xaviertrevino

He liked to be called Gus. He wasn’t too happy about Augie, but neither his English nor his self-esteem was good enough to protest.
Yesterday was five years since he died, and I found out about his death and my friend Andy’s death almost in the same breath, in two separate phone calls that came seconds apart.
He died in a nursing home in the Bronx, a place that as far as I know he’d probably never been to. As a child I remember him speaking fondly of “Delancey,” and “La Catorce,” “El Village,” but he never spoke of the Bronx, and we never lived there. We lived in Manhattan when we first came to New York, then we lived in two different places in Brooklyn, Boerum Hill and Bedford Stuyvesant. He spent the last few years before the nursing home in Hell’s Kitchen, on 47th Street. How apropos for a cook.
He liked being called a chef, and perhaps he was one at one time.

This is a picture of him with Ricardo Montalban the actor in what I think was the Xochil restaurant in Manhattan in the late 50’s. But later in life he spent many years working for the Catholic church cooking for priests in a couple of different places, and they called him a cook, not a chef.

This is a picture of my father and me in 1960, I know because that’s what it says on the back of it. It was taken on Atlantic Avenue near Hicks Street, on a little strip of grass bordering the BQE. We would have little picnics there, as it was the closest green to where we lived six blocks away on Atlantic and Smith streets. Me and my brother and sister would play in the exhaust fumes of the BQE traffic, but we played on grass.

This picture is the youngest one of my dad, he looks to be in his early 20’s, and so it had to be somewhere around 1932 or so, in his hometown of Tampico, Mexico. It says Tampico on the back. He looks like he’s on his second Coca-Cola, and seriously in thought about what the future may hold in store. He rarely smiled in photographs.

By the clothing he and my uncle are wearing in this photo it must have been sometime in the late 1940’s again in Tampico. When I discovered this picture I was amazed at the resemblances between he and his brother and me and mine. I think they were the same age apart, five years; and both my dad and me are the older ones. It could be Luis and me if we wore the same clothing and I slicked back my hair.

This last picture is of course the last picture of him, taken at the nursing home about seven weeks before he died. My son Javier was spending the summer and my dad got to see his first grandson one last time. I know it made him very happy, he was beaming at Javier throughout the visit. The last time the three generations were together.

When he died and I went to the nursing home to wrap things up I found it remarkable that all of his belongings fit into three small black plastic garbage bags. I took a couple of his books as keepsakes and donated the clothing and shoes to the nursing home, for any resident who may need them. Everything else I trashed, it was of no use to anyone but him, and he did not need any of it anymore.
Like Paul Simon said; I have a photograph, actually I have a few as you can see. I also have memories good and bad about Gus, but I’ve learned to think only of the good ones, and see the hidden smile in the pictures of the man that did not smile much in photos.

A couple of weeks ago I was at an event and was sitting next to a friend, actually he’s more of an acquaintance. Best described as a guy I know. I’ll call him Jeff in order to protect his anonymity.
As way of greeting Jeff looked down at my feet and said:
“Flip-flops? What are you, a tourist?”
I should have said I never comment on what you are wearing, Jeff; but what I said was:
“What makes it touristy?”
“How can you walk around the city in flip flops?” He said.
I used to do it more, one summer about 13 years ago I wore flip-flops exclusively well into late October when my feet started getting cold. Now it’s only on very hot days, or when I’m not doing a lot of walking. Getting old takes its toll on all parts of the body, including feet and arches.
“Would you prefer I wore heavy Roman gladiator sandals with studs and white socks?”
Yeah, that might be a little better,” Jeff added as a way of retreating form a really dumb conversation that he’d started.

  Real sexy, huh?

Jeff never wears flip-flops, or any kind of sandal for that matter. The best he can do in the summer is to wear sneakers, with socks. I don’t wear socks in the summer unless I have to work.
In case you are wondering about foot odor, I have five different pairs of sneakers and if you alternate them and give them a chance to air out your feet won’t smell. Besides, I’m not prone to heavy sweating.
I’ve never had a problem exposing my feet, I’d go barefoot if it wasn’t for all the glass, vomit, and dogshit on the city streets. Oh, and the concrete, it’s pretty hard.
In the countryside I love to walk barefoot through the grass, feel the dirt between my toes, it makes me feel closer to the Earth.

The Alvin Lee clogs. Easy to step out of.

