So Still So Still

Im so still so still A statue of flesh and bone For artists draw

THE TASTE OF PIG by Peter Nolan Smith

My great-grandaunt Bert circumnavigated the world on her father’s whaling ship in 1868-1869. In 1960 National Geographic published a story about her childhood travels on her father’s whaling ship back in the 19th Century and at her 101st birthday in a Falmouth Heights nursing home, the ancient Yankee lady had related tales of the black-toothed betel-nut chewers of Siam and tiger hunts on Java. I saw myself there in Asia. A far distant land from New England.

The only two other family members of the previous generation had visited the Orient. My Uncle Dave had served on a US Navy destroyer during the Battle of Biak in World War II and my grand-aunt Marion traveled through Indonesia in the 1950s. She brought back a statue of a bare-breasted Legong dancer from Bali. Their travels to faraway places sparked my imagination and throughout my youth I dreamed of traveling to Indonesia, especially Bali, home of the Legong dancer’s statue.

My chance to scratch this itch came in 1990.

After a successful holiday stint selling jewelry, I sold a 10-carat diamond for a good profit. Business died after the New Year and I decided to temporarily resign my sales position at the diamond exchange. Manny, my boss, asked my plans.

I’m going to travel to Indonesia and write a novel.” My commissions on holiday sales and savings from working every day of the Christmas season added up to enough to purchase an around-the world ticket and cover my expenses for about six months throughout the Orient.

"How long are you going?" Manny paid out my money in hundreds. The stack had a good feel to it. I wasn’t rich, just free.

"Six months. I'll be back in time for the wedding season." Late-May.

"You should invest your money in some diamonds. That's how you make more money."

"I want to see the other half of the world."

“Suit yourself. No guarantee on a job."

"None expected."

Manny was twenty years older than me and hadn’t taken a vacation in years other than to drive each winter to Florida, the true Holy Land. Manny returned to sorting diamonds on his desk. The Brownsville native loved his work. He was happy on 47th Street."Sie gesund and good travels."

A day later I purchased a world ticket from John at PanExpress Travel for $1400. NYC-LA-Biak-Bali-Java-Singapore_Bangkok-Kathmandu-Paris-London-NYC. I also obtained THE ROUGH GUIDE to Indonesia and researched a two-thousand-mile voyage through the archipelago from Biak in Irian Jaya to Sumatra in the west. I mentioned stopping at the first Indonesian destination and John said, “No one has ever stopped in Biak.”

“Then I will be the first.”

He handed over a sheaf of airline tickets and wished me 'good luck'.

My Uncle Dave had served as a Navy sailor in the Pacific War.

“I’ve been to Biak. Not really. I was on a destroyer off-shore. We blasted the hell out of everything. I never stepped foot on it. “He handed me #20. “Have a few beers on me.”

I caught the Amtrak train south from North Station to the city. The first leg of my journey. From here on, my travels headed west and I was happy knowing that two days later Indonesia’s national carrier, Garuda, was flying to LAX and I was scheduled to be on that 747.

I sublet my apartment to a friend. It was winter in New York. Not where I was going. I packed the day before my departure. Summer clothing, an Olympus XA2 camera, a small Brother typewriter, and a Sony World Band radio. The day of my flight, I left my apartment three hours early and the 747 lifted from JFK on time. California-bound. Ever west. After a week in LA I boarded a Garuda 747 to cross the vast Pacific. THe airliner landed at the small fishing port of Biak in Irian Jaya. Bali-bound tourists bought cannibal souvenirs from the small gift shop. Two missionaries were greeted by their Melanesian flock and boarded Cessnas to their churches. The 747 lifted off the tarmac.

I wasn’t the only 'Mistah' or white man on the island. Larry Smith, a famed diver, was opening up a dive shop here. His boat’s engine was kaput, but his Zodiac was good for free-diving off the cliff like reefs. And I couldn’t be happier, drinking a Bintang beer with the bearded Texan on the veranda of the old Dutch hotel overlooking Cendrawasih Bay. We free-dive off the coral cliffs. I had good lungs. Larry had better. He was a pro.

Happier, until I arrived in Bali. A paradise and I lived in Ubud, a cultural center away from the Aussie surfing beaches. I stayed in a small bungalow down Monkey Forest Road from the Legong dance temple. The adolescent students shared identical facial features with the mahogany statue, that I had received from my Aunt Marion. I ate at the Ubu Cafe, swam in a nearby hotel pool, drove a 115cc Motorcycle across the island, and read books at night under mosquito netting. The BBC on my World radio was my ear to the world. Mostly I loved hearing the mosquitoes buzzing and me beyond reach of their stingers. I was more than happier. Happiest in the far away with the gong of the Legong gamelan band wafting from the temple over the rice paddies after sunset. It got dark fast in the tropics. Very dark.

