Can you, uh, hear me in the back?
*they're writing songs of love *
*but not for me *
*a lucky star's above *
*but not for me *
*with love to lead the way *
*I found more clouds of gray *
*than any russian play *
*could guarantee *
*la-La-La-La, la-La *
*la-La-La-La *
*with... although *
*I can't dismiss *
*the memories of her kiss *
*I guess she's not *
*for me *
Written by a young, ambitious, desperate New Yorker...
named Gershwin,
Who lived three blocks off on the left.
Thank you now.
Welcome to New York city.
*they're writing songs of love *
*but not for me *
*a lucky star's above *
*but not for me *
*with love to lead the way *
*I抳e found more clouds of gray *
*than any russian play *
*could guarantee *
*I was a fool to fall *
*and get that way *
*Heigh-Ho, alas *
*and also lackaday *
*although I can't dismiss *
*the memory of her kiss *
*I guess she's not for me *
You know, I抦 learning slowly in my cruising career...
that you cannot expect people...
to transform in an afternoon.
They're not going to rewrite their souls...
and redo every day that they've lived thus far...
before they come on to the double-Decker bus,
And yet I expect that.
I expect the total transformation of their life,
The entire rewrite of their souls.
I am fighting minute to minute,
Every moment that they're on the bus,
For every day they've lived thus far to seem as...
a abstract wreckage...
that might have happened but is probably a delusion,
And that this is the first real day of their lives.
Not to generalize.
Again, with every busload, there's internationality...
and therefore different gradations...
of cruising manifestation.
But I, uh...
I find myself connecting...
with some of them more than others.
- It is raining? - Kind of.
- Hello. - Hello.
What's up, Benitez?
- We're leaving. - We're leaving?
- Oh, it's raining. - No!
It's not raining.
Greenwich village, one of those rare districts...
that occurs once in a while in human history.
Fear, a basic theme of all of our lives.
Constantly afraid along the streets of Greenwich village,
Under threat of assassination,
And the assassins are our dreams triumphant,
The by-Product of such a pursuit... creativity and radicalization...
which are the further themes of Greenwich village lineage.
Right now you are six and a half blocks...
from where Thomas Paine dies.
Paine, the infidel revolutionary,
Author of the common sense and the crisis,
Two of the most influential political pamphlets...
of american history,
Both written during the american revolutionary war.
Thomas Paine returns to grove street...
to die in a somewhat disgrace...
soon after being imprisoned by Robespierre in Paris...
during the French revolution.
You are three and a half blocks from where mark twain moves...
Right after his wife passes away... onto west tenth street.
Twain moving at that time a few doors down...
From o. Henry.
Four and a half blocks from where Edgar Allan Poe...
has a short-Term residence...
deep in the heart of his opium addiction.
Although he has many residences throughout that delusional time,
He writes "the raven" at 61 carmine street.
Five blocks from where...
the american novelist Henry James is born...
and from where Edith Wharton...
spends much of her aristocratic childhood...
on Washington Square Park itself.
And this...
is seventh avenue south in front of you,
The modern semi-Expressway of Greenwich village.
Six blocks from the Provincetown playhouse where Eugene O扤eill...
begins his early playwriting career.
Six blocks from where henry miller decides...
he hates New York city forever...
and moves to Paris.
Two blocks from where Willa Cather lives.
Three blocks from where E. E Cummings lives.
Three blocks from where Sherwood Anderson lives.
Four blocks from where H. L. Mencken lives,
Four blocks from where Theodore Dreiser lives.
Five blocks from where Nathanael West lives.
Five blocks from where D. H. Lawrence...
lives lasciviously.
Four blocks from where jack reed lives,
Author of ten days that shook the world,
The first and only american to be buried in the kremlin wall.
Before that happens to the radical jack reed,
He lives youthfully at 42 Washington square.
His neighbor across the hall, Max Eastman,
Editor of the masses newspaper,
Published two blocks away in a basement,
The major communist publication of american history.
Two blocks from where Arthur Miller, the playwright,
Contemplates suicide...
and from where Jim Morrison does the same.
Five blocks from where the poet Dylan Thomas dies.
"I just had my 16th martini".
He loses consciousness...
in the white horse tavern on Hudson street...
and never regains it.
Five blocks from where Dorothy Parker wrestles...
with alcoholism and the defeats of a lifetime...
and fails.
New York city is a living organism.
It evolves, it devolves. It fluctuates as a living organism.
So my relationship with New York city...
is as vitriolic as the relationship with myself...
and with any other human being,
Which means that it changes every millisecond,
That it's in constant fluctuation.
This winter I really felt like we were getting a divorce.
And I was certainly the loser of that divorce.
There was anger. I was overwhelmed.
I was reemerged into my own naivet?
I couldn't believe how angry the city was with me.
It seemed like a vindictive woman, to be like no reason whatsoever,
Just by the pure rage of its own existence.
Because the concrete settled.
Because the terra-Cotta had been meticulously carved.
Because some of the buildings are higher than others.
The anger, the inferiority,
That some of the shorter buildings feel, I felt.
I suddenly was not welcome on this island anymore.
And the city and I have had...
a reemergence of some kind in the summer,
Maybe because I was able to refuel my cruise a little bit...
by working laboriously...
and crawling my way back onto the island.
Because perhaps I paid proper respect to it.
I don't know why the city was so angry with me during this winter.
I'm just glad that it's not quite as angry with me right now.
I don't want to speak too soon, for god's sakes.
