“What?” I squawked, genuinely surprised. It was the week of Thanksgiving. We were meant to be discussing favorite trimmings alongside the turkey, not armed robbery. “So you've lost everything. Keys, wallet, phone, etc?”

“No, he just took the phone. He said give me your phone or I'll shoot you.”

In his mind the story ended here, but for me it fell short of so much. “Tell me every detail. It’s the most exciting thing you've said in weeks!” Realizing my voyeuristic delight had unsubtly revealed itself, I added: “Exciting in a bad way, obviously.”

He obliged me. “I was listening to music. I opened my gate, went to the mailbox, heard it close again, looked up, the guy goes "give me your phone I'll shoot you." I said "pardon". I was stunned so he said it again. I'm like "fine" and took it out and he kind of ripped it from me. Then he was gone.”

I was amazed. I had never felt unsafe in his neighborhood or in its surrounding areas. He lives in Bed-Stuy. His nearest subway stop is Nostrand Avenue where the food choices are a fried chicken lover’s delight and the vibe is jostling and purposeful. There’s nothing particularly endearing about this strip of fried food joints, the Laundromat, the tired-looking liquor store and the stream of pedestrians and traffic, but I was fond of the streets further north where his apartment is snugly nestled. Stray in that direction and you’ll find the mood changes; it grows sedate, relaxed and more salubrious. The streets are broad and exquisitely sleepy. The neighborhood is gloriously settled and at ease with itself. Somehow it feels less gimmicky than Manhattan. Even the trees ooze age and wisdom. In the past I had wanted to perch on a step, sip my coffee and become a part of the scenery, although perhaps that wasn’t so wise hearing his story.

“I don't think he ran away fast,” my ex was saying.

“Thank god he didn’t want your wallet too,” I was trying to console him, but he was still stuck on pace.

“He must have walked fast.”

“Where’s the mailbox?” I was trying to picture the scene with limited success. I lived more centrally and I didn’t own two cats that liked to jump on people while they were sleeping, so we had almost always stayed at mine while we dated.

“Right in front of the apartment.”

“Did he walk up the steps?”

“No, it's before the steps.” He explained the set-up. “The landlord used to have a slot for everyone by the top of the steps, but now there are separate slots for all three of us at the bottom.”

“So did you have any mail?”

“No, if I hadn’t gone to the mailbox this wouldn’t have happened.” He paused for a moment before adding:
“You're the first person to ask me that question, it's a good one.”

“Well it adds a whole new layer of pathos to your story.”

It was too bleak a thought to linger over so we discussed whether he should move neighborhoods and if so, where? We drifted on to more random topics. We were flitting all over the place, discussing work, weather, whether it’s ever acceptable to wear socks during sex. And because he was no longer talking about it, not wanting to dwell on it, I was certain that he would move.
 

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

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

“Your name Reilly?”

“Yeah,” my father said.

“Richie’s waiting for you.”

“Where?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He’s Mohawk?” the cop asked.

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

“Where does he work?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first time I tired to pass as a senior I told the young man at Paragon Sporting Goods that I was 62. He asked me for ID. I said I didn’t have any on me. He asked me what year I was born. This is where my math skills messed me up. Even though I’d prepared for this question with a pen and paper before I’d gone to the store to try to save on my tennis permit by adding five years to my age, I gave him the wrong answer.

I said I was born in 1950. He punched a few keys on his computer and looked puzzled at the result. “It says you’re only 61,” he said.

I was sweating already because I’m out of practice lying to authorities. True, it wasn’t like lying to the IRS or unemployment, but still I was out of practice.

“Oh, so I’m too young? I asked him.

“Yeah,” he said.

My friend Trevor from the East River Park courts told me about the scam and said it was easy to pull off because you didn’t have to show any id. Plus the Paragon clerks who you have to fool didn’t care much one way or the other. The other thing that made it such an easy hustle, although I’d just blown it, was that for anyone in their teens or twenties, the difference in looks between anyone over 45 and a tennis player who has reached the magic age of 62 is indistinguishable.

I knew I’d never be as cool as my 57-year old English buddy, Trevor, from the courts under the Williamsburg Bridge. He is the charming scoundrel type of sometime painter, sometime photographer, sleazy in the best way, émigré artist type of New Yorker who’s scraped out a living in the city for the last few decades. He lived in the Chelsea Hotel, dated Madonna before her career got off the ground, and won a huge settlement from his landlord after not paying rent for years.

Now he works as a bartender at the hottest restaurant in the West Village, runs an antique lingerie web site and spends a few hours in the middle of most days at the East River Park tennis courts, or as he calls it, the East Village Country Club.

I think he is impressive in his way. And it is an approach that as we boomers get closer and closer, some of us are already there, to not having to scam for the geezer version of the city’s tennis license, that is disappearing. Trevor is a throwback to the Max’s Kansas City era and some of the more glamourous scenes from the city’s past. Plus he’s an expat who stayed, which to someone like me, who barely made it out of Jersey, also has a kind of allure

One of the things about aging is if you miss that chance to date Madonna in the 70's or to play in the NFL, Brett Favre aside, the opportunity, like all the years that add up to only having to pay $20 for your permit, is gone.

So while some of Trevor’s accomplishments are out of reach, no matter how much I might want to emulate his sleazy brand of cool, his reinvention of himself as a sophisticated, expat New Yorker, I thought, couldn’t I at least pull off his tennis permit ruse?

I did the math again. If I was going to be 62 in May 2011, I would have to be born in 1949.

