from: nathaniel.wharton@gmail.com
to: MissingMyFriend@gmail.com
date: July 10, 2007 7:03 PM
subject: I'm sorry
I hope you find her
from: MissingMyFriend@gmail.com
to: nathaniel.wharton@gmail.com
date: July 10, 2007 9:45 PM
subject: Re: I'm sorry
thanks
from: MissingMyFriend@gmail.com
to: nathaniel.wharton@gmail.com
date: July 16, 2007 11:03 AM
subject: Re: I'm sorry
I found her.
Thanks for your support.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Lost and found
Sunday, July 22, 2007
"You know what'd make a great movie...?"
Mel was short and leathery and his long beard connected directly with the hair encircling his bald spot as if his head was wreathed in a wiry black bird’s nest. He had ridden a bicycle to the day labor office, so when we were paired up and sent off to a housing development with a couple of shovels, I drove. He had that sort of crisp, stinging smell that you’ll often find on somebody without a home and I was grateful that it was still just cool enough outside that my request to drive with the windows down met with no objection. We arrived at our destination as the sun was still just rising. I’d spent the last month since graduating high school working as an electrician’s assistant and had done my share of digging ditches and hauling away heavy bits of metal, but that work had gotten ensnared in a legal battle and after a few weeks of unemployment and an expensive year of school looming ahead, my father’s exhortation that I get a job had led me to day labor. I figured I could handle labor and I only had another month’s worth of days to do it in.
Once Mel and I arrived, we met up with the foreman in charge of us and he laid out our instructions. We were to go up and down the streets of this larval subdivision and shovel the dirt that the big earth movers had pushed into the gutters back up off the street and into the lots. We got to work, wondering idly if we’d make it around the entire place before our eight hours were up for the day. As we plodded along, scooping up the dirt and squinting away from the rising sun, Mel did his best to make time pass. He told a few colorful stories about the trip to
It was afternoon, and I knew my liberal application of sunblock had begun to fail me, by the time Mel found out that I was headed off to film school in
“You know what’d make a great movie…?”
Except this time it wasn’t followed by an anecdote about something that had happened to a person he knew. Instead he launched into a speech that was something less than a story but was related with intense conviction that he knew exactly how it would work as a movie. It turned out that his ambition was to make a documentary about how aliens had built the pyramids and that there were secret messages embedded in their proportions and the shadows they cast. As my head throbbed and my skin ached from the radiation it was absorbing from the
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Rattle dem bones
When I was in elementary school, we decided that what we really needed was a treehouse. Between Calvin & Hobbes comics, the treehouse we found near Bryan Brown's house, and the successful hours of fun we'd gleaned from playing in ground level forts in the desert, treehouse fever hit the Wharton household and we decided to make a go of it. Matt and I started with an abundance of enthusiasm for the project, but what we had in motivation, we lacked in lumber. This situation led to the dubious realization that the best source of treehouse-worthy wood would be another treehouse. And there happened to be just one such structure out in the desert. We staked it out and deemed it abandoned, and instead of just playing in it ourselves, we decided to take the wood so we could build a treehouse in our own yard. And so it was that Matt, Bryan Brown, Eric Schaumberg and I set off into the desert with hammers in hand.
We set about dismantling the tree house from the top down, stacking the wood at the base of the tree. We'd nearly taken the entire thing down, with only the enormous board that made up the floor left to go. It was at this point that Logan, a high school boy who had always been something of an intimidating figure to us burst out of the door of the house at the top of the wash.
"Hey! Get away from our treehouse!!!"
In a panic, Bryan knocked out the last supporting strut and the floor of the treehouse came crashing down. I tumbled out of the tree into the rocks below, and Eric jumped and found himself hanging from a branch high in the air. Logan had run back into the house and now came barreling out, brandishing a BB gun. Eric dropped from the tree, and the four of us scrambled about, gathering as much wood as we possibly could under our arms. In what felt as intense as any movie adventure we'd imagined ourselves in, with BBs whizzing by and thwacking into our stacks of wood, we finally grabbed up the floor plank and, using it as a shield, dashed off into the desert. We either lost him in the wash or he gave up the chase, but we collapsed behind our house in a pile of wood, thrilled and frightened and alive.
