One Breath

by Adam Skolnick

  Nick didn’t take long making Esther’s place his home, too. He had a budding chef’s collection of cast-iron pots and pans and top-quality knives, the sewing machine, and a trunkload of thrift-store-quality clothes, plus two BMX bicycles and an old radio with a coat-hanger antenna, which he used to listen to Yankees games and NPR on the fire escape. And he had vinyl. By then Nick had begun to move on from the simple sugars of straight edge to the complex palate of jazz. Thelonious Monk was his guru. He’d roll joints late at night, get high, lie on the mismatched hardwood floor, and melt into bop heaven.

  His squatter soul remained, which meant he was perpetually driven to create something from nothing. When he noticed how many Lavazza coffee cans were collecting in the corner of his kitchen, he decided to bolt them together. They became legs on a coffee table he built himself from found lumber. Whenever he saw a workable piece of furniture on a lonely street corner, he’d rest it on his handlebars and pedal it home. His best find was an avocado green midcentury modernist armchair. It became his office, his lounge, his base camp.

  He didn’t just dumpster dive for furnishings. Tribeca Bakery’s commercial kitchen was in Williamsburg near the industrial waterfront off Driggs Avenue and each day they used to toss enough bread to feed all the hungry in the city. Nick was down there as often as possible, rooting around in dumpsters with immigrants from Poland and China, and old couples barely making it on Social Security rations. Sometimes Esther would join him on the hunt for free bread.

  Other times they’d raid the trash of an old chocolate factory near McCarren Park. In a decade, the park would be revitalized—the pool, repaired and functional; the lawns seeded and trimmed; the area regularly patrolled by cops. But back then it was derelict as hell, a hotbed of drugs and violent crime. Still, they could score a three-month’s supply of premium dark chocolate in an hour, so they braved the danger zone.

  On their first Christmas together, he and Esther found a five-foot frosted plastic Christmas tree at a Manhattan Salvation Army store for $1.99, and they made each other’s presents. In their happy hippie hut on the corner of 3rd and Berry, Nick and Esther celebrated their way. They ate found bread and homemade gnocchi—a Mevoli specialty—followed by salvaged dark chocolate, and watched snow fall from their rooftop.

  New York thrilled him, and it wasn’t about the fashionable nightclubs and fabulous restaurants. It was the humanity. The buzz and rumble of turmoil, movement, art, passion, and pain. The knowing that everything was always happening and all at once. The entire spectrum of human emotion and achievement visible on subway cars, street corners, and parks.

  He’d ride his BMX over the Williamsburg Bridge and head uptown, all the way to Riverside Park on the Upper West Side. In addition to the green lawns, towering sycamores, and soccer fields, there was a skate park where he could ride rails and drop into a twelve-foot-tall half-pipe, catch air, and float above the Hudson for a few suspended seconds. Or he’d stay closer to home and hammer over the Brooklyn Bridge, then weave beneath the stone and brick pylons on the Manhattan side, where Brooklyn Banks Park attracted all manner of BMX bikers and skaters. Unlike Florida, the cross-cultural shredders of New York came in Benetton colors. Nick loved it. It felt like inclusion.

  He’d come home with the requisite bumps, bruises, and gashes, but would barely mention them. He’d just run himself a bath and sink in. Sometimes he’d practice his breath holds, which made Esther nervous. He’d be under for two minutes, then three, then four full minutes before he’d come up gasping, his eyes burning with intensity.

  Nick’s favorite part of Williamsburg was the waterfront, which back then was a wide-open postindustrial labyrinth of rubble and defunct factories, razor wire and garbage drifts. When Aaron or Sol came to visit, Nick led them through a hole in the fence and onto condemned, turn-of-the-century piers near the old Domino Sugar Factory to take in night views across the East River. Where the twinkling skyline erupted full throttle, accented by the gentle slosh of the river against splintering pylons.

  Inspiration was everywhere, and Nick had the urge to channel it. He came to New York for two reasons. He wanted to be with Esther, and he wanted to be an actor. Esther felt he had leading-man looks and talent and made it her mission to help him get there. She was working as a segment producer for MuchMusic, a Canadian MTV-type network, and she’d often get invited to parties packed with producers and directors of the moment. She’d bring Nick along and introduce him around, but he didn’t speak the language and didn’t care to learn. Most often, he’d fade into the wallpaper.