Like I said, the relationship seems to change,
As any human relationship would...
and with any living thing.
Sometimes I think that if this is a living organism,
It's more on the lines of a Cyclops.
Sometimes I think that if it is a living organism,
Perhaps it's more on the level of a scintillating,
Streamlined mermaid...
who sings to me at night.
I guess I am right now.
Joel.
I was just trying to check in.
I did the 8:45 pickup.
Hello. Gray line.
You can stay out there one minute.
Yeah, I抣l be right with you.
Let me see if miss gall is here. Hold on.
The lower loop in the downtown direction...
now boarding the bus outside to the right.
We need a tour guide for a second section downtown.
Hang on. Wait for the second section.
I think of every double-Decker loop...
as another loop towards my death.
That is why I抳e always thought of the double-Decker loop...
each loop as a continuous and individualized, um,
Search for perfection.
H.G. Wells once wrote...
that to tell the history of New York city...
is to tell the story of the world.
Fasten your seat belts.
Two hundred thousand people work...
inside the world trade center buildings...
daily.
The world trade center buildings have their own zip code.
The world trade center towers themselves,
Built to sway in heavy winds a foot and a half in any direction.
Something to consider.
So what's up, Tim? How's the gray line?
- Gray line is like... - Apple's better, right?
Yeah, damn right. Apple was like a living carnival.
We were Cossacks, and we took what we wanted.
We threw people overboard, off the bus, if we didn't like them.
It was our territory.
The city belonged to us at apple. -Apple is better.
- Absolutely. - Number one.
I had more of an erection when I worked at apple.
I just felt like so much more of a man.
You know apple is better, right? -Yeah!
I wanted to hear you say yes.
That's what I wanted to hear. I want to hear you say yes.
For god's sakes.
- Number one. - I'm gonna probably get fired.
I'll probably be hung from a flagpole somewhere,
But apple is better.
Apple is better!
I think that the great tour guides of apple tours,
In that sense, would have been Spartacus.
Spartacus was one of the great tour guides of the ancient world.
He would have fit in at apple tours.
Brutus and his conspirators...
right before the assassination of Caesar,
They were apple tour guides.
But like Willy Wonka is a gray line tour guide.
Also one of my great inspirations on the tour route,
But that's the difference there.
Attila the Hun...
would have been a good apple dispatcher.
Whereas Virgil in the inferno,
I think would have worked for gray line.
How many year now? -Like four years I抳e been doing the tour.
No, five. Don't say four, please. -Five years.
Yeah! By the time you worked at gray line,
You got that trolley bus and you go to central park.
- I remember the damn trolley. - I worked on the double-Decker.
I remember that. -Later on you come work at apple.
That's right. It's been five years of this, going in circles.
You've been standing on this sidewalk for five years.
That's incredible.
Oh, look, straight up. That's a great view.
The white terra-Cotta straight ahead.
That's the one building that Louis Sullivan designed...
for New York city.
Hmm. Look at the meticulousness.
That strong vertical launch in the facade...
is typical of the Sullivan milieu.
You know, terra-Cotta...
becomes one of the major materials...
of New York city architecture.
It's like a sand-Baked brick.
It's not quite granite, and it's not quite brick.
It walks the mainstream middle.
It was excellent for New York architecture...
because it could hang off the skeletons of the buildings.
It's much lighter than stone.
The difference, though, between stone and terra-Cotta...
that strikes me the most...
is that terra-Cotta reflects the sunlight, and stone absorbs it.
You can see the bouncy light along this building.
When I see terra-Cotta like this, it just makes me feel...
like I抦 senselessly running...
through a meadow or high grassland area nude,
Chasing a woman I抳e never met before who's entirely nude.
It's just the most raw and primordial chase.
Two nude human beings running through grassland marsh area.
As you move up the building,
Can't you feel the undulations of her curvature?
The...
Ohh! Yes!
Yes!
Th-That slight groan...
that some people have in the act of intercourse.
The, like, "uhh!"
Like the somewhat dying grunt of a beautiful woman grunting...
in the storms of her own malaise.
You can feel it in the meticulations of the cornice lines
Of the terra-Cotta.
That's why the terra-Cotta is important to me.
It's the "uhh," the "uhh" moments of life.
Uhh! Uhh!
Yes! Yes!
Oh, god, please!
The begging parts of life on the left side.
You see those lion-Esque characters way up there?
Please don't stop. Please don't stop.
Hello. Can you hear me in the back?
Twenty-Seven thousand trees are planted,
Ten and a half million cartloads of topsoil imported...
and a hundred and forty miles of drainage pipes laid,
And these are the basic ingredients...
of the supposedly natural creation...
called central park.
There is nothing natural about central park.
Welcome.
Frederick law Olmsted,
The essential landscape architect of this original central park,
Sees a group of boys playing a primordial form of baseball...
on the lower play lawns in the 1850s,
And at that moment outlaws baseball from central park.
The men who build and design this park are transcendentalists.
To them, central park is a place to become one with nature,
To focus on trees, to scintillate with grass,
To stare into one another's eyes.
No sweating allowed in the original central park.
No perspiration of any kind.
Anyone you see congregating for the baseball game on the left,
Bicycling, roller-Blading, jogging,
They are not historically accurate.
Anyone you see lounging in the sun,
Having a picnic or kissing,
They are historically accurate.
Ack! "Mucho" gracias.
- Muchas gracias. - Nice to meet you.
- Muchas gracias. - Say hola to Buenos Aires for me.
驴como?
