Chapter 7: “Dumbo” (from BRONX NIGHTS 🌃🍎)

a love letter

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Alex.

Alex wasn’t her real name. Out of courtesy, the author decided to call her something else.

Alex lived in a box in the Bronx. And all the people who lived in that box had to share the same nasty-ass bathroom. No thank you.

Alex was a fabulous erotic costume designer. Boys and girls, we call this fantasy. Some of us want to be firefighters, some of us want to be intergalactic call girls. Sometimes even the boys.

Alex didn’t have many close friends—really, only one. Two, if you include me. And Alex certainly didn’t let just anyone near her heart.

Alex prayed to God one day—or the gods or whatever passes for the assistant manager of the Milky Way these days; she prayed:

“Dear Whatever Up There, please give me my One.”

And the Whatever in the Sky said: “He is coming.”

However, the Great Whatever failed to add that this man would have Long COVID (Insomnia plus Brain Fog), Autism and his own special place in The Guinness Book of World Records for troubled pasts.

Also, nothing in Alex’s past prepared her to understand what it’s like for a person to drive a Jeep Grand Cherokee with a U-Haul at max weight nonstop overnight from the Deep South to the Big Apple.

I’m telling you, the Universe is missing a few screws.

Alex is very funny, cutthroat when necessary, sensitive when it’s earned, plus she bitches loudly at shit for brain drivers and all manner of idiotic bicyclists, mopedists and pedestrians as if it were sport.

Pardons—but I haven’t much described Alex physically.

Ah, well, she is, in a word: Regal. As a soldier whips round to attention when a senior officer enters the room, she arises without breath from any depth to any level of formality. (She’s on her shit.)

That’s not really physical.

True.

Alex has great knockers. I don’t mean that in a bad way—she would agree.

She also has the most lovely skin—like a rich velvet carpet on the toes. (No, I’m not into feet shit. I’m just saying, feels good on the toes. The carpet! Okay, and the skin.)

Alex has crafted her body into a masterpiece. Some people get tattoos, even a lot of tattoos. But her ink is as magisterial as it is intentional—like an Islamic muqarnas edged in lapis. For those who care to read, her body art weaves a complex tale. It is her. (I cared.)

Her face is handsome. When she smiles, it’s like the sun reflecting off polished aquamarine. Okay, enough of that Song of Solomon stuff.

Also, I don’t mean to suggest she has a blue-green complexion. In my own Neuro way, every person has a sort of totem stone identifier.

For instance, Arik the bear (introduced on the next page) is more a nepheline-bearing diorite. Why? Other than him being a little igneous, we just wanted to fuck with the audio book guy.

Alex lived in a box, but Arik lived on a pond.

Who’s Arik? He’s the boy in this story.

Well, he’s really a bear, but you know what I mean.

Arik was his real name. So was Bjorn. It means bear. Get it now?

What kind of bear? Well, some days a grizzly, some days a teddy. Once in a tad, a binturong—which, while called the bearcat, is really more filiform than caniform.

Arik hadn’t slept much for four years. He worked two jobs seven days a week, took care of blah blah blah. You’ve heard all that. But what Arik loved to do most (other than play nightly nug-a-nug) was tend the two gardens behind his house right next to the pond.

Arik loved listening to the sound of the fountain in the middle of the pond while his hands nursed growth from the soil. He loved watching his kingdom of Muscovy ducks flop about, neophytes of flight. He especially loved making fresh salsa from his home-grown tomatoes, jalapenos, carrots and bell peppers. (He added the Last Dab hot sauce to every batch.)

Anyway, that’s all just background information on Arik and Alex.

I suppose it would also be helpful to learn that while they had a ton of differences (age, ethnicity, education), they had so much pop culture shit in common it was simply unreal.

Seriously, their favorite zombie movie is 28 Days Later. This came up early in conversation—way before the new instalment was ever announced. I mean, Arik doesn’t even like zombie movies, but that one has always sort of hit him in the gut for its narratological value.

Ahem.

Trust me, there are a lot of things in common. Way too many things for them to land anywhere but in a love storybook.

They even had a shared favorite porn star: Nia Nacci.

That was a new “something in common” for both Arik and Alex.

Back to the Great Whatever for a moment.

I’m no genius, but if I were a Great Whatever, I’d start matching up people more by favorite zombie film and favorite adult film star.

No matter the ultimate outcome of the relationship, there will be at least two nights of abandoned—gooey, if you’re not careful—pleasure that neither partner ever forgets.

