A Writer's Life--Fun and Games, and a Near-Violent Confrontation at The Shadow Room with a Big Bully-of-a-Humanoid-Simulacrum

Here's the kind of magical evening I had last night, and this is only the last part of the fun 'n games I had, first at Eli Cannon's where I got myself kicked out for refusing to back down from a confrontation with an asshole pudgy little fat-bellied man who claimed himself to be a lawyer who could argue me speechless, and then at my favorite hang-out on non-dance club nights, The Shadow Room.  Anyway, here's a detailed account of how much FUN I had after the appetizer course at Eli Cannons, once I got to The Shadow Room:
   I'll give you the first part.  To read the rest, I'll give you the link to my blog, "Bobs blog," where I've posted the rest of it.  Please note that David Gere is a professional movie and TV actor, and SAG member, not saggy like me.  He's also a co-owner of The Shadow Room, where the altercation described in the story, in the form of a message to David, happened last night.

Dear Mr. Gere,
As you undoubtedly have heard from Not-So-Jolly St. Nick, late of TSR, Santa Claus personally evicted my old ass from TSR last night, following a certain pissin' match intitated by a humor-less and very very horny and up-tight Mere Mortal Man who appeared to be jerking off or fiddling with his I-phone accoutrement or some such at the end of the couch (sorta' rhymes, don't it? figures, dude, i am, a POE-it). Now as I 'splained to the Prophet Joshua, whom I really like, and in a FB Message to Mr. Claus, your esteemed pardoner at TSR, the two HUMANS with a Sense of HUMOR who were allegedly associated with that certain Jerk-Off (see, supra.), I had no idea whatever that the aforesaid Beefy Jerk-Offy (he was rather fleshy in his self-same corpulence) was even paying attention to all the Fun 'n Games the studly young man and the hot young Goddess in the back dress were havin', talkin' 'bout "Bobs blog" and The Hollywood Mythic Pics and the poetry 'bout yo' Main and Only (I should hope) Main Squeeze, Toni the Ti-GERE, when all of a sudden, before Jolly St. Nick could hitch up Dasher, and Dancer, and Prancer, and the Goddesses and see what was a-foot, Fat-Ass Beef Jerky tells Your Humble and Most Introverted and Perverted Servant, moi (en Francais), to "Get out of my face." Now, since he (I use that appellation loosely, like his loose belly fat) had been jerking off or fiddling with Facebook (or, only in his dreams, Fuckbook), I assumed he was saying, "Get out of my Facebook." I then told him, I'm not using Facebook right now because I only have a dumb-phone, not a smart-ass phone. This seemed to infuriate the Bull further, and he or she or it, suddenly jumped up and, after telling ME to get out of ITS face, proceeded to bring what allegedly was ITS face very close to MY UGLY OLD FACE (and I don't even get the Ugly Man Discount at TSR). When I pointed out, with perfect calm, that he or she or IT was actually increasing ITS proximity to my ugly face, and not the other way 'round, IT was seething with such HATRED of my dumb demeanor that I just couldn't resist telling him, with most polite enunciation, to "Go fuck yourself. And furthermore, sir, I LOVE you and want to make out with you." Now, for some unknown Raison d'Etre, this appeared further to infuriate the Little Boy in the Big Fat Quasi-Man Ray and he said something like, "You think you're so SMART, Mr. Lawyer, but you're a fucking asshole. Get out of my face." Since I couldn't disagree with anything he accused me of, it all being totally true, except the part about Me being in His face, I immediately pled guilty and put myself on the mercy of the bouncers. In my own defense, I pleaded as follows to the Wannabe Tough-Guy Bully: "Go fuck yourself. What are you going to do about it? Why don't you hit me. Then I'll at least have something to write about tomorrow on Fuckbook and my blog." By now, the Prophet Joshua, whom I really like, as he is a very good man with a big heart and even Bigger Cohones, and that other bouncer, the white guy who ALWAYS looks like he's in final preparations for a colonoscopy (you know the face you get when you drink that orange liquid that makes you shit the entire night before the procedure), realized that somethin' BIG was goin' down, so they came over to me and asked me to move away from the Bull or they'd have to ask, nicely of course, since they are good men, me to leave TSR. Of course, Sir David, out of respect for you, and admiration for the ass-ets of your GF, the Goddess TTT, I immediately acceded to their request. Several minutes later, Goddess Emily waltzed in to your establishment and, of course, caused quite a stir. Goddess Emily greeted me warmly, with a big smile and an even bigger hug, which instantly made me a bit bigger than I hadn't been before the aforesaid big hug. I told her that I had earlier had a nice conversation with the hot and studly dark-haired Mere Mortal Young Man who had been her TSR chaperone or companion for the evening when I first had the pleasure of meeting said Goddess Emily the night my current Profile Hollywood Classic Pic was snapped. I suspect the Bully, seeing this little tableau, of a blonde, Platinum Hot-tttt Goddess embracing the Creepy Old Man whom minutes before the Bully had gotten almost close enough to kiss me, was even more worked up (for the Goddess, I meant to imply, not for me, even though, as I said above, I had offered to make out with him, just to calm him the freak DOWN). At this, the Bully left, trailed by his two companions, the man of whom, who had aready checked out my FB page and invited me to be his Fuckbook Friend, had an expression of serious solidarity with the Bully, although the hot Goddess in the black dress seemed to be a bit bemused by the whole situation, as if she realized how dumb-ass the Bully was. At this, your bidness partner, the aforesaid Jolly St. Nick, informed the Colonoscopy-preparing Bouncer to ask me to leave the premises, which I did, of course.
Now I realize how DEPENDENT Santa is on the revenue from the moonshine sold as legal booze at TSR, so I may no longer be welcome in your Storied Shady Shadow 'Stablishment. If that be the case, I'll certainly understand. In which case I suppose my only alternative is to buy out, not eat out, the Indian Restaurant a few doors down and open a new artists' bar, dance club, and eating-out establishment which I shall call, "In the Sun." This will present a stark, even Platonic, contrast to the cave-like precincts of "The Shadow Room." But here's the rub, dear friend and demi-god. In "The Republic," Plato wrote a little piece he called "The Simile of the Cave." And in that little philosophical riff, the Sophist-NOT explained that human life is a lot like being in The Shadow Room, or as he put it, in a cave. Humans only dimly appreciate the True Reality of the Platonic Forms. But once humans achieve a sufficient Enlightenment, a kind of clearing out the cobwebs from the brain and achieving a state of True Wisdom, Love of Wisdom, Philosophy, really, they are able, finally, to leave the cave and enter the bright light of daylight, "In the Sun." Which is why I'd call my bar "In the Sun." Get it? And I can only dream, and hope, and pray, and fantasy that The Goddesses, the really Hot Goddesses, the blondes, the redheads, the streaked, the oiled, the Playboy-quality Hollywood Mythic Goddess, would avoid dim-witted, shadowy figures like The Bully, and re-join this Mere fuckin' old ass Mortal Man, aka THE WRITER, at Up or on the Rocks for dancing and "In the Sun" for a little nude sunbathing.
All best, my dear young studly demi-god Fuckbook Friend and TTT companion and freak-mate, I shall, always, remain,

The Writer

Like ·  · See Friendship · 5 minutes ago near Middletown

The Little Philosopher: My Grandson Liam on Gender as a Social Construct

My grandson Liam is three.  Back in early July, 2011, I had the privilege of spending three days with Liam and my son and daughter-in-law in Boulder, Colorado.  Liam was 2 years old back then.

Little children are natural-born artists and philosophers.  Liam is no exception.  When I hung out with Liam in those halcyon days last summer, it dawned on me that Liam's every verbal production was pregnant with a wisdom which the socialization of the young beats out of us.  True artists retain that wisdom.

Liam was still sleeping in his parents' bedroom, in his own bed.  He had a humidifier to maintain a good moisture level in the dry Colorado air.  Until I began visiting my son and his family in that state, I never realized that Denver and Boulder are on a high plain, with nearly desert air conditions.  Colorado air is dry on the high plain.  The state gets something like 300 days of sunshine per year.

