Silverleaf

I'm far enough removed from this experience that I feel comfortable talking about it, let alone posting it on an online message board. I've been wanting to be writing something that means something to me for some time, and while there's plenty of other drafts floating around that lead to this, that follow this, I'm inspired to ask for your comments and advice. I never did creative writing in school. I don't do enough of it now.

What I'm giving you could hurt. Be a scholar and don't let us regret it. I love you, but you scare me, Yahooka.

Today was also new.

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I emerged from the subway train at the intersection of Fordham and the Concourse alive and breaking the cast of three years of darkness, loneliness, happiness in brevity, charity, pangs of pity, oceans of regret, mountains of resentment, and a method of theatrics that the sensible and moral would have found abhorrent. I adjusted the strap of my ragged green canvas messenger bag on the inside of my shoulder and I unzipped my light blue hooded sweatshirt to just above my bellybutton, my jacket for the evening worn thin with time and a five-year-old urban adventure. I contemplated how often I had bound myself underground when the sky still glowed a slate blue and reminded us of the hours that had transpired as we sped along to our destination, but upon resurfacing from the concrete tubes beneath our feet, the sun had resigned itself and the cool night air swept away every trace of pink and purple on the horizon, leaving sensory reliance on the tall iron lampposts that dotted the street and lit the stage beneath.

I remembered when flip phones were sexy. I palmed the cellphone in my right jean pocket, cased with ripped and beaten leather and held together with a metal clip that scraped my fingers whenever I dug around my knapsack for it, and I extracted it and thumbed a button on its edge to make it glow in the night. I snapped it open, click, and it shone, my eyes playing over the image of a summer field that would not exist again for another nine months. Kites were frozen in mid-flight in front of powerful and deteriorating billows of clouds broken by sky, enclosed by buildings forming teeth around its edge, a swatch of grass rolled across the foreground and a fountain and football game sat on its back, distinct smiles and the technology of a smoked joint in everyone's eyes, the engine of the city expending their energy in what I remember was a beautiful day when beautiful people were building their lives a step at a time and what to do with all of this reality was ultimately our own decision. All of this in 128x161 resolution! I scanned the bottom bar of the display and read that there were two text messages. Two, two this time. I opened them eagerly, the only good mail that ever came, nowadays, anyway. I'm just leaving now, her laugh is so annoying haha. That was from about forty minutes ago when I was underground and had lousy service and I was leaving Columbus Circle.

I started up Fordham Road and was passing what I wouldn't have called Best Italian Pizza but that's what it called itself, so there you have it, and I was slipping the earbuds of my dying, gasping iPod in and running my finger along the wheel and blasting whatever artist from my most recent appreciation was in fashion that month and passing it back into a pocket on my bag when I stopped. I hadn't lit a cigarette yet, but that was next on the agenda. I thought about my urge to stop and take a piss in one of the closing restaurants, but instead I stopped and started to ramble back a few paces west. I rounded the corner back onto the Concourse and leaned against the corner of the pizza place looking south and watched a group of students pulling open the door of a van parked at the curb. I would have, to save ten minutes, to enjoy the luxury. I liked to walk. I looked on past E. 188th Street, an hour and four miles ago in that direction I'd just enjoyed the luxury of four hours with her. Another hour once I'd left her to wait for the class being conducted downstairs in the cellar of the wine shop where we both worked to start my trip back uptown. She was wearing a dress that looked very soft and it flared out in black and white stripes in the skirt and she smiled greater than I have ever known and she sat with her legs crossed with her back to me and her gray hat, the base wrapped with a thin black band in a tight, pressed ribbon seemed pristine and fit only to be donned on a head such as hers laid on the table next to her.

