Is It One Copper Penny Or Three?
There are pennies all over the floor of the apartment. I said Bill Macy do it over the carpet there so that them down below don't suffer your failure. He didn't fail on the first try, with the ten pennies pointed towards the ceiling stacked on the forearm side of his elbow, followed by the downward swooping of his hand to catch them all in his palm. But on the second try, with 20 pennies, he did fail, and try as he might to collect them all he missed a few. Really, all I see this morning is the one shiny copper but I'm trying to christen a new writing spot and have to come up with something. And if one copper penny is all there is, one copper penny is all there is. And when in doubt just use Bill Macy. The amazing imaginary world of Macy.
I had walked across the street and through the doors of my hiding spot, at that middle dark table in a place that somehow will not co-exist in time with anything around it, and looking out through the glass front I watched all of the current world go by and felt cozy and secure and like I owned a secret, to be so near the present and far away at the same time. What happens in the hiding spot stays in the hiding spot but the real beauty is, nothing ever happens. It was so simple inside of there, until the day Bill Macy looked in and somehow--possibly the x-ray vision glasses he wore really worked--saw through the warp and nodding, walked right in.
What are you doing in here?
I told him I was having a taco and a daydream.
Let's go get a drink, he suggested. I don't know how you can daydream in this gloomy place.
You mean out there? I said.
Sure, what's wrong with it?
Nothing really.
Well then let's go.
I said I was waiting for Bernadette to call so we could go to the grocery store, but I should have said market, because Bill Macy retorted vehemently and wanted to know what grocery store I meant and all but said there are no such things as grocery stores in New York and why don't we just go to the moon while we're at it.
He said we had plenty of time for a drink as if he knew the exact time Bernadette would call. I said ok because this going for drinks was, clearly, central to city existence, and, not being particularly intolerant of drinking myself, although relatively speaking a tee-totaler, I could come up with no real substantive argument against us going somewhere for drinks. I did however find myself wondering just how long it would be before I just gave in completely and walked around with a flask in my pocket, or in my boot (though the boots I had would not do at all, I would need new boots if I meant to carry a flask.)
At that moment my phone rang. Instinctively I walked to the glass door, and then through it to the other side before answering. It was Bernadette. I told her about Bill Macy and drinks and she said that was fine, she would meet us there. I said ok and hung up. I hadn't said where we were going though and felt momentarily disoriented. Had we misunderstood each other? A group of teenagers just out of school brushed by me then and I stumbled and bumped into an elderly Chinese woman pushing a laundry cart up the sidewalk. She ignored my "excuse me" and hurried on by, head down. There was I realized a paper cup in my hand. A short stocky woman with meaty jowls dropped change into it and I said God bless you and she said God bless you right back. But no wait, I said, I think there's been some mistake. And then I yelled at the top of my lungs, Bern-ah-dehhttte!--and the sidewalk parted, all citizens moving at safe distance to my left and right, not a one of them actually looking at me. Goddammit, this isn't even original, I cried, this is some derivative piece of crap cobbled together from Dickens, or the Twilight Zone! You tell 'em pops said a girl dressed in black, heavily pierced along lip and eyebrow and ear cartilage. I am not who you think I am, I whimpered. Don't fight it pops, she said, we are all exactly who other people think we are. It comes down to that then? I said, and she just shook her head and walked away. There was, I noticed, a urine stain on the front of my pants. And on the sidewalk at my feet three pennies. I stooped down and picked them up carefully and placed them one at a time in my pocket.
Bill Macy was prone to using character voices and he was using one now, it clanged discordant like a rusty bell. It was the voice of the rabbi dressed in drag imitating a Jewish mother. What are you doing you? Get your fingers off those dirty pennies, those are for beggars and you are no beggar, are you? Well, are you? And then in his normal voice--come on man, seriously, you don't need those pennies, I'll buy you a drink.
...more recent posts
Mr. Jim And The Three Jeeps
In New Orleans the Sculptor's husband is running one kidney light and if anyone is casting a PSA to encourage major organ transplant donation he would be a good candidate for lead actor. While he always looked perfectly fine, somehow the kidney he gave up to his niece back in October is causing him to exude a glow rivaled only by the pregnant mother.
I have the headphones on listening, I think, to Morphine. I'm prepping the sunny side of Rocheblave for painting, about two years too late. I have just returned from across the street where I have stolen a piece of copper wire attached to the Chauffeurs fence and a wire coat hanger from his construction dumpster for use in tying back the bougainvillea growing up the side of the house. Chauffeur bought the house next to him and the lot next to that since the last time I saw him, to bring the total of his real estate holdings to a quarter acre. He is gutting the new acquisition, hence the dumpster, even though he is not really completely finished with his first, original project.
Trying to coat hanger lasso the bougainvillea but avoid the wicked thorns and out of my periphery I see a car parked at the curb in front of Chauffeurs. I fail on the first lasso and a get small puncture to my wrist, but my cat, Virginia, left behind and living it up five floors high in New York, has done much worse with tooth and claw.
Between songs I can hear the turning over of an engine without petrol or with a bad spark plug wire.
A man calls out from the parked broke down vehicle, a late model Jeep by the way, in much fresher condition than the one I left behind in NY. I pulled the plugs from my ears and walked across the street while the young man leaned his head out the window. He has short cropped hair and kind sad eyes and is advertising a hint of past life by way of the teardrop tattoo. He introduces himself as Darrien and I say Jim and he immediately repeats Mr. Jim. Once you get old there is no turning back. He has run out of gas and is wondering do I have a gas can and where might be the nearest gas station. The gas station is close but the best I can do for a gas can is an empty bleach container, which I encourage him to clean out first at the water hose on the side of my house. There is also a water bottle we can cut the bottom off of to use as a funnel. I offer to drive him over to the Chevron and he then admits to not having any money. But he could call an aunt to bring him some. I'm glad to cover him for a gallon and we get in Bernadette's Toyota parked in the driveway. I have put my razor knife on the ground before getting in the car to seem less like a serial killer, but I forgot my wallet and have to go back in the house to get it. Bernadette is at the desk illustrating for a major children's syndicate. I find my wallet and go back out and Darrien has gotten out of the car and is waiting beside it. I don't immediately see the razor knife on the ground where I left it but I'm not feeling the worry of it. Darrien, I'm certain, had gotten out of the car to remove any doubt that he was standup, and could be trusted not to rifle through the glovebox.
