The Rest of my Week as a Pigeon

Day Five

Rick is dead and I feel responsible.  From what I gather, Rick was hit in the head by an errant champagne cork.  The New York Philharmonic was playing the park and there were all these picnics going on. Several pigeons vow to disrupt the next concert, even though it is Verdi.  I blow them off.  My benefit is tonight.  And it’s at the Museum of Modern Art.

When we roll up to MoMa, spotlights are slashing across the front of the building.  I look up and see the artist Matthew Barney climbing the front façade dressed as one of those shaggy Budweiser horses.  His partner Bjork is below him singing and whistling through an engine block from a ’62 BMW Roadster. 

Inside, I’m shown around by some flamboyantly gay publicist who looks like Henry Kissinger.  He flutters his eyes and asks me if I know that I am a close relative of the parrot. I bob my head and try to roll my eyes.  This makes him giggle.  He tries to touch my beak but I peck him away.

I fall asleep during Minnie’s speech.  When I wake up, DeNiro is at the next table glaring at me.  I squawk and try to say Hey hack, when’s that sequel to Rocky and Bullwinkle coming out?   But all that comes out is spit.

I jump off my chair and waddle straight to the bar.  I’m itching to kick some ass.  The bartender slides the nut bowl my way but blows off my request for a straight up scotch.  I squawk and the guy squirts me with seltzer.  Shaking it off, I try to tell him I could have his ass fired.  He just laughs.   I loath being mute.

Day Six

Man, I just want to sit on my feathered ass today but we have to helicopter over to the Hamptons for a polo match.  We land at Alec Baldwin’s house and Alec doesn’t seem thrilled.  He tells the air he didn’t know the bird was coming.  Alec glares at me and announces with that deadpan TV death whisper that he’s going to fire up the barbecue. 

I spend the afternoon booting golf balls around the putting green.  When everyone leaves for the polo match, I jump in the pool to clean off.  This brings a series of accented yelps from a shirtless Latin pool boy who runs at me while frantically zipping his jeans.  The same jeans I saw at Jeffrey’s store! 

Argentina wins the polo match and soon Baldwin’s place is swarming with tanned, handsome pathological liars in form-fitting white pants and tall boots.  Polo horses are paraded out back to a round of polite applause.  I fly up and land on the hindquarters of one of the horses.  Bladwin immediately shoos me away.  What’s his problem?

Seconds later, a part of Ralph Lauren’s car collection circles the driveway.  What’s cool is that everyone says Ralph, despite his highly compensated authenticity, is a pretty down to earth guy.  But he’s very tiny.  When his vintage 1938 black Bugatti rolls up and parks, guess who pops out of the small rear trunk?

Minnie announces that we’ve raised $1.2 million dollars for the pigeon relocation fund.  Relocation?  I thought we were going back to Trump Tower?  I peer over Kate Winslet’s shoulder as she quietly reads the fine print in the catalogue.  Her fabulous lips move like two moist entwined garden slugs.  I love that image.  As a pigeon, I have a bit of the poet in me. 

I stumble over to the pool feeling like someone ripped out my tail feathers with tweezers. For health reasons, there will be no pigeons allowed at Trump Tower.  The money is going to a pigeon sanctuary outside Providence, Rhode Island.  Rhode Island!?  

Day Seven

Not working has had a profound impact on me.  I consider becoming a philosopher or a Buddhist monk who designs yoga clothes for pets.  Or maybe I will travel the world dropping off American bonhomie and shaving kits in the Middle East.  All I know is I want to benefit humankind.  But not on a schedule.

At an invitation only brunch, Minnie tells me she doesn’t want to go to Rhode Island.  But she says the million two has to go somewhere.  Minnie decides it’s going to the Cayman Islands.  Along with me and Minnie. 

I don’t understand.   Minnie has plenty of dough.  Why would she want to rip off the pigeon fund?  I’m also thinking do I really want to go the Cayman Islands?  Do they even have pigeons there?   But I have to go. I feel like I have brought Minnie some kind of happiness.

Minnie is doing nude yoga in her apartment again and yapping on about how useless her life is.  I’m ready to poke her eyes out.  I spot two plane tickets for the Caymans trip.  I decide that what I’m about to do is best for both of us.

I clamp the tickets in my beak and flutter out the window.  I hover for a few seconds as Minnie screams at me to come back. Then a BB pellet enters my side and takes my breath away.  I fall like a rock.  Minnie’s screams echo in whatever I have for ears.

