The Day I Took my Mother to her Assisted Living Interview

I got to her apartment at nine. The interview was scheduled for eleven. We had an hour and a half drive ahead of us. She was sitting in front of her make-up mirror putting on lipstick, wearing only shoes, her green sneakers, but no pants. She had become ornery lately, having fallen and broken two ribs the week before while pushing her shopping cart around town. After that, she got a urinary tract infection and became the usual three headed rattlesnake until after the first two doses of Cipro. I was holding my breath that everything would go smoothly that day.

She wasn't budging until she found the right hat and right bag. I'm looking at the clock and holding hats up one by one.

I said, "We better get going." 
"NO!" she bellowed, "I have to decide which bag. Bring me those two. No. Over there, over THERE!" 
She placed both bags across her arm, one after the other, again and again, finally choosing the brown one.
I said, "Good. Let's get going." 
She continued to sit until finished with her explanation as to why she wasn't taking the bigger bag.

I got her in the car and off we went. She seemed better at that point and I began to feel a little more hopeful whereas I hadn't before.

She said, "Now, they are going to ask me what day it is, I know they will. What day is it?" 

"It's Wednesday, September third," I said. "September third," she said, "Now how am I going to remember that?" 

We had been talking about the three sisters that lived near her childhood home in Tennessee. After the middle sister died, the older sister propped her up on their living room couch and apparently forced the younger one to keep feeding her and pretend the middle sister was still alive. A few weeks later the postman smelled something while putting letters in their mailbox and called the Sheriff. 

"Why yes, the three sisters and it's September the third," she said. "I can remember that."

I also told her what they were going to ask on the mini mental status exam, the counting backwards from one hundred by sevens part. She practiced but didn't get too much farther than 93. 

After that, she pulled out her compact mirror, lifted a little tube of brown putty from her purse and began applying that to her face, examining herself from different angles and talking all the while. She was upset she had to rush in applying her makeup. 

She started talking about her own mother, how her mother had been really nasty to her whenever she got her period as a little girl. . .

Then she became a little suspicious of what they might do to her at the assisted living facility. In the Emergency Room that week they started an IV, she yanked it out, threw her hat at the nurse and called her a bitch.

I told her it was going to be like an audition and that she had to be on her best behavior and couldn't start giving them shit until after she was accepted. She changed the subject.

As it turns out, she was accepted. And she really liked the place because there was a Rite Aid pharmacy across the street. 

"Look at that Rite Aid," she'd say, pointing out her window. And she liked the mushroom soup they served her in the restaurant downstairs.

French Quarter, Johnny Whites, '83

One night, during the summer of 1983, Ginger Rose and I visited Johnny White's on St. Peter street, in the French Quarter.
We started out at Tyler's Beer Garden on Magazine where Ginger waitressed. The sun was shining all that afternoon and I was eating fresh oysters and drinking beer out of long neck bottles. They'd shuck you a dozen for three dollars in those days and you could make your own sauce with the horseradish and Worcestershire they had on hand. On that particular afternoon, I found a pearl in an oyster shell and gave it to Ginger Rose.
"Oh my gawwwwd, oh my gawwwwd, oh my gawwwd, I can't believe yew! I want to go to the Quarter, man, and drink Schnapp's," she said. "I want to drink Schnapp's ALL NIGHT LONG, MAN!"
I wanted to drink Schnapps too but, at that moment, I was drinking cold ones and eating oysters. Preoccupied.
After Ginger got off, we had shots of tequila on the house. It turned out Ginger's roommate was the bartender! After that, we headed down to the Quarter, stopping off at a bar below Lee Circle on St. Charles and had Pabst Blue Ribbons and shots of Schnapps.
I was genuinely excited. A week before I had been in Johnny Whites when two men started firing guns at each other, one at the end of the bar by the street, the other all the way down by the telephone booth. The man on the street side owned a bunt revolver line with a foot long barrel. Took him five minutes to pull it out of his holster. I'm exaggerating but it seemed like it took that long before he started firing. The man by the telephone booth shot a 45 caliber. While mirrors and bottles were exploding, I had the crawl out of the bar on my hands and knees and had never been so happy in my entire life.
So after leaving the place on Lower St. Charles, I turned to said to Ginger, 
"Alright. Let's go to Johnny Whites!"
Ginger yelled, "JOHNNY WHITES, MAN!"
So we made our way to Johnny Whites, where all the restaurant people went after work to drink! Ginger Rose and I sat right in the middle of the bar and started drinking tequila and beer and Schnapps! 
WE DRANK TEQUILA, BEER AND SCHNAPPS ALL NIGHT LONG!
The things was, after my second tequila I turned my head and noticed a man staring at me. I didn't recognize the man and he was staring at me for no reason at all.

