What Colors the Steel Sky Blue

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.

During my days and nights of unemployment not only did I get less and less motivated to anything and everything but I also developed some really strange skills that one certainly could not share with everyone.

I have always had a solid history of having very vivid and strange dreams. In fact I must have spent every night of my first 23 years with nightmares night after night. Endless combinations of exams failed, public humiliations staged, getting raped by the high school bullies, being exposed as a gay man, and finally a subgroup of dreams that absolutely had nothing to do with my fears or daily life.

All the other ones I could stomach, mostly because I knew where they were coming from and mostly where they were going to, nowhere. These were remains of the daily brew, that stain ring the last gulp of coffee leaves in a mug. one could either way the mug or throw it away if it was a paper cup from Starbucks.

The group that was not related to anything was a rare and strange breed. These dreams mostly felt like being in a film. Many times the credits rolled by after the dream was over. These were dreams about settings, places never seen, perhaps completely fictional people whose names I never remember after I woke up. These familiar strangers of my dreams could be my parents, could be my best friends, wife, boyfriend, perhaps even my child. What I have never quite understood is the process through which our mind creates a completely fictional face, assigns a fictional name to it and then fits it into a dream during our sleep.

Considering the hell we put our heads through daily life, you would think our brains would take any opportunity to unplug, to shut down, to take that blond moment we all are so in need of.

Late July, the weather is unbearable. Still, I am on the street, on the go because I can’t stand myself all cooped up in the apartment all alone. I frequently go to Tompkins Park in East Village these days, mostly because it is a rel strange mix of people. There's the base layer of homeless people speaking in the language of me, add to that the hippies of East Village having heated discussions about which color has more of the fire element in it, then in the shade sitting on a bench a celebrity with his girlfriend --pretending to shy away from the attention of others and of course others like me: the unemployment, multi-nationality marginalities of the lower-mid Manhattan.

In the green gray background of the Tompkins Park I suddenly noticed a spot of pure white, a color one does not come across often on Manhattan. As I followed the winding park path, the trees that were in the way first came closer into view to reveal that the white stains on the green were actually people, then the trees moved to the side as the path made a sharp left turn to reveal 5-6 people painted all white head to toe and wearing white clothes.

This was the kind of visual moment that stops you and forces you to re-evaluate your senses before you fully accept the anomaly. Although I double/triple checked my vision, the white people were not going away. They seemed to be some sort of a family on an afternoon's outing. They had a little baby and everything. There were other people interested and the white people did not mind at all posing for pictures. All this time none of them uttered a word to another.

I finally concluded that this was one of those wonderful moments in New York City when you experience something otherwise you would never experience anywhere. Here was a group of actors that were all dressed up for the part of a mime family but had thrown themselves onto the ever so gray, every gloomy and glaring scene of the East Village.

I followed them around while they made their rounds around the park for a while. Then I decided to leave before they dismantled and revealed their secret. I would rather leave them in mid-act and assume that they kept of living their ultra-white, ultra-calm, ultra-quiet life in a coop building colored none other than pure white.

Feeling is the beginning of hurting where what is felt solidifies at the tip of a tender leaf not letting go of the past and unwilling to accept the future and what it brings. It is at this crease in time in which I find myself balancing tens of apples on the sharp end of a large kitchen knife still wet from the diswasher. Then the sink screams, the microwave burps, the stereo in the living room sings an out of tune Turkish song, and it is time for my shower.

Clothes come off, one by one, perhaps even somewhat out of the ordinary order, the mirror stares on, the towels ready for my wet skin. I climb in and embrace the strings of water that seem to shoot through my conscience and clean all my regrets and pains. But the remedy is temporary because the memory of it all remains. "One slip and one ends up with a broken neck, how come no one ever thought of a shower insurance?" I ponder to myself.

Then that funny book comes to mind. I think its lines to myself, trying to remember every word. Somewhere in my mind a duo sings "you can not do it, you have failed again". But I tune them out like a radio station, like some old e mail print out I recycled, like a monitor I shut down even without shutting down the CPU cause I felt like living dangerously that day. Risking my equipment, risking my job, I unplugged the damn plastica electronica box out of that wall, because I had never done that before. To my despair, nothing went wrong, the monitor lived on.

I turn my head underneath the shower nozzle and my life is burdened by the experiences of others. I am constantly told to do this or that and to avoid all of the above that
involves thinking. My life is lived for me and then put into a package of four with one free at Wal-Mart.

