The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld (4 page)

I tell him about
An American Nekyia
, how it discusses similarities between these two classics.

“How so?” Asa asks.

Ishmael’s voyage on the
Pequod
is a similar kind of plunge into oblivion to the section where Odysseus travels down into the underworld. Both characters have to descend into darkness as part of their journey home.”

“What is it about the descent thing that’s so intriguing for you?”

I look out at the multiplex of lighted windows in all the apartments of this cramped East Coast courtyard—feeling how little I know about life here, how completely foreign it all is for me, and maybe this has something to do with me telling Asa so much about my own life: how in the past couple years I’ve been through some difficult times—mainly the dissolution of a ten-year relationship, the one before Karissa. And how tunneling blindly through that darkness led me to a kind of gritty spiritual awakening.

“I’ve been coming to terms with some of my own darkness in the past couple years,” Asa tells me. “I grew up in a pretty severely alcoholic family. I think that’s why I connect with
The Odyssey
—this search for a true family, for home.”

“Do you feel at home here in New York?” I ask.

“In a lot of ways, yes. This place is intense. You have to band together for warmth, you know? I feel like the friendships I’ve made here are more real, more honest. There’s a depth to people here that I never found on the West Coast.

“What about you?” he asks.

“To be honest, tonight is the first time I’ve felt at home for months.”

“The city can bring up a lot of loneliness,” Asa says. “But the more you get to know it, the more it opens up to you, the more it unfolds.” He reaches over and places his hand on my shoulder, squeezes. “I’m glad you’re here, man,” he says.

Our eyes meet for a moment, then I glance at the open window, through which I can see his bed and stack of surfboards, and part of me wants to lean back over and kiss him. Earlier in the conversation Asa mentioned that his friends model for the famous young photographer Ryan McGinley, who lives in the East Village and cruises around on his bike, taking photos of skateboarders, angelic twenty somethings, musicians, artists. I’d seen some of McGinley’s photos of beautiful young naked people in trees—like a congregation of lanky white birds—or naked couples in the woods, drenched with rain, about to have sex or just having had sex, men and women, men and men. And one I saw in the
New Yorker
was of two boys, possibly skateboarders, in bed together. Skaters in bed with each other was definitely not a photographic tableau I’d ever seen in Colorado, but coming out of the East Village, it seemed like no big deal, and I realize that I sort of want to spend the night over at Asa’s. I’m comfortable enough with my own sexuality and any ambiguity therein. I’d done enough soul searching in my teens and twenties to know that while I prefer women, I’m also not 100 percent straight, and so I’m not totally against kissing someone like Asa, because what the hell? I’m in New York, after all—a place that despite all the grime, or maybe because of it, exudes a kind of rugged sensuality, exploration, pansexuality.

But eventually we crawl back in off the fire escape and hug each other good night—a strong, lingering embrace, during which the desire, but not the warmth, fades. Instead of kissing him, I make him promise to take me surfing.

A
few days after my arrival in New York, I seek out a lesser-known Manhattan tourist destination: Melville’s birthplace at 6 Pearl Street, right across from Battery Park on the southern tip of the island. The actual boarding house was demolished and replaced by a glass high-rise, but a plaque marks the spot (along with a sculptural bust of the prodigiously bearded author), and I’m surprised to find that Melville and I share very nearly the same birth date: he was born late on August 1, 1819; I was born early on August 2, 1973.

From this site it’s a few blocks over to the South Street Seaport, where Melville reportedly spent time. The Seaport docks hold several large antique sailing vessels, all curated by the South Street Seaport Museum. The
Lettie G. Howard
is a sleek fishing schooner, 125 feet long, once used to supply the Fulton Fish Market and since restored for use in sailing instruction. And then there’s the
Peking:
at 377 feet long, with a steel hull the length of a football field and four masts as tall as an eighteen-story building, it’s one of the largest sailing vessels ever built.

Combined with salt air and pungent fish-market smells, the
Lettie G. Howard
and the
Peking
re-create a sense of the city during Melville’s time—”
There is now your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs
“—when Melville’s contemporary Walt Whitman described it as “mast-hemm’d Manhattan.”

In the first chapter of
Moby-Dick
, Melville paints a picture of this old, maritime Manhattan—something that, aside from these museum relics, no longer exists. What hasn’t changed, though, are the “thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries.” From Battery Park to the Seaport, hordes of people stand looking out into the bay; these “water gazers” are there every day of the year, regardless of the weather. Having grown up in the West, surrounded by so many miles of open space, I find living in New York City aesthetically and emotionally overwhelming, and like the rest of the water gazers, I gravitate toward the open space of the sea.