Only in the days after that did we realize that neither of the two trees we had hoped to use were particularly well suited for a treehouse, and after a halfhearted attempt at building one (resulting in more of an art piece with a rope swing than any sort of shelter) we ended up with a pile of rotting wood behind our house.
This last Saturday night, Adam and I went for a walk around Greenpoint. Since he's new to the area, we made a quick survey of a few of my favorite places in the neighborhood, and no such tour would be complete without a trip to the old decaying dock on the East River. It's a nice place to go and explore, or watch the sunset over the city, or just to sit and think. But since I decided to take him over there at ten o'clock at night and the walk over there leads through an unlit alley decorated generously with graffiti, and since there was an ambulance parked at the end of the alley, he was understandably a bit nervous. I'd been out there enough to enjoy how creepy it was and was a little dismissive of his concerns. Then he interrupted whatever conversation we were having to point out something I hadn't seen before.
"Is that a skeleton?"
And sure enough, hanging from a structure of twisted metal, with a rope around its neck and illuminated by the headlights of an unattended ambulance, was a full-sized human skeleton.
We stayed a bit longer, enjoying the macabre little scene, and then went back to Adam's for ice cream and Nintendo. The next day, I told Tom about the skeleton and went back in the evening to take some pictures. The following day, Tom was going to head out and grab some photos himself when he peeked in my room before heading out the door.
"If that skeleton is still down there, I'm going to bring it back."
I don't know if he was asking for permission or for an accomplice, but I offered my help and hopped up to go with him. As we strolled down to the water, I felt my reservations melting away, and while I didn't realize it at the time, the thrill I was tasting on the tip of my tongue was the same flavor as when we made our treehouse raid.
Since neither Tom nor I had brought a knife, Tom used a piece of glass from a broken bottle to saw through the rope holding up the skeleton, cutting his finger in the process. He clambered back down the beam and passed me the skeleton. We walked back home, as casually as two men can walk down the street holding a human skeleton under their arm. Since Tom had done the climb and the cutting, I carried the thing back to our house, hoping to earn with sweat what he'd paid in blood. We both kept looking around to see if any of the surprise in the eyes of the people we passed would curdle into suspicion or recognition, prepared to make a break for it. I started deciding whether I'd be willing to drop the skeleton and run, or if I'd be able to hold onto the skeleton as if it were treehouse lumber.
As we were walking, discussing the ethical and artistic ramifications of what we'd done to the dock, we hit upon a solution that seemed appropriate. Once we got the skeleton back in our house, Tom took a couple of photos of it comfortable in its new environs.
Today, we printed out two of the photos, put them in a beautiful bottle, sealed the bottle with a candle, and headed back out to the river. We clambered back out onto the collapsed beams and hung the bottle with some twine at the same place the skeleton had been.
If it's former owners come looking for it hopefully they'll be satisfied that it has found a home where it belongs. For other visitors to the dock, perhaps a bottle isn't as instantly and ghoulishly satisfying as a hanging skeleton, but for those that take the time to look there still one more thing to be found out there.
And after spending all day itching to get that bottle out there, I feel satisfied tonight that there's no pile of rotting wood left from this adventure.
We set about dismantling the tree house from the top down, stacking the wood at the base of the tree. We'd nearly taken the entire thing down, with only the enormous board that made up the floor left to go. It was at this point that Logan, a high school boy who had always been something of an intimidating figure to us burst out of the door of the house at the top of the wash.
"Hey! Get away from our treehouse!!!"
In a panic, Bryan knocked out the last supporting strut and the floor of the treehouse came crashing down. I tumbled out of the tree into the rocks below, and Eric jumped and found himself hanging from a branch high in the air. Logan had run back into the house and now came barreling out, brandishing a BB gun. Eric dropped from the tree, and the four of us scrambled about, gathering as much wood as we possibly could under our arms. In what felt as intense as any movie adventure we'd imagined ourselves in, with BBs whizzing by and thwacking into our stacks of wood, we finally grabbed up the floor plank and, using it as a shield, dashed off into the desert. We either lost him in the wash or he gave up the chase, but we collapsed behind our house in a pile of wood, thrilled and frightened and alive.
Only in the days after that did we realize that neither of the two trees we had hoped to use were particularly well suited for a treehouse, and after a halfhearted attempt at building one (resulting in more of an art piece with a rope swing than any sort of shelter) we ended up with a pile of rotting wood behind our house.
