Questions for Miles Davis
How does a Pharaoh dance?
Does it look better when you’re high?
Are his limbs akimbo and askew?
Do they move at different rhythms?
Stop and start at different times?
Does he dance alone?
Or with a bunch of servants at his side?
A bunch of cool Pharaoh chicks?
Does he dance outside?
Or in a big old pyramid?
Does he have to plug himself in?
Can any one hear the groove?
Or is it for his self to dig?
The ambulance, unattended. Parked at the curb, its engine idled. The back doors were open, the gurney locked in place. I climbed inside, lay down and looked up the ceiling. This was depressing. I had never been in one before. Nor even on a stretcher. Once I stretched out on the floor of a van whose bench seats had been removed. This did not feel the same. I felt I should be injured. I got down and hopped out.
A black man leaned against the hood of the station wagon parked behind. His bleary red eyes stared straight at me, without interest. I had seen him before, from my window across the street. He lived in this car. Inside it was filled to the roof with stuff. Toys, magazines, clothing, empty two-liters of soda, a rocking horse, pizza boxes, a fire hose, styrofoam coffee cups; once I saw something rustle, and looked away.
“I’m going to drive away.” I said it out loud. We had never before exchanged a word. His red eyes shivered in their sockets, attempted to focus, the dark wrinkles around them relaxing very slightly.
“I’ll steal it. The ambulance. I’ll drive away from here and never come back. I’ll turn on the lights and sirens. I’ll stop for gas South of the city. I’ll cross state lines. I’ll use truck stop bathrooms. I’ll live on drive-thru burgers and shitty black coffee. I’ll let hitchhikers use the back. I’ll park in the desert and we’ll lay out on the dunes with the red lights whirling and whirling and their luminescence will stretch improbably to the base of distant mountains and flare brightly up their sides and a girl who we pick up on the side of the highway outside of some small, sad town will stretch and say “It’s like seeing an echo” and we will all look and silently nod our heads. And in this way roaring across miles of road and taking care to bypass large cities and their realistic concerns we will tear away across America into unknown futures, other lives determined only by our willingness to tether our destinies to velocity and light and nothing else but dreams borne on a great free wild improbable road trip with the whole time those gorgeous red lights whirling, whirling, whirling and the sirens crying, crying, crying.”
The man looked tired. He spoke at last.
“But the ambulance, son, the ambulance is gone.”
I am in conversation with a friend.
“Do you work tonight?”
“I am susceptible to the illusion of a romantic poverty.”
“Is that a no? In the media they call us-”
“Don’t say it.”
“They say we-”
“Stop.”
“Your mother and father-”
“Are teachers. I ask for nothing.”
“But sometimes.”
“The one time. The two.”
“Just two times?”
“This is the part that is unromantic.”
“Sure. Let’s talk about-”
“Let’s not decide what to say. Let’s just say it.”
There is a silence.
“There should be some music.”
“There should always be some music. I’m surprised there isn’t.”
“You’ve overlooked some details.”
“I am wont to, on occasion.”
“There was that party.”
“It was a beautiful party.”
“But you hadn’t cleaned.”
“Did someone notice? I didn’t notice.”
“I noticed.”
“You’ve seen the place clean. The rest hadn’t.”
“It was their first time.”
“Yes. They were surprised.”
“At the walls?”
“Weren’t you?”
“My first time?”
“Even the second.”
“Yes, even the second.”
“So of course the rest were.”
“There were photos taken.”
“I took photos. I was quite drunk.”
“We all were. There wouldn’t have been a party otherwise.”
“I am not prone to extending unplanned invitations.”
“But you were then.”
“I was.”
“And you would blame the drinks.”
“There was a desire for company.”
“You do live alone.”
“I crave the solitude.”
“But do not enjoy it.”
“No.”
“But the alcohol-”
“It eases things.”
“But does not invent them?”
“I try not to credit it too often.”
“But-”
“When I must.”
“And the time of the party?”
“It was practically a guest itself.”
