Prof. Rebecca Chace
Advanced Fiction, Fall 2009
As I copy and paste 70 email addresses from a word doc to my send box, the earplug to my phone is hanging from my ear. My mother says to me, “Have you spoken to him about your loans yet?”
“Mom. He’s still in grief. He says he’ll pay half of it if I raise half in six months after graduation.”
“Right. Look. I don’t care if his wife died. He told you in your fourth year that you had to pay the twenty grand. If you keep working for nonprofit organizations, you’re not going to pay half of it in six months.”
I return to another web tab and scroll through addressses. “I have to get back to what I was doing.”
“Homework?”
“Outreach. I’m way behind because of Joan’s funeral and dad needing attention.”
“He needs attention?”
“Yea. He always wants to tell me the same stories and I don’t have the guts to cut him short. Like how he bought all this
stuff for Joan but she never used it.”
“Like what?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me. Actually, maybe I don’t want to know.”
“Yea so I have to get back to reaching students.”
“Are you coming home this weekend?”
“I don’t think I can leave the house just yet.”
“Bruce wants to see you. Don’t forget he actually has cancer.”
“I’ll probably come in the middle of next week.”
“Well you can at least call me back when I call you.”
“I speak to you at least three times a week.”
“Bruce says you don’t call him back.”
“I have to go mom.”
When she finally let’s me go my father calls a minute later. I answer, “Hi dad!”
“Who’s this?” he asks.
“What’s up?”
“Are you home?”
“Yes. I took care of the dog.”
“Do me a favor. Pick me up from Finnigans.”
“Your car is here?”
“Yes. I’m on the train. Listen. I’m going to let you drive my car. Wait a second. Let me figure this out.”
“I’ll pick you up it’s fine.”
“Listen. At 10:30 be at Finnigans. Just don’t fuck up my car.”
“It’s not even far. I drive mom’s car all the time.”
“Listen!”
“Yes?”
“Do me a favor. Listen. That car was seventy thousand dollars. Ok. Don’t even let me know tomorrow that I let you drive it.”
“Okay.”
The next day is the day that we looked at boats. I deposit change into the Coin Star machine early on a Sunday in Stop n’ Shop. As it counts up past five dollars I start cheering it on. “Yea!” I contemplate whether I should save lunch money by buying bread but it’s only industrial bread and has soy in it and I can’t afford the farmers market bread so I’ll just go broke buying lunch everyday. Then the machine asks if I want to donate to World Wild Life and I curse it for fucking with me and press cash instead of donate, which is for bad people. Then my father calls me. “Listen. Your grandfather canceled on me. Do you want to come with me to the boat show?”
“Will it take all day?”
“You have a date today?”
“I’m just really behind on my internship stuff. I have to reach out to more students. I keep getting side-tracked.”
“Fine. But listen. My father died when I was seven. I can die. You’re going to look back on these times and you’ll be happy
you spent them with your father.”
“I guess I’m coming.”
My mother calls me as I walk home. I say to her through the dangling earpiece, “We’re going to look at boats.”
“He wants to buy a boat!”
“God. I don’t know! We’re going to a boat show.”
“What’s a boat show?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t even wondered that myself.”
“Ok. When are you coming home?”
“I told you about twelve hours ago.”
“When did you say you were coming?”
“I don’t remember. Maybe mid week next week.”
“Call Bruce back. He can use the call.”
“I spoke to him an hour ago.”
“Well he just told me that you’re ignoring him.”
“God. I have to go.”
“Why?”
“I’ll just call you back.”
We stood on the dock and looked at a thirty-two foot boat. “That’s the one,” he said.
“That’s the one that you like to just look at because it makes you feel like you are in the sea.”
“That’s the one I’d like to get. I think it’s affordable.”
The board says $90,000. I say, “Yes. You can say that in a general sort of universal way, or I should say relatively compared
to these like Universal Studios level items, sure, I mean like, if my taxes went to a boat like this I might not even refuse to pay them because I mean like in a world of satellites and ipods, I mean, you can say that if you have perspective of a peripheral mindset of a sort.”
He quietly looks at it. The sky is Bruce. I don’t know what he is thinking. Then he says, “Are you up to some Mexican?”
In the car he picks up a twenty-dollar bill in the cup holder. “Hey life is funny. I found this walking the dog.”
“Yes,” I say.
After a song on the radio he says, “You’ll get me that boat.”
And for some reason, I imagine him riding the boat, and the wind in his hair, and the expansive ocean. I picture him all
alone on the boat.
At the bar in the Mexican restaurant my dad is on his second martini before our food comes, except for the tortilla chips. “Are you going to your mother’s for the Jewish holiday tomorrow?”
“No.”
“What’s the purpose of that holiday?”
“I don’t remember.”
“I used to spend two hundred dollars a month on Hebrew school.” He shakes his head. “I raised you in the Jewish religion
because your mother is Jewish and now you kids don’t even light the menorah. See, your mother has no religion. She doesn’t go to temple-”
“She’s agnostic.”
“It cost money just to be a member of the temple, Shannon. We don’t have that at church. You put something in the basket.”
I almost go into how I didn’t believe in Genesis in first grade but I figure that would further his point. My beans, guacamole and rice come. He says, “Are you sure I’ve never taken you here.”
“I’ve been here with mom.”
“Your mother?”
I eat my beans.
“Well you’re taking Joan’s place. We came here every Sunday. She was so simple man. Not like your mother. Joan paid the check in restaurants. Your mother- forget it man. Did I tell you about the massage in Tokyo? First of all. Listen.” He drank his fourth glass. “Before I tell you about that. Let me tell you about who gave the German massages.” He reaches behind me and kneads my back with his knuckles. Suddenly catatonic, my eyes close and beans pour out of my mouth.
“Feels good right?” he asks.
“I nod in ecstasy”
“Joan used to give me the German massage. We’d go home from here and she’d jump on my back every time and do that
for me. Your mother- when I just married your mother my sensai treated us to a trip to Tokyo. I was the man. We had this hotel in the Park Avenue equivalent of Tokyo. I order a masseuse. I’m expecting a cute Japanese girl. This little, viajo, old Japanese woman lurches into the room. ‘Mr. Ayala. I do you first. I do your wife second.’”
I’m still listening.
“Now, Shannon. Your mother and I were never in love. But that day your mother and I were happy.”
“Have you talked to him about the loan yet?” My mother says behind the wheel at the stoplight. My duffle bag is on my lap. “Fuck this light,” she says.
“I don’t think he ever will care about my loan. He throws my medicine bills on my staircase.”
“What!”
“I know. It’s like half my biweekly paycheck.”
“Well you don’t really have a job, Shannon.”
“I know but I mean I’m a regional organizer and we have to save the food system and the planet.”
“I’m taking him to court. What does he say about the internship? Does he ask you anything about it?”
“Well sometimes he says I’m going to be a doctor. Sometimes he says it’s a good thing, this job.”
“One has nothing to do with the other.”
“What’s the use stressing,” I ask. “He has his own way of thinking. It all makes sense to him. I totally follow his logic.”
“You’re on his side?”
“No. I just see the way he thinks and there’s no bending it. It’s not greed or cheapness. It’s just an aversion to making one’s life too easy. And you’re never going to confront him with a law suit because you’ve been saying it for years.”
“You just watch. Just wait until you graduate. He’ll have his chance.”
“Is Bruce home?”
“Yes. Spend some time with him.”
“Ok. I told the organization, when I went to the training for this my stepmother and stepfather were both in the hospital.
One didn’t go home and the other went home with cancer. So I’m preoccupied with that and with more local concerns that have come up. For example, I’ve been in solidarity with a local community garden and the educational rights movement. So I’ve hardly been doing my job.”
“What are you saying?”
“I want to tell them not to pay me.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“I really being paid for activism anyway.”
“Shannon. Do not be stupid.”
“Mom. I’m stupid. I’m just as stupid as dad is. Only I’m stupid in my own way and I hope you see the difference.”
“Did you tell your father this?”
“For some reason I don’t tell him the same things I tell you.”
“Like about your medicine?”
“I don’t know how to.”
“You say, ‘father. Please help me pay for my medicine.’”
“But I don’t like asking him for anything.”
“Shannon. You’re not going to survive being nice.”
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Beatrice Bat
Part 1.
In the library of CCNY I sat on a couch a space away from a familiar dark skinned girl, hair almost over one of her eyes. I wrote in my note book a few minutes and then noticed she was playing Sudoku. “How do you do that so well?” I asked.
She was startled. “What?” she whispered.
“You’re finishing that Sudoku. I’ve been playing every night this week and I can never finish. Is there some sort of trick?”
“I write the numbers on top,” she said with a very delicate, crispy, whispery voice. “And I cross them out as I get them so I can see clearly what I need.”
“You finished the crossword puzzle too.”
“Yea. I usually do.”
“What’s your name?”
“What?”
“Your name.”
“Beatrice.”
“Hi Beatrice.” She was very short, just over five feet tall. I’d been seeing her around and smiling at her for weeks and she always smiled back. “I’m Pink. What else do you do?”
“What?”
“What else do you do?”
“Um. What do you mean?”
“Besides Sudoku and crossword?”
“I draw. Um, and I make comics.”
“Cool,” I said.
“What are you writing?” she asked.
“I’m planning out the next few hours,” I said.
“I would never do that.”
“No? Hm. What do you make comics about?”
“My comics?”
“Yea.”
“Um. Well they’re just about things that happen.”
“What is it that you like about comics?” I asked.
She looked away from me and said, “I like how the illustrator draws particular parts of the story but decides what to leave out. I like that.”
I stared at her as she stared forward, as if she were protecting herself from further inquiries.
“It was good to meet you Beatrice. I will… see you around.”
She smiled at me. “Bye,” she whispered.
The book fair was set up in our campus, a roped off area of shelves with unwanted, cheap books. I saw Beatrice walking by it. “Beatrice!” I called.
She had a corduroy bag with buttons on the strap at her side and was holding a book with both arms against her chest. “Hi Pink,” she said smiling.
“Have you seen the book fair?” I asked.
“No. Is that where you’re going?”
“Yes. Come with me.”
“Okay.”
She followed me through the shelves. “Hey look,” I said. “The Bhagavad Gita. Cool.” She watched me flip through the pages. “Have you ever seen these pictures?”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t they cool?”
“Are you going to buy it?”
“No. I have it already just not with pictures.”
She followed me to another shelf. “Hey, look at this,” I said.
“What?”
“It looks like letters between Jack Kerouac and some lady.”
I bought it for a dollar and walked her to class, picking up the black school paper on the way.
“I read your article,” she said.
“The one about the water crisis?” I asked.
“Oh no. The one about going green.”
“Oh yes. The true way to go green,” I said, “is to protest.”
“A guy in my class,” she said, “told me he went to a protest at Baruch College against the budget cuts to CUNY.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m part of that.”
“Those things aren’t publicized enough though. In Paris they started charging tuition at this school and the whole city shut down because so many people were in the street. I think that was beautiful.”
Beatrice and I walked up the big white steps inside the middle of the Met Museum. “Remember that book?” I asked her.
“Which one?”
“The letters between Kerouac and that woman.”
“From the book fair.”
“Yea. I’ve been reading it.” I felt extremely empty because I had nothing else to say.
