I just took a panic pill. I should have taken it yesterday, after I had an almost blinding panic attack standing in line at a deli near Rockefeller Center. Sometimes standing in line really gets to me. I am sure to not be alone in that, but I don’t think waiting one’s turn in line should cause your entire brain to physically hurt. I also dropped the bottle containing the panic pills yesterday. It’s just lucky I happened to see it hit the ground, as there was enough noise about that I did not hear it land. It fell behind a counter at the supermarket in the strip mall at 21st Street and Broadway. It did not feel appropriate for me to go behind the counter so I had to ask someone who worked there. For no good reason I said “Those are my panic pills.” He seemed unimpressed, or else he just didn’t hear what I said. I guess this forcibly starts another adventure in sobriety, which I had intended to commence anyway for the Florida trip. We used to call it Flor-dee-da.
I just drafted a cover letter for a job at a corporate news entity. It’s a company not everyone would be proud to work for. I don’t really have issues but others would. And even if I did, a job’s a job. I wonder if competition is less for this position on account of the company’s reputation. It would be cool to work at Rockefeller Center again, though. I liked it there. It’s the home of the 181 and thus my longest-standing permanent address.
Thinking again about my friend who got fired. There was a spate of headlines about the matter, momentarily creating the impression that this was a massively important news development. A photo of him in a sort of Napoleonic pose added to the sense of forced austerity. Really it’s not that big a deal. As he himself said to me after I got whacked from Time-Warner: “Having a job is so 1990s.”
I got out of college in 1990. At the time the job market sucked balls, especially for those of us with impractical degrees in piano performance. The running gag among my college peers was “Did you hear about so-and-so? He got a job that pays.”
It is hard to believe I ever got through those years. I would sit on a bench in the middle of Broadway (in Manhattan, this was long before AsLIC) and think to myself “Is anything good about my life? I have no money, I have 5-figure student loan debts, I live in a squalid shit hole…” I’d stop thinking like that and say “Things could be better but it’s a beautiful day.” And of course the looming dooming legal situation weighed everything down even further.
I just had another brief e-mail back and forth with a high school friend regarding the 30th reunion, which happened about a year ago. He described it as congenial, with everyone either happy to be there or just being supportive of each other solely on account of their connection to the school. Apparently our class has a reputation for being more connected than most, and for giving more money to the school as well. But one individual went on record saying he refused to attend the reunion on account of simmering resentments. That sounded kind of puny to me. I had no interest in going since I did not expect to know anyone there. For me it just didn’t make sense to travel 1000 miles at whatever expense for such a thing.
I was however momentarily inspired to write short stories about my memories of the people I knew from the 3rd grade through graduation. But I did not. I thought some of them might appreciate it since, if they remember me at all, they might remember me as the writing star of the class. I was editor in chief of the paper, after all.
I wonder what would come of that, if alumnus were invited to write about one single memory that had about someone they never really knew. That might be enlightening but also embarrassing. I remember one person telling me that for 2 years he only knew me as the BOBO! guy. I had forgotten about this when he told me. For a period of time I took up some kind of dare and shouted the name “BOBO” as loud as I could in the school library. Bobo was our unkind nickname for one of the librarians, a stout and unpleasant looking woman who I think might have been a nun. The librarians never seem to have figured out it was I screaming this name, and I doubt they even understood what I was saying or what it meant. But the results of the screaming were always the same. All the students got kicked out of the library. All the kids knew it was me doing it but no one ever outed me. As stupid as it sounds to me now it was, at the time, kind of electrifying. Yet, to this day, I imagine there are any number of people from those days who, if they have any memory of me at all, think of me as the BOBO guy. That’s… great.
I mean I have memories of people that would not flatter, and could even slander. One kid standing in front of the class when a river of snot spontaneously poured out of his nose. Stories some of us told about our early sexual encounters, and masturbation. And there was an incident involving someone who threw and smeared his feces all over the bathroom. I have always been reasonably certain I know who that was. Would I tell? Of course not. That is privy akin
to the thickness of thieves.
Still, if that’s not an alumni reunion party game then maybe it should be. Everyone in the room is asked to write down a memory of everyone else, whether they knew each other or not.
I am at the Windmill. Upon entering a black girl was staring at me. Before I could articulate the question in my mind of why she was staring so intently at my face she said “You’ve got a booger.” She was correct. I can never show my face here again.
OK, blood pressure feels like it’s coming back to earth, panic mode is fading. Might go walking some more.
…
At the library. Have not been in a while, which means I have not done the random page 181 game. Today it is The Everything Health Guide to Menopause, 2nd Edition, by Kate Bracy Kalb:
Endometrial Cancer is the most common cancer of the female reproductive organs.
That’s about all there is to be gleaned from this page. Good to know, I suppose, though i do not expect to retain that chunk of knowledge.
