Osama Bin Laden Is Now Dead, Enjoy Your Flight. Vietnam: Part 1

“Really @SLUTLUST is writing his will on twitter #soft” @Scarlettsmithin

I have a 7:30pm flight to Vietnam on May 3rd. I wake up at 12pm. My girlfriend is already packed and at work counting down the hours to our adventure time. My stuff is part in the dry cleaners, part in the laundry, and half in a pile on my bedroom floor. I still don’t have a traveling bag. She sends me a couple of BBM’s making sure I’m ready and on time. I selfishly masturbate, smoke a blunt, and watch the Daily Show. Osama Bin Laden is now dead and my paranoia needed a travel forecast.

Her BBMs are now turning in text messages and phone calls. I wipe the blunt ashes off my chest and start my day in the middle of the afternoon. It’s 1pm when I get my laundry out. 1:45 when I bump into Frog at the barber shop on Allen Street and make an appointment for around 2:30. I love how I can always walk in and always find a barber available. My dry cleaning still isn’t done.  2:15pm when I pass my brother in front of The Hotel On Rivington on my way to get a military bag from the Army & Navy store on Houston Street. I haven’t even seen a boarding pass and I’ve already spent 200 bucks.  While paying for the bag I tell the Korean cashier where I’m going;

“Oh you be careful out there, they a little confused…”

Excuse me? Whatever, can’t think about that at the moment. I glanced at the glass counter and look for a Cambodian anti – cannibal repellant. Did he really just tell me that? When I’ve been all apprehensive about going to some jungle where they don’t speak English and Hanoi – North Vietnam – where they don’t like Americans?! I run back to the Barbershop and get my shape up. By the time I pick up my dry cleaning and give the yellow cab driver my traditional one dollar tip its 3:54pm I’m supposed to pick up Kara at her job on the way to Kennedy airport by 4:30. Her phone calls and text message has now turned into a full multi social network – anyway she can get a hold of me – blitz. I literally have to turn my ringer off in order to concentrate and perform the fastest packing job ever on this side of procrastination.

I arrive at her job 4:45 after bickering over the directions provided by Google Maps. Our anger turns into an anxious vibration of anticipation. She passive aggressively attacks me with the dictionary sized travel itinerary she has prepared for us. I joke about how I’m just going to be the dumb trophy of a blonde on this trip. She knows me all too well; our flight really isn’t until 9pm.

Here I am – once again – in front of TSA. I don’t know why I’m so afraid of these checkpoints. I have nightmares thinking about a half empty bag of coke I might have in my tiny jean pocket or some weed residue I might have in my wallet. Can you go to jail for the redness in your eyes?  I stop at the bathroom before I pass the checkpoint. I’m wearing a business blue Gap button down with some dirty “tan” Converse, blue jeans with the American flag sown into the back pocket, and a athletic grey t shirt with the words “Under new Management” in the shape of the United States- a great outfit for the 4^th of July or voting for a black guy, not so great for traveling to a communist/ socialist county. Did I mention my glasses were red shop class/ scientist goggles? The traveling hipster from New Yawk city! I clear myself of any accidental contraband and move my Yankee Doodle Dandy ass on.

Kara somehow walks right through security wearing what could be called a designer dagger hanging off her neck. We were leaving Singapore by the time anyone even questions it.

Dude we just killed Osama Bin Laden.

Kara points to page 67 in her itinerary. We have a stop in Frankfort, Germany. I thought the flight was 20 hours turns out its 300. I’m excited about all the airplane food and the muscle relaxer I’m going to take the minute Kara stops keeping it from me.  I dose in and out of sleep, only waking up to eat or adjust myself like trying to fit that snake Rubik Cube toy they used to sell in the 80’s into a trapezoid box. We joke about the Mile High Club and have one awkward trip to the bathroom. Fucking travel geeks. I lock the door – then she can’t get in – and she knocks – I panic and don’t open the door. I walk out; we laugh and collapsed into our corniness.

Germany is weird.  People are riding bikes in the airport. There’s something haunting and Aryan white about it – real Children of The Corn-ish. Even the chubby German at the gate with the soft chin and turkey neck seem intimidating. This is the first time I’ve been in a county that has been at war with the United States.  War. That’s right we just killed Bin Laden. Now my eyes are darting everywhere, looking for terrorist like a Dominican Elmer Fudd during “wabbit season”. All I see is the little Asian kid that would later kick the back of my seat all the way to Vietnam. I take a deep breath and try to ignore the newspapers reminding me of the extraordinary time I am living in. Couldn’t escape it – it was written on the carton of duty free Camel cigarettes I brought for a steal.

Singapore Airlines is just an orgy of food. They feed you every hour on the hour, making it impossible to sleep – or stop eating. It doesn’t help my cannibal argument. Are they fattening us up? My eye remains glued to the LCD screen the embedded in the seat 2 inches in front of my nose. My eyes slowly dilating as the little plane crawls over the Middle East. The Middle East?  I press my nose against the window. It’s dark as shit outside minus the full and pregnant clouds we were flying over.  Then I see the lighting. The clouds lighting up like they covered some cosmic pinball machine. There was no mention of bad weather. I had seen the weather being told in about 5 different languages by that time. Kara tries to convince me otherwise but my paranoia mushes her in the face. That’s war. Holy shit that’s war…

When I arrive in Singapore I take the deepest breath of my life. And I’m surprised that unlike Broome Street back in Chinatown NYC, Asia doesn’t stink.

Singapore has an amusement park of an airport. You can surf on the Coy fish that swim in the lake that’s in the middle of a super mall of an airport. I found a DJ lounge. They offer an outside smoking section surrounded by sunflowers and bamboo sticks and the most relaxed security ever. Someone mentions a spa and a rollercoaster but forgets to mention how huge the airport is. I smoke 3 Camels in a row and re-board, praying that little fuck of an un-aborted Asian sperm got on another flight or at least another seat. I settle on being grateful I made it over the Middle East alive – the karate kid is, once again, right behind me.

Kara is a doll the entire flight, even taking it upon herself to physically threaten the kid and vigilantly glare at him from time to time to keep him in check.  She mixes this up with a few Cambodian cannibal jokes to keep the experience interesting. I try to read the Keith Richards book in a panic but find it hard to read like a collage made by a heroin addict. The longest I’ve ever been on a flight before this was maybe 5 hours. This is now hour number 28. My clothes started to feel tighter than usual. This is a flying traveling triathlon. Kara patiently stokes my dreads until I settle to a quiet purr. I stare at the fasten seatbelt sign until it finally goes off.

PING!

I’m in Vietnam.

