dmseay

Wishing the mania would go on forever. Thinking the money will never end. But, it is. And a gloomy cloud of depression starts to build up inside. I sit in a diner owned by Greeks on Lexington eating an egg sandwich. The price isn’t bad; $5.50. I begin counting the money in my pocket. There are tens and twenties; long gone are the fifties and the hundred dollar bills. I’m below a hundred. I’ve got $88 to my name. The mania tells me to spend and spend it quickly. The depression also wants me to spend it in a rapid pace. And, I know the end is coming soon. There will be none. Then it’s back to hitting day labor jobs, calling friends to donate to the cause, family , anybody to keep me afloat; I’m sinking. The water is up to my chin.

I’ve been awake for almost a week now. I’ve walked all over this city. Sitting by the Hudson River, I look out across at New Jersey. I think it’s New Jersey; my sense of direction is off; No longer am I sure of what is south or north, east or west. I don’t know this city. I thought I did from my youth, but, I didn’t know it then either. I reflect on the time when I was eighteen and I came to the city with $500 on me. That was back in the ’86. I immediately got a room for $250 a month. I got a bartending job within a matter of hours. I was young and fit. I had no fears. It is now I realize that back then was the beginning of my down fall. Unable to keep jobs. Constant suicidal thoughts. Up all night combing the city looking for trouble. I lasted two months then returned to the Midwest with my tail between my legs. I think about that time and I begin to cry. I fully understand my life to be one catastrophy after another; job after job. Hospitalization after hospitalization. A million pills taken throughout my life. And for what? To make me feel better? To keep me alive?

Sitting on a bench looking at the Hudson. I lay my head down and the breeze blows. I fall asleep. I dream. I dream…

The mania is starting to wear off. I sit in Washington Square Park wondering what my next move will be. The month is November. I’m beginning to forget what day of the week it is. I think it’s a Monday. Not sure. Could be a Friday. People walk by with baked goods and coffee. I check my pockets. There is $200 left. I think of going into a bar and drinking myself to death. Then I think of jumping in the Hudson. Or, in a dramatic fashion, off The Empire State Building. If that is possible. Wild thoughts go through my head on a daily basis as they always have.

Folks protesting climate change are setting up under the arch. A man playing saxophone opens up his case to collect bills and change. He plays the Coltrane classic, Naima. I hear the notes and I begin to cry. There’s something about sound. Music makes me weep. It has since I was a child. Even when I was a babe I cried at the sound of music. A trumpet, piano, anything that strikes a note makes me tear up; either tears of joy or tears of sorrow; not really sure. Signs and literature are being handed out by the weather freaks. Maybe they’re right? It’s November and the temperature is 70 degrees in New York. Am I in New York? Maybe this is a dream. Maybe I’m in Florida? Or, Hollywood? Perhaps I’m in the Tenderloin section of San Fransisco? Now I see a naked woman being photographed in the center of the park and I realize I’m in New York.

She is a beauty. Tall and statuesque. Dark black skin and long brown hair. I think it’s a wig. She strikes different poses. Nobody seems to notice, but, me. I look on. Not in a lustful way, but, in a way of admiration. I want to tell her I think she’s beautiful. However, I don’t have the guts. Bukowski would have told her. Bukowski would have done a lot of things. So would Henry Miller. These men were fearless. Completely in touch with their own reality. I have yet to realize mine. Then again, some things are best unsaid.

I’ve been up off and on for 72 hours now. Taking cat naps on park benches. I call myself El Gato. I walk into the men’s room in the park and throw cold water on my face. I run my fingers through my greasy black hair. I look in the mirror. My face is sun burned. It is November and I’m sun burned in Manhattan. I check my belongings in my book bag. I still have clean clothes. I go into a stall and change. There is piss all over the floor and the toilet is clogged up. There is shit everywhere. All over America for that matter. I read a quick passage from Tropic of Cancer. Nothing has changed. Miller spoke the truth. Maybe America has always been this way? I just never realized it till I was confronted with the shit that is our land.

I walk out of the park past the protesters, leaving the musician behind, seeing couples holding hands. It is Novemeber and it’s 70 degrees in Manhattan. Take it while you can.

