Baby Mouse

After a few drinks at The Bar tonight, leaning against one of Essex station red steel pillar, I watch a baby mouse running on one of the rails.

It's tiny little legs skipping on the cold metal as it tries to get traction. It's been a long day. Tomorrow will be even longer. The buzz isn't gone yet. I just want the train to come and take me home. As I watch it, I think that this stupid little mouse can feel from the rail whether a train is approaching the station or not. Every one of us on the platform are freezing our asses off, wondering why that fucking train is not coming and Baby Mouse knows, but won't tell.

And then I feel on my face the cold breeze that always precedes a train. Baby Mouse is still on the rail. Trying to run away from the train. Then stops, turns around, and runs toward the train, then stops again and runs away from the trains. You get the idea. It's sad. She tries to go down the rail but hesitates. Baby Mouse, she thinks, Waow! Man... that rail is really huge and there's no way I'm jumping.

When the train appears in the station, Baby Mouse is still running back and forth. The last split second I saw her before she disappeared under the huge mass of the first car, she was running away from it.

Whether Baby Mouse went to mice heaven or managed to pull out an impossible escape is a matter open to debate.

Friday night's Jack

It’s a nice bar. Kind of low key. Because it’s still early there’s no crowd.

Friday night’s crowd sucks. Same for Saturday’s.

It’s a nice table. Sometimes, things can be just like that. The little candle throwing it’s shivering glow across the dark wood of the table. A friend of mine, he could tell you what kind of wood anything was just by touching it. Sure, he would look at it. But always he would gently run his hand across it before giving his verdict. This friend of mine, he could throw his guitar into painfully beautiful feedbacks like nobody else.

It’s a nice table, you know. A “good table” is what they call it in the business. By a corner window. Orange streetlights in the empty street. Lower East Side.

In a public place, the trick is not to wipe your eyes. And in a dimly lit bar at night, nobody can tell the difference between spilt Jack and salty water.

It’s just that kind of place. Good music, too. Not too loud. When a Depeche Mode song plays on the Juke Box, you don’t even want to laugh at it or grind your teeth. The kind of place where even a Depeche Mode song can sound good. Almost. And soon enough, there’ll be a good ol’ Cure song. Or Bauhaus. Just to make things even.

Alcohol. Jack. Beer. Jack. Beer. Cigarette.

Remember when you were a kid? sitting in History class, thinking, “What fucking dumbasses those poor, exploited workers. Blowing their paychecks in a single night at the local pub. While back home their children are crying from hunger. Serves ‘em right.”

Yeah... Pretty smart thinking, uh?

And then time passes because, really, that’s all that lousy bastard knows what to do with itself anyway, and you know better. So much better.

Also, you learn that there’s no glory in that knowledge.

Not that there’s any glory anywhere anyway.

It’s a good table. I know that bass line…

Because it’s still early, there’s not too many people. But maybe I said that already.

“ ’Member The Clash, Cecyl?”

“You bet.”

“And ain’t that just a good table?”

“Sure is.”

Great table. In the lingo, they call it “Table #12.” But I could be wrong. Truth is, I never bothered to ask.

Because it’s a good table, I’ll have to leave it. When the crowd come. Those Who Don’t Know.

I like the owners, here. I don’t want to blow there business. Besides, gotta go to work early tomorrow.

This place, you always want to check out what is it exactly the Juke Box is playing. Because it’s damn good.

But before I leave the table, there’ll be another double round. Jack & beer. In the legal drugs category, there’s nothing better.
From behind her counter, A. calls, “Cecyl, you OK?” I mouth, Yes — looking at her from my warm corner of dim light, and as I nod, a big smile on my face, I feel more tears running down my cheeks.

The trick in public places is never to wipe your eyes.

Later, she comes to me, asking what’s wrong? Your all face’s wet!

Also, the trick about never wiping your eyes in public? Sometimes it doesn’t work.

I say I’m OK. Because, in a strange way, I am. I say, Don't worry. She says, You want another shot?

