4:28 AM Thursday, October 13, 2011
Reservation for Cesca. Easy. I had some idea that the place was booked
solid for years. Maybe the fad has died down. The fad of the old phone
booths. Will I even remember where they were? The interior must be
unrecognizable by now. I remember checking in there pre-2000, asking if I
could use the payphones I once used like an addict. The guy at the
door said the payphones were there but that “they don’t want nobody usin’
’em.” Those were the Parc Lincoln phone booths, those portals of yore,
those vacuums of destiny. They are certainly gone, but will I remember
where they used to be? At what table, at what bottle of wine? That grubby
lobby now gone, even the address is changed from 166 to 164, West 75th
Street. This is as close as I might ever get to Room 317 ever again, but
40 or 50 feet away, 3 flights down. I had a notion that the place was
crazy expensive, but it seems not to be. Though I’ve been contemplating
Per Se these past days, and even that seem less expensive to me
as the passing of currency eructates through my fingers and through my
credit cards.
If you don’t know what I am talking about, it’s simple:
Cesca is a restaurant on the ground floor of the Parc Lincoln Hotel. the
Parc Lincoln is the first place I lived in NYC in 1990 and 1991. The
Parc Lincoln was a bona fide shit hole when I lived there. Cesca
is a fancy-esque place which subsumed the grubby lobby of that hotel. I
expect to feel the past rustle through as the uppity hurly-burly of
culinary luxury rushes around me.
I already know what I am getting: Cacciucco alla Toscana,
Shrimp, Scallops, Clams, Mussels, Calamari, Octopus & Lobster Stock. $35
I can’t read half the shit on the menu but a seafood plate sounds safe and
easy. More seafood for me, I think, whilst at expensive places. That food
just goes down (and stays down) easierily.
I wrote a poem about my ex, a poem in which I mention how I throw up a
lot, even now, depending on how
my digestive serenity is disrupted.
She woke up one day and announced she
would make eggs and bacon. I had not the assertiveness of heart to tell
her that I can
never eat food so soon after waking up. She marched to the kitchen,
though, doing the work that women do, or the work that she thought women
do. She cooked, and complained, complained about the frying pan and the
spatula and the eggs. She worked the work of women, and she put the eggs
on a paper plate for me to eat — because that is what men do. We eat. I
ate as much as I could (which was not much) and when she was not looking I
snuck the rest of the eggs into the garbage can. As soon as she left I
threw up into the toilet, because that is what boys do.
holy crap it’s 5am
