All the Trains

Nothing can explain nor describe the feeling of being somewhere your soul had been curious to see ever since Fitzgerald kissed your mouth with his words or Djuna became your first true love. J.D. once wrote Down at the Dingy and though you won’t ever go find that dingy something in you understands why he could only write about New York. For the fast pumping blood this, New York, is the heart, and it is exotic because it doesn’t beat in the same language as your own “move with the wave to catch the breeze” thump, thump. Here everyone yearns to constantly be on the go while you only ever want to chill and see and touch as many things as possible.
This could have nothing to do with the Pacific’s children versus Atlantic’s children, and everything to do with being on vacation versus not being on vacation. The ice cream trucks here sell ice cream for four dollars so you are taught instantly not to trust anyone; because in what world would you ever? With four dollars at home you could probably-no factually buy an ice cream cone and some nachos. Still, for whatever sense you have that never stopped the lines of these ice cream trucks from flowing. And so many to one street! For some reason that has been the most unbelievable even though you saw Central Park and mentally recreated the first episode of Gossip Girl at Penn and Union station just to be sure. Most likely here you would like for me to stop referring to you as you and instead as I. One of us is anticipating a story but it is none of my business to tell you who. So let’s hold our breath and see what digs up as I contemplate deeply: Who stole my book Summer Crossing and why did they think they liked Grady better than me?
It started in Central Park in the area right before the river if you were coming from Broadway, near Playmate Arch-
Actually that is a lie. It started on the Nine with booted feet kicked up and reading The Plague by Albert Camus. I was only three pages deep so there was not much of a precise commitment going on. Originally The Myth of Sisyphus and I were pals but he accidentally got left behind. Almost missing my stop I got off at 242nd St. and Broadway, to race up the stairs to catch the 1 train. Feeling a bit unsure I asked a lady worker if it would take me “down or uptown”, not knowing what was considered what here. She smiled at me and I could tell in her mind she was saying, “Bless her heart,” because 242nd St. is the first stop going into Manhattan and last stop back to Yonkers.
Settled I hit the 1 and rode and read, and read and watched the people coming and going. Subway riders have the brattiest children. Kerouac said Los Angeles was the loneliest city in the world and that New York, especially in the snow, has a sense of comradeship. Maybe somewhere in the blood this is true, but every time I smiled at someone I made eye contact with they frowned or scuffed at me. So I trained my eyes up toward the sky or down at my feet to see which way they would take me. At least at home if a smile is given meaningful or not another smile meaningful or not is returned. To know people in Los Angeles is to be guaranteed someone is willing to take a nap with you. If I lived in New York I would want to spend all my time alone combing the streets and knowing no one. Perhaps that’s what Kerouac meant by being comrades? I wouldn’t know I’m only staying two weeks.
I hoped off at Christopher St. dyslexia kicked in so for an hour I kept calling it St. Christopher Street. From there I walked down ninth, peered down Gay Street interested to know if it really was such a happy place or if it was generic and only meant gay people frequented there. Waverly halted me at its corner for a moment almost convincing me to go down and see for myself if wizards really lived there. Desperate I was on a mad hunt for Djuna Barnes. Lying to people blatantly telling them I wanted to check out the Met or various museums. These things could very well come in due time but not before I had found her.
A sort of inkling told me that I had passed Greenwich Village when I saw NYU flags. I stopped into a small Mexican restaurant to regroup and was greeted by two quizzical stares from two guys already seated with their meals. One was older the other younger, but both much older than myself. A lady was the cook and she was short and would only speak in Spanish, the guy, waiter, had tattoos, fairly fit, with facial hair. When I first walked in he couldn’t give me the time of day, he wouldn’t meet my eye. I thought perhaps I was sweatier than I realized, but when I asked for the menu, to which he tossed at me to continue his Spanish dialogue, I finally saw all the gay pride flags hanging around. This is probably a stereotype but when I think of pride flags I only ever picture guys and really butch lesbians; which is probably ridiculous because I’m sure non butch lesbians and maybe bi people too, have just as much pride.
Digressing, there seemed to be a veil lifted from my eyes and I understood the looks. I handed back the menu and the waiter guy turned to me and gave me an actual once over. We looked into each other’s eyes and I can’t explain it, but suddenly we seemed to get some fraction of each other. One of us smiled first then the other happily returned it as I ordered a cheese quesadilla. It took five minutes and the whole time the waiter and I kept in constant casual eye contact and smile. The quesadilla done I used their tiny airplane bathroom and took my leave. Out and a little refreshed and sick I realized as I turned yet another corner that I had left behind my water bottle. I felt awfully bad about it but didn’t go back because a husband and wife passed me by with the husband pushing a gray stroller with a baby inside it.
They were wonderful and I was hot and lost so it only seemed right to trail them. We were going the same way anyway. The guy had on a blue baseball cap and the wife a beige sunhat, and I wanted them to be happy for the rest of their lives because in front of an apartment, that I wondered if Holly was a phony in, they stopped. The wife looked at the husband who was saying something I couldn’t really hear. Together she and I followed his pointing finger down to a crack in the ground between them. She became amused and they talked as she searched for a small leaf. She laughed as she scooped something up from the ground to place in some plants on a neighboring fence. They continued on but I went to those plants to see what they saw…and there on that little green leaf they found was a small white caterpillar saved from being trampled on.
