The Shoe Club For Men

Posted on August 17, 2013 by xaviertrevino

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I’ve always loved shoes, don’t know why or how that came about, but shoes are important to me, as a matter of style.

My father wore shiny black oxfords, waiter shoes; I used to think of them as, even though he was a cook. In my dad’s day style was more important than comfort. My mom always wore slippers at home, I guess they were called “carpet slippers” or something, but comfortable for cooking, cleaning, and wrangling four sullen kids around town.

But for church on Sundays she always had on her classic black spike-heeled pumps.

We kids wore sneakers, but we all had our Sunday church shoes, hard, shiny, unforgiving shoes you couldn’t wait to get home and take off. We also had galoshes for the rain and snow. None of us liked galoshes for any reason at all.

One of my first after school jobs was as a shoe salesman at Bloom’s Shoe Gallery on 6th Ave. in the Village. I went on to sell shoes at Olaf Daughters of Sweden (also on 6th Ave.) for a while, and ended my shoe dog career at a place called Yorke Fashion Comfort Center which started out in Forrest Hills and ended up on East 55th Street, looking for the “Carriage Trade.”

If this didn’t influence my shoe-fetishism it at least gave me access to a lot of shoes. I even learned how to fix shoes at Yorke.

One of my regular readers (you can become one too, and get a mention!) Linda Lea Billings made a comment on one of my recent posts, which included a picture of a pair of my boots featured in another post. I really like those boots, John Varvatos side-strap ankle boots. Linda said: “After all, you are the president of the NYC cool shoe club.” See, Linda likes shoes too, and always notices what I wear.

As a kid, Chuck Taylor cons were the rage in the projects, but my mother said we were poor and couldn’t afford them, and we wore Chuck Taylor knock-offs. I would go to school and suffer to the taunts of kids pointing to my “immos”, short for imitations.

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                                My John Varvatos low-top cons.

As a teenager, shoes called “Playboys” came into style; they were pebbled leather with a monk strap and a gummed-rubber sole. I wore these proudly (bought with my own money) and dyed them powder blue when I became a hippie and started listening to Rock and roll music. I also had a pair of work boots I spray-painted silver. In college I had a pair of perforated white Olaf Daughters clogs, just like the ones Alvin Lee of Ten Years After wore in Woodstock.

We are on vacation, the lovely Danusia and I, in Mattituck, Long Island. There was a lot of discussion on what to bring, mostly on her part- I already knew what I was going to bring. I brought two flip-flops, de rigueur for tooling around the island, and two John Varvatos Cons; my white-low tops with the side zippers, and my old Varvatos Bosey boots (no picture, sorry. Too cold to go out to the car), in case we encounter any mud, or rain. They remind me of my jungle boots from my army days.

Danusia brought her “nice” flip-flops, a pair of white Sanuks I bought for her in California last year, and her Dr. Scholl’s Dance Clogs, which I got her for her birthday in June. I bought her these as a replacement for her Dansko clogs, an unattractive shoe if there ever was one.

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                                   Danusia’s dance clogs.

Speaking of unattractive, a popular style here on the Island and in the city are Crocs, (our wonderful host Albert owns a pair) a date killer if there ever was one.

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                                         The dreaded Croc.

Someone posted on facebook a while back one of those poster things that listed pictures of birth control devices for women; there was a picture of a diaphragm, condoms, birth-control pills, and lastly, a picture of a pair of Crocs.

The flip-flops I brought along were my neon-green Havaianas, for town; of course, and my comfortable black Sanuks, for the beach.

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I bought my first pair of Sanuks 13 years ago, when I was going through a really crazed period in my life; those had suede straps that stretched out until I couldn’t keep them on my feet any longer. This was a good thing because the straps had a really loud tiger-stripe pattern on them and drew a lot of comments (and stares), something I can do without now days. The green neon is going to have to do for craziness.

 

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The Dad Plant

Posted on August 13, 2013 by xaviertrevino

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Thirteen years ago this September, I put my Dad in a nursing home. He was 90 and had a lot of health issues, and his doctor kept telling me there was no way I could hold a full time job and care for my dad. So I did it, feeling guilty but at the same time relieved not to have the responsibility of caring for him.

