Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
sent the seemingly silly, material lives his parents lived, with their suburban needs and fears,
their addictions to creature comforts and so-called security, their tastes and fads that looked
ridiculous a few years later and were in fact ridiculous in the moment. Jimmy Levin referred
to his mother and father as pure parents, as lovable as parents could be, and he openly loved
them back, more so for their foibles, which he found endearing and grist for his mill.
Jimmy's parents had gone out with all the 50's parents and bought split-level, ranch style
homes and put plastic covers on the sofas and chairs. Mother wore her hair high. Father drank
highballs. The country club proved their success, and all of life in America had big fins and
plentiful chrome, because those things were evidence of the future upon us, which was super-
ior and real by consensus and apparent reality, along with the prescription drugs Mom and
Dad popped like M & fucking M's, man.
Jimmy's filial love was as radical in those days as a few ear staples, some eyebrow spikes, a
nose ring, a tongue bearing and some lip brackets came to be decades later.
Oddly enough, I met Jimmy under far less friendly circumstances—not met, really, but
saw him. Like so many state university detainees of the times, old acquaintances from high
school reappeared as different people in a different world.
Jimmy wrestled in high school for Ladue, our archrival. He was small even then, wiry
and punked out decades ahead of the punk fad. Two severe cowlicks clipped short rendered
a spike-headed kid with an aggressive smirk who remained undefeated at ninety-five pounds
near the end of the season. Surly and arrogant, he was easy to dislike, stepping out of his team
circle, walking halfway to ours and staring, till he picked out Nick Geiss, his ninety-five pound
opponent. Then he laughed, pointed and sneered with ridicule, in fact aping Mick Jagger even
then, a few years before Mick did it.
Nick Geiss was my good friend, also undefeated, so this match would preview the district
finals, with the winner going on to the state tournament. Jimmy was a villain. He pinned my
good friend and made it look as laughably easy as he'd predicted. Then he did a little strut
with the smirk and pinched face that would stay with him on to the state university, where he
wouldn't wrestle but would become an icon in other circles. The same misunderstood sneer
would be there when they found him.
Yeah? So?
But I get ahead; characters and events and interplay, often influencing what came next.
Reconnection with friends from childhood well into the revolution often disregarded
former identity. It had to by necessity. What came before was a goof of no goof, a joke in which
we had been the butt, till we cast that burden aside.
I don't think Jimmy went through a formal thought process of dismissing our pasts on
opposing wrestling teams. I think he came on like an old friend recognizing a current team-
mate. He carried on over several drugs coming onto the scene, some new, some untried, some
thrillingly anticipatory, while others presented refinements over what had been known. Drugs