Our Hostel has arranged transportation for us from the airport to the front desk. Thank God. This is the first time I don’t complain about Kara’s meticulous planning. The airport itself is frenetic in the sense that every inch of it is trying to hustle you. Everyone sounds like they are screaming and angry or rabid and confused. It reminds me of the corruption I used to deal with when going to the Dominican Republic. I pretend I’m on the floor of the New York Stock exchange taking the best offer for anything that makes sense. Soon we are ushered past the tiny military men with their machine guns and are in our van. The car ride vacuums out the loudness and randomness of the city down to a gentle hum of the air conditioning. I catch my breath and squeeze the shit out of my Asian Adventure teammate as I realize I am totally in her hands. She has the itinerary with copies of our visas, passports, embassy numbers, and social security numbers, DNA samples. All of my money is in her bank account. Guess I won’t be starting any fights with her. Kara has now gone from my travel companion to my international life raft.

We arrive at 9 May May in Hoan Kiem, Hanoi: The capitol of Vietnam. Imagine the corner of Rivington St. and Ludlow in the town of The Corner of Rivington St. and Ludlow or Canal St. in the capitol of Canal St. The streets are just so full of “stuff”. Nick-knacks for a bottom feeder of an economy. Everything is a bootleg of something else. Everyone is busy moving around at a rapid spread – faster than money fluctuating – and I can’t capture anything because I’m fumbling with 2 film cameras dangling off my wrist and holy shit it smells like cinnamon!!!

I go from frazzled traveler to curious child. I let Kara handle absolutely everything. I’m on vacation from my vacation.

Our Hostel is an open door dorm room filled with foreign bros and a lobby that doubles as an internet café and bar. The novelty of this is quickly erased when I realize I can’t log on to FaceBook because it’s blocked by the government. Everyone here speaks decent English and is polite with a mix of apathy. I assume it comes from the loud music and the party hardy bar-tending that’s encouraging everyone to dance on the bar. Kara and I give each other the “way too old for this” look. They’re playing an abundant amount of Mexican music. Are Mexicans even in Vietnam?! Kara tells me Vietnam is known as the Cancun for Australian alcoholics.

Wait, what day is this?

 It’s the afternoon of a cloudy and humid May 5^th. I started flying May 3^rd. It’s May 4^th in New York City. I decide not to fix any of my watches.

Our room is beautiful. The first thing I notice is the water hose near the toilet. For a 3rd world country they are pretty serious about hygiene down there. The room is decorated in warm Persian/ Oriental colors with Indian influences. I immediately pick that up when I jump on the bed. It’s literally a comforter over a queen sized wooden board. I lift off the covers to see if I’m sleeping on a bed of needles. Great, a huge cutting board for chopping up tourist. Sleeping off a little jetlag is now out of the question. I change my T-shirt and take my exhausted girlfriend to hit the ”Saucy Aussie” bar downstairs before a little sightseeing.

[Click to enlarge]

The streets of Vietnam are an episode of Fear Factor for anyone traumatized by a car accident.  Having walked away from an accident less than a year ago myself, I Trojan Horse my fear into a hybrid of vacant amusement and fickle fascination. The traffic reminds me of a row of moped riding ants carrying large crumbs shaped like cars and trucks overflowing with cargo – or junk I couldn’t tell. Everything is so 3D I remove my poser glasses and put my aware face on. Kara is visibly nervous for me. She takes my hand as maneuvers me through the old Vietnamese women selling us weird fruits and the young kids in fake Dolce and Gabbana shades trying to sell us weed off their motorbikes.

Her hands have never felt softer.

“Hoan Kiem Lake (Vietnamese: Hồ Hoàn Kiếm, meaning “Lake of the Returned Sword” or “Lake of the Restored Sword”, also known as Hồ Gươm – Sword Lake) is a lake in the historical center of Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam. The lake is one of the major scenic spots in the city and serves as a focal point for its public life.”

After leaving a “traditional offering” at Ngoc Son Temple, we take a stroll around the Hoan Kiem Lake. Life seems slower here, little kids are swinging on trees while couples sit near the water. Every once in a while I jump at the sound of a motorbike because there are so fucking many of them.  What calms me down is the sight of the floating gardens, these beautiful patches of flowers that float in the middle of the late. Kara tells me about the floating village we will see when we go to Cambodia. The humidity is now a wet and sticky breeze coming from the lake as the sun starts to take a dip in it. The vibe feels like a good blow job with the possibility of being caught… It’s dark, early, in a strange place – we opt for food and a few more drinks back at Cinco de Mayo Hell, aka our hostel, and brave the streets of Hanoi again.

Our 1st dinner in Hanoi: Beef Pho, shrimp fritters, some strange spicy fish, pineapple beef, chicken stuffed with mushrooms, & honey fried bananas. We water bottle everything in fear of some intestinal bug we can get from the tap. Of course the notion is silly, what do you think they wash the food and cook in? Whatever, we go into our table like fancy pants Americans just off a hunger strike. Next to us is a table full of European Businessmen in town for some banking conference. We scoff at them like they are petty tourist – with their ordering like they know the place – and swear we would never be like that. We pay our bill with our noses turned high as I put my 3 cameras away in a fanny pack and Kara puts the receipt and change in an envelope given to us when we exchanged our currency.

Our walk back to the hostel is more confident and romantic. The idea of war/ cannibalism/ being locked up abroad/ kidnapping and extortion/ basically anything that could go wrong on foreign land- and all the fears I had soon start to ebb away with every motorcycle I successfully dodge. I stop and take pictures of everything now, being careful as to not seem exploitive. Everywhere I go the kids point and laugh. I assume it’s my hair. The teenagers look at me with some MTV familiarity and everyone calls for me by yelling “Yo YO YO!” The elders looked at me like I’m some weird ancient living spell or an anomaly of existence while the grown men could care less unless I was going into my wallet.

I’m more concerned with the communist police force and their leathery cigar smoking  faces - terrifying like socialist flesh eating zombies.

Yikes.

The color red is everywhere. I soon get used to it and play it up. I treat it like a walk in the Lower East Side complete with undercover police and people I kind of know and wish to avoid – except here I really don’t know anyone here. Not even the little Vietnamese boy, who runs up to me, casually pulls down his underwear, and pisses right on my expensive basketball sneakers.

I’m not even mad. It’s my first hearty laugh of what will turn out to be the most epic adventure of my life.

The look on Kara’s face…

Even the Australian drunk that streaked naked past us while Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine” blasted out of our ultra dorm hostel’s speakers as we were walking in, couldn’t change it.

