And I always tell them, “I am an elevator operator.” I say that I drive an elevator in downtown Manhattan.
The reaction to my announcement varies. Some people smile politely and then move on to more interesting people. Some ask questions about the art of piloting an elevator in a skyscraper, if I ever forget the route, if I ever get lost. Almost everyone quips, “I bet that job has its ups and downs.”

Generally, when that happens, I’m the one to smile politely. And then I respond with some variation of the retort I learned my first day on the job and have repeated many times over the years: “It sure does have its ups and downs, but it’s the jerks in the middle that cause the most trouble.”

Operating an elevator was not my career choice. I actually taught English for 33 years to reluctant high school kids who preferred drinking beer and getting laid to learning English grammar. Teaching I discovered, like the operation of elevators, is also a job where “the jerks in the middle” can be the most difficult.

The reason I tell strangers who ask that I operate elevators is because of first impressions. I figure that people won’t expect much of some “mobile doorman” who also drives them up and down before opening and closing the door. That way if I say or do anything stupid, their reaction will likely be: “Well what can you expect? He operates elevators for a living.” And conversely, if I am witty, charming and brilliant, their after-conversation will go something like this: “He’s so cultured for an elevator operator. He reads books. He appreciates fine wine and he is a great conversationalist!” For me it is a win/win situation.

I did, in fact, operate an elevator at The Equitable Building, a 38-story office in New York City, located at 120 Broadway across from Trinity Church in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. The building is a landmark engineering achievement designed by Ernest R. Graham and completed in 1915. Originally it was supposed to be 40 stories high, but it was reduced on the advice of consulting engineer Charles Knox. He determined the lower height as being optimal for its elevators, the very ones I operated for one summer, the year I graduated college and before I started teaching. My friend John’s father worked in the Maintenance Department at the building and he got the job for me, and for Sal, a high school/college friend who was also going to teach in September. After our interview, Sal and I in civilian clothes took the elevators for a spin in the middle of the mid-day rush under the watchful eyes of veteran uniformed operators. We both passed our driver’s test, and reported for duty the following Monday.

The boss, a man named Andy Rattazzo that everyone called “The Rat,” but not to his face, had a glass eye that glittered under the overhead florescent lights and a jutting jaw. He looked like Benito Mussolini, and like Mussolini, The Rat prided himself on keeping his elevators running on time. He had risen from the ranks of elevator operator to become the “boss of all bosses,” the final boss of temporaries and hangers-on in a dying industry, at a time when all the elevators in the building were slowly being automated. Progress meant forced retirement or unemployment for the many who had spent their lives and logged millions of miles going up and down the insides of skyscrapers. It was summer employment for a select few.

That fact that he was on a sinking ship didn’t deter The Rat from running a taut ship. So every day, before every shift, he conducted mandatory inspections of the crews, checking the cleanliness of uniforms, the starch in the collared brown shirts, the shine on shoes and the condition of fingernails. If someone didn’t pass muster, he was banished, with instructions to stick his shoes under the electric polisher or put on a clean shirt, to the Break Room, a dingy sub-basement filled with discarded office furniture and a leaky toilet the operators shared with the rats. It was where we spent time between our shifts, where the old timers griped about their changing lives, complained about the bosses and played practical jokes on the temps.

Spencer Something-son was a particularly favorite target. A big, beefy kid from Utah, he looked like a gorilla with his blond hair and glasses in his brown starched shirt and uniform pants with the satin stripe. Although he had started weeks before Sal and me, Spencer was eager to please and still so naïve he believed all their war stories from the “glory elevator operating days.”

“We used to have these contests in the old days, to shoot up the fastest to the Penthouse without getting caught, or to see who could pack the most people into one elevator.”

“But isn’t that dangerous?” Spencer asked.

“Only if the cable breaks.” They all laughed. “And then there was that contest to see who could wait until the very last minute before putting on the brakes and stopping the levelest at the Main Floor without crashing into The Pit. I think Rattazzo won most of them contests, before he became The Rat, of course. He won a lot of money and he still holds the building record for getting twenty-six people into a car designed for twenty.”

The elevators at 120 Broadway were organized in banks. The Local cars patrolled the ground floor up, stopping at each of the 35 floors of the 38-story building. They were the most difficult to operate because they involved the most stops, the most people and had the highest margin for error. The Express banks left the ground floor and traveled through a dark, enclosed shaft like a vertical tunnel that opened at the floors they serviced. The three Express banks were floors 11 to 20, 21-30, 31-35. There was also a separate, private elevator that went directly to the top three floors where the exclusive Bankers Club was located. Only the most senior operators ever got to drive that one.

As a safety precaution, a large red #3 bull’s eye was painted on the walls of each Express shaft to alert the operator that he was approaching the ground floor. It served as a warning to apply the brakes, which meant returning the control handle to the center position, so the car would glide to a smooth stop that was also level if the operator timed it right. None of the cars had automatic leveling devices, and each elevator had different accelerating and stopping characteristics, so stopping level at any floor depended on the car, the weight inside the car, the speed of the elevator as it approached the floor and the experience of the operator. In the event of an uneven landing, which was not unusual when there were too many people on board, or the driver was new, “leveling off” required slowly taking the car well above the desired floor and letting the weight pull it down again. Sometimes the maneuver had to be done more than once. The hope was that it would eventually settle relatively level with the floor. Failing that, the customary warning to passengers was: “Please watch your step. Jump up! Jump down!”

Stopping level at the ground floor with a full elevator hurtling down the shaft from above required great skill and a greater amount of luck. Seeing that red #3 bull’s eye was crucial to brake the elevator in time and avoid disaster. Of course the people who designed elevators had taken into consideration the possibility that a distracted elevator operator might occasionally overshoot a landing, so they built catchers in each shaft, at the bottom, called The Pit, and top, The Claw, with heavy springs to cushion the impact and steel hooks to hold the car in place until Maintenance was able to free the car and its contents.

What happened to Spencer the day he was fired was the topic of discussion in the Break Room for weeks after the event. Some speculated that he was trying to earn elevator history glory and outdo The Rat by setting two new building records – for most people in an elevator. They later counted twenty-seven. And for waiting until the last instant, which he seriously miscalculated, before applying his breaks. Others said that Spencer likely missed the red #3 bull’s eye and crash landed in the basement at full speed. Whatever the truth, neither the twenty-seven people trying to get out of the building for lunch, nor Andy Rattazzo were amused. The instant my friend John’s father and the maintenance crew freed everyone from The Pit, a shaken and dazed Spencer was stripped of his uniform and sent walking.

The building operated twenty-four hour schedule, seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year. Work shifts and elevator bank assignments were a matter of seniority or favoritism. The career guys, soon to be searching for new careers, mostly opted for Express elevators on weekdays from 9 to 5. The temps got what was left. Daytimes were busy and nighttimes were lonely. Some old timers preferred working the graveyard shift so they could nap, drink or pull pranks on the unsuspecting. A favorite was pressing the call button on every floor to get a new guy in motion, and then scaring him by jumping out of the shadows when he opened the elevator door.

If the Local elevators were the most difficult, the freight elevator was the most peaceful, but only after hours when there wasn’t much freight to move. Temps never got the assignment during the day because the freight operators often got tips. Whenever I got the opportunity in the middle of the night, I thoroughly enjoyed it. There was no roof on the freight elevator, so it afforded an unobstructed view of the entire shaft, all 38 floors, and piloting it was like taking a slow rocket ship into the dark heavens.

