Summer–Fall 1996: Holding Pattern

I graduated from Hamilton College in June ’96 and with it the clean identity of being a student and living on campus. I went back to Spokane right after and my plan was to join the Peace Corps which seemed cool, but I’d missed the application window and wasn’t prepared to wait a year.

By August of that year I was coaching cross‑country at Saint George’s School in Spokane, taking over for my father while my parents and younger brother were on sabbatical in Scotland. My middle brother Mike was away at St. Michael’s College in Vermont. I stayed alone in my parents’ house—rural, exposed, already marked by a break‑in a few years earlier and the occasional drunk driver knocking to use the phone. Nights mattered. Sounds carried. I was alert, but not dramatic about it.

I started coaching started as soon as it was allowed, about three weeks before the season. I coached both girls and boys and ran with the team; except for a brief varsity stint sophomore year at Hamilton, I was in the best shape of my life. The teams were legitimately good. The girls made state—no podium finish, but it mattered. One runner, Ben Robinson, stands out. I drove him home after practice and we talked. It was quiet mentorship without ceremony.

The coaching paid about $2,500 for the season and ran only in the afternoons, so I needed another job. I found work at a downtown photo studio that processed school yearbook photos. I parked up on the South Hill to save money and walked fifteen minutes into town. One morning around 7:15 I walked by a police sting at a house—a. drug bust, by the look of it. An officer asked if I was with the house; I said no, just heading to work, and he told me to move along.

My first assignment was the big printer. An older full‑time guy—let’s call him Mark—trained me. You had to load the machine in the dark. I took a coffee break at 10:30 when he said I could, and when I came back Mark told me I’d messed up the setup. Paper was all over the place, and he laughed and told me to be more careful. Mark liked Americana music; I played CDs on the boombox. Later I was moved to developing—another machine, pitch black, learned entirely by feel. I didn’t think I could do it, but the learning curve clicked the way WHCL the radio station had at Hamilton. Sometimes I worked again with Mark; it was the better gig.

My routine was simple and tiring. Up around six, nearly an hour’s drive across town, work until early afternoon, then straight back to Saint George’s to coach from about 3:45 to six. I’d drive Ben home, go back to the house, have one or two beers and some food, and sleep by eight. I wasn’t smoking and only once I got a little weed and smoked behind the house. It felt weird and lonely. I was lonely in general, but the long days made it manageable.

Weekends softened rather than broke the pattern. I drove to coffee shops, bookstores, and CD stores—Annie’s Bookstore downtown, new and used. I read, though not as much as a few years earlier: mostly Anthony Powell and Le Carré—nothing academic at this point.

By November both jobs had end dates, and I knew this wasn’t a life—just a holding pattern.

Late Fall 1996: Before Boston

Japan entered through practicality rather than some kind of master plan. My mom had been talking with the mother of a younger Saint George’s student and she had been teaching English conversation at a company called NOVA in Japan. At the time NOVA was enormous and hired broadly. The interview would be in Boston. I called Ian, who was living with his parents, and asked if I could crash. He said yes, so I took my little money and left Spokane mid‑November, just after state cross‑country.

Before Boston I went to Pullman to see Mason Anderson, who was still at Washington State University. I picked him up and we drove to Seattle to see a concert. We got stoned in the car and I drove stoned through rush‑hour Seattle traffic—bad judgment that somehow didn’t end badly. We made the show and the hotel. It was a good time.

From there it was time for Boston.

Late Fall 1996: Boston and New York City

I arrived in Boston knowing the NOVA interview was still weeks away. I stayed at Ian’s parents’ house. Baran Tekkora from Hamilton was also there for part of the time, and Elena—Ian’s on‑and‑off girlfriend and my crush from Hamilton—was around for about a week or ten days, but not the whole stretch. In total I stayed roughly three weeks, with the interview at the end.

Ian’s dad was kind and mostly kept to his study, which was filled with classical music—his obsession. I asked him if he knew Arvo Pärt, whom I liked, and he did; he put something on for me and that was enough for mutual understanding.

