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springtime
May. 3rd, 2002 04:14 pmI haven’t had a springtime in several years now. My ships follow the heat all winter long, and by the time I make it back up north, it is always just about the same temprature as wherever I was in january or february. I have missed all those muddy slushy days when the snow starts to melt for real and clods of dirt fall from the soles of your boots in the morning. I have missed that one mornng when you wake up and realize that the trees have leaves again. I have missed that first whiff of mown lawn.
Despite the fact that I have been out in the heat scrubbing and polishing and tweaking, screwing, bolting, flushing and waxing my 17 foot zodiac for the past two days, I haven’t been thinking about the way my yard was always shaded by pine trees so that I couldn’t run in my yard without shoes when I was little. I haven’t been dwelling on the serene coolness of the fieldstones that lined the walls of my child hood cellar. I have been thinking about the way that springtime always seems to bring embarassment. I have been thinking about how springtime always bring unfufilled sexual promise, just like what happened with stephanie allen in john sullivan’s basement in the sixth grade. I have been thinking about what happened to me last year.
So, I was off of norfolk, steaming north, and I was feeling the fist crisp air I had in a while. I put my old jeans on because it turned crisp and I was painting and I had to dig into the very back of the locker to get the pair of jeans that I wanted. Now I am not going to go into a long description of the jeans or why they are my favorites or any of that crap. You know all ready. I am sure you have a pair just like them. In fact everybody has a pair just like them. The particulars are mutable, the essential emotional attachment is the same...
So I have these jeans on and I reach into my pockets and pull out some safety pins, and book of matches, a swatch of dyed-blue synthetic hair, some beer caps and a receipt from a Chinese restaurant (shrimp with lobster sauce). And a crumpled ball of six dollar bills. (I must not have left a tip) and this little time capsule reminded me of the last night I must have worn these jeans, way back in the beginning of last may in New York city. We had been tied up to pier 17, which is just below Chinatown and soho and I was having the time of my life. We would knock off at four every afternoon and I would be off like a shot. The first couple of nights we were in town I visited with old friends, but the city changes people. Not that people don't change and mature as they grow older, but Manhattan infuses some sort of toxin into the souls of people who live there for too long. At least those that come from points elsewhere. So I grew sad seeing old friends acting jaded and tired and used up despite the fact that they are doing things like pitching the idea for DEVO songs in car advertisements, spinning records under a pseudonym at scary swirling raves, playing bass guitar on the stage of Brownie's on a Saturday night (where all the people in the crowd call you an asshole as you shove your way to the front to toss your buddy a note letting him know that you are in town). They were jaded and I was sad. And I would stumble back to the Anderson at five thirty sharp every morning for that hour and a half of sleep before it started all over again. Now don't get me wrong, it was great to see them, and they seemed genuinely happy to see me too, but like I said it just made me so goddamn sad to see them fretting over the stock market when I know goddamn well that I could live for a year on what they take home in a month. (That is if I stuck to Ramen noodles and peanutbutter-sauce spaghetti. And 40's of malt liquor...) Besides, living on a boat changes a guy just as much as living in Manhattan and I needed to be off by myself for a while.
Now I have had some pretty good adventures in new york over the years, as a matter of fact I would say that I have had my fill. I much prefer Prague or Marseilles over NYC any day, but again, those are other stories. What happened to me the last night we spent in new york wasn't an adventure. In fact it makes me a little sick to think about it...But there in my hands were the matches, the receipt, the safety pins, the swatch of hair. and I can't stop thinking about it. I started out the evening really slow, I even had something to eat at a Vietnamese place in Chinatown early in the evening. I had steamed squids and noodles in a black bean sauce and the band VS. sat down at the table next to me while I was eating. I guess they were playing in town somewhere that night, or maybe they have broken up but just wanted to get together for old time's sake or something; I could have sworn that they had broken up. So I had a full belly and I was off for the night and I started off at a little joint in a basement marked by a little red light over the stairs. I only know that it was there because one of my friends brought me there. I had one beer and then left because I had to stand. I can't stay in a place unless I can belly up to the bar, that is if I am alone. So I moved on. I went to a place right on Houston called "La Botanica" I know that because that is what the book of matches says. I was reading the paper (the post, not the times) and drinking my beer when this dreadlocked girl came in and sat down next to me. I had been talking to the bartender earlier and for whatever reason he introduced us. She ordered some wine and when the bartender wasn't around she would talk to me. It didn't take long for her to let me know that she had just gotten out of rehab two days before and even though she had taken some XanaX and was having a couple of glasses of wine she would be OK. It was just because it was raining outside, you know? and her apartment was making her think about junk and the rain only made it worse and she knew that the bartender would only let her have two glasses of wine because he was her friend and knew all about rehab (He let her have as many glasses as she wanted. Bartenders don't give a rat's ass about rehab...) In any case, I was a substance abuse counselor before I started working on the water, and old instincts die hard. Not that I was preaching fire and brimstone, but I was gently going about my business and she knew it. She appreciated it.