One of the things he had in the apartment in Hell’s Kitchen that I kept was a dresser, and an antique at that, that my father had kept a bunch of plants on and had ruined by overwatering the plants.

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When I was forced to move out of the apartment a couple of years later, I took the dresser but gave away the plants to the girl who lived upstairs, I’ve never been a green-thumb sort of guy. I would just forget to water the plants and they’d just die.

My first wife had a green thumb, she got an orchid to bloom in Brooklyn, and grew a pretty decent avocado tree until she ran out of big pots and it died.

When I remarried, I discovered my new wife Danusia had a pretty green thumb (as well as being pretty!) as well, and our home is filled with plants. Come to think of it, my mom had a pretty green thumb too, my childhood home was overflowing with green, and she even grew mint and made tea from it. I guess I have an instinct for nurturing women.

I actually bought a plant one day; a tiny little thing that cost $3 at the local Food Bazaar, a monster of a store that caters to fat people on Manhattan Avenue. I figured Danusia would take care of it anyway.

After the first time she came with me to visit my dad in the nursing home, she declared:

“Your father needs some green. There is no green in his room.” Danusia grew a cutting from the Food Bazaar plant, potted it, and the next time we went up to the Bronx to see my dad she presented it to him. He seemed pleased with the plant, but in his heavily medicated and demented state he seemed pleased about anything.

                                       ImageMy dad Agustin

The plant grew, and one day I asked one of the nursing home staff who was watering the plant, I’d expected that it would die for lack of care.

“He does. Your dad, he gets cups of water from the bathroom and waters it every day.”

I took to calling it “The dad plant.”

The dad plant flourished in my father’s otherwise depressing little room in the nursing home, it grew and brightened the room a little, and made him happy, I suppose, since at that point he was in a world all his own and didn’t make much sense when we spoke.

Four years ago, on August 10th 2009, I received a call from my brother in Florida, and he told me our dad had passed away up in the Bronx. He was 97. They couldn’t reach me so they called him.

Just seconds later, I got another phone call from a friend asking me if it was true Andy the skateboarder had died, Andy being a mutual friend. I was in a daze and replied that it was my dad who’d died, though I later found out Andy had indeed died the previous day, the 9th, of a bee sting in Montauk. I knew Andy was allergic; I’d taken him to Beth Israel hospital once because of an allergic reaction to Ibuprophin.

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                                        The last picture I took of Andy

Danusia was in Poland they day my father died, and fortunately for me my son Javier was in New York for the summer, so at least I had one person to share in the grief with me.

Javier had known Andy too, Andy had given him a custom made skateboard when he was12. After a viewing for the two of us, I had my father quietly cremated without a funeral. There was no one to attend it anyway.

Andy’s funeral was huge, there were probably 300 people standing in the sweltering August sun as he was laid to rest somewhere in New Jersey. I thought of my dad and said a prayer for both as Andy was lowered into the ground.

I had to go to the nursing home one more time, to pick up my father’s belongings and sign some papers. The social worker handed me two black garbage bags of books, clothing, and personal effects. There was no sign of the plant. I took the books and his papers; I donated the clothing to the nursing home, and didn’t ask about the plant. Hopefully some staff member took it home; or better still, put it in someone else’s room.

We still have the original plant that I bought, and when I look at it I think of my dad and Andy, and I’ll always think of it as “the dad plant.”

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The Observation Deck

Posted on August 10, 2013 by xaviertrevino

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The other day I was watching The Killing with the lovely Danusia and I said to her:

“If I was being executed I would probably notice what kind of shoes the executioner was wearing.”

She laughed, and said, “You have to do a blog on that!”

And here it is!

Since I was a child, I always noticed the little things that others never picked up on, or if they did, it didn’t register in the visceral, emotional way it does with me. The thing I remember most about being a child was how when my father picked me up there was a line on his face where he started shaving, right above there were tiny little fine hairs that had never been shaved, while below it was smooth and hairless.

I noticed that, and how he smelled of old spice after-shave and cigarettes.

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I know these are my shoes and not the executioner’s, but I like them so much I had to throw them in again.

