miz mae's sparkle

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Daddy and I were a ways out on the Lafayette road, easily ten miles from town, when the turn signal commenced clicking. “RighT-righT-righT-righT” with emphasis on the T.

Something felt wrong.  More wrong than usual, I mean. Or odd, really. More odd than usual to be specific. Out on that highway, “wrong” covered a whole lot of things. There wasn’t a lot of right things that took us out that way.  That was already in the back of my head, but the clicking blinker brought it to the front.  Moonshine was what usually brought daddy up that road, but this felt different.  I knew these particular pines. It wasn’t the first or even the second or third time I’d seen them.  The ‘shine houses were always changing, moving from one place to the next, as revenuers pursued them.  What Daddy called ‘the hot pillow places” tended to settle in for longer periods, staying put for a while once they found the right person to give payoffs to. The difference that I noticed was that the trees looked familiar, and what that meant.

When he actually turned off the road, I recognized it.  It wasn't any one thing. It was the visuals and the timing, and something else, like I could smell it.

This was Miss Mae’s place.  She’d got her start in business – daddy said – in a neighborhood called Storyville, down the highway t' New Orleans. After a while, she’d come up here and opened up her own house with five or six girls of the right age.

When we came here, or other times when he brought it up, Daddy always liked to mention he cut his teeth on Miss Mae, back in Storyville, but now she was retired and just managing. I didn’t know what “cut his teeth” meant, but I could tell it was kinda personal.  Now, he came for the new girls, he said, all between the ages of sixteen and twenty five.

Daddy drove slow and easy down the windy road. It was a year past the end of the war, but the ’36 Studebaker was going to have to last another year or more. It was already 11 years old with lots of hard miles, but daddy told us practically every trip that it was “gonna have to last” a while longer.  He rolled down his window as we crackled down the macadam and gravel.  The road curved side-to-side between big old cypress, reminding us each time how close we were to the river’s personal space. Even that was iffy, ‘cause even in my life, the river had gotten restless and changed its bed. They was even some cypress knobs scraped off by drivers who were too lazy, drunk, or wore out to swing wide enough of the trees.

“Daddy?”

He looked at me with a serious face for just a moment, like he was saying “oh, no, here we go again”, then followed that by giggling like a kid on his birthday, then shrugged with just as much energy.  He knew the question I hadn’t finished asking cause it was always the same question.  He danced a little in his seat and popped his gum louder.  He was on his way to a party that, whether I understood it or not, I’d been explicitly forbidden to mention to Mama.  Repeatedly.  “Women folk don’t understand these things” he would explain, then more often than not, add “… and neither do little boys.”  Sometimes he’d ruffle my hair and sigh, then end with “But you will, boy.  One day, you will, heh-heh.” If he said that much, he always ends with a chuckle.

I knew it had to do with animal urges, with naked bodies, and the lure of sin, like the preacher was always saying.  Smoking and drinking and laying with strange women, like he was supposed to only do with mama, but there was always an excuse, even if it was “… you’ll understand one of these days …”  I pictured people on the far side of the door laughing, dancing, and writhing against each other with cigarettes and glasses of alcohol in their hands. I did know that, sometimes if you writhed in a particular way, a baby would eventually come out. At that point in time, I wasn’t eager to learn more than absolutely necessary about writhing, so I avoided it altogether.

At home, I walked in on them twice, mama and him, I mean. There was once when I was a clueless five and once when I was a curious eight.  I saw very little of them under the blankets either time, just the writhing, but I felt the strop very clearly later. When daddy was done with his doings with mama, and she was taking another one of her silent baths, he come up behind me and started stropping me before I begun to know he was there.

“You shouldn’t oughta did that” he said, each word delivered with a lash of the razor strop.  Three or four times he said it, the phrase I mean. That meant a total of fifteen or twenty licks altogether, and whatever it was about, I was left with burning welts.  Even though I saw nothing, whatever it was they were doing was something I shouldn’t oughta seen and especially not do until I was older.  That’s the look he first give me when we pulled in at Miss Mae’s.  It was a look that said, “Soon enough you’ll understand.  But not yet, boy.”

He pulled the car in just shy of the house’s main entrance.  It wasn’t a grand old house like daddy would describe from when he was young and in New Orleans. Why he would go into such detail about those mansions to a boy who didn’t get it, I didn’t know then and I don’t know now. Maybe it was all just for his own benefit. It was just a half-kept, rambling clapboard farmhouse that trailed off at the back, a nothing building just right for the middle of nowhere. No liveried footman, no porte cochere, no big double doors at the entrance.  The door was single, sober, and sturdy, with a little apple sized port hole peeking out at eye level.

Daddy practically hopped out of the car.  His only instruction was “Don’t wander far, buster” which he emphasized with a jab of his finger. He slicked his hair down, dusted the road off his shirt and pants, and before the dust had settled, he was on the far side of the door and I was alone with the trees.

I got out of the car, escaping the swelter.  I spent a while playing mumblety-peg with myself.  I nearly nicked my right sneaker when a squirrel ran across the branch above and startled me, so I stopped.  Mama woulda beat me herself – which she usually left to daddy - if I’d messed up my good school shoes.  I found me a branch and was peeling off the bark in strips when I noticed someone creeping up on me from around the left side of the house.  Not necessarily scary creeping, just curious maybe.  He was too small to scare anyone anyway, maybe a half a head shorter than me, and was taking the long way around the little clearing this end of the driveway.

