Lost in America: A Dead-End Journey (23 page)

While staring out the window, I could see my building across the way. It was a disorienting vantage point, one to which I was entirely unaccustomed. These rooms were nice to visit, but they were not where I belonged.

As I gazed across at how my half lives—make that more like how my seven-eighths lives—Detroit came into stunning focus for me, and maybe the country, too. Metro Detroit really doesn’t have a middle class. Here, you either have a lot, or you have nothing. The few are loaded, and everybody else lives like the people in my building, paycheck to paycheck, or no check to no check. I keep on hearing about a disappearing middle class in this country, but in Detroit it is not in the act of disappearing, it is gone.

Those who remain populate an increasingly barren landscape that once was one of the most fertile grounds of American wealth and ingenuity, and are now left to their own devices.

A country that no longer has a middle class.

My car has stopped working. I found out this lovely fact the next morning when I felt the need to leave town. I went to check up on it, to see if it was still there or if it had been towed. It responded with silence when I turned the key, and I saw that the back tires were now flat. Caliente, born in Detroit well before I came into this world, and here she will die.

Chapter Twenty-One

Nothing Further

“In order to understand the
world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.”

ALBERT
CAMUS

A
t Wayne
County Airport, the terror alert level was “High,” Orange. I was going on
television, so my terror alert level was somewhat higher, but whenever I hear
them announce the terror alert level at the airport, I hear that Fox News chime
that they play whenever they have breaking news. I looked around to see if
anybody else was concerned about the situation being Orange, which, if you think
about it, is only one level away from “Severe,” Red. Nobody seemed to be like,
“You know what, I don’t really think it’s safe for me to be traveling right now
with the world being Orange, I have a wife and kid. Fuck this, I’m going home.
I’m going to wait till it goes back to Green,
maybe
Blue.” One thing I thought for certain would happen after the election was that
we’d get rid of all this silly terror alert level garbage, but sure enough, we
still measure our fear on a color wheel.

A while ago I was interviewed by a music professor
out in New York doing research for his book on soldiers and the music they
listen to while serving in combat. Now published, he was working on press for
its release. He contacted me, asking whether I’d like to be interviewed
alongside him on a show on Fox News. I agreed, and shortly thereafter, the Fox
News people contacted me, confirming that they’d pay for my round-trip ticket to
New York City and car service to and from the airport, and put me up in a hotel
for a night. All I had to do in return for them was a brief interview, and after
that, I could return to the airport to fly back to Detroit, or wherever I wanted
to go.

A free trip to New York is a free trip to New York.
You can’t really turn that down, right? But there’s more to it than that. I also
agreed to do this for my father, like an early Father’s Day present. I could see
my father watching me on Fox News, shedding a tear of immense pride, thinking to
himself that yes, “My boy’s finally made it.”

My dad likes Fox News, he thinks they’re “fair and
balanced.” My wife, on the other hand, can’t stand Fox News. Won’t watch it even
for a second, and sincerely believes it to be the furthest thing from the news.
“Entertainment.” Since I’ve not had cable, thus, reception, for years, most
recently not even owning a television, I didn’t watch any network news until I
moved into her place. Once I started to, whenever she would come home from a
long day of work, turn on her television to find it on Fox News, she’d say
things like, “What’s wrong with my TV? Why is it that whenever I turn it on,
it’s always on Fox News? My television set never did this before!”

I watch Fox News not only to see what the other
half of the country is thinking but perhaps for the same reasons why my mother
used to watch soap operas. The quick cutting from one dramatic scene to the next
does create a nice break from reality.

I
flew
Continental. When our plane began to descend, I looked out the window, and the
world that we were about to land in looked colorful and pretty. All the houses
were set nicely in rows, no burned-out shells of neighborhoods looking as though
they had received heavy artillery fire. Homes painted in bright colors, clean
streets, cars driving around, and all the factories looked operational. Newark,
New Jersey, you are a jewel.

I
walked past baggage claim with my black duffel in hand, and came across a Middle
Eastern guy wearing a suit, holding a piece of white cardboard with my last name
on it. As we were walking to the parking lot, he asked, “So how is business in
Detroit, Mr. Buzzell?”

