by Jay Fox
One of the patrons at a pub with a football-related name lurched within a few feet of me after eavesdropping upon my conversation with Joe, the bartender. When Joe excused himself to pour a pint for one of the faithful, the man nudged his friend before he sidled up to me with something of a lupine grin. “Yo', bro', Copra's a friend of mine.”
I gave no reply.
He did not push the subject. He just stared blankly to me for a moment before telling his friend that his three songs were beginning to play over the jukebox: the one top-ten Raspberries single, Sabbath's “War Pigs,” and Sugarloaf's biggest, arguably only, hit. Joe returned with a voice plagued by hurried indifference. After a few moments of Q and A, he finally directed me to the bathroom, which, although coated in denouncements of the Giants, the Jets, the Yankees, the Mets, the Rangers, the Islanders, the Devils, the Nets, and (peculiarly) Jay-Z, precluded any mention of the Knicks. “Giuliani is a Fascist” was written on a part of the mirror that had barely evaded renovation efforts. It is interesting to reflect upon the types who decide to write such things. What creates such an outburst? Is it simply the alcohol? Or do people feel compelled to acquiesce and contribute to chaos at the slightest appeal? If questioned about their actions would they have a legitimate response? Would they have a response at all?
But this is not the time for philosophic musings, is it? It is Friday night after all. And, as it is Friday night, each bar is more crowded than the last, filled with people in hot pursuit of that perfect state of inebriation, which is as transient as the moment it is reached. Rain becomes less likely as the hours grow; troops of people consequently roam the streets as opposed to taking cars from Point A to Point B—the four in the morning Point C, of course, remains on the horizon of possibility. Young women swagger down the street in clusters, many in the process of reading or writing a text message. There are a lot of skirts, few cankles, fewer natural blondes, and only a handful of praetorian boyfriends looking on with menacing eyes towards other men, other women, dogs, insects, and inanimate objects too varied to bother mentioning. One such man is kicking a hydrant. There are also large groups exclusively of men—perhaps phalanxes would be more appropriate—moving through the streets with gaits both determined and concerted. These chachy customers are dressed in metallic-hued button-downs and expensive jeans of low quality. Interspersed among these groups about to partake in the nightlife, one finds the more militant members of the Young Republicans—fierce-looking twenty- and thirty-somethings with white bags of take-out in one hand, black bags of spirits in the other. The men have removed their ties; the women have changed their shoes. The determined face of ambition, however, remains. Even with the fatigue of a sixty or eighty hour week, they march by quickly, their heads slightly focused upon the pavement, their eardrums insulated by a song of their choosing, their lips pressed tight into something not too unlike a grimace even though there has been no willful manipulation of the facial muscles. They silently denounce you and the rest of the people not attempting to scale the intractable face of Mount Purgatory as they pass by. I've had political conversations with these types. It's not fun. On top of the pervasive resentment—or ressentiment, for the Nietzsche fans—that has somehow come to dominate the thinking of this nation's wealthy, these “Objectivists” utilize a lot of tautologies when confronted with Skepticism, and seem to be under the impression that repeating these tautologies at greater and greater volumes suffices for a cogent attack upon Cartesian metaphysics. Eventually things get personal. They express the narcissistic belief that their position came as a result of their abilities and their intelligence. They are autodidacts, who by chance went to the most prestigious private schools in their respective areas from the ages of three to eighteen, who got into Harvard or Yale or Princeton due to their tenacity and genius alone, who got a job at a firm that just so happens to be run by a friend of the family. Just about all of these arguments end with either a few words of profanity, something about someone's mother, or, occasionally, a fist. Luckily most of them are total fucking pussies.
While Gramercy Park is clogged with people, the majority of them similar to those outlined above, there are no teenagers unless they are accompanied by their parents. The Village had been filled with them: on stoops, on the street, among the cascading lilacs of Stuyvesant, mulling about the tenement buildings between the boutiques and fusion restaurants, causing types of trouble that are neither malevolent nor entirely innocent; they share cigarettes, bottles of hijacked liquor, and laughs at the expense of others. The Dominican kids wear hoodies unzipped to reveal scrawny torsos and undergarments of the wife-beater variety. Little nihilists dressed in black with skin a ghostly shade of pale haunt the shops of St. Marx Place looking for under-vigilant shopkeepers and sleepy security guards—ex otium delictum fit. Gramercy, it seems, is a playground of a different sort.