Later in the first chapter, Melville states that “meditation and water are wedded for ever.” In other words, we water gazers, beyond traversing the bounds of the city, are looking to transcend the human condition, to plunge into the deeper mysteries of life and our purpose therein.

Moby-Dick
also braids the personal with the political:

A lot is made of Melville’s “part of the bill” after the events of September 11, 2001—how uncanny and prophetic it was, coming after the most “grandly contested” election of our generation—Bush vs. Gore in 2000—and the beginning of our nation’s own night sea journey under the direction of Captain Bush. In post-9/11 America, the label of Captain Ahab is bandied about constantly. In his quest for vengeance against the West, Osama bin Laden is labeled an Ahab, as is George Bush, especially after he steers the country away from our own bloody battle in Afghanistan and into the dangerous waters of Iraq.

As of my arrival in New York, we’re only a few months into this new war, and like the crew members of the
Pequod
, our country is in for a long dark voyage.

A
fter weeks of job searching, I finally land an interview with the president of a children’s book company, a friend of a friend. The night before our meeting, I draft a proposal for a nonfiction children’s book about skateboarding. It’s a good move, because it turns out there isn’t any freelance editing work available, but he likes the book idea. So much that he suggests I turn the one book into a series of six. He even offers me a small advance. The pay isn’t great, but it’s better than what I’m making for the skateboard anthology. And all combined, these writing gigs only scratch the surface of my rent, almost three times what I paid back in Colorado.

So I need another job, something menial that will provide some cash but also plenty of time to finish editing the anthology and write six new books. Walking back from the subway after my interview, I see a Delivery Driver Needed sign in the window of a tiny Indian restaurant, just a few blocks from my apartment. Since I have a car and a valid driver’s license, they hire me on the spot.

Not lost on me is the fact that I’m over thirty and have a master’s degree—and that I’d spent the last year as a university instructor—but now here I am delivering samosas and
saag
, the pungent smell of fried ghee seeping into my truck’s upholstery. I remind myself that it’s only temporary, plus I read and reread the section of
Moby-Dick
where Ishmael talks about making the transition from schoolmaster to sailor—“What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that.”

One major perk of the job is that it allows me to stay in Brooklyn and avoid the subway into Manhattan—a five-minute ride that increasingly strikes dread into my pickup truck–driving, country-boy heart. The other bright spot is that I love Indian food, and the couple who run the place feed me plenty of it. The husband is a Bangladeshi Muslim; his wife is a Brooklyn-bred Catholic. They raise two sweet girls, Amy and Sabiya, who seem overscheduled with visits to both mosque and church, and who have to hang around the restaurant until ten nearly every night. I feel bad for them, so I help them with their homework between delivery runs.

In October there’s a full lunar eclipse. Before we all go outside to watch the moon flicker out, I sit with Amy and Sabiya at a glass-top table and slide little tea candles around in slow circles to illustrate how an eclipse works, how every so often the earth orbits in between the sun and the moon, casting the lunar glow in shadow.

“Does it go dark forever?” Sabiya, the younger sister, asks, holding her hand over the moon-candle flame—something for which her mother is always scolding her.

“Not at all,” I say, taking the candle away, sliding it back into the sun-candle’s light. I explain how the eclipse only lasts a few moments, that nothing and no one stays still for long.

Two weeks later, I find a
New York Times
classified ad for a freelance manuscript reader at a Midtown publishing company.

Still anxious about the subway, I ride my bike from Brooklyn up to Fifty-Third and Third for the interview. My future boss is a friendly man in a purple tie,
Simpsons
posters on his wall, and bookshelves full of trade paperbacks—thrillers, mysteries, romances, but also some interesting contemporary fiction.

I quit the delivery job and start my publishing career a few days later. It seems okay at first, a decent gig for a writer: I’m there three or four days a week, and I can show up at ten and leave early if I need to—all I have to do is read and comment on fiction manuscripts, basically the same thing I’d done in graduate school and as an adjunct writing instructor. With all my experience as a teacher, I know that what I should really be doing is applying for instructor positions here in the city. But I’m so intimidated by New York and its inhabitants that I can’t imagine mustering the courage to teach here—not with my slow Colorado drawl, which I worry makes me sound like a plodder in a city of such fast, fluent speakers. So I content myself with sitting solo in my cubicle, quietly adrift on a small sea of other people’s books.

L TRAIN (Arrives at Bedford Street subway station.):
This is a Manhattan-bound L train
.

FEMALE PASSENGER (Boards train, takes seat.)

L TRAIN:
Stand clear of the closing doors, please. This is a Manhattan-bound L train. The next stop is First Avenue
.

FEMALE PASSENGER (Digs around in her handbag, looking for a cell phone.)

L TRAIN: Want to hear a story?