I’ve been escaping New Jersey, also marriage and family, for six years now, on my way to Manhattan, and I’ve driven the whole way, the whole time, probably because the places I could afford were Uptown, close enough to the George Washington Bridge to make it the best way of crossing over. I have an Edward Steichen photograph of that beautiful bridge hanging where I can always see it, just to remind me of how I got here and why I want to stay. It was a gift. The job is still in New Jersey, so the crossing is frequent, twice or three times a week, and I feel like a failure, for the day anyway, if I don’t get my vehicle up to 70 mph on the bridge, one way or the other. On the way to work, I take the Turnpike and the state highways, because, like most employees, I don’t want to be late no matter how much I hate the job. When I’m done, headed home, I take a county highway that meanders east toward the Turnpike, because now I’m in no hurry, I’m just getting there. But I originally chose this road, 514 East, because it passes by a liquor store, Harvest Wine & Spirits, where, once upon a time, I would stop to buy cheap 12-packs of Natural Light and have at least three beers before I hit the road again. I’d sit in my car under the huge pine trees that lined the little parking lot and watch through the rear view mirror as people hauled their cases, their pints, and their fifths to their vehicles, and sometimes followed my example, started drinking right there and then. I’d also get out my cell phone and call friends because for the moment I was neither drunk nor driving. I’d call my friend old Bob for news about Keith, who had a stroke at the age of 60. Now I call Keith for news about Bob, who has Stage 3 lung cancer, started chemotherapy today, radiation when he’s ready. Or I call my old friend Mike, urge him to tell me about the construction business, which he’s in, or the latest entry in the debate about capitalism and slavery, which he knows better than anyone except maybe professors at Harvard and CUNY. Today I stopped at Harvest Wine & Spirits to buy a 12-pack of Natural Light, but not to drink in my car. I’ve given up that habit. The shelter of the pine trees is gone. Just stumps with brown leaves, mere ruins. So now, rising above this new man-made plain, you can see the electrical towers marching past, right overhead, stringing together something we have taken for granted, but what is it, states, social conditions, economies, our lives? I never even noticed them until today. I was getting ready to call Keith about Bob when I looked over and saw an old guy dancing an Irish jig in the parking lot. Tattered jeans, ratty t-shirt, biker boots and an engineer cap, scraggly beard, a 16-ounce Bud in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Between us was a Harley-Davidson fit for a suburban Dad, all chrome and sleek baggage compartments at the rear and the sides, the equivalent of a Gold Wing bought by someone with intentions of being cooler than the sad owner of a Honda. The old guy was talking to the bike as he danced, more like lecturing or scolding as I leaned toward him and heard the cadence, which was nowhere near in synch with the movement and sound of the feet, a discordant achievement worthy of a jazz drummer. That’s what I was hoping as I listened, and watched. The owner of the bike came out of the store, never looked at the old guy, or at me, just stowed his 12-pack of Heineken in the box behind the saddle, put on his helmet, and rumbled away. By this time the old guy was teetering, but he turned toward the barren corridor under the towers and somehow got himself over the curb and into the tall grass beneath them, started zig-zagging through all the warning posts that protrude from these buzz cuts, and then he started dancing again. He still hadn’t opened the Bud, but as he finished a Michael Jackson-worthy backward moon walk away from the drainage canal that flanks the towers’ corridor, he cracked it and drank deeply, and started wriggling as if he hadn’t had a drink all day. Or as if he were back in Hell’s Kitchen, the Old Country. Then he drank deeply, again, that’s all it took to drain the can, and sprayed the rest in the tall grass. He threw the empty across the canal in anger and set off south by southwest under those towers. I thought maybe I should offer him a ride, but I was headed in the other direction.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 00:49:14 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015