Louder Than Goodbye

By Allen Callaci

Why do we mourn the passing of iconic figures such as Carrie Fisher, Prince or even an obscure regional horror movie host from our youth? Why do we mourn the passing of larger-than-life figures whom we never knew in life as if they were an old friend? Louder Than Goodbye: Reflections and Remembrances from Kurt Cobain to Mary Tyler Moore to the Most Sinister Man to Ever Walk the Earth is a collection of meditations on the passing of pop culture figures and the personal connections to such figures. All were initially written as instant, unfiltered reactions to the unexpected passing of an icon which originally appeared in abridged form in blogs and publications such as BK Nation, The Huffington Post and the I.E. Weekly. They were not written as formal obituaries outlining a person's career but reflections on how the loss of a larger than life figure can act as a barometer and unwitting spiritual guide through the different phases of one's own existence.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pelekinesis
• Release date: Nov 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781949790269

Allen Callaci

Allen Callaci is lead singer for the band Refrigerator, an adjunct professor, and a librarian whose work has appeared in MungBeing, the Poly Post, The Huffington Post, BK Nation, Cinefantastique, Crump Comics and various ’zines in the 90s. He lives in Southern California and is the proud co-founder of the Rancho Cucamonga Public Library’s Star Wars Day.

Book preview

CHILDHOOD

17 and Life

We don’t move on. We move in circles with the remainders of the past following us from behind like shadows lingering out from forever.

I was 17 years old, barefoot, gingerly peeling an orange and living a gloriously unremarkable latchkey kid existence in the middle-class lite suburb of Upland, California the day my adolescence expired. The decade plus that I had spent in Upland had been years filled with soul crushing certainty: the sun would rise every morning, the cul-de-sac streetlights would slowly flicker to life come twilight and every May would bring the Gibson Senior Center’s Butterfly Celebration, an educational children’s event devoted to the short, fragile life cycle of the butterfly:

Egg.

Caterpillar.

Chrysalis.

Butterfly.

Although the Upland eco-system lacked the fluid poetry of a Monarch butterfly’s life cycle it was just as cyclical. One supermarket chain would go under every nine months and be replaced by another chain nine months later. Day turns to night. Night turns to day. Vons turns to Ralphs. Ralphs turns to Stater Brothers. Stater Brothers turns to Vons. Repeat ad nauseam.

The city had branded itself The City of Gracious Living back in 1906 when it had changed its name from North Ontario to Upland. It was a name change that had been inspired by the Citrus growers who boasted that their citrus came from higher ground. Longtime locals sometimes referred to their city as the city of gracious living with a certain sense of communal pride and pre-eminence. Not me. Upland, to me, was a scratchy, mothball smelling blanket that I could not wait to crawl out from under. My plan was to tightly wrap myself in custom designed bubble-wrap made from the finest rock n roll and comic books until that day arrived.

Did you know a girl named Anna Marie Bachoc? my mom asked in her slow, Midwestern way as she entered the kitchen. The screen door clattered from behind her like hail stones hitting concrete. She had just come home from her job as a dispatcher at the Upland Police Department. She was dressed in her work uniform, which consisted of a light blue blouse and a neatly pressed dark navy skirt. I was wearing my uniform as well—a faded Scorpions jersey that featured a howling mustachioed man covered in head bandages with metal forks scraping at his eyes. The bright red logo of the biggest heavy metal band to ever come out of Germany floated above his agonized face. The last rays of the setting sun had made their way past the white birch tree in the front yard. The familiar and muffled daily sounds of laughter; teenage profanity and the rusty squeals of the empty swings that hung from the rickety backyard swing set that was covered in dried bird feces laced the air.

I could feel the coldness of the linoleum crusted kitchen floor beneath the soles of my bare feet as the wind chimes gently rattled. A rerun of Barney Miller buzzed in from the side den that was blanketed in shag carpeting the color of Day-Glo dirt. Did you ever wonder why the sperm whale, which is the largest mammal on the face of the earth, has a throat about that size? a disheveled and exasperated Barney told his precinct as he formed a small circle, the size of a quarter with his thumb and fingers. …Because that’s the way it is. And there ain’t anything you can do about it.

