Sinister: Leaving The Island

[P F]

Soft sweet scented sheets of the hotel Blossom Dearie:
yards of sumptuous unused bedding, virgin territory.
Mysteries of the substances they give you for the
shower. Mysteries of the shower, for that matter. In
the 14 down elevator always different characters: odd
European business associates this time, encountering
each other here during descent, the group forming
around me as though by accident. The elevator seems a
running joke, the one qualm anyone has about the
place, save also the coldness of the breakfast buffet
at which rogue English voices sigh.

Downtown on the corner the Strand’s dollar shelves
hold what seem interesting volumes that gradually
replicate themselves on one shelf after another.
Graffiti and fire escapes, failed bagel venture on 1st
Avenue, 50c for a cold bagel off a stall as I head too
far North up Lexington, little India and all, for
noon’s latest rendez-toi. In the lobby Tokyo Rosemary
in pinks from the shocking to the merely surprising
admires the swish surroundings. It’s like Hal David
could walk out any minute. 34th street, a new Korean
in a new town. On Park Avenue we seek a bus, in the
cold wind that snips between the skyscrapers that
frame the Empire State against the snappy blue. I try
to find out about Manhattan’s place in the history of
aesthetics. The bus never comes, the subway does, up
to the edge of Spanish Harlem, into reach of the
rattling drums. East of the park, over the cliffs mew
the wildcat charms: Barrio land, deadbeat side
streets, up to a point. The Museum of the City of New
York somehow asks that its whole name be recited: not
the New York Museum, no, the Museum of the City of New
York. Grand old marble halls tricked out to neat
modernity, best of two east side worlds. It’s a $5
bargain, kids: don’t miss Radicals in the Bronx,
socialists, communists and cooperative housing,
factional badges, red diaper fables, FDR’s Democratic
Party an exotically conservative option by these
flashing lights. In the Glamour halls I wonder at the
frisson of being a yard from the yards that gave
Nicole Kidman a frisson. Cyan and red upstairs the
Puerto Rican walls; the mysteries of the US
commonwealth. Guidebooks are sold as Not For Tourists.
I object: we are all tourists in someone’s life.
Anyway, why trust the word and feeling of a local?
They (and we are all locals in someone’s town) are
less apt than the despised cashspilling migrants to
look up and see the light.

The Park waits to the west with its lifelines traced
in the orange of Christo’s Gates. Oddly mundane
repetition of the pattern, orange cloth hung on orange
poles, like some Kurosawan feudal structure perhaps
but uniform all across the green miles when so much
might have been gained by variation, the chances once
so good for diversity. In two minutes you could toss
together a notion that would improve it: on this path
every gate bearing a handwritten quotation from a New
York novel; on this every orange cloth emblazoned with
a bird of America. Nothing doing. The Gates seem
always excused by circumstance, some condition that’s
absent: - They’d look better in the wind; - O, they’d
look good in the snow. Nature beats them like it
casually trumps much artifice: the setting sun behind
the Reservoir Jackie Onassis peels more than one shade
of orange across the silhouette-strewn sky.

In the hotel David Crosby I crack a new gold drink,
Brooklyn Pilsner: the variations keep coming. For
storing that in the fridge some Krusty will add $5.44
to the bill. She has written the address in a cute
hand on petit paper. Into early evening once again,
with my hat on and my dollars dry, and the coated
doorman hauling glass aside.
- Would that be the *real* Tracer Hand, sir?
- Oh, I wouldn’t go that far.

