Freezing Indoors
by Albert Russo
“Ok,” my uncle
sighed, after inspecting the place, still flabbyghosted,
“let’s put some order here and make
that corner over there our living quarters.”
There’s a folding
screen with wooden panels painted over with
screaming colors - I hope it’s not Nick’s
masterpiece, coz if it is, he oughta see a sigh-kayak-tryst,
maybe even two - separating the bathroom from the
rest. The shower stand is all rusty and don’t
ask me to tell you what the toilet bowl looks
like. I get constipated just thinking I’ll
have to use it ... if it works. Thank Goddess
there’s an electric radiator located in our
bedroom corner, it’s bulky and it huffs and
puffs while it heats, you’d think it was the
insides of an old hippo, it even smells of fart.
Hotels get stars, but if I
had to rate this place, I’d put 5 stink
bombs next to its address in the New York list of
Quaint Lodgings; only in this case, they’d
have to mention B sans B, on account that you
have to use a prehistoric gas stove if you wish
to cook some sort of breakfast, but as the
stoopid saying goes, beggars (my uncle, not me)
aren’t choosers (definitely me). And these
lofts are supposed to cost the earth nowadays!
Unky Berky sleeps on the only mattress available
here and you oughta see how. Over his flannel
jammies he wears a robe that’s a cross
between a night gown and a kimono judo wrestlers
use, plus two pairs of mountain socks that make
his feet appear bearish (the arctic type). I don’t
want to offend him, but, dressed in this fashion
- poor Versace, his bones would rattle in his
grave if he saw us -, he does look like a bum,
and I, like the mummy of a bum’s niece, on
account that I have to zip myself up in a padded
sleeping bag, with only my lil head sticking out.
Talk of a picnic. That’s called camping out
right in the middle of town.
In almost every film or
video I’d seen in France about New York,
whether they were set in our days or in the
future, there were screeching car chases, bank
stickups or encounters of the bloodiest type that
took place in some crummy backyard littered with
junk and broken glass. So much so, that my early
memories of Brooklyn became blurred and I would
dream of being assaulted by thugs the minute I
walked out of our apartment building. That kind
of mind air-conditioning is worse than
Legionnaire’s disease.
At first, I was almost
disappointed to see how tame New Yorkers behaved,
in the streets, in stores, in coffeeshops or even
in the subway, which is supposed to be the pits;
they looked like silent lil lambs to me and this
has nothing to do with the movie in which Jodie
Foster who’s one of my favorite felinist
actresses gets into trouble. Enough with all that
butchery already!
Excerpt
4 from ZAPINETTE GOES TO NEW YORK by Albert Russo
|
