They weren’t alone in the stadium, the morning clean-up crew was coming through to pick up the remnants of last night’s game.

“Hey,” Jack said, eyeing a discarded program on the ground, “what was the score last night?”

Sam put his paintbrush down. “I don’t know,” he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “Who makes it to the sports-section anymore?”

“Yeah,” Jack sighed. “The whole fucking world’s ending.”

“But, thank god, there’s money in it…” Sam laughed and picked his brush back up. He finished covering the last letter, the letter n, on the ‘WaMu Convention Center’ sign by the bathroom. “Alright. Done,” he declared, before telling his friend, “your turn.”

Jack dropped his cigarette and stepped up with his outline and paints and, as he had done 48 times today, painted the new sign: ‘Wachovia Convention Center’.

“You see that?” Jack asked as he stepped back to admire his work. “It’s real easy and, if you’d just pay attention a little, you wouldn’t have to just be ‘eraser boy’.” He laughed.

The walked down to the next sign.

“How much time we got? When does this have to be done?” Sam asked.

“Tomorrow morning. Before the next game…”

They walked by an ATM that sat next to a closed hot dog stand. Sam looked at the sign over it. “What about that, do we got to do all these too?”

Jack grimaced. “No, no, that’s someone else’s–”

“I mean how do you take money out of a bank that don’t exist no more–”

“Someone else’s problem. Not ours.”

“I hope you’re right. There’s a lot of these things here.”

“Yeah, look, they said just the signs throughout the stadium, alright?”

After finishing a few more signs, Sam asked “Hey, how much do you think those Wachovia guys paid for the place?”

“They way things are going now, probably fifty cents and a free coffee.”

Sam laughed.

“Really though,” Jack continued, “my friend was down on Wall Street the other day, said they’re just giving away, like, tables, chair, pencil sharpeners, coffee makers…”

Sam stopped painting for a minute. “We should be smart and go into ‘Office moving’ or something, we’d make a fortune…”

“Yeah, yeah, let’s ‘be smart’ and finish the job alright, eh? Ah, eraser boy?”

Sam started again. They were both silent while he meticulously covered ‘conven’.

Jack’s cell phone rang and he looked at the number.

“Shit, it’s HQ. Be quiet.”

Sam stared at him while he answered the phone.

“Yeah? We’re just about…what?…WHAT! Ah, motherfuck….yeah. Yeah, okay….I’m putting in for fucking overtime on this right, you can pay me in fucking euros if you have to, but…alright.” Jack hung up the phone and yelled once more, “Motherfuck!”

“What is it?” Sam asked.

“We got to start again. Shit.”

“Why, we do something wrong?”

“No. Wachovia don’t own it no more.”

“They don’t?”

“No, they don’t own nothing no more. Nothing at all.”

The walked back quietly to the stadium’s entrance; on the way, Sam said, again “I’m telling you, ‘Wall Street DIsposers–’We’ll get rid of all your old office shit…’ We’d get rich…”

…but it’s all right, it’s all right
for we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
road we’re traveling on
I wonder what’s gone wrong…

–Paul Simon

Late this autumn the wrecking ball will finally hit old Yankee Stadium, and then hit it again, until it’s a pile of dust on the ground; a ground waiting to be broken for the new condos which will grace the old location–that’s if anyone can still afford them by then. But, though the stadium currently still stands, the Yankee Empire is already a pile of rubble. Bad pitching, lazy playing, and poor management have left us with something that very few tri-staters my age can remember: a desolate October.

But the end of a baseball team’s decade and a half dominance is not news, the end of a country’s is. Because on the other side of the city an equally rare sight (until now) is being seen. ‘For rent’ signs now grace giant buildings replacing the signs of century-old institutions that once graced them. The sights of people leaving Wall-Street office buildings drunk–because that all that’s left to do–and with giant boxes in their hands seems new, but no longer rare; not anymore.

