The construction worker eyed my father’s neatly pressed slacks and asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m his friend? He told me to meet him here for lunch,” my father said.

“Your name Reilly?”

“Yeah,” my father said.

“Richie’s waiting for you.”

“Where?”

The guy with the hard hat pointed ten stories up to the high steel. And then he said, “Take the cage up.”

At the top, the elevator operator opened the cage and motioned to a group of guys who were sitting on wooden planks, suspended over two horizontal steel beams. They were eating their lunch with their feet hanging over the edge, kicking at the clouds.

“What’re you doing?” my father asked. “Where’s Richie?”

“He’s out there. Just walk.You’ll find him.”

“Are you crazy? I’m not going out there. Take me back down.”

Richie Two-ax was my father’s best friend. He was a bolt man, an ironworker, a Mohawk Indian who rode gray iron girders through the high blue sky as they were maneuvered into place by a huge crane perched atop the skeleton frame of the growing Western Electric Building in late 1950s Manhattan. It was his job to fasten girders together with bolts from the bucket strapped to his waist. Like most Mohawk men, he hung out in the Wigwam Bar on Nevins off Atlantic in a part of Brooklyn known as Little Caughnawaga , a ten-square block area which became home to about 800 Mohawks, ironworkers and their families, during the height of the construction boom in New York.

Little Caughnawaga was like any other ethnic neighborhood in New York, transformed by the arrival of the latest other. Long-time residents complained about the decaying neighborhood, but shop owners saw an opportunity and adapted by stocking new foods. The pastor of the local house of worship, Cuyler Church on Pacific Street, had the same business sense as the neighborhood shopkeepers. He learned the Mohawk language, offered a Sunday service to families in the neighborhood, and increased his flock.

Most of the Irish and Italian residents who lived nearby passed through Little Caughnawaga as tourists. It was alien turf for them, but for my father, it was a familiar place because of his friendship with Richie. For the last forty years, he has been telling and retelling stories about Richie with the regularity of the seasons. I call these his Richie Two-ax stories and I recently tried to stitch them together to figure out what the Mohawk ironworker was like. What I discovered was that the anecdotes my father had shared with me over the years, tell me more about him than they do about Richie.

The story about the time he was supposed to have lunch with Richie at the Western Electric Building is the odd one out of the lot because this is the only story in which my father voluntarily leaves his side. In every other story, my father is the classic, loyal friend.

For example, after the Manual Training High School Prom in 1958, they were walking through Duffy Square as three guys passed them. Richie didn’t like the way the guys leered at the girls, and they may have said something, so he went after them. My father gets really animated when he tells this part of the story: “He didn’t say a word, didn’t wait for me. He just went shithouse. Two big guys squared off against him, and when Richie dropped one of them with that right hand of his, the other one lost heart. The guy opposite me was more interested in getting his friends away from Richie than in fighting, so I helped him break it up.”

But it was hard to stop Richie once he started fighting, so soon the cops got involved. According to my father, “Richie was still hot when the cops showed up and there was a lot of pushing and shoving. One of the cops pushed Richie and he pushed back. Richie always pushed back. Didn’t take shit from nobody. And neither did the cops, so out came the Billy Clubs. The cop started pounding Richie, but he refused to go down. Two other cops jumped in and they eventually cuffed him and pushed him into a patrol car.”

My father talked to the cops after they had calmed down and explained to them what had happened. “The guys insulted the girls,” he said. “What would you do if someone insulted your girlfriend in the street?”

“He pushed me, kid,” one of the cops said.

“He’s a hothead,” my father countered. “Give the guy a break. He’s an ironworker.”

“He’s Mohawk?” the cop asked.

“Yeah. C’mon, cut him some slack. He’s a good guy.”

“Where does he work?”

“At the Western Electric Building on Broadway and Fulton.”

“Go see if he knows our guys down there,” the cop told to his partner. And after a brief conversation, which my father couldn’t hear, they released Richie.

My father was by Richie’s side in 1957 when they walked into fraternity dance at Prospect Hall, on Prospect Avenue between 5th and 6th, in Brooklyn: “As soon as we got in, someone threw a bottle of Bushmills in Richie’s direction. It didn’t hit him, but he knew it was intended for him. He had had a beef with some Italians a few weeks earlier. So he went after an entire table of them. No words. No warning. Just steel violence. It took four of us to pull him away. Richie started swinging at us when we pulled him off of one of the Italians, but I managed to calm him down. Once we had a few drinks and everything was fine.”

The best example of my father’s loyalty to Richie takes place on the night of the riot at the Wigwam Bar. This is my favorite Richie Two-ax story. Each time my father told his seasonal story about the Wigwam riot, his blue eyes lit up and he became animated: “One night, after we dropped off our dates, Richie told me he had to go see his cousin who was the barmaid at the Wigwam, and he asked me to come along. We walked into the bar just in time to see her rip a stone tomahawk off the wall, almost knocking down the huge picture of Jim Thorpe that was right above it. She swung it at a guy who had grabbed her arm, and she hit him square on the head.”

Sometimes, during this part of the story, my father reached up to an imaginary tomahawk and swung it down into the air. When he did this, I could almost see the picture of Jim Thorpe swaying on the wall.

He used to get up during the next part of the story, but the arthritis in his feet make him less animated today: “Richie jumped on the guy who had grabbed his cousin, and before I knew it, the place had erupted into a riot! I remember yelling, ‘I gotcha ya back, Richie,’ but before I could take a swing, a huge ironworker I didn’t know picked me up and carried me outside. I yelled at him when he put me down: ‘My friend Richie’s in there!’ Before the guy ran back in, he said, ‘This is a Mohawk fight. No white men allowed.’”

“I tried to go back in, but something was blocking the door. I looked around and saw a black and white police car down the block on Nevins, near Dean Street. So I ran up to the car and told them about the fight. The cops were ambivalent, and when they didn’t do anything, I told them, ‘Hey, my friend’s in there.’ One of the cops said to me, ‘Don’t worry about it, kid. It happens all the time. We’ll take care of it.’ Just then, a guy came flying through the plate glass window and the cops called for backup.”

My father avoided moralizing at the end of his stories and left it to me to figure out what they meant. It took me a while, but one night, years later, as I was watching a National Geographic episode on the salmon's mating ritual with my young son and my father during a Sunday visit to Brooklyn, it hit me. My father had always been obsessed with the salmon’s difficult journey to return to its original spawning ground. He was particularly amazed at how a male salmon would sacrifice itself for its mate. If a female salmon had inadvertently landed on the shore as they leaped upriver, the male would join her and try to push her back in the water so she could continue her journey to lay her eggs where she herself had hatched. Or he would die trying.

As my father explained this ritual to my son, just as he had explained it to me, I realized that the salmon’s spawning ritual was the perfect explanation for my father’s persistent retelling of his seminal stories, which touched in his friendship with Richie, his membership in gangs, and his life on the streets of 1950s Brooklyn. Each of his seasonal retellings of these stories was his journey upriver, back to his spawning ground. And each time he brought me along, pushing me back into the river of his dreams.

Don Reilly received his MA in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama from University College Dublin. He is an Associate Professor of English and Chair of the English Basic Skills Department at Bergen Community College in Paramus, New Jersey. Reilly is a reluctant suburbanite and lives in Wayne, New Jersey with his wife and children, but his heart remains in Brooklyn, the borough of his birth. He is currently working on his MFA in Creative Writing at the City College of New York.

“I’m just returning the key to the supply closet,” I said, heading over to the corkboard to hang it back up. I did not want to get drawn into whatever they were talking about. Sunlight was streaming in through the windows, and I felt like fainting. Karen squinted at me over the top of her glasses and smiled: “Ah, I wondered who’d been rooting around in there.”

“Bobby’s been in the closet for a long time,” Marco said, in a low, mischievous growl. He rubbed his short grey beard. The tattoos on his upper arms leered out from underneath his skintight T-shirt.

I laughed but didn’t take the bait. Marco and I were friends on Facebook and his status updates showed a remarkable propensity for gay innuendo. And in person, if you let him get started, he was even more relentless .

But Karen wasn’t feeling so discreet either. “Yes, Bobby would be a bear, right?” She looked over at Marco with a conspiratorial smirk.

With my thick, luscious brown beard and hairy chest, I would be a bear, I thought proudly—if I were gay, of course.

“Oh no,” Marco said with exaggerated surprise. He was looking at me very sternly, suppressing a smile. “Bobby is no bear. He’s more of an … otter.”

