Rockaway Beach Vignettes: (4th of July) night ride

I told him that I was riding my bike to the fireworks this year. He was quiet and without protest. This is a good sign, let me tell you, because otherwise he would be a pain about it and I would have to give. He was ready on his bike come Fourth of July and I was ready on mine Schwinn (of course and cruiser too). It is already approaching sundown when we join bikes on the boardwalk and the others are waiting. The bike messengers are leading and we follow their pace uptown. I drank too much RedBull and penny tasting beer. The yoga instructor is in front of me and I introduce myself and she tells me that she is leaving soon so I take note of that and then I introduce her to this new person I met who is a bike messenger, “What is your name?” His name is Ryan or Brian. Ryan Brian it is.

He introduces himself and is polite and talks amongst all of them. I race forward because I am not ready to talk to anybody yet but when I am ready then I will because they seem nice.

We stop at 116th Street for beer and it is Him and Pretty Boy and Mulroney and Ryan Brian and Yoga girl and myself. The beach is quiet and beautiful so the bums came out from the methadone house and they sat on the benches on the boardwalk. They are smoking and asking for smokes, they are talking to themselves and to no one at all, and they are all in rehabilitation. The nursing home attendants appear at the stairs of the boardwalk to take a normal moment out of the homes and to breathe salty air.

The Clam is still going and the rowdy crowd is here still drinking and smoking cigarettes. I remember seeing photographs from 100 years ago of women and men wearing white cotton that tugged in the breeze with umbrellas and quiet faces. They stood where The Clam is now and took in the sea where Bro is screaming in Joe’s face about “This guy—Can you believe this guy?” but I don’t know what they were saying because their lips are stern and closed.

Mulroney has the beer now and we are ready to go and the boards rustle and bang under our wheels. We make a turn at 126th Street off the boardwalk to the street where we go up Rockaway Beach Boulevard but “My, how you should see it now!” because the trees are emerald green and the grass is neatly tendered. The pavement is smooth and almost white so that the bike tires are fast past St. Francis Church. Pretty Boy hits a ramp with his BMX bike and causes a loud bang outside the church and I cringe. He turns back and gives me a prolonged grin and moves on ahead of me.

Past Neponsit and the Orthodox and the Old Irish, rich and silent behind their mansion shrubbery, we race toward the tuberculous Hospital at the edge of Riis. The brick building is empty now. It towers above the ocean with views made for the sick and dying. There are no wooden boards here but rather a concrete lane that periodically opens into plazas. We are riding very fast toward the bathhouses and no one remembers what they used to be. Offices, bathrooms, lifeguard stations, and first aid have replaced the crumbling bathhouses for twentieth century beach goers to rent and leave their belongings. The light is fading: pink and orange twilight is on the horizon’s rim. The lights on the lane are the suggestion of yellow and barely illuminate the space they occupy.

I keep falling behind because the bag of beer in my basket is very heavy and making it hard to steer the bike. After we pass the bathhouse, Mulroney, Pretty Boy, and Ryan Brian want to stop to drink beer before they arrive. We go on but they have caught up to us before we lost our way. Mulroney directs us down a black covered path that is a mere separation in the bushes. The concrete path has worn away into gravel and we duck our heads under the tree branches. It is all the sound of tires and shouts to watch the potholes and we all laugh at the beers getting shook up. Suddenly the sky comes back and we arrive at the bombed out barracks, covered in graffiti and empty of the men who once laid in them.

We race another mile or so before we reach the main road into the Breezy where we are supposed to find Flanagan. When we finally get to the Catholic Church, Flanagan is outside wheeling a cooler of beer in a homeless man’s cart with no shoes and enormous clothing. Mobile is with him and greets his neighbors Pretty Boy and Yoga. Sugas told me about Mobile first then his roommate Pretty Boy.

