Advice from Artie
It was only because my brother and I had just recently returned from a stay at our uncle’s house in Vermont (and I use the term uncle cautiously, him being a far off relative, a cousin of one of our great-grandparents; quite possibly even not blood related to us at all) where we spent almost a week listening to the psychedelic echoes of his sixties nostalgia that my temper for all things smelling even remotely close to that era had run dangerously short. Otherwise I would’ve kept my mouth shut as my date and I walked past the window a basement-level world music store on West 4th street full of colorful pan flutes, sitars, and still-originally-packaged Bob Dylan vinyls, none of which looked to have been used in the slightest. My date, a brown-haired girl half-a-head taller than me without her brand-new Doc Martins (reeking of a online trend which had apparently expanded well past its algorithmic cage) was in the middle of a monologue about her vintage record collection when I muttered something about how I bet every instrument in the place had been purchased online from China, in retrospect most likely trying to distance myself from the rehashed mess of a conversation we were having. The comment had its intended effect for a moment, as she stopped and stared off briefly to consider the possibility, but backfired when she visibly and angrily came-to, grabbing me by the sleeve and pulling me in through the dangling beads that had been hung up in place of a front door. It turned out, much to my dismay, that the store was a kind of mecca for the NYU student body, and in doubting its authenticity as an authentic institution, I had inadvertently dismissed an entire population of young artists and musicians (again I use certain terms cautiously here) who frequented the store for weekly drum circles and concerts. Instantly I was greeted by dozens of the aforementioned group, all browsing through a massive collection of vinyls in huge cardboard boxes. They were focused intently on the matter, as if each record constituted a piece of a life well-lived, and through their very purchasing would lift the buyer into the realm of the sacred, the holy realm of the well-listened.
I was also greeted by the nearly suffocating smell of weed and incense, although I could locate neither of the two in the room, instead figuring it was a mixture of scents that had long since become inseparable with the wooden walls and shag carpet of the store. The customers were all dressed in outlandishly colorful outfits, ranging from multicolored sequent sweaters to hot-pink denim tank-tops, but all nonetheless undoubtedly linked via their common ancestor—the upscale boutiques that had taken over the lower east side masquerading as thrift stores. They were like members of an army waging war against clothing with any semblance of logic or functionality; of course ostensibly in the name of self-expression or individuality, whichever was supposed to come first. The most curious part was the coat hanger at the front of the store on which hung, despite what the army would have you believe, a dozen or so tan pea coats with only the slightest variations in size or length. So much for originality, I muttered, even softer this time, as I took off my date’s tan pea coat and placed limply it over the rest of them. “Hey is your name on this…” I asked just before she walked off into the rows of vinyls to start browsing. I followed after her for a while, but seeing that she was silently and completely absorbed into the stacks of records, I figured that I wasn’t needed, and wandered off on my own to explore the shop.
I practically had to push my way through the sea of rainbow-clad students, each too focused on the records they were thumbing through to notice my attempts at moving around them. Only occasionally did they look up from their soul searching to check their iPhones. Truthfully, I too was guilty of this soul-searching, and since moving back to New York, had been followed by a sense of unbelonging, causing me to bounce sporadically between circles in pursuit of friends and self-definition in a manner not too dissimilar from how these students filed through old records. This unbelonging and the searching I have been forced to undertake on account of it has placed me in a number of curious predicaments, and regrettably, I’ve often tailored myself to appear on the surface like one of these vinyls: accept me into your heart as a friend and I will add to you something of value, I will make you whole. All of this tailoring, however, like infinitely and unsatisfactorily hemming the ends of a too-long pair of pants so they fit properly, has left me with very little material left to work with. And so as I pushed through the crowds, I not only was admittedly jealous of their ability to have found such a homogenous group, coming only at the expense of a terrible wardrobe, but their devotion to adapt a style and language that was not their own, something which I could never do without this terrible sense of dissonance. So devoted, in fact, that they were able to revive an entire era of signs and symbols to achieve their goal with wonderful harmony. Truly they had chosen the best era for this task, as there wasn’t one better equipped in my mind to deal with the loneliness of our times.
