(2005)
Time traveler, New Orleans
Window shopping, Philadelphia
(1991)
Before the rain, Avalon, N.J.
(2020)
Rehearsal space, Philadelphia
“E flat into G sharp minor? No.” Chris Larkin (1984)
Cécile, Wilmington, Del.
(2018)
Tiniest redwood, near Eureka, Calif.
(1997)
Boardwalk guys, Wildwood, N.J.
Tony, tonight is going to be special. It gets weird at the Jersey shore after Labor Day. No one’s driving slowly anymore because the cops don’t care, or the cops were part-timers anyway and are back on the mainland. The whole barrier island becomes a construction site. Some businesses are still open, others already said fuck it. More than any other place here, the boardwalk — home to three piers of amusement rides and you don’t want to know what else — really loses it by mid-September. Behind the lens at this moment there’s a guy giving a shopkeeper the business about Jesus Christ, and the shopkeeper is having none of it. Two old dames are driving too fast in their motorized chairs and laughing hysterically. There are no rides running and no one young enough left to want them. And then there are these two guys. (2020)
Restaurant staff, Hong Kong
(2014)
Parole officers, Philadelphia
Might have a problem. One of their fellow officers, somewhat incongruously, was a member of a squash and tennis club on the Main Line where I tended bar. The Fox show COPS was just in development, and this outfit was featured in the pilot (something like that). The club member invited me to tag along with the guys for a while, with a story in mind for some publication. But there was competition for my time and what would pay for it, and the story was never written, to my lasting regret. Because dear God it was an insane story. Like the predawn raid (for which I was given a Kevlar vest) when they all went bursting into a crackhouse rowhome, leaving the entrance uncovered. Who’s got the front door? I shouted, because I had learned a couple things by then. “You do.” (1989)
Haircut, New York
So helpless It was an Upper East Side barber shop, where little boys rolled up jeans cuffs and sat in Jeep chairs instead of on the plank that spanned a man’s barber chair when I was a little boy. If today I had the choice of looking back at a photo of myself in the old man’s plank seat or this one, I would go plank. I’m visible to them on the sidewalk outside the barber shop. I think the woman far right gets it. The woman to her right: not sure. The barber/stylist is either discussing the cut or is flagging my presence. But the boy, the boy is taking dead aim. Perhaps he knew. (1995 or 1996)
