Benchwarmers

While sitting in sliver of parkland known as Van Cortlandt’s Tail yesterday morning, I bore witness to something rather unpleasant. I’ve reported from this sprawling sea of benches before, this noisy location overlooking busy Broadway and the Number 1 elevated subway line. Not too far south from this Shangri-la is another slice of park—crescent shaped and much smaller—with benches that abut the heavily trafficked Major Deegan Expressway, I-87. In my youth in the 1970s and 1980s, the place was affectionately known as the “Bum Park.” In other words, it was oft populated with unsavory sorts with an excessive thirst for the grape or some such thing. Just to keep the local geography in order, the Tail is the “Bum Park North.” I appreciate that these monikers are not politically correct nowadays, but we are entitled to a little black humor every now and then—to laugh to keep from crying—without getting chastised or cancelled by some holier-than-thou snitch or triggered crybaby with too much time on his or her hands.

Okay, back to my sighting. There’s this fellow that I see around a lot, a skinny dude about forty or so, I’d guess, but he could be younger or older. I feel genuinely sorry for this man who regularly rummages through garbage cans for discarded cigarette butts with enough puff left in them. He’s always smoking, perspiring, and bleary-eyed. I’ve long wondered what his tale of woe is. Mental illness? Drug abuse? Both? Is the guy homeless? In any event, he’s a veritable pinball, stopping to sit on benches on Broadway, in the Tail, and in nearby Van Cortlandt Park proper. Stop and go is his modus operandi as this peripatetic wanderer abruptly moves on to pillage the nearest garbage cans for cigarette remains before venturing to his next sit-down. It’s a recurring cycle that I've witnessed over and over. He never speaks with anyone, which is fine by me, but does an awful lot of nervous flitting. And although his attire looks relatively respectable from afar, the guy’s not very sanitary. Now, more than ever, when I plop down on an area park bench, I contemplate all who came before me.

From where I sat yesterday morning, this growing concern of mine assumed Code Red significance. For I saw this mystery man drop his pants and defecate on the sidewalk. He then wiped himself clean with a plastic bag. Well, today, I returned to the scene of the crime, as it were, and cut short my stay. It was hot, humid, and uncomfortable, but the impetus of my early exit from the Bum Park North was an approaching benchwarmer. No, it wasn’t yesterday’s Man of the Hour, but a woman whom I’ve previously encountered there. I hadn’t seen her in a while and, honestly, didn’t want to see her this morning or any other morning for that matter. She’s a disturbed individual who says strange things in an unwarranted and unwelcome hostile manner. Whether this lady is just making batty small talk or looking to pick a fight is often hard to decipher.

As I was making like a tree and leaving the Tail before this character was in earshot and could engage me in conversation, she took note of my sudden departure. My plan was to vanish before this paranoid woman deduced that I was leaving because of her. When she glared my way, though, I knew she had put two-and-two together, that I was, in fact, calling it a day because of her—and she internally fumed! It’s always amazed me that certain types of people feel entitled to rant and rave to anybody and everybody—and nobody has the right to move on until their show of shows is over.

Fortunately for me, there was this senior citizen in the Tail—who often stops there on the last leg of her journey to her apartment building—whom the crazy lady appeared to know. She had found an audience of one and the distraction worked in my favor. So, that’s a little taste of life in the big city on a dog day of summer 2021. It isn’t always pretty and is frequently quite sad. But sometimes it helps to be on the outside looking in—to detach from the reality of the reality. Everyone’s got a story and many don’t have happy endings or beginnings and middles in many instances.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)