What Colors the Steel Sky Blue

PLEASE NOTE: The following events did not take place in 2010. The original entry was written way back in 2002 about events that took place in 2001. I somehow saved it as a draft and never published it. I guess I was still a little embarrassed about the whole thing. Now that the media, reality shows and social networking has left no shame in us all, I find it not a problem to post this story. Hope you enjoy it. The story is presented not to shame Jamie in any shape or form but to entertain and illustrate how life in a big/small city can be frustrating at times.

I live in Stuyvesant town amongst a sad set of brick buildings and greenery to put other parks on the island to shame. Amongst such beauty resides an immense sadness whose source to me is unknown. Perhaps it is a sadness of the years past or it is my own sadness, a fruit of my current state. Perhaps both. Either way living here in my brick and concrete cell feels like curling up in my own misery, somewhat a comfortable bed; one that I never chose to lay in, but I am too tired to try leaving.

I can almost feel this current run through my body as I leave the Stuyvesant town. The jolt, nevertheless imaginary, still makes me feel like a dog running past an electric fence. Once on the outside, it is almost harder to go back in to Stuyvesant town.

Outside it is crazy; it is wild; it is non-stop; and it demands your attention at all times. Outside there is no time to sulk, no time to stop and ponder; outside I must keep moving; the trees cast shadows on me no longer. Outside, one can sometimes be happier than he is in Stuyvesant town.

Living on this tiny piece of flat land called Manhattan, one is bound to run into some people over and over and over. In any other town, you would get eventually get to meet these people, perhaps even make good friends with them. Not in Manhattan.

In Manhattan these are the people you will try to avoid by taking a different path home everyday. Sounds insane but don't tell me you never did this.

What's worse than these random meetings is the possibility that each time one person may be more spooked than the other. One of these daily encounters can put one person in the role of the stalker and the the other in the role of the stalked. This is not to say that one person is always the stalker and the other always the stalked. In fact the roles of these unsuspecting strangers change faster than what's hot in the pop charts.

Well such a person for me is Jamie Harrold, an up and coming actor who has done a decent set of movies and also strangely enough works out at my gym. I kept running into him rollerblading in East Village and or course at the gym in the evenings.

I absolutely had no idea who he was for the longest time. He always looked strangely familiar to me; but then again this happens pretty frequently with me so I did not give it any thought. Finally a couple of weeks ago I was going through my DVD collection looking for something to watch. I decided to give Erin Brockovich another spin.

Halfway through the movie, right when my energy levels were hitting rock bottom and I was considering watching the rest of the movie the next day, there he was on screen. He was the waterboard guy in the movie. It's a small world, and a smaller city.

A couple of days ago I went up to him on my way out the gym and said "hey!". I admit I was trying to keep my cool because I have always found initial conversations with strangers, well just that, strange. He was friendly. We shook hands and I kinda gushed that I really liked the Erin Brokovich. He kinda did not know what to say. I was slipping towards acting like a groupie fast so I kinda cut it short and said bye. Overall I think I did not do too bad. I was hoping I could have a few more follow up conversations with him later -- since I saw him at the gym and on the street everyday!

Well I was wrong. After we met, this cloud of discomfort settled on his face every time he saw me. I was starting to believe that I was put in the role of the stalker and wanted no part of it. The coincidence of running into him all over East Village went from being a daily joke to being darn right annoying. I was truly going on about my life, changing my path, taking another subway line, trying alternative routes, alternative gyms and he seemed to be EVERYWHERE....

First we stopped saying hi, then we stopped acknowledging each other on the street, and soon enough we were strangers again. Ah, the comfort of being complete strangers. I am not planning to give it up so easily next time.

Every day new people come into our lives, much like new voyagers to a ship. Some depart quickly leaving not much for a trace, others stay on for days, months, decades. It is not the length of time that really leaves the mark behind however it is sure to factor into the depth of the mark.

When I left New York, I would like to believe that some people actually missed me. I know my cousin missed me, as I missed him in my life. Perhaps other people I met along the way in those brief 2 years missed me for a month or two. I hope they still remember though I do not know why I hope so.

Either way with my arrival in Austin, a lot changed in my life including a new job, a whole new group of coworkers. Amongst this team was my work-partner, my number one team mate, my other half to be: James Salisbury. I met him during the new employee orientation. A tall dark haired man with prominent and marked bone structure that not only exuded confidence but also created a sense of safety -- a sense of comfort. It seemed like we were going to get along just fine and I was relieved because I know I can sometimes be difficult.

Well, the honeymoon did not last long. Within a couple of weeks we were already in "I want to do it this way", "you want to do it this way" kind of disagreements. In fact after the first couple of months it became apparent to me that we were not going to get anything done unless one of us gave up his personal preferences and played along. And this I did, although every bone in my body screamed that this was not the right course.

I let James create our technology plan, I let him come up with the specs. He loved to work, and heaven knows he seemed to be working hard. He was putting in the hours and I was supporting best I could. At least I thought what I was doing was good enough. Well it wasn't; not for him anyway.

Most of our exchanges started or ended with "why did you do the following task this way as opposed to that way", "you wrote so and so code wrong, it does not work", "no it's all broken, you were busy so I rewrote the entire thing". At first I thought my skills were rusty from such an extended unemployment. But then I realized the number of things I could successfully do was getting smaller every day, leaving me in charge of fewer and fewer tasks I was considered competent to do.

My boss insisted on keeping the two of us as equivalents although both of us at different times had volunteered to work under the direction of the other. So the clashes continued. Yes we were equivalents, with the exception that most of the team only listened to his recommendations while blatantly ignoring my input. He sounded so calm, so calculated, so knowing. Sometimes even I doubted if I was the one full of shit and if he was right all along.

So I shut up, I tried to keep my quiet, I tried to play along. I tried to work with him. But it became more and more impossible until I just could not take it anymore. So after one of our usual "you can not do it right" exchanges I decided no more -- a line had to be drawn here.

I scheduled a meeting with my boss and related the situation. At the time my boss was almost completely unaware of the clash between the two of us. He was shocked, surprised, and a little confused as to how to proceed. I asked him to not intervene and let me handle it. I was merely informing him ahead of time so that he would not be caught by surprise when I acted differently in project meetings.

Right around the time I started to open up and be more vocal about my problems with the ways things were in the team, James started to shy away from us all, started retreating into his corner where he typed at the keyboard incessantly like a deranged racoon. All day long, he would back typing away, looking up questioningly if I dared to leave my desk for five minutes.