We head off to the Chevron and once he learns I have come from New York he says you should have stayed there, you won't like it here. How he wishes he could go to New York. I try to comfort his grass is greener mentality with a short good and bad of NY description. I explain my past briefly but tell him I know what he means, there is something different and hard to define about this New Orleans that has risen from the muck. It has been two years now since my last visit and in that time there has been progress. Brad Pitt, the movie star, whom many wish would get less credit because movie stars are vacuous, has helped to start the rebuilding of an entire neighborhood, with homes whose aggressive architectural statement seem more interested in the future than the past. The Musicians Village is another large block of impressive rebuilding effort and elsewhere throughout the city new homes with innovative design are being built and if not at exactly a rate to effectively compete with the pre-existing blight, still at a rate to promote some hope that a new and better city might be developing here so many years now after the flood. But since my last visit what was then only talk is now reality and that is the removal of the Lafitte projects, all eight blocks long and two wide of it. The live oak trees are still there and as is customary they left a building or two but it is hard to drive down Orleans between Rocheblave and Claiborne without feeling a pang of loss, even if is the type of pang you might feel when your father dies in prison where he was serving a life sentence for killing your mother.
I slide my card through the reader and punch in my billing zip code and Darrien starts pumping the gas. He slows down shy of a gallon and asks me how much he should pump. I put on my reading glasses and squint at the plastic jug and see that it holds almost a gallon and a half. I tell him to stop at about a gallon and a quarter so we don't slosh gas over the seats of Bernadette and her sister the Restauranteur's shiny late model Toyota. We ended up trading temporarily my somewhat suspect Jeep for the the Toyota so we could travel with more peace of mind. Well, actually, the brother brought his Jeep in from Long Island for the Restauranteur to drive in our absence, and he took my Jeep to sit at his curb over the Christmas holidays and brushed off my apologies for junking up his street rep for two weeks by saying—don't worry about it.
Darrien and me we get back to his Jeep and I'm going to hold the water bottle funnel for him but he says he doesn't think he'll need it and so I just walk away and go back to work. I put my earphones in and lasso the bougainvillea successfully, and while doing so see the razor knife on the ground where I left it, just slightly obscured by a blown leaf. I glance over but am trying not to be nosy while he attempts to start the car and it just keeps turning over and over. But then I hear the engine catch and he is running on gas now so I look over and he is looking over at me and I just nod and continue twisting the wire around the piece of scrap wood I have driven into the soft ground as a stake to hold back the bougainvillea. Darrien pulls away from the curb but stops in the middle of the street and leans his head out the window, and waits, silently. I walk over and he sticks his arm out the window and I shake his hand and he thanks me, Mr. Jim, again, and I say no problem you are welcome. Then he confides to me that he could hook me up with some green and I say if he had any on him I would have just a taste but if he doesn't have it on him I would not want enough to make it worth his while. He offers to go get me some and I say no but thank him sincerely for offering and that seems to make him happy, like we square now, and Darrien drives off easterly on Rocheblave.
In New Orleans the Sculptor's husband is running one kidney light and if anyone is casting a PSA to encourage major organ transplant donation he would be a good candidate for lead actor. While he always looked perfectly fine, somehow the kidney he gave up to his niece back in October is causing him to exude a glow rivaled only by the pregnant mother.
I have the headphones on listening, I think, to Morphine. I'm prepping the sunny side of Rocheblave for painting, about two years too late. I have just returned from across the street where I have stolen a piece of copper wire attached to the Chauffeurs fence and a wire coat hanger from his construction dumpster for use in tying back the bougainvillea growing up the side of the house. Chauffeur bought the house next to him and the lot next to that since the last time I saw him, to bring the total of his real estate holdings to a quarter acre. He is gutting the new acquisition, hence the dumpster, even though he is not really completely finished with his first, original project.
Trying to coat hanger lasso the bougainvillea but avoid the wicked thorns and out of my periphery I see a car parked at the curb in front of Chauffeurs. I fail on the first lasso and a get small puncture to my wrist, but my cat, Virginia, left behind and living it up five floors high in New York, has done much worse with tooth and claw.
Between songs I can hear the turning over of an engine without petrol or with a bad spark plug wire.
A man calls out from the parked broke down vehicle, a late model Jeep by the way, in much fresher condition than the one I left behind in NY. I pulled the plugs from my ears and walked across the street while the young man leaned his head out the window. He has short cropped hair and kind sad eyes and is advertising a hint of past life by way of the teardrop tattoo. He introduces himself as Darrien and I say Jim and he immediately repeats Mr. Jim. Once you get old there is no turning back. He has run out of gas and is wondering do I have a gas can and where might be the nearest gas station. The gas station is close but the best I can do for a gas can is an empty bleach container, which I encourage him to clean out first at the water hose on the side of my house. There is also a water bottle we can cut the bottom off of to use as a funnel. I offer to drive him over to the Chevron and he then admits to not having any money. But he could call an aunt to bring him some. I'm glad to cover him for a gallon and we get in Bernadette's Toyota parked in the driveway. I have put my razor knife on the ground before getting in the car to seem less like a serial killer, but I forgot my wallet and have to go back in the house to get it. Bernadette is at the desk illustrating for a major children's syndicate. I find my wallet and go back out and Darrien has gotten out of the car and is waiting beside it. I don't immediately see the razor knife on the ground where I left it but I'm not feeling the worry of it. Darrien, I'm certain, had gotten out of the car to remove any doubt that he was standup, and could be trusted not to rifle through the glovebox.
We head off to the Chevron and once he learns I have come from New York he says you should have stayed there, you won't like it here. How he wishes he could go to New York. I try to comfort his grass is greener mentality with a short good and bad of NY description. I explain my past briefly but tell him I know what he means, there is something different and hard to define about this New Orleans that has risen from the muck. It has been two years now since my last visit and in that time there has been progress. Brad Pitt, the movie star, whom many wish would get less credit because movie stars are vacuous, has helped to start the rebuilding of an entire neighborhood, with homes whose aggressive architectural statement seem more interested in the future than the past. The Musicians Village is another large block of impressive rebuilding effort and elsewhere throughout the city new homes with innovative design are being built and if not at exactly a rate to effectively compete with the pre-existing blight, still at a rate to promote some hope that a new and better city might be developing here so many years now after the flood. But since my last visit what was then only talk is now reality and that is the removal of the Lafitte projects, all eight blocks long and two wide of it. The live oak trees are still there and as is customary they left a building or two but it is hard to drive down Orleans between Rocheblave and Claiborne without feeling a pang of loss, even if is the type of pang you might feel when your father dies in prison where he was serving a life sentence for killing your mother.
