Slice Harvester
Page 16
On the way back to my house I bought a six-pack. Tina went upstairs and went to bed immediately, without saying a word to me. I sat on my couch and drank four of the six beers in silent protest. How dare she try to control me! I passed out sitting up on the couch with the fifth beer open in my hand.
When I woke up in the morning with beer spilled all over me, surrounded by the cigarette butts I’d been angrily stubbing out on the floor, I went into my room to look for Tina to apologize, but she was already gone—though she’d left a note that said, “Call me when you get your shit together.”
Standing in my apartment holding that note and thinking about what a baby I’d been the night before, I decided I wasn’t going to drink anymore. No moderation. No week or month off to dry out with the intention of drinking again. I just wasn’t going to drink at all. I was so sick and ashamed of myself for putting Tina through the irritating and volatile roller coaster of my alcoholism, which is what it was, and I could finally admit it. I rode my bike to Tina’s house and let her know my decision. I expected her to be skeptical, but she was totally supportive. She accepted my apology and advised me to focus my attention on finishing up Slice Harvester so that I’d have something to think about besides the fact that I had just impulsively decided to quit drinking forever.
It wasn’t easy, and it forced me to reexamine a lot of my relationships and a lot of the routines and patterns I’d built into my life, but quitting drinking was the best thing I could’ve done for myself. The months of moderation management, even if it wasn’t a viable long-term solution for me, had prepared me for a life without booze. The most surprising thing about it was that I didn’t really get any pushback from any of my friends. No one felt threatened by my sobriety; no one pressured me to drink. Everyone in my life uniformly supported my decision and did what they could to help me stick to it. The first couple of weeks were hard, and even with the couple of months of moderation, it took a little while before the fog in which I had been perpetually laboring lifted. But sometime in mid-November when I woke up clearheaded for the first time in as long as I could remember, I knew I had made the right choice.
Through this whole process, my pizza eating had slowed to a crawl. I posted only one pizza review for the entire month of October because I was too busy dealing with my own life. In the first week of November, I put up a post letting everyone know that I had four more pizza parlors left to review in all of Manhattan, two of which I had already eaten at. I was immediately approached by Aaron Rutkoff, a reporter from the Wall Street Journal who wanted to profile me for his horrible right-wing newspaper. I, of course, said yes, because I’m a narcissist and he was clearly a mensch, even if he was employed by White Demons. He wanted to come along with me to eat the last two slices of pizza, watch me work, and then write an article about it.
I asked Tina what she thought about the whole thing. I had been looking forward to just the two of us eating the last slice, and the idea of having a reporter along seemed to ruin the romance of it. She agreed, so I called the reporter and we decided that he would come along for the second-to-last slice but only send a photographer to the last. He wouldn’t interact with us, just take pictures from afar.
On November 18, 2011, newsman Aaron Rutkoff accompanied me to Pranzo Pizza, at 34 Water Street, the very bottom of Manhattan, where we ate the second-to-last slice during the lunch rush, surrounded by Wall Street Goons stuffing their faces and storing up energy to Buy Low, Sell High or whatever those people do all day. I hadn’t had a drink in three weeks, and I felt so lucid and articulate. I talked and talked and talked to this dude about New York, about pizza, about my life. I can’t remember whether I talked to him about my recent sobriety, but if I did, it didn’t make the article.
A week later, Tina and I took the subway down to Wall Street to eat the final slice. We held hands on the subway but didn’t say much. She asked if I was nervous to be finishing, and I barely shook my head. The whole situation seemed unreal. Here I was, twenty-eight years old, almost a month sober, with this incredible woman who loved me despite myself sitting next to me on the subway holding my hand. We were going to meet a photographer from the Wall Street Journal to take pictures for a profile about me. I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
We got off the train and walked to the final place, Da Vinci Pizza, at 44 Water Street. My heart was beating so fast as we exited the subway, and I couldn’t understand why. We followed the directions I’d hastily scrawled on the back of my hand (some things never change) until we took a right on Water Street and found ourselves standing in front of Pranzo Pizza.
“Is this it?” Tina asked, and I went into an intense panic. What if Pranzo was the last place? What if I had fucked something up and didn’t count right or didn’t do enough research, and I had already eaten at the last pizzeria with the stupid reporter and now I let Tina down again and, like, hell, maybe it wasn’t that big a deal in isolation, but, like, this was a BIG DEAL because she and I had made it a big deal that she come eat the last slice with me and I had FUCKED IT UP AGAIN like I always do, what the fuck is wrong with—
“Or is it that place?” Tina interrupted my brutal inner monologue and pointed at a place half a block away, which we would’ve been standing in front of if we’d turned left on Water. I look down at the “L ON WATER ST” scrawled on the back of my hand and breathed a sigh of relief.
“It’s that place,” I told her, and we strode on over just as the photographer was arriving.
The inside of Da Vinci is tiled in faded pastels, with a greasy old letter board displaying the menu. It looks lived-in, the way I like a pizzeria to look—worn in like an old T-shirt. Tina and I ordered our slices and took a seat. We forgot all about the photographer taking our picture from a few tables away. I took a quick picture of my slice and pulled out my notebook.
“So, what do we do?” Tina asked.
“We eat the pizza,” I said, lifting my slice to my mouth and gesturing that she do the same. “And we talk about it.”
