A Barney's window display of Lady Gaga's work has legendary multi-media performance artist Colette's notorious creations written all over it.

Colette, whose seminal performance art and multi-media installations originated out of New York City's vibrant art scene in the 1970's has traveled to museums and galleries all over the world; including the Guggenheim; MOMA; and The Whitney.

Upon seeing Barney's Lady Gaga window display in midtown, Colette takes to the streets in protest to send a clear message to the Gaga camp that Colette is standing outside the door and must be invited in and given proper respect.

When the company needed a production assistant, they hired one of my musician friends, a handsome Texan who went on to become so famous that years later, I learned about his death from an obituary on the front page of the New York Times. He’d played with everyone from Yoko Ono to Judy Collins, Bette Midler to the Talking Heads. But that was later. Back then, he needed a day job and we worked together in the studio, saw each other in the same West Village bars at night. It was a cash economy, before credit cards and ATMs, five and ten dollar bills passing from hand to hand.

One evening, as Don and I rode the elevator heading to the southbound 8th Avenue subway, I handed him the $5 I had borrowed the night before. He grinned and said, in his Texas drawl, “I may not be free, but I am extremely reasonable.”

And the elevator full of stone-faced New Yorkers laughed aloud.

Though there was hardcore action, too, as I did raid a crack house in the Bronx with Curtis and a group of reporters from the Washington Times. After scaling a ten-foot wall and entering thru the back door, Curtis threw me a pillow and instructed me to wrap it around my right arm. “For the pitbull!” he yelled.

It was Joe Allen who invited us to Restaurant Row and housed us in an abandoned restaurant he owned next door – Broadway Pasta, now a swanky restaurant called Brazil Brazil. For every four-hour patrol of the street and neighboring parks, we were rewarded with a family meal from one of ten restaurants on the Row. I have been in every one of those kitchens.

If the meal was fish, Joe Allen would personally deliver a burger to me, as I am allergic to seafood. That’s the kind of guy he is! In those days he wore golf shirts and always appeared tan, like he just returned from Florida, or Palm Springs. He had a famous girlfriend, too -- Chita Rivera. Chita would call out to the patrol from across the street and yell, “Hola, Fellas!” One time she hiked up her skirt outside the restaurant and danced a minute or two of Jerome Robbins’ choreography from “West Side Story.” I used to think she was mocking us, but I now suspect she was merely reliving her life with a different gang from the West Side. Another story.

There's little need for Angels in post-Guiliani New York. Joe Allen now has restaurants all over the world. Lisa and Curtis are radio personalities. Chita Rivera went on to win yet another Tony Award. And me, well, sometimes I awake from a bad dream in the dark hours of the morning wrapping a pillow around my arm; but then, more often than not I'm sweetly comforted by the haunting echoes of a woman singing -- “I like to live in America!”

John Quilty is a writer who lives in New York City.

At first I planned for a Netbook to do my writing on the go. Keyboard, long battery life and reasonable price were the enticing factors. I checked out a Netbook on display inside the Staples store on 6th Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan. It radiated heat like the Arizona desert on a summer day, while a nearby HP Touch Pad, an iPad-like tablet, felt only slightly warmer than room temperature. The price tag for the TouchPad screamed from the tag $99! But hastily handwritten text in small letters below whispered that it was sold out.

After Hewlett Packard announced the fire sale of discontinued Touch Pads at $99 apiece, the TouchPad rush commenced on the web and in store. My next stop was Office Depot down the block. “Do you sell tablets?” I asked two Office Depot employees,  tall, muscular men leisurely conversing in the empty store. Unsure whether I was inquiring about computers or medicine one of them said reluctantly - “Check downstairs” - a vague reply worthy of my vague question.

Instead I went to Best Buy located on 5th Avenue and 44th street. “If you want the $99 HP tablet, come tomorrow at 9AM”, the Best Buy employee assured me, “We will have 250 of them.”

9:30 AM the next morning, I was there, eager as a boy scout on a treasure hunt. The line spanned about 300 feet, from Best Buy’s front door to the corner of the block. Most people in the line looked young (below 40) and relaxed. They were peering into their smart phones and simultaneously talking to people next to them. It looked like a friendly meeting of like-minded people preferring for some reason to stand in a line instead of a circle. People here owned more than enough computer equipment. Some of them hoped to make a quick dollar but most, it seemed to me, came to buy something that was slated to become an instant antique.

Waiting in line I could not take my mind away from the diminishing supply of the Touch Pads. But soon the serenity of the crowd overtook me. I befriended a young man, a Help Desk team leader at the MBC who arrived here at 7:30AM. He was seventh in line when the store opened. He got his first TouchPad and now was back in the line hoping for one more catch.

Tourists glanced at us and some stopped to inquire what was happening. A tourist with an Israeli accent would not believe that anything with the plug would sell for less than 100 dollars. “99 dollars, 99 dollars” he repeated in disbelieve. “Join us friend, Empire State Building will not run away”, I felt like saying to him.