He'd come ‘round the clearing til he was right off my other shoulder and just back of the trees.  Ten feet away maybe.  Dungarees … blue shirt … bare feet. Just a shadow in overalls.

When the shadow got close enough for an attack, I asked, “Mind if I ask what you’re looking for?” without even turning his way. Daddy always told me to be polite at first, even if I knew I was sliding toward a fist fight.  I was ready to throw my pocket knife aside and lunge at him or be lunged at by him. I waited, then just as I turned to look, he spoke.

“Hi.” Not a he. A she. It was a girl. She was about my age – around eleven probably. She sounded shy but not scared. “Your daddy in there?”  She nodded toward the front door.

I looked over to the door for confirmation, like a new check would do any good, then back at her “Uh-huh.”

It was definitely a her, not a him, even though she wasn’t at all developed.  She had whispy blonde hair, tiny figure inside a shirt that could have come from a high school football player.  The dungarees fit better than the shirt, but were probably a boy’s also, maybe one two inches taller than her.  The cuffs were rolled up so far they clunked against her ankles.

All that spying back and forth went on a while, with neither of us saying anything.  It was like dogs sizing each other up. Or cats or something.

“Is your m~ ?“ I was about to ask, but stopped myself from asking the worst thing.  I adjusted.

“Is your … daddy in there?”

She shook her head in a way that answered the other question that I didn’t ask at first.

She walked on, back tracking a little. Best I could tell, she wasn’t blushing or carryin’ shame, just maintaining distance.  She was out there, separated from me by the trees and from her mama by the walls, just like Daddy and me.  Well, not exactly like, but as close as it was gonna get.

I started, “Um …” and she slowed to see what I was about to say.

“Umm …” now I had to actually deliver words, which I had none ready. “Uhh … “I have gum. You wanna stick of Black Jack?”

She stopped.  It wasn’t the magical lure of a stick of gum, but a tiny little bridge being offered. I was treating her like she thought I might treat a regular person.  Like I could see her as a regular person. Truth was, I didn’t know if she was, but I thought she might be and I wanted to find out, and even more than that, I wanted to be less alone and more bored than I felt like I was out there.

She walked slow, crossing her feet in front of each other, making a straight line, one foot after another, like one of them woman in the movies. It was clumsy the way she was doing it, but there was also something exciting about it.  It was something she’d seen, and probably not just in movies, but maybe she wasn’t copying it well.  It was a stroll, but it was also a lure.

She plucked the stick of gum from my fingers, then peeled back one end of the paper.  I was just stunned as she pulled the gum into her mouth using just her tongue, all the while watching me.

I looked back at the front door.  I was all of a sudden more intrigued by what else might be on the other side of it. When I did, she drifted away again, glancing over her shoulder at me. I followed her over to the porch and leaned a few feet over on the rail.

“What do they call you?”

“Jimmy. I’m James Edward, but everyone calls me Jimmy.”

“I’m Sparkle.  I was born Isabelle, but everyone here calls me Sparkle.” She watched me for a reaction – something from my eyes or mouth or maybe a twitch, but I didn’t move nothin’.

“Made you blush.”

If I wasn’t already, I was sure I was then. I could feel the burn spreading across my face.

“Oh … heh … what do they really call you?”

“Naw, that’s really what they call me.  Sparkle.”

She didn’t look like a “Sparkle,” not nowhere close, but I was just gonna leave it lie. Besides, if I could blush even more than I had been, I was.  She was enjoying it. I was hating it, and not entirely hating it at the same time.

“How old are you, Sparkle?”

“How old are you, James Edward?”

“I’m ten. And three quarters.”

“I’m the same. Ten and three quarters.”

“Nuh-uh – the same? Ten and three quarters? You funnin’ me?”

“Think you’re the only baby born in August of 1937?”

I shrugged. Maybe she was telling me true, and maybe she was just making it up.  If I made it a big argument, I’d end up standing there alone and bored for the next hour.  I eyeballed her, and even if she looked a little puny, it seemed possible she was the same age as me, or close.

“So, where do you live?” I half-glanced toward the house and stopped myself.

“They’s some little houses out back, like apartments. Or cabins, reckon. Some of the women and such as just stay out here if … well, it just depends.”

“And you and your mama …?”

“Yeah.  I was almost nine when mama and me moved out here. So, like two years and such.”

“Where do you go~”

“… to the toilet?”

“No! No, lord no. Not that – where do you go to school?”

“Sorry – just tryin-a make you blush again. I useta go into town, but now a man comes out oncet a week and teaches us.”

“Us?”

“They’s several.  Me, two older boys, and two other girls ‘bout my age ‘n younger.”

“Uh.  So … where do you go to the restroom?”  I figured if she was going to mention it, it must’ve been someplace strange.  If she was there, Mama’d give me a sharp look if she heard me not say “water closet” like a gentleman, but Sparkle already said “toilet” so I figured she wasn’t gonna chafe at “restroom.”

“They’s a little house for showers and so forth, right between the cabins.  That’s where the toilets and all are.”

“Cabins like tourist court?”

She looked off like she was remembering something, then after a moment said, “Not that nice, but they’re okay.” She sounded as far away as she was looking.