During my brief tenure at 120 Broadway, I tried to be a good elevator operator. I showed up for my shifts on time. I worked over-nights. I passed inspection. My shoes were shined and I smiled whenever I interacted with the public. I was even relatively consistent whenever I had to “level off,” accomplishing it with a minimal number of tries. But still there was a part of me that was curious, distracted, a part of me wanted to test the limits, to see just how far I might go up without getting hooked, how low without ending up in The Pit. Of course I didn’t want to kill anybody or myself in the process. Perhaps that was that wonder that caused the problem on my last day of work. Or maybe it was the image of a smiling Spencer climbing the maintenance ladder through the escape hatch in the elevator, wondering how it felt riding full tilt into the springs below. In any event, I missed the red #3 bull’s eye and kamikazed my elevator filled with Japanese office workers from Mitsubishi on the 28th floor into the The Pit. I don’t remember much, but I am sure it wasn’t me who shouted, “Remember Pearl Harbor!” as somebody reported hearing on the descent.
Of course I was fired in full view of everyone.

My friend Sal later told me The Rat gathered everyone in the Break Room and announced that my crash landing made a bigger impact on the building than the one he had witnessed in March 1942. That was when a seven-inch artillery shell fired by an anti-aircraft battery near the East River by mistake struck the 37th floor.
“It was one of eight,” The Rat told them. “The only one to hit. And I was right there when it happened. The other rounds all fell harmlessly into the river. That shell caused less damage, and no injuries.”
So my career came to an abrupt and crashing end. But I did make it into elevator operator lore, and in September I started on a new career path, teaching high school.

© 2011 Joseph E. Scalia

It took me a few moments to make sense of the situation. The man on the steps was a puppet-maker, and he was presenting a proposal to spend about $1,500 of the movement’s money on art supplies for the construction of large puppets. These puppets, he explained, would join the occupiers’ upcoming march on Times Square. Behind him, a ghostly puppet of the statue of liberty stood about 7 feet high, head and hands made of paper mache, body made of sheets. Many members of the crowd wiggled their fingers to show their approval of the plan.

“As an artist,” said a voice without a body. "AS AN ARTIST!" shouted the crowd. “I respect this proposal.” (I RESPECT THIS PROPOSAL!) “But as an activist” (BUT AS AN ACTIVIST!) “I can’t forget” (I CAN’T FORGET!) “That people are starving here.” (THAT PEOPLE ARE STARVING HERE!)

The puppet maker nodded sympathetically before responding. “But if we do not fund the arts” (BUT IF WE DO NOT FUND THE ARTS!) “my concern is” (MY CONCERN IS!) “who will?” (WHO WILL!?)

This was the human microphone, also known as “the people’s microphone”. One person speaks, and the surrounding people echo in unison; the crowd functions as a bullhorn for the individual.

The human mic imposes a set of formal limitations that shape the way communication is happening within the movement. If you want to say something, you have to know exactly what you are going to say and how you are going to say it before you open your mouth. That may sound, initially, like a self-evident prerequisite of speech. But think about all the particles and modifiers and interjections and digressions that normally punctuate improvisatory human speech: um, like, so anyway, whatever, uh, yeah, hmm, by the way, which reminds me, etc. There is no room for these at the General Assembly. You have to minimize waste and maximize content. You have to economize.

You also have to impose line breaks. The people (your microphone) can’t parrot more than a few iambs of unmemorized speech, so you must staccato-cize your sentences, pausing after each fragment for the crowd’s echo. The result is poetry. Witness the following stanza, extemporized by an anonymous woman:

As someone who used to work
In Times Square
I happen to know they have
A lot of horse cops.

Or this, spoken by a frustrated young man standing on a table:

I’m waiting for something to happen
And when that thing doesn’t happen
I’m disappointed.

At Occupy Wall Street, it’s hard to distinguish between functional and performative speech. If you close your eyes, a General Assembly can pass for a poetry reading, like the one I attended at the park on October 14th. The reading was organized exactly like a GA meeting: Anyone could stand up and read, and the surrounding audience repeated each line. Eileen Myles, former director of the St. Marks Poetry Project, performed a poem called “Anonymous”:

No I’m the poet
No you’re the poet
No he’s the poet
No they’re the poet
No she’s the poet
No that’s the poet
No this is the poet
No I’m the poet
(repeat)

Myles repeated this sequence several times over, and by the end she was jumping excitedly at each emphasized pronoun, and the audience was also jumping and shouting each line back to her, echoing her hoarse fervor.

She told me afterwards that she had written “Anonymous” specifically for this forum. “I was compelled by the human microphone as an incredible medium for writing for the group,” said Myles. “It’s kind of very ancient, to assume you have a chorus to read your lines. [Occupy Wall Street] is the first real talking back in a long and awful growing silence. So to be a poet writing into that space is to really have a job, and to have an audience that is the voice for the work as well.”

So in one sense, the human microphone is a crude, makeshift tool born of necessity: In New York City you need a permit to amplify sound electronically. In another sense it is an immensely powerful and multifarious metaphor. It is a metaphor for the vision of this movement, a governmental body that transforms the “I” of the individual into a larger, collective “I”. But even as it embodies the project of democracy, the human mic throws into relief the difficulties that plague its practice. Sometimes the individual “I” is  at odds with the collective.

From its beginnings in early September, the Occupy movement has been trying to model direct democracy, a form of government in which “the people” speak and decide for themselves, rather than appointing substitutes – congressmen, senators, lobbyists, commanders-in-chief - to speak and decide for them. Anyone can participate in the General Assembly, wherever it is being held; anyone can present a proposal and anyone can block a proposal, forcing the assembly to postpone a decision.

After about twenty minutes of redundant dialogue between the puppet-maker and the crowd, a man in a baseball hat suddenly leapt onto a chair and began yelling. “People are homeless! Do something substantial with the money, something that’s actually symbolic!”

For some reason the crowd did not repeat these words, maybe because his speech was too fast and passionate; he was not pausing to allow for echoes. “Let this man speak,” someone yelled, “he has something to say!”

Just like that, the order dissolved. The crowd was shifting and murmuring; strings of words, rather than being amplified and heard, were proliferating in distinct pockets. No one held the strings; the puppet was being pulled in many directions, about to be torn apart. “Mic check,” someone screamed. MIC CHECK! screamed the crowd.

Here was an ideologically diverse community of thousands, all with separate complaints, congregated in 33,000 square feet of park, the buzz of anger hovering in the atmosphere like charged particles after a big bang of creation. And this place was loud: Cars were honking, a jackhammer was hammering, there was a drum circle on the western steps. And you have a governmental model in which every voice counts equally. Abstracted, direct democracy is a breathtakingly simple idea. Standing on the corner of Broadway and Liberty, it was a logistical nightmare.

The facilitator of the meeting, a young black woman wearing an oversized striped sweater, spoke: “I personally respect this process!”

“That’s because it benefits you!” These words came from the center of the crowd. The boy (or man) was in his late teens or early twenties. He was thin but strong-looking, with a ruffled brown mohawk and a raspy voice. He had been sitting on the ground, but he now stood up. “You are an academic,” he said.

Mohawk boy: I do not respect the mob.
Crowd: I DO NOT RESPECT THE MOB!
Mohawk boy: My humble request is that you stop speaking for me.
Crowd: STOP SPEAKING FOR ME!
Mohawk boy: Please stop.
Crowd: PLEASE STOP!

