The hurricane rains threatened to ruin our weekend and our spirits.
Not my spirits actually, but those of the three friends I was with.
I went into it looking for trouble,
I always do.
It takes more than a little rain to slow me down.
The more hopelessly lost you become in the swamps,
the more scars and bruises acquired in the fight against burning out; the better.
You can't live a good life and expect emerge from the sewage unscathed.
At least not by my definition of a good life.
We piled into the car with a case of beer and drove north.
The big apple.
I've done that drive many times but it will forever remind me of that glorious weekend.
We arrived at the city rather quickly
but only to be informed that baseball game had been rained-out and postponed until the next day,
Sunday.
I was not surprised and silently relished in excitement.
Time to Hunt.
We would stay and watch the game tomorrow;
that was the verdict.
24 hours to kill in a killing city.
That's what I live for;
panic and uncertainly
and running from the showers of bullets and slugs.
A hungry warrior of a weak generation.
I am a king in my own way.
I had almost no money, but was rich in imagination and will.
The two-door car protected us from the rain and savage Puerto Ricans as we sat in a gas station parking lot racking our brains for the 'what's next'.
I remembered an ex-girlfriend,
the headhunter,
who had moved to New York.
One night a few months prior, she had told me how much she loved her new life in the big city and to get in touch if I was ever in town;
a kind of half-hearted gesture that I thought I would never have the need to accept.
At face value we were polar opposites, but to me there has always some sort mutual connection between us after we had lost our virginity to each other at sixteen.
An unspoken allegiance of hearts
or a dormant affection . .
I am not sure what to call it, I just know it's there.
We had a lot in common though, at least more so than most of my subsequent girlfriends let lead me astray. I had been with at least fifteen girls since she and I had disbanded in high school but I'd often thought of her as the most loving and nurturing one of them all. She was passionate and outspoken and much like me; was an acquired taste for most. She would enter my mind once in a while-particularly after a break up-and remind me of a distant time and place wherein I was able to care about someone more than my self.
The days when I could love and live despite the pollution.
It makes a little more sense after you've outgrown your dreams;
unconditional love.
I've lost much more than I've gained since then
but at least I have what I have.
She was kind towards me and was owed far more than I ever could have offered.
I appreciated her more than most.
This is something I should have told her, but probably never will.
We had spoken maybe once or twice within the past five years, but my mind was made up:
we would try to find her.
I was able to get her number from a friend.
Naturally a pessimist, I was not expecting her to answer.
She did.
After exchanging coordinates the boys and I found ourselves hopelessly lost.
Since we couldn't afford to rent a hotel room, we offered to help her move her furniture and belongings into her new apartment in exchange for a floor to sleep on.
The drive from Queens to Brooklyn was a drunken mess, made worse by an incessant downpour. The inside of the car smelled like a warehouse full of homeless men; like crushed dreams.
In that vast metropolis of workers
and beautiful people we stood out like the greasy criminals.
302 1st St.
Brooklyn, New York That's where she stood. Outside of a friend's house waiting for us in the damp street despite fighting a cold.
We picked her up and drove through Bushwick, or Greenpoint or whatever neighborhood it was hiding behind the buckets of rain. The day was unfolding just as I had hoped, and morale was high among my companions.
You have many more options as a poor or broke man with an open mind and strong will than you do as a rich man. I' never be rich.
It's a beautiful feeling to have to pick from a slim list of slight chances.
Luxury and comfort will always be the enemy.
65 Roebling St.
Brooklyn, New YorkWe reached her new apartment building, greeted by the violent gusts of the storm.
After climbing a few flights of stairs she led us four drunks through the massive doors and into her new home. It was the most surreal five bedroom space I'd ever been in, the kind of place one would see on some mind numbing 'reality' television show. I was instantly in love and knew that leaving was not going to be easy on my soul. The guys and I galloped through the empty apartment like hyenas under a full moon. When she informed us that we would be going to a party in midtown later in the evening we became almost ecstatic. But as per our collective agreement to 'sport-drink' through the weekend, we refused to let "later in the evening" impede our progress. We walked through the monsoon to buy more beer, trudging slowly like escaped creatures of the amazon jungle.
