I was walking down Varick around midday when I sensed something unusual in the vicinity. I looked up to find a man stopped in the middle of the street, in the crosswalk but not moving, not coming or going. It’s unusual to be motionless in the city. You notice. It don’t seem right. In the street it’s downright alarming. An arc of yellow piss streamed from the man’s penis and splashed into the intersection. He seemed serene, unbothered. Unhurried. A street character of course, drunk maybe, but not disheveled. Not obviously insane. He just stood there holding his dick on King Street like he was standing at a urinal. After I passed by I looked over my shoulder to find a young man berating him with a torrent of insults and reproaches to which he didn’t react in the least.

A High School Party in Connecticut in 1985

I was pressed into service at the bar. J. had to go deal with something, I don’t know. Broken furniture and spilled beer. The line was long and the kids were thirsty. Maybe they just wanted vodka, scotch. Gin and tonics. I was pouring as fast as I could. Everyone I satisfied might just be satisfied with me. Kirsten came up to the front with her friend Kim. Kirsten with her radiant smile, her glasses. There was a trace of mischief in her face, I always thought, or maybe just thought in that moment and thought I’d always thought. She was beautiful but easy about it, unconflicted. Laughing at the world and everything in it, ‘specially me. So she was a powerful person. Intimidating.

“I’ll have a gin buck,” she told me with her grin. 

At once I knew she was fucking with me. She had to be. This is what happens. A girl like that and me. I was powerless to admit I didn’t know what the fuck that was. I didn’t have the strength to be so weak. I fumbled with the bottles, finding the gin and stroking it uselessly by the neck. A few awful moments passed. The line behind Kirsten and Kim stretched from the dining room into the hall.

“Ginger ale,” she said full of wisdom. Smiling her smile. “It’s gin and ginger ale.”

I muttered yeah yeahs in my humiliation. I made her drink. I made I don’t know for Kim. And I never spoke to her again. Today she lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Later we sat in the living room, seven or eight of us. The untiring inebriation of youth. We needed to go somewhere and do something. When you’re sixteen and drunk you have to take it somewhere. You can’t lean on a bar or watch TV. There’s sparks flying out your fingers.

We piled in the back of Sean’s pickup with a bat. Drove two miles to our math teacher’s house. His driveway was long and it twisted through the woods. Erik stood unsteady. Took a hard swing and bashed the mailbox off its wooden post. The violence was astonishing. The senseless malice. We saw the lights come on behind the trees. The poor put-upon teacher howling, running out the house. His son—our classmate—by his side. Flashlight beam zigzagging in the night. Go, go, go! Sean peeled out and we were gone down the hilly street, knocking against each other in the bed.

We got back and drank some more. In elated wonder at ourselves. Still it wasn’t enough.

We rode to the 7 Eleven in the strip mall near the house. Stormed in and took what we wanted of Ho-Hos and Funny Bones. The guy behind the counter was just a couple years older than us, some poor fuck who just wanted to disinfect the counters and make it through the night. We ridiculed him brazenly, to his face, behind his back. We came back an hour later for some more. He didn’t even look at us from behind the register. Ducked his head, pretending to be busy.

Mark said he fucked his girlfriend and J. said what’d you do with the condom and Mark took a drag off his Camel and he smiled and he said he flushed it.

"Good," said J.

In the cold, bleak light of the morning we took stock of the damage. Bottles, ashes, miscellaneous trash. Mysteriously an upstairs door was torn off its hinges. That was all apparently. 

I reached for the plastic screw top on the milk carton this morning. Bleary, fresh out of bed. It felt different. It felt wrong. The contour was not round and textured as expected but smooth and beveled. I nearly let go in revulsion. Put back the milk. Never to take it out again. These sinister machinations of industrial design. But I poured some in my coffee. Life went on.

Went to pick up my guitar today. When I was almost there, navigating the vast and bewildering crosswalks of the Atlantic Center, it occurred to me I didn’t have the little ticket Igor gave me when I dropped it off. Insurance, he called it. They couldn’t keep my guitar without giving me a ticket. “What’s the value?” he asked. I said five grand, what the hell. Coulda said one, coulda said ten. He handed me a receipt that said work order and had the estimate total, seven hundred something. At home I put it on my desk and forgot about it.

What if they demand it? What if they won’t give me back my guitar if I don’t produce it? I saw myself protesting furiously. That’s my guitar. Appealing to Igor. You know that’s my guitar. But it’s Guitar Center. All corporate and shit. Owned by God knows who. They do things by the book. No ticky, no guitar. I envisioned the altercation becoming savage, physical. I’m not leaving without my guitar! The security guards upstairs would be summoned down. What seems to be the problem? Sir? Sir? Motherfuckers calling me sir. I’d get my phone out, tremblingly call 911. No, not 911. That’s ridiculous. Clownish. I’m not making a fool of myself. No, I’d call the police. Explain in a measured voice that this place of business had stolen my guitar. 

When I went in Igor didn’t seem to recognize me. But he did. Then he gave me my guitar. I played it a little. Paid him and left.

There was a sort of breach in reality, in the numbness of a walk to the bus on a warm November morning. The car angled at me, forced by another on the other side. Their contact made a dull, plasticky crunch, not the bash of metal you’d expect. It rode up on the curb and past me a few inches away. I yelped. I felt it was my privilege—my duty—to yelp. The outside car, the transgressor, drove on through the roundabout. The inside one drove rapidly around it, cutting it off at the next light. I expected anger, maybe blows. Is that what I wanted? Anger and blows. After a time the cars proceeded to the next stretch of pavement and parked, emergencies on. The driver in front got out. Young guy. The one in back got out. Middle aged mom. She let out her kid and kissed her bye. She let out her dog and held it by the leash. And the two drivers spoke calmly, civilly, exchanging information on their phones.

Spent the day working, doing laundry, working, breaking down boxes. Occasionally my mind got shot through with a flash of dread and revulsion. Then work, laundry, boxes.