TROOPS

At this point, however, Causubon retreated from inferential arguments and resorted to one that would have satisfied Montagu.

Was it 1975?

It was summertime in the south of France, or was it Switzerland? A jazz-rock fusion band was playing down in a sandy valley below steep, rocky slopes where we sat with the rest of the crowd. We had a picnic—ham sandwiches, peaches, Evian water in the corrugated liter bottles, everything the same unappetizing temperature and smelling of the plastic of the insulated cooler bag that was in the trunk of the car for the past three hours.

I was worried we might fall off this jagged boulder and tumble down, gashing our heads and breaking limbs.

The men in the band looked like dolls down there in flared pants, silk shirts, bandannas. Strange, angular sounds bleated from their speakers and I wished somebody would sing.

TROOPS

I walked to the car, pausing shyly before opening the door and getting in.

I like the stripes on the water pipes in the stairwell at work. And the fire hoses that say Made in Canada. Sometimes these are the only things I notice in an eight-hour day.

Happy BIrthday

There was a fucked-up trans woman on the corner of Grove Street and West 4th with a big pink chalk in her hand and a cigarette bouncing between her lips. Around her workers built a scaffold, twisting bolts, dropping pipes from the platform up above with a monstrous crash. She crept among them and their edifice crouched over, like a hunter in the woods. Looking for the place and time to strike.

Finally she wrote something on the curb in big, curly capitals. “HAPPY,” it said. “HAPPY BIRTH—” and then I was too far away, and I felt foolish for wanting to turn around and read over her shoulder. Later when I came back the other way, I wanted to know who it was she celebrated. There had to be a name. The target of her message. But that’s all it said.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

I emerged from the Houston Street station to find a row of people facing across Varick, examining something with great concern. Before I reached the sidewalk I realized it had to be awful.

In fact the intersection was jammed with emergency vehicles—cops, an ambulance, a fire truck. I could have turned away at that moment and went on to the entrance to my work, twenty feet away. But I turned again to look at what everyone was looking at. A woman was prone on a stretcher, unconscious. Medium build, black. I did not see any blood. But you could just imagine what had happened.

The Hole Where My Shit Goes

The toilet was on the fritz, water seeping out from around the base when you flushed. Mike the Plumber said it probably needed a new seal. He came quick the following day.

He called me in when it had been removed. Not sure why, but I guess it’s something you’re supposed to see. The toilet itself was at an angle off to the side. Mike’s assistant was bailing it out with a Solo cup, pouring the tainted water into the sink a few ounces at a time. In its footprint was a sinewy mass of yellow wax surrounding the mouth of a cold, silver pipe, five or six inches wide. It was black as hell in there. Mike said a few words and I said a few words back, hoping they were the right ones, but all I could think about was that awful hole, finally laid bare. The truth that lies below reality. The hole where my shit goes.

There’s a godawful electronic squawk outside sometimes, like from the radio in a cop car, but loud. At night. When the weather gets warm. Like a kind of mechanical bird that’s back to life, looking for a mate and a place to build its nest.

Here I am meekly waiting for the software update that will solve it all. The update that reaches into my soul to save it.

When I run past the Pavilion Theatre in the morning I glance at the green plywood covering the entrance, wondering if any progress has been made. Sometimes the makeshift door is open and you can see straight through to the box office on the left. A worker might stroll in or out. There’s a chair in there too for some reason. Other times it’s closed and days and days go by and nothing.

TROOPS

This was more or less the situation when I returned to the neighborhood for the Easter vacation.

TROOPS

Every inch of the garden, the house, and the surrounding grounds was ransacked, yet no trace of the missing lama was found.

There was a discarded flyer on some steps that led to a workroom at the end of the platform at Chambers Street. It read: Win Anywhere. Win Anytime.

TROOPS

“We’re wasting precious time. We

Man on the phone, walking across the street by Grand Army Plaza:

“When I bought this thing I was like, wow.”

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 17

Dad loved to buy records. There was a store in town on the second level of a dreary little strip mall, near a laundromat, near a drugstore, near a printers. He’d go there two, three times a week, bargain hunting in the cutout bins. For Promotional Use Only – Not for Resale. The Nice Price.

I’d go with him and sometimes he’d let me buy something but never something good. All the real music cost money. Presence. Animals. Let It Bleed. Beautiful covers with beautiful words in tight, unscarred plastic. Tantalizing me with that beautiful, impossible sticker: $7.98. I could get something for a couple of bucks, maybe four if it was a double album and Dad felt generous. Bands I’d never heard of. Compilations in garish hues.

My dad would buy anything as long as it was cheap. Kenny Rogers, Carpenters, Lovin’ Spoonful, Rascals, Average White Band. Didn’t really seem to matter. He liked to exit the premises with at least four or five in that square, yellow bag, not spend more than twenty dollars.

