Like I Said

I am in a place filled with loud gabble. Long Island girls all of them, apparently.

I do not say “gabble” in a derogatory way but it seems as if most uses of that word are leveled with some condescension.

A neighborhood message board that I infrequent has a forum called “Random Gabble.” Who would want to contribute to a forum by that name?

Not I.

….

I wandered up the West Side of Manhattan today. I recently found a monthly MetroCard with 3 weeks of time left on it so I’ve been taking buses as they happen to arrive, taking subways 2 or 3 stops, and generally luxuriating in public transit in ways that cost normally prohibits.

I am almost certainly selling my car to a friend. We have arrived at a somewhat unusual but most likely not unique arrangement in which he will buy the car for cheap and grant me borrowing rights. It could work out well or it could get weird. Anything that falls just short of a complete and total sale/transfer of property has lingering potential for weirdness. But I don’t see that happening. Not so much.

….

Walking through Lincoln Center today (and any day when no concerts are happening) is like wandering through a ghost town. Vast, ugly, cavernous spaces occupied by 3 or 4 security guards, one or two employees, and the hushed, knowing gathering of blow job participants in the mens room. Some of them sit in the phone booths waiting for the cue, what that cue is I should know by now for as often as I’ve been unwittingly caught in the middle of the winks and collective momentum of strangers filing into the bathrooms of Lincoln Center, Grand Central Station, the New York Public Library, and who can remember where else.

But I do no know how these group trysts are organized, how the unspoken nods and glances communicate these meetings of the secret society of cocksucking in public spaces.

….

At Lincoln Center I went up into Circuit City, surprised to find that store there at all and surprised as well to find it occupying the same space that Tower Records used to fill. Some elements of the space looked like the old Tower of a few years ago. I found myself looking for evidence of the what was there before. I wanted to find the spot where I saw Robert in early 2002. Robert was some kind of Big Deal Tower while I worked there and he was a bitter, emptied, shit-filled hull of a human being with whom I (naturally) had a good rapport.

I spotted him at Tower one day in 2002 and attempted to engage him in the conversation of long-lost friends but he wanted no part of it. He knew the drill: Youngster who had a job at Tower while waiting for bigger and better things comes back to Tower on their victory lap after achieving those B&B things.

Robert wanted no part of it, as his angrily happy mile communicated. He remembered me but I could further tell he had heard about things and had anticipated this encounter.

Fuck that guy. He was not there today, nor could I find the spot where this encounter happened. The upstairs space is different now. The opera room is gone, the listening stations are gone, the magazine racks are gone. Robert is gone, too. I heard he got whacked with no retirement or severance after 30 years with the company.

Like I said: Fuck that guy.