I remember the first night I spent in New York.

It was December, cold, bitter, the kind of night best spent in fuzzy pajama pants wrapped in a blankie, curled up on the loveseat watching Deadly OSD Housewives on A&E.  Nothing here, just two suitcases with everything I owned tucked in the corner of the studio.  The hard wood floor was cold to my feet, the place smelled like Pledge and I was alone.  The sound of the heating pipes in the far corner cried out a plaintive squeal and cry as steam coursed through the metal thoroughfares, finally escaping via the baseboard radiators.  There was a chill in the air yet it was warm, a product of poorly sealed windows.  All was still and so was I.

I remember laying next to that window on the rickety bed left behind by the previous tenants.  The windows were bereft of dressing, leaving the world below open to me.  I remember lying there, wrapped in a flimsy sheet, staring out that window.  It was nothing special, just a view of the neighboring apartment building, brick side, open windows, corner ending to a half view of the street, bar on the far  corner with standard bar neon illuminating the wet pavement.  Like I said, nothing special.  My wristwatch read 1:51 AM but I didn’t mind.  It was enchanting just staring out that window at the people settled, relaxed, purposeful, their places filled with meaningful stuff doing meaningful things.  Kitchens full of utensils, living rooms stocked with chairs, tables, TV’s, bedrooms with curtains oddly open.  Full of things done, challenges bested, obstacles overcome.

From my empty room, my first empty room in a series of empty rooms that would last to today, I felt terrified.  Overwhelmed.  My place did not have any of these things.  No pots, pans, coffee tables, duvets or curtains.  Nothing.  Just empty space begging to be filled.  Right then and there, I felt ill equipped for the task.  The mountain to climb was too imposing for me to bear.   And at that moment, I felt fully content to lay there on the bed that wasn’t mine, in a place I didn’t know, in a city everyone said I couldn’t last in a body I felt detached from and lie there for time infinite.  Just waste away watching the world roll by.

Until a kitchen light in apartment 6D snapped to life and an angel in an ironic t-shirt came into frame.

The moment I saw Her.

She was rooting in her fridge, amongst her colanders and spatulas, looking for something to chew on.  Couldn’t see what was in her fridge but the manner of her sloped back and softly shaking head was inclination enough that there was nothing of note.  She just needed to move, needed to get out of her room and get away from the emptiness of her queen size.  Like a clichéd Death Cab song, she had the air of long loss coupled with accepted loneliness, evidenced by the straight forward way she closed the refrigerator door and walked to the window directly across from mine.  Her baby blue eyes held a world weariness, yet her brow held firm, resolute, calm.  Later she would say that it was the snow made her look but something else that made her stay, some energetic force that kept her framed in that New York City moment.

Right then I knew, I had to know her.  Her in her dancing potato t-shit with the slogan “Viva La Idaho” emblazoned on the front, her hair pulled back in a tie, her soft lips in a curious kind of half smile, I knew I had to know her.  The notion of surrendering to failure was suddenly gone.  For the first time in what seemed like weeks, I had a purpose.  Why would I get a decent couch to sit on?  So she could come over and be comfortable.  Why would I buy a toaster oven and microwave?  So I could make her Eggos and Ramen noodles when she was hungry.  Why would I mop the floor once in while?  So I could kiss her feet and not taste dust.  Self serving as my motives were, I knew I had to have her.

And I did.

I’m typing this from a borrowed lappy from that very same room.  Odd providence sent me to my old neighborhood tonight.  Just wanted to get out of the place in SoHo, escape the nightmares that have been plaguing me for the last month, away from why I haven’t posted, away from all I got myself into.  And it just so happened I found myself on my old street in front of my old building and wouldn’t you know it, somebody just happened to walk in as I passed and could you believe it, held the door for me to let myself in.  Sadly the elevator was out, but the six floor walkup didn’t bother me as I scaled the steps to my old studio.  Five years had passed since I last occupied this place and imagine my surprise to see an expired eviction notice taped to the door.

