THE NEWSPAPER write-up contains bad directions to the hot new spot. Suddenly they’re on empty streets in unreckoned neighborhoods and must go deeper into darkness before safety. Corners and alleys out of metropolitan fable, bricked-up doorways, newspapers stuntdoubling for tumbleweeds. Streetlights gallow. Footsteps of roving thugs. They ask, Can you hear me. They ask, Is that you beside me or is this the end of it all. Then music enters deep tissues, they see the lights and the mob, but that was real fear and what if word gets out that they’re still capable of fear after all these years. Count on one thing, count on this: night keeps its mouth shut. Nightclub doors are shut. This is Rent-A-Bouncer’s most popular model. They never blink. New satanic advances make it possible for them to actually appraise the souls of aspiring clubgoers. Seen a certain way, the velvet rope kinda smiles. A delegation of corpses staggers by on structurally unsound heels. She read an article where it said formaldehyde is in this season. Simple economics: if they only admit the beautiful people, who will pay the cover charge.
AND THEY SAID his shirt was loud. Pantomime desires. One by one the gang goes off on adventures. On waking next afternoon they’ll compare notes. Design flaws of the rich and famous. Knock politely on the bathroom door. People are up to no good in there. It’s very suspicious. Watch out: it is the nightly running of the anorexic assistants. They squeeze by easily. Everybody’s looking so good, everybody’s so well put together, I just want to say, Keep up the good work, troops. The DJ has scrutinized evolution and knows the back door into reptilian brain-stem. The beat cries mutiny, recruits limbs and hips, strips this vessel of volition. Apparently this song is very popular. Lewd dances trigger responses. Still the wallflower after all these years. To be able to just dance up to somebody and start doing that, whatever that’s called. Akimbo things banish drinks to the floor. Elbows heels hands and heads. Beware the lumbering man-child at ten o’clock—they tend to wave their arms when they dance. She looks down at her hips. Not half bad.
IT’S A FULL MOON. Lunar effects are readily observable in emergency rooms and ATM vestibules. People need more money. If only they could withdraw common sense. Friends put friends up to ill-advised behavior. Talking to that woman, putting up dukes, stealing furnishings. She has been following him for twenty blocks and he still hasn’t noticed. The streets at this hour are low comedy. They chant, Girl Fight, Girl Fight. Why does the crazy person pick on him, is it that obvious. Recognize them from high school and flee. Past the jazz joint humid from solos, past the local bar with the earnest singersongwriter. After this gig she’ll have enough for a new rhyming dictionary, top of the line, the one with the word that rhymes with “orange.” Bumping into the shop clerk after hours in this new context. Worlds collide. There’s a cop. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Now he’s going to have to explain how he got this scar an average of 3.5 times a week for the rest of his life. If the victims all got together they could trace back their misfortunes to this cursed payphone. It’s the only one for miles in working condition and everything people say on it turns out bad. Urgent telegram from the Ministry of Unhappy Thoughts: Been Thinking Stop No Good Will Come From This Stop. Like the moon, you’re only good and visible a few days a month. Exerting influence, pulling up whitecaps. The rest of the time falling away, cut up into parts and nobody knows where you are. It’s so cold. Just a few more blocks, dear.
MAINTAIN the illusion tonight will be different, wheel in the extra generators if you have to. Plenty of seats in the predictable cafés, no waiting, what’ll you have. The menu never changes. Things are pretty much status quo with the sexual-tension friend. Make a note to ramp up machinations for next week. Boys Night Out collides with Girls Night Out over some confusion as to who has the right of way. Perhaps you recognize him from such bungled seductions as Your Front Stoop and Darkened Hallway at the Christmas Party. She has convinced herself she has no secret plan for this encounter. Waiting for the opening in conversation to reveal the true purpose of this meeting. When it comes to romance, he never met a lesson he didn’t learn. No, she’s never cheated on him but if you put it that way it almost sounds like a dare. Two drinks past the point of being able to suffer chance encounters with vague acquaintances, relatives, people from work. They will report back. One by one we are becoming unrecognizable.
