The Enterprise - 47

I plunged into meaningless pursuits, idle amusements, intemperance. Accompanied by Sean most nights. Pool games, foosball games. Whisky, whisky, whisky. There was a video game, a golf game. Golden Tee. You swung the club by spinning the top of a sphere whose crown protruded from the console. If you jabbed at it, fast, you could get a good drive going, four hundred yards or so, over the pixel trees and water hazard. You’d be rewarded with a crease of torn flesh at the base of your palm. And the chance to putt for eagle.

What were we doing?

There was a place we went on the Upper East, frequented by our friend Ron. Nice guy. Ingenuous. Devastating foosball player. He could pass the ball from his midfielders to his forwards, dribble back and forth between adjacent players—even wing to wing, flipping the center up as the ball whizzed by. He could tip, nudge, cajole the ball into control. It seemed to be magnetically attracted to the little stub at the bottom of each man that counted for feet. His signature shot was a deception: he’d jerk the player back and forth, wind him up like he was about to slam it, really slam it this time; he’d watch you with a gaping smile as you made your goalie wide by thrusting him back and forth maniacally. Then he’d tip the ball ever so lightly so it rolled inoffensively toward the goal. It seemed not to have enough momentum to get there. But it did, and you were so nervous and worried and tense with your goalie that you’d let it slip by and hit the bottom of the goalmouth with a derisive, ambivalent clunk. Nothing was more humiliating.

Sometimes Ron and I would team up and play against a portly, middle-aged Indian man named Raj. Sometimes he’d play by himself, sometimes he’d team up with whoever else was around. It didn’t matter. Raj was the best foosball player I’ve ever seen. He’d work the ball up to his center forward and wait there with it, making the tiny statue tremble as though in anticipation, savoring the moment. He’d take a few fake swipes on either side of the ball—or sometimes he wouldn’t. He maintained a light, vaguely taunting banter the whole time. I’d be moving the goalie back and forth as fast as possible to create a blurry barrier, giving myself, I thought, a small statistical chance of stopping the ball. When it came all you knew was the sound it made at the back of the metal goal, an angry crack like a gunshot. He never missed. When the game was over he’d walk away with his Stoli Vanilla and Coke as I wiped my sweaty palms off on my jeans.

We usually wound up at the Irish place on Third. It had a long bar on the left and two pool tables in the back, in a space ringed with Guinness mirrors and elevated flatscreens perpetually showing ESPN. It was the place to be if you were a guy who wasn’t getting laid. The ceiling was covered in a giant tangle of white Christmas lights, enmeshed in some sort of twine. A starrier sky. It did impart a bit of cheer.

I played great for a few weeks. As though my heartbreak had unlocked something new and great within me, something magnificent, and that new, great thing was very specific: it was the ability to lean over a felted table, to aim a stick at a ball, to knock it into another ball so that the second ball would fall into the pocket of my choosing. And to do it many times again. To do it drunk.

What a pleasure it was to destroy other men. To see them approach confidently, maybe even arrogantly. Eager to impress their dates, or girlfriends, or each other. We’d all introduce ourselves and shake hands at the outset. Trying hard to be polite. But I muttered to myself as I went to rack ‘em up. Douchebags.

Sometimes I’d feel guilty, if they were nice enough. For wanting to destroy them. Usually they were nice enough.

Some were nice enough, some were cunts. Telling me how to rack. I know how to rack. Trying to play that head game. I know you.

A guy came in one night with his cue stick from home. Never, ever bring in your cue stick from home. Not the one your girlfriend got you for your birthday, not the one your mom got you. Not the one got passed down from your grandpa. Not that one or any other one, not ever. Don’t bring in your cue from home. Not unless you’re the Black Widow or Minnesota Fats.

He took the navy-blue case out of its protective, zippered nylon bag and laid it on the table. Unbuckled one, two, three little silver buckles. There it lay in two pieces, cradled in velour. He lifted them out, screwed them together, and held the polished, filigreed object aloft a moment, ostensibly to verify that it was true but really to make us look at it in the fake starshine. He lost.

Some were nice enough. A tall, swarthy guy with a moustache, maybe from Egypt or Iran. I was on a run, then I missed and sat back down. Reached up to the shelf along the wall. The feeling of the little glass in my hand, ice chips swimming in the amber fluid. I took a good, cold sip, letting the rubber end of the stick bounce a little on the floor. The guy’s partner missed, then Sean missed, then it was me again. I lined up a long shot. Made it.

The guy got up and approached me with a look of concern.

“That was my ball,” he declared.

“Your ball?” I shouted. “No. That was mine.”

I made another shot and strode around the table, workmanlike, looking for the next problem to solve. What the fuck was wrong with this fucking guy?

“No, no, no, no,” the man protested. “That was my ball.”

“No way it was your ball.” I leaned across the table to line up another one. Just then Sean walked up and whispered in my ear.

“That was his ball.”

“What?”

