245. While in college, my songwriting partner and I bus to Manhattan from Schenectady to audition for Vanguard records. We don’t get a contract and my guitar is stolen from the waiting room. Back in Schenectady, I call the A&R guy we auditioned for (“not ready”) to see if the guitar turned up. “No, but, hey we have insurance. Just come back down and file a police report.” “Not worth the trip down, it was a cheap guitar, a Guava written in the same script as Goya.” “I distinctly remember you had a pre-war Martin D-18.” “Not me…” “All right, if you insist…” Years later I hear the subtext and picture Mr. A&R hanging up the phone and just shaking his head.
246 (The Dr. Facci Fellowship). In 1971 I am rear-ended at a red light, hurt but not injured. The other driver assures me he has good insurance. An actor friend refers me to his “lawyer acquaintance” who got him a quick settlement. “Think of it as the way big companies support the arts.” The lawyer acquaintance hands me a card for Dr. Facci, with a Mott Street address. “Mafia country. The safest neighborhood in the city.”
The dusty waiting room is filled with elderly women, but Dr. Facci waves me right in. He looks like the Orson Welles’s character in Touch of Evil ten years later on a really bad day. Ancient medical journals are strewn across his desk with several unmarked bottles of pills. “So, you have a case of whiplash?”
“Yes, it hurts when I think.”
Dr. Facci looks at me with a weary sadness, then seems to smile a bit, and growls, “Hippie and a smartass. But I’ll take care of you.” He lumbers around the desk, palpates my neck, and tells me to come in every week for six weeks. He jots down a note, hands me some pills, and says, “Here, for when you think too hard,” adding, “Don’t get excited, it’s sugar.”
I like Dr. Facci.
I enjoy roaming Little Italy each week, lunching on pasta, trying to spot Mafiosi. The waiting room is always full, and Dr. Facci takes me right away, palpates my neck, jots a note, and sends me on my way with a few sugar pills. At first I wonder how his career sunk so low but I come to realize he must provide an essential service to the neighborhood. Perhaps my scam is subsidizing medical care for the elderly.
After six visits to Little Italy, I am awarded a $750 Dr. Facci Fellowship.
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