cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 14th Street Station 1. The muted airport television screen showed the space shuttle on its pad. Some sort of crane carried a cap off of the top of it and they began a countdown of numbers on the screen. I put my book down on the table with a paper napkin to hold the place, sipped my beer and waited for the space shuttle Discovery to launch into space for the last time. _________________________ 2. The old man's tenor sax bounced off the tiled walls of the 14th street station like heaven's own reverb. It was some old Sonny Rollins number. I couldn't remember the name of it. A dozen or so people stood around the subway platform pretending not to listen. I leaned back against a concrete column and crouched down low on my heels. A cool, humid breeze blew steady out of the tunnel into my face. He wrapped up the Sonny Rollins thing and smiled at me before stretching his wrinkled, black fingers and launching into 'Desafinado.' The old man had the Stan Getz tone but his hands couldn't keep up with what his brain was singing. Maybe my sister was still awake. Maybe she'd want to get a drink at the Irish pub downstairs from her apartment. I felt badly about it being 1:30 am the night I'd shown up in the city to stay with her and I hadn't talked to her yet. I was a little bit tight but not too tight. I'd walked off most of the beer and the cognac cocktail I'd had at the speakeasy Erin took me around to. I realized that I was whistling Charlie Byrd's missing guitar accompaniment from Desafinado. On the one hand, I figured I looked like a right drunken idiot whistling along in the subway at 1:30 in the morning. On the other hand, I was pissed off at the sax player for missing the changes and tripping me up by adding in bars that didn't belong. His timing was off and he had the beat going all over the place. That's what happens when you play alone in the subway for too long. Your rhythm starts wandering all over the place and you don't notice because nobody else has to keep up with you. No matter how good your tone is. New York City, to me, has always been a place of being alone. The first time I ever went there I was on the run during my freshman year of college. A friend had found out about something he shouldn't have known about, and then I knew about it, too. So we had to take off for a while and we ended up hiding out in the city with some people who knew what was what. I rode into Manhattan on a bus in the middle of the night, not knowing if or when I'd ever go home again. We came over the bridge and were suddenly in this maze of tightly packed stone stoops and trash cans and pasted-up posters in grids across plywood walls and there were sirens and horns in the distance. I saw a sign for 42nd street and my heart fluttered. I still catch a thrill when I walk past certain street signs in midtown. Lenox Avenue, Lexington, 42nd Street. The geography of Langston Hughes. As the old man played his tenor I stared at the white and black tile on the wall and tried to recall the words to Langston's poem, 'The Weary Blues.' I think of the poem every time I see the words 'Lenox Avenue' on a street sign or subway placard. Down on Lenox Avenue the other night I never slept a night in New York City without being lonely. I never laid down on a bed or a couch or a floor without noticing that there wasn't someone beside me. The old man finished up 'Desafinado' and went into 'Prelude to a Kiss.' I thought about asking him to play 'Satin Doll' but I didn't feel like speaking. Erin was at another subway station by then. I imaged her standing at a platform like the one that I was at and I wondered what was happening there. Whether anyone was playing any music or if she was just listening to that distant screeching of train brakes and the tinny sound of someone else's iPod from 6 feet away. I heard that same screeching of brakes and it grew louder and I heard the clack clack clack of the train pulling in and the wind was gusting through the tunnel and lifting the edge of a tattooed woman's skirt. The train slowed and swayed backwards for a fraction of a second and then it stopped. And there was the long second of the train being stopped and people standing impatiently in front of the doors before they opened. And I stood up and stretched out my half-numbed legs and I got on the train. _________________________ 3. Leighton led the way across Saint Marks Place and a few blocks down 3rd Avenue and then between a pair of split curtains into small, narrow restaurant with a single, low wooden counter down the middle. It smelled nicely of onions, wood and oil. We sat down and a Chinese woman handed us each a menu and a plastic cup full of cold water and crushed ice. The only thing on the menu was 5 different types of ramen noodles and a modest selection of over-priced Asian beer. I asked for a Sapporo and whatever they sold that didn't have pig in it. We congratulated each other on the afternoon's work of teaching Manhattanites about how to hunt for deer and butcher their own meat. Leighton's huge, 6'6" frame with belly and caveman arms leaned into the countertop and I thought for a moment that it might actually crack. His shoulder-length, greying hair bounced around when he got exciting talking. He says we should go to Brooklyn. Says that's where they really go crazy for meat. Williamsburg. Lets do the book launch there. Take a whole damned deer over and carve it up right there in a bar or something. Ok, Leighton. We'll go to Brooklyn next time. You pick the place and we'll do it there. Leighton likes how I trust him. I don't question Leighton. I kill something and cut it up and give him the pieces of meat and he cooks it and the people eat it. I don't tell him how to cook it. Leighton loves meat and I can't tell him how to love meat any more than he already does. I think sometimes that maybe nobody else trusts Leighton like that. I brought up a whole venison forequarter just for him this time. Got it just above freezing and wrapped it up and put it in my suitcase and hoped for the best when I checked my luggage at the airport. I gave it to him to take home and do what he pleased with it. Leighton likes beer, too. He likes meat and he likes beer and rifles, only he didn't know that he liked rifles until just a few months ago when he came down to learn how to hunt and he shot a rifle for the first time. He likes