When I was a freshman in college, I had a pair of white perforated Olaf Daughters clogs; the same ones Alvin Lee of Ten Years After wore at Woodstock. I was working in a shoe store in the Village, Bloom’s Shoe Gallery on 6th Avenue and we carried those clogs, and right after I saw Woodstock I got a pair, at my employee’s discount. I think I paid $15 for them.
One day, probably the first week I was living in the Pratt dorm I was walking through the hallway and I spotted a line outside an apartment door. There was a very pretty girl at the door letting people in one by one.
“What’s going on?” I asked her.
“We’re having a Wisconsin Sleeper’s party. Wanna come in?”
“Sure,” I said, and got in line.
When it was my turn I went into the apartment and another pretty girl told me to put on a blindfold and go into the bedroom, there was a surprise waiting for me in there. I eagerly let her tie the blindfold around my eyes and she led me into the darkened room, closing the door behind me.
That’s when I heard yet another female voice ask my name, and then lay out a scenario:
“We just got married, and I’m laying here in bed. What are you gonna do?”
“Get in bed with you,” I said breathlessly, I couldn’t believe my luck.
“Don’t you wanna take something off first?” She said.
I have to explain what I was wearing first. I had on a Tee shirt, jeans, and my white perforated Alvin Lee clogs. And nothing else, I was going commando. So in one motion, I jumped out of my clogs, pulled off my pants, and then the tee shirt.
“Don’t you want to take anything else off?” She asked, stopping me from jumping onto the bed. I though for a second and I realized I was still blindfolded.
“Ah, I guess the blindfold?”
“Take it off.”
I took off the blind fold, and as I did someone switched on the light and I discovered that in addition to my “wife” who lay on the bed, there were at least ten other people in the room, sitting on the floor or in chairs all looking at me standing butt-naked and erect in the middle of the room.
I put my clothes back on sheepishly and joined in the fun. Only one other person took all their clothes off, a girl, and we were the king and queen of the Wisconsin Sleepers and she came back to my room with me after the party was over.
What I learned from that was that is that accessibility is everything.

   How’d you like to walk down the block with a girl wearing these?

I got a job at Olaf Daughters a few years later, on 6th Ave and 11th Street. Catty corner across the street from us was the Birkenstock store. I’ve never had the pleasure of wearing those, since to me they are pretty ugly, the equivalent of wearing gladiator sandals with socks.

In the 80’s came Tevas, a combination of sneaker technology and sandals. My first wife Kathy used to wear those. I was working at yet another shoe store at the time, Yorke Dynamold Shoes in Forrest Hills, and one of the things I did there was repair shoes and make orthotics. I remember making myself a pair of slide-on sandals with a white sneaker sole we had lying around the shop and a piece of blue leather that I perforated with a hole punch. I made a custom leather covered foot bed and glued it to my invention. They were one of a kind and cool looking and comfortable, but they stretched out after one summer and I never tired it again.
There were also the dreaded “EARTH SHOES” back then, the epitome of hemp-and beard hippiedom. Another missed pleasure.

The dreaded EARTH SHOE

It’s good to let your feet air out; I think it airs out my soul a bit as well. So many guys I know are so afraid to expose their feet; I have another friend who wears Chippewa work boots all year round, even if it’s a hundred degrees outside.
What you wear on your feet says a lot about a person; don’t forget that.
I like shoes that are comfortable and not too ugly. But then again ugly is a matter of opinion, isn’t it?

Half a life ago, when I was 30, I wasn’t even contemplating life after 33. I had that age fixed in my head as the age I was going to live to. Don’t ask me why, I guess it had a lot to do with the way I was living my life at the time, maybe a little with being brought up Catholic, but I was fixated on that age.

But yesterday I reached the first day of my seventh decade. Scary.
My son was born when I was 33, the only thing of real importance that happened that year.
My dad lived till he was 97, and my grandmother, his mom was 103 when she died; so I have some good genes on my side.

My mother, on the other hand died when I was 23 at the age of 54. I’ve outlived my own mother by six years.

I was talking to my friend Kristine on the phone yesterday, she’d called to wish me a happy birthday and she asked me how old I felt.
“In my head I still feel like I’m 16, but then I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and go: Whoa!” Then I went on to say that I wish I knew what I knew now when I was 20, life wouldn’t have been such a daunting enterprise.

Kristine went on to tell me that’s what life is all about, learning the hard way.
And I have learned the hard way, being the stubborn person that I am, repeating the same behavior over and over again expecting different results until I metaphorically collapsed from hitting my head against the same brick wall.

I am lucky, and I realize that now. I tempted fate in the worse way possible for a long time; when 33 came along and I was still alive I almost thought I was invincible, but there were times I just wanted to quit, say I’ve had enough, I can’t take it anymore. Life sucks and it’s unfair and why do all of these bad things keep happening to me.

But life went on, and eventually I found myself at a crossroads, I was forced to make a change in the way I was living. I had to take responsibility for my actions and myself and stop blaming others for my problems. This was 14 or so years ago, and it was like starting life anew.
A lot of people get that chance, few opt to go for the change and discover what they are capable of. I consider myself very fortunate to have reached the lowest point of despair that I was willing to listen to someone other than myself for a change.

I owe a great debt of gratitude to a lot of people, some who have come and gone into my life for the briefest of seconds, others that I reconnected with (thinks to modern social media) and others, like my brother Luis and my son Javier who were always there.

It wasn’t easy, and it didn’t happen overnight; change was gradual and grudging; but I took the right steps and talked to the right people and I find myself where I am today, happy with myself and the way I am living.

I have a friend who I met 14 years ago, and she’s fond of saying I looked “rough,” and now I have people saying I don’t look 60.

Physically I feel 80 sometimes, like Leonard Cohen says in the Tower Of Song, “I ache in the places that I used to play,” and there’s no getting around that. But I don’t let it throw me. I’m a great believer in the “use it or lose it” school of thought, and I keep up with both my physical and mental well being.

I have never felt so alive, so excited about what is to come, and I have learned to work through my fears and doubts. It isn’t easy, but the other choice, which is to give up and hide in my own head is no longer viable now that I’ve learned some stuff.