I step out of the shower drops of water being licked by the A/C which is obviously turned down too low. I want to breathe and for that I take a pill. I knew it too, way before I had it coming. I got off the plane and they told me "you just wait, in four years, your allergies will drive you mad". It is almost like telling a child that he will support an unyielding erection in four years and not know what to do with the damn thing.

I climb into bed, one of the few good investments in my life; the pillow soaks my hair in, the comforter dances on my legs and I am in heaven, first row center. The A/C kicks in and crawls into my bed but he has a really restless sleep, I hear him leaving my bed several times during the night. All the better I think to myself his feet are too cold.

Mr Gardener come give me my fix
cause ma can no longer make cookies.

On that red day you began, I ended.
As yellow leaves fell on my forehead
I did not have a comb in hand.

The wild grass was long and soothing,
but soon green stains would be growing.

Everything rips, everything wrinkles
no wash can take away what I have seen.

What you and I hold here for less than a minute,
can only turn to grudges.

You said you knew the course of the sun,
I said I knew it's cooler in the shade.

You're always up for digging up the garden,
somehow I end up sleeping on my back all day.

The windows cave in, the ceiling weighs down
the fan beats that familiar beat.

Your callused hands stroke my winter shoulders,
as ice cubes shift in a glass of ice tea.

Mr Gardener, I can not say yes to all this.
Put that shovel down and let the wilting die free.

TJV
May 2002

I have been a coffee house addict since college. I am addicted to the buzz I get from the smell of stale coffee on concrete floors, smoke wafting over from the smoking section and the electrically charged air just like before a thunderstorm as strangers exchange glances between sips.

I spent a fair share of my days in spring 2002 in Starbucks at Astor place. No not that one on 3^rd Avenue, I am talking about the one on Lafayette. It was a few blocks from the Crunch Gym.

After lunch I would check into Starbucks like a dutiful worker clocks in at their workplace. This was a very busy location so the first thing I would do after I passed through the double doors was to go to walk around and find the best spot. Certain tables were more desirable over others mostly because they were near electrical outlets and had better views. I needed the outlet for my laptop that ran out of juice faster than I did on most afternoons.

After I picked the table I would sit at, I would run over and get a cup of coffee. Through the years I lived in New York City I have learned to love the bitterness of Starbucks coffee. Starbucks coffee to me tastes like a coffee roasting accident --always bitter, always verging on burnt; there's something endearing about coffee that's seen more heat than it should. My coffee soon changed color with a deluge of cream and sugar. I would pause a couple of seconds and watch the clouds of cream do their dance in my coffee every now and then. It truly is one of those experiences we skip out on due to our busy schedules. Everyone should set a couple of minutes a day to watch the cream dissolve in their coffee. Take my word for it, like a good Broadway show, this little dance is delightful to watch each time.

I spent most of the summer working on my book of Turkish poems. The book is still not finished. After years of writing Turkish poetry I have come to realize that this whole poetry writing business is really a difficult and draining experience. I must have written only ten poems all summer.

My poetry writing process has evolved through the years to become what it is right now. I used to write pretty out there stuff that usually meant little or nothing to others. I have since moved away from all that obscurity to more familiar ground. I most write about things I have experienced in my life these days. Most of my current poems have strong roots in my childhood experiences. The writing itself is rewarding but I also have found that the process of writing actually helps one's memory stay in shape. Even the process of writing these New York stories has helped me remember, sort out, cope with the two years I spent in the city.

Starbucks usually got busier after lunch and then quieted down for a few hours only to get worse after five. The busy commuters usually poured into to get themselves fancy caffeine fixes before their long commute. The New York University students came here to study for their classes and work on their group projects. The group projects were always the most fun to listen to. I would sit there working on my laptop while eavesdropping on the academic drama unfolding at the table next to mine. People in college just like others are very good at arguing over the darnest things.

There were always a healthy dose of first dates in the house. I could always tell these people apart from the body language. If things were going well, the two of them would be leaning in towards the table; if things were going down the tubes, there was much nervous smiling, looking around at people in the coffee house.