“And the photos?”
“Are somewhere. There are-”
“Good ones?”
“Some good ones. One. Maybe two.”
“Just one? Maybe two?”
“The quality-”
“Is bad?”
“Is uneven. The drinks-”
“It was hard to focus?”
“At times. As I recall.”
“Do you?”
“Recall?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you want the-?”
“Photographs?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“For photography’s sake?”
“Not to judge, no.”
“Well I held the camera steady.”
“And the subjects-”
“Were lovely.”
“Sure.”
“You remember then.”
“I just wondered how they turned out.”
“Well. They are-”
“Around? In that pile?”
“No, not that-”
“The kitchen?”
“I haven’t been-”
“Haven’t been in the kitchen?”
“I didn’t say-”
“Have you eaten?”
“Today?”
“Don’t be deceptive.”
“Out.”
“Out?”
“I ate out.”
“Today?”
“I tried to clarify-”
“Just check the kitchen.”
“The photos aren’t in the kitchen.”
“Your wall is covered in photos.”
“Those aren’t photos.”
“Black and whites.”
“Clippings.”
“Musicians.”
“They need frames. I live in a dorm.”
“No. It is nice.”
“It is a horror.”
“There is a view.”
“Of the street. Of the whores. Of the traffic. Of the drunks. Of the trash.”
“There is a shower. There is a dinette. There is a large sink. Large closet.”
“There are roaches. There are bothers. Sounds.”
“Sounds?”
“Loud noises. The street. The neighbors. Music, yelling. One is often sick.”
“Sick?”
“The sounds of a man sick at the toilet travel through the wall. It is intolerable. I go out.”
“To eat?”
“Sometimes.”
“To drink.”
“More often.”
“Is the food-?”
“Bad? No.”
“But you prefer-”
“You know what I prefer.”
“Speaking of-”
“The kitchen.”
“Is there a chair?”
“One. I’ll stand.”
“Ice?”
“Wine.”
“What is that?”
“What is what?”
“Those lights.”
“Lights.”
“Lights from-”
“An ambulance.”
“Again?”
“Again.”
I try to wake early but there is something dastardly locked in my heart. It is a great weight and may take magic to unlock. All appearances are extraordinary. The newly painted fence glares white in the sun, but that is not reason enough to rise. It may be an enchantress in the guise of the mailman. I shall know by the paper on which the bills are printed. Only ordinary paper can be burned by ordinary fire. Impossible though, for now, as the lighter has left the room deep in the pocket of a friend. I was forced to sigh and wave a feeble goodbye as she descended the stairs to the street. Promethea, Ceres, Lavender. You can not recall her real name and hope that she returns the favor. There will be some decency left in the world, when all else is gone.
In any case the mails slot creaks viciously and the slap of envelopes on the tiled floor will not be a comfortable sound for a long time to come. But I do not know that yet and still believe relief will appear unbidden. You can not draw inheritance from the living, only debt. The pillow has held many forms though the long night. Gold is malleable too, but sought with dynamite, pickaxe and backhoe, like seeking love in a crowd by hewing with a machete or pressing it into a grinder. Admittedly though, love’s jungle’s are more dense than most, and rife with unusual threats.
It is in search of the exotic that the courageous find their way in the world. What, then are the exotic searching for? The mundane hope it is for them, but I suspect the wild at heart are more astronauts than coal miners; dappled in starlight and bent low to the earth they set rocket fuses aflame.
I remember a time we arrived early, climbing high in the trees, heads tilted back, eyes locked on the night sky. Below the boughs the dark filled with a sputtering sound, and had we looked down, a spark of orange. But we knew the real show was set against the waxing moon, with all attendant stars and planets whirling in anticipation, though of course they seemed still. You’ve seen this show, repeated year after year just past Summer’s gate; in folding chairs on the banks of lakes that ripple gently and rivers running on and on, wedged in cramped plastic seats in stadiums reserved for spectacle, leaning drunk against porch and roof railings. The sight is so consistently pure it maintains strength beside the first sputter, boom and sputter, fall. I may appropriate a celebration of national independence for an individual glory, angering the patriot, who is always waiting for a chance to stray from appreciation of the sky and true love. He is a hiccup concerned with borders, afraid of his dreams, eager to die….
