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JFK, 6 pm, wendzdee eve mid-March. 65 degrees. Bright blue sky with orange and pink stripes. Off the plane things are pulsating. The air, the building, my brains, my heart. Wump, wump, wump. Zax comes to get me on his way home in the white Felux and off we go, to Rockaway Beach. Why? Why not. It was rush hour and we got a little distracted. Called James from the road and when I told him where we were, he said, "Go the opposite way. I'm gonna have a cigarette and a beer. See you when you get here. " Time passes differently in New York. People go fast, but it takes them longer.
Arrive 67 St Felix, 7 pm.
James walked towards the kitchen, looking for something. I assumed because I had a cig to my lips and he wanted to light it. He turned in the doorway of the kitchen and slapped his front right pant's pocket.
His voice is raised when he says, "YOU KNOW!
This happens every time I'm with you and only when I'm with you.
I start looking for something I want and then I realize the whole time I've had it right with me."
"This place is where go you for a drink right after you die. You go there and have a drink and chill out. It's the best place you've ever seen. But you gotta show your respect there."
"Does that mean I need to put on my leather pants?"
We hop down to the subway station and train over the Manhattan Bridge. James tells me how every
time he rides this train he has to get some kind of glimpse of the Brooklyn Bridge or things just don't go right for the rest of the day.
I get it while I look at the ¾ pie in the sky. James tells me,
"You know, it is so cool that you just blew into town."
and I respond with, "Does it make you feel comfy and safe?"
"No, I just feel cool."
In Manhattan, and out of the subway, I realize where we are and why I know no one who lives here. "Oh, it's in China Town."
We start with freshly squeezed Blood Orange juice screwdrivers.
It takes us a few hours to handle a crushed ginger elixir and the best mojito I've ever experienced.
The ass-kicking-kung-fu-ginger-vodka number made James say, "You know who this drink is for? You know who would love this drink? Lydia. I wanna show New York to Lydia (Adkins).
Somewhere in there, I went to the bathroom to read the Rules. I used one of the cloth hand towels and read:
"No star fucking or name dropping. No hootin' and hollerin'. Gentlemen must remove their hats.
If a gentleman wishes to converse with a lady, he may do so, but if she is not interested she will simply lift her chin
and turn away." Speakeasy style.
Sasha eventually showed up, on his only night off, glad to see James. Absolute gentleman.
The bartender who was mixing our magic, Toby, explained his racked nerves were due to the fact that he'd bid on a mansion in New Jersey that was inhabited by a Haitian family of 13 that day.
"That place is gonna be full of all kinds of voodoo," I imagined.
From that point on until the end of the weekend, if there was ever a question of the mood or tone, it was voodoo.
A woman there took up yo-yo'ing to stop smoking. Toby was serving Ketel One on the rock.
It seemed that everything eventually got liquidy. If you sit in the front row, you're gonna get wet, like Sea World. Good thing neither of us was driving.
Cab ride home to find a message from Ryan singing, "Monkey in the NYC….let's hook up tomorrow and get things rolllllllehhhn'." His kung-fu ass don't scare me.
Thursday starts with me shaking and James saying, "Hackett's on the phone. He told me to jump on the bed and wake you up." We make our plans to meet in a couple of hours.
I learned about winter dressing in New York pretty quickly. One shirt, one down jacket. Cold as fuck outside, hot as shit inside. And flat. New York is flat.
I could not get a decent breath of air outside. I couldn't get a decent breath. This was troubling.
"Sometimes I'll take 10 breaths in a row and there's something wrong with every one of them," was James way of putting it.
The plan for Thursday night is to meet up with Ryan at 7:30, give him the evidence he left at Kal's and go surprise
Chris Hackett at the Madagascar Institute HQ.
After a dinner of spacecake, Jamaican coconut shrimp curry with my addiction of the week, ginger beer, at Brawta, James and I head off to meet Ryan on the corner of Smith and Wycoff. Ryan celly-less, Mandy leaving his home number at her home made the missed connections that much more annoying. I hadn't yet been aware of what Hackett refers to as "Oconnor Meantime."
James and I step into Boat, have a whiskey and a smoke, then head over to MI alone. But only after calling Hackett to ask where he lived.
Hans answers the door. "Didn't I meet you at Burning Man?" Amazing anyone remembers anything from those events….
A hauntingly short walk back to James' from Hackett's. Oh, so this is what Chris meant when he said
there were a couple of blocks that I probably shouldn't walk in alone. No one was around and the street lamps had the 40 watt'ers
in them.
"You know what I want in my dream home?" I say. "I want a chill pleashadome lounge with drapes and fabric and enough space for a few people to lie down….."
James stood a lot and I reclined. I'd bolt up to watch him re-enacting various scenes
from Crotchless Tiger, Shitting Dragon, my sides splitting.
Things got dangerously kooky that night.
Friday, we start with brekky at Cafe Lafayette. I fell in love with every North African French speaking man that was within eyeshot of me. There may have only been one or two.
We sat outside at the table on the
porch in the sun. Our French Colombian server definitely knows her way around a coffee pot. Coffee in that African part of
Brooklyn is outta sight.
