lonely havens

There's one thing that I need a bunch of you to do after you listen to this: Click on "Unfollow."

Thanks, 張.

About a year ago, I met the muse at an undisclosed location to say goodbye. There have been a few more goodbyes between us since then (for example...), but this is the one I think about the most. 

I hadn't seen her in the weeks leading up to that meeting. The "farewell tour" -- a flurry of days/nights out with her closest friends -- had been keeping her busy. Since I was the stealth friend no one knew about, I was lying low, waiting to hear from her.

It was a long wait.

The call came just after she had finished packing. In about twelve hours, the movers would be there to pick up the boxes. All California bound. 

I flagged a cab, and twenty minutes later we were sitting with our drinks, talking about people we knew -- a friend who was expecting; another who had recently fallen in love; another who was planning to move to D.C. 

I thought back to the previous November, when the friend who was expecting was not expecting, the friend who was in love was not in love, and the friend who was headed for D.C. wasn't headed anywhere. Back then, I was sure the muse would be in this town for good. Now everything had changed.

"Isn't that great, though?" the muse said. "You never want things to stay the same."

Never mind that I was going on ten years of sameness...

"Let's go for a walk," she said.

Another feast night was winding down in the North End. We walked past the street vendors, and I could see her saying goodbye to the neighborhood in her mind. She didn't look upset about it; she seemed content to be moving on, and she wasn't going to let herself get hung up on who or what she would miss here. She would find something better -- and soon.

We stopped to get another drink. I watched her and listened to her. Fell for her a little, too.

"I can't believe you're leaving," I said.

"Don't say that. Instead, think of where you might go next."

"I'm stuck here."

"No you're not."

"I'm stuck here, and I can't believe you're leaving."

These two frustrations, in tandem, would get me writing again. It started with a farewell to a donut shop. And now, having left behind the place I called home for a decade, I've got the ending I want. 

The final tally stands at thirty-two...and if you've been reading carefully, you might have figured out my one relapse. (Hint: rhymes with "fuse.") 

Lately I've been finding it hard to write in here. Glaring at me from the top of that right side column (dang it, this set-up line won't work for the optimized mobile layout...) is an angry, sorrowful confession from someone I used to know very well.

So I'll be straight: It has not been a very good run. Been in this town ten years, and very little to show for it...I have pushed away friends, let my ambitions rot, and lost my way to the point where plowing through the day on idle gives me a vague sense of achievement. "Once something quits changing, it's dead" -- that may not be a coroner's definition, but I feel almost ready for the autopsy.

A year later, I've made some changes -- enough, in fact, to convince me that I don't need to write this anymore. I'll keep writing. But not here.

You may be asking, "And what about the muse? What happened that night? Did anything happen? How about a few juicy details?...And what happens to her now?"

These are good questions, for sure. Someday I'll probably write the answers to them.

In mid-August of last year, I came down to NYC for a weekend. A friend of mine who was out of town let me stay at his place, a studio on East 56th Street. He kept a nylon-string guitar in the corner of the apartment. I hardly play anymore, so I didn't think much of it when I saw it.

There wasn't much of an agenda that weekend -- just a couple dinners with people I hadn't seen in a while. Mostly I listened. But I started to get some ideas, too. I know that sounds like a simple, easy thing. But when you've been in a rut for so many years, new ideas can seem scary.

One of those ideas was to pick up the guitar in my friend's apartment and record something before I went back home. Everything I needed was there in the room: the guitar, a chair, a table to prop up my phone as I sang into it...

But the song would take a little work. I started with the chords for "Pallet on Your Floor," and wrote out a set of verses that I tweaked as I relearned the guitar part. I got stuck on the second verse, so I left it out. It's an unfinished song -- about ninety seconds. But it's an idea that I made happen.

Since then there have been a few others.

Estimated visits: N/A Abandoned on: 08.26.11 Last thing I did before I left: Put the keys in the freezer. 

