1: Portrait Of A Skyline

1: Portrait Of A Skyline

Weekdays were hellish affairs eroded by anxiety and its accompanying pills. Stress was hidden beneath under-blended foundation, mild mannered facades, and monotone loudspeaker bulletins. At times I suspected that the constant inhalation of paint fumes (due to the prison-cell size and placement of my bedroom window) was slowly causing a cancerous tumor to swell in my brain. I had heard (possibly in some Soap Opera that I absolutely was not watching) of disruptive nocturnal patterns and unexplained compulsiveness being attributed to pressure in the frontal lobe. This, I concluded on my more gullible days, was the cause of my untoward sleeping habits and seeming inability to contend with mornings. Or perhaps I was merely seeking the next wild tale to mollify my mother. Truth was such a boring lecture.

Whatever my subconscious reason for jumping to conclusions was, insomnia electrified my neurons once the sun had guttered out without fail. This was completely regardless of appointments in the coming day, I might add, and often caused me to nap in classes which I really ought to have been absorbing. But the tedious humdrum of Academia was less than noteworthy in comparison to my little world. I was inspired by grains in the wall and the shadows that gathered like teenage hoodlums at the unoccupied edges of boxes to draw the most beautifully hideous things. It was a frenzy of artistic activity housed in my bedroom that carried long into the pre-dawn hours, cluttering my undersized room so much that I was forced to pack away my work in cardboard boxes that stacked seven high and ten long. The untidy island of my tin-framed bed was frequently swallowed amongst the concept sketches and paint-spattered cloths that I seemed to collect in excess.

Two AM commonly found me sluggishly shuffling through homework, tucked under the balding fuzzy blanket that had been my companion since I was two years of age. My personal shroud smelt strongly of stale adolescent sweat distilled by tears from years of angst-filled puberty , mildly like sex (courtesy of my first romantic relationship), the shampoo of two young brothers hiding inside, and a bit like my Grandmother's Florentine Tuber-Rose perfume. The dear fuzzy blanket had never been washed in its double-decade lifespan and I was sure that it had grown so wise that it was capable of departing the academic answers to problems I had yet to understand. Like every malformed romantic, I hated mathematics. The hour of four shackled my eyelids to their platforms and the homework was tumbled to the floor by impatient hands. Fuck the Calculus and fuck the Sociology; by this hour I began to hallucinate either large purple mushrooms sprouting from my ceiling or lines of green ducks waddling at the edge of my sight. These were sure signs that it was time to retire.

I wobbled down the hall to the pirate-patterned bathroom to scrub my teeth and hands free of graphite and artistic residue. The imposing, vicious buccaneers printed across a plastic shower curtain did not seem nearly as worn as I felt.

“Yeah, you’re not tired. But that’s because you don’t have to make sense of big numbers and Marxism.” I pouted at my favorite pirate (a skinny, leprous sort of fellow).

The snaggle-toothed pirate did not respond. If he had, he’d probably have called me a nancy-boy and attempted to throw his rum bottle. Sighing, I rotated my neck to loosen the knots that had gathered there while I spun the twin facet knobs. A chemical bite of paint fumes stung my nostrils as the hot water battled to decompose the colored paste and I twitched my nose in irritation. It was only in the sterile powder-scented washroom that I became aware of the stench of my medium, as my bedroom was constantly ensconced by its smell. Pipes grunted inside the ceiling like a parent woken in the night by a sniffling child, eerie in the otherwise quiet atmosphere, and a resounding thud added to the operatic chorus of the night. Poor Gabby shared a wall with the bathroom and made a habit of tossing sneakers at it to scold me for running water in the dead hours. I ignored his discontent and drowsily seized the bar of gardenia-scented soap, working it into a frothy lather between the frail bones of my fingers.

The thick colors on my paint-encrusted hands muddied the water as it slowly chortled down our partially-dysfunctional drain, no doubt contributing to the pollution of my hometown. March 2000 headline: Local artist contaminates Branch Brook Park. My head leant forward to rest against the mirror as the steaming ribbons exiting the facet caressed my aching hands like a tender massage. Overhead lighting dazzled me as it reflected off of the cyclone liquid that lapped against the smooth white walls of the sink. Red, purple, green, yellow, gray, black, brown, blue, and indescribable mixtures of each peeled from my pale flesh like old skin being shed. It was mesmerizing. More often than not I required the second of Gabby's shoes knocking against the wall to pry me from the sink.