I felt a deep sense of relief when I took my first bite. This slice wasn’t incredible, but it was certainly decent. It was a little thicker than I liked, with more dough and cheese than my ideal ratios, but not so much that it was overwhelming. Tina said, “It’s got that youth-fair taste that I like.” And she was right. This was like a better-quality New York version of a slice they would serve at a carnival—fluffy, delicious, and just what you need in the moment.
When we finished our slices, the photographer shook our hands and packed up. Tina put on her coat, but I just sat there. It was over. A little over two years ago, while I was drunk in the middle of the afternoon, listlessly coasting through my life, I had decided I was going to eat all the pizza in New York. Now here I was, sitting across the table from a woman I loved, who also loved me. I hadn’t had a drink in almost a month; I felt better than I had in years. But I wasn’t ready to let go.
Tina looked at me kindly. “You okay?”
“Yeah . . . I just . . . I don’t . . .” I stammered.
“C’mon,” she said. And she took my hand and led me to the subway home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FIRST AND FOREMOST:
Thanks to Christina Sparhawk for loving me when I was very difficult, teaching me how to love myself, teaching me how to be human.
TO EVERYONE WHO MADE THIS BOOK HAPPEN:
Jonathan Karp for offering me a book deal; Nina Pajak for telling her kid brother, Will Schwartz, to tell my kid sister, Emma Hagendorf, to tell me to respond to Jonathan’s e-mail a week later; Dan Stein for giving me an office in his apartment and letting me keep the desk; Mya Spalter for helping me through this whole scary process; Julia Masnik for being my agent and fielding my constant neurotic questions; Sarah Knight for being an incredible editor/adversary/friend.
TO THE ILLUSTRATOR:
Thanks, Joe Porter, for singing in the most fun band I was ever in, and for illustrating all my zines and also this book.
T
O MY BEST FRIENDS:
Milo Eadan, Caroline Paquita, Salvatore Gandolfo, Marcia Wiggley, and Nate Landry.
TO MY FRIENDS WHOM I WROTE ABOUT, AND EVERYONE ELSE WHO ATE PIZZA WITH ME:
Sweet Tooth, Cory Feierman, Nate Stark, Caroline (again), Phoebe and Greta Kline, Leah Kern, Kevers, Aaron Cometbus, Erick Lyle, Eliza Cutler, BBC, and all the resta yous.
TO MY WRITER/SELF-PUBLISHER CREW/GANG:
Ben Trogdon, Rancid Dave, Imogen Binnie, Golnar Nikpour, AC (again), Justin Sullivan, Corey Eastwood, Sarah McCarry, Lola Pellegrino, Cristy Road, Mimi Nguyen, Mike Taylor, Caroline (a third time).
THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING BANDS/RECORDS/SONGS/RADIO PERSONALITIES:
Tear Jerks first tape, Jo Johnson Weaving, 50 Cent ft. The Game Hate It Or Love It, SZA Z, Nandas demo, Nicki Minaj Pills N Potions (admittedly, not her best work, but it just resonated so hard with me this year), Priests Bodies and Control and Money and Power, Arthur Russell Love Is Overtaking Me, Sinead O’Connor I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, Funk Flex, Angie Martinez, Tom Scharpling.
Thank you to my mom, but not my dad. JK, bro. Luv u 4eva. Thanks to both my parents for raising me to be a weirdo.
I stole the name Slice Harvester from Greg Harvester’s zine Rice Harvester; I stole the idea to steal the phrase “Times were rough and tough like leather” from Raekwon from Ben Pasternak’s zine Seventeen Forever. That’s probably all the stealing I did.
NO LOVE to cops, creeps, goons, buffoons, boneheads, birdbrains, shitfathers, dickwhippers.
MAD LOVE to all the punx, skins, rude boys and girls, greaseballs, dirtbags, and true weirdos all across the world. Stay fresh, stay strange. All you kids out there: keep the faith.
See you in the pit,
Lint
PS: I’m leaving someone out, I just know it, and I’m SOOOO STRESSED OUT about it, and if it was you, I’m sorry, okay? Just cut me some slack. Jeez.
© BEN CHARLES TROGDON
Colin Atrophy Hagendorf is an adult punk rocker and aspiring long-term soberdog. He loves eating pizza, working to dismantle systematic structures of oppression, and carefree afternoon naps. He collects obscure riot grrrl 7"ers and 1970s paperback editions of Sam Delany novels. He lives in Queens with three cats.
sliceharvester.com
@sliceharvester
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Note to readers: Some names and identifying characteristics of people portrayed in this book have been changed.
Copyright © 2015 by Colin Hagendorf
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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition August 2015
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Interior design by Ruth Lee-Mui
Illustrations by Joe Porter
Cover design and illustration by Gregg Kulick
Cover photograph © Shutterstock
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hagendorf, Colin Atrophy.
Slice harvester : a memoir in pizza / Colin Atrophy Hagendorf.
pages cm
1. Hagendorf, Colin Atrophy. 2. Food writers—New York (State)—New York—Biography. 3. Hagendorf, Colin Atrophy—Blogs. 4. Pizza—New York (State)—New York. 5. Hagendorf, Colin Atrophy—Relations with women. 6. Young men—New York (State)—New York—Biography. 7. Alcoholics—New York (State)—New York—Biography. 8. Self-actualization (Psychology) 9. New York (N.Y.)—Biography. I. Title.
CT275.H2514A3 2015
974.7'1044092—dc23
[B]
2014046048
ISBN 978-1-4767-0588-0
ISBN 978-1-4767-0589-7 (ebook)