I eventually enter a tavern that has both shuffleboard and a pool table. It's just after eleven. I know it is going to be the last place I visit for the night, as I managed to exhaust my tentative budget for the day a few hours previously. Sobriety is a charade I'm struggling to maintain. I know that I only have enough money for another two drinks, a cab back to Brooklyn, and, if I'm lucky, a cup of coffee in the morning. A large pack of men at the front of the bar greet me with looks of subdued hostility. These glares do not last long; soon they have returned to singing along with Bon Jovi. The ogres and their girlfriends don't miss a beat. The former advertise for corporations who feel it's not unethical to use child labor to make (at least) a thousand percent profit on a shirt. The latter sport open-toed shoes with heels that range from four to six inches in length; their clothing reads “Juicy” and “Bitch,” as well as some more inventive messages, such as “Cum Bucket” and “Semen Receptacle” and “Jizz Magnet” and “Insert Here” and “You Must Be This Big To Ride This” and “More Baggage Than A Luggage Car” and “It Doesn’t Matter How Big You Are; Nothing Is Going To Fill The Void Where My Soul Used To Be.”
“What'll you have, hun'?” the bartender asks as I approach. She places her fingers on the bar and stretches in a way that is more lucrative than satisfying. I ask for a Manhattan on the rocks. “I have no idea what that even is, babe.”
Foregoing the Larry David response, I tell her what it's comprised of, and even go into a short history of the cocktail. She is neither impressed nor annoyed; she just nods as she retrieves the components of the cocktail from the shelf behind the bar. There are two marines next to me. One of them nudges me with an elbow and bobs his head to point out the bartender's black thong. He doesn't smile. His friend doesn't, either. They are both engrossed by the thong, the strands of synthetic fibers that speak the language of sex (lustful more than passionate) by straddling the line of what is and what is not seen. Even if they were not wearing their uniforms, you would still be able to tell that the two had recently seen combat. They each stare down an asymptote with listless eyes as if golems or silent extras in a play. They do not look to one another; they drink with mechanical torpidity, and focus, focus. When the bartender turns back around they continue to stare, the subject or object of their attention once again the nightmares of idealists.
I ask the bartender about Coprolalia as I guide her through the proportions of whiskey to vermouth. Her tongue is fluent in general disinterest and persiflage. “Only heard his name, hun'. There was that one thing on him in The Post,” she says while looking for the bitters. “I can't remember the last time I used these fucking things,” she says once she finds the bottle. “What was I saying? Oh yeah, about the toilet guy and that article.” She pauses. “When was that?” she asks the other bartender, who is busy waiting for the first half of a Guinness pint to settle, “Like six months ago?”
“What was six months ago?”
“The article about the shitter guy?”
“What shitter guy?”
“The guy who writes on the stalls around the city.”
“Oh. That.” She pauses. “I don't fucking
know.”
“Did you read it?”
“Yeah, I read it, but it's not like I memorized that shit. Who fucking cares anyway?”
“This guy.” The other bartender shrugs. “Did you read it?” she asks me politely.
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Then you know as much as I do.”
I can tell that my tone is less than suppliant due to a solid string of failures, so I only nod. She finishes the drink, feigns a mousy smile, demands nine dollars even though she uses well whiskey, and grabs her tip before it becomes saturated by the pools of spilled liquor and beer. Jimi Hendrix begins to lament for Mary. Air guitar quickly becomes the most popular activity in this area of the bar.
Beyond the horde that lingers around the front of the place, I see that the residents of the tavern are more varied than I had assumed. Besides the two marines, the group of Jersey men playing muted solos over the verse of the song and the derisive women in close proximity, the bar is home to small clusters of people who have assumed less threatening or exhausted roles. There are a few students and recent graduates in threes and fours quietly reminiscing. At one of the bar's two tables a man attempts to bite into a sandwich, but it bursts apart like an exploding cigar from a Bugs Bunny cartoon or a Kennedy-era assassination attempt. He looks down to the entrails of the sandwich—the tomato, chicken, lettuce, and cheese all saturated with mayo—and then to his friends, who try not to laugh at his chagrin. Several couples floating around the pool table have begun the flirtation ritual; beyond these smiling and fawning creatures stand the loafers and the starers, the creeps and the geeks, the chronically misunderstood and the people who misunderstand them, floaters and hangers-on, sycophants and narcissists, and an obviously engaged couple sitting at the other table with a long-haired companion, who complains about a coworker lovingly referred to as “Shitbag.” He then goes into an impression of the reviled character, which sounds like a rendition of Daffy Duck, complete with speech impediment, salivary assault, and implied amphetamine addiction. The pool table becomes unoccupied when the eight ball is sunk prematurely—much to the dismay of the shooter, a guy with that porcupine hairstyle that cautions aggressors and attracts potential mates.
