Sunday, December 31, 2006

There was a knocked-over stack of sodden newspapers in the middle of the tarmac between rows of empty, waiting luggage trailers.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

I was reading an Ian McEwan story in the New Yorker about a clumsy and anxious couple on their wedding night when a couple just like them drifted into the restaurant where I was having lunch, a corner bistrot, French in every regard. They were mute and bewildered, evidently Anglo-Saxon. They stared blankly when the patronne offered them placemats at the bar. Eventually he pulled his knit hat back on his head and they retreated out the door. It seemed to me as though they had strayed off the page and, momentarily, into reality beside me.

Monday, December 18, 2006

We took turns walking out on the balcony to have a smoke or think about jumping.

Far below there were Christmas lights in windows and on buildings and in trees. The various bridges in the distance. The Chrysler Building.

That floaty, wobbly feeling when you look down from a great height, like your fear is cruelly lifting you out of your shoes.

I knocked over an entire tray of good artisan rustic bread and some kind of big, soft cheese.

I was drinking rum and Cokes, like I was back on the beach in 1985 with Matt and Nat and Rich and John. Pouring the Coke out of the big, squishy two-liter bottle and watching the bubbles sizzle on the ice. A nostalgia drink. The effervescent essence of my adolescence.

The night ended dully with The Matrix on TV, a movie everyone likes except now some people said they didn't, actually.

It's a good concept, is what I said.
Dan had prodigious sideburns, he was a student of my dad's. He had a nice house and a wife or girlfriend or whatever who had short hair and was an actress. She showed us pictures of a play she did where she played a princess and a pauper or something. She had a picture of herself all scintillating and pretty and then one all poor and dirty in the pauper makeup. She said it took thirty seconds one to the other, you couldn't tell this was true from two pictures, but we were impressed.

Someone gave me Coca-Cola and I watched a football game on TV. It was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Buccaneers always lost those days.

Always.

My dad had another student, she used to be Miss Connecticut. She had a boyfriend who was a car mechanic, long shaggy hair and a mustache. They drove up our driveway. She had a baby I think, rocked it in her arms. It had a knit hat with flaps over the ears. She rocked it as her man peered under the hood of our car. Our fan belt broke I think, maybe. He showed my dad and mom something and laughed.

"Look where it landed. Look where it went."

Everyone looked and laughed.

"See? See where it went?" He laughed.

The former Miss Connecticut rocked her baby in her arms and laughed as well.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

I had a dream I walked around a corner. I was a little girl. I had a dream I saw a red-painted thing. It was a plank of wood, a bench. Maybe. Peeled paint. Propped upon the dirt. A simple and poignant object.

I was in a novel written by Don Delillo.

I stood above the Pacific Ocean, like a room-size map. At my feet. Prepared to make a journey from Hawaii, south. To who knows where. Why. A long journey south across the dark blue, white-capped sea.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Since I've moved the unending stream of things I buy. Like I refuse to settle in, unconsciously. Or I'm caught for the occasion in the idiotic grip of materialistic lust. A spatula. Shades. Matching lamps on matching bedside tables. Goose-down pillows and a wall mount for the TV. I've been patiently waiting for it to all end. But there is no end.

I have a spasmodic, heaving cough I've not tended to so well. And as the ominous, pulsing waves of droning ambient music swell around me I lay me down to sleep.

Friday, December 01, 2006

As I walked along Third Street a man burst out a store door looking dazed. He held his hand up by his chest in the universal indication of something wrong breathing, something wrong heart beating. He staggered toward the wall. There was a strand of foamy spittle on his black turtleneck shirt. He was a healthy-looking black man, early 30s. He bent over to cough and heave as I walked past the door and looked inside. An aisle formed a ramp up to the door and I stared down it, saw the white floor's waxy sheen.

It appeared to be some kind of hardware store.

Thursday, November 30, 2006

His name was Kris with a K, he wrote his name on the back of my Friends & Family 20% off coupon card.

Wrote it with a K.

In blue ballpoint pen in the top left corner of the letter-sized card. His phone number too.

Kris was talking about Tampa. Clearwater to be precise.

"I've heard of it."

His eyes widened. "You have?"

"I have."

Now he's tellin' me how he moved here from there, onto 9th Avenue. S'OK but he wishes there was a subway.

"Eh, someday."

"Really?"

"Well no."

On the East Side, maybe.

And about how now he sees Clearwater everywhere.

"I'll look at something and somewhere, somehow in the fine print. It says Clearwater, Florida."

I nodded and smiled and said yes, that's what –

"And across the street from me there's this bar. And two of the bartenders are from Clearwater!"

"That's very strange."

"I go out, there's a group of people. Someone's from Tampa."

"Yes – that's bizarre."

"And then there's these other people who come up and are like, did you say you're from Tampa? We're from Clearwater."

"Maybe they're all fleeing," I volunteered.

"Date of birth?"

Kris was entering my data. I was taking the two-week trial at the New York Sports Club and here he was with the plans and such. He handed me my temporary magnetized card. A suspiciously portentous temporary card. Suggestive of lifetimes of recurring fees, referrals, costly training regimens undertaken in fits and starts.

"There you go!"

"Great. Nice to meet you," I said. I extended my hand.

"Not a problem at all – you too. To you too."

"OK. When I'm ready to – "

"Come see me – "

"I will."

"Have a good swim."

"Alright, man."

"Alright."

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Michael Richards is dying for our sins.
I get ideas riding in the passenger seats of cars on the highway at night, ideas for writing. Themes to trace from one memory to the next, a long-past folly, some incongruous idea. But then it evaporates on firm footing, to say nothing of the scouring light of day.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

What I Remember About the '90s

Flaming plane debris bobbing in the water at night
Tonya Harding's handful of cum
And Space Station Mir
My father once returned a pillow to the department store complaining that it smelled of chicken soup.

Today I threw out some old insurance papers, 401k stuff, warranties and receipts. Shit with my name all over it. Into a bag, down the chute and onto some great pile of sweet Manhattan garbage.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

We should have known when they were in our offices, to interview us or explain something or to test our mood and puzzle out our apprehensions. Every moment they were not addressing us or each other they faced their laptops to tip-tap away, God knows why. No one can conceivably have that much work to do with their digits, unless they're a novelist, video game coder or court stenographer. No one on a business trip for Christ's sake. It seemed to me a means of keeping the world at bay, of managing one's tidy corner of it safe and sound. But then when the deal went down I realized.

They're e-mailing all the time.

E-mails to and fro, to the to line and to the cc's. Thoughts? Fire away. Loop someone in why don't you. Give an action item to Bob. Take the lead. Drop the ball and circle back.

This frenzy at first glance seems to take the place of real work in a most ridiculous charade. But then maybe not. Maybe the micro-forces it exerts finally make the world go round.

Monday, November 06, 2006

I threw some things away and bought some slightly finer things to take their place. I arranged it all meticulously, and was dully pleased to see how all the empty spaces in between were even.

More or less.

And then it occurred to me, am I decorating my tomb?

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Lowell Eddy is my nemesis and he bats in the five spot. I bat sixth. Don't know how it all began. A perceived slight in the clubhouse – was it that dreary rain delay when we played cards with Raul and Esteban and Trainer Mike? I ridiculed his dealer's choice, some follow-the-queen claptrap. He spat a wad of chaw at my feet and said at least he didn't strike out not just once but three times last night, one time lookin'.

"Twice," I protested.

"Twice lookin'?" he asked, with mock, journalistic seriousness.

"No... twice... total," I explained lamely. Jesus, it sucks to have to explain something like that. Never be in a goddamn position where you're explaining you only struck out twice. "Never fucking mind."

"Two time, three time," he argued dismissively. "Three times a lady," he added bizarrely. Mike chuckled. What a moron.

"I done tired of gettin' on base and havin' you strike out, Kel," Lowell said, shaking his head. "I can get up there on first, 'cause I got a hit, took one for the team, whatever, I'm a man, see, and I can tip my hat and salute Old Glory and make the base my pillow. 'Cause I ain't goin' nowhere."

Mike hooted and snorted with glee. Raul and Esteban chuckled darkly. Only 'cause they like a fight.

Mike always had a towel draped over his right shoulder. Never did it bother me more than at this moment.