For the next three months I traversed Indonesian archipelago on boats, ferries, trains, and buses. Indonesia possesses hundreds of languages and cultures. Each journey brought me to a new land. The kids shouted ‘allo mistah’ and Bahasa Indonesian became my fourth language. My first second language had been Latin thanks to my years as an altar boy. Knowledge of the Latin Mass was of no use in Indonesia. Over 90% Muslim.

After crossing the straits between Bali and Java by ferry, I rode a train to climb Mt. Bromo. The people on its slopes looked Tibetan and the night air chilly. At dawn a tour group climbed to the volcano's rim of the volcano with a view of the Indian Ocean. Another train to Yogyakarta and a motorcycle exploration of Borobudur’s massive Buddhist and the Dieng Plateau's Hindu ruins. Not really stopping anywhere. I had places to see. A train to Jakarta and a plane to Padang, where I stayed in a cheap hotel on the Indian Ocean. Sweltering hot. Mountains behind the town. I planned on leaving in the morning. My destination: Lake Toba in the highlands. 1500 meters high, promising a cooler climate than the equatorial Padang.

Padang people were mostly Minangkabau, the matriarchal ethnic majority of West Sumatra. Women ruled the houses. A contradiction to Islam and Western ways, due to more ancient traditions or Adat, according to Rough Guide. As it was Ramadan, I took care not to eat during the day to avoid offending fasting Muslims. Hungry people anger fast in the tropical heat and ‘running amok’ is an old Malay term for going crazy. I played it safe. No beer either. Not until after sunset.

I woke and swam in the Indian Ocean at dawn. The water was warm. The waves treacherous. There were no lifeguards. I stayed close to shore, the only one in the sea. After toweling dry, I walked back to the hotel. The only 'mistah' in sight. No one paid my presence any mind. It was Ramadan. Time for prayer and hunger. NO beer too. It was good to be sober. At least in the day.

No Sunday morning church bells sounded in this heavily Muslim town. I checked out of the hotel and walked to the bus station located in a bustling market. A bus bound for the Batak Highlands was scheduled to leave in thirty minutes. Some 600 kilometers to the north. The ticket cost less than $5. The bus left an hour late. More or less on time.

I woke before dawn and ate a traditional ‘sahur’ morning meal of nasi goreng. Spicy fried rice with chicken. Very sweet tea. Dawn brought light to Padang. I heard the ocean and headed to the beach and swam in the Indian Ocean at dawn. The water was warm. The waves treacherous. Children waded in the eddies. Parents kept an eye on their young. I stayed close to shore. There were no lifeguards, and I was the only one in the sea. The only 'mistah' too. For the most part, everyone ignored my presence. I had grown accustomed to being alone.

No Sunday church bells sounded in this heavily Muslim town. I checked out of the hotel and walked to the bus station located across from a bustling market filled with women shopping for the evening break fast or Iftar. No one was eating or drinking. A bus bound for the Batak Highlands was scheduled to leave in thirty minutes. I bought fruits and water and packed them in my bag. Some 600 kilometers to the north. The ticket cost less than $5. The bus left an hour late. More or less on time.

I studied the chattering passengers. Their smiling faces were ethnically different from the lowlanders. The Rough Guide described them as Austronesian like the tribesmen in Biak. As soon as they were twenty minutes out of Padang, they opened their bags to eat all kinds of fruit; snake fruit and mangosteen. Thankfully no durian. Hotels in Bali had signs - NO DURIAN for a good reason. A fruit with a well-known putrid stench. Eating during the day signified that the Batak were not Muslims, the passengers sang a song, which I immediately recognized as BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON.

I had first heard the church tune in Jimmy Cliff’s 1972 THE HARDER THEY COME on a snowy afternoon at the Orson Welles Theater near Harvard. It ha been my first taste of the tropics. I loved the Melodians’ reggae version and I joined the impromptu choir. The closest passengers stared at me with surprize. No 'mistah' ever sang this. At the end of the song, an old man rose from his seat and shook my hand. A faint embrace.

“Chretian?” He had several front teeth. They looked sharp.

“Christian,” I replied without hesitation. My atheism was a secret better kept from the devout.

“Saya nama John.” His English was a step above the usual ‘hello mistah’ from most rural Indonesians. “Where you go?”

“Danau Tobah.” I took out my Nelles map.

Indonesia’s largest lake had been created by a cataclysmic volcano eruption over 60,00 years ago. Not another one since. As a youth, I had seen photos of the lake in an old National Geographic. Hundreds of the magazines were stacked in my grandmother’s attic in Maine and they always set my juvenile heart afire with wanderlusts. I pulled out the Nelle’s map and John’s index finger stabbed the center. His little finger's nail was very long, signifying that he was not a manual laborer. Indonesians also considered the long pinky nail good luck for wealth.

“Tobah my home. You stay at my guest house. Very cheap. Very good.” John motioned for the young man next to him to get out of his seat.

“No.” I waved off the offer. I watched everything about the passing scenery. All the New World. “I like standing.”

“No, you big mistah. You my friend. Sit. Duduk.” The word was more like an order and I sat in the young man’s place. Accepting an offer is always better than refusing one in the strange land.

