From
Visions of Garleyville
Tales
from the Port Authority Men’s Room
Hank and I passed through the Port Authority
building in New York as a matter of habit as we came and went to Greenwich
Village. If other ways existed in and out of Manhattan, we didn't know about
them, or thought them too inconvenient. For us, getting to New York meant
hopping on one of three buses from Paterson, the number 50, the number 53 or
the number 40. Each went to New York via a different Route. The number 50 and
53 taking the more northerly route through Paterson, into East Paterson, and
then along Route 46, turning south when they reached the Palisades. From the
window, we wove down towards the Lincoln Tunnel through West New York and
Weehawken, the Hudson River glittering with the reflection of the New York
Skyline to our left. The number 40 got to Manhattan more quickly, doing all its
weaving through Paterson, Clifton and Passaic before finding its way onto Route
3, and then straight from there to the tunnel.
All three buses came in through the Lincoln
tunnel, up the circular ramps and into the Port Authority, leaving us in the
fume-polluted upper stories where we scampered for stairs down to the upper
concourse, and from this to the lower concourse, and eventually to the street.
The Port Authority lacked dignity in those days, half the size it is today, an
dingy, with tiles stained and floors sticky, and sense of constant gloom. The
only thing I liked about the place was its location and the quarter lockers
that allowed me to store things in if I didn't want to carry books or clothing
around the Village with me.
Everything else about the building scared me.
Over the years, it served as home for the
street's wandering populations, drunk people, mentally ill people, people who
hadn't bathed in months. You could smell them when you emerged into the upper
concourse, that smell of humanity mingled with pizza, men's and women's
cologne, cigarette smoke and coffee, hitting you in the face, making you want
to hold your breath as you rushed for an exit.
Oddly enough, I felt better during rush hour,
when people crowded through the concourse shoulder to shoulder, and rode up and
down the escalator so packed in those behind nearly knocked those people off in
front when the moving stairway reached the end. The crowds implied a sense of
safety, though Hank and I both knew this was an illusion. The same dark shapes
that haunted the place on off hours, haunted the place during rush hours, too.
But we couldn't see them, and they couldn't stare at us the way they did when
the crowds thinned. I often dreaded the
march in or out of Manhattan, fearing that the characters who stared would take
us for victims. None ever did, at least, not while we were together. I guess,
these characters lacked courage enough to attack any two people, even hippies.
The same could not be said when Hank came alone -- and later, he told me about
his experience visiting the Port Authority bathroom on the upper concourse.
At the best of times, I found going to the
toilet there impossible, often choosing to hold in a piss for the whole hour
ride home to New Jersey rather than cross that dark threshold. At the worst
times, when I knew I couldn't hold it, I crossed over with great trepidation.
But at no time, and no matter how desperately I had to peeve, would I have gone
into that bathroom alone. How Hank managed it for so long without trouble, I
never understood, though knew something would happen sooner or later. So his
initial tale about the mugging, did not take me by surprise, only that he had
survived it.
"I really had to go bad," he said.
"I had to go when I got on the bus in Paterson, and should have stopped
over a city hall, but I didn't want to wait an hour for another bus, so I held
it, figuring the number 40 would get me into Manhattan quick enough so I could
scoot down to the Village and pee there. And wouldn't you know, some idiot in a
station wagon tried to get through a red light at Madison Avenue where a milk
truck hit the side, crushed in it like a dented can. No one was hurt, but the
drive couldn't get his legs out from under the steering wheel so the cops
couldn't tow the car until the fire department came to cut him out. Everybody
in the bus stared, I stared, too, though I kept wondered if that guy felt as
bad as I did and whether or not he had to take a pee, too.
"It took over an hour just to get the
poor fellow out, cutting and slicing metal, blue sparks flying all over the
place. I thought they would set something on fire before they got him free.
Then, it took them another half hour to haul everything out of the way, and by
that time, traffic was so bad, we didn't even get to Route 3 for another twenty
minutes. My kidneys felt like shit. I couldn't even sit straight in the chair,
leaning forward, moaning, the old lady in the seat across from me, thinking I
was some kind of pervert. She kept staring out her window mumbling about never
taking the number 40 again.
