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frills, puffed-out sleeves, soft pleats

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"Her secret is good sex," Grace said seriously

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I abandoned the puzzle (impatience died hard),

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through "white eyes," unlike any I'd ever seen

After the gig Jesse, Kevin, Jake, Mark and I went to a little bar on 6th Street off 2nd, next to Jesse’s place, apparently the only establishment on the block that wasn’t a bodega or an Indian joint. It was one of those cozy, garden-level spaces, off the beaten path. Felt like you were entering some sort of secret lair. There was an old-timey bar to the left with a big mirror behind it, a few stools and that was it. Maybe a table or two, but maybe not. The whole place was bathed in a lime-green glow.

The bartender knew Jesse and poured us free drinks for hours. Kamikazes and mudslides, mudslides and kamikazes. Each drink seemed to fortify us somehow. Who knows what we talked about, but we talked. Who knows what was said. We were the only ones in the place, I’m pretty sure.

Finally we left, back up the little steps and out on the avenue. Someone shoved somebody, who knows who. Might have been me doing the shoving. Probably not. But I shoved back. Soon we were all hitting and slapping each other, zigzagging all over the sidewalk. Someone carried a sweatshirt with him. Someone else grabbed it and threw it into a bum-piss–filled puddle in the street. The owner—was it Mark?—retrieved it and swung it hard across the thief’s head. Now we were all grabbing at the sopping-wet shirt, taking turns slapping each other with it. When I got it in the face it felt cool and very heavy, a little grainy, deeply insulting. It made you stagger. It made you fall to your knees.

I think someone humped a car for a few seconds but I might be making it up.

We hit each other all the way up to 13th Street and walked back in the bar. The headliners were packing up, it had to be past four. I let the lead singer patronize me about our band while he wrapped up mic cables. I nodded and thanked him like a little bitch. I felt the glow of the good, hard beating I’d gotten on my neck and face, the alcohol in my brain, the filth from the gutter on my cheeks.

I’m often drawn back to the race we saw in Rouen in 1977, my dad and brother and me. The wooded setting, the sunshine, the small Formula 2 cars in brilliant colors, bearing the logos of obscure sponsors and racing down the hill past us into a canyon with tall, grassy banks—it all formed a kind of unexpected paradise for me. So I’ve researched it, and found pictures of the event, and pictures of the obsolete track today, dilapidated and overgrown.

Today I found a Super 8 video. It had that hazy, beautiful color, and that slightly jumpy feel that Super 8 has, that really makes you feel you’re peering into another world. I wondered, will I be able to squint and see us in the stands? With any luck I’ll see someone who looks a bit like my dad and probably isn’t, but I don’t have to know for sure. As I watched a scene in the pits before the race, in which the eventual winner Eddie Cheever was talking to his crew, my dad walked right on screen, staring vaguely at the camera, with my brother right behind him. My brother looked like my mom. I was there, but invisible.

The neck pain returned early in the afternoon. I tried to do some of the exercises I’d read about online. Stick your head back and your chin down into your chest. I imagined it felt better but it probably just felt different. I foresaw a tangle of trips to the doctor, unpredictable absences, work in disarray; then to the chiropractor, then perhaps a discussion with HR about ergonomic chairs. Or maybe I’ll just live with it.

Hindenburg

During some idle time at work I found myself browsing sites about the Hindenburg and the other zeppelins. I don’t know why. I don’t know why I started. What was it? Maybe the menus, the food. I was suddenly gripped with a desire to know what they all ate on their lazy way across the ocean, what they drank. And I wanted to know what the interior looked like. Wasn’t it small? But wasn’t it also luxurious, graceful, a triumph of sophistication, elegance, of civilization?

The Hindenburg had a beloved bartender. His job was to mix drinks and tell jokes but especially make sure no one got out of the adjacent smoking room with anything lit. One night an American socialite made everybody dance to jazz. The bar ran out of gin so she invented something wonderful and forgettable made with rum. Barkeep couldn’t make a Manhattan for shit.

You better stay in that smoking room, sir.

They feasted on roast beef, boiled trout, asparagus, potatoes. Good, homogenous, boring food from smack dab in the middle of Europe. Naturally there were fine German white wines. And French reds. What more could you want? The breakfasts were continental style. Of course.

They had an aluminum piano. For some reason it didn’t make the final trip.

They were so proud of this, the Germans. Evidence for sure of the preeminence of their people and a glimpse of what the future was to bring: hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years of glory and beauty and pleasure. Of civilization.

People spent the two or three days they had on board in a reverie, lulled by the distant hum of the engines, the sun streaming through the windows, nothing much to do. They napped in the sitting room, newspapers crumpled in their laps.

Didn’t anyone see the horror that was soon to come?

