john lennon's rome
Well, the weekend started out the way it was supposed to, down on Constitution Avenue by the Lincoln Memorial, finally putting to use the wooden bat Lewis got a couple of weeks ago. We were fleeing the city, we could do whatever we wanted.
We played until one of our friends took a liner off the eyebrow, split it right open and we had a nice little debate, emergency room: yes or no? Discuss. We got some napkins and a Coke from the vendor, made a cold compress that didn’t really work. Head wounds bleed a lot, but they’re not that serious, most of the time. It worked out well as a natural end to the game; me and Aaron had a bus to catch.
We sold our textbooks and I was suddenly able to actually afford New York City, and with a sheaf of fives and tens in my pocket, we got to Chinatown with about two seconds to spare, collapsed into our seats and said, we made it, fuck yeah.
Rolled all the way up to Philadelphia and got sandwiches at WaWa (best convenience store in the world, you guys, and I’ve been to truck stops in Germany) before getting picked up by our friends that we were staying with. Gay bars and Curb Your Enthusiasm DVDs, and me on the floor, Aaron on the couch, my cell phone alarm set for eight in the morning.
The longest day ever. I woke Aaron up and said, I’d just like to get this out of the way right now, because you’re gonna be hearing it all day-I am so fucking tired. Everyone was in general agreement on that point. We said goodbye to Jess, and Tim, Aaron and I drove into New Jersey to catch the train. Reese’s cups and sour gummi worms for breakfast, Stephen Jay Gould’s essays about baseball and the Mountain Goats loud loud loud in my headphones.
Penn Station and then the subway, meeting Aaron’s cousin who we were staying with, and we didn’t see the sky over New York City until we got out at Columbia and almost went blind. Dropped off our stuff and walked over into Harlem, bought sodas and peanuts and sunflower seeds from the cheapest bodega in the world, and hopped a train to the Bronx.
We got to Yankee Stadium late, so we couldn’t keep score, but I got a lot of static for my Zito shirt, to which I said, whatever. It was Yankee Stadium and I hadn’t been since I was eleven, and Tim and Aaron had never been, and it does feel like a cathedral, the fans notwithstanding. Found myself, rather unexpectedly, badly missing RFK.
My boys lost, as they are wont to do these days (boys, seriously. It’s not April anymore), but Joe Blanton still owns me, or at least the part of me not already owned by Zito, who spent the game wandering around the dugout being weird. Which was fantastic. The first time I’d seen them since spring training, because I didn’t get out to Baltimore for the season opener, though I should have.
After the game, we went back across the river and smoked a jay in Morningside Park, which is built on a vertical, a cliff-dive into the bad side of town, but chill enough. We could not believe the campus at Columbia, the perfect grass and the huge buildings. We were staying in a freshman dorm, the first time I’ve stayed in a freshman dorm in two years, after getting spoiled by apartments and upperclassman housing, but we didn’t complain because you don’t complain when things are free.
We went down to Times Square to meet our friend who was in town with her mom, and got dinner somewhere in the theatre district before heading out to Brooklyn for the Mountain Goats show.
Oh, did I tell you we saw the Mountain Goats in Brooklyn? Because we did. It was necessary, y’all. The show in DC, earlier in the week, it was one of those things, wherein I am at a loss for words, which you know doesn’t happen to me often. Basically, there was the show in DC, and now nothing in the world looks the same to me.
And we looked and they were in Brooklyn, a place I’ve never been. Brooklyn is fucking cool, you guys. Northsix is just a little club, and the directions for how to get there include, ‘walk west for three blocks (towards the Manhattan skyline).’ John D. never does the same show twice, and he played ‘Source Decay,’ and ‘Going to Cleveland,’ instead of ‘Southwood Plantation Road,’ and ‘International Small Arms Traffic Blues,’ but I could still hardly breathe by the end of it.
We came out of there shaking and smoked cigarettes on the street until it got too cold. Back in Manhattan, we went to a hookah bar in the East Village, some number of blocks away from the flophouse on the Bowery where I stayed the last time I was here, two weeks after September 11th and the school buses full of rescue workers at one in the morning.