In fact Autumn approaches. The wind coerces occasional rain into odd angles and I look toward the window, watching. It has long since been repaired, is in fact no longer the same window, really. What becomes of all those things I saw through once intact glass? I can see see also through the bottom of the glass in my hand, unhindered by the presence of liquid or solid, though how long it’s been empty I can not say. There is a door in front of me through which I can make out nothing. It is made of thick wood. Had I not seen my lighter vanish in the pocket of an anonymous friend, I could simply burn it down, to see who stood on the other side. But I have just queried, “Hello?” in answer to an identical question, and am awaiting an answer. I immediately regret answering. It is so simple to remain quiet and let time pass. I will choose to do that now, if the party on the other side of my door again attempts contact. I am worried that it is too late, but have decided this is the courageous path. The mail lies still on the floor, in a neat pile. An ambulance arrives, rolling slowly to a stop against the curb, with lights but no siren; this time, it is across the street.
“They came cityward lustful as country boys…” William Faulkner, The Mosquitoes
I open the windows to let in the air. The flies get in that way. When I sleep they wake me. Sometimes by buzzing in my ear, which I hate the most, sometimes by landing on my bare skin. In the summer I lie on top of the sheets in only my underwear. The summer is long here, but humid, and on days that it rains I open the windows to let in the cool air. There are still flies then, but no mosquitoes. On days that are dry I must close the windows at sundown, to prevent the mosquitoes from entering. Unlike the flies, they do not wake me with their buzzing nor with their landing on my skin. But in the morning their bites itch and rise, and are often on my face and arms. I have one now above my left eyebrow, though I wasn’t bit in bed this time, but standing outside a bar, wishing I smoked cigarettes, so I wouldn’t have to make conversation, or not, with the bouncers and their friends. I saw the mosquito in my peripheral vision, although I was not sure, at the time, that it was a mosquito. I only saw a small movement. Neither did I feel it land above my eye; not until the morning. I felt its presence in the form of a small itch, and when I reached up to scratch it gently, I could feel the skin raised.
When I was young I went to a museum of science. There was an exhibit on the behavior of insects. In the exhibit, along one wall, were the enormous modeled heads of bloodsucking insects. The mosquito was one of them. The exhibit was interactive. By pushing a button set into the wall I could make the model demonstrate exactly how a mosquito extracts blood from its victim. If I remember correctly there is something called a proboscis which the mosquito stabs into the flesh of its victim, subsequently extending its tongue to lap up the spilled blood. It goes something like that. Maybe it is the tongue that stabs. Or maybe the tongue is called a proboscis. In any case I have been bitten many times, most recently above my left eye. I believe it’s only the females that suck blood and not the males. Males drink nectar from flowers. So it must be female mosquitoes, buzzing silently around my ears, landing on my exposed skin.
I am only trying to get cool, laying above the covers, exposed to the humid air, a fan blowing at the bedside. I wake many times in the night, mosquitoes or not. Often the night is still and quiet, though I am so close to Manhattan, a calm river divides us; these cobbled streets have few travelers at night; these warehouses are empty; the buzz of the power plant is as far away as the stars. So the tiny sound of a fly seeking warmth divides the quiet night like a jet tearing itself from the runway. My vivid dreams are interrupted; I slap at the pillow beside my ear, waking my lover. She is startled halfway from sleep, but the hold of her own dreams is strong, and she only mutters half-syllables before she succumbs again. I am glad not to fully disturb her. She must rise early for work, while I have a full day to doze and waste, visiting the mirror again and again to examine the red, raised skin where I have been bitten in the night. These are the nights I do not close the window early. The nights when I do are less eventful, though stifling and unpleasant. The electric fan at the bedside circulates only heated air, though its sound does calm the mind and makes me drowsy.
