Nevins and Schermerhorn

11:00 p.m., Brooklyn summer night.

On the streetcorner, a man–thinning hair, polo shirt, lanyard, long shorts–stands expectantly, hands clasped behind his back, next to a big telescope set up on a tripod.  The street is deserted except for the two of us.

Me: What are you looking at?

Man: Venus.  Do you want to see?  There’s no charge.

Me: Sure.

Man: Take your glasses off.

I bend down and look up at Venus, bright and scintillating, the only object visible in the New York night sky.

Man: In a magazine it says that they call it the gold planet.

Me: Really?

Man: I don’t know if that’s true.

Me:  Do you come out here with your telescope a lot?

Man: Oh yes.  Every clear night, unless I don’t feel well or I don’t feel like looking through a telescope.  I listen to 1010 WINS, and every time I hear them say “clear tonight” or “tonight clear” I know that tonight will be a telescope night.  I’m Robert.

Me:  I’m Madeleine.

Man: Thank you for looking at Venus, Madeleine.

Whole Foods, Bowery and Houston

In the design-your-own-salad line.  Two twentysomething girls–willowy, in belted tunics, ballet flats, big big sunglasses.

Girl 1: You have to look at Alyssa’s Facebook page.  Did you see that?  Ethnic Studies?  Mills College?  Gross.

Girl 2: Gross.

Girl 1: I saw her, I was like, Ethnic Studies?  Seriously?  She was like, Ellen, do you even know what Ethnic Studies is?  I was like, Go kill yourself.

Girl 2: She’s cute though.

Girl 1: She’s got blonde hair, she’s trying to do something.  Whatever.  I’d cheat on her.

Shattuck and Durant Avenues, Berkeley, California

Provencal breakfast place.  Urgent Thirtysomething Guy with longish dark hair, dark eyes, open-necked blue shirt, five o’clock shadow.  Light sheen of sweat on his face.  He leans in to the table as he talks to: Fortysomething Woman with bobbed curly hair, French sailor shirt, good posture, low voice.

Thirtysomething Guy: I’m trying to be alive to the idea that I can care about what I want.  Not that I don’t care about my partner, but that I can at least rise to the level of equal importance to her.  I was seeing this one woman who, she was trying to break up with me and her interest in me was rekindled when I got angry at her.  She was really turned on by it.  Maybe that was her psychosis, but who knew that women like a man who says, No, I disagree with that.  You can’t do that because this is what I want.  I’ve spent my whole life catering to what women want.

Fortysomething Woman: [inaudible]

Thirtysomething Guy: I know, I’m really looking forward to things being about me for a change.  It’s not even about dating and women and disclosure, it’s just about, I want to watch Smallville.  I don’t want to go to that gallery opening because I’m tired and I want to watch Smallville.  I can’t tell you how difficult that would have been for me six months ago.  It was immaterial to me, my own needs and desires and levels of fatigue.  Now I have all these tools to get over things like this.  I’m at an extreme edge, or I have been, and I don’t want to undo my personality, I’m a good fellow, but there’s got to be room for me to desire a little more out of the world.  It’s hard to live as a good guy all the time.  It’s exhausting.

Fortysomething Woman: [inaudible]

Thirtysomething Guy:  You know what I’ve discovered?  I’m not essential.  Well you are, you’re somebody’s wife and somebody’s mother.  But I’m not.  It’s nice to see you but if I didn’t see you for three months you’d be fine.  I’m tired of being the guest star in everybody’s lives.  It’s like you know what I realized, I really want to go to Europe this summer and travel with Mark.  There’s a lot of things I don’t know in the world, but I know that, so I should do it.

Fortysomething Woman: [inaudible]

Thirtysomething Guy: Where in Europe?  I’m gonna let him decide.  Wherever he wants to go.  He’s interested in Naples, I have no interest in Naples, but we can go to Naples.  He’s interested in Barcelona, I think it’ll be hot as hell there in July, but whatever he wants.  At first I thought to myself, Should I really be traveling the world with my single male friend?  Shouldn’t I be actively dating?  Shouldn’t I really be working on my card game?

Fortysomething Woman: Card game?

Thirtysomething Guy: I invented a card game.  There’s so much you don’t know.  Anyway it’s what I want to do, and if some delicious young creature wants to join me at some point–I hear they have girls in France.

