MEMOIR
Forever StrangersLOS ANGELES 26 May 2009 |
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I passed them, as I’ve by now passed millions, and I shared only the briefest of moments in their company. In some cases, we never exchanged a word. Yet I still find myself thinking about these people, and they’re just the tip of the iceberg—extras or bit players in the movie of my life, as I was or am in theirs.
• A hooker, standing on the steps of a fleabag hotel in lower Manhattan. Her lower lip has all but been cut off, one end of it hanging from a corner of her mouth like a die-hard leech. A cop is beside her, and I’ve just been mugged a few blocks away, and, still shaken, I try to tell the cop about the mugging. “I can’t do anything about it right now!” he barks. The hooker’s teeth are chattering, and she moans “Oh my God, oh my God,” again and again, still able to talk, despite not having, for all intents and purposes, a lower lip.
• A group of teenaged girls sitting on the hoods of cars on an ocean-front strip in Virginia Beach. I’m sixteen and visiting the beach with friends, and as I walk past the girls, I hear one of them say, “He’s cute.” I’ve never previously heard myself described that way by a stranger. Later, during that same trip, a man in a car pulls up alongside me as I’m walking alone and says, “Want me to suck your cock?” Which is also a kind of compliment, even though I freak out and say, “NO!” My first proposition by an adult, not including those who molested me as a child, and they didn’t ask for permission.
• A guy in his early twenties, a bit of a hipster, paused on the sidewalk on New York’s St. Mark’s Place, about to light a cigar. The pretty girl paused beside him is looking on in admiration. I understand. This is before cigars have become a rediscovered nationwide trend, and this kid is doing what I’ve never seen a guy my age do. It impresses me as the coolest thing ever, because it’s so old-school, so traditionally masculine in a way that all us arty young guys in NYC are discouraged from being. I soon become a cigar smoker, as do most of my friends, and when we light up at parties, other guys come up to us and say, “Wow, you’re smoking cigars! That’s the coolest thing ever!” So I jokingly take credit for the trend to come, though for me it dates to that cool-as-fuck kid on St. Mark’s Place, who reminds me, as he walks away in memory with his adoring date, of Robert Doisneau’s photograph of a kiss outside the Hotel de Ville in Paris.
• A woman in her late twenties or early thirties, hitchhiking along the side of Interstate Whatever in the middle of the night, somewhere in the Arizona desert. As she’s fully illuminated by the headlights of the car in which I’m a passenger—the only car on the road—I see that she’s crying. The woman at the wheel, with whom I’m having a cross-country affair, keeps driving. Yet all the way to L.A., which I’m about to visit for the first time, we talk about the hitchhiking woman, wondering how she came to be in such dire circumstances, both of us wracked with guilt for failing to stop.
• An obviously-deranged homeless woman in a late-night New York subway station, having an imaginary conversation on a pay phone. “What do you mean, you reign supreme?!” she shrieks. “Nobody reigns supreme!” Then she hangs up in a huff and pushes her shopping cart further down the platform.
• A distant figure, which may be male or may be female, in the small park near the Roman Coliseum. It’s a brutally hot day in July, and I’ve taken off my shirt, and I’m lying under a tree in the park to cool off. Then I see this figure raise a camera and snap a picture of me. Why? Because I must seem like an iconic Roman youth, so at ease in my native city that I’m lying on the ground half-naked near the Coliseum, as I’ve surely done numerous times before. Yet I’m a tourist, and so, I assume, is the photographer.
• The body of a man under a white sheet on a sidewalk in Hollywood. The sheet doesn’t entirely cover his feet or hands. A trail of black blood (yes, it’s black) is trailing from the hidden head. A wrecked motorcycle is lying on its side nearby. Cops are at the scene, and traffic is stalled, and rubberneckers, including me, strain to see the cause. Somewhere, I think, someone is waiting for this guy, not knowing he’s dead. But I do, and I don’t even know his name.
• Two men and a woman, all in their sixties, in a battered car on the NJ Turnpike, stuck in traffic on an overcast September day. It’s the day I’m moving to New York, and I’m stuck in a nearby lane, with my few possessions in a cardboard box beside me. All three people in the battered car have gray skin, matching their gray or white hair. All three look thoroughly used-up. Yet to me there’s something beautiful about them, because they’ve been used up by NYC, or at least its immediate surroundings. That’s how in love with the city I am: even its human husks strike me as beautiful.