I walked towards 189th and started into my left pocket where I slid a pack of Camel Lights and a small azure Bic lighter from my jeans and pushed at the soft paper packaging to nestle a cigarette sticking out from between the foil. I stuck the end of the cigarette in between my teeth and exhaled and breathed in as I lit the cigarette and I returned my attention to my phone. Hey. I just got back to my place! What are you doing tonight? I tried not to let myself think about what I would rather be doing that night, which involved hours of idle discussion as I admired every delightful image she brought to my consciousness, the art of her living dancing in all its originality and mysteriousness and the enjoyment of living now. I snapped the phone shut and rounded 189th so as to be facing east again. Monday nights were quiet in the neighborhood, excepting for the shuffle of the store clerks as they closed the gates in front of their shops and caged up their wares for tomorrow and the last few of the after-work shoppers stopping for halal and cinnamon sticks and roasted nuts. You recognize a couple of kids you'd been in classes with or at least looked like you could have been in class with on the main stretch of E. 190th and if you walk down to 187th you run across a couple of spots that are only pedestrian-friendly, like a tall and wide concrete staircase and a public courtyard situated across from a building in which the guy I knew I could count on to sell me an eighth good to last a week on a post-college pothead's budget lived. I jaywalked the street and started down Valentine to the next streetlamp.

I had bought, at a steep discount, a bottle of something red. I waited for the car at the light to pass before I took it out of my canvas and stole a long sip of it. As I lowered the bottle, it slid snug in its plastic wrapper. The remains sloshed around lazily in the bottom, where it had once been full was time I had spent with her, enjoying an evening in passing; we stood still as the world sped along in front of us. It wasn't until I worked retail that I could understand the subtle hell that retail was: here is your cage for the evening. Hand and foot shall you wait upon all who enter. They may come and go, but here you will stay. When she was there, there was no place else I wanted to be. Lock me in my cage for all time, I might have begged. I slid the bottle back in my canvas and tightened the strap on my shoulder. Before that bottle, sips of this and that from samples that had been opened prior to the class, ill-attended that evening. A full bottle of Riesling from earlier that day was up for grabs as I was leaving, but I had politely declined. I hated Riesling. I had crossed 188th and Valentine and I was kicking a soda cup, probably from the fucking pizza place, up the sidewalk from the street. I changed the music on the iPod. I was electrified at the idea of what I would say to her next.

The other one crossed my mind. A week, at this point, since we'd last acknowledged each other. After a year of some days a venture, a year of days 'giving space', a year of days boasting disinterest, disgust, disenchantment. I was quick to dismiss her. I felt regret, but I knew I could avoid that train for a while longer. I crossed Tiebout. I flicked the stub of my cigarette to the pavement and watched the ember break from the filter on the curb. I felt for another in my pocket and then decided I would reward myself at the top of the stairs ahead. Coming up to Marion atop the stairs, I stopped at the corner and lit up another. The bodega with its yellow awning was spilling operating room light onto the street through the plastic screen where I could ask the man for some more smokes and maybe a beer stashed in a brown paper bag while its sister store across the street and down the block had more warmth and a door with a counter and a refrigerator. I walked south and cross the street and stood outside the door for a minute, breathing my cigarette. I took another throw from the bottle of wine and smacked my lips at its gritty sediment, and I heaved the bottle into the garbage along with the empty pack. I laid my lit cigarette down on top of the ice machine and I breezed in, bought a bottle of beer and a pack of cigarettes, and walked back out and retrieved my smoke. I tucked the last of my cash in my pocket and put the new pack of cigarettes in the top of my bag. I waited for the light to turn 'walk' for a minute, then surveyed the block and jogged across it. I twisted the cap from my beer and poured some back, thinking about my urge to pee again. Fortuitously, it was then I came to the courtyard, more a square nestled between buildings that was home to a few park benches where a bum was passed out and a stack of newspapers rested at his feet. I quickly stole around the perimeter and, mustering the resolve, I relieved myself behind a tree, then continued on.

I pulled my long hair back out of my face. I wouldn't realize until a year later just exactly what my mop did for first impressions. For one thing, people approached me different. Long, curly strawberry hair with natural blonde highlights on a white dude living in the City meant numerous things, apparently: a stoner, a hipster, a nonconformist, a fish swimming upstream. It wasn't until after I'd had my pride lopped off by a stylist's scissors that I understood that so many conversations that were had probably wouldn't have been, or at least they would have occurred differently, had I looked like what I'd considered to have been “a part of the herd”. Smiles were easier to win when you looked corporate. People assumed you wanted something when your hair hung past your shoulders in natural waves, bobbing with each footstep, telling you which way the wind was blowing. I wondered if my luxurious rags were the first thing she thought of when she thought of me. I thought about tying it back in a ponytail for a moment, twisting the elastic around my wrist up my forearm, but then decided it was too cold and I was too ill-dressed for the occasion. Normally, on a Monday evening, it would be jeans, an oxford, one of a rotation of ties, and a blazer. I'd opted, that night, for the hoodie, simply on a whim. The world was feeling different.