My biggest surprise was how efficiently the Best Buy people were managing the line. Patrons could get into the store without waiting but the only way to the coveted TouchPads was through our line. The Best Buy man at the door let people from the waiting line inside the store in groups of five. “Go to the man in the yellow shirt “he guided aspiring TouchPad owners in the commanding voice, “don’t deviate”.

Someone tried offering a bribe for the TouchPad to a Best Buy employee who flatly declined. Another employee stopped a teenager who tried to cut into my group of five. The group-of-five idea was a stroke of  Best Buy genius. You may swallow an offence if someone cuts in line in front of you when you're alone, but the party of five together as a group will not tolerate a 6th intruder.

I ended up spending over $200. I bought more memory (you always end up spending more on memory), a wireless keyboard and the docking station for the Touchpad. Still it was a good deal considering it costs HP more than $300 to make one.

At work colleagues looked at my TouchPad with envy and they tried ordering from different websites. They are still waiting for vendors’ assurances that their product is not sold out.

This is the 21st century, but at times there is no alternative to good old legwork.

Stas Holodnak originally from Ukraine now lives and writes in Bay ridge, Brooklyn. Links to his stories can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/stasholodnaklinks/.

A year later while browsing a thrift store on the Lower East Side, my friend spotted a Dior handbag that looked like her grandmother’s. When she opened it, she found a napkin inside with a message written on it in her grandmother’s handwriting! The message on the napkin read: “Help me! Please get me out of here!” My friend left the handbag in the thrift store. She wanted no bad memories.

Just today while walking down 57th Street with my friend, we were overwhelmed by a giant Dior handbag – the world’s largest handbag – outside a boutique near Madison Avenue. The enormous two-story handbag is an exact replica of the one the old lady used to carry. The one she always lost. The one that mysteriously ended up in a thrift shop. The one that became so large no one could ever lose it again.

John Quilty is a writer who lives in New York City.

While the maitre d’ was escorting us to our table, Barbara gave my arm an annoying pinch while gasping wide-eyed that Jolie Gabor, mother to Magda, the infamous Zsa Zsa, and Eva was sitting at a table in the center. I had noticed the large jovial group and some of the women bejeweled.

 During the course of our dinner, Barbara began to complain how it was like pulling teeth to get any one of her males to volunteer to help wallpaper her kitchen. I think I saw tears well up in her mink-lashed cocker spaniel eyes when she switched her tone from being pissed off to heartbreakingly lonely. The topic of women’s lib and its pros and cons arose and suddenly, perhaps under the influence of her third glass of white wine, Amy, who believed and rightfully so that we were still too young to concern ourselves with men or kitchens, began to ululate like Tarzan.

I noticed a man seated across the room at the Jolie Gabor table cock an ear. Then without the slightest hesitation, he got up to make his way over to us.

“It’s Tarzan!”Amy shrieked.

It was Tarzan. But in my eyes he was Johnny Weissmuller, five time Olympic gold medalist swimmer and one time bronze.

“That’s not the way to do it,” he said annoyed, all 6 ft. 3 of him.

A waiter appeared like a miracle from out of nowhere to swiftly and graciously slide a chair under Mr. Weissmuller’s rear, I think preventing him from putting it into reverse and careening through the swinging kitchen door.

He was still handsome decked out in his well-tailored tuxedo. The cuffs of his starched white ruffled shirt revealed embroidered initials that repeated themselves as ornate gold and diamond links, and around his neck hung his medals.

The others sort of sat there with ridiculous grins on their faces but I, a swimmer for all my life, looked upon him in awe.

“I’m a swimmer,” I said, rather like an idiot.

After a few minutes of cordial chat, this absolute sweetheart of a man rose from our table, almost taking all of it with him. Later I read somewhere that he'd recently had hip surgery and a broken leg.

Denise Falcone is a writer who lives in New York City. Her New York stories have appeared in J Journal, Antique Children, Kerouac's Dog, and others.

“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 

“Police cruisers,” I say, taking in the block. “A whole shit load.”

We’ve been tracking each other since Penn Station, this voice and I, for precautionary reasons I’m told, and this is where it ends: Thin Blue Lines everywhere.

Now this voice is raspy and a little but harsh. I swear, sometimes it’s as though I’m speaking directly to danger, which is partly why I’ve called. I can hear giggles on her end of the line, my guide telling me not to worry. “Just the local precinct, Boo, some of our best customers. Now jus’ turn the corner an’ we’re two doors down. Press the butt’n when you get here. I’ll buzz you in.”

As I follow her instructions down to the very last splotch of gum on the sidewalk, I can’t help agonizing over being so predictable with my brothel selection. I could have been spanked up in Harlem. I could have been nailed to a cross in Chelsea. Decadent, depraved, and hopeless is what I was hoping for.

