Alvin Lee Bails Me Out

                               Let me tell you about the night I went to Roxbury and caught Muddy Waters, live in a club.
                             I heard about the show from an old guy who hawked The Boston Phoenix  in the Boston Public Garden, Larry The Benchman. I was selling them too, while I was supposed to be at a psychologists office.
                    I was using my sales job to try and get a hippie girlfriend with a place nearby where we could talk privately. Also, I was looking to find some good connections for the old favorites. No Jane Fonda-ish woman entered my scene during that platform on my road to higher education, but I made out rather well in the other endeavor. Too bad for me because a successful combination might have freed me from the suburban chains two years earlier than it took in real time.
                                       You could buy twenty papers for five bucks and sell them for ten, if you sold them all, which I always did. That paper sold itself. It was two papers in one then, the"Phoenix" and 'Boston After Dark" for fifty cents.
                                         This CYA shrink guy used to buy me a milkshake at Friendlys when I actually showed up and we'd walk around Boston Common and The Public Garden and look at girls. He really liked to talk about him mostly and all his good works. He barely fucked with me, a really nice guy. Not nearly as alright as the riff raff on the Common and in the Garden though, so like I said, I missed a lot of appointments.
     As long as I showed up once a month and continued to agree to go to his lame-o CYA Summer Camp when I did, he was cool about the other times I didn't show up, as long as I called him to lie about why I couldn't make it.. I think he knew there was no help for me, whatever help means.
                     He was impressed by me knowing what a fucking miserable policy Manifest Destiny was, he said that was pretty good a young maladjusted stiff dick  knowing the real deal about that little period in The American Experiment with terrorist activity.
I think he was getting paid and boffing his secretary when I called in instead of showing up.. A win win win with one strike out situation for all. I got out of school legally that day for going and he never ratted on me for not showing up, I don't think. I'd take the bus from Braintree to Ashmont and take the train to Park Street, feeling free. I guess I could say I saw Muddy that one time  thanks to him
    I got in line at the club around nine  on a school night and ,well, I hadn't done my homework, chores or mentioned that I was going to be unavailable for dinner and Q&A that evening, , no one but The Benchman that knew me knew where I was. Among my fellow waiters,  none seemed to be surprised  that a white shrimp was in line too,so I was felling pretty lucky. 
  Larry The Benchman told me he was going down there. He said he'd meet me there and help me get in. He wasn't there, he never came. I saw him again, sleeping behind his bench with bewildered pigeons wandering around hoping he'd die so they could eat him. I told him he really fucked up, missing the show, but he didn't wake up..
 Anyway, when I got up to the door, a giant man in a giant silk suit was looking down at me from way up there. He said, very reasonably ,"I.D Please." I handed him an old draft card that said my name was David Hunberg from Mansfield Ohio I think, and that I was twenty three. No picture, but it said I was twenty three, or that David, who used to own it was.
    "What the fuck is this, man. You want me to let you in with this?" I said yeah. I also said I really really wanted to hear Muddy Waters live. People behind me were calm, minding their own buisness, no pressure from back there, and I stood there and waited too. He said, "Look man, if I let you in here, it's twenty bucks to me plus fifteen more for the gate and you hang out in the back and no drinking, you got all that?"
   Yes sir, I did and I do. He let me in, no one said a fucking word. I went straight to the back, a little later a cocktail waitress came over and I ordered a seven up and she brought me one. There was no trouble, the show was ,well what can I say. If you know who Muddy Waters is or was, you know what I got. The door guy came in and looked at me a couple of times but he never came over.
  I stayed there until they finished the first show and went home on the bus. When I got there, my Aunt said, "where have you been? Everyone is worried you ran away. Where have you been so late on a school night? Have you been smoking that pot again? Why didn't you call me?""
 I told her I was at the Tea Party, trying to get Alvin Lees autograph.
"Who is Alvin Lee?"
He's a guitar player from England I told her.
That made it easy on her.
She understood that.
"What about the pot? Did you take any while you were there?"
 She never did get that one. It's too bad too, she could have sure used some.Oh well, you can't get everyone straightened out in the limited time you get here. It's easier when I can just ignore that part of life. It's usually easier to establish a good rapport with  with dogs than people ,for me anyway. I  wonder if Larry ever got right
.The poor bastard missed Muddy Waters.