Day 153 (#2): Good & Sad Meetings With Ric

I burst into Ric’s apartment, hungry for explanations. The air was stale, with none of the normal scents of spices and flowers. I was embarrassed about my weeks at home, but not at all certain he knew about my problems. It turned out his are real.

I’ve never seen Ric drink cognac at 4 pm. He was intently watching a lurid Edgar Allan Poe movie called Masque Of The Red Death, which presented rationalism as something evil and demonic that only love can defeat. From what I know about Poe, he didn’t believe love could subdue a newborn kitten. For him, love was likely to be buried alive.

WHAT’S REASON GOT TO DO WITH IT?I got Ric to talk, though he could barely look at me. He can’t cover the restaurant’s rent. The problem is that the business was successful so briefly that Ric never sorted out his finances. Had Round One struck months later, he’d be in pretty good shape. A tsunami of personal and commercial bankruptcies will hit the civil courts when they reopen.

Businesses just don’t have money coming in, even as they must continue paying rent, insurance, salaries. The banks may have put some cash in circulation, but we all know millions on millions of workers are being put out of work.

I had no idea that the pandemic master plan for corporations called for mass firings if the flu came back. Some state governors are dismissing public workers, too—by executive fiat. We’re diving headlong into what could be a Depression. No one will be able to buy anything. How will people eat, even when there’s food in the stores?

“The bosses are all quoting Ayn Rand,” complains Evelyn. She’s right, but it’s not Rand’s fault. Atlas Shrugged presents a society drowning in so much mediocrity and inertia that its workers walk away from pointless jobs. That’s not what’s happening now, when people who claim to be Rand followers are shutting private enterprise and government down just when Americans most need them. That’s objectively anti-social and stupid.

Faced with a choice between paying his employees or the landlord, Ric is backing his people. Rand probably wouldn’t have done that, but I think she would have respected the entrepreneurial impulse. Ric wants to keep his dream alive.

I should explain that he’s always been an optimist. Hey, he tried to romance me once.

A Date to Remember

I forget how we met. We wound up talking for hours at some party I crashed. I didn’t like the other guests and he was worth knowing—informed and irreverent and pursuing big ideas. I guess each of us assumed that the other shared his own sexual direction. Men do that about everything.

Days later, Ric invited me to dine with him. He surprised me by choosing a pricey French joint, his treat. I can be generous, too, so I just reckoned correctly that he had more money than me. I let him lead on the wine and appetizers.

As we built a buzz over some excellent Burgundy I never would have ordered, we talked about our roots and our ambitions and our politics. Of course I mentioned Ayn Rand and he pointed out that she never acknowledged the problems of race or religion or sexual issues in her novels. He was right. But a lot of writers used to skip over that stuff. ‘Deep’ thinkers, too: What did Marx or Keynes ever say about gays and minorities?

Ric thought that was funny. He hates ideology. I get a pass because I don’t mind his mockery; he’s good at it. Opposition sharpens the mind.

Socially, I wasn’t dating anyone and didn’t feel like discussing it. He said he was solo, too. I didn’t think much about that. I certainly wasn’t looking for a ‘wingman.’ I prefer to circulate alone, forgoing the buddy talk and prospects for competition. As it happened, the waitress struck up a conversation with us about the wine, lingered after dinner to pour free cognac. She was attractive and I like attention, but I thought it was cool that neither of us tried to pick her up or get her email.

Later we sought out a bar for drinks on me. He led me to an unfamiliar lounge full of guys, with one cute woman who came over to greet Ric. She was buzzed and lively and very fond of him. He introduced us and watched us talk till she ran off to greet someone.

Did I want to date her? I said no, thanks. She wasn’t my type and I silently wondered if she was a lover of his. Was he testing me? Suggesting a threesome? I make my own arrangements.

Almost imperceptibly, his hand came to rest on my naked forearm. It was then that I realized the other men were gay. We were on a date. I felt terrible, reckoned I must have led my new friend on by being supremely dense.

He watched my face carefully. I was frozen, as if in a high-stakes round of poker. What the hell to do?

