I met my old lover on the street last night. Really.

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I met my old lover on the street last night.
She seemed so glad to see me. I just smiled.

Still Crazy After All These Years
Paul Simon

Actually, that’s not entirely true. I did more than just smile. I was equally glad to see her. I walked out of my office at the end of the day and bumped into her, almost literally. That’s one of the many magical aspects of Manhattan. Your past can walk down 6th Avenue and right into your office building.

We exchanged surprised greetings and since we both had time to kill, sat down at an outdoor table for a chat. I don’t know what precipitated our break-up but whatever it was has been long forgiven and forgotten. The conversation was easy, like no time had passed at all.

I showed her pictures of my daughters and she did the obligatory ooh-ing and aww-ing. Then something unexpected happened to me. Something extraordinary and unwelcomed. She revealed that she was engaged to be married. I found myself suddenly overwhelmed with heartbreak and loss. It felt like someone hit me with a bag of mud. What’s WRONG with me? We were intimate but never that close emotionally.

Next week is my 14th wedding anniversary. No mean feat! Lots of folks don’t make it past 14 months. I have two beautiful daughters who, as anyone reading this space knows, I adore. I don’t understand what provoked these feelings. I didn’t even grieve when we broke up but there I was suddenly deeply saddened.

We touched cheeks, wished each other well and parted. We didn’t bother with “Let’s keep in touch,” because we’re both old enough to know it wouldn’t happen. I slunk off to a Brooklyn-bound subway, where I was meeting friends for dinner.

I tried reading but as you all know, there’s no distraction when you’re in a cage death-match with your raging emotions. I got off the subway in Williamsburg, walked down the stairs, north on Broadway, looked up and saw this:photo-1

THAT cheered me up right away! I might’ve had a heartache, but things could be a hell of a lot worse. I was having dinner with two good friends at Peter Luger, a 125-year old steakhouse, one of the oldest and most highly respected in New York City. Reservations have to be made months in advance. I had a glass of Pinot Noir. Then guess what? I had another one! Then, a medium-rare steak. I told my friends about my bizarre heartache and they found it to be a tremendously entertaining dinner story.

Take a look at this menu:photo-2

Hummm…let’s see…should you order the Steak for Two, Steak for Three, Steak for Four or the Single Steak? Oh, they have other items on the menu, but if you order anything other than steak, the old world, Eastern Block European, Iron Curtain professional waiters give you a dirty look. As well they should.

Eating across the aisle from us was a family of four. They sat down and dad immediately pulled an iPad mini out of his briefcase, propped it up in front of junior and this is how he spent the ENTIRE EVENING:photo-31

Father of the year. And I thought I didn’t know what I was doing! This isn’t Applebee’s.This is an expensive restaurant. Going here is an event and a privilege. Call me a judgmental old coot, but I think that kid should participate.

Later, we heard a loud THUD. So loud, in fact, that everyone stopped talking. A man passed out and banged his head on the table so hard that they couldn’t revive him. I’ll NOT have what he’s having. An ambulance was called but it took about :10 minutes to arrive, which seemed an eternity. He never revived. The waiters continued to scurry around delivering giant platters of sizzling meat. Heartache, red wine, beef and death. It was a lot for one evening.

*     *     *

Do any of you guys play ATM poker? If there’s a receipt sticking out of the ATM from the previous transaction, you examine it while waiting for your cash to be dispensed. If your checking account balance is higher than that of the receipt left behind, you win! Well…you don’t actually win anything, but it gives you something to do while waiting for your cash.

Take a look at this receipt I pulled the other day. Look at that balance!photo-11

Who, in their right mind, keeps $44,922.18 in a checking account?! The checking account interest rate at Chase is 0.01%. Literally. Perhaps there’s a high-interest checking account for the über-wealthy that we commoners are unaware of? Needless to say, I lost that round of ATM poker.

I’m the man in the box.*

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* Buried in my shit.
Won’t you come and save me?
Save me.

