Baltimore or Less: A Charm City Travelogue

8/12/13 - Security lines: the storm before the calm.

***

If I had my druthers, I’d prefer not to be in situations where government agents are trained to scrutinize our behavior, where their How are you?s aren’t heartfelt queries but litmus tests for sociopathic tendencies and thinly veiled nefarious intent. Under such pressure, I’m liable to avert my eyes and stutter because I know how much is riding on my response. Eye-aversion and nervous speech are on the shortlist of suspicious behavior, I recognize, which compounds the pressure focused on my brain. So as the agent progresses through our circuitous corral, feigning interest in our states of wellness, I exhort myself to Act natural, man. Be cool. You’ve got nothing to hide. You’re on a business trip. You have worldly obligations and are as committed to the rule of law and order as he is. Show him how normal you are, how doggedly you pursue truth, justice, and the American way.

Nearly to my position, so close I can see the tiny eagles refracting light on his holographic ID badge and the scuffs on his kevlar-reinforced clodhoppers, I imagine facing him straight on, and with a mighty voice in my throat declaring, “Good morning, sir! I am in perfect health thank you for asking, proud to be a native-born citizen with a wife and family to live for, and am so grateful for you and your whole squad’s—is it a squad?—service protecting us from threats domestic and foreign!” But that would be ill advised behavior, falling as it does on the same problematic shortlist. For that performance, I’d be given an express pass to the full body scan and the extensive screening questionnaire/polygraph. No, you must play it far, far cooler.

“How’re you?”

“Okay. You?”

He didn’t pause long enough to respond.

I guessed I passed.

***

Southwest’s logo is a red outlined heart, encircled in gold, and flanked by a pair of art deco golden wings. Few self-regarding corporations would emblazon their goods/services with a symbol as trite as the heart, a shape intimately associated with pre-teen doodling and decidedly puerile sentimentality.

What does it say about the airline that they insinuate their cargo is love’s organ? Was this a boardroom decision in favor of directness and sincerity, for substance over style, to eschew both popular irony and Fortune 500 sterility? Were they taking a page out of Dunkin Donuts playbook to cut to the chase and ditch the airs, or was it an appeal to low common denominator syrupy nostalgia? Or has this been their logo for decades, dating back to a time when it was popular/profitable to be innocent, and they’re just too busy/lazy to revamp it?

***

Being so far above the earth shrinks the objects of our worries like inverted binoculars. What an apt analogy for being distant! How could we be so concerned about those affairs when they can be seen as so minuscule?

Then you land and gain the proper perspective when that tiny earth jostles tinier you in your seat.

***

At the excessively named Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, I climbed aboard a completely empty light rail train. An older woman with a flotilla of bulging plastic bags anchored to her fists entered the car. Upon spotting me, she said, “God damnit” under her breath, turned around, and started to leave in a huff. At a loss for how else to rectify the situation, I offered her my seat. She thanked me and took it.

***

The ride into Baltimore: rusting ferrous electric poles, No Trespassing signs guarding areas not likely to be trespassed upon, a history lesson in graffiti styles, cracked lead paint peeling off overpasses’ concrete footings, scrub sumac groves obscuring the horizon, derelict row houses with every fourth or fifth occupied and a plastic kiddy pool growing algae in the backyard, bail bond advertisements promising rates that won’t be beat, 5” conduit pipes establishing a border between the gravel-lined tracks and the surrounding burms, chalky green transformer boxes sprouting irregularly out of the ground like mushrooms, thickets of 4’ tall grass lining ponds and backwaters, creeping vinous plants overtaking chain-link fence and razor wire after months of tenacious growth, split level homes from the Wonder Years era and Ford Tauruses in the driveways, commuter lots with a cross-section of Baltimoreans waiting within shrouds of coffee steam and cigarette smoke, progressively fatter rivulets skirted by cat-o-nine tails waving in the breeze, brilliantly white cranes rigidly posed in the midground, thousands of power lines converging on an electrical substation with dizzying geometric complexity, and buildings gradually ballooning in height until hulking sports stadiums herald the boundary of downtown proper.

***

Baltimore is a lethargic town from what I’ve seen. It’s another city shrinking within its galvanized and masonic exoskeleton. Pedestrians mill about the sidewalks, but never so many the you brush shoulders. There’s a pulse, but it’s sluggish. If the city was a person, Baltimore would be pre-Diabetic. It could be worse, but it’s nothing to crow about, either.

