What I remember about Thanksgiving 1989 is that it was so much work -- the planning, the shopping, the cooking, the entertaining and finally the clean-up -- that I never again hosted for family and friends another traditional Thanksgiving meal -- appetizers, turkey, mash potatoes, stuffing, dessert. In addition to me and my wife, there was my cousin, my wife's cousin, and our friends Gary and Eleni. Not a large group but an ordeal nonetheless.
I also remember that I made a special trip down to 125th Street and picked up a good case of beer, which I hauled back on the 1 Train. Gary and I ended up drinking most of it the night before Thanksgiving, the night it unexpectedly snowed. This necessitated a trip out to get more beer. We purchased some six-packs of 16-ounce cans of Colt 45 malt liquor.
On Thanksgiving everyone got drunk drinking the malt liquor and got stoned smoking the wife's homegrown. We sat at the dinner table. We didn't clear any of the dishes. We just sat there. I had had a lot to drink the evening before, and I had started drinking before 9 AM on Thanksgiving. I was sort of getting way out there. I had a testy exchange with the wife's cousin, who I recall had extraordinarily large hands, and she ended up crying. (Pictures from that evening of the wife and cousin can be found below.)
One last thing that I remember from that evening is how we were so drunk and stoned that all four of us jostled each other to take turns watching through the peephole in the front door little children from the adjoining apartment run around and play on the landing in front of the elevator on the 22nd floor.
The letter ends similarly to the one posted on St. Patrick's Day, which leads me to believe that I didn't actually use the ending in that letter since both letters went to my friend Mark. I think the "sun closes and the doors are open" line only ended up in this letter.
Autumn 1989
Mark, I'm writing now, but this isn't the letter I've been writing to you; I've been dabbling at that one for a long time, maybe even three weeks. And the funny thing about it is that that letter was supposed to be just a quick little beer-fume epistle that announced a bigger and better communication to come. Somewhere along the line I got bogged down. One of the reasons could have been that Ashley, Gary, Eleni and I did up a Thanksgiving together. It turned out to be a helluva lot more work than I expected, and it was made worse by the fact that Ashley and Gary were in the middle of exams. So I did all the menu-planning and grocery-listing; Eleni helped with the shopping. Another reason probably had to do with the sudden puritanicalness of my job. It has gone from a commodious situation to a concentration camp: several people have been fired (some of the livelier conversationalists) and we -- the proofreaders -- have been moved from a private room into a large auditorium with about fifty idiots and an insane supervisor who roams the smooth floors on clacking high heels. I work my eight-and-half hours a day and come home and go to bed (it's been below freezing for two-weeks straight). But anyway, tonight's the night: Ashley's spending the night out in New Jersey with some friends and I have a few quarts, and it's Thursday night, just a little bit before 11 o'clock.
Well, I just worked on one of your Cubans. There're old and crumbly now, but once you get 'em lit up and spit on they still do the trick. Snuz keeps jumping up on the table and trying to sit on my lap; she doesn't like the loud music, and she didn't like it when I opened the cold window to let the cigar smoke out (she's just like Ashley). I tell ya, writing is something to be done alone; it's synonymous with solitude, plain and simple.
Yeah, it's been cold here. The other night I caught myself warming my hands over the naked light bulb of our floor lamp. We have a down comforter and two quilts on the bed -- and that barely cuts the mustard. There's heat in the apartment but it often shuts off inexplicably. I don't have a topcoat. I'm going to see if I can go another winter with just my good old Harris Tweeds. We got snow on Thanksgiving eve. The New York Times said it was the first white turkey day in 51 years, which of course made the holiday feel more like a holiday. (All pretty boring stuff.)
Oh, well. I'm drunk now. And the sun closes and the doors are open. Back somewhere in my mind is the future and it's bright and happy and full of strength and all taking place in a big house and you're there visiting and children are all around like crickets in tal grass. I'm 35 years old but not yet dead so my brain is still alive and buzzin' like a horse fly. Oh man, the coffee is brewing and the flapjacks are puffing and the sausage is sizzling and showers are clouding up medicine cabinet mirrors and everyone is thinking private thoughts of a type suitable for galloping down staircases at 8:30 AM.
The saddest thing is that the past has already happened.
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