“Respectfully,” said the facilitator, “this is not the time/ to make proposals. This is the time / for clarifying questions / related to this proposal.” The puppet-maker nodded his approval.

The puppet-maker nodded his approval.

“There is never a time for love in this community,” cried the boy with the mohawk. A space had cleared around him, and he was swiveling in it, appealing to those nearby. No one repeated is words. “There is only a time for agendas. It’s an insiders' group,” he roared, as though he was going to cry.

“It’s open to anyone,” said the facilitator. IT’S OPEN TO ANYONE! echoed the crowd. “Lies!” screamed the mohawk boy. “Forgive my passion! Lies! Forgive me. Forgive me.” Then he headed for the periphery of the circle, where a young woman was waiting to give him a hug. After the hug he began talking heatedly to a tall blonde wearing a leather jacket.

The facilitator leaned forward and clasped her hands. “This is what / direct democracy looks like. / It’s not always easy, / it’s not always comfortable, / but right now/ it sure looks beautiful. / So thanks for sticking with it.”

“I’m still here,” said the boy with the mohawk, now standing at the edge of the crowd.

“And we love you for it!” said someone. Everyone echoed.

Jean Garnett lives in Brooklyn, where she grew up. She works at a literary agency and is pursuing an MFA in creative nonfiction at The New School.

A few years ago, I went to the New York Historical Society library to find out who had lived on Pearl Street a century ago as the search for the missing couple sent me back in time and forward in geography. Fortunately the New-York Directory of 1812 has a cross reference so you can look up the street and then find the people who lived there. There were two who caught my attention, James Armory, whip maker at 244 Pearl Street, and Sarah Wood, bonnet maker, at 357 Pearl Street. I wondered if they had known each other and, more importantly, had they fallen in love. I think it was the opposite nature of their professions, one, the maker of whips, the other of bonnets, that made a romance seem so exciting.

Over the years I would think about Mr. Armory and Ms. Wood often, not as much as the missing couple but a lot. I decided to find out more about them and what they made. I tried researching whip makers on the Internet because I wanted to know what Mr. Armory’s whips and shop would have looked like. Too many Western style whips came up. When I emailed my questions to a prominent whip maker, he wrote, “Buy my book” which I thought was rather harsh. I was not sure if his book would have addressed the matter of East Coast whips.

It turns out that there was a town in the east called “Whip City,” aka Westfield, Massachusetts, because most of the town's residents in the late l9th century worked in the whip industry. There is one factory left but the factory was closed for a few days. I could not wait to find out about east coast whips so I went back to the Historical Society Library, so calming with the red carpet, the white Ionic columns, and the milk glass, lamp shades. Joseph, the librarian, knew exactly where to find a clue --- The Arts and Crafts in New York l800 -04 by Rita S. Gottesman published in 1965. The late Ms. Gottesman, who also wrote two earlier volumes, was a hero. She reprinted all kinds of ads, under headings such as: Clocks and Watches, Fashion and Beauty, even Balloons. There, in the index, was “whip makers.” On the whip maker page was Mr. Armory.

The ad reprinted from The New-York Gazette, January 1, 1800-1804, for Mr. Armory read: “…He has on hand an extensive assortment of ready made horse whips of every description….In addition...he has entered into….neat double and single barrel Guns ….an elegant assortment of sword dart canes…a few Bird nets... “ Then another of his ads went on about having 2000 bundles of rattan for plaiting whips.

When I showed Joseph, the librarian, my findings, he said, “You know, whips were not just for horses. There were slaves then.”

While reading the 1812 Gazette to get the best sense of Mr. Armory and Ms Wood’s world on Pearl Street, I saw many advertisements for boys: “For sale, a Negro Boy, 14 years of age….he is smart and active. Apply 51 South Street.” Another was “.…about l6, apply corner of Broad & Beaver Streets.” There was an ad for a wench.

I became swept away reading about Malaga Raisins, Spermacetti Oil, and Spy Glaffes [they still used “f” for “s” back then] “A very handfome affortment, confifting of Day and Night, Adromatic, Camp, and Perfpective Glaffes….Fuited to the pocket. For Sale at No. 128 Pearl-Street.” And of course, bombazeens and Elephant and Sea-Horse Teeth…” I did not find advertisements for Sarah Wood and her bonnets but I did see that “S.Frifkney – Milliner… Has juft received by the Fair American from London, a very elegant affortment of made and unmade MILLINERY confiffting of all the moft fafhionable Caps, Cloaks, straw and velvet Bonnets ---like wife leather girdles….” So that gave a sense of the millinery world.

Pearl Street, and the surrounding streets, in those days was quite a hub of commerce. It is entirely likely that Mr. Armory and Miss Wood had been in the same spot, either knowingly or unknowingly, on one or on many occasions, buying groceries or Madeira or red lead.

“How are you today, Miss Wood? “

“I am just fine, Mr. Armory.”

“Are you buying oranges, lemons, or citrons, Miss Wood?”

“No, I was considering the deer.”

But all the same, I was sure there had been convergence between them.

And they might have met at the play on June 8 “…performed, for the first time in America…the comedy of THE KISS.”

Ms. Wood may have looked up at Mr. Armory --- when I think about her, she is always wearing a short-waisted muslin dress and a gingham or straw bonnet tied with a ribbon to the side though, if it were the evening, the bonnet might be velvet. I say that she “looked up at” because I sensed that she was shorter than he was and he, being a whip maker --- it seemed he would be tall --- but then there are enforcing types of all sizes. She would have long, eyelashes and he would be wearing a fitted waistcoat. He might have been married though he could have been a confirmed bachelor. But I concluded that, because Miss Wood worked, she may have been alone with little children to care for, or she lived with a sister. But as I was figuring this out, I came upon another advertisement:

“NOW OR NEVER. Just arrived, a female ELEPHANT, to be SEEN at No 324 Bway near the head of Pearl-street from Thurs to Sat. Those who wish to gratify their curiosity by viewing this wonderful animal, will do well to call previous to that time, as it will positively be removed the next morning. Perhaps the present generation may never have an opportunity of seeing an Elephant again…”

That is where they met, I concluded. They were both starring at the Elephant. Though my mind would change

on my next trip to Pearl Street. Then, of course, other things would happen.

[To be continued…]

___

Toni Schlesinger is a New York-based author, journalist, fiction writer, and theater artist who is writing the non-fiction book, “The Mystery of Pearl Street.” Her “Five Flights Up” book (Princeton Architectural Press) is a collection of her award-wining Village Voice “Shelter” columns about New York. Her most recent original play in which she also performed was “The Palace” (2010) at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. www.tonischlesinger.com

She would often say to him “say my name.” He would say “Sarah” in his Scottish brogue and she would melt. He would say to her “say my name” and she would lovingly say “Martin.” That was all they needed in the moment. “I can’t wait to see you Sarah. I can’t wait to meet you in person. We will have so much fun in NYC together.” She agreed and said “this is magic connecting with you. You’re an old soul that I have known from past lifetimes.” Sometimes he would call her on the weekend at 4am his time and 11pm her time. His speech was kind of lazy and slow, and when he would speak it felt like he was making love to her. Sometimes he would leave a v/m saying “it’s only me calling to say hi.” She would say to herself “it’s only me! Does he have any idea how happy he makes me feel?”