“Oh”

“You can see ‘em if you want.”

I didn’t know about that, so I made a good excuse. “My daddy would tan me if I wandered all the way back there.” It was my turn to look off. I wouldn’t like that, not at all.  I shook my head as much for myself as for her.

“He just gone in.  He’s gonna be a while, less’n he’s one of them fast ones.”

She had a point, I guessed. I didn’t know what a “fast one” was. It made me uncomfortable for some reason.

“But if you’re afraid …”

I was honor-bound to set my face all serious and say “It ain’t that, but …” Since I didn’t have a “but,” I tried to distract her and stood up from the rail.  I looked around slow, surveying my borrowed realm.  “I could take a walk, I reckon.  It’s not like I’m walkin’ to Lafayette.”

She reached out her arm and caught part of my hand with her pinky finger.  “Then maybe let’s walk around in front” she added when her hand touched mine.

Our pinkies hooked together and I follered her to a path that went into the trees, parallel to the road, sorta.  She started trailing ahead of me, so I asked something – anything. “Your mama have any other kids?” to pull her back a little. I wasn’t sure about saying it, but it kinda just popped out.

“A boy.”

“Does he … Is he one of the~”

“He died.  Like that same day he was born.  Mama cried a bunch, and I just brought her fresh handkerchiefs.  Wasn’t nothing else to do. I was five.” She said the last like, if she was ten, there might have been something.

“Yeah.” In my head, I added “I’ll bet” but there wasn’t no point in saying it, so it didn’t come out of my mouth. “So, you didn’t know him at all?”

“Wasn’t nobody to know.”

That thought give me a start for some reason, but I still couldn’t argue with it.  I just nodded my head and kept nodding it a while after she stopped.

She stopped us at a little bench in a tiny little clearing out in the trees, then moved behind so it was between us.

Her fingers danced slow along the back of the bench, like her fingers were walking over for a stick of gum.  “I never even seen him up close.  The midwife just put him right in a box and they buried him right off that day.  Mama said he was real early – it wasn’t his time - and such as, and that was all for the best any way.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t some kind of stupid, so I just looked around and said, “This is nice, right here.”

I looked around again, “So …”

“What are you lookin’ for?  Worried about your papa comin’ back out?”

“Naw.” She was right, though.  It was still too early for him to come out, but I was still too worried about him doing just that.  It had been maybe fifteen-twenty minutes at most.

“Anyone ever learn you how to kiss, James Edward?”

“Huh?”  I heard it, but part of me pretended I had just imagined it.

“Kissing.  You know how? Or don’t you?”

“I … uh …”

Her eyes rolled. “Sit down”

I sat.  Sparkle came around and sat next to me.  She took my arm and lifted it behind her head so it was across her shoulders, then she turned both of us so we were at a pretty close angle.

She leaned in toward me.  Even inches away, I could feel the warmth coming off her face.  I could smell the clove gum on her breath, and the moisture as she breathed washed over me like a sweet fog.  It was like being under the covers at night, reading with a flashlight, with the light adding to the warmth from my body and the moisture from my breath.  Only it was a hundred times better than a book.

She tugged on my shirt and I tumbled onto her, even though she only tugged a little.  My lips fell onto hers.  We both slanted out heads to our rights, and suddenly we were kissing.  Our lips moved against each other and half my brain was saying “This is happening? Is this happening? I think so.  Is it?  Does she realize she’s kissing me?”  The other half was saying “What am I doing? Am I doing it right?  Is she just being nice? Is she about to stop and say, “Yuck!?”

At least my lips seemed to know what to do, even if my brain was confused, and they were doing the same thing her lips were doing, so that had to be a good thing.  Even it was going to be a mistake, it was a mistake that felt amazing.  As long as it was happening, I was going to make sure I enjoyed it.  It seemed the thing to do.

We kissed for a while, just barely touching, only by our lips, then she put one of her hands on my shoulder on its way to the back of my neck.  Then she commenced to teach me absolutely everything I was going to know about French kissing for the next five years.

I was lost in the kissing, totally absorbed in what our lips were doing when she took my hand and cupped it against her breast.  If I wasn’t sweating enough yet, this took care of it.  I didn’t know what to do, but she rubbed my hand in a slow circle, so I just kept that up.  Kissing and slowly rubbing.

We did that until I turned 75. We did that until man landed a rocket on the moon, or some such  Whatever.  It was a long, long kiss, however long it was, and I lost all sense of time.

She slowed down the kissing, then moved my hand down to her hip.  She shifted back and our lips separated.  She studied my face a moment and then said, “Alright, brown eyes.  They’re gonna be missing us soon.”

I wasn’t sure if it was my breathing or the wind or the two of them working together, but I was dazed. I didn’t even realize she had stood up until she again hooked my fingers with hers and tugged me forward off the bench.

I was lightheaded all the way back. Not just that, but my legs were pure rubber. I was wobbly enough to be bobbing and swaying, which I only realized because she would occasionally give a harder tug to square me away.

We were back to the clearing before I woke back up, and light was coming across the roof of the house, through the break in the trees back behind, where the cabins musta been.

“So …”

“Uh-huh”

“It’s been some kind of long, hot Summer, ain’t it, I mean hasn’t it, Sparkle?”