Liam's humidifier is a plastic penguin.  The moistened air is discharged into the room through the penguin's black beak.  It sat on a night table next to my son and his wife's bed.

While Liam's parents were out and I was babysitting, Liam was running around the house, and his and his parents' bedroom, in his diaper.  I asked Liam, "What is penguin's name?"  He thought for a moment and said, "Bob. Bob the penguin."  Naturally, I was flattered.  Then I asked Liam, "Is Bob the penguin a boy or girl penguin?"  Again he mulled this one over, this time a bit longer.  "He's just a penguin," replied the little philosopher.

I love that answer.  It told me that Liam was teaching me that gender is largely a social construct, which he has not yet learned, or if he has, he has not yet internalized.  Sex is a physical attribute but gender is a set of qualities, of mind, spirit, interests, dispositions which society teaches us; it is not something which naturally occurs to a child.

Liam may have the uninhibited spirit socialized out of him but until he does, it's a unique experience to hang out with him.  Fortunately, given the distance between Boulder and Middletown, Liam and I are able to interract visually and orally through the magic of Skype. I hope that one day we'll be able to hang out on a regular basis, in person.  There's SO much I need to learn from Liam and probably one or two things I can teach him.

Writer-Who-Threatened-Me RICK J. WILSON I'm Giving You a Chance to Respond to My Comments about you on MY Facebook Wall and on My "Bobs blog," WITHOUT ANY COMMENTARY BY ME!!!!!!!!!! This is a Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity!!!!!!!!

Writer-Who-Threatened-Me RICK J. WILSON I'm Giving You a Chance to Respond to My Comments about you on MY Facebook Wall and on My "Bobs blog," WITHOUT ANY COMMENTARY BY ME!!!!!!!!!! This is a Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity!!!!!!!!

I haven't heard a Peep out of that Oddly Silent Writer Dude who Threatened me in an email. His name is Rick J. Wilson and he lives in Kensington, CT. I've copied him in on my "Bobs blog" posts about him, and sent the blog story to him by email, his email address being rjwilsonwriter@hotmail.com in case any of you want to have lunch with him or buy his self-published vanity-press books. I can't say if the books are any good, but that's for you to decide. Anyway, I've given Mr. Rick J. Wilson, the Published Author, an invitation to say anything he wants about me, or to me, in the form of an email to me, which I told him I'd publish on my FB page and my "Bobs blog" without any comment or rejoinder from me. Here's the text of the email I sent him this morning:

To: rjwilsonwriter@hotmail.com

Subject: hey, bro', take ur best shot at me, in writing of course, not with no GUN (OMG!!!!!!), and i'll put it up on "Bobs blog" and my FB page, without any critical response of my own. Come on, RJ Reynolds Co. you're a WRITER, right-er?

And my message to Mr. Wilson:

subject line says it all, dude....

FB readers, I'll keep you posted if I hear something back from Mr. Wilson.

P.S.: Editor's Note: The reason Bob was so hard on Rick J. Wilson is this.  Any writer who threatens another writer by saying the former knows where the latter lives opens himself up to an ironic slash-and-burn counterattack.  However, Bob is a Man and can take the heat thrown his way by Rick J. Wilson, apparent  Level 1 quality Auteur, or even writers of lesser ability.  But Bob does prefer to respond, in writing, in a rational way, as he has, even if the writer who threatened Bob is so humorless as to not be willing to step up to Home Plate, like a Man, give it his best shot, and respond to Bob's obvious provocations.

Come on, R J, lighten up.  Get with the program.  You claim to be a Writer, a vanity-press-published Auteur, even, so take Bob up on his offer and GET WRITING!!!!!!!!!

My Responses to Another Writer Who Threatened Me In An Email He Sent To Another Person and Why You Shouldn't Pick a Fight with Another Writer Unless You're Prepared to Engage in Pen-to-Pen Warfare

I'm getting signs and smoke signals and other messages all the time that I'm becoming a Writer and shedding my long-time role of nearly four decades, The Lawyer.  Those messages take the following form: I love to write and I love to write about whatever is happening in my life.  I don't care so much about what happens to me, or what I do, as long as I have computer and fingers and wi-fi access so I can write and publish my writing.  And I am becoming more and more willing to write and publish anything.  The role of Censor is fast disappearing from the quiver of my mental and emotional faculties.  I know this imposes costs on my family, but many things they do impose costs on Susie and me.  If one of my children refuses to wear a helmet when riding a bicycle, for example, as I did for the first 45 or more years of my life, Susie and I have to face the fact that that grown child may get hit by a car and suffer severe head injuries, paraplegia, or death.  There are no cost-free activities in human life.

Anyway, I'm publishing today a series of what are called, in the singular, on Facebook, a Status.  A Status is a statement about anything of interest to the author.  It is posted electronically on the author's FB Wall, for her friends to see and make Comments about.  So I'm going to re-produce now a series of 8 Status assertions, some of which are longer than others, about a subtly threatening email which a man who also fancies himself to be a writer sent about me and my writing to a woman who in turn forwarded it to me.  I wasn't really very afraid he'd do anything to me, but I was amused by his claiming that nobody wants to read my writing, since I've had almost 19,000 times that people have looked on my blog, "Bobs blog," since I started it in mid-July, 2011.

Okay, without further ado, here's the stuff.



Part 1: The Threatening Email. Subtle, but Angry and Threatening

So I got an email from a guy who runs a local writers out loud group, I hit Reply to All and responded to some anti-Obama crap which was factually incorrect, and someone forwards me the following threat which the threaten-er, RJ Wilson didn't have the balls to send me directly. As I say to him in my email directly to him, if he makes good on his ball-less not-to-my-face threats, now the police and state's attorney will know whom to do the DNA testing on first: RJ Wilson. Have a nice evening, Mr. Wilson. Here's the email from him to somebody else, and my reply directly to Mr. Wilson:

Mr. Wilson's email to a Goddess, but no copy to me:

rjwilsonwriter@hotmail.com

Again with this fucking Bob sending me messages I don't want? What the fuck is wrong with you? Nobody wants to read you, Bob. I know where you fucking live, Chimney Hill.

And my reply to Mr. Wilson:

so, rjwilsonwriter/threatener, i'll post this on FB so if you decide to carry out your threats, the police and state's attorney will know exactly whom to do the DNA testing on first--you, my friend.

all best,

A Non-Threatening WRITER

P.S.: If you wanna make threats, at least have the balls to make them to me directly.
Like ·  · Share · Monday at 10:28pm near Middletown
Janis Chrystal Regener Jeesh...people are weird. You never know how they are going to react.
Monday at 11:11pm · Unlike ·  1
Robert Dutcher Yeah, he just resents the fact I get the Hot Young Goddesses, my daughter-surrogates, mind you, to pose with the Old Writer Dude as they do in my Profile Pics....This wannabe Hollywood Nobody got nothin' like that, Goddess......That's what he's ANGRY 'bout....Get a life RJWilson-wannab-Writer@hotmail.cum
Yesterday at 8:26am · Like ·  1