Hypothetical interview: Q: Hi there -- I'm sorry to disturb you at home, but by any chance did you meet the guy who used to live here? A: No, why? Was he a real asshole or something? Q: Well, no; that's not what I'm getting at. A: How about you get to the point then... Q: Is there anything about how he left the place that might give us a clue about him? A: Who the fuck are you, anyway? Q: I'm, uh, just documenting the condition of the building. For the landlord. A: Oh, why didn't you say so? Yeah, the floors were pretty clean when I moved in. But the blinds were dirty, and this kitchen just sucks. He forgot some stuff in the refrigerator, too. Q: Really? What, exactly -- if you don't mind me asking? A: It was a couple things. One, a bottle of Sweet Leaf Tea. And two, a Hershey's Special Dark. It's still in there. I thought about maybe eating it, but I'm afraid to. Q: Why? Was it opened? A: No, it's unopened. So's the drink. I just don't like to eat food that I didn't buy myself -- don't fucking judge, okay? Anyway, I think he just forgot about it. Maybe he was hoping to eat the candy bar after he cleaned out the place. But then he forgot. Q: Why do you think he forgot? A: I don't know. Probably he just wanted to get the hell outta there, don't you think? 

The goodbye: There are a bunch of streets named Memory Lane in the United States. You can look it up -- California, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin all have at least one.

I used to live on Memory Lane when I was a kid. Mine was a dead end street; at the end of it, the pavement stopped but the lane continued as a dirt road into the woods. Occasionally you would see a dump truck head down the street and onto the dirt road. The subdivision was supposed to expand through there, all the way to Limestone Creek, but it never happened. I saw a lot of dump trucks during the eleven years I lived on Memory Lane -- but no new houses.

A lot of "firsts" happened to me as I grew up over those eleven years. I made my first friend -- a kid from Kentucky who showed me how to ride a bike. I had my first temper tantrum when the bus driver tried to drag me onto the school bus on the first day of kindergarten. I also endured my first and only visit to the emergency room after an airborne 450-degree chicken pot pie landed on my left calf. (I still have the scar.)

The neighborhood kids taught me football and baseball and basketball, and I quickly figured out the best yards to cut through whenever my mother called me home for dinner. (The more gardens there were to hurdle on the sprint home, the better I could imitate Edwin Moses.) This was an era during which I developed an intense suspicion of broccoli. It was also when I learned the hard way that if I didn't get good grades, I would spend the summer with Mrs. Benedict, the reading tutor.

I suffered failure (piano lessons), humiliation (from a bully), and defeat (my sisters were better at any game that did not involve a baseball). But I also figured out how to outsmart the other kids when I needed to, and sometimes my parents. I earned some dubious honors (perfect attendance at middle school -- yes, for all four years) as well as legitimate ones (third place at the science fair; a "note of excellence in social studies" from Mrs. Detotto).

I remember a lot of questions back then that came with inadequate answers. For example, what happened to the McCachran's dog, the Pekingese that liked to hide under the shrub in their front yard? Why did they cut down the three willow trees in our side yard? Why did the Spencers put up a fence? Why was the girl next door trying so hard to get a suntan? Why did the Heiseys move away? Why was I not allowed to ride my bike along the highway to get ice cream with the other kids? Why are we moving?

It's easy for me to revisit those eleven years on Memory Lane because there was so much to care about, both along the street and within our house.

I can't say the same about Apt 28 on Comm Ave. The eleven years I spent living there feel empty in comparison. Do I have any good memories of the place? Some, I guess -- but they're buried under a pile of stagnation. 

What did I learn? How did I grow? How did I change? Eleven years passed, but little changed for me in Apt 28.

I passed on a bunch of "kitchen" blues in order to post this. No regrets.

After a month and a half of shelling out to eat out (or drinking coffee instead of eating), I finally decided to cook something for myself in my new and unfamiliar kitchen.

It was a flawed plan from the beginning: frittata-for-one. I did not have enough "bulk" ingredents to fill up the pan, so just before pouring in the eggs I pressed two rolls (from Syrena Bakery) into the edge of the pan simply to take up space. A few basil leaves on top, and then under the broiler...more strata than frittata, I guess, but it turned out okay. 

The stuff is tough.

