Yes Poetry (and Prose)

 A poem that I wrote while in New Orleans a month ago is online in the latest issue of Yes, Poetry. Based out of New York, this collection has poets from all over the world, and is my first publication.

In the meanwhile, I’ve been working fiendishly on my book, Hot Love on the Wing. Its dualities are continually expanding and concretizing, and I’ve had some important revelations recently.  Remember that it is a kunstleroman, so this excerpt involves the narrator dealing with his critics:

If I weren’t a writer, then I would write a book later. But ever since that day in first grade when I realized that being a reader is only half of the equation, that if you can’t write you’re just as powerless as not knowing how to read, I knew what I had to do; even if it was an unconscious stirring in my soul, it was there.

And then when I was eight, finding an old journal entry, my first, and being delighted at my ability to record the past accurately. I remember sitting on the floor cross legged, holding a single sheet of looseleaf paper that was wrinkled and scrawled over in pencil, and being ensnared in the power of my history, standing up and being inspired to write again, and eventually come back to it in another few years and have a repetition of that delightful feeling we recognize as aging, learning.

 In actuality, I could have been disgusted at how poor my writing style was, how inaccurate were the events, and how naïve I was as a mere six year old to attempt to write. You see, I don’t really know. The first way was nicer, it could have been true. But then again, it was so long ago that to remember exactly how I felt at the time is impossible. To try to give it to you, I glorified it the way I would glorify my youth if I wrote a coming of age story as an old man. It’s nice and sweet, sure, makes for good reading, but when you come down to it, it’s the dualities that are worth exploring. My feelings of how I wrote it or read it are untenable, and honestly isn’t it more fun to wonder? To make your own decision based on how well you know me, or rather how well you don’t know me? So my true goal is to allow you to understand my psychology, so that you can see how I might have interpreted my history, whether it was 20 years ago, or last night. We’re in it together, trying to find our way through the recesses of my memory, and interpret the light shining through the corridors as an exit, or maybe as a way to get lost deeper in the labyrinth. And who knows? Maybe we want to get lost. As long as we’re not alone, right?

Neurosurgery Confessionals

I wrote this my freshman year of college for my writing class:

 My dad wasn't around much when I was younger because he was in his residency until he was 36. I can’t blame him  though, since he has to deal with life and death on an unparalleled basis.  This I came to understand during one of those lazy Sundays that involved running errands and making rounds.  This particular Sunday, after making rounds earlier in the day, his beeper went off again.  Usually, if we were out and about and he was called in, I would have a book ready. I often sat alone in the car, reading for hours at a time until he finished doing whatever it was he did.  I expected the same out of this call, but my father emerged from the hospital just as I was settling in for a nice hour or two of reading. He knocked on the window with a key and beckoned me to follow.


In the hospital was a 15 year old boy who was very recently involved in a gang shooting.  When we walked through all of the double doors and were deep into the heart of the hospital, we finally arrived at the right room.  The boy was lying on a bed leaning at 45 degrees, looking very close to death. He was white, his head was shaved and he was stark naked, which added a touch of realism to the situation; that body looked similar to mine, and indeed, we were the same age.  The bullet had entered the boy’s head in between the left temple and ear.  Rather than the bloody mess I was expecting, there was a tiny v-shaped cut.  The bullet was lodged in the left ventricle of the brain, causing massive hemorrhaging.  There was no exit wound.  This kid, who a few hours before had been running around, doing teenager stuff, had been shot and was most probably going to die.  My father was busy conversing with nurses about how the kid had become brain dead.  As his heart was still beating, he was alive and in a vegetative state that would not continue for many more hours.


My father summoned me onwards to a room where he said the boy’s mother was.  I knew what was coming and began to protest that I wanted no part of it.  But I knew that after having come this far, I could not turn back.  It was a ride of painful emotions that I had to weather, even if only to understand how precious my own life is.  We entered the room and sat down in a style akin to the way it’s done in movies.  The mother and the boy’s uncle were there; they knew also.  When my father began to slowly explain the situation, the mother began to sob.  Not uncontrollably, but with deep, steady, sadness.  The man to her left was stone-faced, arm around her, trying to stabilize her bobbing shoulders.  The whole time my dad was solemn, his countenance grim  -- he knew exactly how to handle the situation.   

Dealing with such heavy emotions is never easy, but the composure my father showed was amazing.  He knew the scope of the family’s tragedy. To reveal anything more than a compassionate frown would be disaster, the woman would completely lose it and who knows what might happen after that.  I felt nearly sick from feeling so close to tragedy, yet so very removed; I didn’t even know these people.  And so I just sat, silent, watching, wondering what it would be like to hear that my own son was going to die from a bullet wound to the head. 


My father's poise allowed me to garner a further appreciation for what he does.   While for me, this experience helped me to see the thinness of life's thread and when snipped just how far the spool can unravel, for my dad it was just another day at work.