Fortysomething Woman: [inaudible]

Thirtysomething Guy: No, that was the model from Seattle.  You know, I spent years with people telling me I’m the envy of all my friends: Look at you, you have such a beautiful life!  Sometimes when I talk to Tom Hanks it’s ridiculous.  He’s 56, I’m 39.  He’s got more money than God, universal adulation, back-to-back Oscars, a beautiful wife, and sometimes when he’s hearing about my hookups and my dating life he gets annoyed with me, he says Why don’t you appreciate that you’re single and unattached?  Sometimes I think he’s living vicariously through me.  So…I don’t have the answers, I’m just trying not to do myself in all the time which as I say is my hardest thing.

Fortysomething Woman: [inaudible]

Thirtysomething Guy: Part of it is there’s another human being in the mix.  But just this conversation we’re having is so unlike me, I had this whole gentlemen-don’t-kiss-and-tell thing.  It’s so difficult for me to share and be open about things I’m feeling.  But I’m not trying to manage to be with two women at once anymore.  I’m not trying to be in a committed relationship with one person.  I might meet someone tomorrow who makes me say, I want that with this person, but for now I just want to, you know, enjoy myself, see what’s out there.  I’m enjoying being here with you.  I’m not trying to be anyplace else or thinking Oh, oh, what else do I need right now?  Like I didn’t call the number that my cab driver’s wife gave me.  It’s been two weeks.  I’m not gonna get worked up about whether or not my cab driver’s wife feels bad about me not calling.  I’m only gonna call if I want to call, because it’s finally about me.

A Train between 14th Street and Jay Street-Borough Hall

Vague, abstracted middle-aged couple, late 40s/early 50s.  He: zipped-up leather bomber jacket, pressed dark jeans, loafers; she: beige leather car coat, wool skirt, tights, knee-high boots, lots and lots of loose, limp hair.  Both brooding, utterly unsmiling.

They sit without speaking for some time, eyes fixed in different directions.  Then:

She: I have a new favorite store.  Banana Republic.  You know them?

He: (pause) No.

She: You know them.  That’s where I got these earrings, remember?

She strokes her long, dangly earrings.  He doesn’t look at her.

He: (pause) No.

She: Yeah you do.  At my mom’s mall.  While you were getting that massage?

He: (pause) Oh that thing.

She: I love them now.  I’m getting a denim skirt from them.  It’s really tight.  It’s a size four.  I didn’t know twenty-seven inches could be a size four, I thought that would make it a size six.  So that’s coming to me by mail.

Long pause.

He: We’re not going to smoke pot when we get there.

She: No we’re not.

He: I’ve got it right here.

He pats his breast pocket.

She: We’re not going to smoke it.  Your parents, and my parents…

He unzips his leather jacket partway, reaches into the inside pocket and produces a small white plastic flip-top container.  He flips it open–it’s full of marijuana.

He: It looks pretty good.

He leans down and sniffs it deeply.

She: You should get a pill box.

He: I like this.  My dad gave it to me.

She: Your dad gives you everything.  ‘Cause you’re the first born.

He: This belt.

He reaches down and pulls up his shirt to reveal the belt, exposing an expanse of pale, hairy belly.  They both contemplate the belt.

He: And then sometimes it’s different and he doesn’t give me anything.

He drops his shirt, closes the pot box, slips it back into his inside jacket pocket.

They sit for a long time, brooding, facing different directions.  He jiggles his knee, flicks his middle three fingers over and over again with the tip of his thumb.  Then:

She: Any ideas for what we should do with the girls?

He: We’ll just have to be limited to what’s in the building.  It’s the Sony building, so they have the Sony World of Wonder.  We’ll just have to be limited to the World of Wonder.

A Train between Broadway-Nassau and Canal Street

Two middle-aged ladies–one Eileen Fisher, one Ann Taylor–headed home on the crowded train.  Work friends.

Eileen Fisher Lady: It’s allowed to sleep at the opera.

Ann Taylor Lady: Oh, really?

Eileen Fisher Lady: Of course.

Ann Taylor Lady: You sleep at the opera?

Eileen Fisher Lady: Not always.  Not so much anymore but I used to do it invariably.  During one performance of Fidelio when I was in high school I had the greatest nap of my adolescence.