Last month, on my way to my first MOTH adventure, I had to walk on that street in Gowanus that goes over the canal, and walked by some kind of outdoor warehouse that had all kinds of old, useless stuff, tons of it, and if I hadn’t been so focused on getting up on stage for my five minutes of fame I would have spent hours counting how many dummies there were in the lot.

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Here are some of them.

A week later, waiting to get into the Housing Works Bookstore for my second MOTH appearance (am I lucky or what?) I noticed DAVID BYRNE standing across the street from the bookstore.

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I later noticed him inside, sitting in the audience like everybody else. He also waited in line for the bathroom like everybody else. No one else noticed him, and I had to point him out to the women I’d struck up a conversation with.

A few years ago I went to see my wife perform in a Chekov play at HB studios, and there was a scene in which the lead male character comes out in a vintage 1890’s swimming costume, and I couldn’t pay attention to his lines, because I was too focused on his bare feet.

I was sitting in the front row, and there, not three feet from my face, were two male feet, probably sized 12, with two hammertoes on the left and one on the right. I could not stop staring at the hammertoes, so that killed the whole play for me.

It would be the same if I were talking to a woman with canines, I would only be able to stare at her canines and not be able to concentrate on anything she said.

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As a writer, I’m supposed to be curious, but I think I am more observant than curious, so I guess I’d be a lousy newspaper reporter, I don’t care so much about the whys as about the looks, I’m more visually oriented.

The other day at work the mail was late, I work at a “drop house,” which means we have no mailboxes, the postman drops off the cartons of mail and we have to sort it and deliver it to the tenant’s front doors. Unusually the guy before me does this, but the postman didn’t show up till 7pm, 4 hours late.

One of the tenants noticed the mail hadn’t been delivered yet, and asked what happened to the mailman? I told her I had no Idea. She went out to dinner with her husband, and when they came back I’d gotten the mail and sorted it and it was ready in the pigeonhole cart we have that we use to sort and deliver the mail in.

“Oh, the mail came!” She exclaimed, reaching for the mail in her box.

“Did you find out why he was late?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Did you ask him?”

“Nope.”

“I would have asked him.”

Indeed she would have. I did notice it wasn’t the regular mailman though, and he was wearing sneakers.

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Suffering Through The Baba Ganoush

Posted on August 6, 2013 by xaviertrevino

                      

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Last week, a week ago today, actually, Danusia and I went to a dinner party in Westbeth. It was the home of a friend of hers from NYU, a Romanian woman and her American husband. There would be another couple as well as the host’s two children.

When she told me about it, I asked the question I always ask when invited to a dinner: are they vegetarian? Or worse, are they vegan?

I have to ask, because even though I am less of a carnivore than I once was, I am still a carnivore, and if there would be no meat for dinner, I would certainly have to have it for lunch, baring having to show up at the dinner with a sack from Paul’s on second Avenue. Paul’s makes the best hamburger on the Lower East Side. My writing teacher and mentor Charles Salzburg is in love with Shake Shack’s burgers, but I’ll always be partial to Paul’s. Maybe it’s a geographical thing, since he lives on the Upper East Side.

Getting back to the dinner, Danusia said, yes, they are vegetarians, so you better have your meat now. I had two Karl Ehmer hot dogs for lunch, on tortillas instead of bread.

Image Mexican hot dogs, and I joked to Danusia that I would suffer through the Baba Ganoush that night. She laughed, and said, “It will be fun, you’ll see.”

She was right, I had a great time, even though there wasn’t enough hummus to go around and when dinner came part of the entrée was a roasted eggplant-in-a sauce concoction that though not quite Baba Ganoush was close enough to my prediction. There was roasted tofu in a sauce for protein, and a side of veg all served over white rice.

The best part of the dinner was the company, it turned out that we had all lived on the Lower East side at some point, and we all traded Lower East Side stories. It was like a mini-Moth competition.

The other guest couple were a French filmmaker and his wife, still LES residents, and when he mentioned Edgar Oliver, another Lower East sider, I said; “we know that guy.”

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I told him about the first time I’d seen Edgar, and had fallen under his hypnotic spell. It was at a Herbert Huncke tribute meeting, and I started to describe what Edgar had read, and Francois, (of course Francios!) said: “New Orleans, 1938.”