Skate Rounds to Brooklyn

http://www.goskateorgohome.com/blog/The best thing about New York is the bridges. BMW, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg, that's how I remembered it, from south to north. It's because they allow for interborough subway access, and we all know that public transportation is what really makes a city – that's why L.A. sucks. I'm just kiddin' L.A. I love you. ahem. But the thing about New York is that not only is a car unnecessary, it's impractical. Traffic can add 10 dollars to an uptown ride. But back to the bridges. Of course everyone's favorite is the Brooklyn bridge, since it's brick and wooden planked walkways conjure memories of Whitman's New York, when the city had a vast harbor, and Brooklyn was its own city, which, by the way, if it still were, would be the fourth largest in the United States. And the gulls fly and coast overhead, and it's always sunny and cold and blue skied and all the people who are walking across the bridge are looking back and forth trying to take it all in, holding hands underneath those gothic arches in the high towers, the American flags waving on top – it's the oldest suspension bridge in the country, the Brooklyn bridge. But it's the Williamsburg bridge that I want to write about because when Buckley and I were feeling adventurous, we'd skate over it. The ride was red and blue: the steel mesh cage of the railings of the bridge are red and you can see smeary uptown Manhattan pretty clearly through the grating. Until the river is directly beneath you're skating uphill, which is a drag. It's worth it for the ride down though because the grade is gradually steeper as you get closer to the shore and on a skateboard you can only carve back and forth, weaving so that the board doesn't get the speed wobbles and throw you off of it and you fall and reflexively fall on your palms to protect you even though they inevitably gash and and bleed and you might even have some raspberries on your knees or elbows after rolling facefirst into the pavement – no, instead you dig your heels and toes into the sides of the board because as they hang off you're allowed more lateral mobility as any boardsporter knows (the original phrase 'hang ten' comes from surfing when all ten toes are off of the board itself in order to shred the wave) and so you keep gaining speed trying to carve, but eventually you see the end of the path about three hundred meters away and a solid cement wall, and you know that if you bombed it you'd get the wobbles and even if you carved it you might be running the risk of hitting a pedestrian so you can only jump off, and send the board into the wall careening and falling supine, wheels spinning in stasis. And the adrenaline's pumping and your chest is heaving and you think man, i sure am glad i jumped off when i did because another second or two and i'd be bloodied. 

In Williamsburg there is more grafitti and fewer people. People who are living in New York not because they have the money to afford the luxury of Manhattan or were passed down a rent-controlled apartment out of luck, but because they work in Manhattan and commute, or are artists and enjoy the quiet or whose parents immigrated here last generation and haven't moved because it's home, are the kinds that live in Williamsburg. We skate southeast down a varicolored street with houses that look like matchstick boxes painted the colors of those Valentine's Day hearts that have romantic phrases like 'Be Mine,' and have paint chipping gates and there is a school: a P.S. 89 and a stark playground and basketball court with yellow lines on it and Hasidic Jews everywhere and the men with their hats and their long coats and glasses walk down the street conversing learnedly with their payos shaking back and forth and young pretty wives with their heads covered with handkerchiefs picking their newborn babies in their strollers up as they ascend the steps of these matchbox houses backwards cautiously looking to see that baby doesn't fall out and isn't disturbed by the jump and settle, jump and settle of each step, and I wave and some of them look at me while I wave and their faces have distrust on them and they don't wave back. But I don't hold it against them because Buckley and I are having a day. 

We skate to Flatbush avenue and underneath the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and feel the ages of the crack and the drugs and the danger and the cleaning and the renovation and the new paint and the beginning of gentrification and friendliness, even though it's grounded in curiosity. And we skate, with one leg boardfixed and the other one swinging back and forth on top of the black pavement making small claps as we push and are pulled by the city forward and back. And the brownstones off of Clinton Avenue are surrounded by large elms and the properties are noticeably older and richer and I think of the New York royalty that owned these pads a hundred years ago and how this was farmland and of how young our country is and how money is aristocracy and sometimes the ability to rise also means the ability to fall whereas in England or India at least you're set for life, you don't have to worry about status because it's handed to you and maybe that's good but no, it's not good because it's not American. And we skate along Fulton, past the liquidation furniture stores and the cell phones outlets and sneaker shops and banks and the people and the buses hissing and squeaking as they rise and sink along the curbs to make their stops. And then we're in downtown Brooklyn with black lampposts like the kind that are only around old Washington Square and the mottled black pigeons fly off into the cerulean sky and scatter among the court house, the large legal areas of justice and propriety and flagstoned streets and people walking everywhere and there's seed in the street and there could be a circus around the block with P.T. Barnum saying “Come see the greatest show in the world” and marching his twenty one elephants across the Brooklyn Bridge to ensure people that the flying rumor about the stability of the bridge – or lack thereof – was just that, a rumor and that this is New York City and Brooklyn where we are strong and impressive and acts of virility are commonplace. 

Then when we're back where we started, we're tired and sweaty. We eat some thin crusty cheesestringy pizza and fold it in half and let the grease drip out of the crust side – or not –and drink our Cokes to wash it down and back out we go and see the precipitous towers loom ahead and the hundreds of pedestrians. We sling our boards  under our arms and look at each other and laugh and walk along the bridge,  with everyone else – until midway. We ride the grade down, cutting and weaving and we're back in downtown Manhattan, where we live although the beginnings of the financial district are so different from the ends of the east village that it's like we're still in another borough and we to avoid the traffic, we skate uptown along the water in the the board lanes.

What is a Kunstleroman?

I feel like an explanation is due. For those of you who never studied English literature in college, or who might have forgotten, a kunstleroman is the coming of age story of an artist (see "Kunstler-Hustle" below). This is much like a bildungsroman, which is an ordinary coming of age story.  Kunstleroman comes from the German word ‘kunstler’ which means artist, and the French ‘roman’ for novel. It is an artist’s novel, and it is what I am writing when I’m not at work blogging hard away about winch straps and Judaica and discount medical insurance.

