Blindsided

When I was in grade school, a blind boy moved into my neighborhood and we became friendly.  He was super intelligent and well read.  My Mom, who was a miraculously fast typist, was a volunteer transcriber of books into Braille.  In those days, the machine that punched the holes was incredibly interesting to me-- a child.  There were musical manuscripts, too; my Mom played piano and was useful for this work as well.     

I've written before about the special relationship I had with the blind boy-- how we had a kind of conversational intimacy I'd had yet to experience.  It was addicting; I loved our sacred after-school hours, exchanging ideas.  He could sense the hour of the day-- he could gauge the nearness of objects and I let him run his hands over my face and my hair.  My mother began to disapprove of our exclusive little twosome.  I moved and walked a certain way in his presence, as though it mattered more; this creeped her out.  I realized in retrospect, as an adult, that I'd never felt so 'seen'.  

So he went away and when he returned he had regained some of his sight.  He visited me and did not share this information; we were as we'd been.  Then I found out from some other kids that he could see me... and I was furious.  Why did he deceive me this way?  Because he was afraid I would no longer love him he said. Love-- a word we'd never exchanged; no one did, at that age.  It was something we casually put on valentines and repeated in songs.  

Anyway, things were never the same.  His family moved again and we didn't write-- braille or otherwise.  One day another boy walked into our classroom with a cane and dark glasses.  My heart opened... it turned out that he'd had some kind of surgery or episode and was light-sensitive.  He also was dull and silly and told bad jokes. After discovering Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, I realized I'd somehow mistakenly linked a grade school disability with some kind of brilliance.  He was anything but.  

There's a man (one of many) in my neighborhood who asks for money with a cup and a cane.  He's wheelchair-bound-- used to sing but no more... he's missing one leg and part of the other.  We talk occasionally when I see him 'on break' in the park, eating some of his 'take'.  A local Mt. Sinai doctor told him he could be fitted with an artificial limb-- a prosthesis-- he could become mobile.  He'd rather just have the $5 deposited in his cup, please.  It wasn't the pain, he told me-- yes, it's not easy to go through this process; I read "Slow Man' during the pandemic and it was pretty graphic.  But my panhandling friend looked me penetratingly in the eye and asked 'Woman, where would I be without my disability?' And lit a cigarette.  

It stayed with me all day, his rhetorical question... I mean, who are we all, each one of us-- without our flaws and handicaps and failures? They motivate us, make us create and empathize... sometimes they kill us, cripple us, destroy our families and loved ones.  I have so many friends whose lives are defined by their substance of choice. After the blind boy in grade school, I have fallen in love with not just the addict but their addiction, somehow.  Heroin, when I was 19, was like a test of courage-- a living dare-- an edge you crossed or didn't.  I lived briefly with an addict and was fascinated by the rituals and the daily fluctuations... the obstacle course of a two day cycle-- I was spectator and enabler-- lover and audience-- it was like an adventure, sleeping with danger-- penetrating a deep enigma I could not understand.  Like with the blind boy, I was deluded into believing this other-worldly companionship was mystical and deep  and superior.  

We are all psychological magicians; we turn bad habits into rabbits, we stuff things into hats... we hide behind curtains and mask our true feelings.  We transform... we use drugs, we drink.. we fall in love. All these things change us, or change our belief in what we are.  We have plastic surgery and put on wigs-- we lose weight and build muscles and sculpt our bodies and faces.  In the end, we are only as real as our disabilities-- the B-side of our talents and potential.  At the end of the day, I admit I envy my wheelchair friend his simple answer.  All in.  I am so often on an existential fence.  

So many of my friends and acquaintances wear the badge of Recovery.  It's something the uninitiated of us cannot really understand.  My disability, I suppose, is not having had a diagnosable addiction or issue from which I could emerge like a phoenix.  I don't have any landmarks or the daily reward of measuring my own transformation.  I have no badge or social media post for which others congratulate me.  I do have the daily struggle of human existence--   trying hard to overcome my personal roadblocks, to survive long enough to leave something possibly memorable when I die.  And to recognize sympathy when it is warranted-- to accept and not necessarily fall in love with a disability, no matter how seductive we find these people who may not necessarily deserve our devotion. Then again, who am I to judge anyone on a street corner with a cup or a cane or dark glasses--- or the man in his penthouse failing to see anything from his massive glass world? Not necessarily disabled but disqualified....