BUT WAIT, there’s more. Under the big top. In tiny rooms of polite talk, in cattlecar taverns, in cavernous clubs, citizens line up for the same amusements, the rigged games and the broken rides. I like your fez. Still plenty of time to suck up, air grievances, expose character flaws. The most important person in the room possesses a gravitational field and cocktail napkins waft toward him. Aim for the soft underbelly, that’s their vulnerable point. Anybody got a mint. She must be sleeping on the job because everybody’s acting as if they see her for who she truly is. Folks get by on their favorite props, old jokes, some cleavage, Anecdote 7. Test-run Anecdote 7, twice as efficient as Anecdote 6 and only half as long. They applaud his wit. Not a third of the way to the punchline it’s clear the joke is going to bomb. From their reaction that word is no longer used in polite company. Did you know that smiling politely burns up the same amount of calories as speaking your mind. He confesses his love when the room momentarily clears. Everybody returns as she is about to make her response. They used to be married and now divvy up the room like they once divvied up friends. Dare you to cross this line. Some rub wedding rings with thumbs when that creature comes into view. He studies her posture as she talks to that dashing stranger. Something is setting off alarms. Smoke, no doubt. Ten bucks says they go home together. Suddenly realizing that you’re talking awfully close. Everybody else seems to have left and what does that mean. Somebody stole your coat.
MORE NIGHTMARISH, please. If you insist. This is exactly the sort of behavior her therapist warned her against. He dresses like his friends so they won’t suspect he’s unlike them. To preempt rejection she dresses to exaggerate her difference when the true enemy is not the world’s disdain but its indifference. He is surely the next item in a dreary procession and cannot be seen for all those previous disappointments. Overexplain your latest career decision. How can he even show his face around town after the latest setbacks. People spare a minute or two relishing other people’s setbacks before their own inadequacies distract them again. This is his umpteenth pint but he has a hollow leg or some sort of emptiness in himself and doesn’t feel the least bit tipsy. What they take for her air of mystery is merely a side effect of her medication. Something’s going on under the table. Gargoyles have clambered down from rooftop aeries to replace his friends but he’s not sure if he should do anything because they’re quite funny actually and much more supportive than his real friends. It’s called a tip.
IMPRESS THEM with your selections, jukebox guru. Press the right buttons and she will be brainwashed into the cult of you. Soapbox the better word, for these pamphlets contain his philosophies. Have your songs come on yet. All over town passive-aggressive jukeboxes delay departures. Every selection pulls them this way and that, sad and out to sea unless they outwit the undertow of minor chords. Tonight the song you always despised strides from the jukebox full-bodied and you hear the lyrics for the first time, understand the lyrics for the first time after all these years. This new you with an older soul. Now it’s your favorite. All this time singing the wrong words. Some of them have already decided where this night is going. None of them have commented on her engagement ring so she knocks everybody’s drinks over. Accidentally on purpose. He spills his guts, it was the last sip that sent him over the edge but she has her hands full with her own loneliness, she’s not about to take on his. Reach inside to muzzle the broken part of you that is now talking.
LAST CALL. This is good-night for anyone with a lick of sense. Anyone with a lick of sense is calling it a night. From here on in there are consequences. One more for the road. He pretends he needs convincing. The binge is going swimmingly, thanks for asking. The adjectives that describe the bathro
oms are so scarce as to be an endangered species, protected from poaching by government regulation, so use your imagination. So much for the breakfast date. With every passing hour she scratched off another appointment and now her whole day is free. Rumor has it they’re open after hours. Something in the way they say, See you soon, crystallizes that their friendship changed months before and in fact they will not see each other for a long time. It has been arranged: leave separately and meet in ten minutes. No one will notice. Everybody knows. Exchange numbers. The little noises they make: we should hang out sometime, we should get together, we should do a lot of things we’ll never do. Drunken ladies are crammed into taxicabs by quick-witted friends, out of reach of predators. He won’t wake up. This is the last hand. Bet it all on this. Few of them profess to be actors and yet they are naturals for these curbside improvs, the whole clumsy theater of Which way are you going, Do you want to share a cab. They don’t want to go home. Someone is waiting for them. Or no one.