On the bus' climb into the mountains, John proudly recounted the traditional fierceness of Batak warriors.

"Many of our men serve in the top ranks of the Indonesian military. I fought for British against Communists in Malaysia. Where I learn speak your language. Good money."

The Irish and Scots had assisted the English in the conquest of the world. John’s tribe had done the same in Java for the Dutch and in Malaysia for the British. Merecenaries.

"My family live Lake Toba. Since before time.”

“It says in my book that the Batak people came to Sumatra 2500 years ago.” The Rough Guide delved deeply into history.

“2500 years before time.”

“This book states that 50,000 years ago Lake Toba blew up and nearly killed off everyone on Earth at the time. Some scientists think the population of the world was reduced to 10,000 and they lived someplace in Central Asia.”

“Book say many things. Batak people believe world come from Sideak Parujar.”

"Sideak Parujar."

"Yes, goddess leave husband, a lizard-god.”

John related the Batak tale of creation in a combination of Bahasa Indonesian, English and a little Batak to the passengers. The driver turned off the music. I understood about 5% of the story. Thankfully, John was a skilled mime. The rest of the bus listened intently to every word. No one said a word. The children shuddered, as John stabbed downward with his hand.

“Sideak Parudjar thrust sword into Naga Padoha. He not die. God never die and every time he move earth shake.”

His captive audience applauded his story and John lit a kretek cigarette. I liked the smell of burning cloves. He gave me one as well and lit it. I inhaled and coughed on the sweet, harsh smoke.

“As Christian Batak people not believe in other gods. Old stories too good to give up. Maybe tonight you tell story.”

Nearing dusk, the bus descended from the volcano’s rim to Parapat at the edge of Lake Toba. A two-deck ferry waited on the dock and we boarded a ferry to cruise twenty minutes to Samosir island on the opposite shore. Mostly Batak passengers. Three westerners. A French couple and me. I had met few Americans on this trip. This was the other side of the world. The temperature was much cooler as expected from anywhere 2900 meters above sea level, as the temperature had been atop Mt. Bromo. I was again glad to have my leather jacket.

John’s Batak Villa was simple and cheap. The food adequate. My deck offered a view across the lake to the high rim of the ancient volcano. The other guests were European backpackers. German, French, and of course Australians eager to leave the Antipodes or distant subcontinent. Few Americans traveled this far from the States. That night at the lakeside terrace I narrated the story of the Evans Mountain ghost to John’s family gathered around our table, thus I introduced the Batak clan to a haunted house in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The Evan's Mountain House. I also used mime.

John struggled to translate my tale. The two of us acted out the ghosts and the little children shivered with the old man's version. At the end the children clapped their hands and John said, “Good story. Everyone like. They think Mistahs not have ghosts. Only have one god. Good story. Now go sleep.”

I spent the next few days sightseeing around Samosir Island on a Honda 115cc motorcycle. Even driving off the island to Hadabuan Naisogop Waterfalls to the west. The river was icy cold. In the waterfront town of Pangururan, I ate a nasi goring. I was so far away from the Western World, but at night I listened to the BBC on my Sony World Band radio. Ever so far from London.

The lake was too reedy for swimming. Like an ancient snake or Ular Ndaung according to local legends was trying to seize your ankles. I spent my time motorcycling around the island. It wasn’t the rainy season, and the equatorial sun flayed the skin off my shoulder. John’s wife salved my burnt flesh with a soothing clove oil.

Every evening I ate with John’s family. They asked questions about my family. I lied about a dead wife. They all said sorry. I showed photos of my nieces and nephews, claiming that they were mine. A man my age without a wife or children was considered strange and unlucky by the Bataks and all Indonesians. They had big families and the children strangely cried all the time unlike any other small ones in Indonesia. They had big families and the children strangely cried all the time unlike any other small ones in Indonesia.

“They think they big. Not understand they small,” explained John.

The night before my departure to Medan, John invited me to a pig roast in a mountain village. We arrived at a compound of wooden houses before sunset. The thatched roofs were curved like the horns of bulls. Bulls were a sign of wealth throughout Indonesia and much of Southeast Asia.

Once the pig was cooked, the long curved kris sliced off thick slabs of pork. We ate with my right hand, since the left hand was for wiping the ass. John called his right hand ‘Adam’s Spoon’. We drank Bintang beer and gnawed pig. The bones went to the dogs.

Dogs crept closer to steal the meat. Dogs crept closer to steal meat. John warded off the hungriest cur with a club.

"Angin no good."

"They like people."

"Because people give dog food. I no trust dog, but everything living have tindi, man, pig, dog, tree”

“Tindi.” I figured tindi meant soul.

Two younger men tended to the cooking. Pig fat sizzled onto the coals. We had finished the beer and drank arak or rice wine from plastic bags.

“Tindi live many places. The first in body. The second in birth bag from woman.”

“I was born with the placenta wrapped around my head. In the land of my grandmother the Irish think that gives the new-born the gift of sight.”

