March 25th, 2001

Basketball City Chelsea Piers

There Were Horses

A pick up game at Basketball city. Cold Sunday afternoon. The academy awards that night. Dreading them. Miserable but psyched about the game. We ended up playing four on four full court. On the other team were the guys I play with in my league, on my team was one guy I play with and also a young guy with quick moves and a shot. We ran, and the quick guard was feeding me in the post. The ball went to me. Bucket after bucket. I was like, See, pass me the ball!

I was in the right frame of mind for basketball– pissed off and frustrated about things in general and a few things in particular, hating life and kind of loving it because there is this ball and when I put it in the hoop… but on defense, the old problems. The one guy who most explicitly never passes me the ball, and who is a very good ball player but, you know, he pats the ball too much, well, he got off some good shots in my face.

Three games, we lost all three. I’m always scoring high on the losing team. I felt like Patrick Ewing.

In the locker room after I got in the a conversation with the quick guard who was feeding me in the post.

"Feeding me in the post!" Sounds like I’m a fucking animal.

Anyway, once got my freezing and suddenly "Oh my God there are all these black guys in here" miniaturized dick inside my underwear, me and the kid, the guard, who was this dark black guy, young, little goatee on his chin, we got to talking while we got out of our b-ball clothes and went back into life, one clothing item at a time, and it turned out he was a senior in high school but didn’t play on the team because of grades.

But he seemed really smart. He had those thin wire smart glasses. I don’t know, he seemed smart and I said if he wrote a college essay that had personal character he’d be ok and get into a good school. Really, in that vague jock speak locker room chat I was trying to say something about being an individual and not saying what you think they want to hear. But I mostly felt like an idiot trying to get the point across, sounding extra white because there is nothing worse than a white guy endlessly sounding down. The inter-human warmth is always better when you don’t try to put it in words, at least in the basketball context. I think he understood the good will and it was good and I said good-bye.

There’s an equestrian center next to basketball city. It was dusk, the Empire State Building had blue lights, a dark blue against the faint light blue of the fading sky. And for some reason there were two horses out there, just watching the world, standing on the dirt.

2.

July 29, 2001

How To Stop Time

Basketball Junkie.

You hear the phrase, it’s like gym rat, same idea.

So I’ve been playing a lot. Going to gym a bit, too, because… really it’s because I want to make my game better. But it’s messing up my ball handling, what little flow I have.

Welt on eye from b-ball, just finished a three hour session. It’s almost my only enthusiasm, basketball. I am reading this fantastic book, How to Stop Time, Heroin from A-Z, by Ann Marlow. In some ways being a basketball junkie has similar properties of time stoppage.

Yesterday at the end of a close full court game a guy came down the court, bounced the ball on the ground, jumped, and dunked on my head, basically hit me in the face with his sneakers. Today I had a stocky six two guy on my team who respected my game, good give and goes, and I scored all day until the last game when we finally lost. I am such a head case. I need encouragement and it’s never enough.

3.

September 19, 2001

Smoke

Horatio Street Basketball Court, West Village

There were clouds coming from the south. The wind was picking up. The sky darkening at seven. Soft summer long gone. I sniffed the air like a dog.

"You smell that?" I said.

No one did. The clouds were just clouds and that acrid smell of dust… who knows what that cloud that engulfed lower Manhattan for a week was made of?

We were playing ball. People were playing ball. My game has become stiff(er), but I will get back into the groove. The clouds were just clouds.

Thomas Beller is a writer and founder and co-editor of Open City magazine and mrbellersneighborhood.com. He teaches creative writing at Tulane University, and you can read his tweets at twitter.com/thomasbeller.

After you’ve seen the horrors of Chelsea Pier’s ice rink on a weekend afternoon, nothing raises the spirits of the inner-borough salary man like secret afternoons and evenings spent in Bushwick or Washington Heights trolling whores for coke (TWFC).

TWFC consists, at its simplest, of asking hookers to buy you coke and seeing where the relationship takes you.

Some say TWFC is nothing but safe sex for geezers. Maybe they have a point. I’m not a critic. I don’t want to start thinking about why I TWFC, I just want to tell you how great it can be and how you can do it too if you want to.

For starters, you must have the whores and the retail coke outlets in reasonable proximity. TWFC doesn’t work if you have one and not the other. So this means, in my experience, doing your trolling in poor neighborhoods. I like Bushwick and Washington Heights, but beginners can start with whatever slum is closest.

Maybe its just parochial favoritism on my part, but I don’t think you can beat Washington Heights as a place to TWFC. So I think its worth a trip uptown for most neophytes.

The first thing you have to do is find the whores. You tell them you don’t want sex, at least, not at first. You ask them if they would get you some coke. You tell them you’ll pay as much as for sex or close if they come back with the drugs. Since a lot of the whores are drug addicts, this is kind of like finding something in common with some woman in a bar or office and going from there.

One of the most obvious risks is that the whores take your money and that’s the last you see of them. You have to accept you’ll get ripped off a lot. If you can’t afford to lose the bucks, then TWFC is not for you. But it is cheap. You say you want a twenty of powder and you’ll pay them more than the twenty you’ve giving them to get it, like $35 or $40 or something when they come back with the drugs. Since a lot of them are crack addicts, you have to specify that you want powder or you’ll end up with useless crack.

A lot of times, if they want to do it, the whores will give you some worthless ID or a really cheap radio or CD player or something for you to hold to prove that they’ll come back. These gestures by the whores are all well and good, but whatever they give you is likely to be easily abandoned by them and certainly doesn’t mean they will come back. But there’s no harm in accepting these items. Soon, you too can have a collection of really cheap transistor radios at home.