I raised my other hand to offer a toast to diversity. He cracked up. “Hey, are you straight?” I confessed I had just figured out that he wasn’t.

We swiftly agreed we’d each suffered worse dates with ‘appropriate’ partners and decided to continue becoming friends. It wasn’t long before Ric fixed me up with Lisa, whose brother was an old friend of his. I reciprocated by introducing him to an architect pal whom I suspected was out when he wasn’t at work; they dated for a few months. Ric and I hung out less after Nina moved in, but that always happens when a friend falls in love. Real friends are still there when your romance hits the fan.

I wish I could help Ric now. On top of his business woes, he imagines he has bedbugs—until recently New Yorkers’ greatest fear. He showed me three round, raised welts on his back, but I saw no bites. They looked like hives. But it sure made me want to go outside.

The Oracle of Inaction

As I stood at the door, wishing I could ask him about the disappearing trickster, Ric shocked me by saying he’s been enjoying my exchanges with the LES DIY woman. I tried to grill him, told him ‘Evelyn’ had just duped me.

He didn’t care. “She’s a special prize,” he said. “She got you out of that place. She did it for both of us. Keep at it.” At what? I’ve been around those people for almost five months. The food’s good, but something’s missing.

He just laughed. “All in due time,” he said. Given Ric’s track record—Lisa was my longest, greatest love—I should be intrigued. But Evelyn is all bluff. She should have met me when she had her chances. Round Two has dealt solitaire for all.

At the door I flat-out asked if Anna is behind this. I know he’s very fond of her. Ric looked pained, said she’s still getting over her daughter’s death. Back to zero. He doesn’t even know ‘Val.’ “Just hang on,” he said. “No one’s going anywhere.” Not exactly inspirational, but at least he didn’t complain—yet—about any of the stuff I’ve posted.

I got home to find a neighbor on the top floor failing. She had hip-replacement surgery the day the pandemic recommenced, and they cleared her out of the hospital too quickly. It probably saved her life to be spared all that exposure to H5N1, but something’s gone wrong and she’s in screaming pain. I probably shouldn’t say this, but one guy has gone out to look for street heroin to give her.

The pharmacies aren’t working and her painkiller ran out. It seems that few residents stocked legitimate pills—a claim people neither believe nor challenge. Someone coughed up Tylenol with codeine. I hear it failing.

Two years ago, this woman fussed endlessly to our slumlord about my practice of chaining my bicycle in the rear of the ground-floor hallway. Ever since, I’ve had to carry it down and up three narrow flights when I wish to ride it—far less than I used to.

East Villagers tend to live and let live. Or die. I never complained about the hip-hop my upstairs neighbor blasted 12/7, when he wasn’t working or skateboarding. I’ve missed that manic thumping since he got run over.

I hate to be so certain that this poor, howling woman took pleasure in seeing me lug my bike. In that weird way silly things pop into our minds, I hear a Gene Clark line from Some Misunderstanding about everyone needing a fix at times like this. He suggests it feels good just to keep living. It’s easy for a dead artist to say that.

Day 154: ‘Thank You, Mask Man’

Without explaining, Evelyn has apologized for taking wing while I was being dragged down the stairs. “Call me crazy if it makes you feel better,” she writes. “I had my reasons, even if they aren’t any more rational than yours were. At least Bruno got you out.”

It’s the other readers who are slamming me (though the site’s hits keep coming) because I was snippy about the president’s oration and because I’ve stopped commenting on general pandemic news.

THE OLD MASKED HERO: YOU TALKIN’ TO ME?What am I supposed to say about the blackouts and rioting in Los Angeles? I already got burned blathering about stuff out there. I trust the media are exaggerating. Even the LAPD couldn’t shoot that many people without making waves.

New Yorkers typically shun mob violence. We revolt as individuals.

So I’ll focus on what I see and hear in my Village in Manhattan. I’ll try to get out more—no point in wasting the evil emailer’s time and efforts.

I sure hope never to see the innards of the schools that are being turned into clinics and triage centers. The only draw I envision is that warehoused patients can be fed and kept warm when the weather turns. Not least, they can be given Relenza. Which might help.

