Tag Archives: new york city

December 12, 2011

Meanwhile in New York City

By welcometoflavorcountry

Water-
streaked
faces

Water
cutting
paths
through
dust

Eight
million
faces
grind
and jostle
clammer
and spread
like insects
breed
like rats
undulate
and gesticulate
honk
and finger

Water
over faces
solitary
faces
saline
solution
dripping
down
down
down
taking with it millions
of dead cells

their masses
sleep
in doorways
wrapped
in woolen
blankets
sleep
alone
in rooms
with lead paint
peeling
curling
down the walls
sleep
with strangers
in asbestos-lined
boxes
and
on and on
and on and on

A man
no doubt
with a Bible
on a podium
spouting
redemption
through tragedy

In the morning
they will emerge
from their sticky
hovels
chinese rocks
in their veins
snow
in their nostrils
serotonin dissolving
in their brains

Faces
in a well-lit room
In blue
mass-produced
plastic
chairs
Heads bowed

New York City
will not mind

This five-buroughed beast
heaves
and sighs

This machine
continuous

Tears
in the aisle
Tears
leading up to the pine box
Tears
Atop my body

4 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Poetry

April 11, 2011

A Conversation

By welcometoflavorcountry

Originally from issue #21, August 2010.

“I can’t believe we stayed out until 4am again,” she says.

“Me neither,” I respond, amazed but content.

“So much for getting you to bed early.”

“Yeah. Oh well.”

We carry our inebriated selves into her apartment and she says, “I could go for another beer. Do you want one?”

“No thanks. But I’ll stay up with you if you want one.” She heads to the kitchen and pulls out a Magic Hat from the fridge.

“Do you want to listen to some music?” she asks.

“Sure.”

She puts on the Velvet Underground’s self-titled record, placing the needle down gently as the music warms the room.

“Well, if I’m going to drink I need a cigarette,” she says, standing up from kneeling in front of the record player and going to her bedroom. She pulls a pack of Marlboro Lights out of a drawer and makes her way to the kitchen to climb out on to the fire escape and smoke. I’ve been standing in the frame between the living room and kitchen in order to be out of the way but as she makes her way towards me I grab her by the waist and pull her in for a hug before she can get past me. She hugs me close and I bury my head between hers and her shoulder.

“You’re all trembly – what’s wrong?” she asks with concern.

I stammer as I let go of her embrace. I can’t quite find the words as I follow her over to the window as she climbs out onto the fire escape, lighting her cigarette and sitting down. Finally I blurt out:

“I really wanted to kiss you just now.”

“Yeah, I don’t think my boyfriend would like that,” she says in a calm tone.

“I know,” I reply sheepishly.

There’s a pause as she takes a drag of her cigarette.

“It’s alright,” she says.

I normally can’t stand kissing smokers but with her I don’t think I’d even notice. She takes a swig of her beer.

I chuckle and say, “It’s funny you said your boyfriend wouldn’t like that instead of saying you didn’t want to or something like that.”

“Like I said, I don’t think my boyfriend would like that,” she says as it dawns on me what she’s really saying: I’d like to make out with you and would under different circumstances but not now. I smile while she takes another drag and looks out at the buildings. It’s 5am and the sun is starting to rise.

She takes one more drag and flicks the butt down to the street below.

“I know the people down there probably hate me for doing that.”

She grabs her beer, climbs inside and shuts the window.

“We should listen to some Springsteen and then go to bed,” she tells me. “I want you to hear this song.”

She flips through the stack of records until she finds Springsteen’s “Tunnel of Love.”

“I love this album,” she says as she takes off the Velvet Underground and replaces it with the Boss. “It’s all about how hard it is being married to someone you love so much while still dealing with the things that confront that marriage.”

I glance at the lyrics as I hear the Boss croon, “Tougher Than The Rest.” We listen to a few more songs. Just the music and us. I break the silence.

“I’m sorry about earlier.”

“Don’t worry about it. I appreciate you respecting me once I made things clear. You weren’t pushy about it. It’s okay.”

“Oh yeah,” I say, acting like I’ve done her some big favor when I know I would still jump at the chance to make out if things were different.

She looks out the window and sighs.

“God, I can’t believe the sun is coming up. It’s depressing when I stay up this late.”

“Yeah, I hear ya,” I say.

She flips over the Springsteen record.

“There’s one more song I want you to hear,” she says.

I smile and hold on to some tiny but meaningful feeling of happiness.

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March 21, 2011

Pope Killdragon

By welcometoflavorcountry

I grew up in the same neighborhood as Tim Showalter.

Our families went to the same church for a number of years and I was in the same grade as his older brother. After I graduated college we got to know each other fairly well while we both lived in our hometown. We’re still friends although now he lives in Philadelphia and I live in Boston.

Tim is also a musician and under the moniker Strand of Oaks he has put out a remarkable album, Pope Killdragon. Having known Tim for a long time, I thought that connection made for a unique opportunity for my own creativity. I decided to take each of the songs on the album and use them as inspiration to write something. Hopefully you like some of what you read. You can listen to each of the songs off Pope Killdragon here.

10. Pope Killdragon

I know this is kind of awkward, but I was wondering what your thoughts might be regarding a dramatic, volatile relationship between the two of us. I know, I know – it sounds ridiculous, but just hear me out.

My thought was that it might be somewhat passionate and also somewhat catastrophic. I don’t want to destroy you or corrupt you – I think we’re both too old for that. We’ve both witnessed too many things to go back to having any sense of innocence that could be shattered.

But I really like you. I like your teeth. They’re wonderful in their imperfection. And I think the things you dislike about yourself are absolutely adorable. Your diminutive size is something upon which you take umbrage but the way in which you carry yourself is remarkably strong. I can see where you draw your strength. It comes from your family and your friends. It comes from being independent.

Yet I feel this ache in my body. Deep down inside, past all the black stuff and whatever it was I had for dinner last night. Past the fear and the acumen I normally display. And this feeling (whatever it is) wants you to cut open my chest and crawl inside and seed my heart to grow a crop of fruit so rich that once you get out of my body and sew me back up and clean yourself off we can both enjoy it when it’s ripe. Just you and I. And never Eddie Rabbit. (But maybe Crystal Gayle?)

The skin is fresh and crisp and it has the sweetest, richest taste. Trust me, you’ll love it. Once you find the meat of the fruit it gets even better. It’s so brilliant and filling, but too much of it and you’ll groan in blasted sickness. Vomiting it up is something fiercely rotten. You’ll never want it again if you go too far. So take your time with it and enjoy it while it lasts.

