America the City

     For those of you that have been following my blog, I have moved it to wordpress.  It’s a better format for what I’m trying to accomplish.  So from now on, america the city will be at www.americathecity.wordpress.com.  Happy holidays to all.

-Michael

     When I first visited New York  in 2005 I hoped I would never move there.  When started doing work there I had hoped I would never move there.  When I applied to Fordham I prayed that I would get in somewhere else.  When I applied to Columbia I had hoped that Tufts or Harvard would let me in, or that Brandeis would give me better financial aid so that I wouldn’t have to move to move there.  But the gods are harsh.  All roads have led to NYC.  

     I have gone almost two weeks without posting anything.  I’ve been working on larger writing projects that are taking more time and thought than I had imagined they would.  This blog is slowly turning into a portfolio while I attempt to maintain a regular log of my current activity.

     I’m living with a different friend in Union Square, Somerville.  I’m sleeping on a futon mattress in his living room, taking regular showers, and consuming unhealthy amounts of coffee.  Most of my time is devoted to shoring up the frayed ends of my life that are financial aid, Christmas shopping, and finding a newspaper to write for in January.

     New York is becoming a reality.  After my failed attempt to live in Harlem, I was more than a little nervous about giving it a second try.  What helped ease my anxiety about The City was a weekend in October.  It was my last days in the Harlem Christian Cloister with Mr. Crazy and His timid accomplice.  I moved the remainder of my belongings to my storage space.  It was a week after my birthday and I went down to celebrate with a couple of friends who wanted to take me out.  

     It was Friday, October 22nd.  Friend number 1 was late to pick me up as He weaved his suv through friday evening traffic.  I stood on the corner of 125th and 7th and waited, waited, waited as cars came and went until he finally showed.  We took riverside drive downtown and finally got to the restaurant an hour late for our reservation.  I waited outside until they could find us a new table.  A family, grandparents to grandchildren, emerged from the restaurant.  ”Who’s on rice pudding detail?” the Father asked towards the sky.  ”Meeeee!” shouted a five year old girl as she gripped the sides of her skirt, her white socks shaking lose from her ankles as she stomped her black shoes on the sidewalk.  Her Father zipped her coat, scooped her up in his arms, and they vanished into The City.  The restaurant did their cooking on open fires and the place smelled like the wood stove that I remember lying next to as a child.  I was transported back to winters on the puget sound where every house had stacks of fresh firewood piled outside and the inviting smell and grey ventilation of fires gave comforting assurance at the end of damp afternoons in the woods.  I had the smoky gnocchi and piece of pie with a candle in it.  Friend number 1 sang happy birthday to me at the table.

     We went to a cocktail bar at the bowery hotel and spent the rest of our night there.  I drank too much in the form of a few manhattans and I don’t remember how many glasses of scotch or bourbon.  That bar is one of my favorites.  It’s a living room-sized bar attached to the hotel lobby.  I never feel quite at home at a cocktail bar.  I don’t particularly like the crowd that I find in those places.  I like the people that you’re likely to find at a neighborhood pub, but I love the drinks that I find at a cocktail bar.  I don’t consider myself a snob, I just like good drinks.  Nobody relaxes. Women stand in what look to me to be horribly uncomfortable shoes and nervously sip a drink that they probably can’t name, scanning the room for… Well, whatever it is they’re looking for doesn’t involve me.  And the dudes show up in suits to order beer at a place that doesn’t specialize in beer.  Contrary to popular American sentiment, stella is not classy.  Sorry, bruh.  I’m not a snob.  

     I know that if I get there at the right time I can occupy a love seat.  I can see the entire room from my corner on that padded alcove.  They’re so low, so soft, and so old that I almost disappear into them, my legs stretched straight out onto the carpeted floor as I hope for a pair of six inch heels to come along and trip over them.  She will eat shit, spilling her vodka and tonic on her overpriced hair.  Face-down in a puddle of high class dish water, she will deliver an amazed and bitter glare at my apparition.  She will balance on a bruised hip as she attempts to hold down her skirt while rolling into position for a slow, elegant push up that she must have learned in finishing school, all the while maintaining her cold, expectant stare.  ”Well done, darling,” I will say with a nod as I raise my scotch.  ”Slainte.”  Needless to say, I’ve never met a woman at a cocktail bar.  

     We tipped generously.  The next day I ran errands and waited for the evening.  I was on 124th, trying to waste time until another night of fun.  Time was going far too slowly.  I decided to walk from 124th to 50th.  I wound my way through half of central park.  There were ponds, and flowers, and dogs, and big old trees, and hidden paths and open fields and even a few little cliffs.  I might have been back in Washington again. It was a sunny afternoon and I thought that at some point I may have to pitch a tent in these woods.  I thought that New York was smart to keep this park here for me.  I thanked God for sixty-degree weather and cocktails and puppies and new yorkers with cute kids and Frederick Law Olmstead.  I followed 8th avenue down to 50th.  I was still early, so I went into an irish pub and waited for Shawn.

     I met him in 2008 when I was doing freelance event work.  I got a job through an old Marine buddy.  We helped set up a Cuban themed birthday party on a July week in the Hamptons.  I had to stand up on a ladder one day, stuffing fresh tobacco leaves into a web of wire over the bar to create a tobacco awning.  The leaves dried quickly in the July sun and by the time I was finished it looked as though I had held a handful of cigars over my head and shredded them over my body.  I was afraid of getting a head rush from the contact.  To me, the Hamptons are a foreign country.  I sat on the lawn after twelve hours of finishing the party set up and watched the people in their suits and dresses on the dance floor, smoking cigars and sipping their alcohol as the kitchen staff moved feverishly to keep the tables stocked with hors d’oeuvres and all the accoutrements that accompany… Cuba.  Shawn sat next to me and I made a comment about how I have an instinctive aversion to whoring out my labor to wealthy people.  They’re wealthy, Shawn reasoned, and they do what they do with their wealth according to what they’ve been taught.  He told me about a friend of his in Germany who taught him the real meaning of luxury.  It’s not about having nice things.  It’s about using nice things, and not worrying about their use.  Luxury is pure enjoyment.  He said that even though they’re wealthy doesn’t mean they don’t have struggles.  ”Everybody has their cross to bare,” He said.  I reused that quote many times. 

