I took my blood pressure today per doctor’s instructions, removing the apparatus from the top of the laundry room closet, worried that it wouldn’t work. I strapped it on and watched the high number going down, wondering when it might stop, am I about to die. The mystery of it. And is this making it worse? I was one point above high blood pressure, if they call it points.

I set the hot sheet pan on the stove and stretched over the faucet and poured cold water into it and it tensed and buckled for a second then relaxed back into shape and the whole time it seemed alive, almost human.

I set the hot sheet pan on the stove and stretched over the faucet and poured cold water into it and it tensed and buckled for a second then relaxed back into shape and the whole time it seemed alive, almost human.

The Enterprise - 62

Leanne was an art student at Pratt. We met up in a studio where she was working on a massive project, a maze of undulating wood and PVC. She explained how the boards were softened and shaped, a thing that seemed impossible to me. Her sculpture was beautiful and utterly impractical. It was unclear to me how it might be displayed, let alone consumed. I ran my fingers along the smooth, curved plywood. Later we went to her dorm on Dekalb and drank and ordered out and watched an Italian art film on VHS set in a desolate industrial hellscape.

Every day at about five o’clock cars would line up along Canal to leave Manhattan through the Holland Tunnel. The drivers honked and cursed along the way. If it started to sound crazy we’d get up and peer out the window. I saw an enraged man leave his car with something in his hand and stride with purpose.

“What’s he got? What’s he holding?” I said.

“I don’t know. Something that fits nicely in his fist,” said Tom.

The man hurled the object at the car ahead of him. It made a dull sound against the rear windshield and disintegrated pitiably into foamy little fragments that fell into the street.

“It’s a muffin,” I declared. “It’s a blueberry muffin.”

Sooner or later the traffic cops appeared with bullhorns, bellowing commands like “You! Pull over!” Once I heard the squawking voice say, “I don’t care.” The honks went quiet after that.

I thought fuck it, I’ll go to the bar for fifteen minutes before picking up my kid. Johan’s last night. After all. I was so close to not going. I wanted not to go. I’d lined up all the reasons: exhaustion, late work, family. In the end there was a half hour window and I realized I was powerless not to go. I strode there quickly, emphatically. Imagining the scene. Maybe it’d be crowded, I wouldn’t even see him. Maybe he wouldn’t remember my name. All of these were possibilities. But I was going all the same. When I arrived the bar was subdued, just a half dozen people. Some gazing at the Mets on TV. At the far end Johan was chatting with a little group. When I got his attention he came right over and I said is it really your last night, he said yes, we shook hands and embraced. I bought him a shot. Mezcal for him and Jameson’s for me. I told him all the right things, how we’d miss him, how I had to see him one last time. Where was he headed? I asked. Imagining some far-off place, a young, untethered man’s adventure. Chile maybe. Thailand. Spain, Morocco. He said Manhattan. Some stupid-ass Irish bar in Hell’s Kitchen with a fiddly-diddle name. I wished him well. You’ll be missed, I said. He thanked me and we shook hands again and hugged and I threw a few extra dollars on the bar, not enough, and I walked back out.

Memories of Flying as a Child

I stood by the giant window at JFK, looking out at the sunny tarmac. A TWA 707, possibly our plane, waited at the gate. The big red stripe and the letters on the tail signaled a dimension of mystery and beauty apart from my world back home of walking in the woods. An elderly couple appeared you’d describe as kindly. The woman handed me a yellow butterscotch in its twisted little wrapper. When I found Mom she took it away. Don’t accept candy from strangers, she said.

As soon as the light went bing the man I sat behind reclined and lit a cigarette. The stewardess’s cart clattered with soda cans and baby liquor bottles. I had peanuts and ginger ale. Dinner was lasagna, hot and salty in the smoky atmosphere. The presentation excited me: the foil tight around the edges of the dish, the undressed iceberg and tomato salad, the dense and pale roll. And something strange and colorful and sweet. Utensils wrapped in plastic. We face forward when we eat on a plane. We do not face each other. Not that we really eat. It’s not about eating. I poked apart the pasta layers with my fork. I knew I’d be vomiting by the time we land.

The cabin was dark and still. On the screen a purple dune buggy bounced along the beach. I raised the window shade. The sky above the clouds was yellow, red and deep, dark blue. Was it sunset, sunrise, I don’t know. On the screen a man was getting acupuncture. The practitioner rotated each needle, an act that appeared devious and cruel but might bring healing forces into play.

