Indirect Deposit

I'm going to let you folks in on a well guarded secret no one cares about.

It's not easy being me.

I repeat, its not easy being me. In fact, even I at times have difficulty managing such a show. Take for instance today, my first payday at the new job. Here, I must admit that the actual payday was Wednesday but no one bothered to tell me. This entire post would be about what I've blown my first paycheck on if that sweet slice of information were disclosed to me earlier enough to be convenient. Anyhow, I thought today was payday and when I got to work and asked my co-worker, East Euro T (real name withheld) about who I was to see concerning my check, he mumbled through whatever he was eating at the time. After a clearing and an extra moment for me to climb over his accent I realized he said, "We got paid Wednesday." He showed me who to ask and repeated how bi-weekly paydays function. I politely nodded and after receiving my check became excited about cashing it.

Its been so long, the last 2 1/2 months were financially awful. I was eager to get to a check cash place and buy a metrocard, some lunch, and walk around some more with that paranoid feeling that someone's going to rob me. I hadn't felt that last one in years, I haven't cashed a check since 2005. The plan was to avoid the bank and the account currently blooming in overdraft. At lunch time, however, I figure let me walk into the bank and see what the damage has been, I make it a point to ignore my account when its in poor shape.

"We all are, act accordingly..."

At the bank I discover my account is -$192. Not bad, I thought to myself, so then I got to further thinking. The wheels in my head were turning despite LeFou's warning of such a dangerous pass time. It shouldn't be too bad if I deposit the check here after all. I'd be saving a walk and a lot of bulky paranoia. I walk in.

I walk out, account with its belly full you would think.

But not quite. No, not at all so very quite. If I'm to follow through with the dining analogy, it was as if the food was prepared and served but the account was not to have a single bite until tomorrow...Tomorrow? But I just deposited the check...Look! Its right there, the remainder is right there, under the overdraft that appears to be the only thing available. Do I really have to wait a day? I spent the last 10 minutes before leaving my apartment this morning, combing my shelves for $2.25 in quarters; to pay for the single ride to get to work.

Maybe it just takes some hours to go through...Lets ask Google...Not good. Why? Are you serious? I have to wait a day? Fuck that I won't except it, I'll just go back after work and ask somebody, what the fuck does a search engine know anyway? A search engine doesn't even have a posable thumb...Its not even a real engine, how the hell did I expect it could motor the comprehension necessary to understand this ordeal?!

There was this one time...I was younger...I thought it'd be cool to pretend I'm drunk. I'd walk around carrying a drowsy disposition, slurring words and walks, laughing through lips and half shut eyelids. I put on the act for a few minutes when Snap! I caught a fish! My "friend" Spaceman bought into it, at least he was willing to entertain the notion. I was working for my Oscar nomination that night. Immersed into character, I let Spaceman take me to the neighboring block. Bad idea...but whoa was I ever a good drunk...subtle, not a caricature...more like a drunk person trying to act sober. I didn't even take the time to notice the first rock hurled at me, or the second for that matter. It was probably the third or forth that kissed my eye. Sharp pain, a flash of red and the sense of sober fear gripped me like a girlfriend. I thought my eye was hanging out the socket, I kept asking what happened and specifically asking if my eye was still in the socket...I felt stupid, once the pain was set in place, once the assessment of damage had been made, I only felt stupid; drunk with stupidity.

Moments like those...all you do afterwards is imagine that one decision that could've voided the rest of the accident from happening. An abortion that never came. I don't like dwelling on these phantom parallels, instead I just sit and swear to myself never to let it happen again. To always trust the first instinct that says "I don't want to do this." The problem with that instinct is that his voice is so weak and boring. No one wants to listen to that guy, especially while Cunning Logic is scatting and doing voice impressions of all your heroes and they're all convincing you that Instinct is just scared and not taking into consideration the spoils of success. It shouldn't surprise you that I listen to Cunning Logic too often, always attempting to take advantage of spontaneous situations. Sometimes I win, fewer times I lose. Today, just as back when my eye literally got rocked, I lost.

I had to play that move where you stand by the turn style in the subway and ask someone with an unlimited metrocard to swipe you through. I was lucky to find that Samaritan after asking just twice. She was sweet about it, a true saint and on my way home I regretted not asking her name since I was already planning to write this post. Thank you Samaritan.

