Next morning, woke up, early. Sat and read Trout Fishing in America. Noticed they had a patio. Went on patio. Sat on patio. Noticed there were plants. Looked at the plants. There were a lot of herbs, no tomatoes or peppers. Giant nautical star hanging. Went back inside. Went back to sleep. Woke again to Hu Chin walking around.
Hu Chin and I go to Manhattan on L. I leave Hu Chin. Hu Chin goes to NYU library. I get on Q, head to Coney Island. Sit on Q and read Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliot. The book is okay, everything is okay. Subway emerges from underneath the earth. Stop reading and look around at Brooklyn. The neighborhoods look like they were built 100 years ago. A group of black people get on the subway, three sets of couples. They all seem happy. Everyone is happy. Get to Coney Island. Walk down the street. There are thousands of people, mostly Latinos. Walk to beach first. There was the ocean. It was large and blue. The wind hit me hard. Loved the wind. There was no wind in the city. Feeling the wind was good. Large boardwalk selling lots of food and beer. Didn't go to Nathan's, the line was too long. Went to another place with no line, ordered a steak sandwich with sweet not hot peppers and no onions. They put onions on it anyway. Walked up boardwalk, sat on bench next a Latino man. He was speaking Spanish to somebody on his cell phone. His six year old son kept yelling at him, “Can I take my shoes off.” His father wasn't listening. His father kept talking on his cell phone. The child said again, “Daddy, let me take off my shoes. I want to run in the sand with no shoes.” His father kept talking on cell phone. The kid yelled, “Daddy, let me take off my shoes!” The dad said without looking up at the boy, “Yeah, whatever.” The boy took his shoes and socks. The boy was very happy.
Two gay men in very short shorts were playing volleyball together. They weren't exactly playing. They seemed to be practicing serving just in case a game got started.
Walked down the boardwalk, saw dancing. There were people dancing to very bad techno music. There was a cute Asian dancing wearing a Coney Island dance shirt. I wanted to touch her ass.
Walked back down to the bathrooms. Park rangers were standing together. Arab men were sitting down together sweating looking bored. Old Latinos sat on lawn chairs trying to sell goods. I took a shit in the bathroom. Walked to the fenced-in area where the merchants were. They were selling cheap shit. I didn't have enough money to buy any of it. Bought an empanada. It was a meat empanada not a cheese empanada.
Got back on subway. Arrived in Manhattan. Sat in Think Coffee for an hour. Drank an iced coffee. Everyone had a MAC. There were MACs everywhere. Glowing apples abound. Started to fear the MACs would come alive and attack in unison. There was a girl who did not have a MAC. She hated herself. Tegan and Sara and Beirut played on the radio.
Went to Washington Square Park. Wrote text message to Hu. Hu Chin comes out. We go to dinner at Klong. Lin was going to be there. Lin and I had made up. We wrote emails. The emails said nice things. We became friends again. She was dating a French man.
A man named Louis Russo was coming. He met Hu and I outside of the NYU library. He worked for a local television station. He seemed nervous and sad. Hu Chin was building an army of sad depressed grown men. This army of sad depressed grown men would one day conquer the world and force everyone to read Richard Yates and Jean Rhys. There would be no war because everyone would be too depressed to care about marching and doing push-ups. There would be famine though because everyone would be too depressed to garden and work very hard at anything.
We met Lin at Saint Marks. She was with two French men. Her boyfriend was a happy French man named Etienne. Etienne was taller, with a nice collar shirt, and very spunky for a man. The other French man was short and sad looking. No one told me his name.
Lin's hair was long. She looked older, her face wasn't so innocent. Cat Steven's Wild World played in my head.
Went to Klong. It was nice inside. It was busy. I didn't know what anything was on the menu. Hu Chin told me, I listened and ordered. Lin talked about Bernie Madoff. No one could remember exactly how much he stole, one person said 48 billion, another 57 billion, another 51 billion, the actual number is 65 billion. No one could figure out how one could steal billions of dollars and where would you hide it.
Etienne kept pretending to be surprised. It was really funny. Lin kept acting embarrassed which made it even funnier. Hu, Louis and I kept laughing hysterically. The other nameless French man sat quietly text messaging. Lin kept saying, “Please forgive him, he's French. I think they are all fucked up. I don't understand a damn thing he is doing or saying half the time.”
Everyone kept laughing. Etienne kept pretending he was seeing something shocking. He kept waving his arms about and making his eyes huge. Lin kept acting more and more embarrassed and talking about how French people had no sense of humor and something was wrong with them.
We ate dinner, went outside and stood on Saint Mark's. Tom White's apartment was across the street but he was sick. Lin and her French men went somewhere. Louis, Hu, and I went back to Williamsburg. When we got back to apartment John Walters and his girlfriend Katie were there. Katie was Korean-American, small and adorable. She had a positive attitude. Happy to see somebody okay and stable living with Hu and John, they both needed a positive influence.
John Walters wasn't drunk. He was weird but not as loud and conquering. He poured me a cup of scotch. He put seltzer water and ice cubes in it. Louis drank from a bottle of wine. Katie showed me her plants outside. Katie and I sat outside on chairs and talked about plants. Gave plant growing advice. She smiled a lot. It was nice to see someone smiling. Went back in. John Walters and Katie went to his bedroom and watched a movie on his computer. Louis, Hu, and I sat at the kitchen table. Louis asked Hu, “What kind of music did your parents listen to?” Hu responded, “Traditional Chinese music.” Louis and I talked about sports and our parents. Hu Gmail chatted with his girlfriend. Louis and I went outside and smoked a cigarette. Louis gave me two dollars for one my cigarettes. I took the two dollars.
Went to sleep.
Woke up Katie moving around in the kitchen. Katie said she needed to go to work. She worked at an art gallery doing something. Don't know what she did. John Walters got up soon after that. We went downstairs, walked down the street and got coffee. Went back to apartment, sat on patio and played cards. Told him I got a blowjob from Petra. He said that was cool. Talked about things we needed to do in life. He beat me at Rummy. We walked to a park. There were Latinos playing baseball. We sat on a bench. He told me he loved Katie, it seemed like he did. He said he wanted to be a famous writer. I told him I liked his new poetry book. He told me he rejected Hu Chin. We thought it was funny. Walked back to the apartment. John said he had to piss. When we got back he left. He had to walk dogs.
Hu Chin woke up shortly after. We took the L to Manhattan. Went to small grocery store. A tall black man with dreads made Hu Chin a coconut shake. Sat in Washington Square Park on a bench in the shade. Two pretty Russian girls played on a skateboard in front of us. A band played, made up of four white guys. An overweight white man holding a cell phone stood by dancing. A black man looking old and angry drove a lawn mower throw the park. Thousands of people were walking around. Old women from Park Slope were sitting by us waiting to die. One of them had their very own middle-aged black woman as a personal nurse. Hu and I did nothing but sit there and talked about writing and how to become famous writers. We sat for several hours talking. We went to Think Coffee several times to get iced coffees. Hu eventually went to NYU library. Walked around and sat in the park for two hours. Felt disoriented and terrible. Too much stimuli, too much walking, no anchor in reality. Needed to get back on the bus, back to Ohio, where reality made sense. Stumbled into American Apparel trying to make sense of my life, but no sense came. Sat in Shakespeare and Company reading Rorty, still no sense came. Hu Chin came up out of NYU. We ate Asian food. He had soup, I had Lo Mein and chicken. He could tell I was tired. We talked softly about polite things. We took the subway to Port Authority. Walked around in it, trying to find where I needed to be. We went to a Duane Reade to get water and chips.