Tag Archives: Punk Stories

But there’s…

15 Jul

There’s never been anything that’s ever been easy.

I just walk around, bike, try to talk to people, and try to make new friends. I bring my dog wherever I go, it’s just that this moving around isn’t easy. I miss certain things, I think I miss the friends I made – I know I miss the beach. I use to know the one pizza place I liked the most, but it’s certainly far away now. I tell people here, strangers that I do know a good pizzeria, but it’s not here in Reston, Virginia. Nope. No, it’s in New Jersey. Then I think about my home, the one in Raleigh. I wonder how long it will be before I move back there. Or will I ever? Really. Seriously. Why am I keeping this house? Will I ever move back to Raleigh, North Carolina? Oh, I don’t know. There’s so much…

I used to live in Colorado – don’t know a soul from there – a long time ago. I must’ve been 18 when I hitchhiked out there, lived there for a summer. I fell in love with a boy there, or I should say, he fell for me and I just went along. Never saw him when I returned to New York. In 2001, a visit to Vermont turned into a move to finish my last semester in college. I took away one friend from there who I still speak with – well, kind of – we ‘talk’ on Facebook. In 2007, Atlanta was a completely bad move – I moved there for a contract, thought it was going to be great. Boy, ha! What a joke that was. Get a load of this: in the course of six weeks I was robbed 3 times. Yeah, no kidding. But you know, I took away one friend from there who helped me out of a jam, and I still speak with her on occasion, not a lot, but that’s okay. Look at these towns: Brooklyn, Uniondale, Long Island, Albany, Schenectady, New Rochelle, New York, Stockton, New Jersey, and Trenton. Now I’m in Reston, Virginia. I’m going to tell you why I move so much, but first I want to tell you this:

I was watching this reality show about Long Islanders, how they can’t make it now, how they lost their jobs, how their homes are facing foreclosure. The show profiled these once all working people, how they use to pay their bills, how they use to have a lifestyle where they saw their goals for retirement and the foundation for getting there, and, unbelievably, all three couples were now lost financially on Long Island. Come to think of it, I think that was the name of the show. And Long Island’s not cheap, I mean you have to have money to live there – the taxes are crazy. People there have weird-ass accents.

I moved out of Long Island when I was twenty-nine. I knew the place was gonna’ get crazy. It was nice in the 1960s, 70s, even 80s, but then it got crowded, too crowded for me, so I moved 160 miles north of there and landed in Albany.

This friend of mine just passed away. She was 83. She lived in Albany in the same house since, I don’t know, I want to say at least 50 years. Fifty years! Fifty years in one house. Never had a foreclosure.

Now, personally, I would die. There is no way I could live in the same place that long. Granted, I don’t have kids, and, sure, children make you grounded because of school, friends and friends of theirs; you don’t want to upset the routine they’re in and so on. I get it. But I am a lesbian and I’m a single lesbian and because I am, I can move around and pretty much move, and that’s what I do.

And let me tell you why I love to move: there are so many places and people to see. There’s a completely different culture out here. Take the accents, take the Long Island accent – NO ONE speaks like that in any other part of New York. It’s strictly a Long Island Accent. Albany people don’t sound like Long Islanders and people from New Jersey sound nothing like New Yorkers. I could go on and on about the accents, but you’re getting the picture.

I love to move because, I have to work, and I’m older, and I don’t want to be without work while I’m still young enough to work, and not quite old enough to retire. I get bored easily. Yes, and this is a big one. Last winter I was sitting outside smoking a cigarette, it was right after the New Year, and all of a sudden, after glimpsing the white snow, cresting on a pine bough, I saw my stretched out dog through the pane glass, and said, “it’s time to go.” I guess those are the right words, well, they’re familiar, that’s for certain.

When I lost my last contract – and I did so damn well, I thought they would offer me a full-time gig but they didn’t. I was like, “Fuck it.” I’m moving again. It came as a surprise to everyone. I just got so sick of so much.  Being let go again. What the fuck? Talk about silent age discrimination. It sucks and it’s alive and well. But like I said, I get bored easily. But one thing I knew, one thing I had going for me was that, even through all my adventuring, I knew my word was good, that I was honorable. I knew that if the corporate sector didn’t appreciate my background, I’d pull out my ace in the sleeve – saving it for my older years, so to speak, and that was when I decided to apply for a Secret Clearance job with the government. The government liked that I never cheated on the government and didn’t have a rap sheet.

I’m there five months, right, and guess what I told my boss? I’m like sitting in his office, and he’s giving me my 3 month review (which I did very well; I got a 3% raise – hey it’s something), and I say to him, “You know, I’d be open for relocation.”

There are just no words, there’s only action for me. Because there’s so much more to do.

I think about those people from the reality show, those people on Long Island who are sinking – they don’t want to move. I think if they moved, opened up their mileage and scope for looking for a job – they could keep their house – rent it out, but move around in order to survive. In the olden days people moved all their shit in covered wagons, leaving the rocky roads of Maine, for example, forging into wild, unchartered land because they heard about the California Gold Rush. Americans have always been pioneering. I could go on about how the lazy counter of time can be a killer when you’re looking for work and not finding anything – I’ve been there, I know the trouble, but nothing’s ever been easy.