He frequently asked me why I was coming in late, or why I was leaving early on some days. Days I took for sick leave, or comp time were frequently questioned. He was acting like my boss, trying to manage my time, asking me questions one should not really ask a coworker of equal rank.

I just could not take seeing him right there at the other end of the unobstructed room any longer. So we both went to Target and bought Japanese screens for the room. So the walls went up and soon we did not offend each other with our faces. The walls quietened the stress for a while but instead of chasing it, the screens actually were the beginning of the pressure build up that would eventually erupt one day right when I expected it least.

I defined my work and my tasks by things James did not want to do or was not interested in doing. So the work flow was even partitioned off into tasks only I would do and others only he would do. And believe me my set of tasks always were prey to his ever endless free time and his way of just knowing how to do my job better than me.

I have never been in a job before where I had to almost beg to keep my tasks on my plate. Like a big dog, not only he chowed down his tasks but always had his eyes on my dish. It just did not make sense; I am sorry it just did not.

I tried to communicate with him several times either in person or e mail and every time I was confronted with his singular opinion about how I was doing things wrong and how he was completely unmistaken. The whole experience was a lot similar trying to talk some sense, some objectivity into the religious right. I could gab all day but when it was all said and done he was right and I was wrong.

I am willing to fight any fight and willing to try to win anyone over, time and time again. Heaven knows, I am stubborn at times but that actually means I do not give up on people that fast. I still had not given up on James and I wanted it to work but it just didn't no matter how I changed my role in the team. I tried the project management, production management roles. He would not have it. I was not out to position myself to be his boss, all I wanted was to help him organize his coding efforts but he was not even open to that.

So we went around in circles, with me retreating into my corner and my set of tasks for a while then getting another burst of courage to venture out and try to get things to work with him and back again. This whole pattern was observed by him as "Troy is checking in and out of the project." And this expression became his equivalent of "flip flop" argument the right wing used against John Kerry. Every time I brought something important up, it was disqualified by the fact that I checked in and out of the project.

While this was all going on, we did have months of peace especially around the time he was busy with his wedding plans. I even went to his wedding and it was a great experience to be there. To this day I still do not regret going to the wedding.

So you can imagine how mixed up my head was after two years of this, hot, cold, warm, scalding, freezing, cold, hot and everchanging experience. The feeling of not knowing whether I will be ignored or put down during any given day was messing with my head.

In times of distress I reach for chocolate and it is the one thing I must avoid because it gives me migraines making me even more irratable and angry. Well I plunged into the world of conspicuous chocolate consumption and I knew, I knew some days I would walk into work -- especially in those last few months, with the WORST of all attitudes because the hangover migraine from the day before was hurting so bad.

We had no project plan, no deadlines, no clear milestones... hell we did not even have a technology plan nor any form of achitecture document. Did I mention we were developing in Java?? Exactly.... I begged and I begged, I prodded and prodded for months to get him to sit down and create an architecture document or some high level tech plan at least but it was useless.

One day I walked in, dazed by one of my migraines to find James all braced like a cat in his corner, ready to pounce. I was not sure what was going on but I knew nothing good would come of it. Before I could say hi, I was asked to hand over the code I was putting together for him so that his code could talk to our database. When I asked why, I was told it was because I would be gone for a week for vacation. Apparently, by taking vacation, I would be setting back the project. Mind you, no one at this point had informed me when my chunk of the code was supposed to be ready. Suddenly he was done with his code and needed my code before I left for vacation. When I told him it was not finished he told me that he can finish it. Now normally, I would appreciative of such an offer but with him we had a precedent -- and not a good one. I knew right then and there what was going to happen. My code was going to be thrown out once more, and replaced by his code which strangely looked like my code but had no functions, and nor any object oriented style worth mentioning.

You see this pattern had been taking place in the last two years where I would prototype something, he would take it away from me and turn it into his code and then proceed to delete my version. My documentation from servers would vanish, my experimental code folders would be erased or not tolerated for long on the servers. I could not believe that I had been working at this place for two years, I had so little to show for it -- everything was so rewritten, so erased, so taken offline... Any trace of my work was practically erased and I had had enough.

I told him no such hand over would happen and that I would finish the code and document it once I get back. Well that kind of opened the flood gates. Next thing I knew he was telling me that I was a risk to the completion of the project, that I was refusing to communicate with him, work with him, etc. It was such an accusatory, you you you did this, you did that, you're wrong attitude combined with a raised voice that I was not going to sit there and listen to him. I told him to voice his concerns to our boss if he is so concerned and that he can not communicate with me in this manner.

Silence ensued.

For three months, we must have only said "good morning" in the morning and "have a good one" at the end of the day. Otherwise we did not talk to each other, we did not work with each other, hell we did not look at each other.

My anger lasted longer than it has lasted for anyone in my life. I could not even bring myself to look at him on many days.

He kept to himself. As usual he talked to no one else beyond who's on our immediate team of five. He kept the bare minimum 8 hours -- mostly coming in at insane early hours and leaving at 4PM sharp. I on the otherhand came in as late as I could, usually at 10:00AM and left at 7PM. Subconsciously and secretly our schedules were overlapping each other less and less every day -- until we came to a point where it was almost impossible to schedule a meeting with both of us at the same time.

Long story short, he left without a warning right before the Christmas break of 2004. The day he came in to announce it, we were so shocked but I just could not keep the completely inappropriate smile off of my face. I was a little upset still, upset that he was going without a warning, leaving us in the middle of an already broken production schedule. He was the reason the schedule was so broken and I had never for once told him so. In fact where I come from we spend a lot of time complaining about the small things but never wipe people's face in mud for the big things. It is considered rude and unkind. For big things, you try to help and support people. Well James had certainly fucked us up with the uncertainty he created in our team for two years, by messing with our morale, by messing with our egos, by making what should have been a fun stressless job into one of the most uncomfortable and stressful projects I have worked on.

My project team talked a lot about James after he left. He was the subject of many lunch and hallway conversations. So I feel somewhat justified to deliver the following message on behalf of my team:

James, thank you ever so much for nothing. We love you, respect you, and wish you the best -- just don't come back.

I worked in a company that tried its best to emulate the typical new economy company, complete with its unruly employees, cancerous and unreasonable growth, lots of big talk, and among many other things toys in the office. The Austin Branch took pride in having a certain time of day set aside for nerf wars and late night Quake tournaments. In fact, so many employees spent so much time goofing around that we all ended up spending every waking hour at work to catch up with our endless diversions and unrealistic totally overblown milestones.

