Just Any Other Saturday Night We were on 12th street and 4th ave
maybe 7:00?
had not much else to do,
so we were about to head home
when all of a sudden we realized
we had each developed
an insatiable urge
for Burger King.
But we didn’t know any Burger Kings nearby!
McDonald’s, sure
there was the one at St. Mark’s
where I like to shit
when I don’t got no other place to.
But Burger Kings
are in more scarcity
than McDonaldses
so we ask two pedestrian
NYU students
if they know where’s the nearest Burger King.
One shrugs, says she dunno,
says there’s a McDonald’s over that way,
oh we know, we say,
we want Burger King tho,
so the other says,
as she’s dragging him away
I think there’s
one
down by West 4th Street
I don’t know exactly where,
and we thank him
as she drags him
in the door of some store,
didn’t notice which.
But, hell, that 4th street Christopher street area
confuses the fuck outta me
so that I end up walking round in circles
like a frenzied dog trying to bite it’s own tail
whenever I try to find the Cornelia Street Café,
so I recall
that there’s a Burger King round 86 and Lex,
which I know
because Dan Taylor told me once
that he eats n chills there a lot.
So we’re off to 14th street
to catch the 4/5 train(s) at Union Square
and on the way
we stop in Metropolis
(no more than $9 between us)
a hip, pseudo-skate-poser clothing store
and we jump around the conveyor belt of clothes
giddy guys throwing funky multi-colored hats onto each other's heads
placing green-tinted sharp sunglasses onto each other's noses
trying on punk-ass attire as we whirl through the store
and dancing about in gothic dresses to the Strokes CD that booms form the speakers.
I thought I was getting funny glances from the cashier,
so I figured we should leave about then
even though I was digging the music
but on the way out,
the same cashier (despite our failure to buy any of his merchandise),
complimented us on our clothing:
exuberant, tie-dye shirts from The Sock Man at St. Mark’s
intricately-designed bright draw-string kentia-cloth pants from the dude at 10th and 7th,
he liked our style, said he liked us guys,
and asked us if we were from round here,
maybe in for the weekend from California, being so colorful and all.
Naw, I replied
I live uptown, he lives in Irvington upstate,
we're just freaks, here,
and then we're out
to the subway
a 5 pulls in right as we swipe our shared metro card
and we jump into the crowded car
giddy, dazed and hyper as all hell
much to the chagrin of the other passengers,
humming Jimi Hendrix lyrics
stepping on people's toes
and trying to hold on to the ceiling railings without tipping over into someone's lap,
and we get off at 86,
find the Burger King, wait in line and order.
It tasted really good.
Like, really fuckin’ good.
Definitely worth the trip.
and we had a transfer on our metro card still
for a crosstown bus
so we were about to head home,
being as there’s never much to do
on the Upper East Side
except sit on a 5th ave bench
and mutter “motherfucker” to yourself
just in the earshot of
business suit men
for an hour straight just
“motherfuckermotherfuckermotherfuckermotherfucker”.
But, before we went home,
I got the idea
to call Dan Taylor on the pay phone,
which I did
and I harangued him yelled at him bitched at him
for a minute,
cuz he hadn’t been at the Burger King
and he’d said he often was
and this meant he
was a liar
or a horrible person
or a pigfucker or a sinner
or something like that.
he wasn’t surprised or pissed
to be hearing from me so randomly as this
cuz, well, the guy knows me
and I guess surprises are no surprise
and eccentric behavior commonplace
so he said, “uh… OK, Richard”
and then, “you guys wanna come over?”
I said we’d do that
cuz he was only 7 blocks away
and I hoped
he wasn’t having one of his
Gathering of the Popular People
a Trinity School Social-Climber Event
(for only those cool enough to have made Dan’s list),
and I also hear
kids pay Dan money
to let them have their parties
at his house (7th floor apartment,
the hottest venue in town
cuz Dan’s house
is always sure to have
alcohol and weed a-plenty
and a parent who’s never home and doesn’t care much either way).
We reached Dan’s house,
doorman told us he liked our outfits
and he told us we could
go up,
which we did
and found the door open
and walked into
the middle of his
“Farmer Dan” routine,
which meant he was
busy growing weed
and tending to his precious seeds.
