Despite all the claims, David Byrne purposely made sense with “This must be the place.”
Last night I was on the treadmill and randomly selected an Arcade Fire cover of it. It didn’t sound as great. Nor did it bring me back to Lorimer Street, the night before a stomach flu bug rampage through the apartment, and two brothers—a Hugh and a Connor—flounced around the living room where we had no furniture.
The next day I flew away on a plane to see my family. I think it was Christmas time. I vomited in the toilet at my uncle’s house—the stomach flu bug had struck. I recovered and lay in the back of my dad’s truck on the drive back from Denver to Kansas and listened to Sleater Kinney on my CD player. I guess it might have been 2002.
I went back to New York a few days later. The brothers came and went around. They had lots of money. One lived above a thai food restaurant that smelled pretty awful. I never saw the other brother’s space. He was (is) a sommelier at some fancy eating establishment. The other professed his love and things got awkward. I’m pretty sure he got married and had a baby. We thought it might be nice to visit their house in the Poconos. It never happened.
We always wanted to get out of the city. But, we didn’t. It’s the pull. It’s like this lamp that you never turn off. Maybe you turn it off at 4 AM but then the sun arrives and it’s time to work, to ride the train, to start over.
Someone stole the Talking Heads DVD from our apartment. We never figured it out. Along with Lord of the Rings, we watched it dozens of times with pizza plopped all over our laps and making everything greasy after a long night out.
I miss it less and focus on stuffing all of it into a bubble. I take a bite whenever I want.
