The Forthcoming Jilt

By Terry Boykie

The culture wars collide in The Forthcoming Jilt, the brash, disturbing, satirical, and genuine poetic-prose memoir of Tim Bratkowski, America's oldest and foremost baby boomer. His rise from poverty and loneliness is chronicled from Tim's disconsolate childhood, wayward adolescent, secular demagogue, impassioned spokesperson for godless disciples, and, egregiously, errant seducer of forsaken wives and mothers. At the age 72, this redoubtable anti-hero rails against topics, personal and public, including life versus death, the stench of the political right, the cowardice of the limousine left, and the need that feeds Bratkowski's psyche for, "Hauling spit through paradise seeking other losers' mates." The book's most compelling sections involve TB's clouded view of and actions with women. He claims he is a liberal lion for equality and justice. Yet, at times with women, he is not. Why is that? Profound, honest, biting, and fascinating, The Forthcoming Jilt is a roller-coaster ride to savor and ponder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adelaide Books Publishers
• Release date: Apr 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781952570131

Terry Boykie

Terry Scott Boykie is the author of the book “Autumn for a Day-old Toad.” A native of New Jersey, he has resided in Washington, DC for the past 28 years. More than 12,000 follow him on Facebook. He participates in poetry readings in the DC region.

Book preview

Royelen

Carolyn Males

The Brandts

The Meyers

The Foley Family

The Lyons Family of New Jersey

The Reinhard Family of Pennsylvania

The Reinhard Family of North Carolina

The Shaw Family of West Virginia

Maggie Bavuso

Barbara

Amy Rusk

Glenda Gail Sprinkle

Brenda Laughlin

Anna Correale

Richard Jagacinski

Jonathan Herman

Joe Ruggiero

Chris Bolebuch

Bruce Springsteen

MEMORIES

Diane Jordan

Carol Willasch

Gary Nemec

Sharyn Berliner

The New York Knicks 1969-1973

Charles Stockhausen

Sharon Trickett

Sister Anna Goetz

Mickey Mantle

Patches/Woody

~ First light follows the rush of guilt for

wanting love less than the forthcoming jilt ~

PREFACE

(you should read this)

Tim Bratkowski (TB) maintains he is America’s first and foremost ‘baby boomer.’ The Forthcoming Jilt examines Tim’s rise to leadership of the 70 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964. TB lived poor and lanky in a tarpaper shack in Whippany, NJ.

Throughout his formative years, Tim lived in perpetual dread. He could not bear that classmates on the ritzy side of town, sneered at the ‘dump’ he returned to every night. Tim inhabited his hovel looking like Sad Sack and dressing like Huck Finn. Throughout his formative years, TB remained secretive and anonymous throughout his hometown of Whippany, NJ.

TB’s life does not follow traditional arc expected of baby boomers. have undertaken seeking career success, financial reward, and marital and parental fulfillment. Bratkowski has no nuclear or immediate family. He grew up rejected and angry. In response, TB has spent his adult life railing against inequality, fascism, and America future. In 1965, TB left home for good. He gained the composure, cogency, and credibility, reaching out to the many ‘boomers.’ unable to reap the rewards of supposed privilege.

Tim ascribes to the tenets of Martin Luther King, Jr. Cesar Chavez, and Bruce Springsteen. The Forthcoming Jilt contains Bratkowski’s reflections on his ‘leftist leanings’ and personal trials. His powerful stance has taken him to the brink of failure and the heights of personal growth and ‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.’

Bratkowski’s detractors defame him as a ‘simplistic crackpot’ at best, or a traitor to America. They see the ‘radical’ eager to demolish the nation’s capitalist and religious convictions. ‘Enemies disavowed his espousal of secularism, multiculturalism, and free will. The Forthcoming Jilt describes TB’s public philosophy and personal actions. The book advocates for and re-energizes America’ ethos. The same put forth in the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. Bratkowski’s many disciples appear diligent in asserting and capturing America’s lost conscience.

Tim lives with an Achilles heel. He is not rich, nor narcissistic, nor prideful. Nonetheless, TB has never adhered to his views in his less-than-noble relationships with women. Bratkowski admits he has demeaned, abused, and ignored women who deserved his respect. His travails with married, divorced, and single women remain a stain on his record in support of the equality and compassion. To TB, god does not exist and never did. But if she did she would cringe at Bratkowski’s womanizing conduct that devalues the role of women in our society.