the way that the thirty ought six kicks against his shoulder and roars but doesn't knock him back on account of weighing 300 pounds or so. The ramen was spicy and thick with pieces of chicken and some kind of peppers or something. First I ate the noodles and peppers with chopsticks and then I used a wooden spoon to drink the dark broth with spots of sesame oil floating on the top. Everyone around us was speaking Chinese and I got sloppy and started talking about the TV show thinking that the guy on the other side of me wouldn't understand what I was saying. _________________________ 4. "I'm gonna look hot tonight," my sister announced from the bathroom. A few minutes she came out wearing a short, sleeveless black dress and red lipstick. I closed my laptop and we went out the door and down the stairs and onto the street of the East Village. We stopped at the Irish pub downstairs where she'd buttered up the thin, lanky bartender the week before in order to leave a key with him for me to pick up. I ordered a pint of Harp and she had some horrible hefeweizen and we tried to chat with Joe, the bartender, but he was too shy. He would stammer out a brief response in his melodic Irish brogue and then smile politely while looking like he wanted to run away. Sometimes he would answer a question in the affirmative by giving us a thumbs up instead of speaking, only sometimes one of us would miss it because he gave his thumbs up from the hip, very low, as if he was ashamed of the gesture. I placed my glass on the bar as Joe walked off. "He would be a winker, if he dared." "What?" asked my sister. "He would wink," I said. "He would like to be the sort of man who winks at people in a knowing way, only he can't find the courage to actually do it." "That's true." We finished our drinks and put some money down on the bar, said goodbye to Joe, and I followed my sister for about a dozen blocks to some club in the basement of a Chinese massage parlor. Her friends were downstairs at a big corner table and it was someone's birthday. The music was very loud and the place was full. About 8 people waved to us and my sister introduced me and I forgot each of their names instantly. She sat down and I went to the bar to get us both a drink. I came back with a pint in each hand and set one down in front of her. "So what do you do?" asked the woman beside me. "I'm a subsistence hunter," I answered. "Oh," she said. As if people told her this every day. "So you hunt things?" "Yes." "What do you do with them?" "I eat them." "What do you kill them with?" "Usually a rifle. Sometimes a shotgun, crossbow or pistol." She nodded. Then somehow we were talking about tofu and public transportation. The birthday girl sat down on the other side of me and immediately began complaining about the man whom she assures me is most certainly *not* her boyfriend. She was a healthy-looking young woman who was blessed with large enough breasts and a good enough brassiere to overcome the disadvantage of her weight. More trips to and from the bar for beer. People came and went and then we were still at the table with someone named Emma and either her boyfriend or husband named Franklin. You could tell that Emma was named Emma because she had one of those slightly muffin-like Emma faces. She was pretty and thin but not too thin and decided to instantly convert to my side of this hunting business. Wanted to come to Virginia right away to take a class with me. It was too loud for us to really talk much so we all decided to leave and go to some other place that my sister knew about. The four of us walked a few blocks and were talking and carrying on. I wanted a cigarette for the sheer aesthetic value of it and Emma agreed. After we got to this other bar, Emma and I decided to go find a cigarette. Franklin wanted one too, but he'd just quit so Emma told him that he couldn't come. Neither Emma nor I was really a smoker so it was all right for us. We stumbled off into the night and went in search of a store. We found a little market and I bought us a pack of American Spirits and we went outside and opened them. I handed her a cigarette. We sat down together on the pavement and I struck a match and lit hers and then I lit mine. I forget what we were talking about but it seemed very important at the time. I imagined what it would be like to fuck Emma. We ended back inside of the bar and stood in line to use the bathroom. Wonderful line to use the bathroom. Great people there. We were all fast friends. Some Germans and a couple of South American guys with designer sunglasses. I handed out cigarettes like candy. We went back over to the bar and more beer made its way into my hands and then into my mouth, down to my stomach where the alcohol filtered out into my bloodstream and made its merry way into my brain. Somehow a decision had been made to leave. We were walking back towards my sister's apartment and Franklin and Emma were insisting that they come down to visit at the earliest possible convenience to learn to shoot rifles and carve Bambi up into steaks. I was pretty tight by then. I had more than a jingle going, but wasn�t falling over or sloppy drunk. We split up and said our goodbyes and my sister and I went into a deli and bought a sandwich to split. Something involving roast beef and jalapenos. We didn�t really care what was in it. We ate it on her couch and drank water and finally went to sleep. I woke up a little after dawn with a massive, raging erection. Engorged, with no place nice to put it. _________________________ 5. The airplane flew over the ocean on the flight home. I had my usual window seat and stared out at the sea while an elderly woman in the aisle seat read a romance novel and ignored me. Far below I saw a massive rectangular object out on the water. A barge or a container ship some 20 or 30 miles out from shore. With no wake behind it, the boat seemed to be standing still. All alone out there in the ocean. I started to wave out the window and then stopped because it was ridiculous. 'I'm thinking about you, person on the boat,' I thought almost out loud. Here was a boat completely alone on the ocean, out of sight of shore. Way up more than a mile in the sky there was an airplane with me in it, looking down there and thinking about that boat. 4:10 p.m. - 2010-05-17 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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