I've got a perfect day ahead of me: off to lunch with Gillian, dinner with Mr.Hackett and Milk and Honey with whomever at 9:30. That was the day I found a dime bag on the grass in the park.
I accidentally took the long route to Park Slope via 79th avenue to see Gillian's very own brownstone. One whole building for she and Lydia (Stevens) and their pup, Max. Just walking from the subway to her house made me smile big. What I always wonder is, how did New York get sooo much soul?
God damn!
We went on to her roof almost immediately and saw her view overlooking downtown Gotham, and the Statue of Liberty.
Only thing that beats that is seeing a great person you've known for more than a decade.
Add a little beer and grass in there and we got right to it. We had a little workshop. We solved all our problems.
Jill Scott, Erykah Badu and Radiohead.
At one point, it occurred to me that I wished folks would act more with
integrity than acting to fulfill their own selfish desires. It's so easy to do what you want to do, but is it the right thing to do.
New York buildings are old, for real. They're ceiling had crashed in one room a couple of days earlier. But there are no earthquakes.
At around 7, my plans with Hackett dissolved, which gave James and I
the chance to have our only home cooked meal the whole time I was there.
Ryan called with news of some "subway party on the green line." Once he said something about, "wearing green," I handed the phone to James, who seemed just as enthused as I about the green line subway party.
At least, let's go over to Albert's (who lives at Hackett's old place) and have a drink with the lads before they head out.
We're all wheather-proofed and starting to sweat when I think/ask,
"Should I bring the pizza toppings?"
"122 Norfolk, please." There was talk of James' friend Annuska,
having bungee jumped off the bridge at sunrise and suddenly I had a million dollars in my pocket and the
willingness to pay the cabby that amount to jump off the Manhattan Bridge. That kept us busy til we got to Albert's.
BUZZZZZZZ. "Do we need to get beer?"
Albert shaves. It's all happening in fast slo-mo. He says he has something for me.
My F train shirt. I put it on and ask him to marry me.
Albert says he'll spring for a cab over to Ryan's place in the Village. Time to go.
New York City is at 75 decibels, constantly.
It is still raining. We went umbrellaless the whole weekend. I started to get whiney, and cocky about it.
We pass a building where Albert says he had an assassination, ah-hem, appointment, earlier that day.
When we get to Ryan's Albert let's himslef in and says, "Come up to 3B."I prop the door open (the buzzer doesn't work) while
James goes to the deli for beer.
I stand there holding the door, waiting for James. I wished I had some crack. It was a perfect place to smoke crack. All of a sudden, the door intercom starts talking with a deep voice. "Monkey?"
What's it like to smoke crack? Ryan comes out with his skateboard, which he gives to me, cause it's
raining and then he takes off for a liquid nap.
James plus 6 pack come back and up we go. Also, none of my friends
live in buildings with elevators.
Enter the red and blue zone.
James and I decide we'll try out the subway party, if we're not in, we can always bail.
The goal is to meet at the Bowling Green stop on the Green Line and there'll be a travelling party. Everyone in green.
After waiting for what seemed like 7 years, and after a few green polyester
clad kids file in, a train pulls up. 40 people pour out of the last car, screaming and
cheering and we dash madly to get on the train. I go in one train. Albert,
James and Ryan go on another. I think. I hope.
Knowing nothing about how these parties work except we're going to drink on the train,
I am following. A lemming, a cow, alone. They're chanting: "Ain't no party like the green train party cause the green
train party don't stop!" I couldn't even get the water bottle in my hand up to my mouth. It was body to body.
Someone was even singing a John Cougar song. At the first stop, I rejoined my other halves.
Ryan and Albert were serving up orange Absolut and pineapple juice cocktails, with ice. When the same nose hairs had been tickling my forearm for long enough, I figured I wasn't done, but it wasn't in either. I was ready to take things up a notch.
"James, we are going to split this stem-cap combo down the long ways."
Not soon enough, we've finished 2 more cocktails, smoked a couple bowls dosed
R & A and the train doors open.
"I think we have to take it all the way with this one. Where are we?"
"The Bronx."
The first bar we find is not letting a group our size/caliber enter.
We walk and drink and jump and laugh for at least a mile.
It rains. Finally, we get to a bar on the corner with stone walls.
The soundtrack started coming through in slo-mo. James and I stayed outside to monitor our homeostasis. A guy attempts fire spinning. The NYPD drives buy and says, finger wagging, "No fire."
Once James and I do decide to go inside, we go all the way in.
Past the green polyester. Past the green glitter and past the exposed childhood issues.
We end up in the back at the pool table. There's a different static back there.
We find secret rooms, another bar covered in boxes. I serve imaginary cocktails. We don't use the restroom.
I was tired of handling so much stuff. I had hats and bags and jackets and I wanted someone else to be in charge of my stuff. Albert came through. But he had one of those one strap bag dealies that was rawther difficult to negotiate in my state. I think, in the end, I ended up with his bag and all my stuff in it.
