Apologies for that last entry. Apparently, the mail carrier I’ve chosen for the blog’s “letter bag” feature is having some problems. I’ve no idea how that led to this aquarium shit being posted here, but for the moment, they seem to have my mail, and I theirs. I’ll get yr. correspondence back up as soon as I can work things out, but in the mean time, I’m leaving theirs here, as a courtesy to their readers. Even if they are dumb and creepy, I’m tryin’ to be a good neighbor. After all, if I turned my back on everyone who was dumb and creepy, I’d have to stop watching The O’Reilly Factor, and that shit is just too damn funny to miss.
Anyway, so back to that New York thing…
Every bad set of box or bedsprings leaves its marks. On my first morning in NYC, I awoke to found that my entire back had been scrawled on by the trundle bed, leavin’ a sorta illuminated Celtic text that spelled out: sore muscles.
Still, to be fair, the trundle bed had also offered me one pleasant surprise: if, you’re like me, you sometimes roll off yr. bed, to discover that you’re very briefly, suspended several inches above the floor. Just before you fall, you’re prob. wearing an expression like the one Wile E. Coyote donned, every time he found himself standing on thin air, thousands of feet above the desert floor. Like Wile E., you can’t fathom how this could’ve happened to you again. Cut to you holding a cold rag against yr. vastly swollen nose—(you have no ice cubes, ‘cuz you always forget/don’t want to fill up the fucking tray w/ water). Sure, you’ve gotten off lighter than Wile E. Well, but like him, you’re left to wonder why. Why is the cosmos so hostile?
OK. That’s depressing. But see, here’s where the good part about the trundle bed comes in—the only good part, aside from the fact that it saves space, is funny, and has a funny name. Because it has to fit under the regular bed, it’s really short. That means you’re only, like, 5” off the ground, when you roll off the bed in yr. sleep. So the impact is diminished, leaving you only stunned and humiliated as yr. cohabitants—if you have any—laughs at you.
Other people are assholes, but you knew that already. In this case ‘tho, I was lucky, because for once, I was the first one to wake up, so no one witnessed my somnambulistic pratfalling.
With a childlike lack of self-consciousness, Beloved Female Acquaintance lay drooling into her pillow. I might’ve been touched by this spectacle, if not for 2 facts: 1) she’d stolen the good—authentic—bed; and 2) I am an unsentimental bastard.
I left her sleeping, while I went off to shower, dress, buff, (snicker,) etc. I was awfully pleased w/ myself until I remembered that it was Valentines Day. But I shrugged off ghoulish visions of past VD’s, reminding myself that all human closeness was but transitory and alla that Elton John type shit and that people suck anyway—which I guess made it more like Leonard Cohen type shit. Or something. Anyway, I told myself, VD is just a conspiracy perpetrated by the Greeting Card Industry (a part of the Legion of Doom that is Corporate America—maybe in a sorta Toyman way?) And why was I following these stupid blinking lights: Conspiracies Committed by Corporate America? Well, sure, I guess it happens here and there, but not as much as some idiots seem to think. Usually, I didn’t fall prey to this stuff—must be something in the filthy NYC air—or in the ominous murmurings of secret societies that had been floating around since I became involved in this case.
When I emerged from the bathroom, I found that BFA had scavenged some coffee from that mysterious lounge area. That was the extent of the Continental Breakfast she’d snagged before a busboy told her she had to get out. The lounge was closing. Since she’d only been in the room for about 10 seconds before she was bounced, she couldn’t offer any further description, except for impressions of smudged gilt mirrors and red velvet curtains w/ little gold ropes.
So we drank our coffee, & it was agreed that we’d make our way to some real New York type place w/ bagels and lox. (I’m fond of lox, ‘tho everyone else I know more gets a light case of the dry heaves if it’s even mentioned.) We’d consider our plans and then act accordingly. She headed off for her own quick shower, while I got myself ready to go.
It was my first daytime NYC street scene of that visit! Late Saturday morning, sunny—not even cold, really, for Feb. I wish I could tell you it wasn’t perfect! Or that it was! I don’t remember! I don’t even remember the restaurant that well—only that there was a young woman standing ahead of us in a long line that led to the counter. She shuffled around a lot as she spoke w/ Slavic inflections into her cell phone. Her bag kept hitting me in the arm, and she would look up at me w/ a contempt I could not even imagine harboring for another soul. There was no visible irony or defensiveness in her look—she really seemed to be that appalled by my presence. (Where else could I’ve gone to give her her space? Into a wall? Another person in the crowd? Prob. woulda worked for her either way) All the while she kept up her end of the conversation. I guess. I’m not sure I was getting all of it. Something about getting “better cable.” (Not kidding: I heard “butter kettle,” at first, but…)
Anyway, she was very stylish—or was tryin’ to be anyway. I’ve no idea what it means to be really stylish, but her clothes all seemed to go together well and all fit so snug and there was not an Osh Kosh B’gosh tag to be found, (except one that was hid very discreetly beneath her Andrea D’oria class mink shawl,) and she actually styled her hair—unlike a lotta other women do, where they just get a haircut that looks only sorta OK, but that they won’t have to comb often—thus making themselves look suspiciously like your friend from high school’s mom. She had makeup that was maybe a little too heavy, but not too, too heavy. Her perfume was perceptible, but pretty tasteful, I guess. My point is that she might or might not’ve been stylish, and altho’ my underdeveloped feelings of fashion, taste, or engagement forbid me from knowing if she succeeded, I do understand that she was trying. Ah! The nobility of the human spirit!
