[259] Screed City

[259]

07/28/2023 Friday. Kitchen Microwave. Queen's Palace. Brooklyn/Queens, NY.

HOT. It's hot up in here. Muggy. The city mugged me, man! Of the million times I have tried to make that joke, I think this is the first time it may actually get a yuck. Context is key. Delivery also counts. And since my jokes age like a fine Tickler, they never go out of style. Speaking of which, Andrew Dice Clay is poised to make a comeback and Limp Bizkit has a new album out, and boy do the songs suck. Say what you will about their music, at least back in the 90's it was catchy. Take that away and make them 25 years older, it is not a good combo.

Speaking of inappropriate things that have aged like a fine milk, I've been working at PS/NY this week. I mean, PS/NY has aged quite gracefully, actually. That is not what I am talking about. It's just that you can't be Limp Bizkit or Andrew Dice Clay and get a gig at PS/NY anymore. Maybe in the 90's or the 00's, but the place is quite progressive these days and you can't even do the Little Boy Blue/Blew joke anymore. He needed the money is why he Blue/Blew, if you don't know this genius's master-work. Word play at it's finest! Now picture a guy on stage smoking a cigarette, wearing a leather jacket, sunglasses, with sideburns and slicked back hair. Now picture that same jackass 30 years later complaining how "Woke" culture is ruining perfectly good jokes like: Hickory, dickory, dock, the mouse was sucking my cock. Oh! Oh right, he said, Oh! after every joke he made. And now that I am putting these thoughts in writing, he does sound pretty funny on paper. Perfect for teenage boys. Which, irregardless of how you feel about it, is a real thing, I mean, we'll see, maybe he'll have the comeback he deserves. Lord knows he's worked hard enough to get it.

The job has been funny though. There are two roommates working there this week. Roommate A and Roommate B. Roommate A is they guy on the lease. Maybe 26? He reminds me of Michael from Um. Socially, but probably about 100 times less smart. Or not. I don't know. Michael is great, and quite literally a genius, not and Andrew Dice Clay genius, but a, went to Yale on a classical music scholarship and got bored with that so he switched to math, or maybe it was the other way around. Not that going to Yale makes you a genius, but objectively speaking, if you told me you went to Yale and majored in mathematics and graduated, I mean, I would think that is a little bit of proof that your brain w3rks pr3tty g00d. But Michael has this thing where 90% of the time he is 110% aware of everything that is happening in the world surrounding him, but that 10% where he isn't aware, he is truly clueless. And I find it fascinating, because I exist in the 10% universe, and his 90% is my 10%, if that makes any sense. I'm just saying it is a complex world with complex ins and outs. And earlier today I played "Nakedest" in a game of SCRABBLE today for 178 points. If you know, you know. Had I been able to adjust the word, I would have broken 200. The dream. I was almost living the dream!

But back to the story. Roommate A is a kid, basically. He is kind of awkward and a little bit sensitive. Reminds me of Michael from Um, Um is the band I used to sing in. I suppose I should mention that if I am going to be dragging his name through the mud like this. He played guitar and did all the recordings. The band is on hiatus because of the pandemic. I don't know if we will ever recover. Funny that. You move out of town for three years and suddenly everyone forgets about you. Um moved on pretty quick without me. Jerks. Just joking. But it kind of is funny how quickly you are forgotten in this city. Shit moves fast. I remember when Roy and Sheena from the Wooster Group moved up to the Catskills or wherever, thinking that was career suicide and how could they do that? How could you give up on your art career? Are you crazy? But I was like 26 at the time. Like Roommate A. And they must have been my age now, or a little bit older, and of course it makes sense. It's one thing to be a successful artist in the City. To make decent money and get decent attention doing it, but to be a cog in somebody else's machine and somehow still trying to pay your rent and never feeling like anything will come of it. I mean, the Woosters still only pay like $700 a week to dedicate your entire life to their vision. I mean, by the time your in your 40's it's not hard to feel pretty burned out. And even now, the work available for people like Roy and Sheena and even me pays peanuts. Somewhere in the early 90's inflation overtook the ability to pay your rent by being a working artist and decoupled from the economy and now you either have to be insanely ambitious or delusional to think you can break through and live a half-way decent life on $700 a week. I mean, when I was working in Norway as an artist, making $1,000 a week, that seemed like a fortune, but even then, to have to have a job on top of that job in order to make somebody else's artistic vision possible was too much. You know? I would rather stay home and get a job at Subway Eat Fresh. At least then I wouldn't have to travel thousands of miles and only eat boners and leverpost for three weeks at a time so I could pay my rent. All I am saying is that the artist life sucks. And I understand why Roy and Sheena raise chickens now. I mean, I can do my own artistic vision from my living room. Or kitchen. Or Garbage Room.

