"You don't have to be bored anymore"

From across the subway car, I can tell he's watching. That he's going to come over. He's dirty and there's something off; it's unclear whether this is mental illness or something else. I am thinking about getting up, going to a new train car, escaping, but it's too late; he is already there, shuffling into the seat next to me. His voice is low. He mumbles something, a question.

This has happened before. I've been here almost 7 years, after all. It has happened to everyone. Someone, a stranger, says something crazy, or disgusting. Sometimes both. The difference is that this time, I am not moving, not getting up, no half-smile to the other passengers that says, "what a nut, eh?". I tell him to fuck off. Furious. He's furious. He's on his feet, shouting and bouncing and waving. I am on my feet now too. The other passengers, the Christmas-shopping tourists, tired day-shifters, hooting teenagers, are moving away, escaping to the other side of the train. And it's hilarious that they're moving away, in part, from me. From what I might do. I would laugh, but I'm scared out of my mind. The man is pushed up against me, shouting, his hand on my shoulder.

My hands are clenched. Everything's blurry and I'm so hot it's hard to breathe. I barely recognize my own voice when I snarl it. When I shout it. Go ahead and hit me. I dare you.

How can it be that only an hour later my friend Fred and I are sitting down to pumpkin ravioli at the kitchen table. I don't point out to him that my hands are still shaking as I pour the wine. And when I try to explain what happened, I can't do it. Explanations are lost on Fred tonight anyway. He is Fresh Off the Jet from Korea and Japan, where he was famous; there are pictures of him thronged by girls as he signs autographs. He's hardly slept in two days and he is beginning to forget the words for everyday things. At O'Connors, over the budweisers I guarantee him will help him sleep through the night, his eyes begin to quiver, to shimmy ever so slightly. It makes me laugh. He laughs too, but by the time I drop him off at the Q train, his face has gone blank and his hat is sweetly crooked. He wakes up 14 hours later, ready for pancakes.


*This update completed while listening to Tito Puente.

And Don't the Kids Just Love It

The Michiganders.

They're a lovely older couple from Eastern Michigan. A dairy farmer and a teacher, visiting their daughter. We met them at a bar. They bought our pumpkin ale and we offered to show them Brooklyn. We were boastful, loud; we guaranteed them they would love it. "You need to see it up close," I told them. "We'll pick you up in the morning." Which is how I find myself, exhausted, sandwiched between them in the back seat of a little hatchback early on Saturday. We take them to Tom's for breakfast, and Gus gives me a kiss and asks, "Has our little Australian gone back?" and he is wistful when I tell him she has; it's so easy to love Jess. The Michiganders are amazed at the variety of pancakes and ponder sweetly what a cherry lime rickey might be. She calls him Dad. He's shy, and quiet. I wonder aloud if he misses his farm.

We buy them cheese fries and hot dogs in Coney Island, and they don't mind that the wind and drizzle is messing up their hair; they're good sports, and they laugh with big, booming midwestern laughter. They like Kensington and Flatbush and Sheepshead Bay, and even Bay Ridge, though I tell them they don't need to. In Rockaway, Dad kicks at the sand and has a smoke as they both marvel at the unexpectedness of these little beach houses, at the quiet. "This is New York City?" they ask. "Are you sure?"

Mario.

With our friend Peggy, we've climbed up to the loft of the giant Williamsburg apartment that he's playing in. For a different view, a new view. It's a strange party; pop bands alternating with hardcore ones. The crowd has been eyeing each other suspiciously since it started. The last band is playing and the music is deafening. I squeeze his arm and shout, "I think my head is going to explode." He stares at me blankly; his hands are covering his ears and he can't hear me at all. Outside, the JMZ train is clattering by, back and forth. It's so close we can see people looking out the windows of the train cars; when I wave at them, a little boy waves back.

Mario is a friend from Oakland. I only see him once a year, at the most...long enough to tell him my secrets and for him to give me advice on children's behavioral modification and long enough for us to gossip, laughing hysterically, on an empty roof under the Williamsburg bridge. Long enough for him to find my soccer game on Sunday despite the enormity of Prospect Park. Mario is the cat's namesake (as is Jim Flood). When the veterinarian's receptionists call "Mario Allen!" at the annual check-ups, they must wonder why I'm laughing, Mario, and it's because I'm thinking of you. How you sing along with the radio. How you remove the onions from a burrito with the skill of a surgeon.


*This update typed while listening to Air Miami.

It's only a paper moon

Jess.

The night before she left, I was sitting on the kitchen floor, too drunk and too tired to get up and sit in a chair. Next to me was a friend of ours who had come over at three that morning and also seemed happy to be on the floor, with a wall behind him, and the center of gravity flattened and simple. Jess and I love that some of our favorite people in the world are scattered all over: in Chicago and San Francisco and Madrid and England and the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin. But somewhere between the Australian ghost stories she was telling and the cookies I made at 4 that morning and the stories we all told about the very old people that we love, I start to wish that the world was smaller. That she didn't live so far away.