"
They're all weirdoes on this route,' she said over and over. "I wanted to pat her shoulder and tell
her I only had to go to the bathroom, but I was afraid I'd give her a heart
attack, or pee in my pants trying to get out of my seat. God only knew what
might happen when we finally got to New York where I actually had to climb off
the bus. I saw myself leaving a wet trail behind me, confirming that old lady's
worst fears, and getting the driver pissed enough not to let me back on the bus
the next time he saw me. You know how all those rivers are.
"Anyway, I didn't feel any better seeing
the backup at the Lincoln Tunnel, cars lined completely up the helix right into
Weehawken. I nearly begged the driver to let me off so I could pee under a
bridge. Inch by inch we crawled down towards the toll booths, and moment by
moment I thought my kidneys would burst. Finally, after the toll booth, the bus
picked up speed again and sped through the tunnel without further delay, but by
that time I knew I wouldn't last though a subway ride to the Village. The
vibrations alone would bring forth a yellow stream, and there, people wouldn't
just look at me strangely, they'd locked me up. Belleview's full of paints
peeing people, you know.
"When the bus stop, I leaped off first,
tearing down the concrete stairs, not even bothering with the escalators fifty
feet further. I jumped four steps down at a time, nearly peeing with each
impact, but kept up anyway until I hit the upper concourse then ran through the
crowd towards the bathrooms. I didn't even look at who was standing outside,
though I was vaguely aware of someone there. By the time, I got inside, I had
my zipper out and my penis out and was peeing towards the urinal, rather than into
it, the stream so steady at first, it hit the target despite the distance. It
felt so good I stood there longer than I needed, and then, as I zipped up and
flushed, I noticed two men standing on either side of me.
"You know how they look, but I noticed
the smell first. Neither one had taken a bath in a very, very long time, and
when they spoke, they sounded high or drunk.
" You got any money?' the smaller of the two asked. He had uncombed
black hair that hung into his eyes and a scruffy kind of beard full of crumbs
of something. But he spoke with a lisp and I noticed a scar that cut right
through both of his lips on an angle, leave a gap in his top lip through which
I could see his teeth.
"
Sorry,' I said, and moved across the room to the sink, watching them in
the dirty mirror as they followed, apparently annoyed.
"
Sure, you got money,' the larger of the two said. What are you doing here if you don't have
money?'
"
Going to the bathroom,' I said, sounding flip, I know, but I didn't mean
to sound that way. I was so scared that if they had approached me before I'd
reached the toilet, my pants would have certainly needed to dry. I turned on
the water and washed my hands, feeling dirty from being so close to these
two."
At best of times, Hank lacked any aspect of
macho. When we worked in the theater together, gangs of kids picked his station
specifically because he seemed least likely to stop them, his chest so concave
and his arms so thin, one good punch might have snapped him in two. At this stage
of life, he had the added disadvantage of looking the part of a hippie with
long stringy hair hanging down into his eyes, and John Lennon glasses that gave
him a haunted appearance. "The big
one clutched my shirt," Hank said. "I wanted to protest. It was my
favorite, the purple nehru I had bought after seeing Donovan, but I was scared
-- so scared, I actually did pee in my pants. I gave them all the money I had
and panhandled downtown later for bus fare home."
**********
Years later, I had the opportunity to hear Hank tell
that story again while sitting in the Mountain Side Inn, one of those ugly
little pick up joints the town of Wayne constantly wanted to close down, where
one small flashing red light hung above a six by six foot section of dance
floor in its tribute to the ongoing disco fever. Hank rented a seat in the far corner along
the oval where he sat everyday for an hour or two as a stop over from his job
in Pinebrook. While his hair still hung over his eyes, he had shed the beads,
sandals and nehru for a more Western look, fry boots and blue jeans and a
checkerboard shirt buttoned down the front. Only occasionally did he play
Donovan on the jukebox, preferring bands like Credence Clear Water or Crosby,
Stills, Young & Nash. He smoked no dope, took no acid, just sucked on his
daily dose of beer, two or three a night before weaving his way home.
