dmseay

There is three hundred dollars in my pocket as I walk around Manhattan like a somnambulist. Seventy-two hours are gone, and my money is depleting with every step I take; buying hot dogs and slices, kenish, smoked white fish from Russ and Daughters, pastrami sandwiches at Katz’s, a lox and bagel at Carnegie Deli, beers at The White Horse Tavern, and packs and packs of cigarettes as I play the juke box at Rudy’s. It is my wonderland. And soon I’ll be broke, back to normal. Strolling streets and pissing in alleys. But, it is glorious. Simply glorious.

Your luck changes on a dime in New York. With a few dollars on me, I fall into the Playwright in the Theater District and take my place at the bar next to a gentleman who looks as though he’s had a few. Drunks can go either way; incredibly generous or demonic in their actions. They offer money, drinks, and perhaps a bowl of soup. Kind souls. Or, they tell you to scram and threaten to kill you and your dog. It’s a flip of the coin.

He asks, what’s your game? What do you do? I tell him I’m a writer looking for material, and he’s the type of character I would love to put in a book.

Let me buy you a beer, he says. In fact, I’ll buy you several,  he laughs. I’ve always wanted to be in a book, he takes a drink. You know, I’ve had an interesting life, another drink is had. We toast. To your book, glasses clink.

So, where do you live? He asks. And I tell him the truth. Homeless? I would have never guessed that, he says. I nod my head and look around at pictures of Irish writers on the walls.

Well, not anymore. Let me write you a check. A grand ought to do it. Right? I tell him he is too kind. Yeah, I’ll write a check. What’s your name again?

And so, I’m back in the pink. Another grand. Saint Thomas Schmidt is looking after me.

You need anything else, I’m always here, he told me. Now, good luck to you. David.

Yes. Fortunes change quickly. The kindness of others. I cry out in the streets. The beauty of drunken souls.

Back on trains. Subways and the elevated which run through this city like food being digested, going down the throat and going into the colon only to shoot out into a million pieces of freedom, or one long log of misery that had to be forced out.

Yet, there is very little constipation here in Gotham. All who move through it, both night and day, do so with a purpose as Midwesten tourists look on in utter awe of steel buildings and bums, trees in Central Park, concrete constantly beneath their feet. These are the people who are blocked up. Either from excitement or sheer fear, they can not take a decent shit until they are home, safely tucked away in their suburban beds with thousand thread sheets and cups of tea at night, Sleepy time, Oolong, perhaps a glass of brandy or a shot of whiskey when the other is in bed dreaming of a lover across town, or the teacher at their kid’s school. Yes, back home where the toilet never clogs, where what they think is freedom, the American way lies on a doormat that says, Welcome.

I spoke to a tourist from Indiana who said, my New York dreams are coming true, with a large grin as his wife admired the white horses in Columbus Square. I responded, your New York dreams huh. What is that? Rape, murder, theft, perhaps a good mugging? His grin turned sour.

So, I ride the trains at night reading Baudrillard’s AMERICA. I am captivated by this Frenchman’s point of view and how similar it is to mine. Maybe I am a foreigner in this country. Could be I was dropped here long ago by Europeans in search of a good joke. Left here to fend for myself. I laugh. This is my place of birth. My home. How I wish to be adopted.

This night. A thousand miles away from home. And, I ask the question, where is my home? Certainly not back in Indiana where Midwesterners cling to religion, conservative politics, and pork tenderloin sandwiches with pickles on them. I never felt at home there. Which is why I left at such a young age. Maybe why I tried to kill myself; in and out of psych wards, given a hundred different pills, the questioning and advice from therapists, the ongoing cycling of my mind, who knows?

Maybe Chicago is my home. A town that took me in heart and soul. Women, religion, booze, books, bars, and culture all wrapped in a package with a ribbon on it and a sticker that says corruption; my kind of town. For I am corrupt. I am a sinner. We all know God loves sinners. And, so did Daley; the prophet in the mayor’s office looking down on all of us, saying, follow me.

Perhaps New York will be my home. The land of Miller, Mailer, Breslin,  and others, like Baldwin and Langston Hughes, who placed a dent in America’s shield of shit. These are my heroes. Could be I finally find peace; home sweet home.

