|
|
|
freedom from the flag
Sunday, February 3 2002
Tonight Ray came over with his big black dog Suzy (Suzy loves Sally) and Gretchen ordered Chinese food. For entertainment, we watched a show about a 17 million dollar heist that went awry in North Carolina. Later, we flipped over to HBO and watched the Sopranos and Sex and the City. It was that kind of evening; the Simpsons had been pre-empted by the Superbowl (which interested none of us).
At 9:30pm I checked my email and learned that Anchor Tattoo, one of the bands that Art Winer masters, was having a CD release party at a bar called Great Lakes down on 5th Avenue in Park Slope. I'd eaten so much fake Chinese chicken that my eyes were swimming, but Gretchen was all excited and wanted to go, so we went, taking Sally with us. On the way, we dropped Ray and Suzy off on Seventh Avenue. Ray's girlfriend Nancy was flying in tonight from California, and he thought it prudent to pick up a six pack of beer to celebrate.
I'd never been in Great Lakes before. It was a reasonably-unpretentious micro-stage music venue, and on this night it was crowded with people, most of them in their late 20s and early 30s. Sally, being the only dog present, was a major hit right from the start, though she had to struggle to keep from being stepped on. She also expressed visible concern every time the drummer went nuts on his bass pedal.
The crowd that had come to see Anchor Tattoo was unexpectedly rich in Oberlin College alumni, partly because the drummer for Anchor Tattoo used to be something of a semi-celebrity in Oberlin's Tank Co-op (although I don't remember him). One of the Oberlin alumni there was this woman named Rachæl who remembered me from my "infamous period." She recalled, for example, the time one of my racier diary entries was found glued beneath a drawer in Harkness Co-op (two years after I'd put it there). This entry was an account of the time one of my friends took the virginity of his girlfriend Karina; it was seized by Karina's arch-nemesis and reproduced and posted widely throughout campus in an attempt to embarrass her.
Also present was a round little guy named Gowan who is now a priest but who used to be president of the Oberlin Student Co-operative Association. Back in the late 80s he didn't personally know me, but he knew of me, constantly having to deal with co-operative crises that had my name attached to them: graffiti conflicts, tee shirt contest controversies, boiler room squatting, carpet burns from indoor bicycle races, a dramatic fire that erupted in my dorm room, and even several instances of inter-coop warfare. Poor guy, even after all these years I felt a little bad about all the shit I put him through.
Just as we were about to leave, Gretchen and I were joined by Evan, our unusually tall friend who is scheduled to move to Los Angeles soon. I order a Jack on the rocks and stayed for awhile and chatted with Evan while Gretchen, Sally, Rachæl, and Rachæl's housemate Jill all headed back up the slope (it turns out that Rachæl and Jill live near us on Union Street).
[REDACTED]
As I was coming in from President Street, I took one look at the paper American flag that has been stuck to our brownstone's front door since back in September and decided that I'd had enough. With one swipe downward, I tore at it, leaving an ugly rip down its center. Realizing that I couldn't leave it in this state, I carefully removed the whole thing, hoping that no one would see me carrying out such an unpatriotic act. When I showed its balled-up remains to Gretchen, she was overjoyed, and we made a ceremony of burning it into untraceable ash. It's doubtful that anyone in our brownstone will even notice that it's gone. And even if they do, the prime suspects will be the two people who just moved in.
Gretchen torches an obnoxious paper American flag
that's been irritating us for months.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?020203 feedback
previous | next |