Instead, I went with CLEAN, SAFE, DISCREET. DELICIOUS PENTHOUSE PETS WITH WINDOW VIEW OF THE SKATING RINK. Yet once inside it’s apparent that other than fully functioning female parts (of which I’m still not completely certain) these women do not resemble Penthouse Pets in any figment of a troubled man’s imagination. And unless they plan on tossing my charred remains from the roof of this building, there’s not much chance of getting that view of the skating rink either.

It’s a dark, two bedroom apartment. I start getting that pins and needles feeling right away, still young enough to believe in secret identities, the super-hero-in-training that inhabits male souls. The old Spidey senses start to tingle. I’m reaching for utility belts that aren’t there and peering around corners for traces of Kryptonite. I’m scared, not horny, and I’ll need every shred of make-believe I own to get me through this.

As far as I can tell there are two women here, the one who opens the door, allowing me to enter, and the one on the couch ignoring me. The one on the couch is white, clammy, and cadaverous. She’s obviously been chain smoking for awhile and is grinding out another butt into an overflowing tray atop a glass coffee table. She’s wearing a sweat-suit as gray as her flesh and has long, dishwater blond hair streaming down her shoulders. I’m assuming she’s off duty. I’m praying to Baby Jesus, as well as Allah that she’s off duty. She leans forward to light up again and I quickly look away.

The woman who opened the door is on my right, hand still poised on the knob. She sounds like the woman who guided me in, but any witty repartee we shared earlier has vanished. It’s obvious we’ve never spoken before in our lives. In heels she’s around my height, just under six feet, and the red dress she’s wearing does absolutely nothing for her, hugging her small breasts to her chest then down to a pear shaped bottom. With the television light twitching off her face, it’s tough to say whether she’s black, white, or Latina.

My first baby steps forward and the hardwood floors begin to creak. She gestures to the unfortunate smoke cloud across the room, tells me to have a seat, get comfortable, this may take awhile. I’d like to know how far along we are in the process, as though the sounds of company policy and operating procedures might lend some sense to this. I’d like a comforting woman’s voice to explain things.

“So- how much do I get,” I blurt. “And what’s it gonna cost?”

My voice sounds nervous and shaky, very unsuper-hero-like. It’s obvious I’ve broken some kind of code by speaking out of turn. Red Dress scans me quickly then glances over a shoulder in the direction of what I imagine used to be a kitchen. It’s a large, separate cubicle with small openings cut into the walls like a machine-gun nest. I can tell by the way she keeps looking back that she’s waiting for instructions, as if the holes might suddenly start to speak. There’s someone back there, behind that wall, standing in the dark.

She’s got herself an ace.

It’s good to have an ace.

“You get our company, of course, baybee,” she eventually says, shutting the door hard, bolting it shut behind me. “Now, please, go and have a seat.”

The woman on the couch is watching porn, the post-millennium kind, everyone tan, everyone fit enough to be the trainer at the local gym. That incredibly lucky pizza boy of the Seventies has vanished. Now the cameraman’s in on it. We see what he sees, travel with him on his adventures. It’s also cable porn so nothing too graphic is visible. The camera shows heads bobbing into unseen genitals and intercourse is really just an awkward way of pushing someone across a bed. Normally, I view porn in ten to twelve minute intervals. The prospect of sitting fully clothed, watching this stuff as though it were a real film with characters to root for and a plot to unravel, is mind numbing. So after ten minutes of silence I’m convinced the woman on the other end of the couch is made of straw, a smoking head propped atop a sweat-suit stuffed with hay, like that thing the neighbors drag out every year at Halloween.

She must see me eyeing the remote, but never says a word. I look down again, back to her, lift my eyebrows, comment on the porn, “Hey, she’s pretty,” then end up peering down at the coffee table to stare at the glass. At some point she must have raised her cigarette for a good toke because there are streams of smoke disbanding into the projecting light of the TV, but I never actually see her do it.

There’s some muffled conversation coming from the other end of the apartment. I strain to hear, listening for key words like, “stab, kill, toss body in weeds off The Belt,” but come away with nothing. Rising from the couch, I contemplate some dingy curtains hanging from the ceiling behind the TV. I want to make sure there’s an actual window back there in case I have to jump and not some brick wall with Rod Serling waiting for his cue.

I tug on a stream of it. It’s softer than I thought, but dusty and reeking of smoke. There are two small burn marks at its center, staring back at me like ghost’s eyes.

“Would you leave that alone, please, and come sit down?”

Who said that? I reel around, peeking over a shoulder, then recheck the curtains to see if Serling wants a piece of me. It must I’ve been her, but she never flinches, and her face shows no indication of having just spoken.

I head back to the couch smiling. “Hey, pretty neat the way you throw your voice like that.” I grab the remote then sit back down. “Hope you don’t mind, but I’m changing the fucking channel. Bravo!’s running Actor’s Studio repeats all week long and Gwyneth’s up next. You’re gonna love this. Trust me.