He’s been growing (I told him his plants would grow faster if he talked to them and hugged them everyday)
and dealing (he sold a maple leaf to a kid last week cuz he told him it was weed)
I tell him I look forward to his future
as forerunner of an international drug cartel
and being able to say
that I knew him back in the day...
So he told us our clothes were crazy,
like what the fuck were we wearing?
and took us to his room,
I said hi to his ferrets
(especially Fluffy),
but before I could chase those jumpy fuckers round the room
Dan showed us his baggie of unplanted seeds and asked if we wanted to buy it,
I suppose he forgot the fact that neither of us smoke up...
he bade us smell some of his strong new chronic he got from so and so,
finished downloading porn off the internet,
called his dealer to see if he could meet up later.
I figured that there wouldn’t be much to do there
besides play pin-the-tail-on-the-ferret
or take lessons in gardening
or reminisce about memories of good times past he might not have smoked away
or watch internet porn (a real male bonding experience),
so I asked him if he wanted to come home with us,
which he took a real long time to think about,
said he didn’t think he could
but then decided he would
if he could roller-blade across the park.
Damn,
I was thinking,
so much for the crosstown bus transfers we had,
such a pity that they would go to waste,
but hell, it would be fun to run across the park
so I agreed
and out we went.
We passed a girl on the way to 5th Ave
who was looking mighty purty
and Dan told us
he would have asked for her number
if he didn’t have a cold
and I told him
he would have asked for her number
if he wasn’t surrounded by two tie-dyed freaks.
He agreed,
and we reached the park
only for me to realize
I couldn’t run to keep up with his roller blades
because my drawstring kentia cloth pants
were falling down
like London Bridge
cuz I had so much shit in my pockets like
a wallet, coins, a CD, and what ever not,
so I decided
I had to
take off my pants
in order to run,
which I did
and they both
told me that
I was crazy,
Absolutely
Fuckin’
out of my mind.
I said so what fuckers,
let’s get going
and I ran
with hairy legs and skimpy boxer shorts with frogs on them
and my trippy pants
hung over my back
tied by drawstring
to the plastic bag holding
the day’s shopping
and I ran,
we ran
and Dan bladed
around the great lawn
past those few still out on benches
in the grey musk of coming night
and we ran
west
past
the siren of a police car
who hopefully wasn’t on the prowl for
a deviant rapist loose in the park
because a crazy unkempt kid
with no pants
running
could be mistaken for
that.
And we ran
reached my upper west side
at which point I put my pants back on
backwards
such that
the weighted shopping bag attached to my drawstring was hanging behind my ass
like a fuckin’ monkey’s tail.
And there we were,
home,
went up to my room
and we
chilled for a while.
Dan broke out of my closet
the guitar
which my brother owned when he was 6 years old and taking lessons from that lady Debbie who used to sing songs in class at our nursery school
it was probably a wee-bit small on
Big Dan
but he played it just the same
(and bought it from me for $10)
a pretty song by Bush,
some Red Hot Chili Peppers
Under the Bridge
which we sang
mournfully to,
and, hurrah, hallelujah,
he played Bunny Hop!
a Dan Taylor original
a folk song
the prettiest dittie you ever did hear.
He strummed,
we jammed on the twin bongo drums
I screamed
lyrics
I lamented
the death of bunny rabbits
then Dan sang
pretty
stories
with a happy
voice.
Shiny happy people.
And then he played a song extempore about what a crazy fucker I am,
at which point he had to leave
and meet up with some kid
whose name was also Dan
cuz there are a lot of people in this world named Dan…
so we walked him to the door,
and out
and decided to pick something up
at Hollywood Video
cuz it closes at midnight
so we still had some time.
We rented
Freddy Got Fingered and Moulin Rouge,
then headed for home
but on the way decided
we wanted coffee (well I didn’t want coffee because I never want coffee because I don’t drink coffee even though I used to be addicted to caffeine)
but Starbucks was closed (diurnal corporate motherfuckers)
so we crossed the street to
one of the innumerable
Columbus delis
and each bought a
mint Snapple
because that stuff tastes
ever so mystical,
herbal,
and sexy.
A customer told us
as we paid
that she
liked our
shirts.
We thanked her
and then she told us
she wasn’t R Kelly,
which was somewhat non-sequitur,
but we laughed
and went
home
and soon there
after
went to
sleep,
went to
Sunday,
dropped out of
the crazy world of living
into
the crazy world of slumber.