“That’s right! How did you know?”

Francois had actually made a short documentary on Herbert Huncke,Image

and told us about that. He told a great story about showing two visiting French girls “the real New York,” which involved them helping Huncke try to revive someone from an opiate overdose in his room at the Chelsea Hotel. That prompted more Chelsea hotel stories, Danusia told how she dated Dee Dee Ramone and stayed with him in his room at the Chelsea, I never knew anybody famous there, but I did know enough musicians and lonely rich people to have spent some time there myself, so I got to chime in, and we all had our LES stories. In all it was a great evening, we made new friends and swapped great stories- I got to tell my Nixon story again since it happened on the Lower East Side, and despite the spare meal I had a lot of fun.

We’ll invite everybody over to our place soon- I’ll make a nice Pernil- roast pork butt if you don’t know Spanish; but I’ll make sure to throw in a couple of eggplants for the non-indulgers.Image

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What Is The Law?

Posted on August 3, 2013 by xaviertrevino

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Since losing my handyman job a lot of good things have happened. I’ve started this awesome blog, gotten up on stage at the MOTH a couple of times, actually submitted some of my stuff to actual publishers, but best of all, I’ve lost 20 or so pounds.

One day I realized I didn’t have any meat for dinner, and the choice was to go get some or eat something else. I ate something else instead, and came to the sudden realization that meat didn’t have to be an essential part of every meal, something I’d held as gospel my whole life.

Since that day, I only eat meat once a day, and far less of it than I used to. And I try to keep it to fish or fowl. Not that I don’t enjoy the occasional hot dog or hamburger.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with Maggie Estep’s recent blogpost ANIMALS, which you can find here: http://www.maggieestep.com/animals/.

But it is an interesting read, so read it if you can.

When I started doing this, one of my all-time favorite movies came to mind, The Island Of Lost Souls. This is a movie from the 1930’s based on the H.G. Wells story The Island Of Dr. Moreau.Image

 

The movie stars a terrific Charles Laughton as Moreau, and Richard Arlen as “the guy who falls off the ship.” But the best one in the movie is an unrecognizable Bela Lugosi as “the sayer of the law.”Image

After Charles Laughton, the evil Dr. Moreau playing god, whip in hand demands of his “part man, part beast” denizens “What is the law?” Bela answers for all:

“Not to eat meat.” Then he intones:

“Not to run on all fours.” And finishes with the admonishment:

“Are we not men?” I’ll bet Mark Mothersbaugh is a fan of this movie too.

I don’t do it for any moral reasons; I’ve slaughtered and eaten a couple of animals myself, and helped slaughter and dress bigger animals. That’s what humans have been doing for a long time. And face it, if a carnivore found you in the wild and was hungry, he wouldn’t think twice about how happy a life you’ve lived, it would just kill you and eat you.

So, I’m not going to go into the science of how much saturated fat there is in meat, especially red meat (and pork is red meat despite appearances) or just how bad meat with steroids is for you, all I’m going to say is that I can see the difference in the mirror.

One of my favorite new dishes is avocado and tomato slices on top of garbanzo beans I’ve made myself. It qualifies as vegetarian, even though avocados and tomatoes are technically fruit.Image

And check out this awesome piece of salmon with asparagus, greasy, but I hear that fish oil is good for the brain.Image

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The House On Mink Hollow Road

Posted on July 30, 2013 by xaviertrevino

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The other day I came across a name on facebook- it was on another friends comment, one of those so and so via so and so things, and I recognized the other person’s name, or at least part of it.

I got in touch; I asked are you related to so and so? And she replied yes, he was my ex-husband. It was a guy named Gary Windo, her name is Pamela, and she still keeps his name. When I met him he was married to someone else.

Gary passed away sometime in the 90’s.

I met and hung out with him in the 80’s. He was a musician, a saxophonist; but he was much more than that. He was the leader of the pack, the pack I belonged to at the time.

He was older than the rest of us; probably in his late 30s or early 40’s.We, including Gary’s other wife, were all in our late 20’s early 30’s.

I did a lot of things with Gary and the other wife, mostly drugs, but the most memorable thing we did was spend the Memorial Day weekend in 1987 at Todd Rundgren’s house in Bearsville, NY.

