Leaving On a Jet Plane

It’s unusual to have your heart broken while standing alone on a street corner in Brooklyn.

When nothing seems out of place. When the cars are still driving past. The stores still open for business. The buses running noisily up and down 69th Street, faces pressed against the windows. Eyes vague and unseeing.

Cities are notorious for giving you what you don’t need. For sharing someone else’s fears so you get to know, just for a moment, that the world doesn’t revolve around you anymore. That you’re human, like everyone else and that one day, maybe soon, maybe not, things will be different and you may wish they were back to the way they once were.

And on a summer day, July 12, 1972 to be exact, when the heat was hot, the air thick, the noise not more nor less than it usually was, I found myself standing alone on the corner for about three minutes before the world started clearing its throat and making sounds like I’d better listen, because whatever it was about to tell me, wasn’t likely to come my way again.

So, I did.

How the message was delivered was unspectacular as far as messages go. No trumpets blaring. No tires screeching as a car door flies open and a body is thrown to the curb. No screaming lady on the roof's edge threatening to end it all.

Just me, hands in pockets, looking for my pack of Marlboros. Two kids giggling off to one side as an old man, unshaved, unhinged and off his meds, thrusted both middle fingers at passing cars.

In other words, a normal summer day in Borough Park, Brooklyn.

In a typical location, outside a candy store, selling everything we didn’t really need at reasonable prices.

Waiting as I always did, as I thought I always would, for friends to show up. To stand next to me. Moving one foot and then the other. Asking me for a smoke, a quarter, or a ride to another place.

And we’d chat. And talk sports and laugh and shake our heads as the Yankees dropped another series. As the Mets tried to return to 1969 again. As the Knicks kept surprising us and made another run for the championship.

Or grabbing a ball and a stickball bat and entering the schoolyard to play a little under the lights. Thinking, this is fun. Thinking, this is better than watching summer reruns on television. Thinking, this is better than parents asking if you got a job, a goal, a girlfriend. Anything that would make them think you moved just one step closer to a brighter future.

On this day, the 12th, having just arrived and seeing nothing different than on any other day and feeling nothing more than I usually did, this small corner of my world began to change. Began to morph into something ugly and unkind.

No longer a friend, or a safe harbor. And as ordinary people came and went, I stood center stage looking off down 12th Avenue with an inordinate amount of anger welling up inside of me.

I knew then that nothing would ever be the same again.

That the corner, the candy store, and all its inhabitants were never going to provide me with what I needed in my life. Never.

Not today. Not tomorrow, regardless of who was standing next to me and how loud the laughter was or how cool the stickball game was going. The moments, a handful or thousands strung together were not going to make me feel any better.

So, I pushed the pack of Marlboros back into my pocket. Took a final look at the store, the giggling kids, and the old man named Fortunato and left.

Head down, pace brisk, I walked down 69th Street toward 13th Avenue and tried to think of nothing.

Tried to push away almost 1800 days and nights that I had spent on that corner over the past four years and not consider, even for a millisecond that it was all wasted time. Though I knew in my heart that almost all of it was.

That there might be some moments I would remember. Some people I would never forget. But collectively, like a book of short stories, most of it would be left on a shelf never to be opened again.

I had decided within three or four steps of leaving the corner that I would never go back. Not as a supplicant to some shrine that no longer offered any succor. Not as a young man hoping to find a future somewhere within its confines.

I had had enough.

And with each step, my resolve grew stronger. My mind clearer and my heart once again hopeful, even though I was leaving the one place that had given me hope for over four years, certain there was something right about what I was doing.

I felt good -- until I didn’t.

As I neared 13th Avenue, I saw two friends sitting on a stoop chatting and laughing and thought, no, not again, and started crossing the street to avoid them.

But something happened midway. Some magnetic force. Some irresistible pull that was demanding I not run away. So, I stopped. Stood in the middle of 69th Street and waited for a sign. It came.

I walked back to the curb and continued on, getting the attention of both my friends.

We said hello. We talked. We laughed. We spent a few minutes sharing thoughts about nothing much until one of them (also named Joe) asked me about a mutual friend. Asked if I had heard from him.

I said I had in a letter.

He asked if he had mentioned that he was in living in California.

I smiled and said he did.

He then asked if my friend had invited me to go out and stay with him for a week or so.

I paused and thought about the letter and how it had made me feel. And then nodded and said, yeah, he did.

Then we waited. Not saying anything more for a while. Turning to watch the 69th Street bus rolling up to the avenue. Listening to the kids playing across the street.

“Well, do you want to go to California?” my friend asked.

I knew I would say no, I usually did to sudden change. Or to trips. Especially with people I knew but not all that well. I knew from years of being me that I could resist with the best of them. Find reasons to say no. To keep doing what I was doing in the hopes that things would change anyway, without all the fear and uncertainty.

But I said yes instead. And meant it.

My friend laughed, relieved. My other friend laughed along with us.

And finally, Joe asked, when?

Without hesitation, I said, tomorrow.

The plan was made. The rest were just details and we worked them out. Where we would meet. Who would drive us to the airport. When we would return.

I left, they remained and I walked the rest of the way home.

Told my mother, and assured her I was okay. Assured her I was just visiting a friend. Assured her I would come back in a week.

I grabbed my savings passbook. Emptied my account. Bought a ticket on 65th Street and 12th Avenue. Called my friends. Told them the news. Told myself it would be alright. And waited.

The flight left JFK on time on July 14th, 1972, and arrived at LAX later that day.

The trip was great. Joe and I met our friend and had a good time. Ate the food. Went to the beach. And on the 8th day after leaving Joe returned to Brooklyn but I didn’t.

As I stood in the middle of 69th Street on the 12th of July, 1972 I had no idea what would happen. I just knew that something would.

I never returned to Brooklyn and to this day, still live in Los Angeles.

And the sign I received? Each of the three talking that day was named Joe. One of them having the same last name as me.