My daily routine was simple. I’d get up, eat English muffins, drink coffee, and then head out alone to explore Boston by bus, train, and on foot. I walked the parks, wandered neighborhoods, and spent a lot of time in record stores—especially Newbury Comics. I spent what little money I had on CDs and experience without much restraint.
I was deep into Ron Sexsmith’s first record then. I carried a Discman and listened to it constantly while moving through the city, sometimes to the point of tears. I also bought a record connected somehow to This Mortal Coil—female‑voiced, adjacent rather than the band itself—but the exact artist has slipped away. At the time I was excited, wide open to it.

At night I mostly stayed in. Ian and I watched TV and talked. He was dealing with some personal issues at the time, but we had a chance to go to Newbury Comics together a few times and I recall we went out drinking once. One glorious evening we went to see the band The Red House Painters play at Mama Kin downtown. They played a nine minute version of “The Little Drummer Boy” and I melted into the furniture. It was transcendent.

During the wait I realized I liked Boston enough to consider staying. I thought about looking for a job and even called a Zen center to ask about renting a room for a month or two. But the man I spoke to on the phone was super rude and unfriendly. Even though he eventually said I could stay, I didn’t want to deal with him if he was a central figure there, so I dropped the idea. I had no job lined up anyway so it was probably a good call.

By Thanksgiving Baran and Elena were gone. I went to New York City to visit Miche—the Swiss‑Cambodian friend who is featured in my Hamilton series—and his mother at her apartment. I stayed the night and we had a nice Thanksgiving. Afterward I returned to Boston.

The NOVA interview itself was anticlimactic. It was a group interview—about six of us—with a recruiter who had previously taught for NOVA in Japan. He was heavyset and talked about how great Japan was because of the free food samples at department stores and supermarkets. I wore my only suit and showed up early, but it was clear that didn’t matter much. I had a degree. I was in.

I left Boston around the first week of December.

Winter 1996–Spring 1997: Warehouse, Money, Departure

When I got back to Spokane my parents and younger brother were home from Scotland, and the house filled back up. I had the NOVA job, but it didn’t start until April, so I needed work to bridge the gap.

I went back to Gonzaga University and checked the job board. I found a job at a food bank warehouse on the eastern outskirts of downtown. I drove out there every day and worked for about two and a half months, stocking shelves and moving food around on small motorized carts.

The warehouse ran on strict time. Breaks were enforced: two fifteen-minute breaks and a one-hour lunch. No lateness. The clock mattered.

The people were the education.

The first person I remember was a high school student there on a court-ordered work study after bringing a knife to school. He talked about it openly, even boasted, and said once, “I’m a Jewish Santa Claus; I don’t exist.” He was only there a week or so and then disappeared.

There were full-time workers and temps like me. One full-time guy had once been a top counselor in Spokane, burned out completely, and now worked in the freezer. He seemed genuinely happy there. Several others were former truck drivers who talked casually about carrying guns while driving.

I became friends with a fellow temp named Jeff. He was in AA, NA, and Sex Addicts Anonymous and showed off the bracelets he’d earned for staying clean. He was a chain smoker. His sponsor had told him that if you’re trying to quit booze, coke, and women all at once, the last thing you should do is quit smoking. We drove around after work and talked and talked. He was in his early to mid-thirties, a sweet guy, and I related to him—maybe because of, not despite, his problems. I saw him a few times after I quit and later wrote him a letter from Japan that spring, but we eventually lost touch.

Some of the temps desperately wanted full-time jobs. One woman—Clara—was in her forties and needed it badly. When a position opened up, it went instead to Sharlene, the eighteen-year-old daughter of one of the office managers. As a temp, Sharlene had been pleasant; once she became full-time she turned abruptly bossy. Clara didn’t get the job.

