“Feel free to throw on a record,” Asa says.
I’m on a Talking Heads kick, so I put on Stop Making Sense.
He makes gazpacho with cilantro and wedges of fresh avocado. We eat out on the fire escape, where his wetsuits are draped over the railing, and where a little arc of a moon curls over Brooklyn. We catch up on old times and mutual friends and chat about surfing. He tells me how he used to ride his bike to the subway station with his surfboard under his arm, then take the A train out to Rockaway Beach. One night he got home late, rode with his board through Crown Heights, where an old woman spotted him and said, “Now where you goin’ surfin’?” Asa’s imitation is spot-on, funny without condescension. We also talk books: it turns out he’s really into The Odyssey, in the same way I’m obsessed with Moby-Dick.
I tell him about An American Nekyia, how it discusses similarities between these two classics.
“How so?” Asa asks.
Ishmael’s voyage on the Pequod is a similar kind of plunge into oblivion to the section where Odysseus travels down into the underworld. Both characters have to descend into darkness as part of their journey home.”
“What is it about the descent thing that’s so intriguing for you?”
I look out at the multiplex of lighted windows in all the apartments of this cramped East Coast courtyard—feeling how little I know about life here, how completely foreign it all is for me, and maybe this has something to do with me telling Asa so much about my own life: how in the past couple years I’ve been through some difficult times—mainly the dissolution of a ten-year relationship, the one before Karissa. And how tunneling blindly through that darkness led me to a kind of gritty spiritual awakening.
“I’ve been coming to terms with some of my own darkness in the past couple years,” Asa tells me. “I grew up in a pretty severely alcoholic family. I think that’s why I connect with The Odyssey—this search for a true family, for home.”
“Do you feel at home here in New York?” I ask.
“In a lot of ways, yes. This place is intense. You have to band together for warmth, you know? I feel like the friendships I’ve made here are more real, more honest. There’s a depth to people here that I never found on the West Coast.
“What about you?” he asks.
“To be honest, tonight is the first time I’ve felt at home for months.”
“The city can bring up a lot of loneliness,” Asa says. “But the more you get to know it, the more it opens up to you, the more it unfolds.” He reaches over and places his hand on my shoulder, squeezes. “I’m glad you’re here, man,” he says.
Our eyes meet for a moment, then I glance at the open window, through which I can see his bed and stack of surfboards, and part of me wants to lean back over and kiss him. Earlier in the conversation Asa mentioned that his friends model for the famous young photographer Ryan McGinley, who lives in the East Village and cruises around on his bike, taking photos of skateboarders, angelic twenty somethings, musicians, artists. I’d seen some of McGinley’s photos of beautiful young naked people in trees—like a congregation of lanky white birds—or naked couples in the woods, drenched with rain, about to have sex or just having had sex, men and women, men and men. And one I saw in the New Yorker was of two boys, possibly skateboarders, in bed together. Skaters in bed with each other was definitely not a photographic tableau I’d ever seen in Colorado, but coming out of the East Village, it seemed like no big deal, and I realize that I sort of want to spend the night over at Asa’s. I’m comfortable enough with my own sexuality and any ambiguity therein. I’d done enough soul searching in my teens and twenties to know that while I prefer women, I’m also not 100 percent straight, and so I’m not totally against kissing someone like Asa, because what the hell? I’m in New York, after all—a place that despite all the grime, or maybe because of it, exudes a kind of rugged sensuality, exploration, pansexuality.
But eventually we crawl back in off the fire escape and hug each other good night—a strong, lingering embrace, during which the desire, but not the warmth, fades. Instead of kissing him, I make him promise to take me surfing.
THE BIRTHPLACE
A few days after my arrival in New York, I seek out a lesser-known Manhattan tourist destination: Melville’s birthplace at 6 Pearl Street, right across from Battery Park on the southern tip of the island. The actual boarding house was demolished and replaced by a glass high-rise, but a plaque marks the spot (along with a sculptural bust of the prodigiously bearded author), and I’m surprised to find that Melville and I share very nearly the same birth date: he was born late on August 1, 1819; I was born early on August 2, 1973.
From this site it’s a few blocks over to the South Street Seaport, where Melville reportedly spent time. The Seaport docks hold several large antique sailing vessels, all curated by the South Street Seaport Museum. The Lettie G. Howard is a sleek fishing schooner, 125 feet long, once used to supply the Fulton Fish Market and since restored for use in sailing instruction. And then there’s the Peking: at 377 feet long, with a steel hull the length of a football field and four masts as tall as an eighteen-story building, it’s one of the largest sailing vessels ever built.
Combined with salt air and pungent fish-market smells, the Lettie G. Howard and the Peking re-create a sense of the city during Melville’s time—”There is now your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs“—when Melville’s contemporary Walt Whitman described it as “mast-hemm’d Manhattan.”