Between Marion and Webster I stopped and leaned inside a doorframe for a few minutes and worked on my beverage. I figured a little buzz before getting back home was in order. I wanted to get back, pop off a few crunches or bust out the freeweight for a few minutes, shower, zap some leftovers, play with the cats, smoke a joint, and play around on my new guitar. My roommate in college had played a mean six-string, and I would often saunter into his room while he was fooling around on a lick and stare in wonderment, mesmerized that two hands and such concentration could produce sounds like he made. I had played the saxphone, más o menos, as they said in my neighborhood, when I was younger. I hadn't given up on the horn, but I hadn't played it in a while, either. I had great admiration for jazz artists and rockstars like Charles Mingus and David Bowie and that chick who played the tenor for Rod Stewart. I crossed Webster at 187th Street and passed by the music store where, six months later, I would hock my saxophone for a little extra dough. I knew music theory well enough to know I didn't know jack shit, but I also knew that if I practiced, even just for fifteen or twenty minutes a day, and pushed myself to try something different, it would make all the difference. I had bought the guitar for a hundred bucks from somebody I'd met through Craigslist. It came as a starter kit, with the DVD and the amp and the gig bag and the first set of strings all included. It came in a shoddy box that looked like it might have been opened and then resealed. I did my research before I bought it: the Epiphone (though I mistakenly pronounced it epiphany and I liked it better that way) should have cost me two bills if I'd bought it direct from the dealer. I couldn't get the guitar registered in my name and I couldn't take out a warranty on it if I wanted. Strangely enough, that guitar's neck would later bust in half while I was carting it around the City after a night at the liquor store. But at that time, it was only a week old and my guitar-playing was only in its infancy, having taught myself the first and only chords I knew on an old, warped three-quarter classic Hohner I had stolen from the coat check in a night club I'd bussed tables at the summer before, and I was anxious as hell to get home and get working on my calluses. I polished my beer and chucked the bottle in a garbage can.

It was earlier that week that I had been practicing my guitar, just the day after I'd bought it, when my former and future roommate, at the time a squatter who was looking for a job in the City while he finished up a few credits he still needed before graduating, walked through the door. We decided a blunt was in order, so I plucked a Dutch Master from my dresser, and started doctoring the apparatus. It's really a work of art, if you consider the process beginning to end. Unsheathe the cigar from its plastic and test the end to ensure it's not too spongy, not too dry. Clip the rounded end with a cigar guillotine or wine key or butter knife or whatever is handy, and locate the seam in the shell. Crack straight down the middle. Peel back the tobacco leaf, carefully, keeping it all in one piece. Open up the shell of the cigar with your thumb and forefinger and spill the guts of the cigar out onto the table. Having worked up a bit of saliva, lick the inside of the shell until pliable. “Is that pot ground up?” I ask my roommate. “Alright, give it here.” I tap the catch of the grinder to make sure I've gotten the leaves out of its teeth and I pinch the end of a cigarette into the green mound and mix the ganja up evenly with the tobacco because, fuck everybody else, I like my smoke to burn long and even. I pour the spliff guts into the wet shell of the cigar and roll it tight. I lick the beige leaf and wrap it carefully around the dark brown shell, and then smooth the edges. Applying a little pressure to one end gives the blunt a proper smoking orifice, and, again, fuck everybody else, I finish the job by putting the blunt in the microwave for five seconds just to heat it up, and then in the freezer for about thirty seconds to harden everything together. The casing of the blunt takes on the same feel the cigar once did before I had begun my effort, and once its lit, I enjoy the low whistle and nod of approval from my roommate before passing it to him. In the small one-bedroom, the apartment takes on a very distinct smell. It smells like mouthwatering marijuana. It was probably that smell that led the police to knock on my door, and it was probably that smell that caused them to yank me out into the hallway and throw me to the floor before searching the place floor to ceiling, calling out to me and my roommate, “All right, where's the operation? Where's the weight?” When I disappointed them by keeping my mouth shut in the face of their questions and then asking them if I could go or if there was any other part of the Fourth Amendment they'd like to violate today, they threw back their shoulders and marched back down the stairs. It was the closest, I think, I'd ever come to being arrested, and it gave me a newfound appreciation for the Law and for its Enforcement.

