Our story begins on the shorelines of the north side of Pittsburgh, at a certain Brian and Rachel's house. We were set to take off on the train early on the morning of September 29. i walked into the house, it smelled like freshly cooked basil. They had cats all over the place, apparently after having saved a pregnant cat dying by the Ohio River. Brian traded me backpacks so i would have a good hiking backpack. He had found it in a dumpster and the only thing wrong with it was a broken shoulder strap, which he sewed back together with fifty thousand layers of dental floss. It has not failed yet. It was 5:30 in the morning, we left Brian's house and headed to the train station. Halfway down the block, i realized i forgot my sleeping bag. "Oh no," i thought, "if it's going to be like this the whole time i'm screwed." Luckily, i was not as bad at forgetting things as Mark, who lost some money, a big bag of food, lenses to his camera, free food Rachel got from Dozen, a container of hummus, a 10-pass metrocard in New York, 20 photographs from Toronto, his mind, and his "List of things forgotten" list--so there's probably much more. I forget what i forgot, except for the sleeping bag--which i remembered.
Anyway, as soon as we got on the train, we met Deewight who you might remember from Mark's blog. He was a pretty strange guy. When we boarded the train he was sleeping sprawled on the seats and scratching his belly. Then he spent a lot of time looking out the window. Something sparked a conversation and he seemed to know a lot about the country. Hell, he'd been everywhere--Vegas, Atlanta, Jersey. He graduated from Boston University and had worked craps at casinos for many years. He talked at ease, responding to everything with a stretch of his arms and saying "that's sharp." Talk about nightclubs in NYC, ooh, that's sharp. Or fishing in Delaware. Ooh, that's sharp. Or eating hot pretzels. Ooh, that's sharp. I liked this guy, his smoothness and his wily hair. He looked pretty aloof, as he was traveling with trash bags and his hair was as frizzy as a hairdryer dropped in the bathtub; and he called Central Park, "Grand Central Park," but hell--it's still sharp. When we told him about our trip he said simply, "Sometime you gotta step out into the world..." nodding approvingly. A blessing for the whole journey. Thank you, sir.
We arrived in New York, making our way to Williamsburg in Brooklyn. We met up with Mark's friend PJ, an animal rights activist whom Mark prompted me to be careful with. He has a particularly vicious temperament and doesn't bode well with people. I took the advice and watched what i said around him. Man, he was vicious, and a little crazy, but all in a very monumental way.
PJ worked as an activist since he was was a kid. He had made a name for himself. When he came to New York he had found a woman who dug what he was doing and also owned an apartment building. She essentially provides him free rent and a huge space in the basement to work from. He has a shelter area built in there, with about 50 stray cats. They are trapped, spayed and neutered--then trained for domestication. If they are unable to be trained because they are too feral, he has at least neutered them and sets them back out into New York's obscenely massive stray cat population. He dealt with all kinds of cats, diabetic or with leukemia, burned by chemicals, left to starve, one-eyed diseased cats on the verge of death, cats so twisted and violent from neglect they could not be approached without becoming viciously defensive.
The idea is to put some control on the exploding cat population within the city. He was licensed 10 years for animal care, given generous donations by animal-loving philanthropists but he still talked shit, a dirty wicked sailor with the highest standard and most vitrolic poison slung on anyone who doesn't give it their all--cunt, cunt, cunt!--to anyone whose dedication is not completely given to the endeavor. He despises hypocrites and anyone who challenges him, barking in the face of anyone who provides, essentially, "injustice," or disrespect.
I have to give it to him. The man was completely dedicated, spending all this time rescuing animals. His problem is that he expects so much from his helpers and hates them for not doing enough. With every treated animal, he becomes that much more disgusted by humanity. He laid it on everyone, decrying an established rabbi in the community for supposedly scattering lye on some stray feral cats, or the woman working at a big shelter for not putting her foot down when they euthanize cat because they have leukemia, diabetes or are otherwise sick. He railed on people in Pittsburgh for being too impotent for their causes and people in New York for being too selfish with their time.
We passed by an ironic art display, a bunch of empty cracker boxes stacked up like apartment buildings with a sign that made a statement about the foreclosures recently. There was a pigeon idling on the display
"Whoooooah," PJ realized, when he saw the bird.
He got near it, picked it up. All the while some dumb lady behind him was rambling like "Is that your friend?" "Wow, that's brave (picking up the pigeon)." "He's a piece of the art, isn't he?" PJ, not hearing her, told us later that if had heard her, he would have railed her with "oh sure, you dumb cunt. Query with the masses. Why don't you go slum it in Williamsburg some more while you live in a penthouse in SoHo, with that old ugly man who is cheating on you. Or better go back uptown and cry your lonely life to your next mid-life medication you stupid, slimy whore." Luckily, he didn't hear her--somehow. I mean, she was rambling in his ear. Instead, he picked up the pigeon and an old hippy guy with a russian accent came near him saying, "Hey, that's part of the installation." He must have been the artist.
"I'm an animal practicioner. Why is he on display?"
"He's the guardian of the city--He'll fly away when he's done here."
"Well, i think i'm going to take him."
"I don't want him to be played with."
"Oh," PJ smiled, "I'm going to play with him. I'm going to play with him in very, very special ways."
PJ was pissed off and he could sense something was wrong. He told one of his helpers later to go tell the guy she saw a man biting the heads off pigeons. Apparently, we were lucky he didn't flip out on the guy, blaming the hippies for prolonging the Vietnam war with inefficacy or something and shouting at the guy to humiliation in the middle of a busy street. Sure enough, when we got back to the building, he found the pigeon had a bolt lodged in its crop(neck).