Some of the more famous kunstleromans are Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, D.H. Lawerence’s Sons and Lovers and David Copperfield by Dickens. I’m reading Goethe’s right now, which is called “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. Goethe is a boss:

So that's where all of this German is coming from. For those of you who are further interested in Goethe (1749-1832), I recommend Faust or The Sorrows of Young Werther. The latter is a love story about a young man who, sorry to spoil it, commits suicide because of unrequited love. This novella was so popular in its day that, because Werther wore yellow stockings, hundreds of Romantic Parisians committed suicide in like fashion, yellow stockings.

Anyway, stay tuned for what’s to come. I figure that since I’m blogging all the time, I might as well blog about any questions y'all have. Hope you enjoy the New York Writers stories; comments and critiques are always appreciated.

Kunstler-Hustle

Our first date obviated all of the values and familial histories that are typically expostulated when two people are getting to know each other. Instead, we spent an awkward amount of time looking into each other's eyes, or at least I did, which when she noticed, she tried to ignore and averted hers usually behind me, as if there were someone entering the coffee shop whom was worth paying attention to, rather than the cabal of bored young hip people entering in corduroys and designer jeans. This was enough to unsettle me into asking her stupid questions about school and her future; I tried to sideline any possibility of talking about Aron, her ex-boyfriend.

Oh! The light bounces off the floor onto the brown wall and looks like the light in movie theatre aisles! How quaint! It is actually, if you could see it, you'd think it were. And it plays down the wall as the sun moves incrementally west so that the shadows shrink and shift and the box of light on the table crosses over the back of my head and torso and I feel like a cat. I want her to stroke my collar, and pet the sides of my face, and I want to circle eight through her legs, and meow at her, with a glance pleading and questioning. 

During moments like these, I forget about any possible meaning that our being together in a coffee shop might resonate and we actually have fun, just being in each other's company, buzzing from the organic free trade coffee we're drinking. 

She was reticent, but personable, and I tried to make her laugh as often as I could, in between those bouts of staring over which I had no control. These sometimes pitiful attempts faltered, and soon enough we fell into an interesting conversation.

“I don't know,” she said, “I just feel like modern art can be hung in a museum for no particular reason, that it's mostly a matter of chance and of how you know the curator.”

“Mmm, I disagree,” politely. “I think that extempore composition sometimes justifies certain museum worthy pieces. Pollock, for example. Why was he so popular? Well, granted he happened to come at the right time, like all the great ones, but he also did it the best. His form of abstract expressionism was the purest, it conveyed the rawest emotion, and I think that's easy to see. The reason he's museum worthy is because other people see it too.”

“You may be right,” said Dela, “but that movement in its entirety spawned the kind of art that I'm talking about. I mean what about Jasper Johns. Like why is he so great. I could have painted an all white dartboard.” 

“But you didn't. Can't the man just follow his natural desire? I mean white dartboards hadn't been painted before. And that's why he's so esteemed.”

“Natural desire? What do you mean? Don't you see that the true artist in the end will be esteemed naturally? I mean that's why so much modern art is silly; all these modern artists achieved fame while they were living.”

“All I mean is that Johns' early method – for example the American flag painting – which you can't tell if you aren't looking at it up close, was dripped in encaustic over scrapped collages, like newspaper. So the technique, the painstaking process that this called for, was where the emotion was channelled.”

“I don't know, I think we'll really know which of these modern painters are great in the future. I think that a lot can happen to an artist before he dies. That's why the best only become really famous after they're dead. Like Van Gogh.”

“Van Gogh was great while he was living, but he was loco. No one paid attention. He ran with Toulouse-Latrec and Emile Bernard. I think the great ones are destined from the beginning, and sometimes they know it.”

“Life is so uncertain. There's no way to tell what is going to happen by the end.” At this, she looked to the ground and began to furrow her delicate brow in the same way a child does, just so that there is hardly any crease. “It's all about what happens between birth and death that determines genius. Van Gogh was just that much more liable to go crazy, because he was so great." 

  “So you think that you can be great while alive, but that greatness can  only be realized by the masses after death.”

“Yes.”

“So in Van Gogh's case, his genius corrupted him, it ruined his life, only to preserve his future deification?”

“No, I think that his later life corrupted him. I think that he was born with a certain amount of genius and that from early childhood on, it grew and changed and eventually he couldn't relate to anyone, barely even his artistic friends, because it was so deformed and no one understood it. But those first impressions of his youth, coupled with his natural ability, those are what solidified his character. I mean let's say little Vincent grew up in an environment that was cold and sterile. Clearly, it would have influenced him later in life to be an anxious, overwhelmed man. It couldn't overshadow his genius entirely, but it caused him to be the kind of genius he was.”

“He did grow up that way, meanwhile, he was rigorously trained as an artist during his  adolesence.”

“Right, because it was apparent even from an early age. But let's say that he had never had the opportunuity to practice his passion; his whole life could have turned out differently. He could have become an artist later in life, and never killed himself, he could have maybe never become a painter at all. Who knows, he could have been a writer!” 

“Hahaha.      Yea, God bless his parents for sending him to The Hague.”

