Boxing

The cat jumps up on the bed where Katie lies and stalks over to the crescent of her body. She throws herself down into the crook of Katie’s body and begins to purr.

I turn on the boxing match where Netflix is trying to reinvent HBO. It’s fine.

Fine, I’ll Be Nice

The couple and their enormous suitcases finally manage to shove their way onto the subway car, despite the conductor repeatedly closing the doors on them. I and the entire car watched them struggle and did nothing, and then, when they’re aboard, there’s no place for them to sit together.

A woman sitting next to me gets up and moves to another part of the car, leaving a seat. I see what she’s up to, and after a bear, I reluctantly get up and clear a spot for the tourist couple to sit. 

Moe Line Drama

The normally orderly line to get into the co-op seems particularly disheveled today, with group of people milling about the entrance in clumps and going in whenever they want to.

“Bit chaotic today, isn’t it?” I ask the guy behind me. He smiles noncommittally.

“Well, I’m going to uphold civilization,” I reassure him, and he laughs.

Like Bubba from Forest Gump, but Playlists

“I had a playlist for Halloween, but people like to go straight for the Thanksgiving music as soon as Halloween is over,” the driver for my Lyft says as I scan the QR code he’s helpfully provided to direct me to his Spotify profile. “I started doing it because I would put on other people’s playlists when I started ridesharing, and some of the lyrics weren’t family-friendly, so then I just started making my own playlists, and people said they like them, so I’ve got a classic list, and an R&B list, and pop list, and they’re all Thanksgiving songs.”

As I’m getting out of the car he’s still talking. “So if you like them, tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell everybody and give me a follow.” 

(Almost) My Last Post

The roses in the churchyard along the sidewalk are out late this year: salmon pink, elegant, and entirely incongruous in November. I stop, reach up, and pull one down to my face, and my nose fills with delicate fragrance.

The guy who was walking behind me catches up and passes me, and the waft of his cigarette mingles with the scent of the rose, not unpleasantly.

I’m thinking of these things as I continue walking, mulling them over for, perhaps, a poem, when a car honks, and I realize in my distraction I’ve walked out into the crosswalk with no regard for the light; I wave an apology and continue on my way.

Good Advice

Charlie and Goose are two Doberman Pinschers that regularly visit the booth where Katie sells her work. We’ve become friendly with their owners too.

Today, they all came in, the dogs gentle and supportive, the couple sad and depressed.

“We have to take care of each other,” I said over and over while petting the dogs.

Leaving Their Mark

Someone has slapped a TRUMP 2024 sticker up on this ad in the subway station, raising the question of whether or not it’s even possible to deface an eyesore; regardless, I simply can’t allow this kind of blatant bullshit to remain out here, polluting the world.

But as I begin to peel the offending thing off, the diabolical strategy of its perpetrator reveals itself: they’ve used a cheap, thin paper to print the sticker, and a super-strong glue for sticking, meaning that any attempt to remove it will, unless done carefully, leave an ugly residue of torn paper and adhesive, marring permanently anything it’s touched. 

I slow down, delicately working my fingernail all around the edge of the sticker to lift it, then applying even pressure as I pull, and while there’s still a shadow left behind, unless you’re looking for it, you’d hardly know it had ever even been.

But I know it was there, and wasn’t that the vandal's intention all along?

Drinking Poison, Expecting Someone Else to Die

 1. The obviously feral little girl has decided that the best way to gain the attention of everyone is to roll around on the floor of the booth where we sell Katie’s art, screaming about being a pirate, and having unintelligible conversations with what I presume are the demons that goad her. I am barely able to contain my seething hate of this child, as her mother periodically gives a half-hearted, “Now, angel, you can’t do that,” when what is clearly needed is a beating and a priest. 

2. As I’m coming home from the train after closing the booth, I emerge from the subway to encounter a man, standing on the curb, vomiting a jet of pale yellow that arcs from his mouth out into the street, and I am surprised to find my only response as I walk past is the word, “Bummer.”

(The connection between these two scenes the author leaves as an exercise for the reader.)

Time Marches (Backwards)

When I arrive at the office of the Co-op to work (all members have to work short shifts a few times a year) the clock on the wall reads nine.

But the real time is actually eight, because of the time change.  So my first job of the day is to go around to all the clocks in the building and spin the hands back an hour.

It doesn’t seem like much, but there is something very satisfying about fixing something so simple, yet so essential.

What Do I Know?

The little map on the Lyft app has the guy coming into the U-Haul parking lot via an entrance that I know has been closed for years. We keep sending in notices to Google Maps to let them know, and they keep ignoring us, so I settle back with a sigh and watch the arrival time on the screen, waiting for it to update to a later time, if the driver doesn’t just abandon the ride entirely out of irritation.

But here he comes in a lumbering minivan around the corner of the building from where I know the entrance is closed, giving me a friendly wave. 

He pulls up in front, and hops out to help me load my bags in the trunk, and I ask, “How did you get in?"

A Halloween Visitor

Packs of kids roam the streets in colorful costumes, pelting ahead of their parents, swarming the adults on the stoops to grab handfuls of candy, shouting nonsense to each other, trading preferred treats with the cunning and avarice of silk road merchants. 

A scrum of them surround me - minions and superheroes and cuties with bearskin and wide, alien eyes - and I do my best to notice all of them, give them their due in both sugar and attention, so as the most recent wave begins to recede, one catches my eye, and I turn to her next.

It takes me a second to register that she’s not, in fact, in any kind of costume, nor is she a kid: her hair is piled in a ratted, single mass of a dread on top of her head, out from under which eyes with white showing entirely around the irises peer, while her black, shapeless dress, fallen off both shoulders, barely contains her heavy breasts that sag beneath. 

She smiles, but shakes her head when I offer her candy, and turns to Katie, saying, “I have a daughter who looks like you!”

Don’t Spook The Doctors

The new, young doctor and her even younger shadow bustle around the tiny examining room while my usual doctor goes to fight with the pharmacy about where exactly the lidocaine might have gotten to, and why it might be taking an hour to get it. They move the ultrasound machine, then move it back, do-si-do around each other, put on gloves, take them off, misplace them, leave and come back.

My dressing gown and I watch all this hubbub with mild concern. I mean, they’re doctors, so I definitely don’t ask, “How old are you?” or “Have either of you actually done this before?” because I know how that makes me sound, and it certainly wouldn’t help the case of nerves they seem to have, especially when they’re about to stick me with needles, so I keep my mouth shut.

Fall Dusk

There’s a light in the air, a gray light from the overcast sky, that pervades the park. I watch people outside the booth when it’s slow and I want a distraction from the pain in my legs. 

They move through the mild, gloomy evening, and there’s this sense of… not exactly nostalgia, maybe mild deja vu. Everyone is young and beautiful and completely unaware of the cold winter that’s coming.

In my head

“Excuse me,” the man asks me as I’m standing in the parking lot of U-Haul. “Where did you get that cart?”

“It’s not mine,” I say, looking down at the grey plastic dolly the company lets you borrow that’s piled up with merch for the upcoming market, “but I can unload this one for you.”
We go back and forth like this, with me thinking that he wants to know where I purchased this dolly and offering to unpack this one, and him trying to explain that he just wants to know where they ARE, until finally I figure it out and walk over to show him, saying, “Sorry, I’m kind of in my head today.”

East Coast Nice

“Where are you from?” the guy manning the “Road Closed” sign asks me.

The usual impulse behind this question involves me being pretty open and friendly in a conversation, which must mean I’m not from New York, Brooklyn, or the east coast - and I’m not, but I like to flex my bona fides: “Well I’ve been here almost thirty years, but I grew up in Arizona. What about you

“I’m from Connecticut,” he says sheepishly.

Come again?

 “You look like you’re having a pretty good day,” I observe. The older gentleman to whom I’m addressing these remarks looks at me me for a moment before continuing. 

“Well, I guess I’ve been perkier lately, but it’s been a rough year since my wife died,” he says, reaching down to some shelves near his feet.

“I’m sorry,” I say incredulously, “did you mention someone dying?”

Estimate

“We’ve only got help for a few hours,” Katie says as we enter the second day of move-in. “How long do you think it will take to finish this project?”

“I don’t know how long it will take,” I answer, exasperated. “I’ve never done it before!” 

Let’s Do Our Best!

Tomorrow is move in for the market, which can be physically challenging and kind of stressful. 

Whenever I would have to do the 500 yard freestyle, at a swim meet when I was in high school, I would feel sick. Just knowing the pain and the possible consequences of not doing my best would give me a sick feeling in my stomach.

I still get that, but at least I don’t worry about not giving my best.

Security Blanket

“What’s it look like?” the woman in the bright orange Home Depot apron asks skeptically.

“It’s an iPhone with a green case,” I tell her. The desperation is almost gone from my voice because I know she’s got it, and even though it’s only been ten minutes since I put down my phone for some reason in the lumber aisle of this Home Depor, relief is flooding over me.

She goes behind the counter and retrieves a phone, which is of course mine, and I can feel my blood pressure drop.

Heard That One Before

“Yeah, I’m picking up an order for Katie?” I tell the man behind the counter as I show him the email.

“Last aisle, all the way in the back,” he replies.

So I walk back there, not seeing anybody, no office, nothing until I’m almost at the end of the aisle, when I see the guy sitting in a very tiny chair at a tiny desk, perched under some stairs that are nearly low enough to smack him in the head if he turns too quickly.