If they do come back with the drugs, it means you can trust them. You can get to know them. Maybe you’ll do the drugs with them though they usually won’t have anyplace to go to do them. And you’ll just have to endure the whore’s complaints about what a waste it is to snort, rather than smoke the coke. I suppose, though, if you find yourself smoking coke with your new friends, you may be getting deeper into TWFC than I have. This article is really more of a how to get started piece, if you’re smoking coke with your hooker-friends, then, congratulations, you’re well past the beginner stage of TWFC.

The other obvious thing about TWFC is that you could get laid. They are whores even if you’re pretending just to be drug buddies. I never had sex while TWFC, but I tried to keep an open mind about it. Responses from a hooker-friend like “I’m not taking my bra off because I’ve got some kind of abscess on my breast,” or “I don’t know if I have AIDS or not,” or “If you think that when I’m on the roof of a six-story walk-up with one of my Chinese johns that I’m going to go all the way downstairs to the deli for a condom, you’re nuts” can be off-putting. Maybe I’m too sensitive.

I have supplied the following text based on an actual TWFC encounter for the beginner to get an idea of how conversations with your new drug buddies might go. This is how the TWFC apprentice might start up a conversation. Say you spot a young, white woman standing on the corner of 180th St. and Ft. Washington Avenue. Determine she is a whore. A sexy outfit and or waving at passing cars can be a tip-off.

“Hey, what’s up.”

“Nothin’”

“I’m trying to get some coke, some powder. Can you help me with that? Get me a twenty and I’ll give you a twenty and a tip.”

“You a cop?”

“Nah. I know the drill. Wanna take a look, make sure there’s no badge hanging on my neck?”

“Yeah.”

Lift your T-shirt or whatever you're wearing. Don’t worry about this question. The whores always ask this. For some reason, they also always think that there is some rule that if they ask you if you are a cop, you have to tell them.

If you’re white, as I am, the whores and anyone else you meet TWFC will think you’re a cop. This can be a pain in the ass. On the flip side, when you run into real cops even though you are a white man walking along with a frequently deranged looking, druggie woman in a neighborhood you don’t belong in, they don’t bother you.

“I gotta go to a spot on 173rd. Give me the money.”

“Promise you’ll come back. I might go for a blow job later.”

“If you don’t trust me, then forget it.”

“No, here’s the money. I’ll be at the back of the Port.”

(This is what the whores and dealers call the uptown Port Authority bus terminal, a center for your Washington Heights TWFC).

“Whatever. Be back in twenty minutes.”

Then you wait around to see if she comes back. If she does, often she’ll have gotten some crack for herself. Sometimes an invitation to get high together will follow. Sometimes she’ll want to see you take some coke to make sure you’re not a cop. But finding a place to do this is usually hard. Other times, you’ll just take your drugs and go home.

I like the frisson of TWFC for its own pleasure. You have to have a sincere appreciation for the women, their scene, and of course, for the drugs. I don’t think you can TWFC successfully if you don’t like coke. Nor will it work if you don’t have at least some slight erotic interest in the whores. Even though some people say TWFC is more about drugs than sex, (and maybe they’re right), you still have to have some slight bit of interest in the whores themselves to balance the thing right and make it work.

If you’ve seen the horror of kids running everywhere and wives yelling at husbands that is the weekend afternoon scenario when you’ve doing your parental duties at Chelsea Piers or other such outputs of the domestic life in New York, you can well imagine what a pleasant couple of hours of vacation TWFC can be.

“Of any sports bars around here?” I interrupted.

The towering man paused, chapped lips parted in a bewildered grin revealing white teeth caulked with white material. “You looking for one too?”

“No,” I said, “you asked me that last week.”

We stood this December afternoon on 22nd off 6th. Last time, 19th and 5th. He smiled a smile of forced recognition--having probably leaned into the faces of a thousand Manhattan pedestrians--then thumped my chest with the back of his red hand. “Hey man. What are you doin’ around here?”

When I started to tell him I interned at a nearby publishing house, he swung his 6-foot frame so close that it cast me entirely in shadow. Sour exhalations engulfed my unfortunately unstuffed nose, and I changed the topic to keep his boozy eyes from wandering. “So did you ever find one?”

“Sports bar?” he said. “Sure, just came from one.”

Football, baseball, related social events--all my personal Martian terrain. I could recommend more Christian fiction and brands of pickled herring than sports bars, and I’m a herring-hating atheist. But sensing a slight drawl, I suggested Blue Smoke, figuring if it drew a truly down-home barbecue crowd, it might have a sports bar. Or one where well-dressed execs yelled at a TV.

“It’s not that good,” he said, then, with the rehearsed hyperbole of the publicist I worked for, described Duke’s, a Southern comfort food joint down the street.

“Sounds regal,” I said.

“It’s not.”

With this, he stared. His sapphire gin bottle eyes locked on mine, gaze a west Texas pumpjack probing past my cornea and into my cranium. Pedestrians streamed around us. He never uttered a word. Even the African man selling socks from the corner fold-up table looked concerned.

“So,” I said, taking two steps back from his smothering presence until my shoulders hit the Barnes and Noble wall. “Have you lived here awhile?”

He never answered, just said, “Duke’s passes my Southern taster.” He patted his chest like a vigilant primate, displaying fingers as puffed as pub sausages, tips chapped as his lips. “I checked Blue Smoke out,” he said. “See, we Southerners are nosey like that.”

