Belt. 1989.
Many a memory was born while I was wearing this belt, nestled for many years within the loops of my pants, watching with me as life happened around us. Like an old ski-lift ticket that's kept on a winter jacket, I take some measure of comfort in knowing that it's still around, if only to sit in the back of my junk drawer as a monument to days gone by. If it could talk, the belt could tell countless stories; of the places I’d been and the things I had done. But it was the circumstances surrounding the last time I wore it that I remember most. It was the day the tattered-old leather band broke, snapping in two like a broken shoelace. In an instant my junk drawer had a new tenant.
The story involves an English girl whose acquaintance I had made at a local bar in New York. It was about 2 a.m., and the out-of-towner had been spending the last night of her vacation drunkenly annoying the customers with a silly card trick that, properly executed, resulted in the appearance of the card that was being thought of, to the inside of the participant’s back pocket. The trick never quite worked (everyone knew she was palming the cards,) but that didn’t keep the roving magician from believing that everyone was amazed. “Grand trick, innit?” she’d declare in a blood-curdling, Eliza Doolittle accent at the end of each “performance.” Her self-confidence, no doubt, was aided by the ingestion of copious amounts of liquor that was being furnished by a handful of drunken men at the bar who were, as best as I could tell, taken by the young lady’s looks. I admit that the stranger’s hands rifling through my pockets in search of playing cards might’ve been a welcome adjunct to the evening had it not been for her demeanor, which, except for the drunks at the bar, repulsed everyone else there. All tolled, the consensus was that the young lady, who went by the name of May, was insufferable, and as such was accorded the nickname Mayday (as in the international distress signal), later morphing into Maydini, which was an amalgam of May + Harry Houdini, and then, finally, just Maydi for short.
At the end of the night, May invited herself to join me on my walk home, which I thought was strange considering that, up to now, I was just an innocent bystander. I didn’t seem to have a choice in the matter, given her unyielding determination, and so I accepted
my misfortune as punishment for allowing myself to be the last person at the bar.
After refusing my offer to get her a cab, we left the bar and began walking up Second Avenue in the rain. My new companion exhibited little grace as she drunkenly navigated the sidewalk like an alcoholic in an urban Ice Capades, tripping over parking meters and crashing into newspaper kiosks. “Blimey!” she’d say after encountering each obstacle. Our entire conversation consisted of May’s insistence that she had guessed my card and my protesting that she didn’t. “Yes, I did!” “No, you didn’t!” and so on. She might have seen things my way had she been sober enough to remember that I was never asked to do the trick in the first place. This could be the beginning of a long night, I lamented inwardly.
As we rounded the corner, past the old Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, I gazed wistfully at the entranceway while fantasizing of a bellhop coming out to greet my ward with accommodations for the night. "Welcome to The Bellevue, May," he’d say. "Your room is ready." Realistically, I was just hoping she’d get a sudden urge to hop into a cab and get back to wherever she belonged. “What hotel are you staying at?” I asked at regular intervals.
My unrequited overtones bounced off her like Teflon as we happened upon an old, discarded shag rug lying in the middle of the sidewalk. “Oh, look, a rug!” said May, pointing to it as though she had just stepped out of the lunar module of Apollo 11 and was surprised to see something from her own planet. Scrutinizing it, her mouth turned into an impish grin as she sidestepped
the rug and sidled up next to me. “You look like you could use a shag.” she said, coyly. While not exactly sober myself, I recognized this to be an invitation of sorts. In light of the fact that May had just thrown up on herself some blocks earlier, it made the very prospect all the more revolting. In an effort to assuage the awkward moment, I picked up the rain-sodden rug, slung it over my shoulder and proceeded to drag it all the way back to my apartment. I waited several blocks for a reaction from May. Nothing.
When we finally got to my place I asked her if she wanted to come in to "freshen up" before continuing on her way. What she really needed was a car wash. Once inside, May wasted no time making herself right at home, kicking off her shoes and setting her soggy feet on my coffee table, eager to do more card tricks. Seeing this, I made a beeline for the home stereo and threw on some punk music figuring that the girl who played Dancing Queen on the bar’s jukebox all night might soon tire of the racket and leave. This only gave May an excuse to persist with her tricks. Only now to the strains of Sham 69.
I was running out of tricks of my own when the phone rang. It was the bartender whom I knew from the bar we’d just left. He called to inform me that my little Eliza Doolittle friend wasn’t so much on vacation as she was on her honeymoon and that her newly minted
husband was at the bar looking for her. Evidently their hotel was right across the street from the bar and May had struck out on her own in the middle of the night to tie one on (and, apparently, to consecrate the marriage by abandoning her husband). When I got off the phone I told May that it was time for her to leave, then went up to my loft thinking she’d just up and go when, moments later, I found her in my bed sporting her birthday suit. While throwing parts of her body in my direction she wrestled with my belt (this is when it broke) and as her husband sat in a darkened barroom wondering where his wife was, she was in my apartment giving me her own private tour of England! “So, do you want a shag now?” she repeated. Throwing my best Hail Mary I pointed to the rain drenched rug that was now sitting in the middle of my living room and replied, “No, thanks, I already have one.” I think she got the message this time because the next thing I heard was the door slam and the word “wanker” blurted out in perfect timing with the door. It was, I have to say, her best trick of the evening.
I don’t know whatever happened to May or her husband but, as far as their marriage was concerned, I think it’s safe to say that there wasn't any magic in that deck of cards either. The next morning I woke up to a packet of playing cards strewn all over my apartment (compliments of British Airways) and a pair of undies that May left behind in her haste. Ta-da!