In the first chapter of Moby-Dick, Melville paints a picture of this old, maritime Manhattan—something that, aside from these museum relics, no longer exists. What hasn’t changed, though, are the “thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries.” From Battery Park to the Seaport, hordes of people stand looking out into the bay; these “water gazers” are there every day of the year, regardless of the weather. Having grown up in the West, surrounded by so many miles of open space, I find living in New York City aesthetically and emotionally overwhelming, and like the rest of the water gazers, I gravitate toward the open space of the sea.
Later in the first chapter, Melville states that “meditation and water are wedded for ever.” In other words, we water gazers, beyond traversing the bounds of the city, are looking to transcend the human condition, to plunge into the deeper mysteries of life and our purpose therein.
Moby-Dick also braids the personal with the political:
And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:
“Grand Contested Election for the Presidency
of the United States.
Whaling Voyage by One Ishmael.
BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN.”
A lot is made of Melville’s “part of the bill” after the events of September 11, 2001—how uncanny and prophetic it was, coming after the most “grandly contested” election of our generation—Bush vs. Gore in 2000—and the beginning of our nation’s own night sea journey under the direction of Captain Bush. In post-9/11 America, the label of Captain Ahab is bandied about constantly. In his quest for vengeance against the West, Osama bin Laden is labeled an Ahab, as is George Bush, especially after he steers the country away from our own bloody battle in Afghanistan and into the dangerous waters of Iraq.
As of my arrival in New York, we’re only a few months into this new war, and like the crew members of the Pequod, our country is in for a long dark voyage.
DELIVERY
It touches one’s sense of honour … if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster.
∼ HERMAN MELVILLE, Moby-Dick
After weeks of job searching, I finally land an interview with the president of a children’s book company, a friend of a fr
iend. The night before our meeting, I draft a proposal for a nonfiction children’s book about skateboarding. It’s a good move, because it turns out there isn’t any freelance editing work available, but he likes the book idea. So much that he suggests I turn the one book into a series of six. He even offers me a small advance. The pay isn’t great, but it’s better than what I’m making for the skateboard anthology. And all combined, these writing gigs only scratch the surface of my rent, almost three times what I paid back in Colorado.
So I need another job, something menial that will provide some cash but also plenty of time to finish editing the anthology and write six new books. Walking back from the subway after my interview, I see a Delivery Driver Needed sign in the window of a tiny Indian restaurant, just a few blocks from my apartment. Since I have a car and a valid driver’s license, they hire me on the spot.
Not lost on me is the fact that I’m over thirty and have a master’s degree—and that I’d spent the last year as a university instructor—but now here I am delivering samosas and saag, the pungent smell of fried ghee seeping into my truck’s upholstery. I remind myself that it’s only temporary, plus I read and reread the section of Moby-Dick where Ishmael talks about making the transition from schoolmaster to sailor—“What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that.”
One major perk of the job is that it allows me to stay in Brooklyn and avoid the subway into Manhattan—a five-minute ride that increasingly strikes dread into my pickup truck–driving, country-boy heart. The other bright spot is that I love Indian food, and the couple who run the place feed me plenty of it. The husband is a Bangladeshi Muslim; his wife is a Brooklyn-bred Catholic. They raise two sweet girls, Amy and Sabiya, who seem overscheduled with visits to both mosque and church, and who have to hang around the restaurant until ten nearly every night. I feel bad for them, so I help them with their homework between delivery runs.
In October there’s a full lunar eclipse. Before we all go outside to watch the moon flicker out, I sit with Amy and Sabiya at a glass-top table and slide little tea candles around in slow circles to illustrate how an eclipse works, how every so often the earth orbits in between the sun and the moon, casting the lunar glow in shadow.
“Does it go dark forever?” Sabiya, the younger sister, asks, holding her hand over the moon-candle flame—something for which her mother is always scolding her.
“Not at all,” I say, taking the candle away, sliding it back into the sun-candle’s light. I explain how the eclipse only lasts a few moments, that nothing and no one stays still for long.
Two weeks later, I find a New York Times classified ad for a freelance manuscript reader at a Midtown publishing company.
Still anxious about the subway, I ride my bike from Brooklyn up to Fifty-Third and Third for the interview. My future boss is a friendly man in a purple tie, Simpsons posters on his wall, and bookshelves full of trade paperbacks—thrillers, mysteries, romances, but also some interesting contemporary fiction.
I quit the delivery job and start my publishing career a few days later. It seems okay at first, a decent gig for a writer: I’m there three or four days a week, and I can show up at ten and leave early if I need to—all I have to do is read and comment on fiction manuscripts, basically the same thing I’d done in graduate school and as an adjunct writing instructor. With all my experience as a teacher, I know that what I should really be doing is applying for instructor positions here in the city. But I’m so intimidated by New York and its inhabitants that I can’t imagine mustering the courage to teach here—not with my slow Colorado drawl, which I worry makes me sound like a plodder in a city of such fast, fluent speakers. So I content myself with sitting solo in my cubicle, quietly adrift on a small sea of other people’s books.
