Seventh Avenue South

by Duncan MacLeod

  I hooked both thumbs in my pocket and made a backwards retreat with my fingers covering the stain. I watched as the next man approached with a five-dollar bill and got the same royal treatment.

  Many hands slapped my shoulders as I hunkered down in embarrassment. To make matters worse, my irritable bowel had just flared up. It felt like my colon was being eaten by a horse.

  Donnie asked, “Ethan, are you good?”

  I shook my head.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I took a breath. I could trust Donnie. “I creamed my jeans and now I have diarrhea.”

  Donnie busted out laughing. It wasn’t mean, or vicious. In fact, he did his best to contain it. He explained himself.

  “I’m sorry, Ethan, for some reason I pictured Bill Cosby eating Jell-O brand Instant Chocolate Pudding with Cool Whip topping.”

  I snickered. “That’s what it’s gonna look like if I don’t find a bathroom.”

  Luckily, Donnie was the unofficial mayor of Danceteria. He got me a private bathroom under the stairwell that no one knew was there.

  “I worked here as a janitor. Don’t tell anyone.”

  “How funny. I’m a janitor now. Oooooh!” I held my stomach and ran inside, nearly toppling over in my DiOrsini multi-color platforms. Once on the toilet, I felt the familiar explosions of pain and foul feces. I wiped myself down with toilet paper both front and back and used paper towels to dab dry the stains in my pants.

  When I opened the door, Donnie was waiting. He locked it and pulled it tight.

  “Thank you, Donnie, for understanding.”

  “I puke all the time. I totally get it.”

  “No but I mean I can’t believe I shot my wad in my pants. It’s so humiliating.”

  “We’re not in high school, Ethan. You ask any guy in here what he thinks about you cumming with no hands, and they’ll say it’s fucking hot. Because they’re not dumb football jocks. Here.”

  He stopped a man who turned out to be Marc Almond, but it was too late. “My friend wants to know what you think. When the stripper kissed him, he came in his pants.”

  “I would say that’s a young man’s gift. Enjoy it while you can, Spunky.” Mark smiled before joining his friend Anita Sarko in the DJ booth.

  “Thanks, Donnie. Now Marc Almond knows I’m a premature ejaculator.”

  We both laughed.

  “I think it’s hot.” A voice from behind.

  “Oh, hi Deke.” Donnie was polite but guarded.

  “Who’s your little friend with the hair trigger?”

  Deke slithered over and eyed me like a tray of gray hamburger with a sale sticker.

  “Ethan, meet Deke.” I liked that he put my name first. It meant I rank higher in Donnie’s social sphere.

  Deke was tall, with tiny eyes that flashed when he spoke. He wore a chain mail shirt, black patent leather jeans, a green army coat, and a painter’s cap from Sherwin-Williams.

  “Pleasure,” he said.

  “Pleased to meet you.” we shook hands. I couldn’t find a single characteristic about him that I found attractive, but it seemed I was his type. One of my friends in California, David, said that when someone is into you, that itself is attractive. I didn’t agree. Never did. The minute someone liked me, I thought there was something seriously wrong with them. I was unlovable.

  Donnie didn’t like Deke either. He said, “We’re late to meet Fleur at 103.”

  I checked my Cinderella watch. “Damn! We are so late. She’s gonna be pissed.”

  Deke knew Fleur, like everybody else knew Fleur. “I haven’t seen her in so long. Mind if I tag along?”

  Donnie turned to me. He wasn’t prepared. I improvised. “Her Aunt has Hodgkin’s disease and we’re supposed to be consoling her. It might be awkward to bring a surprise guest.”

  “Good lord. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. Give her my condolences.”

  “She’s not dead, but I will tell her you wished her well. It was so nice to meet you.”

  I shook Deke’s hand. It was big and cold. He held on a little too long.

  Donnie and I left Danceteria and headed down 7th Avenue. The platform shoes were killing me in a thousand tiny scrapes and blisters. The night sky was brilliant orange, nearly starless because of light pollution. Only the North Star and Venus were visible. I turned to my right and saw a Chemical Bank with an ATM.