Plumes of smoke fan across the table as I find my program then gesture at the tube. “Hey, look at Gwyn. Ain’t she pretty? Our generation’s Grace Kelly if she wanted it. Good head on her shoulders, too. Just like you.”

More smoke.

I settle into the couch, watch the end of the interview. Guy with the beard and blue cards wants to know what Gwyneth’s favorite curse word is.

Balls.

Her favorite curse word is “Balls.”

Red Dress clip clops down the hall on stiff heels, her thighs swishing together like helicopter blades. “Sir,” she says, “we’re ready for you now.”

My head jerks at the sound of her. I’d actually forgotten why I’d come. I place the remote back on the table, thinking, Balls, balls, balls... I spring from the couch, bending forward at the waist. The woman looks right through me, smoke pouring from her mouth and nostrils.

“So..," I begin, “thank you for frightening the shit outta me, but other horrors await down that hall.”

She slowly leans forward then does something remarkable. She tells me to go fuck myself, right hand feeding her mouth the cigarette as she speaks. There’s some semblance of a grin on her squiggly lips as she does this, face all done up with TV light like some low budget Jolly Roger.

“Sir!” Red Dress booms, tearing me from the burning side-show before me. “Must everything be said to you twice?”

We start across the room. The volume on the tube cranks up instantly, Gwyneth’s sweet nasal rasp giving way to robotic porn once more. I’m led into a room at the back of the hall, but it’s really just another holding cell. Its interior is sparse and dim. A reddish tint illuminates from a lamp with no shade, giving my skin a bloody shine when I pass a hand over it. There’s a window opposite the door covered with the same hard plastic on a shower stall, making the city outside all blurry and mottled with light.

The bed is empty and sagging, but covered with clean blue sheets. The thought of them touching my skin makes me itch. Minutes go by and I’m wondering what the holdup could be. This can’t be good for either of us. Red Dress looks surprised to see me when I peek out the door, but with her eyebrows shaved then tattooed back into place like a pair of bat’s wings, I really have no indication how she feels.

I could present her with a beautiful array of diamonds. That’s the look I’d get.

I could flash her at church. Same look.

I could be this incredible pain in the ass causing trouble in a whorehouse and never really know the consequences until it’s too late.

“Sir, if you can’t wait patiently, and if I have to speak to you again...” She never finishes her sentence, just points me down the hall and sends me to my room.

I turn away, head bowed, dejected. I’ve made my whore angry and the room’s funky lighting is starting to give me a headache. I’m back at the window, staring into the shower stall, silently cursing the magazine that gave this place a four and a half pecker rating. No chance of me ever getting naked here nor will one of my shiny credit cards be leaving my wallet this evening. My clothes are already starting to thank me, nestling against my skin the way a house settles into its foundation. I better explain the bad news.

“What the fuck? Didn’t I say..? Look, you brain damaged or somethin’?”

“I’m sorry, miss. I’m not feeling very wanted around here so I guess, I guess we won’t be having sex tonight.”

“What?”

“Uh, what I’m trying to say is, I’m sure you have a lovely vagina. I just won’t be paying you to stick my penis into it.”

I start down the hall, passing a small bathroom on the right. I’m angling for the exit when Red Dress steps in my way, flexing her legs in this dangerous, Tina Turner Rollin’ Down the River sort of way. It seems like she’s about to leap forward, checking me into a wall. I brace for impact.

“Look, Boo,” she says, gently cupping a hand to my right shoulder. “We jus’ bein’ cautious, is all.” She’s patting my sleeve, guiding me back down the hall. She smells clean, but smoky. I think she may be wearing a wig, but only glance it at once, resting stiff and shoe polish perfect atop her head. She tells me these are just precautions, that since I’m new and don’t particularly fit any one category, I should view these hesitations as a compliment considering what usually slinks through that door.

We just takin’ it slow, Boo,” she assures me, tickling the nape of my neck with long, curlicue fingernails. I like it when she calls me Boo, as if I’m some kind of ghost who could vanish whenever he felt like it. I start thinking, yeah, maybe... Maybe I could stick around a while. “Beatriz,” this loud, gurgling voice suddenly rattles from behind a wall. “Don’ baby ‘em! Let the nigga go if he wan’ go.”

It’s a deep voice, one that could use a good throat clearing. I picture its vocal cords layered in flesh, packed with cords of muscle, a voice that might play outside linebacker for the Jets, a voice that could do some harm.

“Who was that?”

“Cy.”

“Who is Cy?”

“Cy is I, muthafucka, and you gettin’ close. You gettin’ real close.”

Why did he have to say it like that?

Pride. If it’s not lust then pride or some other deadly sin just waiting around the corner, a pleasure, really, this masculine energy, always having to make no one steals it and leaves you with nothing.

“Close?” I’m saying, mocking Cy outside his cell. “Close to what... Muthafucka?”