I was a bit offended. I’d always kind of thought of myself as a bear. A few years ago, during the dark time after college but before the even darker time after after-college, I’d worked at an independent video store in the West Village. The neighborhood was teeming with homosexuals (or so it seemed to me), and gay pornography was one of our specialties. Titles like Bear Patrol and Free Fur All lined the walls of the seedy little porno room in the back of the store, so I knew what bears looked like: hairy, muscular, dressed in leather, and carrying a nightstick. I’d also seen plenty of pictures of bears on Marco’s own Facebook page. Hardly a week went by without him posting a dozen or so pictures of a weekend “Bear Picnic” or “Bear Hiking Trip” (not surprisingly, bears enjoy the outdoors) or “Bear-E-Okee,” all full of hairy thirtysomethings that, frankly, looked a lot like me. Perhaps I wasn’t old enough? Or burly enough? Gay subcultures seemed so nuanced, I was surprised they could even keep track.

I’d been finding myself embroiled in a lot of these awkward little gay scenarios lately. I’m a bit of a loner, so my day-to-day routine didn’t involve going to that many different places, and it seemed like more and more of these daily stops were becoming tricky due to the presence of gay, or potentially gay, men that I was convinced had crushes on me. But perhaps I was just being paranoid. I mean flattering myself. When I tried out this theory on a friend of mine (that gay men were constantly ogling me and that my awareness of this was adding unnecessary stress to my otherwise banal errands), she said that I have “difficulty” in most scenarios that involve casual interaction with strangers and was likely blowing it way out of proportion.

Nevertheless, I’d started avoiding the bodega near my apartment in Park Slope because of a gay clerk’s overzealous greetings and small talk. And the way he stared at me! It started out innocently enough, with him paying extra-special attention to my bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich orders on Sunday mornings. I was usually hungover, worn out from a long night of drinking alone, or a shorter but somehow more abusive night of drinking with others and feeling alone, so perhaps my defenses were lowered, but I liked the way he smiled at me and said, “Helloooo … bacon, egg, and cheese, right?” before I even had a chance to speak. I’d stand off in the wings pretending to read the newspaper, as he lovingly laid a slice of cheese over the egg and called out, “Salt and pepper?” I’d wait a moment, so as to dampen any impression that I might be at his beck and call, then I’d rush forward saying, “Yes, yes, thank you.”

It wasn’t long before he started complimenting me on my beard, which was lovely, I realized, and apparently impossible for gay men to resist, so I took it gracefully. I’m very susceptible to flattery. And in fact, I was sort of fascinated by his appearance as well. His perfectly round bald head glistened, and his huge blue eyes were always popping with curiosity, the way I imagined mine might, if I didn’t always feel so fatigued. I was simultaneously impressed and appalled by how friendly he always seemed, and he was almost charming, in an exceedingly goofy way.

But being friendly is exhausting for me (this is one of the few drawbacks of being such a stalwart introvert), and sometimes I want to order a bacon, egg, and cheese without being flirted with. I began to dread going in there, and I realized I could only humor this kind of thing for so long. I’d wake up on a Sunday morning with a pounding headache and sit on the couch miserably thinking to myself, “All I want right now is coffee and a bacon, egg, and cheese, but if I go down there, I’ll have to talk to him.” Some days, the dread was so severe I wouldn’t even leave the house, subsisting instead on a box of Rice-a-Roni or Lipton Noodles and dark, milkless coffee brewed in my own coffeemaker. The fact that I’d also have had to go to the bodega if I wanted milk was a bitter pill to swallow that always sent me into a small rage.

Finally, one day when I was feeling brave enough to venture out to the store, he looked up at me expecting the friendly greeting we’d established over the last few months, I snubbed him. I ignored him completely and walked past as if we’d never exchanged hellos before. He was stocking the orange juice refrigerator, kneeling on the dirty floor, and I was overwhelmed by the smallness and sadness of our lives. I was able to collect my meager purchases (toilet paper, soup, milk, cheese) without interacting with him directly. It was obvious to both of us that I had ignored him on purpose, and now the spell was broken. Our little romance was over. I thought that would make it easier to go back in there in the future, but in fact it only made it harder.

Simultaneously, there was also a similar situation going on at Cosi in Midtown, near the magazine publisher where I worked. Once a week, I had a powerful need to consume a turkey and cheddar melt, so I left the hermetically sealed little room where they kept the copy editors and headed out into the midtown Manhattan lunch-hour feeding frenzy.

At Cosi, the prudent first move was always to steel myself with a warm little scrap of bread from the communal bowl they had stationed at the beginning of the line. With my grizzly-man beard, unwashed jeans, and sweater, I always felt out of place in the sea of pant-suited and humorless career women, jocular post-frat boys in light-blue button-downs, and cranky European tourists. “I might look at one of these women and smile,” I’d think, “if this were another life,” but actually I couldn’t bring myself to look at any of them. I was too blinded by their chatter and perceived hostility.

Here, my gay interlocutor was not the person taking the lunch orders, or even one of the half-dozen folks in the sandwich-and-salad assembly line, but the slight, feminine boy at the cash register. His mop of dark hair was mostly hidden under a flaccid Cosi cap, and the faint shadow of a mustache on his upper lip did nothing to diminish the girlish aspect of his face. If Marco were with me, he’d probably dismissively call the fellow a “twink.” (They had plenty of that genre at the video store as well, perhaps even some involving twinks and bears, though based on my cursory scans of the boxes, it seemed like kind was usually paired with kind.)

Cosi was packed during lunch hours, so my attitude was always get in and get out as quickly as possible. This meant, of course, that my interactions with the boy were more hurried and subtle than those with my bald friend at the deli, but again I got the strong and very definite impression that he liked me. His eyes seemed to be looking at me, rather than through me, past me, past everyone, onto the street and into oblivion, like the other wretches with his job. I imagined his whole world snapped into focus a bit more when he saw me approaching, a lovely bearded stranger here to rescue him from the doldrums of another day spent ringing up sandwiches. In any case, he certainly became more attentive, smiling at me slightly, with almost imperceptible amusement—or so it seemed to me, for in the world of midtown Manhattan lunch lines there can be no overt displays of affection.

A few times our hands touched as he was handing me my change, and he didn’t draw away quickly in alarm; perhaps he even let his hand linger on mine for a split second longer than necessary. When I worked at the video store, I tried that trick on a few of the pretty female customers, but I seemed to remember them recoiling in disgust. However, perhaps my slightly warped and impoverished sense of self was overruling reality. In my mind, I am like a bearded god in the eyes of homosexual men, but like some pathetic hairy troll in the eyes of beautiful women. So whenever his hand grazed mine, I smiled and tried to act naturally. I didn’t want to appear rude, but I also didn’t want to lead him on.

Once again, I felt the situation was becoming too familiar. One of the things I like most about living in New York is the absolute anonymity. As soon as I feel obligated to exchange familiar greetings with a person—the chatty doorman at a friend’s apartment building, the brisk Mexican woman who sells me coffee in the morning, the obese and obviously lonely neighbor in the laundromat on a Saturday afternoon—I begin to dread seeing them. And if those interactions are laced with unspoken gay romantic undertones, then they really become too much to bear. So I quickly found myself withdrawing my affection and natural friendliness, which, again, was becoming strained. And in fact, he seemed to be withdrawing as well, perhaps slightly ashamed to have been subtly flirting with a bearded stranger to begin with. I sensed that he was not nearly as self-assured as his goofy bald counterpart at the bodega in Brooklyn.

Incredibly, a similar but even more disruptive situation like this had also developed at my local gym. This one caused me the most consternation, as avoidance was not really an option. At that time in my life, I felt like I had to continue to sculpt and maintain my body, plus the gym seemed vital to my mental health.

I’m not exactly sure how it started, but one particularly muscle-bound jock and I somehow became trapped in a pattern of exchanging the most intense and awkward man-on-man eye contact I have ever experienced in my life. As most gym-goers know, making eye contact is something that is generally not done. In fact, most people at the gym tend to act a bit scared of each other (the women especially seemed skittish toward me); there is a lot of forced politeness, and whatever exchanges do occur are brief and tense. No one wants to “invade each other’s space,” so to speak. Plus, the fact that nearly everyone is wearing headphones further prevents conversation. Before I’d joined the gym, I had imagined (and hoped) that the atmosphere would be more sexually charged somehow, but it wasn’t. Except, unfortunately, between me and this … dude.

It never failed: I’d go dashing up the stairs after doing some bench presses, ready to grab a towel and mount the stair-climbing machine, and I’d look to my left and there he’d be, staring at me. I’d round the corner, heading toward the free weights, glance up, and there he’d be, barreling toward me, staring at me. I’d head into the locker room, drenched in sweat, eager to strip off my headphones and T-shirt, and there he’d be, suddenly, clad in nothing but a tiny white towel, staring at me.

