The Poet : Chapter 28

 

TWENTY-EIGHT

 

The sidewalk in front of the orange-faced billionaire’s skyscraper was blocked off with metal barricades. But there weren’t any protestors, just the good old boys in blue milling about as if a grand joke had been played on them. There were many tourists blockaded in on the other side of the street, wearing their red Make America Great Again hats and cheering on the cops. The orange-faced billionaire’s ugly building had become a bit of a new tourist destination here in Gotham since he’d announced his degenerate candidacy. There were a couple true supporters of the orange-faced billionaire pacing and shouting to the crowd; two gapped-toothed hillbillies. One had a sign that read: When they jumped the fence they Broke the Law. Obviously one of the next ambassadors to Latin America provided he could find any of the countries on the map.

            “Hey, genius,” I said to the other protestor. He was holding a banner telling the current president to go back to Africa. “Any chance you know the way to Bebelplatz? Been a while since I attended a good book burning.”

            He spun around confused. “Huh?”

“Where are all of the protestors, hombre?”

            “Can’t ya’ll hear ‘em?” he said. He pointed up toward Central Park. There were cop sirens and faint chanting. “Them fools started up ‘ere in the park and is workin’ they way right down here. If them po-lice don’t bust’em first.”

            “You know, the public library offers free classes to people for whom English is not their first language. I could probably email you a flier or something.”

            “I’m from Western New York,” he said. “I’m ‘mercian as you can git.”

            “All the same think about it, Jethro,” I said.

            They came like a rush. There had to be thousands of them. They were shouting and swearing and carrying signs against the orange-faced billionaire. Many had signs that showed his face made to look like a pile of carroty shit with his yellow comb-over as the top. That what he was…a lump of shit. SHitler. The cops wouldn’t let the people protesting congregate in front of the building so they turned down Fifty-Seventh Street. I left my new hillbilly friend and started walking fast down Fifty-Sixth and booked it up Madison Avenue to try and catch them. What in the fuck was I doing there? I just wanted to see Larissa, and according to her this protest was the only way in which that was happening. Two weeks and a new month to boot since we’d been together. That infamous overnight bag still sat on my table in its defiled state. But there was no way I’d find her in this mess. Perhaps everyone was right about me getting a cell phone.

When I got to the corner there was a flood of people and I felt lost. I looked for Larissa. It was near impossible, like she said it would be. The protest was full of young people and old hippies; the Cornelia Street reading all over again. Damned near everyone had dyed hair. There were so many people with dyed hair I thought I was at a fucking Anime convention. Orange-hued billionaires and Cosplay were all the rage that unseasonably warm, gray early March afternoon. Before I knew it, I got carried away into the crowd and was pumping my fist and calling the orange-faced billionaire so many names I had to start making up invective. Good Christ was it cathartic to spew venom. If you couldn’t beat them then join them instantly became my new mantra. Rand Wyndham: Man of the people once again. Take that Willy Abelman!

The cops marched after us, waiting to grab anyone trying to get into the street to block that famous Manhattan traffic. They were in full riot gear to beat on jaywalkers. Horns blared. Drivers shook their fists. Protesters shook their signs. Dump the bum. Black Lives Matter. Build a Wall around Him! We are all Muslim. You Mean Make America Hate Again. When people saw a limo pull up to the curb back at the corner of Fifty-Sixth, they booked it toward the thing, and started hovering around and shouting at the blackened windows. Good God what if orange face was actually in there? They’d tear him apart.

            “Rand!” I turned in the maelstrom of bodies. I couldn’t see anyone. I heard my name again. Then there was Larissa…with fucking Kale and Astra of all people. They were right by a corner of the orange-faced billionaire’s building, dressed in camouflage like green cadets.  It took a while to navigate through the crowd but I made it over to them. Larissa and I did not hug. We did not kiss.

            “Hey,” she said, somewhat coldly. It was as if I’d shit on her rally by actually showing up at her behest…or I think it was at her behest. You’ll do what you want is what I believe she said.

            “Oh my God,” Astra said to Kale. “Like that poet is here.” Then her face contorted and she shouted something vile out into the orange-face billionaire-sphere.

            “Hey,” was all that I could say back. I was rendered mute.

I looked into Larissa’s eyes for anything. She looked at me as if I were some stranger. But there was no time to think about any of that. Protestors swamped us. Before I knew it Larissa, Astra and Kale had their signs hoisted and we were marching down Fifty-Sixth Street shouting about ol’ orange-face again. Astra’s sign said, Hate Has No Place in AmeriKKA, spelled just like that, without that extra K needed for emphasis. Kale, for his part, hoisted up a sign that read, Vegans against Demagogues, with pictures of chickens and pigs and cows glued to the thing. Larissa’s said Burn the Patriarchy. I wondered if the bars were open yet. Social protest made me want to drink. Here’s to the examined life!