See, I’ve read your book and you’ve read mine. I know your words and how you sculpt them to create the person I see you as. But they give me hope. Hope in romance and a future and a redemption outside of god. A salvation we have both separately agreed we don’t need.

I want us to read to one another like you used to read to him. Lounging sideways over the arm rests in our respective la-z-boy recliners. Our silence interrupted by the next person to say, “Oh! You have to hear this!” Or perhaps it will just be my loud, abrasive laugh or your giggle.

I don’t know much, but I’m pretty sure you have the same faults I do. We both can’t commit. We both desire our independence too much. We are suffering from the after effects of a twisted youth, trying to understand what it means without a social structure we once adored and a lack of cohesion of what we were told we needed to survive. How is it we’re still surviving? Maybe we just need each other? Or nothing at all? Or like I said, perhaps we just need something dramatic and volatile.

However, I know that after a continuous diet of this fruit that has blossomed from my heart, you’ll find yourself one day gorging on it. And you’ll be forced to release it up from whence it came and let it go. And you should. Just let it go.

I’ll hold your hair back behind your head and bring you a damp cloth so that you might wipe your mouth. But don’t think I don’t know what it all means. Even with my chest not fully healed from the harvest of the crop, you will no doubt rise from your posture of servitude to the porcelain throne and thump me in the solar plexus with the butt of your palm. I know how that feels and I’ve dealt the blow a few times myself.

It will be time for me to go. But you and I both know I’ll still be there for you. And I have no doubt that in spite of our faults and in spite of any once-sweetened and now rotten fruit we might partake in, one day when we are living in New York City and an apocalyptic event struck – the type we’d assumed would only be found in the movies – we’d find ourselves outside on the same street, looking up to a darkened sky at our impending doom and then at one another.

While there would be a brief questioning in each of our minds as to how we both ended up in our last moment on earth at the same time and place, we’d smile gently at one another. And we would both extinguish gloriously in an obscene event of gratuitous violence. And we’d be okay with that. We would expect that. And nothing less.

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January 31, 2011

Interview with Carlene Bauer

By welcometoflavorcountry

Carlene Bauer is the author of the memoir Not That Kind of Girl, which is one of the better books I have read in a while, if for no other reason than I found a lot of similarities between Carlene’s life of being raised in evangelical Christianity and my own. Every now and then I write her and tell her how great I think she is and she humors me with a kind response.

Why did you decide to write a memoir?

Had this been 1994 or 1985 I would have done what many people before me had done and written a thinly veiled, autobiographical coming-of-age novel. But I felt that would be kind of a cop-out. Memoir, to me, seemed like Prozac Nation or The Glass Castle – books I would never read. And I thought, “What if I could try and write a book that would read more like a novel?”

And I also wanted to write a book that could engage the reader not because of the salacious details but because of the strength of myself as a character and the writing. I didn’t think of the book as a memoir but I knew the publishing house would have to call it that because that’s what happens now. I just saw my book as a very long personal essay.

Have you ever read someone’s memoir and then met them?

Yes. One person I was just getting to be friendly with, so I knew about her before I read her book. I also just recently interviewed Joyce Carol Oates and she’s publishing a memoir about losing her husband.

When you met them, how were they different than what you expected based on reading their memoirs?

With Joyce Carol Oates, she’s small and has a soft speaking voice and a shy demeanor, but the writing can pummel you. So that was the disconnect. With the other woman I’m thinking of there was pretty much a one-to-one correlation between her writing and her person. I think with memoir it’s easier to find the one-to-one correlation but with fiction it’s much easier to find a disparity with a voice on the page and the voice of the person. I think most people who are ferocious in any art form are going to be ferocious in person.

Have you ever had a muse that has influenced your writing or do you currently have one?

*laughs* Karl Lagerfeld is my muse.

Who’s that?

He’s this crazy, German fashion designer. He designs Chanel. But I do like his outrageousness. But hmm…I don’t know. I mean, Jesus?

*laughs*

For serious. You know, when I wrote the book I had lots of people in mind. But now I would say lots of people from the 19th century. Currently I would even include Neko Case because the book I’m writing is a love story and it’s very hard for me to say emotional things and I think that happens more often in music so I’m trying to do something that most people do in music – make something emotional without being sentimental or saccharine. So I’ll think a lot of her songs.

With the first book, I think it was predictably Sylvia Plath as a muse. I know it’s unfashionable and stupid, but nobody talks about what a good writer she is. She had a lot of control and whatever she did she did on purpose. I think nowadays our writing gets bigger and bigger and bigger and we don’t try and make every sentence count. You know who else –

Jesus?

You know, even though I don’t know what I believe I do think often of him. I guess in some way I have a religious project and I would like to think he’s hovering somewhere in the background.

Even though you don’t believe in him?

Yeah. It’s like trying to reclaim some sort of religious act from the Right.

What is the book you’re working on right now?

It’s an epistolary novel. It’s told entirely through letters. It’s set in the early 60s and it’s about a poet and fiction writer who become friends and then fall in love but can’t quite make it work. He suffers from manic depression and she is repressed. They’re both Catholic and he eventually becomes lapsed and this creates conflict and the novel follows their ins and outs.

It’s based loosely on Robert Lowell and Flannery O’Connor who were friends but never fell in love (that we know of). I thought it would be interesting to create a story where you have a male character who is very effusive, generous, passionate and sort of delusional and the woman is colder and reticent and have those people be in conflict all the time.

Are there certain subjects you get embarrassed talking about in front of your parents?

Not embarrassed but I’ve learned not to talk to them about politics. I’ve learned through the last two elections that it is just not worth it.

But you can talk about things such as your sex life in front of them?

I have. They’re actually very sympathetic and compassionate so I lucked out there.

If you had to ever kill someone, could you do it?

*gasp* You know I‘ve actually thought about that.

Worst segue ever.

No. Best segue ever. I like to think I’d be able to. But I hope I don’t ever have to find out.

Dogs or cats or both and –

Dogs. Dogs. Dogs.

Why?

Because they’re more emotionally available. I like the space they take up and I like their faces. I’ve had to cat sit a couple of times and the litter box thing is terrible and they’re temperamental and they don’t really need you.

What was your favorite trip overseas?

There was one I took with an ex-boyfriend to Barcelona and London that was really lovely. But I don’t know. I can’t pick! When I graduated from graduate school and my sister graduated from college we took ourselves abroad in the grand manner. We went to London, Paris, Florence and Rome for two and a half weeks and that was great because I’d never done it. Oxford had this weird summer program and I did that about ten years ago, so I stayed there for a month and then went to Paris with a friend.