Washington Square Park, where I sit watching drug transactions and bums sleeping on benches. There is $500 in my pocket. Do I spend money and get a hotel room for the night? Or, like my fellow derelicts and curl up in the night air? Both are impossible. I’m too wired. Too manic. Move, move, move, I tell myself. Run all over New York. Take it all in. Walk the West Side. Travel the East. Go up to Harlem for some soul food, buy a dirty water dog, a slice, go to Greenwich Village, take the ferry to Stanton Island, just get lost in it all. For I am in search of a home. But first, give this homeless woman $50; she’s earned it.

With all this around me; the lights, the sounds, taxis honking and moving swiftly up 8th Avenue, bums asking for money, crazies pleading for sanity, I stop and take it all in. Like a kid at Christmas time, I am fascinated by it all. And, the thought of where I might sleep tonight has not even entered my mind.

I’m too busy with the here and now. Looking at the starving and afflicted. People in need of love, understanding,  cash, opportunity,  something to get through this life of hardship and broken spirit. In need? I am here to give.

An insane woman talking to herself, I give her a twenty. A man on a bicycle traveling the wrong way on a one-way,  I give him a ten and tell him to change course. He yells and gives me the finger; I love this town.

Never have I seen anything like it. Sure, Chicago has its ups and downs, the poor and the very poor, the rich, and those with way too much, with no time to spare, it seems. Always busy placing fingers in pies. Licking frosting off cakes. New York has those in abundance and also the sinners and saints trying desperately to get by. And with six hundred bucks in my pocket,  which one am I?

Don’t fool yourself, David. You’re still a bum. Give some more cash away, you fool. Spend it all tonight and wake up tomorrow to start anew.

This is my mindset. Never half way, go all out and start again; broken and in need, looking for another Thomas Schmidt,  another Gladys, another Cleo. Surely I will find them. I always do.

Mania is sweeping through me. I stopped in a diner on 42nd Street and ordered a coffee with lox and cream cheese on a bagel. It is the best meal I’ve ever had. A true luxury in my stomach. Purple onion flavor mixed with capers and tomato; a feast. And the coffee with lots of cream and sugar. I will last all night, giving this metropolis my all and then some. Why not? Why not, indeed?

Finally, I’m in New York with seven hundred dollars on me; kept in my front pocket due to paranoia, the wallet in my back pocket is obsolete, I pretend it’s not there.

The bills are rolled in a thick wad; more money than I’ve had at one time in my life; thank you, Thomas Schmidt. You are a Saint. Or, a fool. Me? I’m simply lost. Lost spiritually, morally,  and physically. I have no idea where I am.

I used to want to help people,  maybe save their souls, but now I just want more and more and more at the cost of nothing. Don’t judge me. This is America at its best. The leaching of our fellow man. For Christ’s sake, we’re taught it in Bible school. We are told that our sins are forgiven if you just believe. Well, I believe….I believe.

Times Square is an adult porno paradise filled with perverts and pimps, whores and dope dealers, speed freaks and junkies, businessmen in suits, all clamoring for the same thing, women, transexuals,  transvestites, domanitrixes, glory holes, and peep shows. We are all in this together. But we are not all as one. Different people with different kinks about them. Some will survive while others die in gutters.

Few cities of America offer this on such a grand scale. New Yorkers are lucky. It’s right at their fingertips, just a jerk or a suck or a fuck away from dreams coming true. It is really quite something. The spectacular does not do it justice. It is sin on a grand scale. It’s a poker game if you will. And I’m cashing in all my chips.

I watch night go by, and I think to myself, she’s right. I don’t know Miller. I don’t see the beauty within. The search for the soul. The quest for both chaos and peace. What do I know? Sex. That is all my mind is capable of handling. It is a constant throughout the day and night. Even as a child, it was constant, a strange ongoing chase for the physical touch. Yet lost in the mind. Or, was it?