  “Donny, I can’t take another step. Let me get some cash so we can take a cab.”

  The machine was behind a locked door. I jiggled it but it wouldn’t open. “Fuck!”

  A balding man in a tan trench coat with a briefcase stepped out of a 1970’s detective novel and up to the door of the ATM.

  “Is the passkey broken?” He asked us.

  “What?”

  He put his card into a slot beside the door, and it buzzed. He opened it. We stood dumbstruck. He held the door for us, and we waited for him to get his money. He had sized us up and decided that two homos in platforms and furry pants were not a high mugging threat.

  “Donnie, this is great. It means if we ever lose all our money and wind up homeless, we’ll have a place to go.”

  The man at the machine chuckled. “Good luck with that.” He left and returned to the fictional universe he stepped out of.

  I asked Donnie if he needed to borrow money and he said he did. He was shivering. It was July.

  How much?

  “Is forty bucks too much?”

  “Nah. Pay me back when you can.”

  I thought Donnie and I were going to hang out all night at Gia’s, but when the cab pulled up to the door, he asked if he could keep going to the East Village. I asked the taxi driver. He turned off his meter. “Five dollars extra.” I gave him six, and they took off with the meter offline. I know a cab ride, even with the first dollar added, is not a lot more than four Bills to the East Village. But it was nice of him not to restart the meter, so I shrugged it off. I wondered why Donnie left so abruptly. I went up to the apartment and Gia was home.

  “How was the show?”

  “Fucked. The bass player OD’ed on stage.”

  “Oh my god, is he dead?”

  She shook her head. “No, just in the hospital. I’m going to visit him Wanna come?”

  My irritable bowel was firing up for round two. “I got stomach cramps. You go and tell me about it.”

  She shrugged. “I’m tired. Let’s go to bed.”

  After I endured another violent storm of tummy trouble, I joined her in bed. I was asleep before I even realized it.

  ✽✽✽

  After work, I went to Nightbirds for Warm Chili Salad. It was the most delicious dish I had ever tasted in Manhattan. The price was right - just six dollars for warm meaty goodness poured over romaine lettuce and tomatoes, smothered in melting cheddar cheese. I gobbled it down and walked back to Gia’s apartment. When I got there, something wasn’t right. My stomach was gurgling, which it always did, but it was different. I kept burping the salad. Gia came home.

  “What is that smell?”

  “I’ve been burping, sorry.”

  “You should see a doctor.”

  I was going to answer, but instead I held up one finger, covered my mouth, and rushed to the toilet, where I vomited my supper. My body wasn’t satisfied. It was convinced there was more to get out. I dry heaved for twenty minutes. When I came up for air, Gia was there with a shocking pink bottle of imitation Pepto Bismol.

  “Oh god, thanks Gia. You’re a lifesaver.”

  I took a swig, and felt momentary relief, then promptly threw it up.

  The rest is a blur. I know I had to change positions to endure a complete and total colon cleansing bout of diarrhea unlike anything I ever suffered with IBS.

  I remember Gia calling a free clinic and they told her to let me get it all out.

  “If you still have symptoms tomorrow, you go there for some penicillin.” She handed me the address. I remember she was worried.

  I lay on her bed convulsin
g and rushing to the toilet without results. I had one of those dreams like Dumbo had after drinking the champagne for his hiccups.

  In the middle of the night, my fever broke. Whatever bug was in me, it was not tolerant of high temperatures.

  The next morning, I took a few careful bites of buttered toast. It stayed down. Gia brought me a Seven-Up, which helped immensely. I gave one big belch that felt like the last of the painful gas lurking in my digestive tract.

  I had suffered so badly; I didn’t want anyone else to go through the same thing, so I called Nightbirds.

  “Hello?”

  “Um yes hi, my name is Ethan. I ate at your cafe yesterday and came down with food poisoning.”

  “Listen motherfucker, you ain’t suing me, you hear me!” The voice was startling. She spoke with a Chinese accent but swore like a trucker.

