Bike or subway. Bike or subway, bike or subway. . . Bike. It's much more reliable than the goddam MTA these days, especially when you live on the G train.
She may be short, and she may be slow,
But G is for Getting where you need to GO.
People feel an intense loyalty to their subway line, especially for the official underdog of the system. The G train is literally the short bus of the MTA. Only 4 cars long, versus the rest of the system's luxurious 8-car caravans and it's the only train in the whole subway that doesn't go to Manhattan. For a Brooklyn partisan such as myself, how can I not feel a certain underdog pride for my line? It's the only car that can get you cross-town through Kings County, and its really no big deal that you need to pull a triple-train shuffle to get to the West Side of Manhattan in 45 minutes during rush hour. But I'm running late, and feeling athletic, so it's a biking day today. The only question is: What am I going to do with it once I hop on my tour bus? I hate having to get myself from downtown back up to midtown just to pick up my bike. . . unless. . . I can stash it in the undercarriage of the tour bus!! Gideon, you're a genius!!
1:37pm
Mutherfucking dick-cheese, my tour was supposed to end 37 minutes ago, but my fucking bike is underneath the tour bus, which is nowhere to be fucking found, and the shell-shocked, migraine-laden teacher who has been half-comatose throughout the whole tour is also MIA, and he's still holding my tip!! The kids I was touring around today cared about nothing but shopping, and all I want to do is get my tip, get my bike and take a nice long dose of the GTFOH. (Get the Fuck Outta Here.) I find the teacher, snag my tip, collect an extra $30 from the downtown Deli that gives me $1 a head for each kid I bring in for lunch, and only 50 minutes late, but $80 heavier than I started my day, I start riding to the Jewish American Historical Society to get some long-overdue research done.
2:14pm
Biking toward the Historical Society, I happen to pass by the clown I was sleeping with a couple of weeks ago. This may seem like an insulting and derogatory way to speak of a former lover, but no, seriously, she's a clown. Make-up, and physical comedy and all. I sit down with her and catch up a little over a samosa and an asian pear. That was nice. Back on my bike.
4:36pm
Research is intimidating. It's confronting the abyss of history, hoping you come out of it internalizing just a little bit more of the endless chasm of history that can only be glanced at through pinholes and murky crystal balls. Through historic accounts, each of which are tainted by the author's unreliable memory and subjective opinions one can only hope that the puzzle pieces can be jammed together enough to maybe tell a story from an era before any of us were even born. This is the task of writing a historic novel. The Edge of the East Side: a Lower East Side Crime drama that places an Irish, Jewish, and Italian boy together at the birth of organized crime, each of them hoping to claim just a coin's worth of The American Dream, even if it means scamming, stealing, and hustling their way there. But there's only so much I can fake it and load up the cliches before I sit down with a stack of books and really dig into what the lives of Irish, Jewish, and Italian boys were really like in 1905. I've been here for two hours, and I'm a little more informed than I was when I began. It's a start, but my brain is just about ready to clock out for the day, and my body's ready to take over.
7:10pm
I'm trying to wipe the sweat off my forehead with my T-shirt while my work out partner is goading me on to keep punching. The sweat-wipe isn't working. My shirt's already drenched. Saturated. It can't hold any more moisture, but the sweat keeps dripping, and I have to keep hitting the pads. Kick, jab, cross, hook. Kick, jab, cross, hook. This is my first Kickboxing class in six weeks, and I'm hurting. Good god, am I hurting. NY Jiu Jitsu is on Bond street off of Broadway and I'm rounding out my second hour and my body is begging for respite. I put my account at the dojo on hold for the peak of the tour season, and i was finally ready to jump back into the fray. The first class was a belt-advancement techniques class and I'd forgotten most of the combinations that I had worked so hard to memorize for my yellow-belt. Now I'm in the cardio-kickboxing class, and I have twenty more minutes before I can shut down completely. But I can't shut down completely. I brought my bike into the city. I've got to bike back across the Manhattan Bridge to get home. . . Don't think about it. Just hit the pads and think about that stupid teacher that left me running up and down Broadway to get my tip.
8:42pm
My legs hurt. My arms hurt. My brain and hands and eyes all hurt. A lot. But I'm at the Brooklyn Public Ale House on DeKalb avenue in Fort Greene with my New York Magazine, a tall glass of dark ale, a friendly Irish bartender, and an N.Y. Sirloin steak on it's way that I can definitely say I have earned. I might ache like hell tomorrow, but at least tonight I can say:
It's been a fine day.
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