Drink enough, and even macalester people that I never knew are tolerable.
There was an old guy there, class of ‘58. I had a good talk with him about race and the american dream. It warmed my heart to know that there are old people who can manage to hold on to their liberal beliefs.
With any luck, this job will end by next week. I need to rededicate myself to the program. No more drinking, no more job.
Fat chance.
The top photo was taken from the Time Warner Center, where the likes of me cannot afford the food court. The bottom photo was taken on Sunday at the Kissena Velodrome, where, before it was all gussied up, we used to hit rocks with my bat, give fried chicken to coons, and play with firecrackers and related contraband.
***
Tomorrow I go back to work. I cannot believe how much I am already dreading it.
I don’t have a clean pair of work pants. Or a clean work shirt. I don’t really care any more.
After work tomorrow I am going to an NYC Macalester meetup. It’s at a bar that I’ve been to previously–a place for 29 year-olds who want to listen to a DJ spin the obvious choices. I’m looking forward to making a complete ass of myself.
“LOOOOOVVE LOVE WILL TEAR US APAAART AAAGAIN”
Perhaps Manos McFate has a sense of humor. Last night, I got an offer from my boss for a short job next week. This morning, my father asked me to pick him up in the city after work so he can carry some heavy stuff home from work. An hour later, my boss calls and says I can start working on Thursday. Seeing as how I’m down to my last two hundred dollars, I jumped at the offer.
I was enjoying lounging around today, knowing that I’ll have some money coming in in the near future. Actually looking forward to work.
But then I drove my dad home, on the BQE/LIE, during rush hour. As soon as I hit the bumper-to-bumper traffic, I went a little nuts–cursing every single infraction of the rules, leaning on the horn, squirting around slowpokes. I think I may have freaked my dad out a little bit.
Someday I’ll be a real boy and have a job where I can take the train.
I’m at a bar and grill close to Stuy. I may still be in high school. I have got some candy hearts in my pocket that are made out of cocaine.
I sit down with a bunch of unlikely Asians from high school, and we all order food. Then all of my companions get up and go “upstairs.” I follow them, but I’m stopped at the staircase.
“What’s up there?” I ask the bouncer.
“It’s a Korean Karaoke place.”
“Let me up. My friends are up there.”
“You’re not Korean.”
“Fine, I like it better down here anyway,” I lie.
“We’re taking over the downstairs too,” he says.
“Fuck you, asshole. Like the world needs another Korean Karaoke joint.” Then I deck him, but no one seems to care.
He’s not really much of a bouncer. In fact, he was just another person from high school. A bit taller than I am, but very skinny. I’ve lost all interest in going upstairs. I just want to do my candy hearts.
My English teacher walks in, and she asks me what I’m doing here. I buy drinks for both of us, and I excuse myself to find a place to convert the candy hearts to powder form. I’m convinced that if I gave my teacher the converted candy hearts, I would get to go home with her. I check the bathroom, but there are bald men in there–three identical bald men in orange baseball shirts using the urinals and the one stall.
I go back to the table where I had been sitting, but I get completely freaked out that someone will see me crushing the candy hearts and get suspicious. I lay one of the hearts out, carefully, after looking around warily. As soon as I put the spoon to the heart, one of the bald men sits next to me and starts a conversation. Then I look around, and I’m blocked into this booth by white acquaintances from college. They ask me about the Yankees, and some other New York things, and all I can do is nod politely and hope that they go away soon. I’m watching the bar, and my English teacher finishes her drink, and heads upstairs.
Now the people I’m sitting with have finished the food that arrived when I wasn’t looking, and they’re ready to leave. The bus boy comes around and takes away all the utensils. My acquaintances, and the bald guy say good-bye, and all I’m left with are candy hearts and the busboy asking me to leave so that they could close.
For the longest time, I thought Duke Ellington was the man who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.
I am in some kind of advanced writing/learning environment. There are maybe another 10 people with me, mostly white, all around my age.
And then I am, at the same time, a character in a story and a reader of the story. I really wish the title and author had stuck with me, but the story is about this night club.
It’s got greenish lighting, a main room with a bar and the dance floor, a section in the back with a narrow hallway with doors that lead to private rooms, and a lounge area.
I am maybe the main character, or not, but my function was to just sit there drunk and watch all of the people who pair off. I think the premise of the story was that there is this club, and every night, or every weekend, the same forty or so people go there, and everybody has free run of the place, to go into a private room with someone, etc.
Some precise sequence of events/pairings will lead to either me finding out the secret of the club, me being paired with my true love, so I observe with great interest.
Everyone at the club is distinctive looking. There was a very tall woman with a black evening gown and a cigarette holder, her companion was a short Asian girl with short hair, wearing a man’s suit. There was a man in 1930s attire. Now that I think about it, most of these people had old-fashioned clothing, and half were Asian.
Some other stuff happens, possibly intrigue involving foul play. But at no point did I leave the sofa in the lounge where I was drooling on myself.
And then I am myself again, in a classroom, discussing the story with the other writers. We’re sitting in a circle, and we have to do an exercise where a person at a time has to stand up once, go around the circle, serve tea and biscuits and have something to say about the story to every one. I am dreading the time when the kid who is serving tea comes up to me, because I know he’ll mention something about my being Asian. And when he comes up to me, he makes a slight joke that borders on being offensive, and then says some stupid things that I can’t remember. I just smile and let it go. But then the white guy next to me (horn-rimmed glasses, balding, turtleneck sweater), gets offended on my behalf and yells at the poor kid.
CBS News | Flying Cars Ready To Take Off | April 17, 2005 | 23:34:36
Now I’m just waiting for the ray-gun and the soylent green.
with fever.
I have fallen ill.
I was going to write, “I am sick,” but I do like the phrase “fallen ill.”
Mr. XS asked, “You never do anything or see anyone, how do you get sick?”
It may have been when I drove a sick friend to Costco, or after I drove Mr. Autonoetic to Fairway, or after that, when I was smoking and drinking a liter of beer outside Zum Schneider, long after the evening grew too cold for such an activity.
Here are some links:
Curbed: ‘I Love You’ Fans Strike Back. Keep clicking the links at the bottom for more examples of the Love Graffiti. I only found this after reading an article on Revs, growing curious about his subway diaries (ctrl-F “revs”), and figuring out that I should have been googling “‘I love you’ graffiti” instead of “Love Graffiti.”
The Times’ piece is written by Randy Kennedy, whose “Tunnel Vision” column I enjoyed throughout college. For me, that Tuesday morning dose of subway imagery made New York just a little closer to Minnesota. The column ended sometime in my senior year, I think, but many of them have been collected in book form.
And now I’m going to take some more Tylenol PM and hibernate. When I wake up, there had better be a flying car in every garage, a ray-gun in every boy’s hand, and a nice steaming chunk of soylent green in every pot.
Was hoping to see more of the love graffiti, but no luck tonight.
in the afternoon, walking past a church, cherry blossoms in bloom, saw out of corner of my eye a flash of pink. pink and green. like e****a. she had a pink coat and a green bag.
it amazed me how the combination of those two colors seen for the briefest moment in the periphery can bring back so quickly memories of this girl from ages ago. all of the nonsense that went on, watching ducks in the courtyard as she passed, thinking of nothing better to say than the fact of duck-rape, the high pitched squealing on my part in the union, the fruitless following…
it occurred to me that there is just one girl, one soul that jumps from body to body, different emanations like the buddha of the same spirit. it is a neverending wheel of flesh and death.
but then tomorrow is a new day, possibly untainted by alcohol. spring is baseball and the hope of going home. the winter of discontent is behind me.
