The Waking City

It is a snowy, blustery day. Cold, crisp, clear skies over the city skyline of New York City. Snow flurries from the sky as the wind kicks up. We see gusts of freezing air blow past the Chrysler Building, down through streets of honking cabs “hey, c’mon, get outta the way” and miserable looking pedestrians, who crowd into the tunnels of the subways pack. All of a sudden, their winter coats trapping them in boxes of body odor and heat stuffed together on their morning commute. Down through the tunnels, a blast of laundry mixed with hot garbage and the sweet smell of the hot nuts stands. Going through the hellish wasteland in Times Square, following snow again, over the Brooklyn Bridge through neighborhoods where families tuck their little bundled infants through strollers and walk down little lanes of trees. Back through neighborhoods, where, again, little corner stores sell hot bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches to morning commuters, a vendor yells through the streets “A bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, the best thing you ever fucking ate. It cost what? $2.50 That’s a deal.” Following the wind and it’s early to mid-December morning in New York City. A city where so many people dream of coming and making a life for themselves. And it’s always felt a little bit like maybe, just around the corner, there’s a little bit of magic.

A little whisk of snow picks up and travels all the way down, up through Williamsburg where the hipsters still dwell, but mostly the rich people that have now come and displaced those hipsters. And travel into a little neighborhood called Greenpoint, an area of bars and partying. There’s rooftop places that have now been shuttered up for the winter, but also a few tenacious places that have heating lamps up so people for some reason can still be on a rooftop bar in mid-December. The whisp of snow heads very close to the water. There is a dingy little doctor’s office. This doctor’s office might not be super accredited, and it might not even be billed or listed as necessarily a doctor’s office. It’s in a corner of a warehouse, way down by the water. The snow settles on a windowsill. In a dingy, little, medical office, sits Mikey the Mule. Mikey is a drug dealer, when promoting himself he likes to say”Just let me know what you’re trying to track down because I’m sure I can get it. I sell everything and I personally take even more. There is not an errand I can’t run after a fistful of mushrooms.” He’s wearing a cowboy hat and yellow shades because they help him with his seasonal affective disorder. He’s not doing well on the inside. Just did go through a breakup. He thinks he’s lost the one and she’s thriving. Mikey is sitting on a little roll out paper on the bed. He’s got his phone in his hand. Looking at his text history with Diana. It’s not looking great. It’s a big wall of him with time stamps going back for a couple weeks. Every few messages begins with “and one more thing”. He thinks to himself “I probably just should have started writing these things in a note and saving it to draft, but I didn’t. And she just wrote back ‘OK.’ “ The door opens up and Dr. Boris Christov walks in. Dr. Boris is a very kind but intimidating looking guy. He has great, broad shouldered with huge hairy arms that kind down a little bit longer than they should. He looks like he’s got strangling hands. He has a bunch of tattoos of weird dragons wrapped around his arms. He’s got Cyrillic lettering in them. He’s got a white shirt with a black tie. No doctor’s coat. A big square jaw with a nose that got busted up over years of illegal boxing matches, salt and pepper hair in a flop, Extremely thick rimmed black glasses. His eyes are magnified a little bit in his head, making him look a little bit goofy. Mikey has worked with Dr. Boris for a while. His supplier, Z3N, recommended him. Dr. Boris works with people who need medical help for cash and not on the books.

