my dick.
I remembered seeing the cuts on my arms and I remember the ride by cab to the emergency room but I don’t remember harming myself. One of the gashes was deep enough to need minor surgery to repair the tendon. The other ones were okay to just stitch up.
I lied to the admissions guy so they let me go the next day. I copped to being drunk but said I’d fought off a mugger. I was sent home with a supply of tape and gauze and some pills for the pain.
I promised myself that I’d quit this time for sure. Scared shitless by my own madness.
And I did. I stayed completely sober and without any alcohol of any kind for three days.
Early on the morning of the fourth day I was awake. Sweating. Uneasy. Five a.m. Sitting on the side of my bed, smoking cigarettes and waving my gray legs one at a time above the shadows on the linoleum, I knew. I was thirty-four years old and I knew; alcohol had become my medicine, the thing that kept me in balance. It was my wedge against my attacking, endlessly filibustering, condemning mind.
I realized that I was unable to stop. And at the same moment that realization came I also was aware that, if I continued, sooner or later I’d be out of control again, that one night in a blackout I’d find the razor again or maybe jump in front of the Eighth Avenue bus or a speeding cab. Considering both conditions, both sides, weighing out the pros and cons, I came up with what was the only decision possible; I had to drink. The rest was the tradeoff.
I got up, locating my pants in the street-light, my shoes and my shirt and my thick coat. Then I walked. Up Eighth Avenue, along Central Park South, Fifty-ninth Street, until 6 a.m. when the bars reopened.
Chapter Eight
THERE WERE A bunch of jobs in a row after that. Four. #1: Driver for a bootleg airport shuttle service operating out of the midtown hotels, #2: Peddling belts at lunchtime on Fiftieth Street by the Time-Life Building and around Times Square, #3: A ticket-taking gig at an after-hours club on Forty-sixth Street, and #4: A wacko stint as a window cleaner.
I liked the airport shuttle service best because I got to drive around the city and because they paid in cash at the end of each shift. Everything I earned was off-the-books with no deductions to the government.
I’d seen their advertisement under ‘Drivers’ in the Times and got hired on the spot because the morning of the day I walked in, one of their guys had called up and quit over the phone.
At first, because I didn’t know the city, I made constant mistakes and had the passengers pissed off at me. But the company had a high turnover and my dispatcher didn’t care about anything other than me showing up for work. When I’d get jacked up or in trouble about a destination, I would radio in and he’d give me directions.
Mostly, I spent my shifts bopping back and forth from La Guardia and Kennedy Airport and then back to the city. Pick ‘em up here - drop ‘em there. The tips were good.
Our barn was in the South Bronx and the service was owned and run by two Puerto Rican brothers, Alesandro and Hector. We were technically a gypsy cab and illegal becausewhat the brothers had done was to make a back-door deal with the legitimate, larger services to carry their overflow without having to pay any of the heavy New York City licensing fees.
The problem was the equipment. Our vans were shit. The brothers owned three vehicles that stayed in operation fifteen to twenty hours a day. There was no towing insurance, and no back-up or contingency in the event of a breakdown. When one of the mini-buses would give out on an airport run, Hector would come out in his Chevy station wagon with the torn seats and missing headliner and complete the drop by delivering the passengers himself. Sometimes it would take him two hours to get back, attach a thick link tow chain to the front bumper of my van, and pull me back over the Tri-Boro Bridge to Gerard Avenue in the Bronx.
The brothers were
I remembered seeing the cuts on my arms and I remember the ride by cab to the emergency room but I don’t remember harming myself. One of the gashes was deep enough to need minor surgery to repair the tendon. The other ones were okay to just stitch up.
I lied to the admissions guy so they let me go the next day. I copped to being drunk but said I’d fought off a mugger. I was sent home with a supply of tape and gauze and some pills for the pain.
I promised myself that I’d quit this time for sure. Scared shitless by my own madness.
And I did. I stayed completely sober and without any alcohol of any kind for three days.
Early on the morning of the fourth day I was awake. Sweating. Uneasy. Five a.m. Sitting on the side of my bed, smoking cigarettes and waving my gray legs one at a time above the shadows on the linoleum, I knew. I was thirty-four years old and I knew; alcohol had become my medicine, the thing that kept me in balance. It was my wedge against my attacking, endlessly filibustering, condemning mind.
I realized that I was unable to stop. And at the same moment that realization came I also was aware that, if I continued, sooner or later I’d be out of control again, that one night in a blackout I’d find the razor again or maybe jump in front of the Eighth Avenue bus or a speeding cab. Considering both conditions, both sides, weighing out the pros and cons, I came up with what was the only decision possible; I had to drink. The rest was the tradeoff.
I got up, locating my pants in the street-light, my shoes and my shirt and my thick coat. Then I walked. Up Eighth Avenue, along Central Park South, Fifty-ninth Street, until 6 a.m. when the bars reopened.
Chapter Eight
THERE WERE A bunch of jobs in a row after that. Four. #1: Driver for a bootleg airport shuttle service operating out of the midtown hotels, #2: Peddling belts at lunchtime on Fiftieth Street by the Time-Life Building and around Times Square, #3: A ticket-taking gig at an after-hours club on Forty-sixth Street, and #4: A wacko stint as a window cleaner.
I liked the airport shuttle service best because I got to drive around the city and because they paid in cash at the end of each shift. Everything I earned was off-the-books with no deductions to the government.
I’d seen their advertisement under ‘Drivers’ in the Times and got hired on the spot because the morning of the day I walked in, one of their guys had called up and quit over the phone.
At first, because I didn’t know the city, I made constant mistakes and had the passengers pissed off at me. But the company had a high turnover and my dispatcher didn’t care about anything other than me showing up for work. When I’d get jacked up or in trouble about a destination, I would radio in and he’d give me directions.
Mostly, I spent my shifts bopping back and forth from La Guardia and Kennedy Airport and then back to the city. Pick ‘em up here - drop ‘em there. The tips were good.
Our barn was in the South Bronx and the service was owned and run by two Puerto Rican brothers, Alesandro and Hector. We were technically a gypsy cab and illegal becausewhat the brothers had done was to make a back-door deal with the legitimate, larger services to carry their overflow without having to pay any of the heavy New York City licensing fees.
The problem was the equipment. Our vans were shit. The brothers owned three vehicles that stayed in operation fifteen to twenty hours a day. There was no towing insurance, and no back-up or contingency in the event of a breakdown. When one of the mini-buses would give out on an airport run, Hector would come out in his Chevy station wagon with the torn seats and missing headliner and complete the drop by delivering the passengers himself. Sometimes it would take him two hours to get back, attach a thick link tow chain to the front bumper of my van, and pull me back over the Tri-Boro Bridge to Gerard Avenue in the Bronx.
The brothers were
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