I didn't like the man looking at me. He didn't look away so I mouthed the words "fuck you" and shot that motherfucking son of a bitch the bird.

Shot that goddamn son of a bitch the motherfucking bird and mouthed the words "fuuuuck you" just for staring at me. 
I was at Johnny Whites drinking tequila! AND AS SOON AS I SHOT THAT SON OF A BITCH THE BIRD AND MOUTHED THE WORDS "FUCK YOU" I FELT A HELL OF LOT BETTER AND FORGOT ALL ABOUT THAT STARING MAN. 
Me and Ginger went on drinking Schnapps and beer and tequila. We talked to everybody around us, talked with each other and talked to the bartender. Everybody.

When the sun was coming up, it was time to go. Ginger had enough Schnapps. I had enough tequila and beer. We had seen the sun come up on a barstool at Johnny Whites! 

But when as we were walking toward the door, WE SUDDENLY WANTED MORE SCHNAPPS AND MORE TEQUILA! IT WAS SAD THE NIGHT WAS OVER. I DIDN'T WANT THE NIGHT TO BE OVER, AND DIDN'T LIKE DAYLIGHT APPEARING IN THE STREET LIKE IT HAD DONE. ASSHOLE!

But it was time to go and we walked down the length of the bar, Ginger Rose saying she wanted more "Shops." She called Schnapps "shops" and she was somewhere behind me saying that when I passed a man I didn't recognize, a man I had forgotten all about!

ALL I HEARD WAS THE BARTENDER SAY WAS,

After that I didn't remember a damn thing until I woke up, sorta, and saw this foot coming up into my face. It came up into my face over and over and over again. I suddenly found myself out on the street, kneeling over, one hand resting on a knee, the other fluttering in front of my face trying to block the foot. The foot was hard to block. 

THEN I LOOKED UP AND THERE WAS GINGER ROSE STANDING THERE POINTING DOWN AT ME!

 "That was the man yew shot the bird at!"

I didn't remember shooting the bird at that man but in a little while DID remember mouthing the words, "fuck you" to some staring man and after a little while longer figured out that that same staring man had waited all night long when I had forgotten all about him then, just as I was walking out of Johnny Whites all happy and wanting more tequila, rammed his can of Dixie into my face and hit me over the head with one of Johnny White's big ole heavy beer mugs!

Turns out the staring man was a goddamn REDNECK!

 To be honest, when I thought about all of it, and I thought about all of it A LOT later,

I REALIZED THAT GODDAMN REDNECK TAUGHT ME A LESSON: TO KEEP YOUR GODDAMN MOUTH SHUT!

Man At the New York Public Library

On that particular day at the Mid Manhattan Library, a man began raising a ruckus over by the copying machine in the fourth floor reading room.

The man shouted, “Sons of bitches!" and hit the top of the machine with the bottom of his fist. The guards came over, watched him for a few moments then gently tried to move him away from the machine. He gripped the edges and refused to let go. Each guard took one of his arms and tugged, but the man still refused to let go.

“Sons of bitches!” he yelled. “Sons of goddamn bitches!”

They pulled him harder and harder until the first guard grabbed the man's legs and pulled them straight out from under him. 

That precise moment, when the shouting man was fully extended, still holding onto the machine with the guards holding him horizontally by the legs, was what I always remembered. That and what I saw the very next day.
The man did maintain his grip on the corners of the copying machine. The machine tipped forward then rocked back and forth. By that time, everybody in the reading room had stopped what they were doing and were watching the copy machine tip forward one last time and topple over with a loud crash and tinkling of glass.

Now, the very next day, I opened the door to the fourth floor men’s room, which had four stalls and five sinks, and there was that same man, standing in front of the center mirror, pants around his ankles, holding up his scrotum and scrubbing himself with a paper towel. He turned and stared at me. I stopped in the doorway,

 took a step backwards and let the door swing close.

