Whales on the Avenue
The traveling minstrel show is not dead. It lives on with an odd assortment of horribly skilled, talent less, instrument carriers who forcefully charm an equally odd assortment of pot dealers, students, tourists, businessmen, and charming, giggling children, in Washington Square Park on a Sunday afternoon. He went there, that Sunday, as he did, to believe he was part of the city, that the rhythms of New York were not that far from the floor of the exchange, that the life that dueled in the streets, in every moment of every day, was alive in him. He had to believe this. Otherwise, he really was dead.
It seeps in at the side. Crowds, choices of space, spectacle, peering toward some staged vanishing point. Staring not being. Moving not stopping. They share the space, not each other. It isn’t your time. It is our time. A tireless metronome guiding us, merely units, voiceless eunuchs, masturbating to our own rhythm without the help, without the dedication of the other eunuchs.
Two men, middle-aged, poor, black, hustlers posing as comics, argue about who will take the circle next. One blows up balloons and wears pink. He’s the prop man. The other has an amplifier, a prop in and of itself but really just a blunt way of chasing off anyone else trying to hustle a few coins from the people enjoying the sun at the park. He does so with typical New York grace.
“I am going on next you mother-fucking-balloon-blowing amateur. Albert Collins show is next!!!” He marches around, shouting his name, like we might know, going back to the microphone.
“Motherfuckers, the Albert Collins show is next and any of you balloon-loving assholes can just move aside because I’m going to provide some real entertainment. No bullshit here, motherfuckers. Entertainment.”
The ‘mother-fucking-balloon-blowing amateur’ marches over to this dark barrel of a man, aged by time on the streets and a million hustles that barely provide him with his cheap wine.
“Listen, why don’t you just fuck-off. I’ve been work’n the circle on Sundays for weeks. You can’t just come in here and push a man aside. I’m doing my gig, so you, fuck-off.”
They exchange more words. We watch, or pretend not to watch, or really don’t watch but read or listen to the pockets of music drifting from various points in the park. One gentlemen, rocks back and forth like a Talmudic scholar, reading some obscure Hindi play and listening to Barry Manilow on a small Radio Shack Realistic radio. Another, dressed like a victim of Marilyn Manson, doodles on an oversized paper pad. A barefoot woman picks at her nails. Others wait.
The comics clearly know each other.
“You think you’re a god-damned professional just because of that bullshit amplifier.”
Chuckles from the assembled.
He watches them. He likes them both. He wishes he could hang out with Walk through their New York.
A chubby, tall, kid, with a tight tan tank top and jeans walks up to Albert. “What you gonna do now that you son shown up, huh.” The pink man laughs. Albert returns to the microphone.
“Fine. It’s the god-damn balloon motherfucker’s show. I’m sorry folks. You all will just have to wait for Albert Collins. I’ll come on in ten minutes.”
He turns and embraces his son. They sit and they pass sandwiches. The son talks about something and the father listens. They laugh.
He watches them, peacefully sharing with each other, father and son. No pain or despair from not enough. Just them, sharing sandwiches and a joke or two.
He noticed her, lounging like she was not in New York but on a beach on a faraway island. She had a tattoo. The tattoo showed a trim, nude, female figure, lain across her forearm with her head resting on her arms and her arms resting on a star. She is beautiful.
His mind slips up her shoulder toward her face. She drips inside him. His mind falls, reeling toward the aid of something he couldn’t understand, just like all medicines. Her black hair is straight. It is simple. It is long and black. He touches it. He runs his fingers through it. He touches her. She touches him back. She touches his chest. She pinches his nipples. She smiles. He runs his fingers along her lines. He runs his fingers through her wet Indian ink. He paints his body with her ink. He rubs her ink along his new erection. He touches her. She moves away. She leaves him. He never leaves her. He never knew her. He never asked her what it felt like when she drew her fist line, her first blood. He never asked her what it felt like to cry. He never asked her what it felt like to have him inside. He lost. He lost her. He’d have her again. He opened his eyes, crossed the pavement toward her, sat beside her and smiled. Her name was Ambrosia.
She lived above a cafe and a chicken rotisserie joint. The smell of coffee and grease made him sick. Ambrosia was usually too stoned to care. When she wasn’t stoned, usually in the afternoons, she’d want to eat. He’d go down to the chicken place and buy her a few pieces. He’d buy her a small cup of mashed potatoes. He’d buy her some buttered corn. He’d buy her a coke. He’d drag the plastic bags up the steps and present them to her. She’d grab them, pull everything out, placing the corn next to the potatoes, the chicken next to the corn, the coke next to the chicken, and then she’d get up and go puke in the bathroom. He’d go in, run the sink, wet a rag, wipe her face, kiss her forehead as she shook. She looked at him and he told her he’d go look for Robby.
Sometimes they’d find themselves in a busy cafe. It was always like he was there alone. Ambrosia would curl up on a chair, her thin figure coiled like a snake, pulling out her head just to drag on a cigarette and to lick at the smoke. Sometimes she’d seem very intent. She’d stare at someone, something, for ten, fifteen, minutes. He’d ask her what she was thinking. She’d smile, let her fingers drag down my cheek, and say ‘you.’
Ambrosia shot heroin and as heroin users are apt to do, she shot it often. When, he met her he touched her, and she couldn’t feel it but she smiled. So he touched her again. It went on like that for some time. She then taught him how to prepare the needle.