That period taught me what real poverty looked like. Clara and her friend were adults with no cushion at all. Lunch was strategy: a four-dollar buffet. Once I took them to a deli where lunch cost about seven dollars, and they thought I was being luxurious. My parents had always lived paycheck to paycheck too, but they had two full-time salaries, a house, and some nice things. This was different. I learned a lot from Jeff, Clara, and her friend about how the world actually worked.

There was also an African American guy who took the bus to work because he didn’t have a car. He lived near the Shadle area by the large public school there. He told me that every male he knew had been in prison or was in prison—except him. I started driving him home. He was deeply thankful and surprised that I would drive into his neighborhood. Another education.

I was able to save about twelve hundred dollars from the food bank gig. About six weeks before leaving for Japan I’d had enough and quit one day. Jeff later told me that all the temps were fired the very next day. Sharlene’s mother thanked me profusely and wished me well, and then they were all let go.

As I was getting ready to leave, my maternal grandparents visited. My grandfather Bill Kolb was still healthy then, about six years before his death. He gave me seventeen hundred dollars in cash. That brought my total to nearly three thousand. My mother didn’t know about the gift at the time and is still surprised he gave me so much, especially since my grandparents were always financially strapped themselves.

On my last night in Spokane I chose a Mediterranean restaurant and we went as a family. NOVA had asked whether I wanted a big city or a smaller one. I said smaller. I was initially assigned to Osaka, which is a major metropolitan area. Then, one day just before flying, I got an email saying a spot had opened up in Kumamoto on the southern island and asking if I wanted it. I said yes.

I flew out in April 1997. The plane still had a smoking section. By the time the money ran out, I had my first NOVA paycheck.

The rest follows from there.

NOTE: This is the first short story in my upcoming collection. The second is here. This is a work of fiction.

I met Simona in the smoking room of Osaka’s Kansai International Airport (KIX) in very late November. She was 42, Lithuanian, and drop dead gorgeous. I was on my way to New York to see bands and she was going back to Philly where she was living. We smoked a few last cigarettes and boarded the plane.

On the plane I was seated in the first ten rows of coach and she was seated in the back. She asked my neighbor in the middle seat (I had the aisle) to switch and the woman agreed. Simona was next to me.

She immediately ordered two white wines for her and two for me. The stewardess said, well, it’s one at a time, but since this is an international flight… The flight crew would alter its point of view of the two of us in due course.

We talked, and soon we were flirting. Full on. She got up to use the bathroom and left the seat rest up. I took this as a sign. Within ninety seconds of her being back in her seat we were petting, pecking, and then fully making out. It was electric. Automatic.

Soon a man from a few rows up began complaining that we were “making noise.” We weren’t saying a word; our lips were locked. But he said so, and the stewardess came back and said we were cut off. Simona asked for one more, and got it.

Then, in short order, a man—maybe the chief guy—came back. “The pilot is prepared to kick you off the flight if you don’t cool it.” This was Air Canada, and he delivered the bad news in the most Canadian way possible. Polite, a little snooty, and totally assured. I stood up and, somewhat absurdly, tried to shake his hand. “We’ll settle down,” I promised.

Simona, on the other hand, was distraught. “It’s because I’m a second language learner. That’s why. It’s discrimination.”

We survived the flight and landed in Toronto, where we went for a coffee and cake. We started making out like teenagers again in front of the staff, who laughed. We drank our coffee. I had to connect to JFK and she was going to Philly. We exchanged Facebook, and she patted me on the ass as I left.

“My future ex-husband,” she said.

I was staying at an Airbnb somewhere in deep Brooklyn and I couldn’t hack it. The first few nights were OK because the shows I was seeing were in Brooklyn, but the later shows were in the Lower East Side. I had to move to Manhattan, so I took a room at the Roxy downtown. From there I texted Simona.

I told her I was coming to Philly and would be staying at a nice hotel right off Rittenhouse Square. Would she join me? She messaged back that she would like to, but her aunt kept a close eye on her comings and goings and she was living in her house. Simona worked in a bank. Then I said, you are 42 years old. And she said, yeah, OK, I’ll meet you.