I suppose I could keep milking this theme indefinitely, but it would not be long before you realized that really boring stuff tends to last, too.

Memorex dBS cassette tape A few years after the Korean blues proselytizers got me into Buddy Guy, I taught myself the guitar part for "Don't Leave Me," from Alone & Acoustic. The intro has a lot of basic blues licks in key of E, so it was a good exercise for me. But the vocal was impossible -- especially for someone who hates to sing.

So, like any other pushy control-freak guitarist, I convinced someone else to sing the song so that I could practice the guitar part. At the time, I happened to know a gospel/a cappella singer who listened to a lot of Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, and Al Green. (These types do not grow on trees over at the engineering quad. I felt truly blessed.) I gave him the CD and wrote out the lyrics for him. He came by my dorm room the next day.

"張, man, why is this question mark here in the last verse?"

"Oh. I can't figure out what he's saying there. It sounds like 'petting' something."

"Petting? Are you serious? He's saying paranoid, man. Let me teach you something about black people, son. He's paranoid because the girl is making him anxious. He doesn't want to be left alone. Ain't that ever happen to you?"

"Uh, not really."

"That's why he's got the blues in the first place! You understand now?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Okay, I just wanted to be sure. Now go ahead, play the intro."

I recorded one of the rehearsals on this Memorex tape. I last heard it ten years ago, when I still owned a cassette player. It's a funny performance -- I wish you could listen to it. For now, it'll stay frozen inside this piece of plastic until I decide to extract it.

"Bass-y" Smurf figurine Someone close to me once decided to give me twenty-five presents for my twenty-fifth birthday. These were small things that she could easily hide and then surprise me with -- a bookmark clip, a teacup lid, a paperback novel. During the week up to my birthday, she doled out a few presents each day. I might get, say, three at once, or one in the morning and two at night. Each time she gave me a present, she would give me a hug and say, "Happy Birthday!"

I still have a few of the presents, including "Bass-y" Smurf. As for the girl, I last saw her nine years ago. Sometimes I think about getting in touch with her, but then I remember how we left things.

Molson Ice bottle-opener key ring I've never had a Molson Ice...but in 1995 one of my roommates was managing a kitchen on campus, and somehow he ended up with a bunch of Molson-branded key rings, one of which he gave to me. My keys have been on it ever since.

The bottle opener, however, would not see any use until six years later. I was working for a company in Charlestown, and we were having a catered farewell lunch at the office for a handful of temps because the project manager who hired them hadn't realized that there wasn't enough work to go around. So instead of a month-long gig (which is what the temp agency had promised them), the temps all got fired after about two weeks. 

At the end of the buffet table was a cooler full of beer. One of the temps -- a guy named Zach -- reached for a bottle and discovered it wasn't a twist-off. I handed him my keys, and he thanked me. He drank a few more after that one, since it was his last day.

Andrea’s screenplay I used to know this writer named Andrea. She was a very good writer -- granted, I may not be the best judge, as I liked her more than I liked her writing.

One day she gave me a copy of the screenplay she was working on. The 96-page manuscript was three-hole punched and held together with shiny brass fasteners. I remember being excited to read it.

It was an indie/slacker/romantic comedy type of thing. This was seven or eight years before the mumblecore label. Sometimes I wonder if Andrea was in fact the Godmother of Mumblecore.

I'm not into mumblecore, but I do sort of miss Andrea.

The Catcher in the Rye (Bantam Edition, 28th printing) Since the mid-’80s, my older sister has been a trusted recommender of books. She gave this to me when I was twelve.  

Oriental 2 This was taken in 1995, at a friend's room in Dodd Hall. We were probably dropping by on our way over to the library or the dining hall. I was kind of a dork with my guitar back then -- carrying it around everywhere. Schwartz was the same kind of dork, only he carried a camera.

These kinds of casual drop-ins rarely happen anymore in my life. You can't just knock on a door and let yourself in to visit someone. You have to plan. Call ahead. Get clearance from the spouse...

Not sure if this applies to optometrists.

I look up, and I see the dull, beige, rectangular ceiling panels alternating with the dim fluorescent lights. 