“Sight?”

I searched for the right word from a small Bahasa-English dictionary.

“Penglihatan, but with mind.”

“Ah, ESP,” John rattled off an explanation to his friends and they murmured in appreciation of my gift.

Batak people understood the shadow worlds.

"In old days every Batak men have birth bag buried special place to protect tindi.”

“Not the same as in America.” Doctors chucked the placenta out with the trash.

"America have no tindi."

"Too much tindi."

Spirituality in the West was the domain of priests, ministers, and rabbis and I almost told John and his friends this, except they believed every man was in touch with the world beyond our senses.

A young man broke out a hasapsi, a traditional two-stringed lute, to play a lyrical song. More plastic sacks of arak were passed round the fire. A fiery combination.

“You like pig.” John swayed to the music.

The other men were entering a pig flesh trance like Americans after gorging on turkey on Thanksgiving Day.

“Saya suka babi sekali.” I had never tasted better pig.

The older men toasted my compliment, shaking hunks of greasy meat. We smoked kretek cigarettes to the filter and I felt one with them enough to muster up the courage to ask John a question, which had been nagging me for days.

"Islam came to Banda Aceh almost seven hundred years ago. Most of Indonesia submitted to Allah, but the Batak and other mountain people resisted Mohammad's call. Why?” “First we have the Batak tradition.” John licked at his lips and spoke slowly in simple Bahasa, “At one time Batak people ate men.”

“I had read that.” The Rough Guide covered every aspect of a culture without recrimination.

“We drank blood and ate heart, palms and soles of feet. They were good eating and rich with ‘tindi’ or the life-soul of the eaten. In old days we ate man with his family. We suck the bones dry. The meat we eat last and we store bones in cave. If man stranger, we ate him cepat. Fast fast. You know what we call these men?”

“No.” The fire flickered low. Dogs slept at our feet. Silent shadows filled the night beyond the flames. The horned houses were giant buffaloes. I could have been Marco Polo. The year was 1231 AD.

“Babi Bisa,” he spoke the words in a hush.

The other men woke from their stupor and muttered the words in unison, “Babi Bisa."

“Big pig?”

I recognized the words from my guidebook's extensive dictionary, but I didn’t like John's tone.

“Yes, and that why we not Muslims. Because pig taste like man. We killed them on stone.”

The elder explained our conversation to his tribesmen. They laughed and stared at me with an ancient hunger. No one in my family had ever eaten another human being and I tried to hide my shaking as I said, “I like pig too. Not because it tastes like man. I like pig, because it tastes good. Even the oink.”

I snorted several times in my best imitation of a pig.

The party chuckled in convulsion and lifted bags of warm arak. The pig was gnawed to the bone. The snarling dogs had their way with the carcass. In the end we snacked on the crispy ears. The fire died out and John walked me to the hotel. Tomorrow I was off to Medan. A big city on the Malacca Straits and then Singapore. No one ate man in that modern city.

At the door to my room he said, “I tell story to many Mistahs. It is joke. No Batak eat man in hundred years. Many westerners run away, not you. Why?”

“Because I like pig too.” Bacon was my favorite meat.

“Why?”

“Nothing taste like it.”

“Not babi besa?”

“I don’t know, but I think not. Man is not as clean as a pig and not as smart. Dumb men can’t be good eating. I also think the only reason we survived the tigers was that we smell bad and taste worse."

John lifted his head to the stars and laughed aloud. He clapped me on the shoulder and size up my bicep.

“You not good food. Too tough.”

“Same you.” “Same you. We are both pria tua.” I was thirty-eight and John had to be in his forties. Both old men.

His wife shouted for him to come inside. John ignored his wife’s entreaty and walked over to the restaurant. His friends greeted him. John's right hand surveyed the flesh on a fat man. He turned and mouthed the words.

“Babi besa.”

“Sekali bagus.” Good eating, because a young pig was always tastier than an old pig even with babi besa.

“Sama sama. I not here in morning. Selamat jalan.” John wished me a good trip.

“Selamat tingaal.” I wished him a good life. It was the best thing to do with someone who hadn’t eaten you. And anyone with a taste for pig knows that is the truth, especially since I had money in my pocket and the rest of the world ahead of me.

And everyone who has a taste for pig knows that is the truth.

My Mirror Image - Younger

On an August evening I walked east on Houston Street towards Whole Foods. A tropical high had wandered up the Eastern Seaboard and a sweltering heat dome swarmed over the city. I sweat from every pore and my mind was sapped of every thought by this torrid weather. So lost in a haze I strolled past my destination. As I approached Katz's Deli, I thought, "Damn, I walked past Whole Foods."

I stood pole-axed, as if heat-stroked, and pondered, if I should eat a Katz' hot dog. Hot dog buyers don't have to wait in line with the tourists. A hot dog certainly not as healthy a choice as Whole Foods. I spotted a young white bare-chested jogger striding down the busy sidewalk at a pace slightly faster than the surrounding throngs. A lean body honed from running. I had been a middle-distance runner in high school sixty years ago. I still was capable of outrunning most of my compatriots. We were all in our 70s.