I got some gifts yesterday, mostly candy and a nice dinner from my lovely wife, but her niece Kasia gave me the best gift of all. It is a copy of Reader’s Digest from August 1954, the month and year I was born.

One of the biggest influences on the way I write comes from Reader’s Digest. As a child my mother knew a couple of Spanish men who owned a Spanish bookstore somewhere on West 14th Street and every time we visited the store they would give me a bundle of magazines to read, my mother told them I liked to read; and my favorite was the Reader’s Digest.

I read many condensed books in it, and the one feature I loved the most was The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Met. I learned how to write about other people by reading that, and I also learned that there are people who can teach me stuff if I have an open mind and pay attention.

Most of my life I only paid attention to myself, but I am lucky enough to have a good memory and I can remember things that people said and did that didn’t make sense to me then but do now. So thank you Kasia, for a gift you had no idea would be important to me.

I think I owe my biggest debt of gratitude to my wife, the lovely Danusia. She has helped me to be a kinder, more tolerant person, not just to those around me, but also to myself.

Today I planted an avocado seed, I used to do that when I was a kid but I would lose interest and they would die. I would say this one has a better chance of survival. After I patted down the soil my hands were dirty, and I wanted to take a picture of the seedling. The cat was conveniently close and I was able to wipe my hands on her. She thought I was petting her so she didn’t mind.
I am glad to be sixty today.

A couple of weeks ago I was making my morning coffee and poured in some half-and-half from Trader Joe’s, and the second it hit the coffee it separated and curdled. I had to throw the whole cup out, and start all over again. Luckily I had some two-percent milk, the lovely Danusia is not a fan of half-and-half and uses that in her coffee and we both put it in our morning cereal.
I checked the expiration date on the half-and-half before I bought it, it was supposed to be good for two more weeks, but obviously it wasn’t. When I poured out the rest (more than half) into the toilet it came out in great solid globs, it was practically cottage cheese by this time. I’d opened it just a few days before.

They are pretty, aren’t they?

Of course this is nothing new, the WORSE store brand half-and half you can buy is the Whole Foods brand, that either goes bad or IS bad the day you get it despite the expiration date on the top. For all their vaunted care for their products I can just envision whole cases of this stuff sitting on the loading platform in ninety-plus degree weather for hours while the stock boys flirt with the girls that work at whole foods, something they like to do even when you are standing there trying to ask a question or have someone get something for you. They’re almost as bad as the kids at the Porto Rico Coffee company, who get annoyed when you interrupt their play by play of last night’s hot date.
So, yes, Whole Foods is the worst and Trader Joe’s is a close second. Fairway only sells milk with their name on it, they have no store brand half and half, so I can’t comment on that.
I can always get Horizon half-and half, never had a problem with that. Or, if I feel like spending even more money, I can get the Stonyfield Farms half-and-half, or organic Ronnybrook farms at a really premium price.

Even prettier but twice as much.

There is also Organic Valley and Farmland, Farmland is the least expensive of the organics but I only see it at Fairway and at the local Food Bazaar.
I should stick to the Food Bazaar, since it is only three blocks away and has the best prices, but they mostly have Cream-o-Land and Horizon, and I’m a terrible snob. I also hate to venture into the Food Bazaar, where you encounter mostly angry fat people with shopping carts piled high with different colored sugar drinks and cases of chip snacks for their kids. If I want to see a fist fight over someone jumping the line this is the place to go.
I used to go to the Bazaar on Sunday mornings just after 7am when they open, about they only time it is empty, but there was always this old Rasta guy with ratty grey dreds in his late 60’s that was always hitting on the 20-something Latino girls at the registers. A guy that old and creaky thinking he’s still sexy is not a pleasant sight to behold.
So I choose to go to these high-end stores in Manhattan and drag my groceries home on the subway in my recycled shopping bags that the lovely Danusia insists I use. I’m lucky I don’t have five kids or it would be really tough to do this.
When I was 13 I spent a week on a dairy farm in upstate NY, my prize for writing an essay about how much it sucked being a poor inner-city kid with no grass to play on. The first night there I was having dinner with the farmer, a man with a red neck and weathered face who wore his ball cap at the dinner table, and the rest of the family.

Not the actual farmer, but close.

I experienced rice with melted butter for the first time. I also noted that there were several quart cartons of milk on the table, there were probably six or seven people at the dinner and everyone was drinking milk, ergo all the milk cartons, and when I tasted the milk it tasted sour. I wondered if it was milk straight from the cow and that’s what it was supposed to taste like, so I said nothing.
The farmer, who sat next to me poured himself a glass from the same carton, took a drink, and immediately spewed it out onto the floor next to him.
“Mama, this milk is sour!” Then to me he said:
“Boy, you bin drinking this milk? Why didn’t you say it was sour?”
I had no answer, so I sat mute while a new container of fresh milk was placed on the table. But I learned to throw out sour milk.
It all comes down to price, and the Trader Joes half-and-half is the least expensive by far, trumping even the Whole Food’s brand that comes in a really neat plastic bottle with a blue cap, cooler looking than the waxed paper cartons of all the other products. I have to get over buying stuff by its visual presentation.
So I was in Trader Joe’s on 72nd Street on Wednesday, after putting together some shelves for my writing teacher Charles Salzberg who just rented a stunning place in Trump Towers and half-and–half was on my shopping list.
I carefully read all of the expiration dates on the cartons, and after determining that they were all the same (August 26th) I chose one from all the way in the back of the dairy case, where it’s colder than in the front. I hope I’m not disappointed again, but like they say, hope springs eternal.

