—The Residents of Morton St.
Don’t keep people up, don’t work for the Department of Defense, and don’t have a clothesline.
I cried.
I wouldn’t now. I would think it was ironic, or I would just be mad like my mom and dad were.
Mad that a block that once held enough for anyone’s existence was no longer open to anyone.
But I just felt bad and tried to ignore the threatening notes.
Willy said they were cocksuckas and I shouldn’t let them bully me. Years earlier he would have fixed the problem, and come into The Store bragging about how he did it.
But he was bedridden in a basement, and no one except me even went to visit.
Every note I tore down would be replaced by a new one.
A lady stopped me on the street. She yelled at me, pointing up and scrunching her face. She was an adult. I was 20, but a strange mix of an old person and a child. I was at a loss for what to say.
I told her I didn’t hang my underwear up outside, just my pants and shirts.
The next day there was another note.
Clearly her passion was bigger than my passion. So I just stopped hanging my wash on Morton Street.
And when The Store was pushed out and I was evicted from the building I grew up in, it really was not as big a tragedy as it seemed.
Morton Street, circa 1900
Once a man named Paul invited my dad to his apartment. It was a rent-controlled basement unit on Bedford Street.
First thing through the door, Paul said to my dad, “I want to show you something.” Paul led him to a corner of the room, opened a closet, and pulled up a trapdoor in the floor.
They both stared down and saw rushing water.
“That’s the Minetta Brook,” Paul said. “It is still there underneath.”
THE ASG
“Did the Wolfawitzes ever visit Wolf’s Lair on one of their vacations?” I asked my dad.
“No. They are not real,” he said.
“What?”
“I made them up.”
“You did not. You are fucking with me.”
I remembered meeting the Wolfawitzes. Their children were named after herbs: Parsley, Sage, and Cumin. The father designed candy dispensers for a living, and the mother wore sleeveless shirts in the winter.
Of course, my father made the Wolfawitzes up. It was easy to fill them in. Most of the places they visited were places we had visited.
The Wolfawitzes were created to get across my dad’s guiding belief in ASG—Arbitrary Stupid Goal.
A goal that isn’t too important makes you live in the moment, and still gives you a driving force. This driving force is a way to get around the fact that we will all die and there is no real point to life.
But with the ASG there is a point. It is not such an important point that you postpone joy to achieve it. It is just a decoy point that keeps you bobbing along, allowing you to find ecstasy in the small things, the unexpected, and the everyday.
What happens when you reach the stupid goal? Then what? You just find a new ASG.
Customers didn’t understand when my dad said the best way to be was to have an arbitrary stupid goal, so he made up the Wolfawitzes.
Unless he is fucking with me. Then the Wolfawitzes are out there right now.