The ‘good’ doctor walks in with a little chart and asks “OK, Michael, how’s it going?” Mikey answers “Oh, it’s good, man.” “Yeah? You feeling all right? Your test results do not indicate that this is true.” Mumbling Mikey responds with “What do you mean?” “Well, I’m looking here. I guess we’ll start with the small stuff. Your vitamin levels are not great. What have you been eating recently?” “well, I found out, if you microwave cheese on a plate you can peel it off and then it’s like a crispy—like a crispy cracker”, Dr Boris writes down a few notes “Oh, boy. OK. You know you should not be eating just cheese, especially microwaved. You thought—you can’t get—you could go down to the corner store and get the microwave toaster. At least the cheese will be more crisp.” Mikey sighs”Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you’re right. Yeah, I could probably eat a salad or something.” The doctor ticks something off his chart “So, good news as well. It look like you’re totally healed up from the top surgery, which is great. Congratulations.” Mikey smiles “Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Now I’m ready to... fuck.” Mikey starts to cry, Boris, looking a little out of place says “Oh, boy. OK, Mikey. OK, Mikey.” Boris comes over and gingerly wraps his giant arms around him and pats him on the back of the head. Mikey is inconsolable. He’s weeping in his arms right now. “Hey, buddy. It’s OK. Hey, it’s hard. Tell Dr. Boris what happened.” Wiping his tears away Mikey responds “Yeah, I know. It’s fine. It’s fine.” “It’s clearly not fine.” “Yeah. I’m just happy to be alive.” Boris pulls up a chair and nods, knowingly not noticing Mikey reaching into his satchel bag for a mushroom cap. Boris sympathetically says “Enemy gang find out where you live? Now you have to move? Is that what’s going on?” “Oh, no, actually, um” he takes a mushroom Boris quickly notices and asks “What you just eat? What did you just eat in your mouth?” Mikey responds muffled “a vegetable”. Boris snags it, and then he says “This hallucinogenic. Mikey! You are on antipsychotic medication.” “Yeah, I know. That’s why it’s totally safe to do this.” Boris looks confused “Mikey, I don’t—” Mikey interrupts “I can take as much psilocybin as I want. I’ve got the remedy.” “oh my gosh Mikey, when is the last time you slept?” “I haven’t really been sleeping. Yeah, I have—right before I’m about to fall asleep, if I think of something scary or sad, I just stay up and then all of a sudden, it’s 5:40 AM, and it’s like I might as well microwave some cheese and start my morning, you know?” Boris scratches his head. “Michael, I’m going to just run through a checklist real quick here, if I can.” “Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Doc.” “You have not slept in a couple days. It’s affecting your health. Sleep is most necessary part of recuperation.” Mikey takes another mushroom “Don’t take another mushroom. One, honestly, even for a good time, one is fine.” Mikey muffled “Yeah.” Boris ticks off a box “You are actively doing recreational drugs. You have not slept in days. You are on antipsychotic medication. You are also taking hormone treatment—you’re taking male hormones.” “Yeah.” “So, this in the medical profession, we would say is a lot going on. Right?” Mikey nods “Mm-hmmm.” “I don’t think that is good for you. You need to—I can’t believe I’m going to say this. You need to find a way to get in touch with yourself because you are trying to medicate for a situation which medicine maybe cannot treat.” “I kind of get what you’re saying.”Mikey attempts to take another mushroom, Boris looks up, “Maybe a therapist—that’s a third one!” Boris slams a meaty hand onto Mikeys back and the mushroom pops out. He looks at Mikey and says “Look, I’m going to go and try to get a stomach pump because you’re going to straight up go insane if you process those mushrooms. I’m going to be right back.” “All right. Thank you.” Boris leaves the room. Mikey look up and starts to get annoyed by the sounds of water dripping, “typical dingy old building” he thinks to himself, he looks over in the corner and he sees it. There is a radiator, which is dripping a drop of water up and it’s hitting the ceiling. “righteous” he whispers to himself, a puddle slowly starts to form on the ceiling. And in a reflection of that ceiling puddle. There’s a little New York Public Health poster on the wall. And the reflection of the healthy sporty guy in a park turns to look at him and says: hey Mikey, how’s it going? I’m real.” Mikey smirks” It’s going—honestly, I feel like I can be really honest with you. I miss her, and I deleted her number out of my phone but then I found it in our early Instagram exchanges and I re-added it, and I’ve already texted her this morning.” “Oh.. Well good news, magic’s real. Everything’s about to change for you.” “Do you think she read the text or do you think I should—“.

