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PATRICK WALSH: LABOR DAY WEEKEND 2003
The morning we were set to head to New York, I still had not received the key to my apartment. It was supposed to have been FEDEXed to me days ago, but still was not there. I spoke to Laine, the apartment's owner, and she assured me it had been sent. So we waited at my house as long as we could, but eventually just decided to head out.
At about hour eight of the fifteen hour drive from Missouri to New York, my father brought up sex, and I will give you an almost verbatim transcript of that lecture.
"Patrick, I don't need to know what you do or if you are "active" or what have you, but I'm just warning you that New York is not like Missouri. You have to be careful. New York is a melting pot for disease. STDs from all over the world gather in New York. You have to remember that the girl you are making love with, no matter how sweet and innocent she may seem, could have any number of diseases. And it might not even be her fault, she might have drank too much and passed out in a bar one night and maybe five or six guys had their way with her without her knowing. She might have no idea it happened. Your mother and I see these things on Dateline all the time. And that brings me to drinking, Patrick. Don't start, OK? Just about everyone in your family is an alcoholic."
This may seem strange or exaggerated, but this is a pretty standard conversation with my father. I don't know if the funnier part is the idea that one can have sex free of consequence and protection in Missouri, or the idea that a girl could be gang raped in a bar...and not notice. I guess "overly concerned" would be a good way to describe my dad, and I guess that's better than if he were some sort of deadbeat, but then at least we wouldn't have to talk.
Since I was a little kid, I have been privy to these puritanical, shockingly over-the-top warnings about the dangers of the world. When I was 10 or 11, my father gave me "The Talk," which started with the tale of a friend of his who had been rolling around naked with his girlfriend naked, no penetration, and she had gotten pregnant. Now, either this friend was lying to my father or my father was lying to me, but that has quite an effect on a kid. So determined was my father for me not to knock some girl up, he made even making out seem like a huge risk. This is perhaps why I am so well-adjusted.
He also told me during "The Talk" that having an orgasm feels like when your foot falls asleep and it reaches that point where it tingles really bad and it hurts to move it. It's like that, but over your whole body. I hate that feeling, so my early orgasms were filled with anxiety and horror, which I'm sure was his intention.
I'm getting off topic here, but needless to say, the trip was long and awkward and dull and...LONG. We arrived in New Jersey at about noon on Sunday, August 31st, the day before Labor Day. We pulled into my neighborhood, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Remember, this was the first time I was seeing where I would be living. No, it wasn't paradise, but it was better than it could have been, and I didn't hear any gunshots. Yet. We pulled up in front of the apartment and I threw open the door of the truck. I was excited to get inside. I rang the bell. Nothing. Rang it again. Nothing. No one was home. I was furious. I desperately wanted to get my stuff inside and get my dad back on the road. I did not own a cell phone at this time, so I borrowed my dad's and called Laine, the owner. No answer. This was looking bad. The old man and I went and had some lunch, then tried again. I left message after message. "We're here, I have nowhere to stay, please come home or tell me what I need to do to get into the apartment." For hours...nothing. My father said "Well, I guess we'll have to get a hotel." Another night of this! You spend fifteen hours with anyone and you want to kill yourself, imagine your father! And now another night on top of that!
We pulled into the hotel parking lot and his phone rang. It was Laine. Thank God. Laine told me that she was in the Hamptons for the Labor Day weekend and the other roommate was out of town as well. What a time to let me know! "What am I supposed to do?" I asked. She said the only thing she could think of was to get a key from her mother, who lived a few miles away. Before the sentence was finished, we were driving furiously to pick up the old broad. She was easily 90, and over the top Jewish, like George Costanza's mom. She got in the packed front seat of the truck with us, she came along and let us in. First thing I noticed was the barking, howling and wailing of three poodles in the kitchen. Oh no.
We unloaded that truck and moved everything in at lightning speed while the dogs went nuts and the old woman yelled at us, criticized us, and generally annoyed us. We were both drenched in sweat, I took a quick shower and then it was back on the road. I had bought a single cheap online ticket to go see Bruce Springsteen at Meadowlands that night. I could think of no better way to kick off my new life. My dad drove me to Giants Stadium, and they had the whole parking lot set up like the Jersey Shore to set the mood. My dad hugged me, wished me luck, I got out of the car and he drove off. As he drove across the lot, he honked the horn repeatedly and yelled nice things out his window at me.
And then he was gone and I was totally alone. I can't say I missed him, but he was the only person I knew for thousands of miles. I walked into the concert scene and took in some Bruce karaoke. I remember a guy doing "Streets Of Philadelphia," which I thought was hilarious. You've got one of the most triumphant song catalogs in pop music history and you choose to sing a song about a man dying of AIDS on a sunny day to a bunch of drunken karaoke good ol' boys. My song of choice at karaoke is Springsteen's "Thunder Road," but I wasn't in the mood to sing. I wandered around the crowds for a few hours until showtime. The concert was great.
When I came out, all I knew was I was a long way from my apartment. I had no idea how to get there. There were buses set up outside the stadium, so I hopped on one. Wrong bus. It took me to the Port Authority station in Manhattan. Any other day, I would have known exactly how to get home from this point, but that first night I was totally lost. I walked out of the Port Authority and got my first glimpse of Times Square. It has been described by better writers before, but let's just say it knocked me out. Huge glowing signs as far as the eye could see. I walked the streets in a daze, still not quite believing that I was going to live here. I realized it was about 1AM and I needed to get home, so I asked a gentleman how to make that happen. His response: "It doesn't say "INFORMATION" on me anywhere, does it? Didn't think so. You see that sign over there that does say "INFORMATION?" That's probably where I'd go to get fucking information."
Thank you, stereotypical New Yorker. I asked at information, they directed me to another bus that dropped me off nowhere near my apartment, but at least I was in New Jersey. I walked the streets for a while, before finally calling a cab and spending $60 to get home. First night there and I had dropped a hundred bucks on transportation. I entered the apartment to the sound of barking, howling, wailing dogs that would continue throughout the night, (much more on this later), crawled into my bed and lay awake until morning, when a strange man walked by my room. As I thought I was going to be living with two girls, I was a little shocked, but he introduced himself. His name was Joe and he lived in the room down the hall with his girlfriend Paige. The two of them were around my age and couldn't have been nicer. They began to tell me some stories about Laine, the girl I had talked to on the phone and the owner of the apartment. For starters, I learned she was 40 years old (she had told me she was my age), and that she was out of her mind. I told them how the key had never shown up and they assured me that there was no way she had sent it. However crazy this woman was, however obnoxious her poodles were, however scared I was to be here, at least now I had a couple friends. I started to unpack, feeling a little better about the whole situation.
THIS FEELING WOULD NOT LAST.
'No, it wasn't paradise'...it was Palisade Ave. Ha! Your father is great.