We push the bikes past the houses with Flanagan our Ambassador to this Irish town. We park ourselves by the beach restaurant’s lights to watch the fire in the sky. The night is not long because the explosions are upon us in the sky. And oooooooo and ahhhhhhhh.
I am with Him and he is drinking beer for the long ride home. The night gets shorter as we stand outside of the beach restaurant full of the people. They are trying to remember when they were us and we are trying to not think of being them.

Pretty Boy wants to smoke so we hop a fence behind the restaurant and find a grove in the sea dunes for the venture. They pass around blunts and new people have arrived to join but Mobile, Yoga, and I hang back to laugh and do get-to-knows. Some of the party are too tired so they sit around each other and its Woodstock in the dunes. Free share and lay down next to one another. But I see him walk towards me and he and I know that the night is for us and not for others.

He and I leave the party in the parking lot of the church because Flanagan promised things that aren’t happening. Flanagan found a girl and he was talking to her of a night that he had already promised away. Mobile was stuck with him and Mulroney, Yoga, and Ryan Brian peddled away into the darkness. I am ready to be alone in the darkness and give Him the face so we turn away and head towards Tilden.

We travel down the road a bit before veering off right and into the ever-fading street lights. At the mouth of the path he traveled behind me. It became night completely.
“Let’s do this” and I smiled but he chuckled because we were drunk and free. Two of us. Alone and alone.

I went first and he followed with trepidation: Fools do go forward. Soon the black velvet soft summer night was all around and we peddled to the sounds of racing thoughts. Around the bend on the bluff, the large bellied moon appeared and said Hello to us. But he was calm now because he could believe in the darkness and in my lead. And finally, finally, finally he let that salt breeze under his shirt.

We stopped at the bluff overwhelmed by the joy of being alone in this City. Its all Ocean now licking grainy lips and seagulls are fast asleep. He handed me an ice-cold beer and I knew I was in love with this man in this dark. A bell chimed and was carried over to us in the breeze. He smiled and pointed quiet to the fisherman flying solo on the beach near the bluff. “I don’t use the bells because I don’t need them.” This is what he said.

Archer & Claire

Claire was zoning out at the Yale Club.

She was sitting at a corner table in the Tap Room, pretending to listen to the blue blazers discuss bond prices. The hall was oppressively hot. No one seemed bothered though, Claire noted, as they milled about in their starched finest.

Claire made an excuse and got up, smoothing her pencil skirt. So and so transferred to Goldman Sachs, and so and so was finally moving to Boston for graduate school, she heard as she weaved her way to the bar.

She had just asked for a glass of white when someone screamed out her name. Claire turned and saw a sparkly blond at the other end of the table waving furiously at her. She had called out so loudly that several people were now watching. Claire picked up her drink and walked toward the woman, who was sipping on a pinkish cocktail.

“Oh sweetie, it has been ages,” Annabel gushed as they kissed each other on both cheeks. “And you look gorgeous.”

“So do you,” Claire said, meaning it. Annabel looked blonder than ever. Her hair was almost white and her skin a deeply-freckled brown. She was wearing a beaded flapper dress that stood out in a crowd of corporate attire. Annabel spun around, laughing, letting the beads glitter and click in the air.

“Thank you, darling,” Annabel said, looping her arm into Claire’s. “Now, tell me where you’ve been keeping your fabulous self.”

Claire began telling Annabel about Doré, and Annabel mentioned that she owned a few pieces from last fall’s collection.

“I knew you’d wind up with something like that,” Annabel said, smiling toothily. “You were so glam in college.”

Claire found the comment strange coming from Annabel. They had been in the same fashion society at Yale. Claire was the president and Annabel, a year younger, was the secretary. But Annabel was the one who wore mink coats to lecture and had her hair done in New York every week. Annabel’s freshman-year dorm room was even featured in the New York Times Style section. Claire remembered giggling with friends at photos of the glitzy freshman’s zebra-print armchairs and crystal lamps.

She was now telling Claire about her new gig as a research assistant for a D.C. think tank. Annabel had launched a short-lived campaign for student body president her sophomore year, but Claire didn’t know that she harbored any interest in politics beyond that. Annabel said she was in New York for a conference and had to attend a dinner function later in the evening.