One day she was sitting on her sofa with one of her female friends, and she said “you have to hear Martin’s voice, it’s so sexy and that Scottish brogue is to die for.” Her friend said “I’m so turned on by Craig Ferguson,” a Scotsman on late-night TV, so her friend was more than willing to hear the v/m message. Sarah held her breath as she dialed her phone for messages and she gave the phone to her friend to hear Martin’s voice. Her friend took the phone, listened and smiled and said “you’re right. He sounds so sexy. What a great voice. His voice sounds so deep and rich. Wow!” Sarah took a breath and was so relieved. She had been involved in online dating for 6 years, and from past experience learned that long distance relationships didn’t work for her. When Martin contacted her he said “Sarah, I’m thinking of moving to NYC. One of my students got accepted to the Actors Studio in NYC and I have visited her a few times and I love NYC. I would rather be alone in NYC than Scotland. All of my friends are either attached or married.” He was trying to break out of that lifestyle and really didn’t want to get married. She had also told him “I have no interest in getting married either,” but after 2 months of speaking to him, she had fallen in love with him, and now was unsure about everything. Many times she wanted to jump through the phone so he could make love to her. On one phone call, Martin spoke of what was in Sarah’s heart. Martin said “I don’t understand why people have to keep running to go away all the time because there is so much beauty in front of them. Especially where I live.” When Sarah heard Martin say that she totally melted. It was exactly how she felt. How did he know? She rarely heard a man speak like this. He made her feel like a line from the song, “Suzanne,” he touched my perfect body with his mind.

They were both lonely. They felt so lucky. “I’ve never felt like this before,” he kept saying to her. “This is so much more serious than I thought it would be.” He spoke with amazement in his voice and she would keep saying “this is magic, utterly magical.” If he didn’t call her, she would call him. She didn’t care. She wasn’t going to allow this opportunity to pass her by. She was in love with him. She told Martin “I’ve gone out on so many dates that turned out to be so disappointing. Guys that said they were one age, and then when I would meet them, they either didn’t look like their photo or they were so much older than they said, or I just couldn’t talk to them and/or wasn’t attracted them.”

Sarah had been married twice, had raised 4 boys, and had been with many men, and her last relationship had been with a wonderful man that had lasted 5 years, but the man had been tied to his mother and Sarah walked away. Sarah said to Martin, “have you ever been in relationship? Martin said, “yes, I was in two long-term relationships.” That’s all Sarah wanted to hear.

If she could only hear his voice right now. Right at this moment. Now, all he would do was call and hang-up. Wouldn’t talk. What makes a man love speaking to you, and then end up calling and hanging up? She was so saddened by it all. He had wanted her so bad, really bad. She felt the same way, but she hadn’t changed her feelings. “When did he change?” Sarah said. “When did he stop wanting to be with me? How did it all happen?” But now he would just call and hang up. When things were good between them she would see sometimes on her caller ID, that he had called 11 times until he reached her. Oh, she missed him so. She had been so ready for him. All the time he kept saying to her “this has never happened to me before” she realized that it had never happened to her before. She realized it after it failed.

“Perhaps he was preparing me on the phone” she said to herself. She remembered the time he said “you’re so gorgeous, you will be so disappointed when you see me. My skin is chalk-white from the lousy weather in Scotland,” but Sarah thought he was being humorous, because he had a wonderful sense of humor.

His first night in he came directly to her apartment on the 25th floor. When she first saw him, Sarah was taken by surprise by his physical disability. Martin had no neck. Sarah hesitated for that moment when she first saw him, and said to herself “does it change your feelings for him?” She answered “no” to herself. “I could care less.” She opened up her arms and he walked right in and they kissed. They walked hugging one another into her apartment. She showed him around; it was so difficult containing all of the powerful feelings she had for him. They sat on her sofa. He was exhausted being up for 24 hours. She pulled herself towards him and rested on his chest. She wanted to make it easy for him. She soulfully kissed him, their tongues entwined around one another. His arms wrapped around her, and hers wrapped around him. They touched each other’s bodies. Her skin felt like satin with his touch. It was great being together for the first time.

He hadn’t eaten in many hours, and Sarah knew he wanted to go over to Battery Park City to a wonderful restaurant on the water she had told him about. They both loved water. He was surrounded by it living in Scotland, and worked on a ferry when he was growing up. She had grown up in New England, on the water. The water was her lover to contemplate, write or just hangout with. They walked hand in hand towards Ground Zero to get to the restaurant. He had originally told her on the phone “I haven’t gone to Ground Zero because I hate to see them sell souvenirs of the WTC.” Sarah said “we can walk down another street.” But he said he didn’t mind. It was a lovely evening, holding hands, getting used to one another, walking, and sitting and snuggling on a bench looking at the water. So often she had been there alone. It felt so good to be with him. Sarah loved holding hands with Martin.

Sarah knew the relationship was falling apart by the 3rd day. It was a Sunday evening and they had been together earlier in the day and as he was leaving he said to her “I will call you tonight,” but he never did. She called him that evening. Earlier, Martin said to Sarah “I have to be with my theatre student, because she’s in a play and needs someone to direct her and the other actors and she asked me to direct her and I said yes.” When he told Sarah she replied “why are you pushing me away? I want to spend time with you.” Sarah’s jealousy and yearning to be with him were made known to him. He didn’t like that. Oh how she wanted to hear him say “don’t worry about it, we will work it out. Remember we will be going to theatre together, walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, going fishing. We will have lots of time together. Don’t you worry about it.” But he never did. He just got angry and said “I came here for a vacation, not to be stressed out.”

Sarah couldn’t hold back the tears while she spoke to him. She knew if either one continued the conversation she would never see him again. “Oh, she said to herself,” if only he had spoken to me gently, if only he had said “Sarah we will work it out. I want to be with you as much as you want to be with me.” Sarah had made a commitment to herself before Martin came to town, saying “I’m going the whole way with this relationship no matter what happens. I’m not going to run away.” What Sarah was unaware of was that no matter how much she wanted to speak to Martin to see what was wrong, he would remain silent. “He never once seemed to care about me like he did on the phone,” Sarah said to herself. “The only time I felt Martin cared about me in NYC was the first time he came to my place and we went to dinner.”

While speaking to Martin over the past 2 months, Sarah was unaware of an amazing transformation that was happening to her, but realized it when Martin began running away. Sarah said surprisingly to herself “I’ve never treated a man so kindly and so gently, so lovingly under adverse circumstances until Martin. I’ve never accepted anyone so completely.” Something told her even when he got so angry that she must be kind and gentle to him. Although Sarah knew he needed much love and kindness she said to herself “I also want that kindness. I want that love. I thought he would love me like his kids.” He doesn’t say any of the things to me he said on the phone. Where did he go? Where is that man on the phone?”

Sarah realized she was no longer in search of a relationship. When the time was right it would come to her, willingly, without fear, and with someone who would love her unconditionally. In the meantime, she so appreciated her life and would be open to any delicious lovers that would come along. She would never give up on love and she also knew that she would always love Martin.

The day after Martin left NYC without saying good-bye, Sarah walked into City Hall Park to contemplate. As she was walking in, she heard the sounds of Scottish bagpipes playing “Amazing Grace.” She sat down on the bench totally blown away.

I felt nurtured in the sun, and great joy looking at the voluminous colors of spring tulips in luscious, full bloom.

The young dancer was now in my periphery. “Get out of my way,” my mind kept saying, “go somewhere else, don’t dance here.” She was making fun of the passersby dressed in business attire, there was no joy, just making fun. She seemed to enjoy humiliation.