Something that doesn’t seem new: Blame. It’s the most natural things to do in a crisis and we’re nothing if not predictable. Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, trickle-downers, push-uppers, too much regulation, not enough; and if God himself has escaped blame it’s merely an oversight, but here’s the problem: everyone’s wrong. And everyone’s right. What’s happened to us has not happened because of some foreign debacle, or academic philosophy, or even, an apology to my partisan friends, because of a president. What’s happened is that America–and the world–has had too much America.

Owning your own house, or your own business, or your own car has been the promise of this land for over sixty years. No matter your income, there was always someone, some company, willing to give you a chance. But ‘chance’, the core of the American Dream, is a funny thing; and can be as dangerous as it sounds.

But I’m not an economist, just someone who can smell the air and this stench tells me that whatever it is, something bad has happened recently; something not easily fixable; something else that very few people my age, or older, have ever seen before. Something that eerily resembles loosing.

“Was it hard for you to get out here, to Jersey?” he asked, after explaining the mundane details of the job.

I told him it wasn’t.

“It was hard for me, on that day…” he said, only slightly pointing to the hole in the sky. I was covered in (he cringes) god knows what and, the police, as if we were cattle, just herded us onto a ferry–I didn’t even think to ask where it was going, or what had happened, or what was going to happen.” Then he smiled, almost laughed, and said, “really, I didn’t give a shit about any of that because, you know what, you know what I was thinking about?”

I didn’t.

“Well, and you should learn this because, I think, it’s why I’m so successful: I was thinking about the report I was supposed to finish before 2:00pm; I mean, here I was, my office only a few minutes away from becoming smithereens, my boss trapped inside–he didn’t make it out–and the overwhelming majority of my company about to disappear forever, and no guarantee that there wouldn’t be more attacks…and I was nervous that the sweaty pile of papers in my hand wouldn’t get filed in time.” He laughed, sort of. “That’s a work-ethic.

“So we get off in Jersey, at the pier, all dazed; everyone, everyone but me, has there cell-phone out and there roaming around the dead streets trying to get a signal. Me: I’m looking for an internet cafe or just a bench and a pen to get some work done. But there were no internet cafes, there was no nothing around here; nothing but dilapidated factories and abandoned projects. I ask three people on the street, their eyes fixed on the towers, “Where’s a quiet place to work around here?” and they just stare…they just, and this is what’s wrong with this fucking country, they just stare like ‘work’ has to stop because of a little carnage.

“But I find a bench. And that bench, it’s still there–I left it there, the dirty old bench, even after I put all the new ones in–I left it there to remind me. So, I’m sitting there, on this bench, between a factory that hasn’t produced anything– since, I don’t know, Reagan was president–and a housing project that only houses crack addicts; penciling in notes on my papers to people who aren’t alive anymore and I look up when I here that sound, the sound of a crash; but I
don’t
see the
buildings come down,
instead I
see a ‘for
sale’ sign right in
front of mebut I don’t see the buildings come down, instead I see a ‘for sale’ sign right in front of me…the factory, it was for sale. So was everything else around here at the time. I see this ‘for sale’ sign and I hear the screams and cries of everyone, on this side of the river and, I’m sure of it, on the other side. And it suddenly all became very clear; what had happened, what would happen, and what needed to happen. It was like, I saw the future.

“For the first time in my life, I threw my papers away, I just tossed them in the garbage. Then, finally, I call my wife. ‘Remember Joey’s (that’s our first kid) college fund?’ I ask. Well, you can guess the rest…”

I said that I could.

“Before we’d even dropped a bomb on Afghanistan, I, Frank Pantone, became a landowner–stupidly, that’s what everyone said, buying a old, useless factory in the middle of Jersey City. Yep, it was very stupid of me, wasn’t it?” he laughed again. “And it was stupid too when workers started buying gasmasks and executives started buying office parachutes; and stupid when companies started getting their insurance bills and realized it didn’t pay to work in New York anymore; and stupid when they lined up for a “safe” spot in my stupid little factory and the one after that and the one after that.

