Set the way-back machine to 1992

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Exile on Pain Street

Here’s some more fodder from the journals I unearthed. Nothing shocking here. Just a beautiful slice of life. As of these writings, I was still living in Brooklyn. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the Lower East Side of Manhattan was just a few months away.

* * *

Monday, November 16, 1992

I walked over to Brooklyn Heights to get a haircut. I fired Anita, even though she brushes her tits against me (intentionally, in my opinion). She charges too much ($28) and doesn’t always do such a great job. Picking a new barber is angst-inducing, to say the least. I impulsively walked into Golden Fingers on Court Street. I sat down, looked around, and suddenly realized it’s an Arab barber shop. Nobody was speaking English and there was strange Arabian music playing. [Note: Yes, that’s what I called it. “Strange.” I was going to edit that bit out because it sounds awful but thought it best to present these entries warts and all.]

Everyone sitting there, including the barbers, had thick, black, curly hair. Do these guys know how to cut straight hair? I could rework David Crosby’s Almost Cut My Hair into Arabs Cut My Hair. Ha ha. My barber had B.O. I told him to not cut it too short and no blood, please. He laughed but I wasn’t kidding. I’m happy to report that my man did an excellent job. He hands were fast, fast. I was out of there in no time. And cheaper than Anita, too. Only $17. But I missed the tits. It’s kind of far but all the barbers in my neighborhood only have black customers and I don’t know if they’d have any idea how to cut my hair.

I spoke to Klinger a few hours ago. He’s playing an open mic at the New York Comedy Club. He wanted me to come down but I don’t think I can make it. I’m a lot funnier than that guy, but he has bigger balls. Ambition trumps talent. It always has and it always will.

Sheila called me out of the blue. I told her that the common thread running between her and Joann is that on separate occasions I tried to seduce each one of them and they both, miraculously, found the strength to resist my animal charm. That made her laugh. Leave ’em laughing, right? She’s got a boyfriend she hates and occasionally calls me to complain about him. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that? Good God, I don’t care.

I met Cindy at DeRobertis on 1st Avenue and 11th Street. I finished her biography and we needed to pour over the edits and layout prototypes. She was grateful. No, not that grateful. I had a deliciouoso cream puff and a cappuccino. We walked down to St. Marks Bar. They remodeled it not long ago. People—and by “people” I mean the usual Lower East Side malcontents who are always spoiling for a fight, any fight—are bitching about the new décor but I don’t mind it. I asked the bartender what part of England he’s from and he said he was from Ireland. I apologized profusely, then I tucked my tail between my vagina and crawled out of there, humiliated.

At work, I passed two girls who were talking in the hallway. We all exchanged pleasantries. I turned the corner and there was a magazine rack there. I stopped to thumb through the magazines and I heard one of them say, “I passed him on the street the other day and he was talking to himself out loud.” She said it like it was scandalous. Do you know what? Not only do I not mind, I like it! If two sorority chippy investment bankers think I’m strange, then I must be doing something right.

Hey, Muslims! Is this true?

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Exile on Pain Street

Here’s a doozy of a quote from a review of ‘Sex and the Citadel,’ a careful study on sexual relations in Muslim societies, with particular emphasis on Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, by Shereen El Feki:

The rules governing marriage in Islamic countries seem to give great advantages to men. A man can strike up a temporary marriage with a women with whom he wants to have sex, then say, ‘I divorce you!’ three times and have it be all over.

It also said that Muslim men in the Middle East are obsessed with sodomy because their culture places a premium on virgin brides.

Do you suppose any of that is true? Can it be verified? If it’s so, what a demented society. I can’t believe some of those guys are our allies. It’s lucky for them we need their oil or we’d wag our index finger and give them the same human rights lecture we give to China and Russia. And don’t tell me not to judge their culture. I’ll judge whomever I choose and call bullshit when I see fit.