“Oh yeah, where are you from?” This time he patted himself with his palm, gently, the way you might rouse a sleeping child, then threw back his head as if to tell all of Chelsea: “South Carolina.”

Layers of thin, mismatched clothing covered his chest: a white tee under a tattered gray V-neck sweater under a red and blue plaid flannel under a tan Dickies jacket. All sections framed the base of a startlingly hairy neck.

When I told him my girlfriend was from Alabama and that I loved barbecue, he poked his knotty sweet potato finger into my shoulder and said, “You know what you’d like then? Sylvia’s, at 328 Lenox in Harlem.”

Before I could mention that my girlfriend had suggested it, he belched and said, “I’ve been there lots. Soul food’s good for around here. It’s not as good as it used to be since her son took over and started franchising and publishing books with William Morrow, and not as good as joints in Greenville or Charleston.” I studied him as he lectured. The way his hands waved when he conjured surprisingly evocative descriptions of Sylvia’s dishes, the way he stiffened from a clumsy, forward-leaning tilt into a cocksure column, feet out, back straight, he assumed the worldly swagger of a sophisticated traveler. The encyclopedic pride he took in detailing the restaurant’s history and Sylvia’s heritage and recent health problems, mixed with the strength and depth of his personal opinions, he also resembled the carcass of a failed critic. A fallen Frank Bruni, Calvin Trillin’s miscarried cousin. Many renowned native Carolinians matured in the City, I thought: Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Joseph Mitchell. I wondered what this guy’s story was. When he finally took a breath, I asked if Sylvia was from North Carolina too. His lips puckered, eyes locked in a Frankenstinian gaze. “Hey. I take that insultingly.” The words “It’s South Carolina” shot a single glob of spit from his lip to my chin. He ground his teeth. Time froze like ice crystals in dead Everest climbers’ blood. Spit was all I could think about: wiping it off; the chill of wind hitting it; the sort of vectors it contained. Can herpes invade you osmottically? My inner banshee howled. The fanged, green cartoon germs of my imagination cleared the inch gap from chin to lip and dove like frightened penguins into my mouth. Twitching did nothing to dislodge it, either the spit or the worry.

Finally, he looked away, and I wiped it with my sleeve. I don’t want to insult him again.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I sometimes get the two states confused.”

“Ugh,” he groaned. “Come on now. You’re killing me.”

I tried to change the subject by suggesting the only thing I know really well: reading material. “Know what you might enjoy?” I said. “The Oxford American magazine – once called the ‘New Yorker of the South.’ It’s based in Arkansas.”

His eyes dipped slightly behind the lids as he blurted, “Jezebel’s on 630 9th Avenue and 45th is shit!”

I tried to avoid another gustatory tirade with “What’s your name, man?”

“Jesse Lee,” he said, squeezing my hand in a sandpapery grip. So clichéd a name, I thought, so close to the General Lee in Dukes of Hazard, it had to be a lie. “See you around again,” he said, smiling, and stormed off.

I raced to wash up in the Barnes & Noble bathroom. It was closed.

Aaron Gilbreath is an Arizonan who drank lots of coffee while living in New York. His essays and articles have appeared or are slated for Poets & Writers, Men's Journal, High Country News, Saranac Review and McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

It may not have been the 90th floor, perhaps the 30th or 40th. The exact number is foggy in my memory, but the rest of this “strange interlude” dances before me in primary colors. I met Petrillio, an architect, at a private erotic art opening in a Chelsea gallery that was generous with champagne. High on the bubbly, I found myself beside Petrillio while we both stared bemused at a painting of a watermelon-like vulva by Judy Chicago. Naughty, I imagined him following up the dry champagne with wet kisses.

It was difficult to concentrate on Petrillio’s words, rather musical notes, for he spoke in dulcet harp-like tones. Compact, only slightly taller than I, he wore his straight grey hair, a slight curl at the end, shoulder length. As he pointed at the painting I noted his long tapered hands which, I sensed, moved gracefully across a drawing board or along a woman’s body.

Hmmm, I thought to myself, it boded well that Petrillio chose to attend an erotic show rather then one displaying landscapes. When he asked for my card, then called a week later, I ransacked my entire wardrobe to find the perfect garment to bewitch a sophisticated older man who wore his age with the same distinction as his Pierre Cardin suit. I yearned to stroke his perky moustache that he unconsciously twirled now and then.

For five dates we thrust and parried in trendy Chelsea restaurants over dinners that tasted bland, for my attention belonged entirely to Petrillio. In the distance, he pointed to his abode in a tall modern building. Wistfully, I visualized us cavorting on his bed, or enjoying an intimate laugh after a savory breakfast, then back to bed for another roll under the covers.

Why didn’t Petrillio, as huggable as a baby penguin, invite me upstairs to see his etchings? “I’m yours, take me!” I screamed silently. Was Petrillio married, gay or hiding bodies of ex-wives or girlfriends? Finally, in January, on a snowy night--a breakthrough: my cavalier suggested a glass of Pinot Grigio chez lui.

“Oh, I couldn’t. It’s so late,” I answered trying not to appear over anxious. Meanwhile I was petrified he would change his mind. Mentally, I was throwing my coat, gloves, jewelry, high heels, underwear in a heap.

Petrillio passed the doorman with an insouciant wave. Offhandedly, he asked the score of the Sugar Bowl game. “Dip into my bowl of sugar so deep that I’ll have none left, go ahead scoop up handfuls,” I thought to myself. How many other women had zoomed up in this elevator to his perch in the clouds? Were they younger, prettier, sexier than I? How could I induce an amnesia that could beguile Petrillio into thinking that his love life began and ended with me?