I am honored that Tim Bratkowski has agreed to a memoir merging his opinions and history into one book. Thus, The Forthcoming Jilt evinces his ideals and behavior toward the American dream. Tim Bratkowski has thrown down the gauntlet to the nation’s conservative elite for the soul of the nation.

Terry Scott Boykie

INTRODUCTION

(you must read this)

I am Timothy Bratkowski. You know me as America’s foremost ‘baby boomer.’ I arrived in this world in May, 1946. Terry Scott Boykie is my lifelong friend, colleague, and storyteller. He came to me in 1999 soliciting my accord in drafting and impartial memoir about me. To Terry, I am the prophet, leader, and conscience for America’s 76 million baby boomers.

I agreed to a memoir as long as the draft included musings by others familiar with my history. Baby-Boomers have become the most educated, opinionated, and divisive cohort in American history. I have spent my life positing the values and goals that represent the best of the baby boom generation. My tenets do not mirror my wins and losses as America’s self-appointed philosopher-king.

I once worried that critics would view a memoir as self-serving, literary gruel. Terry advised I should describe who I was and who I am. Let historians, sociologists, and psychiatrists assess how I became America’s first and foremost baby boomer. My memory falters. The right-wing question my morality. I am the grist for confederates and their pandering press.

I met monthly with Terry to recount my galvanizing and disturbing actions and tenets. My colleague has written The Forthcoming Jilt using the material he gleaned from myself and others. Information found in the public record would fill in the gaps on who I was and who I am. We agreed I would have no say in the book’s topicality, veracity, and scope.

Eighteen years later, at last, here we are, with one minor change to our agreement. Terry has allowed me one page to pay homage to the element that has most affected my approach to living. Here, then, is that one page.

Timothy Sailor Bratkowski

LAND OF THE WILLOWS

I live in the world of the horned owl in a place of shade not far from where persimmon and sassafras grow and sweet water runs on sloping rocks. Nearby, I rest where the Dark River carries blue-back herring and water snakes to the laughing sea.

At the head of the cove, gulls nest, frogs mate, and swans swim in abundance. Beyond the valley and ridge where hills become cliffs, two raging rivers enter the placid flatland, home of the cold winter. In the Peaceful Valley, if the snow has been deep, the hot summer will provide vegetables, potato roots, and yellow maize for all year.

Here Men among Men breathe between the waving bay and the shoreline next to homes of good women, a land of salt and seashells, and its beaver, ground hog, and good fishing. This place is Whippany, Land of the Willows, with its waving grains near open pits in the plains that once produced flint for fire, soapstone for peace pipes, and jasper for arrows.

In time, a beautiful trail ends at the winding-water-on-the-meadow in a rocky forest of Oak, Hickory, and Red Cedar. Here, great peoples who keep tobacco and dry firewood meet to talk of spirits and the Supreme Being.

I

~ THE BABY GOES BOOM ~

"Down at the railroad crossing, I weep out loud, tears lost

forever in a billowing cloud. Then the mill horn blares

once and for all; the games is over, don’t forget your ball"

AMERICA 1950

Shower’s over. Tattooed boys play mechanic

with a ‘35 Plymouth. Their Negro-malice

quelled for an instant by the mid-day sun.

A biplane sputters; a ‘Shaeffer’ banner flutters behind.

Full-bellied war heroes glare. Then, retreat

to the business of baseball.

Fueled by beer, late-night thrashings will follow.

Weaned from her wet nurse, a sallow waif, encased

in steel, soon-to-die, suckles a ‘fudge-ikkle.

Its drips lapped from the gravel by a mutt with three legs.

Overripe matrons in dresses stained by Kool-Aid

converge on a truck gutted from Anzio.

Its cargo of foodstuff not healthful enough for Europe.

His right eye erased on Wake Island,

Sam, ‘The Dented-Can Man,’ leers at the bundles

of bosoms cloaked in week-old grime.

An old lady with phlebitis spies a tin of kraut, fat

with gas, and offers a nickel for its roiling toxins.

An ex-sailor, a year or two away from the brain

surgeon, counters with a dime. The auction is on; two

bits win the can of cabbage; carrots go for less.

White Americans and old-world refugees will eat well tonight.

WARFARE, BABY

Way beyond the pig farm, where limestone oozes mud, stands the makings of a manor house with a cellar caked in blood. Who could know what happened, but bricks are never made of sand, and any two-bit mason knows it’s silt that beats the band. Viola said it was a gunfight between the builder and his son; and, the General of the draft board who knew the war was won.