I stood in line for beer while the Afro-Honduran band played in the lobby of the Brooklyn Museum. The bass reverberated harshly against the floor-to-ceiling glass. You could tell there was interesting music being played, and sung, but—BOOM BOOM BOOM. As I neared the temporary bar, I observed a woman dressed in black pulling trays out of some kind of food service apparatus. The kind they roll down the aisle on airplanes, but bigger. The trays seemed to be frosted on the edges, and filled with water. A man held a white bucket in which she poured the water, much of which splattered on the floor. He wore a T-shirt that said: Pop! Then she pulled out a tray that was arrayed with fist-sized lumps of dough, each one soaked through. She paused for a moment, as though to ask herself if what she was about to do was all right, and then she pitched the food into the bucket too. Then another tray of the same, then another. As I passed the counter I saw big serving bowls of orange sauce that had been destined for these ruined things, and a sign: empanadas, one for three dollars, two for five. I ordered three beers and walked away.

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He paused, and when I still didn't respond, he said, "May I walk you the rest of the way?"

We sat out on the planting terrace to watch the moon last night. Clouds covered it most of the time. When it came out there was a misshapen smudge on its face, but its edge was sharp and bright. Down on the sidewalk, a woman stood still at the wall of the park. I wondered whether she was looking at it too, contemplating the wonder of this celestial event that won’t occur again until we’re all retired or worse. Then she turned around and I could see that she was on the phone. Oblivious. She’d absentmindedly strolled out of earshot of pedestrians to get a little privacy while she was breaking up with her boyfriend or talking to her senile mom or telling her kid to do his homework, mommy’s gonna be late. Never even noticing the blood moon up above.

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was just as keyed-up as I was and kept barking

There was the picture of the automobile executive, not quite prone on the carpeted stage but looking like he was rolling on his side, or bouncing, his hands near his head for protection. Near him was a new blue car, one of his, undoubtedly. The headline said he fainted. I guess it was all too much.

I’ve developed some kind of allergy to my deodorant. Old Spice. The kind they say, if your grandpa didn’t wear it you wouldn’t exist. Ha ha, so funny. Who knows what satanic chemicals it contains. Aluminum, I guess. The natural ones don’t, so I assumed that was the culprit. All I know is my armpits became furiously itchy at the end of each day. When I stopped using it the itching went away in equal measure to the emergence of that salty, suffocating thing: the odor of my own body. So now I’m backing into some “natural” product, aluminum-free. Not because I want to. Because I have to.

When we reached the bus stop in front of Westminster Abbey we came upon two families of tourists, one Italian and one Japanese. The Japanese father was taking a picture of the Italian family and so the space between them became forbidden, the space around the bus stop sign in fact, and Eddie breached this space, wandering in oblivious with his old-man privilege.

We walked around the Notting Hill Carnival this morning, with Richard and Katie. The shops were boarded up behind graffiti’d plywood, their names juxtaposed with tags, making them seem to participate in the festivities just as they withdrew from them. The grill smoke was punctuated here and there by sweet, little clouds of marijuana. Dancehall blared, one sound system competing with the next. As you walked past the cacophony would phase and shift, the rhythms setting and then canceling each other out. But there was always someone right there who knew how to dance.

There were only two other people in the Polish restaurant in Neasden, a couple of toughs. Or maybe genial construction workers on a break. They were drinking beer and somehow that’s all I imagined they could ever possibly be consuming. But soon the beautiful young waitress set heavy plates of fried, gravy-laden food before them, and they were eating just like anybody else.

During the rare intervals when the English summer sun shines unobstructed it has a venomous ferocity, as though angry at having been veiled so long by clouds. I rolled up the collar of my jacket as I sat in the Hyde Park playground, hoping I wouldn’t get burned. Jackie played on a large swing with a family that I guessed was Iranian. I wondered whether they were very rich or very poor. Probably very rich.

The day before, we went to the London Eye. We had a dreary, sodden lunch, seated around a trash-strewn table by a tree, with rain falling through the branches and the leaves. I ate a tomato and mozzarella Panini that had the peculiar blandness of international tourist trap snack-stand food. Water pounded our Ferris wheel car, forming rivulets that blurred the views of Big Ben and MI6. There was Coca-Cola everywhere, in refrigerated cases along the queue to get in, at the snack bar outside, in the gift shop at the exit.

When we returned to Eddie’s house rain had leaked through a fissure in the ceiling and was dripping on the shag carpeting. We placed a bowl on the floor and suddenly the water went plunk, plunk, plunk. Greeting cards on a side table were soaked, including one of Mary, Joseph and the Baby Jesus that played “Silent Night” when you opened it.

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And hey, with the rover righted, I got to use the bedroom again!

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"Look kiddo, if you can't do this you can't do it. But I think it might be good for you."

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The boy stumbled back from me, alarmed. "You lay a hand on me, I'll tell my daddy."