Now, I’ m not sure what compelled me to try the handle, to feel the slow click and turn of the locking mechanisms that allowed the door to creak open and it’s beyond me why I decided to enter, but I did anyhow.  Easily breaking and entry, but I felt the need to visit a relic of my past.  And there it was, more furnished than I remembered it, but still grimy, grungy and distinctly old.  The bed was right where I left it five years beforehand and still had that familiar squeak and groan as I laid my body upon it, head resting where my makeshift pillow rested five year ago to the day.  The view was the same, and there it was, that window where I first saw a vision of loveliness and decided the journey was worth embarking on.  And for a small fragment of a moment, I half expected her to come to that window, wearing that damn potato shirt, smiling that half smile, to gaze at me like the last five years never occurred, the ends of time squishing together to create a compacted moment where then equals now, past equates to present.

But I knew she wouldn’t come to the window.

Not now, not ever.

in front of that monstrous computer generated fountain. Silhouetted against the lights of the fountains, I see the shadowed outline of a little girl standing with her dad. The plumes of water are at the low point but the child is jumping up and down, waving her arms like a conductor coaxing a crescendo from an orchestra. And as she does, the plumes climb higher and higher, much to her delight.

Amazing how someone so small can have so much faith. Fully expecting the water will bend to her will, she simply believes. Just like she believes in the simplicity of life, in that her dad will forever be at her side and in the fact a fat man is going slide down the chimney with a sack full of presents in a few weeks.  Blind, beautiful belief.

I’m tapping this post via my phone and I think I’m now late for my movie but maybe that’s what this season is all about. Stripping away the strains of reason and simply believing because its good to do so. There’s strength and innocence in faith.

She’s walked away from the fountain with her dad, Christmas is twenty or so days away and full of expectations. And the fountain has dipped in her absence.

Maybe belief has more power than I think.

Oh, and they were real. I’m sure of that.

I think.

Four years ago, I ran out of bus fare on my way to California and crash landed in Sandy, Utah.  Yes Utah, home of Sundance, the Salt Flats and Mormonism.  Naturally, Utah was not my initial destination.  I was trying to get to Sausalito to shack up with a tattoo artist friend of mine for the holidays.  Not to put too fine a point on things, but I loves me my whiskey, so the Mormon population of Utah and me do not make good bedfellows.  I like to drink, they like to tithe.  Whatevs.

While in Utah, I worked under the alter for LDS, helping to maintain the landscaping in Temple Square.  Nothing serious, just some lawn moving here, weed whacking around the Beehive House there, stuff any nimrod could do.  Got the gig by chatting up one of the head groundskeepers while having a pint at a TGI Fridays in Sandy, one of those mall locations that always seems to stick out like a sore mole when you pull into the parking lot.  Twas my first day in Utah, so imagine my surprise when I walked up to the bar, oddly covered with place settings and asked for a Guinness.  Sorry, sir, just bottles and you need to order food with it.  Say wha?  Nothing screams alcoholic degradation like sucking down a Miller Lite in the parking lot of a Utah mall with a steaming pile of Jack Daniels Chicken Tenders in front of you.  Pussy magnet, thy name is B.

After a whopping two beers, enough to garner a sideways glance from the ‘keep, the fella flat out asked if I would like a job and place to say while I was raising cash to get to Cali.  Turns out the guy was a Mormon Bishop who had been working the grounds since he was 16 and got his calling while cleaning out the fountain at the base of Seagull Monument.  A joke concerning how I hear callings all the damn time almost escaped my lips, but I refrained.  The man was serious about two things; his religion and decorative water sculptures.

So, that’s how I ended up staying with J for the better part of six weeks in November of 2006.  Wasn’t a bad arrangement; I needed a place to crash, he saw a potential convert.  Mostly, I spent my days cleaning up the Square while he popped in from time to time to oversee.  The rest of the time he was off in West Wendover, spending most of his cash at the Red Garter Casino.  Wasn’t a bad guy or even a bad Mormon, just liked his video poker a bit too much.  Hear no evil, speak no evil.