“That was his ball,” repeated Sean. “It wasn’t our ball.”

I took my shot and missed. Rattled. Angry. Confused.

“What are we? Stripes?”

“We’re solids. Solids, solids, solids.”

“I hit his ball?”

“I think you did, dude.”

I made some words and gestures of apology and invited the man back to the table. He stood now, chalking his cue, peering at the remains of my disordered efforts. Everything was different now. Everything but the feeling of the little glass in my hand.

The carpet had tiny little flowers. The carpet was maroon. And where there was a seam, a seam in the carpet - where there was a seam that once had opened - a seam that once had opened, had opened so that fabric might erupt. Erupt, trip up a drunken player as he circumnavigated. As he circumnavigated the table. There was safety orange tape.

The chalk made a little melody upon the cue stick tip.

A fat man in a little shirt.

Played decent pool tonight at the Stoned Crow, won the first game with a little run that left me buzzing with adrenaline. I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of the waitress, but she remembered me, turns out her name was Emmy. Natuza thought she knew but asked her, at the end, just for good measure. We tipped extravagantly and then parted ways, those of us who still remained, in opposite ways on Washington Place.

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.

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.

The sound of a car door slamming. 

The sky above the hardware store.

An ad for coffee in a magazine.

A seagull on a saturated beam.

A couple of weeks ago at C.'s party I blacked out. Actually it was after her party but during it I could feel consciousness falter and slip away. I was drinking gin and tonic and vodka and tonic and I can hardly remember talking to anyone but I know I must have, S. I think, and G., and K. a bit and P. who was sitting in a chair by the bookcase looking morose.

G. and C. were there with C.'s sister, whose name I can't remember but who was beautiful, long straight brown hair and dark eyes and a small mouth with full  lips, her lower lip perpetually wet.

Everyone left and C. and H. and C. and I walked to Paddy's and this is when I lost it. I think I remember walking over there, dodging the trees in the sidewalk. We played pool of course. I was drinking whiskey but I'm not sure how the glass got in my hand. We played this couple over and over again. Once I looked over at H. He seemed to be looking down at me. He shook his head a little and smiled, amused, sipping his gin and tonic from the stirring straw. I wondered what he saw.

At one point C. and I were telling C. what shot to take and she hates that, and I know it, but she said OK to shut us up and then C. said hit it low, and that freaked her out. She was crying. She said you guys don't understand what that's like. I wanted her to stop crying, I wanted it to all be better. She wanted to leave but we convinced her to stay. I could not attenuate myself to the situation. I said come on, let's play again, and she was still pissed off. I wanted us to forget about this.

The woman in the couple bought me a drink. I think it might have been because I won a game but I think she might have bought me another one. Maybe more.

I think I remember leaving the bar – literally walking out the door – but nothing else. And I don't know how I got home, or how I remembered that K. had my keys and he was waiting for me to buzz my buzzer.

That's all I remember but the day after C. and C. reminded me about things. C. said he was laughing because I had a giant whiskey stain on my shirt that wouldn't dry. I was marked, extraordinarily, like Lady Macbeth. C. said he'd told me to go talk to the woman who was buying me drinks. Apparently I walked over to her at the bar. She was sitting with the guy. I stood and watched for a few moments. Stood there. And turned around and came right back. After we made C. cry she had comforted her, putting her arm around her and squeezing and saying who needs men anyway? We don't need men. At the end of the night she was grasping C.'s hands and kissing them as we left.

Hearing C. and C. tell me what happened gave me a key to this part of my consciousness and I could sort of remember what it felt like to inhabit that state. At the time I think it felt perfectly normal. I was not aware, of course, of the disintegration of my consciousness – how could I be? But I was present, responsive, engaged. And to have all that be disconnected from consciousness is terrifying.

Last Friday I went out after work just like always, liberated, with limitless possibilities and mysteries ahead. Kevin and I met up with Chloe in front of the Ciel Rouge on 7th Ave., and it wasn't open yet of course, so we walked down to 14th Street and found an old Irish bar with a long green awning. "It looks like they might have beer there," said Chloe.

Inside it was dark and cool and it smelled dank and dead-flowery somehow, a sharp, rich stink from industrial-strength cleaning agents and hundreds of man-years of bad cologne. It seemed like we were in some other city in a faraway state—when we left I said maybe the Southwest somewhere—the place was too cold and spacious and empty for Manhattan.

After one drink we went up to the Ciel and sat in the back garden and Sean came too, and Adam, and Kevin's friend Ed and Su and Nora finally, and I drank mojitos and picked wet mint from between my teeth, and everyone talked and had a good time. Chloe went to the Knitting Factory and Kevin and Ed left, then everyone else got up to go and it was dark now and I hadn't even noticed. Adam and Sean and I met Sean's friend Bret and this other guy Tom and we walked to a pool hall nearby. It was some weird new-looking place with a bar upstairs and tables downstairs and everything was chromy-clean and slick and awful. Adam left and the four of us played, Tom and I beating Bret and Sean in a few games, and I guess I drank Heineken, I'm pretty sure. 

