Friday, June 10, 2005

The girl of my dreams

I was bored and sweaty walking down 18th street at 3am, when I hit Tenth Avenue I knew I had no where else to go so I crossed over and started walking by the water. There was a bit of a wind which was kind of nice, I stared out into the water to see if there was anything out there like an octopus or bank robbers in a raft fighting over the loot, nope nothing but the hollow outline of New Jersey in the distance (like watching paint dry). Well I kept walking, there were loads of creepy weirdo’s out that stare at you like murderers, I'm probably just as weird as they are but at least I don't stare - jeez. As I continued to walk contemplating the mysteries of life (I’m kidding there’s nothing mysterious about life) I noticed in the distance a man wearing a tight red miniskirt. I knew it was a man because I could make out his big sweaty mustache from about a mile away. It was sick and I knew I was screwed because I was gonna have to walk past him; there wasn't a crosswalk near by in either direction, but y'know who cares? I'll just avert my eyes. Its eerie how quiet Manhattan gets very late in the early morning, everything feels so still and quiet, it feels wrong but it's wonderful too. I could hear the water splashing in the distance, I could hear the little waves crashing. It reminded me of the time I was walking across the Brooklyn Bridge when I realized all the cars passing by sounded like water; it was like I was on a beach. Maybe NY is more peaceful than people realize (traffic is Zen).

"What are you doing up so late baby boy?" The mustache asked. I tried not to answer, and just quickly weave past him. "You look like you’re in a hurry" he said slapping his own ass provocatively. "I just gotta get home" I said glancing at him quickly. That was when I realized that he was Charles Bronson in drag. The real guy. I could have sworn that Charles Bronson, the actor, was dead. "You in a hurry?" He asked. He was trying to be cute and seductive and it turned my stomach. I looked him straight in the face and he pouted his lips at me, I felt like I would vomit when I saw the lip stick caked all over the bottom of his mustache. He has that weird accent; it wasn't as pronounced as it is in his movies. He stopped in front of me and I stepped around him, I held my hand up to him as I passed as I would at a passing car I just stepped in front of, apologetically (please don't kill me), and I turned and walked quickly away. A deep growl came from behind me, "EY fuck you, you dick head bastard" (there’s that accent). I would have cried with laughter if I wasn't so frightened. Thirty feet later I glanced back and he was leaning into a car window. Good for him.

I kept walking until I reached Battery Park. It was dark and it felt like there were people lurking in the shadows everywhere. I had never been so paranoid in my life. I stood at the railing and I saw the statue of liberty in the distance, she looked beautiful so when no one was looking I blew her a kiss. I felt so stupid. I looked out at the black water, at the lights drifting through the sky, at the clouds drifting past the moon, at the lights still lit up in the office buildings, and back again at the statue, Miss Liberty. I watched in disbelief as one of her hands reached out and caught the kiss I had blown her, she closed her hand around it and placed it onto her cheek, then she smiled at me and I waved. She already had one foot in the water and before I knew it she was waist deep and walking toward me. In a moment she loomed before me, this grand great giant green woman. Gazing up at her I was in awe, her eyes were so kind, and warm. I racked my brain for just the right words, "I've been inside you a bunch of times" I stammered and I almost exploded when I realized what that sounded like. My face flushed over and I started sweating, I looked her in the eyes nervous, and I said hello. She held her hand out close to me and put my arm on her hand. She scooped me up and held me, and after dangling me precariously over the water she placed me gently on her shoulder. She turned away from the park and began to walk. It only took a moment for me to get comfortable; it was like we were old friends. I can't remember what I said but I just started talking to her, I must have talked for hours. She didn't say anything but somehow I was sure she understood.

The water got deeper and pretty soon, the city was no where to be seen. When the sun came up I wondered what people would say when they saw the statue was gone. I hoped no one would be mad at me. She just kept walking forward, with me holding on, talking into her ear, asking her questions. I didn't even know where we were going, I didn't really care either. The world is a really small place. I wished that we were going some where that no one had ever been to before. Like in “Gulliver’s travels”, I wished there was something left unexplored, that we could stumble upon. A new strange world, a new strange land, where there was nothing set in stone and we could start it over.