I am not nor have I ever been a user of junk. But both in my former profession and in my personal life I have seen too many people change into horrid beasts or at least kill themselves with the stuff. I've seen people go from prep-school trust fund snobbery to hustling queer sex in the backs of oldsmobiles out on broad st. faster than they could have flunked out of college, had they made it that far. Needless to say I have a soft spot for junkies trying to get clean. What happened in new york was about humanity, not gender.
So it started raining harder and she said that she had too much wine. She needed to go home and she wanted me to come with. She wanted me there so I could stop her from copping dope. She said it embarrassed her to shoot up in front of people. Besides, she made her living doing folks hair in her apartment and had a full salon set up in there and she could give me the blue mohawk that we had been talking about earlier. Now you have to realize that I miss having a mohawk, and joey ramone had just passed away. And a lot of things died along with joey ramone. Kurt Cobain may have opened a lot of peoples eyes to the fact that mortality is something very palpable, even if you don't know the cat that died, but joey ramone was there from the very beginning and I suppose, in a way he was there for the very end....but we'll get to that later. This girl, Miss X, hailed a cab and brought me to her apartment. Midtown, west side. Door man and everything. And that is where it all fell apart. I have never taken a stranger home from a bar, I had never gone with a stranger to their home from a bar. I am not a pick-up kind of guy. I went because I believed her that she needed company so she wouldn't cop, I went because I wanted that blue mohawk. But by the time we got to her apartment I was starting to rethink the whole mohawk thing, after all it isn't 1984 anymore, and joey ramone had just died and I still had to make it back to the boat for open house and what will Dave say about the tech with the mohawk anyway? I was losing my courage fast, and she was getting annoyed because I wasn't sure if my hair would look stupid in that shade of blue and besides, she didn’t have any beer seeing as how she had just gotten out of rehab. She told me that her dog needed a walk, and there was a package store around the corner so I could get some beer while I walked the dog. Never trust a junkie. When I got back there was a really scary looking dude in the apartment and I knew who he was. Those guys always have that same look in their eyes, weather you are a social worker or just a visitor. they always look at you wondering if they are going to have to shoot you simply because they don't know who you are. I took the dog and my beer as far away from the dude as I could while they finished business. Now I do have to hand it to new york in that respect, in providence I saw people wait hours for their junk. This guy was over in less than ten minuets.
So she apologized to me and locked her dog in the bathroom because it was harder for her to let her dog watch her shoot up than it was for her to let another person watch. I wonder why she wanted me to go to her place in the first place, I was no deterrent at all. She missed the first shot, skin popped it, so she shot another bag while she was telling me how strong this stuff was. I watched the blood shoot back up into the syringe. This time she got the vein. She let the dog out of the bathroom and puked, then flopped on the floor hugging a teddy bear as her eyes slowly shut. she was on the nod for a good half hour, as I pet the dog and looked out the window at the rain. I stuck around long enough for her to come around again. I wanted to make sure she wasn't going to die. I was four beers into the six when I was convinced that she wouldn't. In fact, she had shot two more bags and was lucid enough to feel enough remorse to have me flush the rest of the bundle down the toilet. I have lots of experience doing that. After that I knew it was time for me to go. I was really glad she didn't give me that mohawk after all, but I still wonder if I had let her do it, would she still sent me out with the dog so she could cop? Not that it matters really. There will always be people killing themselves with heroin, but It just makes me feel such anguish when I am there live, in person. When I was doing social work I had a pager (hate 'em) and I had some friends page me over to their place late one saturday. I got over there and they were all rubbing their noses and sneezing and carrying on...Christ I said ruprecht, why is your nose bleeding? Why is everyone's nose bleeding? He explained that they got their hands on some tablets of lithium carbonate and decided to crush them into lines to snort. ruprecht, I said, Your nose is bleeding because you all just snorted salt. And he said "you mean this shit isn't going to give us a buzz?" The last time I saw ruprecht he was running down the street with a pair of shoes he stole from an antique shop that was owned by someone who we both knew. I heard later that the shoes were too small for him when he tried them on at home.