“Boy, they really got you tucked in there,” I exclaim, and he smiles thinly at my lame banter.

Respect Your Elders

The young man is standing at the head of the line at the post office when we arrive, and the older woman who got there just before us doesn’t seem to notice him. Both the employees are helping other customers, so we settle in to watch.

Sure enough, as soon as the employee behind the counter finishes up with her customer, the older lady steps up to the window and starts talking, without any consideration for the guy who was waiting in line so patiently. 

But when I try to point out her mistake, the young man who was already waiting catches my eye and waves me off, content to wait while the older woman does whatever she needs to do.

What Happened?

I read her a rough draft of a new poem, one about killing spotted lantern flies, which ends with me stomping on one and dragging my foot across the pavement (in iambic pentameter, no less!).

“Jesus,” she says when I’m finished. “That’s not something I need to hear right before bed.”

“You’re such a happy boy!” she exclaims in confusion.

WAIT

The line to get in outside the Co-op is longer than I expected for a Monday at three in the afternoon (I later realized that the federal holiday probably had something to do with it), so I queued up and waited my turn.

When I finally got to the front of the line, I watched the sign reading “NEXT MEMBER” very carefully, but when it flashed for me to go in, the guy sitting at the member check in counter, visible from where I was standing on the sidewalk, put up his hand with a look of irritation, indicating I should continue to wait.

“It’s flashing,” the guy behind me said impatiently.

“Yeah, I saw, but he said wait,” I told him with a shrug, indicating the guy at the counter, and we both watched him intently until he waved me in.

Taking a Bath With Murder

Katie fills the tub while I finish typing up labels for some new pieces she made today. I can hear the water running and her sing-song voice as she chats with one of the cats, who’s joined her in the bathroom to supervise. 

The running water goes quiet as she turns it off, followed by gentle sloshing as she lowers herself into the tub. Then finally I hear the tinny sound of voices describing murder from a podcast on her phone, echoing off the tiled walls in the bathroom, and I know she’s settled in.

Timing

I key in my access code on the pad by the elevator, but I see the elevator is full, so I figure I’ll take the next one. I nod to the occupants, the door slides shut, and I wait what I believe to be an appropriate amount of time before pressing the call button.

But instead, the door that had just closed slides open again, and I find myself locking eyes with the same people. We grin sheepishly at each other, and the door slides shut again.

What’s That Make Us?

After 20 years of living literally around the corner from it (16 years for me), Katie and I finally joined the Food Co-op, and today was our first day shopping there.

Honestly, it was kinda weird. The prices were cheap, and the produce was excellent, but nobody seemed particularly happy to be there, and a lot of people seemed downright UNhappy.

Later, when we sat talking about it, Katie said, “People who join hippy communes tend to be neurotic.”

Out Damned Spot

“Move very slowly,” Katie warns me as I stand up from the couch. 

“That cat,” she continues, pointing to the off-white loaf of fur crouched sullenly beneath the dining room table, “has been running around the apartment, dragging her butt on the carpet leaving streaks, so can you pick her up and help me clean her off?”

Afterwards:“Could you please put away the cheese in the kitchen?” she asks, washing her hands in the bathroom. “‘Cause I’m never going to be clean again.”

That’s What You Get For Jokes

The doctor presses the ultrasound wand onto my leg to aim the needle he’s using to inject gel beneath my kneecap. We’re trying to alleviate some of the arthritis symptoms.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” I joke, and he laughs dutifully. Then he pushes the plunger home and an involuntary shout bursts from my lips.

Glad I Checked

“So I was just looking at the manual,” I tell the prosthesis technician who’s been fitting me for my new knee brace, “and  maybe I’m reading it wrong, but if we want to take the load off the inside of the knee, shouldn’t we crank it this way?”

He stares at the diagram for a minute. “You know, I think you might be right.”

“I’ve got three patients this morning and I guess I got it confused,” he adds quietly.

A touch of nerves

I remember in high school, when it was time to compete in one of my events in a swim meet, I would often find myself sick to my stomach - nerves, of course. I knew that it would hurt, and that there was a chance I wouldn’t do as well as I wanted to, but that there was nothing I could do about it except to give it my best. The race approached, it was inevitable, and in a little while it would be over and I would feel better.

Whenever the holidays approach, I feel exactly the same way as that teenage boy, battling his nerves - no matter how many times I’ve done it, I still get a touch of nerves.

Text to an absent roommate

Yeah, we are gearing up, becoming increasingly anti-social and feral. We miss you, at least partially because we like having another person in the house to chat with, besides the cats. I’ll ship everything this week, and we can figure out postage. I hope the show is going well!!!

Ciao Ciao

“I like the suit,” Katie says to the guys on the Vespa at the stoplight. One’s driving while the other holds a Burberry suit bag in one hand with his other arm wrapped around the driver’s waist. “Very European.”

“See, I was saying that exact same thing,” one of them says, clearly pleased to be recognized for his continental flair.

Safe Word

“I saw this thing on TikTok that said a green flag in long term relationships was turning a previously serious point of contention into an inside joke.”

The couple were having dinner with takes this in as Katie adds, “And a safety word.”

Now they look confused, so she explains. “It’s good to have something one of you can say to the other in case it gets too intense.”

Moved it when I wasn’t looking

The freight elevator is, I think, on the fifth floor, or at least it’s supposed to be. 

But when I get there climbing the stairs, my legs’ complaints a low grumble at this point, there’s no elevator. 

Now I have to check every floor, so I sigh, and trudge down, popping my head around the corner on each floor to check if the heavy metal door is open. 

Until I get to my floor, my knees and hips starting to sound like a chorus of huskies about to howl, and find the elevator, just waiting there, open, mocking me.

If Not Me, Then Who?

“I hate being that guy…,” I say as I get in the shower. 

Katie continues washing her face, but indicates with her expression that I should go on.

“… but in the book, there’s typos,” I finish, referring to a chapbook of our friend’s poetry.

“No you should be that guy,” Katie says decisively.

Debatable

We turn on the Vice Presidential debate, and get about sixteen minutes into it before we agree we are not having a good time, bro. 

A few minutes after we’ve turned it off, Katie stands over me with her first two fingers pressed to her throat.

“I can’t stand watching people arguing,” she says fiercely, “and I can’t get my blood pressure to go down.”

“It’s just so inauthentic,” I whine.

Reckless Disregard

I broke the lid of the toilet seat (don’t ask) but because of Katie’s work we have a LOT of adhesives in this house, so she fixed it.

“I know you like to jump up on the toilet seat in the morning,” Katie admonished the cat as she put the newly repaired lid in a spare room to cure, “but if you do it tomorrow you’ll end up in the drink.”

“Maybe we should cover it?” I muttered to myself.

“No.”

Local Hero

The family, clearly tourists, push their roller suitcases under the subway turnstiles before the whole group has gone through, which is why they’re unable to prevent one of the bags from rolling down the platform and tumbling onto the tracks, just before the train entered the station. 

The train manages, impressively enough, to stop right before hitting the bag, but now we’re stuck - there’s a maroon carry-on sized bag on the tracks, and it’s Sunday, which means nobody is going to be able to come retrieve for a while, and everybody has someplace to be.

I ask if anyone has an umbrella (it has been raining today, after all), so someone volunteers their full-sized one with a traditional, curved handle, and now Katie is lying on the edge of the platform while I hold her legs as she hooks the handle of the suitcase with the umbrella and hauls it up off the tracks to an enthusiastic round of applause.

The conductor thanks Katie, pulls the train the rest of the way into the station, and everyone, including the tourist family, piles onto the train, but after a hurried discussion, the tourist family, grinning sheepishly, gets off the train before it leaves, because apparently they meant to go the other direction, into Manhattan.

Rainy Days and Scooters

“Did you find the painted stripes in the crosswalks really slippery?” Katie asks as we climb the stairs to the apartment. It’s been raining on and off for two days, and scooting down wet streets can be a hazard. 

“Yeah, I found that out yesterday. Before I even stepped on my scooter, just walking on the crosswalk I almost ate shit,” I say. 

Security

The man on the elevator leans down close to the security keypad to enter his code, and when he’s done, I enter mine.

He asks what floor, and when it turns out it’s the same as mine, he says, “So you didn’t have to enter your code.”

“Maybe, but I think that if you don’t put in your code, the alarm goes off when you open your locker,” I explain.

“No it doesn’t,” he replies, and then shakes his head sadly, as if it is his distinct misfortune to be stuck in an elevator, having a conversation with the stupidest person he’s ever met.

It’s more of an art

400 degrees seems to be the exact right temperature to roast brussels sprouts, but our oven doesn’t really measure temperatures with any exactitude. “400” on a dial seems to reflect a sort of Schrödinger’s Cat approach to measuring heat.

It’s like this: as soon as you open then oven, the actual temperature, which was absolutely not whatever temperature is indicated on the dial, changes, because you’ve let in cooler air to check the the little thermometer you hung on the middle rack in a pathetic attempt to control the chaos of this world. 

That being said, dinner tonight was really delicious, and the sprouts were crispy and tender. 

Mistrust

Katie presses the button that alerts workers at the drugstore to come over and unlock the little clear plastic doors they put over all the stuff in the aisles now. Apparently the store was getting ripped off too much, so they just locked everything up, instead of developing a method to get people what they need AND get paid for it.