“So, I’ll tell you exactly what I told my son when he left for college with his thrice-replenished fund: All of this was paid for by Osama Bin Laden and you better understand that because the time for sentimental bullshit is long since over. Get it?”

I winced, just a little, and said I understood.

“And the job is yours, if you want it…”

First, he peeled off his shirt and the shirt underneath it, throwing them down on the ground in front of him. The sweat formed a thick film on his body and his hair was still dripping. Next, he knocked his shoes off; kicking them, with an almost rage-like fervor, against the walls–which were never far away. Then he removed his socks, something which usually made him smile, but today, not even that could do it.

His pants were tricky. The sweat had almost vacuum sealed them to his legs and simply scrunching them off didn’t do it. He started, literally, bouncing about the small space, letting the tight, thick material of the dress pants (or ‘work pants’ as he called them) come off inch by inch. In the process, everything that
was
in his
pockets, which was
everything he ownedeverything that was in his pockets, which was everything he owned, fell all over the floor: an empty wallet, a empty metrocard, the wrapper from an empty cigarette pack, a few crumpled singles, and his small cheap cell-phone (which landed with a thud). Finally, after distributing all his useless crap all over the hard-wood floor, he got the pants off.

It was then he saw it, the phone; sitting there, waiting there, so easy to use. Life could be so much simpler he thought, I could just pick it up and hit ‘dial’. Who knows who it would call; maybe my parents, maybe Monica, maybe the police, maybe no one. Just hit ‘dial’ and say, “I made a mistake, please help…”

That word, “Help”, though only said in his head, sent an evern greater pang of fear through his heart. Has it really gotten that bad? Involuntarily, he said it out loud, “Help.” Not a cry or a yell, but a drowning gasp from the back of his throat. “Help,” he said again, just to be sure, even as it got lost in the noise from the train outside his window.

Oh, the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done!
There are points to be scored. there are games to be won.

–Dr Seuss

When I was sixteen I began to get plagued with terrible anxiety attacks. I couldn’t sleep; I was eating too much or not enough; and I spent all my time on medical websites seeing what I had now. I was dying and I knew it. Then, several months into this, two planes crashed into the World Trade Center and, in one big swoop, my anxiety and insomnia went away. This may sound callous, but here’s the explanation: Before that day my fears were all fantasies–various improbable cancers I was sure I had, fictitious airborne diseases I was sure I’d catch–but then, all of a sudden, there was something real to fear. There really were dangers out there and, for the most part, they were completely beyond my control. My generation, coming of age after the Cold War, has never known anything but the most outlandish and movie-inspired fears and, likewise, we’ve become the most afraid, and the most complacent.

That’s why this November I’m going to vote for John McCain.

On that day, when I learned about real fear, a grand narrative began in our nation’s history. A grand tragic narritive. Never before has a country so powerful been unraveled by a force so small. A few boxcutters, some homemade bombs, and a gun or two have turned us into a country of wimpering idiots ready to quickly remove our clothes at airports, to let out phones be listened to unchecked, to let our soldiers and agents torture without restraint; and to let every lie, over-reach, and immoral action fall under the black hole of “executive privilege”. But this story, this great story, that could well instruct future generations in this country, and abroad, of what not to do, is now in great danger of coming to an end. What kind of writer would I be if I allowed such a fable to be strangled in it’s teenage years.

Electing another Republican is the only way to ensure that this tale unfolds completely. There are still far too many countries to attack for reasons that don’t exist with armies we don’t have; there’s an economy that’s, okay, doing poorly, but not yet “in the shitter”; there’s still the mild resemblance of constitutional government and due-process. What kind of character will our children get if they only know the hint of hard times and not the real thing? How can we appreciate freedom, if we’ve yet to fully lose it?

