One good thing was that Caroline said I seemed too bright to be working in a warehouse. Nobody had ever said that to me before. I asked Billy for her phone number and I called her and she was really nice about it but no, she didn’t think it would be a good idea for us to see each other again.
I thought about what Caroline had said. And what Rennie had said before her. The only way for me to get out of the warehouse was to do my ‘A’ levels again. I had a look online and started saving up for evening classes at Tameside College. And then I saw an offer on cheap flights to New York, and because I was looking for adventure and didn’t fancy going back to school yet, I spent my money on that instead.
Brushing through white cloud into blue, the plane dips past the Manhattan skyline and descends into Newark airport. I catch a bus to Port Authority station and step out onto 42nd Street.
Among the crowds I pass the Don’t Walk/Walk signs and nearly get run over, fall off sidewalks, crane my neck like a fool, walk up and down endless streets full of yellow and clicking flashes; past Radio City Music Hall, Grand Central Station, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Times Square, Broadway, shoe shiners, braggers, homeless, peanut sellers, magazine sellers, and steaming and rattling pavements with straining, submerged trains of life beneath. Walking and staring and sweating for hours, finding the Upper East Side YMCA, paying, getting in the room, trying and failing to sleep with the windows open; humid between the skyscrapers, listening to the rattling pipes and the fat cracking radiators, the police sirens, the cries, the whispers, watching the movements of strangers behind dingy shades, ten floors up among the flower baskets, balconies and fire escapes.
In Central Park the next day, chilling out with big name directors and actors in the bright sunglasses-shaded morning, looking up at the Dakota and around at all the regal dulled splendour of faded apartment buildings. Lying back on a bench among the flowers and listening to the increase in traffic: human traffic building and building through the irregular bouncing feet of a succession of comedy joggers; marathon men and women, sweating in unison on the dust track around the glittering reservoir.
Sitting near the Imagine circle, listening as a grey bearded old man in a dirty suit played a wistful flute for the shot one caught among the rye, the black arms of trees marking the gold morning sun around Strawberry Fields.
Descending into the dark subway with the chipped white tiled walls and the wind streaming down the tunnels, then seeing the train, the people, the crowds, and the movement to and fro, here and there, and a man with no body from the waist-down, going up and down the train swinging his torso like a pendulum, a Pepsi bucket of coins carried in his mouth landing with a jingle after every swing of the arms.
Getting off the subway, climbing up to the light and across the Brooklyn Bridge out of town, looking back at the mix of faded grey and sparkling silver on the skyline. Pausing to take a photograph for two gorgeous, giggling, bronzed Hispanic girls amused by my accent, the graffiti-stained, rusting steel girders alongside, and Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty in the distance over to my right.
Standing with the East River glistening benignly in the sunlight before me, then turning left onto the street, before walking back across the blue and white painted Manhattan Bridge, glancing back at the Brooklyn Bridge in all its ageing glory, with its tilting stone parapets and suspension wires like strands of fine hair glistening in patterns.
Peering through the plastic fencing of the Manhattan Bridge, down at fat tugs plodding through the flat expanse of blue, a flash of a mile of sunlit white alongside. Gazing down into Chinatown with its smell and its bustle and its graffiti covered back yard walls in the shadow of the city, beneath the ornate towers of the magnates of the past, hustling, bustling, toiling, oiling, boiling, broiling.
Catching a subway to Battery Park, deciding not to regret life, and then getting on the Staten Island ferry to the land of the anti-climax…waiting around for the dark, looking back over at the Manhattan skyline, seemingly immovable, distant, distinct, tiny. Watching ferries going back every half an hour, sirens ringing out and the human rush to go back: men, women and children jumping over turnstiles, clambering on board, and then making the return journey to the science fiction cityscape: the Blade Runner night time, with skyscrapers like mountains of stars.
Catching the subway back and listening to an old man singing baritone and rattling an accompanying musical bag of coins, then giving him all my dimes and walking up the steps to look up at the red, white and blue peak of the Empire State, high in the star-bright night.