Man in the Box
Alice in Chains

WordPress behemoth/800-pound gorilla Le Clown invited me to contribute to his Black Box Warnings project. I wrote an amusing little ditty but if you’re having a bad day and are in need of a healthy dose of perspective, click on any of the other links. Therein lie tales of struggle and redemption the likes of which most of us, thankfully, never experience.

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A dark walk home from a long time ago

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binWhile rummaging around in the basement, I found a plastic storage box containing my journals from when I first moved to New York City as a young buck [mumble-mumble] years ago. 1,000+ single-spaced type-written pages and a bunch of hand-written books. There’s stuff in there I don’t want My Bride or Daughters to read so I am of a mind to destroy them. But every time I try, I start reading and get sucked in.

Here’s an excerpt. It’s interesting from an historical standpoint, both mine and in regards to the city. We’re both much different people now. I dedicate this post to all the New Yorkers who bitch and moan about gentrification. Forget your misty watercolored memories. This is the way it was.

*     *     *

March 10, 1993

I saw some horrific things on the way home this evening. If anyone in my family saw even ONE of these, they’d hog tie me, throw me in the trunk and drag my ass back to Ohio.

I got off the F train at Second Avenue and walked east on Houston. I passed Orchard Street and saw two black guys standing uncomfortably near a parked car. I got closer and saw a white guy sitting on the sidewalk with his back against the passenger door. He had a hypodermic needle in one hand and was trying to remove the cap with his other hand. His hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t grip it. How does he expect to inject himself?! Maybe that’s what the two dudes were there for. As I walked by, I heard him tell the black guys, “I’m from Amsterdam, you know.” It was 4:00 in the afternoon in broad daylight! There were people everywhere! I walked on.

I was waiting at the light to cross Essex and I saw a homeless guy on the other side of the street sitting on the ground, completely hidden under a filthy blanket. It was cold and wet out and the blanket looked heavy and damp. I felt awful for him. The light changed and as I crossed the street and got closer, I could see he was shaking. As I walked past him, I looked down at the heap and could tell that the shaking wasn’t from the cold. He was masturbating. In an instant, my sympathy dissolved into disgust.

Then I was waiting for the light to change at Suffolk Street and the guy in the car in front of me was getting a blow job! A girl was in the passenger seat bent over the shift console. The light turned and he drove away with a big stupid grin on his face. Guess what I felt that time? Envy.

The bums were kind of staggering around as usual. I passed the pay phone a half block from Clinton Street and out of the corner of my eye I could see  there was a little kid using it. She was a little girl, about eight or nine years old. She was wearing a dirty pink winter coat that had a hood with a fake fur lining. She had the phone off the hook and was holding it up against the ear of her Barbie doll. In this sea of ugly humanity, this poor child was playing with her doll. She doesn’t stand a chance. She’ll be eaten alive.

Why, in God’s name, did I leave Fort Greene? Brooklyn was great! South Portland is a beautiful street. Even though I was the only white guy on the block I felt, at best, welcomed  and if not that, at least tolerated. I’ll never feel close to the idiots who live in this shithole neighborhood. What was I thinking?

*     *     *

The modern day irony is that today, that same apartment, those same streets, are well outside my range of affordability. I couldn’t move back there even if I wanted to. Other, less dreary, posts pilfered from my journals can be seen here, here, here and here.

*     *     *

My semi-annual visits to Cleveland to see my family have taken on a whole new and fabulous dimension since a casino opened in the heart of downtown. They took a once-elegant department store and filled it with liquor and gambling. Huzzah! I took this clandestine photo of the dealer relieving me of $20, simply because there was an unfavorable roll of the dice. What nerve! Good-bye money. Now, that’s entertainment.

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Krishna on 2nd Avenue

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I’m not a big fan of dance. I don’t get it. I’ve attended numerous performances over the years—everything from traditional ballet to modern—and it all looks like a lot of people with 0% body fat imitating dying poultry. But there’s something about Indian dance that shakes me to my core. I meditate (poorly). Perhaps therein lies the connective tissue.