The young man. Fit. His chest shaven. Sweaty. Earphones. Head down. His hooded eyes straight ahead. His path vectored to where I stood and he clearly had no intention of altering his course. The young man stopped before me inches from my chest. I stood my ground and took off my sunglasses. His eyes clear. Not a druggie.

An impasse and I asked, "Which way are you going?"

"Straight ahead." He wanted me to step aside.

"I'm not moving." Not a chance. I was equally obdurate, yet the young man posed no threat.

Oedipus had slain his father over the right of way in the Greek myths. Most nations' motorists drive vehicles on the right. In warrior castes yielding the left displayed no threat. Not so the English. Their knights rode on left, their sword in the right hand with menace at the ready. It was too hot for a continued confrontation.

I pointed right. We both slid pass each other, then I recognized him. Not personally, but that I also don't give way on the sidewalk to pedestrians blinded by their cell phone. I normally stop in their path. They are startled to find me before them. I knew this jogger. He was me. A younger version. A thirtyish doppelganger. I called to him.

He turned around ready to accelerate the confrontation. I introduced myself.

"Do you do that often? Because I do."

His surprised expression revealed that he does it all the time. Same as me.

"What's your name?"

"Edward."

I motioned for Edward to step out of the bustling foot traffic to the nearest building and we discussed our reasons for confronting mindless strollers with the phones in their hands.

"It never comes to blows, maybe because they know they are in the wrong, or am I seeking to be a 'Karen' policing the public right of way."

The two of us were in accord. He explained that he was caring for his failing mother in Harlem. We were both half-Irish. I offered him a hot dog. He was a vegan. Edward ran an online business selling legit skate wear from China.

In the early 2000s I operated the # 1 website for F1 Racing gear on the internet. F1-shopping.net. I spoke about having crossed over in 2022 from a fatal illness and eternity. We both had lives apart from people. We were both of us 'us' and recognized the each other in each other and parted with a hug. A good guy and I look forward to the next time our mirror images should cross paths.

ps I skipped the hot dog. Maybe next time.

From Goggle AI

F1-shopping.net was a popular third-party online retailer from the mid-2000s that sold replica motorsport and AMG team jackets, but it quietly shut down years ago as official licensing clamped down and Formula 1 centralized its ecommerce__the thieves__

55 REMSEN

55 REMSEN

Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow.” ― J.M. Barrie, The Little Minister

In the fall of 1975, I worked as a substitute teacher at South Boston High School. I taught Math and English to the few black and white students so bored with skipping school that they preferred the gulag of the high school. Some days there were more Staties, i.e., state troopers than pupils. The city's school system fragile racial truce had been torn by busing riots. Poor white kids attended schools in poor black neighborhoods and vice versa. None were bussed to the rich suburbs or the Italian North End

The only times the classes were full came with the arrival of national TV crews to interview a white politicians preaching segregation. The white boys egged on by their parents fought the Boston City riot squad. Few of them attened high school. Their only fates were Billerica School, the Marines, or a job with the city. It was a bad scene, but I was getting $85/day to insure no one firebombed the empty classrooms. Most school days only 3-5 students came to class. They read books for forty-five minutes. I kept my head down and wrote poetry.

Some of it wasn’t bad.

In October I moved into a cheap Brookline basement apartment. Upstairs was a two-family holistic commune. The two parents believed in free love. This was their second marriage. Joe and Kate had eight kids between them. I had dated the mother's second daughter. Hilde had told me that she was 18. We had lasted less than three weeks. Her parents said that the young blonde was too young for me.

"How young?"

"16."

"You're right." I was twenty-three. Too old, but their daughter's next boyfriend was a thirty-year-old car thief. Dennis.

My best friend had come over to visit me and met Hilde’s older sister. Terri was almost twenty and was very sexy as to be expected of a Combat Zone stripper. Two weeks later AK deserted his college girlfriend and joined the commune to live in the attic with Terri. We were one big happy family.

AK also taught school during the day. At night he played keyboards for a popular funk band. The New Yorker was Jump Street's token white boy. He dealt with the white promoters and club owners. Many of them Jewish or Mafia. Neither cared for schwartzers or blacks, but Jump Street was one of Boston's best dance bands.

When Jump Street was hired for a weekend gig at a club in NYC's West Village, AK invited me to accompany him. Hilde's sister was staying behind for a family gathering and AK confided in my basement bedroom, "I have this old college girlfriend in New York. Rose is an artist. She looks like an East European refugee. Maybe I'll get lucky. I was once before.”

I painted my own portrait from his scanty description.

Dark-hair, slim, feminine, maybe East European.

That Friday night Jump Street rode down to New York in the van. AK drove his Firebird. He wanted to impressed Rose. I was the passenger and rolled joints. AK liked his weed.

"It's not a GTO."

"But it is fast."