The New York office was no different. However, by the time I was relocated to the New York office, the economy was already slowly tanking. The pipeline was so empty you could see tomorrow through it and tomorrow did not look good. There were constant rumors of pending layoffs. Will it be this Friday? No, it will be Monday. If not Monday, well it may be Tuesday because it is right before the end of the quarter. In this "sobering" environment all the toys had been cast off to one of the lower unoccupied floors in the hopes that quitting the fooling around would somehow increase our chances of getting new clients and keeping our jobs.

During my lunch breaks, I would go through this huge conference room full of toys trying to find something entertaining to get my mind off, however briefly, of the horrible project I was working on. During one of these excursions, I saw a familiar shape and color towards one of the back corners of the room. Was that really a box of LEGO blocks? Yes it was!

I quickly salvaged it and brought it up to our office work area. At the time I did not worry about a layoff hitting me. I thought to myself; "They just paid 20 odd thousand dollars to relocate me here, there's no way they're going to let me go anywhere in less than 2 years. I was wrong but as I said, I did not know better back then.

This is how my recent prolonged addiction to LEGO started. Several of my office mates also were into LEGO blocks. I remember many of our hopelessly long meetings ending with some sort of a game involving LEGO blocks. Our culture was screwed up, the New York office's culture was worse and the combination of the two was just vile. We all needed an escape and mine was these miniature towers I started building during my lunch breaks.

The first few ones I built were lame but then I suddenly developed a style: It involved over-emphasized verticality conveyed through alternating "floor" colors. Using two different colors created structures that conveyed floors that human eye could recognize even from a distance. Using two different colors of blocks also had another advantage: taller structures thanks to twice the number of pieces. I went from building completely solid towers to more and more shell like structures that housed a significant amount of empty space in them. Creating the voids within the tower created lighter structures as well as allowing me to build taller. Through trial and error, I became pretty experienced in making tall ziggurat-like stepped structures reminiscent of most New York high-rises.

I must admit that I spent most of the summer pre-occupied with my LEGO towers when I should have been paying more attention to the Flash Presentation we were preparing for Deutsche Bank. In all honesty, the presentation was as entertaining as watching paint dry and I had long lost interest in the endless stream of corporate mumbo-jumbo we had come up with for our client through endless hours of fruitless meetings that to me felt like the intellectual equivalent of having bamboo sticks drawn under my fingernails.

Soon I was out of LEGO blocks and in a fit of insanity, I went and bought us another box. A month later towards the end of August 2001, in an effort to increase my engagement in the project, my crazy but well-meaning project manager bought me one more of the same tub of 4000 pieces. I was in LEGO heaven; I had more pieces than I knew what to do with.

Well, you know what happened next.

After 9/11, we were back at the office pretty soon, a little too soon. I was back at work on Thursday of that same week. Considering my commute path had literally been destroyed and now it took me about an hour and half to get to work, just like the other crazies at my work place I was going to work everyday as if nothing actually happened. I now believe we were experiencing some sort of denial. We all figured, if we kept busy, perhaps then all of this mess across Hudson that played like a bad 9/11 DVD day and night through our endless floor to ceiling windows would somehow stop. But it didn't. The site kept smoldering for weeks, as we stared on like campers on the skirts of Mt. St. Helens. A gaping hole, a steam that ever changed direction and strange metallic sounds growling as the heavy machinery worked at the site. The reality did not stop, though we buried our heads deeper into the fictional drama of our project deadlines and goals.

I disassembled all of my towers and started working on a way too big model of the World Trade Center Towers. This model was so big I would need at least 3-4 4000-piece tubs to complete it. I felt compelled to recreate them in some shape or form. Perhaps many people felt the same thing, despite the fact that most of us did not find the two towers all that aesthetically pleasing.

Three or four weeks after 9/11 I gave up on trying to build the models. Our clients were finally out of the mess they had fallen into when the south tower fell onto their headquarters in New York and put all their vitals systems offline. Once I abandoned the WTC model idea, I went back to building the same type of towers; Though I must admit, the towers I was building were much taller and larger --thanks in part to the number of blocks at my disposal and our communal need to make up for the drastic decrease in phallic objects in our proximity.

In a couple of months I ended up with a large block of fairly good-looking designs, each with its unique edge and story. Until I got laid off I dragged this large block of 3-4 foot towers around the office as our team kept getting moved every 2-3 weeks. Every time we moved, people came to watch. They wanted to see how the city was moved they said -- I think they wanted to see if we would take a wrong step and drop the whole thing by accident.

The day before we all got laid off, I already knew we were all toast so I broke the tall towers into neat segments and packed them all. The next day, as I expected, I got laid off along with the rest of the people that were relocated from Austin. I told my project manager that I considered the LEGO city to be mine as a parting gift. He did not object. When I got home from work, the first thing I did was to assemble the city back together.

By the time I was done, it was clear to me: I was an unemployed alien worker in New York City living in a $2200 rent apartment in Manhattan at the worst possible time -- right after the biggest terrorist attack in US history.

Why do I open my eyes in the morning?
Why all the beating in my heart?

Why does this broken back bend,
curl and then roll out of bed?

My body a bag of deliciously colored BBs
all headed toward the kitchen
bouncing off the walls
some getting lost in the floorboards.

Why brew coffee, cook some eggs, talk back to the TV?
Why look at the paper, water the plants, why shower?

Lotion is applied, then comes brushing my teeth
then flossing, then the Listerine.
Cleaning my ears, combing my hair
as the iron is heating.

Why iron clothes
when I know that I when I take a step outside
I will be naked but no one will be seeing.

Why even bother putting on shoes
when every step of mine takes me further away
from where I need to be going?

Pack the lunch, turn the TV off
close the windows, put the dishes away
dont forget your phone, grab your bag
keys, wallet, watch and I am leaving.

Why the happy tunes in the car?
Why pass a car? Why stop at a stop sign?
As I pass on by, I see the old driver
he smiles and motions me forward.
--his eyes mutter, go ahead run forward.

Rushing to work,
getting trapped at untimed lights
trying to find parking
running to the office
being late again to a meeting.

Why even bother?
When it is so much easier to just stop breating.

