Chinatown, NYC
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
how long would it take to find me?
in a crowd, would you want to...
with the windows closed and barred,
washed and polished with care.
i don't think i will ever know what he meant-
to open and close.
notions phrases paragraphs so often get cut
holes you can see through
like my windows and my words
sentence structure attacked
and the grammar is all wrong
relief from those twisted voyeurs and mirrors
i don't remember entering this fun house.
no one steps forward
with nothing to offer.
i think i am losing my will.
lines get stuck in my head
i can't make it 24 hours
without wondering which is better
i'm afraid i'll be gone forever
the beauty in that timid contact was not lost on me.
in a crowd, would you want to...
with the windows closed and barred,
washed and polished with care.
i don't think i will ever know what he meant-
to open and close.
notions phrases paragraphs so often get cut
holes you can see through
like my windows and my words
sentence structure attacked
and the grammar is all wrong
relief from those twisted voyeurs and mirrors
i don't remember entering this fun house.
no one steps forward
with nothing to offer.
i think i am losing my will.
lines get stuck in my head
i can't make it 24 hours
without wondering which is better
i'm afraid i'll be gone forever
the beauty in that timid contact was not lost on me.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
things come and go
Our bungalow was actually two apartments, side by side, under one roof. The neighbor on the other side was a young, single woman. Our house was crammed in comparison, with a cat, and a kid, and a mother, and usually, a live-in-ish boyfriend. It seemed like all the live-in-ish boyfriends had one-syllable names. There were several repeats: “Tom” was probably the most popular. “Tom” always sounded like someone solid and level-headed. They were. But then there was something in my mother that dug out that solid foundation, and made “level-headed” seem like a bad word. And then that particular Tom would stop sleeping over for the whole night, then not showing up quite so much, and finally, whatever it was that made him a distinctive “Tom,” whether it was a Redskins baseball cap, or Marlboro cigarette butts in the flower pot in the tiny sliver of back yard, or a Bruins knit cap that landed on top of the refrigerator, or the pungent scent of Old Spice, would disappear from our lives. And my mother’s slight perfume would take over again, until the next Jim, or John, or Pete, or Bill would start the process all over again.
The “Tom” that I liked best won me over with a Strawberry Shortcake ice cream treat. He was a summer Tom. All of the summer boyfriends seemed to spend a lot more time with me, probably because the days were long and lazy, and sitting on a bungalow porch waiting for the ice cream truck seemed as good a place to be as any. This was the Tom that smoked Marlboros. My mother wouldn’t let him smoke in the house, so that was another rule to pull him outside. Mostly he wouldn’t say anything more to me than “hey there.” Depending on how hot it was, I would either be practicing cartwheels, or begging to water something with the hose, hoping to cool off my feet. Or, on really hot days, I would be content to just sit on the porch step, while Summer Tom sat and smoked.
I got an allowance that translated into fabulous bounty: one ice cream treat a week. The cash was doled out every Monday afternoon. It took a lot of willpower to get past the first rush of instant gratification, an impulse to use it up immediately as it passed from my mother’s hand to my own. Sometimes it went straight to the ice cream vendor, barely touching my fingers before the coins tumbled into his practiced hand. In those moments of weakness, the week stretched ahead, as bleak as a parched wasteland. So I learned to bring my cravings under control. Monday would pass, and Tuesday. Sometimes I got as far as Thursday, finally realizing that the thrill of expectation had a little frisage as much as the taste of real ice cream melting in my mouth. That was when I was being Grown Up Beyond My Years. In truth, an eight-year-old is chronologically challenged, and three days of watching the Sunshine truck approach up the street (such potential), then disappear, might as well have been a month. The very tune hung in the air, the notes almost palpable. Unlike a bakery, where as you walked past you could at least get a whiff of yeasty warmth, the truck left nothing behind. Other kids, luckier, richer than I, contemplated their choices, agonizing over the chocolate/non-chocolate choice, then fine-tuning the decision (Fudgsicle? Sundae cup?).
The day that Summer Tom won me over was hotter than usual for July. It was a Tuesday. That Monday had been one of those days where I recklessly surrendered to a craving for sweet creamy goodness, and now there was no hope in sight for days and days. There was lemon water in the refrigerator, but that wasn’t going to satisfy me. I was jonesing for ice cream, and nothing was to be done.
Soft sounds began -- the endless repetition of jingling bells in a half-recognized tune. I had been sitting on the top porch step, wreathed in Tom’s lazy smoke rings. By instinct, I sat up straight, gazing expectantly to my left. Oh, sweet torture. I imagined all the bright colors of the menu card, the colors saturated, each frozen treat prominently displayed, the text just an afterthought, probably added so that ignorant adults would know what to call things and would order the right thing for their child. (Hearts could be broken when the parent said “ x “ and got “y.”) I gave a heavy sigh. My shoulders slumped. Behind me, I heard the front legs of the chair hit the porch boards, and a sort of shuffling and jingling sound as Tom rearranged himself in the chair.
“Hot day today,” said Tom. “Why don’t you get yourself somethin’ cold.”
I turned around in disbelief. Tom leaned forward with a few coins.
“Go on,” he said, “that ice cream man doesn’t have time to wait for someone as slow as you.”
I grabbed the money with one hand, and with a voice that sounded something like “thanks,” sprinted to the curb. There was one other kid already at the side of the road. We exchanged grins, looking at the magical money in our hands, waiting for the moment of transformation when it turned from hot metal to cold treat. I knew what I wanted. On Monday, I had been all about a Creamsicle. It was probably the citrus tang I was craving, with just a soupcon of creaminess that signaled “treat” to me. But today, in a fog of bliss, I was all about the commitment of a Strawberry Shortcake. There was nothing like a Strawberry Shortcake bar. The color, an artificial, neon bright, surreal pink, with a crumbly coating. All of its fabricated, unreal goodness wrapped around a solid bar of vanilla ice cream. It was a toothsome challenge, but one that I was up for. After all, this was a miracle.
“One Strawberry Shortcake bar.” “One Strawberry Shortcake bar.” “One Strawberry Shortcake bar. Please.” I had to remind myself about the “please” because I was so intent on getting those sweet syllables right, so he wouldn’t have to ask me a second time, or, even worse, give me the wrong thing.
“One Strawberry Shortcake bar, please” I said to Danny, the ice cream guy. I remembered to say “please” because this was a moment that was special. Before, I might have just thought “please,” and Danny, probably an ex-firefighter who took early retirement and settled on selling ice cream to do something else special in his life, would have seen that “please” in a little kid’s eyes and, not being one of those “teach you a lesson in politeness” grown-ups, pushed to hear the actual words.
Danny handed me the treasure. I took it with my left hand, and handed him the coins with my right. I felt like one of those old balance scales – one hand tipped one way with the weight of the ice cream, and then tipped to center itself when the weight of the coins fell out of my hand and into his.
I knew exactly what would be beneath that paper. But as I peeled it off, it was almost as though as I was doing this for the first time. Crumbs stuck to the wrapper, inviting a little lick. This was the tricky part. It was hot, and heat and ice cream were incompatible on several levels. Too slow, and you were licking a drippy mass of frozen cream. Who could enjoy that? Too fast, and you were crunching chunks of ice cream that could lead to the dreaded “ice cream headache.” Where was the joy in that? I started at the top, nibbling the thinnest peak of the treat. There’s nothing but pure sensation in that first bite. The ice crystals hit the tongue, melting so quickly that the creaminess flooded the mouth with vanilla and strawberry and dreams. The other kid! There was that other kid who was at the curb, waiting for the ice dream truck with me. Now that the first wild cravings had passed, I had a chance to look around and see how the world had changed since I took that first bite. Hmm. The sun still shone in the sky. There were a few fluffy clouds. The air had a certain special warmth that before had been just plain hot, but now was a delicious compliment to the ice cream.