I realized then as they grew further and further away from me that I had no right to them after all. How could anyone eavesdrop on pure happiness like that and not feel a little guilty? They escaped and I turned yet another corner, if you know shapes then you would understand that I was nearly a complete square, and stumbled upon a blue eyed bald forty something year old man. His shorts were too short as sadly most men’s shorts are, and in one hand a brief case and in the other a purse. I hoped he was going to be my first drag queen and was momentarily off duty. He told me he lived in New York ten years and still couldn’t give directions, then kindly yet obnoxiously flung me due left towards ninth again. He told me to look for a giant library with a clock tower. I’d be there then.
He walked ahead of me because he felt that I suddenly wanted nothing to do with him. It was true I didn’t because he told me he lived there ten years and still couldn’t find things. If he didn’t want to help me he should have said so. I don’t live here at all but I got myself there and every night from being heaven knows where I’ve managed to always collapse in the same bed in Yonkers. Here I turned a final corner and there was the clock tower I’d first mistaken as a church. The inside moderately impressed, it had fantastic stairs-the outside however, from a glimpse through a window had a beautiful courtyard. Everything was so green and I needed to touch all of it, but it was closed.
That was okay I stumbled upon Patchin Place because of it and froze across the street. There it was. There she was, Djuna Barnes, dead thirty-five years and her presence rapidly engulfing my soul. I couldn’t breathe, I could hardly move. I sat down on a stoop just to stare down Patchin waiting for something to happen. I don’t know what exactly, if Djuna Barnes and I existed at the same time I’d be exactly the personality she would hate. In increments her ghost finally realized I was too alive to be swallowed whole and allowed me to get up and cross (timidly) over to the Patchin Place gate.
My brown little fingers pushed it open and closed it quietly behind me. I wanted to touch every single window and door but so many blinds were open and so many people home. Instead I walked down the very end of it under the gas lamp, first briefly paying my respects to the E.E. Cummings plaque, though I don’t think I honestly read him before. To be perfectly frank I could have stood under that lamp for three seconds or forty-five minutes. Being there made me want to write so badly. Being there made me tremendously sorry Djuna suffered from depression and alcoholism. Being there assured me that no one could or would ever write like her. Knowing that made the previous two statements less important and I was glad.
Some other less passionate but highly influencing things happened after. The 1 brought me back to 42nd St., and Central Park called out to me in light whispers until I had to give up my hunt for the church and my need to light candles and get down on knees. In the upset Central Park promised it would be a good nature church and held me in confession for three hours. When it was all through we came out spiritually weeping at the most orange sunset I had ever seen right between The Natural History Museum; Just me, The Father, and Seneca Village those poor haunted souls. When night woke up I chased down the Q to the L and escaped via Morgan Street determined to meet Gregor for drinks at Tutu’s by 9:30. I showed up at ten, she showed up at 10:15, we laughed and laughed and embraced. Neither one of us ever figuring we would see each other again since high school had been through. Let alone realize that our friendship had accidentally become a real one. And how much prettier and good hearted she had become! Gregor, given this name because her parents thought she was going to be a boy, seemed for the first time genuinely happy with and in life. She told me all sorts of stuff and in return I told her all about the people we know or used to know. Being that her special skill is breaking tabs and mines keeping them. We had three drinks and all of mine were vodka and Red Bulls.
She walked me back to the subway at about 12:30 and I was not drunk but highly tipsy. We hoped to see each other again before I left, then I descended the stairs underground. Riding the L back I had to pee so I got off at 1st Ave., sprinted up the steps, found a building with a walled courtyard, and peed hoping all the blinds to each window was not being peeked out of. With the Q there was going to be more peeing but it was under construction, so the A and I settled that business together instead. Probably it was awkward for the A because I had never ridden it before. Here came the beautiful 1, and a sixty-four year old, possibly drunkard, from Harlem sat next to me, and we vibed hard (though I am aware that that is not a real word. No seriously type it into your computer, the red line appears). So hard in fact he missed his stop by one. He really believed in God and I really believed in him. He told me that he liked me because he wasn’t hitting it off with my mind but with my heart. We blessed each other when we parted and I was sad to see him go.
It started with the Nine and at two am waiting for it to come for me is where it ended. A guy talked to me briefly at the bus stop. He thought I spoke Spanish and made a joke in it at a pestering cab drivers expense. I laughed anyways as I walked circles in the street keeping my eyes peeled for fireflies in the park. It was at this time as I took in my fellow bus waiters that I finally understood Kerouac’s comrades.
You see there is an hour given to everyone who dwells in New York City, a sixty minute period where the city and themselves make sense to each other. Mine was at two am in that empty 242nd St. and Broadway curb amongst the late night winos across the street laughing with each other, the sketch taxi’s trying their luck at customers, and the tired bus takers waiting to get home. There in that empty street as I walked my circles I saw how empty and quiet the city could become. How big and motionless it knew how to be…and…I loved it all at once. Every detail, every person, every dirty mark-it all came crashing down on me in perfect rhythm and I got it. Not the people or the things but the hour, the hour was New York’s comrades and all those who existed in that hour came with that hour. It was too beautiful to take. The city was telling me if I lived in it then this hour belonged to me, it would be my thriving hour, and all those who I came across in it were no more than my very own allies.
We would all look into each other’s face and know we were all merely fighting to exist. Knowing this put me at ease with New York and if I were never to see another part of it again for the rest of my life I would be okay with that. Because New York squeezed my hand and said, “I understand you now.” I squeezed right back and said the same. Then identical to its lover Los Angeles we came home and slept in that same Yonkers bed because we were both so very tired.