Side Note : Temple Square is an exceedingly creepy place and I almost cut out a couple times due to some freaky fucking visions.  The place is crawling with spirits, and while I’m not convinced what I’m seeing is actually supernatural, those six weeks in Sandy were beyond bizarre.  You can actually feel the energy of people long dead swirling around you.  One day, I’ll get into exactly what I saw there, but for now I’m going to refrain.  It’s been a pretty good week and I don’t want to put the whammy on it by bringing up bad memories.

Back on task.  In my short time in town, I learned Salt Lake City is a city of extremes and facades.  On one side you have this huge monument to piety; the members only Tabernacle, the North and South Visitors Center, The Christus housed in a domed room with goofy stars, planets and galaxies painted on it, the overly friendly tour guides, all who want you to convert…all of it designed to project this image of religious devotion.  Oh, and money.  The Church of Latter Day Saints is a pretty wealthy organization, and Temple Square spares no expense.  My last week there, I saw them light the place up for Christmas and it makes Rockefeller Center look like my apartment building.

On the other side, however, if you look beyond the Square, you can tell all that posturing is hiding a sad reality.  Salt Lake City is dying.  Beyond the Church, there’s nothing there.  Walk down State Street downtown and every other storefront is vacant.  Nobody walking around, shopping, eating or chatting.  It’s a ghost town.  I walked into a mall type place and half the building, didn’t just have empty stores, had the lights turned out.  And I’m not talking just the empty partitions; I’m saying the lights were out in the fucking corridors.  Imagine walking around a dark mall that was supposedly open, with only your footsteps to keep you company.  Talk about visions…

And that is the dichotomy of Salt Lake City.  Here I was, getting $15 an hour to carefully prune bushes when the reality of the town, behind the façade of giant churches and ornate fountains, was slowly rotting away. For fuck’s sake, they still had the threadbare banners from the 2002 Olympics hanging from the streetlights.  All this time and effort spent to keep up appearances when they could simply work on fixing what really needed to be fixed.  Like getting plastic surgery when you have a treatable cancer or going on vacation when the house is falling apart.  All distraction and diversion from the real issues at hand.

So why this long tale of shrubbery and decay?

I’ve never spent the holidays with family.  There’s not a single person on this planet I can call a blood relative, and I’ve come to accept that.  Every year, it’s either a Christmas party in Hartford, or Thanksgiving with friends in Brooklyn and every time, I take a look around and say, “Well, this is good enough.”  At least I have friends to spend it with.  At least, I’m not alone.

This year I realized, for me, it’s really not OK.

Just like those false idols covering up the pain of Salt Lake City, these fake Thanksgivings with fake families are just that.  Facades designed to distract us from the realities of our existences.  Despite how much fun it is, or how much you drink or who you hook up with, everybody wants to be with family during this time of year.  It’s bred into us from birth and if you’re not with them, there is a sad reason why.  Maybe you’re too busy with work, maybe you can’t swing the cost of a plane trip or maybe you just can’t stand the drama that goes with a large, sometimes annoying family.  Whatever the case may be, these random gatherings of friends only mask a deeper sadness, a deeper pain, much like the cathedrals of Salt Lake City mask the rotting realities of the town they inhabit.  A bucket of PBR and a Trader Joe’s pre-cooked turkey can’t replace the warmness of family.

That Thanksgiving in Utah, I witnessed it firsthand.  They had a real family Thanksgiving the likes I had never really seen before.  They had it all; turkey with trimmings, football on the tube, more desert than Magnolia Bakery and the obligatory spat over the newly appointed Presiding Bishop.  All of it was there, some of it great, some of it ugly, but all of it genuine.  Real.  Unforced.  Just a family sharing, laughing, fighting and squabbling, just like families are supposed to do.  That night, I spent about an hour in J’s backyard, moaning, crying and making a big damn baby out of myself.  The scene inside hurt something deep inside of me.  And that night, J came up to me, put his hand on my shoulder and whispered, “All things in due time”.  Wasn’t after another 35 minutes of weeping did I realize that J was inside the whole time, passed out from a tryptophan overdose.  Never heard that voice again.

