Category Archives: NYC

NYC, Stories

M Train, 5:11pm

I’m on my way home. I read a book for a while, one I can’t decide if I like or not. Then I tire of trying to figure what side of the fence I’m on and clamp headphones to my ears. The book is replaced with a Jean Shepherd radio show from 1966. I know where I stand on Shep.

In this episode, Shep talked (among other things) about one of his first radio gigs: hosting a remote from a funeral parlor on the south side of Chicago. One of the funeral parlor’s employees would play hymns on a Wurlitzer organ, with Shep occasionally interjecting a pitch for the sponsor’s services. In his retelling, he promised his audience the tale was the god’s honest truth, even raising his right hand as if swearing on a Bible. It was the radio, of course. The audience had to take his word on that gesture as much as they had to on the truthfulness of his story.

I’m standing near a door. A young man seated in front of me gestures, trying to get my attention. He might have been doing it for a while. I was so wrapped up in Shep’s funeral parlor tale I wouldn’t have noticed. I yank out one headphone, but don’t quite catch what he’s saying. So I yank out the other headphone, but his words are no clearer. I ask him to repeat himself.

“Elmhurst?” he says, pointing a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of the station we’re about to leave. It is in fact Elmhurst Avenue. I don’t know why he won’t turn around and take a look for himself out the window to his back, but I confirm that yes, this is Elmhurst. The doors have already closed. If Elmhurst was his stop, he’s too late to catch it.

But it seems it’s not his stop. He says something that I can’t quite make out. It unsettles me because I can’t understand why I can’t understand him. He has no thick accent and he speaks clearly. And yet, something about the way he talks interferes with understanding. His words are slow to register in my brain. I ask him to repeat himself.

“[BLANK] got shot here on Saturday,” he says. “He was killed.”

I can think of nothing to say except, “I hadn’t heard about that.”

“It was on the news,” the young man says. His voice remains flat and distant. The look on his face matches. He’s not trying stir up sympathy. He’s disseminating cold, raw information that he feels I should know. He could be telling me when this station was built, or how many people live in this Congressional district.

I paraphrase myself, “I’m sorry, I hadn’t heard about it.”

“It was in the papers,” he says. “In the metro.” He adds corroborating evidence, but maintains the same level of emotion: zero.

My stop arrives. I line myself at the door, anxious to leave. The young man speaks again. “Woodhaven?” he asks, investing the street name with only the slightest hint of a question mark as he jabs a thumb toward the platform behind him. He says Woodhaven like it stands for a complete phrase all the world should know how to respond to.

“No, this is Grand,” I say. The doors should be open by now, but they’re not.

“Woodhaven?” he asks once more, as if he hadn’t heard me.

“Woodhaven’s the next stop,” I tell him. But he keeps staring at me. He doesn’t want to know where he is. He wants to tell me more about what Woodhaven signifies to his mind, what information it conveys to him that he must share with this train, and he says something. I hear words and I see his lips move, but none of it makes an impression. I’m sure what he says makes sense, but not to me.

“Woodhaven’s next,” I say as I rush out of the train, though I know it’s not what he wanted to hear. And then I add, “Sorry,” as the doors close. I couldn’t leave without saying that I could not help him.

NYC, Stories

Dry Harbor Road, 6:37pm

I’ve been going on long runs lately, starting from my house and jogging to points I previously thought impossible. This feels much more productive than running at a park closer to home, where I know I can stop at any time and slunk back to my couch in 5 minutes. But if I run very far away, I have no choice but to run back.

So I’m jogging at one of the extremities of Juniper Valley Park. Across the street, a trio of Tudor houses squished together, a copy of an idea of genteel English towne life. But something looks off, so off that I have to stop running for a moment and figure out exactly what it is.

All three of the houses have chimneys that jut out into their tiny lawns. The faces of these chimneys are mostly concrete, with brick embedded to form cute little shapes. Two of the houses have chimney faces with brick arranged as diamonds, florid pineapples, majestic eagles.

The third house has none of this. Instead, at the very top, bricks spell out what appears to be a year, 1931. The last digit is a bit unclear, as the artist didn’t plan well and ran out of usable room when he reached the fourth number. Beneath that, four letters, staggered in zig-zag shape: S P C R. I get the impression these are initials.

Back in the day, the first two houses must have been furious at this third one. At that time, Queens was a leafy suburb, with little but the Long Island Railroad connecting it to Manhattan and elsewhere. There were still farms nearby, if you can believe that. These folks had made their little escape from the dirt and noise of The City and settled in this quiet spot, in a neighborhood whose very name implied moderation and peace—Middle Village—hoping to recreate some notion of what they assumed to be respectable suburban life.

And then house number three says “eff that” and marked up their chimney like a kid poking his finger through wet sidewalk cement. Monocles were dropped. Fainting couches summoned.

I continue my run and turn a corner. 100 feet down the road, I spot a yellow Mustang with a vanity license plate: LGR 50, flanked by a Rangers logo. It’s that house again, reborn in a different form. Whatever the year and whatever the shell, we just want the world to know there’s someone real inside.

NYC, Stories

Carmine Street, 7:52am

I’ve just exited the subway. Light rain is falling. Very light. One or two drops every minute. It’s the kind of rain you wouldn’t even notice unless you were bald and wearing no hat, like me, and each drop stung your scalp.

Coming around the corner ahead, by Father Demo Square, a chubby kid in a parochial school uniform. White shirt, khaki pants, black-rim glasses. Looks to be about 12. In junior high or almost there. I say chubby because it takes a lot of work to be fat at that age. He is simply trapped in a body that grew out before it grew up. In his left hand, he holds an enormous black umbrella, sheathed in a telescoping plastic holster. If he held it upright, you’d see the umbrella was more than half his height.

The boy looks uncomfortable walking. The umbrella is throwing off his balance. He walks like he’s not quite sure what to do with his legs. Like he doesn’t want to be where he is, but he wants to reach his destination even less.

He nears the point where the street straightens out and becomes 6th Avenue. There, by a sickly little tree sprouting bike locks, a pigeon is startled by his approach. The pigeon is near the boy’s eye level for a split second. During that split second, he raises his umbrella defensively, perpendicular to his body. Like this pigeon is a vampire and the umbrella is a half-finished crucifix.

The pigeon flutters away. The boy puts down his umbrella and looks defeated, utterly defeated. I can almost see a thought bubble above his head, I can’t believe I did that.

Something in me wants to stop the boy and give him some kind of It gets better spiel, but I know that would be a lie. He might outgrow this body, but the Scared Fat Kid stays within you forever. He lopes on his way past me, on his way to a place where is learning how to hate himself.