***

Loitering is a communal activity here. The wayward clump together like dust under furniture. 5% of the loiterers totter, buffeted by unseen winds/waves. They’re in alternate dimensions, gaping into different skies. On Eutaw Avenue, I sidestepped a man gnarled into the ‘tip me over’ position of the The Little Teapot song. He strafed precariously on sea legs.

It is heartbreaking to see these droopy-eyed, forlorn souls contorted on benches with hospital tags still around their wrists or, in one case, a tourniquet still tied around the bicep.

***

The Inner Harbor district notwithstanding, little about the city is overtly touristy. It doesn’t teem with T-shirt shops, souvenir stands, and hokey Made in China memorabilia advertising an American destination. The citizenry has taken pains to preserve their history. They haven’t succumb to the temptation to either cash in on heritage or bulldoze it. The glaring lack of commercial pandering flows from the historical conscientiousness of the city. If anything, they’ve taken the spirit of commemoration too far. Baltimore leads the nation in plaques per capita. Here stands a house in which Francis Scott Key almost spent the night. In this gutter Edgar Allan Poe passed out. Before you is an abandoned building where Homicide: Life on the Streets filmed a deleted scene.

***

Here, as elsewhere, locals pronounce their city’s name differently than phonetics would dictate. All natives drop the ‘t’ to say Bawl-ih-more. Some excise entire syllables and call their town Bawl-mer. This is a fantastic way to differentiate the in-crowd from the out-crowd.

***

A study of cool: brick walls painted matte black, dilapidated furniture—frames also painted black—with cream upholstery, long metal benches and tables studded in the style of vintage trunks, shiny turquoise chairs sans padding, an obscure doo-wop single playing overhead, condensation collecting inside terrariums full of ferns and mosses, a pair of potted banana trees with fronds in various stages of unfurling, a flat black counter removed a royally intimidating 30’ from the entrance so that newcomers must run a gauntlet of looks—real or imagined—to place an order, a side table covered in mirrored panels, gilded surfaces everywhere—roof beams, tabletops, the underside of industrial single bulb light  fixtures, a precariously low hanging chandelier with six low wattage candle bulbs glowing orange, Pennies from Heaven emanating from above, an industrial fan oscillating feebly in a corner, a long Baroque table topped with large gilded antelope heads, the heads serving as a base for a horizontally laid 40” x 80” piece of glass atop which stand three proportionally dwarfed one lb. bags of coffee, a barista with a pompadour, sideburns, Buddy Holly glasses, and a precious few words for his customers, generic French cafe music with accordion accompaniment filling the space, a knockoff Eames chair too center-stage to be sat upon, a bookcase full of colorful, unrefridgerated sodas bottled by independent purveyors, a second fan aimed to cause one of the gilded light fixtures to gently rock as though possessed, a pair of students technically facing each other but truly facing their own laptops, each with white wires hanging from their ears, half studying, half perusing the web, Ella Fitzgerald crooning about summertime, the entire space dramatically backlit by a 9 x 4 grid of frosted window panes—the sum total designed to transport patrons back to an idealized time in some adjacent universe where desirability, gravitas, and chique poverty melded into a invisible slurry and overflowed upon all who entered.

***

Overheard

Woman [to woman]: He’s gonna smell like that for six months.

***

Overheard

Woman [to boy]: You go back to school on the 28th and if I hear you can’t keep your hands to yourself and if you’re busy worrying about who called you what, I’ma..

***

Overheard

Man [to headset or no one]: I took her to a wedding and I said kiss my ass.

[sucks through teeth]

Down at the penitentiary kiss my ass.

[sucks through teeth]

That shit’ll kill you kiss my ass.

[sucks through teeth]

I tell you he’s a priest kiss my ass.

***

No phenomenon has exacerbated my paranoia more acutely than a police helicopter circling directly above my coordinates.

***

One would think sitting at a bus stop would suffice to signal a bus to stop for you. Evidently, one would be wrong.

***

“You’re in Room 2018, which is on the twentieth floor. To get there, take the second bank of elevators on your left,” is what the concierge said to me when I checked in to the hotel. Take the second bank of elevators I did and turned left at the fork thanks to a sign clarifying ← 2000-2022. On my right 2022. On my left 2021. On my right 2020. On my left 2019. On my right 2016. On my right 2017. On my right 2014. What? That can’t be right. Did I miss it? Could I have? I turned around on my blistered feet.

2014, 2017, 2016, 2019, 2020, 2021...

