Buzz

By Robert Zverina

Born in 1969 on the day of the first moon landing, Buzz is the only American-born child in a Czech political refugee immigrant family. Adrift between Old World and New, feeling alienated by so-called progress, Buzz struggles to find connection in New York City's stultifying Long Island suburbs. When saying goodbye to his step-father for the last time, Buzz inherits his childhood home along with a closetful of shameful secrets. Buzz's bizarre family saga and his earnest quest for friendship present a darkly comic yet touching portrait of the post-War immigrant experience.

Written in a concise cinematic style, BUZZ is a quick read that lingers long after.

"BUZZ is a joy ride of unique characters, chiseled language, and evocative descriptions as moments of magical beauty contrast with jaw-dropping plunges into the cesspool of the human condition." -Heike Uhlig

"It is such a sad story and so beautifully written, it has that unique tension of attraction and repulsion that is so powerful in tragedy." -Neil Schaeffer

"This is a serious book, but Zverina's sense of comedy keeps it from being just a bummer and creates what I consider true art, not just entertainment. Beautiful!" -Sarah Kavage

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Zverina
• Release date: Aug 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476483764

Robert Zverina

Robert Zverina was born in Liberty, NY to recently emigrated Czech political refugees. He grew up in various Long Island suburbs, straddling two cultures in a household that mixed immigrant aspiration with Old World defeatism, the latter compounded by a series of calamities which dogged the family and kept it bouncing from one precarious circumstance to another. Like many coping with dislocation and alienation, he turned to art at an early age in an unconscious attempt to craft his own narrative.After studying literature and creative writing at Cornell, he received an MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College under the mentorship of Allen Ginsberg. Initially skeptical about computers and the internet, in 1997 he launched his ongoing Picture of the Day website (www.zverina.com), paving the way for future bloggers with an autobiographical mix of creative nonfiction, photography, and multimedia elements.Embracing the DIY spirit of the punk rock ethos that saved his life as a dispirited youth, he has also self-published a novel (BUZZ), produced a series of cinema verité DVDs (robZtv), single-handedly made a feature film (One’s A Crowd), and is a founding member of absurd musical art collective 4Shadows.Zverina lives in Seattle, where he supports his mostly non-commercial art practice by working as a self-employed carpenter.

Book preview

The horror of the Twentieth Century was the size of each new event, and the paucity of its reverberations.

--Norman Mailer, Of a Fire on the Moon

Magnificent desolation.

--Buzz Aldrin, first words of 2nd man on the moon, July 20 1969

BUZZ: An Unauthorized Autobiography

by Robert Zverina

copyright 2012 Robert Zverina

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover and body images courtesy of the author, NASA archive, and other public domain sources.

This novella is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is all in your mind. However, all facts regarding the Apollo program and other historic events and personages are accurate. Due to the limitations of the ebook format, certain diacritically marked Czech letters—including the e and r in the author’s last name--have been replaced by their unaccented English equivalents. This deficiency is corrected in print editions.

Table of Contents

PART I: WANING

PART II: NEW

PART III: WAXING

PART IV: FULL

Appendices

Help Build Buzz

About the Author

PART I: WANING

1.

Hello, my name is Buzz. Looks good on a nametag, right? Yes, it’s my given name.

I came into the world on July 20, 1969, the day Buzz Aldrin became the second man to set booted foot on the moon.

But my story really begins tonight, Christmas Eve 1999.

2.

My mother died before I was born.

That’s what my Czech step-father Jerry is asking me to understand as I drive him to JFK for his one-way flight to Prague. He hasn’t been on a plane since he emigrated in ’68, so in a way this is just a very belated round-trip. He’s 86 years old and sees no point in dying so far from home. He’s ready to close the loop.

He was way too old for my mother when they married but she was desperate. My real father died, then she found out she was pregnant with me. One child, my sister, had been enough and she wasn’t looking forward to a second. There would be no chance of a third.

That was 30 years ago. They were all brand new immigrants then, fresh off the boat—or in their case, a passenger jet. After all this time Jerry still hasn’t got the hang of being American. To be fair, neither have I. And I was born here.

Where I was conceived is an unsettled question.

3.

I put it in neutral and gun the engine to keep from stalling in this stop-and-go traffic. The fuel gauge is on E but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s broken. I put in $10 this afternoon and that should be plenty.

It’s an old car, new when I was born. Sometimes the heater works, sometimes it doesn’t. Right now it doesn’t so we have the windows down a few inches to keep the windshield from fogging up. The rain is turning to sleet and wet snowflakes land on my arm. It’s damn cold but Jerry doesn’t seem to notice. A jewel of nasal drip hangs from the tip of his nose, glinting in the beams of headlights jockeying around us. Will it freeze? He’s always been an old man to me and I don’t think there’s much warmth left in his shambling body.