I slide my card through the reader and punch in my billing zip code and Darrien starts pumping the gas. He slows down shy of a gallon and asks me how much he should pump. I put on my reading glasses and squint at the plastic jug and see that it holds almost a gallon and a half. I tell him to stop at about a gallon and a quarter so we don't slosh gas over the seats of Bernadette and her sister the Restauranteur's shiny late model Toyota. We ended up trading temporarily my somewhat suspect Jeep for the the Toyota so we could travel with more peace of mind. Well, actually, the brother brought his Jeep in from Long Island for the Restauranteur to drive in our absence, and he took my Jeep to sit at his curb over the Christmas holidays and brushed off my apologies for junking up his street rep for two weeks by saying—don't worry about it.
Darrien and me we get back to his Jeep and I'm going to hold the water bottle funnel for him but he says he doesn't think he'll need it and so I just walk away and go back to work. I put my earphones in and lasso the bougainvillea successfully, and while doing so see the razor knife on the ground where I left it, just slightly obscured by a blown leaf. I glance over but am trying not to be nosy while he attempts to start the car and it just keeps turning over and over. But then I hear the engine catch and he is running on gas now so I look over and he is looking over at me and I just nod and continue twisting the wire around the piece of scrap wood I have driven into the soft ground as a stake to hold back the bougainvillea. Darrien pulls away from the curb but stops in the middle of the street and leans his head out the window, and waits, silently. I walk over and he sticks his arm out the window and I shake his hand and he thanks me, Mr. Jim, again, and I say no problem you are welcome. Then he confides to me that he could hook me up with some green and I say if he had any on him I would have just a taste but if he doesn't have it on him I would not want enough to make it worth his while. He offers to go get me some and I say no but thank him sincerely for offering and that seems to make him happy, like we square now, and Darrien drives off easterly on Rocheblave.
The Fluid
His girlfriend was straightening up the apartment for the cleaning lady. He did the breakfast dishes thinking he was helping out but his girlfriend said the cleaning lady liked to do that. Oh, he said, feeling partly contrite and partly satisfied with his accomplishment. On another day he might have left the dishes but he was glad he had done them on this day. There would be plenty for the cleaning lady to do. No matter what else happened today he could at least say he had done the dishes, even with that pesky asterisk hanging about reminding him that he had taken something away from the cleaning lady.
He would have to find someplace else to be for the day because the cleaning lady could take up to five or six hours to clean the small apartment. She would in fact not stop cleaning until you told her she had done enough for one day. She was very thorough and hard working.
As it was Monday, to avoid the wrath of the street sweepers he would need to move the car anyway and he thought he might just go for a drive somewhere, leave the city for a day and enjoy a fresh perspective from outside the walls. The city was not actually walled around but it did occasionally feel as though it were. He couldn't really go any distance though without first procuring power steering fluid.
He did not know if his thoughts could be backed up with fact but he was pretty damn certain there was an auto parts conspiracy against him. Oh New York with its vast array of everything you needed if only you could get to the product before the nearest place selling it shut down and turned into a place that could not be expected to sell it. When is a door not a door? When it is a jar. There must be laws governing what can and cannot be sold at certain places and power steering fluid is likely on one of the more strict lists.
The array of noises that could come from his car were at times, in number, staggering to consider. On a road to Queens one cold night in search of remarkable Thai food he lost some of the plastic detail attached to his fender with clips and a very specific grooved alignment and finally a self applied silicone adhesive which proved temporarily satisfactory but certainly not strong enough in the final analysis to withstand the shock absorber rattling pot holes of New York City area roads.
He had gotten out to see if the car would fit into the space his girlfriend was attempting to back into and it was then that he noticed the curved piece of plastic from formerly above his tire well laying on the ground, but still attached to the tire well by one grommet. This dragging of the plastic car ornament over pavement was a noise he was just minutes before hearing and wondering about, although a thorough inquisition of its origin was made impossible because of an Englishman's diatribe in the back seat. Outside in the weather it required that he grab the hard plastic ornamental detail in both hands while stomping on it with one foot and after he did this, under a slightly frozen heavy rain which dripped down the back of his neck, he returned to the business at hand which was telling his girlfriend that while she could potentially fit in the space it would require liberal use of bumper mechanics. She opted for a space across the street and while attempting the U-turn they both noticed the power steering noise, which could just be heard above the sound of the teeth gritting squeak emanating from the windshield wiper motor.
They were going to take this vehicle on a 2000 mile road trip soon and she had some concern about the noises and the overall wisdom of traveling that far in a piece of well used machinery (junk.) For his part he was happy no one had stolen his tires yet, which were in good shape, with not a bit of steel belt showing through the rubber.
There were rat droppings on his engine block which he noticed this morning when checking the power steering fluid.
His girlfriend was getting him an electric rat zapper for Christmas and he was excited about it but had not really anticipated using it to electrocute rats lodging in his engine. There was a newly dug rat tunnel in the back postage stamp sized yard and that is where he had imagined using the rat zapper, powered by its not included 4 D sized batteries.
He spent a lot of his time walking around the Lower East Side and into Chinatown and SoHo in search of establishments that do not currently exist or possibly never did and how they ended up in phone books or any of the electronic versions of phone books he frequently used he did not know. Calling ahead would probably improve his success rate or at least save him some walking but as walking could sometimes be its own reward he never called ahead. Still, he felt some frustration over the difficulty of finding power steering fluid in NYC.
It was too late in the day to leave town now. It was already noon and would be dark in four hours. It did not seem like a good idea to start out on a trip with only fours hours of daylight to look forward to, in a car whose growing list of noises might in some distant future ruled by robots be considered melodic but to him and his girlfriend were simply mundane annoyances.
He went back to the building even though the cleaning lady was still upstairs. Going up and down the narrow stair well made him think of himself as a gerbil in one of those colored plastic tunnel arrangements that kids with permissive parents have in their bedrooms.