"Now look down."

My eyes rotate in their sockets until I see what constitutes "down": a striped camisole under a blue blouse that is under a white doctor's coat. "Down" is also the ring on her left hand -- it's one of those imposing stones, jagged enough that if she were ever in a jam she could cut out a circular escape hatch in the nearest plate-glass window.

"Okay, now look at the tip of my pen."

She talks a little too fast, a little nervous. I try not to think about it as she watches my eyes.

"Now follow the pen as it moves."

I follow and now notice her glasses: gray, oval frames with tiny lenses. They look good on her. (They also match her shoes.) I bet she spent a long time picking them out.

How many data points are needed to define a descent? First I lose my glasses under dubious circumstances, and now I'm in the exam room checking out the married optometrist. I feel like I've reached a new low. And there's no one around anymore to interject...

The O.D., meanwhile, keeps talking faster and faster.

"Your eyes are so dark it's very hard for me to see inside I know you said you can't do the dilation today but if you change your mind you should really come back to me within a couple weeks of today's exam okay?"

"Let me think about it," I say.

The last cut was a bit shorter than expected.

The same two barbers -- a Greek and an Ecuadorian -- have worked here since I became a regular customer about nine years ago. Both are low-key, old-school types who take their time with each customer. (Neither of them knows my name, but they know me better than a lot of people...)

The Ecuadorian, who tends to cut much shorter, will spritz his customers with water before going in with the scissors. The Greek, meanwhile, never touches the water sprayer, and he has a lighter touch with the straight razor. To check that he cut your sideburns evenly, the Greek will stand behind you and place his right index finger under your right sideburn and his left index finger under the left sideburn, and then glance up at the mirror to see if his fingers line up. He always looks dead serious about it, as if he's pointing two guns to your head.

Does this place qualify as a lonely haven? No, it doesn't; it's a quiet place, but fundamentally social. In a good barbershop, you cannot get a haircut without getting to know the barber. Even if you say nothing, the barber will talk to you until you cave. Even if you're a loner, you will cave...

The barbers of Princeton Barber Shop have known about my plan to ditch this town for a while now. Back in July, the Ecuadorian (a former Washington Heights resident) had warned me about Brooklyn.

"You gotta be careful, maybe you gonna get shot over there," he had said.

When I walked in last Thursday, the Ecuadorian was lounging idly in his barber's chair, while the Greek was sitting next to the cash register, reading the Globe. They don't say much to one another when business is slow.

"This-a-gonna-be-the-last-one?" the Greek asked me.

"Yeah -- looks like it."

The Ecuadorian dusted off the chair for me. 

"Same as-a usual," he said. "Short."

I looked at myself in the the mirror and nodded. I have seen that face in this particular mirror for nine years. Maybe you can't tell when you look at that face, but it has been a trying nine years. I have worked very hard at hiding it from you.

These Carolina girls are occasionally stubborn.

After a farewell drink at a bar near the old office, I suggest to Smitty that she visit me sometime.

"Why would I want to go to New York?" she says. "It smells like trash. Even worse, it's full of New Yorkers."

In certain advanced dialects, time is a two-syllable word.

It could be another sign of clinginess that I find myself back in Ye Olde Allston for a few days. Had I planned things better, I could have avoided this trip. But now that I'm here, I'll make the most of it -- see some people I didn't get to say goodbye to, dig up some more stuff that lasts, snag another goroke from Seoul Bakery...

I try not to play this game too often, but I wonder what the people on my mind are thinking about right now. One is plotting to put the moves on some guy -- a guy she doesn't like to mention in front of me. Another is far away from home and annoyed by it because she misses who she has there. And the last might be wondering if I've been avoiding her. (No comment...) All of them are worried about time -- which just doesn't seem fair, since they're all about my age.

I turn the corner at Blanchard's and a few blocks later my ears are ringing thanks to a road crew that's ripping up the asphalt along Harvard Ave. It's nine thirty at night.

I wonder if this song would have been a bigger hit had Harold Burrage substituted the phrase "to let you go" for "to get you back."