PDF - 70 scott

OUR CRIMES SCALE THE HEAVENS
On the night of the last blizzard I found myself walking around alone. The financial district is always em
pty at night but the travel ban made it especially desolate. The only movement was infrequent, a snowplow driving on another street. As I walked I enjoyed the silence and the emptiness. When I started down John St. I heard
a shout from somewhere behind me. I turned and walked towards it. As I got closer I heard more voices, getting
louder and clearer. I stopped when I heard a resonating “Fuck yeah dude!” and on a narrow street, in between two
buildings, in the yellowish light of a streetlamp, four dudes had set up a beer pong table.
One of them noticed me, “Dude, come join us!” I hesitated but submitted at the thought of free lite beer.
They introduced themselves, Eric, Reed, Jack and Scott. Reed was impressed by my celebrity shots and let me take
his place in the next game. Scott and I were on the same team. Before we started he took out a nail and heated it
up with his butane torch, Eric passed him the rig and Scott dabbed. They had set up this table for old times sake. I
sank a shot. Scott asked me if I wanted a dab, I looked at him and declined.
I had met Scott before, Scott shadowed at Bear Sterns the summer before it got liquidated. His father
rented him an apartment on William St. right across from the most popular spot that summer, a long diamond
plated ledge. Our skateboards echoed loudly along the tall buildings and late at night the neighbors would get
upset. They would deal with us by throwing shit out their windows: eggs, glass jars of tomato sauce, cucumbers,
packages of tuna fish. When my friend Chito got hit by half a cantaloupe he yelled out a threat to whoever threw
the melon. It was Scott. He was upstairs getting high when he had enough, he had just finished a long day at the
office. When he called the police, they told him to be downstairs when they arrived so they could identify the
perp. He came down and waited by the ledge, smoking a cigarette and watching us. As more and packaged food
and produce rained on the sidewalk, I approached him to bum a cigarette, a Parliament. We talked about skateboarding. He used to skate but had to stop in high school. He lit another cigarette and offered me one. I declined.
When the police arrived Scott was quick to single out Chito. Chito got cuffed and led to the car, I think
he had a warrant out. Scott stood around and I watched him carefully, we locked eyes as he turned towards his
apartment. They sank a shot.
I drank the beer and looked at Scott in the eye. Scott knew who I was and I knew who he was. The snow
was starting to cover the folding table and the breeze made it sprinkle down towards the white street. I held the
ping pong ball in my hand, Scott was scared, so Scott dabbed.
SOYEZ DE VOTRE SIECLE
BE YOUR CENTURY
The unrest among the affluent white-male urban community has been a hot-topic among talking-head
media outlets throughout the past few months. President Trump, in a press conference that took place at
the White House on Tuesday night remarked:
Since the incidents in Greenwich Connecticut and Martha’s Vineyard, it seems that there has been a new
injustice brought to light at least every week. We have seen many instances of serious inconveniences put
upon our fiscally buoyant white middle-aged citizens captured on camera in the recent months. But let us
not pretend this issue is new. Tension has been bubbling under the surface for a long time.
The most recent offense took place in an upscale after-hours lounge in New York City’s Meatpacking District, where a man was denied table-and-bottle service despite whisperings of a last-minute cancellation.
The subsequent boycott of the business by a group of seven 30-something investment bankers has taken
a severe toll on the cache of the nightclub. When asked how badly his business has been affected by the
boycott, the owner of the club sarcastically replied, “I’m not sure what incident you’re referring to,” before
ducking out of sight behind a row of heavily muscled security guards in tank tops.
Since the infamous Greenwich Connecticut “martini too dirty” incident, a mirror has been thrust in front
of the tumultuous history of that town, which in only the last 200 years has done a 180 degree turn from
being almost completely uninhabited, to 95% affluent white. The authorities in place have been slow to
adjust to the changing demographic, and the ability of the township to “get in front of the issue” is a hotly
debated topic among the group of former sorority sisters of whom the majority of the community board is
made up.
Last week the cover of Time magazine showed a man clutching a first-class ticket being forced into an
economy seat after an unanticipated airplane change. In the corner of the image the date “1974” was
crossed out, and “2015” was penciled in underneath. The temptation is to believe that nothing has changed
in this time, but something has; these men are much wealthier than they were 40 years ago, but still subject
to the same unjust treatment. The more salient concern is: why hasn’t society been able to keep apace with
their growing impatience?
