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John and his New York boys
Saturday, April 13 2002Tell me if you can find what's wrong with this story:The democratically-elected president of Venezuela is toppled in a military coup and our government characterizes the coup as the "restoration of democracy." It's just like the bad old days of Nixon and Kissinger, except the doublespeak is even more transparent.
This comes on the heels of something equally Orwellian regarding the fate of a 12-year, 78 page study of the possible environmental impacts of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Unhappy with the findings in this study, the Department of Interior simply replaced it with a two page report saying, in essence, "there are no risks."
These two examples show how little credit we Americans are being given by our Administration for our capacity to process the news. I'm convinced that none of this would be happening if the news media was behaving in an effective manner, but they've been cowed into irrelevance by the War on Terrorism. They've become about as informative as Pravda back in 1982.
It was a beautiful day for doing things outdoors, and after spending plenty of it indoors working on my Flash chat system, I decided it was time to accede to Sally's insistent demands. As I was preparing myself to take her for a bike ride, suddenly my old housemate John called. He has a way of vanishing from my life for months at a time and then spectacularly reappearing. This time he was coming back from Philadelphia, heading home to his job as a dean at a small Vermont college. He even had his brother Joe with him. After a few minutes of conversation it was determined that they were coming over. I'd been sort of wondering how I'd be cutting through the inherent loneliness of Gretchen's week-long absence, and now I had my answer.
When John and Joe arrived it became clear that, with only one girl-friendly Mike's Hard Lemonade, I had entirely too few beers in my refrigerator. (Or, as as John later put it, "I knew there was something wrong when I saw more jars of curry paste than beers in your 'fridge.")
Amid non-stop cell phone calls (undertaken alternately by both John and Joe), John invited several other local friends and then we three headed off to a 7th Avenue bodega to pick up some beers. The process of our getting drunk was taking far too long to suit John.
Once we had our beers, John and Joe suggested we drink them out on the front stoop of the brownstone, right there on President Street within sight of the Park. While Joe tucked into his Saranac Lite beer, John and I were drinking Old English malt liquor out of fruit jars. All of us were also recreationally enjoying the attention deficit disorder medication known as Adderall. The last time John and I drank malt liquor and ate Adderall on a front stoop was at my old condo in sterile West LA. Brooklyn, though, has a much livelier stoop scene, with many more pedestrians and spectacles. John and Joe seemed to have a particular fondness for the sweaty girls in jogging clothes, though to me they looked bland and sexless, like non-fat vanilla icecream.
We were soon joined by a couple of John's friends - guys he knew in college and such. He'd has sex with the girlfriends of one of these guys and was a little nervous about the issue coming up, but evidently this guy had never found out.
While we were hanging out on the stoop, I knew Sally would want to join us, so I went in and got her. I even brought out Noah the Fluffy Grey Cat for a few minutes, but all he wanted to do was immediately go back inside. No such attempts were made with Eddie Edna, who (unlike Noah) acts with virtually no deliberation, possibly up the nearest unscalable tree.
Interestingly, the whole time we were out on the stoop (and it felt like a couple hours), no one living in my co-op either came or left. Even more puzzling, only one dog was walked past us on President Street. It was that old female Rottweiler whom Sally hates, and as usual Sally lashed out viciously, both when she was going up to the park and again when she was coming back. Also as usual, the old grey-haired gentleman walking the Rottweiler was completely oblivious to the chaos.
The boys were hungry and talking about burritos, so I took them all down to La Taqueria on Seventh Avenue. Gretchen has always dismissed La Taqueria burritos as inauthentic, but I've disagreed; they're easily as good as the best ghetto burritos I've eaten in San Diego and Los Angeles. Still, I thought there might be a kernal of truth in Gretchen's opinion, so I awaited John's La Taqueria verdict with a certain amount of dread. Like Gretchen, John fancies himself as something of a burrito connoisseur. Happily, though, everyone at our table agreed that La Taqueria burritos were among the best available anywhere. John thought they were decidedly better than the burritos at Tacos Por Favor in Santa Monica. If only La Taqueria would get rid of that heinous gold-fringed American flag covering up their colorful mural of Los Angeles, the place would be perfect.
Next we went to O'Connors down on Fifth Avenue, but the place was far too tame for our drunken over-stimulated contingent, and after awhile we walked into downtown Brooklyn to a bar that Joe had enjoyed in the past (I forget what it was called). Joe made the mistake of stoking our expectations, saying that the last time he'd been there the place had a one-legged man, a couple of nasty forty-something barflies, and "a bird." When we got there, though, the place was only slightly crazier than O'Connors had been.