Osama Bin Laden Is Now Dead, Enjoy Your Flight. Vietnam: Prelude

I hate collecting money. The simple act of having to hunt someone down to return a favor you probably couldn’t afford in the 1st place – but you do it anyway – carrying on like“giving” or “lending” is some commodity or a luxury item- fucking blows. I’m terrible at phone calls and short on text messages. My sarcasm is a curse to the most minor of social annoyances. My wit gets lost in translation and I can no longer keep decent eye contact in certain situations. I’d rather not even  bother. But this is Mikes 4^th bbm attempt to get a hold of me in the last week and it’s the last Sunday before my trip overseas on Tuesday.

I sold my first piece of photo art.

How can I not buy a beer in Vietnam with my dream money? I put my blunt out, throw on something weather appropriate, and take my lazy ass on a never ending trip to Brighton Beach.

I promise Mike a print of one of my photo’s from the Well Hung Amory show he helped curate with Serf as I leave his apartment/ studio. His walls are an overlapping cascade of work from all of the creative characters he’s encountered in his life. Many of the names are legends amongst the pigeons and patriarchs of New York City. I even spot Alden Fonda’s head shot, nearly spitting my Smart Water out. There I go convincing myself that I’m an artist again.

The check Mint gave me is burning a euphoria hole in my worn Kim Jones/ Umbro wallet. It would be the first and last check that wallet would ever hold.

The walk back to the train is accompanied by several requests for my presence back in the city. Wow, apparently people know I’m leaving and everyone wants to pay me my money now. Mike gave me a Mirf vs. Obey T-Shirt along with some stickers to post up on my trip. I swore to myself I would never wear anything with “Obey”on it. But this had a Mirf tag over it – considering The Battle For The Wall on Bowery I felt it was justifiably ironic – and perfect. Plus it was fucking cold, the beautiful spring afternoon had turning into a nipple seducing of a night and my Seinfeld suede Eddie Bauer jacket needed the extra help. Fucking graffiti writers and their street art.

My first stop is 50^th street and 9^th avenue. My small talk is limited to “no, thank you’s” and “I have to go’s”. I could never tell if this kid is from the Mid West or Spain – making it uncomfortable for me to relate to him. The bar we met in was one of those theatre bars for acting women who love cosmos and neon fuchsia lights hilighting day glow leather bar stools. It didn’t help his friends were Mario Cantone gay and I can’t stand a gay in a Polo and Dockers. Neither my style nor scene. The C train is nearby so I plan my route to Le Bain, a club at the top of the Standard Hotel, over random cock snobbery disguised as cocktail chatter. I pretended to answer a phone call, proceed to walk outside, and never come back.

The C/E train station at 50^th street is science laboratory bright. You can still get cell phone reception because how open for an underground train station it is. I position myself on the stairway between both downtown trains in an effort to catch the first one that arrives. I take a picture – I’m bored – I scroll through my phone, and by “phone” I mean “Twitter” – bored by twitter – nothing in my text messages – ugh. I have a drink from my bottled water and check again. There’s a random news post about the President having to announce something to the nation. It’s Sunday night at 10:30pm. What could Obama possibly have to say to the nation???  At this hour???

Soon the Rumors start: UFO’s, Earthquake, We are being invaded, we are officially broke, Vice President Joe Biden is dead, Bin Laden is dead, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, 100011101001111100001010011000010010110.…

Then one kept getting repeated over and over:  Bin laden is dead, Bin laden was captured, we know where bin laden is, bin laden is gone, a source said this, reports of that, this is confirmed, Bin laden is dead, Bin laden was captured, we know where bin laden is, bin laden is gone, a source said this, reports of that, this is confirmed, Bin laden is dead, Bin laden was captured, we know where bin laden is, bin laden is gone, a source said this, reports of that, this is confirmed, news, newS neWS, nEWS, NEWS, NEWS!!!

Holy shit. We got Osama Bin Laden.

I don’t know what took over me at that moment. There was something exciting about it. This is it! This is the party that New York City has been waiting for. I was born in this city. No matter how you felt politically, no matter where you were on the totem pole of society, 9/11 affected all of us.  The memory of seeing my friends covered in World Trade soot or the frantic phone calls to people you knew that worked and frequented near the towers. My neighborhood being locked down for weeks, and then the families that experienced tremendous and deep loses. This was huge, it was The Yankees in 1996 huge, Obama winning the election huge, I need to get off the train and run to Times Square huge. This wasn’t like when I overslept and missed voting for Obama, I was a just a couple of blocks away from history.

I couldn’t help it, my heart tried to keep up with my feet while sending enough blood to my mouth so I could keep screaming “OBAMA GOT OSAMA”!!! At one point my feet didn’t touch the asphalt for blocks at a time.  Everyone was looking at me like I was crazy. Although the news was starting to get around certain cable news outlets and being posted on the internet the major news networks still hadn’t picked it up or were waiting for the White Houses’ official statement. Soon the entire world would stop to hear Obama say the word I’ve already been celebrating for 15 minutes.

I get to 43^rd and Broadway with steam blowing out of all of my ends. I must have looked like a dread locked Tasmanian devil when I stopped to ask a police officer if The president had addressed the nation from the huge jumbotron he was facing – hoping he’d confirm  what I was already had foaming out of my mouth.

“Aye buddy I dunno if you wanna tawk abat it tawk ta dem they wanna tawk to ya nat me…” Then he turns around and walks away.

What the fuck? Before I had a chance to respond to Officer Sammy Salami’s Serpico era policing a camera is shoved in my face. The “dear in headlights” phenomenon makes sense as I now am one. A microphone comes at my face from the left like a random cock in a gonzo gang bang porn. Before I could even squint because of the bright light a question ejaculates on to my face:

“So what do you think about the rumors that Obama is about to confirm that we have captured and killed Osama Bin Laden?”

Remember that scientist from the movie, Back To The Future? How crazy he was when trying to prove something, and when he was right – he went even crazier? That’s how I would describe the outburst of a response I gave that camera. If you asked me to describe the camera man I couldn’t, I just spoke into a light. I can describe the piece of balding Italian feast street garbage of a cop that dissed me, but not who asked me the question. I was too busy regurgitating. It wasn’t words that fell out of my mouth; it was luggage full of sympathy for my city, conspiracies by the government, fear, and basic everyday common man joy and elation. It was preparing to say something for years then having that second to say it and it sounds like a super nova mixed in oxygen and saliva. This has to be what the female orgasm feels like.

Then it’s done, I don’t even wait to be asked another question or sign a release form. I bounce in the air from excitement like the Road Runner and peel off screaming like Tiny Tim or Paul Revere with a Black Berry. No one in 42^nd street is feeling me. Everyone thinks I’m on drugs or really trying to advertise them. “OBAMA GOT OSAMA” sounds like something you would buy on a Baltimore street corner in The Wire.