The other kid was down to the stick in some places on his ice cream. He was a sprinter. Maybe he got three, maybe even four ice creams a week. He might have been in danger of becoming a glutton, or maybe had an undiscriminating palate. I would have to keep my eye on him. Or maybe he was just a little kid and would grow out of the gobbling phase. I had high hopes for him. But in the meantime, I had my own ice cream to concentrate on. And Tom! Oh! The founder of the feast, and I had forgotten him from the moment the quarters hit my hot hand.
I looked up. The sun was still high in the sky, but it was behind the bungalow roof. The rays cast themselves out from the side of the house. And there, on the front porch was Tom, sitting, tipped back on a wooden chair, squinting as his last inch of cigarette butt blew smoke into his eyes. He could have been Zeus on Mt. Olympus. He had given some mere mortal the gift of Fire, or Ice Cream. Or whatever. The mortal whose life he had touched was already building a marble altar to him. Tom didn’t show it, but I knew that he was tickled.
This was only one afternoon. This was the only time he ever put his hand into his pocket and pulled out some change and gave it to a little girl for ice cream. I loved him from that moment, and didn’t stop loving him, even though he was turning into a shadow three weeks later, and into a ghost six weeks after that. He represented a giving spirit, even when he wasn’t required to be giving. I asked my mother where he went.
“He had to go,” she said. And by the tone of her voice, I knew not to ask anything more than that. It was ok, though. It was like collecting a butterfly and then having it on display. You knew that one such butterfly existed, and you could imagine another one coming along. For now, eight year old that I was, I was ready to move on.
The “Tom” that I liked best won me over with a Strawberry Shortcake ice cream treat. He was a summer Tom. All of the summer boyfriends seemed to spend a lot more time with me, probably because the days were long and lazy, and sitting on a bungalow porch waiting for the ice cream truck seemed as good a place to be as any. This was the Tom that smoked Marlboros. My mother wouldn’t let him smoke in the house, so that was another rule to pull him outside. Mostly he wouldn’t say anything more to me than “hey there.” Depending on how hot it was, I would either be practicing cartwheels, or begging to water something with the hose, hoping to cool off my feet. Or, on really hot days, I would be content to just sit on the porch step, while Summer Tom sat and smoked.
I got an allowance that translated into fabulous bounty: one ice cream treat a week. The cash was doled out every Monday afternoon. It took a lot of willpower to get past the first rush of instant gratification, an impulse to use it up immediately as it passed from my mother’s hand to my own. Sometimes it went straight to the ice cream vendor, barely touching my fingers before the coins tumbled into his practiced hand. In those moments of weakness, the week stretched ahead, as bleak as a parched wasteland. So I learned to bring my cravings under control. Monday would pass, and Tuesday. Sometimes I got as far as Thursday, finally realizing that the thrill of expectation had a little frisage as much as the taste of real ice cream melting in my mouth. That was when I was being Grown Up Beyond My Years. In truth, an eight-year-old is chronologically challenged, and three days of watching the Sunshine truck approach up the street (such potential), then disappear, might as well have been a month. The very tune hung in the air, the notes almost palpable. Unlike a bakery, where as you walked past you could at least get a whiff of yeasty warmth, the truck left nothing behind. Other kids, luckier, richer than I, contemplated their choices, agonizing over the chocolate/non-chocolate choice, then fine-tuning the decision (Fudgsicle? Sundae cup?).
The day that Summer Tom won me over was hotter than usual for July. It was a Tuesday. That Monday had been one of those days where I recklessly surrendered to a craving for sweet creamy goodness, and now there was no hope in sight for days and days. There was lemon water in the refrigerator, but that wasn’t going to satisfy me. I was jonesing for ice cream, and nothing was to be done.
Soft sounds began -- the endless repetition of jingling bells in a half-recognized tune. I had been sitting on the top porch step, wreathed in Tom’s lazy smoke rings. By instinct, I sat up straight, gazing expectantly to my left. Oh, sweet torture. I imagined all the bright colors of the menu card, the colors saturated, each frozen treat prominently displayed, the text just an afterthought, probably added so that ignorant adults would know what to call things and would order the right thing for their child. (Hearts could be broken when the parent said “ x “ and got “y.”) I gave a heavy sigh. My shoulders slumped. Behind me, I heard the front legs of the chair hit the porch boards, and a sort of shuffling and jingling sound as Tom rearranged himself in the chair.
“Hot day today,” said Tom. “Why don’t you get yourself somethin’ cold.”
I turned around in disbelief. Tom leaned forward with a few coins.
“Go on,” he said, “that ice cream man doesn’t have time to wait for someone as slow as you.”
I grabbed the money with one hand, and with a voice that sounded something like “thanks,” sprinted to the curb. There was one other kid already at the side of the road. We exchanged grins, looking at the magical money in our hands, waiting for the moment of transformation when it turned from hot metal to cold treat. I knew what I wanted. On Monday, I had been all about a Creamsicle. It was probably the citrus tang I was craving, with just a soupcon of creaminess that signaled “treat” to me. But today, in a fog of bliss, I was all about the commitment of a Strawberry Shortcake. There was nothing like a Strawberry Shortcake bar. The color, an artificial, neon bright, surreal pink, with a crumbly coating. All of its fabricated, unreal goodness wrapped around a solid bar of vanilla ice cream. It was a toothsome challenge, but one that I was up for. After all, this was a miracle.
“One Strawberry Shortcake bar.” “One Strawberry Shortcake bar.” “One Strawberry Shortcake bar. Please.” I had to remind myself about the “please” because I was so intent on getting those sweet syllables right, so he wouldn’t have to ask me a second time, or, even worse, give me the wrong thing.
“One Strawberry Shortcake bar, please” I said to Danny, the ice cream guy. I remembered to say “please” because this was a moment that was special. Before, I might have just thought “please,” and Danny, probably an ex-firefighter who took early retirement and settled on selling ice cream to do something else special in his life, would have seen that “please” in a little kid’s eyes and, not being one of those “teach you a lesson in politeness” grown-ups, pushed to hear the actual words.
Danny handed me the treasure. I took it with my left hand, and handed him the coins with my right. I felt like one of those old balance scales – one hand tipped one way with the weight of the ice cream, and then tipped to center itself when the weight of the coins fell out of my hand and into his.
I knew exactly what would be beneath that paper. But as I peeled it off, it was almost as though as I was doing this for the first time. Crumbs stuck to the wrapper, inviting a little lick. This was the tricky part. It was hot, and heat and ice cream were incompatible on several levels. Too slow, and you were licking a drippy mass of frozen cream. Who could enjoy that? Too fast, and you were crunching chunks of ice cream that could lead to the dreaded “ice cream headache.” Where was the joy in that? I started at the top, nibbling the thinnest peak of the treat. There’s nothing but pure sensation in that first bite. The ice crystals hit the tongue, melting so quickly that the creaminess flooded the mouth with vanilla and strawberry and dreams. The other kid! There was that other kid who was at the curb, waiting for the ice dream truck with me. Now that the first wild cravings had passed, I had a chance to look around and see how the world had changed since I took that first bite. Hmm. The sun still shone in the sky. There were a few fluffy clouds. The air had a certain special warmth that before had been just plain hot, but now was a delicious compliment to the ice cream.