We crashed at a black friend's place in Harlem. Duke Booty. AK invited several friends to the show. I knew no one in the city. Rose entered ten minutes before the show, I was on my second beer AK introduced us. She stared into my eyes, as if we were meant for each other. She was just like I imagine, wearing a cotton shift complimenting her Slavic gracefulness. Her hair was cut short like she might have been a dyke in college. Her accent was Appalachian. She laughed at AK's stories. They knew each other from college. Their friends were all gay. Several hit on me at the show. I let them buy drinks. AK had his arm around Rose's shoulders, when his girlfriend entered the bar. Terri had smelled a rat. Ex-strippers are hyper-sensitive that way.

“Pretend you're with Rose.” AK whispered in her ear, plotting to meet her later.

His girlfriend was too smart to fall for such a simple subterfuge, and after the gig she dragged him away to Harlem. I grabbed my bag out of the trunk. I had to find someplace to stay, but first I accompanied Rose to a late dinner at David’s Pot Belly Restaurant on Christopher Street. It was open 24 hours a day. She worked as a waitress to support her painting. We had omelettes and spoke about art. Mostly I listened to her plans to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

“Bette Davis’ character wanted to do the same in PETRIFIED FOREST. Lesley Howard has the outlaw shoot him, so she can collect his insurance. I thought it was very noble.”

“Anyone ever tell you that____”

“Tell me what?”

“That you look like an angel____” she struggled for several seconds with the next words. “______under candlelight.”

"No one has ever said anything like that to me." Certainly not Hilde.

"It's true_____."

She apologized for not finishing sentences.

"Don't worry, I have several speech defects. S_s-s-stuttering just for one."

She smiled at our failings and she invited me to spend the night at her Brooklyn Heights apartment. Certainly better than sleeping on a couch or even the floor at Duke Booty's place.

We rode the 7 train to her neighborhood. 55 Remsen Street.

"I have a roommate."

Her apartment was four flights up. One floor above a Chinese brothel. A dragon lady in sheer silk stood at the door. I guessed her to be about forty. In red light over the door, she passed for twenty.

“You want good time?”

“No." I had never paid for sex.

“Maybe sometime you not lucky. Come see me.” She hissed the invitation like a snake slithering through dry grass.

“I hate that____.”

“Woman.” Rose didn’t have to finish off that sentence.

Straight women hated those that aren’t straight. Rose opened the door to her apartment. She shared the two bedrooms with a lanky West Virginian. They knew each other from college. He held a pad of paper in front of him on which he scribbled numbers with a pencil. Rose introduced him as Bix.

He lifted sallow eyes from the scratching pencil point. He didn’t say a word. Rose led me into the bedroom. I tried to be quiet, but she called out my name with each thrust nearing orgasm. Women were echoing other men’s names from the sex den below.

Every time I exited from the bedroom, Bix was at the kitchen table.

An unlit cigarette in his hand.

An empty beer can to the left.

Several piles of paper were scattered about the table. Numbers filled them to the edges. I had been a math major in college. I tried to make sense of the progressions. The numbers were years abstracted out of sequence. None were zero or 1978.

"I met Rose in 1970. I reduced the years to prime numbers. When were you born?" 

"1952." 

"One year after Rose. I'm two years before." An expression of hurt paralyzed his face. Words were lost in his mouth. Finally on Sunday morning, he asked, “How does it feel to fuck another man’s woman?”

"Rose said nothing about a relationship."

"No, she wouldn't, but what can you expect from someone who can't finish sentences?"

"I don't know. I have a stutter."

"So I asked you before." Bix put down the pencil and picked up a knife. I hoped to sharpen the pencil. He pointed it at me. "How is it fucking someone else's girlfriend?"

“Wait a few minutes and I’ll tell you.” T

The door behind me shut and said to Rose, “Your roommate said____”

“I know what he said. Don’t___” Her hands drew me back into bed to complete her sentence. Her first kiss swallowed my soul. “I love your lips.”

We made love twice more that day. She stretched me nude and said how she was saving money to study art in Paris. On Sunday, Rose escorted me to Penn Station, where I caught the evening train to Boston. I had no idea where AK and his girlfriend were. I kissed Rose on the platform. “I work on the weekends.”

“I’ll wait until you get out.”

“It will be late.” Hesitation rimmed her reply.

“I can wait.”

The train conductor called ‘all aboard’.

“After all this is the city that never sleeps.”

Back in Boston, AK grilled me about Rose.

"Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"You know."

"The answer is no."

"You're lying?"

"No, nothing happened with us. Besides, she has a boyfriend."

"Bix?"

"Yes."

"Bix has been following her around for years. He's a hillbilly from Carolina. Kind of tragic. I don't know why she lets him do that. She says that they are finished. I'm not so sure."

"Me neither."

Thoughts of Rose killed Boston. Its streets were empty after dark. The bars seemed provincial. None of the women possessed Rose's beauty. The next weekend I trained south to Penn Station and took the subway to the West Village. I stood before David's Pot Belly. Rose waved from inside the restaurant.