I spread my wings and it is a beautiful soaring trip down.  I hit the pavement and am immediately surrounded.  Someone snaps my picture.  A private ambulance arrives.  The back doors open and I hear classical music playing.

 

That orange ball Mario Batali chef guy huffs over from his restaurant for what I assume to be a photo op. Instead, Mario gently scoops me up with a spatula and places me on a sheet of bright orange silk which I find out later is what he wraps his breadsticks in. 

A dream flashes across my eyes.  In it, Mario announces that I am going to be dinner.  I try to joke with him and buy some time.  In perfect English, I say I’m lucky that Mario is not a French chef or I’d have foie gras stuffed up my ass and a twirled radish where my head used to be.  Mario chortles with his mouth full and I manage to escape.

When I wake up, I’m on my back.  I do not hear classical music.  I hear water dripping.  I open my eyes and see rusty black pipes above my head.  A drop of water splashes me in the eye and it stings.  I am alone in a basement with a sad-looking man who is wringing out a mop in a bucket.  His name tag reads Hector J. Diaz, M.D. 

Doctor Diaz drags his hands over his blood-stained shirt and tells me I’ll live.  I ask why I am in this dirty stinking basement.  Doesn’t he know who I am?  Of course, my words don’t come out.  Doctor Diaz goes back to his mopping.    

Both my wings are numb, but I manage to fly back to the bar where it all started.  I perch myself on my regular barstool. Everyone points at me but I don’t give them the satisfaction.  The bartender places a shot of Irish whiskey in front of me.  I have no idea how I’ll pay for it.  Then the BT says "on the house."

On the TV hanging from the wall, I see Minnie being led away in handcuffs.  Her lawyer steps to a microphone and says Minnie stole the benefit money because of an illness she contracted from wild pigeon droppings.  In the corner of the screen is a pint sized picture of me.  Everyone in the bar turns and glares.

I finish my drink and fly off on the tab.  I hit the streets and zigzag to the next block where I collapse on the steps of a church.  After a few minutes, a man walks out and places a bowl of thin soup in front of me.  I look into the bowl and see my reflection.  I look cute but haggard.  Slowly, my reflection disappears.  I am nothing again.

My Life as a Pigeon - Days Three and Four

Seven Days of the Pigeon

I live in New York City and when my landlord doubled my rent I got evicted and had to sell all my stuff.  I used the money to get real drunk and in the middle of the drunk I dared God to change me into a pigeon for a week.  Which he did.    

Day Three

I fly above my old building and slash several wet white craps on top of the green canopy that covers the entrance.  The slum landlord looks up at me and shakes his fist.  I squeeze out another slithering line and the scumbag dives into a Starbucks.  For the first time in my life I feel real power. 

After nibbling some tater tots from a trash can and washing it down with puddle water, I flap through the window of Minnie’s apartment.  She is on the floor doing nude yoga.  I can only think of melting elephants.  After a shower, Minnie dresses and we limo downtown.  Minnie tells me she is organizing a fundraiser for all the abused pigeons in New York City.  I don’t care. 

We stop at Tiffany.  Minnie darts out and is only gone a few seconds before bounding back out with two blue bags.  She climbs in the limo and takes out a thin necklace and drapes it around my neck.  I feel like an idiot but bob my head sincerely. Minnie squeals, then claps and kisses me on the head.  

 

We make another stop at Trump Tower.  Minnie shows me around a triplex apartment that has been desecrated with white fur trim and gold furnishings.  The owner is a tall, rail-thin woman whose complexion is the color and texture of corned beef. 

Minnie makes a pitcher of apple martinis.  The corned beef faced lady tells me she once slept with Lou Reed and asks if I know who he is.  I bob my head enthusiastically and hum a few bars from Sally Can’t Dance.  For a few seconds, the two of us duet.  Then the woman passes out.  I walk on her face for no good reason.

Day Four

Over bagels, Minnie tells me that the benefit is not just for me but for several pigeons that have made a home at Trump Tower.  But I have never lived at Trump Tower.  Why me?  I realize I’m being sucked into Minnie’s vortex of fame.  

After breakfast, Minnie reads liposuction brochures.  I fly to the park and find Rick. I’ve never seen him so depressed.  I’ve also never seen him perched on a pile of horse manure.  Rick tells me he went back to see his wife.  She’s remarried and looks great.  Rick squawks in anguish and throws himself into a scrum of pigeons bobbing for oats among the horse carriages.  The Irish drivers threaten to eat Rick.