Kerry Kelly and the Pulqueria in Matamoras

      Kerry Kelly showed up with his duffle bag and said, “I’m heading down to the valley for a few weeks, cat. I want to tear open a fresh grapefruit with my hands and eat it in the middle of the road. I want fresh tortillas, maybe head over to South Padre or down to Matamoras, get me a few cold ones with fresh lime squeezed right into the bottle.” 
Kerry Kelly always talked like that before he borrowed money off of me. I was able to imagine eating grapefruits in the middle of a Rio Grand Valley road, "the place where they grow them." 









After listening to him describe all that the way he did, I wanted to eat grapefruits in the middle of the road too so I packed my bags right then and there. 
We never did eat a single grapefruit. . .But we crossed the border into Matamoras and headed straight for the pulqueria.

Kerry Kelly and I had just returned from a three day trip across the Gold Coast with Ginger Rose, the waitress from Tyler’s Beer Garden. We took Ginger’s little blue hatch back, bought three cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon on lower St. Charles and stayed drunk the whole time. I drove the car back from Pascagoula, nodding off and on, waking up every few seconds while the other two slept, running the car off the road and so forth. Once back in New Orleans, we went to a place on Lower Magazine and had shots of Schnapps. 
When I got back to my rooming house, it was so hot, I slept with my window fan on the bed beside me.

Right before Kerry Kelly showed up with his duffle bag, Ginger Rose had climbed up the rooming house drain pipe. I thought it was a raccoon at first so I treid to get back to sleep. But then there was an even bigger racket, like tin been ripped to shreds and I watched Ginger Rose pull herself in through my window and flop down onto the bed. She said she had continued to party since our trip.

I wasn't feeling good, having been up most of the night vomiting when the racket outside started.

 Ginger Rose gripped the top of the window sill and yelled out:  “Hey, it’s me, man! It's Ginger. Help me, goddammit.”
Ginger Rose lifted one leg up over the sill, grunting. She had big boobs and freckles.

Her breath smelled sweet and she was slurring her speech. 
“I've been drinking all night long and took some valiums, man. I’m not feeling good but I knew I had to see yew.”

 Ginger climbed onto the bed and started snoring.

I wanted the whole bed to myself was the problem. The sheets were already soaking wet and the fan wasn't helping so I tried to push then pull Ginger Rose but she was so limp and heavy, I couldn't budge her. I moved over to the chair.

Ginger Rose was still sleeping in the bed when Kerry Kelly came that morning. I went downstairs to see what he wanted. That's when he told me about eating grapefruit in the middle of the road.

“I thought you might want to come along," he said. "I used to work for the railroad in Harlingen. I may try to get my old job back. I want my boy to come live with me.”
Kerry Kelly had big plans and often spoke to me of his boy who lived in Houston. Kerry Kelly did so much cocaine in the past that his parents had to take his boy to raise. 
Kerry Kelly said, "My boy looks just like me."

I had to tell the landlady I was leaving a week early and wouldn’t be coming back. The land lady always spoke to me very slowly and asked me questions behind the screen door with both of her hands up and pressed against it. I was sorry to leave because the landlady reached up through the floorboards every night and cradled my balls. I don't know how she knew how to do that but she did. She lived in the cool basement surrounded by crystals. When she showed me the room that first day, she moved really slowly up the stairs and pulled her skirt up so I cold see her calves and thighs. At the top she turned and without me asking said, "I used to be a dancer."

 Kerry Kelly and I got down to Harlingen and walked from the Greyhound station all the way out of town on a dirt highway to a trailer park where we rented a small blue one. I took the living room couch and Kerry Kelly took the back bed room. There were black widow spiders in the corner by the couch and in the closet. They gave me the heebie jeebies and I didn't sleep much worrying about where they were.
Kerry Kelly said, "Don't use the closet, those are black widows in there."
I knew that.

One day we road the bus down to Brownsville and walked across the border into Matamoras. Kerry Kelly told me about Boys Town but we didn't have enough money to take a taxi so Kerry Kelly said, "Let's get us a cold one." 
We walked around and after a while, saw a sign. Kerry Kelly said, "They drink Pulque in there. It's an old Mexican drink, cat. It's from Agave. It looks like coconut water and goes back to the Aztec days, cat."
Three old men sat at the bar drinking water glasses full of milky white pulque. They didn't turn and look at us when we sat down. The bar tender had a pencil thin mustache, one big ear and red leathery skin. The bottles on the shelves were unusually shaped and had been there a long time.