Meandering along, I fixed my shirt, tucking its long tails in my jeans. My shirt was about a size and a half too big for me then. I'd lost nearly seventy-five pounds in the last year from a combination of not eating, not making enough money to pay for food on top of rent, electricity and educational loans, on top of alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs, and from getting in the habit of walking everywhere I went. I tried to take the green line home as often as I could, simply because it was another four blocks further west from the orange line, which was already about ten blocks away from my apartment. My clothes didn't fit me right anymore. I had gotten in the habit of hitting the charity consignment store and buying a new oxford or a new pair of pants (now approaching four inches smaller on the waist than what I'd worn in college) every couple of weeks, but my wardrobe was still in transformation. I needed to do laundry, but with a laundry room that closed before I got home from work every night, that left weekends, and it was a long way to the weekend and the weekend before I'd spent covering shifts so as to have the singular opportunity of seeing her as often as I could at the wine store. I was approaching the train tracks for the rapid when I decided I would start back up towards the main road and finish my evening travel along the edge of the campus where I'd got my first taste of the City. I passed through a large brick courtyard where on Sundays tents would be set up and underpants, watches, sunglasses, bedspreads, necklaces, cellphone cases, and suitcases would be sold. Puerto Rican flags, Dominican flags, American flags were hung from the PVC pipe frames, and a few old men were sitting around a small metal table, their seats like gigantic stone marbles that had been shaved clean across the top to provide a flat surface. The campus loomed ahead.

It's a very old, very green campus: the buildings and trees and fields of grass, when you're amidst them, lead you to forget that a City like New York bustles just beyond the tall stone gates. Each post in the gate was engraved with the last name of one of the college's presidents, dating back to its founder, Archbishop Hughes. I always thought of that Leonardo diCaprio movie when I thought of John Hughes, even though I don't think that Liam Neeson's character was supposed to be him or even based on him, but I liked to think that Hughes would have busted some balls and fathered some badass kids like Leonardo diCaprio if he had the chance. It was early September, which meant that students were back in class, but not taking class seriously yet, so the occasional crowd of half-drunks passed in either direction, some taking note of the solitary kid with his iPod in, some ignoring, some shooting sideways glances. I generally kept my head up and stared right past them, especially on a night like tonight. Mustn't find myself waylaid, mustn't keep her waiting much longer on a reply. I pulled my phone from my pocket again and checked it. No new messages. I gathered it had taken me about twice as long as it normally did to walk back from the train that night, what with my detour down 187th and my leisurely enjoyment of the wine and beer. She had no idea how long it took for me to get home, she'd never seen my home. She just knew it was in another borough. Another group of students on their way to a house party crashed by. The neighborhood was funny that way: all summer long, the Bronx natives owned the streets: Albanian, Italian, black, hispanic, Greek, Irish, they all came out of the woodwork. By the time the winter came, students from all over the tristate region were kings again. But the autumn presented a very interesting cross-section: you could tell who lived at Fordham and who was there for a two-semester vacation.

I started texting. Howdy! Just back in the Bronx. I's nothing crazy planned tonight. And what for yourself? I pressed the green send button and I watched the screen as an animated letter fold itself up, tuck itself in an envelope, and float away. The screen flashed blue, confirming that my message had been sent. Every word so carefully chosen. The elision of “I” and “is”, grammatically unsound, yes, but what was more interesting was the sentiment. I liked to think it read: I've learned the rules, but I'm not afraid to break them, honey. I also liked to think it read: invite me back to yours sometime. I rounded the corner onto my street and tucked the phone back into my pocket. I removed the earbuds and was wrapping them around my hands when I noticed the gentleman standing with his back to me, leaning against my apartment building. He tall and lanky, and he was wearing a green sweatshirt and baggy jeans, jeans that were baggy as a matter of choice, of fashion, not as a matter of having no clothes that fit him properly. He wore a bandana that was black and yellow, and a knot of braided hair that seemed light brown, with what seemed like wiry blonde flyaways, peaked out from underneath. He turned to look at me, because he must have heard my footsteps in my heavy black boots, I suspected, and I nodded as I passed him. “Evenin', sir.” I would have said the same to anyone else. I noticed a squat, pudgy teenager standing against the opposite side of the alcove where you entered the building. I took no notice and turned my mind back to her.