Suddenly we stopped moving. We were all just kind of stuck on Fifty-Sixth. Kale leaned forward and looked down the street. “Aw dag,” he said. “They barricaded us in.”

            “It means that we’re like trespassing,” Astra said to me.

            “Like trespassing or actually trespassing?” I said. “There’s a big difference Astro.”

            Larissa finally turned to me and sighed. “You can’t block a city sidewalk, Rand. People have to be able to get by. If they can’t they can start arresting us.”

            “For what? It’s our rights as Americans to protest or waste our lives watching reality TV.” I pumped my fist. “Fight the power and all that.”

            “You need like permits to formally protest,” Astra said.

            “Didn’t these hooligans like get them?” I said.

            “Um…nooooooo…why would they do that?”

            I looked at Larissa. She shrugged. “I didn’t know until we got here.”

            “I knew,” Kale said. He shook his banner. “But I didn’t care.” He looked at me. “Fuck the system. Right, poet man?”

            “Speak for yourself, Rhymin’ Simon,” I said. “I’ve got bills to pay.”

            “The system is like keeping us down,” Astra said. “Like it’s all rigged for the elite or something. That’s why the world is so screwed up and people are like dying in like India.”

            “Neoliberalism…and smartphones,” I said. “The bane of our existence.”

            “We like have to protest to stop this.”

            “We can’t let them win, man,” Kale said. His beard as blunt as his words.

            “You two obviously don’t have a landlord or the student loan people breathing down your neck,” I said.

            “But like some people actually do have to pay for things, old man,” Astra said.

            “Good Christ,” I said. “If the cops don’t do it, I might beat you two silly myself.”

            “Rand, leave them alone,” Larissa said.

            “If I get stuck in the same cell as Kale it’s open season on him.”

            They all went back to shouting and protesting. But fuck it. A duo of twentysomethings still tethered to their parent’s bank account didn’t care about breaking the law. What was going to happen to Kale if he spent a few hours being processed, other than thinking he now had street cred? Or Astra. Her old man would have bail sent via some pampered daughter APP, before the ink on her fingers was dry. Even Larissa, at her age, was still on the take from her parents. She’d live to yoga again. But me? How to explain to my library system that I’d been arrested? For social protest of all things? They wouldn’t believe me. I had a better chance of being bailed out of the drunk tank. Rand Wyndham with a social consciousness? Even I had to laugh at that.

“Also, poet man,” Astra said to me. “Like where’s your sign?” She shook her double K America at me.

            “Left it in the shitter over at that drugged-up Mickey D’s on Eighth Avenue,” I said.

            “After this we’re going down to Wall Street to protest the banks,” Kale added.

            “And for vegan black bean empanadas,” Astra said.

            “You lost me at black bean empanadas,” I said. “Had you said Kimchi tacos maybe…but I’m getting the fuck out of here.”

            “Hmmm,” was all Larissa said.

            I started crawling through the crowd toward Fifth Avenue. In front of the protestors stood a long, thick line of New York’s finest. They had their batons at the ready. They had police vans and automatic weapons ready to use against cellphone junky Millennials and old hippy dips who were holding hands and singing Blowin’ in the Wind? It was unreal watching all of the stone-faced governmental sycophants. They weren’t cops. They were former bullies with grudges made soldiers getting ready to fight a ground war against their own citizenry. Gone was Officer Friendly patrolling the neighborhood beat. Put in his place were proto-military units under the guise of law and order.

America…you fucking, fascist failure.

            I got to Fifth and sure enough it was barricaded. My good ol’ hillbilly friends, however, were free to roam the streets with their racist banners, one working my side of the street and one working the other. Tourists with long Southern drawls were taking pictures and clapping along to the glittering waves of fascism. They came to New York in droves year-round, those fat Southern and Midwestern close-minded, pasty-white, college football t-shirt wearing, 9/11-sobbing monsters. They took pictures in Times Square and spread garbage in Central Park. They rode carriage horses to untimely deaths and watched the Rockettes swing their long legs. They went to the World Trade Center and shed crocodile tears while buying NYPD baseball caps. But we Gothamites knew how they really felt about us. If New York City got nuked tomorrow, they’d roar and cheer and find somewhere else to spend a buck on shot glasses and t-shirts.

“See,” Hillbilly said when he saw me. I done tol’ you they was comin’.”