Yes, some of this is personal: there’s a perverse pleasure in watching an accident. A country quietly, slowly, fixing it’s mistakes and remapping it’s course is not the least bit interesting to this or–admit it–any other storyteller. A country getting back on it’s feet after only eight years in the gutter, won’t translate into great plays or epic novels or films with the most tragic score. Things are bad, but, oh baby, can they get worse…

For some time this country has been a car-wreck, for the sake of good and fun history, why not let it become a pile-up?

At the age of thirteen I was diagnosed with whatever it is they diagnosis difficult children and placed on Ritalin. This began a decade long odyssey through prescription drugs that ended a month ago. Ritalin begot Adderall, Adderall begot anxiety, anxiety begot depression, depression begot Effexor and, for good measure, Strattrra was thrown in to make up for whatever Ritalin and Adderall had become unable to do. During that period, though the drugs stayed consistent, the diagnosis went from ADD to some light form of Autism and beyond. To this day, what I “have” is dependent on who your talking to.

As I said, this all ended a month ago when I made a firm decision to stop taking drugs. There were a mix of reasons for this and I won’t deny that money was a serious consideration; a freelancer, I don’t have healthcare and none of these drugs are cheap. But more important, I’d come to the realization that my doctor, the drug companies, and, in fact, our entire culture expected me to stay on these drugs for ever and, until then, I’d never thought or assumed that that was the case.

When I announced this decision, my doctor and many of the people involved asked me, “Are you sure?” in that tone of voice that really means NO. To be fair, their concern was understandable; I’d just moved to a new place, was (am) experiencing a lack of paying work and professional success that’s becoming endemic, and am at the time in my life where you wonder what the hell it is you’re doing here. In fact, looking back, it was probably irresponsible of me to do this now, but my thoughts fell on those who always say “it’s not the right time” to quit smoking, or drinking, etc. That the thought was in my head meant, for me, that it was the right time.

As awful as it is to be on these drugs, it’s a nightmare coming off them. The current two, Effexor and Strattera, enter your body and slowly become a functioning part of your chemical process, one which your body is not very happy to see go. In fact, stopping these drugs is itelf considered a syndrome of sorts. For two weeks, after quitting cold turkey, I had what could best be described as a prolonged hangover; I slept for fourteen hours a day, ate the strangest meals at the strangest times and, worst of all, put hours and hours of work into things which were meaningless and largely the vomit of a hazy brain–to put it lightly, I got no work done.

But, and this is key, with the help of some serious restructuring–there was a point were I mapped out my day hour-by-hour–that passed. As did my weird appetite and, though I’m still getting their, my inability to think clearly.

It’s been, as of today, a month and a week since I’ve taken any drugs and, though their were some awful nights, I haven’t once said, “That was a mistake”. I’ve had to learn, and am still learning, how to deal with the aforementioned natural stresses, in a sense, naked. But I’ve even gotten a certain enjoyment out of these bad things because, you see, this is my first experience with adulthood that’s not clouded with a pharmaceutical cocktail; there’s a newness to things, good and bad, which I get a weird pleasure out of.

Why am I writing this? Well, for one, to explain why the site has been so slow this last month and a half, but, also, because perhaps it will come up in a Google search of someone trying to do the same exact thing and they’ll read that, though these last weeks have been anything but certain, I’m am still quite certain that I made the right decision.

“Oh, that sounds great, but I’m on Master Cleanse,” she says.

Sadly, she’s not the first female to tell me this, nor the first male, nor, I suppose, the last of either. The Master Cleanse had been spreading like an STD and, as with most things in our culture, it started with super-rich celebrities, worked it’s way down to young middle-class city dwellers, and shall soon be seen in the teens and pre-teens of your town. What is it? Ostensibly a diet, but where diets seek to limit overeating or cut down on certain ingredients, this diet quiet simply eliminates the middle man: No eating!

You see, you’re body, the only one you have, the one you know and love, has, unbenownst to you, filled itself with…things. No, they can’t be seen on a microscopic or found in blood samples, but, trust us, they’re there! Christians call them sins, Scientologists call them engrams, and we, the godless, material-worshipping masses, call them toxins. That they’ve never, ever, been recognized or seen by any scientist who didn’t get his degree in hucksterism, means nothing. No, these are toxic times we’re living in, thus we ourselves must indeed be toxic.