Do you have a favorite out of those?

Well, I’m an anglophile, so I’ve loved whatever time I’ve spent in London. I saw Sleater-Kinney play in London five years ago. There were these Bob Hoskins types standing in the back in this club in Camden drinking Foster’s tall boys. And I said to my boyfriend at the time, “What the hell are these guys doing here?” but they were into it and they approved. I forgot – I went to see Belle & Sebastian in 1999 or 2000 at a festival in the South of England and I saw them and Teenage Fanclub and Sleater-Kinney. But the thing about Sleater-Kinney when they played abroad – I felt that we were exporting this and people were just eating it up. It was a complete rock show. It had nothing to do with who they were as women although I admit I took great pleasure that they were girls kicking ass.

Barcelona is beautiful and I had read Homage to Catalonia before I went and – Oh! George Orwell! He’s often a muse. Anyway, that city is very old in ways that New York and Paris isn’t sometimes. It felt medieval and dusty and untamed and also very alive.

Without giving the obvious answer, what’s something you used to believe that you don’t believe in anymore?

I should say New York. I should have had that beaten the hell out of me by now.

You still believe in it?

Yeah. I feel ashamed. There are too many people with money coming in cleaning everything up and then people want to raze Coney Island to the ground. It’s total liberal arts major complaints that are totally unoriginal but still deeply held about money and history.

Hmm. Also, I might not believe in certain bands anymore.

Such as?

It was Belle & Sebastian a couple years ago.

And maybe I don’t believe in the gym right now. I have gone a lot in my life and I find it useful but the thought of it is kind of soul crushing.

What was the last good film you saw in the theater?

I did like “The Social Network.” I thought it was well done and Jesse Eisenberg did a good job. That might have been the last thing I saw in the theater. That’s kind of embarrassing.

Eh, not really. I only go when I can pull the double feature so it’s not too often for me either.

Okay.

What pops into your mind when I mention the word “Mormons?”

Oh, lots of things. White shirts, ties, and nameplates. Upstate New York.

Why upstate New York?

Joseph Smith was living in upstate New York when he had his visions.

Oh right.

Preparedness – what do they call those kits they make for the impending apocalypse? It’s got a lot of freeze-dried food, too. I wrote a piece on Mormon comedy for the NY Times Magazine a long time ago. So I did a lot of research into Mormons. I actually have sympathy for them in a weird way. I understand the problems and the weirdness and all that. When talking to them I felt that sometimes they were misunderstood. There’s a lot of sexism in Mormonism. They may even be more sexist than evangelicals but it also seems they may also be a little less uptight than evangelicals.

What kind of influence has Soren Kierkegaard had on your life?

Oh. A lot, because he was a depressed person who was a Christian. I knew who he was but I didn’t read up on him until I moved to New York. The line on him is that he’s a poet but he’s also a philosopher. So there’s logic and poetry. There’s a tendency to preach while also trying to purport logic and poetry so as an act of writing I find this incredibly compelling.

It’s beautiful but it also clears the way for existentialism and very clear directives, which I think if you’re depressed, it can be helpful to have. Like the idea that if you despair, despairing over something is worse than despairing of something. So these small shifts with just a preposition shift you into a whole other category of despair and the idea that you move from the aesthetical to the ethical to the religious – that there is a forward motion and a hierarchy of modes – I find this really great. It’s exciting. Just the grappling with faith constantly. And also the fact that you can’t prove it, you just have to believe it. That idea is incredibly helpful. You can’t prove it; you have to just have faith. But this is also hard at times to believe. Like, “That’s it?”

I love his explanation of Abraham and Isaac and how that doesn’t make any sense at all. Abraham goes through this absurd, immoral, illogical thing that breaks all the norms of what we’re taught to believe and THAT gets credited to him as faith and the faith becomes righteousness and the righteousness gets him into heaven. So you have to do something that goes against everything you’ve ever been taught – and that gets you into heaven?

Does that bother you?

I think it used to but now I don’t really give a shit.

Did it bother you because you felt as though it was going to legitimize acts of violence?

No, not that, but that it was promoting the idea that you can’t have a logical basis for your faith. And if you can’t have a logical basis for your faith, how do you defend it against “secular America” or secular society? And then you can’t and you don’t.

But if you just come at it and admit it doesn’t make any sense and it’s not supposed to make sense then it just ends up becoming this thing where you personally believe that this person was right and it’s strictly a matter of faith. I see that with the Christian Scientists I know. It makes no sense but you just accept the idea that this woman received a divine inspiration from God. And that’s totally weird to me because the evidence points otherwise.

Yeah. Thinking about the Mormons it’s the same thing. The only difference between Joseph Smith and Jesus is that Jesus has two thousand years on him. In some ways there might not be a difference. I mean, there is, but there isn’t.

Yeah, totally. So my last question: what is one of the most important things you’ve learned from living in New York City?

There is no meritocracy. Poor me. I’ve learned that.

This is sort of trite but I am often surprised how kind New Yorkers are. I think people don’t realize that. You hear things about New York – “it’ll be a teeming crack den of iniquity and caviar and heroin!” But I was really surprised how easy it was to find friends that are good people.

3 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Friends & Acquaintances, Interviews

January 6, 2011

Hey I Miss You (Part 3)

By welcometoflavorcountry

“So how did you feel about what happened the next day?” asked Jim.

“I dunno. I guess I started doubting myself to some degree. Not because we didn’t have sex but because it all seemed so surreal. It was like a fucking movie. I had wanted to treat it all so normally at first and now it just seemed out of control. So the next day the weather was shitty and we just lay around in bed being lazy and listening to records. At one point that day we were listening to this Sigur Ros album and for some reason the music and my emotions and the weather all got to me and I just started bawling. And Alex was like, ‘What’s wrong?’ and I said through my crying that I didn’t know. I guess I was feeling everything from the past few days so much that it just got me to crack. I had never felt so strongly about anyone before.

“She was really great about everything and held me and helped me feel better. But in the end Jim, I was still just 19. I really had no clue what I was doing and having not had a real serious relationship before this I guess I didn’t know how to handle myself.

“The next day or so we still had a good time and fooled around but we never ended up having sex. And I can’t help but think that as much as I had tried to treat this as a normal relationship, I had either built it up a ton in my mind beforehand or just wasn’t mature enough to handle a connection like that. You know, being so abstract in the form of the relationship and then suddenly being with that person coalesces into something fast, intense and totally romantic. In other words, much the opposite of what I had with Maria.”