“My goodness, yes, you think it will ever cool off?” We were both trying to sound mature and urbane even though I had no idea what urbane meant.

“Well, y’know, of course it’s got to … I mean …” That wasn’t what she meant. She wasn’t talkin’ science or weather or nothin. She was just talkin and I was back to saying stupid things.  Didn’t take long. Maybe thirty minutes? Maybe twenty. Probably ten.

I tried again, “… I mean, yeah, it feels like it wants to go on forever, doesn’t it?” I went from nit-picking to sounding too eager to agree, which was probably still an improvement overall.

While I was talking, she’d drifted slow and easy, like a pinwheel of brush in the river. She’d landed over by an old pump handle in the middle of the clearing, one that someone had put a flower planter around.  Somehow, she’d gone from right next to me to being a good fifteen feet away.  I walked in a spiral toward her, like I was afraid of scaring her off, but I wasn’t scared.  I just wanted to take my time.  If anything, I was afraid of scaring myself off.

“That was nice, wasn’t it, Jimmy?” Her fingers fiddled with the old paint on the handle.

“Oh, yes, Sparkle. It was real nice.  I really … umm … well, I haven’t kissed a whole lot of girls and other stuff but that … that was the best.”  It was.  She kissed better than all the other girls put together.  All three of them. Not that three meant a lot anyway, when you come down to barely one kiss per girl.

“You don’t kiss other girls much?” I wanted to think that she meant that I kissed like a boy with a lot of experience, but even I knew that I had no idea what she really meant. She was probably saying “Uhh … yeah, I figured that out real fast” without actually saying it.

“No, umm, no, Sparkle.  I don’t.” I looked off into space again, like I was making a note to do more of that kissing stuff when I had some time. She wasn’t peeling the paint right – just kind of diddling at it and I could see a whole big piece just dangling loose near her fingertips.  “You’re not …” I reached for the flake and she plucked it away right before I got there, then laughed.

“You were waiting for me to do that, weren’t you?”

She just smiled, then flicked her tongue out and back in real fast.

She glanced at the house, then back at the pump.  “Reckon your daddy will be out soon …”

I squinted at the door, studying it for clues again, like I knew what an ‘about to be opened door looks like.’  “Yeah, I reckon. Sparkle, would you …?”

“Huh?”

“What?”

“You started to ask me something?”

“Here, lemme get that one, Sparkle.”  It was another flake, but smaller and still pretty stuck down.  She was fighting with it, but she was never going to get it with her tiny little nails. I flicked her fingers back and picked at the paint.  I picked it about four times before it came loose, then I handed it to her. “Here.”  It seemed important to hand it to her, but even as I was dropping it into her palm, I felt like a total fool again.  What kind of moron gives a girl a flake of green paint?  Still she smiled a little and asked again, “You were going to ask me a question?”

“Oh … umm …” My hands shot into my pockets to keep them from trembling.

“Nothing. I don’t know. I don’t remember. It was nothing.”

She held the flake up and examined both sides, then tucked it into the pocket of her shirt.

Just then, the door opened and daddy walked out onto the porch. They was a young woman with him and they was being real playful, laughing and going back and forth and tickling each other.  He’d reach out and she’d slap his hand, then he’d pull her close and nuzzle her neck.

Sparkle and I watched without watching, and then we both turned our backs full to them.

“Heh”

“Yeah”

She knew what I wasn’t asking and volunteered the answer, “My mama.”

Nervous silence followed. It wasn’t a long silence, but it was like layers and layers of nervous.  It was like a deep lake full of nervous.

My ring finger made a discovery down in my junk pocket and I yanked it out.

“Oh, hey!”

I flipped it up & out of my pocket, between my thumb and index finger and she looked puzzled.  It was an old, dull grey quarter.  Standing liberty, 1925 (or Barber 1919, not sure), but you could barely make it out.  She musta got a lot of wear in X years.

I moved my hand maybe barely half an inch toward her to show it off better and her puzzle turned to a frown. Redness shot up from her collar and burst against her hairline, soaking her eyes and making them moist.  She stumbled back like I’d thumped her square in the chest. As she stumbled backward, she glanced from me to my dad and back.

Her frown and eyebrows got all bunched up before I realized my brand new mistake.

“No-no-no-no, Lord Jesus (Sorry, mama), no.  Not … it’s not … I’m not …”

I dropped the coin on the ground and she became a blur to me. “I wasn’t trying to pay you or nothin’ “

She was about six feet back, that much I could make out through my own blurry eyes.  “I just … it’s neat. It’s ‘most thirty years old and its kinda my good luck piece.  I just thought…”

She stepped a little closer, but only a little, and then said, “Uh. Well, I don’t want it.”

“Well, I wasn’t even …” but we both knew I was. Not that I was trying to pay her for anything, just it was the only thing of value, real or personal, that had on me.

“Well just pick it up and put it back where you got it.”

“I don’t want it either, not no more. It’s a stupid thing anyway, and I was fixin’ to throw it away after I showed you. I hate it. It’s stupid.” I said it all to my shoes. “I thought you might want it, or wanna look before I threw it away.”

She turned and took a step toward the trees.  I turned and took a step myself, and ran right into my daddy’s chest.

“What the hell, son!? Watch where you’re going.  Anyway, we’re done here. Let’s get on outta … hey, what’s wrong?”