This time at Paragon, there was a young woman running the permit desk. I said I wanted to buy a senior tennis permit. She asked me for ID. I said I didn’t have any on me. She asked me to spell out my name. She asked me when my birthday was. “November 2, 1949"

After some more clicks on her computer, she asked me to take three steps to the left and stand on the red line so she could take my picture for the permit.

A few days later I ran into Trevor at the courts. I showed him the plastic id-like card. It wasn’t as good as dating Madonna. It wasn’t as good as running an antique lingerie web site. But it was OK for me, a guy from Jersey who passed for 62 on only his second try.

Brent Shearer is the book critic for Long Island Tennis Magazine. He is the only reporter to have been kicked out of the 2008 U.S. Open.

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.

I was soon to discover the Café Espresso was not in business to attract customers. It was a strictly private gathering place, catering exclusively to a tightly knit circle of regulars; very much like the local Italian social clubs that dot the neighboring Mulberry and Prince Streets. The social clubs, however, are usually named after a saint, and a statue of that saint is featured prominently in the window of the club.

The Café Espresso did not feature anything prominently, except Nick and Carmine, who sat out front the Café, on straightback wooden chairs, every weekday from 11 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. Being the friendly type, I introduced myself to Nick and Carmine during my first week in the neighborhood. Nick, a shrunken specimen somewhere in his seventies sucked back a can of Budweiser while giving me the once over with his beady bloodshot eyes. His eyes darted out from behind oversized glasses that continually slid down his long, pointed nose. A few straw wisps of thin white hair hugged the lower lobe of his suntanned head, and though it was a mild autumn day, Nick was wearing a Herringbone overcoat.

While Nick spit and slurred his way through our introduction, Carmine, a younger, sleepy-eyed character, sat with his chair turned backward, in a kind of urban cowboy style, his large pulpy hands hanging casually over the back of the chair. A man of a few words, he favored the grunt and mumble style of communication, replying, “Uh-huh” to my greeting, while scouting out the local streetlife in a shiny brown silk suit, no tie. His white sportshirt was open at the neck, revealing a mass of salt and pepper chest hair in a tangle of gold chains. When I told Carmine that he reminded me of Henny
Youngman, only with more hair, he turned to me with the slow witted expression of a fighter that had taken too many punches to the head, scratched his chin, and returned his gaze to the street.

My daily encounters with Nick and Carmine developed into quite a chummy friendship. I had a lot of time on my hands while I was detoxing from drugs, so I often carried my wicker chair outside and sat in front of the café with the boys, shooting the shit and eyeballing the street, smoking ciggies and guzzling joe. Carmine really started to loosen up when he realized I was an expert in the area of early T.V. sitcom trivia. We’d try to stump each other with questions like, “Who played Lumpy Rutherford’s father on Leave it to Beaver?” or “Who was the actor Peter Graves brother, and what show does he star in?” Stuff like that. There was one subject I never discussed with the boys, and it was about what went on inside the Café Espresso when the regulars arrived.

Every afternoon at 4:30, a steady stream of big, black luxury cars came cruising down cobblestoned Mott Street and pulled up in front of the Café Espresso. Judging from the glimpses I got of these guys as they emerged from behind the tinted windows of the Lincolns and Caddys, they could have been straight out of mob central casting. These guys all wore shades, expensive slacks with jackets that often fit rather snugly around the waist, gobs of gold chains and bejewelled pinkie rings. The regulars hugged and kissed on the street before ducking inside the café. Not a soul ever reappeared outside the café until 7 p.m.

While the inside activity of the café remained a mystery, I did learn that the regulars favored Boar’s Head lunch meat. Carmine, who with Nick, always went inside the café when the regulars arrived, began to present me with the regular’s leftover salami, liverwurst and baloney. I usually picked up leftovers from the day before in front of the café around two in the afternoon, along with the current copy of the Daily News. Quite a nice little arrangement. But this one particular afternoon, I didn’t arrive at the café until 4:45, and by this time, everyone was inside the café. I didn’t think the boys would mind if I popped in to pick up my Boar’s Head and paper, so I opened the door to the Café Espresso. Upon opening the door, I was struck with a blast of activity so fierce, I can only compare it to the heavy trading on the stock market floor. The café was stocked with small
wooden tables, with four chairs to a table. There were one or two phones on every table, and every table was jammed with the regulars. They were talking on the phone, jotting down info, shouting, some laughter, the air thick with cigar and cigarette smoke, and more phones ringing. The moment they noticed a stranger in their midst, everything stopped. Complete silence.

The silence was broken by the sound of Carmine yelling at me, “What the hell you doing in here? Get the hell outta here! Don’t you ever come in here when that door is closed!” and he starts with the strong arm stuff, shoving me out the door. God! I couldn’t imagine what I’d done to warrant such an angry reaction, and tried explaining to Carmine as he turned to go back inside, “Hey Carmine, I was just….” But he didn’t listen, just slammed the door and went back inside.

I hot footed it back to my apartment and sat with the shades drawn, nervously wondering just exactly how much hot water I was in. The fact that I was in my first few weeks of detoxing didn’t help my mind set. “You’re dead meat,” I thought, “You’re never supposed to see anything or know anything about what goes on in this neighborhood..You fucked up but good this time…..” My only hope was that the goodwill that had grown between Nick, Carmine and myself would count for something, and maybe the worst that would happen is I’d have to start buying my own Boar’s Head and newspaper.

