Pinball The Gaslight Inn Park Slope 1977

At 3 O'Clock
I thought about going to Rockaways
The day slipped away
Seconds ticked into Minutes
I catch the B54 bus
It's 4:16

I calculated the time.
Four hours
Back and forth
To and from Rockaway

At North Portland
I get off
Across the avenue
Fort Greene Park

A green lawn shaded by trees
My feet carried me
To a Japanese Pagoda Tree
My hand swept away the twigs
And stones
I lay down an orange towel.

This is not virgin ground
Millions of feet have trampled this spot
There are no footprints.
Someone
A long time ago
Carved 'FRAN' into the thin bark.
The name shows its age
I knew a Fran
From Park Slope
1976.

Long black hair
Jewish
She played pinball
At the Gaslight Inn
On 7th Avenue
Her hips humped the machine
Without a tilt
I didn't know her name.

1976
Park Slope
Pinball
I ordered a Heineken.

The bartender wondered
If she made love the same.
After her last ball
Disappeared
I challenged her to a game.
Her Sephardic eyes
Locked on mine
Then gazed at my groin.

"Fran."

She had a Brooklyn accent
Very Brooklyn
She was a native
I came from New England.

Her first shot collected 33,000
Mine 55,000
Her hips ground into the machine
54,000
She was good
I was better.
87,000

"You're going to tilt the machine."

"I never tilt."

Her eyes fixed on the machine
FUTURE SPA
A good run
78000
My next shoot collect 25,000

I took it easy
My best score on the same machine
Times Square.
615,000
I wanted this game over
Fast.

She never caught me
I rewarded her loss
With a White Russian
She slid closer to me
Her skin was caked with baby powder.
I had to ask the bartender's question
About her humping the pinball machine.

"Come home with me and you'll find out "

The answer was yes.
And yes everytime.

Fran had a boyfriend. At her apartment When we were naked on her mattress the phone rang she never answered a little later a persistent knock On the door. It was him. Fran whispered "Don't say anthing And don't stop." I never did not once. I got up from the lawn in Fort Greene Park.
My fingertips touch the name
FRAN
On the Japanese Pagoda Tree
Someone had cut it into the trunk
It wasn't me.
Her name was only tattooed into my memories.

1976
Pinball
Fran.