I shook my head.  “Nothin, daddy. They was just some dust got stirred up and got in my eye.”

Sparkle had already commenced to walking off when he noticed her. She wasn’t going fast, but she was going sure, like wasn’t no reason to be where she was no more.

“Uh-huh … hey, you – girl!”

She stopped, but didn’t turn back.

“I’m talkin’ to you, little bitch.  Turn around and look at me!”

She was half-way round when he said, “I don’t know what you’re thinkin, but you keep your trash self away from my boy.  He don’t need nothing from the likes of some whore’s daughter. Ain’t no need for him to wallow in the muck and mire.” ‘Muck and mire’ was a favorite phrase of his, probably the only thing he ever really heard from our preacher.

Satisfied he’d said his peace to her, he reached up and boxed my right ear as casual as if he’d been reaching for a bottle. By the time my eyes focused again, Sparkle had vanished into the trees like a ghost.

“What the hell’s wrong with you, boy?  I leave you alone for five goddamn minutes, and you’re out here playing games with gutter trash?  I see anything like this again, I’m going to by-God wail the skin off your ass.  You got me?’

I didn’t answer him. I just looked down at the quarter, half-buried in the dust, and while I was looking, a tear splashed down and got it muddy.

He boxed my other ear, “Say something, moron!” That spun me around again, and I could see that Sparkle’s mama wasn’t round no more neither.

“Yes, sir. I got you. I got you!” I covered both ears and started bawling then.

“Well, let’s get on outta here, then.  Yur mama didn’t sweat all day over the stove so’s we could show up late for supper.”

“No, sir.”

I ground the quarter the rest of the way into the dust and followed him to the car.

Frank Sinatra's thoughts on bigotry and hypocrisy - Playboy Interview, Feb. 1963

Frank Sinatra’s February 1963 Playboy Magazine Interview, 
By: Joe Hyams

Playboy: Frank, in the 20 years since you left the Tommy Dorsey band to make your name as a solo singer, you've deepened and diversified your talents with a variety of concurrent careers in related fields. But so far none of these aptitudes and activities has succeeded in eclipsing your gifts as a popular vocalist. So why don't we begin by examining Sinatra, the singer? 

Sinatra: OK, deal. 

Playboy: Many explanations have been offered for your unique ability--apart from the subtleties of style and vocal equipment--to communicate the mood of a song to an audience. How would you define it? 

Sinatra: I think it's because I get an audience involved, personally involved in a song--because I'm involved myself. It's not something I do deliberately; I can't help myself. If the song is a lament at the loss of love, I get an ache in my gut, I feel the loss myself and I cry out the loneliness, the hurt and the pain that I feel. 

Playboy: Doesn't any good vocalist "feel" a song? Is there such a difference... 

Sinatra: I don't know what other singers feel when they articulate lyrics, but being an 18-karat manic-depressive and having lived a life of violent emotional contradictions, I have an overacute capacity for sadness as well as elation. I know what the cat who wrote the song is trying to say. I've been there--and back. I guess the audience feels it along with me. They can't help it. Sentimentality, after all, is an emotion common to all humanity. 

Playboy: Of the thousands of words which have been written about you on this subject, do you recall any which have accurately described this ability? 

Sinatra: Most of what has been written about me is one big blur, but I do remember being described in one simple word that I agree with. It was in a piece that tore me apart for my personal behavior, but the writer said that when the music began and I started to sing, I was "honest." That says it as I feel it. Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe. I'm honest. If you want to get an audience with you, there's only one way. You have to reach out to them with total honesty and humility. This isn't a grandstand play on my part; I've discovered -- and you can see it in other entertainers -- when they don't reach out to the audience, nothing happens. You can be the most artistically perfect performer in the world, but an audience is like a broad -- if you're indifferent, endsville. That goes for any kind of human contact: a politician on television, an actor in the movies, or a guy and a gal. That's as true in life as it is in art. 

Playboy: From what you've said, it seems that we'll have to learn something of what makes you tick as a man in order to understand what motivates you as an entertainer. Would it be all right with you if we attempt to do just that -- by exploring a few of the fundamental beliefs which move and shape your life? 

Sinatra: Look, pal, is this going to be an ocean cruise or a quick sail around the harbor? Like you, I think, I feel, I wonder. I know some things, I believe in a thousand things, and I'm curious about a million more. Be more specific. 

Playboy: All right, let's start with the most basic question there is: Are you a religious man? Do you believe in God? 

Sinatra: Well, that'll do for openers. I think I can sum up my religious feelings in a couple of paragraphs. First: I believe in you and me. I'm like Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in that I have a respect for life -- in any form. I believe in nature, in the birds, the sea, the sky, in everything I can see or that there is real evidence for. If these things are what you mean by God, then I believe in God. But I don't believe in a personal God to whom I look for comfort or for a natural on the next roll of the dice. I'm not unmindful of man's seeming need for faith; I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniel's. But to me religion is a deeply personal thing in which man and God go it alone together, without the witch doctor in the middle. The witch doctor tries to convince us that we have to ask God for help, to spell out to him what we need, even to bribe him with prayer or cash on the line. Well, I believe that God knows what each of us wants and needs. It's not necessary for us to make it to church on Sunday to reach Him. You can find Him anyplace. And if that sounds heretical, my source is pretty good: Matthew, Five to Seven, The Sermon on the Mount. 