"Oh I have discovered the most divine little restaurant in East Village--and it was cheap! It's called Amato. Go there before the masses find it and ruin it" --Typical New Yorker

I too have caught myself many times saying something pretty similar to the statement above. I guess when you live in New York city, in addition to the weather, traffic and models, you have the infinitely dense, diverse, and elusive fauna of restaurants to talk about. There's part gloating, part sharing and part shameless need to talk constantly in all this. Gloating because you were there first, you discovered it, before you came this restaurant was buried under rubble and the waiters were sitting around wondering why there were no customers. Sharing because New York people are not all bad, unlike the way I make them sound here, they too have a good bone or two in them and they like to share little secrets of living well in the city --not with just anyone tough these little factoids are only to be shared with the cool and the savvy.

David, my partner whose southern upbringing has been lost on him except for his excellent manners and amazing wit, is hopelessly addicted to Turkish food ever since he met me. In addition to this addiction, he also dislikes several other cuisines of the world; specifically Chinese, Japanese, Indian. He does not eat fish, and avoids anything with rice. I can brave just about everything with the exception of Italian restaurants in NYC -- too much mafia behavior, it ruins my appetite. I single Italian restaurants out because several times I have eaten at Italian restaurants in NYC only to find the food ordinary and the bill higher than it should be. The hefty bill also is compounded by the fact that most Italian restaurants in NYC will not accept MasterCard or Visa, they only accept American Express and what else... cash. Silly and pretentious.

As you can imagine, between David and I we cut about more than half the list of available restaurants. The remaining restaurants are usually either really busy or surrounded by traffic that turns a taxi cab ride to for lunch an insane crusade of two across Manhattan. Naturally, we end up eating most of our lunches in East Village.

Several restaurants we frequent are The Cloister Cafe, Telephone Bar, St. Marx Cafe, Veselka, Lemon Leaf, Shangri La, and several street corner pizza joint on 1^st and 3^rd Avenues. Missing from this list is the 2^nd Avenue Deli, a prominent historical staple of the East Village scene. Oh we have eaten there, just not more than once.

It was an overcast day in Manhattan, not cold but there was a lukewarm breeze in the air. Both David and I were starving. to make matters worse we were in one of our let's try something new moods. It seemed like in a city full of restaurants we were suddenly unable to find one to eat lunch at. It was 2pm already and I was starting to switch from just grouchy from hunger to down right unpleasant. David was no better, whenever he is hungry he just gets quieter and quieter and quieter until it feels like I am escorting a mute person.

Here we were on 2^nd Avenue in front of the infamous deli. On one had I was not familiar with Kosher food and wanted to try it. I had heard mixed reviews of the kosher food phenomenon. I think we did not have much time to decide. In a matter of a few more minutes I was going to start picking fights with strangers and because of his hunger David would not even have the energy to stop me. So with one brave step we entered the 2nd Avenue Deli.

We were running late so the lunch crowd had already left. Many days I have walked past this restaurant and silently giggled at the masses of people piled in waiting for a table for 45 minutes. I had a strange understanding of these people today, perhaps they too were stranded in their search for a restaurant and the 2^nd Avenue Deli was right there looking at them in the face and asking no questions.

We were promptly seated at one of the booths that had been just cleaned up. The table was still shiny from the rag with long curly streaks drying fast to reveal a dull tan colored formica table. The interior of the restaurant was paneled with a very dark red wood that at times made me feel like I was in a mountain lodge or perhaps a lost Frank Lloyd Wright building. Our drinks arrived, a diet coke and an ice tea. The coleslaw and pickles plate also arrived a few minutes later although we had not requested it. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against coleslaw, it was actually pretty tasty. What I don't like about coleslaw is not so much as what it tastes like as what it does to me once I eat it. There's the indigestion, followed by gas and perhaps the shame. It should be marked as a controlled substance.

The coleslaw tasted good, but the pickles were sad. They were sad like kids pulled out of bed way too early. They were neither cucumbers nor pickles; They were a little bit of each and neither at the same time. They were soft and not crunch. They only promised more indigestion and perhaps even a wonderful episode of IBS and I did not even want to think about that.

Then finally like a diva our waitress took stage and came by our table to take our order. She was a 5'7" tall lady in her late fifties with a big cheap blonde wig that was topped by a white hat not dissimilar from those worn by nurses in old war movies. Her makeup was heavy like a wooden puppets and I could swear it was flaking. To make matters worse she was in some sort of a French maid outfit; while the this dress code might be provocative and sexually titilating on perhaps a 20 year old girl, at her age she looked like a French and Saunders episode that found a way to break out of the TV screen.

As we began ordering my mind had completely stopped and I merely emitting a waxing and waning glow like the Apple Macintosh laptops do when they're asleep. So in the middle of my low blood sugar crisis, I listened on as I mouthed the words "I'll have a 2^ndAvenue Burger with American Cheese." Before I had a chance to look up, I knew I had said something wrong. I did not have to wait long, the waitress was quick to correct me with a capital C.

She literally shouted at me saying "THIS is a kosher restaurant! You can not mix meat with cheese. You should know that." With no further ado, she turned around, her short black skirt taking flight from the abrupt move and proceeded into the kitchen. David and I were left behind staring each other like kids that just spilled something at the dinner table. On one hand what had happened was so wrong, on the other hand we were so hungry that we did not have the power to pick a fight. And even if we did, we would be back on the street looking for another restaurant again --and you know we would be searching for another hour before we settled down again.

The food arrived and I still had not recovered from the abuse. Like a victim of abusive parents, I sat at the table and quietly ate my bland, boring, and greasy burger. David was also laying pretty low. I think we had made a silent agreement not to talk about the incident until we got out of there.

We must have left her the smallest tip we have left in our 2 years of dining in New York City. We walked back home slowly on 2^nd Avenue replaying the incident in our heads -- trying to weight how wrong it was of me to say what I did and how wrong of her was it to snap like that. Perhaps we were thin skinned, perhaps we were not ready for this city with all its rules and regulations and hidden gotchas around every corner. Perhaps we were too tired and hungry and despite my stupidity someone could have been more gracious.

After this incident 2^nd Avenue Deli has become for me a monument to the over-rated nature of kosher food: double the price, half the service, and rules and regulations that make less than zero sense. I mean what's the point of washing lettuce a specific number of times when you know you're washing it with the water that comes out of NYC main?

...ruthless time
your hand on the gun
your eye in mine
ready to commit
that ruthless crime...

...clinging on,
tangled emotions turning
turning around the missing wheel
loopy like the greasy chain.
Dangling brakes unable to stop
the time passing.
The pavement heats,
the pavement cools,
soon it will be raining.
The clouds don't speak
the clouds don't call,
but they lick this wounded bike
with two wheels missing.