I walked alone by the chain link fence outside Luxembourg Airport thinking if they could only see me now. My classmates from that awful year in Paris. If they could only see me in my winter jacket out there in the jet fuel-scented air. Me in my place, them in theirs. Planes taxiing in the distance with the logos on their tails. Much like the one that was to take me home. I could see myself the way they’d see me. If they could only see me now.

My sister and I took turns going to the toilet to steal soap. It was stacked in a dispenser, little paper-wrapped bars with TWA. I don’t know what we ever did with them. They seemed so precious in the air. Stewardesses would give us things, playing cards with a picture of a plane flying over the sunny Rocky Mountains, and I’d wonder how they took a picture of the plane. They gave us little wing pins, junior flight crew pins. Socks.

We sat in a dimly lit terminal at an odd hour of the night, waiting for our connection. Outside a squall covered the planes and tugs and luggage carts in a dusting of snow.

I stood by the checkout at the newsstand in JFK. I couldn’t see above the counter and the lady couldn’t see me. That’s what I figured anyway as she tended to a customer. At arm's reach before me sat rows upon rows of candy: gums on top, Dentyne, Wrigleys in blues and yellows and greens, Dubble Bubble and Bazooka; in the middle Necco Wafers, Smarties, Chuckles and Dots; the chocolate down below: Charleston Chews and Milky Ways, Reese’s, Kit Kats, Crunch. I took a roll of Life Savers. How was I not supposed to? I concealed it in the front of my waistband and walked away. On the plane it fell down my pants leg and rolled along the cabin floor. Mom saw it and said did you steal this, I said yes, full of fear, and she grabbed me by the shoulders and scolded me and said you may have one if you share them with your sister.

I finally let go of my old computer, the one I only used to play a constant slideshow of all my pictures. It was all it was good for until it wasn’t good for that. The recurring black screens, rebuildings of the photo database, your computer restarted because of a problem. I did the things you do, reinstalled the operating system, and when that didn’t work deleted everything and started anew, several times, the updating of files from the cloud taking days on end, a measure of all the pictures and all the years gone by. For the past few years the fan ran constantly; its white noise became a characteristic of the room just like the light coming in the window from the south. Now I can really hear the silence. I’ve put it in the closet, not knowing what else to do—what do you do with your broken computer?—and it fit so neatly and perfectly on the shelf behind my old notebooks that it seems like it belonged there this whole time.

I try to progress through the airport in the optimal way, with a minimum of graceless, superfluous motions. Boarding passes in respective passports, bookmarking the photo page, all three together in the leather document pouch in my messenger bag. Are they there? Yes they are. One two three. Close the flap with the weakly magnetic snaps. Are they there? Open the flap. Yes they are. One two three. Security is problematic. Will they be checking passports on the way in? I think they do at JFK. But what about Heathrow? If they don’t I’m holding mine like an asshole, nakedly American. Does it go in the gray tray alongside my bag, electronic devices, belt and loose change? Or do I carry it through the detection portal, holding it out as I stand in the full-body scanner and make myself into the shape of a stick figure man? Sometimes they say take off your shoes. Sometimes they don’t. Maybe we’re now past the ritual as a civilization, the shoe bomber’s name having finally been eclipsed from the last of our brains. Richard something. I had only just learned to properly navigate this step, slipping on my sneakers quickly after retrieving them and then, so as not to hold up the line, gathering everything and walking to the nearest row of chairs to put it all back down, step on the seat to tie my laces, then put my jacket back on, then my bag, then my hat, are the passports there? Open the flap. Yes they are. One two three.

Adeline the AirBnB manager showed us around briskly, garbage is through that door over there, someone left a popsicle in the freezer and you can have it. Keys, shower, towels. The washer’s here and the dryer’s there. She said a woman thought the dryer was the washer and put in soap, wide eye roll, what a disaster that was. Try to clean soap from a dryer, I am telling you. I’m here for you entirely, je suis entièrement à votre disposition, she said before leaving in that way French people say things and you know they don’t mean it.

We ate at our favorite place that night, the two sisters, and clumsily I asked if they have ice when there was ice obviously in the drinks so the younger sister looked at me and smiled and said of course we have ice, exclamation mark.