Ann Taylor Lady: Really.  I feel bad about it, I guess.

Eileen Fisher Lady: Oh no, you can’t feel bad.  Sometimes it’s just too much.

Ann Taylor Lady: One time I fell asleep in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, but the problem was we were right in the first row, right on top of the actors.  I felt so bad.

Eileen Fisher Lady: My mother always sleeps at the theater.  Well, my mother can sleep anywhere.

Ann Taylor Lady: My mother, too!  She sleeps everywhere.  She slept through The Passion of the Christ.

Eileen Fisher Lady: The Mel Gibson movie?  Good for her.  Good for her.

Ann Taylor Lady: And snored.

Eileen Fisher Lady: Terrible movie.  Terrible movie.  I didn’t see it.

Ann Taylor Lady: The past ten years she’s developed this weird snore with a gurgle sound and a sort of chicken noise in it.  My nickname for her is gurgle chicken.  But she won’t admit it.  She’ll fall asleep on the phone with you and if you tell her she did she’ll yell at you.

Eileen Fisher Lady: The thing my mother does that’s annoying–one of the things she does that’s annoying–is she’ll come to visit me and she’ll want to stay up and watch things on David Letterman.  Now I used to watch David Letterman, I used to be a normal person, but now when I watch it I just feel like I’m on fire.  I hate it.

Ann Taylor Lady: It is awful.

Eileen Fisher Lady: It’s the most awful thing on television!  Ugh, the audience laughter, and those jokes?  And that Paul Schaffer?  I mean, I’ve always hated him but now if I met him I’d kill him with my bare hands.  I hate him that much.

A Train between Chambers Street and Hoyt-Schermerhorn

Tiny Sparkplug Lady–cherry-red lipstick, aqua pashmina,  giant gypsy earrings–crammed in next to Big Butch Lady–sunglasses, Mets cap, Polartec vest over button-down Oxford shirt–commiserating at top volume on a packed rush-hour train.

Butch Lady: He doesn’t understand right from wrong.

Tiny Lady: No he doesn’t.  No he does not.  Now my mother raised me with consequences.  She said, You made your bed?  Bitch you’re gonna lie in it.  But he doesn’t understand consequences.  He doesn’t understand that for every action–

Butch Lady: There’s  a reaction.

Tiny Lady: That’s right.  That’s Einstein.  E equals MC squared.  But he doesn’t understand that.  What does he do?  He practically dislocates my shoulder.  On my fiftieth birthday.  Do I need that?

Butch Lady: No you don’t.

Tiny Lady: I do not need that on my fiftieth birthday.  But I’m stupid about him.

Butch Lady: Yes you are.

Tiny Lady: I am, I’m stupid.  You know how we met?

Butch Lady: No.

Tiny Lady: In high school, we were in high school together.  In ninth grade they let me in the fashion show, I was advanced for my age and they let me walk in this fashion show and he was in eleventh grade at the time and they took a picture of the two of us on stage together.  And nineteen years later I saw him on Ocean Avenue and I had that feeling, you know that feeling when you see someone and you think you know them?

Butch Lady: Uh-hunh.

Tiny Lady: I had that feeling so I walked right up to him, I said, Do you know who I am? I said, You come to my house I will show you a picture of yourself with an afro you are not gonna believe.  I still had that picture in my house like new, no creases in it or anything.  I thought it was a sign.  I thought I was a cosmic chicken.  Now I got a sheet cake this big in my fridge, no bites in it.  I could not touch that cake, my fiftieth birthday cake.  You asked me how my birthday was?

Butch Lady: Yeah?

Tiny Lady: People asking me how was my birthday, what did I do on my fiftieth birthday?  I say I kept my sanity.  That’s what I did.  That’s all anybody needs to know.

Domestic Arrivals, Dulles International Airport, Washington DC

Bored five-year-old boy, his bored four-year-old sister, and bored dad, leaning all over each other out of boredom waiting for their mom to walk through the Domestic Arrivals doors, 10:30 p.m.

Boy: Dad, when you were a kid, were gingersnaps even invented?

Dad: Yes.

Boy: Were…movies?

Dad: Yes.

Boy: Were aliens?

Dad: There’s no such things as aliens.

