On Saturday it took three separate trains (and a detour into Manhattan) to get from one part of Brooklyn to another. Along the way, I met a man named Reggie. We had a brief exchange on the second train, and we began conversing while waiting for the third—first, about trains and schedules (polite) and then about cities and personal histories (tangible). He was surprised that I knew the name of the small North Carolina town where he'd spent some time, and I was surprised that he also used to live in Raleigh, not too far from me. He flashed me his North Carolina driver's license as proof.
Reggie had a small build and an angular face; I could see the shape of his skull underneath his dark skin, the bones of his cheeks protruding like they wanted to escape. The whites of his eyes were cloudy and dark, and his hair was braided in neat cornrows that gathered at the nape of his neck. He looked kind of worn, but came across as friendly and attentive.
When our train arrived, we sat beside each other on a bench, and he told me about a bad car accident he'd had in 1995. The accident stole his memory for an entire 8 months, he said. (In the hospital, they kept asking him, "What's your name? What's today's date? Who's President?", to which he'd reply, "Y'all know I don't remember. So stop asking me.") He'd also lost his short-term memory, and would regularly forget what had happened the day before, or even that morning.
I asked him if losing his memory was sad or scary. He said No, but that his family and friends were upset by it. Friends would come up to him on the street and he wouldn't know who they were. His mother tried to jog his memory by showing him photo albums and taking him to childhood places, but nothing registered as being familiar. In fact, because his family seemed like strangers to him, they made him uncomfortable, so he returned (alone) to his apartment in New York. When his memory finally did return, it came flooding back in one piece, bringing with it a massive migraine headache.
The details of the accident itself came to him differently—little by little, and unfolding in dreams. Once his subconscious (sleepy) mind gave him all of the pieces, his conscious (awake) mind knew the complete story. He was on the Jersey Turnpike when a car hit him, causing his automobile to slam into another one.
When my stop neared, I briefly considered staying on the train to continue our conversation, but instead I gestured toward the door, to communicate without interrupting him. We spent the last 30 seconds going through the formality of trading names and shaking hands, and saying something about how we hope to run into each other again. We meant it, but we won't, of course.
My friend Stuart left New York a week ago to move to Israel. We'd already said goodbye over a casual sushi dinner, sitting on stools while facing the city through glass, talking more in depth than we usually do, and afterwards walking around the city aimlessly. But last Tuesday he unexpectedly ended up in my neighborhood, so I ran out to meet him so that we could spend our last few moments in the same city half-arguing about cell phone etiquette and giving each other a big, sweaty hug. I'm going to miss him.
Stuart and I met in 1997, the first week after I moved to London. He was passing through the hostel where I was staying, on his way to Romania to sell prune juice or something equally odd. He and I and a few other strangers spent a day sightseeing in London just before he took off. I'm not sure how or why we kept in touch, but eventually he put me on his group email list, which he used like GPS, enabling his friends to keep up with his whereabouts. We rarely wrote personal emails, but for some reason, when I moved to New York three years ago, I included Stuart on a list of people I informed about my new address. I heard back from him right away; he was moving to New York on the same day as me.
Now he's gone again, and in May, my friend Joel left for Bangkok. But, as if my friends are taking shifts, Eric is joining me here next month (via Chicago) and my childhood friend Natasha now lives here too, the first time she and I have lived in the same town since 1986. It's an unexpected bonus, like being allowed to bring a friend along on a family vacation, or being told there's ice cream in the freezer. I'm so glad she's here.
Today two people broke in front of me in the burrito line at my favorite lunch restaurant. I was at the back of the line when they arrived, which made the break extra obvious, but they happened to know the man in front of me, and so they loitered around him until I gave in and made some space for them.
Rather than acknowledge what they were doing or ask permission, or rather than letting me skip ahead of them, they just ignored me. I outwardly ignored them back, but inwardly I hated them (take that!), mostly because they reminded me of what an enormous wimp I can be.