THE L TRAIN
L TRAIN (Arrives at Bedford Street subway station.): This is a Manhattan-bound L train.
FEMALE PASSENGER (Boards train, takes seat.)
L TRAIN: Stand clear of the closing doors, please. This is a Manhattan-bound L train. The next stop is First Avenue.
FEMALE PASSENGER (Digs around in her handbag, looking for a cell phone.)
L TRAIN: Want to hear a story?
FEMALE PASSENGER (Ceases cell phone search. Looks around the empty train car, confused.): What kind of story?
L TRAIN: A blackout story. One that involves this guy Justin.
FEMALE PASSENGER: Blackout—you mean he passed out drunk on the train?
L TRAIN: People pass out by the hundreds on the train every day—there’s no story there. I’m talking about an electrical blackout, a power outage.
FEMALE PASSENGER: Okay, sure. Tell me a story.
L TRAIN: So first of all, I run on electricity, understand, so when the power goes out, the trains cease to move. Even if they’re full of passengers, three hundred feet below the East River.
FEMALE PASSENGER: So what happens to all those people?
L TRAIN: Sometimes backup generators power up the system. Other times, passengers have to wait until MTA rescue crews walk them out.
FEMALE PASSENGER: Walk them out where?
L TRAIN: Through the tunnels on the bench wall. Either to an emergency exit or back to the platform. In some cases, they have to walk directly on the track bed.
FEMALE PASSENGER: Oh wow.
L TRAIN: Yeah. It’s not so pleasant. We get a lot of people who freak out. Some piss their pants, or puke all over the place. One lady stepped on a rat and had to be taken to Bellevue.
FEMALE PASSENGER: Bellevue?
L TRAIN: The mental hospital. Please do not leave any unattended baggage or personal items on the train. If you see an unattended package, please report it to an MTA employee.
FEMALE PASSENGER: So where does Justin come in?
L TRAIN: Before moving here from Colorado, he hears all these stories, about evacuations and trains getting stuck under the East River during the rolling blackouts of 2003—not to mention the threat of terrorist attacks—and it really freaks him out. I’m sorry to report that he develops a big problem with me.
FEMALE PASSENGER: What do you mean, problem? Like he’s aggrieved with you? Annoyed?
L TRAIN: Hardly. More like he’s terrified.
FEMALE PASSENGER: What, seriously?
L TRAIN: Seriously. I’m talking full-blown panic. He very nearly loses his shit every time he rides. Okay, well, not every time. He does fine on short rides through Manhattan, when there are plenty of opportunities to exit the train. But during the four-minute ride beneath the East River he comes close to losing it—or blowing apart, to use his words. Actually, it happens right about now, right here, in the very depths of this tunnel that’s not only underground, but also underneath a river, the thought of which completely messes with his mind, triggers a serious claustrophobic drowning response. His heart races and he sweats and he has overwhelming feelings of dread, a full-on neurochemical train wreck in his head. Remember when the new prisoners arrive in that movie The Shawshank Redemption, and one chubby prisoner breaks down, starts blubbering I’m not supposed to be here? That’s how Justin feels in the beginning, as if he’s trapped—imprisoned even—so that when the train stops in the middle of the tunnel, as it does occasionally, it takes every ounce of self-control to keep himself from clutching at people and yelling I’m not supposed to be here.
FEMALE PASSENGER: Clutching at people? How would that help anything?
L TRAIN: Lord if I know. Between you and me, it turns out that he’s had these problems before. He had a thing with airplanes, wouldn’t fly for years. Aviophobia, they call it. Pathetic, right?
FEMALE PASSENGER: A little bit, yes. And ironic. I mean, he’s all obsessed with motion and interested in this Moby-Dick “spiritual descent” stuff, but he’s afraid go down and ride the subway?
FEMALE PASSENGER: So what ends up happening? I mean, I’m guessing he’ll have to ride the subway regularly at some point.
L TRAIN: Stand clear of the closing doors, please. The next stop is Third Avenue. At first he tries to avoid me. Rides his bike everywhere, figures out the bus system. He avoids Manhattan, spends most of his time over in Brooklyn. But he ends up getting a job in Midtown and has to take the train every day. So eventually he has to man up and face his fears.
FEMALE PASSENGER: How does he do it?
L TRAIN: He brings a copy of Walt Whitman’s poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” where Whitman speaks of commuting across the Harlem River, with all the other anonymous passengers, having the same questions, doubts, hopes—the same periods of fear and darkness. He reads it over and over, holds it in his sweaty palms as if it were a close friend’s hand. He likes the way Whitman reaches out across time to the reader, says, “I am with you.” I am with you—he finds this comforting. He also memorizes a passage from the “Grand Armada” chapter of Moby-Dick:
And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely revelled in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.
The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld Page 3