Deh Bubby.

Time is Broken

A book on Jean Genet

Greg Giovanni – when I first met Greg it was on the porch of the squat on 49^th and Baltimore avenue. The house we affectionatly called Hell Squat. I would say there was a party going on, but the place was always in a state of party so the fact that there were people everywhere drinking and getting high and stupid was nothing unique to that night. He was there with a few friends of his and we got to talking. I think he must have wanted to fuck me. No, I’m sure he was hoping to fuck me, the little queer…But what he said was that he was putting on a bit of underground theater and he needed someone to play Saint Francis of Asissi and didn’t I look just exactly the part with my short cropped hair and my brooding countenance. Our rendevous on the porch began a friendship that has lasted till today and a professional relationship that lasted about 5 years or so.

Greg is brilliant. He has written many plays and is a bit of a legend in the Philly theater scene for his work. He is a gnome of a man, filled with a short man’s energy. There is a bit of a sense that he is always on the stage in the way he presents himself. I chalk this up to being an aquarius. It has never been easy to pry the character away from the soft meat underneath pulsing away with raw and messy emotions. His distinctive nasal laugh gives him away at bars. He likes to play games.

Greg is an addict. He has been trying to manage his relationship to crack for a few years now. It doesn’t help that he lives a few blocks away from government subsidised hi-rise. He points that out to me as we drive by it on our way to Bubs. I pick him up from the house in Germantown where he is renting an apartment. It is a beautiful house with a porch in the front and the back and a spacious backyard. The double front door opens to a cool shaded interior that has the almost musty smell of valhalla and home. It is coforting to be there. The neighborhood is quiet and relaxing. I can feel the atoms of my body calm down as we sit on the porch with the cat and talk about what has been going on in our lives over the years we’ve not seen eachother. When we head up to his room to check out pictures of Paradox on his laptop I am struck at how much he reminds me of Carl in so many ways. Their space is practically identical. The books, the games, the ashtrays filled with cigarettes, the clothes strewn about. It is not just the setting, however, that I find so facinatingly similar. The two are alike in their sensibilities and their manner. It is beyond me to be able to describe just how. I will have to see them together to be able to have that comparison made clear.

Greg and I have a lovely afternoon together. We drive back to Bub’s and have lunch and then drop Mom off at work. Greg wants to visit a Russian strip mall and buy pear soda from the russian supermarket. He loves the soda bottles from Russia. Then I drive him into town and drop him off at the theater where he is performing in a play he describes as terrible. He is a creepy piano teacher. It is the reason he has grown a big bushy mustache and shaved the middle of his head so that he looks, as he describes it, like a stadium. He understands when I turn down his offer to see the show.

I drive to Randall’s house, but he is not picking up his phone. Nebish doesn’t have a phone and so there is no way for me to get in touch with him. I do find some good parking though. I make the decision to try and find a place to hang out in the neighborhood instead of going to a strip club, an option that is always close to the fore of my conciousness. Eventually Rand gets home and we walk down to Krista’s house where I anticipate Nebish may be staying. On the way I take pictures of the neighborhood. Hanging around with Randall makes me feel very artistic. It reminds me of my artistic sensibilities and helps me to believe in their value.

Nebish is at Krista’s and the three of us hang out while we watch some episodes from the sixth season of Oz. I wish I could live in two places at once.

Nebish, Dad, and High School fools

Chillin like a villian with the Nebish down town.

Lets do a very quick recap to be elaborated on at some time in the future.

Our friend Pat invited us to his bar. Now, I ask you, why would a friend invite his broke ass friends to come drink over priced drinks at his snooty hotel bar knowing full well there are bars a plenty with better atmosphere and cooler customers if not to comp his friends some drinks? This is not an unreasonable expectation in my mythos. Needless to say, Pat charged us for drinks then left us high and dry as we waited outside for him to finish his shift. He’s really a much nicer guy than all that though you wouldn’t know it from this scene.

Since the other day when John practically passed out in the heat I’ve been worried about his endurance. The few blocks to the trolley up to West Philly seemed to be a little too much for him. I could see the concentration on his face as we walked down the street. It was good when we finally got to Joe and Patty’s house and we could set him down in front of a fan. It was a good and mellow evening playing Wii sports all night and getting loaded.

The following day I got to see my dad. We had lunch together and chatted a bit. I realized that I actually don’t really like it when he goes off on his lectures. That was fine though, because he only did it once before I stopped him. I can understand though. It is nice to feel like you have something to say that actually matters. He has given me this one before where he reminds me that if you have a special someone there is nothing more important in the world than them. What he seems to foget when he is sharing this bit of wisdom with me is that

a) the woman he is talking about was my step mother.

b) I couldn’t stand the woman.

c) Perhaps most importantly, the sacrifices he is advocating one make for their significant other included my brother and I in his case.

Mental note to self – pay attention to your audience to make sure the science you are imparting to them is actually something they have an interest in.

Still it was cool. There were a couple aw shit moments, like when he told me for the first time that he took some chemistry as an undergrad. I had also stumbled upon chemistry when I first started going to school. At the time it seemed comletely out of the blue, but learning it was also a decision of my father’s freaked me out a bit. Our choices are not made as autonomously as we like to imagine they are.

I also found myself humbled as I asked him for money from school. It is not easy for me to ask for help and I hate having to be concerened about money. I know, how unusual, right? He was pretty cool about it all and definitely didn’t try to make me feel like an idiot, although he had just finished telling me how the stock market (where he has most of his money) was not doing very well.

Later that day I spent some time with some high school friends of mine. One of the core crew has fallen away from the rest of the posse for some very obscure reasons that seem to have to do with his wife not likeing white people (they are african-american). I pulled a Jerry Springer on him and invited him out to Gordon’s house so we could hang out for a drink (Gordon is the guy he has the biggest problem with) when he showed up we all acted as though there was nothing going on, but I could tell something was up. I think we did our best to pretend nothing had changed, but you really can’t go home again. After we went our separate ways I ruminated on how foolish we humans are and how short life is. Friends are so important.

Another important thing that I took away from the scene, though, was that there is nothing we have to do to make things better. It is not that there is nothing we can do to make things better, but that we don’t have to do anhything to make things better. I know I can’t fix things between my friends. But I do know that I can love them and support them and let them know that what they are doing to eachother is a waste of time. These are the only ideas that will ever make a difference. Not being in town there is certainly nothing I can do anyway. But that is irrelevant. People are always only going to do what they want to do. You can give them all the advice you want. You can put them in whatever situation you think is best for them. But when it comes down to it what we need to do for eachother is just to remind how much you mean and how essential you are to our lives.