Simona drove down to my hotel and picked me up. We drove around and went to the Rocky statue and she took me by the place where they keep the Liberty Bell. I had wanted to go see Jay Som, an up-and-coming musician, but she wanted to see a comedy show. She asked me who should get the tickets. I said I didn’t know the show, and she said, figure it out, you’re the man.

We went to a fish restaurant for dinner and she ordered a bottle of white. Then another half. We drank deeply and ate. When the bill came she offered to split it. I was prepared to pay for the whole night, but she somehow worked out that I had no money. She was smart like that.

We moved to the comedy show. She drank more wine and we left early. We went back to the hotel where I had prepared wine and chocolate. We drank a little and she undressed.

We kissed and I went down on her. I had a condom and put it on, but after the act it had disappeared. I went to shower. When I came out she told me the condom was gone.

“It’s OK. If I get pregnant I will keep the child. You don’t need to worry.”

Uh, OK.

I didn’t want to have a child with Simona; after all, we had just met five days ago. But there it was.

We slept naked and woke the next morning. I entered her from behind and she said, “don’t come in me.” I didn’t. We both showered and went down for breakfast.

After avocado toast and coffee we went to get her car. It was taking forever, so I got a cab as I had to get back to the train station and back to New York. She kissed me goodbye at the door of the cab.

That was the last time I ever saw her.

Note: Back in 2012 I started a project devoted to the Collected Works of Carl Jung. I didn’t get very far, and I started with his later life reflection on creative people which appears in his memoir, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections.” I will follow this post up with additional Jung pieces.

Toward the end of his life on earth, Carl Jung worked with Aniela Jaffe on a semi-autobiography titled, in English, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” (MDR).  While the exact nature of the origins of the text continues to be a matter of controversy (Shamdasani, 22-38), this work is, by any standard, one of the most remarkable works of self-reflection on record.  As Jung’s work has seduced me, once more, into an extended contemplation of telos as a universal governing principle, and forced me to ask hitherto avoided questions about the nature and possibility of free will, it is only appropriate that we begin with the end, namely the second to last page of MDR, written when Jung was in his mid-80’s.

Looking back over the course of his life, Jung writes/ dictates as follows:

“A creative person has little power over his own life.  He is not free.  He is captive and driven by his own daimon.  ‘Shamefully, a power wrests away the heart from us,/ For the Heavenly Ones each demand sacrifice;/ But if it should be withheld/ Never has that led to good,’ says Holderlin.  This lack of freedom has been a great sorrow to me.  Often I felt as if I were on a battlefield, saying, ‘Now you have fallen, my good comrade, but I must go on.’  For ‘shamefully a power wrests the heart from us.’  I am fond of you, indeed I love you, but I cannot stay.  There is something heart-rending about that.  And I myself am the victim; I cannot stay.  But the daimon manages things so that one comes through, and blessed inconsistency sees to it that in flagrant contrast to my ‘disloyalty’ I can keep faith in unsuspected measure” (MDR, 357).

Here, Jung’s daimon is also his muse, a fickle yet demanding goddess, possessed of little mercy.  Here too we see Jung playing with telos, and also recognizing that creative work never comes without a price.  And yet, Jung is not railing against his fate–while apparent disloyalty, inconstancy, faithlessness, restlessness, and driven arrogance may have plagued his personal relationships, Jung hove true to his inner compass in a manner and to a degree which would have permanently flung most mortals far the other side of sanity, fellowship, and comprehensibility.  When Jung writes that “I can keep faith in unsuspected measure” he is referencing the overarching centrality of intuition as a guide to his life’s work, and building on forty years of reflection on the central orienting elements of personality.  The relentlessness and courage of his six decades of work, even as he came increasingly to fear for the reception of his ideas (pace Answer to Job), attests to his faith, and to his  larger constancy, even as from a smaller bore perspective his alleged lack of intellectual coherence and questionable allegiance to science as commonly understood has led lesser minds to accuse Jung of prophecy, shamanism, and outright oddness (cf Shamdasani, 83).  In order to counteract such limited understandings of Jung, understandings based almost certainly on shallow or incomplete readings of the Collected Works, it behooves us to take an extended look at the textual evidence.  This textual evidence, as we shall see, while voluminous, circular, and even repetitive, signifies in the final judgment nothing short of the most remarkable, daring, and far-reaching bodies of work to issue forth from a single human intelligence since Augustine.  It is our pleasure to place ourselves in the service of this intelligence, to reflect, if even in the smallest way, a sliver of the numinous with which Jung wrestled throughout his life, as Job wrestled with his angel.