I grew up Jewish in New England and was constantly humiliated by the kids after school, running after me and throwing garbage and tin cans at me while yelling out “dirty Jew, dirty Jew.” David Spinney was especially frightening, threatening me in the schoolyard each and every day. I asked my mom if she would meet me after school to walk home with me, but she always said “No,” and dad was never around and thought I was always making up stories.

Time went on and I went to a junior college down South. I was the only Jew. Friends would invite me to their homes, and then report back what there parents said about my visit. “If we knew she was such a nice Jew, we would have invited her sooner.” I found out later that these parents were part of the Klu Klux Klan. The second year I was there I had a private room and kept my door locked at night. One afternoon, I walked into my room and smelled rotten cheese. Someone had smeared it all over my lipsticks and when I opened my close closet doors, there were meat bones hanging with blood dripping down to the floor.

I moved to another bench in City Hall Park. One that was far away from the dancer, and where I was surrounded by yellow, white, pink and red tulips. I was glad I had become an Interfaith Minister two years prior.

I worked at a start-up magazine with crazy hours and I was trying to establish myself as journalist. I was writing for a living, finally. I interviewed celebrities and wrote deconstructive (yes, fashion) essays. Me help out this nasty old city? Me help empower the people? I had my own life to sort out. Unless jury duty was going to be potential material for the next “In Cold Blood,” forget it. I attempted my third deferral. “Look weird. Wear blue lipstick,” advised photographer Henny Garfunkel in her slow-motion voice. Henny always sounded like she’d taken some kind of drug that slowed you down to a luxurious, unhurried speed and never sped back up to normal. Henny I’d met through my home-town comrade, John Waters. She’d done film stills and taken a picture of him with a two-headed calf that we’d published with my article on bad taste. Henny had an eye for curious things that other people missed or shunned; her photographs cast a spell, evoking both gasps and smiles. She was original in every way. She had at least 15 ear piercings and a nose ring before it was trendy and wore deep red lipstick painted in a dramatic Mortitia Addams arch. Her hair was buzzed close on the sides and the top stood straight up like Nefertiti’s headpiece. She’d worn blue lipstick and got off jury duty.

I had normal hair and no blue lipstick. But I did have blue eye shadow and taking my cue from the expert, I globbed it on my lips. I got in that line and when I presented my summons to the lady at the table and said I needed a postponement she took one look at me and stamped MUST SERVE in angry red letters.

I’ve since served here and there, dressed up for the occasion and even tried to be chosen, though I refuse to answer invasive questions in front of strangers—e.g. What do you do? Where do you live? Do you have any family members who are convicted felons? Of course I have a family member who is a convicted triple-felon, and his crimes aren’t even sensational enough to exploit, so I’m writing fiction instead of a family memoir and FYI, prison hasn’t helped rehabilitate him in the least—and I wish they’d reveal astrological signs. (Aries/Taurus cusp, very psycho.) I’d pondered, why is the whole ordeal so unpleasant? Why is the region-tilting-toward-Wall Street so uptight, oppressive and depressing? Why can’t they make jury duty more…charming?

Felons are exempt, but movie stars, lawyers and doctors aren’t anymore. Robert De Niro has served. So has Harvey Keitel and former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Even weirdos have to show up, now. So when I got a summons last year I deferred by phone and punched in my ideal serving time, March. My sense of patriotic duty blossomed, I openly admit, after September 11th. But I was ignored. Never heard back. Until last week. A summons arrived declaring I’d postponed twice and been absent. Not so! I never got the March summons. But I would be away on the September date they had randomly chosen. Would they believe me? What paperwork did I need as proof? Our ferry ticket was in my husband’s name, better get a wedding certificate. What if they made me cancel our vacation? I ran through all the worst scenarios and then determined to go in with a smile and a bounce in my step.

So yesterday, dismissing Henny’s advice (I hadn’t seen her in over 15 years, where was that blithe spirit?) and wearing a neutral lipstick called “Brave” and my most beautiful earrings—large, dangling clip-ons, the ones I’d worn on my wedding day—I took a cab to 60 Center Street. I was sure those earrings would set off the metal detector and they did, but the friendly, smiling sentinels waved me right in. What’s going on? I wondered, when did these people become so trusting and adorable? I asked for room 139 and was told, “Walk toward the light.” Gliding through the palatial atrium I gazed upon bronze zodiac figures embedded in the floor that made me feel as though I might be in a cultured European city or Nostrodamus’ s castle. The sun was in Virgo, sign of service, healing and anal attention to details. Was that beautiful floor always there or was I finally noticing it? I imagined trumpets sounding the arrival of a guest or royalty and fairly floated toward a light at the end of a hall.

I got to the room with the light. There was a sign saying “If you need to blah blah… you’ve come to the right place.” You felt like you’d won a prize.

I told my story to a woman behind a desk. She was actually smiling. “Take a seat.” I was the only “customer.” I thought they might make me wait forever, but within 60 seconds my name was called. I followed the direction of the voice and sat at a desk. There were Xeroxed photos of Naked-Lunch author William Burroughs on the side of his cubicle. More Burroughs behind the computer.

Thank heavens; I got someone with a rich, intellectual life. Thank heavens I got the Bohemian. (Never mind that this guy’s hero had shot his wife.) He had a thick head of dark wavy hair, and he was easy on the eyes. I was explaining that I’d never been absent, my paperwork proof of vacation in hand, when I noticed a book on his desk, a writer’s guide. “Are you a writer?” He paused, espresso-brown eyes too dark to see the revealing pupil of emotion … he seemed to be considering the question as though I’d asked him if he had a disease.

“Why, yes I am,” he admitted, grimly.

“Do you ever write about this place?” He looked around the room. “Nothing ever happens here.”

“What do you write?”

The next thing you know, Prince Charming and I were exchanging contact information, talking about writers from Burroughs to Kerouac. I gushed, “I’d love to read your work!”

He was reluctant but I insisted. “Do you want a novel synopsis?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I’d rather read a short story.”

Am I crazy? I began to think. He might be an Aquarius but what if his work is terrible? He’s unpublished. Everyone’s writing a book. People give me amateurish, awful things to read all the time. What if I hate it and he’s the punitive type? What if he sends me a summons every month?! I’d been candid with him, telling him a confidential truth about my unpredictable, timetable for the next twelve months.

I was relieved to see an understated, fabulous title on his manuscript. “Black Car Service.” He seemed a man misplaced, like Melville or Kafka, with a job that in no way exploited his ambition or talent. I didn’t want to leave. Over the years I had metamorphosed out of fashion and into literature. Hardly anyone I know in the fashion business talks about books unless, of course, it’s “The Devil Wears Prada” or a biography of an overdosed star whose “look” is being rediscovered. I bet if I posed the question, “Do you like Anne Sexton?” most of them would ask if she designed clothing or sex toys. I stood up to leave. At the front desk in this otherwise client-free room I saw the back of a woman with a familiar, languid voice. She turned around. The red lipstick made its siren-call clear across the room. Henny Garfunkel! It felt like a cocktail party!

I introduced Henny to the misplaced Burroughs-obsessed writer, and they shook hands. Where was the champagne?

As we walked out into the August light, Henny, off to the Toronto Film Festival, asked me if I was serving.

“Oh that. I’m off for a year!” Yes, like a genie, the writer granted me my undeclared, secret wish.

In the cab, on my way back to the office I began reading “Black Car Service.” The words sparkled on the page, a spine-chilling, supernatural tale that started like this …

“The sky had been an insane pink that only occurred with any regularity in the fall.”

