Lit Riffs

by Matthew Miele

  “Got nothing to say about that, man?”

  “No, I think you’re right,” Indio said.

  “So you’re retired, then?” I asked, even though I knew he had to be. If it was me in his place, as soon as I was free, I would have wasted no time in reclaiming my fame.

  “Is that done?” he said, looking straight at the joint. I lit it and offered the first toke to him. He took it.

  “So you don’t believe in a lot of things anymore, yet you still smoke up, huh?”

  “It’s the earth man, the planet can’t harm you,” he said.

  That set me off. “So, bro, are you going to tell me what happened to you or are you going to continue to talk like one of them Jesus-freak Moonies or something!” Indio looked calm, I was angry. “Cuz, bro, I got some thinking of my own to do, and I want to know if the old Indio is back or is this a Xerox. Cuz you look like my friend, you smoke like my friend, you even live where he lived, but you ain’t him!”

  Indio just blew out smoke and smiled and nodded his head like he had been doing all along.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right, Hector.”

  “Nigga, talk to me.”

  “I don’t understand it myself. If I did, I’d tell you.”

  “Well then, tell me, man, just tell me anything.”

  He finally stopped nodding and his smile went away. He looked at me and wrinkled his face. There was a long silence.

  “You ever wonder why some people do certain things, and then those things make you see other things?”

  “Don’t know what you mean, but keep talking.”

  “See, there was this old man who worked at that camp. He washed dishes with me. He was real old like you see in movies, white hair, baby teeth. He was like weightless, Hector, hollow cheeks, the skin on his arms was wasted to his bone, man. That old man, he’d never talk to nobody. All he ever do was read, read, read. At the beginning I thought he was just crazy. My job was the kitchen with three others. We were that old man’s responsibility. The guards were always around, but we were his helpers. I would try to talk to him, ask him what he was reading, but he’d never talk to me.”

  “So.”

  “So, one day he finally talked. He said his name was Paul and that he was madly in love and getting married.”

  “Get out.” I took a toke and laughed. “That’s beautiful, bro, I bet that old man could still get it up, too.”

  Indio laughed and reached for the joint.

  “Yeah, I bet he could Hector, even though by looking at him you thought he was dead. Until he really died. Just like that, the old man died.”

  “Well, yeah, you said he was old, right?”

  “Yeah, but then I heard the guards make fun of him.”

  “So what? Was he something of yours, no, right?” I reached for the joint. “So why should you care?”

  “Yeah, I guess not. But see, Hector …” Indio paused, and when I passed the joint, he didn’t take it, he fixed himself in front of me as if he was going to say something that even he was embarrassed about.

  “That same day, I was doing dishes—” And he paused again and looked at the wall as if he was checking if someone else was going to hear this. “I was doing dishes, all these dishes, and see, all this soap foam started building and I saw the suds, and I saw how they just went poof! But it was beautiful when you really looked at it. A rainbow was in every one of those little bubbles. Then I thought of that old man, Paul. I thought, this old geezer must have known he was going to die, but he was going to get married, what’s that about? So, Hector, man, I looked back at the foam, Hector. The suds and all those dishes that I had the power to clean, and then I picked up some suds with my hands, Hector, and placed them close to my ear. I heard them pop like Rice Krispies as if they were coming alive and dying at the same time. All those suds with rainbows in them. And I could never tag like the soap could tag a bubble. It was beautiful, Hector, the colors, Hector, the style, and something happened to me, bro, I don’t know what it was, but something did.”

  I didn’t know what to say. So I reminded him of who he was.

  “What are you talking about? You’re the best. No one can do pieces like you, Indio.” But I had to laugh a little. “Bubbles, you want to quit because of bubbles?”

  “I knew you’d laugh, Hector. It’s all right. I laughed, too. But I saw that old man in those bubbles, Hector, I swear I did. I saw the old man worked into all those bubbles. But in each bubble, he was in a slightly altered pattern. As if someone could somehow work a piece but change a bit of it from car to car, and when the train rushes by, you could see the piece move. Like film. The bubbles were like that, Hector, like film.” I pictured it in my head. A magical train with a piece that moves. Could that be possible? Could it be done? It would take days. A throw-up on one car was risky enough; a piece meant you were somebody and took hours; but an entire train? No way, the city would clean up the train before you could get halfway.