Part 2: My Facebook and Google Search for Info about the Threatener

I just got back from a wonderful evening at The Shadow Room. Just for the hell of it, I did a quick FB search of the chap who threatened me earlier (see my earlier status, below), Rick J. Wilson of Kensington, CT. It was easy to check the guy out from his FB page, his website, and a Google search. I'm really sorry to learn that his mother died on April 25, 2009, at age 82, as my own dear mother died in January, 2010, at age 92. Rick is a divorced self-described writer. Here's his website URL if you'd like to read about him or get links to his two or three vanity-published novels: http://www.rjwilsonauthor.com/about.htm Rick, I now know where you live, too, and will make sure the police do, too, if you ever decide to get crazy about me and actually carry out your idle threat in that email you neglected to copy me in on. Since we are both amateur, wannabe writers, I suspect we'd actually have a bit in common, except for one thing: I don't make threats like you do to people who piss me off, i.e. to third parties. If I'm pissed off at somebody, I just tell them directly, usually to their faces. But look, why don't we get together for a drink and actually get to know each other? Maybe we'd actually like each other? Or not. Who knows? Rick J. Wilson puts his email address, rjwilsonwriter@hotmail.com, on his website contact section, so I'm quite sure you're the one. One final question: If you're so sure nobody wants to read me, as you claim in the emailed threat you wrote to somebody other than me, the one you feel so angry about, why is it that my "Bobs blog" has had more than 18,000 (that's 18 thousand) hits since I started writing it in mid-July, 2011? And why is it that I have readers all over the world? I can show you the statistics which the Google Blogspot software keeps on where my readers come from in the world, what my most popular posts are, the search terms people use to find my blog, and other such interesting information. Hey, Rick, I now know your telephone number, since you've conveniently put it on your contact section of your website, and I put mine on my FB page, why don't you give me a call and we can get together. I'd like to meet you and get to know you so I can confirm my hypothesis about why my writing and what I'm doing with my life so aggravates you. One alternative to using my life as the occasion for reflecting about how unhappy you are with your own life is simply to go about the hard work of making your life better, as I've done with my own. All best, Bob Dutcher, The Writer

R.J. Wilson - About the Author
www.rjwilsonauthor.com
Richard Wilson has led an eclectic career working in media, including television commercial production and stage management in New York City, and motion pic...
Like ·  · Share · Yesterday at 3:25am near Middletown
Jordan Elizabeth Eck likes this.

Part 3: Sign off from Facebook for the Day and a Reference to My Detective Work

Okay, FB World, enough detective work for the day, night, and week. I'm retired from all that law stuff but sometimes a little "situation" arises which calls for resurrecting the old Bloodhound Skills. Good night.
Like ·  · Share · Yesterday at 4:00am near Middletown


Part 4: An Epigram about Writing vs. Threatening

Robert Dutcher

Those who can, write. Those who fear they can't, threaten.
Like ·  · Share · Yesterday at 4:01am near Middletown
David Gere, Sheila Garcia and Stephen Djcribb Cribb like this.


Part 5: Another Epigram and a reference to The Shadow Room Goddesses

Robert Dutcher
Those who can, hang with, and get photographed with, Goddesses of Highest Quality, at The Shadow Room. Those who can't, probably just jack off and dream about it.
Like ·  · Share · Yesterday at 8:57am near Middletown
Brian Hand likes this.
Robert Dutcher No offense, @Brian, given your non-given Sur- or Sir-name, but there's somethin' 'bout a Hand in-between the lines in my aforesaid Status, butt I can't quite figure out what the freak it is, dude. Can you offer a helpin' HAND, bro'.......Not that there's anything wrong with that, if you know WTF eye mean....
Yesterday at 9:11am · Like
Robert Dutcher P.S.: Jess' kiddin', bro'....
Yesterday at 9:11am · Like


Part 6: I Compare the Threatener to Cyclops (him) and Odysseus (me) in "The Odyssey"

Robert Dutcher
Follow up observation about the Threatening Chicken-Shit Email that Vain and Vanity-Press Published Novelista, RJWilsonWriter@hotmail.com send to some girl rather than directly to me. Here's another email I sent do my bro'-in-writing, Rick J. Wilson who lives in Kensington, CT:

Subject: And Cyclops yelled out to his friends, who wondered who'd spiked Cyclops in his third eye, "No One. No One blinded me. Get him. Fast." Just like you said about my writing: "NOBODY wants to read you, Bob. I know where you fucking live, Chimney Hill."

hey, Hollywood Good Lookin' Ricky, bro', somethin' funny just occurred to me 'bout WTF yo' sed yesterday in that hilarious and THREATENING email you chicken-shitted to Goddess Gayle rather than be like MAN and send it directly to me. here's the thing. when you got whatever the fuck degree you got at UCLA (you did graduate didn't you?) you being a writer, an' all, musta read Odyssey by my hommie, Homah Simpson, right yo'? Anyway, 'membah when that cool cat, good lookin' just like you, named Odysseus, put a freakin' spike in that big ole' monstah's eye in the cave, that Cyclops dude, and the Cyclops asked him what his name was and crafty Odysseus said "No one"? Remembah' that episode when you got your B.A. from UCLA, right? Well, anyway, when crafty old Odysseus sailed off of Cyclops' island, Cyclops ran out and his pals, wantin' to kill the guy who spiked their friend asked Cyclops, "Who the fuck did that to you, bro'?" And remember when you were doin' your four years at UCLA, before you got that degree you musta' got there, cause you're a freakin' Vanity-Press-Published Novelist, for Goddesses sake, yo', that that stupid freakin', but really good lookin', just like you're a Very Hot Studly Mere Mortal Man, that Cyclops yelled out: "No One. No One did this to me! No One put the spike in my eye and blinded me."

Well, listen here, Mr. Novelistic Pugilistic Writer and Blogger, although I think you've only been able to type two, maybe three blog posts on your AMAZINGLY well-crafted Blog on your website since last November, it just occurred to me as follows. Like Cyclops, you said about my "Bobs blog" the following, and I quote from your very smootly written and thought-out email to that Goddess lady friend of yours, the one you're dating, maybe:

"rjwilsonwriter@hotmail.com
Again with this fucking Bob sending me messages I don't want? What the fuck is wrong with you? Nobody wants to read you, Bob. I know where you fucking live, Chimney Hill.

Now Mr. Ricky, your "Nobody" kinda sorta reminds me of that Mr. Ricky Cyclops Three-Eyed Monster Man in Homeboy's "Odyssey." In the same way that Cyclops was totally OUTSMARTED by that crafty old Odysseus Hero, didn't I kinda OUTSMART your dumb-ass chicken-shit ball-less email you sent to a girl rather than to me, a Mere Mortal Man, but nonetheless, A MAN........?

Knowing that you're a college grad-u-eight of a first-class university like UCLA (what year was it you got your B.A. degree from UCLA, Mr. Ricky) and also a PUBLISHED vanity-press novelistist, I knew you'd appreciate the IRONY in your use of "NOBODY" and the Cyclops use of "NO ONE" in that older story.

Hey, bro', I think we have the makings of a very close friendship. What do you say? Why don't you come down to The Shadow Room and recite some of your original poetry some night? I'm SURE the Goddesses would love you, 'cuz I can tell from your vanity pictures on your FB page that you are a Very Good Lookin' Mere Mortal Man and I get the Ugly Man Discount at the Establishments in Hollywood where you and Gary Marshall and all your Hollywood friends hang out. Hell, I ain't never been no Executive Ass-iss-tant to no Big Time Hollywood Director like you have, bro', so I hope you'll agree to give at least some consideration to being my CLOSE FRIEND and COLLABORATOR in WRITING PROJECTS.