The other kid was down to the stick in some places on his ice cream. He was a sprinter. Maybe he got three, maybe even four ice creams a week. He might have been in danger of becoming a glutton, or maybe had an undiscriminating palate. I would have to keep my eye on him. Or maybe he was just a little kid and would grow out of the gobbling phase. I had high hopes for him. But in the meantime, I had my own ice cream to concentrate on. And Tom! Oh! The founder of the feast, and I had forgotten him from the moment the quarters hit my hot hand.
I looked up. The sun was still high in the sky, but it was behind the bungalow roof. The rays cast themselves out from the side of the house. And there, on the front porch was Tom, sitting, tipped back on a wooden chair, squinting as his last inch of cigarette butt blew smoke into his eyes. He could have been Zeus on Mt. Olympus. He had given some mere mortal the gift of Fire, or Ice Cream. Or whatever. The mortal whose life he had touched was already building a marble altar to him. Tom didn’t show it, but I knew that he was tickled.
This was only one afternoon. This was the only time he ever put his hand into his pocket and pulled out some change and gave it to a little girl for ice cream. I loved him from that moment, and didn’t stop loving him, even though he was turning into a shadow three weeks later, and into a ghost six weeks after that. He represented a giving spirit, even when he wasn’t required to be giving. I asked my mother where he went.
“He had to go,” she said. And by the tone of her voice, I knew not to ask anything more than that. It was ok, though. It was like collecting a butterfly and then having it on display. You knew that one such butterfly existed, and you could imagine another one coming along. For now, eight year old that I was, I was ready to move on.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Five Haiku About Bigfoot
1.
Erudite sasquatch,
embarassed by Southern kin,
thinks, "Skunkape, indeed..."
2.
"Yeti?!?! What is that?!!
Canadian for bigfoot?!?!?":
jingoist sasquatch.
3.
"IN ORIENT, I
CALLED ABOM-- ABLOMO-- A--
ANABOM-- YETI!"
4.
I once told my dad
bigfoot was a cross between
human, ape, and bear.
5.
"Patterson-Gimlin
film bigfoot think he all that...":
envious sasquatch
Erudite sasquatch,
embarassed by Southern kin,
thinks, "Skunkape, indeed..."
2.
"Yeti?!?! What is that?!!
Canadian for bigfoot?!?!?":
jingoist sasquatch.
3.
"IN ORIENT, I
CALLED ABOM-- ABLOMO-- A--
ANABOM-- YETI!"
4.
I once told my dad
bigfoot was a cross between
human, ape, and bear.
5.
"Patterson-Gimlin
film bigfoot think he all that...":
envious sasquatch
Monday, April 20, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
the slap of conclusion
When they finally released me, I left with a fear of women. A fear of what they can do and a stronger fear of what they can't.
How, where I was, I came to the conclusion I did is best left to the guesses of people who can more easily thrust themselves into thought than I can.
It's not that I didn't have time to think. I did. I had time; it ran off me. Then there was the rethinking. But there was such a small population of thoughts in me. The only ones I latched to were vile and absurd, rainwater beading on cracked walls in a building on the outskirts of a city at the pinpoint center of a country that's been left to crumple.
And women never took up residence anywhere, not once that whole time.
Life can spring out of unexpected places. Opportunistically in sidewalks, say. Or science scaring it out of a barren womb. Life can shrink and grow, expand and collapse. Disappear if it wants.
What I came to, the slap of conclusion, was between. Not swollen or skinny, here or away. Not even living or the opposite.
Between, somewhere between.
But real. This fear, my fear, is real as the history of your own life. Women. I hide my head from them. Not from shame, not out of reverence. Not because I'm any more like or unlike them than I've ever been. But because it's the only thing there is now.
How, where I was, I came to the conclusion I did is best left to the guesses of people who can more easily thrust themselves into thought than I can.
It's not that I didn't have time to think. I did. I had time; it ran off me. Then there was the rethinking. But there was such a small population of thoughts in me. The only ones I latched to were vile and absurd, rainwater beading on cracked walls in a building on the outskirts of a city at the pinpoint center of a country that's been left to crumple.
And women never took up residence anywhere, not once that whole time.
Life can spring out of unexpected places. Opportunistically in sidewalks, say. Or science scaring it out of a barren womb. Life can shrink and grow, expand and collapse. Disappear if it wants.
What I came to, the slap of conclusion, was between. Not swollen or skinny, here or away. Not even living or the opposite.
Between, somewhere between.
But real. This fear, my fear, is real as the history of your own life. Women. I hide my head from them. Not from shame, not out of reverence. Not because I'm any more like or unlike them than I've ever been. But because it's the only thing there is now.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
willful abandon
George sits across the restaurant table and talks about art films and important novelists and experimental jazz and Kayley thinks she might scream. Long and loud and deeply, with great feeling. With high passion. George is talking to Kayley about art and novels and music because, he’d told her, those were the things he was most passionate about. Kayley thought either they had different definitions of the word or, more likely, that George was lying through his teeth. He’d been talking for twenty minutes straight, a monologue interrupted only long enough for her to interject polite noises like “Really?” and “Hm,” and it just seemed like an attempt to look cool. Passion wasn’t coolness; it was dirty and messy and unselfconscious. It was the least cool thing of all, and Kayley wanted to scream with it.
“The thing about the Swedish postmodernists,” George says through a swig of merlot, with what he must have thought was a roguish lift of his eyebrow and a self-satisfied chuckle, “is that their Swedishness was completely at odds with their postmodernism—”
Kayley screams, long and loud and deep with passion.
It is their second date.
When you are young, everything is new and shiny, wrapped in possibility. The world is filled with so many stories, and you don’t know what your ending will be. Who knows what amazing career could come out of that new job! Who knows if your exotic and extroverted new roommate will be your new best friend! Who knows what will happen on your next date, how the evening will unfold, what you’ll do, what you’ll talk about, how far you’ll go!
Kayley isn’t young anymore, and she knows exactly how far she’ll go with a well-meaning and boringly handsome corporate artist who cannot stop trying to talk to her about soulless things. Kayley has seen the way things went in previous chapters, and there aren’t any surprises anymore.
George says good-bye at the subway entrance, and it’s clear he doesn’t want to say good-bye at all. Kayley’s outburst at dinner hasn’t scared him off; on the contrary, it seems to have made him more interested. This is not a surprise either. George thinks it makes Kayley dangerous and crazy, a free spirit. He thinks it makes her someone uninhibited in bed. Kayley is completely over whatever George might think, and she shakes his hand and turns away when he leans in for a kiss. She rushes down the steps and through the long tunnel to the other end of the platform, and then takes a different set of steps back up again. She isn’t tired and doesn’t feel like going home yet, but that was none of George’s business, after all.
At a bar downtown Kayley sips her gin and tonic and watches the old bartender handle the regulars. She’s way overdressed for the dive bar, wearing a cocktail dress, carrying a purse, her hair pulled up and back. Still, no one pays her any attention. She used to live in the area, and this bar was her favorite. The old pub next door has been turned into a hipster lounge, trafficking in fake grime, contrived decadence. The bar she’s in now though, that’s the real thing. The alcoholics here are passionate about their addiction, and that’s something she can respect.