There wouldn’t be a moment that his ears fell death and his eyes soared abreast that silent spring, fogged with thoughts, soiled with memories or wars he fought. He’ll cry about ‘you,’ and wrinkles of the moon, and crisp woolen nights, pulled tight, around noon. His clipped wings. His little breath, stolen, robbed, an ascent, behind bars, smeared with jailer’s breath. He fell her. He touched, moved. He felt her. Trapped in a nest, a withered tree, limbs of dust, a horizon’s breeze, pulled steadily with firm leather reigns. Storms of eyes, lies, nightmares, a driver worn thin by the coming of age, hands are stretched and wrinkled, torn, their hands, torn scabs in the sun, beaten clubs of fingers, ripped asunder by pounding rains and the clack of drums in their empty chests. It isn’t night. It isn’t day. He can’t remember where they are. A few days trapped in veins. A few days with needles in veins. Living museums, streets of museums, cages of museums, a breath from a stone, and a frayed ribbon of reason, are ‘you’, my dear, my bittersweet, my pill, my needle. A bed on a window, so cracked, so fragile, no blossom here, just withering wrecks on fractured glass, glass pushing its way into flesh, shards into the butter of our wounds, into our puss, warm, yellow, glowing, flowing, He’d dreamed of this. He sat with his stones, and Ambrosia was there. Not smooth, like a river. Not cut, like snow. Ambrosia, his lost cousin, his climax, his waste, his child, so silken, so precious and raw. He stands with her, by her, stiff in her lair, frightened of speech, of uttering his false thoughts, of losing reason, of his crutch. He leaves her with morning. He leaves not enraged but gorged. He leaves in the evening and prances to his grave, awoken to his phoenix, his sun, the beats of the drums, day, work, his curse. It was a quieting journey. It was an unnecessary moment. It was an unnecessary shot in the vein. He saw her, in that moment. His ears pierced and red, drowning in human syrups, a red colored spray, quieting his lover, quieting his strain. He buys an icy from a vendor, and walks into his dreams.
“The air is like water when I’m high. I can touch it. I can feel it. I can see it, Robert.” She was very high. He liked her like that. She said amazing things, things that really weren’t so amazing except that they were coming from someone so wracked by heroin that he was amazed that she could speak at all. “I can fly through the air.” It was a cliché except that she meant it.
“I can see things.”
“What do you see?”
She giggled and grasped his arm with enough force to make him wince.
“I don’t know. Things. You, know, like things.”
“I see them too.”
“No you don’t. You won’t shoot with me. You don’t see shit.”
“I do. I see whales drifting down Fifth Avenue. Do You?”
“Yes.”
They went whale watching in Midtown. They walked under the masts of a thousand buildings in search of a whale. They glanced at the beams of a thousand empty windows in search of a whale. They peered between the irons of a thousand fences in search of a whale. He realized that her lines were drawn with a whale’s ink. It was carved from the blubber of a lost sea mountain, carried and bundled upon Clinton street, quickly wrapped up and sold along Canal Street. She is smeared across the streets of New York and he followers her around, going to each gutter, licking up her moisture, missing her, as she takes each new step. They fall like brill into the gaping wide death embrace that only that city in that time offered.
God, he loved her, but she was so dead. Her veins were so filled with heroin and he still feared needles. He was also silently certain that she wouldn’t touch him if he shot-up. He was her stone. She drifted into space and let him toy with her breasts, her cunt, her butt, while she laughed and rolled around, nude, vulnerable, mistaking his grasps with the grasps of the drug. If he were stoned, he’d roll around too. He’d be lost too. She was convinced that he wasn’t lost. She was also convinced that he knew what life was about. He didn’t betray her trust. He merely fucked her and held her hands when she shot-up. Then he fucked her again, and went down the street to buy her some more rocks, some more junk. She smiled like he was god. She smiled upon his deliverance. He walked around, each day after seeing her, in search of her whale in New York.
He left in the evening and pranced to his grave. It was a quiet journey. No trumpets and wings. It was a frayed rhythm. A retarded crescendo. It was an unnecessary moment. She had unnecessary veins. His eyes were finally as full of death as were hers. He heard her that moment. His eyes pierced red, drowning with syrup, a red colored spray, quieting his lover, quitting his strain. It wouldn’t be a moment that his ears fell death and his eyes soared abreast. It was silent in spring, fogged with drugs, soiled with split memories, fragments, linear lost. He’d cry about Ambrosia, a spell of her moon, a crisp woolen night, pulled tight, about noon. But he cannot see. He cannot hear her. His wings clipped, his breath lilted, stolen, robbed, by pushers supplies. He fell toward Ambrosia, and she barely tipped, barely moved. He was caught in the nest of a withered tree, limbs of dust, a horizon’s breeze, storms of eyes, lies, nightmares, pulled steady with firm leather reigns, pulled around her tracked forearms. His driver, a driver, worn thin by the coming of age, his hands outstretched, wrinkled and torn, open scabs in the sun, ripped away by the coming of rain. It is night. It is day. He can’t remember where he is. He is in New York City and yet nobody knows where he is. He doesn’t know where he is. A few days, in trapped veins, living museums, breathing stones, ribbons of reason, frayed by her moans. He’d never made a woman moan with the needle in her veins. A cot by the window, the window that shattered in the face of the wind, the window that remains broken, packed together with tape, shards lying next to a soiled bed. So fragile, so easy to continue to crack, and crack again. He dreamt it. He sat with his stones, not smooth like a river, not cut by the snow. He lost his little Ambrosia. He lost where he stood before. So long honey babe, so precious and bare, so dirty and small. He stood there with her as her body stiffened, frightened of moving, of speaking, of uttering a silent thought, without reason, without himself, with her needles on the ground. Leaving Ambrosia was easy, now.
Dorian LaGuardia
Circa 1998, NYC. Part of a book—“Plastic Ruby Apples”—that plays with themes from “Master and Margarita.” Write me if you’d like more.