Say hello to Buenos Aires for me.
- Say hello? - Mm-Hmm.
Hello, yeah. When you get to Buenos Aires.
- Ah, yes. - Yes. Si.
Thank you.
- Ciao. - Beautiful.
Beautiful. We're beautiful. The park is beautiful.
- Yes. Thank you. Good luck. - Nice to meet you. Ciao.
- Ciao. - Adios.
Style.
I talked to you about bids. Were you interested in taking one?
Oh, um, I looked at what's left.
The ones I was interested in were taken. -Just wanted to check.
The only one I would've been interested in that wasn't taken...
was that 34.
But that's got such an early hotel pickup, and I... you know.
So you're not interested.
- I just wanted to make sure. - Pick a bid...
So you'll know you'll have steady work. -Take the damn bid, Levitch!
Yeah, but I was talking to Tanya. There's no way to rewrite the bids?
No rewriting. -Like... they're, like, with solidity.
- Yeah, right. - Take the bid, Tim.
That's my problem.
You don't care when you're up at 7:30 in the morning.
You don't know anything anyway at 7:00 in the morning.
Neither do I.
I'm doin' it. You get 20 hours a week. Don't worry about it.
Yeah, you get 20 hours a week, and that's one thing.
That's all you want.
It's bein' decided now.
That's all you want anyway, Tim. -Don't be late.
Right. -It may be too late in a few minutes.
- Really? - Really.
This is like my last few minutes to really decide.
I appreciate it.
I'll take these next few minutes...
and deeply contemplate and make sure.
If I have an essential goal on the cruise right now,
I think that the simplest goal...
is perhaps to...
to be able to exhibit...
that I am thrilled to be alive...
and to be still respected.
The more soulful of us...
I suppose the Buddhist or whatever label you want to put...
on those experiencing further individuality...
might say, "look, why should you care about respect from others?
"Just the thrill of being alive is your own business.
You can do that alone in your living room".
But that's not what the cruise is for me.
The cruise is about the searchings...
for everything worthwhile in existence.
It is about walking into the bar and lusting after...
all the worthwhile possibilities of the world.
It is about flesh.
It is about waves undulating.
And it is about exhibitionism.
You know, I want to look at the flower...
and appreciate the beauty of a flower.
Somebody else might say,
"You can look at the flower and become the flower.
Isn't that even better?"
But then I further would love it on the cruise...
if I can look at the flower,
Appreciate the beauty of the flower...
and then have the flower appreciate the beauty of me.
That's how I feel about cruising right now.
Yes, becoming the flower would be a lot of fun. I can do that too.
I can do that on wednesday. I'm free thursday afternoon.
I can try to become the flower.
But come the weekend, goddamn it,
I will appreciate the beauty of the flower,
And then likewise, I will stand exhibitionistic,
Having the flower appreciate the beauty of me.
I think having an intimate "love affair"...
with a flower...
is far more psychotic and riveting...
than having "a love affair"...
with some of the banal creatures of the human race.
Although I抎 be into that too.
Welcome.
This is my friend Russio's room, and I抦 crashing here right now.
*
Civilization...
is the amputation...
of everything that ever happened to us,
An experiment created...
by aliens...
unable to have sex.
Civilization is the molestation...
of everything we ever could be,
A giant repression melting into suppression,
So that you never say what you mean.
Civilization...
is breathing down our necks,
Splitting us apart.
We are wreckage...
with beating hearts.
Civilization is a can of hair spray...
spraying for the seasonless vein...
into a hair net made up of curls,
Only ever meant to be waves.
Civilization... genocide beliefs,
Moralistic, see-Through lace blouses,
Missiles ballistic,
Lackadaisical, melancholic red lipstick.
When one feels nauseous but doesn't feel sick.
Civilization knew who you were...
before you were ever born,
Forgave you when you thought you needed forgiving.
And you never once...
surprised...
this civilization.
And you never once felt...
that sensation.
Any passengers going to the
Circle line boat...
are to check in at the front desk.
Let them know you're here.
Anybody going to the circle line boat
For New York waterways cruise,
Please check in to the front desk,
Let them know you're waiting for that bus.
Okay, Timmy, ready to roll?
Ready to roll. Let's do it right. Let's fucking tour.
I wanna go home.
Fourteen hundred and seventy-Six feet...
of organized granite and limestone.
Sixty-Four hundred windows.
Twenty-Seven thousand rentable interior meters of space.
Seven miles of elevator shafts.
A slice of the state of Indiana...
vaulted onto the corner of 34th street and fifth avenue.
King Kong climbed it.
The empire state building will be in front of us...
when O'shayne makes the masculine turn.
If architecture is the history of all phallic emotion,
The empire state building...
is utter catharsis,
And we are sitting in its silhouette.
The beautiful pyramid atop the Chrysler building,
Meant to be a replica of the front grille...
on a 1928 Chrysler car.
Lewis Mumford, the major architectural critic of that era,
Called the Chrysler building...
quote, "uninspired voluptuousness".
End quote.
Uninspired voluptuousness...
in the sunlight.
Sunlight... powerful.
The sun, another great New York city landmark,
Above you on the left.
The arch in the park will be on the left side of the bus...
when O抯hayne swings us onto 14th street.
And 14th street is the widest street of Manhattan island.
This is where the island is...
literally two and a half miles wide.
And that is it, ladies and gentlemen. That is all.
Two and half miles is as wide as this cacophony gets.
Thirteen and a half miles long. 2.4 million people.