When he gets there, though, she’s already figured out that the little plastic jails, inside which are all the things we need, are open. He’s walking up the aisle and she just pulls face wash out of the little box and off the shelf like it’s just a normal shelf, which it’s not.

Like We Would

The cops standing in front of the Indian restaurant on our street barely acknowledge us as we walk up. “What happened?” Katie asks, looking past them and over the crime scene tape blocking off the sidewalk.

“Some guy got stabbed,” one of them says, and sure enough we can see, in the light from the restaurant door, fresh blood on the pavement beside a small, primitive looking knife.

“Don’t touch the blood,” he adds, while another cop smirks and then, bored, looks away.

Perspective

“I gotta say, I’m having a lot of feelings about this,” I tell the technician as I pop the fasteners on the knee brace he just fit me for.  My knee complains bitterly at the change.

He nods sympathetically as I continue, “On the other hand, there’s a guy out there with just one leg, so what am I bitching about?”

“Yeah, if I’m having a hard day, I remember the people that I try to help, and my life seems a lot better.”

Equinox

My first rejection notice in a while came in today, on the equinox. A cool breeze blows, not cold yet, but with a premonition of cold to come. Day and night greet each other in passing on their way down the year.

Summer takes off her crown of flowers, shakes down her hair, smiles to see it’s already starting to turn grey.

Pita

The sign in the window reads We stand with Israel but I decide to go in anyway. The proprietor, a tall, almost gaunt older man with a substantial beard and a soft smile, greets me as I enter. I see him around the neighborhood where I’ve lived for almost sixteen years, and he always greets me.

I wander through the small shop and its narrow aisles until I find what I’m looking for: a small plastic bag, tied with a twist-tie, with four pillowy pitas in it - the perfect accompaniment to the hummus I made last night.

Wildin’

I turn the corner on my scooter and ride up the street, passing as best I can all the cars queued up to get on the expressway. 

But I’m riding during rush hour, so the commuters are, as the kids may or may not still say, “wildin’.” That is to say, their impatience has caused them to drive three-across up this one way street, from curb to curb, and I almost hit several side-view mirrors as I sneak by, as close to the edge without going up on the sidewalk as possible. 

I finally pass the on-ramp, and continue up the street toward 6th Avenue, where the trees have yet to remember that fall is upon us, and they lace their green fingers over the street.

Little Help

As I tap my phone at the subway entrance, a man standing at the gate catches my eye. “Little help?” he says, with a nod toward the gate.

I return his nod and, after passing through the turnstile, back up onto the bar that latches the gate, opening it and letting him in.

Just this moment, the train pulls in, and with a quick glance back to make sure he’s in, I get on, but not before I see his chin lift in quick acknowledgment of the favor, then we part, never to see one another again.

Own Your Mistakes

Katie stops and looks at her phone. “We’re going the wrong way,” she says, turning to walk back the way we came.

When I try to cross the street to avoid walking past the restaurant we just left (after saying a big goodbye to the waitstaff standing in front) she grabs my hand.

“Just own it!” she laughs.

Natural Pest Control

Could I borrow a cat for a few minutes (or a trap)? our downstairs neighbor texts. She has discovered a mouse in her apartment. 

I briefly consider the logistics of getting one or both of the cats down to her apartment, but finally decide that it would just be too stressful for them (and probably for me).

Later, when she’s in our kitchen getting a trap, I tell her the story of the time we had roaches and our landlord, instead of hiring an exterminator, told us to get geckos and just let them run loose to eat the roaches.

Peek-a-boo

The flight attendant stands at the dividing wall between first class and economy, facing the back of the plane. Her expression is bored and neutral as she demonstrates, with practiced gestures, the locations of the exits and the way to buckle a seatbelt.

When she gets to the part where she displays the card explaining the proper procedure for surviving a water landing, however, she spots a baby a few rows back, and her entire demeanor changes. Her eyes light up, and she spends the rest of the prerecorded checklist hiding her face behind the card and then revealing it with a surprised expression, playing peek-a-boo with the baby, who quietly squeaks and gurgles with delight.

The What Now?

I’m lying on the grass, one arm behind my head, the other beside me. The grass is tickling my skin, and the sun filters through the leaves to shine on my closed eyelids.

Katie’s dad, standing on the back porch, looks down on me. “Don’t get bit by the army worms,” he says with a grin, and he makes claw-like motions with his hands. 

Public Indecency

“You know you’ve matured when you don’t look at everything like a urinal,” Katie’s brother says seriously.

I start laughing and pull out my phone to make a note of that while he continues. “When you’re young, you just think ‘I gotta pee,’ and then you just look around and find a spot and do it.”

“But when you’re mature, you go, ‘Oh, I could get arrested.’”

Body Surfing at 53

The lifeguards spotted a blacktip shark this morning, so it’s a while before we’re allowed in the water. 

It’s low tide, and we’re able to walk far out into the waves when we get in; the surf is gentle, swells and troughs rolling in from a flat horizon.

I watch the waves until I find one that feels right, and then, turning toward the shore, I push off the bottom and swim with the wave until I feel it catch me, the crest foaming and churning around me, and I and the wave roll into shore in a process that feels close to flying.

Later that night, I try to stand up from the couch and have to really concentrate just be upright.

Don’t Swim Out Past The Breakers

The red flag snapping in the wind behind the lifeguard station indicates “high hazard” from a rip current, which usually drags folks out to sea between the breakers. The note on the sandwich board next to the flag says that you shouldn’t go in more than “waist high.”

“If you go any deeper than that, it activates the post-nup,” Katie says forcefully.

When I ask her what the post-nup is (first I’m hearing of it, anyway) she says, “It means if you die I get to say I told you so.”

Doppelgänger

“I found it!” the woman says as we pass her on the way to the car to go to dinner.

When we look at her curiously, she explains, “This car looks exactly like my car.” She points across the parking lot. “But I’m parked way over there!”

New Sunglasses

Katie puts the three identical pairs of sunglasses on the counter of the rest-stop where we’ve stopped to grab some snacks while her brother grabs a bag of Combos.

“Sometimes you need to be in a gang and all wear the same sunglasses,” she confidentially tells the cashier.

The cashier dutifully rings us up and then looks at us with a sly smile.

“Do you want to wear them out of the store?” she asks.

Edamame

“Sure, I can help you find that,” the kid stocking shelves says, pulling out his phone.

“Yeah, you guys seem to have edamame, but only with the shells on,” I tell him while he types.

“I think we’ve only got the the ones with the shells,” he replies, swiping around on his screen. “When my parents buy them, that’s what they get, I mean,” he continues, “I don’t eat them.”

Like The Samsonite Ad With The Gorilla

My flight’s luggage is delayed getting to baggage claim, so we’re all just sort of standing around while the unclaimed bags revolve.

Finally, a suitcase hurtles down the chute, banging into a barrier at the bottom and almost flying off the conveyor belt.

“They threw that one a little hard,” a woman next to me says, wincing.

“Oh yeah, there’s a guy at the top of the belt whose whole job is to just chuck luggage he doesn’t like the look of down onto the thing,” I say, not smiling at all.

Good Looking Out

“I’m pretty sure that’s the right one,” I tell the guy at the UPS store before he starts to wrap it up and pack it for shipping. “I’m doing this for my wife.”

He gives it a quick check before he finishes and confirms it’s correct, and I let him know he’s appreciated.

“I’m not trying to get somebody in trouble with their wife,” he says with a shake of his head.

She Thinks I’m Mean

I’m hoarse when Katie finally calls me to say goodnight from the bachelorette party she’s attending, because I went to a baseball game. I’m also still slightly drunk.

“Yeah, it was good, and the Cyclones actually won!” I rasp.

“Stop saying that!” she snaps, half-joking.

Maps Don’t Know

The driver takes us to the back entrance of the U-haul parking lot, and the reason why Katie is only half-paying attention to my story about V-16 engines becomes clear: the fence at the entrance is locked. It’s always locked, it’s been locked for more than 10 years.

The driver doesn’t say anything, but I can tell he’s terribly disappointed. “I don’t know why the maps always send you this way, it’s never open,” she says, maybe hoping to cheer him up.

Wild Pigeons

I wait on the corner, sitting on a short wall that encompasses a small concrete yard in front of the old church. The little dot on my screen that represents Katie as she rides her scooter back from her studio creeps across the map, and a cool breeze blows as dusk approaches.

There’s a commotion behind me, and I turn to find a trio of pigeons regarding me warily, as if I’m the one who just showed up from nowhere, and not them. I think of a poem by Mary Oliver, where she’s talking about just looking at something, not trying to say something fancy, just looking, so I’ll say that one of them was missing some toes, but the other one, with a black and white mottled head, his feet were pink, and perfect.

They Are Ravenous

“I have a question,” Katie says, “and it’s not about the show or politics or anything.”

“Okay,” I say, pausing The West Wing, which we’ve been watching.

“Why hasn’t Trump been talking about how he got shot at?” she asks. “Because if I was running his campaign,” she continues as I consider this, “I would have him talking about how, like ‘I got shot for you,’ at every ravenous Republican rally,”

Some Persistence

More than a decade ago, at a party thrown by one of our roommates, a friend of mine, after a few drinks, tried to ride a fixie bike to impress a girl and ended up face planting on the asphalt, leaving a trail of blood up the stairs, and giving himself a nice scar and a good story.