In the middle of the ocean in the middle of nowhere, under a perfect blue sky, under a shining sun, the waves were crashing against us, the wind falling all around us in soft bursts. No destination in sight, and no expectations. There was nothing around for miles. Nothing but clear sky and an endless ocean but I could fill it up with all the thoughts in my head, I could spread them out all around us, lay them down like index cards and try to finally get them all in order. Maybe thinking just makes you dumber? I asked her if she knew where she wanted to go, she turned her head toward me and smiled, and she looked back out at the sea.

I tried to think of something to say, but that was all the answer I needed. I closed my eyes.

THEEND

I FELL ON A MONDAY
(OCT 17TH 2005)

Last night was a disaster I had one beer and I got so wasted, turns out that I married a pigeon. I have been asking myself all morning how I got to Paraguay but the bastard won't budge, I’m sure he knows something but he just keeps glaring back over that fucking hotel sink, with the same blank expression.
So I walk back in the room and there it is. The pigeon and I feel a little apprehensive. Maybe the pigeon really loves me? What should I do? I scatter some cracker crumbs at the foot of the bed and it gives me a reassuring glance and it hops down to nibble, and then I run out the door.
In the lobby there is a statue of "Boo Berry" the cereal ghost mascot and it is the biggest and most expansive lobby I've ever seen, chandeliers, fountains, pools, Lilly pads, even a beach with a shore. The hotel clerk has his head thrown back and he is busting a gut laughing, it echoes through the entire room. The sound is just plain eerie, he looks like an animatronic robot, and I can't imagine what he could be laughing at. Just then he casts me a steely glare as if I had walked in on him doing something terrible.
I step outside into the light, or is it dark I can't seem to adjust my eyes. I keep my head tilted down because my head hurts. About two dozen pigeons are formed around the doorway and my stomach sinks and I freeze scared that they are here to kill me, but they just scatter and fly away as I approach.
As I walk past the building I glance into an alley way and I witness a California raisin take a bullet in his fat wrinkled purple belly.
The sound of the gun echoed across the sky, or was that thunder? There was a flash of lightning and the sky opened up like a flood. A howling wind appeared, it blew unending and threw me into the side of a parked car and everything went black. When I wake up I am seated in a movie theater. It's in black and white and it's me up there, it's a movie about me about what happened last night and I'm talking to some one. I try to listen but the audience keeps screaming "I KNOW YOU DIDN’T JUST SAY THAT!" every one of them is saying that same thing over and over again but I can't hear what I’m saying and I have to know. I stand up and try to quiet them, I yell “shut up, SHUT UP” into their faces but they just nod at me like they know exactly what I’m talking about. This is my life!! Don’t they fucking understand this is my LIFE up there! I run out the door and try to find the projectionist. I follow some stairs that spiral around and around. At the top of the stairs there is a door and I open it. Immediately I hear the projector, and I hear people screaming and in the room I see a man laughing all by him self, staring out that little hole in the wall. His head swings back with shock and I know I’m not supposed to be there. I say “I was just trying to hear the movie” but he doesn’t look like he hears me and Its dim but I suddenly realize that he has been severely burned. He has no ears and his skin is melted. He has no hair. I try not to react but I know he can see how scared I have become. I say “I’m sorry I just wanted to hear the movie”. He stands up and looks at me and seems really angry and confused and I feel so stupid I can barely remember why or how I got there. He walks toward me and I get frightened and put my hand up defensively, but he just walks past me out the door, slamming it behind him. For a moment I’m frozen but then I run to the little window and look out into the theater to see the movie. It’s me the previous day and I vaguely recall the events that are unfolding before me. I am standing on a roof top and there is a long shot of clouds as if I am looking at the clouds, it seems like a piece is missing, it doesn’t feel whole to me. Now nobody is saying anything the people aren’t yelling, I look down and it seems quiet, but then I see, it’s the burned man he is chasing people out of the movie theater. He is swinging a big piece of wood around and clearing everybody out. Maybe there was no sound in the movie? But that doesn’t make any sense. I start to feel overwhelmed again and the shot of clouds changes in to a shot of me walking, I start to think “don’t tell me I’m going to the movie theater” and sure enough I walk into the theater! It’s a fake movie, I realize it then. Because I don’t remember walking to the theater so I’m sure that part is a lie. And standing on the building I know there was more to that and some one must have edited it out. I look around thinking maybe the projectionist did it; maybe there are scraps of film on the floor? All the missing pieces that I can use to tie together the scraps of time that are missing from my memory. I look out again and there are credits, white on black but there are no names it’s just a series of random words. “Hate” “Freak” “cabbage” “Old people”. Its just gibberish nothing makes any sense here. The door opens slowly and the projectionist pokes his melted face back into the room. He smiles and tries to speak but I can’t understand him. I say “thank you, Thank you, I understand” and I leave quickly. The stairs this time lead to a fire escape that takes me down the side of the building leaving me next to an empty in ground swimming pool. Its empty but I stop to look into it, fascinated by how deep it is. It’s impossibly deep! It must be impossible to fill that up, it was like staring off the side of a building it must have been 80 stories deep! It just went on forever! Oh FUCK. I get this stupid wave of deja vu. What the fuck?? I look all around trying to place it; there is a blue car a few blocks away that seems familiar. The back door to this building is silver and that seems familiar. The deck chair next to the pool has a Charlie Brown towel on it but nothing is clear. I start to think my brain is out to get me, all the wires are crossed.

