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Part
One:
Douglas
Bradley Smith:
1947-1999
There’s
a tin-age Bob Dylan song called "Is
Your Love in Vain?" that was on the
’78 Street Legal, just one
year before his brief Christian phase. The
lyrics included the line, "Can you cook
and sew, make flowers grow"; this was
back
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when
feminists still existed, and Dylan caused
a stir with the words, but I don’t
think he cared too much. Nor did I, except
that now it’s the first pop
title–aside from "Ain’t Too
Proud to Beg"–that flashes through
my mind when I think of my brother Doug,
who died of a rapid cancer at his home in
San Luis Obispo, CA,
on Dec. 18 at the age of 52. He leaves
behind two loving and quick-witted
daughters, Xela and Kira,
ages 12 and 8, Dan Vasquez, his
devoted companion of four years, and
Barbara Bailey, the mother of his
children. An odd arrangement, I suppose,
in most of the United States, but
San Luis is a college town in California.
That says it all to me: people who look
askance at the intertwining
relationships–Dan has two kids,
Barbara is a lesbian–can fuck off
as far as I’m
concerned.
My
three remaining brothers and I had common
and disparate relationships with Doug (he
was the middle of five boys, I’m
the youngest), times when circumstances
beyond childhood put us in the same
vicinity or household for a long period of
time. He traveled to Bangkok and
Alaska with my oldest brother
Red (there’s a photo of Doug
taking a dip in the freezing waters, stark
naked); deciphered financial statements
with my second oldest brother,
Jeff, for a Mexican restaurant
he’d started a year ago with Dan;
and managed our father’s car wash
in 1972 with brother number four,
Gary, after Dad died unexpectedly
at 55 of a heart attack. Doug had to be
called home from a Peace Corps
stint in Afghanistan when the
tragedy occurred, and when he arrived in
New Jersey after several flights
that totaled maybe 46 hours, I’ll
never forget the endless embrace he had
with my weeping mother. He’d
planned on remaining longer than two years
in Afghanistan, but family came first:
Doug was a mensch.
It
was during the two following years that I
spent the most time alone with him. Once
they unloaded the car wash, Gary and his
girlfriend Teresa, now his wife,
left for San Francisco, while Doug
and I stayed in a ramshackle house with
our mother five miles outside
Princeton. I was a senior in a
redneck high school, Doug was figuring out
what to do next with his life. He seemed
so old then; it amazes me that while I was
17, he was only 25. Doug eventually took a
master’s at Fairfield
University, a doctorate in rhetoric
at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, and soon wound up as a
professor at Cal Poly in San Luis
Obispo. So things worked out for him on a
professional level.
Our
mom was still grieving for the husband
she’d married in 1940 and lost
prematurely (today, he’d have a
bypass and be back at work in two weeks);
keeping her fragile body together was
difficult enough. Doug, aside from reading
14 or so books a week, from mystery trash
to John Barth, and watching All
in the Family and Maude, was
the effective household manager. We were
fortunate to have the Watergate
hearings as a distraction: We both wanted
Nixon to be crucified and relished
every morsel that John Dean ratted
out to Sen. Sam
Ervin’s committee, and
joyously watched the President’s
cohorts fall one by one, especially the
demonic Bob Haldeman. We’d
later be on opposite political poles, but
for then both of us were
tear-down-the-wall-motherfuckers hippies.
Especially Doug, who went to college from
’65-’69, the shank of the
counterculture revolution, at Johns
Hopkins in
Baltimore.
But
back to that lame Dylan song. In fact,
Doug did teach me how to cook and make
flowers grow; as for sewing, we were both
at a loss, as was my mother. In the spring
of ’73, just months before I went
to Hopkins myself–I can still
remember those visits to Baltimore in
’65, when the city was still de
facto segregated and A-rabs led their
horse-drawn fruit carts around
town–Doug planted a huge garden
with four kinds of lettuce, dozens
of
tomato
plants, green peppers, herbs and a little
marijuana on the side. At one point, he
considered getting a goat to roam the yard
and graze on grass, and then eating the
animal that fall. My mother and I nixed
that plan; we couldn’t bear
feasting on a pet.
On
the cooking front, Doug came back with
elaborate (to us) recipes from
Afghanistan, which employed lamb, cumin,
yogurt, grape leaves and flat bread. He
taught me how to prepare coq au vin, roast
chicken, meatloaf and the old family
standard of hotdogs and beans, with his
own eccentric touches, like splitting the
dog and stuffing it with brie. He was a
fabulous chef and I’m sure he
could’ve made a career of
it.
