Chapter 5

“Nowhere Boy,” it was a nickname that I had acquired over the past few weeks.  They would whisper it to me as I walked by, many people only knew me as Nowhere Boy.  Most were unaware of where it came from or what it meant but enjoyed the implications of such a nickname.  Many people believed it to be insulting.  Maybe it was intended to be insulting.  I carried it as something to be proud of.  It was comforting.  And whether it was intended or not it’s a play on words from a song written by John Lennon and recorded in October of 65’ called, ‘Nowhere Man.’  I often seem to fit the part, wandering aimlessly through the streets of Manhattan, or lost in fairy tale for an uncertain amount of time.  “Is nowhere full of geniuses…Because I probably do belong there…,” is a common response I give to people who give me s**t about it.  

On the roof of an apartment building in Brooklyn, there is cocaine being cut and formed into lines on makeshift tables hauled to the roof by a rope and several spotters, someone is playing a banjo over a stereo and Leonard Cohen, its dark and chilly but I don’t feel much, if anything.  Every moment is indescribably prolonged.  We sat juxtaposed and in conversation talking to one another as if from opposite sides of the roof and speaking from somewhere inside of ourselves that we consciously forget to acknowledge on a daily basis, except for one reason or another, at the moment.  We are fixed guided by the stars--if there were any--and dismantling our physical self then re-assembling to mirror an image we have premeditatedly decided upon, after pulling names out of a hat and separating into little circles to paint each others souls on paper.  Then we would dance, and to dance is to have, yet again, evolved into the cosmos--like clouds, and whispers, black holes, and lovers…like we have so many times before.  And we danced, all night, and it was erotic and it was eternal and I understood for a first time in my life how it meant to be in strawberry fields, forever.  When the sun came up we were sitting indian style, still on the roof, and wrapped in blankets singing lost versions of, “My Guitar Gently Weeps.” We could just make out the sun rising in the distance, behind the city buildings, that would eventually redirect the light like a kaleidoscope throughout lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.  Amazing how I never noticed this before, and we sat in silence starring until the sun ascended above the tallest buildings and the silence was interrupted by someone deciding, very matter of factually, that without a bagel he would, we would, all…die.  “And so we shall.”