* * *

I’m sure all you folks in nice, warm climates enjoy a healthy belly laugh when we here in the colder climates are getting slammed with a blizzard. That’s okay. We can take it. But while it’s true you don’t suffer biting winds or numb extremities, you are also deprived of spring. You’ll never know what that first warm kiss of the sun feels like after suffering a long, frigid season. We’ve spent the past six months curled up in a tight little ball trying to keep warm. It finally broke this week. Do you know what that feels like?

It’s back to dining al freaso on 9th Avenue in the theater district. I walked past this last night and it was like seeing an old friend. Doesn’t that look inviting? Take a seat and enjoy dinner + a show.

Suddenly, alternative modes of transportation appear in Central Park.

Springtime brings the swallows back to San Juan, Capistrano. Here in Manhattan, we have the reappearance of these:

Accept no imitation or substitute. I impulse-purchased my first cone yesterday on my way back from a lunchtime read in Central Park. The official end of winter.

But mostly—and this is what sunny Southern California doesn’t get—surviving the winter and walking out into that first balmy breeze feels like this:

* * *

Coco’s righteous indignation that a car has the audacity to drive past her window pooch perch.

What an idiot nightmare*

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Exile on Pain Street

*Bukowski. Notes of a Dirty Old Man

I had a horrific nightmare. Nightmares are exceedingly rare for me. I sometimes have trouble falling asleep but it’s nothing that a mug of hot milk + honey won’t fix. Once I’m out, I’m out. But nightmares? Never get them. Ever.

In New Jersey we have a type of wasp that builds its nests in the ground. They look like this:

They’re big and scary. Almost as big as your thumb. If you step on a nest, you’re fucked x 100.

The house I grew up in wasn’t a nice house. It was a farm house that was much older, smaller and more run-down than the Cleveland suburb that sprung up around it. The house was an anomaly. It didn’t look like it belonged there because it was built ages before the neighborhood was born. It stuck out, and not in a good way.

In my dream, I was sitting in the tiny dining room. The walls and door frames were crawling with ground wasps. Five or six at a time would land on me. They wouldn’t sting, but they’d bite. I’d grab one and try to pull it off but it would cling to my clothing and skin. In my dream, they were bigger. They were so big that as I closed my hand around one, the head would stick out of the top of my fist and the tail with the stinger would stick out of the bottom. I’d yank one off, crush it, throw it to the ground and another would take its place. The biting was relentless.

I ran into the bathroom. I had a can of insecticide in my hand. I started spraying them. I put the nozzle right up to their face, sprayed, and covered their heads with foam. Still, they kept coming. I grabbed one, went to the bathtub, turned the water on and held it under the tap. Its mouth opened wide and I could hear it fill up with water, like when you fill up a bottle. The water kept pouring in and pouring in.

I woke up tangled in my sheets. I remembered my sister running into that bathroom and locking the door behind her. I don’t remember exactly how old she was. A young teenager. Maybe 12 or 13. My father pounding the door with his fist, yelling at her to open the door. Her crying. He kept pounding and eventually we heard the wood split. Then he stopped. My sister, crying behind the locked door.

A horse is a horse, of course, of course.

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Exile on Pain Street

The past week, artist Nick Cave (Not Nick Cave from the Bad Seeds. This one is African American.) along with Chicago-based choreographer William Gill and students from the Alvin Ailey Dance School presented HEARD•NY in Vanderbilt Hall at Grand Central Station. 30 ornate, life size horses were created to gallivant and frolic around the hall.

At the beginning of each performance, dancers would line up, two per horse.

One dancer would don the back half of the horse…

…then the other dancer would attach the head and they would join.

The horses promenaded around the hall, welcoming guests, delighting children and, in the case of a few wee ones, scaring the hell out of them.

A harpist played. Notes gently filled Vanderbilt Hall and the horses pranced and glided in a choreographed routine.

Then a drum kicked in. The front and back halves of the horses separated and a wild rumpus began.

The drumming and dancing became more frantic.

Until, finally, the rhythm died and the two halves found each other a joined once again.

The piece ended about :20 minutes later as it started, with the gentle wandering of the horses.

