coins

I have somehow ended up with a pocket full of change today: remnants of yesterday's morning coffee and evening grocery store trip, this morning's coffee and bagel. Somehow this makes me think of Larry, crazy wonderful playwright Larry, and his funny habit of throwing his change all over his apartment. Years' worth of coins washing up in silver and copper drifts under the furniture, in corners and along baseboards, cascading down from the tops of bookshelves and coats and tables. I spent a lot of time in that studio apartment (with a separate hallway and eat-in-kitchen!) perched on the 16th floor of a housing development overlooking 23rd Street & 8th Avenue, and was always blown away by this change, this money literally paving the floor, just lying there for the taking. I took a handful once, a couple dollars' worth, no more, and was so overcome by guilt that the next time I visited I scattered a month's worth of laundry money down the hallway and under the bed, discreetly letting quarters slip from my fingers to the floor as we sprawled there eating falafel take-out and drinking rum & cokes by the bottle.

Now I save my change in an old apple juice container and take it to the bank once or twice a year. This is much more contained, and feels so middle-aged, middle-brow, boring. I miss his wildness sometimes with a longing that takes me by surprise, his constant play with language and his ridiculous hair and his apartment lined with change, adrift in a certain impetuous abandon that I have never managed to match.