That night, as I tossed and turned on my captain’s bed, I recalled the words of my friend Dale, who had recently moved out of Little Italy. She said, “Whatever you see or hear down here, always pretend you didn’t see or hear anything.” When I decided to pretend like nothing had happened at the Café Espresso, I let out a huge yawn, and fell into a deep and restful sleep.

The following morning I awoke at ten, showered, dressed and hit the street. I ran into Nick and Carmine at Johnny’s Donut Shop on the corner of Mott and Prince. They were sitting at a table with Johnny’s Uncle Sonny, who I happened to also be friendly with. I took a deep breath, waved and said, “Good morning.” Surprisingly, they returned my greeting with big smiles and Carmine called me over and offered to buy me breakfast. I hesitated, still a bit shaken from the previous afternoon, but figured this was a peacemaking gesture, so I pulled up a chair.

The conversation centered around Johnny’s new cappucino/expresso machine and the upcoming, ten day San Genarro Feast. I mostly listened to the boys chat, while slowly eating my eggs over easy with jelly donut special. I was amazed at how well things were going! I was cool. I knew they knew I was cool. I didn’t feel cool. Matter of fact, I was scared shitless, but playing it cool was the name of the game.

When I finally excused myself, I thanked Carmine for the breakfast and said bye to the boys. As I pushed my chair back, Carmine got up with me. He pulled me aside and asked, “So, you stopping by for your stuff this afternoon?” “Sure Carmine, I replied, “why not?” Carmine patted me on the back, “That’s good.”

Phew. I did it. I passed the test. I’m not dead. And from that day to this, not a word was ever said about that fateful day I blew into the Café Espresso, stopping the regular’s business on a dime.

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.
 

I hate to drive, so I've never minded the subway. Usually I hold my book or magazine and pretend to read, but in reality I  just be staring into space. My mother, who is from Queens, would always admonish me, “Don’t look at people on the subway! No eye contact,” she always said was the rule.

When I was younger, and New York was new to me, I couldn’t understand how anyone could help herself. People are so interesting here! I would look at old people, young people, people wearing business suits, people carrying bags filled with bags. I'd wonder; how could I not stare?

It was a Thursday afternoon, around 1 P.M., when the man exposed himself to me on the subway platform.

The subway car was oddly empty that day. I was taking the R train from the East Village where I lived to midtown for an appointment at a law firm there. It was a peaceful commute, a non rush-hour ride. I could be assured of an empty seat where I could space out without guilt – pregnant women, elderly people, and the mildly disabled all cause me anxiety on a crowded train. I am always worried about taking someone's deserved seat or causing a person discomfort. When it's crowded, I keep my legs crossed tightly and hold my magazine close to my chest. But when the subway car is empty, it feels luxurious.

The R train was running smoothly and at each stop the doors opened and closed quickly because there were so few people on the platform. At the 34th street stop, normally a busy one, the subway doors opened and that’s when the man dropped his trousers.

I was sitting directly opposite the open door, like I was the sole audience member for some grotesque show. He was wearing a dirty t-shirt and khakis, which were around his knees, as he fondled his penis.

The subway seemed to pause then, waiting interminably in the station. He looked right at me, right into my eyes, and smiled, an awful grim smile. His flaccid penis flopped while he masturbated, and his face leered at me, smug in the knowledge that I was looking at him.

His hand worked a little harder, a little faster. I felt trapped, staring through a weird window into someone’s unpleasant inner life. His  penis continued to flop stubbornly. I had the urge to laugh. It wouldn’t rise to the occasion.

The man didn’t move toward me, but he didn’t back away from the edge of the platform. He was standing in the yellow area designated as a no-standing zone. I'm afraid of the edge of the platform myself and avoid it at all costs. Standing too close, the subway tracks feel as though they draw me in. I wondered, should I tell him to back away from the platform edge? ... Should I scream?

He still couldn’t get hard.

The doors mercifully closed, and the train pulled out the station. I hadn’t moved. I don’t even think I had blinked. When I got to my stop, I was having trouble not crying, but I didn’t know why I felt so awful.

“Nothing bad has happened to you,” I told myself sternly. “No one hurt you. No one touched you. It’s nothing, nothing. Just some flasher in the station.”

I could hear my mother telling me, “Keep your head down. Hold onto your purse.” She didn’t want me to be a target.

I could never keep my eyes off of the extraordinary. And now I could still see his eyes looking at me and knowing that I saw him.

Jessica Pishko is currently pursuing an MFA in fiction at Columbia University and received a JD from Harvard Law School. She used to work in a law firm and is now writing a novel about it. Her short fiction can be found on elimae and Anderbo.com.

"Shmuel was a great scholar," my mother always tells us. "My father had such hopes for him. He would have become a great rabbi if not for Hitler. I remember the look in my father's eyes when he told my mother how Shmuel had discussed a passage from the Talmud with the elders in the synagogue. "`Such wisdom,' my father said. `Such understanding.'" She shakes her head and tears fall helplessly onto her cheeks. "He died a few days after our parents were taken by typhus. When Shmuel was dying, my sisters and I wept. `Vainen nicht,' he said. `Yetst ich haben kein elteren; ich ken shtarben. Vainen nicht.” He was seventeen years old. He told us not to cry. He tried to comfort us by reminding us that he had no parents anymore; he could die without causing them pain. It was a small comfort. You are named for him, Sonyala. All of you are named for those who died in the Holocaust. You are all living monuments to what Hitler could not achieve.”

