2008-11-13 - 11:55 p.m.
Did I tell you that I was in New York last month? The trip was just after I finished writing that Bachelor’s Paper for college – and to celebrate I treated myself for a very quick trip to Manhattan to visit my two grandmothers, both in their mid-80s these days, but still going strong.
You will no doubt find it peculiar, but in spite of the fact I went to two plays, saw two grandmothers, and partied myself into near-unconsciousness every night at The Cock in the East Village, the things I remember most on the trip were little, minor incidents.
For instance, at one in the morning, coming back from The Cock (oh and The Urge, as well, I have to admit, since it’s next door), I found myself at the 23rd St INT station waiting for the Uptown train. I was staying at this time at a rather roach-infested Hostel on 95th and Riverside Drive, about which I shall tell you more anon.
While standing right on the little white safety “don’t fall over the edge!” line that runs along the ledge overlooking the train tracks, I abruptly heard a loud squeaking – followed by another squeaking. The noise was coming from the dank and mouldy tracks, covered with puddles of brackish, filthy water. It was a rat! A ginormous rat with a hideous black tail and long glistening snout. And it was glaring and squeaking at another rat, who was equally ugly – filthy brownish fur, covered with a glistening sheen of hideous slime.
The two rats squeaked at each other atop the shiny train tacks. And suddenly, they leapt upon each other, snarling and shrieking, biting each other, and rolling about snapping at each other’s throats and tails. “Shriek!” howled one rat, as the other bit it on the snout. “Squeak!” snarled the other, as it rolled on top of him. The two rats rolled over and over each other, snapping and barking.
I looked around me, and I noticed that all the other three or four folks on the platform – a youngish black guy with an Afro and Sam Jackson-like Pulp Fiction wraparound beard, a youngish woman in her down jacket, and an old white guy in a windbreaker – were all staring at the rats, staring at them with slack jawed nonplussed amazement. An entertaining moment, indeed! We were all thinking, I daresay, the same thought – “What are we doing here, at one in the morning, in this filthy place, watching rats fight on a dirty subway platform?” That wasn’t right.
A day or so later, I found myself emerging at around two in the morning from the doors of this club – the 20s, I’m thinking it was called – which, according to the homo rags was open only once a week. It was a club filled with amazing go go boys, who were available for “private sessions” if desired – and if you had enough money to pay for their wiles, which, of course, I did not. Decadent pleasure is too expensive in New York, let me tell you! And so I abstained from participating in the actual “point” of the club, in favor of enjoying the more “cheapskate” pleasures of having a leetle drinkypoo and watching the boys dance on the stage between “tricks.”
As I left the club, though, I saw this ravishingly beautiful woman, gorgeously dressed in a mink coat and fancy gems, standing to the side of the door, behind the two burly security guards, and she was weeping convulsively. I mean, her sobs were hugely loud, and she rocked back and forth, her shoulders heaving with her despair. I looked back at the amazing spectacle, and the two security guards stepped in front of her, blocking her view from me, pretending that nothing was going on.
Don’t you just wonder what all that was about? In my imagination, I have to admit I fancied that the woman was the girlfriend or bride of one of the go go dancers, of whom she was approximately the same age – and that she had only just discovered what kind of a club her boyfriend was dancing at. Of course, she could also have been the bride or girlfriend of one of the wealthy johns, who had just learned what kind of a stripper club at which her lover was cavorted. I fear that I will never learn the end of the story – but there was some kind of a narrative going on, oh yes there was.
On another occasion, I found myself on the M14 bus going East on 14th street (which is what it does, you know), seated behind a large black woman with cornrows who was yammering on her cell phone. I am not like most people – most people hate the public use of cell phones. I happen to like them, but you have to understand that I am a total voyeur, and one thing I adore is the momentary entry into the intimacy of other folks’ lives that overhearing a cell phone conversation might provide.
Anyway, this lady on the bus was talking to someone on the cell phone – a relative – in a loud, strident tones that mingled panic and frustration. Her daughter, age 14, was missing, it appears. “I don’ know where she is! She ain come home in two days. I know she went off with that man. But no one knows who he is! I don know him.” She paused, listening to the other voice on the line. “No, no, I don’ know him – she said he was about 20, and I didn’ wan her knowing him, but what can I do? I can’ watch her all day and night!”
The woman on the other end of the phone squawked something. “Yeah, I know. I’ll wait another day or two and then call the police. I don’ wanna do that – but I jus’ guess I gotta. I gotta report her missing.”
At that point, 1st Ave approached and I alas had to disembark. But I only wish I could have stayed on the bus a little longer to hear more of this intriguing story. For you and I both know that there were two possible narratives here. In one, the lady’s hell child daughter hated her mother so much she ran away with this strange older man, refusing to even tell mom where she had gone. In the other narrative – or perhaps in the second part of the first narrative – the young lady was dead in a ditch, raped, perhaps, or missing her head. In either case, it seemed likely that she would never come home again. But perhaps I was just imagining it all.
One must note that you just don’t glimpse interesting stuff like that in Los Angeles. You just don’t. Or maybe you do – but I sure don’t see it because, in LA, it is clear that I am always in just the wrong place at the wrong time.