I was in the lobby of my building, and I was putting my key in the door leading into the front hallway when I heard the outside door swinging open. My hand was already pushing the door open when I turned and recognized the pair I had seen moments before. There seemed to be another one, perhaps two, persons approaching from behind them. This was my first realization that they were all very young. I stopped in the door, which appeared to surprise them, and asked, “You all live here?” Thrown, the larger of the two youths I'd just encountered stuttered at first and then replied, “Uh, yeah. We live in A.” I politely nodded and pushed the door open, holding it for them when I'd gotten inside. They, this group, shuffled towards the elevator and pushed the button while I turned and started looking for my mailbox key when I came to a halt.

The only good mail that ever came was when she texted, nowadays, anyways.

There was no apartment A in this building. I knew that. After three years of paying rent there, I knew that. I turned back just in time to see Big Boy striding in my direction. “Jes dun make any sudden moves, aight, jes give me your bag, jes hand it to me.”

My canvas. My shitty iPod. Whatever book I had been slugging through in an attempt to keep my brain limber while I wasn't setting myself down in a classroom. An extra pair of socks, maybe. A roll of chapstick, half of a granola bar, and John Goodman saying, “what's mine is mine” over canned laughter in my head. Receipts from a month ago. My broken chain in the front button pocket, the one I wore a sterling silver peace symbol on until it had snapped when I caught it around a crate I had been lifting. That symbol, which I'd explained to countless friends and strangers, as a combination of the semaphore for “N.D.”. Nuclear disarmament. Peace at its most iconic apex. I had paid for that fucking bag with my own hard-earned money, and everything in it. I drew it closer to me and my mouth stopped listening to my brain. “Aw, come on, guys, you don't gotta do this.” There was nothing of value in that bag. “Let's not be stupid here.”

I hate it when people say, “and then, everything was in slow motion,” so I won't say it. For the next two minutes, I was assailed by eight fists that were as furious as a million, and once I had made my way to the floor and covered my head with my clenched hands, I was jabbed and kicked in the sides. One blow was delivered direct, square in the center of my face, and I felt it when my nose broke, but I suspect the only reason I knew it was my nose breaking and not my face shattering was because I'd broken that nose twice already before. For some reason, I smiled before the beating was over and I considered Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. I wondered what kind of a nonviolent advocate I would have made, seeing how, up to this point, I had not yet uttered a word once the assault had begun. Somewhere, the most primitive part of myself must have reasoned that I had not broken the social contract with these people, but rather it was they who were making society their own sandbox to create and destroy in. I must have realized that they were not going to stop hitting me until I either gave them what they'd asked for, or until they'd hurt me enough that they could take it themselves. I would not allow either of these things, so I began to call out, “it's a goddamn fire out here! Someone please help!”

The fists and feet stopped and the gang was in a retreat. I was on my feet in moments, stumbling, catching myself from falling, my knees shaking, and I heard doors slamming around me and feet slapping the tile floor. I regained my bearings enough to see the backs of my attackers and I started after them, calling, “you mother fuckers! You, you sorry, cock-sucking mother fuckers!” Big Boy had stopped and turned around. He took a few paces towards me, menacingly, and we both froze. Our eyes both snapped to the glass door which was slowly closing between us. The metal click of the lock sounded like a sigh of relief to me, an admission of victory to him. He turned up his lip in a sneer and disappeared into the night, turning to head south into the heart of the Bronx. Hands grabbed my shoulder and spun me around: this time, someone I knew I had been in a class or two with before. I parted my lips with my fingers and asked him, “am I missing teeth?” He studied my face, concern washing his, and shook his head to say “no”. My eyes rolled around the lobby, and I reached out and grabbed his arm and slid to the floor, propping my back against the wall. I was asked the first round of questions that would become routine over the week ahead: “What happened? Are you okay? What did they look like? Where did they go? Have you ever seen them before? Did you give them your bag?”

