Our next Americana Story comes from Terena Elizabeth Bell. Her short fiction collection, Tell Me What You See, was named one of the “best books of the century (so far)” by New York Society Library and a Ms Magazine must-read. Her debut novel, Recursion, is forthcoming in September 2027. She lives in Manhattan, where her landlord once was Philip Roth.
As We Go Along
By Terena Elizabeth Bell
You wanna know what it’s like to tail Micky Dolenz? Amazing until it’s not. Oh sure, yeah, everybody wants that detail, follow a bunch of rock stars around, live the high life: clubs, girls. But then the high life becomes the medium life, and the medium life becomes the so-so life and the so-so life, well, you see where I’m going with this.
I was a fan. Heck, we all were. It was 1967, the height of The Monkees’ popularity; back when their show was on primetime, not syndication. My granddaughter watches it now. My granddaughter. She pulls it up on YouTube and lets it roll.
I never thought those guys were commies. For the record, I said it on day one. I told the field chief, “Not everyone with a mop top is a threat to national security,” but no, he wouldn’t listen. “You get me something,” he said, “anything,” having somehow missed the message that McCarthyism was over, that that had been his generation and The Monkees were now mine.
That’s right. I’m talkin’ about my generation.
In the early days, there were 61 of us; that’s how many agents they put on the boys—more than Jane Fonda or the Black Panthers. When the band was perceived to be a “non-critical” threat; sometime between Monday nights and YouTube, the Bureau gradually retasked them. The file will tell you different. According to a heavily redacted LA 100-15732, activity began and ceased in less than three months. I don’t know where the others were reassigned. Maybe they got put on the Everly Brothers, retired, hell, went to buy a dog. I’m here to tell you I’m the only FBI detective still tailing The Monkees today. And, as Peter, Mike, and Davy are all dead, that means Micky. I follow a 72-year-old Micky Dolenz to bingo; I follow him into Ralph’s. I watch as he goes in and out of the podiatrist’s office. He knows I’m there. I’ve totally been made. Last week, I sat outside the proctologist’s for two hours while he got his colon checked just to punk me. All scans clear yet again, in case you were wondering.
It’s a thrilling life, I tell you. Amazing until it’s not.
***
The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz to Perform at 18th Annual Winter’s Eve
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEW YORK, NY, October 12, 2017 — Hey hey! Lead singer Micky Dolenz of 1960s teen pop sensation The Monkees will entertain the masses as featured performer at this year’s 18th Annual Winter’s Eve community festival.
The world-renowned musician will rock the Upper West Side at Manhattan’s largest holiday celebration in Dante Park (Broadway and 63rd Street) at 5:30 pm, Monday, November 27, 2017.
Dolenz’s performance will commence immediately after the official neighborhood tree-lighting ceremony. Tickets are not required.
“The holidays in NYC are always a must-see attraction. I love New York and the Upper West Side especially; it will be an honor to perform there for this season’s Winter’s Eve,” Dolenz said.
Together with The Monkees, Dolenz had a dozen Top 20 singles, four number one albums, five platinum records, and two Emmy Awards. Dolenz was also owner of the third Moog synthesizer ever made, on which he played the song “Daily Nightly” two years before the instrument’s use by The Beatles.
“This year’s headliner has done it all! Micky brings a unique presence to the stage. I’m a believer!” said Monika Rosenberg, President of the Upper West Side Small Business Development District Council (UWSSBDDC), organizer of Winter’s Eve.
Winter’s Eve is sponsored by WABC-TV, Shops at Columbus Circle, and Rosa Mexicano.
***
That’s right: We were back! New York, baby, the city that never sleeps, the Big Apple. It wasn’t Forest Hills Stadium or even JFK with Jimi Hendrix, but Micky and I were back. No more sitting outside the doctor’s office or hanging out in the park all day watching him compete in the 50-meter dash at the Bay Area Senior Games.
A concert. A real, live concert with roadies and lights and music — rock ‘n’ roll, the thing that had made this plum assignment worth it, tailing the exact same target every single day for fifty long years, what made the work worth living for. THE MUSIC.
I told you I was a fan.
***
Dante Park was more hopping than the senior citizen center on the Sunset Strip. The crowd was packed — I do mean packed! — and yes, there were the ladies. More women came out for this than anything Micky had done in years. Granted, most of the attendees had come to see the tree. But this one group in the corner, I’m telling you, they knew what they were about. There was this lady — 74, 75? — all decked out in her love beads and fringe, v-neck halter cut below the breast line like she’d walked off the set of “Laugh-In.” She and her friend had been drinking; I could smell the pilsner with the slightest hint of weed, and as the band warmed up, the two started chanting, “We want Micky! We want Micky,” in this rhythmic flow — a pulse, a drive, a cheer. The woman had that certain “don’t give a damn” that comes from years of practice, decades of younger generations dismissing everything she did, as she and her friend ignored looks from passersby. It takes bravery to let breasts that low go braless in public, and she was not monkeying around.
More power to her, I thought, and edged closer to their side of the stage.