I forced myself out the door today, strolled briskly around the block. My sortie proved that things look better than they sound but smell a lot worse than they look. Few people on the street want to hurt anyone, much less kill. The war zone atmosphere is more a matter of grim filth and shortages, once you get used to plywood façades on your local shops. Kids must have busted every window they could reach through the security gates they couldn’t rip down.

People are sullen. Vendors and consumers contemplate one another with suspicion. Stores seem empty—some because the consumers took everything, others because shopkeepers want special inducements to show their wares.

There’s no good food out there, unless you’re in the clutches of the LES DIY. The thought prompted me to stop in at Ric’s to sample the day’s offering—a toothsome lasagna.

Praying For Cash in Washington

The gang was in high spirits, denouncing the government in a muffled chorus as they whipped up food behind masks. The latest conspiracy theory is that the government wants to crack down on community groups that aren’t affiliated with religious institutions via the DHS’s RAISE. The churches and synagogues that worked with the LES DIY in Round One have bonded with the Feds, who are reimbursing the religious institutions for their um, good works—as I now discover FEMA did after Katrina. Even God has a paid gig in Washington!

Charity, of course, begins at home. With the churches now offering competitive meal services, our colorful Village boasts contending cantinas for the needy. It’s safe to say the meals and conversation excel at Ric’s. Traffic is down, though.

I tried to take the opportunity to thank Anna for sending Bruno to save me. Would she confess? She blushed and mumbled that Bruno had volunteered because they were all worried about me. It was nice to see some color on her translucent flesh. (Don’t you think, Ric?)

Later I caught her staring at me with those heavenly orbs, streaked with sorrow. Too quickly, they ran away, never to return. Again I found myself wishing she were my addled adversary, Evelyn. Then I realized they all stare at me—I’m that friendly right-wing nut who loathes the DHS and RAISE no less than they do.

Even my daily one-way communication was fruitful when I got home. She-who-is-neither-reliable-nor-Anna buttered me up with a link in response to my provision of children’s masks to the LES DIY. It’s an animation of an old Lenny Bruce riff called Thank You Mask Man. Watch it!

I don’t know much about Bruce, who overdosed in the 1960s after being arrested and persecuted for uttering ‘obscenities’ we now hear on cable every night. (Dustin Hoffman played him in a hit movie.)

The cartoon is very funny. Made five years after Bruce died, but using his voice (thanks Google, for the show and background info), it’s quite primitive. And eerily familiar. I’d bet a box of masks that the guys behind South Park loved it when they were just potheads with impossible dreams.

Thank You Mask Man starts with locals on the range marveling at the Lone Ranger’s altruism, then questioning it, resenting it, and finally forcing him to explain how they might reward him. His solution is controversial.

I’m not above accepting gratuities. I love that Evelyn sent me this ‘toon. I’m a proud Mask Man in a pitiless, flat world. Thank You, Mad Mailer.

Day 155: Flu York City on Two Wheels

I’m watching my city mutate from a mobile perch. At times the air I bicycle through is inexplicably smoky. I see grim lines at stores, especially pharmacies—some a block long. People try not to mingle. But New Yorkers still hate waiting: I saw one column erupt like a murder of crows as someone tried to cut ahead.

Today I came across a young woman hacking her lungs up on 14^h Street, evidently suffering the early stages of an immune system meltdown. Passersby watched her helpless red face and distended neck as she clung to a rusty fire hydrant, but no one had a solution. Most moved a little faster.

I reached a guy at 911. He was coughing, too. He said they already had the woman on a list to be picked up. “When?” ASAP, which could be hours, he explained candidly: A death sentence he neither intended nor denied.

MY BIKE IN HAPPIER TIMESSomeone found cardboard on which to rest the woman in front of a closed luncheonette. The Samaritans thinned fast when blood began dripping from her mouth and nose. The effusion was dense, mixed with mucous in pink and red chunks and strings I’ve never seen. Were they strips of lung? It looked like a cytokine storm to me—as if her body had turned against itself, inside out. She was fighting infection to the last bloody cell.