You’ve got to be kidding me! Where the hell is 2018? Did I mishear him? I consulted the keycard envelope upon which was written 2018. I groped for clues. There was one room lacking the numerical plaque to the left of the door frame where 2018 could be, but whether it was the missing room was an open question. From the irregular gaps between the doors, I could tell the rooms were different sizes. Some were suites. Some were standard. The unmarked door could very well have been an auxiliary exit or a storage closet. More telling, the wallpaper where the sign would/should be affixed was pristine. It betrayed no marks of having been lately disturbed by a late night hooligan’s vandalizing or by a maintenance employee’s jimmying.

Having worn as thin as my soles from a many-mile expedition, I risked a swipe.

As the card slid into place, I had a vision of a terrible mix-up where my card had been mistakenly programmed for the obsolete 2018. I feared I was sliding my card into the reader of what had since become an annex of 2016 and was currently rented to nefarious individuals up to no good or else a randy couple engaging in that menage-a-trois they’ve so long lusted after. I dreamed that my card unlocked a portal to a world of licentiousness, that merely pushing the door open would thereby implicate me in the sort of dreadful misdeeds that occur in expensive hotels. I, the unwitting accomplice, would be incriminated into illicit activity in a foreign jurisdiction by a set of fingerprints, and would be unable to defend myself against the aiding and abetting charges, the prosecutor doing as all Deputies of the Month do and throwing the book at the chump with out of state plates. All of this would result in a warrant and my fuzzy, security-camera-captured visage pasted in post offices, wherefore I would never be welcome in the Charm City again, even after the posters’ eventual removal because the interrupted parties in 2016, having done their time behind bars or taken their licks in the press depending on whatever unspeakable crime I barged in on, circulated promise of a handsome reward on my head within Bawlmer’s seediest bars.

The green LED flashed. I cautiously turned the handle and swung the door open. The room was dark and empty.

This must be me.

***

Lying down to sleep, it occurred to me I forgot something. I had no comb. How could I present myself to a convention full of superiors with my hair mussed and shoddily parted? No one would take me seriously. Kiss that promotion goodbye, Kramer. The bottom of the ladder suits you.

I flipped on the bedside lamp and pushed the telephone button for the front desk.

“Hi. I don’t know how this works but, um, do you have a cheap comb you could give me?” I asked the concierge.

“Yes sir, we do. I’ll send one up to your room shortly.”

“That won’t cost anything, right?”

“No sir. It’s complimentary.”

“Oh. Okay. Great. Thanks.”

To pass the time, I flipped on the television. I didn’t make it past my second option. The first channel up from the default Pay-Per-View station stunned me. Generically labeled ‘Analog 1’, the channel showcased underwater footage.

Despite the VHS quality of the video, I thought I landed on a nature special. Minutes transpiring and no graphical disruptions or baritone interjections, I concluded I wasn’t being educated. No commercials. No dialogue. No sudden movements. Not even a logo in the corner of the screen. Never in my life had I encountered this kind of channel. It was a channel built to induce somnolence, a white noise machine for the eyes as well the ears. This was the insomniac traveler’s refuge, a resting place for the over-caffeinated, a televisual hammock for the jet-lagged. It was a channel meant to lose viewers rather than retain them.

Everything about the station was low budget. A stationary and zoomless camera recorded the center of an aquarium. The sets weren’t tropical saltwater aquariums with sea anemones, coral, and authentic seaweed. They were three gallon models like those uncles across the country haven’t consistently stocked since the 80s. Unnaturally black, white, or cobalt vinyl provided the backdrop and neon or chalky green pebbles had been sprinkled along the floor. The stars weren’t prestigious fish pulsating with bioluminesnce or maneuvering with billowy fins. They were your pet store guppy fair, dumbly roaming in irregular paths towards nothing and away from nothing.

The clip’s soundtrack was disturbing, a mash-up of the noise you hear at a dentist’s office when they suck out the blood/spit/water cocktail in your mouth and the sound of water dripping that universally frightens homeowners. The action was minimal and formulaic. The fish sank and rose, bounced off each other, flexed their flippers, swam off stage, swam on stage, etc.

Without warning or discernible cause, the feed abruptly switched to another aquarium. A different menagerie of generic fish, slowly whorling to their own rhythms, performed. 15 seconds later, another switch revealed a similar but unique scene. When the cycle completed and footage returned to a recognizable tank, the action picked up precisely where it left off.