While Alex and Arik were doomed to a Nagasaki nadir, they quickly became best friends—a kind of friendship that one only finds in the pages of the magic books of childhood that, like literary lava lamps, bubble slowly in the background of our workaday adult minds.

Alex’s prayer to the Great Whatever had been answered.

Or so she thought.

The boy, Arik…well, he was a bit of a special bear. First, he was a half-century in years, but he still thought like a boy.

He had Autism, which he learned during his gardening days.

Arik also had a mutated prothrombin gene, but that’s the kind of detail that really drags a storybook.

He was a great big bear with huge biceps who once held up the Brooklyn Bridge, but he kind of looked at the world a lot like Forrest Gump—maybe a Forrest Gump who has read a lot of books and has spent too much time in the Amsterdam Red Light District.

Don’t get me wrong: Alex was special too.

She hadn’t really visited experts yet to figure out the things that made her special, but there were special things, all the same. I could go into greater detail, but I’m not a trained mental health professional. Also, clues are scattered across this entire book.

Alex also was a bit mysterious. She had two names. Most of us only have one—Alex definitely had two. (I found the second name the day after this event happened and took a photo of it.)

There were other things going on in the cave they shared that made Arik suspicious.

That bear would shake his furry head, “Too many secrets. Too many whispered phone calls. Too many masks and shields.”

Jesus, can you just get to the story?

Fine. I just wanted to put it out there that, in my opinion as narrator, I think the Great Whatever answered Alex’s prayer.

The problem is that the bear finally reached a point of illness and stress beyond what most could handle, and it resulted in total collapse of self.

Also, Alex was harboring lots of secrets. The bear didn’t like that.

Had Alex just not taken the Lemonade Pitcher, or maybe had invited him to just say a quick hi to her friends on Bridgerton night, or maybe had arranged for the puppy to go to her mom’s apartment that weekend, or maybe had offered that blowjob 20 minutes earlier. …

Don’t worry, there’s plenty of things the bear could have done. And, yes, most of those things include anger management strategies and limitations on alcohol. Maybe also more time with therapists.

I’m telling you, folks, I was really trying my best just to hold it together whatsoever. But then the court hearing came.

Shoulda woulda coulda.

Boy, you sure know how to ruin a storybook.

Couldn’t agree more.

Than didst the Great Whatever causeth to be Sunday, April 28—a moon’s cycle befors’t the day of oral cocktease.

And Arik the bear popped out of bed as though he were—well, because he had Insomnia and hadn’t slept all night again.

But who needs sleep, when someone is about to be taken on his first date ever!

Best of all, it was a surprise date. Arik had no idea where Alex was taking them.

Actual best of all: Alex wore this tight lavender spandex outfit that practically made Arik’s you know what go all 28 Seconds Later.

I mean, Alex was at her hottest. The Great Whatever would agree with a thunderbolt or two. (The Great Whatever has terrible timing. Maybe you’ll hear some cracks in a few weeks—could be those.)

After a hearty breakfast of bagels loaded with fatty meat and obscene carbohydrates, plus several glasses of Tropicana Grovestand, Alex led Arik outside to the nearest gallery of Citi Bikes.

Arik got rather Neuro trying to detach the damn thing, but Alex the best friend, patient as ever, helped her bear.

Arik wondered where they were headed—wait, there she goes! Better catch up!

Alex glides across the streets of New York City like Princess Leia on a speeder bike in the forests of Endor. Meanwhile, Arik feels like an Ewok hanging onto the wheel by one hand trying not to hit the redwood trunk too squarely.

Hey, the bear realizes. These things can go fast. Me have big bear legs!

ZOOOOOOOOOM!!!!

All of a sudden, Arik finds himself behind an 18-wheeler hauling livestock at the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel toll. Better head back north.

WOOOOOOOOSH!!!!

Bear scratches his shaggy forehead. “Wait, we can’t bike in water. We get on boat now?”

“Yes!” Alex beams. “It’s the ferry.”

See, it’s a storybook with ferries!

Also, it’s Pride Month as I write this, so “Happy Pride!”

I once had the honor of being the keynote speaker at South Carolina’s major Pride event. That was when I ran for U.S. Congress in 2016.

A puzzled attendee approached me after my speech, “So, are you gay, or what?”

I replied, “Why, are you curious?”

They failed to get the joke.

