Thursday, October 28, 2010

Last Exit From New York

As I weaved through the valley of the Verrazano Bridge’s massive iron cable, high in the air, arching over the water, well above any murk or distortion, I monitor the stinging blue reflection of some mounted floodlights on the sturdy ancient wiring that floats above my car like levitating spaghetti. And then Pink Floyd’s Breathe connects sonically on some local college radio station that I’d zapped on to, and near the crest, near the peak of that massive bridge (bridge being an understatement), I put the pedal down heavily. Into the dark New York night I push my rental car hard, and I find a certain comforting space between speed and distance.

But as I slowed on the downside, the City fading quietly behind me, I saw a structure, blinking and blinking, demanding that I come to a full stop and do…something. It was a toll. An eleven-dollar toll. An eleven-dollar toll. Wait, I don’t have any cash on me. I used it all at the rental car place to bribe one of the guys to give me a car (they didn’t take debit cards). And he took the bribe, and now I have no cash.


So I approached the toll at the end of the Verrazano Bridge with a credit card out my window. Just hoping. And before I even got to ask the toll-booth fella’, he quickly shot me down. No credit, kimosabe, this toll is for cash carrying hombres only. And none else shall pass.

“What do I then? I’ve already passed over the bridge,” I said.

“Give me your registration,” the toll-booth guy said with a grin.

I’m in a rental car. I don’t have a registration. Do I? Where am I? What a price to pay.

So I just say simply, for some reason, as if to convey my situation: “I’m from Florida”.

Charlie, the toll-booth operator, falls to pieces. Cackling and wheezing for air. He yells over his shoulder to no one I can see, “Hey Bennie, he says he’s from Floor-ida,”

Distantly: “Floor-ida, yee-haw”.

Bennie’s having a field day. Behind me horns are already starting to blare, cursing seems close behind, and a good beating on the bottom half of the Verrazano Bridge not far from that. My guy, Charlie, grins, soaks some sweat off his brow with an old oily rag and starts laughing again.

“Well”, Charlie says, “anything worth about eleven-dollars hanging around that fancy car of yours?”

“It’s not my car.”

“So you stole it?”

Now I’m panicking. I’ve been at the booth making no progress for about two minutes, and the cars behind me are now like a bunch of aging Barry Manilow fans out front of a suddenly canceled and intimate concert.

“No, for god sakes, it’s a rental,” I say.

“Hey Bennie, a rental, and he says he’s from Floor-ida,” then he turns back to me, "still, Floor-ida, anything of value will work.”

So I start feverishly looking around my stupid giant Chrysler 300 looking for something to give him (and how could I have spent two weeks in Long Island without buying a gold chain?). Nothing. My notebook is very valuable to me but no one else, my used copy of Mephisto is probably worth eleven bucks, but certainly not to this toll-booth operator, and although I just bought a new toothbrush at the Save-Rite, I went cheap. Sigh, just another error.

Then I start looking around the rental car for things that I can tear off and give to him. Horns are blasting behind me. A good steering wheel could probably fetch that eleven, right? The rear-view mirror maybe? I could rip the-

It hit me. I looked back up at Charlie, who at this point was writing something down and not looking at me at all.

“You’re fucking with me aren’t you?”

Charlie starts cackling again: “I am Floor-ida, don’t you guys have bridges down there?” And then he passed me the piece of paper he’d been scribbling on. “Here, pay it online when my associate Bennie gets through gathering your information. Which he can proceed to do if you pull up about 30 feet for just a few minutes.”

“We call them causeways,” I say. Mistake.

“Well you’re gonna cause me to get outta this booth and discontinue my kindness if you don’t pull forward Floor-ida. And I think I have about 40 motorists behind me that would cheer and cheer.”

Fair enough. So I eye down the spot he’s directing me to and pull forward. But it’s about as wide as a shopping cart, and the Chrysler 300 I’d been given at the rent-o-lot is way more car then I’m used to dealing with. Even the door handles work.

