Dance

Funny day walking across the Manhattan Bridge in the rain.
 I was jobless for over a month, 23-years-old. I was returning defeated again from another day of aimless job-wandering. Restaurants, cafes, bars, Craigslist leads, another stack of resumes passed-out to passive managers. No money for the train again. Walking across the bridge it started to pour. Heavy. Heavy rain on my only clean clothes. October, halfway from Manhattan and my bed in Brooklyn, a 40 minute walk, the middle. I looked up and muttered "FUCK". The bulbs on the arch of the bridge suddenly turned on. The sky was a light gray, angry, no sunset, just the end of the day. The steel beams were bright blue under the lights and rain, they looked unconcerned. The rain pounded relentlessly useless into the East River below me. I saw the dry faces of a Coney Island bound Q trains passengers rush pass me beneath the yellow lights of a subway car. I had no bread at home. The light on the bridge was so beautiful and the sky so vast. I was completely alone. Not a soul on the bridge, it was mine.
 I started laughing. Laughing maniacally but genuinely all the same. I knew then that the world was too big and so tiny all at once, I knew then that I would eat again, that I wouldn't die; yet. That I needed to understand something larger than wet, squeaky shoes on concrete bridges. It was there, when, viewing rain on old steel and illuminated white cables, supporting millions of lives a day, unconcerned, even by fence-climbing suicide fiends and Jewish mothers. Rain running down the stone pillars onto graffiti, splashing my face, fat beads of salty, dirty New York rain I could taste on my tongue. Legs weak from hunger; that I would make it.
 I couldn't stop smiling. And laughing. Delirious and saintly. You can only get so rained-on. I had lost my job and my skateboard was killed by a bus. I had spent my last 60 cents in nickles on a cup noodle 36 hours before, lost 12 lbs in a month, but I knew I would make it. I raised my arms and laughed.
 "HELLO BROOKLYN!" ,I yelled, "Christ, what else do you want?", "I just want some fucking bread."
 I started a delirious tap dance down the eastern slope of the bridge, screaming at God, waving my arms in the rain, and started singing.
 "OH I WISH I WERE AN OSCAR MEYER WIENER, THAT IS WHAT I'D TRULY LIKE TO BE!!!!", "FOR IF I WERE AN OSCAR MEYER WIENER, THAN EVERYONE WOULD BE IN LOVE WITH MEEEEEEEEEEE!!!"
 I couldn't stop laughing.
 I made it to my apartment, soaked as hell. The next day I got a job. That night my friend died in front of me. I could never understand my realization after that. So strange.