His cat, formerly from the country, was going through her own adjustments to life in a city she may but only ever see through window glass. She had taken recently to skittishly descending every morning five and a half flights to the basement to spend her daylight hours in its darker recesses. At least partly because the dog on four was in love with her and would sometimes sneak up to see if she wanted to play. But she never did want to play, except for the occasional round of One Clawed Swat Upside the Nose. Some of the building's occupants were reporting that she seemed somewhat feral and was hissing and spitting and nipping at their ankles as they made their ways up and down the stairs. But as the cat is almost as big as a NYC rat, another group of residents optimistically hoped for her basement presence to become a blessing against the occasionally spotted behemoth rodent and took her sometimes surly attitudes in the stairwell as just another necessary due or a tariff or a tax or a surcharge or a fee, in exchange for which might be derived some vague benefit.
There was no straight line marking the shortest distance between two obvious points when going out looking for power steering fluid in New York. He had always heard about the power of unions in the northeast and he figured it must be some sort of union influence causing this lack of power steering fluid at the usual places like the corner convenience store or the big chain drug store, both of which were within easy walking distance.
So he had come back to the building and used the basement bathroom (to his caffeine naïve system the substandard coffee he had ingested at a diner on Delancey was acting swiftly in its diuretic function) and told his girlfriend about the rat droppings under his hood, because he found such things interesting and hoped that she would too, and about his lack of success finding power steering fluid. She recommended that he go to the nearest gas station at Ridge and Houston streets and that is what he did. He bundled up and went back out there and got his small bottle of no name power steering fluid for 5 dollars and some change, while mumbling under his breath—holy shit that must be some kind of good power steering fluid. He took it back to the car and looked for something to puncture the protective foil top but found after unscrewing the cap that the protective foil was already punctured and as he had no more room for the ire inspired by minor annoyances he poured in most of the bottle while running the engine and then he got inside and turned the front wheels back and forth until the noise lessened. Now he could go somewhere if he wanted but it was too late and getting too dark for that, so he just went back home, situated himself comfortably in the basement, and waited for the cleaning lady to finish.
His girlfriend was straightening up the apartment for the cleaning lady. He did the breakfast dishes thinking he was helping out but his girlfriend said the cleaning lady liked to do that. Oh, he said, feeling partly contrite and partly satisfied with his accomplishment. On another day he might have left the dishes but he was glad he had done them on this day. There would be plenty for the cleaning lady to do. No matter what else happened today he could at least say he had done the dishes, even with that pesky asterisk hanging about reminding him that he had taken something away from the cleaning lady.
He would have to find someplace else to be for the day because the cleaning lady could take up to five or six hours to clean the small apartment. She would in fact not stop cleaning until you told her she had done enough for one day. She was very thorough and hard working.
As it was Monday, to avoid the wrath of the street sweepers he would need to move the car anyway and he thought he might just go for a drive somewhere, leave the city for a day and enjoy a fresh perspective from outside the walls. The city was not actually walled around but it did occasionally feel as though it were. He couldn't really go any distance though without first procuring power steering fluid.
He did not know if his thoughts could be backed up with fact but he was pretty damn certain there was an auto parts conspiracy against him. Oh New York with its vast array of everything you needed if only you could get to the product before the nearest place selling it shut down and turned into a place that could not be expected to sell it. When is a door not a door? When it is a jar. There must be laws governing what can and cannot be sold at certain places and power steering fluid is likely on one of the more strict lists.
The array of noises that could come from his car were at times, in number, staggering to consider. On a road to Queens one cold night in search of remarkable Thai food he lost some of the plastic detail attached to his fender with clips and a very specific grooved alignment and finally a self applied silicone adhesive which proved temporarily satisfactory but certainly not strong enough in the final analysis to withstand the shock absorber rattling pot holes of New York City area roads.
He had gotten out to see if the car would fit into the space his girlfriend was attempting to back into and it was then that he noticed the curved piece of plastic from formerly above his tire well laying on the ground, but still attached to the tire well by one grommet. This dragging of the plastic car ornament over pavement was a noise he was just minutes before hearing and wondering about, although a thorough inquisition of its origin was made impossible because of an Englishman's diatribe in the back seat. Outside in the weather it required that he grab the hard plastic ornamental detail in both hands while stomping on it with one foot and after he did this, under a slightly frozen heavy rain which dripped down the back of his neck, he returned to the business at hand which was telling his girlfriend that while she could potentially fit in the space it would require liberal use of bumper mechanics. She opted for a space across the street and while attempting the U-turn they both noticed the power steering noise, which could just be heard above the sound of the teeth gritting squeak emanating from the windshield wiper motor.
They were going to take this vehicle on a 2000 mile road trip soon and she had some concern about the noises and the overall wisdom of traveling that far in a piece of well used machinery (junk.) For his part he was happy no one had stolen his tires yet, which were in good shape, with not a bit of steel belt showing through the rubber.
There were rat droppings on his engine block which he noticed this morning when checking the power steering fluid.
His girlfriend was getting him an electric rat zapper for Christmas and he was excited about it but had not really anticipated using it to electrocute rats lodging in his engine. There was a newly dug rat tunnel in the back postage stamp sized yard and that is where he had imagined using the rat zapper, powered by its not included 4 D sized batteries.
He spent a lot of his time walking around the Lower East Side and into Chinatown and SoHo in search of establishments that do not currently exist or possibly never did and how they ended up in phone books or any of the electronic versions of phone books he frequently used he did not know. Calling ahead would probably improve his success rate or at least save him some walking but as walking could sometimes be its own reward he never called ahead. Still, he felt some frustration over the difficulty of finding power steering fluid in NYC.
It was too late in the day to leave town now. It was already noon and would be dark in four hours. It did not seem like a good idea to start out on a trip with only fours hours of daylight to look forward to, in a car whose growing list of noises might in some distant future ruled by robots be considered melodic but to him and his girlfriend were simply mundane annoyances.
He went back to the building even though the cleaning lady was still upstairs. Going up and down the narrow stair well made him think of himself as a gerbil in one of those colored plastic tunnel arrangements that kids with permissive parents have in their bedrooms.