‘Muthafuckas’ start ricocheting off the walls, his, mine, hers, but the Jolly Roger in the other room is pretty much still quiet. I slap Beatriz’ hand off me, accidentally knocking her into the open bathroom.

“Close?” I keep shouting, searching for an angle. “Close to the trigger of this Glock? Is that how close I am, Cy?” I start flapping down the hall like there’s something inside my coat.

Beatriz recovers quickly, the great ones always do. She kicks off her pumps, throwing each one at my face. She’s headed my way and crouching down low for leverage. She won’t be calling me Boo anymore either. “Oh no you di’ent,” she says, “No you just did not!”

Her momentum sends us crashing into the wall next to the exit. She’s clawing my face with those corn chip fingernails of hers, letting loose a stream of curses normally reserved for comic book strips- exclamation points, dollar signs, and asterisks. Her free hand starts searching my waist, patting me down, feeling me up. “Cy!” she screams at the kitchen wall. “Dis bitch ain’t got no gun! Cyrus, get da fuck out here!”

I’d really prefer not to meet Cyrus, and I tell him so. Beatriz is currently riding my back, forearms locked around my throat, so my words come out sort of hoarse and raspy.

“No, ah, Cy, really. You don’ need to come out here. I was just on my way out. I swear.”

I’m determined not to go down, reeling back and forth while Beatriz digs her feet into my haunches.

“The door, Cyyyyyy,” I slur, “All I want is the door.” I can feel the veins in my neck start to bulge, the blood racing to my temples. Taking two steps forward then a hard one back, I slam Beatriz against the bolted doorway. The air rushes out of her and I’m hoping the fight has left with it. She sort of clings to me like a bear skin rug after this. I flip her off, her mean little body skidding down the hall.

I’m collapsed at the waist and gasping. Beatriz is actually threatening to get up, but I jerk forward, like maybe I’ll plant a boot in an eyebrow if she does. She stays put, but a long scraping noise can be heard inside the kitchen area, the sound of something heavy shifting in its seat.

“Son, I come out there, you don’t see the light a day,” Cyrus tells me, relaxed, the height of restraint. An eerie second passes where I consider his words, him callin’ me son, and the importance of the light of day.

So I’m standing here, sweating and bleeding in one of Manhattan’s finest whore houses, when it hits me how wonderful it might be to one day hear a tiny voice say something like, “Granpappy, tell us the one about the whore with the crazy eyebrows, pleeeaaase!”

Okay. The light of day. Why not?

I tell Cyrus that I understand exactly what he means. “Please, sir, really, all I’m looking to do is leave.” I’m waving to the blank wall as if he was standing right in front of it. “No hard feelings ‘bout all those ‘motherfuckers’ and everything...”

Cyrus starts to chuckle, a cross between an asthmatic’s wheeze and a ghoulish howl. He tells me how lucky I am that he’s in a good mood tonight, then says, “Boy, you so crazy, you make crazy crazy...” He laughs some more then thankfully gets bored with the whole mess.

“Beatriz... Show dis man the door.”

“Yeah, Beatriz,” I whisper once she’s up and fumbling with the lock. “Show this man the muthafuckin’ door.” Beatriz promises to cut me to ribbons should we ever meet again then swings the door wide open. I can almost see the stairs from where I’m standing. I slip past her, stopping abruptly at the threshold to say my goodbye:

“Hey, change that fucking channel back to Bravo!”

No answer, nothing, until one bony digit rises up over the precipice of the couch like a last fuck you from the grave. It hovers for a second, glowing in the unnatural TV light, then slowly sinks back into the couch. Beatriz, of course, looks completely astonished. We both watch in stunned silence then regard each other with contempt. The door slams shut just shy of my nose. I can hear ol’ Bea fumbling with the locks once again, muttering something about somebody being a total fucking asshole.

My first steps for the stairs, the street, the rest of my life, this painful stitch surfacing below the ribs. I check my face for scratches, fingers tapping out some Morse code gibberish on a cheek. All things considered, I think it went pretty well back there.

I limp through Penn Station, ice cream cone in one hand, slice of pizza in the other, clots of dried blood dotting my neck. I stare up at the board and wait for my gate with the rest of demented Long Island. This homeless guy near me is rousted from sleep by a cop. He’s barefoot and bleary eyed, tendrils of hair sweeping his face when he looks up. The cop behind him is just a slouch shouldered entity performing a task. I hand the guy my pizza when he stands because all I really want is the ice cream. He takes it in stride, as if we’d planned it, like it was my job to feed him and he was going to pass the crust to someone else. I can feel him eying my fucked up appearance as he moves past. He takes a few more steps then stops. “Young man,” he says, “I’ve seen you before and often wondered what happens when you come to my city..?”

He turns toward the escalator on flat feet, folding the slice up to his face, and then disappears around a corner. I chomp into my cone, cream dribbling down my chin. The sugar does its thing, revving me back up, settling me down. My number comes up on the board. I shamble to the gate, dissolving down the steps like the ice cream in my throat.