I was out in the street with two beers and the swatch of blue hair, just on case I decided to dye my hair sometime in the future, and it was raining. She offered to get me a cab, but I have a terrible phobia of taxis, especially in NYC, especially when I am alone, so I started hoofing it all the way back to the boat. I left her place remarkably early, it was only about midnight, but I had a lot of ground to cover. At first I just felt really dirty and disgusted with myself for getting into that situation. That's why I went to sea in the first place, to get away from having to care for people in that sort of way. I was sick of having to worry about this one offing himself, or that one o.d.ing. You can only care so much before your soul stretches to its limits...Then I started to get angry because I realized that she had been the one to drag me into that situation and I was just trying my best to be a good person and once again I got fucked over because I trust. By the time I reached the Bowery I was sad, not because of that girl, but because I was feeling like I had failed again. All I wanted to do that night was to go out and read the newspaper and drink beer. How did I know It would end up with me having to worry about weather someone was going to die in front of me again. And I was thinking about the old days, before the first time I knew someone who died from an OD, when everything was brand new and every weekend was an adventure because my parents had no Idea that I could get into the kinds of bars that I could. And I was thinking about the good ol' days when I ran into CBGB's at three thirty in the morning. There was a shrine outside for Joey Ramone. Candles, notes, pictures, and a group of about seven people standing around. We all started talking about different shows we had seen and all the great things that had happened to us at ramones shows and we all ended up having a giant group hug while we were all weeping. Mourning a day long since passed. All in one night I was tossed back in time from the boat through the tribulations of social work right back into the wide eyed world I lived in when I was a teenager. It wasn't an adventure. I guess It was a strange form of time travel.
The closest thing that I got to adventure that night was when I was only about a mile from the boat I stopped at the Chinese restaurant for shrimp with lobster sauce. Of course I had been buying beer at all the groceries along the way and I wasn't too stable when I was waiting for my food. There were these giant live fish tanks in the window, and two very Italian looking guys in sharkskin looking in the bottom most tank saying "wouldjalookit that?" So of course, I stumbled over to look at these huge crabs with claws the size of my fist. They were beautiful and mighty powerful looking and I stumbled and went into the tank all the way up to my shoulder. Luckily the Italians pulled me out and the little Chinese guy thought it was pretty funny.
And that shrimp with lobster sauce was the best I have ever had.
Despite the fact that I have been out in the heat scrubbing and polishing and tweaking, screwing, bolting, flushing and waxing my 17 foot zodiac for the past two days, I haven’t been thinking about the way my yard was always shaded by pine trees so that I couldn’t run in my yard without shoes when I was little. I haven’t been dwelling on the serene coolness of the fieldstones that lined the walls of my child hood cellar. I have been thinking about the way that springtime always seems to bring embarassment. I have been thinking about how springtime always bring unfufilled sexual promise, just like what happened with stephanie allen in john sullivan’s basement in the sixth grade. I have been thinking about what happened to me last year.
So, I was off of norfolk, steaming north, and I was feeling the fist crisp air I had in a while. I put my old jeans on because it turned crisp and I was painting and I had to dig into the very back of the locker to get the pair of jeans that I wanted. Now I am not going to go into a long description of the jeans or why they are my favorites or any of that crap. You know all ready. I am sure you have a pair just like them. In fact everybody has a pair just like them. The particulars are mutable, the essential emotional attachment is the same...
So I have these jeans on and I reach into my pockets and pull out some safety pins, and book of matches, a swatch of dyed-blue synthetic hair, some beer caps and a receipt from a Chinese restaurant (shrimp with lobster sauce). And a crumpled ball of six dollar bills. (I must not have left a tip) and this little time capsule reminded me of the last night I must have worn these jeans, way back in the beginning of last may in New York city. We had been tied up to pier 17, which is just below Chinatown and soho and I was having the time of my life. We would knock off at four every afternoon and I would be off like a shot. The first couple of nights we were in town I visited with old friends, but the city changes people. Not that people don't change and mature as they grow older, but Manhattan infuses some sort of toxin into the souls of people who live there for too long. At least those that come from points elsewhere. So I grew sad seeing old friends acting jaded and tired and used up despite the fact that they are doing things like pitching the idea for DEVO songs in car advertisements, spinning records under a pseudonym at scary swirling raves, playing bass guitar on the stage of Brownie's on a Saturday night (where all the people in the crowd call you an asshole as you shove your way to the front to toss your buddy a note letting him know that you are in town). They were jaded and I was sad. And I would stumble back to the Anderson at five thirty sharp every morning for that hour and a half of sleep before it started all over again. Now don't get me wrong, it was great to see them, and they seemed genuinely happy to see me too, but like I said it just made me so goddamn sad to see them fretting over the stock market when I know goddamn well that I could live for a year on what they take home in a month. (That is if I stuck to Ramen noodles and peanutbutter-sauce spaghetti. And 40's of malt liquor...) Besides, living on a boat changes a guy just as much as living in Manhattan and I needed to be off by myself for a while.