Bram Stoker meets William Burroughs meets Mickey Spillane. I couldn’t put it down. Ignored emails and phone calls and finished it at my desk. At six or so, I called him and told him he was brilliant. (Like most undiscovered writers, he was at a bar.)

He was wrong about nothing happening there. I fell back in love with the city.

I was reading my magazines and enjoying the outdoors when I began to hear this loud screaming. Living in NYC, you get used to this kind of sound, so I continued on with my reading, but the screaming didn’t stop and it became very loud at times. The screaming was full of anguish and pain, and I turned around and off in the distance I saw this black man in a blue nylon jacket walking back and forth, at the gate facing City Hall, waving his fist at the people standing out in front of City Hall.

The sounds emanating from him almost made me want to go over to speak to him to see what had happened to him, but I got scared and I didn’t really have confidence that I could handle the situation.

So I went back to my reading, still hearing this constant cry of anguish in the background. I finally got up to go, and I turned around and watched this man walking back and forth, once again shaking his fist towards the direction of City Hall. Again I was tempted to go over to him to try to comfort him.

I then walked out of the park to go back up to my office. I was very upset about the man in the park, and then I turned on the TV and the news came on. Over the weekend, some man had been shot 50 times, along with his 2 friends, coming out of bar after celebrating this man’s wedding which was to occur the next day. The groom died and the 2 friends survived.

There was a press conference being called at City Hall and Al Sharpton and some other clergy were attending the press conference. I said a prayer for the man in the park and all of us who are affected by this unacceptable behavior by the police.

“You have a job?” he asks.

“I’m a writer,” I say, waving my notebook, which is green and skinny, and has spiral binding on top.

“You work for the city?” he asks.

“No, for a newspaper,” I answer, waving my notebook again. His English is not great, and I think ‘freelance’ will be too hard to explain.

Every morning, Mohammad spends two dollars to ride the subway to 293 Church Street, a garage-like space tucked between two fancy restaurants in a bustling corner of Tribeca. 293 Church Street is more like a not-place than a place. Mohammad calls it a “gar-iz.” It is run by a bristling man named John who has a grey mustache and a heavy Eastern European accent. For six months, Mohammed came to the gar-iz every morning to pick up a silver cart, which he would wheel here, to the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, and sell hot dogs. On a good day, he made about $60 profit. On a slow day, $40.

Mohammad has a vendor’s license, which he keeps in a dirty plastic sheath in his otherwise empty brown leather wallet, its tarnished beaded ball-chain necklace wrapped around it. The license cost him $60, plus $56 for a required 2-day class which taught him that he must wear plastic gloves to handle food, and offered guidance as to how to dress appropriately. The rent on the cart was approximately six hundred dollars per month. It varied, though. “If I am making good business,” he said, “rent go up.”

A vendor’s license allows you to sell food on the street, but a permit is necessary to own your own cart. One day, he showed up at the garage to find that the cart he was renting was no longer available. Permits expire every 7 months, so Mohammad speculates that the cart owner’s permit ran out, or that someone else laid claim to the cart. In any case, he says, pointing to a blue and yellow Sabrett umbrella on the other side of the approach to the bridge, “Maybe he have permit. I have no permit.” Which is to say, without his own permit, there’s nothing he can do.

So now he arrives at 293 Church Street each morning with two blue coolers and an old silver hand-truck. “Water! Cold things!” he says to a group of tourists walking by. “One dollar!” It comes out sounding like, “Wada! Coldings! Wandallah!”

He spends about $30 to fill up the coolers with water, soda, Gatorade, and ice. He wheels the hand truck down Church Street, weaving in and out of parked cars and traffic. The wheels on the truck squeak as he walks. The two coolers are stacked on top of each other, and the lid on the top cooler doesn’t fit quite right. Handfuls of ice cubes fall onto his feet and hit the pavement. His small frame moves quickly, and, struggling to keep up, I keep an eye on his blue and grey and yellow baseball cap, which is made from parachute material and Velcros in the back. He is like a compact little rectangle, with a tan fleece top and blue polyester pants.

He makes a left onto Chambers Street, passes a fruit vendor and a hot dog cart, passes Ralph’s Discount City, and tells me we’re going to the Blooklyn Biliz.

“The Blooklyn Biliz. You know the Blooklyn Biliz?”

I think he’s saying “Brooklyn Village,” so I shake my head no.

“I show you.” He tells me to walk on the sidewalk.

The sky is looking grey, and despite the temperature, which is only in the mid-50s, the haze and the humidity make the air feel hot and sticky.

“Maybe coming rain today,” he says, “people no buy cold things.” Mohammad looks up at the gathering cloud cover. “It’s hard making people like water.”

Mohammad picks a spot at the approach to the Bridge where there is a brass symbol of a walking person inlaid into the sidewalk, with matching brass arrows inlaid on either side, in each direction. The on-ramp for cars hugs the left side of the walkway, and the off-ramp hugs the right. Clumps of tourists walk by, holding cameras and guide books. Joggers and bikers pass, too, sweaty and fast. The Blooklyn Biliz looks dishwater grey on this cloudy day. Its usual majesty is dwarfed by all the taillights and the buildings, which, from this angle, seem at least as tall, if not taller. Even the buildings on the Brooklyn side of the bridge seem tall enough to jostle for the skyline’s attention.

“I set here,” says Mohammad. “People come across. They tired. They buy water.” He lays the two coolers side-by-side, takes their lids off, reaches into the ice, and pulls the bottles of Gatorade—which, at $2, are his most expensive item—to the top of the chilly pile.

“Wada! Coldings! Wandallah!” he calls to a passing blonde family.

“No thank you,” says one woman.

“OK,” says Mohammad, “have a nice day.”

His voice is slightly nasal, and he speaks quickly and confidently, as though he is not aware of the fact that he is often hard to understand. He has dark brown deep-set eyes and a square-shaped dark brown beard with a few grey hairs. Mohammad came to this country from his native Bangladesh when he was 34 years old. The lawlessness and random violence in his country had been wearing him down. “My country too much crazy people,” he says. “People gun. You have money, they take it.” He had been trying to get a visa through the lottery visa program since 1990. He hit the jackpot in 1998. “This country very nice. I like this country,” he says. “Here you have one thousand dollars in your pocket, nobody takes it.”

Mohammad has been here at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge for an hour. So far today, he has made $4.

“Gatorade, Miss?” he asks a passing woman. It sounds like “Gatorid.” “Want Gatorid? That’s good.”

Mohammad wonders if it’s too cold for people to want soda. “I looking for another job now,” he says. “Outside work, vendor, too headache.” Rain, cold, people’s whims—his living is too uncertain. “People buy water, I have money. People don’t buy water, I don’t have money.” When he wants to go to the bathroom, he must cart his coolers to a nearby bench and ask some people sitting there to watch them while he runs to Starbucks.

He lives in a 2-bedroom basement apartment which costs $800. I ask him if he lives alone.

“No, not a loan,” he says. “Rent. Monthly rent.”

He lives with a friend, another Bangladeshi. His wife is still in Bangladesh. He wants to bring her here, but it’s too expensive. “‘How come you no make America for me?’” he says she asks him. “I say no, maybe later.” When he goes to City Hall to try to get her a visa, they always ask about money, always money. “City say ‘how much you make money?’ If you have money, city give you visa.”

He interrupts himself. “Yes sir, wada?” He continues. “If you have no money, city says, ‘how can your wife eat?’”

