Page 39

I’M RIDING SHOTGUN, breeze-happy in the Automatic Climate Control. Billy’s chiefing on a joint in the back, bobbing along to Big L’s “The Heist”.

The plan is to spend the night in Southwest Harlem – four blocks from Columbia – at the apartment of one of Davis’ friends. A pit stop on the nostalgia train for me, and, more importantly for Billy, a sweet squirt of debauchery in the Lecherous Apple. It just feels good to get out, to be moving again, like running downhill. No more vibrations in my pocket.

I-95 South is an asphalt hell-hole, suffocating, fume-laden at the tail-end of rush hour. A twenty-foot black-and-white Derek Jeter eye-fucks his new Movado timepiece. McDonald’s crucifixes coax their congregations with promises of the holy trinity– High Trans-fat! High Sodium! Free Happy Meal Toys!

Billy tosses the roach out amidst a thick cloud. An elderly couple in a Lincoln glare. “At least we’re not going to die soon!” he screams at them, clown-smiling. They pull off the highway. Davis’s CDs cycle endlessly through his unique brand of nineties minutiae – Mobb Deep, Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Nas, variations of alternative, jangle-pop, post-hardcore punk, trip-hop. The Ghosts of Genres Past. I drift in the familiar guitar chords, the middle-school-dance mystique. A breath of old-fresh air.

Traffic crawls.

Davis keeps checking his iPhone. Just after we pass Exit 18 in Southport we see the cause of the congestion, across the median in the oncoming lanes. A truck has skidded perpendicular to the road, four huge tracks of burnt rubber streak the asphalt. The cab is facing us, windshield smashed. Gobs of blood, gray and brown pieces of clothing are splattered across the white hood, a messy abstract canvas. A compacted heap – what might have been a yellow Nissan Altima – rests against the median. Pieces of glass litter the road like parade confetti. People are talking on two-ways, drinking Dunkin Donuts iced lattes. Two paramedics rush past, wheeling a man in a stretcher toward a nearby ambulance. A third paramedic, his sleeves and latex gloves soaked, tries to hold in the strings of glistening hamburger meat seeping out of a gash below the man’s ribcage. Billy rolls up his window, lights another joint, keeps saying Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ between hits. I rifle through my backpack, open a few of the orange bottles, swallow what I hope are a Zoloft, a Percocet, and a Prozac. Davis gives me this look in the rear-view mirror and I know what he’s thinking. In front of us, an old beige Chevy truck with a navy blue bumper sticker that says, I’m Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone…


…and I’m walking past the baggage claim at JFK two-and-a-half years ago, talking on my cell phone to Lauren who’s at school, trying to avoid the young couple that had been sitting in front of me on the flight, making out the entire time, exchanging handjobs under the complimentary blanket. Lauren’s trying to hold it together, but she’s sobbing, telling me she loves me and I’m not crying and I can tell she’s really drunk.

Maybe it’s because, given what’s happened, she feels extra bad about fucking Archer Hamilton on the back seat of a charter bus headed to a Young Democrats formal the night before, something I won’t find out about until I get back to school two weeks later.

Lauren’s saying that everything is going to be fine in between sobs and swallows of what I’m assuming is a mixed drink involving watermelon vodka or something equally sinister. Aunt Susan’s on the other line. She’s calm, sticking to facts, mapping out the next couple of days, the lawyers, the medical examiner’s office, the funeral director in East Fairport, which of my cousins are staying with me for the service and I’m not really listening to any of it and the couple in front of me is sweaty, gleaming, making out roughly on the escalator.

Davis is waiting outside the automated doors in a dark gray suit, leaning against his father’s Maserati. He tucks away his cell phone, smiles sadly, takes my bag.

“Thanks,” I say, “I really appreciate you coming to –”

“It’s the least I could do,” he says. “Your parents, you know how much they meant to Dad, to the whole
company. It’s…” he trails off, looks at the ground.

“I know, it’s been –” I stop and realize everything. I’m starting to fall, not faint, but toppling against the weight of my own legs. Davis is pulling me up and saying I’m here, I’m here, don’t worry before I feel the taste of tears running down my cheek and neck, staining my tee shirt and Davis is taking three Lexapros out of a bottle he’d had in his pocket and is feeding them to me and I’m swallowing and the ride back to East Fairport takes no time at all.

