New Yark – Tuesday – Part One of a Real Trip Mixed with Astonishing Bullshit

Drove to Manhattan with my brother Zachary last week. Along the way, we passed buildings and fields and people with frozen heads.

In West Virginia, we were chased by a coal monster for 89 miles. Zach silently screamed.

From ubiquitous signs in Maryland, we learned that deer and bears are mortal enemies. The bear and deer feud has been going on for thousands of years. Both of us said a prayer that one day the deer and bears will love each other and have a vegetarian picnic.

I don’t like Eastern New Jersey very much. I’m sorry, New Jersey. Perhaps I’m wrong.

Driving in Manhattan sucks, even with GPS. I ran over sixteen people and they dissolved into the concrete of Sixth Avenue. You better not tell anybody!

Zach and I stayed at the Eastgate Tower Hotel on E. 39th Street. It was clean and utilitarian and CAVERNOUS. Every closet had a descending stairwell to an alternate world. We knew this because the songs of the vendors floated up the stairs in alien script, permanently staining the air. But screw those other worlds! We were there to see NY. I locked those doors.

One of the reasons we were in the city was to visit our cousin Paul, who attends graduate school at Fordham University in the Bronx. He is very smart and he walks very fast. We had dinner with him Tuesday night at the Pig and Whistle in Times Square.

Times Square has lots of artificial light. People stop too much in the middle of the sidewalk to take pictures of an imagined wonder. Vampires are afraid of Times Square because the light makes tourists think they own the universe. Everyone knows vampires own the universe.

We learned that The Pig and Whistle in Times Square is a façade. The menu is like a casserole of what everybody expects to see in an Irish pub, with several Italians being pushed into the baking dish by administrative assistants wearing invisible capes. Falling, the Italians cursed in Gaelic about such a preposterous composition. Pasta is a strange shadow in Dublin!

Believe it or not, the day became over! That night, cold and wet enveloped the city while I dreamed of New Amsterdam applying for a credit card in Rotterdam.