Jim laughed, knowing all too well how that relationship had been and how different it was than the one in the story in which his friend was telling. Jim recalled things with Maria had happened slowly and were always quite casual between her and Paul.

“So what happened at the end?” Jim asked.

“Well, I got on my flight after a very tough goodbye and then I didn’t hear from her for quite a while. I mean, we had the token ‘How are you?’ emails but nothing where we talked about what happened or concerning that intense connection we made. And then the letters and emails stopped completely.

“What? Why?” Jim questioned, surprised.

“Well, I found that out about three or four months later. Around the time of my birthday I received this letter in an envelope made of a map of the New York City subway system. I seriously about started to cry. I figured she had some problem and had given up on me. I’m not the type of person to stalk someone so after sending her a few emails letting her know I was still there and wondering – sincerely I might add – how she was doing I just gave up. You can’t force someone to be friends with you.

“When I got this letter it was like being roped back in to all of those emotions and all that shit. It took me a while but finally I opened the envelope and read the letter. The whole thing was basically about how she was sorry but she had needed time to sort things out; to figure out what had happened and what we were. It was so sweet and romantic and it was just like old times. She even wished me a happy birthday. So after giving it a day or so, I wrote her an email telling her thanks and how sweet her letter was. We even talked on the phone a few times. But like Morrissey sings, ‘It just wasn’t like those old days anymore.’ Something in us had snapped and we weren’t the two people we thought we were going to be together.”

Paul starts to pack up his stuff, putting his Solzhenitsyn book in his bag and wiping up spilled coffee with a napkin.

“Hey, I just noticed the time. I’ve got class in half an hour,” Paul tells Jim.

“Well wait, what happened with you and Alex?” Jim asks, somewhat desperately. “You can’t leave me hanging like that!”

Paul gets up and puts his cup, spoon and saucer away in the tub by the front counter. He swings back by the table, grabs his backpack and says to Jim, “Alex and me?”

“Yeah man, what happened?” Jim emphatically asks.

“After a few months of irregular contact I never heard from her again,” Paul says. “Besides, like I said, until today it’s not like I had even really thought much about her.” He shrugs and then heads out the door of the coffeehouse into the brisk autumn chill.

Disappointed, Jim looks back down at his writing and catches the sight of a small rectangular piece of paper lying on the floor by the chair where Paul was sitting. It looked about the same size as the bookmark Paul had been using and figuring it must’ve slipped out of the book. Jim picked it up and looked at it. Staring at it he sees it’s not a piece of paper, but a photo, cut down to make a bookmark. The picture was of Paul with a cute girl with black eyes and black hair, wearing an Ache shirt. Paul had his arm around her and both of them were smiling. Flipping over the picture Jim sees inscribed on the back a sentence: “I believe in desperate acts, the kind that make you look stupid.”

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January 2, 2011

Hey I Miss You (Part 2)

By welcometoflavorcountry

Originally from issue #10, April 2007.

“So, did I mention she was playing for both teams?” Paul asks with that smarmy look on his face that only comes when one controls the release of events in a story, dropping them at the most opportune time.

“What?!” Jim said rather loudly, drawing a few stares from nearby coffee patrons.

“Ohhh yeah,” Paul says with yet another sigh. “She went for girls, too. I guess her interest in me was an exception.”

“Wait a second,” Jim interrupts, “does that mean she and her roommates were – “

“Ha ha. No, no, no. Just friends,” Paul quickly pipes in.

“Okay, just wondering. Go ahead.”

“So where was I? Oh yeah. So we get to bed that night acting like we were all mature and weren’t going to do anything weird and really we didn’t, but when I woke up in the morning she was totally spooning me. I snuck out of bed and went to the bathroom, then went and lie on the couch for a while and read. Eventually Alex woke up, cute as could be.

“I won’t give you every last detail because honestly most of the trip was just us wandering around the city. We went to Brooklyn, the Bronx, did some touristy stuff and ate out at a bunch of restaurants. Being that it was spring break the weather was kind of sketchy some days but it wasn’t too bad. The second night she wanted to go see these bands play at some bar in Brooklyn so we went out there and snuck me in with my fake ID. I felt even more nervous than I probably should have been and could only think of that episode of Simpsons where Bart becomes a courier and the guy running the courier business says to Bart, ‘Well, you don’t look 25, but your out-of-state un-laminated ID is proof enough for me.’

“Thankfully I got through ok, but decided not to drink too much. Alex on the other hand, being a waif got fairly tipsy after a few drinks. It wasn’t really until the end of the night I noticed it. But she was exceptionally giddy and very flirtatious. After the show she held my hand as we made our way to the subway. On the train she put her head on my shoulder and dozed off. Her breath smelled like beer but not in an annoying way. It was actually kind of cute and she just felt right, you know?  I think that by that time, given all the buildup beforehand and what a phenomenally fun time I had had with her I was beginning to really feel like I was in love.

“I hate to sound like a teacher here, but let me tell you a couple of things I’ve learned about love, Jim. It’ll help my experience make a little more sense to you.”

“Ok, cool. Please proceed,” Jim says sarcastically, extending his upraised right hand towards Paul, the signal that says, “You have the floor.”

“Okay, so one thing I’ve learned is that you have very little say over when you’ll fall in love. Granted, you won’t fall in love with someone you hate or aren’t attracted to in some way, but most of the time it seems you can just be minding your own business in life and then it just happens. Another thing I’ve learned is that love isn’t prejudicial. As long as you’re the slightest bit open to someone being in your life and you’re slightly vulnerable with them, it can happen. I mean, it wasn’t really my ideal situation to fall in love with someone who lived hundreds of miles away and who normally found girls more attractive than boys. But it just happens and you go with it. The last thing about love is that when you’re in love, all those stupid pop ballads make total sense to you. Disney-era Phil Collins, Celine Dion, Rod Stewart: all freaking geniuses my friend. It’s pretty sad, actually.”

Jim laughed. “I guess that figures, though. They’d have to appeal to somebody. All of what you said seems to make some sense to me I guess.”