Then the next day in Greenwich Village, sitting outside a café on the corner of McDougall and Bleaker Street gulping coffee, looking around at the white on green street signs, the yellow painted traffic lights, the poster filled lampposts and the iron wire trash bins. Getting up to look around at the clubs, The Blue Note where Bird and Bessie and Miles and ’Trane played, the Café Wha? where Hendrix and Dylan played, and the Bitter End where Bruce Springsteen played, all playing, all in my head, music swirling and swirling around with espresso logic.
Drifting home in the muggy evening dark, hiding on the back streets, looking in windows, shops and hushed delis, where old men and women watched tellies, and then moving on, feeling the whole world trembling beneath my feet and the pavements steaming with heat. Back to the YMCA, up to my room, the TVs all around me bouncing their adverts through my walls, and the heat pipes still rattling and rattling and the radiators mercifully off but still banging, and the sirens ringing in the heat and the humidity. Lying stagnant between the scrapers, naked on the bed, sweating, wanting to sleep, not being able to sleep, getting up, getting the guide book, reading with eyes straining, waiting for the next day, and then the dim light slowly being turned up: the sun behind buildings, still and cool.
Shuffling down to breakfast, past the pensioners running to the pool in their plastic bathing caps, with their proud, half-naked, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty year old bodies and serving myself and watching a very, very fat man smothering dozens of pancakes in a syrup that slithered around his mouth and down his front, and seeing his example and doing the same, but in my case stocking up, fuelling up for the day, churning it up, taking it in: fruit salad, muffins, coffee, pancakes.
Seeing the Chelsea Hotel, elegant, old and beautiful, red brick and balconies black. The house of artist ghosts, with gold plated plaques on the outside dedicated to James Schuyler, Brendan Behan and Thomas Wolfe; god’s lonely man, and Dylan Thomas; who sailed out from there to die; and reading in the guide book a tenuous tale about Jack Kerouac writing like a madman.
Wandering around and then taking a break, going to a tiny cinema in the West Village and watching a film called The 400 Blows; sitting in a city of movies watching a movie, funny and true, with a freeze frame at the end leaving me beautifully blue.
Striding out into the sun, wanting to run, just for fun. Sitting in the park looking up at the Empire State, going down Sixth Avenue and waiting in the queue, then getting in the lift and listening to a laid-back old guy fielding the same gags over and over, yes, up and down every day, eighty eight floors then more, okay. Then walking out of the lift and feeling as though I was making small steps onto the surface of the world for the very first time. Squinting at everything in microcosm before me, right down to the Financial District and into the water beyond and the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island again and the tiny models of the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges.
Circling around and around as others stood looking at plastic replicas of the building, not looking out of the window where a quarter of the world seemed to stretch around past the greenery of Central Park, round to the swamps of New Jersey; the state of gardens; like Staten Island, a moth beside a light bulb; the hot dusty light bulb of Manhattan, shining bright in the middle of it all. Then waiting until dark, until the city lights flickered on to replace the light of the sun, in intermittent jewelled dots sprinkled a
cross the darkness.
The next day, taking in the Whitney, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim. Edward Hopper paintings in a Whitney room alone; quiet, boring, routine scenes, where everything is never quite as it’s been, and Rothko in the Met, and a long twisting Pollock, and a Buddhist mural two hundred feet high, and Picasso and Cezanne.
Drinking coffee and looking out of the window at the park, and then going to MOMA for free and seeing Lichtenstein’s big comics on the walls amid the crowds, and sitting down in a brief air-conditioned respite from heat. Then gazing at the pale, circular banded spaceship of the Guggenheim, standing alone before the park in all its mighty white.
Going to the public library guarded by lions, full of whispering mice, corridors, chandeliers and books, yes books, but with no time for books. Down into the dark underground again and getting off at Union Square and watching a busking set of black brothers in basketball vests doing somersaults and back-flips to a blazing stereo, round and round, over and over; their feet scraping the ceiling.