Today, some fifteen years later, we meet up to go for a walk in the park, and he’s got a noticeable limp. “Oh, what girl were you trying to impress this time?” I ask.

As it turns out, there wasn’t a girl, and it wasn’t a fixie, but he WAS on a bike, so at least he’s consistent.

punched in the face

“Then when I was six, I think? This guy was bothering some friends of mine and I challenged him to a fight and he punched me in the forehead, and I cried.”

“Six?” Katie says, her face contorting in pity.

“Yeah, I was fine,” I say, realizing I don’t really want to talk about it anymore, and that maybe telling every story isn’t a way to feel good.

Edit the Vilanelle

“If you change that comma to a semi-colon, and the put dashes between ‘red,’ ‘white,’ and ‘blue,’ it’ll make more sense and hit harder,” Katie says. I flip the fake chicken patties I’m frying and nod in agreement, with a huge grin on my face.

“I really appreciate you helping me edit my stuff,” I tell her later.

“Just ask the person who doesn’t like poetry!” she says.

Do Not Disturb

“Did you eat?” Katie asks after I get home from the reading.

“No, I didn’t think it would run so long,” I reply as the cat puts a querying paw on my leg, then jumps up on my lap.

She takes a minute to settle in and shortly is purring like an electrical transformer.

“Well, I guess you’re gonna starve to death,” Katie says with a pitying look, and the cat still purrs.

Ask For Help

The pill pocket for the cat’s antiviral doesn’t make her any more amenable to taking her medicine, but we gotta try.

This time, just when it looks like it’s down, she coughs it up, sending it flying across the room, which alerts her sister to try to grab the “treat.” Can’t let that happen so, still holding the first cat, I bend at an entirely inappropriate angle and grab it, only to feel something in my ribs go “pop.”

Later when I’m complaining to Katie about my sore ribs, she says, “Well maybe you should learn to ask for help.”

Attempts At Librarian Humor

I’m in the stacks at the library when I hear a man at the reference desk talking to an employee.

“You’re a librarian so you should know that, right?” he asks slowly.

“Well, there are a lot of things we’re supposed to know, but I don’t think that’s one of them,” the librarian replies, clearly trying to keep his cool.

“No, it’s a joke, man, just answer the question,” the man says.

Can’t Just Be Dancing Like You’re A Kid

“My shoulder hurts,” Katie says, demonstrating like she’s dancing in an 80s music video with an exaggerated roll of her right shoulder. “I don’t know, though, I only did a little work today….”

“Is it ‘cause we danced last night?” which we did, at the concert.

“Oh god!” she exclaims, stricken with the knowledge that time continues to march on.

Enthusiasm

The woman in front of us at the concert is… a lot. A leopard print tube top and a black mini skirt, and when she asks, rhetorically, after stepping on toes getting in and out of her row, “Who raised me?” we sort of think the answer might be, “No one.”

But as the concert goes on, and she is singing every song to her slightly less enthusiastic boyfriend, dancing like no one is watching, and almost collapsing with ecstasy every time the artist plays a song she likes, she’s starting kind of grow on me.She is having the best time,  she’s not hurting anyone, and her boyfriend seems to really like her, so who am I to yuck their yum?

Hardware Store

“How many items?” the cashier asks, looking at her screen in confusion, then at my purchases, then back to the screen. 

“I think it’s six,” I answer, because it is.

She adds then up again, and, satisfied at last with her answer, finishes ringing me up and hands me a receipt.

As I’m leaving, the young man working the other register flirts with her, teasing, “When the door opened, you totally got goose bumps, yes you did!”

I Wasn’t Talking To You

I spot him halfway down the block: a full-sized, rough-coat, brindle dachshund coming down the steps and out the little iron gate of one of Park Slopes innumerable brownstones.

So I do what you do when confronted by beauty and grace, that is, my face erupts with a goofy smile, and I make direct eye contact with him. His scruffy little beard lifts in a dignified acknowledgement of my tribute and I think we’re basically done here.

But his owner, seeing my delight, somehow thinks it’s appropriate to insert himself into our interaction with what seems to me as a slightly can-I-help-you “Hi,” but I choose to ignore his tone, give him a friendly, “Hello, great dog,” and keep it moving.

Part 2

The same time of day, the same spot in the park. Sunshine and shade and the gulls far above, resting on thermals without moving their wings.

This time I’m talking with my mom. When I hang up the phone, I glance at my email to see a required form for my disability leave, and although it wasn’t as upsetting as yesterday’s brush with social media, the day is still suddenly distant, and the sunshine hard to see.

A Lovely Afternoon Spoiled

I put down my notebook, satisfied with my work on this poem today. It takes a second, looking out from the shade where I’m sitting on the grass, for my eyes to adjust to the late afternoon sunshine filling the rest of the park: lawns sloshing with gold, people playing ball like they’re swimming in luminous air.

And for some reason I pick up my phone. “I wonder if that idiot responded to my scathing comment on his post,” I think, swiping my Lock Screen to wake the beast.

No need to fake it

The security guard manning the metal detector at the entrance to the arena looks at my cane while I put my phone and keys in the little bin.

“You got a hip or a knee replacement?” he asks.

I mean, neither? but instead I say, “Yeah, I got all kinds of problems down here,” waving at my lower body with a sort of all-encompassing gesture.

He looks at me suspiciously, then finally waves me around the metal detector and up an access ramp. 

Old Man Playing Mobile Games

The older man and woman sit across from me on the train, a wheeled walker in front of her. He stares down into his phone, which is how I know that the tinny, repetitive, nursery-rhyme-sounding instrumental music is probably coming from him. She stares off into space as he stabs and flicks at phantoms on his screen, while the music loops over and over its irritating, mournful evocation of a blank-eyed child sitting alone in a room turning a crank on a music box, forever.

I breathe deeply, trying to calm this strange mix of grief and anger simmering in my chest, until they finally get off the train at 42nd Street.

Biohazard

“I found where those flies were coming from,” Katie says in a tone of flat dread. At her feet lies a plastic bag she’s pulled from the cabinet labeled “organic potatoes,” but nothing in the shape of the bag would indicate the contents of the bag to be even solid, let alone potato-shaped, and some of whatever remains in the bag has leaked a foul, brown-ish black liquid onto the tiles.

“Oh god,” I reply, which seems like a sensible thing to say, especially since I know that I’m the one who put the biohazard-formerly-known-as Organic Potatoes in said cabinet to begin with.

“Yeah, you are neither mentally nor spiritually prepared for what’s in here,” she continues, peering into the depths of the bottom shelf in horror.

Is This Code-Switching?

The man and woman who sit outside the grocery store have a sort of sing-song patter for panhandling. “Can you spare anything god bless you sir can you spare anything god bless you ma’am can you spare anything ….” etc. in dulled voices almost robotic.

When I realized halfway through cooking dinner that I’d forgotten something, I went back to the store, and the couple were still there, this time though there were two women chatting with them, and I listened in, while pretending not to, as I walked into the store.

“Yeah, you know, I haven’t watched just ‘cause I don’t have a TV right now, but I’ve heard it’s really good,” the woman who’s usually panhandling says in a not at all robotic voice, and it’s nice to hear her normal speaking voice.

Chiropractic Advice

“Books are great,” says the disembodied voice of my chiropractor above me. I’m facedown on the table while he shoves my bones around inside me, and I was complaining about how my vision just seems to be getting worse probably because I read so much.

“But what you really need to do is go outside for a while, and look at the farthest thing you can see for fifteen, twenty minutes,” he continues as he pushes my pelvis down and over into an entirely new configuration. “That’ll help exercise your eyes, just fifteen, twenty minutes.”

Counterfeit

“Can I see that?” Katie asks, pointing to what looks like a twenty dollar bill with the word “FAKE” stamped on it sitting on the bookstore counter.

“Sure,” says the proprietor. “You can kinda tell it’s fake, just the texture and everything.”

“Funny thing is, most people don’t know that Andrew Jackson had the word ‘FAKE’ tattooed on his forehead like that,” I add while Katie strokes the counterfeit with a thoughtful look on her face.

Kindness

We’ve gotten most of the bags downstairs, and I’m putting them in the van, but with the elevator out-of-order, Katie is having to bring the boxes down.

But then I hear the freight elevator, working despite the signs saying it’ll be unavailable! And out of the elevator, with a huge load of boxes and a smile, comes Katie, followed by a nice looking older black man who laughs at my apparent look of astonishment.

“I saw your husband’s knee was bad,” he says, still laughing, and referring to my itchy brace, “so I thought you might need a hand.”

Everyone’s Fair Share Of Abuse

“From the river to the sea!” the woman out in the plaza of the library shouts through a bullhorn. The five people standing in a limp group off to one side weakly echo her chant. 

Their demonstration? protest? let’s say “activity” continues as I push through the revolving doors into the cool, quiet of the library lobby.

When I come out, a different woman has the bullhorn, which she uses to recite Israeli atrocities to the passersby while a woman at the top of the stairs learns to skip rope double-Dutch style. 

Greece Is Nice In The Fall

“Any travel outside the country?” the slightly bored receptionist at doctor’s office asks as usual.

“Nope,” I answer, also as usual. “If I’m leaving the country, you’re gonna be the first person I tell, like you won’t be able to get me to shut up about it.”

He laughs as I continue, “‘Yo I just got back from Greece,’ I’ll say.”

Sunset

August has given up its sullen heat, and we stroll comfortable in the dusk. 