In closing, I’m not trying to shit on spending time with friends during Thanksgiving and Christmas.  The gatherings are often lots of fun, they are usually people you care about and if you’re going to put up a false front, might as well do it with a group.  Actually, I was invited to a Thanksgiving in Greenpoint this year.  Guy I know knows a girl who was having a get together, etc, etc.  Same story I’ve been living for as long as I can remember.  Makeshift families, born of a shared longing, pretending, for at least that day, that what they have was good enough.  This time, I decided it wasn’t.

I’ve done it to death and this year I decided not to do it anymore.

So my Thanksgiving was spent at home, all by my lonesome.  Ordered myself a turkey sandwich from Lenny’s the night before, had it with some Streamfresh veggies, watched the Macys’ parade, the Dog Show, two games of football and the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special, all in that order.  And then, with two more hours to go in my holiday, I turned all the lights out, cut off the TV and just sat in the darkness.  And thought.  And smiled.  With the soft glow of a nearby streetlight softly illuminating my temporary place, I saw all I had, all I had to be thankful for.  This was me.  All of me.  And for the first time in I don’t know when, I felt the cracks of my psyche slowly start to heal.  Finally, after years of jumping from party to party, to staying with families that weren’t mine, I had torn down that wall and spent a holiday with the person that mattered most.

Damn glad I did.

– B

it was me, looking at this sexy brunette with short cropped hair, totally cool, blowing an off the shoulder kiss to a European dude whose smile went from her, as she exited, to a business guy in a suit busy picking his nose who was looking at an Asian kid with blue hair who was staring at a guy who looked like a chick who was talking to a rocker guy in an oversized top hat who was lazily gazing at a crumpled old man huddled in the corner of the car, his mouth locked open mouth in a silent scream and sporting several deep slashes that was oozing black blood carved in his face, staring directly at me.

Shit….

Wow.  Exactly nobody read my first post.  This is going swimmingly!

Sarcasm aside, it’s fine.  This thing isn’t ready for human eyes yet and to be perfectly honest, neither am I.  Maybe I should take this time to tell you all a bit more about myself.  New York City is my home, but I’ve spent substantial time in different parts of the country.  Florida, Utah and Virginia to name a few.  Not for fun, sun and snowboarding or anything, just kinda went there to follow a gig or on a whim.  To be perfectly honest, I’m a bit of a nomad, living life “off the grid”, so to speak.  No credit cards, a small checking account I’ve had since I was born, no tax returns, etc.  Sure I work, but most of my work has either been odd jobs or small gigs here and there, always under the table.  Right now, I’m squatting in SoHo, in a place I’m “subletting” from a buddy of mine.  He’s in Japan teaching English and he’ll be there for another year or so.  The place is rent controlled, so he pays the ‘lord, I pay my friend and when he comes back I’ll figure something out.  Been here three months and I dig the area.  Two words for ya.  La Esquina.  Bad ass tacos.  And to hell with Calexico.  If I’m going to wait a half hour for junk food along with some prick wearing American Apparel short pants, I might as well hump my ass to fucking Shake Shack.  Either that or move to Williamsburg.

Side Note : Nothing against Brooklyn, but to me, the people who move there have made it seem like an artist colony where nobody knows how to draw.  That aside, the people who are from Brooklyn are the salt of the fucking Earth.  And yes, there are some amazing transplants who live there.  If you read this, you know who you are.  One person in particular…

Anywho, didn’t start this to bash a borough or even report a sighting.  Today I was walking through the Garment District, on my way to an HVAC installation on 30^th when I saw something that caught my eye.  No, this wasn’t an image or anything, just two tourists standing outside the fashion building snapping pictures.  You know the place, the big high rise on Seventh that has the statue of a sewing needle piercing a button hole out front?  Yeah, that place.  Saw Jay-Z walk out of there once.

The couple was obviously on vacation, taking pictures of whatever it is people take pictures of in Midtown. A building here, a sign here, a double decker containing fellow tourists down the street, etc.  The girl was facing uptown, probably snapping a shot of the triangle from afar and the guy was shooting the button statue on his iPhone when suddenly he stopped his shot and tilted down to point the camera at her.  At a glance, in the fleeting second between the tilt and her lack of attention, I knew exactly what he saw.

