Coney Island Baby

B’s all Buddhist chanting, and planning for a second life which she will never see. She chants for reason, clarity, and the loving understanding of others, but she’s probably just finding a stillness in the somewhat self-imposed tornado of earlier life. She says things like “I would love to write an adult porno story”, and years ago when told of our mutual friend SL, the one whose hands she misses, and the fact that I, by proxy, caused her marriage to end (simply by an introduction to someone I had no interest in bedding anymore, if I ever had, and someone who I knew would never make the long haul with her either, but he was useless, and I found his one function, and put him to work it seems…), she would just make this deliciously excited face and say repeatedly “scandalous”! She is all for inner peace, washing out the toxicity with your own powers, and success in the world, as herself, but won’t hesitate to tell me to not cut my long hair, for reasons such as: “no…..for your wedding night!” (5 years ago), “noooo, the men love it” (2.5 years ago) and “when you work on clients (to my unspecified but wholly un-scandalous future profession), you can keep it in a long braid and let it sweep up and down their back as you work”.

She had no qualms, when you put the questions to her right and opened up her past tirades. No more happy hours for her. On a most infamous night, she started after work –at happy hour- and kept going until 10pm at least. Feels like a whole day has passed in those hours of hard drinking sometimes. When the Happy Hour is about to conclude, you order 3 drinks at the special price so you can keep the live wire sparking in your empty stomach as long as your mascara can hold out. And, did she ever wear it. Great Lash, the cheap drug store shit which was “all there was”, and thick, and clumped and out there. Five inch heels, “a few hundred pounds lighter” and a big Afro and disco era dress leading her way. She was ripped, as she said, along with her cousin who was out drinking with her. Unbinding her book messily, quickly, too many stitches at a time. She had to pee, finally, and had her tall heels in her right hand. No ladies room. Just a men’s room. So messy and drunk, she could only do what any good thinking drunkardess would – step barefoot, quietly into the men’s room, and look around. The stall doors were shut, causing some mild trepidation, and the urinals just taking up the space, one had burst with water like a bidet for men gone haywire in the corner of the floor. She stayed away from that great fountain, and noticed a drain in the middle of the floor. So, without much thought, she hiked up her dress and squatted down as far as she could. About halfway through, one stall door started to sway open – she was mortified, but also too drunk to stop (her first time with Captain Tanqueray) or move. A homeless man was sitting on the toilet in that stall, wearing black garbage bags as clothing – but not only that. Do you know, he had cut fucking fringes into it, like a high fashion motherfucker? And she couldn’t move. She couldn’t stop that steady stream of gin piss streaming out of her. She Could scream though. And she did, but the thing was, the homeless man in the stall, right in front of her face, he screamed too. Right in her face. In the middle of this screaming match came a cop. He must have laughed his law enforcing ass off. She had to explain to him in so many attempts at words that there had not been a ladies room. In hearing her story, I’m pretty sure she was mistaken. When is there ever Not a ladies room?

The other main tale told was on the night which was “the beginning of the end of my marriage”. This one made the first look terribly humane, and safe. Same situation, same drinking partner – she was so unbound yet again, that on the train home to Coney Island, she sat herself down next to a miniature sized Hispanic man of unknown origin – after sweeping some papers off the seat and down to the ground. She, with her long lashes and big Afro, curled up next to him, laying her head in his tiny lap and sleeping like a baby until she felt a tap-tap on her…shoulder, I’m presuming. He told her, in an accented and soft voice that this was the last stop, and he couldn’t get up in all that time, because she had formed such a tight grip onto his legs while she slept. She stumbled down the platform, her husband waiting for her after her drinking partner had told him she was in a messy state. He said he was scared at what the end result was, so he left the car home. She put those five inch heels right back on, and stumbled delicately home and away from him. She tells me she could walk on ice in those heels. Over subway grates? Tippy toed, like a ballerina. Even when drunk? But of course, you always remember to, it’s in your soul. On that night, she managed to get home and undressed and into bed, passing out again. Her husband comes home, and rolls up that blanket and sheet combination and does nothing other than tries to smother her in her sleep. She tells this unaffected, and almost with the chagrin of someone who knows full well that’s what she deserved. Unsuccessful, and after two weeks of silence, he tells her what a mess she was, and that her drinking partner had told him that she was laying all over this man on the train. She neglected to mention the dead asleep part. He remembered and noted that her mascara was all over her face, and her Afro was all flat on one side – the picture it must have made. To top it all off, she had just given birth and had a one month old at home. The pump and run technique was utilized with all success, depending on your idea of success.

So ended that era, and probably one or two of the main reasons why she talks of drinking, tying one on, cocktails, like one would talk of a honeymoon in Hawaii – with absolute wistfulness, nostalgia, the sort that brings a sparkle to your eye each and every time you relive it all. Now, she sits in her quiet place, alone and padded by a lot more of her than she ran around with before, chanting and hoping for clearer days, and giving into that selfless still beam of something greater, which she can chase with equal abandon, while at home, insulated, safe – but betwixt and between that incense of myrrh, wafting around the bend from that new leaf she’s turned, the corner of her quiet mouth is always cracked upwards a bit – looking through the smoke and mirrors for her high heeled shoes, and turning into and away from a mischievous half-smile.

~ M. Lucia