The air conditioner appeared to work and then it didn’t and I stood below it for half an hour, working the remote, putting it on fan only and back again, turning it off, turning it on, dialing the temperature down in desperation, Googling the force reset and the meaning of a blinking green light. I futzed with the vent by hand, knowing it was a bad idea. Finally I gave up and went to bed. In the early morning I had a happy dream I was somewhere that an AC worked. When I awoke Sara told me she got up at two o’clock when it was way too hot to sleep and pressed the button and it worked and it never stopped working after that.

I was inattentive and unadventurous for most of the trip, losing at online chess, leaving the freezer door wide open. I tended toward the uncolorful gelatos, the salted caramels, the chocolate family, though I knew the fruity ones were better, the mango and the passion fruit. But maybe this is what vacation is. A respite from trying.

Sometimes it just feels good to be in a different jurisdiction, a place where copyright laws prevent the playing of your favorite streamable media.

I discovered an email I’d received seventeen years ago, from a CD buyer, with a tally of what it was paying me for my entire collection—a dollar here, two there, sometimes $8.50 for some obscure reason. As I scrolled down the list there were titles I recognized, some I’d completely forgotten. The artists, even. But I realized this was music I loved, that I listened to again and again—physical objects in my possession, occupying space in my home. Necessarily I played them. Necessarily I loved them. But since I’d sold them—impulsively, heedlessly, but not unwisely after all—they were out of my life.

So much has been lost. And maybe, realizing this, something might be regained.

Damn American flag with its stars arrayed like cheerleaders, specifically Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders except fuck the Cowboys.

The Enterprise - 61

Brett and Tom and I had been playing tunes, Brett on drums even though he’s not a drummer, Tom on bass even though he doesn’t play bass. I felt guilty playing guitar. Brett had a room in a storage facility in Chelsea where he rehearsed with his band. Climate controlled and powered. I didn’t know such a thing existed. I thought storage rooms were dark, dusty and cramped, a place for things not people. In this building the hallways were bright and clean and the spaces big enough to live in.

Brett had made a carpeted space for a set of drums, two amps, and a mic stand, ringed by miscellaneous belongings, furniture maybe, some clothes, appliances. Maybe they were his. Maybe not. Maybe this was all his bandmate’s shit, his bandmate’s space. I took advantage unthinkingly, ungratefully. Here we were. We could plug right in and play.

We played weirdo covers, a hard rock version of “Chim Chim Cher-ee.” We played one or two of my tunes and Tom’s. Was there a point? We had fun. One time we thought, we have enough to play a set somewhere. We should play a show, one show only, start and end in a blaze of glory. But we never did.

After playing we’d go to a bar. Maybe that was the point.

We drove to Baltimore one weekend to see their friend Jim, the drummer in their old band, play a gig. It rained hard on the way and Brett was driving fast, peering below the windshield fog. This was DC Sniper time and we were heading into his territory. He’d shot eight people already, or was it nine, and six had died, or was it seven. I imagined him laying in wait in a perch overlooking the freeway. Maybe we’d be next.

We stopped at a rest stop just over the border in Maryland. There were teenagers hanging out, like this was the place to be in whatever fucking town this was. Racing through the main hall, twisting the knobs of gumball machines for something to come out. Two boys wrestled as they walked, smirking insolently, getting in people’s way and not caring. This is how they interacted, with arms and hands. How they communicated.

At the table next to us a girl gushed to her friends, “I heard he shot five people in a single day!”

We went out in the streets of Baltimore, bar to bar and down some ruined streets with the houses boarded up. Slept on a couch in Jim’s house. On Saturday night we watched his band play fusiony prog rock at a hipster bar crowded with young guys in beards. A confederate flag hung on the wall with no apparent irony.

Things That Are Mysterious

The number of rows of shingles on the south-facing side of a roof in France and the spider web of cracks in the windshield of a car struck by a branch and the song that’s playing at a party when someone spills their drink.

Sitting in the office, obsessively refreshing the workstream. Empty, empty, empty. Trying to waste time. The same old, bank balances, stock quotes, tired pointless shit. Even the news God forbid. And now this. Walking up and down the hallways, the tight-lipped smile at those you don’t know, the hey and knowing look to those you do. I go to the fridge in the kitchen area and take a Diet Pepsi from the rows upon rows of them. Like in a corner store you have to reach in back for the cold ones. Downstairs right by the door workmen are jackhammering, little chips of sidewalk fly past the flimsy safety tape to sully the pants and skirts of passersby.

