04.30.24
My hair is getting longer. It almost sits in a way I want. I tie the top half up and cover it with my Mets hat, the older one with the nicer stitching, pulled low, as I don’t have any headphones in to close me off to passersby. I sit behind a tree on the back patio of the Chipped Cup on Broadway between 148th and 149th. I sip a hot caramel skim latte that I can’t afford and read sixty or so pages of Patti Smith’s Just Kids, one of my favorites, and one of my mom’s favorites. I read slowly and methodically, the only way I really know how.
I love this book. It is so mournful and joyous. It aches — I love her writing, I love her sentences and visuals. I text Saraphina about it. She downloads the author-narrated audiobook and sends me a photo of a new outfit.
My latte long drained, I tip back one last freezing cold sip from its dregs. It’s chilly outside but I want to finish my chapter. I warm my hands on my collarbones as I pass the two-thirds mark of the book, which I only picked up a few days ago — record pacing for me.
I put my AirPods in, the right one full of static and the left one crackly, and put on a playlist I made the around the first time I read Just Kids, peppered with songs and artists mentioned in the book and others that were in my ether at the time — “No Expectations” by the Rolling Stones because Michael told me that summer that it was his favorite by them; “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” by Carole King because I saw a video of a boy I had a crush on covering it online; “Drumset” by Fiona Apple because Fetch the Bolt Cutters had just come out; “Grace is Gone” by Dave Matthews Band because I can’t remember why, but I’m not going to fight it. We were doing reshoots for the movie then, my first venture into the city amid Coronavirus after a few months confined to my parents’ house upstate. We’d meet by the Thunderbolt at Coney Island in the early mornings, fishing our dirty, brightly-colored costumes out of an old suitcase and wearing cloth masks because we were still doing that at the time. It was a good time to be at the boardwalk — bright but still cool, the boardwalk crowds yet arrived, with only sparse joggers to dodge. I would look out at the ocean, marveling, like Patti Smith writes, that you can take the subway to the beach. I’d think of the photo of her and Robert Mapplethorpe here in the late sixties, observe the amusement park and stalls’ modest modernizations futilely attempting to usurp its inherent grime and old-school nature. I love it down there. I haven’t been in a long time.
I walk up Broadway to catch the A train at 168th, cooed by Janis Joplin and Otis Redding and Land of Talk and Bob Dylan and Phoebe Bridgers, passing through the neighborhood where I used to live, just north of where I now babysit in the mornings. I pass by the subway stop I used to enter to go to work, the Bank of America where I used to take cash out, the Planet Fitness I was a member of but hardly went to, my old grocery store that’s bigger and better than my current one. I fiddle with my AirPods case in the pocket of my Lindsay Weir coat — an oversized army-looking jacket I procured from the Salvation Army in college. I often think of getting rid of it, as it’s pretty tattered and has definitely seen better days, but every time I try it on for what I think is the last time, I still think it suits me. Ripped lining, frayed cuffs, perfect slouch.
I rub my eyes because I have no makeup on, my body adjusting to the temperature now that I’m moving. I worry about sweating because I did wash my hair last night, but almost everything I’m wearing is dirty anways. I have a mountain of laundry to do when I get home. “Coney Island Baby” rattles in my ears as I descend into the subway station, catching an Uptown A as the doors are closing: you’re my pretty little lady, I love you tenderly…As long as there is sand, and as long as there’s the sea, you’ll be my Coney Island baby.