Be 1.7 million people, I heard recently, but I don't care.
The Fulton fish market...
will be more of an odor than a landmark at this time of day,
But it really swings out at 4:00 in the morning.
Another timothy speed Levitch recommendation,
If you can't sleep and you like fish.
I hope you can feel the omniscience of this moment,
As we have been blocking this traffic...
as far as you can see on the left.
Sense the grandeur of your power...
as we disrupt one life after another.
Ladies and gentlemen, my name is timothy. Fontanez is downstairs.
If you need advice or directions on New York city,
On style, on how to appear as a debonair individual...
despite interior feelings of despair,
Let us know.
Please remember that tourism is a service trade,
And tips are always appreciated.
We mean that. We will remember you.
This is our central park south stop.
Oh, it's big money, Fontanez.
You're gonna go out later,
Take your children out... -And get drunk.
...for some ice cream cones. -And get drunk.
Yeah, that too. Wow.
One of the great tragedies
Of this experiment called civilization...
is the fact that people have to work for a living.
It would be the first thing, if I had a choice...
other than my acne...
I think would be the first thing I would remove from my life.
If I could erase an aspect of my life,
It would be this need to work for a living.
You understand, it has nothing to do with the tour itself.
When I抦 on the tour itself...
and I抦 showing others the appreciation of beauty...
and the hugeness of all this,
And experiencing the lascivious voyeurism of the tour bus,
And eroticizing women in a conspiracy with this city,
And having spiritual tantric connections...
with international flesh congregations,
This is not, in my mind, working for a living.
Yet, at the same time, it is,
Because at the end of the week when I抳e made $200 after taxes...
and I have all these other pragmatic expenses...
just to keep the cruise alive,
You know, it's ridiculous.
I certainly would never wake up early in the morning again,
Not unless I was cruising.
The roads around you now...
will become claustrophobic and narrow in feeling.
And this will not just be your own projection.
The roads are claustrophobic and narrow in feeling.
These are the oldest roadways of Manhattan island.
These designed by the Dutch in the early 17th century.
Welcome to new Amsterdam.
Fontanez continues to audaciously improvise,
Not only with the tour route, but with his own life.
Next double-Decker loop is in 20 minutes.
No more boarding at this time.
Next double-Decker loop tour is in 20 minutes.
No boarding at this time.
You've got blood all over you.
Fuckin' shaving this morning was like a carnage.
Just clean yourself up. -That's exactly what they told me to do.
George was criticizing the lining.
I'll grant you, it's not in good shape. It needs new lining.
But I don't think that that should affect my, you know...
the cosmetics are a tricky thing on the double-Decker bus.
It's not a matter of simple...
...conformist fastidiousness, you know.
I'm not dressing to impress my grandmother, you know.
I am, in a launching and vitriolic way,
Trying, at any expense, to grab the collars of people...
who have no idea what they're surrounded by...
and trying to grab their attention...
in the middle of the greatest tumultuousness.
And ripped lining is part of that routine.
I don't expect them to understand that, though,
Because they've never done it.
I'd like to see their double-Decker tour.
St. Paul's church, in brown, in front of the bus,
Sitting on Broadway itself,
Was built by the British empire...
when this was still a colony in the British empire...
and not a state in the union.
George Washington... you've heard of him.
He took his oath of office...
as the first president of the united states...
at the corner of wall street and broad,
April 30, 1789.
Just after the oath, Washington is marched in a procession here...
on the left, up Broadway,
Taking a further left turn into St. Paul's church.
Washington kneels at the altar on a pillow...
and prays for the future of the union.
The pillow still sits under glass...
At the altar in St. Paul's, on your left.
"I love the man that can smile in trouble,
"That can gather strength in total distress...
and grow by reflection".
Thomas Paine park.
You know, according to the city reports,
Eleven people have jumped off this bridge...
and survived.
One of my cruising dreams would be...
to get a cruise together with those 11.
I love these things.
I cruised this bridge once solo...
when I was in a severe solo angst,
When the entire world had divorced itself from me...
on a singular evening,
Which is usually on tuesday nights.
And, uh, I cruised the bridge,
Realizing that, uh, the pillars of stone...
were my friends.
They really make me feel whole.
They remind me that my future has a brightness, perhaps.
Even if I抦 the only one who believes that,
I know they believe it.
One thing I like about...
having the triptychs of the Brooklyn bridge as a friend,
Certainly, is that it never contradicts me.
If it makes me feel futile, it does it indirectly,
With a subtlety.
It does it with an ambivalence and an aloofness.
There's no victory in its subjugation of me.
If it subjugates me, that's the delusion,
The power of my own mind.
The best moments in our friendships...
are when I become the Brooklyn bridge in my mind,
When I realize that we are equals.
These are the world trade centers.
Yeah, see these two towers? The twin towers, see?
Brothers.
Sometimes I like to, um,
Spin in between the two towers.
You know, like, um, spin around and you make yourself dizzy?
Then you look up,
And it looks like the buildings are falling in on top of you.
Yeah, I recommend that. It's fun.
If you get to stand in the plaza between the two towers.
But don't look up until after you're dizzy.
Good view of commuters...
running towards their destinations...
and from themselves.
I think that when I think about my future,
Interestingly, I think about my grandparents,
Because, you know, my grandparents
Are very important to me.
I spent many formative moments...
in my formative years with them.
All of my summers were cruising with them.
And from their point of view,
I know that they feel that I am currently a failure...
and will always be a downtrodden failure.