Kayley needs for something to happen. The itch in her chest that had started in the restaurant with George seemed to grow with each block she walked down, and when she got to this street and the two bars, side by side, she couldn’t decide for a minute. She stood on the sidewalk exactly in between them and considered. She needed excitement, an uproar, a feeling of life. On her right, in the lounge, music pulsed out from the seams of the door and took over the street. Sweet young things went in and came out, laughing and stumbling and making out by the side door and the aluminum trash barrels. Kayley needs for something to happen.
But she also needs something real, and so she walked to her left and stepped into the quiet dive bar, waving hello to the ancient bartender as he mixed her gin and tonic.
“Young people, you don’t know what you have. We didn’t know then, and now you don’t know.”
Kayley has made friends with one of the regulars, an old alcoholic named Jim. She let him bum three cigarettes and then just handed him the pack. In exchange, she asked him for his stories, and he happily began telling them. Like George, Jim speaks in monologue, a steady stream of unbroken narrative. Unlike George, Jim is funny and heartbreaking and unfettered and passionate.
Right now, his passion is about his lost youth, and Kayley’s comparative youngness.
“The fire comes so easy when you’re young, and you think you’ll have it forever, that it’s part of your gut and soul. And then life takes over and you get caught up in it all, all the little battles, and then you wake up one day and poof!" Jim throws his hands into the air so enthusiastically that he tips back a little too far, and Kayley moves her hand out as though to catch him. Jim scowls at the gesture, and throws his hands up again, more emphatically this time, to prove her wrong.
“Poof!” he says, remaining standing. “The fire’s gone. Even the embers, gone out with the wind.”
“What fire are you talking about?” Kayley asks. “Like, activism or building something or—”
“Doesn’t matter. Whichever you want. All of ‘em. They all go. Fire to build with and fire to burn it all to the ground.” Jim sighs and sits back on the bar stool and takes the new drink that Kayley’s ordered for him. “Even the fire to burn it all down disappears with age. Without that, how can you start anything new?”
The itch in Kayley’s chest gets stronger, beats a staccato rhythm. She has an almost uncontrollable urge to kiss Jim, not sexually, but passionately. But Jim is focused on his gin and lost in thought for whatever used to light his fire and so instead Kayley raises her glass and taps it against the edge of Jim’s and says
“Cheers.”
Fire trucks pass Kayley on her walk home from the subway, their lights blazing, but when she gets to her block her apartment building is still standing. Real life isn’t as poetic as all that. She opens her cell phone on her walk and checks her messages. One is from George, and she deletes it without listening. One's from her sister, and she shuts the phone for the time being.
It’s almost four in the morning but no one’s around outside her building; either the party kids haven’t gotten home yet or they decided to sit out a night for a change. Kayley unlocks her building’s door and walks up three flights of stairs and unlocks her deadbolt and then locks it behind her again. Nothing happened on her way home; the night was without incident, good or bad. How can a person be expected to live without incident? Kayley wonders. Without burning things down or starting things new.
Kayley’s exhausted, and she kicks off her shoes and opens her window and climbs up her fire escape to her roof. She isn’t supposed to be up there, but she’s tired and the view is beautiful and the sun will be coming up soon and the itch in her chest is beating a drumbeat she can’t find the rhythm to. She lies down on the black tar and wiggles into the hard surface, wishing she’d brought a pillow. There’s a rose color at the edge of the horizon, she can see it just past the skyscrapers and the trees. She fights to keep her eyes open as the rose turns to red and orange and gold, to stay awake long enough to see the sky turn to fire in front of her eyes.
“Poof,” Kayley says, and smiles.
“The thing about the Swedish postmodernists,” George says through a swig of merlot, with what he must have thought was a roguish lift of his eyebrow and a self-satisfied chuckle, “is that their Swedishness was completely at odds with their postmodernism—”
Kayley screams, long and loud and deep with passion.
It is their second date.
+++
When you are young, everything is new and shiny, wrapped in possibility. The world is filled with so many stories, and you don’t know what your ending will be. Who knows what amazing career could come out of that new job! Who knows if your exotic and extroverted new roommate will be your new best friend! Who knows what will happen on your next date, how the evening will unfold, what you’ll do, what you’ll talk about, how far you’ll go!
Kayley isn’t young anymore, and she knows exactly how far she’ll go with a well-meaning and boringly handsome corporate artist who cannot stop trying to talk to her about soulless things. Kayley has seen the way things went in previous chapters, and there aren’t any surprises anymore.
+++
George says good-bye at the subway entrance, and it’s clear he doesn’t want to say good-bye at all. Kayley’s outburst at dinner hasn’t scared him off; on the contrary, it seems to have made him more interested. This is not a surprise either. George thinks it makes Kayley dangerous and crazy, a free spirit. He thinks it makes her someone uninhibited in bed. Kayley is completely over whatever George might think, and she shakes his hand and turns away when he leans in for a kiss. She rushes down the steps and through the long tunnel to the other end of the platform, and then takes a different set of steps back up again. She isn’t tired and doesn’t feel like going home yet, but that was none of George’s business, after all.
+++
At a bar downtown Kayley sips her gin and tonic and watches the old bartender handle the regulars. She’s way overdressed for the dive bar, wearing a cocktail dress, carrying a purse, her hair pulled up and back. Still, no one pays her any attention. She used to live in the area, and this bar was her favorite. The old pub next door has been turned into a hipster lounge, trafficking in fake grime, contrived decadence. The bar she’s in now though, that’s the real thing. The alcoholics here are passionate about their addiction, and that’s something she can respect.
Kayley needs for something to happen. The itch in her chest that had started in the restaurant with George seemed to grow with each block she walked down, and when she got to this street and the two bars, side by side, she couldn’t decide for a minute. She stood on the sidewalk exactly in between them and considered. She needed excitement, an uproar, a feeling of life. On her right, in the lounge, music pulsed out from the seams of the door and took over the street. Sweet young things went in and came out, laughing and stumbling and making out by the side door and the aluminum trash barrels. Kayley needs for something to happen.
But she also needs something real, and so she walked to her left and stepped into the quiet dive bar, waving hello to the ancient bartender as he mixed her gin and tonic.
+++
“Young people, you don’t know what you have. We didn’t know then, and now you don’t know.”
Kayley has made friends with one of the regulars, an old alcoholic named Jim. She let him bum three cigarettes and then just handed him the pack. In exchange, she asked him for his stories, and he happily began telling them. Like George, Jim speaks in monologue, a steady stream of unbroken narrative. Unlike George, Jim is funny and heartbreaking and unfettered and passionate.
Right now, his passion is about his lost youth, and Kayley’s comparative youngness.
“The fire comes so easy when you’re young, and you think you’ll have it forever, that it’s part of your gut and soul. And then life takes over and you get caught up in it all, all the little battles, and then you wake up one day and poof!" Jim throws his hands into the air so enthusiastically that he tips back a little too far, and Kayley moves her hand out as though to catch him. Jim scowls at the gesture, and throws his hands up again, more emphatically this time, to prove her wrong.
“Poof!” he says, remaining standing. “The fire’s gone. Even the embers, gone out with the wind.”