We are the ghosts of the Holocaust. We share the secret password to a world from which I cannot escape. Those of us who have been born with this exclusive membership recognize each other when we first meet. It might be a Yiddish word thrown into a conversation, or an eyebrow raised in response to a casual comment about "the Jews" or about "World War II." We are the children who were born old. Our Washington Heights neighborhood is thick with survivors. All of us know just how much to tell our parents and exactly what must be kept from them. The details that might worry them or bring them unnecessary pain are cloaked in half-truths. We protect them, hover around them when we sense danger and struggle to defend them from further heartache. After a time, we, the children, know we are really the parents, but we pretend it is not so. It would hurt them too much.

The Vietnam Conflict rages. We still do not call it a war although in early December of 1966 the United States bombs targets around Hanoi with such intensity that I can hear the wonder in the newscaster's report. As the year draws to a close, almost four thousand American troops are in South Vietnam. I attend protest rallies and wear a black armband to school to show my opposition to the conflict that is really a war. I march with others both like and unlike myself, shouting, "Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?" My throat is raw from screaming, but I am driven by the energy of the crowd and my own uncertain needs. Many cities throughout the world have organized demonstrations to criticize U.S. policy in Vietnam. The International Days of Protest have begun, and I am not like my passive ancestors, waiting for Got to intervene.

"Don't sign anything," my father says. "Keep your name off all documents."

"Why?" I say. I’m angry that he doesn’t understand my involvement. "Don't you care about all the innocent people being killed in Vietnam?"

"I care about you," he says. "I care about your mother and your brother. I have no part in Vietnam. I want you to be sensible, Sonyala. What you do now can affect the rest of your life."

"I hope so," I say.

The belt on my skirt is twisted in the back, and my father adjusts it. I can feel his strong hands pull a little tighter than necessary, but I do not move.

"Listen to me, Sonya," he says. "You don't know everything. You think you do, but you don't. The world is very unstable, and there is much evil. Don't be fooled by your cause or by the people you think you can trust. Trust no one but your family."

I want to tell him that he’s wrong. My cause will change the world. I will not be discouraged by his pessimistic views of the world. I can maneuver my own way. I can make a difference.

Every evening after dinner, I watch the news. The names of the American soldiers who have been killed that day or who are missing in action lazily roll across the television screen. My heart lurches with each unfamiliar name. I don’t know anyone who went to Vietnam. All the boys in our neighborhood go to college after high school. The college graduates become teachers or continue on in law or medical school, exempting them from military service. These neighborhood boys are untouched by Vietnam except to breathe a sigh of relief that their names will never be among the dead or missing in Southeast Asia.

"Is it a war yet?" my brother asks.

Jeffrey and I never really talk about Vietnam, or about anything else for that matter. I suspect that he barely knows I exist.

"Are you talking to me?" I say.

"Yes, Sonya," he says. "I'm talking to you."
He seems tired and distracted. I know he has been arguing with our parents again, and I am immediately sorry for him. Jeffrey wants to move to Israel. Our parents want him to stay in America. "Do you know how we suffered to bring you to this country?" my father shouts. Their bitter exchanges hang in the air.

"Are you all right?" I say.
He looks at me as if he is about to confide in me, but then seems to think better of it.

"Yeah," he says. "I'm fine."

I watch him walk away. It is a curious thing to love a stranger. I turn my attention back to the names of the other strangers who inhabit my world and try not to think about why I care so much about any of them.

"The line of German prisoners seemed endless," my father said. "Thousands and thousands of them were taken by the Russians. I watched as the gloating Russians herded the Germans. They were boys, all of them boys, Germans and Russians alike. I saw the frightened eyes of the German prisoners, but I wasn’t moved. They were strangers to me, and I felt nothing for their pain or their terror. It's an odd thing to feel nothing. It was my job to interrogate these German prisoners, especially those with a higher rank. They knew I was a Jew. That gave me some pleasure. But it's not the officers I remember. It's the boys. Those lines of frightened boys. I remember them, Sonya, and they are still strangers to me."

"Please come with us, Sonya," my mother says. "Rivka will be so glad to see you. Sam isn't well, you know. Give us one afternoon."

I am braiding my hair in one single plait, but strands keep escaping. Earrings dangle from my pierced earlobes. I can see my mother's refection in the mirror. She’s leaning against the door, watching me. There is always worry in her eyes, but today she looks particularly troubled.

"I have plans," I say.
Lately, I feel the need to be hard with her. I don’t want to see the people of my childhood. I am weary of their stories and the conspicuous blue numbers that identify my ancestry.

"Some other time," I say. My mother steps behind me and takes the brush from my hand.

"Do you remember when I used to make your ponytail in the morning?" she says. "You never once complained if it was too tight. Remember, Sonyala?"

I nod. I want her to leave me alone.

"I remember once I had to leave the house early," she says. "To pick up work from the factory, I think. I told your father to do your hair. `Not too tight,' I told him. But when I picked you up from school that day, it was still so tight that your eyes were slanted. Like this." She holds my hair and the brush in one hand, so she can pull up the skin around her eye with a forefinger. "Like the little China girl where I take your father's shirts." She laughs now and shakes her head. "Poor thing. I felt so sorry for you. Like a little China girl. And you never complained."

"Chinese," I say. "Like the little Chinese girl. Not `China girl,' Mom. Chinese."

"Excuse me," she says. "I wasn't born in this country, Miss America."

I’m enraged. I do not know why, but I’m so angry that I want to cry.

"I didn't complain," I say, "because I didn't know I was allowed to."