Exiting the elevator, windows everywhere, a panorama of midtown floated up to meet my eyes. Was I flying in a stationary airplane about to land in paradise? I wanted to lie down and dream in this hallway of rugs plush enough to be comfy pillows. Petrillio’s hand on my elbow, our first caress, relieved any lurking uncertainty.

Voila, the minute I walked into Petrillio’s aerie it seemed I had been there before; if not in this life perhaps in the Twenties for cocktails and kisses. Tonight, I felt high both physically and intellectually. Petrillio’s apartment exhibited an artistic imagination scaled down to fit into New York’s astronomical rents. Each piece of furniture seemed about to burst into a chorus of welcome as though it had been expecting me. The simply designed chairs were made of wood finished to a silky texture. Flower-shaped lamps gave the room a feminine touch.

Japanese screens, judiciously placed art work--a Warholesque painting of Marilyn Monroe, a smiling Buddha, silk wall-hangings, a Tibetan rug--everything conspired to create an aura of enchantment. Paradoxically, Petrillio’s miniature castle in the sky seemed neither cluttered nor claustrophobic.

“Pardon this camping out,” explained Petrillio, as he gently placed me on a divan barely big enough for two that was set into a cozy nook that contained several small vases filled with palm fronds.

“Till I find something bigger, my art collection’s in storage. Supporting a home in Danbury, an ex-wife’s obsession with her shrink, plus two kids at expensive colleges keeps me hopping. Women haven’t been kind to me, especially Sally.” The pain in his deep blue eyes made me long to kiss away the suffering his thoughtless wife had inflicted. I vowed to soothe this old school gentleman, who exuded elegance and seemed absent from our technological age of cell phones and sound bites.

Petrillio sprinkled his conversation with references to Italian art films and Roman history. He was a genuinely sensitive man of letters rather than a dilettante, I concluded. Therefore, I expected that the books on his shelves would be scholarly. Getting up to examine his collection, I opened a folio written in Italian to a picture of a woman, legs spread, masturbating.

My vision blurred as volume after volume contained pictures of women in classic pornographic situations: multiple partners, orgies, animals, including a monkey. Keeping my voice under control, I whispered: “Are all your books porno? No Dickens or Proust?” I whined. “And Screw magazine. You read that . . . . Why?”

“I’m a collector,” answered Petrillio proudly. “I somehow managed to get a complete run. No small feat since Screw has been published for decades. Don’t those models wear some delightful outfits? Mostly black leather but a few show real imagination. Here look at this foxy lady, her nightie of leather and lace. See, this blondie’s hot pants are cut out at the crotch and rump. Fun, huh?” Cheerfully, Petrillio thrust the well-thumbed magazine in my face.

My smile belied tears oozing from my eyes, about to course down my cheeks. The room started to spin and so did my mind. Was this porno maven the man I had fantasized would be my lifelong partner? I squirmed and intended to leave, however, my feet felt plastered to the floor.

“Pinot Grigio, darling? Other than bubbly, it’s all I drink. It’s good for the heart too. Ah, what beautiful visions my elixir conjures. It compensates me for this meaningless, brutal existence. Water is for fish. Drink up, you angelic creature. Together we shall pay homage to the versatile grape.”

Petrillio sighed and moved my hair away to lick my earlobe. Then he raised the window blinds higher to expose a view of the Empire State building ablaze with colored lights as bright as crown jewels. Pouring glass after glass of wine, soon he finished the entire bottle as though it were apple juice.

The more wine I consumed, the more I yearned to become part of Petrillio’s scenario. As he smoked a cigarette in a long golden holder, I marveled at the movement of his graceful wrist, the erotic way his lips puckered to inhale smoke.

“Darling, mind if I change into a cozy dressing gown?” Disappearing into a small alcove, Petrillio blew me a kiss.

I had anticipated him caressing me slowly, awakening each erogenous zone in turn. Mad from an overabundance of wine and desire, I shivered with longing ready to open every orifice to him.

Ten excruciatingly long minutes later, Petrillio appeared wearing a gold-colored silk robe that Noel Coward would have fancied. Underneath what a shock: black lace panties and bra, a red garter belt that held up black fishnet stockings and an antique locket with rhinestones dangled from his neck. Prancing like a rotund fawn drunk on wine, Petrillio’s reserve evaporated.

“You think I should get a bustier? Petrillio murmured, twisting and turning before a decorative mirror on a stand. He thrust his chest forward provocatively. Meanwhile, he applied layers of makeup to his face and rouged his cheeks. “Could I look worse than Madonna? That slut! Staring at me, darling, why?” asked Petrillio, his speech slurred. “C’mon, never seen a man wear a locket before?”

“Any picture inside it?” I asked, motivated by a mounting hysteria.

“A picture of Mae West taken when the cops arrested her and closed her show. Bought it at a flea market in Danbury along with a hairpin the dealer swore belonged to Mae herself. Some pisser!” he slurred. Fondling the locket self-consciously, Petrillio wriggled in a vain attempt to assume a dignified posture. One of his frilly-topped fishnets dropped.

Bug-eyed, I watched my courtier metamorphose into Tony Curtis’s drag character in Some Like It Hot. Perhaps in a former incarnation I had stolen Petrillio’s garter belt, kicked a cat or spit into a beggar’s bowl? Buddhists say that debts from a previous life must be repaid. By then I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream for help--fat chance on such a high floor. Dazed, I watched this fan of Victoria’s Secret consume another bottle of his “elixir.” Just as I was figuring how to sneak out without Petrillio noticing, he sidled over, crossed his hairy legs and plumped down beside me. Suddenly sober as a deacon, although his breath smelled of alcohol, he crept up close to my face, examining it minutely.

