A Brie Grows in Brooklyn

I’m having a lot of trouble writing these past few days because I’m wracked by horrific insecurities. Who could possibly care what I have to say? Sometimes, it’s probably better to leave things wordless.

But in the absence of spitting, I’ve been thinking, most especially about a conversation I had last week about taking action as the ultimate form of rebellion. The conversation was with Scott Treleaven, about whom I wrote a piece, so you’ll perhaps get to read more about it if you can suffer through my writing. He was brilliant — I think he changed my worldview.

One thing he said was that culture is like a swamp. If you drain it, there’s a chance that nothing will grow back to fill its place. I drain culture every day by writing stupid nonsense. 

Ever since we met, I’ve been making a lot of connections between my thoughts. One such connection I made was this morning, when I tried to look at some images I took of an exhibition I’m reviewing. To prepare for my trip to China, I updated and backed up my phone. There was 7,600 images on it, and I could hardly click through to an app, nevermind take another photograph.

Do you know how fucking hard it is to update an Apple product? You probably do, because it seems like the whole world uses them. It’s not like you click on a button. You have to change your passwords, and type new passwords in, and wait three hours, and then re-start over because you fucked it up, and then your computer freezes because your Apple computer is also a fucking piece of shit. And then, in the morning, after you think that you’ve fixed everything — the saving, the downloading, the updating — you plug in your back-up drive, and find that all of your images are miraculously gone.

Can I ask Apple a question? Why do you constantly need to update your systems so elaborately? Why can’t you just make like minor updates — suppose, for instance, to fix a bug. Did I really need my new phone to take panoramic shots? Panoramic shots look like skinny penises. Did I really need to make it MORE easy to check my Facebook messages on my phone? Did I really need more ersatz filters on my Instagram? Did I really need all of my icons to change to be more graphically appeasing?

No, I fucking didn’t. I’d rather my phone just work than have any of the above. Why can’t Apple just decide on one fucking operating system, and stop making life so difficult?

Because consumer culture is such that corporations are constantly competing to make their product seem newer and more innovative. It sells more products. There has to come a point when we start to say “no” to this all; to the way that we’re chained to the whims and faults of these fucking companies. 

How about, instead of giving us an Apple 6.08s.39.4797 iPhone, they give us an Apple iPhone basic. With an operating system that will last 10 years, and a screen that won’t break if you drop it on the floor. Can it really be that hard to make a phone that doesn’t shatter every time it falls out of your purse? 

I’m so sick of playing into the system. I’m so sick of comfort. I’m so sick of making excuses for criminal behavior because my life is fairly easy. American society has been lulled into a terrifying state of complacency, and I’m had enough.

Now, I’m off to find some food, which is probably why I’m so angry in the first place.

Writing my fucking ass off today to make all the deadlines I’m missing while I’m in China. 

Still cool. (Happy Father’s Day!)

Someone asked me yesterday if I’d rather be satisfied or happy. Oh, I remember who it was, it was my philosophical 17-year-old brother Stuprendan. Later, I saw that on his phone, my name comes up as, “Could Be a Narcissist.” 

This week, I’ve been satisfied, but this afternoon, I’m on the brink of dangerously overwhelmed. So I tried happiness for a few minutes by sitting down for a quick bite at Fatty Crab in between going to see some exhibitions I’m reviewing. 

Happiness, I’ve decided, is pickled watermelon with crispy pork fat. Happiness is being so absorbed in your meal that you don’t even notice that the restaurant, which was empty when you arrived, is suddenly full.

The opposite of happiness is when a meal is over; the opposite of satisfaction is being too aware of other people.

Just a regular Wednesday night.

Taking a picture while riding my bike in perfect light.

Late spring morning when I was a new father and you were barely 6 months old I took you for a dawn walk because you were awake very early and I needed a respite from our tiny, airless apartment on the Grand Concourse. Mom was working nights and hadn’t arrived home yet. It was about 6am in the morning and I had few options as to where to walk so I bundled you up, carried you and the stroller downstairs, and headed to the bakery on Bedford Park.  The sun was just about rising and had the aura of one of those brilliant spring days that fill the heart with promise. I turned onto Bedford Park Ave at corner of Villa Avenue and heard a resounding ‘WALSHIE’ pierce the air. I knew then that my life was irrevocably changed - my friends were leaving the bar and saying good-bye to the day just passed - I was a new father, still a boy myself, saying good morning to a new day, and what was now a new life. You were an innocent bystander.