Not
that things didn’t get testy on
occasion. That summer I worked at
Princeton University–where
our mother was a librarian–in a
science lab where my duties included
feeding and cleaning up after white rats,
and then, when they became obsolete,
throwing about 50 of the varmints in a
metal box and pouring chloroform in it to
knock them off. It was a little unsettling
at first to hear the 20 seconds of rat
whines and scrambling, but it was part of
the job. What really got to me, though,
was when I’d have to go out back to
exterminate redundant monkeys and cats,
and would draw a crowd of outraged
students, who’d boo me (a minimum
wage $1.85/hour grunt) for performing my
duties, so they wouldn’t have to do
it themselves. I hate college students,
especially the sanctimonious liberal
ones.
Anyway,
one night early in the summer, I came home
from work, had a beer or two and went into
the kitchen to pop another when I heard
this Doug-laced harangue: "Gee, it sure is
fun to cook for you and Mom and
then have to clean up, too." I
responded, yeah I guess that’s a
drag. That didn’t cut it. "No, you
don’t understand: From now on,
you’ll clean the dishes and
pots and pans. And I don’t want a
half-assed effort, either." This put me
off, but he was right, and so I acquiesced
and tidied up the kitchen for the rest of
the summer. It was a fair deal. Our mom
was upset at Doug yelling at me, scolding
him, "Son, Rusty’s only 17, why
don’t you lighten up!" But my
brother was correct.
He
drove me to school that fall and stayed
the night, after introducing my roommate
Mark (who killed himself several
years later; I still have no clue why) and
me to Fells Point and
Greenmount Ave.’s
Godfrey’s Steer and Beer,
where a tall glass of Pabst was
still a quarter. (Cigarettes in
Maryland at that time were only 35
cents a pack.) Doug eventually moved out
of the house, when my mother was stable,
and began his second education career. I
remember once visiting him at his
Troy, NY, apartment near
Rensselaer in ’75; he was proud
that I was a journalist at the Hopkins
News-Letter and asked me to teach a
class, even though I was younger than most
of his students.
In
1982 he almost died from a serious bout
with Guillain-Barré
Syndrome. He was taken to Los
Angeles from San Luis (where they had
no clue how to treat him) by a speeding
ambulance and though he was largely
paralyzed in the hospital and
couldn’t speak, he did scrawl out a
message to his brothers: "These doctors
are butchers!" When he recovered a bit,
though he was still on steroids and using
a cane, Gary and I went to visit him and
found a daredevil awaiting us. He’d
drive around the curvy mountains (with no
guardrails) at breakneck speeds, which was
all too adventurous for my taste. We
stayed drunk for three
days.
As
the years progressed, my other brothers
and I would see him about twice a year,
when he came to New York to grade
SAT tests. It was a boondoggle for
him, all expenses paid, and gave him time
to shop at Canal Jean, visit my
newspaper office, fool around with the
computers and eat fancy dinners with Red,
Jeff, Gary and me.
In
1986 we spent time in Dublin and
Belfast together, a wonderful trip
that culminated in a two-day stay at the
Ashford Castle. One day, as we
drove to Belfast, both of us hungover from
way too many glasses of Bushmills
and Guinness at the Shelbourne
Hotel, he was in an exceptionally bad
mood. We stopped early to get some lunch;
I told him I wasn’t hungry and he
replied, "Well, fine, but this is the last
stop till dinner," as if he was meting out
great punishment. I told him I
didn’t give a shit, which stunned
him, since Doug didn’t like to miss
a meal, and we drove on in silence. We
only started talking again upon crossing
the border into Northern Ireland. It was
stunning; from the pastoral South, in just
a few minutes we landed in a landscape
eerily reminiscent of milltown
Pittsburgh or New Hampshire.
When we stopped at a tavern, mindful of
the propriety Catholics and Protestants
put on them, and both looking like
natives, we immediately spoke in a
Texas kind of drawl to separate us
from the locals. "Ah, you’re not
Irish boys after all, you’re from
America," the bartender said and then kept
us in conversation, as did other patrons,
for two hours.
Two
years later I met Doug and Barbara in
Madrid, and had a long,
not-entirely-liquid lunch at the Ritz
Hotel. One night, while Barbara camped
out at my hotel, the extraordinary
Palace, nursing Xela, Doug and I,
after sampling different tapas and wines,
went to a bullfight. I had the concierge
order us the best seats in the ring, and
we landed right behind the battery of
matadors. (I’d been to a bullfight
once before, in Mexico City when I
was 19, although in nosebleed seats. I had
a ball with a couple of friends and the
high altitude just made the Tecates
double-strength, so within minutes we were
shouting, "Ole!" with the Mexican sports
fans. I remember the three of us just
pissing in the streets after the bullfight
and then going to a bar, where I lifted an
ashtray that I preserved until ’93,
when a flimflam personals consultant from
the Boston Phoenix broke it and
didn’t give a shit at all. But
that’s a different
story.)
Anyway,
the expensive seats we had in Madrid were
too close to the action: Whereas in
’74 the bull-slaughtering was
somewhat abstract since it was so far
away, in Madrid we saw every drop of
blood, saw the ears presented to Spanish
officials, and we both got very
squeamish.