On the street it’s very damp like it has just rained, but there is a wonderful cool breeze that is so soothing. It makes me hungry and I feel like getting something to eat. I glance into the shop windows looking for my friends, maybe they are in there? But I don’t spot any one and I find a place that looks comfortable so I go inside. The waitress nods her head at me from across the room, and starts toward me. “Hi back again? you can sit where ever you want”. I start toward a table but then I ask her “was I here before? when was I here?”. Her face lights up and she smiles like I just said a joke, “you were here last night don’t you remember? You come here all the time?” I said “oh” quickly and took a seat. I picked up the menu and started through it. Unfortunately there was no food on the menu, its short stories from famous authors. I wanted to put my head on the table but I refused to react to the confusion, I could hardly contain my frustration. I figured I would wait until the waitress came back and she would already have the fucking food I was going to order. I started to read quickly through one of the stories. It was a short story by Below Tolstoy, the name sounded familiar but it seemed like a typo. It was a story about a girl that carried a bucket down a dirt road and every time she reached her destination her old father would beat her with a broom and kick the bucket over and then she would have to do it all over again. It was the meanest thing I ever read, it was condoning the old mans behavior, the whole point of it was to make you see his point of view but it was completely wretched. Just as I got angry the waitress arrived with two trays of food that I had not ordered.
I liked the waitress because she seemed like she knew me and she honestly seemed to be glad to see me again. I don’t have the faintest clue who she is or when I had been here. “So how’ve you been?” she asked me. I said “uh well I’m a little confused about everything”. She laughed outright, like she knew exactly what I was talking about “well yeah I would think so wouldn’t you?” she said. I asked her if she could sit with me, I really felt like talking to some one. She looked back over her shoulder quickly and a big fat guy in white leaned his head out of the kitchen door. His face was grave and severe and he didn’t look like he cared for me at all. She stepped away from me and seemed suddenly cold, “oh, oh sorry no I cant they don’t let us talk to the customers, enjoy your meal sir”.

She had brought out French fries and blue berry pancakes. Everything seems a bit off, but I ate them. The flavor was subtly wrong, with a strange bitterness to them. No one else was in the diner but me. It didn’t seem much like a diner, kind of like a mix between a church and a school room kind of crossed with and old 50's diner and a library.