THEY HEAD HOME. Remembering too late that he is insufferable on long cab rides. Now Showing: The Return of the Native. In his cups as he slips into his avenues. Buckle up for safety. Ride with him and sooner or later you will hear him say it: I used to live there. His finger jabs as if to poke a hole into night. I used to live there. On Broadway and Fulton and Riverside and Houston he is goddamned irritating, can’t keep his mouth shut. I used to live there. In crowded movie theaters when it turns out the location scout knows where to get the best fifty-cent hotdog. On long walks, while flipping through random books of photography, while flying overhead on jet planes: I used to live there. When they least expect it he will say it, apropos of nothing he will say it, because if he hasn’t lived there, he will someday. There are always other apartments waiting for him. There is always more city.
HELD FAST by red lights in key spots. At the site of yesterday’s accident there are shreds of metal and tiny cubes of glass. Each time the light changes, tires spread it far and wide until it’s an invisible layer of sorrow across the city. He used to live there on the corner. Who lives in those apartments now, who is using his old phone numbers. Quick math says there’s no way he could afford the apartment he grew up in and now he’s an exile in his own city. What’s there to say as he passes it and all the others, how to communicate this feeling to friends or people who might care. Immensity of the debt. Poverty of citizens. What is there to say as you pass the humble places that helped you in ways you cannot understand, that were there for you on certain nights when you had neither friends nor cabdrivers, only keys. The light changes. Almost home. None too soon.
AFTER ALL THAT worry and the rough seas, night runs aground. Some of them made it to shore after all. He knows a place where they can grab breakfast. Look at the time. Look at me. Look at them holding hands. They talked all night. While everyone else went mad they found each other. Not made for each other but maybe made out of each other. The same substance, the way the city is one substance, every inch of it from one end to the other. Solid. Immutable. Unbreakable. Everybody out. Last stop. Look at the sky. Toward the east side. There’s sunlight in its trademarked colors, sunlight charging broken glass, sunlight over tenements at last, and we’re safe.
TIMES SQUARE
IT’S A SICKNESS, really, with telltale symptoms. They say, I do not recognize this place. They say, I feel dizzy and light-headed. Out of sorts. These are epidemic responses, to this kind of dislocation no one is immune. They agree and lament, try to find the words to give to anyone who will listen: It’s not the way it used to be. Of course it’s not. It’s not even what it was five minutes ago.
SAY HELLO to dynamo. Heads tilt up forty-five degrees in the standard greeting. If it weren’t pinned down by buildings maybe it’d raise a hand in welcome. Instead all it can do is shine, brighter than heaven and easier to get into, an asphalt hereafter. Is that an angel up there or just a forty-foot soda can. That persistent problem of scale. One block is a continent, a nice chunk of planet. Events unfurl in other parts of the globe and march in single file for ticker-tape inspection. River of the world. So happens she was wondering what time it is in Tokyo and there it is. None can deny that these are the most spectacular cave paintings in the history of cave paintings. Electric bill for starters. World Leader. Excite Your Senses. Try The Best. Some of my best friends are slogans. Slogans hang out with each other after they punch out, blink and pulsate, gossip about their friend whose rags-to-riches tale is now the big hit musical, The Catchphrase That Almost Wasn’t. Lines around the block. Everybody is a star.
SIMMER THE IDEA of metropolis until it is reduced to a few blocks, sprinkle in a dash of hype and a tablespoon of woe. Add hubris to taste. Serving size: a lot. Some time ago it stopped needing human hands to make it go, for some time now it has been operating on pure will, but performing maintenance lets them sleep a little easier at night. Old-timers balance on rickety ladders and unscrew the dead ones. Replace, replace. Despise it for calling attention to your irrelevance. Pay witness to varieties of obsolescence. The parts she gets offered nowadays mother the ingenues she used to play. The chorus goes, That’s What’s-her-name, as she passes in sunglasses. First visit in years and looking around he’s reminded of the day he realized his son was a better man than he would ever be. Wait your turn, there’s enough bitterness to go around. Divert all the energy rushing into this place to power your subconscious. It would probably look like this.
