On Getting Lost in Brooklyn

[d_aulnoy]

So, last night The Produce Bandit and his gorgeous friend Thalia were playing Brooklyn.  So I figured I'd go.  (The fact that I was willing to go out to Brooklyn in the name of feminine solidarity, but not for his band, probably says a lot.)  However, all of these good adventures were for naught, because ... I got lost.

A wonderful writer friend of mine, Deborah, wrote a brilliant short story about how everyone gets lost in Brooklyn their first time.  She was right (of course, in her case, the characters basically fell down a rabbit-hole, but the principle holds true.)  Despite having grown up in New York, I had not ... so much been to Brooklyn before.  And I got my ass lost, good and lost, true-blue-if-you're-going-to-do-something-do-it-right lost.

The club was located on the intersection of Flatbush and 7th.  Somehow, I misread the map.  Instead of ending up in Park Slope?  I believe that I was in either East Flatbush or Flatbush proper.  Anyway, I was at the Flatbush stop, end of the line on the 2.

New York neighborhoods are funny things.  Roommate B. is always vaguely surprised that, given my typical paranoia about the badness and danger of New York, I'm happy as a clam wandering through Spanish Harlem.  This always makes me think that, somewhere in her head, she thinks that I equate ungentrified neighborhoods with crime, which, no: they remind me of where I grew up.  It's just that, having grown up there, I know that you should follow local precepts on good territotory and bad territory (in my neighborhood, there were a few bridges that you just did not walk under, ever ... ).  However, the collective reaction to my presence of the neighborhood that I found myself in, hippy-dippy and jolly free, could roughly be described a sort of a Who in the what now? 

I mean, when people are taking photos of you with their camera-phones on the bus to where you meant to be as opposed to where you are in a way that spells out "Honey, you will never believe what I saw coming home from work!"...

I got lots of good advice: from the woman on the subway who took one look at me and told me not to pass go, not to collect $200, but to go directly to the B41.  From the gentleman who stopped of his own accord as I was asking another gentleman how to get to the club to offer his own interpretation of the best way to traverse 40-some-odd blocks of Brooklyn (when I explained that I was from Queens, he nodded sagely). From the lady in the middle of Prospect Park, who looked deeply startled to find another wandering denizen in the dark, who popped a flashlight and a map out of her purse to give me directions. 

Now, so far, I've managed to delicately avoid mentioning what I suspect to be the main reason behind the universal amusement for my misplaced ass: partially because it really isn't a factor, partially because this story isn't about that, and can't be, without a number of problematic constructions that I do no like being called into play.  But there's one thing that I have to mention, one thing that people kept asking me, one thing that illustrates the ways in which Murphy rules my life.  The name of the club?

The Chocolate Monkey.

What the fuck?

I picture the owner of the club (a very nice club, despite its unfortunate name) sitting there in hyr plywood-and-plaster smelling, newly renovated, nearly-ready-to-be-opened-club.  I picture hyr pondering, what, what to call this club?  And I picture Murphy sitting on hyr shoulder, whispering a nearly unheard benediction in hyr ear: One day, the whitest of all white girls will be lost in the Jamaican part of Brooklyn, and she will have to ask directions for a club that sounds like a racial slur, and it will activate her white liberal guilt, and much homage will be done to me!  Mwuhahaha!  The innocent owner, of course, connected this to hyr favorite stuffed animal from childhood, or to hyr fondness for chocolate martinis, or something, but Murphy chuckled in triumph when the name stuck. 

Anyway.

I got to the club just in time to see them packing up their instruments, and had a fabulous time listening to the next act.

But, jeez, people ... my life.

Comments

[honeychurch.livejournal.com]

I may have to show your story to my parents - they would get quite the kick out of it, being that they live in that area now - a couple blocks south of the southeast corner of Prospect Park (Parkside subway stop) - they do all their shopping on Flatbush (although the end of the 2 line is a damn long ways away - did you *walk* back to Park Slope?) - they've definitely gotten a few "wtf?" looks in their neighborhood.

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

By all means!