Suddenly I threw my hand in Lowell's face and it was a pretty good one, too. Ace-ten, suited, as I recall. There could have been upwards of $350 in that pot.

"Fuck you!" I said. Accent on the fuck. And I clomped away in my cleats. Over my shoulder they were laughing and going ooh-ooh. Like a table of little girls in the cafeteria. God I hated them all at that moment.

But mostly Lowell.

And Trainer Mike.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

I came back from the game half wasted and reacquainted myself with my ludicrously sparsely furnished apartment. I was starving and all there was to eat was ramen noodles in the brown package signifying beef.

Why do I have beef? I wondered. I know I fucking don't like beef. But upon closer scrutiny it wasn't beef-brown, it was teriyaki-chicken-brown. A duller, beiger shade. I boiled it in too little water and dashed it with cracked pepper. I drank a beer and ate it watching SportsCenter, with shrapnel shards of pepper, that rugged, brutish spice the Portuguese once pried from India, popping dark and dirty on my tongue.

I reflected vaguely upon the night's events.

I play third base for the Centropolis Eastmen, the most glorious and hallowed professional baseball team in all the land. And we had lost to the hated River City Hounds by four runs to three.

My name is Kelly Minter.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

The one girl, she had her face buried in her hands. The other girls said come over here, sit here. Leave me alone. They protested once or twice then gave up, unconcerned.

I've been leaning forward on the train, to ease my perpetual, vaguely sour stomach.

There's always an intriguing group of people waiting at the crosswalk on the northeast corner of Canal Street and Hudson in the morning. Fashion models and religious nuts. Pretty young dog walkers. Slavic looking guys. A couple of the Lost, together or apart, seeking Chinatown or the river.

Monday, September 18, 2006

I suspected that Steve had passed out. I sensed this as my attention shifted drearily from the television to my laptop screen. It seemed there was a new stillness in the room due to the removal of an animated element. I turned my neck lazily, expecting to see him prone, eyes closed, mouth agape, in the posture of one who has retreated into slumber. But his eyes were open and directed toward his laptop, on the coffee table before him. Though he was reclining he held his head up off the pillow. His index finger was poised on the keyboard, as though he were studiously contemplating whether to click. However, he remained perfectly motionless. I turned away and turned back a minute or two later. He was in precisely the same position. I turned away again, trying not to get his attention and thereby disturb his reverie. When I looked again minutes later he was still in precisely the same pose, finger on the key, on the precipice of triggering some action but never doing so.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

2:48 am and the urgent sound of marching, tribal drums fills the air outside. They've discovered drums, these sons and daughters of privilege. Sons and daughters of bitches. Drums and the air of sanctified ceremony only they can bring.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

He hears the sounds of fucking through the walls.

The lid was off the jar.

His lip bled into his cupped hand.


God I was tired yesterday and I'm tired again today. I briefly lost consciousness on the couch while watching college football - Syracuse and Iowa - and reading some article about Dick Cheney. It became increasingly difficult to focus on either the article or the game and then my mind became aswim in a menacing froth of whistles, huddles, arms negotiations and Condoleeza Rice.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

On My Way to Work

I'm pretty sure there was a woman walking toward me on the platform. Young and black. And I do believe I sat and waited for the train. I am under the impression the skies were clear when I emerged from underground. A woman walked her dog under the scaffold. I have a feeling the light stopped me at the avenue.

But I can't say for certain.

Critics and Audiences Agree

it's fun to bangg married chix everyday

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

I awoke with the following maxim floating in my head: "The easiest way to get rid of something is to sell it."

Monday, September 04, 2006

I caught the HBO On-Demand narration as I was flipping through and it said: "... so you can manage the entertainment that enters your home."

Monday, August 28, 2006

To Be Fucking Young

Tonight – Sunday night – kids are up on the roof again. We hear them tromp up there, quickly breaching the invisible border of the motion sensor alarm. EEP EEP EEP.

A minute later there's a ghastly shriek. A sound someone makes when they are sure they are about to die. We pause the TV in order to give each other portentous looks.

Because now it's serious.

Steve rises and gives a cursory glance out the window, as though he'd see something. As though he'd see some lithe, young white chick floating through the air, on her way to meet her sudden, unexpected end amidst the plywood, trash and pissed-on weeds of our back alley. Some pretty, precious thing ripe for the tabloids' first screaming headlines of the working week.

But there's nothing.

In fact the next sounds we hear are mirthful cries, the universal sounds of inebriated jubilation. Great convulsions of titters and exclamations.

More tromping.

And each time, the alarm: EEP EEP EEP.

Here we are making glum little jokes about how old we are, how young are they. But still. It's goddamned midnight.

Finally PC takes the initiative. With a few grim words like, "OK. Well." Resolutely he puts on his shoes and heads out the door.

I feel like he shouldn't have to shoulder this alone. Or also I want to take some kind of stand. Make some petty old man's gesture of my own.

So I follow him out the door. Up the stairs all slick and soiled by many muddy footsteps. Up on the roof under the hazy, rainy sky. There are at least 50 people up there. All having a good time and shit. Standing around in little groups. And PC spreads his arms and says, "Listen up!" And he says saying something about, I don't want to be a drag, but it's late, it's Sunday night, this has to stop.

It's unclear to what degree this is sinking in.

"Is there anyone who didn't get any of that?" he asks. Emphatically. But I find it an intriguing question nonetheless. And then I say, "Party's over." Because I feel like saying something. And immediately I regret it. The gulf between me and them is now articulated. I'm the old crank with the faintly tyrannical, empty taunt. Some chick says warily, "Yeah, yeah." Dismissively. Insolently. Like, The party may be over, but the war has just begun.

Maybe she's the chick we didn't see fall and die.

Ah, to be fucking young.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

In the Park, on our backs, with the multilingual murmur of the crowd around us. There was a strange cloud like a claw mark, soon absorbed into the night. And then planes and planes, some high, some low. Helicopters. People stepped single-file along the narrow track between the blankets, deliberate, like mountaineers. Out of nothing there arose the hum of strings and the opera being performed drifted over us like haze.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

From you stepped onto the platform off the train there was a smell. And it grew thicker toward the stairs, enveloping us in its strangely sweet clutches.

I climbed the stairs amid murmurs.

And burst out on Canal Street on a clear, blue day, beautiful in the extreme. And the stench was all around me: garbage, shit and death.

Monday, August 14, 2006

The vacation house has a dry, sweet tear of punch on the yellow formica countertop inviting ants. On the cutting board there's a quarter-eaten pie in a dented foil pan.

It's dark in there but for the light above the sink; people nursing sunburns are paying homage to TV.

Friday, August 11, 2006

They Lie in Circles on the Street

On my way across Malcolm X Boulevard at 110th Street this morning my reverie was interrupted by a deranged woman's insistent, outraged rant.

"They lie! They lie! They lie!" she repeated. Then, as she passed me across the crosswalk, veering somewhat into traffic: "They lie in circles on the street!"

Thursday, August 10, 2006

What's Your Poison?

On fucking 9/11 we met at her apartment late in the day to watch TV. The general hysteria served to deflect the malaise that had infected us, it seemed. She welcomed me with a Mona Lisa smile. My sister had preceded me and was on the phone, distraught, crosslegged on J's ancient, thinning rug.

They were drinking – it was inconceivable not to drink, of course – but J. said something weird to me. Under the circumstances. She said, "What's your poison?"

I guess she meant, gin or vodka. I paused and gamely made a choice, whatever it was and for whatever it was worth. But it struck me funny that she said that. On any other day I'd appreciate the weird juxtaposition, intentional or not, of hokey cliché and wry morbidity. But on that day, it was - weird. And I didn't even want to be all reverent or nothing. Far be it from me.

But still.

What's your poison?

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

The Acquisition - 1

We looked each other over and said, nice pants, nice shirt. We all wore the same pants. We all wore the same shirt.

We didn't really but we did, really.

We entered via the voluminous rotating door and there we were in a gigantic atrium, peered down upon by skylight and a gleaming acre of marble. Purposeful people came and went.

To and fro.

We'd been summoned by the enormous company for interviews with a view toward the enormous company's possible acquisition of our tiny startup.
We looked each other over and said, nice pants, nice shirt. We all wore the same pants. We all wore the same shirt.