“There’s something I’ve wanted to do since the first moment I saw you, Darling. May I?”

“Why not?” The wine had plunged me into a lethargic reverie. The scene assumed a fin-de-siecle aura reminiscent of a novel by Gabriel d’Annunzio. Only lacking was the subtle odor of heliotrope or the green fairy, absinthe.

Mesmerized, I watched Petrillio fling open two drawers brimming over with makeup. Other drawers in a delicate lacquered chest were bursting with hairnets, rollers, and hair conditioners.

“Sorry Darling, but your eyebrows are so. . .” he searched for a word. “Yuck! Like they’ve been sprayed with DDT. The hairs scraggly every which way. No arch to speak of, tch tch. Let me fix them, pretty please?”

Before I could say Estee Lauder, Petrillio started plucking away. Expertly, he wielded the tweezers across my brows. Da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa could not have been more intent on his task. Foundation, powder, rouge and lipstick were applied with the same agility.

Next Petrillio covered me with a plastic cape and took out a professional scissors. While he snipped away, he supplied highlights of his biography.

“Wanted to be a stylist since I played with grandma’s curling irons back in Bumfuck, Ohio. My parents, especially tight-assed Dad, insisted I study architecture. The bastard died last year. Left me some money, and soon I’ll have enough to quit drudging away. Hell, let those snooty, philistine clients of mine live in a sewer.” Venting his irritation, Petrillio threw a brush across the room.

“I’ll find women to beautify, even if I have to chase them down Broadway. No more men’s suits either. Before the great drag queen in the sky pulls down her shade, it’s gonna be gowns and champagne at The Four Seasons for this tootsy.” While applying pomade to my hair, Petrillio chortled merrily.

“Let me look, please,” I murmured half-expectant, half-fearful. Like moths, Petrillio’s hands flitted around my face and throat.

“Trust me! In you I shall reanimate Rita, Ava, and Marlene. Stars then were glamour pusses. Not like those anorexic twits on screen today. Turn right, chin up, my lovely.”

Petrillio moved my face around to different angles to check if the colors were coordinated and flattering. Was he going to make me look like Mae West?

Finally, after I couldn’t sit still one more second, Petrillio brought over a hand mirror. As he sprayed my hair with jasmine-scented mousse, I examined his handiwork, which had turned a boring shingle cut into a layered fantasy of curls that made me look years younger.

“What d’ya think?” he inquired, fists clenched. The artist wanted to be certain the canvas on which he’d painted his masterpiece had the right proportions. Meanwhile he rubbed heavy dabs of setting gel on his grey hair that now looked shellacked.

“A red streak, gold eye shadow!” For a moment, I hardly recognized myself. Alchemically, Petrillio divined from my soul the audacious way I had always wanted to look but never dared.

This chic, yet funky style eventually caused a renaissance in my social life. I bought form-fitting clothes, ventured into offbeat clubs, bought spiky, black-heeled shoes with ankle straps. As though I were a car, Petrillio gave me a complete overhaul.

At this time, I desperately wanted a lover--not a cross-dresser. If he wasn’t the elusive Mr. Right, at least Petrillio had given me a valuable crash course in cosmetology. I remembered John Lennon’s words: “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

"Oh my god! How the hell did you know!"

I wanted to say, it’s really not that difficult when you date someone for nearly a year. And we did meet through craigslist ourselves. His words got me everytime. Even when placing an ad for a trannie or a woman with a strap-on. I knew it was Luke. And this made him cry. Because we couldn’t make it work between us. He hasn’t come to terms with his sexuality yet. Doesn’t want to deal with his "heteroflexibility" as he likes to call it which I think is really a cop out.

In any case, he is this amazing guy, who dates great women like me, gets bored, ruins the relationship–and goes for these people men, women, somewhere in between, that are after money, a place to stay, not a relationship, not even sex or friendship. He has to double check each time he has a date from craigslist, to make sure that the date isn’t an escort-referencing the escort services section! Half the time they are.

When we first met, his "assistant" was a trannie named Layla. She had nowhere to stay so he took her in after their craigslist fuck. When I came into the picture, she had been around about a month. She stayed another month or so. Free room and bored. MetroCard and lunch money. I was sure she was planning to run a bordello out of his apartment. She tried to break us up from the start. I wanted to feel sorry for her because I knew it wasn’t easy living in transition; between two genders. She made this impossible. She was a pathological liar. Taking and taking and basically feeling it was her right to do so. I spotted her lies the first day. It took Luke much longer. I guess he needs to see the good in people while I see them for what they are.

I still troll craiglist once in awhile--it’s like watching soap operas. Mindless entertainment. I will always be able to pick out Luke’s ads because he writes a certain way and I doubt he will change his character or his desires. I know I freaked him out by picking his ad out so easily, but after all, I chose his ad out of over two hundred when we first met. Words get me everytime.

Later on, when we had the stroke of luck we expected four and a half years earlier, we moved to a place three times bigger, overlooking the Queensboro Bridge. We could finally get our long-lost things from storage. We splurged on movers. They carried everything down five flights of steps, made a stop at Chelsea Storage, then carried it all up four more flights to our new place.

We were ecstatic. We spent the weekend dusting furniture and unpacking boxes of books that hadn't seen daylight in five years.

