July 28, part four: (abandoned)

a dozen floozies flapped their hems and sang in a raspy smoke-choked chorus the joys of clitoral ecstacy. They started a group called Clit Clutch to reclaim their bodies. Who has the right to push us around---

Twelve, thirteen, sky scraper
Flapjack, hot potato, pencil neck
Fission, fizzy, filibuster,
Fantastic fact checker
Salsa sensation---

Scarecrow walked into the bar and sat down with a thud on the dusty stool. Poof! a cloud of dust flew out from---

July 28, part three: still there (15 minutes)

Grand Central Terminal is still there, though the restrooms on the east side of the food court are closed for renovation.

Times Square is still there, if you can recognize it at all. What's easy to recognize are the fat American tourists and chainsmoking European ones, a little less uncomfortable since the renovation.

Central Park is still there. I walked through it on a cool, sunny day, found something new that has been there a long time, I'm sure: The Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, with a running/walking track around it.

My first apartment is still there. I saw it from the bow of a boat, a party boat I went on with the people I work with. They're still there, I'm a satellite worker now.

Chelsea is still there. I visited the Housing Works Thrift Store and found a shirt, a pair of pants and a book. (I brought the book home with me but forgot the other two items.)

The A train is still there, but they're doing work on the tracks, blue lights throughout the tunnels tell you this. And if I got on the train after 10:30, it added an extra half hour to the hour-long commute to Inwood, where I was staying, up on 200th Street, just down the hill from the Cloisters, which I assume are still there, but I didn't visit them this time around.

The second apartment I lived in is still there, like a shy kid, short and quiet in the midst of new, cheaply built apartment buildings.

The main post office is still there, shrouded in a dirty tan gauze like a Christo artpiece, under extensive renovation.

Penn Station is still there, still unappealing, still ugly in the shadow of Madison Square Garden.

Cowgirl Hall of Fame Restaurant is still there. I met Suzanne & Chris there for brunch.

Angelika Kitchen is still there, too; I always visit there, but it was closed for their yearly "clean-up."

My fourth apartment is still there, the last New York City apartment I lived in. I left nine years ago. Polly's name is still on the next door apartment. I buzzed her but she didn't answer. I'm sure she's still there.

My third apartment is still there, no longer overlooking the Hudson River, surrounded by behemoth glass apartments, beautiful, expensive residences.

Battery Park is still there. I saw Drive By Truckers play in the Castle Clinton Monument with Kathrin and Stacey.

Harlem is still there.

Washington Square Park is still there, full of jazz musicians and dope dealers and people reading Harry Potter everywhere you look.

NYU is still there, still swallowing up the neighborhood.

The Lower East Side is still there; the shops are different, restaurants are more trendy, more expensive. I sang karaoke in an old boarding house.

July 28, part two: the dance (10 minutes)

The pier has been renovated, bricks laid in a decorative fashion, some smooth, some a bit rugged to enhance the design. I had gotten an email about a concert on the pier, some sort of disc jockey and live drummer combo.

My friend and I met at Columbus Circle, had a snack at the Whole Foods -- how ridiculous! (I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about the owner of Whole Foods that makes me prefer Wheatsville I think).

But anyway, we walked to 70th Street and there were a couple of people -- a woman alone and a toddler, a little Asian boy -- dancing, that was it. Other people were standing around, moving past the stage to the far end of Pier 1 to look out over the Hudson River and the changing New Jersey shoreline.

If you want to see change, turn around. New York City is changing, growing, expanding; condos going up, million-dollar efficiency apartments for sale. No room to expand in those. You could take in a lover, but a roommate would be out of the question. And who can afford a lover anyway?

The music got louder, a tribal sound, a heavy rhythm, a white guy with dreadlocks and three black dudes with instruments between their legs, drumming along to whatever the DJs delivered. Two DJs taking turns, playing songs in tandem, never stopping, never slowing, slowly building on the beat, rising, rising to a frantic pace.

I danced, took off my shoes, danced till my feet hurt from dancing on the rugged bricks, put my shoes back on, took them back off because I felt constrained by them, danced some more, danced through my throbbing feet, keeping the beat. (Later when I got home they stung in the cool shower water.)

My friend said she had to leave, she's a New Yorker, she has stresses that I don't have, don't want, she had a headache. I stayed and danced. For three-and-a-half hours I couldn't stop.

I ran my hand across my head to wipe the sweat and I wiped the sand and dirt from the shores of the Hudson deeper into my skull. I wanted to say "Eww!" wanted to hold my dirty hand out to show somebody the dirt our sweaty bodies were collecting in the open air under the fantastic purple and orange sky, but nobody was looking, all were intent on their dance.

July 28, part one: late (5 minutes)

She looked up at me, her eyes two smiles behind rimless glasses, her strawberry hair bound up above her, her fingers still busily scratching along the page, a pen in tow, blue lines, blue letters, blue words, blue thoughts, dots, periods, commas.

We're just doing a quick five minutes, she said, and then her eyes went back to the page.

Alone I am in a roomful of scratching and thinking, trying not to think, writers. Are we writers? What brings us here on a Saturday morning before enough coffee has been drunk, before an adequate breakfast has been eaten? To write, I suppose.

Oh no, now she has put her pen down.