A friend of Todd's is a writer for The Daily Show, and last week he offered to give us VIP passes to a taping. (As far as I could tell, the difference between the VIPs and non-VIPs was that the VIPs wait in a yellow concrete room with a metal detector doorway [as opposed to outside], and they sit to either side of Jon Stewart, rather than directly in front of him.) We saw Tuesday night's show, which was apparently its second night in the new studio.
We spent the first hour in the holding pen with the other VIPs (which included obviously very important people such as a group of skaters, a large man with a walking stick and a "NORML" t-shirt, a girl with impossibly tan legs, and us) before we were allowed to file into the studio. Todd and I killed time by playing Hangman, a game my friend Sarah and I used to play as kids during the sermon each Sunday. Sarah and I weren't very competitive, and we regularly cheated for each other by drawing gloves and belts and shoelaces on the dangling stick figure, in order to buy more guessing time. Todd assured me that the stick figure he'd drawn would be wearing no such items.
The professional audience warmer (PAW) emerged a half-hour later, and began asking audience members about where they were from. People held up their hands anxiously, proudly annoucing the names of their cities. Santa Cruz, California! Brooklyn, New York! Nashville, Tennessee! One couple from New Jersey contributed an exasperated sigh when PAW asked, "Which exit?" An old man looked confused when PAW joked that the name of his town sounded a lot like the words, "Whore Pile." (I don't remember the actual name of the town, unfortunately.)
Eventually Jon Stewart came out for his pre-show show, in which generously fielded unprepared questions from audience members: dumb things like, "How do you feel about Brad Pitt being in the hospital?" and interesting things like, "What news sources do you read?" Somehow, he managed to be remarkably polite to the inquirers, while consistently producing clever jokes out of thin air. It was like watching someone pull rabbits out of empty hats.
On Friday night Meghan and I saw A Nightmare on Elm Street in the theater, for the opening night of the Johnny Depp film festival. She'd only seen parts of it before (mostly, she remembered Johnny being sucked into his bed and being regurgitated as several gallons of blood). I, however, had seen it enough times that I once knew not only every line in the film, but how each syllable was delivered.
In the sixteen years that have passed since I last saw it, I've naturally forgotten details, and I've gained the brain of an adult, which, as it turns out, changes the film completely. I'd never realized that not only is the movie not scary, it's actually quite terrible, as well as unwittingly funny, and therefore awesome. It felt something like visiting the house you grew up in; it looks roughly like you remember it, but everything seems small and distorted.
For example. The main character, who was probably supposed to be 16 or 17, hadn't slept in seven (seven!) days, looked at herself in the mirror and said, "God...I look twenty years old." I'm almost positive she used to say Fifty.
I spent the long holiday weekend with six people who regularly stand on stage with the task of making strangers laugh. It was entertaining, of course, but also quite depressing, as the experience made me feel remarkably unfunny. When watching comics on stage or on TV, your role as an audience member is clearly defined, and nothing is expected of you apart from laughter (which, I must admit, I'm not so good at giving; it actually takes a lot for me to laugh audibly). It's the difference between watching The Daily Show and having dinner with Jon Stewart. (I'd much rather do the former.)
I don't normally put much pressure on myself to be funny (though self-conscious pressure is no doubt the fastest path to becoming witty), but four days spent with comedians-who-talk-a-lot-about-comedy gave me a little bit of a complex. I don't doubt that I would have similar problems going on vacation with supermodels, or Mensa, or the Young Achievers Club. Perhaps it means I should be hanging out with totally untalented people.
Complex aside, I had a very nice (and unusually calm) vacation. It was my first time on Cape Cod, and the first time in quite a while that my most difficult decisions involved determining whether I should swim in a pond or in the ocean, and whether I should drink beer or wine. It was also my first time sitting by a bonfire on the beach, though thanks to a few movies (namely, The Karate Kid), my memory wants me to believe I've done that before.