She took my hand and led me towards the exhibit. The sign said, “Love and the Renaissance.” There were extremely colorful paintings of semi nude people in natural settings surrounded by angels. There were flowers and sometimes alters. Beatrice let go of my hand and jotted notes in her book.
“I think the main thing,” I said, “was that before this time men would marry women by force you know? It was like a form of property and in the renaissance they wanted to make love the central thing and like always, emphasize chastity.” There was a painting of cupid sneaking behind someone in the shadow, putting his mischievous finger to his lips.
We walked through the knight’s armor. “Look how short people were back then,” she said.
“Yea.”
“I’d like a pendant of my own,” she said.
“What’s a pendant?”
“It’s that logo on their chest. See.”
“What would yours look like?”
“It would be a panda with a spear riding a unicorn over a banner that says ‘Go Team Beatrice.’” She giggled.
I wandered into the Asiatic room by myself. The walls were turquoise and the items were wooden.
“Pink,” called her soft voice from the room before me. I felt as if time had stopped.
She held my hand and we looked at a small statue of a fruit bat. “I was at this psychic Reiki healer recently,” I said. “And she told me that she saw this image of a bat while healing me, and that bats to her symbolize transformation.”
“That sounds correct,” she said. “I have a bat tattooed on my back.”
“Can I see?”
“Mm,” she considered it reluctantly. She lifted the back of her shirt. There was a cartoonish bat.
Outside it began to rain so I opened my umbrella. Half of it was broken and hung down so I held the remaining half over both of us, holding her close. “You’re ridiculous,” she laughed.
“So,” I said.
“You can just hold it over yourself.”
“Why? You’d get wet.”
We stopped at a corner for a red light. She was looking across the street and without second thought I kissed her.
On the train I wrote her a stream-of-consciousness letter, read it once and folded it four ways. When she wrote back she said, “I admit that this is my fifth try at writing this letter. I also admit that you make me extremely nervous. I’m also trying to write in pencil because as you say, it’s more sustainable although I have my skepticism about that.”
She walked with me from bulletin board to bulletin board. I held the thumbtacks and she held the posters. She lifted them up from the bottom as high as she could and I tacked them on top.
“That’s the last poster,” she said.
“Good. It’s been good to poster with you and that’s everything on my list.”
“Thank you Pink.”
I took my little notepad out of my pocket and scratched “Posters” off. “Oh no!” I shouted.
“What?” she asked.
“What time is it?”
She looked at her watch. “It’s 4:50.”
“I have ten minutes to submit my entry for the writing contest.”
“So what do you have to do?”
“Run. Can you come with me?”
“Okay.” We ran to the computer lab. I printed the story while she read the contest rules. “You’re supposed to number the pages,” she said, “and write the name of the award you’re competing for on the front page.”
“Fuck!” I yelled.
Soon we were running, holding hands, up the broken down escalators. I ran into the English department sweating, right up to one of the advisors and handed the manuscript to her.
“You’re ten minutes late Pink Noche,” she said in her Russian accent.
Beatrice came walking in.
“Will you accept it anyway?” I said, heaving.
“Yes,” said the advisor. “But this is the last time.”
Beatrice broke into laughter, leaning on her knees and I smiled, took her hand and walked out of the department.
“Who’s this girl?” asked my mother washing a dish in the sink. I leaned against the counter, legs crossed, hands in my pocket watching her go back and forth from the sink to the other counter, letting the water run.
“Mom, you shouldn’t let the water run,” I said.
“What, I’m doing dishes.”
“She’s from school.”
“What school? Your school?”
“Yes. CCNY. My school. What’s sort of interesting is around the time that I met her I bought this book.”
“Yea?” she said, cleaning a knife.
“There’s a parallel because it’s a compilation of letters between this woman when she was dating Jack Kerouac in 1957. Kerouac was older than her. I’m older than this girl, Beatrice. She lived in Morning Side and this girl, Beatrice lives in Morning Side. This woman and Beatrice went to the same high school.”
My mother transferred to the counter, letting the water run. She said, “So?”
I reached over and turned off the sink.
“What are you doing?” she yelled.
“You’re wasting water.”
“I’m trying to do dishes!”
“I’ll do the dishes.”
“Okay. Do them. Anyway, I don’t get what you’re trying to tell me.”
“Well the other thing is Beatrice is kind of shy like the girl in the book.”
“Well, that’s okay. She does talk doesn’t she?
“Never mind mom.”
“Do you like her?”
“Yea. We’ve been going out now.”
I was typing on a computer in a small office covered in all sorts of maps, posters that said things like, “Take Action” or with images such as wind turbines. There was a knock at the door. I let Beatrice in and shut the door behind her. “So this is where you save the planet?” she said.
“Well so far I’ve only done extremely local and more health-based environmental issues. I’ve only just began to focus Climate Change. I’ve been working extremely incessantly on it.” She sat on the couch. I turned on a lamp and turned the main light off. I turned off the computer screen and sat next to her. Strangely, some R&B music played through the walls.
I gave her the next letter and she said, “Thank you. I really like reading your letters.”
“I like the drawings you put in mine,” I said. “And you say really insightful things.”
“Thank you.” She leaned against me and said, “Pink. I really like you.”
“I like you.”
“Only, you make me extremely nervous. I had this dream of you the other night. You were in some sort of parade. I was squeezing through to see you. It was like you had super powers or something.”
“Hm,” I said. “I don’t think I have any super powers. I can do this funny dance though.”
“And do you remember meeting me?” she asked.
“I remember seeing you walking by and smiling back at me.”
“No. Before that. Do you remember you helped me register to vote?”
“Oh. Oh I registered hundreds of people to vote this year. I even stood on the street in Harlem and registered people, and in the subway.”
“It was at a table outside. I thought you were in your late twenties.”
“Late twenties?”
“Yea. It’s embarrassing. I realized you were a student when I saw you inside and realized you were probably 25 years old. And I was holding a cupcake and you smiled at me and I bumped right into this woman and dropped the cupcake on the floor,” she giggled. “Then in the library when you so randomly talked to me, and I don’t know why you did by the way, I realized that you looked extremely young and that you were probably only 20 years old.”
I laughed. I wondered what the deal was with this girl. Most people thought I looked younger than I was. Most girls seemed to think I was too funky or gay or skinny or too nice. I thought to myself, “This Beatrice is not human.” I didn’t think I was looking for anyone gentle and good. I thought I was looking for someone weird and outgoing. Beatrice fell asleep on me. I watched her breathe for an hour. She was like a flower.
Part 2.
“Wake up,” I said. She lifted her head from me in the darkness of the bus and the night. “We’re here.”
A group of five of us walked into a hotel room where one friend already was. She greeted us enthusiastically in her Russian accent. “The opening ceremony was so great!” she said. “It was spiritual and like we were all one.”
“Too bad we missed it,” my friend Amy said.
Immediately Beatrice and I curled up together on a bed. “They’re tired,” said Amy. “Louie’s going to be here tomorrow. He’ll miss all the workshops but he’ll be here Monday to lobby.”
“That’s good,” said the Russian girl.
Thousands of people our age swarmed every where in the Convention Center, many in green t-shirts. The seven of us met by a large Rosetta Stone-square block with every alphabet carved out and the shadows of the alphabets projected onto us. We all had name tag necklaces on. “So how was everyone’s workshop?” Amy said.
Beatrice said, “Janine and I went to one about global politics and Climate Change. It really helped me understand things.”
“I went to one about food,” I said. “They had to divide it into two workshops it was so popular.”
Beatrice whispered to me, “Pink, I want to go to the last one with you.” It was Sunday and we hadn’t attended any together in the two days. “I was thinking we could go to ‘Art and Activism.’”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
She held my hand on an island in the middle of Times Square. Someone gave her a jar and said, “Be very careful with this. It’s coal sludge. It’s very toxic.” The 100 of us marched one block to a hotel chanting, “Clean Coal’s a Dirty Joke/Watch Your Profits go Up in Smoke.” We circled in front of a hotel where a coal company was having a black tie affair. Beatrice handed flyers to people passing by. One woman shook her head at us in disgust.
As the sun set we walked out of the dispersing rally and I asked her, “Do you want to meet my friend at an exhibit on robot-art?”
On the screen the robot drew all sorts of patterns. “The robot makes its own decisions,” said the narrator. My arm was around Beatrice in the dark theatre. My friend had a mustache like Salvador Dali. I wasn’t paying attention. I was worried that my mind was fizzling out.
The lights came on. My friend said, “What did you guys think?”
“It was really cool,” she said. “When I was a little girl my father made robots and once he worked on a similar project. I really can’t wait to tell him about this. What did you think Pink?”
“So,” I said. “They are robots stimulated by brain tissue?”
“What?” she said.
“I mean. How did they make decisions?”
“You didn’t understand it?” She looked at me horrified.
I walked her home in the night. She was on her phone. “Dad! I saw a movie that reminded me of you.” She held my hand.
I joined her in the cafeteria where she laughed with her dozen friends. I didn’t pay any attention and didn’t understand their inside jokes. She looked at me with girlish eyes and said, “Are you okay? You seem bored.”
“I’m just kind of tired. I have to go finish some work.”
“Okay.”
On the train I read her letter. She said, “I don’t like that you don’t talk to my friends. I have to tell them that you don’t hate them. They’re important to me just like you are important to me. I know you want to meet my parents but I can’t let you meet them until you at least talk to my friends.”
I walked into the school gym which was filled with hundreds of people in white t-shirts that said Relay for Life. It was a cancer fundraiser. I spoke to my friend until Beatrice saw me. She was wearing the white t-shirt and no shoes. She asked, “Are you staying the whole night?”
“No. I just came to give you this letter.”
“Aw, stay the whole night.”
“The trip to the Climate Change Exhibit is ten tomorrow morning,” I said.
“So. We can just get coffee after this and then go from here.” Then she gave me sad puppy eyes.
I sighed. “For you I will stay.”
A woman said to me, “You’re going to walk laps around the gym in those boots?”
I sat down with Beatrice’s friends in their circle of some 15 people. They were playing cards and joking. “Hey,” I said to Beatrice. “I’m going to talk to my friend.”
My friend Wanda was one of the organizers of the event. “Wanda,” I said. “What can I do to help?”
“Do you want to run the popcorn machine?”
“Okay.”
Beatrice came to me where I was reading my astronomy text book at the machine. I loved my astronomy class. “Why won’t you come hang out with my friends?” she said.
“I’m volunteering.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to. I won’t be here all night.”
“I’ll stay here with you,” she said sadly.
“I’m boring Beatrice. Go hang out with your friends.”
She sullenly left.
When I returned to her I took a short story from my bag to show her. “Look,” I said. “Someone in my class wrote this. I want you to read it.”
After ten minutes she said, “Can I show you all the typos you missed?”
“That wasn’t the point!” I yelled and snatched the story from her and went back to Wanda.
As the people dispersed I cleaned up debris around the gym and she said bye to her friends. I struggled to remove a blue balloon from a paperweight because it was her favorite color. When I gave it to her she said, “Aw. Thank you.”
We walked into the dawn. “I’m really cold,” she said.
“Take my jacket.”
“That’s okay,” she said.
“Let’s get coffee.”
“I’m going to go home.”
“Don’t go home. Come to the exhibit.”
“I don’t think we’re getting along very well right now.”
“Yea but you should still come to the exhibit. It’s about Climate Change.”
“I’ll go another time.”