These hot dog stands are useful it turns out, not just
some retro decoration. Past the Empire State’s blessed
eternal landmarking, Herald Square – why do you only
ever hear of Herald Square once you're in Manhattan?
mystery of its obscurity abroad – and the Broadway
woozy tootsies: the subway to 103rd street, reading
all the way about the land above none of us down here
can see. Quietness of the norwest reaches; Manhattan
Avenue sounds a name from a Massachusetts past. The
Ding Dong Lounge flips suddenly into view: through the
door the lugubrious sound is a sudden bath of absinthe
and petrol, ‘Epitaph For My Heart’. I would like to
report cocktail shakers and parasol tremblers,
maraschino waitresses and tinkling ice-buckets, but
it’s dark and downhome, great spatial rifts of echoing
rock between one table and another. At the bar the
bearded tender serves me a pint of naturally Brooklyn;
he probably wanted a tip also. The bogs are splattered
with old punk posters, samizdats and slashed
photocopies, vague early-Reagan satire, loose shocks,
unknown support acts who peopled the glacial history
of the electric guitar. At a table at the front I open
the Rough Guide and wait. A fellow from the bar
follows me like an agent in a Deep Throat drama, asks
for whom I’m waiting. O.Nate, his name punctuated as
mysteriously as a modern rock band’s: an international
businessman and a grindcore fan from Hoboken. To a
mere foreigner his voice sounds way out West,
possessed of one of those mysteriously other American
textures. In fact I think he’s Californian: West, OK,
but not quite what I had in mind. We name a few names:
the Rocking Vicar and YMOF, Lara Byrne and Bertie
Ahern, that class of thing. Distant grey Atlantic
drops, it is only 2:30 in the afternoon in Dublin. New
arrivals now come thick and fast: Eater looks younger
than his 31, is unsure whether to consider that a
compliment. Ally Zay Garance Dallas really exists
after all these years. So does the pinefox for that
matter. Their meeting’s like a summit, though not
Joyce and Proust: perhaps Myles na gC and Mary McC.
She remembers having to talk about Adam Ant in the
shower. East in the dark the unfinished Cathedral
waits unvisited. Tracer H arriving late, elegant and
lean: a confidence man, drawling in that outstate
voice and disarmingly setting off unexploded bombs of
charisma. The Mod is framed by vast headphones, a Mod
scientist at his desk of sonic inventions and wax
equations: his mere gaze is packed with a spraining
overload of intelligence, ferocious numeracy. How, I
ask, do you know so much about computers?
– I didn’t date in high school.
That sounds a good answer, but hold on… nor did I. In
fact – I didn’t go to high school. From his box of
magic he pulls me a track by the Boredoms:
refreshingly, for all the space-age math talk, it’s a
load of silly banging. Dollars on the counter. Nabisco
shows last, having least distance to travel. Eager
thought in his smiles, motion in his conjecturing
voice, the fast train of intellection speeding through
chuckles and hypotheses. The gang of smokers forms and
fumes on the street: A, B, C, A, C, B, A, coming and
going in and out. The shop across the road provides
bad crisps: crisps to rank with the ones I bought at
the Hotel Lev Yashin seven years ago, don’t remind me.
Perhaps not that bad. The bartender orders tacos: I
have never seen the GHS order chips. The subway seems
a labyrinthine trip. In the late lobby of the Hotel
Alan Sugar we find the right personae for the place.
- So, things seem to be moving forward. I’ll call you
about the deal –
- I still need to check some things with my people.
- Of course; but I think things are looking good for
us now.

Green 6 line downtown from 28th and Park Avenue, past
Union Square with Bleecker Street still to come;
follow the song one more time and get off at Astor
Place. East into the mysteries of the Village, harsh
geometries of Alphabet City, gungy low-rise land out
of keeping with the island, scrawled walls and stacks
of iron stairs, free papers and Jews performing
themselves on street corners. Tompkins Square, gritty,
dry: I walk into a closed public library and the camp
librarian thinks I want to hand over my Rough Guide.
The Life Café is clean and glossy enough, but also
‘vegan-friendly’, Mexican and all that: uh-oh, I only
came here for a Yankee breakfast.
– Sit yourself anywhere: as I deliberate the
blackhaired waitress Rebecca says, - you want the
perfect spot, don’t you, I know how that feels.
She brings fine coffee, refills it 5 or 6 times: it
takes all of 5 refills to jade the tongue out of
wanting more. Strawberry pancakes, syrup, eggs easy
over she explains, hm, I thought it was over easy;
wish I could have the bacon – why not? order that too,
holiday indulgences, playing with the casino’s
potatoes. Sumptuous it comes, a decent feast at last.
I read the rough guide to Staten Island and Queens,
politely pose her questions: she tells of a neighbour
here who lives in Queens, the chances still so good
for diversity; she’s from Brooklyn, recommends nothing
in it; I ought to go to the Met, or the Natural
History Museum. Big numbers. She stops to seat and
serve, comes back, carries on. For once a $4 tip seems
the least that’s needed. North, taking snaps down the
eastern streets till a clodhopper leaps from a café
and shouts mockingly, Buddy, take a picture of me,
too… yeah, not so interesting now, is it? Tosser. Back
to Tompkins Square through the wire fences, wary
guards, dusty yards, seeking the memorial to the 1904
Slocum disaster. I walk right past it, double take and
turn in my tracks, find the faded stone, melted by
decades of air. Mr Bloom might have sought it too.
Check the paper.

