[277] Screed City
[277]
02/06/2024 Tuesday. Table On Top Of Table. Hilton Suites Room 328. Vineland, New Jersey.
Road trip. Kind of. Not really. Fool's errand trip, probably more likely. Last minute trip to New Jersey to do an inspection with Scott. Problem is, we don't have a lift for tomorrow. Problem is, the motors we need to get to are 40' in the air. Problem is, everyone involved in this business is a god-damned psychopath and nothing can be straight forward or easy. I guess we'll find out tomorrow at the butt-crack of dawn.
Swank digs though. The room is just slightly smaller than the apartment in Queens.
[Insert room photo]
I took the train to Secaucus Junction where Scott picked me up. Which, I have been living in New York for what, 25 years? Depending on how you count it. And I fucking know how to get to Penn Station, but did I just take the train to Penn Station like normal? No, I was carrying a heavy bag so I asked my phone to give me the best route with the least walking. It instead gave me the worst route with the most walking. By the time I got there my back was sweaty and I was annoyed as hell. But that is not what I was going to complain about. Something else happened on the train that was a blast from the past.
When I was packing my bag I decided that I should fill my traveling coffee mug with coffee so I would have decent coffee to drink tomorrow morning before leaving the hotel. Makes sense, to me at least. I made the coffee directly into the traveling coffee mug with the pour over thing. I put the lid on. Opened the spout to let the coffee cool so that the steam would pop it open during travel. Makes sense, to me at least. Right before I left, hours later, I closed the spout and tested whether or not coffee would spill out over the sink. You know? Flopping it around. Giving it the old what for. And guess what? No coffee came out. I put the traveling coffee mug into my bag and hit the skids.
I walked to the L train because that is what my idiot phone told me to do because it's stupid and I hate it. A train came and I got on it. Because the train came quickly I was at the front when I wanted to be in the middle. I walked to the back of the car I was on. Got off at the next stop and got into the car behind the car I was on. Makes sense, to me at least. I did this another time. The third time I did this, as I was walking to the back of the train car some guy said, "You're losing something there." I looked down and saw what he was talking about. I had left a trail of liquid all the way down the train car and now it was pooling next to my feet. Instead of changing cars at the next stop I walked to a place out of the way to figure out what was happening. It was then that this guy who had been watching me carrying my very awkward, heavy and leaking bag down the middle of the train said, "You got everything in there including the pool cue! Including the pool cue! You got a pool cue in there?"
I didn't know what he meant. I unzipped the bag and looked inside. Nothing was wet. At that moment it dawned on me what was going on. I unzipped the side pocket where I had stowed the traveling coffee mug and guess what? There was two inches of coffee just waiting to make a huge mess wherever I went. The guy who by now I realized was not exactly living in the same world I was living. The guy obsessed with whether or not a had a pool cue said, "Where ya going with all that stuff?"
I said, "To make a mess, apparently." My joke, although insanely clever, did not register. The guy that had told me I was losing something there looked at me. I showed him the traveling coffee mug. Instead of nodding or saying, ya know, "That sucks," or something, he just glared at me. Then the guy who was obsessed with whether or not I had a pool cue in my bag said, "That's a lotta stuff." Then he got off at the next stop and said goodbye to both me and the guy that pointed out that I was losing something there.
I got off at the stop after that. I didn't want to, but I was leaking and that judgmental jerk was still upset that I was leaking. I got off and walked to the nearest trashcan and dumped the two inches of coffee into it. Put the traveling coffee mug into my jacket pocket and waited for the next train.
The reason this was a blast from the past was because of two reasons. The first being the guy obsessed with whether or not I had a pool cue in there recognized me for who I was. Even though he was not exactly living in the same world as I was at the moment, he wasn't far off. When I say that it makes sense, to me at least, it would make sense to him too. He seemed like he understood what it is like to be somebody burdened with poverty. That I looked like somebody that was sketchy as hell because of a lifetime of vagrancy. I was wearing two $12 suit jackets on top of each other. A hoodie underneath those. My pants, two sizes too big. My long and greasy hairy shooting out from under my baseball cap at weird angles. Carrying a bag that was way heavier than it needed to be. A black leather bag that is well past its prime and not only that, it was leaking some mysterious black liquid that made another person, a stand-up member of society upset. He recognized me as he saw himself, an Untouchable.
This reminded me of when I walked into the train station in Harlem all those years ago, during that super big freeze that killed like hundreds of unhoused people and I was going to work and this guy kept circling me and I thought he was going to ask me for something, like money or whatever and as he got closer and closer he finally said:
"You wanna go somewhere?"
"What do you mean?" Thinking he was propositioning me.
"You hungry? You want something to eat?"
"I'm okay, thanks."
"You need a place to go?" At this point I had figured out that he was asking me if I was without a home. If I was starving and living on the streets. If I wanted to go with him to get shelter. After I told him I had a place to live and was heading to work we were both embarrassed and he ran off to help somebody else and I went to work lamenting that I didn't just go with the easy life. You know? Free food, free housing, now work, just ride the subway all day and hope I don't freeze to death or starve to death and live like a king until the ripe old age of 43 sucking on the tit of the American taxpaying public.
Alas, or however that word works, the second reason this interaction was a blast from the past was that jerk telling me I was losing something there. There is a jerk on every corner, man. I remember years and years and years ago, back when I would take the train every single day to work and back, when it sucked, the commute, the sardines, the unreliable trains, the at least 30 hours a week wasted going back and forth, hither and thither and elsewhere. When I would buy a coffee from a deli and try and drink it on the train. And it always spilled. It did. There was no stopping it. Well, not as long as there was always a full fucking train at all fucking times and this jerk or that jerk jostling for this space or that space and god-damn it can't I read my New York Post in peace!?
Which is all whatever. Commuting sucks. Everyone knows it. Public transportation is a mess. It is. There were no fewer than 18 stink holes I encountered on my way to Secaucus Junction, including the NJ Transit train. It's how capitalisms works. You can either hired people with a living wage to clean stuff up, or you can hire cops at $150 an hour to round them up and ship them to New Jersey. And because most people would rather just shame you for accidentally having an oil leak on the L train, the latter is the what they would prefer. Out of sight, out of mind.
I wasn't shitting on the floor. I really wasn't. After the, "You're losing something there," prick didn't accept my apology, guess what? I kind of wanted to shit on the floor. I wanted shit on top of his tightly screwed on traveling coffee mug. That'd show him! The prick.
But really, back when I used to commute a bunch during the rush hours, it was mayhem and it was a mess. Humans are messy. They are. Americans especially because life has to be so efficient. I don't want to be drinking coffee on the train, but since I have to spend at least two hours on the train to get to work every day, I kind of don't have much of a choice, that is if I want to actually enjoy my life for just one tiny second. And fuck you for judging my oil leak. What about me? What about my feelings? I had to get off the train and deal with two inches of wetness coming from the bottom of my bag, she said after I pulled out.
Oh, yeah, you know how it is!
[Insert Husker Du Diane]