Although you run through me
like deep streams of a hot morning shower
you wash nothing off of me,
leaving me with my dirty thoughts
and a pile of laundry beside the couch.

Beside me a dog that barks for love
and is beaten to silence,
Outside the door a lawn overgrown
with diminishing hope for water.

In this three bedroom house
without you I wait for the ceiling to fall
but it hangs on by its tresses like claws
onto the laughter filled days that echoed here.

Now I can do the cleaning
with environmentally friendly detergent.

Take out the trash again
and yes even clean the oven.

Brew another pot of coffee
pour a cup for me, a cup for you.

The passing hours clouding my memory
As this house and I wait.
Waiting for you to come back to me
again.

Troy James Vega

One usually goes from bad to worse, hopeless to desparate from deep to rock bottom. Well, I was sinking deeper into my depression too. Days were rolling by, I was sending job applications by the hundreds per week. Still most of the time I never heard back from any of the employers. I was convinced it was because of my visa status. No one wanted to go through the trouble of applying for an H1-B visa for a foreigner when their doors were lined with hopeful citizens. It all made perfect sense to me; however it was still hard to accept that I was yet again on the outside, yet again not a part of the in-crowd.

I was Americanized to a point of no return. A point at which one goes back to his own country only to find his own people dismissing him as a foreigner. Furthermore, I had finally put the sexual orientation issues part of my life behind and focused on my career. Needless to say the bust of 2001, and 9/11 really arrived at the wrong time for me. Then again, I guess there was no good time for either one of these two event to arrive. They never were and never would have been welcome.

My partner David insisted that I return to Austin, TX where he had an apartment. He himself was almost never there because he commuted to Long Island for his job. He worked as a consultant on one of the information system migration projects of a big hospital in Long Island. He also was not yet completely disengaged from his project in LA. So he was traveling to LA one week, then to Long Island in the next, and spending one weekend in Austin and another in New York City with me. This was a taxing schedule for both of us. We did not see each other much that whole year. Needless to say, things were not the same, there was less and less to talk about, less and less intimacy, and it all just did not feel right anymore.

If he had not been as mature and as patient as he is, he and I would have broken up long time ago I think. What's worse is I was stranded in alternate options land with all the time in the world. Two ingredients one should never put together: time and options if he is intending to keep a relationship going.

The thing that was on my side however was the fact that most Manhattan boys at one time or another did something or said something that immediately threw their cover. Most of them seemed so normal, so nice, so interested at first. They immediately sniffed out that I had a weakness for compliments, and man they piled them on.

It is through this experience that I learned that you can make people do whatever you want if you just find the right place to rub. Self esteem usually is the point that's common to most people out there. So that's where they hit first. If it's not that, then it's money, if not that then it's status, or drugs, or sex or something else.

Most of the time I am very good with sniffing out what someone is up to. That's because most of the time, people usually have little patience and theyget to the point pretty fast. Just when I thought I had people figured out, I was fooled. Just when I thought I could not be deceived I made the biggest mistake of my life.

I am not ready to write about this experience yet but I am willing to say that during the last three months of my stay in the big apple, I was really tempted by something, by someone, by another path that could have been mine.

Most other people would have taken the other path, but I felt this would be the wrong choice for me, the wrong solution to my woes, and perhaps an addition to the pile of troubles I had created for myself. So I passed it on, I turned it down, I pushed it away, and out of my system as forcefully as I could.

It flew out of me like a projectile, tearing bits and pieces of me off, and leaving gushing wound behind that just as quickly as it formed, filled with blood and strangely started a speedy healing process. By the time I moved back to Austin, there was only a scar left, a subtle reminder of a mistake, a bitter keepsake from my last days in New York City.

I had given the King Midas his haircut, and now I had to keep my mouth shut.ˇ

There is usually so much in the media about how we as the whole world should love New York City, how it is the best place to live on earth and how the ones that live there have truly made it in life. Day after day, night after night, sitcom after sitcom our brains are washed by the dry sense of humor in Seinfeld, then soaked in Will and Grace, bleached by the NYPD blue, then second washed by Friends and tumble dried by the Nanny and Everybody loves Raymond. According to these sitcoms life in NYC definitely requires a twisted sense of humor, a double side order of sarcasm, and perhaps most important of all a certain stubborn streak combined with a definitive dislike of people --random people, people you do not even know. On any given day, it is hard to bring all these different personality items together. So it would seem New Yorkers would be hard to come by. On the contrary, six million and counting, New Yorkers are more abundant than they themselves are willing to admit.

When you have that many assholes living together in one space, being an asshole no longer differentiates one from others. This is when ultra-asshole, super-asshole, and mega-assholes come into play. I wonder why there are no public bathrooms in NYC? With so many assholes roaming the streets one would think it would not be hard to stay in business.

I tried to be an asshole. In fact, I do believe I had most of the qualifications listed. But I just could not hack it. And to tell you the truth, I am tired. I am tired of hating New York City. I hate its bridges, tunnels, and its freaking Central Park. I could not give a rat's ass about not getting a table at the Oak Room, not lunching at the Four Seasons hotel, not having friendly little dinner at Vong, nor being treated like a non-celebrity at the Hudson hotel. These are things I never wanted to have in the first place. But when you're there, when you're on the street, when you're among the other minions you cling to these little dreams, these little scenarios that will somehow transform you from being a nobody to someone important someday. The logistics of this delivery day when you will receive your gift is not clear, in fact some believe it is as much of an urban legend as the second coming of Jesus.

New York, New York, they thought it was so good that it needed to be named twice. New York you lay on your side like a dying cow. New York you spin, you cycle, you rise, you falter. Still the big wheel keeps on turning with the homeless people eating out of trashcans in East Village. New York with your $400 stilettos hammering the streets in Upper West Side; New York, your queers outnumbering everyone else; Manhattan New York with Brooklyn and New Jersey dangling on both sides unable to join in on the glamour and still unwilling to let go. I do not heart you New York. I am sorry to say but I promise you this, I will not be coming back to you one day.

Since the day I went to school for the first time, the first light of day has lost that welcoming gleam it used to have for me. As I slowly woke up in my bed, I would stretch, turn and let the bands of sun hit my thin legs sticking out from underneath the covers.