The best way to rid your body of these evil beings, it seems, is to starve yourself; not for a day or two days, but for ten days. For ten days, the master cleanser will only consume lemonade (or lemon juice), maple syrup, cayenne pepper, and water. Who decided that these four ingredients, and the absence of all others, lead to perfect health? The creator of the Master Cleanse diet, Stanley Burroughs, who, though not a doctor, insisted–in the 50s, actually– that his master cleanse system would lead “the correction of all disorders”. The Good Undoctor’s book still, to this day, ranks in Amazon’s top two-hundred (and he didn’t even have to get a degree).

Well, I’ve yet to see the master cleanse cure any disorders, which is something I usually tell my friends when they start it, but, unfortunately, our conversation are usually interrupted by them having to take a shit; because if you’ve ever been around someone whose diet consists solely of lemons and cayenne pepper, you know that they’re not usually, particularly pleasant. I’ve observed extreme irritability, crying for no reason, falling asleep unexpectedly, and even the occasional babbling mindlessley; the reason for all these things is simple: You’re body likes food and doesn’t react well to it’s deprivation. Likewise, when–after the ten days–you attempt to re-introduce it to solid foods, a period of intense vomiting, shitting, and god-know-what-else will begin.

Western civilization has seemingly become so uncomfortable with it’s own prosperity that we, in various different ways, have begun voluntarily starving ourselves . Perhaps the whole thing would seem more valiant if the master cleanser began their cleanse by taking all the food that they might have eaten that week and sent it to some country that needed it, that wanted it, and who had the idea of body “toxins” rated rather low on their list of priorities. At least then someone would benefit from the “I Got A Bridge in Brooklyn…” school of health that America consistently embraces.

“One. Two. Three,” the child next to Jakup counted to himself. The thunder came at number “four” and the child mouthed “Boom”. Then another flash of lighting, another count, and another “Boom”. Now Jakup felt the child pull the end of his old coat, jerking it towards him. It was another flash, but not from above; a fire shot up from far away, an orange smoke-filled hue filled the sky. Again, the child counted, “One. Two–”

The explosion ringed through the underpass and bounced off its ancient walls. Everyone, even Jakup, jumped.

“It’s getting closer,” the woman, who hadn’t spoke yet, said.

“Shut Up!” the man said, wiping the tears from his face as it turned red.

Another flash in the distance.

“One. Two–”

“Stop counting!” the man shouted to the boy. And, as the explosion went off, he added, “That’s my fucking house over there…” the end deteriorated into another sob as he kicked the ground.

“They’ll rebuild it,” a young lady, one half of the couple, said.

“Who? Who’s they?” The man asked in a fury. “Which ‘They’? The government–which one? The army–Whose? My people? I’m not
even
sure what
group I’m a
part of anymore…”I’m not even sure what group I’m a part of anymore…” and again he began to cry.

Another flash. Whether it was lighting or bombs stopped mattering for the moment. The child didn’t count.

The old civil servant looked to Jakup and then to the sobbing man and said, “During the war–sorry, not this war, but the one before…or maybe the one before that–I heard a joke, which goes: ‘So, they’re bombing a city, right, and everyone’s running in, or, wait, the police….yes, the police are telling everyone to run, but one man, he can’t walk–or maybe he could walk, but he didn’t want to walk, anyway, he asked the policeman, “If I stay, whats the normal procedure for when a bomb falls?” The policeman, in a rush to get the hell out himself, thinks about it and quickly says, “Well, the ‘normal procedure’ is to spread yourself out across 200 feet in a million pieces”‘” The old man burst out into a spasm of laughter and Jakup gave a friendly smile as another flash was seen outside.

This time Jakup himself began counting, “One. Two. Three. Four–”

“Enough!” The red-eyed man shouted.