Playboy: You haven't found any answers for yourself in organized religion? 

Sinatra: There are things about organized religion which I resent. Christ is revered as the Prince of Peace, but more blood has been shed in His name than any other figure in history. You show me one step forward in the name of religion and I'll show you a hundred retrogressions. Remember, they were men of God who destroyed the educational treasures at Alexandria, who perpetrated the Inquisition in Spain, who burned the witches at Salem. Over 25,000 organized religions flourish on this planet, but the followers of each think all the others are miserably misguided and probably evil as well. In India they worship white cows, monkeys and a dip in the Ganges. The Moslems accept slavery and prepare for Allah, who promises wine and revirginated women. And witch doctors aren't just in Africa. If you look in the L.A. papers of a Sunday morning, you'll see the local variety advertising their wares like suits with two pairs of pants. 

Playboy: Hasn't religious faith just as often served as a civilizing influence? 

Sinatra: Remember that leering, cursing lynch mob in Little Rock reviling a meek, innocent little 12-year-old Negro girl as she tried to enroll in public school? Weren't they -- or most of them -- devout churchgoers? I detest the two-faced who pretend liberality but are practiced bigots in their own mean little spheres. I didn't tell my daughter whom to marry, but I'd have broken her back if she had had big eyes for a bigot. As I see it, man is a product of his conditioning, and the social forces which mold his morality and conduct -- including racial prejudice -- are influenced more by material things like food and economic necessities than by the fear and awe and bigotry generated by the high priests of commercialized superstition. Now don't get me wrong. I'm for decency -- period. I'm for anything and everything that bodes love and consideration for my fellow man. But when lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday -- cash me out. 

Playboy: But aren't such spiritual hypocrites in a minority? Aren't most Americans fairly consistent in their conduct within the precepts of religious doctrine? 

Sinatra: I've got no quarrel with men of decency at any level. But I can't believe that decency stems only from religion. And I can't help wondering how many public figures make avowals of religious faith to maintain an aura of respectability. Our civilization, such as it is, was shaped by religion, and the men who aspire to public office anyplace in the free world must make obeisance to God or risk immediate opprobrium. Our press accurately reflects the religious nature of our society, but you'll notice that it also carries the articles and advertisements of astrology and hokey Elmer Gantry revivalists. We in America pride ourselves on freedom of the press, but every day I see, and so do you, this kind of dishonesty and distortion not only in this area but in reporting -- about guys like me, for instance, which is of minor importance except to me; but also in reporting world news. How can a free people make decisions without facts? If the press reports world news as they report about me, we're in trouble. 

Playboy: Are you saying that . . . 

Sinatra: No, wait, let me finish. Have you thought of the chance I'm taking by speaking out this way? Can you imagine the deluge of crank letters, curses, threats and obscenities I'll receive after these remarks gain general circulation? Worse, the boycott of my records, my films, maybe a picket line at my opening at the Sands. Why? Because I've dared to say that love and decency are not necessarily concomitants of religious fervor. 

Playboy: If you think you're stepping over the line, offending your public or perhaps risking economic suicide, shall we cut this off now, erase the tape and start over along more antiseptic lines? 

Sinatra: No, let's let it run. I've thought this way for years, ached to say these things. Whom have I harmed by what I've said? What moral defection have I suggested? No, I don't want to chicken out now. Come on, pal, the clock's running. 

Playboy: All right, then, let's move on to another delicate subject: disarmament. How do you feel about the necessity and possibility of achieving it? 

Sinatra: Well, that's like apple pie and mother -- how can you be against it? After all, despite the universal and unanimous assumption that both powers -- Russia and the United States -- already have stockpiled more nuclear weaponry than is necessary to vaporize the entire planet, each power continues to build, improve and enlarge its terrifying arsenal. For the first time in history, man has developed the means with which to expunge all life in one shuddering instant. And, brother, no one gets a pass, no one hides from this one. But the question is not so much whether disarmament is desirable or even whether it can be achieved, but whether -- if we were able to achieve it -- we would be better off, or perhaps infinitely worse off. 

Playboy: Are you suggesting that disarmament might be detrimental to peace? 

Sinatra: Yes, in a certain very delicate sense. Look, I'm a realist, or at least I fancy myself one. Just as I believe that religion doesn't always work, so do I feel that disarmament may be completely beyond man's capacity to live with. Let's forget for a moment the complex problems we might face in converting from a cold war to a peace economy. Let's examine disarmament in terms of man's political, social and philosophical conditioning. Let's say that somehow the UN is able to achieve a disarmament program acceptable to all nations. Let's imagine, a few years from now, total global disarmament. But imagine as well the gnawing doubts, suspicions and nerve-wracking tensions which must, inevitably, begin to fill the void: the fear that the other side -- or perhaps some third power -- is secretly arming or still holding a few bombs with which to surprise and overcome the other. But I firmly believe that nuclear war is absolutely impossible. I don't think anyone in the world wants a nuclear war -- not even the Russians. They and we and the nth countries -- as nuclear strategists refer to future nuclear powers -- face the incontrovertible certainty of lethal retaliation for any nuclear strike. I can't believe for a moment that the idiot exists in any nation that will push the first button -- not even accidentally. 