The women were talking about the way that things used to be, and there was none of that maudlin that goes with it. “What about when they were stuck in the phone booth,” said the friend, laughing like the episode had aired last night, “and they kept Clark Kent from getting in because they couldn’t get out?” nothing subversive in their conversation or that would raise the specter of Uncle Sam, and I thought again about that first day, how I told the location chief, “There’s nothing here,” and he said, “There is and you’re gonna find it if it’s the last thing you do,” then denied every request for a transfer I had for the rest of my career.
He was the reason I was still on this detail, but in reality, had I wanted to be anywhere else? I was young and loved my country, had thought I was protecting it by sleuthing out truth in America’s fight against evil, an evil that threatened our way of life, and while I knew this wasn’t it, I wasn’t about to quit, go and do something else.
It was a little bit me, I thought, and, Chief, it was a little bit you, too.
I digress. Easy to do at this age. Most days I’m just glad I remember where the bathroom is and that I’m still physically able to keep up with Micky, who was standing in a makeshift press tent the UWSSBDDC people had set up to the right of the stage near the Christmas tree, which was next to a menorah for good measure. I’d poked around the tent when we got there, monitored who was going in and out, including a local TV reporter who didn’t look old enough to be a Homecoming queen, much less interview a man who sang about one. She was asking Micky questions like “Did you think you’d still be singing at your age?” and “Did you ever think about The Apes or The Gorillas for your name?” At one point, she even mentioned the murder of John Lennon, how losing him must have made Micky sad.
He was a champ, Micky, pointing out politely that Lennon had been in a different band, one he thought was called The Weavils.
There was a difference, I thought, between subversion and tongue-in-cheek. Between wanting to harm your country’s government and throwing its shit right back in its face, between putting up with the stupidity in life; people’s faulty logic and bad decisions, and wanting veritable harm, to want to actually hurt or destroy your nation. The former was American, patriotism in itself, freedom of thought the holiest of virtues we took a vow to protect.
Oh, what can it mean?
We weren’t going to solve those woes at Winter’s Eve. Heck, we couldn’t even solve them then, back when we were in the throes of it. All we could do was go along. All we could do was love the music, and that’s exactly what those women were there to do, band warming up on stage. Halter-top started to sway while her friend stood awkwardly by, as more and more people around the two began to laugh.
In a flash, Micky jumped on stage with the vigor of a 50-year-old. He lifted that mic out of the stand, a smile spreading across his face. The women went wild, and even some of the younger people joined in, one or two making comments that they couldn’t wait to tell their dad.
When that band opened up in that C-major key, halter-top’s whole body began to shake. Buh-ba buh-buh-buh, buh-ba buh-take the last train to Clarksville, and boy was she ready to meet him at the station. She had her arms going, her legs going, wiggling those boobs like Jello in a jiggler, and when he opened his mouth to sing that first note, she hurled her entire self forward and ran. “Micky,” she screamed, “I love you!” She wasn’t at Winter’s Eve because she came every year; she was here because she loved him. And by him, I mean him, not them, shouting Micky’s name not because he was the only Monkee left standing, but because then — back when she wore that suede outfit the very first time — he had been her favorite.
She rushed the stage. The last time I had seen a woman do that was Salt Lake City, 1968: fans in the audience shouting, “We want The Monkees! We want The Monkees!” like the boys were oxygen and they were hungry to breathe, then as the group came on stage, some sweet young thing charged, slick blonde hair parted straight down the middle, coming at Micky like a linebacker.
For a moment, I wondered if she might be the same girl. It wasn’t unheard of, teens in the 60’s as transient as their dreams. Maybe she’d gone to college then got a job in the city, crossing the country in her Volkswagen bug. Maybe she’d caught a ride with Deep Purple. Micky wasn’t the only one who’d gotten older and had to slow down, with multiple doctors’ visits. So had I. So had I and everyone at those concerts, the boys and the girls and the American dream, the sound and the music and everything in between. This was what the younger people didn’t get, as a Millennial in the crowd asked, “Who’s this guy?” and another said, “Why do they always get such has-beens?” and the women beside them did not react, did not even hear the insult.
No, they were enraptured, in love with a band that was bigger than the Beatles in an age where YouTube wasn’t yet an idea, when something like the internet could not be fathomed, when we had to surveil The Monkees, like it or not, because the US was a country at war and they did produce art that defied the government, showing images from Selma and Vietnam at their concerts, Micky saying on the show that reporters only called the demonstrations riots because they couldn’t spell anything more than four letters. They spoke their minds, Micky and the rest. They spoke their minds, and so they were followed; everyone back then was followed: Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger. It was the 60s. And while it was easy to think of The Monkees as a made-up band with their bubblegum sound, that sound was what made the world pure again. It made it pure while it defied it: three basic chords with an intro riff as a man who had been drafted picked up the phone and called the girl he loved, a girl maybe with her own part down the middle, and asked her to meet him at the station because he knew he was never coming home.
Pretty subversive thinking for a spook.
Let her rush the stage. Let her run at it screaming and shaking every part of her body she had left; let Micky, let us all feel young again.
