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“You Don’t Know What Love Is ” was a finalist in our recently concluded 71st Short Fiction Contest, and is published with the consent of the author.

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A band made up of inmates at the Narcotic Farm; Lexington, Kentucky (date unknown)/via American Blues Scene

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You Don’t Know What Love Is

by L.F. Graubard

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…..Mornings hit like punishment detail. First thing’s the piss—slow, reluctant, a thin stream from a rusted pipe. Then coffee. Bitter, black, essential.

…..On my shuffle through the hallway, I catch my reflection: naked, swollen, sagging. Once, if someone talked to me the way I talk to myself now, they’d regret it. These days, I just stare. Sometimes I catch something in the eyes—like a black‑and‑white Polaroid of someone I used to be. Barely.

…..You’re never one thing. Just masks. Archetypes on shuffle. Hero when you’re scoring. Trickster when you’re scheming. Sage when you’re high enough to sound profound. Caretaker when you’ve got nothing left but mercy. A jukebox of selves. Quarters ran out years ago.

…..Now I live the Starbucks lifestyle—padded walls with jazz. Regulars shuffling in like patients on a drip. The green siren grinning down like a corporate succubus hawking warmth and connection.

…..Sometimes I hear it: a faint high tone, steady and pure. Concert A, 440 hertz. Back when TV signed off it came with a frozen test pattern, Indian head, bull’s‑eye hum. Coast‑to‑coast hypnosis. I never forgot the sound.

…..I sit. I watch. The Mermaid hums and we nod along, high on our own brain chemistry. Like shipwrecked sailors. People don’t want meaning. They want another hit. Life feels like a punishment treadmill—like that old Betty Boop cartoon: the villain runs faster, gets whipped harder. The system whips you, and you keep running, pretending it’s freedom.

…..The espresso machine clicks four times and just like that—I’m back in 1967.

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…..There are years that split the soul. 1967 was one of them. King denounced Vietnam. Ali refused the draft and lost his crown. The Six‑Day War lit the desert. And somewhere between Quảng Tín and 14th Street, I picked up a tenor saxophone and walked into the shadows.

…..Back in the day, I played with a rhythm and blues band. Middle‑aged Black brothers in green tuxedos, pompadours slicked high, leaning against a Cadillac DeVille like a Kool cigarette ad. Kool smoke in the air, brown‑bag beer, talking shit like it was a second language.

…..Lester knocked first. Bald, broad, looked like Ernie Shavers, eyes that had seen Korea, Lorton, half the Chitlin’ Circuit. His guitar told the stories he didn’t.

…..My father cracked the door. “Who the hell are you?” “Lester. From Lester and the Rockets. We’re here to give your boy a ride.”

…..I came down the stairs dressed like them—green tux, pompadour tight, tenor sax in hand. My father squinted. “Isn’t it hard enough being a Jew without being a  schvartze  too?”

…..The Caddy backed out, Junior Walker blasting “Shotgun.”  Lester passed me a spliff. “Only weekends,” he said. “Keeps me glued.”

…..Café La Sombra burned on 14th Street—neon bleeding across wet asphalt, hookers flagging cars, dealers pacing corners like sentries. Inside, La Sombra lived up to its name. Dark. Smoky. Dexter Gordon on one wall, Ali standing over Liston on another. A crooked Harvard diploma drooped like a bad joke. The walls sweated memory.

…..Lester stomped four times—always four. His ritual, his time machine. Then we hit “Crosscut Saw” — Albert King’s dirty blues welded to an Afro‑Cuban groove. Lester rasped into the mic: “I got a double‑bladed axe… it cuts both ways…”

…..The floor went swampy. Sweat and skirts rising, horns slicing through haze. Dancers grinding, bodies slick. The saw cut through pleasure and pain, music and menace.

…..That was Lester — touch the eternal, then let it burn out in a spoon.

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…..The summer of ’69 was chaos. Life tilted sideways, like the whole planet rolled dice and came up snake eyes. Everyone glued to the TV, hypnotized by the moon landings — progress televised, every heartbeat narrated. Families lit candles like the astronauts could see candles from the moon.

…..Broadcast became the new opium. Music, war, assassinations, moon dust—the hum filled the air. I carried battle fatigue without a battlefield, dread of annihilation, living at permanent ground zero. When the networks signed off, the ritual never changed: anthem, fighter jets, silence, frozen test pattern —bullseye, Indian head, numbers like coordinates—and then the 440Hz drone. Not a show. My favorite part.

