Tag: Alcohol

A photo of Brooklyn Bridge in black and white

The Art of Jumping

Joseph Lyttleton40 Comments

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[Names are whatever I want them to be]

I spent much of my youth with a group of boys, which explains why I was such a surly kid. Following church one Sunday afternoon, where the message had been “Good Ideas vs. God Ideas” (your wisdom or God’s wisdom), a group of us gathered at a buddy’s place to hang out and be teenage boys.

From a tall tree in that friend’s backyard, a zip line had been attached that shot across the yard to a patch of grass a dozen or so yards off. This bright summer day, the boys were taking turns riding, but there was a hold out: Dylan. No matter how much the other boys badgered him, Dylan wouldn’t ride the line.

“I don’t think it’s safe,” he protested.

“Well, maybe that’s a good idea,” a kid named Chet intoned, “but is it a God idea?”

It says something about Christian youth that, even as a joke, that line still worked: Dylan climbed the tree. I surmise the jumping off spot for the zip line must have been roughly three stories, though details are fuzzy: let’s say at least 25 feet. By the point Dylan was stepping up to the ledge, at least four or five other boys had already ridden the line.

Effectively goaded, Dylan stepped out of the tree, putting all of his faith in the strength of the line, and immediately dropped. The line snapped. He hit the ground like a rock.

There is an art to jumping out of a tree, and Dylan apparently had forgotten it: Instead of bending his legs and rolling with the momentum, he locked his knees and came straight down on his feet. Following that fall, Dylan spent the next few weeks in a wheelchair, though nothing was broken, only bruised.

When Dylan hit the ground, he went fetal, writhing in pain. The rest of us were frozen in a mixture of shock and awe until Chet broke the silence with the soundest theological statement I’ve ever heard:

“Maybe it was a God idea.”

Meet Cute

I met Sophie the way all New Yorkers meet: outside a Williamsburg coffee shop after attending an independent movie premiere. This short film, about the Manson Family, had been created by a friend and his theater troupe. At 30 minutes, it was an artfully shot re-enactment of rape and murder, a feel good romp if ever there was one.

Sophie, not part of the troupe but involved in theater, had a role in the film. The post-screening party was being hosted at a nearby Starbucks that also served alcohol. When the only two people I knew were otherwise engaged, I wound up outside conversing with a group that included Sophie and another woman, Amy.

With the party unwinding, Sophie, Amy, and I, joined by some guy named Stan, continued our night at Rosemary’s around the corner. As tends to happen with the male of the species, once in a booth, Stan brashly hijacked the conversation and soon the ladies and I were communicating telepathically to make our escape.

After telling Stan we were calling it a night, the three of us regrouped outside and Sophie suggested that we prolong the night back at her Greenpoint apartment. Though late, her place was just past McCarren Park, so we hoofed it. Along the way, spurred by the admission of my Kansas youth, we turned to the topic of climbing trees, as you do.

“Everyone climbs trees in Kansas,” I probably said, because this is factually accurate.

“I never have,” Sophie admitted. Since alcohol was involved, her confession became a challenge.

The London Planetrees lining the park weren’t as sturdy as the cottonwoods I had grown up with, but they’d do. Showing surprising dexterity, I scurried up one and straddled the lowest hanging limb. Proud that I could still get up a tree in my 30s, I jumped out with ease, a height of maybe eight feet. It was Sophie’s turn, now.

We selected a suitable option and with a little assistance from Amy and I, Sophie scampered up the tree’s white tree trunk. As she settled into the nook between its three branching limbs, her expression was a mixture of relief and mild terror.

Reveling in the glorious absurdity of our endeavor, I neglected to mention the most important part of climbing a tree: the dismount. Leaving Sophie in her perch, Amy and I chatted a few feet away when, in our peripheral, we saw Sophie come sailing down.

The art of jumping out of a tree is best learned when you’re a child and your body is made out of rubber. You might start by cautiously sliding your ass along the trunk until you’re on the ground with a scratched up back, or maybe you just take a haphazard leap and limp off the impact. Eventually, having done it enough times, you develop a second nature for it.

Having never climbed a tree in her youth, Sophie wasn’t practiced in this particular skill. Landing firmly on her ankles, she crumbled to the ground. Amy and I raced to her side and helped her up. Attempting to put weight on her right foot, Sophie yelped in pain.

“I think I broke my foot,” she fretted.

Imbued with the confidence of manhood and alcohol, I replied, “I doubt it. You probably just bruised your ankle.”

Though she was in evident pain – just how much, I didn’t realize at the time – we continued walking to Sophie’s apartment, she directing from the rear. Once there, we poured more drinks while Sophie elevated her leg. Removing her boot proved a struggle as her foot had ballooned inside. Now a discolored rainbow, I nonetheless surmised with my expert medical opinion that it was a minor injury. With enough ice, she’d be fine in a day or two.

A little later, I passed out on the couch while the two women talked. In the morning, Amy urged Sophie to see a doctor, but she was reluctant and I was still confident that it was unnecessary. However, since Sophie was struggling to walk and Amy had to go to work, I volunteered to hang out for the day. It was Friday morning, I didn’t work again until Saturday afternoon.

We whiled away the hours conversing and watching television on her couch. We ordered Chinese food for lunch. When the dog needed to go out, I walked him. There was such an easy, natural tempo to our conversation that we never hit a lull, whether we talked family, politics, or art. We delved into our pasts, those dark passages that few others ever saw. The sun rose and fell across her apartment’s bay windows.

It was almost dusk and the progression of the day had brought us together, our legs touching as I argued with myself whether or not I should kiss her. It seemed a foregone conclusion, but I’d been wrong before.

Glancing at me sideways, Sophie inquired, “So… is it wrong to fuck a cripple?”

I laughed.

Friday became Saturday. I made a few half-hearted efforts to exit throughout the morning, eventually leaving some time after noon to return to my Bed-Stuy apartment and get ready for work.

In my absence, a worried Amy returned and brought Sophie to urgent care. That night at work, I received a text:

My foot is broken.

I’d been in Brooklyn for eight months.