I am in New York now, and no ambulance has passed my window in the few months I have been here. I have seen ambulances in other parts of the city, but my own block has been unlit by their whirling lights, by their alarms, by the tramp of boots from the EMTs. I would assume there has been no tragedy here; this must be a place untouched by hurt. That can’t be right. The noises here are from large trucks being put in reverse. Always moving in reverse along the one way streets. Their drivers are seeking the correct spot to sit, so their hoses can reach the right hole underground; their open backs the right docks to load to or unload from; despite their frequency,the idling engines and squeaking brakes rarely interrupt my sleep. I am trying to remember a time the ambulance came. It was a time when there was a knock at the door. I lived, then, in an apartment where the windows were often open, though there were not mosquitoes. The climate was different. But that was all long ago, so I try and forget. There are concerns more immediate, not the least of which is a new, small pain on the inside of my right forearm. I turn it over to look, but the room is dark. It would take a certain effort to turn on a light, and besides, half the bulbs are burned out. That is a bad excuse. Even with only half of the bulbs lit, this room on the third floor is nearly as bright as a department store. Or bright enough anyway, to see whether a small sting on my arm is of any real concern. Nevertheless I choose to stay seated in the dark. It is approaching twilight, though it almost always is, even when it is just after twilight; this is the nature of time and of the revolution of the planet, and of the planet’s journey around the Sun. This seems a large subject to tackle, though the mosquitoes, small as they are, seem to know twilight well and even to depend on it. Without sundown, without my open windows, they would surely starve.
The Ambulance
I have a headache and am standing at my dresser, gazing forlornly into my underwear drawer when the ambulance pulls up outside. I hear it, of course, long before I see its whirling red lights cut across my peripheral vision as it lurches to a stop in front of the building. In the drawer, which I have rifled through three times now, I am dismayed to not find a single pair of clean underwear, apart from a set of novelty boxer shorts, still in plastic wrapping. One pair is white, with red and green strands of lights looping and twisting over themselves from the elastic waistband down and up and over the legs, through and around the crotch and backside. From the other pair an idiot Santa Claus grins, holding the reins of two straight-faced reindeer. A bulky red sack is slung over his shoulder. This image is repeated many times, and I consider for a moment opening the package in order to count the repetitions. Eventually I decide this would be a stupid thing to spend time doing. I have twice lifted this package from the dresser drawer and turned it over in my hands, and twice put it down, knowing I will not wear these, though they appear to be my only choice. I try and fail to remember the last time my choices were thus limited, though I am sure it was not long ago, and am struck with the nagging feeling that certain factors (the hangover, the ambulance) were present when I last ran out of clean underwear.
These thoughts take me some time, and I stand naked near the front windows, the ambulance lights still spinning as its doors open and a man and woman dressed in dark blue uniforms exit the vehicle and approach the front gate of the building. I would prefer to continue devoting my thoughts to the current situation at the dresser drawer, and am reaching for the package of novelty boxers once again, when I realize that the woman is looking in at me through the window, which has no blinds. I am not immune to self-consciousness, especially while standing naked, but not so crippled by embarassment that I run and hide, nor cover myself with an item of clothing. Instead I turn my head to the right, to look directly at the EMT and she looks quickly to her partner, who is pressing buttons on the intercom. I can hear the static as the line opens, and a ringing of a telephone as an apartment number is selected from the list. The list, I am sure, is out of date. My own listing reads:
Apt. 103 Hirakawa
It is incorrect. The female EMT has dark brown hair tied up in a pony tail and his hair is also dark and cut close to the head, and those facts do not surprise me at all. It is only then that I notice a sizable hole in my front window, and the shattered glass on the sill and covering the love seat underneath.
