Arthur Nersesian - The Fuck-Up

The oddities of the night included a crab-like man hunching under a huge ghetto blaster angled on his shoulder and back. It was playing “Purple Rain.” Turning north, we journeyed to the corner of Saint Marks Place and Bowery, and as we passed the Transient Hotel, we were propositioned by a hooker who couldn’t intuit our alleged longings. Passing Cooper Union, we walked around an array of garbage, which was street vendor merchandise, unsold and abandoned from earlier that day. Looking north on Fourth Avenue, I saw the clock at the Metropolitan Life Building and the outline of the Empire State Building, an attractive view that was to be barred with the erection of the Zeckendorf Towers in ‘86. Walking through the parking lot on Astor Square, we swung south down Lafayette past the Public Theater. On Houston Street, we noticed a makeshift abode: an old table covered with boxes adjacent to an old sofa—an ingenious housing project for a group of derelicts. Making a right at Houston, we passed the NYU projects with the Picasso centerpiece. There, the wanton one initiated a conversation. “David Byrne lives in one of those apartments.” I could think of no reply.

We turned south on West Broadway. There, through the store windows, we saw art. I wasn’t sure whether or not he was making an advance, but as we were nearing Spring Street, the wordless one took out his penis and urinated against a metal pull-down gate that had the word BOONE painted on it. As the stream of urine trailed from the gate across the sidewalk and into the gutter, he mumbled with a grin, “Wanna taste?”

“I’m a believer in nice, slow courtships.” To this he sighed tiredly.

“Then you should move to my old town,” he replied. “That’s why I left.”

“And that’s why you came here? For the more accelerated life?”

“Well, that and the culture.”

“What do you mean, culture?”

“You know the opera, dance, Broadway. This is the center of culture. Isn’t that the reason everyone comes here?”

“I came to New York for the roaches, the filth, the sense of intimidation, the foul odors, the violence and…oh yeah, the sky-rocket rents and the over-population, not to forget the freezing winters or the insanely hot summers.”

“If you don’t like it, why don’t you leave?”

“Don’t like it!” I replied. “But where else can I get all this?”

The guy wrinkled his nose boyishly and made a completely innocent expression that made me laugh. He was cute, handsome, and seemed like a decent, intelligent guy; it just wasn’t my ballgame. I started to feel bad that I was just using him. It was a shame that he wasn’t as cold as everyone else. I had no business being in this situation, but I wanted my theater job even if making this poor guy into a fool was the price. One loses a little bit of one-self with each cruel gain. I decided to limit the humiliation as much as possible. I gave the guy a sporting slap on the back. I noticed a clock in a store window, the bar was still open so we proceeded slowly south toward the dawn rising over Canal Street.

People were starting to come out of their little holes, a new day was stepping up to the mike. Soon, the bar would be safely closed, it was time to relieve the misery of this wounded yesterday. We cut a left on Canal and exchanged some notion of going to Chinatown.

“What time is your flight?” I asked, as we crossed Broadway.

“Three o’clock.”

“Well mine is now,” I replied and dashed down the flight of subway stairs. An R train fat with people was sitting in the station making awkward attempts at sliding its doors shut. The beach boy was tumbling down behind.

“Wait a second,” he yelled. As he fumbled through his pockets for a token, I hurdled like a gazelle over the turnstile and shoved in just as the doors locked.

Looking through the plate glass on the subway door, 1 could see the panic in his eyes, like a lost child in the crowd rushing upstairs. I made rapid and meaningless gestures that tried to indicate concern and sorrow. As the train pulled out of the station, I regretted that this random guy had been made into my Exhibit “A” for Miguel. Slowly I made it back to Helmsley’s.

I wearilywalked up the stairs to Helmsley’s apartment and found the door unlocked. When I opened it and flipped on a light, I wished I was back on the train. His house had been busted up. Clothing was tossed, dishes were broken. I noticed that some of his prized books had been damaged. No one was home. My first guess was that a struggle had occurred. Where the hell was Helmsley? Maybe he too had been brutalized.

His first German printing of Spengler’s The Decline of the West had declined into shreds. His nineteenth century folio facsimile of Shakespeare’s tragedies was tragic. His autographed first edition of Being and Nothingness was now the latter.

When most of the harvest was in, Helmsley walked through the door. Wordlessly he dropped onto the couch and threw his head back, closing his eyes. I immediately noticed that his reddened nose had a new angle to it, his hair was tousled and his old clothes were tugged and ripped.

“What the fuck happened?”

“I got into a fight,” he replied with a nasal honk. He was a mess.

“Well, I’m back from work,” I replied furiously. And putting a letter opener that might serve as a weapon in my pocket, I said, “Let’s go kick some ass.”

“We can’t.” There must have been too many of them.

“Then I’ll call the police.” I started dialing.

“Put it down—it was Angela,” he said and didn’t look at me. I didn’t know what to say. I wrapped some ice in a towel, brought it to him, and inspected his nose. Considering his nose was broken and a chunk of his precious collection had been mauled, he seemed to be taking it well. Perhaps he was just fatigued.

“Well, I suppose that ends that relationship,” I finally said, not knowing what else to say.

He looked to the ground and began whimpering that he didn’t know how to deal with this. He tried discussing it rationally, but she had kept pounding at him. When he pulled his shirt off, I saw welts and bruises zebraed along his lower chest, his ribs bruised, probably cracked.

“Exactly what happened?”

“Well,” he started, as his fingers ran across the lumps rising out of his scalp. “We were lying in bed this morning, just a couple hours ago, and she said that it was time for me to arise. I explained that there was no reason to get up, but she insisted that she wanted to go out for breakfast immediately. Maybe she’s hypoglycemic.”

“What happened next?”

“I said that I wanted to sleep for another hour.”

“What happened next?”

“That’s when she shoved me hard with her foot.”

“And how did you respond?”

“I told her violence was the language of animals.” I waited for him to tell me more, but he volunteered nothing. “What did you do next?”

“She laughed and made some weird reference to colleges and called me a wimp and that’s when I told her to stop laughing, and she slapped me.”

“Did you hit her back?” I yelled at him.

“Of course not. I told her that if she was angered over something it should be discussed.”

“And was it discussed?”

“No, I told her she was acting like a simpleton.”

“A simpleton, huh?”

“Yeah, that’s when she started tearing up the books, and when I tried to stop her, she hit me on the nose with an ashtray.” No wonder he didn’t want to volunteer anything; what a pathetic tale.

“Maybe you should go to a hospital; I think you’ve got a broken rib.”

“They don’t tape ribs anymore.”