Back up to the light, finding the day had gone cold, scanning Time Out and seeing so many choices, so many things to do, and going off to the New School with famous poets and writers like Rick Moody reading for free. Then walking out into the humid night, going back to Battery Park and sitting on a bench, peeking up at the stars and gazing across the East River to the blinking lights of Brooklyn.
Riding the rails the next day; the steel horse running on rails, and going back to Central Park and lying on a bench in the sun. Then going up to the Bronx and getting paranoid: perceiving a tinge of meanness in the air, before seeing the giant letters of Yankee stadium and Budweiser, Budweiser, Budweiser emblazoned on water tanks and rooftops and lorries in red flashes.
Walking through Harlem and along Malcolm X Boulevard and Dr Martin Luther King Jnr Boulevard and seeing the Apollo, going into a soul food diner and eating black-eyed peas and potato salad, listening to two old men sitting at the counter speaking about black history and jazz. Smiling to a sweet old lady dressed in pink and the geezer at the counter with a tweed suit on and a feather in his hat, then strolling like a black panther down the street, past all the book stalls, walking back over to Marcus Garvey Park, quiet save for schoolchildren on the basketball court; hoop dreaming beneath the twisted bare trees, climbing up the steps to an incongruous bell tower and surveying Spanish Harlem, and sauntering back down into the subway for a ride; the sweet steel ride back uptown to the glamour of 42nd street, to walk around Times Square among the camera-clicking crowds, multicoloured screens and neon dreams.
As I sat in the YMCA, I realized while looking at the guidebook that I could easily get a bus from Port Authority to New Jersey. The next morning I did just that, and I remembered the opening credits of The Sopranos as the bus headed through the toll gates on the New Jersey turnpike.
In my excitement I jumped off at the stop before Asbury Park. I had to go quite a way down Ocean Avenue before recognising the area from photographs I’d seen in books and on album covers. Walking down the boardwalk beside the Atlantic Ocean, I saw the gutted pier casino, blighted by cracked and filthy panels of glass. Nearby, a solitary man sat in a wheelchair, looking out at the sea. Behind him there was a fortune-teller’s booth, a seaside attraction that had featured in Springsteen’s 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy). The whitewashed hut bore the legend Madam Marie on the side, above a painting of an eyeball and three gold stars.
Further down the boardwalk was the run down Palace amusements arcade, from the ‘Tunnel of Love’ video, advertising Funhouse and Twister above boarded up entranceways. At the junction of Kingsley Street and Sunset Avenue, an empty road circuit stretched around silent parkland and a greasy lake: the junction from Something in the Night.
I saw the bars that Springsteen played in as a young man: a place called Seductions; a strip joint clad in pink bricks, The Fast Lane; stuck between a vacant bus depot and an empty theatre, and, most famously, The Stone Pony. Sitting at the corner of a desolate junction, its white on black sign stood out from a stone wall, and a wooden porch stretched out onto the pavement, forty or fifty yards from the ocean.
The front door was locked, so I went round to the side, where a woman with tired eyes was dealing with a delivery. When I told her I was a Springsteen fan she smiled and let me in. Inside the unlit bar there was a poster advertising a gig for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at the Odeon, Hammersmith in 1975. The opposite wall was taken up with a mural that said Welcome to Asbury Park. Like the cover for Springsteen’s first album Greetings from Asbury Park, the mural was designed in the style of a postcard from the 1950s. It showed the town in its heyday, with the windows of the pier casino viewed from the inside, and men in hats and women in long dresses looking up through glass at a block of blue sky.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw a small stage and jumped up on it to play some air guitar. For a few moments I felt like the man himself, leaping around and strumming guitar riffs to the imaginary crowd with a weightless Fender Telecaster.
Sand scraped across the boardwalk in the wind. As I stared over the waves towards the end of the pier, a middle-aged man in a denim jacket went past, walking a tiny white dog.