But I cleared myself finally from the mob, and getting to the rear of the place, which was covered in hanging sitars and er-hus, I felt suddenly disgusted with myself, and that I needed to extricate myself from the store, my date, and the circle of her friends that I was currently associated with. Really, I wanted to remove myself from anything that could be tied to that particular moment in time, or the immense amount of self-deception that it required to exist within it. My perfect double existed somewhere, like me in each and every way that I had branded myself—if I could only just find him and convince him to take my spot, I would happily take his, wherever I imagined it to be, maybe somewhere in Eastern Europe or the Middle East (I have been told I look distinctly Persian on not one occasion). I doubted my ability to accomplish any of these without causing some sort of scene, and so retracting into myself for the moment, put aside my existential worries and tried to pretend as if I had walked into the store of my own volition.
The whole situation reminded me of the few weeks I had fallen into the company of a prestigious debate society in North Carolina, and fashioning myself as a politically-minded young man, would dress in three-piece suits twice weekly to listen to memorandums on a constitution of which I had no intention of ever reading nor caring about in the slightest. (Suits also happened to be my least favorite of all types of clothing, although compared to the denim jacket I was currently donning on top of my shoulders like a cape, I am not sure which was preferable). After a few weeks of entertaining my helpless fantasy, I stood up during one of our debates, and proceeded to outline a constitutional amendment that would remove me permanently from the group and institute a lifelong ban on anyone a member of the group from speaking to me directly. The speech went on for approximately ten minutes, replete with a long and detailed history of the group’s slave owning legacy and a curse word laden segment which I shall not dare to repeat here. At the three or four minute mark half of the congress had raised objections to my speech, trying to bring it to an early halt, and by the eight minute mark, the entire congress had voted to remove me from the building by force, which was instituted immediately. If I recall correctly, the amendment that I had proposed passed unanimously.
I pulled down a dusty banjo that was hanging above me and took a seat on a little fold out chair. I didn’t play the banjo, nor did I have the slightest inclination of learning to play, but neither of these really seemed to matter at the time. The warm metallic plucking I was able to produce was quite nice sounding, and fiddling around with the instrument for a little longer, I actually began to contemplate learning how to play. More likely, however, I was making the same fallacy one makes singing along to the radio, or listening to music on a long walk—it wasn’t so much the instrument that was pleasing to me but the delusions of grandeur that followed, and thoughts of projecting my name and likeliness onto every record in the store, and the minds of their every listener. I put down the banjo and remembered why I had given up music in the first place, hanging the prideful thing back up where it belonged on the ceiling.
Someone must have been hearing my innermost thoughts, however, because as soon as I finished hanging up the instrument and old man who looked almost identical to my uncle (long white ponytail, bushy unkempt beard) appeared from a staircase coming down from a second floor that I hadn’t noticed earlier. “Hey that sounded pretty alright,” he said in a slow, disarming voice, again reminding me uncannily of my uncle, “it’s a shame people’ve got to attach so much ego to those things,” he motioned to all the instruments in the room, and then broke into a high-pitched laugh. “But luckily for my business they do,” he somehow managed to squeak out between laughs and gulps of air.
I couldn’t help but smile at his whole demeanor; the guy must’ve been here forever, and most certainly was the sole source of the store’s smell. He was wearing a Native American looking leather jacket with hanging tassels, and I noticed only later that he was bare-footed. The outfit would have been intolerable to me had it been on anyone else, but for some odd reason I didn’t mind it at all on him; actually I thought it fit the old man perfectly well. I was confused by the distinction I had drawn in my head—obviously this man had lived through the sixties, and yet the time was long gone. Did he somehow have more of a right to it than its millennial adherents I detested? Through some complicated function of authenticity I had determined to answer to be yes, but still I wondered if his convictions were more genuine than theirs, and what that even meant.
“You’re even luckier that vinyl’s made a comeback,” I joked, although not quite sure if what I’d just said followed so logically from his last statement, deciding to respond instead to his ego comment, figuring he was more interested in it than business talk, “unfortunately most of these are going to decorate bedroom walls instead of ever getting played.”
He seemed to appreciate the sentiment. “You’re probably right you know,” his laughs subsiding, “although hey, times are changing…” here there was a long pause, after which he added, “as long as the damn things are selling I don’t mind!” He fell back into the same high-pitched laugh as before, and a smile broke out on my face again. This guy was genuine all right. I waited for his laughter to subside, and looked around to see if anyone else was as interested in this guy as I was. Thankfully I seemed to be the only one, and he finally caught his breath, red in the face and teary-eyed.