All best, and namaste,

Bob aka Not Up to Your Writing Ability or Educational Level or Good Looks, but workin' real hard to catch up to you, bro'

Bob's blog
wwwbobs-blog.blogspot.com
Like ·  · Unfollow Post · Share · 21 hours ago near Middletown
Mark DjAdonis Gagner likes this.
Robert Dutcher Anybody think I mighta been a little too HARD on the doo-dood?
21 hours ago · Like
Robert Dutcher I mean, Rick J. Wilson of Kensington, Ct is a Vanity-Press-Published Writer 'n all, but he may actually have feelings. So if anybody thinks I've hurt his poor little feelings, please reply in strictest confidence. Thank you. VTY, Bobby, the Poisoned Pen Piss-ant Peon
21 hours ago · Like


Part 7: More Sarcastic Comments by me about The Threatener aka The Vanity-Press-Published Auteur

Robert Dutcher
Another Funny Thing about Threatening Rick J. Wilson writer @hotmail.com: I sent him a private message on his Facebook page last night about that chicken shit email he sent to the girl. Now, when I was doing him the courtesy of sending him another private message to let him know what else I was writing about him, I could not get access to his FB page. Do you think the big Threatening Vanity-Press-Published Auteur is freakin' AFRAID to hear from my Poison Pen again? OMG I hope I didn't hurt Ricky J. Writer's FEELINGS, FB people. Maybe some of you Goddesses can go up to his Cyclopsian Cave, up there in Kensington, CT and Comfort Ricky now that Bobby's hurt his feelings...........oh, so sorry little Ricky.......but don't worry, you'll write about it and post it on YOUR blog, as your third or fourth blog post on your blog since you first posted on your blog in November, 2010. I know you're a bit slow on the uptake with your writing hand, but you SURE ARE A GREAT WRITER, Tricky Ricky, and I for one would vote to give you an Academy Award for Scaring the Shit out of me with your powerfully-written, threatening email. Keep up the writing and I bet those three GREAT NOVELS you've vanity-press-published will win a Cyclops Award. I'm sure of it. And BTW, how's the Play comin' along?

Part 8: Another epigram

Robert Dutcher
The pen is mightier than the sword, and even more so if the other verbal combatant don't have no sword. (Ancient Confucian Saying)
Like ·  · Share · 21 hours ago near Middletown
Franco Pulino likes this.

Part 9: The Final Episode

Robert Dutcher
Okay, FB World, gotta eat some gruel and maggot-invested 201(k) certificates from my non-investments formerly known as Private Social Insecurity Accounts........will check back later for Fuckbook fun 'n games and see whether that Pulitzer-worthy and Putz-lacking AUTEUR, RickJWilsonWriter@hotmail.com is creepin' 'round Chimney Hill wit' a Tire Jack-Off, ready to Whack me with it!!!!!!!!! Prease, rerease me, Mr. Wilson. Sincerely up yours and on your rocks, Dennis the Freakin' Menace

Epilogue: This is not the first person who wants to see me act out my life on the TV screen

Chris Lavado
you sir... should have your own television show...
Unlike ·  · See Friendship · 21 hours ago near Newington
You like this.
Robert Dutcher
Great idea but I'm too Ugly 'n OLD, bro'. But I LOVE ya' for suggestin' it, man.....
21 hours ago · Like ·  2

Chris Lavado Come to 960 Saturday For Boris... i need to see how you move to some house music!
21 hours ago · Unlike ·  1
Robert Dutcher That sound like a plan, yo'.......butt won't that little shit LMS doo-doo-dude wut' kicked my old ass outta' Mezzo Burger Dance Hall in Middleberg, Konventional Konnecticut keep me from getttin' in dat' 960 Room dis' Sat knight ah' Columbo, yo'? eye b = scared a dat' little Hitler shitler tiny dickless dude, bro'...Please Reply in Strictless Confidence...
21 hours ago · Like
Like ·  · Share · 21 hours ago near Middletown


A Final Comment


I've emailed copies of all my sarcastic remarks about Rick J. Wilson who calls himself a writer.  I have received NO response to any of them.  I wonder:  Why the Silence, Rick the Writer?

A New Poem by Bob: "Shadow Room Goddesses", with 2 Photos of Bob and TSR Goddesses, and an Editor's Note about the poem and the blog post itself

Editor's Note: Bob does not put everything he writes on "Bobs blog."  Bob has noticed over the past few months, since he first started writing the blog in mid-July, 2011, at the suggestion of his friend John Hall, that some (at least one but it could be any number up to the more than 18,000 hits he's gotten on "Bobs blog" all over the World based on the very precise statistics kept by the Google Blogspot "platform") of his Dear Readers do not like to get the more, shall we say, conventionally "salacious" blog posts.  Therefore, Bob censors "Bobs blog" and writes more freely on his Facebook page.

However, true artists don't censor themselves.  Bob's not yet a "true" artist, although he's getting there, so he continues to restrict "Bobs blog" to more "prim and proper" writing productions.

To give you all a little change of pace, I'm going to post a poem I whipped off yesterday afternoon at the request of my SAG actor friend, David Gere, owner of The Shadow Room (TSR) on Main Street in Middletown.  TSR is a bar, dance club, art gallery, and artists' hangout, including wannabe writers/dancers/comix like Bob.  So Bob returned to his lair, Susie's OLD HOUSE in Middletown, and whipped up the following little poem about some of the TSR Goddesses, as David Gere requested.  I then peformed it last night at TSR while standing on the couches along the north wall, all the while wearing the same outfit I was wearing the night before, as described below.

To understand the poem, you'll need to do two things, assuming you want to read any further.  First, read the poem.  Second, look at the Facebook Profile Pics of me surrounded by assorted TSR Goddesses.  Third, read the FB Status I posted yesterday about the Sunday night adventure at TSR, in particular the references and descriptions of Goddesses Andrea and Emily.  Fourth, understand that Goddess Andrea in no way is androgynous.  She's very pretty, feminine, and intelligent.  But she did like wearing my dark shades and my dark-blue worsted wool blazer for a few sweet minutes.  Like all beautiful women who put on male clothing (think Marlene Dietrich and other great actresses of the past), it's a very nice look.  Fifth, Goddess Toni is David Gere's current girlfriend.  David refers to her, affectionately, as Toni the Tiger.  I changed that appellations slightly.  You'll see why.  Finally, also understand that Goddess Emily merely slipped while she and Goddess Andrea were dancing with me, all in the presence of their boyfriends.  Goddess Emily was not drunk, but she did fall backwards and land on her tush, but with a smile on her face and a laugh from her throat.

Okay, so here's the poem, "Shadow Room Goddesses," followed by the FB Status which sets the stage, and last, but not least, the photos of the TSR Goddesses and me.  The first photo is my current FB Profile Pic and the second is my penultimate FB Profile Pic.

Finally, if I did not treat these Goddesses with the respect that a father shows his daughter, they would not feel, and appear in the photos, as relaxed and comfortable in my presence, so close to me physically, as is shown in these photos.

Very truly yours,  THE EDITORS of Bobs blog.  P.S.: You always have the option of opting out of the rest of this blog post by simply......not................reading......................................it...........but don't say I didn't warn you!]

Now the poem.

Shadow Room Goddesses

I knew Goddess Maddie's
surname was Gish
but now
I know
she's also
the freakin' sexiest dish


I knew Goddess Andrea
was a Czenar
but now
I know
she's also
Insatiable Sexy Satyr

I knew Goddess Emily
was a Gorgeus Platinum Blonde
but now
I know
she also
safely lands her Beautiful Behind

I knew Goddess Toni
had a figure to die for
but now
I know
she also
is Toni The Ti-Gere

bob dutcher, February 20, 2012

Now the Facebook Status.

Last night I made a last-minute (or last hour-and-a-half to be precise) appearance at The Shadow Room in Middletown. I was delighted to meet a new Goddess, Goddess Tiffany, who tends bar to give a break from Mortal Dionysian Alcohol-Nectar service by Goddess Andrea and Goddess Toni (the Tigress). Although Nick, David Gere's partner in TSR, told me otherwise, my first impression of the lovely Tiffany Goddess was this: "That girl's Jail Bait." But Nick firmly disabused me of that notion. Although all Goddesses are timeless, eternal, and ageless, we Mere Mortal Men arbitrarily assign an "age" to each of them. And Nick insisted that her Mere-Mortal-Man-assigned age is greater, though not by much, than Goddess Andrea.