Gary invited us, but our friend Laura was the one who drove us up there that weekend. Laura’s husband was in a rehab and she desperately needed company, and my wife Kathy and I were more than happy to oblige. We drove up to Bearsville in a car Laura had borrowed from her mom, listening to Prince all the way.

We got there, and Gary and his wife Ellen were waiting for us, especially me, since I was bringing the goodies.

I was excited, when I was in high school I really loved Todd Rundgren, I had the “we Gotta Get You A Woman” single that I would play incessantly hoping it would get me one when I was 16.

A few short years later I was in awe when I discovered that Todd hung out at Max’s Kansas City, just like me! And he was a big NY Dolls fan, just like me! I didn’t realize he was so tall, made even taller by the high-heeled boots he wore; I guess all of the men who were fans of the NY Dolls wore platform shoes at Max’s.

Todd also had green hair, and wore sort of glittery clothes. He fit right into the scene.

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But Todd was not there that Memorial Day weekend, just me and Kathy, Gary and Ellen, Laura, and a guy I didn’t know with his wife and 4-year old daughter.

The guy was one of the Psychedelic Furs, I don’t know which one since I never really cared for their music. But he had the cutest little 4-year old.

Kathy was pregnant at the time, and the little girl was obsessed with Kathy’s belly.

I remember sitting out by the pool, and the little girl kept asking Kathy questions, like “When is it going to come out?”

“Can you feel it swimming around in there?”

“Can I listen to your belly?”

Kathy was a good sport about it and let the little girl put her ear to her belly and feel the baby kick. At one point the little girl insisted on going in the pool, though it was unheated and was still pretty cold. She came out shivering and crying soon after.

That weekend was the first time I ever watched “The Gods Must Be Crazy.” Gary rented the movie in town and insisted we all watch it together. I liked the movie so much I bought the cassette when we got back to Manhattan.

That was the thing about Gary; he would discover things and share them. He gave me a book about the Kray Brothers, London gangsters in the 60’s. The book was made into a movie in the 90’s. He also turned me on to William Kennedy, he gave me “Ironweed” and I’ve read every book of his since.

Before we left for the city, Gary even started giving me some of Todd’s belongings, declaring, “Todd never wears this stuff anyway.”

It was a shopping bag full of stuff, Gary was very generous with things that weren’t his; but the only thing I remember of the bagful of stuff was a pair of boots.

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These aren’t the boots, these are mine, but very similar to the boots Gary gave me.

Unfortunately, since Todd is well over six feet tall I think the boots were a size 13, so they didn’t fit. Oh, I tried; I stuffed paper in the toes and put them on my size 10 ½ feet- to no avail.

I kept them in my closet and would show them to people, until finally a friend said, “those are really Todd Rundgren’s boots?” I said yes. He tried them on, and though his feet weren’t much bigger than mine, he had to have them.

“You’re sure they’re Todd’s?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“I’ll give you $20 for them.”

“OK.” I said. They didn’t fit anyway.

 

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Invasion Of The Shredded Bald Men

Posted on July 27, 2013 by xaviertrevino

Image Vin Diesel

Last week I was headed home from work, it was Saturday night after 11, and the train was full of young people headed downtown (or to Bushwick/Williamsburg) for a night out. As a writer, I am an obsessive observer, and I look at people.

What I noticed that night was that there was an overabundance of very fit young men in tight suits and shaved heads. I call it the Vin Diesel look, but that’s a little extreme.

It can also be called the Die Hard look, in honor of Bruce Willis, who actually pioneered the look. But most of these young men would probably say: “ Who’s Bruce Willis?” if you mentioned him.

So I counted at least ten of them, mostly Latino, a couple of African-Americans, and a couple of white ones, and not all wearing suits. There was a group of five who were together, they were wearing the suits, tight fitting shiny suits and shirts with open collars open to the sternum to show off those gorgeous pecs. Let’s roll that beautiful pec footage.

For me that seems like a lot of work; an awful lot of going to the gym; and shaving your head every day MUST be a lot of work.