…..You’d think I’d have fit right in. I didn’t.

…..The Lone Star biker bar embalmed in nicotine and spit buckets, Confederate flags sagging like surrendered skins. Slot machines blinked cheap constellations. Harleys outside, Pagans and Junkyard Saints inside, everyone carrying something sharp or old enough to jam.

…..We played behind bulletproof plexiglass, zoo animals for a drunk kingdom. Fights routine. A stabbing meant the night was slowing down. A shooting meant the moon was theatrical.

…..Johnny Rumble stood dead still — ruffled shirt, dark shades — testifying like a basement preacher. Gravel voice, sax strapped like an extra lung. He rocked back on his heels, call‑and‑response lines setting the room on edge.

…..Sixty bikers surged, sweat‑slick carnival. Tempo climbed, horns cut, mambo rhythm churned like an engine about to seize.

…..Between songs Johnny leaned in:

…..“Stay in school. Don’t lie. Be good to your woman.” The bikers howled.

…..“A man who doesn’t stand for something — he’ll fall for anything.”

…..Silence, then laughter sharp enough to leave marks.

…..Back at the bar, a biker on PCP leaned in, pupils blown.

…..“CIA bugged my molars, man. MK‑ULTRA. LSD’s just the test run.”

…..He lit a Marlboro and stared into the jukebox waiting for orders.

…..We tore into “The Sidewinder,” coasted Lee Morgan, then kicked off “Sex Machine.”  The room went feral.

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…..1971 wasn’t just a year. It was a rhythm. A full‑time hustle with no benefits — just consequences. Scamming, boosting, prostituting, forging, begging, borrowing, stealing. Every addict had a rhythm.

…..And me — I was just another body gorged with needle marks, a man who’d been to war and lost. Stanislavski would’ve been proud. Best Supporting Junkie.

…..I chose Tang. Juice from the Black Man’s Development Center — methadone mixed with Tang. Baseline for survival. The director, Colonel Muhammad Jeru‑Abdul Al‑Jazeera, had a rap sheet longer than his sermons: robbery, forgery, bad checks. His nonprofit pulled a fat federal grant. Rehab for profit. America in miniature.

…..If your urine was clean, you got take‑home bottles. Which meant addicts sold methadone to buy heroin. Capitalism again, now in a Dixie cup.

…..One morning, already dirty, I slipped a girl two bucks for her urine. Fed the clinic their specimen through a sweatshirt rig — hole in the pocket, plastic bottle, rubber tube. Thought I was slick.

…..Two weeks later the counselor called me in.

…..“Good news and bad news,” she said.

…..“Bad news is your urine’s clean.”

…..“Why’s that bad?” I asked. “Good news is — you’re pregnant.”

…..End of my take‑homes.

…..Sunday mornings, the clinic opened 7 to 9. The lot turned into a block party from hell. Two hundred heads hustling — dope, Wild Irish Rose, secondhand clothes. One guy sold cigarettes from his trunk. Another hawked shoes. A bald man stood under an umbrella. And it wasn’t raining.

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…..I jump a Yellow Cab from College Park, incognito, like an alien. Stumble out more loaded than I thought. Vomit under the red, white, and blue marquee lights — one shipwrecked soul offering guts to the gods.

…..Brother Blue X paces the curb like a panther with nowhere to go. Fistful of flyers, voice sharp enough to cut steel.

…..“This fight don’t mean nothin’, brothers! Soap opera for the colonized mind!”

…..A popcorn box flies. Blue X doesn’t flinch.

…..“Wake up! This ain’t a fight, it’s a funeral! And the body in the casket is your freedom!”

…..Inside, the buzz is electric. Ali in red, Frazier in green. Durham’s sweatshirt a billboard: JOE FRAZIER, WORLD CHAMPION. Ali towers, radiant, moving like the Ali before exile. Fast, ghostlike, jabbing. Frazier bores in, throwing punches from the floor, digging through Ali’s ribcage for his heart.

…..Ali slows. Round by round, the magic fades. Frazier doesn’t. By round three, Ali is hurt — covering up, peeking between gloves. And me? Stuck between a cheap theater seat and a dream I can’t wake from, trying to make sense of a world that cheered Cassius Clay becoming Muhammad Ali, then punished him for it.

…..Frazier mocks him — taunting, laughing, but with rage. A left hook to the liver lands. Ali shakes his head like it doesn’t hurt. Bullshit. Those shots are wicked. The headshake is theater.

…..Round 15. Frazier clocks Ali. He goes down — stunned. Jaw like a grapefruit. No smirk now. Tough bastard. But he lost.