     Shawn is into people.  When He got to the pub, I was still finishing my beer, so He came in and sat and ordered a drink.  We thought we might just eat there, so Shawn asked if they had a food menu.  ”Oh, we just opened on Tursday,” said the bartender, “Our kitchen isn’t open yet, sorry.”  We drank slowly.  Shawn looked around then leaned over to whisper in my ear.  ”I think I’m the only black guy in here,” He said.  ”Well, they just opened on Thursday, so you might be the FIRST black guy they’ve ever had in here,” I told Him.  Shawn gripped the bar and screamed His robust laugh.  If you don’t like being noticed in public, don’t go out with Shawn.  He’s about 6’4” and His laugh corresponds to his height.  It’s enormous; you could use it to signal oil tankers.  The bartender asked what we were laughing about and I told him.  ”Oh, yeah, that’s true!” said the Bartender in his Dubliner brogue.  Along came another off-the-boat staff member asking “What is it? What,” as she held Shawn’s shoulder, scanning the three of us with amused eyes.  ”Well,” said the bartender, “We just opened on Tursday and this guy says He’s the only black man in here, and then his friend said that since we just opened, He’s probably the first black man in here.”  She smiled at Shawn.  ”Heeeeey!  Yeah!” She reached out and shook His hand.  By this time Shawn was almost in tears, laughing uncontrollably.  ”It’s their joke, their joke,” the bartender said as He held up two open palms and backed away.  ”But, hey,” He said, “we should take a photo and put a plaque of you up on the wall behind the bar!”    

     We went to Swan Lake, then to another pub where we finished off the evening talking with two brothers who owned a construction business in New Jersey.  They invited us to come to their beach house over the summer.  We walked to the train and I told Shawn that I have a lot of anxiety over moving to NYC and going to Columbia.  It’s a new city, I have no job, school will keep me plenty busy and will cost me a sum of money that I can’t fathom.  ”You have to get into the people here,” He reasoned.  ”If you get into the life here, all the people and all the different stories, it makes it fun.”  ”Well,” I told him, “I’ll be studying, and I’m sort of an introvert.  I like people, but it’s not my focus.”  ”You’ll make it,” He said.  Quoting a writer-friend of His, He said “You’re a good story.”  

     I spent my last night in Harlem and caught the bus to Boston the next day.  I returned last week to look at apartments and meet with my advisor.  I scheduled my classes for spring semester and reserved my room in student housing at Columbia.  I will be living with two graduate students on Riverside Drive.  I suppose that the likelihood of pictures being torn off the walls and chests being thrown at my feet are significantly lessened in student housing.  

     I’m back in Boston, finishing my last two weeks at Super Tours.  I have given up on the job as it is a drain on my mental faculties and I’m anxious to continue this good story in New York.  I left work early on Friday only because I was fed up.  Bob Vila took my tour and told his concierge all sorts of terrible things about me, who then wrote a scathing email to my marketing manager, who forwarded it to my boss, who called me to ask about it right as I was about to begin my tour route.  I called the dispatcher and said “I’m not in a mental state to give tours today.  I’m going home.”  Two days later I showed up late for work because I stayed overnight at Brandeis and couldn’t get into the city on time.  

     I’m counting the days.  New York is on the horizon. 

     Leslie Nielsen died yesterday.  When I was a kid, He made me laugh.  I thought I owed him at least a blog title.  

     It’s a glorious, sunny, freezing Massachusetts Monday.  I’m off.  I’m blogging from the Starbucks in Davis Square, Somerville.  I’ve been trying to stay out of Jon’s house as he is getting increasingly serious about finishing his master’s and needs the appropriate space to concentrate.  He called me when I was on my way here to ask me if I could move on.  I told him that He had the liberty to do this whenever he felt it necessary so I don’t take it personally.

     I’m some sort of a bum.  Now that I have worn out the Jon option, I have to contact another friend who offered to let me stay with him.  So goes the life in transition, which is nothing new to me.  I could sleep in the woods if I had my tent, but there aren’t many woods around here and it would be difficult to take showers and connect to wi-fi.  If it gets really bad, I can  stay at the hotel at work for short periods of time and get away with it.  It’s a very depressing lifestyle and were it not temporary it would be causing me serious anguish.  I already have a difficult time getting through some days at work.  

     I’ve done this type of thing before.  The tension is tangible.  People who live like this lose a significant amount of self-worth and confidence in a short amount of time.  It’s natural to follow a self-doubting line of reasoning.   I saw it happen to my family in a similar state of transition when I was in junior high.  I watch people making progress with their lives in their educations and careers.  I see people affording things, like decent housing.  And I can’t help but think that if everybody else’s life looks like x, and mine looks like y, then I must be far behind the power curve.  And in a way, that’s true.  I knew, when I lost all of my benefits, that life would be increasingly difficult as I moved forward.

     There are ways to deal with this type of depression.  First, you must know what not to do.  Do not compare yourself to others.  It will kill you.  Everybody else will look better to you than yourself.  The world will swirl around you, pointing and laughing, until you go insane.  Stop that before it starts.  Ask yourself two questions: 1)where am I?  and 2) where should I go?  This can take an hour, a week, or a month, depending on how receptive and experienced you are with this sort of thing.  Then remember that the only way is forward.  I’ve recognized that I’m genuinely depressed, I know why, and now I have to get going.  