8th Avenue is a buzz. All of America is on full display as I make my way over to Broadway; Times Square. You see all of America in front of you. Advertisements after advertisements with blinking lights and loud music playing, Elmo, Spider Man, The Hulk, Big Bird, on every corner handing out flyers to see this show, or, experience a grand tour of Manhattan on a double decker bus, McDonald’s lit up like a beacon in the night, Olive Garden and TGIF has lines of people waiting to get in. The crowd is too much. I feel high from the manic state I’m in yet I also feel depressed as to what has happened to this part of the city; this country. The gentrification gods have done their work. Times Square looks like a circus. All they need are elephants and dancing horses to complete the job. I walk on with both eyes open and hands in pockets; cash wrapped in a safety pin. Hundred dollar bills, twenty dollar bills, tens and fives. A homeless man approaches me. I tell him I’m in the same boat then give him a twenty for good karma. God knows how much I’ve taken from people and never paid it back. Maybe this is my way of paying off my debts. I almost gave him a hundred. But, then I realized, I’m crazy, but not stupid. Or, maybe I am dumb for not having faith that the bum will be grateful and one day pass it along. Evangelicals and other Christians in America tell us to not give to the man on the street. He’ll spend it on booze and drugs, they say.  I say so be it. If he needs a bottle to get him through the night; so be it. Who am I to judge?

I find my way down into the Village where poets and punks used to hang out at one time. Gentrification has struck here too. Everything is nice and neat; clean. Almost too clean. It’s as if the hand of capitalism came swooping down upon them and cleaned from top to bottom, spic and span, every last bit of grime the neighborhood could muster. The streets sparkle.

On a barstool I find myself  sitting inside The White Horse Tavern. This is where Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs plotted to change the world. Or, at least write some damn good poetry and prose. They say Kerouac was kicked out of here on numerous occasions for being drunk and disorderly, loud and obnoxious. God love him. We are all fools in God’s hands. Rumor also has it that Dylan Thomas died here by way of the drink. They say he collapsed right here on the floor. Research shows that is simply not the truth. He might have left his spirit here that night, but, his body was found at The Chelsea Hotel. The same hotel where Syd Vicious of The Sex Pistols brutally murdered his love Nancy Spungen. People line up in front of the place every day to take pictures. Midwestern tourists and Japanese on-lookers are told of the unspeakable. They are told of death and drugs and how now the neighborhood has changed; the city has changed. But, at what cost? The poor being moved out to Queens, the Bronx, Jersey City, Newark. Some even move as far away as Camden, New Jersey; a city that has still not gotten rid of it’s streets of crime.

It’s five o’clock in the morning and I’m hungry. Can’t find a dollar slice to save my life. As David Mamet said, Things change.

Three years ago.

I watch America roll by. Hilly land and mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire on into Massachusetts where this country began. People wave at the train as it goes by. I sit in the bar car having a $7 beer and a bag of peanuts; collecting shells and placing them in a paper coffee cup while others play cards and listen to music on their headphones; bobbing heads to beats I can barely hear, yet it is a distraction. I hear just enough to make out the profanities that are scratchy and screeching in their ears. The youngsters look at me and smile. I pull out the matchbook given to me from the young waitress in Burlington and I think, They’re not all bad. In fact, They’re not all bad becomes my mantra. I say it over and over again in times of stress. A whole culture taken over by youth with old men financing their every move; I continue looking out the windows.

The train runs through Connecticut where the land is not quite as mountainess, but, the feeling is still the same. These are the blue bloods of America mixed with poverty in New Haven, Bristol, Hartford. It is actually the perfect picture of America; those who have and those who have not. There are those back in the Midwest who believe there are those that have worked for it and those who haven’t. But, they have not seen the wall that surrounds Yale, or the green yards of Harvard in Cambridge, Mass. People in this country refuse to believe there is a caste sysyem. There are the rich and there are the poor and never do the two meet. Or, shall we say three? That is if there is a true middle class anymore. We wait to see the outcome; It’s not dark yet. But, it’s getting there, as Bob Dylan said. Yes indeed. It most certainly is.

Manhattan. The Port Authority Building. Every vagabond in America is here. And, if they are not here they’re on the other coast: Los Angeles, San Fransisco. But, a large percentage of them are here in New York. They live in shelters, drop in centers, sleeping in church basements, on benches, sidewalks, city parks and so-on. A lot of them try to sleep in the Port Authority Building. Junkies falling asleep in bathroom stalls, drunks staggering into corners, hookers on the roof top and parking garage. Offering clients special discount rates. They are young girls just off the bus. They are men wearing wigs and tight skirts. They are former housewives with habits. All of them searching out of desperation for dollars to support their addictions. They are a community of loners. Death is destined.

It is midnight and I’m walking around Burlington, Vermont. College kids run rampant in the streets, dodging and bumping into each other on their way to bar after bar after bar. The air is filled with alcohol and reefer. Kids smoking it openely in the streets, down alleyways, in between buildings in the dark. The smell is sweet and it brings back memories of St. Louis where I drove through and stayed for a week with a friend in public housing on the city’s Northside.