Jay Street Train

Flashback

New York City couldn’t possibly live up to my fantasies, to the extended nine year tease I had put myself through; and yet, in many ways, it somehow did. Every free afternoon, I walked the borough, barely scratching Brooklyn’s 97 square miles. There was art and music and the quintessential melting pot of diverse residents. My first full weekend in the city, I saw Spoon play a rollicking concert in Central Park while the sun set over the treetops. Purely cinematic.

Shortly after my arrival, I attended a rooftop party at my apartment and met a young French photographer studying in the city for the semester. We had a brief, caustic affair and then she returned to Paris. Meanwhile, I served tables in Park Slope, one of the many neighborhoods in Brooklyn where the locals will proudly tell you how it had once been a much different, rougher neighborhood. Now, their dog walkers make six figures a year.

Naturally, New York tried to kick my ass. That’s what it does. It’s impatient and unkind, expensive and exclusive, unimpressed by anything you’ve ever done. The city doesn’t need you or want you, thank you very much; although, it’ll gladly have another meal.

And this is the easy version of New York City. Most everyone will report with nostalgia how much harder – and better – this city used to be. Nothing will ever be greater than the past.

Montage

Sophie’s broken foot complicated matters. She could no longer continue her theater internship, her main reason for being in the city. A job was out of the question and she was essentially immobile, Brooklyn being hostile to the hobbled. When not working, I was invariably with her.

After a few weeks, we attempted a visit to my apartment, a fourth floor walk-up. Our collective restiveness induced Sophie to push herself – and her foot – sooner than she should have. Every time Sophie thought her cast could come off, a new complication extended her recovery. As the weeks turned into months, my guilt grew exponentially, her every grimace a reminder that I had played an active role in her agony.

Sophie was immensely frustrated by her lack of mobility and her inability to take advantage of New York City’s lucrative theater network. She sought other avenues for pursuing her artistic ambitions. Having no great affinity for the city, no reason to chain herself to New York, she figured “why not?” and applied to numerous graduate schools, most of them in England where she had spent much of her childhood.

Though we were simpatico on most every level, our nights occasionally flipped from romantic to adversarial seemingly on a dime. We shared ideals, but some conversational tangents could splinter us, as tends to happen with any two headstrong people. Scotch might have been a factor.

Everything between us felt emotionally charged, whether discussing our pasts or our ill-defined futures, during physical intimacy or a heated argument. She challenged me, as a writer, as a thinker, as a man. She could infuriate me – and I her – but conversations with her never ended without me questioning my assumptions, and that’s a rare talent.

She was just as talented as a writer. Every grad school she applied to, most of them prestigious, accepted her. She had her pick of the litter. She was to be in England by September.

At the end of July, not even three months after we met, and less than a week after having her cast removed, Sophie flew to Washington to spend time with family before her next journey.

I don’t suppose either one of us thought we were built for the long-term. We’d both been nomads. So much of the fire between us was in the immediacy, the sense that neither one of us had ever known permanence – maybe we never would – but at least for a few hours together the outside world’s beckoning wasn’t so loud.

I would have taken more time with her, but she couldn’t stay. New York City wasn’t where she belonged; it wasn’t where she was going to make her mark. And she’ll make her mark. She’s a resolute woman, audacious in her convictions. She was always going to jump; I can’t wait to see her land.

Like few others, Sophie’s voice continues to ring in my ears. It’s the voice of my conflicting internal monologue, challenging my opinions and making me step back from my preconceptions. It’s telling me to listen more, speak less. I’m still debating with Sophie in my head, and she’s still winning.

The Final Reel

Emily in SilhouetteFor the final week of 10 Cities/10 Years, as my first year in New York City came to an end, I hit the road with Emily. She was moving back west, from Boston to Los Angeles, after graduating from nursing school. Our route this time took us through Kansas where we spent a night with my family before continuing to see her brother in Flagstaff and on to Long Beach.

I stayed with Emily’s family for a couple days and revisited Costa Mesa where I met up with Selene who’d recently moved back home. After all the cities, all my experiences over the past decade, it felt like the pieces were being reset with the project’s conclusion. Maybe there would be nothing to show for the effort. No matter, that’s life.

On the last Saturday of August, I returned to New York to be alone.

There’s one detail I left out of Dylan’s story. Another kid didn’t ride the zip line that day: Me. I was just as scared as he was; more so, because not even God could get me up that tree. No one ever called me a particularly adventurous child, which is why I’m sure it surprised more than a few people when I embarked on this journey.

Ten years of constant uncertain, of impending financial ruin and personal angst – of being out on a limb – and I am no less afraid than when I set out. Anxiety still roils my gut when I enter an unfamiliar social situation, whether it be a new job or a packed bar. The self-doubts, the fear, it never abates.

I live with that fear every day, and I always will. It’s my main reason for climbing trees: so I’ll have to jump.

Read from the beginning

Allston That Ends Well.

Joseph Lyttleton

Chapter IX

We watched the SUV sail across all three lanes of Storrow Drive. It was Saturday night and Amanda was giving three of us rides home after work. The bars had just let out and Storrow, which runs alongside the Charles River and connects the West End to Allston, was pocked with traffic. Not that it deterred the drunk in front of us.

That year, Boston was launching a pilot program to keep a selection of subway and bus lines running until 3 a.m. on the weekend, up from 1 a.m. Working in the service industry, I welcomed the change – unfortunately, only temporary – as finding a Taxi on a Boston Saturday night is cutthroat business. Plus, Boston roads are less than ideal that time of night.

After the SUV narrowly clipped our rear bumper, Amanda judiciously let him pass. In awe, we watched the drunk race ahead, swerving across all three lanes to sideswipe the cement barrier on the left side before ricocheting back across the lanes and nearly careening off the road into the river before correcting.

From the shoulder, a sitting police cruiser watched the scene but didn’t move. We called 911. To our dismay, the drunk slid off the same exit as us. The SUV must have pulled off down a side street as we merged into traffic because we lost sight of him. I have no idea where the driver ended up, whether back home, in a police car, or with his head bisected by a tree trunk.