For a moment, we stare at each other in the mirror.
"And who should I complain to, Sonya?" she says. "Can you answer that question for me? Who should I complain to? Where is my mother?"

It is the litany of my childhood. "And who should I complain to, Sonya?" There is no answer for this question. I want to shout at her that it is not my fault she is motherless, but I cannot bring myself to say the words.

"Tell Rivka I'll be there on Sunday," I say.

She claps her hands together, delighted. Her previous words are already forgotten. Like a child, she is easily diverted by the promise of a modest pleasure, and I am grateful to be relieved of even supposing that I could hurt her.

"A bake sale?" my mother says. She wipes her hands on her apron and frowns. "I'm not sure. On such short notice?"

I was supposed to tell her on Monday, but I forgot. Today is already Thursday, and I promised my teacher that I would bring in a cake for Friday.

"I forgot to tell you," I say. My mother takes my chin between her fingers.

"So unlike you, Sonyala," she says. "Don't worry. I'll make something for your bake sale."

I wrap my arms around her waist in gratitude. I don’t ever remember loving her as much as I do at this moment. I want her to prepare a marble cake. It’s my favorite, but she is leaning towards butter cookies. Both are delicious. We discuss which would make a better item for the sale and finally agree that the marble cake is more impressive. She checks the cupboard for ingredients and opens the refrigerator to see if we have enough butter and eggs. We need cocoa and another stick of butter.

"Make sure it's unsalted," she says. "And get the imported cocoa. Not the American kind. It has no taste."
I take the money she gives me and repeat the items.

"One stick of unsalted butter and a tin of cocoa. Not the American kind," I say.

"Be careful crossing," she says. "I'll get everything ready."

Just as I am about to leave, she calls after me.

"Sonya! Stop in at the bakery and ask Mrs. Hellman to give you a cake box. Sometimes she charges a dime. Sometimes she gives for nothing. Go. Hurry back."

This time Mrs. Hellman "gives for nothing." It seems as if everything is working perfectly this afternoon. My mother and I sing to the radio as we work. "Oh, I could kiss you on a Monday, a Tuesday, a Wednesday, a Thursday, a Friday, a Saturday. But never, never on a Sunday, a Sunday...a Sunday..." When she forgets the words, she sings, "la, la, la, la..." I try to show her how to do the Twist, and we laugh hysterically. The chocolate batter is ready to be swirled through the white cake batter. I stand, fork poised in mid-air as my mother slowly pours.

"Now!" she says. "Slowly."

I run the fork around the Bundt pan and watch as the white batter is merged with fine rivers of chocolate.

"Perfect," my mother says.

I open the oven door, and she glides the pan in.

"Don't slam the door," my mother whispers.

We smile at each other, and she gives me the bowls and spoons to lick. The kitchen smells wonderful. My mother hums as she cleans up. I’m so happy.

In the morning, I carefully carry the cake to school in the white bakery box. It is placed alongside countless other baked goods on long tables set up in the school gym. I watch as a label is attached to the side of the box: MARBLE CAKE-$1.50. I feel proud and excited.

At lunchtime, we’re allowed to go to the bake sale. Many items have been sold, but my mother's marble cake is still there. I’m worried, but there is still lots of time.

At three o'clock, I check the gym. All the tables but one, have been folded and set aside. I see my mother's cake, still in it's white box, standing obtrusively among a few odd plates of broken cookies and muffins. Leftover bits of samples from the day. I feel as if I have been left, abandoned on the table among the chatter of indifferent strangers.

I walk home slowly. My mother hears my footsteps as I come up the stairs and opens the front door.

"So?" she says. "Who bought our delicious cake, and how much did it cost?"

"I'm not sure who bought it," I say. "But it cost two dollars, and it was gone by the time I went in to check at lunchtime."

She is so obviously thrilled that I do not even consider sharing my own disappointment. The lies come easily. I will do anything to save her.

"Sonyala," Rivka says. "Sonyala, I'm so glad to see you."

I relax in her embrace. She touches my long earrings and shakes her head a bit. Then she winds a few strands of loose hair around my ears and kisses my cheeks.

"Such big earrings don't give you a headache?" she says.

"No," I say.

"Good. Then come with me to the kitchen. See what I prepared for you."

Rivka leads me by the hand towards the kitchen. Others call out to me as we pass, but Rivka tells them, "Not now. Just a minute." They all laugh. They know better than to argue with her when her mind is set. I can see my brother and Larry already talking. My parents are agreeing with everyone that it’s so nice the children came.

"How's Sam?" I say.

Sam is sitting on the porch with a blanket on his lap even though it is especially warm for April. Rivka sighs so deeply that I regret the question. She squeezes my hand.

"Not so good, Sonya. Not so good."

"I'm sorry."

"You're a good girl, Sonyala. You were always a good girl. A daughter is a blessing."

I laugh. "I'm not so sure my mother would agree these days," I say.

"Oh," Rivka says. "I think she would. She's just trying to find her way with you. She was never your age, you know."

I look away. I don’t want hear any more. Not today. Rivka takes my hand and presses it against the blue tattoo that she never hides beneath long sleeves as some of the other women do. I know Rivka's number, G-2183, as well as I know my own phone number.

"It's a burden," she says. "I know it's not an easy thing to grow up knowing everything you know. I tell my Larry and my Michael the same. But what should we do, Sonyala? Who should we tell? Is there an easy way to tell our children about what we went through?" She shakes her head. "No. There is no easy way. And there is no easy way to listen. But you must listen. You must tell your children, so they can tell their children. If not, no one will remember."