  “That’s not why I called, ma’am. I have to warn you about the Warm Chili Salad. I think it needs to be Hot Chili Salad from now on.”

  “You don’t tell me how to run restaurant, stupidhead.” Then she slammed the phone down.

  The next time I went to Nightbirds, the menu bore a noticeable scribble in black Sharpie where the Warm Chili Salad had been.

  ✽✽✽

  My job that started off so cool and wonderful was taking a dark turn. Robin knew I was going to Columbia in a few weeks. She sat me down for a talk. I thought it would be like having a cup of coffee, but it was “the talk.”

  “Listen, Ethan, honey, I’m gonna have to let you go. Your Ivy League education is way too important. I searched for your replacement yesterday, and I already found him. He starts tomorrow. He lives in the subway right now, so he needs the money, y’know?”

  The part of my brain that wanted to fly into a rage fought and lost to my New England good manners. “Do you think there might be an opportunity for me on the night shift?”

  “We don’t need any busboys or barbacks right now. If it changes, I’ll give you a call.”

  I walked home in a daze. I turned on the television and was shocked. Phil Donahue had been a respectable talk show host when I was young. He had political discussions with key figures in the news. Since his move to New York, something must have changed. There were toothless trailer park girls pointing accusatory fingers at the man they believed fathered their child, who was not the current boyfriend. A fistfight ensued, and the show cut to commercial. What was this? Where was Merv Griffin presenting Charo singing some hoochie coochie song? I think it was just cancelled. That was entertainment. Donahue was hiring the extras from The Hills Have Eyes to come on the air and humiliate themselves and their loved ones. I wonder what he paid them, or if they did it just for the fame.

  The commercial break ended, and security guards had both men restrained. The pregnant princess was puzzled when Phil announced, “The blood test shows that your baby is A negative, like you. Both Denmon and Marshall are O positive.”

  “Yeah, so?” she asked.

  “So, if one parent is O-positive, the baby has to be as well. This baby is from someone else. Someone with your blood type.”

  The entire room exploded in chaos. Denmon, the ex-boyfriend, said “I told you, bitch.” He got blindsided by Marshall. The room turned into a WWF stadium, shouting “fight, fight, fight!”

  Phil knelt by the pregnant girl. “Quiet!” he yelled at the audience. The security guards quieted the crowd.

  Phil whispered, “Shhh-shh, sweetie. It’s going to be okay. What’s the matter?

  She sobbed into her hands. “It cain’t be Daddy, it cain’t. He said it don’t happen with kin.”

  The crowd leapt to their feet again. Some clever audience member began chanting “Incest is Best!” Soon the whole room affirmed the superiority of father-daughter sexual relations in a cacophonous rally cry.

  A sword fell out of its holster, knocking the TV antenna. The picture turned to snow. Not even Gia’s apartment could stand the human misery. And I felt worthless, having lost three jobs in as many months. Gladys and Andre were right: I was a worthless piece of shit.

  I was breaking down. It was hard to recognize it, but the signs were there: loss of self-worth, unstable relationships, hatred for humanity, drug abuse and drinking. I was nothing like the squeaky-clean boy who went off to boarding school. I had become a depressed, useless deviant. I needed my mom to tell me I was okay. I called the commune, but the person who answered said my mother was on some sort of silent vow for the next month. I would have to wait until then to talk to her.

  I called Grandma Joan. She was sweet, but she grew terribly worried when I told her I was living on Bleecker Street.

  “That’s not a safe neighborhood.”

  My grandmother lived in New York during the Great Depression. Her impression of neighborhoods was very outdated. She had no idea that Bleecker Street was safe, and Times Square was dangerous.

  “It’s nice now, Grandma.”

  “I lived near there in a cold-water flat. On Sheridan Square.”

  “Was that where you met Grandpa?”

  “Well, yes, in a way. We met at a Communist Party gathering in Washington Square. This was before people hated Communism.”

  “Wow, I’m so close to Sheridan Square. I’m right off Seventh Avenue South.”