The Urban Justice Center recently released a report about street vendors in lower Manhattan. They interviewed 100 vendors in 5 languages, and they found among them a median yearly income of $7,500. I cannot imagine Mohammad making even that much at this rate. “The typical vendor,” wrote the New York Times in an article about the report, “is a married immigrant man who is the sole provider for his family and has no health insurance.” That’s Mohammad. “Only 20 percent of the vendors reported English as their first language; forty percent said they were uncomfortable speaking it,” the Times went on to say.

Mohammad is a Muslim. He belongs to the Alamin Mosque on 36th Avenue in Long Island City. He prays five times a day. He might not get a chance to pray five times today, though. He looks at his watch. He sometimes goes to a mosque near here, if he can get away while he’s working. “You watch?” He gestures at his coolers.

“Sure,” I say. “I’ll watch.”

“Really? No problem?” he asks? “You watch, I go?” I nod. “No problem.”

“You watch, I go.” He’s happy. I watch his little blue and grey and yellow hat bob through the crowd towards the Assata Islamic Center, a mile north, on Allen Street.

A sign above my head reads “AREA UNDER NYPD VIDEO SURVEILLANCE.” I watch the twin yellow lights flash at the off-ramp. Bottomtop. Bottomtop. Bottomtop. I write in my skinny red notebook. I wait. A red double-decker Gray Line bus drives by, people spilling off the roof with their cameras. Bottomtop. Bottomtop. I look at the Bridge. Some 27 people died during its construction, most of them immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, and Germany. One tourist in an orange Red Hot Chili Peppers t-shirt passes, doubles back, asks for a beer. When I tell him it’s only water, soda, and Gatorade, he leaves. While Mohammad is gone, I sell two sodas and one water. It’s been about two hours, and Mohammad’s total is now $7.

He returns in about 20 minutes. He smiles at me when I hand him the crumpled dollar bills. “Oh,” he says. “You sell?”

Mohammad has four children. The oldest is 17, the youngest—he has to count forwards on his hand from 1997—is 9. They live in Queens, too, with their mother, his first wife. She’s Bangladeshi but they met here. She divorced him a few years back when she fell in love with another man. After that, Mohammad went back to Bangladesh “to make another marriage.” It sounds like he says “mat-iz.” He gives his first wife money for their children.

“Wada?” He pauses to ask a passerby. “Cold dlink?”

“No thank you.”

“OK, bye.”

He turns to me. “You matiz?”

I’m wearing a wedding ring. I am, for all intents and purposes, married, although my partnership is not valid in 46 states and, until 1993, was flatly illegal in 14. For simplicity’s sake, I shake my head. No. It’s not a lie, not exactly.

“No?” he asks. “What happen?”

I just shrug silently. He leaves it alone.

Mohammad says he has tried to get a job in a restaurant, but he can’t because of his beard. The weather is getting cold, and he knows he won’t be able to sell cold drinks for much longer. So he has decided to try to get a job with the City. His options are limited because he can’t read or write much English. But he wouldn’t mind working with trash. “I make cleaning job,” he says, “OK. No problem. Garbage OK. I like this.” He looks appraisingly towards City Hall.

“Wada?” he asks the next person, and the next. “Wandallah.”

“A Million Little Pieces” is about a man and his addiction. “Westchester Burning” is about a woman and her marriage. Any resemblance between these two very different books is limited to whatever slim overlap there may be between those two topics–but with one big exception: they were both sold to the public as memoirs. And neither of them were memoirs.

There are different routes to the misnaming of a book as a memoir. The Frey approach, as we now know, involves sensationalizing experience. It’s a form of sensationalism via exaggeration. Fictionalizing.

The experiences recounted in “Westchester Burning” are not sensationalized or exaggerated, but they are fictionalized. Wefali’s writing is a kind of magnifying glass trained onto the subject matter at hand–the dissolution of a marriage, the lives of the protagonist, the people she encounters. A big house, children, shared decades. Her tone is tart, wise, deadpan sometimes to the point of sounding a bit stunned. There are echoes of James Salter, but where Salter writes with the wisdom of someone who has seen it all, Wefali writes as if she is experiencing everything for the first time and can’t quite believe it. And yet the flatness of the voice is like the blankness of Buster Keaton’s face—a vehicle for comedy. She has a miraculous eye for the absurd, and an equally miraculous ear for her character’s conversations.

Anyway, don’t take my word for it, here is an excerpt.

Portions of the book appeared in Open City 8 and again in Open City 14. Each one a gem.

So it was a happy thing when I heard that an agent had contacted Amina. Not long after, the agent sold the manuscript to a well-regarded editor at the Dial Press, a distinguished literary imprint (who recently purchased this Neighborhood contributor’s forthcoming memoir).

It never occurred to me that the book would be presented as something other than fiction; Amina had always referred to it as fiction. The prose read with the immediate intensity of something that really happened, but that was no reason to insist on being true to the facts. Each little tidbit was stylized and dramatized.

So… what is the big deal if it is fiction or a memoir? A story is a story! And yet.

When I found out it was being put out as a memoir I felt as though its artistic accomplishment was being slighted. Amina told me about it with a mixture of alarm and rue—apparently it had something to do with the lawyers at the publishing house, how there was less legal exposure if it was treated as a memoir and not a novel. This makes no sense, but then Amina’s is not a legalistic mind, and apparently there was no arguing with the publisher. It was her book, but it was their money (and an impressive sum), which Amina felt gave them a certain authority over how they could most likely get their money back.

The book was well received, to a point, and sold a respectable amount, I think. Not what a publisher dreams of, but still.

A reviewer in booklist wrote:

“This brave, stoic memoir recounts the collapse of the author’s own 30-year marriage, and few fictional accounts could be as brutally honest, heartbreakingly poignant, or emotively explicit.”

I couldn’t disagree more—the implication is that the events are powerful because they really happened. But unlike a guy who gets dental work without anesthetics, a divorce is a commonplace thing (though perhaps as painful). It wasn’t what happened to Amina Wefali that makes her book interesting, it is the way she tells the story, the highly stylized drama, the abrupt conclusions to the vignettes, the music of the conversation.

I’ve always felt that when someone asks me if a piece of fiction I wrote really happened, if the character is really me, it deals an implied insult to the writing, as though it isn’t skill or imagination that made the story, but just straight reportage. I once went so far as to repeatedly insist on how invented a particular story was in an anthology that asks the question of its contributors, “How did your story come to be written?” Further down the page were remarks by Dennis Johnson, writing about his story “Emergency,” which became part of his story collection, “Jesus’ Son.” Johnson wrote, “I did in fact work as a clerk in a hospital emergency room in Iowa City. This story strings together a lot of things I heard or I experienced there—a good deal of it actually happened.”

This is refreshing candor coming from Dennis Johnson, author. When that blurring comes from critics, or the publishing world, it becomes insidious.

Edmund White’s recently published autobiography, “My Lives,” contains details that will seem extremely familiar to anyone who has read his autobiographical novel, “A Boys Own Story.” But the two books couldn’t be more different in structure and tone and in their effect on the reader. You could probably look back at every decade for the last hundred years and find examples of autobiographical fiction that, in today’s publishing climate, some editor might have been tempted to publish as memoir.