His body was phenomenal. I could admit that. It was no wonder it seemed like he was always at the gym (I tried going at different times of day and night in an effort to avoid him, to no avail). In order to build and maintain a body of such absurdly statuesque proportions, you’d have to be there all the time. He was several inches taller than me, his chest and arms were chiseled, and his stomach was flat and defined, but it was his legs that were really impressive. His buttocks, thighs, and calves were all ripping with muscle that was perfectly in proportion to his heaving upper body. In contrast, my own legs were a source of constant shame. They looked and felt (both physically and psychologically) too skinny, but I found leg exercises to be too tedious to really correct this problem. I’d look down at my legs, at my sneakers really, as I hurried past this Adonis in a skimpy white towel. My face felt hot and, absurdly, my heart was racing, the way it did in middle school whenever I saw a girl I liked.

He had an interesting face. I suppose that was the original problem; he caught me looking at him. He had a strong chin, which was angular and smooth and always immaculately shaved, dark eyes and dark, spiky hair, which he wore very closely cropped on the sides. This combination of features made him look a bit like a Japanese anime character, although if I had to guess, I bet he was from New Jersey.

Actually, now I do remember how this all started. The gym was about two blocks downhill from my apartment; and Prospect Park, where I went running during the warmer months, was about four or so blocks uphill from my apartment. Sometimes on my way downhill to the gym, or on my way uphill to the park, I would pass this spiky-haired gym bunny as he was also either coming from or going to the gym. (I don’t think either of us lived very busy lives.) The first one or two times this happened, I may not have even recognized him. Most likely, I just noticed that he looked familiar, if I noticed him at all. But then, perhaps the third time this happened, I had a simultaneous flash of recognition and fit of friendliness, and I did something unthinkable: I nodded in recognition at him, breaking the invisible plane that usually exists between strangers and establishing actual, furtive human contact. (How I wished I could take that back later!) He nodded back. And so our new nodding-in-recognition rapport was established. Then, for a while, it actually seemed like I didn’t see him at the gym anymore, just in the outside world, in the vicinity of the gym, and so we would nod hello, each thinking, in a very masculine, non-gay way, I presumed, “Oh, there’s that dude from the gym.”

Strangely, while I was OK with this dynamic of nodding hello to a guy in the real world that I recognized from the context of the gym, when I started seeing him again at the gym and he wanted to continue (or even, I feared, escalate) this nodding relationship in that context, I wanted no part of it. It was absurd to have to nod hello at this guy every time I saw him at the gym, which started to feel like every time I went in there. And even more unsettling, he seemed to want more than that. It was almost as if he wanted to talk to me. For what reason though, I couldn’t fathom—at first. Perhaps he was just a lonely straight guy. Maybe he just wanted to have a beer or something, make a new friend. But, no, I thought … that is madness.

Back in the office one afternoon, as I was scrutinizing some proofs, Marco came in and said, “Hey Bobby, you claim to be straight, you should know this: How many players on a hockey team?”

I didn’t really look up. I could imagine the smirk on Marco’s face well enough. “I don’t watch hockey,” I said. “And what do you mean ‘claim’ to be straight? Is there some debate about this?”

Marco laughed. He was standing by the window looking down at the city, perhaps evaluating its relative hetero or homosexuality as well.

Then, as if to cast further doubt on the matter, I said, “So I looked up ‘otter’ and you were right, an otter is just a skinnier bear.”

“Mmmhmm,” Marco said, glancing back at me and drawing the sound out—as if he found otters delicious.

It would be kind of nice to be an otter, I thought to myself, or a bear, to have a cozy little niche clearly designated like that; to be eagerly accepted by a group based on the way I look. I’ve never had that. In fact, I’ve never really been a part of any group, not even any of the ones that are based on the feeling of not fitting in.

I looked up to say something to Marco, something witty about otters and bears perhaps, or maybe even something serious and sincere about people, but he had already wandered out of the room.

Rob Williams is a mercenary copywriter and copy editor who currently lives above a meat market in the East Village. You can find more of his stories at www.itmustbebobby.com.

Photo by Mike Baird 

My girlfriend Victoria and I live on the third floor of a pre-war, red brick building on 19th St. in South Park Slope. Our back windows afford a nice view of all the backyards on our block and those of the homes on the north side of 20th St, which abut ours- each a tiny Kingdom for it’s little Monarch – sometimes with a miniature Versailles, and children running around just as filthy and shoeless as serfs of yore. Each kingdom is separated from the next but by a fence of chain links or tall wood plank.

Some have been maintained, but not many. The once magnificent grounds have fallen to disrepair. Flagstones once used for a footpath to protect a lush green lawn or prizewinning rose garden from unwelcome footfall are now just barely bald-spots in an expanse of weeds growing unchecked and wild.  What mostly remains is hard-packed dirt and dog shit-covered Astroturf; reliquaries of rusted out barrows, barbeques, and the rubble of excess materials from construction projects, decades since passed.

And at the foot of all these yards standing proudly tall are the blind sentinels of each delinquent kingdom- the seemingly pointless ladders to nowhere, the clothesline towers.

When I moved to Brooklyn I had no idea what these were, as all I saw were not actually in use anymore. But then someone told me, “those are for clotheslines.”

JUST for clotheslines?” I thought. It seemed so strange. All that height – the metal and concrete, a towering eyesore, in a city where people's showers are put in kitchens and toilets are put in showers for an extra foot of space; a city where economy of space is a religion. A tower just for laundry? It just seems so improbable.

When my girlfriend and I moved in together, the size of our average load of laundry doubled. We live far from the Laundromat – at least what we consider to be far, which is two long blocks and one short block. For whatever reason, we immediately became incapable of doing laundry. New socks and underwear would be purchased. Travel bags on visits to my parents would become stuffed to capacity without benefit of folding. Occasional emergency wash runs would be made to Vic’s parents in Midwood. But a full load of laundry was apparently impossible. A large pile would sit in the corner of the bedroom, and be cherry-picked again and again for salvageable items until finally consisting of nothing but sheets and towels.

Exercising became problematic with no clean workout clothes. I would run on the track at the Y or in Prospect Park, stink-lines trailing behind me, people falling away like flies. To combat this problem I began taking gym clothes into the shower with me after my run and would vigorously rub Garnier Fructis conditioner into my shorts, adding a squirt of Kiehl’s for good measure. However, with no place to hang them other than on top of the shower, they would drip on the floor or onto the dry towels, staying damp for days, and in the end just smelling mildewy and stale, like a summer camp changing room.

I decided that the problem was NOT in fact insufficient cleaning methods, which eventually became tossing a capful of Ultra Gain into the shower, then stomping and squishing my gym shorts with my feet as I bathed myself, like some disgusting 18th-century vintner trying to achieve an earthier tannin,  while giving his grapes what-for. The problem was that I didn’t have anyplace to properly dry them. I needed a clothesline.

I assumed the installation involved climbing the tower as opposed to firing some kind of harpoon gun from our window, but wanted to make sure. I typed “installing a clothesline tower, Brooklyn.” My search yielded a youtube video entitled “Joseph installs a new clothesline, Brooklyn.”

It did not include Joseph falling to his death as I assumed it would, but it did confirm my assumptions about ascending the tower. I’m sure this was safe when the house and tower were built in 1910, but I questioned the structural integrity of the rusty quarter-inch metal bars at Centenarian age.

I measured the distance from the house to the tower. It was almost exactly 50 feet so I would need a bit more than 100 feet of rope. Of course the hardware store only carried 50 and 100-foot lengths of clothesline, so I begrudgingly purchased two hundred feet as it began to rain.

About a week later, there was a break in the rain and I decided it was time. I could finally wash my gym clothes and hang them out to dry! Victoria refused to be any part of it, not wanting to be witness to me falling to my death, so I had to be my own spotter.

I tied one end of the line to the pulley outside my kitchen window and tossed the coil down into the yard. I had promised Vic I would use a “safety harness” so I cut a length from the extra coil and strung it through the belt loops around my waist, then around the tower. With a good square knot, I leaned back and felt the rope tighten around my hips. As long as I remembered to keep my pants on, I wouldn’t fall away from the tower, but straight down and be able to quickly grab a rung.

Safely securing the end of the rope I had thrown down from the kitchen around my neck, up I went, hand over hand. I had to stop and clear myself of some old cut cable wires and dead ivy to get up. And some tree branches. And some live wires. But soon I was at the top, three stories up on a structure with rungs just wide enough to accommodate one foot. I was gripping tightly, pressing my body to the metal, trying to keep my weight centered to minimize the swaying which did have me a bit concerned. I untied the rope from around my neck, slipped it through the pulley above my head, and secured it to my belt. And down I came, hand under hand.

I released myself from the safety harness and feeling quite satisfied, began walking away with the line, preparing to hoist it up to my window. Then, looking up, I realized I would have to send the rope over the branches, adjacent to the second story of my building, in order for this to actually work. Fuck.

I secured the extra coil, which I would need for additional weight and length when throwing the rope over the branches, safely around my neck, my harness back around the tower, and the end of my future clothes-line to my belt.