I sighed. “You might as well go this time so you end up going for sure.”
“Bye Pink,” she said and left.
I walked to another part of campus and sat at a picnic table. After a while of quiet a blue balloon appeared. It floated under a ceiling and in between two walls where I watched it float off into the sky.
Amy said into the conference call, “Janine, You’re going to put up flyers tomorrow. Avery and Pink are going to leaflet from twelve to two. Does every one know what they’re doing for the rest of the week?”
“It’s going to rain on Earth Day,” Said Janine.
“It’s suppose to rain on Wednesday, which is the world’s Earth Day. Our Earth Day is Thursday, which should be sunny. Our events are inside on Wednesday and at 2 people are walking out of class to protest the budget cuts. I don’t know about you guys but I’m going to walk out.”
“Me too,” I said.
I wrote a text message asking people to volunteer for CCNY Earth Day and went through my address book clicking on names to send it to. When I got to Beatrice I hesitated. She had been at a couple of our meetings. She helped make flyers. But she hadn’t been helping at all for the past two weeks and we had hardly spoken. I skipped over her name and then I stopped again. “On the other hand,” I thought, “Just because she’s my girlfriend doesn’t mean she isn’t a person. It doesn’t mean I should exclude her from volunteering on Earth Day.” I scrolled back up and clicked on her name, counter-intuitively.
On the world’s Earth Day, I walked out of my astronomy class into the rain. Amongst the 150 people, someone gave me a sign and I stood up on a bench holding it over my head. I spotted Beatrice with her friends. They were standing outside of the rally talking. I got down and approached her.
“We need to talk,” she said.
“I know. Can I come to your building tonight after six?”
“Sure.”
I returned to the bench. I watched her and her friends walk away. “Does she not agree with this?” I wondered. “Why has she never discussed her feelings about this? Does she think I’m some sort of follower? Does she think I’m too political? Is it because her friends don’t care?”
The next day Avery helped me clean up on the sunny day in front of the school when the CCNY Earth Day dispersed. “I can’t believe it’s finally over,” she said.
“It’s never over,” I said. “But we can sleep tomorrow.”
“That’s right,” she said. “Where do you go now?”
“I have to talk to Beatrice. I guess me and her are over too.”
“Oh what happened?”
“Oh um… I don’t know. I’ll tell you later.”
I sat on the bench in front of her building. Her small form emerged into the windy, leaf swirling, late afternoon. I leaned back, exhausted, arms stretched out on the bench. She sat a foot away from me without touching me, her knees together, both hands on her knees, facing forward and looking down. “I think we should just be friends Pink.”
I was quiet. I watched her hair blow in the wind and her sad, almost indifferent face. It was surreal to hear her say that so certainly after such a short period of time. Just two months earlier she still looked at me with stars in her eyes and wrote as if she didn’t deserve me in her letters.
“Why?” I asked, sincerely.
“We’re just too different. We have nothing in common.”
I knew this was compensation for a longer story that she’d rather not say. Obviously, amongst the whole world, or the whole school, we had hardly different sentimentalities. “She just doesn’t think I love her back,” I thought. “I could get on my knees and tell her that she’s being stupid and that would probably work… but I’m pretty tired, and I don’t mind if my life changes right now.” I was amazed that she still wasn’t looking at me. “Don’t think that I don’t love you just because I’ve been so busy lately,” I said. “When the time comes, no one is important to me. People are replaced by the whole of the world.”
She was still quiet.
“But I thought about something today. Because it was Earth Day. I’ve been so frantic lately and especially today. I think to really appreciate nature you have to relax, like the people of pre-modern times who tended the fields all day.”
“They had it hard,” she said. “They worried about basic survival every day.”
“But I think it’s better to live on the edge of death, to be poor and to live benignly amongst nature.”
“People weren’t happy in those times, I assure you,” she said.
“I’m glad we’re having this discussion. I think we were lacking this.”
“I have to go,” she said. She stood up without touching me and walked inside at the same pace that she came out and with the same sullen grace. Somewhat awed, I watched her disappear.
That night I read her dozen or more letters and closed the lid on the little box. I turned off my lamp and the solar powered lamp that she bought me for Beatmas (she was born on Christmas) automatically turned on and illuminated the picture she drew of me and her laying in the grass, hearts floating up into the sun. I walked outside and in a courtyard I was suddenly struck by the sight of bats fluttering in the trees.
In the library of CCNY I sat on a couch a space away from a familiar dark skinned girl, hair almost over one of her eyes. I wrote in my note book a few minutes and then noticed she was playing Sudoku. “How do you do that so well?” I asked.
She was startled. “What?” she whispered.
“You’re finishing that Sudoku. I’ve been playing every night this week and I can never finish. Is there some sort of trick?”
“I write the numbers on top,” she said with a very delicate, crispy, whispery voice. “And I cross them out as I get them so I can see clearly what I need.”
“You finished the crossword puzzle too.”
“Yea. I usually do.”
“What’s your name?”
“What?”
“Your name.”
“Beatrice.”
“Hi Beatrice.” She was very short, just over five feet tall. I’d been seeing her around and smiling at her for weeks and she always smiled back. “I’m Pink. What else do you do?”
“What?”
“What else do you do?”
“Um. What do you mean?”
“Besides Sudoku and crossword?”
“I draw. Um, and I make comics.”
“Cool,” I said.
“What are you writing?” she asked.
“I’m planning out the next few hours,” I said.
“I would never do that.”
“No? Hm. What do you make comics about?”
“My comics?”
“Yea.”
“Um. Well they’re just about things that happen.”
“What is it that you like about comics?” I asked.
She looked away from me and said, “I like how the illustrator draws particular parts of the story but decides what to leave out. I like that.”
I stared at her as she stared forward, as if she were protecting herself from further inquiries.
“It was good to meet you Beatrice. I will… see you around.”
She smiled at me. “Bye,” she whispered.
The book fair was set up in our campus, a roped off area of shelves with unwanted, cheap books. I saw Beatrice walking by it. “Beatrice!” I called.
She had a corduroy bag with buttons on the strap at her side and was holding a book with both arms against her chest. “Hi Pink,” she said smiling.
“Have you seen the book fair?” I asked.
“No. Is that where you’re going?”
“Yes. Come with me.”
“Okay.”
She followed me through the shelves. “Hey look,” I said. “The Bhagavad Gita. Cool.” She watched me flip through the pages. “Have you ever seen these pictures?”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t they cool?”
“Are you going to buy it?”
“No. I have it already just not with pictures.”
She followed me to another shelf. “Hey, look at this,” I said.
“What?”
“It looks like letters between Jack Kerouac and some lady.”
I bought it for a dollar and walked her to class, picking up the black school paper on the way.
“I read your article,” she said.
“The one about the water crisis?” I asked.
“Oh no. The one about going green.”
“Oh yes. The true way to go green,” I said, “is to protest.”
“A guy in my class,” she said, “told me he went to a protest at Baruch College against the budget cuts to CUNY.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m part of that.”
“Those things aren’t publicized enough though. In Paris they started charging tuition at this school and the whole city shut down because so many people were in the street. I think that was beautiful.”
Beatrice and I walked up the big white steps inside the middle of the Met Museum. “Remember that book?” I asked her.
“Which one?”
“The letters between Kerouac and that woman.”
“From the book fair.”
“Yea. I’ve been reading it.” I felt extremely empty because I had nothing else to say.
She took my hand and led me towards the exhibit. The sign said, “Love and the Renaissance.” There were extremely colorful paintings of semi nude people in natural settings surrounded by angels. There were flowers and sometimes alters. Beatrice let go of my hand and jotted notes in her book.
“I think the main thing,” I said, “was that before this time men would marry women by force you know? It was like a form of property and in the renaissance they wanted to make love the central thing and like always, emphasize chastity.” There was a painting of cupid sneaking behind someone in the shadow, putting his mischievous finger to his lips.
We walked through the knight’s armor. “Look how short people were back then,” she said.
“Yea.”
“I’d like a pendant of my own,” she said.
“What’s a pendant?”
“It’s that logo on their chest. See.”
“What would yours look like?”
“It would be a panda with a spear riding a unicorn over a banner that says ‘Go Team Beatrice.’” She giggled.
I wandered into the Asiatic room by myself. The walls were turquoise and the items were wooden.
“Pink,” called her soft voice from the room before me. I felt as if time had stopped.
She held my hand and we looked at a small statue of a fruit bat. “I was at this psychic Reiki healer recently,” I said. “And she told me that she saw this image of a bat while healing me, and that bats to her symbolize transformation.”
“That sounds correct,” she said. “I have a bat tattooed on my back.”
“Can I see?”
“Mm,” she considered it reluctantly. She lifted the back of her shirt. There was a cartoonish bat.
Outside it began to rain so I opened my umbrella. Half of it was broken and hung down so I held the remaining half over both of us, holding her close. “You’re ridiculous,” she laughed.
“So,” I said.
“You can just hold it over yourself.”
“Why? You’d get wet.”
We stopped at a corner for a red light. She was looking across the street and without second thought I kissed her.
On the train I wrote her a stream-of-consciousness letter, read it once and folded it four ways. When she wrote back she said, “I admit that this is my fifth try at writing this letter. I also admit that you make me extremely nervous. I’m also trying to write in pencil because as you say, it’s more sustainable although I have my skepticism about that.”
She walked with me from bulletin board to bulletin board. I held the thumbtacks and she held the posters. She lifted them up from the bottom as high as she could and I tacked them on top.
“That’s the last poster,” she said.
“Good. It’s been good to poster with you and that’s everything on my list.”
“Thank you Pink.”
I took my little notepad out of my pocket and scratched “Posters” off. “Oh no!” I shouted.
“What?” she asked.
“What time is it?”
She looked at her watch. “It’s 4:50.”
“I have ten minutes to submit my entry for the writing contest.”
“So what do you have to do?”
“Run. Can you come with me?”
“Okay.” We ran to the computer lab. I printed the story while she read the contest rules. “You’re supposed to number the pages,” she said, “and write the name of the award you’re competing for on the front page.”
“Fuck!” I yelled.
Soon we were running, holding hands, up the broken down escalators. I ran into the English department sweating, right up to one of the advisors and handed the manuscript to her.
“You’re ten minutes late Pink Noche,” she said in her Russian accent.
Beatrice came walking in.
“Will you accept it anyway?” I said, heaving.
“Yes,” said the advisor. “But this is the last time.”
Beatrice broke into laughter, leaning on her knees and I smiled, took her hand and walked out of the department.
“Who’s this girl?” asked my mother washing a dish in the sink. I leaned against the counter, legs crossed, hands in my pocket watching her go back and forth from the sink to the other counter, letting the water run.
“Mom, you shouldn’t let the water run,” I said.
“What, I’m doing dishes.”
“She’s from school.”
“What school? Your school?”
“Yes. CCNY. My school. What’s sort of interesting is around the time that I met her I bought this book.”
“Yea?” she said, cleaning a knife.
“There’s a parallel because it’s a compilation of letters between this woman when she was dating Jack Kerouac in 1957. Kerouac was older than her. I’m older than this girl, Beatrice. She lived in Morning Side and this girl, Beatrice lives in Morning Side. This woman and Beatrice went to the same high school.”
My mother transferred to the counter, letting the water run. She said, “So?”
I reached over and turned off the sink.
“What are you doing?” she yelled.
“You’re wasting water.”
