My EQ

Just as I was walking out of Equinox today I spied Nancy and Cindy and they were graciously reminding me how my presence was missed at the club. That got me thinking about friendship and I remarked about how those of us that see each other virtually everyday spend more time than even we do with our best friends. She agreed as if it was an awakening and just because we are not spending our nights and dinners together we have created our own world inside these environs. I have come to believe like our friend Louis has said that EQ is a 3rd space. There’s home there’s work and then there’s the club. We do have a community here unlike any exercise club I have been in my life and I feel blessed that I have befriended some very beautiful people here. 

Awakened at 61

These days I don’t lead with my brains or even my personality rather it’s the energy they tell me that I bring to my friends when they are in propinquity. Never had that experience before and it took coming to spin class to figure that out. I trust now that I don’t have to exercise mental dexterity or charisma to affect my friends in the most positive way. I thought it was purely my writing but writing has just given me the knock on the door that some have answered: Come in Jack!  

Self-discovery at age 61 seems enigmatic to me but then there are those I suspect that will never be afforded the gift I have been given.  I can’t lament about how old I am nor can I say: why now?  All things come to those who wait and are willing to be patient.  I was never patient and having to wait for anything brought me nothing but angst. My own experience of addiction, compulsion, obsession and impulsiveness have tortured me but now these afflictions have given me the acumen to know what happiness is and to truly understand how transient discomfort and pain really are.  

Greenpoint

My paternal grand parents displayed the most affection towards me more so than anyone ever did in my child hood. When I went to their railroad flat in Greenpoint Brooklyn I felt like I was in heaven. Every child’s dream would be to have grandparents like them they doted on me as if I was the only child and answered every wish before I could even think about what I wanted.  These times stayed with me my whole life and made me feel so wanted whereas at home I felt like just another mouth to feed.

Greenpoint a Brooklyn hamlet known mostly for its Polish immigrant population was like a city unto itself back in the late 50’s and early 60’s. Equipped with two movie theaters, which showed two movies with cartoons in between on only one screen. The RKO Theater and the Meserole were like home to me on Saturday afternoons and at 4 bits (50 cents) the bargain couldn’t have been better.  Candy was only a nickel then and my Grandparents made sure I had plenty stuffed in both my pockets as I watched movies to my hearts content. 

The GG

Those summer visits just after the decade of the 60’s began was more about being smothered with attention which I so felt I lacked at home than anything else. I was the eldest and only boy and by that time 3 of my 4 sisters were alive and this was my way to as it were get away from it all.  And the Woodside-Greenpoint sojourns were just what the doctor ordered.

 Sometimes my father would drop me off in Queens or as he felt I could manage it he let me take the LIRR to Woodside station and trek the 5 blocks to Grandma’s house. I loved the independence of that ride and when it came to traveling to Greenpoint later in the week I took the GG subway from 65th Street to Nassau Avenue in Brooklyn on a 15 cent token ride. When I would emerge from that hole in the ground and walked but one block to turn the corner on Manhattan Avenue I would love the smell of the subway below that rushed my olfactory nerve up through the black iron gratings. I could never figure out what was so pleasant about it but it was one of the biggest anchors that reminded me heaven was just a few steps away.  

Woodside

Drop me off in Woodside and let me start my weeklong stay free from parental restraint.  

It started off at my mom’s mom at her apartment in Queens known as the Mets and the second part of my stay found me in Greenpoint with my father’s parents still both alive. The order of my visit was in my hands and I always left the best for last.  

My maternal Grandmother doted on me and fed me meals on my special decorative plate, which I always wanted to take home with me. Nanny would tell me it had to stay here in her apartment for safekeeping as it made eating off it all the more special.  The extra dessert was my pre pubescent girlfriend and somewhere in one of my visits I gave her my first buss and although it was disastrous or so I thought the feeling of being with Debbie DeMarco is something I will always treasure. She called me Jackie back then a name that stuck until college. 

Polar Jack

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Some things in life you just don’t have to think about and today was one of those times. I had been to the beach more times this past summer than I have in the sum total of the rest of my life. And so I wasn’t thinking that I might make another water entry in March but today I took the plunge.   I’m no fan of cold water so to dive head first into Oyster Bay at 2 PM today was most improbable. My friend Tripp Doherty had been chatting it up for the past few weeks but I’ve never given it a thought and after class today I decided that I might try this and because I didn’t think about it I had no time to let those voices inside my head from  keeping me home and warm.  I liked how it felt and I didn’t mind that the air temp was 50 plus degrees either. Can’t wait for next year.  

Pococurante? Well Hardly

No disrespect to anyone especially those I will always love but I am convinced I have needed this time alone to begin to understand what makes me tick. I know some might say you don’t know by now? You’re 61 years old and at this stage of your life you had better have gotten it together.  Well let that be the court of public opinion because in my world it has been truly a plethora of hellos and goodbyes and just for now I want to say hello to myself. 

One might say that I have been pococurante about the people who have passed in and out of my life but if you were one you know that wasn’t the case. 

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