Now I made my Grand Entrance into TSR last night wearing the double-breasted blue suit jacket, dark gray pants, and black shoes I wore to my baptist rockin' church service yesterday, and also had my eyes shaded from the Overwhelmingly Brilliant Radiance of Goddesses Andrea, Emily, Tiffany, Sarah, and the others by my black wrap-around shades. Within minutes, Goddess Andrea, always accompanied by her trusty Hot Young Mere Mortal boyfriend, Mike, had removed my shades and put them on and removed my double-breasted suit coat, perhaps to cover her own double-breasted outer/upper white garment. Goddess Andrea and Goddess Emily, who was also chaperoned by her Studly Mere Mortal Young boyfriend, proceeded, against my better judgment, to arrange the three of us in an unholy (but most fun)
three-way Oreo Cookie in negative photographic mode. By that I mean that these two lovely blonde, fair-skinned Goddesses had me, a now-black baptist, in-between them. I have no current recollection of what the Goddesses were doing, if anything, to me during this ecstatic moment.

Meanwhile, Nick, @David Gere's co-owner of TSR, got out what appeared to be an I-pad shaped video recording device to make permanent video record of this Outrageous Outlaw Ovation to the gods who made the visitation by the Goddesses (not to mention their Otherworldly Beauty, Uncommon Intelligence, and Aesthetic Sensibility) possible.

Well, time to go off FB for a while, saw wood, and work on a new poem to perform tonight at The Shadow Room, should the Mere Mortal Men, the Goddesses, and, especially the demi-god @David Gere, permit me so to do.

Later, Goddesses, Mere Mortal Men, and The Demi-God,

Bob aka The Writer

Now the photos.


Goddess Andrea, Bob, and Goddess Emily

Goddess Maddie, Andrea, Bob, Gia, and Emily

Our Black Cat, Russell---Human? Almost Human? More than Human?

I've been living with a male housemate.  His name is Russell.  He's a black cat, about 4 years old and 20 pounds.

Russell is my third son Jamie's cat.  Jamie doesn't have room for Russell in his place in San Franciso.  I'm thrilled because I love Russell.  Every night, Russell sleeps on top of the duvet which Susie lent me to keep me warm in the sleeping bag I've been sleeping in, on a green mat, in Susie's old house, which we're trying to sell.

When I woke up this morning, Russell was stretched out across the bottom 1/4th of the sleeping bag.  My feet had to rest through the sleeping bag on the floor off the side of the mat.  Russell knows that I love him so much I won't bring myself to push him off the duvet so my legs can be in a more comfortable position.

Although I love watching the bull fights in Madrid when we visited K.C. there in 1997, including the final kill of the bull by the matador, and I have no objection to men who like to kill deer, I don't think I have it in me to kill an animal.  They're too much like us.  Actually, non-human animals are in some sense better than human animals.  Russell doesn't start wars, have feuds, or use energy gluttonously.  He's quite self-contained.

A while ago, when I went to the congregational church, I read a prose poem I wrote about Russell in church on animal Sunday.  Here it is, followed by some recent photos I took of Russell, lying in the sun on a winter afternoon at the old house in which he and I make our home.

Human? Almost Human? More than Human?



My name is Russell.  My owner, Jamie, named me after his grandfather, because, Jamie said, Grandad was the sweetest man he ever knew, and I’m the sweetest cat Jamie ever knew.


I’m jet black, with some white whisps.  But for the white, Bob’s friend, Joe Glaz, would not cross my path.  


Now that Jamie lives in San Francisco, Bob takes care of me.  Bob tries not to cross me.  I rarely bite or scratch people,  but will when aggravated by childish-acting Homo Sapiens.


I LOVE being stroked and touched.  LOVE having my ears rubbed firmly.  BRIDLE when  officious inter-meddling humanoids hold my head between their palms and massage my chinny-chin-chin, and what I consider the most vulnerable part of my beautiful, sleek body--that’s right, my  throat.


Bob tells humans I’m manly, aggressive, a hunter, and love to provoke.  But, he adds, I’m feminine, graceful, luxurious, and regal.  A King and a Queen, all wrapped in one flesh, Bob says.  I don’t know about any of that.  I’m just me, Russell, the Cool Cat.


I guess I am squeaky-voiced, and sultry-sounding. I like to think of myself as slovenly, sleek, sardonic and sweet.  And I’m definitely stand-offish, yet slavish.


A bundle of contradictions, you humanoids might say. But I think you’d all agree, that I, Russell, AM.  Which of us Cool Cats, AIN’T?!


                                                         @@@@@@@@@@@


And the photos:

16 Photographs and Commentary about My Cross-Country Skiing Adventure in January, 2012, during a Nearly Snow-less Winter, in Cockaponsett State Forest, in Haddam, Connecticut

I love winter snow.  It marks the territory here where I've made my home for four decades, if you include the first four years when I went to college at Wesleyan.  But not this winter.  Since October, we've only had two snowstorms, and it's now nearly mid-February.  The first heavy snowstorm happened back in late OCTOBER.  Because the leaves on the deciduous trees had not yet fallen, that storm took out a LOT of tree limbs and uprooted countless entire tree trunks.  I've written extensively on "Bobs blog" about the power outage which followed, and why I actually think that was a good spiritual experience for us Eastern Seaboard Americans who take our electric power for granted.

A few weeks ago, back in January, we got our second decent snowstorm.  And given the much warmer winter this year, I knew the snow cover would not last, so the Sunday afternoon after the storm I tried to go cross-country ski-ing at Cockaponsett State Forest in Haddam, just a 15 minute drive south of Middletown on Route 9.  Cockaponsett is the second largest state forest in Connecticut.

Because the snowfall happened the day before that Sunday, I figured, based on past experience, that the snowmobilers would have groomed the off-road ski trails.  There's a perfect symbiosis between snowmobiling and cross-country ski-ing, except for the fact the one is noisy and the other totally quiet.  Snowmobiles pack down the fallen snow and make it much easier for the skier to glide through the forest.  It's a lot slower-going when I as a skier am confronted by a vast expanse of unpacked white stuff, especially when it the ambient temperature is above-freezing and the snow itself is wetter and less the consistency of powder.  When I got out of the Outback wagon and snapped my boots into my Alpina skis, I knew this was going to be a slow-going adventure into the back woods on the way to the swampy wetland pond.  I planned to write a blog story about the experience so I put my Canon digital SLR camera into the right pocket of my blue LLBean fleece jacket and tramped the skis back onto the blazed trail through the woods.  The trail I chose goes about a mile into the woods and ends at a vast open area surrounding the swampy wetland pond.

The first picture shows the trail ahead of me.  I'm the first human visitor to the snow covering the trial, so there is no evidence in the snow of tracks from skis or a snowmobile or snow shoes.  It's late afternoon, so the sun is coming from about the 2 o'clock position, so you can tell I'm heading in a southerly direction.

The second picture is looking down at my feet.  Well, actually, the snow was deep enough that my lower calves are visible but my ankles, feet, and most of my ski boots are fully covered by the somewhat wet snow cover.  Notice I'm wearing black Levi jeans and the blue fleece.  That's my typical ski outfit.  Very low tec and not at all chic chic.

To show what my Alpina skis look like, I lifted the skis up and banged them down against the snow cover, yielding the third photograph.

To show you what a newly-plowed ski trail looks like, I turned around and took the next photograph looking back north.  Notice the small marks on either side of the ski tracks, which are from the the points of my ski poles, which I use for balance, especially on downhills or slippery snow and icy areas.  You can tell I'm looking to the north on this shot because ther sun is not flooding through the trees, as it was in the first picture.

To show you what the forest looks like off the trail, I took the next shot. Because this is not shot through a wide-angle lens, you don't really get an idea of how vast the forest is.  When I've skied this section in total darkness, on a moon-less night, using only my very bright bicycle head-lamp for illumination, the light from battery-powered lamp shines brightly for a hundred feet or so and then quickly disappears into the vast black expanse of the night.  At those moments, honestly, I'm a bit scared, for I don't know what creatures might be out there and what mood they'll be in for an encounter with a human animal.  I do the night-skiing because I like to be scared, on a kind of existential thin ice, really.  Here's the picture looking into the forest.