“After the beer, yes.”

Again, she asks what’s wrong. So I tell her as much as I can. As much as I can tell anybody. All it comes down to is: Never take out of your Ignore List someone you put in there. No matter how long ago. I say, My exes, they’re like Blue Boxes. I’m not sure whether that’s the reason they became exes, or whether that’s why they became my girlfriends in the first place. It’s like the story with the fucking chicken and the egg — you can’t tell for sure.

Suicide’s on my fucking mind.

“En somme, t’es comme la peste. En moins bubonique...”

Il rit. Tourné vers le ciel. Il s’est fait renversé par un bus. Le chauffeur ne s’en est même pas rendu compte. Tout ce qu’on a retrouvé de lui c’est son manteau et son dentier. C’est vrai.

black force carefully sugar me

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That's what I got in my mailbox today. Not in the spambox. This one's full of penis enlargment ads. Go figure. Somehow, this spam dodged the anti-spam and I'm glad it did. It reminds me of Burroughs'work with cut-ups.

Have you noticed how those anti-spam things that ask you to type strangely shapped letters to make sure you're a real person are getting more difficult to figure out -- even for humans? Or is it just me? Soon, we'll need a software to find out how to prove that we are humans.

A story about "The Epic of New York City : A Narrative History"

The Epic of New York City : A Narrative History

by Edward Robb Ellis

Rich with details and anecdotes. A must read if you have any interest in NYC history.

See more about The Epic of New York City : A Narrative History

Smoke

This is where I go to puke. By now, you should have noticed. So watch your shoes when you step in here.

You can start a new life. Or you can kill your blog. Or you can take it somewhere else. Start a new life.

I'm tired of bitching. Something gotta happen. For better or worse.

This smoking thing is getting way out of hand. Stop smoking and when you start again, it's worse than before. I know how to put a stop to it. This is not the moment. It's not that I smoke much more than I used to. It's that I smoke at times when I used not to. Like in the morning. Like the last before sleep. It sucks.

The "need" is different too. But I don't want to get into that here.

I indulge myself. These days, my mind is fucking weak.

Our new all-white, all-American roommate bailed one night. One week into a new month. No rent. The bastard didn't even left behind the book he borrowed from me.

My other roommate took to boxing at a club a few blocks from the apartment. He asked me to join and if it wasn't for the price I would take him on his word. I feel I need something like that.

I'll never stress this enough...

Fuck this job.
Fuck it.
Fuck.

These days...

These days, I want to put the world into a small, neat, tight ball and throw it as far as I can.

Friday night's beer

Lost post

This computer is so dead. Fucking piece of cheap crap. Fucking ingrate!

Got a blue screen as I was writing. Had to reboot.

The thing that worries me is something like that. This computer is way too unstable now. It's way too old. It's way too fucking slow.

Also, sometimes I have those puzzling messages when a green arrow icon pops up in the toolbar, and a window error window open, telling me that I shouldn't disconnect something without ejecting it through Windows first. You know the type. When it's about a printer or a scanner, it's ok. Even if you haven't unplugged shit, you can just shrug it off. But when the message is about one of your hard drives, telling you that, really, you shouldn't unplug your hard drive when the computer is running... it gives a scary feeling and you start emailing work files to yourself because even the fucking CD burner is not reliable.

So, yeah, fuck this shit. I'm getting myself a new computer if I have to eat chinese take-out for the next 2 months.

moving

Over the phone, J. says: "You sure you don't mind?" I reassure him. It's midnight, I just got home.

Over the phone there is a pause. Then he talks again. "You know, I don't feel like doing this now. If I could, I would wait till tomorrow." He says his girl is not strong enough. He says he's exhausted. To tell the truth, I am too and I wish I wouldn't have to do this.

But on the phone I say, "It's ok." I tell him I promised I'll help him. I should have called earlier, before I left work so that I could have gone directly to his place. I say, I forgot. He says he can come and pick me up in 10.

