Original Love. J.J. Murray

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СКАЧАТЬ you need the chapters, Henry?”

      “Oh, as soon as you can get them to me.”

      Great. “Okay. Uh, thanks for everything.”

      “Don’t mention it.”

      As the elevator plunges to the parking garage, I close my eyes. Here I am, a published author reduced to writing on spec, about to write an African-American romantic comedy in Cherry Grove, the oldest gay community in the United States.

      Good writing, F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, is like swimming underwater and holding your breath.

      I just don’t know if I can hold my breath that long anymore.

      2

      I drift along with the tide of cars escaping New York City, Walt Whitman’s “city of spires and masts,” letting the convoy of tattered flags and red, white, and blue bumper stickers carry me through the wasteland of Long Island, the supposed recreation area for the people of New York City, home to several million commuters and the infamous Long Island Rail Road. I float east with flocks of other idle dreamers and screamers clinging to steering wheels on the Northern State Parkway around lunchtime. From Massepequa to Montauk, where the Amistad landed only to be escorted to Connecticut, Long Island is the melting pot cooked down to the dregs.

      Suffolk County: nothing but potato farms, ducks, and Grumman.

      I hesitate when I see a sign to Huntington. I don’t want to go there yet. One ghost story at a time.

      I waver again when I see an advertisement for Levittown, one of the places the Captain used to live before Levittown became marginally integrated. I don’t ever want to go there. I like homogenized milk; I don’t like homogenized neighborhoods. Maybe the melting pot went to Levittown to die. And all during junior high, Levittown was the only Long Island town listed on the big Cram map on the wall in geography class, the rest of Long Island obliterated by the letters of New Haven, Bridgeport, and Stamford, Connecticut.

      Heading south to Plainedge, then east, I read signs announcing so many towns, so many names like Wyandanch, West Babylon, and Bohemia. Native American names coexist with biblical names east of Hedonism on this thin sliver of the American dream jutting out into the Atlantic. What the Dutch took from the natives then shared with the English is now one large faceless neighborhood divided by malls, restaurants, convenience stores, and the empty shadows of industrial parks.

      Huntington’s main mall is the Walt Whitman Mall. What would Walt say as he walked around inside his own mall? Would he say, “I am large, I contain multitudes”? Could he bloom at Bloomingdale’s or contemplate leaves of grass at Garden Botanika? Would he echo the sufferings of men like me who don’t like to shop and say, “I am the man, I suffered, I was there” or “I stop somewhere waiting for you”? Would Walt “invite his soul” to observe the indoor sidewalk sales? Would Walt feel connected to all the atoms in the houses in planned neighborhoods on Long Island that look the same, two cars in every garage, a single tree in every yard? A couplet takes shape as I drive:

      Welcome to a dark, suburban Hades,

      where houses run into the 180’s…

      I slip through the redundant Islips (West Islip, Islip proper, and East Islip), past Great River to Sayville, heading to River Road and the Charon Ferry Service for the trip across Great South Bay to Cherry Grove. That’s one of the many nice things about Fire Island: no cars allowed, only your own two feet or a bicycle to get you around. I park the Nova, grab my carry-on and laptop, and stroll to the docks, the scent of diesel fuel and salt air tingling my nose. Great South Bay, while not exactly a quagmire of whirlpools, has been known to belch sand onto the rest of Long Island.

      Because the next ferry to Fire Island won’t leave until 2 P.M., I have half an hour to waste counting rows of red Radio Flyer wagons and analyzing the other passengers in a poem on the back of the car rental receipt:

      A young man, hacking into a handkerchief,

      leans against an older man who winces at every cough.

      Another, dressed in black, sits by himself on the dock,

      his feet splayed over the rainbow-colored water

      while a man in red holds on to a piling for dear life.

      Two crew-cut blond women work an old snack machine,

      yanking and cursing at each knob,

      while an older woman wrapped in a blue coat nods off on a bench,

      her breathing as exhausted as her makeup.

      An old song creeps into my head,

      something about not paying the ferryman,

      and I find myself humming “Come Sail Away,”

      an even older song by Styx.

      The other people waiting seem like fallen leaves in the chilly air,

      like birds that flock to land, stretching arms out toward the bay.

      We are all helpless souls of the unburied,

      fluttering around these docks,

      so many bones in New York not yet laid to rest.

      God, my poetry is as depressed as I am.

      After buying a honey bun that I know has been aging gracelessly in the machine since August, I read the ferry regulations, the print looking fresh on a wall covered with old nautical charts and faded boating notices:

      In order to comply with United States Coast Guard regulations, the following baggage and freight procedures must be followed:

      Two (2) pieces of hand luggage is allowed, no charge. A Tariff will be imposed on all additional items. Shopping Carts & Luggage carriers—Min. charge $3.00. Luggage only is allowed in passenger areas. Loaded wagons (e.g., Radio Flyers) will not be accepted. Absolutely no bungee cords can be used. Freight must be handled on and off the ferry by crew.

      Due to quantity, size and weight of freight, limited space on board, weather conditions, loading and unloading time, and the safety and convenience of the passengers, the crew at times will limit the amount of freight carried on a trip.

      I don’t have much baggage (visible anyway), and I look at the few others waiting around me. A couple of briefcases and a few handbags. Our own thoughts will echo on this ferry. The last item—Smoking is not allowed on the docks or the ferry—makes me laugh, because as the ferry approaches, I see the captain in the fly bridge of the approaching ferry puffing a big cigar.

      After the crew tethers the burnt-orange ferry to the dock, the captain walks down the gangplank followed by a small group of people. Those waiting around me fade away like autumn shade, and I’m the only one left to take the next ferry.

      “I got a lot of freight to load,” the captain says to me, “so you might wanna reconsider what you’re bringing cuz we may have to shoehorn you in or find you a smaller boat to get across the marsh.”

      I look again at the laptop and carry-on. “I only have these.”

      He taps СКАЧАТЬ