The Epitome of Time and Other Stories

By Jamie Groccia

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781984579980

Jamie Groccia

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Book preview

The Epitome of Time

It was Madness that was driving Jayson crazy.

Jason held tight the urn carrying the ashes of his dog Madness close to his chest as he got into his twenty-foot skiff with the single outboard motor. It was Sunday morning, Easter Sunday, and there was not a cloud in the Bermuda sky, just east of Hamilton. The day was a perfect as a Jesuit’s conscience and Jason checked the engine for oil, full, and gasoline, full, and started the motor with one gentle tug on the chord, then threw off the ropes to the dock, the one still furthest east, where Hamilton could not quite be seen because of the harsh angle in the marina.

Jason, still clutching Madness’s ashes frowned, and wondered how far out into the Atlantic would he be able to go before it would be right for ashes to swallow sixteen years of faithful devotion, mainly Jason’s, for the Atlantic to do right and give validation for his seemingly eternal struggle between his good, somewhat, and his evil, mostly judgmental.

Jason checked his watch. It was the first day of summer and the heavens indicated that it would be a day right out of paradise. Paradise beckoned. It was both beautiful and sexy, but if course that was also an indication of a betrayal.

Good, Jason thought and then he lapsed into a stream of consciousness. Summer, seasons, sex and all lost at the sight of the unseen, the unnoticed, that which passed by in less than a blink of the eye. Jason smiled. He was near blind in his left, a deterioration of the retina not yet corrected, and he was used to his single dimension that that gift had rendered to his vision. He was undeterred and cast out southwest somewhere in the direction of the U.S. Carolinas. Not that he had the gas in his single outboard motor to reach even near to the outer banks. Maybe he could, however, and that one hope led him to speed the motorboat full gear towards America.

America.

Land of the loss of highways walked found and lost again, like Kerouac, the book he brought with him, The Dharma Bums, not On the Road, as he was just someone aging in the sun, high above, yet not blazing, not now, not until the heat comes and goes like tides.

For now Jason plunged ahead always looking around with this good right eye for a place to dump Madness’s ashes, somewhere in the existence of time and space, somewhere in the triangle the cries to be discovered, its secrets yielding lost and other times and places other secrets other mysteries thought to be forgotten by those who wanted something more that mattered less.

Then there was the first of the morning’s ocean currents forcing the motorboat further westward, good westward was America. Jason held the rudder tightly directing the boat into the current, fighting it, each second the waves pounded the wooded skiff and why Jason hadn’t taken out the fiberglass twenty-five footer with the inboard motor craft was now just taking root in his mind.

Jason realized that he was fighting time which he knew did not exist, not for him nor for anyone. For how time could exist if he was in it, if time extended endlessly, infinitely back ad forth and forward, its very nature of limitless space and dimension precluded his capacity to dwell in that universe. He was clearly not limitless and had no business fighting the vastness of infinite time and space.

He could not negotiate even the ocean nor the sea that he was in now. The Sea was nothing. Water was not the vacuum that existed to house both time and space, it was tangible, wet, sure, and incompetent like himself. It had the same dimensionality as his sight, short, uncertain, and unsustainable.

Then his motor, his single, stupid outboard, sputtered and stalled. He was suddenly adrift. Jason looked around at the sea, then the sky and tried to measure distance between them. The sky darkened as if to torment his short sightedness, his hubris, his infallibility of spirit. God. How can he dream of negotiating the universe when Kerouac failed to negotiate New Jersey?

New Jersey was somewhere north of the Outer Banks and he jerked his rudder toward that area of the sea and as he did the outboard sputtered, stretched out itself and started.

New Jersey.

Its shores were the epitome of time and he marked it on his map and headed westward with the ashes of Madness.

A Bit Like John Denver

Don’t you think Donna, that Richard Marx sounds a bit like John Denver?

Who?

John Denver, you know, Rocky Mountain High."

I was high, on a mountain once, I think it was in Idaho.

I don’t believe, that Idaho has any mountains.

Yeah, maybe it was New Mexico.

When were you there, Donna?

Very long, ago, Zack, very, very, long ago.

I smiled to contain my laughter.

How old are you, Donna?

Stop it, Zack, you know how old I am.

Please, remind me.