The Scott has roamed the urban sprawl for as long as I can remember. Merrill Lynch sweater
vest, topped with the alma mater curve-brimmed shitbag baseball cap.
There lies a deep hatred within most of us when they swiftly lurch by screaming sales into
their smartphone, but this hatred must be filled with understanding.
My peers and I gather
At the edge of the top
The whole city is visible
Over the drop
What was the point
Of these so many lives
Spent scooping up much
From their edge of the sty
The muck gets thrown down
Where nobody looks
I ate my wife’s cooking
Now she doesn’t cook
When J-CREW cashmere pills
I want to shoot up the brand
So I smooth down my feathers
With four oily hands
A poor wasted bum
Begs me for change
Eat the front of a bus
That’s a good change
The city’s no cleaner
Since freeloaders got offed
Now models and artist assistants
Commit vandalism and theft
The hood of my PATAGONIA jacket
Whips in the helicopter breeze
The pilot keeps on waving
Who could kiss that fucking goatee
Tunnels are halted
Bridges have screeched
Jam packed with people
Behaving like beasts
We fly back on Sunday
I COULD NOT BE TRUE AND CONSTANT TO THE ARGUMENT I HANDLE, IF I WERE NOT
WILLING TO GO BEYOND OTHERS; BUT YET NOT MORE WILLING THAN TO HAVE OTHERS
GO BEYOND ME AGAIN
Silky sheets
Cold feet
9-5s
Real clean
My comb, black sheen
Routine
My morning protein
Trains into town
Elevators up
Runways down
White collars
10 cards
3 gray hairs
Break with a date
They write you?
Her name is Kate
Wooden heels
Swiveling wheels
Dollars for beggars
Hours for commuters
Towers in the sky
An office meeting
Papered report
6-8
Back home
Monitoring phone
I remember when you could trade up without worrying if you'd get caught.
I remember when they didn't watch your every move. I remember when
DOW dropped 20 points in a day and we went to the Patriot to celebrate
and that sexy Asian with the massive midriff was there giving out shots.
I remember the truffle butter. I remember when my kid asked me what I
did. I told him I printed money. I remember where I was during the crash.
I remember the taste of my secretary's pussy. And her sister. And her
hooker friends. And her coffee. I remember the time my wife showed up at
work with a turkey sandwich and Jack had to talk her away from my office
because I was having lunch with Cassandra. I remember all the lunches. Oh
the lunches. The glorious cash lunches. Snails for breakfast. Cocaine for
lunch. I remember my office with its west side view. Looking over at New
Jersey. Reminding me of what could go wrong. How close they are. But
how far at the same time. I remember my suit. Correction, suits. I didn't
have just one. The Hugo boss, the Armani, the Brooks brothers. Enough
exotic fabric to drown in. I remember when I flooded the apartment below
me and Cassandra saved me. She said I was passed out in the shower, butt
over the drain with a drink in my hand. I closed on CRT later that day. I
remember how mad the wife was about the water stains on the freshly
laid Venetian wallpaper. She threw a pure silver pan at my head. A 12000
dollar bullet. I remember my watch. It’s calf skin band and dual time zone
function kept me calm. I used to stare at it in meetings, to remind myself of
what I was doing. I remember my job.
GIANTS ARE APT TO BE KNOCK KNEED
An extinction is coming.
An old Indian man with purple lips and a rotting face moves along a stone path through
Trinity Church Cemetery with a yellow New York Post tote bag. He's within 8 feet of a stone
structure that tourists are using to eat their lunch. I can smell the sharp scent of his determination to make it underneath the cherry blossoms so he could rest. This man is selling
newspapers in 2015; he certainly will not last long. In this one moment I feel as if I have come
across the most doomed man in the city.
A white flash sends silent waves of immeasurable force throughout the city.
A black homeless man carrying an overstuffed plastic bag on Nassau Street scrambles to
catch his belongings as the bag bursts open - countless sun faded magazines, a jar of cheap no
name peanut butter with the label half peeled off and a bottle of lotion hit the pavement.
