Notes. From the Upper West Side. A novel by Dan Wrench. CHAPTER 14.
Live. And Learn. I didn't know why bang was interested, but it was something to talk about while waiting for the sweaty-filling boys to get things square away or their shit together, or their film all on a roll, or whatever they call it when their asses are finally in gear. Yeah, I told bang.
You could say Libby hates Park. In a way. After a fashion. And yeah, it's the same curtain would be I told you about way back in that early chapter, chapter 5 or 6 or something.
You remember. The Tubby Fuck X wrestler from Ann Arbor who got the cereal blowjob from Constance that we can so long ago when we were all just barely out of high school. Kurt Libby of the Kurt and Constance episode, the event that drove me into therapy and made me come to terms with my need to be Lord of all-tail. To the extent that I have come to terms with it.
Kurt's around. He's in the city. Like I told bang, he tends bar in the restaurant at the Commodore Hotel, the big one on 6th Avenue. He poured a bill Clinton and drink once.
Wife, no kids but three cats, lives near Riverside Drive in the 90s. When we graduated from college, Kurt belonged to that little group of kids I decided I could live without ever seeing again. So it was a good decade or so before I ran into him, even though we only lived about 30 blocks from each other in Manhattan. In 1994, I went down to Soho to audition for Depth Charge Repertory Theater.
And boom. There was Kurt Libby on the other side of the table. A lot thinner and almost no hair. Kurt was a member of Depth Charge Rep.
And after my interview and audition, he recommended me to be a member. Bygones being bygones and water being under the bridge. The way it often is when time passes and you wonder what happened to your old jumps and you wish you could see them again just to tell them it's okay. So there we were, me and Kurt Libby in the mid 1990s, members of Depth Charge Rep, which back in those days used to call itself the quote, home of literate theater unquote, and produced almost exclusively Oscar Wilde plays.
Critics found that weird. A bunch of Americans off Broadway doing British comedy from a century earlier. So then it became the quote, home of dangerous theater end quote. And every production we did was pretty much a new play about people in square relationships who end up having strange sex with partners they later have to kill.
Critics thought we were a lot better suited to that kind of play than we were to Salome and Lady Windermere's fan. We did a few critically acclaimed shows too. See right about then was when the New York Times hired a guy to go around reviewing off Broadway shows instead of just Broadway. And a couple years later was when theaters started having websites.
Before that you had to advertise or get publicity in newspapers and magazines. And that was a struggle in and of itself. Raising money for advertising and press agents. Never mind mounting the actual show.
So in the 80s you could make magic and pretty much be ignored by everyone unless you had connections. And if you didn't have the connections yourself you could pay out the ass for a press agent's connections. Which he or she delivered on maybe half the time. But like I said in the mid to late 90s all that started to change.
You could actually get a public presence and a New York Times review without having to pay extortion to some reptile who left slime wherever she fed. Depth charge did three or four shows that the New York Times guy I forget his name right now. Just loved. The last one the biggest deal was this play called Smile Shine which was sort of a sequel to Death of a Salesman only not written by Arthur Miller.
So the writer had to be careful about not using the same character names and other legal stuff. Kurt and me play the late Billy Cormans aging sons riff and slappy. It was great. At the end of the first act riff me drill Slappy's wife up the S while she begs him not to.
And in the third act just before the lights come down she blows his brains out with Slappy's 12 gauge while he begs her not to. We did 96 performances and got great reviews. So Lebs came to see us. I have the clippings.
Then right after it closed a lot of ego shit happened and envy shit and bottom line. We all got pissed off at each other and the company broke up. Kurt and me were pretty down about it but we kept the friendship going. Off and on we talked about maybe putting another troop together or maybe just doing another show but so far we haven't really done anything about it.
When we first hooked back up back in the 90s when I ran into him at depth charge we had a lot of laughs about the old college days. Of course we had to deal with the Kurt and Constance episode. Put it behind us get it out of the way. Laugh about it.
I needed to be Lord of all tale. I confessed although putting it in the past tense made it less of a confession. It's what got me into therapy. I told him all about Fritz Koch and my problem.
He seemed really sympathetic. Almost ashamed. Like you get when you're really hard on somebody for being a jackass and later you find out they've got valid emotional issues. It was like you realize that even though it was my fault for acting like a paranoid freak in another sense it wasn't my fault that it was my fault.
He laughed. I laughed. We got a little missy. We drank beers.