Note: If you linked this piece, you may also like On Transference in Artistic Collaboration.

Note: This list continues from our top five male athletes which can be found here.

A Note on Criteria

For this list, I’m not trying to identify the “best athletes” in a purely technical or statistical sense. I’m interested in athletes whose excellence escaped the boundaries of their sport—who reshaped society, culture, commerce, and the collective imagination. Sustained professional dominance matters more to me than amateur achievement, and peak matters insofar as it translated into lasting impact. Versatility is a bonus, not a requirement.

6. Wayne Gretzky

Wayne Gretzky didn’t just redefine hockey; he popularized it in places where it barely registered before. There have been other great players—Bobby Orr, Eric Lindros, Pavel Bure—but there has never been anyone like Gretzky. He combined statistical dominance with a kind of spatial intelligence that made the game newly legible, even to people who didn’t grow up with it.

With the Edmonton Oilers, Gretzky won four Stanley Cups (1984, 1985, 1987, 1988), anchoring one of the most dominant dynasties in modern professional sports. When he was traded to the Los Angeles Kings, he didn’t win a championship there—but that almost misses the point. In L.A., Gretzky proved his greatness wasn’t system-dependent. He led the Kings to the 1993 Stanley Cup Final and, more importantly, made hockey matter in a non-traditional market. Youth participation surged, media coverage followed, and the NHL’s westward expansion suddenly made sense.

After his playing career, Gretzky has remained an ambassador for the sport—visible, articulate, and largely free of scandal. He may hold some right-of-center views and he has a famously public daughter; neither of these rise to the level of controversy. His global impact doesn’t quite match the saturation of the top five, but in terms of transforming a sport’s reach, style, and imagination, Gretzky stands alone. A worthy number six.

7. Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods is second only to Mike Tyson when it comes to complicated athletic legacy. Jack Nicklaus has more major championships (18 to Tiger’s 15), but Woods is almost inarguably the most dominant golfer ever.

From his appearances on television as a very young child, to his years at Stanford, to his immediate impact after turning professional, Tiger redefined what greatness on the links looked like. His early wins on tour were not incremental; they were seismic. Courses changed. Training changed. Television audiences changed. Golf suddenly had an axis.

Tiger’s career has been defined as much by comebacks as by dominance. His victory at the 2019 Masters, after years of injury and personal collapse, secured his place in history all by itself. Off the course, his massive commercial success was temporarily undone by scandal: affairs, car crashes, substance abuse, and public reckoning. For a time, it looked like the collapse might eclipse the achievement.

It didn’t. Today, Tiger stands as an elder statesman of the game, invested in its future—including an unusually gifted son now competing at a high level. Even if he never wins again, his legacy is complete. Golf before Tiger and golf after Tiger are different sports. The number seven spot is not a compromise; it’s recognition of how fully he reshaped his world.

8. Tom Brady

Over time, Tom Brady has cemented his place as the greatest player at the most important position in America’s most popular sport. There have been other transcendent figures—Jerry Rice, Lawrence Taylor, Anthony Muñoz, Ray Lewis—but everyone understands that the value of a quarterback, in terms of win shares and institutional gravity, dwarfs every other position.

The Brady-versus-Belichick debate will rage on, but Brady settled it decisively by winning a Super Bowl in his forties with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, outside the system that first made him famous. That championship reframed his career from sustained excellence to unmistakable authorship. He wasn’t merely the beneficiary of structure; he was the structure.