“Cool. So that night as we got off the train and made our way back to her place she got really close to me and while we were waiting to cross the street she looked at me and said, ‘I’m gonna take a shower when we get home.’ ‘Alright,’ I replied, looking away from her and at the crosswalk sign. ‘Do you want to take it with me?’ she asked with a big smile on her face. The crosswalk suddenly said walk but I was just standing there with my mouth hanging open. She started walking and I couldn’t move – I was fairly stunned. I mean Jim, come on, you know me – I’m not some naïve dude, but I’m definitely not a player, so when a girl tells me she wants to shower with me, it catches me a bit off guard. I mean, I guess when I flew out there I thought we’d do stuff but figured it more along the lines of making out a bit. Showering together always seemed at the time to me to be something that married couples only did together. I’d fooled around with girls before, but never something so intimate. Shit, maybe I was slightly naïve. I dunno.” Paul said that last part and trailed off, once again going someplace else in his mind.

“Dude, it’s cool,” Jim said, “I understand. No need to justify things to me.”

“Ok, well, anyway, seeing as to how she was slightly tipsy and all I didn’t feel quite right about it. So I told her, “Alex, that’s okay. I appreciate the offer but I think I’m just going to go to bed.’ She smiled and said, ‘Okay, your loss.’ Having dodged that bullet in the loss of my innocence I got ready for bed while she took a shower. She came back to her bedroom dressed only in her towel and I was about half asleep. She said my name to see if I was sleeping. All my half-awake mind could muster was a mumble. ‘Can we cuddle?’ she asked me. Fuuuck. As though I’m that naïve. ‘Sure Alex,’ I told her, suddenly waking a bit and sitting up. She had changed into some flannel boxer shorts and a t-shirt and hopped under the covers with me. ‘Like my shirt?’ she asked. ‘Oh you’ve got to be kidding me,’ I said. And there she was wearing an Ache t-shirt.”

“Which one?” Jim, always the consummate band nerd asked.

“It was the one with the Greek warrior on it.”

“Cool. I like that one.”

“Yeah, so next thing I know we’re making out and cuddling and I’m pretty sure it was only our fatigue that kept us from having sex.

“The next day we went back over to Brooklyn ‘cause I wanted to go to this bookstore over there. We had a really good time and I had this ridiculously good PBJ and banana sandwich before we went to another show of some local bands, this time at the Northsix. It’s one of the indie venues in Brooklyn. After the show we walked down the block towards the water. From the front steps of some boarded business we found the best view of the Manhattan skyline. It’s fucking gorgeous and we’re standing there just watching the city, not talking, and I put my arms around her. Dude, it was totally like something from the movies. So perfect.

“It was fairly late by this time, so we headed back and experienced one of those totally typical things that can only happen in New York. The subway was kinda crowded, so when we saw two open seats we thought we were in luck. Then we noticed the huge pile of puke lying right in front of the seats, narrowly avoiding a very gross finale to our evening. As we stood there, it suddenly became our job to warn people at every stop about the puke. Unfortunately some couple didn’t heed our warning. While it sucks to step in puke, seeing the reaction on people’s faces is hilarious. So after that we quit warning them.

“When we got back to her place we were in a good mood and we started to watch a movie and we snuggled and all of that kind of thing. Finally things got kind of heated and we ended up going pretty far but stopped short of having sex.”

“Why?” Jim asked.

“You know, I really have no clue. Don’t get me wrong, what we did was great, but I guess things just weren’t right. Eventually we fell asleep.”

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December 30, 2010

Hey I Miss You (Part 1)

By welcometoflavorcountry

I’m really not sure how I feel about this story anymore, but figured I’d share it anyway.

Originally from issue #10, April 2007.

“You know, there is seriously a good chance I may never fall in love,” Jim says to his friend Paul looking up from his writing.

Paul, a scrawny college senior with black messy hair slightly hanging in front of his eyes and sporting a yellow Bad Brains t-shirt with the band’s ROIR tape cover on the front, glances up from his book while still trying to finish the sentence he’s reading. He mumbles a “Hmm?” only half paying attention.

“I said there is seriously a good chance I may never fall in love,” Jim, repeats himself, this time more firmly. Jim is the nerdier counterpart to Paul, with wire-rimmed glasses, short brown hair and wearing a button-up collared shirt. While not masking his interest in all things computer-related it does belie his more non-mainstream music tastes which range from Mr. Bungle to James Brown and old Green Day.

“I’d rather doubt that,” Paul says skeptically. A few seconds of silence pass before Paul adds, “Wait, you’ve never been in love before?”

“Uh, no,” Jim says hesitantly.

“Wow.”

“Why, have you?”

“Yeah, a couple times. Don’t worry though. It comes easier to some of us than others. Besides, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

“Why do you say that?” Jim asks. “Did you have a bad experience with it?” Jim finally puts down his pen on his notebook. Sensing that this is leading to a deeper conversation, Paul loosely places the bookmark in his book and lays it face down on their table at the coffeehouse.

“I wouldn’t say either experience was bad, per se, it’s just that love is a very intense emotion and often times it will turn you into someone you’re not. Later on, months or years down the line you wonder why you did what you did or said what you said.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard all that before,” Jim responds. “I was hoping you’d have some other insights beyond that.”

Paul laughs a quick “ha” and then says, “Afraid not man. What makes you think you’ll never fall in love anyway?”

“I dunno. I’m just not feeling the possibilities I guess. It seems like my life is all such a routine: school, work, sleep. It’s hard to imagine anything else.”

“Yeah, I hear ya,” Paul says, blowing on his still steaming cup of coffee.

“Does that really help at all?” Jim inquires, motioning to Paul’s hand holding the cup of coffee.

“What?” Paul asks, looking at his hand holding the piping hot cup of java. “Oh. Uh, I dunno.” Paul takes a sip and the warm liquid burns his tongue. “Ahh – still too hot,” he quips, rubbing his tongue around his mouth.

“So what are you reading, anyway?” Jim asks, pointing to the book lying face down in front of Paul.

“Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.”

“Any good?”

“I have no idea. I literally just started reading it.”

“What class is it for?”

“Modern Russian History. Solzhenitsyn was a political prisoner in the ‘40s and ‘50s in the Soviet Union. He also had internal exile imposed on him.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, according to my professor’s definition today in class,” Paul thinks for a second, “it’s ‘the detention of people in specific places by force.’ It’s within the person’s own country, but usually out in the middle of nowhere.”

“Ha. If that was a condition of the mind, I think it would be vaguely synonymous with love,” Jim quips, laughing. “Speaking of, do you mind if I ask what happened with the two relationships when you were in love?”

“Not at all. The most recent time was just last year with Maria. You remember her, right?”

