AUGUST 9, 1979
Over a week ago my hillbilly girlfriend and I watched television at our friend’s Kim, duplex. We returned to my room of Ezast 11th Street around midnight. The SRO’s manager knocked on the door, asking, “Mr. Smith, are you moving tomorrow? Check-out is 11.”
“Yes, I’m leaving, but now so leave me alone.”
“11 on the nose or it’s another week and you lose your security.”
“Like you’re going to give it to me.”
He walked away and I laid my head on the pillow.
“You think you’ll get that money,” asked Alice. We had little cash left after paying two month’s rent for our new East Village apartment.
“I doubt it.” I hadn’t read the renal contract’s’s fine print.
“Damn.”
I didn’t really care. I wanted out of there.”
AUGUST 9, 2021
On Friday NYU Hospital announced my before noon. I had been wearing the ‘johnny’ four days and hadn’t bathed in that time either. The pervious year’s Covid had stripped away my senses of smell and taste. The hospital had me on a bland broth and plain yogurt diet, not really testing my tongue’s taste receptors, but my body didn’t smell filthy and I recalled Van Halen’s line in too hot for teacher,” Funny, I don’t smell dirty.”
The SRO was on West 11th Street across from the building blown up by the Weathermen in 1970 killing two of the revolutionaries. I have always blamed the FBI for supplying the bomb-makers with a hot explosive, wrapping up a loose end for Richard Nixon’s Silent Majority.
The SRO had a shared bathroom in the hallway. The tiles were grimy with human dirt. I always wore flip-flops in the shower and tried not to touch any other surfaces. Alice and I were moving to a tenement apartment with a bathtub in the kitchen. A luxury in comparison to the SRO.
I went into hospital bathroom and washed my face and privates with a cloth. The ‘johnny’ fell to the floor and I changed into clean clothes. I had no idea how hot it was outside and checked with my phone.
84F was livable.
At 11:45 the attending doctor signed me out and I rode the elevator to the ground floor, got some medicine from the Rx, and hit the street. Every face belonged to a stranger. Millions of them in this city and only a few hundred people you know as best as you can know anyone in a city this large. I called Dave Henderson and he invited me to lunch. I was feeling fit after my hospital stay and agreed to meet at an Italian restaurant in Williamsburg.
Montesacro.
There wasn’t much on the menu to appease my hunger according to the harsh strictures of my diet, but it was good to speak to Dave, who will be leaving for Kaiserlauten, Germany to put up a sculpture show with his brother, Doug.
I wish I could have gone with him, except I’m hooked to New York for at least months for treatment. At least I have plenty of room at 387 and it’s not the SRO room.
Life is life.
THE SEA IS A BIG GREEN LENS by David and Doug Henderson