The ambulance arrives like this once a week, though not always on the same day, and often on days when there are no obstacles to my getting dressed in the morning, and not once before when there was a sizable hole in my front window. Often, however, the ambulance’s arrival does coincide with the hangovers. I have no delusions that is the fault of the ambulance. As it approaches noon and I have no underwear and a hole in my window through which comes now a noticeable breeze, and the sound of a voice on the intercom outside, I move towards the kitchen and a bottle of gin. The voice, from an apartment somewhere inside the complex, which is larger than some I have lived in, but smaller than others I have seen, says only, obtusely: “Hello?”
I am careful to watch the fading, dingy gray carpet for pieces of glass, but all there is in the narrow foot path between my mattress and coffee table is a scattered pile of money, most likely small bills, ones and fives, though I will check later to see if something larger survived the night. I look forward to that and also to the ritual of checking my jacket for more bills, secreted away into inside pockets. A longtime habit of not putting change back into my wallet has become a delightful game I play with myself, one that I also believe aides me financially, though I suspect there is nothing mathematically sound about that belief.
I pour gin from the bottle into a glass and go to the freezer for ice. When I grip the plastic handle on the freezer door and pull, it breaks off in my hand. The momentum sends me back a step. In my hand is a piece of plastic an inch or so long, jagged on top and bottom. A small pool of blood is gathering atop my left index finger and I watch as it rises and then breaks, sending a thin stream down the backs of my other fingers. I rotate my hand so the blood does not drip onto the linoleum floor, and reach for the freezer door with my right hand, opening it from the door itself this time. It resists, but I persevere. The freezer contains three ice trays, a bag of ground coffee, a good amount of built-up frost, and a glass beer mug. For a moment I wonder about the frost, whether it signifies anything alarming about the refrigeration system itself, or whether it simply needs chipping away. Removing an ice tray, I am careful to keep my left hand parallel to the floor. For a few moments I stand like this, left palm down, still gripping the length of broken handle, right hand holding an ice tray.
I move to the sink, dropping the plastic into the basin, setting down the ice tray next to a rectangular roach trap, and turn on the water. After rinsing the blood from my hand I press a towel to the small cut. Before retrieving the ice tray I peer inside the trap, a small paper box with a floor of glue, brown on the outside and a pure white within. Inside a tiny roach stands preserved, presumably dead. It could almost be a wax figure of a cockroach, it stands so still. I begin to imagine dying in such a way, forced into physical stasis, limbs unable to move but the mind reeling, overcome by fear, eventually by hunger. I have no idea how long it might take a cockroach to starve to death. I begin to feel uneasy, my own arms and legs repellent at the thought of being trapped in glue, walled in on three sides but having an exit just in front, just behind, maddeningly close and ever out of reach. The futility in the situation is about to become overwhelming and, I think, sad, so I turn hastily to the round kitchen table and drop three cubes of ice in the waiting glass of gin. I prefer to stir a drink, when prepared not for company but solely for myself, with the index finger of my right hand. I do this with the gin, and decide to make a list.
On a nearby sheet of 8” x 11” paper, crowded by sentence fragments, short quotations, and a partial monthly work schedule, all written in black sharpie, I write:
Today
1. Laundry
2. Broken Window
After some thought I add a question mark after “Window” so that it reads:
2. Broken Window?
The question mark signifies that I have no remembrance of having broken my window nor of witnessing any act of nature, nor of accident nor mischief resulting in its breakage. Satisfied, I drink twice from the glass of gin and consider going outside, to see what the damage to my window looks like from the street, but I look again at the list and am upset to see I have already begun to invert the priorities just settled upon. I attempt to turn my attention dutifully to the first item on my list, feeling, as I sit, suddenly uncomfortable in my bare wooden chair. I can not concentrate any longer in this state of nakedness, and leave the kitchen table to retrieve a pair of black jeans from the end of the bed where I doubtless left them the night before, laying as they are in a crumpled heap with a black leather belt still through the loops, and my black boots lying beside them.
