After the Midnight Magic

It took a few seconds to realize I was utterly and completely lost. The sun was not helping. The sun was behaving horribly; beaming too bright and being far too loud about it. The sun was literally screaming at me.

It seared into the New York City sidewalks, encouraging the fetid scents of dried piss and stale garbage to waft offensively into the air; drove its intolerable rays into the sewer grates, inciting fumes to flow up from mysterious depths and bathe my nauseous belly, agitate my bruised guts, stir their bile to a frenzy. I swallowed hard to choke it all down. Fuck, that fucking sun.

The heat was simply untenable. Disorienting. It made my hungover skin feel tight, confining, made me sweat— beads of stale vodka and blue curacao leaked from my pores, dampened my hair to matted clods, congealed my sex smeared makeup, dried out my already sticky mouth and magnified the residue of leftover debauchery that idled there.

My breath tasted like death, like something had burrowed in between my lips and snagged on my back molars. Something left there to rot. To putrefy. To bake to a repugnant jelly inside the oven of my jaws. To suffer right along with me beneath that horrible, fucking sun.

I glared up at the sky, spun on my axis beneath all that obnoxious blue, and tried to gather some sort of bearings amidst my growing madness. My brain was slow and stifled. My memories were piecey at best, weighted down by the booze I could still taste stinging in the back of my throat.

I could remember waking up, which was good, because it had happened only minutes prior— in a strange apartment, in a strange bed, beside a strange and snoring man. A situation which was less than ideal and more than familiar, but I had no energy to worry about it then. I would say two Hail Mary’s and four Our Father’s later. I would pray to God to be absolved of my wicked ways. I would ask him to lift my penance, the pain in my head, which I trusted, with unwavering certainty, to be easily comparable to a cracked skull. He didn’t. He forsook me, which I suppose is fair. I really only believe it him when I need something anyway.

Before the bed there was only a blur of crowded and sticky bars, and then groping and sticky hands, a sticky body grinding against mine. After the bed was a bit more clear. I had slipped silently from beneath the sheets and hunted the apartment for my clothing, finding pieces of it strewn to the four corners, like some absurd and vindictive scavenger hunt. I dressed quickly, despising every second of the action. The jeans, which had only just recently molded so deliciously to my figure, now felt constricting, itchy and grotesque. The sheer, satin blouse was monstrously heavy, and the shoes? The platform wedge sandals? Forget it. Absolutely not. Bricks bound to my feet. Stylish shackles that made me teeter and tilt, and pinched at the skin beneath the buckle— I wore them anyway, so perhaps I’m a masochist. I suppose I could have asked the sleeping man for input on this matter. Alas, another missed opportunity.

After I was dressed, I tried a myriad of doors before finding one that actually led out into the halls. Then I wandered those for a while until I found an elevator, used that to reach ground level, then stared stupidly at the concrete walls of the entry way until I finally spotted an obvious metal door to my immediate left. I shoved that open, and then stumbled out onto the bustling sidewalk, where I stood, and stood out like a sloppy thumb amongst the well-dressed pedestrians with far more important things to do. Hungover and sick. Lost. Beneath that god awful sun.

Can I really be just ‘lost’ if I don’t even know where I began? I thought to myself, ridiculously. Am I really just ‘lost’ if I don’t even remember getting here? There should be a different word for that level of ‘lost’, like, vanished— losnished?

The delirium from my hangover made my cryptic nonsense seem hilarious, and I began to cackle uncontrollably as passersby stared at me with concern. I ignored them and their judgement, and began to scan the surrounding block, trying to find a street sign that might provide some indication of my whereabouts.

Flatbush Ave. Where the fuck is Flatbush Ave?

I had no clue and no answer, and so my panic began to grow, soon rising well above my usual aversion to social discomforts. I surveyed the surrounding faces as they passed, searching for eye contact from anyone who seemed friendly enough to help me. After a few minutes, an old woman with blue hair and a hunched back rounded a nearby corner, shuffling in my direction.