There is no line for the bathroom, though someone does occupy it. It is a very obnoxious setup: there is a toilet and a urinal, but the two are positioned in such a way as to make it impossible to use one without rubbing shoulders with the person using the other (unless, of course, one of them is sitting…and, no, it's not always on the toilet). Consequently, no two people ever use the bathroom at the same time unless they are mutually comfortable with the presence of a potentially visible penis that is not their own. A shuffleboard player with thin, blond hair and a drunken stare informs me of this. His accent is of the West Coast variety: resonate, slow, tired. The man next to him, who stands at an even seven feet, adds that a lot of fights break out in the bar, most of which are due to either the lavatory arrangements or their often-belligerent friend. Needless to say, I wait until the bathroom is completely vacated to enter.
The washroom is cleaner than most I have seen. The walls are painted forest green and the tiled floor is coated in only trace amounts of urine. There are plenty of paper towels, but the soap dispenser is empty. There are three advertisement posters; two near the toilet and one directly above the urinal. All of them are for the same deodorant, which promises frequent and vigorous encounters with super models. (Are beautiful women the only ones responsive to the pheromones that the product attempts to recreate? Are the less aesthetically endowed for some reason incapable of discerning said pheromones?) Most of the writing on the wall is of generic stock: names of people for whom having been “here” represents some type of accomplishment, the W.A.S.T.E. symbol, and the requisite, “Here I sit broken hearted / tried to shit, but only farted.” There is also the unfortunate reversal of this: “Here I sit broken hearted / tried to fart, but I shat!” In modern slang, this messy misfire is known as a shard. The term can also be used as a verb: Billy was relieved to find an extra pair of boxers in his locker after he sharted in gym class.
Below the advertisement and above the urinal are two messages written in black ink: “God Hates Fags,” and, above that, “Shantih Shantih Shantih.” Both of the messages are written by the same hand, that much is clear. But what the hell does it mean? One is the mantra uttered by a contingency of spiritual derelicts; the other is the final line in T.S. Elliott's most famous poem.
It is clearly the Coprolalia to which Sean's list refers. He has called it Aptheos Ampersand Peritheos. I don't understand the title, probably because I am not familiar with two of the three words. I don't stay in the bathroom studying the piece for too long, as someone assaults the door with a series of importune knocks before I can even finish urinating. I open the door to see one of the marines. He gives a quaint salutation in the form of a head nod, but he does not smile or say anything as I step out. Before the door has fully closed, I hear the sound of whatever he had for dinner hitting the water.
2
“How do you know he exists?” I ask Sean over the phone. “I mean, does he ever give anything like an insignia?” I cannot help but smell my breath—a brassy pollution. It's eleven in the morning. I'm in my apartment. When I awoke, the only evidence of a cab ride could be found by the lack of money in my pocket. Then it started to come back to me. Slowly. The driver was of the talkative variety. He was South African. Black. Xhosa, I think. I faintly remembered the Williamsburg Bridge and a disjointed conversation about Antije Krog with a Clementi soundtrack. I could also remember that he thought Coetzee was overrated and that Mda—a mystery to me—was a genius. Then it all came back. Literature was the icebreaker. After that, there was no hesitance to disclose any detail of his life: that he made sixty-two thousand dollars a year, and that, once the lease, gas, taxes and miscellaneous fees were added into the equation, he walked away with something like eighteen grand, plus the three thousand bucks that came via his tax return. I didn't ask about tips. Regardless of his qualms, he was clearly happy to be away from the poverty and crime of “Jo'burg,” and appreciative of the relative comfort afforded by even the ghettos of this country. Still, he was sick of watching the immigrant's dream come too true from behind a thick sheet of Plexiglas, and didn't seem to think I would get offended when he told me that he didn't really care for white people, generally speaking of course.