When we arrive at his place, I know it's going to take longer than I thought. Nothing's been prepared. Drawers are full. The TV, the desktop -- everything is up and running. Outside, the truck is waiting in an empty street of Bed-Stuy. A Uhaul truck. I watch it while they put their shit together. Every now and then, a skinny black guy with more years to him than teeth comes and goes with a brown paper bag in his hand. Between two mysterious errands, he stops to talk with them. He's burned out. Whatever it is -- booze or drugs -- it got him, and it got him good. In the hall, there's also this huge wooden TV set, probably from the 80's. We load the truck.

While we follow a police car I say, "You have interesting characters in your building."

He says he promised this guy $30 bucks to help him with the lighter stuff tomorrow.

When we arrive at his new place, everything goes well at first. We unload the truck and bring everything into the hall then we lock the truck. One piece of furniture, he didn't want to empty the drawers. I have enough moving experience behind me to know it's not a good idea but he insists. So be it. We taped the drawers shut.

As I expected the motherfucker is too long and heavy and requires a lot of clearance to turn. Everything was fine until we reached the stairs. J's new place is on the 3rd floor. The stairs are narrow and steep. Three doors on each floor, and it looks like there's no much place to turn. With the fully loaded baby on our hands, we find out that there's no place to turn at all. To make it worst, the glossy wood of the furniture makes it all slippery.

We sweat and curse our way to the 2nd floor. He's going first, walking backward, and I follow, pushing my way up and carrying most of the weight. I tell him, "Look, let's do this in one go. Just after the turn, stop a few seconds so I can get a better grip, and then we go all the way up." It's so narrow that I have to take the turns by holding the furniture with one hand only. And even like that, there's barely enough room for my arm between the wall and the furniture. From the back of one drawer, on the cover of a bootleg DVD, there's two huge boobs staring at me. Everybody's drawers are the same, but this clearly doesn't help right now. Also, despite the tape, some of the drawers keep opening. So we start turning, the furniture still not sure whether it's going to tip over on the left side or the right, and sure enough J. doesn't stop after the turn but starts climbing the stairs fast. In the empty and quiet building I yell: "Stop! Stop!" He stops and hurts his leg and I barely have the time to grab under the furniture with my other hand. I laugh. This is fucked up.

He says, "You said we do it in one go!"

Then J. calls for a break, puts down the furniture at the top of the stairs while I still hold it a few steps below, and takes out his heavy leather jacket and throws it upstairs. And misses. The jacket goes over the handrail and there's nothing we can do but watch it fall to the 1st floor. I start laughing. He says, "Man! There's my new cell phone in there!" I can't stop laughing. My back hurts, my hands hurt and the furniture is slowly but surely slipping off my hands, but I can't help it.

I say, "Hurry up, go get your jacket!"

But someone just entered the building and he yells at them to bring him his jacket.

I say, "Dude, it's slipping we have to hurry."

So he grabs it again and we start climbing again and he clearly doesn't care that the furniture is hitting and scratching against the wall or that we broke a foot. Hell, we didn't even know there was a foot in the middle of it anyway, so it's not like it's going to be missed.

I'm confident we woke up everybody in the building. At one point, a guy came up and handed us the metallic foot that had noisily rolled down all the way downstairs.

After that, everything else was easy. Even the Queen size mattress was a joke.

This is one of the worst moving I've ever done. I'm usually pretty good with them. It comes close 1st with one I did with Raph, a few years ago in France. Just like Raph to go live in a fucking dungeon. And this is no figure of speech, it was a medieval dungeon. His studio was on the 4th or 5th floor, up a corkscrew stairway. The stone of the steps were at least 300 years old and worn out and slippery and this loser had this fucking big-ass couch that had to be brought up there. A fucking nightmare. We laughed a lot, though.

He drives me home, and it feels good to ride and watch the streets of Brooklyn. I wonder if there are more churches or delis...

Got home after 3 am. First rest in 16 hours. Boot up the computer. No emails. I mean: some professional emails, but no personal emails. I don't know what it means. Or even if it's supposed to mean anything. Whatever.