Great battle Tokio. Lovemaking in Irish £200 damages.
Gordon Bennett. Emigration swindle. Letter from His
Grace William +. Ascot Throwaway recalls Derby of ’92
when Captain Marshall’s dark horse, Sir Hugo, captured
the blue riband at long odds. New York disaster,
thousand lives lost. Foot and Mouth. Funeral of the
later Mr Patrick Dignam.

Five words drowned amid the millions.

Down the Western street I happen on The Source where
the postcards seize my random eye. The longhaired
midaged vendor hands them back in the shop’s own bag,
newsletter enclosed: tie-dye colours, psychedelic
community messages. I’m later struck by how central
this spit of a shop seems to think itself, or be. St
Mark’s Books is clean and tidy, doesn’t claim to be
cheap. Yank editions of everything from Lethem and
Didion to Terry and Joyce. (Why have I never seen this
John Bishop 1999 FW before?) A dumb droning
conversation drones dumbly at the counter. Odd
stupidity of the wouldbe intellectual. I stop and
scribble notes to myself, pick up DeLillo and Fred
Jameson for the bulk of $30, walk out knocked out
laden. Time to drop this load, to scurry uptown encore
to the Hotel Siri Hustvedt. Across the vague traffic
dangers at Astor Place, in and out of the 4 or 5,
thinking of Richard Dalloway crossing town with
flowers, is it?, in his hands.

In the morning mezzanine I’d awaited again the slow
lift coming: turn to the besuited hairless assiduous
attendant and mention breezily that they say the
Staten Island Ferry is worth doing, and it’s free and
all. – Oh, I’m not sure that it’s *free*, he warns, I
think it *used* to be. I’ll look into that for you,
sir, and have someone find out for you. Plunging into
the next hours and no second thought to that exchange,
but suddenly now the telephone rings: a dude from who
knows where calling to tell me that the ferry is free
and it runs every half hour. – Oh, thank you very much
– well, you know, I think I’d like to experience it…
and how long does it take? – It takes a half hour. –
Oh – yes. I can’t let that promo cat down now: I catch
the trains to Bowling Green.

At the island’s tip skyscrapers without famous names.
Imposing Ferry terminal, new, glass and steel, the
ferry announced in giant letters. The brave new dock
is but a great vast waiting room: white and black,
white and blue collar, cops and kids stand and
shuffle. Anxiously I ask where you board the ferry.
The query must sound silly: right there – you can’t
miss it. Industrial strength of boarding a ship: the
seriousness of water, the heaviness of bolted steel.
The orange southbound boat toots its horn like a
picture-book character and sets its backwash flurrying
across the Sound. Scant space outside, and wind and
rain force me out of it, set me watching weather
through stained glass. Liberty vanishes into the heavy
vapour. Mundane insides: functional benches, opportune
snack bar, inaudible tannoy. To most their books and
talk must hold more fascination than the trip itself:
commuters from the real world to home. A class of
Geordie boys seem to have joined me. Oddness of the
English voices – dull, unimpressive, silly, even
though on my shores those Shearer sounds would hold
more romance than mere Estuary. I retreat to the back
of the ship, listen to a guide tell others of Staten
Island. – Is it true, I ask, like the guidebook says,
that they want to secede from New York. - *Oh*, no, he
laughs the suggestion out of the water.
 