To my surprise, Analog 1 wasn’t the snoozer it strived to be. I found myself becoming involved in the aquatic narratives. Like an award-winning actor, the fish left me wanting more. What happened to the blue one? He was ascending but the black ones were in his way. Did he make it to the top? The conflicts were compelling, too. Fish of the same specie nearly came to the piscine blows over a territorial (hydraulic?) dispute. And all for what? The tragic nature of the drama sunk in the longer I watched. Here was a race of Oedipi bereft of the nobility of station. Here was a school of Sysiphi not extended the privilege of a singular, defined sentence. The fish’s actions were for naught. I never even saw them feed! They were brutes, animate atoms bouncing entropically. There was no escape, no ultimate victories or defeats. The whole channel struck me as microcosmic and hellish, a perversion of gladitorial combat, a drawn-out blood sport where no blood is drawn but where a captive death awaits all combatants, the lethargic warriors to be ignominiously disposed of like so much excrement. Theirs was a godless universe. I begun to despair.

The spell broke at the 12 minute mark. The soundtrack stopped. The fish floated in eerie silence. I blinked like a patient after a hypnotist’s snap. What was I doing? Then, the loop restarted and I was drawn back in. Why was the sound dissociated from the video? Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to mike the aquariums the crew was filming? There was much to ponder here, but I couldn’t ferret it out because at that time there came a gentle rapping at my door.

“Your comb, Mr. Ritter.”

“Ah, yes. Thank you.”

8/13/13 - A Baltimore thing: men lacing tennis shoes halfway up the eyelets and tying, modifying them into slip-ons.

***

Overheard

Mother [to boy]: Let’s go put your make-up on.

***

Overheard

Woman [to woman]: I need a job that pays enough so that I can do what I want afterwards.

***

In my 24 hours here, I’ve only been greeted once by persons not employed to greet. That lone occasion was next to a pond in Patterson Park. A shirtless youth and his skateboard-toting compatriot said hello when I accidentally intruded upon their hangout. Their relative effusion made their closed red cooler all the more shady since what friendly teenagers bring coolers full of water, milk, or other soft drinks to secluded public locations hidden from parental and law enforcing view alike? Returning to my point, though: if we give them the benefit of the doubt and construe their salutations as earnest, still one is a starkly slight number. What gives?

First, a geographical aside that eventually becomes pertinent. The east coast in America is not identical with the “East Coast.” Although Georgia has an Atlantic shoreline, it doesn’t self-identify as eastern. I get the sense that everything below Virginia is southern first and eastern second, notwithstanding Florida. (Florida, were it to check a box on a geographical survey would do well mark Other since the South and East won’t claim allegiance with it.) Baltimore, then, is eastern. The East Coast is renowned elsewhere for its rude inhabitants. Baltimoreans, despite their refusal to verbally or otherwise acknowledge passersby, don’t properly exhibit that infamous coastal trait. Or if what I’ve experienced is actually what the rest of the country is wont to bemoan, then there’s been a huge misunderstanding.

The behavior on display here isn’t rude per se. It’s reserved. It’s withdrawn. What we have here is isolationism on a personal scale. There’s no hint of antagonism, no flagrant abuse of private space, no pointed glares, and certainly no bird-flipping, horn-honking, or expletive-laden dress downs.

Rather, if the city had a formulated ethos it would be “Let live and live,” with the emphasis on the allowance for others. Baltimoreans respect my right to solitude to a fanatical degree. It’s as though they have no radar for others, no special awareness of human proximity. Even the homeless hardly panhandle.

My observation also made retrospective sense out of a strange situation I experienced yesterday in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood. On a corner near the Walters Art Museum, a black man in his sixties wearing khaki pants, an ecru oxford, and golden bow tie, stood holding a periodical folded in a manner hindering his own readability. A neat stack of other papers were piled to his right. I presumed he was hocking them. I girded myself to graciously decline his offer. When I drew closer, though, he didn’t engage me. All he did to make the pitch was stare into the landscape, level-headed and statuesque, with the paper displayed at his left side, saying without words or deeds but letting the context do the talking, “You and I both know what I’m doing here. Buy one or don’t. It makes no difference to me.”

Once this defining characteristic struck me, I put it to the test. I started pouring on my midwestern amiability. I looked people in the eye—or tried to. Most didn’t notice. For the ones who did, I smiled. They didn’t return it. And now we may have alighted upon the cause for the rest of America’s oriental indictment. Whether or not membership to society demands cognition of people, it certainly demands recognition. You may not believe you have a duty to address others but you certainly have a duty to do something if an other addresses you. Rudeness is not reciprocating. He/she has already put in the effort of addressing you. Don’t stiff them. It’s like accepting a gift without saying thank you.