In anticipation of an uneventful week spent alone by myself, a week ago I'd decided to go to Mark's birthday party, which was happening tonight. (Mark is the former-surfer boyfriend of Lin, who is in turn a friend of Ray and Nancy, whom Gretchen met years ago walking Sally in Prospect Park.) But the arrival of John and his boys meant I was no longer all by myself. So what the hell, I decided to bring my expanded contingent to Mark's party, which was happening at CBGB's Gallery in the East Village. (On the news of John's unexpected visit, I'd already bailed on a pre-birthday-party dinner.)After crossing to Manhattan on the F Train, we got out in the lower East Village and started heading for CBGB's Gallery. I'd been wondering what sort of present to get Mark, and in my drunken state decided that a small packet of drugs might be just the thing. It seemed like an even better idea once one of John's friends mentioned that he knew exactly where to go to buy cocaine. I said great, let's go.
Only about a block away from CBGB's we came upon an unmarked black door along a sidestreet. "This is it," said John's friend, hitting the buzzer. When the tinny voice in the speaker asked what we wanted, John's friend said we were there for "Billy" (well, we actually named someone else) and they immediately buzzed us in. We entered what seemed like a traditional 20s-era speakeasy, complete with romantic lighting and a fully-stocked bar. At the near end of the bar sat "Billy" (or one of his understudies). There was also a lady bartender and a few other people, but the joint wasn't exactly hopping. I gave Billy $40 and he gave me a small black package. He also warned John's friend "Don't bring so many guys with you next time." "Sure, sorry man." We exited through a backdoor into the alley. "Probably the reason I'm alive today is Billy's shitty coke," said John's friend, in reference to the inferior quality of what I'd just purchased. Evidently "Billy" is a well-known Manhattan institution, because at least one other person we ran into tonight immediately recognized the coke as having come from there.
The entertainment at CBGB's Gallery was a band that sounded a lot like Mule, if that means anything to you. It had that same gritty atonal-blues quality, perfect for a night of alcohol and stimulants. In addition to Mark and Lin, I noticed a number of other people (girls all of them) whom I had seen at past Ray and Nancy get-togethers. I got to talking with one of them and I told her that I'd come with a contingent of friends, and that all of them were "gentlemen." I decided that I'd brought my boys to the right place when she immediately wanted to know if any of them were attractive.
So soon us boys were sitting at a table with a bunch of girls.
Despite my drunkenness, I had enough social awareness to divide my time between this table and the one where Lin and Mark sat. We weren't far into a geopolitical conversation before someone chirped up, "I can't believe our government is telling Isræl what to do!" I was flabbergasted, but kept silent. There's no sense in arguing with someone who holds an opinion like that.
I'd been trying to feel out whether or not it was appropriate to give Mark $40 worth of cocaine as a birthday present, and after some deliberation I decided it wasn't. This wasn't exactly an altruistic decision. By now, of course, my boys and I had run out of Adderall and we were in need of a little pick-me-up.
I don't really remember what bars we went to after that, but we went to several. There was this one scene where a group of us guys were in the men's room dipping into my parcel of coke with our keys and snorting it that way - I'd never heard of this technique before, but it seemed surprising effective. Everybody was in a giddy mood, slapping me on the back and insisting we'd have to get together again next weekend.
At around 4am we went to a loungey little Latino dance club, but no one was really dancing because they were too busy living up to their New Yorker stereotypes. I tried to get a couple of the girls still in our contingent to dance with me and finally had success with this 39 year old schoolteacher from Houston. She'd spent the night mostly talking to John, and when everyone went their separate ways, she caught her cab with us (she was successful and we weren't). John got her number and intends to look her up in Houston next time business takes him there.
At an East Village pizza joint, John and I found the picking pretty slim. There was a solitary cold calzone growing increasingly unfresh on the shelf, so we split it. It was nasty, even after John went nuts with the salt and pepper.
Catching a cab back to Brooklyn wasn't easy. The key to success seemed to be climbing into the cab before saying where we wanted to go; when John announced our destination before climbing in, the cabs always split.
The World Trade Center Memorial Spotlights were the main spectacle of our ride back across the East River. Instead of being turned off promptly at 11PM, they'd been set to run all night, since this was to be the last night of the commemoration.
Back at the brownstone,John crashed out on the couch, the first time he'd ever slept over.
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