January 2003<\/p>\n
I pushed the door of Night Cafe open calling out a \u201cSee ya later!\u201d to my work buddies who were still shooting pool inside.\u00a0 It was cold again.\u00a0 Too cold again.\u00a0 I was underdressed for the weather again.\u00a0 I had told my roommate the day before, \u201cOnce you hit mid-January without buying a new winter coat, you kind of resign yourself to waiting \u2018til next winter.\u201d\u00a0 I puffed out fog as I walked west on 106th toward Broadway.\u00a0 A cab drove by too fast, honking at the van with the out-of-state plates, who, dammit, was in his way.<\/p>\n
The bus stop shelter was empty, save for one man.\u00a0 He was in his late 30s, dressed mostly in denim, but with a black North Face coat.\u00a0 The hood of his coat was trimmed with fur, and I thought to myself that, if I had had a hood, I sure as hell would\u2019ve had it tied tightly around my face, not hanging back like he had it.<\/p>\n
The man was sinking into an imaginary chair, his knees bending slowly, his torso pitching steadily forward like a square rigger off its keel.\u00a0 His eyes were closed.\u00a0 I stood watching him unabashedly; he sure as hell wasn\u2019t gonna notice.\u00a0 The invisible chair was so low.\u00a0 He was practically squatting when he jerked<\/em> back to a standing position; his distracted puppeteer had suddenly regained his focus.\u00a0 Denim man’s eyes opened a crack and his body remained erect for a half-second before the comfy chair began to call him back.\u00a0 Again, he sank, unevenly, occasionally pulling up an inch.\u00a0 And again, just before capsizing into the gutter, the crown of his head shot upward.<\/p>\n The M60 lumbered up.\u00a0 I got on and watched the puppet-man until he was out of sight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January 2003 I pushed the door of Night Cafe open calling out a \u201cSee ya later!\u201d to my work buddies who were still shooting pool inside.\u00a0 It was cold again.\u00a0 Too cold again.\u00a0 I was underdressed for the weather again.\u00a0 I had told my roommate the day before, \u201cOnce you hit mid-January without buying a … Continue reading New York Memory<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/51"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}