But Jakup continued. “Five. Six. Seven–”

Finally the explosion came. Far off in the distance, it was a faint sound, much weaker than any of the others.

“It’s getting farther away,” Jakup whispered to the child, but the angry man heard it.

“What do you mean?” he shouted.

“The army, the other army, they’re backing up.”

“You mean,” the angry man said as the look of heartache turned to one of triumph. “We’re winning? Our guys are winning!” he ran up to the edge of the shelter, with an ear-to-ear grin, trying to find a better view of the Barov Army’s victory.

“No,” Jakup said with a sympathetic smile. “The rain is too heavy. You can’t fight a war with rain like this.” he turned to the boy next to him and whispered in his ear, “They’re running away from the rain. They don’t want to get wet.”

The civil servant began laughing again.

Click here for more of the Jakup Borovsky stories.

I moved my eyes up slightly, to the shins. They were ugly shins, but in that beautiful way; let me explain: they were shins that said, “I go out and do things enough that my shins aren’t unblemished. If you want immaculate legs, find an idle trophy-wife on the upper west–” Oh, I don’t, I don’t! I love your shins too. Then came the knees, with the skirt barely covering them. Question: Why are girls wearing skirts again? Has some outbreak of conservatism taken the east-coast by storm and no one mentioned it to me? Is she a republican? She might be. We’ll work through it.

The train starts to empty out at Columbus Circle. Yes, she’s beautiful. Yes, she–seems–smart. She takes out a book, oh, be something wonderful–”Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom”. is she a–no stop, don’t make yourself a male stereotype. Perhaps a feminist? But then clearly not a Republican. It’ll work. Is that guy sitting next to her ever going to leave? Are they dating? She’s hasn’t talked to him yet (but she’s a feminist). Fuck, they could be dating.

81st Street. He’s getting up, he’s getting up! Bye, bye, my dear friend. She’s alone again, well, I mean, she was always alone, but now I know it for sure. Where are we going? I don’t even remember my stop anymore. Fuck it, who cares! Where are we going? Did she just look at me.

Stop with your stares, beautiful, I’m looking at the window, not you! See that ad for a cheap podiatrist–yes, that’s what has my attention not your face, as mysteriously wonderful as it is, that’s just a peripheral externality. Not that I have feet problems or that you do, I already said they were nice–I’m just reading it, okay! Wait, wait…what are you doing? Don’t collect your things, wait, no, we still haven’t talked or even met eyes.

86th Street. Oh, god, she’s getting up, she’s getting up. No! NO! Sit back down. For a brief moment her eyes meet mine. I look away.

She leaves, getting off at awful, terrible, child-molesting 86th Street. One day, after I’ve made my money, I’ll hire planes to firebomb 86th street for all it’s treachery. Fucker! 86th Street! How you make me cry. Worst street in the city! But such beauty on your block…

I won’t, at length, delve into the various borough prejudices and presumptions made based on where you’re housed, these things are very hard to explain to non-New Yorkers and, more important, they would make us seem petty and small (which we occasionally are). However, the ‘job’ question is probably understood by most people living in western societies and it’s importance needs no explanation. I’ve always tried to avoid that thoroughly American habit of immediately judging people based on what they do. Today, I failed.

“I’m a teacher,” she says. “A high school teacher.” The girl is pretty, smart, can make me laugh, has read Henry James–in effect, everything I’m looking for. I end the conversation here.

I quickly invent some stupid excuse for having to go. Why lie? Because I was raised too proper to say this:

I think you, and your brethren, have destroyed our society; have turned a whole generation into mindless robots who let their phones be tapped, who willingly remove all their clothes at airports, who never ask questions, who buy into every pointless corporate-fed fad and trend. You’ve allowed every child whose shown the slightest inclination for free-thought to be diagnosed, monitored, and drugged; then, with Obama sticker on the car, have wondered, innocently, why our society is falling apart. To continue speaking to you would make me a lesser person, would support and even celebrate the continued imprisonment of the American public.

I walk away quietly.