Salt Water Sound

She always told me to stop thinking so much; that I was above the mind.  Woody Allen once said that the mind is the most useless organ.  So here goes.  We’ll see if I’m any sort of artist without her.

By his adolescence, Miguel had begun to fall prey to all manner of diseases: lechery, coveting of all that was not his, brooding.  All of these and more were part of his prognosis.  He had become so bad at being loved that he had decided that there must be something wrong with him.  Today was different though.  After years of self prescribed medication he felt he was ready to be released back into the world and he said so to his father who did not look so sure.  To assure him of his progress, Miguel grabs a vase from their dining room table and throws it into the wall, denting the dry wall and shattering the vase.  He storms out of the house, with no clothes or money, vowing not to return until he has proven himself.

Ten minutes later and approximately thirteen blocks away, he realizes how childish he is.  A homeless man, patrolling a corner near a convenience store approaches Miguel, reminding him of what the world looked like without money or a change of clothes.

“Oye papi, you could spare me some change for a bottle of water?  It’s 90 degrees out here and I ain’t had nothing to drink but some water out of a public bathroom sink this morning.”

Miguel shakes his head apologetically and keeps walking, mumbling that he doesn’t even have enough money for himself right now.  The man doesn’t seem to care much and offering Miguel a very dirty middle finger spits at his feet and tells him, not so politely, some things he can do with his genitals that don’t seem very appealing to Miguel.

Taking his phone from his pocket, Miguel dials the number of one of his friends from Manhattan, hoping that they pick up.  After three rings, the phone finally picks up and Jeremy’s cigarette-ash voice clouds the receiver.  “Sup, ‘guel?”  Restraining a sigh of relief, Miguel explains his situation and after a few minutes of negotiation, they agree to meet at Jeremy’s apartment on the Upper West Side.  Walking down Broadway, Miguel tries to figure out what to do about his lack of money and Metrocard fare.

It’s hot out but not nearly as hot it will be in a few hours; a light breeze runs through Miguel’s denim shirt and over his legs which are scarred from countless accidents and scrapes.  He readjusts his Washington bullets cap, a cap that he finds to be ironic due to the fact that the team no longer exists.  He likes to think himself funny in the most ironic sense, ironic being a word that comes up quite often with Miguel.

Van Cortland Park is under construction again, this time to install more baseball fields that no one uses and Miguel scrutinizes  it as he walks by, judging the runners who trace circles around the construction and the Hispanics who set up their nets to play volleyball like clockwork every morning.  The tree line at the far end of the park looms ominously in the distance, barring entrance to Miguel.  He knows there are paths out there in that artificial forest but he for some reason avoids walking them, avoids leaving the sidewalk and the safety of bare city.  Pulling his eyes from the park, he ascends the steps to the 242 street station, still unsure of how he’s going to get on the train downtown.

Entering the station, Miguel peruses the vestibule, noticing that the attendant at the toll booth is occupied with a particularly fat woman who can’t seem to understand why she needs to pay 2.25 now when two dollars was already too much.  He glances past the turnstiles towards the train and sees that the “go” light is flashing green and Miguel thinks: fuck it. Running to the turnstile he grabs the sides and jumps over the metal bar, ignoring the police officer who tries to stop him.   He runs through the doors and feels them close a second after he leaves the platform.  Behind him he can hear the officer banging on the door but he knows the train operator can see and hear none of this and he settles down into a seat, waving cheekily at the officer as they leave the station.  Some of the passengers laugh and shake their heads, others glare at him but he has already closed his eyes to nap.  Having lived long enough in the city, his body knows how long it takes to get places and he’ll wake up when it’s time.

He is now sitting in Jeremy’s apartment on 82^nd and West End, nursing a beer and listening to music.  Jeremy is telling him something about the novel he has been working on for a year now but Miguel can’t force himself to be interested.  Jeremy is small and fragile, his body appears to almost disappear when Miguel doesn’t look directly at him and his limbs are thin after months of spending all of his energy on pen and paper living.  He was fair of skin, and rosy cheeked, characteristics that gave him the impression of a 19^th century German school boy, overalls, white shirt and all.  Even with all of this, his most striking features are still his eyes, eyes that merit more description.  They are green on the outside, flecked with brown spots that leak into an inner circle, creating the effect of some unholy fire raging into a black hole, the birth of a universe in his eyes.

He is still talking.

“…maybe if I made Mark’s character less relatable?  Would that help do you think?  A bit unconventional don’t you…You’re not even listening are you?”