“But it was more than that. He probably was astounded with color, saw the glow around the animals and the fields as a boy and it left its mark on him. The difficult parts of his childhood probably stuck with him more than anything else. That was probably what he had to wrestle with daily as an adult, because he would try to separate it from his character, when deep down he knew he couldn't, wouldn't be able to, because that would only harm his art. Even though keeping it inside, and the struggle to hide it, hurt his social life and eventually his entire life. Because you can't be really great and be alone. No one can. You wind up growing crazy, or growing bad.”

It's not difficult to imagine how stimulating I found this girl, both intellectually and physically. We had finished our coffee and were rotating the base of the empty coffee cups in fidgets around the table.  Hunched with our elbows on our thighs, we looked directly into each other's eyes. She glanced at her watch and said it was time to go; we both have early class in the morning. Rising slowly and stretching slightly, we walked out, into the warm May night time. 

Ausgesprochen

As graduation approached, I had made enough small attempts to feel comfortable enough to ask Dela out. The glances between us were what alerted me to her possible acceptance. Originally they were friendly; they became inquiring as she began to view me as her equal, and then challenging as though we were bound to fight. When flirtation and coquettry escalated to the point where physical contact of the obligatory sort occurred, i.e. a touch upon the upper arm, brushing of elbows, I knew I had the balls to intimate an intimate setting, a rendezvous. It was one occasion in particular that justified this notion. When Mrs. Buckley walked in on us discussing the progressive nature of Bacon's self-portraits, I, animatedly and conscious of the pleasures of speaking well, in the course of a gesticulation, brushed the top of the hand of Dela, which was resting on the top of her chair. 

The hand was swiftly withdrawn – and I felt just as suddenly that it was my duty to ensure that the hand was not withdrawn when I touched it. The idea of an obligation to fulfill, if not a need not to succumb to inferiority, diminished instantly any traces of my pleasure felt by speaking passionately to two women whom I admired and respected. 

The next day when I entered the Buckley residence, Dela was reading a story to Little Buckley, who was of an indeterminate sex, had a scraggly bowlcut, usually wore overalls and didn't even have a name – even Mr. and Mrs. Buckley called it Little. It was Shel Silverstein, “Lafcadio The Singing Lion,” a story I was familiar with from my own childhood. Sensing an in, I sat and listened to Dela finish the chapter to the child. Little Buckley's presence allowed me to think less of Dela herself and more about my preoccupation with the task at hand. When Little ran away after his older sister's dismissal, and pleasantries languished, I could feel my face begin to flush. do i have nothing to say when it finally comes time to act? what a fool i've been to think that this cute older girl would kowtow to me – but after learning from similar situations, young Gabriel did not falter; he was too suspicious of the result not to be aware of his own state. I sat and listened to myself speak while fuming on the inside about my pusillanimity and insistence towards action. Beethoven: Symphony #1 in C, Op. 21- 1. Adagio Molto, Allegro Con Brio.

“Would you like to get some coffee? Buckley's doing homework.”

She looked up at me, those sapphiric eyes aglow, broad lightly tanned forehead partially covered by oblique velvet threads, her two perfect lips, the color of ripe strawberries, began to part showing those teeth, blocks, the building blocks of love, like they had been painted white, and she smiled. “Sure.”

They Can Touch The Heart Only By Bruising It

You might be wondering what Dela was thinking about when she saw me. She knew Buckley and I were great friends, and that my family didn't have the kind of money her ex-boyfriend had, that any kind of interaction with me besides a purely friendly one would never behoove her because though her family didn't have money either, she had the breeding that allows one to move up in the world  - she was exceptionally beautiful for a girl of just more than middle height, with eyes that shone like sapphires, almost purple, and which glistened as you moved around her, her swanlike neck cocked deep in concentration as she studied differential equations; she was a math major, a very intelligent girl. Dela saw me as a young man of simple means; she never saw me without thinking to herself: poor guy, how can he manage? He works hard at that market, his mom is crazy, dad's never there, and he has to take care of his sister. Gradually she came to feel pity instead of shock at all of the things I lacked.

Dela was one of those city girls you might take for a fool for the first two weeks of your acquaintance. She had no experience of life and made no attempt at small talk. Since she was gifted with a delicate and lofty soul, her instinct for happiness which is natural to all living creatures, provided that she paid attention to the behavior of the gross creatures amid whom fortune had thrust her.

 She would not have ventured to say a harsh word to anyone and the most trivial cough from Little Buckley could send her running to nurture and care. A burst of crude laughter and a shrug of the shoulders was all she ever received from her Stanford boyfriend whenever she attempted to open her heart about matters not including academia and politics. His variety of humor, especially where regarding feelings and sentiments, twisted the knife in Dela's heart, ultimately causing her regret, but not an open disavowal of a wounded relationship. Too proud to discuss matters of this sort, she approached her one friend, a Jackie Franzinnini, with the attitutude that all men are the same - coarseness and brutal indifference to everything that was not money, study or women; a blind hatred that went against feminine interests; these qualities seemed to her as natural to the male sex as wearing suits and ties.