He has a hard way of dealing with things not exercised to their full potential, someone crosses him the wrong way they become the "cuntiest cunts of cunt city." The helpers he has, who work under him, prove their loyalty by putting up with him, by listening to him and taking his verbal abuse and not giving up. He is earnest, dedicated and ambitious. Albeit, maybe crazy. But that's what it takes, a needle through the eye--he's up nights! He is hardworking and profoundly successful. The warehouse-looking room in the basement of the building was filled with cages and trappers. Some of them housing at most 5 cats. Cats abused and forgotten. Some, too feral to be given a home, were spayed and neutered to be released again.
The idea was--and this is sort of the genius--instead of euthanizing cats too miserable and erratic to live in a home, to release them back onto the streets neutered. They would still provide competition to cats vying to have more kittens--the population could stabilize this way. By having a termination block of spayed cats, down the line the population would control itself. A technique that, essentially, positively uses natural selection.
PJ collected mice who had been tested on, lab rats as well. Dogs, he picked up, neutered, spayed, trained them, took them to a better home. Lobsters in a big tank at a supermarket. Broke in and took them out, found a way to ship them to Maine to be let back in the ocean. Heart and soul.
He had two pit-bulls which he had found stray. These were the guys he held on to. I slept with them that night at the apartment. I don't know if you knew this, but the teeth on a pit bull can bite through a tin can. At one point, i had my hand in the dog's mouth and he started chewing it off. It's hard to be mad though when THEY'RE SO DURN CUTE!@!! Also, they gave me bed bugs--which was a mega pain in the ass! He also had built a closet like space, about 4'x6' in his apartment which he kept as a nest for injured pigeons, "one a day," he said; the sounds of their idle flapping lapped the night like a ticking clock.
We ended up meeting with Danny for only a minute at a small French cafe called Mon Petit. It was a strange spectacle, us walking in with heavy packs on and smelling dirty. He was simultaneously drinking a cup of coffee with a glass of rose. Mark commented later that Dan had changed, far from the hip-hop guru and street king he once was, he now had the hispanic look going; slicked-back hair, popped collar. Mark also commented that he had never seen such a substance addict. In the thirty minutes we spent with him, he drank two glasses of wine, a cup of coffee, smoked three cigarettes walking four blocks and the whole time talked about getting some smoke. He takes it all in smorgasboard. A revelry with jet fuel. Oh, these New York monsters!
Doting on the appropriateness of the time, Mark drank his first cup of coffee ever---EVER! A really delicious french roast that i'm sure made his heart tingle.
Dan talked to us about the absurdities of the Jackson Heights dance scene. No girls to dance with at the clubs in Queens, have to pay $2 to get a girl to dance with you. 'Dos dolares, senor.' '?Que?' '!!!Mi obra, aqui, obra aqui!!!' He was getting fed up with the Albanians he worked for at Lumine, calling their language schizophrenic jargon, single-phrase quick sputterings (yelled PO-PO-PO or KOSZ-O-NOM!) so fast you would have to be convinced it was crazy talk if the phrases were Americanized. He told us of his now slightly embittered exhaustion with the dumb, poor and hopeless ("fuck 'em" he said, compelling his flight further to an understanding in social darwinism "Republicans for Obama, Wat-up!") and then shared some memories of Pittsburgh, like making collect calls from the porn theater The Garden as Osama Bin Laden.
He's now fully into his real-estate gig, having become a broker at a brokerage. He works his ass off, telling me about the busiest day of his life. Woke up, made love to his girl since it was his day off. it was 11am and he gets a text message, "Call here, asap." Picks up the phone, "the couple just called, they want to close the deal. Get a check by them by today or we'll lose the it." Bolts out the door, calling them on redial--no answer. Heads to the bank, taking out new bonds for his IRA when they call. "Where are you?" "Midtown." She works at the United Nations building. He runs to the train, knocking people over on the platform, runs off it, sprinting through the cold. Meets her in the lobby of the UN then sprints back to the agency. "Congratulations, your first sale." A rush of calm, and then...shit, school starts today! He runs to the campus, having missed his first class, barges into the second. Apologizes--no problem. Heads to work. While serving rich lawyers and pouring their wives champagne he is in between phone calls to the brokerage making sure the check passes, an upset with them cataloguing his tuition. Not to mention that when he tried to find the street for the apartment, an Autobahn Avenue, uptown; he didn't know where it was. So quietly he asked in the elevator a woman, "Do you know where Autobahn is?" "Autobahn!" she asked loudly, "I don't know Autobahn! Hey, anyone know where Autobahn at?" The whole elevator russled, then out of the thick crowd a watery-blue eyed crackhead came up to his face, saying "Autobahn! You looking for Autobahn. It's to de east! tha east!!" He kept shouting, it was to the east, and even escorted him off the platform to the stairs to point the direction. This was his day off, for the most part, except for the school he forgot about and the 8 hours he needed to work. This is the New York lifestyle i suppose, jackrabbits on their way to the bank and the market. An insanity i can not begin to fathom. The beginnings of our trip, total madness. Will there be a New York in Canada??? Only time will tell. And it's questionable whether we'll meet characters like Dan or PJ there either. But who knows?
Dan and I discussed literary theory at the top of the stairs to the train station. Particularly, time
in 'Point of View', where the narrators perspective either slows down
to an instant or rapidly speeds up in a timeframe. He was reading this very extensive book in spanish and explained how the notions are better understood because he must take the time and patience to translate them. We had only minutes to catch our train so we ran to the station and barrel-rolled in at the last moment. Phew, NewYork!
No comments:
Post a Comment