Aside from the scary wild monsters of my imagination, the forest teems with a variety of creatures, who hide from me, because I AM a monster to them.  Many of these soldiers in God's (or Mother Nature's) army are tiny and delicate.  Like all dedicated environmentalists, they try their best to leave no trace.  One of them is probably a bird of some kind.  This photograph of the animal's footprints shows the only trace I see of it on that above-freezing cloudy Sunday afternoon.  I had to enhance the contrast of the original image so you'd be able to see the tracks.  They march from side-to-side across the photograph.

I took another shot of the same beings footprints, which you may be able to see more easily.  This time the tracks run from the bottom of the picture to the area at the top where a few delicate tree branches try to keep their heads out of the snow cover in order to make sure they can breathe some carbon dioxide.  I wonder if you'd agree that that image looks a bit like one of those delicate Japanese paintings you might see in a minor art museum or even hidden away in somebody's attic.

As I get close to the pond, the wetland is now directly under my skis so it begins to get harder to glide through the increasingly-wet snow cover.  To document the problem I'm having, I took the following picture.  This shows the icy watery ski tracks I make when my 160-pound, 5 foot 10 inch frame compresses the snow cover and presses the packed powder into direct contact with the unfrozen swamp water below.  Here's what the tracks look like.  They're kind of all over the place because I had to maneuver around the branches with much heavier skis, now that the snow was wet with water and sticking like pricker-bushes to the bottom of my Italian-made Alpinas.

Finally, after much effort, I negotiate the the maze, plodding, lumbering along, not skiing, and reach The Promised Land: the swampy wetland pond.  (Growing up in Philly, we called swamps what we now call wetlands.)  I'm shooting today with a normal lens, so, without a wide-angle substitute, it takes me three frames to take in the vast open expanse.  You can tell from the dying of the light that it's now late-afternoon on this mid-January winter day.  The cloud cover is moving from south to north.  The open northern section of the sky, from this perspective, looking to the southwest, is still fairly bright because sunset will not come for another hour or so.  I think it was about 4:30 p.m. when I photographed this awesome open space.  You'll notice the areas of watery dark gray in a mostly white field of snow on the wetland.  In the third shot, in the foreground are the leave-shorn rhododendron bushes which are a major part of the ground cover in this vast forest.  Here are the series of three pictures.  Unfortunately I don't have one of those computer software programs which enable even an amateur photographer to stitch together three images of a swamp into a single, seamless photograph of a wetland.  Sorry.

The next three images reveal the red flannel shirt I was wearing under the blue fleece.  I don't have any ear covering because it's not that cold.  When I ski in below-freezing conditions, I wear the same type of clothes, although I will put on heavier, warmer socks and I always cover the skin of my ears and wear gloves, to avoid frostbite, and stay warm of course.  The three photos I took of myself were shot with one hand holding the camera as far away from me as I could.  But the camera doesn't lie, so you will see the lines in my face, the gray in my hair, "warts and all," although I have not warts.  That's just an expression, as all of you, no doubt, know.   ha-ha-ha  lol  and lm( )o, as they/we say on Facebook.  I also varied my expression, ever so slightly, for each of the three shots.

The penultimate photo shows the tracks made in the snow by the end of my ski pole as I ski along through the woods.  The left side of the marking reminds me of a white spade on a deck of cards.  There are no white spades in cards, but you get the idea.  

The last photo shows what all the roads through the forest are like after a snowstorm.  The state environmental protection department does a certain amount of maintenance in the forest but the roads are never plowed.  The tire tracks you see in the roadway are from the four-wheel trucks which drive through the forest.  Those tracks are actually great for skiing, because they're packed-down snow-pack.  I would have skied on them the day I took these pictures, but I wanted to show you the back-country conditions in which I love to find extreme fun and adventure.  Also, as you can tell, it was just past sunset and the forest was getting dark and dreary, and somewhat.......SCARY.

On Becoming a Christian and Being Drunken, Continually, on Life, through Christ-----Baptized as a Baby at Johnson Memorial Methodist Church and Baptized Again, and Born Again, at Age 62 at Zion First Black Baptist Church

I was born a white Methodist.  I was baptized without my knowledge when I was just a few months old.  Yesterday I was reborn a black Baptist, in a baptismal pool at Zion First Black Baptist Church, 16 James A. Moses Drive, in Middletown, Connecticut.  This time, 62 years after my first baptism, I freely chose to have Rev. Carleton Giles, my new minister, stand in for John the Baptist.  And when I hit the water and was pushed under after Rev. Giles ordered me to "Hold your breath," I was surrounded by my Baptist brothers and sisters, by Susie, my wife, by John Hall, my former minister at the white congregational church, and my old friend Mark Brady.  (Mark's younger than I but he's know me for 35 years, so that makes him my "old" friend.)  Before being "forcibly" submersed, Rev. Giles asked me three questions: "What is your name?"  "Robert Paul Dutcher."  "Do you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?"  "Yes."  And, finally, "When did you begin to believe?"  Now crying, tears of joy which nearly prevented me from getting out my answer, I answered: "When I began coming to this church, in July of two-thousand and ten."  Susie later told me of my slip; I first went to Zion last July, in two-thousand and eleven.  I suspect the reason for my Freudian slip is this.  Until I set foot in my black baptist church last summer, I hadn't experienced religion, Christianity, Christian song and liturgy, or anything remotely like how we praise God at Zion, since the nights of the church suppers at my boyhood Methodist church, when we sang the old familiar church hymns to the accompaniment of an old upright piano.  

In my first baptism, way back in the day, in 1950, I imagine I cried like a baby, because I was a baby.  This time I cried like a baby, because I'm now a man, and real men cry when they're moved to tears, as I was yesterday, before, during, and after the miracle of my rebirth.

After I got "dunked" yesterday at Zion, one of my sisters, Stephanie, and I greeted each other after the more than two-hour service. (With baptisms we start a half-hour early; when it's also a communion first Sunday of the month, add another half-hour onto the usual hour to hour-and-a half service; that may seem long to you, but I assure you, it's never boring in a black baptist church like mine at Zion; I'd have to be in extremis to want to miss a service voluntarily.)   Stephanie, who retired after 30 years as a Spanish teacher in the Milford, Connecticut public school system, joked, with a twinkle in her eyes, and the corner of her mouth turning slightly up as it re-formed her lovely smile, "Bob, I was wondering if you might come up out of that baptismal pool as an actually-black black baptist!"  I nearly wet my now-dry pants with laughter.  After the baptism the three of us baptizees, a teenage young lady and a teenage young man, and I were led by our Baptismal Spirit Guide, sister Doris, back down to the parish hall in beneath the sanctuary.  We were then asked to change from our wet white baptismal clothes in the rest rooms back into our Sunday finest.  We were given black plastic bags to store our wet clothes.

Back in Philly, where I was born, my mother was born into a Methodist family.  Her mother was born in England, an Episcopalean. Momma's father was a lifelong Methodist and Republican.  The Heydrick girls, my momma, Aunt Margie, and Aunt Ellie, all loved to sing at Bridesburg Methodist Church.  Granddaddy Heydrick was the Sunday School Superintendent.  During the Depression years, my grandfather lost his grocery store because he was generous to a fault and gave too much food on credit.  Unfortunately, nobody had good credit in those days.  The family went belly-up but eventually Granddaddy paid back all of his creditors.

My parents lived with mom's family at 2407 Spring Garden Street in the Bridesburg section of Philadelphia until they were able to buy a row house in the Frankford section of Philadelphia after my parents moved back from Seattle, where Dad last was stationed by the U.S. Army.  We all went to Frankford's Johnson Memorial Methodist Church until we moved to a single-family house in the step-up Northeast Philly neighborhood in 1954, when I was four.  At the Frankford church, my only memory is being scared too death by a female youth minister who preached a children's worship sermon, in a room off the main adult sanctuary, about the chains and fires of Hell, which awaited any bad little boy or girl.  I didn't care about the girls' fate, but I knew I was a boy, and I must have had some subliminal consciousness of my own badness because I remember running out of that fire and brimstone homily into the security of sitting between mom and dad in the big sanctuary.  That was not a good first encounter with Christianity, and maybe it created a fertile field in my mind for the atheism which eventually took root and flowered during my college philosophy years.