I catch the A train and head to Le Bain. My screaming doesn’t stop underground either. I go from car to car. How that never made it to You Tube is beyond me. The United Colors of Benetton on the A train looking at raving lunatic yelling news from some invented future. Osama? We invented him. I continue screaming it out of the train all the way until I’m a few feet away from the doorman. I calm down – I mean this is Le Bain after all.

Once I pass the door gods velvet rope I turn myself up to 10 again and start yelling in the elevator. The President still hasn’t made the announcement yet. No one knows what the fuck I’m talking about and I’m all “fuck you guys, you’re all French anyway”. Boorish American behavior at it’s best. Next thing you know the elevator doors open up, we spill out, and I feel a heavy arm around me.

‘Yo Nigga what the fuck were you doing on NY1?

Blu Jemz’s cackle of a laugh is infectious. He shows me his phone and gives me the healthiest “this guy” on this side of the planet. Soon my phone starts to catch up and I start receiving all of these messages with pictures of me on the news. Mind you all of this happened in the last 45 minutes. I left midtown at 10:30, got to Le Bain by 11:20 – and Obama didn’t speak to the nation until 11:35.

The Rest of the night was a huge celebratory blur. A bottle of whiskey poured on a water color of an eventful evening. The next morning I woke up, cleaned myself, and collected my installation art from the Something I Ate art show. Read the paper and watched reports of huge crowds that came out in Times Square and at Ground Zero after the President spoke.

And I missed it all.

Yup, the first time I was ever way too early for a party.

My girlfriend told me she caught some of the news and recorded it for me. Great, the smoking gun. I scanned my DVR and there I was, on my favorite channel – losing my mind. If someone would have told me that a black President would catch the terrorist that fucked our lives back in 2001 I would have called Bellevue or the local nut house in your town on you.

Wow.

I rolled a blunted and inhaled it all in and exhaled history out, sinking deep into the signs of our beautiful and extraordinary times. I sobered up with a hint  of responsibility and work a cover shift at Beauty Bar in Brooklyn. I write my name all the way down Broadway when I got off at 4am – in case something happened to me on my trip – as a pre R.I.P. mural. Somewhere along the trip i get lost and wind up at Clare’s trap house with Paulie, Randy and some kid that keeps singing to his own music. It’s actually not that bad but oh my god I can’t do this and Clare’s ramblings. This is my last – beautiful – morning in New York City.

Could you imagine? I was going to fly halfway around the world for the first time in my life the a day and a half after we killed Osama Bin Laden.

At least I got on NY1. I love fucking that channel.

BUCKET LIST.

The Gentleman from Kentucky: PPP SGU Edition

“We don’t sneak into parties we sneak out of them”

Peter Pan Posse

Great, 3 hours to Baltimore and I get to sit bitch in between some random intern I’ve never met and a young in the face Mr. Rogers. MI** and **RF rented a minivan with 1 person too many, and that person was me; Mr. Take A Picture & Blog About It. We were headed to The Virgin Free Music Festival and to be honest I didn’t know why I was going. My graffiti was limited to whatever bathroom I did drugs in and the 5 block radius of my apartment in South Williamsburg. Mint thought it would be cool If I took some photos and documented the trip and all I kept wondering was “Has MI** even seen my blog?” I’d be the last person I’d trust to preserve a moment or to photograph an event that you would later need for its promotional or commercial value. I’m horrible when it comes to deadlines and guidelines. But whatever, I devour my egg & cheese from McDonalds’ and ready myself for the most uncomfortable ride of my life.

Let’s go back for a second. I knew The Wonder Twins that combined to create M**F and S**E, but the rest of the crew was new to me. One kid was trying to get us Ecstasy from a bodega in Harlem at 8 in the morning (later I would find out that was S*), and the Asian intern from the far east – whatever that’s just an intern… Who was Mr. Rogers?

He didn’t say much during our ride down there. The entire time he was on the phone with who I could only assume was his beautiful wife and 2.5 kids. Since when did MIRF start rolling with dads??? He had the type of haircut you would only find on an episode of Mad Men with the immaculate jaw line you would find on a 70’s Cognac advertisment or on James Bond no matter who played him. This man was the real deal. Was this the M**F manager or accountant, maybe a reporter for the New Yorker? I was absolutely clueless.

Before we arrive in Baltimore we stop at a Home Depot with a rest stop to buy spray paint. A bunch of graffiti writers buying paint? This wasn’t the graffiti I grew up with. We stole everything, and if it was nailed to the floor we stole a hammer to pull it out of the ground. Now it’s 2010 and we get hired to spray paint all over a music festival as part of its “art” installation. Ok, cool. As we load up the van as I plot a way to maneuver myself towards a window seat. Total fail. Mr. Rogers is the last one to walk out of, out of all places, Roy Rogers. He is wearing a Roy Rogers french fry gun holster on his belt, complete with the fries and dipping ketchup you would get in a kid’s meal. MI**, **RF, SI, and S**E can’t stop laughing. I’m thinking this is what white dads do when they are “out on the town” and the “wife” is “back home” and all of his “office work” is “done”. This is all a little too weird. He enters on my side of the van and once again I’m playing bitch. He offers me a French fry as a consolation prize. Thanks dad, Baltimore can’t come soon enough.

We opt out of going to the hotel and go straight to the festival. After some minor haggling we get our VIP passes and are led to the 2 walls we are supposed to decorate with our extensive knowledge of street vandalism. I’m thinking they will be doing some elaborate graffiti art piece with fancy letters and colors like we were redesigning the Graffiti Wall of Fame in Spanish Harlem. No. MI** and **RF go with fill Ins, stompers, and basically rag the shit out of both walls in what looks like we all have eternal beef with each other. At first I’m like “ok this is probably not what the organizers where looking for” – but then I see the vision. The wall looks like a wall you would see along the West Side Highway or on a train coming in or out of the JMZ Essex Street train station. This wasn’t graffiti, it was “performance art” on dust, a moment in the streets of New York City captured and placed on a fake wall built in Baltimore. One by one, rave faced spectators surround us, curious as too what exactly we were trying to do. M**T rocks a floater that’s crossed over by **ME who then gets covered by stomper made by SE** who then gets crossed out by *I who then get’s half his shit blocked out by N***S. Everyone rags me and the intern.

Oh yeah, in case you just missed it, Mr. Rogers has a graffiti tag and it’s N***S.

The crowd surrounding us looks like extras from a Blink 182 or Moby video. Everyone tells us what we are doing is cool but no one really knows what’s going down with the exception of some local toy writers that hoover around in hopes of catching a quick tag. Soon we have a gaggle of girls watching us vandalize and re-vandalize this poor wall that’s collapsing from the weight of the spray paint. For every girl we saw with a nice ass in skinny jeans we were greeted by bedazzled tank tops and dusty ballerina flats or poorly executed wedges. Mostly everyone at this music festival has bad acne. My entire crew is aggressively New York snobby so we come to terms that none of us are getting laid tonight.