His cat, formerly from the country, was going through her own adjustments to life in a city she may but only ever see through window glass. She had taken recently to skittishly descending every morning five and a half flights to the basement to spend her daylight hours in its darker recesses. At least partly because the dog on four was in love with her and would sometimes sneak up to see if she wanted to play. But she never did want to play, except for the occasional round of One Clawed Swat Upside the Nose. Some of the building's occupants were reporting that she seemed somewhat feral and was hissing and spitting and nipping at their ankles as they made their ways up and down the stairs. But as the cat is almost as big as a NYC rat, another group of residents optimistically hoped for her basement presence to become a blessing against the occasionally spotted behemoth rodent and took her sometimes surly attitudes in the stairwell as just another necessary due or a tariff or a tax or a surcharge or a fee, in exchange for which might be derived some vague benefit.
There was no straight line marking the shortest distance between two obvious points when going out looking for power steering fluid in New York. He had always heard about the power of unions in the northeast and he figured it must be some sort of union influence causing this lack of power steering fluid at the usual places like the corner convenience store or the big chain drug store, both of which were within easy walking distance.
So he had come back to the building and used the basement bathroom (to his caffeine naïve system the substandard coffee he had ingested at a diner on Delancey was acting swiftly in its diuretic function) and told his girlfriend about the rat droppings under his hood, because he found such things interesting and hoped that she would too, and about his lack of success finding power steering fluid. She recommended that he go to the nearest gas station at Ridge and Houston streets and that is what he did. He bundled up and went back out there and got his small bottle of no name power steering fluid for 5 dollars and some change, while mumbling under his breath—holy shit that must be some kind of good power steering fluid. He took it back to the car and looked for something to puncture the protective foil top but found after unscrewing the cap that the protective foil was already punctured and as he had no more room for the ire inspired by minor annoyances he poured in most of the bottle while running the engine and then he got inside and turned the front wheels back and forth until the noise lessened. Now he could go somewhere if he wanted but it was too late and getting too dark for that, so he just went back home, situated himself comfortably in the basement, and waited for the cleaning lady to finish.
Welcome To New York
With neither pride nor undue shame I too have left parts of myself all over these United States, at times in what is considered the proper fashion and at other times in such fashion to raise eyebrows, and if you have even the merest shred of decency you will start exercising your brow at this moment. Neither would it be out of line if you choose to purse your lips and shake your head slowly back and forth, projecting outward as far as you can reach with it, your indignation.
Folks here in New York City have been real nice about welcoming me and the cat and my multiple aloe vera plants. Jimson Creed had coined me the Reluctant New Yorker on one of my recent trips here from Virginia and North Carolina, three years of going back and forth I think rightly earned me the moniker and although I still have a fair amount of wrap up in Virginia I am now heart and soul embracing the big city life, which ironically is in some ways more country than any country life I've ever lived. By that I mean that not once in the country did I ever turn a corner and run just inches shy of smack dab into a man with a freshly gutted sow slung over each shoulder.
I'm not crazy about the question but as it seems to be the universal ice breaker here I have decided for simplicity sake and to lessen the risk of saying the wrong thing just stick with the same one liner—so far so good—in answer to how am I liking it here.
I have procured a real cherry of an on street parking space as it only requires a thirty minute investment twice a week instead of the more common 90 minute times two investment plus the handful of coins for short timing it at a meter. Bernadette's sister, the Restauranteur, was looking out for me that first week and would call me whenever she moved her car to see if I wanted a better space than the one I was in, until finally the cherry spot came available, in a parking zone of which I was heretofore ignorant, and now I am hesitant to consider ever again moving the Jeep, despite it being under a tree where roosting birds poop on it.
The first Monday in the spot I forgot where I was and by what duties was I dictated and didn't get out to move it to the opposite curb so the street sweeper could pass. I received on my back passenger window one of those nasty orange stickers informing me that civically I was a bad person, although I did not see a ticket on the windshield. Bernadette says people steal parking tickets to use on their own cars for short term illegal parking and that I would be wise to go online and see if I owe the city 65 dollars. To remove the large orange decal requires heavy work with a single edged razor blade and a paint thinner backwash to get the glue off.
Today I was out early though, with a cup of coffee as big as my head and some reading material, and behind the Jeep on the street was a large pile of what I think was human excrement. What I may have been alluding to in the opening was a sympathy for the bowel movement that just won't wait but sympathy is not to be construed as a love of so I was eager for the cleaner to come this morning, although not that happy with the imagery running through my head of the sweeper brushes and what they would do to the fecal matter. Thursday is Thanksgiving and the cleaner won't come on that day. The next cleaning day will be a week from now, which seems a less than ideal amount of time to be parked in front of a pile of human waste. But as is sometimes the case you sit in your car and the street sweeper doesn't come and this was one of those days. Someday I will desire to go somewhere and the passion I feel for the parking space will meet its first real challenge. I can imagine equally the desire for movement and change and the seduction of inertia. But certainly I will be moving it when Bernadette and I make the road trip to New Orleans over the Christmas holidays. And then when we get back I will have to start over with the process of searching out the cherry spot. Probably it is better not to believe that there is only one.
After marching back up to the fifth floor this morning I told Bernadette what I had seen behind the Jeep and she said, welcome to New York, even though she has by now already welcomed me many times over.
With neither pride nor undue shame I too have left parts of myself all over these United States, at times in what is considered the proper fashion and at other times in such fashion to raise eyebrows, and if you have even the merest shred of decency you will start exercising your brow at this moment. Neither would it be out of line if you choose to purse your lips and shake your head slowly back and forth, projecting outward as far as you can reach with it, your indignation.
Folks here in New York City have been real nice about welcoming me and the cat and my multiple aloe vera plants. Jimson Creed had coined me the Reluctant New Yorker on one of my recent trips here from Virginia and North Carolina, three years of going back and forth I think rightly earned me the moniker and although I still have a fair amount of wrap up in Virginia I am now heart and soul embracing the big city life, which ironically is in some ways more country than any country life I've ever lived. By that I mean that not once in the country did I ever turn a corner and run just inches shy of smack dab into a man with a freshly gutted sow slung over each shoulder.
I'm not crazy about the question but as it seems to be the universal ice breaker here I have decided for simplicity sake and to lessen the risk of saying the wrong thing just stick with the same one liner—so far so good—in answer to how am I liking it here.
I have procured a real cherry of an on street parking space as it only requires a thirty minute investment twice a week instead of the more common 90 minute times two investment plus the handful of coins for short timing it at a meter. Bernadette's sister, the Restauranteur, was looking out for me that first week and would call me whenever she moved her car to see if I wanted a better space than the one I was in, until finally the cherry spot came available, in a parking zone of which I was heretofore ignorant, and now I am hesitant to consider ever again moving the Jeep, despite it being under a tree where roosting birds poop on it.
