Alphabet
City
Along
every boulevard, every lane, ally and street – from the relatively tourist free
thrifty neighborhoods of Soho to the flooded hub of Time Square—are hundreds
upon hundreds of drainage ditches covered by a thin sturdy layer of steel
grating. Big grates of cross hatched metal, bearing the weight of hundreds of
bodies trotting across them; grates all over the city—grates that you, no
matter your age, walk across with trepidation, always fully expecting to fall
into the pit below.
Carefully,
I treaded across these grease covered masses of twisted steel for my first two
years living in the Loisaida, most often preferring to walk around them despite
the fact that these holes can sometimes blow warm air up like a city wide
radiator during the chilly winter months. Dozens of times – ok, maybe only the
half dozen times—when I would embolden myself and force my feet to cross the
girded pit-like domains I never really believed that I could actually fall
through into the cage below street level—it was, I told myself, a childlike
irrational fear—but ice is a funny thing: Apparently, there is an angle at
which, if you hit the grate with just the right amount of force and in just the
right spot, the grate will flip on itself, leaving you landing in a sludgy rat
infested hole, brimming with dog refuse and all kinds of animal piss. Even as I
tumbled backwards through the steel bars, I could feel the peculiar absence of
eyes on the street: I had managed to fall through the only deserted street in
all of Manhattan. Fortune did not smile on me that day; it chose to take a crap
on me instead.
Gradually I awoke from my landing feeling the
lightest sprinkling of rain on my face. How long I had been down here, in the
bowls of 26th street, only the ambient sounds of cars honking along
the FDR drive pervading the stale air, I had no idea; all I knew was that I was
lying on my back, smothered in a sticky foul smelling slime, and that the only
street light I could see sat burning directly above my prison in the ever
increasing darkness.
I tested my legs
and back gingerly for any breaks or sprains before hoisting myself up; I was
lucky in that at least—nothing seemed to be out of place: I had only given
myself a goose-egg that throbbed to a painful and steady beat. Just when I had
found my bearings, the drizzling rain morphed into a veritable downpour and
water began to trickle down the edges of my enclosure and pool on the dirt
caked ground.
“Kill me now,” was
all I could think to say when I saw the growing river at my feet wash a nearby
rat carcass out from behind the remains of a cardboard pizza box. Luckily for
me, I had not yet noticed that this was the only New York City grate in
existence without a spillway for the water to flow down. Moments later, I
realized all to quickly. No drain, nowhere for the water to go. Only up.
Perhaps that was when I started to panic— to panic from trying to avoid the
scruffy rat—which turned out to not be dead, only asleep, as it swam
ferociously around my knees in the ever increasing water—ever increasing
because, as it turned out, though the pit did not have a drain, it apparently
was the drain for every other grate found in the Tristate Area; water not only
flowed from a two inch pipe near the top of the wall, but also oozed, with the
smell of faintly green, toxic sludge from a rather large crack in the concrete.
Quickly the water rose past my thighs as the roar of the waterfall made even
the sounds of the city impossible to hear.
Reasonably, with
the water already reaching belly button height and with a rat clinging to the
leg of my new jeans squeaking for dear life, I lost it. Sure that I was going
to die in this hell hole, next to a rodent and every washed out takeout menu
this side of China town, I shrieked curses and prayers to that stupid lamp
blazing stoically above my head until the lamp went out all together, leaving
me in half lit city darkness. To some, the newly acquired darkness would have
been the end all of the situation, but for me, it was a blessing. Unlike a lot
of people, if I can’t see what it is I’m touching, it becomes much easier for
me to touch. Very carefully avoiding the rat that I knew was thrashing nearby,
I swam over to the nearest wall and clawed carefully over its rough surface
until I found the crack from which water was still pouring.
Without my vision, unable to see the crusty
slime I was touching, I was able to pull myself up to the top of the concrete
and out of the maelstrom below: my fingers, raw from the effort of pulling up
my entire body ached when curling themselves around the bars of the grate above
me. Xanadu it was not, but it was still a better place to be than the choppy
waters below; with my current position, I could not move the grate, but by
placing one foot against an opposing wall and flipping my entire body around I
was able to attain the leverage necessary to force the steel up and drag myself
out.
You don’t always
feel how tired you are until after you’ve finished doing something really
difficult, but this was not one of those times: as I clawed my way back up onto
the street I could feel every sinew and tendon in my arms straining for more
oxygen; when I had finally gotten out and said a small eulogy for my furry
friend, claimed by the sea, I staggered, wet, bedraggled and smelling of a
subway terminal, back to my apartment on Avenue A: It was all I could do not to
fall asleep on the welcome mat outside my door; I only barely made it to my
bed… before…
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…
©2012-2014 Lex Vex
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