Up I went hand over hand, over the old cable wire, dead climbing ivy, tree branches and live wires. I broke what branches I could (they were dead and it’s a neighbor’s tree) to facilitate the process of getting the rope over the tree. Clutching to the tower with the crook of one arm, I bunched up all the dangling rope with other and attached it to the coil tied around my neck. Finally removing the extra coil from my neck, I said a prayer and lobbed it in as high and long an arch as I could, over the branches and into the yard. Success!

Arms shaking, but victorious none-the-less, down I came, hand under hand. After a struggle getting the line over the low-hanging lights and ivy structure the old landlords had by the back of the building, I ran upstairs with the extra coil, secured it to the fire escape and dropped it’s length down to the yard. I ran back downstairs into the yard and tied the two lines together, then ran back upstairs to pull the whole big motherfucking mess up. Finally I slid the rope through the pulley and tied it to itself. Huzzah!

Testing the pulleys however, I discovered that the rope had come off the pulley-wheel at the top of the tower and was pinched at the pin. Fuck.

Up I went, hand over hand, over dead cables and live wires and tree branches. Clinging for life, swaying in breeze, remove and reattach rope to pulley and come down, hand under hand. Finally. Back in my kitchen the tug the rope and hear the satisfying squeak of the pulley taking the line in and out of its grooved body. I can wash my clothes. Once I buy clothespins.

Connor Gaudet lives in Brooklyn and does freelance anything for a living. He writes whenever he isn't reading and is the current Managing Editor of mrbellersneighborhood.com.

At 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning in May, a blank white truck pulled up curbside and the most beautiful man I’d ever seen in New York opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. He was dressed in black jeans and a spotless white t-shirt. His hair was military short. His eyes were the color of wet peat moss and dark tattoos ran down the sides of his neck and snuck up his sleeves. He extended his hand and introduced himself.

“I’m Jason,” he said, smiling a set of flawless teeth, straight and white, framed by lush lips. I’m such a sucker for polite, and for a good, strong handshake. I was immediately, completely undone.

My gaze traveled from our locked hands up his arms and across his chest—large but perfectly proportioned muscles, olive skin, a hint of Latino maybe. He smelled like fresh laundry.

“So?” Jason said.

“I’ll take you upstairs,” I said, snapping back to reality and turning toward the elevators.

In my tiny apartment, I showed Jason what had to go. I had separated the heavy things and the boxes full of books, along one wall, and I pointed these out, warning him about the weight.

“You like to read?” he said.

“Yeah. I’m a writer, or…trying to be.”

“That’s cool,” he said. “I like to read, too.” He asked me what I wrote and I told him I was working on a book about a cowboy.

“How can I get a copy?” he asked. I told him I’d have to finish it first. He said he’d watch for me. I decided not to tell him all about how I’d been working on the book for five years and was hoping to sell it soon, but how I was also too scared to put all my eggs in the precarious basket of being a writer and so would be starting a full-time, soul-sucking job the very next week for which I’d already bought a pair of black Kenneth Cole slingbacks, several conservative black suits and a professional handbag (black) to carry my office-issue Blackberry. He picked up a few of the book boxes and curled his arm around them, pausing in the doorway. I wanted to ask him what he liked to read, but I didn’t want him to have to answer my question while holding the boxes. Then again, I wanted him to stand there and hold the boxes for awhile, maybe all day. I was suddenly sorry the bed sheets were already packed. I desperately wished Dan would evaporate. The look on my face must have been confused.

“I know I look intimidating,” he said, unprompted. “But my friends say I’m a big pussy cat.”

All I could think to say was, “Okay.”

A half hour later, everything was loaded into the truck and the apartment was as empty as the day I’d moved in. Jason looked around, the way my mother does when she leaves a hotel room, making sure none of her things have blended inadvertently into the landscape of the space that is not hers.

“What’s this?” he said, picking up a stretched canvas propped against the corridor wall. It was a painting of two cowboys riding the range in black and white and shades of gray.

“Oh, that stays,” I said. “I’m throwing it away.”

“Why?”

“I never really finished it.”

“You painted this?” he said, his beautiful eyes wide. “You can’t throw this away. This is really good.” He held the painting at arm’s length and studied it the way people study paintings in museums. “Can I have it?” he asked.

“You want my painting?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t think you realize how good it is.”

I think I smiled. I think I raised my eyebrows and smirked a little. It might have looked like a come-on. It might have looked like I wanted to puke.

“Sure,” I said. “You can have it.” And with that I closed the door to the apartment and we turned into the stairwell, Jason carrying the painting carefully by the frame.

Downstairs, Dan was pacing up and down the sidewalk next to the truck. It was drizzling and the door to the truck was open. Jason asked us if we wanted a ride to Brooklyn with him and I said sure. The subway would take us an hour, and it was such a dreary day. I climbed into the cab and took the middle seat and Dan got in beside me, his knees pressing against the glove compartment that was held shut with a piece of duct tape.

I wasn’t really sure, but I suggested we cut across to the FDR and drop down and cross the Brooklyn Bridge. Dan concurred. We wound up taking a wrong turn, and then somewhere along MLK everyone was honking. Jason looked in the side mirror and said, “Oh,” jerking the truck to the curb and jumping out. I looked back through the open window. Boxes were scattered down the street. “I’ll be right back,” Jason said. So Dan and I sat in the truck and waited. When Jason jumped back in the cab he said, “I got it all! Don’t worry!” And I trusted him completely.

A few minutes later, we were negotiating a series of one-way streets through Harlem when he spun around again, hit the brakes and wheeled the van around across traffic.

“Hang on a minute!” he said, leaving us idling on a sidewalk while he trotted into the open door of a junk store.

Dan looked at me, incredulous. “What the hell?” he said.

I shrugged.

Jason came back a few minutes later, got in the van and put the truck in gear.

“I just had to see about that juke box,” he explained without apology. “I collect ‘em. But the guy wanted eighty bucks, and that’s steep.” He pulled back into traffic, heading east, and I took the opportunity to look at his profile, his neck and hairline. “I watch Antiques Road Show,” he went on. “Do you know that show?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Well I watch it a lot,” he said, “so I know what’s worth collecting. I really like slot machines and skulls and inkwells. You know what an inkwell is?”

“Uh huh,” I said. I didn’t look at Dan, but I was sure his eyes were rolling.

“I got this skull inkwell on lay away,” Jason went on. “Nine-hundred-dollar skull inkwell. You put the ink in the top of the skull. It’s crazy. I love it.”

By this time, I was sure we were heading in the wrong direction. In a moment, we hit Broadway.

“I think you can just turn left here,” I said.

“Okay, no problem,” Jason said. And for the first forty blocks or so the traffic moved at a decent clip. Just above Houston Street things got hung up and we sat for a long time watching the lights turn green, yellow, red. The rain was streaming down the windshield and Jason flicked the AC on.

“What’s your neck say?” I asked.

He reached a hand up and rubbed the ink embedded just above his collar.

“F.T.W.? It stands for Fuck The World,” he said. “I hate everyone, so this is my message.” He reached around the back of his neck, slipping his fingers beneath the collar, suggesting ink beyond the visible. His arm was as thick as my thigh. “I got a lot of these in jail,” he said.

I could feel Dan’s leg against mine, and it wanted to twitch.

“How long were you in jail?” I asked.

“Two years. On and off,” he said, and of course I was dying to know what for but was too afraid to ask. Luckily, he offered. “This last time,” he said, “I was in there for selling two hundred hits of X to an undercover cop. You know, Ecstasy. But the Tombs, that’s not an easy place to be. I recommend you don’t go there. It ain’t too cute.” Okay, good, I thought—drug-dealing. That’s safe. We’re safe. We’re not going to die between here and Brooklyn. We moved forward a block and a half.

“I just hang around with idiots,” he went on. “Like my friends, Mario and Carmine, they’re retarded. Mario comes up limping the other day, says Carmine stabbed him in the leg. But the next day they’re walking down the street holding hands like they’re boyfriend and girlfriend. And mostly I date strippers. I know I should date nicer girls, but that’s just the people I hang around with. I just broke up with this girl. It started off good, and then she got crazy. We used to go dancing at Copacabana. You been there? You like to dance?”

“Yeah, I love to dance,” I said. I hadn’t been in years.

“You guys should come,” he said. “Just don’t go on a Tuesday. Tuesdays is hoodie night. It ain’t too cute.”

I considered his offer. What would I wear? Could my tits compete with the stripper ex-girlfriend’s? Dan didn’t say a word, south along Broadway through Manhattan, over the bridge, through Brooklyn Heights, past Atlantic Street Center, up 4th Avenue to 3rd Street where we pulled up in front of my new place. It was still raining, but not as hard. We all grabbed something and went up to the second floor, a spacious one-bedroom, freshly painted.