“I’m trying to do dishes!”
“I’ll do the dishes.”
“Okay. Do them. Anyway, I don’t get what you’re trying to tell me.”
“Well the other thing is Beatrice is kind of shy like the girl in the book.”
“Well, that’s okay. She does talk doesn’t she?
“Never mind mom.”
“Do you like her?”
“Yea. We’ve been going out now.”
I was typing on a computer in a small office covered in all sorts of maps, posters that said things like, “Take Action” or with images such as wind turbines. There was a knock at the door. I let Beatrice in and shut the door behind her. “So this is where you save the planet?” she said.
“Well so far I’ve only done extremely local and more health-based environmental issues. I’ve only just began to focus Climate Change. I’ve been working extremely incessantly on it.” She sat on the couch. I turned on a lamp and turned the main light off. I turned off the computer screen and sat next to her. Strangely, some R&B music played through the walls.
I gave her the next letter and she said, “Thank you. I really like reading your letters.”
“I like the drawings you put in mine,” I said. “And you say really insightful things.”
“Thank you.” She leaned against me and said, “Pink. I really like you.”
“I like you.”
“Only, you make me extremely nervous. I had this dream of you the other night. You were in some sort of parade. I was squeezing through to see you. It was like you had super powers or something.”
“Hm,” I said. “I don’t think I have any super powers. I can do this funny dance though.”
“And do you remember meeting me?” she asked.
“I remember seeing you walking by and smiling back at me.”
“No. Before that. Do you remember you helped me register to vote?”
“Oh. Oh I registered hundreds of people to vote this year. I even stood on the street in Harlem and registered people, and in the subway.”
“It was at a table outside. I thought you were in your late twenties.”
“Late twenties?”
“Yea. It’s embarrassing. I realized you were a student when I saw you inside and realized you were probably 25 years old. And I was holding a cupcake and you smiled at me and I bumped right into this woman and dropped the cupcake on the floor,” she giggled. “Then in the library when you so randomly talked to me, and I don’t know why you did by the way, I realized that you looked extremely young and that you were probably only 20 years old.”
I laughed. I wondered what the deal was with this girl. Most people thought I looked younger than I was. Most girls seemed to think I was too funky or gay or skinny or too nice. I thought to myself, “This Beatrice is not human.” I didn’t think I was looking for anyone gentle and good. I thought I was looking for someone weird and outgoing. Beatrice fell asleep on me. I watched her breathe for an hour. She was like a flower.
Part 2.
“Wake up,” I said. She lifted her head from me in the darkness of the bus and the night. “We’re here.”
A group of five of us walked into a hotel room where one friend already was. She greeted us enthusiastically in her Russian accent. “The opening ceremony was so great!” she said. “It was spiritual and like we were all one.”
“Too bad we missed it,” my friend Amy said.
Immediately Beatrice and I curled up together on a bed. “They’re tired,” said Amy. “Louie’s going to be here tomorrow. He’ll miss all the workshops but he’ll be here Monday to lobby.”
“That’s good,” said the Russian girl.
Thousands of people our age swarmed every where in the Convention Center, many in green t-shirts. The seven of us met by a large Rosetta Stone-square block with every alphabet carved out and the shadows of the alphabets projected onto us. We all had name tag necklaces on. “So how was everyone’s workshop?” Amy said.
Beatrice said, “Janine and I went to one about global politics and Climate Change. It really helped me understand things.”
“I went to one about food,” I said. “They had to divide it into two workshops it was so popular.”
Beatrice whispered to me, “Pink, I want to go to the last one with you.” It was Sunday and we hadn’t attended any together in the two days. “I was thinking we could go to ‘Art and Activism.’”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
She held my hand on an island in the middle of Times Square. Someone gave her a jar and said, “Be very careful with this. It’s coal sludge. It’s very toxic.” The 100 of us marched one block to a hotel chanting, “Clean Coal’s a Dirty Joke/Watch Your Profits go Up in Smoke.” We circled in front of a hotel where a coal company was having a black tie affair. Beatrice handed flyers to people passing by. One woman shook her head at us in disgust.
As the sun set we walked out of the dispersing rally and I asked her, “Do you want to meet my friend at an exhibit on robot-art?”
On the screen the robot drew all sorts of patterns. “The robot makes its own decisions,” said the narrator. My arm was around Beatrice in the dark theatre. My friend had a mustache like Salvador Dali. I wasn’t paying attention. I was worried that my mind was fizzling out.
The lights came on. My friend said, “What did you guys think?”
“It was really cool,” she said. “When I was a little girl my father made robots and once he worked on a similar project. I really can’t wait to tell him about this. What did you think Pink?”
“So,” I said. “They are robots stimulated by brain tissue?”
“What?” she said.
“I mean. How did they make decisions?”
“You didn’t understand it?” She looked at me horrified.
I walked her home in the night. She was on her phone. “Dad! I saw a movie that reminded me of you.” She held my hand.
I joined her in the cafeteria where she laughed with her dozen friends. I didn’t pay any attention and didn’t understand their inside jokes. She looked at me with girlish eyes and said, “Are you okay? You seem bored.”
“I’m just kind of tired. I have to go finish some work.”
“Okay.”
On the train I read her letter. She said, “I don’t like that you don’t talk to my friends. I have to tell them that you don’t hate them. They’re important to me just like you are important to me. I know you want to meet my parents but I can’t let you meet them until you at least talk to my friends.”
I walked into the school gym which was filled with hundreds of people in white t-shirts that said Relay for Life. It was a cancer fundraiser. I spoke to my friend until Beatrice saw me. She was wearing the white t-shirt and no shoes. She asked, “Are you staying the whole night?”
“No. I just came to give you this letter.”
“Aw, stay the whole night.”
“The trip to the Climate Change Exhibit is ten tomorrow morning,” I said.
“So. We can just get coffee after this and then go from here.” Then she gave me sad puppy eyes.
I sighed. “For you I will stay.”
A woman said to me, “You’re going to walk laps around the gym in those boots?”
I sat down with Beatrice’s friends in their circle of some 15 people. They were playing cards and joking. “Hey,” I said to Beatrice. “I’m going to talk to my friend.”
My friend Wanda was one of the organizers of the event. “Wanda,” I said. “What can I do to help?”
“Do you want to run the popcorn machine?”
“Okay.”
Beatrice came to me where I was reading my astronomy text book at the machine. I loved my astronomy class. “Why won’t you come hang out with my friends?” she said.
“I’m volunteering.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to. I won’t be here all night.”
“I’ll stay here with you,” she said sadly.
“I’m boring Beatrice. Go hang out with your friends.”
She sullenly left.
When I returned to her I took a short story from my bag to show her. “Look,” I said. “Someone in my class wrote this. I want you to read it.”
After ten minutes she said, “Can I show you all the typos you missed?”
“That wasn’t the point!” I yelled and snatched the story from her and went back to Wanda.
As the people dispersed I cleaned up debris around the gym and she said bye to her friends. I struggled to remove a blue balloon from a paperweight because it was her favorite color. When I gave it to her she said, “Aw. Thank you.”
We walked into the dawn. “I’m really cold,” she said.
“Take my jacket.”
“That’s okay,” she said.
“Let’s get coffee.”
“I’m going to go home.”
“Don’t go home. Come to the exhibit.”
“I don’t think we’re getting along very well right now.”
“Yea but you should still come to the exhibit. It’s about Climate Change.”
“I’ll go another time.”
I sighed. “You might as well go this time so you end up going for sure.”
“Bye Pink,” she said and left.
I walked to another part of campus and sat at a picnic table. After a while of quiet a blue balloon appeared. It floated under a ceiling and in between two walls where I watched it float off into the sky.
Amy said into the conference call, “Janine, You’re going to put up flyers tomorrow. Avery and Pink are going to leaflet from twelve to two. Does every one know what they’re doing for the rest of the week?”
“It’s going to rain on Earth Day,” Said Janine.
“It’s suppose to rain on Wednesday, which is the world’s Earth Day. Our Earth Day is Thursday, which should be sunny. Our events are inside on Wednesday and at 2 people are walking out of class to protest the budget cuts. I don’t know about you guys but I’m going to walk out.”
“Me too,” I said.
I wrote a text message asking people to volunteer for CCNY Earth Day and went through my address book clicking on names to send it to. When I got to Beatrice I hesitated. She had been at a couple of our meetings. She helped make flyers. But she hadn’t been helping at all for the past two weeks and we had hardly spoken. I skipped over her name and then I stopped again. “On the other hand,” I thought, “Just because she’s my girlfriend doesn’t mean she isn’t a person. It doesn’t mean I should exclude her from volunteering on Earth Day.” I scrolled back up and clicked on her name, counter-intuitively.
On the world’s Earth Day, I walked out of my astronomy class into the rain. Amongst the 150 people, someone gave me a sign and I stood up on a bench holding it over my head. I spotted Beatrice with her friends. They were standing outside of the rally talking. I got down and approached her.
“We need to talk,” she said.
“I know. Can I come to your building tonight after six?”
“Sure.”
I returned to the bench. I watched her and her friends walk away. “Does she not agree with this?” I wondered. “Why has she never discussed her feelings about this? Does she think I’m some sort of follower? Does she think I’m too political? Is it because her friends don’t care?”
The next day Avery helped me clean up on the sunny day in front of the school when the CCNY Earth Day dispersed. “I can’t believe it’s finally over,” she said.
“It’s never over,” I said. “But we can sleep tomorrow.”
“That’s right,” she said. “Where do you go now?”
“I have to talk to Beatrice. I guess me and her are over too.”
“Oh what happened?”
“Oh um… I don’t know. I’ll tell you later.”
I sat on the bench in front of her building. Her small form emerged into the windy, leaf swirling, late afternoon. I leaned back, exhausted, arms stretched out on the bench. She sat a foot away from me without touching me, her knees together, both hands on her knees, facing forward and looking down. “I think we should just be friends Pink.”
I was quiet. I watched her hair blow in the wind and her sad, almost indifferent face. It was surreal to hear her say that so certainly after such a short period of time. Just two months earlier she still looked at me with stars in her eyes and wrote as if she didn’t deserve me in her letters.
“Why?” I asked, sincerely.
“We’re just too different. We have nothing in common.”
I knew this was compensation for a longer story that she’d rather not say. Obviously, amongst the whole world, or the whole school, we had hardly different sentimentalities. “She just doesn’t think I love her back,” I thought. “I could get on my knees and tell her that she’s being stupid and that would probably work… but I’m pretty tired, and I don’t mind if my life changes right now.” I was amazed that she still wasn’t looking at me. “Don’t think that I don’t love you just because I’ve been so busy lately,” I said. “When the time comes, no one is important to me. People are replaced by the whole of the world.”
She was still quiet.
“But I thought about something today. Because it was Earth Day. I’ve been so frantic lately and especially today. I think to really appreciate nature you have to relax, like the people of pre-modern times who tended the fields all day.”
“They had it hard,” she said. “They worried about basic survival every day.”
“But I think it’s better to live on the edge of death, to be poor and to live benignly amongst nature.”
“People weren’t happy in those times, I assure you,” she said.
“I’m glad we’re having this discussion. I think we were lacking this.”
“I have to go,” she said. She stood up without touching me and walked inside at the same pace that she came out and with the same sullen grace. Somewhat awed, I watched her disappear.