Hence the success of Gabriel. When he entered the room, little Dela's brow just containing the slightest hint of a furrow as she waded through her homework, lightened, as if she sensed the passing of a cloud over the sun, only to reveal ample light and warmth. She found that he was worth listening to, even when talk concerned the most ordinary and wretched subjects: on one occasion, there was a cat that was seen run over on First Street, and eavesdropping with ears and sidelong glances, she noticed that the fine arches over Gabriel's eyes contracted and loosened in sympathy. Gradually, it seemed to her that the nobility of spirit which she had hoped for in her boyfriend was indeed apparent in this friend of her younger brother's, two years her junior.

On reality television, this relationship would blossom after two or three dates, giving forth to a drama-sparked breakdown between the love of either Stanford ex, or the newcomer Gabriel, resulting in personal astonishment on the part of more than one member of the triangle d'amour, and possibly, hopefully, even violence. Television would outline the roles for them to play, as if they were simply stereotypes, or imitators of love. Yet because Gabriel and Dela happened to be intellectuals, at least to have had the capability to reason and understand the conventions imposed upon them by societal standards of heartbreak and courtship, and because they were city children, used to things happening quickly, and therefore all the more apprehensive about the speed of events taking form to which they were unaccustomed, they slowed their behavior, and acted all the more naturally.

When Gabriel attempted to speak to Dela in more than inchoate stutters and nods, he had to gather his courage every time he opened the Buckley's door, because after years of being friendly, he not only text messaged Buckley to plan and alert him to his imminent arrival, but told him not to bother getting up from masturbating to open the door for him, he could just as easily enter himself, in hopes of seeing beautiful Dela sitting at table working slavishly in her three inch thick volumes, quietly scribbling and that soft brow just beginning to squirm in thought – just the notion of this neighborly beauty in proximity made his palms sweat and his heart patter. On a Thursday evening, after dinner, when parents are watching television or reading, or doing whatever it is elderly people do in those soft and quiet post prandial moments, there she was, lucubrating at the table. Surprised, he seemed not to want to distract her but carefully and curiously made his way over to Dela, who sensing his presence hovering closer and closer and not drifting towards Buckley's corner, was preparing herself for more than just the customary hello and broad smile she was so used to affecting for him.

“Hey, whatcha working on?”

Sigh. “Just some Diff E.Q.”

“Cool.” Three seconds of silence. “I'm taking some calculus right now, but it looks like algebra compared to this stuff. Is that a triple integral?”

“Ya.”

“What's it mean?”

“Well, you know how the integral is used to find the area under a curve?

“Ya.”

“Well, the triple integral is used to find the area of a three dimensional object, like a box.”

“Cool.” I hover and bob my head in appreciation.

She smiles, shakes her head slowly, I'm in, yes. “Nah, it's kinda tedious.” God those, teeth, they're perfect rectangles, I would live in those teeth, make them my windows, and look out of them, how are they so white... She recognizes my silence and fawning appreciation, but isn't sure whether it's over her breasts or her knowledge of integrals in cylindrical coordinates. I pause, embarassed, not sure what to do.

“Well, guess I'm gonna see what ol' Buckley's doing.”

“K. You have fun, be safe.”

Be safe? Be safe? Like what are we going to be doing? And who does she think she is telling me what to do? She's not my mom. I mean, sure she's a bit older, but come on. It's not like I wouldn't listen to her, though. And we should be safe. Safety comes first. She's so caring, loving, always looking out for us... “Sup Buck.”

What is this about? Radiators and Stan.

There's something to be said for confidence. It is innate and it is reckless, it spreads and fosters risk and reward. There's no real way to be forcibly confident. You have to practice it. This I found out when I was sixteen after my first real sexual encounter. These are the things we remember, vrai? No, I'll save you that one for another rainy Sunday. I don't think, I drink, like my mother. She imbued me with this predisposition in the womb. Part of me always thought it would be fun to be a raging alcoholic, to have the disease. You can blame things on it, you can be drunk, and who knows what kind of crazy lifestyle comes with those two things. And talk about creative! Can't you see me just thwapping away on the old typewriter smoking cigarettes drinking Jameson neat in gulps? I can. Anyways, where was I – confidence. Just have to put it on, like a suit. It takes time, some preparation, some fixing of the collar, but when you're ready you feel it. I'm thinking that I can watch the whiskey visibly melt the ice in my glass, slowly bobbing in minisucule modulations barely visible. There are two radiators in my room that otherwise I would not bother describing because they are boring. But with my buddy, oL' Jamie over here, I'm going to do it. Yes, I'm going to give you an idea of how integral these radiators are to my well being and the character of my room. Here goes: These radiators are about two and a half feet high, and are painted in white paint that looks very old, like it was painted at least before 1970. They have little legs maybe three inches high that make them look like pygmy radiators that could start waddling forward at any moment. When they release heat that is necessary for my comfort, they hiss slightly like a tea kettle before it's really ready. Too many slits to count, maybe fifteen, line white panels of metal releasing heat and are dark because of dust or maybe just because they are close together and I am looking at them from an oblique angle; I would be four o clock if they were the center of the face. On one side of the radiator is what looks like a small, oblong bell but could also be a CO2 cartridge attached to it. On each end of each radiator are six slits (in two groups of three, a top and a bottom) and on top of the top middle heat releasing slit is what could be a compass, painted white, to direct the little men inside of the radiator where and how much heat to release. Oh, there's one below the bottom middle too! I hadn't even noticed that one, probably because it is better painted and just above it and below the top one are screws also painted white, they must get hot, must be some kind of special radiator screws perhaps. And on the other side of the radiator is a valve that can be opened or closed to release the amount of heat. There are two radiators directly underneath my two windows and are bordered by thin white painted wooden frames that are actually in-frames that are framed by the wainscoting of the window which is not at all perpendicular but reaches straight to the floor, making the north wall of my room, look like it has two eyes with two lower eyelashed lids, which are the radiators. It is very symmetrical, my wall, and the two skateboards in between the windows, up against the wall are like a nose, a black nose on a white face.

