I walked from home to Queens Place Mall on Thanksgiving Day. It stirred up a lot of memories, some good but most not. Some years ago, somewhere along that path, I blacked out. It was hot as hell but I don’t think that was a contributing factor. I was simply walking one direction and then, as if teleported, I was walking the opposite direction about 10-12 paces away from where I last remembered standing. I was having other dizzy spells in those days, culminating in a brain MRI which found nothing. I mean, I had a brain. But it was, in the withering word of the MRI technician, “unremarkable.” Still, the neurologist thought he saw something in there, some kind of white matter. It was probably just normal fatty stuff but he recommended a followup MRI 6 months from then. I never did that.
That neurologist’s first words to me when he came into the office were “Mark Thomas? I used to work for a guy named Mark Thomas at Sports Illustrated. That was a little weird since I used to work at Sports Illustrated and my name is Mark Thomas. It turned out he had worked for the other Mark Thomas, the high-flying sales dude who once in a while got my expense check and vice-versa. At the time I felt an existential strain in knowing that someone with my name was in receipt of my deliveries. I still find it strange that something so fundamental as a person’s name can be a source of such critical confusion.
Another bad memory of Queens Boulevard is from the day I went walking, this time not out of the usual flâneur stylings but to work through relationship anxiety. I was in a bad relationship but did not want out. I walked to Forest Hills and most of the way back to Astoria before surrendering to my bleeding feet and ankles. It was also getting dark and after I passed Blackthorn I felt, for a few minutes, like I was being followed by some people who had come out of that place. They, three of them, followed me across Queens Boulevard where I stopped at a Q60 bus stop and stood on my bloodied ankles, waiting to be gloried away. I do not know where I got this idea but since childhood I’ve had the belief that bus stops are safe places, and that no one will mess with you if just stand there and look like you have legitimate business waiting for the bus. In my baseless belief system about this I imagine that fines and punishments for assault or robbery are quadrupled and octupled for crimes committed at a bus stop. I do now know of any legitimate reason to believe this but that is what informed my path from Blackthorn across 12 lanes of Queens Boulevard to the Q60 bus stop. As if to substantiate my belief that bus stops are sanctuaries the three men disappeared.
Blackthorn is next to the Nevada Diner. I cannot remember now if it was that place or another similarly-styled diner on Queens Boulevard where I went with a group of radio and movie producers after giving them a brief tour of Calvary Cemetery. A couple of filmmakers were filming something there and, for whatever reason, I was contacted by an NPR producer who was also part of the entourage to give some kind of guidance to the grounds. I had little if anything to contribute to the proceedings but it was a nice crowd and we had a good time. The lead filmmaker was driving a hybrid vehicle, which was sort of a new thing at the time. He joked about Queens, and how places like the Nevada Diner had parking. What a bonus.
That’s not an especially bad memory, except for the fact that the meetup with those folks was a big waste of my time. But somehow Queens Boulevard evokes more negative recollections than others. It is not a beautiful stretch of road by any estimate but by my characterization it is bottomless. Every building filled with mysteries stationary and transient, thousands upon thousands of lives unseen and laid out to dry, all of it emblematic of how there is so much of New York that I will never know.
The Boulevard is part of New York State Road 25. On account of the relatively high number of pedestrian fatalities Queens Boulevard has been nicknamed the Boulevard of Death, though by my understanding this reputation applies not so much to the entire roadway but to certain portions up toward Forest Hills. Still, I thought of this yesterday when passing over the BQE while attempting to ingest an apocalyptically nasty cup of coffee from the nearby 7-Eleven. I thought that particular passage looked like a place where people died, where bodies lay undiscovered for decades as the darkness swallows their visibility. I’ve had similar thoughts about stretches of Northern Boulevard, where overgrowth and shrubs could make bodies vanish to all but the most intrepid scavenger or starving dog.
As densely populated as parts of New York are I’ve found a surprising number of areas where it would seem safe to hide in plain sight, dead or alive.
I could say more, and more, and more. But it is time to feed my face. The subway sounds at the top of this squall are from the end of my long Thanksgiving Day walk, whence I basically gave up the journey in the interest of expedience. When I got back to AsLIC I found the avenues to be cloaked in a profound silence that I felt mimicked how heavy the darkness felt. I started to feel nervous about things, the quiet weighing just that heavily upon me. Here or there I heard sounds of Thanksgiving dinners coming from windows and passageways. But mostly I felt oceanic silence.
