I’ve had to pay the tab for it again and again. I’d also been drinking on the way home to keep warm and prevent illness from the hooker’s coughing germs.
When pussy Neil started in and got hysterical about the impounded belt rack, my automatic first brain impulse was to punch him in his face several times, and that’s what happened.
After I’d left his room and got back to my room, after shattering his glass coffee table by kicking it and tearing my wad of dollar bills in half, I realized that I’d been out of line. Overreacted. But, of course, by then, being sorry didn’t mean shit.
I had eight hundred dollars saved so I remained at home most of the time. I’d see both Neil and Dylan going in and out of the building but they avoided me.
I got through all of Tennessee Williams’ plays again and all of Eugene O’Neill.
But the blackness started again. I drank more to fight it. Again too much. For too long. But I didn’t hurt myself this time. Nothing violent happened.
To break the cycle I rode the subway. For two days. The Woodlawn Line.
When that train gets to the Bronx it busts out of the tunnel into the sunlight and runs on the elevated tracks by Yankee Stadium.
And there you are. A few feet away. If you’re riding in one of the cars toward the end and you stand when the train is pulling into the One-sixty-first Street stop, you can make out home plate. Where Ruth and DiMaggio and Mantle and Yogi Berra and Reggie slammed the shit out of that pill. You are right there within touching distance of the shrine.
I rode to the end of the line both days. A couple of times. By Woodlawn Cemetery. Reading Hubert Selby Jr., The Time of Your Life by Saroyan, Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Reading those guys or staring out the window at the Bronx.
When I had to smoke I’d go to the last car. Usually it was empty. Sometimes I’d get off the train, stand on the platform, smoke my cigarette, then wait for the next Woodlawn Express. Then ride on.
By the first week in February I was completely broke so I had to start looking for work again.
Chapter Eleven
WINDOW CLEANERS IN New York City are mostly wine drinkers and head cases, the ones that work freelance non-union on the high-up buildings. And fools too. They’re an overlooked demographic and someone should do a study.
I applied for the job cleaning glass with a firm called Red Ball Maintenance. The company held a contract to clean all the windows of all the state office buildings north of Fourteenth Street in Manhattan. They did apartment buildings too. Large buildings.
I got the interview because of Brad O’Sullivan who I had met at the staple-pulling assignment at the TV ad research place on Madison Avenue. Brad lived in my neighborhood in Hell’s Kitchen and it turned out that we were both boxing enthusiasts. Once or twice on Tuesday night, fight night on TV, I’d run into him at Gleason’s Bar on Ninth Avenue. The saloon showed boxing. Braddie’s uncle was Johnny Murphy. A huge guy with a great, protruding belly. Murphy was the shift manager at Red Ball.
When I came in and sat down in his office, Murphy glanced at me from across his desk, scooped up my job application and began reading. He knew already from talking to Brad that I needed the gig, that I’d been out of work for weeks.
He completed reading and looked up. Studied me. My face, my hair, giving me an embarrassing once-over. Then he glanced back down at the top of the application wheremy name appeared. It happened to me a lot at job interviews, especially in New York. My name, contradictory appearance and coloring would cause people to do double-takes. Murphy’s aggressive leer made me feel like a lab specimen.
‘Your name’s Dante?’ he asked.
‘Correct, Bruno Dante.’
‘You don’t look like a Dante. You don’t look like no I-talian.’
He was right. But he was being too pushy with his authority. He twisted his gelatinous neck around the side of the desk to see the rest of
When pussy Neil started in and got hysterical about the impounded belt rack, my automatic first brain impulse was to punch him in his face several times, and that’s what happened.
After I’d left his room and got back to my room, after shattering his glass coffee table by kicking it and tearing my wad of dollar bills in half, I realized that I’d been out of line. Overreacted. But, of course, by then, being sorry didn’t mean shit.
I had eight hundred dollars saved so I remained at home most of the time. I’d see both Neil and Dylan going in and out of the building but they avoided me.
I got through all of Tennessee Williams’ plays again and all of Eugene O’Neill.
But the blackness started again. I drank more to fight it. Again too much. For too long. But I didn’t hurt myself this time. Nothing violent happened.
To break the cycle I rode the subway. For two days. The Woodlawn Line.
When that train gets to the Bronx it busts out of the tunnel into the sunlight and runs on the elevated tracks by Yankee Stadium.
And there you are. A few feet away. If you’re riding in one of the cars toward the end and you stand when the train is pulling into the One-sixty-first Street stop, you can make out home plate. Where Ruth and DiMaggio and Mantle and Yogi Berra and Reggie slammed the shit out of that pill. You are right there within touching distance of the shrine.
I rode to the end of the line both days. A couple of times. By Woodlawn Cemetery. Reading Hubert Selby Jr., The Time of Your Life by Saroyan, Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Reading those guys or staring out the window at the Bronx.
When I had to smoke I’d go to the last car. Usually it was empty. Sometimes I’d get off the train, stand on the platform, smoke my cigarette, then wait for the next Woodlawn Express. Then ride on.
By the first week in February I was completely broke so I had to start looking for work again.
Chapter Eleven
WINDOW CLEANERS IN New York City are mostly wine drinkers and head cases, the ones that work freelance non-union on the high-up buildings. And fools too. They’re an overlooked demographic and someone should do a study.
I applied for the job cleaning glass with a firm called Red Ball Maintenance. The company held a contract to clean all the windows of all the state office buildings north of Fourteenth Street in Manhattan. They did apartment buildings too. Large buildings.
I got the interview because of Brad O’Sullivan who I had met at the staple-pulling assignment at the TV ad research place on Madison Avenue. Brad lived in my neighborhood in Hell’s Kitchen and it turned out that we were both boxing enthusiasts. Once or twice on Tuesday night, fight night on TV, I’d run into him at Gleason’s Bar on Ninth Avenue. The saloon showed boxing. Braddie’s uncle was Johnny Murphy. A huge guy with a great, protruding belly. Murphy was the shift manager at Red Ball.
When I came in and sat down in his office, Murphy glanced at me from across his desk, scooped up my job application and began reading. He knew already from talking to Brad that I needed the gig, that I’d been out of work for weeks.
He completed reading and looked up. Studied me. My face, my hair, giving me an embarrassing once-over. Then he glanced back down at the top of the application wheremy name appeared. It happened to me a lot at job interviews, especially in New York. My name, contradictory appearance and coloring would cause people to do double-takes. Murphy’s aggressive leer made me feel like a lab specimen.
‘Your name’s Dante?’ he asked.
‘Correct, Bruno Dante.’
‘You don’t look like a Dante. You don’t look like no I-talian.’
He was right. But he was being too pushy with his authority. He twisted his gelatinous neck around the side of the desk to see the rest of
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