The cook Michael served me a Gruyere and mushroom omelette.

Afterward I killed time at the Riviera Bar with a silver-haired jazz impresario. I recited a poem about hitchhiking. James said that I was almost a genius.

“How do you know?”

“I manage Cecil Taylor and Merce Cunningham. They are real geniuses. Not fakes.” He smoked a cigarette like Marlene Dietrich. The Riviera was a middle meeting ground for gays, bi, and straight. James was 100% playing for the other team and proud of his sexuality.

“I once made it with James Dean.”

“The movie star? I heard that he had been with Sal Mineo."

“He went with anyone. You care for a drink?”

"Yeah, why not?"

James and I drank too much at the Riviera Cafe. Him whiskey and coke. Me Gin-tonic. I arrived at David’s Pot Belly at closing. Ro was waiting. James wandered off toward the meat racks on West Street.

"I'm exhausted. Let's go back to my place."

We took a taxi.

There was no traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.

I paid the taxi fare. We climbed the stairs. The dragon lady smiled at my passage.

“You lucky man.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

"This one never go home same man. You must be special."

"I'm an angel____"

Rose slapped my hand. She didn’t want me socializing with her downstairs neighbor. We climbed the final flight and she opened the apartment door. The wall clock said 3:16. Bix sat at the table. Once more an unlit cigarette in his hand. The pages of numbers plastered to the walls. None of them were equations. Only numbers and now not years, but five-digit prime numbers.

Rose and I retreated to her bedroom. She wasn’t in the mood for sex.

“I’ve had a long day______at work.”

“What’s with Bix and the numbers?”

“He feels as if he can find the right number maybe he can reverse the hands of time and win back my heart.”

“And do you know the right number?” I had loved the poetry of math until LSD warped my perceptions of dimensions. Then words became my math.

“No, and neither will Bix. He’s crazy and that’s why I______stopped being with him,” she whispered from bed. We kissed under the sheets. She murmured with a cuddle, “I love your lips. Go to_____sleep.”

“All right.”

I fell asleep reading Henry Miller's TROPIC OF CAPRICORN. The profane author had spent his childhood in Williamsburg. Brooklyn Heights was more for successful artists such as W. H. Auden, Truman Capote, Hart Crane, Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer, Carson McCullers, Arthur Miller, Walt Whitman, and Mary Tyler Moore. I woke to the screams of a Chinese woman fighting a man.

Not everyone was as happy as me in Brooklyn Heights.

The next day we brunched on Montague Street. Rose had to be at work at 4. We made love quickly on her bed. I liked her tongue more than her lips. She liked oral better than penetration. I let her have her way with me.

“That was better than good.”

I can only try to do my best."

Saturday night repeated Friday night. Dinner at the Potbelly and drinking at the Riviera with James. Ro was off on Sunday. We went dancing at the Limelight on 7th Avenue. James came along with us. He bought drinks. We shared a taxi back to Brooklyn. His apartment was in Park Slope. He dropped us in the Heights.

“You ever need a place to stay call me.” James blew me a kiss, as the taxi disappeared into the shadows.

“You know what______he wants?”

“Same thing as everyone. A little love.”

On the stairs I didn’t even notice the dragon lady. In the apartment I didn't see Bix or hear the cries of pleasure from the brothel. Ro and I were the only two people in the world. I wrote several poems. Ro had me read them to her. They may have made more sense than Bix’s numbers.

On Monday morning we ate in the city. I went to the train by myself, telling her that I would be back in two weeks.

She smiled and said, “I’d like______that.”

Throughout that fall and winter I commuted on weekends between Boston and New York. I’d phone during the week. Ro rarely answered the phone. She was either at art school or work. She told me that Bix never picked up the phone. He was even deeper into his numbers. His scrawlings infected the hallways. I asked Rose about her plans to leave for Paris.

"They are just a dream."

One Friday night, the dragon lady greeted me. Her name was Lee. Bix stuck his head out of the top-floor apartment.

She asked Bix for numbers.

He handed her a sheet of paper.

“If I like number. I make bet. Win big money.” Lee followed the twisting cortex of numbers for a lottery winner. “Open restaurant. Sell food. No pussy.”

I plotted a strategy to quit teaching in June and collect unemployment through the summer. I informed Rose about this plan on several occasions.

"This apartment is small."

"Bix could leave."

"No, it's his place."

"We can get another apartment."

Obviously Rose was stalling, but I didn’t care, because I no longer wanted to live in Boston. My parents were sad to hear about my departure. They wanted me to have a life in Boston. Find a nice wife. Have children. I was sad I wasn't that man. I didn't tell them about Rose.

AK said I should thank him for introducing Ro.

“You owe me.”

"I'm not sure how to pay you back."

"I'll think of a way."

Hilde's car thief boyfriend arranged a job driving a gas-guzzler to New York. The owner paid me $300 to ditch the Oldsmobile to collect the insurance, then claim that the car had been stolen.

