HOW TO GET GOING WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH

the lady was definitely having a bad morning. among her worst, maybe, as after she'd been yelled out of the seat that she thought was hers she'd spilled her complementary orange juice all over her own (and her lap), where she was then forced to sit, wet, behind the awful conversation and matching promise earrings of the gay christian boy band until one of the sky waitresses could get to her with a napkin. and although my own morning had begun more than promisingly, us airways seemed determined to thwart everyone's (on average) okay day, having made its best effort at me by putting tel aviv on the cover of the inflight magazine. new york was new york, but it wasn't the trip to the mediterranean gay disco on the beach that i'd promised everyone someone would be coughing up for my birthday. still, enough...: even if my miles hadn't been sufficient for keeping up appearances by sending the gift to myself, i had been flying enough to have found a comfortable space for personal reflections at the ends of the terminals at ronald reagan international. that said, i wasn't at all put out when my attempts to focus my way away from tel aviv were interrupted. i don't know with what she thought she might be able to help, but it was nice that she offered, and that she offered with her princess diana pocket knife. wondering then why i'd been given such a hard time by the tsa over my night creme was an easy way out of chasing the failures of my benefactors. worrying wasn't going to change my itinerary, and maybe the princess would even be my escort to la guardia.

no such luck, but my preoccupation with ground transportation had easily helped me put everything else out of mind. (we'd arrived safely, anyway, and since the boy band had sagged its pants onto a different flight we hadn't had any need for the knife.) it was, however, lucky that the princess had let me keep half of what we panhandled at the terminal before we parted ways, because the q33 doesn't take dollar bills. and it didn't apparently take no for an answer either, because no matter how many times i told them that javier was dead and that i was just wearing his clothes, all of his friend on the bus through queens wouldn't stop asking after their immigrant native son. exasperating, yes, but for one of his shirts i was able to trade instructions on getting (away from inside of the chase scene under the train tracks) to the 7 and to the g. and from the stop at metropolitan avenue i walked (and only for a little while in the wrong direction), until my stupid grin had to answer the phone and tell her that her neighbors were going to be looking at her funny the next week for having seen her with the simpleton, plagiarist (and defeated -- if smiling) chapero de postín. she obliged me by laughing (some redeeming patronage for the moment), and told me that she'd see me as soon as she could get to me after work. but where was i going, i asked, and before we chased our tacos with palomas or saw the center for wayward cats or hopped the debris at the water to get a better view of the skyline i took a walk along the path of progress, down bedford avenue toward the meeting place.

and when she met me at black brick an hour later, as i was doubting myself alongside ramón durán under the scrutiny of javier salazar as to whether or not i could in fact be anything i wanted to be, she was gracious enough to extend another kindness. if not the rest, my luggage was apparently up to my aspirations. unfortunately, it wasn't in me to respond with commensurate grace. as i told her, the march of progress had taken me no further than paying three dollars for a cup of fucking stumptown drip. ever forward. all the way back.