With the beginning of school days, I lost my right to those long morning naps, that special right to going back to sleep because the credits of my dream did not roll yet. Since primary school I have been rushing from one thing to another, meeting one deadline after ten others and still not seeing the end of these endless list of accomplishments to be had. In this sense the life as we have structured it in the 21st century feels more like a computer game with endless levels to master and with perhaps no tangible reward other than seeing our name in a list of top players after we have spent the last of our nine lives.

All of this kind of thinking above naturally constitutes, and distills drop by drop from my decades old negative thinking. Like smoking, a habit one can not kick, mostly because every cell of my body is addicted to this bitter poison that seems to poison everything I throw myself into. In this sense, I sabotage most of the things I start, and the opportunities that come my way by blind luck. There comes a time in your life, whether it be your thirties, your teens, or perhaps after you're over the hill, you realize, you just can not continue living like this. Not only is it hard to wake up in the morning, it is even harder to go to bed knowing tomorrow will be yet another day of defeat.

So why do you ask, why is defeat so certain, so imminent, so here, but so intangible. It is because I give life to it. It is hard to look at anything you create objectively, whether it be a child, a painting, or an argument at the supermarket. My failure is kind of the same. I know I create it, I know it is bad for me, yet I feel attached to it with a mother's love for her first born ugly retarded child.

I wish they made a patch, a piece of gum, or perhaps a set of pills I take every day except for the last week of the month for this addiction. But there is no such quick fix.

I have always said that the degradation of one's mind is like falling off of a cliff. Although the event happens pretty fast, much distance is traveled vertically. If one happens to survive the fall, he has to get up, dust off, and somehow find his long way back up. Many people choose to remain at the bottom of the cliff; this is not a poor choice by any means. Who could argue that the top of the cliff was a good place to be in the first place? It was windy, perhaps exposed to too much sun, there was no water and plus it was lonely. There are lots of people at the bottom of the cliff and misery seems to always create company.

On the brink of my thirties, I have just been able to get a to a point where I can catch myself right before I hit my ego with a bomb, just before I step into the interview room and pull the trigger to turn myself into a human bomb, exploding on the interviewer's face with bits of my selfless effacing clouding up the room.

The great thing about our busy, crazy, hectic daily lives is the fact that they provide enough distraction for us all to ignore these core issues. Instead, we keep icing the cake, adding more elaborate patterns. As we add the layers, the structure underneath first weighs down then starts to sag and perhaps for some of us, eventually, it gives way completely.

They say that when a big cookie crumbles things get awfully sweet and messy. I wonder what happens when a small cookie crumbles? Does anyone ever know?

Shredded and shed, she a restless blur
ruptures the sheath of my years past
and becomes my reason to forget.

She, the flourescent yellow highlighter,
drawn under every line in every book,
stares on into my toddler eyes.

She, the subject of every truth and dare game,
wants me to play with her heart, and break it.

As I cunningly calculate her demise,
a bank account accumulates the sum of her first tears.

She questions on while I lie on my back
with no coherent reasons for what I have done.

Without a powerpoint presentation to save my ass,
in that meeting room where my destiny is sealed
I sit in my chair quietly waiting for the judgement to air,
yet the channels keep changing,
but the news she and I are expecting never comes on.

She, a restless twitch in my perfect reflection
with the lipstick smudged around the edges,
tells me what's right and I listen on.

Within the firm grasp of her arms
I am taken to the awkward beginning.
Her perfume is an untold story,
her scarf a sea of silk crashing in my face.
Her necklace leaves a red outline in my neck.
Soon her body wraps itself around me like a snake of love.

I give in to what has arrived at my door.
Though no one is knocking, I can hear her breathing.

Troy James Vega
May 2002

Wherever we go, whatever we do, however we live our lives, we can always depend on one thing; our mothers. They are the rock in our lives, the source of every single cell in our body, and perhaps the starting point of every dramatic family meltdown. Our mothers manage to go to bed every night talking about something not done that day, and wake up the next morning with the previous day's list of to-dos not accomplished to a satisfactory level AND new tasks that must be accomplished before the end of the new day. Before there were post-its, we had our moms to serve as the bitter reminders of every mistake we made and every to-do we would like to avoid in our simple daily lives.

As for my mother, you just need to know her and if you are somebody in Istanbul, you probably do. She is a modern day Coco Chanel who not only is very educated and well mannered but also enjoys the joys and luxuries of life. I think my mother never really knew what poverty and hardship are. And you can not really blame a person for having a pretty privileged life. As I have always said, my family is not rich, we are just well off (depending on the every so turbulent Turkish Economy.) When I say we're not rich, what I am getting at is the fact that if we were to stop working we would not be able to sustain the same lifestyle we have today. My parents work hard and perhaps in some ways can never really be compensated for their hard work.

For the first eighteen years of my life, my parents lived their entire life within the context of the university they are so dedicated to. So no wonder I turned out to be so attention starved; even against my best efforts I can be attention seeking even when I am just standing there. It is amazing how our body language gives so many things away, and all the while we're thinking we're so sly.

My mother's discontent started with my move to the US. I guess she always imagined this to be a temporary move for education purposes only. She never intended me to stay here for more than ten years and then to top it off turn out to be gay in the end. To this day it is her firm belief that America made me gay, specifically the city of Austin.

At times painful, at times entertaining, and many times just darn right depressing I have to live with the fact that I decided to come out to my parents in September 2002. This was one of the hardest choices I made, and to this day, I still change my take on what happened. Don't get me wrong, this was a horrible, painful, horrible ordeal for the three of us. It really was the last bout of pain that played out with New York City in the fall for my backdrop.

My mother expected the world from me, and she still does. Good looking, smart, educated Turkish men are supposed to marry well and have beautiful healthy and smart kids that go to the best schools. It is this strange cycle of unreal expectations. Perhaps someone lives this happy and ideal life somewhere but I have yet to see a family in Turkey that had a less than perfect facade to it. I think all these lofty expectations result in mid-life crises, unhappy families, screwed up kids, and of course drama.

My family is not Greek, neither are we Italian nor Jewish. So you can understand my astonishment when I found out the disfunctionality common in my family exists in Italian and Jewish families as well. The same behavior of the mothers, the same crazy expectations, the full nine yards. So what is the connection between all these different cultures that aligns them so close to endless bouts of drama?

When you're unemployed you have a lot of time to go window shopping. It is ironic actually, just when you have all the time to find just right pair of jeans, you have no cash flow to buy it in peace. But does that really stop you? Of course not! They're hot!