     I’ve found a few mitigating measures to avoid losing my mind before Christmas.  I started finishing final paperwork and other administrative things for school.  That keeps me busy.  I decided to get serious about my book.  I keep myself to 1 page per day, which may not seem like a lot, but after a long day at work, it is.  I missed yesterday, which means that I’m doubling up today.  I bought Jon a brand new, very high-quality coffee maker as a token of my gratitude.  If I could recover my running shoes, I would be running as well.  I have contented myself with long walks around fresh pond.  I’m taking two people who are dear to me, a very lovely couple, out to dinner next week.  I have made contact with a few people at various publications at Columbia to give myself the opportunity to write when I start school.  I had the same opportunity at Brandeis, and I decided that I was too busy to do it.  I now regret that decision.  Lastly, I have a new vision for this, my blog.  It involves an overhaul to make it better organized and thus more accessible and, finally, more attractive.  The problem is that I don’t know how to accomplish what I want with this.  And that is the hard part, which is also the most valuable part, and so here goes more research on web design.  This may eventually have to exit the tumblr community.  When it looks the way I want, I will start directing more web traffic to it.  Or should I start directing traffic here first while I work on it?

     Lastly, we’ve all heard people tell us to count your blessings.  It is a great way of looking at life, if you believe in a general positivity of things, or if you believe in God or some such thing.  Dennis Brown, a reggae godfather, even wrote a song called ‘Count Your Blessings.’  It’s one of my favorite songs.  However, I’ve never believed in doing this, as counting my blessings necessitates that I weigh them against my curses, and when I feel bad about life it’s usually because my curses outnumber or outweigh my blessings.  But right now, I have a blessing.  Waking up next to somebody is possibly the best feeling in the world.  And I have that.  I will count that blessing and not weigh it against other factors.

     So there I go.  I know I’m not the only person who frequently feels this way.  I at least feel like I am going in the direction called forward.  Life-altering depression has been put aside.  I will be going back to Washington on the 23rd at which time this lifestyle will stop.  And it can’t stop soon enough.

     Last Thursday I went to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.  There is something about museums that awakens my curiosity, the type of which can cause one to get so extremely sidetracked that it may derail your life.  Curiosity that begs you to let it dig into an object, a concept, or an idea so thoroughly that you would forget meals and skip work to satisfy it.  I went to see the new Art of the Americas wing.  They have a whole room full of Copley’s paintings, including the famous Paul Revere portrait, which I maintain looks astonishingly similar to Jack Black.  I put on my headphones and listened to my Chopin Pandora station while I browsed the paintings and furniture.  I will go back for more if I have the time.

     It was a bright fall day, and I am very happy to say that Massachusetts has been having many of those this season.  Jon called me while I was at the MFA to ask if I would later like to go to the observatory at the Marriott Customs House.  I kept the schedule in mind and rode the T back to Davis Square.  I finished a previous post then went back into Boston.  

     I use the bathroom at Sel De La Terre on State Street multiple times every day.  It’s the official starting point for the trolleys and serves as our break stop after every tour.  I have promised myself many times that I would go to their bar for cocktails.  Since the Marriot is up the street, I used Thursday evening as my chance.  I ordered a drink and started scribbling down a piece of a book that I’ve been working on for years.  Jon met me there and ordered what I had.  Then I had another cocktail, and he ordered what I had.  This happens every time we go out.  When it comes to alcohol, Jon tends to agree with my taste.  I could order rat poop flavored ale and He would go for it.

     He asked the bartender why the flavor of His drink changed.  Absinthe is a great thing.  It has a licorice taste, and if you mix it in a drink, it seems to sink to the bottom and lower your drink gets, the more licorice you can taste.  It wasn’t real Absinthe we were drinking, since it contained no wormwood and therefore no thujone, which supposedly could make you go crazy.  

     Jon’s new friends called him.  They were on his tour that day and took a liking to Him when he said, “This is stop number 2.  That’s the only even prime number.”  They invited us up to see the observatory.  We went to the Custom’s House tower and met his friends.  They were an English couple who lived in southern France.  The Marriott staff committed some heinous error in their reservations and had to give them a suite near the top of the tower, just beneath the clocks.  

     We went to their room first, where they showed us the view from the windows.  We tried the views from every window, seeing which was the best angle over the city.  A city starts to look like an organism from those heights.  The streets wind around boston proper and the seaport district like veins with no discernable logic to their pattern.  The Rose Fitzgerald Greenway is an obsolete strand since the big dig as it sits on I-93, the real femoral artery.  The head-lighted cells are propelled throughout Boston as we stand on the pulse.  The sky was dotted with the flickering lights of planes coming in from the east over logan airport, the city breathing them in and out in fluid respiration.

     They offered us wine.  They told us of their educations.  I think He said that He studied economics.  They didn’t seem too excited about where or what they studied, but Jon and I asked.  They seemed fairly young, by my standards, to be retired.  They told us about what their children did.  Their son got into Princeton, but decided to stay in England for school as the U.S. is far too expensive to justify just an undergraduate degree, and given all the core requirements one must take as an undergraduate, it didn’t make sense to them.  That’s when I began to nod my head.  ”My son applied to Harvard, you see,” He began.  ”And I think the wrong person may have read his essay.  It was brilliant, really.  He wrote about a conversation with God in which God asks him about his life, and He tells God about all the things that He has done and learned.  And at the end of the conversation, God asks ‘What do you want to do now?’ to which He answers ‘Well, I want to go to Harvard University.’  Then God nods and says ‘Ah yes, my alma mater.”  I was amused, but not as much as Him.  

     We walked around the observatory deck in the freezing air.  They talked mostly about their kids.  She told me that he was a runner.  I run, sometimes, when my feet and knees don’t hurt.  But the short answer was “I’m a runner, too.”  I tried to ask Him what He thought about minimalist running, which is something that I have gotten into in the past year.  The basic rule is the less footwear, the better it is for you.  I run in a pair of Nike Free’s with no socks.  They don’t smell very good, but my feet are tough as hell.  Unfortunately, He changed the subject.