…..That fight swallowed me whole. Drugs, politics, racism, religion — all in the ring. Millions watched. An indictment of humanity. Not a fight — a Mandingo remake with better lighting. Ali the wild buck, Frazier the house slave with the harder hook. And Brother Blue X outside, pimping slogans like prophecy.

…..That old fight, that theater of pain — it never ended. Just changed venues.

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…..1979 was a prime number. Like every addict — divisible only by consequence and the One. The year began with peace, ended in invasion. Begin and Sadat signed the Egypt‑Israel treaty. China hit Vietnam. Iran crowned its revolution with a hostage crisis. Oil spiked.

…..Music, dope, chaos — braided into a rope I wrapped around my throat. When that wasn’t enough, I turned to chemistry. The Physicians’ Desk Reference became my hymn book. Doctors were easy marks. Pharmacies blind. A fake voice, a forged BNDD number, an invented cough. I learned to mimic authority, learned to disappear. I even wore a doctor’s skin.

…..A friend gone — suicide. Good jazz drummer. Everything running smooth.

…..Until Chester.

…..Chester the Snitch, dragging shot‑up legs like bad luggage. Picked up, flipped instantly. Spilled everything — my pharmacies, my methods, my garnish of lies. Within hours the cops decided I was a one‑man cartel posing as a jazz musician.

…..They grabbed me outside a pharmacy in Chevy Chase. I tried the line — “Officer, you’re making a terrible mistake, I’m a physician” — but the radio said cuff him. I bolted down Connecticut Avenue in a grey three‑piece suit until a cop built like Dick Butkus stepped out of an alley and flattened me. Head hit pavement. World went sideways.

…..DC’s Central Cell Block was a medieval toilet: piss‑slick floors, bleach burned into walls, metal bunks colder than concrete. Detectives pinned a phonebook to my spine and punched through it — house tradition. Cuffed wrists and ankles, tossed into a concrete puddle best left unnamed.

…..The Feds came next. Judge Rodman, one‑armed veteran of the Philippines, presided with a .38 under his robe. He looked at my file, then at me, like he’d seen this movie before.

…..My lawyer pitched treatment. I stood, heart thudding like a muffled tom.

…..“Your Honor, I don’t think I’d stay in a program like Second Genesis. I think I need federal time. Real treatment.”

…..Rodman nodded once.

…..“Three years at the Federal Medical Center in Lexington. Plus, a three‑year special parole term.”

…..The hammer fell soft, but it fell.

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…..The Bureau of Prison bus rolled past bluegrass hills, then through the gates of the Old Narco Farm — revival architecture, arch‑lined walkways, brick dorms, and forty‑foot fences humming like electric harps. A paradox wrapped in manicured grass.

…..The place wasn’t born a prison. Opened in 1935 as a volunteer drug‑treatment center, it housed fallen royalty of jazz — Sonny Rollins, Chet Baker, Sam Rivers, Red Rodney, Lee Morgan, Jackie McLean. Burroughs checked in on his own terms. Tadd Dameron led a patient band that could’ve headlined Newport: Chet finding his voice, Rivers sharpening his tone, Kenny Drew pouring fire on piano. Some came to escape death; others to rehearse rebirth.

…..If I’d been born fifteen years earlier, maybe I would’ve walked in behind Sonny and carried his horn.

…..When Lester and I arrived, we were in chains. The romantic era was long gone. No more volunteers, no more open fields of recovery. The Farm had snapped back into a prison. Yet the ghosts stuck around — musical fingerprints etched into the brick.

…..Dorms held alcoholics on one side, women on the other. Walkways lined with parallel bars and benches where men tried to remember their spines. Therapy rooms hawked Transactional Analysis and meditation sheets. But music — real music — still pulsed under it all.

…..Pain turned to rhythm. Rhythm to meaning. That’s what kept me breathing.

…..Sonny Rollins came too. Kicked dope, walked out clean, then exiled himself to the Williamsburg Bridge — sixteen hours a day blowing notes into the wind. He cut Saxophone Colossus after Lexington. Sonny was on the righteous path to individuation. Never better than when he practiced, meditated, became what he was meant to become.

…..He never looked back. Called addiction a trick bag, a lying mermaid. Lovely face, lovely song — nothing waiting but bone death between her legs.

I knew that siren. I knew that bridge.

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…..The Narco Farm band was limping. Duke’s lip split, Fabio locked in the hole. That left me. Mickey tracked me near the therapy wing, moving like a messenger with bad news.