There are streetlights shining down on small Ohio towns as we cross the border from Indiana, where youth never leave and the old stay to die. But, I left. And when I did, my father wished me good riddance; my mother simply stood there in shock, thinking to herself, how could he do this? How could our boy leave paradise? She was never the wandering or wondering type.

I remember when I first tried to kill myself; viewing the ambulance from above as we drove rapidly through town, lying on a stretcher, feeling nothing but warmth, an embrace; I wanted to leave this town, this state, this apple pie philosophy topped with a scoop of vanilla; where’s the spumoni?

Awaking in that hospital bed after hours of sleep, no one was there to greet me back home from my trip to heaven’s gate. My father was not there. My mother was not there. Friends and enemies to celebrate my journey were not there. I just lied there in bed. Feeling nothing. No remorse, no guilt,  nor shame. I wanted to be dead, I thought. But then sexual thoughts entered my mind as if it never left. And even in that half dreamlike state, I had an erection that showed through white sheets I was wrapped in.

It was the nurse I wanted. Not a Bible or a book of virtue, but a brunette nurse who smiled at me and was soon replaced with my mother standing over me.

She did not shed a tear or yell at me. She simply whispered that the road to hell was paved with sin. And then she walked away.

So, no, I do not know Miller. His beauty escapes me. I know not the soul. Only the flesh. And yes, it is weak.

I watch America go by from the seat of an Amtrak train. A scotch and soda in hand as trees, rivers, and streams go by in front of me. Large cities and towns of the Midwest and Eastern parts of these United States while I read Baudrillard’s amazing insights on this country; a Frenchman traveling America with keen insight as to our triumphs and failures. From East Coast to West, he saw it all, the beauty and the ugliness. What humor.

I continue looking out the bar car window, fascinated by what Baudrillard has said of my native land. It’s a lot to take in, New York, the skyscrapers, people in lines waiting. Minneapolis, with its huge mega mall called The Mall of America. Again, the lines of people. What are they wanting? Why are they waiting? I knew what I wanted. I could no longer wait.

A woman sits at my table. She reminds  me of Cleo. Her red hair and emerald eyes. The tight-fitting sweater shows a near perfect form. She drinks coffee and reads Miller’s Sexus; a big, thick book filled with insight on the human condition and what it takes to be a true artist.

Do I talk to her? I know I would be perturbed if my reading was interrupted. She puts the book down and looks at me. Two readers engaged with one another. What is that you’re reading? She asks. I tell her a French philosopher’s view of this land of ours. She smiles.

I see you are reading Miller, I say. I’ve read Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn. But, never Sexus, Nexus, or Plexus. Tell me about it.

She reaches under the table and touches my thigh. Smiles, and says, you wouldn’t understand. You are tickled by the sexual writing of Miller. Have you really read him?

I guess not, I tell her. She laughs.

Rosy Crucifixion indeed.

I am sitting in a diner on Belmont under the L tracks eating a cheeseburger, so greasy that it swims on its own. No help. No paddling like an infant. Just fluid strokes in a pool of grease. The bun is soaked.

We meet here from time to time. Sat side by side on stools watching the old cretin flip grilled cheese sandwiches and put mustard on hot dogs as he rattles on and on about the old country. Telling tales of when he was younger and swam in the ocean. Or fished on his father’s boat for sardines. This fool. He had a choice to stay in beauty but chose to come here to the land of opportunity. He says he came here with nothing. Not a stitch of clothing nor a dollar in hand. The old Greek told Gladys she had the eyes of a troublemaker. And then he’d laugh while looking at me as if to say, run for your life, kid.

And perhaps he was right. I should have ran. Far away from her and Cleo, too, for that matter. They were both demanding too much. Destroying me. Preventing me from writing. A voice inside my head told me to leave. Get out of Chicago. Just do it. But first, one more night with Gladys and one more night with Cleo. Lord, forgive me of my sins.

Was I never in love with Cleo? No. Although I was in love with what she offered. Fine foods,  beautiful music, a sophistication about her. But, I was never in love.

And as for Gladys? My heart went out to her. She could have any man. And maybe she was having them all on her plate with gravy and mashed potatoes on the side with a fat juicy ribeye, smothered in wine butter. One never knows. I didn’t.