     They had dinner reservations so we went on our way.  I couldn’t believe that Jon met them on his trolley tour.  I’m so used to having to explain to people who Paul Revere was and why He was important.  When we first arrived in their hotel room, the man was apparently impressed by at least Jon.  ”What are you guys doing driving trolleys?” He asked.  I almost said “Welcome to the new economy,” but instead I explained that Jon is in the number-one M.A. philosophy program in the country.  

     Jon explored the hotel lobby, the inside of which was an old custom house, hence the name.  We went to an irish pub and brushed up on some gaelic with the bartender for a few minutes, then Jon pulled out his philosophy notes.  I ate my veggie burger and watched the Bruins game.  

     After going back to Jon’s house and doing my laundry, I took the commuter rail to Brandeis.  I spent a whole year at Brandeis and only now that I have formally withdrawn am I spending the night there.  I’m in Boston with one purpose: to make and save money.  It’s isolating.  My social connections have dwindled down to almost nothing, and Jon has become the only person with whom I have regular contact.  But for this past year I’ve had Brandeis.  I feel a small sense of pride in having two different lives juxtaposed in a an awkward, tense harmony.  It must mean that I’m making some progress.  I lay in the bed of that person about whom I must tell you nothing, save that she is a godsend.  As I faded into sleep, I had two thoughts: even though I am sort of homeless right now, my life is great.  And what the hell am I doing driving trolleys? 

     Damn Massachusetts rain soils the city along with my tour: “This land on top of the hill used to belong to John Hancock.  When he passed away it went to his wife.  When she passed, it went to the Commonwealth, and we built the Massachusetts State House on it.  See that cannon on the left?  That’s where Hancock’s house used to be.”  I looked in my rearview up into the rows of seats to find faces free of expression and heads bobbing leisurely with the dip of a pothole.  ”This was completed in 1798.  Charles Bullfinch was the chief architect.  That dome is 23.5 caret gold leaf.”  Arms folded over cold ribs in damn near rheumatic stiffness.  I gazed forward and let the trolley bus roll towards the curb into the next stop.  In the street before me lay a bulging, saturated, brown rectangle.  I didn’t know what it was until it was too late and I drove over it.  It passed clearly between the wheels.  I switched to neutral and engaged the parking brake.  ”Hold on,” I said as I pulled off my headset, exposing the red lines over my ears and feeling the sudden relief of pressure from my head.  I ran out into the rain and there it was, 15 feet behind my bus: a wallet.

     My fingers transferred splotches from the damp leather to the dry plastic cards as I rifled towards a saving grace: a photo i.d. complete with a local address.  Go go magic iPhone to white pages-dot-com and there he was.  An answering machine fielded my anxious call.  ”Hello, my name is Michael Young.  I’m looking for _______.  I live in Cambridge.  I have something that belongs to you, and I think you probably know by now what I’m talking about.  I can be reached at _______.”   An hour later, when I got back to Jon’s place, I had a message.  ”Hi, this is _______, and I do know exactly what you’re talking about!  I’d like to meet up.”  So I called him.  These conversations can get awkward really quick.  I essentially held the man’s life in my hands and He had no idea who I was.  I explained to him that the first thing I considered were all the ‘weirdos’ that hang around Boston Common, and how terrible it could end were a stray wallet to get snagged by the wrong weirdo.  ”Oh, good, you don’t sound crazy,” He exhaled over the phone.  We agreed to meet in Harvard Square.

     Harvard Square.  No sight of him.  He’d better not come with eight people and get nasty because I have his shit.  Is that?  Nope, that’s not him.  That looks like him.  Yep, he’s looking all over.  Good thing I have hair.  Nobody wants to see a skinhead with their wallet.  ”Hi, are you _____?”  ”Yes!”  These types of handshakes are especially rewarding for the good samaritan.  It’s means that your right hand knows that your left did a good deed.  But the guy for whom the good deed is done is thinking Okay, handshake, good.  Where the hell is my wallet?  So I made sure that the second thing I did was give him back his wallet, then pull my hands back up in the air, tv arrest style, to absolve myself of any further responsibility for the lumpy thing.

     “Want to go get a drink or some food?”  He asked me.  We went to a newish bar called Tory Row.  He set the brown blob on the bar and patted his fingers on it, shouting “Yesss!  Yesss!”  I smiled.  Drinks and food were ordered.  He had been on a field trip with students from Curry College, teaching students about Bostonian history when he lost it.  He thought He had left it at a dunkin donuts, and when He called they didn’t have it.  He called campus security at the college and they couldn’t find it.  He had almost given up hope when His boyfriend got my voicemail.  

     I brought with me a copy of Ploughshares to the bar.  He wanted to know if I was a writer.  I told him that I “try” to write.  Are all writers lacking in confidence about their craft?  I write strictly memoir and I read literary publications to exposed myself to many different styles in a short amount of time.  He told me about a writer’s conference that He went to in Vermont called Breadloaf.  He told me how I could go if I wanted to.

     As I was writing this post, I pondered why it is that I want to be journalist.  It’s because I have an eye for what differentiates some people and situations from others.  I was pondering how to express the odd occurrence of finding a mans wallet and then meeting him, and seeing that he is a great person, and the quick change of uncertainty to friendliness.  Self-conscious half smiles and heightened situational awareness merge almost unnoticeably into the allure of fresh intellectual fodder while getting lost in a fun conversation.    

