WORKS ON DIGITAL PAPER

Outside the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center

In the official "downtown" area of the suburb I grew up in was a shop called The Cutty Sark. Filled with all sorts of nautical knick knacks, it was the sort of place that, besides the name being the name of a whiskey I had seen in the too-oft adult-ignored "bar" area of my childhood home, had a particular whiff of a locale specifically not for children. I always wanted to go into Cutty Sark, the salty smokiness was so enticing, but never mustered the courage. The breakables looked too precious, the light too dim, the shop keeper too much like he had actually been shanghai'd at some point. I knew it was off limits. There was a longish running television advert for Toffifay caramel candies when I was a kid. I remember the basic narrative was a mother withholding the Toffifay from her children because it was a "grown up" candy. If I recall this correctly, it must have been broadcast during the breaks in afternoon cartoons. Those sneaky advertising people. A handful of years ago I returned to my childhood town and made a point of going into The Cutty Sark. Once there, looking at all the boat paintings and brass barometers, that feeling of childhood awe and fear crept up my back. Suddenly self-conscious at twenty-something, I needed to somehow overcome the adultness of the place, to match it with my own irrefutable existence as a grown up. I sauntered over to the counter, where the man with the mustache and thinning hair looked at me over his glasses, and proceeded to tell him, in a breathlessly clipped fashion, how as a boy I found the shop so scary, so foreboding, and now, as an adult I was returning, fears overcome. I might have even shrugged my shoulders half-chuckling . The man looked at me, disinterested, and didn't say a word.