            “I knew I should’ve trusted a man from Western New York. I always forget what a percolating bastion of genius it is up there.”

            “You ever been?” he asked.

            “I’ve shuffaloed to Buffalo a few times.”

            Hillbilly spit. “Nothin’ but libtard scum in Buffalo.” Then he ran down Fifty-Sixth to taunt the caged-in protesters, under full police protection of course.

            An announcement came over one of the speakers atop a cop van: This is a message from the New York City Police Department. Trespassing is against the law. Anyone blocking a city street or sidewalk without a permit is subject to arrest. Protesters started booing and shouting at the message. My hillbilly shouted at the cops to arrest us all. Things were getting heated quickly. Someone tried to pull the sign away from my hillbilly pal but he ripped it back and laughed. He got behind the cops. I looked across Fifth Avenue and tourists were taking pictures of the madness just across the street. An hour later they’d be atop the Empire State building, their fat asses full from fast food chain hamburgers. I started snaking my way back toward Larissa and the wonder twins.

            “I think we should find some way to get the fuck out of dodge,” I said to Larissa.

            “I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

“I’m like so going to the Republican Convention to protest,” Astra said.

            “Don’t forget the Democrats too,” Kale added. “Corporatists in sheep’s clothing!”

            “They’re all swine!” Someone else shouted. Shit, we might’ve well have been at one of the orange-faced billionaire’s rallies for all of the angry populism going around.

            “Larissa I’m not kidding around here,” I said, as that NYPD announcement started again. I saw big bottles attached to the cop’s belts. Pepper spray. People were getting pepper sprayed all over the place at that orange goon’s rallies.

            “No one is stopping you from trying to leave,” she said. “In fact, why’d you come back?”

            “Yeah,” Astra said. “Like if you’re not a part of the problem then you’re part of the solution.”

            “I think MLK said that,” I said.

            “You bring me down, poet man,” Kale said.

            In the middle of Fifty-Sixth Street there was a crosswalk. People were leaving the protest and crossing there, and the cops weren’t doing shit to stop them. They weren’t barricading us all in like lambs to the slaughter. They sure as shit weren’t stopping those people. I started creeping toward the exit. But then my conscience got the better of me. I grabbed Larissa by the wrist and started pulling her along. She was reluctant at first but then she gave in. No one really wanted to get arrested or pepper sprayed. Except maybe Kale and Astra. Larissa pulled away from me and stopped the minute we were safely on the other side.

“I told you I wasn’t leaving,” she said. She rubbed her wrist to give me that extra twinge of brutal, male guilt. Larissa took a hit on that stupid e-smoke of hers.

“Then why’d you cross the street with me?”

“Because I think we need to talk.”

I was shaking. Yours truly was visibly afraid of the cops and those automatic weapons they carried. I was a touch scared of the protestors and salivating tourists too. I was becoming afraid of all Americans. “Let’s find a bar. I need a drink.”

            “What else is new?” Larissa looked at her watch. “It’s like two in the afternoon. Why not start crawling toward the inevitable blackout.”

            “I didn’t say I wanted to get drunk. I said I needed a drink. Something to relax with all of this madness.”

            “This isn’t madness,” she said, as that cop announcement started again. “This is people standing up for their country.”

            “Yeah and I hate this place from sea to shining sea. So…anyway why are you being so cold to me?”

“Why’d did you go digging through my shit?”

            “Who gave me up? Gigi? Christ, she won’t rest until I’m dead, will she?”

“I mean seriously what in the fuck were you doing in my overnight bag anyway?”

            “If I told you the truth, would you think me erotic and cute?”

            “Fuck no.” So, I stayed silent. Larissa took another drag on her e-smoke and then whipped out her phone as a distraction. “You really have nothing to say for yourself?”

            “One action doesn’t dictate an entire personality,” I said “Unless you’re Tricia Thread. What I did was a lapse in judgement. I sincerely felt guilty when I got home that night, Larissa. I missed you. I guess I wanted to feel close, so I went inside the bag to grab a pair of…”

            “Ugh, maybe I don’t want to hear this.” She checked her phone again and started typing away.

            “And I found the folder.”

            “Duh.”

            “In my defense why would you even bring that to my place?”

            “Because I thought I had a little something called privacy or personal autonomy.”

            It was then that someone in the crowd stepped out onto Fifth Avenue and the cops went nuts. At least a dozen of them took off after one person. The protestors booed and started moving toward the street. More cops left their formation. It became one big mass of blue and camouflage and banners. The two hillbillies danced around the madness and waved their signs. A subtle odor of pepper spray filled the air. We needed to go.  I went for Larissa again but she side-stepped me and started hurriedly down the street.  We got to Madison Avenue and made a right and hid in the wide-open front entrance of a skyscraper. Protestors and cops ran past us in blurs.