Watching the SUV abuse the road evoked a visceral response in me, a seemingly gratuitous anger. I’ve done my share of idiotic things while drunk but my reaction wasn’t because the driver almost collided with us; or, it wasn’t just that.

There is a beauty to a road at night, the serenity of a world viewed only in the high beams. Red and white lights passing in streaks, chaotic yet rhythmic. It’s game theory and ballet; it’s sacred. And one drunk was fucking that up.

Forget it Jake, it’s Allston

My arrival in Boston coincided with the beginning of the school year, and since the city is one giant college campus with a town threaded in the cracks, hundreds of thousands of students had already gobbled up every rental well before I began my search.

Only a few weeks out from my ninth move, I received an email from a guy named Lucas. He and another roommate, Emily, had locked down a four bedroom apartment in Allston, but two of the other renters had dropped out unexpectedly and now they were scrambling to fill the rooms. Their misfortune was my… not misfortune.

On Moving Day – the bitterest Boston holiday – I drove into the city under a torrential downpour to meet my three roommates. Together, the four of us would survive our apartment.

Welcome to AllstonAllston is the cirrhosis-stricken liver of Boston’s college nexus. Calling it rat-infested inaccurately characterizes the natural ecosystem: Allston is human-infested; the rats just tolerated us. Our first floor apartment included easy access to the basement laundry and a quarter-inch layer of black, indeterminable grease coating every surface. It was a week before I realized our floor was actually made of hardwood.

Like any classic sitcom setup, the four roomies had one dynamic as a group, but split into pairs we developed distinct relationships. With Lucas, I chatted pop culture and liquor, money and politics; life. He worked in fraud prevention for a major bank and, of the four of us, was the only one with a traditional 9-5 job. He was also a practiced cook and spent many weekends with his out-of-state girlfriend.

Adam, the youngest of the four, had been studying film at UCLA before transferring cross country. He required little prompting to expound endlessly on his passions. He and I frequently debated art at length, somehow always circling back to David Lynch (he a devoted fan, me, not so much). An off-hand comment about a  superhero movie trailer could unexpectedly turn into a three hour exegesis on the shifting classification of film genres.

Finally, there was Emily. She’d relocated to Massachusetts from Arizona for nursing school. Demonstratively bright and from a family of means, she could’ve studied anywhere in the country but was drawn out East by a desire to expand the borders of her world. With Lucas’s regular schedule and Adam being a morning person, Emily and I handled the late night conversation shifts and became fast friends from our first meeting.

On any given night, we could kill a bottle or two of wine while weaving through a range of topics, whether travel, music, mental health, or any tangents that might shake loose after midnight. Or, we might just have a 2 a.m. dance party, to Lucas’s chagrin.

Lucas, Emily, and I barhopped together – Adam, to our occasional amusement, wasn’t a drinker. We partied vicariously with the Founding Fathers on the Freedom Trail and danced to 90s songs in sweaty clubs. Sometimes we stayed closer to home to drink among the crystalline youth of Allston. My roommates could still pass for undergrads, in looks if not in lack of cynicism, but next to collegiate eternal youth, I couldn’t help but feel (and look) worn. The threshold for old age in Allston isn’t high.

In our apartment, indignities stacked up quickly. Even after we – well, Emily – gave the place a thorough cleaning, rodents were a fact of life. The rats and the mice maintained separate territories. Outside, long-tailed, beady-eyed rat bastards rustled incessantly in the garbage before retiring under the tires of passing cars, painting the streets like some sort of gut-splattered Jackson Pollock.

Though slightly less aesthetically repulsive, the mice were nevertheless a more persistent problem, scampering inside our walls and hungrily devouring anything within two feet of the ground. They got so comfortable in our home that they even invented a fun game: They’d hide in the trashcan and race up Emily’s arm when she went to throw something away. Boy how she howled with laughter.

As our landlord unhelpfully – but rightly – pointed out, mice were just a fact of life in Allston. The same could apparently be said of an apartment whose power grid had inexplicably been rerouted through the oven. Half of the apartment, including Lucas and Adam’s bedrooms, lost power unless one of the stovetop burners was left on. Not ideal.

When we eventually found a non-incompetent electrician (third times the charm), he discovered that the fuse box in the basement had previously caught fire and partially melted. Now, I’m no building inspector, but I suspect one or two codes had probably been broken to get to that point.

Then there was the paper thin ceiling. Usual college kid noises infiltrated our space, but we – again, mostly Emily – also had our upstairs neighbor’s awkward sexcapades projected down at us as if by loudspeaker. And yet, the true cherry on top of our shit sundae apartment didn’t arrive until New Year’s Eve.

With Adam and Emily out West, Lucas having an NYE dinner with his girlfriend, and me working the holiday shift, our apartment was visited by freelance movers. Climbing in through a broken window in Emily’s room, the intruders ransacked the place. In terms of financial loss, Lucas probably suffered the worst – I lucked out; though they swiped a couple hundred dollars I had sitting out, they unplugged but ultimately left behind my laptop, my only possession of any value.

The police were predictably unable to do anything about the break-in. While we could accept our material losses, it was the psychological intrusion that invoked the deepest absence. I’ve been robbed before, but never from inside my own apartment, even when living in some of the purportedly worst neighborhoods in the county. For Emily, especially, the use of her window as the point of entry was an unrectifiable invasion.

With the passage of years, we’ve come to appreciate the dark humor in our garbage dump of an apartment. Even at the time, though, the various frustrations never perturbed me quite as much as they did the others. In part, this was because I’d lived in my share of hovels. Even more so, though, I felt comfortable with concrete issues, problems with solutions. We could set mouse traps, put bars on the windows, call repair men. I didn’t feel, as I had in New Orleans, like returning home was a prison sentence. I actually liked the apartment; I enjoyed my roommates.

Lest I give the impression that I only experienced one Boston neighborhood, I did enjoy life outside Allston. I served tables at a pub in the Financial District, working alongside a diverse and rowdy crew, including my co-closer and concert partner, Amanda. I celebrated St. Patty’s Day in Southie with Emily and attended the Red Sox’s World Series parade with Lucas.

