Pluses and Minuses

A Hell’s Kitchen hotel was the place in 1956 he chose to hide.

As the mid-western boy barely 21, arriving in NYC

to follow in Brando and Dean’s wake and take Broadway by storm

was to find he was lost in the big city’s all-consuming fear-syndrome.

Such a shock to his small-town upbringing was this fast-lane of chaos living,

where his cheap room environ decorated most doorknobs

with “do not disturb” hanging day and night,

and its mostly itinerant guests wanting only to left alone,

he knew his anxious ambition had to not succumb.

He knew it was wrong to stand around in but underwear

staring at his reflection in the dark screen of a 12” TV

seeing nothing but himself frozen.

Such were those first of many nights…

His ancient alarm clock ticked slowly up to midnight

when he would don jeans and t-shirt,

quietly pass through the lobby and the snoring desk attendant

and then merge himself into the manic streets that were never quiet.

His haunt…

A dimly lit neighborhood dive,

where quarter priced beer and a table of condiments

fulfilled his sense of belonging, and hunger,

at least up through a second beer when he’d stealthily pocket some olives,

leave and wander the middle of the night’s deserted streets

in no hurry to return to his lonely home-away-from-home.

Eventually…

He’d slip back into his “do not disturb” room,

light his Chianti-bottle candle, stare a while at the flame,

then curl himself beneath the dingy yellow-worn sheet,

find his pillow companion and listen to the dripping faucet,

or on certain nights, the rain flaking his window with dark droplets of city grime,

while the city he was determined to understand and conquer

continued on with no curfew.

But…

Little did he know such appreciation of the unexpected

would come after sixty years of NY and Hollywood fear-survival

and the eventual discovering of who he truly was in a Spartan setting in Oregon,

gazing upon the ever-dependable mountain rain creating clear droplets

on windows void of history’s grime, merely providing honest miniscule reflections

of the pluses and minuses finding peace of mind with each other.

Like people might argue that life wouldn’t be life with the element of paradox.