We start popping the first of many E pills. After we decide we are done with the wall (how we came to that conclusion is a mystery to me) we stumble around the fairgrounds hunting for free food and liquor. N***S is already breaking in and out of shit and showing off whenever we find him. The intern is slightly drunk and we then find out he’s only 16 and MINT might have dated his mom. Shits and giggles for hours. LCD Sound System closes the festival with a loud “electro-dance” set and we are left alone in a field of dust and garbage. The ecstasy has me already seeing doubles – and now it’s time unwind and party.

We stop at a deli to get some cigars and beer. Apparently you can also buy liquor at any local deli in Baltimore so Of COURSE our Russian designated driver gets a bottle of Smirnoff while the rest of us load up on Coors light and Budweiser’s. N***S show us up with a 1 liter bottle of a mystery whiskey that would later be known as the Kentucky Gentleman. We go in face first with our bottoms up. Pause.

This is where the night gets blurry; at one point in the night we wind up at what I could only describe as a Baltimore Bass “Krunking” party where a bunch of black kids are dancing their spines and whatever inner city demons they have living inside out. NEWES disappears.

Again.

In an alley full of hipster weirdo’s we meet 77 Klash with 2 girls I know from “the scene” back in New York City. Hotel after hours? Sure, why not? On our way back to the hotel we get lost and crash the minivan twice. Ever been in a van filled with drunks, on E, lost in Baltimore? Extreme levels of life changing. We find N***S (again) who volunteers to sit in the back with the left over spray cans and starts telling us how he grew up somewhere along the road we just happen to be lost on.

“Yo Baltimore is soft, I left, tried to find some crack drunk, and came back with all my money.” 

WHAT?!

That prompts S**E to joke about which tree N***S lived in, opening the floodgates for jokes on jokes on top of jokes with a side of jokes. After our 3rd, E tripping, slightly drunk driving, everyone screaming directions at the same time but no one knows where we are going crash into whatever you would describe as a highway, N***S reaches his whiskey soaked boiling point. Kicking the back of my seat, N***S starts screaming and freaking out, demanding to get out of our sloppy party van. By then I was nearing my own breaking point with him when **RF and S* pulls me aside so I can have a moment.

“Don’t worry about him… That’s Pablo, P3D.” 

Ok.

We finally find our fucking hotel.

Behind our hotel there’s a pond with a small romantic deck. We proceed to litter it with our drunk and trippy New York City born and raised arrogance. Earlier in the day N***S bet S* he could get people to jump into the seemingly welcoming pond. By the time the night was over four of us had jumped in. Three of us quickly got out when we realize that this isn’t a pond as much as it is a murky marsh, like the one The Swamp Thing from DC comics would live in. We prayed that there was nothing unhealthy about the green algae that has glued itself on to our skin. Not N***S. He swims the entire pond and climbs the Weeping Willows brushing the pond like a drunken lemur with his Kentucky Gentleman well in hand. I keep motioning to MI** to get him out of the water but everyone is too busy laughing at my nude “Dominican Shark” to care. In my defense it was the first time I’ve ever gotten naked and skinny dipped in front of a bunch of men.

Pause.

I was bonding, N***S was wearing sea weed like a swamp warrior and throwing whatever he found at the bottom of the pond at us. An old Commodore keyboard, Play Station, more sea weed, etc. I would later tell this story to my girlfriend who had previously met N***S before we started dating and she didn’t believe one word.

We finally get N***S out of the pond and he’s is not too happy with that, or us. He refuses to put his clothes back on and starts doing naked cart wheels on the now formerly virgin grass. At this point it’s around 4am and we were all a little loud and a little too loose for the imaginary security plotting to bust us. All I remembered was **RF stuck on stupid by the little bit of weed he smoked (we are talking internet kitty cute) and SI blessing us all with some grown man, one to grow on talk. I’ve never felt so close to a motley crew of people as I did but now I’m pretty sure that was the E talking.

And then N***S started screaming…

“I’M OK!!!!!” “I’M OK!!!!” “I’M OK!!!”

All I could think about was N***S drowning himself or killing someone, or just SERF who everyone I’ve ever met described him as legendarily annoying. But no, SE** was a beardy pug on a hallmark card with his newly discovered stoned self. MI**, as camp leader, did his best to calm down **WES but to no avail. He angrily put on all of his clothes and stormed off with a repeated shreik that would haunt me for the rest of my life…

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

“AHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

“AHHHHHHHHHH!”

“AHHHHHHHH!”

“Ahhhhhhhh!”

“Ahhhh…”

The scream faded the further he stormed away from the pond and into the hotel parking garage. We heard NE***’s screams slowly fade out in the distance for the next 10 minutes or so. It wasn’t even a scream it was more of a shriek that comes from a lot of internal pain or unresolved childhood shit. Yes, even in my drunken and hallucinogenic state I was trying to Dr. Phil the events surrounding me. We anticipated the not so imaginary hotel security calling the cops on us so we quickly gathered all of our things and ran back to the hotel room. This was not going to be good but we were way too wasted to do anything about it. We all split up into our seperate rooms. Me and MI** pass out to the sounds of S**E petting a small furry mouse (you’d have to ask him, sorry).

The next morning is hangover heavy with a side of exhausted. Everyone is sluggish and cranky on the way to van. We decide not to see the last day of the virgin music fest, find a diner, and go back to the land of sky scrapers and mass transit. One by one we pile into the van, MI**, **RF, S**E, S*, the intern, myself…

“Where’s Newes”

“Yo I tried to call him I don’t know” MI** answers with a Kanye West at the VMA’s shoulder shrug…

“Are we leaving him???”

“Yeah man, what else can we do?”

At this point I’m thinking MI** has to be one of the shittiest friends in the world. I don’t even know N***S and all I want to do is search the local hospitals and call the police. No one cares; everyone just piles up in the van and puts on their best “I need a nap” face. I couldn’t sleep because all I keep thinking about was that shriek. I had never heard nothing like it in my entire life. What if that would have been me?

These motherfuckers would have abandoned me with the Snoops and Barksdales and whatever other character that would have killed me on HBO’s “The Wire”. I contemplate arriving in NYC and erasing them all from my cell phone. Here I am, sad for a man I just met. Who would do Mr. Rogers like that??? I would have taken a train home if I didn’t spend all my money on booze and ecstasy. Fuck these niggas… Then M**T gets a text messages and starts laughing out loud:

“Yo this nigga N***S, went to DC to find crack, found it, passed out in a bus station, wound up in Jersey, and is home safe, sipping coffee…”

We, on the other hand still had another 2 hours on our trip back to New York.