I’m crying now. My skin own feels like dry ice against Rivka's tatoo, and I try to pull away. Her grip is fierce.

"Do you know why I'm such a good cook?" she says.

I shake my head.

"I planned menus every day," she says.

"Menus?" I say.

"Yes. In the laguer I worked twelve hours a day with nothing to eat but a heavily salted broth that occasionally had a few potato peels floating about. On a good day, there was a piece of dark bread and some weak coffee. The menus never varied, so I created my own. The other women joined me in this game. We argued over ingredients. How much egg white to brush over a challah before baking, how small to cut the carrots and onions for a really good goulash, the virtue of adding a little brandy to the sponge cake batter." She strokes my hand where she still holds it over her tattoo. "You know why we did it, Sonya? To stay alive. It gave us a little humanity to remember that once we had slept between clean sheets and eaten off real plates with utensils. Once we had not hoarded crusts of bread for a dying friend. Once, long ago, we had been normal people. Do you understand?"

Do I understand? There is a place in me that wants to shout at Rivka, “Understand? How could I not understand?” Instead, I nod and reassure her that, of course I understand. I look around Rivka's kitchen. The counters are covered with platters of food. All my favorites have been prepared. She loves me.

"I made the lima bean salad just for you," Rivka says.

Now I look at her and smile. Her black hair is knotted at the back of her head, and her skin is smooth and soft, her brow unwrinkled. No one would ever guess her losses. I’ve always thought her beautiful, but she laughs when I tell her this. The hand that presses my flesh against hers has brightly painted nails.

"Too red?" she says.

"How can anything be too red?” I say.

Rivka laughs, and I’m happy. When she laughs, she looks like a girl. The place where our skin meets no longer feels odd. Rivka releases her hold, but I don’t take away my hand. Cautiously, I run my thumb around the tattoo, surprised not to confront sharp edges. I always thought the tattoo would be raised, the skin beneath it still raw.

"Only the memories hurt," Rivka says.

The numbers are blurred through my tears.

"And the fear of being forgotten," she adds.
I trace the letter and numbers of her tattoo with my forefinger. G-2183. It is the first time I ever touch Rivka in this spot. The first time she ever reveals herself to me. Now I am forced to remember.

Phyllis Schieber lives in Westchester County where she spends her days creating new stories and teaching writing. She is the author of three novels, The Sinner’s Guide to Confession, Willing Spirits, and Strictly Personal. Her new novel, The Manicurist, will be released by Bell Bridge Books in July, 2011. G-2183 is part of a larger work that is still in progress.

Crackheads are like seagulls: you feed one, and it comes back every day for the next year, staring at you with its flat, needful eyes, shifting from foot to foot, emitting an occasional squawk of impatience. It’s a particular kind of love, a pick-your-bones-before-your-body-cools kind of love. On Cape Cod, where I come from, only the tourists feed the gulls.

Now, I get it, I see the pieces sliding into place in your minds: white college girl from bourgie East Coast seaside town, moves to New York City, becomes “college poor” and ends up living in real poor neighborhood, naively takes condescending pity on desperate crack ho, and then can’t shake her. Cry you a fucking river, right?

Let me explain.

Tay Tay and I had more in common than you think, than I thought. And I’m not talking about our Puerto Rican fathers.

How about some more context? This was the year 2000, pre-9/11, pre-George Dubya, post-millenium. We had partied like it was 1999, and we were still partying, because the world had not ended, because we didn’t need a reason. It was the year I ripped my first CD, my junior year of college. It was the summer that Aaliyah’s last hit: “Try Again” was all over the radio. I loved that song, despite the fact that I had invested most of my music-loving years to semi-obscure indie-rock and the kind of underground rap music that only arty white college kids and the black intellectuals who hate them loved (remember Ded Prez? Cannibal Ox?). I was a New School student, after all.

It was not the first year that I smoked crack, but, it was the first time I could buy it at the corner store. Though, I didn’t know that when I first moved in.

I should never have given Tay Tay my money. It was only that one time. See, when we first moved in, our apartment building’s door was busted, which meant that after dark, the vestibule that housed our mailboxes was consistently fishbowled with crack smoke. Tay Tay would wait in the vestibule for a tenant to open the second door, leading into the building, wedge her flip-flopped foot in as it closed, and then lead her tricks up to the roof. She used protection, I’m happy to report, the evidence was all over our roof, as if a horde of snakes had slithered up there, and molted, en masse.

I wasn’t even looking for crack, that day. My heroin habit was much more pressing. But crack was the drug industry in Bed Stuy. She ripped me off, of course. I knew enough then that I shouldn’t let her out of my sight, but I wasn’t brave enough yet to insist that she take me with her to cop.

The next time I saw her, weaving down Gates Avenue, hair half braided, flip-flops flapping, one arm clutching a child-size pink raincoat closed over her skinny chest, the other raised high over her head, waving as she called out “Haaay-aaay!! Melinda!” I almost ducked behind a tree. I fiercely protected my double life, and only recently had my habits assumed the strain of desperation that threatened the compartmentalization of my ambitious college student identity and my street-savvy derelict. My literary heroes—those precious gold standards of junkiedom whom I referred to whenever the need to rationalize the obvious dangers of drug-use popped up—(William Burroughs lived into a ripe old age, nevermind that he shot his wife). Well, they had never written about what to do when your cover was blown in broad daylight by a crackhead in a pink raincoat. I gave her a dollar and scurried into my apartment as quickly as I could manage. Her hungry face disappeared behind the apartment door, but the gnawing fear in my chest hung around.