JB McGeever’s stories have appeared in Hampton Shorts, $pread Magazine, and the Southampton Review, with nonfiction in The New York Times, Newsday, The Long Island Press, City Limits Weekly, and Family Circle.
 

Joey Arias was the store manager in the summer of 1977 and the part-time singer featured a gold lame Elvis suit in the front window. I wanted it bad. The price was $300. Almost a week’s wages at Hurrah where I worked as a doorman. I tried to bargain him down by offering him free entrance to club.

“I already get in for free.” Joey was persona gratis everywhere.

“What about 20% off the suit?” That price was still beyond my finances.

“No way.” Joey walked off to get an expresso and I went over to talk with Matt, the dweebish store manager. He said he might lower the price if I went into the backroom with him.

“No, but thanks anyway.” I was no hustler on the corner of 53rd and 3rd. I had a girlfriend. I was straight, although 50% of the men on the night scene were playing for the other team. My friends at Serendipity 3 and seemingly many of the punks at CBGBs. Most of them considered themselves straight as long as they got paid for it. 15 tricks and the suit was mine. I had my dignity and resigned myself to torn jeans and a black t-shirt. As a punk I got in everywhere too.

July was hot that summer. Lightning rocked the skies without rain. On the 13th I was finishing an acting class at Hunter. I was seeing an actress in the troupe. Carla and I were practicing a scene from STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. I was playing Mitch. Her estranged husband was in the role on Stanley. The coach thought the inner tensions strengthened our personae, but before the three of us could move onto the next scene, the lights went out.

All over New York.

It was a blackout.

Escaping the darkened building took the better part of a half-hour. The chaos of Lexington Avenue revealed the extent of the outage. Cars were stalled at the traffic lights. Several people were directing traffic. I asked Carla, “You want to come home with me?”

“No.” She wasn’t walking to Park Slope and looked over to her estranged husband. He was handsome and his family owned a meat-packing company in the Midwest. They linked arms and strolled into Central Park. He had a penthouse on West End Avenue. She had told me about the view from the terrace many times.

I headed over to Serendipity 3. My friends were upstairs at their apartment. They had run out of ice for their vodka tonics.

“There’s no ice anywhere.” Tim complained bitterly with a southern accent. He had studied ballet In North Carolina. His good friend Andy was in the ballet corps. He was already drunk.

“I want ice.”

“Maybe the Plaza has some.” I suggested since the hotel was the epitome of elegance. It had to have an emergency generator. Ice was less than five blocks away.

“Let’s go.” Andy and I hurried through the streets. People were talking about looting going on in Harlem.
They looked to the north. A radio said Flatbush was under siege. There were no police in sight. City dwellers were marching home. Some said they had been in the subway for hours. The usual light canyon of Park Avenue was without illumination. Andy pointed to the sky.

“I can see stars.”

“Orion.”

“Also the Big Dipper and the Bear.” He drew Ursa Major in the night. I saw it as a hog. We turned the corner at 59th and 5th. I stopped in shock. The Plaza was pitch-black. We were back in the Stone Age. Ice only came in season. For some reason this new truth angered me and I said to Andy, “Let’s go to Fiorucci.”

“They won’t have ice.”

“No, but they do have a gold Elvis suit.”

“No one will be working there now.” It was past 11.

“Exactly.” I picked up a cinder block from a work site. “I’m shopping the old-fashioned way.”

“That’s looting.” Andy was wild, but never violent.

“Just like the Huns.” I had Pictish blood in me. We were an old tribe before the 10th Commandments were etched in stone by a bearded god. I strode up to Fiorucci. The gold lame suit shone even in the black of anarchy. 54 was at my fingertips. I wouldn’t be Mitch in the next acting class. I’d be a star.

“Stand back.” I warned Andy and then heaved the cinder block at the window. The missile struck the plate glass and bounced right back, narrowly missing my skull. Several guards pointed at me. I hadn’t seen them in the murk. They chased us to the Subway Inn and we lost them in the crowd in the dubious establishment. When we arrived back at the apartment above Serendipity 3 the boys were entertained by my attempt at communal confiscation.

“I didn’t get anything.”

“But you tried and that’s the key to triumph. The first syllable.” Tim was proud of his knowledge of Salada Tea sentiment and I guess I was proud to be an outlaw, although the next day when I tried to go to Fiorucci, Joey Arias ordered the security to refuse me entry into the store.

“We don’t accept thieves as customers.” The boys above Serendipity 3 had snitched out my
failed trashing of Fioruuci’s window

“At these prices I don’t know who’s the real thief.” It was the best riposte I could come up with, hung-over.

Fiorucci closed several years later. I bought the dusty Elvis suit through Matt. It was two size too small. My girlfriend at the time was a tall model from Baltimore. She loved it. It got her into everywhere. I was not so lucky. I only went places where I knew the door. That was everywhere too, but I really wished I could have been wearing the Elvis suit.