            “Look, I’m as curious about what you write as I am about everyone else,” I finally said. “I don’t often admit it, but good old Rand has a competitive streak in him.”

            Larissa looked away from her phone. “And a deceitful streak.”

“I don’t know what Gigi or Jackson or whoever filled your head with, but I looked at your stuff once and I was wrong to tell Carolina that I thought I was in love with her at Big Nick’s. For the record she doesn’t even want to see me.”

            “Neither of them told me about what you said to Carolina,” she said.

            “Well, who did?”

            “You just did asshole. I was only talking about my fucking short story that you stole.”

“Oh.” Christ, I really wished that I was in a bar. I did this kind of stuff much better in a bar. “Look, kid, you want to talk about deceitful? Never mind that I went into your bag. That story, Larissa. I mean what in the fucking blazes was that shit! How could you? No…why would you even do that to me…all things considered. You know how I’ve been tortured over that novel of Carolina’s. I mean tortured. Like thrown in the ovens burnt to a crisp.”

“Did you just compare yourself to a Holocaust victim?” She didn’t even look up from her phone. “By the way Kale and Astra didn’t get arrested. Not that you care.”

“They could wind up in Gitmo and the world would be a better place.”

            “Also, you’re a fucking hypocrite,” Larissa said. “You write all of those poems about people, about co-workers, about your friends, about people on the bus and subway. You have those ones that are about Carolina. Your one true love, right? Yet there she is in your poems like some big bar whore who wronged you.”

“Have I told you about Colin and the sink?” I said. “Although that might be a drunken delusion at this point. It was Jazzy Jim, right? Alcohol and I have a very O’Brien/Winston Smith relationship.”

“I know enough about that stupid, fake sink story that I could recite it back to you.”

“Or write it yourself.”

Larissa laughed bitterly. She still kept her head in that fucking phone, texting with fucking Kale or Astra, or culling up the spirit of Carolina. “And you have poems about me,” she finally said. She held up her phone to show me the evidence. “Poems about my tattoos; especially the ones that no one else can see. You have poems about my hair, my ass, and my tits. Why not write an ode to the thin hairs circling around my asshole for Christ’s sake, Rand!”

            “Well, excuse you for being a mammal.” That solicited an eye roll from Larissa. More cops and robbers came running past us. “Love poems. They’re all clearly love poems.”

            “The poem about accidentally putting a finger in my ass was a love poem?”

            “I took creative license,” I said. “That never happened. Any good and careful lover would never mistake the asshole for the vagina.”

            “You’re a liar on top of being a hypocrite.” She finally looked away from her phone. “Our friends have seen those poems. Every time you touch me, I feel those poems. Every time I’m at a reading with you I think people are looking at me when you read those poems. Every time I talk to Killian or Jackson…or Gee, I feel those poems between us. My sister has seen those poems. I called her when I found out you stole that story, and she asked me what in the fuck I was doing with a dirty old man like you, and honestly, I couldn’t answer her.”

            “Did you tell her about...?” But I had no answer. The world will tell you that writing is a solitary experience. But that extends only so far as the little room that you do it in.

            “And I write one story about you,” Larissa said. “One, Rand. And it wasn’t about you being drunk all the time. Or how much you love my dildo collection. Or you clogging up my toilet all of the time. Or you being worried about your man boobs, your one testicle, that weird rash that you have on your back, or even that you think your dick is too small. It was about a fucking wiffleball game. A story that you weren’t even supposed to see yet. And you get your panties in a knot? Bitch, please.”

            “Did you even consider my feelings when you sat down to write that story, or think maybe I wanted it?” I said.

            “Rand, you’re as thick as a milkshake sometimes,” Larissa said. “I didn’t consider your wants or needs then, and I don’t really care for them right now.” She looked at her phone. “Did you consider my feelings when you wrote the poem Making Satan’s Daughter Come Again?”

            “At least you don’t come off as a fat fool like I do in that story.”

            “It’s not you it’s a character, right? I’m not telling you something that you don’t know.”

            “I’m on YouTube for Christ’s sake!”

            “And whose fault is that?”

            I shook my head. “I was defending your honor and the honor of all women.”

            “Nobody wanted you to,” Larissa said. “You and your noble-white-male-finally-attacks-the-patriarchy act actually made shit worse for me and Millicent. Now those asshole kids make it a point to be outside when we come home.”

            “Would it help if I apologized?” I asked. “For everything.”

“I’m not in the absolution business.”

            “Then why did we even do this today?”