I end up coming to a stop at some strange angle that blocks to some degree not only my lane, but that of the E-Z Pass lane next us. And those drivers are just blasting past. And everyone that starts driving angrily around me already has their windows down, so they are just lighting me up. It was like an unrehearsed motorist version of joke The Aristocrat’s; each piece of the anger got meaner and dirtier.
So I put my hazards on (this is a major hazard!), and just keep yelling out my window, “Sorry, I’m from Florida.”

Five-minutes pass. No sign of Bennie.

“You maniac!”


“You’re worse than Bono!

“I’d have a field day with your face!”

A car almost clips a giant truck as it swerves to avoid my highway abomination. And I would just drive off, screw the fine, something awful is about to happen at the bottom of the Verrazano Bridge (Headline: Local Floor-idan Pummeled to Death at End of Bridge; Witnesses Say Deserved), but New York City toll-booth operators aren’t just that: they’re actually cops. That’s right, full on cops, and they are packing. And when a cop with your license plate number and a good look at your face tells you to go somewhere and stay, it’s generally a good move do so. And especially when you have no idea where the hell you are.

So I sit there and take it. Starting to panic, wishing there was an ejection seat on this car (why aren’t there?), and watching for any incoming 5-irons. Then finally, I see Bennie, approaching, slowly, from the toll booth plaza. He comes up to my window, completely expressionless, completely, and hands me another small piece of paper.

“Pay it online, if you make it home Floor-ida”.

And he lurches back into the night. I floor the peddle hoping jet engines came standard. Covered in sweat, and scanning my mirrors for any still furious motorists (those who seek unending revenge), but there are none. I’m nearly out of New York, and it’s been a crazy ride, but you buy the ticket, you take the ride.

And I suddenly see a sign that says: LAST EXIT FROM NEW YORK.

I exhale, relax in my seat and take a large swig of Fiji water (tastes them same; side effects are condescension and the need to watch re-runs of The Wire).

Then I see another sign, this one muddy and covered with graffiti. It says: WELCOME TO NEW JAR-SEY: HOPE YOU HAVE YO’ SHIT TOGETHER.

Check my seat-belt, it’s tight, and I focus in on the long winding road ahead, back down south, to a place where the birds chirp but we can’t tell if they are real.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Yulan, New York

So I walked up to the entrance of Yulan’s Crossroad’s Bar fairly drunk to begin with. And it was cold , damned cold, but as I approached the doors a large Black Bear ran up and blocked my entrance. Then he reared up and stood 9 feet in the air and he roared. He was like a terrible furry T-Rex blocking me from alcohol.

And I said to him: “So it’s a fight you want? Bully!”

As if in confirmation, the Black Bear roared at me again in front of that bar, and so I charged him with a patented bull-rush. I caught him right around his massive torso and began a vicious assault of punishing body blows to his kidneys and one swift left to the solar-plex. But it did not deter him in the least. Shrugging off my attack he grabbed me around the shoulders and threw me thirty-feet in the air, and I skidded across the top of a Ford Fusion. I slid to a stop and laughed wildly.

“You call that being a bear?” I said.

I charged him again, but this time I jumped up towards the Black Bear’s massive head and connected a clean right to the jaw (like the upper-cut that Ryu and, to a lamer degree, Ken can do in Street Fighter II: Tournament Edition). And the beast was stunned, and he stuttered into the outside wall of the Crossroad’s and collapsed in a heap. When the Black Bear regained himself he slowly walked up to me, still on his hind legs, towering over me like a fleshy street-light, and I remained in fighting stance.

But the Black just stood in front of me, looking solemn, and said: “Yub eht tekcit, ekat eht edir,” and then he galloped off into the night.

So forget all that. And I victoriously kicked open the doors to Yulan’s Crossroad’s and demanded whiskey. I said to the dull-eyed, petite bartender with dark eye liner around her eyes, “Give me all the whiskey you have, and don’t spare a drop you crazy swine”.

She chuckled at me and rambled off: “All the whiskey, black bear or not, Yankee’s are down 3-0, and C.C. is a pilot whale without even a beach to land on.”

Then she gave me some whiskey. And as I stood there at the bar the man in the Mark Teixeira jersey started crying and babbling.