"It's easy," her boyfriend explained. "Once in New York, park the car by the Hudson, throw the plates in the river, and leave the keys in the ignition. Joyriders will steal the car within minutes. Easy."

I never liked it when anyone said something was easy.

That Friday morning I phoned Rose several times. No one answered the phone. After packing my bag in the Olds, everyone in Hilde's two-family commune stood at the door and waved good-bye. This was for good. It was a little after noon.

“You be careful.” Hilde was a little teary-eyed.

"Don't break any laws," cautioned her boyfriend. Dennis was glad to see me go.

"I won''t." Our rule was only break one law at a time.

I drove down south on I-95 at 55. Everyone else speeding over 65 or better, but I didn't need a state trooper stopping me.

The trip from Brookline to the West Side Highway took a little more than four hours. I unscrewed the license plates and tossed them into the black water flowing upstream past the desolate docks. I walked to her restaurant. I had $300 plus my savings in my pocket. A new life awaited me and I entered the restaurant with a smile.

"Where's Rose.

"She quit yesterday," said Michael the cook.

“She say why?”

“No.” He knew, but wasn't saying.

Brooklyn Heights was a couple of subway stops away from Christopher Street. On the way I reflected on the unanswered phone and her quitting her job. That one and one didn’t add up to two, but a myriad of possibilities. Too many to count. Numbers and more numbers. Just like Bix.

I arrived at 55 Remsen at 5. A prime number. I rang the downstairs doorbell a few times without success. I tried the buzzer for the whorehouse. The door clicked open. I climbed the stairway. The dragon lady waited under the red light.

“Today I lucky. Find good number.” She pointed to a scrawled number on the wall. “Tomorrow no work. You come back. Have good time. Okay.”

"I'm here to see Rose."

"Oh, yes, you." All Gwai-lo looked the same to Lee. "She not home."

"Not home. You ask Bix. He know."

The door to the apartment was open.

Bix sat at the table.

A burning cigarette in his hand.

Not a number anywhere other than the walls. All years boiled through addition to their prime. My birth year added up to 17. 

“You know that Hitler was anti-smoking. So was Rose. When Hitler killed himself in the bunker, the first thing the Nazis did was light up a cigarette,” Bix inhaled deeply and then said, “Rose’s gone. She left this afternoon.”

“To where?"

“Off to Paris to study at Beaux Arts.”

The famed art school.

“I thought it was just talk."

“I know. I was surprised too.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, but you’ll have to go to France to find out what it’s like to see another guy fucking your girlfriend. Not me. I already know.”

It was a shitty thing to say and I probably should have hit him, but I had said the same thing several months earlier, so I figured us even.

“You know she never kissed me.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“How was it?”

“Good.” I had no reason to lie.

“I thought so.” Bix took out a pencil and paper. The numbers were his friends. I walked out of the apartment with my bag. On the stairs the dragon lady said me, “Look you not lucky no more.”

“No, not lucky.” Fucked was a better word, except that word had only one meaning in Lee’s bordello.

I wandered onto Remsen Street. A plane flew east overhead and I imagined Rose looking down from an Air France 747. From that height people were not visible. Certainly not me. Somehow I had ceased to exist for her. I couldn’t say why.

At the corner phone I called James Spicer. The jazz impressario answered on the first ring. I told him that I needed a place to stay.

“I knew you’d call me one day.” He sounded drunk.

“Why?” I wanted drunk too.

“Because that girl had heartbreak written on her face. More hers than yours. Get in a taxi and I’ll tell you more.”

“Okay.” I glanced back over my shoulder at 55 Remsen. A taxi came down Montague. I waved it down. Like Rose I was gone and I wasn’t coming back either.

I ran into Bix two months later. He was living on the street. I got him a job as a carpenter. He stayed about two weeks. That winter the police found him dead below Brooklyn Heights. Starved to death. A burnt cigarette in his hand according to the police report. His ragged clothing had been stuffed with paper. All of them blank according to the police report.

He had buried that demon of numbers in the peace of his death, as I had tempted to excommunicate my pain by writing the same poem to Rose about a hundred times. Each ended as a crumpled paper. James Spicer called the pile of rejects 'the hill of THE END'. I didn't laugh at his joke. After that I stopped writing poetry. The words were simply letters, not magic.

Rose and I met each other years later. We had another affair.

Very brief. She was working at a fish restaurant. Her paintings were of fish. They were very good.

I mentioned Bix. She said that she had heard about his death.

"There was no helping him."

“None?"

“None____.”

I waited for her to say more.

Rose was a woman of few words and I couldn’t bring myself to ask why she had left me or why she never kissed Bix, but then I had always known the answer.

It was in the movie PETRIFIED FOREST.

Art was more powerful than poetry and numbers or love. Only life was stronger, although sadly not for everyone and Bix knew that better than most.

I’m only glad not to discover the same yet. Maybe one day, but not now.

ps I am still friends with Rose. She paints me on occasion. I like her work, especially the nudes.