     He invited me over for dinner, which will hopefully happen before I move to NYC.  Halfway through our discussion his boyfriend called to make sure that He wasn’t beaten up or kidnapped.  He told me that his boyfriend was a hairdresser.  I asked if he could do something with my hair.  It has been seven years since I’ve had to get a haircut, but now that I’m letting it grow, it’s finally time.  I didn’t think to ask if he did men’s hair.  

     And that went my evening in Harvard Square.  I met a man who writes who wanted to know about my writing.  I sat at a bar and got to know a new person who made me want to try to publish some short work of fiction.  Then I wondered how one goes about getting published.  All I ever do is write memoir, and now I’m left wondering if I can ever do justice-in-words to the cities I experience.  At the very least I’ll get a haircut.  

     Mr. Crazy looked over to Mr. Accommodating and nodded.  ”Remember for next time:as is.”  With elevated eyebrows he looked back at me.  ”They need to come down,” I told him.

     “You’re a jackass.  You’re a JACK-ASS!”  He pointed a straight, thick finger at me.  His hands came down to his knees, pushed him up off the chair, and then commenced his scornful waving.  He thrust aside the sheet that hung over the back door.  I followed him through what doubled as the living room and their bedroom.  We marched in between two big screen televisions that vomited sitcoms from their flanking positions at the bed which lay beneath the row of barred windows.  His tank top swung loosely at his torso, the wrinkles catching flashes of florescent light from the kitchen as He fished through a row of curtains which established the boundary of the living room.

     I stood at the door of my room as he went for his first picture, trying to hold his fingers to the frame as he drew his weight back from the wall.  ”H-, calm down,” I said as I reached out my open hand, hoping to gain his attention.  When we first met, He introduced himself as H-, then later told me that was His last name but it’s what He goes by.  ”My name is C-!!!” His cheeks quivered as His bloodshot eyes caught mine for a milisecond before they rolled back towards His next task.

     He threw a chest at my feet, then came another picture from the wall with the weight of His body.  His ass jutted as he leaned back, and with the last picture freed he almost fell.  ”Jackass, you jackass,” His voice vibrated in long waves.

     “H-” I said his last name again.

     “My name is C-!  You will call me Mr. H-!”  I gave up, leaning against the doorway.  ”If you’re going to be a jackass,” he instructed as his stubby finger shook towards my face, “I’m going to treat you like the jackass that you are!”  The whole person before me was an abstract of rage-in-motion; a black, gyrating ball of crazy.  He picked up another chest and stumbled towards me.  I backed into something that wasn’t there before.  ”Sorry, he just gets this way sometimes,” said Mr. Accommodating.  Crazy hurled the chest into the living room and came back for another.  ”For as long as you live here, you will call me Mr. H-!”

     I turned to Mr. Accommodating, who seemed more worried than I.  ”You know, I wasn’t trying to create problems tonight.  This really shouldn’t be that big of a deal,”  I told him.  ”I know, I know,” he said as his eyes switched between me and Mr. Crazy. “He just gets this way sometimes.  I’ll talk to him.”

    Mr. Crazy was moving more chests out of the room.  He dropped one more in the living room.  ”Aaaand, and the rest of this stuff is stayin’!”  There were a few chests stacked against the wall, along with clothes hung in the closet.  ”And I don’t care, I DON’T CARE, this Saturday we’re running a chord through that window and plugging in our lights, I DON’T CARE!”  The lights were to be part of Mr. Accommodating’s 30-something birthday bash.  

     Mr. Accommodating went to Mr. Crazy, stepping in the way of the still shivering mass of motion.  ”You know he wasn’t try to cause prob-” but Mr. Accommodating didn’t finish, nope.  ”I DON’T THINK SO!  He’s a jackass, trying to come in here and tell us what to do with our stuff!”

     “I’ll talk to him,” Mr. Accommodating said to me as he followed Crazy out of the room.  I closed the door behind them and sat down on the bed and called a friend in Brooklyn.  ”Are you safe?”  He asked me.  ”Yeah, I think so,” I said as I sat on the bed, not knowing how I actually felt yet.  ”I mean, do you feel physically in danger?”  That question was much easier to answer.  ”No.”

    I sat in silence for an hour, then tried to sleep, but my mind was too busy gauging the danger to myself and my belongings, and the prospect of moving was becoming the only safe option I could think of.  That will be move number five for the year.  Shit.  Sleep wasn’t happening.  I read another ten pages of Epictetus’ The Discourses and sat and thought.  Another hour and I began to sink into the warm sheets and my eyes shut on their own.  A phone rang.

     “Hello?!” Crazy shouted into the receiver.  He screamed into the phone for the next half hour.  It was a police officer who came to a building where Crazy and Accommodating ran a transitional housing program, looking for a tenant who had supposedly been involved in a shooting that afternoon.  The tenant was apparently at work and the officer had no warrant.  90’s pop/hip-hop mixes shot from one of the tv’s, passing through the thin membrane that was a wall.  The smoke of incense passed around the gaps in my door frame.  ”Don’t try to strong arm me!”  Shouted Crazy through the phone.  

     I eventually slept.  When I awoke, they were gone.  Christian worship music played from the television.  They didn’t come back all day, and the music played.  I took my important documents and valuables and put them in a safe deposit box, which I was wise enough to get when I moved to The City.  When I returned, the music had stopped and was replaced by a sermon, then more music.

      I left for the airport that afternoon and saw them on my way out.  They were carrying two amplifiers.  I said hello, they said hello and asked if I was going to the airport.  Yep.  I wondered where the amplifiers were going.

     Weeks later, the day before I was to return, I called Mr. Accommodating.  ”Are you planning on staying?” He asked.  September moved into October and I hadn’t paid rent.  ”Um, I don’t think so.  I don’t think it’s going to work out.”  I didn’t want to say it.  I didn’t want to give a reason for them to retaliate.  I scraped the quiet, grey, evergreen-dotted streets knowing that I was about to return to a very different landscape.

