Yeah, Kick It

The video for the Beastie Boys’ fourth single, (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!), from their Licensed to Ill album released in November 1986, was featured in MTV’s Buzz Bin that December. I intrinsically know this because my sisters and I watched the video repeatedly in the hotel room on our first trip to New York City with my father. We didn’t have cable at home, so when our dad went out to trip the light fantastic around town, leaving us in the room, we ordered three dollar cans of Coke from room service and watched TV.

My father, Bobby, convinced our mother, his ex-wife, that it was a good idea to take Maggi, Molli, and me to New York City for a long weekend over the holiday season, Thursday through Sunday, a cultural outing. He loved Christmas, carols stayed on the jukebox year round in the family bar, decorations up for months, until a bartender would break and take them down, usually in the springtime, when the sag really set into the garland. He also considered New York City the best city in the world. The weekend culminated with the Christmas Spectacular featuring the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. He rented a car for the trip from Towson, Maryland, his 1973 Cadillac unreliable for the trek and ungainly for parking. Driving out of town with my father meant we left from the bar at night, usually around 9 or 10 pm, in this case Thursday night.

Bobby was a cash guy, no wallet, two different rolls, smaller notes—singles, fives, tens, and twenties in the front pocket, hundreds and two dollar bills, brand new from the bank, in the back pocket. When my father couldn’t decide if he should stay on 95 north, or take the exit into the city, he made the decision a few beats too late and hit the exit ramp with such force the rental car got an flat tire. He opened the door to check it out, right there on the ramp. It was Friday morning, around 1 am, a constant raw rain fell from the sky.

And out flew the money, not the hundreds thank god, but a sizable stack for going out in the New York City, from the front left pocket. It must have fallen out at the last toll, the Lincoln Tunnel, and now the money was taking itself out, on the highway.

“Girls, get the money!” My father exclaimed and we ran across the lanes, picking it up. Luckily, it was stuck just a little to the road. The traffic wasn’t that bad, and by that I mean we survived this mission. I was the youngest, and kind of a daddy’s girl, a terrible phrase I loathe but appropriate for this moment, as I thought nothing of the task and took it to heart, without hesitation.

Then we drove into whatever part of town this was. And how the hell would I know, I was 13 years old. Where were we? For years I have deliberated this, and just through the course of writing this (perhaps the whole reason), I’ve come to the conclusion that we were in Hell’s Kitchen, which makes sense because we drove into the city through the Lincoln, rather than the Holland Tunnel. Entering Manhattan through the southern tunnel makes no sense for where we were going, my dad wasn’t going to hang out in the West or East Village.

My dad pulled over, looking for a phone in a bodega, locking us in the car. The rain was really coming down, everything was black and silver, quite noir. When two men knocked on the car’s window, Maggi, Molli, and I were startled. Then Bobby, unable to find a phone, yelled, “what the hell do you think you’re doing?’ to the men, they replied “sir, we are the police. This is a very bad part of town. You are probably the only person in this neighborhood without a gun.”¹ Then the cops changed the tire for us while we waited in the rain.

Somehow, my dad, never known for his sense of direction, found his way to the first hotel we stayed in, a Howard Johnson, in midtown I imagine, but not before double-parking to take a piss between cars. When we heard multiple police sirens, he and I both thought it was curtains for him.

The rest of the weekend was a blur. We went to the Empire State Building, we walked so much, the crowds were nuts. When you live here, you wonder why anyone would come here for a weekend in December. When you don’t know any better as a tourist, you just think this is New York, huh? We threw ourselves into it. On Friday afternoon we checked into the Waldorf Astoria, staying there for two nights, because Bobby liked to live life and was a high roller, one room for the four of us, there was a cot. New York City is the best city in the world! He went out at night and Maggi, Molli, and I watched cable (hence the Beastie Boys time stamp) and ordered room service. Sometimes I wandered the hotel. That first night on the highway took care of any serious wanderlust we might have had for the evening hours.²

We went to the Russian Tea Room, a flex for a man often behind or completely negligent on child support. Molli was sick, probably from retrieving money in the rain, but she still walked around with us everywhere. Our tickets for the Christmas Spectacular were early afternoon on Sunday, we couldn’t find a cab to save our lives so we walked what felt like 30 blocks to the theater. I remember thinking “surely one will stop at some point,” is that hope, or delusion? We lived in the suburbs of Baltimore, our legs had never walked 30 blocks. Afterwards, we found our car in the parking lot to head home, our home base since we checked out of the Waldorf. Sunday afternoon before Christmas in New York City, a really horrible idea.