Feeling better protected against further developments in the day, already mounting in its complications and distracting elements, I smile to myself, enjoying the mounting effects of the gin. I envision its course through my limbs, though I am not sure it actually travels anywhere but down into my stomach, liver, intestines, bladder. When there is a knock at my door I am still standing shirtless in black jeans, determining, albeit with limited anatomical knowledge, possible paths for the alcohol through my body. I am startled by the knock; my heart begins to beat wildly. Had I been in motion I would surely have frozen in place, as it is I am nearly glued down, just a few steps from the door, feeling a sudden kinship with the dead roach in the kitchen.
There is no immediate repeat of the knock upon the door and I consider looking through the peephole to identify the visitor. Still with the cockroach on my mind, I imagine looking out to see an enormous face filling the doorway. I think: At least I will not die naked. I run my left hand through my hair, wondering when and where I dropped the towel with which I had bound my cut hand. Nevertheless I am confident the bleeding has stopped, though I am unsure just how much time has passed. For that matter I have no idea exactly how much time it takes for blood to clot in a small wound on the hand. It must be the building manager, having noticed the broken window as she arrived this afternoon. I speak, afraid the broken window constitutes an emergency or a threat to the building’s security and she will use her key to enter, and find me standing here shirtless with an empty glass in my hand. I am conscious also of an ashtray filled with cigarette butts on my coffee table, though that puzzles me, as I do not smoke and can’t be sure to whom they belong. Or even if it is one person or multiple people that smoked in my apartment, and left numerous butts there. I am relieved to find my headache is gone. I say: “Hello?”
I’ve been fretting, unemployed, frittering away borrowed cash on beer and candy bars, wondering if this great New York dream is going to work after all. Reading, in my ample spare time how the dream was dead in the water before I even arrived. Sources learned and experienced in the art of coming up in New York City declaring the possibilities, once seemingly endless, are now nil; swallowed up or killed off by progress, politics and their myriad moneyed brethren; all the old, good, weird places gone, all the down and dirt-cheap rents condemned and wrecking-balled away by the new anonymous real estate behemoths, their slick logos and complicated international financial networks less romantic than the nostalgia-hazed names of Carnegie, Rockefeller, the titans of old New York money. No place here for young artists! those old-guard cry out on the pages of their blogs or into the microphones of vaunted interviewers. Patti Smith suggests Detroit. Poughkeepsie. I don’t know quite what to make of that.
But I do know that I’ve just arrived. Can’t leave yet. Numerous times I heard in the weeks before I left You can always come back! As many times I shook my head, said I didn’t believe in backward steps.
With little to do these past few weeks, I’ve been prone to taking the train in to Manhattan and wandering the streets of various neighborhoods, usually ending up, whether I start in Midtown or the Meatpacking, Tribeca or the West Village, meandering back and forth on St. Marks, 7th St. on to the South and back North along 1st Ave. or 2nd, Avenues A or B. Never matters much to me which I’m on; crossing and re-crossing my own tracks and eventually settling on a barstool at some place cheap and dark that smells of mold and alcohol. True it doesn’t seem out there beyond the saloon doors in the East Village or Lower East Side, like the wild last bastion of glassy-eyed artists with brave hearts and empty pockets, their dealers lounging against tenement rails, immigrant families packed like sardines in apartments with paper-thin walls, friends waiting downtown with a dingy couch to share and bacon on the hot-plate, wooden floors paint-bespattered, vibrating with ecstasies of creation (or is that just the train going by)…
But there’s still something there. I believe I can feel it. And no amount of boutiques and tapas bars or plastic box lofts can quite shake it. No tourists tramping instead of tramps cruising by can convince me that Manhattan completely ceases to provide some underground wellspring of inspiration. It might take a bit more effort to mine and I’m not sure I even have the strength and fortitude to dig that deep. But as long as there’s a bar to duck in for respite, where beer comes cold and cheap, and there’s no TV to stare at so you’ve got to settle for divining the foam at the top of your mug, I’ll retain some hope. Might even get the courage, after a couple of rounds, to ask for a job, and rectify at least, that fretting over money; that silly stuff that starts and solves so many problems.
