More and more these days I just want to escape this dark timeline but the disbelief of America’s self-inflicted wound hovers ominously overheard, the black cloud I can’t outrun.
Makes sense. I was once part of the Black Cloud Brotherhood.
What the hell was THAT? you ask.
The Black Cloud Brotherhood (B.C.B.) was created by Alex Totino and I while cooling our heels backstage at yet another Nihilistics/Misguided gig or maybe as we traipsed around Flushing-Meadows Park long after it’d closed. Alex was The Misguided’s guitarist, I was the Nihilistics’ (above) and we both felt doomed to a life of disappointment and travail. As far as we were concerned, nothing – jobs, romance, our role in our bands – ever worked out, Then one of us (probably Alex) moaned about a black cloud following us everywhere. Misery loves company so “brotherhood” was amended and now we had a club. Of two (I’m not sure there was ever a third member). Alex even drew a logo featuring a black cloud shooting out a lightning bolt with the letters “BCB” beneath. If I’d been into tattoos – or could afford one – back then I would’ve taken Alex’s ballpoint sketch to a parlor and committed our friendship permanently to my arm. But the black cloud took even that: Alex and I haven’t spoken in almost forty years.
When I started putting together the NIHILISTIC book I made a list of those I wanted to interview and Alex was at the top. I tried to find him on social media and couldn’t. When I sat down with Lyle Hysen, drummer and main force behind The Misguided and, later, Das Damen (which Alex was also in) he told me Alex long ago moved on. Lyle had tried to enlist him for a Das Damen reunion a few years ago but Alex declined, apparently permanently stung by how badly Das Damen flamed out. Of all our NYHC (New York hardcore) contemporaries apart from the Beastie Boys, Das Damen came closest to “success.” They were on three different record labels (including SST), toured, shot several music videos, put out a few albums but still couldn’t gain traction and eventually disbanded. Some of Das Damien’s members stayed in music, even tangentially (Lyle runs a music licensing service and still has a band), but Alex hung up his Gibson and never looked back, apparently.
The NIHILISTIC book and the current “failure to thrive” conversation around young men has me thinking about Young Chris even more than usual. How did that formative period after high school and before leaving home, when I pinballed between endless family conflicts, a series of shitty jobs and the internecine struggles inherent in launching and maintaining a band, lead me here?
While my friends were going off to college and on seemingly clear trajectories, I had no fucking clue what to do with myself. From 1980 to 1987 I excelled at exactly two things: playing the guitar and jerking off. Only one had the potential to lead anywhere but I’m not sure I ever thought of a future for The Nihilistics. We’d play some local gigs, put out some records… then what? There was no MTV. We weren’t about to give up our jobs to get in a van and tour. No major label was throwing money at us. I morphed from guitar-slinging teenager to young adult and gave little-to-no thought about what comes next. Content to have a bit of money in my pocket and occasionally appear on a grimy stage to raise an electric racket, I lived like tomorrow wasn’t guaranteed… so why plan? That's when I formulated my “Shopping Cart Full Of Cement” theory, based on a story I’d read about a guy walking down a Manhattan street who’s killed when a shopping cart full of construction debris rolls off a roof and crushes him. I even wrote a short story where the doomed man is having the happiest day of his life – the woman he loves agreeing to marry him, his dream job just secured, etc., – when Fate in the form of an errant, laden Gristede’s shopping cart intervenes. Call it my form of “You could walk out in the street tomorrow and get hit by a bus!” but the shopping cart full of cement was my attempt to do an end-run around a chaotic and random world where all your plans come to naught. Because you’re in the Black Cloud Brotherhood.
But here comes the big question: was I at least living in the moment, happy in my mindfulness?
Umm, no. No, I wasn’t. I was miserable, way more than now. Fat, still pimply, with no talents but the aforementioned two (only one of which was acceptable in public), I was convinced I was unlovable. Hell, unlikeable, too. I had few friends besides Alex and one or two others. Even my bandmates left me behind once they started getting laid. I had absolutely no game with girls and saw myself as a monster doomed to furtive stroke mag sessions. Things were bad at home. My rarely-seen father was living in Westchester, my mother drank, my sisters were off on their own, my brothers treated me like a human punching bag… so how did I hold on long enough to make it out? How did I manage to thrive even after the Nihilistics failed and all I had left was marathon masturbation sessions?