Pablo P3D.

Mothers Day.

My smile. Here I am on the other side of the world with this beautiful smile. a smile that has kept me from harms way, built life time bridges and broke many hearts. A conniving and sly smile with charisma carefully hidden within humility. I know there’s a few people who couldn’t imagine a life with out this smile. Trust me mother if I die right now it wouldn’t be a empty funeral.

My smile comes from you… It all comes from you. I love music because you always played it when you were happy, occupied with the moment and not with the weight of the world you carried with 3 children in a new country. Mind you we are talking about NEW YORK CITY. First Dominican family on our block in Harlem during the crack attack of the 80’s? Check. What was it again? The thing our elementary school teachers would pepper us with along with Christopher Columbus and our ABC’s? Oh yeah, dead or in jail by the age of 21. FUCK THAT. Mom I’m on a motorcycle riding through the shadiest parts of Cambodia, enjoying every heart beat at the age of 35, with my dream girl on the other side of the planet, with money I got from art. Art mom – some stupid pictures I took so I could have some sort of relevance in the sense of our city’s history. A story for my estranged son to curse at or treasure for it’s cautionary fables.

I’m still messy mom… but when I clean up I do pretty ok. I like the corners of furniture to align and the room color schemes to be perfect. Our apartment never looked the same… you constantly redecorated, as I now constantly re invent myself, improving on décor at a time. Even through the worst you made our lives beautiful. You probably thought having me help with your college homework was hard on me but no I was honored that you trusted me at such a young age. You probably wish you would have done some things different, the little Cambodian girl, no older then nine years holding a baby begging for food, says you shouldn’t regret a damn thing. The Dominican republic you grew up in is no different from where I am now.

15 and with a new born? Homeless in NYC? With no English? Wow you did all of that so I can sit in this hostel in Cambodia, living out my wildest dreams.

Yeah, you did that.

Thank you.

“The Vietnam Diet” 1st Brooklyn Art Show Edition

“You have to document 7 days of what you ate, then come up with a art piece for it…”
Kat Popeil, Something I Ate

3 eggs, 2 slices of raisin bread lightly buttered with the non-heart attacky stuff. A banana, some apple juice, some mixed nuts to go along with my severed balls while I read my New York Post. What the fuck do I care about this gut anyway? So what? I’ll be the fat American on vacation. Being stared at by locals who know I’m from a country where we give eating and drinking utensils out as souvenirs. Commemorative plates used to adorn an already full mantle loaded with memories of our excess. My gut carries the rotting remains of one too many drinks and I’ll order whenever I wants. Vietnam and Cambodia? All I know is what I saw in movies and in the little green army men I used to play with when I was young and impressionable. Everyone looked poor and savagey in Full Metal Jacket. Here I am worried about how poor my stomach looks in a white V-neck. I forgot all about it as I crushed my 4th PBR later that Night.

I wake up feeling like shit but I promised my girlfriend I would work out today. I like telling her to tell me to do stuff and get mad at me if I don’t do them. Then, in true elegance, I argue with her for getting upset. That roller coaster of pressure has got to be giving us good abs. I still feel full from the all the beer I had last night. It becomes apparent I’m not full when doing all of the slow burn poses in yoga as I shake like an above ground train platform. I still can’t believe I do yoga, and I do enjoy dropping the Y bomb on twitter like I’m some put together snob. I pig out on a turkey & swiss hero with lettuce & tomatoes toasted from my corner deli. That’s not bad. Then I top my order off with a Phillies Blunt cigar. I later eat all the cashews and walnuts from my industrial size planter peanuts can from BJ’s Wholesale.

I stayed in on a Wednesday night. Wow. Lately I’ve turned into a fucking recluse, curating the 4 corners of my vision with whatever sitcom currently in season that I can DVR without Time Warner fucking me. So now it’s Thursday morning and I have nothing to watch. Good. I take the free time bang out my yoga and finally set up my “art” tumblr. I’m suspicious about the attention I’m receiving but refuse to blame the constant smoking of the pot. It has to be something else that everyone wants from me. Flattery, like I have that much to begin with. I have a can of Progresso vegetable soup with 2 slices of toast. That was healthy. The sugar in the 3 glasses of grape juice I washed it down with wasn’t. I take a handful of wheat thins on my way to catch the B60 bus to sell my 2nd photo print. This is my life at the moment.

Because I work late on Thursday nights, Friday is already off to a bad start. On my way home from Beauty Bar Brooklyn I get a chicken kebab from the Halal street meater in front of Woodhull hospital. Right after my last bite Flowgy answers my mass after hour’s text. The last time I showed up to his loft at this hour the space was flooded with conversation peices. When I arrive it’s only him, a neighbor and some brutal non-descript gin. Suddenly I’m too full to party and go home. I wake up later in the afternoon to a banana, a corner store croissant, and a bowl of my beloved lucky charms cereal drowned in 1 percent milk. I’m horrible to the things I love.

There’s no fucking way I’m working out today. I’m too old to be smoking dust in a Lower East Side house party complete with the flirty enabling mom but I didn’t let it get in my way at all. Recalling the rest of last night is like trying to drive with sunglasses on in the middle of a down pour at night. I promised Alison that I would check her out at Tandem bar for brunch. That was 3 Saturdays ago. My “responsibility” to my friends is awarded with 2 eggs over easy on a biscuit drowned in gravy with a side of sausage. It reminded me of the now closed Relish diner. I should remember to be more responsible. I smoked dust again later on in the evening.

Sunday is family brunch day also known as Dances with White Girls diet cheat day. Everything is friends, fashion, and cocktails and Frog it killing it. An alpha male doesn’t ask for the price on the special so I order the Steak & Eggs with the home fires as my fuck you, your salmon, and your fancy mixologist concoctions. I don’t know why I’m so bothered being that Frog has been like this since I’ve met him. Later I realize it’s me who’s changed. The days of wearing expensive sunglasses and women’s jewelry were behind me, I was content with my old Adidas shell toes and fuzz balled J. Crew sweater. I saw it as a sign of my maturity, but at that moment it felt uncomfortable. It was my fucking stubborn gut feeding my paranoia. Prosecco after Prosecco I felt like his flash as a statement of youth and it was calling me fat, old , and sluggish. I now secretly hate him. He’s officially like my family now.