That smell of pot being a constant in the air. Black kids huddled together at bus stops smoking Swisher Sweets and Philly Blunts packed with herb. Rapping as they smoke. Talking about this bitch and that hoe. Checking guns they have in their pockets, coats, book bags, at hand and ready to use. The price of life in St. Louis is cheap. These white kids in Vermont do not realize that. They sing out rap music as well in their nasal tones. They know the words, but, they don’t know the music.

I’m sitting in a bar and it is almost closing time. A tattooed waitress tells me she’s going to New York as well one day to be an actress, or, a burlesque star; she hasn’t made up her mind yet. She talks to me as if I was her father, asking advice, wanting to know all about me, as if she came from me. I tell her I’m a bum on the run. A man who could not take it anymore. I tell her about the voices I hear, the highs and lows, the constant thought of ending it all. She places her hand on my shoulder and gives me a hug. That would be a shame, she says. An absolute shame, she kisses my forehead. It is good to feel her warmth. Maybe I’ll see you in New York one day, she says. I tell her maybe. Then, in a sweet old school way, she writes down her phone number on a matchbook. She smiles and says, Keep this. You might need it some time. And I realize I was wrong. Not all kids are bad.

The trees that were green when I first hit town have now turned golden over night. The mountains are breathtaking. Never have I seen such beauty in natural landscape. Yes, there are the Rockies out west and the Ozarks in Arkansas, but, they do not compare. This is magical. And, untouched.

I drive through small towns on back roads and highways. Looking at feed stores, gas stations with the old pumps, general stores, beautiful libraries, cobble stone streets, I’m taken back in time. That is till I get back to Montpelier where craft beers are all the rage and haute cuisine at the cooking college makes this town seem cosmopolitan. I have just enough money left for a decent meal and a beer. I skip the meal and fall into a dive bar for cheap PBR’s. There I come up with the plan to sell the truck for scrap. See what I can get for it. Then set my sights on New York. I am cold, tired, and hungry. I doubt my actions.

But, like the Mexicans, I’ve left everything behind in search of a new start. My dad was always wanting a new start. Moving from state to state, job to job. From Texas to Tennessee. Tennessee to Indiana. Indiana to Mississippi then Ohio. Always on the move. Seeking out the perfect opportunity; the perfect American dream.

Americans are always looking to better themselves. And, parents want their children to make it, have more in America than they did. Me, I just want to survive.

I sell the pickup for a grand. I’m back in the flush. College loan companies keep calling. I change my number. They keep calling. I’m no different than the rest of America; I hate to pay off my debts. We borrow and borrow in this land of opportunity and rarely do we pay it back. The government never does. Why should we?

These are clearly the thoughts of an insane man. Or, are they? I’ve been hospitalized thirty-two times. Had three suicide attempts. Prescribed countless medications. Been homeless and down on my luck. For now I will take in the golden mountains and consider myself lucky. Like the dollar says, In God we trust.

I’m sitting on a park bench in Montpelier, Vermont reading Charles Simic. It is the beginning of September and an early autumn has come. The pickup is in need of repairs of which I cannot afford. I figure I have one more long drive left in it. Not sure. My money is tight; little opportunity here for work. Simic will guide me.

Montpelier is the smallest state capital in the union. Around seven thousand people live in this picturesque town. It is a combination of the old and the hep. A town where an attitude prevails from it’s youth. Every young hippie from America eventually winds up here on their travels. Guitars carried in cases, scented oils bouncing off their bodies, and a constant stoned look upon dirty faces. White kids with dreadlocks far away from home. Following Phish, or, the Dead, or what’s left of the Dead; they don’t want the party to end.

And, maybe I’m no different. I’m running across America too. Running on high and low octane. My energy goes up and crashes down within hours. A constant roller-coaster ride. I used to take pills for this; a lot of pills. Before hitting the road I quit cold turkey. All my pills tossed out; anti-depressants, mood stabilizers, heavy doses. Some days I feel as though anything is possible. Other days the feeling of death takes over. I am hungry, cold, tired, and ready to crash. “I can’t go on. You must go on. I will go on.”

It is afternoon. Approaching evening. I have a hundred bucks to my name. I’ll work some meaningless job for awhile and bring myself back to snuff. But, tonight I’ll spend most of the cash I have on a good meal and cocktails. It’s very American of me to do this. The philosophy of spend it all and start all over again runs rampant in our society. Businesses practice this, banks too. So do mom and pop stores. Our government, always spending then making more; a constant recession. And everyone wonders how inflation got so out of control; $3.49 for a dozen eggs. $19 for a Caesar salad at a restaurant; with anchovies. And, we buy it. Spending the last of our loot. Why should I be any different?