Her hair was wafting up around her ears, exposing her smooth neck, her eyes squinting at the camera screen, her posture completely unassuming.  The boyfriend held his camera there and I knew right away what he was feeling.   It was like seeing her for the first time.  One could tell this wasn’t a new love.  None of the usual hand holding and twitterpatting one sees when the flame is burning brightly.  No, this flame had quelled some time ago and in that moment in New York City, the boy knew he was in love.  Affirmed in the sweeping cross of her hair and the silent serenity of her posture, he knew.  The same way she probably looked waking up in the morning, still curled next to him, all quiet and unprepared yet snuggled, warm and completely defenseless, all pretense of should and could abandoned; that was the way she looked now.  Daring not to snap the picture to break the moment, he held the shot for what seemed like infinity, just him and her and the maddening rush of the late to work crowd.

Naturally, like everyone does when a camera is trained on them, she turned her head to her boyfriend and for another brief moment stopped.  And looked.  And cracked the smallest of smiles.  She felt the vibe in a way only old lovers can sense, the way they can feel each other’s energy.  For that moment, they weren’t living together in a cramped one bedroom on the border of Fargo and Moorhead, new to the world and everything in it.  They were partners, in life, in love and in the now.  A picture of two people who enjoyed each other enough to simply share a holiday, framed in a city they had never experienced yet finding new angles they hadn’t seen.  One through the viewfinder, the other looking back.  One snapping, one smiling, better than Norman Rockwell.  Way better than an Apple commercial.

I walked away before the picture was snapped but I half wish I had stuck around, made myself even more tardy for someplace I didn’t want to be.  Maybe stop and say something like, “Wow, you two are a nice couple” or, “Where are you from” but it’s best I didn’t.  If they had turned and saw some dude with a New York Jets hardhat and stained overalls coming at them, the moment would be lost anyway.  They would’ve returned to being scared out of towners and hurried off to the unknown.  Not my place to ruin that mood.

Not sure why I felt the need to share that, but I suppose it stirred up old memories.  Memories of a time long gone when I felt that way about someone, had that love that made your heart feel like it was wearing fuzzy slippers near an open fire.  Not hot flames of passion, just a toasty warm ticker, beating a slow and easy sixty beats a minute.  Maybe I’ll get into that one day.  But not now.

Maybe someday…

– B

The first time I had a hallucination, the very first time I saw something that wasn’t there, was twenty years ago today.  To the day.  I was nine years old.

I was living in an orphanage at the time although something tells me it’s not called an orphanage anymore.  I think the proper term for it is “foster care”….hang on a tick

::Googling “foster care”::: 

Yep, foster care.  Anyway, I was nine at the time   The building had about four stories to it, three of which were actually used.  I was a rambunctous lad back in those days and me and this one other kid, Barney Knuble, used to run around that place like mini criminals.  Even though many of the places we hung out were considered off limits, such as the boiler room, the caretakers, especially Mrs. Winsledale, didn’t care too much where we went.  Too many kids, not enough orderlies, that sort of thing.

Side note : (and sorry, but I’m going to do this alot) We used to call Mrs. Winseldale “Skeletor”.  Both Barney and myself were huge Masters of the Universe fans and she looked just like He-Man’s nemisis, except she was more like a skeleton wrapped in skin as opposed to being completely devoid of flesh.  She may have even had a cane but I can’t remember.

Anywho, Barney and I were playing some damn game, probably not hide and seek as we used to think that was for braindead retards but probably something close.  Come to think of it, it may have been Cuban Missle Crisis.  Yeah, that really might have been it.  Odd for a nine year old to know about the sixties, but one of my teachers had a hard-on for Kennedy.  That, coupled with a lack of proper medication, caused her to show us a film strip intended for high school juniors every Friday afternoon.  The same freaking movie.

Side Note : Sorry for the “freaking” but but I’m not sure if you can say fuck on this thing.  That being said, if this goes through, expect to see that word alot.  I’m a potty mouth. 

Back on task.  So Barney and I were playing, twenty years ago today and I had been doing horrible in the game.  My role was the one of Khrushchev and Barney was Kennedy.  If memory serves, the game worked like this:

1)  Kennedy would pick a US base somewhere in the building and I would pick a Russian base.

