The Bad Flasher

This is just what my sapling looked like when we met on a cross street in Manhattan’s East Thirties. The only difference was that we met at night. I never saw my tree in the daytime. Not one time.

For the first three years I spent on my then favorite block, that baby tree was never there. Then, one night, it just was. I didn’t know when the baby tree was planted on my block. I suppose I missed its arrival by a few hours. I’d hang out on the block between Second and Third Avenues every night, the block that served as its new nursery, and which will someday serve as its retirement community, and never saw it planted. It must have been planted in the daytime. It was a delicate, trim and pretty tree. It didn’t expect attention and it kept to itself. For hundreds of nights my baby tree was never there, and then, all of sudden, it was. The tree was just like the girls who would walk around the corner of an Avenue and enter the block where I’d wait for them. They didn’t expect attention and they kept to themselves. For hundreds of nights they were never there, and then, all of a sudden, they were.

In the warm weather months of 1994, I’d usually arrive on my favorite block around 11pm. I spent a lot of time with this baby tree there, sitting or standing right next to it. I don’t know if I was sitting in front of it, or behind it, or to its side, because I don’t know if a tree has a front and a back like a person has. I never got the sense my sapling was offended by where I chose to sit. I did sometimes wonder, though, if the tree liked having me keep it company. I like to think it did. It was new to the neighborhood, after all, and probably to the city, too. Who doesn’t want a friend when they’re new to New York City?

As far as trees go, I guess they see a lot over the course of their healthy lives. But that tree? It hadn’t seen too much yet. It was too young. It couldn’t have known too much about anything, other than, of course, how to survive the winter cold, how to enjoy the summer sun and how to drink the rain water which irrigated its roots. I liked that baby tree. It never bothered me and I never bothered it. Sometimes I’d say, “Hello, tree,” as I’d lower myself onto the second step of the stoop it was planted in front of, with a cup of coffee in my hand from the Korean deli around the corner.

This is the brownstone in front of which my tree was planted. Actually, the tree was planted one and one half houses over – to your left. Just to the left of that stoop you see running off the left margin of the photo. I’d sit on this stoop every night, with my leafy friend beside me. Sometimes, I’d stand on the sidewalk, facing the one-way, left-to-right traffic heading to Third Avenue from Second Avenue, leaning my butt against the iron railing between the stoop and the gate you see on the right in the photo. I’d lean, and smoke cigarettes, and think. And wait. And watch.

Standing allowed me to see the entire width of the sidewalk on my side of the street clearly, from one end to the other. It also allowed me to see the entire length of the opposite sidewalk, above the roofs of the parked cars which spanned the block’s length. Sitting on the stoop prevented such a view, and limited my sight lines considerably, but sitting did have advantages for my purpose over standing. I’ll get to them in the next few posts. The concept – in its entirety – of sitting versus standing for my purposes, then, requires its own post. It’s rather complicated. Doubt me? Ask a cabby, or a chauffeur if driving professionally is different from driving your own car, say, to the store or to the movies. I promise you that every one you ask will answer with a variation on this sentiment: “Are you kidding?! It’s totally different!”

For the three or four years I visited that block after my baby tree was planted, its branches remained immature. They were low to the ground because the tree wasn’t more than ten feet tall, and they weren’t large enough, or long enough, to reach me or otherwise cause me interference. They were also too undeveloped to cover me in their canopy’s camouflage. Because of the tree’s youth, the sidewalk on either side of it was clearly illuminated by an anemic, metallic yellow glow from a street light looming above us, its silver metal stem planted firmly in the sidewalk soil of cement on the opposite side of the street. Through this weak, artificial and impersonal night-light, which faded into the gray, shadowy natural light of a typical Manhattan residential block, I could see Second Avenue’s traffic speeding south to my left, and to my right, Third Avenue’s traffic moving north.

I’d watch the cars hissing past my block on their Avenues – seventy yards to my right and over a hundred yards to my left, and I’d wait to see their rhythms interrupted by the silhouette of a female turning the corner onto our block.

I remember looking at the tree’s trunk one summer night in still, balmy air and hearing myself whisper, “Jesus…the thing has grown, like, four inches in diameter.” And I remember my next thought as clearly: What am I doing with my life?

That’s when I knew it was time to find another block, and say goodbye to my tree as it entered its adolescence. It was making progress. It’d be just fine on its own. I wasn’t making progress. And I certainly wasn’t fine on my own. In fact, the more alone time I had, the worse I became. I used to wonder if my friend, the tree, talked to the other trees about me?

“What is it with this loser,” my tree would ask its new tree buddies. “Why does this guy always have to hang out by me?”

I wondered if the other trees answered.

“Because you’re the new guy, that’s why. Now shut the fuck up, Rookie, and don’t worry about him. You’ll be around a lot longer than he will. Just grow. And watch out for the terrier that gets walked with the fat guy who smokes a pipe. It likes to take a shit right where you’re standing.”

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