The western sun bruises the sky orange and neon purple through the trees. We can see it as we cross the street.

“I wonder if she uses the same acupuncturist as me,” Katie asks the sunset thoughtfully, rubbing her arm.

Real Breed

“Mercy,” the man drinking a light beer by the pond where people bring their dog’s to swim says sharply, “stop bugging that dog.”

“What breed is Mercy,” Katie asks as a thin, nervous looking dog trots over to him wearing a guilty expression.

“A blue lacey,” he says as if this is something we would have heard of, ah yes, blue lacey, of course, everyone knows the blue lacey, should have guessed just by looking.

“I think he’s just making up names,” I mutter to Katie after Mercy and her owner have left.

And By “Drugs” We Of Course Mean “Catnip"

The cats stand poised with looks of confused sorrow beside the piles of crumpled packing paper they’ve been nesting in all evening, then they scatter.

“We’re stealing their toys from them!” I lament as I stuff the paper into the recycling bag to go to the curb.

“They’ve been fighting over it all night, and they have other toys,” Katie says dismissively.

“Sure, like what about the fish with drugs in it?” I say.

That Simple Minds Song

Today, the only time I went outside was to go to the store.

The rain came down all morning and most of the afternoon.

On my way to the store, I saw a man who lives on the streets, huddled in a church doorway, watching people walk by. I had been kind to him in the past, but today, I took off my glasses and wiped the spatter off them as I walked by him, and I’m not sure why.  

Rainy Day Jury Duty

All of us reporting for jury duty line up on the accessibility ramp to the courthouse, while the spattering rain drips from the aluminum construction shed overhead. 

As we get to the security station, the clearly harried security guards repeat their spiels with increasing exasperation.

“Put everything in your pockets in your bags, that means wallets, phones, keys, and if you don’t have a bag, use one of these plastic buckets,” one says.

“Please do NOT put wet umbrellas in the buckets,” his coworker adds wearily.

Trauma

I lay on my bed in the dark, with my phone the only light, and watched a political rally, which is not a sentence I ever would have thought I’d write.

The current vice-president announced her nominee for vice-president in the upcoming election. And I found myself crying.

Sitting, crying at a political stump speech, just because the candidates were saying things like “we need to be better,” and “let’s take care of each other,” and I guess the last few years have been kind of traumatic.

Freedom of/from Opinion

Burberry skirt, Gucci loafers, standing in the subway - I find myself thinking about fashion as language. She wears these clothes to make a statement, to speak, as it were, through the syntax of fashion, to say something to people about herself and how she wants us to perceive us. 

So what is she saying, with her complementary (but not matching!) brands, the money she paid to procure them, the casual way in which she wears them, and what opinion do I have about these things and the statements she’s making?

I have no opinion about that.

Lucky

I finally leave the house to go to the grocery store. The storm and various projects have kept me inside all day, but I’m done with the projects and the sun’s come out, so I guess it’s time to head outside!

Dark clouds show their backs to the neighborhood as the storm rolls east, illuminated by the sun going down. Two rainbows, perfectly formed, arc across the sky, so vivid that I can see right down to the dark purple.

Happy to Help

“Can you help me brainstorm this?” Katie asks. “I need help unpacking some boxes and it’s supposed to storm today.”

“Sure!” I say. There’s a quick moment as she’s walking away where I realize I’m genuinely excited to just go cut open boxes and take things out of them, and I wonder at myself.

She’s Fine

“Okay, so before I tell you this, I want you to know, I’m fine, I’m completely okay, okay?” Katie is still wet from the rain and the storm that soaked her still grumbles and tosses the trees around outside.

“Got it.”

“I got hit by a car, but I’m FINE,” she says as my eyes widen and I start to scan her head to toe looking for any injuries, even a scrape.

Getting Ahead Of Myself

I’m excited to try this new recipe, so I dump the fake ground beef into the frying pan to start browning it.

In doing so, however, I realize I haven’t bothered to prepare any of my other ingredients, and now the clock is ticking. I’ve got about 5 minutes to slice up the tofu, get all my spices measured (and where the hell are my measuring spoons?), grate the ginger, slice the green onions, get the eggs beaten - I mean, it’s utter chaos here.

When Katie gets home, the meal is cooked, and delicious, but the kitchen could use a good hosing down.

Getting To Use That High School French

A New York City summer reeks with heat, and the wet air lays across Brooklyn like a stranger rubbing up against you on the subway.

A middle-aged black woman sits on some flattened boxes under a tree, her legs splayed out in front of her like a child’s, and she is waving to a little girl who watches her in confusion before running to catch up with her mother as she crosses the street.

I walk up to the woman, who is still waving to the air where the child had been, and ask, “Are you thirsty?”

The woman responds in a language I don’t immediately recognize, but eventually I figure it out, and when it seems like she’s done, I try again, asking, “Ummm, l’eau?”

YIATA

A rental truck parked in the middle of a residential street: clearly just another asshole double-parked, so I go around on my scooter. 

Except they’re NOT double-parked - they’re just stopped at the light, which changes as I’m going around them, meaning I am directly in front of them when they start to go, which is hella dangerous for me.

At the next light they’re too close to the parked cars for me to squeeze through, so go around again (what was I thinking?), going past the driver’s side.

“You motherfucking idiot,” he helpfully suggests as I ride past, and I really can’t blame him.

Long Ago Seems So Close

“What other bands from that era started in the Eighties?” my physical therapist asks. We’ve been talking about Nineties bands.

“Well, The Flaming Lips started in the mid- to late-Eighties I believe,” I say

“Wow, I mean, I know my dad was listening to them around then, but I didn’t know they went that far back,” he replies in mild disbelief as I turn into dust and blow away.

Interspecies Communication

While Katie returns the freight elevator to its proper floor, I sit down on the curb outside and wait.

It’s late afternoon, an hour or so before dusk, still some light left, a low, buttery light tinted with gray from the overcast. I watch the breeze play with the few living things in this industrial dead end: a weed or tree growing in the rain gutter on the top of a brick wall waves a few delicate leaves, a pigeon wandering the asphalt a few yards away shakes his feathers in the cool.

The pigeon notices me, noticing him, and struts over to check me out, so I politely say, “How’s it going?” but he doesn’t reply. 

Mourning

I watch the swimmers at the Olympics, and I remember what the pool smelled like, chlorine and sweat. I remember slipping through the water, pulling my body clean and swift through the water, my skin tight and my body loose.

I remember winning, the tiny sliver of embarrassment when they took losing hard, the raging exultation of crushing my opponent, my personal best. 

Tonight, I remember getting a piece cut out of me and I miss it, I miss that person, and I mourn him, a little, even though he had to die sometime - I just didn’t expect to still be alive afterward.

Delicious Prayers

The framed front page of the New York Times from September 12, 2001, complete with screaming headlines and photos of burning buildings, that formerly loomed over this table in the restaurant is gone, replaced with an innocuous ad for beer. 

Katie and I devour tacos on homemade tortillas, with fragrant red-tinted rice, and pinto beans swimming in savory, thick broth heaped on paper plates. We eat peacefully, without saying much until finally, plate empty, stomach and heart full, I speak up.

“I don’t know how to say this without sounding stupid,” I say, “but eating a well cooked meal is like someone praying through you."

Theology Hospital

“So what hospital are you getting your knee looked at?” my physical therapist asks.

“It used to be called Methodist, now I guess it’s Presbyterian, in Brooklyn,” I reply.

“It would be weird to have them both own it at the same time,” he says.

“Yeah, Calvinists versus the Wesleyans,” I say apropos of nothing.

Over Explaining

“We have two cats, pair bonded litter mates. We got them when they were five years old, and I think it’s ’cause their owner got sick or something and couldn’t take care of them anymore.”

Now my physical therapist, who’s been listening to me talk about my cats, is looking sad, so I switch tactics: “So we called them Wallace and Davis, which we picked from the movie White Christmas, because the women, played by Rosemary Clooney and Vera Green get married to Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, respectively, so they’re taking on their names….”

Instead of sad, he now just looks confused, and my voice trails off.

Returning The Call

I end the call and stand up at the desk in the office, getting ahold of myself. I can feel my insides vibrating, and my skin strains with the effort of keeping it in.

I walk into the kitchen where Katie is sitting and kiss her on the forehead. I have my water bottle in both hands and I realize that my fingers are wrapped around it as if it were a neck.

Bad Timing

“Okay, well, it’s really important that I speak to them today, so please have them call me, okay?” I tell the customer service rep after waiting on hold for over a half-hour.

“Absolutely, sir, and I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help you more today,” he says, so I reassure him that I know he did all he could, and hang up.

After my doctor’s appointment, I walk into the library, and pull out my phone to double check for any calls. 

...and see the voicemail from the call that I missed as I was crossing Eastern Parkway to get here, not five minutes before.

Tiny Victories

“I gotta say,” as I’m putting the yogurt away, “I’m very proud of how I asked the guy to check the price on the yogurt.”

“Yeah! Good job!” Katie replies, unpacking her backpack.

“I mean the price was wrong but I spoke up for myself and got it changed, you know?”

That’s New York City

We get on the crowded train, but no seats available. Now I don’t expect people to offer a seat just because I carry a cane - why should they? And of course I don’t know what other peoples’ situations might be, but the woman with the rosary doesn’t offer, nor the young man and his girlfriend, nor any of the athletic and able-bodied looking folks on the train, and I resign myself to sore legs and a long ride into the city.