To Not Know so We May Know

On the Occasion Where We May Exchange True Words

For the way you smile and the way your voice sounds in my mind, I'll hope for the day when we no longer see one another so that by chance, one day we'll have a casual reintroduction. On a day when we have no occasion to think about one another; on a setting foreign to the association of either you to me or I to you. Taking a second to even recognize our faces, and then scurrying into the archives of our memories for each other's names that do not arrive immediately to the grasp of our tongues.

You'll smile and your dark, wide eyes will hold me in place for a second. We'll talk when we remember who we are; we'll talk as if we were more than just a brevity of familiarity, as if we were friends. You'll tell me what's new in your life, even though its all new to me, since I never knew anything personal about you. Likewise, you'll listen and update my profile as I anchor the news. We'll see one another out of context and as a result, for the first time. Its as if it was only through costumes at a ball that we experienced one another, until finally an opportunity has randomly placed us side by side without our masks; and the surprise of what lies beneath somewhat interests us both.

Fear, Shame, Embarrassment, and How They Cut

I once knew this girl who stole a blade from me. It wasn't exactly stolen, more like it was taken away without a presented incentive for me to attempt a rescue. She was older than I, taller and stronger, probably not smarter but that didn't help me much.

It was a summer in the late 80s or early 90s and I was in the Dominican Republic. Los Alcarrizos, thats where my aunt-godmother lives; thats where I ran across a field behind the houses with the other kids and embarrassingly stepped into a pool of mud, just as the kids imagined a New Yorker would. It was right where my brother and I competed for smiles from Josie; where my cousin Yuri constantly tried to kiss me, but failed. So many of my visits to the Dominican Republic are forever committed to Los Alcarrizos, low concrete layers of houses, dirt roads and steep hills, random fields, avocado trees, and the smell of wet tangerines after a fresh rain. It was also here, in Los Alcarrizos, that after one of those fresh summer rains, a shaving blade that I had been entertaining since the morning was removed and taken hostage.

I don't remember her name but she was the neighbor's daughter. She was the older sister of this annoying kid, who was around my age, who I had just pushed off my aunt's property, off a platform, down to his front dirt (there was no lawn). I pushed her brother a few days prior to her stealing my blade. I only pushed her brother because he kept asking for it, literally.

"If you're such a bad ass from New York then prove it...Push me off this ledge. Go 'head, push me."

Translated from spanish of course. After a long, monotone looping of his request, I became bored or irritated and I complied with his order, he thanked me by crying and maybe hurting his arm. When he called his mother I made a break for it. Not that anyone would believe his story, even if it were true; I was considered an angel.

His older sister, however, she saw right through me. She was about thirteen or fourteen and politely asked to see my blade as I stood outside my aunt-godmother's house. She let me have it in the open, very straightforward did she smile and tell me what she thought of me, that she knew I pushed her little brother. I was barely paying attention, I just wanted my blade back and made a face to reply to the smell that followed her like a disciple. After she wrapped up her veritable accusations, I asked for the return of my blade. She must have misunderstood, because instead of placing the blade back on my palm which I held extended, she did something quite contrary. One would wonder if my spanish was indeed that awful, that cock-eyed as to have someone confuse, "give me back my blade," for "shove my blade down your pants."

I stood before this older, taller, stronger girl and pouted my entire face with annoyance. "Is she serious?" I must've said with my eyes. All the while that disciple of hers warmed like an aura around her, like an atmosphere. I almost had to hold my breath but my anger usually demands air through flared nostrils. I asked her once again to return my blade, release the hostage, let's walk away from this peacefully. She replied with an invitation, said that if I wanted the blade so bad I'd have to reach in and pull it back out.

Now, don't get me wrong, she was dirty. She looked like a dark, wet alley cat. Nothing like Josie or her older sister, who wore long skirts and smiled like a piece of something sweet. There was nothing sweet about this kidnapper, this terrorist pervert and that sour smell which perfumed her like a bad frame. Nothing sweet about her smile or her husky voice, yet when it came down to whether or not I would reach into her crotch for my blade, none of this made an impression on my decision. I blushed at the idea and in the end, I didn't get my blade back but not due to disgust, rather because of fear.

Soon after, I left with my family to another town to visit some other relatives, my cousin, Yuri probably came with us. I never saw that girl again, neither on that trip or any future return. She ran off with something I was scared to do, something sharp and intimately fresh. As a result, there is a possession of mine wandering along the past, snuggled soundly in the crotch of a teenage alley cat; and when I see an older dominican woman, who is questionable in character, I think only of my blade and its rightful, manual owner.

