Tosh’s Unfortunate Life

Wednesday, August 31, 2022

I began to write my obituary because I didn’t feel I would make it off this island.  The local (and prominent volcano) Mount Mihara is fully active and ready to blow at a second’s notice. On top of that, there is a significant earthquake fault underneath the island.  Everywhere I go on this island, I’m reminded of death.  On a walk, I came upon a monument and a little shrine that announced a plane crash that took place here and killed 30 people.   In another walk, there was another shrine that honored the 35 people who were victims of a mudslide due to the typhoon that hit the island three years ago.   And just before we arrived here, a plane crashed into a house, killing the occupant, who, by chance, had just moved into the house.  The volcano attracted hundreds to commit suicide by jumping into the lava-filled crater.  The cruel joke is that one wishes to be swallowed by the earth, but when you jump in, lava keeps you floating, and you burn to death by the steam coming out of your body.  Death here is no joke.

So, if you look at this statistically, I have a 50/50 chance of making it alive from Ōshima.  To be on the safe side and concerned about not having the last word on my life and not having the time to finish off the full memoir called “Tosh’s Unfortunate Life,” I decided to, at the very least, write my obituary.   Here it is:

Tosh Berman (August 25, 1954 - August 31, 2022)

Born in Los Angeles and died in Izu Ōshima, Tokyo, Japan.

“Tosh Berman was a writer, poet, publisher, and gentleman.  The son of Wallace Berman and Shirley Berman.  He went to school, but the school denied that he was a student.   Nevertheless, he never let a locked door stop him from getting a full education.   In school, Tosh was deeply interested in whatever was happening outside the classroom.  This led him to fail Kindergarten, and he had to take that class twice.  By the second time, he realized that the school world wasn’t made for his liking.   At eleven years old, he wrote his book of poetry, “My Life, My World, My Everything,” which was published in an edition of one on a notebook that his parents gave him.   Because the hand-printed manuscript is extremely hard to read, the author is the only one actually to read the book of poems.  Even with that, Tosh gave the book a superb blurb in the back of the notebook: “Poetry is real, and this is the real deal” - Tosh Berman, Poet (author of “My Life, My World, My Everything.”)

As a teenager, it could be thought that he discovered girls, but the fact is, girls discovered Tosh.  They found him peeking through various keyholes and windows in selective residences where pretty teenage girls were found to be residing.   Being caught regularly, Tosh learned to use language not only as a tool but also as a weapon.  The girls became wary of him when he claimed he was looking for his glasses in various suspicious locations.    By seventeen, he was the lead tambourine player for the band “Knock Knock Who’s There.” They were the no. 1 band at Louisville High School in Woodland Hills and had a sizable female audience because it was an all-girl school.   Tosh became a fixture at this educational institution, and his one goal in his life at the time was to become a janitor at the school.  Fate had other plans for him; for instance, he was kicked out of the band due to his reckless dancing and insisting on having a microphone on stage, which in fact, he didn’t sing at all.

Tosh, it was reported, was a very bitter young man.   He seemed to drink only liquids that had a tang taste and usually had a puckered gesture around the mouth.   That look was iconic on him, and many people eventually imitated his face by holding their puckered lips together.  Since then, Tosh started to have a following - primarily guys who couldn’t function in the world and were often called dreamers by the local High School football team.  Tosh was known for his militant “no exercise” stance, which he kept until his death.   He deeply felt that one should read a book instead of doing exercise.  Or, if one needs to do exercise, they can do so by reaching for a book on the top shelf, or doing deep knee bends, when the book is located on the bottom shelf of the bookcase.

It was only at the age of 21 that Tosh decided to get a job because his parents refused to feed him until he found an occupation.  He went to the first record store and got the job there when he could name every member of Freddie and the Dreamers (Roy Crewdson on guitar, Derek Quinn on guitar and harmonica, Peter Birell on bass, Bernie Dwyer on drums, and of course, Freddie Garrity on lead vocals and lead dancing).  Tosh was profoundly moved when he read a quote from Freddie saying, “The Dreamers and I have always been daft.  You couldn’t call me a sex-idol, could you?  Collectively, we’re no glamour boys.”

