Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me(43)

O nodded.

Ali threw in two books.

I noticed they were blank—just white covers. “The matches,” I said, “they don’t have ‘Thank You’ printed on them anymore?”

Ali still had that frozen expression on his face. “No one says thank you, so the matches are same.”

“Really …?”

“Things change,” Ali said with not a hint of regret or emotion. “Things change.”

_____________________

9-20-14:

“Do you sometimes catch yourself thinking?” says O, out of the blue, in the car, on the way to his weekend home in the Hudson Valley. “I sometimes sort of feel like I’m … looking at the neural basis of consciousness…”

“Yeah?”

“Those are special occasions,” he went on, “when the mind takes off—and you can watch it. It’s largely autonomous, but autonomous on your behalf—in regard to problems, questions, and so on.” A pause, then returning to his thought: “These are creative flights … Flights: That is a nice word.”

“Mmm, I love that word … What … triggers such flights for you?”

“Surprise, astonishment, wonder…”

“Yes.”

_____________________

9-25-14:

Heading home after taking pictures in Washington Square Park, I took a shortcut through the alley off Waverly where I saw a guy on the other side of the street walking with a jangly rhythm—music in his body. “How many times have I seen you today?” he yelled in a friendly voice. “Twenty-five? Thirty? And now? Again …! Unbelievable.”

I couldn’t see very well—it was getting dark—had I seen him before? Possible. After all, I had just taken photos of a teenage couple making out on a bench that I’d photographed three weeks earlier in a different park. The city can seem so small.

I played along: “Thirty? No, not thirty times—seventeen, I think.”

“At least that, I think you lost count,” said the young man.

I crossed the street and came to him. He was scrappy, thin, young—maybe twenty-three, twenty-four—wearing a baseball cap low over his face, almost covering but unable to conceal his alert, flashing eyes. He was high or drunk. He had a handsome face. He said his name was Billy. I asked if I could take his picture.

“What kind of photography do you do?”

I told him.

“Show me, show me some.”

I reached for my phone. He objected—vociferously: “Not your phone! Not your fucking phone!” Then, quieter, whispering almost: “On your camera. Show me on your camera. Show me the last picture you took.”

“Okay, hold on.” I pressed the review button and found it: the picture of the young lovers on a park bench. He grabbed my hand and pulled the camera closer to his face; he studied the picture carefully—a young man and woman, in love, caught in a carefree moment; and I wondered what went through his head. Did he see himself in them or complete strangers?

“Show me more,” Billy said. So I did. He nodded, approving.

He stood in the middle of the street. “How about here? If we’re going to do a picture, it’s gotta be the best.”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“It’s gotta be better than anything you’ve ever taken.”

I was just about to click when, suddenly, he dashed across the street and down into a stairwell leading to a basement. I walked over, peered down at him.

“Billy, do you know what it’s like”—he pulled out a baggie and a lighter—“to smoke?”

I knew he meant crack. I shook my head.

“It’s unlike anything else, it’s like heaven, it’s—when I smoke, I want to do anything, I can do anything. I could take off all my clothes and dive into a garbage can and it would feel good.”

I watched as he took out a joint. I put my camera to my eye and began taking pictures. Billy lit the stump of a joint laced with crack. He held the smoke in and finally released it. He watched the bluish smoke float away.

He fell back, eyes closed. “I want you to take a picture of that—of the smoke.”





Billy in the Alley

I took up my camera again, he relit the joint, and I took more pictures.

I thought to myself, He’s going to die this way.

_____________________

10-24-14—In Amsterdam:

On a short holiday in Amsterdam, one of O’s favorite places; my first time here.

Last night, he was having dinner with a colleague and encouraged me to go off on my own, have an adventure. So I did.

Not sure where to begin. I suppose I could start with the taxi drive to the restaurant, or with the meal itself—the lovely food, the lovely waitresses. Or I could start where I ended up, in a dark bar, until 4 A.M. Or perhaps on my walk back to the hotel, with a detour through the red light district. But I will get to all that on another day. For now, I have a short New York story—but one set in Amsterdam.

After eating, I sat by a canal and took tokes from the joint I had gotten at a “green café” yesterday. I got gloriously high, then I headed into the bar across the street from the restaurant, the bar that the waitresses had said is “the best” in Amsterdam. It was packed, uncomfortably packed—but with gorgeously dressed, gorgeous young Dutch people. I managed to find a spot at a table on the side where I fell into conversation with two outstandingly pretty young women. We talked for a while. I showed them a bunch of my pictures on my phone. But honestly, it wasn’t very long into our conversation when one of the two, Pauline, who had long blonde hair piled atop her head, suddenly said to me, apropos of nothing that I recall, “I am going to write you a poem.”