I went to the dentist for the first time in five years yesterday. Obviously it’s not something I like to do.
The dentist is at my union, or soon to be former union. The rep told me he’d keep the case open long enough for me to do this. It’s like making up for lost time anyway, as the lovely Danusia put it.
“They owe you,” she’d said.
It took a long time to get an appointment, I’d been put on their shit-list by not getting annual check-ups and the like, so I had to beg them to put me on the waiting list some time ago, and lo and behold, the day the union settled my case with my former employer I got a phone call from the dental office, I was now eligible to make an appointment. So I made one.
It is actually a very good dental center, clean, state of the art facilities and a decent staff. I guess that’s why they are so well booked. But they don’t do some stuff, and I think that’s one of the reasons I went to an outside dentist in the first place, and sort of lost my place in line, as it were.
All I really wanted was a cleaning, until I get some new kind of health insurance, but you just can’t ask for a cleaning; you have to do the whole x-ray, exam, and consultation thing. Then you can get a cleaning.
They are also real sticklers about lateness, they give you a little paper detailing all of the ins and outs of dental center policy, one of which is if you are late three times you are out of the program till the list opens up again.
I’m never late, so that’s not a worry for me.
I planned to get there at least a half hour early for my 9am appointment. I got there at 8:25 after a quick trip to the bathroom.
But I’m running ahead of myself here, I tend to do that, run ahead of myself; and in my wake I forget things or leave them behind.
I was very pleased with myself when I got up to the train platform at Flushing Avenue by 8, and I could see the next M train at Myrtle Avenue just start out from the station. Then I put my hand in my right front pocket, where I keep my iPhone, and realized it was still on the kitchen counter where I’d left it charging when I got up at 6am.
As I watched the M train approach, I could hear the opening chords of the Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go?” in my head. I wanted my iPhone; I never left the house without it. It’s like an American Express card.

The train entered the station, and I figured, I don’t really need it at the dentist, do I? I was supposed to meet a friend in the afternoon, we’d set a time and place but I figured we’d speak beforehand to confirm.
The train doors opened and I got on.
As the train passed my building I looked at the window of my apartment imagining my phone laying on the kitchen counter waiting for me. I was suddenly incommunicado, cut off from the world.
I could not check my emails, answer any calls, post something to Facebook or check for any updates, nor could I click on my NYC Subway app to make sure the M train was going to make it to 14th Street instead of being diverted to Chambers Street because of a signal malfunction at Broadway-Lafayette, something that’s been happening a lot lately. I was bereft.
The train made it to 14th Street, fast, that’s why I was 35 minutes early instead of the 30 minutes I desired. Even more time to sit in the waiting room at the mercy of the calling you for your turn gods.
I let the receptionist know I was here and was given the paper with the rules and consequences. Then I waited. And waited some more. The big clock on the wall made it to 9, then 9:05, 9:15, 9:25. People that came in after me, including a man who was “sorry he was late” because he was parked in the wrong spot and “the guard told me to move it” went in before me. By 9:30 some were even done and out of the place.
The Clash song started anew in my head.

Every time one of the white-coated clinicians came to the glass door to the waiting room I tensed up, only to hear someone else’s name called.
At 9:37 a young Hispanic man called my name.
“Follow me, please,” he said leading me into the labyrinth of the new dental center. The Union had moved to this location four years ago and it was my first time here. We found the room he wanted and he motioned me into a Dentist’s chair. He put one of those little paper bibs on me and sat to look at some paperwork, ignoring me.
It was an open room, not much more than a partition and I could hear the whirring of drills and cleaning wands and people talking behind me. After sitting in the chair for more than 15 minutes a very pretty young Desi woman pulled up her rolling chair and introduced herself as Dr. Zackira. She looked in my mouth while chatting amiably, remarking that I hadn’t been at the center in 5 years. She sent me off for x-rays, which the sullen young Hispanic man took. He put me in a fantastic contraption where I rested my chin on something and held onto these two handles while two metal bars were automatically pressed against the side of my face holding my head still. Then another contraption, a scanner made of white metal and plastic approached my head and made a complete revolution around my head while emitting a high-pitched sound. I felt like I’d been kidnapped by little green men.
We went back to the dentist’s chair where Dr. Zackira poked at my teeth with a sharp dental pick and measured bone loss. She remarked that while it was obvious I took good care of my teeth there had been some bone loss and I would need to see a Periodontist. I know why it’s called “getting long in the tooth” now.
I signed a bunch of papers and was directed outside to wait for the technician that would do the cleaning. Another 30 minute wait.
I got out of there just shy of noon, with my tongue probing the newly bare backs of my teeth. They did feel very clean.
I considered going home for my phone before meeting my friend Olivier, who is visiting from Paris, but I knew if I went all the way to Brooklyn I’d only have a chance to get the phone and drop off my new tooth cleaning kit, a gift from the 32BJ dental center: a G.U.M. toothbrush, a small tube of Crest toothpaste, and two picks, for the gaps between my long teeth. Take care of your teeth now and you won’t have any gaps the way I do when you’re old.