  My grandma clucked. “In my day, you didn’t go south of Greenwich by yourself. Really anything below Union Square was pretty dangerous, but Sheridan Square was okay.”

  I never knew any of this about Grandma. She kept a lot of stuff to herself. “How much was your rent?”

  “It was thirty-five dollars per month.”

  “I’m paying ten times that.”

  Grandma paused. “Speaking of paying, did you find good work?”

  “Yes. Well, no, not at first. I had a horrible job at a record store. But they fired me, so I found a job the same day at a nightclub.”

  Grandma asked, “At night? Are you working at night?”

  “No, during the day. Except I got let go today.”

  “How much do you need?”

  “Grandma, I just needed to talk. I don’t need your money.”

  “What’s your address? I’ll send you a check for fifty dollars.” She wasn’t hearing me.

  “I need to get away. I made some bad decisions and I’m trapped here until school starts.”

  Grandma heard me. “Honey, I’d ask you to come stay with me, but Thea and I are going to Israel in a week. Your mother’s not speaking...well, I can’t even call her.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said.

  “Why don’t you call your father? I think he owes you a room in his house if you need it.” Grandma had a sharp tone when discussing him.

  My father. He was a kind, gentle man. He hadn’t talked to me since I went through the whole financial aid debacle at Columbia. They were the only school that demanded his tax returns to calculate my fee. All the others understood what divorce really meant. That’s why Columbia wasn’t the free ride I had at Sarah Lawrence or NYU. It was the name that made everybody insist I go there, even if it was five thousand per semester. I could take out loans, they told me.

  But back to Dad. He was hopelessly disinterested in having a son. He felt so guilty for leaving me in the clutches of a bipolar narcissist. The thing was, I could work that guilt.

  “You know, Grandma, I would but I don’t have his number.”

  “I have a number for him in Oakland. Do you think that might be it?” Grandma had one of those address books made of metal where you slide the lever to the letter you want and press the release. It flies open, magically, on the letter you selected. I heard it pop in the background.

  “Do you have a pen?”

  I got the number and called. My father answered on the third ring. “Hellooo?” He spent his early childhood in Scotland; he retained the accent, even though he had been here for almost 20 years.

  “Hi, Dad, it’s Ethan.”

  “Oh, hi there!” he chuckled. “Fancy hearing from you! Are things fine i
n New York?”

  “Well, I tried my best, but I’m having a hard time. I need a break.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “See that’s the thing. I have nowhere to go. I wondered if you would let me stay with you for a few weeks, just until college starts.”

  My dad cleared his throat. “Well, my little sister is staying with me right now. Your aunt Jessie. She’s got the spare room. I can give you my couch.”

  The thought of sleeping on Dad’s couch, safe, under his roof, filled a horrible aching emptiness in my heart. “I’ll take it.”

  “And why don’t I buy your ticket?” He added. He was like Disneyland. “I have a travel agent with an office in the Bay Area, but I’ll work it out. We can send it overnight via Federal Express if we have to.”

  “Federal Express?” I asked. “Won’t that cost more than the ticket?”

  “No, they aren’t like that anymore. Normal people can use them now too.”

  “New York is a great city, but I don’t know if I can make it here.”

  Dad chuckled. “California is a sight bit easier all the same.” There was that Scottish way of talking I missed so much.

  We exchanged contact information and addresses. He promised to ring me back the next day after he talked to his travel agent.

  As I said, “Bye, Dad.” I wondered if he would pull a Saturday switch on me. That was my name for the Saturdays he promised to take me fishing at Putah Creek or Briones Reservoir or wherever, and I would get so excited to get away from Mom and her insanity. I sat on the front porch for hours until late afternoon, long after I knew he wasn’t coming. I would hear the phone ring, and my mother shouting. But the point is, he said he would take care of me in some way and then dropped the ball. That was the Saturday switch.

  “Trathail the noo.” That was how my father said goodbye in Scottish.

  The next morning, the phone rang at eight. I jumped out of bed and answered. It was my father. I braced myself for horrible disappointment. It was five in the morning in Oakland.