When the city started feeling too small, I left. The Northeast has an advantage over any other region of the US because a day trip in almost any direction will bring you somewhere entertaining and beautiful.

Meanwhile, Emily and I worked to bend Boston to our inebriated will. Boston doesn’t permit happy hour and its nightlife is mostly constrained to weekends. Allston dives were fine, but half the fun was in wandering. On one late night, in fruitless search of a rooftop to lounge on, we surreptitiously climbed the fire escapes of strangers, dodging the headlights of passing cars.

One Sunday evening, we trekked half of the city until we finally located an open liquor store. Stashing bottles of champagne, we entered Boston Common and reclined on the grass while the dusk burnt away to night.

For all its posturing as a city, Boston is a small town, for better and worse. It didn’t take long to feel like we’d experienced most of what it had to offer. When the city felt constraining, we sought out fresh avenues. Emily was a fellow traveler, accustomed to taking detours in life. Restlessness was our bond.

The Drive

Twenty-four hours after the NYE break-in, I arrived in Phoenix, Arizona. The trollies and subways of Boston could be inefficient, especially in winter, so Emily was transporting her car across the country. To give her parents peace of mind, I volunteered to co-pilot. They expressed their appreciation, but fact is, I’d drop a baby to go on a road trip.

We had a loosely planned route: Avoiding winter in the Midwest, we cruised across thirteen hours of hypnotic, Texas nothing, then dropped into New Orleans overnight for Emily’s first visit. From the bayou, we crept through eerily quiet Mississippi and Alabama towns in pursuit of plantations and any restaurants open on a Sunday afternoon. Our progress was hampered by a snowstorm as we approached Nashville. Finally, we reached the coast, dining with Marianne and her beau in D.C. before swinging past New York on our way back home.

Somewhere in the lull between Texas and Tennessee, while I sat behind the wheel with Emily asleep in the passenger seat, I had a moment of such transcendent calm that it bordered on religious. With the road stretching to each horizon, no cars in sight, I was overwhelmed by a sense of timelessness, as if there was no future, no past, just that road, that instant. Maybe I wasn’t meant to have a home; I’d be okay.

I could’ve driven forever.

Separate Paths

In the waning months of my year in Boston, while I focused on my final move, my roommates were also resolving plans. Adam jumped the Charles River to live in Cambridge; Lucas moved in with his soon-to-be fiancé in Connecticut; and Emily found a new apartment with Amanda so she could finish her final year of nursing school.

As for me, it was almost literally the last hour before I had a place in New York. It didn’t matter. Even if I ended up homeless, come September 1st, I was driving my few belongings the four hours to Brooklyn to begin Year 10.

I could see the finish line, if nothing else.

Keep Reading: Start from the beginning

Letting It Ride: Remembering (and forgetting) what mattered in Music City

Joseph Lyttleton2 Comments

Chapter VI

[I’ve changed names when I felt like it]

I came to on an elevator, floating somewhere between the first and fifth floor. At my feet, half-conscious but laughing all the same, was my friend, Ariel. Abruptly, the elevator stopped – had it been going up or down? – and the doors opened to reveal a parking garage.

“Where did you park?” I asked  her, not entirely certain where I was or how I got there, but apparently fully cognizant of our mission to find Ariel’s car. From her position splayed out on the ground, she pressed the button on her key fob. No horn. The vehicle, it seemed, was not on this floor, whichever floor that was. The doors closed and we progressed to the next.

This continued for a few more minutes – or was it half an hour – with Ariel losing the fight to regain her footing and I determinedly stepping out of the elevator on each floor and trying to spy the missing car. Eventually, either through exhaustion or the miraculous return of some sense, I realized that even if we found her car, Ariel was in no state to drive. I sent the elevator back to the ground floor.

Exiting the parking garage, I half carried, half dragged my friend to the street and waved down a taxi, sliding her into the backseat.

“Tell him your address,” I commanded Ariel, which she dutifully did. I gave the driver a twenty-dollar bill and they were off.

With each passing minute in the late March night air, my senses were gradually returning to me. I walked to clear my head a bit before waving down a taxi for myself. Slouched in the backseat, I gave the driver my address and held loosely onto my fleeting consciousness until I arrived home. My neighborhood: Fisk-Meharry, Nashville.

5 No's

Safe and Secure

I arrived in Nashville defeated. I had crawled through San Francisco and Chicago amidst the worst of the Great Recession and come out the other side, officially in the latter half of 10 Cities/10 Years; I was drained, bitter, and ready to give up. Just a few weeks prior to my move, I briefly contemplated scrapping my plans and moving into an apartment with my brother in Austin. It would’ve been a terrible idea (for both of us).

I finally settled on a dirt cheap two-bedroom apartment in the predominantly black neighborhood between two historically African-American colleges, Fisk University and Meharry Medical College. And by “predominantly,” I mean, the only white people I saw were driving through with their windows securely rolled up.

Like my time in West Philly, I heard frequently that Fisk-Meharry was a dangerous neighborhood, including from my white landlord and my black neighbors. Taxi drivers regularly refused to drive me back home after work or to pick me up when I called for a ride. The recession had hit Nashville, too, leaving city projects in my area, intended to usher in new growth and development, incomplete or abandoned altogether. I walked the neighborhood every day without being accosted, but its reputation was fixed.

I lived on an island set upon a sea of liquor.

Every month, I went through a handle each of bargain bin whiskey and vodka – the kind that comes in plastic jugs and doesn’t even pretend to have a pedigree – on top of drinking with coworkers after nearly every shift and any other occasion I could find for “exploring” Nashville. When I couldn’t work up the energy to go out in public, I hid inside my apartment, a sparsely furnished grotto for my isolation.

My one lifeline to humanity those first months in Nashville was Ashley, the woman I’d left in Charlotte. After having spent four years far apart, only one state divided us now and we still had a crackling electricity in our flirtations. She’d endured the separation and my relationship with Selene – the Facebook posts, the pictures, the public display of romance that we’ve masochistically made a part of our societal norm – under the pretense that we were “just friends.” But we were never just friends. Or, more accurately, we were never good at being friends.

As long as the possibility of a future romance remained on the table – and with Ashley, it always did – she tolerated the distance, both physical and emotional.

