Jay Fox - THE WALLS

While Gramercy Park is clogged with people, the majority of them similar to those outlined above, there are no teenagers unless they are accompanied by their parents. The Village had been filled with them: on stoops, on the street, among the cascading lilacs of Stuyvesant, mulling about the tenement buildings between the boutiques and fusion restaurants, causing types of trouble that are neither malevolent nor entirely innocent; they share cigarettes, bottles of hijacked liquor, and laughs at the expense of others. The Dominican kids wear hoodies unzipped to reveal scrawny torsos and undergarments of the wife-beater variety. Little nihilists dressed in black with skin a ghostly shade of pale haunt the shops of St. Marx Place looking for under-vigilant shopkeepers and sleepy security guards— ex otium delictum fit. Gramercy, it seems, is a playground of a different sort.

I eventually enter a tavern that has both shuffleboard and a pool table. It's just after eleven. I know it is going to be the last place I visit for the night, as I managed to exhaust my tentative budget for the day a few hours previously. Sobriety is a charade I'm struggling to maintain. I know that I only have enough money for another two drinks, a cab back to Brooklyn, and, if I'm lucky, a cup of coffee in the morning. A large pack of men at the front of the bar greet me with looks of subdued hostility. These glares do not last long; soon they have returned to singing along with Bon Jovi. The ogres and their girlfriends don't miss a beat. The former advertise for corporations who feel it's not unethical to use child labor to make (at least) a thousand percent profit on a shirt. The latter sport open-toed shoes with heels that range from four to six inches in length; their clothing reads “Juicy” and “Bitch,” as well as some more inventive messages, such as “Cum Bucket” and “Semen Receptacle” and “Jizz Magnet” and “Insert Here” and “You Must Be This Big To Ride This” and “More Baggage Than A Luggage Car” and “It Doesn’t Matter How Big You Are; Nothing Is Going To Fill The Void Where My Soul Used To Be.”

“What'll you have, hun'?” the bartender asks as I approach. She places her fingers on the bar and stretches in a way that is more lucrative than satisfying. I ask for a Manhattan on the rocks. “I have no idea what that even is, babe.”

Foregoing the Larry David response, I tell her what it's comprised of, and even go into a short history of the cocktail. She is neither impressed nor annoyed; she just nods as she retrieves the components of the cocktail from the shelf behind the bar. There are two marines next to me. One of them nudges me with an elbow and bobs his head to point out the bartender's black thong. He doesn't smile. His friend doesn't, either. They are both engrossed by the thong, the strands of synthetic fibers that speak the language of sex (lustful more than passionate) by straddling the line of what is and what is not seen. Even if they were not wearing their uniforms, you would still be able to tell that the two had recently seen combat. They each stare down an asymptote with listless eyes as if golems or silent extras in a play. They do not look to one another; they drink with mechanical torpidity, and focus, focus. When the bartender turns back around they continue to stare, the subject or object of their attention once again the nightmares of idealists.

I ask the bartender about Coprolalia as I guide her through the proportions of whiskey to vermouth. Her tongue is fluent in general disinterest and persiflage. “Only heard his name, hun'. There was that one thing on him in The Post ,” she says while looking for the bitters. “I can't remember the last time I used these fucking things,” she says once she finds the bottle. “What was I saying? Oh yeah, about the toilet guy and that article.” She pauses. “When was that?” she asks the other bartender, who is busy waiting for the first half of a Guinness pint to settle, “Like six months ago?”

“What was six months ago?”

“The article about the shitter guy?”

“What shitter guy?”

“The guy who writes on the stalls around the city.”

“Oh. That.” She pauses. “I don't fucking know.”

“Did you read it?”

“Yeah, I read it, but it's not like I memorized that shit. Who fucking cares anyway?”

“This guy.” The other bartender shrugs. “Did you read it?” she asks me politely.

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Then you know as much as I do.”

I can tell that my tone is less than suppliant due to a solid string of failures, so I only nod. She finishes the drink, feigns a mousy smile, demands nine dollars even though she uses well whiskey, and grabs her tip before it becomes saturated by the pools of spilled liquor and beer. Jimi Hendrix begins to lament for Mary. Air guitar quickly becomes the most popular activity in this area of the bar.

Beyond the horde that lingers around the front of the place, I see that the residents of the tavern are more varied than I had assumed. Besides the two marines, the group of Jersey men playing muted solos over the verse of the song and the derisive women in close proximity, the bar is home to small clusters of people who have assumed less threatening or exhausted roles. There are a few students and recent graduates in threes and fours quietly reminiscing. At one of the bar's two tables a man attempts to bite into a sandwich, but it bursts apart like an exploding cigar from a Bugs Bunny cartoon or a Kennedy-era assassination attempt. He looks down to the entrails of the sandwich — the tomato, chicken, lettuce, and cheese all saturated with mayo — and then to his friends, who try not to laugh at his chagrin. Several couples floating around the pool table have begun the flirtation ritual; beyond these smiling and fawning creatures stand the loafers and the starers, the creeps and the geeks, the chronically misunderstood and the people who misunderstand them, floaters and hangers-on, sycophants and narcissists, and an obviously engaged couple sitting at the other table with a long-haired companion, who complains about a coworker lovingly referred to as “Shitbag.” He then goes into an impression of the reviled character, which sounds like a rendition of Daffy Duck, complete with speech impediment, salivary assault, and implied amphetamine addiction. The pool table becomes unoccupied when the eight ball is sunk prematurely — much to the dismay of the shooter, a guy with that porcupine hairstyle that cautions aggressors and attracts potential mates.

There is no line for the bathroom, though someone does occupy it. It is a very obnoxious setup: there is a toilet and a urinal, but the two are positioned in such a way as to make it impossible to use one without rubbing shoulders with the person using the other (unless, of course, one of them is sitting…and, no, it's not always on the toilet). Consequently, no two people ever use the bathroom at the same time unless they are mutually comfortable with the presence of a potentially visible penis that is not their own. A shuffleboard player with thin, blond hair and a drunken stare informs me of this. His accent is of the West Coast variety: resonate, slow, tired. The man next to him, who stands at an even seven feet, adds that a lot of fights break out in the bar, most of which are due to either the lavatory arrangements or their often-belligerent friend. Needless to say, I wait until the bathroom is completely vacated to enter.

The washroom is cleaner than most I have seen. The walls are painted forest green and the tiled floor is coated in only trace amounts of urine. There are plenty of paper towels, but the soap dispenser is empty. There are three advertisement posters; two near the toilet and one directly above the urinal. All of them are for the same deodorant, which promises frequent and vigorous encounters with super models. ( Are beautiful women the only ones responsive to the pheromones that the product attempts to recreate? Are the less aesthetically endowed for some reason incapable of discerning said pheromones? ) Most of the writing on the wall is of generic stock: names of people for whom having been “here” represents some type of accomplishment, the W.A.S.T.E. symbol, and the requisite, “Here I sit broken hearted / tried to shit, but only farted.” There is also the unfortunate reversal of this: “Here I sit broken hearted / tried to fart, but I shat!” In modern slang, this messy misfire is known as a shard . The term can also be used as a verb: Billy was relieved to find an extra pair of boxers in his locker after he sharted in gym class .