The music stopped and the exhausted dancers shed their equine skin.

Gay friends and other ruminations

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Exile on Pain Street

I’ve decided to poach from my recently excavated journals for another post. This one is from September 28, 1992. Long time gone. I have a cripplingly poor memory. Consequently, these journals have been a revelation to me.

* * *

P said there’s a woman in his office who wants me to take her daughter out on a date but first she needs to see a photo of me. He said it’s because she doesn’t believe I’m white. [Note: At that time, I was virtually the only white person living in a black neighborhood—Fort Greene, Brooklyn—which has since been gentrified and is now overrun with white people.] That’s insulting! Who is she that I can’t meet her on my own merits? Has her vagina been dipped in platinum? Still…I gave her the photo of me on the balcony in Cozumel and felt stupid doing it. On Saturday, I’m taking M to a matinee. I jokingly asked her if she was going to “require a feeding” and she said, “What am I, a cow?” No, my sweet, you are definitely not a cow.

On Sunday P and I got on the G train and paid a visit to D for dinner. [Note: D owned the top two floors of a beautiful, old, Brooklyn brownstone, which included a roof garden.] The train skipped Bergen Street so we had to get off at Carroll Street and catch the Manhattan bound F one stop. Fucking subway. When we got there it started to downpour. We sat in the kitchen while D cooked and you could hear the hard rain fall against the greenhouse on the roof. It sounded like bacon frying. We smoked some pot and had a few beers. I faded into the background and listened to the two of them talk. Let me tell you something; everyone should have a few gay friends. They are endlessly entertaining. Especially after smoking some weed. They were arguing about the proper way to cook a pot roast, calling each other bitch and slut and all sorts of other horrible things. Yelling about adobo seasoning, whatever the hell that is. God, I was laughing my ass off. Some of the funniest, kindest people I’ve ever met are gay. It’s too bad I have no proclivities towards experimenting.

I didn’t have to work today so I made a good breakfast with three cups of strong coffee because it’s getting chilly out. The sky was crisp and blue so I went for a walk on the Lower East Side. As I passed Delancy Street, I was propositioned by a hooker, of all crazy things. I approached this cute Latino and she gave me that look and I thought to myself, well, this is kind of nice. Then as I passed by she said, “Do you want a date?” Oh. That. I got really embarrassed and checked to see if my shoelaces were untied. They weren’t.

I sat at a sidewalk cafe on 2nd Avenue and 6th Street to read the Times and watch the big parade. There was a really old guy sitting in front of me and everyone seemed to know him. They all stopped to chat. Cops. Old folks. Club kids. Blacks. Whites. Latinos. Everybody! I wonder who he is? I walked to the Orpheum and bought a ticket to the new Mamet play that’s in previews. $27.50. I’m surprised it’s opening down here and not on Broadway. [Note: That was Oleanna with William H. Macy and Rebecca Pidgon.]

I ended up shooting pool at Julian’s. That stairway has the most God-awful stench in all of NYC. And that’s saying something. Urine, body odor, vomit and Olde English 800 malt liquor all in one noxious whiff. Blame it on 8-0-0, indeed. [Note: That was the ad campaign slogan at that time.] I’m going to start using the rear entrance that lets out onto 14th Street, even though it kind of dangerous. The guy forgot to turn the timer on so he only charged me $3.50. I always feel stupid because I’m such a bad shot and I assume everyone is watching me but the truth is nobody cares. The guy behind the counter came out and taught me how to rack the balls for 9-ball. He also tried to explain strategy but I didn’t understand him. It’s not that his explanations were vague. It’s just that I’m as dumb as a brick when it comes to geometry. So I still don’t know how to play the game properly.

Ate dinner at an Italian deli/cheese shop that has a few tables in the back. Ate off a styrofoam plate and used plastic utensils. Low key but so damn delicious that I almost passed out from bliss. Took the 6 train to the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge and walked home over the bridge. Stopped midway to watch the sunset over the Hudson River. All alone, but not lonely.