Henry’s is a bar and restaurant on Main Street. It’s been around since the ’50’s. Beautiful inside. Dark wood and a bar the length of a football field. Booths on the side for private conversations. Lights dimmed always; very little light. I go in and Wes is bartending. Nice guy. The son of missionaries. A true bartender. One who listens, is attentive, and knows every face that walks through the glass door.

I ask him what’s new? He tells me fishing stories. How he almost landed a big one. He’s always on the verge of landing the big one. Aren’t we all? He also tells me that Floyd the baker will be in later on tonight. Floyd the baker. A true genius. Could be the most well read guy I know. Never went to college. Lost his hearing years ago. Uses a high tech hearing aid for conversations. Still hums John Coltrane songs and talks of aliens taking over the planet. Says, there’s always somebody taking over something. It’s cyclical. They take over then we take over. But, now I think this time the aliens have us on the ropes, he said. How do you explain cell phones? He asked me once. Aliens, he said. We couldn’ t come up with this shit. Never in a million years, he said. And, I believe him.

Looking at the menu it’s the same thing. Only the prices have gone up. $14 for a cheeseburger. $19 for fish and chips. $23 for some kind of Cajun pasta. I object to the Cajun pasta. Italians and Cajuns should never mix their recipes. Keep the Italians Italain and the Cajuns Cajun. Fusion food. You know who doesn’t do fusion? Mexicans. They stick to thousand year old recipes. They don’t mix it up.

I splurge and order the fish and chips along with a cheap beer. This is my night to celebrate. Celebrate that tomorrow I’ll be starting over again. Always starting over. A true American.

I lie in bed with cool air blowing through the cracks of my windows. Blankets are on top of me, but, I am still cold. I hear the sounds of fire trucks and ambulances; wondering where they’re going. The sounds of the city are a constant. It is noise. It’s become white noise. A background to everything I do. It makes me feel at home.

The ten years I lived in the suburbs, I did not feel comfortable. It was too quiet. Too perfect. It was like a picture postcard. Complete with a waterfall in the center of town. People walking their dogs in the morning and evening hours through parks and on sidewalks; tying them up to a fire hydrant as they went inside Starbucks to order lattes. Those days are over.

Waiting for my water to steep, I take down a book by Baudrillard, America. I read what the French philosopher and social commentator has to say about our country. Was his experience of roaming around the U.S. the same as mine. All this bigness, this plasticity that is America, is anything authentic anymore?

Looking out of my window as I do every morning, I see the facade that is the new shopping center here in town. I also see the for sale signs in the front yards. The time is coming when all of us (renters) will be kicked out, looking for a new home in another bad part of town, or, another town completely.

The apartment in the house I live in is not for sale; yet. I hide inside like a soldier in a bunker. Waiting for the enemy to attack. Soon their armies of the night will come. They will take over and I’ll be forced to surrender. And, it will be time to hit the road again. And again. A never ending life of being a nomad.

“You can’t go on. I must go on. I will go on,” Beckett.

Like a thief in the night I leave these towns; working just enough to get to the next city where I’ll continue my tour of America. I travel on I-80 then connect to 76 which takes me by Pittsburgh where I stop for a few days.

It is a city that at one time was in decay. Much like Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Memphis, the list goes on and on. But, there is construction here. People building infrastructure, new places of commerce, hope. I see this hope when I talk to folks in bars. Impressed with new shopping malls going up in the suburbs. These are destinations built to look like small cities. Stores after stores with restaurants like The Cheesecake Factory and Olive Garden where you get as many breadsticks as you like. Don’t forget the never ending soup and salad bowl.

People, lemmings, walk up and down the brand new sidewalks going into Chico’s, Macy’s, Build A Bear, The Gap, Old Navy, and countless other spanking new businesses. All of them smiling and happy while looking at their phones. Watching music videos, reading emails, texts, talking out loud as they carry the instruments in their hands away from their mouths. They walk in front of traffic. Cars honk at them. Kids on motorized skateboards zip by on their way to no-where. The flowers are fresh smelling and the grass is green. The people of Pittsburgh, of America, are proud of these architectural achievements. We are in love with the brand new.

And I look at this mall. This shopping mecca. I see plastic. It is not real. Much like Times Square in Manhattan is not real. Disney characters following you around. Handing out leaflets to tour the island. Too many people, too many lights, too much loud thumping bass and blaring notes, all of America is becoming the same.

I sleep in a parking garage by the bus station downtown Pittsburgh. I sit there listening to jazz on the public radio station; jazz, the last American art form. And it is old jazz, bop jazz. Coltrane, Davis, Monk, Max Roach, Bill Evans, Mingus, they all play that night as I dream with a soundtrack playing till the sun comes up. Light gleaming inside my pickup. It is a sign from God. Another day has begun.