TRUEBOY: GETTING THE BIGGEST HIGH POSSIBLE …a head full of pills and a rainbow of fruit flavors…I woke from a three-day party to the roar of police helicopters over my building. It was like Vietnam out there; I was on the floor, bare foot with my cell, trying to get a car to get my ass to Jersey. I had that sinking feeling—some of y’all know which one I mean… I didn’t know what day it was, and I needed to pee. There was a feeling of de ja vu as I took my iced-out symbol off my neck and dropped it in a gap between the floorboards and the wall. It winked back up at me from where it landed on the dusty black floor of the boiler room. I grabbed an overstuffed ashtray and dumped it in after it. The butts and ash rained down and snuffed out the sparkle. I’ve totally done this before, I thought. Not that it mattered—everyone knew where I was and where I had been--they knew what I looked like and they knew my voice. They knew everything . There was a crackle in my earpiece as Fitz finally answered the phone. He was in Hoboken.
“Hey, Love. Glad you called. I just had the craziest dream about a bomb going off,” he reported. “In Chinatown of all places—in my dream I was watching the news and it showed people lying on the street with their polyester aprons burned into their skin.”
“Listen! Fitz! You gotta come and pick me up! I need to get out of here! This is an emergency, goddamn it. An actual emergency.”
“Then the news showed that the lions outside the public library had also been blown to smithereens. Compressed TNT, just like Madrid. In the dream I was completely crushed by this. They were wearing baseball hats--Mets on one, and Yankees on the other—you know, how they did during that subway series whenever it was. I don’t know—them getting blown up really galvanized me. Even though it was a dream. I woke up really wanting to DO something. Do you know what I mean?”
“Fitz—I’m telling you a helicopter with NYPD painted on the side is bobbing over my building RIGHT NOW. Its fat black and white belly and long metal feet just swung past my window.”
“Why would they announce themselves like that? Listen, calm down. It’s nothing I’m sure. A traffic jam. Whatever.”
“Can’t you fucking hear that?” I screamed and held the phone out into the roar of the rat-a-tat-tat. “Do you think I’m rocking out to some old Industrial—some fucking Nitzer fucking Ebb?”
I heard him sigh and light a cigarette. “Why would a helicopter come to your building? Logically speaking. Duh, you have a slanted roof.”
“Fitz!”
“Sweetheart, go back to sleep. I mean, do you even remember breaking that mirror at XL last night? What you need are some good old fashioned VITAMINS.”
“What? What the fuck.” I shut off my phone. Obviously, I wouldn’t be able to count on anyone from here on in. Although I was it was true that I was scared shitless, there was also something exciting about being left on my own. I sat against the wall for an undetermined amount of time, zoning out. I think I was waiting for him to call me back. Suddenly I realized that I could hear the stereo again. The Cure’s “Close to Me” was playing. “Oh, if only I was sure, that the head on the door was a dream-dream-dream.” The room was completely silent and grey except for the light by the window. The air looked grainy, like a movie still. I stepped to the window and couldn’t see or hear the helicopters. I had been expecting to feel a thud if they landed on the roof but maybe they’d managed to set-down without a sound. Or maybe they had gone away. As far as I could tell, the coast looked clear. But there was no way to be certain. It occurred to me again that it was possible that I was still hallucinating and this whole thing was a dream. Even Fitz’s phone call, and his dream, were parts of my overall dream.
A dream within a dream within a dream within a dream of a life…
A million switches turned in my body at once as I tried to ascertain what was real and what was fake.
I felt a train rumble beneath the building and an idea came into my head. I would head underground where I could blend in and get lost in the crowd. I grabbed my nike bag and without giving it another thought, ran out the door as though for my everyday hustle. I trotted down the three flights with a spinning sense of freedom, a superhero in my shades and blue camouflage nylon jacket that billowed elegantly out behind me. I kept thinking, I knew I shouldn’t have smoked that shit, I knew I shouldn’t have smoked that shit, over and over as again and again I nearly fell on my face trying to look over my shoulder. I could picture the cops, storming down the stairs bowlegged with fat thighs and jet black guns, just like in the movies. A part of me wanted someone to put a stop to everything. I’d already imagined the scene a million times—it was a running fantasy of mine, a harmless little diversion, a place for my thoughts to wander to when I was waiting on line at the supermarket. The pig who would finally catch me and bring me to justice always appeared in my mind as a passport control cop I’d encountered years ago on a train traveling from Paris to Vienna.
“Excuse me,” he said, appearing from out of a secret panel in the floor. His voice was deep and sinister. His outfit made him look like a straight-up Nazi.
“You need a supplement,” he said, waving my passport in front of his face. “I must have your supplement, immediately, please, or you can not continue.”
“Or you can not continue…” I looked up into his face and saw the whole procession of events already unfolding in his eyes: the argument over the supplement during which time the holes in my story would be revealed and my bag and person would be searched, at which time I’d be promptly deported, without a chance to get all my shit out of storage in the Marais…
But it turned out that even though I didn’t have any money, the nazi liked my watch, and so the supplement was marked as “paid” and my passport got a little red stamp and my bags and person weren’t searched I was left to my own devices.
Now, years later, I pushed open the metal door and ran out onto the street, holding my breath—ready to be surrounded. Cornered. Played out. But again, nothing happened. A few people walked slowly back and forth, none of them taking any notice of me. A mustached Mexican in blue jeans and red sunglasses played a mournful song on accordion, and there were some other people, also Mexican, who gathered around to listen. A yellow-eyed dog ran past. And kids too, there were a few cruising around on dirt bikes, speaking Spanish into walkie-talkies.
The sky was completely empty. There were no helicopters, birds or planes to be seen.
No clouds, either.
And god, he wasn’t around either, btw. which would have been cool because that james carvawhoever works the gothed-out, blood stud look to the hilt.
piss n moan
puss n boots
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