Playboy: You foresee no possibility of world war or of effective disarmament? 

Sinatra: I'm not an industrialist or an economist; I know I'm way out of my depth when I attempt even to comprehend the complexity of shifting the production of a country from war to peace. But if somehow all those involved in production of implements of destruction were willing to accept reason as well as reasonable profit, I think that a shift in psychology might be possible. And if this were to happen, I believe that the deep-seated terror in the hearts of most people due to the constant threat of total destruction would disappear. The result would be a more positive, less greedy, less selfish and more loving approach to survival. I can tell you this much from personal experience and observation: Hate solves no problems. It only creates them. But listen, you've been asking me a lot of questions, so let me ask you a question I posed to Mike Romanoff the other night. You know, Mike is quite a serious thinker; when we spend an evening together, we play an intellectual chess game touching on all topics, including those we are discussing here. Anyway, I asked Mike what would happen if a summit meeting of all the leaders in every country in the world was called, including Red China, at the UN. Further suppose that each leader brings with him his top aides: Kennedy brings Rusk, Khrushchev brings Gromyko, Mao brings Chou. All these cats are together in one room, then -- boom! Somebody blows up the mother building. No more leaders. No more deputies. The question I asked Mike, and the one I ask you, is: What would happen to the world? 

Playboy: You tell us. 

Sinatra: I told Mike I thought it might be the only chance the world has for survival. But Mike just shook his head and said, "Frank, you're very sick." Maybe so. Until someone lights the fuse, however, I think that continuation of cold war preparedness might be more effective to maintain the peace than the dewy-eyed notion of total disarmament. I also wonder if "total" disarmament includes chemical and bacteriological weapons -- which, as you know, can be just as lethal as nuclear weapons. Card players have a saying: "It's all right to play if you keep your eyes on the deck" -- which is another way of saying, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." 

Playboy: Do you feel, then, that nuclear testing should be continued? 

Sinatra: Absolutely not. I think it's got to stop, and I think it will stop -- because it has to stop. The name-calling in the UN and the finger-pointing at peace conferences is just a lot of diplomatic bull. Both sides have to live on this planet, and leaders in all countries know that their children and grandchildren have to live here, too. I suspect that when the limits of strontium 90 in the atmosphere get really dangerous, scientists in both camps will persuade the politicians to call a final halt to testing -- probably at precisely the same time, with no urging from the other side. 

Playboy: You spoke a moment ago of the fear and suspicion that might nullify any plan for lasting and effective disarmament. Isn't continuing nuclear preparedness -- with or without further testing -- likely to engender these emotions on an even more dangerous scale? 

Sinatra: Fear is the enemy of logic. There is no more debilitating, crushing, self-defeating, sickening thing in the world -- to an individual or to a nation. If we continue to fear the Russians, and if they continue to fear us, then we're both in big trouble. Neither side will be able to make logical, reasoned decisions. I think, however, that their fear and concern over the ideological balance of power in some areas is far from irrational. Our concern over a Sovietized Cuba 90 miles from Key West, for instance, must be equated with Russian concern over our missile bases surrounding them. It is proper that we should be deeply concerned, but we must be able to see their side of the coin -- and not let this concern turn into fear on either side. 

Playboy: On a practical level, how would you combat Communist expansion into areas such as Cuba, Laos and the emerging African nations? 

Sinatra: It strikes me as being so ridiculously simple: Stop worrying about communism; just get rid of the conditions that nurture it. Sidestepping Marxian philosophy and dialectical vagaries, I think that communism can fester only wherever and whenever it is encouraged to breed -- not just by the Communists themselves, but by depressed social and economic conditions: and we can always count on the Communists to exploit those conditions. Poverty is probably the greatest asset the Communists have. Wherever it exists, anyplace in the world, you have a potential Communist breeding ground. It figures that if a man is frustrated in a material sense, his family hungry, he suffers, he broods and he becomes susceptible to the blandishments of any ideology that promises to take him off the hook. 

Playboy: Do you share with the American Right Wing an equal concern about the susceptibility of our own country to Communist designs? 

Sinatra: Well, if you're talking about that poor, beaten, dehumanized, discriminated-against guy in some blighted Tobacco Road down in the South, he's certainly in the market for offers of self-improvement. But you can't make me believe that a machinist in Detroit, ending a 40-hour week, climbing into his '63 Chevy, driving to a steak barbecue behind his $25,000 home in a tree-lined subdivision, about to begin a weekend with his well-fed, well-clothed family, is going to trade what he's got for a Party card. In America -- except for tiny pockets of privation which still persist -- Khrushchev has as much chance of succeeding as he has of making 100 straight passes at the crap table. 

Playboy: In combating Communist expansion into underdeveloped areas here and abroad, what can we do except to offer massive material aid and guidance of the kind we've been providing since the end of World War II? 

Sinatra: I don't know. I'm no economist. I don't pretend to have much background in political science. But this much I know: Attending rallies sponsored by 110-percent anti-Communist cultists or donning white sheets and riding with the Klan -- the one that's spelled with a "K" -- isn't the answer. All I know is that a nation with our standard of living, with our Social Security system, TVA, farm parity, health plans and unemployment insurance can afford to address itself to the cancers of starvation, substandard housing, educational voids and second-class citizenship that still exist in many backsliding areas of our own country. When we've cleaned up these blemishes, then we can go out with a clean conscience to see where else in the world we can help. Hunger is inexcusable in a world where grain rots in silos and butter turns rancid while being held for favorable commodity indices. 

