Jay Fox - THE WALLS

His friends call him Midas because everything he's ever touched has gone to shit. At least that's what I assume. It's an example of the sardonic humor that one is bound to encounter in these neighborhoods — a mild causticity that makes the incisive bite of a working a job that never pays all the bills, of living in a home that never keeps out all of the cold, of remembering a past that never fails to center upon the elusive “one big shot,” diffuse into a string of inconveniences and accidents and twists of fate that remove the central figure from any fault or blame — a comedy of errors that never ceases to provoke that poor-bastard shake of the head or, failing that, an encouraging remark about the sun rising the following morning. Luck, the most sacred shibboleth of the working class, never fails to make a cameo every couple of days to break a window, tamper with an alarm clock, or cajole a shoe loose while its owner tries to chase down a B61 driven by “a sadistic son of a bitch,” whose thoughts on empathy can best be summarized by his lead foot (practicing misanthropy, after all, is not just common behavior for MTA and city employees; it's one of their requisite duties). Luck forces the individual to make a split-second decision of “losing my job for looking like a fucking derelict or losing my job because I came in late two times last week” for reasons that are also subject to the whim of the malign poecilonym that keeps the gears of misfortune spinning.

“What would you do?” he asks.

“What do you mean?”

“If you lost your shoe running after the bus,” he responds quickly. “If you show up to work late, you're fired; if you show up wearing one shoe, you're fired — either way you're fucked. The boss will tell you that you should have left earlier. That way, you don't have to run to the bus. Hell, that way, you can even lose your shoe, walk back, pick it up, put it on, and still get to work on time by catching the next one. Problem solved, right?” he says with a snort and a cackle. The bottle almost reaches his mouth before he places it back down on the bar. He turns to me. “But what happens when you're kept up by your cunt of a wife? What happens when your kid won't stop crying all night? What happens when there ain't enough fucking hours in the night to deal escape from all the shit you have to deal with during the day?” He looks back to the bottle of beer in front of him and seems to become almost remorseful. “Fuck, guy, I don't mean to throw all of this on you. You're just looking for some prick who writes some stupid shit on the wall. I don't mean nothing by what I'm saying.” He looks to the beer in his hand with a tepid smile. “You're all right, you know that?”

We drink our beers in relative silence and stare to the televisions that broadcast sports that no one cares about. Midas offers sound bites of bar wisdom: “All a man really wants is five things. He's gotta have food and shelter; and he's gotta have a reason to wake up every morning and a reason to come home every night. Besides these, he's gotta believe that those four things are secure — philosophy ain't nothing more than a man attempting to legitimize that last one.” “This country was founded by hard work, and hard work's the only thing that's gonna save it.” “We were all born thanks to a woman, and we're all gonna die thanks to a woman.”

“I wanted to be a musician,” he says after a desultory harangue against unions, Republicans, Democrats; anyone, really — whether they are trying to impugn his liberty with regulations or whether they are getting rich due to the dearth of regulations. To him, it was pretty much all the same: the workingman gets screwed. “I was in a band for a long time called the Red Hook Sound Machine.” I ask what he played. “I was the drummer. I was on kit; we had another guy on percussion. Back in the day I was really something. People used to compare me to Harvey Mason, if you know who that is.” I begin to nod with diffidence. “You know Herbie's Headhunters album?” I smile. “That's him. One of the tightest, most innovative drummers of all time.” The jukebox, after a short hiatus, begins to spew out Big Joe Turner. In the purlieus of the bar, the Motown-Atlantic debate begins anew.

“Yeah, but I was never in it for the money. I mean, I wanted to make it — don't get me wrong — but I was also realistic. To me, just gigging with the guys every once in a while was enough. Extra money in my pocket was nice, but it's not like that was the only reason I was in it. We were good, too; and a lot of people really dug our sound. It's not like we were putting out gold records, but we had a pretty serious following around Brooklyn, and we were pulling in two hundred or so whenever we played.

“And then it got to be the nineties, and everything we did sounded outdated. Guys started quitting the band. Two of them got married: one to a woman, another to the JDL. Once we split up, I did some session work here and there, but that kinda fizzled out when Mikey, my connection with the studio, passed about a decade ago.” I don't ask; he just tells me: “AIDS.” He picks up his beer. “But I'm sure you don't wanna hear all this. As a poet once said, the wise don't worship dusty deeds.”

I mention the opening lines of a Coprolalia poem found in a nautical bar on Atlantic a few years ago. He bobs his head with suspect enthusiasm. “It's a somewhat odd rhyme pattern called terza rima ,” I begin. “This, of course, is pretty weird to begin with — in English anyhow. Furthermore, each line contains eleven syllables.” Midas looks to the mirror behind the bar, perhaps to make sure he is expressing perplexity as accurately as possible. “It's like playing a song in a weird time signature, something like a five-four or a seven-eight.”

“Okay,” he responds with a nod. “Now you're speaking my language.”

“But here's what's really interesting: The most famous example of an eleven-syllable terza rima is found in Dante's Divine Comedy . The work has to be a reference to that poem. I mean, if one only takes the words into consideration, Faust seems to be a better candidate; but that ignores the context of the words. And then there's other stuff that he's done. There's a really good one called Herculi Romano Augusto , but no seems to really know what it means. I mean, it's a reference to Commodus, but that's all anyone really knows.” I take a sip from my beer.

“Who's Commodus?”

“Roman emperor. I think Joaquin Phoenix's character in Gladiator is supposed to be based on him.”

“Good movie.”

I nod.

“I’d never catch any of that shit. I haven't read anything like it since high school. I think I understand why you like this guy so much, though,” Midas adds as he reaches for his beer. He laughs to himself and shakes his head before taking down the remainder of the bottle. “I used to go through that same shit when I was trying to find the meanings behind the lyrics of Dark Side and Blonde on Blonde . I fucking love Dylan, man.”

I begin to lose what Midas calls my “college” tone as the dusk begins to creep upon the city. Charlie listens intently to our exchanges and interjects every so often with a non sequiteur involving one of the regulars. He interrupts the music every once in a while to make announcements. Midas keeps repeating the phrase, “When Caesar speaks, the music ceases.” Midas is told to shut the fuck up. A lot. Charlie lets me know that he has a box of photos of the bar before the paint job somewhere, but he doesn't know where. He thinks the box is in his attic, but he's unwilling to commit. “I'll check up there when I get home,” he says in fifteen minute intervals — right after he asks when I'll be back to the bar, and right before he launches into some story about Tony or Debbie or Pepper (a/k/a Handles, but never to her face) or Pabs (a/k/a Broccoli Head) or Shapiro or Marty (pronounced Mardy).