4/12/23
Newsletter #305
The Crack of Dawn
I’ve known John Brinkman since 1967, when I was in 4th grade and he was in 3rd, and we both attended Franklin Elementary School, but we weren’t friends. He was a punk 3rd-grader and meant nothing to me. However, we had a number of friends in common, so I knew John, and we were part of the same crowd – the troublemakers. Me and Henry Hook and Kevin Corcoran were the biggest troublemakers in the school. These positions were rated by how many detentions and suspensions you’d racked up. Henry was the king and nobody could touch him.
Henry Hoover Hook was a fiery, pushy redheaded kid whose family lived in the historic little red schoolhouse, built in like 1857, that had absolutely no insulation. I slept over on a winter night and it was like being in a barn; we could see our breath inside the house. But Henry was the direct connection between me and John.
Very strangely, Henry was also good buddies with my good friend Jim Rose, the richest, smartest kid in the neighborhood. And Jim was friends with Brinkman. But I still wasn’t friends with Brinkman. John Brinkman seemed like an idiot to me.
Anyway, me and Henry and Kevin were the school’s biggest headaches – we were the smart alecks, the class clowns, the disrupters. John and his buddies were coming up from behind there in the 3rd grade, but they of course would never have a Henry Hook, so we would always be the baddest motherfuckers.
[In my movie, Morning, Noon & Night (2018), I wrote a speech about Henry, delivered in a toilet stall while two characters are snorting coke. I changed Henry’s name from Henry Hoover Hook to Calvin Coolidge Claw, a change of which I’m quite proud].
I was just thinking – as folks who write occasionally do – what’s the point? You know what? I’m not going to get to the point right away. I started off discussing John Brinkman, which led me directly to Henry, so let’s just stay there for a second. Brackets be damned!
I think this speech about Hook, who became Claw, in my movie, Morning, Noon & Night, is one is one of the best scenes I’ve ever done (I rented the widest-angle lens I could find). And in the scene the one character tells the other, as they snort coke off of a toilet top, how Claw walked into work one day at the insurance company where he had worked for years, took a pistol and blew his brains out. And it was open casket funeral.
OK, so where were we? Oh, Brinkman.
When was this? Fifteen years ago? I went to a party with my girlfriend Lisa, that she had arranged, at the house of a gal with whom I went to elementary school, Margaret. It was a good party and there were a lot of people there, many of whom I knew from way the hell back. As Lisa and I were making our way into the house, through the throng of the people, an incredibly beautiful, dark-haired young lady walked past who literally took my breath away. Fuck! That girl was gorgeous. Lisa was behind me and watched. She said, “That’s John Brinkman’s daughter.” I said, “Get the fuck out of here. John Brinkman can’t have a daughter that beautiful. John’s an asshole.”
Margaret lived in a terrific house, half in the woods, with a cool deck, which is where John and I found ourselves since we’re both smokers. And we started talking, and we haven’t stopped since. It’s like we’d always been friends, but we weren’t; we were friends of friends. And yes, that beautiful young gal was indeed one of his two grown daughters. It had been quite a few years since we had seen each other – like those girl’s whole lives, plus more.
Brinkman was still an asshole, I’d just never knew he was such a bright, funny asshole. That’s why diverse characters like Henry Hook and Jim Rose obviously both liked him. But also, and it’s a shared inbred trait, John and I both bring weed with us to parties. So I say first, “Hey, I’ve got a joint of some great shit, anyone want to smoke?” and Lisa, John, and a guy we’ve known forever, Scott, who was a lovable, blond, handsome, dufus, all accompanied me out to the driveway to smoke that joint. And it was a good joint. No, it was an excellent joint, brought by me. Scott drunkenly held forth about the partying spree he was on, and that he’d been up for twenty-four hours, had been doing coke, and had visited the titty bars in Windsor, Ontario. Being polite people, the three of us listened to this idiotic nonsense as we smoked this terrific joint, then we went back into the crowded party.
I was out on the deck smoking cigarettes and jawing with John, and there were a lot of people in the house. Then, there was a loud thud from inside – loud enough to be heard outside. Well, that thud was Scott’s head hitting the wall, then hitting the floor where he was presently passed out cold. EMS had been called. Lisa came out of the house and said those often-spoken words, “Let’s get the fuck outta here!” which we did, pronto.
Margaret told Lisa that the next day she found Scott out on her driveway on his hands and knees searching for the roach of the joint we’d smoked the night before. He told her that it had to have been spiked with something, that’s why he passed out. Well, Scott’s an idiot. I brought the joint, and it was just plain old good weed. Neither me, Lisa, nor John passed out. Maybe it was the twenty-four hour parting spree, and the coke. Whatever it was, Scott’s head hit the wall and the floor so hard it shook the house.
And that was the night I became reacquainted with John Brinkman.
As kids we would often use our rapier-like cutting wits and call him Stinkman. I still do.
A new day will dawn within a few minutes. We made it again.