Miguel looks up from his beer and focuses on Jeremy.  “Ah.  No.  Sorry.”  He returns his gaze to his beer and then takes a drink.  “Sorry, I’m just thinking that if today is supposedly the first day of me being cured of her, why is my only reaction to my father’s doubt to throw a vase against the wall.  I don’t even really know if I’m ready to do this again.”

“I dunno, ‘guel.  Locking yourself up isn’t doing shit.  You’re just hiding away and the longer you hide away the harder it will be for you to handle reality.  I think this is the only way you can ever really cure yourself of her.  Anyway, fuck her.  You don’t need her or relationships or any of that.  You’re fine, man.  Just fine.”

The second just fine felt less like an affirmation and more like doubt but Miguel ignored it.  He took another swig from his beer and looked around Jeremy’s apartment.  The walls were covered with pictures from the early turn of the 20^th century and late 19^th century, pictures of men hunting, homesteaders, wealthy uptown New Yorkers who lived in the Village when the Village was about as far north as you could go.  These were portraits of Jeremy’s family, old money New Yorkers who had helped write the city’s history in their own way.  Jeremy found the portraits to be a little excessive, he suffered from white guilt, but Miguel, being the historian that he was found them fascinating, placing each generation within their proper place and time, imagining their lives for them.

“Its bullshit you know.”

Jeremy’s questioning face doesn’t reach Miguel as he continues to drink from his beer, finishes it and grabs another, so he voices his expression.  “What is?”

“That you just get over it.  That’s bullshit.  That everything is ok.  It’s been years and I still dream that I’ve fixed things.  There are days where I just try to remember the exact moment where I should have said shut the fuck up Miguel and just tell her you love her.  I didn’t tell her enough that I loved her, you know.  I complained a lot.  I still complain a lot.  I’m complaining now.  How am I cured?”

Looking at another portrait of one of Jeremy’s homesteader ancestors kissing his wife in front of their cabin, he drinks deeply from the beer.  The drink is cold and its hot outside.  Jeremy doesn’t say anything about the beer, understanding and not really caring how much his friend drinks; he doesn’t judge.

“I don’t know if you ever can cure yourself of that shit.  Unrequited love is the love that always stays with you longest, I think.  You have to learn to accept the past is what I think is more important.  You fucked up.  Fuck ups happen.  People live years fucking up, man.  That’s life.  I personally avoid the shit out of girls so that this same shit won’t happen to me.  But you didn’t and that’s cool too.  Just means that you’re gonna learn to make amends.  You’re too smart for this.  To let yourself dwell on the past.  You’re too smart for this.”

And Miguel was smart.  He wasn’t science smart but he had original ideas and he was working now on his doctorate thesis, theories that would change the face of history if they could only get them published.  In a lot of  ways his drive to be so successful had come from her, from his deep desire to prove that he was better than her, or as good as her.  And every day he got a little closer to that goal and maybe redemption would be his.  But until that day he would take another drink from his beer.

“So are we going to Christopher’s?”

Jeremy knew that they hadn’t finished the discussion but it wasn’t really his place to push and he knew that Miguel hated being pushed.

“Yeah let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Miguel was drunk.  He’d been drinking since Jeremy’s which had been around midday and it was now evening.  They had gone downtown to Tribeca where one of their friends owned a townhouse.  They were on the roof, looking up 6^th Avenue to the skyline and a glowing Empire State building, lit red, white and blue for the World Cup.

“Yes I am more Chinese than you, Christopher.  And yes my name is Miguel.  What of it?”

Christopher laughs and shrugs off the joke, one that was long standing in their group.  Miguel had a deep obsession with Asian culture and Christopher, half Chinese, had no sense of his Asian half.  So whenever they could, the group liked to tease him for not being Asian enough and for Miguel being a better example.  The group was small, consisting of Miguel, Jeremy, Christopher, Dan and Marta.  They had known each other since childhood and drinking was nothing new to them.

Dan was talking to Marta about something that sounded serious to Miguel and he stumbled over to sit next to Dan on the floor.  “What ya talkin about?”

Laughing, Dan rubs Miguel’s head to his great pleasure.  “We’re talking about the future of everything.  Wait.  You’d be interested in this.  What do you think about it?”

Miguel, taking no time to think, shrugs and answers simply, “We’re fucked.”