 Minnie complains of hemorrhoids the size of golf balls so we eat dinner at some raw food place.  We sit and the owner dances out with two glasses of some Muscat grape juice concoction that tastes like a 7-11 slushy.  I almost nod off as the guy drones on about harmony and not using ovens, gas, sugar, eggs and whatever.  So why are the guy’s prices so damn high if all he’s got is four walls and a Cuisinart?  Bastard. 

I peck at a cup of Brazil nuts until I notice Robert DeNiro staring at me.  He’s got that narrow-eyed squishy faced look, like he’s doing a scene with Meryl Streep and she’s just farted.   I spin my head in a complete circle and this flusters DeNiro who drops his chopsticks into a bowl of brackish flaxseed soup.  His gaunt publicist with the Beatles haircut yells for fresh sticks and another bowl of soup for DeNiro!  “Bob” gets up and intentionally bumps my chair on his way to the bathroom.  Bastard. 

Minnie takes me to a club in Brooklyn.  She hands me to some scary-looking DJ (“DJ ThirdBass”) who’s got sharp wooden plugs sticking out of his ears and nose.  I’m thinking ritual sacrifice, but the guy just places me on his keyboard.  A spotlight hits me.  I hop around the keyboard and it sounds like something Monk might play. 

Backstage, DJ Dom tells me he wants me on his next record. Cool!  Then he cuts me a line of nose powder and I kind of peck at it.  Whatever, after a minute I want to go back out and jump on that keyboard.  I’m also horny as a priest after church. 

         

I live in New York City and when my landlord doubled my rent I got evicted and had to sell all my stuff.  I used the money to get real drunk and in the middle of the drunk I dared God to change me into a pigeon for a week.  Which he did.  My friend Rick who was slumped next to me at the bar also got turned into a pigeon and he was pissed.  In fact, he’s damned depressed about it since only last week his wife left him. 

Day Two

I’m standing on the street when some flailing bejeweled woman with tight blond curly hair grabs me.  She looks me over like an expensive vase then presses me to her chest.  She tells me her name is Minnie and she is going to save my life.  Minnie stuffs me into a purse which is shaped like a large loaf of Italian bread.

We take a white limo uptown to Minnie’s apartment.  She lives alone but says she would like a man, someone without back hair, preferably Turkish. Minnie asks me if I want to watch her take a shower.  I nod and try to say no.  It doesn’t seem to bother Minnie that I can’t speak.  Nothing against Minnie but I feel vulnerable because I don’t want to get stepped on.  I’m also keenly aware that I have no penis.

Later, Minnie lies down on the bed and drapes an eye mask over her face.  She grabs a silver sex toy which is also shaped like a large loaf of Italian bread.  Minnie tells me was designed by Michael Graves for Target.  Minnie sobs for a few seconds then shuffles into the kitchen.  I watch her sadly place the toy in the top rack of the dishwasher.  I have never had an apartment with a dishwasher. 

My Life as a Pigeon - Day 1

I live in New York City and when my landlord doubled my rent I got evicted and had to sell all my stuff.  I used the money to get real drunk and in the middle of the drunk I dared God to change me into a pigeon for a week.  Which he did.  My friend Rick who was slumped next to me at the bar also got turned into a pigeon and he was pissed.  In fact, he’s damned depressed about it since only last week his wife left him. 

Day One

My first flight is okay but I stumble on the landing.  I’m in front of a fancy clothing store where a famous designer (skinny guy with big dark glasses) is wrestling with a fat girl who is demanding an autograph.  I nip the designer’s ropey calf which tastes like cookie dough.  The creep screams that he could have me killed.  I’m about to lunge for his eyes when I’m scooped up by a sweet guy named Jeffrey who takes me inside the clothing store which he says is his.  He points out a pair of sparkly jeans that are on sale for $450.  I rotate my head in outrage even though Jeffrey tells me the price includes my extensive alterations.     

I nap next to a dumpster until evening then fly back to the bar and hook up with Rick.  We get kicked out for loud squawking and flap it to this fancy hotel and land on their roof garden. It’s four in the morning but the place is packed.  Everyone’s dressed like cat burglars. We waddle under a few chairs and peek up the model’s skirts but, incredibly, this gets old.  I wonder if I’m ill. 

Bored, I flutter over to a table and listen to a guy tell some girl that he worked on Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.  The guy is Caucasian but he pronounces the movie’s title with a slight Chinese accent.  The girl’s eyes go wide and her hips start to shake.  I end the night perched on a ledge watching TV through a window.