The door opens and Boris comes back in. Mikey looks back up at the ceiling “Hey, where’d you go?”, Dr Boris looks at Mikey, looks at the ceiling and then back to Mikey “OK, this is not great. Right? Michael, listen. Mostly what I do here is I pull bullets out of gangsters that have been shot. That’s like my number one thing.” Mikey looks back at the Doc, “In a way, I was kind of shot.” “not really” “I shot my tits off”, Boris chuckles “I will admit—I will admit it was my first time doing top surgery.” Mikey grabs his chest “You did a great job. I don’t think you left that much stuff in there that you shouldn’t have. It’s a little bit bumpy on this side, but I think it’s kind of cool.” “Well, I am very excited to do it. You might imagine, there’s not a lot in my line of work. There is not a chance to prove I am LGBT ally, so it’s nice to be able to do that.” “Yeah.” Boris gently pats Mikey on the back “ I am worried about you. You need to get rest.” “OK, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Boris writes in his chart “You need to heal. Be careful out there today. Oh, remember, by the way, I would say go get rest because also it’s going to be a crazy day for you, right? Because SantaCon is happening today, right?” Mikey smacks his habd to his forehead “Aw, fuck. Yeah, you’re right and they’re going to want a lot of cocaine.” Boris glances over his glasses “Are people still doing a lot of cocai—” “Just the Santas. They’re stuck in the 90s.” “Oh, these are mostly people from Hoboken.” Mikey starts getting ready to leave “Exactly, exactly.” “It’s like 10 years in the past over on that side of the river.” “Yeah.” A small chime rings through the room as Boris reaches for his phone “What you going to do? All right. Well, listen. One of my clients has just gotten into a violent car accident, so I need to go make a house call. Be safe, Michael.” “Yeah. Thank you so much, Doctor. I’ll see you.”

Mikey heads out. The yearly clusterfuck that is SantaCon, where a bunch of college kids dress up in Santa outfits and go on a crazy pub crawl and make New York virtually unlivable for a day has already begun. He begins to head back to his apartment. On the train ride home a text pops up on his work phone from Z3N saying “Price of the brick went up. LOL.” Mikey slams his hand on his knee in frustration “fuck” he lifts the phone back up and begins typing “Yeah. We’ll take care of it”. He arrive back at his apartment, a little bit deeper into Greenpoint. He’s living in a spare room that is functionally a converted walk-in closet. He walk into the apartment and sees Lena, a 60s, 70s Polish woman—she’s wearing a little babushka around her head—and her early 20s grandson Jakub. He’s got a chin strap beard, very thick eyebrows. Wearing a windbreaker. He’s a wannabe gangster guy. Mikey walks into the apartment and sees that a bunch of his stuff is in boxes. “uh-whats going on?” Mikey says with a puzzled look. Lena whips around “OK, so. I got—I found proof” she pulls out a little empty plastic baggy “I know what this is. You deal drugs out of apartment?” Mikey walks further into the apartment “What? No. No. What are you talking about?” “You are a bad boy, Chłopiec, You do this?” “No. No. That is from a pen. That’s dry ink from a pen. They do that now, here.” Lena looks unconvinced and replies “Dry ink from pen? You are drug dealer, all right? You scurry around—” Mikey buts in “I work at the school!” “what you do at the school, huh? Walking around with cowboy hat on” “I work at the school” Mikey replies whilst reaching for another mushroom. “No. I see you with drug from your coat right there” “no that was a snack” “You are a bad influence on Jakub!” Mikey looks in disbelief “What are you talking about? No. Jakub? Jakub, look, I work at the school, right, man?” Jakub looks confused “I thought you were drug dealer”, “No. No. Remember the point is how much of not a drug dealer I am.” “But I’m supposed to buy drugs from you later for a party!” Mikey puts his head in his hand “No.” Jakub continues “We’re going to club.” Mikey stares at Jakub before turning to Lena “ I don’t—are you hearing him say all this?” he turns back to Jakub “She’s not mad at you.” “My sweet grandson Jakub would never!” Lena begins to cradle his head He would never do this.” “Look. I don’t sell drugs. I promise.” “I find out you’re—I find out from this that you are bad—I know you are up to no good because you come in, you have the crazy hair, and you have the cowboy hat—” Mikey takes his hat off and runs his hand through his hair “This is just my hair.” “You crazy, boy.” “I’m not, No.” “So now you’re going to be out on the street.” Mikey begins to beg “ No. No. Come on.” “Your father is here.” Mikey’s eyes widen “What?”