A shabbily dressed man with a ragged turban, maybe homeless, looked at us as if we were chicken dung. He bent over to help. I watched, ashamed, as he spoke to her. When she tried to respond, a thick red blob spewed forth to paint his face.

Everyone ran away as if a bomb had gone off, leaving the man dripping horror. He was yelling—his hands bloody, outstretched, like an Aztec high priest.

I handed him a t-shirt I carry in my pack for emergencies, marched away before he could wipe his mouth to thank me. What else could I contribute?

I rode away as the sun emerged, wondering what to think of all the efforts to produce a vaccine. The longer it takes to deliver one, the more antagonistic the antivax activists are becoming. Poll results that once showed Americans eager to take a shot have turned around, even as more people die from avian flu. Conspiracy theories abound. Even Fitch is up to his neck agitating on the social networks, which at least keeps him busy.

Fortunately, I soon discovered that New York has turned into a bikers’ town. (Not motorcycles—we lack fuel.) Cyclists and skaters, even scooters, have taken the streets. I’m not sure it’s such an improvement for pedestrians, who can’t hear us coming.

Proceeding north, I saw bent storefront grilles, plywood windows, scorched façades. Mountains of garbage feeding more rats than the Pied Piper ever bargained for. Sidewalks flooded by waters whose storm drains are jammed with refuse. A city adrift in tawdry anarchy.

On a busy corner, I saw church volunteers handing out food to people who didn’t look poor but sure were hungry. The charity truck was marked with a big RAISE logo advertising that odd new branch of the Department of Homeland Security. When I approached for a look at the sandwiches and pickles, I noticed the deliverers were wearing white shirts emblazoned with the logo, which made them look like airport screeners.

Speaking of Washington, I wonder how the government will respond to the anti-vaccine rally that’s been called by Nation Against Toxins Under-Researched Everywhere. (Yep, N.A.T.U.R.E.) The march to the White House has already been banned on health grounds, but organizers vow that thousands of mostly mothers will drive to Washington with their children to demand that no vaccine be allowed to contain mercury, adjuvants, or anything that hasn’t been thoroughly tested.

The authorities will never agree to any of these conditions. First, mercury (thimerosal) still comes in flu shots for people over six because each shot would otherwise have to come individually packaged; you can imagine how much more trouble, time, and expense it would entail to inoculate the entire planet. Second, while they were lucky with swine flu because only one shot was needed to render immunity, H5N1 will require at least two (possibly three) normal vaccinations because so few people have ever encountered anything like it before; adjuvants that boost the human response can stretch out supplies. Third, none of the emergency vaccines for the new virus strain will be thoroughly tested. That would take until after Round Two ends. Time is short.

So is gasoline. I doubt many protesters will make it to Washington. N.A.T.U.R.E. may call, but few will risk getting the flu to fight a solution most people can’t wait for. This Million Mom March ain’t gonna happen.

Fitch will hate me for saying all of the above. I’ve come to realize that he didn’t invest in my mask business to make money—though I fear he intends to make more from it than I do —but because he hates vaccines. More than I (who might opt for a flu shot), he believes masks and protective gear offer the only way to survive H5N1. There’s always more to Fitch than I had suspected.

Day 156: My Day in the Medieval Sun

I biked today through a remarkably gray and lifeless midtown Manhattan. It looks as if no one is working. The food trucks are missing. There were empty parking spaces, few taxis. I don’t know how the big companies function. All businesses need maintenance, contact, live flesh.

Plenty of skin was displayed on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The mad medievalists are still whipping themselves red over our shortcomings. Their leaflet offered the usual catalogue of misdeeds by the Roman Church (in which I was raised), plus man’s general immorality and lack of penitence. That’s reassuring: During the Black Death, hordes of flagellants marched around Germany, inciting people to destroy the Jews they blamed for the Plague.