Hank spent a
great deal of time recalling for the disco generation tales of his psychedelic
youth, of life at the Renaissance Switch Board with Abbie Hoffman, or three day
trip to Woodstock at which he caught pneumonia. One of his favorite tales,
however, involved his getting mugged in the Port Authority -- which although
had undergone a face lift and a cleaning out, still stirred up dread in those
traveling to it from New Jersey with images of sprawled stinking bodies and out
thrust begging hands.
New York, in our
minds, had changed for the worst. Love and peace had faded into disco and
glitter rock. Junkies proliferated in such vast numbers, people no longer used
dark streets or wandered into Central Park at night. The East Village grew dark
and grim, full of strangely haunted characters with sunken eyes. Hank no longer
traveled to those parts, choosing instead to inhabit the pick up bars along the
upper East Side, for his weekend jaunts, though this early on, he still
preferred the bus to driving.
"I had to
take a piss from the moment the bus left Paterson. I would have used the
bathrooms behind City Hall, but the town had closed them on account of all the
junkies and whores who hung out there. Both apparently were giving people
blowjobs for money in the stalls. I thought maybe I'd get lucky enough to get a
bus with a toilet in back, but I didn't, then figured if I caught the number 40
I could get into the city and uptown in time to use the toilet at the Love Me
Do or the Come Any Time before they shifted from the dinner to the dance
crowd. "Even when some dumb fuck in
a Dodge station wagon tried to run a red light and got hit, I wasn't worried.
The dented side didn't look too bad from where I sat, and no one looked hurt,
though an hour later, we were still waiting for the cops to call the fire
department to bring the Jaws of Life, and we could hear the yelling from the
guy inside, who said if the cops didn't get him out he would have their badges
-- which might have explained why they took their time. "Then the cops took their time directing
us around the wreck, glaring at me when I gave them the finger as if they
wanted to send me to the hospital, too, without benefit of a convenient car
accident. But they already had too many other drives pissed at them to even
think about stopping the bus.
"As it was,
I nearly didn't make it to the Port Authority, let alone uptown to some crowded
East Side bar. I didn't want to use the toilet there -- and if I'd needed to
take a shit, I would have taken a cab uptown, but a piss, well, I figured I'd
be in and out. Oh boy was I wrong. I guess I was in too much of a hurry to
noticed the two queer characters near the door when I went in, their cut off
leather making them look like bikers, though later, when I got a closer look at
their bleeding, puss-bubbling arms, I recognized them as junkies.
"I got as
far as the urinal when one of those son of a bitches pulled out a knife and
pushed it against my neck.
" `Give us
your money, fucker, or I'll give you fucking shave,' said the skinnier and
uglier of the two.
"I saw my
life pass before my eyes and how that junkie would slice my throat and then my
prick, and he wouldn't just take my money, but cut up my face so my mother
wouldn't even be able to recognize me. And I had better plans than to die in
the dirtiest men's room on the planet. So I pulled out my wallet, my house
keys, my comb, and anything else I could find in my pocket and thrust them into
the junkie’s hands, and while he was trying to sort it out, I ran like
hell."
By the 1980s, punk music had replaced disco, and crack
cocaine displaced the heroin trade. New York's East Village swarmed with
twisted teens wearing orange hair and spikes through their noses. While most of
these were no worse than the hippies we knew, high school kids acting tough on
weekends away from home, a whole new class of criminal prowled the Port
Authority, something akin to characters we used to see in movies like "The
Wild Ones," only hopped up on crack and cruising for trouble. Men -- and
women -- word leather and chains, and bore tattoos of Swastikas and skulls on
their arms.
Hank largely
stayed out of New York City, even on weekends. He didn't take the bus much, but
drove in late to avoid the traffic and the crazy cabs when he did. Like many of
our contemporaries, he'd come to see New York as a place of evil, and told me
he often woke up in the middle of the night, after dreaming of such devils
attacking him. He was convinced someone someday would follow him home, beat him
up, rape his mother, or skin his dog. At
a Christmas Party he held at his house, he whispered to us about what would
happen if a gang should come after him out of the city, showing us his
collection of pistols, he had wisely purchased for self-defense. At this party,
he told some of his younger cousins about the time he had to use the Port
Authority bathroom.