Twenty, well, almost twenty, I will be twenty in October.

I think that makes you nineteen.

If you say so.

I could not contain myself and I laughed in Donna’s face.

Don’t you dare laugh at me, don’t you ever dare laugh at me.

Her eyes teared up.

Don’t tell me you are going to cry?

What if?

What the hell does, ‘What if,’ means?

It’s what we say, these days. What do you know, you’re are an old man?

That hurts.

You’re not even fucking relevant.

And you, don’t even know who John Denver was.

I don’t give a shit who John Denver was.

He was a voice of optimism in the Seventies.

My God, Zack, how old are you anyway?

Guess?

A hundred years old, you’re a fucking hundred years old.

Almost. Why are we always fighting?

For friction, it is our fuel for sex.

I turned from her to face my white ceiling. I laid on my back, waiting for her.

What do you expect, now? She asked.

For you to do, what you do.

You are an animal, a sexist, pig. I love that in you.

I had met Donna that past March although, it seemed much longer ago. She was on Columbus Circle, waiting for a crosstown bus in order to transfer to the downtown Second Avenue, when I offered her a lift on my Harley. Without uttering a word, she jumped on the back of my bike, and pressed her body into mine for safety.

She wore a long, flowered dress, clean and perfect for the New York summer afternoon. She moved her ass on the back seat of my cycle, and as I turned to her, I saw her trying to feel the wind in her hair, The wind is wonderful, so fucking wonderful she shouted, and I gunned my cycle faster, to please her. I took Third Avenue, aiming for Saint Mark’s Place, and passing through the East Village, we headed thru the lower dredges of Manhattan.

Where, now?

Alphabet City, do you know where that is?

I think I may have an idea.

There was a biker gang who hung out on E Street, where young male celebrities pretended, they were Hell’s Angels, and close to where suburbanites, afraid of Harlem, came to buy crack. I was a counselor for addicts of mixed races on A Street, and I was very astonished when the girl directed me to two blocks from where I worked.

She pulled her body into me, and yelled,

Stop, this is me.

I stopped besides a dilapidated store front, warehouse building. On the west side of A Street, I saw the haunts of starving artists and musicians, the epitome of Rent. I imagined that I heard the swift currents of the East River. Donna slid her ass off the back seat of my chopper, and I worried for her.

Are you sure that you live here?

Sure, as shit.

I smiled. The girl was putting on an act, of belonging to the street.

Yeah, I guess you are. Be safe, Sweetheart.

She stood on the sidewalk and faced me.

My name isn’t Sweetheart, Sweetheart, it’s Donna.

Well, goodbye Donna.

She did not move and, with the widest of smiles,

Do you like Woody Allen movies?

All my life.

Yes, me too.

The next evening, we went to see Manhattan, and leaving the movie theater, Donna turned to me,

Do you think I look like Muriel Hemingway?

Shit, she did, almost exactly. It was easy to see what Woody Allen saw in Muriel Hemingway.

Yes, you do, but she was too young for him.

No, not at all, I like older men.

I smiled at her condescension, the lie in her meant, I realized, that she liked me more than she wanted me to know. She saw my appreciation for her remark, and knowing that I knew why she said it, could not help but smile back at me, and laugh.

If you wanted to woo me just do it, you don’t have to be so fucking cute about it.

Donna says to her secret self, so I cannot hear,

"I said I liked older men, to make him feel desirable. I liked him, however, at once, on his motorcycle, on Columbus Avenue across from Central Park. Yes, he is old, nearly forty, his curly brown hair starting to grey above his ears. He seems so sure of himself, on the high perch of his chopper. I know, at once, to be careful with him, to not scare him off. I do not reveal the truth about myself, except that I know the way downtown, shouting obscenities, as the mood hits me. I dare not tell him that I read Jane Austin, or that I write poetry in the dark of my room.