Sometimes I wondered whether he liked music at all.

One Tuesday night after dinner he got the itch to go. A school night. A work night. Everyone was about to settle in for Happy Days.

“C’mon,” he said. “You wanna go?”

I wore my Aquaman pajamas and my Spider-Man robe. But I wanted to go.

“Honey,” Mom said to him, exasperated.

“He can go!”

“In his pajamas? Paul.”

“Who cares? It’s warm out.”

There was a moment when nothing happened. Then something remarkable did. My mother gave a faint little shrug and returned to her newspaper, looking back down through her reading glasses—a series of gestures that meant: OK, fuck it, I don’t care.

So there I was wandering the aisles of Record City in my nightclothes. Did anyone stare? The other customers were all heads down, thumbing through stacks like you’re supposed to do. But had they looked away the moment before I saw them? Jerry, the paunchy, gregarious owner, had greeted us in his usual jolly way. Not appearing to give a fuck, either. Was it a conspiracy? Would they all howl with laughter as soon as we were gone?

For a while I laid low in the nether regions of the place. Along the far wall was a swivelling rack of aluminum-framed display cases with posters front and back—images waiting to be worshiped on adolescent walls. I paged through them glumly. Kiss Destroyer. The four men in their body suits and makeup; giant, snake-fanged shoes stomping on a silhouetted pile of rubble. Jimmy Page sweating profusely in his dragon-covered suit, his disheveled hair magenta from the spotlight. Queen sitting on the stone steps of some monument somewhere, looking bored. Jimi Hendrix in a military coat and purple velour pants. Some kid at school said his bandana was always soaked with LSD. Two men in business suits shaking hands in a desolate industrial complex, one of them ablaze. 

I found a copy of Tommy at a surprising discount. Dad okayed the purchase and handed me a fiver. Stunned by my good fortune, I walked to the front and handed it to the young woman behind the counter. She examined it with a frown, and turned to me with a look of concern. But not for my clothes.

“You know what this is, right?”

“It’s Tommy.”

“It’s the Tommy Soundtrack. It’s not really Tommy.”

She handed it back to me so I could see. I turned it over and I felt a shock of shame. Elton John, Eric Clapton, Tina Turner. A parade of names that weren’t the Who. Ann-Margret.

“It’s like, some of it has other musicians on it,” she added helpfully. “Other people singing.”

I now became aware of my little penis and balls naked, hairless, against the polyester of my pajamas. I was a fraud. Not a man—not even a real boy—before this woman, this judge. But I felt called upon to respond. To defend myself. To survive.

“Is it… good?” I stammered.

She shrugged. “It’s not bad. It’s OK. Some of it’s good,” she said. “But it’s not Tommy.”

“How much does Tommy cost?”

“Fourteen ninety-eight.”

I was about to return this disgraceful, odious object to the stacks, as a demonstration of some kind of principle, or maybe just pride, when my father approached, oblivious to my predicament of course.

“What are you doing, Pete? Buy it. Just buy it already,” he declared.

So I handed her the five dollar bill, wadded and wet from my sweating hand. She rang up $3.99 plus tax and gave me back a little handful of change with a littler smile. I took my faux Tommy under my arm and we left.

Or was it just a dream?

TROOPS

I even drove down with Karen to visit him in Wildwood (she had a license, I didn’t).

Sitting on the train to work I felt a sudden jolt of pure dread, inexplicable. It went away in a moment, leaving me with an unpleasant buzz.

I'm Sorry

I saw the van turning but I had the right of way. I kept walking. It kept turning. For a moment I thought: I’m not going to run away. I’m right. He’s wrong. I’m going to keep on walking. But he was turning, turning, speeding up. So I ran. I ran to the other side of the street.

He’d stopped now—after he saw me running. I stepped up to the window.

“Hey! What the fuck are you doing!?” I screamed.

I saw a flash of defiance on his face. Like he was going defy me. New York City, not fuck me, fuck you. But then he mouthed the words “I’m sorry.” Chinese guy. Delivering for some Chinatown business, a pawn shop, a restaurant.

“Be careful!!” I screamed again, my voice rasping and breaking.

Again he said “I’m sorry.” Gave a little smile. I’m sorry.

The young man thrust his hand between the closing doors of the subway car. Now his forearm was gripped tight by the black rubber gaskets. He made no effort to withdraw. His fingers clenched and curled as though they might summon the rest of his body through somehow. Then his hand wilted and dangled in midair. It was in the car and he was out. What would happen next? No one cared or even seemed to notice. But something was bound to happen. The doors opened again.

A couple fighting on Seventh Avenue. He’s approaching the door to their car as she follows a few steps behind. He says:

“You can go back in time and fix it!”