The northwest corner of our large home on the northwest corner of Rhawn and Frontenac Streets adjoined the home of the large Irish-Catholic Mountain family.  Mary Beth "Betsy" Mountain was a year older than I.  Like my wife, Mary Beth was a very pretty blue-eyed blonde person.  She was also an intolerant Roman Catholic.  "Bobby, you have a Black Mark on your soul, because you're not Catholic," Betsy informed me one day, as we were doing something together which found me listening to this lecture, warning really, by Mother Superior M.B. Mountain, on Frontenac Street, right outside the east side of Mr. and Mrs. Kemper's house.  The lecture, the warning, the homily, the accusation, whatever it was, scared the heck out of me.  It also had the effect of causing me, unconsciously, to revile Catholicism as an intolerant religion for which I had nothing good to say or think from that time on.  Well, at least until I heard of people like Mother Theresa.  Come to think of it, what really changed my mind about the Catholics was the person who really turned my head, and the course of my life, and that's my beautiful blonde, blue-eyed, and Catholic wife, Susan Price Dutcher

But before I met Susie, I also started having doubts about my own Protestant religious tradition.  After we moved to Rhawnhurst in 1954, my parents switched from Johnson Memorial to Tabernacle Memorial Methodist Church.  And that's where I became a devout little Christian boy.  I was always a good reader and loved the positive vibes I got when I read the scripture aloud.  At 8 years old, maybe 10, I thought I wanted to become a minister.  I didn't like the stiff formality of Rev. Donald Miller.  He always wore a black "priest's" outfit with a white clerical collar, one of those ones where the white part was a little square in the vicinity of his Adam's apple.  Very much like the little white fluff on my son Jamie's cat, Russell, whom I take care of now.  The big difference is, Russell is a more inviting creature of God than Rev. Miller, at least to me.  I didn't understand much of what Rev. Miller preached, but I knew it didn't make me feel very good inside.

What I did love about the Methodist church in Rhawnhurst was the singing.  Especially when we sang the old-time hymns in the basement parrish hall, after a church supper.  Somebody played the piano and Roy Diebler led the singing.  I remember Mr. Diebler as looking something like Walt Disney.  Mr. Diebler had a similar mustache and slicked-back hair, but he wore glasses.  Walt Disney was un-spectacled.  Mr. Diebler was an enthusiastic song leader.  He had a gold ring on the third finger of his right hand, with a purple stone in the setting.  It may have been a men's club ring, like a Masonic ring.  And when he led the hymns, he made his right hand into a fist and rocked his right arm back and forth, like the pendulum of a very fast clock.  There was always a big smile on his face.  The piano was an old upright which did not have a perfect sound but nobody paid attention to the imperfections.  John Wesley, the circuit-riding English-born founder and chief apostle of Methodism in the United States, believed that the best way to praise God was to sing with enthuiasm and volume.  And so we did, back in the 50's in that parrish hall at the little Methodist church on Loney Street in Northeast Philly.

Those were such happy years in my life.  I didn't have a care in the world in the 50's and early 60's.  School was no big deal and the rest of the time we played outside.  There were no cell-phones or computers to check, no video games to play to obsession and distraction from all else, no parents to supervise us or interfere in whatever mischief we dreamed up that day, and no play-dates or other scheduled activities.  When my mother signed me up for clarinet lessons one summer, I hated the vibration of the reed when I blew into that licorice stick and had zero passion for the instrument, so I road my single-speed bicycyle to a little forested area between our house and the high school where the lessons were given and hung out there until I knew I safely could pedal home and lie to my mother about how much fun the clarinet lesson had been.  Yeah, right.

And then, just when I was getting my grove in my little Garden of Eden, God got bored with me.  I wasn't doing anything dramatic with the life He gave me.  I'm quite sure God is a frustrated writer.  Because He has no body and is pure Mind, he cannot write stories himself.  In fact, he can't "do" anything directly.  So, wanting to watch some interesting theater, He created human beings and made them in such a way that they'd disobey all his many commandments and enact some pretty interesting dramas.  The way God did this to me, and I suspect a few others, was to send flashes of Testosterone coursing through my body at about age 13.  By 14, I was a total Testosterone Zombie.  At about that time, I've heard I was seen walking, running even, from the Garden of Eden, with my arms raised in front of me, parallel to the ground, and my eyes wide open, with pupils fully dilated.  But most noticeably, I have it on reliable information, my mouth was always running at full speed, arguing, always arguing.  About anything and everything.

 In my teens, my mother required my brother Bill and I to continue to go to Sunday School and church, totally against our own perceptions of what was best for us.  "Oh, boys, please can't you go to church?  Do it for my sake. Please."  I have no idea why it was so important for us to go to church?  In my case, it must have been related to the fact that mother had no clue what I was doing in my free time, didn't really care what it was, but figured The Church would make sure Bill and I were kept on the straight and narrow path of righteousness for His name's sake.

In retailiation, I suppose, I made myself a total argumentative pain in the rear-end of my admiring but irritated Sunday School teacher, Harriet Rettgers.  Harriet was married, but childless, so she taught Sunday School.  She was a proof reader for a book publisher.  Mrs. Rettgers always wore very high heels, roccoco plastic colored glasses frames held on her head with interesting loose-fitting temple holders, and mostly smiled when I argued the absurdity of the standard, "Government-Issued," Christian theology, as presented by non-intellectuals to non-college Sunday School "students."  It's philosophically easier to tear the Idols of Literal Christian Biblical Interpretation limb-for-limb than it is to shoot deer in a zoo with a heat-seeking shoulder-mounted Raytheon-manufactured missle, from 5 feet away.  The only Houdini-like escape for street-smart Christian theologians is The Metaphorical Approach to the text.  And it doesn't take an Oxford-educated philosophical-type to recognize this simple fact.  Harriet would frequently take me aside, in the small chapel where we had Sunday School, next to the larger main church building, and inform me, warn me, beg me, "Bobby, I know what you're doing.  I understand your questions, your doubts, but if you keep this up I'm afraid you'll destroy the faith of the other kids."  I don't recall what I said back to her but I do know this for a fact: I didn't care what impact I had on anybody else.  Probably, I was pissed my mother required me to sit through these classes, so I did what any self-respecting ruthless, heartless teenager would do: I kept on arguing until Father Time kicked me out of the Sunday School and into a more fertile intellectual field, Wesleyan University, Philosophy 101, taught by the smartest man I've ever met, L. Kent Bendall.  Ken co-authored a book about the philosophy of religion when he was in the philosophy department of Wellesley College outside Boston, before coming to Wesleyan.  My older sister Carol took an introductory philosophy course with Professor Bendall, hated it, but I wound up with he copy of Ken's book.  Carol and I both encountered Ken in the 60's, but she was more interested in music theory and French language fluency.  Unlike Carol, I took to philosophy like a fish to water.  Carol and philosophy mixed about as easily as thick crude oil and ice-cold water.

I still have the textbook.  Fineberg was the editor of this wonderful comilation, "Problems in Philosophy" I think is the title of brief introductions to all the major topics in the history of philosophy and excerpts from the orginal texts.  [I'm writing this from the old house we're trying to sell.  The book is at Susie's new house, where the book is on a bookshelf upstairs, and I don't want to ask her to go up and look for it to check the title.]The year was 1967.  The first topic was arguments for the existence of God.  The first text was Anselm's Ontological Argument.  "God is that than which none greater can be conceived."  Being an existent, so the major premise goes, is greater than being a non-existent, at least in the human conception of what is greater and what is lesser.  Inherent in the ordinary, common-sense meaning of the term "God" is having the quality of being the greatest.  Therefore, since God is assumed to be the greatest, then He also must exist, or he woudn't be the greatest of which man can conceive.  Thus, God exists.  QED. There are some philosophical problems with Anselm's approach, but in case you find it persuasive, I'm not quite as heartless as I was at 15, so I won't fire the shoulder-mounted missle I still carry around with me, just in case, at the Ontological Argument.  At the moment, in this story, my interest is history, etiology even [of my own religious faith], not ontology generally.