“What fire are you talking about?” Kayley asks. “Like, activism or building something or—”
“Doesn’t matter. Whichever you want. All of ‘em. They all go. Fire to build with and fire to burn it all to the ground.” Jim sighs and sits back on the bar stool and takes the new drink that Kayley’s ordered for him. “Even the fire to burn it all down disappears with age. Without that, how can you start anything new?”
The itch in Kayley’s chest gets stronger, beats a staccato rhythm. She has an almost uncontrollable urge to kiss Jim, not sexually, but passionately. But Jim is focused on his gin and lost in thought for whatever used to light his fire and so instead Kayley raises her glass and taps it against the edge of Jim’s and says
“Cheers.”
+++
Fire trucks pass Kayley on her walk home from the subway, their lights blazing, but when she gets to her block her apartment building is still standing. Real life isn’t as poetic as all that. She opens her cell phone on her walk and checks her messages. One is from George, and she deletes it without listening. One's from her sister, and she shuts the phone for the time being.
It’s almost four in the morning but no one’s around outside her building; either the party kids haven’t gotten home yet or they decided to sit out a night for a change. Kayley unlocks her building’s door and walks up three flights of stairs and unlocks her deadbolt and then locks it behind her again. Nothing happened on her way home; the night was without incident, good or bad. How can a person be expected to live without incident? Kayley wonders. Without burning things down or starting things new.
Kayley’s exhausted, and she kicks off her shoes and opens her window and climbs up her fire escape to her roof. She isn’t supposed to be up there, but she’s tired and the view is beautiful and the sun will be coming up soon and the itch in her chest is beating a drumbeat she can’t find the rhythm to. She lies down on the black tar and wiggles into the hard surface, wishing she’d brought a pillow. There’s a rose color at the edge of the horizon, she can see it just past the skyscrapers and the trees. She fights to keep her eyes open as the rose turns to red and orange and gold, to stay awake long enough to see the sky turn to fire in front of her eyes.
“Poof,” Kayley says, and smiles.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
sirens
The sirens went off every Saturday at noon. The boy was always surprised, but then remembered that it was only a test. No tornadoes were coming.
What would happen if a tornado came at noon on a Saturday, would everyone just continue pushing their carts down the produce aisle and making sandwiches and folding the laundry? Would they hear the noise before it was too late and run to the far corners of their basements. Would they have time to save the dog?
Why hadn't any adults thought of this problem? They were supposed to be in charge.
This is what he was thinking when his Grandpa came into the room.
The boy's Grandpa was a kind old man, soft around the middle, with deep creases in his face. He'd raised the boy since his son dropped the boy off for the weekend and never came back. It didn't effect the boy much, he was so young, but to his Grandpa it meant a lot. He knew he had to be better than a father, better than a mother, better than a family.
And he was better. He raised the boy with more attention and love than his son ever could have.
The old man was sick though, but they still went about their daily routines, the boy’s Grandpa pretending he wasn't getting weaker and the boy pretending that he didn't notice.
The boy took on many of the tasks the old man couldn't manage anymore. He cooked their meals and helped with the cleaning. He did a good job too. He had never gone to school because his grandfather didn't believe in it, but he had managed to learn enough along the way.
Now it was his grandfather who was startled by the sirens, and every Saturday the boy had to dry the old man's eyes and reassure him they were safe.
The only thing the old man had any energy for was destroying his belongings.
He'd push glasses off the table to watch them shatter. He’d tear houseplants out of their pots. The boy didn't mind because it was something he used to do when he was little. And because it made his Grandpa happy, the boy would sometimes help.
Their favorite thing to do was to tear the pages out of books. Sometimes they'd spend the whole afternoon shredding one text after another. Reader's Digest, War and Peace, The Joy of Cooking. Even the Bible. Their house looked as though a small tornado had made its way inside and devoured everything in sight, leaving only the walls and furniture intact.
When it was time for his Grandpa to die, the boy helped him into his best suit, now worn thin at the knees and elbows. The boy cooked and they talked and laughed all morning.
When they ran out of things to say, the boy led his Grandpa to his room and placed a pillow beneath his head. He crawled into bed next to the old man, and this time when the sirens went off, it was the boy who cried. When the sirens stopped, the boy wiped his eyes, kissed his Grandpa's cold cheek, and walked out the front door.
What would happen if a tornado came at noon on a Saturday, would everyone just continue pushing their carts down the produce aisle and making sandwiches and folding the laundry? Would they hear the noise before it was too late and run to the far corners of their basements. Would they have time to save the dog?
Why hadn't any adults thought of this problem? They were supposed to be in charge.
This is what he was thinking when his Grandpa came into the room.
The boy's Grandpa was a kind old man, soft around the middle, with deep creases in his face. He'd raised the boy since his son dropped the boy off for the weekend and never came back. It didn't effect the boy much, he was so young, but to his Grandpa it meant a lot. He knew he had to be better than a father, better than a mother, better than a family.
And he was better. He raised the boy with more attention and love than his son ever could have.
The old man was sick though, but they still went about their daily routines, the boy’s Grandpa pretending he wasn't getting weaker and the boy pretending that he didn't notice.
The boy took on many of the tasks the old man couldn't manage anymore. He cooked their meals and helped with the cleaning. He did a good job too. He had never gone to school because his grandfather didn't believe in it, but he had managed to learn enough along the way.
Now it was his grandfather who was startled by the sirens, and every Saturday the boy had to dry the old man's eyes and reassure him they were safe.
The only thing the old man had any energy for was destroying his belongings.
He'd push glasses off the table to watch them shatter. He’d tear houseplants out of their pots. The boy didn't mind because it was something he used to do when he was little. And because it made his Grandpa happy, the boy would sometimes help.
Their favorite thing to do was to tear the pages out of books. Sometimes they'd spend the whole afternoon shredding one text after another. Reader's Digest, War and Peace, The Joy of Cooking. Even the Bible. Their house looked as though a small tornado had made its way inside and devoured everything in sight, leaving only the walls and furniture intact.
When it was time for his Grandpa to die, the boy helped him into his best suit, now worn thin at the knees and elbows. The boy cooked and they talked and laughed all morning.
When they ran out of things to say, the boy led his Grandpa to his room and placed a pillow beneath his head. He crawled into bed next to the old man, and this time when the sirens went off, it was the boy who cried. When the sirens stopped, the boy wiped his eyes, kissed his Grandpa's cold cheek, and walked out the front door.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Distance had been traveled
Revelations come and gone
Dampening dreams
Reshaping the outcomes
Next to me
Always so near
Never have I felt this absolved
A quest felt by so many before me
Habitats have changed
Memories move and flow
Have they stayed true?
Mentioning my memory of you?
Observing to keep the same straight face
Just to move my feet along the ground
Obstacles of mountains and men
Jokes of tall tales and long days
Beside all of these years
Far and near
Beside my side and invisible
Forget these fears and I know you will stay near
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
White Riot
Jimmy was the kid that nobody talked to. Nobody.
Especially in Riverdale.
Sheila Barnaby once tried, and she was pretty tough. She wore dark red nail polish and chewed cinnamon-flavored gum with her mouth open. So scared of Jimmy, she looked down when he approached her on the street. The attempted conversation happened two weeks ago in aisle two at Fontaine’s drugstore. They were both looking at sunblock (although she couldn’t really tell, because Jimmy was always wearing the darkest of dark sunglasses), and Sheila had thought to make a remark about how she was going to the beach later that day, but got nervous when Jimmy cracked his knuckles and stared straight ahead at the five choices of sunblock available in aisle two.