What are men to do with vacant hours away from home?
The answer is beer.
Always.
When we arrived back at the apartment I laid my head on the hardwood platform in the living area and drank and sang songs to the roof under its off-beat-rain-rhythm. I felt like a rugged king. The rain refused to let up,
so did I.
When I stood up to grab a beer from the fridge I saw what I thought was a multicolored sun spot in the corner of my eye. I quickly focused.
It was a human; her roommate.
"My one roommate is a fashion designer." Was the first coherent thought to echo between my ears.
This must be our fashion designer, was the second.
He strutted into the apartment with the confidence and vigor of a black woman on a shopping spree. His collar-less, zebra-print, button-up blouse clung to frail shoulders and flailed behind him like a silk flag.
A timid ghost-man floating into sight with colors more offensive to the eye than the sun.
He entrance, so dramatic and calculated, almost seemed to be in slow motion. We honed our drunken attention and salivated like starving predators waiting for him to try to escape.
One of my more narrow-minded friends looked him over in shock when he introduced himself to us and our barrage of questions and remarks. I watched them force fed him beers despite his numerous refusals and apprehension. I was surprised to see him warming up to us, and even more so when he began to talk almost condescendingly about his motley outfit and fashion sense. We gawked and laughed and traded insults but began to accept and embrace the absurdity. Then, with almost no transition from the harmless conversation between us, the room suddenly exploded into obnoxiously bright colors and laughter and trash bags, boxes and racks stuffed with clothing. We had somehow sparked an impromptu fashion show. My friends, the unscrupulous consumers of drug and drink, snatched one shirt after another from the piles of clothing and giggled like school girls while stretching them over their beer bloated bodies. The mild mannered roommate was obviously now in his element and fully comfortable with our incoherence. He spoke with an excited lisp when unveiling us his latest projects, thrift store gems and homemade banana-colored pants. We were sucked in and for a brief moment I felt the room spin.
A mutiny of pigs in the slaughter house.
To witness the most criminally insane person I know, one of my best friends, stumble proudly through the room in a woman-sized clothing so lavish in color and design was a frightening experience.
I'd had just about all I could take of the fashion show. It was time to hit the bars and parties. My hopes were to see the gritty watering holes and dives of the New York streets but our host had other plans. The details of the first two checkpoints are no longer familiar to me. Beer will do that. I do recall meeting and talking to a co-star of a television show called "Flight Of the Concords", and him being genuinely polite.
The subway and cab rides to the party passed in a blur of lights and unapologetic faces. The rain had finally stopped. I could hear my heart pounding as we approached the club. Pretty, important people in expensive clothing smoked and laughed by the entrance.
We entered.
Single file; ready for war.
The place was packed wall to wall with exotic young people. The Red lights hung from the roof and cooked the dance floor, bar and mile-long bathroom line. The eyes of a thousand strangers packed into a heat chamber greeted mine with disinterest. An overwhelmingly homosexual putridity about the air had me apprehensive at first, but then dissipated when the mens room door swung open; releasing the toxic-hot-piss-stench.
From the ceiling hung cages.
In the cages were men.
Pretty men, wearing only briefs, dancing to the depraved music with their stone faces.
A sight that on a normal night back home would have sent jolts of anger and discomfort through me was shockingly soothing. You don't have time for your anger when your a scared mammal in a foreign jungle, and when you don't have time for anger your a free man.
My comrades soaked in the scene, wide-eyed, confused and secretly terrified.
I felt like a holiest of virgins that had been thrown to the hungry lions of a bloodbath orgy.
The boys and I stared down at the floor so as to deny the gay and red heat from boring into our flesh.
Someone handed me a Vodka.
I don't drink vodka.
I took nervous sips till it was empty and felt swim through my veins. Everything outside of 10 feet from me was lost in the hazy cloud of homo-erotic white mist but I could only sense what sinister, secular acts were being performed in the invisible pockets of the club.