He is a madman, I think, and I want so much to be as mad as he. If he lets me, I wish to learn his mind. He is old and, therefore, has a past, which is a mystery to me. I do not reveal, even the low sum of what I know, for fear of being thought precocious. I bait him, to pique his interest, so not to seem a bore, an adolescent, a passing fantasy. I teased him when I ask if I look like Muriel Hemingway, without believing that I do so. Yet, he says I do, so perhaps it is true, for I am not too sure what I look like. I don’t like mirrors. I brush the thinness of my hair by the feel of it. I wish to be his mirror, so I reflect his beautiful face. Yes, he is beautiful. His face is somewhat chiseled, his mouth yielding to ready smiles. His dark eyes blaze, and as they look upon my face, I see them widen, desiring me. He is my safe security, a harbor for my unseeing years. He is my rain, softly wet, or vicious like a hurricane. I wonder if he lies down for me, either in bed or on the grassy hills in Central Park, while I read to him, aloud, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austin’s pages stained with my tears. I yearn to hear his voice say unintended endearments, or better yet, just listen as I speak to him, my voice aquiver, my words of absolute enchantment."

We were not too far from Greenwich Village, so we went to Little Italy, and ate in the darkest corner of the last family owned restaurant on Mulberry Street.

I’ve always wanted to eat, at an authentic Italian restaurant, you know, where the menus are in Italian, and the waiters do not quite understand English when you order.

I ordered spaghetti with linguine sauce, a plate of sautéed mushrooms on the side. Donna, favoring the exotic, wanted pearl white oysters and clam’s casino, just for me to hear her loudly crack the shellfish with both her hands.

That’s very sexy.

The sound, you mean. I know."

I looked at her, hazy in the candlelight, and barely seeing her smile in the shadow of the restaurant’s darkest corner. I put my right hand high above the candleflame and held it there.

Doesn’t that hurt?

Zen.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Repair, Zack, you are right now, a cliché.

How did you know about that obscure book?

Yet, since I was not impressing her one bit, I pulled my hand from above the flame, because it absolutely fucking hurt.

Why, do you ask me that?

My God, that book is from the Sixties, I mean from the fucking Sixties.

SomeZackes, I just pull things out of my ass.

You don’t have to speak that way, to me.

Like, how?

Like you’re someone who you’re not. You can’t fool me. I know that you are sweet.

Come on, Zack, don’t romanticize me.

I thought of the last line of Manhattan, when Muriel Hemingway says to Woody Allen, over Gershwin’s incredible Broadway Lullaby,

You have got to have a little faith in people.

Well life is romantic, don’t you think?

Don’t you want to know, and her eyes intensified, what I think is romantic?

Yes, very much.

Donna dropped her eyes, and when she raised them to mine, they were wet.

Do you love me?

Gershwin’s Broadway Lullaby, defined Manhattan, and beyond Greenwich Village, I saw the skyscrapers of The Financial District, and to its east, the Brooklyn Bridge, and to the south the dark, sweep of the Atlantic Ocean.

With all my fucking heart.

All right, Zack, I will tell you what I think is romantic.

Your eyes, Zack, are romantic. The way you speak to me with the gentleness that you show no others is romantic, the way you want to show New York to me, as if I do not know it, is romantic.

What, do you find romantic, other than me?

Isn’t that enough?

Yes, for me, it is, but what about for you?

There is no other than you.

There must be.

"I find Alphabet City, romantic, I find the south Manhattan streets, in the rain, the lampposts shining on beautiful boys in colorful clothing, romantic. I find the honesty of west side prostitutes, their thighs visible in see thru mesh, romantic. I find that the brown of Spanish Harlem, and the voice of Sam Cook, singing about it, romantic. Yes, of course, Central Park for so many, many reasons, the Pond, the hilly field named after a Beatle song, the small, black castle set into the bedrock, the zoo, and mostly how the lake ices in smoky condensation, romantic.

I find New York’s gothic churches of many religions, romantic. I find Christopher Street, where gays and transgender people struggle for their humanity, romantic. I even find Bank Street, its neat row houses, and its unexpected green, romantic.

And for us, I find the Statin Island Ferry, going to and froe, romantic, but above anything, anything at all, I find your fucking eyes, when you gaze into mine, the most romantic thing, of all."

She felt so fine in the back seat of my bike. She is, however, very fucking young, a kid, then again, these days kids grow up so very fast, and are adults in adolescent clothing. I realize that I rationalize my inexplicable desire for her. I promise myself that I will not touch her, even if she wants me. I realize, this rationalization, is meant to protect me from any predatory actions, if she just isn’t so fucking beautiful. She makes promises, that her body cannot keep. She draws me to her, opening, yielding and possessive. I yield to this, melting, powerless to resist, her sudden strength. She surrounds me, like someone older and I become the innocent, I the reluctant stranger. She touches me with soft endeavor, as if she means me to enter her. She aggresses as I retreat. I listen to music with her, her head in my lap, until she falls asleep. I do not pass my hand over her sleeping body, for her all her sexuality.