• A girl in her early twenties, buying a box of candy at a kiosk in the center of Belgrade. She has honey-colored hair, sumptuous skin, eyes like coins wrapped in gold foil. She’s with a female friend, who’s likewise buying a box of candy. It’s maybe midnight, and it seems to me they’re on their way to a party. I’m too awestruck to approach her. I buy whatever it is I’ve come to buy at the kiosk, then return to my nearby flat. Three minutes later, I’m kicking myself for not having said anything, and I rush downstairs and dash all around the center of town, trying to find her. I never do.
• Another gorgeous Eastern European girl, this one in Budapest. She’s working at an American Express office at the train station, and a good-looking guy, possibly her boyfriend, is standing at the window talking to her. It’s a snowy night in December, and I’ve been stranded with next to no money by a friend (now a former friend), and I desperately need to call a friend in America to ask if he can wire me something so that I can get home to Belgrade. But I don’t have a cell phone, and I don’t have enough money to buy a card that will allow me to call an operator from a pay phone, and I explain the situation to this gorgeous girl through the window at the American Express office, and without a flicker of a pause, she gives me, free, a calling card. A half-hour later, two hundred dollars arrive, and I eat my first meal in a day or so—a gyro sandwich—as snow falls thickly around me. I love you still, you gorgeous Hungarian. I hope you went on to marry that guy, who seemed no less sympathetic, and you’ve since made lots of stunning babies. The world needs more of your kind.
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Original comment thread:
Comment by mcurie
2009-05-26 21:45:41
I liked the last one about the Hungarian girl.
A thought though: It always surprises me that people are able to show such heart-warming kindness towards strangers, which they never would show to their kin.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-26 21:51:39
I agree with you. It’s rather like misanthropes who adore animals. There are many such people in PETA, or so I’ve found.
Comment by Aaron Dietz
2009-05-27 00:46:27
This is what Missed Connections should be. Great post! (And why is Missed Connections limited so strongly to potential romantic connections, when there are so many other people to wonder about - like the woman crying, etc.?)
Comment by Rebecca Adler
2009-05-29 08:10:43
My thoughts exactly!
D.R.: This was wonderful. That woman crying in the desert made me sad though. I wonder what happened to her after you passed her by. Also, I’m curious about how you’re able to remember these so vividly. I loved every one of them.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-29 19:02:35
Thanks.
I generally have a good memory, or at least a good memory when it comes to people (excluding their names), but these people were particularly memorable for whatever reason. I only wish I could remember them better! I mean, for instance, the Hungarian girl and the girl in Belgrade — I can see them perfectly. But I wish I could better remember the face of the crying woman or the face of the kid smoking the cigar.
I expect the crying woman had had an altercation with a guy who’d thrown her out of the car. A lover’s spat, probably. Doesn’t that seem the most likely scenario? I mean, I don’t think she’d broken down, because we’d been driving on that stretch for a while, and we hadn’t seen any abandoned cars by the side of the road. Anyway, I’m sure somebody must have picked her up, eventually. I just wish it had been us.
Comment by Rebecca Adler
2009-05-30 12:23:52
OR, best case scenario, the guy felt bad and came back for her.
What can I say, I’m a sappy romantic.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-27 01:07:59
As you might guess, I had to resist the impulse to list more missed romantic connections. I mean, in any given lifetime, there are bound to be several. The one I wrote about was a token.
Thanks for confirming me that I was right in setting limitations. In fact, I probably should’ve foregone the bit I included.
Comment by Rich Ferguson
2009-05-27 04:24:10
I dug this D.R. Dug the hell out of it.
Write on. Right on.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-27 05:06:07
Actually, I think this was inspired by some of your posts, as well as the most recent (iPod) post by Nick. I’d meant to say as much in an addendum.
And now I suppose I have. Better late than never.
Comment by N.L. Belardes
2009-05-27 11:05:44
Thanks bro! I felt like where mine only showed the titles, you pressed play. I was right there. Your writing is so crisp. Damn. I was there.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-27 13:50:54
Well, though I didn’t say so when I commented on your piece, you managed to sear a few of your memories into my brain. So maybe this now makes us even.
Comment by Brin
2009-05-27 05:38:13
That was a pleasure to read. Duke’s Greatest Hits. More like it just had the feeling of every song on an album being really good.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-27 05:57:55
Thanks.
Meantime, we’re back to our old Tribe ways, with comments going back and forth. Why the delay, I wonder.