Some things just aren’t meant to be.

Especially Elvis Suits for men who are not Elvis.

Peter Nolan Smith left New England in 1976 for the East Village. The nightlife became his vehicle for traveling the world; Paris, Hamburg, Nice, and London. His career ended at the Milk Bar in Beverly Hills in 1995 and he split the following years working as a diamantaire in Manhattan's Diamond District and traveling through the Orient. Most of his 21st Century has been spent in Thailand, although economics forced his return to 47th Street in 2008. Peter NolanSmith currently lives in Brooklyn and Sriracha, Thailand. He is the editor and writer of www.mangozeen.com and has recently been named writer-in-residence at a foreign embassy in Mittel Europe.
 

While light races above you, movement down below is next to impossible. I generally tend to avoid Times Square because once you enter this blinding abyss your chances of escape are encumbered by slow-moving tourists who have lost all inertia. Despite the mercurial light show above, traffic oozes like reluctant sludge.

The best way through Times Square is on a pedicab, best described as a bicycle rickshaw. I had befriended some of the Pedicabbers thinking I was going to write an article about them, posing them as part of the Green Movement. I had met one named Milosh while in Columbus Circle. Milosh was from Bosnia and he and his family were refugees during the war.

Milosh took me to meet the other pedicabbers who were hanging out near Bathesda Fountain in Central Park. They looked at him incredulously for having brought a stranger into their midst. Milosh explained that I wanted to write an article about pedicabbers. This did not make me any less strange, but they trusted me after I smoked a spliff with them. I found out that most of them were students from Eastern Europe and Turkey.

Though technically you need a license to operate a pedicab, most of the pedicabbers didn't have one because all that really mattered was that they had the $200 needed to rent a pedicab each week. They charged around $70 for a tour of Central Park, and provided taxi services to theater goers near Times Square. One Russian I met made a thousand dollars a week. They were their own bosses. They worked when they wanted, picked up who they wanted, and obeyed traffic laws only if they wanted. They are the accented cowboys of midtown.

Since that first meeting, whenever I went by Columbus Circle I would encounter the pedicabbers. Eventually they met my friends. One of my friends even started dating a pedicabber. The article never got written as I started feeling less like a journalist and more like a pedicabber groupie, which is probably one of the most random things anyone can be.

One night Milosh decided to take me and my friend Liz on a ride through Times Square. Compared to their four wheel counterparts, being on a pedicab makes you feel like you're on the Millenium Falcon. Milosh weaved through traffic as if he were dodging asteroids. No longer part of the sludge, we were as mercurial as the lights flashing above us. Liz and I were somewhat at our wit's end, as an encounter with any fast moving vehicular asteroid would have demolished the rickity pedicab and us. Milosh made certain that our jaunt was as harrowing as possible, narrowly missing the side-view mirrors of cars and squeezing past halal stands and yellow cabs.

Eventually we had to park the pedicab for the night. Milosh usually parked his in the stables where they kept the horses that pulled the carriages in Central Park. The stables were closer to the river, and Milosh decided to park in a garage that was a couple blocks away from Times Square.

He pedaled the cab past the entrance while Liz and I were still in it. There were two attendants. One, a large Puerto Rican man, leaned his weight on a booth as he eyed us warily. “Park it here, up front,” He commanded to Milosh. Milosh refused, explaining that he always parked at the lowest level and proceeded onward.

“I said you cannot park there!” The vigilante persisted, but Milosh was not about to make this man's life easy by complying.

“I alvays park at bottom! I don't know vat the deal is. Every time I park in front my pedicab get a scratch.”

“Um maybe you should just park at the entrance,” Liz and I said, but Milosh ignored us too.

“I keep telling you, you cannot park down there! Park here!”

“No!” Cried Milosh to the man.

Then he turned to us and said, “There's something I vant to show you!” And we lurched onward into the depths of the garage. The attendant's protests were muffled by our indifference, but I couldn't help noticing that he he had started chasing after the pedicab.

“Milosh, are we going to get into trouble?” I asked, looking at the pursuant behind us.

“No, its okay.” And I noticed the man had stopped running and was heading back to his booth. Case closed.

“Okay, now dis is vat I vant to show you.” As we descended on the ramp into the bowels of the garage, the pedicab gathered speed and we started spiraling as gravity took us downward like a corkscrew. Milosh pedaled faster and with each level we descended we made a jolting turn, which got more acute the farther down we went. We were caught in a concrete tornado as we zoomed past parked cars. Liz and I raised our arms as if we were on the Cyclone. We finally came to a halt and Milosh locked the pedicab. “It's like roller coaster! Cool, no?”

It was a clever shenanigan indeed, but the glee wore off as we got out of the pedicab. How were we going to get out of the garage without encountering the attendant? Milosh pointed to a door and explained that there were stairs that led outside. I went up the stairs thinking how lucky we were to thwart the fat man. I felt a little sorry for him. There were three of us, and a pedicab. And now we even had this secret exit. All he had was himself and his barrel gut.