When we sat, I heard a sound and looked down. Water ran through a porcelain trough at our feet from one end of the bar to the other. In a few minutes, one of the old men took out his penis and urinated. He splashed a little urine on the wood of the bar.
We each ordered one glass of pulque each and since it tasted so bitter, switched to cerveza. When I gagged on the pulque, the old men laughed. We ordered lime with our beer and squeezed it into the top of the chilled bottles. 

In a few minutes a man pulled up a stool and sat down between Kerry Kelly and I, his shoulders touching ours. He turned and looked at me, grinning. Actually he didn't grin, he grimaced. The man wore a double breasted sport shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. His hair was combed straight back and black with axle grease. He spoke to me in Spanish and I said, "Yo hablo solo poquito espanol."
The man grinned again and said, "Oh? Poquito espanol?" He continued to speak quickly in Spanish, however. I looked at Kerry Kelly on the other side of the man. He shook his head and said quietly, "Sometimes its better not to say anything, cat."
The man paused when Kerry Kelly spoke then continued in Spanish, nodding. He took out his wallet and removed an identification card. The card said Policia. I heard the man say "Federale." He poked at his chest with one finger. He had bags under his eyes and scars from acne.
The man then removed a black forty five caliber revolver from under his shirt and held it in the air. In English, he said, "I am a good shot. I can blow a man's head off if he is running past me fifty feet away." 
I looked past the man. Kerry Kelly was shaking his head back and forth. Kerry Kelly had spoken of the Federales on the bus coming down the Brownsville. He said some oil field friends were arrested and driven around in police cars until money could be wired from the States.
I told the Federale, "I believe you."

 The Federale placed his forty five on the bar and asked, "What is your business in Matamoras? Where are you going? In which direction are you travelling?"
I said, "No, we came across to walk around and saw the Pulqueria."
He said, "Yes, but what are you doing in Mexico? What is your destination?"
I said, "We wanted to get Mexican cerveza as it is the best. Do you like cerveza?"
He said, "I like Tequila."
I signaled for the bartender, "Una Tequila, por favor."
In the course of the next two tequilas, the man appeared sullen and kept insisting that Kerry Kelly and myself  were travelling south and wanted to know where. He refused to speak to Kerry Kelly because he saw Kerry Kelly had biker tattoos, orange hair and a Texas belt buckle and he said he didn't trust that. As I had three Mexican cold ones in me by that time, I laughed and said, "No, Kerry Kelly is good people. We really did just walk across the bridge from Brownsville to have a few cold ones in Matamoras. We don't have enough money to travel. Mexican cerveza is the best cerveza in the world and that's why we're here. The Pulque is too strong. I tried it but am not used to the taste," I said. "I'm having another cerveza. Do you want tequila?"
At that moment I actually did believe that Mexican beer was the best beer in the world. The Federale told the rest of the bar something about the American not being able to drink pulque. The old men laughed and so did the bartender.
The Federale put his gun back in the holster underneath his shirt and told me how careful I had to be in Mexico. Then he unzipped his fly and peed into the trough. In a few minutes, I unzipped my fly and peed tambien! I splashed a little on the bar in the process. Kerry Kelly peed into the trough a little later.
After his fifth tequila, the man shook hands with us and said, "Enjoy Mexico but be very careful going home." 
He said if we are stopped to mention Ray Jay, that you know Ray Jay, Policia.
It was dark when we left the pulqueria. The old men and the bar tender nodded. When we walked across the bridge we had just enough money left for the bus ride back to Harlingen. We had spent it all on Pulque, tequila and cervezas.

Orangutan at the Central Park Zoo, 1966

The zookeeper tossed a banana through the bars. Dad and I had been standing side by side. They had cages back then, not enclosures. The orangutan flicked his lower lip with a finger, flicked it twice.

Dad said, "Lookatim."

The tang stamped on the banana, peed on it, picked it up, and ate it without taking his eyes off of us.

“GEE GODS,” my father said.

The orangutan then held his wrist out as if looking at a pocket watch, placed his lower lip over his upper and stared.