Manhattan is the ultimate foraging ground; with thousands of shops each stocked up to the ceiling with anything and everything one can ever want or need. Despite all this variety and quantity, one has to search quite aggressively to find just the right shade of gray and the right cut for a pair of trousers. Forget trying to find anything in black. Black is the official color of Manhattan. Everyone that needs to feel powerful at work wears black.

By the time you haul your sorry ass to the department store only crazy yellows, strange oranges, and other selections from the Rainbrow Brite's closet are left behind. After a couple of cold winter months and tough luck at the department stores, I gave up on trying to beef up my business casual selection for work. Instead, I persuaded my employers that punk and grunge were the next power-suit.

My biggest supplier for skater boi look was of course the urban outfitters, a store I never could put anywhere within the gamut of clothing stores. It was not a thrift store but most of its items were as stressed as Wall Street brokers at the end of the year. It was definitely not where you went to don your Wall Street getups. It was not couture, but it was couture weird; it was trendy but it carried goods from 20 years ago. Some items looked old but they were not cheap; other items that looked cheap were comfortable and lasted for months on end.

Whenever I walked by an Urban Outfitters, it was "uncle" all over again. It was as if I was pulled into the store by some invisible tracking beam. The store I went to most frequently was in my neighborhood on 3^rd Avenue. It was a small store that usually had limited selection but they always left me alone there so I hung around for a while. Some customers sometimes even asked me questions; I guess I looked like I belonged there. Sad that is, considering that I was 28 years old, an ex-internet specialist with two degrees from expensive schools.

One day I met the manager of the store by accident. He seemed like a nice guy; obviously gay with the fakest dye job, and a lisp that could not hide behind the curtain of manager's voice. We talked for a while. I did not mind it at all, I was already planning to spend a good hour there anyway. He was very friendly, almost too friendly. Like most other Manhattan guys he was perpetually stuck in the hunting mode and did not know how to relate to someone of same sex in a non-sexual manner. He was all flirty and it was kind of cute, in a two puppies running into each other and falling on their back kind of way. So I watched on as he clowned. After my attention span had trailed off, I told him I had to be off and I left.

I chuckled to myself as I walked towards the gym. This guy's scene was ultra spiritual; he was planning on becoming a monk. I don't have any problems with that except that it seemed too good to be true. Many Manhattan guys have a marketing a pitch, something that is supposed to make them special: The multiple personality guy(s), the office worker that was in the Twin Towers, the guy who's on TV, the water board office clerk from Erin Brockovich, the guy with HIV, the guy with too many muscles, the stripper that's actually the next hot shot writer, the Harley Davidson guy with long hair that actually is the writer of children's books, the list goes on... And now here's one new addition to the list, the spiritual guy; kind of made me wonder whether I had a pitch for myself, and would it be? The Turkish misfit who can never really go home? Oh that's so sad, give me lots of attention already.

It was not as if I was looking for a soul mate. I had one of those; though he always ended up miles and miles away from me most of the time. At the time my significant other was still working in Long Island and commuting to Austin Texas on the weekends. He and I got to see each other every third week or so. I tried to tell myself this was normal, and that this was enough, but at a gut level it just was not enough.

So I was not planning to date, to trick with or do anything funny with this Urban Outfitter manager. Next time I ran into him, he asked if we could have dinner together. I was a little suspicious so I turned it into a lunch. Whenever you're in doubt about a guy's intentions, don't accept to have dinner with him --that only leads to trouble. Just have a lunch.

Of course he sniffed it right away and said, "ugh, lunch that's so non-committal." I was surprised that he caught on that fast but I saw it as a good thing. It meant less work for me.

So we met for lunch the next day. After we met at the store, we walked down to Lemon Leaf --a great Thai restaurant on 3^rd Avenue. He was ultra strange that day --stressed, snappy and somewhat catty. The lunch was a miserable experience. He kept nagging me about this and that, yanking my chain and calling me names. It was the kind of abuse I could only take from a very good friend I had known for a while. Naturally, all of this teasing coming from a complete stranger was completely out of place for me.

A pattern was starting to emerge for me. It was just not a good idea to have meals with people I did not know too well. It just meant that I had to spend the whole duration of the meal with the person and take the potential torture until the check has been paid.

He paid for the check and I did not even offer which is very unusual -- usually I pounce on the check because that's what you do in Turkey. It was a miserable lunch, and as far as I was concerned he could make it better by paying for it.

After lunch, he asked me if I wanted to come by his place. I had visited his apartment briefly the day before. It was kind of this extra crammed, run down place that I frankly did not care to visit one more time. So I said nah, thanks I have errands to run in the afternoon. By this time he was livid. I think he thought that by paying for lunch he bought himself some of my time at his place. Frankly I was offended. He followed this offer with offering to come to my apartment with me. This option I did not care about either because

• his behavior at lunch had proven him insane


• I did not want him to know where I lived


• I was afraid he might jump on me or something in my apartment.

Of course when I told him that I did not want him to come to my apartment he did not take that too well. By this time I was just ready to turn and leave no matter what. So although he was still fuming on the hot East Village sidewalk, I said bye and turned around and left.

On the way home I got a little paranoid that he might be following me, so I must have taken the most convoluted way home.

I got into the elevator, got off on fourth floor and entered apartment 4F as in Frank. I closed the door. I was home. I was safe. The episode was over. I exhaled.

Needless to say I never shopped at that Urban Outfitter again. That was a shame because it was such a fun part of my daily routine. Instead, I started roaming around inside the store by 6th Avenue and 14th. I did not make eye contact and I definitely did not talk to the staff anymore. I was becoming a Manhattanite faster than you can say "freak".

In the last few months, I got addicted to a new delight, Nutella (chocolate-nut spread) with crunch peanut butter on toasted white Italian loaf bread. My days are not complete without eating this poor man's delicacy at some time of the day.

Today is no different. I woke up hungry from my afternoon nap and stumbled to the kitchen. I can almost hear you asking, what are you doing napping in the afternoon. When your life is completely demolished like the two towers of World Trade Center, when you've lost all hope of employment, come to the verge of losing the best relationship of your life, when you're going to the gym every like it is your job, one needs a nap in the afternoon. Sometimes I even wish that I can sleep for longer periods of time, and perhaps sleep entire days out of my way. At this point life became this hurry up and wait process leading up to the good times that lay ahead. The existence of the good times ahead was starting to seem quite questionable like the unreal stories of the three holy books.

The cool kitchen tile felt good on my feet, as the fridge hummed a familiar tune. The spike of the florescent lights above as I turned the light on somewhat woke me up. I went through the pantry looking for something to eat. Then I remembered that I had not yet had a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich.