The first Monday in the spot I forgot where I was and by what duties was I dictated and didn't get out to move it to the opposite curb so the street sweeper could pass. I received on my back passenger window one of those nasty orange stickers informing me that civically I was a bad person, although I did not see a ticket on the windshield. Bernadette says people steal parking tickets to use on their own cars for short term illegal parking and that I would be wise to go online and see if I owe the city 65 dollars. To remove the large orange decal requires heavy work with a single edged razor blade and a paint thinner backwash to get the glue off.
Today I was out early though, with a cup of coffee as big as my head and some reading material, and behind the Jeep on the street was a large pile of what I think was human excrement. What I may have been alluding to in the opening was a sympathy for the bowel movement that just won't wait but sympathy is not to be construed as a love of so I was eager for the cleaner to come this morning, although not that happy with the imagery running through my head of the sweeper brushes and what they would do to the fecal matter. Thursday is Thanksgiving and the cleaner won't come on that day. The next cleaning day will be a week from now, which seems a less than ideal amount of time to be parked in front of a pile of human waste. But as is sometimes the case you sit in your car and the street sweeper doesn't come and this was one of those days. Someday I will desire to go somewhere and the passion I feel for the parking space will meet its first real challenge. I can imagine equally the desire for movement and change and the seduction of inertia. But certainly I will be moving it when Bernadette and I make the road trip to New Orleans over the Christmas holidays. And then when we get back I will have to start over with the process of searching out the cherry spot. Probably it is better not to believe that there is only one.
After marching back up to the fifth floor this morning I told Bernadette what I had seen behind the Jeep and she said, welcome to New York, even though she has by now already welcomed me many times over.
A Rush To Toilet
It began today as an inauspicious ending after a night shortened by a morning too soon. Endings can be hard especially when necessary and here in Bushy Fork, the former Fence Post, I felt at dawn the dread of the dream walking naked through high school halls realizing against all waking logic that I didn't have enough credits to graduate. I did graduate though mane, what the hell is the meaning of that dream? A question not begging an answer is still worth voicing.
I'm eating Blue Diamond almonds from a bag and drinking Newcastle from WalMart and in a perfect world where anything you wanted to amount to something, did, with no sense of who is the whore and what constitutes whoring, would be enough to fly me around the world nonstop. Although of course I would occasionally stop for more beer and almonds.
Mane, nobody's calling me which despite seeming like a return on the investment from encouraging people over so many years not to call me, is still harshing my sense of well being. There are no banks to handle this kind of business, I have to do it all on my own and it's lonely at the top of a, uh, island. I know it is only ignominious by my own reporting but oh the shame, the shame of he who waits by the phone.
Though Bruce and Pizza did show up, without calling, and the last, the very last several hundred pounds of past renter's garbage did finally find a home somewhere. I'm not sure what bridge they dropped it off of, or into what pristine water, or who's backyard or into what illegal dump. I trust them implicitly. And rounded their pay up 10 dollars over an already fairly generous offering.
And the property managers are not returning my calls. It will be less than ideal to leave here without engagement to a property manager. But then they are here and seem willing and acceptable or better than that and without too much, as my mother was fond of saying, hullaballoo, the deal is inked and I'm ready to pack up and get the hell out of here. Except for that toilet which sprung a leak today.
Oh how I rushed out against all my better inclination towards leisure, and purchased that new toilet, only to lug that heavy bitch in and realize my earlier assessment had been too much based on self doubt, and that the leak was not so much a go out and buy a new toilet kind of leak but a simple push a small plastic tube onto a nipple sort of leak. I'm keeping that new toilet dammit. I will not give up on self doubt so easily.
It began today as an inauspicious ending after a night shortened by a morning too soon. Endings can be hard especially when necessary and here in Bushy Fork, the former Fence Post, I felt at dawn the dread of the dream walking naked through high school halls realizing against all waking logic that I didn't have enough credits to graduate. I did graduate though mane, what the hell is the meaning of that dream? A question not begging an answer is still worth voicing.
I'm eating Blue Diamond almonds from a bag and drinking Newcastle from WalMart and in a perfect world where anything you wanted to amount to something, did, with no sense of who is the whore and what constitutes whoring, would be enough to fly me around the world nonstop. Although of course I would occasionally stop for more beer and almonds.
Mane, nobody's calling me which despite seeming like a return on the investment from encouraging people over so many years not to call me, is still harshing my sense of well being. There are no banks to handle this kind of business, I have to do it all on my own and it's lonely at the top of a, uh, island. I know it is only ignominious by my own reporting but oh the shame, the shame of he who waits by the phone.
Though Bruce and Pizza did show up, without calling, and the last, the very last several hundred pounds of past renter's garbage did finally find a home somewhere. I'm not sure what bridge they dropped it off of, or into what pristine water, or who's backyard or into what illegal dump. I trust them implicitly. And rounded their pay up 10 dollars over an already fairly generous offering.
And the property managers are not returning my calls. It will be less than ideal to leave here without engagement to a property manager. But then they are here and seem willing and acceptable or better than that and without too much, as my mother was fond of saying, hullaballoo, the deal is inked and I'm ready to pack up and get the hell out of here. Except for that toilet which sprung a leak today.
Oh how I rushed out against all my better inclination towards leisure, and purchased that new toilet, only to lug that heavy bitch in and realize my earlier assessment had been too much based on self doubt, and that the leak was not so much a go out and buy a new toilet kind of leak but a simple push a small plastic tube onto a nipple sort of leak. I'm keeping that new toilet dammit. I will not give up on self doubt so easily.
Healthcare
Two months ago she had seemed very nice over the phone when explaining to me about how I could pay off the doctor's bills over time. But now sitting in her office I am trying to keep from soundy bitchy and she is, today anyway, not that happy to begin with. Maybe her kid got kicked out of military school. And the fact that I can pay these bills (I have given the same speech now several times over the several visits, that I want to be paid up in full when I leave the office), that I am concerned about the elaborately complex billing and how inexplicable charges keep showing up after I've been assured I'm all paid up, that I'm not putting her in the position of seeming to help me by setting up a lifetime payment plan and instead am asking her to explain something she clearly has no clue about, is just making the matter worse.
