Reel Fiction

A friend and I were reminiscing about our first records... not the ones we shared with our parents, not our adolescent rock-obsessions but our very own early-childhood albums.  Mine was Funnybone Alley.  I played it over and over on my machine-- with the switch and the heavy rotating disc covered in some kind of wool or felt-- the metal bullet in the center. There were silly songs and dreamy songs-- marches and sad ballads. Just for children. I inhaled these... memorized every melody, every lyric. One step more sophisticated than the little colored plastic sing-along rhyming discs, it sang to me, this album.  It changed me.

My first book-- the one that was really mine.. was A Fly Went By.  I was already a pretty good reader at 5, but this was a gift. I devoured it-- over and over.  'A fly went by...he said oh, dear... I saw him shake... he shook with fear...' I could recite the entire text now, 60-something years later. The color blue on the cover was perfect.  The little freckled boy-- unlike the drab boys in my pre-school-- he was adventurous and independent; he was there for me, whenever I picked it up. He was my friend.  The boy.  No names, these books. Likewise A Hole is to Dig...  A Hat for Amy-Jean... these were my companions, my confidantes-- my familiars.  They never abandoned me.

Lately I've regained the habit I once had of reading.  I've been through Dostoevsky, Murakami, Eliot, Musil.  The depth of my library never ceases to thrill; I will never finish. I also frequent the library for discovery.  Coincidentally, I live on a street rich with writers.  My neighbor's son recently wrote a novel.  It was pretty decent... but I couldn't stop looking at his picture on the back sleeve;  I knew him. The book won an award, and now he wrote another one.  Again, the photo.  You feel close, like you have shared some intimacy... this time he divulges his masturbation fantasies, he dissects his father's flaws.  It's fiction but you know better.  He passes you occasionally on the sidewalk... for you it's like seeing an old lover.  He has no clue, of course, that you applaud him for craving his father's approval while giving him the finger.

In college there was a famous Physics professor.  Or maybe it was Philosophy.  There were rumors... he'd written a bestseller and his boyish profile with the shock of hair on the backcover-- the loosened tie and open collar... sold books.  Not long after I graduated he let my college advisor know that he'd had a little crush on me. Flattered, I agreed to go on a date-- intimidated but somehow reassured by the familiarity of that image on the book-cover.  I knew him... the way his fingers absentmindedly held the piece of chalk-- the way he gestured with his hands, and pushed the shock of hair off his forehead. When he came to pick me up, he told me he'd often thought I had the legs of an extinct running animal.  I'm sure I wore a very short skirt; we all did in those times. As we walked he calculated the number of shades between the whiteness of my skin and the black of my hair.  I was a little speechless... out of my element.  He took me to the movies-- something almost embarrassingly pedestrian like Rocky.  The smell of popcorn and urban movie-theatre didn't quite fit in with that disheveled young professorial silhouette.  I wanted him on the cover. That version. Somehow I felt humiliated when he left me at my door, as though he had put me back in some inferior student slot.  I thought about the comments he made... Liar, liar, pants on fire I said to myself over and over in my apartment, like a 5-year-old, to console my ego.  

Since the pandemic has completely disintegrated whatever skewed temporal reality I once had, I often stay up and watch films-- great ones: Godard, Almodovar, Fassbinder, Kurosawa. I am transformed by the better of them-- the way I was when I took my first course in film in boarding school, and was shown Truffaut and Fellini and Bergman. They seep into the cracks of me-- the ones that haven't been filled by novels and text.  They haunt my dreams and my strange daily existence which is at least five degrees more separated than it once was.  Sometimes I feel as though I've been transferred into another human form.  I am married to my solitude; I have said this many times, and it has been a wonderful and attentive husband.  

Tonight I ventured out to witness the Philharmonic on the Great Lawn-- this annual event I'd attended so many times-- with husbands, boyfriends, schoolmates, babies... I stayed on the outskirts like an eavesdropper, with a book to fill the intermissions.  At the end I wandered back along the reservoir-- my daily habit... and pausing to watch the post-concert fireworks... I was nearly alone-- not even the ducks were awake-- waiting, except for two large dogs who are normally prohibited there, but it was late.  Suddenly I began to sense there was a couple embracing in the shadows... it was awkward; the dogs eventually forced them to address me. The girl was familiar-- I'd seen her on the way to the park with her dog...  beautiful like a younger, prettier Natalie Portman... and sweet;  she smiles at me often with true kindness.  The man was older--- boyish and familiar... I recognized him hours later... an actor... anyway, it became apparent that I was somehow inserted into their story-- or film.  We made a little smalltalk.. and then the actor came over to me and began speaking-- nervously-- soliloquizing... mentioning his little sons.. how one of them was terrified by fireworks, their sleep habits, etc., etc...  It was a moment of intimacy he opened and I suddenly realized they were meeting illicitly there... he, perhaps, had a family-- a wife.. but the two of them were so magnetically attached, there on the path-- watching their dogs play... touching, waiting to touch... and there I was, the unanticipated witness... maybe the only witness. I am safe, I did not say... you are safe. 