“This is nice,” Jason said. “Really nice.” He looked up at the pressed tin ceilings, peered in at the newly-tiled kitchen, and I wondered where he lived, what it looked like there. He unloaded the truck in no time. And then we stood on the sidewalk, me with a wad of cash and him with an empty truck and my painting. Dan was upstairs and I could feel his eyes on us from the window.
I wondered if he was watching to protect me, or to see what I would do.

Jason held the painting out to me. “You should finish this,” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t think painting is my thing.”

“But if you get famous, this is gonna be worth something,” he said. “I’m no dummy. I seen it all the time on Antiques Roadshow. Somebody gets famous for one thing, like they write a book or something, and then everything they’ve ever done or owned is worth a ton of money. So you’re going to write a book and then this painting is gonna be worth some money. You gotta finish it. Will you finish it and send it to me? I’ll give you my address. You gotta pen?”

I looked him all over, searching for something I still can’t name. I couldn’t imagine how a boy this pretty had survived in the slammer for even a day. He was a mama’s boy, a curious boy. He did his research. He liked collecting things. His eyes were open for opportunity. His eyes were open.

I pulled a yellow legal pad from my bag and gave it to him. I knew I wouldn’t finish the painting, but I thought maybe I could write to him instead. Maybe we could go dancing. He handed the paper back to me with his name and address written in a neat, blue hand.

“You know,” I said, looking at the painting, “I want you to have this one. I really do. If you like it the way it is.”

“Okay,” he said. “But if you paint another one, in blue, you can send it to me. I think it would look good in blue.”

“Alright,” I said. “We’ll see.” We shook hands. And then he got in the truck and drove away.

Upstairs, Dan said, “What the hell was that?”

“He wanted me to finish that painting.”

“What painting?”

“Of the cowboys.”

“Are you kidding?”

“He liked it. He thought it was beautiful. And he thinks it’s going to be worth a million bucks on eBay if I become a famous writer.”

“Oh my god.”

“Yeah. Well,” I said. I ran my key along a seam of tape, opened a box and took some things out. There was no furniture in the place, nothing to sit on, so Dan sat cross-legged on the floor, asked if I wanted help unpacking and, when I declined, stood up and said he was going to go home.

I settled into my new place nicely, commuting every day to my job in Lower Manhattan and returning home to cook dinner for friends who would sit on the couch and balance plates on their laps, drink bottles and bottles of wine and make fun of my Barry-White-inspired bathroom, all black tile and gold fixtures. I worked 12 hours a day in my office with no windows and I got really good at running from one meeting to another in high heels. I had cocktails with the mayor at Gracie Mansion and rode around town in government-issued vehicles, with a driver who wore one of those curlicue wire devices behind his ear. I didn’t touch the draft of my book that sat on my desk for almost two years.

It would be a few months before Dan and I would break up, and years before I realized that at least one box of books and my favorite mug, stolen from the university student center in Reykjavik, were lost along that stretch of MLK in Harlem. Eventually I lost Jason’s address, too. For awhile I’d kept it, thinking I’d show up at Copacabana and try to find him, but of course I never did. I’m no dummy. Where Jason saw potential in my half-finished painting, in my half-formed self, I feared I would be disappointed in him. But who was I, in my suit and my slingbacks with my Blackberry, a nameless engine behind the powers that made the city go, go, go?

Much as I loved my new apartment, it was not who I wanted to be. I decided that after a year, I would move again. If I finished my book and became a famous writer, Jason could sell my painting on eBay and buy himself a cool new skull inkwell. I wondered if he would find the painting beautiful enough to hold onto until then.

Margot Kahn left New York City for Seattle where she hikes, bakes cakes and reads with her husband and son. Her book Horses That Buck, the biography of a Wyoming cowboy, was published in 2008. www.margotkahn.com

I usually pass by and pick up a cup of coffee on my way to the subway, at about ten o’clock most mornings. The cavernous space is always completely deserted. There’s a large, wide-open counter area where various pastries and bags of High Point brand gourmet coffee are displayed, and an enormous adjoining room with dozens of empty tables and chairs. The radio plays strange old songs, like “Somebody’s Watching Me,” by Rockwell. Behind the counter stands one of two men: (1) A friendly, round-faced, round-bellied African who is usually on his cell phone when I enter, but who’s also courteous enough to put it down right away and say hello, or (2) a laconic Hispanic man, who smiles at me and averts his eyes slightly when we speak and moves very slowly about his business, as if everything around him is a dream.

I always order a large coffee, dark, then ask if I can have the thermos of milk. (Since there are no other customers, the milk is always in the fridge.) As the only customer, I feel especially obliged to be friendly, which is good, since that is sort of a project of mine. "Practicing to be a person," I call it—and I want to put on a convincing show. I always say hello and speak confidently, then thank the man as I leave, sometimes even being so bold as to say, “Have a good day,” or “See you later.” He always reciprocates in kind. Sometimes, if I am feeling giddy that morning, I almost feel like crying. I feel a bit guilty, like maybe I should buy more. One cup of coffee a day is not much, especially in such an enormous coffee shop, but it’s all I want.

I have heard other people disparaging High Point, anecdotally. Once, when I suggested to a friend of mine who also lives in the neighborhood that we go there, she said dismissively, “Oh, I heard they have really bad coffee. Plus, it’s always so weird and empty in there.”

“But you don’t drink coffee,” I smartly pointed out to her. “And I don’t actually understand what people mean when they say 'bad' coffee. I am not able to evaluate coffee objectively like that, or even subjectively—this is 'good' coffee, this is 'bad' coffee, this is just 'average' coffee. I don’t drink coffee on those terms. Plus, I like that it’s weird and empty in there! That’s why I go there. Come on, let’s go!”

What a snob everyone is, I think to myself, as I stand on the subway drinking my tall dark coffee ... which always tastes fine to me. One day, however, as I was sipping my coffee, I glanced down at my shirt and saw several drops of coffee spreading out across it and felt my chest immediately constricting in annoyance. Dammit! How had I managed to let that happen? I began to sip more carefully, but noticed drops of coffee were still falling from the cup—into my beard, onto my jacket, all the way down to the floor. After a few minutes of investigation, I was able to determine that the coffee was actually dripping from the back of the cup, from along the top rim. Apparently the lid did not fit tight enough! Somehow I must have gotten a dud. I was annoyed, of course, but also soothed by having found the source of the trouble.

The next day, when the same thing happened, I became even more frustrated. Two dud lids in two days—that’s really a stroke of bad luck. On the third day, a pattern had been established and I could no longer attribute this misfortune to “luck.” I had to admit that, amazingly, there was a coffee shop with lids that did not fit the cups. Such an essential thing. And such a frustrating problem. I couldn’t go to work day after day with coffee running down my hands and onto my shirt because of the crummy lids at my coffee shop! But as their only customer, I couldn’t just stop going there either. More than that, as I said, I liked going there. It was such a relaxed, easy way to practice my “being a person” routine ... I couldn’t just give that up. I wondered if perhaps they had a suggestion box. That would take care of the problem nicely. I decided to do another day or two of reconnaissance as I tried to determine a solution. I could deal with sticky coffee-hands that long.

Not surprisingly, there was no suggestion box. Just a long table lined with mysterious flyers for events that probably no one ever attended. On the fourth or fifth day, I almost felt bold enough to tell the African man about the problem with the faulty lids—but as I was about to speak, I suddenly became too shy. I felt that my words would not be understood, and not even because his thick accent suggested a communication barrier, although it did, but rather because the problem was so trivial, so absurd, and yet so important, that I did not feel I would be able to express it. I often think life is like this—that the most trivial things are actually the most important, and therefore the hardest to express. I knew that these simple words, “These lids do not fit,” once uttered, would become hopelessly complex and incomprehensible.

I needed a few days to think this over. Perhaps I could just write them some kind of note? That had an appealing element of mystery to it! In any event, in the meantime I still needed my morning coffee, so I started stopping off at the bodega near my apartment instead. I felt somewhat guilty, as if I was “cheating” on High Point—but I told myself this was just temporary, until I could figure out a solution to the lid problem.

So then, on that warm April evening, as I passed by with my groceries and saw that the windows were already dark, I was immediately concerned. I rushed up to the window and peered in, but I already knew what I’d see. The place was completely empty. The counter, pastry display cases, tables, chairs, everything—all gone. The floor even looked dusty and ragged, as if even it had been stripped away. A note on the window said:

Marshal’s Legal Possession
Civil Court of the City of New York
County of Kings
The Landlord has legal possession of these premises.
For information, contact Landlord or Agent immediately.

I didn’t fully understand the words—but I knew I had done this. I had been their only customer, and I had deserted them, just because the lids didn’t fit right, and now the whole place was gone. This was a problem I could have done something about. If I didn’t learn to speak up soon, I realized, to be a person, or at least a better approximation of one, eventually there wasn’t going to be much of a world left ... and trudging home, my bags felt very heavy indeed.