Occasionally a guy would walk in get a drink and sit at a table directly across mine, and stare me down all the way to the bottom of his drink. Some days I would glance back, some days I would ignore them completely. Some days interest from other people can be so overwhelming --much like a burden. Strange how something good can become an annoyance given a certain set of circumstances. If I were single, if my spirits were higher, if my work situation was looking up I probably would have been delighted to see someone interested in me. But I was none of these things, I was busy trying to keep a relationship going while looking for a job in a beyond hope economy.

At this point, I had delved so deep and dwelled so long in the have-nots in my life that I was unable to look at anything positively. Most people complain about seeing the glass half-empty. My complaint was the complete absence of the glass.

Trapped in my head, I just think and re-think things to the point that I can not even think of a way out of it all. In a way, the problems become the maze, and I willingly and eagerly throw away the map and convince myself that the maze is my home, and my endless wanderings in it is my life.

This was the routine of my life in the spring of 2002. I hated the way it all felt but it surrounded me so gently, slightly squeezing me in its embrace. It felt warm, and heavy like a comforter and I must have feared the cold outside because I stayed wrapped in my misery for far too long.

After another calm day spent in my East Village, I walked home calmly. Summer was slowly fading away, the air was changing, I would have to soon dig out the thick comforter from my closet. Fall was on the way, and I was still unemployed and still undecided about what next step to take.

My head was a mess. I was two cappuccino's away from starting to talk to myself. Despite my mental state, I walked calmly, with trees and the noisy street to my right. Just to make my life a little more interesting, I decided to enter my building from the rear entrance on Avenue C. I usually used the entrance on the inner courtyard side off of Avenue B.

I entered the lobby, checked mail; a few advertisements, bills, more bills, and a postcard. I walked to the elevator calmly. There was an middle-aged man wearing sweatpants and a white t shirt waiting for the elevator. Pretty ordinary scene except for the fact that this man had this strange protrusion on his belly that stretched the t-shirt to the limit. He was overweight yes, but beyond the typical outline of a pot-belly, he had a further second teer of protrusion. It was bothersome. I did not want to even look at it --so I did what any other person would do --look down. Well on the way down to the floor, my eyes unfortunately caught yet another protrusion in the man's figure. I think he was not wearing any underwear or perhaps wearing boxers underneath his sweatpants. Anyhow, I could see his euphamism hanging down his leg like some alien creature was just in the process of exiting his body and running down his legs to its freedom in this brave new world.

Being a New Yorker in training, I assumed the best thing to do would be to just keep my eyes on the ground and pretend that I did not see anything. I had to remain calm. I did not want to offend him, and I did not want to have to talk to him because that would require me to look up which would make my pupils revisit the previously noted abnormalities.

The elevator, as usual, was taking forever to come down to the lobby. The minutes seemed like hours. In the meantime, the man was looking at me and breathing very heavily like he just came back from running five miles. I could not see how he could even run to the end of our block. By this time I was starting to figure out that he probably had a health condition of some sort. Something I just did not need to know about.

Then suddenly the double doors of the lobby flew open and a lady with her three year old in a stroller pulled in. They promptly checked their mail and then assumed their impatiently waiting for the elevator stance by the rest of us at the elevator door.

The silence was heavy, the silence was contagious, the silence at that moment was breathing down my neck and making all the hairs on my forearm stand up.

Then the silence was broken by the three year old: "Mom, I can see his cock." The mother bent down, saying "I can not hear you sweetie; what did you say??"

I could not accept the fact that a three year old would observe this and then report to his mother using the C word. Just when I was halfway in the process of persuading myself that I was utterly deaf and insane, the boy repeated the very same sentence one more time.

"I told you mom, I can see his cock."

This time the man started giggling to himself. The mother immediately turned the stroller around and went to the other end of the lobby and started whispering something to the boy. I figured they had much negotiating to do which meant I was going to be left alone with the man in the elevator. The elevator of course promptly arrived, the blue enamel door scrolled open and soon I was engulfed in the stale air of the elevator cabin filling up quickly with his stale breath as he continued on taking breaths like these next ten or twenty were his last.

Fourth floor, finally, I jumped out, literally. I no longer worried about offending anyone. I had to run. Silent hallway, with black linoleum tiles, walls painted green blue, my green door, apartment 4F. Unlocking the door, the door slams behind me and I am home. It is over.

