“beats the shit outta me.”
This was the flavor and attitude in the summer of 1992. I
had just finished the second half of my ongoing education,
which by my calculations, will allow me to graduate
sometime in the next half-century. I had no intention of
going back to the bright lights of Atlantic City, with all its
promises of luxury and aimless nights of drinking purely for
the act of not having to remember where you are and what
you are doing there. No sir, I Had A Plan, I Was Going
Some Place. That place was called St. Mark’s. (You know,
the patron saint for lost keys?) At the time I was living in a
college dorm off West 8th St.(My neighbor, a future
roommate in fact, lived in the same room as Mickey
Rourke when he lived there). After a mild bout of botulism,
I had been convalescing when a friend from my first tour of
duty at school stopped by. While trying not to heave, I
listened to his appeal for a sublet over the summer, whilst
he returned to Kansas.
universe.
Smoothie, whom I also had met during my first
tour of duty, and had realized that, yes indeed,
there actually were simpatico life forms out
there that shared a mutual fondness for
intoxicants, loud noise and a penchant for
destructive behavior so typically found in the
criminally insane or game show hosts.
The same people who, two weeks ago, lost
a bet to each other about who could keep from
smoking cigarettes the longest (they both broke
down at the same time) & whomever lost, were
going to skate down 5th Avenue butt naked,
from 34th Street to Washington Square.
(They didn’t in the end, the settlement was to
skate down the avenue, from 14th Street to
Washington Square, zippers open, with their
johnsons hanging in the breeze.)
involved carting my meager collection of crap on my back, using Smoothie’s old Bauer skates (which, by the way, lost a wheel on our last trip to
the cramped two bedroom apartment I was going to call home).
If perchance, you find yourself in the area, go to Astor Place (Third Avenue and 8th Street) and look down St. Marks, left hand side and up,
the building with the large mural of a guy with an eye patch, smoking a butt...that was our building. Needless to say, it was not something you
would write long letters to the Pope about. The sleeping arrangements consisted of a 75 year old sofa bed, beat down by the constant
wrestling matches, beer spills, and other mystery science projects. The apartment itself was situated on the ground floor, juxtaposed with three
other buildings and a restaurant that stank of refried beans and 6th world kitchen help. The latter would constitute a real menace, banging pots
and screaming at each other in languages that bordered on arcane at 5 in the morning, barking out obscenities in Bhutanese...