The Lexicographer's Rules

Two days ago, we went out for a little dinner and gift exchange at M&R on Elizabeth Street. Cozy, a little pushy about turning around tables ("Are you done, because we need this table": another non-question question), but decent food, fair-priced. Gave them books and each a copy of McSweeney's, the journal. Very pleased to find it in the indy bookstore on the corner. Friendly Indian clerk sees me buy it: "Are you a writer?" Umm, among other things. Do only writers buy McSweeney's? At M&R, people all around us unwrapped gifts in their gift exchanges: creased chic-chic shopping bags filled with tissue paper and ribbon-tied bundles of crinkly plastic and more tissue paper enclosing gifts not half as spectacular as their accoutrement. Soaps, mostly. It's been a year since I left the company. Our three paths have diverged. I have returned to university, reapplying grout and filler to crumbling self-made walls. Those two, they're still there, working long, searching for escape, new opportunities. There's more distance between us now. Before I left I said: "Let's not let this become a series of false starts in which we keep claiming we'll get together but never quite do until one day we see each other on the train and we know so little about each other's lives we have nothing to say." So the distance at dinner bothered me. Small space after words, a weird uncomfortableness, a couple of silences, the night closed too early. They're both sweethearts. Bright, attractive, creative women. We've had good moments. More would be great. But there's worry, fear they'll go the way of other friends, equally as appreciated and rewarding in their day as these two are in theirs. It would be better to not have to reconnect, not to see tight bonds unravel. How long is the list of good people who've faded away, dropped out? I have useless phone numbers and no faces, faces for which only maiden names or nicknames come to mind, old photos without dates on the obverse, a now-unwrapped book, a dusty gift, dozens of address books saved, perhaps, for when there's a recycling drive for defunct numerals and digits, an untenable position. Were I to skip-trace lost friends, what would I say? "I just wanted to catch up with you. It's been too long." It's another movie line, movie-of-the-week, transparently clichéd and to be avoided. It's best not to try to renew those old acquaintances. Twice in the last two years I've been sought out by friends from seven, eight years ago. Exciting emails, long phone calls, even visits, then the trickle away into nothing. Now my messages to them are as likely to go unanswered as theirs are to me. We are not who we were. Moments of misanthropy sometimes lead me to believe it's inevitable that good friends will soon become no friends at all. Only a small few leave via fallings-out, irretrievable friendly fire. The rest find new jobs, new towns, new homes, wives, husbands, and so pass beyond my horizon. Last night an email from the human resources director of the old company said to me: "Sorry. Meant to invite you to the company party. Please come if you can. Global 33, 7 to 11." I had considered crashing the party anyway. Same joint as last year, I knew. I wanted, well, I wanted another chance to re-do what a year had undone with Alexandra and Carol, to make up for the past failures to keep in touch, to write, to call sometime, to drop lines, drop dimes, drop everything. They were, as I'd hoped, pleased at my guest star appearance. We, and other people I'd forgotten how much I liked, had a wonderful time. Free food, a little marijuana, high-contact dancing, cheek kisses, arm squeezes, alcohol, cigarettes, booze, and lots of each. Then Liquids, upscale last time I was there, but this time, sweatshirts and flannel clothed hopeful bodies. No doubt a trusted free listings paper or guidebook in coat pockets. Everybody calls it "Liquid" without the plural, in the opposite way that Wal-Mart becomes "Wal-Marts." Alexandra and Carol at first puddled on the floor, eventually fled in yellow cabs. Of our group, that left six men and three women. When one woman left, the other two took turns half-accepting and half-rejecting the advances of men turned on by the delights of a company party. A year of sexual tension, of unanswered looks, hopeful scoping acted out. One woman put limes in the mouth of two men, licked their sweaty, salty necks, downed two shots of tequila and then vacuumed the limes from the lips of her co-workers. Then she necked with a man a good deal older and fed her tongue to a short Italian scumball kid from the Bronx. Then she panicked. You could see it. She had misread the situation and it was coming home to her: six men standing around, horny, chubbies inflating, thinking, Here's a prospect. A hot one. I got a shot. She found herself in an unplanned circle, ragged. She fled, forgetting her coat. Ten minutes later, she's back. Gets the coat. Makes out in the foyer with the older man again. The other woman, she's drunker, little slower. She's the receptionist. Trim, short, a little weight loss, cute bobbed hair. She gets lonesome at the front desk, all by herself, only a ringing phone for company. Holiday party, she cuts loose. All the men, six to one, commiserate. Yeah, too bad. So boring up there. Do you want a drink? A cigarette? Want to come over here and sit down? So, I mean, I just, you know, like, what's going on? Every guy makes his move. Some come away with a little over-friendly body contact, others get impromptu lip sucking. Told this story today at lunch with Alexandra and others. They left before it happened, so there'll be discrete vetting of the material before it enters lore.