  A natural born DIY-er, Nick wanted them to make their own movies, and he and Esther began to write together. His ideas always included fractured father-son relationships and rebirth. Esther tried to be enthusiastic, but she knew that writing a great script can take years, and financing one can take longer. Plus, they already had a movie in progress, in the form of a plastic tub of DV tapes hibernating in a storage closet. Esther unearthed that Exist footage and the more she watched of it, the more she saw the movie materialize. Although they’d shot only one-third of the scenes, there was something to build on. She and Nick decided to write a new version of the film in which Nick, once a side player, would become the lead.

  He played a squatter named Top who is at odds with Jake, a black Ivy League–educated activist played by Ben Bartlett. Top squats as a rebellion against mainstream culture, which he thinks will never change. Jake still believes in justice and democracy, but when a police officer is shot during an eviction raid on their squat, Jake is accused of killing him and flees. Jake’s sister turns to Top to help find him.

  The movie was all consuming, and they shot it for $5 a day, guerilla style, in parks, in their apartment, on the street corner, and on their roof, over five weekends. “My creative life, my sex life, and my love life all crashed into one guy,” said Esther. It was exciting, but it was also combustible. They fought—on set, off set, everywhere. Tension mounted, and Nick had a short fuse. He expected a lot from himself and often was his own worst critic. If he forgot a line, or screwed up a scene that had been flowing well, he’d explode in a self-directed tirade. Esther always talked him down. It didn’t help that both Esther and Nick had full-time jobs.

  Nick had scrapped the bagel shop by then and begun working as a production assistant in New York film and television production. When it came time to edit Exist, he’d found himself in the art department of a new, low-budget (read: nonunion) comedy variety show on Comedy Central, hosted by a young, edgy black comedian from the DC suburbs named Dave Chappelle.

  With shooting wrapped, Esther churned through editors. Given the different cameras that were used and the various locations, matching shots and camera angles for a consistent edit was a problem, and nobody could seem to make it work until Nick found an unemployed film editor and brought him home.

  Nick met Yasunari Rowan in Mullaly Park, the city’s only exclusively BMX park. As the number 4 express rumbled overhead, in the shadow of the old Yankee Stadium, they took turns riding rails and catching air in the Bronx, surrounded by the low-rent apartment complexes that rose on the Harlem River bluffs. Yas, twenty-seven at the time, was born and raised on the Lower East Side. He was the melt within the melting pot: a mocha-skinned, blue-eyed black man, a beautiful blend of African American, Irish, and Native American heritage. Yas grew up hanging out with squatters who listened to punk music and skateboarded everywhere. He and Nick had common ground.

  They rode together until dark and found out they were neighbors. Yas gave Nick a ride back to Williamsburg in his VW, and on the way, he mentioned he’d been cutting promos for television shows to make ends meet. Nick chatted him up about Exist and the squatter activist world they were hoping to bring to life. When they arrived at 3rd and Berry, Nick invited him up to check out the footage. Esther had been ready to give up on the movie again when they walked in. Yas watched a few scenes and experimented with filters, which enabled him to match shots. In a few minutes he’d accomplished
more than four previous editors had in a month.

  Esther and Yas worked nights, while Nick crafted absurd props for Chappelle’s skits. He built a gigantic horse schlong out of gluten one evening. Another week it was a supersized crack rock. When it was time to score the film, Nick called Clayton, his musician friend from Tallahassee. When the film finally premiered, one of the actors, Tunde Adebimpe, the frontman from the up-and-coming band TV on the Radio, played the after-party.

  At a time when what passed as American independent cinema was often polished and corporate funded, Esther Bell’s little movie, though imperfect and perhaps too earnest, burst with grit and poetry. Nick looked angry and innocent, jumpy yet confident, just like a nervy squatter kid should. There were sex scenes with tall string-bean girls with tattoos, and seeds of disruptive politics. Esther and Nick had come together and accomplished something huge.