In my post-Chicago malaise, I gifted Ashley with the fractured pieces of my psyche. She helped me put them back together. We used the word “love” – we never had during the nascent, Charlotte period of our relationship. I started making concessions: I could end my project a year early, count my hometown as Year 1, and move back to North Carolina once I finished so we could live near her family. That’s all that mattered to her.

Now a nurse, Ashley looked into travel nursing so she could spend a few months in whichever city I lived. I supported the idea, but it meant giving her a vote in my next cities. She wanted to live in Arizona, but I was adamant against it: the state had recently passed Arizona SB 1070, the draconian anti-immigration law, and I suppose I felt I was making some political point with my stance. Mostly, I just didn’t want to be back in the Southwest again.

Our long distance relationship lasted nearly four months, a mix of highs and lows. The week of Thanksgiving, we spent a few days in a secluded cabin up in the Great Smoky Mountains, the border between her state and mine. The picturesque, revitalizing backdrop offered all the promises and pleasures of what a simple life together could be.

So, of course, I broke up with her. The distance – the continued separation – required too much energy, too much focus, and the thought of stitching together a relationship over the next four to five uncertain years apart was unthinkable. Once again, I had a choice between Ashley and my project, and I chose 10 Cities/10 Years.

Nash Vegas

After a fruitless and demoralizing stint at a phone bank calling up dissatisfied and very angry customers, I found a gig waiting tables in downtown Nashville. The restaurant, Demos’, is a regional institution with its steaks and spaghetti varieties, positioned in that niche between fine dining and generic family fare. All of Nashville came through those doors, whether to eat or to serve.

The staff at Demos’ was your usual mix of students, burn outs, lifers, and strivers. Like Los Angeles for actors, screenwriters, and directors, Nashville’s official status as Music City means seemingly everyone in the service industry has (or had) a dream of making it in the music business.

It was the one city where, when I told people I was a writer, they immediately assumed songwriter.

As I gradually climbed out of my depression, the Demos’ crew was always around to provide at least one drinking buddy. In an industry with massive turnover, some servers came and went in a matter of months or even weeks. From shift to shift, I could repeat the exact same day – serve lunch, go for midday drinks and pool at Buffalo’s Billiards, serve dinner (partially in the bag), and then get more drinks – with a whole new group of coworkers. Server life is a bit like Groundhog Day.

Not everyone vanished. There were a core group of Demos’ servers who regularly went out together, including the high spirited Ariel, a favorite drinking companion.

That black out night in the elevator had begun commonly enough at the Beer Seller, where our group was playing pool and watching March Madness. A couple hours into the night, we were joined by one of our usual creepy hangers-on.

There is a type of older man who hovers in bars where groups of young friends regularly gather. These men ingratiate themselves into the group with the hopes of getting a shot at one of the attractive, young girls, which, as servers, we had no shortage of. Everyone knows their intentions and no one trusts them, but they buy drinks and other substances, so the group usually tolerates their presence.

That night, our creep – John? Sure, let’s go with John – had supplied the usual rounds when he offered to up the ante. Retrieving his wallet, he slipped out tabs of what, at the time, I assumed were Xanax. I suppose they could have been almost anything, but I wasn’t really in a questioning mood. Four of us – John, Ariel, myself, and Will, another coworker – put the tabs on our tongues and washed them back with beer.

And then I woke up on the elevator.

A few days later, when Ariel and I had a shift together, she beelined straight to me.

“How did I get home?” She asked, a mix of confusion and concern in her tone.

I told her about the cab. Thanking me profusely, she explained that she could remember most of the night, but not what happened after we had been kicked out of the last bar. As she recounted, after splitting from John and Will, we had bounced from bar to bar, dancing at one, hogging the jukebox at another, generally being young and obnoxious as you do when your mind is erased.

She could recall up until the point that we left the bar, well after closing time, and then, like something out of science fiction, we swapped consciousness: the moment she blacked out, I came back online and filled in the rest of the memory. She remembered the partying, I remembered our egress, and together, we completed the night.

Lubrication

As the year in Nashville progressed and each day pushed Chicago further into memory, I regained my sense of purpose. For the better part of a year, when I thought of 10 Cities/10 Years, all I saw was everything I had lost, everything I had given up for this quixotic venture.

The friends I made at Demos’, the strangers I met in bars and the stories they told, even the failed attempts at romantic flings, these were all a reminder of why I had set out on this path half a decade prior, and why I had to keep going. In the process of falling in and out of love, I had lost sight of what mattered: the people on the road.

That year, my sixth, I made a vow to myself: I would complete this project no matter what came my way, even it if killed me. So what if I was throwing good money after bad, I had come this far, and I was going to let it ride.

Ironically, after resisting Ashley’s direction of my future, for Year 7, I created an online poll to let friends and strangers determine my next city: Austin, Denver, Portland, or Seattle. When the voting closed, Seattle claimed the victory by one vote.

Let It Ride

One of my last nights in Nashville, I ascended the towering grassy hill known as Love Circle, joined by Dustin and Jacky, two close friends from Demos’. As its name implies, the spot is a popular, shall we say, “make out” spot, but at a nearly 800 feet elevation, it also offers one of the best views of the entire city. We climbed up to the hill with a bottle of Eagle Rare and sat on top of the world, recounting our shared times and envisioning our separate futures.

Love Circle

Jacky was a singer in a band, Dustin was in school, and I had four long, unknowable years ahead of me. But for a short time, our paths had merged.

Maybe I’m just projecting, but that night on Love Circle had the feel of a transitional moment for all of us. High above the city that had brought together three dreamers from different hometowns, we could see for miles. Other than a few clouds, we had clear skies. I felt something I hadn’t in a very long time: contentment.

And that was reason enough to keep going.

Keep reading: Chapter VII – Seattle

Sound & Vision or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Whiskey

Joseph Lyttleton

CHAPTER II

[Some names are real, some are changed, and some are made up because I don’t remember their real ones. You can guess which is which.]

I was leaving work when my phone buzzed: a text. It was Megan.

“You want to get drinks?” It read.