Once the fireworks ended, I took off down the steps of Engineer's Gate... they waved from the wall, and recalled the dogs who followed me for a bit.  The night could not have been more perfect... one day past the Strawberry Moon.  I have plenty to grieve this year-- the loss of friends, relatives-- the absence of my former habitual performance schedule-- the closing of so many beloved shops and venues.  I am a shabby aging writer/musician... a dying bohemian breed with barely enough income to cover the most basic expenses. Apologies to my late mother, I pay little attention to my wardrobe and appearance; she who was proud and always groomed would surely pass me by on the street, the way she publicly ignored me when I was going through my grunge phase.   

And yet I am still in love with New York-- the silhouette, the stones and sidewalks, bricks and facades... the graves and plaques and benches which memorialize so many vanished writers and artists and composers and heroes. The faded narratives and unseen films-- the diaries and heartbreaks. I will be gone one day but tonight I participated in one of those random urban tales of intrigue and passion and some kind of longing... and it felt like closure. My own little movie-- no wardrobe, no lines... just me, the intruder and the witness, who altered the narrative just that bit-- left my tiny mark on the city. 

Somebody Loan Me a Dime

'I'm in a phone booth baby... got your number scratched on the wall...' The moment we all radio-heard Robert Cray sing those lyrics over two basic minor chords... well... it was an instant urban classic... so good even Albert King had to do a version.  I had to run out and buy that album-- not just because Robert sang those lines with authority and played like he meant it,  but because every one of us in the 1980's had had a phone-booth moment.  The vintage, 10-cent variety from the song.  

Not a few of us mourned the recent removal of the last public phone in the city.  The booth thing-- well it had been 21st-century minimized into a sort of 3-sided metal stall-- no glass, no funk, no soul. Not much privacy... not much use.  You could bet on some discarded lunch-garbage or worse on the little shelf.  You could also bet the line was dead-- cord vandalized, coin return mangled by some desperate junkie hoping to retrieve some change.  Not an appetizing thing to put the plastic receiver to your ear, especially with pandemic awareness.  In its favor, the thing was still weighty-- solid.

The very first time I made a pay-phone call I had to stand on the phonebooks to reach the dial.  Yes, there were phonebooks placed there in the old days... sometimes with chains, sometimes without. Who would steal a phone book?  They were free.  My Mom put dimes in our little penny-loafers so we could use them in an emergency.  I knew a few numbers in case she wasn't home-- there were neighbors, aunts and uncles.  You didn't call your father at work-- ever.  

The best booths were inside buildings... the train station-- airports... they had wooden sides and a little seat.  The door folded in and didn't fog up so much.  I got my first job acceptance from a phone booth...   there was even a free number you'd dial to get the exact time and still get your dime back.  Information was free.  When I ran away from home in high school I called my boyfriend and wept inside a phone booth.  I learned the sex of my baby boy from a payphone call... in Italy I learned to use gettone to wake up my secret lover six hours behind.  The studio where my first band rehearsed had no bell; you'd call from the street and they'd come and let you in.  I knew the number of the backstage phone at the Beacon theatre; the stage hands would let me in to see a show.  I sheltered from hurricane-force rain in one on Madison Avenue, collapsed there after being mugged.  I witnessed a pervert press himself against the glass while I was talking...  a girl change her entire outfit, like Superman... make-up and all... and yes, once in the UK (the best booths of all) I had sex with my husband in a phone box. 

I've personally written a small pile of songs about making calls from the street... I still don't carry a cellphone and for years have noticed the lyrical malaise of songwriting in general... the aching, the separation- the voice.  It's heartbreaking, in a way.. the things that are missing.  Hello, Baby?  Or the Muddy Waters... Sounds like a long distance call... and Here Comes my Baby flashing her new gold tooth... just to rhyme.  The Primitive Radio Gods song would never have broken hearts in this day of mobile phones.   

I, too, have written the poems-- from the Chelsea Hotel to 125th Street-- short stories and vignettes... witnessed infidelities, confided and confessed... I could have given a tour of the city from downtown to uptown with a caption for every phone booth.  I wish someone had made a film-- like Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer where he goes from pool to pool in Los Angeles.  No more.  The Colin Farrell movie remake will have to be re-staged; the next generation won't 'get it' anyway.  And when you see someone on the sidewalk you want to avoid, there is no hiding place.  

Noir films will never be the same... the streetlamp-light and the desperate tearful hang-up with the metallic ring-echo in the slam. The sound of coins dropping.  The little bucket that held your change.  One of my friends had a Twitter post... about how it was a little sad to see the last public phone be removed.   Me-- I'm deeply grieving... watched Manhattan the other night... in black and white they look especially good.  Poor old Woody Allen had his share of not just cinematic booths but undoubtedly real-life phone-drama.  And these calls were not traceable.  Drug deals were often completed... meetings set up.  People banged on the door after 3 minutes and lurked and threatened.  

When I lived in the UK a record collector asked me to get him a pay-phone from New York.  We had the whole thing shipped over and he set it up in his studio.  It cost a small fortune but he loved it.  I wonder if it's still there... if he's still alive, if that phone-box on the corner of Acton and Graham is still there-- the one where I sat up all night trying to decide whether to leave my British husband, waiting for the morning church bells and for the endless London rain to stop. 

Deborah Harry knows what it's like to be desperate in a phone booth... but maybe the all-time killer is the Fenton Robinson lyric, immortalized by Boz Scaggs among others... 'Somebody loan me a dime... I need to call my old time, used to be.'  If it were only that simple.