Stream of Consciousness Saturday – Shock Jock

We all edit our lives. Some chapters become suspiciously short; others bulk out with sensuous feelings, tragedy, comedy, and love. Some of us do such a good job of editing that entire chapters are elided with surgical precision.

Not long ago, I read the obituary of a formerly close friend. His biography was complete, except for the years carefully papered over or cleverly excised. He’d been one of the ringleaders in the raucous crew I lived with on the backside of Boston’s Beacon Hill. Some of the more wondrous, obscene, and whacked-out things we had done had him in the lead.

Somehow, after marriage and children, he reinvented himself. But what a reinvention. From the very left of the center to the very far right of the center on the political spectrum.

Sometime in the early eighties, I ran into him for a final get-together. He found me and the few surviving other friends from the old days to be both an embarrassment and political liability. He’d prefer if we quietly didn’t call again. We didn’t jibe with the right-wing shock jock persona he used on his radio show. He feared enemies would find us and ask for the dirt. After a while, I got up and left.

On the way out of the Harvard Gardens, I called out his old name, “Hey, Teahead! It’s been nice knowing you!” We knew him as the Teahead of the August Moon.

And no, I didn’t attend the funeral or fill in the relatives on the Teahead’s doings. He had been so much more interesting back then!