“Make that a Yueng-ling instead,” I said, and then slammed the Yankee fan’s face into a basket of pretzels. Blood and bits of pretzel exploding out of different parts of his face like a kamikaze water balloon, and he went spinning into the deepest corner of the bar. But I ran over and extended an arm quickly, picked him up, and told him that I’d like to bet him $50.00 (US) dollars that the Yankee’s would win that game.

“$50.00 dollars?” he exclaimed. “Game one, ALCS, down 3-0, on the road in Texas, up it to $250.00 you dumb lunatic and it’s a bet”.

“Make it $500.00 and we have a bet you stupid mountain savage,” I said.

And he did. We shook hands. Five-hundred dollars, Yankee’s down 3-0 on this dank Friday night (it would become 5-0 at one point), and the whiskey began to swill.

I rubbed my temples and closed my eyes. And when I opened them I was in the bar from The Shining. Bright white light, no one else there, and the bartender, neatly dressed, stood in front of me rather expressionlessly. He stared through me, looking for something, and I couldn’t tell if he was finding it.

“What’ll it be hombre,” the bartender from The Shining said.

But lo things are never that easy, and I’ve been through to many rodeos that’ll prove it. It caught my attention that sitting next to me were Google Mercenaries Number Four and Six. Stout, stern and serious.

“You bastards can even follow me here?” I said.

“Of course,” Number Four said casually.

“Who’s that watching the door?”

“Agent fifteen.”

“Christ that’s lazy. Fifteen? I didn’t even warrant a top ten Google Mercenary?”

Then Number Six breathed in heavily and laughed. “Not the old days anymore kiddo, we have a light handle on you. Not that were not impressed with the hits, but where are the runs?”

“We need more runs,” Four hissed into my ear in that old hotel bar. Bright lights, Jack Nicholson running around somewhere, lurking, sharpening his axe.

I sulked and shivered. “I can’t write like that anymore.”

“Write like what?” Six sparked back.

And he added: “It’s been five months and no mention of the words Sink or Quayle in any post. And we’ve got a full blown witch running for senate, and not a peep out of you. Not. A. Peep.”

In the bar I fought fear and searched for truth.

And Number Four added: “You don’t even write about drinking anymore.”

“I’m drinking right now,” I retorted.

“You call that drinking,” and then Google Mercenary Number Four grabbed a bottle of Grey Goose that appeared on the bar and began chugging. It was like a awful tornado vortex of the Russian poison funneling into his system in front of me. Horrifying. And when he was done, with the bottle, the whole bottle, he pushed it back gently to the bar and said, “cute”.

Then he grabbed me by the collar and pulled me in close.

“Write like you used to.”

“When you had potential,” Number Six chimed in.

“When everything was a joke.”

“All is fair in love and war.”

“William McKinley was the first president elected during an Olympic year.”

“We all die on the same bed”

“Hunt for October you stupid slug.”

And after their rotating verbal attack I shook my head back and forth violently and said: “I just can’t be funny or interesting anymore you terrible Google Mercenaries”.

And Number Four said quietly, but with severity, into my ear: “Says you.”

I closed my eyes and rubbed my aching temples again. And when I opened them there I was, back in Yulan’s Crossroad’s bar, and looking up I saw that the Yankee’s were now up 6-5. Of course. So I swung around looking for my ALCS bettor like a osprey looking for a fat deaf mullet. And there he was, the loon, happily trying to have sex with the right corner pocket of their blue felt pool table.

“You crazy southern hick,” he yelled at me as he humped away, “how did you know?”

I picked up the pool cue next to me and cracked it over his head. It dislodged him from the pool table and knocked him onto the glass of a nearby Back to the Future II pinball machine. Then I grabbed him by the shirt and demanded my five-hundred dollars.

“You dumb punk, you southern fool,” he said. “It’s the middle of the ninth inning. Mo Rivera is just coming in. The game’s not even over.”

So I put him in a vice like headlock and said: “How can you still not get it?”