Kenneth Rominski, the bagger at Hermann’s Groceries, would snap the brown paper bags less smartly when Jimmy came in to buy his: gallon of milk, jar of peanut butter, loaf of bread, bar of Irish Spring, pound of coffee, pack of razors, dozen eggs, two pounds of hamburger and quart of orange juice every week. He wasn’t sure if Jimmy was looking at him as he bagged the nine items. Jimmy always stood, hands in his jacket pockets, his sunglasses-covered eyes never belying his true line of vision. Uncannily, Jimmy was always at attention enough to grab the grocery bag from Kenneth when the top was all folded and pressed. Kenneth got goose bumps from the seemingly mundane transaction.
Ruthie Eckhardt stopped cleaning out the parakeet cages at Metzer’s Pet Mart every time Jimmy walked past outside, his sneakers sounding like he’d stepped in gum, his pale skin gleaming like the undead, Walkman blaring Stiff Little Fingers out of the cheap headphones affixed around his small cranium. The dull, paint-it-black hair had oddly wispy, duck-fluff roots peeking out from underneath. The tiny parakeets in their cages involuntarily shuddered because Ruthie would suck her breath in sharply each time it happened. Needless to say, the parakeets’ new newspaper became old again, real quick.
Matt Sutton gripped the handlebars of his kickass BMX bike a bit tighter, half wondering if Jimmy would try to mess with him and take his bike again as he rode past him down Beechnut Street. The trees whispered, “no”, but his heart beat like a rabbit-heart, thumpity, thump, pedal, pedal, pedal, coast. Last week, Jimmy wordlessly grabbed his handlebars at the park and gave him a shove, hopped on the bike and took off like a bat out of hell, only to return the bike to a bewildered Matt five minutes later, out of breath and with no explanation. He had half-thrown it at Matt’s feet, and sauntered off, trying to light a cigarette with pale, shaking hands, turning his head in all directions, the setting sun glinting off of his dark plastic frames. Now, Matt shook the hair out of his eyes, trying to look authoritative. "Just try to take my bike, asshole," he muttered underneath his breath as he veered past Jimmy, who held a suspicious-looking brown paper bag in his pasty hand. Jimmy visibly flinched and his mouth turned downward in a state of startled confusion.
Angela Goodwin sidestepped an oncoming Matt Sutton and wondered if she took that third library volume on paleontology of the Paleozoic Era out of her brown shoulder bag quickly enough, she could defend herself against an approaching and suspicious-looking Jimmy. He’d never actually threatened her, but never say never, right? Would she go for the throat or the kneecaps? She glanced at his brown paper-covered mystery object, his sunglasses-veiled face and reached for her book as though it were made of metal, not paper. “Paper, rock, scissors,” she muttered, “pick your weapon,” as she quickly passed him. Jimmy, again, wondered what the hell was up with people talking to themselves today. He felt the gum on the bottom of his sneakers and stopped to scrape his foot on the curb. Angela looked over her shoulder two seconds later and noticed a group of three neighborhood kids rounding the corner behind Jimmy. He was out of her field of vision. She let her breath out and promptly tripped over an uneven part in the sidewalk.
Mrs. Heckler ‘saw’ Jimmy Albinson coming with her three out of five senses. She could smell, taste and hear as keenly as if she were a flawless, newborn, despite her eighty-three years and terminal blindness. She could smell Jimmy’s Irish Spring sweat under his blue, gabardine zip-up jacket on the May breeze heralded by the wind chime on her porch, she could taste the faint whiff of his open-bottle brown bag on the moisture-laden spring air and hear the swish of the gabardine, the soft thud of rubber sneaker soles and the soft and quick breathing of an out-of-shape punk. She could hear the held-breath breathing of the three pursuers.
Her neck twisted and rose like a bird’s. Mrs. Heckler wasn’t afraid of anything because everything and everyone was afraid of her. “Fools, fools!” she muttered.
Mostly unaware to all of this: parakeets, Paleozoic Era volumes and "paper, rock, scissors," BMX bikes, and brown paper bags, Jimmy Albinson, shrouded in his black sunglasses, clutched his brown bag tighter at the neck when he walked past Mrs. Heckler’s porch, even though he very well knew that old Mrs. Heckler probably had no clue that he was drinking on a public sidewalk.
Still, he rushed past. “It’s too early!” Mrs. Heckler crowed from her porch. She intuitively was attempting to shake off the three following the slight, sunglassed and pale seventeen year-old with her vocal display.
Jimmy didn’t catch any of this. CRAZY, he thought. Too early for what? It’s one o'clock in the afternoon. What a wack-job, he shrugged, thinking, My life sucks enough already, I really don’t need an old crazy bugging me on a Saturday.
Further down the street, the three boys stopped for a millisecond, feeling the unseeing eyes of Mrs. Heckler on them, then continued on, cutting diagonally through the impatiens planted by Geronimo Musselli, the eccentric neighborhood physicist and artist who was on vacation in Naples, down the caving pavement of the alley and into the warm, garbagey smell environment of the alley garages, no noises, save for a baseball game on an AM radio here and there and a couple small, authoritative dogs expressing their Napoleon complexes in fenced-in disdain.
Three boys versus one. The largest of the three was a Gene Wilder type of punk, dealt a crappy head of hair and a crappier dose of teenage acne. He first grabbed the brown-bagged Newcastle out of Jimmy’s surprised hand, then flew the other fist into Jimmy’s small, pointed chin. The second kid pushed Jimmy from behind; the Newcastle bottle flew and shattered, contained inside the bag. The third, as a typical third person does, kept lookout. All wore an unassuming costume of mommy-bought clean T-shirts, jeans and sneakers.
“What’s the matter, punk?” Gene Wilder sneered as Jimmy thudded into the warped concrete, “Gonna cry over spilt beer?”
Jimmy said nothing. He knew it was inevitable. It usually took about two years…he’d been in Riverdale for just under two.
The second one, skinny and slack-jawed and big-toothed, joined in, “Not so tough now, huh, Mr. Fancy Pants?” he mouth-breathed. He kicked Jimmy in the back. The third one, slightly chubby and red-cheeked, pretended not to be nervous, but tapped his right hand against his right hip, his fingers hooked into the belt loop of his jeans and tried to glare at Jimmy, but the sun was too bright in his eyes, and he just glared, in general.
Jimmy winced. Alright, just get it over with, he willed.
“How about some mud all over those Fancy Pants?” Gene Wilder offered, scooping up a convenient clump of rain-soaked sod from the side of the alley and pitching it at Jimmy’s curled-up knees. What fancy pants? Jimmy thought of the normal, boot-cut jeans he was wearing. Now, covered in mud. He held his breath, waiting for more mud to be added to them.
He knew that if he got up and ran, it’d all be over. It had happened once before. He luckily had run past that kid with the BMX, and had taken it for a cruise to lose his assailants that time. Now, not a BMX in sight to rescue him.
Another clump of mud hit Jimmy in the side of the face. Still, he did nothing. What could he do at this point?
This non-reaction reaction pissed Gene Wilder off to no end. Skinny & Slack-jawed echoed the curly-haired fury. They went at Jimmy from both sides, his already-askew headphones cracking in half, his Walkman and cassette dying in a sad chorus of broken plastic. His right shoulder hit the pavement now littered with brown shards of glass and black plastic as his sunglasses slid off only to be crunched like a large, black beetle under Gene Wilder’s white-sneakered foot. This made Gene Wilder laugh. The famous black sunglasses. Jimmy closed his eyes. The sun pierced through his eyelids like a laser.