Made worse by the fact that my dad, a severe diabetic, couldn’t find his insulin in his luggage. It was a rental car, tabula rasa, a clean slate, yet still, no dice. We drove to the Lincoln Tunnel, Billy Ocean’s hit single “Caribbean Queen” on rotation on the radio, another aural marker, this time for bumper to bumper traffic. Maggi and Molli bickered in the back seat about who was invading whose space, eventually both of them fell asleep or the long ride home.

And what a drive home that was. Bobby’s blood sugar crashed repeatedly, we kept the windows down for sobering slaps of cold air, with the heat cranked to balance it out. We stopped often, black coffee for him and soda for me. Who can sleep during such worry? It took 8 hours to get to my mother’s house, and that entire time neither of us thought to call her to tell her we were safe. When we crossed the Maryland state line, my dad declared “I got my second wind,” which still pisses me off to this day, and at the same time endears me. An hour later, he dropped us off at my mother’s house, where she was awake, beyond concerned, and on the verge of calling her lawyer to amend the visitation agreement.

The repercussions from this trip ran deep, my sisters never visited New York again until I lived here, almost twenty years later. Our memories don’t always line up, we each have an eye for different details, but for this trip we are in step with each other moment by moment. I didn’t go to NYU for college, mostly because another school gave me more money, but I also feared my father would drive up some night after closing the bar to surprise me. I don’t understand why people travel at the same time as other people, I don’t understand the willingness to put oneself into crowds and tourists. I try to avoid it all. I do not care for the holidays. These fews days imprinted something wild onto me, an idea that life was like this, this was normal, because sometimes it was.

Since her passing last November, I’ve been revisiting Dorothy Allison’s writing, re-reading her debut novel Bastard Out of Carolina and her essay A Question of Class. I find myself, in the corners and hallways of her work, even though our childhoods are very different. There’s always this sense of leaving, of betraying the people you come from in trying to find who you are and where you belong, repeatedly butting up against the same issues. The spaces that are supposed to be the solutions have their own sets of problems, oftentimes with disregard and some disgust for our origins, our families.

I am always touched by the deep well of love and affection the narrator, Bone, from Bastard Out of Carolina, has for her uncles, regardless of their social and familial standing. It’s something that tracks with me deeply, I notice it because I need to notice it. Allison’s own process of reckoning where and who she is from, these things sticks with me. My father was a flawed human, some people like to call him a character, another phrase I don’t care for. As we head into these relentless celebration/commitment of life, love, family time of year, our families’ influences on us all is largely epic, even as we try to build our own lives that speak to what we need. We can’t leave them, I’ve tried, they’re too foundational for us.

I think of my dad because it’s Christmas, and he loved it. He also passed on Friday, December 13th, an easy date to remember. His death is part of my holiday season. I do wish Bobby was alive now, to come to New York. We could hit up some place where I’d have a hook-up, payback for all those expensive room service cokes. He’s got the cash tip. This time, he’d take the train. I’d definitely take him to Jimmy’s Corner. Maybe he’s been.

There’s something romantic about fucked-up men, I know that for sure, but I also know that is dangerous. We often grant the men, the fuck-ups, the dreamers, the fucked-up dreamers, the dreamy fuck-ups, more forgiveness than we grant other folks and ourselves. When a parent dies when you’re younger, you only have so much to go on, the stories take on their own mythology. But most of us don’t live myths, they’re too taxing, we live in the everyday, the mundane. That’s hard enough. That’s what keeps the lights on.

Here’s to everybody who keeps the lights on, especially the single mothers. December isn’t just about my dad. My mother Sally, a Sagittarius, loves Christmas. She knows when to take the decorations down: in January, early January. She kept us housed and fed, she taught us about work ethics and responsibilities, all while maintaining a hard-fought career. She just turned 80 on December 10th. And she’s never uttered the words “girls, get the money” to us. Never once.

1. Which, debatable. My dad had a license for a gun as a bar owner, he often had a little .32 somewhere with him.

2. And only now do I think about how the Beastie Boys were just a few miles away from us at 59 Chrystie Street. Just over three miles, but really worlds away.