LET THE HONKING commence nanoseconds after the light changes, up and down the ave. Honk all you want, little man, you’re not going anywhere. Quite a traffic jam we got going on, all of civilization’s wrong turns lead us here, bumper to bumper, without insurance or title. She’s been through a lot but makeup hides those little dings and dents. Visitors from war-torn lands stroll into this confusion from hotels and feel right at home. Did they leave the iron on, how trustworthy is the caretaker of their pets or children. Nice place to visit but they wouldn’t want to live here. Crushed limes at the bottom of jumbo-sized souvenir cups are shorthand for disappointment. Stock up on T-shirts. Ask directions for the fifth time, see if it does any good. Compass needles spin wildly, act hinky when asked to draw a bead on true north. Those with foreign tongues seek after their English lessons, attempt to conjugate this mess. How do you say, I am lost and helpless. How do you say, I am desperate and alone. No need to translate the lights, lights say the same thing in all languages. Look skyward and get swept up by the human current, get deposited blocks away, exactly where you need to be. Gawk at the unlikeness of it all, as if human beings slouched from amino acid pools wearing tuxedos and top hats.
BUILD IT BIGGER, better. Brighter and blinding. Buildings get taller, burying us deeper as they play chicken. Race you to heaven, last one up is a rotten egg, floors full of lawyers. Up there in the corporate headquarters of the entertainment combine, executives decide your dream life. Down here vendors hawk heartburn, but at least they wear gloves per health regulations. A man hands out leaflets and they shun him as if he held a sheaf of virus and not merely advertisements for discount prosthetics. Formerly a pickpocket, now he pushes nosebleed seats to faded Broadway shows. The lightbulb salesman on his first visit reels around in glee and says, Now we know where to send all our colored lights. Everybody selling something. Have I mentioned my special introductory offer. The United States Armed Forces recruiting station has some primo real estate, conveniently located in a commotion that turns everybody into an army of one. Protect your borders. Call upon instincts of self-preservation. Hit the arcade. Experts agree video games improve hand-eye coordination. Juvenile delinquents scrounge up quarters for machines, dig deep in pockets for lies to tell cops and parents. Suburban kids trade the better alibis amongst each other. Learn some tricks of the adult world while you’re down here, kids. Learn you haven’t alibis to spare.
SHOWFOLK SCURRY and scamper, impossible to distinguish from civilians. Magic of the theater. Where is the book of spells that will transform her latest head shots into glossy f
ashion spreads, insinuate her name into the captions of paparazzi photos. Last night’s miscalculations are this morning’s blind items. Smile mysteriously when pressed for information. Long as they spell her name right. Wait to be discovered. Break a leg. Opening night for that couple learning warmth in each other’s hands. The reviews will come out in the morning. Closing night for that duo making getaway in separate cabs. Let the casting begin anew. Critics sharpen knives, their latest humiliation a whetstone. Wait for your big break, until then you’re understudy for that washed-up has-been who’s been using your name and face all these years. Maybe one day you’ll get to go onstage.
NINETY-EIGHT TIMES she’s seen it and each performance illuminates some new corner of her soul. Avert eyes from horrible spectacle. The leading man recites his father’s insults in his head while his mouth delivers dialogue with perfected passion. So full of feeling up there onstage. This is the mechanical age. What failure in their upbringing pulls them here night after night, audience to this better bauble world of their exile. On New Year’s Eve citizens gather and shiver for one last curtain call before it’s on to the next production. Watch the ball drop, counterweight to hope. The entire cast signed the program and congratulations, pass out the cigars: it’s a souvenir. Wait for idols by the backstage door. Even a single glance would erase so much. When the revolver clicks empty no one will doubt he is her number-one fan.
UNNATURAL nonetheless inspiring analogies from the natural world. A Black Hole. Visible from space, with a gravitational pull so strong that not even life can escape. Subways try to avoid it but every line and route ends up bending into its quantum miseries. A Great Beating Heart. Congested by those who clot this thoroughfare. A healthier diet would include cutting down on us. Or maybe we are less intrusive, more integral. People are pulled into ventricles, then banished to arteries and avenues, feed other neighborhoods with new red-blooded knowledge. What a rush. A Geological Truth. Where two tectonic plates crash into each other egging on earthquake, Broadway slamming into Seventh in ancient dispute. Seismic and measurable in its predictable arguments. How else to explain the rumbling beneath your feet and this feeling of jeopardy.
The Colossus of New York Page 7