…..“Duke’s out. Fabio’s in the SHU. You good to lead Saturday’s courtyard set?”

…..I gave him a long look.

…..“I can read a chart. I’m not Duke, not Fabio — but I’ll hold the pocket.”

…..Heads called: “St. Thomas,” “Blue 7,” “You Don’t Know What Love Is.” A tribute to Sonny Rollins. Maybe “Tenor Madness” for the blues guys, “Naima” if there was air left.

…..The courtyard looked like it always did — bleached concrete, stressed grass, rusted amp stacks buzzing louder than the bass. But when we wheeled the gear out, inmates drifted in like smoke.

…..I stepped forward, cradling the same Selmer tenor Sonny played when he was here. Mickey called “St. Thomas,” sticks counted us in.

…..Soft, clean tones drifted into the air like incense. Each note deeper than thought — like I wasn’t just honoring Sonny, I was connected to him. We opened light, syncopated. Then cut into “Tenor Madness,” pushing the pulse. I kept solos short, speech‑like. Not trying to impress. Just trying to mean it.

…..By the third tune, the sky softened, and the notes started to rise. Even the COs stopped checking their watches.

…..A cracker shouted, “Play somethin’ dirty!”

…..Instead, we gave him “You Don’t Know What Love Is.”

…..Akari sang:

“You don’t know what love is

Until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues,

Until you’ve loved a love you had to lose,

You don’t know what love is.”*

…..I thought not until you’ve suffered enough to recognize it. Until the masks drop. Until the high wears off and what’s left is raw, cracked‑open humanity.

…..We closed with “Blue 7.”  Blues. Pure. No apology. More Sonny. Applause wasn’t thunderous. But it landed. And it was real.

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…..Finally, my time in Lexington was over. Worth it. I was clean, safe, with plenty to think about.

…..Secretariat. Big Red. I saw him run the Belmont on a black-and-white TV in a cheap Baltimore motel. Sham broke hard, gave out early. Secretariat just kept going — like he knew the track was too small for him. Thirty-one lengths. Not a win — that was ascension.

…..I cried. Not because I loved horses. Because I wasn’t him. Not yet. I was still Sham   — bleeding pride, running scared, trying to prove something.

…..But somewhere in me, the gallop echoed. Not on the track. In my ribcage. Big Red opened his stride, and the rules folded. No past. No shame. No loss. Just rhythm. Just flight. God lived in the horse.

…..Escorted out through the glass doors to freedom. The air outside cleaner, the day serene. Jack — another inmate — drove me to the airport.

…..“What time’s your flight?”

…..“Not until 5:45. We’ve got time. Do me a favor?”

…..“What’s that?”

…..“I want to see Claiborne Farm. Secretariat.”

…..“That close?”

…..“Thirty-five minutes from the airport. Twenty from here. No guarantee you’ll see him. Tours are booked. I’ve done it before. But it’ll cost you a hundred.”

…..“That’ll work,” I said, handing him the C-note.

…..We pulled off the road, and there he was. Twenty yards away. Lucky day.

…..I wished for an apple, a sugar cube — something to coax him closer. But Secretariat came anyway. Regal gait, timeless. Massive, chest like a drum, eyes that could read your soul.

…..He stepped close, nodded once, and exhaled long and low. It felt like he saw me. No judgment. Just presence. Just being.

…..I cried.

…..It’s different with animals. I don’t trust people. But horses don’t lie. A horse loves completely. He stood there, red titan, pure spirit. I remembered being a boy on a pony, six-gun in hand, cowboy hat tilted.

…..I touched his head. Then I walked away.

…..“Sometimes I craved to cry, but I lacked the tears,” I told Jack.

…..Dreamed of the Mermaid. Thought of the red colt. And wondered what waited further down that long Kentucky road.

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L.F. Graubard writes noir‑inflected fiction about memory, institutions, and the quieter forms of American strangeness. His work appears in SmokeLong Quarterly, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Berlin Literary Review, ExPat Press, Blood + Honey, and 50‑Word Stories, with work forthcoming in the Bath Flash Fiction Award Anthology. A former jazz musician and longtime tech consultant, he draws on lived experience to explore addiction, identity, and the shifting boundaries between history and myth.

 

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*From “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” written by Don Raye (lyrics) and Gene de Paul (music)

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Information about the  Jerry Jazz Musician  edited book Kinds of Cool: An Interactive Collection of Jazz Poetry, Vol. II (featuring women poets)

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