By the way, did you ever skim that copy of House of Leaves I gave you? If so, did you have any particular opinion about it?
Comment by Brin
2009-05-27 06:18:14
Ergodic literature isn’t a walk in the park. I liked Johnny Truant. I hate footnotes. It felt like one big fat satire on academic criticism. I haven’t read a book quite like it. I gotta get that book back to you. Book tour! You got plans for one? Why the hell don’t you read up here? Dan Starling was excited to set something like that up.
Did you like House of Leaves?
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-27 06:35:14
I only read the first few pages. I skimmed the rest. So undoubtedly it’s unfair for me to render an opinion.Still, it seemed to me gimmicky; too conceptual; an arty guy’s take on “genre.” I liked that he was so ambitious, and I found it inspiring that an “underground” book like that one could amass such a large following. But HOL had no heart, or so it seemed to me, and I doubt that such a value even figures in its maker’s thinking.
A book tour? I would if I could, and I will if I can; but you, as the originator of And/Or Press, surely understand about meager resources.
I mean, hell, who ran up to San Francisco to meet you for a proposed reading? Too bad that ended with me all lachrymose at Kerouac’s former hangout.
But I’m quite serious about the “will if I can” part. I’m definitely going to hit NYC in the near future, even if I have to sell a kidney to do it.
Comment by Kimberly M. Wetherell
2009-05-27 06:25:09
“Somewhere, I think, someone is waiting for this guy, not knowing he’s dead. But I do, and I don’t even know his name.”
Love this.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-27 06:42:27
Thanks.
And somewhere his relatives and friends and lovers are surely still reflecting on the day he died. And I am, too, obviously. And I would love to talk to them, if only to learn a bit more about who he was. And I almost certainly never will.
Comment by Marni Grossman
2009-05-27 06:32:23
“Nobody reigns supreme!”
She may have been deranged, but, as you obviously saw, she knew her shit.
This was beautiful
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-27 06:34:22
It was one of the most imaginative lines I think I ever heard. And, yes, that made it beautiful. It made her beautiful.
Comment by Kip Tobin
2009-05-27 06:57:41
An excellent rumination on the extras in our lives. It would be interesting to find out if any of these people ever wrote about the same experience they had and your involvement in it. Of course that would be nearly impossible to pin down unless you knew their names. As they stand, they are nameless non-fiction characters.
This post walks a very real/harsh and romantic line throughout. Congrats.
Sidenote: whenever I see your profile picture, for a second I think that you wrote these lines from a hospital bed, which always adds a little emotive interpretation to whatever it is you write.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-27 15:12:01
Well, considering that so many people are “writers” these days, it’s not wholly inconceivable that one of my brushes or crushes has since gone on to provide an alternative version of our rendezvous.
I mean, wouldn’t it be something if I came across that photo taken near the Roman Coliseum? In fact, I was trying to find a photo on Google that would show the exact spot I had in mind, and I must admit to secretly hoping that I’d bump into myself. On the other hand, the photographer was so far away that I would only have been a mere blip in the picture.
It’s slightly maddening to me that I feel I have a lifelong connection to all these people, but I know next to nothing about any of them.
About the sidenote: The photo does at least suggest a story, which is one of the reasons I no doubt use it; and I’ve found that it makes for an online ice-breaker — that is, when it isn’t scaring people. What can I say? I’m perverse.
Now, close up that apartment and hop on the plane! Your country needs you!
Comment by Irene Zion in L.A.
2009-05-27 11:11:49
Duke:
My 95 pound therapy dog and I are at one of our jobs at a place for sexully abused children. A two year old boy jumps on top of her as she is lying down. He keeps leaping with two feet as hard as he can. Children often poke her eyes or pull at her teeth or her tail or open her mouth. She understands this. Nothing I do will stop this boy from hurting my dog. My dog gives me a look I’ve never seen before. We get up. I take her home.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-27 13:38:01
This could easily be slipped into my piece. The boy, I mean.
How fascinating that you work (or have worked) with a therapy dog. And she’s gigantic! But was the look one of “Please get me out of here,” or one of “If this kid does one more thing to me, I’m not going to be liable for my actions”?
Either way, it reminds me of an anecdote in my novel, in which a group of handicapped kids is escorted by the narrator to a petting zoo. The narrator says (I paraphrase from memory): “What an experience that was! ‘Bucky, put the stick down! Goats don’t like it when you hit them with sticks!’”