I sigh, in my frustration of the loss of her, immeasurable and transparent absolute desire, which I know can envelope me, if I let it.

I courted her, careful of abusing her by seducing her. We went to movies and held hugged in city boulevards and parks. The Lower East Side gave us access to the Brooklyn Bridge and across to Brooklyn Heights, to enjoy its promenade, and to lunch at Capulets on Montague Street.

We found one thing that seemed to bond us, romantically. From Battery Park, we took the Statin Island Ferry, and during that first New York City Saturday night, we held each other and standing at the low, brown railing of the Ferry, we looked upon the New York almost ocean, and passing the Statue of Liberty, and the Verrazano, and to the black rod iron promenade of Brooklyn Heights.

I don’t mean to imply that our relationship was easy. I could not forget the almost twenty years that lied between us, and although she seemed to know almost everything I knew, I did not challenge her, or mock her, with the trivia of my heart..

You know, Zack, the shit you say when you walk with me, is so fucking redundant.

I just point out things, that I think that you would find interesting.

It’s as if I did not have a clue about the City, like a tourist.

What is the point of being so very young, if you know everything?"

Who made you God, to know exactly what I know, or even think, I know.

Donna, I said, you are so circular, your mind works in spirals. It isn’t fair to me.

I did not realize that my very being to you, was contingent on my being fair.

Then she ran ahead down East Sixth Street, passing the light of many lampposts, until I lost her somewhere in the fog of Greenwich Village. She expected me, I guess, to follow her. In any case, I did. She was so much faster than me, her youth ah advantage for the distance with which she burdened me.

I found her, languishing under the arch, like a trophy. Under the arch that terminated Fifth Avenue, there was a high spotlight, which framed her, and I knew that she had chosen that exact spot in all downtown Manhattan, to show to me, in dramatic pose, her sense of lighting, like Greta Garbo.

When I finally reached her, I pulled her to me with unnecessary force, and when she pulled away, in a show of pique, I let go of her, and she fell on the sidewalk of Sixth Street, and in sudden horror, I retreated a few feet, where we were divided by the dichotomy of Fifth Avenue. I knew, Fifth Avenue was a metaphor of the gap between our generations, and I, reached down to help her to her feet. Donna, however, with newer sensibilities, refused my help, and she fell.

Get away, old man.

And although, I could not be any sorrier, I said.

You are the clumsiest person, that I have ever known.

I thought, for no earthly reason, that my mocking would make her laugh, but it was only the mocking from my mouth, that she heard.

Salt in the fucking wound,

She yelled to me, so loud that I feared the sudden interference from the cops, busy chasing the homeless away from Washington Square Park.

You are a fucking sadist, underneath your patronizing exterior.

You have a way, Donna, of saying so little, with so many words.

She would not back down. It was to her, a generational battle of will.

You will not intimidate me with your assumed superiority, I am your very equal, and maybe more.

I’m sorry.

Yes, you should be.

I love you.

I accept your apology, since I think that you’re sincere.

I looked around. We had drawn a small crowd of bored tourists and NYU students.

Do you forgive me?

For fucking, what?

You know, we say fuck way too much.

Yes, but it is a great term of endearment, don’t you think?

I think that we are family.

Maybe so, maybe no.

We waited for the ferry, lost for moments in fog. It appeared. In the early evening, in approaching rain, and it was as romantic as we hoped.

Docking at the steel and wooden pier, the ferry waited for us. We boarded, looking for a quiet place. When the ferry departed for Statin Island, a place somewhat foreign to us, we could not see it, in the mist and fog.

As we passed the Statue of Liberty, Donna pointed to it.

I cannot see her torch in the fog, yet I know it’s there. It’s a matter of faith, Zack, isn’t it?

If you look at it that way, then, everything is.

