THE BEST OF CITY LIFE:
Boston, you're my home
By Camille Dodero

I want to tell you a story

I want to tell you about my town

I'm going to tell you a big fat story, baby

It's all about my town.

The Standells, "Dirty Water"

IT'S FITTING THAT a raucous gang of garage punks from Los Angeles penned the definitive Boston rock-and-roll anthem. Because as much as I would love to tell you a big fat story about my town, I can't. After spending years upon years kicking around these parts, I'm starting to think that the only way to see the city with any clarity -- beyond the cliché sobriquets like "Beantown," "Athens of America," "Hub of the Universe," "Land of the Bean and the Cod" -- is from the somewhere else. Every time I return from somewhere else -- be it Chicago, Montreal, or New York City -- the Hancock Building shrinks as if it's moored in quicksand, the accents in the air sound sharper, the strangers on the train appear more familiar. And so I'm wondering if the best possible way to distill the city into a big fat story -- maybe even to see it for what it really is -- is to see it from somewhere else.

I could tell you about Boston when I was five, when I lived 25 miles south. Boston was the ultimate Metropolis, the twilight cityscape that Superman circled with Lois Lane cradled in his arms. Or that's what I used to think every time my family zipped into town on the Southeast Expressway. As we'd zoom past the Boston Gas tank decorated by Corita Kent, with its rainbow swaths rumored to ape the profiles of Ho Chi Minh and Frankenstein, I'd watch Boston's buildings poke over the crest of the dashboard and excitedly point, "Look, look! Those are the buildings where Superman flies!"

Back then, I didn't know that this was not the bustling backdrop where Superman: The Movie was shot (my parents humored me), or that Christopher Reeve would someday become a celebrity symbol of life's cruel ironies, or even that Boston was not the most impressive American concrete jungle with the tallest skyscrapers. I did know that Boston was the capital of Massachusetts -- my capital, the only one I knew -- where the flamboyant trapeze artists and car-stuffing circus clowns came annually to perform in a huge, ramshackle building with rib-like rafters and championship banners. I knew that Boston was where a freckled Irishman named Ray Flynn ruled, the Museum of Science's enormous Tyrannosaurus rex stood, and a television show that my mother wouldn't let me watch because it was filmed in a basement bar took place. I also knew that a section of town called "Copley Square" was one of the windiest places in the city -- not because I'd ever been there on a gusty day, but because one night when I sneaked a peek of that verboten Thursday-night program, the fluffy-haired ladies' man named Sam invited one of the regulars to Copley Square to watch all the women's dresses blow up in the breeze.

Back then, Boston was a place of superheroes, circuses, basketball championships, politicians, dinosaurs, and beer. But more than 20 years later, after living here for almost 10 years, the city isn't so easily distilled. That could be because I love Boston by default, much in the unconditional way one loves a sibling or a parent or an appendage. Or because I've felt trapped, frustrated, and angered by it at night, but then found myself loving it again in the morning. Even the town's traditional stock characters -- the crooked politicians (Mayor Curley, Billy Bulger), the Boston Brahmins (Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Kerry), the legendary criminals (Whitey Bulger), the old-school Irishmen (Mayor Flynn, Mayor White), the Massachusetts dynasty (the Kennedys) -- seem inappropriate, more like caricatures of the past than archetypes of the present. And since these stereotypes persist, the disconnect makes me wonder if I really know the place at all.

What I can tell you about Boston from the midst of it is how lush and idyllic the Public Garden is in the spring, with the elegant swan boats sliding across the pond, the lacy brides swooning over their tuxedoed grooms, and the quixotic lovers cuddling on the park benches. I can tell you about the Garden's grittier neighbor, Chinatown -- a milieu where the strip clubs stay open until 2 a.m. on Fridays, but can't lawfully purchase a bottle of liquor after 8 p.m. -- and its puddled alleyways, its murky-watered aquariums of plump fish, its smudged restaurant windows, its sweet, dark oyster sauce. I can tell you what it's like to work two blocks away from Fenway Park, to grow disgusted with the boozy, besotted Sox fans treating Brookline Avenue like a toilet bowl and then to feel strangely flattered when the gum-splotched sidewalks of my daily commute become a cynosure of American sports for two weeks in October.

I can even tell you what it was like to spend Saturday night kicking around Lansdowne Street when Springsteen came to town, to duck into the bustling Cask 'n Flagon for a brew and to discover the jukebox playing "Hungry Heart" when a live version had been sung a couple hundred feet away a few minutes earlier. And what it was like on that same night to wander back into the September warmth and to hear the Boss rasping "Dirty Water," with Peter Wolf as his encore. And then to wonder if the Jersey boy on the stage realized that he was singing a love song to Boston that only an outsider from somewhere else could've written.

Camille Dodero can be reached at cdodero@phx.com.