Like
all my brothers, Doug had his contentious
side. My favorite example of this, which
he maintained till the day he died, was
his choice of a favorite whiskey. Which to
him meant a premium brand of tequila. The
rest of us would laugh and say, "Fine
Doug, you’ve made your point, as
silly as it is." He insisted–and
this would sometimes last through
dinner–that tequila was in
fact a whiskey, just like bourbon and
scotch. Uh, right.
And,
as I mentioned previously, he never gave
up his liberal-radical politics, even
though he was a man of relative affluence.
Once, fairly recently, while having dinner
at Arqua with Mrs. M and me, he
insisted that we send our boys to public
schools, so they’d be exposed to
minorities and immigrants. "Doug," I tried
to explain rationally, "our sons live in
New York City, not a liberal, white
college town like San Luis Obispo. They
ride in cabs every day, interact with
every strain of humanity known to man.
Besides, even though Junior’s
school is exclusive, a lot of his fellow
students are Indian, Japanese and South
American. I think we have the diversity
angle covered." Surprisingly, he shut
up.
Our
last conversations were on Necker
Island this past Thanksgiving,
just a few weeks before he died. We all
knew he would bow out soon, but expected
he had three months or so. First, we
talked about Time’s "Person"
of the Century. (Why Time began,
just in ’99, this farce of gender
confusion I have no idea. If it’s a
man they select, it should be "Man of the
Year," as was previously done; if
it’s a woman, then "Woman of the
Year." Or "Robot of the Year." Whatever.
This concession to washed-up 60s icons
like Gloria Steinem is plainly
unacceptable and needlessly misleading.)
Doug chose Gandhi; I opted for
Churchill, even though my heart
said Babe Ruth. The eventual choice
of Einstein smells of compromise
and noncontroversy.
On
the last night at Necker, Doug took me
aside for a half-hour lecture, which was
not at all uncharacteristic. "Listen pal,"
he said, "I think New York Press
has come a long way on gay issues, but
your pandering to George W. Bush is
kooky. Don’t you understand that
this backwards man from Texas wants
to exterminate all gays?" A neutral
observer might speculate it was the
painkilling drugs at work; I knew better
but didn’t put up much of a fight.
It all seemed moot at that point. He then
went into the importance of hate-crime
legislation, which I vigorously oppose.
And then he segued into the evil of
Republicans in general. I don’t
know, maybe I should’ve argued back
like the old days, but I didn’t
want to get him too aggravated. The trip
to Necker was a year in planning; it was
fortuitous under the circumstances that
Doug could see the entire extended
Smith family at once. When he, Dan,
Xela and Kira left by boat for St.
Thomas, and he could see the entire
clan wave, it was as poignant a moment as
I can remember. He e-mailed me two days
later saying it was the greatest act of
love he’d ever
experienced.
Obviously,
I’ve left a lot out in this short
space and my other brothers would have
different stories to tell. But like many
brilliant men of his generation, he was
multitalented. He understood the immense
effect of the computer more than 10 years
ago, hosting his own homepage and sending
digital photos. I once asked him, in about
’93, if he’d consider
writing for New York Press on a
semiregular basis, as he had a magnificent
way with words. "Why would I do that," he
asked, "when right now I write for
millions of people on the
Internet?"
He
was a gifted professor, popular but strict
with students. He traveled extensively,
usually to Latin American countries, but
London, Thailand,
Greece and Capri as well. As
a younger man he painted and made silk
screens. One of his creations, Forty
Soul Dancers, which wound up being
sold at headshops around the country, took
him two days to complete, at one
crystal-meth stretch, all while playing
one record, Hendrix’s
Axis: Bold as Love, over and over.
Although he couldn’t carry a tune
(a Smith trait) he’d revel at
family dinners, often in
Southampton, where the five of us,
well-lubricated, would belt out old
favorites for an hour or so, like "La
Bamba," "Runaway," "You Can’t Hurry
Love," "I Was Made to Love Her," "Good
Vibrations" and "It Ain’t Me,
Babe." Our parents died young, but Doug
always had immense affection for my
mother’s brothers, Joe and
Pete Duncan, and their magnificent
wives Winnie and
Peggy.
A
kind colleague at work sent me a note
shortly after Doug died. It read: "Dear
Sir, I know that there’s grief in
your heart, but we shouldn’t feel
sorry for the loss of a love. Rejoice for
now your brother is with God!" My brother
had no truck with Christianity–he
believed in a more Buddhist concept of
life–so he’d probably sneer
at this sentiment. But it made me feel
better.
Doug
packed a lot of intensity into his short
life, but I’d always imagined
he’d reach 90 at least. That errant
prediction makes it only tougher for my
brothers and me: losing one of the Five
Smith Brothers was something we
weren’t prepared for as early as
1999, and so just leaves us unbearably
heartbroken.
December
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