I wake up to the mother of all hang over’s. All I want is Lasagna, greasy and obese just like my mother makes it. I settle for Chicken parmesan sandwich with an order of mozzarella sticks to complete the ten dollars needed to complete my order. The mozzarella sticks taste like shit. The purple I smoke does nothing for the situation, minus cure me from the post vomit nausea. I step on my scale and I’m the same weight as when I started this Vietnam diet if not more bloated. I miss my Girlfriend. She comes home with a matching hangover and a face riddled with social exhaustion. I show her the video of her stumbling all over the apartment drunk that I recorded on my Black Berry as we hide our shame under the Kellogs Diner menu. I stuff myself with a grill cheese sandwich and a banana milkshake. My gut is now on a steady pace of being the only New York souvenir I’ll carry overseas.

(Editors note: A special thank you goes to Martine Langatta, Igor Smith, Steven Klavier, Kara Mullins and my brothers Napolean Luna and Dances Bolton for paying $30 dollars to share this moment with me. I love you all…)

They Glow

“Yo did you see that?”

“What was it?”

“The bunny rabbit…”

“Nigga we in Pacha are you trippi…?”

“Nah, nah, look at that blond in the blue dress hopping around the club with all those dude just, just chasing after her…”

“Oh my God they are falling over each other trying to keep up with her…”

“Yo that’s why you pop bottles and buy drugs in the club, for that… Niggas go bald for that.”

A slightly embellished conversation between Dances with White Girls and myself. Pacha NYC.

I was too wasted to remember “Playboy Bunny” so I called her a bunny rabbit. She must have been a good 5’9, and with heels that made it her super model tall. Her hair was platinum blonde that glowed under the neon lights and bounced with her every step like her shoulders were trampolines. Her face was of a 15-year-old girl and a body of a porn star neglected by her father. Not like the ones that silicone up and do Gonzo porn because it doesn’t require a script for reading but like the ones with natural bodies and cancer free tans with huge Vivid Video contracts. She exuded sex. Her lips said “less talk” while her body said “fuck the shit out of me” and yet her actions where as innocent as a child flirting with daisies. See how that messes with your train of thought? That’s exactly what the men embarrassingly stumbling over themselves to be near this woman looked like to me. She would pull off from one corner of the mega club like the last train out of Paris and all of these random men were holding on for dear life, some falling off to an uncertain death on the dance floor. She couldn’t have been that hot, these mushrooms must be on dust or some other drug.

But she was.

Her dress was electric blue, very tight and elegant. Her jewelry looked straight out of the Harry Winston Barbie doll collection. Her shoes looked like she wore them at a prom in Las Vegas or Beverly Hills. Her skin was a glazed porcelain, far from pale and comfortably tan.  If someone had told me before hand that she was completely sober I would have believed it. This was the high that popular kids feel in secondary school before they start trying drugs. She didn’t even carry a clutch. No cell phone or credit card just men auditioning for a spot in Madonna’s Material Girl video. I couldn’t even tell if she was there with anyone, just a flock of men trying to dry hump every single inch of her perfect body. She didn’t care; she just danced and giggled, sounding like what I would imagine Paris Hilton would sound like on helium but without all the annoying.  She was a walking champagne bottle in the middle of an alcoholic marathon.

The men looked sketchy in comparison to her 3am sunshine. Armenian men with slicked back hair and elaborate watches with black crocodile leather bands and little Vinnys from the Jersey Shore in their first button down shirt.  A mix of European driver shoes and those unsightly sneakers that Diesel made for club goers not ready to switch their dress code followed the ripped American Eagle jeans and the Calvin Klein slacks that wanted to be found on her bedroom floor. While one man would pull out his black American Express card to pay for a bottle the other one would snatch her to the dance floor where an auditorium of men awaited to gyrate with her.  The men not confident enough to approach her shyly adjusted their boners while wilting in pain from blue balls. No one even tried to talk to her. Everything was a grunt or moan for her attention. The information these men needed was immediate and didn’t require the speed bump of conversation. It was the touch of her skin they spent every day of their lives working for and the pressure of their hard cocks bulging in their pants pressing against perfectly round ass is what they showered and wore cologne for. The feel of her youthfully perky breast against their sweaty pit stained shirts and the sensation of her fingers bear trapped in their jealous hands. The more one man spent at the bar to get her attention the more the other danced or showed off his steroid perfect body. She just danced, oblivious to the violent courtship that orbited her celestial self.

“yo I got go talk to her…”

I needed to see this for myself. What could possibly reduce a man back to the animal kingdom, where survival is as basic as eat, fight, and fuck? I left Frog at our usual spot on the dance floor at Pacha, underneath the 2^nd floor balcony where all the Chinese ecstasy addicts hang out, in the middle of his old man dance.  I followed the trail left by the bunny’s glowing blue dress through the crowd of New Jersey Guido’s and midtown real estate agents. DJ Erick Morrillo’s big room house music set has the crowd pulsating like an erratic heartbeat. The closer I got to her the highs and mid ranges from the music drowned out leaving me with nothing but life flooding bass. Then the bass started to filter out as I licked my lips contemplating what my first words were going to be to be. Everything was a sonic mumble. Would she even talk to me when she has an entourage of The Situations and Tom Fords surrounding her? Me? 5’9 on a good posture day wearing nothing but my thrift store finest? I doubted if she even used the same tooth-brush twice and here I am, smelling like Beacons Closet, a ratty second-hand store from Brooklyn.

Then the mushrooms started to peek.

After successfully using club security as a football tackle to lose the parade of testosterone following her, the bunny leans against the back of a speaker using its shadow as a cover. I have now been following her around the club for 15 awkward minutes, every breath as heavy as the 808 kicks coming from Erick Morillo’s CDJ’s. I had just gone from investigated reporter to card-carrying creep. Every time common sense told me to walk away the euphoria threatened to murder me if I did.  Every man has their “The worst she can say is no moment” and this was mine. Suddenly everything around me lost shape and turned into an array of pastel colors. I was in the middle of a mushroom/ bass reaction. I took another deep breath in an attempt to grasp on to the world I felt slipping away. God damn these mushrooms are good. By the time I exhaled I was standing right next to her.

“How exhausting is it to be you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well all of those men chasing you around the entire club, I’ve never seen  nothing like that…”

“I know right? Is it always like this in New York? So much fun!”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m just here for the weekend it’s my first time in the big city. I’m a ballet dancer from a town outside of Seattle and I rarely go out. These guys are sooooooo crazy right? I just love dancing and everyone …”

“Huh? Did you just call that dancing?”