And I think that often that my thoughts about the future...
veer towards their points of view on the universe,
What they consider to be important,
And what they consider to be important...
is a basic self-Preservationism...
and security that I am not creating for myself.
What they consider to be important is having an occupation,
A niche in society,
So that when you're at a party and somebody asks you what you do,
You'll have a single-Word answer...
or at least you can answer within a sentence.
Welcome. I know that they think that I抦 not altogether...
with my feet on the ground.
I know that they feel they're going to be dying very soon...
with the knowledge that I am going to kind of fade out...
into a supraterrestrial failure.
A series of aggravations, a series of frustrations.
Their lack of confidence in me from the beginning of my life...
is something I抳e always been contending with...
and always been obsessed with.
Bye-Bye. Thank you.
If I had an immediate goal on an afternoon like today,
It would be to be able to serve some concreteness to them,
To give them a platter of success,
Even if it was one anecdote.
Something that they could, in their own world...
and their own vernacular, taste and say,
"Yes, he does have something. There is hope.
There is some sort of success in his life".
I grant you,
All these words I抦 using are kind of bland and vague terms,
But in my grandparents' world,
They're the most concrete and absorbing goals a person can have.
I really would like to be able to tell my grandparents...
that I抳e done something that they can appreciate,
That they can respect.
I really, really do not want to become...
the person that they think that I抦 going to become.
The, uh, image makes me think of this conversation,
Uh, with this woman the other day.
She was a fastidious, Judaic-Type woman in very sexual slacks.
We were talking about the grid plan.
And I made the comment about how, you know,
The grid plan emanates from our weaknesses,
This layout of avenues and streets in New York city,
This system of 90-Degree angles.
To me, the grid plan is puritan, it's homogenizing,
In a city where there is no homogenization available.
There is only total existence, total cacophony,
A total flowing of human ethnicities and tribes and beings...
and gradations of awareness and consciousness and cruising.
And...
This woman turns to me. She goes, "I never even thought of that".
She goes, "I can't imagine it. Everyone likes the grid plan".
Of course, the question is,
"Who is everyone?" It's just what I had said.
Whoever that is under the white comforter,
Cuddled up with 34th street and Broadway,
Existing on the concrete of this city,
Hungry and disheveled,
Struggling to crawl their way onto this island...
with all of their machinated rages and hellishness...
and self-Orchestrated purgatories...
I mean, what does that person think about the grid plan?
Probably much more on my plane of thinking, my gradation of being,
Which is, let's just blow up the grid plan...
and rewrite the streets to be...
much more a self-Portraiture of our personal struggles,
Rather than some real estate broker's wet dream from 1807.
We're forced to walk in these right angles.
Doesn't she find it infuriating?
By being so completely allegiant to the grid plan...
I think most noteworthy is this idiom:
"I can't even imagine changing the grid plan".
She's really, uh, aligning herself...
with this civilization.
It's like saying, "I can't imagine altering this civilization.
"I can't imagine altering this meek and lying morality...
"that rules our lives.
"Can't imagine standing up on a chair in the room...
"to change perspective.
"I can't imagine changing my mind on anything.
"I, in the end, can't imagine having my own identity...
that contradicts other identities".
When she says to me, after my statements,
"Everyone likes the grid plan,"
Isn't she automatically excluding myself from "everyone"?
How could you not like the grid plan?
It's so functional.
You take a right turn, a right turn, a right turn.
There's a red light, green light, yellow light. It's so symmetrical.
By saying that everyone likes the grid plan,
You're saying, "I抦 going to relive all the mistakes my parents made.
"I'm going to identify and relive all the sorrows...
"my mother ever lived through.
"I will propagate and create dysfunctional children...
"in the same dysfunctional way that I was raised.
"I will spread neurosis throughout the landscape...
"and do my best...
"to recreate myself and the damages of my life...
for the next generation".
If you look at the original maps of midtown Manhattan,
Even from the beginning of this century,
Madison avenue, in front of you, in back of you,
Is not even on the map.
This begins as a service road for fifth avenue,
One block to the west.
Fifth avenue is "millionaire's row,"
A system of aristocratic mansions.
This is where the horse stables are.
This is where the gardeners' shacks are, not that long ago.
Madison avenue, not even a boulevard...
until the automobile takes over the island.
Will you look at it today.
May I restate, recapitulate...
and generally regurgitate,
When you are sitting in the middle of midtown Manhattan,
You are sitting amongst a 20th-Century invention,
A city that grew up at an explosion, as an explosion.
It is an explosion, an experiment,
A system of test tubes gurgling, boiling out of control,
A radioactive atom swirling.
Civilization has never looked like this before.
This is ludicrousness,
And this cannot last.
The new Ann Taylor store on the right.
Yesterday gray line finally enforced their, uh,
Um, obligatory uniform policy.
It's a new policy.
We have to... all the tour guides have to wear...
gray line bright red shirts.
And certainly my illness, I think, is associated...
with this latest legislation.
I mean, you know that I came...
to the double-Decker bus for employment...
for one reason and one essential reason only,
And that was to, uh, meet women,
To meet and seduce women...
from every habitable continent in the world.
That's the only reason I抦 here.
I'm certainly not here for the money.
And, um, they're just literally blowing my shtick.
I said to George yesterday,
Because the dispatchers basically said,
"If you don't put on that shirt, we're gonna send you home early".
It can lead to my termination.
That's how serious they are about this.
I said, "as far as I抦 concerned,
"The official gray line policy at this point is, you know,
"'Speed, you are not gonna get laid on our buses.