Way too soon, the kids start yelling "We're leaving!" I grabbed Albert and said, "This is a great song! We gotta dance."
And that was the last we saw of Ryan and the Green Line party.
Mid-dance, I walked over to the bar for the first time all night and asked the bartender something.
I was convinced he was gonna give me a beer, but I ended up buying one somehow out of guilt, not really needing or
wanting it.
Now there were 3. James and Albert and Mandy with beer
in hand, head out into the rain towards the subway station. We procure a young, thick Latin fellow in a baseball jersey and who had too tight a grip on my handshake. That kid ended up on the fucking train with us somehow.
Just as I see the NYPD limo cruising slowly beside us, I realize, I am the one with the beer in my hand.
Now I have to handle this.
I followed the set of rules. This was happening as part of the entertainment. It was my muse. Standing on the sidewalk, James started talking about how I needed to mellow out, but as far as I could tell, things were going swimmingly. The cops were kids and I was the big grown up with the beer. I ask the young woman cop what I should do with it. Was she gonna confiscate the evidence?
"Finish it and put the bottle in that trash can over there."
GULP, gulp, gulp.
Black leather pants. Silver jacket, Suzy Chapstick hat. From Frisco.
They had to be laughing. I ask the two in the car what was happening.
"Am I getting a ticket? What's this called?"
"A summons." Mandy's getting a summons for an open container. In the Bronx.
While waiting for the cops to finish processing me, I suggest we all climb that wall over there. Albert promptly stands to my rear with his arms wrapped around me. James is stupefied and laughing. I am rolllllllin'. Turns out I never signed the "summons" upon receipt. No proof that I actually ever received it. A little gift.
We discover a subway stop half the way closer than the one we arrived to. Glory. We can hear a train arriving downstairs. Slide the card, through the turnstile, hustle down the stairs clump-clump, clump, clump jump onto the linoleum train floor. James and I are on the train and the doors close. Where is Albert? I turn around still inside the train, the doors magically re-open.
I lean out the now open doors and shout, "RUN ALBERT!" I couldn't even see him.
I jump back on the train, sit down, half-defeated and Albert suddenly appears, Budweiser in hand. Doors close and we roll. We're back to three.
I decide the whole train needs fresh air and while I'm getting all the windows open and
I see the two MTA rent-a-cops sitting to our left. Shit. When I decide to start
photographing the other passengers on the train, through my view finer,
I see three, count them with me, three real cops standing at the other end of our car.
I resume my intoxicated, tripping cool and sit down next to Albert, across from James.
We walk out onto the empty street and straight down some stairs into another subway station.
James holds open a door covered in graffiti that says Siberia. There's a bar right inside. Oh my god. Time to dance.
I dodge the wires that hang from the ceiling and shake it like nobody's looking.
This is the bar in the subway station that used to be an KGB front (no WONDER Albert had been there before). At closing time,
( I thought bars didn't close in New York) I barely come away without smiting a blow to the bartender who talked more smack than
a regular smack talker. James is dancing with the blond girl. "Everyday is Like Sunday" comes on and suddenly I'm a Morrisey fan.
3 of us have finished enough drinks and other toxicants for 6. Nostalgia crept up for a night that wasn't over.
Chapter 9
James slides into the front of the cab that has 3 women in the back, including the blonde gal.
"It's just us now, let's GO!" I say to Albert as I start running for the neon.
Times Square, center of our teeny universe.
You can't get lost here. 4:30 am, misty rain, empty streets.
10 a.m. Saturday morning. Be still my pounding head. What is this gun doing on the radiator over my head?
I pick it up, smell it and check for grease or dirt. It's clean. Now I'm sure. He is a special agent.
Albert sleeps and talks to me while I talk to James on the phone. Be still my pounding head.
Time for Monkey to cab back over the Manhattan Bridge and eat.
James is always ready for whatever when I come back from 122 Norfolk mid-morning.
I make pasta and role a joint with the free grass. I announce that Chris Hackett is the Manager. And James concludes that he's the one who hired Albert to be my bodyguard the night before. Thus the gun.
Audibly, I note that the periods of time between when we were getting fucked up were becoming shorter and shorter. I didn't just think it. We had to head out for a neighborhood slow soul stroll.
We found places neither of us have ever seen under grey, quiet, chilly sky. Nobody around.
Just us.
Saturday passed with a few hours of afternoon/evening sleep and Saturday night
found us chasing unmade plans in a train and a cab back to our own neighborhood for
some of Kadel's Front Porch Belize-ian yummies. Sitting with James at the round
table at Kadel's was heaven. My night could've ended there and I'd have been pleased.
I had called a party at Frank's, but by the time we got there, at 11, I was ready to be on the couch, at home, lying flat. ]
So that's what I did. It was raining a lot. I called folks to let them know where I'd be. We call Zak first and
leave a message. "Uh, Zak? It's James and Mandy. Last night we pushed it a little harder than it's ever been pushed before…."
Midnight is like noon. Around 1 Hackett showed up. So did Liza. James and Liza headed back over to Franks and Hackett
and I played ketchup.
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