He wiped his eyes, which were actually quite wet, pulled out another folding metal chair and took a seat beside me. “But hey,” he took out a ragged handkerchief and blew his nose loudly into it, crumpled it up and stuffed it back into his pants pocket, “R.D. Laing says everyone’s just pretending, man…” he leaned back into his chair as if he had just made some earth-shattering declaration, “some people just hide it a little better than others.” He pronounced the initials R.D. like the name ‘Artie,’ and I wasn’t sure if he knew it wasn’t. It was exactly the type of hackneyed sound bite that would usually make me shudder with embarrassment, but once again coming from this guy it didn’t seem so ridiculous. “Or was that Jung… I don’t know man. Listen, I’m going to go smoke a jay—I hope you don’t mind.”
“No… no not at all,” I replied barely two seconds before he pulled out a joint from a mysterious hidden coat pocket and lit it in his mouth. He took a deep, long drag and closed his eyes for a moment before exhaling. Opening his eyes slowly, he passed the hand-rolled joint to me. I paused, not knowing if taking a hit was worth most likely ruining the remainder of my date. I could see her from the back of the storeroom, still browsing, only now with about fifteen different records under both her arms; knowing she would want to listen to them all straight through with me before filing them away forever. I accepted the joint from my gracious new friend. “Thanks,” I whispered, and drew in a short but fiery breath, holding it in momentarily and exhaling through my nose. Passing it back to my friend, I was aware suddenly of many odd things, the twitching of muscles, the large number of colors in the room, the pretenses under which I had ended up in this store, all amongst many others I can’t remember now as well.
What I do remember is how the two of us passed the joint back and forth a few more times before my date, having paid for her records now tucked away quietly in two branded tote bags, rushed over to us and, furious at me for getting high in the middle of our date (of course loudly inventing some other reason as to not imply anything about the storeowner) took me by the arm and pulled me out of the place before I could get a chance to bid my friend a proper farewell.
We exited the store to a gray and cold late afternoon, and being at once too embarrassed (my date being rightfully upset with me) and too self-conscious to speak, we walked in silence for a while. At some point on Houston it started to drizzle lightly, and we started back home, tacitly agreeing to head back to our respective apartments. We lived in the same neighborhood however, so we were forced to walk in the same direction despite our mutual agreement on silence. We had shifted out positions on the sidewalk slightly, one behind the other, as if to express this desire spatially, and so I trailed behind her by about ten feet, left to wonder if there was anything I could say to repair the break that had grown between us. I was fumbling over the words in my head at that point, still properly high, and wasn’t sure if I could come up with anything coherent to say to her, instead choosing to stay silent.
We had just gotten into our neighborhood when I mustered up the courage or sobriety to say goodbye. But just before the intersection where we would have parted ways, a camera crew had been set up on the sidewalk. Around five people with huge lights and cameras must’ve been having a photo shoot, because standing in front of the lights, set up opposite the front window of an old kosher deli, was a scantily-clad woman in ripped baggy jeans, a thick, brown-leather belt, and a torn white t-shirt posing confidently and spastically for the photographer egging her on. She was holding a white placard with the word “BEAT” written on it in bold black lettering, and at the flash of the camera, would switch to a new provocative position with the card in her hands. Her photographer in a white turtleneck and black leather khakis was coaching her from behind a huge inverted umbrella flashing at her like a strobe light—“Beat! Ooh, yeah—cigarettes! Allen Ginsberg baby! Be the Beat! Howl! Howl! Perfect!” A cigarette hung damply from his thinly lipped mouth, and he struck poses almost as rapidly as his model. Before I could cross to the other side of the street, I burst into the most maniacal laugh, completely unable to contain myself, nor my coughing, hyena-like cry. I clasped my hands over my face, but I couldn’t stifle my laughter in the slightest; both the model and the cameraman stopped to look at me, along with my date. I was doubled over on my knees, trying to catch my breath but hopelessly unable to between my twisted laughs.
From behind my teary eyes I saw my date clenching her fists, bloodless with rage, staring at me with the coldest scowl I had ever seen. “Can you at least pretend to care about someone else for once today?!” She snapped, her voice cracking mid-sentence. Then she let out a sort of exasperated yell, which really sounded more like a feral growl, and turning her back to me, hurriedly strutted off. The drizzle started to pick up, the photo shoot quickly packed up, and I managed finally to catch my breath, although by then it hardly mattered. I wondered what Artie would have to say about my pretending. And there I was, thinking I hadn’t done a good enough job at hiding it…