The Floor
The Floor
Who would have thought that 75 miles north of the city, amidst the majestic farmland of Ulster County, amidst the rich smell of manure, in the shadow of the glorious Shawangunk Ridge, east of the Wallkill River, that you would find this, that you would find us? The few. The un-proud. The terminally weird. Who would have thought that we would assemble here?
I would imagine that we would assemble in the alley behind the dive bar in Williamsburg, next to the ruptured sewer pipe. I would imagine that we would assemble at the Arby’s, any Arby’s, but probably one down south where they are taken more seriously. I would imagine that we would assemble in the psych-ward, or a detox, or a federal prison, but not here.
Billy owns the property. I heard one time, awhile back, he kicked everybody out. Came through with a bulldozer and leveled all the platforms. Not surprising, really. The surprising part is that this is even a thing. That camping on Billy’s property is a thing. Most of us don’t even know him.
These are the facts. A deck that isn’t connected to a house, one that is free-standing, is called a platform. I have erected a platform on which I place my tent. I have erected this platform in the woods on Billy’s property. At the ranch. That’s what we call Billy’s place: the ranch. South of the runway, west of the sheep farm, halfway between The Golden Tit and Little Odessa.
There are many platforms on Billy’s property but this one is mine. What skydivers lack in overall hygenine they make up for in boundaries and respect. No one will ever pitch their tent on my platform. Besides, there are many platforms on Billy’s property. So much so that, at a yearly “pub crawl,” it requires a map to properly find each location hosting food, beverage, or substance.
Usually a host has a good sturdy, platform, not high off the ground. It’s safer that way. It’s not safe for people who are drunk or high to walk around 5 feet off the ground without a guardrail. But that is how I built mine. It is five feet off the ground. Far away from any critters. And when it was finished, the first time, I remember being able the see the sun light bounce off it like a mirror and return some of that brilliance into the woods around it.
Not all platforms at Bill’s is this well made. No platform at Billy’s is this well-made. Oak flooring is expensive. But some people have used pressure treated wood. And others have covered their non-pressure treated would with a tarp to increase longevity. The result is that water gets trapped in-between the wood and the tarp and can’t evaporate, hence speeding up the process of mold, mildew and rot. Some platforms have been there so long that they are close to being reclaimed by the Earth. That it, they have broken down into the biodegradable elements that wood breaks down into on the Earth-side, and on the Top-side, one can just bearly make out the shape of the platform whose color now matches, exactly, the dirt and leaves around it.
My platform though. I erected my platform so that I could rest between bouts of weirdness, and so that I could spend time in the tent with strange women, on strange nights. I erected my platform so that I could escape my family. But I tell you, I lost my family. I lost them, I say. And I no longer seek strange women or strange nights or anything of the sort. But yet I return, for the floor. The platform floor.
***
It’s the late-eighties or early nineties. I’m anywhere from 40 to 45 inches tall. I have golden, curly hair. And an imagination, to rival any imagination. The machinery responsible for the production of fantasy in my mind is a venerable juggernaut. A sacred being unto itself.
In my dreams I can fly. I am always lucid dreaming. When I wake I have done all the things I wanted to do while I slept. I have met the people I wanted to meet. I have held the girls hand I wanted to hold. This ability was iron-clad until I wanted to kiss them as well and right up until I hit puberty and, well, you know.
Now my dreams are nightmares. My kids are gone and I can’t find them. Or they’re held hostage. There is a knife against Demosthenes’ neck. The fear is worse than falling. In your sleep. How you wake up right before you hit the ground and die. That’s how I wake.
Now I wake up and I have never done the things I wanted to do in my dreams. I never know that I was dreaming anymore. In my dreams. I am never excited. I am not excited to rest. I am not excited to wake.
***
The brilliant sun saturates little areas in random patches on the forest floor. A shirtless man emerges from his tent. From within a cloud of wood-dust, from atop my platform, I see this man. From the corner of my eye.
“Shut! The! Fuck! Up!”
I pay him no mind.
“It’s outside, you know… this is outside.”