“Oh, hon, I am just so thrilled to catch up with you,” Annabel said, squeezing Claire’s arm tighter. “By the by, you haven’t said one word about that enormous rock on your finger.”

“Oh!” Claire said, blushing.

“If I had a hunk of ice that heavy, I wouldn’t forget it,” Annabel winked.

Claire blushed deeper and received Annabel’s well wishes.

“You married that fella you were going with in school, Arthur was it?”

“Yes, Archer.”

“Archer, of course.”

Annabel loudly kissed Claire’s cheek. “Now, you give him a kiss from me.”

Claire kissed Annabel on the cheek and waved goodbye. Annabel’s glittery figure sashayed around the cloud of dark suits and out the door.

A half hour later, Claire left the stultifying room.


-- Miss Cottonwood

Rockaway Beach Vignettes: The Booleyvaard

The City is thick hot. It is the space between you and the stranger’s body standing next to you. The wind has steamed and is a canopy over Rockaway Beach Boulevard today. Hipsters are pouring off the train and spilling onto the boulevard. I’m with Pretty Boy and we are eating fried plantains out of a Styrofoam container with our backs to The Wave. I like to watch the boulevard though I don’t want it to notice me. It is all good though as I am with a loud-mouthed twenty something and he likes to talk back to the bums and the drunks: he is my spokesperson.

A woman is rolling our way and she looks like she stinks. Sick and dead hair tied into what girls call a ponytail. She getting close now and we can hear her talking to herself. She bumps into a patron of a corner saloon—this is a place that the only the true rogue drinks. He is an old man and he is mean drunk with a face like a balled up fist. They fight and the old hag screams for retribution and evokes Jesus down on the old mean drunk. Pretty Boy and I decide to move along. We walk past the gangstas coming, going, lingering, and fleeing the corners we pass. We are in a walking mood but decide we had enough of this boulevard of nightmares and take a quick left around the deli and towards the beach.

We find ourselves on a friendly street and our pace slows with every block we put behind us. On our right, the revival tabernacle jesuschrist of all saints including god church hung out a new banner on its flagship building: a broken down house with a caved in porch. We take note—and we look with our best stare.

We pass by the Captain’s house and he is leaning over his gate talking to Flanagan. We stop and chat for a few: they are talking coke but we are talking drinks. Flanagan never wears shoes and Capt. Jack never wears shirts and this hippie stuff drives us nuts. Flanagan is going uptown in a few but we don’t want to go besides his route is not direct and we prefer express. Pretty Boy is the new man in town and his childish face attracts more drunk girls than Flanagan’s former protégé Mulroney. Flanagan eyes to bring him into the fold but Pretty Boy stands off too far for him to reach.
We are persuaded to come back to Captain Jack’s that evening to attend a birthday party for the Musician—he is turning who the hell cares. Flanagan jumps onto his skateboard and with toes gripped leaves us standing with Captain Jack. We all watch as he rolls up the street with a hand outstretched toward the sky until his lithe form disappears around Holland Avenue.

We take leave of the Captain and walk a little quicker to get back to the bungalow. Pretty Boy is almost sprinting because now we have something to do and we have to at least smoke before we swim. The Victorian houses on each side of the street sag and are broken; the people who built them are gone and now the owners are the slumlords, the elderly, and us. There are houses with many different windows and balconies, with wide open porches that stretch around the entire home—they are Escher drawn dwellings—and all with surf boards or boxed up garbage in the yard.

We are close now to Pretty Boy’s place and I smell the violet candy locust trees so late in June. Mulroney has a new neighbor and he is sitting on the porch, we wave but there are things to accomplish and we have wasted too much time. Down the alley of bungalows, we sidle up to the apartment and I make plans to meet up later. We are going to that party tonight and I will bring the tequila. Tonight the Musician will play and begin the summer properly-before he drags his cello out to the sand to perform under the boardwalk.

-- Lady Gravesend