In the Summer of Infinite Horrors (the one of '06) my friend Kevin ended up staying on the couch (the back seat of a passenger van that was found on the sidewalk and brought indoors as furniture) and he and I spent the summer in mostly miserable circumstances due to job problems, housing problems and other problems. However, we are troopers and we had a ball. I was paying too much rent to live in a house in the mosquito-infested neighborhood of Gowanus in Brooklyn down by the canal. The house was owned by my then-girlfriend's famous artist-friend. My then-girlfriend was away living it up in France for the summer and I was stuck in that house with no AC and lots of heat and feeling sort of confined all around. Kevin had recently found some folks smoking crack for breakfast in the kitchen of his home and, showing his typical good judgment, bailed out of there. I didn't mind at all that he was around for a while and it was nice having him around.
He and I barbecued with regularity, played music real loud in the basement with Ryan, and we hung the gigantic American flag in the living room next to the van-couch where it took up the entire wall. A lot of cigarettes were rolled and smoked and cheap beer consumed as ailments were nursed and then replaced with other ailments. The soundtrack of the summer was only the saddest of country music as our weary hearts could not identify with the more festive genres. To further combat the loneliness I adopted a cat that we found on the street and Kevin showed me how to take care of it and comb out its fleas.
And yet some good times were to be had. Me, Kevin, Ryan and Gordon went to upstate NY as we had been asked to be the musical entertainment of the Morris Family's Second Annual Pig Roast. We got up there on Friday around midnight and me and the boys shared a great evening of whiskey drinking and guitar playing up in the gazebo on the hill all by ourselves as the respectable people slept down in the house. The songs of the many Georges and Hanks and of Merle were plucked from the guitar and glissandoed from the dobro as we sang our little miserable hearts out. We did this into the wee hours before becoming inspired by the rising sun to take Ryan's Cadillac into town and hit the diner as it opened up on Saturday morning. Excellent diner fare was had all around and the peanut butter pie was so good that we bought the whole thing and brought it back with us. We avoided all local authorities there and back and then hopped into the pool and had a good swim as the rest of the guests were waking up from their country slumber.
The pig got roasted and we ate a whole bunch of it. Still more beer was consumed. The horseshoe tournament was entered and I and Gordon took home first place trophies. It was a great weekend. The music was played at some point and we managed to brutalize every tune we knew. And yet we were warmly and graciously received. Those few days will be forever remembered by me as being some of the greatest, and I am aware that I am blessed to have been able to have had such great friends around me to share it all with.
Back at the house in Brooklyn, the misery sort of leveled off as the heat rose. Not too much else could really go too wrong that summer and as such I was able to take it all in stride. You could get a 22 ounce Coors for 1.25 up by the projects on 3rd Avenue and so I'd sit out on the stoop and just soak it all up. The block was forever being developed as yuppies tried to build out the homes they'd bought and turn them into something luxurious that they were never truly capable of becoming.
Cheap laborers from all over the globe could be found on the block doing shoddy work that would have to be redone sooner rather that later. It seemed like there was always some fiasco being meticulously planned by an amateur foreman. Tools were routinely used outside of their typical scope; hammers were used to beat a door into the wall because they didn't set the jamb right in the first place and the whole frame swelled up as it got hot and humid. It was pretty much endless.
One morning me and Kevin were outside looking at all the stray cats or something and down the block we hear a frantic voice with an Indian accent belting out an order to someone on the work site. "José! Bring Saw!" he bellowed. And then he let it out again. Now, we never saw José or the saw being brought or what on earth this saw was supposed to do to but the image in our minds was certainly preposterous. Perhaps a tire needed to be changed or some electrical work needed fine tuning. But the words "bring saw" will forever be able to rouse a smile between the two of us. You reallly had to be there, and even then you really needed the context of the Summer of Infinite Horrors to really drive the madness home. This is what had become of our lives.
Eventually Kevin found a room in an apartment up in Williamsburg. The barbecues ceased as a community event and I waited around for the then-girlfriend to come home and become my ex-girlfriend thus capping off the summer and leaving me to live out my wretchedness in solitude and peace.
Clearly it's all worked out okay, and the real point of all this is that I am happy to have such great friends. I've got 'em all over the place now and they're each immensely important to me. I hopped off the Appalachian trail a few weeks ago and ended up in NYC for a week and a half and was able to stay with a friend in her apartment, and now I'm in Seattle staying with another friend. Some day I hope to be able to find a way to pay them all back for all the good stuff they've done for me.
This summer is going great so far, incidentally, and if there's any saw-bringing I am confident that it will be used in a conventional way or else as a musical instrument.
Later On,
Jonathan