     When I returned, my boxes had been rearranged but otherwise untouched.  Crazy explained that he gets mad sometimes and that I shouldn’t feel unsafe in the apartment.  I moved my things into storage the next day.  I left for a week, then came back to celebrate my birthday with some friends.  I left the key on the microwave and left for Boston.

     Beyond that, they were good people.  They went to church.  Their transitional housing unit was a “ministry.”  ”It doesn’t matter what you do, he sees,” Crazy told me when I signed the contract.  One of the picture that I forced him to take down was of an angel.

     “When you walk down this street, this street right out here, when people come down here, they see this row of porches, and they walk by all these windows, and then they come by this place.  And they can feel it.  Try it sometime.  You can feel it!  The spirit, the grace, the love.  It flows out of this place.  We moved in here and prayed that God would remove all the evil, all the bad spirits and principalities that have cursed this place from before.  This place has been blessed by the blood of the lamb.  And you can feel it!”

     While on the bus to Boston, I received a call from Mr. Crazy.  I didn’t answer.  He didn’t leave a message. 

     “This is yours,” one roommate told me as he stood at the entrance of my room.  ”Now that you’ve signed on it, this is your space.  Come and go as you please.”  It sounded like the temptation of Christ, except this was on a contract and it wasn’t exactly a vast, wealthy kingdom.  And He didn’t ask for my soul.  But this guy may very well have been Satan, though I didn’t know it for sure at the time.  ”Okay.  Um, but when I move in, all this is going to be gone, right?” I asked him.  ”Like what?” He asked.  ”All the pictures on the wall and the boxes and clothes.  Everything stacked in the closet.  All the stuff,” I told him.  ”Yeah, like I said, this place is yours,” the words crawling out of his mouth at a sloth’s pace, emphasizing every syllable to put me at ease.  

     I had an odd impression of them from the start.  One was very quiet and accommodating as he went over the contract with me.  The other got progressively weirder.  When he heard that I was trying to do event work, he suggested that he somehow piggyback his “production” business on my freelance “connections.”  As I was signing the contract, He sat on the couch staring at me, giving me something that felt like orders at random.  He told me that I must open up a P.O. box and that I should tell the security at the front of the building that I’m a visiting relative.  This almost caused me to walk away, and had it not been for the cheap price and that month-to-month left me a way out, I would have.  I thought that maybe this was just a temporary way of doing things until they know for certain that I’m staying.  

     When I moved in a week later, I asked the accommodating one if he would please take down the pictures.  Sure, sure, he tells me.  When I came back a week after that, most of the pictures were off of the wall but stacked on my floor.  The roommates were gone and didn’t return before I had to leave to go back to Boston.  The next week I got a call from the crazy one while I was at work.  ”When are you coming back?” He asked.  ”Next week. I’m not sure,” I told him.  I was pretty sure, but I didn’t want him to know.  ”That’s too bad,” He said.  ”You’re missing the african day parade today.  We’re selling chicken out on the street.”  I could imagine them giving out drumsticks and breasts from the back porch to people in red, green, and black as marchers and floats went by under the blue sky on a sunny fall day.  ”Ah, that’s too bad.  I would have liked to be there,” I told him.  ”Have you moved the stuff out of my room?” I asked him.  ”What stuff exactly?” He asked.  ”You know, the boxes and chests and clothes and all the stuff that we had discussed.”  ”Yeah, yeah, you know we’re so busy these days we just haven’t gotten around to it but we’ll get it, yeah.  Don’t you worry.”

     I spent the preponderance of September in Boston and went back to New York the day before I was to fly home to Washington State.  When I got back to the apartment, Mr. Accommodating showed me what they had taken out of the room.  There were still clothes hanging in my closet and a few chests stacked in a corner, along with a pile of new blinds on the floor and three pictures still hanging on my walls.  I avoided the issue and thought that maybe if I were to spend time with my new roommates it would be easier to bring up later that evening.  

     I went to the back porch and sat down next to the crazy one.  ”Hey, how are you?”  I asked him.  He leaned in towards me, looked me in the eyes, cocked his head to the side and asked “Why di-dn’t you call?”  I thought he was joking, so I laughed.  ”Right,” I said, but his face lacked any expression as his eyes stayed focused on mine.  ”What do you mean?” I asked him.  ”You know, how ‘bout ‘Hey, I’m coming home’ you know. How ‘bout checking in?”  

     The harsh, orange street lights reflected off of one side of his face as he smoked.  Mr. Accommodating came out to join us.  I used him to try to change the subject.  ”I’m thinking about getting some food,” I said.  The crazy one leaned back, pursed his lips, and with a dismissive wave of his hand he said “There’s a Popeye’s up the street.”  ”Well, I don’t know if I said this before, but I’m a vegetarian, so there’s not much at Popeye’s for me,” I told them.  ”Well, then,” Mr. Crazy shook his head, “I don’t know what there’s gonna be around here for you.”  ”Oh, it’s no problem,” I told him, “There’s a vegan soul food joint around the corner.”  ”Oh?  What time do they close?” He asked me.  ”I don’t know,” I replied.  He leaned in once again, smoke escaping out of his nostrils, his bright, wide eyes trying to lock with mine as I couldn’t recognize any of his other features in the darkness of his silhouette.  ”Remember where you aaaaare,” came the pathetic prophesy-warning through the smoke.  

     I watched his weird little brain work as he shifted in his seat.  My hands started to sweat and I could feel myself sitting up uncomfortably in my chair.  Back when he told me to get a P.O. box and I asked him why, he said, “Remember where you are.  You’re living around a bunch of blacks and spanish people!” He paused, giving me time to follow his logic.  I shook my head.  ”So?”  ”Sooooo?!  You don’t want these folks knowing your business!”  Maybe he just means that things close early in Harlem?  But judging by his tone it must have been a very grave, bad thing.  Maybe the last guy who went out looking for vegan soul food in Harlem after 8pm ended up in a dumpster, but I doubt it. 

