Paulie Sings
Tuesday, May 15th, 2007Went down to the basement to see Paulie. He was in the tool shed.
Right away- he was high.
A hot day and Paulie- inexplicably- had a sweatshirt on. Sitting in the broken office chair with wheels, his huge frame spilling over the edges. He kept tinkering with a small black fan. The cage was open, the blades exposed. I remember he held a paintbrush with dry red paint on it. I guess he was trying to sweep dust off the fan blades, but I’m not sure.
His head dropped, chin slowly to the chest. He’d doze off for a few seconds. I stood there, filming him. I don’t think he knew I was there.
He rolled the office chair over to a white wood work table. He plopped his elbows down and put his head into his hands. Moaning and complaining of a terrible head ache but he couldn’t remember the word for head ache. Shadow’s calendar was blowing in the breeze created by a loud, a painfully loud fan mounted above the door. It was on the month July, which was the right month. There were sunglasses on the table. Paulie started singing “Why’d you have to be so good?…the way that you hold me….the way that you scold me” his voice was wavering, and low, but in tune. He seemed lost in thought over some memory, some past lover perhaps. He’d fall asleep for a few seconds and then start to sing again “…the way that you hold me”
After a time, he decided to put on the sunglasses. He unfolded the glasses and slowly held them open with both hands. He moved his head toward his hands very slowly, trying to fit the glasses onto his head. It was a slow, slow process.
Jason, his best buddy, said Paulie’s got a problem with a few drugs. The problem is sometimes you get hooked on the drugs you need to get you off of the first drug. It’s a vicious cycle. Paulie’s trapped.
When he finally got the sunglasses on, Paulie started to comb his hair. A black fine tooth comb. His thick black hair is always greased back and he combed it back in place, only to have the fan blow it out of place again. This continued until he used the comb to scratch his back, but I don’t think he ever reached the spot that itched. James came in and talked with Paulie briefly. Paulie didn’t say anything that made sense. He called James, by the name Charlie, and said he never wanted to get dirty. Realizing Paulie was high, James smoked a usually prohibited cigarette with Paulie and then left work early, not completing any of the necessary repairs to the cubicle upstairs.
After a while, Paulie’s high wore off. He took his shirt off and shaved in the sinks in the basement. He told me he no longer lived at the White House. Meyer had told him he could have his cubicle or his job but not both. Paulie kept his job and moved into a shelter on 125th St in Harlem.
He was so down, so rejected. He had looked upon Meyer as his savior, but now his savior had decided he had to go. Paulie was a broken man, at the lowest point I’d seen him.
He walked out of the blue doors of the lobby and stood on the Bowery smoking a cigarette before he left. A bunch of young women walked by in tube tops and Paulie and I decided to people watch. That seemed to lift his spirits. He walked off down the Bowery. I wanted to follow him and film him where he lived but I didn’t have any tape left, or any energy either.