The weather keeps changing—rain, sleet, snow, sleet, hail, rain. Traffic is snarled and everyone makes it worse by constantly changing lanes, honking, desperate to surge into any gap, only to have to hit the brakes again. Frustration mounts as we crawl along. It would be faster to walk.

They’ve been predicting a big storm all week and for once they get it right. It’s here. But the three networks and two local TV stations out of New York City can’t say whether it will stay rain or turn to snow. Either way it’s a mess and the state trooper who does the syndicated traffic report cautioned people to stay off the roads.

Jerry hates that policeman. Men in uniform delivering the news was one reason he was glad to flee Czechoslovakia back in ‘68. Now the tide is turning here and he’s eager to leave. Martial law might be just a week away if Y2K turns out half as bad as they say.

Just stay home with your families, the trooper warned with a smile, hand resting unconsciously on his holster. Don’t go out tonight unless it’s an emergency.

Apparently, there’s lots of emergencies. People flying out, flying in, visiting relatives, purchasing last-minute presents, panic-shopping storm supplies. Southern State Parkway is jammed in both directions.

I’m not sticking around if your flight’s delayed, I warn. I wanted him to take a cab but he insisted I drive. This would be our last goodbye. He said I was obliged. Or was it obligated? After 31 years in America, he still has questions about the language. I have a BA in English but don’t know the answer.

We keep passing and being passed by a station wagon with its dome light on. The woman in front has a cat in a wire carrier in her lap. The soft light on her concerned face makes her seem somehow saintly and I almost rear-end the car ahead of us looking sideways at her.

We’re on the edge of the front, heading west into the coming storm. The spattering on the windshield suddenly stops and the clouds break just enough for a glimpse of the moon stalking us through roadside winter skeleton trees. It’s been following our car my whole life but it hasn’t caught us yet.

It disappears just as quickly and I know I won’t see it again.

The rain comes down harder than before. The windshield wipers work only if you jiggle the switch. Jerry had fixed it himself. I jiggle it.

A retired engineer, Jerry thinks he’s better at maintenance and repair than he actually is but he does manage to keep the car running. Barely. Our closest hours were spent among the dilapidated and discarded dreams of rusting automobiles in a Queens junkyard, smack dab in the middle of Gatsby’s valley of ashes.

There was a ‘69 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight identical to our own except it had been in a terrible accident when new. The roof was peeled back like the top of a sardine can and there were dark stains on the dashboard and fabric of the exposed interior which years of rain had failed to wash away. Most people don’t want a car after someone has died in it, the junkyard man told us the day he showed it to us. It was how he got his best bargains.

He knew the story behind each car on the lot, from the apparently flawless late model lemons to the comical cubes of steel which had been compacted for scrap. Like a Civil War buff visiting a battlefield he retold the tales of death and destruction in hushed reverent tones, as if he were embellishing each gory detail in the interest of historical accuracy, not merely to indulge his own morbid proclivities.

High school graduation present and the kid ate the wheel that same night. Why would anyone eat a steering wheel? six-year-old me wanted to know but I was too shy to ask. Soon after, I lost my first tooth biting down hard on our own.

The junkyard man had us look at the odometer: 00019. It was easy to see because the steering column had been removed as part of the extrication process, further convincing me that the wheel had been literally eaten.

They built ‘em right back then. The frame’s still straight. They built ‘em right, none of this tin can Jap bullshit. No offense. (Did we look Japanese?) It coulda still ran, too, he said wistfully, but I promised the parents I’d part it out—they couldn’t stand the thought of pulling up aside it at a light. He looked around warily. This place is a graveyard in more ways than one.

Like a healthy donor whose violent death leaves organs intact, our car’s double provided the vital young parts that kept our Olds Ninety-Eight rolling. Thanks to those happy weekend forays to the auto graveyard all the parts were factory original, a key criterion determining whether a car earned classic status or not.

I only knew that much about what made cars classic because a local gas station attendant with Joe Nemec stitched on his shirt owned the same year and model as ours. He was always asking if he could buy pieces of our car. Jerry was befuddled by these overtures, not knowing the proper American response to such importunings.

How much for the gascap? Joe Nemec asked, offering to replace it with a brand new one that could be locked with a key. He reached in for the cigarette lighter. You don’t smoke, do ya? Ah, but Jerry did, and offered him a Dutch Masters cigar so there would be no hard feelings.

Joe Nemec offered to replace the already outdated 8-track player he coveted with a cassette deck. The mechanic’s own would-be limited edition classic was up on blocks at the side of the garage, needing in addition to the gascap, cigarette lighter, and stereo: original rims, original power antenna, original Safety Sentinel, and an original engine. Oddly, he never offered to