Brady’s greatness was never about spectacle. It was about discipline, preparation, and a refusal to decline. His longevity recalibrated expectations for elite athletes. Off the field, his controversies have always felt almost quaint: a close relationship with his trainer, persistent rumors of personality-free excellence, a public divorce, and a criticized broadcasting stint. None of it ever threatened the core of his achievement.

Seven Super Bowl championships, unmatched longevity, and relevance across eras make it hard to imagine anyone eclipsing his résumé. Number eight is a natural fit.

9. Mike Tyson

Mike Tyson emerged from juvenile delinquency to become the brightest star in one of America’s most enduring sports in just a few short years. Still in his teens, he captured the public imagination like very few athletes before or since. His dominance was immediate and terrifying: the speed, the menace, the ninety-second knockouts. It felt less like competition than inevitability.

Although Tyson did not have the longest career and was not undefeated, he remains an icon of boxing greatness, mentioned in the same breath as Ali and Mayweather. At his peak, no fighter has ever been more frightening. Fear itself was part of his cultural impact.

Outside the ring, Tyson lived what Bill Simmons famously called “the Tyson Zone”—the idea that you could hear anything about Mike Tyson and believe it. A sexual assault conviction and prison time. Biting an opponent’s ear off. Face tattoos. Tigers. Pigeons. Weed. Cocaine. Toad venom. It has been a wildly strange life.

And yet, today Tyson is broadly beloved in the way only someone who has lived nearly forty years in public can be. He has been on top of the world, he has been a total mess, and he has inhabited every state in between. Like Sinatra, he’s done it his way. Number nine is exactly where he belongs.

10. Roger Bannister

Roger Bannister rounds out the list. In 1954, he became the first person to break the four-minute mile, running 3:59.4, a feat long considered impossible and one of the purest accomplishments in sport. Anyone who has run the mile competitively understands the pain and resolve required to take down that mark.

The achievement was later immortalized in the cultural imagination through works like Chariots of Fire, which captured the ethos of the era even if Bannister himself remained understated about the feat. After retiring from competitive running later in 1954, Bannister became a distinguished neurologist and academic, eventually serving as Master of Pembroke College, Oxford.

Bannister’s place here rests on a single act—but a singular one. He didn’t just win a race; he redefined what humans believed was possible. For that reason alone, number ten is a fitting landing place.

Epigraph
“If we have to go extra long we’ll do your chart for you.”
—Alex Chilton, spoken intro, Live in Anvers

One of the strangest and most beautiful things about Live in Anvers is how Alex Chilton opens the show: with a joke about astrology. Not even a real joke — more like a sly provocation. “If we have to go extra long we’ll do your chart for you.” He says it like someone who halfway believes in fate and halfway believes it’s all a scam, but is charming enough to let you decide which half you prefer.

This is Chilton in his final form: loose, amused, sweet, slightly mocking, fully present but refusing to take presence too seriously. It’s astrology as banter, metaphysics as stagecraft, irony as prelude. And it sets the tone for what comes later in the set: a version of “Claim to Fame” so casually perfect, so gently killed, it becomes the quiet centerpiece of the whole night.

People forget that Anvers wasn’t Big Star, and it wasn’t the Box Tops. It was a pickup band — session pros from the Low Countries who got the call and showed up to do a gig with Chilton, no rehearsal, no long history, just charts and instincts. Professionals first, and then something else entirely: Chilton’s field, Chilton’s pocket, Chilton’s gravity.

When Claim to Fame hits — relatively late in the show — something happens you can hear instantly. The whole band breathes together. The horns fall into place with an ease that should be impossible. The drummer slides into Chilton’s behind-the-beat phrasing like he’s been waiting for it all night. The guitarist and keys stop “accompanying” and start listening. And Chilton? He’s singing like a man who doesn’t need to hit anything hard because he knows he can hit anything he wants.

It’s sweet. It’s gentle. It’s unforced. It’s a man killing it softly because softness is the point.