He must have addressed me as “Mister” because I
like to travel light, but I sometimes like to dress up when I travel, as well.
Though no one really does that anymore. I was now wearing my wool trench coat,
suit and tie beneath, topped off with a fedora and my sunglasses. I replied,
“Slow right now, but hopefully things will pick up soon.”

“That’s good.”

I started feeling a little déjà vu in the back of
his black car, remembering being on leave from Iraq. I had spent that time in
New York City, and as the driver maneuvered through Manhattan, I was feeling
that same sensory overload all over again.

Huge billboards, a sea of pedestrians, many well
dressed, walking every which way, holding multiple shopping bags. And the
buildings. All seemed inhabited and alive, the first floors operational retail
stores, money being exchanged, a constant parade of consumers. Restaurants all
open for business, on every sidewalk there were street vendors selling food—hot
dogs, falafel, peanuts. People purchasing it, eating it, and loving it.

I felt a little woozy.

He dropped me off at my hotel, located in the
middle of Times Square. The lobby was packed, many dressed to the nines; I
imagined some being on their way to one of the few three-star Michelin-rated
restaurants, having booked reservations months in advance.

I left my dark glasses on as I walked toward
reception. As she pulled my reservation, the receptionist kindly asked, “Is this
your first time staying with us, Mr. Buzzell?”

It was, but since there were people standing kind
of close, well-dressed members of the same club, game face on, I told her, “No.
I’ve stayed here several times before, you know, whenever the Waldorf is booked
up.”

With a smile, she handed me my door key and said,
“Well, welcome back, Mr. Buzzell.”

I smiled. “Thank you.”

T
he
room was nice, real nice, and after dropping my shit off, I quickly changed back
into some street clothes and exited the hotel. I inhaled deeply and exhaled. I
don’t know what it is, but New York City has this certain smell that I can’t
really describe, and you can only smell it here. Steam from the street vendors,
air forcing itself up from the subway, the surrounding water, people, life; a
unique smell. Just then, a lady took off her headphones and asked me if I knew
directions to Seventh Avenue and Forty-sixth Street. I pointed her in the right
direction.

I then stood for a second as people all around me
walked by—without even noticing me standing there. I remember there used to be a
time in my life when I tried to call this city home. No matter how hard I tried,
it just never felt that way to me. Shortly after 9/11, I decided to leave. I
moved back home to my parents’ house. That no longer being an option made me
feel more lost than ever. I shook that thought out of my head and started
walking.

I used to live here, and when I did, I avoided
Times Square as much as possible. Way too many people and tourists around these
parts. Instead of taking the subway, I decided to just walk it, and on my walk
through New York, I still couldn’t believe how many people there were, all
moving, some fast, some slow, and people doing stuff, whether it be eating
outside at a café, or working a job doing construction, selling hot dogs, police
officers on the street guiding traffic, bike messengers weaving in and out of
cars, kamikaze cabdrivers competing for fares, vendors pushing their wares in
and out of stores on dollies, women pushing baby strollers, men in suits, women
in high heels, and over there, even a fashion photo shoot going on down a side
street, people stopping to watch, eventually moving on to the crucial drama of
their lives. I don’t know what I expected or remembered, but living in Detroit
had not prepared me for this.

It all reminded me again how I was once in love
with this city. I then wondered if I could ever move back here. Probably not,
for the same reasons why I decided not to go back to Iraq—I’ve already been
there—why do it again? If I moved here, I’d wonder what else was out there and
start feeling the pull to leave again. The same feeling I used to get every time
I moved back home. I thought about this as I made my way.

I used to live out in Brooklyn. On Bedford Avenue.
Not the Bedford Avenue located around the “hipster trolley” L train station, but
the Bedford Avenue over by the Marcy Projects, over by where Jay-Z and Biggie
grew up. Nice neighborhood. Really was.

When I lived blocks away from the Marcy PJ’s, I
used to grab my skateboard many a night and by myself skate down Bedford,
through the Hassidic neighborhood all the way to Williamsburg, and when I got to
the L train station, I’d quickly stop at the corner store, pick up a six-pack
and smokes if need be, and after my purchase, exit and make a left heading west
toward the direction of Manhattan, down N 7th Street. I’d take that all the way
to the
DEAD END
sign.

The
DEAD END
sign
is still there but the wooden pier off to the side that stretched beyond it, the
one that was old, decrepit, and barely alive, is not.