Rob Williams is a mercenary copywriter and copy editor who currently lives above a meat market in the East Village.

The house itself was much like the others on the block: overpriced real estate in the densest city in the USA. Not the trendiest part of Brooklyn, but give it a few years. A bit run down, okay, a lot run down, trash piled in the front beside the low stoop. Dirty windows. Red bricks. The front doors were bright yellow, though, unlike those of its neighbors.

Anya rifled through a handful of loose keys, found the one she needed and jabbed it into the lock. She cracked open the front doors and we filed in, like a tour group that had been seriously ripped off. The interior was dark green, I guess the previous owner was going for that sunken-submarine effect, Decay Under the Sea or something.

Anya was going a mile a minute about how everything was going to get repainted and refinished and refurbished and re-everythinged. Kurt was just being a silent German guy. Me, I was trying not to check out Anya’s ass in front of her husband.

As we trooped through the darkened hallway of the neglected house and descended into the damp basement, my eyes tried in vain to focus in the deep brownish-grey. I wanted a Maglite, not just for the illumination, but so I could bash anything that popped out at me. My brain told me to look for lotion in a basket.

Anya had talked the basement up in a big way, and the advertising did not even remotely match the product. This basement was meant to be a two-bedroom apartment, pending some pressure walls and a renovated kitchen. Yeah, right. In fact, walls and a kitchen would have been a great start, as none were in evidence.

The basement had no working lights. Forcing a window to allow some sunlight, Harris sighed, and in that sigh was a rare admission of defeat. Two people could not share this space unless it remained an open-plan studio. Harris and I could not live in an open-plan studio. A kitchen would be necessary as well, unless we planned to survive on take-out and cannibalism.

Still, the basement did have a bar. Yeah. An L-shaped wooden bar with weak-ass shelves running the length of it. No sink. No stove. Just a bar. As we prowled the basement, I fantasized about a speakeasy down there, with some kind of special secret knock to get in, a dartboard and personalized mugs for the (ir-)regulars. Okay, it'd be three knocks, then a pause, then three more knocks, then another pause, then a knock. Then I'd let you in. Operating hours from 2am until 6am. Word-of-mouth only, right of admission reserved. We could maybe even have a crooked pool table. Yeah. The lowest-ceilinged bar in Brooklyn. Nobody over six-two allowed.

I fantasized the speakeasy into existence as I climbed back up the stairs and continued to the second floor.

The door was locked. I pulled it free of the jamb with the tiniest effort. I told myself that I must possess some sort of super-strength, effortlessly yanking doors free of their jambs. That would be awesome. I could use my powers for crime. Sweet. Chase Bank was always screwing up my account, now I could get my own back. Plus interest. Hell, yeah. Heroism and villainy aside, that door was in sad shape. The deadbolt lock was basically tacked onto the door, fitting into a rotted slot (great name for a band) hastily drilled into the doorframe. The lock fell to the floor at my feet. Clunk.

Someone should fix that, I mused aloud.

The electricity was switched off, so everything was sort of half-lit, augmenting the haunted-house vibe that the place had going on. The anemic sunlight lit up the floating motes of dust that spun around our heads, as well as the mischief in The Doctor's eyes; he lives for this shit.

Let me tell you about The Doctor. A shortish male, mid-30's at the time, gingerish brown hair. His eyes will tell you he's a grouchy old man or a hopped-up teenager, depending on the moment. He is a doctor of computer science, and is capable of building a functioning PC out of items found on the street. He has demonstrated this several times. As a younger man, he ran for office in Australia with the (wait for it) Marijuana Party. And what a party it must have been. People actually voted for him.

The Doctor knows that "Arabian Goggles" are when you hang your nuts into someone's eyes. I bet you didn't know that. I couldn't tell you what lowering one's balls into someone's eyes has to do with the Middle East, but that's not the point. The point is that The Doctor knows what Arabian Goggles are, and that's how come you know now, too.

The Doctor and I went straight past the pocket-sized bathroom to the kitchen.

Yikes. Several of the ancient, yellowed tiles crumbled beneath our feet. It felt like stomping on a giant ancient skeleton's face, a Paleolithic beat-down. The walls looked like if the Brady Bunch ran a prison camp in French Guyana. A sort of yellowing brownish stucco-covered fake brick, cut into irregular chunks in a misguided effort to look like... I'm still not sure what they were going for with this, but they definitely failed. The countertop was about as smooth as Edward James Olmos' face, but it lacked his coolness. And it was green. Olmos is not green.

The cabinets were making a bid for freedom from the wall to which they were so unjustly bound. The shelf over the sink was demonstrating dreadful posture, sagging petulantly, sulking.

Dust bunnies roamed wild, obeying no master. The window gate was chained shut: to keep people out or in?

The cabinets beneath the counter had no interior shelves, so they were just big, dusty spaces for dead rodent storage.

I looked up and was pleasantly surprised for the first time in what felt like ages. Tin ceilings. Yes. Major selling point. In reasonable condition, too. Wow. So there’s that. The stove, though. It must have been a convention hall for those that crawled or skittered.

The refrigerator had some rust clinging to it, which was weird considering the vinyl coating of the doors shouldn’t really be oxidizing. We figured we’d have to deal with it ourselves, since landlords (and –ladies) are by nature slow when it comes to replacing appliances. In our current state, though, the future was a fuzzy abstract, a million miles away from this teeming hutch of dust bunnies.

I opened the fridge and a tiny part of my soul died. Some of that shit in there was once edible, but now it was simply vegetation. Ever see Aliens? Some nasty business in there. My eyes watered like I was sporting onion contact lenses. The fridge would require an exorcism in order to once more contain food in a sanitary fashion. There were, though, three Coronas tucked away behind a colony of mold. I pulled the beers out; I could almost hear the mold protesting, "Bring your own, you bastards!" Mold can be so rude. I slammed the door in the mold's face, passing a beer to The Doctor.

I have a fold-out bottle opener key ring, passed down from my grandfather. An old-school promo, before all the weak plastic merchandising. This bad boy had a folding knife, nail file and screwdriver-tipped bottle opener; engraved on the side was "Old Granddad: Head of the Bourbon Family." I couldn't bring it onto planes anymore, but we weren’t on a plane.

Cheers, Doctor. Under the circumstances, ten in the morning was not too early to start drinking. Some might have argued that we hadn't yet stopped drinking from the previous night, and they may have been right. The Doctor and I toasted, the clink of the bottles underscored by the sound of Harris chundering in the dankness of the basement. The third bottle went into my jacket pocket for later use. Better to be caught with than without.

They say, "Start as you mean to go on."

We explored the second floor: lots of cool but neglected prewar details: crown moldings, pocket doors. Exposed brick along the western wall of the apartment, and a fireplace in one of the two bedrooms.

The smaller of the two bedrooms had a doorway leading to an adjacent office, big enough for a decent-sized desk, wheelie chair, and maybe some shelves.

Being residents of NYC, The Doctor and I immediately recognized this space as the third bedroom. It would need to be occupied by someone of smaller than average size, we reckoned. An Oompa Loompa, ideally.

Also, the Lilliputian room had no closet, so this hypothetical flatmate would have to keep his or her clothes either in one of the living room closets or in a dresser, which would leave about ten square feet of floor space, assuming a full-size bed. The doorway between this room and what would be my room would have to be transformed into a wall, which would mean that the occupant of this room would have to venture across the landing and enter the front door of the flat in order to use the living room, bathroom or kitchen.

Okay, mildly inconvenient. If the rent was cheap enough, though, we knew that someone would take it. The Doctor and I came up with a figure of $450, which anybody in NYC would have to be completely insane to pass up, even with the sore lack of floor space. Having said that, you’d have to be nuts to want to live in what is basically a walk-in closet. Conveniently, nuts was just the quality we'd look for in a flatmate anyway.

With a rent of nineteen hundred dollars per month, this, as a three-bedroom, would be a stellar deal for the neighborhood. Sad when nineteen hundred bucks is considered cheap, huh? Okay, fair point, but how’s the pizza in Duluth? Yeah, I thought so.

Harris, horrified by the basement, decided to stick with his current apartment in scenic Brownsville. I could understand: the local hooker on his block would be devastated not to see him hurry past every morning on the way to work. She has feelings too. Also, if he moved from his current neighborhood, who would regale us with tales of cars stolen from in front of the police station?

That Harris, a Gulf War Part One vet, was turning this place down should have shot up some kind of warning flare, but hindsight is always 20/20. Hey, the Doctor and I were sold, figuring we'd solve the third-flatmate problem easily enough. And that's how we decided to make Flat Two our home.

In the back bedroom we finished our beers and looked out over what some may once have called a yard. I remember thinking "quarry", "dump", "where the bodies are hidden", and so forth. You'd get tetanus just looking at it.

