A Miracle on Harlem

Having a new girlfriend changes my life in a number of ways…for one, it allows me to focus on music less and less, because now I have somewhere else to put my energy…living in the constant insecurity of whether I have made the correct choice in choosing music as my main pursuit in life has worn me down to the point where I just don’t want to think about the future anymore…money is a constant issue, and strangely, the fact that Chris believes strongly in my talent in some ways makes me relax and just forget about writing for awhile…my father is constantly on me to get a job, the not so subtle inference being that he doesn’t believe I have a future as a musician…he tells me that it is a hard life, and I believe him, but underneath that warning lies the fact that he doesn’t have faith in me…having finished my ‘pseudo’ album, I stop playing guitar completely, spending all my free time over at my girlfriend’s apartment or hanging out at the record store…for the first time since I had first picked up a guitar at the age of 15, I contemplate the idea that maybe being a musician just isn’t my destiny, and that I really should be doing something else…it is as if a spell has been broken…

Chris buys me a monthly bus pass so I can come and visit her anytime I want…she has a decent job to help her pay some of the bills she incurs while attending school (she sells t-shirts at the Hard Rock Café part-time) …she feeds me and comforts me and my worn soul, making me feel important for the first time in my life…this love and attention is so welcome that music quickly becomes a fading notion because I am getting all that I need from her…after a time it occurs to me that I have not picked up my guitar for a couple of months…I open up the case and stare at the thing for awhile, and all this does is remind me of my failures…I start to consider more seriously that I need a steady job, hoping that I can get myself back on feet financially…but what I am really saying to myself with this thinking is that I am starting to believe myself that I am not going to make it in music…I have grown tired of living like a rat with my father, and his own atmosphere of failure seems to add to mine…music becomes my enemy, the thing I attach to my problems and my father’s problems and my family’s problems…it just screams ‘no future’…it is not just a direction home that I am seeking but a way of life I am beginning to reject…being with Chris offers me a fresh chance in life, a better chance than music seems to in this moment…she is someone or something I can actually see, touch, and experience…love, life, and victory is right in front of me, not ‘out there’ in some place I can never reach…so I put all my energy there, with her…

When Chris and I walk through the streets of her immigrant neighborhood, the kids call her ‘Madonna’ because her bleach blonde cut (usually combed straight back) looks like the pop idols most recent incarnation…I am embarrassed by this kind of attention now, the kind where people stop and stare and point…within one short year I have gone from drawing all sorts of attention to myself to wanting none at all…everywhere I go, I just wish I was invisible…and so it is on one warm evening that Chris and I go to the movies out somewhere near my dad’s house (ironically just near where my mother was committed)…after the movie is over, we have to catch a bus back…because it is a Sunday night, the buses are running fairly infrequently, so we decide to go ahead and walk up to the main corner where we would probably switch buses anyway…we are just in front of a parking structure attached to a mall when a car goes by with 4 guys inside…the guy in the passenger seat yells “fucking freaks” as they roll by, and I immediately yell without much thought attached, “FUCK YOU!!!!”…the car goes down about ¾ of a block before it screeches to a halt, as if it took them a second to say “did he just say what we think he said!?”…suddenly I realize the street is deserted, there is no one around now, and the light is just going out of the sky…right out of a movie, the 4 guys comes spilling out of the car, walking briskly towards us…

Time stands still, and I flash back to walking the drags of my hometown when I was a kid with my friend Bob…as we walked under the train underpass, Bob took an empty beer bottle by the neck and smashed the butt end against the concrete wall (like they do when they are christening a ship)…”what are you doing?” I asked him, frightened by his sudden aggression…”I’m making a weapon in case anyone jumps us”…and somehow this thought sticks in the memory bank for a future day…