Mikey hasn’t seen his dad in 6 years and all of sudden footsteps are walking up the stairs, footsteps Mikey never wanted to hear again. The door opens and he sees his dad, Dean, standing in the doorway. “What the fuck? Dean, what are you doing here?” Dean replies in a low gruff voice “You’re gonna call me Dean? OK.” “Yeah, I am.” Even though Dean has not seen Mikey in years, there’s no emotion in his face, just a pure blank expression. Mikey angrily stares at Dean “Fuck. Why-why are you here?” “I had a hard time finding you.” He goes and picks up one of the boxes of Mikeys stuff, and starts to carry it down the stairs. Mikey notices it a box that has something he ‘needs’ in it,” OK. Hey, put that down. Put it—come on. What is going on?” Without a single acknowledgement of Mikeys words Dean continues down the stairs, Mikey looks back at Lena then at the door, he huffs and runs after his father. “Well, eventually, we had to pay a private eye to track you down.” Dean says as Mikey catches up “How did they find me? I don’t—what? No way.” “What do you mean, no way?” “ I’m too good. No one can find me. What are you talking about?” Dean rests the box on the floor turns around and looks in Mikeys direction, except he doesn’t make eye contact just looks straight through him “We knew you had to be in New York. We knew you weren’t—you know, left upstate dropped out of school. We want you to come home. OK?” “No.” Dean begins to get bothered “What’s so great about this place? I saw a bunch of bums driving on the way in. It’s dirty as hell.” “ Yeah. Exactly! I can’t go and live on a farm where there’s—where I’m the only trans person anyone’s ever met in their lives.” “That’s—OK.” Dean’s face shows his discomfort in the subject and waves his hands around. “I—I don’t want to talk about that, all right?” “You’re doing the weird chicken dance that you do whenever—” he looks at Mikey. Mikey starts to feel something weird as emotions kick up, he feels that feeling of going over a bump in a road really fast where your stomach starts to rise and you feel a little bit weightless, that is starting to happen to him.” It’s not a fucking conversation –“ He goes to say Mikeys deadname. And as he does he makes a gurgling bubbling sound as a bunch of bubbles come out of his mouth, he starts looking around. More bubbles begin to issue out of him. They go into his clothes and around him and start lifting him up into the air as he flails his arms. And Mikey looks up to see his dad is surrounded by bubbles and sails off into the sky.Mikey grabs his box and begins to head back inside Mikey feels fantastic he’s never had a high like this before. He bump into someone and he hear them say in a thick gruff New Yorker accent, “Hey, watch it, asshole.” He turns around and a trash can with two little eyeballs on top flaps its lid and goes, “What’s your fucking problem? I was standing right here by the doorway. What are you, some kind of piece of shit?” Mikey just stares in amazement before saying “OK. I need to take an upper.” Two of the other trash cans turn around and the second one begins to say “Oh, what, is this guy fucking bothering you, dude?” “ I don’t know. You trying to start some fucking trouble?” Mikey still in amazement but with a little bit of worry says “No” “If we weren’t already outside, I’d ask you, you want to go outside?” “No, man. You’re just a trash can.” “Oh, I’m just a trash can.” “You’re just a trash can—” “And you’re just a piece of shit. Kids like you move into the fucking neighborhood, you sell drugs, you make crime happen. You’re a real piece of shit, buddy” Mikey begins to panic and starts to take off down the street. Still carrying the box in his hand.