We didn't really but we did, really.

We entered via the voluminous rotating door and there we were in a gigantic atrium, peered down upon by skylight and a gleaming acre of marble. Purposeful people came and went.

To and fro.
Every night in the mirror I must examine my incrementally deteriorating scowling, jowly face.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

We met on Sixth Avenue at a quarter to nine, in a street-sign eddy of the sidewalk rapids: people going to work and tourists, doe-eyed and slow; witless and imperiled in the bustle.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Concentrated built liquid detergents containing a biodegradable chelant
Modification of pertussis toxin


This morning at the snack stand in Central Park.

The Russian snack stand.

With display case: Seran generic muffin; German candy, also Czech; cookie chocolate-chip and black-and-white.

A taste of heaven on earth.

I ask for a plain bagel. Toasted, a little cream cheese.

"Yessir! Bagel. We got a plain bagel, poppy seed and uh, everything."

"I'll have a plain bagel."

"You got it!"

Circuit breaker having a cam structure which aids blow open operation
Stable non-aqueous blends for personal care compositions


A few seconds pass. He saws at the invisible roll.

"Do you have iced coffee?" I ask. It's goddamned hot by the way. 95 degrees or whatever.

"No, no ice coffee."

"OK. A coffee, plain, black, no sugar."

"You got it!"

He takes the bagel out the oven and spreads the cream cheese from the vat. He sets it upon a paper plate and tops it with a clutch of napkins. Like I'll be taking it across the lawn to Aunt Matilda.

"Three twenny-fife."

I put a fiver down and rustle up a quarter too.

"Fife twenny fife!"

He lays out my two bucks change.

"Thank you!" I say. And lift the plate and bagel and goddamn napkins and balance it all on the coffee which is hot as fuck and I do mean hot as fuck. I put one of the fucking napkins around the coffee cup but still.

"You welcome! You got it!"

Methods and compositions for increasing production of erythromycin
Concentrated built liquid detergents containing a dye-transfer inhibiting additive

Monday, July 17, 2006

Jury Duty

Downtown where the courts are the doors are tall. I saw iron gates and columns, and steps and steps and steps. Of extraordinary breadth. Steps whose breadth will make you comatose. Whose breadth suggests the world is without purpose. And that the world is flat. That you'll fall off it one fine day.

We crowded into the juror's waiting room and awaited further instruction. Finally we were instructed to wait.

I was trying to read the New Yorker with my head propped on my hand, my elbow on the arm of the chair. I felt melatonin seep gently into my brain.

Before you knew it there was some kind of announcement regarding lunch.

I explored the strangely timewarped environs of the court. I walked east, I think, yes, east. No – west. I walked west. Toward Broadway and everything. All the stores were old stores, discount stores with corrugated faces, cigar shops, luncheonettes. The very streetlights and lamps took on the aspect of mid-20th-century modernity, the days we all said wow.

I had a solitary lunch at a bar with a friendly bartender, she seemed to be from something like Wisconsin. She recommended the California Cab and who was I to refuse.

Back in court we waited. I drifted off to sleep on crooked elbow. They emptied the room in sets of three dozen or so throughout the course of that drowsy afternoon, sending them all up there to their fates as dispensers of justice. And then they said: Come back tomorrow.

We sat for what seemed like hours in the deep mahogany pews of some courtroom on the what was it, sixth floor. Like schoolkids on detention.

We were each assigned a number and urged in the strongest possible terms to memorize it.

"You will be handed a card. Memorize the number on your card."

I received a card and memorized the number.

"Do not forget the number on your card. This number is your number. The number on your card."

I thought about my number. I liked my number. I thought about the number on my card.

My number was 17.

Vaguely I worried: What if that was not the number on my card?

What if the card said 19?

I pried the card out of my pocket, a card just like some business card. Of someone you met at a party or a bar.

It said 17.

I was 17.

We were told we would be moving. To another courtroom. The two officers in charge occasionally excused themselves to ascertain the preparedness of this next stage; of its judge, its officers, God knows what. They'd leave and say, Don't leave. They inspired in us solemn and unquestioning consent.

Finally we filed out into what, an antechamber. We piled into elevators in disordered, deferential sets.

When we had to wait we waited.

When we arrived on the 23rd floor the courtroom was, strangely, still not ready. We hovered in the lobby next to windows to the north. The windows looked upon Canal Street, Chinatown, Little Italy, the Lower East Side, the East Village, Chelsea and, looming in the midst, the Empire State Building.

For Christ's sake.

They opened the door and we filed in processional. Tomb quiet. Maybe fifty of us in all.

It was startlingly, remarkably cold in the courtroom. Colder than the moment you were born.

The court clerk, a young black woman with a languid posture, told us instructions. Sit in these rows. We will be calling your name, your number. We will call you to sit in the box.

A door somewhere opened and a black-gowned figure floated in.

All rise.

His honor So-and-So.

He welcomed us in the sternest possible manner. Yet I could perceive in him a trace of hard-won benevolence, a real thing, not put on nor imagined, that sustained him through these trials with their evidence of repeated, fateful failings of our kind.

I liked him.

During the course of his preamble the judge said: This case is a racketeering case. It is a case, you will hear talk of the Mafia. You will hear talk, la Cosa Nostra. The defendant's name is Gregory DePalma. Here he is now, sitting before you. He is an elderly man. He is in very poor health. He is an ailing man.

And he recited the charges against this man, a garish hodgepodge of loan sharking, bookmaking, assault, intimidation, embezzlement, payola.

And more.

His candor had a rhythmic, mesmerizing effect, as of some litany or chant.

Mafia. Cosa Nostra. DePalma.

Bookmaking. Loan sharking.

He duly introduced the prosecution and defense.

Then, one at a time our numbers were selected by the languid black girl from some ancient, hallowed tumbler. It was six-sided, I think, all nicely wood.

Number 27 please. Take the first seat in the box.

I was the third juror.

There began the litany of excuses.

I have a house reserved in the Hamptons. It's quite expensive.

My son is graduating and I can't miss his graduation. He's graduating.

My wife requires medical attention and I am afraid no one will look after her.

Some tearful.

I for one saw no reason to reject my duty though I felt as though I were sliding inexorably toward something strange and new. Bewildering.

When the first phase of laborious and faltering rationalizations, supplications and concessions ended we were dismissed for lunch. A period not to exceed one hour and one half.

We tromped out of the box and out the stately door.

The defendant, froglike, sunken in his chair and neck, examined us with jaundice.

If ever he leaves I bet he takes the back door out.

I went to an Italian restaurant outside of space and time. Giant potted plants, and tablecloths, and napkins. An easel with a chalkboard, specials written in pink chalk.

I heaved myself up to the bar like a shipwrecked man to shore.

I ate pasta and meat sauce, drank Chianti. I listened to some rich old lady prattle on. To her husband and their friends. The put-upon bartender, who wore red.

She wore a long coat and a scarf.

Back at the courtroom for another round of excuses. The prosecutors with their manila folders with rows of sticky notes representing each of us. Some covered in handwriting and some not. The court clerk wrapped up in her shawl, looking bored. The defendant glum, head swiveling almost imperceptibly to cast his glare upon the room.

Then the judge asked, has anyone here ever committed a crime, been the victim of a crime, known anyone who's been convicted or known anyone who's been a victim? If so, stand up and form two lines.

I thought, this is my chance to get out of this trial. But curiously my back was pinned to the chair. I don't know why. Maybe I thought I was fated to be on this jury and I didn't want to impede fate. But I was compelled to after a few minutes. I once plead guilty and I have a friend in jail. So I, too, got up and got in line.

When I got to the front the clerk said what number are you and I said 17 and she said 17 to the judge and the counsel assembled in a sort of familial huddle at the sidebar. I approached them, walking in the direction of the judge. Making eye contact.

"What number are you?" he said.

"17."

"And what do you have to tell me?" He eyed me in a kindly, attentive manner. The very picture of a judge.

"I once plead guilty to filing a false report," I said.

"Tell me what happened."

"I had an accident in my car and left the scene and reported it stolen."

"What was your sentence?"

"50 hours of community service."

He smiled. "Do you think this experience would impair your ability to be a fair and impartial juror in this case?" He asked the way you ask when you already know the answer and just asking is a kind of joke.