Well, that was successful, I think. If I wanted to write a very self- conscious kunstleroman, then this would be a part of where the young artist is attempting to write about things that aren't very interesting, to try to make them interesting in an objective way that is really just his subjective point of view. While drinking, that is. Because drinking is supposed to bring forth creativity, right? I can't wait to be an alcoholic! That would be a good idea, to write a novel like that. I think that that level of self-consciousness would be good for literature, for everyone, because too many of us are too unself-conscious. Is that a good thing? Isn't it nice to be unself-conscious? Yes. It is. But, artistic Daniel rejoinders, doesn't a lack of self-consciousness lead to ignorance? to complacency? Yes. It does. So being able to control self-consciousness in writing, like we do in real life, when we are experienced and older and can contribute positively to social interactions, to moderate it and mediate it, how would we do this in writing, artist? Well, by jumping back as the writer! I poured a lot of Jamie. He's gonna be my ol' pal, but I won't have to get a drink till much later, when I'm out at the bar, and when I do, it'll be beer, because I may still be tipsy from hangin with Jamie. Boo, that's no fun. O beer. Hey beer. How ya doin. Ya. That's cool. Or maybe it'll be a fun beer! Like a seven dollar ale, from a microbrewery. Hey ale, you're so hoppy and flavorful tonite! I'm glad you made it!

“Thanks, man. It's good to see you too. It's been a while.”

“Ya well, times have been tough, you know?”

“Sure, it's a recession. But it's good of you to drop by.”

“I had too dude. Bud Heavy was with Coors Lite, and they were talking about going to some cockfest out in the woods man.”

“Dude, you made the right choice. I mean there are some beautiful girls here tonight!”

“O hey Alex. Ale, this is Alex, she's my girlfriend.”

“Hi Alex, I'm Ale.”

“It's nice to meet you, Ale.”

“It's a pleasure, Alex.”

Alex places her hand beneath my elbow and wraps it around my bicep.

“So what were you guy's up to tonight?

“Well, we were at this lame bar in the east village; it was loud and the music was dece," I tell Ale. “What were you doing tonight?”

“We were just hangin' out at Sam Adams', shootin the – hey man! It's Stan the Janitor!”

“Eyyy! (Like the Fonz.) Stan is the janitor. He wears loose grey trousers, beige boots, a green t-shirt, and a kind of vest that only covers his belly and protects it from hernias; it has shoulder straps and looks like a marsupial pouch. He can be seen pushing a garbage can on wheels, running through the hallways of my brain, cleaning up all of the refuse that accumulates over the course of the day as well as Coles Gym, where I work, and his tools, which shake on his belt are: a yellow flashlight, gloves attached to a carabeener attached to his belt loop, a radio and a silver chain which runs across his left leg and keeps his wallet in place. He is of about middle height and is from Brooklyn, an doan fuhgedid. Stan's demeanor is blithe, proven by a cachinnation that follows after about half of everything he says. He's loud and gruff but he's really a sweeheart – he gets off on the Chewbacca groan he affects so well. He is balding on top and when he's had a long day the stray hairs of his sinciput become unruly and dishevelled, rising like his pate had been rubbed with a balloon an though his ears look as though they've been pinched and pulled, are about half an inch wide, almost elfin, and have cropped black tufts of fur in the areas most visible, he is still a not unattractive. His eyebrows are thick and black, and his eyes are large, brown and unintelligent, though not dull. His nose is aquiline, but broad and somewhat cucurbitaceous. Like his hair, his beard is gray, but jet black high around his cheeks, a remnant of his youth, and runs eagerly down his neck into the clumps of chest hair spilling loosely from his collar. He swears freely and casually and talks to himself when no one listens.

“Eyyy!” Stan's gait has a bit of the waddle about it and he greets me and Ale with a dap, takes Alex's hand like a gentleman, with his unoccupied hand behind his back and a farther torso lean forward. Removing the square lid from the garbage can, he whips open a bag and asks me, “Ya know wha tha new word is fuh tha new yea? Neudral.” Stan turns back around bends his torso slightly forward and pauses, holding up his index finger. “Neudral. Ya know why? Cuz errybody roun heah eitha likes ya uh they doan. Thas why.” Wieldy, he throws the full bag of garbage on top of his overflowing wheeled trashcan. He finishes balancing it and stands in front of me while I have sitten down in a chair and turns to me as he says, “Ya god tha? Neudral – right uh wrong?

We agree.

“Cuz errybody iz alwayz lookin fa whaz right.” He roars gauchely. We laugh too.

“Fuckn doo many people doinza wrong.” Again, we weakly follow his laughter.