Though my recollections of the place are little more than vague aromas of annoying boredom, I do remember something of our conversation. Despite the crowd, we managed to find a table. I was drinking more coffee, but still my thoughts seemed to plod slowly along. I couldn’t pull them together, so I just watched the linoleum floor as it moved slowly by—slowly—as in, not at all. After some time, BFA asked me what I was thinking about.
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“That’s what I’ve heard.”
“Henh. No, see, what I don’t get is knights were supposed to be all about codes of chivalry and that sorta shit, right?”
“I guess.”
“Well then, how are these guys who are all about that virtue hackshit condone torture and ritual murder?”
“Hypocrisy?”
“I mean, the standard line w/ this secret society claptrap is that these dudes are supposed to be protecting ancient secrets, but like, from whom? And why?”
“Ida know.”
“A-and how can someone who’s privy to at least some of this vaunted wisdom be as much of an apparent blockhead as your uncle?”
“’Blockhead?’ Who’re you, Lucy Van Pelt?”
“No offense about your uncle.”
“None taken.”
I almost regretted that “no offense” thing. She was starting to piss me off.
“Look,” I said, “how come you were all forthcoming w/ insights that you’ve gleaned from your useless college degree about knights and that sorta shit last night? Whatta ya got now?”
“A headache. And a growing sense of boredom.”
“That makes 2 of us. Look—“
“You keep saying, ‘Look…’ Who’re you, Lou Piniella?”
“You’re not answering my question.”
“Well, you’re not answering mine.”
“You’re the 1 who said I oughta come here. Practically shanghaied me. So. Like. What the fuck is going on?”
I thought she was gonna say something real for a minute. She looked at me that way. But instead it was mostly more horseshit.
“I think you should go talk to some people at the Order of the Comely Hind.”
“From what I understand, they’re pretty committed to their privacy. Sorta like Elvis. Or Howard Hughes. Or Jim Jones. Or Scarlett Johansson. ”
“I think they’ll see you, given the circumstances.”
What I really wanted to know was how she could say “comely hind” w/ a straight face, but instead I asked, “What circumstances?”
“Well, someone is going to kill my uncle, right?”
“Look—I mean, ‘listen…’ They must know what’s up. The old man’s more than a little scared. He was freaking out last night. Figure your aunt begged off because she wanted to take him home and change his colostomy bag.”
BFA was staring at me. She hadn’t blinked in a while. “You wanna go?” She stood up.
I was annoyed by the change of subject, but said. “Sure.” I’d insulted her family a little, and no matter how much disdain she’d express for the idea of family, she was pissed. I almost didn’t care. I felt like she was jerking me around—not telling me everything. She was walking fast in front of me, forcing me to scamper after her. She was staring ahead, refusing to look at me. I practically had to run to get in front of her so she would look at me.
“Hey!” I said, but some construction scaffolding got in my way. To keep up w/ her, I had to veer around it, off the curb and into the path a squat, muscular dude with a mustache and loadsa angry drunken macho swagger. He was glaring and angry too—a sorta short, male, Latino aspect of the same thing that BFA was right now. He was hogging the whole area between the curb and the traffic. Whatever. I was sick of both of them—their insistence that they had a right to all of the space—in his case—or of the moral high ground in hers. I faced him, walked right at him. If he was gonna push me aside, he was gonna have to do so physically.
We walked right up to each other, each glaring, and stopped. We stood inches away—a tableaux of silly macho poison. His breath smelled of fermentation. He said, “You know how to walk man?” We stared awhile longer, then somehow made room for one another and went on our separate ways. Wow! A real NYC moment of urban anger! Funny how it was indistinguishable from the same impotent, empty shit that went on in Chicago!
Feeling more stupid than validated, I found BFA waiting for me on the other side of the street.
She said, “You’re an idiot. With a Napoleon complex.”
I said, “You’re right. So was he. My point is this: Your uncle must’ve been to them by now.”
She said, “He hasn’t. He’s embarrassed. He doesn’t want anyone to know. That’s why I asked you to help. Remember?”
Again, she didn’t blink. She didn’t have to. She was right. I’d said I would help, and thus far, I hadn’t done much of anything but complain.
“OK,” I said. “So take me to the Comely Hind.”