Took the train from a different station, 15th Street. As I descended onto the platform I wondered how much of a different scene it was. People getting high and fucking maybe. It did feel different though. It seemed like you’d be less likely to get pushed in front of a train by the mentally ill. But these things can be deceiving.

Felt out of sorts most of the day as is often the case with Mondays. And this despite episodes of good fortune, such as finding that the obstruction in the vacuum cleaner hose was near the nozzle and easy to remove. You have to grab what you can get in this life.

In the early afternoon it poured for no apparent reason, and stopped. One of those summer storms when the rain comes in silvery strands and nothing gets wet.

We went to the Red Hook pool where the lifeguards sit across from each other in their tall chairs and fiddle with their whistles and signal to each other in some made-up sign language, or maybe it’s real sign language, I don’t know. City pools might be the last place on earth where everyone follows the rules. No phones, no hats. Only bottled water to drink. They wouldn’t know if it was full of vodka, I thought when I walked by the locker room guard with mine.

The Entreprise - 60

At night more than ever I sought oblivion. At the time I would have called it freedom. 

Pam had a late-summer roof party and I got wasted and went to McDonald’s and got on the bus back uptown, drifted off and woke up at 120th and Adam Clayton Boulevard. Walking back down in the streetlights and the moonlight was like a dream of old New York. Beautiful buildings seemingly intact, preserved not by renovation but by some benign force. Walls bathed in yellow glow. Street life here and there, people on stoops, on the sidewalk in little groups.

Before long the steam pipes hissed and gurgled to signal the changing of the seasons. Alan said he got a deal on a new office space downtown by the river. We assumed this really meant the end. A skeleton crew to guide the enterprise into a quiet, thrifty failure in a cramped space in a bad part of town. Except it wasn’t a bad part of town when you think about it. The top of Tribeca, on the corner of Greenwich and Canal. In any other city the blocks and blocks of warehouses and secondhand shops would mean you got lost on the wrong side of the tracks. Here it was where movie stars renovated industrial spaces into massive homes. The kind of real estate that rich people buy even though it’s in a weird old building that was configured for button sewing or shoe manufacture. They pay whatever for it, they put up with the raw walls and haphazardly situated columns. The hideously high ceilings. The rich have the alchemical ability to transform these very drawbacks and inconveniences into symbols of status and privilege. Look at my gigantic loft with the renovated period flooring. The floor above us was the home of a jeweler. I recognized the name of my ophthalmologist on the buzzer in the lobby. He occupied the floor below us with his young family. Our space too was vast. Everyone got a desk by a window. There was a kitchen and a separate room with a mattress on the floor should anyone have a need for one reason or another. Andre set to work repairing ethernet cables and setting up the modem. Almost like we had a purpose.

Each morning I walked west down Canal from the station. Through Chinatown, past the watercolor calligraphers, the shops of knockoffs. The street was intimate; a distinct, self-sustaining community. A woman swept dust out of her store and returned the dustpan and broom to a store a few doors down. Businesses on top of each other and you don’t know what to buy or who to buy it from but hang around a while and someone’ll sell you something. Shops with “electronics” and “audio” in their names appeared to have nothing but fake shoes and bags.

Mostly we hung out and went out for long, drinky lunches, the Argentine place down Greenwich or the Ear Bar most of the time, somewhere else if we got bored. If Alan wasn’t around we’d play guitar and sing. Erupt in mad fits of cursing. But it probably wouldn’t have mattered if he was around. One day I made a point to remember this time forever, to realize life would never be the same again, so weird and wonderful. It was hard, maybe impossible, to grasp it in the moment. But there’d come a day I’d look back and know.

Time stretched out in my early morning dreams to the point that I was sure I was oversleeping by hours; it had to be past noon. But I opened my eyes and it was seven something. When I opened them again it was a little past nine.

It was a day of mundane tasks: head shaving, box opening, taking out the trash. The take a book leave a book. I perused the titles and opened up an anthology by school kids called “Growing Up in Park Slope.” In the middle of the page was a sort of prose poem about Grandma having a stroke. I superstitiously thought of reading something else before closing the book, something happy, but I didn’t. I left Raggedy Ann and Andy and Grisham and something else, taking nothing.

We didn’t talk too long about it. S. thinks a woman can’t win in America. Maybe but we have to try.