But there was a problem. There was still a bunch of stuff left in storage that had to be disposed of. We'd discovered that some of the things we'd done without for five years we actually preferred to do without. But rent for the unit—$134.60—was due Tuesday unless we emptied it and left it broom-clean. I worked from home. My hours were flexible. I'd take care of things.

I was a model of ruthless efficiency. I arranged to have a furniture dealer who rented out props to movies come meet me at the facility. I had a 1915 maple dresser with a swivel mirror that I'd refinished myself in the backyard in 11th grade. No sentimentality. No prisoners. The dealer only offered me $40, but I ran a quick cost-benefit analysis and took it on the condition that he'd cart away the folding chairs and broken washstand too.

Now came the tricky part. Big, heavy stuff to throw away. There was the 1920s battleship of a typewriter my mother had bought in the 60s when her office upgraded to electric. It was a hunk of cast iron weighing a good thirty pounds (the dealer refused to take it), black, with beautiful white keys and the name L.C. Smith in worn, gold paint. And there were a couple of big, bulky computer monitors too. I bought them cheap when my old office upgraded.

I put everything on the trolley Chelsea Storage provided, and wheeled it to the glassed-in office downstairs. "Is there somewhere I can get rid of this?" "Nowhere here," said the guy on duty, "But there's a dumpster around the corner on 22nd. Trolleys have to stay here, though."

Well, I paid to lift weights at the gym, so why not do this for free? I hoisted the L.C. Smith off the trolley, and put it on the edge of the loading dock. I hopped down to sidewalk level and reached up, easing it into my arms. I shuffled along 23rd with the monster braced against my belly.

I finally reached the dumpster around the corner. There were a couple of guys from the warehouse there, taking out the trash. When they caught sight of my L.C. Smith, they said they'd take it. Somewhere deep inside the warehouse they were keeping a "museum."

One down, two to go. I grabbed the first monitor, a bulky whale of a thing. I was tired from my last trip and my arms were trembling. I didn't know how much more of this I could take. After about half a block, though, a man from the garage across the street shouted out to me, "Does that still work?" Yes, thank God. "I have another one too," I told him. I'd be back in a few minutes' time.

I walked back to Chelsea Storage. Sweat was trickling down my back. I brushed the dust off the front of my shirt and off my black cotton pants. I stretched my arms and shook out my hands. Almost there. After this was done, I'd go home and lie down in the bath.

The last monitor was sitting on the edge of the trolley. OK, almost there. I did a deep knee bend and reached forward. Rrriiiip. I stopped short, frozen. A roar of laughter came from the office. I felt a cold breeze at the seat of my pants. I remembered I was wearing a thong.

I shuffled to the ladies room to check out the damage. The guys in the office all turned away. It was worse than I thought. A tear in the fabric along the seat seam, a good six inches. I rifled through my purse. Safety pin? Bandaid? Paper clip? Nothing. I was screwed.

I went back to the loading dock. Maybe nobody noticed. Maybe they were just laughing at something else. I didn't have enough time to go home and change, then come back again before closing. I'd just walk, you know, carefully.

A man in coveralls came up to me. I acted casual. "Do you need help?" He was a tall Jamaican with a lilting accent. I tried to act like everything was normal. "You mean carrying stuff?" "No." His face was serious. "Your pants broke." I started to laugh manically. "It's not funny," he said. "Look, I have a t-shirt underneath. You can tie it around your waist." "OK," I said. My eyes were tearing up.

With Winston's t-shirt on, I hauled away the last monitor, then hailed a cab. Once I got home I washed the shirt, and mailed it back to Chelsea Storage with a thank-you note. The pants weren't salvageable, so I threw them away—along with all my thongs. I'm sorry now about the typewriter, but I'm glad it's in a museum.

“Hold my bag, would you,” I say to my poor friend Chris, who I drag along with me to art openings each Thursday. The bag is full of library books and has been throwing off my back for the past two days. “Great, I was looking for something to make me look gayer,” said Chris, and I’m surprised that he’s willing to say that in such a crowded Chelsea setting, given his overall shyness. Then I start counting back to how many drinks he’s had and never get to zero.

Each mugshot is accompanied by a description of the person and his alleged crime. One man’s crime is listed as "Communist (drunk)". Any physical irregularities and vices—i.e. tobacco use, bad temperament—are also listed, and a woman with a quaint British haircut turns to ask me what a carbuncle is.

I go up to the free bar and there’s a complex array of dyed syrups, juice, vodka and twists. I don’t see a drink list so I just wait and ask for what the lady before me had.

“Are you sure?” the bartender starts, grinning at me. He begins making the drink, which involves pouring orange juice and vodka and some red dyed substance back and forth between two plastic cups. “This drink has arsenic in it, you know,” he says, still grinning.

My mind boggles at the fact that he’s treating me like a three year old and sort of coming on to me at the same time. I mumble something meant to make him awkward but he doesn’t stop.

“That’s what you get for blindly following,” he says, handing me the drink. He made it extra strong with plenty of warm vodka so that it tastes something like goose’s vomit.

I circle around the rest of the exhibit slowly. Mugshots are easier to appreciate than other forms of art because they aren’t really based on a certain technique or viewpoint—each one invites its own narrative. I look around for Chris but he isn’t in the room. I call him on my cell. “Hey, what’s going on?”

“Oh, I’m across the street getting arrested.”

“Drinking in public?”

“Yep.”

I’m zipping down the stairs and I open the heavy metal door, stepping into one of the last hot breaths of September night. The sun has already gone down and I see the cruiser first, then the red tufts of Chris’ bad haircut, then a fatass female police officer leaning onto the trunk and writing Chris a summons.