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The Fruits of Labor – Paulie and the Blueberry Letter Part 1

10 Dec

Paulie Arcevita is a nineteen year-old out of Brooklyn, a rogue and a ruffian, he got chops from the “school of hard knocks.”  Cut fresh and edgy, with an attitude as sharp as a butcher’s knife, he’s still got a heart of gold under that metallic hard surface. Everything Paulie does he does the hard way.

***

Every time I walk somewhere I look at the ground, but there is no money on the ground. I know for a fact people lose money, but I walk everywhere and I never see any lost money – and forget about a wallet. Man, how I’d love to see a wallet with some money. Or a bag with some money. I’d be crazy with excitement if I ever found a bag of money.

I’m walking like I do on some avenue that’s kind of dirty with houses that don’t turn on their lights at night and during the day their blinds are shut. They gotta’ keep it out, you know. I know behind those blinds is some kind of dysfunctional shit going on. People who leave the door open, lights on, they seem more normal.

Several months, you know, after this, like what I’m telling you, I’m walking – again – and one day, I’m walking, right, and I pass near a forgotten lot and these bushes are enormous like no one, and I mean no one –  has ever trimmed them or taken care of them in any way, right. So in the bushes is a bag. The bag is small and it’s ripped just a little so I pick it up. The rip in the bag reveals a little piece of paper with a paisley design and, at its end, where the white creamy border is, is curled just a little so you know it’s packed tightly. I’m thinking, Oh, Jesus, it’s money, Oh, Jesus, it’s money!  My balls are itching with excitement. I ignore the marsh-like mud that creamed one of my boots, and I grab the bag. I’m excited and I wipe the mud off my boot on the back of my other leg and get my jean leg dirty, but I don’t care. So I’m holding this bag and then all of a sudden I feel angst! Now I feel kind of criminal and figure it’s normal and I begin to walk with the bag detouring my original destination. I go behind the bakery and sit way back behind the garbage and I open the bag. Sure enough, there’s a roll of twenty dollar bills wrapped in a rubber band and a deposit slip for $2500.00. The address on the deposit slip reads “Van Vranken Avenue Garage.”

I keep the money in the bag and take out two twenties. I go into the local DVD store – one still left that hasn’t been hit by Netflix and Blockbuster. Don’t ask me how this guy is still making it.  Anyway, I’m taking my time, spinning through the store, and I feel like the clerk is rushing me.  He knows me as a customer who usually goes to the back room where all the porn is and where the kids aren’t aloud in.  Today he’s surprised when I pull out cash and pay for two movies instead of renting them.

At the counter he says to me, “Popcorn?” like he knows I always take the popcorn, and I could see he’s wondering how come I didn’t get no popcorn for free.

“Because, man,” I wanted to say, “I don’t eat your lousy heat lamp popcorn no more. Only when I got these shit-ass movies for rent did I want your heat-lamp popcorn because I felt like that was part of the deal. But now, now, I’ve got no deals to make with anybody because I’ve got money on me!” But I don’t say anything, no. I just tell him, “No, thanks.”

Then I pass George the mechanic. He hasn’t seen me in a while. I never pass that way, that street, whatever way you want to say it. And I like George and all, and him and I get along good and he’s a good mechanic. He’s surprised to see me and we shake hands.

“Man,” he says after I hand him the money I owed him from, God knows how long ago. “What? Did you hit the lotto, Paul?” he tells me.

George got a greasy face and greasy hands and grease under his fingernails.  I like George, but George knows a lot of people, and he’ll stand around in his shop for hours talking about people and I’ll probably be one of them. I don’t need that.  George fixed my car almost a year ago right before I got hit with a DUI and lost my license. Then I had to park my car and that’s when I owed George money.  “No, George. I’m working now, and I’m doing good. I didn’t hit no Lotto.”  That’s what I told him.

It was good to pay off George.  It was an old debt – $150.00 bucks.  Now I can walk on this street again.  When I said goodbye to George he was standing under the shop’s sign: Van Vranken Avenue Garage.

This one guy I know parked his Miata in a garage and somebody broke into the garage and stole his freakin’ hard top. That’s lousy. So even though my car’s in a garage and I can’t drive it for another three months –  and it kills me, because it’s gonna’ be summer soon and I won’t get to the beach, and I won’t get to show up for softball practice because the park is way out of the way, and I’m gonna’ have to hoof it everywhere, even with this freakin’ money – and me, like a jerk, gives it to the video guy, and then back to George.  Shit man, what am I gonna’ do? What if George catches on? Holy shit. I’m gonna’ be in so much freakin’ trouble it’s not funny.

So I keep walking and I know I got to be home. I got to feel safe. I feel uptight. I want to watch the movies. The bus is coming, that’s good. I get on the bus, and I could tell it’s a new driver but I can’t tell if this driver is a man or a woman. The black girls are sitting way in the back. The same girls – I’ve seen them before; they go up to the community college and take the bus pretty regularly. The three of them, here they go, whenever they see, they start singing.

© Terry Rachel, 2011

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