An old white lady is on her way to drop off her recertification papers to the HRA to renew the
lease of her rent controlled apartment. She isn't fortunate enough to have any other objective
in her day. She stands dumbfounded as the white, cleansing light comes around the corner.
She cannot think quick enough to dive in the nearby bank vestibule.
A Mexican man with a guitar is walking through the cars of a train passing over the Manhattan Bridge; he had just performed for a train car full of disinterested commuters and didn’t
receive a cent.
An overweight junkie in sweatpants and an athletic hoodie is nodding out on a bench inside
of the park on Forsyth and Hester. He is wearing a lanyard around his neck that holds his government benefit cell phone. It's ringing - an antiquated ringtone. The man's head slumps so
low his cheap sunglasses fall off his face. His eyes open at the very moment he is destroyed.
A man is walking south on 5th avenue just below 42nd Street. He is wearing a suit made of
poor quality fabric. The collar of his dress shirt is yellowed from years of sweating, cooling
off, and then sweating again. He smells of his own urine. He is carrying an attaché case with
nothing of real importance inside.. A poorly wrapped homemade tuna sandwich slides around
the inside of the case when he walks, staining the three or four loose papers he had put inside
just to feel as if the attaché case was serving its purpose. He is attempting to open the doors
to the 455 5th Avenue New York Public Library.
A man sits smoking a cigarette outside of a Mitchell Lama complex turned luxury high rise,
on a set of benches near the entrance to the buildings lobby. A boom box sits at his feet, blaring out classic rock. The man bobs back and forth, greeting the new tenants of the building.
"Hey how ya doin, hey how ya doin?". Out of a few hundred tenants, several respond with a
nervous acknowledgement - a wave of the hand, a weak nod or a muffled "hi".
I pass people and streets that recall memories of large CRT monitors being sold on Park Row. Compaq
Presario’s and Hewlett Packard computers - impatient Jewish men trying to sell them to my mother
and I. A chiropractor on Broadway, the McDonalds on Broadway with the piano sitting on a loft alcove
accessible by a ladder. Small electronic stores that somehow sold authentic video games for less than
the chain stores. A man getting chased down Christopher Street by police in that sharp, harsh daylight
that creates shadows so deep and dark they almost beg to be used for no good... a man that carries flammable liquid in a Windex bottle, spraying things and igniting them in blasts of flames - the cops drive
up onto the sidewalk and almost push his body through a park fence.. The man hits the hood and then
the pavement. The police almost tear his white shirt from his body but the collar is still around his neck
while they beat him with batons.
I pass people and places that recall memories of homeless men standing on West Broadway and Prince
Street saying: "I fucking hate Koreans, I HATE Y’ALL"
I pass people and places that recall memories of homeless men approaching my golden retriever and I
outside of a grocery store, smashing a bottle at my feet and lunging towards me while my Mother was
shopping inside.
Men unzipping the flies of their suit pants on the 6 train and stroking their cocks off at 8AM on a work
week.
Men who stand outside of the St. Luke’s school during recess and wait for boys by the gate on Hudson
Street – sticking one long arm into the yard to feel the clothing and skin of young boys running past
playing tag.
Men taking crude baths inside of subway cars - pants dropped to ankles, rotting skin showing, using
household cleaning wipes to clean their skin, knocking dead flakes of flesh to the subway car floor.
The back seats of yellow taxis with silver bumpers in the winter. Black water from melted snow sloshing
up and jumping from one foot rest area to the other.
The feeling of walking home from school alone, unattended.
Black Israelites standing high in Times Square. "YOU AINT WHITE MOTHAFUCKA YOU RED! IF I
SLAP YOU ACROSS THE FACE WHAT COLOR YOUR SKIN GONNA BE? NOT WHITE, RED!!" "JESUS
DOES DEMAND THAT I SMASH YOUR BABIES ACROSS THE ROCKS!!"
Street justice. Street logic.
Schizophrenic men standing in pedestrian tunnels underneath Port Authority, asking boys cutting class:
"How should I get to Reno? Michael Jackson is waiting for me there. I need something to drink, should I
get a juice? A coffee?"
Sun faded advertisements. Cyan holding out, begging you to acknowledge the product, the person, the
service, the event, the cause.