‘Hi. Do you know anything about Bruce Springsteen? I came from England to visit here,’ I said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Springsteen, I’m a Springsteen fan.’
‘Oh right, Springsteen? Hell, yes. I used to know the guy. You been in the Pony? I used to work bar in there,’ he said.
‘Really? I’m a big fan.’
‘Yeah? That’s great. He’s well respected around here. He’s done a lot for the place. My name is Chuck.’
‘Do you live in Asbury Park then?’ I asked, as his dog pissed in the sand.
‘No, I live in Neptune, a little further down the coast. I’m just getting my exercise. Say, you should go out and see Bruce’s house.’
‘Yeah, I might. I never thought of that…it’s in Rumson isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, that’s right. Aces Avenue. But I doubt you’ll see much. It’s set way back from the road.’
‘Oh, who cares? I’ll try it. I’m going to try and find Bruce Springsteen’s house. Ha! Fucking hell. Sorry. Hey, can you tell me where the bus station is?’
‘Yeah, you just go down to Main Street and take a left. It’s just up there.’
‘Okay, listen - thanks. It means a lot to me, mate.’
‘Yeah, I get you. No problem. Take it easy now,’ and with that he turned and paced off down the boardwalk.
Wandering through the empty streets of Asbury Park, I passed derelict hotels and gardens with ragged lawns. On Main Street there was bright yellow bookshop. Inside I searched for some Greetings from Asbury Park postcards, but the lady in a long green dress behind the counter said no one had asked for any in years.
Back at the YMCA I wrote a fan letter to Springsteen, and in the morning I was back at Port Authority station, buying a ticket to Red Bank, New Jersey.
In Red Bank I waited opposite the Amtrak station. Wires criss-crossed overhead and left cracked shadows on the pavement. An old woman rose slowly from a bench as the yellow bus came to a stop. I asked the driver if he knew where Aces Avenue was and he said he did, though he looked surprised when I told him Bruce Springsteen lived there. When he dropped me off I stood at the T of the junction, waiting by a road sign that rose from the manicured grass.
A succession of large white houses lined the empty road. Leaves in the tall trees brushed together. In the distance a red dot bounced on the grey crest of a hill - a jogger in a red cap coming closer by the second.
‘Do you know where Bruce Springsteen lives?’ I said, stopping him.
He looked surprised. ‘Pardon me?’ he said.
‘Do you know where Bruce Springsteen lives? I’m a big fan; I just wanted to see his hous
e.’
‘You’re English, right?’
‘Yeah.Yeah.’
‘Well, yeah, we live next door to him actually. You see the hill down there? Well you go over that then you’ll see some traffic lights at the bottom of the road. It’s just opposite there.’
‘Oh, that’s great. Fantastic. Thanks.’
‘That’s no problem,’ he said.
I ran down the road and reached the place where he said the house would be. There was a porter’s cabin just inside the iron gates, and a driveway leading down to the side of an otherwise hidden house. A black 4x4 was parked in front of a garage, and a dog lying on the grass was striped by the shade of trees.
‘Is this Bruce Springsteen’s house? Hello? I’m a Springsteen fan. Hello?’ I said, into the mouth of a silver intercom.
‘Why?’
‘I came from England to see Bruce. Is he in?’
I heard hushed words then a muffled expletive, before a gruff, older voice spoke.
‘Sorry, he’s not in.’
‘But I came from England to see him.’
‘I’m sorry but he’s not in.’
‘Well, can I just leave a letter for him?’
‘We can’t accept anything.’
‘What if I just leave it on here?’ I said, looking innocently into the camera.
‘Sorry, we can’t,’ he said.
‘Why not?’
‘Listen, I don’t want to have to call the police.’
‘Err … OK then. That’s alright.’
Noticing the dog’s ears prick up, I realized I was about to invade on the privacy of the only hero I’d ever had. As the gates closed, I thought of an article I’d read about a young Springsteen jumping over the wall at Graceland to try and see Elvis.
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