Back to the Wick Jan. 27, 2024
It is gray outside, but not raining, something of a change
after four days of steady drizzle.
It’s even warm enough to stroll in the rain, as I did during
my odyssey two days ago, though it didn’t quite feel the same way as when I did
so when younger.
Too much hyperbola when it comes to everything, a massive
amount of noise being generated by people who talk more than they think, but
think they know what they are talking about.
It’s pointless to argue with braindead zombies, people who
ache to be important, to have something important to say, when they aren’t and
don’t.
Went to the Wick in East Rutherford last night for dinner.
This was never my hang out, but many people I later
associated with hung out there, including Susan, the woman I dated in college,
and John Telson, who had had worked with at the cosmetic company and the wine
imports company.
I had lunch with him at the Wick back in 2002, a year or so
before he passed away, one of those amazing moments where I got to revisit and
possibly make up for the mistakes the past.
He had aged badly, in the same way my onetime best friend,
Hank, had, and the lunch allowed us to tie up loose ends before we once again
parted ways.
Oddly enough, I didn’t come to the Wick during those two
years we lived two blocks away from it, perhaps seeing no reason to when our
lives were aimed in a different direction, and unlike the Tick Tock or the old
Central Diner in Passaic, the Wick has no special meaning for me.
More recently, I met with Garrick there, where we got to rehash
a number of things, and to once again mourn the passing of our close friend,
Pauly.
We spent the majority of our younger lives inhabiting diners
– like West Diner and Kalico Kitchen – when we were still too young to hang out
at bars.
Alf recently reminded me of our days at Kalico Kitchen,
which was the place we most frequented and has long faded into the dust, unlike
some of the other diners along that stretch of Route 46 in West Paterson and
Little Falls. These places also served as a place where we could lick the
wounds we received from misguided love.
During dinner yesterday, we talked about the “one true” love
that each of us had, suffering over even into our 20s. Hank had Peggy; I had
Louise. Pauly had Jane. Garrick had Jean. And until recently, I was unaware of
Alf’s undying love for Carol, who largely had no use for him since he was not
rich, famous or good looking enough.
All these years later, he is still stung over the slights
she caused and how her family deliberately directed her attention away from him
towards more successful candidates, one of whom she eventually married and
moved with to Europe.
We were all attractive to Carol, even if it wasn’t a matter
of being head over heels. She was the minx who attracted us each time she
walked into a room, oddly enough very much like the singer, Madonna, who she
lived with for a short time in the 1970s, and – as if a scene from “Desperately
Seeking Susan” walked off with one of Carol’s favorite shirts.
Carol dated John for a while, putting a bit of pressure on his
friendship with Pauly, who Carol was constantly trying to drag into bed, and
succeeded once when she and Jane worked as au pairs in Manhattan, only to be
discovered by the sudden appearance of John.
Thinking back about all this makes me a bit dizzy, partly because
all of the pieces don’t fall completely into place in a neat time line, but
rather one memory bumps into another, causing me to recall different things out
of order with the way they happened.
I could write whole novels just following the trail we left
in visiting diners over all these long years, because each moment captured a
particular feeling.
When Hank died in 1995, we all made our way to Kalico
Kitchen as a kind of wake, ordering his favorite meal and leaving it in place
as we sat around the table, as if he was still there.
Visiting the Wick does the same thing when it comes to my
memory of John Telson, someone who I befriended and betrayed, and eventually
came to terms with, a man who represents a time and place I still miss, even
though I wasn’t completely happy living through that period.
These are the thoughts that ran through my head during the
dark drive home last night, stirring up feelings about people who remain alive
only in memory.
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