  Exist was chosen to play the esteemed Rotterdam Film Festival in 2003, and with a good showing, it was possible they might win distribution at the Berlin Film Market the following week. But the process of making and marketing the film had taken its toll on Esther, who had a thyroid condition. She was frequently exhausted and weak, and her sex drive had been sapped. Nick never complained, but he was convinced she’d turned off to him, and he started to drift away. After Rotterdam, she promised to take time off and get healthy.

  The festival treated them like rock stars. They were flown out along with six members of their cast and crew and put up in a gorgeous four-star hotel in the city center. This was just the beginning, Esther thought. Their creative partnership and romance would only grow bigger and brighter. Nick was less impressed by the glitz. Still just twenty-one years old, freedom beckoned, but his timing was harsh.

  Dressed in a black suit and smoking a spliff, he picked a fight on the evening of their big screening while Esther was doing her hair, getting ready to greet the press. It had dawned on him, he said, that she was driving the relationship, and making all the decisions. He told her he’d had enough. “Okay,” she said, “but I’m about to deal with this interview, can we talk about this later?”

  “No,” he said. “I mean, yeah, but, what I’m trying to say is, I’m not in love with you anymore.” Esther was stunned silent. She slipped on her heels, grabbed her handbag, and bolted. Her head spinning, she fumbled through the interview and somehow managed to introduce her film. Nick never showed at the screening. He caught a train to the airport instead.

  Esther went on a bender and the rest of the week was a blur. She vaguely recalled Berlin, and couldn’t remember boarding her return flight. She did manage to make it home alive, but Exist never sold. Their movie lived a brief, hopeful life, and now it was dead. When she entered the apartment Nick was in his chair, smoking and writing in his journal, Monk on the turntable.

  “I’ll leave,” he said. “I’ll go.”

  “Where, Nick? Where will you go?” She stared at him and saw all his youth and beauty, impatience and naiveté. He’d always been a risk, and he’d been a hell of a ride, until he gutted her. Still, she had so much love for him that she felt an urge to protect him. At least here, in this apartment, she knew he’d manage. PA work didn’t pay much but rent was cheap, and he was at home on 3rd and Berry. She packed as much as she could fit in one bag, scooped up her cat, and headed to her friend’s place. She would soon move to a cabin upstate to get healthy and didn’t return to Williamsburg for a year.

  In one of his half-filled journals from that time period, Nick wrote an entry while hanging out on the waterfront during a storm:

  Lounging in the face of a hurricane, pelted by razor rain, six feet steep the waves a wall crashing into me Change has blown in with the wind…I feel as though I am finally maturing into the man I was meant to be.

  He threw himself into his work. By the time season two of Chappelle’s Show was set to shoot, it was a runaway hit, by far the biggest success in Comedy Central’s young life, but it was still low budget. Nick worked in the art department, often doing five people’s jobs at once. All the skills he’d learned by building the family house with Fred began paying off. He could build, he could paint, and he could rig. All of it with lightning speed. He worked ninety hours a week, commuting on his BMX or new fixed-gear bike. During the first season, they’d hire extras and green comedy actors to dress up as famous people, but by season two, big stars appeared on the show themselves. Susan Sarandon guested one week, Wayne Brady the next. Chappelle did a jaw-dropping Rick James impression, so naturally Rick James appeared.

  Once Nick, a union actor, was asked to be in a now dated sketch called “Gay America.” It was a Frontline (an investigative news program) satire based on the opening of a new public high school exclusively for gay kids in New York City, Harvey Milk High School, which set off a predictable firestorm. Watching the debate play out, Dave and his writing partner imagined a world of gay-only public services, and even a gay chapter of the KKK. Nick worked in the Gay DMV. Campy as hell in a tight tank top, he said, “Your license plate is so ready,” as he handed a customer a personalized plate that read: ASS MILK. The sketch didn’t make the show’s final cut, but pieces of it were unearthed in a compilation episode called “Great Misses,” in which Dave showed highlights of a number of sketches deemed too offensive to air. The musical guest was a young and forceful Kanye West. Nick’s line got one of the biggest laughs.

