Satiation Summer; Life in Brooklyn

A young women fed up with the society she lives in, seeks the uncharted and receives more than she bargains for.

In the Summer of 1978, I realized I could not go on living in this society in which I had etched into. I graduated from Wellesy College in the past spring and was now living with friends in a palatial old house out on Douglas, Long Island. It was a blisteringly hot summer, but out on Long Island with the off shore breeze it was better; slightly more bearable. Many an afternoon I sat out on our veranda, that god blessed breeze blowing my penny blond hair up against the pristine blue sky. I would fold my tanned legs underneath me, and lapse into the world of Ginsberg. I no doubt read “Howl” over a hundred times, running the words over and over on my tongue trying to trace the events depicted. The world Ginsberg wrote about entranced me. I would get me mad at my boring life and go hop the subway into Harlem, to try and see the real world. God was I stupid. God was I young. But I knew something that would change my life that was slowly suffocating me.

            Coming back from one of my excursions into the city on a humid night, the kind of night that just slinks in, an extension of the hot morbid heat that hits New York in the summer. I had caught the 2am back to Long Island, back to the house in which I was supposed to live all summer with the   glam narcissistic college friends of mine, still living off their parents trust funds. God that house made me think of my childhood again, so ridiculously privileged. When I was a child, my family would never stay in the city for the summer. Instead, every June my mother and nurse packed up my two brothers and I and took us to our vacation house up on Nantucket.  We spent the whole summer going to the beach, having sailing and tennis lessons, attending events dressed in up in our parents bank accounts. In high school years we drank our parent’s expensive liquor cabinets dry. But this society of my childhood I thought I had left behind, until we rented the summer house out in Douglas. I was thinking these thoughts of malcontent as a man ambled unto the train at the east Brooklyn stop. He was of medium build with bright blue eyes that pulled the eager edges of my young heart.

            The train was not crowded, yet the man took the seat across the aisle from me. He sat down on that blue faded vinyl seat with the chewing gum stuck to the bottom and the vulgarities written on the armrest, and proceeded to pull out of his small beaten up briefcase, a pile of drawings. They splayed across his lap; kids drawings. The kind I remember doing back in third grade, back when I was blissfully ignorant of the world and had no idea what an absurdly advantaged life I lived. But now, as he looked over the drawings he smiled to himself. I smiled too, and inquired about them.

            The man’s blue eyes laughing silently, he replied, “Yes, well they were given to me an innocent gift of admiration” He winked, and stuck out his hand, “John Gedsudksi, East Brooklyn” he smiled in a shy manner.

             “Mary Hudson” I said with a slight pique. I hated my name. You could practically hear the conservativeness from a mile away.

            John told me about his job as a “Chief” of a group of little boys that were part of a group called the Comanche Club. The job seemed admirable enough: he worked with young boys, the “have not’s” of the world. He would take them to Central Park to play baseball, or on a lucky day they would go camping in Palisades. My stop seemed to approach much to soon. As I stood to exit John asked me I’d like to come visit the Comanche club. I told him yes.

            The day I came to visit John and his boys was cloudy, but still warm. The kind of warm that seems to seep into the manholes and then slowly rise out, generating an odor fit for the lowest. When I boarded the bus all the little blond heads suddenly turned in unison. The presence of a woman had completely stopped their conversations.

            Soon instead of lounging about Long Island I found myself going to the Comanche club day after day. John was my escape, my ticket on the train out of what would have turned out to be a summer of dull subway rides and late night drinking with the rich kids of Manhattan. Instead we spent that summer perambulating about the city. We took trips to Central park, drank pink tonic on a blanket as the afternoon stretched on forever instigating words that flew in like away Or I would bring him out to Long Island and we would take a boat out, just the two of us, bright pristine sky, dark cool water and this man that I wanted to share everything with. At night we would find our way back to his little apartment in Brooklyn. This euphoric new life went on for two months until in one moment everything we had built was shattered, I realized I was pregnant.

            I dragged myself to the baseball field that afternoon after receiving the positive test. Sat down behind the bleachers. It was fall now and the leaves were blowing off the trees.

            “Come play”, the little boys urged. The same boys who had looked at me unbelievingly and incredulously the first time that I told them I, a woman was going to play the game. God, why did everything have to go so dreadfully wrong? I lit another cigarette, and watched the boys until the sun started to set over the buildings of New York and John called the game. I walked over to third base where he was cleaning up. The news changed him. He quickly implored me to get an abortion.

            “John how can you be so insensitive?” I said. My eyes pooled with tears unshed.

            “Mary, listen to me” John said, reaching out to touch my arm. I pulled away. “You know just as well as I do that we should not bring another person into this god awful world, the streets they are covered with the very life that the jobs they are scarce.

            I looked at John and then looked at the ground. I was so shaken up that my mind reached for the catholic teachings I though I had left behind with Ralph Lauren knee socks and Bitey Bits.

            “John it is not right, Gods will is Gods will,” I said.

            “Oh please Mary cut the bullshit…you and I",” he began.

            I did not here the rest for I bolted out of there as fast as my heeled legs would take me.

            Two days later, a letter arrived in the mail from John.

Dear Mary,

            How could you bring a child into the world, if this is all we have?

John.

Attached was a copy of Ginsberg’s “Howl”.

            I looked down at the letter, and then at the poem. The words glared up from it clear and stark: [people] who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hungover with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices. John was right; I did not want this life for my childe. Harsh reality began to blur as my tears hit the paper, sending the ink into a distinctly patterned chaos.

 

Author's Note

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Reviews

[emmajoy]

Wow .. breathtakingly well written. The story romps from start to finish, fine wording, fine descriptions of life style and the gradual introduction of John, There's a true touch of reality in this, not flowery this and that that makes this reader feel its romantic fiction.

The ending is sad, tragic .. the way you've yet again mentioned the book title is like pricking yourself with a needle just to remind yourself that you bleed.

Great write, honestly.

[Coyote Poetry]

It is a very good story. You bought me in with the happiness of a new place and person. Then a sadness of making a big decision. Life can twist us up. I like the letter. You wrote a complete and sad story. I like the flow and just enough detail to keep our interest.
Coyote