I get a call from my mom one afternoon telling me that I had to call this number and make dinner arrangements with one of her good friends from Istanbul and her daughter. Even before I hung up the phone I knew that a trying evening was to follow but when you're laid off, and unemployed for month's on end, it becomes increasingly hard to come up with excuses for unwanted social engagements. It seemed I had used all the good excuses with my parents, and now I could not say no. I wrote down the number on a crowded piece of paper and hung up the phone.

I picked up the phone again and called the number right away; mostly because I knew if I hesitated I would find a perfectly reasonable activity to help me procrastinate. A familiar voice picked up on the other line. It was Mine Hanim, the mother, an opinionated but well-meaning lady in her late forties. Last time I saw her was when we had visited them at their hotel down in the south part of Turkey. I liked her, she did not seem to fear what other people thought. It seems that although everyone seems to be advocating free expression these days there are still relatively few people that have anything dramatic and worthy to say. Well she was interesting, unique, somewhat dramatic but overall a good host, and a caring wife. He was one of the most successful businessmen in Turkey but had recently lost his beloved first wife and found himself at the center of a void he alone could not fill. So against his own intuition and with the insistence of his friends he had agreed to meet and later go on dates with her. Apparently, they hit it off right away. Good for them I thought when I heard their story. They seemed to complement each other.

I was trying to focus on the positive. I liked Mine Hanim; spending a night with her and having dinner was hardly a burden really. It was more of my social inertia that was in the way. I have to ramp myself up to a certain level before I can comfortably interact with others. I know that many people have this issue, and most use alcohol for help; only in my case alcohol does not work. Drinks just make me tired and miserable.

She recognized my voice immediately. I guessed she had been waiting for my call a while. It made me feel bad, although I had not wasted any time before calling them. We made our plans quickly. She confirmed that Uftade, her daughter, was with her and she was going to come along to dinner with us.

I made reservations at VONG for a party of three, then jumped in the shower. I got ready in a hurry. It was almost dinner time. Soon I was on the street begging the taxi cab gods to grant me my wish. Finally a cab stopped in front of me and we headed our speed limit trying, nerves grinding, bumper scratching rush ride uptown. Vong is located at the corner of 54th street and Lexington.

I always found that it was easier to go uptown on the east side of Manhattan. West side always seemed to be such a mess; especially if you were planning switch from East to West side while also going uptown you were screwed. It was almost better to take the subway in that case.

The cab arrived at the restaurant within fifteen minutes and I was right on time. I stepped out of the vab to find Mine Hanim and Uftade waiting in front of the restaurant somewhat impatiently. This is the thing about Turkish women, even when you do things right, you are made to feel that you've done something wrong. I was on time but according to Turkish female central time I was fifteen minutes late.

Uftade, the daughter, took one look at me, and I could tell she was not at all impressed. The smile on her face dissolved into an expression that clearly said, ummm is this why I am not hanging out with my wild rocker boyfriend tonight??

Inside the restaurant, we were quickly seated and we were soon exploring the exotic menu while snacking on the special flat breads and the wonderful peanut butter based spread.

Uftade did not speak a word for the longest time. It was already a very awkward meal and we had not even hit the first course yet. Mine Hanim was trying to compensate for the silence. She kept starting her sentences saying "Uftade here, thinks..... Uftade here has, Uftade here is doing.... etc." Uftade on the otherhand had this strange smirk on her face like a Halloween pumpkin and it went from annoying to down right rude towards the middle of the meal.

Luckily by that point both the mother and daughter were getting slightly tipsy from their wine so Uftade started opening up and finally saying a word or two. Then suddenly she decided to give me the Uftade coolness test that comprised of several questions about my habits and my wildest moments in life. I failed miserably, having lived most of my life as safely and as ordinary as possible.

The night continued and by the time we hit the dessert I was wishing she had not opened up in the first place. She had already told me that I was living in a crappy part of town and that my apartment was probably not all that good considering the neighborhood. She also told me that I was a way boring person for not going skiing ever. It was weird, she was raging a free for all insulting war on me hidden in the skin of ordinary conversation and I could not even care to respond back to all the stabs.

I somehow felt above it all, although it hurt me still that a complete stranger could be so rash with my feelings.

The night ended with Mine Hanim insisting on paying the tab and getting us all into a cab for a ride back to our apartments. They also stayed downtown so sharing a cab somewhat made sense except it prolonged the torture I was in, and it was a bit of a false economy considering we had probably parted with $300 for dinner.

I stepped out of the cab on 14th street and 3rd Avenue then exhaled; it was over.