Out of the water the rain is pelting down. I head
straight through, seeking the momentum to carry me
into another Borough. In the dripping immediate bus
station I board a bus, the wrong one, kind of, swipe
the MetroCard wrong at least twice till the silent
disdainful driver swipes it for me, ponder the route,
disembark, board another, the right one, sort of,
swipe the MetroCard wrong at least twice till the
silent disdainful driver swipes it for me, ride as one
of the wet huddled masses West down the island’s edge,
just a suburban run, black folks, laughing cops, no
tourist mile. Suburban America, the rest of America,
that’s how it feels when they let me off and I’m on
the edge of a road tracking the shore, and asking a
chick the way to Snug Harbour Cultural Centre, as
though I’ve any reason to attend it. Stop signs,
school buses, like Massachusetts in 1979, 1988;
another green world. Sloping roads from the shore past
spaced houses; America, the stretched land of the
rainy day movies. The Cultural Centre is many old
houses; it’s odd to arrive, alone in the rain like I
have a purpose, when I don’t; like Gradus coming for
Kinbote or someone seeking a known job, not an aimless
visitor making up sketchy relevance. In one building I
see some local art; on walls Dreiser or Melville are
quoted about Snug Harbour, a haven for sailors. I turn
around and get out of dodge: walk all the way back
East as buses Not In Service pass one after another.
On the side roads to the sea the gold and black school
buses queue patient as cows.

Past the stadium, up to the pointless top of the bus
terminal, back down to pick up a $1.60 coffee and
donut with a cop waiting behind. (Cops! All these
cops!) In the hall I await the ferry for 20 minutes or
more, reading the guide on the Village; a business
type asks me the ferry is how often? On the way back
to Manhattan too, some Indian type wants info from me,
about subway lines and the like. The weather has
cleared: Liberty’s visible to our left, Manhattan an
epic of downtown highrise against a stunning sky, the
air cleared and painted like October. February. Off
amid the eager hungry hurrying crowd into the city:
the pointlessness of my come-and-go, there-and-back
trip to nowhere stays a safe secret from the
purposeful citizens.

Quit the subway at Union Square, out of its little
pagoda, head West and get as far as 5th or 6th Ave,
with an old tune in my head, the building visible
North (I wrote it on 5th), the thought of new lyrics
that could salvage its glory… till I realize I’ve
overshot for the Strand, which turns out to be
directly south of Union Square. Hand over the bag and
take docket #42. Many things round here take me a
while to understand: in maybe three visits to the
place I try to exit by the entrance. Lethem’s Men &
Cartoons looks an uncertain bargain at $15, Levin’s
James Joyce first edition for $7 (hm), Fast-Talking
Dames at $5. I am unsure of this place, amid the
afterwork shoppers at what must be six, later; miles
of books to go but it’s time to stop, to go. On the
Union Square platform I watch the Express go by. Local
trains.

In the Hotel Roger Williams a jazz band is playing
again. Naturally I like it for its tipped hat to the
first night I arrived. I dare the telephone’s
complexities and talk to the Hand. Tennessee is not
the state we’re in. With a guide’s expertise he says
they stopped charging for the ferry cos they realized
it was uneconomical; with a tutor’s reassurance he
says sodden Staten Island may have felt a lost hour to
me, but many New Yorkers haven’t done it. With vast
and sincere charm he says he would have loved (that
is, *loooved*) to be the one to show me Chumley’s. I
might go anyway. – Well, do, do, he says (that is,
*doo…. just  dooo*!) I am leaving a message on
Nabisco’s rolling tape or invisible space when the
telephone blasts off again; always it seems to ring
from the corner of the room, though the central set’s
the one I put down and grab back. How does the song
go?
- Who is on the other end talking / Am I even home?

South down 3rd Avenue, to the narrow façade of the
shebeen. In the cosy indoor twilight the Stones play
all night. They’re Dartford’s answer to the Pogues. I
take a table like I know how, the midaged waitress may
be Irish, calls me darlin’ time and again. I order a
pint of Murphy’s, gulp it down while penning a
Chrysler card. Molly’s Classic Burger, a pint of red,
a pint of black, the stripey paper of the Hotel
Bridget Riley. American diners come and go. If memory
serves Greil Marcus said that ‘Gimme Shelter’ was the
best rock record ever: a few blocks from here Simon
Reynolds agreed and said that in a post-rock universe
the intro would go on for 15 minutes. I kind of wish
it did, now. The check (yes, the – the check) is
alarming: $28.65 pre-tip. It’s only alarming in
American: in translation it’ll look fair enough. I
wait thankfully in vain for their eyelids to bat when
I hand over my card. It’s now destroyed I am surely. I
leave a five dollar bill like I know what I’m doing,
walk home like another New York drunk.





		
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