Another fist to the face and Jimmy’s eyes shot open despite the laser-beam light. The light was white-hot and uncomfortable: those sunglasses had been on for a good reason. He’d worn them outside almost every day of his slightly vampiric life. Gene Wilder and Skinny and Slack-jawed froze and jumped back as though Jimmy were a human electric cattle prod. “What the fuck?” Gene Wilder whisper-hissed.
Jimmy’s pink eyes blinked hesitatingly back at him with a delicate, albino stare. Three pairs of eyes blinked back at him: brown, blue and black. He wondered when it’d be a good time to tell his parents that they might have to move, again…maybe this time, though, things would be different. He wouldn’t get death threats from the older, superstitious neighbors, rocks thrown at him from the football team, whispers of the worst names imaginable from everyone from age three to age eighty-three. Jimmy opened, then shut his naked eyes twice only to see the soles of three pairs of sneakers and three pairs of jean-clad legs run, run, running as fast as they could, first to get away and second to tell everyone, “Guess what???”
Especially in Riverdale.
Sheila Barnaby once tried, and she was pretty tough. She wore dark red nail polish and chewed cinnamon-flavored gum with her mouth open. So scared of Jimmy, she looked down when he approached her on the street. The attempted conversation happened two weeks ago in aisle two at Fontaine’s drugstore. They were both looking at sunblock (although she couldn’t really tell, because Jimmy was always wearing the darkest of dark sunglasses), and Sheila had thought to make a remark about how she was going to the beach later that day, but got nervous when Jimmy cracked his knuckles and stared straight ahead at the five choices of sunblock available in aisle two.
Kenneth Rominski, the bagger at Hermann’s Groceries, would snap the brown paper bags less smartly when Jimmy came in to buy his: gallon of milk, jar of peanut butter, loaf of bread, bar of Irish Spring, pound of coffee, pack of razors, dozen eggs, two pounds of hamburger and quart of orange juice every week. He wasn’t sure if Jimmy was looking at him as he bagged the nine items. Jimmy always stood, hands in his jacket pockets, his sunglasses-covered eyes never belying his true line of vision. Uncannily, Jimmy was always at attention enough to grab the grocery bag from Kenneth when the top was all folded and pressed. Kenneth got goose bumps from the seemingly mundane transaction.
Ruthie Eckhardt stopped cleaning out the parakeet cages at Metzer’s Pet Mart every time Jimmy walked past outside, his sneakers sounding like he’d stepped in gum, his pale skin gleaming like the undead, Walkman blaring Stiff Little Fingers out of the cheap headphones affixed around his small cranium. The dull, paint-it-black hair had oddly wispy, duck-fluff roots peeking out from underneath. The tiny parakeets in their cages involuntarily shuddered because Ruthie would suck her breath in sharply each time it happened. Needless to say, the parakeets’ new newspaper became old again, real quick.
Matt Sutton gripped the handlebars of his kickass BMX bike a bit tighter, half wondering if Jimmy would try to mess with him and take his bike again as he rode past him down Beechnut Street. The trees whispered, “no”, but his heart beat like a rabbit-heart, thumpity, thump, pedal, pedal, pedal, coast. Last week, Jimmy wordlessly grabbed his handlebars at the park and gave him a shove, hopped on the bike and took off like a bat out of hell, only to return the bike to a bewildered Matt five minutes later, out of breath and with no explanation. He had half-thrown it at Matt’s feet, and sauntered off, trying to light a cigarette with pale, shaking hands, turning his head in all directions, the setting sun glinting off of his dark plastic frames. Now, Matt shook the hair out of his eyes, trying to look authoritative. "Just try to take my bike, asshole," he muttered underneath his breath as he veered past Jimmy, who held a suspicious-looking brown paper bag in his pasty hand. Jimmy visibly flinched and his mouth turned downward in a state of startled confusion.
Angela Goodwin sidestepped an oncoming Matt Sutton and wondered if she took that third library volume on paleontology of the Paleozoic Era out of her brown shoulder bag quickly enough, she could defend herself against an approaching and suspicious-looking Jimmy. He’d never actually threatened her, but never say never, right? Would she go for the throat or the kneecaps? She glanced at his brown paper-covered mystery object, his sunglasses-veiled face and reached for her book as though it were made of metal, not paper. “Paper, rock, scissors,” she muttered, “pick your weapon,” as she quickly passed him. Jimmy, again, wondered what the hell was up with people talking to themselves today. He felt the gum on the bottom of his sneakers and stopped to scrape his foot on the curb. Angela looked over her shoulder two seconds later and noticed a group of three neighborhood kids rounding the corner behind Jimmy. He was out of her field of vision. She let her breath out and promptly tripped over an uneven part in the sidewalk.
Mrs. Heckler ‘saw’ Jimmy Albinson coming with her three out of five senses. She could smell, taste and hear as keenly as if she were a flawless, newborn, despite her eighty-three years and terminal blindness. She could smell Jimmy’s Irish Spring sweat under his blue, gabardine zip-up jacket on the May breeze heralded by the wind chime on her porch, she could taste the faint whiff of his open-bottle brown bag on the moisture-laden spring air and hear the swish of the gabardine, the soft thud of rubber sneaker soles and the soft and quick breathing of an out-of-shape punk. She could hear the held-breath breathing of the three pursuers.
Her neck twisted and rose like a bird’s. Mrs. Heckler wasn’t afraid of anything because everything and everyone was afraid of her. “Fools, fools!” she muttered.
Mostly unaware to all of this: parakeets, Paleozoic Era volumes and "paper, rock, scissors," BMX bikes, and brown paper bags, Jimmy Albinson, shrouded in his black sunglasses, clutched his brown bag tighter at the neck when he walked past Mrs. Heckler’s porch, even though he very well knew that old Mrs. Heckler probably had no clue that he was drinking on a public sidewalk.
Still, he rushed past. “It’s too early!” Mrs. Heckler crowed from her porch. She intuitively was attempting to shake off the three following the slight, sunglassed and pale seventeen year-old with her vocal display.
Jimmy didn’t catch any of this. CRAZY, he thought. Too early for what? It’s one o'clock in the afternoon. What a wack-job, he shrugged, thinking, My life sucks enough already, I really don’t need an old crazy bugging me on a Saturday.
Further down the street, the three boys stopped for a millisecond, feeling the unseeing eyes of Mrs. Heckler on them, then continued on, cutting diagonally through the impatiens planted by Geronimo Musselli, the eccentric neighborhood physicist and artist who was on vacation in Naples, down the caving pavement of the alley and into the warm, garbagey smell environment of the alley garages, no noises, save for a baseball game on an AM radio here and there and a couple small, authoritative dogs expressing their Napoleon complexes in fenced-in disdain.
Three boys versus one. The largest of the three was a Gene Wilder type of punk, dealt a crappy head of hair and a crappier dose of teenage acne. He first grabbed the brown-bagged Newcastle out of Jimmy’s surprised hand, then flew the other fist into Jimmy’s small, pointed chin. The second kid pushed Jimmy from behind; the Newcastle bottle flew and shattered, contained inside the bag. The third, as a typical third person does, kept lookout. All wore an unassuming costume of mommy-bought clean T-shirts, jeans and sneakers.