"No," I answered, smiling too.

One of the prosecutors, standing beside the judge, was examining me with wide, alert eyes. He whispered something urgently into the judge's ear then turned to me again with his wide-eyed stare. It occurred to me that only the judge was allowed to address me and with the handicap of silence the others' senses grew more keen. He was speaking to me with his eyes.

The judge said, "There is an issue in this case of perhaps false reports of some sort or other. Being filed and whatnot." Serious now. "Are you sure you would be able to be fair?"

"Yes," I said. I felt a desire to elaborate, I'm not sure why. Maybe I thought it would please him. Maybe I wanted to prolong this odd ritual, to decorate it with more words. "My feeling is that the issue I was involved in was relatively trivial, and I suspect that the issues in this case might not be as trivial, and I'm quite sure I could evaluate them fairly."

A beat of pause.

"So you think you would have no problem accepting my instruction as to the law in this case?"

"I believe I would not."

"Anything else?"

"A friend of mine is in jail for drug trafficking. And resisting arrest."

No immediate reaction from the judge. I took this as an indication I should continue. Perhaps even that he was underwhelmed and I should find a way to supplement my declaration.

"And I have some other friends who have gone to jail for drugs."

"These other friends, are they still in jail?"

His question struck me as slightly irrelevant and this intrigued me.

"I believe they are no longer in jail."

"But the one friend, he's still in jail?"

"Yes, I believe so."

"And what is your view of what happened to your friend?"

"I believe he was arrested unjustly. I believe he shouldn't be in jail."

"Why?"

"I disagree with the drug laws. I don't think anyone should go to jail for growing and selling pot."

The judge nodded without a trace of surprise or reproach. He turned to the prosecutor beside him. "There are no drug charges in this case right?"

"No your honor I don't believe there are."

Long pause. Judge eyeing me over.

"I'm going to let you sit. Thank you."

As I walked back to my seat I felt, unexpectedly, a faint elation. Like I'd done well on some level. Or, a great wheel had been creakily set in motion and I was powerless to stop it, and for this I was glad.

There was a prolonged conference at the sidebar, the entire courtroom still. The people in line had all gone up and now there was no one left in line and we were all back in our assigned seats and waiting.

"Number 17," the judge looked up and barked. The clerk repeated, "17?"

I got up and walked back to that crowded, shadowed corner.

"There's been some concern expressed," the judge declared. "You told me things such as your case was trivial, this case is not. You are using terms that indicate. That indicate to me that you are forming ideas and prejudices regarding the particulars of this case before you've seen evidence. In the case."

"I understand."

"Will you be able to put those ideas out of your mind, this is important. Ideas such as this is important, such and such is trivial?"

"I do believe I would."

"So are you certain that you would be able to judge fairly in this case?"

"Yes, I do."

A bit warily the judge said for me to go and sit. I had not walked halfway to the box when they called my number again.

"17 again. Please."

I turned on my heels and dutifully returned.

"There are some things you said, I have to ask," the judge stated. "About your friend in jail. The drugs."

"Yes?"

"There are no drug charges in this case per se but there is the issue of the illegal interstate transport of prescription drugs."

"Ah."

"Is this an issue where you feel, your ideas about drug laws. Is this a situation where you would have a problem in terms of evaluating fairly?"

"I don't believe so. My feeling about what happened to my friend concerns the fact that he was growing pot and I believe that's relatively innocuous and should not be illegal."

"So other drugs, prescription drugs, you would accept my instructions and – "

"Yes."

"Be fair and impartial?

"I believe I would."

Silence. And then: "I think I'm going to let you sit. Thank you."

I walked away once more, and just as I sat down the judge lifted his head and mouthed something to the clerk.

"17," she said. "Number 17."

Again I walked that familiar path, in the cool glare of every other juror and Gregory DePalma.

"I have a concern in terms of your willingness to accept my instructions," began the judge this time. "Things like relatively, this or that is worse and this is trivial and what have you. That's not for you to say. Your decision must be based on my instructions as to the law. So. Do you feel that you would be able to set aside your ideas about the law and accept my instructions in this case?"

"I believe I would, given that this case does not involve an aspect of the law I would have a disagreement with." This I heard myself say. And somehow I knew in this wordy equivocation I was precipitating my demise. Or engineering my escape, perhaps unconsciously. Something seemed to tighten in the judge.

"Are you saying that it might be possible under different circumstances, you might ignore my instructions?"

I followed the lead, like it was too late to turn back now.

"If this were my friend's trial, I believe I would be – "

"Never mind your friend's trial, if this – "

"If this were a case similar to my friend's," I corrected, knowing exactly where he was going and wanting to prove it for some reason, "I would be quite tempted" – I don't know why I chose that phrase but it seemed to strike some balance between obeisance toward the system and my own convictions – "to disregard your instructions if it meant keeping my friend out of jail."

"Not your friend."

"Keeping the accused out of jail. For a similar crime."

The judge examined me with what frankly seemed to be a trace of disappointment.

"I'm going to let you go. You're free to go."

And the judge hung his head to confer with the others as I stepped to the clerk's desk and she gave me a little card and she said give it to them downstairs, you're free to go, and she looked past me as I turned and left. And I don't mind saying that at that moment I felt not free but lost.

Jury Duty - 12

There was a prolonged conference at the sidebar, the entire courtroom still. The people in line had all gone up and now there was no one left in line and we were all back in our assigned seats and waiting.

"Number 17," the judge looked up and barked. The clerk repeated, "17?"

I got up and walked back to that crowded, shadowed corner.

"There's been some concern expressed," the judge declared. "You told me things such as your case was trivial, this case is not. You are using terms that indicate. That indicate to me that you are forming ideas and prejudices regarding the particulars of this case before you've seen evidence. In the case."

"I understand."

"Will you be able to put those ideas out of your mind, this is important. Ideas such as this is important, such and such is trivial?"

"I do believe I would."

"So are you certain that you would be able to judge fairly in this case?"

"Yes, I do."

A bit warily the judge said for me to go and sit. I had not walked halfway to the box when they called my number again.

"17 again. Please."

I turned on my heels and dutifully returned.

"There are some things you said, I have to ask," the judge stated. "About your friend in jail. The drugs."

"Yes?"

"There are no drug charges in this case per se but there is the issue of the illegal interstate transport of prescription drugs."

"Ah."

"Is this an issue where you feel, your ideas about drug laws. Is this a situation where you would have a problem in terms of evaluating fairly?"

"I don't believe so. My feeling about what happened to my friend concerns the fact that he was growing pot and I believe that's relatively innocuous and should not be illegal."

"So other drugs, prescription drugs, you would accept my instructions and – "

"Yes."

"Be fair and impartial?

"I believe I would."

Silence. And then: "I think I'm going to let you sit. Thank you."

I walked away once more, and just as I sat down the judge lifted his head and mouthed something to the clerk.

"17," she said. "Number 17."

Again I walked that familiar path, in the cool glare of every other juror and Gregory DePalma.

"I have a concern in terms of your willingness to accept my instructions," began the judge this time. "Things like relatively, this or that is worse and this is trivial and what have you. That's not for you to say. Your decision must be based on my instructions as to the law. So. Do you feel that you would be able to set aside your ideas about the law and accept my instructions in this case?"

"I believe I would, given that this case does not involve an aspect of the law I would have a disagreement with." This I heard myself say. And somehow I knew in this wordy equivocation I was precipitating my demise. Or engineering my escape, perhaps unconsciously. Something seemed to tighten in the judge.

"Are you saying that it might be possible under different circumstances, you might ignore my instructions?"

I followed the lead, like it was too late to turn back now.

"If this were my friend's trial, I believe I would be – "

"Never mind your friend's trial, if this – "

"If this were a case similar to my friend's," I corrected, knowing exactly where he was going and wanting to prove it for some reason, "I would be quite tempted" – I don't know why I chose that phrase but it seemed to strike some balance between obeisance toward the system and my own convictions – "to disregard your instructions if it meant keeping my friend out of jail."

"Not your friend."

"Keeping the accused out of jail. For a similar crime."

The judge examined me with what frankly seemed to be a trace of disappointment.

"I'm going to let you go. You're free to go."