We're gonna make sure'."
They're gonna make me pull a shtick...
that everybody else is pullin', and it's terrible.
And, uh, really,
Mostly it's just the regime sending out a message...
that I抦 entirely replaceable.
It's them saying,
"We don't care about your tour. We don't care about you.
"You wear this shirt, and if you don't conform, you're out,
'Cause we can replace you".
Unemployment in this city right now is seven percent.
The anti-Cruise in front of us.
"Anti," as opposed to "cruise".
This is an elementary and very physical example of anti-Cruise,
Where our immobility...
is created by literally just a blockade of the sidewalk.
The anti-Cruise is everywhere.
Every good day of my life is a day I evade the anti-Cruise.
Please keep your eyes open,
'Cause I do sense a lot of that negative fodder in the air.
I don't know about you,
But this is a very eclectic and dangerous afternoon.
The anti-Cruise is certainly mobilized today.
On our left will be the criminal courthouse,
Capital of incarceration.
Incarceration, another basic aspect of our daily lives,
Utilized in an unoriginal way...
in the criminal courthouse on our left.
And I can personally vouch for that.
The anti-Cruise is an attempt to imprison us.
At every level of living, it exists.
Younger cruisers have asked me, "why?
"Why is the anti-Cruise so avaricious and constant...
in its attempt to stop the cruise?"
And I have no answer. There is no answer.
I mean, it's gravitational.
It's a relationship that's made up of reciprocals...
and of pulling gravities.
It simply exists.
Where there is cruise, there is an escort of anti-Cruise.
But even in a complete bastion...
of anti-Cruise fodder,
Which this entire square block is,
There is cruise.
Somewhere in there is a sparkle of cruising energy...
deeply sublimated within the bellowing belly of the beast.
Survivor.
He knows no prison.
They were all over the prison floor,
But you never saw them looking melancholy.
They kept cruisin'.
No imprisonment for the cockroach.
Life-Impending drastic survivor.
Through the millennias, through the eruptions of time,
Past the dinosaurs,
Witnessing the flight of birds for the first time,
Clouds dying, asteroids hitting the earth.
No prison for the cockroach.
I have such respect for those bastards.
But I was not so fortunate.
But, you know, I was cruising hard at that time,
So when you think about it...
the anti-Cruise really breathing down my neck...
could not allow me even physical mobility.
I was... according to them,
I was running from the cops for a month...
before they caught up to me.
I was not even aware that I was running from the cops...
as much as from the anti-Cruise.
I felt like a fugitive, but you know what?
Every day I feel like a fugitive.
It never occurred to them...
that I抦 running from the anti-Cruise every day.
When I was up in front of the judge for my arraignment,
The judge said,
"My biggest problem with this case is that this guy...
"this current person we're judging...
ran from the police for a month".
If I could have spoken... of course, I wasn't allowed to speak...
I would have said, "it's been a lot more than a month.
"I've been running from you people all my life.
All my life. And I抦 gonna keep running".
There are so many prisoners,
Inmates, so many people to be judged,
They don't even have time to consider you as a human being.
You're filed through as in an assembly line.
In some ways,
It made me think of the fact that in terms of molecular biology,
We have the same infrastructure as plants.
So this entire notion of individuality...
is a delusion anyway.
It is a direful delusion.
There is no real individuality except for that which we project.
But sitting in the cell block,
I realized that the pursuit of that so-Called individuality...
is everything I believe in.
The fullest pursuit of those...
possibilities of that "individuality,"
Even if it is an absolute failure,
It is the most beautiful failure I can think of.
I don't care if it's a delusion.
I don't care if we have the same infrastructure as plants.
I want to be the plant that grows the highest.
I want to be the bean stalk.
I want to be the flower...
that smells most profusely,
That veers most drastically towards the sunlight.
Look at these beautiful leaves, for god's sakes.
You see that? See how stubborn this leaf is?
I'm trying to pick it up, like look,
Pick up the spirit. Like pick it up now.
Let's get some expansion. Let's get some erection goin'.
He's like, "I抦 flaccid. I'm not movin'. I'm not doin' it today".
Come on, it's west 67th street. It's sunday afternoon.
It's august. Do this. "No, no, no".
Come on, get it up. "No, it's not gonna happen today".
Come on now!
Look at this guy. He's totally different.
Different color, different attitude.
Look at that style.
And they move with you. They've got such mobility there.
This guy's like streamlined, like sexy.
So sexy. Look at those lines.
An airplane.
Beautiful.
Gotta rise.
Rise. Rise to the occasion.
These people are on the 12:00 down,
And they don't look like it to me.
The 12:00 down on this particular day will never happen again.
I don't think that they're understanding that right now.
Look at this.
Rise.
Go for it.
Good luck out there. Good-Bye.
Good luck.
I think that my favorite victory is the ability to feel.
Such insincerity... it's incredible.
If the cruise is anything, be it appreciation, be it a voyage,
Be it an adventure that leads back to ourselves,
Be it a cartwheel or a somersault...
if you find the cruise in a piece of carrot cake, a topless bar,
The one thing the cruise always is, I think, is sincere.
And sincerity is one of my favorite victories in this lifetime.
I mean, how much rebellion did I have to experience?
How much fighting did I do?
How many times did I have to ignore...
my father's inability to emote?
How we all ignore our fathers' inability to emote in our presence.
How much air-Conditioning did I have to transcend...
and the comfort that goes along with it?
The comfortable couches, the television,
The magnitude of static that surrounds us.