After washing I wished the leprous pirate goodnight and returned to my own bedroom, peeking in to the door beside the bathroom to blow Gabby a silent kiss. My brother’s fluffy red-gold hair and a vague coil that suggested limbs were all that could be identified beneath the thick handmade quilt and he remained still. After shutting myself back into the Bat Cave I huddled half-dead beneath a voluminous aquamarine sleeping-bag for three hours to dream of falling through gaps in the Earth's crust and Rosie O'Donnell delivering Orange Cream Soda to Retirement Homes. My dreams never did come to any agreement about whether they meant to be educational, metaphoric, or in need of enrollment in Narcotics Anonymous. I could not understand a meaning or pattern, besides the recurring theme of Rosie with her truck and holes in the ground that I always fell into. My therapist had once tried to decipher my nightly thoughts and only succeeded in confusing the both of us to the point of an awkward silence. 'Tic Tac, William?' she had then offered for lack of a more intellectual topic.

I rose once again at seven-fifteen to slink onto the acrylic-speckled ebony carpet and crawl into whatever article of clothing smelled recently laundered. It was quite the chore to drag my fatigued body from the warm invitation of my blankets to the mountain of black clothing that had taken residence against my closet door, but somehow I managed each day to do the very thing. Occasionally my actions caused an avalanche and I lost time attempting to resurface from the smell of body mist and cigarette smoke. Someday they will find my corpse buried beneath cotton t-shirts and nylon miniskirts.

Once I was certain that I did not reek of decomposing moose I zombie-walked into my brother's bedroom, squirmed beneath his blankets with a murmur for him to budge up, and conformed to his emaciated body for fifteen minutes. My mother insisted that we must learn to be less dependent on one another yet I could not resist the magnetic draw of cuddling with my younger sibling. Hardly fitting behavior of an adult, you may accuse. I digress that at the age of five years I discovered that I slumbered most peacefully in my infant brother's crib and the habit has been with me ever since. It was only with his warmth pressed against me that I dozed free of nightmares (and Rosie).

Once Gabby's bedside alarm began to shrill, the temporary bliss was severed and my hardly coherent sibling turned over, buried his long nose in my hair (as the little fucker has somehow managed to be both tall and slender, neither of which could be associated with me), and proceeded to snore for another ten minutes with his gawky limbs wound around me like ivy. Once jarred thus I could never return to sleep and I lay awake enjoying the distant clank of Mama readying breakfast for those of us that need not race out of the door.

I picked at the downy copper of Gabby's tangled hair as morning light caught the crystal prism that hung above the headboard. The shimmering trinket cast multi-hued luminescence on the stained Superman sheet that engulfed our fetal juncture of arms and legs. I wiggled my toes to make the purple rays tremble. Gabby generally made some sort of noise in protest to my movement and planted an elbow in my soft belly. My brother’s greatest rule is that Gabby will sleep or there will be hell to pay.

At seven-forty-five my companion stirred a second time and clumsily shooed me into the kitchen for caffeinated sustenance while he himself embarked on the quest for the least odious garments littering his floor. I envied him the ability to wear color and thus find things much easier. Black tends to look all alike, I snickered to myself. With care I gripped the banister and took a step; the rail was only partially rooted to the stairs and tended to lean dangerously to the side. I descended the stairs cautiously to the fanfare of aging floorboards sinking beneath my weight.

Our butter-colored kitchen was at odds with the black-and-red-and-sunflower-yellow theme of our home, sporting cream lace curtains and tile like a checkerboard. It was inarguably the most peculiar room of our seventy-year-old dwelling, with a newly installed smooth black countertop, ancient refrigerator, and unhappy gas stove being the prominent features. My mother adored our pot-bellied china cabinet and scarred wooden dining table even if Dad insisted that we replace them. The kitchen was the throbbing core of my home and the first place to find a family member that had gone missing. The dining table had seen more artwork, meals, generations, and passing faces than the walls of our residence itself.