I stayed in the city, whomever was trying to call/text/email or Facebook notify me could wait.
At One I met Olivier as planned and we had lunch.
“Sorry I didn’t answer your calls, I left my phone home.”
“Oh, I didn’t call, sorry.”
I got home at three and picked up my phone that had waited so patiently for me all day. There were no missed calls, messages or emails, and only one Facebook notification about something somebody did that I couldn’t care less about.

I got a call last week form my sometime employers Elly and Eddie, the elderly couple from the Upper East Side whose garden I’ve worked on.
“Oh, Xavier, the garden’s run wild again, could you come over and trim it down?”
I said yes, and after some discussion about the lack of proper tools (she wasn’t able to borrow garden shears) I offered to pick up some on my way there. Elly told me she would reimburse me.
There are precious few hardware stores left in Yorkville, the few left are far in between, and as I found out yesterday none of them carry garden shears.
“This is the city. Who has a garden?” Said one Russian immigrant hardware store owner on Second Avenue. Elly and Eddie do, I was tempted to tell him.
I went to two other stores with less attitude but also no garden shears. There was other stuff to do in their home, so I soldiered on.
“We have these,” Elly said handing me a pair of cheap ten-inch shears. They were going to have to do. They were spring-activated and stiff. Elly had some WD-40 and that helped, but I kept having to oil them through the afternoon.
I was surprised at how much the foliage had grown back; it was like a jungle back there.
This is how I left the three hedge bushes the last time I was there:

This was how they looked yesterday:

The thing is, if you want to promote new growth, you cut, and that’s what you get, lots of new growth. I guess it takes a lot to keep up with nature.

Elly also wanted the wisteria vine cut back drastically; it was sort of overwhelming the garden. That was to be my main priority, besides beheading the bushes, which were incredibly lush, much fuller than when I first met them a couple of months ago.
The wisteria covered the entire fence top to bottom, and was growing into the yards on all three sides of Elly’s yard. It was going to be tough with the miniature shears.

Luckily there is a lot of shade in their yard, so at least the sun wasn’t beating down on me. It was still tough going, requiring a lot more effort than if I’d had proper 16 or 20-inch shears with long handles.

The mini-shears had a one-handed squeeze mechanism that succeeded in giving me a couple of blisters. Maybe next time I’ll be smart enough to bring some work gloves along.
It was actually pleasant being outside and running my hands through the lush green leaves and basking in the rich aroma of the cut foliage, which at times smelled like fresh cut basil. And as I watched vines and leaves and branches grow in volume on the ground beneath me there was a growing sense of accomplishment, and also knowing that the wisteria vine, now denuded of most of it’s leaves would grow back with a vengeance gave me a sense of purpose, of service. I was helping not only Elly and Eddie, but I was helping the plants in the garden grow and co-exist a little better.

After a couple of hours I was done with the trimming, then it was time to gather up the massacred leaves, vines, and branches and stuff them into garbage bags. I wish I knew someplace I could take it all and turn it into mulch, it seems a big waste to just put it all in the garbage. I filled three large garbage bags with the debris and took them outside to the eave under the stoop where the garbage cans are kept.

Elly paid me and we found a proper pair of shears on line which Elly promised to order to have handy for the next time, which will probably be next month by the amount of rain we’ve been getting.
It’s been a good summer for plant life in New York, and it’s actually been a pretty good summer for me as well, doing things and meeting people I would not have met if I’d still been standing behind the front desk at 144 bored out of my skull and wishing I could be outside someplace nice.

42 years ago today I went to see the Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden. I was 17 years old and I worked at a shoe store in the Village called Bloom’s Shoe gallery. It was summer, so I was working three days rather than the Saturday I worked during the school year. I was starting college in the fall.
I won the right to buy tickets by sending a postcard to WNEW F.M. radio; I probably sent in a bunch of postcards, I don’t remember if there was a limit.
A week before the show I received a letter in the mail that authorized me to stand in line at Madison Square Garden and buy 4 $10 tickets. All tickets were $10, and you got whatever seat you got.
The line was huge, and I remember standing in the hot July sun in that little plaza next to the Garden waiting for my turn.
That I had $40 to spend on the tickets was only because I had that job at the shoe store.

One of the tickets was spoken for; I was taking my girlfriend Elissa to the concert. Elissa was a tall willowy girl with dirty blond hair from Bayside who played the recorder. She wasn’t exactly a rocker, more of a recorder player. But she didn’t say no to the Rolling Stones.
The other two tickets I sold to my best friend from High School Richie Miller, for cost. After all, we were best friends. He brought along his girlfriend Diane, who was from Canarsie like Richie.
The day came and Elissa and I met Richie and Diane in front of Macy’s before the concert. Richie had some weed and I bought a bottle of wine. I was never carded since I had a big Pancho Villa mustache.
Elissa did not indulge; she was not that kind of girl. That kept me from dropping the tab of acid Richie had slipped me in front of Macy’s. I was really smitten with her and didn’t want to screw it up. She didn’t mind if I smoked a little weed, and even had a sip of the wine, but I knew she would draw the line at acid.
We went in and took our seats, which were in the second row of the loge. I thought it was better than being on the floor, as we could see the whole stage.
Stevie Wonder was the opening act, and I don’t remember much about his performance, except that he sang “Uptight” and he finished with “Superstition.”