I step across the street. There are at least three people within a ten foot radius gulping down PBRs on the sidewalk. I think to myself how noticeable Chris is in everything he does. He tries to do things when people aren’t looking but spends so long looking around suspiciously that by the time he gets around to doing whatever it is everyone’s ready to pounce. It’s like that time I convinced him to run out on the bill of this shitty Mexican restaurant we were at. He spent so long debating on how to do it—should we leave at the same time or one after another—that the waiter caught up to us easily.

“Where I come from, in upstate New York…” Chris was intoning.

“Well this is New York City, and if you don’t like it here, you can get the hell out. You know, I can just put you in the car and take you down to the station.”

“Yeah,” Chris said, “I guess you could arrest me for about anything you wanted. I found that out at the Republican National Convention.” They started mouthing off to each other about George W. and who made the laws and who enforced them.

“You better watch it, or I’ll be throwing you right over the roof of this car, I’ll be showing you how liberal I really am,” the cop said. The woman writing the summons looked up, bored, her eyes half-lidded like a cow’s. “Don’t you get him started,” she said to Chris.

“Yeah, come on Chris, this is the most obvious place to get caught drinking,” I said. “We saw the cruisers all around.”

Chris looked straight forward and said nothing, doing the stoic drunken hipster bit. I sort of wanted to kick his ass but I restrained myself until later when the cops weren’t there.

Eddie also sweeps the stoop, greets the visitors, buzzes in delivery guys, and holds the door for women. He is the mayor of our block. I mean this in a libertarian sense. If every tenant in the West 200s on Fifteenth Street had to identify in a lineup the one person they made eye contact with the most in any given month, it would be Eddie. I guess what makes him such a public figure is his continual presence; I have at least a hundred extended neighbors, and none of us really know each other, but all of us know him. When I go to work in the morning, he's there; when the unemployed insurance salesman across the street steps out to check his P.O. box or pick up his wired cash from his mother in Lansing, he's there; when the smoking hyena adsales girls who live below me go out for their evening fixes, he's there. I officially inaugurated Eddie myself in 2002, a few weeks after I moved in, when I noticed that I didn't have to separate my cardboard from my plastic in the recycling bag—Eddie would do it for me, with the sort of alacrity that only inspires those who truly enjoy their occupations. It is a specific “I enjoy service” face. He is not thinking, “You are a shithead” under his breath. Delivery guys don't make this face, but deli guys do, and so do the people who handout the ad-fat free daily papers on the subway.

Over the years, Eddie has teamed up with various “lieutenant mayors”, but none of them have lasted even a half term. Some of them were too cracked out; others too lazy. The only first lady was a mid-day snoozer with a penchant for Swiss Cake Rolls and caterwauling at rival congressmen around the block. Her committees convened during trash pick-up hours, which left her other half constantly in the lurch.

Recently, he acquired a really lusterless-yet-functional lacquer folding chair from the mid-century. He wears a bomber in the winter lined with fuzzy shearling, which he wears with a pair of gamekeeper tweeds. He wears a pair of original Nike Air Dunk hi-tops, always, and his shorts in the summer are mesh - short mesh, like the Lakers in 1969.

Trash days are Mondays and Thursdays, and of the off days, he sells books and socks around the corner on 8th Avenue. The likelihood of him reading this essay is nil, but he has been known to pawn back issues of ArtForum off to unwitting Midwestern Chelsea boys on their way to, or from, the 8th Avenue New York Sports Club. On a day when my girlfriends nominate their ugly crushes—Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Peter Gallagher, it comes my turn and I don't have one. And then I realize when Eddie walks out of the alley in the middle of the day in a kind of disoriented pleasure-wooze with a big sucker kiss - a hickey the size of the dial on an industrial washing machine, but a little less perfectly circular - that I am jealous. That Eddie is my ugly crush. And not only that - that to me, he is not ugly.

My boyfriend, easily only a Jerry West to Eddie's Wilt Chamberlain, said he once saw Eddie hand off a dime bag to a murky street skulker in the middle of the night, just outside my apartment; then deduced that the clanking pots and pans might be the kitchen for cooking methamphetamine, about which all I know is this: because of it, there is a growing demand for dentists in Kansas.

I'm moving out next month, and I've thought about calling the cops, or the management company, or the super, about the drug stuff. But there are such bigger problems (like the woman who feeds the birds and rats with Grape Nuts), and anyway, I know he's in cahoots with the super—he has tammanyed almost anyone who might get in the way of his platform.

Truth is though—he's just too damn cute.

Two friends and I went in at about 1 am. There was no one at the door, and the place was nearly empty. The boat swayed slightly, dark and dank inside. I wandered around at a slower than usual pace, winding through the ship’s many rooms. There were only a handful of other people. They must have come aboard the same time we did, given that we, for a time, were all clustered by the bathroom. I lost track of my friends among huge rooms filled mainly with machinery, narrow passageways dotted by portholes, and then found them again and again, there, in other rooms and levels, and finally on the tin-floored bottom, smooth with wear over the years.

We followed the voices, lured down by the muted then louder sounds. At first I thought the night had yet to start, that more people would come, but I could feel the emptiness of the vessel, and knew something was somehow off.

We wound our way down, circled the floor. Idiotic voices repeated banalities, echoing what one would expect to hear on a flight, maybe tapered to a boat’s experience.

“So enjoy the cruise. Anything we can do for you…” a female’s voice bounced and landed dead in the metal.

“Welcome, welcome,” a male voice joined.