We had gone up a couple flights of stairs, skipping two steps at a time with cruel glee, when a loud metal crash announced that the door had been violently flung open. I was wondering what sketchy personality other than ourselves might need to be taking these stairs. Then I heard the loud stomping and heaving breathing of someone who was carrying a lot of weight really fast, and understood that we had underestimated the fat man.

“STOOOOOP!” Thundered the attendant. What was he, some kind of tell tale heart that was going to follow us around for a simple parking misdemeanor? Liz, Milosh and I looked at each other. The exclamation points in our eyes read HOLY SHIT. The ensuing dialogue sounded like a scene from a World War II flick.

“You guys go ahead!” Cried Milosh.

“What are you going to do?”

“Just go on without me!”

“But...”

“JUST GO!”

“We can't leave you!”

It was true, we could not leave Milosh there. Liz and I do socially sanctioned forms of running all the time. Playing soccer. Jogging through Central Park. There was no doubt in my mind that we could outrun the guy. But Milosh was a little soft around the edges and chain smoked like the proper Eastern European he was. The asphalt was a great equalizer, and without the pedicab he was a slow creature. Leaving him to fend for himself would have been like leaving an earthworm on the intersection of Broadway and 42nd.

Our indecision helped the guard close the gap between us. And we saw that we weren't just being chased by an angry fat man, but an angry fat man wielding a metal golf club. We all gasped in unison, trying to look at each other and the golf club at the same time. Milosh protectively placed himself in front of us, God bless him. It was too late for us to make a run for it and there was not enough room in the stairwell for us to disperse. The man had the golf club poised over his head like a baseball bat. By the desperate look in his eyes and the quiver in his belly it was clear he had been flirting with the precipice of insanity for a while. Maybe he had problems at home, or working under the constant glare of fluorescent lights with only a panorama of cement garage walls was affecting his psyche. This unfortunate encounter and usurpation of his authority might be all he needed to take the plunge. Any wrong word or movement might push him off the edge and someone's head would be a pinata.

We all wondered who would speak first and what the hell they would say. In the liminal moment between an inhale and an exhale, I allowed myself to stare off into space, to see if my life would flash before my eyes. It didn't. I took this as a sign that everything was going to be fine.

Then Milosh spoke, waving his arms delicately in front of the guard as if the man were merely a smudge he was trying to wipe off a wine glass. “It's okay, everything's okay. We didn't mean....”

“OUT! COME DOWN! COME WITH ME!” The man bellowed. Could he really believe that he was waving a metal golf club at three unarmed twenty-somethings? I didn't think he actually wanted to hit us, and his eyes were darting around frantically as if looking for a reason not to.

“We'll come,” I said “But first you lower your golf club.”

He did, and we went down the stairs with him leading the way and flinging open the door. The man continued his rant. “I TOLD YOU! DO NOT PARK HERE! YOU NOT SUPPOSED TO PARK DOWN HERE!”

But we became emboldened as we left the claustrophobia of the stairwell behind us. Space offered protection from any potential bludgeoning. “Look sir, maybe you can get away with this in Puerto Rico, but not here,” said Liz.

“BUT I CANNOT LET ANYONE PARK HERE!”

At that point in my life I still hadn't learned that you can't really diffuse an irate person by being irate yourself. So I yelled “YEAH, BUT I'M PRETTY SURE IT'S NOT IN YOUR JOB REQUIREMENTS TO CHASE PEOPLE WITH GOLF CLUBS! YOU COULD GET FIRED FOR THIS!”

Trying to do his part, Milosh had been babbling an apology, explaining that he only wanted to show us how fun it is to go down the ramp in a pedicab. Liz was the most rational. “Sir, we understand why you're upset but we didn't mean any harm. You don't want to be fired for something like this.” In the man's anger and our shock, the parked pedicab was ignored. We had walked right past it.

Eventually the man stopped talking and the golf club remained at ease by his side. It was useless anyway. The entrance to the garage, the booth and the other attendant were all in site. Freedom was literally a shining light at the end of huge tunnel as the glow of Times Square beckoned nearby. All the man could do was shake his head.

It had not been his day. The man's authority had been brazenly undermined, his impressive sprint down four levels of the garage was in vain, and now he was being told that he could be fired for protecting his turf. Even worse, the offending pedicab remained parked at the bottom of the garage. I didn't dwell on it for too long as we finally reached the gaping exit. As we emerged from the cave of doom with its wild, club bearing inhabitants we all breathed a sigh of relief. I made a mental note to add this incident to the list of things I will never tell my mother. Together we walked slowly, silently and gratefully towards the light of Times Square, wanting it to engulf us.

Robin Kilmer graduated from Bard College in 2007 and worked for three years at a public school in the Bronx. She hopes to one day successfully converge two diametrically opposing forces: writing and making a living. Until that day she is working as a nanny.