“What’s the matter, punk?” Gene Wilder sneered as Jimmy thudded into the warped concrete, “Gonna cry over spilt beer?”
Jimmy said nothing. He knew it was inevitable. It usually took about two years…he’d been in Riverdale for just under two.
The second one, skinny and slack-jawed and big-toothed, joined in, “Not so tough now, huh, Mr. Fancy Pants?” he mouth-breathed. He kicked Jimmy in the back. The third one, slightly chubby and red-cheeked, pretended not to be nervous, but tapped his right hand against his right hip, his fingers hooked into the belt loop of his jeans and tried to glare at Jimmy, but the sun was too bright in his eyes, and he just glared, in general.
Jimmy winced. Alright, just get it over with, he willed.
“How about some mud all over those Fancy Pants?” Gene Wilder offered, scooping up a convenient clump of rain-soaked sod from the side of the alley and pitching it at Jimmy’s curled-up knees. What fancy pants? Jimmy thought of the normal, boot-cut jeans he was wearing. Now, covered in mud. He held his breath, waiting for more mud to be added to them.
He knew that if he got up and ran, it’d all be over. It had happened once before. He luckily had run past that kid with the BMX, and had taken it for a cruise to lose his assailants that time. Now, not a BMX in sight to rescue him.
Another clump of mud hit Jimmy in the side of the face. Still, he did nothing. What could he do at this point?
This non-reaction reaction pissed Gene Wilder off to no end. Skinny & Slack-jawed echoed the curly-haired fury. They went at Jimmy from both sides, his already-askew headphones cracking in half, his Walkman and cassette dying in a sad chorus of broken plastic. His right shoulder hit the pavement now littered with brown shards of glass and black plastic as his sunglasses slid off only to be crunched like a large, black beetle under Gene Wilder’s white-sneakered foot. This made Gene Wilder laugh. The famous black sunglasses. Jimmy closed his eyes. The sun pierced through his eyelids like a laser.
Another fist to the face and Jimmy’s eyes shot open despite the laser-beam light. The light was white-hot and uncomfortable: those sunglasses had been on for a good reason. He’d worn them outside almost every day of his slightly vampiric life. Gene Wilder and Skinny and Slack-jawed froze and jumped back as though Jimmy were a human electric cattle prod. “What the fuck?” Gene Wilder whisper-hissed.
Jimmy’s pink eyes blinked hesitatingly back at him with a delicate, albino stare. Three pairs of eyes blinked back at him: brown, blue and black. He wondered when it’d be a good time to tell his parents that they might have to move, again…maybe this time, though, things would be different. He wouldn’t get death threats from the older, superstitious neighbors, rocks thrown at him from the football team, whispers of the worst names imaginable from everyone from age three to age eighty-three. Jimmy opened, then shut his naked eyes twice only to see the soles of three pairs of sneakers and three pairs of jean-clad legs run, run, running as fast as they could, first to get away and second to tell everyone, “Guess what???”
Friday, April 3, 2009
Now Empty #42
In NYC shops have always closed and we would mourn them for a week, then a month later we would patronize the new place and be all happy about it. But now, everything is empty. Stores go down, nothing comes up. More stores go down, still nothing. This store is next to 45 West 8th Street, which is a well-known street to buy shoes. In two blocks, there were 6 empty storefronts. What will we become, NYC?
Thursday, April 2, 2009
the frown
Mama always said I came out with a frown on my face. I never cried, I just opened my eyes and frowned. She says it was the darndest thing. All my brothers and sisters cried.
Well, Russell cried after he fell to the floor. Doc couldn’t keep his hands on him. Slippery little bastard. That’s just what he is to this day. He’s always lying and thieving, and the law just can’t seem to keep their hands on him for very long.
We all called him Slick when we was growing up.
Me, I frowned. So I got called Sad Face. Matter of fact, three people to this very day call me Sad Face - Sissy, Slick and Bernard. I never much cared to be called Sad Face, but I have to admit they had a point. I can’t even smile. Not a proper upturned smile like Sissy could make.
I smile in my head, and what’s on my face is an upside down version. Looks pathetic. I’ve stopped even trying.
So either the name wore off on me, or maybe it was imprinted on me from the moment I came out of Mama. Maybe the frown sealed the deal.
Well, Russell cried after he fell to the floor. Doc couldn’t keep his hands on him. Slippery little bastard. That’s just what he is to this day. He’s always lying and thieving, and the law just can’t seem to keep their hands on him for very long.
We all called him Slick when we was growing up.
Me, I frowned. So I got called Sad Face. Matter of fact, three people to this very day call me Sad Face - Sissy, Slick and Bernard. I never much cared to be called Sad Face, but I have to admit they had a point. I can’t even smile. Not a proper upturned smile like Sissy could make.
I smile in my head, and what’s on my face is an upside down version. Looks pathetic. I’ve stopped even trying.
So either the name wore off on me, or maybe it was imprinted on me from the moment I came out of Mama. Maybe the frown sealed the deal.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
town of planks
Sunlight mounted the room as pyramids. The heat, and there was so much of it, coughed up a sleazy barroomish haze. I was choking on the humidity, but the windows had long since swollen stuck and I'd promised I'd wait there.
This was around the holiday, but after.
The town—three irregular peels of streets hemmed by shops filled with dunes of souvenirs—was in its midweek slump. It was like how it becomes when visitors leave after the on-season finally gasps to a close. Only then it’s stiller and we sleep easy.
I'd been a beast, something slovenly and low. So when she'd said, "Wait, I need this," with stabbed-through urgency, I realized this might be the chance I thought I'd never have to bounce back to being the way I'd always imagined I could.
She wasn't from here. She was another of those who filtered in and out during that brief stretch when the weather lets up and unfreezes the lakes. Her features were toneless; she didn't stay for long, but we kept in touch over a diminutive pile of years. I'd pay for tickets to visit her in the denser southern part of the state.
For the telling, she'd managed to tug extra life out of her time off, so I said I'd be here and I was, drained-feeling, asphyxiated and fluvial in the hot room.
Then the sun got lower and I finally heard the gravelly sound of her approach. Looking out, I saw her mouth hitched into something like a grin through the snare of her windshield. What she'd put to me, I knew then, would not be what I'd wanted.
This was around the holiday, but after.
The town—three irregular peels of streets hemmed by shops filled with dunes of souvenirs—was in its midweek slump. It was like how it becomes when visitors leave after the on-season finally gasps to a close. Only then it’s stiller and we sleep easy.
I'd been a beast, something slovenly and low. So when she'd said, "Wait, I need this," with stabbed-through urgency, I realized this might be the chance I thought I'd never have to bounce back to being the way I'd always imagined I could.
She wasn't from here. She was another of those who filtered in and out during that brief stretch when the weather lets up and unfreezes the lakes. Her features were toneless; she didn't stay for long, but we kept in touch over a diminutive pile of years. I'd pay for tickets to visit her in the denser southern part of the state.
For the telling, she'd managed to tug extra life out of her time off, so I said I'd be here and I was, drained-feeling, asphyxiated and fluvial in the hot room.
Then the sun got lower and I finally heard the gravelly sound of her approach. Looking out, I saw her mouth hitched into something like a grin through the snare of her windshield. What she'd put to me, I knew then, would not be what I'd wanted.
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