Eskandarian - Golden Years

Sometimes the answers come while youre standing at the mouth of a great canyon; other times the catalyst could be the smell of a cab drivers cheap cologne while he squawks away about Mohammed and his prophecies. They never want to talk about his forty wives or why we should believe God came to him through an intermediary in a cave and handed him the Old Testament plus the bible and said, Here you go, sonny, now its your turn, go get em!

Allison was born in a volcano on Easter Island. It was a Saturday and everyone was out statue-watching. Shes an Aries like my dear Maman. Its Sunday and Allison is cooking our favorite breakfast: sauted kale with garlic, onion, and mushrooms. Also grits with butter and fresh jalapeos, veggie sausage links and sliced wholegrain French sourdough.

Our new apartment smells like a home. The sun is shining through the wooden blinds and the window-unit AC is blowing cold. Duke Ellingtons on the radio. I feel like a whole man. Its my second day of sobriety and this time Im quitting for good.

I love you, baby, she says to me smiling, her blue eyes radiant and fully alive. The ground shakes and rattles as the express train plows up or down 4th Avenue. I slide over to where shes standing by the stove and grab her waist from behind, pull her close to me, and kiss her on the neck. She moans with delight and melts into me for a moment while turning the heat down on the kale. I move my hands down and squeeze her ass with intent. Shes stirring the grits. Her short shorts are exposing her long smooth legs. I want to lay her down on the wooden kitchen floor and examine her from head to toe but my hunger gets the better of me. Were happy today, have been for a couple of weeks. Before that we had a couple of miserable weeks with no sex, no love-making at all. I was mostly getting drunk after work so by the time she got home from the restaurant late at night I was done for. When the loving is good its the best.

When we met we were both lurking in the dark corners of the night, swimming in the frigid waters of single life in New York City. I fell for her the moment she walked in the door with a roommate of mine and a bunch of other people. It turned into a party pretty quickly. I had to have her but needed to be careful. You dont take a girl away from a friend without a little bit of tact and skillful maneuvering. We were both coked up within an hour of that first meeting and working on getting drunk. She played all the right songs, just sat down and asked if she could take over the music.

Do you know who this is? she asked me slyly.

Sure, its the 13th Floor Elevators. Great choice, I answered.

What do you want to hear?

Whatever you say.

We shared a cigarette, passed it back and forth like wed known one another for years. Stayed up until way after dawn. Then she left with my friend and I had to wait a while to see her again.

*

Every visitor was impressed by the loft I was living in back then, not that I was living there alone, or that a bunch of people living in a loft in Brooklyn is a rare thing, but this was a special place. To begin with it was in a very desirable location in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I had tried to stay far away from Williamsburg but after a brief period of exile in Texas found my only real option to be living here with half-a-dozen other people, and many more coming and going at all hours. The loft was in the only old building standing in that part of the neighborhood. Amongst the dead shiny architecture it stood, defiantly, like a mountain before the flood.

There were four flights of stairs to walk up. On the fourth floor a heavy iron gate opened onto a long corridor with six separate loft apartments on opposite ends, some larger than others, but all large enough to house more than four at a time. Ours was the largest one of all. The views were spectacular from the windows alone but through the bathroom window one could access a rooftop the size of a football field which not only had unobstructed panoramic views of the city but a fifty-foot-high water tower and an eighty-foot chimney stack, both of which were visible from Manhattan if one wanted to find them. The plumbing was shoddy at best, the hot water never hot. If you wanted to make coffee on the stove youd see a mouse jump from one burner to the other. If you turned on the toaster the whole building might lose power, and often did. When the upstairs neighbors walked around dust would fall upon us like snow. There was no real way to keep the place clean. The minute I walked in I knew I had to live there for a while and get my life back in order. It was a terrific hideout and I was a fugitive of sorts, in need of a fresh start. No address, no telephone, no connection to the people of the past, and I hardly knew any of my roommates, who were all recent arrivals from Iran, rock musicians whod made it out. They knew me too, had seen me on Voice of America TV back in Tehran, which is illegally picked up via satellite. All these guys were much younger than me but that was no problem, I didnt feel old. I felt more alive than ever and in the next year we would enjoy countless wild times together. They gave me a couch to sleep on. It was the middle of summer and hot. I owned three T-shirts, two pairs of jeans, three pairs of socks, and my trusty black leather boots. Had almost no money and no job offers. I was a happy man. These kids were good to me and in time Id be able to repay them for their kindness. The first order of business was to go on a two-month tour around the country with them as an opening act. I would get thirteen dollars a day to live on, a meager per diem no matter how you look at it.