When The Stones took the stage Richie and Diane got up and disappeared into the crowd, massing with a lot of others near the stage. Elissa was staying put, so I stayed in my seat.
It was a great show, I think the first song was “Street Fighting Man,” but they did that and the showpiece of the performance was “Midnight Rambler.” During Midnight Rambler Jagger took off his wide belt and smacked it on the floor every time the band did the all instrument “slam” in the middle of the song.
For me the most memorable song was “You Can’t Always Get What you Want,” and unbeknownst to me it was a harbinger of my relationship with Elissa, but in the moment I was impressed by the French horn player and the choir that took to the stage just for that song. It was just like the record!
They brought the house down. There was so much cheering and yelling and whistling I could have gone deaf from that alone.
The Stones left the stage to a standing ovation, and after a few minutes of much screaming and yelling and whistling, the took the stage again, and Keith Richards launched into the familiar chords of “Satisfaction.” The crowd went wild again.
Stevie Wonder was led onto the stage, and was directed to a microphone.
As the Stones played “Satisfaction” and Mick Jagger pranced and shook his skinny hips, Stevie Wonder suddenly launched into “Happy birthday, Mick!”
It was Mick Jagger’s birthday! What a treat!
Nobody joined in with him, everyone else, the backup singers, Bobby Keys and the horn guys, Nicky Hopkins on the piano, Keith and Mick Taylor and of course Charlie and Bill kept playing “Satisfaction.”
In the middle of a move Jagger swiftly made it to Stevie’s microphone and pulled the cord from the end, and Stevie Wonder’s vocal of “Happy birthday, Mick” ended abruptly.
There were a lot of people on stage, the Stones, the horns, the backup singers, even some people from Wonder’s band were up there clapping hands in time with the beat, and nobody paid much attention to Stevie Wonder, who realized his microphone was dead and started feeling around for another. He was near a keyboard player and reached around till his hand touched a microphone boom. He was home free.

I wonder if I was the only person focused on Wonder, if anyone else even noticed. But I was fascinated how this blind man was flailing around until his hands found a microphone. The dude was determined to wish Jagger a happy birthday.
“Happy birthday, Mick!” Boomed over the speakers.
Jagger promptly made his way over to that microphone and unplugged it too.
I guess he was tired of hearing it.
After the song a big cake was rolled out on a cart, and Stevie was finally able to sing happy birthday to Mick.

If you are a regular reader of this blog or if you know me you are aware of how much I hate the beach. Which is unfortunate, since just about every woman in my life loved the beach. My first wife grew up on Martha’s Vineyard and was a lifeguard and avid swimmer and beach goer. The first girl I ever lived with loved the beach and we spent many a weekend at Riis Park naked and laying in the sun.

There was also a woman I dated briefly many years ago who had a car and knew of a really secluded piece of beach in Far Rockaway where we’d drive to and have sex on the beach in broad daylight. The things we do for love.

So if you know me, you’d be surprised to know that the lovely Danusia and I went to the beach yesterday, she’d actually said “I’m going to the beach Wednesday” over the weekend and I asked her if I could come along.

                                          It was a bit more crowded yesterday.
“You want to go to the beach?” She asked incredulously.

I ended up at Nordstrom’s Rack one day last week, killing time between one errand or another and ended up buying a pair of swim trunks for $20. The ones I already own I bought a few years ago thinking I was still a size that I am not anymore, and those just wouldn’t do.

Another reason to hate the beach nowadays is that I really don’t cut the most dashing figure in swim trunks, and no amount of dieting and working out is going to change that. But the sight of two enormous 300-pound plus women in bikinis the last time we went to the beach last month told me not to worry too much about it. That day I wore shorts and stayed out of the water.

Yesterday, for some reason I was determined to not only wear my new bright orange $20 swim trunks but actually go in the water! I think the last time I did that was a few years ago in the calm waters of Long Island sound in Mattituck. Rockaway beach is a whole different ballgame when it comes to waves.

I should mention that an invitation from my good friend Ezra to use his cottage out there as a pit stop was helpful in making my decision.

It was hot yesterday, and after first going in the morning to 26th street to feed my friend Jenny’s FIVE cats I got back to Williamsburg in time to eat lunch and leave for Beach 88th Street with Danusia. We took the long ride out to Broad Channel where we switched to the shuttle, I felt like I was going out to that house we didn’t buy again, except that was on beach 25th, the opposite end of the peninsula.

I told Danusia that when I was a kid the Rockaways were a 2-fare zone, you had to pay to get off the subway when you got there. When we were kids we just used to jump the turnstile.

The first thing we did after changing at Ezra’s and leaving our valuables there was have some ice cream at a Bolivian beach side food bar. The kids behind the counter were all naturally blond, beautiful white kids who spoke Spanish, as they were all Bolivian, and I couldn’t help but think they were descendants of either Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid or escaped Nazis.

After sitting in the sun and battling the wind for a while (I had Ezra’s beach umbrella) we decided to go for it and waded into the cold water.

                                      Charlie don’t surf and neither do I, but wave hopping is fun. 
The thing about ocean water is that after you get soaked you get used to the water temperature and forget about it. That’s when we started “wave hopping” as Danusia likes to call it and had fun.