            “You wanted to talk,” she said into her phone. “I wanted to protest that vile, baby-dicked orange-faced billionaire…and get empanadas.”

            “I wanted to talk about us,” I said.

“Us as human beings?” Larissa said. “Us as an autonomous collective? What us?”

            Sure, now she learns how to banter. “Look, I can see you being all cold with me because of what I did. But let’s look at the bigger picture here.”

She put down her phone and looked at me like she didn’t care. “And that is?”

            It was the grasping at straws portion of the day. “Kid, admit that you were using me all along. Millicent explained as much. I know all about the poet boyfriend of yours. I know all about him taking off with someone else to go off and forge a brave new world. You meet me. I’m sort of drunk and silly. I’m safe. You think, oh, maybe this time it’ll work out with a guy like Rand. I mean you said so yourself that you don’t usually go for guys like me. So we date. You find out this boy has a touch of the old kink in him. But then the drinking got in the way, right? And me not wanting to go anywhere. And...”

            “Etcetera, etcetera, all the way to your invasion of my privacy,” Larissa said. “And Rand, you’re quite possibly ninety-nine percent incorrect. I thought you were amusing, yes. I don’t normally date squares like you, also yes. But it had nothing to do with me getting over someone. That’s such a stereotype. I don’t need to fill any hole, certainly not by someone like you. Honestly, I tried giving you hints that I was kind of done with you, but you never seemed to get them. And I guess it takes me a while to build up to confrontation, because I’ve been around the block with insecure men like you. So, I just stopped coming around.”

            “I just thought that absence made the heart grow fonder,” I said. “That you were somewhere bursting with fondness for me.”

Larissa shook her head and looked at me as if thoroughly done and disgusted. “You know I was just going to go ahead and ghost your ass,” she said, “but then Gigi told me how complicated that would be with someone like you. If he didn’t get a hint when he was younger, she said, he won’t get a hint now. And now I ha…” Suddenly her cell phone blared some god-awful screeching, wailing punk anthem. Larissa picked it up like we weren’t even having a relationship ending conversation. “Gotta take this.” Her mood instantly changed and she said a happy yo into the phone and then walked away for a second.         

Ghost me? What in the shit was that? I swear every time I got down with the lingo, people changed the game on me. I watched Larissa talk and pace. Well, I thought, this was almost done. Or it was done and really Larissa didn’t even need to tell me. In truth I wasn’t as thick as all that. I knew the deal. It’s just…I was a little bit sad. Larissa had been good company. We had no romantic chemistry. That was my fault mostly. I was long past the thrill of living and romantic chemistry was no longer my kind of science. That was fine with me. The cultural good ship lollipop was sailing and good ol’ Rand was stuck on the docks.

            “Kale got pepper sprayed,” Larissa said, when she got off her phone. I couldn’t help but laugh. Just the image of that bearded dipshit spinning around Midtown with his eyes burning while Astra walked circles around him going, like, like…wrong reaction to have I know. But nothing mattered.

            “They say to use milk,” I said. “For the eyes.”

            “Astra tried to get him some but the bodega she went to didn’t have organic almond milk.”

            “An American tragedy.”

            Larissa looked at me sadly. “Soooooooo, we done here or what?” she said. If she didn’t want ceremony then I didn’t want ceremony. “Because Kale is my friend and I want to go and see if he’s all right.”

            “Completely and totally done,” I said. I sounded a bit cold but I’d save the dramatics for when I was back at the apartment and had the vodka and old R&B music going, when I knew the tears would come, when the world would become completely overwhelming as it did to me at times. I’d save the real stuff for when it hit me, I was back at ground zero again with no one lying next to me, and no one around to give me that knowing glance or touch. “But one thing? What are we going to do about our friends? Do we have to, you know, divide them up?”

Larissa shrugged and smirked. “Do you really think that I’m so fragile that I can’t be in a room with you, dude?”

Perhaps I’d shed no tears tonight. “I…”

            “Or are you the fragile one?” Larissa craned her neck down Madison. “Go get yourself that drink, Rand,” she said. “Maybe I’ll see you at the reading.”

Then she was gone. Gone. Just like that. People in and out of your life. It had been a while for me and legitimate break-ups. I forgot how much endings stung. How hollow they left you. Larissa seemed fine. But poor me. How was I going to be in a room with her? See her with some other person? Someone who truly made her happy? Caught up in sex and poetry and all that bullshit for real this time? I started walking toward a bar that I knew on Third Avenue. It was almost three in the afternoon and there I was heading toward the abyss alone. I was alone a lot but I never really felt lonely, until moments like this, that is.