Playboy: Is American support of the UN one of the ways in which we can uplift global economic conditions? 

Sinatra: It seems to me that a lot of us consider the UN a private club -- ours, of course -- with gentlemen's agreements just like any other exclusive club. Only instead of excluding a person, a race or a religion, the members of the UN have the power to exclude entire nations. I don't happen to think you can kick 800,000,000 Chinese under the rug and simply pretend that they don't exist. Because they do. If the UN is to be truly representative, then it must accept all the nations of the world. If it doesn't represent the united nations of the world, then what the hell have you got? Not democracy -- and certainly not world government. Everybody seems to have forgotten that President Kennedy, before he became President, in his book, Strategy of Peace, plainly advocated recognition of Red China. So I'm not too far out on the limb, am I? 

Playboy: With or without mainland China in the UN, what do you feel are the prospects for an eventual American rapprochement with Russia? 

Sinatra: I'm a singer, not a prophet or a diplomat. Ask the experts or read the Rockefeller brothers' reports. But speaking just as a layman, an ordinary guy who thinks and worries, I think that if we can stay out of war for the next 10 years, we'll never have another war. From all I've read and seen recently, I'm betting that within the next decade the Russians will be on the credit- card kick just as we are. They're going to want color TV, their wives are going to want electrified kitchens, their kids are going to want hot rods. Even Russian girls are getting hip; I've seen photos of them at Russian beach resorts, and it looks just like the Riviera. They're thinning down, and I see they're going the bikini route. When GUM department store in Moscow starts selling bikinis, we've got a fighting chance, because that means the girls are interested in being girls and the boys are going to stop thinking about communes and begin thinking connubially. I've always had a theory that whenever guys and gals start swinging, they begin to lose interest in conquering the world. They just want a comfortable pad and stereo and wheels, and their thoughts turn to the good things of life -- not to war. They loosen up, they live and they're more apt to let live. Dig? 

Playboy: We dig. 

Sinatra: You know, I'd love to visit Russia, and sometime later, China, too. I figure the more I know about them and the more they know about me, the better chance we have of living in the same world in peace. I don't intend to go there with a mission, to sell the American way of life: I'm not equipped to get into that kind of discussion about government. But I'd love to go and show them American music. I'd take Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald with me and we'd do what we do best. We'd wail up a storm with real American jazz so that their kids could see what kind of music our kids go for, because I'm sure that kids are the same all over the world. I'm betting that they'd dig us. And that's got to create some kind of good will, and man, a little good will is something we could use right now. All it takes is good will and a smile to breach that language barrier. When the Moiseyev Dancers were in Los Angeles. Eddie and Liz Fisher gave a party for them, and although I couldn't speak a word of Russian, I got along fine. I just said, "Hello, baby" to the dancers and they shouted, "Allo, babee" back at me. We had a ball. 

Playboy: Frank, you've expressed some negative views on human nature in the course of this conversation. Yet one gets the impression that -- despite the bigotry, hypocrisy, stupidity, cruelty and fear you've talked about -- you feel there are still some grounds for hope about the destiny of homo sapiens. Is that right? 

Sinatra: Absolutely. I'm never cynical, never without optimism about the future. The history of mankind proves that at some point the people have their innings, and I think we're about to come up to bat now. I think we can make it if we live and let live. And love one another -- I mean really love. If you don't know the guy on the other side of the world, love him anyway because he's just like you. He has the same dreams, the same hopes and fears. It's one world, pal. We're all neighbors. But didn't somebody once go up onto a mountain long ago and say the same thing to the world?

RFK on the challenges to making change in the world

First is the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills -- against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. "Give me a place to stand," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation. Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers are making a difference in the isolated villages and the city slums of dozens of countries. Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

The second danger is that of expediency; of those who say that hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities. Of course if we must act effectively we must deal with the world as it is. We must get things done. But if there was one thing that President Kennedy stood for that touched the most profound feeling of young people across the world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspiration, and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs -- that there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities -- no separation between the deepest desires of heart and of mind and the rational application of human effort to human problems. It is not realistic or hard-headed to solve problems and take action unguided by ultimate moral aims and values, although we all know some who claim that it is so. In my judgement, it is thoughtless folly. For it ignores the realities of human faith and of passion and of belief; forces ultimately more powerful than all the calculations of our economists or of our generals. Of course to adhere to standards, to idealism, to vision in the face of immediate dangers takes great courage and takes self-confidence. But we also know that only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

A third danger is timidity. Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change. Aristotle tells us "At the Olympic Games it is not the finest or the strongest men who are crowned, but those who enter the lists. ... So too in the life of the honorable and the good it is they who act rightly who win the prize." I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.

For the fortunate amongst us, the fourth danger is comfort; the temptation to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who have the privilege of an education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. There is a Chinese curse which says "May he live in interesting times." Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. And everyone here will ultimately be judged -- will ultimately judge himself -- on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort.

"What is dangerous about extremists ..." - Robert Kennedy

What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.
- "Extremism, Left and Right," The Pursuit of Justice (1964)