Issue 23: Go and come back a drifter

Dearest reader,

I trust this letter finds you as it leaves me, in good health. Last weekend I traveled for the first time since relocating to Minnesota in May. I was back in New York for a friend’s birthday. It felt quite stimulating to be back in the city, and I also appreciated being there while carrying the perspective of a visitor. One of the memorable moments from the trip happened on Saturday night, right before I went to the venue where my friend was having her party. I had about an hour to kill and decided to walk into a random East Village restaurant for a scoop of gelato.

The place I entered was on some corner of Avenue A. I walked in and exchanged an ambiguous nod and movement of the eyes with the bartender which communicated a very unambiguous meaning. He acknowledged it and guided me to the farthest end of the bar, where I took a seat. He seemed to observe me with ambivalent curiosity. He handed me a menu, which I knew right away contained nothing I was going to order. I had just taken a shower and was not about to be contaminated.

“Do you have a dessert menu?”

He immediately pulled the menu away, contemptuously, and pointed at the front of the restaurant. I was obviously the most incompetent person he’d come across all day—the entrance was overflowing with a bright assortment of cakes on display, and about a half dozen buckets of gelato were laid out behind a glass pane.

“There. Dessert.”

I walked over, walked back, and picked the raspberry. There was a TV on the wall, right above my head, on mute and displaying many faces, speaking seriously, concerned about something or the other, in fast succession. I looked at it and turned away immediately, preferring the ambiguous shadows, faces, and tube lights of the restaurant that reminded me, vaguely, of Saudi.

By the end of the hour, I had become the closest of friends with the bartender and a man named Carl who was sitting two seats to the left of me. Carl was eighty years old, he made me explicitly aware of this, and had lived in many cities during his life. He used two hands to count them all. He was eating a slice of cake and was drinking, simultaneously, a mug of tea and a glass of dark wine. He played the guitar and used to play at this very restaurant we were sitting in. All, however, before the pandemic, he noted. He worked at the MoMA for fifteen years and one day—fifteen years to secure his pension and the single extra day to be sure they weren’t going to stiff him. Since then, he’d been living in the West Village. He designed websites back in the day and asked me questions about JavaScript.

Carl, eventually, became fixated on the TV and stopped speaking mid-sentence. Footage of the January 6 riots was now playing on the screen.

“It’s crazy, isn’t it?”

I observed Carl observing the screen and noticed his age.

I asked, “Do you think Americans have gotten crazier over time?”

“Ah, yes. Crazier over time for sure. Then, we’ve always been crazy…”

The bartender chuckled. He looked at Carl and then at me.

That’s all I got for now. Oh—I added five more drafts to the ٨٧٨ Radio playlist. I hope you are happy and that you have a beautiful weekend ahead of you.

Love,
Reef