Comment by Irene Zion in L.A.
2009-05-27 18:37:04
Duke,
Both as a teacher and, God help me, as a mother of small unruly children, I have had to say things all too similar to what your narrator said! Please tell me the title of your novel.
Brooklyn works twice a week. No one has EVER tried to hurt her on purpose. The look she gave me was one of disbelief. It broke my heart. I will not allow my dogs to be hurt intentionally. We go back, but I am on guard now. Evil exists. Even tiny children can be evil. I understand that there is a reason, perhaps an unimaginably horrible reason, but it does not make a difference to me. No one has the right to intentionally hurt my dog. I am responsible for her.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-27 20:35:45
I am right there with you on this. Nothing justifies malevolent behavior; I don’t care what’s happened in the past. And to intentionally inflict pain on an animal — it really does something to me to see that.
I also agree with you about the potential for evil in children. It’s there. Children can be unbelievably cruel. In fact, I look back at some of the cruel things I did as a child and cringe. But none of it involved animals; only my younger siblings. And they could be just as vicious to me.
The name of the book (and I thank you for asking) is “Banned for Life,” but the anecdote I cited is just that: an anecdote, based on a few stories I heard from my sister, who used to work at a home for handicapped kids. The majority of the book is taken up with music-related stuff.
I’ve been meaning to tell you for some time that I was reading an old post of yours with photos of your children napping on a sofa that you left behind when you moved to Florida, and not only were the photos charming, but I wished, seeing them, that I could curl up and sleep on the same sofa. It looked so warm and inviting!
Comment by Irene Zion in L.A.
2009-05-27 11:37:35
(Isn’t that a photo of you in the hospital getting an IV? That’s what I really thought. Otherwise, what is it, exactly?)
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-27 13:44:32
Well, at that point I was on a continual IV. I don’t remember exactly what they were pumping into me. It undoubtedly changed, depending on the time of day. They had me on morphine at the beginning, which was wonderful. And I know this picture was taken shortly after the accident (by a well-known cinematographer who appears in a cameo in this very piece — “former friend,” etc.), and I do look a bit drugged, so maybe I’m on morphine in the shot.
I suppose I’ll have to change it one of these days, but it amuses me to have it up. It’s also on my MySpace page, and back when MS was the happening thing, I was constantly getting messages, sometimes from strangers, saying, “Your picture is really creeping me out!”
(Oh, and I can’t help but note that you’re in L.A., presumably to visit Lenore. I do hope my adopted hometown is treating you well.)
Comment by Irene Zion in L.A.
2009-05-27 18:44:56
So far, we’ve seen “Tyson” and “Anvil”. Going to “The Fall” and can’t seem to find this weird Spanish movie about time playing in the daytime. (Oh, and we’ve also been seeing Lenore and Lonny and lots of their friends.)
I thought that was a photo circa your accident.
Yup. Having a good time in your neck of the woods. (Bit chilly, though, eh?)
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-27 20:50:18
I love Spanish movies. They’ve kind of got their own thing. The Italians used to make singular movies, as did the French, but both have receded a bit in recent years, the Italians especially. This is a tangent, obviously, but I’d like to recommend a fantastic Italian movie called “The Best of Youth.” It was originally a miniseries, so it’s six hours long, but I can’t remember the last time I was so riveted by a movie. You can find it on Netflix, and it’s well worth the six-hour investment. In fact, there’s quite a bit in “Youth” about mental health, since one of the two main characters is a psychiatrist, and there’s a subplot about a beautiful girl who’s been institutionalized and brutalized by the staff.
But maybe you’ve already seen it. You sound like an adventurous moviegoer — a rare breed these days.
Yes, it is a bit chilly, but I like that. We’re going to have months and months of hot, dry weather, so I’m enjoying the breeze while it lasts.
Comment by Irene Zion in L.A.
2009-05-28 18:35:42
My absolute favorite Spanish Movies recently were: Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth. Staggeringly good.
Favorite Swedish movie this year: Let the Right One In. That one we saw months ago in Miami Beach, but it only played for one week. You LA people are so lucky! It’s playing here anytime you want to go see it.
(Duke, if you didn’t see these. Please go.)
-I can’t forget the memories connected with that couch either.-
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-28 19:05:08
Funny; you’ve mentioned three Spanish movies I haven’t seen, so I’ll have to make it a point now. I don’t know how I managed to miss “Pan’s Labyrinth” in particular, seeing how long it played here.
