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

Rockaway Beach Vignettes: Judas, Brutus, and Cassius

This vignette series will be running over the summer about Rockaway Beach, New York.


Ran into Mulroney on 96th eating fish tacos and he was off the junk so he and Red Hat and Pretty Boy and I went to the Bar for a pina colada. Yeah Mulroney was good with soul present eyes and we were all feigning for that frozen rum drink. I said to Mulroney “I thought you were wearing tanks all summer: what’s with the button down.” He smiled and opened his shirt to show his commitment – a black tank revealed. “It’s a little chilly, ya know.”

As we walked down 95th to the Bar, a car pulled up to park. Mulroney familiar with its driver ran up to the passenger window. “Its Bodi!” I knew of this person and was curious to meet this storied surfer. Mulroney waived us on to the Bar and said that Bodi would be joining us there. Past a group of children perpetually playing on the street who were all too curious and then on to the first tier of our favorite place. It is the afternoon during the week and in the seventies, cooler than usual. The Bar is empty but for a few others craving the summer drinks. I just bought two packs of American Spirits and was happy to sit down to a rum high and smoke my American tobacco. I gave a cigarette to Red Hat even though I felt bad—his being young and all. We were waiting for our drinks. I didn’t feel like a lecture but reminded him that they cut off the oxygen to your brain. He looked a little disturbed—good…success.

The drinks arrived and we settled into a long relaxed sip on this beach veranda. It was a pleasure to have this spot so Appollonian and quiet—the nights erupt into a Dionysian ritual of sex, jealously, drunkenness, and the deafening roar of the present. All are completely in the moment with no future and only few are unfortunate enough to bring in a past.

We wait for Bodi to arrive—his Guinness foams and settles long before his arrival. Red Hat and Pretty Boy take off for the skate park after one. Mulroney convinces me to stay for at least two more—how could I say no with nothing to do for the afternoon. Mulroney nods to an approaching car, “ugh, here comes Fake Frank.” “why do you call him that?” “You will find out in about two minutes.” A far too blond man with no shoes and a Grateful Dead T-shirt approaches us with a drunk and cheery girl. “Hey, there Mulroney…Oh man, I haven’t seen you in (pause for fist bump)…wow, how are you?” Introductions. “Hey I know you?” “Uh, nah but maybe I have seen you around.” No matter Fake Frank is already consumed the annoying banalities uncharacteristic to the neighborhood. Mulroney placates then rolls his eyes as the two disappear into the bar for their drinks. “Yeah, I got ya, Mulroney” Laughter. Sip Drinks. The kids from the sidewalk come up towards us—one boy gave me a white flower taken from the house next door. He is our instant friend.

A man rounds the corner—big and husky. He is wearing white linen pants and a button down, sunglasses, an Irish cap, and using a wooden cane. Banged up clearly. This is the surfer from Nicaragua. This is the man all the other surfers talk about. He sits down with big warm handshakes all around. He sits down like Santa with his beard and his legs apart for a listening lean. After he lifts his warm beer, Mulroney looks pleased and they catch up. He was injured in an accident—hence the cane. I am out of my league and thinking I should depart. Not good for ladies to be hanging out with so many men— as I stand to leave Mulroney insists that I stay for at least one more. Bodi takes notice of me then and offers his introduction. “I am the girl who lives with the dark haired man” Ahh…yes, there is recognition now—he came to one of our yard parties. Already warm on rum I say “I have heard of you—the surfer from Nicaragua.” This pleases the crowd and Bodi who is attentive to me now. We talk of Nicaragua while Mulroney gets my drink—of international relations and drug trafficking—of the people and the jungle. Mulroney arrives with a rum floater on my pina colada. I avoid these but am not upset at its arrival. I settle back into my wrought iron chair of curly-cued roses and chipped paint and take the golden brown rum off with a slow sip.

The rum is getting me now as the banter is quicker and Fake Frank arrives to speak more banalities to Bodi whose patience is of the worldly kind. Fake Frank and the girl tuck themselves into the corner for some making out while we continue a better conversation now about Dante’s Inferno and who was the third man in the mouth of the devil. No one can remember and Bodi says he can’t because he is too high. He is reading Don Quixote in Spanish –“DO you know Spanish?” No. “My friends are teaching me.” I think they are …Yo quiero cerveza...ha.

- Lady Gravesend