Put Up a Parking Lot

Boston, Mass.  Spring of 1995.

One of the other grad students was hosting a party out in Braintree.  I don't remember anything about the actual party beyond a general sense of red:  a walk from the Red Line T, a new construction condo of faux red brick, red Solo cups for your bottle beer.  (No one did kegs in grad school, as the transportation issue got in the way: no one had a trunk.  Better to ask that all comers BYOB, carry in twelve's from the package store on the corner.)  I feel like Chris was at that party, and also Chris.

What I do remember well is leaving.  A group of us called a cab, either in an effort to catch the last northbound train or because we'd missed it entire.  We filled the cab, one of us shotgun and the rest crammed in along the backseat.  I ended up in the middle, on the hump, pressed forward a bit to allow others to have girls on their laps.  (Yes, they were women -- aspiring poets and memoirists, women who'd go on to high profile jobs at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Brace, but because they were on boys' laps, they were girls too.  Alluring, intimidating, unknowable girls.)  I did not make friends easily that Spring, if indeed I ever have.

The cab held a thick tong of incense, masking something earthier and less legal.  The driver was thick and coal-black, a ringer for the actor Yaphet Kotto -- Lt. Al Giardello on NBC's Homicide, Fridays at 10 Eastern, a panacea for smart young men with inactive social schedules.

The cabbie wore a dyed orange dashiki and a little pillbox hat to match.  He was chanting along with some lush rhythms coming through the radio.

I could not talk comfortably with girls, less so women or children.  I inverted in the company of strangers or teachers or authorities of any stripe.  Small talk was a foreign language.  My tools were nervous laughter, self-consciousness, and lame attempts to look engaged without engaging with anyone.  I inspected bookshelves or stayed close to the booze.  Cf. Jona Lewie, "You'll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties," Stiff Records, 1980.

Who could I talk to?  Without any crippling self-awareness whatsoever?  Cab drivers.

I met the driver's bloodshot eyes in the rearview, his skin so dark that the whites of his eyes looked jaundice yellow.  Lined with weariness or herb, maybe both.  "What are you listening to?" I asked.  There was other conversation in the car, but it didn't involve me.

His answer in a kind of Carribean patois: "West African chant, man."  He issued some groove, spreading his hands wide and shimmying in his seat: picture Little Richard just about to hit the keys.

"Right on," I said, then ducked down to watch Boston at night out the side windows.  I felt him flicking his eyes towards me in the rearview: to the road and to me, the road and to me.

"Ay man, ay," he said after a while.

I gave him my attention, some negotiating going on with the couples to my right and left.

"Ay man," he said.  "You got beeg head, man.  You know you got
beeg head, man?"

I needed clarification on the direction of the conversation.  "You're asking," I said, "if I know that I have a big head?"

"Yeah, man.  You know?  Beeg head fill up whole window."  He gestured as to indicate all of the moon and stars.  He had the attention of us all, by now.

"I--," I said.  "Yes, I'm aware that I have, I guess, a large head." (It's true.  What can you do with a head this big?  Hats don't work -- they only serve to make the head look even larger, the hat by comparison a tiny monkey fez.  I can barely comb my hair.)

The cabbie met my eyes and nodded, proud of me.  "Beeg head," he said to himself.  "Ay, Beeghead Man:  what you do with beeg head, man?"

Again, needed clarification.  "What do I do with my big head?"

"Yeah, man:  whachu do?"  The others in the cab useless now, not daring to laugh for fear they'd miss something.

"Right now," I told the cabbie.  "I'm in graduate school..."  I wasn't sure how far out he wanted me to report.

"GOOD," said the cabbie.  "You fill beeg head up with BOOK."

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