I wish I could say I became a sperm bank donor but that wasn’t it.
When I think back to how I survived that gestational seven year period and launched myself into the rest of my life, I can’t help but compare myself to young men today. I keep reading that they’re not thriving. They don’t have cheap rents. They don’t have plentiful jobs (soon, thanks to AI, they might not have ANY jobs). They don’t meet in real life. They’ve been hobbled by Steve Jobs and his goddamn pocket computer to where they’d sooner interact with a screen and an artificial “companion.” They’re not having sex, they’re not getting fucked up, they’re not trying and failing, over and over again. The pandemic set them back, Donald Trump is making it worse and getting from here to the rest of their lives seems impossible. But if it helps at all, here’s how I did it, fully aware that (as Lou Reed sang) those were different times:
Save yourself – these people are insane and soon you’ll be too.
I was convinced if I didn’t get out of my mother’s house it’d be the end of me. Between my weight-lifter/body-builder brother’s endless rage and my mother’s hair-trigger temper, I learned to out-crazy them to survive. But constantly threatening violence at the top of your lungs is not a good long-term strategy. I knew I had to go or die and ultimately chose flight over fight. Then I told myself I’d sooner live in the gutter than go back home (and there were times I thought I’d have to).
Life is absurd – laugh to keep from crying.
OK, I did plenty of crying, weeping on the edge of my bed sure I’d be broke and alone the rest of my life. But with the help of MAD magazine, Mel Brooks and Monty Python and the friendship of Glenn Katz, Jeff Maschi, Mike Nicolosi (RIP) and Alex Totino I developed a sarcastic sense of humor that became my balm and which I rode all the way the hell off Lawn Guyland. It also helped with the ladies, who, as you know, LOVE TO LAUGH.
Life is also unfair – but you have skills no one else does.
Bad people prevail, good people get crushed. Things seldom go your way. Someone else always has more advantages. But I could play guitar. I could make people laugh. I don’t want to contemplate where I’d be sans those two. What’s your special skill? How can you exploit it? Who will pay you to do so?
It’s all a performance – get comfortable on stage.
Before my cover band Cobra, before Nihilistics, there was theater. Mr. Monsell (RIP), my high school English teacher, saw something in me and I figured if Jeff Maschi can act, so can I. I began doing plays. Comedies, dramas, you name it. Anything to not be me. And it gave me the confidence to appear in front of audiences, which became enormously helpful on club stages playing music and later on the radio. Fucking fake it before you make it or however you want to put it. And remember: no one is thinking about you as much as you’re thinking about you.
Find your community – and hone your skills.
Whether in The Charles Street Players, Thespians 1895, Cobra, Nihilistics or WFMU, I gravitated toward like-minded people and used any available resources to get better. You know, Malcom Gladwell’s 10,000 hours.
Checker Cabs are big and heavy – and will fuck you up.
Young men, if you can, get rear-ended by a Checker Cab. If I hadn’t back in ‘85 or ‘86 I would’ve never gotten the seed money – $6,000 – to get out of my mother’s house and move to New Jersey. Okay, so maybe you don’t need to be nearly killed in Long Island City by a cabbie… but get that seed money somewhere and move out, even if you have a good relationship with your parents (ESPECIALLY if you have a good relationship with your parents).
I know I swerved from where I began, talking about Alex Totino and the Black Cloud Brotherhood. But I often wonder if Alex was able to thrive and whether he’s happy with where his life went. I hope to speak with him someday and find out (and learn more about Young Chris, too). I’ve compared myself to a pinball, caroming all over the field, occasionally hit by a flipper and put back into play. It’s not entirely accurate. I had (and have) agency and seized opportunities when they came my way. But I would not want to be just starting out now.
I don’t envy anything about young men but their great skin and good hair.