That’s the part people miss about Chilton — the late-career sweetness. Not the wounded sweetness of Thirteen, or the teenage ache of the Box Tops. This is middle-aged sweetness: warmth without sentimentality, looseness without sloppiness, charm without calculation.

Chilton’s magic in Anvers isn’t that he doesn’t care — it’s that he cares only in the ways that matter. He cares about feel, about timing, about tone, about leaving space for the horns to shine and the drummer to speak. He cares about the room. He cares about the night. He cares just enough to be dangerous.

That danger is key. Chilton sings “Claim to Fame” like he could tip the whole thing over if he felt like it — but he won’t. Because tonight isn’t about tearing anything down. Tonight is about letting everything be exactly what it is. A good band, a warm room, a late-set groove, a song breathing the way it was always meant to breathe.

When he swings into the chorus you can hear it: he’s not performing, he’s allowing.

And that’s the moment I recognize something of myself.

Because when I’m in the right performance space — a school speech, a good karaoke set, a future book night — the same thing happens. Self-consciousness drops out first. But awareness stays. I always know I’m being watched; that’s part of the voltage. When that happens, instead of tightening up, I loosen. Play rises. Warmth rises. The room becomes a call-and-response, not a test.

The performance isn’t something I put on —it’s something I stop resisting.

That, more than anything, is why Live in Anvers feels like a secret manual for a certain kind of adult performance. Chilton isn’t trying to impress anyone. He’s not chasing legacy. He’s not reenacting the myth of the young genius or repenting for the years he walked away from fame. He’s simply showing up as himself — and because he’s himself, the whole room recalibrates.

When my self-consciousness dissolves, the same three things come online for me:

Play. Warmth. Call-and-response.

Play is the improvisation — the micro-timing, the shifts in tone, the risk of letting the moment lead me.

Warmth is the generosity — the willingness to let the room in, to let people feel something real.

Call-and-response is the connection — the vibration between me and the crowd, whether that’s a gym full of students or nine people in a Kyoto karaoke bar.

This is what Chilton is doing in Anvers. This is what makes it so sweet. This is what “killing it gently” actually means.

The band may be all session pros, but by the time they hit Claim to Fame, they’ve crossed over from professional competence into something more mystical: fluency in Chilton’s wavelength. They’re not following charts anymore. They’re following him. And he’s following the room. And the room is following the looseness.

It’s adult music by an adult man, played by adults who know how to leave space. And space is everything in this performance.

Listening to the Anvers version now, I hear something I couldn’t have understood in my twenties: the sweetness of someone who’s already lived through the first fame, the second fame, the backlash, the retreat, the rediscovery, the ambivalence, the refusal, and the acceptance.

Claim to Fame becomes, in this version, neither a boast nor a lament. It’s a shrug, a smile, a wink, a truth. Not bitter. Not triumphant. Just real.

A man with a gift he can’t turn off,
killing it gently,
in Belgium,
on a night the world wasn’t even watching,
and doing someone’s star chart if they needed it.

Dedication:
For the players who show up cold and make the room warm.

I’ve worn stranger versions of myself than I care to admit, and somehow they all felt natural at the time.
Happyness, refracted


I juggle money, fear, and bad habits like they’re part of the same routine, and I run my mouth most when I’m scared.
The Felice Brothers, refracted


Dateline The Jazz Club: November 5th, 23:11


Grey led the way to a backroom at the club he knew about. It was not the green room, but was rather a dingy room that barely fit the six members of the group. Grey led off, seemingly determined to do the talking.

“Look here boys,” he began, “we know Maya was sent to entrap McKnight and she has done so successfully. That ends tonight.”

The heavyset Italian looked Grey up and down, not for the first time. “And what is it that you intend to do about it?” 

“Well, that’s the thing,” said Grey. We intend to grease the wheels just a little.” He paused for effect, then continued, “here are three envelopes. They contain $10,000 in cash each. We are not asking for your allegiance, or for any inside information. Instead, we want you to have these envelopes. And when your paymasters ask, and they will, what happened tonight at the club just tell them McKnight broke it off suddenly and is leaving town.”