There are certain sounds that one is accustomed to hearing at the ranch. For instance, one would not be particularly surprised to hear a woman, or a man, moan in pleasure, from a nearby tent, in the dead of night. Should you happen to hear the shrieking of a man as he runs bare ass into the pond at day break, it would not be the first time. You would know that he’s just fouled himself with mushrooms and has become, all of a sudden, both terrified and overjoyed by the big, round, orange ball that has started to emerge. And on each summer morning with blue skies (and low wind), the Otters will be taking off in quick succession. Every twenty minutes. One after the other. Again, and again until sunset. Plenty of people can sleep through the innocuous drone of an Otter as it taxis down the runway. The distant rise and fall of their twin turboprop engines can be soothing.
This brings us to the sound that has bothered our shirtless friend across the way. One would not expect to wake to the sound of a thirty-five-hundred-Watt generator, 40 feet from their pillow. Nothing but a thin piece of polyester, or nylon, between themselves and the gasoline-fueled combustion required to power my tools.
The man eyes me down for a bit before retreating. Before brushing his teeth in front of the mirror he’s hung on the tree beside his tent. Before rinsing his mouth with water from a plastic water bottle. Fuck him, I say. Before long he’ll be careening from an Otter. Falling from thirteen-thousand feet above the Earth. That fall will help him. Maybe he will feel more alive. Maybe he’ll forget his troubles, for a while. That’s what he needs. Not me.
I need the surface of my platform to be more level. I need to fill the cracks between the boards with filler. If the cracks aren’t filled, the poly will fail to unify and protect the wood underneath. Then the wood will fill with water. And eventually, the platform will buckle, and collapse under its own weight.
I wouldn’t be able to handle a sight like that. The once shiny floorboards, reclaimed by nature. The once shiny floorboards, beset by rot. Eaten by insects. Turned to dirt.
No, I pay him no mind at all. There is too much to get done.
This isn’t the first time I’ve done this. The polyurethane I first had used failed. And so certain areas of the wood have been water damaged. Dare I say, have begun to rot. I need to start over. I need to start from scratch.
The only way to keep the rot from spreading is to expose good, clean wood. Get one of those heavy-duty drum sanders. One of those walk-behind deals. Rent it from Home Depot, haul it up to the ranch with the generator. Crack the bitch up and have at it. That’s the only way. Then, only then, I can apply a coating that will be impenetrable.
I have decided to varnish my platform with a Marine-grade lacquer. The floor will be like the deck of a ship. It will last forever, if maintained. But the surface must be prepared properly. I must work, within my cloud of dust, while the others play. Fuck him, I say.
***
See, the boards of the floor are not just any boards. I did not buy them. They were laid in a house in Bergenfield before I was even born. I took them up and had saved them when I renovated my mother’s house. The house I bought with my wife. I took them up and used shitty thin engineered-floorboards from Home Depot instead. No sanding though. I thought I was doing the right thing.
The boards sat around taking up much needed storage space for years until I brought them to the ranch. Before she, my ex wife, had manipulated me into anger. Had used the children as pawns. The only thing that could get to me. After I punched a wall.
She filled in the the blanks at the courthouse with lies and he threw a mirror at me and tried to rape me and said whatever her fucking bitch-lawyer probably told her to say, she got it: the restraining order she wanted. She got the leverage she wanted. Got the kids temporarily. But she couldn’t keep them from me at that time. She could at another. But that’s different story. This is about the home where I grew up. She got me to sign a paper saying that I would never return to the only home I had ever known until the day the divorce was final, except for one day of supervised retrieval of an agreed upon set of assets subject to equitable distribution.
Is that why I work so fervently? There is no way I can keep this platform standing in perpetuity. I have to know that. Still I pour myself into it. I pour money. I pour time. I pour hours lost of jumping out of de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otters with my mates. As if restoring the floor would restore my family.
But the floor isn’t my family. My family is the present. The floor represents my past. The house I grew up in. That family. Every part of it, stepped on. Now it’s the broken window. Now it’s the crumbling steps. The people laughing as they wait for the light to turn. As they wait to pass us by. Now it’s the garbage piled knee high in the basement. My sister and I, wading through it, as if it were a ball pit. I’ve long since left that house but I can still feel the dirt of it on me. I can still see my mother’s tears. They’ve become my own. I don’t even know which broken family I cry for anymore. I don’t know why I polish. I don’t know why I sand. This hardwood floor in the woods, completely out of place, without a chance in the world to survive, destined to degrade, destined to rot and return to the earth, just like me.