I remember my sister describing our mother’s menopausal moments. A particularly memorable incident occurred at either a park or a zoo. All she wanted to do was sit down, then stand up, the sit down again. She was clearly agitated but would not say why. The one thing that appeased and calmed her was the presence of a man, who approached them to ask if they needed any help. She often, over the years, made comments noting that men were present, and that this was the most interesting part of an otherwise mundane situation.
In another type of incident I accidentally opened a window that was not supposed to be opened because it was almost impossible to get it back shut. I did not know this. Mother tried and tried to get it closed again. I can still see her struggling with that, her whole body and every hair on her face outlined by the hot Florida sun. Before finally fixing it she said something about how men in circumstances like this would be expected to be responsible for everything, and why would any man want that? Our father was long gone by then. I never quite got what she meant by injecting that comment into the moment, but I guess it is as simple as blaming him for not being there to fix this instead of her.
Guess I’ll be thinking about stuff like this more than usual next week. I’m thinking I’ll bring the DSLR, which I’ve hardly touched in months, and walk around the old ‘hood. It is not walking country. One time I was walking on North Boulevard when someone in a car yelled out at me “GET A CAR!” It was funny except for how seriously disdainful the guy was in saying that.
A similar incident happened one of the first times, maybe the very first time, I walked over the Triborough Bridge. At the time it was under construction of some sort. I think they were adding lanes in anticipation of the water world theme park that was at one point supposed to open on Randalls Island. That water world thing never happened but the extra lane did, and I think on account of that construction the width of the pedestrian walkway was cut by almost two-thirds, and the barrier between peds and vehicular traffic was pretty thin and short cement wall. It felt pretty precarious. And it was here that someone in one of the cars shouted at me “KEEP WALKING!” He at least meant it to be funny, but the joke was on him when traffic got stalled and I ended up getting to the halfway point of the bridge before him. Hah. What a tiny victory.
It is probably going to be in the 90s the whole time I am down there. One of the more memorable aspects of living in Florida was the afternoon thunderstorms. You sorta get used to them but they almost never fail to terrify in some way, as violent as they are. And in my memory I see countless lamps and electrical devices blowing up because of power surges from all the lightning. It was routine to unplug the big things, like televisions and such. But sometimes you couldn’t do it fast enough. I wonder if that’s still the problem it was.
One of the last times I was down there I had a rental car, and happened to be out driving when one of these afternoon cloudbursts roared across. I got stuck on the side of a dirt road, unable or unwilling to drive in such conditions. At some point I thought the car might slide into the ditch. But others just drove on as if nothing was happening. I guess you can get used to it but when you’ve been out of that game for a while it’s scary.
I want to visit Hamner Park, or Hamner Tower, an unused but (I think) maintained fire tower named for some city official. I did research into that name once but have no memory of it now.
I have half a mind to contact a woman who ran an after school music program I and my friend Phil attended. She was kind of a horrible person, but she lived near the house I grew up in. No idea if she’s moved on. And I might look up my piano teacher, who was a professor at the University of Tampa. Except I think she’s gone. I’d heard years back she was quite sick.
Hah, just looked her up. First thing that comes up is a site where people rate their professors. She got a 1.8 rating, out a possible 10. The reviews all seem to be from 2004-2005, and many of them suggest that she was just too damn old to be teaching. She was not my best teacher but she wasn’t bad back in the mid-1980s. WIthout blowing sunshine up my ass I can say that I was extremely motivated and would have done well with almost any teacher. But she did have her flashpoints. I seem to remember my mother commenting on how flaky she was, forgetting student’s names and other such vagaries.
Looks like she was still doing recitals as late as 2009.
Not going to look her up, though. Last time I saw her I irritated her with my comments about Andre Watts. She was showing off flyers for an upcoming concert at the University of Tampa, a concert in which Watts was featured. I did not really care, since my estimate of him as a pianist at the time was not particularly high. I related a story about a concert he did in New York where, according to numerous sources, he played so badly in the first half that people thought he was sick or on drugs. Then he came out the second and played the Brahms Paganini variations like no one had ever heard. It was amazing.
For some reason this story really ticked her off, my former piano teacher. She didn’t say anything much more except to suggest I leave. I guess she didn’t think my college-age opinion mattered for anything, even though the account of the Jekyll and Hyde concert was not exactly my opinion.
…
At the ghetto coffee shop. Really getting around today. Hah. Definitely feeling the panic anxiety recede. I’ve maintained a slight fear that there will be a time when the panic pill does not work. Can feel myself getting hungry already. Anxiety has a strange way of sabotaging my appetite. Maybe that’s not so strange.
Going to see if I can catch the aforementioned high school friend on a webcam from Key West. He is playing guitar at the Hog’s Breath Saloon, which has 3 webcams. One points at the stage while the others let you watch people at the bar getting intoxicated. I think I’d want to sit somewhere away from that camera’s purview.