Our jump in logic, we both knew, was ridiculous, but it seemed to suit our sensibilities. We were water people, favoring its unknown depth, and of sometimes churning current. Yet, we knew, again, it was the depth of our souls that were called into question and it was unanswered by our visions of the Verrazano or the promenade of Brooklyn Heights, and these visions were there, again, upon the ferry’s return to Manhattan.

When we debarked the ferry, we heard a muffled cry.

What is that? I asked.

A baby! That’s a baby, crying.

Why do you say, that?

Shut up and listen.

The muffled cry was louder, and as it did, the wailing became more distinct. You are right.

The wailing led us to a trash can. Below the first layers of newspaper and garbage, we uncovered an infant, laying there naked.

Oh, my God, Zack, it is a baby, a baby girl.

Donna picked the crying infant up, and as she cradled the infant in her arms, it was Donna who began to cry.

Oh, how precious, how beautiful, what kind of heartless person could have left her, in the trash, like this?

I looked around for a cop.

We need to bring the infant to Saint Vincent’s.

No, Zack, they’ll take the baby from us.

Yes, of course.

Look at me, Zack. Do you love me, I mean, really love me?

Yes, you know I do.

Let’s take the baby home,

Home?

Yes, Zack.

You are crazy, Donna, I mean, I suspected it, but you really are.

This is the test, Zack, this is the ultimate test of your love for me. There is no other test that will ever matter.

I stared at her. Her eyes did not lie.

Okay, okay.

We took the infant girl home, and my eyes fell upon her.

She is so fucking beautiful.

We surrounded the infant in a warm, grey blanket, and fed her, and nurtured her as best we could.

My God, Zack, we are family.

We kept the baby for two weeks, until reason finally prevailed, and it was Donna who made the decision not to put our happiness over the basic need of her.

I cannot bear the loss, of our baby, Sarah, but, I must, mustn’t I?

If you really love Sarah, you must.

Yes, I know.

Donna called Manhattan Social Services, and they came with compassion, not questioning.

Donna placed Sarah in the arms of the Social Services nurse, and as she did, the nurse, seeing Donna’s tears.

Do you want to kiss her, goodbye?

And Donna, not to see her as she left our lives, turned into the darkness of the room.

Donna cried for a week, then on the first Sunday of October, she dragged me to Saint Mark’s Church.

It’s not that I need to pray, you don’t need a fucking church for that, but it just feels so safe, here, at Saint Mark’s Church, don’t you think?

It’s not, what I think, it’s what you feel, in your heart.

That’s very, poignant, Zack.

You’re mocking me.

Well, someone has to mock you, and it might as well be me.

I laughed. Donna taking my hand, led me to a quiet corner of our room, and nestling close to me, opened a book.

Do you mind, Zack, if I read to you?

Not, at all.

Good, she said, and Donna read to me Jane Austin’s, Pride and Prejudice, out loud.

"Who was Burgess

Meredith?"

I believe in Fate, Harry.

Man’s fate, Dottie, or do you mean Woman’s fate?

Harry smirked and thought he knew he had me.

He did, but not in the existential way, or the conflict that he wished to cause in me. I saw in him a viciousness of soul and it reflected my own existential dilemma of love and hate, Los Angeles style, in my year of living dangerously, 1959.

I smiled in Harry’s direction, he looking elsewhere than at me.

I smile, knowingly. My smile was a defense against the very aggression so apparent in the L. A., an aggression that had worked its way into Harry’s heart, a parasite, a tapeworm that grew inside his soul.

Transparent,

So,

I moved across the room as if I was skating on the Venice Beach boardwalk where one of his girl scouts saw me somewhat along the western reaches of Santa Monica boulevard, which was, itself, somewhat east of Eden and thought that Harry would wish to have me for the entrée de jure.

I smiled and tried to tease him, not with tears, but with my words.

Harry cut me off before I had a chance to speak, like always.

Beauty comes to those who see it coming. It is what you make it so, or do you think it does not, mi amado?

I saw in Harry his attempt at humility and with it just a bit of hypocrisy.

Is it really Harry, I mean, really?.

I saw in his mirror someone half undressed with her eyes cold and shadowed with mascara and smeared and my eyes were shallow, so I led him to our bed, sat on its edge, lowered my head and waited for him.

Dotty, you are the most beautiful woman in the world.

In his long