“Yeah, totally,” Jim replies, recalling the girl a year ahead of them in college with the choppy brown hair and piercings in her nose, ears and lip. The seminal indie rocker minus the elitist attitude. She broke up with Paul after graduating and moving way. The two of them had been going out for a couple of years. It didn’t come as much of a surprise to either one of them when it happened, but it certainly didn’t make it any easier on Paul. He spent a good three days in his bedroom, coming out only to use the bathroom and to get the occasional glass of water. Jim was finally able to coax him out to go to a house party where Paul promptly got incredibly blitzed, fucked some girl he didn’t know and puked all over someone’s bed. It was one hell of a rebound.

“So yeah,” Paul responded, flickering through all his memories of a two year relationship in the course of five seconds, “you know that situation. The other time I was in love was before Maria – it was a very strange experience to say the least.” Paul leans back in his chair and exhales, staring blankly at the book in front of him. Nervously, Jim chimes in, “Hey man, if you don’t want to talk about it that’s ok.”

“No, no. It’s cool. I just haven’t talked about it much – hell, I haven’t thought about it in forever. It almost seems like another life,” his voice trails and for a split second he’s somewhere else. Paul wipes his hand over his face trying to clear his thoughts. Suddenly he asks Jim, “Do you remember the band I was in a few years ago?”

Ah, how could Jim forget Ache? Named after a Jawbreaker song, they were the toast of the indie scene in their college town for their two-year existence. Culminating in a couple of regional tours, an EP and an album, Ache was a good mix of punk and indie rock. Their live show was always a good time, usually degenerating into a full-on party with at least one band member drunk. What else could you expect from a band full of college students?

“Paul, I was at half your shows dude. Of course I remember.”

“Oh yeah. I guess that just seems like so long ago I haven’t thought about most of it in a while.”

“That’s too bad. You guys were good.”

“Thanks. Anywho, I was the guy in the band answering most of the email from our website and so I’d get the occasional email from some fan from somewhere in California or Texas who heard our stuff either online or some other way. They’d write and I’d write back just to be nice and answer any questions they might’ve asked.

“Anyway, one day my freshman year I get this email from a girl in New York City. She’s a student at Columbia and seemed sincere and friendly and after the initial email we kept writing, talking about our lives, schools, what inspired us and so on. Well, this went on for a few months and before I know it we’re talking on the phone a few times a week and sometimes for like four or five hours at a time. How I kept from failing my classes is beyond me.

“The girl’s name was Alex and she was a junior and lived in an apartment with a few roommates in Manhattan near the campus. And as weird as it may seem for people to meet over the internet, that’s totally what was happening. We were getting to know each other better and she really liked the songs I was writing and I liked that she was older and bookish. And you know how it is meeting someone over the internet.” Paul quipped, knowing his friend had made quite a few friends in the online gaming community.

“You can really get to know them to some degree but usually only what they want you to know. So after months of phone calls and emails and us opening up to one another and eventually sharing our feelings for one another, she told me I should come visit her in the spring since we both had the same spring break.

“So I bought my plane ticket and when spring break came I flew in to JFK and took a cab to her place. Here I was, nineteen, by myself in New York, and about to meet some girl I had primarily communicated with over the internet and spend four days with her.”

“Had you ever been to New York before?” Jim asked.

“Yeah, once with my family when I was about ten,” Paul replied.

“Okay. So is this the part where you tell me Alex was really a 48 year old man who weighed 300 pounds?” Jim questioned, laughing.

Paul smiled. “Hardly. Of course we had traded pictures beforehand. She looked pretty much like she did in her pictures: maybe 5’2” or 5’3”, short black hair, black eyes, just incredibly cute. I finally got to her apartment and she buzzed me up, I lugged my bag up the stairs and knocked on her door and there she was, finally before me. She gave me this big hug and squealed out, ‘Paul! It’s so good to see you!’ I hesitated for a moment and then returned her embrace. And it was right at that point that I thought to myself, ‘You know what? I’m gonna treat this just like anything else. I’m not going to make this weird. I’m just going to pretend this is like a normal relationship.’

“And so there we were. She introduced me to her roommates and then I was all ready to crash out on the couch since it was late and I was tired from being in airports all day. But as I threw my stuff down on the couch she just looked at me and said, ‘What are you doing?’ I told her I was pretty tired and was going to crash on the couch. ‘Oh no,’ she said to me in a really coy voice, ‘you’re sleeping with me tonight.’ I swear dude, my penis went from half mast to full-on raging boner like that,” Paul said, snapping his fingers.

Jim laughed. “Nice. You’re one lucky guy.”

“Oh, just you wait,” Paul replied with a half-tortured smile. “This story only gets more fun from here on out.”

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November 1, 2010

New York City is big and it is evil

By welcometoflavorcountry

New York City is big and it is evil and you will get lost there. It will eat you up and spit you out. You will get mugged or murdered or raped. The people are sinful and will steer you to paths of unrighteousness.

It’s thoughts such as these that entered my mind as I made my way to NYC the other week. Along with the concern that getting up to go pee three times the previous night meant I had lost all control of my bladder and would start wetting the bed and need adult diapers, I wondered, who had taught me this; these negative notions of the Big Apple? I reckoned it was some leftover feelings from my days growing up in suburban Indiana. No doubt someone (probably my parents or pastor or some other adult figure I looked up to) had warned me of the dangers the five boroughs possessed, based most likely on their own phobias of tall buildings or foreigners or perhaps just some story they heard. “I know a guy who knows a guy who got mugged in NYC once. Took his shoes and everything.” Poor guy. And while it has been bad in the past NYC is not the same place it was even in the early 90s. As I’ve been there numerous times, so allow me to recollect my experiences in the Big Apple.

1985 – I was six years old when we went as a family this first time. I was in first grade and remember we went out for Thanksgiving and the Macy’s Day Parade. I was pulled out of first grade a few days early to go on the trip which I recall made me feel triumphant against the tyranny that was learning numbers and letters and their proper usage. Fuck you letter A and number 7! I’m going to see a giant inflatable version of Garfield and freeze on the sidewalks with a bunch of people whose heads I can’t see over! However, much of this trip – like many portions of my youth – remains abstracted in my head or else I get parts of it confused with my next trip to NYC.