I first saw Elke in my kitchen making tea one morning. She stood there in doubtful black shiny nightclothes, fair-skinned. One of the roommate's many dames. This week he tried to break it off with her. She responded by stepping out for unreality. One a.m., she's cracking and knocking around the apartment like a three-year-old at recess. "No. no no no no noooo." To herself, then like a wounded animal, wailing. "No I don't want to I don't want to no nono nonononon ononono nonon no no no." Throws his laptop computer across the room. He's talking quietly, low. I can't hear the words. Sounds like chatter used to break a mustang. In and out of the bathroom she goes, banging the door both ways. Tries to shut herself in his bedroom. Slams the door. But he's in there. "I don't want to go. Make love to me. Make love to me." Opens the bedroom door a crack. She's hunched low, looking up at me. Says: "I just want to make love to him." I think, That's a song. She rips at her clothes. She's near-naked, breasts hanging out, unconcerned. Finally she calms. He puts her in a cab, tells me, "She's lonely. She doesn't know anybody."

Waiting for the train, filthy tall drunk, black, lecturing, badgering, cursing at short dark Indian girl. He's got a bottle of Boca Chica in his back pocket. Cheap shoes, soles gone, laces knotted. New black zippered sweatshirt. Dirty slouch hat. She and he standing in front of the newsstand. She's staring straight ahead, not looking at him, not looking at anything. Still. Arms down at her sides, straight. "What dyou mean excuse me." There's no question in his question. "I'm not in your way. You in my way. You in my way. I walk where I want to bitch. Fuck you, bitch. I'm the boss. I can walk anywhere I want to." People standing around, cautious. Not interrupting, but watching. There may be a call to action. The drunk is an advertisement. "This is not yours. 'Excuse me. Excuse me.' What do you mean excuse me." No question. "I go uptown, I go downtown, I go anywhere I want. I'm just standing here doing what I do and you say 'excuse me.' I'll excuse you, little bitch. Fuck you bitch." I buy a newspaper. I apologize to the girl on behalf of everybody and everything. She talks back, London accent. "That's okay. It's okay." Drunk walks on, up to the track overpass, standing by the turnstiles, he's shouting. "You gotta pay. Everybody's gotta pay. That card ain't gonna work. You gotta pay." Everybody who had been watching now to does the knowing, "I thought there was something weird going on... Did you see... Man, I remember this one time, a friend..." All the bad stories come out. Everyone's pleased to have fear confirmed, and a story.

Out last night with Kay. First to Kitty's place. Big pad, cheap, got it through a friend. Near Grand Central. Wood floors, light, big bedroom, big living room, big bathroom. Half the crowd was fat or gay. Not happy gay because they were all too concerned with whether the birthday gifts they'd bought would look more expensive than they cost . And how nice Kitty's gown reflected her composure. "She's so collected, for being 30 and all." All night with the "and all." Can't talk to those guys anymore. The whole gay thing, the whole fag, queer, homo thing. I say that unprejudiced but jaundiced. They musta bought manuals: "How to be Gay the Safe Way." Not about safe sex, but about how not to stand out from the gay crowd. What's more boring than an artificially flamboyant gay man, lisping and limping through a house exclaiming ironically at flea market furniture and silk scarves, at fondue pots and cowboy patterned curtains? Swear to God, that's what they did. Probably still doing it now. Some of the fat people surprised me. Not just overweight. Fat. Huge. Extra chins, fatty plus sizes, flowing caftans, everything. They looked like they should be riding the white cart at the airport on the way to their departure gate. Kay looked like a high class escort. I loved it. She's so chaste the contrast is delicious.