  “But that wasn’t all, Hector. Later I heard the guards say that his girlfriend was also old and that she died a couple of hours after Paul had. And the guards laughed some more. That instant I looked around at all these dishes that I had to clean, man. They were piled up in all corners of the kitchen. So many dirty dishes. And the foam was building, all that white, sparkling foam, Hector. At that minute I couldn’t write, couldn’t paint, but I could clean all those dishes. The dishes could be saved, washed you know.”

  “Look, bro, I think you’re crazy, but that’s all right. You’ll be all right. Listen, just give it a few weeks, you’ll be back with us in no time. We got to get reclaim the 6 train, right? Right? The green line, that’s ours, right?”

  “It’s like when you’re thirsty, you know, Hector, you don’t need the ocean, just a cup of water.”

  He was on some other plane. I saw his pupils grow large even though his room had a lot of light. He looked down at the floor. “Maybe the old man just wanted to feel young for a second, you know, he didn’t need years. I think he was trying to tell me this, I don’t know. But something happened to me.” Then Indio returned from wherever it was he had been in his head. “Sorry,” he said, defeated. “Sorry, Hector.”

  “Fuck that, man.” I got up from the floor. Put out the joint. “Do what you want, Indio. Always do what you want.” I was a little angry at him and just wanted to get out. Indio smiled and nodded like he had been doing all along. I left his house knowing that Indio felt embarrassed. As if he had told me something that only he thought was important.

  I once heard a santero say, “Sometimes you play the right number and that number never comes up. Sometimes you play the wrong number and it is that number that hits.” You can’t really explain it. I think something like that is what happened to Indio.

  I saw Indio after that, but he never tagged again. He took to going to Central Park and feeding squirrels and watching birds. One day I asked him why and he said, “It’s like hunting without killing anything.” Later, he got a big yellow dog, which I thought he called Sinatra, which was bad enough, but the dog’s real name was Siddhartha. I went home and looked up the name and found out it meant Buddha. I wondered why would Indio name his dog after that fat statue that everyone in Spanish Harlem rubbed its belly for good luck? I tried talking to Indio again, but he never really talked much to me anymore. He would always remain in his own little whatever. At times I spot him on some grassy field in Central Park, sitting cross-legged like the Indio that he was, never looking up when others would pass by and give him odd looks. I heard some kids egged him while he was sitting like that and that he didn’t even blink. I never believed it. Though I do know that the old Indio would have kicked those kids’ ass.

  A few weeks after graduation I saw Inelda walking alone by the Harlem Meer in the north end of Central Park. The trees were beautiful and the pond was clean. We wound up talking about high school and all that junk, crews, graffiti, trains, styles, Lucky G, Yvette. When I mentioned Indio, her faced saddened. She said he
was crazy, and I agreed with her. I asked her if Indio talks to her and she said no. After that walk in the park Inelda and me started seeing each other. At first it was just fuck, fuck, fuck, and later we had a kid. This was around the time when Mexicans were taking over Spanish Harlem. The green, red, white, and eagle of their flag fluttered all over East Harlem. Indio was gone by then. No one knows where he went, his mother said he was in the army, but we knew that was a lie because the dog was gone, too. The last time I saw him was at the library. Me and Inelda were checking out books about babies, and Indio was returning a lot of books. He was scrawny, like he didn’t eat much. We went over to talk to him and all he said was “Oh, hi. I don’t understand these books but they fill me up.” We said, yeah, nice seeing Indio, whatever, and went back to our lives.