Yeah, the place had charm. The place had character. Okay, so the place maybe had a few issues, but it also had a soul.

How hard could it be to turn this place into a home?

Jordan Matthew Yerman is a writer, photographer and actor. He has been around the world two and a half times. His still-unpublished novel, 'Porn-Fu', is making the rounds, and he is hard at work on a follow-up, at least when he isn't taking photos of neon signs and toy robots.

I entered Prospect Park at Grand Army Plaza and headed south towards 9th Street where there are some picnic tables I could make use of. I was shifting gears and beginning to pick up speed when I saw it flash by below my tires. Just a blink of green and white, geometric patterns and sharp angles amidst the chaotic cracks and non-repeating lines of the bumpy charcoal-grey sheet of asphalt. In the same instant I made eye contact with Washington, he was gone.

I hit my brakes and oozed to a stop (rather than screeched, as I lost my front brakes a few days ago and my rears were hanging on just barely). Fearful of losing my bounty to the next passerby, I used the last of my momentum to whip my bike around to the right, hoping to ward off any other pursuers with my stern glare. An all-to-serious-looking biker in red and white spandex whom I had cleverly distracted by making him veer sharply to avoid hitting me was the only person nearby. “Yeah, keep moving, “I thought as I watched him pedal by.

Not wanting to allow time for the wind to take my treasure, I gently dropped my bike without bothering to kick the stand. I ran back to the dollar only to find that there was in fact several dollars! Unfortunately, in addition to my newly multiplied wealth, there was also a New York State Driver’s License.

It belonged to a woman in her late 30’s, a Christmas baby like me, who lived on Vanderbilt, a few blocks away. I felt angry, robbed of my guilt-free money! I knew I would never be able to enjoy spending it, even if it was only a few bucks. A happy hour beer. A soft-serve chocolate vanilla swirl ice cream with chocolate jimmies. All would be as ashes in my mouth, knowing that returning it to its rightful owner was fully within my abilities.

I briefly cursed myself and my parents for raising me right, but finally decided that returning the lost money would be worth it and possibly more fun than keeping it as long as I pretended to be a detective on a case.

Looking at the facts before, I decided she must be biking, as cash and cards do not just squeeze out of a back pocket unless as the result of some kind of repeated action, force or pressure, like that of gyrating gluteus muscles rubbing vigorously against a bicycle seat. I also deduced that she couldn’t have passed by too long before, as unattended money doesn’t sit unnoticed on the ground for too long. Also, judging by her license picture, she was a little on the pudgy side so I figured I could probably catch up to her.

I saddled back up and continued on my way. I wanted to catch her on this side of the park because to not do so, would mean going down a big hill and then having to come back up an even bigger hill. On a bike that is rapidly ageing like Mel Gibson at the end of Forever Young, it is not a pleasant prospect.

I pumped away, overtaking most people pretty quickly, craning my neck and checking bikers who made likely candidates and also a few who made less likely candidates, but I wanted to be thorough in my search.

I really enjoy finding lost objects (not just money), whether I am able to return them or not. There is a kind of magic to them, like they have many stories to tell but no words to tell them, leaving us to wonder and guess. They are mysteries to be solved, and naturally, I take it upon myself to solve them. It’s the perfect outlet for my inherent desire to be a private eye- to track down some missing dame or in this case, track down the dame who owns some missing thing that I have found.

Approaching the downhill slope I saw a potential and coasted after her. It was not long before I realized it was not her and just kept coasting. I was fairly certain at this point I wouldn’t find her here, but I had come this far so wanted to see it through to the end.

In my head I begin to compose the note I will drop off with the cash and ID at the address on her license – several versions, some admonishing her carelessness, some hoping to kindle her faith in the good of humanity, all signed with my first and last name so that she can find me easily enough if she happens to be a millionaire dowager who wants to reward me for my honesty.

Once in Washington DC, I found a digital camera on the ground and tracked down the owners by looking through their pictures to see where they had been that day and figuring out where they were likely heading next. I caught up with them four blocks or so from where I found it. They hadn’t even noticed it was missing- nor did they speak any English, so I couldn’t even impress upon them the amount of deductive problem-solving energy that I had expended upon the camera’s return. That was the real tragedy! They never knew my brilliance! They probably thought I saw it fall out of their pocket thirty seconds before and just picked up and handed it to them.

I finally came to the foot of the giant uphill struggle to the end of the loop, and kicked it into an easier gear. It is the same hill on which Colonial soldiers felled an enormous oak tree across the road and held off advancing British and Hessian soldiers during the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776. I will concede that it was probably harder to get up then, but it is still a pain in the ass to get up on a falling-apart, 3-gear bike.

I started to climb, thinking of how much smarter it would have been to have turned around and done the loop in the opposite direction when I found the money, thus cutting her off halfway around, as opposed than chasing her like an electronic rabbit around a track.

The end of the loop was just beyond the top of the hill, and I did not plan on making the rotation more than once. Chasing some phantom that may not even be there around and around and around. But finally, sweaty and winded, I approached the hill’s crest and saw her. There was a garland of nylon flowers on the back of her bike. I could see she was wearing glasses like the ones in her picture, and her hair was up. She was standing astride her bicycle at the very top of the hill, patting and searching the back pockets of her Spandex pants.

She looked around her a bit and got back up on, riding slowly and unsure, no doubt distracted. I finally caught up with her and came along side, making cautious eye contact a few times as she started to pick up speed, no doubt wondering why I was not just passing her.

“Marika?” I said, still out of breath from the hill. She turned her head and looked at me as I reached out with the bills and license, and said, “here.”

She saw it and took it from my hand with a smile and with obvious relief said, “Oh thank you! Oh my God, thank you!” I smiled and nodded her welcome and sped up without looking back to say anything else, make awkward eye contact, or even to see if she got off the path at the end of the loop.

I didn’t see the point in telling her about my chase around the park, other than fishing for praise I suppose. She seemed sufficiently appreciative of my handing it to her without knowing where exactly she dropped it- unlike those snooty Germans back in DC! I’d been tracking her for 20 minutes, but to her, she had been in trouble for less than 30 seconds. I don’t know. Maybe she would have been happier in knowing that there are some people who would go to those lengths to return her lost property. Or maybe she would have been creeped out that some sweaty guy on a bicycle had been following her around the park and planning to go to her house if he couldn’t find her there.

I biked on past where I’d found the cash, into a nice small grove of pines near 9th street, sat down on the ground, and began to write.

Connor Gaudet is an unemployed, 27-year-old writer/musician, living in Brooklyn and surviving on government assistance. He keeps track of his triumphs and humiliations at thedailyhell. He also runs the Mr. Beller's Neighborhood reading series.

I love riding my scooter. I’m thrilled with the feeling of freedom it gives me and I’m crazy about not having to strategize parking solutions. What I’m far less crazy about is the way a lot of cars don’t treat me as an equal vehicle. How they see the lane I’m driving in as rightfully theirs. I’ve made so many gestures to these drivers that I feel like I’m channeling Marcel Marceau. I often try to turn around in my seat to point to my license plate…to indicate that I’ve paid a fee to use the roads, in particular the lane that I’m in. This has proven to be both ineffective and dangerous. I’ve ached to call the jerks over, to explain how efficient my scooter is, how I’m saving the planet; futilely hoping that they will either revere or take pity on me.

The bike is a heap, barely making it over 30mph. This is partly why I’m a marked man. No one in NYC drives that slowly, especially on the bridges from Brooklyn to Manhattan. This trip over the East River is usually white knuckle time for me. If I’m lucky, cars just buzz by me; more often they bear down on me as if I’m a jockey who could get a whip out to get the thing to go faster. As I’m having visions of being hit and tossed over the side of the bridge, I make mental notes of what clothing to remove, and in what order so I’ll be able to swim to safety. I have a gnawing feeling that this stress is not good for me.

Occasionally, when I’m riding, I’ll catch a glimpse of a reflection of myself in one of the storefront windows on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope. The image I see does not coincide with the one I carry in my head. Instead of a cool, dare devilish looking dude, I see a middle aged man with white hair peeking out from under his helmet; looking way too tall for the small bike he’s on. I’m feeling like Peter Fonda in Easy Rider but looking like Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond. This is disappointing beyond words.

Last week I brought my motor scooter in for a tune-up. I bring it to a shop nearby that is mostly a motorcycle shop but also does work on scooters. I’m reluctant to go there because I feel so out of place. The people who work there, their customers and the hanger-outers are mostly “bikers.” Everyone is very nice. And also very BIG. So there I am, surrounded by these huge Harleys and motorcyclists in their “leathers.” And then there’s me–with my little Yamaha, feeling like some amalgam of Woody Allen and Felix Unger. To overcome this feeling of prissiness, when it’s necessary for me to go to the repair shop, I wear old jeans and don’t shave. I usually try not to shower for a while, as well. But as I’m thinking about it , I realize that there aren’t enough days in the week for me not to shower to create the ‘bad boy’ image I’m looking for. So, now…I’m thinking tattoo. A tasteful one on my bicep. “Scooter (boy) Man”

Neil Stein lives in Park Slope where he is a real estate broker. He took up writing a few years ago and has been publishing the blog, http://ironicman.wordpress.com/ for about a year and a half.
 