You Can Leave Your Socks On

Late-Mondays Times Square underground platforms are a kind of reality stage for a cross-section of New York City not everyone gets to sample.  Recently there is a sprinkling of track workers because
there is always post-midnight repair activity and endless delays... so you have more time to settle into the drama. By 2 AM there is little musical entertainment, but plenty of hustlers and salesmen of a variety of wares-- stolen cheap watches, re-wrapped candy, articles of clothing and discarded earbuds...  talkers, lonely displaced people with nowhere else to spend the night... shuffling old women often close to your own age...dragging their shopping bags, hunched over and unwashed... the squishy stenchy hardcore car-sleepers... rats taking their time doing a sluggish diagonal dance on the tracks because train traffic is sparse; there is a kind of rare silence.

Last week a nice-looking guy with sideburns sat down on one of the wooden seats and took off his boot.... he had clean white sport-socks on, and he started in scratching.  Minutes later he'd scratched so hard the ground was littered with dancing clumps of white fuzz from the cotton... and still he went at it; I tried not to look.  After a time, a sick yellow-green ooze started to penetrate his socks; my stomach turned over...  he stopped-- as though the liquid seepage was the antidote to the itch.  He shook out his boot, stuck his foot in and walked to the north staircase of the uptown 1/2.  Just like that.

Not even a minute later, a drunk young couple sat down where he'd been working his foot... I tried to warn them, but they were too busy groping each other.  I'm no germaphobe but I felt a little tense in my seat on the train;  I started to reconsider trying on shoes in thrift stores.  In every car, the late-shift was working the crowd--- asking for handouts-- food, old gloves, a smile...  the same girl I've seen nearly every week gets on looking for enough money to buy a room for the night.   Her eyes are glazed, her feet are filthy and bare, her skin is pocked with needle-marks and infected sites.  It's more than sad.  You squirm and don't give her money to get high... but you feel ashamed of the C-note in your pocket even though you can barely come up with your month's expenses, even with the care packages from the kitchen at your gig.  A man gets on and sits across from you-- bloodshot eyes, a wedding ring-- he looks guilty and somehow sated.

All the stories in New York City-- the lit and unlit windows, the drawn shades, the silhouettes.  My friend's boyfriend has been seeing another woman; I know this and don't say anything.  It's not my role to hurt her, to bust him... I'm caught.  Another woman just ended her marriage when she found her husband hopelessly addicted to porn and heroin.  She must have been the last to know, or the last to want to know until it was in and on her face.

My best friend in the world is an ex-- one of those men who comes in and out of your life between disastrous relationships and marriages. You figure one day you'll marry him, but you're not quite ready to surrender to yesterday's clothes that have lost their style and no longer really fit.  Still, he's there.... or is he?  You walk by his place one random night; he always comes to yours-- his is essentially a mattress on the floor, some piles of books, dingy walls and permanently shut blinds.  You buzz up... and a woman answers... it seems he no longer lives there... has he forgotten to mention to you that he's moved?  Who are you, you text.  You get home late-late and he's been calling..  and the tales begin to unravel like a committee of scriptwriters batting around a scene.  On the third night your lawyer friend looks up his court records and it seems he's secretly married.  He's living with some Asian waitress--- sublet his place and moved to Queens.  You are stunned... not exactly hurt, because it's not like that-- but stunned.  Like your security blanket has been ripped away... like a betrayal.  He cries... how could he have lied to you?  Every day-- every FaceTime, every call, every joke-- because he sees you nearly every day-- tells you everything... except this.  Day 4, he claims he's miserable, he hates his life-- he hates the lies, he's always loved you-- well, sort of, because it never really worked out between you...  but he has been your health-care proxy, your emergency contact.  Who is this man?  The Asian woman is a bitch and is showing her age-- not a nice comment, because she is like twenty years younger than you are.  I guess this happens once the green card is inked.  The double life thing...

When I was a teenager I saw my best friend's father making out with a young woman in a restaurant.  It wasn't him, my Mom assured me... but it was.  Or it wasn't 'him' but it was my friend's father.  Itch.  The oozy, itchy leaking feet underneath those clean white socks.  Like a metaphor.  Who are these people?  I remember when we were young kids--- underneath our clothes we were beautiful and innocent... still honest enough in our free-love practice not to really hurt anyone... clean, even when we were bad.... but life goes on-- our scars and wounds and complications besiege us with small disappointments and failures... and we escape-- some of us have music and art-- fantasy... but others confuse their life opportunities with an emotional vacation... they create these webs of deceit and they knot themselves up so there is no way out without ripping off an arm or leg.