~~

Two months prior to this evening, I was employed at Sound & Vision, a used CD/DVD store with two locations in downtown Philadelphia, one on 2nd Street and the other on South Street. Separated by less than a mile, when I needed to bounce from one store to the other, I frequently took a scenic stroll past Penn’s Landing.

I began working there in June, only a few weeks after departing Charlotte. The job involved sifting through stacks of mostly unlistenable CDs while blasting Neutral Milk Hotel over the stores speakers or staving off boredom by watching movies on a 13″ television. For a 23-year-old new to the city, it was almost the perfect job. Steve, the owner, played the role of Almost.

A man more horizontal than vertical, Steve had spent his entire 50 years in Philadelphia but looked no less road worn for it. He rhapsodized frequently about his past accomplishments and justified his current, not-quite-estimable status by blaming any number of villains: Past employees, city officials, his baby mama.

I suspected, however, that his decline in fortunes might fairly be attributed to his crack addiction. That, and his weakness for companionship. Prostitutes aren’t cheap; although, his did appear to be on the, shall we say, more economical side.

As Steve’s extracurricular activities took precedence over managing his stores (and paying his employees, and bathing), he charged me with finding someone to cover the shifts he was no longer interested in working himself.

One of those interviewees was Megan. She was a petite, mousy girl with an almost perfectly round face and hair so thin and matted down, she gave the impression of someone just a couple months out from finishing chemo treatment. Other than the aforementioned baby mama, Donna, the staff was all male, so I recommended Megan to Steve who, with all the vehemence he could muster, said, “Fine.”

After that, I rarely saw Megan unless there was a problem. The stores could operate with one employee at a time, and as the de facto manager (a role I had essentially forced Steve to bestow upon me), I took all the hours I could get.

When I did cross paths with the other staff, we shared our latest stories on Steve’s erratic behavior.

“He came into the store with a hooker and emptied the till.”

“He called me up, yelled at me, and then started sobbing.”

“He smells like a homeless man, if that homeless man ran back-to-back marathons.”

With Steve growing increasingly unhinged, the responsibility of running the stores fell to me, even as I knew no employees were being paid. Some of the newest hires – including Megan – still hadn’t received a single paycheck. I received promises almost daily that we would be paid “the next time I come in.” But one afternoon, I noticed an ominous bill in the pile of mail. Holding the unopened envelope to the light, I could make out the words “Past Due” and a number with five digits before the decimal.

On what would turn out to be my last day working for Steve, I arrived before noon at the South Street location. Megan was to work at 2nd Street that afternoon; it was a normal Sunday.

A few minutes after I opened South Street, Megan called in a frenzy.

“My purse was stolen.” She had opened the store, set her bag down on the counter and gone to the back for a moment. When she came back out, someone had absconded with her possessions. Frazzled and upset, she wanted to go immediately to the police station to make a report. I told her I’d have Steve come down and cover the store. That didn’t seem unreasonable. Apparently, I was mistaken.

Steve arrived at 2nd Street in a sour mood, his 4-year-old son and Donna, the child’s mother, in tow. Immediately after relieving Megan, he called me on the store phone and launched into a lengthy diatribe, complaining about our overstock and any number of other grievances. This haranguing continued for a half hour, until eventually his voice began to drop out and his words jumbled together. Then silence.

He fell asleep. Poor guy, apparently all those hookers and blow had plum tuckered him out.

An hour later, I received a call from Megan.

“They’re both passed out.”

“Excuse me?”

“Donna is asleep on the ground behind the counter, and Steve is passed out in the back. He doesn’t have clothes on.”

I had unfortunately had the inauspicious experience of walking in on a sleeping Steve before, so I knew what she was witnessing: A gray-haired, whale of a man, undressed to his skivvies, his gelatin hindquarters squeezed to the point of bursting inside tighty (off-)whities. It was a sight meant for neither man nor woman.

“You have to get out of there,” I insisted.

“I can’t,” she protested. “The boy’s here. There’s a homeless guy in here with him.” Where was Norman Rockwell when you needed him?

Megan did leave, after Donna had stirred, and she came straight to South Street. I was sitting there with another employee who Steve had fired the night before (the employee claimed he quit). He was looking to get paid, and come to think of it, Megan wouldn’t mind the same.

I gave the former employee about $200 out of the till, figuring that was the least Steve could do. I told Megan she should just go home for the day. There was no way she could be expected to work around her half-naked boss (no sexual harassment policy on earth would let that fly). I told them that if Steve contacted them, tell them I gave them permission and they could blame me.

They did. And he did.

When Steve awoke from his power nap, he called again, apoplectic. He upbraided me for giving away his money. For an hour, we yelled at each other, I laying out his numerous sins, he venting all the ways I had earned his disdain. Then, with his anger boiling over, he abruptly hung up.

Stewing for half an hour, I paced back and forth behind the counter while the few customers the store had stared at me with concern apparent in their eyes. They’d heard everything.

I called Steve again and quit. Immediately, he turned apologetic and conciliatory. He offered to pay me (most of) what he still owed me. He offered to drive me home. He offered to buy me dinner. I took him up on all of it; then I still quit.

My triumphant exit was slightly undercut by the fact that I had already agreed to cover Megan’s shift the next day. But then that was it.

A few days later, I started working at Penn Book Center and I put Steve and his insanity behind me.

~~

Megan and I had remained in touch, but this was our first excuse to hang out.

“They’re running a crazy promotion. Free vodka from 6-7.”

In those days, I wasn’t yet on the whiskey train. As an inexperienced drinker in Charlotte, I initiated my journey towards noble alcoholism with rum. However, after a few too many nights that resulted in my evening’s drinks reincarnated as vomit, I was looking for a less sweet drink. Vodka, why not?

The bar was somewhere downtown, and that’s about as specific as I can hope to get. When I arrived, Megan was there with a friend I didn’t know. The promotion, – sponsored by Smirnoff, or Skyy, or Absolut, as if it made a difference – was as advertised: From 6 to 7, the bar was slinging free vodka. The three of us immediately lined up and downed a round. And then we did it again. And again.