***

In the neighborhood of Little Italy, I watched a cop on the beat actually twirl his billy club. His motion was so slight, so nonchalant, yet the movement of the stick was so great, so blurred, I was transfixed. He was the lovechild of drum major and wild west gunslinger. I nearly recorded a video clip but thought better of it. I recalled police aren’t keen on having anything pointed at them.

***

Evidence supporting the proposition a foreign culture can endure within limited confines: the only exception I’ve come across to this unspoken Keep to Yourself rule was in Little Italy. Milling about those streets for an hour, I was hailed twice. Both times, the greeters were older denizens settled on benches in front of their homes. This case of isolationism within isolationism paradoxically yielded a mindset of engagement.

8/14/13 - All of the groan-worthy tedium of traffic reports in your hometown, all the predictable snarls, usual back ups, and everyday bottlenecks are transformed into a titillating thriller when out-of-town. The exotic street names, the lingo, and the hurried intensity of the reporter’s pronouncements arouse fascination. You almost want to be there, to see firsthand what the stink is all about.

***

Either there isn’t much in the way of competition, or Baltimoreans love their Whole Foods. The vast majority of grocery bags I’ve seen are branded with its name and logo. Even people outside of their stereotypical customers (i.e., lower income individuals) are carrying bags through modest parts of town.

***

Self-consciousness about Halloween colors does not obtain here. Orioles fans sport the orange and black year round.

***

Irrational: I feel under greater surveillance in a city with police helicopters than I do in my home, yet apparently the government and Big Data know far more about me than any officer with a pair of binoculars could ever glean in the fraction of a second he/she has to spy on little old me. But it’s the dangers we see that grab our attention, isn’t it?

***

“Come enter our raffle! We’ll be picking a winner at the awards luncheon today.” I told anyone who would listen. (I am in Baltimore on business. Part of my mission is to promote next year’s conference, which happens to be in my hometown.) My first shift coincided with an educational session, which meant that any of the passersby I snagged were either mid-bathroom break or else cutting class.

Out of a sense of obligation, they joined me to hear a brief synopsis of St. Louis’ many wonders. Each nodded with approval, placating me as my mother would. Once my pitch was over, I reminded them of the raffle. All four visitors replied with variants of the same refrain. “Oh, I already entered yesterday.” Very well, then. You passed the test. Nice meeting you. Thanks for stopping by.

I knew my time was at an end when the foot traffic finally increased. Three of my fellow St. Louisans gravitated toward me fresh from learning about topics too obscure to relay. While I was confabulating with them about my shift’s meager happenings, a rotund gentleman approached our table. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him grab the wheel of raffle tickets, uncoil eight, and set about feverishly writing his name and contact information on the back of each.

My contributions to the chatter around me waned. I was dumbfounded by his audacity. Who did he think he was rigging the game like that? From the looks of it, he presumed he could get his way by force.

Spotting someone he knew milling around, he beckoned her to his side. “Lisa! Lisa! Git ova heah!” He unwound six tickets, tore them off, and put them on the table for her. “Gotta increase ya chances!”  

I seethed quietly to myself. It’s not enough to bamboozle solo. He enabled another’s downfall. My disdain couldn’t have been more concentrated by this point. Even his show of altruism was a sham. He ensured his own odds for victory would be better than the woman’s he deigned to aid. She didn’t care, though. Like a worthy subordinate, she followed orders.

For all of my outrage, I could not stir myself to intercede. What would I bring down on my head if I confronted him? I could hear my coworkers protest. “What are you doing, Matthew? What’s it to you? Let the man play.” Worse still, the cheater could be a threat. A man who would stoop to fleecing his peers might well possess other character flaws like vindictiveness. “Don’t go ta St. Louiz. They’ra buncha jerks ova deh.” Word would spread that I was to blame for his unfavorable impression. Our registration numbers consequently falling below their targets, I’d be called into my boss’ boss’ boss’ office to explain why I besmirched our town’s good name. On a more basic level, I was enfeebled before his girth. I had to cross an exceptional distance to engage him. His head was more than a foot behind the apex of his stomach.  I would have had to lean in to an awkwardly obtuse angle at the waist to get in his face, which I imagined would be requisite to dissuade someone so brazen.