There is a companion to that look, the stubble look (sported mostly by men loosing their hair anyway) where they have a two-day shadow (as opposed to a five-o’clock shadow) of hair all over their face and head.

Again, it must take work, or at least a special kind of electric razor to achieve a 32nd of an inch’s worth of stubble all over your head. I worked for a guy like that, an Irish-Italian guy named Glen who it was rumored was on steroids, but he was balding, and I’m pretty sure he was a Vin Diesel aficionado. He once asked me if I was going to “The Parade” one first week in June.

“What parade?” I asked.

“The Puerto Rican day parade.” He said.

“What would I want to do that for?” I asked, and then remembered he had a Puerto Rican fiancé. I think they are still engaged.

When I was that age, the age of the young men on the train, not Glen, there were more important things to do than go to the gym and shave my head, though I did both those things during my brief stint in the U.S. Army. I went to the gym in the army when I was broke and bored, and I shaved my head once.

I had to shave it, what happened was that when we were told we’d be getting another haircut just two short weeks after the first, and we had to pay for it, I decided I would do it myself and borrowed an electric razor from someone. I gave myself a mohawk; after all I was on my way to an airborne unit (they famously gave themselves mohawks to scare the Germans in WWII); and it was 1980- and I was sort of a punk rocker.

But the Drill Sargent wasn’t having it, he told me to “get that shit offa your head” and I went up to make it more even.

That was in January in Georgia, and I froze my head off that January. If you shave your head in the winter, you’d better have a good hat.

Before I went in the army I wore my hair in a sort of Afro, just curly and standing up. In high school I had the distinction of having the second biggest Afro in Brooklyn Tech, my friend Richie had the biggest, even though he was Jewish. Neither of us went to the gym to exercise, and when we HAD to go to the gym at Tech we smoked pot in the stairwell leading up to the track.ImageLuis and Me in 1973

On the other end of the modern style spectrum are the skinny white boys who sport a 1930’s hillbilly look. They all wear hair that is very short on the sides but long on the top, carefully combed back away from the forehead. A lot of them compliment this with varying lengths of beard, depending on how hillbilly you want to look. They wear crisp shirts tucked into slim jeans or “trousers” and often wear suspenders. Or “braces.”Image

The slim jeans (or trousers) are then carefully rolled up to show off very expensive “work boots” that have never seen a days work in their lives; preferably $400 Red Wing boots made exclusively for J. Crew. They all look like clones of George Clooney in “Oh Brother Where Art Thou?”

Any way, this is all just an observation (and an opinion, I guess); and I’m glad all I needed was jeans, t-shirts, and the ripped-up black motorcycle jacket I won in a poker game to look cool when I was young.

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This One’s For The Kitties

Posted on July 23, 2013 by xaviertrevino

ImageKiwi

Sometimes I feed cats for people in the building when they’re away. This summer I’ve been part of team “Kitty,” feeding “Kitty” while her owner is gone. She has a beach house somewhere and spends four days a week there.

The other night, my teammate, a girl named Catherine came in to see “the cat.”

“I mean Kitty. Wow, what an original name.” She smirked.

I lived with a girl for a while many years ago who had a cat called “Miss Kitty.” An obvious Gunsmoke fan. The first night I spent with her was almost the last, as I stepped on one of Miss Kitty’s kittens (say that three times fast) on a trip to the bathroom in the dark. The kitten was OK and I was forgiven.

Miss Kitty was a skinny Siamese chocolate point with one eye, and as I mentioned, unfixed. My least fond memory of her was spending a weekend taking care of her while she was in heat. A very noisy experience.

Getting back to KITTY, another skinny cat of no distinguished markings, the woman wanted me to pet her but every time I try she runs away and hides.

ImageI lost one cat-sitting gig for not petting the cat, a big hairy Angora called Jade Riley (now that’s a name) who I was not too keen on touching on account of the hair. I don’t know how the woman found out, maybe she had a nanny cam, but she got another doorman to do it after that.

I had another regular, Frank; a big fat orange Tabby who went first class all the way. Frank (who names a cat Frank anyway?) had an electric litter box that had a rake to rake away the poop after he went, and electric food dispenser with a timer, (all I had to do was fill the dispenser with a can of cat food every day) and a reflecting pool electric water trough that circulated fresh water for Frank. That woman moved out.