And the judge hung his head to confer with the others as I stepped to the clerk's desk and she gave me a little card and she said give it to them downstairs, you're free to go, and she looked past me as I turned and left. And I don't mind saying that at that moment I felt not free but lost.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

The French Dream

The French had invested a lot in Zinédine Zidane, in terms of representing France not just in the way all sports heroes make their countries proud but also of representing a certain idea – OK, a fantasy – of France as a well-integrated, tolerant and faultlessly high-minded society. A place where on the rough streets of Marseille the son of immigrants learns to play soccer, and the more he learns the more his soccer-loving patrie encourages and reveres him, and wishes ever more keenly to make him one of its own; and in the glow of this adoration he learns not just to be a great footballer but also to be French. To be reasoned and articulate, civic-minded, formally engaged in his society. And as a man – transformation complete, voilà – he evinces both of these, shall we say, talents in full view of the world.

Call it the French dream.

The problem with this idea of France and this idea of Zidane – these twin fantasies – is that of course being fantasies they are not true. But in some senses they are nearly true, agonizingly almost true, and they are so noble that people may be forgiven for deeply yearning for them to be true, even pretending that they are true, and because for all that strain they still aren't true this state of affairs is nothing less than tragic.

Last November in the suburbs the fantasy of French society broke down and last Sunday in Berlin the fantasy of Zinédine Zidane broke down. In a moment, Zidane was no longer the French man playing the ultimate match of his glorious career, he was the immigrant kid playing a street game in the concrete jungle where he grew up; a place where doubtless milder insults than the one he heard were ample provocation for sharper retaliation than a head-butt to the chest.

But isn't that what made Zidane a great player? His ability to thrive in the ghetto, to navigate crowds of rough-playing street kids – arms, elbows, shoulders swinging – and forge a clear path to the goal? Isn't that what made Zidane a great Frenchman? To come from outside and, with great strain and ruthless determination, to find a way in?

The French dream.

Planting your head in an opponent's chest is not, in and of itself, excusable. Surely Zidane knows that more than anyone else. But can he be forgiven? The question is whether the French can reconcile the two Zidanes: their fantasy of Zidane and the flawed, great man that he is. To do so they must address their fantasy of France. It is not a tidy nation where people of all colors meekly and gratefully aspire to Cartesian virtues. It is a difficult, tumultuous, stubborn place where with a little effort anyone might be heard above the din.

Jacques Chirac's predictable plaudits actually express well what Zidane might hope to someday regain from his nation: "You are... a man of heart, commitment, conviction. That's why France admires and loves you."

The French dream, indeed.

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Jury Duty - 11

When I got to the front the clerk said what number are you and I said 17 and she said 17 to the judge and the counsel assembled in a sort of familial huddle at the sidebar. I approached them, walking in the direction of the judge. Making eye contact.

"What number are you?" he said.

"17."

"And what do you have to tell me?" He eyed me in a kindly, attentive manner. The very picture of a judge.

"I once plead guilty to filing a false report," I said.

"Tell me what happened."

"I had an accident in my car and left the scene and reported it stolen."

"What was your sentence?"

"50 hours of community service."

He smiled. "Do you think this experience would impair your ability to be a fair and impartial juror in this case?" He asked the way you ask when you already know the answer and just asking is a kind of joke.

"No," I answered, smiling too.

One of the prosecutors, standing beside the judge, was examining me with wide, alert eyes. He whispered something urgently into the judge's ear then turned to me again with his wide-eyed stare. It occurred to me that only the judge was allowed to address me and with the handicap of silence the others' senses grew more keen. He was speaking to me with his eyes.

The judge said, "There is an issue in this case of perhaps false reports of some sort or other. Being filed and whatnot." Serious now. "Are you sure you would be able to be fair?"

"Yes," I said. I felt a desire to elaborate, I'm not sure why. Maybe I thought it would please him. Maybe I wanted to prolong this odd ritual, to decorate it with more words. "My feeling is that the issue I was involved in was relatively trivial, and I suspect that the issues in this case might not be as trivial, and I'm quite sure I could evaluate them fairly."

A beat of pause.

"So you think you would have no problem accepting my instruction as to the law in this case?"

"I believe I would not."

"Anything else?"

"A friend of mine is in jail for drug trafficking. And resisting arrest."

No immediate reaction from the judge. I took this as an indication I should continue. Perhaps even that he was underwhelmed and I should find a way to supplement my declaration.

"And I have some other friends who have gone to jail for drugs."

"These other friends, are they still in jail?"

His question struck me as slightly irrelevant and this intrigued me.

"I believe they are no longer in jail."

"But the one friend, he's still in jail?"

"Yes, I believe so."

"And what is your view of what happened to your friend?"

"I believe he was arrested unjustly. I believe he shouldn't be in jail."

"Why?"

"I disagree with the drug laws. I don't think anyone should go to jail for growing and selling pot."

The judge nodded without a trace of surprise or reproach. He turned to the prosecutor beside him. "There are no drug charges in this case right?"

"No your honor I don't believe there are."

Long pause. Judge eyeing me over.

"I'm going to let you sit. Thank you."

As I walked back to my seat I felt, unexpectedly, a faint elation. Like I'd done well on some level. Or, a great wheel had been creakily set in motion and I was powerless to stop it, and for this I was glad.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Jury Duty - 10

Back at the courtroom for another round of excuses. The prosecutors with their manila folders with rows of sticky notes representing each of us. Some covered in handwriting and some not. The court clerk wrapped up in her shawl, looking bored. The defendant glum, head swiveling almost imperceptibly to cast his glare upon the room.

Then the judge asked, has anyone here ever committed a crime, been the victim of a crime, known anyone who's been convicted or known anyone who's been a victim? If so, stand up and form two lines.

I thought, this is my chance to get out of this trial. But curiously my back was pinned to the chair. I don't know why. Maybe I thought I was fated to be on this jury and I didn't want to impede fate. But I was compelled to after a few minutes. I once plead guilty and I have a friend in jail. So I, too, got up and got in line.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

It rained and it got warm before the rain quite ended and then it got sunny and quite hot.

People on the subway read their papers warily, just a bit distracted. Like they are waiting for something to happen that never does.

When I was playing with George and Joe in Washington Square Park the other day. As usual a clutch of derelicts, head cases and addicts gathered 'round us. And some marginal cases too – quiet guys, some with guitars, suspended from the bearings of a dull and cozy life. Sitting amidst the cigarette butts and the trash, watching, listening. Smiling strangely.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Jury Duty - 9

I went to an Italian restaurant outside of space and time. Giant potted plants, and tablecloths, and napkins. An easel with a chalkboard, specials written in pink chalk.

I heaved myself up to the bar like a shipwrecked man to shore.

I ate pasta and meat sauce, drank Chianti. I listened to some rich old lady prattle on. To her husband and their friends. The put-upon bartender, who wore red.

She wore a long coat and a scarf.

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Somewhere in the world it's raining hard and I like to think about that.

One night I fucked a girl on the L-shaped sofa in my friend's parents' living room. Some drunk, young girl I kind of remembered from high school. Everybody upstairs.

I didn't ask, but she said the reason she let me fuck her is: She likes guys in bands.

After some exertions I came into the unfathomable darkness inside her. At once I evidently was despondent and remorseful, and said or acted to the effect.

I recall realizing she might perceive this as a slight and so steered my melancholy musings toward the abstract.

And that's when she was moved to ask me.

Did I think I would ever do anything bad to anyone. Do I think about doing bad things. She asked.

She seemed quite concerned.

With my softening cock inside her still I reassured her best I could.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Jury Duty - 8

When the first phase of laborious and faltering rationalizations, supplications and concessions ended we were dismissed for lunch. A period not to exceed one hour and one half.

We tromped out of the box and out the stately door.

The defendant, froglike, sunken in his chair and neck, examined us with jaundice.

If ever he leaves I bet he takes the back door out.

Friday, June 09, 2006

Jury Duty - 7

During the course of his preamble the judge said: This case is a racketeering case. It is a case, you will hear talk of the Mafia. You will hear talk, la Cosa Nostra. The defendant's name is Gregory DePalma. Here he is now, sitting before you. He is an elderly man. He is in very poor health. He is an ailing man.

And he recited the charges against this man, a garish hodgepodge of loan sharking, bookmaking, assault, intimidation, embezzlement, payola.