Each morning Grandma stood at the counter laying honey over fresh bread and sipping Peppermint tea. This was how I had found her for the last twenty-one-years-and-odd-months. Were this morning ritual to be interrupted I suspect the world would pause on its axis. Mama, bless her maternal heart, could unfailingly be found pushing some sort of savory dish round a skillet while Dad picked at the splintering oak of the table and voiced his displeasure at the hour loudly to his conveniently deaf womenfolk. My father's family was not of the early-rising Italian descent that Mama and Grandma were and he was just as fond of mornings as he was telemarketers.

Gabby arrived soon after myself to bicker with me over possession of the coffee and claim the 'Garden State' mug. Usually I lost this contest of wills to his greater height and unjustified parental favoritism and was left with a plain mug holding half a cup of strong coffee. At that moment of the morning I was certain that only Grandma liked me best. As if called by a battle cry Grandpa appeared promptly in his forest-green bathrobe to tug on my ear for either biting my brother's arm or yanking Gabby’s hair. I am astounded that my ears have not grown to the size of oyster shells from all the tugging that has been delivered to them in my lifetime.

By seven-fifty-two I was kissing my family of five farewell and bolting out of the door with my academic belongings and a shout from my mother to ensure that I had my Student Pass. I never remembered to retrieve my identification, just as I had misplaced my lunchbox every single day of Elementary School. Being thus afflicted I made a hasty retreat to recover said item from the plastic jack-o-lantern by the door and skidded out on my next departure. It was only a short bus ride from Clifton Ave. to the main train station yet one which I hardly succeeded in partaking of with my dismal punctuality.

However desperate I may have been to enter Newark Penn Station ahead of the eight-sixteen train, it proved easier said than done and often I was not able to reach the busy depot in a timely manner. I never did leave myself nearly enough time to cross streets and pelt down stairs (without becoming human graffiti, that is to say). My luck had never particularly charitable, after all, nor my legs very swift. It would have served my interests to use a car. Had I not been terrified of automobiles I could easily have invested in one, but this was not an option under the present circumstances. My first mishap with driving at age fifteen had resulted in the bumper colliding with a street sign; I was loath to destroy anything else. In a rustle of denim and clattering pencils I mingled with the commuters that rushed to and fro inside the travel metropolis, peering on tiptoe to find the nearest visible timetable. Reinstating in my memory the number of the eight-forty train I began to wander throughout the station and its sizable crowds. Moving was a bit inevitable despite the fact that I desired nothing more than to lie against a wall and resume slumber.

The air in March was chill with the concrete of the platforms and burnished by light from the windows, a paradox of golden spring sun and dirty gray granite. I sometimes made believe that I had been sent into the mines of Moria and that an Orc might make chase at any moment, but only when I felt secure that no one was watching my careful movements from one cool pillar to the next. The weather of Newark is of a cold, tempered disposition and I wore a hooded sweatshirt zipped to my throat and tried not to touch the walls too often. As a part of my newfound decision to try this uncomfortable madness called 'exercise' (which I had long thought was merely theoretical and not required) I paced the halls for a quarter of an hour studying the tracks and occasional dropped parcel. A foreigner cannot fathom the treasure that can be found in the corners of Newark Penn Station. However, a native does. In fact, I tended to become distracted by my discoveries.

The train arrived as planned (as I had never done) and every single morning I was late and became caught by the closing doors.

“Ow! Hey, what's the fucking idea?!” I shouted as the train doors attempted to crush both my ribcage and the backpack that rode it.

The inanimate doors made no reply and continued to battle with my bone structure for dominance.

“Lemme' in, motherfucker!” I growled, squirming as the doors pressed suffocating on my torso.

Each morning I made a similar protest but they had yet to develop the sense to wait an additional five minutes. Perhaps it was selfish in retrospect, but at the time my young mind computed it as infallible logic. Why wait for the next train and be late to class when I might instead risk serious injury? Avoiding lawsuits was apparently not high on the priority scale of this conductor, just as escaping bodily harm was not mammoth on mine.

“Yo! Doors' closin', dipshit.” Drawled a tall man, reaching for one of the sliding doors and applying the necessary pressure to reopen it.

His comrade, a slight Asian dude dressed also in bright loose-fitting clothing, seized the other door and mimicked his friend. With a loud exhalation and mounting irritation I slid through the small opening with much scraping of nylon and whining of a determined train entry. Oh, glorious oxygen! One never appreciates the utter lack of space in a subway until he compares it with being stuck between sliding doors.