As my friend Patrick Gallagher pointed out, “People think that they prefer reading memoir to fiction, but they really don’t. What audiences actually prefer is fiction that they think is memoir.” Nevertheless, I don’t mean to play a parlor game in which we look back at all the great autobiographical fiction and wonder if it would seem as interesting or as accomplished had it been presented as straight autobiography. But it is interesting to think about these last few years, when the “true story” has come to exert such a lunar pull on the publishing industry and its customers, and wonder about all the novels and story collections that were stolen out from under our eyes and sold, in a diminished form, as the plain truth.

**

On a related note, Amina Wefali runs an organic sandwich shop near Wall Street called, “Zaitzeff,” with her son and daughters. The food is fantastic. And shortly after they opened I came by and had some of their excellent food, a waffle with ham and cheese mixed in, and it was handed to me on a very nice plate. I stared at it for a while before realizing the plate came from her own kitchen. The one I visited in Westchester! There is a good fiction/non-fiction moment. I recomend a visit to Zaitzeff. Say hello to Amina. She is very nice. She’ll be totally shocked to be recognized as the writer of Westchester Burning. As far as being a published author goes, she still doesn’t really believe it.

I had broken some sort of levee on the China Town bus between Philadelphia and New York. That morning I had woken up next to a beautiful Korean girl who played the tuba. I read comic books about the life of Buddha while she slept through her alarm and was late for work. She rolled me out of bed and laughed as she called me a scum fuck. When she left for Savannah, I got on a northbound bus.

It was the only appropriate way for me to come to the city. There are many ways to cross the river, ocean, or sky into New York City. But there are invisible unspoken rules that we all must obey. I did not know this, but my hands must have, as they gave my last ten dollars to another hand over a counter in exchange for cigarettes. It was not until I had left the store that I looked at the $3.25 I held and realized that it was all I had. I suppose I should thank those hands. Our body has many operations that we are unconcious of, and I had come to New York like the space between footfalls, exactly as I should.

This was more or less my first time in New York. See, I had been here 3 years earlier with my girlfriend, but do not recall it, as at 21 I was too young to remember. I’m not sure that my tired obliviousness was the best way to confront the brutality and beauty that the city is famous for. I was not suprised at the hunger of New York. But I was suprised to find that it had eaten my friends whole, not even bothering to chew them up first. We sat in their apartment in Brooklyn, drank tall cans and smoked rollies, while we were digested on my first night in the city.

I woke up early and headed to Union Square with crime on my mind. I was going grocery shopping for the household. See, I had made some sort of deal with the devils in me. As long as they kept my face innocent, I could live freely, and the rest of me was theirs. It had been going quite well.

I’m from California, and am quite aware of my health and the ethics of consumption, so I went to the health food chain store. She’s an old friend of mine, or at least I thought she was. We have had many casual relations, and were very mature about the whole thing. I got what I wanted, and didn’t care what she did with anyone else. I guess eventually she figured that I took alittle too much, and sent a plain-clouthed pimp to collect.

I was taken into his office. It’s a small room, close to the till. The pimp sits in there behind the video eyes of the store, fighting someone else’s idea of crime, like a mercenary vulture, surviving off roadside casualties. I sat in the nest. He ruffled his feathers. He screamed. Bobbed his head up and down, and poked me with his claw. I told him to get the manager as I did not speak vulture pimp.

The manager came in. He heard my story, then the vulture’s. He knew we were both assholes. He had better things to worry about and left. I assumed I would be sent home and waited patiently while the vulture whistled along with the radio. It was a 16 year old pop star who sang, “Why did you have to make everything so complicated?”

Any criminal who is worth his bones can recognize certain things. Cars approaching from miles off. The bobbing of a flashlight in the dark. The difference between the footsteps of a passerby and of someone who is searching. My sense of right and wrong might be in retrograde, but when I heard a radio chirping, leather belts creaking, and boots shuffling on the other side of the door, I knew immediately that the situation had escalated. This was confirmed by the vultures smug look of contentment. It said Justice was about to be served, and he had earned his pay. Petty crooks and petty cops. Predators and scavengers.

California is a big state, and geographically I grew up in the far North. But no part of the world is far enough away from Hollywood. If you have any doubts about this, the proof hangs in a vulture’s nest down on Union Square. Its a polaroid of a young man in handcuffs, showing his best screen smile. His teeth are straight and white. We all do what we can, right? For about 5 minutes I was the star of the grocery store as I was marched past women pushing strollers and business men on cell phones. For a few seconds their eyes were not upon each others designer jeans, but transfixed upon my glorious walk of shame. If attention can be bought and sold, it can be stolen. And for a country boy from out West, it’s quite flattering to have someone from New York to look away in embarrasment, even if it is second hand. Petty theft never felt so grand.

They serve frosted flakes in the catacombs below New York City. I opened my milk, poured the cereal and ate it, wondering if it was really 5 am. I had no way of telling, as there were no clocks or windows. I was wondering if I was really 24, or if I was 16. I had no way to tell, as it felt just like high school, and there were no mirrors to see if I had grown younger. I suppose I could have asked someone else in the cell–there were over twenty other souls occupying the stainless steel benches and cement floor. But I felt as if I had slipped into a void where the only real question was if those crooked goons on the other side of the bars would ever let us out.

50 people to a cell while the one next door is empty. Some are down there for 30 minutes, some for 3 days, sweating out alcohol and medication onto the floor. It’s real slippery down there. Some blood on clothes and the floor is new and still red. Some on the wall is dried and black. All the corners are filled with the visible filth of the invisible. Every surface is covered in filth waiting in vain, hoping not to be forgotten.

We slept with the intimacy of the homeless. Strong men curled upon the floor with their hands tucked between their legs or down their pants for warmth, using their shoes for pillows. I more or less had slept in bedrooms like this one before, and was disturbed by it. Once again, my face changing demons had proved themselves to be ineffective, as I was excepted into the brotherhood of the incarcerated all to easily. At this point I am tempted to draw some redundant parallels between the faceless throngs on Wall St. and those in the tombs, but I’ll restrain myself for everyone’s benefit. New York eh?

My name was on a peice of sacred paper that, when held in the bestial hand of a primitive animal god, and called out aloud, meant a slight change in altitude that was in no way relative to the emotion it created. Six feet means below or above the ground can mean alot.

Fresh light shone into my new cell. Fresh cellmates slept on its floor. A fat white man with a limp who had been incarcerated for self-medicating with crack cocaine after a motorcycle accident. He asked me so many questions I thought he might be a cop. When I told him I had an associates degree in art, and he told me he would kill to have one, I knew he was living in a dream world.

People in New York make the same deals with their demons as everyone else in the States. My cellmates had stolen their girlfriends’ credit cards, beaten their children’s mothers, robbed their sisters, hammered their wives’ lovers with sticks, and held up donut shops for $60. Of course, we were all innocent. Well, all of us except those who had been there before. Which was most of us.

I stared at my attorney’s tie. It was possibly the most ugly thing in the whole building.

“Im a lawyer. I’m going to help you.”

We went on lying to each other like that for awhile, then finally came clean and were truthful when he left and I fell asleep on the floor.

A few hours later I took off my hat and entered the courtroom. My attorney bargained alright I guess, and I ended up with 2 days of community service and a bus voucher for the rest of the day.

My first day I swept up seed pods in Tompkin’s Square and was fed cigarettes by its locals. I watched palm sized toy dogs chase one other around their enclosure and swept up the wood chips they kicked out.

The second day I weeded the gardens below the Brooklyn Bridge. Unrepentantly I thought that there were worse ways to spend the first days of Spring in New York than with my face in a rose bush. I only got a few thorns in my hand and a little sick from the chinese food.