And more.

His candor had a rhythmic, mesmerizing effect, as of some litany or chant.

Mafia. Cosa Nostra. DePalma.


Bookmaking. Loan sharking.

He duly introduced the prosecution and defense.

Then, one at a time our numbers were selected by the languid black girl from some ancient, hallowed tumbler. It was six-sided, I think, all nicely wood.

Number 27 please. Take the first seat in the box.


I was the third juror.

There began the litany of excuses.

I have a house reserved in the Hamptons. It's quite expensive.

My son is graduating and I can't miss his graduation. He's graduating.

My wife requires medical attention and I am afraid no one will look after her.

Some tearful.

I for one saw no reason to reject my duty though I felt as though I were sliding inexorably toward something strange and new. Bewildering.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Jury Duty - 6

They opened the door and we filed in processional. Tomb quiet. Maybe fifty of us in all.

It was startlingly, remarkably cold in the courtroom. Colder than the moment you were born.

The court clerk, a young black woman with a languid posture, told us instructions. Sit in these rows. We will be calling your name, your number. We will call you to sit in the box.

A door somewhere opened and a black-gowned figure floated in.

All rise.

His honor So-and-So.

He welcomed us in the sternest possible manner. Yet I could perceive in him a trace of hard-won benevolence, a real thing, not put on nor imagined, that sustained him through these trials with their evidence of repeated, fateful failings of our kind.

I liked him.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Jury Duty - 5

We were told we would be moving. To another courtroom. The two officers in charge occasionally excused themselves to ascertain the preparedness of this next stage; of its judge, its officers, God knows what. They'd leave and say, Don't leave. They inspired in us solemn and unquestioning consent.

Finally we filed out into what, an antechamber. We piled into elevators in disordered, deferential sets.

When we had to wait we waited.

When we arrived on the 23rd floor the courtroom was, strangely, still not ready. We hovered in the lobby next to windows to the north. The windows looked upon Canal Street, Chinatown, Little Italy, the Lower East Side, the East Village, Chelsea and, looming in the midst, the Empire State Building.

For Christ's sake.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Jury Duty - 4

We sat for what seemed like hours in the deep mahogany pews of some courtroom on the what was it, sixth floor. Like schoolkids on detention.

We were each assigned a number and urged in the strongest possible terms to memorize it.

"You will be handed a card. Memorize the number on your card."

I received a card and memorized the number.

"Do not forget the number on your card. This number is your number. The number on your card."

I thought about my number. I liked my number. I thought about the number on my card.

My number was 17.

Vaguely I worried: What if that was not the number on my card?

What if the card said 19?

I pried the card out of my pocket, a card just like some business card. Of someone you met at a party or a bar.

It said 17.

I was 17.

Friday, June 02, 2006

Jury Duty - 3

I had a solitary lunch at a bar with a friendly bartender, she seemed to be from something like Wisconsin. She recommended the California Cab and who was I to refuse.

Back in court we waited. I drifted off to sleep on crooked elbow. They emptied the room in sets of three dozen or so throughout the course of that drowsy afternoon, sending them all up there to their fates as dispensers of justice. And then they said: Come back tomorrow.
Lightning blinked beyond the kitchen window. Home at last.

I walked a balance beam of asphalt across a puddle on the treed and tessellated sidewalk by the Park. Fifth and oh, 108th or so.

Fire engines were parked before the hospital, silent. Flashing.

Her theory was: Every man becomes my stalker. And it was nearly self-fulfilling.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

What I Remember from the 1977 Guinness Book of World Records

1

There was some miser, Hetty Green? Meanest woman in the world. She parlayed two scraps of soap into an incalculable fortune; a sum to rival any captain of industry's.

There she was walking across the gunmetal cobblestones of some Manhattan alley. Corseted and severe. Her grim and unforgiving mouth curled by the faintest trace of terror.

What was a miser, in fact? I had no idea.

She seemed to know she was despised. Yet in her pride she could not fathom why.

2

A man in the shade of a fairground tent hung his head over a paper plate splattered with ropes of spaghetti. He ate more of it in 21 seconds, or something, than any man before him.

His head hung like a penitent's, or like a hajji's, finally arrived. Bowing tremulously to pray.

Beside the plate was a paper cup bearing the Coca-Cola ribbon. I imagined the sweet, cold and dark liquid flowing over my tongue. Soaking my thirsty throat in prickly bubbles.

3

A tiny man on a massive rock formed like a bridge, somewhere in the West.

4

The fattest man in the world who had to be buried in a piano case. Three questions nagged me:

What did he do before he died?

Who came to the funeral?

What did they do with the piano?

Monday, May 22, 2006

Jury Duty - 2

I was trying to read the New Yorker with my head propped on my hand, my elbow on the arm of the chair. I felt melatonin seep gently into my brain.

Before you knew it there was some kind of announcement regarding lunch.

I explored the strangely timewarped environs of the court. I walked east, I think, yes, east. No – west. I walked west. Toward Broadway and everything. All the stores were old stores, discount stores with corrugated faces, cigar shops, luncheonettes. The very streetlights and lamps took on the aspect of mid-20th-century modernity, the days we all said wow.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

In the living room my roommates are unconscious on the La-Z-Boy and the sofa respectively, or maybe dead.

What noxious spirit hath permeated this space?

Monday, May 15, 2006

Jury Duty - 1

Downtown where the courts are the doors are tall. I saw iron gates and columns, and steps and steps and steps. Of extraordinary breadth. Steps whose breadth will make you comatose. Whose breadth suggests the world is without purpose. And that the world is flat. That you'll fall off it one fine day.

We crowded into the juror's waiting room and awaited further instruction. Finally we were instructed to wait.

Friday, May 12, 2006

There's some news story on the TV, I've never heard of it and can't even fathom:

GRICAR SIGHTINGS

It might as well have been invented by a child. Were it not so knowing, so taunting in its electronic urgency. Is that a word? A name? It is a thing, now that it's been lobbed into the living room like a radioactive ball. Guess I'll put it under my pillow and go to bed.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

My dentist of indeterminate North African origin.

My sexy dentist.

She pried off my temporary crown and I yelped from not so much the pain as shock the wrenching force and - suddenly - razed tooth laid bare.

The temporary crown. The false crown.

It sat on the tip of my tongue before I spat it out upon my aquamarine bib.

She was contrite. I was OK. I said, I'm OK.

Sorry, she said. With that dark and throaty voice, the accent, yes?

The precisely not quite sure how do you say.

I suppose I love her, but she hurts me so.
Every time the sun sets it's like it's never set before. Every time it rises.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

I came so close to dying today.

I walked out of the office and headed east on desolate Canal Street to the terrifying intersection of Hudson and Watts and the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. At night I don't think so much about it, maybe 'cause I'm tired and it's dark and the whole world seems somehow less perilous, softened in the gloom.

I got the light and I walked.

My ears plugged with earbuds and Donald Fagen cooing in his Jersey know-it-all, adenoidal snarl.

A car raced around another heading west on Canal and abruptly cut across. In the space of about half a second I formed the following distinct thoughts, apprehensible as gradual stages in some deliberate process of realization or at least of coming to terms:

1. That car can't possibly be coming at me.
2. Can it?
3. Is that car coming right at me?
4. I mean, right at me?
5. At full speed?

I broke into an awkward, loping gallop, three steps maybe, just enough for the demon car to squeal past my back, not slowing nor swerving nor honking nor giving the least indication.

I exploded into motion, it occurs to me now, the way they said that new defensive tackle the Eagles drafted, the way they like him for his explosiveness, and I thought at the time, what a dumb football cliché, explosiveness.

To explode into motion. All the requisite muscles suddenly and completely given to the task of displacement at the instigation of a subconscious or superconscious thought.

When it was over and I reached the other side of the street, I thought, What now?

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

The Cake & the Square Plates, the Smudgy Glass with a Puddle of Wine

At the end of his birthday Johnny was breaking up with Val. Through the half-opened door we heard his murmurings in the dark. Conciliatory words of endearment and atonement, perhaps. Soft but ruthless half-truths, devised to extract himself from her with surgical precision.

Not damaging nearby tissue.

We figured we'd see him soon enough, within an hour or two, and he'd be returned to us with his freedom, relieved and hungry.