This last Saturday night, Adam and I went for a walk around Greenpoint. Since he's new to the area, we made a quick survey of a few of my favorite places in the neighborhood, and no such tour would be complete without a trip to the old decaying dock on the East River. It's a nice place to go and explore, or watch the sunset over the city, or just to sit and think. But since I decided to take him over there at ten o'clock at night and the walk over there leads through an unlit alley decorated generously with graffiti, and since there was an ambulance parked at the end of the alley, he was understandably a bit nervous. I'd been out there enough to enjoy how creepy it was and was a little dismissive of his concerns. Then he interrupted whatever conversation we were having to point out something I hadn't seen before.
"Is that a skeleton?"
And sure enough, hanging from a structure of twisted metal, with a rope around its neck and illuminated by the headlights of an unattended ambulance, was a full-sized human skeleton.
We stayed a bit longer, enjoying the macabre little scene, and then went back to Adam's for ice cream and Nintendo. The next day, I told Tom about the skeleton and went back in the evening to take some pictures. The following day, Tom was going to head out and grab some photos himself when he peeked in my room before heading out the door.
"If that skeleton is still down there, I'm going to bring it back."
I don't know if he was asking for permission or for an accomplice, but I offered my help and hopped up to go with him. As we strolled down to the water, I felt my reservations melting away, and while I didn't realize it at the time, the thrill I was tasting on the tip of my tongue was the same flavor as when we made our treehouse raid.
Since neither Tom nor I had brought a knife, Tom used a piece of glass from a broken bottle to saw through the rope holding up the skeleton, cutting his finger in the process. He clambered back down the beam and passed me the skeleton. We walked back home, as casually as two men can walk down the street holding a human skeleton under their arm. Since Tom had done the climb and the cutting, I carried the thing back to our house, hoping to earn with sweat what he'd paid in blood. We both kept looking around to see if any of the surprise in the eyes of the people we passed would curdle into suspicion or recognition, prepared to make a break for it. I started deciding whether I'd be willing to drop the skeleton and run, or if I'd be able to hold onto the skeleton as if it were treehouse lumber.
As we were walking, discussing the ethical and artistic ramifications of what we'd done to the dock, we hit upon a solution that seemed appropriate. Once we got the skeleton back in our house, Tom took a couple of photos of it comfortable in its new environs.
Today, we printed out two of the photos, put them in a beautiful bottle, sealed the bottle with a candle, and headed back out to the river. We clambered back out onto the collapsed beams and hung the bottle with some twine at the same place the skeleton had been.
If it's former owners come looking for it hopefully they'll be satisfied that it has found a home where it belongs. For other visitors to the dock, perhaps a bottle isn't as instantly and ghoulishly satisfying as a hanging skeleton, but for those that take the time to look there still one more thing to be found out there.
And after spending all day itching to get that bottle out there, I feel satisfied tonight that there's no pile of rotting wood left from this adventure.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
"Will the bicycle kids retaliate"?
I got my first taste of lawlessness over ten years ago at the Park n’ Swap in Apache Junction, Arizona. At that time, I was a plump elementary school student and my mother’s concern for her family's cholesterol meant that fast food was a somewhat rare indulgence. At the Park n’ Swap, however, where she’d set up shop for her first time, there was not a home-cooked meal to be found, so she gave my brother and I each a bit of money and sent us off in pursuit of sustenance at the McDonalds just across the street. Blessed with this rare opportunity, we agreed that the best course would be to pool our resources and get a twenty-piece Chicken McNugget sack. We made the transaction and, greasy bag of chicken product in hand, we set off back to mom’s table.
We’d only just reentered the Park n’ Swap, thrilled with our purchase which I held up as if it were some sort of talisman, when a kid on a bicycle swooped by and snatched the bag right out of my hand. He convened with his friends, also on bicycles, and the pack of them circled around and rode off. It took a moment for the shock of what had happened to sink in, and in that moment we realized that neither my brother nor I could catch the bicycle kids, that nobody else had either noticed or cared, and that all of the effort our salivary glands were making were now for naught in the absence of those chicken nuggets. We were hungry and powerless, and before those bicycle kids I’d never fallen so low after riding so high.