While I ineffectually raged, the pair crossed their T’s and dotted theirs I’s.The deed done, they sprinkled their entries into the fishbowl and left. My coworkers and I disbursed to the ceremony toting the tainted goods.

While the long list of accolades were disbursed and the room of 200 golf-clapped, I reflected on the episode. This is how evil spreads: by conscription. It commands others to dirty their hands and neglects to mention alternatives. But there are sins of commission and sins of omission. This is how evil wins: when theoretically good people do nothing. I knew what the man was doing was wrong while he was doing it, but I assessed the negative consequences of stopping him to be too risky.

My contemplation ceased when the bowl was carried on stage. No one’s breath was more bated than mine. The hand went in. The hand came out with a red slip of paper. A woman from Utah took the basket of Switzer licorice, Billy Goat chips, a Budweiser Koozie, and other chintzy provincial memorabilia home with her. Character, for some people, has less than a $40 value.

***

Left to my own devices that night for dinner, I sought out Maryland’s famed blue crabs. Having pummeled my meal with a wooden mallet, soused innocent bystanders with crab juice, lacerated my dermis with crab shell, discarded unspeakable bowel-related organs and a primitive lung-type-things, pried out shards of edible flesh, and repeating the gruesome process until frustration won out over hunger, I wondered why crustaceans were considered a delicacy.

***

Mission accomplished, I exited out the Lexington Market’s back door and hung a right. I immediately discovered my route was a mistake. Unlike the front, which was congested with paying customers as well as dazed wanderers, the back could have been a set for one of George A. Romero’s flicks. A cadre of men, intimidating by its numbers alone, congregated ahead of me on the sidewalk. I gulped.

Carried on by momentum’s pacing, I weighed my options. Stay on course or take evasive maneuvers. The opposite sidewalk was empty. I could cross over and enjoy less tense passage to Paca Street.  But was diversion appropriate? What message would it send?

I remembered as a youth, walking the family’s pet boxer. Without fail, a neighbor of mine would flee to the other side of the street when they saw us coming. They were only trying to protect themselves, but they were inadvertently offending me, too. What was their problem? She was a sweet dog—all 65 lbs. of her. She was leashed and trotting deferentially as well-trained dogs do. What about her appeared so dangerous? Just because she’s large doesn’t mean she’s aggressive. Besides, what could they hope to accomplish by putting distance between us? If she was so blood thirsty, would an extra twenty feet really spare them from an attack? Given her top speed, they couldn’t have secured more than three extra seconds of bodily integrity. And what about me, her owner? Why didn’t they trust me? Would I take an animal out into the world, risk litigation and outrageously high punitive damages, if she posed such a threat?

And so, now, what was my problem?

I kept the course. I threaded the needle between the idlers. A few of us went so far as to exchange glances. I came through unscathed.

8/15/13 - “What have you done?” my stomach asked my brain bright and early Thursday morning. I endured the first few hours of consciousness on a strict diet of water and unsweetened whole grains. When the time to check out came, my guts revolted. I nearly vomited whilst gathering my personal effects. I was in no shape to sight-see.

Marriott, have mercy on me!

I pushed the front desk button. A man answered.

“Hello. I am not feeling uh well. What’s the latest I can stay in my room?”

“Today, sir, you may check out no later than one.”

“Oh… Okay. I’ll be down by one, then.”

My digestive system had an hour to settle down. I did all that was in my power, which didn’t amount to much. I drew the shades, lay on my left side, and pulled my knees up. I prayed for relief. I tried to think calming thoughts.

One o’clock came like the grim reaper. I sat up, sipped tepid water, and breathed meditatively. With stoical resignation, I strapped my luggage on and exited. The door’s spring-loaded closure sounded cruelly definitive. Downstairs, the man from the phone was waiting for me. I returned the cards to 2018 and signed papers with aplomb. He wished me bon voyage. I had been evicted in a dignified manner. No large boot to the rear. No arms tossing me to the sidewalk. No revolving door set whirring top-like from my ejection. In a show that harkened to Grecian capital punishment, I voluntarily exiled myself. I became temporarily homeless. I had no bed, no resting place, no refuge.

Moving, I found, was inherently nauseating. I trudged to a nearby bench that faced the National Katyn Memorial. Seated, I doubled over like a dead spider curling inward. The sun baked my clothes. I waited for the hours to pass until I was due at the airport, paralyzed by gastronomical distress, all trying desperately not to smell a single scent (all of them proving disagreeable).

