That night l passed a lone shoe oddly sitting in the middle of the sidewalk on 1st ave. I stopped and just stared at it and wondered why only one shoe? What happened to the other shoe? Shoes are supposed to be in pairs. I truly felt that shoe's loneliness. And right then and there, I decided to use the image of that lonely size 9 shoe to write a pretentious metaphor.
The first night sleeping in my new apartment was surreal. It was very Philip Guston. Philip Guston started out as an Abstract Expressionist painter who took a sudden turn down a creative path and went from the abstraction of that period to bizarre cartoony images of disembodied heads, hob nailed shoes, hooded klux klan men painting chomping on a big cigar or cigarette. The critics hated it. But, to me, it was a brilliant expression of his own disembodied mind and soul, isolation, and paranoia--that also paralleled the same disembodied mind and soul and paranoia that the country was experiencing at the time.
It was a period in my life of discoveries. I discovered many things. I discovered that the fitted sheets I brought from home didn't fit my bed so the ends popped everytime I was on it. I discovered that some guy named Joey lived in my building because all night his friend kept yelling under my window "Jo-eyyy! Jo-eyyy!!!! Jo-eyyy, I got that thing!" I discovered that to stop the toilet water constantly swirling I had to jiggle the handle everytime I flushed I discovered my upstairs neighbor was the worst kind of insomniac. One who wore dutch clogs.
Laying on my new CB2 modern couch that had all the comfort of a trampoline, the movie of my marriage played in my head. I couldn't help play over and over again all the mistakes I had made. My wife was a saint, a good hearted woman and we both worked on trying to keep the marriage together. But, to be honest, I wasn't the easiest person to get along with. I was a bit, how shall you say intense. And there were many incidents that must have been very hard for her. Like that one incident on the plane, when we went on vacation to Aruba. I believe after that, it was the beginning of the end.
Eventually the soothing voice of my neighbor wafted through the thin walls and rocked me to sleep: "I'm not leaving the apartment I lived in for 30 years! You hear me! I'm not leaving the apartment I lived in for 30 years! I'm not leaving! You can throw me out in the street for all you want! I'm not leaving!"