The builder paid with unclean coin to keep his Sonny out of it and he knew a few more dollars was like adding spit to shit. The General begged to differ since Viola needed money. Sonny, whom she named the dad, roared, Am I supposed to think that’s funny, Guns came out when the builder cried, Your daughter is a slut.

Shots rang out soon after. Sonny took one in the gut. Then, the draft board lost its bigwig with a slug in and out his throat. The builder sent his brains astray without an obliging suicide note.

Viola hiding in the attic heard each of them go down. She did her best to clean it up, then, took the first bus out of town.

The General was a filthy fraud for rigging who went to war. Sonny was a user and abuser of a woman’s core. The builder became a local legend for his auto-execution. Viola, that slut, turned out to be my mother, finding another boyfriend her dubious solution.

I FELT FREE

Found it hard to make the move

Never dreamed I had more to prove

A wolf bared his teeth for me to see

For the first time ever I felt free

I took a shortcut past overload

If I do what’s right I won’t explode

Start at A, go to B, choose to chase infinity

For the second time ever I felt free

Ain’t no one gonna stop me here or there

My joint"s jumpin’ for you, I swear

Older now, nothing left to flee

For the third time ever I felt free

I went away to do what I should do

Tomorrow I walk, yesterday I flew

If you want the groove, believe in me

For the fourth time ever I felt free

Wolf returned to finish off my fate

No longer will I ever have to wait

For the last time ever I felt free

For the last time ever . . .

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO

BROAD AND MARKET?

The hard-nosed Pollack boxed his way into local legend when he beat the man who beat the man who beat Mickey Walker. Wadzu Gawluk kept his fists high covering the wreckage of his misshapen face. He won and lost hundreds of welter, middle, and light heavyweight brawls from the ‘Golden Age of Dempsey’ to the dawn of World War II.

I called him Uncle Wazoo. He owned enormous hands. flounder- sized palms and cucumber fingers all with the texture of crocodile leather from decades of drowning his hands in pickle juice. Gawluk lived next door with his daughter’s family. Here catholic masses played ‘Fortress America.’ Here insurgents formed the ‘hell-dust’ of Negroes, mongrels, and Moroccans ‘storming’ their doors.

The Pollack patrolled Brenner Street from West Side Park to Woodland Cemetery. From there, Gawluk spread his worth onto and Springfield Avenue all the way to Market. Where the brown blemish of Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Moroccans had taken hold. In Down Neck, though, Europe persisted. Here, on sweltering streets and stoops, immigrants bickered. Here, the Italian, Polish, and Portuguese shouted in their native tongues. Here. also, teenage ‘Madonnas’ and ‘Wops’ ranted in fractured English. In this part of Newark, New Jersey, Mother Mary and Joltin’ Joe Dimaggio reigned.

From Spring to Fall, Wazoo goaded local heroes in their 20s into bare-knuckle matches. If you hit his paunch, you won the ten dollars. Punch that crumbling face and US Grant was yours. Before each match, street urchins roamed the recesses of six-story walk ups for loose change and cardboard canisters of dated beer. I followed along while Gawluk treated his pretenders as filth. He broke noses, split lips, cuffed ear lobes until it all ran purple. Best of all, Uncle Wadzu sliced eyelids. Yakety yak grandmothers stitched the lids in place. They used needle and thread carried in their oily smocks. The once cheeky adversaries yelped like week-old puppies.

The proud Pole gave me the ten dollars to buy candy for his young admirers. He used his fifty to buy beer for the apostles of the ‘Ironbound Brawler.’ What he won on side bets, which some nights surpassed one thousand dollars, he gave to his daughter. She gave half of that to the Catholic Church. Opponents never won a nickel for their work.

The Pollack may have lost in his sauerkraut days to the likes of Battling Levinsky, Sergeant Sunny Blake, Young Frankie Corbett and the ‘Guinea’ orphan from Brooklyn; but, on the streets of Brick City, Uncle Wadzu ruled. We are all wiser because this illiterate warlord from Poznan taught youngsters like me how to become a man . . ."OK, who wants to fight?

TEST PATTERN

The house was not plumb and the wind knew it. In winter, drafts broke into whistles and spooked the old mutt who paced the linoleum in search of calm. At times, field mice would cozy up between cinder blocks and joists. Where the rodents would wait out storms as the mutt growls in protest at their retreats.

Most nights, shades remained up taking in the moon and stars. With each cold-snap shades come