Archive for the 'road trip soundtrack' Category

I’m on the ass-end of a whirlwind here on the fifth floor of the Larchmont in NYC. The bed is on casters and the shower is down the hall. The style of this hotel room is “cozy institutional.”

The A/C works great

I always rip my feet up in this city. Yesterday I got my toes done in the cheapest place I could find. I started walking down the hallway to go to the bathroom and a woman got in my face and asked me what I was doing. I said I was going to the bathroom. She was mad about it. There was a language barrier. The soak water was so hot it started parboiling my feet. Another woman touched my toes. She asked if she should cool the water down and I said no. She asked if I wanted the razor and I frowned at her and she said I only needed the stone.

I met a new friend named Emily and we had adventures. The food we ate was so pretty I wanted to photograph it, and she said the restaurant’s sister restaurant experienced that so much they had to ban the practice. They served sliced scallops mixed with spicy red and crunchy green bits. We drank a tequila cocktail with a long pepper afterburn. The train stopped while we were underneath a river.

I read at Happy Ending, which was fun like a Lynchian dream sequence, accordions followed by Shane Jones reading a story about a hair monster making love to a handicapped girl followed by Audrey “the time traveler’s” Niffenegger reading Finnegans Wake backwards, I shit you not. Then we ate late-night treats from Central Mexico, I think, shredded meats in corn masa pockets and a plate of fried plantains. I signed a copy of AM/PM by squirting salsa into it.

My dad wanted me to go check up on Bleeker Street Pizza, an establishment he has not visited since 1973 but thinks fondly of. I walked an hour, found it, and drank some water while sitting next to an oven and eating the most perfectly crispy slice of mushroom pizza in the middle of one of the hottest July days on record. Fine, New York. I give in. I love you.