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Queens
Surface Transport PAGE
TWO Then there are your colleagues in the other camp who worked sporadically. Or not all. Who actively take advantage of a nation that had unwittingly established economic systems whereby one could continue to legitimate part-time work as one struggled feverishly to contribute with one's "art." Those who genuinely felt they had some kind of right to preen their aesthetic pinfeathers in front of an adoring and guileless world...a world sucked in by its own earnest appetite for comfort through variety. And it's these people who disgust you as you walk along, making a mental note of the Body Shop's animal testing protest and Showtime's latest billboard foray into Message Movies, existing in, and of, the world as a kind of moral lightening rod...you capricious, infatuated, imperiously-cross-eyed testament to narcissism. You who humble yourself to acknowledge the man who sells you cigarettes while you sip coffee with people in the morning under humid greasy lights. Suddenly you think about the people in your life who possess any complex regard for highfalutin misfits like James Joyce. You think about his smoldering, drunken Irish heart. And how infrequently people like that get deposited upon this earth. And then you think about Thomas Merton. Once you remember who he is. And you think yourself incredibly highbrow for thinking about Thomas Merton in the first place, and then you quickly, greedily, heap lots of other demi-important figures onto your shiny horrifying plate and you swallow heartily, contentedly. Then you continue on in your hatefully superior day, you unctuous benevolent light shedder. And
you step out confidently onto Madison Avenue searching vainly for
significant meaning with which to begin a candid narrative. And
no sooner have you regarded all of these dull prospects when you
see the large Queens Surface Transport bus bearing down upon you
at forty miles an hour and accelerating. A huge, daunting and very
evil bus, with the coldest halogen eyeballs you've ever seen ...and
you can hear it getting louder and louder and it wasn't like
you couldn't move but like you didn't move. You didn't move.
And sure your heart was propelled from your chest cavity
into your throat. And sure you could feel that funny liquid
coating the edge of your eyeballs. And here's where you might
say "And now my troubles are finally over." But you won't.
Because nothing happened. Nothing. You instinctively, mechanically
stepped backward. One step. Averting disaster. Averting "Does
what's left of the body have any identification on it?"
Averting "This is EMS one twenty seven we got a dismembered
female at East Fifty Eighth street and seven witnesses."
Averting "And to think I just had a drink with her last
night." Averting "gosh I wish I'd gotten that green mock
turtleneck back before she ...is it absolutely not cool to ask her
grieving family for it back?" Averting "This is
Mrs. Raines from the credit office of Citibank Visa it's very important
that you return my call at one eight hundred seven six three oh
four seven oh." Just took a step backward. And you lived.
And you live. And you're standing on the corner shaking and you're
wondering about this near fatality and along comes the guy from
the Simulated Tropical Rainforest Exhibit at the Central Park Zoo
and he stops in front of you and he bends down and he picks up your
scarf which has fallen onto the pavement and he smiles and steadies
you under your elbow and asks if you'd like to have a cup of joe
to calm down and all you can do is just stare at him and...and...and...
nod, and mutely follow.
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And
then you suck your friends into that vortex. Your friends who in
seconds become almost monochromatic. Since clearly you're
the only person around who could simultaneously take in both forest
and trees. On the one hand are your friends who, out of their own
timid need to function safely within a system, had day jobs. Who
saw the day's variety in a hand-roll or a quesadilla or maybe a
new font, who personally felt and appreciated the impact
Voice Mail had had upon society, who spoke of hybrid engines, Clay
Aiken, and Refinancing Opportunities in the same earnest commuter's
breath. These were your friends with jobs.
