(no subject)
The Beauty of the Wayfarers
My name is Estragon. My family lived for generations as shepherds on the island of Sicily. My great-great grandparents immigrated to New York in 1876. My great-grandmother married a barber in the upper East End. I’m not sure, but I think his shop has been turned into an ice cream parlor now. My parents, Bella and Bassanio’s marriage was arranged through a mutual family friend. Bella’s father owned a bakery that specialized in bagels. He provided a solid bagel tower instead of a wedding cake for the ceremony. They decided to move into the countryside and build a farm. A year after they married, in 1946, I was born, but Bassanio was often away on business (he was trying to start a rice company) so my origins were dubious. My mother was known to hire a youth from the city to come help her manage the land on weekends. I am told he and I have a similar nose.
When I was eight, my father’s rice company was flourishing. We sold mainly to residents of Chinatown who didn’t want to pay import taxes. With our profits, we hired lots of farm hands and moved back into the city. When I wasn’t in school, I spent my time wandering around with a shovel, cracking concrete off street corners and throwing them at passing taxis. On my fourth return home with a police officer holding my by the back of my shirt, still clutching to my shovel, Bella decided I needed a better hobby. The next day she gave me a pair of roller skates. I had never skated before and I rushed out to the sidewalk to try. I wasn’t very good at first and I rolled out into the street. I was nearly hit by a truck, but I tripped on one of my pieces of detached concrete just in time and fell to the ground as the huge automobile rumbled above me. Bella never gave my little sister Isadora roller skates. As I grew older, skating became my passion. In the 1958, when I was 12 or so, I frequently skipped school in favor of lolling around roller rinks and practicing all day.
In 1965 I turned 19. That year I met the most amazing girl I have ever known. Her name was Elise. We were united at a skating workshop. We fell instantly into an all fire all flame love/ hate relationship. If we were fighting, we would trip the other on the skating floor. I think we each suffered a few minor concussions, but mixed with the psychedelic drugs and hard partying we did in the sixties, it wasn’t a big deal. We were skating and domestic partners for the next four years until I proposed to her in 1969. She accepted and we rushed to tell my family (her parents were brutally murdered in an Ohio gang war when she was four) and make wedding plans for the following summer. My parents were absolutely against the idea. They insisted I stop seeing her and consider instead a daughter of their friend that would like to marry into our family. I refused and Bella disowned me. My father, feeling rather bad, but unwilling to disagree with Bella, gave me the rest of the money they would have spent on my college and kept secretly in contact with me until his death in 1973. We took the money he offered and fled to Germany where we studied the fine art of roller painting, where you dip the wheels of your skates in paint and roll around on a large sheet of paper. We were married in the summer of 1970. In January of 1972, Elise was run down and killed by a compact car that ran off the road in a snowstorm. She was 27.
After Elise’s untimely death, I returned to New York. I never went to a roller rink again, not even after they became popular. I was a sailor for a year, on a ship that carried crates of granite from New York to London. After my father’s death in 1973 I attempted to return to mother to take care of her. She refused me again, even though I was sans-Elise.
Dealing with my maternal rejection I sank back into a drugged stupor. Between 1973 and 1975 I became obsessed with David Bowie and followed him across the country until he flew to Germany on tour. I couldn’t go back there, there were memories of Elise rooted everywhere. I settled back into New York life and in the end of 1975 I met Mr. Vladimir Sanderson in a certain gay bar where I was picking pockets every other Thursday night. Vladimir turned out to be aesexual, and a perfect companion to my widower self. Vladimir was also the heir to a Russian fur fortune. He believed he was supposed to find a certain meeting place to he could wait for the appearance of one, Mr. Godot. He never fully explained whom mysterious Mr. Godot was, but I needed something to do, and as Vladimir was loaded I decided to accompany him on his quest. We roamed the city of New York and the surrounding suburbs, countryside, and bogs for two months. We became close friends, our only company and confidents. I affectionately dubbed him Didi and to him I was Gogo, because he had it in his head that I used to be a go-go dancer as well as roller skater. We wandered until we came a clearing that he felt was the right place and that’s where we are right now. He seems to want to stay here, so I am writing this memoir to identify my body if we stay here until I die.