But the guy with the 40 in a plastic bag, with the hat that says “Fuck You” and the marijuana festooned socks and the facial tattoos - THAT guy offers his seat, which I gratefully accept.

Who Is This “We?”

Bottom of the ninth, the Brooklyn Cyclones are behind five runs to nothing, and after a lackluster performance all game by the home team, we’re ready for the game to be over.

“I mean, statistically it’s possible for them to score six runs in an inning,” I tell my friend Kevin, and we both laugh.

But then they proceed to score five runs, one right after the other.

“Holy crap, we might actually win this!” I say.

The Way To A Woman’s Heart

“We have 7 different types of gnocchi, and 25 different sauces,” our waiter tells us, “so to try every type, you would have to visit us twice a day, every day, for a year.”

“I’d practically live here!” Katie exclaims.

“We’d be working each others shifts,” the waiter replies with a smile.

“Hey, buddy,” I mock-growl, “that’s my wife you’re talking to.”

Not the first time he’s used it

One of the assistants in the operating room comes up as they’re prepping me. “My name’s Noel, not the the first but the greatest,” he says by way of introduction.

“That’s a pretty good line,” I say.

“Did you hear that?” he says with a grin as the entire surgical suite staff groans. 

Killing The Killer

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a tiny fly in the air above the couch where I’m writing. When I look directly at it, though, it’s gone.

I catch a glimpse of it again, so when I see something moving on my chest, I react without thinking and smack it.

When I lift my hand, though, I realize it’s not a fly that I’ve killed, but a spider, and my heart sinks.

Inspired

“Your wife has a studio!?” my physical therapist asks. He’s usually very calm, but something about my mention of Katie’s art studio has gotten him excited.

He watches me intently as I explain her workspace and her business. “I’ve never talked to anybody here about this,” he says shyly after I’ve finished, “but outside of work, my real interest…, my passion, is photography.”

Slow day

The guy on the e-bike pulls in front of me as I turn on to Sixth. I follow behind him for a bit, my excessive politeness keeping my natural competitive streak in check, but finally I just can’t stand it anymore.

I push on the accelerator and pull wide around him. There’s no traffic, and no problems, I just zip around him and it feels good to not worry about what other people think.

Undercover

We’re waiting for the light under the BQE when Katie points to a car parked on the sidewalk across the street.

The parking job is a real dick-move: it’s unnecessary (a summer weekend in NYC means everyone is out of town, leaving plenty of spaces and no need to park on the actual sidewalk) and completely inconsiderate in the way that it takes up so much room that it blocks anyone from actually being able to walk on the sidewalk without having to go into the street. Plus the car has this very aggressively macho-muscle-car look to it, with a gray paint job and dark, dark tinted windows.

“That’s a cop,” Katie says, and then repeats it: “That’s a cop.”

The Law of Attraction

As we coast down the hill toward the intersection, I wish for a green light and, way down at end of the block, as if in response to my wish, the light obediently turns green. I also know, with absolute certainty, that we’ll make it through no problem, and sure enough we slip through, barely even slowing down, only to be caught at the next long stoplight a block later.

When I mention how much I love catching a green, she agrees, adding, “But I’m sure that’s gonna be the intersection where I get straight-up t-boned from somebody just ploughing through a red light.”

“Yeah, let’s not manifest any unwanted experiences in our lives,” I say, nodding ruefully.

Horror Books

“These books are heavy, off putting, and have a good chance of making you dry heave!” Katie says, quoting a book recommendation video, then she repeats it. “A good chance of making you dry heave!”

“It’s not for me,” I say, waving my hand.

“I mean, maybe I’ll like something on it,” she says, pressing play.

They Were Just Trying To Be Nice

Two pretty young women rolling a bright yellow cart stacked with thin, glossy paperback books and craft materials rattle up to me as I sit in the waiting room for my doctor’s appointment.

“Would you like to do an activity while you wait?” one of them, an asian woman with long black hair, asks. Her expression suggests that, while concerned in a friendly sort of way, she takes a certain pleasure in demonstrating her concern, but wouldn't want to show either her concern or pleasure in a way that was too obvious.

I’m polite, midwesternly so, and I smile, showing none of the rankling I feel at their (entirely inadvertent, and probably felt only by me) condescension in treating me like I’m some sort of child who needs to be entertained and distracted by crosswords or origami or macaroni art, and I just say “No thank you,” indicating the book I was reading before they walked up, and they smile back and nod and roll on, content and secure in their beneficent goodness. 

Customer Service

“And before we finish this call,” says the customer service rep on the phone, “can I just ask, purely for my own nosiness, what kind of art your wife makes?”

I mean, it’s the reason why I mentioned it in the first place, so I tell him her website, the name of the piece we’ve been discussing, her insta handle, the whole thing.

I hear him typing and then he says, “Oh wow….”

“I didn’t think I’d see anything as beautiful as that today,” he says, his voice softening from his customer service voice to something gentler, more emotional, more real.

MRI

After they’ve strapped my feet together and attached me to the machine that will pump a chemical into my veins that allows the bigger machine to read my insides with greater accuracy, after they’ve put plugs in my ears to ensure I don’t go deaf from the buzzing mechanical symphony of physics and enormous magnetic fields that will see through my skin like a man looks through a window to check the weather, after all of this preparation for what is effectively a miracle of science..., we hit a snag.

Now three people are futzing with the table upon which I am trussed and blanketed, raising it, examining the readout, lowering it, shoving it into place with a jarring clunk, consulting, shaking it back and forth, wiggling it, several more clunks and finally a smooth slide into place.

You know that feeling when the ride operator at the carnival checks the straps and the shoulder pull-down bar, just to make sure everything’s kosher, before the chair upon which your very life depends lifts off at ridiculous speed to spin you through space, but you notice when he does it he has to really shake it once or twice, like maybe he’s not entirely confident, but finally he leaves it, because, you know, good enough? I have a brief moment of trepidation as the open maw of the machine receives me and the cacophony of the scan begins.

Think Small

I’m hanging out with Katie in her studio (which is really only set up to comfortably hold one person) seated behind a desk about a foot-and-a-half away from her as she works. We often joke about how it’s a good thing we’re obsessed with each other, because we spend an awful lot of time right up in each other’s business. 

But when I need to get up, I feel like an enormous, clumsy lummox, gingerly rising, being as careful as I can to not accidentally knock over the tools and supplies she’s surrounded herself with to do her job, and I wince as I try to get stiff muscles to move with a dancer’s grace that I didn’t possess before I had cancer, let alone now.

She looks up from her work to watch me sympathetically but without pity, and says, “Yeah, it’s a little crowded in here.”

Scooting Big and Tall

I love riding my scooter - with my leg banged up, riding a bike is tough, so it’s the easiest way to get around for the time being.

But occasionally, I am confronted by the limits of the technology, namely that I am kind of a big dude, and  maybe tending towards the upper limit of the weight that your average scooter can bear.

So sometimes, on a hill, say, or even just from a standing start at a stoplight, the little electric motor that makes the scooter go vroom has to do a little more work than it might like, and even though it never complains… I know.

And I know I’m at an okay weight for my height, but when my scooter starts to chug going uphill, man, I kinda take it personally.

Belt And Suspenders Kinda Gal

“This is the place”: Katie sets down the furniture dolly and points to the brownstone sheathed in scaffolding. We’re both slick with sweat and tired of walking, but this is our only stop before home - we’re picking up a little shelving unit someone’s giving away to put in the living room. 

A young, blonde, slightly disappointed looking woman brings the shelves down the wide front stairs and, seeing the dolly, compliments us on being prepared.

As Katie straps the unit to the dolly with bungee cords (also brought by us for just this purpose) I can only think that this lady obviously never met my wife.

Giving Up

Four boys running across a field, three of them moving well in a small pack - legs pumping, chests out, heads high, pure joy in forward motion.

The fourth is slower and runs like someone unaccustomed to the task. My eyes flick back and forth between them: the sprinters surging, reckless with laughter, encouraging each other to greater speed, while the kid at the rear falls further and further behind, his every effort seeming only to slow him down more.

He persists even as he slows until finally his stride subsides into kneeling, into falling, into laying out flat, arms akimbo, face down on the grass.

Ice It

The chiropractor has me turn on to my back, and he lays hands on my arthritic knee with a firm assurance.

“Let’s just get this…,” he says, and then, giving it a practiced push, he puts my knee back in place.

There is a painful pop, and warmth and what feels like an electric shock zaps up my leg and straight out the top of my head, causing me to yelp involuntarily.

“Okay,” he says gently, “I was not expecting that to be quite so intense, so I’m gonna suggest that you take it easy for the next few days.”

Poetry of The 6 Train Conductor

Once again to all my beautiful people aboard this train

this is your uptown uptown Bronx bound

Six train to Pelham Bay.

Yes you can transfer to your D and M train - take the stairs at the north end north end of the platform, and have a blessed and beautiful day

Reading The Room

The quiet reading event that has taken over the backyard of this Brooklyn Bar is about to start when the young couple walk in. 

And who can blame them? Yesterday’s heat and misery has given way to the kind of perfect day that New Yorkers keep secret from their friends who don’t live here, and the careless blue sky above the buildings is dotted with perfect meringue clouds - if I were young and on a date with a girl I just met who I wanted to impress, I’d sit outside too.

