I’m just being nice here

Notes from under New York

Greetings from Barcelona! I made a last-minute decision to tag along on Nuvia’s trip where she’s working with the Department of Education here in Spain. All I’ve done is work, eat, drink coffee, and sleep at unusual times while fighting off some intense jet lag. So apologies in advance if this edition of Message from the Underworld feels a more disjointed than usual.

Since last week I’ve been doing a lot of traveling by bus, train, and plane. I went from Washington D.C. to Manhattan on a cramped double decker bus and finally finished Denis Johnson’s Angels, his first novel, which a friend recommended. (Hi Josh!)

I’m not a huge Denis Johnson fan. I’ve always been a little underwhelmed by his work, which is probably more of a response to all the hype around Denis Johnson, especially Jesus’ Son. If you tell me I have to read something because it’s the best, I’m probably not going to do it, and if I do I probably won’t like it.

I don't like this about me but it’s some Gen X feature that’s hardwired into my brain that I’m powerless to change. As soon as someone insists I “have” to do something, my contrarian defense system goes on high alert. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about books, movies, or potato salad, telling me I have to do something is a sure-fire way to get me on the other side of your argument in an aggressive “Oh, what’s so stinking about it?” kind of way.

So I didn’t like Nobody Move. I didn’t like Train Dreams. I didn’t like the story I heard DJ read from his last collection before he died. I liked the first story in Jesus’ Son because I read it in the back of a car that had been pulled over by the Burbank police while I was high AF. Later, when I found out how much the book was revered by MFA-types who have never run afoul of the law in their rule-following lives, I decided I didn’t like Jesus’ Son either.

I was prepared not to like Angels. I liked it’s interiority in a Seize the Day kind way, but something about the first half of the book irked me. Something about the pace seemed a bit too content to not go anywhere. I didn’t trust it. Then somewhere in the middle the action moves to Arizona. There’s a heist and I love a good heist story, especially when the heist is a colossally bad idea that’s going to end disastrously for everyone involved. By the end of the book I had my highlighter out and was marveling at the sentences.

TLDR: I guess I’m a Denis Johnson fan now. It took a long bus ride to get it, but I got it. Now I have to go back and reread everything and see what I was wrong about.

TLDR: I am wrong about a lot of things.

I spent three nights in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and it felt like most of my days were spent on the train, going in and out of the city.

I had an unusual experience on the train on Saturday night. After getting off the train at Grand Central Station following a day trip to Connecticut, I wanted to stretch my legs a bit and grab a coffee before heading back to Brooklyn. I walked down Park Avenue where I saw statues of hippopotamuses in tutus and glimpses of the Empire State Building. Neighborhoods are always changing—that’s nothing new—but for the first time I was struck by how the social make-up of the city above ground was very different than it was underground.

I took the N train to Brooklyn and when I sat down on a bench that wedges up against the first row of a two-person seat, the guy sitting there wasn’t happy about the way my legs jostled against his. He said something, not to me but to the whole train. “This fucking guy thinks he can sit on top of me!”

“Great,” I thought, “we’re going to have problems.”

I really didn’t want to get in a fight with a middle age Black dude who may or may not have brain health issues, or more likely, was having a really shitty day.

At this point a Black man in his sixties entered the train car and asked for everyone’s attention. If you’ve ridden the subway in New York, you’ve probably heard some variation of this solicitation. This guy was different. He commanded the car the way a professional orator might. For the two minutes or so that he shared his story, I was rapt. At the end of his spiel I decided to contribute a buck or two.

When it came to collect, I dug out my wallet and handed the man some money and the grumpy guy next to me did the same. No one else at our end of the car contributed. For the rest of the ride I thought about they guy beside me and how for a few minutes I was ready to throw down and yet we were only two people in the car who were moved by the man’s speech to want to help him out. I wasn’t sure what to make of it then, and even less sure now.

The other day in Bay Ridge, I went to the post office with Nuvia. I had my cousin’s SUV and we were double parked on 3rd Avenue outside the post office. I was parked behind a black Escalade that was also double parked. Of course, the owners of the two interior cars came out at the same time and 3rd Ave turned into a clusterfuck.

In all the moving around, I swooped into the inner space next to the Escalade, and the driver was not happy about that. He got out of his car and walked toward my window in a threatening manner.

“Hey,” he yelled, “I was waiting for that space!”

“You can have it. I’m just trying to get out of the way,” which was true. I wanted no part of parking on this street.

“I’m just being nice here,” the guy said.

Was he though? If that’s being nice, what did being aggrasive look like? Maybe the guy on the train was “Just being nice.” I don’t know. I’m going to try harder to be a little nicer these next few days until my head doesn’t feel like stretched-out silly putty.