Ten years later, I was attending school in New York City and had gotten an internship at a television program. As part of the yearly Halloween festivities out at the studio, I decided to participate in the pumpkin-carving contest. I had purchased two pumpkins and spent the rest of the night fashioning a somewhat cartoony version of a dragon's head jack-o-lantern (utilizing items that could be found in my apartment, including light bulbs, paint, make-up, a black wig, and toothpicks). The pumpkin’s innards remained in a grocery bag in our kitchen for a couple of days. And as such things are wont to do, they developed a substantially foul odor. The evening before Halloween, as I set off to catch a midnight movie, I decided to take my bag of pumpkin guts and drop them in a garbage can on the way to the subway. Outside, the low fog and smattering of early trick-or-treaters lent the night an enjoyably spooky vibe. I had only made it a couple of blocks away from home, however, when a fellow walking down the sidewalk toward me body-checked me into the gate, grabbed my bag and ran off. Again, I was frozen for a moment as I confirmed that I was not hurt, that the guy had already rounded the corner, and most importantly, that he’d just stolen a rancid bag of pumpkin guts from me. And it began to dawn on me that while he was not on a bicycle, he surely must have hid it right around the corner to serve as his getaway vehicle. And that he was surely convening with his cronies and smacking his lips as they opened up the bag to get a look at their spoils. And that what had in fact happened what that I had inadvertently visited revenge on the bicycle kids ten years after the McNugget Incident.
I cannot help but wonder, though, whether this latest incident concludes this tale or I’ve instead initiated some cycle of revenge that will continue from here. Will the bicycle kids retaliate? Are we at the dawn of some sort of feud? The pumpkin wielding Hatfields and the bicycle riding McCoys? Will there be little red-haired kids shaking their fists at the kids riding hoverbikes, long after I’m gone? Let us pray that sanity prevails. And in the meantime, I’ll clutch anything delicious a little closer to me as I walk down the street.
We’d only just reentered the Park n’ Swap, thrilled with our purchase which I held up as if it were some sort of talisman, when a kid on a bicycle swooped by and snatched the bag right out of my hand. He convened with his friends, also on bicycles, and the pack of them circled around and rode off. It took a moment for the shock of what had happened to sink in, and in that moment we realized that neither my brother nor I could catch the bicycle kids, that nobody else had either noticed or cared, and that all of the effort our salivary glands were making were now for naught in the absence of those chicken nuggets. We were hungry and powerless, and before those bicycle kids I’d never fallen so low after riding so high.
Ten years later, I was attending school in New York City and had gotten an internship at a television program. As part of the yearly Halloween festivities out at the studio, I decided to participate in the pumpkin-carving contest. I had purchased two pumpkins and spent the rest of the night fashioning a somewhat cartoony version of a dragon's head jack-o-lantern (utilizing items that could be found in my apartment, including light bulbs, paint, make-up, a black wig, and toothpicks). The pumpkin’s innards remained in a grocery bag in our kitchen for a couple of days. And as such things are wont to do, they developed a substantially foul odor. The evening before Halloween, as I set off to catch a midnight movie, I decided to take my bag of pumpkin guts and drop them in a garbage can on the way to the subway. Outside, the low fog and smattering of early trick-or-treaters lent the night an enjoyably spooky vibe. I had only made it a couple of blocks away from home, however, when a fellow walking down the sidewalk toward me body-checked me into the gate, grabbed my bag and ran off. Again, I was frozen for a moment as I confirmed that I was not hurt, that the guy had already rounded the corner, and most importantly, that he’d just stolen a rancid bag of pumpkin guts from me. And it began to dawn on me that while he was not on a bicycle, he surely must have hid it right around the corner to serve as his getaway vehicle. And that he was surely convening with his cronies and smacking his lips as they opened up the bag to get a look at their spoils. And that what had in fact happened what that I had inadvertently visited revenge on the bicycle kids ten years after the McNugget Incident.
I cannot help but wonder, though, whether this latest incident concludes this tale or I’ve instead initiated some cycle of revenge that will continue from here. Will the bicycle kids retaliate? Are we at the dawn of some sort of feud? The pumpkin wielding Hatfields and the bicycle riding McCoys? Will there be little red-haired kids shaking their fists at the kids riding hoverbikes, long after I’m gone? Let us pray that sanity prevails. And in the meantime, I’ll clutch anything delicious a little closer to me as I walk down the street.
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