There is, however, a connection, in the present, between my black baptist church and that Wesleyan philosophy class from 45 years ago.  Rev. Usher Toler, one of Rev. Giles's assistants, led the first intercessory prayer ritual at Zion in one of the first services I attended there last year.  His prayer motif, the theme of his prayer, was that there is None Greater than God.  That phrase, "None Greater," resonated deep in my soul.  Frequently, after that service, when Rev. Toler would get up to give a prayer in the pulpit in later services, I yielded to my impulse and shouted out, "None Greater," when Rev. Toler was making one sort or other of claims, announcements really, about the power of God.  That's the sort of freedom I love about my new church.  If the spirit moves you to do something like that, shout out, clap, break out into a dance, you're free to do it.  Until I wrote this story today, I was not aware of the connection between Anselm's Ontological Argument ("God is that than which None Greater can be conceived.") and my noticing, and focusing upon, the same phrase when uttered by Rev. Usher Toler.

And as I've suggested at the outset of this story, there's also a connection between my boyhood love of the singing led by Roy Diebler in the Methodist church and the singing at Zion led by Rev. Giles right from the pulpit, or Minister Kathy Burgess, or Willie D., an older former Methodist from South Carolina, or brother Bob Bailey and sister Carolyn Coleman of The Praise Team.  When I hear these hymns, many times the same ones I loved as a little boy, or the ones which sprang from the long tradition of the black American Baptist Church which I never heard before I arrived at Zion, I get chills of interest and excitement which course through the same arteries and veins which transport my life-blood throughout my old man's body.

In college at Wesleyan, I stopped going to church, except on trips back to Philly to see my parents and old friends.  Then, it was fun to go back to the old church stomping grounds to learn how far I had come, intellectually, from my family, and church, of my birth and boyhood.  I also moved from agnosticism to what I thought of as atheism.  And so my church-going became fitful, intermittent, until, that is, Susie and I had the first child of our own.  Kevin Christopher Dutcher in June of 1976. Then, suddenly, I was seized with the notion that I wanted my son, and any future child God might bless us with, to have a religious upbringing, just like Susie and I did.

And that reminds me that I don't want to forget to mention that Susie, like Mary Beth "Betsy" Mountain was brought up Roman Catholic.  Susie went to an all-girls parochial school in Milwaukee, Holy Angels, from kindergarten through 10th grade, when she moved over to Brookfield East Public High School to lend her younger sister Maryglenn Price moral support when Maryglenn decided she wanted a co-ed high school experience.  Like Betsy Mountain, Susie was a blue-eyed blonde, although Susie was more beautiful, and much smarter.  Susie's an open-minded person and never once told me I had any black marks on my soul because of my non-Catholic upbringing.  I have since added black marks to my soul from some of the "bad" things I've done in life, and mostly gotten away with, but I doubt God cares very much what any of us does, as long as we're leading lives of drama and interest, and learning from our mistakes and trying hard not to repeat the really hurtful ones.

So Susie and I found religion again, one we could share, at First Church of Christ, Congregational, 190 Court Street, in Middletown, Connecticut.  We've both been very active there.  But after I began recovering from my suicidal depression (September, 2010 through December, 2010), and I got a taste of the "uninhibited" life, my friends there found me too much too handle.  So I tried South Congregational Church on Pleasant Street, accross from the South Green, at the south end of Main Street in Middletown.  That lasted all of June and into the first week or two of July of 2010.  Until, that is, the Sunday in early July at South Church when, during the announcement by parishoners of their Concerns  I recounted the almost Job-like encounters with tragedy my family was spared on my son K.C. and grandson Liam's second Habitat For Humanity House Building trip to Honduras in June, 2010 and Susie's nearly deadly bicycle accident on July 2, 2010.  I was told by a woman who heads the Habitat for Humanity group in Middlesex County, Connecticut, who goes to South Church, in a confrontation she initated with me after the service, "Let me tell you something, Mr. Dutcher.  I'm the Vice Moderator of this church.  [Maybe she said "Moderator"; I can't recall.] We NEVER hold an imaginary gun barrel to our minister's temple! NEVER! No matter what story you're telling.  Okay?!"  She didn't say, but in my imagination it was as if she added, "Capiche?!"  And I looked her straight in the eye, dead in the eye, really, and calmly and coldly replied, "I'll think about it."  And then I walked away from her, left the sanctuary, and entered their parish hall for the coffee and conversation time after the service.  After exchanging emails with the pastor of that church, in which she asked me to please not make such an announcement again, I never returned.

One Sunday morning when I was walking from my car to the front entrance of South Church, I saw a black man, brother Hosea Gainer, walking in the direction of South Church.  I said good morning to him and he smiled and stopped to chat.  I asked him if he was going to South Church, as I hadn't ever seen him there and South Church, like First Church, is almost exclusively a white congregation.  Brother Hosea explained that he goes to Zion First Black Baptist Church next to the YMCA, which is right across Main Street from South Church.  He said he hoped I'd come to Zion some Sunday to see if I liked it.  After feeling unwelcome at South Church for the side of myself I decided to show the Southies when I revealed my near-connection to the Jewish bible's Job character, I decided to give Zion a try and did so in mid-July, 2010.  Unlike Lot's wife, who turned to salt when she looked back at the smoldering Sodom and Gomorrah, I never looked back at the white churches, not even in my rear-view mirror.

I felt an immediate emotional connection with my black baptist church culture.  I love to dance.  I can dance there, in the pew I sit in, either the first or second pew on the right side, or, if so moved by the Spirit, I could dance up the center aisle or in between the first pews and the altar.  I love to sing.  We do a lot of singing, especially of the old-time hymns of my boyhood Methodist church.  I love to emote, sometimes loudly, even shouting out.  That's okay at Zion also.

Rev. Giles sometimes dances a bit in and around the pulpit, even down towards the pews on either side of the altar where the church Deacons sit on the left side and the church Officers on the right.  Rev. Giles often sings from the pulpit, either to work up the congregation to a fevered pitch, or to calm us down when we're a bit too fevered and he needs to move us on to the next part of the service.  He even plays the piano behind and to the left of the altar, back near where the choir sits.  On the other side of the rear of the church is the electric organ, the drum set, and the area where one or more guitar players play their musical praises to Jesus and the Lord.  And Rev. Giles also emotes, jokes, and viscerally leads us in giving thanks to God for getting us up that morning, making our limbs move, our minds work.  Rev. Giles also is a student of the bible.  He gives meaty, intelligent, erudite sermons.  He's very well-spoken.  There's no question he loves to put on a great show, all for the glory of God.

In a recent "Bobs blog" post, I discussed the poem I've come to love, "Be Always Drunken," by the French romantic poet of the 19th Century, Charles Baudelaire.  Being drunken, in this wonderful poem, really means being excited by life, high on experience, affirming the goodness of existence.  When I say that I've accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, a secular way of understanding what I mean is this.  Jesus is the name of a man who once walked the earth.  He lived His life in such a way that people who had soured on life, as I had when I wanted to end my life in the Fall of 2010, used Jesus as the occasion to regain their love of life and once again "Be Drunken" on Life.

It is neither necessary nor sufficient to "Be Always Drunken" on Life to be a religious person or a believer in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  One can be Jewish, or Muslim, or Christian, or secular humanist, or agnostic, or atheist, and also "Be Always Drunken" on Life.  I am so constituted, by biology and history, as to "Be Always Drunken" on Life in part because of my association with, and experiences in, a black baptist protestant church.  I don't care how you find a way to "Be Always Drunken" on Life, but I hope you do.