Legendary Lower East Side performance space La Mama is jam-packed this week with performances from Drive East, the Indian music and dance festival. It’s an intimate black box theater that, while lacking in amenities, is ideal for dissolving the space between performer and audience. The caliber and athleticism of the dancers—Kalanidhi Dance—is extraordinary.

This dance, Alokaye Shri Balakrishnan, tells the story of Krishna, who brings his cows to the river to drink. They all die because the water has been poisoned by the serpent Kaaliya. Krishna hunts the bastard down, taunts him and a fierce battle ensues.

Synergy blends elements of traditional and contemporary dance and music. The video is relatively brief because I accidentally touched the off button. Hold your applause.

The biggest surprise is how percussive the performances are. Being in such a small space, you hear the fleet slapping the stage and the bells on their ankles. It’s exhausting to watch. I had to nap on the way home.

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Complementary, not opposing, forces.

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Last week while visiting my family in Cleveland, I treated the girlies to two diametrically opposing forms of entertainment. As I’ve stated previously, it’s important to expand their tiny little minds by exposing them to high art, but it’s just as important to keep them grounded by sampling the more visceral forms of fun.

The Cleveland Museum of Art has a kick ass, world class collection. Their special exhibits will also whoop yo’ ass. The museum recently had a major structural revamping. The results are spectacular. Currently on display in the new, humongous, light-filled atrium is Ai Weiwei’s Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads. Twelve bronze sculptures represent the Chinese zodiac.

art1

I saw this exhibit last year when it was mounted around the fountains outside the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan and am happy to make their acquaintance again. They’re playful and a little bit nightmarish. The detail is extraordinary.

art2

Do you know your Chinese zodiac symbol? I’m a bore. Oh…excuse me…I mean a boar. Daughter the First is a snake.

art3Currently on a five-year loan is Damien Hirst’s Bringing Forth the Fruits of Righteousness from Darkness. These beautiful cathedral windows are made of…wait for it…

art4Butterfly wings. For real. He bred the butterflies specifically for these works. A lot of people think Hirst is a joke and I agree, he can irritate. His Spot paintings are idiotic. But I also think this guy can really turn out a spectacle. I still think his great white shark in formaldehyde was a scream.

art5

My bride explaining to Daughter #2 that Degas was laughed at for painting dancers tying their shoes instead of dancing.

art6Here’s another special exhibit to die for. Damián Ortega’s The Blast and Other Embers. It’s a suspended sculpture of found objects and tools. Every object emanates from the center outward. Its shape looks globular from a few paces back. Beautiful.

art7They only allow ten people at a time into the “glass box” space. Any more would spoil the effect. The sculpture has an opening in the center that allows you to walk through it.

sculpture

*     *     *

A few evenings later, I dragged their now-cultured asses to the premier event of the Cuyahoga County Fair: the demolition derby. Do you guys know what a demolition derby is? Have you ever been to one?

demo1

For the uninitiated, some wildly spray-painted, beat-up cars with their windows knocked out drive into a ring and then repeatedly smash into one another until only one is still running. It’s awesome. There are a half dozen races, all segmented by car size, my favorite being suburban minivans. Here’s a clip of the compact car division.

If you’re having a hard time viewing the video, it’s a lot of this:

demo2

Of course, something went horribly wrong.

The girlies were actually pretty freaked out about the fire. At the :16 second mark Daughter #1 says:

“Daddy! I want to leave now!”

“It’s okay.”

“No it’s not! It’s going to blow up!”

“No, it won’t.”

Then, of course, a giant flare-up at :27 seconds. Probably the gas tank.

Again, for those without video:demo3

My brother, brother-in-law, and I, along with the rest of the toothless clods in the grandstand, couldn’t stop laughing. Fathers of the year. It probably wouldn’t have been quite so funny if one of the drivers had crawled out of the wreckage engulfed in flames.