RUDIMENTS, pt. 86
Making Cars
Some way or another I was determined
to make my life a study hall. That was it.
That was about all I learned from school
too. Except for lies and obfuscation, what
good was all that? The main thing they tried
to do was socialize you, into other versions
of a useful citizen - which basically meant
a go-along slave. You work all these years,
I use to think, to develop a character of
your own, and the first thing they want you
to do once you're done is jettison it. I met
a guy once who said to me, 'Son, whatever
you do, don't do it if it's theirs.' And then the
rest of his point was that it was all theirs,
I'd learn that soon enough, and they were
all killers out to stifle, smother, and then kill
me, or whatever spark there was in me. So,
yeah, that guy knew his stuff. When I was
in New York City for every five people I
knew who worked, I probably knew three
who didn't. It was just that kind of place.
I was never able fully to figure all that
stuff out, all that independence of means,
because it surely was an expensive place.
But these people always got on well enough -
I never knew, maybe they had some big family
money they were slumming on, or whatever.
The other thing abut New York City, and this
made it pretty different from other places too,
mostly, I used to think, because it was pretty
heavily Jewish, was that it was like a Socialist
paradise, I mean, with all that support and
benevolence stuff all around : missions and
food-banks, and assistance groups, food trucks
into the park and stuff - homeless people,
derelicts, dregs, all being taken care of, to the
far, far extreme too. There was a time when
they even had, in the west-side harbor area,
over by the Hudson River piers and all, that
area, some sort of harbor boat thing going
on for drug addicts - as crazy as it was,
not to cure them or solve the problem, but
instead to dispense. It was called Methadone,
like some sort of synthetic replacement
heroin drug, something like that, that
would give these jerks all the thrill they
needed, to stay alive and quit bothering
people. Benevolence only should go so
far, I used to think. Some of those people
should have been just left - whatever
their ultimate fate would have been.
-
You can answer those questions all day
long to yourself, it was that sort of era.
I was always too naive, or separate, to
make a go out of understanding any of
that. Sometimes I used to think New
York people were the very worst. The
ones born and raised there - they were
different. Hard as Hell, blunt, direct, in
your face always about stuff, heavy-boned,
the guys all seemed like killers - long
noses, dark eyes, negative space. Just,
generally, bad faces, no matter the race.
The Italian guys I met were all thugs,
just tough bastards, plain and simple,
who'd grown up on streets like Carmine
Street, Sullivan, Elizabeth Street and
the rest. Everything was learned and
done right there. Mostly that's all gone
now, but it used to be you could still
smell it all, lingering, in the air. I never
even knew how half those guys survived,
made it past 18. If you had a sister, to
begin with, good God, keep her locked
in place, was the rule. Every 30 feet there
was some sort of church or shrine and
some jerky, young, Italian priest trying
to help all the pious little ladies, families,
and all. But it didn't always work. Someone
was always getting bonked and impregnated,
by who and how no one often knew. The
brilliant solution? Instead of finding the
guy and grabbing him to make him the
daddy, they'd stab him. Real genius stuff.
He'd live, his life then would be screwed
up miserable, and the next thing you know,
instead of one kid, he and that girl have
three, and he's living in the back closet
of their four-room walk-up leaning to be
a baker down the street. It was always
that way. Tenements, basements, hallways,
social clubs - and always some lame-ass
do-gooder around trying to make a new
playground or fix up a plaza, which 'new'
effort was supposed to solve everything
and clean up the entire scene. Nobody
cared, and they all just laughed in their
red wine and spaghetti. And that was
just the Italians. There were plenty of
others too : All those really jagged Irish
guys, in what was called 'Hell's Kitchen,'
whatever that meant. They were thieves,
every last one, and drunks second; or first.
Or maybe just drunk thieves. No matter.
Whatever messes got made, they
always got cleaned up.
-
In a way, you could walk in and out
of whichever world you wanted in
New York - which is what was cool
about it. The Studio School people, a
lot of them had money and some taste,
even some breeding. That changes things,
when you can start making decisions and
stand on your own two feet. By contrast,
I always lived like a refugee, living among
others but never really a part of them. That's
probably how my entire scene got cracked up
and amounted to nothing. I really couldn't
be bothered 'representing' myself, to others.
My loyalty was to me, I kept it that way.
Inside the school, in my 'lair' as I called
it, I was kept perfect. I don't know how
it happened but no on ever bothered me, I
had my space and was allowed to keep
my own time. Coming and going, all
hours. There was a black guy, Mr. Rush
- that was all I knew for a name. He lived
way uptown somewhere, and worked the
Studio School sort of like a porter or attendant.
He'd arrive each morning, about 6:30; I'd
hear him or he'd awaken me with noises,
all pre-arranged, pleasant. He did his stuff,
and that was the daily start of mine. There
were nights too when I'd sleep on the
(thinly) carpeted library floor, or had been
reading until sleep, and I'd get up from
there. Because this once had been three
distinct brownstone buildings, there were
stairways and doorways everywhere -
long and narrow, winding, with a door
here and a door there. It took a while
to really learn where everything was
and/or get oriented to the layout of these
three-into-one places. But it was pretty
cool. I go back there now and, surprisingly,
some of it is about the same, but that
'library' now has some fanciness to it
and is funded or endowed and named
for John McEnroe, with a plaque, and
chairs and tables and all. How any of that
happened, I don't know, nor why John
McEnroe and his 'generous grant,' got
involved. No one I knew ever played
tennis. Not even the rich kids.
No comments:
Post a Comment