Now I have had some pretty good adventures in new york over the years, as a matter of fact I would say that I have had my fill. I much prefer Prague or Marseilles over NYC any day, but again, those are other stories. What happened to me the last night we spent in new york wasn't an adventure. In fact it makes me a little sick to think about it...But there in my hands were the matches, the receipt, the safety pins, the swatch of hair. and I can't stop thinking about it. I started out the evening really slow, I even had something to eat at a Vietnamese place in Chinatown early in the evening. I had steamed squids and noodles in a black bean sauce and the band VS. sat down at the table next to me while I was eating. I guess they were playing in town somewhere that night, or maybe they have broken up but just wanted to get together for old time's sake or something; I could have sworn that they had broken up. So I had a full belly and I was off for the night and I started off at a little joint in a basement marked by a little red light over the stairs. I only know that it was there because one of my friends brought me there. I had one beer and then left because I had to stand. I can't stay in a place unless I can belly up to the bar, that is if I am alone. So I moved on. I went to a place right on Houston called "La Botanica" I know that because that is what the book of matches says. I was reading the paper (the post, not the times) and drinking my beer when this dreadlocked girl came in and sat down next to me. I had been talking to the bartender earlier and for whatever reason he introduced us. She ordered some wine and when the bartender wasn't around she would talk to me. It didn't take long for her to let me know that she had just gotten out of rehab two days before and even though she had taken some XanaX and was having a couple of glasses of wine she would be OK. It was just because it was raining outside, you know? and her apartment was making her think about junk and the rain only made it worse and she knew that the bartender would only let her have two glasses of wine because he was her friend and knew all about rehab (He let her have as many glasses as she wanted. Bartenders don't give a rat's ass about rehab...) In any case, I was a substance abuse counselor before I started working on the water, and old instincts die hard. Not that I was preaching fire and brimstone, but I was gently going about my business and she knew it. She appreciated it.
I am not nor have I ever been a user of junk. But both in my former profession and in my personal life I have seen too many people change into horrid beasts or at least kill themselves with the stuff. I've seen people go from prep-school trust fund snobbery to hustling queer sex in the backs of oldsmobiles out on broad st. faster than they could have flunked out of college, had they made it that far. Needless to say I have a soft spot for junkies trying to get clean. What happened in new york was about humanity, not gender.
So it started raining harder and she said that she had too much wine. She needed to go home and she wanted me to come with. She wanted me there so I could stop her from copping dope. She said it embarrassed her to shoot up in front of people. Besides, she made her living doing folks hair in her apartment and had a full salon set up in there and she could give me the blue mohawk that we had been talking about earlier. Now you have to realize that I miss having a mohawk, and joey ramone had just passed away. And a lot of things died along with joey ramone. Kurt Cobain may have opened a lot of peoples eyes to the fact that mortality is something very palpable, even if you don't know the cat that died, but joey ramone was there from the very beginning and I suppose, in a way he was there for the very end....but we'll get to that later. This girl, Miss X, hailed a cab and brought me to her apartment. Midtown, west side. Door man and everything. And that is where it all fell apart. I have never taken a stranger home from a bar, I had never gone with a stranger to their home from a bar. I am not a pick-up kind of guy. I went because I believed her that she needed company so she wouldn't cop, I went because I wanted that blue mohawk. But by the time we got to her apartment I was starting to rethink the whole mohawk thing, after all it isn't 1984 anymore, and joey ramone had just died and I still had to make it back to the boat for open house and what will Dave say about the tech with the mohawk anyway? I was losing my courage fast, and she was getting annoyed because I wasn't sure if my hair would look stupid in that shade of blue and besides, she didn’t have any beer seeing as how she had just gotten out of rehab. She told me that her dog needed a walk, and there was a package store around the corner so I could get some beer while I walked the dog. Never trust a junkie. When I got back there was a really scary looking dude in the apartment and I knew who he was. Those guys always have that same look in their eyes, weather you are a social worker or just a visitor. they always look at you wondering if they are going to have to shoot you simply because they don't know who you are. I took the dog and my beer as far away from the dude as I could while they finished business. Now I do have to hand it to new york in that respect, in providence I saw people wait hours for their junk. This guy was over in less than ten minuets.