Tosh worked at a record store on Sherman Way in Reseda from the beginning of March 1975 to the end of March 1975.  He often commented on the enjoyment of various porn actresses who worked as a stripper on the side and would come in to get music for their acts.  Tosh showed choreographed talents when he recommended to the would-be strippers how to do some of the movements.  He was eventually let go of the job due to his naturally suggestive sexual activities while working at the store.  Customers and the fine-looking women who worked with him didn’t complain, but the city council of Reseda took notice and requested that he be removed from the job.  Usually, something like this would discourage Tosh’s love of music, but it only became more assertive when he devoted his life to various punk rock clubs around Los Angeles.

At this time, he became a professional friend to bands such as DEVO and The Weirdos.  He would ensure the right drinks were in the right glasses and kept the bands safe from the Los Angeles Police Department and the over-zealous female fans.   He often read poetry in the dressing rooms to calm the musicians’ nerves before hitting the stage.  It has been noted that DEVO’s Mark Mothersbaugh would request Tosh to read Frank O’Hara’s poem about drinking a coke.  To add to the effect, Tosh would serve Mark a glass of Coke as he read the poem. Tosh realized that this wasn’t a good career move because there was no payment in what he was doing, so he decided to devote himself to the business world of making and writing poetry.   Here he made his fame and fortune.

As an adventurer (both sexually and a world traveler), Tosh became an obsessed collector of rare petrified mummies caught in the lava flow of various volcano eruptions.  His obsession with Mount Mihara, on the island of Oshima, one of the seven Izu islands off of but still part of Japan, had an active volcano.   A girl he was dating at the time, Kiyoko Matsumoto, jumped into the flames of Mihara when he refused to take her out for shaved ice near the black beaches on the island.  She survived the suicide attempt, even though she did lose some inches of height wise.

Tosh settled in the town of Moji-Ko and married a girl from the area.  Here, he found a publisher, Cole Swift & Sons, who had offices not only in Moji-Ko, but also in Bombay, London, and Paris.  With them, he produced his first ‘real’ book of poems, “The Plum in Mr. Blum’s Pudding.” The entire book was written in Moji-Ko, with a broken typewriter that couldn’t type the letter “E” due to the malfunction of the typewriter. It became the first book of poetry that didn’t use the capital letter “E” or a small “e.” This, of course, caused a great deal of controversy in the Poetry World.  For a while, it was banned in all countries with the letter E in their name.  The scandal even touched Tosh personally when for about a month or two, he was known as “Tosh Brman.” (The “e” was removed from his last name).

Banned from writing poetry and told to be kept away from all workable typewriters, Tosh decided to start a press TamTam Books, that focused on post-war French writing.  At the time he started this press, no one was interested in the writer Boris Vian, so he devoted his finances and time to promoting the works of Vian. Not surprisingly, no one was interested in Boris Vian when he closed his press.   Therefore it was a major disappointment for him when he got turned down for the highest French medal of honor, but also he couldn’t get a visa to visit France.   He became banned in France.  With that in mind, Tosh wrote his last book “Sparks-Tastic” which became an instant classic for the Kindle set.   It seemed that Kindle would malfunction whenever it tried to download the non-fictional work.  With a string of failures in his background and that nothing was going to happen in his future, Tosh decided to move to Izu Ōshima, where he became a manager of the Innomaru House, an inn and a house of loose women who served not only the local population but also customers from the mainland.   It was here when he….”

This is where I had to finish off the obituary because, at this time, I’m not sure what or how my “ending” will happen.  Fate often knocks on my door, and it is that fateful moment where I either go with the wind or against I.

Photo of Tosh by Manuel Chavarria