Boy: Yes there is!  (re: his sister’s snack) That’s an alien yogurt!  (sighs) I wish my birthday was tomorrow.

Girl: (hushed, dramatic) How about this? What if it was every day?

Dad: If your birthday was every day you’d be dead by now.

Boy: I wish it was every day but we never died and we never got old and we always looked awesome and we never got tired!

Pause.

Girl: Daddy I’m tired.

Dad: Let’s play the silent game.

18th Street between 10th Avenue and the West Side Highway

Bus driver with reading glasses and Yankee cap, addressing the smattering of passengers on his M14D bus over his shoulder and through his rearview mirror.

Bus Driver: I always say, This is not Planet Earth, it’s Planet Dirt.  And everything on this planet is made of dirt.  And everything sooner or later returns to dirt.  And what goes up?  Sooner or later must get torn down.  This?  This?  (He gestures to the buildings out the bus windows.) All torn down.  So I say to you all, Welcome.  Welcome to Planet Dirt!

Q train over the Manhattan Bridge

Nebbishy dad–gray beard, jacket over hoodie over sweater, wearing both his and his kid’s backpacks–and painfully dorky eight-year-old boy–adenoidal, sticky, tiny, pre-orthodontia–riding home on the Q.  Kid sitting, dad standing.

Dad: So how was the rest of your day?

Kid: Ummmm.  B+.  We did family tree stuff.  We were allowed to include whatever kinds of beasts or creatures we wanted, even imaginary.  Rachel did the whole Simpsons.  She had some really obscure Simpsons characters like Herb Powell, remember him he’s Homer’s long-lost brother, but she forgot Maggie.  The smartest member of the Simpsons family.  Maggie’s even smarter than Lisa because Lisa has an attitude.

Dad: Attitude doesn’t have anything to do with intelligence.  Although a bad attitude is sometimes a byproduct of having too much confidence in your intelligence.

Dad takes out his iPhone.

Kid:  Right.  I think all the characters on the Simpsons are pretty solid.  (gesturing to a bag of barbeuce potato chips inside a Gristede’s bag his dad’s holding) Can I have some more?

Dad: (absent, on his iPhone) Yes.

Kid: Why don’t I hold them, that way I can have them whenever I want them.

Dad: (distracted) Okay.

Dad hands Kid the Gristede’s bag.

Kid: You do what you need to do, and I’ll do what I need to do.

Kid eats chips by the handful for a while, breathing noisily through his nose, pausing sometimes to make quiet robot fighting noises and explosion noises to himself.

Kid: (thoughtful) I think that organized crime family should watch a few episodes of the Simpsons.  I think that would be a good idea for them.

He chortles sardonically to himself: “Good one.”

Kid: I almost cried because these are so spicy.

Dad: Hey how many of those have you eaten?  Now you’re going to be extremely thirsty, what are you going to do about that?  Do you have water in your bag because I don’t.

Kid: No.

Dad: What are you going to do when you’re so thirsty you can’t stand it anymore?

Kid: Suffer!

Bowery and Bleecker

Sweet-voiced, sweet-faced 21-year-old boy and sharp-voiced, sharp-faced 21-year-old girl doctoring their coffees.

Boy: You know why human beings survive?  And prosper?  Running.  It’s the truth.  There are other animals that can run faster but none that can run for a longer period of time.

Girl: This doesn’t look good, what I’ve done.

Boy: Why?  What happened?

Girl: Too much milk.

Boy: That’s how we conquered them.  Animals would run away and we would chase them, run away and we would chase them, and eventually they’d get tired and we’d spear them.

Girl: That’s not true.

Boy: I know, I was surprised that we could outlast like a cheetah.

Girl: We don’t eat cheetah.

Boy: We eat wild boar.

Girl: You don’t chase down a wild boar.

Boy: You could.  Or a cow.

Girl: Cows don’t run at all.

Boy: Chickens–I mean turkeys, turkeys have a very high capacity to run away.  Every time I eat one of them I think, my goodness, long ago we would really have had to work to get our hands on this guy.

She shakes her sugar packet up by her ear, tears into it.

Boy: The music of the sugar packet.  Not to be confused with the racket of the tea bag.  (sighs) So yeah, I’m turned on by theater.  Theater, what’s so hard about that?

They go.