The surf in the Rockaways is always heavy, the one time I got pulled under when I was a kid was at Rockaway beach, and it made a lasting impression on a poor swimmer.

But years of experience (and a little practice swimming) made me less afraid, and I just let go and enjoyed myself, despite getting knocked down twice yesterday and hit so hard by a wave I thought it had burst my eardrum.

                                          The lovely Danusia on the way home.

It was quite a workout, and when we got home and watched TV after eating diner I realized that my legs hurt, even my toes hurt from trying to grip the receding sand and stay upright.

If you are thinking of going to the beach, I can report that the water’s fine. Not too cold. But watch out for those waves, and the wind. When we got out of the water the blowing sand felt like tiny needles on my skin, I don’t know why we didn’t feel it before we were wet. If any of you know, drop me a line in the comments!

                                                 Waiting for the A train home.

A little over a year ago I went to my first MOTH, my friend Lexie asked me to go with her and told me what it was all about. She told me they loved drug stories, and I’ve got plenty of those.
On a lark I dug out a short story I’d written sometime ago, and read it on the way to the Bell House in Brooklyn, where the event was being held.
I put my name in the hat, or paper bag rather; they use some kind of shopping bag to draw the names out of. After I did this I turned to walk away from the stage and collided with a young woman holding a large cup of beer that was approaching the stage to sign up. The beer spilled all over her and there was nothing I could do about it. She glared at me so angrily that I slunk away as fast as possible without offering to replace the beer.
To my surprise and shock my name was called right after the intermission, and I had to go up on stage in front of 600 or so strangers and tell the story. When I was done I was so nervous I started to bolt off the stage and the MC, Peter Aguero, had to call me back to pick a name out of the bag, the way it’s done. You can always tell first time storytellers by the way they fly off the stage when they finish.
The crowd laughed through my whole story, I had to wait for the laughter to die down before saying the next line and I hoped I wouldn’t go over the 5-minute time limit. No need to worry, I told the story so fast and breathlessly I was off before the first toot of the oboe they were using to let you know the time is up.
I told my wife, the lovely Danusia about it, calling her on the phone from the bathroom after I got off the stage, and she said: “that’s fantastic!”
Of course after hearing of my experience she wanted to try it, after all she is an actress, writer, and storyteller and I told her she’d be great.
I went back for a second helping a month later, this time at Housing Works Bookstore on Crosby Street. David Byrne was in the audience and I came in second place, not too shabby for a novice. There is a whole subculture of MOTH storytellers and they all know each other.
Danusia went to her first one at Housing works shortly after, on what she described as the “hottest day of the year.” She came in third that night.
I went back to the Bell House a couple of weeks later, on my birthday, and went up again. I tied for second place with my friend Dennis the fireman, whom I’d invited. It was crazy that we both got picked; some people go all the time and never get picked.
That was the last time I went, work and themes I could find no story for kept me away.
Danusia went again in the winter (on the coldest day of the year) and won. She was going to a grand slam.
The Grand Slam was last night, and Danusia knocked the ball out of the park.
It took work, she’s been rehearsing the story and re-writing for the past two weeks, and I had to hear many versions of the story, but all the work and re-writing was worth it.
Danusia was up against some stiff competition, out of the ten story tellers six had already participated in Grand Slams and one of them, Mathew Dicks I believe, has already has already won one.
Mathew went up first, usually the host (who was Dan Kennedy last night) draws the first name and then the storyteller up on stage draws the next name out of the bag. For The Grand Slam each storyteller picked a number from the bag at the sound check and that was their position.
Position is very important at the MOTH, being first is the worst spot. The judges don’t want to give too high a score right off the bat, so unless you have a story that absolutely will blow everybody away first is bad. But Mathew is a wonderful storyteller, very smooth and polished with a poignant but funny tale about being a schoolteacher and reaching unreachable kids. He set the bar high.
Danusia was in the sixth spot, right after the intermission and she was so nervous she got up to go to the bathroom during the break and I started getting antsy when I saw Dan and the producer (Jennifer Hixton) getting ready to take the stage and Danusia was still upstairs in the Green room. Which BTW wasn’t even green and was hot as hell.
I needn’t have worried, the second half started out like the first half, with a violinist, a talented young woman named Mazz Swift played a little something before Dan took the mike. Danusia was back in her seat just in time. She actually opted to stand, ready to take the stage and one of her friends sat in her vacant seat.
Danusia told the story of the first and only time she served on a jury for a criminal trial, and it starts out funny, with her describing how she tried to get out of the commitment and failing, the crowd couldn’t stop laughing, more laughter than anyone else had elicited all night, and there were some pretty funny people up there.

I think it has a lot to do with her delivery and personality, as sort of wide-eyed innocence wrapped in matter-of-fact rebellion.
Then suddenly the story changes, when she realizes she is not who she thinks she is and has to think twice about a decision that could put someone behind bars.
With tears in her eyes and a quavering voice, she brought the story home with the acceptance of the others on the jury whom she’d judged so wrongly. The applause was thunderous, and she topped all of the scores so far.
Like I said, the competition was fierce and the remaining storytellers, especially a nice Orthodox Jewish guy named Eli Reiter (who is actively looking for a nice Jewish girl) who told a story about a close and loving relationship with a Palestinian fellow whom he worked with. It was touching and sad given the current political climate in the Middle East.
The first time I went my friend Lexie asked me if I was nervous.
“Of course not,” I lied.
“Well I’m nervous for you,” she said. And last night I was nervous for Danusia. Every time another storyteller’s scores came up I prayed they wouldn’t beat Danusia, and I kept a running tally (you can see the scores written on a big sheet of paper on an easel up on stage) and the only one who came seriously close was Eli.

