Flushing down our differences

The Observer walked into Kelly’s Pub beneath the rattle and screech of the 7 line. An unimpressive dive bar with too many televisions came into focus as The Observer’s eyes adjusted from the bright afternoon sun to the dank confines of the bar.

Finding a seat and a cold beer The Observer began to note the assembled residents of Queens. In one corner were a half dozen Chinese men playing Mah Jong and talking loudly in Mandarin. Mandarin that was likely polite exchanges but sounded like a conversational cock fight to The Observer’s untrained ears. Further down the bar was the old Irish lady in her Sunday church clothes nursing a pint of Guiness. Beside her a drunken Chinese man who was sharing a racing form with a heavy set white guy in a NY Rangers jacket. They both stared laconically at the returns from Belmont and a hockey game beaming down from televisions above the bar. Next to The Observer was a table of men watching soccer. A Jamaican, an Indian and a Mexican. They ate chicken wings and chatted amiably in the way old acquaintances do.

They asked if The Observer would like some wings. The Observer accepted and the Indian guy brought a full plate from the grill smoking in the outside area where they kept the bulging black plastic bags of garbage. The Observer thanked him with a smile.

She appeared from the street. She hugged almost everyone in the bar as she made her way to a stool seemingly reserved for her ample rump. The Observer got the impression this wasn’t her first drink of the day. Her clothes were too tight and revealing for a woman who looked like she had been rode hard and put away wet. There were many nights spent in the back seat of a Dodge in the disco era past of this creature. Her voice was like a cheese grater run over piano strings. She flirted liberally with anything wearing pants.

Suddenly the fat man in the Rangers jacket yelled “shit!”. The Rangers just lost their playoff game. His inibriated Chinese compatriot looked up at the TV and joined in with an exclamation in his native tongue; “Mung Waa!” with great distress. The Observer made a cultural stereotype assumption; not a hockey fan, but a betting fan.

Local team loss aside, this was a happy place. A place where elbows of all flavors rubbed. A place where the diaspora of the world made its boozy home. Only in New York. Particularly in Flushing, Queens.

Ghettofabulous!

As The Observer was exiting the Harlem DMV he stood for a minute amidst the swirling cloud of plastic bags and candy wrappers. Before The Observer was a latina woman pushing a girl in a stroller. She stopped and pulled out her cigarettes and bent over to use the back of the stroller as a windbreak as she lit her Newport. Bending over pulled up the back of her quilted shiny black warm up jacket. Her lower back made a fleshy appearance and tattooed on that light brown canvas were the words “Fuck Me” and then another word below that looked like it might have begun with a capital “H” but was obscured by the straining waistband of her too tight acid washed jeans.

This got The Observer thinking about what that other word might be. Of course, the obvious ones popped into The Observer’s mind: “Here” or more likely “Hard”. The Observer wondered if it might be something more poetic like “Heroically”. A little piece of Lombardiesque encouragement to her baby daddy, or the baby daddy’s brother, or the cable guy or just about anyone. The Observer then wondered if this woman ever went to the beach in a two piece. And if she did was the attention and comments she would most certainly earn be welcome or a shameful reminder of a wicked night of drinking and poor judgement. And if that little girl in the stroller would ever see this tattoo and what might her future be growing up in an apartment filled with mentholated smoke and a slutty mother.

Living the dream in New York.

Since The Observer moved into this building there has always been the slight odor of dirty kitty litter by the mailboxes in the lobby. The smell never escaped the bounds of that wing of the lobby, never got it’s tentacles beyond the elevator. Today the smell permeated the hallways. As The Observer opened his 4th floor apartment door it sucker punched him in the nose. Descending the stairs this odor picked up force like a malodorous hurricane bumping up a strength category with each floor. By the time The Observer hit the lobby it practically knocked him down. It was coming from one of the apartments across from The Observer’s mailbox. The apartment door was wide open.

Seems someone in the 2 bedroom apartment off the lobby had died. The super and some Mexican minions were clearing the apartment out, they had removed the beds and dressers and the couch but they hadn’t gotten to the black plastic bag phase so most of the personal items remained. The Observer poked his head into the apartment, hand over nose and mouth. The kitchen was littered with empty Fancy Feast tins. Scores upon scores of them. They filled the sink. The bedroom had dozens of empty liquor bottles. No favorite brand or flavor, the inhabitant liked every thing from expensive Bombay gin to rot gut tequila. And the floors were caked in cat shit. You’d see a full turd every 2 or 3 feet but you also could see where it had been mushed into the parquet floors. The Observer didn’t see a litter box, but that doesn’t mean the suffering porters hadn’t removed it. Even though every window and door to this apartment was open to full hilt the smell was like a blanket. How someone lived in that stifling gas chamber The Observer has no idea.