“Thanks.” I huffed at the two, pushing at the insistent copper fringe that had flopped once more into my line of vision.

The taller, mocha-skinned man flashed me a smirk and raised thumb while the smaller one merely smiled and resumed reading an outdated issue of Financial Investments. Composing myself, I shuffled further inside the car in hopes of finding an unoccupied seat. My feet were beginning to harbor blisters at the mercy of too-small Converses.

In my humble, semi-observational opinion the most curious thing about the train system is the height of the seats in Train 6. As I have not ridden an alternate route I can not say that the space between slick flooring and the imprints of a thousand varied butts is unique... but I think it may be, for what precisely is the point of installing uncomfortably lofty bucket seats? I am a small person, true, but I do not presume myself to be anything miniature. In fact, my size is probably just under average. A little short for a guy, a bit overweight, sort of little in that odd dainty manner that is generally exclusive to women, but not understated. My black Converses tapped ever so lightly against the floor when I was fortunate enough to claim a seat in the train and I labored to touch the trembling linoleum. Stretch and flex. The longer, considerably more agile passengers around me tossed their legs carelessly into the aisle with feet crossed at the ankles as if they were mocking my disability. I strained to extend my legs to reach as far and succeeded only in kicking some poor harried businessman ambling past. He must have been having a sour day because he kicked right back and left my ankle twanging.

A girl of eight or so sympathized with me on a Tuesday morning in March, her smile the naïve unassuming register of childhood. She did not seem to be offended by the inches in-between her little buckled veneer shoes and the floor yet appeared to take pity toward my perspective. Her eyes spoke volumes of kindness to my illiterate self-esteem. How is it that little girls harbor such wisdom? I considered questioning her peace but thought that it could be classified as presumptuous or even destructive. I was painfully shy, after all, and perhaps she would call me an ugly pig and refuse to indulge my starvation for cordiality. It would not be an unusual occurrence. Instead, we kept a strict silence of what I hoped was mutual understanding while the world roared on in and around us.

I studied her sweetness with thoughtful eyes while she attempted to piece my story together. She was such a pretty little creature in her checkered summer dress (out of season, which made my cheeks gather in a smile) and she vibrated more than the erratic hum of the train over its tracks with a peculiar air of electric current. There was a mellow buzz adorning her like stage lights, akin to the background purr of the refrigerator that comforts an insomniac in the dead of night. From the bag that I clutched jealousy in my lap I extracted my sketchbook and haphazard box of pencils, opening to a fresh page and setting a 6B graphite to the white surface. The little girl was patient as I skittered a rough outline of her well-postured form, unconcerned that she was modeling for some ghetto kid or that I was wearing yesterday’s eyeliner with pink jelly bracelets. The mother, however, took high insult toward the exchange of stares from her daughter to myself and cast me a threatening glance before snatching the child close. The abrupt movement interrupted the position and now my outline was entirely wrong. What sort of world do we live in that mothers must keep their daughters from an artist's eyes? Is it not our occupation to capture the beauty and detail of that which we see? I closed my sketchbook.

I may not have been appreciated as I would be in Central Park, but nevertheless I held a kinship with the silent outcasts of the herd that all artists have access to. It seemed I made a 'friend' on each mode of transportation. First had been the man on the Train; an enormous African-American with a shock of tangerine hair and the starriest black eyes I had ever seen. I had only seen him twice in three times that many months but both had been genial, pleasant experiences. He lounged so unethically in his seat (claiming two to three spaces unless asked to move) and everyone seemed loathe to stand too close to him. The line of him was vast and mighty to the casual eye yet his expressions never strayed from merry. He allowed me to draw him with vigor and sat as my model for as long as I remained seated, a large canary-yellow backpack under his masculine right arm. I dare say I had a teeny tiny crush on him. The other Train-Friend had been the sweet little girl in her checkered dress, of course, whose mother now steered starboard to any and all adolescent males with sketchbooks.

