The snow was deep, some drifts as high as 15 feet. He made a cave and sat there alone. The walls were more blue than white. He stretched his legs legs out and watched his breath float in clouds, listening to his snowsuit crinkling and then the shifting and cracking of the snow.He heard steps, his father and Mr. Wylie.
“Huson had a break-in?”
“They went after his motor, chained to his Ski-Doo. Cut the goddamned thing off.”
“I heard they were in Reynolds’ place last week.”
“Left the door wide open. Ruined the floor.”
“They catch anyone?”
“Kids, goddamn good-for-nothings.”
Their voices vanished. He stared at a tiny animal trail going into a frozen hole. He only saw the animals dead on the road, frozen and squashed.
Lots of people busk in the New York subway, but there is no show like this. Love Portal is comprised of three guys who dance crazily, bouncing off each other and the walls, in this instance to Steppenwolf’s Born to Be Wild. I have no idea what any of it meant, and I don’t think they were too clear about that either.Said the guy with pantyhose over his face to the guy in the body-stocking after it was over, “What’s your name again?”
The Super Bowl is in New York with the cold hype of hyping hype.Broadway is closed from 47th down to 34th with kiosks and sad fanfare. They recommend pre-registration, but it doesn’t even work, not the badges, neither the machines.There is a promise of giveaways, kicking field goals, seeing the Vince Lombardi trophy, playing trivia contests. But the process is slow, often broken, with the long lines stuck in the dark, cold and endless.
New York has been hit by the unthinkable – a storm without a name. People are cold.Transport is slowed. And now it’s getting dark. What are we going to do?!
I can’t move my head. Not even my shoulders. I am pinned, a bright side light on my face and neck.
I am flat and horrible, my eyes wide, stuck against the ground. Stuck there, panicking. I can’t even move my leg. I have no control. I am completely helpless, trapped by monsters, people I don’t know, who have left me here to die, to be tortured and think nothing of it.
I try to close my eyes to make it go away, but it is still there. I can’t move. I want to scream but I can’t even do that. I am stuck in this silence with not even myself, with nothing but my labored miserable loneliness.
I already told you, Christmas Tree. Weren’t you listening?Fuck you. How could you fall for this all over again? You think that we care because we take you into our homes and dress you up? How stupid could you be? We use you, Christmas Tree.We just pretend to care.And then we throw you out. You’re garbage. So get into your mulcher and let us get on with our lives. Until we want to pretend again. Until then, remember what we said. “Fuck you, Christmas Tree.”
Brutus absorbs the impact of Antony’s speech at BAM in 2012.
Thoughtful, sometimes even entertaining, the productions have been well worth the time and expense.
This, however was not the case in this fall’s highly-touted New Wave Series, offering instead half-baked exercises in esoteric nonsense. While my sampling is limited, having attended only four evenings, of those four, three were hardly passable – We Have an Anchor, An Enemy of the People & Hans Was Heiri and one – Bodycast– was probably the worst thing I’ve ever seen in New York. BAM has taken a turn for the worse, indulging in this directionless, tedious stuff and, to add the insult, changed their ticket policies, almost blackmailing attendees into subscriptions. Bad, BAM. No.
And so we’re thinking of doing something different, perhaps subscribing to another theater or maybe even being more drastic than that.
I continue to work on the opening to my novel, my bad side. I have the original, written three years ago, Version One: I liked my face in the cab window, fading in and out with the shadows, my eyes there, my mouth, and then all of me, my neck and chest, my bra strap just there and then gone and just the buildings, the slumped scaffolding and empty street. There was a kind of liquid sound, almost like rain, inside me, a fluid crinkling in my brain, chewing into my ears and down my neck..Crystal said she had brain cancer. She was always saying things like that, determined to be the loneliest, the purest of all. I’d have to call her when I got home.
Two years later, I put together Version Two:I watched my face fade in and out against the shadows and buildings, my eyes and mouth, and then all of me, my neck and chest, my bra strap suddenly there and then gone into the scaffolding and lights, and then a police car, its blue and white lights swimming back and forth, and an officer stretched out against the passenger side, his right leg angled into the road. The cab turned, and my face was in the window again, the flat stone of Battery Tunnel and then the gravel and bent-over plastic fences in front of my building. “$9.40.”
And now, I have a combination of Versions One & Two (without references to Crystal or the police): Version Three:I liked my face in the window, fading in and out with the shadows, my eyes there, my mouth, and then all of me, my neck and chest, and then everything gone, just the buildings, the slumped scaffolding and empty street, Bowling Green locked and empty. The cab rattled heavily over a rutted grate as I watched a line of light glide across my arms, jump down and vanish in a flash across my dress. I was home.
He made a cave and sat there alone. The walls were more blue than white. He stretched his legs legs out and watched his breath float in clouds, listening to his snowsuit crinkling and then the shifting and cracking of the snow.
He heard steps, his father and Mr. Wylie.
But the process is slow, often broken, with the long lines stuck in the dark, cold and endless. 
People are cold.