The 4 guys from the car are now only about 20 seconds away from reaching Chris and I…because the light is dim, they can’t really see us in great detail, we are more shadows…if we run they will catch us, and the mall is closed so we can’t go inside for any help…I frantically look on the ground for a bottle, hoping to be able to defend us against these idiots…I can’t believe my eyes, because I cannot find anything at all…however, sticking up out of the asphalt, for whatever reason, is a steel rod, the kind they use when laying concrete to make it more secure…without thought, I grab for the piece of steel, hoping to wrench it from the ground…mysteriously, it pulls out easily, like King Arthur with Excalibur!...quickly turning, I hold the metal rod (it’s less than a foot long) behind my back, and I can tell by the body language of our 4 would-be attackers that they didn’t see this miracle occur…they are suddenly upon us, quickly making a semi-circle to pin us back…words start to fly at us, “fuck you” this and “motherfucker” that…the tension is electric when one punk steps forward to shove me…”I wouldn’t do that if I were you” I tell them…they laugh out loud, “and why the fuck not you piece of shit, what are you gonna do about it?”…I brazenly flash the steel rod, getting tall as it rips thru the air…“now back the fuck off, or I’m gonna break your fuckin’ skulls” I tell them calmly…there is confusion because they are so hopped up on the thrill of possible violence that they haven’t considered at all the possibility of them backing down…the standoff lasts about 30 more seconds until the de-facto leader decides to take a step back, and the rest of the dumb dogs follow…“don’t let us see you around or we are gonna kill you” one of them tosses at me as they head back towards their car…their leaving is unbelievable, a true miracle in my eyes!…they get in their car and head off in the same direction…

Chris and I stand there for a minute numb and shaking until it hits me cold…once they realize that I am just one guy with a piece of steel and that they are 4 morons with a car they are going to come back looking for us, because their egos won’t be able to handle the fact that they backed down to some pale fag with long hair (cro-magnon logic!)…so we run and hide in the parking garage, and sure enough, about 3 minutes later they are back, cruising up and down the same strip where they just saw us (doing frantic u-tuirns)…they finally head off in the direction we had been headed, figuring we must have gone further up…we are afraid to wait for a bus on any corner, so we walk for another 2 hours down side streets until we get back to my dad’s house safely…

The spring passes slowly and wonderfully, as I make ends meet here and there and try to hang on to my youth just a little longer…a few blocks from my dad’s is a schoolyard where some of the local kids play baseball on an almost daily basis…at first, I just hang out and watch them play, but after a time I am invited to join in when the sides are uneven…looking the way I do (which is at this point is nothing radical, but in this area is pretty edgy) the guys are surprised I can play…not only do I play well, I quite frequently help my team win, and this creates an interesting dynamic…no one wants to claim me as ‘their’ friend, or take the risk to call me at my dad’s to come join them play because I am too ‘weird’ looking, but if I do show up, different people will argue over who’s team I end up on…I start to bring Chris to the games, and to them she looks even weirder than I do (again, nothing shocking---even the blonde hair is gone, replaced by a dark honey brown)…what they don’t realize is her father is a huge Yankees fan, and she has grown up watching baseball, so she enjoys watching the games as well…she appreciates me confounding these guys with my decent set of baseball skills and my anti-social attitude…it is something we laugh about on our walks home…her coming to watch me play re-connects me to a part of my past that I had thought was long gone; the competitor, the athlete, and the warrior…and this feels good…

I try to stay in my father’s good graces by doing whatever he needs me to do around the house…he is still insisting on receiving his $150 dollars per month, but is willing to lop off certain sums if I do odd jobs for him…one day he tells me he wants me to paint the entire house…so, it’s up on the roof in the blazing sun, and it’s beyond boring…so I go back in, grab my boombox, and put in my Joy Division tape that has one album on each side, taking it back up on the roof with me…after 4 hours straight of Manchester’s finest, my dad’s girlfriend, on a PMS bender, comes screaming out of her house “I can’t take it anymore!! I can’t take fucking take it anymore!!! Turn that shit off, it’s making me want to kill myself!! How can you listen to that music??”…I try to calm her down by putting on Prince instead…