I never copped from her again, sticking instead with the dealers I quickly located around the block, who didn’t use their own product, and weren’t any eager to be seen in my company than I was in theirs. But Tay Tay persisted. “Girlfriend,” I’d hear her hollar from half a block away, on my way home from the Bedford Y—where I liked to lift weights in slow motion when I was high on dope.

Let me explain. My logic functioned on junkie arithmetic, which reasoned two bags of dope + one hour of exercise had an absolute value of zero; the two values neutralized one another. Throw in a shot of wheatgrass, and I was having a good day.

I tried to neutralize Tay Tay, by telling her I was on the wagon now. “White girl,” she’d say, sucking her teeth, “you. Are. Not.” She’d lean back to appraise me, squinting one eye theatrically.

“You on that good shit. Tay Tay can tell.” It took one to know one. Her brain might have been pudding from years on the pipe and the street, but a fiend always knows a fiend.

One time, I was standing on my stoop with my roommate, Emily, and our super, Walter, a giant, kind West Indian man who never fixed anything, but would bring us salves to cure athlete’s foot, and thick stalks of raw sugar cane. As we chit-chatted, I spotted Tay Tay coming down the block, and hurried to finish up our conversation. I relaxed as she turned down Franklin Ave, moving away from us.

“There goes a junky scramble,” I blurted out. I have often had the tourettish impulse to point out the objects of my anxiety, as if drawing attention to them will divert it from me.

“A junky scramble?” asked my roommate. “Like, a tofu scramble?”

I laughed. “No, like, a junky on the move.” I descended the stoop steps, and scrambled down the walkway. Walter hooted. It was an imitation of that motion recognizable to most people who’ve ever lived in a major city (well, the kind of people who live in not-nicest neighborhoods, or have a reason to notice this kind of thing): legs stiff but hustling, a hint of a limp, arms awkward but swinging, body’s frame rocking side to side. The junky scramble. It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing; everybody knows where you’re going when you walk like that.

Eventually, my roommates, who drank and smoked like normal college students, started to feel uncomfortable, about my drug use, and my new BFF. No one said anything—I never gave them an opportunity, and I never used in front of them, but I recognized that thickness in the air of our mouse-infested home, the gravity of silence clotted with words unspoken.

Then one night, I woke to one of my roommates prodding, her furrowed face leaning over me.

“Wake up!”

“What?” I asked her, blearily rubbing my eyes.

“Listen.”

We stared at each other in silence for a moment, and just as I raised my arm in incredulity, I heard it.

BANG BANG BANG.

I sat up in bed, rubbing my eyes again.

BANG BANG BANG.

“What the fuck?” I said.

My roommate gave me an exasperated glare, and then I heard her.

“Melisssssssaaaa! Yo!! Me-la-nie!”

I froze, frantically hoping that I would wake up a second time, to find that this had been just another anxiety dream.

BANG BANG BANG.

“The neighbors!” hissed my roommate, and I sprung out of bed, hurrying through the kitchen and down the long hallway that led to the apartment door, my feet sticking to the never-mopped floor.
I secured the chain-lock, and cracked open the door, just as she began to call my name again.

“MEL—”

“Ssshhh!” I hushed through the crack.

At first I didn’t see her. Then I lowered my gaze. Tay Tay sat on the landing outside our apartment, smiling up at me with her three teeth.

“Oh, hey girl! It’s just me.”

She was obviously high—but not as agitated as her banging had suggested. I closed the door, and unlatched the lock, opening it again, but just enough to stick my head out.

“Tay Tay, what are you doing?” I asked. But it was obvious. She had an oversized sweatshirt spread out beneath her for a makeshift blanket, and neatly arranged across it were a couple of sooty crack pipes, a small pile of crumpled heroin bags, a battered box of Newports, and an empty 24 oz coca cola bottle. A crackhead picnic.

Perhaps this was all arranged just so for her convenience, but I later suspected, as I still do, that it was more for my benefit—either to entice me, or to horrify me, I’m still not sure. Drug addicts’ powers of manipulation can never be overestimated.

“Tay Tay,” I said slowly. “You can’t be here right now. It’s four o’clock in the morning.”

“Oh,” she said, tilting her head back. “You were sleepin’?”

“Yes,” I said. “And so were my roommates, and so were my neighbors.” I examined her to gauge comprehension. Or more accurately, to gauge cooperation. I silently prayed that she would go peacefully. I’d started talking to god more in those days than I ever had, being that I spent so much time in foxholes. “You have to leave, Tay Tay,” I said, not unkindly, but with what I hoped conveyed non-negotiability, and more confidence than I felt.

For a few moments, we didn’t say anything. She stared at me, then down at her picnic. I became aware of my goose-pimpled legs, my roommates breathing behind me, and the smoldering cigarette she had wedged in the cleft between her index and middle finger.

Finally, she gave a shrug.

“All right then. I’ll be on my way.”

I nearly collapsed with relief.

“But! You can at least do me this one favor.”

I didn’t know how I had ended up in her deficit, but I was willing to concede, if it meant that she’d pack up shop before my neighbors started poking their heads out from behind their peepholes. Bed Stuy’s sidewalks might have been scattered with crackheads, but its homes were mostly full of hardworking people, who just wanted a good night’s sleep.

“Okay, what?”

She cocked her head at me. “You gotta hair pic?”

“What? No. Wait, what?”

Tay Tay rolled her eyes. “A comb, you got a hair comb?”