“Yezzaday I wuz on da zubway. An dis piece a shit comes up and dozen even lukka me. Putziz stuff down nexta me, duznt say scuze me uh nuthin. So I lookz at im, I zayz, Scuze me, ow bou a lil commun curtezy? E lookz a me, takez iz stuff an zitz zumwheya elze. Fuckin pizza shit. Do many peoplez, dey ain't got no curtezy. Looka me, Ima uman bein, I doan cayuh wha ya do, just ave da commun curtezy ta lookame. Right uh wrong?”

“Right.”

Stan turns back to the teetering garbage can and begins to push it down the hall toward the secret janitor's lounge. As he walks past us he says as he daps me goodbye, (don't tell Ale, and Alex, it was her first time meeting Stan, so...but I'm his favorite) “Ahright, you be good. Eyyahaha.” Stan knew it was safe to speak like this to us, to tell us his how he was feeling, what was on his mind. He seemed not to care what people thought, but only of their thinking about him. And honestly, isn't the only thing worse than being thought poorly of is to not be thought of at all – does anything else really matter in life?

An Annual Event

The Bowery, being watchful, was loud and rough except at the hour when the halfway houses were serving dinner. A red brick building of six stories overviewed the southeast corner of first street, obligingly settled next to its northern neighbors. The other buildings on the street were varicolored, conscious of the usual discord and momentary peace within them, and gazed at one another with imperturbable faces.

The former tenant of our building, a priest, had died on the top floor. Air, heavy with cotton ball stink from being long enclosed and even longer untended to, seeped downwards and hung in the hallways, and the garbage chutes were littered with scraps cleaned too seldom. Among these, I found a few paperbacks, whose pages were yellow-curled and damp: Nexus, by Henry Miller, Journey into the Center of the Night, and Waiting for Godot. I liked the last book because it smelled mildewy. The wild alley behind the building was freshly paved and a barbed wire fence seperated the next building over. He had been a magnanimous priest; his monies were bequeathed to the halfway houses up and down the Bowery, and his furniture he had given to his tenants, since he had no living family.

When the short days of winter came dusk fell before we had eaten our dinners. When we met in the alley the streets had grown somber. The space of sky above us was a pale orange that darkened quickly into indigo and towards it the gray streetlights hung their heads indifferently. The cold air stung us and we skated until our cheeks glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent alley. The carreer of our play brought us through the fence by a small furl of untethered mesh, and we ran through the corridors in between buildings, listening to the blaring of televisions or Puerto Rican bailandos, where odors of plaintains and frijoles steamed and our bellies somersaulted with hunger. When we returned to the street, light from the eyes of the tenement illumined our way. If my father was seen turning the corner we hid in the shadow until we had seen him safely ensconced. Or if Buckley's sister emerged to call her brother to dinner we watched her from our shadow peer up and down the quiet street. We waited to see whether she would remain or return, and, if she remained, we left our shadow and walked up to the building resignedly. She was waiting for us, her figured limned by the light of the foyer. Her brother always teased her before he obeyed and I stood removed, looking at her. Her limbs swayed like rope as she turned and she walked matronly within, though she was hardly two years our senior.

Every morning before school, I waited at the kitchen table listening for the lock of her door. When I heard the click and pause, I leapt up with my knapsack, and out the door just in time to see her lock her door. She acknowledged me with a smile and a nicety, and we walked down the stairs together and out the front door, in silence. This happened regularly. Besides this, I had never spoken to her, and yet her name caused the callow blood in my veins to roil and shake.

Her image accopanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday afternoons when my mother did her errands I had to help her carry the bags. We walked through the jostling streets, weaving between drunken men and eager women, amid the shouts of Mandarin, the bustle of map-wielding tourists, the enchanted anti-war posters of protestors, their speakers blaring threats about government power and justice. These walks converged into a single sensation of life and experience: I imagined that I bore my gift safely through a mass of thieves and fingersmiths to bring it to a shrine of devotion. Her name sprang to my lips in these moments of bravery in litanies which I often did not understand. My eyes were full of tears (whether from the cold or from thoughts of illusory dedication, I don't know) and at times a flood from my heart poured throughout my body. I thought little of the future. I did not know if a conversation would ever consist of more than a greeting, or if it did, how it would proceed to my outpouring of love and unwavering loyalty. But my body was like a guitar and her image was like the fingers that bluesily bend and pluck at those strings that sound my being.

One evening I went into the priest's old apartment where he had died. It was a dark stormy evening and there was not a sound in the building. Through the windows and the thin roof I heard the rain patter, the sheets bouncing into the tenement, immovable, then gurgling into the gutters. A distant light from an open window shone below me. I was thankful that I could see so little. All my senses became indistinct and, feeling that I was about to slip into darkness, I bowed and genuflected to Venus, murmuring “O love! O love!” many times.

At last she asked me a question of substance. When it happened I was confused as to how to respond; my self-doubt was firm and unshakeable. She asked me was I going to the Christmas tree lighting this year. I forgot whether I answered yes or no. The tree is a douglas fir, over one hundred feet tall, she said; she was planning to go.

While she spoke, she purled a brown thread of hair around her forefigner. Her brother and two other boys were pushing each other against the brick wall and we stood alone in the lamplight of our tenement's facade. The light shone on her white neck, the ends of her parallel clavicles were illumined, her hair was suffused in a golden patina, and falling, lit up her hand on the cold iron doorhandle. It caught the folds of her dress, and was lost in the ruffles and blackness of her overcoat, loose around the neck as she stood contrapposto, at ease.

You should go, she said.