I looked over at where the waitress had been and she was gone. This was getting depressing. What am I supposed to do? The mean guy I realized was looking at me, and he of course looked angry. I stood up and said “hello” from across the room. He said nothing. I nodded my head at him as if to say, “yep I'm done over here”, then I made the writing the check motion and for some reason I felt utterly ridiculous. It was as though he had no idea what I was doing. he just stared at me. I shrugged and tried to smile but I was growing impatient. The clock said three thirty. I yelled across the room “I really have to be going, thanks for the food!” and I walked out the door onto the street. The waitress ran up behind me and whispered “RUN” into my ear and I felt nauseous and tired, but I did it. I ran as fast as I could. I ran until I couldn’t breathe. Who was after me? Why was I running? I don’t fucking know, but I was certain that soon everything would be clear. The hotel I was in, I could see it now from where I was, and the beach wasn’t too far away either. It started to seem like a nice town but, of course it wasn’t and some how I knew that. There was a big banner hung from the street lamps it said “welcome to Our town”. There was a cartoon trombone on one side of it and it was royal blue with yellow letters. Looks like I had missed a parade or something. This is when I began to feel sickeningly apprehensive; it was like deja vu only worse, vertigo. I could hear a car engine in the distance and I knew something bad was going to happen but I couldn’t see a car. I kneeled down against a wall and tried to hide and I saw a car about six blocks away turn onto the main road, and it was coming toward me. It drove slowly deliberately right up onto the side walk next to me. A fat man in sunglasses who was going bald asked me if I was okay. I held up my hand in a wave and I said “I’m okay”. Then my chest hurt and I was dizzy again, my stomach ached and everything was spinning so I closed my eyes. I felt like I was going to cry and I clenched my fists and then it turned into anger and I opened my eyes and I screamed with a force I have never known “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT MOTHER FUCKER??” “GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME, GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME OR I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU”.

He looked at me like he didn’t understand “are you okay?” He asked again. And the anger just dropped right out of me, I was exhausted. “No I'm not okay; just tell me what you want”. He took out a pack of cigarettes and started to act like he was cool, he hits the pack against his hand, pops out a cigarette, throws it into his mouth and he lights it up. Looking at him I got a sense that he wasn’t always this fat and that he may have been some hip guy years ago but I was sickened at his posturing and revolted when he said “you just got to relax bro”. So I fucked with him. “Wait what did you say?” “I said you just gotta relax bro” “”No I can barely hear you, you said AX-TONE?” He squirmed and raised his voice a bit, “I said you, I SAID YOU JUST GOTTA RELAX BROHEIM”. “I DON’T KNOW WHERE THAT IS” I yelled “BUT I’M SURE THEY SELL MAPS AROUND HERE”. He tried to roll with it and play it cool “That’s not what I said man” “I’M FROM QUEENS” I yelled. “THANK YOU, THANK YOU VERY MUCH”, “JUST MAKE A RIGHT UP AHEAD BROHEIM”. He looked foolish sitting there in his car and he cleared his throat and drove on. Just as slowly as he came. I hoped I had broken his spirit; I wanted his hollow bones to crumble and his entire body to turn to dust.

I walked back to the hotel and there were maybe a thousand pigeons out front. I was petrified but they parted and let me pass. As I entered the lobby I recalled something. Earlier in the day I had fallen against a car, maybe that’s what that fat guy was talking about? When I fell against the car? Maybe it was his car?? I didn’t know but I burst out laughing. I walked into the lobby and the hotel clerk was still laughing and wiping tears from his eyes, he held his hand held up like “just a second I’m laughing here”, but I just walked past him and headed back up to my room. The door was ajar just like I had left it and there was a strange surge of comfort and familiarity as I walked down that hallway. She was in there sitting on a pillow and she looked like she had missed me. I realized I walked out because I was scared but what was out there was far more terrifying than what was in here. I could see in her tiny little bird eyes that she loved me and I had been foolish to be so afraid and there was a moment of tension as I stood there at the foot of the bed, until I smiled and lay down beside her. The light was dim from the window and I turned on the TV, she jumped up on my shoulder and leaned into my neck and I leaned against her. The laugh track of some sitcom faded into the room, and George Jefferson shouted “and now isn’t that exactly what I’ve been sayin’ all along?” and that was the first thing that made sense all day. I realized there is nothing at all to be afraid of, if anything... at all.