The men were armed, infected, mad, so David, no coward, never considered intervening, even once fully awoke from short sleep. Call a cop? He could imagine himself pleading, disheveled; returning, harshly condescending Officer in tow, to show The Man this group of invisibles again peacably drinking, panhandling, napping, the fetid woman, curled under burlap, unwilling to show her schizo face, much less file incident reports or again expose of her own free will her greenbruised clotted thighs for a sad Polaroid. (Backlit acid cyanine, the hue of her varicose....) Clearly law and custom did not apply. Goths encamped in the eternal city, the seat of empire. David walked back to Grand Central, stripped to the waist in the men's room and bathed. The water brooked along his pebbled back, infested his trouser seams with damp. The universal solvent marking the insoluble stranger. The waiting room was too exposed. He struck his tents again. All the same he would days later pass one of his father's colleagues on at 42nd but by then David would've become invisible too. Torn, dirty, homeless. As callous about room temperature as a bike racer. Wandering Jew. The days passed. He developed an obsession with cleanliness, arcane knowledge of bathrooms and fountains. The obsession metamorphosed. His topsiders would hold up well, though provide inadequate cushioning. Intended for sailing, a nongravity sport. He shifted for himself. He studied where the rain does not fall, the sun shineth not, where wind is lost. He found a refrigerator box on the Lower East Side, pulled it into a drain gully behind a Canal Street culvert and insulated it with carpet remnants and chunks of fiberglass found in a construction dumpster. Omar Khayyam, his tent. Put up and hidden away at daybreak, repitched at nightfall. The box was safer than a Shelter or Con Ed
The men were armed, infected, mad, so David, no coward, never considered intervening, even once fully awoke from short sleep. Call a cop? He could imagine himself pleading, disheveled; returning, harshly condescending Officer in tow, to show The Man this group of invisibles again peacably drinking, panhandling, napping, the fetid woman, curled under burlap, unwilling to show her schizo face, much less file incident reports or again expose of her own free will her greenbruised clotted thighs for a sad Polaroid. (Backlit acid cyanine, the hue of her varicose....) Clearly law and custom did not apply. Goths encamped in the eternal city, the seat of empire. David walked back to Grand Central, stripped to the waist in the men's room and bathed. The water brooked along his pebbled back, infested his trouser seams with damp. The universal solvent marking the insoluble stranger. The waiting room was too exposed. He struck his tents again. All the same he would days later pass one of his father's colleagues on at 42nd but by then David would've become invisible too. Torn, dirty, homeless. As callous about room temperature as a bike racer. Wandering Jew. The days passed. He developed an obsession with cleanliness, arcane knowledge of bathrooms and fountains. The obsession metamorphosed. His topsiders would hold up well, though provide inadequate cushioning. Intended for sailing, a nongravity sport. He shifted for himself. He studied where the rain does not fall, the sun shineth not, where wind is lost. He found a refrigerator box on the Lower East Side, pulled it into a drain gully behind a Canal Street culvert and insulated it with carpet remnants and chunks of fiberglass found in a construction dumpster. Omar Khayyam, his tent. Put up and hidden away at daybreak, repitched at nightfall. The box was safer than a Shelter or Con Ed
final_triage.docx