Chaste, at least, with me. Borderline crowd of the near- but never-will famous. Half-assed writers, dumb-assed computer programmers, a lot of time-biders, non-restaurant hesitators: always on the edge of a big break, the job is just for now, until, temporary. Just about to happen. Any minute now. Yeah, a real sweet situation. Just need this one teensy weensy little bit of frigging never-will luck to show up on the stoop with Italian sweets and beaujolais nouveau and make me famous. At least better off. They'd make more money in a white shirt and black pants taking the steak tartar back to the kitchen because it's too raw and filling up the bread basket for the nineteenth time. But waiting tables, that ain't respectable. And offers no false hope. Then to Vedi's swank pad. Kay, from wealth, is impressed. By the apartment. Not the people. The people are cookie-cutter bankers and venture capital hounds and a 39-year-old guy in two-tone shoes who thinks swing is back for good, forever. Restaurant kitchen, blonde wood floors, intentional spartan furnituring. Big ass bed. View of a church, a historically protected church, so there will be no view-blocking buildings going up. Until the earthquake. We flee. Dewey's Flatiron. Huge screen, rodeo playing. Toothless barrel rider. Parallel vaulted ceiling, bricks stacked like Pez, restrained by rusted steel straps. Long, long rooms. Fratboy hell, all the sweethearts of the world are dancing in the bar. A girl is pole riding, dancing, grooving: voluntarily, unpaid, she's in heat. Jeans and cheap straw hat and a white cotton t-shirt with lace on the sleeve cuffs. Her own thing. She's in faces, in laps, licking her lips, Dharma hands and Demi body waving and winding. Every skeeze geek chump in the joint is all over her. But she's a tease. She grinds her behind, polishes pants, bats eyes, pouts lips, then moves on. Resists urge. Deflects gropes and grabs into unintentional caresses. She's drunk as hell. She looks like a pro. White kid in a dancehall reggae knit cap sits in a well-lit corner and sniffs coke from his jerk-off curved hand. What are bathrooms for? Can't get your coke-sniffers merit badge in the bathroom. This is his performance. This is what he does. This is what he is known for. The disk jockey blows. Bad segues, bad beats, can't find a groove, talks loser talk in a loser mike, feeds it to his tonsils so the whole chit chat is plosive and distorted. But he's a friend of the promoters, a bunch of local Jewish kids. Mix of Israelis. Nice bunch. Friendly, loud. My one goy word of Hebrew works well in noise: Ma? What? Kay and I eat at 3 a.m. at L'Express. She's been to Paris, lived there, but still suitably impressed. Twenty-four hour French joints, even here, are rare.

The bus ride from Mérida in the Andes mountains of Venezuela is simple. Mérida for a week. Small college town, poked on a plateau between a valley and higher mountains. Lethargy dominated, read in my room, scoped the delicious Danish girl (with boyfriend), ran around, when I ran at all, with two Brit chicks who when drunk were completely not understandable. Incomprehensible, unreadable, glowing happy drunks, bubbling away about this and that and everything else is naff, naff, naff. Walk around, take pictures of the cemetary. Body being exhumed, coffin rusted, bent, torn, sitting by wall, grinning girls shouting "Los dientes!", the teeth, the skull, ribs, fibula, tibula, bones lying there. I check it out. Two burly, busty Latinas fingering the teeth, posing, taking pictures. One holds skull, supporting the mandible, and puts her head next to it, two matched grins. Leathered man in straw hat puts pieces in plastic bag, sweeps bones in, unconcerned, having just finished bringing bones to surface, to the world. Marker says 1974. Piece together the story: Kid dies, 24. Family is poor. Cheap grave, no concrete, cheap casket. Without concrete cheap casket rusts. So family saves, twenty plus years, saves, saves, saves, in the name of the dead. Up comes body for new concrete unleaking grave, new waterproof casket. But there will be no ceremony. Bones will be put in the new box, put back in the ground, family secure, having done duty and reassured themselves. Family not even present for the exhumation, the resurrection. Jesus Christ hovers nearby on every cross. Drafts and breezes and winds funneled through passes climb over the town, hawks and buzzards and big-winged creatures swirling, turning, twirling, winding down, down, around to catch another ride. Por puesto