And as he looks down, he notices he’s running through a little melted area of snow. He continues to look down and sees that everything else but him has a reflection in the puddles. At that exact second, he fall into the puddle. All of a sudden, he’s standing on the other side of the puddle in a snow-covered New York where snow is issuing out of the storm drains in the street and flying up into a sky full of endless stars. This sky is more stars than it is darkness. It is night-time here. A full moon turns around to Mikey. And he see that there is a beautiful woman in the moon. Incredible eye shadow, full lips, she turns and says “Holy shit! This is fucking crazy.” “I’ll say” “You want to take a look around?” This enormous moonbeam collides with the ground at his feet, and he’s raised up on it, Mikey sees an endless dreamscape of New York City stretching around him. A sparkling unicorn rushes past him but he can tell it has also put glitter on itself. The unicorn looks at Mikey and in a thick southern bell accent says “Oh my god! What are you doing here? Sugar, are you new to this place? Something tells me you’re real as hell” “Yeah.” “Wow, that is something else. I am loving this.” “OK. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” Mikey slaps his face and begins to fall through the moonbeam. He sees that as he’s falling, this eight foot tall creature that looks like a monkey with a pair of wings on its back and an owl’s face starts flying around him and says” He’s back! He’s back! He’s back! “ the creature gently pecks Mikey’s cheek almost like a kiss” I’m so happy you’re here!” “ow, what?” He lands on the ground but the floor is more like a bouncy cloud. He sees that there is a little rat with a slice of pizza strapped to its back like a hiker. “Holy shit. You’re here! That’s incredible!” “umm, Thank you.” “For sure.” Mikey scratches his head “Where am I?”the pizza rat crawls onto Mikey’s shoulder” I don’t know. Where do you want to be?” Mikey hesitantly picks this little rat off his shoulder and holds it in front of him, the rat has a big grin on its face as Mikey says” OK. OK, something else was in those shrooms, I think. I think—wait where’s my dad?” and as soon as he thinks of his dad, he sees a little thing of bubbles with him sailing off in this dream realm and suddenly Mikey just drops through the cloud and begins to float in inky blackness.

He hears whispers all around him “He’s gone. We have him now. You’ll never have to worry about him again. We can make things that are unreal real. And we can make things real unreal. Whatever you want. Do you want this power?” Mikey’s med bracelet starts to glow on his hand. And a little happy face appears on it, throbbing like a button he could press.” Did I take MDMA recently?” Mikey looks at his watch and presses the button with a little “bloop” A colossal rending sound resonates and the entire darkness splits above him, the silvery stars and white clouds pour through, and Mikey can feel things screaming with joy as they escape from whatever realm this is. He suddenly feels himself being drawn into deeper darkness. He hears a voice draw a menacing breath in, as a single point of golden light, bright gold burning with intensity draws near. He starts to feel his body sweating and heart rate pick up. A deep dark demonic voice begins to sing “Start spreading the news. I’m leaving today. I want to—” a distinct sound of fire crackling drains out the singing, A rectangle of golden light in burning lines, superimposed against inky blackness forever beyond it, appears before him, and the burning singes his skin and eyes. The demonic voice continues” I want to be a part of it.” Mikey’s body drops again and a little gray child’s face with inky black eyes appears in front of him as black tears go down its gray face, it whispers “It’s happening. I’m so sorry. Heed the words of Lazarus before it’s too late.”and then disappears.

Mikey suddenly appears in an alleyway surrounded by SantaCon people, “Fuck, I wish I had a girlfriend.” One of the SantaCon people turns over to him and half of his face melts, he says “Ho, ho, ho!” and bites the side of his head. “No, no, no, no!”