Then I ran him to Crossroad’s double-doors (which blew open for me) and tossed him into the cold night air. And as he rolled down the mountainside you could hear the trailing echo of the words Middle of the Ninth bouncing around every cavern and crater. I didn’t get my five-hundred dollars.

I walked back into the bar and the doors stayed wide open. A cold artic wind blew around every corner, sweeping up every soul in its path, pieces of paper and dirt whipped around hauntingly and without destination. And the same bartender’s thin blonde hair stood on edge, as if she were being shocked by static electricity, and I assumed she was about to start yelling Beetlejuice over and over. But she didn’t and instead said: “If you leave the doors open the bears will come in. And they’ll demand gin. Lots of gin.”

I raised my hand high in the air, as all the locals stared, and snapped my fingers. The doors slammed shut.

The bartender nodded. Her make-up was running, her hair went back to normal, the paper and dirt stopped flying around, but she didn’t smile. She instead set down a bottle of whiskey before me, leaned over the bar, and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

It was in the Crossroad’s, in Yulan, New York, on this dark sad Friday night, and I started drinking that whiskey.

And finally I looked to my left, and next to me, unnoticed for sometime, taking up a huge portion of bar real estate, and with a bottle of gin, was the very same Black Bear that I had fought in the parking lot earlier. He looked happy now though.

“You a Yankee’s fan?” I asked.

And he looked at me and nodded. The Black Bear even grinned a little; a long line of sharp bright white teeth. He used both paws to hold his gin (no thumbs) and drank deeply. And we sat there together and watched as Mariano Rivera mowed down three pathetic Rangers in workman like fashion. Through the pixels I watched as Nolan Ryan started weeping in the stands. I toasted him with another shot of whiskey.

And then the Black Bear turned to me and said, “Ni eht dne, eht evol uoy ekat si lauqe ot eht evol uoy ekam.”

“Cheers to that,” I said.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

72 Hours

I am here. And then I am there. I move with the energy through these warm days and wet cold nights. Here, is where I am. From canvas to train, bar to obsession, beauty to tragedy, and vibrancy to strong, silent, peace. Through the graveyard of old wooden piers to the peak of tall elegant buildings.

I have wandered. I passed through the city and absorbed it as much as is absorbed me. And a booming city is much like a deep ocean: It moves you. The illusion of control I feel within both is different, but neither brings legitimate comfort. In both it seems that if I make the wrong move the consequence could be severe, but in truth, I am being pushed and pulled with only minor negligable input. When both the ocean and a great city wish to sting you with something of true importance, they will. And so I move as one molecule with these great and large things; hoping only to learn.

And as the Hempstead Train next to me and the Babylon Train I am on, in this dark night, jockey for position and hum with a static march of persistence; all I can do is sit and reflect on my 72-hours in New York City. The lessons on fear and the human condition that it taught me in a crash course fashion. A soft cool rain falls, small electronic devices click and whir around me, and hearts beat in irregular motions. We'll all stay on this train until it makes us get off.

I was within inches of the souls of Cezanne, Monet, Dali, and De Kooning in the afternoon. And on my back I carried those of Gibson, O'Conner, Roth, Dellilo, and Pynchon. Or so I hope. We all hope there is eternity in these pages and on these canvases. Perhaps it is a vain hope.

As I write this, aboard the Babylon Train in my little green composition book, I have only left the New York City limits, heading west, for about twenty minutes. So what I know and have soaked in about the place is still raw and unsorted. Imprints still to be deciphered. But it seemed that most everyone was hurting in their hearts and minds. And we all put up a very tough exterior, but maybe more importantly, we keep moving. And no where was that more evident then in the bars under the Brooklyn Bridge, in the vodka swilling bourgeois fashion stores in the East Village and in the dark and warm basement restaurants where those without illusion wept and struggled right alongside those who have not. Those ones song and held tight. But disillusioned or not; we were one.

And we kept moving, and without any question we pushed hard. It's the only responsible choice. These 72-hours in the City were some of the most beautiful in my life, and they were wrapped lightly in the enigma of pain.