My name is Estragon. My family lived for generations as shepherds on the island of Sicily. My great-great grandparents immigrated to New York in 1876. My great-grandmother married a barber in the upper East End. I’m not sure, but I think his shop has been turned into an ice cream parlor now. My parents, Bella and Bassanio’s marriage was arranged through a mutual family friend. Bella’s father owned a bakery that specialized in bagels. He provided a solid bagel tower instead of a wedding cake for the ceremony. They decided to move into the countryside and build a farm. A year after they married, in 1946, I was born, but Bassanio was often away on business (he was trying to start a rice company) so my origins were dubious. My mother was known to hire a youth from the city to come help her manage the land on weekends. I am told he and I have a similar nose.
When I was eight, my father’s rice company was flourishing. We sold mainly to residents of Chinatown who didn’t want to pay import taxes. With our profits, we hired lots of farm hands and moved back into the city. When I wasn’t in school, I spent my time wandering around with a shovel, cracking concrete off street corners and throwing them at passing taxis. On my fourth return home with a police officer holding my by the back of my shirt, still clutching to my shovel, Bella decided I needed a better hobby. The next day she gave me a pair of roller skates. I had never skated before and I rushed out to the sidewalk to try. I wasn’t very good at first and I rolled out into the street. I was nearly hit by a truck, but I tripped on one of my pieces of detached concrete just in time and fell to the ground as the huge automobile rumbled above me. Bella never gave my little sister Isadora roller skates. As I grew older, skating became my passion. In the 1958, when I was 12 or so, I frequently skipped school in favor of lolling around roller rinks and practicing all day.
In 1965 I turned 19. That year I met the most amazing girl I have ever known. Her name was Elise. We were united at a skating workshop. We fell instantly into an all fire all flame love/ hate relationship. If we were fighting, we would trip the other on the skating floor. I think we each suffered a few minor concussions, but mixed with the psychedelic drugs and hard partying we did in the sixties, it wasn’t a big deal. We were skating and domestic partners for the next four years until I proposed to her in 1969. She accepted and we rushed to tell my family (her parents were brutally murdered in an Ohio gang war when she was four) and make wedding plans for the following summer. My parents were absolutely against the idea. They insisted I stop seeing her and consider instead a daughter of their friend that would like to marry into our family. I refused and Bella disowned me. My father, feeling rather bad, but unwilling to disagree with Bella, gave me the rest of the money they would have spent on my college and kept secretly in contact with me until his death in 1973. We took the money he offered and fled to Germany where we studied the fine art of roller painting, where you dip the wheels of your skates in paint and roll around on a large sheet of paper. We were married in the summer of 1970. In January of 1972, Elise was run down and killed by a compact car that ran off the road in a snowstorm. She was 27.
After Elise’s untimely death, I returned to New York. I never went to a roller rink again, not even after they became popular. I was a sailor for a year, on a ship that carried crates of granite from New York to London. After my father’s death in 1973 I attempted to return to mother to take care of her. She refused me again, even though I was sans-Elise.
Dealing with my maternal rejection I sank back into a drugged stupor. Between 1973 and 1975 I became obsessed with David Bowie and followed him across the country until he flew to Germany on tour. I couldn’t go back there, there were memories of Elise rooted everywhere. I settled back into New York life and in the end of 1975 I met Mr. Vladimir Sanderson in a certain gay bar where I was picking pockets every other Thursday night. Vladimir turned out to be aesexual, and a perfect companion to my widower self. Vladimir was also the heir to a Russian fur fortune. He believed he was supposed to find a certain meeting place to he could wait for the appearance of one, Mr. Godot. He never fully explained whom mysterious Mr. Godot was, but I needed something to do, and as Vladimir was loaded I decided to accompany him on his quest. We roamed the city of New York and the surrounding suburbs, countryside, and bogs for two months. We became close friends, our only company and confidents. I affectionately dubbed him Didi and to him I was Gogo, because he had it in his head that I used to be a go-go dancer as well as roller skater. We wandered until we came a clearing that he felt was the right place and that’s where we are right now. He seems to want to stay here, so I am writing this memoir to identify my body if we stay here until I die.