I had been summoned to her office after watching the minute hand move well past my appointment time. Johnson, Margoli, Sevenski, Washington, Tavelles had all gone in front of me. Tavelles went back with his wife and a clear gallon sized ziplock bag containing all his medications. There were messages on my cell phone from a robot confirming my appointment and telling me to bring all my medications with me (I have none, after the pain was gone I just ate the remaining pills for the sheer fun of it) and that there was no smoking anywhere inside or out of the Duke Hospital premises (don't, would never) and that there was a billing system which might come from two different sources (this it was explained was so that we patients could be better served and was the first clue that I should just K up and enjoy the miserable ride and probably should have never entered the Castle in the first place.) Damn Tavelles, I'm thinking, you are taking way too many pills. There were at least thirty plastic amber bottles with white child-proof tops in that baggie. If there really is a war on drugs and we can assume a training facility for its soldiers, this guy would be the face on a pop up target.
When I arrived the receptionist had tried to get me to pay for the past and the future and I was about to but then she said unless you'd rather wait to add today's charges and pay on the way out and I said that sounded fine as it would save me valuable time and obfuscate the idea of double billing. But I suspected something was up when all those people went in front of me, each of them with the swagger, albeit a waddling swagger in some cases, of the well insured. And then the perky nurse came up and said I would need to go see Millicent, the billing manager. I have talked with Millicent on previous visits and that first time on the phone weeks ago and also her counterpart down the hall and they are both fine people and nice to be around and maybe it is too much to expect that they should understand everything there is to know about the fiscal complexities of the behemoth hospital. I could see that asking her to explain the details of my past charges was beyond what she was either willing or capable of doing so I slid the card over and watched as she slid it through the card reader. I hate the feeling, the burden of it, knowing something that will make things work better but also knowing the mentioning of it will be a mistake. So I didn't say anything while she repeatedly swiped and failed. What would I really gain, what would either of us really gain by the information that the magnetic strip on the back of the card was each time clearly visible to me as being outside the confines of the reader? Millie disappeared with my card and the perky nurse came in and said oh whenever you're ready and I said I would be with her shortly.
I was sitting back in the waiting room when she came for me, asking was everything all right (meaning did Millie overcome that dreaded malfunctioning card reader and was I no longer considered a deadbeat) and I said everything was fine and meant it. And saying it made me wonder what the hell am I doing here in this hell of contagion, risking with my every touch some god-awful sickness I did not come in with?
I suppose that be it with leeches or card readers the ways of medicine must remain mysterious.
My blood pressure is dead on average and has been for every testing of it in my life. The doctor came in smiling but said sorry, you're average, and I said I could have told you that, what do I owe you. He said the testing of my kidney stone showed it to be the most common kind and I guess that's good. He said my testicles were fine and I said thank you. I told him that sometime in the next year I would probably still want to have that benign mass in the left one removed and he said he could set that up. I said I didn't really want to set it up yet but would like to know what it cost. He gave me the names of two doctors in NY in case I wanted to have it done there and the PCT billing code for the procedure (if I wanted to have it done at Duke) which I then took back to Millicent. She was trying to hide behind the monitor of her computer. I hated to bother her. But I did. I handed her the billing code. She said it would take two days and that she would call me. I left the building, trying not to touch anything on the way out.
Two months ago she had seemed very nice over the phone when explaining to me about how I could pay off the doctor's bills over time. But now sitting in her office I am trying to keep from soundy bitchy and she is, today anyway, not that happy to begin with. Maybe her kid got kicked out of military school. And the fact that I can pay these bills (I have given the same speech now several times over the several visits, that I want to be paid up in full when I leave the office), that I am concerned about the elaborately complex billing and how inexplicable charges keep showing up after I've been assured I'm all paid up, that I'm not putting her in the position of seeming to help me by setting up a lifetime payment plan and instead am asking her to explain something she clearly has no clue about, is just making the matter worse.
I had been summoned to her office after watching the minute hand move well past my appointment time. Johnson, Margoli, Sevenski, Washington, Tavelles had all gone in front of me. Tavelles went back with his wife and a clear gallon sized ziplock bag containing all his medications. There were messages on my cell phone from a robot confirming my appointment and telling me to bring all my medications with me (I have none, after the pain was gone I just ate the remaining pills for the sheer fun of it) and that there was no smoking anywhere inside or out of the Duke Hospital premises (don't, would never) and that there was a billing system which might come from two different sources (this it was explained was so that we patients could be better served and was the first clue that I should just K up and enjoy the miserable ride and probably should have never entered the Castle in the first place.) Damn Tavelles, I'm thinking, you are taking way too many pills. There were at least thirty plastic amber bottles with white child-proof tops in that baggie. If there really is a war on drugs and we can assume a training facility for its soldiers, this guy would be the face on a pop up target.
When I arrived the receptionist had tried to get me to pay for the past and the future and I was about to but then she said unless you'd rather wait to add today's charges and pay on the way out and I said that sounded fine as it would save me valuable time and obfuscate the idea of double billing. But I suspected something was up when all those people went in front of me, each of them with the swagger, albeit a waddling swagger in some cases, of the well insured. And then the perky nurse came up and said I would need to go see Millicent, the billing manager. I have talked with Millicent on previous visits and that first time on the phone weeks ago and also her counterpart down the hall and they are both fine people and nice to be around and maybe it is too much to expect that they should understand everything there is to know about the fiscal complexities of the behemoth hospital. I could see that asking her to explain the details of my past charges was beyond what she was either willing or capable of doing so I slid the card over and watched as she slid it through the card reader. I hate the feeling, the burden of it, knowing something that will make things work better but also knowing the mentioning of it will be a mistake. So I didn't say anything while she repeatedly swiped and failed. What would I really gain, what would either of us really gain by the information that the magnetic strip on the back of the card was each time clearly visible to me as being outside the confines of the reader? Millie disappeared with my card and the perky nurse came in and said oh whenever you're ready and I said I would be with her shortly.
I was sitting back in the waiting room when she came for me, asking was everything all right (meaning did Millie overcome that dreaded malfunctioning card reader and was I no longer considered a deadbeat) and I said everything was fine and meant it. And saying it made me wonder what the hell am I doing here in this hell of contagion, risking with my every touch some god-awful sickness I did not come in with?
I suppose that be it with leeches or card readers the ways of medicine must remain mysterious.