My, How We Are Thirsty

Days of Lemons and Daffodils

Any night I find lemonade in the fridge, I can't figure out how not to revert into a crackhead. After one sip, all I can think of is another. Its too good to stop. Sleep is a passive aggressor and never convincing enough to deter me from the self-appointed mission, in such cases:

drink all the lemonade in the fridge.

Sure, tomorrow will proceed this night and my love for lemonade will not wane; and sure I could do, tomorrow, with some of the euphoria that sizzles in my brain when I drink the naturally squeezed sour-made-sweet drink; but why concern myself with tomorrow when the night and the lemonade are both here, presently.

Drink all the lemonade in the fridge.

It becomes a command, one which I take seriously. It becomes a law and I, its most faithful of officers. A nebulously, grayish-yellow liquid, as if a cloud of sun became a beverage that pours onto a cup like a god into a miracle; a holy communion becomes the quenching of a thirst. Only its not the thirst of a dry tongue or throat, not the deprivation or dehydration that can drain a body, like a fish out of water, and kill it. This thirst is not much like that, if at all. This is the thirst of addiction, of chemicals in the brain recognizing a familiar chemistry and associating with it, the most welcomed of lemonade memories. The sour-made-sweet yesterdays. Its sweetness and all its delights, excessively craved, sought, and possessed only for a few seconds before it fades as you sigh out a momentary satisfaction. But before you know it, the satisfaction is gone, for you can't have your lemonade and drink it too.

Still this doesn't stop me from trying, sometimes all night. Each time hoping some physical anomaly will take pity on me and allow me both, my possession and my drink.

How I Most Likely Got Brainwashed into Kylie Minogue

This afternoon I saw an old classmate from grade school. Her name, "E." She has a son, I didn't notice the kid since she still had the prettiest smile. We recognized one another and exchanged a smile with a partial nostalgic hand wave. I've seen her a couple of times in the past 2 or 3 years, though its the first time I've seen her son. Its weird because today E looks like a mom, like an adult woman walking her son home from school but when she smiles I see her at about her son's age back in first grade in 1988.

I had a few crushes in grade school, E was never one of them but I always thought she was pretty. In first grade we sat at the same table. One day I thought I'd cheat on my writing exercise, we were suppose to work on our letter Ts, so I figured to make things easier I'd write out a series of vertical lines, like a bunch of lower case Ls and then in one long stroke, I'd pass a horizontal line through all the lower case Ls to transform them into crossed Ts. Of course when Mr. Cohen made his rounds and came upon my desk he didn't find it as clever as I did, in fact, he said I had to do it over. E and the other girl at our table thought the humiliating correction to be hilarious. I wasn't too fond of either girl much after that.

I also remember that E had a thing for the Dirty Dancing soundtrack as well as Locomotion by Kylie Minogue. Everyday after recess, Mr. Cohen had us lay our heads down and he'd play music for ten to fifteen minutes, whenever E got to pick the playlist it was a sure bet, Hungry Eyes, Time of my Life, and/or Locomotion. E was a dark puerto rican girl with long dead black hair, she looked like a native american princess dressed like a mini Molly Ringwald.

Mr. Cohen by the way always reminded me of Tom Hanks.

Rock the Boat

Titanic - (1953) Directed by Jean Negulesco

Starring Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck,

Robert Wagner, Audrey Dalton

This summer or spring, the last survivor of the Titanic passed away. I was at the World Financial Center. Inside the WFC, there's a Winter Garden Theatre thats occasionally used as a rather impressive music hall. I forgot the composer but I believe the piece was called Requiem for The Titanic and it was then followed by the news of the last survivor passing away that same day.

I can't help but compare the two films. After all, in 1997 I was 15--In 1953, well, I think my mother was born in 1953. Naturally, I saw the 1997 version first. I don't think either film was bad and keep in mind it would be unfair to call James Cameron's film a remake of Jean Negulesco's film of the same title. That would be like saying Roman Polanski's The Pianist is a remake of George Steven's Diary of Ann Frank. Yes, they both take place during the same event and yes, both follow characters trying to survive the unfortunate catastrophe of said event but the stories are different, as are the protagonists whom each story occurs to. So not only would it be unfair to call the latter a remake of the earlier, it would also prove untrue. However, if your imagination is just as vivid a playground as mine, you'd also enjoy noting that as Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck argue over custody of their children and the current state of ruins that was once a successful marriage; at the very same time this is occurring, Leonardo Dicaprio is running around with Kate Winslet on the same sinking ship. The two stories run parallel. Just like Wladyslaw Szpilman and Ann Frank, as one was hiding in an attic in Nazi occupied Amsterdam, the other was in an abandoned Warsaw ghetto, both during World War II.

