual snippets of super 8 films, sitting in a rolling bassinet surrounded by chain link fence on a concrete square in a backyard row house alley behind Federal St. The soundtrack of my life had begun. My father playing his records: Big Band, Jazz, Swing, Louis Prima, Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, The Ink Spots, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Dean Martin. The soundtrack of his life melted into mine. The AM radio played Wayne Newton singing Danke schoen. Aunt Helen played Perry Como, Jimmy Rodgers, and Dean Martin.

      My earliest memory of the power of music was playing yellow vinyl 45s on a tiny record player in a box; the speaker on the end of the needle arm sounded like scratching inside a tin can. They were called Peter Pan records :The Three Stooges singing All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth. Then I heard Elvis and The Beatles invaded. We all witnessed those nights on The Ed Sullivan Show. At a family party, my little sister was dancing The Twist to Chubby Checker and it was scandalous. All the relatives were either in shock or cheering her on. She was maybe six years old. At The White Rice Inn Chinese restaurant on Park Ave. with my Mom, brother, and sister, at a wooden booth, bright red Formica table, I had my first chow mein and egg roll. There was a Herman’s Hermits bobble head set on the shelf for some odd reason. Mom wore saddle shoes. A throwback to her Catholic school days. We are third generation Sicilian. Our parents wanted us to be American, so they only spoke Italian to each other, never to the kids. It was like they were embarrassed by our ethnic heritage, or because Mussolini sided with the Nazis. And there was also the mafia stigma. The Sicilians have a name for someone like me. A menefeigista, someone who doesn’t give a fuck. By the late-60s you were either a Beatles fan or Rolling Stones fan. The Beatles were good boys, while the Stones were juvies. Guess which side I was on?

      We moved to my Ma’s parent’s home around 1960. It was a big noisy family affair. I never knew my father’s parents. They both died before I was born. He was a shoemaker. His wife was a Mediterranean mama to nine children. One of whom was my Dad. He was a Merchant Marine. Enlisted during WW2 and stayed through the Korean conflict and Vietnam War. Needless to say he wasn’t home much. About three or four months a year until the late-70s. After that he worked for many years at Sea Land in the Dundalk Marine Terminal as a night watchman. So the threat, Wait till your father gets home had little meaning except when he was around. On my mom’s side of the family there were five kids. Sundays at Noni and Papal’s was a feast that started after morning church. Noni was always cooking, but Sundays was when all the family gathered, sometimes as many as 20 or more people during the holidays. Noni’s kitchen was in the basement at 2924 E. Cold Spring Lane. Huge stainless steel pots filled with sauce, meatballs, sausage, and pounds of boiling pasta in the other. She baked her bread and made biscotti cookies. Once a week or so we would ride the streetcar down Harford Rd. to the Belair Market, now long gone. There she bought fresh groceries and on occasion live chickens that she’d decapitate in the backyard. She gave us yellow, green, blue, orange, and pink marshmallow peanuts to distract us while the butchering occurred. I recall a headless chicken running around the vegetable garden. Another memory was Noni soaking her feet in an old washtub sitting on the

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