1989 – I was ten years old for this trip and do believe it was also for Thanksgiving and once again we went to the Macy’s Day Parade. I recall it was cold and I complained a lot. I was a real pain in the ass for my parents and seem to think I did a lot of complaining as a child. Perhaps some beginning to my delightful anxieties and neuroses? It’s hard to say but I know that the trip also had some pretty rewarding experiences such as going to see Les Miserables on Broadway. We were staying with my aunt’s sister (extended family) at her posh condo on the west side of Central Park along with my cousins. My parents had a really nice condo on 5th Avenue my aunt’s sister had set them up with. I have no idea what this woman did for her work but she was pretty well off and I wasn’t one to complain when it came to getting us 8th row seats to Les Miserables or a table at Tavern on the Green. I don’t think I entirely understood or appreciated the importance of such experiences; all I knew is I had to dress up nice but at that time in my life I also had to dress up to go to Olive Garden. I have since learned that in the scope of high society events, Broadway show > Olive Garden.

I also got to play with my cousins and we spent a lot of time fraternizing with my aunt’s sister’s mink stole. Looking back it seems kind of creepy and gross, but at the time we all thought it was pretty funny to imagine it as this inanimate pet that talked to us. It didn’t help that the jaw of the animal acted as a clasp but also meant we could make it talk. And the stories it could tell! It was the kind of ridiculousness that could only come out of the mouths and minds of pre-teens. In other words, I can’t remember any of it.

1999 – This was a really big trip to NYC for me. I went with a group of people from my (Christian) college and a couple other (Christian) colleges. I was somehow allowed to drive a 15 passenger van filled with luggage and other college students – we made it through the night driving through Northern Pennsylvania which is one of the greatest stretches of interstate if you’re a big fan of pine trees. Oh Conifers! Your beauty is redundant along Interstate 80! We were spending our Spring break on a missions trip to the city, learning how missions work was different in a big city as compared to a developing nation, which is usually what most people think of when they hear about missions and missionaries. The trip was also an excuse to sightsee the city and I got to see many things there that I probably wouldn’t have necessarily seen otherwise. Not to mention we got the hook-up with a good hotel in mid-town Manhattan and since it was a “missions” trip people gave money to us to help fund it. Christians are suckers like that. Good cause my ass! I got my picture taken in front of that den of debauchery known as CBGBs but I suppose I atoned for that act by visiting the American Bible Society (which is interesting if you’re into that sort of thing – lots of Bibles from all ages and parts of the world).

Punker than you. Spring Break ’99!

Other things that spring to mind from this trip include the following: getting to take a look at the floor of the NY Stock Exchange where capitalism reigns; going to the top of the Empire State Building; seeing the statue of the giant bull down by Wall Street (and yes, I did touch his enormous balls); playing with a dog and baby at the same time; volunteering at a soup kitchen where they gave us old Michael Jackson shirts (for a tour that never happened) as a thank you; and seeing the police take care of a murder scene in the sand at Brighton Beach. About that last one: in order to better understand the breadth of cultures in NYC, we went out to Brighton Beach, a Russian Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. The guide for our trip asked us to pair off with people and go look around and see what we noticed that made Brighton Beach unique. My friend Sara and I started walking down the actual beach and noticed an ambulance back on the road. We then noticed a park ranger’s vehicle and a bunch of cops and what I assumed to be plainclothes cops standing around something by the water. Amazingly we were allowed to get fairly close – less than 50 feet – and then we saw the black body bag and the shovels spiked into the mound of sand that had accumulated next to the hole on the beach. Needless to say we had an interesting story to tell when we met back up with our group. In my mind I’ve just assumed it was a hit by the Russian mob, if only because it makes my story even more badass.

Me, a baby and a dog. Just like I said.

In preparation for this trip, I remember inducing myself into numerous panic attacks (which was my habit at the time as well as making myself so sick I would throw up) but looking back it was a remarkable trip with lots of special experiences. Meeting a bunch of guys with HIV and AIDS who lived together in a group home and yet were able to keep positive attitudes about life was pretty amazing. So was getting to see the Stonewall Inn, where the modern gay rights movement started in the late 1960s, although I really only understood and appreciated its importance many years later.

Our whole crew along with some new friends from the group home.

2001 – Yes, I, along with millions of Americans have made the mistake of taking Amtrak, our nation’s intercity passenger rail service. In my mind it constantly stands as the crippled brother to Europe’s far superior train system. Travel the rails around America! Live the bohemian lifestyle and meet interesting people. It sounds nice in theory but as long as it has to pull over on its shitty rail system to make way for commercial trains carrying coal and automobiles, it ain’t gonna get nowhere fast. And the people can occasionally be intriguing but they are also the “single-serving friends” as Tyler Durden calls them in “Fight Club”.

The path to NYC is also quite ridiculous – it does a roundabout route when you’re coming from Northern Indiana wherein it goes through upstate New York and then down the Hudson River. All in all, this trip is akin to being stuck in some sort of purgatory where you can’t sleep unless you have a sleeping car, which just adds to the astronomical price that Amtrak already costs. The sleep you are able to gather in a normal passenger train car is done in a slightly inclined state in 30-60 minute increments whereupon you wake up, look out the window and don’t recognize anything and drift off into a state of sleep that makes sleeping on an airplane seem like a comfy night’s rest in a king-sized bed.

Digging into an old journal I find that the Amtrak also served to inspire my writing skills to new heights, including such memorable passages as this: “I’m not tired enough to go to sleep, but I don’t know what else to do. Ugh. It’s days like this that kill me, but I think the fat, bloated body next to me shows that death mistakenly nailed the wrong guy.” Good work, 22-year-old Kurt. You’re on your way to being the next Jack Kerouac.

But I digress. The purpose of this trip was to see my roommate from my senior semester (I say that because in an effort to get the hell out of college I graduated after the fall semester) who lived just north of NYC. I also wanted to meet up with a girl from my college with whom I had taken a liking and who had an internship at CMJ. We all met up and there was lots of awkward Christian sexual tension and I think on the whole the trip was a success although honestly I can’t remember a ton about it. My old roommate and I went to see Burning Airlines and Ex-Models at the Knitting Factory and just generally hung out. It was a long weekend trip over the 4th of July and the girl I was crushing on is now married and a librarian in Pennsylvania and has a kid. I win again.