Like I said I like them both, its just I like each at different parts. I like the central story from '53 slightly more than the story from '97. The romance between Leo and Kate is just not for me I don't care about their love, I'm a cold iceberg myself, in fact that was my favorite character in that film. I enjoyed the failed marriage, the father's relationship with his children, as well as the fact that Clifton Webb is just so great to listen to in the 1953 film. Its a good central story and could easily have been a film on its own if it took place on land with a resolution that did not involve sinking, separation, and death. However, the rest of the cast and their smaller stories don't seem to do much other than remind you, The Sturges aren't the only people on the Titanic. An underdeveloped love interest between a student (a young Robert Wagner) and daughter Sturges (Audrey Dalton) and a lush ex-priest nearly come close to interesting at first but then are interrupted by the iceberg before anything useful to the film can happen.

And there lies the difference, the 1953 film is itself sunk by the iceberg while the 1997 film gets snapped in half and the remainder stands straight and high with great momentum, suspense, passion, and panic. As much as I don't care for the love story it is effective in investing interest in the characters so to enhance the action after the ice cube pokes the boat. 1997 also has subplots involving class division; not to mention the special effects and set designs that fully bring to life the last hours of The RMS Titanic. The film is huge, its Titanic, which was probably what James Cameron had in mind.

Another fun thing my imagination likes to do during 1953 Titanic is imagine Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as the Sturges, it would be like Revolutionary Road onboard The Titanic. I'll stop now.

An Affair to Remember - (1957) Directed by Leo McCarey

Starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr

Wow! This was far more romantic than I was ready for. Its probably one of the most romantic films I've ever seen and I watched it alone, late at night on Columbus Day.

October has wasted no time in getting cold, no formalities or subtleties, just straight down and forward into business. My hands are gloved in a thin atmosphere of cool air, leaving my fingertips with a most strange sensation whenever I move them across the keypad of my laptop. Getting into bed is the worst, it takes so long to warm up under the sheets, especially my feet.

I thought about how one could not know the full story when something set to happen suddenly doesn't; how the most natural idea is often a greedy and selfish one. And then one day, you realize this about yourself and immediately everything inside shifts and rearranges once again as it was before, like an involuntary reaction. I haven't found the right quotes for certain events of my life, I haven't read that many books and I haven't had that many events. I do know I've had a Terry McKay and a skyscraper to meet her on, I was there but she was too busy rushing into her own accident.

At night I eventually fall asleep despite the cold feet and hands.

Pirates of the Caribbean

O brave new world that has such people in't!

In Junior High School, my 7th grade social studies teacher was a diabetic and a rather large man who had a hard time getting around. He sat behind his desk in front of the class and dictated the lesson. The blank blackboard would stare at us students, jealously curious as to how the teacher's word would look in written form. In that class, I saw Last of the Mohicans, and obediently covered my eyes during Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Crowe's sex scene (later I would discover it was only a steamy kiss). Earlier however, in October, my classmates and I took our seats and Mr. T (as he had asked us to call him as a mercy to his ears from potential mispronunciations) had started the lesson about Christopher Columbus. .

It was the first time I ever heard anyone refer to Columbus as a pirate. It was the first time anything I had been previously taught was challenged by an alternative, logical version. He was the first but not the last of my teachers who dropped gems when The Board wasn't looking. So every Columbus Day reminds me of that discovery. I call it Tabachnikov Day!

Confessions of a Crap Artist: A Punctual Failure

When I was in high school, I was an awful student. I do not mean that I was the rowdy, back-talking, antagonistic teen who threw erasers or batteries at teachers and stole homework from other students, etc. No, it was far simpler than that, I was just inattentive and genuinely disinterested in school. Unique? No. I was one of the many who felt exactly the same way about high school during the most unsure years of our lives.

To make matters worst, I was also very punctual. I held a nearly immaculate attendance and rarely was ever late to class. In class, however, I'd space. I'd travel in my mind and every 45 minutes of a period would be a vague hallucination, a mirage at my peripheral while I'd spend my daydreams on more relative matters such as, girls I had constant crushes on, what I'd do with superpowers, and becoming the best hip-hop lyricist before reaching eighteen years of age. I didn't cut class regularly until senior year (you'd think that'd be the year I start sharpening my act) and even then not as often as others, who, starting far earlier than myself had by that point dropped out or only made monthly appearances maybe out of boredom.