Did I know a girl named Anna Marie Bachoc? It seemed like such a random question for my mom to be throwing out there. I had never let on to my mom about the crush I had on Anna throughout Junior High. No way I would ever have even mentioned her name in front of her. I shudder to think of the gentle chiding that would have followed if I had. So, tell me a little more about this Anna Marie. You’re blushing. I bet she’s cute.

Did I know a girl named Anna Marie Bachoc?

The answer was yes.

Anna and I shared the same homeroom back at Upland Junior High. The only break fate had bestowed upon me during the 7th grade was to drop me in the same homeroom as Anna. The homerooms at Upland Junior High were assigned alphabetically by last name. So maybe it wasn’t so much fate that brought us together, maybe it was all just a pre-destined matter of ABCs. Either way I felt blessed to have been a lost satellite that had found its way into her orbit.

Anna was royalty as far as my retainer-fitted, KISS obsessed, comic book loving misfit self was concerned. To be acknowledged by her was to be temporarily lifted out of teenage peasant-dom where a good day was any day where you didn’t get body-slammed into the hallway lockers between class by some future warehouse worker as he’d laugh and bellow out loud enough for everyone to hear next time get out of my way, ya dink.

Anna was an unknowing buoy that helped keep me afloat in these merciless waters. I clung to the Fridays where she’d be sure and remind me to have a good weekend. The Monday mornings where she’d ask how my weekend had gone. And the every once in awhile where she’d chide me for having a different KISS T-shirt for every day of the week. None of these moments probably meant a whole lot of anything to her. But to me her smile was a glass of cold water in a sweltering desert of social rejection.

Anna, like me, was Catholic. Though she was far better at the whole Catholic thing than I was. My devotion to the faith was limited to attending mass each Sunday at St Joseph’s and going to Catechism each Wednesday night where I’d waste the hour trying to discreetly read the latest issue of The Incredible Hulk I’d tucked inside my Catechism reader as the elderly and constantly scowling Sister Lucy went on and on and on about guilt, sin, suffering, and salvation in her thick Irish accent. He died, so that you might have life everlasting. I want you to let that sink in. Perhaps, it wasn’t me she was looking at when she made that decree through her clenched yellowed teeth, but it always felt like it was. Every now and again Sister Lucy would break up the monotony of the liturgies by gripping a cherry wood ruler with double metal edges and wielding it across the bare knuckles of the unbelievers and those smuggling Marvel Comics contraband inside their Catechism readers.

I doubt Anna’s knuckles ever felt the cherry wood sting of a Sister’s ruler. She was an active member of St. Margaret Mary’s parish. She was no doubt as familiar with the Apostles’ Creed as I was with issue #121 of The Amazing Spider-Man—a seminal issue where Peter Parker/Spider-man’s blue-eyed, blonde haired, purple headband wearing high school sweetheart, Gwen Stacey comes to a tragic end at the hands of the Green Goblin. Anna had no time for Gwen Stacey and the Green Goblin. By the time she was 15 she was assisting in teaching and shepherding the youngest of lambs at St. Margaret Mary’s parish and familiarizing them with the Apostles’ Creed.

I believe in the Holy Spirit… the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Oh yeah, Anna, I wistfully answered my mom as I gently placed the orange back down onto the paper towel. It was good hearing her name. Hearing her name was like hearing a favorite song I hadn’t heard in forever.

It’d been awhile. I had not seen Anna since we both got our reprieves from that Upland Junior High homeroom some three years earlier. I had been bused 5.1 miles south to Montclair High whose official school colors, fittingly, were black and blue while Anna ascended to become an Upland High Highlander. It was probably inevitable our worlds would wind up spinning in opposite directions after unexpectedly colliding. I was Arnold Horshack in black plastic granny glasses. And Anna looked like the enigmatic model from the Night Ranger Sister Christian video. Smiling in slow motion floating down a foggy campus hallway in a flowing graduation gown with a power ballad breathing down her neck.

"Anna and I shared the same homeroom