That night I read her dozen or more letters and closed the lid on the little box. I turned off my lamp and the solar powered lamp that she bought me for Beatmas (she was born on Christmas) automatically turned on and illuminated the picture she drew of me and her laying in the grass, hearts floating up into the sun. I walked outside and in a courtyard I was suddenly struck by the sight of bats fluttering in the trees.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
The Gates of Margo
2/2010
Someone once told me, “17, that’s when everything goes wrong.” It seems that when I started hanging out with Margo I literally drove into some other world when I was 17 and then drove out of it when I was 18. These transitions happened in events that seem to me like two gates.
1. Mount Misery
After a few months of driving a car and hanging out with Margo, often while she would run into a store for a scratch-off and a Dutch cigar, I’d sit there in my own world, skinny, pale, sleepless, with a prophetic feeling that we were within hours of death, I would stare at the same, dull, Long Island roads aligned with soulless houses and strip malls.
Margo was just over five feet tall. She had black hair with pink ends, a ring in the middle of her nose, she was pale, showed cleavage where she’d stick her money, wore colorful shoes, tight jeans, a tight hoodie zipped up halfway, thick, black, rectangular framed glasses, had long, red finger nails, had drawn on, high arched eyebrows, and would walk fast and usually talk fast and incessantly. I was a skinny boy that looked young for my age. My head was all shaved except for 2/3rds of my scalp, a big patch of hair that hung almost to my shoulder and had blonde streaks in it that were always dyed one color or another. I wore black, blue or red eyeliner, sometimes big circles drawn around one eye. I wore some colorful, striped shirts from the thrift store or black band t-shirts. I cut thumb holes into my long sleeves.
Margo would get back in the passenger’s seat and gutting the Dutch Cigar out of the slightly open door while telling me, “We have to get Lance, but I’m going to say to him that I have to be home at five, because that’s when we could get the yay from Patty and I don’t want to share it with him.” I’d reach past my coffee, water and red bull and put on the oldies station.
She got the way to move, me Cherry
(She got the way to groove me)
(She got the way to move me) Cherry baby
(She got the way to groove me) Alright
We were in my car in a parking lot before midnight, behind an elementary school. Margo’s red fingernails pointed upwards as she played a geometric puzzle on her phone. I was reading Allen Ginsberg’s Pocket Book of Poetry.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
“What are we doing?” Margo said in a complaining drone.
“I don’t mind just talking,” I said while reading.
She was quiet. Then she said, “Let’s go to Mount Misery.”
I rose from the book. “Mount Misery? I drove so much today Margo.”
“But I have to be home in an hour. I want to do something before the night is over,” she said.
“I just don’t want to drive all the way over there. It would be more climactic for me to not drive for two seconds,” I said.
“Okay. Do you have any pot at your house?” she asked.
“Well. Yes. But my mother’s going to ask me what I’m doing. I’d rather just not go into my house.”
“I don’t want to finish these lines here. I want to finish them at Mount Misery.”
“Why do you like that place so much anyway?” I asked.
“I feel good there. There’s something comforting about it,” she said.
I drove off in disbelief that I was actually embarking on that trip. On the highway I put on what I called moon glasses. They highlighted colors but made darkness darker. The lights looked like yellow stars through them and the darkness dark like space. Margo was quiet from crashing. 50 Cent was playing on the radio.
Look homie, I don’t dance. All I do is this.
It’s the same two-step wit a lil’ twist.
Listen pimpin’, I aint new to this. I’m true to this.
Pay attention boy, I teach how to do this shit.
Mount Misery was a long, narrow, windy, inclined path through some woods off the turnpike. There was little light and cars needed to drive very slowly to get through. We drove shortly in and parked at the gate for a small cemetery. After we snorted two short lines, a rowdy car of Goths stopped behind us on the road. One gothic girl got out and the jokesters went off without her. We were getting out anyway for fresh air. Margot and the girl talked and I went into the graveyard to pee. As I unzipped near a grave, I heard dashing. The trees shook in the woods and through my moon glasses I saw footprints in the bright, yellow-glowing snow.
After I returned we all went for a walk in the cemetery. “I think I saw someone run into the woods,” I said.
“No you didn’t,” said Margo.
“It’s probably that guy that tries to scare everyone,” said the girl.
“You mean that guy,” Margo said, “Who drives that beat corvette really fast through the path?”
“Yea. Weird things are more likely to happen to you hear when I’m around because I tend to put bad luck on people.”
“Really?” asked Margo. “Maybe you should walk a little bit farther away. No, I’m just kidding.”
“It’s true though,” she continued. “Terrible things happen to people when I meet them.”
“I wouldn’t even know darling,” Margo said. “Crazy things are always happening to me anyway. I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”
The car of goths was waiting at the gait. The girl kissed Margo and said goodbye. The car took off and Margo said to me, “So are you ready to do one monster line at the top of the hill and then we’ll drive home?”
I nodded.
We drove up to the top of the hill, where the path ended. Margot sorted the coke. I said, “Sorry Margo. It’s been rap all night.” I switched the station to classic rock.
Yeah, keep your eyes on the road, your hands up on the whe-el
Keep your eyes on the road, your hands up on the whe-el
Going to the road house, gonna have a re-al,
good time
After our lines we rubbed the ends of cigarettes in the coke bag, lit the cigarettes and cruised down the hill and rounded the bend. The first drag of the cigarette tasted sweet and satisfactorily poisonous.
Let it roll, baby roll
I cruised a little faster. A truck came at us. I drove around it onto some ice and, screaming, we slammed into a tree; Margot’s window shattered on both of us and my head slammed against the steering wheel. The music had stopped: I yelled, “Margo!
“Wait! I can’t find-“
“Margo, are you alright!”
“Stop yelling! I can’t find my glasses!”
There was glass in my mouth. The windshield was broken. My moon glasses and cigarette had flown somewhere.
“I found them,” she said. “Pink, there’s glass in my mouth.”
“Me too.”
“Is my face bloody?” she asked. There were cuts on her face that were only bleeding a little bit.
“You have some cuts but it’s not so bad.”
“I’m going to call the police,” I said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I can’t drive this car.”
“Shit,” she said. “I have to go bury my razor blade and the bag.” She got out of the car.
With shaky hands I dialed 911. “Hi I just crashed my car on Sweet Hollow Road.”
“Do you need an ambulance?”
“No.” While talking I saw Margo talking with people at a car that had been coming our way. At the end of the call I ran out towards them.
“These are my friends,” she said to me. “This is Pink.”
“Are you okay man?” said the driver.
“Yea man! We crashed to Roadhouse Blues, which is pretty ideal.”
“You’re fucked up Pink,” Margot said. “You’re going to be like what the fuck in a minute.”
I turned back to look at the car. The whole front was bent inwards. I went in the car to see if there was anything I needed. Margo’s friends took off
and she got in the car. “They’re going to come back to drive us home,” she said. “They just need to drop people off first.”
“Cool.”
“Did you call your mother’s boyfriend?”
“No. No, no, no.”
After a minute I said, “Margo.”
“What?”
“Just before we crashed, I had a vision of a woman in a white gown screaming in the woods.”
“Really?”
“Yea.”
“What did she look like?”
“She had black hair. She was in her forties.”
“Cool.”
The police car came, it’s red and blue lights flashing on the trees. The officer gave me a report to fill out. Margot called her grandmother while I narrated the whole story excluding the cocaine and the moon glasses.
“Hi Grandma,” she said. “Yeah. Listen. Pink and I got in an accident. We’re okay and my friends are going to drive us home.
“Just some cuts,” she said. “Yea, I think so.” She turned and asked me, “Are you okay?”
I nodded.
“Yeah, he’s okay. He’s just has this gash between his eyes.” I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the big, red bump and a dry line of blood
between my eyes.
For some reason the police had us stand outside but didn’t invite us into their car. We were cold, standing on the edge of the haunted woods. I prayed that all of the ghosts in the woods would come out and scare the police. There was a thick, 12-foot branch hanging from a nearby tree, dangling by a thread. I walked over and pushed it. It swung slightly.
The cops left when Margot’s friends came and we got in her friend’s car. “You can drop Margo off first,” I said.
“Is she closer?” the driver asked.
“I need to be home,” Margo said.
“How long have you had that car?” the driver asked.
“I’ve been borrowing it from my mother’s boyfriend.”
“Shit. Does he have another car?”
“Yes.”
At home, my mother was on the couch with the light on, the TV on and she was folding laundry into a basket. I sat on the other couch. “I crashed Bruce’s car,” I said.
“You what? You crashed Bruce’s Car? Are you okay? You could have died! Were you drinking? You could have died, Pink. You could be dead! Were
you on drugs? Who was there?”
“It was just Margo and I. We didn’t drink or smoke anything.”
“Is Margo okay? Do I have to call her grandparents?”
“She’s fine. She just has a few cuts on her face.”
“They could sue us Pink. Don’t you understand? Now I have to deal with that! You better call Bruce. Where’s the car?”
“It was towed.”
“Towed? That costs money. Why didn’t you call Bruce?”
“I just didn’t want to tell you yet.”
“You don’t respect Bruce. He does so much for you and you disrespect him. Call him right now.”
I called him. He said, “Hey buddy. Aren’t you with Margo? What’s up?”
“I’m sorry. I crashed the car.”
“Oh shit. Are you and your friend okay?”
“Yea but the car is wrecked.”
“Are you in it now?”
“No. I got a ride home.”
“So you’re with your mother?”
“Yes,” I said unintentionally dreadfully.
“Oh god. Is she flipping a shit?”
“Yes,” I said rubbing the back of my neck, looking over at my mother faulding clothes and muttering to herself.
“So it’s not possible to be driven,” he stated as a question.
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Okay. Where’d you crash?”
“Into a tree on the side of this really dark road. The path was so narrow and I went around this truck and got caught on the ice.”
“Where?”
“It’s called Sweet Hollow Road in Huntington.”
My mother said, “What were you doing in Huntington?”
Bruce continued, “Sweet Hollow Road. What were you doing there?”
“It’s just like a place to go because we were bored. It’s just like a haunted road.”
“Okay,” said my mother, irritated. “Give me the phone.” I gave her the phone and got up but she said, “Sit down. You don’t go anywhere.” Then she
sat down and said, “He’s fine. He’s just stupid. He could have died and he doesn’t have any respect or appreciation that you let him borrow the car.”
Then she said to him, “Yeah, but you know what? It’s not fare. How many kids have to fucking die because they don’t give a shit? Okay. Okay. I have
to go. You too. Bye.”
I looked at her and she looked at me. She asked me, “What is wrong with you?”
I shrugged. “I’m a terrible person. I should die.”
“No. You’re just disrespectful. God.” She fumbled trying to put a thought together and then finally said, “I don’t know anymore. You know what? Go
away. Get out of my face.”
In my room there was an Exorcist movie poster on the wall of the possessed girl and her green, scarred, cold face. I tore it off the wall, crumpled it
up and threw it into the closet. I took the lid off my stereo and opened the triple CD cartridge. I reached beneath it and pulled out a glasses case. I sat
on my bed taking a bowl out of the glasses case and a dime bag, crumpled a big weed nug in the bowl and took a drag. I sat there for a moment thinking about whether anything really happened at Mount Misery that would cause me to still feel terrorized by everything around me, or if I was just torturing myself from infantile projections. Why was it that I still felt as though I was in the woods?
