Mojo

Mojo

          When I first moved into my shady old duplex on Claremont Avenue in 1977, my neighbours on the other half of the porch were a quiet lesbian couple, but they moved out a couple of months after I moved in. Mojo and his Harley moved in sometime early in 1978, and they — Mojo and his Harley — lived next door to me for a couple of years. Mojo brought a ramp with him when he moved in so that he could roll his hog up over the front steps into the house. He kept it in the living room at night.

          At the start, Mojo had a woman with a large German shepherd living with him, but after a while they moved out and Celeste replaced her. Celeste was passionate about motorcycles, too. When I first saw her she wore a “No Putt No Butt” T-shirt. In Mojo’s terminology at the time, a big Harley was a putt-putt.

          Mojo managed a Harley-Davidson repair shop down on Broadway. He was a bull-goose biker, no doubt about that, but although he had biker friends who’d come to visit and get fucked up, I got the impression that he was more a lone wolf than the leader of any one pack. He was burly and loud. He had curly dark hair and a scraggly black beard. His eyes looked sleepy and his lip had a curl to it that could instantly turn into either a sneer or a secret-looking smile. He had a drawling, Southern way of talking, and always seemed to be trying to make a point, even on mundane topics. It was as if he felt he’d acquired some great store of wisdom and was duty-bound to hand it down. He kept guns.

          We gave each other room at first. I imagine he had trouble getting a firm grip on how to peg me. I left the house every morning in my Ford Maverick, wearing a three-piece suit. But I had that beard, and I played strange music, and fairly loud sometimes. And I had odd-looking friends come by to see me from time to time. Aromas carried over between our open balconies. Mojo offered to sell me a lid. Okay, that was settled. I was officially Mojo’s beatnik. That’s how he introduced me to his friends: “This is my beatnik.”

          Mojo ran a tight neighbourhood. Celeste told me once that Mojo had been a Master Sergeant in the Army. (That was when I found out Mojo’s square name: “Master Sergeant Terry Browning,” she’d said, saluting.) A petite Chicana stripper whose stage name was Little Mary lived in one of the duplexes across the street. She had long, bleached-blonde hair and the word “FLACA” (‘skinny’) tattooed to her right thigh. Little Mary was friendly enough, in a neighbourly sort of way, but Mojo had a problem with her boyfriends. They would park at the curb and honk their horns for her. Mojo thought this was unacceptably bad manners. Nice young men went to the door to escort their girls to the car. They didn’t honk their horns and expect their girls to come running. Especially if the neighbour across the street is sleeping something off. All this shouted from the upstairs balcony with great clarity and hostility, and — once or twice — with a firearm being displayed. And Little Mary’s young men started showing her more respect — when it came to going up to her door and knocking, at least.

          A retired Army sergeant and his wife lived in the free-standing house on the uphill side of my place. The wife was dying of cancer, but she was extremely friendly — giving me tips on hanging out my wash, and things like that. His name was Sarge, but her name was always Mrs Melancon. Mrs Melancon told me that she loved Mojo; him being there made her feel safe.

          Once a couple of bimbo sales clerks I’d met whilst peddling advertising at one of the malls came by to see me, get high, and tease me. One of them, the non-blonde, was wearing a black Harley-Davidson T-shirt. While they were there Mojo came by the house for something. When he saw the girls the first thing he drawled was, “Oh! Do you have a Harley-Davidson? Or just a tee-shirt?”, his lip in sneer mode, dragging out the word tee-shirt so that it sounded as disgusting as ‘dog turd’ or worse.

          Another time he encouraged a well-tattooed female friend of Celeste’s to climb over the little barrier between our balconies and wake me up most pleasantly in the wee small hours one weekend. I’m forever grateful. The next day I dropped by Mojo and Celeste’s about noon. The three of them were drinking coffee and offered me some. I said, “I had the strangest dream last night,” and they said, in unison: “Did you?” Too bad it didn’t work out with her and me in the long run. She had Tweetie tattooed on her right thigh in full colour.

          Eventually Mojo and Celeste had problems and then resolved them and so on and then they moved on. Little Mary had a baby and was thrilled that it was really blonde. Mrs Melancon died and Sarge took to spending his days in a no-frills bar down on Broadway.

After a few years Mojo and Celeste came by to see me, passing through. Mojo had picked up a job as a cook on a shrimp boat and had put on a bit of weight. He told me that the guys on the boat were particularly fond of his pies.