I have already been to the nearby bodega to pick up a cup of coffee and a bacon, egg, and cheese. I paid for the latter almost entirely with coins found in the couch—two dollars and a quarter that had two pennies attached to it by means of some mysterious adhesive. I applaud myself for the decision, even if I initially thought it somewhat pathetic to be spelunking for treasure lost on a lazy afternoon. I don't feel as terrible as I look, smell, and (probably) taste, though I must admit that coming back into my building is always somewhat depressing, especially when I've spent the previous night zealously punishing my liver. Perhaps it is because the building is depressing by its very nature. The stairs and walls are painted spleen gray; the hallways smell like cat dander, cumin, garlic, and something that is neither pleasant nor offensive (evasive of definition with the exception of a single word—viz. fried). The sound of someone traveling up the stairs echoes throughout the building. You can hear the process even in your most somnolent moments. You come to expect it, to feel it. (The front door inviting the cacophony of the street in, the bomb-shelter slam of the reinforced steel door, the arduous hike upon the decaying wood stairs—each footfall provoking a snap or a crack—, the aggravated respiration resonating throughout the building like a death-rattle with jingling key accompaniment, click, the turn, the opening door's manipulation of space and silence, the door's fall back into position one, peace, the deadbolt penetrating the door-frame like a rapist.) The tenants are reclusive, so the air lingers in the foyers, the hallways, the stairwell, and the small lobby that houses the mailboxes; it is something like a collective sigh from all
of those caught in the doldrums of this existence—too poor to get away, too employed to be afforded a helping hand. I often feel that I am one of them, but this is a specious belief that they are quick to recognize and disdain.
These are visions from Bushwick. The neighborhood is not at the end of the line on any of the trains, but it is deep enough into Brooklyn to provoke a double take from longtime residents, who never can shake incredulous glares when I reaffirm cross-streets and subway stops without a sense of shit-impulse trepidation in my voice. Those from the nicer parts of the city consider Woodhull—the somewhat nearby hospital—to be nothing less than a mythical place, a legend lifted from one of the Inferno's later cantos. And yet I am beyond it, deeper. Those who grew up in the area and have since moved out seem convinced of nothing less than suicidal compulsion on my part, even if the word “gentrification” hides in the shadows of implication. Some seem more incensed about it, gentrification, than others. It's not that they are angry with me personally when it really comes down to it; they are angry at the wave, not the particulate. Those who hunt the dawn don't always make this distinction.
The apartment itself was renovated by a coat of paint and some new windows. The latter fail to keep out either the cold or the din from the streets; the former, on humid days, bleed a dirty-amber substance (proof, my roommate attests, of a chain-smoking former tenant). The roaches are certainly here, as are the mice. Only the latter make regular cameos while the lights are on, though they have been less of a problem since the coming of spring.
Our building is narrow, but the apartment is—for someone used to living in Manhattan—rather spacious. The living room is capacious enough to allow seven or eight comfortably; nine, ten, and beyond have to find a spot either on the floor or in one of the bedrooms (though it must be said that a friend of mine, Denise, did fall into the habit of spending the majority of her time in my tub whenever there were more people than a few people over, as she was not only an over-zealous acolyte of Marx and Bakunin and Lenin and Trotsky, but of Diogenes (the Cynic), too; she would sit there in silence as the rest of the party carried on without her until a visitor came to use the toilet, and she would say that the most earnest conversations take place when people are naked, and that, while she did desire earnest conversation more than just about anything, the bathroom was as close as she wanted to get without sending mixed signals, which is why the toilet became known as “The Hot Seat” whenever Denise was around, why it was dreaded by people who didn't know her or didn't know most of the petit comité in the other room or didn't really feel like talking about anything that required sincerity or extensive thought, which is something that Denise was quick to recognize; and when situations such as these arose she would just recount the most famous of the interactions between Diogenes and Alexander the Great, which occurred when the latter interrupted the former, who was quietly sunning himself, and said, “Ask of me any boon you like,” to which Diogenes replied, “Get out of my light”). The bathroom is small, not have-to-rest-your-legs-on-the-tub-to-shit small, but of a size that can dissuade the seriously claustrophobic from frivolous trips. The shower spits out six minutes of hot water on good days. The bedrooms are large, perhaps designed to accommodate two strangers.