Then maybe we could watch TV.

But a more sinister process seemed to be at work. When you end a thing like this, the implications have no bounds. Must you punish yourself, scar yourself ritually, to measure up to them?

Will Johnny survive?

Day drew alarmingly into night with no developments. It was spooky to imagine them in there on his bed. What on earth were they saying? What was one saying to the other? And the other saying in turn? The proceedings had the solemn and semisecret air of eleventh-hour union negotiations or the drafting of a weapons treaty. But there was no intervention from civilization, nor even life; no breaks for food or drink or rest.

Interactions of any kind with others were clearly taboo.

But at around 1 am Johnny shuffled out to take a piss. As he walked back toward his door Sam called out, "How's it going in there?"

Trying for a little levity maybe.

Johnny shook his head almost imperceptibly, not looking our way. Conveying no of course, but most of all don't ask. He was embarked upon a journey that we ordinary mortals could not hope to understand.

Then there was a savage creaking of their bed accompanied by muffled groans and urgent whispers.

They were fucking, just like that. And we were left to wonder by what alchemy.

By what godless process this had occurred.

Human beings and what they do.

Except a funny thing happened the following day. Johnny came out alone, early in the afternoon. Where's Val, we asked; Val is gone. She left under cover of the raw, white morning.

"Are you back together?" I asked, quizzical.

"No," he said. "It's over."

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

I just saw the FUNNIEST movie! It's called "The Passion of the Christ."

It's about some dude who gets laughed at and whipped and shit because he says he's like, the king or something, and there is already another king. Or two. Or maybe three, it's confusing. It happens in olden days so I don't know. The whole time you're like, dude! Drop it! Don't be a dick.

Except I spose there wouldn't really be a movie if he did.

He's like covered in blood and they make him carry his own thing that they hang him on, his own scaffold or whatever, all the way up the hill. And the whole way, they're all like making fun of him! He's almost naked.

I think it's supposed to happen in the medieval ages.

It looks like some other dude might save him but that guy gets his ass kicked too. The soldiers really know how to kick some ass. They are badass! Don't fuck with them, motherfucker!

Then he dies and it's like, wow. So much blood dude!!!

I don't know if I totally recommend it because the action was like, kinda boring. But it was pretty awesome for the amount of blood.

Friday, April 14, 2006

We went to Paddy's, C. and I.

There was the Red Sox losing on one of the flatscreens. On another the Mariners played the Indians.

The Mariners are always playing the Indians.

Later it was Man. U. and Arsenal, Man. U. leaping to a two-nil lead.

Man. U. is always playing Arsenal. And Man. U. is always leading two-nil.

That big, tall and perpetually drunk guy Justin, that cantankerous fuck, always at the bar and always shooting pool through slitted eyes, he was talking up some petite blonde. Talking about lemon drops. Vodka, lemon and sugar.

I wondered, will Justin have sex tonight?

The lion sleeps tonight.

A parade of young, thin cunts traipsed through at a certain point. All rolled-up jeans and midriff baring. Girls who couldn't shoot pool to live another day but tried to all the same. One drank a Corona and I couldn't imagine, honestly, how she fit it all inside of her.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

On my way to work through north Central Park I was briefly blocked by a man and a woman, both elderly, but somehow clearly not a couple. They were well dressed and smoking cigarettes. They had the presence and bearing of people walking down the sidewalk to sneak a smoke in opera intermission.

Perhaps they were amicably divorced.

I gave the wrong directions to an attractive young woman on the Canal St. Uptown ACE.

"You can take this train to 59th St. and change there," I proclaimed. I didn't know what the fuck I was talking about. I was speaking to her over my shoulder as I entered the train. She froze in the doorway, shuddered with disgust, turned around and walked away. I turned to face what she had seen: a copious splatter of beige and red vomit on the floor beside the opposite door.

As the train lurched it occurred to me, she's in the car next door now. I can switch at Spring and right my wrong. I did so and found her sitting there, making me a face like, Wasn't that gross? I told her she would have to change earlier; this train doesn't go to 59th. At West 4th she looked over to me. I nodded. She nodded back queryingly. I nodded resolutely, urging her off the train with my head and eyes, and she disappeared out the door.

The kitchen with its mop and bucket, rickety dish rack, magnets. Its calendar and mail-strewn table. The tidy grove of bottles in the bar.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

The little racecar burps and snores around the track in the video game PC's playing. It leaps clunkily over the curb and up a hill beside the track, a hill made of that computer-nothing, that color and that form becoming less distinct the closer that it seems, that seems to merge with the car or the guy or the tank or gun and yet also to repel it, all these things swimming in their brave and fragile world, struggling to lay claim to some discreteness, to survive.

Monday, April 10, 2006

We went to some quaint tea house today, for brunch. There were thousands upon thousands of teas on their list: black teas, green teas, white teas and herbal teas; tisanes; tea with ginger and peach tea, mint tea, safflower; eucalyptus, saffron and myrrh; coconut, basil and litchi; straw and nettle; fern; witch hazel, alabaster, grass & sawdust.

The waitress overheard me speculate that the French toast might be "just a bit too much."

It came with crème anglaise, three varieties of berries, whipped cream and syrup, the bready part infused to soaky saturation with jasmine tea.

"Oh no, it's not too much, it's just enough," she said.

She wore gossamer wings and bore an air of alert ingenuousness.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

A squall came this morning, beyond the blind that had shaded me from winter's southern sun. Adam said, Wow it's snowing hard. I thought he was joking. But I lifted the bottom and peered out to find an excited haze of thick flakes, seeming almost in suspension.

Baseball's back.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

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I got down in the uptown side of the 1 station on Canal and proceeded to pace frenetically, unthinkingly, my mind aswim, as is so often the case after work. A cockroach was struggling on its carapace, legs wriggling horribly in the air. Across the track a whistling MTA worker sauntered to and fro, lantern in hand, on a taped-off part of the platform – a demoralizing vision of civic maintenance; man and mankind resigned to the futility of all enterprise.

On my side there were finally two bright eyes of light deep in the tunnel.

The 1 pulled in and its doors opened before me, then the station went all haywire with white noise. It filled the cavern with invisible foam which carried me upon it through the threshold, which sealed the gaps between the cars, which drowned a yawning child, which enveloped and demystified the third rail.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Where was I?

There's a beautiful and terrifying short film I found online, directed by Claude Lelouch: the camera's mounted on a car careening through the streets of Paris, stirring in the first gray rays of dawn, August 1976. The sun in fact appears to rise over this joyride: it's a bit dark as the driver enters the Porte Dauphine and devours the avenue to the Arc de Triomphe; there are only a few cars on the roundabout, a few sagely navigating cobblestoned streets. Delivery men in their modest Renault trucks, market people, shop people going where they go at such an hour. And the car passes them angrily, snarling. Dodging and feinting, darting between them and the sidewalk, skidding around islands, past abutments, perilously close to knock-kneed ladies with their shopping bags and dogs. Every red light is unflinchingly burned. The engine shifts in lusty, curious growls. What's around this corner? What's down that street? A flash of neon from a cafe sign amidst the venerable facades. The car brings furious life and light into the city, and yet you sense it isn't out of place. It's of a piece with this weary, violent and sultry place.

Monday, April 03, 2006

We were in Central Park on Sunday, we'd walked through the Ramble to the lake, and we were sitting on a rock, right over the railing from the path, that was dappled in shade. We looked at the couples in their boats. Always the man takes the oars. A Japanese woman leaned over the back of her boat to take a picture of a duck.

Near us people lay on a big rock on the water.

There was a commotion among the bushes and reeds beside the water to the right, below the bridge. A black boy, about 10, emerged trudging shin-deep through the shoal. He walked heavily, languorously, more and more impeded with each step by the soaking of his shoes, his socks, his pants. A group of boats that had gathered to observe some geese now dispersed, their occupants bewildered by the boy. He seemed to be trying to say something in a sort of moan. "Boat," I think he said, stretching out the O. Boooat. The men rowing rowed away, trying not to seem to eager to depart. The boy trudged farther in, water knee-high now, still so much shallower than you'd expect amidst these ducks and boats – he seemed to be performing some sort of half-miracle, heedless, upright and mostly dry.