I lit a cigarette while still sitting on the floor and stretched out my hand. He took mine in his and pulled me to my feet, then slid his arm around under mine and guided me to the bottom of the stairs where he set me down again. A group of other students were starting to congregate, one of them in his boxers, the other staring dumbly, a group of girls on their way out for the night stopped in their tracks and clearly reconsidering their evening. I asked generally for a pack of ice, an Advil, and a beer. Magically, all three were procured in moments. I cracked the beer and tossed the painkillers and took a swig. Another swig to swish around between my teeth, checking them again with my tongue, trying to remember if I was supposed to have thirty-two or twenty-three. My tongue felt swollen. The ice pack I applied to the side of my nose, then my crown. Sharp pain in my side caused me to double over in a coughing fit which prompted someone to suggest I put out the cigarette to which I replied, “go fuck yourself.” Someone had called the campus E.M.S. squad, because they were carting in their equipment and their stretcher and calling dispatch and “yeah, yeah, we got it, send security, ay-sap” over the radio. I told them what happened before they asked me, and then I told them my first name, my middle name, the last four digits of my Social Security Number, my telephone number, the date, and who was President before they asked me. Satisfied I wasn't terribly concussed, though I was feeling mighty concussed but in no mood to go to the hospital that evening, the volunteer squad shrugged and asked me to sign on the dotted lines and state I was refusing medical attention. A security van was rolling up. Soon the NYPD would be rolling up behind them. A goddamn zoo, when all I wanted was to play the guitar. I was wishing I hadn't thrown away the bottle of wine earlier, or that I'd been finishing my beer when I got back. What I would have given to have smacked one of them upside the head, broken the bottle across Big Boy's face, jabbed at the others with the shards, crazy, crazy bleeding out of my nose, crazy saying, “never fuck with me again,” and not accepting their whimpers until they had all squeezed out a “yes, sir, and sorry for the trouble.” Oddly enough, the cop who responded to the assault call was the same cop that had busted into my apartment. I prayed at first he wouldn't recognize me, but then when he started writing the report he turned to his partner and said, “wait, what's the address on this building? Hey, ain't you the kid with the stinky apartment? Try not to get robbed again, Junior!”

I wanted to tell him, “I didn't get robbed, I got assaulted, use your goddamn ears instead of stroking your mother fucking ego always the same way you stroke your mother fucking cock every night before you pass out with your wife turned over in bed pissed at you because you made fun of her dinner plates.” Instead I said nothing. Instead, after he finished laughing, I asked him, “and your name, officer?” I asked him, “am I free to go now, officer?” They left and the circus dissipated with them.

When I'd slapped the first responder on the shoulder and promised him a bottle of wine delivered to his door in the near future for his valiance, I boarded the elevator and took the slow climb up to my apartment. My phone was blinking. I keyed into my apartment on the top floor to see I was alone. I glanced at the phone in my hand, knowing who I would see when I checked it. I pitched it gently onto the couch and collapsed in the armchair. A pack of rolling papers and a ground-up nugget of ganja on the table in front of me. I rolled, I lit, and I smoked in silence for a few minutes. I contemplated the television, then I snickered when I remembered I'd had the cable turned off months before. I reached for the guitar that was leaning in a stand against the wall, but replaced it after a moment with no desire to play. I was feeling tousled, relatively collected, defeated, exultant, and properly fucked up from a combination of the adrenaline and the pot washing over me. My phone was blinking.

I stumbled to the bathroom and started running hot water in the sink. I looked in the mirror and cracked a smile. I lit a cigarette, thinking about Holden Caulfield as I sat “watching myself get tough in the mirror”, before I laid the cigarette down on the porcelain toilet tank and proceeded to wash my face, gingerly rubbing around my nose and letting the dried blood dye the water in the sink with a red tint. I flicked off the light in the bathroom, picked up the phone, and flicked off the light in the living room. I collapsed in my bed and snapped the phone open, click, and read: Going to bed now. Can't wait to see you tomorrow for our lunchtime smoke!

I smiled. Everything can be new.

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Jenna_Grows

Very moving. So descriptive I felt like I was there.

It's got a gritty energy and makes me wanna read more of your work.

If its a true story, I'm glad you are here to post it. Wow!

Peace