I gazed at the ground I was covering, saw “STAPLE” embossed there, and wondered how old the boat was. I temporarily lost track of what was occurring. When I noticed again, the female’s voice was repeating the same inane statement about the cruise.

I walked directly up to where they were gathered, seven or eight of them bunched together in the DJ area. “Does anyone have any music?” one of them asked over a mic.

I stepped up, and climbed around a pole. “I do.” I announced, and advanced.

Some kept intoning into microphones, pleased to hear the sound of their own voices.

“And do you know the third chorus to the Messiah?” one kid asked me.

“You guys are really asking for a lot, you know that?” I joked, as I eased the heave of my bag onto a nearby chair and began digging through it for my MP3 player. It took a while for me to figure out the wiring.

“Do you guys know this board?” I asked, flicking switches, pressing buttons.

Someone offered to help, and my two friends went off to get beer. I put on the first song, which eventually worked.

A blond, be-backpacked kid looked at me with recognition. “It’s The Cramps!” he noted, and I was glad he knew it.

Further glee came from the prototypical hip-hop kid intoning the chorus after it was sung: ‘I need a new kind of kick’, he repeated, facing offstage, although all of us were gathered upon it.

“Nice.” said the guy to my right, nodding. He perused through my collection of music, and selected Raw Power.

The scene began to loosen, we all realized we were in cahoots, it was alright, we shared a station and a source.

Below the sound board, there was a plastic container with a few stray LPs inside. I began to look through the records, slightly limp with river air, the covers extra heavy and humidity-filled. I settled on Judy Garland’s “Christmas Hits” and wondered if I could, on the fly, figure out how to transfer to the turntable. I eyed the switches and cords, and began to really consider about the implications.

This place was amazing. Was it really a sort of open, actual vessel for the taking? Could it be this easy to walk in, plug in, and begin a party? Even though, after my friends left to get beer, I knew no one there, there was still a sense of genuine camaraderie, of worthwhile collaboration. This held great promise. This was what this city should be, and, evidently, could be. Within minutes I was having wild visions of secret good times without a chaperone or supervisor.

Then we were busted.

A slightly nervous-looking guy came up to our little knot of revelry. “Did you rent this space out?” He asked us.

We were all quiet for a moment.

“No.” admitted one of the trendy Euro girls, who had previously been dancing in small circles to an Elvis song.

“You can’t just come on here. This is a rental-only space.”

"It is?" asked the blond kid.

"Yes. Only booked events are allowed in here."

”Oh,” I spoke up. “I had no idea.”

“And you can’t smoke on the boat.” He said to me.

The group began to shift, disperse.

“Is this anyone’s record?” He asked, peering at Judy Garland on the turntable.

“Yours,” I said, approaching to retrieve my iPod. He seemed satisfied that we would vacate, and turned to leave.

“Don’t listen to him. You keep smoking.” One of the hip-hop guys said to me, nodding.

As we filed out of the boat, we thanked each other. It was, technically, as a matter of fact, Independence Day, and for a few minutes it had been true independence in action.

It was fun while it lasted. No, it was great while it lasted. Anarchy, pure and driven like hope. The idea that if you’re lucky enough to wander onto an equipped boat in the middle of Manhattan and savvy enough to figure out how to make it work, and can maintain good will, there a good time is for you. Even if only for three songs.

and is reading a poetry magazine. “Say,” I say, “is

that some sort of poetry magazine?” “Yeah,” she says.

“I like Billy Collins,” I say.

“Yeah?” she says.

“Yeah,” I say. “But don’t you think Poetry is Dead, kinda?”

“Not really,” she says, and she gives me facts and

figures and numbers to prove her point, which I have

since forgotten. Then she asks me if I’ve read

that John Ashberry article, you know,

the one in The New Yorker? “Oh yeah,” I say, “that

was a great article! I liked how at the end there was

a flashback to when he was young and struggling, for I

myself am young and struggling.” The woman smiles

and picks at her pea salad with the dill yogurt dressing

on top. Then we talk about Billy Collins some more,

and then this woman says, “You should read Elizabeth

Bishop.” “Okay,” I say, “yeah, I know her, but only when

she gets her stuff published in The New Yorker. Published

from purgatory, rather – she’s dead, right?” The woman

smiles and says, “You’re a bit of poet yourself, aren’t you?”

“Oh jeez,” I say, and my face blooms crimson, “I wish.

But I don’t know. I don’t really write poems. They’re

more like, I don’t know – maybe I’m a storyteller, really.

My lack of poetic skill is what keeps me from being a poet.

My similes are like…well…they’re like…they’re like, bad!

And my metaphors are…they are boulders of…of terribleness!

So no, I’m not a poet. I wish I were. Once I thought I was.

I won an award for poetry in college. It was called The Hopwood.

Ever heard of it? I went to Michigan. Yeah, uh, Go Blue!

But see, I wrote my prose when I was sober, during the day,

and my poetry at night, when I was drunk. And when my poetry

won…well, it was great for the ego, but not for the drinking!

Anyways. Enough about me. Are you done with your salad?”

She paid, smiled, and left.

“Who was that?” I asked my boss.

“That was Alice Quinn,” my boss replied, “she’s the Poetry

Editor at The New Yorker.” “Oh jeez,” I said, “I hope she’s

not mad because I said that part about how Poetry is Dead.”

“I doubt it,” my boss replied, which was confirmed that

weekend when The New York Times Book Review printed

a gushing review on its front page of a new book of

previously unpublished work by Elizabeth Bishop,

edited by Alice Quinn, who clearly has better things to

worry about then whether some stupid fucking waiter

thought Poetry was Dead, kinda.