Frank put me in mind of my friend Tommy’s cat Clyde. (Really? Clyde?) Clyde was another big fat orange Tabby who weighed 30 pounds. Clyde got sick with diabetes, and one day there was a fire in Tommy’s building while he was at work and Tommy’s wife ran out in her PJ’s on orders from the FDNY. When she reached the first floor she realized she’d forgotten Clyde, and had to go all the way back up to the 12th floor to get him, as Tommy would have been very unhappy if Clyde died of smoke inhalation or something. Clyde died of the diabetes a couple of days later.

Any way, all of these names, Clyde, Frank, (Frank’s on a par with Tony as a name for a dog) Kitty, make me wonder what I would name a cat or a dog, if I had one.

If it were a male, I’d call him William Blake, in honor of Johnny Depp’s character in Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man. If it were a female, (cat or dog) I’d call her Madame Blavatsky, in honor of the 19th Century mystic. Now those are names with class.

My wife’s cat, a little calico female we got at some smelly rescue place on East 4th Street already had a name, Kiwi. I told my wife to keep the name; after all, the cat before was called Banana, another fruit name. Not my cat anyway.

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The Nightly Parade Of Doggies

Posted on July 20, 2013 by xaviertrevino

Owner/ Copyright holder

Marvin

Every night at work (I work as a doorman on the UWS in case you don’t know) I watch the parade of dogs marching through the lobby on their way to do their “business” one last time before bedtime.

There is never any particular order, most people walk their dogs at the same time or close to it, but often they have gone out, or worked late, or just plain didn’t feel like walking the dog, so the order varies on any given night. What never varies is that they all gotta go.

Last night it was my boss first, very early, seven or so; with his mostly Jack Russell mutt who pulls and strains at the leash like some bloodhound hot on the scent- except he’s not a bloodhound and there is no scent. He always breathes heavily; I call him “The obscene phone caller” on account of all the huffing and wheezing he does. He also lunges and barks at any dog that gets within striking distance. My boss calls him Tony. Who names a dog Tony?

My last boss, a big Dominican guy with slicked back black hair and a big mustache, had a Chihuahua he called Spikey- now that’s a dog name- but I chose to call him Sparky (another good dog name), and they looked so comical, the big guy and his little dog walking down 86th street.

Then came the Portuguese water dog Coco- a very friendly and demure (if a dog can be demure this one is) that likes me so much she’s always trying to bury her nose in my crotch. Or maybe she just likes the smell.

Then came the blind black cockapoo with his super control freak lawyer of an owner. A woman in her 50’s of remarkable heft, she directs the dog’s every move in a voice you use for the feebleminded.

“Walk here, walk there, get on the elevator, that’s none of your business…” She gives me the shivers.

Last night, because it was so hot, she actually asked me if I wanted an “ice cold drink of water”, but I demurred (I like that word) thanking her profusely, the last thing I wanted was for her to return to the lobby.

After the cockapoo came the Blue Kerry from the second floor, a dog trained to be a “therapy dog”; her owner is a LCSW after all, and a very good trainer indeed. This dog can march to cadence.

blue dogOn the opposite end of the spectrum is the black female poodle belonging to the sort of famous writer, a big guy with white hair who looks like he’s entering in an Ernest Hemmingway look-alike contest, an “unkempt” man (another tenant’s word, not mine) form one of the upper floors. This dog will lunge at anyone close enough to be lunged at, doesn’t bite; just tries to climb all over you. Not pleasant at all trying to pry this dog off.

The writer; who by the way never talks to the help unless he wants something or has a complaint; recently added another dog to his stable, a small white one of undetermined breed that looks like a cross between a poodle and a dachshund.

I can’t even tell if it’s a male or female since it’s legs are so short and I’m not going to bend down to look underneath. It looks like a white hairy caterpillar. He looks like he’s walking Mutt and Jeff down the block when they are all together.

The last to come down is usually Alvin, a longhaired dachshund also from the second floor, who is afraid of crossing the gap between the elevator doors and always has to be dragged across. If I don’t see Alvin I know it’s because he’s already gone upstairs. I know this because I saw him do it once when I was the handyman and doing work in their apartment.

