My friend Bruce Garlington died on May 13, 2021, leaving the world a lot less vivid. Bruce was a great drummer – so great he didn’t even need drums. Any solid surface would serve. He improvised his life entirely, rolling along by impulse and chance meetings. Other people fascinated him, and whatever their previous attitudes or prejudices, he soon overwhelmed them with his combination of humor, delight in being alive, and unfeigned interest in their lives, their loves, their histories. Everywhere he’d been – and he’d been damn near everywhere – he’d left friends behind him. He loved dogs, I think because they shared his sense that every day the world was new. I tried to capture some of him in a poem:
Bright Red Lipstick
During the night, some time
before the birds started,
my friend Bruce told me
of a Oaxacan song called
“The Iguana.” This poor lizard
hangs out in his hole,
but he can’t stand it all the time,
he has to come out
for a little sun.
“Oh, man, why don’t you
go back in your hole, you’re so ugly,”
all the other animals sing to him.
It never became clear
how the song came out, or the iguana.
Many things Bruce begins
are not supplied with endings.
You could ask for one,
but he would be in his next story.
“Flor’s father, one time he got in jail.
He was drinking with his cousin,
and this truck driver
comes in the cantina, ‘Ey,
who’s here got to move that Porsche rojo?
It blocks my alley.’
About the time Flor’s father
turns on the ignition,
this big cop hand clamps down on his wrist.
They all go to the jail.
‘You were driving while intoxicated,’
the judge tells Flor’s father,
‘you must spend some days
in jail. And you,’
he tells the cousin, ‘you will pay
5,000 pesos for calling this officer
a son of a bitch.’
‘Good,’ the cousin says.
‘Here are 10,000 pesos.
You’re a son of a bitch, too.’
Flor told me that story
in Vera Cruz. Oooohh.
They party hard in Vera Cruz.”
Bruce gets up, lamed by sitting,
halts across the kitchen,
kicking an empty bottle
so it spins behind him.
“They party day and night and day.
When you’re somewhere else
and you see some folks walking like
this… they’re from Vera Cruz.
But you know what? You know what?
You know what, Malcolm?
They were my best crowd. Every day,
about two o’clock,
I’d stagger down to the beach – “
(he staggers back toward me
and the new bottle, spinning
the empty on the floor again,
it spins sounding like
skateboard wheels) – “my head
all baaaad,
and I’d be thumping up the sand,
some kid see me and go,
‘Sa bop a doodle-ee, sop bop a da’
on his log, and I’d go,
‘Sop a doppa doo-wa, a soppa da daaa’
on my chest.
‘Venes a cantina esta noché,’
I’d say, and he’d bring four-five
with him. That’s how it started,
every night.” By this time
my house smells like a bar again,
the birds are waking up.
“This Ethiopian gal I was telling
you about, she was beautiful
on the inside as she was on the out.”
What? I’d drifted off into birdsong.
What Ethiopian?
Ethiopian?
“She was sitting at this table
right down front one night,
she and Klaus her old man,
and this black-haired beauty
comes over to her, says,
‘Excuse me, have I seen you in Vogue?’
‘I don’t believe
you’ve seen me,’ she says,
goes back to talking to Klaus.
The black-haired one, she
sits down, what can she do,
and when the lights go down for next set,
I’m watching her slip this thing
out of her bag, I think,
‘Uh-oh,’ but then I see she’s
putting on lipstick with it.
Like she doesn’t want
anyone to notice.
We make the set. Lights
come up, she walks out between me
and this Ethiopian and Klaus,
everything is moving. And she’s got
on this bright, red
lipstick.”
The birds are louder than the cars,
the honeysuckle vine explodes
in the pallor of morning.