Posted on the chain-link fence was a
NO TRESPASSING
sign which I’d ignore and I’d walk
out onto the pier all the way to the end, by myself, sit down, light up a smoke,
open up a bottle, and just sit there under the stars drinking while staring off
at the Manhattan skyline. The lights radiated from the city and those two
ominous tall towers that stood there side by side over by Wall Street.

It was peaceful and I used to love hearing the
sound of that bottle splashing every time I finished one and threw it out as far
as I could into the East River. Then I’d open up another bottle and sit there
and continue drinking. I also remember how I used to sit there and think to
myself how there had to be more to life than this, but had no idea what in the
hell that was so in the meantime, I’d figure I’d just sit around and wait.

For a while doing this became a part of my routine.
Two or three times a week I’d go out there to that pier, sometimes for hours. At
night, every time, I’d be the only one there and it made me feel like the
loneliest person on earth. Here I am living near and around a city of millions
and here I am, the only person doing this.

Don’t know what happened to it, but the last time I
was here and decided to walk down memory lane while holding a six-pack, when I
came to the
DEAD END
sign I sadly discovered
that the pier beyond the fence was completely gone.

Everything else appeared to be the same except the
professional-looking signs posted all around indicating new high-rise condos to
be developed sometime in the near future.

Since that pier is no longer there, I make it a
point to go to this particular bar every time I go back to New York. I’m scared
to death, like the pier, of someday coming back and finding it no longer
there,
*
what with all the redevelopment that’s
been going on around that neighborhood the last several years—the new upscale
condos, the Whole Foods behemoth a block away, etc. CBGB was once around the
corner, but that’s become a museum piece in Vegas; luxe restaurants and John
Varvatos have moved in.

When I stepped inside the bar, I was relieved that
it hadn’t changed much at all—still a dive, still dark, still a shit hole loaded
with drunks, still the way I like it. “Let’s Get Fucked Up” by The Cramps still
on the jukebox. I took a seat at the end of the bar, and once I finished my shot
and a drink, I stepped back outside for a smoke break.

It then hit me: I’d made it. I’d made it all the
way across the country.

The last time I was here, in this bar, a guy
wearing a parka and Yankees hat asked me if I was interested in any “party
favors.” I was, so I bought an eight ball off him, did a couple bumps in the
bathroom, and since I was about to board the train from Grand Central to D.C. on
my way to Obama’s inauguration, I figured there’d be cops and sniffing dogs
crawling all over the place, so I gave the rest of what I had to the bar back.
We’d had a nice chat that evening, and I remembered the time a while back when
he had crushed up some Valium that we shared in the bathroom. When I told him I
was on my way to the inauguration, he asked, arms folded, “What for?” I told him
to witness history, and he seemed unimpressed. “Don’t get me wrong, Obama is a
good morale boost for our country, and I think we need that right now, that’s
good. But people are fucking stupid, nothing’s going to change, people still
aren’t going to do shit and it’s going to be the same shit, only now Obama’s
fault. Watch, nothing will change. Nothing.” And when he told me this, I
remember thinking, “What a shitty attitude to have. I want my fucking coke
back!” But maybe the bar back was right.

I thought of all this while smoking outside the
bar, as life went on. People walked by, some by themselves, some in couples,
some in groups. As cabs drove by, drinks were being poured and consumed inside
the bar, as well as every other bar across the country, and world. A couple
pushing a stroller passed by.

P
eople
have told me that as soon as their kid was born, their life changed, how they
“just knew,” and how they all had some kind of realization, or something like
that, about their purpose in life, their plot. Some have asked if I’ve had some
kind of similar epiphany with the birth of my son. I can honestly say no, I
haven’t, and honestly, I think that’s a lot of weight to put on the little
guy.

All that really happened to me when he was born was
me thinking, “Holy shit. He looks just like me.” This kind of scared the hell
out of me, though it did eliminate any potential doubt that I was the father, if
there was any, which there wasn’t.

After the doctors handed me a pair of steel
scissors for the honor of cutting the bloody umbilical cord, setting him free
from his mother, they took him off to the side to clean him off. Shortly after,
they called me over.

A look of horror spread across my wife’s face as
the doctors informed us all, “Not to be alarmed,” but that he was having a
difficult time breathing due to fluid in his lungs, and that they were going to
take him into the intensive care unit next door. He also had jaundice, which I
had also had when I was born.