My father wrote this for my Father’s Day story for Glo.

(PS fucking check out my big head! My mom said that when I was little, my pediatrician was monitoring me for encephalitis.)

In a believable twist of events, the radiator on the Jeep blew up as I was driving it home from a bridal shower on Saturday evening. 

Right before it happened, all of the lights on the dashboard started blinking. The thermometer gauge went from somewhere in the middle to all the way to the right, in the red zone. I immediately called Caleb. “So the thermometer goes all the way up to 260, I believe,” he said. “What’s it on right now?”

“260,” I screamed. 

“Pull over immediately,” he said.

But it was too late. Right as I pulled off the ramp leading down from the Brooklyn Bridge, in bumper to bumper traffic, a huge puff of smoke emitted from the hood, followed quickly after by a huge explosion. The hood popped off — the cars around me were soaked in neon green anti-freeze fluid. I grabbed my purse, opened the door, and ran as fast as I could away from the car.

Across the street, a man started shouting at me. He was carrying a sign written on the jacket cover of a library book that read “Please help, United States Vet.” “Don’t run away!” he yelled. “The car’s not gonna explode!” 

Then he hopped through the traffic jam I had just caused, and came to stand next to me. “Hey,” he said. “Name’s Joseph Manzioni. US Vet. I’ve seen explosions before, and trust me, if the car was going to go, you’d already be pinned against that wall over there.”

“Phew,” I said.

“Your water pump just exploded,” he said. “Get back in the car, and we’ll push it out of traffic.”

Then, he flexed his muscles. “I’m 53 and short,” he said. “But I’m strong as an ox.” He followed that with a cackle.

I got in the car, and he pushed it up on the sidewalk. As soon as it was safely out of the way, he began telling me his life story. “I’m from Cherry Hills New Jersey,” he said. “You heard of it?”

When I nodded my head, he slapped my arm with the back of his hand, and continued. “I lost my teeth in the Iraq war. I was in the black ops. Check it out. You can google me. My wife kicked me out of the house, and I was homeless for two years. I get real bad nightmares sometimes. I was in a few explosions myself, and I still see burning people running towards me. Looks like you got sediment in the pipes of your car. You put a bowl of water in a microwave, and you see what sifts to the bottom when you take it out. Guess what? I just got an apartment and $1200. I just came from helping a school move a box of books to the third floor…”

I listened while he meandered on. My hands were still shaking a bit. “I grew up around the corner from this lawyer, I’m helping him do some research because he helped pay for some of my hospital bills. He lives right across from this place Roberta’s in Bushwick. You heard of it?”

When I nodded my head, he slapped me on the arm with back of his hand, and continued. “When I first walked into that place, I thought to myself, man, this is my place. The old warehouse and everything. I’ve met with celebrities at Bertie’s. John Leguizamo. I’m telling you! Everyone wants to buy the rights to my story. Google it. The PTSD is so bad, but if you go to the VA, they keep you for 6 months, and when you leave, you’re even worse off than you were when you went in.”

I tried to mention the New Yorker article I had just read about Chris Kyle, the celebrated US Army sniper who had just been shot dead by a soldier also suffering from PTSD, but Joseph wasn’t interested.

He chattered on for a few more minutes, lingering. “My wife was an ingrate, but what are you going to do,” he said.

Pretty soon, Caleb, who had hopped on his bike as soon as he heard me screaming, arrived. I turned my back on Joseph for a second. When I went to introduce him to Caleb, he had disappeared. “Where did you go?” I asked the empty air. The traffic moved on. The passages underneath the bridge looked deserted.

“I swear to God, half the time, I think you’re making these people up,” Caleb told me.

One of these two people drinks white wine spritzers.

Recently, I’ve started to notice that our dog Franke caters her bad behavior according to specific types. When she sees a mailperson, she is apoplectic. When she sees another dog, she spins around on her leash like she’s Regan from The Exorcist. When she sees the British guy who sits on his stoop and drinks red wine in the late afternoon, she stops dead in her tracks, and growls while looking at his sideways. When she sees the Jehovah’s Witnesses next door, her barking is like singing — if they give her a Milk Bone, she accepts it, and then drops it at her feet as if to say, “Are you kidding me, old people, these things are disgusting.”