2)  We would agree on a central location that was to be Cuba, usually the boiler room, as that was in the basement. 

3)  My goal was to get the nukes (old rolled newspaper with the word NUKE wirrten on it) to Cuba without Kennedy stopping me.  I could also win by invading the US base.

4)  Kennedy’s job was to either stop me by catching me in the act or invading Russia.

5)  If I was caught, I was to be arrested for war crimes and the game was over.

Fun little game, right?  And we took it damn seriously, to the point where we would ask other kids to be spys for us.  If I was planning an offensive front via the southwest staircase, I would send a decoy to the northwestern staircase, especially if my intelligence indicated that Kennedy had his spies there.  With the decoy in place I could sneak up on Cuba plant the nukes and bwa ha ha, nuclear superiority!

On this particular day, though, my spies sucked ass.  Billy Goldstein completely messed up his postion, James Toucarian got left the game ten minutes in due to boredom and some fat kid named Pat left to get a snack.   A snack!  In the middle of the Cuban freaking Missle Crisis!

Being I was already up shits creek, I knew I couldn’t mount an offensive, especially if Barney was holed up in the library, which I knew he would be. Single staircase access, two entrances, one with a guard to be sure and deadly quiet.  He’d be able to hear me from a mile away.  As a result, I decided to be bold and pull my ace.  If I couldn’t attack, then I’d stalemate the game.  Russia got set up on the 4th floor.

The fourth floor of the building was pretty much abandoned.  Back when the building was a public school, the fourth floor was used for the fringe classes.  You know, music, art, etc.  The floor was a long rectangular hall with grimy glass doors and windows to each room.  The floor was cluttered with decades worth of crap; old basketball nets, plies of rotting books, a floor hockey goal with the nets rotted away.  A graveyard of days gone by. 

And that’s when I saw him.

I say him, but it wasn’t gender specific.  Just a figure held tightly to a beam in the far left corner of the hallway, its feet dangling maybe a foot off the floor.   The thing was clothed in a wrap of some sort but it’s arms and hands were free, busy tugging at a Pee Wee Herman mask that was attached to it’s face.  I could hear a muffled sound of distress but it wasn’t coming from the far side of the room.  The sound was coming from behind me.  Or inside me.  Or maybe both at once.  Then the hallway started to shrink.

Once about one hundred feet long, the hallway started closing in on me, like a contracting acordian.  I remember the windows and doors and walls rippling and folding, making the creature creep closer and closer.  And the closer it got, I could see it was desperately trying to take that mask off, but couldn’t.  Closer still and I could actually see the skin from the things face streching out like Elmer Fudd in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, streching and pulling as the thing tried in vain to remove the mask.  But I didn’t want too see what was behind that mask, what god damn terror was lurking.

Suddenly the thing ugged with all it’s might, a scream rose from somewhere or anywhere and that’s when my feet reconnected with my legs which reconnected to my spinal column which reconnected to my brain and I tore down those fourth floor stairs.  I never looked back, screams caught in my nine year old throat.  Oh, and I’m pretty sure I pissed myself.

So, why am I telling you all this?

It’s because, twenty years later, I’m still seeing things that are not here.  Some days I’m fine, some days I’m not but I still have hallucinations.  And not in a Beautiful Mind kind of way or an, “I See Dead People” kind of way.  No, they’ve become completely intigrated with my life.  For example, today I was on the 6 train heading downtown, sitting in a seat and my shoes started to melt into the ground.  And whats worse, I can’t seem to tell my mind to stand up.  Part of my brain knows it’s all fake but the other part, the broken part, completely believes the fantasy. 

So, here I am, starting some god forsaken blog nobody is going to read just to hopefully make some sense of it.  Of me.  Of what the hell is wrong with me.  It’s getting late, even for me, and I’m not going to get into my I just don’t see a shrink, but suffice to say, I’m not exactly in a position to seek medical treatment.  So here I am.  Hopefully, the more I write about it, the more it starts to make sense and hoipefully stop.  I’ve been living with these figments of my imagination for twenty years.  Maybe it’s time to understand them.

– B