How much daily infighting, strategizing, evading, running...
did I have to do for the ability to feel,
For the ability to emote,
For the simple moments when I feel actual passion?
Hello, everyone. Can you hear me in the back?
Welcome to New York city.
H.G. Wells once wrote that to tell
The social history of New York city...
is to tell the history of the world, the story of the world.
It's going to be a long morning.
To all my enemies who add flavor to my life,
Why don't you come up here to the Brooklyn bridge...
so we can talk about it?
Why don't you come up here and talk to me about it?
To Leslie Lindenstraus:
Look, if you wanna try to choke me when I抦, like, prepubescent...
and really much smaller than you, that's fine.
I know that's how we all really feel about each other,
And I know that's what it's really all about.
But I抦 gonna find you and kick your ass 'cause I抦 not seven...
and prepubescent anymore.
I don't know where you are, but I remember that day.
To Jordan:
Look, bananas may be something...
that you and your friend can eat without me, all right?
Yes, I wanted a banana and yes, you left me out.
But that's okay because there are other bananas.
I think I proved that to you by now.
To Tirzah:
There was about two hours of my entire life thus far on earth...
when I was absolutely dependent upon you.
And those were a couple of the worst hours of my life.
I know you never read my screenplay.
I know you didn't read that full-Length play.
I worked on it. I sweated on it. I turmoiled over it.
I malaised through it.
I lived above it, under it, because of it, not because of it.
I hated it. I loved it.
I died and I was reborn within the room as I worked on that play,
And I know you did not read it.
To Swayne,
Who supposedly was going to read that script I gave him.
And you know what? Fuck the script.
You are forever known as the tour guide...
who got hit by a traffic light.
And I think that's the proper epithet for you.
And how dare you do a Tina Howe play...
in the middle of June in New York city,
As if I have time to sit there and listen to that trash...
when there is shticking and cruising to be done.
You obviously lead an "infintestimial" existence.
To josh:
Your narcissism...
is mediocre.
Narcissism in some ways is inevitable.
I mean, since we're all living in the same bodies for this mortality,
It's almost inevitable that we will be...
self-Absorbed at some point.
But why is it that so many people have a narcissism as yourself...
that leads to mediocrity and nothing else?
To Jen and Michelle:
That was supposed to be an orgy.
I don't know how it came down to a double date...
with me as a fifth wheel.
That sucks. I've never been in a situation where I抳e been...
so severely dissed.
I mean, an orgy is when everybody participates,
Not four out of five in the room.
To Raelle:
I am not going to go to some single jewish party...
because I抦 a disheveled wreck of a shticker...
to try to meet some long island jewess...
and land on a front yard in a house with two cars...
and children who bawl my name...
through their own salivary glands.
That may be your approximate goal, but that is not mine.
I am surprised by your unoriginality,
And I am tired of your silly emasculations.
I would prefer to be emasculated by a woman...
with much more severity...
and with a little bit more backbone.
To Mem Levitch:
Why don't you leave me alone?
I'm trying to lead something of a youthful existence here.
I'm standing here on the Brooklyn bridge today...
talking to the Brooklyn bridge...
about the minuscule moments of alienation...
that I remember so well over the last quarter century,
And all you can do is leave messages on my machine...
and lecture me about how much you need me...
up there in Westchester.
What am I supposed to do? Check the air in your tires?
You never once vaulted out of the golden chair.
You never had the guts, the audacity,
To stand up and do something with your life.
You could only utilize your own narcissisms...
and your own self-Absorption...
to always, in a tonal sense, imply to me, your child,
That I had to save your life.
And this has been a daily crusade from the first moment of my birth.
And when I emanated from your bloody thighs,
If I抎 known all this, I抦 sure I would have crawled back in.
Don't you know that all the menstruation...
that happened after that...
was parts of myself left behind that you were choking to death?
That was my blood!
"When I stood atop the Brooklyn bridge...
"overlooking the Brooklyn navy yard,
"I felt severed from humanity,
"From the activities of humanity, from man himself,
"Staring at Brooklyn and then Manhattan.
"It made no difference which direction I walked in.
Either way was hell".
Henry miller, tropic of Capricorn.
And a good literary description...
of a New York city nervous breakdown.
Times square, empire state building,
Greenwich village, stop at Bleecker and LaGuardia,
Through Soho, right on Broadway,
Chinatown/Soho/little Italy stop. Hello.
World trade centers, battery park,
Statue of liberty, of course, south street seaport, wall street,
Up through the other side of Chinatown, up first avenue,
Delancey and Allen, orchard street flea market,
The united nations, across 49th street,
The Waldorf-Astoria shtick,
Park avenue on either side of you, up Madison avenue,
Central park south stop, down to Rockefeller center,
Back to the terminal.
That's life.
Life...
a circle wrought with destinations.
People constantly jumping off the bus and jumping back onto the bus.
Sea lions.
Nabobs.
The circle.
When you cross the street called Houston street,
You enter the district called Soho,
Which stands for "south of Houston".
And as we enter Soho today,
I'd like to take a moment...
to dedicate this cruise and this entrance into Soho...
to our driver and navigator downstairs, Benitez.
In a certain personal despair today,
I want him to know that I am with him,
And I抦 backing him up all the way.
We've done many circles together,
And together we've suffered, as we enter Soho.
We're crossing Houston street right now. Can you feel it?
Benitez, can you feel it?
We're entering Soho.
I wrote Jon a letter about the, uh, lamed vovniks.