“Ah, yeah, I guess. I mean, I think so.” I didn’t actually brush my hair often, but held up a finger to indicate that I would soon return. I pushed my way past my roommates, bare feet suctioning again to the sticky floors as I padded into the bathroom and slid open the medicine cabinet. On the top shelf, in a puddle of nail polish remover was a cheap black comb. I wiped it on the corner of a mildewy towel and scuttled back to the door, cracking it open once again.

“Here you go,” I sung, projecting an air of closure, as if it were now obvious to all that our business was finished.

“Mmm,” she grunted, and examined the comb. She dropped it onto the sweatshirt with her other goodies, and stared at it some more. A fresh spurt of anxiety chilled my chest. Tay Tay reached for the empty coke bottle and held it up to me.

“You got something to drink in there?”

I paused, “Yeah, yeah I can get something to drink.”

“What I’d really like is a shower. My head is itchiiin.’”

“Tay Tay…”

“I know! I’m only asking for a little something to drink. My mouth is dry.”

She coughed dryly to illustrate.

I rolled my eyes, but took the bottle. Closing the door softly again, I hurried back to the bathroom and filled her bottle with water, careful not to touch its mouth with my bare fingers.

When I handed it back to her, heavy and cool, and beaded with droplets, she stared at it, much as she’d stared at the comb. As if she had been expecting something better.

“You don’t have no coca-cola?”

“No, Tay Tay, I don’t drink Coca-Cola.” This was true.

She looked at me like I was crazy. I stared right back at her, and there followed another long stretch of silence, in whose liquid thickness I knew more than one potential floated. I could practically hear her brain gnawing on the options, and their possible outcomes.

Finally, she shrugged, and began packing up her picnic. This took longer than I need detail, but suffice to say, it was with no urgency that she closely inspected the insides of each empty baggie for any valuable residue before folding their tiny rectangles into tinier rectangles and laboriously wrapping them in the foil from her cigarette box. With a disgruntled air, she finally hoisted herself up, and into her blackened flip flops, and slow motion scrambled down the stairs.

And that, was pretty much the last interaction I had with her. Sure I saw her around the neighborhood, hustling across Franklin Ave like her life depended on it, which it did. Or passed out on the sofa underneath the C train overpass, which we referred to as “the living room.” Every couple weeks the city would drag away the loveseat, hobbled folding chairs, and milkcrates that had been collected there, and within another couple days, replacements would appear, with bodies sprawled across, or crouched over them.

I wish I could say that getting such a close-up view at what drugs did to human beings was what got me sober. I wish I could say that, at 20 years old, I realized that my middle-classness, my higher education, my wheatgrass shots, or theories of invincibility wouldn’t protect me from becoming someone else. None of that did. It was only the private revelation of my own suffering, and I had a few more years before that would get worse enough.

Once, on my walk to the subway, outside a bodega, I saw a man punch a woman in face three times. I had seen fights, but no one had ever punched me in the face. I didn’t hesitate before throwing myself between them like some kind of tiny white feminist superhero. Shooting rays of hubris from my knuckles. These two crackheads both looked at me like I was fucking crazy.
I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same thing today. But the shame I feel thinking about it has more to do with my silent presumption than my actions. That I knew anything about their lives, or their states of victimhood, or what of. I might have studied racial politics in my New School classrooms, waxed on about hegemonic class dynamics, gentrification, and paradigms of subjugation, but I didn’t have a fucking clue. At least not how to place myself in the context of any of that. I still thought that knowledge was an action. That self-knowledge induced change.

Though I stopped hearing Tay Tay call my name down the street, I did receive a call from my landlord. He was a mild man, who never minded if our rent was a few days late, and so I knew something was up.

The three of us showed up on the appointed afternoon, and were seated in his tiny Park Slope office.

The performance that followed I am loathe to describe to anyone, though I was proud of it at the time. As my roomates looked on, I explained to this man that the neighborhood was just full of these sad cases, and I had only been trying to help. I had tried giving her food, and then just enough money for a metrocard, or the 24hour buffet down on Fulton. I wept real tears, which is somewhat of a miracle, considering how emotionally numb I was—they must have been on reserve for whenever I got quiet enough to feel how completely terrified and miserable I was.

As I remember it, my roommates didn’t say much, and my landlord gently reminded me not to feed the crackheads. For years, I thought back on it, despite with growing chagrin, as my most immaculate performance. And I gave many.

After I got sober, left Bed Stuy, and was living the clean cut life of a professional dominatrix, my old roommate Emily and I had lunch in Williamsburg. The subject of Tay tay came up. I cringed.

“Do you remember that fucked up performance I gave david, after she showed up at four in the morning that time? I can’t believe I pulled that bullshit off.”

Emily stared at me in disbelief.

“What?” I said.

“Do you remember that day?” she asked.

“Of course I do!”

“You were so high,” she said, “you practically fell out of your chair.”

“What?” I said.

She just nodded, eyes widened.

I reeled. “But why would he just act like he believed me. Why didn’t anyone say anything?”

She stared at me for another moment. “What was the point?”

Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir, WHIP SMART. Her writing has been published in The Southeast Review, Redivider, Dissent, The Chronicle of Higher Education Review, and Bitch Magazine, among many others, and she has been profiled in venues ranging from the cover of the NY Post to NPR’s Fresh Air. She teaches at Purchase College, Sarah Lawrence, The New School, and NYU, and holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence. A resident of Brooklyn, she is currently at work on a novel.