cold river costin

The allure of Tate Street has to be that it holds only one prerequisite....come as you are.

There is only one you and you will always find a chair at her table. This paved Jewish mother never puts a hat on your head or waits for you to come home. She'll be wearing the same thing she had on yesterday.... and tomorrow.


Making friends with the students was always the best part, but then they leave. The unspoken clause with these pals of mine is for me to accept that they're becoming holy and precious and wonderful....and I'll stay the same. They didn't treat me badly for it, they just never came back.

When I first met Cold River (I gave him this nickname because he has a bert lahr/ned beatty skittishness), he was a bartender at my pool hall. He was brilliant, charming, brash, fun, arrogant, and the worst "I know something and everyone's gonna know I know it" on earth. He was endearingly sensitive, constantly keeping "knowing something for dummies" books in his face as a lull-staver. When a movie was discussed, he would holler, "the book was better." Yep, one of those...

As I withstood the horrors of poo-hall distraction, he'd roil my plasma by using his capacity as trusted ball-hander to amplify pussy-getting rock ballads to painful extremes. I knew not to look. His overhead and hand air-drumming wasn't half as reddening as that look on his face. Had we pulled the plug, it would've resembled a solo girl-fight. When the song got to the "she just might dump her date and notice me moment" Cold River would do the "I ain't lookin at her" look (a look she looked at while everybody looked). And he'd leave there alone, every night, in the Cutlass that Noah built. (I'm positive he's saying to himself as he reads this, "why did I drive when you know I walked?"..... see?)


Cold River had some real bad habits. He lived in the apartments above Friar's, ordering walk-to large pizzas from NYP. He'd pass by the hang-out spot with his five-cheese, extra crisco and bacon box of death tucked under his arm. Unless he puffed in his sleep (which wouldn't surprise me), there was eternal smoke escaping his mouth or nose or fingers. After a joke jab or two, he was off to woof it down. He'd kick off his sockless shoes and watch TV, through his toes, in his grease-slathered bliss.

Cold River was a labeler. To him, everything had a term. Talking to a girl was talking to a girl; he'd let you know. "I'm talking to her." Best to walk away and let it continue. If he was on a date, we didn't, for the love of Jesus, get near his woe-man. There's proper escort to a car, and then there's the way he did it. You could do it his way if, maybe... uh ... you needed an expose' on how to let on you just might be with something you're attracted to. Hand on waist, hand on ass, back to waist, unsnap bra, over shoulder, clothes torn off, children screaming, spot lights looping, sirens wailing, oo-ee, oo-ee, putt-ding!.......... (support payments behind). At least there was foreplay.

Cold River's emptiness pinballed on whims past the point of labels. He never said, "I'm pinballing on whims," (proof it was really bad). He smoked more and hung out on loser's row longer; he even listened. Little did he know he was ripe for the queen of all man-haters. This skank would tell him all he wasn't and never would be while coveting all the wasses and currently izzes. And she could do no wrong.

My lump-throated, well-read buddy had missed this book: "How Many Does It Take To Tango?" It was never a best-seller, but I would've waddled down MLK with a Dixie flag jutting from my cheeks (while yelling enigma) to save him from this character-disordered nightmare. Ikky Vikky also whined and guilted him for every second she wasn't being entertained. Her subscription to "Ozzie and Harriet Lifestyle" was mailed to an old address, and it was all his fault. He'd bite his toenails in public to figure out new ways of keeping her and keeping her happy. While Cold River was spinning plates, she married his best friend (and was told of it after the fact). I've never seen him cry, but I know for certain he did that day. So did I.

God let it get a tad darker for him.

We worked together for a short stint, to keep the pizzas flowing. It's a gamble to ride off with me and then be told the assignment. "Here's a snow shovel. We can't back down that driveway, so let's get up those 12,000 lbs. of shingles, hot as it is, one scoop at a time and fill this mother up." It damn near killed him. His grunts deepened as he mouth-breathed in misery. "Both loads to-day?".... Yessiree.

When that day finally ended, he shut his door behind him and fell out on his face; sockless shoes still on. Had I beat his door with a Nigerian tom-tom team, he would've laid there 'til eviction day. Cold River had hit the bottom.

He applied for his teacher's license and became a high school mentor just outside Wilmington. He met a great gal and was married, even taking his time to plan. His students adore him. He got a new car to replace the Cutlass that Noah built.

I wish I could say it was ambition that straightened him aright. It was a unimpressionable skank and a few shingles more than his pride will ever have to endure again.