So the parade was over until the morning shift, that is unless some doggie gets sick in the night.

Poop B 4 U go 2 bed.

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The Sexy Tooth

Posted on July 18, 2013 by xaviertrevino

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When I was seven, I slipped in the bathtub and chipped one of my front teeth, the left one. It was a small chip off the inside corner of the tooth, and it gave me a slightly gap-toothed, weird, but somehow appealing and later sexy smile.

The way my mother liked to tell it, my dad, who was sitting at the kitchen table by the window in his boxer drawers and undershirt sipping whiskey and smoking a Lucky; when he heard me shriek after falling, said:

“What’s all the noise about?” And my mom said:

“He fell.”

My dad then opened the window and looked down to the ground seven stories below and said:

“I don’t see him.”

Years later, when I was a young man and very invested in getting high and getting laid; an endeavor I felt was helped greatly by my slightly gapped-chipped tooth smile, I paid scant attention to my dental hygiene. It was not a big topic of conversation at home, my mother took us to the dentist when we were kids, and I went until I was old enough to blow it off. We were taught to brush our teeth before we went to bed.

I ended up homeless for a little while at the age of 25, a couple of years after my mom died- and this didn’t lend it self to good dental hygiene either.

I finally saw a dentist again when I joined the Army, my solution to the homelessness problem- and the first time I had my teeth cleaned and examined in probably ten years the dentist, an Army captain, scolded me severely over the amount of plaque on my teeth and my dental hygiene in general.

“Your teeth are gonna fall out.” He cautioned.

About 13 years ago, long after the dentist’s warning and a whole lot of “life experience,” His prediction started coming true. I broke a tooth, a molar, while eating, and when I went to the NYU dental clinic, the dentist told me there wasn’t enough tooth left to save, and pulled out what remained. I started going there sort of regularly, by the age of 45 the results of my poor dental hygiene were coming home to roost and I was having a lot of toothaches and such; and once the teaching dentist told the student dentist about a particular tooth- “Just pull it. It’s gonna fall out anyway.”

A lot of my teeth, particularly the upper ones, were “off the bone,” meaning there was very little left to hold them in place.

So the sexy tooth, my beloved chick magnet, became loose enough that I could worry it with my tongue and feel it move.

One time, I was talking to a friend who had her four-year old daughter with her, and the daughter, a cute little girl named Natasha- looked up at me and said:

“Mister, your tooth is moving.”

That night, at work, (I was a night porter and I spent all night cleaning a building by myself) I looked in the mirror obsessively playing with the loose tooth. At one point, I made it turn completely around, the tooth was facing backward! And when I tried to turn it back to the front, the pain was so intense, and it was wedged in tight between the other good teeth that I thought it would stay that way forever. The chip was facing the wrong way. Then a tenant walked through the door, and I panicked. I had to talk with my mouth closed like some kind of jailbird. But I needn’t have worried, tenants pay very little attention to their service workers, I could have had a hatchet buried in my forehead and I doubt the tenant would have noticed.

After I was alone again I got the tooth loose, but now it was just sort of hanging there, held only by the nerve root. Every time I took a step the tooth would hit one or the other of its neighbors and a searing pain would shoot through my head. I couldn’t do this all night. I knew it had to come out, and I wasn’t going to wait to see a dentist.

I steeled myself, and looking in the mirror (for me curiosity trumps pain) I held it between two fingers and tugged.

The pain was like nothing I’d ever felt before; it felt like I was pulling my left eye out through my mouth. I was in tears. But it had to be done. I had no idea a nerve could be so strong.

I took a deep breath and yanked, the tooth came out, and there was very little blood.

I started going to my union’s dentist after that, and embarked on a personal program of “Good dental hygiene.” I went for regular cleanings, got the ones that needed fixing fixed and the ones that needed replacing replaced. I brush after every meal when possible and chew Orbits sugar-free gum. The gum really works.

So kid, the moral of the story is: See your dentist twice a year, floss regularly, and get your teeth SCALED (that one’s for my good friend MAGGIE ESTEP, who inspired this blogpost) if you need, and brush, at least before you go to bed.

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