Jay Fox - THE WALLS

“That's true,” as he lights another cigarette. “You have to remember this was before he became famous.”

“How did he become so famous? Everybody seems to know his name in this city. It's weird. I mean, I met a guy the other day who had never heard of Dali, yet he knew all about Coprolalia.”

“I don't want to sound like a braggart, but I was the first one to ever publish an article on him. In fact, if it weren't for me, no one would have ever put all of the pieces together; it'd be assumed that Coprolalia's corpus represents the work of a myriad of artists and a few talented drunks — besides the Bay Ridge collection, of course.”

The desire to keep up the conversation wastes away for both of us. The call ends in what feels like a stalemate. My phone ends up on the table next to a stack of borrowed and owned books that were featured in the bibliography of a paper I turned in a few weeks ago. The Brothers Karamazov is on top of the pile. My bookmark is the discarded foil from a pack of cigarettes. It rests between pages 780 and 781. On the bottom of page 780 the following passage has been underlined with pen: “If everything in the universe were sensible, nothing would happen.” I don't look at it; I simply remember it. It's one of those brilliant lines that stay with you. I light the remnants of something sitting in the incense catcher. The apartment is overtaken by a pungent, herbal aroma. The couch begins to vibrate slightly; my skin hums a pleasant tune; my eyes go saurian. I feel an oppressive weight on my chest, a presence of anxiety that slowly dissipates over the course of a few minutes.

Sitting here in one of those horse latitudes of existence, I feel a part of me wants to give up, to abandon the search. Is it not conceited to believe that I can find him when so many others have failed? Of course it is. Then again, what else do I have to do? I am strolling down the Via Atē. I am Don Quixote sans Rocinante. Hell, I don't even have a Sancho Panza. I am not only alone, but also without responsibility — without direction, only temptation. I am watching the lazy River Heraclitus from what feels like the wrong bank. I should not be looking back this early in my life to evanescent youth, and yet I am almost paralyzed by the desire to feel the bubbles from a glass of coca-cola I once had when I was nine on my tongue, to dance to Nina Simone's rendition of “I Loves You Porky” with barefoot Connie in that overpriced jazz club in Gramercy, to spend the night sharing a case Natty Bo' with the guys on the shore of Chesapeake Bay just before our respective departures to our respective universities. If nothing is eternal, then nothing really matters.

So this is despair.

Monday arrives with a languid and party cloudy dawn. There is talk of rain. At least that's what some of the weathermen on the Internet say. I shower after learning that John Edwards' expensive haircut is more important than the hundreds of people who have been killed in Iraq in the previous twenty-four hours (and don't kid yourself; it's at least in the hundreds). The shower liner needs to be changed soon. I don't remember this being such a persistent problem when I lived with my parents — the mildew that creeps up like the tide. I don't know any women with this problem, either. Then again, how often do I gaze upon the curtains of strange women?

I'm waiting on the train platform by quarter after eight, aboard the train by eight-twenty. This constitutes the earliest time I have ever left my apartment in Bushwick, unless one counts those lucubratory nights that bitterly transcend the dawn and necessitate several cups of coffee, the occasional amphetamine, and, at some point, a horribly agitated and nonsensical and silent tirade on a matter that is neither pressing nor relevant to the catalyst behind the outburst. These are the types of hours that are comparative to the infamous and brutal Alaskan summer nights, nights infested with wall-eyed lunatics engaging in mild levels of mayhem (not in the legal sense, of course — i.e. to maim or disfigure a potential soldier in the King's army) throughout towns that are described as sleepy because they are populated by somnambulists sauntering (in the strictly Thoreauian sense) through memoryless weeks under the ruthless empire of the sun.

My typical commute into the City had taken place no earlier than ten, no later than eleven. True, the riders were far from boisterous then, but they had the tendency to appear less sleep-deprived than those with whom I share the car at this early hour, people best defined by either one or a conjunction of the following four adjectives: ornery, pensive, bored, asleep in a position that is both uncomfortable and conducive to nothing more than making said individual appear gruesomely unattractive and ostensibly homeless. I would paint myself a hue that straddles the line between the first two because I have been forced to stand. I didn't think it possible that one could be required to stay on one's feet so deep in Brooklyn.

There are no babies on the train, a detail that would be an anomaly at virtually any other hour in the day unless we're talking about the lean hours, which cater to drunks two (perhaps three) drinks past sympathy. All of the people here are clearly on their way to work. The older commuters, the awake ones anyhow, have become inured to the routine. The younger ones, however, still have some fight in them; there is an indelible bitterness in their eyes, as they are more than likely chagrined over the inescapable nature of that proverbial rat race, which involves little running and a far greater proportion of sheep to rats. One of them listens to a song about the lyricist's keen intellect. The lyrics stop short of saying anything insightful or particularly interesting because the song is of that genre of hip-hop that speaks to college-educated kids and loners, those who assume their lack of friends and affinity with the feel of a fifi-bag to be portends of brilliance or genius or whatever it is you call the ability to rationalize a low score on an IQ exam and a bedroom rank with the smell of mushrooms, feet, and sour milk. They are the boring protagonists in boring novels, adventurers as curious as furniture, subjects of insult, purveyors of silent retort. They are the antiheroes of bygone days, the heroes Generation X, made of the same special stuff of Felix Krull and would be no less murderous and pathetic than Nero if given the opportunity. Other songs can be heard, including someone's ring tone, which features the chorus of the Pink song “U + Ur Hand” (and it is spelled that way, too, perhaps to intimate that the lyrics were written out in a series of text messages) blasting through one shitty speaker again and again, though the owner of the phone does not seem to be receiving a call — or, from the look of her, too many drink offers. Other people are on the phone, as the M is superterranean throughout north Brooklyn and Queens. The three people in their residency that board at Woodhull are probably the most loquacious of this group. An older woman speaking in Chinese to someone with bad reception or a broken hearing aid is undoubtedly the loudest. Several Orthodox Jewish men speak in low tones and glance about the train like pitchers with pick-off moves that any umpire would call a balk.

As we approach Manhattan, the people boarding the train begin to resemble models from those uncomfortably erotic American Apparel advertisements: pallid faces and lugubrious countenances, emaciated bodies adorned in clothing that caters to a Progeria fetish. Most of these individuals read novels with controversial and profane titles or self-indulgent memoirs about being totally punk before it was cool to be totally punk or treatises by English professors for whom the usage of a German word with a readily available English equivalent brings on a state of tumescence. The few not reading look impatient and unimpressed. I don't know why.