There's a house on Marlborough Road that we both love for its giant front porch and I know that when I dive into the leaves in the yard that she'll dive into them too. I like the way she stomps around in leaves, kicking her feet up high to get them off the ground. The way she tosses them into the air so they drift down onto her head.

When I get home from school the house is dark and her things are gone. I'm happy that she left, happy for her sake; it was time for her to start making her way back to Melbourne, and I knew it even while we tried to convince her to stay. I fumble around in the living room looking for the note I'm sure she's left when I remember that she always leaves notes on the table. And I am only halfway down the hall to the kitchen when I know exactly what I will find with the note: a potted amaryllis. I'm sure it will be there as much as I've ever been sure of anything. I only mentioned them once to her, days ago, passing a bodega. "Those are my favorite," I told her, as we walked past, quickly, on the way to the subway. And it's just like her to remember that I love them.

The apartment is a ruin of half-finished bottles of wine and the rinds of good cheese and cracker boxes and clementine peels and empty bottles of Lithuanian and Australian beer crammed like a crowd of tourists on the end table. She slept in the middle of all of this, in the pull-out bed, and she slept like a rock, even when the sun started streaming through the curtains and the bus brakes shrieked and the Puerto Rican men who are always having a party in the back of their parked van start playing bailar-bailar music early. And it amazed me that she could sleep so soundly and then suddenly leap out of bed and be ready 5 minutes later to seek out wonderful old diners in Greenpoint, and to chat with hilarious subway conductors in the middle of the night, and to search for gospel music in Harlem on an early Sunday morning. When she was here, the possibilities of every day were a little more beautiful and the people we met were a little more fascinating and every moment was bursting with strange and lovely potential. These are the best things a friend can give to you. The sun is coming up and I can't wait for the day to begin. Wake up, Jessie, we've got so much to do.



*This update typed while listening to a compiliation of songs about the subway.

Rhiannon

It's the way my hands are covered with little knicks from cutting linoleum.

And it's the early sunsets and the brief moments of panic they cause.

And it's the scuffling sound of walking through leaves on the sidewalk late at night.

And it's saffron and cinnamon and pumpkins. Garlic and sage and nutmeg.

And it's the heat coming on, and the heat failing again.

And it's third graders, and the way they laugh like crazy at my bad jokes.

And it's the leaves drifting down at the park with the sunlight filtering through.

And it's steam rising on the Gowanus on cold mornings.


*This update typed while listening to Nico.

She serves them whiskey and wine

It starts with a memory, a particular summer night in Wisconsin, when I was eight or nine. Whole years of childhood are blotchy or missing to me, and yet the feeling of one minute from this particular night is crystal clear. It's very dark and the sky is full of stars. The smell of the lake is everywhere, a green and heavy smell that I love. We are playing ghost around the graveyard, as we do every summer night. My friends are hiding somewhere behind my house, in the dark, waiting to tag me, and it's terrifying, even though it's only a game. I am looking down at my feet with astonishment; they are speeding over the grass and the world is gliding by at a perfect and even speed. Superhero feet. Gazelle feet. I am so fast, for that minute or two, that I wonder, in an eight or nine year old way, if there was something magical about the burgers my dad had grilled for dinner that night. Or the potato salad my mom had made.

On Saturday night, my feet are gliding, nimble and light, in exactly the same way. I am in Greenpoint. Once again I look down at them with astonishment. I am trying to find some Polish chocolate before a show starts and it seems like far too ordinary a moment to feel this fast. It was my fault that a Cadillac hit me while I was on this walk. It is a little known fact, however, that I was hit because I was trying to remember the verse of "Brandy" that starts, "Brandy wears a braided chain...". This so distracted me that I walked into an intersection with a two way stop, thinking it was a four.

And then suddenly I am on the ground, looking up at a street light, and I am thinking: I've got it. The line in Brandy I am trying to remember is suddenly clear as day: "Made of finest silver from the north of Spain." I sing the whole verse in my head, triumphant. I decide, in the next moment, that I will go back to the North of Spain, soon, to the Basque country. I will rent a bike and ride around near the sea, stopping to drink the local honey wine and to eat tapas. I decide that there are some secrets I have waited too long to tell and that I am going to tell them now. I decide to never get so lost in a one hit wonder again. I decide to sit up. The Polish man from the car is standing above me. He smells like cold air and cigarettes and vodka. He speaks to me in Polish, he doesn't speak English, and he is pleading and angry at the same time. As he is looking down at me, a wheezy sob escapes him and because I can't bear to see anyone cry, I start crying too. Not because of my left leg, which is throbbing, or because of the shock of getting hit by a car, but for reasons I can't put into words. I just don't know how to say it. We gaze at each other for a moment, tears streaming, and then I climb to my feet. It is up to me to show this man that I am fine. That it is not his fault.

#2 is to ride your bike your foot dragging the leaves in the gutter. Columbus, Ohio 1992

*This update typed while listening to Christine McVie.