The bunny was really a bunny, a bunny that just fell into Alice In Wonderland’s rabbit hole. Her accent had a drawl that you would only find on the cutting room floor of a Dolly Parton movie. Her breath smelled like fresh-baked pie and her fingers looked like they wrote thank you notes to her grandparents and voted with her heart.  Her eyes were blue and wide and as magnetic as a black hole.  Her eroticism didn’t come from sex but from her unadulterated optimism and genuine belief in people.  People still live like that outside of New York?? In her mind the perverted bottle service and Ed Hardy zombies that kept trying to rape a hole in her satin fabric where just being friendly; expected night club behavior like she saw on reality TV shows. She didn’t know what to wear for her big night in the city so she borrowed a friend’s prom outfit down to the tiara her male friend was holding for her. The only thing his suit was missing was a bow tie and the theme song from Green Acres.  He hands her a bottle of water, I take whatever I was going to offer her and slip it back into the tiny sin pocket on my Levis.

“So you’re from Brooklyn huh? Tell me alllllll about it!”

“No well,  I live there now but I was born and raised in Harlem and…”

Everything I told her fascinated her. She leaned into me and did that thing with her hair that blondes do when they are Farrah Fawcett hot, only this girl was young enough to not know who Farrah Fawcett was.  To nightlife vampires she was the holy grail of day walkers, an American Dream in every sense of the word. I started to feel guilty. I went from Nosferatu to Edward from Twilight and she was my night club Bella of the moment. Every question I answered returned with another question. Her attention made me feel like the nerd who won his dream girl in the middle of a cage match against all of  her jock ex-boyfriends, before the match starts. Between that and her attentive eyes my ego elevator took me from penthouse to basement and back with no care for what the g-force was doing to my stomach. Great, I’m going to have to fight my way out of this breakfast club like it’s a suburban school parking lot. She takes my phone, puts her number in, thanks me for being such a sweetheart, and vanishes into the neon lights and fog machine smoke. Some random dude purposely bumps me with his shoulder on his way to follow her, knocking over my drink.  I’m too hypnotized, confused and dumbfounded to care. The music filters back in and the mids and highs from Morillos DJ set come rushing back into my ear like a tsunami. Oh shit I’m still at Pacha.

I skip through a bunch of sweaty weekend warriors in crop tops and tank tops in order to get back to where I left Frog. Without hesitation, I shove my brightly lit cell phone in his face. Frog and I have had this unspoken competition since back when I first met him at Morrissey Park and we both had on the same exclusive Nike’s sneakers on in different color ways. Needless to say ever since his “anal sex with a midget in an oven” story I was trailing far behind in exploits. This coup, the hottest girl in Pacha, was sure to even the playing field.

“I GOT THE BUNNYS NUMBER!”

“Yo you got the bunny’s number??”

We laugh and he throws a fist in the air as an exclamation point as to how excited he was for me. But, this is Frog; although he’s never mentioned it I’m pretty sure he’s aware of the competitive nature of our friendship. He places a hand on my shoulder, stopping me from bouncing around like a lottery winner and goes:

“So what are you gonna do with that? You do know you live with your girlfriend right?”

Fuck, the bunny made me forget I lived with my girlfriend. Back to the drawing board and quietly hating my best friend.

Delete.

(This is the video Team Facelift was filming when I took all the above pictures. Enjoy.)

Flash: A Summer Poem About Service

“Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.”
Russel Baker

He hated this fucking day job. He hated the friend that gave him this shitty delivery job. Is it still a job if you don’t pay taxes? The job is pretty easy, answer a phone call then send a text with an address and shut the fuck up about it. But no, it was how many minutes this and what you got that.  The level of micromanaging he had to endure consistently tested the strength of his friendship. Because of this he adopted the “Always Keep Your Phone On Silent” method of aggregated communication. The only way he knew if anyone called or texted him was when he wanted to check his twitter status, which he did often. Like dude, how incognito are you posting crap every 5 minutes? It was the only way he could speak without confrontation.

Every day it was a different part of the city, a different way to get there, and a different amount of time to do it all. A different face with money in different denominations, clueless of the risk or hassle it took to get there. It was always bro this and yo what took so long that. He would then tell me of how he ran out of facial expressions to would illustrate his apparent disgust.

“Motherfucker I don’t ride a bike I ride the train”

Those words must have shot out of his mouth like some weird New York City I can’t drive turrets. Every out of towner or “New New York” transplant looking at him with this pitiful didn’t your public school have Drivers Ed face? Even hicks get their tractor-trailer licenses what’s wrong with you? He would try to save face with the all time favorite “well I was born here and…” but by then they had already paid him and were casually ushering him out the door. Nobody care about your non driving disability until it’s time for a road trip or you can’t rent a car then it‘s all “you’re useless”.

So there he went, with his camera in one hand, a sack of shit in a fancy fanny pack and the heat wave of the century piggybacking on his balls. In and out of the train system like a slug on salt, melting with every movement until the nearest Bodega fed his thirst. All he ever wanted was a simple address so he didn’t have to call and beg for a buzzer number while the nosy (fill in the blank) poked him with their disrespectful and suspicious eyeballs. The streets in Crown Heights were rough but Park Slope has CHILDREN, and lots of them. Children are being pumped out of fire hydrants wetting cars that were filled with children while children crossed the street. A child is giving a poorly parked car a ticket while the owner throws a temper tantrum. It was too much for him. He lived in the night and the sight of kids was sunlight to a vampire. He just really missed his son. He would later profess his deep love for children and his shame if he ever got busted in front of one.

He was in and out of random apartments like wind, knowing the next breath the host would take would be filled with mood altering smoke. Breathe in… oh my god I’ve had a shitty day. Breathe out… yeah man fuuuuuuuck that.  Breathe in… oh shit I have a dead line. Breathe out… huh? Everyone had their own anxieties to tame so he never judged them. He would just stand outside their doors in their stairway Google mapping the next address, praying just this once his friend got the information correct. Was it Smith Street or Smith Avenue? Finding the correct address at times resembled his inner struggle to find the right answers by shifting through God-given signals in order to justify his immediate lifestyle. Sometimes he would get it right, other times he would wander into the wrong part of town trying to imagine a way to hang up and slam this phone in a text message.

Everything was as scary and nerve wrecking as it was an engaging and exhilarating adventure. The smoother every hand to hand was the more comfortable and paranoid he got. Weaving In and out of random police terrorism checks and the occasional undercover like the trash that blows through a train platform.  He never stopped arguing with his friend, instead finding the art in their confrontational banter. Confident yet humble, he never felt as aware as he did dull. A smile got him a glass of water and a small joke would get him a generous rip from a strangers bong. Gone were the hard edges defined by sharp shadows that composed his world, all that remained was a city similar to a watercolor painting allowed to bleed a little too long. The heavier his eyelids got under the sun the more dilated his eyes were, allowing the beautiful light of existence to rush in, everything looking like an overexposed black and white picture.

“Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.”
Sam Keen