And over those same years Libby and Park got pretty tight even though Park had zero to do with depth charge rep except to come to a few performances. I think he was trying to fuck one of the actresses at one point but I never found out what was really going on there. All I know is one night she was crying and the next night she said she was going to nail Park's cock to the call board. And even though I was tight with Libby and Park was tight with him the three of us never hung together except maybe for one Christmas party where Park showed up for a few hours.
He was starting to click with some short check with Spiky hair but he split before he got an info on her other than her first name. So later he called up Kurt for her phone number or email or something and Kurt turned him down and he said she's got a boyfriend. Now that may not sound like such a terrible objection. Loyalty is important.
Maybe you could say that Kurt was being a little presumptuous. He could have let the girl speak for herself but at least his heart was in the right place. Right? Well here's the thing.
For about a year before that Kurt had been fucking an actress from depth charge and I think I might have already mentioned that he was how shall I phrase this married. Now who's a guy to turn to when he needs to fuck around on his wife and not get judged for it? Park of course. Not only is Park not married himself but he thinks marriage is a feudal institution that kills the souls of a participating humans.
So Libby goes to Park, tells him his marriage has turned into a big grey photo of life in prison and by the way can he use Park's apartment to bang his babe in? Park says yes of course. The amoral turd. Six months later Kurt and the actress get tired of fucking each other and two months after that Libby tells Park he won't give him a chick's phone number because she has a boyfriend.
So I asked Libby when I heard about it. You don't think that was a weird place to start taking a stand for monogamy? I gave a cackled when I asked him. We were at a diner on 92nd Broadway.
He seems taken off guard. Well you know he said I mean some things I mean relationships have to be respected. He said he stared at me like it was really important I buy it. I just get caggled.
He sighed then he laughed. Okay look it's like this okay I guess I had a bed of a crush on this girl. What you call a crush you know and you know there was Park acting like I wasn't even there. Sort of like yeah Kurt couldn't be anything to that girl.
The only thing Kurt could be good for is getting her information from me. Totally Park. He took a long quack of his beer then said it's like I wasn't even there. Like I'm a fat guy or I'm out of it or I don't have a deck.
You know what that's like? Indeed I do. Even after Kurt refused to give Park the girl's number the two of them still worked on a bunch of crap ago. Mostly short films.
But their friendship had definitely reached its day no more. One day I'm sitting over on that big green couch with a scotch in my hand and I'm thinking what the fuck is wrong? I ever have a moment like that. I'm like shit something's been wrong for a long time.
What the fuck? And then it came into my head like a little message handwritten on a pulse. That's a park. You know what I mean?
He's just fucking depressing the shit out of me. Look I was around the sky for a long time. I was starting to feel like a sellout for having a wife and cats and not fucking the first slut he pushed my wife. He waved at the waitress for another beer there.
Or maybe he wanted to check. I forget I remember him waving. You know how he does that right? He asked.
Park pushes to let's your way. You know it's like okay you're hanging with him. You're just talking about normal day to day shit. Then suddenly he's like you gotta have a gem in your apartment.
And you're like okay that's an idea. Where do I put it? And he's like you'll have plenty of room as soon as you get rid of a wife and cat. The cats too.
Oh he left. You know okay not the cats but you know you're in the apartment to do that. That last night you have to change your life completely. So bottom line end of day take away thing.
Park depressed me day in day out no matter what I wanted to do. I was starting to think I had to change my whole life to do it. One day no shit. This honestly got happened.
It's Sunday and real quiet and I'm out getting a red bullet. I'm thinking I have to watch this and more. And that makes me sad because the next thing I think is how am I going to tell Candice I'm moving out. So I stopped returning parks calls and after a while I got back to feeling like hey I like my wife and cats.
I'd make Candice happy. She was sure Park was going to roll some piece of snatching my way and I'd end up popping up. So Candice didn't trust you on her. She doesn't trust Park.
Now what I meant. Park side of the story was shorter. Kurt and Candice Libby remind me of Jude the obscure only with cats instead of kids. He said I never read Jude the obscure.
But when I mentioned to Libby that Park said he and Candice reminded him of that book Libby kind of freaked. And ever since then whenever Park's name comes up all he can say is fuck that guy. Fuck that guy. I don't know maybe I shouldn't have said anything.
Live and learn. Notes from the Upper West Side is a work of fiction. The people depicted in this work do not exist. Notes from the Upper West Side copyright 2013 to 2014 by Dan Rensch.