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| A Late-Summer Suday Morning in Jackson Heights by CrackerBarrel 02/11/2003, 1:35pm PST | ||||
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| This story is true:
I had awoken with a head dense from the night's drinking and a stomach roiling with hunger and poison. It was late a late Sunday morning in the heyday of my life in New York City. The night before was a bigger one than usual, out with my surprisingly wealthy friends and our shocking wads of cash--we were professional waiters. There was a little cocaine and a lot of drinking, but I remembered everything and after a litre of water in the morning I felt better than I could have. There was a girl I remember kissing and groping in the bathroom over my paltry bag of coke. She blew me in the stall and asked for no return in kind, in fact she kissed me with her semen-tasting mouth and left without a word. No numbers were given and none were asked, which was fine. Months later I would embark on the biggest romantic failure of my life. But that's not what this story is about. That morning I felt good, though somewhat drunk still. My senses were open and raw as they usual are when I'm hungover--a sensation favorable to me. I needed fatty food and coffee and I wanted someone to bring these things to me. There was a guy who was subletting my roommate's room for a month, an overbearing Jew in an artform not considered to be the proper milieu of Jews. He was on the threshold of the nominal success he enjoys today back then, which only made him more of a bastard. We had a certain workable animosity between us. But I was feeling fine and above petty personality conflicts, so I asked him if he wanted to go to a diner. He said yes and I left for a moment to get cash from the ATM a few blocks away. My aparment building was the very south west corner of what is known as Lefrak city. I was literally a few blocks away from Little New Delhi, but also blocks away from a white Latin American neighborhood (Angentinians, Uruguayans, etc), a darker Latin American slum, a Polish outpost, and across Roosevelt Avenue there was the vast Korean neighborhoods. It was a good neighborhood. No one ethnic group dominated and none resented the other, though there were a few Korean mafia killings across Roosevelt, but that seemed worlds away. It was hot, I remember. My sweat was acrid with the booze, but it felt cleanly swept away by the generous breeze flowing down the streets and through my thin shirt. The sun was high and golden, but I was protected in the dappled shade of the trees lining the streets. I passed a busy Indian Fresh Food market with the Indian women scrutinizing the produce with intense eyes and strategic squeezes. I was enjoying the pedestrain traffic and the pleasant hum of a busy neighborhood. As I entered the last narrow street on the way to the bank I saw a man in front of a white brick apartment building across the street from me. He was standing in front of an iron-gated door on the side of the building, not the usual glass-doored entrance. There were a few makeshift buzzers there mounted on the wall. The man was probably in his fifties. He had a full head of white and gray hair slicked back. He wore a pink and white striped button-up that had the tell-tale rectangular creases crossing his chest and back. His khaki trousers were perfectly creased and he wore tired brown shoes polished to a shine. As he stood there in front of the door, he was turned sideways, picking at a small cedar shrub set into a raised planting platform. His chest was heaving with sobs. When I saw the man I detested him. He saw me looking at him, and he tried to quell the sobbing, but it seemed to redouble instead. My mind created stories. He was a drunk, he looked the ageing-drunk type--furrowed face, bags under the eyes. Maybe he lost his job as super of that building. I turned away from him and put it out of my mind; the day was so fine. I went down the street a little ways and crossed to the bank. At the ATM I saw a neighbor of mine, an older woman that was in love with my cat. We talked briefly, I got my money and exited. I was not thinking about the man or his crying, in fact I had forgotten him completely, or else I would have crossed the street again to avoid him. When I reached the iron door, he was gone. I remembered him and was relieved he was not there all at once. But there in the blotchy golden sunlight, sitting on the concrete wall of the raised planter, next to the buzzers I saw two things. I saw what looked to me at the time as an orange, unripe tomato and a bundle of three pink carnations, stalks bound neatly together. Something moved in me at that moment. I almost re-entered a state of drunkenness: my head reeled, my eyes dried. I reached out for a brief second to take the strange fruit, but I could barely get my arm out to do it. I walked away. By the time I reached my apartment I had formed another story in my head. The man was perhaps a janitor in the nearby hospital. He had met a woman, perhaps a nurse or receptionist. She was a bit plump and shy and younger than he was, though old enough to feel that time was wasting. When the two met in the hall, the skinny man trembled when he spoke, but he was polite and gentlemanly. The woman, though shy, still held hopes for a dark beau to see through to her, so she considered the older man little. She returned his politeness, but did her best to move along in her work. One day, after years maybe, they shared a laugh, and his nervousness pushed him to ask her to lunch. Caught off guard and unskilled as to how to reject, she accepted. He was at least very polite and nice. Maybe he would make a good friend, she thought. It was only lunch, it really meant nothing. That Sunday morning came and she woke up late, a little nervous. She sat on the couch with sweatpants and a tee-shirt on, watching TV for hours and hours, not abiding the clock. Having pushed herself out of expecting anything, she jumped when the door buzzer rang. She turned the TV down to almost mute and sat with muscles tense and arms and legs wrapped into each other. The brilliant sunlight bounced obliquely through the high window--she lived in a shadowy basement apartment--illuminating lazy motes of dust. The buzzer rang again and she tensed, slowing even her breathing now. The buzzer rang and rang. She was beginning to ache from the stillness. Still, once when the buzzer had rang she half-lunged to get up, an excuse of having come down with the a flu--"I hope it's not the West Nile Virus"--racing through her head. But she stopped herself and resumed her huddled posture. The buzzing became less frequent and eventually stopped, though she stayed still for quite some time. What happens then? Do they see each other again? Does he drag himself into a bar? Does she make excuses about a sick aunt? Does he forgive her, perhaps lying that he didn't even make it to her apartment? Maybe he was flip and told her he forgot all about it. I don't know, for some reason the vision I had stopped there and to me justifiably so. You see, what is tragic about this story is not that these two did not see past their own insecurities to be able to provide comfort to the other. What is tragic is that they go on, unaware that they have lived, for that moment, in the Great American Tragedy, and do their best to forget it. |
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A Late-Summer Suday Morning in Jackson Heights by 02/11/2003, 1:35pm PST  Re: A Late-Summer Suday Morning in Jackson Heights by 02/11/2003, 9:24pm PST |