vans cart around anonymous passengers on unknown journeys, to the market, to school, to the bar. A few hostels in town filled with recharging visitors, from everywhere. German Martin decides to ride the bus with me to Bucamaranga in Colombia. Three in the morning, we're waiting for the next bus of the day at the bus station. We chat. My Spanish isn't what it will be, and the woman talking to me has difficulty making me understand that she wants me to take her child and hold him on my lap for the duration of the trip. Rules say, one child per adult can ride free. She is by herself, she has two children. I consent by silence. We board the bus and the little chap sits next to me, hands folded in his lap, stuck down between his knees, waiting. He doesn't look at me. He's done this before, and a man three times his height does not interest or intimidate him. Martin sits across the aisle. We talk. Martin has never been to Colombia. Martin has not read a newspaper in months. He has his trusty travel guide, though. Martin has been out for less than a month. He chose South America because of the favorable exchange rate, but didn't realize that he would have to transfer all of his Deutsche marks to dollars before he could exchange them for the local currency. His pride and his favorable exchange rate disappear. Turns out Martin doesn't know anything about Colombia. Doesn't know about the rebels, the kidnappings, the shootings, buses being stopped so that passengers can be frisked for guns or dubious affiliations. Martin is surprised. I tell him that it's a good thing. Crime devalues the currency. His Deutsche marks will go further. We take the bus ride. You've read about bus rides. They describe the sheer cliffs, right? The drop-offs? The dangerous speed? The twistiness, the turns, winding, binding, back and forth and weaving roads, those the stories maybe do not describe. I barfed, puked, gagged, vomited, made sick. Had to swallow it back down. The bus stops only for the driver. When he stops, you better run. Get your food, your bathroom, your cigarette, gringo on parade. You've got unknown quantities of moments in which to take entirely too long and miss your bus. Always order the plata del dia. Faster, plus high-energy starches. Beans, rice, yucca, potatoes. plus thin beef strip for color. We reach Bucamaranga. Early morning. Martin goes to the airport and takes the very next flight out of Colombia. Panicked, scared by the stories. Don't know where he went. Me, to a hotel. Long nap, quiet room, a rare event. Downstairs, later, in a restaurant, meet Andre and Mark. Andre and Mark are British. We agree: one must set up tasks for oneself, events to be accomplished, in order to provide a point to each day, rather than wandering, wondering around. Many vow to see great churches. Others try every kind of beer. I am always on the look-out for a) an ATM machine compatible with my card, and b) key lime pie. I found no key lime pie anywhere in South America; that doesn't mean it's not there. Andre and Mark, however, have decided to a) take every opportunity to watch porn and strip shows and b) to take pictures of crippled beggars, maimed, marked, scarred, ideally freshly bleeding. Quite a picture collection. Stumps, nubs, ends, lumps, bulges, dark on white, white on dark, scabs, scales, peels, wounds, rips, bruises, tears, everything. They have an audience in me. There is, apparently, a scarcity of wounded in Manchester, in England. Once the steam-driven mills left, the gimps eventually died off. Thus, their invented package tour. We're sitting in the café, a regular march of the poor wind through, their handlers, organ grinders, fathers, not hiding, standing there, directing the world's greatest actors, children, to acquire idle cash and coins. One, I see later, is parked down the street, his brightly painted colorful van a household, children, too many to count, how many, coming back after each score, sent out again on a mission. But Andre and Mark enjoy their beer. New man, new mendicant, comes forward, unmarked, unscathed, except by street dirt. Mark and Andre ask in schoolboy Spanish, What's wrong with you? Why do you need money? If you're not hurt, why do you need money? You're perfectly healthy. You can work. Our man gets it, understands, cross-cultural barriers broken. Knife out of his shirt, blade open, he pointedly slices his forearm from wrist to elbow. He bleeds. He bleeds everywhere, on the table. Mark and Andre take his picture and give that man a few coins. He walks off.