But when the event starts, and the backyard goes *really* quiet in that heavy way it does when a bunch of people are reading, and the guitarist the event organizers brought in starts playing a jazzy solo instrumental of “Still Crazy After All These Years” the couple seem to get the hint and beat a hasty retreat.  

Mild Chaos

The rain starts with a few fat drops spattering down, but it’s only a few blocks before the sky opens up and gutters start to run. We huddle under a tree for a few minutes before the downpour overwhelms the leaves, and we break for cover of a bus shelter as the splashes from the raindrops hitting the wet pavement make it look like it’s raining upwards. 

We sit on the bench watching the storm roll across the city; lightning flashes and grumbles at us, and we see bedraggled celebrants walking by, still thrilled at Pride month, in rainbow stripped outfits or carrying Pride, laughing and enjoying the rain.

I watch the tops of the buildings, thinking about my family, my mom and sister, and enjoying the mild chaos. 

Helping

He’s bent with depression or weary from work, his head in his hands across the car from us as we ride the Q Train into Manhattan. 

At Canal Street, a woman hauling an inappropriately wheeled suitcase attempts to board, when one of the wheels slips between the platform and the train, becoming wedged.

Her cries of alarm become more frantic as she struggles with her bag, and suddenly the guy across the car is up, along with another guy and Katie, and Katie and the second guy are holding the door, while the first guy, the depression guy, is down on his knees, hauling away with all his might until he pops the wheel out, freeing the bag, the woman gets on the train, and everyone goes back to their seat as if nothing happened. 

The guy goes back to his pose, head in hand, but when I say, “Hey, man, nice job,” he looks up, face transformed in a smile.

Or A Storybook

Katie’s dress is covered in dragons and hearts, birds, swirls or color, stars, and snakes (among other things).

My linen shirt is embroidered with leaves and stems, sunflowers, purple plants, and suns, in natural and unnatural colors.

“I like your outfits,” some one says to Katie as we’re standing in line to make our purchases at the thrift store.

Katie thanks him and replies, “We kinda look like we stepped out of the same cartoon.” 

Afternoon In The Park

We lay on inflatable loungers in the park, eating snacks and watching the women play softball.

The sun came out from the clouds and went back behind the clouds and the breeze chased it, and a redheaded dog came over, all floppy and friendly, and then ran away, and we stopped watching the game and read for a while, and a lady laughed and laughed until we thought she might hurt herself.

Then a hawk flew over, and another, and another, and a man walked by with a cat perched on his shoulder looking very mysterious like he belonged in a souk in a 1930s Boys’ Adventure Novel.

And the afternoon turned to dusk and the breeze and the sun took their game over the river, and a twilight of fireflies sparked their bodies into brightness as the warm air cooled and it got too dark for us to read.

Prayer Wheel

We see him every time we walk by this section of the drive that circles Prospect Park: a man sitting on the guardrail with a speaker playing some pop song or other, holding a handful of burning incense sticks, grooving in place to the music.

A couple of the mob of bicyclists smile and give him a wave, which he returns with a huge smile of his own and a shout of, “Blessings!”

I imagine him blessing every one of the bicyclists and walkers circumambulating the park with his music and his grooving little sit-down dance, and them taking those blessings around and around the park, turning it into a giant 3.3 mile in circumference prayer wheel, sending positive energy all over Brooklyn, and I tell Katie this vision.

“As long as you put another guy just like him on the big hill at the other end,” she replies.

A Nice Night For A Walk

When we walk out of the movie theater, spun through the revolving door and out onto the street, I immediately feel the contrast between the air-conditioned interior and the breezy summer night air. 

We head toward the subway, and the artificial cold evaporates out of our skin and bones, to be replaced by a gentle relaxation. I think about the harsh lighting down in the station, the noise of the trains, the same-old-same-old regularity of which subway car we get on, the crowded trains....

“Why don’t we walk home?” I suggest, and Katie agrees.

I Probably Wouldn’t Like It Either

The heatwave broken, the trees toss their heads back and forth in the blustering wind as we walk through the cooling park near dusk. 

On our way out of the park, a couple clip a leash to something in a backpack, and we watch to see a tabby slowly raise its head out of the bag to cautiously survey the surroundings.

“A cat won’t like such a rambunctious, windy day,” Katie says sympathetically.

“If their ancestors roamed the Serengeti killing all the birds like little murder machines, they should be able to handle a little wind,” I say dismissively, but I know what she means.

Slapstick Summer

Despite my having grown up in Tucson, I find the heat in New York City to be entirely intolerable - sticky, foul, oppressive, entirely a different sort of beast from the desert heat, which while savage, has a certain bleaching, blowtorch purity.

That being said, a good air conditioner in the window is a godsend, and I’m privileged enough to need to move mine from one window to another so that I don’t give myself freezer burn by having it blow directly on me when I’m sitting in my favorite spot in the living room.

It’s been running for a couple weeks in its current spot, so we make sure it’s off and unplugged as I haul it from the right front window to the left, but there’s always a moment of terror when we actually take it OUT of the window, the intrusive thought being that it will somehow tumble from its perch down onto the street below, where it will crush, say, a baby in a stroller or an old man with a walker or an immigrant family who just got here from Nicaragua or a puppy out for its first walk, etc. etc. etc.

So I have my arms wrapped tightly around it, pulling it out of the window and tipping it towards me to keep the demons of gravity at bay, and the waste water that has accumulated inside it over the past few weeks dumps out all over me and pours a small flood onto the floor.

Matthew 5:45

As the train pulls in, Katie and I step to one side of the door, like you do, to let the passengers inside off before we get on. 

Another woman, an old, stooped, gray-haired woman in a shapeless gray and black dress with a thoughtless pattern printed on it, steps directly in front of the door and, when it opens, desperately shoves her way into the car to grab a seat before anyone can get off, earning herself a few dirty looks from her fellow passengers in the process.

Later, the old lady and I are seated next to each other, and a family pushing a baby carriage gets on the train and parks the carriage in front of us, presenting us with a beautiful, brown little baby with fat little fingers and toes, who, after considering us with a certain amount of confusion for a moment, favors us with the most beatific, loving blessing of a toothless smile.

The old lady leans over to the parents of this angel beaming at us and asks, “How old is she?"

Fine, Then. Leave It There.

I find a seat on the train and sit down with a sigh. The guy across from me is a middle-aged latino fellow with a gym bag and sweats on, headphones in, and right next to him on the bench is a single folded dollar bill.

I do the raised chin thing with eye contact, try to get his attention to tell him about the money, but he narrows his eyes to almost slits, like he’s squinting at something outside the train, and refuses to meet my eye. 

I raise my chin again and he, still not meeting my eye, shakes his head, so I shrug and go back to writing.

Be Prepared

The processor sets up her station at the DMV while I wait - counting money, setting her keyboard and chair exactly where she wants it, getting the printer and scanner up and running - and then pulls out a clear vinyl bag with a zipper at the top, about the size of a medium clutch bag. This bag is full almost to bursting with pens: highlighters in various day-glow shades; ball point pens - capped and clickable, in blue, black and red; markers in a variety of widths; plus some hand sanitizers, a couple pencils, paperclips, and other sundries.

When I mention how much I like the bag, she says matter-of-factly, “Oh, yeah, I take that thing everywhere.”

She extracts, after some consideration, a red pen, a yellow highlighter, a black clicky ballpoint, and a Sharpie from the bag, and, placing them equidistant from each other in a tight rectangle, adds, “You never know when you’re gonna need a pen."

This Is Why

I see a former employee of mine on the subway platform at Union Square as I’m on my way to a physical therapy appointment, and I walk past without him seeing me, make my way further down the platform, and stand waiting for the train.

It’s mostly because I don’t want to have to explain my cane, what I’ve been up to, the whole thing that has been this past year, but this guy was a pretty neat guy when I knew him, and we had a good rapport, so I turn back up the platform and walk until he sees me, whereupon he gives me a surprised, friendly wave.

“Wait,” he says after we greet, indicating the cane, “last time I saw you you were this big strong guy!”

“Hey, I’m still plenty strong,” I say, eyes narrowing, smile still firmly in place.

Sometimes, You Need To Move

As we’re finishing lunch with our friend for her birthday, in the middle of the conversation, her husband who hasn’t been feeling well stands up with a silent grimace and abruptly walks outside.

“Well, goodbye,” she says to his back with a mild exasperation, but I’m not offended. I know that expression, the sudden stab of pain that short circuits thought, making any position sitting still a torture, when you can either walk or writhe.

“No big deal,” I say, and we continue as if nothing happened.

Lucky Me

The receptionist at the hospital is doing her best, since the automatic check-in machines that dot the airy, two-story, white stone lobby seem not to be working, and while the line is pretty long, it’s moving at a good clip.

When I finally get to the front at her enormous desk, she, all professional, asks the usual, name, date of birth, phone, but after a moment, her bored countenance shifts and she looks up at me apologetically.

“Your appointment is for... July seventeenth,” she says, hesitantly, as if expecting me to blow up at her.

A beat, then I give her a smile and say, “Ah, well I guess you just freed up my morning, didn’t you?"

Dogs Just Know

The old man walks a little way past the dog tied up outside the grocery store, then backs up a couple steps, and starts talking in a low, gentle voice. It’s clear that he is not the dog’s owner - he could be, I suppose, but somehow you can tell this is just a random encounter - but the dog is wagging, not in the frantic, attention starved way of some high-strung dogs, and not in a submissive, frightened way, but in the slow, calm, friendly way that dogs have when they’re relaxed and happy.