We disproved the theory that you can no longer smoke a jay on the sidewalks in New York City, and it took us an hour to get back up to Columbia, being as it was two-thirty in the morning, but we were okay, we’d been burning through caffeine pills all day.
We broke some more laws in the dorm, and twenty-one hours after we’d woken up in West Philly, me and Aaron watched SportsCenter in the study lounge and then finally, finally, fell back asleep.
Tim left the next morning, and I said goodbye to him like I’ve been saying goodbye to all my East Coast friends for the past month, because I’ve got two more weeks and then I’m not coming back for a long time.
Similar pattern to our day, Yankee Stadium for a day game, and Rich Harden won me over again, some more, but there’s not a man on that team that can hit right now, and for all the improvement done to the bullpen over the off-season, and all that was surrendered in the name of that improvement, they still can’t get shit done late in the game. There’s gonna be a Cy Young race in the National League this year that’ll finish in Atlanta or St. Louis, and Christ, but Billy Beane’s gonna look stupid by the end of it.
Anyway. I’m not letting any of this bring me down. Best part of the day: we were in the bleachers, just above the A’s bullpen, and after the game, Huston Street was hanging out being really tempting in that way he has, and this girl in A’s gear who was not me (alas!) totally passed him down an A’s team schedule with her name and phone number on it, and he totally tossed her a ball. From which we can surmise a) Street is very polite, b) Street is very easy, c) all of the above.
Back to Morningside Park, back to the prettiest college campus in all the world, and we took a nap, watched the O.C. on Aaron’s computer, then went to the Toys R Us in Times Square until it closed. We walked down Fifth Avenue and I kept looking for stuff that wasn’t there anymore. It’s weird because I didn’t expect to care that much, but the city of New York is a specific thing in my mind, and it doesn’t look like this.
By the time we got to Greenwich Village, we’d caught our second wind. Met up with some NYU kids I know, played pinball in a basement, and then said goodbye again, left with Aaron to buy a Zippo and get some food.
We got lost wandering around the Village, and ended up at the Hudson River. The grid just falls apart below 14th, which I knew intellectually but couldn’t get my sense of direction to understand. Crossed back into SoHo and found a bar with Baseball Tonight on the television. We got caught up on the scores and saw all the best plays, and the bartender gave me my Coke for free.
Aaron fell asleep on the subway ride home, and I played Tetris on my phone with him leaning on me just like always.
We woke up and met our friend and her mom at the Guggenheim, where the Michael Jackson/Kurt Cobain/Joy Division exhibit was the coolest, and everybody got vertigo looking over the spiraled drop. I called my mom because I missed her on Mother’s Day, and again the whole family, save myself, had been together out in California. My brothers go to college an hour away from where we grew up; I’ve been on the other side of the country, or the world, since I was seventeen years old. Which was intentional, of course, but two weeks from moving back, and I can’t decide if I’m ready yet.
We had soft pretzels and ice cream for lunch in front of the museum, a guy with a great voice singing old R&B and doo-wop for spare change. Went into Central Park and played catch, an intensely good day for it. I spread out the Yankees towel I’d gotten free at the Stadium and we smoked cigarettes, rode the train together as far as 42nd, where Aaron got off and I rolled on to Penn Station.
It was an hour wait before the bus left, spent chainsmoking on the sidewalk, calling basically everyone I know. Aaron called me from the Yankee game when we were stopped at a way-station somewhere in Jersey, and told me the out-of-town scores, asked me to pick up his mail tomorrow.
I didn’t get back home until eleven, caught the late games and set my lineups for tomorrow, I had good intentions for the next day that would not be fulfilled, but when I went sleep, I was pretty sure I had my life in order, or as good order as can be expected for a kid about to be cut loose.
New York City, man, where I swore I’d end up when I was eleven years old, and still might, hell. You never know. The only thing is, if I lived there, I would have to be a Mets fan. I mean, I wouldn’t even have any choice in the matter. I am physically incapable of rooting for the Yankees.
So, it was a good weekend. I’ve got a semester’s worth of everything to learn by tomorrow, but you know what? Done it before, do it again.