I don't love the guy.  No, but I expected loyalty-- honesty?  Some version of this... after all, what did he have to lose?  Me?  If you watch someone scratch long enough you start to itch.  I don't want to see what's underneath most people anymore.... we use our imagination.  This is why people love their pets-- their babies...  with humans it's complicated.  Needs... secrets-- stuff we hide that festers into addictions and lethal diseases... syndromes and mental illness.  So what now?  Amputate the guy?  You would never have known-- what were you missing?  Not  much?  You didn't need so much from him-- just trust, faith-- the phone calls and facetimes-- the seat next to you at your Mom's funeral.... It's a quandary.  The truth is more complicated than it should be.  It's a dirty fork in your road, here.

At the end of the 2 train ride, you get out.. you've got a couple of bucks to buy vegetables at the fruit stand; the same panhandler always there to greet you at 3 AM.  Hey, Baby, he says, like a question.  You wind up with 17 cents.  You tell him... 17 cents.  That's it.  That's not it, he says-- that's a fucking blessing.  He thumbs-up you as you drop the coins into his cup and he looks happy.  Clean.  Simple.  The truth.  He's a damned angel, this guy.  Somehow you feel better.

Crosstown Traffic

Last week I found myself in front of the television-- not just once but twice-- watching the film "Traffic".  This is a hefty investment of late-night time… and it's not the first time I have re-viewed it.  It is not the acting or the story per se, although the treatment is intriguing and Benicio del Toro has always been one of my favorites (ditto the Brian Eno soundtrack choices).  I have to be honest-- my favorite scenes are those of Erika Christensen and her friends getting high, getting fucked up, in that sort of innocent high-school way you discover drugs…and it is not just a world you enter, but a kind of baptism-- a conversion.

Sex in high school can be awkward and ambivalent and there was the threat of pregnancy or commitment or infuriating your best friend by hooking up with the boy she loves who really loves you even though you love some college boy who is unattainable.  The temptation of letting someone's passion spill over you is irresistible and you let it happen.  But drugs… it's the ultimate Hall Pass.  No guilt, no fear, no lines to blur.  You push a button or pop a pill, and you are inter-planetary.  You can fly… you can float-- you can  dance-- you are your own future-- you are everywhere and everything.  Music is 3-D, 3-D is 4-D.  Boys are sexy and sex is slow and loose the way you dream it.

Drugs when you are young are like freedom.  They are recess, they are unlocked doors and windows and no rules.  But most of all--- they let you love yourself, or they let you let someone else love you in the way you can't in regular teenage life because you hate looking at yourself in the mirror some days.  You hate your life and especially your parents and you haven't yet realized this will have absolutely nothing to do with your adult life if you are smart and brave.  But when you are high, for just a minute, your room is not your world and your face is so not your face.

And I apologize to my niece and my son and all the kids and adults I have seen struggle to manage the massive attraction of substances, and I have not used anything for decades and do not necessarily have the desire.  But watching this film-- -and others-- does not leave me with a message of relief or wisdom.  And of course, like a permanent vacation, Cancun or Paradise gets boring; witness Adam and Eve and just about every fairytale and Biblical parable where reality wins.  Even Hollywood angels have chosen to return to earth and suffer mortal torments.  Not to mention that the mechanism of addiction leaves a user little choice; it is get high or be sick.

Some days the pain of sobriety-- if you happen to be a sensitive person--- is brutal.  I am one of those people who get flagged by Seventh Day Adventists and street hustlers.  Beggars smell me coming.  I can't refuse them.  I feel pricked and guilty and sheepish and human.  I curse my good fortune even though I can scarcely fill my pantry these days, have gaffers tape on my boots.  I come home from a 4 AM train ride feeling smaller-- a little beaten up and with that teenage mirror-angst.  Who the fuck am I and why should I give money for food to people who smell like alcohol and body rot?  Is it superstition?  A test?  Fear of meeting the Indian goddess of luck who stalks the earth in various disguises and should you refuse her will curse you with bad fortune until you die?

As an adult, Love was maybe my drug of choice.  Music--- playing at a volume that challenges all your senses-- almost pushes you across the border… but not quite.  The song ends, and you return.  You are left with a little aura-- maybe a little more attitude-- that Fuck You thing if you play rock and roll.  You jump off a stage and feel no pain.  But it's not the same kind of high.

So I watch this film and the teenage daughter getting fucked up with what I confess is a kind of fascination or envy.  Of course former users or addicts will never recreate their first innocent experiences, no matter how much we fantasize.  And the fictional girl in the film doesn't have to worry about college loans or car insurance or parents that don't love her, like most of us… and on the surface, she hasn't really ruined her life the way some of us have.

