Have You Seen Zoe?
I was unwilling to risk another sleepless night so I took a pill.
After a fairly strenuous previous day I had anticipated a night of deep dreamless sleep but found it elusive. That day by 2pm. I had ingested two Bloody Marys, three frozen Margaritas and one lavender infused gin lemonade drink and here let me pause and say oh God bless that wonderful Margarita machine, you were a marvelous and I would go so far as to say essential part of my survival and happiness while roughing it for four days with as many as 33 other rummies in a decrepit and sometimes spooky three story former ballerinas compound deep in the Adirondacks. After the heavy early morning drinking I and five others attempted a 5.5 mile hike of a somewhat strenuous nature (up and back down Slide Mountain. Three had to turn back once it became obvious that completing the hike would make catching their bus back to NYC unlikely). Midday hiking on a hot muggy day is hard to beat I say facetiously and as the sweat poured down my face and soaked my body I counted off one Bloody Mary, two, and so on. I did though after the hike feel an energy akin to elation, which was however short-lived, as once back at the compound I again began pouring down frozen Margaritas and then, inexplicably, lifting heavy objects, cinder blocks and such, and also wondering, why is there such a stigma about drinking Bloody Marys late in the day, I hate that, because, they are, properly made, perhaps the most delicious drink in the history of tomato-based drinks.
The pill I took last night—which combined with just a splash of Johnnie Walker Black puts you in a pretty much guaranteed state of temporary death for about eight hours—begins and ends with the third to last letter of the alphabet. My lame attempt at subterfuge is because I don't want to glorify brand name drug use, or make it too easy for others to replicate my decision making, which can occasionally be listed under the title ill-conceived, or stupid, if you find that easier to spell, nor do I want to condemn it too harshly, this decision to ingest drugs, lest those revelers (I have your names written in my “notebook”) who regaled relentlessly through the night my wakeful aching body as they “sang” and danced and engaged in ponderous discussion under the influence of um, whatever that stuff is that makes you alert and uncommonly vivacious until 7 in the morning after a previous day and night of heavy drinking and exercise, think that I am holding a grudge (the fact that your names are scrawled with delirious hand in my notebook is not intended to make you jump in the night every time you hear some strange noise, and wonder, was jimlouis serious about that “notebook” or is he just spoofing, he's a real kidder, but also, he's kind of got that edge that scares me sometimes? Do you thinks he's one of those whack jobs that snaps one day and then they find these notebooks scrawled with all sorts of weird shit?) I would love to help you answer those questions, set your mind at ease but...did you hear that? Did someone just turn our doorknob? Hey does your drink taste funny? Mine tastes a little like it has 1200 mics of LSD in it, naw it's probably ok.
So the pill worked, perhaps too well (I got my desired dead dreamless sleep), and when Bernadette nudged me this morning, back in NYC, to ask do you need to move the car, I said or croaked, possibly squeaked, a yes and when she said it was 8 I thought, that's a nice number and I could probably use about 8 more hours of sleep. When she asked did I want her to move it I gave an adamant no, it's not woman's work afterall, I mean, there's just things she wouldn't understand about growing up on the streets...I won't go on in this vein...it was the beginning of an attempt to obliquely reference something that we did last night, which she made me promise, or maybe promise is too strong a word, that I wouldn't mention, while we baby-sat for a kid named Atticus. But despite the aforementioned lack of or at least occasional lack of good judgement I think now it will be best if I just admit that we watched Dirty Dancing on the TV . It was the best I could do with the system I had to work with, of which the DVD part along with the multiple remotes had so flummoxed me that I just gave up on it. The movie we had intended to watch, which was much the artier film, with accomplished actors, and buttloads of nuance, was the type of film you would be proud to discuss, drunkenly or sober, with just about anyone. I can't remember its name and as far as I know it is still stuck in that machine with the word “cannot” flashing on the display.
I exited the building and when you do that you are like immediately smack in the C part of NYC, which luckily accepts the walking dead as normal parts of its makeup, but in preparation I had put on my billed cap and positioned it low to hide behind instead of the bleary eyed drunk pill popping hiding sunglasses that other Nykers might prefer. There was however no accessory to hide the fact that I could not walk all that well and I just did the best I could. That pill had really kicked my ass. It felt as if not just my shoes but perhaps my pants and underwear were on backwards. And to get to the Jeep, which uncharacteristically was parked all the way over on Houston near the FDR, with literally only thirty seconds to spare before a meter maid dropped from the sky and zapped me for sixty, I had to run or rapidly limp (I should have mention earlier about the Adirondack block of cement that viciously attacked my left baby toe) the last two blocks while holding up my beltless pants in the most subtle fashion I could manage.
Usually when I start out writing I have some kernel of an idea inspired by one simple, ordinary sighting from a day, but what I say or how obviously it is connected to the original kernel can be hard to discern. Today I thought it was going to be that boy child I saw on Norfolk, the last of a group of seven kids leashed together single file. A previous group of leashed children had been led by a few moments earlier and it usually makes me smile, these leash or wagon train led groups of children in NYC, but this morning it made me laugh out loud, not at the boy per se but after he had passed and I had processed all of it: the cuteness of the group, and certain of its members individually, the way they walked or what they wore or when they waved at construction workers, and the fact that the doll the boy was carrying was Elmo's best girl friend, the tutu-wearing Zoe, who is a figure very close to me for reasons...save your breath...I'm not telling you, well, all of it seemed connected and part of that spiral of life that makes writing about it seem worthwhile. But I don't see how I really got Zoe into this one. I'll check for Zoe on the next edit.
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