The woman’s skin hung from her bones in sheets of tanned crepe, pulled slightly taught across one of her bare arms as she flexed to drag a rolling basket behind her. The basket was laden with fresh fruit and canned vegetables and a dewy bouquet of orchids. It tipped slightly on one janky wheel that rattled, and the woman met my helpless gaze. She peered up at me through the depths of her crinkles, her brown eyes lightly glazed with smoky cataracts. A smile spread across magenta lined lips, showing pearly white dentures that slipped precariously over her gums.

She was perfect.

“Excuse me?” I called to the woman timorously. “Excuse me, ma’am?”

The old woman stopped, concern sprouting between her thin, drawn-on brows. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry,” I began, ignoring the woman’s obviously startled reaction to my bedraggled state. “But, um, where am I?”

“Brooklyn.”

“Oh.” Fuck. “You’re sure? Brooklyn?”

“Yes.”

“So not Manhattan then?”

“No, honey. Brooklyn.”

My booze-addled guts slunk down and crawled into my toes. “Ok. Um, do you happen to know how to get back to Manhattan?”

The old woman shrugged, and pointed an intricately polished nail over her shoulder. “Subway’s that way.”

I tracked the gnarled finger, “The subway? Do you know how far?”

There was no answer. I turned to find that the old woman had already abandoned me. Her hunched silhouette was traveling at a surprisingly nimble clip, and already halfway down the block. I sighed after her, watching the retreating figure grow increasingly distant, until it disappeared into the surrounding herd.

Her advice was vague, and similarly appreciated. But with no other offers for solutions, and no brain function left to come up with my own, I had no choice but to take it. I began walking in the direction the old woman had indicated.

After the first block, a blister grew on the instep of my right foot. The blister began to bleed on the second. Half-way through the third, I had to stop to dry heave against the wall of a brownstone. After four blocks, there was still no end in sight, no signs for upcoming stations, and no hope— no deliverance, just the endlessly sweltering trail of pavement ahead.

Insulated by the mass of snarled hair, the back of my neck began to pour with sweat. So I dug through my purse as I walked, hoping, with every last drop of my stupid optimism, that the me’s of days past had left the proper tool for remedy. After a few seconds, my fingertips fumbled over the elastic band. They had not failed me— this time. I retrieved the scrunchie and tipped my head forward, gathering up my locks in an effort to secure them into a more manageable bun. But the inverted position was an invitation for disaster on a good day, and in my current state, a misstep was patently inevitable.

Sure enough, after just a few steps, my heel snagged on an errant break in the sidewalk, sending my right foot sliding off of the platform shoe. Its strap held out, just long enough to twist my ankle painfully, before the buckle snapped and released me. Normally, I might have been able to retain my upright stance, as the affected foot had managed to land flat again on solid ground. However, at the time, expending the energy required to steady myself felt like too great a sacrifice to bear. I chose to let my body tumble instead.

“Shiiit!” I exclaimed, dramatically, trying to convince myself, and nearby eyes, that gravity had truly bested me, as I lowered myself down to my hands and knees in ridiculous and theatrical slow motion.

I landed gently and rolled to my seat, letting my legs sprawl off to the sides. I glanced around to see if anyone had noticed the fall, and noted a few faces that had begun to study me, each marked with a mixture of pity and undeniable joy. I blushed, and then decided I didn’t care. Finished securing her hair into a messy topknot, and moved on.

My right shoe was worthless, so I slipped it off and tossed it to the side. Easy decision. No issue there. It was the left shoe, that was the real problem.

Should I ditch that one too? I thought. Or is that just baby bathwater territory?

The quandary seemed insurmountable. My vodka-pickled brain was ticking slowly and without much coherence. After mulling it over for an inordinate length of time, I rose to my feet and took a few steps to try out the single shoe.

It was nonsense.

The five-inch wedge required my right foot to tip-toe and limp along at an unreasonable disadvantage. On the other hand, the concrete was apparently resting atop lava, and scorched my bare flesh upon contact. Retaining one shoe, I reasoned, would at least allow for some small reprieves by balancing dangerously on my remaining stilt. Whereas ridding myself of both shoes would be condemning my feet to a veritable coal walk for the remaining unknown distance. So I conceded to hobbling along like a fool for six more blocks, until I finally found the Beverly Road Station.

Home, aspirin, a shower and a breakfast sandwich— gloriously greasy and sodium rich— was only a train ride away.