“That’s all?” inquired the German. 

“That’s all” said Grey.

Now during all these proceedings the Thin Man felt a little odd—it was Grey’s show now. He thought about Vivian; maybe she was still at the bar? He could go back to her, he thought, if the club remained open.

In the meantime, the three associates of Pelican Corp. looked at one another. Finally, the heavyset man shrugged. “It’s pretty much what happened anyway. We get paid for telling the truth, essentially.” 

Maya chimed in. “We have a good thing going and I’m good at what I do. The Thin Man even said so. We can parlay our little gig to new opportunities, in or out of Pelican Corp.” It was clear to the Thin Man that this threesome were freelancers, contractors at best. They would look after their own, a fact Grey would have anticipated. 

“OK, deal,” said the heavyset man, who was clearly calling the shots. Now what do we get in return?”

“Apart from the cash?” asked Grey. “You also get my word on behalf of the three of us that we will make no mention of you two gentlemen’s role here tonight. Our story is the same as yours. The true story.”

The exchange was over and Maya and the men left the room quickly. The Thin Man looked at Grey. “I’m going back to the bar. What is my end tonight?”

“Well, you did flush out the two misguided tough guys and charmed Maya, however you needed my help to finish the deal. How about this, another $20,000 and an apartment for a few weeks while things calm down?”

The Thin Man thought about it. On the one hand, it was not a raise. On the other hand, Grey was not wrong, he had carried the day but for the grace of god and played things a little close to the line. “OK, I’ll take it. Can I get a fully furnished apartment with in-house laundry?”

“I think we can sort that out” said Grey. “And now you are free to pursue the night. I’ll have the money wired within 24 hours.” He stuck out his hand, which the Thin Man accepted. He turned to Ali. “Next time, Red Krayola, yeah?” 

Ali just smiled that thin smile, the only one he seemed to possess. “Sure thing boss,” he said. “I’ll upgrade.”

The Thin Man retuned to the bar where Vivian was, maybe, waiting. He sat down and ordered a Negroni. Vivian was having another Manhattan, she’d had four or five the Thin Man guessed. Within mere seconds there were touching, petting, stroking each other.  It was electric, automatic. The Thin Man felt a little overt, however the jazz band was still playing, quietly as if wrapping up. The theremin was over and they were playing straight jazz. Peter Andreessen was indeed the lead; he had actually introduced himself at some point. The atmosphere allowed for a little action.

“Where are you staying tonight?” Vivian asked. 

“I have a hotel. Will you come?”

“Yes” And that was that. Vivian and the Thin Man exited the club and the Thin Man ordered an Uber on his phone. They sat at a respectful distance in the car and walked through the hotel lobby to the elevator. No one batted an eye; they never do. They rose to the sixth floor and entered the Thin Man’s room. The Thin Man could barely get the Clientele dialed up on his phone before Vivian was all over him. He loved “The Violet Hour” the most of all.

They made out passionately and soon ended up in the shower, fully naked. Vivian washed the Thin Man with care and the Thin Man returned the gesture. Vivian had long hair and said she wouldn’t wash it, so the Thin Man washed every other area. They began to couple, but shower sex, well shower sex is an operation. After a bit the Thin Man led her out of the shower where they semi-dried off and to the bed where he climaxed, spilling on her belly. They spent the rest of the night kissing and listening to music. She liked Poison and The Rolling Stones; the Thin Man played Wild Pink and the Clientele. Vivian explained that she didn’t sleep much, and the Thin Man, though pretty beat, managed to stick with her for three or four hours before he dozed. 

The Thin Man woke, fully nude, at 8 AM sharp. Vivian was sitting up in bed, also nude. The Thin Man did not make a habit of sleeping naked, so this was, at a minimum, interesting. The kissed for a moment and the Thin Man proposed breakfast at the restaurant. They dressed, without re-showering, and took the elevator down.

Dedication: To the night that lasted three weeks.