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This project has been funded with support
from the European Commision.
The following takes place between 11pm and 2am
on the day of Wolfgang Staehle's visit to the American Embassy
For some reason I remember standing in a phone booth at a 76 Station in Palm
Desert at nine-thirty on a Sunday night, late last August, waiting for a phone
call from Blair, who was leaving for New York the next morning for three weeks
to join her father on location. I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and an old
baggy argyle sweater and tennis shoes with no socks and my hair was unbrushed
and I was smoking a cigarette. And from where I was standing, I could see a bus
stop with four or five people sitting or standing under the fluorescent
streetlights, waiting. There was a teenage boy, maybe fifteen, sixteen, who I
thought was hitchhiking and I was feeling on edge and I wanted to tell the boy
something, but the bus came and the boy got on. I was waiting in a phone booth
with no door and the Day-Glo light was insistent and giving me a headache. A
parade of ants marched across an empty yogurt cup that I put my cigarette out
into. It was strange that night. There were three phone booths at this
particular gas station on that Sunday night last August and each booth was being
used. There was a young surfer in the booth next to mine in OP shorts and a
yellow T-shirt with "MAUI" etched across it and I was pretty sure that he was
waiting for the bus. I didn't think the surfer was talking to anyone; that he
was pretending to be talking and that there was no one listening on the other
end and all I could keep thinking about was is it better to pretend to talk than
not talk at all and I kept remembering this night at Disneyland with Blair. The
surfer kept looking over at me and I kept turning away, waiting for the phone to
ring. A car pulled up with a license plate that read "GABSTOY" and a girl with a
black Joan Jett haircut, probably Gabs, and her boyfriend, who was wearing a
black Clash T-shirt, got out of the car, motor still running, and I could hear
the strains of an old Squeeze song. I finished another cigarette and lit one
more. Some of the ants were drowning in the yogurt. The bus came by. People got
on. Nobody got off. And I kept thinking about that night at Disneyland and
thinking about New Hampshire and about Blair and me breaking up.
Bar: The Thing New York
Music: American Embassy Berlin
A warm wind whipped through the empty gas station and the surfer, who I thought
was a hustler, hung up the phone and I heard no dime drop and pretended not to
notice. He got on a bus that passed by. GABSTOY left. The phone rang. It was
Blair. And I told her not to go. She asked me where I was. I told her that I was
in a phone booth in Palm Desert. She asked "Why?" I asked "Why not?" I told her
not to go to New York. She said that it was a little too late to be bringing
this up. I told her to come to Palm Springs with me. She told me that I hurt
her; that I promised I was going to stay in L.A.; that I promised I would never
go back East. I told her that I was sorry and that things will be all right and
she said that she had heard that already from me and that if we really like each
other, what difference will four months make. I asked her if she remembered that
night at Disneyland and she asked, "What night at Disneyland?" and we hung up.
And so I drove back to L.A. and went to a movie and sat by myself and then drove
around until one or so and sat in a restaurant on Sunset and drank coffee and
finished my cigarettes and stayed until they closed. And I drove home and Blair
called me. I told her that I'll miss her and that maybe when I get back, things
will work out. She said maybe, and then that she did remember that night at
Disneyland. I left for New Hampshire the next week and didn't talk to her for
four months.
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