Burning Airlines

2002 – This trip was highlighted with a battery of behavior best suited for a psychologist with the latest version of the DSM. In other words, it was GOOD TIMES! According to the journal I kept at the time, highlights included (with my present day comments in parenthesis and italics after each):

–Little cafes all over the place (I was living in Indiana – this was a novelty, as were taxi cabs and black people)
–Victory At Sea @ The Knitting Factory (I still love this band. It was really powerful stuff. I also remember The New Year [ex-Bedhead] played and they had like four guitarists playing at one point, to which I recall thinking – “that’s just an unnecessary amount of guitars”)
–Diane Cluck @ Pete’s Candy Store (I still love Diane Cluck. She’s amazing!)
–Visiting Tag Team Media & Soft Skull Press (I was still doing an online zine at the time and this was me schmoozing.)
–NYC Subway rides (Another novelty. I was like some sort of caveman or something.)
–Meeting lots of lesbians and Jews (Novelty meter off the charts!)
Lowlights:
–Fighting off anxiety attacks the whole time (I went to see “The Ring” while having an anxiety attack. This definitely wasn’t an antidote to the problem.)
–Coming home to this pathetic excuse of a life (Self-deprecation will get you everywhere in life, Kurt.)
–Driving alone (at least it went quick) (Interstate 80, I love yooouuuuu!)
–People asking me why I don’t a) live in the city b) go to school c) move out from my parents house (Oh anxiety and depression, you were like the one-stop shop for answers to everything that was wrong with my life at this time.)

2005 – I was on tour with Brazil (Indiana) as a roadie. We were touring with 3 (New York) and The Reason (Ontario) in June of 2005 and we stopped over in Brooklyn to play a show at North Six. North Six is a club on North Sixth Street in Brooklyn, hence its name. It’s also one of the hottest, most humid venues I’ve ever been in. Barely anyone showed up and I was only too interested in getting the hell out of there and cooling off. We went back to the drummer’s parents’ house in New Jersey where a fifteen year old tried to sell us pot and I pondered what I would have been like if I had grown up in Northern New Jersey. (Aaron, one of the guitarists for Brazil, suggested, “you’d probably be an asshole.” A sentiment with which I heartily agreed.)

2009 – I went to Queens for the first time in October of 2009 for a pop culture conference. I presented to about four people (including two other presenters) on my thesis topic of 1970s Christian scare films in the basement of a community college that was clearly a relic of some 1970s building project (and hadn’t been updated whatsoever since). It was depressing and I was only too happy to get out of there and back to Boston.

2010 – I have never walked at graduation at any of the educational institutions I’ve attended. I didn’t at high school, college or the first time I was in graduate school. This previous graduation was no different. It’s not that I’m not proud of my accomplishments – I suppose I am to some degree although I’ve never found school real challenging – I just never saw the point in sitting in the hot May/June weather listening to a speaker try and encourage me with my future endeavors. Big crowds, annoying groups, pomp and circumstances – I’d rather be anywhere else. So I figured I’d keep the tradition alive and skip this latest graduation (masters degree number two) and do something fun. Seeing as to how I hadn’t spent any substantial time in NYC in many years, I decided a long weekend trip was in order.

Alas, the vast majority of my friends I knew that used to live in NYC have long since vacated. So I lined up a hostel for one night and then would stay with a girl, Julie, I met through the couchsurfing website for two nights. The first night I was there I met up with Carlene Bauer, whose book, Not That Kind of Girl, I had read. It’s a memoir of her time growing up as an evangelical although she no longer considers herself part of that movement. It struck a chord with me and she had referred to the film A Thief In The Night that I had written about for my thesis. We met up in the city, had dinner and some really good conversation. And she paid for it, too, which was sweet of her.

Central Park, June 2010

The next day I did what I do best in big cities: wandered around. Eventually I made my way up to the free Friday night entry to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). It started at 4pm and it was 3:30 by this time so I thought I’d get up there a few minutes early and get a good place in line. However, it appeared many people had that idea about a few hours before I did because the line stretched for two blocks.

Amazingly, MoMA had their shit together and once the doors opened things moved without a hitch. However, I do wish to report that the people working at MoMA had a look in their eyes that said, “We hate you” but which also might have been interpreted as “Human beings are an infestation that must be stopped.” Still, for any lover of art, making your way to MoMA is a requirement, free night or not (go on the free night – it’s free!) To be able to see classic Picasso, Monet and Van Gogh right there before you is nothing short of amazing. Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” is located at the MoMA and it was the star of a fairly star-studded cast (see what I did there? exactly – I overused the word star). Here is the portrait that adorns a plethora of postcards and posters and it’s there right in front of you. It’s like seeing Jesus in person, except historically verifiable.

The rest of the weekend consisted of hanging out with Julie, eating out, going to see “Breathless” in the theater, going to PS1 (MoMA’s contemporary art museum in Queens), staying out late at night and closing down bars and just generally holding on to my Al Burian acquired mantra that the weekend consist of me joining the “non stop party wagon.” And I didn’t even end up drunk. But there was that sweet bartender who called me babe but I thought she was calling me Dave. And there was the obnoxious dude at the hipster bar who assured the girls he was talking to that they wouldn’t know what club he was talking about where he liked to go dancing. In regards to that dancing, he told them, “When I go in (to dance), I go all the way in.” This was made even more humorous by the fact that he was wearing a polo shirt, wire-rim glasses and had a Jew-fro. He was about the most non-party guy you might expect to hear talking about partying and dancing. Needless to say, I didn’t let him join our non-stop party wagon. Saturday night Julie and her friend Kate and I went to a couple bars and I urinated in public.

In the end, however, I realized something great about New York City. It’s not perfect. Yes, it has that special spark to it that makes it beautiful, magical and amazing but it’s also a city of fuck ups and misfits. It has people who wouldn’t fit in many other places. The amount of people suffering from some degree of anxiety or depression is pretty staggering (based on my informal polls and conversations). Instead, the crowds stay put, their mental illnesses keeping them in a place that drives them crazier and crazier. Climbing up the walls. It’s been happening for decades there. Joey Ramone tried to get it across on his tunes. The Ramones’ poppy wall of sound akin to being a house band for “Happy Days” belies the harsh tales of wanting to be sedated or needing shock treatment to straighten out Joey’s brain. It wasn’t just him. The New York punk scene of the 1970s was filled with crazies. And today the city is still full of them. They crowd the sidewalks. And I’m not just talking about the guy who wears the footy pajamas during the day with aluminum foil on his head or the people asking for spare change. No, even the functioning people have a few screws loose. The greed of the broker on Wall Street so that he can buy that second or third house in the Hamptons is just as insane as the man yelling about an invisible Martian sitting on a trashcan that stole his soul.

The secret that’s not entirely known is that after a while, if you can survive in the city; if you can scrounge up the money to pay your rent and bills and food; if you don’t let the crowds tear you down; or the crush of the weight of millions of people to beat down your soul then you’ll realize as Carlene told me that in the end, if you live in New York long enough it’s all just “HBO and burritos.” To which I replied, “you can afford HBO?!”

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