Unfortunately, the version of “Let The Right One In” that I saw was dubbed into English, which made for an annoying experience. I like to see films in their original languages.
Keep warm!
Comment by N.L. Belardes
2009-05-27 13:21:22
Just ordered your book. Looking forward to it daddy-o.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-27 13:49:08
Wow. You’ll let me know how it’s treating you, yes? It’s a nice book. I mean, it won’t bark too loud or beg by the side of the table or get hair all over your furniture. I taught it not to do all those things.
Seriously, though, thanks, man. I’m humbled.
Comment by wade
2009-05-27 13:22:36
i enjoyed reading that. very much up my alley. the hitchhiker, shouldve gotten her. i’ll have you know i’m enjoying “banned” too, and the challenges that come from reading a novel several steps beyond my kindergarden reading ability.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-27 14:47:47
“Several” steps? Really? I was hoping you were going to write or call me eventually with: “Hey, I’m just tearing through this thing! I read 150 pages in a half-hour!”
Then again, I was afraid it was going to end up as a coaster or something, so I’m glad it’s being put to its intended use. You’re a champ.
Oh, and your comment caused me to look again at that bit–the hitchhiker–and spot my requisite typo. I’d written that she was “in her late twenties or early twenties.” The latter should have been “thirties.” It is now.
You do realize that you’re going to end up in this blog at some point, don’t you? Bryce has already made an appearance.
Hey, all you people reading this comment (all three of you), this is my good friend Wade! One of the best damned guys I know!
Told you so.
Comment by Megan
2009-05-27 16:42:20
A trillion times more interesting than missed connections. Can you crush casual encounters though? I love me some super sick casual encounters reading. Makes me feel so clean and pure by comparison.
This topic (theme?) reigns supreme, D.L. Nice job.
I gasped at the molestation line. The fact of it, the placement of it. I’m not totally sure it wasn’t in jest. But if it was…
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-27 17:09:40
It wasn’t in jest. However, I think I was wrong to put it there. I mean, it’s a big subject, and it requires lengthy treatment, so to just kind of toss it off as I did — yeah, it probably didn’t belong. It kind of throws the piece off-balance.
I always look forward to your comments, Megan. I have since the first one, and especially after reading your fridge piece, with its colon at the end, and your comment about the placement of that colon. I appreciate that kind of sensitivity to a matter that many would, and do, ignore.
Call me Duke, would you? Friends call me Duke, and I’d like to think of you as a friend. (Interestingly, Wade, who commented just prior to you, is also nicknamed Duke. For at least two years, mutual acquaintances would say, “Hey, do you know the other Duke?” I didn’t, though I heard about him constantly. Then we met and immediately became good friends. Funny — or to me it is.)
Comment by Megan
2009-05-28 11:23:24
OK, Duke. I just bought your book.
You’re probably at the point where you’ve dealt with that particular demon and can toss it off. And that comes through, it just snagged me a little. It didn’t throw the whole piece off or anything.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-28 16:17:51
I’m very flattered that you bought my book. Thanks. I hope it goes down well with you. I mean, it’s a bit like cooking a dinner and inviting people you just met over to your house, and you’re hoping they don’t turn out to be vegans, since you’re prepared a pot roast that you’re anyway afraid may be too undercooked or overcooked, and you meantime hope your guests don’t mind that that your house is unsettled, since you just moved, and so on. I don’t know. I’m not very domestic, so maybe I should’ve selected a different analogy.
And, yes, I dealt with those particular demons.
Thanks again –
Duke
Comment by Zsofia McMullin
2009-05-28 04:15:05
I am glad the Hungarian girl treated you well. I would have been ashamed of myself and my fellow Hungarians otherwise.
Comment by D.R. Haney
2009-05-28 05:08:57
I made numerous trips to Budapest while I was living in Serbia, because of my visa situation (a long story), and I was struck again and again by the kindness of the people I met there. I love Budapest. It’s a place I could easily imagine myself living.
Comment by Zara Potts
2009-08-04 14:43:49
I’m so so so late to this.
But I loved this. The photo, I want to frame.
I only just noticed your comment here, Zara. Belated thanks.
You mean the Doisneau photo, yes? That used to be framed on the wall of every other girl in downtown NYC. I always wanted to think it was taken by chance, but in fact it was only recently learned that Doisneau staged the photo with student actors who were, apropos this post, strangers prior to the day of the shoot. Or so I seem to remember.