     He changed the subject.  ”Why you gone so much?”  He asked.  ”Because all my work is in Boston.”  ”Oh, so you just come and go, here and there, doin’ all sorts of shit.  How long you stayin’ this time?”  ”I’m going to the west coast for a while, starting tomorrow night.”  ”What you doin’ on the west coast?”  ”It’s where I’m from.  I’m going home to visit family.”  He leaned back again, head still cocked to the side, and asked forcefully “When you comin’ back?”  I didn’t want to tell him anything.  ”Early October,” I told him.  ”When?  WHAT DAY?” He asked.  I paused.  ”I don’t remember.  I don’t have my itinerary.”  ”Mmhmm.  So you’re one of those, you know, in and out types, all mystical and stuff,” he said as he looked at Mr. Accommodating and nodded.  ”Mystical?”  I asked, “Like Gandhi?”  ”Yeah, you know, all mystical.  Mystical means, you know, like we don’t know what you’re doin’.  Mystical.  I know what I’m sayin’.”

     And that’s when it happened.  Maybe he thought he had me scared; pinned in the same submissive, hopeless corner where he kept Mr. Accommodating.  ”Those three pictures still on your wall, those are stayin’,” he said with a wave of his hand as he looked away. “Okay,” I said.  I was trying to stay calm.  ”I can take them down myself and put them in the closet.  That seems like a fair compromise.”  He leaned in again.  ”No, I mean they’re staying ON-THE-WALL,” the words clumsily popping from his mouth like air pockets forced from a faucet.  ”Well, we agreed that the pictures would be taken off of the wall,” I told him.  ”Oh, no, no,” he started.  ”Yes, yes,” I interrupted him, “When you rent a room out to somebody, that space becomes theirs.  If I’m paying for a room, I expect to be able to move into it and make it my home.”  He looked at Mr. Accommodating, who sat in uncomfortable silence.  He sat up in his seat, thinking of what to say next.  ”Nooooo.  When you rent a hotel room, do you take the pictures off the wall?” He asked.  ”That’s different,” I told him.  ”No it’s not!” He yelled as he pointed at my face.  ”Yes it is.  When you check into a hotel you do so with the understanding that guests constantly rotate and that your time there is limited-” “NO!” He interrupted me.  ”You didn’t even look at the pictures,” He said,”They’re nice pictures.”  ”I’m not making a judgement about your pictures.  I don’t care what type of pictures they are, I don’t want them on my wall.”  And there I waited for another reply as he paused and thought.  His body shifted again with his demeanor.  His eyes became sad and he gazed downward.  ”How can you do this?”  He asked as he opened up his arms and shook his head.  ”I take you in, I put you up-,” “No,” it was my turn to lean in.  I waved my hand in his face.  ”Just take the pictures off the wall.  It’s not that difficult.”  

     When I went back to Oregon I chatted briefly with a guy I met on the beach who told me that his girlfriend wanted to move to Manhattan.  ”Good luck,” I said to him.  ”I don’t want to,” he said.  ”If you’re moving to the island with anything less than 30 G’s to blow, you’re slummin’ it.”  The prospect of Manhattan truly concerned him.  He looked out into the ocean and disengaged himself from our conversation.  As I stood on the beach, trying to enjoy my vacation, I couldn’t help but think that this is what I get for trying to save money, for taking a risk, for not staying at Brandeis or setting myself up with a career earlier in my life.

     Mr. Crazy stopped and leaned away from me, stunned.  He looked over at Mr. Accommodating, who was watching, silent, and now speechless anyways.  Once again he shook his head as he crossed his arms.  I waited, ignoring the horns on 7th avenue and the hum of bass reverberating from the rows of cars at the stoplight outside of our porch.  I was focused solely on this ridiculous game.  ”Ooooooh, you’re a jackass,” he said through clenched teeth.  What precipitated after that is deserving of a separate post.  

     I’m living with a friend in Cambridge.  You don’t need to send me anything.  I’m fine.  In fact, I think there is some odd bromance going on here.  The guy is old enough to be my father.  Sometimes we get into long, meaningful conversations.  Our thought patterns seem to match up better than they do with most other people.  We tend to take the same stance on most life issues.  Scholarly topics may be a different story.  Like the other day he tried to defend Jack Kerouac.  I was none too happy about that.  I hate Kerouac.  Or today he tried to tell me why he enjoys sudoku.  Another turn off.  But besides his positions on Kerouac and sudoku, I respect him.  I also remind him almost every day that he can kick me out whenever I make him uncomfortable.  He hasn’t yet.

     Right now, it’s very quiet in this apartment.  He’s studying, trying to finish up his master’s degree in philosophy.  Once I found out that he was so close to finishing his masters yet not taking it completely seriously, I promised him a favor: I would stab him if he didn’t finish.  So now he’s focusing and it would be wrong of me to interrupt.

     See that hat?  I got it for him.  Except I didn’t actually get it for him, per se.  I got it for myself.  It was lying on the ground outside the Renaissance Hotel in the Seaport District and I stopped my trolley to jump out and get it, then I washed it and realized it didn’t fit me.  So I gave it to him.

     I’ve placed an air mattress on the floor of his study/library.  I try not to get distracted by all the philosophy books surrounding me.  I’ll save you the list and just say that the names and titles jump out at me and if I don’t block them out I won’t get anything done with my life.  Most of my clothes and other belongings are in a storage unit in Manhattan.  What I need here with me can fit in two backpacks stacked in the corner of the library.                                                                                                                   

    Tomorrow I may go to the laundromat.  I will also need to track down a suit.  I was invited to the Human Rights Campaign New England Gala Dinner on Saturday.  Since I’m living out of a backpack, I don’t have much in the way of a suit.  I’ve been living in the same two pairs of jeans and a jacket for the past month.  If worse comes to worse, my friend who has the privilege of letting me stay with him has a suit that sort of fits me.  I know that, as a guy, it’s okay if your date looks better than you, but I don’t want her to look too much better.  Just a little bit is fine.  I have some phone calls to make.  I’m thinking of one friend who is close to my size who also owes me $140.  I think I can take care of this.