The worst thing that could possibly happen has happened and now I’m still here and this life is really still happening. Do I really have to feel what all of these conditions dictate that I feel? Can I just be happy anyway even if everyone around me tells me that I’m in deep shit and am fucked forever?
What if I watch TV? Can I shake Mount Misery off me if I just sit here in the dark?
I looked at the room, already bored with the same old life that I had been living. It seemed like a good enough reason to look into another world for a little while. I turned on the TV and watched South Park, the extremely bright and colorful, two-dimensional cartoon with mocking-toned voice-overs. I ran down to the kitchen for munchies. On my jog back up the steps this female presence in my mind, some eternal consciousness that was not me but was within my awareness and was part of me suggested to me without words, happiness is always an option.
2. White Railings
Just over a year later I was nearing the end of my first year of college at some prestigious art school in Manhattan that I had already transferred my transcript from, to a public school somewhere else in the city and planned on moving in with my father partly to shorten the commute and partly to change my scenery. It was a Wednesday, the one day that I didn’t have work or school, and I was in my neighborhood driving my black Volkswagon Jetta through the wet, sunshiny day to meet a best friend of Margo’s that I had been dating since August. Jenna, my girlfriend, was a thin, Indian girl that wore tight jeans and tight red tank tops and listened to Jay-Z. She smoked long cigarettes and was mildly addicted to coke.
Earlier that morning I drove to the DMV in the rain, listening repeatedly to a Nine Inch Nails song from the early nineties. The DMV was in a town closer to Queens, in an area extremely dense, developed, industrial, beat and poured on by rain.
In this place it seems like such a shame.
Though it all looks different now,
I know it’s still the same.
Everywhere I look you’re all I see.
Just a fading fucking reminder of who I used to be.
I sometimes wondered what it might have meant that a boy from a Jewish house and a girl from a Muslim house lived on opposite sides of a town border road called Jerusalem and were dating each other. I drove down Jerusalem, over the overpass and before I made it to her school to pick her up, (she was a senior in high school) I parked on a side street to wait for her to call me. Since the sun had come out, I decided to put on The Velvet Undergound, a band from the 60s, and some of their particularly raspy songs.
(White light), white light goin’ messin’ up my mind
(White light), and don’t you know it’s gonna make me go blind
(white heat), aww white heat it tickle me down to me toes
(White light,) Ooo have mercy white light have it goodness knows
After some 15 minutes after she didn’t call me or even pick up her phone, I decided to move from that spot. I drove the opposite direction towards my old high school on the other side of town. Of course when I got there kids were pouring out of the school to get home and walk dogs, go online, watch TV, smoke a bong, change for practice, go to work, watch porn or masturbate without it but with classmates on the mind or play the drums.
Escaping the 2:30 tangle, back on the road, I had to take two long roads, 106, the main road of my early life, and at the end, Jerusalem. Down 106,
I turned up the song, Sister Ray. It was the longest Velvet Underground song. The guitar played one riff repeatedly, an electric viola squeeled, the singer droned on nonchalantly.
Doug and Sally inside
They cookin’ for the Down Pipe
Who’s staring at Miss Rayon
Who’s busy licking off her Pig Pen
Seemed down at Jerusalem there was one massive, black cloud in the sky. Now I wasn’t sure whether I was heading for Jenna or not. My cell sat neutrally in the cup holder not vibrating.
By the middle of Sister Ray I was turning on Jerusalem.
Cecil’s got his new piece
He cocks it shoots it between three and four
He aims it at the sailor
Shoots him down dead on the floor
I drove down past my street and I drove past the yard of my old elementary school and I drove to the border of 3 towns where cars were all
cramming to a slow down onto the overpass because there was a light right after it. I slowed at the slope and it occurred to me to drive left and see some friends at my old job, for they certainly showed more love for me than my girlfriend. While I contemplated whether turn left of go forwards, the black cloud either moved or broke and a shaft of light illuminated the wet, vertical, white railings of the overpass. This inspired me to make the left to see my good old friends.
Now who is that knocking
Who’s knocking at my chamber door
Now could it be the police
They come and take me for a ride-ride
When I turned a car that I didn’t see drove into the front corner of my car: the air bag exploded in my face as I pressed down on the brake and the car spun. While it was spinning, in the silence of the silenced music, I recognized the feeling of the worst possible thing that could happen is happening, that I might not even survive, and I accepted it. When it stopped I pushed down the airbag and all I could see was bright light illuminating orange dust that flew up from the airbag. The bridge of my nose hurt as if I was punched. I pushed the door open but it would only open a fifth of the way. As I climbed out, both sets of my limbs hurt, even my cribs and shoulders, I said out loud, “Oh Lord, Oh Lord.” I then hoped that I was having an epiphany.
What’s the epiphany? Is my life changing?
There was the girl that collided with me, standing in front of her car, which was half off the road on the pass. It was apparent that she was a student from the high school. “I just bought that car!” she yelled.
“You’re alive,” I said, approaching her. “You’re alive. That’s good.”
“As her complaints faded out of my attention I walked like a withered tree to the sidewalk near her car and paced slowly back and forth. A man asked me if I was okay, a tough guy in Speedo shades and a windbreaker.
“I’m cool.”
Then he went to her. I called my mother.
“Yes?” she asked.
“I crashed at the intersection of Jerusalem and Loring. Car’s dead. I’m fine. A girl is mad.”
“Stay right there.”
As I waited I looked at my ruined car and laughed. Two young teenagers on bikes on the other sidewalk told me to stop laughing and past over the top of the hill.
An ambulance and my mother came. My mother just asked if I was hurt and if I was drinking. And, “Where’s Jenna?”
“I don’t know.”
She sighed in a disgusted way and we went in the ambulance by invitation. We sat on boxes while a paramedic interviewed me. I took a yellow lollypop from my pocket and unwrapped it.
“Last name?”
“Noche.” I put the lollipop in my mouth.
“First name?”
“Pink.”
My mother was filling out a form.
“Any pain?” the paramedic asked.
“My ribs hurt, my leg, my arm.”
“Son. Please take that lollipop out of your mouth. It’s pretty disrespectful. This is a serious situation.”
I looked at him madly. My mother said, “Just take it out Pink.” I slow took it out. My mother said, “I don’t think this is necessary. I can take him to our doctor.”
“He could have a concussion mam.”
“Did you hit your head Pink?”
“The airbag hit me.”
“Do you feel dizzy?”
“No.”
“Yea. It will be cheaper if we go to our doctor. It’s fine.”
“Are you sure? Pink, speak up if you feel that your bones hurt severely.”
“I’m cool,” I shrugged and put the lollipop back in my mouth.
The Velvet Underground CD was stuck in the car stereo forever but I grabbed a roach joint from the car and got in my mother’s jeep. As we drove onto the road I spotted Jenna with some friend of her. “Can you pull over?,” I said, “It’s Jenna.” My mother pulled over a bit and Jenna came to my window.
“Hey,” she said, smiling.
“Hi.”
“Was that your crash up there?”
“Yea.”
“That looked bad. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. Going to the doctor.”
“Did anyone else get hit?”
“Some girl. She’s okay.”
“Man. I was going to call you.”
“Whatever Jenna,” I said.
“I was just going to go to Erica’s first.”
My mother said, “Come on Pink.”
“I’ve got to go,” I said.
“I’ll call you later.”
I nodded and put my window up as we took off.
My mother said, “That girl is selfish. She only cares about herself.” For an instant I almost defended Jenna. “Lose that girl, Pink. Just focus on school
and don’t drive for a while. Take a cab to the train. There’s only a few weeks left.”
We drove in silence. Then she said, “Where were you going?”
“I was supposed to pick up Jenna an hour ago but she was a no-show so I was going to go to see my friends at the store instead.”
“I don’t even want to hear about that Jenna anymore. God forbid you should have a concussion. Hopefully we don’t get sued.”
There were two quiet magazine readers in the carpeted lobby. My mother leaned against the desk, keys in hand. “Hi. My son just had a car accident. He might have fractured some bones.”
I sat on the X-Ray table, my mother in the chair. The doctor was outside. My mother was in the dim. We were quiet. I looked ahead of the few
remaining weeks of school left without a car. I wondered how I was supposed to meet with Margo. I looked at how I was moving far away in a few months. It suddenly became clear that even if I wasn’t moving something was naturally steering me away from Margo anyway. I wanted to fight this thing, which seemed to be divinity. I wondered how I could fight it. It was going to win. I began to cry.
“What is it? What’s wrong? Don’t worry about the car,” she said. “Is it the car? Hey,” she barked. “At least you survived.”
“I know. That’s what I said to that girl,” I wiped the tears from my cheeks. Tears went into my mouth.
Then after a moment I cried harder and covered my face.
“Are you okay Pink? Is it that selfish girl? Tell me. Look at me,” she continued. “Is school bothering you? Pink! Look at me…
“It’s okay,” she said. “Let it out. Let it out. Tell me when you’re ready.”
“It’s,” I muttered. “It’s because…”
“What?”
“Margo.” I looked at the floor. “I can’t be friends with Margo anymore.”
Someone once told me, “17, that’s when everything goes wrong.” It seems that when I started hanging out with Margo I literally drove into some other world when I was 17 and then drove out of it when I was 18. These transitions happened in events that seem to me like two gates.
1. Mount Misery
After a few months of driving a car and hanging out with Margo, often while she would run into a store for a scratch-off and a Dutch cigar, I’d sit there in my own world, skinny, pale, sleepless, with a prophetic feeling that we were within hours of death, I would stare at the same, dull, Long Island roads aligned with soulless houses and strip malls.
Margo was just over five feet tall. She had black hair with pink ends, a ring in the middle of her nose, she was pale, showed cleavage where she’d stick her money, wore colorful shoes, tight jeans, a tight hoodie zipped up halfway, thick, black, rectangular framed glasses, had long, red finger nails, had drawn on, high arched eyebrows, and would walk fast and usually talk fast and incessantly. I was a skinny boy that looked young for my age. My head was all shaved except for 2/3rds of my scalp, a big patch of hair that hung almost to my shoulder and had blonde streaks in it that were always dyed one color or another. I wore black, blue or red eyeliner, sometimes big circles drawn around one eye. I wore some colorful, striped shirts from the thrift store or black band t-shirts. I cut thumb holes into my long sleeves.
Margo would get back in the passenger’s seat and gutting the Dutch Cigar out of the slightly open door while telling me, “We have to get Lance, but I’m going to say to him that I have to be home at five, because that’s when we could get the yay from Patty and I don’t want to share it with him.” I’d reach past my coffee, water and red bull and put on the oldies station.
She got the way to move, me Cherry
(She got the way to groove me)
(She got the way to move me) Cherry baby
(She got the way to groove me) Alright
We were in my car in a parking lot before midnight, behind an elementary school. Margo’s red fingernails pointed upwards as she played a geometric puzzle on her phone. I was reading Allen Ginsberg’s Pocket Book of Poetry.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
“What are we doing?” Margo said in a complaining drone.
“I don’t mind just talking,” I said while reading.
She was quiet. Then she said, “Let’s go to Mount Misery.”
I rose from the book. “Mount Misery? I drove so much today Margo.”
“But I have to be home in an hour. I want to do something before the night is over,” she said.
“I just don’t want to drive all the way over there. It would be more climactic for me to not drive for two seconds,” I said.
