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The sound of the waterfall, the cool wet darkness behind it, crouching and watching the sheath of water come down like a veil, and the pulsing drip, drip, drip from a spot where the water seeped through a crack in the rocks and pooled at his feet... that was his favorite memory.
I had spent the past six hours driving through the desert darkness, heading east on a whim. Nary the moon or city lights left me to my car headlights for guidance and the landscape of dirt and succulent foliage was left to my imagination. There was light coming out from somewhere, somewhere straight ahead and the tops of mountains could be made out in the distance, flat and carved by dry winds blowing for since a time no man can honestly recall. Dark on even darker and nothing more.
It may be possible that no one loves Brooklyn more than Jason Cusato, a 35-year old Park Slope movie maker, who makes films about his borough to capture its ever-changing charm.
“I try to make films about the Brooklyn that practically doesn’t exist anymore,” Cusato says. “The borough has changed so much and I want people to remember what it used to be.” Jason Cusato got his start at the School of Visual Arts when he helped to shoot a documentary The Aid to Church in Need about a lower Manhattan congregation.
The year was 1971, Richard Nixon was president, ‘Attica’ was a chant, The Weather Men blew things up, Alan Shepard hit a golf ball miles on the moon and felt totally cool, and Hamburgers got a helper! Let’s see… We also had the Pentagon Papers, we’re All in the Family and I was a meathead, Woody made us all Bananas, Lennon asked us to Imagine, a fiddler fiddled on a roof, The Vietnam war raged and I was drafted.
When I tell people I used to be homeless I always get attacked with questions. The most popular is “what was the worst part?”. The answer? There are no bathrooms. If you have to take a crap you have to search high and low for a place that doesn't care that you'll never buy something from them.
You probably don't realize how good you have it until you have to frantically search for a public bathroom at three in the morning. Those bathrooms were a treasure cove. The best part is that after you did your thing you could use the sink to take a "whores bath", basically a sponge bath using the tiny amount of soap in the dispenser. You could also wash your change of clothes (which were kept secure in your backpack of course). All this was made even more interesting because I have OCD and being clean is the most important thing in the world to me.
After people get bored of the standard homeless questions I always get this one: what do you remember most about being homeless? This is also easy to answer. I remember the day I scammed a scammer.
Erhardt watched the smoke curl from the end of his cigarette like the tendrils of some strange plant. In the near distance, past the swirling smoke, was Edward's face in soft focus, looking villainous as ever with his craggy nose, bad complexion, and high forehead crested with its tousled tuft of wiry black. He sat at the window bench, his pineapple-shaped head blocking Erhardt's view of the sea. He wore the same expression he always did, the one that was so deadly serious, yet so seriously full of it. Sir Edward Dalliance, Earl of Grift, Duke of Dupe. All pomp and no consequence.
At the end of Day Three of the conference, after the gathering with chilled beer and neatly sorted little appetizers, after the trading of business cards of varying degrees of texture, font and thickness, he declined a colleague's offer to share one of the peculiar-looking cabs idling outside of the conference center and opted to walk back through the now-silent streets. The odors of fish and garbage lingered in the humid night. Occasionally he passed other people. Their gazes would run quickly across his face and suit, but they didn't make eye contact.
After fifteen minutes and a couple of glances at a laminated street map his wife had insisted on slipping in his travel luggage, he crossed a short bridge and came to where the little pink hotel squatted, its small balconies unused. White-ish curtains moved softly through the open windows, pushed by a light and welcome breeze.
Their running made a breeze out of the standstill air. One by one, they would give chase. The others fled in whatever direction they could, attempting to escape in a torrent of running feet, exhausted breath and scared laughter. Eventually one would become two, two became three and so on until the one had become the many. Those who knew them may have said days like these were a glimpse at what they would become. But to the boys in the grey-striped shirts, it was just a game. Always just a game.
The area in which they played seemed almost tailor made for them: a bright blue sky hanging over a small expanse of green grass; an old wooden shed with a flower garden off to the side. Sometimes they would wonder about that old wooden shed that no one ever seemed to use, that clipped green grass they’d never seen anybody cut. But thoughts like those always got pushed to the back of their mind. This place was theirs, an escape from their nightly incarcerations. This place was perfect…save for the dark wood.
Look at him. He is so buff. When he wears his black Storm Trooper suit it drives me crazy. I would bite his butt right here if I could. But it always pisses him off whenever I get affectionate around the troops. And he can be such a bitch when he gets angry. He says he has an image to uphold. He needs to demand respect. God, please! What did he think he demanded last night? Respect! He demanded total respect from me, but I sure as hell got no respect from him. He was such an animal. And it wasn’t just physical; he uses The Force during our little trysts, and let me tell you, that’s something else altogether. I’m still sore as hell and not at all sure I can sit on this damn scooter all day after what he did to me last night. At least he was home early. I guess I should be thankful he was not running around with one of his little numbers.