Kim Soles is a photographer, writer and designer. Her designs sell throughout the US and most recently has had some of her writing published in the 6S Volume 3. She resides in Philadelphia with her twelve year old daughter and visits their previous Brooklyn neighborhood as often as possible.
 

When ninety-minutes had passed and Mr. Milano had not come, Nina began sobbing: “He couldn’t even make it to my wedding! I knew he wouldn’t come!” As she wailed, we tried to calm her. I cursed him under my breath and prayed silently that good-for-nothing would show. In the pews, the bride’s relatives, most of the crowd, whispered and clucked, craning their necks every few minutes to see if the father arrived. Occasionally a scout was sent to the back of the church for an update. Just as Nina reached the point of hysteria, her father burst in, accompanied by his girlfriend, her black hair teased into a beehive, stiletto heels, excessive make-up, short tight skirt, fur stole, and belligerent look met the definition of “tramp.” Nina’s mother and sister controlled their anger and took their seats. Nina, still hiccupping from crying, grabbed her father’s arm and they walked to the altar.

The ninety minutes of waiting at the church was plenty of time for the troops to build defenses, develop allies, draw up battle plans, and steep their hatred in an ugly brew of hair spray and perfume. One of the warring factions consisted of Nina’s mother’s side whose fierce loyalty to her was matched only by their hatred for her perfidious husband. The other faction, Nina’s father’s relatives, defended the man’s right to do whatever he pleased, especially considering that his former wife was, all agreed, a whore—her two young out-of-wedlock children all the proof needed to justify the pejorative.

When we got to the VFW hall it was the usual set up for a party: collapsible tables covered with paper tablecloths, metal folding chairs, a white crepe paper bell, a “Congratulations” sign strung across the room and red and white plastic poinsettias as centerpieces. One table held the wedding cake and the soda and liquor—several bottles of Smirnoff’s, Seagram’s Seven, White Horse scotch, Four Roses—all the components of the highball, and lots of bottles of beer and soda. The hall smelled like all VFW halls—rye whiskey and cigarette smoke with a whiff of Lestoil. The guests came in and took their seats either on Nina’s father’s side or Nina’s mother’s side. Everybody got drinks, and continued to look across the hall and talk in low voices that I knew were making sniping comments, if not outright plans for attack. The air was electric.

My mother and father were at the party and the three of us filled our paper plates with baked ziti, eggplant parmigiana, Italian bread and salad, got a few drinks, and sat at the table with Larry’s only family members—his little sister and his father. I got up to get another drink and a woman on the food line turned around and said to the woman behind her, “Stop pushing me, you fuckin’ bitch, or I’ll punch your fuckin’ face in!” That was the flashpoint, the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the sinking of the Lusitania, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, on a smaller, but no less incendiary scale. Plates of food and fists went flying. As if on cue, just about everybody, both men and women, started punching somebody. My father returned from the restroom to a scene that looked like a bar brawl in a Western, except there was no wagon wheel chandelier for somebody to swing on to kick people’s teeth out. My father and I, both woozy from the highballs, watched the twenty or so couples or triples swinging, tearing, and smashing. It was like a series of small fires had broken out, the sparks of one igniting another, threatening to become an inferno.

My parents and I stood dazed at our table hoping not to get hit. That’s when two men, clutching each other and grunting, crashed into my mother, sending her sliding across the floor, with such force that she went under a table and smashed into the wall. She emerged from under the tablecloth holding her arm, her hair wild, shrieking, “Jesus! Oh Jesus, Mary, and sweet Saint Joseph! Let’s get out of here.” She went running into the street waving into traffic on Fourth Avenue trying to get any car to stop and give us a ride out of that bedlam. My father and I pursued her, convinced her no one was going to stop and pick her and us up, and pushed and dragged her back into the hall, almost empty now that the melee had ruptured onto the street. She sat moaning and crying, trying to quell her panic. Once I ascertained that she was safe, I turned to leave. “Don’t go out there,” she said, but I had to find my sister who I last saw on the sidewalk jumping up to defend the bride’s mother. My sister Janet was a loyal friend, a fierce fighter and she was in the fray somewhere.

I rushed outside and saw Janet, in her vivid red velvet dress, engaged in battle. As maid of honor and friend of Mrs. Milano, Janet became a target of the father’s party. They could not wait to get their hands on her. Two of the women had grabbed her and dragged her out into the street. One woman dug her fingers underneath my sister’s Grecian curls and was pulling with all her might in what seemed an attempt to rip Janet’s scalp off, while the other woman delivered punches to my sister’s head. Janet was doubled over, trying to keep her hair attached with one hand and flailing at her attackers with the other. “Hey!” I screamed, “Leave my sister alone!” One of the assailants stopped trying to gouge Janet’s eyes out and fixed her demented gaze on me. Oh my God! It was one thing to tell someone to leave my sister alone, it was another to have to physically defend her. My attacker raised her massively fat arm, enrobed in bangle bracelets and black lace, and prepared to deliver a roundhouse blow to my face. I am not sure if it was inebriation or reflex, but I rolled back on my heels and her fist slammed into the plate glass window. She bellowed in pain and I beat it back inside, fortunate to have avoided a broken jaw, and hoping to lock myself in the ladies’ room, should she or any of the other combatants seek to finish me off.

Inside the hall, the best man’s ten-year-old brother Louie, looking anguished, got behind the cake and liquor table. He groaned, winced, and with both hands heaved the table over. The shattering of the combined whiskey, gin, beer, and scotch bottles produced a little ocean, tiny waves of liquor shimmering over the wooden floor, progressing merrily toward the door. For a moment, the hall was beautiful, an inch deep in liquor that looked like the incoming tide at Coney Island. The shards of multicolored glass jutting up like a kaleidoscope of danger were the perfect symbol of a wedding gone really wrong.

Finally the police arrived, eleven cars, and three ambulances. The sight of the cops convinced everyone to stop fighting. The police began lining up the young men, all with clothes shredded and bloody. Of the eight standing outside the hall, just one had a shirt still in one piece, and three of them were completely bare-chested. Inside the VFW, ambulance workers tended to some of the wounded, including my mother who, we initially feared, was having a stroke. The hall looked like a combination infirmary/holding cell–some wedding guests were being bandaged while others were being questioned by the police.

A few people escaped the pandemonium. The bride and groom had found shelter in the back room, a kitchen, and looked out in bewilderment on the mayhem. Nina’s nine-year-old half-brother and six-year old half-sister were found afterward hiding in a subway station a few doors away. Nina’s sister Linda, seven months pregnant, whose father and husband had been opponents in one of the main events in the slugfest, spent the night in the hospital but was released the next day, physically unharmed.

My father and I got away unscathed, but my mother’s upper arm turned black and sagged, literally a bag of blood, for a month afterward. Janet’s face was deeply scratched, and her scalp had several red and sore bald patches, but she used those injuries to redouble her determination to find the two women and kill them.

Nina and Larry stayed married for sixteen years, a solid run for such a shaky start. I recently met one of their two sons, Stephen, at a luncheon of the crowd from the old neighborhood that included Nina, Linda, and Mrs. Milano. He was a friendly 36 year-old, interested in hearing the stories told at the table. When I mentioned that his mother’s and father’s wedding was something to be remembered, Stephen asked me to tell him the story, saying he never really got the whole picture. Feeling that I did not want to embarrass the former bride, her sister, or her mother, I volunteered only that I saw the fight started when the two women on the line began cursing each other out. “Oh, no!” Linda declared proudly. “My father started that fight. I was seven months pregnant and my father didn’t like the way my husband Eddie was treating me, so he told Eddie that he was gonna teach him a lesson, and punched him in the face. That fight lasted til the cops showed up.” “Oh, please!” piped up another voice, the voice of Mrs. Milano, now tiny and frail at 88. “That’s bullshit! What happened was I seen my husband with that bitch he was goin’ with and I went right up to her and said, ‘Come on upstairs with me and I’ll beat the shit out of you’ and she said ‘Hit me right here!’ So I did! I gave her one good slap across her mouth. Then she slapped me back and then everybody got in on the action. I started the fight, not your father, Linda.”

That Linda and her mother both wanted bragging rights shocked me, but should not have considering all that happened at the wedding.

Marilyn Horan was born in Brooklyn and has spent her whole life there. Recently retired from the job of assistant principal in NYC schools, she now has time to write.