“Well yeah but why?  I mean I was just saying that I’m happy with this whole postmodern approach to everything.  But!” At this he pauses and raises his hand, bending over to look directly into Miguel’s eyes.  Miguel sticks his tongue out at him and takes a hit from the joint being passed idly around.  “But its scary and postmodernism is flawed too.  It’s too much about equality and justice and too little about the facts.  You can’t write books about the way the world was before and base it off your desire to equalize the inequalities without science!”

Miguel stares intently at Dan for a second and then blows the smoke into his face and laughs, coughing out more smoke.  “Eh.  That’s not true.  They’re not just trying to equalize things.  That’s not all postmodernism’s about.  It’s about voicing the voiceless.  It’s the people’s medium.  It’s…” Stopping for a moment, he notices that everyone has quieted down and is staring intently at him.  “Punk rock!”  The group laughs.  Miguel shrugs and lights a cigarette.  “I dunno.  If the world is falling into ruin then I guess I’d rather the academy move in this direction.  At least they’re trying to make up for the identities they’ve smashed and all the agency they’ve taken away.  But maybe it’s all just bullshit fear again.  Maybe they just know that Judgment Day is coming and they’re worried that St. Peter isn’t gonna be as forgiving as they once thought.”

Silence.  Coughing from Marta who has inhaled too much weed.  He looks at her and she looks back intently for a moment.  “You’re too dark, ‘guel.  Just chill out a little.  We’re all gonna be okay.  And if we aren’t, then what the fuck is brooding gonna do?  Smoke some of this and shut up.”

He doesn’t.  Instead, Miguel gets up and leaves, ignoring Dan’s offers for him to stay over at his apartment.  He gets on the train and closes his eyes.

“Who is she to judge me?”

Miguel is drunk.  He’s walking home because there are no buses running this late.  Vancortland is pitch back and he the tree line is no longer visible, only a deep, dark black.  Without thinking, he trips  into the park, making his way towards where he assumes the trees are.  Impossible to see more than five feet ahead of himself, he holds his arms out and tries not to trip as he makes his way.  Suddenly he hears a rustling of grass behind him and he stops.

“Don’t move, motherfucker.”

Miguel doesn’t move.

“Turn around slowly me and give me your shit.  Do it quick! Then you can go home and I won’t have to kill you.”

Miguel turns around and finds himself face to face with the homeless man from the morning.  Seeing recognition on his face he tries to talk his way out of the situation.  “Look I still don’t have any money.  I had to hop the turnstile just to get into Manhattan.”

The homeless man leans closer to him and Miguel forces himself not to recoil.  “Then why can I smell beer on your breath motherfucker.  Don’t smell to me like you don’t got any money.  Don’t fuck with me papa.  Just give me your money.”

“I don’t have any!”  Panic begins to set in but Miguel tries to remain outwardly calm.  “My friends bought the beer!  I promise you I’m not lying.”

The man laughs and the sound scares Miguel more than anything else in the darkness.  “You rich motherfuckers and your rich friends.  Don’t gotta pay for shit.  You just milk your parent’s bank accounts.  And you all pretend like ya’ll are tryin to help us with your politics and your fund raisers and shit but it’s all bullshit.  It’s too bad you don’t have any money.  I’m just gonna beat the shit out of you then since I ain’t got nothing better to do.  Can’t promise I won’t kill you.”

These words and the cool calm with which the homeless man says it force Miguel to react and with a scream he kicks the man and runs.  He doesn’t know what direction he runs in but he can hear the homeless man behind him, cursing at him and promising him that he will kill him if he catches him.  From nowhere, a tree rises up and Miguel runs into it.  He has found the tree line.  He scrambles through it, hands in front of him and his legs kicking aside brush.  When he finally can’t hear the homeless man anymore he stops and looks around him.  All he can see are trees and darkness but he sits down anyway.  Seeing no other option but to wait out until daylight, he curls up and lies down, looking around in fear.  The beer and the hour still are too much for him and he passes out.

The sun peeking through the trees wakes him and Miguel jerks awake, looking around himself erratically as the memories of the previous night come flowing back.  The homeless man is nowhere to be seen and he soon calms down, looking around at where he ran to in his panic.  He is high up on a rock in the woods, looking out over Vancourtland.  The sun is rising and in the moment, Miguel forgets everything.   The rays reach out to touch him; red, gold, purple, and orange all touch him and he breaths it all in deeply.  He remembers Marta.  And he thinks maybe I should just remember to chill out.  Maybe everything will be just fine.