The more restrained contemporary version was hideous to watch—or hear. The men beat themselves in stark rhythm, beginning with a whoosh as the knouts swept through the air, then a collective whomp as they ripped into human tissue, and finally the tcchh sound of tiny barbs being torn out of them in unison. Did some of these men used to wear suits in nearby skyscrapers?

Lest we be spattered by gore, the audience kept distant. Some baited the flagellants. Others cursed the hecklers. The police looked dangerously unhappy, though it’s all apparently legal as long as no one flogs anyone else and the men don’t lose their loincloths (or insult the mayor). They evidently don’t enlist women.

Then I biked to the top of the island to see what’s become of my car. First I pedaled along a path up the Hudson River to the tallest part of Manhattan Island, just north of the George Washington Bridge. A mockingbird was riffing in all directions over the old train tracks. Those critters inspired jazz.

I felt lucky to be exploring the city, rediscovering movement. My hamstrings haven’t forgiven me yet, but I’m absolving them with ice. I won’t pretend it isn’t a drag to bike hard while wearing a serious mask, but I grew accustomed to it. There were long stretches where I was alone and could breathe nakedly, the sun on my face. The air was clean, the skies blue.

I coasted down Broadway into the 190s, 10 miles north of my home. My sense of menace dissipated as I realized no one cared to harm me. New Yorkers are spooky and angry and needy—their gait is slower, confused, wary—but there was none of the malice or viciousness I’d anticipated having to flee. Manhattan was more like an afternoon break on a George Romero set, with the zombies content to relax, stretch, smoke.

The streets up there were filled with cyclists. Even surrounded by contagion, the riders were friendly, almost exultant. People on bicycles seem convinced they’re not ill. They must believe their exertions confirm it, the way some churchgoers think pious behavior proves they’re destined for heaven.

I Hope They Recycled it

I felt like a double agent. Bicyclists in New York tend to hate cars. But I was using my two-wheeled Green Dream to rescue my four-wheeled Toxic Public Nemesis from the bus stop where the panicky crowd had left it.

The corner was vacant.

My old VW Fox had vanished, crumpled axle and all. With so many stranded Acuras to steal, why would anyone want a dented, busted, four-cylinder German sedan that was made in Brazil before the millennium? All the plastic stuff had long since snapped off—not least, the door lock buttons.

A shopkeeper who looked as if he maintains an arsenal under his counter remembered seeing it. Didn’t know when, flung his hands as he shrugged. (I guess he trusted me.) The man actually had grub to sell. I was hungry, but it wasn’t fresh.

I called the police tow garages in Manhattan and the Bronx. Each answered after long delays. One cop sounded surprised that anyone had waited for him to pick up. “You know the problems these days,” he mumbled. Sure, I predicted them.

Tired, I followed Broadway south for five miles until I realized I was near Central Park. There I found a strange world of flugitives camping peacefully enough, interspersed with mounted cops rousting people who didn’t look like they were camping. No one bothered to yell so I couldn’t tell what activity the police were discouraging. It looked like a jerky silent movie without title cards to tell you what’s happening.

Sticks, Stones & Dead Birds

I pedaled up a steep hill to Belvedere Castle, next to the Central Park Weather Station. The courtyard was strewn with paper, deserted except for a couple of men barking into cell phones in foreign tongues. One had a little girl with him. She gazed at the battlements as if she wished a prince would come down to entertain her.

A frog croaked in the pond far below. I was tempted to tell her about the amphibious route to royalty.

Instead I bounced my bike down some stone steps into the Ramble, a wooded labyrinth famed for nighttime activities I won’t describe here. I’d never been there, but it was scandalously pleasant to be surrounded by tall trees and chirping birds. The woods were deserted by humans, which was fine with me.

A trail led me onto a peninsula that jutted out into the lake, toward the big fountain on the other side. In better times, the water would be full of tourists rowing rented boats, but it was empty—except for ducks and geese that blithely pretended to know nothing of any plague. One honked at me like a native New Yorker of yore: “Boid flu, wazzat?”

As the sun began setting, I made my way to a bridge over the lake. On the shore below, I saw a pile of geese that hadn’t died naturally. Some jerk had gone to a lot of trouble to catch and torture them. Need I repeat that whatever strain wild birds have is not the one people are giving each other? We are our problem.

