Memorial Day: I walk on the block I want to live on. It’s like a lot of blocks within a mile of my apartment: one-way street, speed bumps, trees lining both sides; mostly three-floor brownstones, each with a ground floor level, a stoop leading to the two top floors, I presume a backyard.
I’m not sure why it strikes me as the quintessential Brooklyn block. It’s a shadier, more peaceable vision of the "Crooklyn" family’s block, five decades on. It’s my train from the opening scene of “Stardust Memories,” not the car I’m stuck on with lugubrious ghouls but on the track opposite, everyone dressed in white, drinking Champagne, laughing uproariously, Sharon Stone blowing me a we’ll-never-meet kiss.
Tonight, a twilit, sun-warmed slice of spring perfection, my Ideal Block residents sit out on more than half the stoops, in pairs, quartets, larger groups. Grill smoke wafts; music plays from unseen speakers: R&B, soul, jazz. In untrafficked CoronaWorld, I walk unfearful down the middle of the street. One family’s front door is open, though no one’s on the stoop; inside, the base of each step leading to the top floor is painted with a word or two, all in different colors, scripts: Peace, Smile, Love Often, Live, Happiness, Imagine, Courage, Faith, Hope, Believe, Dream. In some places I’d find this cheesy, but not on Ideal Block. Further up two men greet each other with a gesture I’ve seen a few times now in lieu of hugs, handshakes: an interlocking forearm grab, palm-to-elbow, something Shakespearean actors or Robin's merry men might employ.
When I lived in Santa Cruz, in my mid-20s, I was lonely enough one night to follow the sound of laughter and a bouncing bass line to a stranger’s house, where I poked my head through an open gate to see a score of people lounging in a backyard. Someone hailed me as if I were expected. I asked about the song. Quincy Jones, the party-goer said. It’s so great, I said. Grab a beer, he said. I did, and spent a lovely hour with friendly people I never saw again: UC Santa Cruz students, surfers, restaurant workers, all engaging enough for a slightly drunken evening.
Now, in socially distanced CoronaWorld, I couldn’t stop even if I found the courage.
I walk further south, past Fulton, turn east on Lefferts, another block where dozens are out enjoying drinks, grilled meats. Some are masked, some not; some are distanced, not all. I hear distant fireworks, a crackle which brings to mind a late afternoon last week in the Catskills, where I heard a steady series of single pops: rifle fire. Target practice, I thought, but then the sound shifted, echoed as if from a moving gunman; I couldn't tell. That felt foreign, ominous; this feels like a Fourth of July picnic.
In the northern sections of Bedford-Stuyvesant I pass the shiny apartment buildings that have replaced aging brownstones, like silver-and-chrome caps in a toothy smile. These blocks see fewer stoops, more white folks out walking a variety of dogs. A colorful mural brightens a fence on a lot slated for another new building; Notorious B.I.G.’s message seems especially relevant.
Walking north on Franklin I see a lamp sweeping. A cop car, I think, but the glare is too dim; it’s a man wearing a headlamp, sifting trash bags on the curb. I pass three trucks of an emergency ConEd crew, all masked save a guy lowering himself down a manhole.
On the next block, an unmasked man and woman smoke in front of a house; an unmasked man approaches.
“You look like you’ve been working out,” she tells the newcomer.
I glance. His tight T-shirt reveals muscles, a gut the size of mine.
“Working out with some food, maybe,” he says.
“That’s what I meant! You look more pregnant than I ever did!”
This brings to mind a walk The Girlfriend and I took a couple of summers ago, over several days around the east side of Lake Como. At the end of one afternoon’s journey we tramped into a small town, looking for our hotel. A middle-aged woman hailed us; she spoke no English, we no Italian. She seemed frazzled, a bit off, but unthreatening. She asked if we were a couple; we said we were. She reached out, put her hand on my belly, said a phrase of which I made out one word, understood to mean: “Look at this nice panettone you’re packing around!” She laughed uproariously. “Yes,” I said, through gritted teeth: “Panettone. Ha ha.” Now that’s our eternal word for my paunch: I’ve got to go for a run, work off a bit of the old panettone.
A couple of nights ago, at a similar hour, The Kid went for a walk by herself. This year she started traveling the city alone, with a city-issued bus and subway pass given to all public school students starting in 7th grade. But in CoronaWorld, this was an unprecedented event. When she returned she looked glassy-eyed, asked me to turn off the music.
“What happened? Are you OK?”
“I think so.”
On her way back, she said, a couple of blocks from home, a single man called to her. She couldn’t hear everything he said; either he wanted her to take a picture of him, or he wanted to take a selfie with her. She hesitated, said no. The man dropped his head to the side, uttered a syllable she took as part disappointment, part mockery: “No-oh!”
The Kid worried that she’d somehow offended him. Earlier this semester, she remembered, while she waited for a friend’s mom to give her a ride to her after-school writing program, a woman emerged from a house carrying balloons, asked The Kid to take her picture; The Kid unthinkingly obliged; they enjoyed a nice exchange.
“Maybe this guy was just a tourist,” she said. “Maybe I was being rude.”
“Was there anyone else around?” I asked.
She shook her head: “No one on the whole block.”
“You did nothing wrong,” I said. Your priority is your own protection and safety. Social convention, other people’s potential disappointment: those don’t register in comparison. It’s worth respecting your intuition; if you felt like the situation was dodgy, if you felt uncomfortable, then you did the right thing to decline, move on. A strange man’s hurt feelings matter not one whit.
“I guess,” she said, slumping beside me on the couch.
“One thing you can always say in CoronaWorld,” I add. “You’re not supposed to be within six feet of strangers. You probably shouldn’t be sharing phones or anything with a hard surface, either. These days, you can use that as an excuse. But you don’t really need one. If you feel like a situation’s potentially dangerous, heed that instinct.”
This would never have happened three streets away, I think, on my Ideal Block.
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