really. All we know is what they tell us. And they donât tell us much.â
He is right. This city is one vast conspiracy, a riddle whose answer has been cleverly concealed from us. There is something weâre not getting, though there are certain clues: Steam rises from the streets; the pavement rumbles; the bedrock beneath our feet is shot through with tunnels and secret passages, arteries leading into the gloom beneath skyscrapers to a secret terminus where the cityâs own heart is revealed beating and horrible, tended lovingly by transit workers like a queen by worker antsâthe ventricles of its machine pump fueled by steam and blood and the dashed hopes of millions.
12
S UNDAY.
Chase is having a small dinner party in her loft just east of Carroll Gardens for Jillian. I almost refuse to attend, but Sundays are bad. Long, empty afternoons full of whispers and blank sunlight, followed by remorseless evenings, rearing up like a wall of ice.
Itâs not the foodâChase is an excellent cook, conversant in several obscure Asian cuisines. Itâs her friends, a motley collection of hipper-than-thou film professionals, acidheads, disaffected youths in jackboots, witches, Communists, performance artists. Rude bohemians with a passionate antipathy for table manners and the everyday kindnesses that are the grease of bourgeois life.
As dark spreads up from the river, I walk up Tide and catch the F train at Knox to Bergen Street. The neighborhood here is mostly Hispanic now, but there is still a block or two of Italians left, a row of Italian restaurants, and a few safe streets, supposedly patrolled by Mafia henchmen. Chaseâs loft is at the corner of Smith and Baltic, in an old Episcopal church, St. John the Baptist. The church was converted to lofts ten years ago, when the last Episcopalian in Brooklyn fled or died.
The massive, studded doors on the Baltic Street side are equipped with an iron knocker of medieval proportions. Party lights shine throughthe Gothic stained glass window of Chaseâs loft, and I hear the crash and hammer of an old Sob Sister tape played at top volume.
After a few minutes Jillian comes down to answer the door, a snifter of whiskey in hand. Her blond hair is bleached white tonight and slicked back, and she looks unhealthy and even thinner than she did at our last meeting. She is wearing a long-sleeve knit top that fits like a wet suit. Her ribs stick out like the ribs in a Dürer painting of Christ crucified.
âShit. Itâs the bastard,â she says. For a minute it seems she is not going to let me in.
âJillian, great to see you again,â I say, shifting the bottle of cheap California Chablis and offering my hand.
âWhatever,â she says, and gives a dismissive wave and leaves me behind to shut and bolt the doors. I watch her bony butt wag up the stairs for a moment, and I am forced into a sad reflection upon its former luscious proportions. Another beautiful woman gone to the dogs on heroin and New York City. But this isnât exactly fair. Jillianâs appalling new look is really the last stage of a general decline from ingenue through porn star to junkie that began many years ago. I blame everything on rock and roll.
At Brown in the early eighties, Chase and Jillian formed an all-girl thrash band called Sob Sister with an art student from the Rhode Island School of Design. Chase plunked the bass; Jillian picked up lead guitar and sang; the art student banged on things. In those days punk was the common language of the counterculture, and Jillian soon became known for her crude tattoos, dissonant shrieking, and disregard for common decency. During the performance of her infamous signature number, âFuck Me Blind,â she would strip naked and masturbate onstage with the head of the microphone. The most obscene part was the wet, squelchy sounds that came though the old Vox amplifiers.
For three years Sob Sister played a series
He is right. This city is one vast conspiracy, a riddle whose answer has been cleverly concealed from us. There is something weâre not getting, though there are certain clues: Steam rises from the streets; the pavement rumbles; the bedrock beneath our feet is shot through with tunnels and secret passages, arteries leading into the gloom beneath skyscrapers to a secret terminus where the cityâs own heart is revealed beating and horrible, tended lovingly by transit workers like a queen by worker antsâthe ventricles of its machine pump fueled by steam and blood and the dashed hopes of millions.
12
S UNDAY.
Chase is having a small dinner party in her loft just east of Carroll Gardens for Jillian. I almost refuse to attend, but Sundays are bad. Long, empty afternoons full of whispers and blank sunlight, followed by remorseless evenings, rearing up like a wall of ice.
Itâs not the foodâChase is an excellent cook, conversant in several obscure Asian cuisines. Itâs her friends, a motley collection of hipper-than-thou film professionals, acidheads, disaffected youths in jackboots, witches, Communists, performance artists. Rude bohemians with a passionate antipathy for table manners and the everyday kindnesses that are the grease of bourgeois life.
As dark spreads up from the river, I walk up Tide and catch the F train at Knox to Bergen Street. The neighborhood here is mostly Hispanic now, but there is still a block or two of Italians left, a row of Italian restaurants, and a few safe streets, supposedly patrolled by Mafia henchmen. Chaseâs loft is at the corner of Smith and Baltic, in an old Episcopal church, St. John the Baptist. The church was converted to lofts ten years ago, when the last Episcopalian in Brooklyn fled or died.
The massive, studded doors on the Baltic Street side are equipped with an iron knocker of medieval proportions. Party lights shine throughthe Gothic stained glass window of Chaseâs loft, and I hear the crash and hammer of an old Sob Sister tape played at top volume.
After a few minutes Jillian comes down to answer the door, a snifter of whiskey in hand. Her blond hair is bleached white tonight and slicked back, and she looks unhealthy and even thinner than she did at our last meeting. She is wearing a long-sleeve knit top that fits like a wet suit. Her ribs stick out like the ribs in a Dürer painting of Christ crucified.
âShit. Itâs the bastard,â she says. For a minute it seems she is not going to let me in.
âJillian, great to see you again,â I say, shifting the bottle of cheap California Chablis and offering my hand.
âWhatever,â she says, and gives a dismissive wave and leaves me behind to shut and bolt the doors. I watch her bony butt wag up the stairs for a moment, and I am forced into a sad reflection upon its former luscious proportions. Another beautiful woman gone to the dogs on heroin and New York City. But this isnât exactly fair. Jillianâs appalling new look is really the last stage of a general decline from ingenue through porn star to junkie that began many years ago. I blame everything on rock and roll.
At Brown in the early eighties, Chase and Jillian formed an all-girl thrash band called Sob Sister with an art student from the Rhode Island School of Design. Chase plunked the bass; Jillian picked up lead guitar and sang; the art student banged on things. In those days punk was the common language of the counterculture, and Jillian soon became known for her crude tattoos, dissonant shrieking, and disregard for common decency. During the performance of her infamous signature number, âFuck Me Blind,â she would strip naked and masturbate onstage with the head of the microphone. The most obscene part was the wet, squelchy sounds that came though the old Vox amplifiers.
For three years Sob Sister played a series
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