Sweet and true; everything authentic and powerful. There are places in New York City where you can feel that you're beholding something that may just be the peak of the Western Hemisphere's collective human creation. Spasm inducing moments of technological, artistic and absurdest power. And in those moments the feeling I had was of both elation and deep horror. But never hollowness.

And like this light falling rain, a pulsating piece of neon tubing, and a railway always in flux: All I can do is to following the energy. And take it wherever it may lead me.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Rocket Man

Truth is an unpopular subject. Because it is unquestionably correct.

That was the line on my fortune cookie tonight. I like the idea of it, but I wonder about the execution of the sentence. Unquestionably seems a bit over the line, and yet more importantly, why not just make it one sentence? As in: Truth is an unpopular subject, because it is unquestionably correct. It’s fair to start a sentence with because, but really, only if you have just cause. Did the writer of this fortune have such a cause? Not in my mind. And I would have quoted the line, but without an author to assign it to that idea seemed over the top.

But that was my fortune and mine alone. I would think that it applies to no one else as that is how fortunes work.

And that above paragraph, shouldn’t that be all I submit to BCC to become a Comp I professor? Do they have people there that take two hours and deliberate the sentence structure of their fortune cookies? Probably not. But just as likely; there’s seventeen grammatical errors so far in this post, and see if you can find them all. And once I get those little sweethearts tidied up I’ll submit a resume without being condescending to the good people at Brevard Community College.

What? Where I am? Ah yes, here. Here, here, here. Watching Star Trek III: The Search for Spock at 5:30 AM on a Monday morning (a Sunday night in my book), and trying to justify Christopher Lloyd as a Klingon (it cannot be done, and by the way, for shame, Klingon, according to Microsoft Word, is not an official word).

And I apologize to everyone who had to sit through the first part of that writing. And I thank everyone who woke up early and paddled out with us Saturday morning for Mike and Pat. It went perfectly. Swell was small, water and sky were clear and blue, and the people were friends and true. It’s a strange ritual that I think everyone in this area should appreciate in its rarity as it’s such a localized and recent tradition.

Surfing has only been around in the America’s for barely a century and of course for many more centuries in the Pacific and Indian Oceans of the world. But that ceremony, to paddle out and sit with a piece of a person you’ve lost, and to return them to the waters that we feel like we were all born from seems eternal. And it felt incredibly important.

Where do these ocean currents take us and how do we dissolve into them. It’s not a question, but a thought based on our Saturday ceremony. We are, in the small space of time that takes up the generations of existence that we identify ourselves with, doing something ritualistic that may be looked back on as an artifact. Like an arrowhead, like Stone Hedge, like Machu Picchu, like Jamestown, and like every other piece of the narrow human history that we fear and investigate.

But to me, and for all of us, there’s no doubt that what we did out there Saturday, and what we do out there every time one of our own goes down, will stand the test of time. Not in history, but in the rotating pulse of energy that makes up existence as we can believe it to be.

And now I’m leaving on a Jet Plane, and I don’t know when I’ll be back again (could one of my musically inclined readers tell me who’s lyric that is?). Tuesday I’m flying up to John F. Kennedy Airport with only a backpack, and I will slowly migrate back down the East Coast like a solemn slug. Looking for passage, writing, drinking like Andre the Giant (word has it he drank 119 beers in six hours; seems impossible, but if you want to dig up his 600-pound corpse and ask him yourself feel free) and just wandering. I’m a born wanderer, so it’s something I take to naturally. If you’re on the East Coast until about early November, drop me a line, via the Long Sunset MojoWire (or just e-mail me at spbuc5@yahoo.com), and I may just visit you as well.

But I must say, I may be natural wanderer, but I am far from natural right now. And I doubt I’ll ever be again. I’m more of a comet, as we all are, briefly moving through the atmosphere. A sandcastle that falls into the sea eventually. I’ll try to keep the TLS updated as much as I can, as I’m often at my best when on the road and pushed against the wall. And yet like all things in my life right now I can’t promise much other then that I’ll do my best. And maybe it’ll be good enough.

For me this time in my life is a tricky subject. Because it is unquestionably midday in this Long Sunset.