I put the two slices of bread in the toaster that slowly blushed and turned crimson. The sweet smell of the Italian bread started to waft out of the toaster as I unscrewed the top of the peanut butter. Soon the slices popped out of the toasters like college buddies on crack. The only thing that was missing was the toasts saying "oh mi god like how's it going??"

I took a table knife from the drawer and scooped a large glob of Nutella with it to spread on the bread. I was still dazed from my sleep so it seems what followed happened in slow motion, with the deep hoarse sound effects and everything. The Nutella started to drip from the knife onto the slice of bread on the plate. It was a hot day, when the room temperature is higher Nutella gets this viscous consistency like honey. So it drizzled on quite ordinarily but then it started to scribble. No I am not losing it, it scribbled an uppercase "T", followed by a "r", "o", "y" all lowercase.

My hand still over the toast, hovered frozen in time, frozen between sanity and acceptance of full on your regular every day insanity. There it was, even Nutella was spelling my name. The only thing it did not do was to keep writing on to tell me that I should give up this whole New York "I'll make it there, I'll make it anywhere" thing.

A few second later the analytical, skeptic, rational Troy kicked in. But he too was a little baffled. Even upon close inspection, the Nutella simply spelled my name on the toast.

I called my cousin immediately for a reality check. He told me that I was going insane being cooped up in my apartment and that I needed to get out and come over to his place so that we can go to dinner like normal people.

I obediently left the toast and Nutella on the counter and got dressed and left. The rest of the evening was pretty unremarkable. I had almost forgotten about the whole incident until I came back home to find the toast and my name on it staring back at me from the dark kitchen counter.

I decided to take the weirdness of this all head on, and took several pictures of the anomaly. Strangely enough although I used two different cameras all of the images came out blurry. Either my hands were shaking or I was truly experiencing an extraordinary event.

Either way, I was obviously entering the world of the weird with day-long naps, psychic dreams, strange daily coincidences and finally Nutella readings.

It is really that late in the night
and so early in the day that
though I close my eyes
the burden of unfinished tasks
and the anticipation of new ones
put a metallic twist in my chest
under heavy winter covers.

The radiators tick to their 4 am beat
as the pipes hum with their steam.
I turn to my left side, and the comforter
swings a slow one with a sweet tune
it whispers to dirty floors listening.

In that rarely quiet corner of Manhattan
I become the crease in time today holds onto,
that split in the garden hose where time leaks
and drowns the graying lawn into a green retreat.

As a firetruck screams on past my block
I become the bookend that the tomorrow leans on,
that final hold before next week falls off the shelf
where my mother's glass ornaments wait
for their untimely end.

Troy James Vega

My dissaproval of you is the only thing that
stands between you and I as we sit
across each other in a Village bar.

Your eyes shift to my left and then to my right
I pretend not to notice and speak on
hoping that my paranoia is weaker
than your six dollar long island ice tea.

The bottom of the glass arrives sooner
than that dreaded end of the night.
Once I laid that glass down
I just was not in the mood to fight.

You climbed down the steps to the F train entrance
I saw you and your train pull out and get lost
into the summer stench of China Town.

Waiting on an uptown platform,
I thought I should have waved
and pointed at the service change poster
but I'm not sure you were looking back.

Troy James Vega

This morning I woke up from this strange dream about the power plant behind my building. This still operational power plant is one of the two on Manhattan on the East River side.

To some this power plant is an eye sore, for some reason I always thought it was beautiful. Well, in my dream this particular power plant was on fire. With flames gushing out from one side while people were running around like crazy. The sound of the fire raging was incredible, I could barely hear the sirens, then there was another explosion, another cloud of smoke and fire blew out of the other side. At this point I woke up.

Like most days it took me a few moments to realize that I was no longer in the dream. The sound continued however, like a pipe organ on fire, kept blowing. The windows were vibrating, and then there was another explosion.

THIS WAS REALLY HAPPENING. I jumped out of bed, put on my clothes as fast as possible and stepped out into the hallway. There was no one in sight in the hallway. I ran down the stairs, the sound was coming from the power plant side so I went one level lower to the street side by the power plant. The stairs door flew open and there it was. There was this huge ball of fire at the side of the power plant.

There was no fire fighters or police in sight. My guess is right around the point I was woke up from my dream the first explosion happened. Just like in my dream the fire was growing. Pipes and pieces of the transformer that was on fire were being blown onto the street.

I ran upstairs to my apartment to pack my essentials for evacuating the building. This was stupid in retrospect but there was no way I was going to be stranded in New York City without money, some form of ID and my passport.

On my floor I ran into my neighbor Jim, he had the same idea. He had already packed a suitcase for himself and his wife and was on his way out the building. I rushed into my apartment and salvaged my backpack with my laptop and the papers I needed. I did not even think about clothing. Oh, I also took my portfolio of paintings. These are the times that make me appreciate the fact that I paint small 12x16 watercolor paintings --they pack nicely.

Jim and I ran out of the building with several other people. We kept going. By the time we left the building the fire fighters and police were flocking to the East Side of the 14th street where the fire plant was located. The streets were cordoned off and officers started going through the buildings closest to the plant trying to evacuate anyone and everyone.

Jim and I ran into Jim's wife on the way. She did not even see us, she thought that the fire had already reached our building. Jim had to call her name out several times before she realized he was her husband. After we exchanged our stories we calmed down a bit. It looked like a few avenues down, the power plant fire was under control.

The three of us calmly went to a bar nearby and had lunch. I guess this was a strange reaction to a major gas explosion in a power plant across our apartment building. But what is one to do really when they are faced with these situations. This was also a couple of months after 9/11, so we were always ready for something to explode in those days.

It turned out that one of the transformers in the power plant had experienced and overload and melted down. This meltdown had ignited the gas intake that exploded and became the big gas fire that drove us out of our building.

The power outage that followed hit the West Village and other parts of Lower West Side. Our power was not affected. Strangely, there was little or no coverage of this event. In these post 9/11 months where everyone loved linking everything including a dog pissing on a priceless Thomkins Park statue to terrorism, no one linked this huge explosion and power outage to anything.

Although I had moved away by the time of the second big power outage, I have always thought it strange that the authorities threw out the possibility of sabotage so swiftly and with so little to prove their theory.

A couple of hours later, we were back in our apartments. Our double pane windows were still in place. In fact except for a power outage that did not affect us, one could barely tell this ordeal even took place.