The father-head of an Indian family once confided to me his belief that squirrels are blind. They can't see, which helps to explain why they panic in the middle of the road: the squirrel tries to “hear” the on-rushing engine and thus determine its position and direction. But squirrels are not very good at this game.

Four hours thirty minutes after the bus pulled out of South Station and the city of Boston, it rolled into the honeycomb hive of the NYC Port Authority. I thanked the gracious black captain, who drove slow and nostalgic through Harlem to Manhattan, and followed the streams of passengers along with my instinct to the heat and the fury that is the street. Humanity climbed the stairs to the exit like moles digging to reach the light above. Lack of nicotine pushed me up. In no time I was smoking on the corner of 6th and 42nd, alone in the capital of the wild world.

I had made plans to stay with an old friend in Brooklyn but had dropped all communication 48 hours prior in the run up to my escape from Boston. No longer sure that I was a wanted man, I took out my phone to call her up for directions, and reassurance. What I saw distressed me: Low Battery. I placed the call: no response. The feeling in my heart was the stab of fear and the whiff of excitement... like a nude boy swimming in the river in the middle of the night. No one knew where or who I was, and it felt strange and wonderful.

Blind, in squirrelly bliss, I walked up and down the streets and avenues adjacent to the Port Authority. I could, in fact, see, but my sight was overpowering and rendered meaningless. Steel skin and glass teeth, rock asphalt, reverberating language animals... I stopped listening when my phone rang. “Q train,” said Crystal.

I went underground, twice to tunnels with Metrocard access only. Then I asked a cop. He pointed to a hole in the ground about ten feet away. I climbed down, looked around for Q. The underground was endless, and infested with people. Yes, there was definitely some sort of human infestation down there. Tunnels led to more tunnels, past more people, the walls adorned with all numbers and letters. I was not confused. As a balls makes its way down a vertical maze I dropped through various slots down multiple ramps. I circled down spirals. Q was the source, my ride to Brooklyn.

Forty five minutes later I rose up from the steamy subway swamps aboard the Q. Arched over the Hudson River parallel to the Brooklyn Bridge, frozen for miracle moments midair like a flying fish in flight before plunging back down the black tunnel. The train burroughed into the new burrough with zeal.

We cut Brooklyn down the middle, shears through Flatbush. Stopped at the usual places... Paid a heavy toll to ride the King's Highway, souls searched at Avenue U. Afro combs and baby strollers. I got on the horn to Crystal at the Neck Rd. and Sheepshead Bay stops. She had me peer past olive-skin faces to the MTA map on the train wall. It was intricate and highly technical, but I was able to place most of Brooklyn behind the Q. Coney Island just up around the bend.

“Find the beach... a green umbrella... pink kimono,” were Crystal's last words. My cell phone, already on its last legs, folded up and powered down. Dropped like a shot horse.

Incommunicado on the Ocean Parkway platform I saw the sea. Descended down to street level and headed to the source of the salty winds blowing notes of children's cries. A boardwalk flanked the wide lip of sand. I combed the mobs on the beach for a pink kimono but this Coney Island was truly massive. A green umbrella, she had said, and I finally spotted that. I walked out into the sand and the winds tugged my transient garments across my limbs as clothes billow on a line. Crystal in a pink kimono met me out in the the Coney desert with motion picture grace. We ran to each other and hugged. She lifted me off the ground as we twirled, and I bent one foot back.

“You fucking jerk,” Crystal said and pushed me back. “You should have called me to say you were really coming.” She forgave me for being the worst communicator in the information age and introduced me to her roommate Olympia, who offered me strawberries. I laid on my back and laughed up at the gods and clouds and pollution in the sky.

Olympia had a bad leg but those girls were hungry so we slowly made our way to the boardwalk concessions. Moseying along I giddily told them of blind squirrels and how strawberries are part of the rose family... Handsome Brooklyn boys played handball in court after court. A schnauzer on a leash behind it's human master stopped to eat pebbles of horse feces. “Who's nastier, the dog or the woman for allowing that?” asked Crystal, loud enough for the woman to hear.
Olympia threw back her head laughing as an animal man with a parrot on his head, snake 'round neck and lizard on shoulder freaked out some Latin lady as he wove through the boardwalk mobs. Shoot the Freak read the sign to one game. The barker running the show stood astride a line of paintball guns and sing-sang, “Come on baby, shoot the freak now!” to the tune of the Locomotion. “Grand Funk Railroad,” said the barker, dating himself. Down in the pit the freaked moved about, wearing a motorcycle helmet.

After Nathan's original hotdogs, Brooklyn lager, Italian sausage, fried shrimps, Olympia's futile search for fish and chips and eventual exit, Crystal and I used the boy's room and then decided to ride the Cyclone. My stomach has iron walls like a cement mixer and Crystal is one steely sister, so our constitutions were up to it and we bought the tickets. I displayed my flair for passivity as wailing children pushed me aside cutting me in line. After a healthy digestive wait we took seats. “Girl, you got a big ass,” I told Crystal, who in fact does not. Her ass is pure muscle. She punched me hard, and I momentarily forgot my rollercoaster fear.

The tracks and superstructure of the Cyclone are wooden. As a smoker with some phobias I fretted over this as the cars lurched forward up that big first hill, rickety clack. Near the top of the ascent the ancient ride that's run perfectly for two hundred years had to come to a sudden stop, probably because I was riding it. A mechanic came up after a minute. We asked him what the problem was, and if the can of WD-40 we'd noticed below could be of help. “Bubble gum,” said the gruff mechanic. “We use bubble gum.” I cringed, Crystal was amused. The ride started moving again and we clicked on up to the precipice of a New York summer night and rose our arms...