He caught up with one couple's boat, the last to have turned around and slowly leave. They scrutinized him quizzically but did not shoo him away. He grabbed the back. The woman stared at him and might have said something, but it did not seem unkind. He muttered something about don't leave me, don't go without me, don't go. Then he said something like pusssh and he gave their boat a little push.

Eventually he crossed to our shore, to the stone beach to our left. Though he reached the water's edge he seemed oddly reluctant to get out. I thought, Get out. He kneeled in the water and reached up to the rock, at the feet of two women who were sunbathing there. They seemed intent on ignoring him, or at least not being disturbed or antagonized by his behavior. Alligaaaator! he said. The one woman right near him sat up and looked at him but said nothing as far as I could tell. Aaaligaaator!

He crawled out of the water onto the sunny, hot rock and walked away. I scrutinized his gait for indications of illness, injury, intoxication or dementia. His posture seemed insouciant and also weirdly listless. Nowhere to go sort of thing. He reached the path and I thought he'd disappear behind the bend forever.

A minute later we noticed he was still lurking, farther down the path where more rocks gave out on the water. We turned away but soon heard urgent splashing: a man had removed his shirt and jumped into the lake. A moment later he waded back with the boy, now completely soaked, heavy in his clutches. I found it amusing, yet somehow alarming, perhaps even outrageous, to think this poor Samaritan imagined he had saved the boy's life. But maybe he had, who knows? We got up and left, and walked by the boy, now sitting on a rock. There was a gaggle of people near him, all looking a bit stupefied. None were tending to him directly but it was clear that they were involved in some way with making sure he was all right, fretting about his fate, puzzling over his intrusion upon their idyllic afternoon, its portents and ramifications. I took a good, hard look at him as we passed by. He held two dollar bills aloft, before him, in his left hand. I imagine he wanted them to dry but he held them like a charm and I'm not sure why. S. made the point that this was perhaps not all a bad thing; he was playing, he was good-humored. Kids do things. I agreed but he worried me again when I took one last look back. He had spit onto himself and a thick strand of spit now hung from his lip to the front of his still-soaked shirt.

Monday, March 20, 2006

We were dead asleep, sometimes shifting on numb limbs and trying, without a thought, to keep in contact with each other, if not to hold. I was serene, swathed in gauzy narcosis, floating down the corridor of my dream –

BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!

From the awful waking world came some urgent, cruel tattoo, at once hard and membranous, shaking through my mind in thunderous strokes that bore the resonant hint of some ghastly, inhuman voice. When this wrenched me from my sleep I lay gazing at the dark, uncomprehending, knowing not where I was nor who I was, everything called emphatically into question. I was draped in terror and dismay.

BAM BAM! BAM! BAM BAM BAM!

It continued. So, deliberately, I raised my head to where it seemed to come from. The window. I saw the flash of a hand, an arm. I perceived a skittish, shadowy figure hovering in the steam of his breath. Someone was pounding on my window from out on the fire escape.

Beside me S. was saying, No, no, no, no, no. I said, My God, there's someone out there. We lay still a few moments longer, hoping he would leave. We lay quiet, apprehensive, like we were hiding from the Gestapo.

BAM! BAM BAM BAM!

Naked on the bed – the light of the moon – I reached for my pants at the foot and pulled them on, grim, resolute. I got up and faced the window. There he was, a thin, young man with curly hair and glasses. I could not distinguish the features of his backlit face.

"What?"

"I'm alright, I'm alright. I just want to get in, can I just get in to the hallway?"

"Where do you live?"

"I'm alright. Don't worry. I live upstairs."

"You live upstairs?" Upstairs is the roof.

"Yeah," he said. "I live on the seventh floor. Will you let me in?"

I paused a moment and shook my head.

"No!"

I lay back down, somehow afraid I'd just committed an act of violence against this man. Maybe feeling guilty for what must have been my first reaction: an inchoate, murderous urge. He seemed now to bounce around the fire escape – I heard the dull, springy sound of its frame and railings bearing shifting weight. I imagined him pitching over the side and falling to a crumpled heap on 105th Street.

We got up and went out to the living room to settle our nerves, to wait him out, we hoped. As I left the room I looked back to see him there, hunched, gazing out upon the street. We waited and waited, saying what will we do if he's still there? After half an hour we went back in the dark room, fearful for what we may find, and I looked out the window. Between it and the lights in the hospital across the way the night was again still, moonlit and streetlit, empty.

Monday, February 27, 2006

Wing Nuts

I observed my plane through the terminal window at Reykjavik and noticed that the tips of this particular jet's wings bent upwards in vertical fins six feet or so tall. What is this, a hundred years of manned flight and suddenly the engineers say, "Um, about the wings? We're gonna make them stick up at the ends. It's better this way.'' What?! People, it's not rocket science. Uh, actually, I guess it is rocket science. Which is the point, come to think of it. It's science. Can ya just do the math please? 100 billion hours of passenger jet travel, of takeoffs and landings and crashes, of turbulence, bad movies and barf bags, air rage, terrorism, screaming children and magazine tales of Tuscany and profiles of Renee Russo and now this? What will they think of next? It's a goddamn tube with people in it with wings attached so it doesn't crash into the ground, for fuck's sake. Make up your minds.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

At the Phil Lesh show last night, right up near the stage, a tall, twenty-something guy fell right over. He went completely limp and collapsed backwards onto the floor, and lay sprawled and perfectly still as the music floated and hung above. Someone immediately knelt by his side and made gestures of attending. Others waved their arms in the air in wild crisscrossing patterns, as though signaling an oncoming train. We formed a solemn little pocket of concern in the midst of the dark crowd of thousands of drunk, stoned Deadheads.

Then the guy got up. He stood up, but I mean right away – not coming to his feet groggily or in the least unsteadily but becoming vertical like someone just blew reveille. He stood right up the same way he fell down. His friends, onlookers – gazed into his eyes with wonder and a fair amount of worry. He was taken by the arm. Asked questions. He looked around a little puzzled, the way anyone would be if they were suddenly and inexplicably the center of concern. He seemed like, What?

Then two security guards approached, not urgently but purposeful. They looked at him for a couple of seconds and led him away, and he went placidly, betraying only a trace of perplexed dismay.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

The turnstile and the stairs, the thousand strangers and the stores, the streets and snow and slowly turning spheres.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

I'm Still Tumbling Through the Air, 1,500 Feet Over a Train Trestle in Rockford, Illinois, in March of 1974

I'm still tumbling through the air, 1,500 feet over a train trestle in Rockford, Illinois, in March of 1974.

I'm sort of in suspension like I'm not descending but the wind is beating against my face. Against my head and balls and chest. So hard for air. I'm at about 1,500 hundred feet and below me is the train trestle and the track winding away between fields ochre, yellow and brown and the road a ribbon of gray and there, another road. The river below the trestle. I'm still tumbling through the air in 1974.

I'm still in a villa looking out upon the sea. I believe the villa may be in Italy. A cliff climbs up out of the surf at dusk. It climbs a hundred feet or so to a terrace where headlights occasionally pass around a corner in a road in front of darkened homes and a hill that rises higher yet again, and higher still with buildings fading into formlessness into the darkened clouds.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Eat Drink Fuck Sleep

Eat sleep drink eat eat sleep eat drink sleep fuck eat sleep eat drink sleep drink sleep eat eat fuck sleep drink drink eat fuck eat sleep eat sleep drink fuck drink sleep eat fuck sleep fuck fuck eat sleep sleep drink drink fuck eat sleep fuck eat eat sleep drink eat fuck sleep.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

I looked out the front of the commuter train from S's this morning, the length of a car away. The opening at the front seemed so promising: unexpected light, a window onto something rare and precious. I wondered how the backward-facing commuters could be so oblivious, with their New York Times folded into halves and quarters, the sports section and the crossword puzzle. But the truth is there wasn't much to see out front. Signals and trees and vague debris. Tunnels and walls and every surface painted in graffiti. Weeds grew in between the tracks. A uniformed figure waving from the platform of a bypassed station. I was so glad to see it.

Saturday, January 28, 2006

The escalators at the Gare du Nord metro weren't running and the stairs were strewn with trash, giving the place the appearance of a Third World urban hell. Old ladies paused at the feet of stairs and gazed wearily upward before hoisting their carts and climbing.