No, I'd appear every day to class to attend my failure. I was there for every step of the decline. I didn't care for homework or well prepared studying, eventually I didn't even feel embarrassed for not caring, I'd stare teachers in their disappointed faces a bit proudly and say, "no, I didn't do the assignment." What a stupid kid. It would've been nice to have been interested. Most of the teachers that really taught me anything were around for my elementary and middle school years but by the time of high school I was of the idea, 12 years of schooling is a bit much. Needless to say the thought of college horrified me, the idea of even more school after all this high school business is finally over. In fact after 4.5 years of high school (you didn't really think I graduated on time did you?) the only thing I was grateful for were a few friends, fewer free lunches, and my handwriting, which I stole from U.S. History's Mr. Garabidi, and that was in night school.

The ironic thing is, everything they taught in school that didn't interest me, I later read about or learned on my own through books, films, music and people; and so, I was fascinated by history, math, science, and literature at one point or another but all these points follow one another, only after high school.

It still amazes me that I sat in class day after day, writing rhymes or sketching while the teacher mumbled a lesson in the background. I'd be there for the only reason that I had nowhere else to go, nothing better to do. Retrospectively, its not something I'm too proud of. I should've had somewhere else to go, something else to do. If school was a waste I should've left it instead of wasting my time failing classes. Since then and possibly also because of "then" I have developed a hatred for time wasted. Yet I can't help to think that I'm starting to feel these current days are waste. I feel like I'm sitting through my current present life daydreaming while a lesson is being mumbled in the background and I'm punctual as fuck, I'm there for every second of the blasted thing yet I'm failing but I won't leave, I won't cut or skip out, I just sit there disinterested, inattentive and passing the time.

But You're Singing Sinatra Again

I knew a girl who made me write out an essay for her friend, she used me but I went along because I liked her, the essay was already written but her friend wasn't good at grammar so my job was more that of an editor. I spoke to the girl I liked that same day and told her I liked her, well, not really...I told her to look in the mirror and there she'll find the kind of girl I was looking for. This was back in the spring/summer of 2001, I was 19 and met her at my first job. I worked in a Duane Reade in her neighborhood on the mid-westside of Manhattan, coincidentally enough, she worked in the high school she had just graduated from, South Bronx High School, which was just down the block from my home. I'll call her B for the first letter of her name. She was a silly girl who I would've had very little in common with, who would've annoyed me, who had a boyfriend and ignored my half-confession when half-confessed, she thought me cute and would sit in the aisles of Duane Reade with me while I priced pet food and Quaker Oats Rice Cakes that inspired a nausea through me, awaiting medicine for her mother. I saw less and less of her and eventually one day I walked out on Duane Reade and the summer ended, releasing her from her summer job as she prepared for her first semester at BMCC.

I ran into her once on a commute to the city and never again. I can't really remember what she looked like, at least not exactly. But today she came into my thoughts, I've been listening to a song by Anthony Green of Circa Survive, titled Califone. i don't know what the connection is between Green's song and B, the song wasn't around when B was around, in fact I would have never listened to anything like Anthony Green when I was 19. You may also remove the idea that anything in the lyrics of the song designates reminiscence. There's nothing particular about Califone's words to remind me of B. Not "coalesce", "Sinatra", roses that have "lost their glow", nor weak "soldiers", or over-welcomed nocturnal bands that "play for too long" have any apparent bridge that stretches back to that spring of 2001; to her glasses on her slender face and jeans that never quite fit her skinny legs, to her forgotten voice and accent, to her friend and her essay and its forgotten topic reworked in my capitalized handwriting which would be once again, rewritten down to a horrible chicken scratch penmanship. No, I can't really determine a link at all other than the "califone" itself.

I did own a califone, probably two, and I at that time mostly listened to cassettes and when I wrote rhymes I did it to beats played on a califone. I never used the califone for anything related to B, nor have I ever written about her in a song or story. Nevertheless, and though I have been obsessed with the song for the past few days, at least 2 before attaching B; the song recalls, that silly girl I liked for no other reason than she was straight forward and slightly interested in me.

So here's to you B, like a califone you were around for a small portion of my past. Thank you for taking a moment to sit with me.