“Okay. Do you have any pot at your house?” she asked.
“Well. Yes. But my mother’s going to ask me what I’m doing. I’d rather just not go into my house.”
“I don’t want to finish these lines here. I want to finish them at Mount Misery.”
“Why do you like that place so much anyway?” I asked.
“I feel good there. There’s something comforting about it,” she said.
I drove off in disbelief that I was actually embarking on that trip. On the highway I put on what I called moon glasses. They highlighted colors but made darkness darker. The lights looked like yellow stars through them and the darkness dark like space. Margo was quiet from crashing. 50 Cent was playing on the radio.
Look homie, I don’t dance. All I do is this.
It’s the same two-step wit a lil’ twist.
Listen pimpin’, I aint new to this. I’m true to this.
Pay attention boy, I teach how to do this shit.
Mount Misery was a long, narrow, windy, inclined path through some woods off the turnpike. There was little light and cars needed to drive very slowly to get through. We drove shortly in and parked at the gate for a small cemetery. After we snorted two short lines, a rowdy car of Goths stopped behind us on the road. One gothic girl got out and the jokesters went off without her. We were getting out anyway for fresh air. Margot and the girl talked and I went into the graveyard to pee. As I unzipped near a grave, I heard dashing. The trees shook in the woods and through my moon glasses I saw footprints in the bright, yellow-glowing snow.
After I returned we all went for a walk in the cemetery. “I think I saw someone run into the woods,” I said.
“No you didn’t,” said Margo.
“It’s probably that guy that tries to scare everyone,” said the girl.
“You mean that guy,” Margo said, “Who drives that beat corvette really fast through the path?”
“Yea. Weird things are more likely to happen to you hear when I’m around because I tend to put bad luck on people.”
“Really?” asked Margo. “Maybe you should walk a little bit farther away. No, I’m just kidding.”
“It’s true though,” she continued. “Terrible things happen to people when I meet them.”
“I wouldn’t even know darling,” Margo said. “Crazy things are always happening to me anyway. I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”
The car of goths was waiting at the gait. The girl kissed Margo and said goodbye. The car took off and Margo said to me, “So are you ready to do one monster line at the top of the hill and then we’ll drive home?”
I nodded.
We drove up to the top of the hill, where the path ended. Margot sorted the coke. I said, “Sorry Margo. It’s been rap all night.” I switched the station to classic rock.
Yeah, keep your eyes on the road, your hands up on the whe-el
Keep your eyes on the road, your hands up on the whe-el
Going to the road house, gonna have a re-al,
good time
After our lines we rubbed the ends of cigarettes in the coke bag, lit the cigarettes and cruised down the hill and rounded the bend. The first drag of the cigarette tasted sweet and satisfactorily poisonous.
Let it roll, baby roll
I cruised a little faster. A truck came at us. I drove around it onto some ice and, screaming, we slammed into a tree; Margot’s window shattered on both of us and my head slammed against the steering wheel. The music had stopped: I yelled, “Margo!
“Wait! I can’t find-“
“Margo, are you alright!”
“Stop yelling! I can’t find my glasses!”
There was glass in my mouth. The windshield was broken. My moon glasses and cigarette had flown somewhere.
“I found them,” she said. “Pink, there’s glass in my mouth.”
“Me too.”
“Is my face bloody?” she asked. There were cuts on her face that were only bleeding a little bit.
“You have some cuts but it’s not so bad.”
“I’m going to call the police,” I said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I can’t drive this car.”
“Shit,” she said. “I have to go bury my razor blade and the bag.” She got out of the car.
With shaky hands I dialed 911. “Hi I just crashed my car on Sweet Hollow Road.”
“Do you need an ambulance?”
“No.” While talking I saw Margo talking with people at a car that had been coming our way. At the end of the call I ran out towards them.
“These are my friends,” she said to me. “This is Pink.”
“Are you okay man?” said the driver.
“Yea man! We crashed to Roadhouse Blues, which is pretty ideal.”
“You’re fucked up Pink,” Margot said. “You’re going to be like what the fuck in a minute.”
I turned back to look at the car. The whole front was bent inwards. I went in the car to see if there was anything I needed. Margo’s friends took off
and she got in the car. “They’re going to come back to drive us home,” she said. “They just need to drop people off first.”
“Cool.”
“Did you call your mother’s boyfriend?”
“No. No, no, no.”
After a minute I said, “Margo.”
“What?”
“Just before we crashed, I had a vision of a woman in a white gown screaming in the woods.”
“Really?”
“Yea.”
“What did she look like?”
“She had black hair. She was in her forties.”
“Cool.”
The police car came, it’s red and blue lights flashing on the trees. The officer gave me a report to fill out. Margot called her grandmother while I narrated the whole story excluding the cocaine and the moon glasses.
“Hi Grandma,” she said. “Yeah. Listen. Pink and I got in an accident. We’re okay and my friends are going to drive us home.
“Just some cuts,” she said. “Yea, I think so.” She turned and asked me, “Are you okay?”
I nodded.
“Yeah, he’s okay. He’s just has this gash between his eyes.” I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the big, red bump and a dry line of blood
between my eyes.
For some reason the police had us stand outside but didn’t invite us into their car. We were cold, standing on the edge of the haunted woods. I prayed that all of the ghosts in the woods would come out and scare the police. There was a thick, 12-foot branch hanging from a nearby tree, dangling by a thread. I walked over and pushed it. It swung slightly.
The cops left when Margot’s friends came and we got in her friend’s car. “You can drop Margo off first,” I said.
“Is she closer?” the driver asked.
“I need to be home,” Margo said.
“How long have you had that car?” the driver asked.
“I’ve been borrowing it from my mother’s boyfriend.”
“Shit. Does he have another car?”
“Yes.”
At home, my mother was on the couch with the light on, the TV on and she was folding laundry into a basket. I sat on the other couch. “I crashed Bruce’s car,” I said.
“You what? You crashed Bruce’s Car? Are you okay? You could have died! Were you drinking? You could have died, Pink. You could be dead! Were
you on drugs? Who was there?”
“It was just Margo and I. We didn’t drink or smoke anything.”
“Is Margo okay? Do I have to call her grandparents?”
“She’s fine. She just has a few cuts on her face.”
“They could sue us Pink. Don’t you understand? Now I have to deal with that! You better call Bruce. Where’s the car?”
“It was towed.”
“Towed? That costs money. Why didn’t you call Bruce?”
“I just didn’t want to tell you yet.”
“You don’t respect Bruce. He does so much for you and you disrespect him. Call him right now.”
I called him. He said, “Hey buddy. Aren’t you with Margo? What’s up?”
“I’m sorry. I crashed the car.”
“Oh shit. Are you and your friend okay?”
“Yea but the car is wrecked.”
“Are you in it now?”
“No. I got a ride home.”
“So you’re with your mother?”
“Yes,” I said unintentionally dreadfully.
“Oh god. Is she flipping a shit?”
“Yes,” I said rubbing the back of my neck, looking over at my mother faulding clothes and muttering to herself.
“So it’s not possible to be driven,” he stated as a question.
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Okay. Where’d you crash?”
“Into a tree on the side of this really dark road. The path was so narrow and I went around this truck and got caught on the ice.”
“Where?”
“It’s called Sweet Hollow Road in Huntington.”
My mother said, “What were you doing in Huntington?”
Bruce continued, “Sweet Hollow Road. What were you doing there?”
“It’s just like a place to go because we were bored. It’s just like a haunted road.”
“Okay,” said my mother, irritated. “Give me the phone.” I gave her the phone and got up but she said, “Sit down. You don’t go anywhere.” Then she
sat down and said, “He’s fine. He’s just stupid. He could have died and he doesn’t have any respect or appreciation that you let him borrow the car.”
Then she said to him, “Yeah, but you know what? It’s not fare. How many kids have to fucking die because they don’t give a shit? Okay. Okay. I have
to go. You too. Bye.”
I looked at her and she looked at me. She asked me, “What is wrong with you?”
I shrugged. “I’m a terrible person. I should die.”
“No. You’re just disrespectful. God.” She fumbled trying to put a thought together and then finally said, “I don’t know anymore. You know what? Go
away. Get out of my face.”
In my room there was an Exorcist movie poster on the wall of the possessed girl and her green, scarred, cold face. I tore it off the wall, crumpled it
up and threw it into the closet. I took the lid off my stereo and opened the triple CD cartridge. I reached beneath it and pulled out a glasses case. I sat
on my bed taking a bowl out of the glasses case and a dime bag, crumpled a big weed nug in the bowl and took a drag. I sat there for a moment thinking about whether anything really happened at Mount Misery that would cause me to still feel terrorized by everything around me, or if I was just torturing myself from infantile projections. Why was it that I still felt as though I was in the woods?
The worst thing that could possibly happen has happened and now I’m still here and this life is really still happening. Do I really have to feel what all of these conditions dictate that I feel? Can I just be happy anyway even if everyone around me tells me that I’m in deep shit and am fucked forever?
What if I watch TV? Can I shake Mount Misery off me if I just sit here in the dark?
I looked at the room, already bored with the same old life that I had been living. It seemed like a good enough reason to look into another world for a little while. I turned on the TV and watched South Park, the extremely bright and colorful, two-dimensional cartoon with mocking-toned voice-overs. I ran down to the kitchen for munchies. On my jog back up the steps this female presence in my mind, some eternal consciousness that was not me but was within my awareness and was part of me suggested to me without words, happiness is always an option.
2. White Railings
Just over a year later I was nearing the end of my first year of college at some prestigious art school in Manhattan that I had already transferred my transcript from, to a public school somewhere else in the city and planned on moving in with my father partly to shorten the commute and partly to change my scenery. It was a Wednesday, the one day that I didn’t have work or school, and I was in my neighborhood driving my black Volkswagon Jetta through the wet, sunshiny day to meet a best friend of Margo’s that I had been dating since August. Jenna, my girlfriend, was a thin, Indian girl that wore tight jeans and tight red tank tops and listened to Jay-Z. She smoked long cigarettes and was mildly addicted to coke.
Earlier that morning I drove to the DMV in the rain, listening repeatedly to a Nine Inch Nails song from the early nineties. The DMV was in a town closer to Queens, in an area extremely dense, developed, industrial, beat and poured on by rain.
In this place it seems like such a shame.
Though it all looks different now,
I know it’s still the same.
Everywhere I look you’re all I see.
Just a fading fucking reminder of who I used to be.
I sometimes wondered what it might have meant that a boy from a Jewish house and a girl from a Muslim house lived on opposite sides of a town border road called Jerusalem and were dating each other. I drove down Jerusalem, over the overpass and before I made it to her school to pick her up, (she was a senior in high school) I parked on a side street to wait for her to call me. Since the sun had come out, I decided to put on The Velvet Undergound, a band from the 60s, and some of their particularly raspy songs.
(White light), white light goin’ messin’ up my mind
(White light), and don’t you know it’s gonna make me go blind
(white heat), aww white heat it tickle me down to me toes
(White light,) Ooo have mercy white light have it goodness knows
After some 15 minutes after she didn’t call me or even pick up her phone, I decided to move from that spot. I drove the opposite direction towards my old high school on the other side of town. Of course when I got there kids were pouring out of the school to get home and walk dogs, go online, watch TV, smoke a bong, change for practice, go to work, watch porn or masturbate without it but with classmates on the mind or play the drums.