Rockin' the Suburbs (Is a Good Idea for Even the Biggest Asphalt-Addicted, Tight-Jeaned Burnout City Freak)

A recent trip to upstate Connecticut, the land of Huskies, steamed cheeseburgers, and most importantly, my birth, has given me a much needed breath of filth-free air, a reminder of why the first twenty-odd years of my life were zenlike when compared to the gonzofied sensory-explosion monkeybomb world I currently inhabit -- and more than a few reasons why I will ultimately return to live out the rest of my days in a kingdom of soccer milfs and weed whackers. I'll list a few of these until the "pizza" delivery guy shows up with a fat bag of "pizza", or until the technology-induced ADHD kicks in, whichever comes first.

• Trees. Yes, Central Park and Riverside Park offer the occasional unspoiled leafy glen, and all the biking, tennis, cross-country skiing, frisbee, and sunbathing options that any urban treehugger could possibly desire. But they also offer more than the occasional glimpse of foaming junkies getting their tweak on, and Puerto Rican hookers having their asses eaten out next to busy playgrounds. Not to mention the major highway that runs alongside Riverside, or the European tourists make the Great Lawn seem like a Great Place to swallow a bucket of lighter fluid. In CT, I went on a 15-mile bike ride through a quaint town center, a primeval forest that has been unchanged since we gave smallpox to the Pequots, a nature preserve, a river that doesn't have a highway next to it, rows of endless tobacco fields, a cemetary with stones from the 1600's, the pristine campus of my prep school, and a dirt road next to a turf farm where my buddies and I used to "study" after school. Not once during this entire ride was I accosted by a crackhead or subjected to the constant ruckus of taxi horns, packs of creepy obese children, garbage-day stink-smells, and crosswalk stagnation. Besides the occasional car and dog walker, this was Nature on my own quiet, bird-call-filled terms. Wide open (if manicured) spaces, the pump of the bike, the empty blue of the sky and my peace-starved head. Transcendence ahoy!

• NO HIPSTERS!!!

• Real dogs. People actually have real, outdoorsy, L.L. Bean Catalogue-worthy labs and retrievers, not the pathetic, yappy punt-worthy rat-creatures I have to avoid stepping on all the time. And the dog in the 'burbs are much happier, free to roam, to chase rabbits, to be actual dogs, instead of crying blankets for miserable 30-year-old single women who get stood up by their match.com dates. 

•  Pickup trucks with the occasional racing sticker. 

• Golf. It's crack for white people (except for the white people who actually smoke crack). I didn't realize how badly I missed it until I played a round. The attraction is simple: Take the Nature idea and add open boozing and swearing and hitting things with a metal stick. There is nothing finer on God's earth. Besides porn. And "pizza". 

•  Did I mention no hipsters?

• In the suburbs, there's much less room for dissatisfaction. When the choices of what to do on a Friday night are limited to a dozen restaurants and a handful of decent bars, there are two options: either stay inside or make whatever you're doing fun.[Not to forget house parties. Not sweaty, forty-assholes-cramped-into-a-tiny-apartment parties, HOUSE PARTIES. Like "let's go out back to the barn or skinny dip in the pool or be able to have a conversation where I don't have to smell your breath or count the open pores in your face!"] New Yorkers will spend an entire night working their way through 15-20 bars/clubs in one neighborhood looking for the perfect vibe, only to realize that it doesn't exist, and that the search has depleted most of the week's paycheck. Sure, people and places in the 'burbs may be simpler, but that simplicity generally makes happiness a much easier state to attain. I'd rather hang out at the same local, familiar pub with my best buddies night after night than have my brain explode while trying to figure out which of the 85 Thai places to go to within a three-block radius of my apartment. 

• There's also something to be said for being able to drive for hours on open stretches of road and highway, letting your arm catch the breeze outside the window, blasting your tunage with the unshakable confidence of knowing that you will never be a slave to the hell-colored stoplights of the All-Mighty Grid. 

Not to say that the suburban life is total nirvana. There's plenty of reasons why I stay in Manhattan. Career progression, 4 am last calls, exotic polychromatic women, getting a bacon-egg-and-cheese and a 40 oz whenever I damn well want. And most importantly, there aren't any pizza guys in the suburbs. And like clockwork, as I write this sentence, the buzzer is ringing. I wonder what delicious toppings he'll have today. The suburbs, for now, are only a distant Disneyland dreamworld. And one day I will sleep there in the carefully crafted fantasy that is Connecticut. But until then, I have more pressing business. Lunch is served!