Staring at the aggregate concrete, I realize how doubly horrible it must be to be both sick and destitute. You have nowhere private in which to recover. Anyone can see you writhe and if you look you can see them withhold pity from you because of trained apathy. Worse still, you have no place quiet and discreet in which to manage your symptoms. When I resolved to empty my tummy of what ailed it, I could retreat into climate controlled environs. I wasn’t questioned in my trek to the public restrooms near the hotel’s front counter because the staff recognized me. I was allowed the luxury of sticking my finger down my throat to evacuate the disagreeable crab meat from my system within a clean stall, glossy marble floors, and a dark-stained solid wood door. I could sanitize my hands before and after. I could wash my face and rinse my mouth. No one entered, so my embarrassing secret could stay under wraps. I was free to rejoin the world to be esteemed afresh. But if I were homeless, I’d have been summarily turned out. I’d have been forced to puke in some filthy alley or, if I could hold out, into a park trash can. The acrid taste in my mouth prolong my misery and I’d feel as I was: dismal.

***

Like most urban green space, the park near Broadway Pier in the Fell’s Point neighborhood is populated with indigent people. Since the shade-draped benches hadn’t been outfitted with deterrents such as mid-bench arm rests or uncomfortably sculpted seats, they served as make-shift beds. At midday, the conscious ones were doing the same as I was: people-watching.

In my peripheral field, I could sense a homeless man stand and come my way. I swiveled my head to see him more fully but not so far so as to face him. His holey T shirt and frayed jeans were faded black. His skin was as tanned as his hair was bleached. I tracked his approach with foreboding. I prepared my retorts. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t have any change.” “I’m all out.” I abhor disappointing people, yet I do—especially people in his condition.

To my surprise, he stopped short. He reached down at the base of a locust tree and clasped a piece of trash. He deposited it in a nearby can. He surveyed his surroundings for other refuse. He picked up a plastic spoon a boy had earlier launched mid-melt-down nearby the snow cone stand and threw it away, too.

The park wasn’t his home in the traditional sense, but it was a home all the same. I was shamefaced.

***

A black man with a naturally occurring Friar Tuck haircut hunched over an electric guitar in the public square. His amplifier’s cord tapped an unknown power source. Wholly absorbed and without so much as a hat to collect change, he let fly lick after lick with a savant’s skill. I know this. What is this? Muddy Waters? No. Chuck Berry? No. BB King? No.

Hotel California. Take It Easy. Lyin’ Eyes. Whether for his audience or for the musician, he progressed through The Eagles songbook.

***

On my way back to the B/WITM Airport, I met a child leading the procession of his family down the bus’s aisle. He held an object up for my inspection as high as his two foot frame would allow.

“What do you have there?”

He stopped and beamed. “A KEY!”

“Really? What’s it a key to?”

He was too enraptured to respond.

“Is it a key to your house?”

“NO!”

“Is it a key to your car?”

“NO!”

“Well, then, I’m out of guesses. What’s it a key to?”

His father put his hands on the boy’s shoulder and bent to advise him. Judging from his answer, the boy kept his own counsel.

“You put it in like this,” [stabs the air] “and you tuhn it like this.” [twists his wrist]

[a chorus of chuckles]

“Yes, that’s how it works.”

The boy delighted in his possession. More than any of the specifics, it was his. Dallying with the details didn’t interest him. He didn’t care about the object’s origin and destination. Material, efficient, formal, and final causes be damned.

This is joy: embrace a being without the need for prosaic explanation or verbose analysis.

***

With two hours until my flight, I stood by the southbound light rail track. A gentleman approached me and asked if I had change for a five. (He showed me the bill in question to bolster his credibility.) I did not. He proceeded to ask me how much money I had. This a french kiss applied when a handshake was in order. I clammed up. With only three ones and a ten in my pocket, I didn’t possess the means to help him. Rather than get mired in the fine points, I lied and said I didn’t have any money.

“What’d you buy that with?” he asked, pointing to my Teriyaki chicken wrap.

Crap. He caught me. I improvised. “Oh this? This was five dollars on the nose... I knew how much it cost so that’s how much I brought with me to the market.”

He elaborated on his plight. He needed ones to get an MTA pass to return home. I was pretty sure the ticket machines could handle small bills, but I took him at his word.

“Have you tried to break the five someplace? Up the street I think I saw a donut shop. Or there’s a uh [walks into the street to check] 7-11 on the corner.”