Roommate B is from Palestine. I learned this today. Or yesterday, I guess. I asked him where he was from. I apologized for assuming he wasn't American, which I then backtracked and said, What I mean, and I don't mean to assume you are not American, it's just that you have an accent that reminds me of this guy I know, [Bozy] who is from Turkey, and I kind of just assumed...But Roommate B is, I don't know how old, he seems older, older than 26, but that is only because he has an interesting face, like acne scared or something, there is a lot of character there, as we used to say back in the 90's. He is handsome and has a very mischievous eye. Not as sexual as, trigger warning, Scott Shepard, speaking of Woosters, but kind of close. He has long hair that he keeps in wild braids and loves to talk shit about people. And I don't think he even knows he does it. He just likes to say whatever he has on his mind. And not in the, I just tell it like it is, kind of way, but in the, This isn't gossip because nothing is gossip, gossip doesn't exist kind of way.

Anyway. Roommate A and Roommate B are in the midst of a scuffle. Roommate B is moving out of the apartment they share. He has found a new place closer to Queen's House, where I live with Professor Curly. I didn't get the details exactly, they are irrelevant, in a sense, I wished I knew more, but I didn't ask, which is a problem I have, being a curious mind like I am, sometimes certain details get put to the side because of my own 10% problem.

But I learned on day one of this week, which was Tuesday, that Roommate A and Roommate B were fighting and it was awkward because we they were working in the cellar, the basement of PS/NY, cleaning it out and making room for new storage and et cetera, the details are not important, but Roommate A and Roommate B were not talking to each other because Roommate A had sleep-walked in the middle of the night and tried to get into Roommate B's room. Like I guess he was trying to open the door, which I assumed was locked? And Roommate B told me, It was like I was blacked out, but it was after I went to sleep, so I couldn't have been blacked out.

Which made me think that he was indeed blacked out, and had just been sleeping and woke up still blacked out and thought the door he was trying to go through was a different door. But either way. This upset Roommate B. I didn't ask if Roommate A had been drinking the night when it happened. Which is my problem sometimes when garnering information. I mean, I kind of assumed he had been drinking and had gotten up to use the bathroom. And because recently I, myself, had also got up to use the bathroom during the night, a night when it was quite hot, Vermont-style, and Professor Curly had been running the air conditioner so the bedroom door was closed and in my sleepy state, not blacked-out in the least, true, I had had a few Ticklers when I was writing before, but there was no way in a hundred years that I was "Black-out" drunk, I don't think I was even "Buzzed-out" from what I remember, I was maybe "Shit, I am going to have to piss again when I go to sleeped-out" annoyed with myself because getting up to piss is annoying. Or not, I don't know, maybe I was rip-roaring drunk and my body needed to howl at moon, all I know is that I needed to piss and because normally the door would be open and I could sleepy-eye, bounce against the wall like I was blind and sit on the toilet and piss, but because the door was closed I ended up next to the dresser and I was very confused and it woke Professor Curly up and she was worried about me because I was confused, and I didn't want to turn the light on because she was sleeping and I said I was alright and her waking up woke me up and I understood the door was closed, so I opened it and walked down the hallway and sat down on the toilet and pissed and then for some reason I closed the door when I came back, even though the air conditioner wasn't running and the door didn't need to be closed because the window by the bathroom was open and the cool air from the night was below 65F and would have been nice to feel on our bodies. I mean. I know I am protesting too much, but I am quite sure that I simply followed the wall with my hand, like I normally do when I get up to piss at night, in the sense that I just follow the wall, but this night the wall led to a closed door that led to a dresser that let to me being very confused and I had to wake up totally before I understood what was happening, and because there was a witness, I had to explain myself. And I told Roommate A this story. In the elevator as we were going down to the street so I could buy two diet Cokes for lunch and he could buy two slices of pizza. For lunch.