  When the eighties started to die, the city bought new trains with an alloy surface that not even flypaper would stick to. Many writers started to scratch their tags on train windows. I understood their need to tag, but I gave it up. Where were the colors, the smell of turpentine, the sound of the aerosol can? Many crews split up. Some took up Web design, graphics, some even hip-hop. I started working at the factory where my father is the foreman. Without knowing it, I’ve become Fred Flintstone. Now I work all day waiting for the five-o’clock whistle, and then it’s yababadabadoo! The factory is hard, backbreaking shit, mixing paint and hauling steel drums. I use to look down on my father. I used to think that if you’re not sitting behind a desk and don’t leave El Barrio, you’re a failure. I used to think that way. But not anymore. I work hard and my union has good benefits, it even paid for the birth of my daughter. And I get free paint, though for what, I don’t know. At times Inelda makes fun of me: “Now you have all the spray cans in the world, Hector, and no one writes on the trains anymore.”

  Subway graffiti had a short but glorious history. I still say the city blew it. Subway art could have been a tourist attraction. If done right, people would have come from all over the world to see our trains. Another artistic ghetto invention America could’ve exported like rap music. More beauty from the gutters of NYC. Now, when I wake up in the morning to go to work and see trains rushing by me with that sterile steel shell that attracts more grime than anything, I miss the pictures, the colors, the words. And I remember Indio. Whatever happened to that graffiti monk? Man, there was a time when me and Indio would wait for hours in the cold subway stations watching trains rush by, checking out the competition or just hoping to catch a glimpse of a piece that Indio had done. Sometimes we’d never see it, the city had washed it before the train pulled out of the yard. But we knew it had existed and we had those stupid Polaroids. I never understood why Indio turned away from graffiti; whatever it was that he saw in those bubbles, God, death, or whatever, it must have been something big. Because there was nothing that brought me more pleasure than to know that strangers were reading my words, seeing my pieces whether they liked it or not. Back in those days, fame was the name of the game. “I saw your tag in Far Rockaway, nice.” And I felt as if I had traveled all the five boroughs. I was getting around, I was somebody.

  author inspiration

  Watching MTV’s late-night show Old School Hip-Hop, I came upon Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s video for their song “The Message.”

  It wasn’t so much the words that caught my attention but rather the images of a filthy and broken New York City. For some reason, the next day I found myself waiting for the train on 149th Street and Grand Concourse. I looked for the “writers’ bench,” where graffiti writers would gather in the eighties. As a teen, I had admired so many, and to my surprise the bench was still there. I decided to write a short story about that period. It was really my late-seventies, early-eighties New York City I longed for. In today’s age of gentrification, that period in NYC history is lost. But there was a time when we took all that neglect, crime, and poverty and turned it into art. “Graffiti Monk” is my attempt to capture some of that lost history.

  SMOKING INSIDE

  darin strauss

  Can I have some remedy? Remedy for me, please.

  “Remedy”

  The Black Crowes

  Tragic example of me being a stupid mother came when Morrison, he’s my oldest, packed an onion ring up his nose while his brother peed the carpet on purpose. Little Dylan does that: he pees. I’ll open the door, burned up after eight hours helping morons at the library, and there’s my bony, pale guy standing pants down with his mini-sized Oscar Mayer between his pinkies. Like he’s been waiting to show me for hours. The jukebox in my head starts in on the Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home,” but you actually think I’d split? A parent may get notions that are no more than daydreams for herself; she’s better than those.

  Now, I don’t scream; I shake my head and go, “Put your little noodle mvay, Dylan.” Kid’s only seven, you think he’d feel embarrassed. But my shirtless boy, long black hair bopping across his shoulders, does a five-second hula shake. His measly dick flaps like one of those gummi worms my ex-husband, Dave the Rave, used to let our boys eat for dinner. (Dave the Rave left us for Sheri-with-an-z, and if Dylan and Morrison had been this hellacious before that bastard split, no one’s convinced me of it.)

  “Put your goddamn penis away”—I’m trying for calmtoned, even in my rush of anger. Dylan’s eyebrows go flat above his squinting eyes that steal my heart every time; his cheeks look delicate like white tissue paper. When he runs crying to the kitchen—his butt too scrawny to have much bounce—he trips on the cloudy-blue corduroys tangled at his shins.

