Alicia and I'd been texting back & forth for the better part of the afternoon as we did pretty much everyday anyway, but now we'd been talking about our road trip to the Big Apple.
This all started earlier in the week when I rather glibly texted as an aside, "Wanna go occupy Wall Street?"
"We must!" she replied nearly instantly, incorporating an inside coo of which I wouldn't go into detail. Suffice it to say it was my indicator that she was serious and passionate about wanting to do it.
Alicia and I both like to wax or wane on Facebook, and I on Twitter, about the issues we take with the powers that be, on Wall Street, Capitol Hill, and at the White House. And she took my impulse and pumped some reality into it. "We have to back up our words," she insisted. "It's now or never!"
I could only agree.
We'd need a place to crash, of course. We're not protest veterans after all, and neither of us are of means. And we're not college kids anymore either. I'm a 50-something grizzled dude with knee issues, and she's a mother of 3, accustomed to the comforts of family living, and living well at that. As such, neither of us was bent on sleeping on a park bench, under a shelter-half if we were lucky, or in a soggy cardboard box maybe, or, worst-case scenario, in a jail cell, say, at Rikers Island.
And, well, y'know, I have family and friends. No man is rich as he, you see. I could make some calls.
My nephew Jesse, for example, is an accomplished jazz & classical pianist with space in Brooklyn. But he'd been on the road touring up & down the midwest. I could sense he was exhausted and likely would rather not be entertaining just now. Timing's bad, I get that. Fair enough!
So I called Mikey D., a buddy from alumni softball in D.C. a few years back. He hangs out a shingle in suburban Jersey, and, after giving it some thought, was amenable to putting us up... after he cleared it with the Mrs., of course. Besides, we're in the early stages of a collaboration on a political novel and could kill two birds as it were during some downtime from the protest.
So, we were good to drive to Jersey and ride the commuter rail into Grand Central for the Occupation. That is until Rob called me yesterday. He and I were thick as thieves for a time, off & on since freshman year back in '80, but recently more off than on. I hadn't heard from Rob in months.
"Are you going to Manhattan this weekend?" he asked.
"How the Hell d'you know?"
"Alicia and Jen have been chatting online."
"I'll be damned!" I said.
As it turned out, Rob's a huge sympathizer to the cause and, unable to come in person, offered to help with some of the travel expenses. I was agog and told him I wouldn't say no.
We talked some more, which then prompted him to remember his father owned an apartment on the east side near the United Nations, and which was, for the moment, unoccupied. When it rains, it pours. "And?" I asked, my cup runnething over. And, he continued, his father might let us use it.
"Wow, fantastic!" Alicia squealed when I told her.
Rob texted me the good news this morning: His father too was sympathetic to the cause. So, "Yes!"
"Hot damn!" I exclaimed, thanking him, and I asked that he please extend our thanks to his father.
I called Mikey D. to thank him and his Mrs. again, but that we'd be staying in Manhattan, just up the street from the Bears and the Bulls and the 3-piece suits and the cliche suspenders and the expensive cigars... and, uhh, the cops.
But, yeah: Wow, fantastic!
Manhattan, here we come!
Sunday.