Walking down the street today it seemed the scent of marijuana is everywhere… even in Central Park in the secluded little uptown copse where I write songs occasionally.  Smoke always made me dull-- not my drug of choice.  Thinking about the exits and near-exits I've witnessed this year-- inconclusive suicide, self-euthanising, and then the ones desperate to hang on who were just dropped by the universe…  and passing my local junkie 'clique' enjoying their late-afternoon 'nod', one of them hovering on the curb like he's about to dive off-- eyes closed, mouth open… I'm more than middle-aged…I'm lucky to have a couple of quarters to give the guy who sleeps on the church steps… my local homeless guy knows where I shop and what I buy and he stopped hitting me up long ago.  His hair is perfect, by the way; he could play himself in a film.  He shows me a wrinkled tabloid photo of the new Wonder Woman.  She's dressed in black now.  Even the name doesn't sound right anymore… Wonder Bread, Wonder Boys, Wonder Wheel.  Heroin(e).

Needlemarks (Coda)

Some time ago I posted and quickly removed this piece.  Prompted by a near-relapse, I'm re-posting:

NEEDLEMARKS

About a year ago I read an amusing essay by Terry Castle—a bona fide academic and wit-- called ‘Heroin Christmas’, recounting the period she spent reading Art Pepper’s autobiography ‘Straight Life’ and singing its praises.

Of course, I immediately ordered this from my library and within moments was incredulous and hooked into the brutally honest account of the colorful life of this tragically addicted but brilliant jazz saxophonist. So much so that I was compelled to date a kind of East Coast/Jersey Shore version of Art. Heroin or not, the dysfunction was sufficient to fuel my personal reality show for at least the summer/fall season. He played alto like a Bird, but spoke like a Soprano and behaved like a Neanderthal. What was I thinking? Something similar to the summer I adopted an abused pitbull puppy and tried to rehabilitate it with kindness and patience. I nearly lost an arm.

Back to the sex---er, sax player. He drove an old Lincoln filled with garbage, dogeared music, scratched cds, masses of unpaid parking tickets and women’s underwear like a kind of advertisement. He called me ‘Baby' even in my local Starbucks. Although he was nearly 50, he wore bowling shirts and ghetto sneakers. Alternatively, there were the 1980's-style mafia Hollywood suits to harmonize with the Godfather dialect. His hair was long and blonde (colored, I discovered to my horror), and his nose was constantly running. His manners were atrocious—table, bed, etc. He ate like a man who has lived alone most of his life, he received texts from women at 4 AM in my bed while telling me I’m the only one for him. Of course the gigs were fantastic, and he’d leave the stage and play these brilliant Coltrane-runs at my table. I was briefly blinded by the jazz-romance, and the endless stretch of rehabilitative possibilities which maybe filled the gap left by my last rough teenager finally coming of age.

I’m sure the novelty of dating an ivy-league slightly older mother-type wore off fairly quickly, but he was a little intrigued by my bass playing and macho-jealous enough to hang on for dear life. The poor guy even proposed marriage at the same time he was facebooking my girlfriends and soliciting women's phone numbers even at my own gigs. I broke it off so many times even I lost count, until I realized the guy wasn’t actually listening. He plays, he blows, he serenades…but most of all he ‘solos’. When he is not soloing he is not only NOT listening, but seems to be simply waiting for his next solo, the next opportunity to flex his musical muscle. Ditto the romance. Our conversations were totally one-sided, not unlike the pitbull who at least gave me some soulful looks as I was preparing his meal. The sex?  With a narcissistic soloist?  Do the math.

I finally reached one humiliation over my highest maternal limit, and checked out. Nine days sober and counting, he doesn’t seem to have noticed. He plays to me on my voicemail, calls me Darling and is undoubtedly still texting from someone else’s bed.

As for me, I am a little sad and miss my heroin summer, but am glad to have my friends back and my credibility is only slightly dented. This, unlike a broken heart and my damaged ears, will hopefully heal. As opposed to Art’s trackmarks which both followed and drove him to an early grave. I guess I’ll have to pick a new addiction for the winter. Maybe I’ll even celebrate my own heroin Christmas. Or I’ll adopt another puppy.

Ouch.

Easter Banksey

I looked over two estate sales today at the auction houses. Michael Crichton… his collection seemed smart and corporate-literate. As though he’d had an advisor, and his own point of view in a way… scientifically collected, with a few impulse-buys. One wonders about these celebrities…doesn’t he have a family, don’t these things have personal value or do they pay tribute by having the public bidding on a piece of their life, in plain view—I mean, it’s not like a piece of Elvis or Marilyn Monroe… does the provenance provide security? I’d feel better with a picture from an artist, someone who knows.