Boyish girls and girlish boys clutching and writhing to the beat on the sweat-soaked dance floor.
A pulsating unison of young hearts in defiance.
Morbid curiosity was slowly transformed into infatuation. I felt the Floor bellow and try to suck me in.
The heat lamps swayed from their chains, setting the uneasiness of our closed minds afire, pleading for our participation . . . for us to lay down our weekday wars and let the night cauterize our wounds.
I was in love with the world again.
In love with a scene;
a movement;
a savage underbelly of which I had nothing to do with, but could not be denied or dismissed as anything but pure and honest. My internal organs soaked up the twelve hours worth of sport drink.
We baked under the red lights.
Together
and to the beat.
When the music dulled and the floor's epic vibrations calmed, the freaks began piling out toward the night. We picked up, dusted off, and headed out for the damp streets yet again.
It was another impossible maze of lights, cars, and derelict subway tunnels and then back in Williamsburg.
She was obviously worn out and had expressed the importance of getting to bed. Lord knows what time of night it was by now. I had to concentrate on the edge of the wet curb to make sure I was walking in a straight line. Soft, post-storm winds brushed my skin nearing the apartment building.
"Your going to sleep with me tonight, OK?" she asked me.
I didn't object.
Our sore legs climbed the steps yet again.
Against my better judgment I drank two more beers in the shower.
Half beer, half soapy water.
They went down smooth and geared my mind for sleep.
In her bed, the familiar sound of the air-conditioner in the dark room had me drifting to sleep when she pulled my arm around her body and beckoned for me to come closer. This came a surprise to me. My body, four times the size of hers, was switched back on.
Seek-and-destroy-mode.
This was not my intent, honestly. But couldn't control my self and practically choked on the pheromones lingering throughout the room.
It was her smell.
That smell that had driven me out of my mind, causing me to fall in love for the first time when we were in seventh grade. How could it have survived throughout all these years and all these wars?
My muscles tensed. The vodka and soap-beers churned in my guts.
She was wild for it but I was so full of toxins that I couldn't keep it up. I tried for what felt like an hour, but collapsed on the bed like an ape in defeat. Shame and embarrassment forced me to cower towards the wall away from her.
This is something that I am sure most men have fallen victim too, but it's almost impossible to laugh at the irony of such a depressing situation. You, as a man, spend almost every waking second in search of these moments and to be forced by nature to give it up is a kick in the balls unlike any other.
She laid closer to me. Her soft kisses and hands over my skin put me to sleep despite my despondence. I fell into a trance to the hum of electric behind the walls.
I was alive and well in a new territory.
In peace with myself and humanity.
Rest is a rare commodity for the soul, take it where you can get it.
The New York night swooped down and took me to its bowels without warning. Pitch black winds of freedom and solace whirled and cooled the bedroom.
The snipers had fallen asleep.
The Gatling had exhausted its last cartridge of ammunition into the sky and I was finally free to roam. If your able to catch your breath and reflect fo only one second, at least you've won something: you're still alive.
The police, with their god damned warrants, didn't know where I was. I didn't have a job or its headaches from sensory deprivation. There were no soul-crushing debt collectors to call with death threats. I didn't live in Pennsylvania, on the third floor of my one-thousandth home.
Nothing to run from, nothing reason to hide.
A naked ignorance of the fucking poachers and peddlers of what little happiness is left on this earth.
We leaned into one another.
She slept until ten AM while I spent the night's hours sleepless; staring at the ceiling and
giving thanks.
She rushed off quickly in the morning after getting dressed. My brothers and I had survived with all limbs attached. From the roof of the apartment building we drank breakfast beers and laughed while trying to piece it all together under the morning sun. The skyscrapers stood frozen in the distance. The wind gusts were sporadic but comforting. The rain was now one hundred miles north, blanketing some helpless small town, forcing its people indoors to face each other. One hundred miles south awaited our homes, jobs, failures and a bleak reality. We stood on the roof between the two cities like triumphant soldiers of hell, drinking cold beers and counting our scars in silence.