The interior architecture seemed to preclude conviviality or even the most incidental human contact.

We walked farther east now, to Paddy's. I want to describe how we knew upon walking in that we had to leave but I'm not sure how. The crowd was not precisely unfriendly but sort of leeringly territorial, flush with the idea of themselves. We walked uptown to some other place, a place I'd been, and ordered drinks and sat like assholes in chairs by the wall, waiting for God knows what to happen.

Finally Bret left and Tom and Sean and I met Chloe back downtown at Bar 81. We sat around the corner of the bar and drank and talked and I was starving so I went with Chloe to get pizza and we got back and drank some more and played pool. I was unhinged, dancing around the pool table. In fact I did not play so badly. But I wish I'd been more conscious.

After the first few hours of blackness I was hit hard in the morning. I craved sleep but it only seemed to come in fitful spurts punctuated by agonizing nausea. There was no comfort anywhere. I got up once and took some Advil and attempted to assess the true scope of my misery.

Then I woke up at 4 o'clock and felt fine.

She winced a bit. "The things you do for fun in India you can't do here. I don't know, I read," she said. She ate tortilla chips in tiny bites. Sometimes a piece would crumble off and fall in her downy drink and she would pluck it out and pop it in her mouth. "I see how people live on television," she said, "and it's very different from life in India. I wonder what it would be like to live like that. I think I would like to try."

"But life on television isn't like real life," I said.

She looked across the room for a moment. "People going out to bars and drinking, and laughing, and doing things like playing pool," she said. "I think I would like someone to show me what that is like."

And I realized she was right: life in America is like life on TV. She was describing my life, and it had more in common with a beer commercial than with anyone's life in India. And I also realized what she really wanted from a man, an American man, and I realized I could give it to her if I wanted but I knew that I didn't and it was sad.

Went out last night to a comedy club, Emma had some free passes. Five comedians or something, none too funny. One had an odd, hesitant persona, like a small child. "A lot of guys like big breasts. I like little breasts. They're so nice,” he said. “They're like, ‘Hi! Can I help you?'"

The Kiwis were there, Jen and Steve, and Chloe too. Then we went to Von on Bleecker and met up with Jim and Shane and Sophie and someone named Nicole who looked familiar and seemed to recognize me, so I pretended I knew who she was and said "Good to see you" not "Nice to meet you." Emma was leaning on me, arm around me. She and Chloe left early, and the rest of us wandered a while until we got to the Edge. There were lots of beautiful young women with their backs turned to us. Jim talked about how he's been seeing Lucy at school and they've been meeting up for drinks. Where might that be going? We talked about her mania. Sophie said she can never get a word in when she’s with her.

I played great pool. I've been playing great the last three times. Since Mel broke up with me. Maybe that’s what did it. Heartbreak’s prodded me to greater heights. The 2 was about five inches from the side bumper near the far corner but my shot to that hole was blocked; I hit the ball on the right, banked it, the cue ball and the 2 narrowly missed each other on their ricochets and the 2 rolled right in the near corner pocket. 

Eventually Jim and I lost and it was time to go home. I walked up 1st Avenue to Stromboli on 8th Street for a slice, past shuttered shops, past revelers whose nights were still young, past bags and bags of garbage, past a beautiful wide-eyed blonde clutching a book of Tartans in her green-gloved hands.

We played in NYC on Friday. Have a sense of obligation now to document our comings and goings, as it were, but I'm not sure how it will come off. Anything can be described successfully, I guess. Not much to say about an experience that we had already had over and over, some just like this night, others not. Most just like this night. Went to the Downtown Lounge, on Houston St., a street too wide and dangerous to sustain a cogent night life, it would seem. But when we arrived there was a darkly clad crowd in a small hot room, smoking cigs and listening to some thrash punk band. We went on after many hours of waiting, and shooting pool. One guy who beat me said as he was leaving, cheerily: "Time to go home and be sick." By the time we played there was hardly anyone there. Had a good set, could not get the sound guy/manager to give us a nickel. Something about how the chick with the door money had gone home. He was shaking his head and looking down as he spoke, and fidgeting strangely with a little strip of white plastic. "Sorry. You should have asked sooner." We bought a couple of bottles of Olde English and headed home.

Saturday was a much better night, at Leo's in Portland, Maine. We were greeted by an impossibly good natured hippie cool guy who brightly offered free Guinness ("Just don't let it get out of hand") and pizza. Played for a small but extremely enthusiastic crowd. We never get new music up here, they said. You guys are so different. They seemed intent on telling us just what it meant to them that we had come up, how wonderful it was. A drunk fat chick wanted to get laid. An exile from Connecticut wanted news from home, was fascinated that we were from down there, probably figured every Connecticut band sounded like us now. Altogether a really good time. Listened to WFAN on the way home. The voice of the Jets, Mets, Knicks and the Rangers.