“I tried at Dunkin Donuts but they told me I hadda buy something and I didn’t wanna spend my money.”

“Hm.” I was plum out of ideas. We reached an impasse.

He invited me to use the ATM up the way. I could get cash for him there. Now he was whisking me to his boudoir without asking my name. With that, I became incredulous. I’ve never known an ATM to dispense the denomination he claimed to be needing. I judged him desirous of more than change. He was going to rob me in broad daylight. I became thoroughly uncomfortable. Before me stood a man whose tune would change the instant I entered my 4-digit PIN. I foresaw violent threats. Was he armed? This is how you end up on the news.

My conscience chided me. Do unto others, Matthew. Do unto others.

“No, no. That’s alright… I’ll go and try to get you some change by myself.”

“Where you going? To the 7-11?”

“Uh yeah.”

Fearing I’d miss my train and thereby my plane, I popped in the closer Dunkin Donuts instead. They wouldn’t make change for a man in a stained tank top, but maybe they’d make change for me. I was third in line. I peered out the storefront almost constantly, ready to bolt after my ride. I swapped a Hamilton for ten Washingtons once it was my turn. Nothing to it.

I headed back to the MTA kiosk prepared to make someone’s day. To my surprise, the fellow had vanished. Did this mean I was right or wrong about his intentions? Had he cut his losses and moved on to a different stooge? Was he lying in wait by an alley near the 7-11?  

Steel-on-steel screech announced the train’s approach. I tucked my fattened wallet into my pocket and buttoned.

***

Down a dimly lit blasé corridor I went after flying over the Gateway to the West. I passed a sign that declared in stark, bold print No Re-Entry. Dread momentarily overwhelmed me. I was suddenly weary of continuing. If I proceeded to cross this upcoming threshold, I would be doing so permanently. I had no boarding pass, so I had no business in Terminal 2. There was no going back.

My legs outpacing my mind, I continued into the baggage claim area. On the way to Passenger Pick-up, I pondered my perturbation.

Had I realized on the wrong side of the line between secured and unsecured zones that I had dropped, say, my favorite pen somewhere near the men’s room, there was nothing I could do to reclaim it. If I sprinted as quickly as I could to snatch my pen off the ground, I wouldn’t make it 20 yards. If I pleaded, “I dropped my pen! It’s my favorite! I’ll only be a minute! Don’t mind me!” I’d fare no better. Surely I’d be tackled and drug to a room with one-way glass, a closed-circuit camera in the corner, and a knob that locks from the outside for questioning. The officers wouldn’t even grant me my lone wish to at least check for a black rollerball pen, rectangular in shape, by the Cinnabun. They wouldn’t be interested in exonerating me. Didn’t I read the sign? Didn’t I know I had broken multiple laws for unauthorized regress post egress?

Of course I hadn’t left anything behind—at least not anything tangible. I’m far too neurotic to be careless. I check my pockets every two minutes or less. What the sign communicated wasn’t a specific warning about the consequences turning around but a much more general message. What I left behind was something vague and ambiguous, some huge and ever expanding truth of which I was an infinitesimal yet increasingly subsumed part.

An optimistic old saw insists, “When one door closes, another opens up,” but that doesn’t change the fact that the first door is shut, bolted, and there’s no crowbar strong enough to pry it open. Time is unidirectional. Heraclitus asserts, “You cannot step twice into the same river,” but that emphasizes the river’s alterations. Part of what’s so grating about the rule is that you can’t do it. It’s not just the river that’s passing. It’s you, too.

Mature as we are, familiar as we’ve become, there are still moments when sheer prohibition beguiles us. We’d rather not be reminded of one-way passages. Even if there’s nothing back there for you, you’d appreciate the option. How many tantrums are thrown, not because the child can’t have the toy or stay up later, but because the child simply can’t?

Such signs (Do Not Enter, Dead End, Off Limits, Staff Only, etc.) are banal references to fundamental truths. My nano-frantic response was from deep within me—brain-stem deep, bottom of the heart deep, shrouded unconscious deep. It was a reflexive revulsion to my powerlessness and coerced surrender. It was the futile rebellion followed by the superfluous resignation I cycle through when confronted by facts not of my making and rules not of my choosing.

Spiritually, I drifted in the existential doldrums created by a refresher on being human, on aging, and on frailty. Corporeally, I reached the sliding doors that emptied out into the familiar world. When I saw my wife behind the wheel round the bend, my two-pronged nature was reconciled. I was home.

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