<\/p>\n
Roll it . . . <\/strong>I buy<\/span> a slice of pizza on Broadway and walk <\/span><\/span>by the Cooper Union, then down St. Mark\u2019s Place. I notice the Fillmore East is going to reopen as a circus. I go up Second Avenue and see bus ads that say Prisoner of Second Avenue<\/em> on them. That\u2019s a Neil Simon play. (When Simon was on Dick Cavett,<\/em> Simon said his problem was he couldn\u2019t stop writing.)<\/p>\n I arrive at 215 Second Avenue, my destination. I\u2019m thinking of renting a room here, but the sublet guy isn\u2019t home. A friend of his is in. He’s Joel. Another guy is here, too. He’s Joe. The guy I\u2019m looking for is Joey. The place is a dump. All these guys are crashing here. Joel has a hacking cough and a pornographer\u2019s beard. The windows are dirty and have iron gratings. I’ll take the place.<\/p>\n I use Spic and Span to clean the refrigerator and kitchen table. Joel says, \u201cDon\u2019t be so middle-class about it.” Joel is a graduate of Queens College, as are Joe and Joey.\u00a0Joel spits blood in the toilet and doesn\u2019t flush it. He floats his pink toilet paper! The cat shit is encrusted all over the bathroom. Joe is the editor of Monster Times. <\/em> I head<\/strong><\/span> over to Greenwich Village. I know a recent Brandeis graduate there who has enrolled in NYU law school. He lives on Waverly Place and is seemingly normal. He’s not in. I go to Fifth Avenue and look up a girl whose father I know from Cleveland.\u00a0The doorman says I can buzz her. \u201cI\u2019m Bert,\u201d I say on the intercom.<\/p>\n \u201cWho?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBert like in Bert Parks.\u201d<\/p>\n This girl is a buyer for Bloomingdale\u2019s. She’s heading out to New Jersey for a grand opening. I head over to the 34th<\/sup> Street YMCA, where I’ll spend the night, I think. A girl there — at the Y — asks me, \u201cWhere are you from?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMichigan.\u201d (Michigan<\/em> is cooler than Ohio<\/em>.)<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m from<\/strong> <\/span>Minnesota!\u201d she says. She says she’s going to be an actress. Her boyfriend shows up.<\/p>\n Walkin’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Roll it . . . I buy a slice of pizza on Broadway and walk by the Cooper Union, then down St. Mark\u2019s Place. I notice the Fillmore East is going to reopen as a circus. I go up Second Avenue and see bus ads that say Prisoner of Second Avenue on them. That\u2019s a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29442"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29757,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29442\/revisions\/29757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/em><\/p>\n