"I thought
Paterson was bad when the bus from Haledon dropped me off," he said.
"That's why I didn't go to the toilet there. I kept thinking about how I'd
have to fight my way out of town hall if I used that dirty place. I thought I
could find a nice quiet restaurant somewhere in midtown Manhattan, go to the
bathroom there, then have dinner. The number 40 was always prompt, and
sometimes it even had a toilet in the back.
"But it
wasn't prompt this time and it didn't have a toilet. In fact, that dumb driver
didn't see a traffic light and slammed into the side of someone's mini-van. You
should have heard the poor other guy yelp, saying he'd just made his last
payment and lowered his insurance, and he how he was going to sue the bus
company and the bus driver for having such faulty brakes, and how he was going
to sue the city for making the light change so quick. "The guy was so upset, he got into
shouting match with the cops, who got so mad at him, that they told the fire
department to take their time cutting him out.
" `If that son of a bitch is going to sue us anyway, why make him
comfortable,' the one cop said.
"Meanwhile, I got my hands down between my legs, squeezing myself
to keep from peeing, almost thinking I should get off the bus and find an alley
-- though with what happened to me and Kenny and Passaic that time, I'd wind up
in jail or in the hospital, so I decided to wait. "By the time that bus pulled into the
port authority, I was out the door and running down the stairs, and across the
upper concourse and into the bathroom before I could notice anything. I nearly
pissed on my shoes getting it out, and stood there for a long time letting it
run into the urinal, only then notices the two guys on either side of me,
neither of whom was taking a piss. They had scars all over and their faces had
the studded look of punks. "I
thought they wanted money and was about to pull my wallet out and hand it to
them, but they just grinned at me, and said they didn't want my fucking cash,
all they wanted was a chance to take me apart, piece by piece. I could see the
NYPD sending me home in a box and my mother picking out an arm or leg before
realizing what had happened. I was still pissing when I turned towards the
bigger guy. In fact, I piss accidentally on his leg. He looked down at the
streak of wet, and then up at me, as if he couldn't believed I done it, or
believed I'd done it on purpose. He was so peeved, he couldn't speak, or aim
right for that matter when he went to punch my face. He hit the metal over the
urinal instead and let out such a howl of pain I thought the cops would charge
me for mugging him. I didn't stick around. I ran to fast I didn't even get to
close my zipper until I was on the street."
After this, Hank
and I fell out of touch. My life took me out of his, my work taking up more
time, and then my marriage made it impossible for me to attend the same bars as
he did. But when I heard illness had struck him and that the doctors did not
expect him to live, I rushed to his death bed to say good bye, as I discovered
others had.
Now Hank had
never been a robust person. Life had short changed him at birth, giving him
such a frail body he barely escaped birth alive. For many of his early years,
doctors treated him for a hole in his heart, which eventually healed. But as a
teenager, his father's horse kicked him in the stomach, an injury that would
later haunt him, and result in numerous hospital visits. I'm not sure that blow
helped kill him, but it certainly set him on a path of frailty that had Jimmy
betting seriously that Hank would not live until he was 25 -- something Hank
made a point of doing, though at 45, Hank finally succumbed to a kidney
ailment.
Seeing him again
after such a long time, I was shocked to see how small Hank looked, shrunken
with his leathery skin tight around his bones as if he'd already died, but was
too stubborn to lie down or admit it. His face had grown gaunt and his hair
thin, his arms and hands resembled machine parts with all the joints visible
beneath the skin. Oddly enough all this made him look tougher than he had
looked when younger, giving him a grim and frightening expression. He knew he
was dying and, in facing the inevitability of death, he'd grown tougher inside
as well, befitting the 1990s world only the toughest survived.
During his last hours, Hank retold many of the same
stories I'd heard in differing variations over the years, stories that seemed
to define the whole of his 46 years on earth, from delivery room to death bed,
from the highs of his early romantic conquests to his lows struggling against
the kidney machine. And, in this last telling, Hank recalled the time he'd once
been mugged in the Port Authority restroom. His eyes shimmered a little with pride
as he got to the part with the thugs, and glancing over at me and giving a
wink, he said: "I kicked butt!"