     Beyond the Gala Dinner and that I’ve been asked to write Senator Brown, once again, to give him my perspective on why DADT ought to be repealed (please God before the Republicans take over the house), my activity within the LGBTQ community is essentially down to nothing, as it has been for some time.  And though I now have a few avenues I could follow if I wanted to be a more active volunteer and ally, I have decided that it’s best for me to do as I’m doing now.  That is to volunteer when I’m asked and needed, give when I can, but not be too involved, as I feel like it’s something that I will never fully grasp unless I live it and I’m basically straight so I’ll never live it.  I’m hoping that more of my efforts in the future will go towards what I discussed in the previous post.  

     The apartment is warm.  We have lots of alcohol.  We just made coffee as we both intend to stay up late studying.  I’m always nervous that one of those cinderblocks will fall on my head.  Tonight I sleep under Marx, Nietzsche, Russell, Sartre, Aristotle, etc., etc.     

     Today marks the 235th Birthday of the United States Marine Corps.  Today Marines worldwide are dressed in their blues with shiny medals and perfectly-aligned ribbons.  They are cutting cakes, making toasts, and shouting Oorah!  Tomorrow is Veterans Day, when folks will congratulate and thank the veterans nearest them for their service.

    These two days will always be bittersweet to me.  I wish I had a story for you about Iraq or Afghanistan.  I wish I could tell you that I received a combat action ribbon, or maybe a purple heart.  I wish I could tell you that I was given an honorable discharge.  But if I had some of those stories, I would probably wish I hadn’t.  So I can’t tell you any of that.

     I can tell you what it’s like to be twenty years old and deal with clinical depression without any support.  I can tell you what it’s like to live for over a year with suicidal thoughts and not tell anybody for fear of punishment.  I can tell you what it’s like, after such a year, to finally end up in the hospital and confess your problems to a Navy Psychiatrist only to listen to him tell you that there’s nothing really wrong with you and that you’d better just get back in the fight.  I can tell you what it’s like for patient confidentiality to be broken, to listen to your own words quoted back to you, out of context, as your commanding officer attempts to piece together evidence of your alleged malingering.  Or what it’s like to stand in front of your platoon commander and not be allowed to speak while he explains his research on the legal avenues that he intends to follow in order to put you in prison for the remaining balance of your enlistment.  I could tell you of having to think twice about giving an honest answer in therapy sessions for fear that your answers might be strategically misconstrued.  Or I could tell you about the humiliation of being put under suicide watch when it’s one of your own friends who is assigned the watching and you’re assigned a mattress on the floor next to the armory.  What’s it like to be excited when you get diagnosed with a personality disorder, even if you don’t have one?  I can tell you: it means you might get out and meet a doctor who believes you and can help you get better.

     I went from being a team leader to being treated like a criminal.  Sessions with my command and psychiatric professionals felt more like interrogations than treatment or help.  I don’t know if I can make anyone fully appreciate what it’s like for your entire life to be at the mercy of people who choose to believe that your condition is a fabrication.      

     My commanding officer told me that I would probably end up working at McDonald’s for the rest of my life.  My life has moved forward slowly since then.  It took me a couple of years to find the confidence to apply to college.  I went to an academic planning session at Columbia and listened to all the veterans, and there were many of them, talk amongst themselves about their experiences and how sweet a deal is the GI Bill.  I sat silently, hoping not to be found out, as I didn’t want to tell my story to any of them.  I received a letter with my acceptance packet telling me how to go about claiming my GI Bill for tuition.  They were all very confused as I told them, one by one, meeting by meeting, that I don’t have any benefits.  As far as anybody in the administration knows, I’m the first veteran to attend Columbia without GI benefits.  So I’ve grown out my hair in hopes of avoiding being noticed by other veterans.  I really don’t believe that most other veterans will understand.

     I’ve alluded to it in speech and in writing but have, as of yet, lacked the courage to say it fully.  Though my story differs somewhat from the people you see in the video, I am one of the over 22,000 veterans who have been discharged for personality disorder.  I have always been afraid to tell most people unless I know them. It is something that carries a social and professional stigma that has kept me generally silent about it except to those that I know and trust.

     I’m writing this with the knowledge that my readership is generally limited to family, friends, and colleagues.  I wish I had a larger audience.  This may irritate some or make others uncomfortable.  My intention is not to overshadow the meaning of the Marine Corps Birthday or Veterans Day with my own narrative. But these days give me reason to reflect on what I went through and how my life has been as a result.  I can’t forget the many times that different people in my command told me that I was a “piece of shit.”  I have finally returned to a place where I feel confident and settled in my life, and now that I’ve achieved some semblance of normalcy, I would truly feel like a piece of shit if I didn’t start saying something about this.  I’ve spent much time thinking about what I can do about this, from simply raising awareness to starting a scholarship fund for veterans with a PD discharge.  I have, thus far, been too afraid to do anything.  So this is my first step.  

     So for my Devil Dogs out there, celebrate the birth of our Corps.  Take a few shots for Chesty, Smedley, the Commandant, and especially for 3rd Battlion, 5th Marines in Sangin.  For everybody else, please honor the veterans that you know.  But I hope that all will remember that for many, military service has not been a happy story.  It’s still happening.  There are people like me who are burdened with this label and losing their benefits, their health, and their good names for the convenience of the military.  And though things have not been simple or easy for me since I was discharged, I’m afraid that I may be the luckiest of all of them.