Roommate B was upset with Roommate A because he had gotten up in the night and tried to open his apparently locked door. This upset Roommate B so much that he wasn't talking to Roommate A. And on top of this detail, Roommate B was moving out this weekend.

The next day I learned that Roommate B not only was still mad at Roommate A, but it turned out that Roommate B had gotten a previous roommate fired from their job, so Roommate A was trying to be as careful as he could be in order to ensure he stayed employed. At this point I mentioned this article about this woman down in Florida who was considered an "Agent of Chaos" because she was a disrupter of sorts and had been thrown in jail tens of times and had become computer famous because she was White and pretty and her mug-shots were photogenic. And I suggested that maybe Roommate B was an agent of chaos himself.

On the third day I asked Roommate A how things were going with regards to his situation and he told me that Roommate B had now convinced the woman that was supposed to move into Roommate A's apartment not to move in. That he was now looking for an emergency roommate, because nobody can afford rent around here, especially with the money artists are getting paid. I mean, the work at PS/NY is clean and easy, but it is still time, life and time, and it needs to be about $10 an hour more, but we will get there one day, or not, maybe art collapses within weeks at this point. The bottom can't hold. The dam is weak and the locals have fled the town for higher ground. But you never know. I mean, we were changing a lightbulb, me and the guy running the place, and I said:

"How many technical directors does it take to change a lightbulb?

"I don't know, you tell me."

"None. They just spend their time writing grants and then giving the money to the people that throw the parties for the donors who could give two-shits about the arts community and just love hob-knobbing with celebrities."

Roommate A then told me that not only was his apartment a Railroad apartment, meaning it was the same layout that me and Professor Curly have. A bathroom that is right next to the kitchen, which leads to a living room which leads to a bedroom which leads to an office with a door that opens to the hallway that leads right back to the kitchen door. I mean, IT IS NOT A PLACE FOR HAVING ROOMMATES. And Roommate A said he can't take the office room because HE HAS CATS.

He has cats in a railroad apartment that he is looking for a temporary roommate to take over the un-furnished room in the front of the apartment and needs to have somebody by the end of this weekend because otherwise he can't pay the rent because prices are so extreme now that nobody can live here in the City without having roommates, yet the "Agent of Chaos" is now not only convincing his new tenant to not move in, but also threatening his job. But the guy also has cats! So he has to have the middle room, so the cats won't get out! And apparently the guy likes to get up in the middle of the night and break into the other room. Black-out drunk or not.

I mean, I am very much on the fence about this situation. I like Roommate B. He very much is an agent of chaos. I gave him a copy of DISHWASHER and a DISHWASHER t-shirt. He really is up to no good. But I also like Roommate A. I ran into him on the train to work on Wednesday, and instead of him yacking at me for 30 minutes, he sat down and listened to whatever the hell it was he was listening to. Leaving me alone. Leaving me alone to score some sweet hella points on my SCRABBLE app. I mean, you have to hand it to me. I played some sick tiles.

Either way. I have some shit to figure out tomorrow. I am leaving for Wyoming on Sunday. G is going to meet me at the airport. Professor Curly is coming later. Like the 5th, I think. I think I will just leave Junior Mint on the street. Collecting two tickets is cheaper than paying for parking at the La Guardia. Go figure. I mean, every time I leave the subway these days I make sure to take the emergency exit so anyone that wants to sneak in has an opportunity to do so. I keep expecting somebody to yell:

"Hey! You're letting them in!" To which I would yell:

"Yeah? So what! Abolish turnstiles! The working class shouldn't be taxed for going to work, you fuck!"

[Insert I Did It All For The Nookie]

Pavlov's Gun.