If I go, I said, I will find you by the time the tree is lit.

What countless fantasies and illusions lay waste before my waking and dreaming visions after that encounter! I focused only on the moment when we would stand together underneath the lights of the behemoth tree; I wanted to destroy the intervening days, and would have sacrificed greatly to do so. Such are the follies of youth. School was not just tedium, but agony. At night in bed and by day at desk in the classroom, her image came to me like a succubus, taking my full attention from all reality. The syllables of Rockefeller came to me with the mystique of American royalty, as though simply saying the word, I attained a higher plateau of sophistication and culture. When I asked for leave on a Wednesday night, my mother was surprised at my gall. I answered no questions in class. I watched my teacher's face pass from amiability to distrust; she hoped I was not growing idle. I could not shepherd my roaming thoughts. I had hardly any patience with the work of life which, now that it intervened between me and my desire, seemed sore ugly work, like the monotony of an office job cubicled in by three sides with only the future as escape.

On Wednesday morning I reminded my father that I wished to go to the tree-lighting ceremony that night. He was shaving, and answered me curtly, knowing that I wanted to travel solo:

Be careful on the subway.

He stood there in delicately absorbed. I sat at the kitchen table and skulked with my head low. I didn't wait for the click of the lock to leave because I was too excited and eager to see her that evening, fearing that seeing her twice in the day would be too much, that it might dissuade her from going to the ceremony. The wind was biting and I was debeatified by the time I arrived at school.

When I came home to dinner my father was not yet arrived. Still it was early. I sat staring at the clock for some time, and restless, wandered from room to room. I tried to read, unsuccessfully. The empty rooms of our apartment sang with the wind's knocking at the glass window panes. From the back windows, I saw my buddies playing in the alley, skating and falling. Their shouts reached me softly from the street, blurry and muffled and, leaning my forehead against the window and watching condensation slowly build, I thought about her downstairs getting ready for the ceremony. I may have stood there for half an hour, obsessively meditating on her quotidian actions, seeing her in that golden patina of light as the darkness enclosed her and the pallor of her collarbones receded into shadow.

When I came downstairs again I found Mrs. Lorenz sitting at the fireplace. She was the mother of two younger boys and was a notorious gossip, an electirician's wife, who collected tidbits to give her life some sort of purpose. The meal was prolonged an hour and still my father did not arrive. I had to endure her bandying for the entirety. Mrs. Lorenz stood to leave: she was sorry she had to make dinner for her kids, but it was after seven o'clock and the festivities had begun. When she left, I began to walk through the rooms in irritation. My mother said:

You can wait until your father comes home before you go to the tree-lighting; it doesn't start for another few hours.

At eight I heard the latch click and da entered; he hung his coat in the closet and his keys jangled. When he had finished his salad, I asked him for the money for the subway. He had forgotten.

You better get going, before they light the tree.

I stayed stoic. Mom said to him energetically:

“Give him the money, by the time he gets there, it'll be lit.”

Da said he was sorry he had forgotten. He said he believed in the old saying: Work hard and play harder. He asked when it started and when I told him a second time, he asked me did I know the old Wordsworth Ode to Duty. When I left the kitchen with my coat, he was beginning to recite the opening lines to my mother.

I held my cash tight and eagerly bought a subway ticket, knowing how to get there from downtown on the Lexington line. The holiday fever had begun and infected me as I passed into the subway station, dripping with water despite the last rain days ago. The train came quickly and I sat, hands folded in a moderately filled car. Each stop dragged interminably on. When it arrived at Grand Central, I felt butterflies flutter and a crowd of people entered the train. The next stop was mine. I ran to exit the station and walk west, to fifth avenue. I passed a large bank with a roman numeralled clock that read a quarter to nine. I had ten minutes until the lighting. The square was two blocks away, and throngs of people collected, buzzing with anticipation.

It dawned on me that to find her would be difficult; she would be in the front. I found myself crawling through black peacoats and avoiding large circles of people who knew each other, making way for me, as if I were a disease. Suddenly, the tree was lit, and oohs and aahs, the flashing of cameras signalled that it was over. I didn't even stop swimming through the crowd to admire the tree; I wanted only to find her and apologize for my tardiness. I paused for breath in an opening and tried to get my bearings. I overheard the conversation of some Southern folks.

I wonder where they got it from.

I heard it was from Washington state, that they found it and put it onto a plane to get it here.

A plane?

I thought they drove it.

Where'd ya hear that?

Noticing me noticing them a motherly figure asked if I needed help. The tone of her voice was comforting; she seemed to speak to me out of a true desire to help. I looked around, hoping to glimpse her and save my honor, then at the looming tree like as if it were mocking me with its multi-colored lights and symbolism of Yuletide cheer, and murmured:

No, thanks ma'am.

She looked inquiringly at me for a moment and returned to her husband and the two others who could have been her children. They returned to the subject of the tree. Once or twice, the woman looked at me with distrust.

I lingered, though I knew it was pointless; I would never find her now – she had probably already left. Then I turned slowly and walked through the emptying square, disenchanted and disheartened. I clanged the change for the subway in my pocket. I heard a female voice call from behind me, and turned excitedly, but it was not her. It was now past ten o' clock and there were fewer and fewer people.

Gazing skyward I saw myself from above as an animal driven by fruitless passion and pride; and my eyes blurred with tears of anger and shame.