My blood pressure is dead on average and has been for every testing of it in my life. The doctor came in smiling but said sorry, you're average, and I said I could have told you that, what do I owe you. He said the testing of my kidney stone showed it to be the most common kind and I guess that's good. He said my testicles were fine and I said thank you. I told him that sometime in the next year I would probably still want to have that benign mass in the left one removed and he said he could set that up. I said I didn't really want to set it up yet but would like to know what it cost. He gave me the names of two doctors in NY in case I wanted to have it done there and the PCT billing code for the procedure (if I wanted to have it done at Duke) which I then took back to Millicent. She was trying to hide behind the monitor of her computer. I hated to bother her. But I did. I handed her the billing code. She said it would take two days and that she would call me. I left the building, trying not to touch anything on the way out.
Cat Comforter
Oh the cat's been pretty good about being left alone for many days these recent weeks, with her cat window for egress and that man who comes every couple of days and fills her bowl. No apparent tantrums on my returns discluding the blood drawn from my flesh and not much to suggest extreme angst while I'm away, the shredded toilet paper rolls really only good clean fun. I write the blood drawing off to over-exuberant joy or possibly she just likes to see the peroxide bubble on my wounds. I'm coming for you Virginia, I'm all packed up and waiting for the sheets to dry and then I'll drive up from NC and pick you up and bring you down here for one last visit. No, you won't be happy about the driving and you will poop yourself and drool but we'll clean that up and let it fade into the recesses of our memories. When I left you were snuck up under the comforter like a wadded up pair of pants. I knew it was you though, ain't no fooling me but what I let you.
Oh the cat's been pretty good about being left alone for many days these recent weeks, with her cat window for egress and that man who comes every couple of days and fills her bowl. No apparent tantrums on my returns discluding the blood drawn from my flesh and not much to suggest extreme angst while I'm away, the shredded toilet paper rolls really only good clean fun. I write the blood drawing off to over-exuberant joy or possibly she just likes to see the peroxide bubble on my wounds. I'm coming for you Virginia, I'm all packed up and waiting for the sheets to dry and then I'll drive up from NC and pick you up and bring you down here for one last visit. No, you won't be happy about the driving and you will poop yourself and drool but we'll clean that up and let it fade into the recesses of our memories. When I left you were snuck up under the comforter like a wadded up pair of pants. I knew it was you though, ain't no fooling me but what I let you.
The Barrel
In North Carolina there is a fifty gallon plastic barrel full of chicken manure and water out in the back yard, one of the last troublesome remnants from the former tenant and I'm not real sure how to go about dealing with it. A neighbor with a garden might be interested but I suspect they would feel the same trouble I do, that is how to move it without sloshing the top layer of water all over you, or how to remove the top layer of water without an unfortunate result.
I have imagined drilling a hole in the barrel to remove some water but not knowing how much water is in there or being able to figure out the projectile force of the ensuing stream I am hesitant to go that route. Rubber gloves and a small handled bucket I could use and then dip out until the water is gone or enough of it to roll the barrel away somewhere with the handcart seems like an ok idea. In its resting state the barrel does not give off any odor and it may be that as manure it is thoroughly processed and the stink will be minimal but uncertainy still resides deep inside me. Years ago in a job that had me walking across vast stretches of East Texas farm and woodland I came upon a fairly large commercial chicken coop and etched pretty deeply into that part of my brain that assists with the gag reflex is the memory of the crude effluvium drain running out of the coop and through a shallow ditch alongside it. That part of my brain and I have come to an understanding that if I won't visit it, it won't visit me.
If you have ever siphoned gas out of a tank you know it is close to impossible not to get at least a little in your mouth so I have ruled that out completely.
I have it on my list to call Bruce and Pizza to haul away the several hundred bagged pounds of non burnable remnant which I have raked from the burn pile and a couple of other junk graves on the property, the bones and cans and plastic and assorted metal parts and rubber hoses and twine and discarded toys and spent shotgun shells just floating up on their own over time, and I'm sure they would deal with it without out all this namby pamby considering but I hate to lay it on them, kind of in the same way you straighten up the worst of your mess before calling the cleaning lady.
I guess I'll just put it off and deal with something else today. Might drive into town and get breakfast and then over to the Home Improvement to pick up some flexible heating duct to replace that section or two into which mice moved and infected my interior air with the aroma of their urine and feces and, I daresay, their dead selves.
In North Carolina there is a fifty gallon plastic barrel full of chicken manure and water out in the back yard, one of the last troublesome remnants from the former tenant and I'm not real sure how to go about dealing with it. A neighbor with a garden might be interested but I suspect they would feel the same trouble I do, that is how to move it without sloshing the top layer of water all over you, or how to remove the top layer of water without an unfortunate result.
I have imagined drilling a hole in the barrel to remove some water but not knowing how much water is in there or being able to figure out the projectile force of the ensuing stream I am hesitant to go that route. Rubber gloves and a small handled bucket I could use and then dip out until the water is gone or enough of it to roll the barrel away somewhere with the handcart seems like an ok idea. In its resting state the barrel does not give off any odor and it may be that as manure it is thoroughly processed and the stink will be minimal but uncertainy still resides deep inside me. Years ago in a job that had me walking across vast stretches of East Texas farm and woodland I came upon a fairly large commercial chicken coop and etched pretty deeply into that part of my brain that assists with the gag reflex is the memory of the crude effluvium drain running out of the coop and through a shallow ditch alongside it. That part of my brain and I have come to an understanding that if I won't visit it, it won't visit me.
If you have ever siphoned gas out of a tank you know it is close to impossible not to get at least a little in your mouth so I have ruled that out completely.
I have it on my list to call Bruce and Pizza to haul away the several hundred bagged pounds of non burnable remnant which I have raked from the burn pile and a couple of other junk graves on the property, the bones and cans and plastic and assorted metal parts and rubber hoses and twine and discarded toys and spent shotgun shells just floating up on their own over time, and I'm sure they would deal with it without out all this namby pamby considering but I hate to lay it on them, kind of in the same way you straighten up the worst of your mess before calling the cleaning lady.
I guess I'll just put it off and deal with something else today. Might drive into town and get breakfast and then over to the Home Improvement to pick up some flexible heating duct to replace that section or two into which mice moved and infected my interior air with the aroma of their urine and feces and, I daresay, their dead selves.