Escaping the 2:30 tangle, back on the road, I had to take two long roads, 106, the main road of my early life, and at the end, Jerusalem. Down 106,
I turned up the song, Sister Ray. It was the longest Velvet Underground song. The guitar played one riff repeatedly, an electric viola squeeled, the singer droned on nonchalantly.
Doug and Sally inside
They cookin’ for the Down Pipe
Who’s staring at Miss Rayon
Who’s busy licking off her Pig Pen
Seemed down at Jerusalem there was one massive, black cloud in the sky. Now I wasn’t sure whether I was heading for Jenna or not. My cell sat neutrally in the cup holder not vibrating.
By the middle of Sister Ray I was turning on Jerusalem.
Cecil’s got his new piece
He cocks it shoots it between three and four
He aims it at the sailor
Shoots him down dead on the floor
I drove down past my street and I drove past the yard of my old elementary school and I drove to the border of 3 towns where cars were all
cramming to a slow down onto the overpass because there was a light right after it. I slowed at the slope and it occurred to me to drive left and see some friends at my old job, for they certainly showed more love for me than my girlfriend. While I contemplated whether turn left of go forwards, the black cloud either moved or broke and a shaft of light illuminated the wet, vertical, white railings of the overpass. This inspired me to make the left to see my good old friends.
Now who is that knocking
Who’s knocking at my chamber door
Now could it be the police
They come and take me for a ride-ride
When I turned a car that I didn’t see drove into the front corner of my car: the air bag exploded in my face as I pressed down on the brake and the car spun. While it was spinning, in the silence of the silenced music, I recognized the feeling of the worst possible thing that could happen is happening, that I might not even survive, and I accepted it. When it stopped I pushed down the airbag and all I could see was bright light illuminating orange dust that flew up from the airbag. The bridge of my nose hurt as if I was punched. I pushed the door open but it would only open a fifth of the way. As I climbed out, both sets of my limbs hurt, even my cribs and shoulders, I said out loud, “Oh Lord, Oh Lord.” I then hoped that I was having an epiphany.
What’s the epiphany? Is my life changing?
There was the girl that collided with me, standing in front of her car, which was half off the road on the pass. It was apparent that she was a student from the high school. “I just bought that car!” she yelled.
“You’re alive,” I said, approaching her. “You’re alive. That’s good.”
“As her complaints faded out of my attention I walked like a withered tree to the sidewalk near her car and paced slowly back and forth. A man asked me if I was okay, a tough guy in Speedo shades and a windbreaker.
“I’m cool.”
Then he went to her. I called my mother.
“Yes?” she asked.
“I crashed at the intersection of Jerusalem and Loring. Car’s dead. I’m fine. A girl is mad.”
“Stay right there.”
As I waited I looked at my ruined car and laughed. Two young teenagers on bikes on the other sidewalk told me to stop laughing and past over the top of the hill.
An ambulance and my mother came. My mother just asked if I was hurt and if I was drinking. And, “Where’s Jenna?”
“I don’t know.”
She sighed in a disgusted way and we went in the ambulance by invitation. We sat on boxes while a paramedic interviewed me. I took a yellow lollypop from my pocket and unwrapped it.
“Last name?”
“Noche.” I put the lollipop in my mouth.
“First name?”
“Pink.”
My mother was filling out a form.
“Any pain?” the paramedic asked.
“My ribs hurt, my leg, my arm.”
“Son. Please take that lollipop out of your mouth. It’s pretty disrespectful. This is a serious situation.”
I looked at him madly. My mother said, “Just take it out Pink.” I slow took it out. My mother said, “I don’t think this is necessary. I can take him to our doctor.”
“He could have a concussion mam.”
“Did you hit your head Pink?”
“The airbag hit me.”
“Do you feel dizzy?”
“No.”
“Yea. It will be cheaper if we go to our doctor. It’s fine.”
“Are you sure? Pink, speak up if you feel that your bones hurt severely.”
“I’m cool,” I shrugged and put the lollipop back in my mouth.
The Velvet Underground CD was stuck in the car stereo forever but I grabbed a roach joint from the car and got in my mother’s jeep. As we drove onto the road I spotted Jenna with some friend of her. “Can you pull over?,” I said, “It’s Jenna.” My mother pulled over a bit and Jenna came to my window.
“Hey,” she said, smiling.
“Hi.”
“Was that your crash up there?”
“Yea.”
“That looked bad. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. Going to the doctor.”
“Did anyone else get hit?”
“Some girl. She’s okay.”
“Man. I was going to call you.”
“Whatever Jenna,” I said.
“I was just going to go to Erica’s first.”
My mother said, “Come on Pink.”
“I’ve got to go,” I said.
“I’ll call you later.”
I nodded and put my window up as we took off.
My mother said, “That girl is selfish. She only cares about herself.” For an instant I almost defended Jenna. “Lose that girl, Pink. Just focus on school
and don’t drive for a while. Take a cab to the train. There’s only a few weeks left.”
We drove in silence. Then she said, “Where were you going?”
“I was supposed to pick up Jenna an hour ago but she was a no-show so I was going to go to see my friends at the store instead.”
“I don’t even want to hear about that Jenna anymore. God forbid you should have a concussion. Hopefully we don’t get sued.”
There were two quiet magazine readers in the carpeted lobby. My mother leaned against the desk, keys in hand. “Hi. My son just had a car accident. He might have fractured some bones.”
I sat on the X-Ray table, my mother in the chair. The doctor was outside. My mother was in the dim. We were quiet. I looked ahead of the few
remaining weeks of school left without a car. I wondered how I was supposed to meet with Margo. I looked at how I was moving far away in a few months. It suddenly became clear that even if I wasn’t moving something was naturally steering me away from Margo anyway. I wanted to fight this thing, which seemed to be divinity. I wondered how I could fight it. It was going to win. I began to cry.
“What is it? What’s wrong? Don’t worry about the car,” she said. “Is it the car? Hey,” she barked. “At least you survived.”
“I know. That’s what I said to that girl,” I wiped the tears from my cheeks. Tears went into my mouth.
Then after a moment I cried harder and covered my face.
“Are you okay Pink? Is it that selfish girl? Tell me. Look at me,” she continued. “Is school bothering you? Pink! Look at me…
“It’s okay,” she said. “Let it out. Let it out. Tell me when you’re ready.”
“It’s,” I muttered. “It’s because…”
“What?”
“Margo.” I looked at the floor. “I can’t be friends with Margo anymore.”
Monday, February 8, 2010
Transformed
I was 16 I think. It was summer. There were some people talking to my mother in the kitchen. I looked through her album collection because I'd already enjoyed her Janis Joplin and The Turtles CDs. I also knew her boyfriend's collection too well and exhausted his Kinks, Hendrix, Violent Femmes, Pink Floyd and other CDs. For the first time I saw the spine labeled, Lou Reed: Transformer.
The Velvet Underground was my favorite band then. I was high as much as I could afford to be to the point of being high in front of my mother and forgetting I was high. Class though was one place I couldn't manage but the bus stop, my off-periods, and before gym and art classes were lighting up times, with the scratchy, mellow Velvet Underground playing in my head. They were just like any band except their long, one verse songs were more simple than the Kinks and felt shrouded in the mist of sleepiness and other worldliness, sad people found in the holy ghetto blocks of 1960s New York City and I blazed in my shrouded teenage suburbs in their soundtrack.
This was new. I knew the band broke up in 71 or other. What came later, I vaguely knew the that the singer, Lou Reed wrote Take a Walk on The Wild Side, which was all I knew. On the cover his face was death white against a black background. His eyes were thickly rounded in blackness, more death. He had a big round acoustic half-in the photo. It said Lou Reed on a yellow melting top border, Transformer. "What does that mean?" I thought. I snuck it past the kitchen and went to my room upstairs. I first lifted the cover off my stereo, opened out the 3 CD cartridge, reached in half to elbow length and took my eyeglass case from the bottom. Then I put the CD in & the volume to 12, a low level, not wanting my mother to hear in case it was embarrassing. Some ordinary electric guitar riff began and it was like regular old rock n roll, between Kinks and the Stones so I put it to 15, the case back on the stereo, took the bowl from the glasses case and filled it with pot. I put it to 16 and blew smoke out the back window. As it went on I felt it was much happier than Velvet Underground, much more alive and particularly flamboyant. It became much to let my mother know so I lowered it to 13 and then 12 but sat near the stereo and took a hit. I looked at the back of the album cover. There were two pictures next to the song list, a woman or man, maybe a transvestite emerging from dark curtains, making a kissing face. The other was a man in a tight t-shirt, muscles, a cop hat or other and very tight jeans. There was a huge, long bulge half way to his knee. "Is that supposed to be obvious?" I wondered. Then I felt very high. "Could mom hear the music?" There was a broadway element to the music. There was a very gay element. It was happy, proud, outlandish, very 70s and still very rock n roll. I remember half way through thinking that liking the music was a decision. Either be embarrassed by it and turn it off or love it forever and turn it up. So I turned the extravaganza up and felt very good. Later I'd tell my mother I took it and I never gave it back, ever.
The Velvet Underground was my favorite band then. I was high as much as I could afford to be to the point of being high in front of my mother and forgetting I was high. Class though was one place I couldn't manage but the bus stop, my off-periods, and before gym and art classes were lighting up times, with the scratchy, mellow Velvet Underground playing in my head. They were just like any band except their long, one verse songs were more simple than the Kinks and felt shrouded in the mist of sleepiness and other worldliness, sad people found in the holy ghetto blocks of 1960s New York City and I blazed in my shrouded teenage suburbs in their soundtrack.
This was new. I knew the band broke up in 71 or other. What came later, I vaguely knew the that the singer, Lou Reed wrote Take a Walk on The Wild Side, which was all I knew. On the cover his face was death white against a black background. His eyes were thickly rounded in blackness, more death. He had a big round acoustic half-in the photo. It said Lou Reed on a yellow melting top border, Transformer. "What does that mean?" I thought. I snuck it past the kitchen and went to my room upstairs. I first lifted the cover off my stereo, opened out the 3 CD cartridge, reached in half to elbow length and took my eyeglass case from the bottom. Then I put the CD in & the volume to 12, a low level, not wanting my mother to hear in case it was embarrassing. Some ordinary electric guitar riff began and it was like regular old rock n roll, between Kinks and the Stones so I put it to 15, the case back on the stereo, took the bowl from the glasses case and filled it with pot. I put it to 16 and blew smoke out the back window. As it went on I felt it was much happier than Velvet Underground, much more alive and particularly flamboyant. It became much to let my mother know so I lowered it to 13 and then 12 but sat near the stereo and took a hit. I looked at the back of the album cover. There were two pictures next to the song list, a woman or man, maybe a transvestite emerging from dark curtains, making a kissing face. The other was a man in a tight t-shirt, muscles, a cop hat or other and very tight jeans. There was a huge, long bulge half way to his knee. "Is that supposed to be obvious?" I wondered. Then I felt very high. "Could mom hear the music?" There was a broadway element to the music. There was a very gay element. It was happy, proud, outlandish, very 70s and still very rock n roll. I remember half way through thinking that liking the music was a decision. Either be embarrassed by it and turn it off or love it forever and turn it up. So I turned the extravaganza up and felt very good. Later I'd tell my mother I took it and I never gave it back, ever.
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