The man is kneeling now, directly in front of the dog, his wrinkled face inches from the dog’s, and the dog is gazing into this man’s eyes with understanding and boundless love, as if he’s been waiting for this conversation all day. 

When I come out of the store later, a young man, tall, good-looking, with impeccable hair and tastefully expensive-looking clothes is standing holding the dog’s leash, with a statuesque woman, equally outfitted, flanking him on the other side of the dog, and the dog’s eyes are staring off into nothing, the three of them out of some kind of central casting version of an ideal couple and their beautiful accessory dog.

I Wouldn’t Have Done Much Better

We’ve set up our blanket on the soft grass on the hill above the baseball diamond, where the game is just wrapping up.

As the left-fielder bobbles a high fly ball, allowing the opposing team to bring in two more runs and win the game, I remember the miserable spring I spent, an uncoordinated twelve-year-old, half-heartedly playing on the junior high baseball C-team (as opposed to ‘A-‘ or even ‘B-‘)  to please my parents while I waited for swim season to start, barely able to throw a ball with any accuracy, let alone hit.

Some kids playing catch behind us miss, and the ball they’re using sails just over my head to land right in the middle of our blanket with a resounding thud.

“You’re gonna have to get better at catch if you wanna do that,” I tell the kid who comes to fetch it, and he apologizes, grabs the ball, and runs off to do it again a few minutes later.

Monsoon-ish

The sky quickly transitions from unsettled, to glowering, to livid, to apocalyptic, followed by hammering, angry rain, the kind of downpour that wants to tear a sinkhole in your front yard and pull down a hillside on your house, but who cares? The pizza was ordered two hurricane stages ago, and it doesn’t look like letting up, so I slip on the grey Hunter rain booties and the teal and pink reversible rain poncho over my t-shirt and shorts, and step out into the gale.

Two blocks later, when I push past the delivery drivers huddled under the awning to squelch into the pizza place, it is still bucketing, and an older woman sheltering from the deluge looks my bedraggled ass up and down and asks with a sardonic grin, “Did that cape help?”

I do a little Marilyn Monroe wiggle while grabbing the poncho, and tell her, “It blew right up my skirt,” and she gives me a cackle. 

Check, Please

I put my card in the little tray they give you with the receipt in it and space out looking around this cute Chinese restaurant. The neon characters in the window are rainbow hued, but individually, like one’s blue, one’s red, one’s orange - you get it.

A guy comes up with one of those hand held devices to run my card, and as he picks up my card I see that he has two thumbs on his one hand, one on top of the other, next to four normal fingers, and each of his thumbs has a perfect, immaculately manicured nail. 

I am a man of the world, so I don’t stare or react in any way whatsoever, because that would be rude, and unkind, but I will admit to you, dear reader, that I did take a moment, internally, and confirm to myself that I was not in fact hallucinating, because for just a second that seemed, not just possible, but likely.

I’m Not Picky

The house manager of the Broadway show we’re attending has taken a shine to us, and after the show ends finds us to say goodbye. 

We joke about the wood-fire pizza places in Brooklyn Katie recommended, and then he gives us each a hug before we leave. 

Seeing the cane I’ve been walking with, after hugging me he fixes me with an intense look, and grabbing my shoulder with his bony hand, says, “Be whole and healed, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

I take a beat to process this, then, with a smile, say, “Hey, I’ll take whatever help I can get!"

Tuppence A Bag

On the weekends, Grand Army Plaza at the north end of Prospect Park fills with white tents for the greenmarket, like mushrooms that appear after a storm. They make a miniature city, with little streets that fill up with shoppers and their dogs, their bikes, their strollers, all milling about, buying apples and cheese and bread and cabbages, arms full of flowers and potted plants.

Today, though, walking through the plaza on my way to the library, the plaza is empty, a vast expanse up the sky, criss-crossed by bicyclists streaking through the void, with a lone woman down by Eastern Parkway feeding a mob of pigeons.

The pigeons revolve around her, like worshipers around a shrine, or groupies around a pop star, circling as a single organism, parts of them breaking off and rousing up in a flurry of wings to settle on her shoulders and outstretched arms before diving back to the ground where she scatters sheets of seed for them to eat, and as I walk past I avert my eyes, somehow embarrassed by this naked display of adoration, the birds for the food, the woman for the birds. 

Matthew 5:41

“You have to seek out the thing that makes you tired,” my mother tells me over the phone, “and just keep doing it.”

“Yes, I get it.”

“If you have one set of stairs to go up, you go up them twice. That’s how I’ve managed to live so long."

If Music Be The Food...

 “Oooh, who’s this?” Katie asks as the music curls from the kitchen speakers like the scent of onions and garlic cooking in the pan, drums popping, horns all spicy. The fried rice she’s making sizzles like high-hat cymbals, umami like bass.

I do a half-assed quick-stepping dance across the tiles, then perch on the stool, phone in hand. “Buena Vista Social Club,” I say proudly, checking the playlist. 

A Different Kind of Joy

You take the bag, that’s what it essentially is - a big, impermeable bag - and you run with it, holding it open to the wind you’re creating by running, until it fills up, and then you kind of twist it closed with this buckle thing, and you end up with what looks like an enormous split top hot dog bun, only you are the hot dog, and the bun is a remarkably comfortable couch/hammock kind of thing. 

Katie bought one of these magical treasures today and brought it to the park, and after she tried it out, she let me have a go, and let me tell you, it was worth looking like a big ol’ dork running with this bag-thing  to lie down on a literal pillow made of air and textile science.

When I was young, I felt my epiphanies in my gut, right below the solar plexus, with this sort of crazy, wild energy that would shoot through my stomach and down into my crotch, and it was half-way between lust and rage, and it would feel good but also kind of scary.

Today I lay in the Hot Dog Bun Of Perpetual Indulgence and I swear to you, as the tension left my body and I relaxed into the warm Brooklyn afternoon, I felt my heart open up with joy and something like love, and thought “Ah, I am no longer a young man."

Trash Day

My knee hurts, my hip hurts, and I’m tired, but the garbage needs to go out.

Walking down the stairs is just as hard as walking up, so I grip the handrail with each step, the recycling in my other hand. 

I look at the stairwell down to the front door, and I’m struck by the idea that I am alive, in this moment, and pain is part of this moment, and so too is the satisfaction of just moving through air, being in a building, the cool air outside, the satisfying thump of the door being pulled to, the trash bagged by the curb, the cop car with its flashing lights slowly following the ambulance down the street toward the hospital, in no hurry with whomever might be inside, and on and on and on, the entire world surrounding me and my tiny little body, every part touching every other part, all the way out into space.

I remind myself to take Advil when I get upstairs, and then forget again as soon as I go back inside.

Babies Don’t See Color

The sudden torrential downpour drove all the stroller-moms in from the streets, rapidly filling up the small cafe in which my friend and I chose to meet, and one of the babies has taken quite a shine to my friend, staring with intense, un-baby-like concentration.

“Ooooh, he must be an ‘old soul,’” my friend says, waggling his fingers at the fascinated child. I’m always embarrassed to make too much eye-contact with babies I haven’t been formally introduced to, but I smile gamely.

“Or,” he says, considering, “maybe he’s just never seen a black person before."

Living On Top Of Each Other

 “We gotta just get the same amount of juice on each plate,” I tell the cats as I divide the can of rendered chicken between them for their dinner. “Don’t want either of you terrorists getting weird about it.”

I see some movement out the open window I’m standing next to, and look down to find our downstairs neighbor out on her deck, sweeping up the fallen flowers that have dusted it all in yellow, and she looks up at me.

“Hey there!” I say with a smile, knowing that she heard every word of the preceding. and she looks up with a smile of her own and waves.

Riding Home

There’s a part of my journey home from Katie’s studio, when I cross over the parkway and into my neighborhood-proper, when the character of things changes.

The trees have sheltered these streets for forty or fifty years, the houses have been here way longer than that. Or maybe it’s the fact that it’s sunset, and I’m going downhill, slipping through traffic while the cars sit fuming at stoplights, idling murderously. 

I find myself praying in that sort of inarticulate way that sometimes happens, wordlessly grateful for the road, the tires, the traffic, the trees, leaves like stained glass, for standing, for moving through the world, like everything around me is a church, a temple, a shrine. 

Do Not Engage

“You got any change?” he asks, hoisting a blue plastic IKEA bag up on one shoulder. 

I start to say “Sorry, I don’t have anything on me,” but he’s already groaning angrily before I begin. “’Sorry’ doesn’t cut it, man - I need money!”

I keep walking, saying, “What can you do?”

Make A Wish

I lean out over the rail of the 19th floor rooftop deck and look down to feel the nauseated thrill of gravity. To my left, the tall buildings shoulder their way up the coast of Manhattan to vanish in the shallows of the Bronx, while directly below me, scatterings of people play in the park or relax on the lawn as twilight creeps in from the east, shadowing the sun across the water into New Jersey.

Like the stars we never see, the buildings begin their glitter seemingly all at once, but sprinkled across the skyline so you couldn’t know which one you saw first to wish on.

Katie comes up behind me, puts her hand on my back, I turn and see her smiling, and I put my hand out to stroke her hair, smiling too.