This is probably as good a place as any to let you know that this chapter came out in full after the original publication date.

Today, the day I’m publishing this chapter, is June 6. Bronx Nights was published June 1.

While the book was completed (enough), 14 chapters were left in unfinished condition for a future embedded Volume 2—making Bronx Nights the world’s first fluid book—is that a thing? It is now!

Here’s how it works.

I upload the manuscript with this chapter onto Amazon’s publishing platform, and: Hey, Presto!

For those who have already purchased the e-book, the revised portions are automatically updated in their respective readers.

Future paperback copies automatically include the revised text.

And for those who have already purchased the paperback?

Just go to VikingWord.com , and you can read the new content for free.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’m onto something that would make Gutenberg pop his punch-matrix.

But you’re also on storybook acid! The story!

Right. Alex and Arik sat atop the ferry from Manhattan to Brooklyn, like two members of royalty. I mean, he in royal blue and she in lavender. Fits the bill, sort of.

At the tip of Roosevelt Island, where the lighthouse guards, there upon the East River, the bear realizes this is already the best day of his life.

I mean, excluding the day his daughter was born—that’s just a given for every parent.

Before he knew it, he was snapping a decent photo of the Domino Sugar Refinery at river’s edge. He paused. He realized what this was.

The emotion caught him off guard. He didn’t think he would ever experience it again.

And then Alex said it to her bear not long after in their shared cave:

“I love you.”

Wow, hold that moment.

Okay, debark. And to the electric bikes—we ride!

The bear wonders for a moment whether Alex has signed him up for the Tour de Five Boroughs.

Eventually, Alex and Arik park their bikes. They order a pizza and go find restrooms. Bike bladder!

They find a grassy, shaded area with a full view of Manhattan, the Brooklyn Bridge looming before them.

Dumbo. Or: Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.

Yeah, I wondered about the elephant too. Never bothered to look it up. Let me know what you find.

We didn’t say a lot while we ate. Long ago, I learned that that’s when you know.

We knew. And the city nodded back to us. I may have even heard the faint sound of 111 sighing.

Then, Jane’s Carousel spun like a golden uraeus whirlwind, drawing us in—I mean, Alex and Arik the bear. Ugh. Long line.

That’s another thing Alex and Arik had in common (and why I think she’s Autistic too): a total inability to accept the fact that anything such as a queue should exist anywhere!

We’re also the two most efficient shoppers in the history of box stores. In. Grab quality items—swallow some Swedish meatballs. Stop and look at puppies if there are any. Out.

Anyway, some Disney soundtrack in the wind convinced us to wait in line in the hot sun so we could ride pretend horses and listen to the sounds of a bygone time when we would have been childhood friends at the park on a Sunday afternoon going for a ride, flying dragons.

That would be a good place to end this storybook. I had never been happier.

But there’s more.

Cool! We bike across the Brooklyn Bridge—no Godzilla!. Flying at the speed of moped, I pretend I’m on a Tron Light Cycle.

We navigate across Manhattan, Alex’s lovely backside guiding me around every corner and voluptuous curve—I mean, the bear could spot her easily because of all that lavender.

More Tron up Riverside Drive—our circumnavigation of Manhattan nearly comp—!

BRAKE!!

“Wait?! Is that really Grant’s Tomb?”

“Uh, yeah. Why?”

“I mean, he’s buried there!”

Alex draws it out thicker, “Yeah?”

The bear realizes this one is a socioeconomic, generational gapper not worth the effort.

The ride continues, but the bear pauses. His beloved is perfectly juxtaposed against a cathedral.

Just a girl named Alex, who prayed to the Great Whatever Up There, and got her wish.

And now she gets to ride her bike home with her bear.

Somehow I had fought with everything inside me, driven beneath Godzilla’s balls and everything else, to get to this moment.

It was love. Real love.

I finally found someone to care for me as much as she can care for me. I could focus on my health now—on everything else.

For once, the bear didn’t have to worry about being alone. He had his Alex.

And Alex had her answered prayer.

Hold on to that feeling while it lasts.

And it will last precisely 16 days.

Let’s just appreciate this love letter for a moment or two more.

I never stopped loving her—even a few weeks later, the night I slept in the storage unit. I never stopped loving her from the jail cell she put me in illegally a few days after that. I never stopped loving her, period. In fact, I still love her, wherever it leads.

The Great Whatever Up There fucked us both up pretty badly.

It kicked the shit out of me, but not the love.

xxx