Weber’s Closeouts, Odd Jobs, Woolworths. Cheap stores with Indian security guards that never let their
guard down. The clothing stores that took your bags and gave you a tag to claim them on your way out.
Passing porn stores in my Father’s red Isuzu Trooper. My throat tingled, my dick awkwardly bulging and
throbbing at the sight of a bland blonde woman with a fuck me face. Blue eyes, white teeth, tits that glow
in soft light, faces that look like they were designed to have semen shot all over them. I would put my
own hand to my chest; feeling my own breaths made my dick grow larger and larger, sliding it down my
leg to the point where a single step felt like the hard stroke of a strangers hand. Cheap colored fluorescent lights, pinks and deep blues.
The feeling of slithering into the adult section of J&R Music World’s basement movie store while my
Mother browsed for both a family movie and an R-rated thriller for herself. Don't move the beads above
the doorway too much, you might get caught. You're in. Pure rush, pure adrenaline, it all turned you on.
Men on men, women on men, women on women and women alone, black, white and especially Spanish
girls.
Drunk Mexican men pulling up in vans, cargo doors sliding open, shots fired from a revolver at two
young boys walking their dog in the back courtyard of the Shearson Lehman building.
Cab drivers who massage private school girls running late to class in the morning.
Men in vans. All of the day’s meals, tickets, and receipts scattered across the dashboard. A tortured biography written out in detritus.
Men playing music from cellphones in crowded public spaces, mumbling the lyrics to themselves, getting
turned on by their own reflections… silently hoping someone calls them out for it so they can yell “I’M
NOT THE ONE!!”.
First and foremost, I want everyone to know that the reason I am jumping today is not because I am
a closet homosexual. I have simply chosen a career that has taken control of my life and identity,
and the only way out is to fly from the very window that separates me from the rest of the world
Monday through Friday. I have spent the last nineteen years of my life in this office and although I
wear a smile, there are many things inside that I choose to hide from my friends and coworkers. In
June when Steve took us all to the strip club, he saw me crying in the bathroom. I told him that my
sisters dog had died, but really I was torn up about never becoming the dancer I was destined to be. I
knew that I should have been the one on stage and not the one in the chair with a wad of cash and a
cigarette. Last week I went to the ballet and I got so frustrated and full of jealousy that I walked out
halfway through and went to Shake Shack. I have only been with one man in my life, and because he
was my woodshop teacher I could never fully express my true love for him publicly. I desire certain
men in the workplace, but most of them have wives and think I am a vagina slayer. I have come to the
realization that no one knows who I really am and therefore I will be leaving no one behind when I
exit this life. I will dive into lower Manhattan just as it dove into me and I will come back to earth as
the beautiful dancer I was meant to be. I am donating all of my belongings to Jesus, the janitor from
the 3rd floor who helped me assemble my desk. Goodbye cool world...
Scott
A READING OF THE TEXTS IN THIS BOOKLET TOOK PLACE
ON THE EVENING OF SATURDAY MAY 9TH 2015
850 FEET ABOVE STREET LEVEL
INSIDE OF THE OBSERVATORY OF 70 PINE STREET
FIRST KNOWN AS THE CITIES SERVICE BUILDING
THEN THE AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL GROUP (AIG) BUILDING
IT IS CURRENTLY BEING CONVERTED TO A RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT
WRITINGS
LORENZO BUENO
CODY RANALDO
JACK IRVING
SPENCER TULLIS
MERCER TULLIS
ALEC TINMAR
SEAN VEGEZZI
TOMMY MALEKOFF
PRODUCTION
PARIS VENTURE
KEEFE BUTLER
MANUEL SMITH
DESIGN BY SEAN VEGEZZI
COVER IMAGE BY ALEC TINMAR
IMAGES BY SEAN VEGEZZI AND ALEC TINMAR
ARCHIVAL IMAGE (X2010.7.2.5184) BY WURTS BROS (NEW YORK, NY) /
FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF THE MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
POST PRODUCTION BY CODY RANALDO
OF THIS BOOKLET 25 COPIES HAVE BEEN PRINTED AND BOUND FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION
UNDER LOCK AND KEY / IS THE WAY IT HAS TO BE