Then there was Nina Abrams… a world-class human. Her ‘collection’ was all over the place, from Picasso and Warhol to stuff made by the school janitor. That makes her a good person. I poked through one of those Christies jumble sales… lives there, the way you see cartons of books in cheap thrift shops… filled first with college texts, then books on investing money, mortgages, then wedding planners, What to Expect When You’re Expecting, Private School Catalogues, then a bunch of novels, self-help and diet books… in the end some books about dying and meditating and Illness as Metaphor… then the carton. Done. My kids won’t even bother putting them in a carton--- they’ve already assured me everything will be in a dumpster next day while they put a cinema-sized flatscreen on the wall with whatever pathetic IRA money I may or may not have left.

Still, I look at the paintings… a few estates with good stuff in crummy frames because they cared about the art, not the décor. I like to find things. The galleries and big sales are riddled with landmines and holes, re-packaged gum wrappers and inflatable toys, but I can still hear some things calling me with a bell-clear voice. Which gets hard amidst all the hype and drama. Noise in our culture. No wonder no one can see straight. We give up listening.

That girl that got herself killed on the 6 train because she jumped down to get her phone… she wasn’t listening. Except for her ringtone. A man who came into the station just after it happened said he saw her arms sticking up—like a mannequin… he thought it was a dummy or a doll— a set maybe. I was in the train behind, cursing and stuck with the other pissed-off passengers until they made an announcement. Then the noise stopped. For a few minutes, anyway.

Yesterday I was on that platform.. like nothing happened… thinking there must have been tiny residual bits of flesh and body that got eaten by the rats. They have no way of judging. In a way this is all the democracy left.

I came out of my friend’s gallery in Chelsea and there was an ambulance--- a body on a gurney, covered-- you get that feeling, that sick feeling—it could be you-- 20 minutes ago that person was looking at a painting and a chandelier fell on their head… or an elevator malfunctioned… or their heart just got sick of the overtime…whatever. Then I realized… someone was directing---it was all being filmed. They were just actors… or it was an art piece… a performance thing… and people were looking, people had had emotion...because they thought it was real. It was drama. Maybe the woman who jumped—she was a drama queen. Or the kid from Yale. What was he saying? The goddamn Empire State Building. Empire Skate my little boy used to say. If you want to end it all, there are better ways. Quiet ways. Ways that don’t risk falling on some 4-year-old future genius or his mother. But these people are not being followed by paparazzi and maybe they just
wanted something. Some interest.

Banks--- they have no interest in you. They only care about rich people. They deduct and deduct and there is no more INTEREST for the customer. They have your money—if you want theirs, pay for it. Something happened since I was 5 and opened up my first little savings account with a book and a lollipop and interest. Now they charge you 50% of your money in fees and give you a pen that lasts long enough to sign a few checks.

My friend is married to a teddy bear. He is Harry Potter and the Pillsbury Doughboy. But here’s the thing: He’s a teddy bear with money. He earns money, he shits money. Apparently.
Sexy guys shit real shit. And sometimes it stinks. Sometimes they shit on your life.

I once had a dog. It wasn’t a poodle but it had soul. It messed stuff up.
In the end these people.. .they’re alone with their poodles and their paid housekeeping-neatness and their stupid well-framed Richard Princes and Bankseys and their money.

Every few weeks lately… I get this feeling, like my personal banks are going to flood along with all these forgotten people who get 10 inches of rain in one day and cresting rivers with no functioning dams and no interest from the banks and insurance companies. … I can feel it rising...

Yesterday the phone rang.. .and it is my best friend—the one that shot heroin and was broke and sleeping on sofas and cried about it, the one that dressed up like an UES woman going to tea and still shot heroin—the one I took for her amnio 4 months pregnant who pretended to be clean and shot up in the Mt. Sinai toilet. That one.

Well, she’s producing rock bands now and getting paid all kinds of money to make them ‘industry-ready’ which basically means she sucks dick and acts like they’re sucking hers. But we know better. Yeah, she buys $500 Starbucks cards and gets driven around the city with $100 take-out bags… but the thing is, what happened to her SINGING? I mean, life sucks unless you are painting or singing. Or whatever. Listening.

She’s got money, she says… like she’s better than I am. Money.. .what is it in the end but a ticket to nothing, to nowhere, because you’re a passenger…you’re the audience. You’re not shit. You eat expensive shit.

You’re getting dark, she says. But I didn’t even get started.