  Watching him tumble, I think (or I want myself to think), Kid, go on and cry yourself hoarse. But why isn’t he wearing his underwear? Motherhood’s got loads more carpet-pissing and vanished underwear than advertised.

  Then, just like that, Dylan’s up, off to hide within the majesty of my twelve-hundred-square-foot “amenity ranch home.” I turn to Morrison, the older one. He’s been watching Emeril Lagasse on the idiot box. (At thirteen, my Morrison’s the man of the ranch.)

  “Hey, there, li’l’ gourmet” I say, imitating my own mother’s idea of a talking-to, like I’m pulling taffy inside the words. “Isn’t your job in this life not letting your kid brother piss where he shouldn’t?” That’s angry-sounding, but what I feel is I’m just about used up. “Isn’t it—your one job?”

  “Wait, Nanette,” Morrison says; he’s sunk into his father’s green TV chair, which is indented and frayed black around the buttons. “Emeril’s about to do it.”

  And right on cue, Emeril Lagasse yells, “Bam!” and my son’s face bursts like one of those jiffy popcorn containers. I really can’t help my soft spot for the zip of that boy’s smile.

  “Can you get that onion ring out of your nose?” I say, but not before something pulls at my attention like a magnet: Dylan’s whiz has made a perfect tan frown on my off-white pile rug. Since The Rave left, I’m the oldest single mother in Pritchardville, South Carolina, by eight years.

  “Mo, what did I tell you kids about stopping for junky food on the way home?” I say. In the mirror my eye shadow’s runny. I haven’t taken off my coat yet. “Besides,” I say, my sigh showing too much of the unfun woman The Rave says I am, “it’s Mom to you.”

  The thing is, I’m not that unfun woman, not when I don’t have to be.

  “Men,” I’m saying now, “are allowed to call me Nanette only when they reach eighteen and take me to see The Black Crowes.”

  “Nanette,” he says, “I didn’t get it on the way home—the onion ring, I mean.” He’s all nasally, as the food’s still in his nose. “This is from lunch.”

  “Take it out!”

  Later, I scrubbed the carpet until I woke the old knee cramps; after that I gave the little villains my “punishment dinner,” which is bread and bologna. (No matter how angry she gets, a mother has to provide.) I cleaned a half hour more before putting them to bed. And cursed the ex. But not before I logged on. I’d learned how at the library—I like books oka
y, but it’s only a job my cousin Francis got me. I hate having to talk politely, proper, and all quiet, pretending I give a tit about Tom Clancy or Hemingway; the one perk is it gives free internet at home. Nothing beats that eBay auction site. I once got a salesman’s sample “Hearth-Style” stove I didn’t need—thirty bucks, give or take.

  On this night, eBay had 1½ Ct. Genuine Ruby Earrings in gold-plated silver for sale, pretty nice, and a Black Crowes Signed Concert Tee (I’m a fan. Though it stings to call anyone younger than me a real rock star).

  I was surfing through it all when I got this idea. I love my kids and would be lost without them, etc., but wouldn’t it be quote unquote funny if I put them up for auction online?

  Two kids for public sale. 13 and 7—Morrison and the other one. Fmr. bed-wetter and current carpet-wetter. Would make a god-awful gift or to keep for yourself. Buyer pays shipping and insurance. I 100% guarantee these kids to be a handful and offer a three-day return policy if not found as stated.

  Right away, emails. MissThang@usfolk.net: “Can I add my 4 snot-nosed guttersnipes to auction with your 2?” KARIN@earthfair.web: “Hoping you’ll take one obese, ‘prime-of-life’ husband for barter. I’ll throw in one pair skid-marked tighty-whitees and some Mitchum X-tra strength deodorant.” Best thing about it, I went to bed not really in a mood anymore.

  Next day, from eBay: “To whom it may … You are hereby prohibited from auctioning … privileges invalidated.” No big deal. If they can’t dig a joke, I can join another auction site. Easy peasy.

  Couple weeks later, I was cooking with Morrison—just store-bought sauce and pasta, he stirred the tomato paste while I did the noodles. Dylan was napping upstairs. The mail was an unopened pile on the table.