Zero data.

I have decided to write down a few important things about this location. In my pocket is a blue BiC round stic pen; 50 for $5. I write on the back of a piece of paper, folded four. The front reads: Tutor Interest Survey. Second grader handwriting has finished about half of the survey questions, at the moment the most interesting thing to me is still that we, this kid and I, played hangman so that I could keep his interest for long enough to spell all the letters in my favorite dessert. I deliberately picked something long so that he would have to spell a lot.

Backtrack just a bit. I glance at the woman next to me waiting for the bus. I reach into my too-new, too-clean bike-courier bag and pull out “The Epic of Gilgamesh” and pull out of that my piece of folded paper. My pen hand is poised. I start to walk briskly away. I get my first strange look from Auntie Diana, the woman standing next to me who has never told me her name, the woman who missed the last bus, which I saw come and didn’t tell her about, and who I will ride with home. It came right before the express and she thinks it comes right after and I know we’re in for a wait. I don’t know why I don’t tell her, it just seems like it doesn’t matter.

It’s nighttime. I’m very visible right now, and tall and blonde. I just want to write these things down.

I feel like I do when I see a photo and I don’t have a camera. I want this space. This is exciting space; it exists as a dream, as somewhere I might never return to. The bus simply left and I rode and I got off because this felt like the right place to be. I must write. Everything. All things. Brand names seem especially important to me.

The corner of Mawney and Elmwood Street I decide. Mendeza Travel agency on a green awning behind a prison-bar fence. Delgado Restaurant, empty at 6 PM on a weeknight. Lights off. I don’t even glance in, but the thought occurs to me now that there is no restaurant in Delgado Restaurant. Rain is on the street. A lot of rain. And the street is orange but primarily green, then red, and only orange just a little bit of the time.

Maverick cigarettes will cost you $5.30 here. If you want import beer they have it. Corona, but probably not Sapporo. A flat silver Capri-sun, probably sucked up on a sunnier day soaks in the sidewalk cracks. Auntie Diana asks a couple for a light and they pass her by. There is a paper cup jammed in the chain link fence there where they are walking now and in it sideways is a puddle of beer and rain.

She asked me for a light too, but I don’t smoke. Here they come.

KOOL and Natural Ice on the ground.

Beinvenidos a Fernandez Liquor and Lottery! “The Lot. Your Rhode Island Lottery.” I’m a man and she’s a woman, and I have nothing to feel uncomfortable about. I’m a man and she’s a woman. She called me a “fucking nigger”. Not Auntie Diana. A jogger in a white t-shirt with, I feel like, a gold something around her neck. This was earlier. I’m holding a video camcorder and riding traffic into the sea of neon, smoother motion, no smoother, another take. I need this tonight. I need this for tomorrow. Footage—really, at this point, anything.

“Why are you fuckin’ filmin’ people for? Stop filmin’ people! Oh—now you’re…”

“I’m just filming the cars.”

“I caught you–you fuckin’ nigger.” Her teeth are tilted. Her cigarette represents her. My finger shouldn’t have, but it hits the stop button. I stop. You win. God I wish I had gotten this on tape. I’m a white-blonde, you’re calling me a fucking nigger?

This is a bad neighborhood.

Beinvenidos a Fernandez Liquor and Lottery! Across the street a man stands outside the door, older perhaps, hooded eyes. Cigarette. An enemy. I feel like a white man in Africa. The neighborhood Africa. Africa between Mawney and Elmwood on Resevoir. No cover charge for white people the whole night and still none show up.

I feel short. I feel like my coat is real leather. My eyes roam like a dogs. Then, like a dog they jump and catch the chain. Choke. Recoil. Damnit, I’m so college-kid and I hate myself for it. The secret is out. My forced-casualness, my faux-belonging gives it away. You can’t look natural natural in a Michael Kors jacket. You can’t look natural natural here without a black hoodie and sweatpants.

Beinvenidos a Fernandez Liquor and Lottery! A boy comes around the corner followed by his sister-she’s dolled up, age 4 in a pink coat with pink sweats and pink-L.A. Lights. Blink, pink, blink. Pink. Smile. Does Auntie Diana get a sparkle in her eye? Auntie Diana asks for a light. The kids play in the dark. They run behind her and she holds her dignified stubby face at the level. Or maybe I just didn’t look. The boy tries to get a walkie-talkie to work. Fizz, spat, buzzle. Out of range. Liquor store. Out of range. Give him a few years.

My shoes are tan and two stripes, fashionable I guess. I bought them this summer for a sale price. Shit. Where’d that dog come from? He bends and swims between traffic. Black and white, tongue hanging. He pulls a chain to hold a truck. Some white fluff sogs at the end of it. Some white fluff obediently follows the whipping trail in front of it. This is worth watching.

The good guy:

“Anyone know whose dog this is? Do you know whose dog this is?”

A door knifes open angrily. A familiar man enters frame, neighborhood familiar, he belongs here, the first, the one doing the talking, the dog talking, doesn’t.

The bad guy waits for the beat and slips out from behind:

“What the fuck are you doin’!”

I’m glad it’s not me. It’s not my animal. Who knows. I don’t know. I don’t want to take him. No. No, okay. No. I’m driving away. But not this guy, naive punk, in his 20s, naïve for the neighborhood. He’s wearing naive leather with pouty chains, red scorpion on his shirt, or something else that doesn’t match his face. Get back in your car. Okay-put the dog in the car. He does.

All in long enough to realize I should tape this, and miss it. I’ll write it. I’ll take notes and look like something I’m not, like a detective and stick out like detectives might. But I don’t know. Everyone won’t quite tell me the truth with their eyes, and their hand in their pocket, just like when there are cops around. They will make telling movements that tell nothing but what they want me to think, or what I want to think and they will notice me always. Always they will step around me. They will always step around me, even with their eyes. Zero data. Zero telling. The world will shift under my eyes, will lie to my face until I leave. And I pressed stop, and closed real faces and real tilted teeth, and now I do this. Second best. Sort of truths, and you are the detective and I step around you and sort the things in my mind, and only write down zero data. But for you. Zero data for you.

j.m. betz. october 2006.