  The Chappelle crew bonded like family, which happens on set, especially when swept up in a cultural phenomenon. At the time, Dave seemed the second coming of Richard Pryor. His future was easy to imagine. There would be blockbuster movies and sold-out arena shows, and yet he remained unaffected. He hadn’t gone Hollywood. He was real. Always.

  On weekends, Nick would ride with Yas. They built their own jumps in McCarren Park, and still hit the skate and BMX parks they loved. During breaks on set, Nick would entertain Chappelle’s crew by riding up the walls on his BMX. Each week, it seemed, a new restaurant, bar, or club opened in Williamsburg. Kokie’s closed, but the space reopened under new ownership and without the shitty coke and crooked cops.

  Nick enjoyed late nights but he wasn’t into the emerging hipster scene—though he fit the profile. His New York nocturne involved riding the Staten Island Ferry with a cold six-pack, skirting Lady Liberty, and enjoying the waterfront lit up by skyscraper starlight. Most Saturdays he’d ride the PATH train to New Jersey to visit his Grandma Josie and Grandpa Joe and do yard work and other chores they couldn’t handle anymore then crash for the night in their guest room.

  Before the third season started shooting, Dave Chappelle signed a $50 million deal, and the energy around the show changed. Before, Dave would write 90 percent of the material with his writing partner, but with extra money came more demands and frequent visits from network suits. There was less time to write and the writing staff grew. Nobody knew it yet, but Chappelle was having a crisis of conscience. He was on the precipice of superstardom, about to have it all, and it was more than he wanted.

  On the infamous day that Dave Chappelle disappeared and the show was killed, Nick got a text from a girl he knew. She’d just seen Dave at an ATM in Manhattan. He’d taken a fistful of money and bailed without his card. Nick’s friend was in line, and stopped him. Dave was kind but distracted, and he didn’t look right. When her text came in, the crew and producers had already been waiting for four hours hoping he’d turn up. Nick had to break the news. That night, after the show was officially canceled, the crew gathered on Nick’s rooftop. They drank whiskey and Pilsner Urquell and swapped stories into the wee hours. Dave Chappelle had illuminated the sky like a comet, and they’d been along for the ride.

  After Chappelle’s Show, Nick’s best friend on that crew, Morgan Sabia, helped him get in the unions, which enabled Nick to earn $450 a day as a prop master. He worked commercials and a reboot of the children’s show The Electric Company. Morgan, like Yas, became a big brother to Nick and made it clear that now that they were union guys, Nick had to ditch t
he ratty thrift-store duds and wear deodorant every day. Nick listened, dutifully swiped his roll-on, and dressed the part. Work was never scarce. Although Larry rarely called to check up on him, Uncle Paul kept tabs, and he was proud. Nick had gone to New York without a pot to piss in, and made it.

  Production was just a job, though, and Nick still had a burning passion for acting. He joined Akia Squitieri’s Rising Sun Performance Company and starred in a string of small off-Broadway productions. Like Nick, Akia’s roots were all New Jersey, and together they would stage classics and debut plays from burgeoning playwrights like John Patrick Bray.

  Their best collaboration was Hell Cab, which featured Nick as a cab driver enduring a brutal swing shift. Five months of almost daily rehearsals were held in Nick’s apartment, and the show ran Thursday through Sunday, from November 2004 to January 2005. As ever, Nick was a perfectionist and his own worst critic, frequently venting his frustration with himself during rehearsals or even after a show. Akia would comfort him, and eventually his brooding would fade.

  When they weren’t rehearsing, they were cooking and partying. Nick taught the cast how to fold gnocchi, Mevoli style, and frequently produced plates of gourmet cheese and dried fruits, which he’d serve on his coffee table. Often an actor or two might pull a guitar off the turquoise walls, which were also decorated with Chappelle’s Show souvenirs, including the giant crack rock and ASS MILK license plate. Or they’d get behind the drum kit, which was forever set up beneath a bay of windows in his living room. The only actor who would bow out of the bacchanalia was a young Nepalese immigrant named Saha, who played Nick’s rival cabbie in hilarious deadpan style. At one point, Saha confessed that he’d never kissed a girl, been to a party, or sipped a drop of alcohol. Nick and Akia didn’t pressure Saha, but quietly hoped he’d come to the wrap party.