In between drinks, Megan and I caught up. She had stayed on at Sound & Vision for a month after I left. With the crew diminished, she was catapulted into the managerial role I had vacated. Whereas I had convinced Steve to allow me to take cash from the register when I needed to pay bills and whatnot, Megan lasted nearly two months at the store and never received a red cent. “I quit last week,” she said.

By the time the hour had passed, we had managed four or five shots each, and I, being a vodka-newbie and drinking on an empty stomach, was feeling the warm, Russian comfort in my gut. My drinking companions, being prudent with their finances, packed it in when the free booze dried up.

I, on the other hand, had a full time job that actually provided an income. I said goodbye to my companions and saddled back up to the bar.

All I remember after that was stumbling out of the bar, maybe ten minutes later, just as possibly three hours. Crowds of well-heeled couples were gathered on the sidewalk, waiting for taxis. I circumvented the line and threw myself into the back seat of an unsuspecting cab.

“Where you going?”

“50th Street and Spruce,” I sputtered.

The cab was swirling. The planet was shaking. As the taxi pulled away from the curb, I felt a familiar churn in my core. I rolled down the windows and – well, I’d like to say that I managed to evacuate everything outside the window, but I suspect that was not the case.

“Here you are,” the cabbie said curtly after only a few minutes. Even wasted, I knew he couldn’t have possibly gotten all the way across town.

“Where are we?” I asked, as much a question of location as a metaphorical pondering from death’s door.

“15th Street.”

“No, 50th Street. Five-Oh.”

“I don’t go that far,” he stated in such a way as to preclude debate. Drunk, sick, and wobbly, I paid the protracted tab and stepped out of the cab and into darkness. I was just on the outskirts of Center City, but it might as well have been the woods by Camp Crystal Lake for all I knew.

Now, on top of my inebriation and general wooziness, I was lost in a city I had only lived in for three months. My dark haze had me turned around and unable to figure out which direction I needed to head. Looking about me, I picked a direction and…

Woke up on my lumpy futon the next morning.

This wouldn’t be the last night I would find myself in an unknown Philly neighborhood and somehow will myself home. It was also the initiation of a brief affair with vodka that would last roughly until I moved to southern California and began courting a burly gentleman named Jack.

I hung out with Megan two or three more times after that night and then she just slipped out of my life, like so many other two-month friends I’ve had. Philadelphia, more than anywhere else I lived, was a city I merely passed through, sometimes stumbling. Much of that year set the pattern for the next decade of my life, but when Year 2 ended, there were no tearful goodbyes, no farewell parties.

I was stronger for it: the struggles, the isolation, the city’s coarse touch. I chose Philadelphia for my second year specifically so I could push myself, test my mettle. In that sense, it fulfilled every expectation. It’s why I’ll always have a fondness for that dirty town; even a slight appreciation for Steve.

Still, a month before I packed up all my stuff and moved to Southern California, I trekked down to 2nd Street and saw something that made me smile:

The End of Sound and Vision

The end of Sound & Vision. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

Keep reading: Chapter III

BARchetypes: The One Who’s Gonna Die Here

Joseph Lyttleton1 Comment

It’s been some time since I wrote 1 of these, but seeing as I’m in my last month, I figured I’d bring back this feature for an appropriate send off.

Bar regulars are a varied lot. There are the assholes and the loners, but somewhere in between sits the patron saint of all drunks: The one who’s drinking until he (or she) dies. The bar is the pharmacy for the depressed lot who can’t afford therapy or medication, or who just find it easier and less humiliating to self-medicate.

Look around: One of those bar stools is occupied by someone on their way out.

The Nearly Departed might be funny or morose, talkative or monkish, man or woman, but no matter their character they have arrived for one reason: Life is unbearable and they want to numb themselves until it’s over. The bartender is their Kevorkian.

In a perfect world, every person who suffered from depression, bi-polar disorder, anxiety or one of the other related mental illnesses would find peace and solace through some healthy outlet. This isn’t a perfect world. It never will be. Actually, in a perfect world a lot of bars would probably go out of business, so I guess there’s no such thing as a perfect world.

As someone who works and spends a lot of extracurricular time in bars, it’s not hard to spot the outgoing mail. Maybe they are the Dylan Thomas-type, sacrificing their mental health for their art until they succumb at the bottom of a pint of Guinness. Or maybe they took a job straight out of high school and they’ve been stuck in a Groundhog Day-esque loop ever since. Either way, their shoulders slump in resignation.

It might seem sad, but really, there are worse fates than to waste away in a place where you feel at ease and welcomed. They know your name, they know your drink and they know when to leave you alone when you’re in one of your moods. Some people search their whole lives for such an environment.

But your first impression was right: It is sad. Not because they will die – we all do – or because they are finding peace at the bottom of a glass – we’re all addicted to something. No, the sadness comes from the knowledge that at one point, there were infinite paths set out before them, and either because of bad choices, bad planning or bad luck they settled on a road of least resistance.

It’s not the kind of sadness that deserves pity. They would reject yours if you offered it. It’s just the sadness inherent in living, because despite all the childhood pep talks and optimistic sloganeering, it isn’t possible for everyone to achieve their dreams. The world isn’t so kind.

Some people will, inevitably, fall to the wayside.

And in most of those cases, it’s not the priest or the rabbi that picks the fallen up. It’s not even a good Samaritan.

It’s the bartender who pours the shot, pops the cap off the beer and says, maybe for the hundredth time, “Hey, how was work?”

Condoms... Condensation

 

Welcome to New Orleans: Another 48 Hours

Joseph Lyttleton2 Comments

I arrived in New Orleans 3:15, local time, an hour later than scheduled due to storms in my layover city, Houston.  Upon setting foot in NOLA, I found a cab and met the new roommate at our apartment.

She had already warned me that, thanks to Hurricane Isaac’s visit earlier in the week, our apartment and the surrounding neighborhoods were without power.  This offers a variety of challenges to the newly arrived transplant.  No electricity meant no way to charge my phone, and considering how short my battery life is, that’s an immediate problem.  Furthermore, no internet except for what I can get on my fading phone.

