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When I lived up in Washington Heights, I purchased a box containing 200 yards of Reynolds Aluminum Wrap. Never thinking of it as 200 continuously rolled out yards of aluminum wrap stretching from my apartment to Baker Field up at 220th Street, I instead saw it as several years worth of protective strips to be sprayed with Pam and conscientiously placed between a metal cooking tray and my fresh, wholesome chicken drumsticks.
Boom boom ba-doom.
Last week, after almost 6 years of what I thought of as endless service, that roll of aluminum foil came up empty. I had to line my cooking tray with something less than a full strip of foil. There are grease stains on the tray itself to speak for the night my foil ran out.
The moment at which 6 years of foil ran out seemed portentous, and in retrospect it may have been emblamatic of a recent turning point in my sad little life.
I purchased that massive roll of foil with high hopes that it would be all the foil I ever needed for as long as I lived. I really, I mean really truly never ever thought I would see the end of this roll of Reynold's Wrap.
I bought it at Dick's Hardware & Supply Shop on Broadway near 210th Street in Manhattan. That store had some fine prices, and its owners, collectively, had a fine attitude.
I purchased a noodle strainer there, and the 2 cashiers (why did they need 2 people to run a cash register?) saw my purchase and got that glimmer in their eyes. They were obviously very interested in kitchen wares and household supplies.
They looked at each other, acknowledged my noodle strainer and said "Aahh, yes. This is one of those lifetime utensils." The woman grabbed the noodle strainer by its handle and earnestly shook it at my face, declaring "Sir, you will own this utensil for the rest of your natural life."
That was 1991, and I was 23. Now I am 29. The noodle-strainer is still around here somewhere.
But I've used a lot of foil these past years, and a lot of other things have changed.
Buying utensils at Dick's put one in the unfortunate position of walking around Upper Manhattan with a bag that read:
in giant red letters. There seemed to be no way of hiding it.
Oh, but who the fuck cares about aluminum foil? I had such a week of high emotion and hopeless confusion. And today, Friday, where I'm going and what I have to do in the coming weeks and months has finally materialized.
I am almost certainly moving to Atlanta. It is about 98% certain that I shall be satisfactorily employed and living there by May.
The fact that Atlanta has entered the picture at this time is somehow ironic. My cousin Dean was killed in a car-wreck outside of that town just a couple of weeks ago. I have relatives there who I last saw the same night Dean and I last met and had ourselves a quick, ridiculous laugh at the expense of absolutely no one.
I spent a memorable few days in Atlanta seeing the Olympics and angrily reconsidering a future quite different from the life I had at that time, only to decide there was no reason to quit my job, and no reason to do anything except complain about the lack of Table Tennis coverage on NBC, and then come home to New York and sleep for 3 days straight, retaining a certain glow having actually let the calm, righteous power of the Olympic Movement enter my life.
And growing up in Tampa, any time I traveled north we always had to change planes in Atlanta. The instantly old joke was "When you die and go to Heaven you have to change planes in Atlanta."
Wow, that was such a funny joke. What genius made it up?
The reality of packing this place up and heading south is only beginning to sink in. Down there I'll have a huge house. A car. A cat. A yard. A John Deere.
But I'm coming back here, I think. The thought of living elsewhere secures the feeling that I am from New York, and this is where I shall settle. A house and a family in Brooklyn. A Sunday ride with the kids on the subway.
Of course, I am not from New York. I am from Florida, and a few days outside of this town will probably have me thinking of someday heading ever further south, back to the land of outstandingly terrifying afternoon thunderstorms and lush ocean air.
Sometimes I think of John F. Kennedy talking about Massachusetts. Cape Cod, Hyannis Port in particular. He found such a beautiful way of saying "This is my home." But I think that most people who heard him were just jealous. Why should his life have been so comfortable that he should be able to feel he had a home?
I spent the better part of this week babbling like a crazy little boy to anyone would had the tolerance to hear, and also starting essays and ramblings which never got finished. Oh, here is another one. This right now is the nearest venue of existential expulsion, and suddenly I think I'll change the subject.
Speaking of chicken drumsticks (boom boom ba-doom), I was openly accused of stealing chicken from the Food Emporium on York Ave. and 80th Street. The whole exchange was pretty sorry:
"Hey, pal, where'd you put that chicken?"
"Huh?"
"Why did you steal that chicken?"
"What chicken?"
"The package of chicken you were carryin' around. Where is it?"
"I put it back. I carried it around, then thought I'd buy the same thing over there" (pointing at D'Agostino's, which suddenly looked like some kind of refuge.)
God, I was positively whining.
"My guy says you were walking around with it, then you heard the announcement and got scared and ran off."
"I didn't hear any fucking announcement."
Then I remembered that an announcement had been made, something like "All security personnel, please report to the back."
"What kind of chicken was it?"
"Uh, Purdue. Roaster legs. I don't go for roaster legs, they got all that goddam fat on 'em." (I gestured with my hands over my mouth to demonstrate fat streaming down my face after taking a bite out of a Purdue roaster leg). "And you don't seem to have any beer. I was looking for beer. You don't have it, so I thought I'd go over to D'Agostino's," I flailed my arm as a gesture toward D'Agostino's across the street. "They have every goddam thing."
"Where'd you put it?"
"Fuck you, cocksucker, I didn't fucking put it anywhere. Here, look." And so I opened my jacket. Thought about dropping my pants. Unzipping my fly and yelling "Here's your goddam chicken!"
Now, if he'd thought that I'd stolen a pack of Life Savers, then this altercation might have gone on all night, because he'd have decided that it was a lot easier for me to have hidden a smaller piece of merchandise somewhere on my person.
Instead, he saw that I could not have possibly stuck the package of chicken anywhere up into or onto my person. There was a sense of relief, then I shouted "Fuck your stupid fat ass, fuckhead, no wonder you're fucking store is always so goddam fucking empty!"
And on that note I trotted out across York Avenue, conscious ever more of being scrutinized every step of the way by some $6 an hour security guard from the Food Emporium who thinks he's the fucking NYPD.
And I spent the rest of the night shaking like an old man, shocked at and exhilerated by my own spontaneous invective.
Then thought of how bleak that confrontation really was. And how the conversation might have gone had I been born in some other place in some other time.
"Why did you steal that chicken?"
"Because I'm hungry."
"Man, if you're hungry then you gotta pay for your food."
"Come on, man, you're just gonna throw it out anyway."
I've seen and heard these conversations. I saw a guy steal a bunch of apples from a fruit stand on the west side. He thought no one had seen him. As he tried to walk discretely away from the fruit stand the owner ran up behind him and yanked him by the back of his shirt collar. The apples fell out of the guy's jacket and all over the sidewalk, and the store owner shoved the guy forward and literally kicked his ass, saying "Garbage out, asshole!" (or something that sounded like that)
The shoplifter bent over and frantically tried to pick up the apples, saying "You're just gonna throw this stuff out, man. Come on, man, I'm hungry."
He had this piercingly nasal voice that every fucking person could hear loud and clear.
But the fruit stand owner stomped and smashed the apples under his feet and kicked the guy's ass again, getting smashed apple all over his pants.
The street was crowded. Most people acted as if nothing was happening. Some others chuckled.
And so I think I'll change the subject again.
Yes, it looks like I'm headed south again. Cleaner living. Nice, normal women. For that I can only hope.
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