On the Ferry there was Molly And Her Dolly, an ancient dame that must have had an epic tale locked behind her deeply lined lips. It was she that I favored drawing whenever I was fortunate to spot her. I found myself very taken with the string of yellowed pearls at her throat and the deteriorating fabric doll cradled in her cord-like arms. One of her eyes drifted to the left every few moments as if independently searching for some lost relative and her voice whistled like a dysfunctional piccolo. We never really spoke about anything aside from the state of the carpet, but I had the distinct impression that she was waiting for her Granddaughter to board the Ferry. I called them my friends because I had so very few, considering I had been the little Wednesday Adams of the First Ward my entire life. The price of being special was to be very, very lonely.

It was refreshing to exit the railway each morning and transfer to the ferry. Claustrophobia had been a plague on my fragile nerves for quite a score of years and my carefully medicated neurosis demanded that subjection to tunnels be kept at a minimum. A constant conviction sat leaden in my belly telling me the city would collapse either overhead or beneath me. I was no fan of water, either, but boating was a great deal less unsettling than the shadowy maw of the city’s intestines.

There was certainly a greater span of potential portrait subjects in the open air. In search of inspiration I aspired to be a permanent passenger at the window where I would be among the first to spot NYC and identify the components of the New York City skyline. The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the World Trade Center, all rising like the plants of a marsh into the granite gray of space. With precision and mild anxiety I held my sketchbook precariously balanced atop my knees as I immortalized those around me against the quadric backdrop (mapping out Liberty Island or the Jersey Shore if mankind didn't please me). My latest fixation was drawing the elderly, duplicating the ruts and folds of their sagging flesh with melodramatic strokes of my quickly dwindling favorite pencil. There was a fastidious beauty in those many-fingered labyrinths of skin, like the roots of an aging tree spreading wide and arched from the earth. They had earned every one of those laugh lines, I was certain, as well as every line of the brow that came with frowning. I myself had so little to offer: my face was so round and smooth as to be hideously boring. The only point of interest found housed at the forefront of my skull were my eyes, which were striking and round and the color of a Granny-Smith apple in decent light. The contrast between the placid legacy of my elders and my blank simplicity reminded me to appreciate the metaphors of even the most menial lifeform rather than feeding my brain on plastic commercials promising eternal youth.

The resting period of two days which we call 'weekend' could hardly qualify as a time of recuperation. Saturday and Sunday were penciled in with their own dissatisfaction: excuses for staying in made to distant-eyed 'friends', empty soda bottles spilling from plastic washtubs, Peanut Butter Crunch on the living room floor, ancient flannel pajama pants that my height refused to shorten, and goofy cartoons ingrained to the sarcophagus of my brain. My Gabby, who was as perceptive as he was beautiful, slunk into my sight with heavily-sweetened cups of coffee and absconded with my worries as often as possible. Yet he always had somewhere to go and someone to see even at the underage status of 16.5. Though true twins in many aspects there were certain facets of ourselves that were at utter polarities.

Indiscernible faces passed through our home and occasionally paused for my benefit. I continued to lie on the carpet and pretend that my Diet Coke was the cavalier alcohol that so many found escape in. The only cheer I gleaned from weekends was lying on my bed in utter darkness with Paris beside me, dining on phlegmatic sorrows and pregnant dreams that I dared not lay on my lesser burdened friends. My ex-boyfriend and I took the opportunity of parting momentarily from school to meditate on the human soul and open our wounds to the time-worn surface of my X-Men comforter.

My Grandma in her cigarette-coarsened tones of profundity always said, 'Watch for falling stars. Sometimes they land nearby.' when I returned home from school with a cloven lip or bruises in the shape of fists. It had taken some time for this wisdom to travel the proper synapses and be redirected to an area of my brain that had yet to develop in the more literal years. I had consummated a reputation as a small child for walking into walls and poles due to the fact that I was always in my own world staring upward at the sky. In fact I had been searching for those burning composites of gas and rock. Since I practically existed in a different dimension throughout most of my life no one thought anything of my peculiar fascination with the yawning distance. What my dear Grandma had meant in her boundless spiritualism was that one should be observant to the roil of humanity that they pass through. Within it you may find on occasion a person so beautiful and awing that you question their origins on Earth. If you are given the miracle of finding one, cup them in your palms and treasure your lucky discovery. I had yet to test her theory, for the most precious person I knew had been hot on my heels out of my mother's womb, yet I was a fool (or perhaps wise) to its idealism.