The Season's Rites

The Trouble With Apartment One

Here’s the latest chapter of The Trouble With Apartment One. It recounts the first Christmas I spent in the Punk Magazine office on Fulton Street—an unlikely sanctuary I retreated to after three years of couch-surfing.

—B.F. Späth

CHRISTMAS

Sunlight crept upon me, slowly, stealthily, along the office floor—it found me sleeping, I said, as I wandered dreaming—past the city’s poison chambers, past the wrecking ball, past a battered iron door…

The day pours in ungoverned, I said—spilling through the sunken chamber, the late-lamented citadel of Punk—as though illusion itself had blossomed from the void…

Why force light upon this relic? As if the room had stood forgiven—

I’m dispossessed, I said—a parasite—I make my bed beneath
A Borrowed Moon…

It was then that something sought me out unbidden—something grave and evanescent—

It’s Christmas itself, I said—uncertain as a flickering candle—stealing in upon the prowling light…

Christmas Morning arrived all blanched-white—as silent as a shroud—

I feel displaced somehow, I said—as if the holiday were unfolding elsewhere—

In a tenement on Cleveland Place, perhaps—along a street in Soho—or a park in Petrosino Square…

It was during that strange and sleepy interlude—between Christmas and the New Year—when trade itself lies dormant—

That I found myself suspended, I said—

Between the rooftop and the street…

My final petition was swallowed up in silence—Arseny’s words seem plastered to the door—

We’ll proceed with your eviction when The Season’s Rites have ended, he said—your petition not withstanding.

The Vagrant City appears before me once again—through the foggy lens of exile—

Along the pressing corridors of Nassau Street—

I’m lost down here, I said…

I proclaim a winter toast! The Painter cried, as he swayed upon my doorstep—flushed with a reckless foaming cheer—

(I refer to him as The Painter only because he carries about him the faint odor of turpentine—and something like regret…)

The Captain’s on his way, he beamed…

A Misbegotten Fraternity has assembled here, I thought—as we took our seats against the window—

The Painter, The Captain, and The Homeless Man—

Joining in a boorish agitation—that almost passed for cheer—

Ah! This is magic, The Painter cried—good friends—a celebration—

A stock of Belgian beer—

It’s all good, he kept repeating…

A Seasonal Fugue had overtaken him, it seemed—he careened about the Bennett with a blustering holiday swagger…

The Painter kept a life of sorts, I suppose—a studio, the bottle, and a wife who bore it all in silence—

The Captain’s made a lot of money on the eighth floor, I said—he drinks himself into a stupor—

And I maintain a vigil on the rooftop—consigned half-mad to solemn rumination—while pretending not to sleep….

Cursed with An Unfortunate Horoscope—and a reluctance to make a fuss—I entertained their senseless rants without rejoinder—

I sat there like a schoolboy—slack and unprotesting—like a cardboard prop, I said.

I lack a sense of self—that’s the root of the problem, really—

My own intent is absent, I said—I move only in answer to those around me—

It’s the reason I was assigned to 10-03!

I don’t exist, it seems—I’ve Got a Sign on Me—

I’m chum for sharks, I said.

As the bottle tightened its grip upon him, an uncanny transformation stole across the Painter’s face—

A stranger appeared, I said—a malevolence—as if the spirits had dredged it up from a long-forbidden vessel…

His voice grew harsh and surly—the very shape of his head had altered—

The city itself is evil! he intoned—it drives its artists into exile—

Don’t get too comfortable, he said…

With this the Captain found his own aggression quickened—

You’ll be gone before the New Year’s ball has dropped! he told me.

They snap like feral dogs—they’ve turned against me, I said—

The Season’s Grace has ended, it seems—the Belgian beer’s are skunked!—

Christmas itself has fled…

The Bennett’s stately columns rose into the winter light—

I can see the shack upon the rooftop where I sleep—

The building itself had fastened its gaze upon me, it seemed—

In that strange Cathedral Time…