I thought she chose me. Of all the men in Chicago, I thought she chose me. I was never a meal. Only dessert.

What made her this way? I do not know. Those eyes and hips. I will  never forget her. But that laugh. That evil way she had about her enticed me more. She drew me in. Was she honest? It’s hard to say. It always is.

Throughout the dawn of time, people have lied. Gladys lied, Cleo lied, and I lied. We were all living a lie. And when living a lie, you fear the truth. You fear it will come to you. And that will be that. The trick was to move on before you were caught. That’s what the voice told me.

So, I called my old friend Thomas Schmidt, don’t you know. I knew he’d come through for me. I told him I was desperate, down on my luck. You’re always down on your luck, David. He said. I’ll meet you at Melrose in an hour. How much do you need? I told him a grand should do it. And, on the other end, there wasn’t a cough or a laugh or a snicker. He just said, OK.

I sat down at the Melrose and ordered a huge fluffy omelet with spinach and cheddar and onions with buttered toast and marmalade, hashbrowns as well. I didn’t have a dime to my name. Thomas was late. But, I didn’t sweat. I knew my savior would come.

Here David. He said. Take this. He handed me a wad of dough. Let’s talk business. I had to stop myself from laughing at him. I’ve loaned you over two thousand dollars. And I’ve been very lenient. However, I’m expecting the money back with interest. Again, I almost fell out of my seat. Sure thing, Tommy. I told him. Sure.

I walked out of that diner a new man. And I never contacted Thomas again. Who was he to tell me interest would be added. Nothing is free in this life. Nothing. Or is it?

It is four in the morning, and I am listening to Mozart on WFMT. The music is playful and lively. It is joyous. A happy piece with strings only. And yes, that damned cello comes through with its seducing sound.

She is asleep as I think about Gladys and her wool coat, unbuttoned, lifted up over her thighs, with snow falling as the city moved around us. And though I know nothing about her, I feel as though I know everything .

A fool? I think she is not. She knows what she is doing. Calculating? Perhaps. I am not sure. Gladys is a product of my lust. I went out in search of her. I found her. Will there be consequences? Who knows.

What has happened with Cleo? She is no longer as she was when we first met. What does she want from me? As I am thinking these thoughts, there is a tap on my shoulder. She is wearing a short silk robe with her breasts exposed, her legs perfectly smooth, eyes glowing in the dimly lit room.

Come with me, she whispers in my ear. The sprite grabs me by my cock and leads me into the bedroom where she pushes me down upon the bed, straddling me, grabbing me, kissing me and staring into my soul. And although she is there in the moment, I am not. I’m a million miles away thinking of ham sandwiches, liver pates, French baguettes, dark mustard, and Gladys.

Mozart continues playing as we sit up in bed sharing a cigarette. She tells me there is no one like me. Says I am an artist waiting for his moment to come. I know she is lying. Or, she is not honest with herself.

There is now the sound of a piano played softly. Quietly, as we lie back and fall into sleep. Her cheek is on my chest. Her lips are parted. What have I done? I ask myself. What have I done?

She grabs my hand and kisses me on my cheek as if we were old lovers rekindling a flame. She is wearing a wool coat and shows just a bit of bare skin. I notice freckles on her breasts and ankles uncovered.

You’re going to freeze to death, I tell her. Not if you keep me warm, she says. And I try my best to keep her warm, placing my arm around her waist, pulling her in by my side. I notice that her hips are wide. Her brunette hair collects snow falling from the heavens.

Come with me, she says as she yanks me into an alley. This woman is kissing me and holding on for dear life, lifting her coat to expose no clothes at all, only her body. Make it quick, she demands. Make it quick.

The morning sun is beginning to come out over the city. We kiss. Do you still want that cup of coffee? I ask her. She laughs, kisses me again, and says, I am now awakened.

Snow has stopped falling. City plows are sweeping the streets. We climb the stairs to Kurtz’s Tower, and she bids me good morning. Come again, she says. Come again.

She unlocks her door and walks in, closing it just a bit. Her green eyes look at me one last time. She whispers, I am Gladys. It is nice to have met you.

The door is closed.