Um...
The, uh... from the ancient cabala.
Thirty-Six, uh, in hebrew... lamed vovnik.
I believe it means 36.
And, essentially,
It discusses how there are 36 human beings on the planet...
At all times... only 36...
who, uh, uphold and create the equilibrium...
for all of our sufferings.
They take the malaise and the maelstrom of persecutions...
and the disasters of the world onto their own shoulders,
Past, present and future,
Throughout their flesh-Physical-Incarnated lives.
And without these 36 people,
The infrastructure of the world would fall apart...
and there would be Armageddon and perhaps the final judgment,
But not a pretty judgment, by any means.
Final but not pretty.
Most of the vovniks do not know that they're vovniks.
They suffer in an incomprehensible hell,
And they swim in an entire whirlpool of humility...
without the knowledge of themselves or who they are...
or their importance in the world.
And the vovnik mordecai,
Who left the large family of the levis...
to move to mierdzbergzst on the rocky glaciers of Silesia,
Uh, in the 17th century,
Where the Baal shem tov had set up cruising headquarters...
and instituted the beginnings of the Hasidim, Hasidic religion.
And the Baal shem tov, the enlightened rabbi,
Preaching the carnivorousness and the religiosity in joy...
and the ecstasy of prayer.
I mean, the hasids are no longer going to sit with prayer books,
You know, silently praying in darkened synagogues.
They are going to jump around the room.
They are going to scream and yell their love for god.
They're going to do cartwheels.
And mordecai went there to help clean out outhouses.
Basically, he was a peasant living in the town.
Derelicts and bums and geniuses and aristocrats and poets...
and men of every kind of occupation and phylum...
were going to mierdzbergzst on the rocky glaciers of Silesia...
just to have their own moments with the Baal shem tov,
This enlightened rabbi.
And mordecai reverently stood in the same room...
with the Baal shem tov a few times...
as he went off to do his daily toil.
Eventually, they called him "the dancer of god,"
Because when the hasids would form for their reels of dance...
in honor to their ecstasy to their god,
Mordecai would jump so high...
and would dance with such an exuberance,
The other hasidics were embarrassed about him...
and for him,
And he was exiled from the dance.
And so he appeased himself by dancing alone at night...
in the shed reserved for the sick and dying,
And he would entertain them in the evenings alone.
Suddenly,
The gaon of Kiev whispers to the Baal shem tov one day...
that there is a vovnik,
Uh, a holy, uh, man.
They have another term for it.
A man of total equilibrium, a lamed vovnik, in town.
And so they start searching for who this might be.
They interview the derelicts.
They interview all the peasants. They interview the handymen.
They're looking for the guys who hang out with farm animals,
Anybody who might be mentally retarded,
As many vovniks are mentally retarded.
Suddenly, they realize that the guy who cleans the outhouses...
disappears the next morning.
Suddenly, rumors spread around.
They say to the Baal shem tov, "he danced for the sick at night alone.
He cleaned the outhouses conscientiously".
And the Baal shem tov wooed them away, pushed them away,
And was crying.
And there was silence.
And the Baal shem tov said simply,
"That one was healthy amongst the sick,
And I did not see him".
- Is that open? - Yeah. Thanks, Larry.
- How ya been? - All right. What's happenin'?
- Hangin' in there. - I know that feelin'.
Today's my last day, man. -Really?
Yeah. I got the job working with transit.
All right. Congratulations.
Thank you. I start that tuesday. -All right.
I was gonna come in monday,
But after I heard the weather report, I said no.
Yeah. Absolutely. You're right.
I've paid my dues.
Well, you've come a long way. We've done a lot of circles.
You got that right.
I'm glad to know that there's a finish line to this.
I find that... I find that interesting.
That's a good way of looking at it, man. -It's been so nice to know you.
- It's been my pleasure. - Yeah, it's been a damn pleasure.
- Yeah, but I抣l be around. - All right, yeah.
Pick up some extra money from time to time.
Yeah, I can understand that.
You can never have too much money. -That's right.
Well, congratulations, and keep it alive.
244 east 49th street...
will be a quiet,
Brown row house in the middle of the next block on your left,
Still currently the New York city residence...
of Katharine Hepburn.
Greta Garbo and Bette Davis, when they were both living,
Also had residences on this next block.
When they asked Greta Garbo why she chose to live in New York city,
She said that New York was the only place...
Where she could be... alone.
I am cruising currently...
Right now.
I am cruising because I have dedicated myself...
to all that is creative and destructive in my life right now.
And I抦 equally in love with every aspect of my life...
and all the ingredients that have caused me turmoil...
and all the ingredients that have caused me glory.
I am the living whispered warning in the roman general's ear,
"Glory is fleeting".
And in that verb, that active verb, "fleeting,"
There I live, there I reside in this moment.
I've dedicated myself to the idiom, "I don't know".
And I抦 in love with the frantic chaos of this limitless universe.
I've faced this before.
The second to last time I tried it, it didn't go off,
And I found myself overlooking 42nd street.
I was, like, exactly 45 floors up,
Right across the street from the Chrysler building.
It was unbelievable.
The last time I tried it,
I stood atop the Marriott Marquis hotel,
Thinking that I had so gloriously once again evaded...
the anti-Cruise fire exit signals...
and then was suddenly surrounded...
by two fire departments people,
Head of security.
Lecture, reprimand.
I barely got out of there alive.
I've never seen a key before, though.
Seems to me it's the potential of turning it off,
But I don't know what is on and what is off.