In a secluded patch of magical, fading light not far from the carousel, I paused to watch a circle of hippies. At first I thought they were partying like it was 1969, trading tokes and blues on pipes and strings. But they were chanting for the dead. I sat by to admire their rich, heartfelt harmonies as I thought of Lisa, her big brown eyes, her serene smile.

As the sun set, the group invited me to break innumerable laws by smoking with them. (It’s illegal to smoke anything in a city park.) A friend in Virginia had died of bird flu, and this was his memorial. I started to talk about the pandemic, but they stopped me after I mentioned that nature might be targeting mammals. “Dude, the other critters are collateral damage. It’s us.” No point in arguing with that.

Before I rode off in the dark, I traded a pair of masks for some herbal supplies. (Mine await a lucky intruder, upstate.) Nothing like finding a vendor who so enthusiastically uses her own. In my neighborhood, they favor harder stuff these days.

A patrol car stopped me on my way home. I told the cop I’d just delivered masks to a doctor in the West Village, showed her my remaining sample. She was pleased to accept it and told me how to obtain a permit to break curfew. I asked how dangerous it is at night. She shook her head and murmured: “Pretty dead.”

Day 157: Bedbugs Thrive, We Die

The Feds have leaked an enterprising plan to fire doctors, nurses, and technicians who don’t toe the line. That’ll reduce America’s health while breaking independent spirit. RAISE be praised.

I rendezvoused with Ric in Tompkins Square Park. He wouldn’t let me visit his apartment because he’s captured two specimens in a bottle and wanted to spare me any exposure. I had inspected an excellent bedbug site so I’d know what they look like.

SPREADING LIKE INFLUENZA: CIMEX LECTULARIUSHe’s got ‘em—rust-colored insects the size of watermelon seeds. Bedbugs aren’t known to spread human disease, but they can live in cracks and folds all over your home for as long as a year without blood. It’s very difficult to outlast them.

Pigeons, sparrows, and starlings can carry bedbugs, which can also travel on bags, shoes, clothes, buses, taxis, and subways. I haven’t sat on a wooden subway bench for years because the parasites love cracks in wood. I’m guessing Ric dragged some charming piece of infected furniture home after someone left it on the street. (We do that a lot here.) Or hooked up with someone who had one in his clothes or bag. Some people don’t react to bedbug bites and can carry the insects the way asymptomatic carriers spread flu.

He can’t get anyone to kill the pests. In the best of times, extermination takes patience and money, if you can find someone to pay enough visits. Often they bring dogs trained to detect the insects. Ric has no cash. Now he’s afraid to visit his restaurant lest he infest it. As someone who nearly lost his mind a few days ago—and whose loving roommate apparently went mad several months ago—I worry for his sanity.

Even so, I sat away from him on the rainy bench. Of course he noticed. That’s why we were out there.

Ric had the look of a bank robber on the run. He was gaunt, alert, poised to dash. His dark eyes were restless, taking in a world that no longer felt like home. When I squeezed his shoulder from afar, he kept his gaze on the squirrels. “Better not touch me.” His voice was strangled. He sobbed quietly as I kept my hand there.

I wouldn’t know about the LES DIY if it weren’t for Ric. They wouldn’t be nearly as effective without him. A lot of New Yorkers owe this man. I don’t know how to help him.

Everything’s going wrong. Sneeky is licking himself compulsively. His belly is a red splotch and I can’t help but wonder if he’s got bugs.

We hear rumors that H5N1 has turned more virulent, is killing more New Yorkers. All they tell us is to stay home and wash our hands. It makes me nauseous—but that’s just another flu symptom.

I put together a business card and visited the 9^th Precinct to get a Health Security Certificate so I can go out at night in my capacity as a provider of public health equipment on an emergency basis. Evidently my papers must be sent to Washington for approval by the Department of Homeland Security, something no news reports had indicated. But the desk sergeant appreciated my needs—and samples—and gave me a temporary permit that should keep me out of trouble for a while.