She is at her worst when we run into the elderly man who lives in the garden apartment of a brownstone around the corner. He has a protusion from his belly that looks like one of those 50-lb tumors that land people in the National Inquirer. In his head, he has only one tooth, and that tooth is visibly rotting. 

Usually I only see him in the courtyard of his building; a few days ago, he ventured out to the sidewalk. The occasion was a fight between Franke and a little teacup yorkie named Cookie Dough. Cookie Dough is only 14 months old. She’s never had a haircut, so she looks like a dustball who crawled out from under your couch in a nightmare.

Franke is tiny, but Cookie Dough is tinier; at most, she weighs 3 pounds. When Franke saw her, she pretended that she was going to go sniff her butt in a friendly manner. As soon as she got close enough, she latched onto Cookie Dough’s lip. Caleb’s immediate reaction was to jerk Franke away; Cookie Dough sailed along in the air behind her, still attached. When we finally got them disentangled, Cookie Dough was foaming at the mouth, and her owner, another elderly gentleman who claims it’s his “daughter’s dog,” was sobbing.

All of the noise had drawn the man with the tumor out of his courtyard, and across the street to where we were standing. “What’s going on over here?” he asked. 

I couldn’t tear my eyes from the pavement to look at him directly. I was too ashamed. In the background, Cookie Dough’s owner held her up in the air in front of him, and kissed her all over her face. “Franke is such a bad girl,” I said. “I’m sorry.” The sorry was meant for anyone in earshot; the neighborhood has been collectively terrorized by our 5.5 lb dog.

After assuring me that everything was ok, Cookie Dough and her owner departed. The man with the tumor lingered. “What happened to your arm?” he asked Caleb, noticing his sling.

“She beats me,” Caleb joked, gestured in my direction. 

“My wife beats me too,” the man with the tumor joked in turn, holding up his left arm, which was in a cast. “She doesn’t like that I stand outside all day, and look at pretty girls.”

“That’s what you get,” I said, and wagged my finger at him. “You’re an old flirt, and I know it.”

“I’ll reform my ways!” he joked. His smile is a largely dark hole, but it makes you feel happy.

“See you later,” I said when we got to his doorstep.

“Bye Franke,” he said. He doesn’t know either Caleb’s or my name. No one does. To our neighbors, we’re only Franke’s owners.

But I can tell, despite it, that they like us. And they like Franke too. You can see their faces light up when they catch sight of us walking down the street. Me, checking my phone; Caleb, his head in the clouds; Franke straining on the end of the leash with such force that she hops like a bunny rabbit rather than walks. 

Thanks to her, our neighborhood, which for the past year I’ve disliked because it feels like a creepy utopia, has started to feel like a real home. The guys in the pizza joint wave at me when I pass by them; the policemen at the station down the block knock on our door to warn us when our car is about to get towed. I feel safe even in the blackest nights walking down deserted blocks; even then, the houses are lit by electric lamps that cast shadows through the long yards. If we walk for long enough, Franke stops barking.  

Caleb broke his collarbone while trying to fix the air conditioner in our car this weekend. In the 90 degree heat, he slid underneath the body. When he tried to get out again, he slammed his shoulder against the open car door. He didn’t go to the doctor for three days, until his broken shoulder was so swollen that his body looked half-hipster, half-Humpty Dumpty.

When the doctor saw the X-Ray, he whistled. “It’s pretty severe,” he said. Then he gave Caleb a sling, and a prescription for 60 Percocet, which is all you can really do with a broken collarbone.

Even though Caleb’s in a tremendous amount of pain, he still insists on going to work. This afternoon, he called me. “Why don’t you squeak more when you pick up the phone?” he asked.

“What?” I said.

“I just wish you would squeak more like a baby duck,” he said. 

Then he hung up the phone, and called back two minutes later. “Why don’t you love me?” he asked. “I feel sick because I miss you and you don’t love me.”

“What the hell?” I said. And then it dawned on me. “Did you just take a Percocet?”

“Yes,” he said. “My tummy hurts.”

“Oh sweet Jesus,” I said. Then I immediately composed this blog post. Then I thought about ways that I could film Caleb high at work.

Unless one of my fuck-up friends comes over and steals them first, as soon as the initial pain is over, I’m flushing the Percocet down the toilet. Both for Caleb’s sake, and my own.

I was up so late last night, I caught the bakers down the street beginning their morning.

Mah Jong in the rain.