But the problem that was most exacerbated by New Orleans was the lack of air conditioning.  Take the unpleasant swampy feeling that you get in your pants on a particularly hot day, and then spread it to your entire body.  That’s real, Cajun heat.  How anyone inhabited this particularly spot in the world before the invention of air conditioning, I do not know.  I literally woke up 5 times my first night just to splash cold water in my face.

Now, before I give you the impression that I moved into a disaster zone, let me detail my first 48 hours in the city, always the most exciting 2 days of the new move.

My roommate greeted me with a swig off a bottle of rum.  We picked our respective bedrooms and once I settled my things in my room, she took me to explore the neighborhood.  She pointed out the residences of some of her friends in the area before we turned onto the first of the main streets in the area which holds a line of bars and clubs, including the one she works at.

We stopped into one bar, itself out of electricity, but that didn’t stop the patrons from playing pool or the bartender from taking cash.  Buying two vodka tonics in plastic cups, we next did something that everyone always says you can do in New Orleans, but I still found surprising: We left the bar and continued to walk the hot, sun-drenched afternoon with drinks in hand.

From there we swerved up and down blocks, passing bars and restaurants interspersed throughout the neighborhood, until we came to Decatur St (a round of applause) at the edge of the French Quarter.  There we parted ways so she could get ready for work and I could continue to explore on my own and get some food (having woken up at 4a.m. in Seattle and eaten nothing but Chex Mix all day, the heat, drink and general exhaustion was setting in something fierce).

What I found in the French Quarter was a sight that’s become all too familiar in every city I’ve lived in: Anti-Gay protestors, their signs ablaze with Bible verses and lists of who all were going to hell (turns out, lots of us).  Now, this is nothing new, but I was still confused why they were here today.  Yeah, these people would surely love to protest the ills of New Orleans every day of the week if they could, but these protestors have to spread their hate a lot of places.  Why be here today of all days?

Then I saw it:

 

Shirtless men as far as the eye could see, some ripped like Chippendale dancers, others resembling the burly animals that earn them the affectionate title, ‘Bears.’  “Southern Decadence” is a week-long celebration of gay and lesbian sexuality, like Gay Pride in any other city, but this is New Orleans, so there are no rules.

This would become abundantly clear that night when, after having stopped back home for a cold shower, I moseyed down to the bar where my roommate works.  Early on a Saturday night, with no electricity, the place was sparsely filled with an assortment of drinkers around the bar.  Not one beer in and the scene had altered dramatically. 

A DJ arrived, playing off of a generator-sustained laptop while the dance floor filled with a cornucopia of revelers from all corners of the Kinsey Scale.  King-sized lesbians were grinding, some with their shirts off, while skinny hipster couples bounced around like trendy Weeble-Wobbles and the bar top became a dance floor for scantily clad go-go dancers (is that redundant?).  Even the doorman was buck-ass naked.  Something for everyone.  Sort of.

After less than 24-hours in the city, I had already experienced a quintessential New Orleans day.  Though I was sober, relatively.

My night ended uneventfully, as I was too exhausted and hot to feel like participating.

The next day brought a little more personal energy but no less heat.  Still no electricity, going on 4 days for those residents of the city who hadn’t just flown in the day before.

I headed out to find an internet café to charge my phone and get online.  Unfortunately, half the city had the same idea.  The spot was packed, every socket occupied.  No luck there, so after a bagel and iced chai, I continued on, back through the French Quarter which had clearly not fully shaken off its hangover from the night before.  Plenty of tourists filled the sidewalks, but the bars were not yet brimming over.  Still early.

Tiring of lugging my laptop on my shoulder, I returned home, dropped off my things, showered (the second time) and, finding it too unbearably hot in my apartment, headed out again.  I didn’t have any definite plans, just a hope that I could find a nice cool bookstore or ice cream shop to sit in and luxuriate in the air conditioning.  What I found were t-shirt shops, antique stores and, of course, rows upon rows of bars.

I kept walking until I came upon the famous Canal Street, the 42nd Avenue of New Orleans, all full of tourists and large box stores and flashy lights (well, I’m assuming; it was still daytime).  I followed Canal for awhile and turned off.  I had in mind, like those miserable New York daytrippers in Gatsby, that I should find a movie theater to pass the time in air conditioned peace.  But no luck.  Instead, I stumbled across another famous neighborhood, though this one only recently achieving widespread cultural recognition:

 

I am unquestionably smitten with HBO’s series, Tremé, a show that helped push me towards my decision to move here with its doting look at the musical and historical significance of the city.

Having spent the better part of 3 hours walking in the hot sun, I could feel my skin starting to boil.  I walked home in shade as much as possible and as I approached my neighborhood, I noticed the whirring sound of window unit ac’s blasting.  Electricity!

I almost ran home I was so excited.  It’s a good thing I didn’t, though, because that would have made the bitter reality all the worse.  A couple blocks over had electricity, but not my place.  It was still a sweltering heatbox, it’s torturous lack of air making me consider checking into a hotel or taking a trip up to Nashville for a day or two.

I took my third shower of the day and then sat out on the porch.  A few minutes later, my roommate returned with some amenities for the apartment.  As she put them away and we discussed returning to the porch, something caught my eye.

The ceiling fan was moving.  Oh sweet Jebus, power!  We rushed to turn on the air conditioning units and shut all the open windows and then giddily hugged.  No need to sweat to death for a second night.  Sweet, sweet relief.

I returned to my roommate’s bar for a second night, this time for both performances of the “Freakshow,” a vaudeville burlesque show that incorporated assorted dance routines, fire and razor swallowing, the music of Tom Waits and healthy doses of partial nudity.  My cup overflowth.

My second night in the city was easier to enjoy knowing that I had an air-conditioned bed to return to.  I struck up conversations with various members of the troupe, found myself genuinely engaged with total strangers (the whiskey helped) and settled into a bar that is predestined to become a regular spot.

But nights end.  As did my first 48 hours in New Orleans, a city that is looking to offer me a unique set of experiences and challenges.  Probably more than any other move, I think I can truly say I don’t know what to expect this year, both good and bad.

Fingers crossed it’s not Hurricane Jésus.