Grayson - I Hate All of You on This L Train

I HATE ALL OF YOU ON

THIS L TRAIN

SELECTED STORIES

R ICHARD G RAYSON

Canarsie House 2009

These stories originally appeared, in somewhat different form, in the following books:

Lincolns Doctors Dog

With Hitler in New York

I Survived Caracas Traffic

Highly Irregular Stories

And to Think That He Kissed Him on Lorimer Street

Copyright 2009 by Richard Grayson. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

Canarsie House

P.O. Box 6969

Brooklyn, New York 11236

ISBN # 978-0-557-08077-9

First Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Tao Lin

CONTENTS

The Best Rosh Hashona Ever 1

With Hitler in New York 16

I Saw Mommy Kissing Citicorp 32

Twelve Step Barbie 53

Diary of a Brooklyn Cyclones Hot Dog 64

Schmuck Brothers of East Harlem 74

I Hate All of You on This L Train 93

The Best Rosh Hashanah Ever

Somebody like Pete Hamill or Norman Podhoretz or Gloria Steinem once observed that one of the longest journeys in the world is the trip from Brooklyn to Manhattan. I made that trip last Rosh Hashanah on the D train, which is a very good train as far as they go. It was one of the last really warm days of the summer and I dreaded staying home doing nothing but playing solitaire or watching soap operas.

Actually, I used to be a soap opera addict, and I still get the urge to turn them on when Im at home during the day. My friend Willie and I used to rush home from Meyer Levin Junior High School to catch the last fifteen minutes of Another World almost every day. The best actress on the program played Aunt Liz, and I truly hated her. The last time I saw Willie, he told me a new actress was playing Aunt Liz now and shes not half as evil.

During the 1964 Worlds Fair, Willie and I were waiting to get into the Johnson & Johnson pavilion when we were approached by this guy from some little jerkwater religion whose name I dont remember. The man was trying to convert people, and when he found out we were Jewish, he went into a long harangue about Jews having animal sacrifices. I dont remember much of what he said. I wanted to get Willie out of there. Hell, he hadnt had his bar mitzvah at that point and in another ten minutes he would have converted. So I pulled Willie from the line and told him I needed to pee really badly. As we walked away, the man kept yelling at us, "But wheres the blood, fellas? Wheres the blood?"

When we moved to Mill Basin, my parents joined a synagogue, the Flatbush Park Jewish Center. It was "modern Orthodox," and I think we belonged because their friends did since we certainly werent Orthodox. Temple Sholom, the Conservative shul, was just a few blocks away but that might have been better. I never knew I could hate school so much until I went to Hebrew school at Flatbush Park. And on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Mom and Dad made me wear a suit and tie for services where all that constant jumping up and down made me crazy.

The last time I dressed up for the High Holy Days was in September 1966. That was also the same month I started in psychoanalysis because of my anxiety attacks. If you remember, that was the time when Governor Rockefeller had all those cute commercials for his reelection. He could afford it, I guess. One of them was about a talking fish. Not that Im saying those commercials had any connection with my seeing a shrink; it was just a coincidence. Dr. Weinberg had his office in his big mansion on Albemarle Road, just off Coney Island Avenue. I took the D train to Church Avenue to get there when I didnt have to take a taxicab. Dr. Weinbergs house smelled of jasmine. When Arlene gives me a cup of jasmine tea, I remember Dr. Weinberg.

The year before that, I enrolled as a sophomore at The Benton School, which catered to upper-middle class Jews. Nearly everyone at the school lived in the city, and it was a long trip for me from Brooklyn to the Upper West Side, but I always arrived early, even in the winter. Sometimes I got there before the registrar, Mrs. Mogg, who opened up the school. It got very cold in the mornings and Id have to stay in a telephone booth. Incidentally, on all of Central Park West, I never found a telephone that worked.

The principal of The Benton School, an Englishman who occasionally took a nip of brandy for the malaria he contracted when he was a spy in the First World War, told me on that first day that he would assign an older student to look after me for a while. He told me not to get too dependent on this one student. The students name was Peter. His stepfather was the producer of documentaries Id seen on CBS News.

By the time I was a high school senior, we had stopped going to synagogue. By then, though, I wasnt going out much at all. At first Mom and Dad freaked out when Id wear jeans and sneakers on the High Holy Days instead of getting dressed up, even if we werent going to shul. They told me they didnt care what our Jewish neighbors thought, that they were worried about the Catholic families on the block.

"If they see you dont respect your own holiday," Mom said, "how can they respect you?"

I just shrugged and agreed, saying, "Yeah, I guess theyll stop saluting me."

Quite a while after that, I put an ad in The Village Voice . I dont remember it word for word, but it was good, like a prose poem. I asked for a friendly guy or girl to share a trip around New England. At the time I was trying to get over my agoraphobia. I got a ton of replies, mostly from weirdoes or old people. When I read Eriks letter, I knew he was the right one.

First Erik and I went to New Haven. I didnt like Yale, probably because it wasnt what I expected. I expected some elegance. All I got was noise and confusion. Sometimes I think I should have been born in the nineteenth century. Im a Victorian at heart.

I heard a cute story about my little next-door neighbors first day in nursery school. The teacher put up one finger and asked the kid what it was, and the kid answered, "One." Then the teacher held up two fingers and asked what it was. The kid answered, "Peace."

Last Rosh Hashanah was the fifth time that I had gone into Manhattan that year. Once I went to a dental laboratory to pick out a shade for my capped tooth, the one I broke in the obstacle race in Willies basement when we were in eighth grade. Once I went to visit a friend who worked at the Barnes and Noble textbook store. Twice I went to the Village, to Washington Square. Thats also where I was heading last Rosh Hashanah.

By then, my parents had given up even the pretense of pretending we observed the High Holy Days. My father went out on Rosh Hashanah morning to play tennis with his business partner Frank Amatuzzio.

Did you ever notice that the West Fourth Street station of the IND has entrances on Sixth Avenue, West Eighth Street and Waverly Place, but no entrance on West Fourth Street? Mansarde loves to hear about things like that. Shes my pen-pal in Madison, Wisconsin. Her real name is Mary, but she calls herself Mansarde because her last name is Garrett, and mansarde is French for "garret." Before he went out to play tennis, my father brought in the mail, and I got this letter from Mansarde.

Dear Kevin,

This has been a momentous day, and I celebrate it with this letter. Two of my friends and I (hard core hoodlums all) were invited to leave French class for the next two weeks. The teacher thought she was threatening us, be we plan to take her up on it. We were accused of "disrupting the class, disrespectful behavior, inattention" blah blah blah. What really happened was that I questioned her translations and teachings, Pat broke into laughter when asked to translate, and Cris stuck up for us. Cris is overly sensitive and almost broke into tears under the tongue-lashing she received.

Speaking of trouble, there have been four or five fire bombings around the University. They bombed the wrong side of the gymnasium so that the only thing that remained unscathed was the ROTC offices. Although these people are rather inept, I sympathize with them. Id really like to burn down West High first, tho, and then the University. I dont dare say that at home.