So she apologized to me and locked her dog in the bathroom because it was harder for her to let her dog watch her shoot up than it was for her to let another person watch. I wonder why she wanted me to go to her place in the first place, I was no deterrent at all. She missed the first shot, skin popped it, so she shot another bag while she was telling me how strong this stuff was. I watched the blood shoot back up into the syringe. This time she got the vein. She let the dog out of the bathroom and puked, then flopped on the floor hugging a teddy bear as her eyes slowly shut. she was on the nod for a good half hour, as I pet the dog and looked out the window at the rain. I stuck around long enough for her to come around again. I wanted to make sure she wasn't going to die. I was four beers into the six when I was convinced that she wouldn't. In fact, she had shot two more bags and was lucid enough to feel enough remorse to have me flush the rest of the bundle down the toilet. I have lots of experience doing that. After that I knew it was time for me to go. I was really glad she didn't give me that mohawk after all, but I still wonder if I had let her do it, would she still sent me out with the dog so she could cop? Not that it matters really. There will always be people killing themselves with heroin, but It just makes me feel such anguish when I am there live, in person. When I was doing social work I had a pager (hate 'em) and I had some friends page me over to their place late one saturday. I got over there and they were all rubbing their noses and sneezing and carrying on...Christ I said ruprecht, why is your nose bleeding? Why is everyone's nose bleeding? He explained that they got their hands on some tablets of lithium carbonate and decided to crush them into lines to snort. ruprecht, I said, Your nose is bleeding because you all just snorted salt. And he said "you mean this shit isn't going to give us a buzz?" The last time I saw ruprecht he was running down the street with a pair of shoes he stole from an antique shop that was owned by someone who we both knew. I heard later that the shoes were too small for him when he tried them on at home.
I was out in the street with two beers and the swatch of blue hair, just on case I decided to dye my hair sometime in the future, and it was raining. She offered to get me a cab, but I have a terrible phobia of taxis, especially in NYC, especially when I am alone, so I started hoofing it all the way back to the boat. I left her place remarkably early, it was only about midnight, but I had a lot of ground to cover. At first I just felt really dirty and disgusted with myself for getting into that situation. That's why I went to sea in the first place, to get away from having to care for people in that sort of way. I was sick of having to worry about this one offing himself, or that one o.d.ing. You can only care so much before your soul stretches to its limits...Then I started to get angry because I realized that she had been the one to drag me into that situation and I was just trying my best to be a good person and once again I got fucked over because I trust. By the time I reached the Bowery I was sad, not because of that girl, but because I was feeling like I had failed again. All I wanted to do that night was to go out and read the newspaper and drink beer. How did I know It would end up with me having to worry about weather someone was going to die in front of me again. And I was thinking about the old days, before the first time I knew someone who died from an OD, when everything was brand new and every weekend was an adventure because my parents had no Idea that I could get into the kinds of bars that I could. And I was thinking about the good ol' days when I ran into CBGB's at three thirty in the morning. There was a shrine outside for Joey Ramone. Candles, notes, pictures, and a group of about seven people standing around. We all started talking about different shows we had seen and all the great things that had happened to us at ramones shows and we all ended up having a giant group hug while we were all weeping. Mourning a day long since passed. All in one night I was tossed back in time from the boat through the tribulations of social work right back into the wide eyed world I lived in when I was a teenager. It wasn't an adventure. I guess It was a strange form of time travel.
The closest thing that I got to adventure that night was when I was only about a mile from the boat I stopped at the Chinese restaurant for shrimp with lobster sauce. Of course I had been buying beer at all the groceries along the way and I wasn't too stable when I was waiting for my food. There were these giant live fish tanks in the window, and two very Italian looking guys in sharkskin looking in the bottom most tank saying "wouldjalookit that?" So of course, I stumbled over to look at these huge crabs with claws the size of my fist. They were beautiful and mighty powerful looking and I stumbled and went into the tank all the way up to my shoulder. Luckily the Italians pulled me out and the little Chinese guy thought it was pretty funny.
And that shrimp with lobster sauce was the best I have ever had.