At the end Dan Kennedy was reading prompts and keeping the crowd occupied while Jennifer tallied up the scores, and I watched her hands intently. When I saw her draw a heart in front of Danusia’s name I was able to let my breath out. She signaled Dan and tapped on Danusia’s name.
The room went wild with applause, and I’d never felt so relived in my life. It is a moment to remember.
Now it’s my turn to work hard and win one of these slams myself. In the beginning of the show Dan talked about how it’s not about winning, it’s about WINNING! And the only way to win is the way Danusia did it, with hard work and perseverance.

          I was scheduled for a ‘task’ this morning, at 8am. The job was to hang a PowerPoint projector from the ceiling somewhere down in the Wall Street area. The guy had sent me a picture of what they had, the part that goes in the ceiling. They did not have the piece that went on the projector, and I had texted him a suggested bracket.
          I hadn’t heard from him, despite one message yesterday asking him if he’d gotten the part, so I figured I would show up, see what the deal was. I texted him that I was on my way.
As I waited on the elevated platform for the M train to Manhattan, the text came, “did not get the part, can we re-schedule?” I called him, using the blind Google call feature Taskrabbit uses, and left it at that, I’m waiting for the go-ahead.
         It was not a wasted trip, though, since I was also scheduled to feed my friend Jenny’s voracious monster cats. I went up to 26th Street instead.
         The cats were anxious and hungry, or maybe they were anxiously hungry, and there was a note with four little cans: “Divide four cans for three cats!” The cats swarmed me as I opened the cans, I had to push them away just to get the food on the plates.

                                        The plates were licked clean in seconds.

        There are three plates, and you would think each cat would stick to one plate, but they don’t. They all attack one plate at the same time, and the two smaller skinny cats bully the big one called Koko, who I assume is a guest.
        Koko meekly goes to sit in a corner. If I was bigger than the other cats they would not get away with it, I would sit on their heads till they quit eating my chow.
While the voracious monsters were devouring one plate, I took another can and plate in the bathroom, served it on the plate and locked Koko in with it. The other cats, noticing the food going in the bathroom tried to get in.
         “Tough luck, suckers!” I crowed, amazed at my own ingenuity.
          Then my phone started to ping with tasks. There was one right around the corner, tying cables together with zip ties, and I took the job. She said she needed to wait till 9:15, so I cleaned up after the cats, emptying the litter box SOMEONE ELSE was supposed to empty, (NOT Jenny) and I cleaned up all the little shredded pieces of cardboard the cardboard eater leaves strewn around.

                                                 I know it’s a little out of focus, but you get the idea.

           I sat to wait and read the paper and took snaps of the fighting cats, a blog post working itself out in my brain. I didn’t hear form the woman around the corner, so I was going to go back to Brooklyn when I got another ping. Hang a 50-inch TV on 17th Street. I took the job, said bye to the little monsters and walked downtown. I hoped it was not a sheetrock wall.

                                        The fighting cats. Koko stays out of it.

           I got to the address, and it looked like some kind of dorm for Mount Sinai. I called the client and he said it was the right place, so I went up to his apartment, riding up in the elevator with two young people, a man and a woman wearing scrubs.

           “Are you on rounds?” Asked the man.
           “I switched to afternoons,” she answered. Interns, I surmised.
           I got to the door indicated in the text and a young Indian guy in scrubs opened the door.
          “You’re a doctor,” I said.
          “Sort of,” he answered.
           He showed me the monster 50-inch TV and the wall mount. I proceeded to assemble the mount and checked the wall he wanted it hung on. It was sheetrock.
I was lucky I had the drill and assorted wall fasteners that I was going to use to mount the projector.
           “Ah, this is a sheetrock wall, I hope I can find the studs to take the weight.”
           “Do what you can,” the sort of doctor told me. I measured, and the wife, a very pretty young barefoot woman came out to render an opinion (more like a pronouncement) on how high the TV should be on the wall. When we were all in agreement I made my pencil marks on the wall.
             I drilled into the stud on one side, luckily this was a three foot wall that was the side of a closet and I knew there was a stud there; and I was actually able to find the stud near the other edge of the wall after making a big hole for a butterfly nut I was going to use. I was able to use the big carriage bolts included in the kit. Sometimes you get lucky.
             In the process I somehow stripped a nut that went on the frame mount, skinned the knuckles of my left hand trying to force the nut on, and left little dots of my blood on the wall where I hung the frame. Luckily the TV is huge and it covers everything, including the unnecessary big hole.
              The sort of doctor and his wife were very happy and we did the whole payment thing on my app, I gathered my tools and set off for home.
               So I started out to do one thing for someone, but ended up doing another thing entirely for someone else using the same tools. I never heard form the woman on 27th Street but I wasn’t going all the ways back up there even if she had contacted me. Life gets interesting in Rabbitland.